The Great Schemer: Who was the prototype of Ostap Bender. Ostap Bender - the real story of the great schemer (2 photos)

Ostap Bender is the main character of the famous novels by Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov “The Twelve Chairs” and “The Golden Calf”. Without a doubt, Bender is one of the most striking characters in Russian literature, each of whose lines has long been analyzed into quotes. This is an amazingly charming swindler, smart, subtle and incredibly inventive, whose goal, faith and eternal passion is money. He does not hide his sincere love for banknotes, and his whole life is subordinated to their extraction. Despite the fact that in the end all his grandiose projects fail, Bender always remains a winner - even with his throat cut, even robbed and caught, as happened to him in the denouement of both novels.

He calls himself Ostap-Suleiman-Bertha-Maria-Bender Bey, as he introduced himself in the novel “The Twelve Chairs”, and in “The Golden Calf” he called himself Bender-Zadunaisky, although throughout the entire novel he is simply called Ostap Ibrahimovich. Ostap's year of birth is also ambiguous - in "The Twelve Chairs" he was 27 years old in 1927, while in "The Golden Calf" he mentioned that he was 33 years old ("the age of Christ"), the time of action is 1930. So, we can consider Ostap Bender’s birth year to be 1900 or 1897.

From the scattered and sometimes contradictory stories of Ostap, which he told to various characters on different pages, Ostap’s childhood passed either in Mirgorod or in Kherson, and in 1922 he was in Tagansk prison. And it was after leaving prison that he developed his famous “400 relatively fair ways of taking money from the population.”

So, appearing for the first time in the novel “The Twelve Chairs,” Bender arrives in Stargorod, where he immediately begins to develop vigorous activity. It’s funny that many critics immediately saw in the “young man of about twenty-eight” a former recidivist prisoner. Indeed, Ostap Bender had nothing, he didn’t even have a coat, but at the same time he managed to look like a real dandy and a heartthrob.

Bender's charisma literally captivates the reader from the first appearance - every phrase is a pearl, every decision speaks of genius. It is not surprising that he instantly becomes a leader in any society. “I will command the parade!” - this famous phrase of Bender has long become a saying, and, they say, this phrase in this wording had to be abolished in official documents.

During the course of “The Twelve Chairs,” Bender has to lead what is, in his opinion, not the most intellectually burdened group of adventurers just like himself, but Bender never loses his famous optimism, even in the most deplorable circumstances.

Bender's mind is unusually flexible - sometimes he comes up with simply brilliant plans right in the course of events - so, while still entering Stargorod in one suit, the young man was not at all sure what he would do in this city - whether he would become a polygamist, or would distribute the painting "Bolsheviks" writing a letter to Chamberlain." And in the end, he meets Ippolit Matveevich Vorobyaninov, who tells him the amazing story of Madame Petukhova’s family diamonds. So, Ostap’s plans changed instantly, and the new friends decided to set off to get treasures.

Money is the idol, the idol and the meaning of Ostap’s whole life; he sincerely and selflessly loves these “yellow circles”.

“Since there are some banknotes wandering around the country, there must be people who have a lot of them,” Ostap is sacredly sure of this and is ready to put his life into searching.

Alas, the search for the family diamonds, which sometimes seemed so close, was not successful for Bender. Moreover, at the end of the novel, Ostap is killed by the former leader of the nobility Vorobyaninov. By the way, they say that the authors of the novel, Ilf and Petrov, had serious contradictions about the ending of the novel - should Bender be left alive or killed? In the end, everything was decided by lot - and Kisa Vorobyaninov struck the razor along the defenseless neck of the sleeping Ostap...

Surprisingly, the lack of happy endings in both novels does not sadden the readers at all, although all of them, no doubt, succumb to Bender’s charisma and sincerely wish him luck in his scams. So, the end of each book seems to promise - Ostap Bender will return again, with a new adventure and new congenial ideas.

By the way, they said that Ilf and Petrov announced a third novel with Bender, and its title was even published in the press - “Scoundrel”, but this novel, alas, never saw the light of day.

There are many versions of who was the prototype of Ostap Bender - some even name the name Valentin Kataev, although Kataev himself said that it could be one of the writers’ Odessa childhood friends.

The image of Ostap Bender was embodied on screens by several brilliant Russian actors, among whom the most prominent are Sergei Yursky, Archil Gomiashvili, Oleg Menshikov, and, of course, Andrei Mironov.

Monuments to Ostap Bender stand today in many Russian and Ukrainian cities - St. Petersburg and Kharkov, Pyatigorsk and Kremenchug, as well as in Elista, Yekaterinburg, Berdyansk and many others.

