Arkady Gaidar is a hero of the civil war. Arkady Gaidar became a hero after brutally killing women and children? Drummer's nightmares

Seventy years ago, on October 26, 1941, the writer Arkady Petrovich Gaidar (Golikov) passed away.

The fate of this man, if you look without ideological blinders ("white" or "red" - it doesn't matter) is 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 only read by children, but gave rise to a real social movement among teenagers who called themselves “Timurovites.” So, today fans of Tolkien’s novels call themselves “Tolkienists” - different times, different morals, different “Timurites”...

Arkady Gaidar after leaving the army. Last meeting with my sick mother. Alupka. 1924 Photo: From the family archive

But that's not even the main thing. The mystery of Gaidar’s personality is how this born warrior, who took part in the bloodiest Civil War in Russian history, which claimed millions of lives on both sides, could write a work of such lyrical depth as “The Blue Cup”? You may not know about Gaidar’s life, but it is absolutely impossible not to fall unconditionally in love with the author (namely the author!) of this pure and touching story of the love of adults and children’s complicity in the love of adult parents! It is impossible not to choke with delight after reading the first lines of the story “School”: “Our town of Arzamas was quiet, all in gardens, enclosed by shabby fences. In those gardens grew a great variety of “parental cherries,” early ripening apples, thorns and red peonies.” Because everything here breathes not with a bloody revolution, but with deep Russia, which the writers of a completely different ideological “front” knew - Bunin, Shmelev, Zaitsev...

What about "Drummer's Fate"? Is this really a thing about “spies” and “bandits” who deceived a Soviet teenager, who in the end turned out to be vigilant and took up a pistol? Of course not! This is a story about a boy who dreamed of becoming a midshipman and sailing far, far away, into unknown distances, away from all these “spies” and “bandits,” and at the same time from this vigilant state. This is a great teen adventure novel, like Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn. There, too, if you remember, the boy was left without parents and is floating somewhere all the time (only on a raft, and not on a beautiful ship, but what is the difference, in essence?), and he is also surrounded by adult swindlers, the King and the Duke, and other adult idiots shoot each other, obsessed with their "American Dream". But it is impossible to deceive a child’s soul, just as it is impossible to deceive God. And it is still the boys with childish wisdom who are right, and not the adults with adult stupidity. That's what this story is about.

Nevertheless, there are many dark myths and legends about the life of Arkady Gaidar. In this regard, many questions have accumulated that we asked Boris Nikolaevich Kamov, a teacher, publicist, and biographer of Gaidar. For the book "Arkady Gaidar. A Target for Newspaper Killers" he was awarded the Artem Borovik Prize for 2010.

Myth one: cruelty

Russian newspaper: Is it true that Arkady Golikov (the future Arkady Gaidar) was from the nobility?

Boris Kamov: Half. Mother, Natalya Arkadyevna, belonged to an ancient (300 years old!), but poor noble family. Father, Pyotr Isidorovich, was the son of a serf. All men in the mother's family chose military service.

RG: Is it true that at the age of 14 he commanded a regiment?

Kamov: Wrong. Arkady Petrovich Golikov was born in 1904. Until the end of 1918, he studied in the fifth grade of the Arzamas Real School. At the end of the same year he became an adjutant to the commander of a local labor battalion. Suddenly the commander was appointed commander of the troops for the protection of all railways of the Soviet Republic. Arkady remained with him as an adjutant, head of the communications center. Left for Moscow.

In 1919 he graduated from the Kyiv command courses and at the age of 15 became a company commander. The regiment was entrusted to him at the age of 16 after receiving his second military education at the Shot school. During his studies, teachers from former officers discovered the young man's leadership abilities. The regiment received by the future writer consisted of 4,000 people. Golikov was afraid of such responsibility and asked for a lower position. In response, he... was sent to the Tambov province. There he soon became the head of the combat area. 6,000 people were under his command.

RG: Vladimir Soloukhin wrote in his book “Salt Lake” that his “bloody cruelty” was evident in the Tambov region.

Kamov: However, he did not provide a single document. In my book I showed: Soloukhin attributed to Golikov the criminal acts of other commanders. By 1921, both the rebels and the federal authorities 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 seventeen-year-old regiment commander Golikov, whose civilian education amounted to five unfinished classes, came to the famous commander. He 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 offer? - the commander asked politely. He was a very well-mannered man.

If a person comes out of the forest, hands over 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. I think that at that moment the future writer remembered that he was the grandson of a serf.

RG: Soloukhin also wrote that Golikov behaved extremely cruelly in Khakassia...

Kamov: That's also not true. 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, two wounds and two military educations.

When Golikov was already in Moscow and preparing to take the 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 was sent to Khakassia not as an executioner, but “as someone who knows how to negotiate with the local population.”

The Siberian authorities hated the envoy from Moscow, offended that the capital sent a boy to solve all local problems. He was appointed head of a 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 commander of the combat area around the clock.

Golikov’s direct boss, Kudryavtsev, regularly wrote denunciations against him to the provincial GPU. The denunciations have been preserved. When there were too many of them, Golikov was recalled to Krasnoyarsk. Here, four departments opened criminal cases against him: the ChON, the GPU, the prosecutor's office of the 5th Army and the control commission under the Yenisei provincial party committee... Each authority conducted an independent investigation. Accusations like: “Why did you throw children into wells?”, or: “Why did you drown several hundred Khakass in the Salt Lake?” were simply not in the folders. The questions were discussed: why did he “not pay for the six sheep taken from the residents?” He was also suspected of... collaboration with Solovyov. Accusations of “genocide of the Khakass people” arose only 70 years later.

Nevertheless, the villainous, cannibalistic facts cited by Soloukhin were confirmed. There were mass executions and group drownings in lakes (100 people each!). There is only one inaccuracy in Soloukhin's book. The crimes were committed by other officials. Moreover, one and a half to two years before Golikov’s appearance in Khakassia. He never had any “bloody ideology”. His letters from the war to his relatives, especially his father, are full of tenderness.

