Science fiction writer Alexander Belyaev died in the fascist rear. The mysterious life and death of science fiction writer Alexander Belyaev

Born on March 4 (16 NS) in Smolensk in the family of a priest. Since childhood, I read a lot and was fond of adventure literature, especially Jules Verne. Subsequently, he flew airplanes of one of the first designs and made gliders himself.

In 1901 he graduated from theological seminary, but did not become a priest; on the contrary, he left there as a convinced atheist. He loved painting, music, theater, played in amateur performances, took up photography, and studied technology.

He entered the legal lyceum in Yaroslavl and at the same time studied violin at the conservatory. To earn money for his studies, he played in a circus orchestra, painted theatrical scenery, and studied journalism. In 1906, after graduating from the Lyceum, he returned to Smolensk and worked as a lawyer. He acted as a music critic and theater reviewer in the Smolensky Vestnik newspaper.

He never stopped dreaming of distant countries and, having saved money, in 1913 he traveled to Italy, France, and Switzerland. He retained the impressions from this trip for the rest of his life. Returning to Smolensk, he worked at the Smolensky Vestnik, and a year later became the editor of this publication. A serious illness - bone tuberculosis - confined him to bed for six years, three of which he was in a cast. Not giving in to despair, he is engaged in self-education: he studies foreign languages, medicine, biology, history, technology, and reads a lot. Having overcome the disease, in 1922 he returned to a full life, serving as an inspector for juvenile affairs. On the advice of doctors, he lives in Yalta, works as a teacher in an orphanage.

In 1923 he moved to Moscow and began serious literary activity. He publishes science fiction stories and novellas in the magazines “Around the World”, “Knowledge is Power”, “World Pathfinder”, earning the title of “Soviet Jules Verne”. In 1925 he published the story “The Head of Professor Dowell,” which Belyaev himself called an autobiographical story: he wanted to tell “what a head without a body can experience.”

In the 1920s, such famous works as “The Island of Lost Ships,” “Amphibian Man,” “Above the Abyss,” and “Struggle on the Air” were published. He writes essays about great Russian scientists - Lomonosov, Mendeleev, Pavlov, Tsiolkovsky.

In 1931 he moved to Leningrad, continuing to work hard. He was especially interested in the problems of space exploration and the ocean depths. In 1934, after reading Belyaev’s novel “Airship,” Tsiolkovsky wrote: “... wittily written and scientific enough for fantasy. Let me express my pleasure to Comrade Belyaev.”

In 1933 the book “Leap into Nothing” was published, 1935 - “The Second Moon”. In the 1930s, “KETS Star”, “Wonderful Eye”, “Under the Arctic Sky” were written.

He spent the last years of his life near Leningrad, in the city of Pushkin. I met War in the hospital.

On January 6, 1942, Belyaev died of starvation in occupied Pushkin.
Books:

No series

Witches Castle

(Heroic fantasy)

Star KEC

(Heroic fantasy)

In my early youth, I simply read the works of Alexander Belyaev. Everything was re-read more than once, or twice. Wonderful films have been made based on his works; in my opinion, “Amphibian Man” with Korenev and Vertinskaya especially stands out. But still, not a single film made such an impression on me as the books! But what did I know about the life of the writer, whose works gave me many wonderful moments while I enjoyed them? It turned out - nothing!

The famous Soviet science fiction writer Alexander Belyaev is called the “Russian Jules Verne.” Who among us in adolescence did not read “The Amphibian Man” and “The Head of Professor Dowell”? Meanwhile, in the life of the writer himself there was a lot of strange and incomprehensible things. Despite his fame, it is still not known exactly how he died and where exactly he was buried...

Belyaev was born in 1884 into the family of a priest. The father sent his son to the theological seminary, however, after graduating from it, he did not continue his religious education, but entered the Demidov Lyceum in Yaroslavl. He was going to become a lawyer. Soon, Sasha’s father died, the family found themselves strapped for money, and in order to continue his studies, the young man was forced to earn extra money - giving lessons, drawing scenery for the theater, playing the violin in a circus orchestra.

Alexander was a versatile person: he played various musical instruments, performed in a home theater, and flew an airplane. Another hobby was filming so-called “horror” films (staged, of course). One of the pictures in this “genre” was called: “Human head on a platter in blue tones.”

A significant part of the young man’s life was connected with the theater, which he loved since childhood. He himself could act as a playwright, a director, and an actor. The Belyaevs' home theater in Smolensk was widely known and toured not only around the city, but also in its environs. Once, during the visit of the capital’s troupe to Smolensk under the direction of Stanislavsky, A. Belyaev managed to replace a sick artist and act in several performances instead. The success was complete, K. Stanislavsky even invited A. Belyaev to stay in the troupe, but for an unknown reason he refused.

