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but in general, of course, this is also an alteration, if you read the history of the creation of this song

Wait, locomotive, don't knock the wheels. History of the song

*Involuntary provocation of Fima Zhiganets

THE HISTORY OF BLATY SONGS reflects the history of the Russian people - difficult, vivid, often tragic. Many masterpieces of criminal “classics” originate in a folk song, and then absorb the events and realities of a different, new, differently seething life. This topic in itself is adventurous and exciting. But sometimes detective touches and nuances are added to it, giving a seemingly purely historical or philological study a scandalous shade.

This is what happened with the famous criminal song, which some call “Wait, locomotive, don’t knock the wheels,” others call it “The locomotive is flying through the valleys and hills.” It is still a kind of “apple of discord” among lovers of penitentiary folklore. The song about the steam locomotive gained enormous popularity after it was performed in Leonid Gaidai’s film comedy “Operation Y” by Yuri Nikulin and Georgy Vitsyn.

And in 1999, the Rostov publishing house “Phoenix” published my book “Blatnye songs with comments by Fima Zhiganets”, where attention was drawn to the fact that the song “Wait, locomotive, don’t knock, wheels” is a remake of the pre-revolutionary one - “Here the train is moving to a distant place " It is spoken from the perspective of a soldier who was given three days leave to say goodbye to his mother:

Now the train has set off towards a distant place -
Conductor, apply the brakes:
I go to my dear mother with a farewell bow
I hasten to show myself.

He flies to God knows where;

And the deadline was given to me for three days.

Forgive me mom
Sorry, honey! –
That's all I'll tell my mom.

I'll lay down my violent head...

A version of this song is known, in particular, performed by Zhanna Bichevskaya. Next to me I placed an extended criminal version of “Steam Locomotive”:

The locomotive flies through the valleys and hills,
He flies to God knows where.
The boy called himself a swindler and a thief,
And his life is an eternal game.

Wait, locomotive, don't knock the wheels,
Conductor, hit the brakes!
I'm going to my mother's house with my last greetings
I hasten to show myself.

Don't wait for me, mom, for a good son -
Your son is not the same as he was yesterday:
I was sucked into a dangerous quagmire,
And my life is an eternal game.

And if they put me behind bars,
In prison I will break through the bars.
And let the moon shine with its corrupt light -
And I, I’ll still run away!

And if the prison guards notice -
Then I, little boy, disappeared:
Alarm and shot - and head down
He fell off the longboat and fell.

I will lie and die...
And you won’t come to me, dear mother,
Caress me, kiss me.

This is where it all comes to a head..., as the wonderful Russian satirist Arkady Averchenko once said.

**Nephew plays trains

IT TURNS OUT THAT BY THAT TIME, or rather, since 1996, the authorship of “Steam Locomotive” had already been attributed former employee"Lenfilm" to Nikolai Ivanovsky! And they even brought up the “canonical version”:

Wait, locomotive, don't knock the wheels,
Conductor, apply the brakes.
I go to my dear mother with my last bow
I want to show myself.

Don't wait, mother, for your son, ever.
He was sucked into the prison quagmire,
He willingly said goodbye forever.

My years will pass like meltwater,
My years will pass, perhaps in vain.
No joy awaits me, I swear to you freedom,
And they are waiting for me at the new camp.
(1946, Karelia, Petrozavodsk)

In principle, there would be nothing criminal in Ivanovsky’s authorship. The man is quite suitable for this role. Born in 1928. At the age of fourteen he was sent to a children's colony for theft. According to him, he wrote the song in the zone when he was 18 years old. He was released at the age of 25 (in the year of Stalin’s death; possibly due to the famous “Beriev” amnesty). He left the life of crime, and a year after the zone he ended up at Lenfilm, where he worked for 35 years as the head of the lighting department. I knew Nikulin, Vitsin, Dahl, and many other actors. He wrote poetry and prose and published in periodicals. Member of the Writers' Union and the Cinematographers' Union. In general, a suitable biography.

Ivanovsky's nephew Alexander Duris hints that his friends knew about his uncle's authorship. Although this statement is more than controversial. Thus, Yuri Nikulin recalled in one of his interviews:

“In addition to jokes, I collected songs. I even took a little album into the army that went with me through the war. The song “Wait, Locomotive” was also in that album. Of course, I don’t know the author. I recorded it after the war, when I was demobilized. And in the film the song appeared like this. During the filming of “Operation Y,” Gaidai said: “We need a song, some kind of criminal song.” I sang a couple, but they seemed rude to him, and what was needed was a pitifully lyrical one. And I remembered “Wait, locomotive...”, and she came up...”

Another of his film studio comrades also does not remember Ivanovsky’s performance of “Steam Locomotive”:

“I myself have not heard any songs performed by him,” says the current head of Lenfilm, Maxim Alexandrovich. “Although he read poetry often.”

But let’s still assume that the author of the thieves “Steam Locomotive” is Ivanovsky. Well, a man wrote a “thieves’ version” of a folk song - honor and praise to him. Moreover, Ivanovsky himself never said a word that he created the song from scratch, and did not remake it from an already known folk song. However, his nephew to this day insists that “Wait, Locomotive” is the fruit of his uncle’s original creativity! And pointing to folklore sources infuriates him. He constantly fights with “slanderers.”

The question is - why? Well, if my uncle were recognized as the author of a talented adaptation, that would also be glory. But in a strange way the rights to the authorship of “Steam Locomotive” were claimed just when Ivanovsky himself had a stroke, the left side of his body was paralyzed, and his speech was impaired. As the Tribune newspaper wrote on January 8, 2002 (“Conductor, hit the brakes!”):

“About five years ago he had a stroke. Special medications are needed. Meanwhile, his sister and nephew, with whom he now lives, are sure that Nikolai can be put back on his feet if only he had the money. But there are none. Now, if we managed to defend copyrights, achieve some royalties, who knows, maybe there would be enough for treatment...”

However, if "Locomotive" is just a reworking of a folk song, copyright issues may arise. We need “clean” text. I do not claim that this was precisely the motivating factor for Duris. Perhaps he really feels like he is “fighting for justice.” In this case, his motives are not so important for establishing the truth. For reference, we note that Ivanovsky himself has been virtually unable to say anything since 1996. However, Tatyana Maksimova, the author of the article quoted above, clarifies:

“I speak poorly,” as if apologizing, Nikolai Nikolaevich hardly “scrapes together” two words upon my departure. And suddenly he easily and deftly adds the well-known Russian expression of three words, one of which is unprintable.”

But otherwise, my uncle couldn’t say anything intelligible. The entire “interview” was “voiced” by the nephew...

***The peasants are not our decree!

AND STILL – DOES THE BLAT SONG about a steam locomotive and a conductor have folk roots? Without a doubt. There are many indications of this, which Alexandre Duris persistently tries to refute. As for the “recruit” text of Zhanna Bichevskaya, Duris casually pours a tub of slop on the singer, “convicting” her of intentionally “stylizing” the criminal “Steam Locomotive”, written by Ivanovsky, as a folk popular print. The purpose of such strange stylization, however, is completely unclear.

However, there is other evidence. So, for example, Viktor Astafiev published the novel “The Snow is Melting” in 1958, where he writes:

“Women walked behind the tractor with buckets, baskets and shovels. Every now and then they turned onto the boundary and overturned buckets. The pile of potatoes grew noticeably. A song reached Ptakhin. He was surprised. It’s been a long time since people worked with songs, especially in the fall. In spring it's a different matter. The song was old, local, about a girl who leaves for distant lands, unable to bear mental anguish.

The train has started
To a distant place,
Conductor, hit the brakes!
I'm mommy's dear
With final bow
I want to show myself...

Tasya sang along with everyone. She didn’t know the words, but she quickly got used to the melody and picked up on it...”

However, Duris “refutes” this instruction, claiming that Astafiev, in his youth, did not know village life, and therefore also... converted the thieves’ song into a folk song! Russian chanson researcher Mikhail Dyukov, speaking in support of Duris, explains:

“The novel mentions that this song is local and ancient. For some reason I think that the author has bent his heart a little, because he couldn’t have written that it was modern and camp, those were not the times.”

Of course, it is not forbidden to think whatever you want. But there must be at least the slightest basis for conclusions. Meanwhile, many other facts point to the folklore “original source” of the song about the locomotive.

In the book by Michael and Lydia Jacobson “Song folklore of the Gulag as historical source(1917 - 1939)”, another interesting version of the song about a steam locomotive was published:

Stop the locomotives, don't knock the wheels,
Conductor, apply the brakes.
To my dear mother at the last minute
I want to show myself.

Don't wait, my mother, for a handsome son.
Don't wait, he'll never come back,
He was sucked into prison bars
He said goodbye to his will forever.

Khevra is daring, brave, thieves,
The one whose life is like grass,
All my Kiryukhs, the whole big family,
Goes on tour to camps.

What else should we do, hot boys?
Our families were sent to Siberia.
We got away, worked at the dacha,
And for this they are sent to Anadyr.

