Genre: short story
pages 112
1985
(unremarkable)
Arkady Gaidar lived in the Russian Empire, in the city of Lvov.
Main characters:
Timur
Zhenya
Olga (Zhenya's sister)
Doctor Kolokolchikov
thrush
Mishka Kvakin
Simakov
Geika
Georgy Garayev (Timur's uncle)
Alexandrov (father of Zhenya and Olga)
Plan:
1)Meeting of Timur and Kvakin
2) Races at the gate
3)Scenes with the woodpile
4) Delivery of an ultimatum
5) Receiving a response to an ultimatum
6) Capturing the gang
7) Arrest of the gang
8) Conversation between Timur, Figure and Kvakin
Plot:
Main actors Gaidar's story "Timur and his team" is a group of boys and 2 daughters of a Soviet military leader, Zhenya and Olga. They move to a holiday village, where the youngest Zhenya discovers that on their site in an abandoned barn there is a meeting place for the boys of the village, whose activities are well organized by the leader Timur Garayev It turned out that they were not engaged in the usual entertainment for boys, hooliganism, but were helping the relatives of those who were drafted into the Red Army.
Zhenya gets involved in the activities of the “organization”. Her older sister Olga believes that she got involved with hooligans and in every possible way forbids Zhenya to communicate with Timur and his team. Olga, meanwhile, begins to befriend the “engineer” Georgy, who in fact turned out to be a tanker and Timur’s uncle.
Timurites provide assistance to the relatives of those who served in the army, protecting their gardens from thieves, carrying water, and searching for missing pets. They decide to give a decisive battle to a gang of hooligans who are robbing residents’ gardens. Attempts to resolve the issue peacefully were unsuccessful and Timur’s men defeated the hooligans in hand-to-hand combat. The hooligans were captured and locked in a booth in the central square of the village.
The story “Timur and His Team” ends with Timur taking Zhenya to meet his father on his uncle’s motorcycle. Olga understands that Timur is not a hooligan at all, and Zhenya is also doing useful things.
Timur and his team
Unlike Pavlik, this hero did not have real prototype. He was born in the imagination of the author of adventure books Arkady Gaidar, who wrote, in particular, “Military Secret”. Coming from the pen of one of the most popular children's writers of Stalin's time, the story “Timur and His Team” was published in Pionerskaya Pravda for several months, and then went through many book editions. This is a lively, well-made and entertaining book. Its action takes place during a war, which is not directly stated, but the first readers, of course, guessed that we were talking about the Soviet-Finnish war, which began the previous winter. At the center of the story is a group of children living in a dacha area near Moscow; they organized a kind of patrol, taking upon themselves the responsibility of guarding the houses of officers fighting at the front. The leader of this patrol was Timur, whose name gives the title to the story. After a series of clashes with hooligans operating under the leadership of a certain Mishka Kvakin, Timur’s men manage to lock the members of the gang in an empty booth, on which they post a notice: “PASSERS-BY, DON’T BE SORRY! There are people here who cowardly rob civilians’ gardens at night.” It all ends with the restoration of order: “I stand...I look. All is well! Everyone is calm. That means I’m calm too” (271).
The activities of Timur and his team are not similar to the feat of Pavlik Morozov or even Malchish, created by the same Gaidar. The activities of the Timurites are more modest and do not threaten them with tragic death, as in the cases of Pavlik and Malchish; it is aimed at combating juvenile hooligans, not adult criminals. In addition, Timur received approval from Red Army Colonel Alexandrov, the father of the two heroines of the story. At the end of the book, when Alexandrov learns about what is happening, he warmly congratulates the heroic boy: “The father stood up and, without hesitation, shook Timur’s hand” (272). One of Alexandrov’s two daughters, Olga, imagines herself as the main one in children’s social and political life and therefore does not approve of Timur’s activity, but now she is forced to admit that his activity benefits the team. In the decisive scene of reconciliation, the older male character no longer appears as “Colonel Alexandrov,” but as a “father,” thereby symbolizing the wise parental protection that extended to Timur, who grew up without a father, and to all youth in general.