Despite the fact that the first novel by Ilf and Petrov was published more than 80 years ago, Ostap Bender remains one of the most recognizable, bright and timeless characters today, and each of his lines has long become a quotation. Critics and literary scholars can argue about how exactly the authors managed to create such a controversial image - at its core, Bender was an ordinary swindler and scoundrel, and at the same time it is simply impossible not to love him. Charming and gallant, daring and noble in his own way, stylish and poor - this is him, Ostap Ibrahimovich Bender, “the son of a Turkish subject.”

Money is the idol, the idol and the meaning of Ostap’s whole life; he sincerely and selflessly loves these “yellow circles”.

“Since there are some banknotes wandering around the country, there must be people who have a lot of them,” Ostap is sacredly sure of this and is ready to put his life into searching.

By the way, they said that Ilf and Petrov announced a third novel with Bender, and its title was even published in the press - “Scoundrel”, but this novel, alas, never saw the light of day.

The image of Ostap Bender was embodied on the screens by several brilliant Russian actors, among whom the most prominent are Sergei Yursky, Archil Gomiashvili, Oleg Menshikov, and, of course, Andrei Mironov.

Monuments to Ostap Bender stand today in many Russian and Ukrainian cities - St. Petersburg and Kharkov, Pyatigorsk and Kremenchug, as well as in Elista, Yekaterinburg, Berdyansk and many others.

"I'm certainly not a cherub. I don't have wings, but I respect the Criminal Code. That's my weakness."

Many fellow citizens, who have read, or even watched enough, films about the adventures of the son of a Turkish citizen, from time to time rush to write a sequel to “Chairs and a Calf.” How can one “retrain as a house manager”!? This post is both a response to this impulse and the life story of an extraordinary person.

Full name: Ostap-Suleiman-Berta-Maria-Bender-Bey, Bender-Zadunaisky, and also Ostap Ibrahimovic. The main character of the novels by Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov “The Twelve Chairs” and “The Golden Calf”.

Some researchers believe that the surname Bender comes from the name of the city of Bender, which at the time of the appearance of novels about Bender was located on the Romanian side of the Dniester, and even earlier was in the possession of the Turks. “My dad,” Ostap Bender liked to say, “was a Turkish subject.”

Most likely, Bender’s dad, like the dad of his creators, lived in Odessa and could have been a Jewish businessman who often accepted Turkish citizenship so that their children could bypass a number of discriminatory laws that existed in Russia.

Bender is known as a “great schemer”, “an ideological fighter for banknotes”, who knew “four hundred relatively honest ways of taking money.” In his early youth, Bender “fed himself by showing a fat, busty monk at the Kherson fair, passing him off as a woman with a beard - an inexplicable phenomenon of nature.” Based on the details of the story about the Eternal Jew (“The Golden Calf,” Chapter XXVII), Ostap Bender was engaged in smuggling during this period.

In 1922, Ostap Bender was imprisoned in the Taganskaya prison together with Yakov Menelaevich, who was also imprisoned there on a “trifling matter.” Under the NEP, fraud moved from the category of a crime to the category of immoral acts, since money and valuables were confiscated non-violently6 “on a silver platter.” With the adoption of criminal legislation, an amnesty was granted to all those who were imprisoned in overcrowded prisons “for trivial matters.”

The main prototype of Bender is considered to be Osip Shor, a former employee of the criminal investigation department of Odessa, the older brother of the poet Nathan Shor (Fioletov). Osip Shor was born on May 30, 1899 in Nikopol. Such adventurous episodes of his life as impersonating an artist, a grandmaster, a groom, or a representative of an anti-Soviet organization in order to obtain a livelihood, are copied from O. Shor. This prototype was confirmed by Valentin Kataev.

Birth certificate of Osip Shor

Osip Veniaminovich Shor was born on May 30, 1899 in Nikopol (now Dnepropetrovsk region) in the family of the owner of a colonial goods store, merchant of the 2nd guild Veniamin Shor, and his wife, the daughter of a major Odessa banker Ekaterina (Kuni) Berger. He grew up in Odessa, where the Shors moved when Osya was one year old, i.e. in 1900

In Odessa, the Shorov family lived in house No. 78 on Poltavskaya Pobeda Street (now Kanatnaya Street). Osip or Ostap, as his family and friends called him, was the second child in the family. His older brother Nathan later played an important role in Ostap’s life. In 1901, their father died of a heart attack. A few years later, Ekaterina Berger remarried the successful St. Petersburg merchant David Rappoport. From this marriage a girl was born, Elsa, who later became a famous artist.

Kanatnaya Street in Odessa (early 20th century)

In 1906, Ostap Shor entered the Iliadi men's gymnasium. Many years later, Ilf and Petrov “assigned” Ostap Bender here, who, according to the authors of “The Golden Calf,” remembered for the rest of his life “Latin exceptions, memorized... in the third grade of the private Iliadi gymnasium.” Judging by the assessments, he was more inclined towards the exact sciences than towards the humanities (the only three among thirteen disciplines he had was in Russian language and literature, but in the subject that studied the “laws of the Jewish faith”, Shor had a solid four). But in law, mind you, an A!

