Arkady Golikov Gaidar in the Civil War. The maniac-killer Gaidar was a hero in the USSR, his grandson is a hero of the white ribbon people

On October 26, 1941, the war correspondent of Komsomolskaya Pravda, the famous writer Arkady Gaidar, died from fascist bullets.

At the beginning of the destructive 1990s, in search of strength to lift the spirit in the heroic past of the country, I visited Krasnogorsk, in the State Archive of Film and Photo Documents. Once in the darkroom I caught a moment when a photo restorer was dipping some kind of black negative one by one into baths of solutions. Projected onto the screen, it initially reflected someone’s half-blackened, unrecognizable image, which, as it washed, began to lighten up, finally revealing the familiar face of the beloved writer Arkady Gaidar, familiar to many in the country. And from the sudden flood of memories of his brave, selfless heroes, my soul became cheerful and cheerful, and I felt ashamed of my weakness.

In 1933, alarming news about Adolf coming to power in Germany Hitler, which threatened a new onslaught to the east, inspired him with “The Tale of Malchish-Kibalchish and his firm word.” It was read and memorized by the children of the Soviet country. And the generation of Kibalchish Boys, who grew up on courageous books, unanimously volunteered from the first days of the fascist invasion to the front. It was it that performed unprecedented feats. It was he, together with his older brothers and fathers, who, having been greatly reduced in battle, won.

And the story “Timur and His Team,” published in chapters in 1940 in “Pionerskaya Pravda,” and the film script “Timur’s Oath,” completed in the first days of the invasion, also published in “Pionerka,” created the Timur movement throughout the country - schoolchildren took care of families fighters and commanders, about elderly and lonely people.

Of course, a writer of such gigantic power to influence millions of young people could not help but become a target for the haters of our country. But if during his life and after his death only rumors were spread about his illness associated with military concussion, then after the victory of the bourgeoisie in the 1991 coup they began to openly call him a “murderer and punisher” during the Civil War - in articles, books, and television films. However, clearing his name is inevitable.

A literary pseudonym is never accidental. Although Arkady Petrovich himself did not reveal his secret to anyone or anywhere. The most common explanation of the five known ones - a translation supposedly from Mongolian or Khakass - “a horseman galloping ahead”, it turns out, means in Khakass just the question “where?” At the same time, the sixth assumption remains unnoticed, expressed in the preface to the book “Tales of the Cat Purr”, famous in the beginning. 20th century Russian Andersen Nikolai Wagner, a famous professor of zoology at Kazan and then St. Petersburg universities. In the book, which survived in the beginning. 20th century seven editions (!) and the first in the Soviet Union back in 1923, which was read by both high school students and realists, and Soviet schoolchildren, among many smart and strange philosophical fantastic works: about the Gingerbread Pope, the Fantast fairy, the reckless Smoking Room, Uncle Puda and others - there is “The Tale of Prince Gaidar” (“The Great”)...

About how the young prince abandoned the royal chambers and comfort after the beautiful Princess Gudana asked him to find out what “great” is. And he went to wander the world alone without an entourage, met many poor people with their sorrows and troubles, suffered for them, forgetting about the beautiful Gudan. I realized that what is great is love for all people. However, a meeting with a man who dreamed of taking revenge on the enemy, but, seeing him sick and dying, felt sorry, forgave and loved him, seemed even greater. And out of compassion for all the people he met, “his heart began to flutter freely and joyfully. It expanded. It captured everything earthly, everything created by the Great... and exploded..."

It would be unlikely that the courageous man that Gaidar was would admit that he chose a pseudonym based on such a touching fairy tale... Although he himself spent his entire short life. Without having any property or a wardrobe of clothes - in a tunic and boots, with a backpack on your back or a traveling bag.

...He grew up in a family professing the views of “creative populists.” This is the name in Russian history for the mass “going to the people” of educated young people who began in the 1870s, who did not want to put up with the lack of rights and widespread illiteracy of working people, demanding equal rights for all classes. Arkady's father Pyotr Isidorovich, great-grandson of the serf peasant of the Golitsyn princes, for whom a surname similar to the prince's was invented upon his release Golikov, became a teacher. Mother Natalya Arkadyevna Salkova married him against the will of her parent, a poor nobleman, an officer. She worked as a paramedic, then also as a teacher. After the revolution, both went to the Red Army. What could their son, a 5th grade student at the Arzamas Real School, become, left alone, without parents, at the age of 14?

In January 1918, he took part in the defense of Arzamas from attacks by rampant gangs, and was on patrol at night. He receives the first wound - with a knife in the chest. In December 1918 he joined the Red Army, adding years to his strong, broad-shouldered self. Goes through military training, formation, shooting. He writes later in his autobiography: “I was on the Petliursky fronts (Kyiv, Korosten, Kremenchug, Fastov, Alexandria) ... commander of the 6th company of the 2nd regiment of a separate brigade of cadets.”

Here it is appropriate to recall the lines from the story “School” that Soviet Russia fought during the Civil War not only with whites: “Peace between Russia and Germany was signed long ago, but, despite this, the Germans flooded Ukraine with their troops, pushed into the Donbass, helping whites form troops.”

And the Red Army soldiers peered into the advancing chains, guessing who was coming: the Whites, the Petliurists, the Germans? Everyone tried to tear Ukraine away from Russia. Already then.