Timur thus embodied the unifying force of social cohesion, while Pavlik was more like the hero of a Western scout novel or even the protagonist of Enid Blyton’s most popular adventure stories about the “Famous Five.”
Like other successful authors who not only managed to survive, but also quite prospered under the Stalinist regime (it was apparently somewhat easier for children's writers to achieve this position than their counterparts in adult literature), Arkady Gaidar had a special political sense. The name “Timur” itself, not very common in Russia, was probably chosen not only in honor of his own son Gaidar, but also in honor of the adopted son of Kliment Voroshilov (after the death of M.V. Frunze, K.E. Voroshilov adopted his children - the son of Timur and daughter Tatyana). When Gaidar was working on this book, Voroshilov was one of Stalin's closest associates. At this point, the artist Alexander Gerasimov had just finished painting his “icon” - the painting “I.V. Stalin and K.E. Voroshilov in the Kremlin,” on which the marshal is depicted shoulder to shoulder, overcoat to overcoat next to the leader against the backdrop of a panorama of Zamoskvorechye, stretching beyond the Kremlin wall. Voroshilov was associated primarily with military valor: in 1925 he was appointed People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs, from 1934 to 1940 he was People's Commissar of Defense, and in 1935 he received the rank of marshal restored in the Soviet military hierarchy. But at the same time, he was a favorite of the pioneer press and received hundreds of letters from children asking for an autograph or advice on how to live. The marshal did not like autographs and usually did not send them (until in 1968 his assistant acquired a stack of photographs of Voroshilov with a ready-made signature). But he generously gave verbose instructions: “And under communism, every person, all people without exception, must become and will become hardworking, conscientious, honest, comprehensively developed, in other words, as indicated in the Program, they will successfully combine spiritual wealth, moral purity and physical perfection" (273). There was a huge distance between the stellar rank of Marshal Voroshilov and the modest rank of Colonel Alexandrov. And yet Alexandrov, also a military man, who took a strange boy under his wing, was distant alter ego Voroshilov. Thus, Voroshilov was also perceived as the symbolic father of Timur, and under the “virtual” patronage of the highest Stalinist elite found himself a hero boy of a new type, who cooperates with adults, performs safe and modest public work, and also maintains the chain of command, conducting propaganda and denunciation activities in accordance with to his age.
The appearance of Timur clearly marked an obvious turn in the tasks of the pioneers. In the 1920s and 1930s, activists worried that the Pioneer organization would lurch toward the Scouts, a patriotic but politically conservative cause. children's movement, who placed more emphasis on leisure and bourgeois philanthropy than on social activism. Timur, as the ideal pioneer hero, marked a change in the attitude of the authorities towards scouts: now Sovietized forms of scout activism became the official direction of development of the pioneer movement.
The support of the new line on the part of the leaders of the pioneer organization is evidenced by the fact that Gaidar’s book was promoted much more diligently than the canonical biographies of Pavlik. This can be seen in the circulation, which in the centralized Soviet system unmistakably reflected not only the true popularity of the book, but also official opinion about its meaning. The total circulation of canonical biographies of Pavlik Morozov in the 1930s - given the hero's fame - was surprisingly small. After the first edition of 10,000 copies, Solomenn’s book was no longer published. The biography, written by Alexander Yakovlev, went through only two reprints: 1936 and 1938, so that the total circulation of all three editions was 105,000 copies. Smirnov’s “Pavlik Morozov” was published only once (1938, 50,000), as was Valya Borovin’s poem “Pavel Morozov” (1936, 10,000) (274). These figures, totaling 175,000, look very convincing when compared with the circulations of poets who wrote for an "elite" adult audience: for example, the circulation of Pasternak's books usually did not exceed 5,000 copies or so. But at the same time, they were significantly inferior to the circulation of Gaidar’s “Military Secrets” (eight editions with a total circulation of 555,600 from 1935 to 1939) (275). And the story “Timur and His Team” significantly surpassed in this indicator the biographies of Pavlik, published in the 1930s, and the post-war editions of Gubarev’s book (total circulation 90,000 from 1947 to 1948). Only during the Great Patriotic War“Timur” was reprinted four times, reaching a total circulation of 200,000, and then the number of copies was 200,000-300,000 per year.
