(his son), gradually erased from the media, a generation has grown up that has no idea that there was such a person, there was such a book. We are talking about the "Brest Fortress". In the 1950s, Sergei Smirnov found the living heroes of the Brest stronghold, spoke about their fate, and in the 55th, on the advice of Irakli Andronikov, he made a radio broadcast that literally the whole country listened to. After Stalin's death, Sergei Smirnov was the first to say that not all prisoners of war were traitors. The writer claimed that many suffered innocently. For these efforts to restore a good name to thousands of front-line soldiers, Sergei Smirnov has already earned a low bow. As a result of many years of searches and investigations, a book was published, for which the author was awarded the Lenin Prize. But soon, at the direction of Suslov, the set was scattered, and for almost two decades "Brest Fortress" was not published ...After 18 years it was republished, I can't help but mention the people who did it: the last edition is Valentin Osipov, the publisher who ensured that this book was republished on the anniversary of the Victory. This edition was charitable, it practically did not sell, it was sent mainly to libraries, and also presented as a gift to war veterans who came to Moscow to celebrate Victory Day. And now our mother reproaches me and my brother, says: "Why don't you do anything to remember your father?" To this I answer that he did such an important deed that, I hope, perhaps, over time, it should not be erased in the memory of the Russian people. And if it is erased, then all efforts are useless.

The fact is that people who do not go to work today on May 9 and March 8 do not even suspect that they also owe this to my father.

In 1955, for the first time on the radio, in the month of August, his radio programs were called "In Search of the Heroes of the Brest Fortress." On the first traces of these searches, he managed to find and question the first living participants in the defense of Brest. I went to school in two weeks, and it turned out that the whole country was sitting at the radio, literally the whole, my father instantly became famous. But what was the most important thing in these programs? Of course, stories about the heroism of the Russian soldier, about the people who fought, continued to fight in absolutely hopeless, hopeless conditions. After all, there were still pockets of resistance in the fortress, when the Germans were already beyond Smolensk, Minsk had already been taken. Nevertheless, these people, ordinary Russian guys - and not only Russians, of course, Russian guys, because there were Tatars, and Armenians, and Volga Germans, and whoever was not there, and Kazakhs, in short, from all ends of the empire - continued to fight, did not give up, killed Germans, starved ... And, naturally, all of them later - who did not shoot themselves or were not killed - were captured, fled repeatedly, then went into partisans when they succeeded, up to what they tried to harm there, inside Germany. Yes, in fact, if there were no such soldiers, the outcome of the war would probably have been different. And all these people were denied the right to citizenship. Father was the first to talk about the fact that circumstances forced these people to be captured, that these are soldiers who have the right to the same, and perhaps even more respect than anyone else. And gradually, this was introduced not only into the consciousness of the people, but also into the consciousness of the authorities. I will never forget how we tried - when Brezhnev died, but the "living dead", the bosses, were replaced one after another, until it came to Gorbachev - once again my mother and I were on Staraya Square, in the Central Committee of the party, we talked about that it would not be bad to publish this book. And every time they promised, they said that this is our national treasure, and then the editor in the "Young Guard" - I will never forget! - he said in a completely state voice, explained to me ... I remember my last name well - let this scoundrel, perhaps, or his children hear - his last name was Mashavets, then the editor-in-chief of the Young Guard publishing house, some kind of party or Komsomol figure. I vouch for the accuracy of the quote, because I wrote it down right there, outside the doors of his office. He explained that the book could not be republished at the moment, because it gave "an incorrect and superficial assessment of the first stage of the war, and secondly, if it is published, all references to those who were in captivity must be thrown out of the book." And those who were not in captivity were not mentioned in the book. It was already the time of Afghanistan, our army got stuck there, the problem of our prisoners rose to its full height, and therefore familiar guiding notes sounded. And in 1965, a decree followed that May 9, on the 20th anniversary of the victory, became a day off. I remind you that from 1945 to 1965 it was a working day. But the generous government also gave the people March 8, which was also a working day, and the decree said: as a sign of respect (something like that) for the contribution of Soviet women to the war and to work in the rear. So let them know when they drink on May 9 and March 8, with whom to clink glasses.

P. Krivonogov "Defenders of the Brest Fortress", 1951

Smirnov Sergey Sergeevich (1915-1976).

Smirnov Sergey Sergeevich (1915-1976).

Prose writer, playwright, journalist, public figure. Born in Petrograd. He began his career at the Kharkov Electromechanical Plant. In 1932-1937. studied at the Moscow Power Engineering Institute. Since 1937 - an employee of the newspaper "Gudok" and at the same time a student of the Literary Institute. A.M. Gorky. “In the Great Patriotic War, he takes part first as a combat commander, and since 1943 as a special correspondent for an army newspaper.”1 After the war, he worked at the Military Publishing House, then in the editorial office of the Novy Mir magazine. In 1950-1960. - Editor-in-Chief of Literaturnaya Gazeta. Member of the Soviet Committee of War Veterans, Secretary of the Moscow branch of the Union of Writers of the RSFSR, member of the Board of the USSR Writers' Union, member of the editorial board of the magazine "Change". He was awarded two Orders of the Red Star, the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, and medals.

S. Smirnov is the author of plays and screenplays, documentaries and essays about the unknown heroes of the Great Patriotic War, including The Brest Fortress (1957; expanded edition - in 1964), Stories about Unknown Heroes (1963) and others. For many years he hosted a popular program on television - the TV almanac "Feat".