“Then I was on the Polish front near Borisov, Lepel and Polotsk - the 16th Army. The regiment forgot, because I had three diseases at once - scurvy, contusion to the head and typhus. I came to my senses in Moscow. He was sent to the Caucasian Front and appointed commander of the 4th company of the 303rd (formerly 298th) regiment of the 9th Army. After the capture of the remnants of Denikin’s troops near Sochi, he stood with a company, guarding the border from the White Georgians (and we didn’t even know that there were such Georgians! - L.Zh.) - the bridge over the Psou River beyond Adler. ...was transferred to the mountains, fought against the gangs of General Gaiman and Zhitikov, who rebelled in the Kuban.”

Then he is the commander of a separate 58th regiment for the fight against Antonov in the Tambov province. And isn’t it strange that the commander of the military operations Mikhail Tukhachevsky, who rode under the People's Commissar of Military Affairs Leon Trotsky from lieutenant to marshal, who used artillery and chemical gases against the rebel peasants, is praised as a great commander? Regimental commander Arkady Gaidar is accused of participating in the suppression of both this rebellion and another in the south of the Krasnoyarsk Territory, in Khakassia (Tana-Tuva).

In the book “Salt Lake” by the writer who repainted himself as a monarchist Vladimir Soloukhin, published with the money of JSC Khakasinterservice in the ill memory of 1994, it is suggested that it is not at all the gangs of the “Emperor of the Taiga” Ivan Solovyov, who sought to separate this distant region from Soviet Russia, kept both Russians and Khakass, the overwhelming majority of whom were illiterate, in fear. And the “punisher-Chonovite Arkady Gaidar” fought “with the partisan detachment of Ivan Solovyov, the last center of armed resistance to the Bolsheviks throughout the entire territory of the former Russia”...

“The last hearth”, because the new government was supported and accepted by the majority of the people in the giant country! And among the primary tasks of this government were the elimination of illiteracy and the development of healthcare even in the most distant corners of the republic, such as Khakassia. Didn’t the sponsors of the slanderous book and its author from an illiterate peasant environment know this?

But who became a scientist in Khakassia under Soviet power, a candidate of historical sciences Alexander Sheksheev considered it his duty to investigate the accusations against the writer. He published an article in the Khakassia newspaper on December 14, 2005 entitled “Gaidar and red banditry: the last secret.” Now this article, transformed by the author into a voluminous research work, is posted on the Internet. The scientist, based on archive materials, generalizes: “Red banditry, the direct predecessor of which was the destructive behavior of the partisans, was due to the cruelty of the white military, peasant rebels; in response, supporters of the Soviet regime developed a desire for revenge.”

Having recounted the actions of local Soviet authorities in the Yenisei province, described by many archival researchers, now classified as “red banditry,” the author concludes: “But Gaidar had nothing to do with these crimes.” And further: “The fact that Gaidar did not take part in the crimes attributed to him is confirmed by the chronological boundaries of his presence in the Yenisei province... A certificate found in the archive indicates that he was here from FEBRUARY TO SEPTEMBER 1922. Reports of events sent by the Chonovites to their headquarters, allow us to create a chronicle of the activities of Golikov’s detachment... Judging by the available documents, Golikov’s detachment was engaged in reconnaissance, search and prosecution of “gangs” that did not bring him positive results... Noting his “inertia,” the inspection commission concluded that it was necessary to remove Golikov from position... already on June 10, 1922, he was removed from his post and was at the provincial headquarters of the ChON... But in June, the Minusinsk executive committee was notified (by whom?) that battalion commander Golikov had executed people. He threw the corpses into the river, and his case is being investigated... After his issue was resolved, Golikov left Krasnoyarsk. Considering the state of traumatic neurosis he was experiencing, the Revolutionary Military Council on November 18 granted the sick commander a six-month leave. In January 1923, as a veteran of the Zlatoust division, he was awarded a cash bonus and crimson riding breeches (!).”

Arkady Petrovich himself writes about this short period in the Tana-Tuva region in his autobiography: “... here I began to get sick (not immediately, but in spurts, periods.) I was diagnosed with traumatic neurosis. He was treated several times... In April 1924 he was enlisted in the reserves. In November he was fired due to illness. Only two years later, in 1926, that is, 8 years after I joined the army, my 1904 conscription deadline came.”

In the old days, boys from 14 to 18 were called adolescents, that is, without the right to speak in front of adults (speech-river-rock), immatures (not mature enough to reach adulthood), and now - teenagers. Although life itself during revolutions and wars will grow up children early. And 18-year-old Arkady Gaidar, wounded at different times in the back, arm, leg, head, in search of the further work of his life, it was no coincidence that he chose the path of a children's writer. He lived his adult adolescence once again together with his boy heroes and conveyed to them his unfulfilled dreams, his passions and hobbies, his love for people and for his homeland, his willingness to sacrifice, if necessary, his life for the life of the country. Today, a new class of very literate consumers cynically calls this self-sacrifice “infantilism.”

Author of the monument to Arkady Gaidar in Khabarovsk, where “The Tale of Malchish-Kibalchish” was born, sculptor Galina Mazurenko, having read “Salt Lake,” admits in her memoirs: “... I went to Moscow, met Timur Gaidar, and he added to my hatred of Arkady Petrovich. I couldn't be inspired by such a monster. ...I reassured myself that he was just an infant. He didn’t grow up, and life was a game for him.”

