Baruzdin biography for children. Sergey Baruzdin: Poems
“Baruzdin as a person, as a person who subsequently chose for himself that type of service to society, which is called writing, began during the war, and almost everything, and perhaps even everything further in his writing path was determined by this starting point, had its roots there , in the blood and sweat of war, in its roads, hardships, losses, defeats and victories.”
K. Simonov, “Reference point”, 1977
There lived a boy, Seryozha Baruzdin, in pre-war Moscow. Studied at school. Drew. Wrote poetry.
In Moscow there was a literary studio at the Palace of Pioneers, where the talented boy was sent. Since 1937his poems were published in Pioneer. Sergei was a childcare worker. His poems were different from the poems of other children in the junior circle in which Sergei studied; they were full of seriousness. Even as a child, Baruzdin believed: “Poems are poems and they should not be written the way you say or think.”.
The Great Patriotic War began suddenly for him. Instead of studying, a fourteen-year-old teenager had to go to work. Sergei thought: “Who can I be? I had dreams. [… ] But these were dreams of something that should not happen soon. When I grow up. When I finish school, where I still have to trumpet and trumpet. When I graduate from college. And of course, these dreams did not include today’s war.”
He got a job at the printing house of the newspaper "Moscow Bolshevik" for the debtor of the catoshnik(rolled rolls of paper to the rotary machine). And even in this work he felt great responsibility.
Baruzdin was enrolled in a voluntary squad, and during an air raid he had to be at his post - on the roof of his house. “I felt a feeling close to delight. Alone on a huge roof, and even with such a light show all around! This is much better than being on duty downstairs at the gate or in the entrance of the house. True, it was possible to chat there, there were many people on duty, and I was alone. And I still feel better! I seem to be the owner of the entire roof, the entire house, and now I see what no one sees.”- he said.
The printing house signed up volunteers for the people's militia, but they didn't take him there because he was only 15 years old. But he was taken as a volunteer to build defensive structures on Chistye Prudy.
On October 16, 1941, Sergei’s father took him to the front in a special battalion, which was formed from the People’s Commissariat workers who remained in Moscow. He took it himself and defended it in front of some higher authorities when they tried to object. He even added a year to Sergei.
Like all boys, Sergei was more attached to his father than to his mother. He saw his father less often before the war, and especially during the war, but they always found a common language with each other, both in big and small matters. Sergei was especially proud of the fact that his father sometimes trusted him with secrets that he did not even trust with his mother.
Sergei wrote the very first poem about his father:
Once upon a time there lived a father
Very kind,
I just came late
And he took his work home.
This made his mother angry.
I thought:
Brought the car
And he brought work,
I put it on the shelf
But he didn’t disclose his work.
Every day
dad comes
Just go home for the night.
From such a big job
Our dad can be evil.
Sometimes it happens like this:
Our dad
Takes a job
And he sits over her all night.
In the morning dad
Tea swallows
And he runs to work with her.
On October 18, 1941, Sergei’s father died from a German mine fragment. He was buried on the fifth day at the German Cemetery. Among the hundreds of people buried there with German surnames, there now lay a man with a Russian surname.
The deaths didn't end there. Every day there were more and more of them. Sergei saw people he knew and did not know die. This was the horror of war.
What different people the war brought together. Sergei had never looked at people like that before. They were different, and he always accepted them as they were. But it was during the war that Sergei thought that different people mean different human qualities within each person. No people are entirely good or entirely bad. Every person has good and bad and everything. And it depends on the person himself, if he is a person and knows how to manage himself, which qualities prevail in him...
In 1945, Baruzdin took part in the capture of Berlin, and it was there that he especially acutely felt homesickness. He said: “Probably none of us need to say these words out loud now. Not for me, not for everyone else who came a thousand miles from their homes to Berlin. These words are in our very hearts, or rather, they are not even words. This is the feeling of homeland".
During the Great Patriotic War, S. Baruzdin was on the fronts: near Leningrad, in the Baltic states, in the Second Belarusian War, in the Far East (in Mukden, Harbin, Port Arthur).
“Of all my awards, the medal “For the Defense of Moscow” is one of my most expensive,” admitted Sergei Alekseevich. – And also medals “For the capture of Berlin” and “For the liberation of Prague.” They are my biography and geography of the war years.”
In 1958 Baruzdin graduated from the Gorky Literary Institute.
Sergei created war books: the novel “Repetition of the Past”, “The Tale of Women”, the story “Of course” and the novel “Noon”, which, alas, remained unfinished.