In fact, Golikov in Khakassia decided the fate of only three captured Solovyov intelligence officers. They agreed to cooperate with the commander, but in a combat situation they deceived him.

RG: How did the criminal cases end?

Kamov: He was acquitted by all four authorities, proving his complete innocence - and this at the age of 18, without lawyers! Then I bought a ticket and went to Moscow to enter the General Staff Academy again. And here it was discovered that he was sick. Four simultaneous investigations were not in vain. His military career was cut short.

Myth two: illness

RG: Was he discharged from the army?

Kamov: Not right away. The then Minister 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 there was no complete recovery.

RG: Is it true that after Khakassia he became a mentally ill person?

Kamov: He was never mentally ill. In fact, in 1919, during a battle, he was torn from his saddle by a blast wave. He fell badly - on his back. He received a severe head concussion. In a quiet life, the consequences of a fall might not be felt for a long time. During the war, the disease made itself known three years later.

He was diagnosed with traumatic neurosis. This is not destruction of the brain, but a periodic disruption of the blood supply to its cells. Such disruptions can lead to short-term behavioral disturbances, but as soon as the oxygen supply is restored, the person is completely healthy until the next attack. The psyche and abilities do not suffer. Compare the story "RVS" with "Chuk and Gek". His talent has only improved over the years.

RG: Where then did the rumors come from that he slashed himself with a razor?

Kamov: If a person has spasms in only one vessel, he looks for a headache pill. During attacks, Gaidar experienced several constrictions at the same time. The condition became unbearable. To stop the pain in his head, he caused pain in his own body. Doctors call this “distraction therapy.”

Statements by false Gaidar scholars that Gaidar attempted his own life, that he was therefore regularly taken to the Sklifosovsky Institute, have no evidence.

Myth three: success

RG: Gaidar the writer was a successful Soviet author? Party servant? Did you often compromise?

Kamov: Classic portraits of a smiling Gaidar gave rise to an opinion about his unclouded life. About "warmed by power." 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 tunic. 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, he was awarded the order along with other writers, 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 highest party officials

management 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.

Death of Gaidar

RG: The end of Gaidar's life is shrouded in darkness... He died at the beginning of the war, didn't he? It seems that there was not a single eminent writer who would go to war, and not just as a front-line correspondent.

Kamov: Gaidar submitted his first application with a request to be sent to the front on June 23, 1941. The military registration and enlistment office 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. When he appeared on the front line, near Kiev, it became obvious to everyone that he had come to fight.

Together with the soldiers of battalion commander I.N. Prudnikov, he went to the German rear for the “tongues”, went on the attack and in one battle carried Prudnikov himself out from under fire, who lost consciousness from a shell shock. Before the fall of Kyiv, Gaidar was offered a seat on a plane flying to Moscow. Arkady Petrovich refused. "Why?" "Ashamed!" Stalin and Budyonny abandoned the then best army of 600,000 men near Kiev. But these were his readers. Gaidar did not find it possible for himself to abandon them either.

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 Semenovka. He entered the forest and found despondency 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 fighter pilot, Colonel A.D. Orlov, they formed three assault columns and fought their way out of the forest, 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.

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...

He decided to create his own partisan detachment, but of the 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. All that remained was to stock up on provisions for the road to the Chernigov forests.

On the morning of October 26, 1941, Gaidar and four 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 up a high railway embankment and saw an ambush.

There was still a possibility of escape. All it took was a dash across a single-track embankment. The Nazis were ready to allow the partisan who was standing on the hill to leave. The Germans needed “tongues”, not corpses. Gaidar had the opportunity to perform any action, but only one.

Guys, Germans! - he shouted.

A machine gun burst rang out. Gaidar died, but four comrades remained alive. The fate of the two is unknown to me personally. Lieutenant Sergei Abramov, who accompanied Gaidar on the 26th, later became Kovpak’s main bomber. Another lieutenant, Vasily Skrypnik, reached Berlin. I was friends with both of them. One day, when we 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.

What was Arkady Gaidar really like?

Arkady Gaidar is remembered primarily as a famous Soviet writer working in the genre of children's literature. Those who were born during the Soviet era probably remember his popular works, such as “Chuk and Gek”, “Blue Cup”, “Timur and His Team” and many others. They were included in many collected works and children's books published in the Soviet Union. These stories were read to children by their parents, and some of them were once taught as part of the school curriculum.

But not everyone knows that one of the favorite writers of Soviet children was also a bloody murderer, a psychopath, and also an executioner, whose activities can rightfully fill several pages in that section of the history of the USSR that concerns the times of the so-called Red Terror.

Little-known facts about the life of Arkady Gaidar

Arkady Petrovich Gaidar (real name Golikov) was born at the very beginning of the twentieth century on the territory of the Kursk province. It is known that his parents participated in the revolutionary uprisings that took place back in 1905, and therefore they were forced to leave their place of residence.

After the October Revolution, when Arkady was only about fourteen years old, he joined the Communist Party. That same year he was enlisted in the Red Army. The future writer took part in the fighting on the battlefields of the Civil War, where he was wounded and shell-shocked. After that, he was sent to study, where he underwent training in command courses. As a result, already in 1921 he became the commander of the 58th separate regiment of the Red Army.

Arkady Gaidar in the Civil War

Also in 1921, the 58th separate regiment, under the control of Gaidar, took part in the suppression of the Kronstadt uprising. Then Arkady continued to serve in the so-called special units (or simply CHON), which performed the functions of punitive detachments. According to some reports, with them he took part in the bloody and cruel events that took place in Bashkiria and Khakassia.

