Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Red wheel
Node IV April Seventeenth
Proclamation "Young Russia", 1862
REVOLUTION CALENDAR
There is only one way out ... a revolution, a bloody and unforgiving revolution ... We will be more consistent not only the pitiful revolutionaries of 48, but also the great terrorists of 92, we will not be afraid if we see that ... we have to shed three times more blood than the Jacobins shed ... With full faith ... to the glorious future of Russia ... to be the first to carry out the great cause of socialism, we will publish one cry "into the axes"
(Art. Art.)
- Germanic min. in. demanded cases from min. finance another 5 million marks "for political purposes in Russia"
- F. Platten, on behalf of Lenin, entered into conspiratorial contact with the German ambassador in Bern
24 - In the West Good Friday
- United States declared war on Germany
- The German government informed the Leninist group of consent to their passage in an isolated carriage
25 - 28 - Exit party k-d in Petrograd
27 - Departure of the Lenin-Zinoviev group from Zurich to Germany. German Ambassador in Bern: "It is imperative that the German press completely ignore what is happening."
30 - Lenin's group sails to Sweden. Emperor Wilhelm ordered: if Sweden does not accept them - to pass them through the Eastern Front
31 - Meeting Plekhanov at the Finland Station
2 - The first day of Orthodox Easter
3 - Meeting Lenin at the Finland Station
4 - Lenin in the Tauride Palace speaks with theses ("April") on the deepening of the revolution
8 - Meeting at the Finlyandsky railway station Chernov, Deich, Avksentieva, Savinkova
INTRODUCTION
DOCUMENTS - 1
PERSONAL SECRETARY TO GEORGE V STAMFORD -
... must implore you to convey to the Prime Minister that everything that Kothe role hears and reads in the press, shows that the presence of the emperor and the empress in this country will not be liked by the public and will certainly worsen the position of the King and Queen ... Buchanan must tell Milyukov that dissatisfaction in England against the arrival of the emperor and empress so strongly that we must abandon our past soglasia on the proposal of the Russian government ...
DOCUMENTS – 2
AMBASSADOR IN PETROGRAD BUKENEN -
FOREIGN MINISTER BALFUR
... I completely agree with you ... It would be much better if former emperor won't go to England.
This arose before the Siberian Social Democrats suddenly: they came to Tsereteli, who in two days became the master of Irkutsk, asked: should the echelons of equipment that had come to the station from Vladivostok go to the front? And Tsereteli, without thinking at all, exclaimed: "Of course, let it go!" So it was born that in a few weeks they began to tease "revolutionary defencism".
War! How many have been negotiated about her and changed their minds during these years by the exiles. They were all united by a passionately negative attitude towards this insane war, especially meaningless for Russia, which did not need a single top of territorial gains. But the hope did not materialize that the socialist parties of Europe would each fight imperialist aspirations at home: it’s wild, but it turned out that the working class there felt more in common with the national policy of its ruling classes than with the international tasks of the proletariat. Only we Russians were free of all this! - and did not want to be as myopic-practical and not principled as our Western brothers. However, there was little hope that this war would end in the conditions of popular uprisings - and then whose side should we wish victory? Publications came from Europe that Lenin put forward “nationalism on the contrary”: to desire and achieve the defeat of Russia. But the Siberian socialists (like Tsereteli and his party comrades - Dan, Voitinsky, Weinstein, Gornstein, Ermolaev, and together with the Socialist-Revolutionary Gotz) adopted the line of absolute neutrality. (That is, they would of course sympathize with the Western democracies, but tsarism will triumph along with them? - and this is horror. The only hope is that the fundamental interests of the Russian bourgeoisie are irreconcilable with the autocracy and will undermine it.)
And suddenly - the revolution broke out! And she inherited this war. And the Russian socialists suddenly turned from a persecuted irresponsible opposition into the masters of a revolutionary country. And this caused a psychological turning point for the war, it was not even formulated theoretically yet, but suddenly it appeared like this in Tsereteli.
When in the Second State Duma on June 2, 1907 it was already clear that only a few minutes remained until the arrest of the Socialist-Democratic faction or the dispersal of the Duma, - a young slender Georgian, an undergraduate student, but already the leader of Moscow students, but already the leader of the Duma faction s-d - Irakli Tsereteli, with noble grace of movement, independence in head-set, hair-eyed, black-eyed, at 11 o'clock in the evening still managed to get the floor, ran up to the podium for the last time and in a full-sounding angry voice scourged this government of military courts, this triumph of boundless violence when the bayonet is put on the order of the day of the Duma. On that day, the state bulk of the autocracy seemed impenetrably eternal, and our breasts, especially those already touched by throat consumption, were doomed to be given away.
But not a full ten years have passed since the capital of Siberia, Irkutsk, began to flow to the unintelligent inhabitants and mercury-susceptible exiles, with private congratulatory telegrams, news of the unthinkable and instantaneous collapse of this damned autocracy. Anything was expected - but not this! And suddenly political exiles, still only in private apartments and summer cottages, boiling over in their circles with arguments about socialist attitudes (well, it is true, sometimes they published magazines, and Gotz contrived - and a regular newspaper of the Zimmerwald direction) - in three days as the only authority here. And immediately Tsereteli headed the committee of public organizations, established an 8-hour working day, on the square in front of the city duma he spoke to the garrison built and then let the troops march past him, and they enthusiastically barked at the committee, and reluctantly - to the commander of the District.
It was necessary to experience this transition after six years in prison (due to his poor health, Irakli was replaced by hard labor with a prison sentence), then four years of Usolskaya exile (quite comfortable and fruitful, 60 miles by railway from Irkutsk, and you can go any day, but eternal hopeless settlement, if not to flee abroad), - and to this suddenly fabulous instant collapse of the age-old system (yes, is success lasting? Yes, it got too easily), to this state of intoxication and power tension.
But from the very first days - and acute anxiety for the fate of the revolution. With this screaming mass of soldiers, in fact, there was no understanding, this is not the working class, this is an element without certain social ideals, it does not even realize what is happening and conceals the danger of both anarchy on the left and counter-revolution on the right. Russian Social Democrats have long known from Marxism that a revolution cannot make the leap from a semi-feudal russian system and immediately to the socialist, the limit of possible gains now is the democratization of the country on the basis of bourgeois economic relations. But such a sudden joining of a multi-million armed army to the working class lures the socialist parties into the most extreme experiments, to impose the will of the socialist minority on the whole country - and this can lead to an explosion and counter-revolution, and the revolution will collapse.