However, it is not at all interesting to discuss the opinions of the great Gaidar, both from consumers who have forgotten how to read, and from his “same pseudonyms”, who made a career under the roof of the famous literary name, but secretly, as it turned out, hated his only legitimate bearer. But you can learn a lot more interesting things about the further life of the wanderer Gaidar.

In the peaceful post-war life, he continued to wander around different parts of the big country: Perm, Arkhangelsk, Sverdlovsk, Khabarovsk... working as a correspondent for regional newspapers, staying in the cities for no more than a year or two. I saw my son Timur for the first time in Arkhangelsk when he was two years old. Didn't create a home - wife Liya Solomyanskaya went to someone else, a journalist Samson Glazer.

What a family man, journalist and person 22-year-old Arkady Golikov was can be imagined from the memoirs of his colleagues at the Arkhangelsk newspaper Pravda Severa. They say that Gaidar lived constantly on the move, often “changing” his profession: he felled wood together with lumberjacks, worked on rafting, and pulled a seine with fishermen. One day I left the house to buy pickles for the meat, and returned three weeks later! With an essay about spring rafting of timber. It turns out that at the market he met a team of rafters, was carried away by their stories, went with them to the pier, and there he asked to join the team, and sailed with them on a steamer. He collected logs into rafts with a hook, cooked food on the shore on duty, fed mosquitoes, and froze on cold nights. And “in order not to be a black sheep among the rafters,” as he explained to the accountant who was booking the business trip after the fact, “I had to play cards, lose and drink so much vodka.” “I consider the issue of compensation to be fundamental,” the traveler said, either jokingly or seriously. They paid, of course, and the essay turned out brilliant.

...In the spring of 1926, Gaidar was again called on the road by his favorite muse of distant travels. He went with a friend Nikolai Kondratiev on a trip to Central Asia, with an inspection of the sands of Kara-Kum, camels, saxaul, but most importantly - the dramatic changes in these regions, where recently the bai and khans still ruled, women wore veils, and farmers cultivated the meager land with a hoe. Gaidar sent travel notes, stories, feuilletons (and very funny ones!) about his observations and meetings with new people in Asia to the Perm newspaper “Zvezda”. In it he also published the story “R.V.S.”, written on the road. and the story “Life for Nothing” (“Lbovshchina”), still under the name Golikov. Money is tight, and Arkady Petrovich writes several feuilletons for the Tashkent newspaper Pravda Vostoka.

The friends use the fee they receive to travel to Turkmenistan. In Poltoratsk, which has not yet been renamed Ashgabat, they publish in the newspaper “Turkmenskaya Iskra”, again earning money through publications for their further journey. Having reached Krasnovodsk, they wash themselves in the Caspian Sea and shake off the sand from their dusty backpacks. They cross the sea on a steamship, learn how “black gold” - oil is mined, and admire the Caucasus mountains. It was incomprehensible to me, who read these essays in my youth, dreaming of journalism, how, constantly moving, collecting material for newspaper publications “for the sake of our daily bread,” Arkady Petrovich at the same time wrote major literary works: the story “In the Days of Defeats and Victories,” “ Riders of the Inaccessible Mountains”, “R.V.S.”, “Distant Countries” and others.

Using the example of one of the essays noticed by the Pravda newspaper, let’s imagine the life of a journalist who is not looking for peace.

After the publication in the Perm newspaper “Zvezda” of Gaidar’s feuilleton “The Noise of Marseille at Night” about the addiction of local investigator Filatov to night gatherings in a low-grade tavern, where he played foxes and tangos on the violin for money for a drunken public, the investigator sued the author, and he was convicted ... The Sverdlovsk newspaper “Uralsky Rabochiy” came out in defense of the journalist, and then the main newspaper of the country.

In Pravda on April 5, 1927, the article “Gaidar’s Crime” criticized the actions of the Perm court, relying on the opinion of the people: “Public opinion rebelled against the court’s verdict. Public opinion was on Gaidar's side. Workers of a number of large factories, the regional workers’ council, and the regional newspaper “Uralsky Rabochiy” spoke out in defense of Gaidar.”

Public opinion is now for Gaidar, while his books still live. And some private modest publishing houses continue to print them.

However, I would still like to finish my word about my favorite writer with a mention of his last courageous act - joining the active army in defiance of the prohibitions of doctors, because those were too difficult days of retreat and abandonment of our cities. There was no way Gaidar could sit at home!

Evgenia Arkadyevna Golikova-Gaidar, daughter of his beloved wife Daria Kuznetsova, recalls: “Dad came with binoculars and a hiking bag, which he bought on Arbat at a second-hand store. I was very happy: “This is exactly what I need. Arbatia is an extraordinary country. And this is for you." And he hands me a thin package. And it contains a book, fairy tales!

Now let’s figure out what to write in it. After all, I’m leaving for the front, and it may happen that we won’t see each other for a long time. He opened the book and immediately wrote:

"Dad goes to war
For the Soviet country...
Zhenya will read a book
And she dreams about dad.
He's in a far place
Beats the fascists in the war."

And the signature is Ark. Gaidar. July 1941."

He always signed his name like that - Ark. Gaidar seemed to have a presentiment that he would have to dissociate himself from the unworthy privatizers of his literary name.