I will never forget my dear mother,
I know he will waste away and grieve for me.
After all, her sons, the whole large family,
The dispossessed girl is driving along the ground.

The notes indicate that the text is taken from the collection of Alexander Vardi, an emigrant who spent many years collecting folklore from Stalin’s camps (he himself served time in Magadan from 1939 to 1941). It is now kept at Stanford University. In the margin of the manuscript there is a note “Magadan, 1939.”

But this did not convince the nephew either. He undertook a “lexical analysis” of the text, agreeing to the point that the term “dacha” did not exist in Soviet use, as “bourgeois”, until the very mid-50s, “Our families were sent to Siberia” - “a phraseology of a Marxist-Leninist nature ", which was also unknown until the 50s, and so on.

Of course, all this is complete and unconditional nonsense, it is not clear from where it was taken. It is enough to watch the film “Hearts of Four” or read “Timur and His Team” by Gaidar, where the action takes place in dacha villages, and also flip through the volumes of memoirs of Russian Narodnaya Volya members, who were sent to Siberia without asking permission from Marx and Lenin. Mikhail Dyukov added that the lines about the “dispossession” are complete nonsense: what kind of thieves with peasant origins can there be? The rest of the argument is of the same order. Of course, if Mikhail had at least read Varlam Shalamov, he would have learned to his surprise that it was in the 30s that thousands of young healthy peasant boys joined the ranks of professional criminals and they played a significant role among the prisoners (although “legal thieves” were not were).

But main question: Why would an emigrant “reinterpret” Ivanovo’s “Steam Locomotive”? There is only one answer: only because Ivanovsky’s nephew doesn’t like it. It is curious that he questions and ridicules any testimony of the camp inmates, forgetting that his uncle’s “testimony” is nothing more than words.

****Song of the Flying Locomotive

HOWEVER, THIS IS NOT ALL. The Hoover Institution houses Vladimir Yurasov's work “Song in Soviet Prisons and Camps.” It was written in 1950, when the “author” of “Steam Locomotive” Nikolai Ivanovsky was still serving time. The work provides a version of the song with the first line “A steam locomotive flies through the valleys and villages” - the same one that is absent in Ivanovsky’s “canonical” text, but is present in many others, especially in the “recruit” one. folk song, performed by Bichevskaya. A little about Yurasov: born in 1914. In 1938 he was arrested, in 1941 he escaped from the camp, lived on false documents, fought, lieutenant colonel (1945), after the war, commissioner of the Ministry of Construction Materials Industry in East Germany, fled to West Germany, from 1951 to the USA, editor of the magazine "America", commentator for Radio Liberty. That is, after 1941, Yurasov was never in the Soviet Union and could not hear the song allegedly created in 1946 and circulated in the camps. Surely he quoted a text that he heard directly in the Gulag.

Question: how could a verse with a “flying” steam locomotive appear in West Germany in 1950, which is present in many performances of the song (including those performed by Vladimir Vysotsky in the first half of the 60s)?

Duris’s comrade in battle, Mikhail Dyukov, tries to answer this:

“In Mikhail Demin’s novel “Blatnoy,” the fact is mentioned that Demin himself heard the song “Wait, Locomotive” and added (we will leave the likelihood of this fact to the author’s conscience) with his own verse with the words:
"Fly, locomotive, through the valleys and hills,
He flies to God knows where...”
Well, now we know where and where the alien verse was “sewn in”. If we take into account the fact that Demin himself went to prison only in the middle of the war (1942-43), and the alteration took place some time later (he does not mention specifically), then we can assume that this song was heard in the camp and altered there , and this was the year 1946-47.”

Everything here is not true, from beginning to end. Demin wrote about “Steam Locomotive” in autobiographical novel"Blatnoy", published in France in 1972, the following:

“The repertoire of Maidanniks is no less diverse; here trains, stations, the expanses of the homeland are sung... “A steam locomotive is flying across the green expanses. It flies to God knows where... I called myself a swindler and a thief, boy, and said goodbye to my freedom forever.”

It is clear that Dyukov did not read this passage and therefore quoted the song inaccurately. And at the same time he manipulated something in passing. After all, Demin does not claim that he “added” any verse. He simply cites an excerpt from a prison song, widely known in criminal circles. By the way, along with “The Steam Locomotive,” Demin quotes many other criminal songs, including songs from the Solovetsky camps, which were completely unknown to the general public at that time: their full texts were published much later.

So the reference to Demin’s novel does not explain at all how a former prisoner who left the camp in 1941 wrote a work abroad in 1950, where he quotes a song about a steam locomotive with lines that Ivanovsky does not have, but which are present in most subsequent variations !

However, the story of “flying locomotives” does not end there. In the first half of the 90s, in the program of Eduard Uspensky and Eleonora Filina “Ships came into our harbor...” another version of “Steam Locomotive” was heard. Its text was published in 1995 in the collection of songs “Ships Came into Our Harbor”:

A steam locomotive flies through the valleys and mountains
He flies to God knows where.
She called herself, girl, I'm a factory donkey,

I work in a factory, making parts,
I got used to the lathe.

I will run away from this factory.

Boss, boss, don't stomp your feet,
And master, don’t jump like a goat!
Give me a vacation for three days,
I'll eat my fill at home.

I drove for a long time, dirty and hungry,
I arrived and ate my fill.
Oh, dear mother, they tortured you in the factory,
I won't go again before the trial!

The conductor doesn't apply the brakes...
Now I, girl, am going to the North,
Far away to the North forever!

Judging by the reality of this song, it was created in the period from 1940 to 1956. In 1940, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR issued a number of decrees: on the transition to an 8-hour working day, on the transition to a 7-day working week, and on the prohibition of workers and employees leaving the enterprise without permission. Violation of these decrees carried criminal penalties ranging from 2 to 4 years in prison. The consolidation was complete and concerned everyone - from students of factory schools to directors of enterprises. Some historians believe that millions of people were convicted under these decrees. Only in 1956 was criminal liability for leaving work without permission (by the way, for being late for workplace) has been cancelled.

So, the version about the factory girl is historically completely reliable. And if we assume that the folk recruitment song “Here the train has set off to a distant place” did not exist, it turns out that the song about the plant was remade from the “stylization” of Zhanna Bichevskaya BACK IN THE 40s - 50s! That is, long before Bichevskaya’s “stylization” came into being. There is no other way to explain the obvious coincidences. Here's your first clue:

Now I don't know what minute
I will run away from this factory.

Compare with the “recruit” option:

Now I don't know what minute
I will lay down my violent head.

Give me three days off.

Where is the mention of vacation and specifically in three days - in the text of Nikolai Ivanovsky? It doesn't exist and it can't exist! He doesn't stick to the criminal world. What kind of vacation does the urkagan have? And to the hard workers - just right! That’s why this mention migrated from the popular version “and the deadline was given to me for three days.”

However, it is also undeniable that by the time the “proletarian” adaptation was created, a criminal adaptation of “Steam Locomotive” already existed, as indicated by the lines:

I called myself, girl, a factory donkey
And I said goodbye to my will forever.

In the thieves version:

I, little boy, called myself a swindler and a thief,
And he said goodbye to his will forever.

However, Duris has his own line of defense: the “Havanese” text dates back to 1995, therefore, it was simply “stylized” after “Wait, Locomotive” became popular thanks to the movie “Operation Y”. That is, this “stylization” is based on Ivanovsky, and Bichevskaya, and everything known variants performance of a criminal hit. But here’s the question: why did someone suddenly need to “stylize” “Steam Locomotive” in the 90s to look like the 40s?! This is just paranoia: according to Duris, there is something like a worldwide Masonic conspiracy aimed solely at depriving Nikolai Ivanovsky of the authorship of the thieves’ masterpiece through numerous stylizations and manipulations! For some reason, they not only “steal” the song from his uncle, but also fake it, either as a recruit song, or as a kulak song, or as a factory song, or as a peasant song... Moreover, these insidious machinations began back in the 50s of the last century (after all
the obviousness that Vladimir Yurasov’s work on Soviet prison songs appeared precisely in 1950, even Ivanovsky’s nephew did not dare to dispute). Well, this is a topic not for historians of folklore, but for psychiatrists.

*****George Westinghouse provides evidence

But things get really bad for the fiery nephew when he tries to “analyze” the text of the folklore source of the famous thieves’ song. To begin with, he gets into trouble by asserting the following:

“From the guy’s words, I know that one distortion crept into his song,” says Sasha. - Instead of “I go to my mother with my last greetings,” it should be “with my last bow.” “Bow” was more in line with the thieves’ sentimentality of those years, when a criminal could easily stab someone to death, and an hour later in the barracks “shed tears” to songs...”

