What does the pseudonym Gaidar mean? The pseudonym displaces the real surname

“We were dismissed for the summer holidays. Fedka and I made all sorts of plans for the summer... Firstly, we had to build a raft, lowering it into the pond adjacent to our garden, declare ourselves the rulers of the sea and give a naval battle to the united fleet of the Pantyushkins and Simakovs, which was guarding the approaches to their gardens on on the other side..."

This is from “School” - a wonderful semi-autobiographical story that brought Arkady Gaidar his first fame in 1930. And just these few lines convey an incredibly acute feeling of happiness from the upcoming adventures, wanderings far and near, from the fact that the hero is so young and not alone. They convey this spirit, which is so characteristic of Gaidar’s worldview, of all Gaidar’s writings.

Sounding texts

Almost always Gaidar felt the need to go somewhere, to travel somewhere, to wander around the world in order to live and to write. In these travels he found himself, became who he is. In a romantic impulse, like the heroes of his works, he seemed to be looking for mysterious and incomprehensible lands where his happiness resides. And, apparently, from time to time I found it. Remember how “Chuk and Gek” begins? It’s a fabulous opening: “Once upon a time there lived a man in the forest near the Blue Mountains...” By the way, three years after the writer’s death Lev Kassil will name these lands Synegoria, dedicating his story “My Dear Boys” to the all-Union counselor (and making him the prototype of Guy).

In a sense, we, too, have found our utopian place, Sinegoria - the chalk mountains of the White City. It was here that the hero of our issue - soloist-multi-instrumentalist of the Belgorod State Philharmonic Timur Khaliullin (organ, harpsichord, piano, carillon) read letters from Arkady Petrovich.

Those that in the spring of 1934 the writer sent to his relatives and friends from our region - from the small green Ivnya.

And while we were getting there, the musician was talking about his Gaidar:

Of course, I read the story about Timur and his friends with curiosity. But I learned about Gaidar’s hero much earlier. This is understandable, my name inevitably entailed “Timur and his team.” Since childhood, this phrase has accompanied me. And I even tried on the image of Timur for myself - I always wanted that one day I would have such a team and that we would do good deeds together. In part, a childhood dream came true at the Belgorod Philharmonic.

"Timur and his team". 75 years ago

Perhaps, for most, this book is the most famous of Gaidar’s. However, not everyone knows that the original film script appeared first, and secondly the story (August 1940, it was published in Pionerskaya Pravda and broadcast on All-Union Radio).

At the end of 1939, Gaidar accepted the offer to write it. And he completed work on it in April 1940. It is curious that the author’s title sounded like “ Duncan and his friends" But the ideology of the regime made its own adjustments - Duncan urgently needed to come up with a replacement. And it dawned on Gaidar - Timur, well, of course, the name of his beloved son! But from the image of Duncan, the noble Scottish king, a character in Shakespeare's tragedy "Macbeth", energy and justice were transmitted to Timur, giving him the features of a hero who sacrifices himself for the sake of others.

But let's return to the hero of our issue. If you read Gaidar’s letters with him, then at the end you heard music of amazing beauty (played by Khaliullin). Famous Soviet composer Lev Schwartz created it just for the film “Timur and his team” Alexander the Reasonable And Lev Kuleshov, which was released in the fall of 1940 (the second film adaptation by Alexander Blank and Sergei Linkov appeared in 1976). We decided to remind you about it, as well as about the film.

“I was pleased to get acquainted with Schwartz’s music. And he improvised it for organ, harpsichord and piano. Of course, this is typical Soviet music, life-affirming and full of enthusiasm. The march genre is very characteristic of that era, positive, bright and very energetic. And between the marching parts there is a beautiful melody, reminiscent of many love melodies. Its contrasting image sets off and further emphasizes the marching nature of the extreme sections. This kind of music is very easy to fall in love with, and then it’s hard to forget – the melody of the opening theme constantly sounds in your head. And I want to play it with a smile,” comments Timur Khaliullin.

Restoring the contest

These lines are written in a beautiful language unique to Gaidar alone. You will meet them as you complete your reading. "Drummer's Fates" (1938). The pressure of time is felt in this story. But in it, the writer directly told the story of a boy whose father, a hero of the Civil War, was arrested. Behind this situation are real arrests of military marshals Mikhail Tukhachevsky, Vasily Blyukher, Alexander Egorov... And the tragedies of their doomed families. It is no coincidence that “The Fate of the Drummer” began to be published in Komsomolskaya Pravda, broadcast on the radio, and then everything stopped - and there was silence. And only the question hung in the air: “How is Arkady, is he still alive?”

For me, Gaidar began with the “Blue Cup”

Just recently the war ended, there were almost no books, especially for a child. And I stuck my nose into my father's. My father subscribed to books from the Ogonyok Library series, a supplement to a popular magazine that published works by the most outstanding domestic and foreign authors. And one day he brought home “The Blue Cup.” Stories". I immediately noticed the portrait of Gaidar. I liked him - a very photogenic, pleasant face. And the unusual surname attracted me. The contents of the book turned out to be fascinating. Especially “Chuk and Gek” - this story simply fascinated me.

“Blue stars were born here”

This is my first material about Arkady Petrovich. I brought it to the editorial office of Belgorodskaya Pravda while still a philology student. Then it increased in volume and was included in the book of local history essays, giving it its name (1968). By the way, the publication was designed by the legendary Belgorod graphic artist Stanislav Kosenkov. This was his first such work. And the abstraction for the cover was created by the famous Belgorod master of photography Pavel Krivtsov, then a young photographer of Lenin's Shift.

The second book is “Gaidar’s Homeland” (1972). I asked Krivtsov to go with me to Gaidar’s hometown - Lgov, Kursk region. We spent three days there, wandering through the provincial quiet streets of Lgov - exploring Gaidar’s places.

Then there was the literary chronicle “Arkady Gaidar” (1975) - the most serious of my works. And the only one in a large number of books and works about the writer. Written in the language of the document, it helped to dispel some of the myths that accompanied the name of Gaidar. The last of my books is dedicated to his 80th birthday - “It Was an Extraordinary Time” (1984). And here again Kosenkov worked with me, creating wonderful engravings for it.

Golikov became Gaidar on November 7, 1925

The largest researcher of the writer’s life and work, Boris Kamov, testified that Gaidar’s friends, Reuben Freyerman and Konstantin Paustovsky, believed that the pseudonym comes from a Mongolian word and means “ Horseman galloping ahead" But when we turned to the Mongolian language, there was nothing like it. “Haidar” was found in Khakassian. In translation - " Where are you going?. Arkady Petrovich's school friend Adolf Goldin talked about the abbreviation in the French spirit: G - Golikov, A and Y - Arkady, DAR - d'Artagnan from Arzamas (one of his favorite literary heroes and the first letters of his hometown, where the writer spent his childhood after moving from Lgov ). And Vasily Bereza, director of the Gaidar library-museum in Kanev, believes that Gaidar heard the future pseudonym in the Zmeevsky district of the Kharkov province, where it meant “ sheep shepherd"(Dictionary of the Ukrainian language by Boris Grinchenko). Well, when he ran away here from the boredom of Pyatigorsk, he earned whatever he could, he also herded sheep. But there is also symbolism in this: Gaidar, just like Salinger’s Holden Caulfield, in his works watched over children, not allowing the child to fall into the abyss.

What connects Gaidar and Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov?

Blood relationship. On the maternal side, Arkady Petrovich's pedigree goes back to the family of the great poet. Natalya Arkadyevna Salkova was his great-great-grandson relative.

All that remains of Gaidar is an old dusty suitcase

The boys found him in the attic of a house in Klin - there, shortly before the war, Arkady Petrovich settled with a new family. In the suitcase are Gaidar's documents, photographs, letters. Everything else was collected from his relatives, friends and acquaintances. Much of it ended up in the Central State Archive of Literature and Art of St. Petersburg. But I found Gaidar’s orders from 1921 in the Moscow Central State Archive of the Soviet Army. Then Gaidar commanded the 23rd Infantry Regiment in Voronezh. He was 17 years old. Here are the orders and instructions of the army commander, future Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, addressed to him. But before these finds, many did not believe that all this was true - they say, Golikov was too young to be a commander.

Gaidar died in occupied territory, behind German lines

He worked as a military man correspondent"Komsomolskaya Pravda", ended up in a partisan detachment, was betrayed and died. This happened near the Ukrainian village of Leplyavo, Kanevsky district, Cherkasy region. The Germans removed the order from his tunic and took away his documents. For a long time he was considered missing. And until his fate became clear, Gaidar’s name completely disappeared from the newspaper pages and stopped sounding on the radio. And as everything became known, the media burst with publications about him and about him.

In the niche of children's literature, Gaidar escaped censorship

Of course, the realities of the totalitarian regime corrected his work. But even despite this, he remained an organic author, never breaking the connection with the child within himself. Hence his eternal flight from the mundane of everyday life, the romantic impulse, the risk.

The hero of “School” is our glorious fellow countryman

Commander of a detachment of Donetsk miners Semyon Afanasyevich Begichev was born in the village of Shelaevo near Valuyki. This personality inspired Gaidar. Arkady Petrovich made a memorable inscription on his copy of “School”: “Comrade. Begichev S.A. in memory of the distant, unforgettable days of 1918, when he was a detachment commander in those places where the author of this book was still a Red Army boy. Arc. Gaidar. 21.XII.34 Moscow.”

Arkasha Golikov had a nanny

While at the Lgov Literary and Memorial Museum of Gaidar, I found out that she was alive Anna Aristarkhovna Bogomolova, who nursed little Arkasha. And he went to the village of Karasevka, where she lived.

And now Anna Aristarkhovna meets me - such a neat old lady. Nearly 90 years old, but with an excellent memory: she told me that more than half a century ago Pyotr Isidorovich Golikov, Arkady’s father, read to his schoolchildren in lessons, described their rooms, their games... Much of this was included in my “Homeland of Gaidar.” But the main thing is that she had rare photographic portraits of the writer’s father and mother. I begged her to let me make photocopies.

Hello, Timur Arkadyevich!

I met Gaidar’s son completely unexpectedly. We talked with Leah Solomyanskaya, and one day I went to Moscow again to meet with her. For the summer, she moved from the noisy city to her dacha in Dunino, near Moscow. There I found her, and not alone, but with her son and his family.

Willow. On the other side of the letters

Spring 1934. Gaidar is on his way to Ivnya, where his ex-wife Leah Solomyanskaya and his son Timur lived at that time. He got off the Moscow train at Rzhava station and sent a postcard to the capital Anna Trofimova(according to one version - to a close friend, according to another - to his common-law wife): “I got off at a small station, there was amazing silence all around, sun and spring. Dry! The rooks are screaming - and it seems that for the first time in a very long time I feel quite good.”

Hastily written in blue pencil, it allows us to establish the exact date of the writer’s arrival in our region - 26 March(and not April 29, as was erroneously indicated when his letters were published).

From Osykov’s essays it follows that on the day of his arrival, Gaidar never made it to Ivnya - he met a collective farmer on a muddy road and together with him went to the field camp of the Budyonny agricultural artel. By the way, Arkady Petrovich will write quite a lot about the life of the collective farm and its workers for the local large-circulation newspaper “For the Harvest” of the political department of the Ivnyanskaya MTS (edited by Solomyanskaya). And only the next day he will be in Ivna, where his continuation will be born "Blue Stars".

Faina Polishchuk drew an illustration - Ivnya pond and boys.

Gaidar Memory Island

This is about Ivna today. For many decades, there has been a House of Pioneers and Schoolchildren, where children and teenagers (more than a thousand people) study in various creative associations. Display cases were placed in one of his offices. They contain Gaidar's books, newspaper clippings about the writer, badges, children's crafts... A rare picturesque portrait of Arkady Petrovich from the time of his stay in Ivna hangs here. A handsome, broad-shouldered man with a kindly, sly smile looks from him. The author of the painting is called Mikhail Kramskoy, a talented Verkhopensky artist.

The kids who come here read Gaidar’s works, which due to some mistake were missing from the school curriculum. And most importantly, they largely inherit his worldview.

Last year, BelPress wrote about a unique project of the excursion route “Gaidar’s Trail” - young guides from among Ivnyany schoolchildren become the best guides to Gaidar’s corners in Ivnya for everyone who is interested in it. Within a few months it became very popular and continues to be developed. And at the same time a new one.

This year we developed the project “Under Gaidar’s Star” - we are resuming Timur’s movement. In our area, Timurov detachments have been created at schools. There are 17 in total. Each has from 10 to 20 participants. As part of the project, we have created a data bank of those Ivnyans who need our help, comments Zoya Drychkina, deputy director of the House of Pioneers and Schoolchildren

In general, long before the project, Ivnyansk schoolchildren thought like Timur - they patronized veterans, tidied up abandoned graves, collected waste paper, brought and read books to people who had already done it with great difficulty themselves... Unselfishly, like Gaidar, only because for the joy they bring to people. Like, for example, Nastya Taranova, a student at Ivnyansk school No. 1:

Gaidar’s works are interesting because these are not fictional stories, but real ones. I really like “School”, “Blue Cup”, “Chuk and Gek”... And, of course, “Timur and his team”. When I read how this boy and his friends helped people, I also wanted to do something useful for another person. And I joined the ranks of the Ivnyansk Timurovites. How do we help our fellow villagers in need? We buy groceries, work in the garden, clean the house, and just talk with the person we came to see. After all, most of them are very lonely.

Real name: Arkady Petrovich Golikov. Born on January 9 (22), 1904 in the city of Lgov, Kursk province - died on October 26, 1941 near the village of Leplyavo, Kanevsky district, Cherkasy region. Famous Soviet children's writer, participant in the Civil and Great Patriotic Wars.