In 1947, "Timur" was included in a selection of outstanding children's books published on the cover of the official annual bibliography "Children's Literature", sharing fame with Krylov's fables, Pushkin's " Captain's daughter", Tolstoy's "Childhood", Jules Verne, Mayakovsky's children's poems, a collection of Russian folk tales and “Stories about Lenin” by Kononov. The list also included contemporary works, mainly in military theme, and others written by the best children's writers of our time: Marshak, Abramov, Lev Kassil, Sergei Mikhalkov, Veniamin Kaverin and Valentin Kataev. None of the biographies of Pavlik Morozov were on the list (276). The progress of the two heroes in the Warsaw Pact countries was also surprisingly different: Timur was published seven times in East Germany and Romania throughout the 1940s, while not a single book about Pavlik Morozov found its way into these politically important “Soviet colonies” (277 ) .
The distribution of written texts was not the only way of Timur's propaganda among youth. In 1940, director Alexander Razumny made a children's blockbuster based on the story; the film was such a success that Gaidar immediately began work on its sequel. “Timur’s Oath” was published in 1942, a year after the writer died at the front. Cinema remained extremely popular among Soviet children, who had virtually unlimited opportunity to go to cinemas—generation after generation of Soviet educators voiced their concerns about the harmful influence of cinema. Since the mid-1930s, the solution to this problem has been the promotion of children's family films. It is clear that a film about Pavlik Morozov could not fall into this category, and vice versa, a film about a socially active, but obedient and charming boy had every chance of success.
At the same time, it is interesting to note this fact: when Gaidar’s story was first published, its assessment was not always complimentary. In 1941, for example, Pioneer magazine published several letters from children complaining that Timur, in their opinion, was “unconfident” and weak in expressing his disagreement (278).
Such tolerance towards even benevolent criticism of an officially approved story is an exceptional phenomenon; it points to high degree the authorities' confidence in the universal popularity of the book among children. Oral history fully confirms this impression: even those adults who criticized other aspects of Soviet life retained a warm feeling for this hero. For example, a man born in 1935 who was an active dissident in the 1970s and early 1980s recalls enjoying the film and compares Pavlik Morozov and Timur in favor of the latter: “At least he wanted to help people” (279 ) . The women of the same generation whom I interviewed were simply thrilled at the mention of Timur. “We are at this time (those when the film came out. - K.K.) were already teenagers...And we were simply in love with him...” recalls one of them (1931 Ave.). “He was a torch for us,” adds another (280).
Another proof of the extraordinary popularity of this hero is the respectful references to him that regularly appeared in the children's press: “Timur would never have done that” (or “would have done it differently”). In 1944, the article “Timur managed without a nanny” appeared in Pionerskaya Pravda. It criticized lazy children who resorted to deceitful tricks to evade work: for example, they told their mother that they could not help her with homework, because they have to do their homework, but the teacher at school - what they didn’t do homework, because they were busy with housework (281).
Most effective method encouraging children in their desire to be like their idol was the organization of teams of “Timurovites”: they collected scrap metal and other recyclables, delivered mail, collected money for combat aircraft, helped babysit children, participated in checking blackouts and other measures air defense(282) . The creation of self-governing children's secret societies like Timur's team in the 1930s would have displeased any Soviet official who came across such an organization and such initiatives were then strictly persecuted (283). In the 1940s, attitudes towards them became a little less harsh, but they were still on the edge of what was acceptable. In 1944, Lev Kassil published the adventure story “My Dear Boys,” which centered on a group of boys from a Volga town who, in secret from the adults, played a romantic game and called themselves “Sinegortsy.” Later they actively participated in anti-fascist resistance. The central conflict of the book lies in the confrontation between the “Sinegorsk people” and the leader of the local House of Pioneers, who considered their activities illegal. Just as in “Timur”, this picky teacher was corrected by a senior comrade - the secretary of the city committee of the Communist Party. He first scolded the boys for their secrecy, but then decided that their activities were harmless and gave his fatherly approval (284).