Even as a child, Sasha lost his sister: Nina died of sarcoma. And a mysterious and creepy story happened to brother Vasily, a student at the Veterinary Institute. Once Alexander and Vasily were visiting their uncle. A group of young relatives decided to go boating. For some reason Vasya refused to go with them. For some reason, Sasha took a piece of clay with him and molded a human head from it right in the boat. Looking at it, those present were horrified: the head had Vasily’s face, only his features turned out to be somehow frozen, lifeless. Alexander threw the craft into the water with annoyance and then felt alarmed. Stating that something had happened to his brother, he demanded that the boat be turned towards the shore. They were met by a tearful aunt who said that Vasily had drowned while swimming. This happened, as it turned out, precisely at the moment when Sasha threw the clay cast into the water.

After graduating from the Demidov Lyceum, A. Belyaev received the position of a private attorney in Smolensk, and soon gained fame as a good lawyer. He gained a regular clientele. His material opportunities also increased: he was able to rent and furnish a good apartment, acquire a good collection of paintings, and collect a large library. Having finished any business, he went to travel abroad; visited France, Italy, visited Venice.

Belyaev plunges headlong into journalistic activity. He collaborates with the newspaper Smolensky Vestnik, where he becomes editor a year later. He also plays the piano and violin, works at the Smolensk People's House, and is a member of the Glinka Music Circle, the Smolensk Symphony Society, and the Society of Lovers of Fine Arts. He visited Moscow, where he auditioned for Stanislavsky.

He is thirty years old, he is married and he needs to somehow make decisions in life. Belyaev is seriously thinking about moving to the capital, where it will not be difficult for him to get a job. But at the end of 1915, illness suddenly struck him. For a young and strong man, the world is collapsing. Doctors for a long time could not determine his illness, and when they found out, it turned out that it was spinal tuberculosis. Even during a long-standing illness with pleurisy in Yartsevo, a doctor, while performing a puncture, touched the eighth spine with a needle. Now it has given such a severe relapse. In addition, his wife Verochka leaves him, and to his colleague. Doctors, friends, all relatives considered him doomed.

His mother Nadezhda Vasilievna leaves the house and takes her motionless son to Yalta. For six years, from 1916 to 1922, Belyaev was bedridden, of which for three long years (from 1917 to 1921) he was shackled in a cast. Belyaev will write about these years, when one government replaced another in Crimea, ten years later in the story “Among the Wild Horses.”

Belyaev's willpower endured, and during his illness he studied foreign languages (French, German and English), and was interested in medicine, history, biology, and technology. He couldn’t move, but some ideas for his future novels came to his mind right then, during real estate.

In the spring of 1919, his mother, Nadezhda Vasilievna, dies of hunger, and his son, sick, in a cast, with a high fever, cannot even accompany her to the cemetery. And only in 1921 he was able to take his first steps thanks not only to his willpower, but also as a result of his love for Margarita Konstantinovna Magnushevskaya, who worked in the city library. A little later, like Arthur Dowell, he will invite her to see his bride in the mirror, whom he will marry if he receives consent. And in the summer of 1922, Belyaev managed to get into a holiday home for scientists and writers in Gaspra. There they made him a celluloid corset and he was finally able to get out of bed. This orthopedic corset became his constant companion until the end of his life, because... Until his death, the illness either subsided or again confined him to bed for several months.

Be that as it may, Belyaev began working in the criminal investigation department, and then in the People's Commissariat for Education, as an inspector for minors in an orphanage seven kilometers from Yalta. The country, through the NEP, began to gradually raise its economy, and therefore the well-being of the country. In the same year, 1922, before the Nativity Fast, Alexander Belyaev got married in church to Margarita, and on May 22, 1923, they legalized their marriage with a civil status act in the registry office.

Then he returned to Moscow, where he got a job as a legal consultant. In his free time, Belyaev wrote poetry, and in 1925, his first story, “The Head of Professor Dowell,” began to be published in the newspaper “Gudok.” In three years, “The Island of Lost Ships,” “The Last Man from Atlantis,” “Amphibian Man,” and a collection of short stories were created. On March 15, 1925, their daughter Lyudmila was born.

ALEXANDER BELYAEV WITH WIFE MARGARETA AND FIRST DAUGHTER: the death of little Lyudochka was the first big grief in the science fiction writer’s family

In July 1929, Belyaev’s second daughter, Svetlana, was born, and in September the Belyaevs left for Kyiv, to a warmer and drier climate.