Lyudmila ZHUKOVA

The author of the kind, bright, romantic works “Chuk and Gek”, “Timur and His Team” experienced pangs of conscience, tried to commit suicide, drank heavily and was treated in psychiatric clinics. Mystery surrounds the early years of a children's writer. Who is he: a sadist and punisher or a victim of the civil war?

“I used to be sure that everything was nothing. But apparently I'm actually sick. Otherwise, where does this slight vulnerability and often unaccountable anxiety come from? And this is obviously a character disease. I just can’t understand and determine what’s wrong? And where do I get this feeling of great guilt? Sometimes it goes away, it becomes calm, joyful, sometimes it creeps up unnoticed, and then my heart burns and my eyes don’t look people straight in the face,”- entry from the diary of Arkady Gaidar.

Arkady Gaidar (Golikov) is a writer whose personality raises a lot of questions. His biography has turned into a myth. Or rather, several myths. The mysterious Golikov has opponents and defenders. He has an army of fans and personal famous “killers”.

It is absolutely known that Arkady Golikov spent his childhood in Arzamas. There, a fourteen-year-old boy joined the party. There he got his first pistol (according to one version, he bought it, according to another, the weapon was given to the boy by his father). There he went on night patrol and shot at the windows of the temple. Arkady's favorite book was the collected works of Gogol. These facts are known from the memoirs of the writer himself. And then he went to the Red Army. His childhood included the First World War, revolution and civil war. From the moment he left home, the adult life of teenager Arkady Golikov begins. Biographers still have not agreed on what she was like.

Version one. Salty

In August 1918, Golikov submitted an application to the Communist Party committee. He feels cramped in a small town and in December he joins the Red Army to fight “for the bright kingdom of communism.” The boy commanded a company on the Petlyura front, and at the age of 17 he became the commander of a separate regiment to combat banditry. First, he bloodily suppressed the uprising of the Tambov peasants, and then eighteen-year-old Golikov was sent to Khakassia. Much has been written about this. This period of life, or rather the atrocities of young Golikov, was described in especially detail by Vladimir Soloukhin in the book “Salt Lake.” In Khakassia, according to Soloukhin, Golikov-Gaidar showed himself to be a sadist. His task was to find and destroy the people's commander Solovyov, who was holed up in the taiga with peasant soldiers. In order to find out where Solovyov was hiding, Golikov frightened, tortured and killed the Khakassians. Here is a quote from that essay:

“In the morning, he let them out of the bathhouse one by one and shot each one in the back of the head. He shot all sixteen people. With your own hand. And what’s more, he gathered the population of an entire village, well, that is, a whole village... There were seventy-six people there. Old women and children, everything. He lined them up in one line and placed a machine gun in front of them. “If you don’t tell me, I’ll kill everyone.” They didn't say. He sat down at the machine gun and... everyone... And then in Salt Lake, and in God’s Lake he drowned. He pushed people into the hole under the ice... he personally pushed almost living people under the ice. A lot, a lot, a lot."

Soloukhin’s “Salt Lake” was published in 1994. The village writer hated Soviet power. He depicted the heroes of his book in contrasting colors. Peasant chieftain Solovyov is white and in white. People's defender, a noble, brave and proud person. But Soloukhin painted the figure of Golikov bloody - the color of the revolution, endowing him with the worst qualities. Not a man, but a beast. Moral freak. Maniac. Sadist. The writer relied on the testimony of local residents. In the book he gives the names of the narrators. Quite a few journalists and writers agree with Soloukhin’s opinion. In the 90s and 2000s, many articles were published on this topic. But there are also intercessors. Here's how critic Benedikt Sarnoff reacted:

“Perhaps, none of the currently debunked classics of Soviet literature have had as much slop poured on them as Arkady Gaidar.<...>They write about Gaidar with some downright pathological malice and hatred. Vladimir Soloukhin even composed an entire story on this topic: a documentary, as he calls it.”

Documentation

No confirmation of these terrible accusations was found in the archives. Although there is no doubt that at the beginning of his life Golikov saw death and killed himself. From the soldiers' reports on their commander, it is known that Arkady Golikov shot prisoners of war because there was nothing to feed them or there were no conditions for their detention. He also engaged in looting. The young commander took away livestock and food supplies from the Khakassians.

“The most precious thing about Gaidar is that he obviously had enormous self-control to forget the blood that he himself shed. Gaidar achieved this. Either they cut their throats, or they drowned them alive, I heard stories like that. I didn’t conduct my own investigation, I don’t have my own evidence. But I admit that it could be,”- Doctor of Philology Sergei Nebolsin shared his opinion in a television interview.

It is truly known that several cases were opened against Golikov. The reason was exceeding official duties. Not a single investigation was completed. Due to a serious injury, Arkady Golikov was dismissed from the Red Army and spent his entire life being treated for terrible migraines. The severe pain was accompanied by attacks; he cut his veins with a safety razor and was pulled out of the noose several times.

Version two. Intercession

The main demythologizer of Gaidar's biography was Boris Kamov. Kamov became the most devoted biographer at the behest of his heart. The writer grew up reading Gaidar’s books and considered it his duty to expose Soloukhin and prove that “Salt Lake” was a vile fiction. Boris Kamov studied the archives and enthusiastically delved into the biography of Gaidar for 20 years.