Already on the tenth day of this feverish, sleepless Irkutsk situation, Irakli's throat began to bleed, and he had to sleep. It is necessary that in the most radiant days of life - health refused! Friends and relatives called me to Georgia by telegrams - but no, I wanted to go to the very center of the revolution! The “train of the Second Duma” trudged from Irkutsk to St. Petersburg, lively crowds met him at the stations, people were looking for leaders, but Irakli continued to cough up blood all the way, he did not come out with speeches, only quietly talked in a compartment with members of local councils.
Yes, overtaking the slow movement of the train, they grabbed the oncoming, everything fresh, Izvestia of the Petrograd Soviet, the throats of the revolution. It was already clear that the authority of the Council was much higher than the Provisional Government. The harsh articles of Izvestia dictated a distrustful attitude towards the bourgeoisie. But some articles contradicted others - who wrote them? who typed? - it turned out that the Council did not have a clear program of its own. And the heart was torn - rather go there, and rather put an end to this chaos and uncertainty! Now, when the revolution is moving from negative to positive tasks, a clear program is needed first of all, especially about power and about war. With joy and pride we read and re-read the Manifesto of March 14 - that international word, which throughout the war was longed for by millions of tortured masses all over the world. Yes! of course - not reckless defencism. But neither is the overthrow of the Provisional Government. And how difficult it will be to explain it now to the working masses in Petrograd: what, now, with the unconditional victory of the revolution, it is necessary to limit ourselves in demands? how to explain to workers the importance of this intangible, intangible influence of technically educated cultural circles?
LOAN OF FREEDOM. Appeal of the Provisional Government.
TO YOU, CITIZENS OF A GREAT FREE RUSSIA, TO THOSE TO WHOM THE FUTURE OF OUR HOMELAND IS DEAR. A STRONG ENEMY THREATS TO RETURN THE COUNTRY TO A DEAD STORY ... MANY BILLIONS NEEDED TO SPEND THE COUNTRY ...
Uprising in Serbia against the Bulgarians.
Loss of spirits in the Turkish troops ... The position of the Turkish troops in Mesopotamia is becoming more and more difficult. Jerusalem is full of refugees ...
Washington... Subscription to the 1917 Freedom Loan expressed positively in the flow of gold, goes in such huge quantities that it threatens to clutter up all telephone lines. Virtually every delivery boy gives a telegraphic order to subscribe to a loan ...
(Reuters Agency)
... But all of us, the Russian people, will be responsible to history so that the further course of the revolution is worthy of its great beginning. Future generations will pay for the weakness of our will and reason - but the present will be condemned and damned. Before the judgment of future generations, we will be indivisible in guilt as well as in merit.
Under the old regime, the tax apparatus was completely insufficiently used to replenish the treasury. The current restructuring of public finances cannot but be associated with an increase in the tax burden.
... Give the army of people! Has Russia really become impoverished in people? Where are the replenishments? Whoever is booked with patronage in the rear - to expel the force of the entire people!
("Russian Will")
STATEMENT OF THE KRONSTADT COUNCIL... Kronstadt instills anxiety in the black hundred of the bourgeoisie ... The Kronstadt Executive Committee of the Council will take all measures to decisively fight against the dark elements hiding behind the title of "Exchange Vedomosti correspondents."
Chairman I.K. Lyubovich
Oath of the Gendarmes... ... going to their positions, the former policemen and gendarmes greet the Provisional Government and the Soviet of Workers' Deputies. Inspired by love for the Motherland and the people, we take an oath ... We defended the life and property of every civilian population ... Many of us have military distinctions for the Japanese and current wars ...
... In the south, the area under cultivation is expected to be cut by half. Creating a completely unreasonable alarm, the owners and managers of large estates flee to the city, abandoning their estates to their fate ... Is it possible that the triumph of the revolution and the fulfillment of social ideals should be accompanied by popular hunger? .. The lands are left without sowing, and there is no sowing material ...
Kharkov... The Public Committee sent a telegram to Petrograd: to immediately remove Archbishop Anthony in view of the harmful direction of his activities. Sunday 16 Apr there was a fight in the cathedral of supporters and opponents. Its instigator - a student of a commercial institute, who insulted the archbishop during the service and threatened to remove him, was arrested by the police.
... How should the Synod listen to the decree of the Provisional Government? - standing, as the highest decree, or sitting, as a message from the Council of Ministers? Resolved: standing, as a sign of all-submission to the Provisional Government.
DARK FORCES. Kharkov, Apr 17. In Kharkov, dark rumors are spreading that yesterday, during the ministry of Archbishop Anthony in the Myrrh-Bearing Church, some Jew Koufman "said something." Koufman was beaten.
The Zhytomyr City Executive Committee appealed to the Provisional Government to remove Bishop Eulogius from the Volyn province. The petition was supported by the Zhytomyr Soviet of Workers' Deputies. But the clergy are at odds with everyone public organizations and acts in the wrong direction, as it would be desirable in the sense of strengthening the foundations of the new system. And Eulogius is still not being expelled.
Zhytomyr... The Ukrainian Rada spoke in favor of the immediate removal of Archbishop Eulogius from the borders of Ukraine as an enemy of the Ukrainian people.
... Information from the deputy of the State Duma Fridman that in the Podolsk province. pogrom agitation is being conducted, they do not correspond to reality. Nowhere in the Podolsk lips. there is no manifestation of enmity towards Jews.
BE AFRAID OF EXCESSIONS! ... The danger of people's lynching hangs over the Leninists. Let's say right away: it would be a disaster for the revolution and a shame for a free people if there were some violent act, some excesses against Lenin or Pravda ... non-tactless polemics with Lenin of some press organs, suspicions of “Germanophilia,” suspicions not based on anything ... who calls for reprisals against Lenin - this is the real agitation for civil war.
... The revolution brought a valuable gift to the people: courtesy. The main consequence of the revolution is the joyous enlightenment of the people. And the May Day holiday showed that both laughter and joy came for politeness.