The most important feat of S. Smirnov is the rehabilitation of the heroes of the Brest Fortress. He was one of the initiators of the creation of the fortress defense museum; the materials collected by him (more than 50 folders with letters, 60 notebooks and notepads with records of conversations with the defenders of the fortress, hundreds of photographs, etc.) were transferred to the museum. A stand is dedicated to him in the fortress museum. Smirnov recalled: “Our enemies spoke with amazement about the exceptional courage, steadfastness and perseverance of the defenders of this stronghold. And we consigned all this to oblivion ... In Moscow, in the Museum of the Armed Forces, there is no stand, no photograph, nothing about the defense of the Brest Fortress. Museum workers shrugged their shoulders: “We have a museum of the history of exploits ... What heroism could be on the western border. The German crossed the border without hindrance and reached Moscow under a green traffic light. Don't you know that?". In 1965, S. Smirnov became a laureate of the Lenin Prize for the book "The Brest Fortress." On this occasion, G. Svirsky wrote:

“Until 1957, the press did not say a word about the heroism of the defenders of the Brest Fortress,2 which later, in the history of the war, became a symbol of the Resistance. A photograph of heads pressed against each other, weeping leaders of the defense of the Brest Fortress, who met in Moscow on the way from the Siberian camps - this stunning photograph, reproduced by Literaturnaya Gazeta in the Khrushchev era, has become an irrefutable document of the vile cruelty of Stalin's time. - said, as you know, Stalin, - there are traitors. Who needs traitors?.. The Soviet Information Bureau reported on the tragedy of the time with a fake headline: "How German generals fabricate Soviet prisoners of war."

In the mid-sixties, the history of the defense of the Brest Fortress and its heroes who fell into German captivity (and later in Soviet camps) was told by Sergei Smirnov - in the documentary book "Brest Fortress" (awarded with the Lenin Prize in 1965). Brest Fortress", in which the author writes: "Ten years ago, the Brest Fortress lay in forgotten and abandoned ruins, and you, its hero-defenders, were not only unknown, but, as people who for the most part went through Hitler's captivity, met insulting distrust of themselves, and sometimes experienced direct injustice. Our party and its 20th Congress, having put an end to the lawlessness and mistakes of the period of Stalin's cult of personality, have opened up for you, as well as for the whole country, a new streak of life."

“Direct injustices”, “lawlessness and mistakes”, “hurtful distrust” - all these euphemisms mean that the heroes who bravely fought in the fortress, which turned out to be in the rear of the German troops, were arrested by the Soviet security forces only because they turned out to be prisoners of war, and that these war heroes spent the post-war years in camps.But even at that time of the Khrushchev "thaw" their chronicler, writer S.S. Smirnov, could not tell the whole truth about them without resorting to shameful, deceitful substitutions: "concentration camp" is replaced by the phrase "direct injustice", the words "crimes" and "terror" are replaced by the words "lawlessness" and "mistakes", the words "Stalin's despotism "- the stereotype of" the period of Stalin's personality cult "" (Svirsky G.S. On the frontal place. Literature of moral resistance. M., 1998. S. 471-472).

The work of the writer S.S. Smirnov ended with the rehabilitation of A. Fil, the release of P. Klyp, the removal of all suspicions from Majors P. Gavrilov and S. Matevosyan and other surviving defenders of the Brest Fortress. Those expelled from the party were reinstated and properly employed (Viktorov B.A. Without the stamp "secret". Notes of the military prosecutor. Issue 3. M., 1990. P. 286).

Son of S.S. Smirnova - Konstantin Smirnov (b. 1952) in many ways continues the work of his father. He is the host of the Big Parents Sunday TV show, which has a consistently high rating. In one of the interviews, to the question “What was the main idea you learned from communicating with the children of great parents?” he replied: “I realized that the Soviet government was so anti-human that even its beloved children, those who served it not out of fear, but out of conscience, she ate like a pig eats its piglets. In their own lives or in the lives of their loved ones, they necessarily had some kind of tragedy, which often no one knows about at all ”(NTV: hunting for children / / Arguments and Facts. 2000. No. 9. P. 8). The eldest son of S.S. Smirnova - Andrey Smirnov (b. 1941) - film director, author of the films "Belorussky Station" (1971), "Autumn" (1975), etc.

Notes

1) These data are taken from the reference book "Scriptwriters of Soviet Artistic Cinema" (M., 1972, p. 336). In a different

