Young Guard Fadeev because. The Young Guard (novel). The last pages of a wonderful work

Under the scorching sun of July 1942, retreating units of the Red Army walked along the Donetsk steppe with their convoys, artillery, tanks, orphanages and kindergartens, herds of cattle, trucks, refugees... But they did not have time to cross the Donets: they reached the river parts of the German army. And all this mass of people poured back. Among them were Vanya Zemnukhov, Ulya Gromova, Oleg Koshevoy, Zhora Harutyunyants.

But not everyone left Krasnodon. The staff of the hospital, where more than a hundred non-ambulatory wounded remained, placed the fighters in the apartments of local residents. Philip Petrovich Lyutikov, left as secretary of the underground district committee, and his underground comrade Matvey Shulga quietly settled in safe houses. Komsomol member Seryozha Tyulenin returned home from digging trenches. It so happened that he took part in the battles, killed two Germans himself and intended to kill them in the future.

The Germans entered the city during the day, and at night the German headquarters burned down. Sergei Tyulenin set it on fire. Oleg Koshevoy was returning from the Donets together with the director of mine No. 1-bis Valko and on the way asked him to help contact the underground. Valko himself did not know who was left in the city, but he was sure that he would find these people. The Bolshevik and the Komsomol member agreed to keep in touch.

Koshevoy soon met Tyulenin. The guys quickly found a common language and developed an action plan: look for ways to the underground and at the same time independently create an underground youth organization.

Lyutikov, meanwhile, began to work for the Germans in electromechanical workshops as a diversion. He came to the Osmukhin family, which he had known for a long time, to invite Volodya to work. Volodya was eager to fight and recommended his comrades Tolya Orlov, Zhora Arutyunyants and Ivan Zemnukhov to Lyutikova for underground work. But when the topic of armed resistance came up with Ivan Zemnukhov, he immediately began to ask permission to bring Oleg Koshevoy into the group.

The decisive meeting took place in the “weeds under the barn” at Oleg’s place. A few more meetings - and finally all the links in the Krasnodon underground were closed. A youth organization called the “Young Guard” was formed.

Protsenko at this time was already in the partisan detachment, which was based on the other side of the Donets. At first the detachment acted, and acted well. Then he was surrounded. Protsenko, among others, sent Komsomol member Stakhovich to the group that was supposed to cover the retreat of the main part of the people. But Stakhovich chickened out, ran away across the Donets and went to Krasnodon. Having met with Osmukhin, his schoolmate, Stakhovich told him that he had fought in a partisan detachment and was officially sent by headquarters to organize the partisan movement in Krasnodon.

Shulga was immediately betrayed by the owner of the apartment, a former kulak and hidden enemy of Soviet power. The location where Valko was hiding failed by accident, but policeman Ignat Fomin, who conducted the search, immediately identified Valko. In addition, in the city and in the region, almost all the members of the Bolshevik Party who did not have time to evacuate, Soviet workers, social activists, many teachers, engineers, prominent miners and some of the military were arrested. The Germans executed many of these people, including Valko and Shulga, by burying them alive.

Lyubov Shevtsova was placed at the disposal of the partisan headquarters ahead of time for use behind enemy lines. She completed airborne courses and then radio operator courses. Having received a signal that she had to go to Voroshilovgrad and bound by the discipline of the Young Guard, she reported her departure to Koshevoy. No one except Osmukhin knew which of the adult underground fighters Oleg was connected with. But Lyutikov knew perfectly well for what purpose Lyubka was left in Krasnodon, and with whom she was connected in Voroshilovgrad. So the Young Guard approached the headquarters of the partisan movement.

Bright in appearance, cheerful and sociable, Lyubka was now in full swing making acquaintances with the Germans, introducing herself as the daughter of a mine owner repressed by the Soviet regime, and through the Germans she obtained various intelligence information.

The Young Guards got to work. They posted subversive leaflets and issued Sovinformburo reports. Policeman Ignat Fomin was hanged. They freed a group of Soviet prisoners of war who were working in logging. They collected weapons from the Donets battle area and stole them. Ulya Gromova was in charge of the work against the recruitment and deportation of youth to Germany. The labor exchange was set on fire, and along with it, the lists of people whom the Germans were going to deport to Germany were burned. Three permanent combat groups of the Young Guard operated on the roads of the region and beyond. One attacked mainly cars with German officers. This group was led by Viktor Petrov. The second group dealt with tank cars. This group was led by Soviet Army lieutenant Zhenya Moshkov, released from captivity. The third group - Tyulenin's group - operated everywhere.

At this time - November, December 1942 - the battle of Stalingrad was ending. On the evening of December 30, the guys discovered a German car loaded with New Year's gifts for Reich soldiers. The car was cleaned out, and they decided to immediately sell some of the gifts on the market: the organization needed money. Following this trail, the police, who had been looking for them for a long time, found the underground fighters. At first they took Moshkov, Zemnukhov and Stakhovich. Upon learning of the arrest, Lyutikov immediately gave the order to all members of the headquarters and those close to those arrested to leave the city. You should have hidden in the village or tried to cross the front line. But many, including Gromova, due to youthful carelessness, remained or were unable to find reliable shelter and were forced to return home.

The order was given while Stakhovich began to testify under torture. Arrests began. Few were able to leave. Stakhovich did not know through whom Koshevoy communicated with the district committee, but he accidentally remembered the messenger, and as a result the Germans reached Lyutikov. A group of adult underground fighters led by Lyutikov and members of the Young Guard ended up in the hands of the executioners. No one admitted to belonging to the organization or pointed to their comrades. Oleg Koshevoy was one of the last to be captured - he ran into a gendarme post in the steppe. During the search, they found a Komsomol card on him. During interrogation by the Gestapo, Oleg said that he was the leader of the Young Guard, alone responsible for all its actions, and then remained silent even under torture. The enemies did not manage to find out that Lyutikov was the head of the underground Bolshevik organization, but they felt that he was the largest person they had captured.