Train tickets. ... a special committee has been set up to settle the sale railway tickets... The committee appealed to the population with an appeal: to sign up for the queue for the first half of May and not to form a queue at B. Konyushennaya on the day of the bright May Day holiday ...
IN Moscow acute lack of forage, horses die. The introduction of forage cards is being prepared. Since April 18, the bread ration has been reduced to residents from 1 lb. up to 3/4 lb.
In March and April, many German and Austrian subjects came to Moscow without permission.
The opera "A Life for the Tsar" will now obviously be excluded from the theatrical repertoire.
At the Mariinsky Theater, a meeting on further postponements for actors liable for military service ... In the Alexandrinsky Theater there are 28 hours of such, including Meyerhold. At a meeting of the troupe of the Alexandrinsky Theater, a resolution was adopted: "To recognize the activity of theaters in wartime as necessary, since it maintains vigor among the people."
It is no secret that together with the freedom fighters, in some places, criminals were released from Siberian penal servitude. And everyone pretends to be liberated politicians.
Odessa... In honor of May 1, the entire garrison, led by the generals, officers and to the last soldier, vividly demonstrated. The Jewish Junkers walked along with the singing of Hebrew songs.
Vitebsk... The coup d'etat was met with enthusiasm in our province by the class-conscious class of the population, but confusion occurred among the dark masses. Phenomena that did not correspond to the tasks of the moment were observed, but the conscious class prevailed.
("Stock Exchange")
IN Kiev the Yugorussian society is organized. Yugoross is the one who recognizes Russian as their language literary language, and the place of activity is the territory of free Ukraine. Fight the narrow national trend ...
Rostov-on-Don... A gathering of three thousand Russian Galicians decided to protest against the seizure activities of the Ukrainians and their arbitrariness towards the Russian Galicians, Bukovynians and Ugro-Russians, and their attempts to turn Russian gymnasiums into Ukrainian ones.
RED WHEEL CHANGED TO YELLOWNatalya Solzhenitsyn - about the main book of Alexander Solzhenitsyn and about our days FROM compilation of the works of A.I. Solzhenitsyn in 30 volumes is published by the Vremya publishing house.
Three volumes will see the light of day for the first time. In one - the author's diary of the epic "Red Wheel". In another - a book about modern Russia "Another time - another burden." In the third, the unpublished part of the Literary Collection.
Following the first volume ("Stories and Tiny" 1950-1990s), volumes 7-8 were printed. This is "August the Fourteenth" - Node I of the "Red Wheel".
The literary chronology was violated by the will of the author: "a narrative in the measured time frame" about the Russian revolution will be released before the "Gulag Archipelago".
The editor-compiler of the collected works Natalya Dmitrievna SOLZHENITSYNA tells about the "Red Wheel". - Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn considers his main book not "The Gulag Archipelago", but "The Red Wheel". Why?
- "The Red Wheel" is a book parallel to his entire life. On November 18, 1936, the idea arose: "I will write a novel about the Russian revolution." The eighteen-year-old student began with chapters on the fighting in East Prussia in 1914.
In 1944, it was to East Prussia - by coincidence! - he came himself with his battery. Then there was the arrest. In the Butyrka prison, during the shipment, on the sharashka, in the camps, Solzhenitsyn asked the elders about the seventeenth year.
And this was his vector. He saddled it, spurred it on and flew on it.
Archipelago material ... there was so much of it! He simply made him fulfill the obvious duty that his fate had imposed on the author.
But it was precisely the thought that guided Solzhenitsyn all his life: to understand how the catastrophe of the Seventeenth happened? What is its mechanism? Is it repeatable? Was it rock or not?
The revolution in Russia could not fail to happen - or could it not happen?
In the 1970s, he wrote: “It is amazing that in 60 years it has not been written in fiction there is practically nothing about such a great event as the February Revolution ... There are so many memoirs (scattering), research - but there is no novel. Such is the power of obscuration (by later events). All these heaps of contemporaries lie and languish, as if they were waiting for me. "
The powerful scrupulousness of the chronicle breaks the myth of the "great bloodless". "Martobr" of 1917: 11 thousand lynchings. Kronstadt and Helsingfors: the number of officers killed is half of the number of officers killed at Tsushima.
Petrograd: reprisals against the police. The director of the Putilov factory is drowned: it's good to bend your back! The community members are smashing the farmsteads of otrubnikov - "Stolypin landowners".
... Until 1922, about 15 million will die.
- In terms of detail, The Red Wheel is a work for a group of historians.
- Yes, the author studied and used a tremendous amount of material. Memoirs, letters, diaries. Everything written by historians in exile. All the major newspapers of those months.
Aleksandr Isaevich was lucky enough to find many more participants and witnesses alive. After our expulsion, he met a lot with the emigrants of the first wave.
Here is Alexander Pavlovich Sevryugin, an Orthodox monastery in Bussy. In the past, a military man, he lived at the monastery. He talked wonderfully about the First World War (he was, it seems, an auxiliary) and about the Civil War.
There was a wonderful meeting with Zinaida Stepanovna Mokievskaya-Zubok, the sister of mercy of the Volunteer Army. Her memoirs were later published in the All-Russian Memorial Library.
In the midst of A.I. writes: “In the Archipelago, I wrote: now if I have to get a cheerful letter, then only from a former prisoner. Now, in 1977, I can add: either from a former White Guard. Those who survived the darkness, humiliation and poverty of the emigration, at the age of 80, convey to me in their letters their firmness, loyalty to Russia, a clear view of things. How much to suffer and so be preserved in spirit! They help us a lot to take the epoch. "
The colossal material requires a remarkable skill to deal with it. You can train as many threads from sources as you like. It is important for everyone to find the right place right away. And then you will disappear. You will never find her.
Alexander Isaevich's card file for the "Wheel" - we have all of it preserved. She occupied the drawers and tables in a large library room in Vermont. These are hundreds of envelopes with the inscriptions: "Petrograd Garrison", "Petrograd factories", "Fleet", "Village", "Cossacks", "Church", "Zemstvo", "Cadets", "Revolutionary Democrats". Or: "Guchkov", "Maklakov", "gen. Alekseev "," Trotsky ".
And in each envelope, when he read it, he immediately put extracts on the topic.
- In the pre-computer era ...