Everyone remembers the smart, kind, funny Baruzdin works for childhood and youth:"Ravi and Shashi", "How the Chickens Learned to Swim", "Moose in the Theater"and many others. More than two hundred children's and adult books of poetry and prose with a total circulation of over 90 million copies in 69 languages!
Since 1966 Sergey Alekseevich V headed the all-Union magazine “Friendship of Peoples”. Thanks to the energy, will, and courage of the editor-in-chief, the magazine always brought words of high artistic truth to readers from its pages.
On March 4, 1991, Sergei Alekseevich Baruzdin passed away. The writer's books are republished and are still read today.
There lived a man in our house. Big or small, it's hard to say. He grew out of diapers a long time ago, and has not yet reached school. Read...
A bull was grazing at the edge of the forest. Small, a month old, but quite dense and lively. Read...
In Odessa, I wanted to find my old front-line comrade, who was now serving as a long-distance sailor. I knew that the ship he was sailing on had just returned from a voyage abroad. Read...
It was late autumn in the last year of the war. There were battles on Polish soil. Read...
In the summer we traveled around Ukraine. One evening we stopped on the banks of the Sula and decided to spend the night. The time was late, the darkness was impenetrable. Read...
A new theater building was built in the old Ural city. The townspeople eagerly awaited its opening. Finally the day has come. Read...
A new film was being filmed at the film studio. There should have been a scene like this in the film. A bear crawls into a hut where a road-weary man is sleeping. Read...
As a child, I lived in a village in the Yaroslavl region. He was happy with everything: the river, the forest, and complete freedom. Read...
On the way to the village of Ozerki we caught up with a chaise. But, to our surprise, there was no rider in it. Read...
During the war I had a friend. We jokingly called him a fur farmer. This is because he is a livestock specialist by profession and previously worked at an animal farm. Read...
For many years, the state farm herd grazed in the large meadow of the Kamenka River. The places here were quiet, peaceful, with short but lush grasses. Read...
Ravi and Shashi are small. Like all children, they often play pranks and sometimes cry. And they also eat like little children: rice porridge with milk and sugar is put directly into their mouths. Read...
Little Svetlana lived in a big city. She not only knew how to say all the words correctly and count to ten, but also knew her home address. Read...
Svetlana was once small, but she became big. She used to go to kindergarten, and then went to school. And now she is not going to the first grade, not to the second, but to the third. Read...
Our cities are growing quickly, and Moscow is growing by leaps and bounds. Svetlana grew as quickly as her city. Read...
It was raining outside the window. Boring, small, turning into a downpour and then small again. Spruce and pine trees do not make noise in the rain, like birches and aspens, but you can still hear them. Read...
She read a lot about the sea - a lot of good books. But she never thought about it, about the sea. Probably because when you read about something very distant, this distant thing always seems unrealistic. Read...
And yet this forest is amazing! Spruce, pine, alder, oak, aspen and, of course, birch. Like these ones that stand as a separate family at the edge of the forest: all sorts of them - young and old, straight and short-haired, beautiful and not at all attractive to look at. Read...
Sergei Baruzdin's stories are different. Most of them are devoted to the relationship between people and animals. The writer vividly and colorfully describes how people show their best qualities in communication with nature. Through his stories, he conveys to us that animals need our care and love. See for yourself by reading “Snowball, Rabbi and Shashi”, “Moose in the Theater”, “The Unusual Postman” and other stories.
Very interestingly and with love, Sergei Baruzdin describes the world of a little man using the example of the boy Alyosha from “Alyoshka from our yard” and “When people are happy.” They tell a simple and clear story about goodness, responsibility and growing up. Sergei Baruzdin's children's stories carry a great charge of positivity. Read them and see for yourself.
Once upon a time there lived a father
Very kind,
I just came late
And he took his work home.
This made his mother angry.
These lines belong to the Soviet writer and poet Sergei Baruzdin. Simple and artless, but at the same time warm, like summer rain, they remain in our memory for a long time.
Creativity of Sergei Baruzdin
The writer lived and worked at a time when literature was under close censorship supervision. All published works were supposed to glorify Soviet power. Rarely has any writer managed to create a work that is not politicized, but Sergei Baruzdin did it.
All his work is illuminated by the warm light of humanity and love for people. He did not read morals and sermons, he showed both with his creativity and his life how to live so that it would be good not only for himself, but for all the people around him. He was called a true friend of children.