All Young Guards were terribly beaten and tortured. Uli Gromova had a star carved on her back. Reclining on her side, she tapped into the next cell: “Be strong... Our guys are coming anyway...”

Lyutikov and Koshevoy were interrogated in Rovenki and also tortured, “but one can say that they no longer felt anything: their spirit soared infinitely high, as only the great creative spirit of man can soar.” All arrested underground workers were executed: they were thrown into a mine. Before their deaths, they sang revolutionary songs.

On February 15, Soviet tanks entered Krasnodon. The few surviving members of the Krasnodon underground took part in the funeral of the Young Guards.

Retold

Alexander Fadeev is a wonderful Soviet writer who is remembered by us thanks to the novel “The Young Guard”. Fadeev was not only a successful writer, but also an influential functionary - the head of the Union of Writers of the USSR and a member of the CPSU Central Committee. But the dizzying career was interrupted by a shot from a revolver on May 13, 1956 at a dacha in Peredelkino.

The official cause of suicide will be alcoholism. The writer has been spending more and more time on drinking bouts lately. True, Fadeev’s close friends claimed that two weeks before the tragedy he was at his wit’s end.

During his life, Fadeev rose to the post of chairman of the Union of Writers of the USSR. For several years he nurtured the idea of ​​writing the novel “The Young Guard.” He not only wrote, but sincerely worried about the fate of each of his heroes. The total circulation of the novel was close to 25 million books.

Two versions of "Young Guard"

The idea of ​​writing a novel came to Fadeev after reading an article in a newspaper that described the exploits of young underground fighters in Krasnodon. He was struck by the information about the dead guys - Young Guards who were taken out of the mine (the Nazis threw them there while they were still alive).

In the fall of 1943, the writer decides to go to Krasnodon himself to personally collect all the facts about the organization. The material collected there formed the basis of the novel “The Young Guard”. The book was published in 1946 and was heavily criticized for its poor portrayal of the Communist Party's "leading and guiding" role.

Fadeev was sharply criticized for not clearly depicting the “leading and directing” role of the Communist Party in the novel. Serious ideological accusations were brought against the work in the newspaper Pravda. In 1951, Alexander Fadeev will present the final version of the novel, which Stalin himself approved.

However, in addition to the “leading role of the party,” there were other inaccuracies in the novel “The Young Guard”. For example, the commissioner of the organization was named Oleg Koshevoy, who in fact was an ordinary member of the organization. The reason for this was the fact that on his trip to Krasnodon the writer stayed with Koshevoy’s mother, and she became one of the main sources in collecting material. The name of the real commissioner became known after Fadeev’s death. In 1959, a special commission created after the trial of V. Podtynny, who served in the Krasnodon police in 1942-1943, established that the commissar of the underground was Viktor Tretyakevich, who until that moment was generally considered a traitor.

The fatal XX Congress of the CPSU

The turning point in the career of the writer and functionary was the 20th Congress of the CPSU, which took place in February 1956. At the congress, the personality cult of Stalin was condemned - a man who would be almost a god for Fadeev. The writer himself got it from the delegates. Michael Sholokhov, author of "Quiet Don" spoke with harsh criticism of his activities in the Writers' Union, accusing him of bullying and oppressing writers M. M. Zoshchenko, A. A. Akhmatova, A. P. Platonov, B. L. Pasternak, L. N. Gumileva, N.A. Zabolotsky.

In addition, Alexander Fadeev was one of the co-authors of the article “About one anti-patriotic group of theater critics” in the Pravda newspaper. After this article, the fight against cosmopolitanism began. In 1949, he took part in the persecution of Boris Eikhenbaum, as well as other employees of Leningrad University in the press.

After open accusations against Sholokhov, Fadeev lost his membership in the CPSU Central Committee. It was the end of a career.

Many years later, the main character of the 20th Congress, Nikita Khrushchev, would give his version of Fadeev’s suicide: “Remaining an intelligent man with a subtle soul, after Stalin was exposed... he could not forgive himself for his apostasy from the truth... He had outlived his usefulness and was also afraid to meet face to face with those writers whom he helped Stalin drive into camps, and some later returned home..."

Fadeev himself left a suicide letter with the following content: “I don’t see any way to continue living, since the art to which I gave my life has been ruined by the self-confident and ignorant leadership of the party and now can no longer be corrected.<…>My life, as a writer, loses all meaning, and with great joy, as a deliverance from this vile existence, where meanness, lies and slander fall upon you, I am leaving this life. The last hope was to at least tell this to the people who rule the state, but for the past 3 years, despite my requests, they cannot even accept me. I ask you to bury me next to my mother.”

Interestingly, the note was seized by intelligence officers and made public only in 1990.

Slanderers of the Young Guard and Alexander Fadeev

The beginning of this article was published in Pravda No. 64, June 19-22 of this year. Its author is the brother of Nina Minaeva, a member of the underground Komsomol organization "Young Guard" in the city of Krasnodon, who was executed by the Nazis along with most of her comrades.

A worthy representative of great literature

A huge lie also fell upon the author of the novel “The Young Guard,” Alexander Fadeev, one of the most worthy representatives of great Soviet literature and Soviet culture in general. In our current society, people oppressed by American “values” are immersed in horoscopes, detective fiction, horror stories, “cultural” vulgarity, sectarianism, enjoying the spectacles of violence, demonstrative sex, gay parades, crowds of thousands of nudists, gluttony contests and viciously, insultingly mocking over the humane Soviet past, trumping the illusory “freedom of speech” and “independence”.
But this was an era in which the high work of life captivated people with extraordinary power, aroused a feeling of excitement, and inspired them. All forms of art, literature and media contributed to this.
The twentieth century of Soviet life is crowned with many truly wonderful literary works.