- Of course. But - with his clear mindset and mathematical education. And this helps in any profession. There is an entry in the "Diary of a Novel": “For a job like my Knots, another quality or passion is needed - taxonomy. As a rule, a writer does not have it. And without her I would have disappeared here a long time ago. "
The rootedness of this book is not only in the documents. But also in them. And in the answers to the main questions, a lot changed as the material was obtained and assimilated.
The Red Wheel is a harsh book. It is thanks to the author's taxonomy.
Solzhenitsyn is precisely unraveling our beloved lament by strings: "The hardest fate is to execute Russia." But for what ?!
... You read about the plan for the second stage of Stolypin's reforms. To increase the number of scholarship holders at universities twenty times, the number of secondary schools - up to 5000, higher - up to - 1500. Introduce a "qualification of professionalism" in the state apparatus - and thus further facilitate vertical mobility. (Although in the 1910s, 20% of the gymnasium students were already "peasants".)
Further in the project - roads, factories, development of zemstvos and geology. What are the plans for reorganizing the country by 1932!
… You read further: what was the origin of Stolypin's death? From the fact that General N., without hesitation, gave agent Bogrov a pass to the theater. Officer N. did not check him at the door - although he was obliged to. And Bogrov entered the Opera with a weapon. And why was Stolypin's only guard far from him? AND...
The same thing happened in February 1917. The reader sees how the "death of the empire" was formed from thousands of actions. Out of laziness, vanity, fear of the "public" of specific people.
Which of them knew that they were taking their step towards the common abyss? And that 50 million will disappear in it by 1953?
... And the engineer-traveler Bublikov jumped out of the snuffbox with a fertom to the forefront of history - to send out a telegram about the events in St. Petersburg throughout Russia. After that, the fermentation of the reserve regiments passed into the category of world events.
It was already impossible to stop. Or is it possible? At this crossroads? At that station?
The strongest note in the book is that we do not know what we are doing here and now.
How many crossroads there is one warrior in the field. And his choice will decide the case.
But one more thing emerges from the scrupulous chronicle. There were not so many people who were not seized by the general fever. They were: the active tsarist minister Rittich, the honest populist Poshekhonov, colonel Kutepov, the workers' leader Kozma Gvozdev. But there were more people seduced by the glory of a liberal general or by the right to shake things up "among the people".
- The book of strict judgment ... Not even over the revolution.
- I would not say that. This book invites the reader to make his own judgment. Probably, he will be harsh for many. But not because the author wanted it so. Solzhenitsyn the writer has this principle: he writes about each character from the inside. Allows everyone to be their own lawyer.
Even if this person is unpleasant to the author, or alien, or strange, the arguments in favor of his choice are set forth in his own thoughts: be it Kerensky, Milyukov, Plekhanov or Nicholas II. This is how the organ sounding of this historical prose arises.
- But then who was Lenin? From the volumes of "October" and "Mart" it seems: not a demon, not a demiurge. So, a float on a wave, a bubble of the earth. Not the cause of the death of millions and the "dislocation of the axis" of Russia, but a consequence of weakness, laziness, fear of hundreds of other people.
- Of course not. The trouble is that people distinguish a demon only if he appears in a cloak of Mephistopheles. Lenin was a man of great potential. Partly both a float on a wave and an earth bubble. But he carried a colossal charge. And he kept on these waves, where no one, even the strongest, could do anything. He did not miss the moment when the crest of the wave rose and tossed it, where he was aiming.
This is what distinguishes genius from non-genius.
He had such a filling and such an incredible sense of purpose that he did not miss this moment. I went to him all my life. But he couldn’t have known: if it will happen, it will not happen? Most even highly gifted people let go of the reins at their prime moment.
Parvus was brighter. And Trotsky is brighter. So what? Yes, they were in the lead in some segments. But that's all. And shining, and striking, and carrying away with them, they nevertheless did not go the whole distance. They flashed and lost. Lenin did not lose. He turned everything upside down. And we still live in Lenin's Russia.
He is certainly not a black and red demon. Rather ... gray. But the most powerful one.
And this is much scarier than a demon artist.
- "The Diary of the Novel", "The Diary of R-17" will be published for the first time. When?
- The author's desire and my desire is to roll the Wheel as quickly as possible. The second Knot, "October Sixteenth", is already in the publishing house. I think the volumes will come out in February-March. By the fall of 2007 - four volumes of Martha. Then "April". And behind it is the P-17 Diary. 2008, I guess.
- And what is this book?
- Solzhenitsyn's life confrontations, publicly known, leave the impression of a man of steel. Uncompromising. Free from doubt.
We have written about this more than once. He seems like that.
In fact, everything is completely different! And the diary that accompanied his twenty-five years of work on The Red Wheel reveals this. There are many doubts, even torments.
"Diary R-17" was written by a suffering person.
In some notes, the author despairs that, apparently, he will not have the strength to complete the "Wheel". Because it took so many years of work to chronicle several months - the sixteenth and seventeenth.
But further, in the process of work, he becomes convinced (and we together with him) that already from May 1917 nothing could be returned and slowed down.
Previously, he wanted to conduct the action until October 1917, showing in the same detail how it was. And then I realized that already in May there were no forces that could stop this cosmic wheel. What happened has already been shown. And - it has already happened ...
- Maybe the ten-volume chronicle lacks a short and hard code?
- At the end of each volume of "Martha" there was such a code - an overview chapter. Written by "today's man": Solzhenitsyn, who went through the Second World War, the Gulag, exile.
I just thought that these chapters in the "Wheels" corps contradicted the idea: to reconstruct events as accurately as possible, but to give the right of the court to the reader. Alexander Isaevich hesitated, our disputes are on the pages of the "Diary". In the end, he combined these four chapters into an article "Reflections on the February Revolution."
- "Reflections" is on the website www.lib.ru. The theme of "The Red Wheel" is very strong there as a book about the eternal discord between the authorities and the "public".
“It was like a general (educated) state under hypnosis. ... The incandescence of hatred between the educated class and the government made it impossible for any constructive joint measures, compromises, state exits, and only created a destructive potential for destruction. "
The results of that strife are evident. But can we “recognize the government” in 2007?
- Actually, the government is not bright ... But here's what: it's time to recognize the government as a participant in the dialogue. It's time to argue with him, it's time to whip him, it's time to praise him, if he deserves!