Arkady, Gaidar was named after his maternal grandfather. Thus, Gaidar’s mother wanted to make peace with her father, Lieutenant Arkady Gennadievich Salkov. Ask him for forgiveness for marrying the “commoner” Pyotr Golikov. But the father did not forgive his disobedient daughter and did not want to look at his grandson.

Where did the surname Gaidar come from? Arkady Golikov never answered this question. If they pestered you, you would get off with a joke.

After his death, speculation began to arise. Writer Boris Emelyanov suggested that pseudonym"Gaidar" comes from the Mongolian "gaidar" - a horseman galloping in front. This version has become widespread. Indeed, Arkady Golikov visited Bashkiria, and the names Gaidar, Geida, Haydar are common in the East.

But why on earth should nineteen-year-old Arkady take a foreign, albeit sonorous, name? Yes, and he was not boastful. The fact is that since childhood he has been a great inventor, and at school he used a code of his own invention.

Arkady’s school friend, A.M. Goldin, managed to solve the mystery of the pseudonym “Gaidar”. It turns out that “G” is the first letter of the Golikov surname; “AY” - the first and last letters of the name; “D” - in French - “from”; “AR” are the first letters of the name of the hometown.

G – AY – D – AR: Golikov Arkady from Arzamas.

By the way, at first he signed simply - Gaidar, without a name and without an initial, because the name was already part of pseudonym. Only when pseudonym became a surname, the following appeared on books: . And his son is Gaidar, and his daughter is Gaidar, and his grandchildren are Gaidars.

Over the course of four war years, he went from adjutant to regiment commander. Colonel at seventeen! Even the young officers of eight hundred and twelve did not know such a career. They fought for the Fatherland, against a foreign enemy, and Golikov fought with his own people - the Russians. The civil war brought the young man a lot of shock and pain: wounds and shell shock were not in vain. The path of a career commander of the Red Army, which began so confidently, was clouded over. The result was a severe nervous illness that haunted him all his life and forced him to leave the army. It was not possible to continue my education.

Having lost his only and favorite business, Arkady decided to tell people, and, above all, young people, about what he saw and experienced - “In the days of defeats and victories.” This was the name of Golikov’s first story.

He considered his best works to be the stories "P.B.C." (1925), “Distant Countries”, “The Fourth Dugout” and “School” (1930), “Timur and His Team” (1940). He traveled a lot around the country, met different people, and greedily absorbed life. He couldn’t write, locked himself in his office at a comfortable table. He composed on the go, thought about his books on the road, recited entire pages by heart, and then wrote them down in simple notebooks. “The birthplace of his books is different cities, villages, even trains.” When the Patriotic War began, the writer rejoined the army, going to the front as a war correspondent. His unit was surrounded, and they wanted to take the writer out by plane, but he refused to leave his comrades and remained in the partisan detachment as an ordinary machine gunner. On October 26, 1941, in Ukraine, near the village of Leplyavo, Gaidar died in a battle with the Nazis.

Creator of your favorite children's books
And a faithful friend of the guys,
He lived like a fighter should live,
And he died like a soldier...

...Pages of honest, clean books
Left as a gift to the country
Fighter, Writer, Bolshevik
And Citizen - Gaidar...

S. Mikhalkov.

Arkady Gaidar...
A name well known to all of us who sat at a school desk with the “great indestructible.”
His works, one might say, were part of the pioneer childhood of each of us who was born in the USSR...
As children, we - pioneers - sang the song of Pakhumutova-Dobronravov: “Only in struggle can you find happiness, Gaidar walks ahead!” And they voraciously read “The Blue Cup”, “Chuck and Huck”.
Arkady Petrovich, with his books, helped to grow the brave and hard-working guard of young sons and daughters of our people.

The fate of this man is simply amazing!
He commanded a regiment at the age at which our modern children receive passports.
He died on the front of the Great Patriotic War as a combat commander at a time when other well-known writers were evacuated or served as front-line correspondents.
He is the only one of our writers who created a work that was not just read by children, but gave birth to a real social movement among teenagers who called themselves “Timurovites.”

Then years passed...
Gaidar has gone out of fashion.
His books ceased to be popular.
Then they remembered again. But only to debunk.
Articles and books by Vladimir Soloukhin, Stanislav Kunyaev, Oleg Davydov, Boris Zemtsov, American emigrant Boris Zaks and others appeared. There, these gentlemen unfoundedly erected terrible fables and false accusations against a wonderful children's writer. A writer whose books brought up hundreds of millions of teenagers.

As Mikhail Elizarov writes:

"The nineties; the time of Gaidar the Oprichnik, Gaidar the Punisher. Not the former god of red Olympus, not the kind-eyed counselor playing the piper for the pioneers; A young battalion commander appeared to his stunned fellow citizens on a bloody, hot stallion: Gaidar was rushing through the forests of Tambov, the mountains of Khakassia, disastrous, like the horseman of the Apocalypse. Khakass bones crunch under their hooves, White Guard little heads fly, fair-haired peasant children fall with their faces cut open, the battalion commander laughs loudly and bares his red mouth. And so furious that even the security officers themselves could not stand it and drove him away: ; Go, ; They say, ; Gaidar the executioner, go to Moscow, and get a good treatment...
He didn’t calm down even then, Gaidar. In the evenings, when a mortal longing for blood came over him, he cut himself with a razor, a literary maniac...”

“One way or another, in the nineties, the victorious militant “bourgeoisie” crossed out the writer from the school curriculum. His books were purged from libraries. They disappeared in the same way in '38. Gaidar's imminent arrest was expected, and librarians hastily disposed of the works of the enemy of the people.
Then A. Fadeev, the secretary of the Writers' Union, saved Gaidar from arrest: at his own peril and risk he included him in the lists of writers nominated for the Order of the Badge of Honor. The newspaper “Izvestia” with the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Council on awarding Gaidar stopped the repressive mechanism...”

They tried to make Gaidar a “villain”, a “terrible, bloody executioner”, “a mentally ill person with a manic passion for murder”, “a monster obsessed with hatred”.
They tried to imagine him as a “beast”...

I am amazed - how could one talk such nonsense, such bullshit?!
How could the “beast” write such subtle lyrical things, smart, kind, which led to his readers doing good, patriotic deeds.
Let us recall at least such of his works as: the stories “School”, “Timur and His Team” and “The Fate of the Drummer”, the stories “The Tale of Boy-Kibalchish”, “Chuk and Gek”.
Or a work of such lyrical depth as “The Blue Cup” - this pure and touching story of the love of adults and children’s complicity in the love of adult parents.

“There lived a man in the forest near the Blue Mountains. He worked a lot, but the work did not decrease, and he could not go home on vacation. Finally, when winter came, he was completely bored, asked permission from his superiors and sent a letter to his wife asking her to come and visit him with the children. He had two children; Chuk and Gek. And he and his mother lived in a distant, huge city, the best of which there is nothing in the world. Day and night, red stars sparkled over the towers of this city. And, of course, this city was called Moscow.”

This paragraph begins the story of the Soviet New Year's miracle; when everyone is alive, when everyone is together, when everyone is happy...

The last lines of “Chuk and Gek” are simply a masterpiece:
"What is happiness; Everyone understood this in their own way. But all together, people knew and understood that they had to live honestly, work hard and deeply love and take care of this huge happy land, which is called the Soviet country.”

The books of Arkady Gaidar are of value that does not pass through time.
In Gaidar’s works there are always examples of courage, nobility, kindness, which would be nice to learn in our time...

Arkady Gaidar...

What do we know about him?
What kind of person was Arkady Gaidar?
What kind of life did he live?

Arkady Petrovich Golikov - the future writer Gaidar - was born on January 9 (22), 1904 in the small town of Lgov, Kursk province, into a teacher's family.

Golikovs is a peasant surname...
“Golik” was the name of a broom or broom made only from twigs.
They put Golik on a stick and swept the yard.
It was also used for scrubbing floors.

Arkady Petrovich's grandfather, Isidor Danilovich, was a serf of the Golitsyn princes.
He served in the tsarist army for 25 years.
At the age of 43 he returned home - to Shchigry.
He got married and took up his hereditary craft - wood chipping.
Arkady Petrovich always remembered that on his father’s side he had peasant roots.
Having become a journalist, he liked to mention on occasion that his grandfather was a serf.
Arkady Petrovich's father, Pyotr Isidorovich, the son of a serf, dreamed of becoming a teacher since childhood.
He hatched a project that was fantastic for those times - to teach all children in Russia to read and write.
At the cost of considerable hardship, Pyotr Golikov graduated from the teacher’s seminary.
Later, in the Golikovs’ house in Arzamas, 4 volumes of the book “The Great Reform” stood in a prominent place.
They outlined the tragic history of the Russian peasantry.
Pyotr Isidorovich wanted his eldest son, Arkady, and his daughters to always remember where they came from...

It must be said that half of Arkady Gaidar came from the nobility.
After all, another grandfather of the future writer - Arkady Gennadievich Salkov - was a hereditary nobleman.
All the men in this family from generation to generation chose military service.
When the eldest daughter, Natasha, was born, the family was noticeably poor. Natasha's mother soon died. The stepmother appeared in the house. New children were born. Natasha had to babysit them.
The girl graduated from high school with a gold medal.
This entitled her to the position of primary school teacher.
Natasha did not want to remain a nanny and servant in a house where she felt like a stranger, and left the family.
Soon Natasha met Pyotr Golikov.
He was 5 years older than her. Peter proposed to Natasha. She accepted it. Natasha was 16 years old at the time.
She also had a dream. The dream is to become a doctor.
But women were not accepted into the medical faculty at that time. Natasha entered Miklashevsky's courses in Nizhny Novgorod and became a midwife.

The Golikovs lived and worked in Lgov.
Arkady spent the first 5 years of his life there.
The boy's unique character developed unusually early.
None of the relatives and friends in the Golikov family remember little Arkady being capricious over trifles, complaining about his sisters and comrades.

Arkady became the first-born.
Gradually the family grew.
Following the son, three daughters appeared.
First, when Arkady was just over a year old, a little sister appeared in the family, Natasha - Talochka.
And the mother explained to her son:
- You are the eldest now. You are now responsible for Talochka. So that everything will be okay with her. So that no one would offend her.
Then Katya and Olya were born.
Arkady was an older brother to them too. That is, he was responsible for their every step and action. He went for walks with them and read books to them.
If the sisters got sick, he gave them medicine by the hour.
Gradually, the boy developed the habit of being responsible for others.

The children loved to play.
And the ringleader in all the games was Arkady.
They went to “distant countries.” Sometimes theatrical performances were staged.

It must be said that Arkady’s parents belonged to that part of the Russian democratic intelligentsia who saw their primary duty in selfless service to the people and an uncompromising struggle for justice.
Arkady's parents were engaged in self-education.
We read poems to each other that we remembered by heart.
At first, the family was infinitely happy.
There was a lot of singing in the house.
For family holidays, in addition to other gifts, poetic gifts were also prepared.
From childhood, parents instilled in their children a love of music and books, read books to them aloud, memorized fairy tales and poems.
And in the evenings they listened to their father sing.
There was always a friendly atmosphere in their family.

On Sundays the whole family gathered around a square table.
A kerosene lamp with an elegant colored lampshade was lit.
The father read books to the children, told fascinating stories about the life and customs of other peoples, and together they wrote short stories and poems.

Gaidar later said:

“I don’t know what they were about, about Little Red Riding Hood or the gray wolf? But I remember my big dream of a good life for the rest of my life.”

By the way. Gaidar later reproduced the festive atmosphere that reigned in the family in the story “Chuk and Gek”.
A mother and two boys travel across all of Russia, through the remote taiga, just to see their father.
Happiness is when the whole family is together...

In 1910, the Golikov family moved to Nizhny Novgorod.
Then the family moved to the city of Arzamas, Nizhny Novgorod province.
This happened in 1912.
Arkady grew up and studied in this town.
There Arkady's formation as a person and citizen took place.
It is this city that Arkady considers his second homeland.

Gaidar wrote:

“I grew up in the town of Arzamas. There, the bells of 30 churches buzzed loudly, but no factory whistles could be heard. There were no factories there. But there were 4 monasteries and lines of God’s pilgrims and pilgrims always stretched across the entire city.”
“Our town of Arzamas was quiet, all in gardens, surrounded by shabby fences. In those gardens grew a great variety of “parent cherries,” early-ripening apples, blackthorns and red peonies.”

Pyotr Isidorovich first taught.
But teachers' salaries then, as now, were small.
That's why he became an official.
I was involved in excise duty - that is, collecting taxes on vodka...

The eternal holiday in the Golikov family lasted for several years.
Then a cooling began between the parents.
The father - a peasant son - became a homely man. All romance of life, he believed, was left behind.
And the mother, feeling deprived of women’s joys, continued to dream of a diverse and bright existence.

Arkady loved his father very much, who was an excellent storyteller.
The boy liked to tell his father about what he read and saw.

Later - in 1914 - when Pyotr Isidorovich was taken to the front, ten-year-old Arkady missed him and ran away to the front.
Of course, he didn’t get to his father. He was returned from the road.
But the family remembered the decisive and touching act...

From an early age, Arkady grew up unusually inquisitive, thoughtful beyond his age, impressionable, and keenly interested.
From an early age he was distinguished by a bright, indomitable imagination.
Arkady is always an inventor, a dreamer, a leader.
Favorite games were: lapta, hide and seek, Cossack robbers.
Strong beyond his years, blue-eyed, with a big forehead, Arkady was the most important “organizer” among the neighborhood boys.

He loved all kinds of living creatures very much - in his barn he had hedgehogs and rabbits, tame jackdaws and turtles.

But my favorite pastime is reading.
He read voraciously. He read everywhere, at every convenient and inconvenient occasion.
I could sit until the morning reading the works of Gogol, Pushkin, Tolstoy, Lermontov, Goncharov, Dostoevsky, Korolenko, Saltykov-Shchedrin, M. Twain, J. Verne, E. Voynich, Shakespeare, Schiller...
Many adult books were difficult for him, for example, Anna Karenina. But he took them by storm.