And here’s what the Parisian newspaper Lettre Française wrote in 1949: “If the history of one civilization and one of its greatest moments must be expressed in just one literary work, then in the USSR such a work could well be Alexander Fadeev’s The Young Guard.”
In the current dishonest times, both in Ukraine and in Russia, the work and the very name of the author of the great book tend to be consigned to oblivion, and if the need arises to turn to the events associated with the novel “The Young Guard,” then the author, in contrast to the well-known request bequeathed by Kobzar, remembered with an angry loud word. Why? For what? Conscience should not allow us to give the honorable name of an outstanding Soviet writer to the desecration of the slanderers and ignoramuses who have rapidly proliferated in the conditions of “democracy.”

Lines of a wonderful life

Alexander Alexandrovich Fadeev was born on December 24, 1901 in the village of Kimry, Tver province. In 1908, his family moved to Primorsky Krai. In Vladivostok, during the Kolchak regime in September 1918, he became a Bolshevik communist. In the group of "falcons" he posted leaflets at night, devoted himself entirely to revolutionary work, steadfastly endured all the difficulties of forest partisan life, saw with his own eyes the death of his comrades and the bloody reprisals carried out by the White Guards. His cousin, Vsevolod Sibirtsev, along with other fiery revolutionaries - Sergei Lazo and Alexei Lutsky, were captured by the Japanese and handed over to the White Guards, who burned them alive in the furnace of a steam locomotive. Fadeev was not only a witness to the white terror, but also actively participated in the fight against those who carried it out together with invaders from nine countries.
In the partisan detachment, Alexander Fadeev went from an ordinary soldier and political instructor of a machine gun team to a brigade commissar. And on April 5, 1920, in a battle with Japanese invaders, he was seriously wounded, and the soldiers carried him out of encirclement through swamps, waist-deep in icy water. As a delegate to the Tenth Congress of the RCP(b), Fadeev participated in the suppression of the counter-revolutionary Kronstadt rebellion and on March 18, 1921, he was again seriously wounded. After five months of treatment in a Leningrad hospital, he entered the Mining Academy to study, where in those hungry years, student food rations consisted of several hundred grams of rye flour and herring.
Fadeev did not have to graduate from the academy: in February 1924, the Party Central Committee sent him to professional party work in Krasnodar, and then he was recalled to Rostov-on-Don to work in the regional newspaper "Soviet Yug".

I read a lot. While still at the academy, twenty-two-year-old Alexander wrote his first story “Spill”, then the story “Against the Current”, and in 1927 his novel “Destruction” was published, which immediately gained worldwide fame and was published in many countries, including the USA and China. It was translated into more than 20 foreign languages ​​and into 54 languages ​​in the USSR. It was translated into Chinese by the great writer Lu Xun. In 1942, Mao Tse Tung noted: “Fadeev’s “Destruction” depicts only one small partisan detachment. This work was not written at all to please the tastes of readers of the old world, and yet it influenced the whole world. At least At least, as everyone knows, it had a very great influence on China."
One foreign critic wrote with delight in those days: “Look in history for a revolution that would have created its own literature so quickly.”
M. Gorky said about the novel:
"...Fadeev's book is very talented." V. Mayakovsky included Alexander Fadeev among the outstanding proletarian writers.
In 1937, Alexander Alexandrovich wrote the essay “Sergei Lazo”, in 1938 - the essay “Mikhail Vasilyevich Frunze”, in 1940 four parts of the novel about the Civil War “The Last of the Udege” were published.
Having been hardened in battles with interventionists and White Guards, in the struggle for the establishment of Soviet power, A. Fadeev became not only a talented writer, but also a great politician. Politics was as much a passion for him as his vocation as an artist.
In 1935 and 1938, he visited Czechoslovakia with delegations of writers and journalists, writing a series of essays “Around Czechoslovakia.” Together with Alexei Tolstoy in a group of writers, he visited warring Spain: Barcelona, ​​Valencia, besieged Madrid, at the front near Brunetto and Guadalajara and in the homeland of Cervantes in Alcala de Henares.
Since 1926, A. Fadeev has become one of the prominent organizers of Soviet literature. He participated in the leadership of the USSR Writers' Union and became the chairman of the board of this creative union.

In the first months of the Great Patriotic War, Fadeev remained in Moscow and was engaged in organizational work of a very different nature: he held anti-fascist evenings, was one of the organizers of the All-Slavic rally in the Soviet capital, spoke on the radio, corresponded with foreign cultural figures, helped refugee writers from the Baltic states, from Belarus, from Ukraine, from Moldova, he organized the evacuation of Muscovite writers. From August 23 to September 10, he, together with M. Sholokhov and E. Petrov, went to the Western Front. As a special war correspondent for Pravda and the Soviet Information Bureau, Fadeev then often visited the front line. His essays and articles from the Western, Kalinin, Central, Southern and Leningrad fronts appeared in central newspapers. Twice he was in besieged Leningrad. The first time I stayed there for three months (from April to July 1942), the second - a month and a half. Soon his book-diary “Leningrad in the days of the siege” appeared. He worked on it 15 - 16 hours a day. “I write in the morning, in the evening I write to the Union, to the Central Committee, etc., and I’m incredibly tired,” he wrote to his mother.