"Arkady Gaidar. A target for newspaper killers” - written in pretentious language. Kamov constructs it as a refutation. He uses quotes from articles and stories by Soloukhin, argues with the authors and provides his own evidence. Kamov’s book convinces that all the accusations against Gaidar are lies. "Gaidar became a victim of a colossal fraud." True, Boris Kamov’s reasoning is not always based only on documentary facts. The writer often goes into lengthy discussions about a global conspiracy. Kamov claims that the company against Gaidar is nothing more than a weapon of psychological defeat. The goal is to deprive the people of their ideals. The sponsor, of course, is the West.

“Long-prepared disinformation technologies and methods of organizing mass panic and mass hysteria were tested on Russians. This “psychological plastid” came from a foreign arsenal. It was prepared in case of the Third World War and for the first time on such a large scale it was tested on former Soviet citizens,”- from the book “Arkady Gaidar. A target for newspaper killers."

Another opinion

“In order to become a children's writer, I suspect, you really need to carry within yourself from childhood a huge reserve of incomprehensibility and loneliness. You turn to children when you have been betrayed and sold by adults. Something like this happened to Gaidar,”

In 1941, Arkady Gaidar obtained permission to go to the front as a war correspondent. He did not return home. The writer died at the age of 37, fighting for his homeland.

Real name - Golikov (1904-1941) was the son of a peasant teacher and a noblewoman. His parents took part in the revolutionary unrest of 1905 and, fearing arrest, left for provincial Arzamas. There, the future children's writer studied at a real school and first published his poems in the local newspaper "Molot".

In 1919, he joined the Red Army and the RCP (b), and became an assistant commander of a detachment of Red partisans operating in the Arzamas region. Concealing his age, he studied at command courses in Moscow and Kyiv, then commanded a company of red cadets. He fought on the Polish and Caucasian fronts. In 1921, as commander of the reserve Voronezh regiment, he sent marching companies to suppress the Kronstadt uprising. In the summer of the same year, commanding the 58th separate regiment, he participated in the suppression of the Tambov peasant uprising. Golikov himself explained such a high appointment for a seventeen-year-old by the fact that “many of the senior command staff were arrested for connections with gangs,” i.e. with the rebels.

After the destruction of rebellious peasants, Gaidar continued to serve in special punitive units (CHON) - first in the Tamyan-Kataysky region in Bashkiria, then in Khakassia. Here, the 2nd “combat area” was in his zone of responsibility, which includes six current districts in the south of the Krasnoyarsk Territory. He was ordered to destroy the detachment of the “Emperor of the Taiga” I.N. Solovyov, consisting of local peasants and Kolchak officers.

Unable to cope with this task, Gaidar attacked the local population who did not support the Bolsheviks. People were shot without trial, chopped with sabers, thrown into wells, sparing neither the elderly nor children. The main target of the young commissar's bloody hunt were the Khakass. In one of the Khakassian villages, according to local residents, he personally killed more than a hundred people lined up at the edge of a cliff with shots to the back of the head. In another village, he took hostages and put them in a bathhouse, threatening that he would shoot everyone if they didn’t tell them in the morning “where the bandits are hiding.” And in the morning he fulfilled this threat: again with shots to the back of the head. To track down the elusive Solovyov, Gaidar recruited agents from the local population, paying for information with scarce textiles. Local Soviet leaders constantly complained about Gaidar.
For example, a letter from the volost executive committee, sent by courier from the village of Kurbatov to Achinsk, says: “The arriving detachment immediately used whips, which, in our thoughts, should exist in the realm of legends... and not appear now under Soviet power.”

The end to Gaidar’s excesses came only after he, despite the order of his superiors to deliver the prisoners to headquarters for interrogation, personally shot them, not wanting to allocate people for the convoy. The commander of the CHON province V. Kakoulin was forced to admit: “Ideologically, Golikov is an unbalanced boy who, taking advantage of his official position, committed a number of crimes.”

Gaidar was summoned to Krasnoyarsk for an explanation; he was expelled from the party, removed from his post and sent for a psychiatric examination.

Council, found “severe exhaustion of the nervous system due to fatigue and former concussion, with functional disorder and cardiac arrhythmia”(from Gaidar’s letter to his sister Natasha on January 17, 1923). After undergoing treatment courses in Krasnoyarsk, Tomsk and Moscow, Gaidar goes first on a six-month and then on an indefinite leave “with pay.”

In 1925, he wrote his first story, “In the Days of Defeats and Victories.” The editor advised the young author to start a peaceful life, and he went to work as a correspondent, first in Donbass, and then in the Urals. Gaidar worked for local newspapers; in Perm, he married seventeen-year-old Komsomol member Lia Lazarevna Solomyanskaya, adopting her son Timur. After the publication of the story "R.V.S." Gaidar received recognition, and the family moved to Moscow. But in 1931, his wife and son left him. The reason for leaving was the writer's alcoholism.

Gaidar was sad, could not work and went to Khabarovsk as a correspondent for the Pacific Star newspaper. Boris Zaks, who knew him at this time, wrote:
“Over my long life, I have had to deal with many alcoholics - drunkards, chronic ones and others. Gaidar was different, he was often “ready” even before the first glass.” And further: “Gaidar was cutting himself. Safety razor blade. One blade was taken away from him, but as soon as he turned away, he was already cutting himself with another. He asked to go to the restroom, locked himself, did not answer. They broke the door, and he cuts himself again. They took him away in an unconscious state... At the same time, it did not look like he was trying to commit suicide; he did not attempt to inflict a mortal wound on himself.”