Children were not allowed to independently organize their own societies - it was necessary to obtain the consent of adults, and even better (in life, not in literature) to act under the direct guidance of elders. However, children's social activity inside pioneer movement, expressed, in particular, in playing “secret societies” under the strict control of adults, was allowed. Accordingly, the Timur movement did not stop its development after 1945, unlike other children's movements of that time, but continued to be propagandized until the end of the Stalin era and after it for another four and a half decades (285).
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From the book Modernization: from Elizabeth Tudor to Yegor Gaidar by Margania OtarYear of writing: 1940
Genre: story
Main characters: Zhenya And Timur– teenagers, Olga– Zhenya’s sister
Plot
In a holiday village near Moscow, the guys organized secret assistance to the families of military personnel; their commander is Timur, the nephew of Captain Garayev. Olga and Zhenya, daughters of Colonel Alexandrov, who is at the front at that moment, come to the dacha.
The guys do a lot of good things, but there is also Mishka Kvakin’s gang, which robs gardens and vegetable gardens local residents. There is irreconcilable hostility between the guys.
Olga, without understanding, accuses Timur of many sins and forbids her sister to be friends with him, but Zhenya really likes the honest and brave boy, who, moreover, provides her with enormous services.
And finally, Timur, at the risk of being severely punished, takes the girl on a motorcycle to Moscow to the station for a short meeting with her father. After this, all secrets are revealed. And Captain Garanin receives a summons to the front, and he is escorted out by the entire village.
Conclusion (my opinion)
Timur was an ideal for children of several generations, today there is also a “Timur movement” - selfless help to older people. You can’t do everything just for money and gifts; the main thing in human relationships is mutual assistance.
The story “Timur and His Team” is still regularly republished and is included in the list of one hundred books recommended to schoolchildren by the Ministry of Education for independent reading, although the historical situation in which it was created text is a thing of the past. This is one of the most popular and sought-after books in the Soviet children's canon. The story was read both as part of the school curriculum and completely voluntarily; Heroes were imitated; for many years, boys were named after Timur, and girls were named after Zhenya. Timur replaced the main character of the 1930s, Pavlik Morozov, in the Soviet pantheon and won the sympathy of readers for a long time. According to the British anthropologist and historian of childhood culture Catriona Kelly, “even those adults who criticized other aspects of Soviet life retained a warm feeling for this hero.”
Timur and Timurites
Cover of Arkady Gaidar's story “Timur and His Team.” Gorky, 1942"Detgiz"; Russian State Children's LibraryNot many people remember that the story “Timur and His Team” was preceded by a script for the film of the same name. The film appeared before the book, and it was he who first attracted the attention of Soviet children to the story of the boy Timur and his friends. Only six months after finishing work on the script, when the film had already gone into production, Gaidar began to rework it into a story.
Its plot is as follows. In a dacha village near Moscow there is an unusual team - teenagers secretly help the families of soldiers and commanders of the Red Army: they fetch water from a well, put firewood in a woodpile, search for missing pets, protect children from cruelty from adults. At the same time, the guys enter into confrontation with local hooligans - destroyers of gardens and vegetable gardens - and win a convincing moral victory over them.
This model of self-organization and social activity immediately found a response and became a model for imitation. The first Timurov teams appeared in the USSR back in 1940, immediately after the film was released. After Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union, Timur’s teams began to actively spread: the number of participants in the first post-war years amounted to hundreds of thousands. Even the expression “Timurov movement” appeared - in fact, this was the name for a form of social volunteering, firmly tied to the postulates of Soviet ideology. Today, the initial context of the appearance of Timur and Timur’s men is little understood. Let's try to restore it.