And now the ruins of the Brest Fortress rise above the Bug, ruins covered with military glory, every year thousands of people from all over our country come here to lay flowers on the graves of fallen soldiers, to pay tribute to their deep respect for the selfless masculinity and stamina of its defenders.
The defense of the Brest Fortress, as well as the defense of Sevastopol and Leningrad, became a symbol of the resilience and fearlessness of Soviet soldiers, forever entered the annals of the Great Patriotic War.
Who can remain indifferent, having heard today about the heroes of the Brest defense, who will not be touched by the greatness of their feat?!
Sergei Smirnov first heard about the heroic defense of the Brest Fortress in 1953. Then it was believed that all participants in this defense died.
Who are they, these unknown, nameless people who have shown unparalleled resilience? Perhaps one of them is alive? These are the questions that worried the writer. The painstaking work of collecting materials began, requiring a lot of strength and energy. I had to unravel the most complex interweaving of destinies and circumstances in order to restore the picture of heroic days. The writer overcomes difficulties step by step, unraveling the threads of this tangle, looking for eyewitnesses, participants in the defense.
Thus, originally conceived as a series of essays, The Brest Fortress turned into a grandiose historical and literary epic in terms of coverage of events. The novel combines two time planes... The days gone by and the present stand side by side, revealing all the beauty and grandeur of the Soviet man. The heroes of the defense pass before the reader: Major Gavrilov, amazing in his perseverance and stamina, who fought to the last bullet; full of bright optimism and fierce fearlessness, Private Matevosyan; little trumpeter Petya Klypa is a fearless and selfless boy. And next to these heroes, miraculously surviving, the images of the dead pass before the readers - nameless fighters and commanders, women and teenagers who took part in battles with enemies. Very little is known about them, but even these meager facts make one marvel at the resilience of the Brest people, their selfless devotion to the Motherland.
The strength of the work of Sergei Smirnov lies in the rigor and simplicity with which the writer recounts dramatic events. His harsh, restrained manner of narration further emphasizes the significance of the feat accomplished by the defenders of the Brest Fortress. In every line of this work, one feels the deep respect of the writer for these simple and at the same time extraordinary people, admiration for their courage and courage.
“I was a participant in the war and saw a lot in those memorable years,” he writes in an essay prefixed to the novel, “but it was the feat of the defenders of the Brest Fortress, as if with a new light, illuminated everything I saw, revealed to me the strength and breadth of the soul of our man, forced me with special sharpness to experience the happiness and pride of the consciousness of belonging to a great, noble and self-sacrificing people...”
The memory of the feat of the heroes of Brest will never die. Book S.S. Smirnova, awarded the Lenin Prize in 1965, returned to the country the names of many dead heroes, helped restore justice, reward the courage of people who gave their lives for the sake of the Motherland.
Each historical era creates works that reflect the spirit of its time. The heroic events of the civil war were embodied in Furmanov's Chapaev, in Ostrovsky's crystal clear novel How the Steel Was Tempered. Many wonderful books have been written about the Great Patriotic War. And among them, a worthy place belongs to the strong and courageous book of S. S. Smirnov. The heroes of the "Brest Fortress" will stand next to the immortal images created by D. Furmanov and N. Ostrovsky, as a symbol of unparalleled devotion to the Motherland.

Some of the sources claim that the history of the Brest Fortress began a century before its heroic deed in 1941. This is somewhat untrue. The fortress has existed for a long time. The complete reconstruction of the medieval citadel in the town of Berestye (the historical name of Brest) began in 1836 and lasted 6 years.

Immediately after the fire of 1835, the tsarist government decided to modernize the fortress in order to give it the status of a western outpost of national importance in the future.

Medieval Brest

The fortress arose in the 11th century, references to it can be found in the well-known "Tale of Bygone Years", where the chronicle depicted episodes of the struggle for the throne between two great princes - Svyatopolk and Yaroslav.

Having a very favorable location - on a cape between two rivers, and Mukhavets, Berestye soon acquired the status of a major trading center.

In ancient times, rivers were the main routes for merchant movement. And here, as many as two waterways made it possible to move goods from east to west and vice versa. It was possible to travel along the Bug to Poland, Lithuania and Europe, and along the Mukhavets, through the Pripyat and the Dnieper, to the Black Sea steppes and the Middle East.

One can only guess how picturesque the medieval Brest Fortress was. Photos of illustrations and drawings of the fortress of the early period are a rarity, it is possible to meet them only as museum exhibits.

In view of the constant transition of the Brest Fortress under the jurisdiction of one or another state and the arrangement of the town in its own way, the plan of both the outpost and the settlement underwent minor changes. Some of them were inspired by the demands of the time, but for more than half a thousand years the Brest Fortress managed to preserve its original medieval color and atmosphere.

1812. French in the citadel

The border geography of Brest has always been the reason for the struggle for the town: for 800 years, the history of the Brest Fortress has captured the dominion of the Turov and Lithuanian principalities, the Commonwealth (Poland), and only in 1795 Brest became an integral part of Russian lands.

But before the invasion of Napoleon, the Russian government did not attach much importance to the ancient fortress. Only during the Russo-French War of 1812, the Brest Fortress confirmed its status as a reliable outpost, which, as the people said, helps its own people and destroys its enemies.

The French also decided to keep Brest behind them, but the Russian troops recaptured the fortress, having won an unconditional victory over the French cavalry units.

Historic decision

This victory served as the starting point for the decision of the tsarist government to build a new and powerful fortification on the site of a rather flimsy medieval fortress, corresponding to the spirit of the times in architectural style and military significance.

And what about the heroes of the Brest Fortress of the seasons? After all, any military action involves the appearance of desperate daredevils and patriots. Their names remained unknown to the wide circles of the then public, but it is possible that they received their awards for courage from the hands of Emperor Alexander himself.

Fire in Brest

The fire that engulfed the ancient settlement in 1835 accelerated the process of the general reconstruction of the Brest Fortress. The plans of the then engineers and architects were to destroy the medieval buildings in order to erect in their place completely new structures in terms of architectural character and strategic significance.

The fire destroyed about 300 buildings in the settlement, and this, paradoxically, turned out to be in the hands of both the tsarist government, and the builders, and the population of the town.

Reconstruction

Having issued compensation to the victims of the fire in the form of cash and building materials, the state convinced them to settle not in the fortress itself, but separately - two kilometers from the outpost, thus providing the fortress with the only function - protective.

The history of the Brest Fortress did not know such a grandiose restructuring before: the medieval settlement was demolished to the ground, and in its place a powerful citadel with thick walls, a whole system of drawbridges connecting three artificially created islands, with bastion forts equipped with ravelins, with impregnable a ten-meter earthen rampart, with narrow embrasures, allowing the defenders to remain as protected as possible during the shelling.