Having become a student at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Novorossiysk University and having changed his mind about studying at this wonderful university, not having a penny in his pocket, seventeen-year-old Osip-Ostap went to St. Petersburg in 1916 to personally write an application for admission to the Faculty of Mechanics of the Technological Institute named after Emperor Nicholas I. But, as they say in Odessa, the music did not play for long: the matter of accepting Osip Shor as a student, which began on November 13, 1916, was completed on September 13, 1917.

An unrecognized genius. Shore had many brilliant ideas, but he dreamed of finding a goose that would lay him golden eggs. And he met this chicken literally. Osip found her on the road and there was something indecent about her appearance - she was without a single feather.

A wonderful future awaited them at the agricultural exhibition. The bald chicken became a celebrity. Odessa newspapers spread the news about the amazing discovery of domestic breeders - the dream of cooks and housewives - a chicken that does not need to be plucked! The meat industry immediately responded to this message.

The largest meat producers sent their agents to Odessa, who were invited to the local scientific society, where a gray-haired professor gave them a long lecture about the revolution in the field of poultry farming. Shor played the role of the professor in disguise.

The Ideal Chicken company has entered into contracts with the largest poultry farms in the south of Russia. However, the chickens were not delivered to the customers on time. The breeders sounded the alarm, but the professor and the company could not be found. They only found a chicken with a note hanging from its neck: “We Odessa breeders bred another chicken without a head and bones.”

Here are a few more “jokes”.

On May 30, 1918, Osip Shor celebrated his 18th birthday, and highly respected people came to congratulate him - sugar refiner Evlampy Kutyakin, bandit Vaska Kosoy and the rabbi of the local synagogue Bershtein. They all addressed the birthday boy with great respect and thanked him for his brilliant ideas.

The merchant Kutyakin was indebted to Osip for the rest of his life for helping him get rid of his rival, the merchant Rosenbaum. Both of them preserved the wine with sugar, and for both of them it turned sour before reaching Samara. Shor whispered a secret recipe to the merchant Rosenbaum - if boric acid is added to wine, it will not turn into vinegar, even when it reaches Khabarovsk. As a result, Rosenbaum went broke - the wine had such a rich bouquet that even bitter drunkards did not drink it.

Vaska Kosoy’s gang had long been looking for a bank to rob, but there was a huge two-hundred-kilogram door with combination locks that was impossible to approach. Just looking at the bank building, Osip realized that there was no need to open the door, you just needed to disguise yourself as chimney sweeps and get into the bank through the chimneys. Needless to say, Shor received his percentage after the robbery was carried out.

But he proposed the most ingenious idea to the rabbi. Bershtein wanted a better life for his parishioners, and on the advice of Osip he began selling places in heaven. For clarity, a diagram of heaven was hung on the wall of the synagogue, presented as an expensive boarding house. Below there was a price list where everyone could choose a place in paradise according to their taste and budget. With contributions from those wishing to do so, the rabbi restored the synagogue and renovated his own house.

But of course, his 10-month journey from Moscow to Odessa deserves special attention. Chaos reigned all around, so the penniless Osip got out as best he could.

What did he do on his way home? Not knowing how to really play chess, the failed student pretended to be a grandmaster, without ever holding a brush in his hands, he got a job as an artist on a ship that operated propaganda voyages, visited various establishments as a fire inspector...

In addition, Osip married an obese woman who served as the prototype for Madame Gritsatsueva. Moreover, he did this solely for mercantile reasons - times were hungry, and she kept a shop. That's how I survived the winter.

"Greyhound" opera. He returned to Odessa at the most difficult time. In a very short time, the city changed 14 authorities. Mishka Yaponchik's gangs were in full swing on the streets. The city was drowning in banditry. Young Odessa residents began to unite into people's squads under the auspices of the local police. Osip Shor was a physically developed person. While still in high school, he was interested in classical wrestling, kettlebell lifting and football. He had nothing to live in Odessa. Therefore, Osip Shor got a job in one of these squads and soon became the leading detective in the fight against banditry of the Odessa Criminal Investigation Department.

Osip Shor did not spare the raiders, and mercilessly eliminated the bandits who resisted arrest. Those caught were interrogated with such passion that they handed over their accomplices in batches. Naturally, Mishka Yaponchik ordered the greyhound to be shot.

A famous shootout took place in a cafe on Longeronovskaya Street, during which the gang was missing four hired killers, and Osip Shor did not even receive a scratch.