Mental illness (manic-depressive psychosis against the background of chronic alcoholism) did not prevent Gaidar from creating works that placed him in the first rank of Soviet children's writers.

But resounding success did not relieve him of the burden of crimes he had once committed. “I dream about the people I killed in my youth in the war”, he wrote in his diary. Constant binges interfered with normal work.

With the start of a new war, Gaidar asked to go to the front. When in October 1941, the partisans of the detachment in which he was a war correspondent ran into the Germans, Gaidar jumped up to his full height and shouted to his comrades: “Forward! Behind me!" It was a death similar to suicide. Other partisans escaped.
Children's institutions, schools, and libraries are often named after Gaidar.
____________________________________
"The Black Book of Names That Have No Place on the Map of Russia"
Library of Russian Studies, Issue 11
S.V. Volkov. M., “Posev”, 2004. 240 pp., ISBN 5-85824-155-7

08/20/18. Kristina Rudich.

The governor of the Kemerovo region, Aman Tuleyev, resigned on April 1, 2018, a week after the worst tragedy in the history of the city of Kemerovo - the death of 60 people during a fire in the Winter Cherry shopping center. Tuleyev's 21-year reign was a time when numerous books about the governor were published in Kuzbass, with the support of the regional administration. Kemerovo historians have also unearthed a remarkable fact connecting Aman Tuleyev and the famous Soviet writer Arkady Gaidar (grandfather of the reformer Yegor Gaidar).

The story of Koldybay Tuleyev.

The “documentary-fiction novel” “Tuleev’s Roads” published in 2016 and a documentary film on this topic released at the same time tell about Tuleyev’s ancestors. The author of the book, which has received significant distribution in Kuzbass, is Tuleyev’s ex-assistant Lyudmila Polikanova.

According to the text, Aman Tuleyev’s own grandfather, Koldybai, had a very atypical biography, the details of which even the governor himself did not know for a long time.

Koldybai Tuleyev comes from the Adai clan of the Kazakh Junior Zhuz. During the Civil War, he was a representative of the Kazakhs at the headquarters of the White Guard ataman Dutov. Kazakh Alash Autonomy (Alash Orda) was proclaimed in Semipalatinsk in December 1917. The Alash party, which stood at the helm of the autonomy and adhered to the policy of moderate Kazakh nationalism, entered into an alliance with the leader of the Orenburg Cossacks, Alexander Dutov. It is alleged that Koldybai Tuleyev was an officer and adviser to Ataman Dutov on national issues. The choice of his candidacy was due to the fact that Koldybai had both military and Islamic religious education - he graduated from a cadet school and a madrasah.

The fact that this information may correspond to reality is also indicated by indirect data from other sources. Ataman Dutov’s personal convoy actually consisted of Kazakhs.

Arkady Gaidar: raid to Siberia.

According to the book and film version, Koldybai Tuleyev carried out diplomatic assignments, being a negotiator between the whites and the reds. After Ataman Dutov retreated to China, fate threw Koldybai to Siberia, to the territory of the modern Republic of Khakassia - then the Yenisei province. In 1922, he was captured by the Reds, and was a valuable hostage for them, as a person through whom they could get close to Ataman Dutov. At the same time, a detachment of a special forces unit appeared in these places, commanded by 18-year-old Arkady Golikov, the future famous children's writer Arkady Gaidar. He was sent here to destroy anti-Soviet rebels.

Further events in the film are narrated as follows: “Gaidar was an extremely inexperienced and narrow-minded commander of the ChON, prone to unjustified cruelty. Faced with a shortage of places for prisoners, he, without really understanding who was who, ordered the execution of all the extra Khakass. Aman Tuleyev’s grandfather was also among the doomed. The prisoners were taken to the shore of the Tom River. Four Khakassians were killed at once. Grandfather Koldybai knew that they would execute him, but he remained calm. While others were begging for mercy, he himself threw off his torn clothes from his shoulders and stood in front of the Red Army soldier. He slashed with his saber and jumped back so that blood wouldn’t splash on his shirt. The hostage only swayed, but straightened his back and seemed to become taller. “Who chops like that?” - reprimanded the Red Army soldier.”

As a result, it is alleged that Arkady Gaidar, dissatisfied with the delay, personally killed Koldybay Tuleyev:

“Gaidar himself grabbed the blade, ran up and slashed his grandfather with a roundhouse. The man jerked, but stayed on his feet. Gaidar turned pale and began to chop stupidly and frantically, like boys chopping burdocks with a stick, and the hostage kept getting up and getting up. In hysterics, Golikov pulled out his Mauser.”

The body of the murdered Kazakh was thrown into the river by the Red Army.

The Siberian trace in the biography of Arkady Gaidar was indeed one of the most controversial. The methods used by the communist commander and his murder of old people, women and children did not meet with understanding even among fellow party members. Gaidar was deprived of the right to hold leadership positions. Subsequently, the children's writer, who suffered from traumatic neurosis since the war, was treated in psychiatric clinics more than once and inflicted injuries on himself with a razor, claiming that he dreamed of murdered people. In Khakassia, Arkady Gaidar is still called the “red executioner” and is accused of genocide of the indigenous population.

In Soviet times, Aman Tuleyev’s relatives did not talk about the past of Koldybay’s grandfather, because they were afraid of the stigma of relatives being labeled an “enemy of the people.” It should be noted that during his tenure, the Kuzbass governor received the Order of Friendship (Dostyk) from the President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev, who spoke positively about the activities of Alash-Orda during the Civil War.