The sentimentality of thieves, frankly speaking, has nothing to do with it. In the original criminal song, the words about “last bow” to mummy sound ridiculous. What “mama”?! There is not and cannot be any such purely popular appeal in any of the original thieves' songs. Only - mother, mother, in the extreme - mommy. Neither “mama” nor “mother”. You can check with famous songs“Mommy, mommy, forgive me dear”, “The ice melts on the bay in the spring”, etc. “Mama” is a pre-revolutionary vocabulary, but not “sub-Soviet”.

Now let's move on to bows. What kind of ritual is this? Among the people - yes, but not among
thieves! Bowing to Father-Mother is characteristic of Russian pre-revolutionary life. After collectivization and industrialization, breaking the old patriarchal orders new government over the knee - where are the bows from, what kind of “mama”?!

Mama was in Ostrovsky’s “The Thunderstorm”, there are also scenes of farewell with bows to the ground and three kisses, with everyone according to seniority. Or let’s remember Dostoevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov”:

Absolutely possible! - Krasotkin immediately agreed and, taking the cannon from Ilyusha’s hands, he himself handed it over to his mother with the most polite bow.

The same tradition of bowing to the mother is also in the Russian song “Steppe and steppe all around”:

You're a horse
Take me to Father
Give your regards
To my dear mother.

And here is “The Adventures of a Sailor” by Stanyukovich:

And tell daddy and mommy my deepest bow and how grateful I am for the affection.
Thousands of such examples can be cited in Russian literature and folklore. In thieves' folklore - not a single one!

Other claims by Alexander Duris to the folk song about a recruit sound just as ridiculous. Continuing to accuse Bichevskaya of “remaking” his uncle’s locomotive, he writes:
“The social (technical) characteristics were set by the original song “Wait, Engine”: “steam locomotive”, “don’t knock the wheels”, “conductor, press the brakes”. And also a derivative version: “a steam locomotive is flying.” In the rewritten, adapted version, technical and clerical terms were added: “the deadline was presented to me for three days,” “at what minute.”
Since we are dealing with Russian folklore, which existed in its own linguistic (and temporal, and social) patterns, let us ask where suddenly the folk linguistic element manifests bureaucracy in its creativity - “the term is presented”? (Even K.I. Chukovsky in his book “Alive as Life” spoke about penetration into Soviet era clericalisms into the Russian language). Well, “presented to the St. George Cross” - this is understandable: an award, a Knight of St. George, etc. Vacation: given, in extreme cases - granted...
...If Zh. Bichevskaya had invited a competent specialist, instead of “at what minute” he would have been able to insert “in someone else’s”, “in the distant”, “in the enemy’s side” “I will lay down my violent head.” Which would better disguise the song as Russian folk. Moreover, he would have built it in rhythmically, without mutilating the words and their combinations (“and the deadline was presented to me for three days”).”

For all his attempts at irony, Duris looks completely helpless. I'm not even talking about the wild phrase “ folklore" “And the term given to me is for three days,” “at what minute,” “I’ll lay down my violent head” - all this is just living vernacular! In order to understand and feel it, it would not hurt to start by reading the wonderful works of Russian folklorists. For example, “Metkoe Moscow word» Evgenia Ivanova. Fairy tales and legends of Boris Shergin. Yes, at least just Russian fairy tales by Afanasyev! Or open Vladimir Ivanovich Dahl. There vivid examples: “which puppy are you taking?”, “I’m not taking any apples, they’re bad”, “whatever God soaks, he will dry”, “whichever”, “whichever is”... Polemicize on this topic with a person who, at the same time, is completely confidently declares that in the 30s there were no dachas in the Soviet Union - not seriously.

It’s tiresome to list all Duris’ nonsense. But quite by accident, he suggested another argument in favor of the existence of a folklore source for the criminal song about a steam locomotive and a conductor. Duris writes:

“It is unlikely that the trains carrying soldiers to the front of World War I had conductors and brakes. Most likely, the driver controlled the movement of the train (and braking) - from the locomotive.”

Absolutely wonderful replica! Firstly, it is not clear why a soldier should go on leave to visit his mother in a freight car, and not in an ordinary carriage? But this is not the main thing. Unwittingly, the nephew gave a “beacon” tying the action specifically to pre-revolutionary times.

It is quite obvious that the hero of the song does not have the slightest idea about the principle of operation of the train! At least about the principle of operation of the brakes. Indeed, under no circumstances could the conductor PRESS the brakes! From the very beginning (1868), it was not possible to press the pneumatic railway brake invented by George Westinghouse, which operated using compressed air. Emergency braking was initially carried out using a special handle, which was pulled down, and later they began to pull a lever called the “stop tap”.

An illiterate soldier from the common people of the early twentieth century could easily not have known this. For a simple boy from the outback, such wisdom was a novelty. For him the train was something like spaceship for today's average person. But for an experienced “swindler” of the late 40s, such ignorance was unimaginable! Urkagans constantly “toured” cities, “worked” on trains; by the middle of the 20th century in Russia the swindler was very familiar with railway transport. He “bombed” in the “centers of civilization”, and not plowed land in the village... Moreover, the guy from Leningrad Nikolai Ivanovsky knew what a “stop tap” was.

So the heartbreaking cry of the Gulag crook - “Conductor, hit the brakes!” is perceived as a wild anachronism.

However, knowledgeable people They may object to me: in trains BEFORE the 30s of the 20th century there was such a position as “brake conductor”. There is even the famous song “Here is a train rushing down the slope” - an adaptation of the no less famous miner’s “Konogon”:

There's a train rushing down the slope
Dense Siberian taiga.
And to the young driver
The brakeman shouts:

"Oh, hush, hush, for God's sake,
We could fall downhill!
Here is the Transbaikal road,
You can't collect your bones...

The brigade consisted of five people: a conductor - now he would probably be called a foreman, a driver, a brake conductor (who, by the way, was sitting in a booth on the brake platform of the last car), an assistant driver and a fireman. Before the revolution, the conductor was an official of grade 12-13 - a respected and extremely highly paid specialist. But already in Soviet times, such conductors became a thing of the past.

There was even a lively discussion about this on the search site. Here's what they write about the role of the brake conductor:

"In those days when not all carriages were equipped with brakes, the last carriage was special. On level ground, the locomotive would brake - this is all clear. But on steep slopes the locomotive could not be braked - the entire mass of carriages would simply fall off the rails. Therefore, the last carriage "There was a special one - with brakes. Most likely, these brakes were mechanical, since there was a steering wheel in the conductor's booth."

Another participant in the discussion elaborates:

“They braked with mechanical brakes, now preserved as a parking brake (in the vestibule of a passenger car you can see red folding handles, and some freight cars have “brake booths” where the brake handles are visible - now these are cargo security booths, etc.), and to brake, the driver gave a signal with a whistle - at the signal, the conductors activated the brake, ROTATING THE HANDLES, and there was a signal to release the brakes.
The Westinghouse brake was invented in 1868, but was introduced in Russia later. Since 1931, the vigorous introduction of the Matrosov brake, similar in design, began, so the creation of the song can be attributed to the 20s."

We have already clarified that the song was created even earlier. And, in any case, before Kolya Ivanovsky was born. By the way: even in those days, conductors did not press the brakes, but turned the handles.

******Someone came down the hill

But there is one more circumstance. The fact is that in pre-revolutionary urban folklore there was one more (at least one) mention of a conductor who performs duties unusual for him. We're talking about the song "Here's someone coming down the hill." Yes, yes, about the same one that was later remade into the famous song about a sweetheart in a “protective tunic.”
Here are a few of her verses:

Someone came down from the hill,
My darling is probably coming.
He's wearing a blue shirt,
She'll drive me crazy.

He's wearing a gold chain,
Flower in the buttonhole on the chest...
Why, why did I meet
Him on the path of life?

I'll buy a three arshin ribbon -
You, wind, flutter the ribbon!
My dear gets into the car -
Conductor, close the doors.

Next, the heroine decides, “I’ll go to the pharmacy and buy poison,” and even despite the fact that “the pharmacy doesn’t give poison,” the girl commits suicide, having managed to utter a pathetic speech addressed to her beloved.
But this is not important for us. The role played by the conductor in the song is curious. It's quite strange that he manipulates the doors in the car. What kind of conductor can be in the car?! Of course, one can assume that the heroine calls a horse-drawn horse (or even a tram) a “car,” but there the conductor also did not open and close the doors, especially since there were no doors in either the horse-drawn horse or the tram. Closing doors are a later invention.
Thus, we see that strange conductors fit completely into the pre-revolutionary urban song folklore, while they are completely out of touch with the Soviet one.

*******There is no song, but they sing it!

“If this song is old, then why is it not in the repertoire of singers of the early 20th century, either by Soviet or emigrants?! During the First World War, patriotic songs were popular, but even among them “Here the train has started” or something similar in meaning and text could not be found. Why?
Maybe it just hadn’t been written yet?!
I wasn't too lazy and leafed through "Russians" folk songs“(quite an extensive work, about 300 texts), there is a section “Soldiers’ and Recruitment Songs”, but nothing similar to Zh. Bichevskaya’s version could be found.”