There, Arkady Gaidar allegedly received an order to find and destroy Solovyov’s detachment, which consisted of officers who acted under the leadership of Kolchak, as well as local villagers. Having failed to catch the legendary White partisan, he brought his anger down on ordinary people who lived in small villages. According to eyewitnesses, a huge number of residents of Khakassia were killed or tortured to death. People were shot, their limbs were cut off, they were thrown into wells and ice holes. In one of the episodes described by eyewitnesses of those terrible events, it is said that Arkady Gaidar personally killed about a hundred ordinary villagers with shots to the back of the head. Gaidar was diagnosed with traumatic neurosis. And even later, doctors discovered he had manic-depressive psychosis due to chronic alcoholism. Arkady spent a lot of time in psychiatric clinics, where suicidal tendencies were repeatedly noted in his behavior (he cut himself with a razor several times). In addition, he suffered from an advanced form of alcoholism, which never allowed him to have a normal personal life.

The nineties were the time of Gaidar the oprichnik, Gaidar the punisher. Not the former god of the red Olympus, not the kind-eyed counselor playing the sopilka for the pioneers - the young battalion commander on a bloody hot stallion appeared to the stunned fellow citizens: 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, they drove him away: “Go,” they say, “Gaidar the Executioner, 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...

The new Gaidar study - “psychiatric” - was formed in the early nineties. The epigraph to it can be the famous “diary” phrase: “ I dreamed about people I killed as a child...».

This one has an excellent (jokes aside, strong line!) " dreamed about people» there is no primary source. That is, there is no such mossy general notebook, no yellowed piece of paper where Gaidar himself would have written down this confession. The dreamed dead live exclusively in the research space of the “new Gaidar studies.” A dead detachment without a clan-tribe marches in formation from article to article. Each new text refers to a previous citation - mutual responsibility. Petrov says: “I read about this from Ivanov.” If you press Ivanov, he points at Sidorov, and Sidorov refers to Petrova.

All the other “truth” about Gaidar exists in the same way. And she is terrible: the red Billy the Kid, who killed - H. L. Borges will not let you lie - more than one thousand people, not counting the Khakass.

At least the writer Vladimir Soloukhin, author of the pseudo-documentary novel “Salt Lake,” counts in the thousands. Soloukhinskaya truth is strong in its artistry and detail. Consider one Khakass grandmother from the memoirs of cultural figure G. Topanov, an old woman who carefully collected her son’s brains in a wooden bowl after the young psychopath Gaidar smashed his head with a Mauser...

If this de-re-vya-ya-ya-nn-oh (glass or tin) bowl with brains had not been there, then one would have doubts, because the eyewitness to the crime Topanov (perhaps the only named witness in “The Lake”) At that moment he was five years old, but he remembered that the commander in the hat fired from the Mauser. And since only Arkady Gaidar wore a hat throughout the entire country of the Soviets, you understand...

In a good way, the ill-fated hat as a sign of a killer is a little more significant than, say, pants. The killer was wearing pants. And Gaidar wore pants.

But one bowl of brains is not enough. No scale. He ordered two thousand white officers who surrendered to be cut down with sabers. Soaked - both literally and figuratively, and in the Putin sense - in the Lake of God the local residents: since then there has been a taboo there against fish that have eaten human flesh. Seventy-six people - children and old women inclusive - he personally shot with a machine gun: they put them in a line and mowed them down. (The number 76 is another detail that works for reliability. Here are a hundred people - this is doubtful, but 76 seems to be reliable. But personally, I would write 73. This is more optimal. Or 69. 81 is also possible).

There is even a quote from Stalin himself (here Soloukhin honestly says - “the quote is attributed to Stalin”), who seemed to say, marveling at the deeds of the bloody youth: “We will forgive him, but will the Khakass forgive him?” It seems that in 1922 the bestial antics of Chonovets Arkady Golikov received an all-Russian resonance. The little demon asked for forgiveness, and the Devil, with caution, absolved his sins...

But in 1922, Stalin, who had just taken up the then relatively modest position of General Secretary of the RKPb, was not authorized to punish or pardon the cruel battalion commander from the Yenisei province and utter historical phrases.

There is one serious problem with the “truth” about Gaidar. There is not a single document testifying to the cutting down of relic officers, about machine-gun fun and the ice battle on Lake God... For serious research, the lack of materials is a problem.

To this, the new Gaidar scholars had a verified answer - the documents of that terrible time simply did not survive. Therefore, the atrocities had to be reconstructed on our own - to our own taste.

How come the documents were not preserved? Here they are, in the archives. Every sneeze of Gaidar is recorded. Where he went, what he ordered - all of Gaidar, at a glance. He really was under the hood of the GPU. There were denunciations, he was checked, interrogated. And during the entire investigation, the eighteen-year-old battalion commander did not receive one complaint from the local population, and they probably would not have missed the opportunity to draw up a paper and get even with the killer.

Gaidar, of course, is rampant. But exclusively in the virtual space of psychiatric Gaidar studies. Caught in slander, it wriggles out with Jesuitical dexterity.

He asks, looking into his eyes: “Was it a scary time?”

I answer: “It’s not simple...

- Is the Civil War a fratricidal blah-blah-blah?

I cautiously agree: “Blah blah blah...

- Did Gaidar cut himself with a razor?

There’s nothing to cover: “It happened, I cut it.” But this is...

Relieved: “Well, and you say, Gaidar didn’t kill.” He killed like a darling. He's a great guy!

And how can one not cite a characteristic paragraph from “The Fate of a Drummer”?

« “Yurka,” I objected, “I didn’t eat any popsicle.” It was you who ate, and I went straight in the dark and sat down.

- Here you go! - Yurka winced. - I bought six pieces for everyone. I sat on the edge. I took one for myself and gave the other five to you. I remember very well: just as Charlie Chaplin was flying into the water, everyone was screaming and cackling, and I was giving you ice cream... Do you remember how Charlie Chaplin was flying into the water?

- Do you remember, as soon as he got out, the rope pulled - and he went back into the water?

- And I remember that.