However, soon the illness made itself felt again, and I had to move from rainy Leningrad to sunny Kyiv. Living conditions in Kyiv turned out to be better, but obstacles arose for creativity - manuscripts there were accepted only in Ukrainian, so they had to be sent to Moscow or Leningrad.

The year 1930 turned out to be a very difficult year for the writer: his six-year-old daughter died of meningitis, his second daughter fell ill with rickets, and soon his own illness (spondylitis) worsened. As a result, in 1931 the family returned to Leningrad: ignorance of the Ukrainian language made life in Kyiv unbearable. Constant everyday troubles prevented him from writing, and yet A. Belyaev created during these years the play “Alchemists...” and the novel “Leap into Nothing.”

The year 1937 also affected the fate of Belyaev. He, unlike many of his friends and acquaintances, was not imprisoned. But they stopped printing. There was nothing left to live on. He goes to Murmansk and gets a job as an accountant on a fishing trawler. Depression and unbearable pain from the corset, to the surprise of many, give a completely opposite result - he writes the novel “Ariel”. The main character experiments with levitation: the young man becomes able to fly. Belyaev writes about himself, or more precisely, about the unfulfilled dreams of his life.

The war found the family in Pushkin. Belyaev, who had recently undergone spinal surgery, refused to evacuate, and soon the city was occupied by the Germans.

ALEXANDER BELYAEV: loved to fool around in spite of all diseases

According to the official version, the science fiction writer died of starvation in January 1942. The body was transferred to the crypt at the Kazan cemetery to wait in line for burial. The turn was supposed to come only in March, and in February the writer’s wife and daughter were taken captive to Poland.

SVETA BELYAEVA: this is how the writer’s daughter met the war

Here they waited for liberation by Soviet troops. And then they were sent into exile in Altai for 11 long years.

When they were finally able to return to Pushkin, the former neighbor handed over the miraculously surviving glasses of Alexander Romanovich. Margarita found a tightly wrapped piece of paper on the bow. She carefully unfolded it. “Do not look for my traces on this earth,” her husband wrote. - I'm waiting for you in heaven. Yours, Ariel."

MARGARITA BELYAEVA WITH DAUGHTER SVETA: they went through fascist camps and Soviet exile together

There is a legend that Belyaev’s body was taken out of the crypt and buried by a fascist general and soldiers. Allegedly, the general read Belyaev’s works as a child and therefore decided to honor his body to the ground. According to another version, the corpse was simply buried in a common grave. One way or another, the exact burial place of the writer is unknown.

Svetlana Belyaeva

Subsequently, a memorial stele was erected at the Kazan cemetery in Pushkin. But Belyaev’s grave is not under it.

One of the versions of the writer’s death is connected with the legendary Amber Room. According to publicist Fyodor Morozov, the last thing Belyaev worked on was dedicated to this very topic. Nobody knows what he was going to write about the famous mosaic. It is only known that Belyaev told many people about his new novel even before the war and even quoted some passages to his friends. With the arrival of the Germans in Pushkin, Gestapo specialists also became actively interested in the Amber Room. By the way, they could not fully believe that they had gotten their hands on an authentic mosaic. Therefore, we actively looked for people who would have information on this matter. It was no coincidence that two Gestapo officers also went to Alexander Romanovich, trying to find out what he knew about this story. Whether the writer told them anything or not is not known. In any case, no documents have yet been found in the Gestapo archives. But the answer to the question whether Belyaev could have been killed because of his interest in the Amber Room does not seem so difficult. Suffice it to remember what fate befell many researchers who tried to find the wonderful mosaic. Maybe he paid for knowing too much? Or died from torture? They also say that the science fiction writer’s corpse was charred. His death is as mysterious as his works.

Alexander Romanovich Belyaev(March 4 (16), 1884 - January 6, 1942) - Soviet science fiction writer, one of the founders of Soviet science fiction literature. Among his most famous novels are: “The Head of Professor Dowell”, “The Amphibian Man”, “Ariel”, “The Star of KEC” and many others. He is sometimes called the Russian "Jules Verne".

In 1933 the book “Leap into Nothing” was published, 1935 - “The Second Moon”. In the 1930s, “KETS Star”, “Wonderful Eye”, “Under the Arctic Sky” were written.

He spent the last years of his life near Leningrad, in the city of Pushkin. I met War in the hospital.

Alexander Belyaev was called the “Russian Jules-Verne” for his ability to predict many events. In his books, Alexander predicted not only the invention of scuba gear and the orbital station, but also his own death...