“He had another important front at that time,” notes Doctor of Philology V. Savateev, “the Writers’ Union, of which Fadeev was the leader. He dealt a lot with the evacuation of writers, organizing their life, business trips - in a word, all that “thankless” work ", which required an unusually large amount of time and effort during the war. A. Fadeev spared neither one nor the other."

Marietta Shaginyan wrote: “His merits as an organizer-leader who did not think about himself at all were especially clearly manifested during the days of the Patriotic War... How he was able to mobilize us with lightning speed!.. Fadeev not only managed to involve us in enormous work for defense, he did not let each of us out of his sight, inspired, supported, his closeness was felt by the writers evacuated to work in the rear, sent to the Urals, to Siberia, where the largest defense enterprises were transferred, where the Academy of Sciences opened its work." Much such evidence could be cited.

The war is over. In April 1949, at the first World Congress of Peace Supporters (Paris - Prague), the Peace Supporters Movement took shape - a mass movement against wars and militarism. The governing body of the Movement was the World Peace Council. French physicist and public figure, Nobel laureate Frederic Joliot-Curie was elected its first chairman, and Alexander Fadeev was elected vice-president. To participate in the work of the Bureau of the World Peace Council and the work of the World Peace Congress, Fadeev traveled to Berlin, Warsaw, Vienna, Geneva, London, New York, Beijing, Rome, Stockholm, and Helsinki.
Since 1951, Fadeev was chairman of the Committee for the Stalin Prizes in the field of literature and art, chairman of the editorial board of the academic Collected Works of L.N. Tolstoy, Chairman of the Archive Commission A.M. Gorky.
In the collection "A.A. Fadeev. Materials and Research", the section "Chronicle of the life and work of A.A. Fadeev" occupies 165 pages, typed in small print.
A special form of the writer’s creativity are his letters, in which, in the words of A. Herzen, not only “the blood of events is caked, this is the very past, as it was, detained and incorruptible,” but their author himself appears as an active public figure, a benevolent critic , a spiritual mentor, a kind, sympathetic and caring comrade.

Letters from A.A. Fadeev's works were published in the 7-volume Collected Works, as well as in separate collections and in 17 magazines. Deputy correspondence totals 14 thousand letters to voters, to various institutions regarding the affairs and requests of voters. In addition, Fadeev’s letters are in the personal archives of other writers. Thus, K. Simonov emphasized in 1956: “If we collect Fadeev’s letters written to hundreds of writers over these ten years about their books and manuscripts, full of advice and suggestions, brilliant and accurate assessments..., then from these letters... we would collect a big book to help beginners, and not only novice writers. You can collect into a book what lies in the desk drawers of each of us, Fadeev’s comrades from his work in the Writers’ Union. These are dozens and dozens of notes, often written from the hospital ".
By the way, during the 100 days preceding his death, Fadeev wrote 50 multi-page letters.
He was a man of duty and never shirked responsibility; he knew how to conduct a direct, honest conversation with anyone, even the most famous writer. Fadeev boldly challenged the opinion of Stalin’s associates, if there was reason. He wrote to his wife about his work as the head of the Union of Writers of the USSR: “From early morning until late at night, I sit, coordinate, organize, listen and correct grievances and “relationships”...

The book is not just written - “it is sung!”

December 13, 1945 is a special date in the life and work of Alexander Fadeev. He wrote in his diary: “Today at 8 o’clock in the evening I finished The Young Guard.”
According to the author, many pages of this heroic and tragic novel were “written with the blood of his heart.” A.V. Fadeeva, the writer’s mother, said that she more than once heard her son’s muffled sobs through the office door.

The famous journalist Ivan Zhukov wrote: “The history of the creation of the novel “The Young Guard” is like an attack on the move, an attack with a cry, with mental pain, bitterness... Swiftness did not mean haste. Drafts of an already completed novel were taken to the archives on a three-ton truck.” Companion in literary work P.A. Pavlenko told Fadeev about his “Young Guard” in 1946: “For me, this book of yours seems like a miracle... It is like a “single breath”, whole and light... No, this is one of the most inspired books in all Russian literature, it It's not written, it's sung! (Fadeev A.A. Materials and research. - M., Khud. lit., 1977. 670 pp., p. 432).
The novel was awarded the Stalin Prize of the first degree, published in more than 30 languages ​​and distributed throughout the world. Presenting rave reviews about him would take up an inordinate amount of space!
While working on the novel, A. Fadeev sought to preserve, perpetuate, and protect the memory of the Young Guards with the same dedication as the Young Guards themselves sought to protect and preserve their Soviet Motherland for centuries. Both the historical and artistic truth of a truly great book work towards this goal.
In a letter to the Bulgarian schoolgirl Svetla Fadeev wrote: “In the depiction of Ulyana Gromova, Lyuba Shevtsova and other Young Guards, I tried to stick to life. But still, my book “The Young Guard” is a novel, and, as in any novel on a historical theme, in it fiction and history are so intertwined that it is difficult to separate one from the other."
If Fadeev’s critics do not understand this, then they are complete ignoramuses in literary criticism; if they know the uniqueness of the technology, the creative “cuisine” of the epic display of historical events, the creation of novelistic situations, then these critics, maliciously defaming both the work and its author, act as deliberate and primitive slanderers.

For them he is “so-and-so Fadeev”, and they crucify him

Vicious haters of the Soviet era will never forgive Alexander Fadeev for his novel “The Young Guard.” Just as a pig is not given the opportunity to see the sky, so they are not given the opportunity to look with all their eyes at that, in Fadeev’s words, “the high crest of history” to which the young heroes of Krasnodon were tragically raised by the Great Patriotic War.
I will give a set of assessments from the “democratic” press on the topic “Fadeev and the novel.”

