Maxim Fadeev told why he quarreled with Ernst. The strong family of Maxim Fadeev The conflict of Max Fadeev

Maxim Fadeev gave a long interview to video blogger Yuri Dudu, in which he explained why he had a huge quarrel with Konstantin Ernst. A woman was involved in the conflict between the producer and the TV boss.

Initially, Fadeev and Ernst communicated well. “We have always had normal, human, warm relationships,” Maxim emphasized. The producer of the Serebro group and the general director of Channel One were at loggerheads over two television projects.
Fadeev at that moment was sitting in the jury chair on the show “Voice.Children”. “I didn’t take money for the project because I have a special relationship with children. I would feel like I was taking money from the children,” Maxim explained. – In this regard, I did not have a contract. That is, I conceptually sat on this television project. I don't regret it at all. I’m a teacher, so I was there like a duck to water.”
At this time, Ernst’s ex-wife Larisa Sinelshchikova, who is a close friend of Fadeev, turned to Maxim with a request. “She was doing another project called Main Stage. She asked me to participate. And it turned out that these projects were running in parallel, at the same time. I received a call from Kostya, he asked if I would be on air. I answered: “Naturally!” I warned the second channel that I had an agreement with Ernst, because they were the first,” the producer restored the course of events.
The employees of the second button entered his position. “They were as delicate as possible in order to console all the whims of Konstantin Lvovich,” Fadeev noted with irony. “So we waited for him to set the hour “X”. The final. And they scheduled it for the 10th. All. I warned that I would be there on the 10th, the second channel scheduled the final for the 17th.” And here problems suddenly began. “As soon as the “Main Stage” marked the 17th, Ernst called me into his office and said: “Here, you see, I added a new circle, and we will have the final on the 17th. Make a choice." I said that I keep my word. I'll be there on the 17th. Dot. And the 17th came, and I felt like an idiot - this was the first time in the entire history of television! - run from one studio to another and sit in a chair here and there. And this is live! – Fadeev emphasized in an interview. – This has happened only once in the history of world television. This incident that happened to me at the whim of an adult man.”
Now Maxim does not want to have anything to do with Konstantin. “I agree once, I don’t agree twice. And if a person changes his shoes in the air and does some other things, then that’s it, for me this book is closed forever. No chance. No compromises. He did this on purpose to put me in an extremely awkward position. And for me to make a choice. He wanted to see what choice I would make. This is a small, very feminine position. I make a choice towards my word. I don't give a damn what he thinks. He banned my music on his channel, it's just kindergarten! Child! - Fadeev is indignant. – This normal communication is over. Only God can ask me to make peace with him.”
The producer claims that with his devastating post about Channel One’s “Blue Light,” which horrified him, he did not want to prick Ernst. “He has nothing to do with Blue Light. Yes, he approves the artists, but does not delve into the repertoire. This is all done by Yuri Aksyuta, who is also an actor, has little connection to music, and directs the music broadcast of the country’s first button. Actor. But this is normal in our country. That’s why Happy New Year sounds every year, but it’s just been worn out,” the influential producer says indignantly.
He turned on the first button on New Year's Day without a second thought. “I accidentally came across this “chic” channel. I was simply shocked! He reacted absolutely sincerely and wrote, there was not a drop of revenge in it! I don’t give a damn about him at all, about his channel, his actions, his prohibitions. “I don’t care,” assured Dudya Fadeev.
Wanting to close the unpleasant topic, Maxim noted that the general director of Channel One has positive qualities. “The fact that Kostya is a talented person is a medical fact; it would be stupid to dispute, but he is a very, overly impulsive person, and this prevents him from drawing the right conclusions. he makes a lot of mistakes that are not masculine. If he personally calls and apologizes to me, I will talk to him,” the principled Fadeev gave Ernst hope for reconciliation.

On a foggy September morning in 1947, a small company in two cars left Baku and set off on a long journey. There were eight of us in total: Alexander Alexandrovich Fadeev, Samed Vurgun, myself, one respectable border guard, a serious man who understands hunting matters, then a learned man, a forestry specialist, and a real huntsman, an expert on the animal and bird world, two drivers, okay who knew all the roads of Transcaucasia.

The very composition of our company indicated that we were not going on a visit, not to meetings, not to mountaineering feats. Numerous guns of different systems in leather cases, cartridge belts, hunting bags, two dogs, accustomed to long journeys, quietly lying at the feet of the riders, betrayed the purpose of our trip to the foothills of the Greater Caucasus.

We left behind us the labor noise of a gigantic city. The forests of the Baku towers disappeared from our field of vision. The distances opened up before us.

The light black Pobeda and the tall, strong green Dodge ran quickly among the empty autumn fields, thinned groves, red, burnt-out hills, and dusty roadside rocky cliffs. Autumn had already arrived, the air was cold on the cheeks. At short stops, the smell of dry herbs, withering leaves, the smoke of distant fires, the purely southern smell of the autumn steppe, incomprehensible to northerners, was felt even more acutely, bitter, alarming, exciting.

Everything around somehow darkened, lost its lush summer colors, but these clear outlines of late autumn had their own special beauty. If nature in the north dies in winter, covered with white blankets of snow, then nature in the south, in late autumn, begins to plunge into that amazing sleep until spring, in which the sleeping beauty resides in the famous fairy tale.

We enjoyed the quiet day, the fast driving, the fluent change of scenery rushing past. It was so good to watch how distant hills and copses first appeared on the horizon in a blue haze, then they ran towards you, approaching with extraordinary speed, then they were already nearby, and you could clearly see every branch of a tree, every pattern on a stone, spots black-green mosses on a gray rock, then all this remained far behind, as if it had never existed, but had only been imagined for the briefest moment.

A strange calm descended on us after the incredibly noisy, filled to capacity days we spent in Baku and other places in the glorious Azerbaijani land.

The celebration of the great Nizami had just ended, and the most picturesque pictures of the anniversary celebrations still lived in my memory.

The guests came from all over the Soviet Union. There were foreign poets and writers, mainly from socialist countries. We plunged into the times of Nizami in order to feel even more strongly the new youth of the capital of Azerbaijan. Ancient couplets about roses and young men falling in love resounded in Baku against the backdrop of advanced technology.

Among the entire motley society, I mentally singled out two people. One of them could be called the chief guest, although he was not a poet, but he loved poetry very much and knew a lot of it by heart. It was Alexander Alexandrovich Fadeev. Everyone treated him with enormous respect and love, which increased in connection with the publication of the novel “The Young Guard.” He felt it and was in a good mood. Tall, fit, deft in his movements, he was cheerful in a good way, there was none of that dark tension in him that at times made him gloomy and irritable. He was forty-six years old, but he looked much younger than his years. He looked like a horseman, and if he had put on a mountain costume, he would have really suited him. It was not for nothing that Fadeev in his youth wore a black shirt, somewhat reminiscent of a checkmen, and was girded with a narrow Caucasian strap with a silver set.

His gray hair sparkled with blue sparks. He laughed a lot with his thin, ringing, trembling laugh.

If he seemed to me, and not only to me, the main guest, then another could be called the poetic host of the holiday, because he was undoubtedly the people's poet of Azerbaijan and he had the honor of introducing his ancient teacher to the guests and people on the day of the anniversary. It was our friend and comrade Samad Vurgun. He was in the prime of his life. He was in his forties. Thick salt covered his black, coarse hair. Wide resinous eyebrows, the eyes of a mountain eagle boldly looking at the world, the features of an energetic face spoke of great vitality, great will, and courage.

Who, if not he, should have said the first word about Nizami!

Didn’t he himself express with utmost clarity what the basis of his own poetic creativity was!

Not knowing birthdays, days of departure,
Under a thousand names in my native country -
To live, to live forever: in the immortality of the people.
In grain and word, bread and wine!..

In Azerbaijan, a country of poets, where people honor such names as Nizami, Khagani, Vagif, it is not so easy to capture hearts in order to receive high recognition as a national poet. Samad Vurgun is a singer of the people, who himself came from their ranks, who himself shared with them all their troubles and their difficult revolutionary path. He had the right to exclaim in his famous poem:

Is it possible to steal a song from your throat? - Never!
You are my breath, you are my bread and water!
Your cities opened up before me...
I'm all yours. Forever given to you as a son,
Azerbaijan, Azerbaijan!

And how strange it is for me to think today that on the station square in Baku, among a large park, our friend Samad Vurgun stands on a high granite pedestal. And he looks with a bronze gaze, and a bronze hand lies on a bronze chest. And under it are carved on the pedestal lines about his greatest love for his homeland.

And this monument was made by the same people’s artist of the republic F. Abdurakhmanov, who also made the monument to Nizami in Baku. This is how times and poets meet.

But I want to return to that foggy and amazing day in the Transcaucasian autumn, when we were all together and did not think about anything gloomy.

Even when our plane, flying to Baku from Moscow, flew over the scorched steppe in front of Stalingrad, we were struck by an extraordinary picture. The entire steppe, and this was especially clearly visible from above, was strewn with red, red, brown, rusty fragments of countless vehicles, tanks, and guns. Like iron bones, bent over a vast space, these witnesses of a grandiose battle lay, tormented by steppe storms, cut by rain, scorched by the burning sun of the steppes. They have not yet had time to disassemble and take away.

Fadeev said then, gloomily looking through the round window of the plane: “We are flying to the homeland of great epic poems, and this is the skeleton of a fascist dragon, slain by a Soviet hero. Legends will be made about this too. This event will forever remain in the memory of peoples. But how difficult it can be for a contemporary to see the full scale of what happened! You need to take off on an airplane for the altitude to allow you to see something like this. And poets also cannot write about this, as Nizami wrote. We need, so to speak, something new. Yes, yes, yes... If Mayakovsky were alive, he would have tried...”

Someone said: “He tried the epic, wrote a modern epic about 150,000,000, and saw for himself that a new myth did not work out...”

Fadeev remembered this again when he was looking around Baku. I'm afraid I'll be wrong, but, in my opinion, it was his first time in Baku in his life. He got to know the city in detail. He wanted to see everything. And when we stood at the monument to Kirov, having climbed the wide stairs to the main platform of the monument, and a view of the entire city, the sea and the surrounding area arose, he said, pointing to the bas-relief on the monument depicting Sergei Mironovich, surrounded by workers in the fields:

This is the epic of our time! Yesterday's workers of a people oppressed by poverty and darkness are today's first masters. And Kirov! You will find him in red Astrakhan, on the Volga, in the Caucasus mountains, and there he is with his iron will of a Bolshevik, he is in Leningrad, and here he is, what a force of creative aspiration, what a character! The people of Baku chose the place well! He loved space, could not live without it...