The defensive capabilities of the fortress in the 19th century

In addition to defensive structures, which, of course, play a leading role in repelling enemy attacks, the number and well-trainedness of the soldiers serving in the border fortress are also important.

The defensive strategy of the citadel was thought out by the architects to the subtleties. Otherwise, why attach the importance of the main fortification to an ordinary soldier's barracks? Living in rooms with walls two meters thick, each of the servicemen was subconsciously ready to repel possible enemy attacks, literally jumping out of bed - at any time of the day.

500 casemates of the fortress easily accommodated 12,000 soldiers with a full set of weapons and provisions for several days. The barracks were so successfully disguised from prying eyes that the uninitiated could hardly have guessed their presence - they were located in the thickness of that same ten-meter earthen rampart.

A feature of the architectural design of the fortress was the inextricable connection of its structures: towers protruding forward covered the main citadel from fire, and targeted fire could be fired from the forts located on the islands, protecting the front line.

When the fortress was fortified with a ring of 9 forts, it became practically invulnerable: each of them could accommodate a whole soldier garrison (which is 250 servicemen), plus 20 guns.

Brest Fortress in peacetime

During the period of calm on the state borders, Brest lived a measured, unhurried life. An enviable regularity reigned both in the city and in the fortress, services were performed in churches. There were several churches on the territory of the fortress - nevertheless, one temple could not fit a huge number of military men.

One of the local monasteries was rebuilt into a building for meetings of officer ranks and was named the White Palace.

But even in calm periods, it was not so easy to get into the fortress. The entrance to the "heart" of the citadel consisted of four gates. Three of them, as a symbol of their impregnability, have been preserved by the modern Brest Fortress. The museum begins with the old gates: Kholmsky, Terespolsky, Northern ... Each of them was ordered to become the gate to paradise for many of their defenders in future wars.

Equipping the fortress on the eve of the First World War

During the period of unrest in Europe, the fortress of Brest-Litovsk remained one of the most reliable fortifications on the Russian-Polish border. The main task of the citadel is "to facilitate the freedom of action of the army and navy", which did not have modern weapons and equipment.

Of the 871 weapons, only 34% met the requirements for combat in modern conditions, the rest of the guns were outdated. Among the cannons, old models prevailed, capable of firing shots at a distance of no more than 3 versts. At this time, the potential enemy had mortars and artillery systems.

In 1910, the aeronautic battalion of the fortress received its first airship, and in 1911 the Brest-Litovsk fortress was equipped with its own radio station by a special royal decree.

First war of the 20th century

I found the Brest Fortress in a rather peaceful occupation - construction. Attracted villagers from nearby and distant villages actively built additional forts.

The fortress would have been perfectly protected if the military reform had not erupted the day before, as a result of which the infantry was disbanded, and the outpost lost its combat-ready garrison. At the beginning of the First World War, only the militia remained in the Brest-Litovsk fortress, who, during the retreat, were forced to burn down the strongest and most modern of the outposts.

But the main event of the first war of the 20th century for the fortress was not connected with military actions - the Brest peace treaty was signed within its walls.

The monuments of the Brest Fortress have a different appearance and character, and this treaty, significant for those times, remains one of them.

How the people learned about the feat of Brest

Most contemporaries know the Brest citadel from the events of the first day of the treacherous attack of fascist Germany on the Soviet Union. Information about this did not appear immediately, it was published by the Germans themselves in a completely unexpected way: showing restrained admiration for the heroism of the defenders of Brest in personal diaries, which were subsequently found and published by military journalists.

This happened in 1943-1944. Until that time, the feat of the citadel was unknown to a wide audience, and the heroes of the Brest Fortress who survived in the "meat grinder", according to the highest military officials, were considered ordinary prisoners of war who surrendered to the enemy out of cowardice.

The information that local battles took place in the citadel in July, and even in August 1941, also did not immediately become public. But, now historians can say for sure: the Brest Fortress, which the enemy expected to take in 8 hours, held out for a very long time.

Hell start date: June 22, 1941

Before the war, which was not expected, the Brest Fortress looked completely unthreatening: the old earthen rampart sank, overgrown with grass, flowers and sports grounds on the territory. In early June, the main regiments stationed in the fortress left it and went to summer training camps.

The history of the Brest Fortress for all centuries has not yet known such treachery: the predawn hours of a short summer night became for its inhabitants. Suddenly, out of nowhere, artillery fire was opened on the fortress, taking everyone in it by surprise, and 17,000 ruthless "well done" broke into the territory of the outpost. from the Wehrmacht.

But neither blood, nor horror, nor the death of comrades could break and stop the heroic defenders of Brest. They fought for eight days according to official figures. And another two months - according to unofficial.

It was not so easy and not so fast to give up its positions in 1941, which became an omen of the entire further course of the war and showed the enemy the ineffectiveness of his cold calculations and superweapons, which are defeated by the unpredictable heroism of the poorly armed, but passionately loving the fatherland of the Slavs.

"Talking" stones

What is the Brest Fortress silently screaming about now? The museum has preserved numerous exhibits and stones on which you can read the records of its defenders. Short phrases in one or two lines are taken to the quick, touching representatives of all generations to tears, even though they sound sparingly, masculinely dry and businesslike.

Muscovites: Ivanov, Stepanchikov and Zhuntyaev chronicled this terrible period - with a nail on the stone, with tears in the heart. Two of them died, the remaining Ivanov also knew that he did not have much time left, he promised: “The last grenade remained. I won’t surrender alive,” and immediately asked: “Revenge us, comrades.”

Among the evidence that the fortress held out for more than eight days, there are dates on the stone: July 20, 1941 is the most distinct of them.