Amphibian and scuba

When Alexander Belyaev, against the will of his parents, chose the profession of a lawyer, a woman who called herself a clairvoyant came to seek his protection. “I warned two women about the possible imminent death of their husbands,” she said. “And now the inconsolable widows accuse me of deliberately killing them.” Alexander just grinned: “Then predict for me,” said the writer.

“Your life will be hard, but very bright. And you yourself will be able to look into the future,” she said. After this, Alexander agreed to take on the woman’s case, and she was acquitted at the trial. But what was predicted did not take long to arrive. Belyaev was not a prophet, but he knew how to notice what ideas modern society had grown to, and on the verge of what new discoveries and achievements it was on.

One of his first novels of predictions was the famous “Amphibian Man,” where the writer foresaw the invention of an artificial lung and scuba gear with an open breathing system using compressed air, invented in 1943 by Jacques-Yves Cousteau. By the way, the novel itself was largely biographical.

Still from the film “Amphibian Man” (1961)

As a child, Alexander had a dream in which he and his brother Vasily were crawling through a long dark tunnel. Somewhere ahead there was a light, but the brother could no longer move on. Overcoming himself, Alexander was able to get out, but without Vasily. Soon, his brother drowned while boating.

In the novel, Belyaev describes how Ichthyander, getting out into the vast expanses of the ocean, had to swim through a tunnel. He swam along it, “overcoming the cold oncoming current. It pushes off from the bottom, floats up... The end of the tunnel is near. Now Ichthyander can again give himself up to the current - it will carry him far into the open ocean.”

Air pollution

When Alexander Belyaev was forced, due to poor health, to go to Crimea for treatment, on the train he met people who had suffered as a result of a technological accident at a Kuzbass enterprise. This is how the idea of the “Air Seller” was born.

In his work, Belyaev warns of an impending environmental disaster, where the environment will be so polluted with gases and industrial emissions that clean air will turn into a commodity that will not be available to everyone.

Is it worth reminding that today, due to poor ecology, there is a constant danger of cancer walking around the world, and life expectancy in large cities is rapidly decreasing. Under these conditions, states are even forced to enter into international agreements, an example of which is the Kyoto Protocol to limit carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere.

Orbital station

“The KETS Star” was written in 1936 under the influence of the writer’s correspondence with Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky. As a matter of fact, KETS are the initials of the Soviet scientist. The entire novel is built on Tsiolkovsky’s ideas - the possibility of launching an orbital station, people going into outer space, traveling to the moon.

After the release of the book, which was published by the magazine “Around the World,” Tsiolkovsky wrote an enthusiastic review of it. The two dreamers were far ahead of their time - after all, the first real orbital station, Salyut, appeared in space only in 1973.

Drones

In the book “Lord of the World” (1926), Belyaev “invented” a device for transmitting thoughts over a distance on the principle of radio waves, which made it possible to instill a thought in a stranger at a distance - essentially a psychotropic weapon. In addition, in his book he predicted the emergence of unmanned aircraft; the first successful tests took place in Great Britain only in the 30s of the 20th century.

Plastic

In his novel “The Man Who Lost Face” (1929), the author presents to the reader the problem of changing the human body and the subsequent problems associated with it. As a matter of fact, the novel predicts modern advances in plastic surgery, and the ethical problems that invariably follow.

According to the plot, the state governor turns into a black man and, as a result, experiences all the features of racial discrimination. It is somewhat reminiscent of the fate of the King of Pop, Michael Jackson, who changed his skin color to escape prejudice against black people.

The Mystery of the Bermuda Triangle

After the triumph of the novel “The Head of Professor Dowell,” at one of the meetings, journalists bombarded the writer with questions: “Who lives at the bottom of the ocean? Is there life on other planets? Do the Flying Dutchmen really exist? Having not found an answer to this question for himself, Belyaev delves into its study and begins to figure out...

Let's say that somewhere, for example, in the area of Bermuda, there is a certain special zone. The nearby Sargasso Sea with its abundance of algae has always made local navigation difficult; ships left here after shipwrecks could easily accumulate in its waters. This is how the plot of the novel “The Island of Lost Ships” begins.

In his new work, Belyaev became the first to point out the mystery of the now famous Bermuda Triangle, the anomaly of which was first publicly announced by the Associated Press, calling this area “the devil’s sea.”