My brightest hobby during my student years was writing poetry. Moreover, Arkady began speaking in rhyme and composing poetry long before he learned to read and write.

Little Arkady passionately loved theater and almost always took part in school plays.
As a child I dreamed of becoming a sailor...

All his life he loved dawn fishing trips, forest hikes, spending the night under the mysterious starry sky and soulful songs.

In 1914, World War I broke out.
My father was taken to the front.

Gaidar remembered the moments of farewell to his father for the rest of his life. Everyone was crying: sisters, mother, neighbors. Only a ten-year-old boy stood at the threshold, biting his lips, bracing himself and not crying.
Natalya Arkadyevna was left alone with four children. She became a nurse at the hospital.
A harsh life began for the Golikov family...

10-year-old Arkady was sent to the Arzamas real school.
Here Arkady met literature teacher Nikolai Nikolaevich Sokolov, who became the boy’s mentor for several years.
Under the name of the craft teacher Galka, he was introduced in the story “School”.
They said about Nikolai Nikolaevich that he:
- traveled halfway around the world,
- knew ten languages,
- could teach at the capital’s university, but chose Arzamas Real. Why is still unclear...
It was Galka who gave Arkady and his classmates “advice for life”: to take care of and skillfully develop their memory.
“Learn poetry or passages of prose text every day. Or a foreign language. The time spent will be returned to you with interest.”

Arkady already knew many poems and songs by heart.
And then he began to learn poetry on purpose.
Soon Arkady's memory began to amaze those around him. He memorized tests of textbooks and books he read almost entirely.
Later in the army, Golikov remembered all the curves of the terrain, huge sheets of maps, the names of hundreds of soldiers, their biographies, all the information necessary for the commander.
And, having become a writer, he remembered the texts of his main books word by word.
There are many memories of how Arkady Petrovich went out to the public without a single piece of paper and read a new story or story from memory...

The first recognition came to Arkady at the age of 11.
Once Galka assigned a homework essay on the topic “An old friend is better than two new ones.”
Arkady wrote about his father.

Galka said:

“I find, Golikov, that you have literary abilities. And early awakened abilities are very rare. I would be pleased if you would take the time to visit me at my apartment.”

And all the time, before Golikov left for the front, Galka led and guided him through life, as a person with great talent.
Jackdaw:
- selected history books, domestic and foreign classics for him;
- talked with Arkady about what he read,
- talked about the dramatic destinies of writers.
Galka's apartment, where not only Arkady came, but dozens of students visited here every day, became a literary university for Golikov. The only one in my entire life.
It is no coincidence: after going through the Civil War, having written his first story, Arkady Golikov will travel across all of Russia, find Galka, who by that time will have moved to Leningrad to show him the manuscript...

During my studies, such an incident occurred.
During the first school winter, Arkady and his friends went to the Tesha River to skate. The ice was not particularly strong. But to ride on it, you didn’t need anything thicker. We set off in a gang: Arkady, Kudryavtsev, Kolya Kiselyov and several more people.
Let's go for a ride.
Arkady headed to the shore and unscrewed his skates.
I was getting ready to go home and suddenly I heard a cry:
“Get ashore! Get out to shore!
Arkady looked back and saw: Kolya Kiselev had fallen through the ice and was trying to get out of the hole. And Kostya Kudryavtsev, being at a considerable distance, gave useless advice. Meanwhile, Kolya had little chance of salvation. As soon as he grabbed the edge of the hole, the ice broke off.
- Arkasha, help! - Kudryavtsev called.
- Kissel! I'm coming to you! - Golikov shouted.
Arkady stepped on the ice, then lay down and crawled. The ice under Arkady himself broke up, and Golikov also found himself in the water. Instantly his wet clothes pulled him down. There was nowhere to wait for help. There was no hope for Kudryavtsev and the others.
Arkady disappeared under the water. Suddenly everything began to boil in front of Kiselyov. Arkady surfaced, spat out water and shouted:
- It’s small here! It's small here! - and clapped his hands. The water was up to his neck.
Golikov took two steps towards Kiselev. He disappeared under the water again. But this no longer frightened him. He grabbed Kolya by the sleeve and pulled him onto land...
Nikolai Nikolaevich Kiselev, a retired colonel, participant in three wars, and recipient of many military awards, spoke about this later.
“If it weren’t for Arkady’s determination,” said Nikolai Nikolaevich, “my life would have ended at the bottom of Tesha.”

When Emperor Nicholas II abdicated the throne in 1917 and power in Russia passed to the Provisional Government, a “fun time” began for Arkady and his peers.
In quiet Arzamas, rallies broke out at every turn.
Everything has changed in the boring and strict reality. Student committees emerged in each class.
Many parties arose in Arzamas.
The most interesting people gathered in the Bolshevik club. Arkady began going there. He was noticed among other boys and brought to work.
It consisted, first of all, in running somewhere, notifying someone or bringing something.
Therefore, already at the age of 13 he was called the “messenger of the revolution.”
He was given a military uniform and weapons. He patrolled the city streets at night, and this was only allowed to the most trusted people.
All these events were later described by him in the story “School”.
This is where his “ordinary biography in an extraordinary time” began...

In August 1918, he became a member of the Bolshevik Party (he was accepted into the party with the right of an advisory vote due to his youth).
In order to go to the front faster, he added 2 years to himself.
Since he was tall and broad-shouldered, they believed it.

Soon he was appointed adjutant to the commander of the defense and security of all railways of the republic.
Together with Efimov, they leave Arzamas “to fight for the bright kingdom of socialism.”
His childhood, his youth was over.
A new, difficult, but wonderful life began...

There was something in the appearance of Arkady Gaidar that amazed his contemporaries and remained forever in their memory.
He was tall, broad-shouldered, stately, with fair hair and blue eyes.
A bright, sly smile illuminated a kind, wide, slightly cheeky face with intelligent, penetrating eyes and long eyelashes, with childish, slightly swollen lips.
Gaidar was a humanist - a lover of life, a starter of cheerful companies, able to be serious, and ironic, and generous, and sober. He did not need to be optimistic and cheerful.
An amazingly simple person, sincere, modest, sincere, charming.

All those who knew Arkady called him a noble man.
A noble person is a person with high thoughts, with impeccable moral qualities, an honest person. This is how they remember him...

At the same time, he was distinguished by courage and determination.
I absolutely could not stand rudeness and rudeness. Then he lost his temper.
A physically and mentally strong person.
He was kind and easily wounded.
He considered acquisitiveness, hoarding and greed to be the greatest sins.
Among his friends and relatives, there is, perhaps, no person to whom Gaidar would not come to help in difficult moments of life.

Moreover, as K. Paustovsky recalled:

“It was impossible to thank him. He became very angry when people thanked him for his help. He considered helping a person as natural as, say, greeting. You don’t thank anyone for saying hello to you.”

Gaidar’s words did not diverge from deeds – he fulfilled his promises religiously.
There was some kind of spring in him - he was always ready for action, full of thirst for activity, he was restless, impatient, hot, self-willed.

Arkady Gaidar loved children very much. And the children felt in him a great, true friend. They responded to him with the most tender love and affection. Wherever he is - at home, in the city, in Artek, in the village, on a hunt. Even at the front. Children found him everywhere and surrounded him.
With them he was kind, generous and affectionate.
But he could also be strict, stern, and destructively mocking.
I couldn't stand cowards and braggarts.
In the soul of this man with a sharp mind, a broad outlook and a naked conscience, spontaneity, openness, and love of the game have forever been preserved.

Writer Ilya Ehrenburg put it this way:

"A hero with the soul of a child."

At the age of 14, Arkady Golikov volunteered for the Red Army.
He left to “fight for the bright kingdom of socialism.”
He took part in battles on the Petliura, Polish and Denikin fronts.
Was at the suppression of the Antonov uprising.
He fought with gangs of bandits in Siberia - near the borders of Mongolia.
He was wounded and shell-shocked several times.
It’s amazing: by the age of 17 (!) he had gone from a cadet to a regiment commander and higher - the commander of an entire combat area.

This is what his life looks like during the Civil War...

Gaidar would later say about these years:

“I... always remember with great warmth the fire dawns on enemy fronts - the combat school in which I spent my best boyhood years.”

I would like to dwell in more detail on Gaidar’s life during the Civil War.

At the end of 1918, a communist battalion was formed in Arzamas.
Efim Osipovich Efimov was appointed his commander.

Efimov talked with 14-year-old Golikov - a smart, well-read boy.
It turned out that by this time this little boy had managed to read all of Pushkin and Gogol, the novels of Leo Tolstoy and Goncharov, the tragedies of Shakespeare, and watched all the new films and theater productions.
In addition, he was distinguished by an excellent memory, good speech, good manners, efficiency and impeccable morality.
And Efimov took him as his adjutant.
Arkady was given a uniform. They put him on allowance and paid him a salary.
The service turned out to be not very difficult:
- Wrote from dictation.
- Monitored incoming messages.
- I traveled with Efimov in a letter carriage, either to Nizhny or to Kazan.

And a month and a half later, Efimov was suddenly appointed commander of the troops to protect the railways of the Republic. The headquarters is in Moscow.
Efimov took the intelligent boy, who had an excellent understanding of documents and was efficient, to the capital.
Arkady was not yet 15 years old at that time.

With all of Golikov’s exceptional fighting qualities, even then his rare ability to work was striking; could not sleep for three days if the service required it.
Disciplined, smart, reliable guy.

Here is what Boris Kamkov (Gaidar’s biographer) writes about what the work of the commander’s adjutant consisted of:

“Efimov came to his office at six in the morning.
Arkady got up at five. I doused myself with cold water. Then he went to the duty officer at the headquarters and listened to what information had arrived overnight from railway junctions and stations. I jotted all this down in a notebook.
After that he went up to the telegraph operators. Here the sorted dispatches were waiting for him.
I returned to the reception and waited for the call. The bell rang.
The commander sat under a huge, wall-sized map of railways. The morning reports consisted of two parts: the general situation at the fronts and the situation on the railways. Arkady remembered geographical names, numbers of trains with which incidents occurred, the number of damaged locomotives and carriages. The time required to eliminate accidents on each section of the railway network.
The information was extensive.
When E. O. Efimov was summoned by the commander of the Eastern Front, I. I. Vatsetis, Efimov took Arkady with him.
The report required many maps. If there were no factory maps of a certain area, Arkady unfolded the diagrams that he made himself and gave explanations on them.
Since all information from different parts of the country flowed primarily to Arkady, Efimov assigned him one more responsibility: he made Golikov the head of the communications center of the entire headquarters.
Arkady was now not only the first to receive all the information - he was also responsible for the uninterrupted work of the telegraph operators who sat at the machines, controlled the activities of the most secret people in the headquarters - the cryptographers; was responsible for the operation of complex, old equipment that often broke down.
When the situation at the front became difficult, we had to sleep no more than two hours. Once Golikov and Efimov did not sleep for three days.
Any boy in Arkady's place would be happy. His military service began with an unprecedentedly high position. But Golikov himself was dissatisfied with his position.
He wanted to go to the front. Wrote a report.
Efimov tore it up.
Arkady wrote another. It became obvious: the boy would not stop.
“Okay,” Efimov agreed. - Just go to study first. Those who have been shot at are taken to command courses from the age of eighteen. But I called Vatsetis - he allowed it.
Golikov was sent to the Moscow command courses of the Red Army, which were located on Pyatnitskaya Street.
But the educational institution was transferred to Kyiv. To Ukraine. The front passed there..."

The program of the Kyiv command courses included: Russian language, arithmetic, natural history, history, geography, geometry, infantry regulations, fortification, machine gunnery, tactics, topography, basics of artillery, military administration.
After lunch - practice.
These were: drill exercises, topographical exercises on the ground, horseback riding, exercises with edged weapons and every day of shooting: from a rifle, revolvers of various systems and Maxim, Lewis and Hotchkiss machine guns.
The classes lasted a total of twelve hours.
And two hours were allotted for self-preparation.
It was a two-year officer's infantry school program. It had to be mastered in 6 months.
But it was obvious to the cadets and teachers that it was unlikely that the current intake would be able to study for such a long period.
Listeners were thrown into breakthroughs every now and then.
Not everyone returned.

Arkady knew how and loved to study.
He had a powerful, analytical and systematizing mind.
And the memory instantly and forever absorbed information about past wars, about the happy and unhappy destinies of commanders, about the prose of a commander’s craft.

On August 20, 1919, an order came for the early promotion of cadets to commanders.
The next day, at seven in the morning, 180 students lined up on the school parade ground for the last time.
Nikolai Ilyich Podvoisky, People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs of Ukraine, quickly drove up in an open car.
Walking around the line, he handed each graduate a certificate with a red star on the cover.

15 year old teenager; not yet Gaidar, but simply Arkady Golikov - together with the other 180 cadets of the Sixth Kyiv Infantry Course for Command Staff of the Red Army, he received his painter's certificate on the parade ground.

Arkady revealed his:

“During his studies, comrade. A.P. Golikov showed excellent success and, based on his qualities, fully deserves the title of red commander.”

But 180 cadets, who had been trained for six months, were thrown into the breakthrough as privates that morning.
Everyone understood: there were suicide bombers on the parade ground...

Gaidar later recalled:

“Podvoisky addressed us with a speech:
-You are going into difficult battles. Many of you will never return from the battles to come. So, in memory of those who will not return, who will have the great honor of dying for the Revolution,” here he pulled out a saber, “the orchestra will play the “Funeral March.” The orchestra began to play..."

Arkady Petrovich admitted:

“I had goosebumps all over my body. None of us wanted to die. But this funeral march seemed to tear us away from fear, and no one thought about death anymore.”