To comprehend the significance of the heroism and stamina of the fortress defenders for the whole country, you just need to remember the place and date: Brest Fortress, 1941.

Creation of a memorial

For the first time after the occupation, representatives of the Soviet Union (official and from the people) were able to enter the territory of the fortress in 1943. Just at that time, publications of excerpts from the diaries of German soldiers and officers appeared.

Before that, Brest was a legend passed from mouth to mouth on all fronts and in the rear. In order to give the events officiality, to stop all kinds of fiction (even of a positive nature) and to capture the feat of the Brest Fortress through the centuries, it was decided to reclassify the western outpost as a memorial.

The implementation of the idea took place several decades after the end of the war - in 1971. Ruins, burnt and shelled walls - all this has become an integral part of the exposition. The wounded buildings are unique, and they form the main part of the evidence of the courage of their defenders.

In addition, during the peaceful years, the Brest Fortress memorial acquired several thematic monuments and obelisks of a later origin, which harmoniously fit into the original ensemble of the fortress-museum and, with their rigor and conciseness, emphasized the tragedy that occurred within these walls.

Brest Fortress in Literature

The most famous and even somewhat scandalous work about the Brest Fortress was the book by S. S. Smirnov. Having met with eyewitnesses and surviving participants in the defense of the citadel, the author decided to restore justice and whitewash the names of real heroes, whom the then government blamed for being in German captivity.

And he succeeded, although the times were not the most democratic - the mid-50s of the last century.

The book "Brest Fortress" helped many to return to a normal life, not despised by fellow citizens. Photos of some of these lucky ones were widely published in the press, the names were heard on the radio. Even a cycle of radio broadcasts was established, dedicated to the search for the defenders of the Brest stronghold.

Smirnov's work became the saving thread along which, like a mythological heroine, other heroes emerged from the darkness of oblivion - the defenders of Brest, privates and commanders. Among them: Commissar Fomin, Lieutenant Semenenko, Captain Zubachev.

The Brest Fortress is a monument of valor and glory of the people, quite tangible and material. Many mysterious legends about its fearless defenders still live among the people. We know them in the form of literary and musical works, sometimes we meet them in oral folk art.

And live these legends for centuries, because the feat of the Brest Fortress is worthy of being remembered in the 21st, and in the 22nd, and in subsequent centuries.

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Sergei Sergeevich Smirnov
Brest Fortress

Return of fate

Sometimes, probably, everyone sadly feels the imperfection of human memory. I'm not talking about sclerosis, which we all approach with the passing years. Sad is the imperfection of the mechanism itself, its inaccurate selectivity...

When you are small and clean, like a white sheet of paper, the memory is only getting ready for future work - some hardly noticeable, due to your familiarity, events pass by the consciousness, but then you suddenly realize with bitterness that they were significant, important, otherwise and the most important. And you will be tormented by this incompleteness, the impossibility of returning, restoring the day, the hour, resurrecting a living human face.

And it is doubly insulting when it comes to a loved one - about his father, about those who surrounded him. Unfortunately, I am almost deprived of the usual childhood memories of him in normal families: childhood left few clues, and when the memory mechanism worked, we rarely saw each other - either the door to the office was closed and through the corrugated glass his silhouette at the table vaguely darkened, or a long-distance call crushed the peace of the apartment, which had quieted down in his absence, and the impassive voice of the telephone lady told us where, from what corner of the country or the world, the hoarse paternal baritone would now come ...

However, it happened later, after the Lenin Prize for the Brest Fortress, after the incredible popularity of his television Tales of Heroism. It was later...

And at first there was a small apartment in Maryina Roshcha, where in the mid-fifties - at the time of my childhood - some unattractive personalities came every day and nightly, with their very appearance arousing suspicion among the neighbors. Some in a quilted jacket, some in a darned overcoat with torn insignia, in dirty boots or knocked down tarpaulin boots, with shredded fiber suitcases, official-looking duffel bags or simply with a bundle, they appeared in the hall with an expression of submissive hopelessness on their earthy faces, hiding their rough rough hands. Many of these men were crying, which did not fit in with my then ideas about masculinity and decency. They used to stay overnight on the fake velvet green couch where I actually slept, and then they would throw me onto a cot.

And after a while they reappeared, sometimes even managing to replace the tunic with a Boston suit, and the quilted jacket with a gabardine coat to the heels. Both of them sat badly on them - it was felt that they were not used to such outfits. But, despite this, their appearance subtly changed: stooped shoulders and bowed heads suddenly rose for some reason, their figures straightened. Everything was explained very quickly: under the coat, on the ironed jacket, the orders and medals that found them or returned to their owners burned and tinkled. And, it seems, as far as I could judge then, my father played some important role in this.

It turns out that these uncles Lesha, uncle Petya, uncle Sasha were wonderful people who did incredible, inhuman feats, but for some reason - which did not seem surprising to anyone at that time - were punished for this. And now the father explained everything to someone, somewhere “above”, and they were forgiven.

…These people entered my life forever. And not just as permanent friends at home. Their fates became for me fragments of a mirror that reflected that terrible, black era, whose name is Stalin. And then there's the war...

She stood behind their shoulders, having collapsed with all her monstrous mass, with all the load of blood and death, the burnt roof of her native home. And then another and captivity ...