“The units of the Red Army that liberated Donbass could not help but understand that a nationalist, and not a communist, underground was operating here. It urgently needed to be “repainted,” which was what Fadeev was instructed to do.” "Communist ideologists were in a hurry to use the names of new heroes." "The novel was written on Stalin's instructions." “Fadeev could not fail to fulfill the social order of the system.” “Fadeev was forced to rewrite the book almost from dictation.” “The guys were captured, tortured and executed. This happened. But everything else is an invention of Soviet propaganda and the writer obedient to it. We will probably never know how everything really happened.” “Today we can confidently say that the previous history of the Young Guard is a series of “Soviet myths.”

Yes, there are many of those who indulge in vile fabrications or speak from their swamp hummocks. They lie in a Goebbelsian way both about the Young Guard and about the author of the novel about it.
Thus, a certain V. Kovalchuk called his article categorically: “A bullet in the heart saved him from the pangs of conscience” (Public People magazine, No. 7, September 2003, editor-in-chief N. Vlashchenko, circulation 20 thousand copies). In the course of the article, the author expounds with particular passion the thesis about the writer’s supposedly indomitable desire for power: A. Fadeev “adored power since childhood,” then he became the “Supreme Manager of Literature.” “He was a kind of “literary Stalin,” because power attracted him and at the same time weighed him down.” "...He fought for every yard of power and glory." “He did not find the strength to voluntarily remove the “crown” - the taste of power was too sweet.” “His most passionate “game” was power...”, and “... friends forgave Fadeev for the dynamism, ruthlessness and rapacity with which he walked through life.”
I will answer V. Kovalchuk this way: yes, A. Fadeev fought for power all his life. But this was a struggle for the power of the working people - both in the battles against Kolchakism, and in the works on the development of Soviet literature, and in trips to fighting Spain and besieged Leningrad, on front-line business trips, and in activities in the World Peace Council.
It’s good that at one time completely different, immeasurably more authoritative opinions about Alexander Fadeev as the head of a writing organization and a person were collected and published. I mean the book “A.A. Fadeev. Memoirs of Contemporaries: Collection” (M., Soviet writer, 1965, 560 pp.).

Let's say A.Ya. Yashin (Popov) noted:
“Throughout my life, I often, like many of my peers, needed Fadeev the man. I used to open my soul to him with complete faith in his absolute nobility and never had any reason to repent. "..." How often Alexander Fadeev helped out people who got into trouble. We all know about this. Later, in difficult moments of my life, I myself felt with particular acuteness that Fadeev was not next to me.

"..." Dissatisfied with himself, he often rushed from his secretarial position in the Writers' Union to his desk, but his civic temperament did not allow him to leave his party post.

I bowed and will always bow before Fadeev’s personality, before the purity and nobility of his soul, before his human beauty.”

Or S.V. Mikhalkov: “He was generous and modest, kind and sympathetic, harsh and principled in his judgments, even when he was wrong about something. He loved to read poetry aloud, sing drawn-out Russian songs, wander through forests and swamps with a gun, and communicate with friends. He knew how to argue and polemicize...

He was democratic in the truest sense of the word, and his captivating human charm conquered his interlocutor once and for all. This is how I knew Alexander Fadeev for twenty-five years." Writer S.S. Smirnov reminded the participants of the Third Congress of USSR Writers (1959): "Remember how many of those present in this hall he encouraged, supported, and instilled in them faith in their own strength . Remember how many of us have had Fadeev’s call ring at one or two in the morning, and Fadeev would say to the person who got out of bed: “Dear, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but I’ve just read your book - it’s good! I congratulate you on your success!"

And this man then, perhaps, could not sleep until the morning, he was happy. He wanted to work harder, better and justify these words of the head of the Union, which obliged him to a lot!”

The favorite hobby of today’s spiteful critics is the topic of A. Fadeev’s alleged special addiction to alcohol. But Fadeev drank no more bitters than A.S. Pushkin and Kobzar, A. Blok and S. Yesenin, M. Sholokhov and A. Tvardovsky, V. Shukshin and O. Efremov and many, many others. But they do not mention this weakness for wine of the great and deified, the illustrious and famous, rightly highlighting their talent and their achievements. Why is it that Fadeev is mockingly put in a bad light for this predisposition of some talented people? Yes, all because of his great book, because of the Young Guard!

The same Kovalchuk writes: “Many people later remembered Fadeev’s multi-day binges”... “for many months in a row, while lying in the Kremlin hospital, the writer first came out of his binges, and then treated depression.” And a sane reader will certainly have some puzzling questions. How did they endow the “alcoholic” with greater rights for many years, assign him complex literary and political responsibilities, and entrust him with the evaluation of literary works nominated for the Stalin Prize? How could a “drunkard” lead the plenums of the board of the Writers’ Union, which, as they said, in the 40s and 50s were very stormy, filled with disputes and literary battles? How could the “booze” be awarded the Order of Lenin twice (in 1939 and 1951), and after his death establish a literary prize named after Alexander Fadeev? Why was the drunken writer sent to Berlin, Warsaw, Vienna, Geneva, London, New York, Beijing, Rome, Stockholm, Helsinki, where he met with writers and spoke at rallies?

It is, of course, clear to a sane person that A. Fadeev, with such serious responsibilities, could not be a hopeless alcoholic, a binge and a drunkard. So this is for a sane person. And we are talking about unsound people who have problems with logic and education.
Here is a certain O. Trachuk on the website of the newspaper “Fakty”, who celebrated the 60th anniversary of the “Young Guard” with a dirty article, in which he pasted the following thesis: “If Fadeev had not gone on a drinking binge, maybe to this day no one would have known about the feat of the Young Guard.” And then, without noticing it, in a stream of verbiage he refutes himself, reporting that after the occupiers destroyed the work of the Young Guard, “the organization itself became a legend that was passed on from mouth to mouth.” It turns out that even without Fadeev, people learned about the feat of the Young Guard and passed on this knowledge “from mouth to mouth.”