There is now an opportunity to speak out loud. Yes, it must be achieved. But we see that the authorities react to the expression of the will of the groups.
This was the case with monetization. So 28 thousand people stood up for Shcherbinsky - the driver, who was overtaken by the governor Evdokimov. The movement of defrauded real estate investors, the idea of \u200b\u200ba referendum in St. Petersburg on the Gazprom tower on Okhta ... The people are definitely learning a new language of conversation with the authorities.
- Or the resistance of the STD and the Union of Museums to the law "On Autonomous Associations." And they achieved a correction - by a two-year chicanery of conciliation commissions.
- And note: the whole people could not participate in this action. But a group of people who considered it their own blood business found an opportunity to influence the Duma.
We are so accustomed to the fact that there were tsars, then the Bolsheviks, under whom it is better not to crawl out ... The consciousness of people should change, but it changes terribly slowly.
The principle of interaction with the authorities should be different. The one that was not in Russia in February 1917: do not break everything on a grand scale and do not surrender everything without a sound.
- There is a scene in The Wheel: Colonel Vorotyntsev at Shingarev. October 1916. The famous cadet, the future suicide bomber Shingarev says with horror and delight: I am reading about France at the end of the 18th century. Oh, what a resemblance to us!
Vorotyntsev replies: “Aren't we ourselves catching up with these parallels? And how to make an effort - to parallelize? How would ... bend over? "
We love to build these parallels. A special temptation: writers grow above themselves by the size of the predicted disaster. It thickens in the minds of the readers: since everyone is writing! And it comes.
In 1916, they read about the guillotine.
Now about the similarities with Germany on the eve of fascism.
What do you think about it? "How to make efforts - parallelize"?
“The recent wild displays are endlessly depressing. Vietnamese boys studied in my course in the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics at Moscow State University; they were just angels ... Quiet, diligent, sweet.
And the same people are being killed on the street in St. Petersburg.
I can't live with shame when this happens.
Undoubtedly, this must be fought harder. Seems to be finally starting.
But I think that the population of Russia does not carry the roots of fascism. From all previous experience: they are not!
But nevertheless, we see the facts. Hence, we must look for the reason. I think “ours” is in the way in which we got rid of communism in the 1990s. The social hopelessness of whole townships. Or districts in big cities: Petersburg has long been such a city.
In 1996, we were there with Alexander Isaevich. They were tears! Dirty, crying city. Crying in the literal sense: all facades with dark streaks.
Then the skinheads of St. Petersburg appeared. It's clear: gateways big citywhere teenagers congregate. Today need has collapsed - and there is no work - and hopelessness lies ahead. In such an air, there will always be gurus who are intoxicated by power.
The economy was falling apart in entire regions. There was nowhere to work. And it's impossible to leave. And people in multitudes have fallen into a social trap.
- In 1998, in the book “Russia in a landslide,” Alexander Isaevich quoted letters to him about this. Are they writing the same thing now?
- They write all the time: he is generally recognized as the defender of the province. Yes, he always was. People write about things that are no longer available to them. A lot is about culture, which is now not available anywhere where there is no oil. Especially for teachers, doctors in the Middle Lane. Yes, salaries have gotten a little better. It can be seen from the letters. But all the same, there is no money to come to Moscow on vacation, go to theaters, exhibitions (as teachers used to do). Now they work in the garden during the holidays.
Many people have been morally undermined by these years.
- In 1930s England, after the Great Depression, life was so difficult that the workers and part of the elite were interested in the experience of the Reich. But they were able to "pass over".
- The solution to these problems is very difficult. But the origins are not in the Russian national character.
Aggression can come to life in any society, it would be the environment. We created the environment ourselves with an extremely inept transition. Those who led the country in the 1990s have forgotten that there are people to take care of. The smarter of the old leaders now admit it.
- You mentioned: Alexander Isaevich calls the post-Soviet years "Yellow Wheel". What's behind this formula?
- We did not see August 1991 in Moscow. It's a pity: the participants experienced it as great days. But that climb was channeled into nothing. What was called democracy during the Yeltsin era was, of course, a farce.
Lies (sometimes out of stupidity, but more often deliberately) ached my ears when we returned in 1994. I wanted to ask: "Can't you hear this yourself?"
Many have not heard. Perhaps by inertia in 1991.
... Yellowness - and in an instant change of ideals in which children were raised. They were canceled overnight. It felt good to be rich. But "Don't steal!" it became indecent to pronounce aloud. "Thou shalt not kill" did not sound either. Moral imperatives were gone from speech for years.
And it turned out: not to succumb, to live with your own mind, to remain faithful to what you breathed - in the Yellow Vortex it is safer than in the Red one. But it is also very difficult.
The Red Wheel ... it wasn't hiding, though. The yellow came gradually, under false slogans. And also killed a huge number of people.
The roll of this new Wheel tormented Alexander Isaevich from the very beginning. Here are his notes:
“Three Great Troubles have now converged on my tables. The Troubles of the Seventeenth Century, which I follow - according to historians, but precisely with the search for lessons; Troubles of the Seventeenth Year, Modified to the Bottom; and the Third Troubles, today ... and to which the "Wheel" was so late, too late.
These 75 years have mercilessly imposed on our country - all with new, new pressure layers, beating off the memory of the past, not giving a sigh, recovering, and understanding the road. And - again we are on the same, February: to chaos, to tearing, to shreds.
And our democrats - as in 1917, having received power, do not know how to lead it: they are neither courageous nor professional.
In the seventeenth century, our people in the depths of the country were healthy, well-fed and strong in spirit. And he resisted. In the seventeenth year - still full and still healthy in body. And now - everyone is hungry, sick, in despair and in complete misunderstanding: where have they been brought? "
This is 1991.
- The epic comes out in a new author's edition ...
- The changes mainly concern "Marta" and "April". The bottom line is the release of redundant information. Mostly in "newspaper" chapters.
Alexander Isaevich was fond of them. Microfilms of newspapers of 1917 were sent from the Hoover Archives, and he spent a significant part of his life "odorobl". (We called the reading apparatus a peasant phrase: it was absurdly large.)
There were so many bright details in the newspapers! But such a volume is difficult to perceive.
And the author did not have the strength to squeeze: we were already in a hurry to Russia. Perestroika began. And Solzhenitsyn was in a hurry with April.