Throughout his life, the writer wrote more than 200 books for children and adults. The total circulation of his works is about 100 million copies. Books were published in approximately 70 languages of the world. His work was highly appreciated by Nadezhda Krupskaya and Lev Kassil, Konstantin Simonov and Maria Prilezhaeva.
Sergey Baruzdin: biography
He was born in Moscow in 1926. Dad wrote poetry and also taught his son to love poetry. Everything turned out very well: his works were published in the school wall newspaper, and then in the Pioneer magazine and the Pionerskaya Pravda newspaper. drew attention to the young talent and sent him to the literary studio of the House of Pioneers.
Meeting new interesting people, doing what you love - life was easy and wonderful, but everything changed, and the familiar world collapsed in a few hours when the Great Patriotic War began. A few months after this, my father died. Grief and death quickly burst into the world of fantasies and dreams of the young poet.
Sergei was only 14 years old, and he was eager to go to the front, but for obvious reasons they did not take him there. A year after the start of the war, having credited himself with a couple of years, he had already fought in artillery reconnaissance, participated in the defense of Moscow, took Berlin and liberated Prague. He was awarded orders and medals. More valuable than all other awards was the medal “For the Defense of Moscow.”
After the war he entered the school named after M. Gorky. After graduating, he was the editor of the magazines “Pioneer” and “Friendship of Peoples”. Worked on the board of the USSR Writers' Union. Sergei Baruzdin died on March 4, 1991.
Magazine "Friendship of Peoples"
At the age of 39, Baruzdin became the editor of not the most popular publication in the Soviet Union. The magazines we read were “New World”, “October”, “Znamya”. “Friendship of Peoples” was called “a mass grave of fraternal literature,” and this publication was absolutely not in demand.
But thanks to Sergei Baruzdin, it began to publish K. Simonov, Y. Trifonov, V. Bykov, A. Rybakov and other not only well-known, but also unknown authors. Many national writers and poets became popular only after publications in Friendship of Peoples. Baruzdin always had problems with censorship, but he knew how to protect writers and defend his position.
Baruzdin was able to make “Friendship of Peoples” one of the most beloved and read in the Soviet Union. The truth, no matter how bitter it may be, has become one of the features that distinguishes the magazine. Its pages perfectly combined Russian and translated literature.
Sergey Baruzdin: books
The development of the writer's personality was greatly influenced by the war. He went to the front when he was just a boy, but came back as a soldier who had seen a lot. At first he wrote about the war. These were stories, but the writer did not describe horrors, but funny stories that happened to him and his comrades at the front.
In 1951, the author wrote a book that is one of his calling cards. This is a trilogy about the girl Svetlana. At the beginning of the book, she is three years old, the girl is just getting acquainted with the huge world that surrounds her. Short stories describe incidents from her life. Simply and clearly, Baruzdin teaches the reader important things: responsibility for an action, respect for elders, helping older people and much more.
Almost fifteen years after the war, he wrote an autobiographical novel, “Repetition of the Past.” The book covers a large period of time: peacetime, years of confrontation and post-war time. Baruzdin wrote about how hard it was for yesterday’s schoolchildren and schoolgirls during the war, and how early home boys and girls became warriors defending their homeland. Truthfulness and sincerity are the hallmarks of this book. At first it was written for an adult reader, and later it was remade for children by Sergei Baruzdin.
This author wrote poetry and prose, as well as journalism. He has many books for children in which he introduces them to the history of our homeland: “A Soldier Walked Down the Street” and “The Country Where We Live.” Books about the Great Patriotic War were also published: “Tonya from Semenovka” and “Her name is Elka.” There were also works about animals: “Ravi and Shashi” and “How Snowball Got to India.” In addition, it should be noted a collection of literary essays entitled “People and Books”.
The work of E. Asadov, A. Barto, L. Voronkova, L. Kassil, M. Isakovsky and many other Soviet writers and poets becomes closer and clearer after reading essays about their lives written by Sergei Baruzdin.
Basic principles
- Do not under any circumstances distort the existing reality.
- Good must triumph.
- Do not use complex sentences in works - everything should be written in simple language, understandable even to the youngest reader.
- A sense of duty, justice, internationalism.
- To awaken the best and most humane feelings in your readers.
There lived a man in our house. Big or small, it's hard to say. He grew out of diapers a long time ago, but has not yet reached school.
And the man’s name was Alyosha.