So at the age of 15, Gaidar had already attended his “funeral”.
This ceremony burned away the fear of death in Golikov.
Then the real life of a fifteen-year-old boy began forever...

On that memorable Kiev parade ground with the funeral march, 15-year-old Golikov was a platoon commander.

Their half-company spent the night in the village of Kozhukhovka.
At night the whites attacked.
In the confusion, the commander, Yashka Oksuz, was killed.
The soldiers were confused and stopped under fire. The death of the commander turned into a disaster.
Feeling in his spine that the last moments that could change something were passing, Golikov shouted:
“Forward - for our Yashka!”
He won the fight.

The half-company was a commander's company. Each of them had a Kraskomov ID in their pocket. Having buried Yashka, the half-company gathered to choose a new commander.
They chose Golikov.
The youngest...

Later Arkady Petrovich wrote in his diary:

“Oksyuz Yashka was killed in front of me, I replaced him.”

So, less than 10 days later, he already took command of the company.
But at that time he was 15 years and 7 months old...

Taught by this morning raid by the Petliurites, Golikov forever forgot how to sleep.
And I never missed an enemy...

In December of the same 1919, Golikov was “concussed in the head and wounded in the leg” by a “shrapnel shell explosion.”
This seemingly not very severe concussion and not very serious injury later turned into a disaster for Golikov.
That explosion would later echo more than once in his life.
In the shell-shocked head, like a rat, a terrible destructive illness began; traumatic neurosis.
He will first leave him without the profession of a soldier, then he will go through his family and writing work...

Then there was the Polish Front.
Battles near Borisov, Lepel and Polotsk.
The result is scurvy, concussion and typhus...

Arkady recovered his health only in Moscow.

And from there in March 1920 he was transferred to the Caucasian Front.

“The arriving... instructor Arkady Golikov will be included in the lists of the regiment... with appointment to the post of platoon commander from April 8, 1920.”

Two months later, Golikov was appointed company commander.
Golikov commanded a company stationed near Sochi. Guarded the border beyond Adler from White Georgian detachments.

By the way. An interesting episode happened there...
The brainless Red Army soldiers from his company, for the sake of gangster chic, sawed off the barrels of their rifles; made "carbines".
To prove to the idiots that the mutilated rifle did not hit the target, company commander Golikov attached such a “carbine” to a machine gun. He himself stood fifty paces away and ordered it to be pointed at himself.
They shot and didn't hit.
It’s not even “Russian roulette” with one cartridge in the drum...
An absurd, eccentric act, a ready-made episode for a red western.
Gaidar will later make a story out of it, “The Shotgun.” But out of modesty, he will appoint his then assistant Trach as the main character.

What the company did is evidenced by entries in the combat log of the 303rd regiment:

“July 14, Sochi. An order was received for the regiment to transfer along the railway. to the station Belorechenskaya...
July 18. Art. Belorechenskaya... The regiment was quartered... and took over guarding the village and the surrounding area...
July 27... 1st detachment had a battle with the greens... Losses of the detachment: 2 wounded and 2 missing.
After a continuous week-long campaign, people ... were very tired, many were sick and barefoot, the horses were exhausted and needed shoeing, the wagon train needed repairs, and for some carts, complete replacement.”

From the “Certification for the commander of the 4th company, Comrade. Arkady Golikov":

“...Although by the time Comrade arrived. Golikov in our regiment, the front had already been liquidated and therefore I cannot judge in purely combat terms, but judging by his conscious attitude to the matter, clear and sensible orders (thanks to which he established correct relations with the Red Army soldiers as both a comrade and a commander), it is possible to think that he will retain these qualities in any situation.
Battalion commander - two V. Sorokin.
Sochi city. June 29, 1920."

The commander of the second battalion, V. Sorokin, giving a description of the commander of the 4th company, A.P. Golikov, on June 29, 1920 in Sochi, indicated:

“In my battalion, he is so far the only one who meets the requirements for being sent to higher courses.”

But a counter-revolutionary rebellion broke out in Kuban.
And the unit where Arkady served was sent to suppress him.

Golikov chases the rebels through the mountains until the beginning of autumn.

At the end of September, as part of the second battalion, Arkady Golikov held the defense at the Tuba Pass.

From the regiment's combat log:

“September 28. ...the battalion, lacking good uniforms, found itself in a very bad situation, since it was snowing at the pass. Many Red Army soldiers do not have decent shoes and absolutely no overcoats... there is absolutely no food. There is absolutely no salt... they are in very poor conditions.”

Only in mid-October was the second battalion replaced.

From the order for the 303rd Infantry Regiment:

"October 14. There are two instructors for assignments with the battalion commander. Arkady Golikov, who left for the brigade headquarters... for a trip to command staff courses, presumably on a long business trip...”

Golikov was sent to Moscow to study at the Vystrel Higher Rifle School.

Arkady Petrovich was accepted as a student of the junior section - company commanders.
Golikov is one of the best cadets.
Less than a month had passed - it became obvious: he had nothing to do on this course: he knew and could do more than others.

Golikov is transferred to the battalion commanders' department.
Another month passes.
The school's credentials committee is meeting again.
Among other questions, a very unusual one: about the new transfer of A.P. Golikov from the department of battalion commanders to the department of regiment commanders.

Golikov receives this transfer.
And he is only 16 years old...

During his studies, teachers from former officers discovered the young man's leadership abilities.

February 1921.
Just two weeks ago Arkady Petrovich turned 17.
He is given a mandate to graduate from the “tactical department” with the right to the post of regiment commander.

“Vystrel” turned out to be the second educational institution that Golikov managed to graduate from.

He was sent to Voronezh.
Position - regiment commander.
There he received his first regiment (at the age of 17!).

Golikov was not devoid of ambition.
But such a rapid rise alarmed even him.

He told his father:

“I’m writing to you from Voronezh,” he informed his father, “...now I’m sitting and thinking about the work that lies ahead of me starting tomorrow, who is taking command of the 23rd reserve regiment, numbering about 4,000 bayonets... at the first opportunity I’ll try to take it a little lower - a pomkompolka or a regiment of a field rifle division of not so many...”

It must be said that Golikov received this position because the entire commanding staff of the regiment was arrested, who planned to go over with all the fighters to the side of Alexander Antonov.
With the appearance of the commander from Moscow, new arrests were expected.
But Golikov did not bring a single person to trial.

What did the 17-year-old regiment commander do?

Golikov started with economic issues and made 3 most important decisions:
1. On the mandatory and immediate bathing of all soldiers and regiment commanders.
2. On the methods of boiling and frying the uniforms of Red Army soldiers to exterminate lice in their clothes.
3. On the construction of new, clean, relatively comfortable public regimental latrines for four thousand soldiers, in order to reduce the risk of the spread of cholera as a result of direct contact of soldiers with contaminated feces in old, littered toilets...

The series of decisions was completed by a generalized order:

“In view of the emerging cases of cholera, I propose, under the personal responsibility of commanders, commissars, senior doctors... to take decisive measures... Where defects are discovered, the perpetrators will be brought to trial by a military tribunal.
Regimental Commander A. Golikov.”

The new regiment commander personally spent an hour and a half in the hospital where Red Army soldiers affected by the rash were treated.

After this, Golikov turned to the regimental doctor with the unusual surname De-Notkin with a request: to take him to a remote barracks.
The doctor objected violently.
Then the regiment commander ordered him to do this.
In that remote building, cholera patients were treated.
The regiment commander considered it necessary to visit them too.
17-year-old Arkady Golikov believed: he is responsible for every person entrusted to him.
He visited the cholera barracks and talked with the patients.
Golikov wanted to know whether the sick were being treated well.
He needed to understand how everyone became infected with cholera:
- Dirty hands?
- Other manifestations of unsanitary conditions?
- Or sabotage, deliberate infection, the possibility of which intelligence warned?

Arkady wrote later in his Autobiography:

“I was very young then, I was in command, of course, not like Chapaev. And that’s not the case with me and that’s not the case. Sometimes, it would happen that you would get spinning, look out the window and think: it would be nice to unfasten the saber, hand over the Mauser and go play lapta with the kids! I often stumbled, broke down, sometimes even became self-willed, and then my own people harshly cut me off and pulled me back for this, but all this only benefited me.”

The 23rd regiment in Voronezh was a reserve regiment.
It did not take any part in hostilities and was soon disbanded.
That is why, at the beginning of April 1921, A.P. Golikov was sent to a new place of service - in Tambov.

Here, in the Tambov region, a rebellion broke out under the leadership of Alexander Antonov.
The unprecedented tenacity of the rebels was explained simply: local peasants took part in the struggle.
Families were involved in the riot.
Antonov spent a long time and skillfully preparing his rebellion.
In reality, he had about 50,000 people under arms and in his mobile reserve.
Some were better armed, others worse.
But 50,000 “forest brothers”, who had nowhere to retreat because they had their own hut behind them, became a force of frightening tenacity.

The commander of the Tambov province troops, M. N. Tukhachevsky, appointed Arkady Golikov (at the age of 17!) as commander of the 58th separate regiment.
The regiment consisted of 4,000 soldiers.

It must be said that by 1921 the forces of both the rebels and the federal government were exhausted.
The command of the Tambov province, headed by M. N. Tukhachevsky, could not agree with the rebel peasants on voluntary surrender.

And so the 17-year-old regiment commander Golikov came to the famous commander.
He initiated the bloodless resolution of the peasant “Antonov” revolt.
The young man told the commander that the conditions for the surrender of prisoners, set out in his order No. 130 of May 12, 1921, were incorrect.
The order promised that bandits who voluntarily surrendered would not face the death penalty, but would only face... imprisonment for up to five years.
- What do you propose? - the commander asked politely.
- If a person comes out of the forest, surrenders his rifle, you need to write down his name and let him go home.

Tukhachevsky accepted the offer.
After some time, more than 6,000 rebels came to Arkady Golikov’s headquarters and laid down their arms.
There are documents about this.
It seems that at that moment the future writer remembered that he was the grandson of a serf...

After some time, Golikov became... O. commander of the combat area.
6,000 people were under his command.

After the completion of the Tambov campaign, awards were given.
Commanders and soldiers received from the hands of Tukhachevsky weapons with gold monograms, gold pocket watches and even gold cigarette cases.
Golikov received nothing from this jewelry wealth.
But Tukhachevsky arrived at Golikov’s headquarters, received the garrison’s parade, had lunch from a soldier’s cauldron and announced a unique award for Golikov.
He was sent to study in Moscow, at the Academy of the General Staff.
The academy did not yet know 17-year-old applicants who would have combat experience, 2 wounds and 2 military education...

A brilliant military career opened up before 17-year-old Gaidar...
But there was no trial...

When Golikov was already in Moscow and preparing to take exams, a difficult situation arose in Khakassia, in the Krasnoyarsk province.
There, since 1920, a detachment operated under the command of local Cossack Ivan Solovyov.
The detachment was small, but enjoyed the support of the Khakass and was elusive.
The provincial leadership asked Moscow for 1,500 fighters.
The capital's authorities decided that Krasnoyarsk simply lacks a smart head.
And they sent Golikov there.
ONE...
He sent Solovyov, who called himself “Emperor of the Taiga,” to fight the gang.

The Siberian authorities hated Moscow's envoy, offended that the capital sent some boy to solve all local problems.
And Golikov was appointed head of the combat area, where there was no telephone connection with Moscow or telegraph.
Three couriers were assigned to him, who brought orders from the authorities and took away reports.
One security officer always stayed with the head of the fighting area around the clock (he was under the control of the GPU).

Arkady found himself between a rock and a hard place; CHON of the Yenisei province and the provincial GPU.
Against 300 sabers of Ataman Solovyov; "Emperor Taiga"; the Moscow “prodigy” Golikov, a dangerous upstart; This is how the local KGB authorities thought of him: an upstart, an early colonel! ; Only 124 fighters were placed at the disposal.
And the task; neutralize Solovyov's gang as soon as possible.
Forever.

But even in these unbearable conditions, he managed to fight well.
And Solovyov fell into his machine-gun traps, lost people and supporters...

As a result, Gaidar adequately coped with the task.

What helped him?

Probably, the fact that he himself was young, passionate, fought for justice, loved people, and people paid him the same, helping his squad.
The end of the “Emperor of the Taiga” is described in the film, which is called “The End of the Emperor of the Taiga.”
There, young Arkady was played by Andrei Rostotsky, who was surprisingly similar to Gaidar.
Solovyov's gang was defeated.

Meanwhile, Golikov’s direct boss, Kudryavtsev, regularly wrote denunciations against him to the provincial GPU. These denunciations have been preserved.
When there were too many of them, Golikov was recalled to Krasnoyarsk.
Here, 4 departments opened criminal cases against him:
- CHON,
- GPU,
- Prosecutor's Office of the 5th Army and
- control commission under the Yenisei provincial party committee...
Each authority conducted its own investigation.
Questions were discussed: why did he “not pay for the six sheep taken from the inhabitants?”
He was also suspected of... collaboration with Solovyov.
Golikov was checked and interrogated.

It must be said that during the entire investigation, not a single complaint was received from the local population against 18-year-old Golikov.
In the end, he was acquitted by all four authorities, proving his complete innocence.
And this at 18 years old, without lawyers!

Arkady loved the Red Army with all his soul and wanted to stay in it forever.
He bought a ticket and left for Moscow.

And he came to Moscow in order to again enter the Military Academy of the General Staff.

But the military medical commission declared him unfit for military service.
Still, 2 sleepless months in Khakassia, and 4 simultaneous investigations were not in vain - they strained his nervous system...
His military career was cut short...

True, he was not immediately dismissed from the army.
The then People's Commissar of Defense, Mikhail Vasilyevich Frunze, became interested in him.
For more than two years, Golikov continued to receive the salary of a regiment commander (significant at that time), and all types of treatment.
But a complete recovery never happened...