"Soyuzdetfilm" Any reader of the story, like the viewer of the film, cannot help but notice that a huge place in these works is occupied by descriptions of the movements of Soviet troops and various kinds weapons Even in the dacha village, Uncle Timur has a pistol loaded with blank cartridges, and Doctor Kolokolchikov has a hunting rifle, and the heroes shoot from both.. The word “front” appears already in the second sentence of the story, and the word “armored division” - even in the first. When Olga, the main character’s sister, goes to the dacha, sitting on a wicker chair in the back of a truck with a kitten and a bouquet of cornflowers on her lap, she is overtaken by a marching army motorcade. In this sense, “Timur and His Team” is perhaps one of the most disturbing works of Soviet children's literature.
The signs of an impending war will become clearer if you pay attention to the dates when work on the script, and then on the story, began. From Gaidar's diaries it follows that he sat down to write the script in early December 1939, that is, immediately after the start of the Soviet-Finnish War Soviet-Finnish War- the war between the USSR and Finland from November 30, 1939 to March 12, 1940..
On June 14, 1940, Gaidar wrote in his diary that he had begun “the story of Duncan” (at first he was going to call Timur that), and by the end of August he was finishing it. The start date of work is very important: it was on June 14 that the Soviet Union presented an ultimatum Republic of Lithuania before sending troops there. The next day, similar ultimatums were sent to Latvia and Estonia, followed by the occupation of all three Baltic countries.
Newspaper language
Still from the film “Timur and His Team,” directed by Alexander Razumny. 1940"Soyuzdetfilm" An important place in the plot of “Timur” is occupied by the episode with the ultimatum that Timur decides to send to the gang of the hooligan Kvakin. He is in both the story and the film. In the script, these scenes could have appeared before the corresponding events of the summer of 1940: the word “ultimatum” was also in use in the international politics of the previous 1938-1939 In 1938, Hitler sent an ultimatum to the government of Czechoslovakia before the occupation of the Sudetenland, in March 1939, Germany issued a verbal ultimatum to Lithuania, and on September 2, 1939, after Germany’s attack on Poland, Great Britain addressed - issued his ultimatum to the aggressor country..
However, it was in the summer of 1940 that the Soviet government began to speak the language of ultimatums, and their tone was very harsh. During these months, Gaidar includes details in the story that are missing from the film: the boys ask Uncle Timur how an ultimatum is drawn up, and he replies that each country does it “in its own way,” but it is imperative to end the text with assurances “in agreement.” Our utmost respect to you." Timur’s team abandons the diplomatic protocol and decides to “send a simpler ultimatum, in the manner of that message from the Cossacks to the Turkish Sultan, which everyone saw in the picture when they read about how the brave Cossacks fought the Turks, Tatars and Poles.” The only boy from Kvakin’s gang who knows what an ultimatum is gives this diplomatic genre an unambiguous interpretation: “They will beat you.”
The mention of the letter of the Cossacks here is not accidental, because, according to legend, it was created shortly after the annexation of Ukraine to Russia It is believed that in 1676, the Cossacks of Right Bank Ukraine sent a letter to the Turkish Sultan, demanding to stop raids on the Ottoman Port (Right Bank Ukraine then belonged to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which concluded a peace treaty with Turkey). The text was harsh and full of curse words. The scene of the creation of this letter is captured in the famous painting by Repin and was re-produced in all Soviet school history textbooks. Ukrainians in general and Zaporozhye Cossacks in particular were presented as bearers of a freedom-loving spirit, which inevitably turned them away from Turkey and Poland and encouraged them to ask for help from Russia. This is how the decision of the Pereyaslav Rada of 1654 on the annexation of Left-Bank Ukraine to Russia was presented to Soviet schoolchildren, which was followed by the war between Rus' and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The annexation of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus in 1939 was part of the next division of Poland carried out by Germany and the USSR.. Thus, the language of ultimatums is presented here as the language of “liberation from the yoke of hostile peoples,” but in fact acts as the language of imperial expansion.