I, of course, appreciate Mikhail’s titanic work, but for reference I have to say that there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Russian folk songs. And the texts of not all of them are published even in special collections. A collection of 300 songs can be considered in this sea as a comic book for defective teenagers. Five or six years ago I could not find the “Cossack” lyrics of the song “A River Flows.” Now there are about a dozen of these texts on the Internet.

That the song was not included in small collection, does not mean at all that it does not exist. Even if you don’t find it in a hundred collections, it can sound great at the same time among the people. Because folklore is still oral folk art.

Dyukov also refers to the fact that the song about the steam locomotive is not mentioned either by Varlam Shalamov, or by Dmitry Likhachev, or by Andrei Sinyavsky, who wrote about thieves' song folklore. Well, first of all, this is not entirely true. Sinyavsky just quotes two whole verses of the full version of the song:

And if the prison guards notice,
Then I, the little boy, am gone!
Alarm and shot and head down
He fell off the ledge and fell.

I'll be lying on a prison bed
I will lie and die...
And you won’t come to me, dear mother,
Hug and kiss me.

True, Sinyavsky was sent to prison already in 1965, so the reference to him is not entirely correct. But note that the quotes actually belong to the OLD BLOOD SONG. If only because a number of performers (including Arkady Severny) instead of “from the cornice” sing “from the longboat” (or from the longboat). “Barkaz” - in the old pre-war hairdryer it means “prison wall” (see, for example, the same Likhachev). This word is not in post-war and modern criminal jargon; it has long been forgotten.
For the sake of fairness, we note that both of these verses are absent in the version attributed to Ivanovsky. But they are present in almost all performance variants. We turn to Sinyavsky only because Dyukov himself referred to him. Alas, all of the listed authors - Likhachev, Shalamov, and Terts-Sinyavsky - quote in their works only a small part of the classic thieves' songs. Therefore, the argument that these researchers of criminal folklore do not mention any of them should be recognized (in legal terms) as insignificant.

However, recently on the Internet site “Nostalgia” someone under the nickname Olegvi also expressed a number of doubts about the fact that there was a “recruit” original source for the song about the steam locomotive:

“Only Bichevskaya claims this...
There are logical inconsistencies in the text, in comparison with which “he went to Odessa, but came out to Kherson” simply fades.

So, the train is “flying to God knows where.” Wait, who knows where? The hero goes by train to his mother, he was released for three days. This means the train is flying to God knows where.

The hero “hurries to show himself” and immediately asks the brakeman to stop the train. FOR WHAT??? With Ivanovsky, everything is clear - the hero is being transported, he dreams of a meeting with his mother, driving past his native place. Here it is unclear.

Don't wait, mother, for your son, for your dissolute son,
Mother, never wait for your son.

Nikulin’s is a little softened, but also - “don’t wait for me, mom.” And this is understandable - the conductor will not fulfill the request anyway. And here:

Forgive me mom
Sorry, honey! -
That's all I'll tell my mom.

Forgive for what? If the hero of the song is taken into the army, what is his fault?”

Alas, most of the arguments are, to put it mildly, far-fetched. For example, about the fact that the train is “flying to God knows where.” Like, it’s clear that it’s to mom! Just not. It is no coincidence that the recruiting song begins with the words: “The train has started to move to a faraway place.” That is, the train is not going to mommy, but to unknown lands. And that is why the hero asks the conductor to “press on the brakes,” since he “will stop by his mother’s for a short time.” That is, the soldier asks to be dropped off at an intermediate station, and he has every right to do so: after all, “I was given a deadline of three days.” What is unclear here?

Well, we’ve already figured out the “brake conductor” thing a long time ago. But the last remark - “Why forgive? If the hero of the song is taken into the army, what is his fault?” - Deserves attention. Indeed: from Zhanna Bichevskaya’s version it is really unclear why the soldier was so frightened that he asked his mother for forgiveness. And now it’s time to pull the piano out of the bushes.

The fact is that, although Dyukov did not find traces of the “recruit” pre-revolutionary song about the conductor and the brakes, it still exists and is still not only in the repertoire of Zhanna Bichevskaya. One of the “Cossack” options was recorded on a CD “ Cossack songs"(Polyphony Studio, Novosibirsk, 2006) folklore ensemble"Beauty". And here we clearly understand the meaning of filial repentance:

The train started moving towards a distant place.
“Conductor, hit the brakes!”
I say my last bow to my mother
I want to show myself.

The locomotive flies through the valleys and mountains,
He flies to God knows where.
I’ll visit my dear mother for a while,
And I was given three days.

“You cannot live, mother, neither with your son nor with your granddaughter,
Don't live with your young daughter-in-law!
I have a share left - they have become my family
Just a saber and a black horse.”

“Forgive me, mom, forgive me, dear!” -
That's all I'll tell my mom.
Now I don't know in what wild land
I will lay down my violent head.

“Cover me, mother, with prayer with love,
And I will pray for you.”
Forgive me mom, save me God
Or maybe I'll return to my mother.

So, the son asks for forgiveness for the fact that he did not have time to start a family and because of this, “You, mother, should not live with your son or granddaughter, You should not live with your young daughter-in-law!”

Of course, Nikolai Ivanovsky’s nephew can also call this version a “remake” of the song performed by Zhanna Bichevskaya. However, the song has also been preserved in the repertoire of the Cossack System ensemble from Mariinsk, Kemerovo region. The Cossack recruit song, which served as the basis for the thieves' "Steam Locomotive", is also mentioned by the author of a note about the Cossack folklore festival "Will you be an Ataman?", published in the newspaper "Evening Tyumen" (No. 39, October this year).

So if a researcher fails to find something, this is not yet an argument in the dispute. Perhaps it is simply a matter of the conscientiousness of the researcher himself.

********Dear Mom!, or Maria Spiridonova enters the battle

However, if we dig further, then the “recruit” song also has an inspiring source that inspired its unknown creators. This is the famous romance by Yakov Prigozhy to the verses of Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich Romanov (widely known in poetic circles under the initials K.R.) “The poor fellow died in a military hospital...”. Poem by K.R. It was simply called “Died” and was written in 1895, and gained wide popularity in all layers of Russian society precisely thanks to the romance, first recorded in Moscow at the Pathé company in 1908. It was performed by the incomparable Nadezhda Vasilievna Plevitskaya, the favorite singer of the last Russian emperor. Here are the words of the romance (the prince’s poem is longer):

The poor guy died in a military hospital,
My dear one lay there for a long time.
This soldier's life gradually
A serious illness has finished me off.

He was torn away from his family early,
The mother cried bitterly,
The full depth of a mother's sadness
It's hard to describe with a pen!

With inexpressible melancholy in his eyes
The wife hugged her husband
A full cup of great grief
She drank early.

And he stretched out his little hands to him, crying.
Boy, baby...
The native huts disappeared from sight,
He left his native land.

True, the reader may notice: this romance does not have much in common with “The Steam Locomotive”! Except for the mention of his mother and the fact that the unfortunate man once left his native land. That's how it is. But! The romance about a poor man in a prison hospital turned out to be so popular that many adaptations immediately followed. There are known folklore variants performed in Russian-Japanese war 1904-1905, during the first war and even during the Great Patriotic War. For example, Nikolai Klyuev’s revision, which dates back to 1914, is known:

He died, poor fellow, in a military hospital,
In death he is beautiful and holy,
Isn't this a valuable cover for him?
Woven an autumn sunset? -

So: one of the anonymous folklore variations was dedicated to the Socialist-Revolutionary terrorist Maria Aleksandrovna Spiridonova - the same one who, on January 16, 1906, in Tambov, emptied a revolver at the provincial councilor Gavrila Nikolaevich Luzhenovsky, who led the suppression of peasant uprisings in the Tambov region. Luzhenovsky, who received five bullets, died three and a half weeks later. The visiting session of the Moscow District Military Court in Tambov sentenced Spiridonova to death penalty by hanging. On death row, she waited 16 days for the verdict to be approved, but in the end, her execution was replaced with indefinite hard labor.

While under investigation, Maria Spiridonova was subjected to beatings, torture and abuse - in particular, by the Cossack officer Avramov and assistant police officer Zhdanov. The case of torture was dealt with by a special investigative commission; journalist V. E. Vladimirov told the Russian reading public about the details of the beating of the Socialist-Revolutionary, as well as about her meeting with her mother in the Russian reading public. In particular, he wrote:

“When the iron door of the cell was unlocked and the iron bolt was turned on rusty hinges with a cold clanging of metal, I saw before my mother’s eyes scary picture: on the floor, in the corner of the room, lies her daughter Marusya! Her glorious little Marusya, her favorite! The head rests motionless on a pillow, covered with compresses. There is also a compress on the eye.
With full consciousness and a clear understanding of things, the patient began to reassure her mother; urged her not to despair, not to be killed by the thought that she would be hanged for the act she had committed.
- Mommy! - she said. - I will die with joy! Don't worry, don't kill yourself for me; You still have four more children, take care of them! It’s just hard that I didn’t have time to commit suicide and was given to these tormentors and torturers alive!”