In January 1923, a council of doctors diagnosed Golikov:

“Severe exhaustion of the nervous system due to fatigue and former concussion, with functional disorder and cardiac arrhythmia.”

In 1924, a medical commission in Moscow signed a sentence for 20-year-old Arkady Golikov:
"Unfit".
He stood in front of them, a dumbfounded young athlete with strong biceps. He stood and smiled in confusion: is this trained body really no longer needed by the Army?..
His cherished dream of becoming a military man was crumbling...

Unbidden lines burst out of themselves, like a cry from the soul:

It's all gone. But the fires are smoking,
The rumble of storms can be heard in the distance.
All the comrades left Gaidar,
Further, further forward we went.

Golikov could not imagine his life outside of a military career.

But numerous injuries and illnesses forced him to demobilize from the ranks of the Red Army in 1924 and go to the civilian field with a severance pay.

It was the collapse of all his hopes...

In despair, Golikov writes “Farewell Letter to the Red Army,” where signs of literary talent have already appeared.

But still, after painful thoughts about what to do next, he decides to “serve as a pen.”
Arkady Petrovich decided to write to boys and girls about what he saw during the war, because he went to the front, essentially as a boy.

A new round of his biography began - the saber and Mauser of a combat commander were replaced by the pen of a writer.
I remembered my real school and my favorite literature teacher.
Gaidar's books were published in 89 languages ​​of the world, they were published 919 times and their total circulation was more than 58 million copies.
But that was later.
And now - the unknown and the desire to be useful to people lie ahead...

In 1925, Arkady began working in Perm - in the newspaper Zvezda.
He wrote essays and stories. He was especially good at feuilletons.
There he met his future wife, the “fierce” Komsomol member Liya Lazarevna Solomyanskaya.
A year later, their son Timur was born (later he would become a rear admiral).

There in Perm, for the first time, under the story “Corner House” he signed the pseudonym “Gaidar”.
There are many versions of the origin of the writer's literary pseudonym.

Gaidar's main biographer, Boris Kamov, talks about the Khakass origin of the sonorous pseudonym - “Haidar”.
- Version 1; "linguistic misunderstanding"
It seemed to Golikov that “Haidar” meant “commander” or “horseman,” and the sonorous word turned out to be the adverb “where.”

There is also a 2nd version from Timur’s son:
"Gaidar"; a complex abbreviation mixed with a code dating back to real school times.
"G" ; the first letter of the surname Golikov; "ay"; first and last letters of the name; "d" ; French; "from"; "ar"; the first letters of the name of your hometown. G-ay-d-ar: Golikov Arkady from Arzamas.

Translated from Mongolian it means “a horseman galloping ahead.”

This is what Arkady was - always ahead, always in the line of fire.

A new life has begun for Arkady Golikov - the life of the writer Arkady Petrovich Gaidar in books.
Gaidar entered children's literature with his story about the Civil War, “RVS” (1926).

During his work in the Urals, Gaidar wrote 127 works.
His comrades noted his cheerful disposition and his modesty.
He never boasted about his military exploits.

After 3 years, Arkady Petrovich left for Arkhangelsk.
Here he worked for the newspaper Pravda Severa.

Then the Golikov family moved to Moscow.
And in 1931 the family fell apart. Leah and her son left for someone else. And Gaidar was left completely alone (he always had few friends).
He was very sad and could not work.

From Gaidar's diary:

“October 28, 1932. Moscow. He spoke on the radio - about himself. But I have nowhere to put myself, no one to easily go to, nowhere to even spend the night... In essence, I only have three pairs of underwear, a duffel bag, a field bag, a sheepskin coat, a hat - and nothing and no one else, no home, no place , no friends. And this is at a time when I am not poor at all, and no longer at all rejected and unnecessary to anyone. It just turns out that way somehow. I haven’t touched the story “Military Secret” for two months...”

Soon - in 1932 - Gaidar left for Khabarovsk.
There he worked at the newspaper Pacific Truth.

In the 30s, Arkady Petrovich wrote books on which more than one generation of children was raised.
This:
- "School".
At first it was called “An Ordinary Biography” (1930). It was a romanticized biography of the writer himself. It shows his difficult development as a person.
- “Distant Countries” (1932).
- “The Tale of a Military Secret, of Malchish-Kibalchish and His Firm Word” (1933).
- “Military Secret” (1935).
In it, the writer showed the life of a little hero against the backdrop of the events of his time - new buildings, pest control and saboteurs. After its release, the writer was bombarded with accusations that he was too cruel to his hero, who would die at the end of the story.
- “The Blue Cup” (1936).
- “The Fate of the Drummer” (1936).
This story was written on cutting-edge material.
“This book is not about war, but about matters that are harsh and dangerous, no less than the war itself.”
It was full of omissions and omissions that were understandable to contemporaries. The protagonist's father, the red commander, is arrested. His wife runs away from home, abandoning their son.
The author used a peculiar technique of secret writing - semantic and plot inconsistencies. Because he could not tell the complete truth about the events taking place in the country.
- “Chuk and Gek” (1939).
- “The Commandant of the Snow Fortress” (1940).
In this story, the writer, again in a hidden form, condemned the Finnish military campaign. The story was published, but caused such a public outcry that an order was issued to remove Gaidar’s books from libraries.

There was also a story “Let it shine!”
In it, the characters dream about the life that will come after the Civil War:

“The war will end, and then we will live in a new way. Then such huge houses will be built... 40 floors, here you have a dining room, a laundry and a store and everything you want - live and work. And above the 41st floor we will put a stone tower, a red star and a huge spotlight. Let it shine!”

Gaidar wrote in a surprisingly interesting way.
He would conceive a whole work within himself, and then sit down at the table and write it down in one gulp. At the end of the page I put a small red star with 3 outgoing rays.
Indeed, let it shine!

The merits of Arkady Petrovich were highly appreciated by the government of our country.
In January 1939, by Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, A. Gaidar was awarded the Order of the Badge of Honor for outstanding successes and achievements in the development of Soviet literature.

Gaidar, receiving it, said:

“I accept this award as a talisman whose power ends as soon as the work ends.”

Arkady Petrovich was very proud of this award.

1940 is the pre-war year.
The international situation was alarming.
Gaidar had a presentiment that war was inevitable.

And he had a question:

What will the guys do if war starts?
What good and useful things can they do?

This is how the idea for the story “Timur and His Team” (1941) arose.
First, he wrote the film script from which the film was made.
The exceptional popularity of the film was explained not only by the vitality of the image of its protagonist, who immediately transcended the screen and became an ideal and example for many thousands of his peers.
The word “Timurovets” clearly reflected the best traits characteristic of a schoolchild in the Soviet country: an insatiable thirst for activity, nobility, courage, and the ability to stand up for one’s interests.

And then the story itself appeared.
This work gave a noble direction to the activities of the pioneer organization - the Timur movement.
Operating everywhere, Timurov's teams helped the families of soldiers who had left and died at the front.
During the Great Patriotic War, this movement grew and expanded literally every day: in the RSFSR alone, Timurov’s teams numbered over 2 million people in their ranks.
The title “Timurovets” was obligatory. It had a disciplining effect on the children, encouraging them to noble, patriotic actions.
The activities of the Timurites had enormous socio-political and pedagogical significance.

By the beginning of the forties, things seemed to be getting better for Arkady Petrovich.
Gaidar remarried.
From time to time he took his son Timur from his first wife and went with him and his adopted daughter Zhenechka to rest in the south...

Just before the war, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya and Arkady Gaidar met.
Zoya asked him:
“Isn’t it a pity to die for great human happiness?”
“It’s not a pity,” Gaidar replied, “but let’s better live long.”

Unfortunately, the Great Patriotic War did not allow them to live long...

V.G. Belinsky once wrote that a writer working for children “needs a gracious, loving, meek, calm, childishly simple-minded soul; an elevated, educated mind, an enlightened view of objects, and not only a vivid imagination, but also a living, poetic fantasy, capable of imagining everything in animated, rainbow-colored images.”

Arkady Gaidar possessed all these noble qualities.
And for his young reader, for whom, as he said, “he had the honor of working,” he wrote wonderful works.

As S. Marshak wrote:

“He was a poet from head to toe, and in his reader - in the Soviet child - he loved most of all the bold and lively poetic imagination. He was “on the same path” with this friend-reader, agile and active, inexhaustible in undertakings and always ready to fulfill his duty, and if necessary, then to feat
Gaidar knew what strings in the soul needed to be touched in order to mobilize the guys for noble deeds. He believed in the strength of a growing person, and the children appreciated this trust.”

His books in the Timur series gave rise to an entire social movement - millions of Timurites began to act in the image and likeness of Gaidar’s Timur.
Thus, according to the writer’s word, one of the remarkable miracles that world literature has ever known occurred.

And the poet Lev Oshanin was right when he wrote:

...The world became wonderful and new,
My heart wanted to take off on its own.
When young, in an amazing word
Arkady Gaidar touched him.

But not everything was smooth in the writer’s life...

Arkady Gaidar is a writer who created the brightest images and wonderful stories on which all Soviet children were brought up.
However, at the same time, the Soviet leadership did not bestow Gaidar with the same benefits and affection that it bestowed on close writers who correctly and widely quoted Comrade Stalin.

Maybe because Gaidar managed to never mention the name of the great leader in his works?

Mikhail Elizarov:

“The writers Reuben Fraerman and Konstantin Paustovsky considered Gaidar their close friend.
Gaidar wrote this to Fraerman:
“Dear Ruvchik; I turned 36 years old (5 months). What are they made of? 1. Birth. 2. Education. 3. Warfare. 4. Writing. Divide 36 by 4, and my life will be in front of you in full view, with the exception of that dark time when I owed you 250 rubles of money.”
And before that from the sanatorium in Sokolniki:
“My health is good. One problem: the thought worries me; Why did I lie so much? It seemed that there were no reasons justifying this constant and painful lie with which I talk to people... I have formed a habit of lying from beginning to end, and my struggle with this habit is persistent and difficult, but I cannot defeat it.
Sometimes I walk very close to the truth, sometimes; exactly; and cheerful, simple, it is ready to roll off the tongue, but it’s as if some voice is sharply warning me; watch out! Do not say! Otherwise you will be lost! And immediately you imperceptibly turn, spin, scatter, and for a long time then it dazzles in your very eyes; eh, they say, where have you gone, you scoundrel!..”
Gaidar understood perfectly well what was happening in his country. Knew to remain silent; It’s a shame, and truthful “talk” is tantamount to suicide. And he did everything he could at that moment; wrote “The Fate of the Drummer,” the very first book about repression, about the crippled fates of children whose parents were arrested. I wrote it and almost lost my freedom.
Paustovsky recalled how one day a waiter showed up at his home; I brought cutlets and a note from Gaidar: urgently borrow so many rubles. Paustovsky handed over the money. The next morning he asked Gaidar; why cutlets? Gaidar replied: “How could I tell the waiter that I don’t have enough money? I came up with a reason...
You can make people afraid of you. But you can't force love. Gaidar was loved. They valued their friendship with him. In pre-war Moscow, people considered it an honor to meet the No. 1 children's writer.
Both Paustovsky and Fraerman would probably have refrained from communicating with a sadist and psychopath...
Was Arkady Gaidar sick? Yes.
Is Sachs-Soloukhin's diagnosis correct? No.
Biographer Boris Kamov talks about traumatic neurosis, the result of shell shock. He believes Gaidar used vodka as a vasodilator; relief from headaches. When vodka stopped helping, Gaidar cut himself with a razor; the pain also dilated the blood vessels. If this last resort did not help; went to the hospital.
Not sure if alcohol dilates blood vessels. He rather acted as an antidepressant. And Gaidar had plenty of prerequisites for depression. Critics spent six months conducting dangerous discussions about his stories, which were half a step away from arrest. Ex-wife Solomyanskaya was nerve-wracking; until I ended up in the camp. The wait for arrest in 1938 ended with a nervous breakdown.
The therapeutic abilities of the razor can also be questioned. Gaidar was sick, or rather wounded, but he overcame his illness with creativity. Schizophrenia and MDP kill talent. And Gaidar’s skill grew year by year. Performance still did not disappoint. His personality suffered. But she didn’t degrade.
Just before the feat, the young hero of the story “The Fate of the Drummer” experiences a wonderful auditory hallucination:
“The air froze. And a sound rang out, clear, even, as if someone had touched a large melodious string and it, overjoyed and untouched by anyone for a long time, trembled and rang, striking the whole world with the amazing purity of its tone. The sound grew and became stronger, and with it I grew and became stronger.”
The writer Gaidar himself was the source of such a sound, a human tuning fork by which a timid, false heart should be tuned.”