Let us analyze just one short paragraph from the publication in question by O. Trachuk to illustrate the complete ignorance, absolute ignorance of the material about which this self-confident scribbler undertook to discuss.

“In the same 1943,” O. Trachuk tells the world, “Stalin read a small publication in Pravda about the Krasnodon Young Guard and gave the task to Alexander Fadeev to send a journalist to Krasnodon to write a large newspaper article. But it was at this time that friends "They informed Fadeev that “the leader of all times and peoples,” to put it mildly, treats him unkindly because of the writer’s constant drinking. Therefore, Fadeev decided to temporarily hide from the leader’s sight and went to Donbass himself."

Let's turn to the real facts.

If Trachuk, before taking up the topic, had taken the trouble to familiarize himself, as he writes, with “a small publication in Pravda,” he would have discovered that that publication, on the contrary, was extensive, the size of two full pages of the current newspaper Fakty ". The day before this, an issue of Komsomolskaya Pravda appeared, in which the volume of materials about the Young Guard was equal to three pages of Facts. That is, “large newspaper materials” about the Young Guard had already been published, and Stalin did not it was necessary to give “the task to Alexander Fadeev to send a journalist to Krasnodon” precisely for “writing a large newspaper material,” since the journalists were not under his “department.” Fadeev worked with writers, and in wartime journalists were strictly subordinate to the chief editors of newspapers.

Archival documents describe every day of Fadeev’s active work several months before his trip to Krasnodon. And he by no means “went to Donbass on his own,” as Trachuk claims. For the trip, he was given travel certificates by the Central Committee of the Komsomol, the board of the Writers' Union and the editor-in-chief of the newspaper Pravda.
While A. Fadeev was collecting material for the book and writing the first chapters, many newspapers glorified the Young Guards, fighters and partisans published their promises to avenge their deaths. The publishing house "Young Guard" published the book "Heroes of Krasnodon" back in 1943, and the newspaper "Bolshevik Pravda" published the book "Heroes of the Young Guard" in September 1943. In 1944, the story "Hearts of the Brave" by M. Kotov and V. Lyaskovsky was published ", books "Immortality. About the life and work of the underground Komsomol organization in Krasnodon", "Young Guard" of Ukraine."
So The popularity of the “Young Guard” in the Soviet Union was not originally created by A. Fadeev. With his novel, he immortalized the heroism of the Young Guards and made them famous throughout the world.

N.S. was the first to label Fadeev an alcoholic. Khrushchev in retaliation for the fact that the writer publicly reminded him that he was a former Trotskyist. In addition, A. Fadeev, in order to express his concern for the state of Soviet culture under Khrushchev and propose ways to correct the “bad practice of leadership in the Writers' Union,” several times asked for an appointment with Khrushchev and Malenkov, but his letters were not even answered. Honest and straightforward Fadeev found himself face to face with the regime in which it was no longer the cult of personality that was emerging, but the cult of duplicity. Alexander Fadeev committed suicide. His suicide letter explains:
“Literature has been given over to the power of untalented, petty, vindictive people.” "Literature - this highest fruit of the new system - is humiliated, persecuted, ruined."
“My life, as a writer, is losing all meaning, and with great joy, as a deliverance from this vile existence, where meanness, lies and slander fall upon you, I am leaving this life. The last hope was to at least say this to the people who rule the state , but for the past 3 years, despite my requests, they can’t even accept me.”

So Fadeev died a fighter for the truth. And Khrushchev’s revenge was base and vile.
Another slanderous statement of the current scribblers that Fadeev is “a villain who betrayed his fellow writers” is completely refuted by numerous copies of those characteristics, letters and notes that Fadeev wrote to the Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR V.M. Molotov, Prosecutor General of the USSR A.Ya. Vyshinsky, People's Commissar of Internal Affairs L.P. Beria, Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR K.E. Voroshilov, to the Main Military Prosecutor's Office with a request to “consider” or “expedite the consideration of the case”, to take into account that the person was “unjustly convicted” or that there was an “excess” when considering the issue.
Letters have also been preserved about the assistance, including financial assistance, that Fadeev provided to the families of convicted people known to him (he literally supported the families of some of those arrested at his own expense), as well as his letters in which he defends writers who have unfairly suffered from all kinds of “work-outs” that time.

The famous writer Boris Polevoy said: “Now we know how many times he tried to stand up for this or that writer, how excruciatingly painful he perceived the repressions that tore talented people from literature.”
The malicious slander against Alexander Fadeev breaks down if we turn to the facts. And one of the reasons for these slander is that A. Fadeev is the author of the novel “The Young Guard,” in which he forever glorified the moral heights of the generation of Soviet youth who faced the war. In January 1946, A. Fadeev wrote to the editor of the Czech newspaper Mlada Fronta: “Since such youth were not invented by me, but really exist, they can safely be called the hope of humanity.” And he emphasized that the character traits of these young people “look especially majestic in the light of the fact that imperialism... dehumanizes, standardizes, corrupts young people, turning them into its slaves and servants, instilling in them animal instincts, zoological individualism and the lowest careerism... "What a painfully accurate hit on today's day! Alexander Fadeev, of course, could not have imagined that every word he said about “dehumanization” would become relevant in the country that he defended, built and loved.

Hired political strategists understand that Soviet heroes, such as Matrosov, Kosmodemyanskaya, and the Young Guards, still radiate energy that can inspire determination and perseverance in the struggle among young people. This energy can strengthen the core in people that will not allow them to kneel, and can increase resistance to the onslaught of colonialists and the establishment of a “new world order” by globalizers.