Alyosha knew how to do everything. And eat, and sleep, and walk, and play, and speak different words.
He sees his father and says:
He sees his mother and says:
He sees a car on the street and says:
Well, if he wants to eat, he will say:
Mother! I want to eat!
One day my father went to another city on business. Several days passed and my father sent a letter home.
The mother read the letter. And Alyosha decided to read it. He took the letter in his hands, twirled it this way and that, but couldn’t understand anything.
Mother sat down at the table. I took paper and a pen. I wrote my father a reply.
And Alyosha also decided to write a letter to dad. He took a pencil and paper and sat down at the table. I started running my pencil over the paper, but all I could see on it was scribbles.
So it turned out that Alyoshka can’t do everything, doesn’t know everything.
The simplest thing
It's a long wait before school. Alyoshka decided to learn to read himself. He took out a book.
And it turned out that reading is the simplest thing.
He sees a house drawn in a book and says:
He sees a horse and says:
Alyosha was delighted and ran to his father:
Fine! - said the father. - Let's see how you read.
Father showed Alyosha another book.
What's this? - asked.
Alyoshka sees that in the picture there is a beetle drawn with an umbrella, and something is written under it.
This is a beetle with an umbrella,” explained Alyoshka.
“This is not a beetle with an umbrella at all,” said the father, “but a helicopter.”
Father turned the page:
And what's that?
And this,” Alyoshka answers, “is a ball with horns and legs.”
“This is not a ball with horns and legs, but a satellite,” said the father.
Here he handed Alyosha another book:
Now read this one!
Alyoshka opened the book - there is not a single picture in it.
“I can’t,” he said, “there are no pictures here.”
“And you read the words,” the father advised.
“I don’t know how to speak,” Alyoshka admitted.
That's it! - said the father.
And he said nothing more.
A bucket of water
This has happened more than once before: Alyoshka’s mother will ask Alyoshka for something - to bring salt from the next room or pour water from a cup - and Alyoshka will pretend that he didn’t hear and continues to play. The mother will get up, bring the salt herself, pour out the water herself, and that’s the end of it!
But then one day Alyosha went for a walk. As soon as he left the gate, how very lucky he was. A huge dump truck is parked right next to the sidewalk; the driver has opened the hood: he is rummaging around in the engine.
What five-year-old boy would miss an opportunity to look at the car one more time!
And Alyosha didn’t miss it! He stopped, his mouth opened, and he looked. I saw a shiny bear on the radiator, I saw the steering wheel in the driver’s cab and even touched the wheel, which was taller than Alyoshka himself...
Meanwhile, the driver slammed the hood: apparently, he had fixed everything that was needed in the engine.
Will the car move now? - asked Alyoshka.
“It won’t go until we fill it with water,” the driver answered, wiping his hands. - By the way, where do you live? Close, far?
Close,” answered Alyoshka. - Very close.
That's good! - said the driver. - Then I’ll borrow some water from you. You dont mind?
I don't mind! - said Alyosha.
The driver took an empty bucket from the cab and they went home.
“I brought my uncle to borrow some water,” Alyoshka explained to his mother, who opened the door for them.
Please come in,” the mother said and led the driver into the kitchen.
The driver filled a bucket of water, and Alyoshka brought his own - a small one - and poured it too.
They returned to the car. The driver poured water from his bucket into the radiator.
And my! - said Alyosha.
And yours! - said the driver and took Alyoshka’s bucket. - Now everything is all right. And thanks for the help! Be there!
The car roared like a beast, shuddered and drove off.
Alyoshka stood with his empty bucket on the sidewalk and looked after her for a long time. And then he returned home and said:
Mother! Let me help you!
Have they replaced my son? - the mother was surprised. - Somehow I don’t recognize him!
No, they didn’t change it, it’s me! - Alyosha reassured her. - I just want to help you!
The right nail
In the morning mother said to father:
In the evening, please hammer the nails in the kitchen. I need to hang the ropes.
Father promised.
My mother was at home that day.
She got ready to go to the store.
“You play for now, son,” she asked. - I'll be back quickly.
“I’ll play,” Alyoshka promised, and as soon as his mother left, he went to the kitchen.
He took out a hammer and nails and began hammering them into the wall one by one.
I scored ten!
“Now that’s enough,” thought Alyoshka and began to wait for his mother.
Mother returned from the store.
Who hammered so many nails into the wall? - she was surprised when she entered the kitchen.