This is what Boris Nikolaevich Kamov, a teacher, publicist, biographer of Gaidar, writes, who is for the book “Arkady Gaidar. Target for Newspaper Killers” was awarded the Artyom Borovik Prize for 2010:

“In fact, the writer’s fate was full of drama. Until recent years, being famous, he remained a natural homeless person, without his own corner and desk. He lived and worked in creative houses, the Artek pioneer camp, went to his homeland in Arzamas, lived with friends, rented a dacha in the village of Kuntsevo. Only in 1938, the Writers' Union allocated a room to Arkady Petrovich in a communal apartment on Bolshoi Kazenny Lane.
He published a lot, but then there was a regressive payment system. The more often the work was published, the lower the fee. Payment could drop to 5% of the original one. When Arkady Petrovich was supposed to receive the order, his wife Dora Matveevna spent the entire evening mending the famous gymnast. There was nothing else to go to the Kremlin.
Since 1935, with the exception of the story “Chuk and Gek,” Gaidar has not published a single work that was not subject to furious criticism. When the story “Military Secret” was published in 1935, he was accused of “ideological vacillation.” In six issues of the magazine “Children's Literature”, collections of articles against the story were regularly published. The writer was hospitalized.
When The Blue Cup came out, the same magazine met it with hostility. The new discussion continued for three and a half years. The result was a ban on further printing of the story, imposed by the People's Commissar of Education N.K. Krupskaya. During Gaidar's lifetime, The Blue Cup was never published again.
After the first chapters of “The Fate of the Drummer” appeared in “Pionerskaya Pravda,” the story was banned and its collection was scattered. A circular was immediately issued. All the writer's books in schools and libraries were collected, taken away and burned. In 1938, Arkady Petrovich was awaiting arrest. A miracle saved him. According to a list compiled long ago, together with other writers, he was awarded the order, and the list was endorsed by Stalin himself. All accusations were instantly dropped, Gaidar’s books were reprinted in huge editions. For the first time, for a short time, he became a wealthy man.
History repeated itself when Pioneer published the first chapters of Timur and His Team. A denunciation was instantly sent. The story was banned. The writer was accused of trying to replace the activities of the pioneer organization named after. V.I. Lenin underground children's movement. The story, Gaidar, the editorial board of Pionerskaya Pravda and the press department of the Komsomol Central Committee were saved by the senior party leadership, who became aware of the scandal. The manuscript of the story was placed on Sam's table. The leader liked the story about Timur and his team. He didn't find any crime.
By the way, in his works and even in his journalism we will never meet the name of Stalin, who was praised by highly respected masters of Soviet literature.”

Mikhail Elizarov:

“But a telling fact; in the entire corpus of Gaidar’s (the most Soviet!) heritage there is not a single mention of Stalin’s name; in contrast to the same Boris Pasternak, the future Nobel laureate and martyr of democracy... If only with the nightly question about Mandelstam: “What to do?” ; Stalin turned to Gaidar, and not to Pasternak; the Secretary General would not have heard on the phone: ; Joseph Vissarionovich, which Mandelstam? Let's talk about literature...
Gaidar would have interceded. He did not betray a single comrade, he took care of everyone...”

Gaidar was finishing the script for the film “Timur and His Team” when he heard from the loudspeaker: “Today, without declaring war...”
When the Great Patriotic War began, from the first days Arkady Petrovich was eager to go to the front line. He was eager to go where the fate of the Motherland was being decided.
But it was not easy for him to fulfill his desire to go to the front - an old illness prevented him.
But it was impossible to keep Gaidar.

Gaidar submitted his first application with a request to be sent to the front on June 23, 1941.
The military registration and enlistment office categorically refused, as a disabled person from the Civil War.
Then Arkady Petrovich stated (but already in the editorial office of Komsomolskaya Pravda) that he wanted to get into the combat area as a correspondent.
And after repeated requests, statements, petitions, he finally, despite the objections of the doctors, received a assignment to the Southwestern Front.
Moreover, having been transferred to the reserve as a regiment commander, on July 20, 1941, he went to the front as a private.
He took a business trip to Komsomolskaya Pravda and went as a front-line correspondent to the front line - near Kyiv.
At that time, the situation near Kiev (and this was his favorite city) was difficult.
There were difficult battles.
But Gaidar firmly believed in our victory.

During the short period of his front-line correspondent activity, the writer gave several brilliant military essays - “At the crossing”, “Rockets and grenades”, “Bridge”, “War and children”, “At the front line”.
It must be said that his essays were the result of personal courage.

As Mikhail Kotov recalled:

“At the front, Gaidar could rightfully be called a front-line soldier. He always strove to be where the fierce battle ensued, to see and capture as much as possible. He could not sit a single day away from the front line; he was always in communication with soldiers and commanders of various branches of the military. One can say about him that he fought for his homeland with everything he could.
What was striking about Gaidar was his extraordinary restraint, calmness and confidence.”

Arkady Petrovich went with the scouts on a night search - to the German rear for “tongues”.
He risked his life to cover the group's retreat. He returned with a captured “Walter” and a German dagger, obtained personally.
Another time he went on the attack with a rifle company. And he captured a German machine gun as a trophy.
In one battle, he carried out from under fire the seriously wounded battalion commander I.N. Prudnikov, who lost consciousness from concussion.

Once Gaidar found himself on the Kanevsky Bridge, where a traffic jam formed.
The writer becomes the commandant of the crossing.
Usually good-natured, Gaidar was stern and domineering on the bridge: everyone obeyed his will.
By the time the enemy bombers appeared, the traffic jam had been eliminated.

When the threat of capture loomed over Kiev, the journalistic corps was ordered to urgently evacuate.
Gaidar was offered a seat on a plane that was flying to Moscow.
Arkady Petrovich refused.
"Why?"
"Ashamed!"
Gaidar had two arguments:
1st: he believed that he did not have the right to use the plane, since the soldiers and commanders of the encircled army did not have such an opportunity.
And the second argument was this: Gaidar wanted to go with the surrounded army all the way.
He thought, if he remained alive, to write a book about this unprecedented outcome, with which even the biblical outcome cannot be compared. After all, an army of 660 thousand of the best commanders and fighters was surrounded near Kiev...
Gaidar did not find it possible for himself to abandon the fighters who remained in the “cauldron”.
He, along with the retreating troops, is the last to leave the besieged city...

Gaidar condemned those writers who “drove to the rear”:

“They are wrong to think that the war will write this off for them. You can write off worn-out boots or an old gun, but you can’t write off your conscience.”

And he continued to act as he lived: “Only forward, only into the line of fire!”

Being deep in the German rear, Gaidar heard that 3,000 or even 4,000 soldiers had gathered in the forest near the village of Semyonovka.
He entered the forest. And I found despondency there, close to despair. There was no food, no bandages, not even enough water.
But the main thing: no one had any idea what to do next?
In a neighboring village, Gaidar found Komsomol members. They arrived in carts and took away some of the wounded.
After that, he began to look in the forest for people who were familiar with these places, and found a crippled sapper captain named Ryabokon. He explained how to get out of the forest and where to go safely.
Together with the fighter pilot, Colonel A.D. Orlov, they formed three assault columns and fought their way out of the forest. We went out to the swamps. And there they began to disperse in small groups.
That night, Gaidar and Orlov managed to save more than 3,000 people...

Colonel A.D. Orlov, former chief of staff of the Kyiv Air Defense Fighter Division wrote:

“For me personally, there was no better, more reliable, more efficient person in difficult times than him. He was a man of exceptional honesty, warmth and courage.”

Soon a group of encirclement led by Gaidar and Orlov found a partisan detachment.
The camp and the detachment turned out to be unreliable. Orlov with some of the soldiers and commanders headed to the front line, came to ours and fought until the end of the war.
Gaidar refused to go with Orlov...
Having the opportunity to escape from encirclement, Gaidar remained in the partisan detachment.

As partisan Butenko recalled:

“From the very first day, Gaidar in the partisan detachment established himself as a brave machine gunner and especially distinguished himself in a battle on the territory of a sawmill, when he and two other machine gunners successfully repelled the onslaught of a large group of Germans.”

Mikhail Elizarov:

“Covering the retreat of a partisan detachment in the forest near Kanev, Gaidar killed more than a dozen of them. Gaidar fired, Lieutenant M. Tonkovid was number two; served the ribbons. Their machine gun crew delayed and drove back a detachment of two hundred.
For such a feat, the fighter usually received an order; at the beginning of the war "Red Star". At the end, when awards were lavished more readily, the “Red Banner” or the Order of “Glory”. But this is not just one episode of Gaidar’s brief partisan period. Before that, he helped lead the regiment out of encirclement. He distinguished himself in the battles near Kiev: he carried battalion commander I.N. Prudnikov out of the battle; also, in an amicable way, the order is due; went with the soldiers on reconnaissance, took the “tongue”; another order or medal “For Courage”...
In total, in one month (from September 18, when he remained in surrounded Kyiv, until October 26, the day of his death), the writer earned more than enough for the star of Hero of the Soviet Union...
Lieutenant Tonkovid survived the war. Both Colonel Orlov and battalion commander Prudnikov survived. Lieutenants Sergei Abramov and Vasily Skrypnik (it was Gaidar who saved them on the railway embankment with his shout: “Guys, Germans!”) also went through the entire war. All of them were with Gaidar in the partisan detachment near Kanev. Real witnesses of his heroic service; This is not the mythical Soloukha grandmother with her signature dish: her son’s brains in a wooden bowl.
And Gaidar received his only military award in 1963; posthumous Order of the Patriotic War, 1st degree. Here the Soviet Motherland showed unexpected stinginess towards the fallen hero.”

Gaidar decided to create his own partisan detachment, but of an army type.
Today it is obvious that the former regiment commander Golikov-Gaidar had a real opportunity to create a partisan formation before the future twice Heroes Sidor Kovpak and Alexei Fedorov.
But it was not destined...

Fighting in the ranks of a partisan detachment in the Dnieper forests, Arkady Petrovich died a hero's death in battle.
It happened on October 26, 1941 near the village of Leplyava.
On the morning of this day, Gaidar and 4 comrades were returning from a food depot to a temporary camp.
Before reaching, we made a halt.
Gaidar volunteered to go to a familiar roadman to ask for bread or potatoes. To do this, he climbed a high railway embankment and noticed an ambush ahead.
What to do?
There was still a possibility of escape. You could have rolled down the embankment and survived yourself.
But his comrades were nearby, and they could have died.
Gaidar made the only right decision: he rose to his full height and shouted:
- Guys, Germans!
A machine gun burst fired, and Gaidar fell onto the embankment, struck by an enemy bullet...
Such heavy fire began that the partisans managed to return to this place only at night. Then, with the help of local residents, they buried their friend, partisan, writer.
To avert the suspicions of the Nazis, the burial mound was built in a completely different place.

And in 1943, at Gaidar’s grave, local residents burned the words on a simple tablet:

"A. P. Gaidar - writer, warrior, machine gunner of a partisan detachment. Died on October 26, 1941."

In the words of K. Paustovsky, Arkady Gaidar:

“He died riddled with fascist bullets, he died defending his dear native country. He lived as a wonderful writer and an extraordinary person and died a hero."

Gaidar died, but four comrades remained alive.
One of them, Lieutenant Sergei Abramov, who accompanied Gaidar on the 26th, later became the main bomber at Kovpak.
Another lieutenant, Vasily Skrypnik, reached Berlin.

From a letter from Sergei Abramov to Gaidar’s wife:

“Dear comrade Gaidar!
...Fulfilling the request of your husband, Gaidar Arkady Petrovich, I inform you that he died heroically at the hands of fascist barbarians on October 26, 1941...
You know that Arkady Petrovich... was a correspondent for the Southwestern Front... When the encirclement formed, Gaidar was offered to fly out by plane, but he refused and remained with the encircled army. When part of the army was defeated, we, leaving the encirclement, remained in a partisan detachment in the Dnieper forests. And one day we were going to our base to get groceries and ran into a German ambush, where Comrade was killed. Gaidar Arkady Petrovich.
His grave is located in the Poltava region, near the railway that goes from Kanev to Zolotonosha. If you go from Kanev, you need to get to the Leplyava station... There is a booth there, near this booth on the right side of the railway, about five meters from the track, and he is buried. The watchman knows the grave... I remain - Lieutenant S. Abramov.
I am sending this letter from temporarily occupied Ukraine...”

One day, when friends got together, Abramov said to Skrypnik:

You know, Vasily Ivanovich, if it weren’t for Arkady Petrovich, you wouldn’t have your daughters, and I wouldn’t have my sons.

And finally, 2 quotes:

Boris Kamkov:

“Arkady Gaidar was indeed born a children's writer. He was cheerful and good-natured, like a child. His word did not diverge from deed, thought from feeling, life from poetry. He was the author and hero of his books. This is how he will remain forever in the memory of people who happened to know him during his lifetime, and in the minds of those who learn about him from books written by Gaidar and about Gaidar.
Arkady Petrovich’s words are also known that he had an “ordinary biography.” Today it remains to add that it has absorbed romance, superhuman tension and the tragedy of “extraordinary times.”
The thirty-seven years that Gaidar lived were replete with daring impulses, courageous deeds, erroneous decisions, social discoveries and unpredictable twists of fate.”

Mikhail Elizarov:

“The alphabetic genetic code of all Gaidar’s texts: “Don’t be afraid!”
...Standing guard over an impressionable child's soul, he simply taught to live in such a way as not to be afraid of death.
But Gaidar really wasn’t afraid of anything. Neither in the Civil Service, nor in civilian life.
He withstood the blow when criticism fiercely, for several years in a row, destroyed his bright, cheerful stories about youth, war, and the blue cup...
He endured the illness stoically; monstrous headaches, from which there was only one salvation; razor, and he cut himself, drowning out the hell in his shell-shocked head with new flour.
Twice he called the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Yezhov to shield his ex-wife, the cruel Leah Solomyanskaya, an arrested “enemy of the people”; called to protect the one who turned Timur into an instrument of torture for him: Gaidar, sad, did not see his son for months.
I didn’t lose heart, expecting a quick arrest in 1938, when after a denunciation the typographic set of “The Fate of a Drummer” was scattered. At that time, he, aware of his “plague”, prudently fenced himself off from his friends; so as not to “infect”.
Gaidar was not afraid until his very last day, October 26, 1941, when near Leplyava on a railway embankment, warning the partisans about an ambush, he exposed his heart to a machine-gun burst.”

Publishing a literary work without a signature or under the signature of a fictitious person did not always achieve its goal - if any was set - to hide the name of the real author.

Pushkin did not sign his epigrams, but everyone knew whose pen they belonged to - after all, the author is clearly characterized by the manner and style of writing. Pushkin himself speaks about this in an epigram entitled “Ex ungue leonem” (By the claws [one recognizes] a lion):

Recently I somehow whistled poems and gave them out without my signature; A magazine buffoon published an article about them, and let it go without a signature, the villain. Well? Neither I nor the common jester were able to cover up their pranks: He recognized me by his claws in a minute, I recognized him just by my ears.