It can be assumed that after victory in the wars for oil, gas and raw materials, a war will be launched for territories with fertile lands. And modern persistent “whistleblowers” ​​of the underground Komsomol organization “Young Guard” and the author of the novel of the same name They are working to implement a policy designed for such a future that on our territory “in the subsequent war there will be no Young Guard, there will be no Kosmodemyanskys and Matrosovs.”
The information war against Soviet images and symbols will be long. And for a long time to come the words from the song of the Krasnodon heroes in the post-war play “The Young Guard” will be a direct reproach, a grave reproach to all the reckless, inert and cowardly.

Alexander Fadeev

"Young guard"

Forward, towards the dawn, comrades in the struggle!

We will pave the way for ourselves with bayonets and grapeshot...

So that labor becomes the ruler of the world

And he welded everyone into one family,

To battle, young guard of workers and peasants!

Song of Youth

Chapter first

No, just look, Valya, what a miracle this is! Lovely... Like a statue - but from what wonderful material! After all, she is not marble, not alabaster, but alive, but how cold! And what a delicate, delicate work - human hands could never do this. Look how she rests on the water, pure, strict, indifferent... And this is her reflection in the water - it’s even difficult to say which one is more beautiful - and the colors? Look, look, it’s not white, that is, it’s white, but there are so many shades - yellowish, pinkish, some kind of heavenly, and inside, with this moisture, it’s pearly, simply dazzling - people have such colors and names No!..

So said, leaning out of a willow bush onto the river, a girl with black wavy braids, in a bright white blouse and with such beautiful, moistened black eyes, opened from the sudden strong light gushing out of them, that she herself resembled this lily reflected in the dark water .

I found time to admire! And you are wonderful, Ulya, by God! - another girl, Valya, answered her, following her, sticking her slightly high-cheekboned and slightly snub-nosed face out onto the river, but very pretty with its fresh youth and kindness. I., without looking at the lily, restlessly looked around on the shore for the girls they had gotten away from. - Aw!..

Come here!.. Ulya found a lily,” said Valya, looking lovingly and mockingly at her friend.

And at this time, again, like the echoes of distant thunder, the rolling of gun shots was heard - from there, from the north-west, from near Voroshilovgrad.

Again... - Ulya repeated silently, and the light that poured out of her eyes with such force went out.

Surely they will come in this time! My God! - said Valya. - Do you remember how worried you were last year? And everything worked out! But last year they didn't come that close. Do you hear how it thumps?

They paused and listened.

When I hear this and see the sky, so clear, I see the branches of the trees, the grass under my feet, I feel how the sun warmed it, how delicious it smells - it hurts me so much, as if all this has already left me forever, forever, - with a trembling chest Ulya spoke in a voice - The soul, it seems, has become so hardened from this war, you have already taught it not to allow anything into itself that can soften it, and suddenly such love will break through, such pity for everything!.. You know, I can only do it for you talk about it.

Their faces came so close among the foliage that their breath mingled, and they looked directly into each other’s eyes. Valya’s eyes were bright, kind, widely spaced, they met her friend’s gaze with humility and adoration. And Uliya’s eyes were large, dark brown - not eyes, but eyes, with long eyelashes, milky whites, black mysterious pupils, from the very depths of which, it seemed, this moist, strong light again flowed.

The distant, echoing rumbles of gun salvos, even here, in the lowlands near the river, echoing with a slight trembling of the foliage, were each time reflected as a restless shadow on the faces of the girls. But all their spiritual strength was given to what they were talking about.

Do you remember how good it was yesterday evening in the steppe, remember? - Ulya asked, lowering her voice.

“I remember,” Valya whispered. - This sunset. Do you remember?

Yes, yes... You know, everyone scolds our steppe, they say it’s boring, red, hills and hills, as if it’s homeless, but I love it. I remember when my mother was still healthy, she was working on the tower, and I, still very small, was lying on my back and looking high, high, thinking, how high can I look into the sky, you know, to the very heights? And yesterday it hurt me so much when we looked at the sunset, and then at these wet horses, guns, carts, and the wounded... The Red Army soldiers are walking so exhausted, covered in dust. I suddenly realized with such force that this was not a regrouping at all, but a terrible, yes, just terrible, retreat. Did you notice?

Alexander Fadeev

Forward, towards the dawn, comrades in the struggle!

We will pave the way for ourselves with bayonets and grapeshot...

So that labor becomes the ruler of the world

And he welded everyone into one family,

To battle, young guard of workers and peasants!

Song of Youth

© Fadeev A.A., heir, 2015

© Design. LLC Publishing House E, 2015

- No, just look, Valya, what a miracle this is! Lovely... Like a statue - but from what wonderful material! After all, she is not marble, not alabaster, but alive, but how cold! And what a delicate, delicate work - human hands could never do this. Look how she rests on the water, pure, strict, indifferent... And this is her reflection in the water - it’s even difficult to say which one is more beautiful - and the colors? Look, look, it’s not white, that is, it’s white, but there are so many shades - yellowish, pinkish, some kind of heavenly, and inside, with this moisture, it’s pearly, simply dazzling - people have such colors and names No!..

So said, leaning out of a willow bush onto the river, a girl with black wavy braids, in a bright white blouse and with such beautiful, moistened black eyes, opened from the sudden strong light gushing out of them, that she herself resembled this lily reflected in the dark water .

– I found time to admire! And you are wonderful, Ulya, by God! - another girl, Valya, answered her, following her, sticking out onto the river her slightly high-cheekboned and slightly snub-nosed, but very pretty face with its fresh youth and kindness. And, without looking at the lily, she restlessly looked along the shore for the girls they had strayed from. - Aw!..