Fadeev wandered through the old city, where the streets are so narrow that in other places you can’t walk together together; you can shake hands with your neighbor across the street. We lived in a big house on the embankment. During leisure hours, mainly at night, they played billiards. Friends came and talked long after midnight.

Then there was ancient Ganja. Today it was called Kirovabad. The celebrations took place there seriously and splendidly. Fadeev made a speech at a rally at the Nizami mausoleum. When the rally ended and we were walking near the mausoleum, he stopped and began to carefully examine the surroundings. A gray plain covered in faded autumn grass, intersected by ravines, was before his eyes. Villages could be seen in the distance; nearby it was deserted.

“You know and love the Caucasus,” he suddenly said to me, “but can you fill this plain with anything?” Tell me something about this place? I wanted to imagine it as animated, but I don’t know a single event related to Ganja...

“How,” I exclaimed, amazed by the unexpected course of his thoughts, “at this place the fate of the Azerbaijani people was decided and decided!” Here the Russian army in one thousand eight hundred and twenty-six defeated the regiments of Abbas Mirza. Over there stood his sarbaz, his guards. They had guns and English instructors. There were thirty-five thousand of them, Iranians, six thousand Russians. But these were seasoned Yermolov soldiers, and with them such generals as Velyaminov, Simonovich, Madatov. Paskevich was frightened, thinking that Yermolov’s friends were deliberately setting him up for defeat. He did not know the courage and patriotism of these people. When Velyaminov, leaving his soldiers, galloped up to him to say that it was time to attack the enemy, full of vague thoughts, Paskevich could only sternly tell him: the place of the Russian general is under the cannonballs!..

Velyaminov silently turned his horse, rode ahead of his troops onto a bare mound, spread out his cloak and lay down on it. The Iranians brutally fired at him and his convoy. He was lying under the cannonballs. The hot-tempered Madatov ran up to him and asked what he was doing, why he was waiting. Velyaminov calmly answered: “I am fulfilling the order to be under the cannonballs.” Finally, Paskevich decided to give the order to attack. The battle was fierce. In the center, two Russian battalions overthrew eighteen Persian ones. Abbas Mirza and the Erivan Sardar fled with the remnants of the army. The entire camp went to the Russians.

Here it is, this Shahduzi valley. In this battle, the fate of the Azerbaijani people was decided, because if the Iranians had won, they would have fallen into terrible slavery, and the massacre in Ganja would have been inevitable. And do you know who witnessed this battle?

Who? - asked Fadeev. - I don't know.

Over there, near the Ganja tea, Mirza Fatali Akhundov was waiting for the outcome of the battle. He was fourteen years old then!..

Fadeev laughed his thin, long, beady laugh.

But, honestly, admit that you know nothing more about Ganja except this!

I know,” I said firmly, “a hundred years ago Nikoloz Baratashvili, known to you, lived and served here...

“I know this too,” said Fadeev, “Georgy Leonidze told me about this at one time... I remembered!”

After Kirovabad they wanted to show the guests Lake Gyok-Gol. It lay in the nearby mountains. This lake is the pride of the republic. But nothing came of our trip to the lake. It had rained heavily the day before and a section of the road was washed away. There was a dangerous slope into a cliff, and therefore there was great doubt about the advisability of the risk.

We had already approached this risky turn and were stopped by friends. They held a meeting at which they decided not to let Fadeev through the dangerous area. No matter how much he persuaded his friends that he was not afraid of any cliffs, that in extreme cases he would go on foot, our car was turned around, and we set off into some kind of world of shepherds, sheep flocks and mountain meadows.

We drove through sparse forests, then through bushes, spiraling higher and higher into the mountains. There was already bare stone on the sides, purely biblical views floated in the fog. A stream of sheep moved through the fog. Large stones covered with dark green moss could be seen all around. It began to rain. Its fine mesh dullly covered the surrounding area.

Where are we going? - asked Fadeev.

To the Kamo collective farm,” they answered him, “it’s already close now...

Crossing small, but angrily growling streams between boulders with dark green mosses, we reached some kind of trough-shaped hollow, and here we were met by new herds and shepherds, wildly shouting at the rams and at the dogs, who at our appearance raised such a roar and bark that nothing could be heard except these hoarse, angry rumbles. Our car stopped here. People approached her. There was still some delay. Then there were cheers and we saw a whole crowd clapping their hands together, which was unexpected and strange in this damp and rainy place.

Someone cautiously opened the car door, and Fadeev made a movement to get out of the car, but then he sharply leaned back and sat down, frowning and even somewhat confused. I rose from my seat and looked over his shoulder into the open door. I was also confused at first. A large puddle of bright red blood was spreading in front of the car, which, as I later saw, even thickly splattered the wheel.

It felt as if someone had just been hit by our car. When Fadeev refused to leave, and when leaving he had to step over this puddle of blood, people around began to fuss and start calling someone. A respectable-looking man approached us and shouted, waving his arms and stretching them towards us: “This is good, very good. Come here, dear!..” He pointed to a puddle of blood, and immediately another man shook a blue ram’s head and a bloody dagger, smiling from ear to ear, so that his teeth glowed brightly.

Fadeev was silent. Then the car was pulled back a little so that he could get out without touching the puddle. We all went out into the meadow, immediately surrounded by shepherds and friends who drove up in cars after us.

They began to explain to us that, according to ancient custom, this is how especially distinguished guests are received. A sheep is specially slaughtered so that the guest will step through its blood. This means great honor and peace between the hosts and the guest.

Soon fires were burning all around. Their flame seemed to have blown away the fog from the surrounding rocks, the barbecues began to hiss, and a feast began on the way, unexpected, but very friendly and picturesque. We sat on burkas, on stones, on the grass. The shepherds poured vodka and wine from wineskins. The day suddenly brightened, the sun appeared, and shepherd dances and songs began. For a long time we were not allowed to leave this lawn. But the feast ended, everyone thanked the hosts, and we went to Kirovabad.

On the way, Fadeev was gloomy, and I decided that this was a wild rite of hospitality - this puddle of blood at the feet of the guest -| left him feeling disgusted and confused.

“This is truly an ancient custom,” I told Fadeev, “it exists among many peoples of the East.

But listen, this is, so to speak, a disgrace,” he replied, “and it’s not for us to adhere to such customs today.” Then puddles of sheep’s blood would never dry up in front of “Aragvi” in Moscow, and how then would it be possible for eminent people, so to speak, to visit this restaurant?..

I talked about how one Arabian ruler made peace with his old enemies - the sheikhs of the desert - and invited them to his palace to make peace. Of course, they arrived full of suspicion and hidden anxiety. But for them, showing them special honor, they made a special hole in the wall so that they would not walk in the usual way, and this gap was filled with the blood of a killed camel. It is possible that the point was for them to go to the house of peace, stepping over the past bloody enmity, mutual quarrel.

Then they were seated on carpets, and the ruler himself received them. An Arabic meal starts with good water. Having seen many dark bottles of mineral water, they decided to drink only from those bottles from which the owner drinks. But the owner was prescribed special water that acts on the stomach. And the unfortunate sheikhs, having eaten wonderful dishes, soon felt pain in their stomachs, because the water began to act. Thinking that they had become victims of some kind of poison, they hardly finished their lunch and rushed headlong to the hospital, pale, with green stripes on their faces from anxiety, with eyes wide in pain. It’s good that they were explained the cause of their illness - excessive consumption of potent special mineral water. But if they had not been explained, the war would have started again that same evening with even greater ferocity.

Well, so to speak, you lied! - exclaimed Fadeev. - In what century was this? Give me the exact date...

In ours, Sasha, in ours,” I told him, “they were Soviet doctors who, it seems, treated the ruler of either Yemen or some other Arab kingdom. And that was several years ago. I read about this somewhere...

“You made it all up,” said Fadeev, already laughing good-naturedly at the suffering of the imaginary ill Arabs.

He soon forgot about how he was met on the Kamo collective farm, but I still mentally returned to this episode more than once, I don’t even know why, and somehow I suddenly remembered the incident with Fadeev and me on the Leningrad front, in years of war.

I knew that Fadeev was a very brave man, and he couldn’t be any different. Everyone knows how he went to storm the rebellious Kronstadt forts and was wounded in the process. It was difficult to confuse him with the sight of blood.

In May of '42, I found myself with Vishnevsky and Fadeev at a long-range naval artillery position located on the right bank of the Neva, quite close to the front line, which at first surprised Fadeev. But the commander of the unit, an old honored artilleryman, a sailor, experienced in all dangers, explained that when they built platforms for guns, naturally designed to operate at the greatest distance, they did not foresee that the opposite, close, left bank would be in the hands of the enemy.

Now there is no way to evacuate the batteries, and they must, of course, not fire at trenches or dugouts on the enemy bank. The caliber of the guns is such that it should cause harm to the Germans in the distant rear, which its batteries do with benefit.

And, knowing about the existence of these weapons, the enemy wants to destroy them at all costs. He conducts such hellish shelling that it is impossible to count how many shells landed in the battery positions. They can be counted in tens of thousands. The Nazis fired eight and a half thousand shells at the battery we were on alone. We walked and saw how the space between the gun mounts was densely strewn with fragments of all sizes.

Fadeev spoke with the sailors, asked the commander about the life of the unit, about the shelling, and was surprised at the cleanliness of the artillery sites and courtyards.

It’s as clean as on a ship,” he said.

“We are sailors,” answered the commander, “and we also speak to the enemy in naval language.” These guns are naval caliber!

At this time, four guns struck dully but audibly in the distance, and the shells came towards us.

Please go to the dugout,” said the commander, “the next concert is starting.” It is not recommended to remain without cover...

And we listened to the entire long concert. Other shells exploded loudly near our dugout. We talked calmly about all sorts of things that had nothing to do with the war. No one could guarantee that a stray shell would not hit our dugout. Rolling logs sometimes moved above our heads, fragments hit the walls, glasses on the table clinked loudly from a close blow, sometimes the entire dugout shuddered, one could imagine that we were having a conversation in the cabin of a ship that was slightly rocking on the wave.

The cannonade stopped as suddenly as it began. We went out into the fresh air and then we saw a wounded man. It was a Red Navy man who accidentally fell into an explosion. He stood, pressing his hand over the wound. Blood flowed abundantly down the tunic. He was pale, and only his eyes burned feverishly. The orderlies brought a stretcher. Everything was ordinary.