Uncle Lesha, who carved for me a luxurious pistol with a patterned handle from a lime block of wood, and could make a whistle from any knot, is Alexey Danilovich Romanov. I will never forget this living embodiment of kindness, spiritual meekness, mercy towards people. The war found him in the Brest Fortress, from where he ended up - neither more nor less - in a concentration camp in Hamburg. His story about the escape from captivity was perceived as a fantasy: together with a friend, miraculously escaping from the guards, spending two days in icy water, and then jumping from the pier onto a Swedish cargo ship that was standing five meters away, they buried themselves in coke and sailed to neutral Sweden ! Jumping then, he hit his chest against the side of the ship and appeared after the war in our apartment as a thin, transparent tuberculosis patient, breathing heavily. And where could the forces to fight tuberculosis come from, if all these post-war years they told him in the face that, while others were fighting, he “sat out” in captivity, and then rested in Sweden, from where, by the way, Alexander did not let him go to the front Kollontai was the then Soviet ambassador. It was he who "rested" - a half-dead man, removed from the hold along with a dead man in the same camp clothes! .. He was not restored to the party, he was not given work, there was practically nowhere to live - and this was in his homeland, on his own land ... But there was a telegram from my father...

Petka - that's what he was called in our house, and needless to say, what kind of bosom friend he was to me. Peter Klypa is the youngest among the defenders of the fortress, during the defense a twelve-year-old pupil of the music platoon - he appeared to us as a thirty-year-old man with a timid, suffering smile of a martyr. Of the 25 years (!) assigned to him by the authorities, he served seven in Kolyma for a fault incommensurable with the punishment - he did not inform on a friend who committed a crime. Not to mention the imperfection of this criminal code on non-information, let's ask ourselves a question: the boy, yesterday's kid, but who had the Brest citadel behind him, should be hidden for half his life for such an offense ?! Is it his, about whom experienced soldiers almost told legends? .. Many years later, in the seventies, when Pyotr Klypa (whose name was given to pioneer squads throughout the country and who lived in Bryansk and, as it was said then, worked hard at the factory ) collided in some unkind way with the former secretary of the Bryansk Regional Committee of the CPSU Buivolov, again they began to recall his “criminal” past, again they began to ruffle his nerves. I don’t know what he didn’t please, and there’s no one to know: this whole campaign was not in vain for Petya - he died only in his sixties ...

Uncle Sasha - Alexander Mitrofanovich Fil. He was one of the first to appear on Oktyabrskaya, although he traveled the longest. From the Nazi concentration camp, he went by direct message along the stage to the Stalinist one, to the Far North. After serving 6 years for nothing, Fil remained on Aldan, believing that with the stigma of "Vlasov" on the mainland he would not live. This "Vlasovite" was casually hung on him by an investigator at a filtration checkpoint for prisoners, forcing him to sign the protocol without reading it.

... The details of these three and many other no less dramatic destinies are recreated on the pages of my father's main book, Sergei Sergeevich Smirnov, "The Brest Fortress". The main one, not only because she was awarded the Lenin Prize in the memorable year of the 20th anniversary of the Victory, and not even because he devoted most of his life to literature to work on the Brest Fortress. As far as I can judge, it was during the period of work on this book that he formed as a personality and as a documentary writer, laid the foundations of his somewhat unique creative method, which brought back from oblivion the names and destinies of the living and the dead. Nevertheless, for nearly two decades, "Brest Fortress" was not reprinted. The book, which, like no other, spoke of the feat of the Soviet soldier, seemed harmful to the Soviet authorities. As I learned much later, the military doctrine of the communists, who were preparing the population for war with the Americans, did not agree with the main moral content of the Brest epic - the need to rehabilitate prisoners. So Dzhugashvili's catchphrase "We have no prisoners - there are traitors and traitors" was still in service with the party apparatus in the late 80s ...

"Manuscripts don't burn," but they die without a reader. And until the beginning of the 90s, the book "Brest Fortress" was in a dying state.

In the early 1970s, one of the most prominent defenders of the Brest Fortress, Samvel Matevosyan, was expelled from the party and stripped of the title of Hero of Socialist Labor. He was charged with administrative and economic abuses, such as abuse of authority and use of his official position - Matevosyan served as the manager of the Armenzoloto trust of the geological exploration department of non-ferrous metallurgy of the Council of Ministers of Armenia. I do not undertake here to discuss the extent of his violation of the norms of party ethics, but one thing was surprising: the law enforcement agencies dropped their charges "due to the lack of corpus delicti." Nevertheless, I remember very well how, a year before his death, my father came home with a gray, suddenly aged face - from Gorky they reported that the Volga-Vyatka publishing house had scattered the Brest Fortress set, and the printed edition was put under the knife - any mention of allegedly guilty S. Matevosyan demanded to be removed from the book. As it happens with us to this day, then, in the years of the "heyday of stagnation", the wild absurdity of Stalinism made itself felt - from slander, no matter how monstrous and illegal it may be, a person cannot be washed off. Moreover, his whole life before and after the incident was called into question. And no evidence of eyewitnesses, fellow soldiers, comrades in the service was taken into account - the work went along the knurled rails of a biased selection of "facts" and facts, at least somehow able to prove the unprovable.

For sixteen years this deeply elderly man, on top of everything else and a war invalid, had been knocking around the thresholds of various instances in the stubborn hope of achieving justice; For sixteen years, the book, awarded the highest literary prize of our country, lay under the shadow of a departmental ban. And it was impossible to get through to officials, to explain to them that the composition and structure of a literary work do not lend themselves to administrative shouting and simply fall apart.