“I,” Alyoshka said proudly, “so as not to wait for dad to score.”
I didn’t want to upset Alyosha’s mother.
Let’s do this,” she suggested, “we’ll take out these nails.” They are not needed. But here you will hammer one nail into me, a bigger one. I'll need it. Fine?
Fine! - Alyoshka agreed.
The mother took pliers and pulled out ten nails from the wall. Then she gave Alyosha a chair, he climbed onto it and hammered a large nail higher.
“This nail is the most necessary one,” said the mother and hung the saucepan on it.
Now Alyoshka, as soon as he enters the kitchen, looks at the wall: is there a saucepan hanging?
This means that it is true that he hammered the most necessary nail.
How Alyosha got tired of studying
Alyosha turned seven years old. He went to school to learn to read and write properly.
The school year has not yet ended, winter has only just begun to appear in the autumn days, and Alyosha can already read, write, and even count. He can read a book if it is printed in large letters, write words on paper, add numbers.
Once he was sitting in class, looking out the window, and the sun was shining straight into Alyosha’s face. In the sun, Alyoshka always has a snub nose: he wrinkled and his nose became like a Chinese apple. And suddenly Alyosha felt that he was tired of studying. He can read, write, and add numbers. What else!
Alyoshka got up from his desk, took his briefcase and went to the exit.
Where are you going? - asked the teacher.
Home! - answered Alyosha. - Goodbye!
He came home and said to his mother:
I won't go to school anymore!
What are you going to do?
Like what? Well... I'll work.
Like by whom? Well, how about you, for example...
And Alyosha’s mother worked as a doctor.
Okay,” the mother agreed. - Then you have a little task. Prescribe medicine for a patient who has the flu.
And the mother gave Alyosha a small piece of paper on which recipes are written.
How to write it? What medicine is needed? - asked Alyoshka.
“Write in Latin letters,” the mother explained. - And what medicine, you yourself should know. You're a doctor!
Alyoshka sat over a piece of paper, thought and said:
I don't really like this job. I'd rather work like dad.
Well, come on like dad! - the mother agreed.
Father returned home. Alyoshka - to him.
“I won’t go to school anymore,” he says.
What are you going to do? - asked the father.
I will work.
How are you! - said Alyosha.
And Alyosha’s father works as a foreman at the very factory where Moskvich cars are made.
“Very good,” the father agreed. - Let's work together. Let's start with the easiest one.
He took out a large sheet of paper, rolled into a tube, unfolded it and said:
Here in front of you is a drawing of a new car. It contains errors. Look at which ones and tell me!
Alyoshka looked at the drawing, and it was not a car, but something completely incomprehensible: lines converge and diverge, arrows, numbers. You can't make out anything here!
I can't do this! - Alyoshka admitted.
“Then I’ll do the work myself,” said the father, “while you rest!”
The father bent over the drawing, his face became thoughtful and serious.
Dad! Why do you have Christmas trees on your face? - asked Alyosha.
“These are not Christmas trees, but wrinkles,” said the father.
Why them?
Because I studied a lot, fought a lot, worked a lot,” said the father. Only slackers have smooth skin.
Alyosha thought, thought and said:
I guess I'll go to school again tomorrow.
When people are happy
At school, children were often told:
You must be able to work hard. Work so hard that people will then say: what golden hands our guys have!
Alyoshka loved to do carpentry. His father bought him a carpentry machine and tools.
Alyoshka learned to work and made himself a scooter. It turned out to be a good scooter, it’s no sin to boast!
Look,” he said to his father, “what a scooter!”
Not bad! - answered the father.
Alyoshka - into the yard, to the guys:
Look what a scooter I made!
Nothing scooter! - the guys said. - Ride!
Alyoshka rode and rode on his scooter - no one looked at him. He's tired of it. He threw the scooter.
In the spring, at school, the children had to grow seedlings, so that later, when it became very warm, they could plant them in the yard.
The teacher said:
The high school students promised to make us boxes. As soon as they are ready, we will start seedlings.
And Alyoshka returned home, got hold of the boards and decided to make the boxes himself. Just think! This is not some kind of scooter. As easy as pie.
On Saturday Alyoshka worked all Sunday, and on Monday he brought two boxes to school, just for two windows.
The guys saw the boxes.
Wow! - they said. -Your hands are golden!
The teacher saw and was also happy:
Well, you have golden hands! Well done!
Alyoshka came home, and his mother said to him:
I'm very pleased with you, son! I met your teacher, comrades, and everyone says that you have golden hands.