The Red Navy man courageously asked the commander, holding back the pain, to arrange for his return to his unit after recovery.

This is not the first time we have all seen blood. Fadeev looked frowning and attentively, as if trying to remember the wounded man and his surroundings. He remembered it. He wrote about it in his book about besieged Leningrad.

Our cars are picking up speed. Now all these meetings, incidents, incidents are behind us. We have seen everything: a national holiday, meetings, an unprecedented evening of fifty-two poets of different nations in Baku - now we are rushing only forward, and around us there are quiet fields, deserted hills, in the distance the mountains turn purple and blue, the rivers sparkle, over which we knock on the iron new bridges. It's all behind!

There are several days ahead, filled with unknown joys and those incomprehensible hunting worries that so occupy all my companions.

Despite the fact that I spent a lot of time in the mountains, forests and swamps, I never had the desire to shoot an animal or a bird, but Samed Vurgun and Fadeev are passionate lovers of hunting, and now they only talk about where it’s better Now find game and what kind.

Samed Vurgun skillfully, with the passion of a fanatic, talks about the rich hunting world of the Transcaucasian mountains and valleys. And he never tires of his hunting inspiration.

So we continue our journey to the northwest. Our first stop is Shamakhi.

Shemakha greeted us with a sea of ​​greenery. The city streets are like alleys. Poplars of extraordinary size, centuries-old mulberry trees, gigantic linden trees. But, despite all this rich frame, the city itself could not provide evidence of its centuries-old existence, because nothing remained of the former glorious capital of the Shirvan Khanate except ruins, covered with the picturesque foliage of surviving trees. Shemakha is a city of tragic fate. Like a vision he disappeared from the face of the earth. Founded back in the sixth century, it was a center of sericulture and trade for many centuries. Venetian, Genoese, Moscow, Iranian, and Turkish merchants had their representative offices here. The scope of trade was enormous. During the bloody raid of Khan Kazikumukh, he destroyed about three hundred Russian merchants alone. Then Peter the Great undertook his campaign to the Caucasus. Then the importance of Shamakhi fell more and more with each new earthquake. Having already become part of the Russian Empire and being the administrative center of the Shirvan province, Shamakhi was again shocked by a strong earthquake in 1852. After this, all institutions were transferred to Baku. The growth of the capital of new Azerbaijan began. The earthquake of 1902 ended the history of the old city. Only from the artist Gagarin can one get an idea of ​​the wealth and culture of old Shamakhi from his drawings made from life.

We had all these conversations about Shemakha at a short rest before heading through Geogchay to Agdash. Samad Vurgun, being an expert on the issue, painted with very vivid colors a picture of the life of the cities of old Azerbaijan and was sad that such a beautiful city as Shemakha had not preserved anything from its rich past. The malice of nature, multiplied by the destructive malice of the ancient conquerors, destroyed all the cultural monuments of Shamakhi.

Having paid our debt to historical memories, we left Shamakhi, and at the hour when light twilight began to fall on the ground, Agdash opened before us, and the hunters shouted: “Something will happen here!”

Without resting, straight from the cars, taking with us more local lovers, a whole armed brigade we set off to the friendly groves running down the slope of the sloping, low hills surrounding Agdash. We walked along the edges, the dogs rushed into the bushes with the excitement of dogs that had rested for a long time. The hunters stopped, conferred, and divided into groups. Others shouted: “Be careful not to shoot each other!” Don’t go ahead of others!”

But warnings and searches were in vain. The thicket was silent, as if no living creatures had ever lived in it. Even the rare songbirds fell silent as we approached.

Local people said that it was late, nothing would work out, that we had to leave early in the morning.

These arguments were not unfounded, and, having wandered between the islands of forest and young groves, we returned to Agdash for the night.

But after a good dinner we talked until midnight.

Tell me, Samed,” I asked, “you are an old hunter in your area.” Is there really no such bird, such an animal that you would not beat?

“There is no such thing,” Samed said, grinning his predatory grin, squinting his eagle eyes.

Well, who did you hit?

He killed ducks, of course, geese, snipe, great snipes, quails, partridges, pheasants, chickens, roaches... he beat them all. I brought such a bag home, my wife gave gifts to friends: they couldn’t eat so much themselves...

But he probably didn’t hit the bustard?..

No matter how you beat a bustard, you beat a bustard, there are a lot of them near Ganja in winter. There was this bird there, Sasha probably knows, it’s called a curlew, he also killed it. He beat goats, he beat goitered gazelles!.. He beat all the birds, he beat all the animals...

And Korsakov?

What is a corsac, a fox? We don't have corsacs!

Did you beat the Lankaran tiger?

Samed's face turns cunning. He clicks his tongue and doesn't answer right away.

In Lankaran we hunted wild boar, you know. And the tiger came. He came and stood in the reeds, thinking. Figures out what to do. And we realize that the tiger has come. But he was the first to realize: it was better to get out of our way. He broke the reeds and left. But at first we wanted to leave on our own. And he was the first to realize. Ho, ho, ho!

And Samed begins to laugh like a child, and it is impossible to understand whether this happened with the tiger or not. Laughing, he asks:

I know you’re not a hunter, but have you seen birds up close?

“I saw it,” I answer, “I once traveled to Kopet-Dag.” With a blanket and a stick, with a bag over his shoulders. I used to sit somewhere on a stream, during the day, of course. Such narrow gaps. There is as much greenery as you want. Look, there are figs, wild grapes, and blackberries. There are also plane trees and maples. And above you there are bare rocks. It's hot, God forbid! And there I saw bees drinking water on this stream. They drank so much that their bellies swelled. And there were birds walking nearby, not afraid. Pigeons and pheasants are fat, beautiful as hell, you can catch them with your hands. It's good to sit with them, it's funny...

“In Primorye,” Fadeev said, “pheasants roam in flocks. How tame. You can beat them with sticks. The bird there is not scared. And once we saw a bear catching fish on the river...

I have already heard this story more than once, but every time new details appear in it, and therefore you can listen to it without getting bored. Samed does not know this story, and neither do the other companions.

We hear a rustling,” says Fadeev, “we hid in the bushes, we looked: a bear was sitting on a narrow spit, climbing into the water with its paws. Something is catching. And, having caught it, he throws it back over his shoulder. It is along the river, so to speak, that the fish move thickly, and the current drives it towards the bear, pressing it against the spit. And he’s happy with this extra income, he thinks he’s saving it for the whole winter. And he works, and he presses, and he throws everything over his shoulder. He just doesn’t realize that the spit is narrow, and with a strong jerk he throws the fish back into the river, and it calmly leaves. He works until he sweats, so to speak. I decided to rest, looked around, how many fish there were - probably a whole mountain already. I looked around, and there was nothing there. The bear was stunned. He got up and scratched himself. He looked around the area with a threatening look, growled, and thought: some impudent person, so to speak, stole his fish. He roared terribly, but what to do - there are no fish! He walked around, sniffed the stones and bushes, returned, sat down in his previous position and started working again. He throws and throws and doesn’t look back. And the fish also flies over the spit and back into the river. I sat, sat, caught, caught - well, that's enough. I looked around - again not a single fish. The bear stood up, grabbed his head, howled sadly, as if he said: I don’t understand anything. And he went, without looking back and hooting, into the forest. We almost died laughing... Well, he was great at catching... Yes, yes, yes...

Samed says in turn:

And I had such cases. This is where the Kura and Araks merge. It's good to hunt there in late fall. I was with the dog. Cold. Wind. There are empty reeds and swamps. The dog rushes. I'm aiming. Ducks take off. I'm shooting. Suddenly - what is it? More ducks. I was among the first ones to take off. And these ones, out of fear, go straight to those. Collided in the air. They hurt each other. And there were so many of them, I was surprised... They knocked themselves down...

“You don’t believe it,” he tells me, “I can see it in your eyes—you don’t believe it, but this is true.” You know, brother, what happens in life. I had a little flu here. I was sitting at home. Got better. I have to go to the city on business. Of course, I live in the city, but I say this - go to the city as if I lived outside the city. The driver took the car out, opened the gate to the street, tried something on the engine, said there was some small hitch, I’ll crawl under the car now and have a look. The motor is running. I'm sitting next to the steering wheel. The driver is doing something under the car. I thought about it, I saw the driver’s legs in front of me, I wanted to take out my notebook and write it down, a good idea came to my mind. Suddenly the driver picked something down there - and, can you imagine, brother, the car itself moved through the gate. Before I had time to realize anything, she was already on the street, the driver remained there, lying behind her. And the car itself is already driving down the street. And I’m sitting next to the steering wheel, like a passenger, and I don’t understand anything. And the street was right in front of us, and we were driving along the street. I see passers-by looking at me, some saying hello, some not understanding anything, waving their hands, pointing at me. It’s some kind of miracle: a car without a driver moves forward and even seems to pick up speed. And Samed Vurgun sits in it. Then I begin to figure out what will happen. You can’t go on like this forever, brother. The policeman whistles, but what can I do? I see there must be a turn. You can't do that, brother! I grabbed the steering wheel and turned right. There is a booth here where posters are pasted. I went straight to the booth: I didn’t have time to go around. Fuck! The car hit the booth directly, crushed the booth and stopped. I got out of the car, they were running towards me: what happened? I say, nothing happened, I say, I did an experiment on how to drive without a driver... And the driver is alive and well, only he was very surprised that the car left with me. He pulled his legs together and the car passed over him. So it was, brother! You can believe it! Strange case, isn't it?

And I’ll tell you,” Fadeev begins, “what happened to me when I started my partisan life. It was in the taiga, well, the Far Eastern taiga is a serious thing. You can walk there for days and not meet anyone. And there is no one to ask for directions. It so happened that we needed to send a messenger with an urgent report to one detachment about which we had not received information for a long time. And to speed up the journey, you need to go straight through the taiga, so to speak. And you won’t get there in one day. The path that they showed me is not that wide; it seems to be used only when absolutely necessary. I can't refuse. I was still a young partisan then. And my conscience doesn’t allow me: I need to tell my comrades important news. I took a bag, a rifle, a package with me, and went. The first day nothing happened. And on the second I began to doubt whether I was going down the right path. I was walking correctly, but from loneliness, from my elevated state, such doubt came over me. What to do? There is no one to ask. And my doubt was that in some places I had to wade, so to speak, cross streams that crossed the path, and it seemed to me that I had deviated to the side. And the taiga is quiet and quiet. No rustle, no sound. This silence somehow makes me feel uncomfortable. There a squirrel dropped a pine cone - it sounded like a gunshot. Somewhere a branch moves - you stop and listen, although you know well: no one walks on this side and no one is here. Not even any animals, like a bear or a wolf. I go and go out, when I was already in the greatest doubt, into a clearing. The path barely winds through the thick grass, and suddenly I stop and look and understand nothing.