In the era of Brezhnev's stagnation, all attempts to revive the book ran into an impenetrable "layer cake" of all kinds of authorities. At first, on the upper floors there were sweet assurances of the need to republish, to return the "Brest Fortress" to the circle of literature. Then the middle "layer" - harder and with bitterness - nibbled on the book: it was no longer only about the "seizure" of S. Matevosyan, but also Petr Klypa and Alexander Fil; until, finally, the matter ran into an absolutely impenetrable wall, or rather, into cotton wool, where all efforts were silently extinguished. And our letters, regular requests for meetings - like pebbles in water, however, there weren’t even circles ... And information was already being pulled out that somewhere some official Central Committee lecturer publicly stated that “Smirnov’s heroes are fake”, and other such delights.

Fortunately, times are changing - "Brest Fortress" has returned to readers. She returned to tell people once again about how amazing Man is, what high moral standards his spirit can achieve ...

And yet, the past years of the ban do not come from memory, and when I think about this sad story with dull pain, a strange feature of my father’s fate suddenly opens up to me - after death, he, as it were, repeated the path of the people he returned to life, doomed to experience its unevenness of his own soul, enclosed in the book "Brest Fortress". If he knew all this then, in the fifties ...

But no! .. This sad foresight was not needed then, at the end of the fifties. Then his living labor, visibly embodied in these early aged people, proudly walked along the Moscow streets. Our neighbors no longer feared for the safety of their apartments, but smiled happily when they saw one of them - now they were known by sight. Passers-by recognized the crowd, shook hands, politely and respectfully patted on the shoulders. Sometimes, I walked with them, in a glimpse of popular recognition, which happened to fall on me too, because I was childishly vain. For me, they were all not famous heroes, but close friends, almost relatives, who easily spent the night on my sofa. And this, you see, warms the soul.

But father! .. Father really reveled in what was happening. It was the work of his hands, a tangible result of his energy, which drove him thousands of kilometers into the back of nowhere, confronted him with the impenetrable soullessness of the reigning system.

After all, it was he who read dozens, then hundreds, and then thousands of letters in the kitchen at night, filling up the apartment - opening a window in the summer became a problem: first it was necessary to move the thick stacks of envelopes that covered the window sills. It was he who studied thousands of documents in various archives - from the military to the prosecutor's office. It was he who, after Rodion Semenyuk, was the first to touch in the 55th the fragile fabric of the regimental banner, buried in the casemate of the fortress during the days of defense and dug out by the same hands. There was something to admire - everything now materialized in the people around him.

And yet the main reason for his delight became clear to me much later, over the years. He returned to these people Faith in justice, and this, if you like, is faith in life itself.

He returned these people to the country, to the people, without which they could not imagine their lives. There, in deadly Brest, and then, in the death camps, they are mutilated, having gone through all degrees of hunger, having forgotten the taste of human food and clean water, rotting alive, dying, it seems, a hundred times a day - they still survived, saved with his incredible, implausible faith...

I think it was the most joyful for my father then to be convinced of the far from indisputable fact of the existence of justice. He promised it to them who had lost their faith, he was its unwitting arbiter. And my God, how grateful he was to everyone who helped even the smallest bit, who shared this heavy burden with him.

Father and his numerous and selfless assistants, such as, say, Gennady Afanasyevich Terekhov, an investigator for especially important cases, known throughout the country during perestroika, who, unfortunately, is no longer alive, who has since become a long-term friend of his father, and many other people, made, in my opinion, a process of rehabilitation of the country, the people, our very history, unique in the history of mankind, in the eyes of those who had to go through all the circles of hell - Hitler's and Stalin's ...

And then there was a trip to Brest - a real triumph for the heroes of the fortress. Yes, it was, it was ... And we also had a holiday, but especially, of course, with my father, when the fortresses were given the Star, and May 9 was declared a day off and a parade was scheduled on Red Square!

Then it seemed to him that everything had been achieved. No, not in the sense of work - his road just rolled ahead. Achieved in the sense of the moral support of the title "Veteran of War". In those days of the early sixties, a man with a number of order strips on his jacket did not need, blushing, to reach into his pocket for a certificate of a participant or, moreover, a war invalid - the line parted by itself.

Yes, we have experienced since then a long period of erosion of public morality. But after all, there are, cannot but exist among enlightened peoples, to which we include ourselves, saints, values ​​that cannot be shaken by time or people, without which a people is not a people. Today we cannot devalue the huge spiritual potential that is contained in the words “Veteran of War”. After all, they are few. There are very few of them, and every day this number is decreasing. And - somehow painful to imagine - the day is not far off when the earth will accept the last. The last Veteran of the Great War...

They do not need to be compared with anyone or anything. They are simply incomparable. My father somehow struck me, saying that it is unfair for us to have the same status of Hero of Socialist Labor and Hero of the Soviet Union, since the first sheds sweat, and the second - blood ...

Let it not seem to you, reading these lines, that he was a man without a hitch without a hitch. The father is inextricably linked with his difficult, terrible time. Like most of those who grew up and lived then, he was not always able to distinguish between white and black, he did not live in harmony with himself in everything, and he did not always have enough civic courage. Unfortunately, in his life there were actions that he did not like to remember, admitting, however, openly committed mistakes and carrying this cross to the very grave. And this, I think, is not a very common quality.

However, it is not for me to judge my father and his generation. It only seems to me that the work he served with such amazing conviction and spiritual strength, the work he did, reconciled him with life and time. And as far as I can judge about this, he himself understood this, understood and acutely felt the tragic unevenness of the time in which he had to live his life. In any case, the following lines, written by his hand, suggest this conclusion.

Once, after my father's death, I found in his desk a draft letter to Alexander Trifonovich Tvardovsky. Tvardovsky, whose father was his deputy in the first composition of the New World, was sixty years old in those days. By the hero of the day, the father retained a reverent love for the rest of his life and bowed before his personality. This letter, I remember, struck me. Here is an excerpt from it.