Last prediction

The year 1940 comes. Many people in the country have gloomy premonitions that a terrible war is coming. And Belyaev has special feelings - old illnesses are making themselves felt, the writer has a presentiment - he will not survive this war. And he remembers his childhood dream, writes a novel about Ariel - a man who could fly. He himself would like to soar above the bustle of everyday life. Ariel, like Amphibian Man, is biographical. This work is a prediction of one’s own death. He wanted to fly away from this world like Ariel.

And so it happened. The writer died in 1943 from hunger in besieged Leningrad. The writer Belyaev was buried in a common grave along with many others. After this, Belyaev’s wife and daughter were captured by the Germans, and then in exile in Altai.

Upon returning from there, they found the writer’s glasses, to which was attached a note addressed to Belyaev’s wife:

“Do not look for my traces on this earth,” her husband wrote. - I'm waiting for you in heaven. Your Ariel...

Alexander Belyaev

Birthday: March 16, 1884. Place of Birth: Smolensk, Russia
Date of death: January 6, 1942 (57 years old)
A place of death: Pushkin, Russia
Citizenship: Russia

Biography

Alexander Romanovich Belyaev- Soviet science fiction writer, one of the founders of Soviet science fiction literature. His books are devoted to the problems of science and technology of the future. Among the famous works: “The Head of Professor Dowell”, “Amphibian Man”, “Ariel”, “KETS Star” (KETS are the initials of Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky) and many others (in total more than 70 science fiction works, including 13 novels) .

He was born in Smolensk, in the family of an Orthodox priest. There were two more children in the family: sister Nina died in childhood from sarcoma; brother Vasily, a student at the veterinary institute, drowned while boating.

The father wanted to see his son as a successor to his work and sent him to a theological seminary in 1895. In 1901, Alexander graduated from theological seminary, but did not become a priest; on the contrary, he left there as a convinced atheist. In defiance of his father, he entered the Demidov Legal Lyceum in Yaroslavl. Soon after his father's death, he had to earn extra money: Alexander gave lessons, painted scenery for the theater, and played the violin in the circus orchestra.

After graduating (in 1906) from the Demidov Lyceum, A. Belyaev received the position of a private attorney in Smolensk and soon gained fame as a good lawyer. He gained a regular clientele. His material opportunities also increased: he was able to rent and furnish a good apartment, acquire a good collection of paintings, and collect a large library. Having finished any business, he went to travel abroad; visited France, Italy, visited Venice.

In 1914 he left law for the sake of literature and theater.

At the age of thirty-five, A. Belyaev fell ill with tuberculous pleurisy. The treatment was unsuccessful - tuberculosis of the spine developed, complicated by paralysis of the legs. A serious illness for 6 years, three of which he was in a cast, confined him to bed. His young wife left him, saying that she didn’t get married to take care of her sick husband. In search of specialists who could help him, A. Belyaev, with his mother and old nanny, ended up in Yalta. There, in the hospital, he began to write poetry. Not giving in to despair, he is engaged in self-education: he studies foreign languages, medicine, biology, history, technology, and reads a lot (Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky). Having defeated the disease, in 1922 he returned to a full life and began to work. At first, A. Belyaev became a teacher in an orphanage, then he was given the position of criminal investigation inspector - he organized a photo laboratory there, and later he had to go to the library. Life in Yalta was very difficult, and A. Belyaev, with the help of friends, moved with his family to Moscow (1923) and got a job as a legal consultant. There he begins serious literary activity. He publishes science fiction stories and novellas in the magazines “Around the World”, “Knowledge is Power”, “World Pathfinder”, earning the title of “Soviet Jules Verne”. In 1925 he published the story “The Head of Professor Dowell,” which Belyaev himself called an autobiographical story: he wanted to tell “what a head without a body can experience.”

A. Belyaev lived in Moscow until 1928; During this time he wrote “The Island of Lost Ships”, “The Last Man from Atlantis”, “Amphibian Man”, “Struggle on the Air”, and published a collection of short stories. The author wrote not only under his own name, but also under the pseudonyms A. Rom and Arbel.

In 1928, A. Belyaev and his family moved to Leningrad, and from then on he was exclusively engaged in literature, professionally. This is how “Lord of the World”, “Underwater Farmers”, “The Wonderful Eye”, stories from the series “The Inventions of Professor Wagner” appeared. They were published mainly in Moscow publishing houses. However, soon the illness made itself felt again, and I had to move from rainy Leningrad to sunny Kyiv.

In September 1931, A. Belyaev handed over the manuscript of his novel “The Earth is Burning” to the editors of the Leningrad magazine “Around the World”

In 1934 he met with Herbert Wells, who arrived in Leningrad.

In 1935, Belyaev became a permanent contributor to the magazine “Around the World”.