In the evening, the mother told the father about this, and he also praised his son.
Dad! - asked Alyosha. - Why, when I made the scooter, no one praised me, no one said that I had golden hands? Are they talking now? After all, a scooter is more difficult to make!
“Because you made the scooter for yourself alone, and the boxes for everyone,” said the father. - So people are happy!
Polite bull
A bull was grazing at the edge of the forest. Small, a month old, but quite dense and lively.
The bull was tied with a rope to a peg driven into the ground, and so, tied, he walked in a circle all day. And when the rope was too tight, not letting the bull go, he raised his muzzle with an uneven white star on his forehead and pulled in an unsteady, rattling voice: “Mmm-mm!”
Every morning, children from the kindergarten who were relaxing in the neighborhood passed by the bull.
The bull stopped nibbling the grass and nodded his head friendly.
“Say hello to the bull,” the teacher said.
The guys greeted in unison:
Hello! Hello!
They spoke to the bull as if he were an elder, using “you”.
Then the guys, going for a walk, began to bring various delicacies to the bull: a lump of sugar, or a bun, or just bread. The bull willingly took the treat right from the palm. And the bull’s lips are soft and warm. It used to tickle your palm pleasantly. He eats it and nods his head: “Thank you for the treat!”
Cheers! - the guys will answer and run for a walk.
And when they return, the polite bull will nod his head to them again:
“Mmm-moo!”
Goodbye! Goodbye! - the guys answered in unison.
This happened every day.
But one day, having gone for a walk, the guys did not find the bull in its original place. The edge was empty.
The guys became worried: had something happened? They began to call the bull. And suddenly, from somewhere in the forest, a familiar sound was heard:
“Mmm-moo!”
Before the guys had time to come to their senses, a bull ran out from behind the bushes, tail raised. Behind him was a rope with a peg.
The teacher took the rope and drove a peg into the ground.
Otherwise he’ll run away,” she said.
And again the bull, as before, greeted the guys:
“Mmm-moo!”
Hello! Hello! - the guys answered, treating the bull with bread.
The next day the same thing happened again. At first there was no bull, and then, when he appeared, there was a rope with a pulled out peg behind him. And again the teacher had to tie the bull.
Have you seen a bull around here? - asks. - He’s a little black one, with a star on his forehead.
We saw it! We saw it! - the guys shouted.
“He’s there, at the edge of the forest,” said the teacher. - I tied him there.
What miracles! - the woman shrugged. - For the second day I tied a bull in a new place, but found it in the old one. I can’t understand why he liked it so much!
“He’s probably used to my kids,” the teacher laughed. Your bull is polite, he greets us every day.
Don't take him away from us! - the guys began to ask. - We are friends with him!
Yes, if your friends ask, you’ll have to leave it! - the woman agreed. Since he became friends with the guys...
The next morning the guys went into the forest. At the edge of the forest, as before, a bull was waiting for them.
Hello! Hello! - the guys shouted.
And the satisfied bull nodded his head in response:
“Mmm-moo!”
Two-meter misfortune
In Odessa, I wanted to find my old front-line comrade, who was now serving as a long-distance sailor. I knew that the ship he was sailing on had just returned from a voyage abroad.
When I arrived at the port, it turned out that the ship had already unloaded and its crew had been written off yesterday. At the port office I found out the address of my friend and went to his house.
In a new house on Khalturin Street, I went up to the third floor and called. Nobody answered me. I called again.
In the depths of the apartment there was a creak of a door and laughter. A woman's voice shouted:
Who's there?
I said through the closed door who I wanted.
Come back later! There is no way we can open it for you! We're under arrest here.
I thought I was being played. And completely stupid! If a friend is not at home, why can’t you open the door and say so in a humane way?
Having gone downstairs, I wandered around the city for about an hour, and curiosity rather than necessity again led me to a strange apartment. I called again and heard the door creak, laughter and a question:
Who's there?
I had to repeat why I came.
More laughter, and the same answer. Only more polite:
Please come back a little later. Your friend will be back soon. And here we are, really, arrested and cannot go out into the corridor. You see, a two-meter misfortune has settled in our country...
Frankly speaking, I was completely confused. Either they really are playing the fool with me, or this is something funny. In order not to miss my friend, I began to walk near the entrance.
Finally I see: it’s coming. We hugged in joy, and here I could no longer stand it.
What do you have in your apartment? - I ask. - Which arrestees? What kind of two-meter misfortune is this?