And yet he got revenge. The bandits killed his brother, the poet Anatoly Fioletov. Having identified the killer, the detective personally showed up at the gangster’s “raspberry” in Vtoroy Zalivnoye on Peresyp, put his registered weapon on the table and asked: “Which of you scoundrels killed my brother?” In a wide jacket, a sailor's vest and a cap on his head, Shor, terrible and powerful, stood for a long time in front of the repentant murderer. And then...forgave him. Ostap spent the whole night with the bandits. By the light of cinders they drank pure alcohol without diluting it with water. They read the poems of the murdered poet and cried. At the first rays of the sun, Ostap hid the Mauser in a wooden holster and left unhindered to once again begin a life-and-death struggle with the bandits.

The death of his brother had a depressing effect on Shor, as the bandits had hoped. He vowed not to take up arms again, resigned from the criminal investigation department and left for Petrograd. There he immediately (in 1922) went to prison for a fight with a man who insulted his companion. Osip did not stay in prison for long: he was released immediately after information was received from Odessa about his military past and they began to persuade him to join the Petrograd Criminal Investigation Department.

In 1934, Shor left for Chelyabinsk to help his friend Vasily Ilyichev, director of the tractor plant, improve the national economy. In 1937, Ilyichev was arrested by NKVD officers in his office. Ostap starts a fight with them, which was, without a doubt, a brave act. He was arrested, but again he did something extraordinary - he escaped. For a long time he hid in Leningrad, and then moved to Moscow, where he lived with his Odessa friend, the already famous author of “Three Fat Men” and “Envy” Yuri Olesha.

From the memoirs of Natalya Kamyshnikova:

His life was guided by the most complex logical calculations. Ostap was a player by nature. Passionate gambler. He calculated, calculated, and then put everything on the line - and often lost. And he couldn’t stand defeats (hence, perhaps, his refusal to go to funerals and cemeteries?). I think that he felt the post-revolutionary lifestyle, the bad taste and hypocrisy of the Soviet language, and the coming festival of fools as his personal failure in life.

Ostap, earlier than many, realized what had happened in the country and calculated his further behavior. He went through everything that his cheerful contemporaries, in their creative foresight, described with the expression “retraining as a house manager.” After the short years of crazy hopes, mischievous antics, easy and dashing popularity in the picturesque world of bohemia of the 20s, the time has come to hide, remain silent, spit out your sarcastic jokes, forget all ambitions and, most importantly, let yourself be forgotten. The growing popularity of his literary counterpart was becoming dangerous for him. Many of his relatives managed to emigrate; any attempt to get an official job would have revealed this. And he went “underground”.

Ostap never spoke seriously or cheerfully. It was always sarcastic wit, annoying mockery, tiresome but fascinating. With defiance and some kind of malice, he emphasized his semi-criminal connections and interests. He claimed that he didn’t do anything “for thanks,” that he played cards only to win, that he didn’t believe in God or the devil, and even more so in any kind of disinterested good motive. His cynical manner of speaking about people, his cutesy appeals “Mon ange” to acquaintances, regardless of age and sometimes gender, French quotes interspersed with rather greasy puns, his obvious contempt for everyone repelled him, and yet there were traces in him when something of powerful charm. And despite his manner of communication, he inspired complete trust in himself.

One could believe that a crowd of dudes and tramps of the twenties followed him, and the famous wits of the era repeated his jokes. The sardonic antipathos of his speech acted like a refreshing shower or, remembering what he constantly quoted, “Like a healing enema, joy illuminated the soul. Electric power will be the daughter of communism!” I later learned that this is a line from the once famous humorous poem by young Kharkov residents “From Cosmos to Sotsvos or Tsik and Vutsik.” Unfortunately, I don’t know the authors, and I can only guess that they mean the Central Executive Committee and the All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee.

They told endless fantastic stories about him, some of which I saw on the Internet and therefore I will not repeat, especially without having witnessed them. We joked at home that in the summer he was in charge of the skating rink and in the winter the boat station. In October 1941, I heard from my mother, he managed to get sent to Central Asia to accompany the evacuated Moscow zoo. In Tashkent, he and his family were among the staff of the zoo, and from time to time a sakted yak, a boar bitten by an evil tiger, or a llama tormented by malaria appeared on the table. I cannot guarantee the accuracy of this story, but it corresponds to the “myth”.

In the 40s and 50s, Shor was engaged in what would later be called the shadow economy; one of his then employees, artist Victor Ioels, spoke of him this way: “You didn’t know him. You didn’t know who he was to us. Ostap Vasilyevich was an extraordinary person " left artels." And how many people did he simply save from starvation? For years he helped the families of prisoners, often strangers. There weren’t many houses in Moscow where you could come to spend the night after returning from the camp. Almost strangers came, stayed, sometimes lived for a long time ", until he got them a job, didn't find any opportunity for them to stay in the city. But those were the years - forty-nine, fifty-one, and even later there was enough."