At the beginning of 1938, after eleven years of intensive cooperation, Belyaev left the magazine “Around the World”.

Shortly before the war, the writer underwent another operation, so he refused the offer to evacuate when the war began. The city of Pushkin (a suburb of Leningrad), where A. Belyaev lived with his family in recent years, was occupied. In January 1942, the writer died of hunger. The writer's surviving wife and daughter were deported by the Germans to Poland.

The place of his burial is not known with certainty. And the memorial stele at the Kazan cemetery in the city of Pushkin was installed only on the supposed grave.

Creation

A. Belyaev was an enthusiastic person. From an early age he was attracted to music: he independently learned to play the violin and piano, and loved to play music for hours. Another “fun” was photography (there was a photograph he took of “a human head on a platter in blue tones”). Since childhood, I read a lot and was fond of adventure literature, especially Jules Verne. Alexander grew up restless, loved all kinds of pranks and jokes; the result of one of his pranks was an eye injury with further damage to vision. The young man also dreamed of flying: he tried to take off with brooms tied to his hands, jumped from the roof with an umbrella, and eventually took off in a small airplane. However, while trying to take off, he received an injury that affected the rest of his life. One day he fell from the roof of a barn and significantly injured his back. In the mid-20s, Belyaev suffered from constant pain in his injured back and was even paralyzed for months.

Even while studying at the Lyceum, A. Belyaev showed himself to be a theatergoer. Under his leadership, in 1913, students of male and female gymnasiums acted out the fairy tale “Three Years, Three Days, Three Minutes” with crowd scenes, choral and ballet numbers. In the same year, A. R. Belyaev and cellist Yu. N. Saburova staged Grigoriev’s opera-fairy tale “The Sleeping Princess.” He himself could act as a playwright, director, and actor. The Belyaevs' home theater in Smolensk was widely known and toured not only around the city, but also in its environs. Once, during the visit of the capital’s troupe to Smolensk under the direction of Stanislavsky, A. Belyaev managed to replace a sick artist and act in several performances instead.

The writer was keenly interested in the question of the human psyche: the functioning of the brain, its connection with the body, with the life of the soul and spirit. Can the brain think outside the body? Is a brain transplant possible? What consequences can anabiosis and its widespread use have? Are there limits to the possibility of suggestion? What about genetic engineering? The novels “The Head of Professor Dowell”, “Lord of the World”, “The Man Who Lost Face”, the story “The Man Who Doesn’t Sleep”, “Hoyti-Toyti” are devoted to an attempt to solve these problems.

In his science fiction novels Alexander Belyaev anticipated the emergence of a huge number of inventions and scientific ideas: the “KEC Star” depicts the prototype of modern orbital stations, “Amphibian Man” and “The Head of Professor Dowell” show the wonders of transplantology, and “Eternal Bread” shows the achievements of modern biochemistry and genetics. A kind of continuation of these reflections were novels-hypotheses, placing a person in different environments of existence: the ocean (“Amphibian Man”), air (“Ariel”).

His last novel in 1941 - “Ariel” - echoes the famous novel by A. Green “The Shining World”. The heroes of both novels are endowed with the ability to fly without additional devices. The image of Ariel is the writer’s achievement, in which the author’s faith in a person overcoming “gravity” was objectively realized.

Memory

In 1990, the section of scientific, artistic and science fiction literature of the Leningrad writers' organization of the Union of Writers of the USSR established the Alexander Belyaev Literary Prize, awarded for scientific, artistic and popular science works.

In his science fiction novels, Alexander BELYAEV anticipated the emergence of a huge number of inventions and scientific ideas: in "The Star of the KETS" the prototype of modern orbital stations is depicted, in "Amphibian Man" and "The Head of Professor Dowell" the miracles of transplantology are shown, in "Eternal Bread" - achievements of modern biochemistry and genetics.
He had a huge imagination and knew how to look far into the future, thanks to which he perfectly depicted human destinies in unusual, fantastic circumstances. One thing Alexander Belyaev could not foresee was what his own last days would be like. While biographers know almost everything about the writer’s life, the circumstances of the death of the “Soviet Jules Verne” are still mysterious.
His burial place is also a mystery. After all, the memorial stele at the Kazan cemetery of Tsarskoye Selo (formerly Pushkin - K.G.) was installed only on the supposed grave.