He burst out laughing.
I knew it! - speaks. “It’s my neighbors who are afraid to leave their room.” Why are they afraid when it is small and completely harmless? Yes, and I locked him in the room. I told them and reassured them. And they tell me: he can crawl under the door...
Wait, who are you talking about? - I asked again. -Who is the little one? Who is harmless?
Yes, a boa constrictor. Only two years old. Only two meters long! - my friend explained to me. - At one of the ports, the kids gave it as a gift. So the captain instructed me to place him in the zoo. It was late yesterday, so I went to negotiate now. And he spent the night at my house. That's all. I'll take it now.
A few minutes later, my friend and I were already walking towards the zoo. My friend carried the boa around his neck like a wreath. And it’s true that the boa constrictor turned out to be a completely harmless creature. He did not try to escape, but only occasionally hissed and opened his mouth.
True, passersby shied away from us. But in vain. They had nothing to fear.
Hedgehog with a cold
It was late autumn in the last year of the war. There were battles on Polish soil.
One night we settled in the forest. We lit a fire and warmed up the tea. Everyone went to bed, and I remained on duty. In two hours I was supposed to be relieved at my post by another soldier.
I sat with a machine gun by the dying fire, looking at the embers, listening to the rustling of the forest. The wind rustles dry leaves and whistles in the bare branches.
Suddenly I hear a rustling sound. It's like someone is crawling on the ground. I wake up. I keep the machine gun at the ready. I listen - the rustling has stopped. He sat down again. It rustles again. Somewhere very close to me.
What an opportunity!
I looked at my feet. I see a bunch of dry leaves, but it’s as if it’s alive: it’s moving by itself. And inside, in the leaves, something snorts and sneezes. Sneezes great!
I took a closer look: a hedgehog. A muzzle with small black eyes, erect ears, dirty yellow needles with leaves pinned on them. The hedgehog dragged the leaves closer to the warm place where the fire was, moved his nose along the ground, and sneezed several times. Apparently he caught a cold from the cold.
Now the time for my shift has come. The Kazakh Akhmetvaliev took over as a soldier. He saw the hedgehog, heard it sneeze, and, well, scold me:
- Oh, that’s not good! Ay, not good! You sit and look calmly. Maybe he has the flu or inflammation. Look, he's shaking all over. And the temperature is probably very high. We need to take him into the car, treat him, and then release him into the wild...
That's what we did. We put the hedgehog along with an armful of leaves in our camping gas car. And the next day Akhmetvaliev got some warm milk somewhere. Pzhik drank milk, warmed up and fell asleep again. During the whole trip I sneezed several times and stopped - I got better. So he lived in our car all winter!
And when spring came, we released him into the wild. On fresh grass. And what a day it turned out to be! Bright, sunny! A real spring day!
Only this happened in Czechoslovakia. After all, we celebrated spring and victory there.
Bee scourge
As a child, I lived in a village in the Yaroslavl region. He was happy with everything: the river, the forest, and complete freedom.
I often sat with the guys around the fire at night.
But there was one “but”. This is the “but” I want to talk about.
The owner of the house where we lived had several hives with bees.
They say bees are peaceful creatures if you don't offend them. And it’s true: our bees didn’t bite or touch anyone. Nobody but me.
As soon as I left the hut, some bee would definitely bite me. And there were days when I was stung several times.
“You play around a lot,” said the mother, “so they bite you.”
“I’m not playing around at all,” I justified myself. - I don’t touch them at all.
“What a misfortune this is! - I thought. - Maybe they confused me with someone? After all, other bees do not sting me - in the forest, in the field - but their own ... "
Time passed, and there was not a day when I escaped this bee scourge. Sometimes I have a lump under my eye, sometimes on my cheek, sometimes on the back of my head, and once a bee stung me in the back, and I was completely exhausted: I couldn’t even scratch the bitten area—I couldn’t reach it with my hand.
I wanted to ask our owner why the bees don’t like me, but I was afraid. “He will also think that I really offend them. How can I prove to him that I don’t touch them at all? But a bee, they say, dies after it stings. This means that many of them died through my fault.”
But it turned out that I still could not avoid talking with the owner. And it’s good, otherwise I would have suffered all summer.
One evening I was sitting at the table, all bitten, having dinner. The owner entered the room and asked:
- Did the bees bite you again?
“They bit me,” I say. “Just don’t think that I was teasing them.” I don’t go anywhere near the hives...