Internal chronology of the story
Still from the film “Timur and His Team,” directed by Alexander Razumny. 1940"Soyuzdetfilm" The film and story take place in the summer of 1939. The dating of individual episodes can be calculated literally using the calendar. The narrative begins with the fact that Colonel Alexandrov, who did not come from the front to Moscow either in the spring or at the beginning of summer, sent telegram and invited his daughters Zhenya and Olya to move to Da-chu.
Timur’s company takes special care of the family of the Red Army soldier Pavlov, who was recently (that is, apparently in the early summer of 1939) killed “on the border.” We know that Lieutenant Pavlov was a pilot: it was in June 1939 that the heaviest air battles at Khalkhin Gol took place Battles at Khalkhin Gol- an armed conflict in the spring - autumn of 1939 near the Khal-khin-Gol river on the territory of Mongolia, where Soviet troops and the army of the Mongolian People's Republic fought on the one hand, and the army of the Japanese Empire on the other perii. The conflict ended with the victory of the Soviet-Mongol group..
The last day of action is determined with even greater precision: the colonel’s arrival in Moscow and the rapid voyage of Zhenya and Timur on a motorcycle are preceded by a holiday “in honor of the anniversary of the Reds’ victory at Khasan.” Fighting on Lake Khasan Khasan battles- armed conflict between the Red Army and the army Japanese Empire, which happened in the summer of 1938 due to the territory around Lake Khasan and the Tumannaya River. The Soviet military group gained the upper hand. ended on August 11, 1938. This means that the last scenes of the film and story take place on the night of August 11-12, 1939, a few days before the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and three weeks before the start of World War II.
This dating obviously contradicts what we see in the book and on the screen. Troops moving to combat positions; the draft of Timur's uncle, George, into the army; Colonel Alexandrov, clearly heading to the same place as Georgy - all this is the reality not of August, but of September 1939, when Germany invaded the territory of Poland, and the USSR began the occupation of its eastern part. The beginning of partial mobilization in the USSR was announced not in August, but in early September. At the same time, theoretically, there should have been a relocation of military formations under the command of Colonel Alexandrov: if in the spring and early summer he was “at the front,” then there could only be one front in mind - in Mongolia. The fighting at Khalkhin Gol, as is known, continued until the very end of August 1939, and a truce was signed on September 15.
The shift in historical chronology within the fictional chronology was most likely necessary for Gaidar in order to fit the entire action of the story into the summer season: in September the heroes had to sit at their desks.
Military children
Still from the film “Timur and His Team,” directed by Alexander Razumny. 1940"Soyuzdetfilm" The structure of Timur’s detachment is not just a game one, but a military one. The communication system and call signs, reconnaissance and patrols, prisoners and envoys - all this testifies to a war that has already turned into Child's world from an adult. There is not a single peaceful song in the story or the film. Olga’s favorite song, which she plays on the accordion, contains the refrain “Pilots! Bombs-machine-throwers! Georgy represents in the theater an old partisan who, even twenty years after his military exploits, is ready to rush into battle. At the end of the film, Timur’s entire detachment, led by Olga, sings a song based on Mayakovsky’s poetry: “Take new rifles, / flags on a bayonet! / And with a song / let’s go to the rifle circles.” The following stanzas of the song and poem encourage Soviet schoolchildren to become orderlies and intelligence officers.
In 1938-1941, Gaidar was very interested in the problems of military education of schoolchildren and educational war games. Traces of these interests were reflected in his diary and in the stories about Timur. The first, “Timur and His Team,” is about a military-type children’s organization that voluntarily and secretly helps the families of Red Army soldiers. In the second, “Commandant of the Snow Fortress” (written in the winter of 1940-1941), children are already playing a real war game - with attacks, assaults and even the use of children's weapons. The third, “Timur’s Oath,” created in a few days at the end of June 1941, talks about what a children’s paramilitary organization will need in the conditions of the outbreak of war (duty during bombings and blackouts, vigilant protection of the village from spies, weeding of collective farms). vegetable gardens and the same assistance as before to the families of Red Army soldiers).