For three days in a row, retreating units of the Red Army stretched through Pushkin in an endless line. The last truck with our soldiers passed on September 17, 1941, and by evening the Germans appeared in the city. There were so few of them that 12-year-old Sveta, looking at the enemy soldiers through the window, even became a little confused. She didn’t understand why the invincible Red Army was running away from a small group of machine gunners? It seemed to the girl that they could be slammed in no time. Then she did not yet know that in just three months the war would kill her dad, the famous Soviet science fiction writer Alexander Belyaev. And the rest of the family members will then spend 15 years wandering around camps and exile. However, we began our conversation with the daughter of the “Soviet Jules Verne” with a different topic.

As a child I loved to swing devils on my feet

Svetlana Alexandrovna, please tell us how your parents met?
- It happened in Yalta, at the end of the 20s. My mother’s family lived in this city for quite a long time, and my father came there in 1917 for treatment. In those years, he had already developed spinal tuberculosis, which put him in a plaster bed for three and a half years. Later he would write that it was during this period that he managed to change his mind and experience everything that a “head without a body” could experience. However, his father’s illness did not interfere with their acquaintance or the development of their relationship.

SVETLANA ALEXANDROVNA: the pre-war years were the happiest

When doctors made a special corset for dad, mom helped him learn to walk again. And her love finally put him on his feet. By the way, before meeting my mother, my father had another wife named Verochka. When he fell ill with severe pleurisy and lay with a high fever, Verochka left him, saying that she did not get married to become a nurse.
-Did dad tell you anything about your childhood?
- It’s not much, but I remember most of these stories very well. I especially liked the story about the devil. Dad grew up in the family of a priest, and as a child his nanny often scolded him for his habit of crossing his legs. “There’s nothing unclean to download!” - the woman said in her hearts. Dad always obeyed the nanny, but as soon as she left the room, he immediately crossed his legs, imagining that a cute little devil was sitting on the tip of his leg. “Let him sway while the nanny doesn’t see,” he thought.
In the evening, when my mother and grandmother went to get some fresh air, we stayed at home alone. And he came up with all sorts of incredible stories for me. Let's say about the tailed people who used to live on earth. Their tails did not bend, and before sitting down, they always drilled a hole in the ground for the tail. I remember I believed this for quite a long time. And not long before the war, he promised me to write a children's fairy tale - about me and my friends in the yard. It's a pity that I didn't have time.

Marauders removed the dead man's suit

From the memoirs of Svetlana Belyaeva: “Having occupied the city, the Germans began to walk around the courtyards, looking for Russian soldiers. When they came to our house, I answered in German that my mother and grandmother had gone to the doctor, and my father was not a soldier at all, but a famous Soviet writer ", but he cannot get up because he is very ill. This news did not make much of an impression on them."
- Svetlana Alexandrovna, why wasn’t your family evacuated from Pushkin before the Germans entered the city?
“My father had been seriously ill for many years. He could move independently only in a special corset, and only over short distances. I had enough strength to wash myself and sometimes eat at the table. The rest of the time, dad watched the flow of life from above... his own bed. In addition, shortly before the war he underwent kidney surgery. He was so weak that leaving was out of the question. The Writers' Union, which at that time was engaged in evacuating children of writers, offered to take me out, but my parents refused this offer too. In 1940, I developed tuberculosis of the knee joint, and I faced the war in a cast. Mom often repeated then: “We’ll die together!” However, fate would have it otherwise.

SVETA BELYAEVA: this is how the writer’s daughter met the war

There are still quite a few versions about your father’s death. Why did he die anyway?
- From hunger. In our family, it was not customary to make any supplies for the winter. If they needed something, mom or grandma went to the market and simply bought food. In short, when the Germans entered the city, we had several bags of cereal, some potatoes and a barrel of sauerkraut, which our friends gave us. I remember the cabbage tasted nasty, but we were still very happy. And when these supplies ran out, my grandmother had to go to work for the Germans. She asked to go to the kitchen to peel potatoes. For this, every day we gave her a pot of soup and some potato peels, from which we baked cakes. Even such meager food was enough for us, but for my father in his situation this was not enough. He began to swell from hunger and eventually died...
- Some researchers believe that Alexander Romanovich simply could not bear the horrors of the fascist occupation.
“I don’t know how my father survived all this, but I was very scared.” I will never forget the man hanging on a pole with a sign on his chest: “The judge is a friend of the Jews.” At that time anyone could be executed without trial or investigation. Most of all we were worried about my mother. She often went to our old apartment to pick up some things from there. If she had been caught doing this, she could easily have been hanged as a thief. Moreover, the gallows stood right under our windows, and my father saw every day how the Germans executed innocent residents. Maybe his heart really couldn’t stand it...