A separate edition of Vladimir Soloukhin’s story “Salt Lake”, written in the early 90s, is being prepared for release, which is planned to be supplemented with unique archival documents. “A friend of children with kind eyes” and the founder of a famous family, Arkady Gaidar appears from the pages of Soloukhin’s book as one of the most terrible executioners of the “Red Terror” times.

The person of Arkady Gaidar (Golikov) is still one of the most mysterious myths of the Soviet period for most Russians. Not only for people of the older generation, but also for modern youth, he remains a wonderful children's writer, the creator of works of great educational value. And the activities of Golikov-Gaidar during the Civil War are painted in romantic tones for many - they say, he joined the Red Army at the call of his heart at the age of 14 and fought for a well-known idea passionately and unselfishly.

The fact that Arkady Gaidar was not all right in his head was first widely and openly written by the historian and literary critic Mikhail Zolotonosov in the Moscow News newspaper (01/23/2004). He said that Gaidar ended his stormy “revolutionary activity” by commanding the 58th separate regiment, which became famous for its unheard-of cruelty in suppressing a peasant uprising in the Tambov province, and then fighting at the head of special forces with the detachment of the “white partisan” Ivan Solovyov in Khakassia. “Here his traumatic neurosis manifests itself, and as a result, in December 1924, Golikov left the army and switched to literature,” notes Zolotonosov.

Analyzing Gaidar’s “strange-looking prose,” the literary critic notes that the founder of the famous family “responded to all the ideological demands of the era,” and in his writings “ideological zombification is diluted not only with pathos, but also with a thick layer of sentimentalism.” At the same time, Gaidar did not disdain plagiarism. Zolotonosov rightly draws attention to the fact that the death of the boy Alka, killed by a stone thrown by a drunken bandit (“Military Secret”), is practically copied from the scene of the death of Ilyusha Snegirev from “The Brothers Karamazov”.

The article in “Moscow News” also talks about Soloukhin’s story “Salt Lake” (first publication – “Our Contemporary”, 4, 1994), which, according to Zolotonosov, is dedicated not only to the activities of Gaidar-Golikov in Khakassia, but also to the personality of Arkady Gaidar in general.

The author reports that Soloukhin’s book “provides a lot of evidence of the atrocities of the Chonovites in general and Golikov-Gaidar in particular.” And that the author of inhumane and essentially criminal “liberal reforms,” Yegor Gaidar, owes his last name to the Khakass word “Haidar,” which translated means “Where to go?” Wildly shouting this word, Yegor’s grandfather and Maria’s great-grandfather Gaidarov rushed throughout little Khakassia, pursuing Solovyov’s partisans. And the Khakass, hearing these screams, ran away in different directions, screaming in horror: “Save yourself! Khaidar-Golik is coming! Our death is coming!

On June 14, 2004, on the occasion of Vladimir Soloukhin’s 80th birthday, Komsomolskaya Pravda, where Arkady Gaidar was once listed, published a large interview from the writer’s archive. In it, Soloukhin draws an interesting parallel between Yegor Gaidar and his grandfather: “Stalin took away power from them (the internationalists - A.Sch.), tore Russia out of their hands. And they can never forgive him for this. They themselves are not there.

But new generations have risen. And they will try to take revenge, to return to the positions occupied by their fathers and grandfathers. Here's a concrete example. Arkady Gaidar was a punisher, a Chonovite, who shot peasants in Khakassia. (I wrote a story about this, “Salt Lake.”) And my grandson almost made it into the premiere. Would take Stolypin's post. From Stolypin to Gaidar?! Can you imagine?

The author of these lines had the opportunity to do the last interview with Soloukhin, which was published in Rossiyskaya Gazeta in February 1997. During our meeting with the writer in Peredelkino, he struck me with the conviction that after the war Stalin was gradually preparing to proclaim himself Russian emperor, he also touched on the theme of his story “Salt Lake”.

Soloukhin complained that very influential forces from the circle of Gaidar and Chubais were doing their best to prevent the release of “Salt Lake” in the form of a separate book and in a decent circulation. According to the writer, this is due to the fact that he managed to show Arkady Gaidar not only as a bloody executioner, but also as a mentally ill person, whose pathological cruelty could be inherited by his descendants.

Indeed, the facts presented in “Salt Lake” are amazing. While working on the book, Soloukhin got acquainted with unique documents miraculously preserved in the archives of Abakan and Achinsk, and also met with old-timers of Khakassia. Since the apologists of Arkady Gaidar demanded from Soloukhin “documentation of the actions of Golikov-Chonovets” in “Salt Lake” there is a lot of information gleaned from the Khakass media. Thus, fragments of the translation of the radio program “Achban Saltachi”, aired in Abakan on October 20, 1993, are given. In it, old-timers of the republic tell terrible things about Arkady Gaidar. So, E.G. Samozhikov testified how his relative, a 12-year-old boy, was hacked to death with a saber in a hysterical fit by Yegor Gaidar’s grandfather, mistaking him for a messenger of Solovyov’s detachment.