The prospect of escaping to the front is discussed in the first and main story of the cycle: Timur unequivocally declares to his companions that this is impossible under any circumstances, the commanders received the order to “drive our brother out of there.” Thus, all that remains for brave and socially active children is to become a support for adults in the rear and prepare for military service by improving discipline, physical endurance and, finally, special military skills such as shooting, stealth movement in reconnaissance or marching . For Gaidar there was no doubt: until they reach conscription age, teenagers must remain in the rear, but the very organization of their rear work will be military.
Civil War Commissioners
Still from the film “Timur and His Team,” directed by Alexander Razumny. 1940"Soyuzdetfilm" The country was preparing for a battle with an external enemy: bourgeois Poland, militaristic Japan or fascist Germany. However, Gaidar’s children get involved in an internal war, shown as an analogue and continuation of the Civil War. Antagonists --- Timur and Mishka Kvakin call each other commissar and ataman, and these nicknames refer to the conflicts of the late 1910s - early 1920s. For the commissars, the Red Army and Soviet power there are ideas of social justice, protection of the offended and oppressed, knightly honor and nobility; behind the atamans (in other words, gangs of street hooligans) - complete disregard for any ethical standards, humiliation of human dignity (even among one’s own), indifference to the life of the country and society. Gaidar shows that many of the destructive forces of the Civil War are still strong and the new generation will have to enter into the same confrontations as their fathers.
Timur's desire to independently restore order, establish social justice and decide which neighbors require help and protection establishes an important parallel with the legend of Robin Hood. The idea of secretly doing good deeds, leaving behind various kinds of written messages (notes to Zhenya, a poster at the place of imprisonment of the Kvakin gang), refers to the same tradition. At the same time, Gaidar clearly did not want to emphasize such similarities, because Robin Hood’s main enemies were representatives of the English state. Therefore, it was important to show: Timur’s detachment is doing exactly what the party and government consider important at the moment.
Children Adults
Still from the film “Timur and His Team,” directed by Alexander Razumny. 1940"Soyuzdetfilm" Whether Gaidar wanted to create an alternative to the pioneer organization with his Timurov stories or only proposed new ways of its development in wartime - we do not know for sure, nor whether Timur’s team had a real prototype: according to one version, Gaidar described in the story the experience of scout organizations during the First World War. One way or another, “Timur and his team” is a book about a “self-disciplining” children’s team (a term from philologist Evgeniy Dobrenko): children take on all their responsibilities and decide everything themselves, without the help or control of adults. This means that they have fully internalized the social norms and requirements of the adult world and are able to solve the problems facing them without special stimulation or prodding - simply because they know that it is necessary. If one of them makes a mistake or stumbles, neither a teacher nor a pioneer leader will be needed: others will help and promptly rectify.
Of course, in reality such children's groups did not exist. However, Gaidar (like the writer Anton Makarenko before him) came up with a model that was very convenient to propagate as an example to follow. If children cope with the tasks assigned to them without the help of adults or with their minimal mediation, then they not only show independence, but also save the human resources (and therefore material) resources that the state needs so much. And if we add to this the very possibility of using these teams as free labor, the benefit for the state, which had already actually entered the war, was enormous. It was precisely these motives that apparently led to the active promotion of the story and the film by the Komsomol Central Committee.
In the story “Timur and His Team” by Arkady Gaidar, the main characters are a team of boys and two daughters of Colonel Alexandrov - the eldest Olga and the youngest Zhenya.
Olga and Zhenya arrive at the dacha
The sisters received a telegram from their father from the front. He invites the children to spend the rest of the summer at the dacha. Olga was the first to leave for the dacha. She asked Zhenya to clean the house first, and then come too. Zhenya is forced to obey Olga because she is older.
At the dacha, Olga notices that a red flag is fluttering on the roof of an old barn, which soon disappears. She hears muffled whispers, noise. A neighbor suggests that the boys may have entered the orchard to get apples.
Olga meets a young mechanical engineer, Georgiy Garayev, who sneaks onto the site to listen to her sing. Zhenya came to her sister the next day. She was looking for mail and accidentally wandered into someone else's dacha. The girl was forced to spend the night there because she was scared of the dog.