- You see now! You remember everything yourself, but you say: you didn’t eat. Not good, brother! »

The only witnessed martyrs who died from Gaidar’s machine gun were the civilized German National Socialists who visited the USSR in 1941 on a liberation mission. 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 - he handed over the ribbons. Their machine gun crew delayed and drove back a detachment of two hundred.

For such a feat, a fighter usually received an order - at the beginning of the war, the “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, he is entitled to an order; I went with the soldiers on reconnaissance, took a “tongue” - also an 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. The real witnesses of his heroic service are 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 - the posthumous Order of the Patriotic War, 1st degree. Here the Soviet Motherland showed unexpected stinginess towards the fallen hero.

The Frenchman Exupery, a pilot-writer, a specialist in “those he has tamed,” went to the front, flew over the ocean and did not return. He disappeared and became a world celebrity. A wonderful romantic image.

But by golly, in comparison with our Arkady Petrovich, the French pilot is more like a character in a joke, a heroic Mitka, who, saving a lady, jumps overboard the liner - “and immediately drowns.”

A resounding pseudonym and national fame did not save the writer Arkady Gaidar from the memory of his own past - the reprisals that the young Arkady Golikov, with a bruised head and the all-powerful position of battalion commander of CHON - Special Purpose Units, carried out on the civilian population in his time. But how the same person, in the short periods between his stay in a mental hospital and heavy drinking bouts, managed to create the bright heroes of the romantic book country of Gaidaria - this is an amazing literary mystery that the writer’s biographers are struggling with to this day.

I dreamed about people I killed as a child

In the thirties of the last century, on winter evenings, young writers invariably gathered at the light of the Moscow apartment of the writer Reuben Fraerman - they exchanged news, read to each other what they had just written from the pen, argued furiously and simply had fun. One of the regulars was Arkady Gaidar. It was he, as if parodying Pushkin’s “Arzamas”, who called literary gatherings Konotops: an evening close circle - Small Konotop, once a week a larger gathering - Middle Konotop, and even when once a month up to twenty people came - Bolshoi Konotop.
According to the memoirs of K. Paustovsky, “an amazing competition of epigrams, stories, unexpected thoughts arose, striking in their generosity and freshness... Plots, themes, inventions and observations fermented in us like new wine... Gaidar always came with new humorous poems. I remember one where Gaidar, in very touching tones, indulged in thoughts about his future death: “Konotop women will tie a fragrant wreath to the grave, Konotop girls will say: Why did this boy die…” The poems ended with a plaintive cry: “Oh, give me the car quickly! Oh, take me to Konotop!” The laughter sometimes didn’t stop until the morning.”
No one suspected that Gaidar's joke inadvertently revealed a longing for the impossible - for the oblivion of such darkness in the dense depths of his soul that it was terrible to look into. Few of his friends knew about the strange attacks when he suddenly grabbed a razor and began to slash himself. “I was young, I had never seen anything like it in my life, and that terrible night made a terrifying impression on me,
- journalist and writer Boris Zaks decided to tell about this only half a century later in a foreign publication, - Gaidar cut himself. Safety razor blade. One blade was taken away from him, but as soon as he turned away, he was already cutting himself with another. He asked to go to the restroom, locked himself, did not answer. They broke the door, and again he cut himself wherever he got a blade. They took him away in an unconscious state, all the floors in the apartment were covered with blood that had coagulated into large clots... I thought he wouldn’t survive... At the same time, it didn’t look like he was trying to commit suicide, he wasn’t trying to inflict a mortal wound on himself, he was just organizing some kind of “shahsey-vahsey” (religious self-torture. - Ed.). Later I happened to see him in shorts. The entire chest and arms below the shoulders were completely - one to one - covered with huge scars. It was clear that he had cut himself more than once.”
In Gaidar's diaries about these seizures
- not a word. He came up with a code for secret recordings. He wrote down, for example, that he was again tormented by recurring dreams, and then only noted: dreams “according to scheme 1”, “according to scheme 2”... But somehow he apparently lost control over himself, and burst out in plain text: “I was dreaming about people , killed by me in childhood."
Within the framework of the official biography, this cry of the soul was not too out of context. It was known that from childhood Arkady Gaidar, then Golikov, perceived life as an exciting game of war. It’s another matter that the war was real - bloody, fratricidal - civil. Only in modern times did it become clear: the young man played so terribly, stunned by the right to execute and pardon given to him, that he was forced to be abruptly stopped by his own superiors, who were by no means distinguished by a meek disposition, who themselves had piles of victims in that meat grinder. So which of the killed did Gaidar dream about?