About two years ago, he did some serious editing. 5-7% of the volume by the author compartment. To the apparent ease of reading. But there are no changes in the essence, there is no other view of the trajectory of the Red Wheel.
- We are definitely afraid of this topic. In 2006, there was an experience in the "Live Journal" - the publicist Olshansky asked the question: "Who would you be with in 1917?"
Gave 1100 answers. Basically: "With the red: I'm from the land-poor." "With the Reds: they built Magnitka in a wild country." They often answered: "I would be with those who win."
It seems that the country does not want comprehension and repentance.
The surviving victims and their descendants led us to condemn collectivization and 1937. Victims of the Civil and 1920s almost no descendants were left in Russia.
- It's very controversial. I think that those who today in Russia condemn collectivization and 1937 are no more than those who are ready to recognize the legitimacy and heroism of the White Struggle. But something else is more important: when blood descendants raise their voices, it is not as valuable as when not blood descendants. I think that the people's repentance for the unrighteous piece of their history is not only possible, but also necessary. No, not in the form of a temple act. Repentance is the labor of comprehending the past. And in making (on the basis of today's experience) his own personal verdict.
God gave us this land and language; our ancestors raised, accumulated, domesticated. We let it all go down. Destroyed each other. How not to repent for this?
But so far, the "victory of the Reds at the Runet" does not surprise me. The old propaganda worked powerfully for a long time. And it is firmly rooted in the minds of adult compatriots.
- There is a formula in the book: "It is easy to seduce an infant, pre-political people." The law on universal primary education in Russia was adopted in 1908. Completed in the 1930s. The USSR received the "general average" in the 1970s. Our first general picture of Russia in the twentieth century is from Brezhnev's textbooks.
- After our return, Alexander Isaevich was repeatedly sent new history textbooks for examination. Tears too. There are no textbooks on the history of Russia of the twentieth century that are not propaganda, serving the fact, worthy of respect.
So, unfortunately, teenagers know no more and no better than their elders.
But the fact that so many people have answered on the Internet to a "purely historical question" may mean: is there an anxiety about self-determination? The gray spot wants to be translucent.
Remember, Akhmatova's Poem had lines written already in the 1940s, with new experience: "As if in the mirror of a terrible night / And rages, and does not want / A man recognizes himself / And along the legendary embankment / Not a calendar one was approaching - / The Real Twentieth Century."
If you like, the "Red Wheel" is a mirror that the author presents to us.
Here is a mirror. If you dare to do the work of self-knowledge and will be able to accept its results, not all is lost.
... It is important not even to award who was right. It is important to understand: what stem of all that happened can grow for today? This is the only thing that matters!
Who remembers that in the 1910s the Russian economy grew by leaps and bounds? And that while we had the lowest taxes in Europe: 1%, not 33%? Although the country was the same: huge, the population was not very dense, but in some places it was very rare. And the roads are in trouble.
But the same roads: do we remember that the Transsib route was laid in 1901-1910 - in record time? Now the Germans are designing the Cologne-Shanghai expressway. They are counting on the same ten years. But a century has passed.
But we just keep repeating: everything in Russia was very bad. And we must look to the West.
Of course, one must look to the West. And to China with its miracle. You have to look everywhere. But since you will still have to build on our land, you need to know how they managed here, with us. And how they destroyed it further.
- But then why the circulation of the collected works of A.I. Solzhenitsyn - 3 thousand? Books published in a 140 million country with such a circulation exist before God, but not before people. Is it not because we stayed with the truths of Soviet textbooks, because they were printed in millions?
- I am very calm about this. We now exist "in a market environment." The Vremya publishing house called this print run a trial run. The test showed itself as follows: 3000 disappeared from Vremya's warehouses by the end of the first day of sales. A second edition was immediately ordered to Yekaterinburg, all provided with orders from wholesalers and shops. Now he is already in Moscow.
So publishers will print as much as the country decides to read.
Interviewed by Elena DYAKOVA
Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn
Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn
Red wheel. Node I August Fourteenth
Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn
Red wheel.
Node I August Fourteenth
ABOUT THE BOOK
The last revision of the Node was made already during the recruitment process, in 1981 in Vermont.
Solzhenitsyn Alexander Isaevich
"August the Fourteenth" was conceived by the author in 1937 - not yet as the First Knot, but as an introduction to a great novel about the Russian revolution. At the same time, in 1937 in Rostov-on-Don, all the materials on the Samson catastrophe, available in Soviet conditions (considerable), were collected, and the first chapters were written: the arrival of the colonel from Headquarters to Samsonov's headquarters, the headquarters moved to Naydenburg, lunch there ... these chapters remained almost unchanged in the final edition. In that first stage of work, many chapters were assigned to Sasha Lenartovich, but these chapters have disappeared over the years. There were also chapters on the economy of Shcherbakov (the author's maternal grandfather), where even then the question of Stolypin's activities and the significance of his murder was raised.
Then there was a break in work on the novel until 1963 (all the blanks survived through the years of war and prison), when the author again began to intensively collect materials. In 1965 the name “Red Wheel” was defined, since 1967 - the principle of Knots, that is, a continuous dense presentation of events in compressed periods of time, but with complete breaks between them.
In March 1969, continuous work began on the "Red Wheel", first the chapters of the later Knots (1919-20, especially the Tambov and Leninist chapters). In the same spring of 1969 the writer turned to work on one "August 1914" - and in a year and a half, by October 1970, he finished it (what in the current edition makes up the first volume and part of the second).
In this form, Knot First was published in June 1971 in Paris by the YMCA-press, in the same year two rival publications appeared in Germany, then in Holland, in 1972 - in France, England, the United States, Spain, Denmark, Norway, Sweden. , Italy, in subsequent years - and in other countries of Europe, Asia and America.
The unauthorized printing of the book in the West provoked an attack on the author in the communist press.
After the expulsion of the writer into exile, he deepened the Leninist chapters written back in the USSR, including the 22nd from August, which was deliberately not published in the first edition. She entered the separately published group of chapters "Lenin in Zurich" (Paris, YMCA-press, 1975). In the spring of 1976, the writer collected extensive materials at the Hoover Institution in California about the history of Stolypin's murder. In the summer and fall of 1976, all chapters related to this cycle were written in Vermont (now 8 and 60-73). At the beginning of 1977, the chapter "Study of the Monarch" was written (now 74th, was published separately in the "Vestnik RHD", 124, 1978) - after which the First Knot finally became two-volume.