Somewhere in the late fifties, already an elderly gentleman, during the period of his greatest financial prosperity, Ostap suddenly appeared with a new wife. Her resemblance to Madame Gritsatsueva seemed mystical, incredible! On a hot summer evening, a languid, extremely plump person of about thirty-five with dark oriental undershirts entered our communal apartment on Kislovsky Lane, wearing lace gloves and a black pan-velvet dress with lace, decorated with jewelry and thick makeup. Her name was Tamara. At first she was very timid and silent, and we tried not to show amazement at seeing such splendor at our modest family table. As it turned out, Tamara used to sell vegetables in a tent at the market, and now Ostap has given her some position in a fur studio on Arbat, near Smolenskaya Square. Probably, at that time she had not yet read the famous novel, and she invented the pet names with which she addressed Ostap (“Ostapchik, my angel, my baby”) herself.

In the 60s, Shor went out of business and worked for 15 years as a conductor of the Moscow - Tashkent train (15 days there - 15 back - a month of vacation), his room in the communal apartment was mostly empty. In old age, Shor began to go blind and became completely unsociable.
He lived to be almost 80 years old and was buried at the Vostryakovsky cemetery in Moscow in 1978, having suffered two heart attacks and gone blind in one eye.

There were people who loved and remembered him, but he did not know how to be loved.

Who doesn’t know Ostap Bender, the “great schemer” and “son of Lieutenant Schmidt”? Surely everyone has watched the legendary films “12 Chairs” and “The Golden Calf”, based on the novels of the same name by Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov. Ostap Bender is the main character of these film adaptations and works. He can rightfully be called one of the brightest and most memorable heroes of Russian literature. Every phrase of his is a masterpiece! He is smart, cunning, quick-witted, charming, resourceful. Ostap's greatest passion is money. He constantly strives to get them at any cost.

Ostap Bender: years of childhood and youth

The full name of the main character of the novel “12 Chairs” is Ostap-Suleiman-Bertha-Maria-Bender Bey. This is exactly how he introduced himself in this novel. However, in the work “The Golden Calf,” written by I. Ilf and E. Petrov later, he calls himself Bender-Transdanubia. The origin of Ostap Bender is difficult to establish reliably, but from some of his phrases one can understand that as a child he lived in Mirgorod and Kherson. He also says that he served time in Taganskaya prison, but after leaving there he tries to “honor the criminal code.” In addition, he claims to be the son of a Turkish citizen. It is known that Ostap studied at a private gymnasium.

"12 chairs"

The biography of Ostap Bender is not described in detail in any of the works of Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov. In the novel “12 Chairs” he appears to readers as “a young man of about 28.” He appears in Stargorod, where he meets Ippolit Matveevich, who has gathered to search for the diamonds of his late mother-in-law. Ostap immediately senses the smell of profit, so he imposes himself on Vorobyaninov as a partner. Bender is madly in love with money, for the sake of it he is ready to commit any scam. The novel “12 Chairs” describes his marriage to the widow Gritsatsueva. He did this only in order to get a chair in which treasures may have been hidden. However, there were no diamonds there, and Ostap, together with Ippolit Matveyevich, set off in search of new adventures. In Stargorod, the great schemer creates the “Union of Sword and Ploughshare” and collects money from local influential people. All funds go into the fraudster’s personal pocket, but to members of the organization he hints at a “sacred goal.” At the end of the novel, Vorobyaninov cuts Ostap’s throat, but the hero does not die.

"Golden calf"

In the novel “The Golden Calf” Ostap Bender appears before readers as a man with his own dreams, weaknesses and experiences. In “12 Chairs” the image of the hero is schematic, but here his inner world is more fully reflected. And again he comes up with a variety of scams: posing as the son of Lieutenant Schmidt, selling a recipe for making wheat moonshine, and so on.

His main dream is to take possession of the money of the underground millionaire Koreiko. Bender achieves this by all means, and in the end he succeeds. At the end of the novel, he tries to cross the Romanian border, but the border guards rob him. However, Ostap Bender remains alive, and this epilogue gives hope that there will be a continuation of the story about this charming adventurer. It is known that Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov planned to write another novel called “Scoundrel,” but this was not destined to come true.

Quotes

Almost every quote from Ostap Bender is unique. His expressions became popular among the people. Here are just a few of them:

"A sultry woman is a poet's dream."
“Why are you looking at me like a soldier at a louse?”
“Breathe deeply: you are excited.”
“...No criminality. We must honor the code!”
“Whoever says that this is a girl, let him be the first to throw a stone at me!”
"The crystal dream of my childhood."
“I will command the parade!”
“Foreign countries will help us.”

It seems that you can quote Ostap Bender endlessly. It is worth noting that the novels of Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov are full of funny phrases. The catchphrases that are loved by all readers belong not only to Ostap Bender. Almost all the characters in the novels “The 12 Chairs” and “The Golden Calf” say something funny and memorable.