Print on blood

What Gaidar wanted and could not forget was revealed more than half a century later in the revealing wave of the 80s. The name of Golikov is imprinted in black letters in the memory of people who witnessed the Red Terror in Khakassia. About this - in the book by V. Soloukhin “Salt Lake”.
There is a lake in Khakassia - once it was called God's, then they began to call it simply Big. Locals have not fished there since the 1920s, when Arkady Golikov, an eighteen-year-old battalion commander of the ChON - Special Purpose Units, appeared in those parts. A terrible right was vested in the “special appointment” of his plenipotentiary representative. By order of Golikov, local residents were pushed alive into the hole under the ice - this is how he dealt with the hostages because he could not get from anyone where Solovyov’s gang was hiding, which he was sent here to destroy. So many people were drowned in that lake, old-timers said, that catching fish that fed on human flesh became an unspoken taboo here for many decades. So which of the killed did Gaidar dream about? Maybe those drowned in the lake?
Or maybe he dreamed of the population of an entire village, seventy-six people, who fell under his inflamed rage - among them were old women and children, whom he “lined up in one line, placed a machine gun in front of them: “If you don’t tell me, I’ll kill them all.” They didn't say. I sat down at the machine gun and... everyone..."
How many of them, shot and tortured with his own hands or on his orders, must have been dreamed of by Gaidar, if he had been gaining experience in such massacres since the age of fifteen!
He was born in 1904. In 1818 he joined the Red Army, he was only fourteen. And the very next August 1919, his service record indicated a position that gave a minor boy the right to merciless terror: “Commissar of the detachment of cadets who pacified the Kuban Cossacks.” There is no evidence left of Golikov’s actions at that time, but the numerous documents published about the so-called “decossackization” give an idea of ​​what kind of “valor” should have been shown in relation to the Cossacks and their families in order to receive even greater powers. And he got it: at the age of seventeen, by order of the commander of the troops of the Tambov province, Mikhail Tukhachevsky, he was appointed commander of the 58th separate regiment to combat banditry.
From Soloukhin: “... Sverdlov issued a decree “On the decossackization of Russia.” That is, about the extermination of the Don and Kuban Cossacks. And the regions of the Don Army and the Kuban Cossacks were surrounded, and the villages were burned and the entire population of one or another village, along with children and women, was shot in one night. This outrage lasted for two weeks. Who did all this? Not combat, not field, not combat units of the Red Army. This was done by Special Purpose Units. Abbreviated as CHON...
Before the shooting volleys on the Don and Kuban had time to die down, the peasantry in the Tambov province rebelled. They could not stand the robbery, surplus appropriation, food detachments, hunger, which led to cannibalism and child-eating, and they rebelled. About two hundred thousand people took part in the Tambov uprising, and it was led by thirty-four-year-old A. S. Antonov.
A regular army under the command of Tukhachevsky was moved against the Tambov men. But since the main means of fighting the rebels was the hostage system, Tukhachevsky could not do without Special Purpose Units. It was done like this. A man left his family for Antonov, and his entire family was arrested. Several men left the village to join Antonov, and the entire village was arrested (or even simply burned). But the hostages must then be shot. How can we get by without CHON? Arkady Golikov was sent to Tukhachevsky. Golikov’s biographer wrote about this: “... the conversation with Tukhachevsky was short. Mikhail Nikolaevich said that he invited him (Golikov) to get to know him better, that although the rebellion as such had been eliminated as a whole, there was still a lot of work to do..." Well, Golikov, despite his youth, was no longer used to such work..."
By that time, young Golikov had received an injury that did not have the best effect on the state of his psyche - the shock wave from the explosion of the shell threw him off his horse, and he severely bruised the right side of his head. With an untreated shell shock, but with “combat” experience, having firmly learned that there are no civilians in a civil war - only one’s own and enemies, and enemies should be dealt with mercilessly, after the Tambov region he was sent to Khakassia to destroy Solovyov’s rebel detachment.
From Soloukhin: G. F. Topanov, Khakass writer, testifies. “On an early spring morning in 1922, five armed horsemen rode into our village of Togyr Chul, which clings to the spurs of the Kuznetsk Ala-Tau. Stopping on the road, they called my father, who was standing at the gate. I was playing in the neighboring yard. He ran towards the noise. One of the riders shouted at my father. He was a tall, very young guy. On his head is a hat, very familiar to us from photographs and pictures of the Civil War. It was shifted to one side. This is how I remember the legendary hero, “the horseman galloping ahead,” the red commander Arkady Golikov-Gaidar. He was swinging his whip. Then he pulled out a Mauser and fired. Father fell. Another shot rang out. The riders immediately turned around and galloped off along the road. I remember I sat down next to my father, looking at his bloody face. That's all I remember about my father. Then they said that our grandmother collected her son’s brains in a wooden cup...”
The young battalion commander became arrogant, imagined himself to be the arbiter of destinies and, apparently, was surprised when he received an order from his superiors from Krasnoyarsk to report to the center to clarify certain circumstances. It turned out that even by Chonov's standards he had exceeded the permissible level of bloodletting. Soloukhin suggests that someone at the top realized that Golikov’s actions were political chaos, because he was making the Khakass hostile towards the Russians, and yet the Soviet government was perceived as Russian power. They urgently came up with a reason that was ridiculous at that time - the battalion commander was supposed to send some prisoners to the center, but he criminally shot them because he could not find free people for the convoy. This occasion later gave biographers the opportunity to heatedly argue: how many prisoners did he shoot? Some said 16 people, others said half as many, and others said that he used “only” four. As if this number changed something in the massacre carried out by the Chonovites.
From Soloukhin: “There are no transcripts of the proceedings in this case, but there is a conclusion on case No. 274. In this conclusion, the commander of the CHON province V. Kakoulin wrote: “My impression: Golikov, by ideology, is an unbalanced boy who, using his official position, committed a number of crimes.” ... The chairman of one of the verification commissions, namely Comrade Wittenberg, demanded a trial for Golikov and capital punishment, that is, execution. Golikov's biographers claim that the trial did not take place. A researcher at the Institute of History of Khakassia, Sergei Mikhailovich Todyshev, assured me that there was a trial and that Golikov was sentenced to death, but that Tukhachevsky, being at the height of his government position at that time, saved his former subordinate by recalling him from Krasnoyarsk to Moscow “for treatment.” Both are plausible, because by this time it became clear to everyone that Golikov needed to be treated. That he is not just a killer (all Chonovites are killers), but that he is a killer - a psycho, that he is a killer - a maniac.”
The fact that Golikov’s head was not all right was also suspected by those who witnessed the strange ritual with which he accompanied the re-recruitment of Solovyov’s spies whom he had captured. They say that he wrote on a piece of canvas (there was no paper): so-and-so “is my intelligence officer. Head of the combat area CHON 2 Golikov.” Then he pulled out a knife, cut his hand, dipped the seal in the blood and sealed it to a rag. It made an indelible, shocking impression.
Where's my black gun?
There is no reason not to trust Soloukhin when he relies on documents and eyewitness accounts. However, having gone into a frenzy, he is ready to come up with ideas where there are no facts, but he really wants to. This applies, in particular, to Gaidar’s childhood. A mysterious entry in his diary, “I dreamed about people I killed as a child,” leads Soloukhin to an unsubstantiated guess: even before joining the army, the boy killed someone.
He even knows who: “And the theme of three young beautiful women, three Arzamask sisters arises in painful dreams, in nightmares. If there was one, it would be clearer and simpler. Is it enough? Well, a teenager fell in love with a Russian beauty, even if she was older than him, and she was inaccessible, unattainable and remained a bright memory for the rest of her life. But why three? And why did they then come to the adult Chonovets not as a bright fairy tale, but as a heavy nightmare?.. It is impossible to document... but intuition suggests: did the young r-revolutionary slap them (italics ed.)? After all, I suppose the sisters were noblewomen or, in any case, intellectuals.”
Until the reader figures out what happened and what didn’t happen, Soloukhin’s subsequent speculation is firmly based on the newly invented murders as a fact that does not require proof: “Apparently, guessing about the bloody tricks of her son, or even knowing about them, the mother begged her friend, take Arkasha to the detachment (Chonov detachment) as soon as possible. From Chonovets, even if something were revealed, the bribes are smooth. And then, it was clear that the detachment from Arzamas would soon leave. For Golikov it was: the sooner the better.”
But this is an outright lie on the part of the writer Soloukhin, contrary to historical facts. There were no “bloody tricks” and there were no Chonov detachments in the 18th - they began to be created only a year later. However, the picture that Soloukhin lacked to completely complete the image was created. This is how a sensation starts.
Let us still adhere to the known facts.
As a child, Arkady Gaidar, like all boys of his time, raved about exploits and even tried to escape to the war - he was nine years old when the First World War began. He was born into a family where he heard a lot of hot revolutionary speeches. Father Pyotr Isidorovich was from the peasants, mother Natalya Arkadyevna was from an impoverished noble family and had a distant relationship with Lermontov’s descendants. Both were teachers, both believed in the February Revolution of 1905 and took part in its events throughout the city of Lgov, Kursk province. Therefore, when the arrests began, they had to move. Gaidar always considered Arzamas his hometown - he lived there from the age of eight. Like all boys, he ran away from classes to accompany the trains to the front. My father left with one of the trains. The first-grader failed to rush off to war - he was intercepted at one of the stations.
October 17 turned life in Arzamas upside down; the city became one of the revolutionary centers. Thirteen-year-old Arkady got in the way of adults, asked to go on patrol, “became like our messenger and intelligence officer,” one of the old revolutionaries said many years later. Then, on the sly, he got hold of a Mauser. “Weapons were brought and sold by soldiers,” testifies B. Kamov, a researcher of the life and work of Gaidar. - “Nizhny Novgorod Listok” published advertisements: “A low-maintenance revolver with a box of cartridges is for sale.” He carried a short-barreled, flat-top Mauser in his trouser pocket." Having a Mauser but not shooting it is too much of a temptation for a boy. I shot at the windows of the cathedral with my friend - that was it. And there was an unintentional shot in the classroom when classmates tried to take away the weapons - many years later Gaidar would describe this episode in the story “School”. But even while on patrol, he did not have to use the Mauser.
With his activity, the boy became such an eyesore to everyone that no one was surprised when he acquired guarantors and in 1918 submitted an application: “To the committee of the Communist Party. I ask you to accept me into the Arzamas organization of the RCP (b)” (there was no Komsomol cell yet). The decision was positive, but cautious: “Accept A. Golikov into the party with the right of an advisory vote due to his youth and from now on until the party’s education is complete.” However, there was no time to educate. Three months later, the fourteen-year-old Bolshevik, having said goodbye to his weeping mother and three sisters, went into the Red Army. This is how, in essence, Arkady Golikov’s childhood ended. And no matter how you look at it, it’s worth admitting: no one would accept into the ambitious Bolshevik Party of the 1918 model a boy who had stained himself in peaceful life with “bloody tricks.”