Maria Spiridonova became a real heroine in the eyes of intellectuals and people. Maximilian Voloshin dedicates poetry to her:

There is a mark of a whip on a clean body,
And blood on the marble forehead...
And the wings of a free white seagull
They barely drag along the ground...

And soon, to a tune similar to “The poor fellow died in a military hospital,” an untitled song appears:

It's dark in the women's prison hospital
A gloomy day looks through the window.
Sad, all in black, with my dear daughter,
An old woman sits crying.

This unfortunate daughter is her Maria
With a broken chest, he lies near death,
The living place on the body is not visible,
The skull is broken, and the eye cannot see.

She extended her weak hand,
To shake her own hand.
Mother covered her hand with kisses
And she began to sob even louder.

The complete “Spiridon” version has not reached us; we can only reconstruct it approximately according to later criminal revisions - in particular, according to famous song“Quiet and gloomy in the prison hospital”, “Boring and gloomy in the prison hospital”, etc. For example, in the 1932 version, recorded by VRLU student N. Kholina in a MUR cell, we find an appeal to her mother asking for forgiveness, as well as indications of the beating of the heroine (as some researchers indicate, instead of the words “beaten with a revolver”, originally it was “beaten” whip"):

"Poor mother, I'm sorry, dear,
Your thief daughter!
I die so proudly and boldly
Hiding your secret.

The cops beat me, they beat me with a revolver,
The boss at that time also beat me,
I answered so proudly and boldly:
“This is my spiritual secret!”

Dear mother, I'm sorry, dear,
I'll die soon now...

Most likely, the original source of both the Urkagan and “recruit” episodes was precisely the song about Maria Spiridonova. And then the appeal to the mother and the “prison bed” migrated from both songs to the prisoner’s “Steam Locomotive”. Moreover, farewell to the mother is a traditional technique of Russian folklore (“Black Raven”, “Steppe and steppe all around” and so on).

True, the romance “Here the train has started” was created, followed by “Wait, Locomotive” to a different melody than the song about Maria Spiridonova and its prison reworking. Some researchers are inclined to believe that the motive of “Steam Locomotive” is reminiscent of the same waltz “Autumn Dream”, which is sung in the song “Inaudible, weightless, a yellow leaf flies from the birches” by Matvey Blanter and Mikhail Isakovsky.

Actually, the waltz is not as old as the song claims: its author, the English composer Archibald Joyce, was born in 1873 and died in 1963. Joyce allegedly created “Autumn Dream” (“Songe d'Automne”, or “Autumn Dream”) in 1908. The composer quickly gained the title of “English Waltz King”, his works “Dreams of Love”, “Memories”, “Dreams” , “A Thousand Kisses” and others gained worldwide fame.According to legend, it was “Autumn Dream” that was played on April 15, 1912 on board the infamous Titanic, when the ship was slowly sinking into the depths of the ocean.

“Autumn Dream” was also extremely popular in Russia. More than once poetic texts were created to this melody. Prince F. Kasatkin-Rostovsky was the first to compose the words to Joyce's music and dedicated them to Baroness Olga Nikolaevna Taube. Yuri Morfessi sang the song with different words. In the 30s and 40s, attempts were made by poets Viktor Bokov, Vadim Malkov and Vasily Lebedev-Kumach to come up with song lyrics for the melody of the waltz “Autumn Dream” and introduce them into performing practice. The latter composed a poetic version of “Autumn Dream” after persistent requests from Lydia Andreevna Ruslanova.

So the version with Joyce's waltz would have a right to exist. If not for one “but”: the music of the English composer can hardly remind the melody of “Wait, Locomotive”! This parallel seems to me artificial and unfounded. Many musicologists agree with this.

********* “And “Yuri Miloslavsky” is also your composition?”
REMEMBER THIS PLACE from Gogol's "The Inspector General", where the mayor's wife asks Khlestakov if he is the author of the then famous historical novel (actually written by Mikhail Zagoskin)? The same story happened with Ivanovsky. Moreover, there are strong suspicions that the culprit of the error (or confusion) is not Nikolai Nikolaevich himself. Most likely, his nephew Sasha plays the role of Khlestakov.

But Nikolai Nikolaevich could just be mistaken. Mikhail Dyukov, proposing to consider the old prisoner as the author of “Steam Locomotive,” writes:

“He himself says that he wrote it to someone else’s melody, but here are his words.”

It is quite possible that this is exactly how Nikolai Ivanovsky expressed himself. Or perhaps his words were simply “interpreted” that way. In the same way, for example, Ivanovsky was made the author of the song... “Black Rose, Emblem of Sadness”! Yes Yes.

We already mentioned at the beginning of our notes that in December 2001, Tatyana Maksimova met with the paralyzed Nikolai Ivanovsky and wrote a short piece “Wait, locomotive, don’t knock the wheels!” Among other things, there is this paragraph:

“At the film studio, Ivanovsky wrote a film script based on his story “They Can’t Steal Further than the Sun.” There, one character sings a song: “A black rose, the emblem of sadness, When I met the last one, I brought it to you, We both sighed, we were both silent, We wanted to cry, but there were no tears.” Sergei Soloviev read the script, and the quote ended up in the title of his film...”

And a month later, in January 2002, Irina Kedrova’s publication appeared in the St. Petersburg newspaper “Tribuna” under the heading “Conductor, press the brakes!” The correspondent already states quite definitely:

"The black rose, the emblem of sadness,
At our last meeting, I brought you
I wanted to cry, but there were no tears...
It turns out that these lines included in the title of Solovyov’s film belong to the pen of the tireless Nikolai Nikolaevich.”

And already in “ Encyclopedic Dictionary winged words and expressions”, author-compiler Vadim Serov secured this version as the only correct one:

“The black rose is an emblem of sadness

The author of these lines is the writer Nikolai Nikolaevich Ivanovsky (b. 1928, for more information about him, see Wait, locomotive, don’t knock, wheels!). In the film script that he wrote based on his own story “They Can’t Send Farther than the Sun,” one of the characters sings a song:

Black rose, emblem of sadness,
At our last meeting, I brought you
We both sighed, we both remained silent,
We wanted to cry, but there were no tears.”

True, below the compiler still makes a reservation:

“This song is a version of the romance “It’s a shame, a shame...” (1920s), written to the poems of the poet Alexander Borisovich Kusikov (1896-1977), a friend of S. A. Yesenin.”

Wonderful wording! What is this “version”? Let's compare Kusikov's text, created in 1916, and Ivanovsky's text. From the author of the original song:

Two black roses - emblems of sadness
On the day of the last meeting, I brought it to you.
And, full of forebodings, we were both silent,
And I wanted to cry, but there were no tears.

You can read Ivanovsky’s text just above. Well, did you find many differences? And, of course, it’s ridiculous to assume that Sergei Solovyov was inspired by a line in Ivanovsky’s adaptation. In any case, the director in the title of the film “Black Rose is the Emblem of Sadness, Red Rose is the Emblem of Love” quotes not Ivanovsky’s variation, but the lines of a “children’s” song:

The black rose is an emblem of sadness,
The red rose is an emblem of love.
The devils shouted to us about the black rose,
The nightingales sing about the red rose.

This song is also a kind of adaptation of the romance by Alexander Kusikov. In Ivanovsky’s adaptation there are no words about a red rose at all.

If the journalist herself did not invent the story about Sergei Solovyov (there are serious doubts about this), then Tamara Maksimova conveyed the story to either her uncle or her nephew. In any case, it is obvious that the quatrain is present in the script. That is, Ivanovsky, with a light soul, considered himself the author of “The Black Rose,” although his quatrain was just a simple alteration. The old prisoner had the same attitude towards “Steam Locomotive”. And what? He changed a lot in the folk song, shortened it - why is he not the author?

Yes, there were other options. There were other couplets as well. But Nikolai Ivanovsky could consider himself the author of the song, even making such minor changes to it as in “Black Rose”...

As for the statements about the “authorship” of certain criminal prison songs, I would not be in a hurry to trust them. Researchers of thieves' folklore know how easily former camp inmates take credit for the creation of this or that prison masterpiece. Maybe out of forgetfulness, maybe out of simplicity...

By the way, “Parovoz” has already found another author - former prisoner, musician Genrikh Sechkin. Well, this is all clear. From his memoirs “Behind Barbed Wire,” Sechkin managed to “remember” how in the post-war Gulag a camp song sounded in his ears:

I walked to the punishment cell barefoot,
Like Christ, both calm and quiet..."

That is, the same “Butt” that Yuz Aleshkovsky composed... in 1963!

**********Epilogue
AND STILL THE AUTHORS OF THE “LOCOMOTIVE” SCANDAL should be thanked with all our hearts. After all, if it weren’t for them, it might not have been possible to uncover such layers of folklore material, to learn about the stormy biography of the “comic couplets” performed by the Goonie and the Coward in a funny film. But this biography is worth a lot. It intertwines song folklore and Russian life, the fate of soldiers of Tsarist Russia, collectivization and hard labor of Soviet people, the camp everyday life of prisoners and even the history of the Westinghouse steam brake. No, whatever you say, this was worth discussing!