Lying in front of me on the green grass next to the path is, so to speak, a new plane. Well, so new, as if it had just been taken from the store. Clean, shiny, lying on the grass, as if it had been placed there on purpose. If you think that someone has lost it, then they don’t lose it like that. He would lie on his side somehow. But here is something else. Someone put it there on purpose, but why?! I’m standing over the plane and I can’t figure out anything. And the main thing is that the path in this place is soft and my footprints on it are clearly visible, but in front of me there are no traces. And not on the grass. The grass is not crumpled. I was young, of course, and all sorts of romantic things came into my head. Some kind of witchcraft. I stood and stood, then I began to think this way: the plane itself in this taiga is, so to speak, an unusual thing. And there seems to be no one to bring it. And if they carried it as a necessary thing, they won’t lose it. People in the taiga are cautious. Yes, no one walks this path: there is no need. I stood there and thought about this: witchcraft is witchcraft, but someone was here. This means, first of all, my doubts that I have lost my way from the path disappear. And that was the most important thing. I didn't take the plane. Why - I don’t know, I can’t explain. By the end of the day I went out to the right place; I found the detachment, gave the package to the commander, told everything, then began asking the detachment who had passed along this path and when.

We coped, we coped - no one went either there, to us, or from there, except me. I didn't tell you about the plane. I remembered this story for the rest of my life... Well, brothers, enough stories. I have to get up early tomorrow. Let's go for a walk before bed...

And we went outside the village. It was a silky night outside. Either under the impression of stories about nature, about animals, or because in this lull of the night we did not want to turn our thoughts to the everyday affairs that awaited us upon our return, we walked with a light step along the lawns that lay under our feet, not thinking about anything, except for that peace of the night, feeling nothing but the enlivening coolness of the night and the tops of the young forest carved into the clear, blue-violet sky, seeming close and at the same time ghostly.

I looked at Samed Vurgun and Fadeev and felt they were completely different. They changed a lot during the journey, they became simpler, calmer, freer, some great feeling awakened in them, which they seemed to drive somewhere into the depths of their being in ordinary surroundings. There was no need to prove anything to anyone, there was no need to do things that you force yourself to do, that you don’t want to do. The stars looked out from the calm sky, as on the night when the first line of the poem came to the poet: “I go out alone onto the road.” The flinty path glittered under the hill, but it was neither hard nor difficult for us. Here I understood why Samed Vurgun loves hunting wanderings so much, why Sasha Fadeev is now experiencing the joy of night loneliness in front of the light of these distant stars and shadows running from quiet trees.

Fadeev, speaking about the Caucasus, once asked me: “Why do you think Leo Tolstoy wanted to stay and live in the Caucasus?” I then replied that Tolstoy himself had an explanation for this. He found that it was in the Caucasus that a great moral change occurred to him. In addition, here he began to feel like a writer. Here he wrote “Childhood and Adolescence”.

Fadeev laughed it off, he smiled and said somewhat ironically:

Well, he also liked hunting in the Caucasus. I even remember. - And he, with his hellish memory, quoted from Tolstoy’s letter: “Hunting here is a miracle! Pure fields, swamps full of hares, and islands not made of forest, but of reeds in which foxes live...”

And now, walking through the lunar meadows, inhaling the ferruginous air of the foothills, infused with autumn forest extract, I thought that for people like Fadeev and Samed Vurgun, life is without great, internal communication with nature, deep and understandable to them alone. , it is impossible that no city joys will replace for them such a sweet autumn night with its bitter smells and alarming silence.

Fadeev walked silently along the edge of the clearing. I asked him:

If you, Sasha, lived in a different time, in your Far East, would you have gone if you had been offered, say, with Przhevalsky, to the Ussuri taiga on an expedition?..

Perhaps,” he said, and his face in the moonlight seemed to be washed with clean spring water, “but why do you ask?..

And you would have left with the same Przhevalsky, when he headed to Central Asia to reach Lhasa, you would have left to walk for years through deserts, rivers, steppes, walking hundreds of miles, far from home, seeing new things every day, discovering new places , new paths, would you leave?..

He looked at me with very attentive eyes and suddenly said loudly:

Well, of course I would leave!

That’s all,” I said for some reason, and we continued to walk along the edge of the clearing, where the moon played with bizarre shadows. And the night continued, and the silk clouds moved uncontrollably but quietly over the sleeping village, catching up with each other...

Early in the morning, having had a good rest, our hunters cheerfully set off on a hike to the nearest groves, but the hunting was bad. I don’t know what was the matter, only after a little time they interrupted the hunt and returned to the village with a very modest booty. True, they had some considerations of their own, and in these considerations they proposed to go straight north through Minge-chaur, to the Nukha region, and there to taste the heavenly bliss of indescribable hunting. “There is a kingdom of roaches and pheasants” - this was said by a specialist in forest resources, a border guard, and a huntsman.

In the meantime, I found Samed Vurguia and Fadeev among the collective farmers of the Red Azerbaijan collective farm. And here Samed Vurgun acted as a wise business executive. He argued with the collective farmers about the place where the collective farm club should be located. He extolled the merits of the place he had chosen so convincingly that his most ardent opponents finally began to give up.

Then everyone went to the collective farm fields, and there I saw Samed Vurgun discussing new varieties of cotton. He reasoned with complete knowledge of the matter. He dealt with so many varieties of cotton and described the achievements of Azerbaijani cotton growing so well that the best agitator could not have more eloquently defended some varieties and proved the unnecessaryness of others. From the looks of the villagers listening to him, I saw that they treated this conversation not as a whim of a famous poet, but listened with great attention.

After inspecting the cotton fields, we began to get ready for the road again. But before leaving, a meeting of readers with Samed Vurgun took place. He was very happy when representatives of the local youth, lively, hot guys and girls, read his poems, and read them with enthusiasm and love. The meeting was very cordial, and, accompanied by best wishes, we went to Mingachevir.

The road from Agdash to Mingachevir is not so far; we descended from the hills into the so-called Kura-Araks lowland. Until now, we have stayed in the quiet countryside, where the neighing of a playing foal, the dull roar of a black-haired buffalo climbing into a warm deep puddle, the lowing of cows going to water, the sound of a threshing machine heard far around the area, the whistling of birds, the light murmur of blue, greenish and brown streams, the clatter of horse hooves of a lone rider, the creaking of collective farm carts accompanied us all the time.

Now we drove into the roar and ringing that rent the air over Mingachevir. In this place, near the village of Mingachevir, the fabulous Kura itself, which has cut its way through the whole of Georgia, emerges magnificently and smoothly onto the plain. It was then that it was blocked by the highest alluvial earthen dam in the world. Anyone who comes to the banks of the Kura today will find a constructed dam, the blue waves of the Mingachevir Sea, which is not inferior to Lake Sevan, large main irrigation canals, which, going hundreds of kilometers into the interior of the country, are revolutionizing agriculture.

All this can be seen today, but then, in the fall of 1947, we were present only during construction work, the scale of which amazed us and awakened a sense of pride and poetic excitement. All the numbers here had some special grandeur. The height of the dam is 81 meters, the capacity of the hydroelectric power station being created is 360 thousand kilowatts, the possibility of irrigating the system is one million hectares. Stunned by the clang and thunder, we followed the builders as they showed us individual areas of work, and we understood only one thing: that silent life on the banks of the Kura was ending and something had begun that no one had ever dreamed of in these parts.

Below, where the sea was supposed to overflow, stood the forest, bristling with all its branches and peaks against the threat that hung over it.

“What will happen to this forest?” we asked.

“It will all be cut down and taken away,” the builders answered.

What about the animals? - the question of the hunters was heard like a sigh. “Where are they going?”

When we start cutting them down, they will run away and will not wait until they are flooded. Well, if someone doesn’t leave and starts to die, we will help, we will save.

We saw a new town among an empty valley with bare hillocks. So far, its white houses, very neat, have sheltered only families of workers and employees, engineering personnel, but in the future it will be a new large center - Mingachevir. Children were already running around in it among the first green spaces. Here, from childhood, they were already accustomed to the high anthem of labor, which sounded over the deserted banks of the ancient river from morning to evening.

There were also German prisoners of war who were busy doing earthworks. They looked so healthy that we involuntarily asked how they were feeling here.

The engineer grinned:

Do they have a bad life? It's very hot here, that's true. So they have a house in the mountains, like a holiday home, where they live if the heat makes it difficult for them here. They are fed well, and they also destroy all the animals that they come across. When they started frying, boiling, steaming green frogs, lizards, turtles, snakes, we were surprised and asked: “Why are you eating, there’s not enough food?” - “No, they say it’s exotic, a delicacy, but at home we’ll tell you that we ate what millionaires eat abroad.” Well, in that case, we will not create obstacles. Eat all the lizards and snakes if you like...

Although we spent very little time in the labyrinth of giant buildings, our soul was so disposed to the forest, to the clean mountain air, to silence that we, heading straight north, to the foothills, were not at all sad when the Mingachevir crater disappeared behind us, spewing thunder and lightning.

Now we were leaving the plain again, and our cars, groaning, began to climb the turns of the mountain road, since the former capital of the Sheki Khanate is located at an altitude of 700 meters above sea level. All around her, shrouded in the pinkish haze of sunset, lay rice fields and dark orchards. Walnut and mulberry giants greeted us at the entrance to Nukha.

Far in the north, the snow caps of the Greater Caucasus sparkled with the flames of some orange blur. Nuha was good! But, most importantly, our hunters had a presentiment that here, in these places they had never seen before, there would be the hunt for which they had, in essence, traveled so far.

The hosts greeted us extremely hospitably, we felt very good in Nukha. The paintings of the Khan's palace, very skillful and amazing with the abundance of a wide variety of patterns, perfectly preserved, convinced us that art really flourished in old Nukha, and they understood poetry and philosophy here.

Brothers, said Samad Vurgun, do not forget that Mirza Fatali Akhundov was born in this city.