Philasha, let's have a drink, you fool!

At what point does the furious Arkady Golikov, blinded by “revolutionary necessity,” end and the romantic writer, good friend of children Arkady Gaidar begin? Is this really one person? One can only speculate about how sharply the turning wheel of fate made the retired battalion commander understand something about it and be horrified. Otherwise, where did the dreams “according to patterns” come from, and the fits, and the binges... Maybe he was running away from himself into his books, into an imaginary life with a clear and bright horizon, in which the division into friends and enemies was clear, and therefore there was no question , whose side is the truth - of course, on the side of his brave and strong-willed heroes. In this clear world he was already called Gaidar.
There are different versions of where the pseudonym came from. He answered questions evasively and chuckled. The most romantic popular version, but also the most far-fetched, was the beautiful legend that in the Mongolian language this word means “a horseman galloping in front.”
Soloukhin presented his own gloomy version: Gaidar - from the Khakass word “haidar”, which translates as the question “where?” It seems that Golikov, in conversations with residents, only kept repeating: “haidar?”, asking where Solovyov had gone. That's what they supposedly called him. However, a pseudonym is not a nickname. It is difficult to imagine that, of his own free will, a writer would take a name reminiscent of his own atrocity.
The most plausible thing is a code. Back in Arzamas, Arkady and his school friend came up with a game - they inventively encrypted everything in sight. He returned to his childhood, creating a bizarre abbreviation from the letters of his name and city: Golikov Arkady from Arzamas, where “from” was replaced by the French “d’”, as in the name d’Artagnan. It turned out: G(olikov) A(rkadi)YDAR(zamas). It’s puzzling, but in spirit it’s very similar to him.
Perm readers were the first to recognize this name. After hospital troubles and a period of confusion, when he was completely discharged (but not for his actions in Khakassia - but for health reasons), all he could do was take up journalism. After wandering around the country, in 1925 he settled in Perm and settled in the newspaper Zvezda. Work and life were easy, the past was hidden in the dark recesses of memory - it was obscured by love. He married seventeen-year-old journalist Liya Solomyanskaya and had a son, Timur. In just over a year, Gaidar published about three dozen stories and essays and four novellas, the most famous of which is “R.V.S.”
The cloudless life was interrupted by a scandal. Gaidar should have made forensic investigator Filatov the hero of the feuilleton. He raised a fuss and brought the matter to court. It was impossible to refute the facts stated in the publication, and the accusation of libel fell apart. But the court still found Gaidar guilty of insult - Filatov’s interlocutor, invented by the author, addressed him with the words: “judicial soul, Filasha, let’s have a drink, you fool.” From that day on, the careful editor of the newspaper began to find fault with every word and wrote several feuilletons. Gaidar moved to Sverdlovsk and then to Moscow.
It didn't go well. There Leah found new love. Gaidar became sad and started drinking. From the diary: “And, in general, - hustle and bustle, parties. And because 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... Overnight stays
- wherever necessary. Money, lack of money, money again. They treat me very well, but there is no one to take care of me, and I don’t know how to do it myself.”
Then there was work in the Khabarovsk newspaper Pacific Star, and again Moscow, and Klin, where he married again and acquired an adopted daughter, Zhenya. The books “School”, “Distant Countries”, “Military Secret”, “The Blue Cup” were published... Popularity grew. And he was tormented by duality, tormented by dreams, the shadows of the past loomed, and he increasingly fell into binges, cut himself with a razor, ended up in psychiatric hospitals and wrote desperate letters from there.
From a letter to R. Fraerman: “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 completely close to the truth, sometimes - just about - and cheerful, simple, it is ready to roll off the tongue, but as if some voice is sharply warning me - beware! Do not say! Otherwise you’ll be lost!”...
Whatever Gaidar meant by these “perverted” and “beware”, his actions testified to open courage bordering on recklessness. During the years of repression, when he learned that his first wife had been arrested, he without hesitation rushed to call the all-powerful Yezhov: “Why did you arrest my Liyka!” When on sleepless nights people listened with beating hearts to whose soul the boots on the stairs were thundering again, he wrote “The Fate of a Drummer,” about a boy whose father was arrested. And the editor, sweating with fear, forwarded the story so that it turned out that he was arrested for banal theft. But it turned out that it is impossible to shade out the Gaidar subtext.