On the territory of the former Soviet Union no, probably not
a person who has not watched these films at least once. So I decided to re-read the collection of scripts “Operation Y”, “Prisoner of the Caucasus” and
"The Diamond Arm".

Some, including playwrights, believe that the script is
this is just a literary draft of a future film,
a kind of sketch containing descriptions of actions and dialogues.

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Would it be interesting for the general reader to communicate with such a person, it seemed?
perhaps an unusual shape? The answer to this question is given by Eldar Ryazanov.
"A real script is one that is written by a good living
a language that colorfully captures not only the actions of the heroes, but also
talks about their thoughts and feelings, he is convinced. - Except
pleasures for the reader, author's remarks, reasoning,
digressions will always help the director to penetrate deeper into
author's intention, to enrich one's own interpretation, more
talented at interpreting literary work".
Scenarios for "Operation Y", "Prisoner of the Caucasus" and
"The Diamond Arm", according to Ryazanov, meet the highest
requirements for literature. They are written easily, they *
The dialogue is aphoristic and capacious; it sparkles with humor.
Humor in the conditions of the Soviet “through the looking glass” in which they wrote
these scenarios were so intricately intertwined with
the reality that it was sometimes difficult to distinguish one from the other.
This is confirmed by the memories of Yakov Kostyukovsky from a conversation with
Moscow News correspondent Marina Podzorova (interview
also included in the collection). But if the vicissitudes of filming today can *
cause only smiles, at that time the filmmakers had no time
laughter.
"...In the script, the house manager Mordyukova had the following line: "I
I wouldn’t be surprised if tomorrow it turns out that your husband is secretly visiting
synagogue,” recalls the playwright. “When the episode was already ready,
a signal followed, or rather, a denunciation from vigilant people. The reaction was
terrible. The big boss said: "You raised the Jewish question
and they didn’t solve it in any way.” They weren’t allowed to reshoot it, so as not to
waste people's money. They ordered it to be re-voiced, and our comments
the fact that the articulation does not match was stopped: this is your problem.
The big boss himself came up with a replacement for the “synagogue”. House manager
Mordyukova eventually said: “I wouldn’t be surprised if tomorrow
It will turn out that your husband is secretly visiting his mistress!
(By the way, scripts are published without any
changes - neither “censorship” nor truly creative,
that arose during the making of films. For example, the text returned
that same original “synagogue”, Papanov’s “Lyolik” is called
“Mechanic”, and Mironov’s “Gesha” - “Count”.)
Or another episode. Famous phrase from "Prisoner of the Caucasus" about
that in a neighboring area the groom stole a party member, initially
According to the script, it belonged to Frunzik Mkrtchyan. But the remark was banned
saying that he pronounces it with subtext. Then he came to the rescue
Yury Nikulin. Everyone loved him so much that they often allowed him to
which others were not allowed to do. He "took" this phrase upon himself - and it
really passed.
According to the memoirs of Yakov Kostyukovsky, the “showdown” with
bosses had a murderous effect on Gaidai: after them, some
for a time he was practically incapacitated. "They led to
that Lenya made, in my opinion, a big mistake - he decided to take up
film adaptations, hoping that there will be fewer problems in this genre than
when filming original scripts,” says the playwright. -
Alas, he made no less of a difference with the film adaptations.”
As for the viewer, he lost many amazing
comedies that Gaidai could make. And then from the screen into the hall, and
then and in daily life new dozens of “winged” would have left
phrases with which both “Operation Y” and “Caucasian
captive", and "The Diamond Arm". Few were published in the book
more than forty phrases (plus the famous toasts from the "Caucasian
captives"). "We must, Fedya, we must!", "Don't confuse your fur with
state!”, “Our people don’t take a taxi to the bakery” and,
of course, “Living is good. And living well is even better,” which has become
title of the collection. And how many were not included! Nikulinskaya "Alcohol?" or
his “Shashlik. Three servings. Threw into the abyss”, Vitsin’s “Yes
Long live the Soviet court - the most humane court in the world!" or "Where is
granny?", Morgunov's "Why are you making noise, I'm disabled!" or "Left toe
your legs are crushing one cigarette butt...", Papanov's "I won't do this
I can" or "Make sure you don't mix it up, Kutuzou!"...
Today in Russian cinema is the time of “Prisoners of the Caucasus”
(we are, of course, talking about a good movie). Talented, smart, mischievous,
screwball comedies - no. A new book makes up for something
this gap. And it makes you think again about what to live
good only when a good life becomes the norm.
Leonid Gaidai In the main
cast Alexander Demyanenko
Alexey Smirnov
Natalya Selezneva
Evgeny Morgunov
Georgy Vitsin
Yury Nikulin Operator Konstantin Brovin Composer Alexander Zatsepin Film company "Mosfilm".
Second creative association Duration 90 min A country USSR USSR Language Russian Year Previous film Moonshiners Next movie Captive of the Caucasus, or Shurik's New Adventures IMDb ID 0059550

« Operation “Y” and other adventures of Shurik"is a Soviet comedy feature film filmed in 1965 by director Leonid Gaidai. The film was the leader in film distribution in the USSR in 1965 and was a great success: it was watched by 69.6 million viewers. In the same year, at the short film festival in Krakow, the short story “Obsession” was awarded the main prize -.

The film consists of three independent short stories: “Partner”, “Obsession” and “Operation Y”. All of them are united by the figure of the main character - a simple-minded, but cheerful and resourceful student Shurik, whose adventures were continued in the film “Prisoner of the Caucasus, or New Adventures of Shurik”. “Operation Y” also features a trio of comic anti-heroes and rogues - Coward, Dunce and Experienced, who first appeared in Leonid Gaidai’s short films “Dog Barbos and the Unusual Cross” and “Moonshiners”.

Plot [ | ]

"Partner" [ | ]

You must Fedya, you must!

The next day, Fedya is enthusiastically ready to go to any other job, but he is assigned a personal outfit. Having learned that he will have to work together with Shurik for 15 days, Fedya faints.

"Obsession" [ | ]

An examination session is underway at the Polytechnic Institute. In the last hours before the exam, Shurik reads lecture notes in the hands of an unfamiliar student, “on autopilot” following her everywhere, even to her home. Young people don’t have time to pay attention to each other and to anything else around them.

After the exam, Shurik’s friend Petya introduces him to Lida, the same student, and sympathy immediately arises between them. Finding himself visiting Lida, Shurik suddenly realizes that here, in someone else’s apartment, he is familiar with many things - objects, sounds, smells, etc. Lida and Shurik are conducting a scientific experiment to discover Shurik’s parapsychological abilities. This experiment ends with a kiss.

"Operation Y"" [ | ]

The thieving manager of a trading base hires a trio of swindlers - Coward, Dunce and Experienced - to stage a burglary and thereby save him from the audit. A carefully organized and rehearsed operation is disrupted due to an unforeseen accident: on the fateful night, it is not the grandmother, God's dandelion, who takes over the protection of socialist property, but her tenant, the brave Shurik.

Filmmakers[ | ]

Starring [ | ]

In other roles and episodes[ | ]

"Partner" [ | ]

Actor	Role
Alexey Smirnov	Fedya big guy Fedya
Emmanuel Geller	a passenger with an umbrella trying to get on the bus
Rina Zelenaya	angry bus passenger
Huseyn Akhundov	bald bus passenger
Valentina Berezutskaya	bus passenger
	pregnant bus passenger
Mikhail Pugovkin	Pavel Stepanovich Pavel Stepanovich foreman of construction and installation department No. 61
Vladimir Basov	stern policeman
Victor Uralsky	police cook
Oleg Skvortsov	prisoner uttering the phrase “Announce the entire list, please”

"Obsession" [ | ]

Actor	Role
Natalya Selezneva	Lida Lida, student at the Polytechnic Institute
Vladimir Rautbart	Professor
Victor Pavlov	Oak Oak, cunning student
Valery Nosik	student player
Georgiy Georgiou	master angry dog(credited as " V. Georgiou»)
Natalia Gitserot	angry dog ​​owner
Zoya Fedorova	Aunt Zoya Aunt Zoya, Lida's neighbor
	Ira Ira, Lida's friend
Sergey Zhirnov	Peter Peter, the student who introduced Shurik and Lida
Victor Zozulin	Kostya Kostya, Comrade Duba - radio amateur

"Operation Y"" [ | ]

Actor	Role
Georgy Vitsin	Coward Coward
Yury Nikulin	Dunce Dunce
Evgeny Morgunov	Experienced Experienced
Vladimir Vladislavsky	S. D. Petukhov S. D. Petukhov director of the trading base
Maria Kravchunovskaya	Marya Ivanovna Marya Ivanovna watchman
	van truck driver at the market (episode)
	Lena Lena granddaughter of Marya Ivanovna (episode)
Alexey Smirnov	outraged painting buyer

Film crew[ | ]

Film making process[ | ]

Preparing for filming[ | ]

After the success of his previous film “Business People,” director Leonid Gaidai decided to make a film based on an original script on a modern theme. From many options, he chose the script for a comedy film called “Frivolous Stories,” written by two authors: Yakov Kostyukovsky and Maurice Slobodsky. The original version consisted of two short stories, the main character of which was student Vladik Arkov, a bespectacled intellectual who ended up in various comic situations and came out of them with honor. In the first short story, he re-educated the gloomy and ignorant type, and in the second he got a job as a tutor and prepared Ilyusha for entering the institute.