Yes, by the way,” said Fadeev, “we, thank God, already know about Akhundov as well as, say, about Bestuzhev or Lermontov, who both knew him, but that’s why in Azerbaijani literature, my friend Samed, There is still no novel about Akhundov? Do you understand what kind of novel can be created about the life of this extraordinary Azerbaijani!..

The conversation was already taking place during dinner, and we had time, since we had nowhere to rush. And since this conversation was connected with Akhundov, it continued to develop in this direction.

Samad Vurgun replied that in order to capture such a large period of time, one must be a painstaking historian; without recreating pictures of the era, one cannot write hastily, especially since Akhundov is associated with so many Russian writers and political figures.

I have always been interested in the fact, I said, that the translation of Akhundov’s famous poem on the death of Pushkin was done under amazing circumstances. Remember that Bestuzhev translated this poem with the help of Akhundov himself a few days before his death, in the forest at Cape Adler. Some strange coincidence brought Akhundov and Bestuzhev together at this time...

“It happens,” said Samed Vurgun, “for example, here, near Nukha, Hadji Murat died, and it seems, what relation does he have to Nukha? And fate forced me to take the last battle over there, in the rice fields. Now you can find this place. Nothing has changed there. If he had decided to go straight into the mountains along a good road, perhaps he could have left. And he complicated the situation. I thought about going to the side, Kalazani, through Agrichay, through the rice fields. I wanted to deceive, but I was deceived myself, because it’s impossible to get through there...

Here our companions also entered into the conversation, who rarely spoke on historical and literary topics, but here they became animated.

They started talking about what would have happened if he had left. Different opinions were expressed, but in general everyone agreed that such a dramatic figure, such a predatory and warlike character could not be subordinated even to Shamil.

“I was in the homeland of Hadji Murad, in Khunzakh,” I said.

What is left of him there? - asked Fadeev.

Left behind is a great-granddaughter, a pretty girl. The teacher has probably been married for a long time now. There remained a post to which Hadji Murad and his nukers tied their horses. The entire post is scarred from constant tying. Besides, he was chewed up by horses. That's all...

Samad Vurgun spoke about the high poetic image in poetry:

But still, he is a historical hero, and it was not for nothing that Leo Tolstoy chose him from the entire mountain history. Today they say that a great dramatic personality cannot correspond to the spirit of modernity. In my speech about Nizami, I deliberately spoke about Bernard Shaw. This brave Bernard Shaw was not afraid to express that modern English culture does not give him any spiritual food, that he lives like a man “with hindsight”, lives in the thoughts of Shakespeare, and not in the thoughts of his contemporaries... tell me, Sasha, why you came to Nizami’s anniversary, how do you understand what a national form in literature is?..

“Samed, dear, for me there is no other understanding,” answered Fadeev, “except for the one that I have spoken about more than once.” The people's honoring of their great poet or writer is, so to speak, a holiday of national pride, because the national character has found its highest expression in the language of the people. And Shakespeare will therefore never lose the power of dramatic impact. And this does not come into any conflict with socialism, since socialism is the free development of all the best that expresses the national character. And during the days of Nizami, I, like everyone else, felt how the people understood this celebration and accepted it as their holiday. And that's right... Yes, yes, yes!

Our era, continued Samad Vurgun, is a great era in the history of mankind. There are great positive heroes, there are our great enemies; Is it possible to depict their struggle in some diminutive way? You cannot make a strong enemy a fool or just a coward. You cannot do less to our hero so that he loses the power of his feat. Look, they say: no big words are needed. What was it like during the war? Such big words were spoken: Motherland, Revenge, Oath of Hatred, Death to the Enemy. Everyone understood that they were fighting for a big cause. "Communists, forward!" - these are big words. How can you say it differently? “Let's go forward, comrades!”? You can not say that. When I wrote Vagif, I knew that I had to find the language of tragedy. If I don’t find it, the hero and his era won’t work out... There’s no need to be afraid of a big topic, big things. We watched Mingachevir. Big deal! How to leave his little words for posterity! The descendant himself will come to the Mingachevir Sea, and look for himself, and throw all the little words aside, and say: my ancestors are heroes, they did a heroic deed...

Of course,” said Fadeev, “Leo Tolstoy in “War and Peace” found that noble combination, so to speak, of folk tragedy and the life experiences of individual people. He cannot be reproached that he failed to create an epic of the people's struggle, and one cannot be reproached that he does not have a common man, with all his passions, mistakes, and everyday words. I think the complexity of our era must be addressed in many styles, in many literary forms. You are a poet, so to speak, of a different formation than, say, Mirza Fatali Akhundov, who chose for himself the method of a theatrical work, a comedic one, so to speak, and achieved enormous success in depicting his era with this method. And in poetry, we have such diversity, so many voices, and very different ones! Of course, you have the right to your high approach, to your large scale. You yourself are such a character that you are fit for a play of high poetry. Yes Yes Yes!..

That evening they no longer talked about hunting. Perhaps our hunters, out of a sense of superstition, deliberately did not raise this topic, and the conversation was only about literature, and it went on for a long time.

And only when leaving, the hunters, like conspirators, winked at each other, saying meaningfully: “Well, see you tomorrow!”

They have finally arrived, the long-awaited days of real hunting. The Ashaga forests accepted hunters into their protected areas. And now nothing existed for them except these oak groves, maple and beech groves, except the thickets in which countless pheasants and roach hid.

Shots and screams were heard from different directions. Blue haze from the shots hung on the bunches of wild grapes. The pheasants, having warmed up at dawn on the open lawns, moved into the shade of the bushes and lay there as the sun rose higher. The dogs, smelling the bird, rushed into the bushes and drove the pheasants out of their hiding places. Pheasants taking off with a noisy snort sparkled over the green lawns; their wings hung in the air like pieces of a broken rainbow.

The noble pheasant, already out of range of shots, not finding his girlfriend nearby, returned to the place where she was killed, and circled in the air, calling for her, and himself became prey for the shooters.

I did not shoot at these amazingly beautiful birds, which seemed to me a wonderful decoration of the Transcaucasian forests. I simply walked, armed with a stick, and pheasants flew up from under my feet, and I watched with relief as they disappeared into the dense greenery, and no longer could a hunting shot reach them.

The hunters were tireless. Exchanging only short exclamations, they wandered through the forests for hours and looked for their victims among this sea of ​​lilac, red, yellow, green-crimson foliage, but even they could not confuse with their shots the imperturbable grandeur of the forest beauty, the waves of which rolled on us from all sides . How right Samad Vurgun was when he wrote:

You are kind and welcome to your homeland...
Forests, don’t let hurricanes hit you,
You are kind and welcome to the people!
You are the homeland of coolness and peace...

I involuntarily remembered another poet and other times. The shadow of Mickiewicz appeared to us against the background of the forests, with the sounds of a hunt that took place more than a hundred years ago. But hunters in all ages are apparently the same.

And although my friends had a preoccupied, concentrated look, it seemed to me from some inner feeling that they were overwhelmed with joy, that their souls were open to these forests and glades that surrounded them, breathing in the coolness and colors of the unique valleys.

Fadeev's cheerful eyes followed every rustle, every movement in the grass, the dog sniffing out game. Samad Vurgun suddenly appeared, parting the bushes, like a wild hunter of distant days that did not know any technical progress. He laughed with a guttural laugh, shouted in a hoarse voice, raising high a heap of pheasants or snow-black torrents burning in the sun. A dog was rubbing nearby; thin streams of blood ran down her paws and sides; she cut herself on thorny bushes in the forest and did not feel pain in the heat of the hunt.

The hours passed unnoticed. Leaves rained down on the hunters, and it seemed as if a multi-colored waterfall was splashing on them, and this made things even more fun around them. And suddenly everyone stopped, as if on cue, because in front of us some black heap began to move on the ground, some large mound came to life and began to grow in front of us. Everyone looked in bewilderment. Even the dogs stopped, raising their paws as if on a stand.

Boar, brothers! - shouted Fadeev, - Look, a wild boar!

And indeed, in front of us at a very close distance, as if reluctantly, rose an enormous boar, which lay in a hole in the mud, in its boar bath, and cooled off in the green thicket. Now, worried, looking with some drowsy reddish-blue eye of a drunkard, he slowly rose until he had established himself and stood at his full height. He stood there, as if thinking, and then walked away from us, sometimes looking around, heavily plunging his thick legs into the dug-up earth, as fat as black sour cream.

In his eyes there was a mockery of the hunters, who looked at him in impotent rage, because their guns were loaded with shot, and the boar felt it.

The boar, raised in the middle of the midday rest, walked, breaking branches, as if on purpose, out of mischief, making noise in the forest, moving further and further away from us.

What a pity! - Fadeev exclaimed. - Well, who could have known that we would meet him! He left, but...

The hunters crowded together, discussing the incident.

This is a mountain boar, not a grassland one,” said the forestry specialist. - The reed warbler is brown, and the muzzle is narrow, but this one has such high legs, a large slope towards the tail.

“We don’t take wild boar from the approach,” said the usually silent huntsman. - It happened by chance. They're going at it, then it's order...

The hunters went deeper into the forest again, and I separated from them and followed the smell of a nearby fire. Soon I came out into a clearing where only children were sitting and lying around the fire. At a distance, huts were built, and in them, too, teenagers were visible, sitting on pieces of felt. This forest camp was very picturesque; the boys and girls were in the most colorful costumes, and their big, black, blackberry eyes looked at me with undisguised curiosity. One of the local people was with me, and he explained to me that these are children from a nearby village who collect wild pears and apples, berries and nuts in the forest.

I lay on the warm, coarse grass in front of the fire, the sparks of which fluttered like little pearl-red hummingbirds in the blue smoke, and I felt very calm and thoughtless.

I looked at the dancing of multi-colored leaves, which were raised by the breeze running from the forest, at the flames, with a crunch, devouring dry branches, at the pale blue autumn sky, at the forest, above which in the distance stood the blue, black, gray masses of rocky mountains covered with the peaks with transparent clouds, above which the peaks themselves, covered with fresh snow, shone with their fractures.

After a short rest, we walked into the forest again, and it seemed that the forest was luring us further and further and that we could walk for so long, forgetting everything in the world and only parting the blackberry bushes and young walnut thickets, splashing through the mud of the beech forest, breathing in the coolness and seeing the mountains carved into the blue sky, surrounded by cords of the first snow.

When I remember now these few days spent with Fadeev and Samed Vurgun in the autumn forests, where the flames of the fires competed with the flames of the leaves playing with all the colors, where it was so quiet that you could hear a leaf falling from a branch, and this great peace was disturbed Only with feverish gunfire and the firework crack of bird wings, I think these were happy days for all of us.