Ricochet with Civil

No one has ever seen Gaidar in civilian clothes. Tunic, commander's belt, boots, overcoat, hat. Paramilitary clothing corresponded to the internal mood.
This stern attitude is a refrain in every one of his books. The world of his child heroes
- a reflection of the world of adults without any allowance for age - they die in the name of bright ideals, are divided into whites and reds
- one will not survive unless he kills the other, the struggle of ideologies divides their world. Even Gaidar’s most poetic work, “The Blue Cup,” is not complete without episodes where
military exercises or memories of bygone days invade the charm of the summer peaceful landscape: “But stupid Marusya did not know that the Red Army never waits to be asked. And she herself rushes to help where the whites attacked. And already close to Marusya our Red Army detachments are advancing across the steppe. And each rifle is loaded with five rounds of ammunition, and each machine gun with two hundred and fifty”...
Arkady Golikov, who firmly believed in communism and blindly rushed into the struggle for Soviet power, has not gone away, he is in these books. And Arkady Gaidar, in his paramilitary clothes, never left the Civil War - his heroes continued it in their childhood, which in fact was not such a peaceful life. However, this reflected the mood of the entire country.
And yet, even in this black and white, without nuances, life there was a moment - Gaidar’s brakes worked. He, so irreconcilable, was sickened by the immoral smell that came from the story with Pavlik Morozov. A story was commissioned in which a 12-year-old boy hacked to death with an ax was to become a symbol of the struggle for the collective farm system. Gaidar initially took it on, received an advance and even wrote a couple of chapters. However, as I delved deeper into the material, I realized that I was falsifying it. It was too late to refuse - the first chapters were published in the magazine. He went on a saving binge. And he never returned to this topic.
But the famous Timur and his team stepped into the story from a real event. The son of Gaidar’s friend fell ill and urgently needed medicine, but there was no time to visit pharmacies one after another. Gaidar gathered the boys of the yard, gave them a piece of paper with the name of the drug and sent it to different parts of the city. The medicine was rare, yet one of the boys found it. The excitement with which the guys rushed to help gave Gaidar the idea for a story. At first it was called “Duncan and his team,” but the ideological department of the Central Committee stood up against the non-Russian name. After a long search of names (“Vasya and his team”? “Styopa and his team”? - the author was angry, they themselves don’t understand that it doesn’t sound?!) Gaidar settled on the name of his son. And it was not his fault that the game of Timur that spontaneously arose among the children was introduced by ideological officials to the rank of a forced “Timur movement.”
In 1941, with the beginning of the war, Gaidar began to rush to the front. With his bouquet of illnesses and mental disorders, he was refused. He achieved a business trip to the battle area, to Kyiv, as a correspondent for Komsomolskaya Pravda. The very first essay, “At the Crossing,” was taken out of the attack into which he rushed after the company. In that battle he got a captured machine gun and was very proud of it. The last of the essays he passed on told about the night search he went on with the scouts. During the chaotic retreat of the army, Gaidar disappeared and was only later discovered in a partisan detachment.
Further information is sketchy. It is known that he was a machine gunner in the detachment and in skirmishes with the Germans he bravely repelled their onslaught. And one more thing - he wrote a lot, kept a diary of the detachment and always kept the notes with him.
Gaidar died in the same 41st, on October 26th. He and four other partisans went to the food cache to replenish their supplies. An ambush awaited them at the trackman's house. Gaidar was the first to notice this. He could warn his comrades in the only way, and he did it - he stood up and shouted: “Guys! Germans!" Immediately he was mowed down by a machine gun burst.
The rest escaped, but could not save Gaidar's notes - they fell into the hands of enemies. Not Germans - policemen. In this section of the forest, villagers later said, there were no Germans; it was under the control of the police. And since they were from the locals, the locals willingly named the name of Gaidar’s killer - Yakov Voropai. They say he later hanged himself.
It is known that, as a rule, people who suffered during dispossession and decossackization went over to the German invaders. It turns out, by and large, Golikov-Gaidar died at the hands of those whom he himself mercilessly exterminated during the Civil War. Fate has completed the mystical circle. It’s as if the lines of Okudzhav’s song are about him: “I will still fall on that one, that one, civilian one, and the commissars in dusty helmets will bow silently over me.”