Since two short stories were not enough for a full-length film, it was decided to come up with a third. Gaidai decides to pit the new hero against the old trinity - the Coward, the Dunce and the Experienced. After a month of hard work, “Operation Y” was born, in which Vladik had to expose the thieves of socialist property.

As a result, the studio’s artistic council settled on the candidacy of Valery Nosik, although Gaidai himself had doubts. He remembered young actor Alexandra Demyanenko, with whom he also starred in the film “Wind” and went to Leningrad on July 11 for personal negotiations. Both were pleased with each other. Then the actor recalled:

When I read the script for Operation Y, I realized that the film was doomed to success. There was nothing like this in our cinema then.

Alexander Demyanenko

Valery Nosik nevertheless starred in the film - he played the cameo role of a student on an exam, and the daughter of the poet Pyotr Gradov and the sister of actor Andrei Gradov, Tatyana, starred in the role of the restless girl Lena from the short story “Operation Y”. Gaidai initially invited Mikhail Pugovkin to play the role of the parasite Fedya, but after two weeks of deliberation he preferred the role of a construction foreman, citing unsuitable height and build.

After the films “Dog Barbos and the Unusual Cross” and “Moonshiners,” Gaidai stopped creative collaboration with composer Nikita Bogoslovsky. The film “Operation Y and Other Adventures of Shurik” began collaboration with Alexander Zatsepin, then a little-known composer. Subsequently, not a single famous film by Leonid Gaidai could do without the music and songs of this composer. In 1965, the Melodiya company published a gramophone record containing 5 plays by Alexander Zatsepin from the film:

• "After exams";
• "Meeting";
• "Savage";
• "Market";
• "Walk on the bus."

Filming [ | ]

• The film was shot in Leningrad, in Moscow (in the pavilions of the film studio

The film "" consists of three short stories, the main character of which is a student of the Polytechnic Institute Shurik(Alexander Demyanenko).

Partner

On the bus on the way to college Shurik tried to reason with a healthy big guy (Alexey Smrnov), who refused to give up his seat to a pregnant girl and was rude to passengers. As a result, a fight broke out, and the hooligan was taken to the police station, where he received 15 days of arrest. The next morning, the bus boor, along with other troublemakers, was sent to correctional labor.

The big guy was sent to a construction site, where he became his partner Shurik, who worked there as a laborer in his free time.

Having met again with Shurik, a fifteen-day-old, whose name, as it turned out later, is Fedya, began to look for a way to take revenge on his offender. But this idea turned out to be not at all as simple as it seemed to him at first.

Obsession

It's a busy time for exams at the Polytechnic, and Shurik, like most students, was preoccupied with searching for notes. But no matter which of his classmates he turned to, no one could help him - some needed the lecture notes themselves, others, having successfully passed the exam, had already given their notebooks to others. However Shurik he was lucky: on the tram he saw the necessary notes in the hands of two girls (Natalia Selezneva, Lyudmila Kovalets) and began to read, looking over their shoulders.

One of the girlfriends remained on the tram, and Shurik and the second student got off at the stop and proceeded to the girl’s home. At the same time, both were so immersed in reading that they did not notice anything around them and did not even see each other. After several hours of studying notes, the couple returned to the institute.

After passing the exam Shurik met a friend of my classmate Lida, with whom I fell in love at first sight. Having escorted the girl to the entrance, Shurik became the victim of a dog attack that tore his trousers. Lida invited her escort to her place so that he could put his clothes in order. Once in the apartment, Shurik experienced a strange feeling: it seemed to him that he had already been here...

Operation Y"

Selling lollipops and tacky rugs at the market Experienced(Evgeny Morgunov), Goonies(Yuri Nikulin) and Coward(Georgy Vitsin) invited the head of the trading base Petukhov(Vladimir Vladislavsky) to offer them one profitable “deal.”

The base was due to undergo an audit soon, and Petukhov I really didn’t want the inspectors to discover a shortage of the goods he had stolen. He decided to hire three klutz adventurers to stage a warehouse robbery. When discussing the details of an upcoming “event” Dunce suggested, for the sake of secrecy, calling him " Operation Y"".

On the night of the “robbery,” everything did not go as planned, because instead of the old woman guard, the warehouse was guarded by someone who had replaced her Shurik.

The history of the film Operation Y and other adventures of Shurik

After finishing work on the film adaptation of the stories O.Henry(O. Henry) – comedy " Business people " Leonid Gaidai I wanted to make a film on a modern theme. Of the scenarios offered to him to choose from, he chose one - called " Frivolous stories", written Yakov Kostyukovsky And Maurice Slobodsky. The main character of the script, consisting of two short stories, was a student named Vladik Arkov- a good-natured “nerd” with glasses.

After the script is approved by the artistic council and the film is launched into production Gaidai together with Kostyukovsky And Slobodsky started reworking the script. In the final version, only one story from the original version remained - about the re-education of a fifteen-day-old boor, and main character got a new name - Shurik.

Painting Operation "Y" and other adventures of Shurik became the leader of the Soviet box office in 1965: it was watched by 69.6 million people. According to modern data, the film ranks 7th in terms of attendance among domestic films.

Filming took place in several cities - in Moscow (in the film studio pavilions under construction " Mosfilm", on the capital's streets and new buildings in the Sviblovo area), in Leningrad and Odessa.

In the 1965 novella " Obsession" from the movie Operation "Y" and other adventures of Shurik At the short film festival in Krakow (Poland) the prize “Silver Dragon of Wawel” was awarded.

Interesting facts about the film Operation Y and other adventures of Shurik

For the role Shurik about a hundred candidates applied, among whom were Oleg Vidov, Vsevolod Abdulov, Vitaly Solomin , Evgeny Petrosyan , Sergey Nikonenko , Evgeniy Zharikov , Gennady Korolkov, Ivan Bortnik, Valery Nosik , Alexander Zbruev And Andrey Mironov. When Gaidai already approved for the role Nose, a photo caught his eye Alexandra Demyanenko. The director immediately decided what to play Shurik it will be he. Valery Nosik nevertheless starred in the film in cameo role student gambler.
- The plot of the novel " Obsession" Gaidai"borrowed" from a Polish humor magazine" Hairpins"("Szpilki"), which, by the way, served as a source of inspiration for the authors of the famous " Zucchini "13 chairs" ".
- Mikhail Pugovkin At first I auditioned for the role of a big guy in a short story" Partner", but ended up playing the SMU foreman Pavel Stepanovich.
- Letter code on the car number Experienced- "BBT" - formed from the initials of nicknames " Experienced", "Dunce" And " Coward". The number that the three friends hung on the car while going to the “business” - “A 1-01” - was diplomatic.

Film crew of the film Operation “Y” and other adventures of Shurik

Director of the film Operation “Y” and other adventures of Shurik: Leonid Gaidai
The authors of the script for the film Operation “Y” and other adventures of Shurik: Leonid Gaidai, Yakov Kostyukovsky, Maurice Slobodskoy
Cast: Alexander Demyanenko, Natalya Selezneva, Alexey Smirnov, Yuri Nikulin, Evgeny Morgunov, Georgy Vitsin, Mikhail Pugovkin, Vladimir Basov, Rina Zelenaya, Victor Uralsky and others
Operators: Konstantin Brovin, A. Egorov
Composer: Alexander Zatsepin

“Operation “Y” ...” or “Conductor, apply the brakes”

How was the legendary comedy filmed and why was filming stopped?

“Operation “Y” and other adventures of Shurik” is the first comedy by Leonid Gaidai with Alexander Demyanenko in the image of the eccentric Shurik.

A serious approach to frivolous stories

The script proposal for the future film “Frivolous Stories” was accepted by the 2nd creative association of the Mosfilm film studio in March 1964, and in August 1965 the all-Union premiere took place.

In the film, three short stories are united by one hero - the eccentric Shurik, who gets into trouble but emerges victorious. And at first there were two short stories. Made them related central character, but he was different: the student’s name was not Shurik, but Vladik. In one of the short stories, he rehabilitated a grumbler and a lazy man who did not like work, but was polite to the ladies. And in another part, Vladik Arkov, as a tutor, prepared for university entrance exams modern Mitrofanushka, who did not want to study or get married, but simply dreamed of getting rid of parental care.