All notable historical figures, all major military leaders, mentioned revolutionaries, as well as all the material of the review and tsarist chapters, the entire history of Stolypin's assassination by Bogrov, all the details of military operations, up to the fate of each regiment and many battalions, are genuine.
The author's father is bred almost under his own name, and the mother's family for certain. The families of the Kharitonovs (Andreevs) and Arkhangorodskys, Varya are genuine, Obodovsky (Pyotr Akimovich Palchinsky) is a famous historical person.
ACTION ONE.
REVOLUTION.
_ “ONLY_AX_CAN_CAN_US_
REDUCE, _ AND_ NOTHING, _EXCEPT_
AX ... _TO_TOPOR_CALL_RUS "._
FROM A LETTER TO “BELL”, 1860.
AUGUST FOURTEENTH
They left the village on a transparent bright morning, when, at the first sun, the entire Ridge, bright white and in blue depressions, stood within reach, visible with each of its incisions, so close that an unaccustomed person would have remembered to reach it in two hours.
He stood so big in the world of small human things, so miraculous in the world of things made. For thousands of years, all people, how long they have lived, bring here with a fail-safe solution of their hands and put everything they have worked out or even conceived in puffy heaps - they would not have erected such an incredible Ridge.
From the village to the station, the road led them all the time that the Ridge was right in front of them, they were driving towards it, they saw it: snowy spaces, bare rocky ledges and shadows of guessed gorges. But from half an hour to half an hour it began to melt from below, separated from the ground, no longer stood, but hung in a third of the sky and swaddled, there were no scars and ribs, mountain signs in it, but seemed like huge solid white clouds. Then the clouds were already torn to pieces, no longer distinguishable from true clouds. Then they were washed away, the Ridge completely iznik, as if it were a heavenly vision, and ahead, as well as from all sides, there was a grayish, whitish sky, gaining heat. So, without changing direction, they rode more than fifty miles, until noon and noon, - but the giant mountains in front of them were gone, and close rounded hills approached: Camel; Bull; bald snake; curly iron.
They drove out by the not yet dusty road, still by the dewy cool steppe. They drove through those hours when the steppe rang, fluttered, chirped, then whistled, crackled, rustled, - but to Mineralnye Vody, dragging a lazy dusty take-off, drove up at the deadliest afternoon hour, and there was only a distinct sound them: taratajki, tree on tree, and horses almost inaudibly became their hooves in the dust. And all the subtle smells of herbs for these hours were and passed, and now one sultry sunny smell with a mixture of dust was infused, and their taratais, and hay litter, and they themselves smelled the same - but, to the steppe inhabitants from the first childhood memory, this smell was him pleasant, and the heat is not tiresome.
Father regretted giving them a spring chaise, a bank, because they were shaking and pounding at a trot, and they passed most of the road at a walk. They rode between the crops and between the herds, passed through saline bald patches, rolled gentle hills, crossed sloping ravines, with close water and dry, not a single real river, not a single large village, meeting few people, few people were overtaken on Sunday, but Isaac, and always patient, especially today, according to his mood and design, these eight hours were not at all burdensome, but he could have traveled sixteen like this: from under a leaky straw hat - over horse ears, and holding unnecessary creeps.
Evstrashka, junior, from his stepmother, little brother, this all the way to him today to toss and turn into the night, at first he slept in the hay behind Isaac's back, then he turned around, got up on his feet, looking in the grass, jumped off, ran, caught up, he was full of things and told or asked: "Why, if you close your eyes, it seems that you are going back?"
Now Evstrat moved to the second grade of the Pyatigorsk gymnasium, but at first, like Isaac, his father agreed to let him go only to the nearest gymnasium: the rest, the older brothers and sisters, did not know, saw nothing but land and cattle and sheep, and lived the same ... Isaac was admitted to study a year later than necessary, and after grammar school his father overexposed him for a year, not allowing himself to immediately be told that now some kind of university was needed. But just as bulls shift the weight not by a rush, but by a tax, so Isaac took it with his father: with patient insistence, never at once.
Isaac loved his native Saber and their farm ten miles away, and rural work, and now, during the holidays, he did not in the least shirk either from mowing or threshing. In understanding his future, he somehow hoped to combine his original life and his student body. But, every year, it turned out the opposite: the doctrine irrevocably separated him from the past, from the stanitsa and from the family.
There were two of them in the whole village, students. Surprise and laughter aroused among the villagers their reasoning, their appearance, and as soon as they arrived, they hurried to change into their old clothes. However, one thing was pleasant to Isaac: for some reason, the village rumor separated him from another student and called him - with a mockery - a populist. Who stuck it first and how it worked out, and all together began to call him “populist”. Narodniks had not been in Russia for a long time, but Isaac, even though he would never have dared to introduce himself so aloud, understood himself, perhaps, precisely as a Narodnik: those who received their teachings for the people and goes to the people with a book, word and love.
However, even to the family of origin, it was almost impossible to return. Three years ago, having yielded to an incomprehensible university, the father no longer changed his decision, did not take back, but felt like his mistake, like the loss of his son. The only thing he saw was good in him on vacation - to take Sanka to rural work, and in the rest of the absent months he could not discern the meaning of scholarship.
Yes, they would have remained akin to their father, if it had not been for the stepmother Martha - lively, domineering, greedy, pulling the house under her arm, freeing space for her children. Isaac's older brothers and sisters had already separated, both father and home were alien to the stepmother. Looking closer, Sanya also wondered as a boy: how does this craving lead a man of everything, and for a long time, if, over forty widowed, his father brought a second wife of twenty, and to such a young agile woman, now about sixty, he could not put a firm charter, and I didn’t decide much myself.