On January 22, 1904, Arkady Gaidar (Golikov) was born - one of the most controversial figures of the Soviet period in the history of our country. Many remember him as a famous children's writer. However, Arkady Petrovich did not immediately become an artist of words; there were other pages in his destiny. For example, the suppression of peasant uprisings in the Tambov province in 1921 and the anti-Soviet insurgent movement in Khakassia (then the Achinsk-Minusinsk region of the Yenisei province) in 1922. 108 years have passed since the birth of this man. Four generations have passed. The country has changed. What do our contemporaries think about Gaidar? On January 22, 1904, Arkady Gaidar (Golikov) was born - one of the most controversial figures of the Soviet period in the history of our country. Many remember him as a famous children's writer. However, Arkady Petrovich did not immediately become an artist of words; there were other pages in his destiny. For example, the suppression of peasant uprisings in the Tambov province in 1921 and the anti-Soviet insurgent movement in Khakassia (then the Achinsk-Minusinsk region of the Yenisei province) in 1922. 108 years have passed since the birth of this man. Four generations have passed. The country has changed. What do our contemporaries think about Gaidar?

Roman SENCHIN, writer, literary critic:

A talented writer for any age. I think that a sadist, a psychopath would hardly have written such works. Therefore, the stories that in 1922 Gaidar (Golikov) committed atrocities in Khakassia and destroyed innocent people seem unlikely to me. Although Gaidar, of course, killed “enemies” - and gave orders to kill. He did not hide this. It is impossible to take part in the Civil War without getting dirty with blood.

There are two points of view on Gaidar. The exponent of one was Vladimir Soloukhin with “Salt Lake,” where Gaidar is shown as a cruel killer and mentally ill person; the spokesman for the other is Boris Kamov with the book “Arkady Gaidar: a target for newspaper killers,” which heatedly argues with Soloukhin’s book. Both there are more emotions than facts. It would be worthwhile, in my opinion, to write a biography of Arkady Gaidar, collecting all the documents, studying the archives seriously, and not in haste. Surely in Khakassia in 1919 - 1922 there were commanders (both white and red) much more cruel than Gaidar. But their names were forgotten, but Gaidar’s name remained (thanks to his fame as a writer), and people’s memory transferred some of the cruelty of others onto him.

Oleg SHAVYRKIN, individual entrepreneur:

I have an extremely negative attitude towards the personality of Arkady Golikov (Gaidar). For one simple but very compelling reason: a repeat offender who took the lives of ordinary people without trial or investigation. At the same time, he often acted like modern terrorists: he took hostages and, if his demands (in most cases absolutely absurd) were not met, he simply shot civilians: women, children, and the elderly. And no amount of children’s books can cover up the evil he committed. A person who has committed so much evil, a priori, cannot bring anything positive to children and be an example for them.

Sergey REBENKOV, doctor:

As far as I know, there are no reliable facts about his punitive operations. But in his books, patriotic education, respect for elders, honesty, and hard work were at the forefront. And this played a positive role on the eve of the Great Patriotic War. Nowadays, unfortunately, there is no one to create such useful works for our youth.

Alexander KOVRIGIN, artist:

Firstly, he is Golikov, judging by this name and it is necessary, in my opinion, to relate to the essence of this person. “Golik” is a bath broom that has lost its leaves. The boy, not burdened with education, was allowed to play war, but with real weapons! And this led and continues to lead to disasters. Secondly, the books he wrote later seem to be compensation for feelings or rehabilitation, although this looks cynical. Traumatized man. Even in my childhood, such literature seemed fantastic to me. Robinson Crusoe was closer.

Valentina MELNIKOVA, writer:

First of all, he is a wonderful children's writer. As for “punishment”. I want to ask: who was Kolchak? A brilliant officer, an explorer of the North, or also a merciless and cruel punisher? We must remember the circumstances in which they lived and fought. And if you make a choice in favor of human values, then Arkady Gaidar, who made an undoubted contribution to literature and the upbringing of children, undoubtedly deserves respect and today's recognition.

About Khakassia: Gaidar served here for three months. He became a “cruel punisher” at the instigation of Soloukhin, who wrote a wild book, clearly commissioned and for a decent fee. But for some reason he did not remember Pavel Lytkin, who at that time was the head of the southern combat region and already in those days was known as an ardent fighter against banditry. He is responsible for up to a dozen defeated gangs. And Ivan Ravdo, is he exactly the same section chief as Golikov? Could it be that he, the commander of CHON, was white and fluffy? By the way, Ravdo fought against banditry in Khakassia much longer than Gaidar.

Irina KOMAROVA, deputy of the Abakan City Council:

After all, a children's writer. We read “Timur and his team” and, moreover, played this team. His books were interesting and exciting. But the book “Chuk and Gek” surprised me more than others. I liked these boys, and I remember carrying a brochure with this story in my briefcase for a month.

I will not comment on the activities of Gaidar-Golikov in Khakassia in 1922 - let historians do that.

Stanislav UGDYZHEKOV, historian:

This man was both at different times. He was a punisher and executed the unarmed, even going down in the history of Khakassia as the “mad Arkashka.” He wrote children's books, whose literary significance I personally consider exaggerated. As a rule, the plot in them is built on the confrontation between good and evil. So, in the case of Gaidar, these concepts are confused. Is Timur really that good with his iron team that crushed the naughty kids? Is it possible to imitate the teenager from the story “School” who shot a man? Golikov was an instrument of the totalitarian system both when he brandished a Mauser and when he wrote for Soviet children.

Prepared by Sergey AMELIN