In the film, as we remember, everything looks different. In the part “Partner”, a bespectacled student working part-time at a construction site finds a would-be assistant on his head - a big guy who doesn’t give a damn, Verzila, who received “15 days”. In the short story “Obsession,” Shurik amusingly meets a girl with whom he blindly prepared for the exam. And in the last fragment (“Operation “Y”) the hero accidentally finds himself at the scene of a crime, forestalling a contract robbery involving Experienced, Coward and Dunce. These three, as well as the film’s cameraman Konstantin Brovin, were also involved in Leonid Gaidai’s previous short films: “Barbos the Dog and the Unusual Cross,” “Business People” and “Moonshiners.” But the one who would personify Shurik had yet to be found.

“For our chance acquaintance!”

Negotiations were conducted with Andrei Mironov, but it did not come to screen tests. Imagine what our favorite hero would be like, played by Oleg Vidov or Alexander Zbruev, Vitaly Solomin or Evgeny Zharikov. In addition to them, Valery Nosik and Alexander Lenkov, Gennady Korolkov and Vladimir Korenev, Alexey Eibozhenko and Ivan Bortnik, Sergey Nikonenko and Vsevolod Abdulov auditioned for the role of Vladik (Shurik).

For some reason, the director was not satisfied with any of the candidates. And when one of his colleagues mentioned that there was a suitable actor in Leningrad, he personally went to meet this recommended artist. So in July 1964, the life of Alexander Demyanenko changed once and for all, thanks to a fateful meeting with Leonid Gaidai. The image of Shurik “glued” to the actor will not allow him to later play the roles he dreamed of, but in his creative biography There will be works for which the artist will be remembered for a long time. Because Gaidai’s comedies are timeless, audiences of all generations love them. And the actor himself determined that the comedy was doomed to success as soon as he read the script: we had never made such films before Operation Y.

Demyanenko has already been approved for main role, and there was less than a week left before the start of filming, when suddenly the artistic council decided to make sure that the choice was correct. A repeat test was arranged for Valery Nosik. Having compared both actors, the role was given to Demyanenko, and Nosik was offered an episode with a student gambler passing an exam in the short story “Obsession.”

But not only for the performer of the role of Shurik, Gaidai went to the city on the Neva. From there, another Leningrad actor, Alexey Smirnov, was also invited to the film. Many candidates portrayed the big guy at screen tests, among them Mikhail Pugovkin. After Pugovkin was criticized by Ivan Pyryev (he allegedly didn’t show up), the artist was given the role of a foreman, and they decided to cast the big guy Smirnov in the role of Big Man.

They recommended the director and debutant composer Alexander Zatsepin, who had recently moved to Moscow and made his living playing the accordion in restaurants. “Wait, locomotive!” wrote a 38-year-old musician with Siberian roots, for whom meeting Gaidai became a passport to great art.

Only cats will be born quickly

In the era of plans and labor obligations, filmmakers were covered up in the same way as machine operators at the factory. The studio archives contain reports on shooting days, from which one can judge the pace of work and the workload of the actors. Ironically, the productivity of the film crew in the episodes with the lazy man Verzila was no greater than that of the hero Alexei Smirnov.

Filming begins on July 27. The first scene is a formation of “alcoholics, parasites, hooligans” in the police yard (near the 9th Mosfilm laboratory). Participating in the crowd are Vladimir Basov (policeman) and Alexey Smirnov (Big Man).

The next shooting is in 10 days. On August 7, Smirnov was again in the frame, but now with Pugovkin. The foreman shows the construction site to a friend who has joined for 15 days. “Have you had any accidents at a construction site?.. Will there be one!” Verzila pronounced this text at a real construction site in Sviblovo.

Three days later - construction again. On August 10, Big Man was supposed to chase Shurik. An understudy ran instead of Demyanenko. For the whole day - three shots: The big guy pops out from behind a pile, close-up Smirnova, Big Man runs to the tractor. Due to a faulty engine, filming stopped at 16.30. The shooting will end at the same time in a day due to rain. On August 12, they will only have time to film the episode with Big Man throwing the bag from the ski lift.

And the day before, they mastered the episode of washing Big Man in the shower, when Shurik stole his clothes. Demyanenko is not on the set again - the understudy steals things (his hand is in the frame). Wearing a loincloth, Verzila jumped out of the shower only on August 28, but he was unable to chase Shurik - his camera broke. After lunch they brought another one, but they still didn’t have time to fulfill the plan for the shooting day - it got dark.

Lunch was delivered to Verzile, who was serving his labor service, on August 13th. An unlucky number did not bode well. And as soon as Smirnov finished his shish kebab, the film crew settled down to rest with him in the midday heat. Because of a scratch on the film, the camera had to be repaired or replaced. Three hours later, two mechanics arrived along with the head of the camera department, Fayman. Together, the defect was eliminated, but rain again prevented the filming from continuing. The footage plan was not met that day again.

Then they filmed three episodes from the short story “Obsession.” Shurik followed Lida and her friend Ira around the city for three days. On August 26, the girls walked along Komsomolskoe Highway and Frunzenskaya Embankment, and Shurik stood at the kiosk. All three stood at the tram stop near VDNKh on August 25, boarded the tram on August 27, and rode on and off the tram a few days later. It was not possible to immediately capture the scene on the tram due to the difficulties of filming in motion. The plan for footage was again failed.

Not everything was smooth during the winter filming. The third short story - with Vitsin, Morgunov and Nikulin - was filmed in Leningrad, where the film crew, as they guessed, arrived on December 13. The bad luck started with the weather. The snow brought to the shooting location by ten dump trucks melted, it rained for three days, and the actors had to wait while the props masters prepared the scenery not only of the base, but also of the “snowy” street. In the frame, under the heroes’ feet it was not snow that creaked in the cold, but polystyrene foam. They also brought in a lot of cotton wool, and the props and clothes of the actors were generously sprinkled with mothballs.

By the way, the “summer” filming of the episodes of taking the exam by the characters Valery Nosik (a gambler student) and Viktor Pavlov (Oak with a Bandaged Ear) was filmed on January 11, but not in Leningrad, but in the capital, in the auditorium of the Moscow Economic Institute.

Terrarium of like-minded people

And the next day the filmed material was analyzed by the artistic council. After watching the first two short stories, the director's and camera work received good reviews, and colleagues liked the acting of Demyanenko, Smirnov and Pugovkin. But the biggest boss is the artistic director of the 2nd creative association and the “tough” director Ivan Pyryev again found fault with Pugovkin, recommending reducing the time he spent in the frame. The image of the policeman also seemed “too detailed” to him. Pyryev did not approve of the choice of Basov for this role - he was, they say, not the right type. The editor-in-chief also echoed the idea of ​​the artistic director of the association. “Basov is not good,” Boris Kremnev joined the criticism, “it’s better to reshoot the episode with the police.” At the same time, the picky Pyryev suddenly praised the second short story, which he supposedly underestimated. The artistic director recognized the previous skepticism regarding “Obsession” as erroneous, and later generally called this part “the greatest success of comedy,” “fresh intonation,” “a new facet of the director’s talent” and “a step forward in Gaidai’s work.” He closed the meeting of the artistic council with a proposal to change the title of the film “Frivolous Stories.” No one dared to argue with the boss’s version: the comedy was called “Operation “Y” and other adventures of Shurik.”

A month later, we discussed the third novel. On February 25, Vitsin got it from Pyryev: his acting seemed fake to the artistic director. Reproaching the artist for repeating the image from Barbos the Dog, Pyryev advised looking for “new colors” and used Nikulin as an example, who is “always different.” But with special pressure, the Mosfilm boss attacked Morgunov, whom he called “not funny, but unpleasant.” At the final verdict on the film on April 23, Pyryev stated bluntly: “We need to stop filming Morgunov and Pugovkin! Tired of it. Not interesting".

After advice to reduce the length in the first and third parts of the film, Gaidai excluded some episodes and presented the re-recorded version to the Mosfilm management. The general viewing was scheduled, as was done, for May 13. The script editorial board ordered to shorten the chase shots in the first short story (long), remove the episodes with the Big “Papuan” (deliberately) and cut out the exam scenes (out of the general style).

Fortunately for the viewer, the director ignored the recommendations, for which he paid with the status of the film: the comedy, which had outlived its time, was assigned only the second category. Even the film’s victory at the Krakow Film Festival (the second short story “Obsession” won the award) did not influence the commission’s decision.

In the same 1965, the first category included films that not only no one remembers now, but few watched then: “Whom Do We Love More” (in 7 months - 2.4 million), “A Bridge is Being Built” ( for six months - 2.6 million), "House in the Dunes" (for a year - 3.4 million).

Leonid Gaidai’s comedy “Operation “Y” ...” was watched by 69.6 million viewers in the year of its release (from mid-August, in 4.5 months). This was the top line in the list of premieres in 1965 and an absolute record for films of the “frivolous” genre.

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Vyacheslav Kaprelyants, 2015