"Peredelkino, 20.6.70.

Dear Alexander Trifonovich!

For some reason, I don't feel like sending you a congratulatory telegram, but I'm tempted to write something non-telegraphic with my own hand. You have played such an important role in my life that I involuntarily feel the day of your sixtieth birthday as a significant date in my own destiny.

These are not red anniversary words. I have often thought about how lucky I am to have met you and had the happy opportunity to work with you and be your close friend for a while (I hope this is not insolence on my part). It happened at a very critical, probably a turning point in my life, when energy and a thirst for activity were bursting, and the era in which we lived at that time could, after all, direct all this along different channels. And although, I believe that even then I was not capable of conscious meanness, God knows how the circumstances and difficulties of those times could have affected, if I didn’t meet you, with your great sense of truth and justice, with your talent and charm. And in everything that I did after parting with you, there was always a share of your influence, the impact of your personality on me. Believe me, I am very far from exaggerating my capabilities and what I have done, but still I sometimes had to do good human deeds, which in old age bring a feeling of inner satisfaction. I don't know whether I could have done them or not, if there hadn't been a meeting with you and your never-ceasing influence behind my soul. Probably not! And for this, my heartfelt thanks to you and my low bow from the student to the teacher ... "

It's a pity, a mortal pity that my father did not live to see the day when the "Brest Fortress" saw the light of day for the first time after a long ban. It is a pity that he was not destined to find out the posthumous fate of his main book, to hold a signal copy smelling of printing ink in his hands, to touch the cover with the embossed words "Brest Fortress". He left with a heavy heart, without illusions about the main work of his life ...

And in conclusion, a few words about this publication. In post-Soviet times, the book was published several times. Of course, over the past period, many new facts, evidence, and documents have appeared in the historical science of the Great Patriotic War. In some cases, they correct some inaccuracies or mistakes made by documentary historians in well-known works on the history of the war. To a certain extent, this also applies to the "Brest Fortress", since at the time of its creation, historical science did not have a modern completeness of view on the initial period of the war.

Nevertheless, given the insignificance of discrepancies between the lifetime author's edition of the book and the current position of historians, we will refrain from alterations. This is obviously a task for future publications that need more extensive scientific tools.

Of course, there are ideological overlaps in this narrative as well. But do not judge strictly: no matter how we, today, may relate to the realities of the time when this book was created, the sincerity of the author should not be questioned. Like every significant creation, the Brest Fortress belongs to its era, but no matter how many years separate us from the events described in it, it is impossible to read it with a calm heart.

K. Smirnov

An open letter to the heroes of the Brest Fortress

Dear my friends!

This book is the fruit of ten years of work on the history of the defense of the Brest Fortress: many trips and long reflections, searches for documents and people, meetings and conversations with you. It is the final result of this work.

About you, about your tragic and glorious struggle, stories and novels, poems and historical studies will still be written, plays and films will be created. Let others do it. Perhaps the material I have collected will help the authors of these future works. In a big business, it is worth being one step if this step leads up.

Ten years ago, the Brest Fortress lay in forgotten, abandoned ruins, and you, its hero-defenders, were not only unknown, but, as people who, for the most part, went through Hitler's captivity, met offensive distrust of themselves, and sometimes experienced direct injustice. . Our Party and its 20th Congress, having put an end to the lawlessness and mistakes of the period of Stalin's cult of personality, have opened a new phase of life for you, as well as for the whole country.

Now the Brest defense is one of the pages of the history of the Great Patriotic War dear to the heart of the Soviet people. The ruins of the old fortress above the Bug are revered as a military relic, and you yourself have become the favorite heroes of your people and are surrounded by respect and care everywhere. Many of you have already been awarded high state awards, but those who do not yet have them are not offended, because the title “defender of the Brest Fortress” alone is equivalent to the word “hero” and is worth an order or medal.

Now there is a good museum in the fortress, where your feat is fully and interestingly reflected. A whole team of enthusiastic researchers is studying the struggle of your legendary garrison, revealing its new details, looking for still unknown heroes. It only remains for me to respectfully make way for this collective, to wish them success in a friendly manner, and to turn to other material. In the history of the Patriotic War, there are still many unexplored "white spots", unrevealed exploits, unknown heroes who are waiting for their intelligence officers, and even one writer, journalist, historian can do something here.

With the publication of this book, I handed over to the museum of the fortress all the material collected over ten years and said goodbye to the theme of the defense of Brest. But you, dear friends, want to say not “goodbye”, but “goodbye”. We will have many more friendly meetings, and I hope to always be your guest at those exciting traditional celebrations that are now held in the fortress every five years.

Until the end of my days, I will be proud that my modest work has played some role in your destinies. But I owe you more. Meetings with you, acquaintance with your feat determined the direction of the work that I will conduct all my life - the search for the unknown heroes of our four-year struggle against German fascism. I was a participant in the war and saw a lot in those memorable years. But it was the feat of the defenders of the Brest Fortress that, as it were, illuminated everything I saw with a new light, revealed to me the strength and breadth of the soul of our man, made me experience with particular acuteness the happiness and pride of the consciousness of belonging to a great, noble and selfless people, capable of doing even the impossible. For this priceless gift for a writer, I bow low to you, dear friends. And if in my literary work I manage to convey to people at least a particle of all this, I will think that it was not in vain that I walked the earth.

Goodbye, see you again, my dear Brest residents!

Always yours S. S. Smirnov. 1964