Scams and fraud

Ostap Bender knows what to do in any situation. He can find a way out of any situation and gain the trust of everyone. Books about him charge readers with positivity, and his phrases and actions invariably bring a smile. Just look at the situation when he introduced himself as an artist in order to get on the ship, but in the end it turned out that he couldn’t draw at all. Once in Vasyuki, Ostap lies that he is a world famous chess player, but loses all the games and is forced to flee from the angry residents of this town. In the novel “The Golden Calf,” he introduces himself as the commander of a large automobile rally, and also sells the technology for making moonshine to American tourists.

Appearance and age

Ostap Bender is a handsome and prominent man. He is very charming, so all women without exception like him. He easily gains people's trust, presents himself as a completely different person (policeman, fire inspector), but he gets away with everything. Ostap, under other circumstances, could have achieved great success and made a career, but he directs all his energy to dubious matters, deception and fraud. In the novel “12 Chairs” the hero is about 28 years old, and in “The Golden Calf” he is 33 years old. He does not have a noble origin, but is very smart and cunning. Ostap is an undoubted leader in any society. People are ready to follow him to the ends of the earth.

Annual festival "Benderiada"

Few people know, but the city of Vasyuki, described in the novel “12 Chairs,” really exists. At least, residents of the small town of Kozmodemyansk, located on the right bank of the Volga, believe that it was there that the legendary chess tournament took place, in which Ostap shamefully lost all the games. Every year this city hosts an entertainment festival called “Benderiada”, filled with fun competitions, as well as performances by dance and music groups.

During the festival, residents and guests of Kozmodemyansk can take part in a real chess tournament, play beach volleyball, eat delicious barbecue and even buy a chair at auction (12 of them are being sold in total, and a diamond is hidden in one of them). Large cruise ships often stop in the city, and tourists go out and explore the local attractions. During the Benderiada there are especially many visitors, because this festival attracts guests from all over the country.

Ostap Bender in the cinema

Based on the novels of Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov, many TV series and films were shot, not only in Russia, but also abroad. The very first Ostap in cinema was Sergei Yursky, who starred in the film “The Golden Calf” in 1968. One of the best films about Bender was shot by Leonid Gaidai in 1971. The role of the great schemer in it was played by Archil Gomiashvili, whose age did not correspond to the age of Ostap in the novel “12 Chairs”. However, most TV viewers consider this particular picture to be the most successful of all that were made about Bender. The musical film “12 Chairs” from director Mark Zakharov is also popular. Ostap was played in it by the inimitable Andrei Mironov.

In 2006, the series “The Golden Calf” was released, consisting of 8 episodes. The main role in it was played by Oleg Menshikov. According to critics, Ostap, played by him, turned out to be the most unsuccessful of all.

Museums and monuments

Monuments to Ostap Bender are installed in many cities, including: Yekaterinburg, Cheboksary, Odessa, Kharkov, Pyatigorsk, Krymsk. In St. Petersburg in 2000, a monument to the great schemer also appeared.

Bronze Ostap immediately catches the eye of passers-by. There is a permanent cap on his head, and a scarf around his neck. There is even a tradition among residents of St. Petersburg: in order for everything to go well, you need to rub Bender’s nose.

In the city of Kozmodemyansk (the prototype of Vasyukov) there is a “Museum of Satire and Humor” dedicated to Ostap Bender.

It is located at Sovetskaya Street, building 8. In the museum you can see a lot of interesting things, including portraits and photos of Ostap Bender, his quotes, objects related to him, sculptures, and an old car. Tourists who visited there claim that they received many positive emotions. The museum has a very cozy and positive atmosphere.

Conclusion

Novels about Ostap Bender were written many decades ago, but today he remains one of the most popular literary characters. Books about his machinations are read with great pleasure. And films in which Ostap was played by famous actors (Andrei Mironov, Archil Gomiashvili, Sergei Yursky, Oleg Menshikov and others) are periodically broadcast on the main federal channels. In principle, his image is negative, because he is a fraudster, a liar and a deceiver. However, despite these significant negative aspects, Ostap Bender remains a favorite hero of many generations.

Name: Ostap Bender (Ostap-Suleiman-Bertha-Maria Bender Bey)

A country: USSR

Creator:

Activity: adventurer, "great strategist"

Family status: not married

Ostap Bender: character story

The “ideological fighter for banknotes”, who dreams of walking through the sultry Rio de Janeiro in white pants, has graced Russian literature. Ostap Bender captivates with his thirst for life, his ability to deal with defeats with humor and his iron-clad perseverance in achieving his desired goal.