Therefore, sometimes pseudonyms did not fulfill their main function, and incognito was revealed. For example, all readers of Polar Star and Kolokol knew perfectly well who was hiding behind the signature Iskander.

And sometimes the authors themselves were not particularly keen to keep their names secret. Thus, Pushkin, when publishing “Belkin’s Tales,” had nothing against readers knowing who the real author was. In a letter to P. A. Pletnev, who was in charge of his publishing affairs, the poet asked “to whisper my name to Smirdin, so that he whispers to the customers” 1 (Smirdin was the owner of a bookstore).

1 (Pushkin A.S. Collected works in 10 volumes, vol. 10. M., 1962, p. 63)

Pseudonyms have a life of their own. Sometimes they quickly disappeared, giving way to the real surname. Thus, Pushkin used the name Belkin only once; Gogol published only one book on behalf of V. Alov and one on behalf beekeeper Rudoy Panka.

Gradually stopped using his main pseudonym - M. Stebnitsky- N. S. Leskov. For a while he signed N. Leskov-Stebnitsky, but he published the complete collected works under his own name.

Sometimes the pseudonym became firmly attached to the autonym. At first the author published under a fictitious name: Andrey Pechersky, D. Sibiryak, V. Kumach. Over time, they began to add it to the real one, taking into brackets: Melnikov (Pechersky), Mamin (Sibiryak), Lebedev (Kumach).

Finally, the brackets opened and a line appeared between the pseudonym and the autonym. And now, after all this evolution, Melnikov-Pechersky, Mamin-Sibiryak, Lebedev-Kumach, as well as Saltykov-Shchedrin, Sheller-Mikhailov, Novikov-Priboy, Andersen-Nexo, etc. are familiar and close to us.

Sometimes the pseudonym came to the fore, and the real surname was added to it: Garin-Mikhailovsky, Nechuy-Levitsky, Stepnyak-Kravchinsky, Gudaitis-Guzyavichyus.

Many Soviet writers replaced their surname with another, literary one (in essence, such a surname and a pseudonym are one and the same thing, but the latter can be placed under one particular work, and the former is usually adopted for life).

The author of the story "Tashkent, the city of grain" A. S. Skobelev was published under the name Neverov; the author of "Stanitsa" and "Running Run" V.P. Kirpichnikov, who died in battles with the fascist invaders, is known as V. Stavsky.

Adalis, Aksenov, Ardov, Granin, Grebnev, Doroga, Kron, Likhodeev, Nikolaeva, Radov, Rybakov, Samoilov, Tess, Finn- all these are literary names.

Even if the reasons for which they appeared disappeared over time, the invented surname sometimes completely replaced the real one. Thus, on the tombstones of E. Bagritsky and M. Svetlov there is only one surname each - a literary one.

If a writer gained fame under a pseudonym, he usually kept it in the future.

Thus, N. A. Alekseev, the author of the trilogy “Beyond Living and Dead Water” (about the struggle of Ukrainian partisans against the Nazi hordes), adopted the literary name Far. "Why such a nickname?" - they asked him. “Because I was always far from my family and people dear to me,” he answered. “Now I could do without a pseudonym, but it’s too late to change it” 1 .

1 (Distant N. For living and dead water. Lvov, 1969, p. 736)

Literary surnames, like real ones, are inherited. The names adopted by their fathers are the journalist Timur Gaidar, the poet Harold Registan, the playwright Valery Tur, and the film director and essayist Roman Karmen. Critic Cecilia Kean writes under the literary name of her late husband V. Kean.

Sometimes, however, the literary surname was deliberately not inherited, so that readers would not confuse the works of the son with the works of the father. So, the son of N. F. Pogodin, also a playwright, author of the play “House of Cards,” writes under his father’s autonym, which he never used - Stukalov.

Sometimes a pseudonym so crowds out the real name that readers don’t know it at all. These are the names Gorky, Gaidar, Sholom Aleichem, Lahuti and etc.

Shortly before his death in battle with the Nazis, Arkady Gaidar told his comrades in arms about how, in the last year of the civil war, he served in the Soviet Army on the border with Mongolia:

“Often, a Mongol would run towards him, wave his cap and shout: “Gai-dar!” gai-dar!"... And "gaidar" in Russian, as it was translated to me from Mongolian, means a horseman galloping in front. That’s what our soldiers later began to call me. And this word sank firmly into my soul, very firmly.. . As you can see, guys, I didn’t take this pseudonym for myself for the sake of some kind of beauty!” 1

1 (Lyaskovsky V. G. and Kotov M. P. Horseman galloping ahead. M., 1967, p. 192)

Having started his literary activity after demobilization, he signed only his first book, “In the days of defeat and beating” (1925), with his real surname - Golikov, and then gained wide popularity under the name Gaidar.

According to another version, this name is a cryptonym, which stands for: G- the initial letter of the real surname, ai - the first and last letters of the name Arkady, gift supposedly means in short, in the French manner, (dar) “Arzamas” (Gaidar was from this city).

A talented fiction writer who truthfully depicted the hard life of the Jewish poor in the Pale of Settlement, everyone is known as Sholom Aleichem, but according to his passport he was Rabinovich. His nickname means "peace be with you!" (cf. Arabic "selam-alaikum"). The author of "Tevye the Milkman" and "Wandering Stars" used the fact that the word "peace" in Hebrew sounds the same as his name Sholom (Solomon).

“Lahut” is the name of one of the seven heavens of heaven in Muslim mythology. Hence the nickname Lahuti, given to Abulqasem, son of Ahmed Ilghami, in his childhood, when he composed poetry in a mystical spirit. He retained this nickname as a literary name even after his emigration from Iran to Turkey, and then to the Soviet Union, where he became one of the founders of modern Tajik poetry.

One of the first Yakut writers, Platon Sleptsov, is known not by this surname, but by his literary name: Oyunsky. It comes from the word “oyun” - sorcerer, shaman and originates from the play of this writer “The Red Shaman”, the plot of which is the “reforging” of one of these cult ministers, who played a significant role in the life of the Yakut people.

The outstanding Armenian prose writer of the last century Hakob Melik-Hakobyan, who spoke about the struggle of his people against foreign enslavers, entered literature under the name Raffi, i.e. teacher (from the Hebrew "rabbi").

The literary name of Sh. Abramovich, the founder of Jewish prose in Russia, is Mendele-Moyher-Sforim- means "Meyadele the bookworm." The point here is that this democratic writer devoted his entire life to the education of his people.

In the literature of some peoples of the Soviet Union (Mari, Chuvash, Komi), it has long been a tradition to sign with a pseudonym. The reason for this was the persecution of the tsarist authorities, who looked askance at the development of national literatures. In the journal of the Kazan Black Hundreds "Delo" it was said in 1905 - 1911. There are a lot of poisonous words addressed to the “Cheremis writers” who took care to hide their names under pseudonyms.

The surnames of some Mari writers are tracings of their Russian surnames and at the same time their family nicknames: the surname, once Russified, was again translated into their native language and became a pseudonym. So, playwright I. Belyaev signs Oshalgyn(blond), journalist N. Tsvetkov - Peledash(flower). Signatures of G. Ryabinov, N. Oreshkin, K. Skvortsov - Pyzler, Puksh, Shyrchyk mean “rowan”, “walnut”, “starling” respectively. The poet N. Mukhin wrote under the name Karma(fly), and G. Golubkin - under the name Kede(dove, dove).

For a number of Chuvash writers, their literary surname became part of their passport. So, A. Alexandrov is now Eshel (eshel is a verb indicating labor origin), I. Grigoriev is now Malgai(walk straight).

In Western literature, cases of a pseudonym replacing the author's real name are no less common.

The golden fund of children's literature includes books about Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, the prince and the pauper, and when asked who wrote them, everyone will answer: Mark Twain. But the real name and surname of their author was Samuel Clemens, and “Mark Twain” is nothing more than the exclamation of sailors who were measuring the fairway, which he repeatedly heard during trips along the Mississippi: “mark two” (feet). The witty writer took advantage of the fact that the word “mark” coincides in English with the name Mark.

Many French prose writers and poets took a strong place in literature not under their real names. Their pseudonyms have become so familiar to readers that their real names seem, on the contrary, to be pseudonyms.

Thus, an outstanding poet of the Middle Ages is known under the name Villon or Villon. In fact, his last name was Montcorbier, and he began to be called Villon after he was adopted by the Parisian priest Guillaume Villon.

The surname of the author of "The Barber of Seville" and "The Marriage of Figaro" was Caron (without the prefix "de"). A simple watchmaker, he gained access to the royal palace, became a music teacher to the daughters of Louis XV, and after getting married, acquired a noble title and began to call himself de Beaumarchais, after the name of his wife's estate.

The author of the novels “The Red and the Black” and “The Parma Monastery” was named, as already mentioned, Henri Bayle; his literary name is Stendhal- the name of the Brandenburg town where the art critic Winckelmann, whom Beyle loved very much, was born. And in this case, the pseudonym completely replaced the real surname.

Widely known French writers Gerard de Nerval, Claude Farrer, Gabriel Ferri, Roland Dorgeles, Pierre MacOrlan, Luc Durtain, Pierre Amp, Thierry Molnier. But they all bore other surnames in life, and some had other names. So, author of adventure novels Gustave Aimard in life there was Olivier Glu, and the poet Paul Eluard- Eugene Grendel. Raymond Payel was initially an actor and, having entered the literary field, adopted the same pseudonym under which he acted on stage - Philip Eria.

Real name of the famous Italian writer Gabriele d'Annunzio was Rapagnetta, and the Norwegian one was Knut Hamsun- Pedersen.

For over 40 years, until the death of the author, who wrote under the name Bruno Traven, no one knew his real name. His books, published in German (The Ship of the Dead, etc.), were a great success and were translated into many languages. But all attempts to establish who he was ended in vain. There were reasons to believe that under the name Ret Marut he published the revolutionary magazine Ziegelbrenner (Tile Burner) in Munich. After the defeat of the Bavarian Soviet Republic in 1920, he was arrested and sentenced to death, but he managed to escape. He eventually settled in Mexico, which became his second home, and began to study archaeology. The materials collected during the expeditions formed the basis of his books. The first of them, “The Cotton Pickers,” was published in 1925 by the editors of the Berlin newspaper “Vorwärts,” who allegedly received the manuscript from the author’s cousin and confidant. Publishers wrote to him at the address: Mexico City, General Post Office, owner of mailbox No.... Only after he died in 1969, the widow revealed the mystery that shrouded him and talked about the creative path of Traven, whose real name was Torsvan.

The original pseudonym was invented by the Turkish satirist Mahmud Nusret. He writes about this: “In 1933, a law was passed according to which every Turk had to take a surname... I didn’t get a beautiful surname that I could boast of, and I took the surname “Nesin”, meaning “who are you?” I wanted every time my name was called, I would think about who I am."

Nowadays Mahmud Nusret is widely known under the name Aziz Nesin(Aziz was his father's name). But in addition to this main literary surname, he had over 200 pseudonyms. This is explained by the fact that when the authorities closed the newspaper where the satirist worked, he could not place his works anywhere if he signed them with his name, which had already become famous.

“Because of my pseudonyms, there was once a lot of confusion,” he reports. “Combining the names of my daughter and son - Oya and Atesh, I once published a book of children's stories... Then this book was included in the bibliography of the works of Turkish writers, as belonging to the pen of Oya Atesh ..." 1

1 (Nesin Aziz. A story about yourself. - "Questions of Literature", 1968, No. 6)

In the literatures of the peoples of the East, the displacement of a real name by a pseudonym is a rule with almost no exceptions.

In Japanese literature, pseudonyms are widespread. Until our century, it was believed that all writers, without exception, were supposed to have a “batsumei” (another name). Almost no one knew the real names and surnames of many writers. In addition, it was customary to change the pseudonym frequently. It almost always had a semantic meaning, sometimes quite interesting.

Japanese classics often used the vocabulary of ancient Chinese and Japanese poems for their “batsumei”. Some nicknames come from words denoting various natural phenomena, plants, etc. Thus, the betsumei of the 17th century poet. Matsuo Munzfusa - Basho- means "banana tree". The poet planted it near his house, and the neighbors began to call his home "basyoan" (hut by the banana), and he himself - "basyonoo" - the old man living by the banana). The writer of the early last century Sasaki Sadataka is known as Shunsui(spring waters). Tsuboutn Shoyo wrote under the name Harunoya Oboro(dusk of spring night).

Tekodo Shujin- the literary name of the writer Akuta Gawa Ryunosuke - means "master of the hall of the transparent river." The poet and critic Yosano Hiroshi chose the name Tekkan (iron trunk; this is how the trunk of an old willow tree is called in Japanese poetry). Shusui- the pseudonym of the writer and revolutionary Kotoku Denjiro, who translated the works of Marx and Engels into Japanese and was executed by the reaction in 1911 - has two meanings: “autumn waters” and “sharp sword” (since the color of the steel is similar to the color of autumn water).

The literary names taken from the Japanese landscape are poetic: Koyo(purple leaves) Sazanami(ripples on the water) Setsurei(snow peak). There are also ornitonyms: Takuboku(woodpecker), Ujaku(sparrow in the rain) Hakucho(white bird, swan).

Kunikida Tetsuo entered literature as Doppo (lonely wanderer): he wrote his poems during country walks. "Eastern Rousseau", Nakaz Tokusuke, wrote under the names Tyomin(all the people) and Nankai Sengyo(hermit fisherman in the southern seas).

Many Japanese authors, like European ones, used the name of their place of birth or residence for a pseudonym; others followed the line of abbreviation, modification of the real surname, and even giving it the opposite meaning.