If I had not seen Fadeev and Samed Vurgun nearby in all their hunting equipment, overwhelmed with excitement, walking tirelessly and carrying all their companions with them - two of my friends, rejuvenated, fresh, cheerful, courageous, as if they had sipped a witch's potion - I in his friendship with them he would not have touched an important source of energy that fed their moral strength.

The hunters returned for the night in a noisy crowd, richly hung with birds, tired but happy. Therefore, at first I did not understand Fadeev’s movement when, after dinner in the house where we were staying, we were surprised to see in his hands a volume of Gogol, which he had found on the bookcase.

I knew that in some hours of his special mood he liked to read Gogol aloud, and especially expressively, with painful experience, read the terrible lines about how already on the execution site, experiencing his last mortal pangs, the mighty son of Taras Bulba Ostap was tormented and exclaimed: “ Father! Where are you? Can you hear? And Taras’s voice is heard among the general silence: “I hear you!” At this point, it happened that Fadeev could not even hold back tears.

And now, seeing how he was looking for the right page in the book, I thought with trembling: “Are we really now, after such a noisy and joyful day, supposed to experience unheard-of torment and horror?”

But I was wrong. And when he began to read, gradually becoming more and more interested in reading, he made his listeners feel something unusual, because what he read resonated well with the forest enchantments, as if we were back again this time in the moonlit forest and seeing what was hidden from us during the day...

He read with great enthusiasm, with such extreme depiction, as if he had written it himself, that passage from “Viy”, where the philosopher Khoma Brut rushes across the night expanse with an “incomprehensible horseman on his back” - with the grandmother-witch. “He lowered his head down and saw that the grass, which was almost under his feet, seemed to grow deep and far, and that above it there was water, clear as a mountain spring, and the grass seemed to be the bottom of some light, transparent to the very depths seas... He saw how, instead of a month, some kind of sun was shining there; he heard the blue bells, tilting their heads, ringing..."

Everyone listened, surrendering to the magical rhythm, as if the reader had made us winged and we see everything and experience everything, like a Kiev philosopher captured by an unknown force.

Fadeev always read these pages wonderfully; he loved them so much that he could probably recite them by heart. But then the wonders of our forest day were added to Gogol, and took away the sweet pages even more...

After this reading, they talked a lot about life and sang songs - they sang Ukrainian, Azerbaijani, Russian songs. Fadeev sang solo Lermontov’s favorite “Grave of a Fighter” to his own tune:

He's been sleeping his last sleep for a long time,
He sleeps his last sleep,
There was a mound above it,
Green turf all around.

Is that why he lived and carried a sword,
So that in the hour of evening darkness
They flocked to his hill
Desert eagles?

It seemed to me that, after all, before he chose the pages from Viy, he hesitated for a moment whether to read about Ostap and Taras, and that “The Soldier’s Grave” was some kind of replenishment of what he had not read. He finished singing. He sat there, somewhat softened and moved. And suddenly, turning to Samed and me, he completely unexpectedly said:

How powerful that film was, remember?! I rarely cry, but I confess: I sat in the dark and secretly roared. I couldn't help but cry.

We all roared! - exclaimed Samad Vurgun.

To be honest, I said, we all roared...

Yes, it was that movie! Here is how it was. On the eve of our departure from Baku, we were shown a documentary film about the so-called “South Azerbaijan” in a small company.

Southern Azerbaijan was oppressed by the Iranian Shahs for centuries. But in September 1945, a new life for the southern Azerbaijanis began. The film consistently showed how the Azerbaijani people were liberated. The age-old darkness, the age-old oppression is over. The democratic party has been created, and the first people's Majlis has begun its work. Demonstrations, joyful days, peasants receive land, children go to new schools, a university is opened in Tabriz. Laughing faces of students. These are the first artists of the first national theater, musicians in their philharmonic society. Newspapers and magazines began to be published in Azerbaijani... The country lives a free, new life. Democratic principles have triumphed. We see fields belonging to peasants, joyful men, liberated women. This is incredibly good. Happy people are watching from the screen, old people are smiling, children are laughing.

Only a year has passed. And the treacherous Iranian government, which had previously recognized the autonomy of Iranian Azerbaijan, treacherously attacked the country. It is impossible to see, the fists are clenched in impotent rage! People are killed in the streets, thrown into prison, hanged. Schools are destroyed, the land is returned to the landowners, the scourge of slavery is again upon the peasants, refugees are fleeing into the desert, saving their lives. Freedom has been destroyed. The Iranian gendarme and landowner are back in power. Now we see only tears, blood and humiliation. Rags, poverty, hunger. People are saving themselves as best they can, fleeing through Arak to their brothers in Northern Azerbaijan. You can't look at these pictures without crying. In the darkness of the hall, writers and poets, who miraculously survived and escaped from Southern Azerbaijan, cried. We all cried too, because it was a spectacle of such a human tragedy that even in our cruel times, when the imperialists and reactionaries became immeasurably brutal, these atrocities struck our hearts. We sat in silence for a long time when the light came on. Yes, it was a film of terrible power! Southern Azerbaijan shouted in its torment to its northern brother: “Do you hear, brother?” And Northern Azerbaijan answered, frowning his eyebrows and clenching his fists: “I hear you, brother!”

This is the film Fadeev remembered that evening...

Our forest days flew by quickly. There is a break in the hunt. We drive further to the northwest through a completely extraordinary land called the Alazan-Agrichay Valley. The generous southern nature has not given people here anything! There are countless apple trees, pear trees, and peach trees. Chestnuts and walnuts are the rulers of the local green kingdom. It seems that with just one more effort, this entire region will turn into a continuous orchard, and the space free from trees will be occupied by melons and vineyards, tea and tobacco.

We drive for hours along an unprecedented walnut alley, planted by order of Yermolov. There is no end to it. Above us, the tops of hundred-year-old trees closed their greenery, and under this vault, impenetrable to the sun's rays, we were like in an underwater tunnel. At times, where the alley is torn apart by a stormy mountain stream, which has piled up shapeless heaps of stones brought from the mountains, we emerge into the light. Breaking centuries-old trees, seething with furious force, the river makes its way to Alazani, noisy and thundering, although there is not much water in it in the fall. The snow has stopped melting on the mountains, and the water in the river is clean, transparent, with a greenish tint. Foam curls around the stones. Our “Victory” is heavily stuck and cannot get out onto the road on its own. Then the strong green Dodge slides into the water, crushes it, walks around the Pobeda, hooks it in tow and pulls it out, and the river begins, as if angry with us, to make louder noise, to roll stones with angry intransigence, but we are already far away. And again the gigantic alley stretches - how many nuts it gives the collective farms! - and again a mountain river. All repeats. We get out of the Dodge while he is tinkering with the Pobeda, shaking stones and foaming the water, and look at the autumn mountains, very close to the forest; behind them, beyond the pass, is the familiar valley of the upper Samur, harsh, granite-gray Dagestan.

We made short stops in Zagatala and Belokany. Now, flashing through the thicket of the forest, the ruins of ancient Christian churches, built in time immemorial and not completely destroyed by all-consuming time, begin to remind us that the borders of Georgia are already close, Kakheti is close.

This is where we are headed now. We agreed back in Baku that Fadeev and Samed Vurgun would take me to Kakheti, to Dzhugaani, to our mutual friend, the oldest poet of Georgia, author of the glorious “Arsen” and many other dramas and poems, Sandro Shanshiashvili. Samed Vurgun has never been to Kakheti, and neither has Fadeev. They agreed to take a break from the hunt and travel through Lagodekhi and the Alazani Valley to the hospitable home of Sandro and Maro.

And so Azerbaijan ends. The border between the republics is in the forest.

We made a field stop, before reaching Lagodekhi, on the bank of a large stream, rested and moved on. Having passed Lagodekhi, we turned directly south near Shroma. The evening Alazani Valley opened before us. Even passing it for the first time, hastily, the traveler involuntarily becomes imbued with the charm of what opens before him. The soft colors of the valley, the smoky distances, the warm glow of the Kakheti evening, the green hills ahead - all this not only calms the traveler, tired from a long non-stop journey, but inspires him with the best thoughts regarding an overnight stay.

We arrived at Tsnoristskhali station when the lights were already lighting up around us. Having skirted the railway tracks, our cars began to climb towards the famous village. Evening fell on the vineyards and orchards. People were going home. The villagers sat down to a modest dinner. The village spread along the mountainside. Behind us, in the west, like a legendary dragon entwining a high mountain with its fiery rings, the thousand-eyed Sighnaghi began to glow.

A few more turns up the mountain, the narrow road went over a ravine, past an old church, then another turn - and we were already at Sandro Shanshiashvili’s house.

Here it is, a familiar house that speaks so much to my heart! I will write a separate story about him someday, because he deserves it. There is a very old inscription on his wall. It reads: “I belong to Shanshiashvili.” In fact, members of the large and old Shanshiashvili family were born, grew up and lived here all their lives. My friend Sandro was born and lives here. Here he is engaged in agricultural farming and poetic farming. He is a man of the Kakhetian land. He cannot imagine life without her. In autumn, clusters of grapes hang over the pillars of a wide balcony, so that you can take the berries from the branch directly with your lips. There is no oriental luxury in the house. The walls, painted with oil paint, have neither expensive paintings nor colorful carpets. The very modest decoration of the house is reminiscent of the home of the mountaineers - people of proud, unyielding courage and harsh life.

Sandro and the wonderful Maro know well that people who come to this house are not looking for glaring luxury, empty vanity, or pompous speeches. But what immediate joy, what poetic self-will, what freedom of heart reign in this house, when friends who have come from afar talk with the owners about the most important thing, about the most intimate!

Here songs are sung, poems are read, friendly conversation is enjoyed here, life stories are told that will make you immediately take out your pen and write them down. Here, experts in folk wisdom will sometimes tell you things that will make you laugh until you cry.

No wonder the owner himself is a Kakhetian to the core. That is why the evening when Fadeev and Samad Vurgun entered this house will never be forgotten in my memory, because it truly was an extraordinary evening.

It is difficult to retell in order everything that happened that evening. Immediately the house was filled with noise and excitement. The owner's busy bustle began, and poultry and pheasants were taken out of the cars. Guests and hosts mingled in a colorful bustle, talking about everything at once. But soon everything was in order, and that table conversation began, which could continue until the morning, especially since the witchcraft Dzhugaan wine had already appeared on the table, which is prepared according to the magical recipes of the host-poet and promotes a good mood and inspiration of the mind and heart.