“Come here!.. Ulya found a lily,” said Valya, looking lovingly and mockingly at her friend.

And at this time, again, like the echoes of distant thunder, the rolling of gun shots was heard - from there, from the north-west, from near Voroshilovgrad.

“Again...” Ulya repeated silently, and the light that poured out of her eyes with such force went out.

- Surely they will come in this time! My God! - Valya said. – Do you remember how worried you were last year? And everything worked out! But last year they didn't come that close. Do you hear how it thumps?

They paused and listened.

“When I hear this and see the sky, so clear, I see the branches of the trees, the grass under my feet, I feel how the sun warmed it, how delicious it smells, it hurts me so much, as if all this had already left me forever, forever,” Ulya spoke in a deep, worried voice. “The soul, it seems, has become so hardened by this war, you have already taught it not to allow anything into itself that can soften it, and suddenly such love, such pity for everything will break through!.. You know, I can only talk about this to you.” .

Their faces came so close among the foliage that their breath mingled, and they looked directly into each other’s eyes. Valya’s eyes were bright, kind, widely spaced, they met her friend’s gaze with humility and adoration. And Uli’s eyes were large, dark brown—not eyes, but eyes, with long eyelashes, milky whites, black mysterious pupils, from the very depths of which, it seemed, this moist, strong light again flowed.

The distant, echoing rumbles of gun salvos, even here, in the lowlands near the river, echoing with a slight trembling of the foliage, were each time reflected as a restless shadow on the faces of the girls. But all their spiritual strength was devoted to what they were talking about.

– Do you remember how good it was yesterday evening in the steppe, remember? – Ulya asked, lowering her voice.

“I remember,” Valya whispered. - This sunset. Do you remember?

- Yes, yes... You know, everyone scolds our steppe, they say it’s boring, red, hills and hills, as if it’s homeless, but I love it. I remember when my mother was still healthy, she was working on the tower, and I, still very small, was lying on my back and looking high, high, thinking, how high can I look into the sky, you know, to the very heights? And yesterday it hurt me so much when we looked at the sunset, and then at these wet horses, guns, carts, and the wounded... The Red Army soldiers are walking so exhausted, covered in dust. I suddenly realized with such force that this was not a regrouping at all, but a terrible, yes, just terrible, retreat. That's why they are afraid to look you in the eye. Did you notice?

Valya silently nodded her head.

“I looked at the steppe, where we sang so many songs, and at this sunset, and I could barely hold back my tears. Have you often seen me cry? Do you remember when it started to get dark?.. They keep walking, walking in the twilight, and all the time there is this roar, flashes on the horizon and a glow - it must be in Rovenki - and the sunset is so heavy, crimson. You know, I’m not afraid of anything in the world, I’m not afraid of any struggle, difficulty, torment, but if I knew what to do... something menacing hung over our souls,” said Ulya, and a gloomy, dim fire gilded her eyes.

– But we lived so well, didn’t we, Ulechka? – Valya said with tears welling up in her eyes.

- How well all the people in the world could live, if they only wanted, if only they understood! - said Ulya. - But what to do, what to do! – she said in a completely different, childish voice, and a mischievous expression sparkled in her eyes.

She quickly kicked off the shoes she was wearing on her bare feet, and, grabbing the hem of her dark skirt into her narrow tanned skin, boldly entered the water.

“Girls, lily!..” exclaimed a thin and flexible girl with boyish desperate eyes who jumped out of the bushes. - No, my dear! – she squealed and, with a sharp movement, grabbing her skirt with both hands, flashing her dark bare feet, she jumped into the water, dousing both herself and Ulya with a fan of amber splashes. - Oh, it’s deep here! – she said with a laugh, sinking one foot into the seaweed and backing away.

The girls - there were six more of them - poured out onto the shore with noisy talk. All of them, like Ulya, and Valya, and the thin girl Sasha who had just jumped into the water, were in short skirts and simple sweaters. Donetsk hot winds and the scorching sun, as if on purpose, to highlight the physical nature of each of the girls, one was gilded, another was darkened, and another was calcined, as if in a fiery font, arms and legs, face and neck to the very shoulder blades.

Like all girls in the world, when there are more than two of them, they spoke, without listening to each other, so loudly, desperately, in such extremely high, screeching notes, as if everything they said was an expression of the very last extreme and it was necessary , so that the whole world knows and hears it.

-...He jumped with a parachute, by God! So nice, curly, white, eyes like little buttons!

“But I couldn’t be my sister, really, I’m terribly afraid of blood!”

- Surely they will abandon us, how can you say that! That can't be true!

- Oh, what a lily!

- Mayechka, gypsy girl, what if they leave you?

- Look, Sashka, Sashka!

- So immediately fall in love, that you, that you!

- Ulka, weirdo, where did you go?

– You’ll drown yet, you said!..

They spoke that mixed, rough dialect characteristic of the Donbass, which was formed by crossing the language of the central Russian provinces with the Ukrainian folk dialect, the Don Cossack dialect and the colloquial manner of the Azov port cities - Mariupol, Taganrog, Rostov-on-Don. But no matter how girls all over the world talk, everything becomes sweet in their mouths.

“Ulechka, why did she surrender to you, my dear?” - Valya said, looking worriedly with her kind, wide-set eyes, as not only her tanned calves, but also her friend’s white round knees went under the water.

Carefully feeling the algae-covered bottom with one foot and lifting the hem higher, so that the edges of her black panties became visible, Ulya took another step and, bending her tall slender figure, picked up the lily with her free hand. One of the heavy black braids with a fluffy braided end overturned into the water and floated, but at that moment Ulya made a final effort, with just her fingers, and pulled out the lily along with the long, long stem.