Walking around the summer cottage, Zhenya launches a cardboard man into the sky with a slingshot. A gust of wind blows a little man through the window of an old, abandoned barn. The girl climbs into the barn and discovers a steering wheel there. There are many wire ropes attached to it, which diverge in different directions.
Zhenya ends up in the boys' secret headquarters
Zhenya excitedly turns the steering wheel, imagining himself on the ship. She doesn't even suspect that she ended up in a secret headquarters. The boys don’t tell anyone about the existence of their team or headquarters. While turning the steering wheel, the girl accidentally gives a signal to gather the guys.
The boys are very unhappy that an unfamiliar girl has entered their headquarters. They are trying to drive her away. Soon Timur arrives. He allows the girl to stay. From the boys' conversations, Zhenya learns that the boys have created a team to help people in need. Timur is the nephew of Georgy Garayev.
Good deeds of Timur and his team
The guys help the elderly and the families of Red Army soldiers. Boys don't want adults to know that they are the ones providing help. The boys decide to deal with Mishka Kvakin and his gang themselves, since they are stealing apples and pears from other people’s orchards.
The boys have a map of the village. They paint stars on the houses of residents who need help. The guys try to look into every yard and provide everyone with all possible help. They helped the family of Red Army soldier Pavel Guryev find their missing goat. They stack firewood in the old woman’s yard, realizing that it’s hard for her to do it herself.
An elderly thrush is getting water into an oak tub. The boys try to do everything early in the morning while the old woman is still sleeping. Boys have to get up early and carry heavy buckets. Cold water flows through clothes, burns hands and feet.
Timur teaches the children to do good, not to be indifferent to people in trouble. He believes that all work must be done carefully and diligently. He makes a remark to Kolokolchikov, seeing that he drew the star’s ray crookedly. In the evening, taking a tube of paint, Timur touches up the unsuccessful star.
He is very pleased to see the joy on the faces of the people they help. The boys are proud that their work is useful. They try to follow Timur’s example in everything.
Olga considers Timur a hooligan and forbids Zhenya to communicate with him. Zhenya cannot tell her sister the whole truth about what the guys are doing. The girl helps the Timurites as best she can. So, she spends time with the little daughter of Lieutenant Pavlov, who died at the front.
A warm relationship develops between Olga and Georgiy Garayev. They have many common interests. Georgy, like Olga, loves to sing. He is kind, jokes a lot, tells funny stories. Georgy plays in the factory opera. Olga likes to ride a motorcycle with Georgiy.
Soon Olga finds out that Timur is his nephew. Zhenya continues to be friends with Timur, although Olga does not tell about this. Olga gets angry and leaves for Moscow, leaving her sister alone at the dacha. In Moscow she receives a telegram from her father.
Olga and Zhenya meeting with their father in Moscow
Father reports that he will be in Moscow for only three hours. He really wants to see his daughters. Olga gives a telegram to Zhenya telling her sister to go home urgently. Zhenya is confused. She was asked to look after a small child by the widow of Lieutenant Pavlov. She urgently needed to go to the capital to meet her mother.
My wife has no one to leave her little girl with; the last train has already left. She turns to Timur for help. The boy quickly thinks through everything and solves the problem that has arisen. Kolya Kolokolchikov receives an assignment from him to look after the sleeping girl. Timur takes Zhenya to Moscow on a motorcycle.
In Moscow, Olga and Zhenya met with their father, who missed them very much. The girls are proud that their father is a commander. Timur is glad that he was able to help Zhenya see her father. The sisters return to the holiday village with Timur. They tell Garayev everything, who is concerned about Timur’s disappearance.
Soon Georgy Garayev receives a summons to the front. He comes to say goodbye to Olga and asks her to sing. All the guys saw off Georgy and wished him Bon Voyage. Timur is worried, but tries not to show his feelings. He is sad that he is left alone. His mother should come to see him tomorrow.
Zhenya encourages his friend. She will be next to him, their whole friendly team. Olga tells the boy that people will always remember his good deeds and will definitely help him.