Of course, during the conversation they talked about many things at once: about the past Nizami holiday, about our magical road through the Azerbaijani forest wonders, about hunting, about home news, about literature, about heaven and earth, about friendship, about love.

Time flew by. Fadeev was in the best mood. He was sincerely happy to see old friends, he read poetry, walked around the room, tall, light, cheerful, feeling that everyone loved him, everyone wanted the best for him and that it was simply a sin to leave this room into the night and drive through the forest wilds , where even pheasants, roach and wild boars sleep deeply.

He saw a large inscription on the wall in two languages ​​and began to read it, squinting his blue eyes. They explained to him that this is a poetic agreement concluded between Russian and Georgian poets for peace and friendship, and it says in Russian and Georgian that every year on the ninth of October - the day was chosen arbitrarily - poets of any countries and peoples can gather in Dzhugaani in the name of friendship of peoples for the festival of poetry. Every poet, like a sacred pilgrim, will be received in Dzhugaani as the most welcome guest.

Fadeev really liked it all. He only expressed his sad regret that he could not stay until the ninth, because, so to speak, we only had the third today and he was tired of returning to the other side of Alazani today.

Of course, it was a unique evening. Neither Samed Vurgun nor Sasha Fadeev visited Dzhugaani again. They felt as if they were sitting in Shanshiashvili’s hospitable house for the first and last time; they really didn’t want to leave him, they wanted to continue a friendly conversation, speak in poetry, sing songs. And all this happened that evening, which well completed our green path from Baku. The cheerful table was seething with excitement. Already Samed Vurgun called Marobaji Maro” (sister), already, with sparkling eyes, he exclaimed with feigned rage:

Give back the gate, Sandro!

Sandro, perfectly understanding that this was a guest’s joke, and not quite guessing what the point of it was, answered, playing along superbly:

Which gate should I give, dear?! Look, go out to the balcony, I don’t have a gate. If there were, I would give it to you right now! Please take the gate! There are none! What to do? Where to get?

Give back the gate,” Samed Vurgun stubbornly insisted, waving the skewer like a sword.

But which gate, Samed?

Ganja Gate. You took them when there was an earthquake in Ganja and when everything was destroyed, and you came and took the gate...

I didn't take the gate, dear! Honestly, I didn't take it. When it was?..

“Two hundred years ago,” said Samad Vurgun, laughing at how he embarrassed Sandro, and they both began to laugh at how well they played this scene.

And they sat at the friendly table for a long time, and a lot was told to each other, but the companions of Fadeev and Samed Vurgun began to ask to get ready for the journey, because the time had come and we had to go while the moon was shining: the roads at night are not so simple, especially since several crossings are confusing their.

New excitement began, preparations for the journey, farewell words, farewell toasts. Everyone took to the road. The cars were already grumbling and snoring like sleepy buffalos.

Leave your inscription on the wall,” Sandro said. “As a keepsake, dears!”

Write on our behalf, we trust,” Fadeev said, hugging Sandro tightly, who, together with everyone else, was seeing off the guests.

I quickly jotted down a few lines and immediately gave them to Samed and Fadeev to read. I wrote this:

“Not having the opportunity to be on the ninth of October at the festival of poets, drawn by a deep feeling of true heartfelt friendship, rushing in one day through Zakatala, Belokany, Lagodekhi, overcoming all obstacles, on the third of October in the evening, the wonderful friends of Georgian poetry A.A. arrived in Dzhugaan for a friendly feast. Fadeev and Samed Vurgun. Having arrived with the fruits of their hunt - pheasants and turrets, having tasted the Djugaan majari in due quantity, they departed back out of duty of service to the fatherland and humanity in good health under the full moon, as evidenced by: M. Shanshiashvili, S. Shanshiashvili, M. Tikhonova, N. Tikhonov "

Wonderful! - Fadeev exclaimed. - I ask you to move this, so to speak, to immortalize it on the wall in this house...

Friends and brothers,” said Samed Vurgun, “I am happy that I was here with you, brother Sandro and sister Maro!”

It took them a long time to get into their cars, because new jugs of majari and new glasses kept appearing in the hands of guests and hosts. Finally the cars started moving. The moon was shining so brightly that the narrow passage above the ravine near the old church was illuminated as if by a searchlight. The drivers carefully guided the cars through, and they began to descend onto the lower road. We saw them clearly at first, then we only heard their rumble, and then their lights flashed far, far below, and we returned to the house, which still retained all the heat of a friendly meeting.

I couldn't sleep for a long time. I sat on the balcony, saw how the moonlight played on the lush bunches of grapes and in the foliage of the old walnut tree, how patterned shadows lay on the floor and slide along the pillars. I imagined with vivid palpability how cars rush through forests and hills, how they enter lunar rivers churning under the wheels, how a heavy green Dodge climbs into the night water and drags “Victory” to the shore. Then I saw how they moved further and further, and Samed Vurgun and Sasha Fadeev were sitting next to them. I saw how cars were being made smaller and smaller, they were visible more and more dimly in the moonlight, a strong, ever-blinding, ever-flooding light... And then they completely disappeared from my eyes. There is only endless moonlight; they melted in him irrevocably...

Now she is completely different from the girl who became famous 10 years ago at Star Factory 2. For some time, she even had to explain to her friends: “It’s me, Polina, I just dyed my hair and lost several dozen extra pounds.”

I have never been as slim as I am now. During the “Factory” I looked like a plump girl, with round cheeks, and weighed 57-58 kilograms. I remember how happy I was when the scales suddenly showed 56! And during pregnancy, plus I gained another 30 kilograms. Passing by the mirror, she turned away. But what could I do? When I became pregnant, I felt hungry all the time. I even dreamed about confectionery. I could wake up at three in the morning, go to the refrigerator and destroy half of its contents. At the restaurant I ate two plates of spaghetti carbonara and still remained hungry. For tea, and sweet tea, there are two large cakes. Now I’m wondering: how could I eat so much?! But my mother told me: “Enough is enough.” And I was also offended by her: they say, she forbids a pregnant woman to satisfy the needs of her body! (Laughs.)

What did your husband (actor Pyotr Kislov - Ed.) say about this?

Petya simply endured. A monument should be erected to him for his patience during my pregnancy! After all, I not only ate all the time, I also cried all the time. From morning to evening! My mood was constantly changing - it was a disaster!

How did you manage to lose weight?

First, I went on a strict diet. I alternated: one day I eat only rice, another day - chicken, the third - only vegetables or light vegetable soup. And strictly until six o'clock in the evening! At first it was hard, I was hungry all the time, but then I got into it. I even began to like watching my diet and choosing foods for my diet. But most importantly, I had very heavy workloads at the Moscow Art Theater School, where I was studying then. Every day for three hours - stage movement, fencing, then a dramatic dance class with Alla Sigalova, after which we all literally crawled out of the studio completely exhausted. It was because of these stresses that my breast milk disappeared. I fed Andrey for only a month, and then switched him to artificial feeding. In general, in six months I lost 30 kilograms. And then another 10 suddenly left. I was literally blown away! And since this coincided with the fact that I dyed my hair blonde, it felt like the dye had penetrated my body and dissolved the extra pounds. So my weight dropped to “47” and is no longer growing. Some kind of restructuring of the body has occurred. Now I'm not on any diets, I just try to eat right. Excluded flour, sweet, fatty foods. Sometimes I completely forget to eat. In addition, I go to the gym: I run, lift, swim and steam in the sauna. And, of course, I give my all at concerts.

Why did you decide to radically change your hair color?

The stylist Alexander Shevchuk advised me. One day we found ourselves in adjacent seats on a plane. We talked, as they say, “for life,” and he said: “Don’t be afraid to change everything.” - “It’s easy to say... But when you don’t even know where to start?” - I shrugged. “Yes, with little things - at least with your hairstyle! I see you as a gorgeous blonde, and a new beautiful life will be added to your image. If you decide, call.” One day I did just that. But first, my black hair turned bright red, and I also had to shorten it greatly. There were a lot of funny situations associated with this: at the institute, at the entrance gate, they began to ask me for a student’s ID, and one day, when meeting me at the station after a tour, my director passed by. (Laughs.) After a few weeks, the hair acquired a harmonious white color. I saw a new Polina Gagarina in the mirror, which I liked.

Many women radically change their appearance after a divorce...

I lost weight and dyed my hair six months before we parted with Petya. So this is not about me.

Why did you break up?

Peter is an actor, we met at the Moscow Art Theater School. Both are temperamental, selfish, stubborn people; no one could or wanted to give in. We thought and looked at things differently. Each quarrel resulted in a big scandal. In the end, I realized that it was better for us to break up. I just packed my things, took my son and moved in with my mother. Now Petya and I have a very warm and respectful relationship. First of all, he is my friend. We learned to hear each other and understand. He helps me a lot with raising our son. I'm sure people meet for some kind of mission. So we met so that Andrei appeared.

You became a mother at the age of 20. Was it difficult to decide to have a child at that age?

At that moment, Petya and I were deeply in love with each other and, of course, dreamed of a family and children. I saw only this man as the father of my child! But I didn’t expect that everything would happen two months after we met. Now I am sure that this is fate! Andryusha should have been born precisely at the peak of love, emotions, passion. That’s why our son is so cheerful. We call him "Mr. Positive". He runs, jumps, laughs, dances, adores us, and we him. Petya and I got married when I was already deeply pregnant - it didn’t work out for us before, we both studied and worked. In parallel with my studies at the Moscow Art Theater School, I tried to build a singing career and performed in concerts. Although the teachers were extremely surprised when I came for the first time and said that I was going on tour for a couple of weeks - after all, you can’t skip classes at such a serious university, even with a fever you have to come and show a sketch. And when six months later I became pregnant, everyone was in shock! But right up until giving birth, I led an active lifestyle. She worked until the sixth month, and then she went to Jurmala to see “New Wave” and sang “I will never forgive you.” By the way, this was our first work with Kostya Meladze, then he was not yet my producer. And I continued to study. I remember in September, in the eighth month, I rolled into the classroom, and everyone shouted: “Oh, the bear has arrived!” And literally on the eve of giving birth, she played a German fraulein. I specially chose a thicker heroine, put on a huge pink robe, cap, and glasses. I handed in the passage, they read it to me, and I calmly went to give birth. Just two weeks after giving birth, I ran to take exams, because otherwise I could be kicked out of the institute. I remember my best friend Alena was ironing the stroller on Kamergersky Lane, because I had no one to leave Andryusha with. And every half hour she wrote to me by SMS: “I’m changing my diaper,” “I went to the restaurant.” And at this time I was scribbling a plan for an answer about Don Quixote. Having received another SMS, I couldn’t stand it and went up to the teacher: “Listen, I have a child on the street, can I quickly tell you about Don Quixote?” He was surprised: “What child?” After all, with my chubby cheeks and naive eyes, I looked like a child myself.