ALEXANDER BELYAEV WITH WIFE MARGARETA AND FIRST DAUGHTER: the death of little Lyudochka was the first big grief in the science fiction writer’s family

I heard that the Germans didn’t even let you and your mother bury Alexander Romanovich...
- Dad died on January 6, 1942, but it was not possible to take him to the cemetery right away. Mom went to the city government, and there it turned out that there was only one horse left in the city and she had to wait in line. The coffin with my father’s body was placed in an empty apartment next door, and my mother went to visit him every day. A few days later, someone took my dad's suit off. So he lay there in his underwear until the gravedigger took him away. Many people at that time were simply covered with earth in common ditches, but they had to pay for a separate grave. Mom took some things to the gravedigger, and he swore that he would bury his father like a human being. True, he immediately said that he would not dig a grave in frozen ground. The coffin with the body was placed in the cemetery chapel and was supposed to be buried with the onset of first warmth. Alas, we were not destined to wait for this: on February 5, my mother, grandmother and I were taken prisoner, so they buried my father without us.

The Germans laughed at them, and the Russians hated them

Why did you end up in a special camp where Russian “foreigners” were kept?
- I got my foreign roots from my maternal grandmother. Just before the war, they changed their passports, and for some reason they decided to change my grandmother’s nationality. As a result, she turned from a Swede into a German. And for company, my mother was also registered as a German, despite her Russian name and surname. I remember very well how they laughed merrily when they returned home. Who knew then that a banal mistake by a passport officer could result in a prison sentence.
When the Germans came to Pushkin, they immediately registered all the Volksdeutsch. In mid-February 1942, we found ourselves in one of the camps in West Prussia. They took us away from the USSR, supposedly saving us from Soviet power, and then for some reason they put us behind barbed wire. The food was so bad that very soon we even began to eat grass and dandelions. On Sundays the locals came to stare at us like we were animals in a zoo. It was unbearable...

MARGARITA BELYAEVA WITH DAUGHTER SVETA: they went through fascist camps and Soviet exile together

This whole nightmare should have ended for you no later than May 9, 1945.
- The last camp we were in was in Austria, but the troubles did not end for our family, even when the country capitulated. The camp commander escaped. And then Soviet tanks entered the city. Many of the prisoners rushed to meet them. They shouted as they walked: “Our people are coming!” Suddenly the column stopped, the commander got out of the lead vehicle and said: “It’s a pity, we didn’t get to you before the surrender, they would have run you all over to hell!” Children and old people stood thunderstruck, trying to understand why they displeased the liberating soldiers so much. The Soviet soldiers apparently mistook us for Germans and were ready to wipe us all out.
Our homeland greeted us with camps, where we stayed for 11 years. Later, I accidentally found out that we were sent to the Altai Territory several months earlier than the corresponding order was signed. That is, people were imprisoned “just in case.”
- How did you manage to return from exile?
- At the end of the 60s, a two-volume book by Alexander Belyaev was published, for which my mother was paid 170 thousand rubles. Huge money for those times, thanks to which we were able to move to Leningrad. First of all, we rushed to look for my father's grave. It turned out that the gravedigger kept his word. True, he buried his father not exactly in the place that his mother agreed with him. Today, at my father’s grave there is a white marble stele with the inscription: “Belyaev Alexander Romanovich - science fiction writer.”

The last refuge is in a mass grave

The first worker at the Kazan Cemetery of Tsarskoye Selo, whom we asked to show the white marble stele, readily responded to our request. It turned out that the monument to the science fiction writer does not stand at the writer’s grave, but at the site of his intended burial. The details of his burial were found out by the former chairman of the local history section of the city of Pushkin, Evgeniy Golovchiner. At one time he managed to find a witness who was present at Belyaev’s funeral.

ALEXANDER BELYAEV: loved to fool around in spite of all diseases

Tatyana Ivanova was disabled since childhood and lived her entire life at the Kazan cemetery - she looked after the graves and grew flowers for sale.
It was she who said that at the beginning of March 1942, when the ground had already begun to thaw a little, people who had been lying in the local chapel since winter began to be buried in the cemetery. It was at this time that the writer Belyaev, along with others, was interred. Why did she remember this? Yes, because Alexander Romanovich was buried in a coffin, of which there were only two left in Pushkin at that time. Tatyana Ivanova also indicated the place where both of these coffins were buried. True, from her words it turned out that the gravedigger still did not keep his promise to bury Belyaev like a human being - he buried the writer’s coffin in a common ditch instead of a separate grave.
And although no one today can name the exact place where the ashes of Alexander Romanovich rest, knowledgeable people say that the “Russian Jules Verne” lies within a radius of 10 meters from the marble stele.