The owner shook his head in disbelief.
“It’s strange,” he says. - They are quiet to me...
And I see that he’s looking at me closely.
- Do you like onions? - he asks suddenly. “You seem to smell like onions.”
I was glad that I was not scolded for bees, and I answered:
- Yes, I love it a lot! Every day I probably eat a kilo of green onions. With salt and black bread. Do you know how delicious it is!
“That’s why they bite you, brother,” the owner laughed. — My bees really can’t stand the smell of onions. And in general, bees are very picky about different smells. There are those who don’t like cologne or kerosene, but mine don’t like onions.
You'll have to abstain from onions.
From that day on, I didn’t eat another onion all summer. Even if I found it in soup, I still threw it away. I was afraid that the bees would bite me.
And they sure enough stopped stinging me. Once I even stood next to the hives when the honeycombs were taken out of them, and the bees did not touch me!
Baruzdin Sergey Alekseevich - poet, prose writer.
His father, being the deputy head of Glavtorf in Moscow, wrote poetry. Not without the influence of his father, Sergei began to become interested in poetry, publishing his first poems first in a wall newspaper, then in the large-circulation “Industry Headquarters”, in “Pionerskaya Pravda”, the magazine “Pioneer”, “Friendly Guys”. They were noticed by N.K. Krupskaya, at that time Deputy People's Commissar of Education, and she sent the young poet to the literary studio of the Moscow House of Pioneers. “I was fourteen when the war began and when the day before I was at my next lesson at the House of Pioneers. The war was already underway when I was fifteen... In the Red Army I served as a private in artillery reconnaissance... On the Oder bridgehead, in the Oppeln area, near Breslau, in the battles for Berlin, on the Elbe, and then in the dash to Prague we, seventeen-eighteen-year-old boys understood a lot...” (Baruzdin S. People and Books. M., 1978. P. 320-321).
Learning is not the sweetest thing.
Baruzdin Sergey Alekseevich
After demobilization, he worked and at the same time studied at evening school, then by correspondence at the Literary Institute. M. Gorky.
In 1950 he published his first poetry collection. for children “Who Built This House” and a collection of poems together with A.G. Aleksin “Flag”; in 1951 - a collection of stories “About Svetlana”, then a story in verse about a first-grader Galya and her friends. The poems are warmed by the author's personal attitude towards his characters.
In 1956 he published a book for children, Step by Step. Sat. are dedicated to the education of schoolchildren. poems “Who is studying today” (1955), the story “Lastochkin the Younger and Lastochkin the Elder” (1957).
L. Kassil characterized Baruzdin’s poems for children as follows: “Important in meaning, tightly coordinated...” (Baruzdin S. Your friends are my comrades. M., 1967. P.6). Baruzdin's talent is characterized by philosophy, parable-likeness, and rhetorical formulation in verse for children of their main thoughts. By talking with the child not only confidentially, but also seriously, the author strives to awaken in him the most important civic qualities - hard work, humanity, internationalism, a sense of duty and justice. The prose is even more problematic, the plots reveal the severity of conflicts; Baruzdin combined poetry and prose into the book “On Different Differences” (1959).
Addressing the little reader in books of the 1960s, Baruzdin turns to journalism: “A soldier was walking down the street,” “The country where we live,” “The country of Komsomol.” In the story for children “A Soldier Walked Down the Street,” the author teaches young readers the first lessons of patriotism. In the book “The Country Where We Live,” the narrator, together with his 5-year-old interlocutor, flies around the whole country on an airplane, they see the Urals, and Siberia, and Kamchatka, and the Far East, and the hero understands that our country is big and rich . The author skillfully and tactfully introduces little interlocutors into the complex web of difficult everyday problems: “Big Svetlana. Little stories" (1963), "Valya-Valentin. Poems" (1964), "It's Snowing... Stories" (1969).
In Baruzdin's books, a child comprehends the diverse beauty of life, learns kindness and the joy of being kind. The friendship between the Soviet and Indian peoples is described in the book “Traveler Gifts” (1958). Here, in the stories “Ravi and Shashi” and “How Snowball Got to India,” the author has a serious conversation with the little reader about the friendship of peoples, about human responsiveness and solidarity. In the small but capacious and instructive story “Not Tomorrow,” as in the stories “The First of April - One Day of Spring” and “New Yards,” the author poses to schoolchildren questions of conscience and duty, selfish acquisitiveness and work for the common good.