You entered the Moscow Art Theater School-Studio after “Factory”, being a famous singer. Did you want to change your profession?

No, what are you talking about? My mother always insisted that I get some kind of higher education. I didn’t want to go to the conservatory because it was boring, I couldn’t stand it. And at the Moscow Art Theater School they almost immediately told me: “We like you, don’t go anywhere else.” The professions of an actress and a singer, it seems to me, are quite similar, they even complement each other. The singer simply needs acting skills. After all, the song must be lived, the meaning of each line must be conveyed to the viewer.

How did it happen that you got into the “Star Factory” at the age of 16? At this age, you’re supposed to still be in school...

In Greece, where I lived with my mother (Polina’s mother is a professional dancer, she worked under contract in the Athens ballet. - Ed.), people go to school from the age of five. I was even released late - at six. And when I moved to Russia, I dropped out of fourth grade - after third, I immediately went to fifth. So I graduated from school at the age of 15. Moreover, in my senior year I studied in parallel with the first year of the pop and jazz school. That's why I came to the Factory. I didn’t even know about this project - because of my studies I had no time to watch TV. But one day a teacher from the school called me and asked me to come to the casting - they were recruiting for the “Star Factory”. At first I refused. It seemed to me that since “Factory” is a reality show, it would be the same as “Behind the Glass.” And it’s impossible to imagine more dirt on television. But the teacher persuaded me. Well, when they said that they would hire me for the project, then my mother and I started thinking seriously. We had never been separated before, but here we had to suddenly gain independence. In general, we consulted and consulted, and then I thought that if I didn’t try, I would regret it. There is nothing worse than regretting something not done...

And so you won at “Star Factory-2”, a lot was written about you in the press, you were very popular. And then, one might say, at the peak of fame, they disappeared for seven whole years. There were rumors that this was due to a personal conflict with Maxim Fadeev...

Sometimes people are suitable for each other, and sometimes they are not suitable. Maxim Fadeev is not my producer, and that says it all. To say that I disappeared for seven years is, at the very least, incorrect. A year after “Factory” I signed a contract with Igor Yakovlevich Krutoy. Or rather, my mother signed for me - I was only 17 years old. Then I recorded several popular songs: including my starting work “Lullaby”, “I am yours”. I toured constantly and released two full-length albums. So there is no question of any disappearance. Then we met Konstantin Meladze. I was still in another production center, but we had already released the song “I will never forgive you” together. Then Kostya came up with the song “The Performance is Over.” We recorded it very quickly then, and a month later the song took off and was heard literally from everywhere. From that moment on, the most vibrant and interesting creative period began in my life, which continues to this day. Now I can say with one hundred percent certainty that Konstantin Meladze is my producer. I needed a person like Kostya, I trust him, this is very important to me. He is aware of all the events of my life. The songs written for me largely relate to my experiences. And they are unlikely to suit anyone else.

And if your son ever wants to go into show business, how would you feel about it?

Andrey already, at five years old, sings at the slightest opportunity, hits the notes, feels the rhythm. He is especially good at dancing. But even if I see his incredible abilities, I will still try to protect my son from show business. He doesn't need this! A man must earn money with his intelligence and ingenuity, and the profession of a singer is somehow unmanly. By the way, this is why I decided not to take photographs with my son for the press anymore. Andrey once took part in photo shoots with me, posed, smiled for the camera, and changed clothes with great pleasure. But I think that this is unnecessary for a boy, let him do men’s things and not be photographed.

But your parents didn’t try to protect you from show business...

Unfortunately, here we can only talk about my mother - my father died when I was only six years old. But my mother did not prepare me for show business at all. There was no such thing before! I was simply given a comprehensive education. I played the piano, went to ballet school, and did gymnastics. Then she started singing... All the children around me played the piano, some the violin. This was customary in intelligent families, one might say it is in the order of things.

Does your ex-husband take part in raising your son?

Certainly. He is a dad, and no one has canceled this fact. And a good dad! Petya loves our son very much, worries about him, and rejoices at his successes. Andryushka adores him. Sometimes in the evenings my son sighs: “I miss daddy.” And one stingy man’s tear, no, no, and will roll down his cheek... (Smiles.) I say: “Soon daddy will come and take you for 2-3 days...” Andrei used to say: “I’ll go to my man’s apartment.” She and dad are reading something, playing, watching sports, chatting... I'm sure they're having a good time.

Your work takes up a lot of your time, you constantly tour, and also participate in television projects. Are you able to fully communicate with your child?

There comes a moment when I say: “Stop! That’s it, I don’t need any money. I want to go to my son!” And then I call the tour operator, order a ticket, take Andrey and my mother, and we fly to the sea. During vacation, we all sleep in the same bed - this is already a ritual. You simply cannot persuade a child to lie down separately. So we fall asleep side by side. And Andryusha will definitely hug me! It seems to me that my son does not have attention deficit, because he feels the love of all his relatives, he sees how we are all trying to spend as much free time as possible with him.

Back to your new look. They say that if you change your appearance, your whole life will change...

This is true! True, it was necessary to finish old things. But now is the time to turn the page and start life from scratch.

2. Go to the light 3. Cocaine 4. Go! 5. Game without fire 6. White smoke 7. Who are you 8. Dedication to Zhenya Lenka 9. Lullaby 10. Dance on broken glass 11. Resurrect! 12. Tiny duet 13. Queen 14. Waltz 15. Lord! 16. Opera 17. I'll come in...

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It is worth noting that the majority of subscribers took the side of Alla Pugacheva. According to fans, Fadeev could really do something himself, rather than criticize others. In addition, not all of Fadeev’s songs become hits and many do not like them. Many people have said that “New Year’s lights” are already boring and are losing relevance. If earlier this project aroused interest among viewers, as the artists presented their new songs, now everyone just sings each other’s songs, or tries on strange images, which becomes uninteresting. According to subscribers, there are now more artists than good songs, and they sing old hits, because no one can write new high-quality songs.

Alla Pugacheva responded to Max Fadeev’s message. The diva called the producer an “aging loser” and a “grump.” The singer advised Fadeev to do something cool himself, and not criticize existing projects. Pugacheva recalled that Fadeev himself promised to create something new last year, but all these are just words, and there are no actions. At the end of her message, Alla Pugacheva added that she considers Max Fadeev a genius and his songs “cool.”

In January 2010, on the air of the program “Morning of Russia” (TV channel “Russia-1”), Maxim Fadeev supported the initiative of the LDPR party to introduce a bill to the State Duma on quotas for Russian music on the radio.

Alla Pugacheva and Maxim Fadeev New Year's Eve. Recent events.

After the holiday television broadcast last year, the New Year's “Blue Light” caused a storm of negative emotions among viewers who complained that they were tired of watching the same thing every time. Max Fadeev agreed with the opinion of the audience. On his Instagram page, he asked if anything had changed this year. The producer said that since last year, the heads of TV channels promised to change the format of “New Year’s lights” and create something new and modern. Fadeev asked subscribers who were watching TV on New Year's Eve, did the show really become different?

Maxim Fadeev put an end to the scandal with Alla Pugacheva.
Producer Maxim Fadeev said on his Instagram that the situation with New Year's shows on Russian channels will change radically in the near future
Fadeev said that at his instigation, a new format of New Year’s programs - “people’s lights” - will appear on the country’s screens next year. The audience themselves will decide by voting which artists they want to see on television on New Year's Eve. He added that his idea received approval from two federal channels.
Earlier, a petition appeared on the Internet to the General Director of Channel One, Konstantin Ernst, demanding to change the New Year's program in 2018. “What happened on your New Year’s broadcast is simply beyond the bounds! Why did you highlight the New Year's broadcast of Channel One? Because, in my opinion, it has become significantly inferior in quality to its previous years. Believe me, few people liked being at the “Visiting the Diva” table. Read the tens of thousands of comments under the petition and see for yourself!” - the text of the petition says. The author of the petition is a resident of Rostov-on-Don, Vadim Manukyan.
In the show “New Year's Eve” on Channel One, Alla Pugacheva, together with her husband Maxim Galkin, acted as an entertainer, which caused dissatisfaction among TV viewers. Maxim Fadeev himself sharply criticized the show, calling everything that happens on the screens hell.

Alla Pugacheva ran into Maxim Fadeev. Detailed data as of 01/06/2018

Natasha Ionova (“Glyuk’oZa”) and Maxim Fadeev met on the set of the film “Triumph”. Max was the author of the music, and this spirited fourteen-year-old girl played one of the supporting roles. The first test in their joint creative biography was the song “Suga”, which interested the musical community and listeners. The producer organizes the group “Gluk oZa” with soloist Natalya Ionova.

Of the current rappers, Fadeev likes Skryptonite, his creative biography, atmosphere and energy of performance. True, sometimes the illegibility of the text being read is annoying. Does not accept those who try to imitate him. Celebrates T-fest from "Gas Holder". Mushrooms is also a band that Max understands, although he considers it to be well-produced pop. He speaks respectfully of Oksimiron. According to Fadeev, he is a wildly educated and talented guy. On Versus he is handsome, but on stage he loses because he is too clever. Those who listen, these sixteen-year-old girls and boys, do not understand him. Such an audience is ideal for Husky, and he will eventually lead them away from Oksimiron. Maxim is in the “Versus Battle” topic, watching its episodes, watching the participants.

1. Burn 2. Nirvana 3. You can swim in dirty water 4. Blooper, blooper, blooper 5. Let it be quiet 6. Open me up 7. Little fire 8. Electrics I 9. Electrics II 10. Shaman 11. Look behind the sun 12 .Play with me 13. Gift

1. Burn 2. Nirvana 3. You can swim in dirty water 4. Blooper, blooper, blooper 5. Let it be quiet 6. Open me up 7. Little fire 8. Electrics I 9. Electrics II 10. Shaman 11. Look behind the sun 12 .Play with me 13. Gift

Alla Pugacheva and Maxim Fadeev what happened. Detailed information.