Story

In the early spring of 1927, employees of the newspaper “Gudok” received the position of “literary blacks” - a writer who also worked for the publication instructed a couple of novice reporters to put into literary form the idea of jewels hidden in chairs. Journalists got down to business with enthusiasm.

Having looked around, we chose heroes for the new work from our immediate circle and just acquaintances. Among the episodic characters appeared the adventurer and swindler Ostap Bender. But from the very beginning he turned out to be so bright and charismatic that he constantly strove to come to the fore. The authors resigned themselves and decided to give the hero the right to fully realize himself.

It took a little more than four months to write the future legendary book. Having received the first manuscripts, Valentin Kataev was surprised - there was almost no trace left of the idea. However, he admitted that the guys did a brilliant job and have the right to consider themselves mature writers. At the beginning of 1928, the novel was put to rest, and the editor of the magazine “30 Days” approved it for publication.

The book “12 Chairs,” consisting of three parts, had a triumphant future ahead of it. Still would! The picaresque novel not only captivates with the adventures of Ostap Bender and (aka Kisa Vorobyaninov), who went in search of treasures stored in furniture. He attracts with sparkling humor - the book was immediately stolen for quotes suitable for any occasion.

The value of the work is also in the scattering of characters, each more colorful than the other. Just look at the wife of engineer Shchukin, who easily parted with her chair in exchange for a tea strainer. The heroine's vocabulary is limited to 30 words. The authors collected these phrases and expressions from their notes in notebooks and took them from the languages of their friends. Ellochka, symbolizing the consumer society, does not age. And today you can meet many women of narrow minds who strive to live for their own pleasure in a man’s bosom.

The story of Ostap Bender's adventures begged for continuation. Ilf and Petrov began working on their next novel in 1929, and a couple of years later, the same magazine “30 Days” began publishing chapters of “The Golden Calf.” It is curious that the book was first published as a separate edition in the USA, but Russian readers received it a year later.

In the drafts of Gudok reporters, which were collected in a folder labeled “Case No. 2,” the work bore whatever title: “Calves,” “Burenushka,” “Half-Heifer,” and even “The Great Schemer.” The authors admitted:

“It was difficult to write, there was little money. We remembered how easy it was to write “12 Chairs” and envied our own youth. When we sat down to write, there was no plot in my head. It was invented slowly and persistently.”

The torment was not in vain - the second novel turned out even better than the debut work. In The Golden Calf, Ostap Bender, in company with the “children of Lieutenant Schmidt” Shura Balaganov and Panikovsky and with the owner of his own car, Adam Kozlevich, hunts for the money of the “real Soviet millionaire” Alexander Koreiko.

With the inconspicuous and modest, but very rich employee of the accounting and financial department, Ostap is connected by two passions - the love of money and tender feelings for the girl Zosia Sinitskaya. This time, luck smiled on Bender, or, as he accurately noted: “An idiot’s dreams came true!” The hero managed to get the savings of the underground schemer Koreiko, however, his dreams of Rio de Janeiro still did not come true...

According to rumors, Ilf and Petrov were going to write a third book about the “great schemer”; an announcement of a novel under the working title “Scoundrel” was even leaked to the press, but the authors did not please the fans.

Image

Ostap Bender appears before readers as a 27-year-old attractive young man and immediately captivates with his intelligence, ingenuity and sense of humor. A charismatic liar, endowed with acting talent, a favorite of women... In “The Golden Calf” Ostap reaches age, here the character is deeper, and the jokes and phrases are more sophisticated.

The clothes of the tramp, unpretentious in food and shelter, from the first book indicate that he has just left places not so distant - the plot of “12 Chairs” begins in early spring, and the man has neither a coat nor socks. But he is wearing smart shoes and a fashionable suit. The scarf and cap become integral attributes of the character, which Bender does not part with until the end of the second book.

Every phrase of Bender is a pearl, and every decision is brilliant. It is not surprising that he takes the place of leader in a company of petty swindlers. However, colleagues in the search for treasures and banknotes are not burdened with intelligence, and it is not difficult to lead them. Ostap is sincerely in love with life and remains an optimist even in the most disastrous situations. The main passion of the energetic scoundrel has always been and remains money.

The character’s past is vague, only occasionally do details of his life slip through: supposedly a graduate of the private Illiad gymnasium, during the Civil War he lived in the Ukrainian Mirgorod, traded in smuggling, and also amused the audience of fairs by showing a bearded woman (in fact, he dressed a full monk in a lady’s outfit). An enterprising young man would have been able to make a “legal” career, but he preferred to wander in the hope of getting a “plate with a golden border.”

The name Ostap Bender is not so simple. The hero introduces himself in an original way - in “The 12 Chairs”, upon meeting, he calls himself none other than the Turkish citizen Ostap-Suleiman-Bertha-Maria-Bender Bey, and in “The Golden Calf” he turned into Bender-Transdunaysky. The authors gave the character the patronymic Ibrahimovic, which Eastern fans took as one of their own, attributing Turkic roots. However, Ilf and Petrov, most likely, simply wanted to show the internationality of the hero - every nation has its own brilliant adventurer.