There are betsumei, the meaning and origin of which are quite original. Yes, nickname Hamabe Kurohito means “black to the teeth” and comes from the fact that the writer not only wore black clothes, but also painted his teeth black. Detective novelist Hiram Saburo is known as Edogawa Rampo- imitation of the first and last name of Edgar Allan Poe, the founder of this genre. Literary critic Ose Casey chose a pseudonym. Comradeship- imitation of the Russian “comrade”, and Kondo Sakao under his first work put Setsu Mowa- distorted French c "est moi (this is me).

Fukizawa Yukichi signed some works Gokuro Samman, i.e. “thank you for your work” (implying the work spent on reading). Nickname Ftabatey Simei by another author was created in consonance with the words “kutabatte shimae” (go to hell, go to hell). This is what the author’s father said to him, who did not approve of his passion for literature.

The use of pseudonyms is no less common in Vietnamese literature, both classical and modern. From some authors, only pseudonyms have come down to us, which, as a rule, have a semantic meaning. This is the name of one of the first Vietnamese poets (X - XI centuries) - Wang Han(great happiness).

Almost all Vietnamese prose writers and poets had pseudonyms. Chu An (XIV century) signed Thieu An(sad hermit), Chin Thanh (XV century) - Chuk Khe(mountain bamboo).

Often pseudonyms were associated with mottos under which the authors performed at poetry competitions, with Buddhist and Confucian terms, with images of ancient (often Chinese) mythology and literature. Often pseudonyms were adopted or changed in connection with a change of dynasty, with the appointment of the author to one position or another, or with his departure to hermitage.

One poet of the 16th century there were two aliases: Han Fu(comforter) and Father Van Ky Shy(hermit of white clouds). Having retired from the world, he built a temple not far from his native village, nicknamed the “Pagoda of White Clouds.”

Often the pseudonym was intended to emphasize one or another trait in the author’s character: Kong Ding(impartial, strong-willed) Phi Khanh(selfless, not greedy for ranks).

It happened that the name or surname of the author was changed by a special royal decree: the poet Nguyen Thuyen (XIII century) was allowed to be called Hanh Thuyen in honor of the Chinese poet Han Zi; the court poet Ngo Thuong Kiet (11th century) was allowed to take the name Ly Thuong Kiet in honor of the ruling dynasty Lee, and the poet Nguyen Chai (XV century) - the name Le Chai in honor of the ruling dynasty of Le - favor, as if making poets relatives of kings.

Pseudonym of a Vietnamese poetess of the late 18th - early 19th centuries. Ho Xuan Huong means "spring scent".

Pseudonyms are also used in modern Vietnamese literature. Most often they are not related to the real facts of the author’s biography and are of a poetic nature: Hai Chieu(tide), Tham Tam(a big heart). Literary name Thanh Hai one of the revolutionary poets of South Vietnam means “blue sea”, and his comrade-in-arms - Giang Nam- "southern river".

Curious pseudonym Tu Mo(fat) of a Vietnamese satirist, created by analogy with the pseudonym Tu Suong (skinny) of another satirist 1.

1 (Data on pseudonyms in Vietnamese literature was kindly reported by M. N. Tkachev)

Pseudonyms and nicknames are constantly found in the literature of the peoples of India.

Name Valmiki, who is considered the first Indian poet and creator of the Ramayana (VI century BC), means “anthill” in Sanskrit. According to legend, in his youth he was engaged in robbery, and then, having repented and become a hermit, for many years he sat so motionless in one place that the ants built their home on it.

Another legendary Indian poet, Vyasa, who is credited with writing the Mahabharata, is known as Krishna(black) and Dwaipayana(islander).

The name of one of the oldest Indian poets - Khali (II - III centuries) - is a difficult to translate philosophical concept; its meaning is unique, simple, pure. Another ancient Indian poet, whose drama "Shakuntala" (5th century) gained worldwide fame, is known as Kalidasa, i.e. slave Kali (the goddess who personifies the birth and death of all living things); his real name has not reached us. The Tamil poet Vadavuran (9th century) is known as Manikkavashagar(ruby-tongued).

Indian critic and poet Maulana Muhammad Hussain wrote in Urdu under the name Azad(independent, free). The literary name of the modern Indian writer Dhanpatraya Shrivastava is - Premchand- means "moon of love." The pseudonym of the poet Phanishwarnath is symbolic - Renu(speck of dust, smallest particle). The author seems to emphasize that he is one of the particles of a common whole, which individually do not mean anything, but together form a people.

The literary name of the famous Indian poet Srirangam Srinivasa Rao is Sri-Sri- means "twice blessed" in Telugu. At the same time, these are the first syllables of his names.

Pseudonyms of Korean writers most often belong to the type of geonyms and indicate the place of birth of the author, and sometimes just a place known for its beauty: Songan(pine river), Yulgok(chestnut valley), Yeonam(swallow rock). Literary name of a Korean poet of the 13th century. Lee Gyu Bo - Baegung Kosa(white cloud) - a symbol of giving up a career and going to nature. The poet of the last century, Kim Byung-yong, adopted the name Sakkat (straw hat) - a symbol of the simple, wandering life of the author.

Literary name of the Burmese poet and philologist of the 18th century. Thun Nhou became the name of the position he held - Twindindaya unta(ruler of Twyndeen district).

Arkady Gaidar - Arkady Petrovich Golikov (1904 - 1941). Russian writer. It is generally accepted that on November 7, 1925, the name Gaidar first appeared in literature and journalism.

1 version

The pseudonym comes from the word Khaidar - “where” in Khakass. This is how Soloukhin describes it in the story"Salt Lake":
“Gaidar,” Misha said slowly, as usual, “the word is purely Khakassian.”
Only the correct sound is not “Gaidar”, but “Haidar”; and it does not mean “going forward” and not “forward-looking”, but simply “where”.
- Well, why did Golikov take the Khakass word “where” as his pseudonym?
- And that’s what the Khakass called him. They shouted: “Hide! Run! Khaidar-Golik is coming! Khaidar-Golik is coming!”
And this word stuck to him because he asked everyone: “Haidar?” That is, where to go? He didn’t know any other Khakass words.
And he was looking for Solovyov’s gang. And he wanted to catch Solovyov himself. Solovyov was specially sent from Moscow to catch him, but no one told him where Solovyov was hiding. He suspected that the Khakass knew where Solovyov was, they knew, but they weren’t telling. So he asked everyone he met and crossed: “Haidar?” Where to go? Where to look?

2 version

The riddle that the writer asked us was one his school friend A.M. Goldin tried to solve.
So: 1923, Arkady Golikov was wounded, shell-shocked, and sick. The path of a career commander of the Red Army, which began so confidently, was clouded over. What to do next? How to live? A solution is ripening - literature.
Then a literary pseudonym was invented and found:
"G"- the first letter of the surname Golikov; "AY"- first and last letters of the name; "D"- in French - “from”; "AR"- the first letters of the name of your hometown.
(Let us also recall that in French the prefix “d” indicates the affiliation or origin of, say, d’Artagnan - from Artagnan.)
We get: G-AY-D-AR: Golikov Arkady from Arzamas. By the way, at first he signed himself - Gaidar, without a name or even an initial. After all, the name was already part of the pseudonym.
Only when the pseudonym became a surname did the following appear on the books: Arkady Gaidar.

3 version - "Shepherd" for young readers

The “Ukrainian trace” in the pseudonym of a famous Russian writer was found by the director of the library-museum

Arkady Gaidar in Kanev Vasily Bereza

Interviewed by Yevgeny BRUSLINOVSKY, The Day

The naive but bright works of Arkady Gaidar, which have been read by more than one generation, an eventful life, a rather early and mysterious death - all this is of great interest to literary scholars. They also do not ignore the mysteries of the pseudonym - Gaidar - discussing and breaking spears about how he “stuck” to Arkady Petrovich, what are his roots?.. Our correspondent’s interlocutor is the director of the Kaniv Library-Museum A.P. Gaidar, Honored Worker of Culture of Ukraine Vasily Bereza, who has been the constant custodian of Gaidar’s grave and a researcher of his creative heritage for many decades.

Vasily Panasovich, how much known from history, Gaidar himself never explained his pseudonym.

Yes. And therefore, today there are several versions of its origin on equal terms. The most likely is the one that, according to Arkady Petrovich’s school friend, Adolf Goldin, was retold in his book “Golikov Arkady from Arzamas” by the writer’s son, Rear Admiral Timur Gaidar.

Mr. Goldin visited Kanev in the early 80s and at a meeting with readers of our library and museum he said the following. He and Arkady sat at the same desk at the Arzamas real school. At that time, the First World War was raging. Like all boys, they loved to play war and came up with all kinds of codes and cryptonyms.

Each secret word had to encrypt as much information as possible. What does the word “GAYDAR” mean according to Goldin? “G” is the first letter of the Golikov surname. “AY” is the first and last letter of the name Arkady, “AR” is the initial letter of the city of Arzamas, in which Gaidar spent his childhood and which he considered native. And the missing letter “D” is nothing more than the Latin “D”. In French it means (the kids studied French at school) the preposition “with” or “from”. Thus the title of the book is “Golikov Arkadi th from (i.e. D. - Aut.) ARzamas" and reveals an intricate "cipher".

- Are other versions less plausible?

There are many supporters of the version of Lev Kassil, who artistically reinterpreted the legend that the Mongol people had a scout horseman who raced ahead of everyone and warned the others in case of danger. Consequently, Gaidar, according to Kassil, is a horseman galloping ahead.

Others find roots in Baydar Gate- areas in the Crimean mountains above the Black Sea, where Golikov was in 1924 year. It was as if he had climbed to the very top of the Baidars, looked down into the blue distance and exclaimed in admiration: “Baidars, Gaidars!” And supposedly from then on this exclamation became a famous pseudonym. There are other versions. The only way to discard the “legendary” layers in this matter is to find out the real origin of the mysterious pseudonym.

-Did you succeed?

- Fortunately, an accident helped. Once a resident of Kanev, Tamara Khomenko, spoke about how she traveled by bus with her old grandmother to Kanev. They passed the village of Liplyavoye. in the fall of 1941, Gaidar died from a fascist bullet. She told her grandmother about this.

The old woman clasped her hands: “Gaidar? Why didn’t you tell me before!” The fact is that two of her sons (including Tamarin’s father) died during the Great Patriotic War, and their burial places are still unknown. So the grandmother thought that her granddaughter had found the grave of one of them - after all, they both had a surname... Gaidar. By the way, as Mrs. Tamara said, in the village of Chapaevka ( Cherkasy region), where her grandmother is from, quite a few people have this surname.

It was this sad incident that gave me the idea to look for the origin of the pseudonym “Gaidar” from the Ukrainian surname Gaidar. But no matter how much I “dug,” neither Arkady Petrovich himself, nor his friends and relatives had ever been to the village of Chapaevka and, of course, had never heard of the common surname there. No traces.

And then by chance I picked up the “Dictionary of the Ukrainian Language”, compiled at the beginning of the century Boris Grinchenko, opened on the letter “g”. “Gaidar is a sheep shepherd... This word is used in the Zmeevsky district of the Kharkov province.” The circle narrowed.

I started looking in the biographical information of Arkady Gaidar for a mention of his visits to the Kharkov region, namely, the Zmeevsky district. I learned about Kharkov quickly. But with the Zmeevsky district it was more difficult.

But in Arkady Gaidar’s collection “The Story of the Elusive Ticket” (published in 1965) I find the story “Roads and Roads”. Here it is - the solution! This essay-story tells how in 1924 year, 20-year-old writer Arkady Golikov, after a long and somewhat tedious vacation in Gagra, decided to unwind a little. Having reached Sochi by boat, he decided to go to Moscow by train.

But there was only enough money for a ticket to Kharkov: “I got off the train in Kharkov, slowly made a circle around the city and saw that it was a really good city.” The writer reached the market, bought four pies for 20 kopecks, sat down on a block and began to think about what to do next. Of course, you could go to the local editorial office, write something, and earn a fee. But he wanted romance. What, he thought, if you forget about your literary profession and try to live this summer just like that?.. No sooner said than done.

Arkady exchanged his holiday suit at the rag picker for pants and a burlap shirt. Having earned 5 rubles from this “operation”, he bought himself two pounds of bread, an old soldier’s cauldron, filled the pouch with tobacco, lit a pipe and moved south - through Zmeev to Donbass.

I decided to try miner's bread. (Looking ahead, I’ll say that he managed to work for a whole month as a carriage driver at a depth of more than 400 meters). In the meantime, he was moving along the dusty Slobozhansky roads. “I reached the Zmeevka station in the evening, I wanted to spend the night there, but when they told me that there was a small village about five miles ahead, I walked along the sleepers...”

The first night, Gaidar spent the night in the guard's kuren, who guarded the collective farm's melon field. Over time, I met two boys who had run away from the orphanage, and walked a significant stretch of the road with them. There were obviously other meetings during his travels through the Zmeevsky region. Perhaps there was a meeting with local shepherds, who in these parts were called gaydars...

The pseudonym “Gaidar” first appeared a year later - November 7, 1925 in the Perm newspaper "Zvezda". Arkady Petrovich signed the story about the civil war “Corner House” with it - by the way, it is also on Ukrainian themes.

Why do you think Gaidar didn’t tell anyone about the origin and, in fact, the meaning of his pseudonym?

Personally, I see two reasons why Arkady Petrovich wanted to keep everything secret. First: this added even more intrigue to his biography and works. Second: it is likely that, carried away by the phonetic sonority of the pseudonym, he was ashamed of its meaning - a shepherd of sheep. Was it worthy for a man who commanded a regiment at the age of 17 to be listed as a “shepherd”? Although, in my opinion, there was nothing reprehensible in this.

No. 156 01.09.2000 “Day”
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