The famous Khakass writer and respected veteran in the republic, Georgy Fedorovich Topanov, then stated: “He not only did not like little children, but also old people, he killed. He chopped them and ordered them to be thrown into the water; the blood in the lake was always red. A.N. Mokhov from the Mokhov ulus on Uibat said: “A Russian soldier spent the night with them. In the morning Golikov came in, saw him, and said “traitor.” He shot both the mother and the soldier with a revolver.”

And here’s what I.V. said. Argudayev from the Ot Kol ulus: “Golikov had an order, I know from his mother, if even one in the family sympathized with the white partisan Solovyov, then Gaidar-Golikov slaughtered his entire family. For example, Lake Bolshoye... Every day in those days, Gaidar-Golikov’s people pushed the living into the ice hole. Our Khakassians still don’t fish in the lake. They say she gained fat from human meat. Golikov of the Khakass of the Sharypovsky district, Uzhursky district massacred everyone, even now they no longer live there.”

The article “Roads of Life. Gaidar-Haidar? (two faces of one person), published in the Lenin Choly newspaper on February 12, 1991 and practically unknown to the Russian-speaking reader. When, at Soloukhin’s request, she was transferred, the writer did not learn anything fundamentally new after what local old-timer Mikhail Kilchichakov told him about the fate of 16 hostages who had been held by Golikov’s Chonovites all night in a cold bathhouse on suspicion of supporting Solovyov’s partisans: “In the morning Golikov released them on one and shot him in the back of the head. Or as he announced to one village: “If you don’t tell me where Solovyov is hiding, I will shoot the entire village.” And indeed, he lined everyone up, women, old men, and children, in one line and knocked everyone out with a machine gun. According to one version, 86 people, according to another – 134.”

Realizing that, due to objective reasons, it was not possible to legally document the atrocities of Arkady Gaidar in those troubled years, Soloukhin provides striking evidence of the mental problems of the Soviet legend, which manifested themselves in peaceful, literary and journalistic life. In particular, Soloukhin refers to the work of Boris Kamov, who studied the diaries of Arkady Gaidar. In them, he noted the dreams that tormented him in the 30s as “Dreams according to scheme No. 1” or “Dreams according to scheme No. 2.” And in these notes there is a phrase: “I dreamed about the people I killed in childhood.” If we remember that Golikov-Gaidar was engaged in “revolutionary activities” from the age of 14, this recognition is more than remarkable.

In 1988, in the fifth issue of the almanac “The Past” published by the Parisian publishing house “Athenium”, the memoirs of the writer and journalist Boris Zaks, who had long been a close friend of Arkady Gaidar, were published. Zaks comments on Gaidar’s famous letter to the writer R. Fraerman, which apologists for the creator of “Timur and His Team” like to portray as a kind of protest against the atmosphere of lies and fear during the period of Stalinist repressions. In it, Gaidar notifies his friend: “Why did I lie so much? I have formed a habit of lying from beginning to end, and my struggle with this habit is persistent and difficult.”

So, Zaks points out that the publishers of Gaidar’s letter do not mention that Arkady wrote it from a psychiatric clinic. According to N. Stakhov, Gaidar suffered from a severe nervous disorder since the Civil War. “But Stakhov does not reveal what is behind this,” notes Boris Zaks, “And we are talking about a real mental illness, which regularly brought Gaidar to medical institutions. He didn’t stay in the Far East for very long (he worked for the Khabarovsk newspaper - A.Shch.), but during this time he visited a psychiatric hospital twice.”

“Over my long life, I have had to deal with many alcoholics—drunk, chronic, and others,” Zaks writes further. – Gaidar was different, he was often “ready” even before the first glass. He told me that the doctors who examined him in detail came to the following conclusion: alcohol is only the key that opens the door to the forces already raging within.”

The same Zaks in “Notes of an Eyewitness” reported that Arkady Gaidar more than once inflicted serious, but deliberately non-fatal wounds on himself with a safety razor: “Gaidar cut himself. Safety razor blade. They took one blade from him, but as soon as he turned away, he was already cutting himself with another... Later, already in Moscow, I happened to see him in only his shorts. The entire chest and arms below the shoulders were completely covered with huge scars.”

Zaks is sure that Arkady Gaidar did not seek to commit suicide. According to friend Golikov-Gaidar, the creator of “Chuk and Gek,” the smell of blood was arousing, and in a peaceful life he had to be content with his own.

Thus, from the book-research by Vladimir Soloukhin and the memoirs of Boris Zaks, a completely different image of Arkady Gaidar emerges from the one to which many are accustomed - the image of a man, from childhood, who experienced an indomitable thirst for murder and abuse of people, who suffered from chronic alcoholism and severe nervous disorders . And those who, due to historical circumstances, received the opportunity to satisfy their pathological and terrible desires.

In this regard, one involuntarily recalls a well-known trend in criminal psychology associated with the name of the famous Italian psychologist of the late 11th century, Caesar Lombroso. Its representatives believe that criminal pathology in the psyche can be inherited, and manifest itself not so much in the first, but in the second and subsequent generations.

So, is it not the influence of the above-described “oddities” of Arkady Gaidar that explains the fact that his grandson Yegor Gaidar carried out his “reforms”, completely ignoring the grief and tears of millions of people dispossessed by his inhumane policies? And that the great-granddaughter of the creator of the “Blue Cup,” Maria Gaidar, has publicly said more than once that she is not at all ashamed of a single act of her “illustrious” great-grandfather? I think there is something to discuss here, and not only for specialists in the field of cultural studies and transpersonal psychology.