The character has many prototypes - from Kataev himself to the character of the theatrical production “Zoykina’s Apartment” Amethystov, an eloquent rogue and a talented swindler.

The main prototype of the handsome schemer is considered to be a friend of the authors, Osip Shor (friends called him Ostap), a former criminal investigation inspector. Young Osya's return from studying from Petrograd to his home in Odessa dragged on for a year, during which time the young man got involved in a bunch of adventures: he presented himself as the fiancé of a rich lady, an ace in the game of chess, and an artist. Bender’s “parents” borrowed the most vivid adventures for novels.

Movies

Russian and foreign directors have made several films based on the books by Ilf and Petrov. Some managed to brilliantly convey the character of an adventurer, while some films are considered downright unsuccessful. The role of Ostap was played by Hungarian Ivan Darvash, an Odessa resident, and even a singer. The experiment on the Bender theme was not a success for Ulyana Shilkina: the hero’s performance received low ratings from cinema connoisseurs.

Some directors allowed themselves to fantasize about the further adventures of the charming swindler. Yuri Kushnerev in the 1980 film “The Comedy of Bygone Days” united Ostap () and Kisa Vorobyaninov () with the heroes of Gaidaev’s comedies Coward () and Experienced () in search of treasures.

In the list of iconic films based on the works of Ilf and Petrov, critics include the following productions:

"12 Chairs" (1966)

For the first time on television, Soviet actor Igor Gorbachev played Ostap Bender. The Leningrad Television performance was directed by Alexander Belinsky.

"Golden Calf" (1968)

And this is the debut film adaptation of the second novel about the adventures of an Odessa swindler under the direction of Mikhail Schweitzer. I tried on the image of the main character, whose age coincided with the age of the book Bender.

"12 Chairs" (1970)

The American interpretation of the journalists' work "Beep" fully corresponds to the author's characteristics of the character: the actor Frank Langella is young, handsome, with the bearing of a military man.

"12 Chairs" (1971)

Quotes

Quotes invented by the tandem of Gudok reporters are firmly rooted in the vocabulary of Soviet citizens, being inherited by the modern generation. One of the most famous:

“Ostap was carried away. Things seemed to be getting better...”

Even those who are not familiar with the works use the brilliant phrases of the “great schemer”:

“You are, after all, not my mother, not my sister, not my lover.”

“A sultry woman is a poet’s dream”

“I will command the parade!”

“Whoever says that this is a girl, let him be the first to throw a stone at me!”

“The ice has broken, gentlemen of the jury!”

“Perhaps I should also give you the key to the apartment where the money is?

“How much is opium for the people?”

“A car is not a luxury, but a means of transportation”

“You did not come from a monkey, like all other citizens, but from a cow. You think very slowly, just like a cloven-hoofed mammal. I’m telling you this as an expert on horns and hooves.”

“Rio de Janeiro is the crystal dream of my childhood, don’t touch it with your paws”

“The work of helping drowning people is the work of the drowning people themselves”

“Money in the morning, chairs in the evening!”

“No, this is not Rio de Janeiro! This is much worse!

The author of the story “Son of the Regiment” Valentin Kataev is the brother of Yevgeny Petrov. Evgeny Petrovich took a pseudonym, deciding that “Bolivar of Literature” would not be able to handle two Kataevs.
The name of Kataev as the ideological inspirer of “12 Chairs” should have appeared on the list of authors, but the writer refused such an honor, because the idea was significantly redrawn. All he needed was dedication. Ilf and Petrov spent the first fee on a gift for their mentor - they gave him a gold cigarette case.

The name of the character in picaresque novels is immortalized in monuments - sculptures of the adventurer were erected in St. Petersburg, Pyatigorsk, Yekaterinburg, Kharkov and other cities. And in Odessa, the attention of residents and guests of the city is attracted by Ostap Bender’s chair of impressive size - it is a meter in diameter.
A third of a century after the publication of the novel “12 Chairs,” an amazing event happened in the life of Osip Shor - a possible prototype of Ostap married a lady who, in appearance and character traits, was the spitting image of Madame Gritsatsueva.

Monument to Ilf and Petrov in Odessa "The Twelfth Chair"

In Gaidai's film, Bender performs for Madame Gritsatsueva a sad song about the suffering of a pirate in love. According to the script, the film was supposed to include two compositions, but one, called “Striped Life,” was removed by order from “above.” USSR Minister of Culture Ekaterina Furtseva explained that the country had enough of the song “But we don’t care,” sounding from every corner, and “Striped Life” faces the same fate.