And the newly acquired views alienated Isaac. As a child, he knew unwisely, incomprehensibly fasts and holidays, barefoot to the all-night vigil, and then whoever did not reject him from the people's national faith. Both Sablinskaya herself and their entire districts were sifted by sects - Molokans, Dukhobors, Stundists, Jehovah's Witnesses, there was also a stepmother from the sect, my father began to get lost about the church, disputes about faiths were beloved in their area at leisure, Sanya walked a lot and listened until the views of Count Tolstoy pushed him away from all these differences. There was a confusion of minds in the cities too, educated people did not understand each other either, and Tolstoy's teachings put everything in the world so convincingly, demanding only the truth. Alas, Tolstoy's truth in relations with his family led Sanya, on the contrary, to a lie: thus, having become a vegetarian, it was impossible to explain what he was doing according to his conscience - shame and laughter would have risen both in the family and among the stanitsa; I had to start with a lie that there is no meat - this is a medical discovery of one German, provides long life... (And in fact, having thrown itself with sheaves, the body shivered for meat, and it was also necessary to deceive oneself that potatoes and beans were enough).
The alienation from the family made Isaac easier and the current decision with which he was leaving now - but even then he could not open up, he had to lie here that he needed to go to the university for practice ahead of time, and to invent and explain this practice to an innocent father.
The three weeks of the war have so far responded in their village with only two tsarist manifestos, to Germany and Austria, read in the church and hung on the church square, and by two spare departures, and even a separate drive of horses to the district, because the village of Sablinskaya was now not listed. Terek Cossacks, and Katsaps. In everything else, as there was no war: newspapers did not get into their stanitsa, and it was too early for letters from the Army in the field - and even there was no such concept of a "letter", until now "receiving letters" in their village was immodesty, isolation, Sanya tried not to receive. They did not take anyone from the Lazhenitsyn family: the elder brother was already in years, his son was already serving in a real one, the middle brother did not have enough fingers, Isaac is a student, and the stepmother's children are still small.
And in today's half-day ride across the vast steppe, no sign of war was sent to them either.
Having crossed the Kumu bridge, crossing a stony crossing over a sultry double-track road and already driving along the grassy street of the village of Kumskaya, now Mineralnye Vody, they did not notice any signs of war anywhere. So I didn't want life to turn over! Wherever it could, it flowed and lurked as before.
In the shade of a large elm tree at the well, they stopped: Evstrashka was supposed to cheat here, cool and water the horses, then drive up to the station. Sanya washed himself, sloshed to the waist, took out two buckets, Evstrashka poured a dark tin mug on his back with ice - then he rubbed himself well, put on a clean white shirt with a belt, left his things in a clap, and lightly, avoiding the dust, went to the station.
The station square was recently adorned with a park planting, but chickens were rummaging along its outskirts, and chaos and carts that drove up to the long station building blew up a layer of dust.
On the other hand, the Mineralvodsky platform, covered in full length with a light canopy on thin painted posts, wind-blown, cool, beckoned with resorts today, as always. At the posts of the awning, wild grapes twisted, everything was customary, dacha, cheerful, there was no war, and no one here seemed to know. Ladies in light-colored dresses, men in scabies followed the porters to the platform of the Kislovodsk trains. Ice cream, narzan, colored flying balls and newspapers were sold. Sanya bought one, thought - and a second, unwrapped them already on the move, and then on a bench near the dacha platform. Contrary to his usual gravity, he did not finish reading the messages, jumped over the columns - and became enlightened. Good good. Our Major Victory at Gumbinen! The enemy will be forced to clear all of Prussia ... And things are good in Austria ... And the Serbs have a victory! ...
Editions
In Russian
- Solzhenitsyn A.I. Red wheel: Narration in measured time in 4 knots. - Node 1: August the Fourteenth. Vol. 1. - Moscow: Military Publishing, 1993. ISBN 5-203-01576-7; and further (in 10 volumes). Reprinted reproduction from the collected works of A. Solzhenitsyn (YMCA-PRESS, Vermont-Paris, vols. 11-20, 1983-1991) "with the last amendments by the author, which were used for the first time in this edition." (circulation 30,000 copies)
- Solzhenitsyn A.I. Collected works in 30 volumes (Editor-compiler Natalia Solzhenitsyna; circulation 3000 copies).
In other languages
Links
- Red Wheel (text for 1993)
- Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Reflections on the February Revolution (a chapter not included in the main text of the "Red Wheel") lib.ru
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See what the "Red Wheel (Book of Solzhenitsyn)" is in other dictionaries:
Genre: historical novel epic
- "The Red Wheel" is an epic novel by Alexander Solzhenitsyn about Russia in 1914-1917, the February Revolution of 1917 and the First World War. One of the main literary works of Solzhenitsyn. The author himself defined the genre as “narration in ... ... Wikipedia
The most significant works of Alexander Solzhenitsyn - The farewell ceremony for the writer and public figure Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who died on Monday night at the age of 90, will be held on Tuesday Russian Academy Sciences on Leninsky Prospekt, RIA Novosti was told in the Public ... ... Encyclopedia of Newsmakers
This term has other meanings, see Time (meanings). The Vremya publishing house was founded in 2000 and publishes modern Russian prose and poetry, Russian classics of the 20th century and documentary prose, criticism and literary criticism, books ... ... Wikipedia
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Solzhenitsyn, Alexander Isaevich Alexander Solzhenitsyn Solzhenitsyn in 1994 after returning to Russia Name at birth: Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn Date of birth ... Wikipedia
Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn - Alexander Solzhenitsyn is an outstanding Russian writer, publicist, historian, poet and public figure. He became widely known, in addition to literary works (as a rule, touching upon acute social and political topics), also historically ... ... Encyclopedia of Newsmakers
Alexander Solzhenitsyn - an outstanding Russian writer, publicist, historian, poet and public figure. He became widely known, in addition to literary works (as a rule, touching on acute social and political topics), also historical journalistic ... ... Encyclopedia of Newsmakers
Books
- Red wheel. In ten volumes. Volume 5, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Reprint reproduction from "Collected Works of A. Solzhenitsyn" (Ymca-Press, Vermont-Paris, vols. 11-20, 1983-1991) with the last amendments by the author, which were used for the first time in this edition. ... Category: Publisher: Military Publishing,
- Red wheel. August the Fourteenth. Node 1. Selected chapters. Stolypin cycle (MP3 audiobook on 2 CDs), Alexander Solzhenitsyn, We present to your attention an audio recording of selected chapters of Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn's novel "The Red Wheel. August the Fourteenth. Node 1. Stolypin cycle" in the author's reading. On… Category: Classical and contemporary prose Publisher: