Oleg Vasilyevich Volkov (1900-1996) was born in St. Petersburg into a noble family. My father was the director of the board of the Russian-Baltic plant. The mother came from the Lazarev family (she was the granddaughter of the famous Admiral Lazarev). In 1917 he graduated from the Tenishev School, where his classmate was the future writer Vladimir Nabokov. The October Revolution did not allow Oleg Volkov's plans to come true: to graduate from the Department of Oriental Languages ​​at St. Petersburg University and become a diplomat. Worked as a translator at the Nansen mission, for an Associated Press correspondent, at the Greek embassy.

In February 1928arrested for the first time after refusing to become an informantsentenced to 3 years in a camp on charges of counter-revolutionary agitation and sent to the Solovetsky special-purpose camp. Four more arrests will follow. Only in 1955 would Volkov be finally released from exile and come to Moscow. He will become a keen publicist, an ardent defender of the natural and cultural heritage of Russia. He is considered one of the founders of the environmental movement in the Soviet Union. He will be one of the first to begin the fight to save Baikal. On the recommendation of Sergei Mikhalkov, Oleg Volkov will become a member of the USSR Writers' Union and write more than fifteen books about the history of Russia and its nature.

His main book – “Descent into Darkness” – Volkov will graduate in the late 70s. For her, the writer will receive the State Prize of Russia and the Pushkin Prize of the A. Toepfer Foundation (Germany), and will also become a Knight of the Order of France for services in the field of literature and art.

Okudzhava helped like a neighbor

– Margarita Sergeevna, you live in the famous writers’ house in Protopopovsky Lane, which in Soviet times was called Bezbozhny and which became the subject of literature thanks to Bulat Okudzhava’s song “Crying for the Arbat,” which contains the following lines: “I was evicted from Arbat, an Arbat emigrant. My talent is withering away in Bezbozhny Lane.”

– Yes, Okudzhava was our neighbor. We were almost the first to move in, and they rushed to install a telephone for us. But – with a number that previously belonged to a medical dispensary! His worried patients kept calling us for a long time...

At that time - and this was the 70s - our house was considered “elite”: multi-story, brick. All around, people were still huddled in tiny wooden houses. I remember how one guy wandered near our entrance, kicked the cars parked near the house and angrily said that they would soon take us all under the fingernail.

– It was in this apartment that Oleg Vasilyevich apparently wrote “Plunge into Darkness”?

– Yes, including here. I wrote it quickly. He miraculously kept small notebooks - diaries - written in French from his camp days. During new arrests, they were confiscated and then partially returned. He used this diary when he wrote “Immersion.” Although I remembered everything perfectly well.

– Why did you keep a diary in French so that fewer prying eyes could read it?

Olga: French was my father’s first language, then he learned Russian, as was customary in noble families. Dad spoke exclusively French with his mother, and with his sisters and brothers. – Same. Maybe it was easier and more common for him to write down some personal things in French. By the way, “Descent into Darkness” was first published in France (first in Russian, then in French) in 1987, and two years later – already in the Soviet Union.

– It turns out that it was tamizdat?

Olga: Well, of course. Dad didn't expect this to be published here. Yes, he always said: “Carthage must be destroyed,” that is, he hoped that this system would one day collapse, but he was sure that not during his lifetime. It was important for him to write this text as a document, a testimony, in the hope that someday it would be published. And so it happened that Bulat Okudzhava offered to secretly transport the manuscript of “Immersion” to France. Dad was on good neighborly terms with Okudzhava, and Bulat Shalvovich was the only one of our acquaintances who regularly traveled abroad at that time. I think the customs officers didn’t dare search Okudzhava. But to be safe, when he was traveling on the train, he hid the manuscript behind the back of the sofa.

And then, when the book was published here, dad became the first laureate of the State Prize of the Russian Federation in the country. It was 1991. At the moment when Yeltsin presented him with this prize, dad said: “Boris Nikolayevich, you destroyed the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg, it’s up to you to restore it.” Yeltsin didn’t answer dad, he just patted him on the shoulder.

How important it is to wash your hands

– Six court sentences. Twenty-eight years of camps. What helped Oleg Vasilyevich survive?

This may be strange, but the “white bone” usually survived in the camps. And the point is in upbringing, which formed a strong inner core. Oleg was brought up very harshly. He was born left-handed, and when he was still very young, he was retrained to be right-handed: they put a mitten on his left hand so that he could not use it. To contradict parents was something unimaginable for children! The only thing he managed to defend in childhood was the right not to eat semolina porridge. He hated her and finally rebelled, went into the attic, where he ate nothing and didn’t talk to anyone for several days. He was then five years old. If he was guilty, he was given a notebook, and he had to write it all down with the phrase: I made such and such a mistake in such and such a thing.

In addition, Oleg was a very patient and strong person. Once we were on vacation in Komarov, and while playing billiards, he severely pierced his hand and did not even cry out, but silently continued to play. It must be said that he did not accept any anesthesia or painkillers at all.

The husband was an old-regime man - that is, he strictly followed the rules – hunter, we always had hunting dogs in our house, mostly pointers. And then one day, when Oleg was nearly ninety, our pointer Rex the Fourth was severely stung by bees in the hunting reserve. The dog became weak and could not walk, and Oleg carried him in his arms for more than seven kilometers, and also carried a gun and a game bag.

And then, the husband knew how to do everything and, it seemed, could survive in any conditions. In noble families, children were taught to work from an early age, and the camp was also a good teacher in this sense. And for Oleg there was no division between high and low work. He could take out the trash and cook food. He knew how to cook pasta better than anyone else. And one day my friend and I came to our house, we went into the kitchen to drink tea, and we saw: above the sink there was a note on which a bearded man with his arms akimbo warned: “Be careful! Don't go blind! It was Oleg who scrubbed the sink...

Olga: Dad spent many months in solitary confinement. What is there to do? Neither walk, nor read, there is no one to talk to either... So he is from memory! – translated Homer from Greek to French, then to English, and finally to German. Homer was enough for him for a long time...

– How did he raise you - was he pampered or strict? After all, you are a late child.

– When I was little, he spoiled me a lot. My mother was a strict teacher, she taught me something, we constantly solved some problems, she also punished me. And dad, on the contrary, always stood up for me. I remember I was about six years old, we were on vacation in Koktebel. Mom punished me for something and locked me in the room. I sit and suffer. And then dad comes up to the window and throws buns, cherries, sweets, and apples through the window for me. And a note: “Transfer of s/c to Olga Volkova from former s/c of ​​Oleg Volkov.”

But when I became a young lady, from the age of fourteen, my father’s upbringing methods changed dramatically – he became strict. I drove all my gentlemen away, they were afraid to come to our house. Yes, I didn’t bring them, I knew what was waiting for them here. Of course, no rudeness - dad was just cold and mocking, and the young men, unaccustomed to this, blushed, turned pale, stuttered and generally became quite pitiful. And when I went to see one of my classmates for a birthday, my dad would ask my mom every time: “She went to Petya’s. Do you know his parents? Good family?" His pre-revolutionary ideas about how young ladies behave and how life should be structured in general remained unshakable.

– Your dad was 63 years old when you were born. Did you feel the age difference?

– I’m 6-7 years old, let’s go for a walk. Passers-by say to me: “Girl, your grandfather is calling you.” I suffered so much because of this: “It’s not grandfather, it’s dad!” Moreover, he was always younger than many young people. So, in the subway he never stood on the escalator, he always walked up and down. I, such a languid young lady, didn’t want to jump up the stairs, apparently I was saving my dignity, I kept screaming: “Well, paaaaah! Well, stop!” And he: “No, let’s run!”

He put me on a horse, and together we rode through the mountains in the Caucasus. I’m 14, he’s 77. He outpaced me, of course.

Dad gave me gifts very touchingly. He will go abroad and bring, say, jeans, but they are a hundred sizes too small – somehow he didn’t really see the real me. Or he will buy me boots - just right, but for a boy, because teenage girls in his time wore just such boots.

– Did he somehow influence your choice of profession?

– Unfortunately, I couldn't. I was very stubborn. He immediately told me that there is no need to be a journalist: the profession is unreliable, very dependent, like acting, only worse. He said: learn languages. You know the language well – you will always feed yourself. But I still chose journalism.

Meeting with the saint

– Margarita Sergeevna, how did you meet Oleg Vasilyevich?

– It was the beginning of the sixties, I then worked in the editorial office of the magazine “Friendship of Peoples”. One day I was running along the dark editorial corridor, in a hurry - they were waiting for me for coffee. I bent down to shake some paper dust from my skirt as I walked, and suddenly my head hit the person walking towards me in the stomach. I raise my head and see: mustache, beard - salt and pepper, – robber blue eyes. The stranger held me by the shoulders and asked: “Well?” I apologized, ducked out from under his hand and ran on. I admit, with some sadness... This happens when something alluring and unattainable passes by. The possibility of love is what I felt then. And when I left work in the evening, the stranger I had bruised was waiting for me on the street - he definitely needed to find out if my head was intact...

– Oleg Vasilyevich writes in “Immersion” that he grew up among St. Petersburg people of little faith, who were the majority among the St. Petersburg intelligentsia of the early 20th century. And he himself was at the beginning of his life’s journey the same lack of faith. Later, he had a terrible period in the Arkhangelsk prison, when the circumstances of his life were so monstrous that it was impossible to believe in God. What kind of faith did he have at the end of his life?

Margarita Sergeevna: Fate itself led Oleg to true faith. And the Lord kept him. The fact that the husband survived the terrible camp meat grinder is not a miracle, not the mercy of God? After all, how many times was death very close... He was even released from one of the camps – to die from tuberculosis and dystrophy, which made him a barely moving goner. But the cavities in his lungs disappeared, the disease receded - isn’t this a miracle?

Oleg recalled how one day, at a logging site, a clumsily cut forest giant began to slowly fall on one of the prisoners. The death of the idiot was inevitable. Everyone froze in horror. And suddenly the tree moved to the side, only scratching the poor fellow’s face. The guard who saw this swore in admiration. “This is the power of prayer!” – Oleg concluded his story without specifying who exactly was praying.

Oleg served two terms in Solovki, where at that time those whom we now recognize as martyrs and confessors were imprisoned - many of my father’s bunk neighbors have now become saints. So, in exile, Oleg met Saint Luke (Voino-Yasenetsky), and the bishop told him: “Do not consider yourself an exile, consider yourself a witness.” By the way, Saint Luke did not leave Oleg even after his death: I am sure that it was through his prayers that “Descent into Darkness” was first written and then published, including – and in Greece.

The rector of one of the Greek monasteries, Archimandrite Nektarios (Antonopoulos), went to Crimea to venerate the relics of St. Luke, whom the Greeks especially reverence. And suddenly a certain woman came up to him and gave him “Plunge into Darkness” in Russian. He gave the book to the translator. And she, having read it, exclaimed in complete delight: “This needs to be printed!” The book has already been published in two editions. It turns out that Father Nektarios learned about the “Immersion” thanks to Saint Luke.

By the way, it was Father Nektariy who found unique documents related to Oleg’s arrest in the archives of the Greek embassy – the husband was repressed when he worked as a translator at the Greek embassy in Moscow. And thanks to these documents, it turned out that after Oleg’s arrest, the Greek ambassador submitted a petition to his government to intercede for the gifted young man. But, apparently, it was impossible to help.

– Have you and Oleg Vasilyevich talked about faith?

– They talked, but not much. But it was he who gave me the first Gospel, then brought me the Bible. He revealed to me that you can believe in God not mentally, but with your heart. We got married at Father Dimitry Dudko's in Grebnev. Then he baptized our Olya. At that time, informers were assigned to Dudko, and in order to talk calmly, Oleg and Father Dimitry went into the forest. And I have a photograph of them talking in the forest: small, plump Dudko and tall, thin Oleg stand in the same pose, leaning towards each other. By the way, one of the informers gave me this photo.

Shelter for a snitch

– Oleg Vasilyevich’s life, apparently, also could not do without their presence?

Margarita Sergeevna: One informant lived on our loggia for some time. It was the early 80s. We were relaxing at the Komarovo House of Creativity, and somehow a little fussy man rushed to Oleg shouting: “Z/k s/k sees from afar!” – I jumped up to my husband and shook his hand for a long time. A writer and at the same time a security officer, who was relaxing right there, hastened to warn us that our new acquaintance was a well-known informer who had served time for homosexuality. He is fictitiously married to an American, and he needs to earn points to get permission to travel to America. So he earned money - he didn’t leave us a single step, and when we returned to Moscow, he showed up at our house.

N, of course, guessed that we knew everything about him, and nevertheless asked us to allow him to live with us – they say, have pity, they won’t let me out without this! An absurd situation: asking for shelter from people you will snitch on, and they know it very well! "Whoever he is, – Oleg said, – and he suffered more in prison than many.” And we decided not to complicate his fate, we gave him a folding bed and a place on the loggia... Among the flowers...

Olga: He settled in with us pretty quickly. I sipped tea in the kitchen and gave out more advice. Banana pants were in fashion back then. So he told me that this is not feminine, not sexy, and that girls should not wear this. When he left us, he also asked for “a little money.” Dad gave him 500 rubles, and then it was a decent amount. He swore that he would give it back. I sent a letter from America, but never returned the money.

Margarita Sergeevna: There was another wonderful story. On the eve of the 1980 Olympics, all socially unreliable people are expelled from Moscow. Oleg was listed in the police as having served time. And he, a hunter, had a weapon at home. And a local district police officer with the last name either Korytko or Kosorylko decided to confiscate these guns from a former criminal and potential criminal. So what if he is completely rehabilitated? The police came with witnesses and solemnly left, taking away what they had discovered...

This was a clear violation of the law, and the Writers' Union stood up for Oleg. Soon a call came from the police: “You can take your guns.” - "No, – the husband said to them in response. “You took it, please bring it.” They brought it, and they still scraped around. Oleg was not afraid of them at all, he said that they would never get him again. But he was very indignant, he said that the KGB noose was still following him.

Shortly before Oleg’s death, the editor of the magazine “Showcase. Reading Russia” with an offer to participate in the Turgenev questionnaire, which was once very popular in the salon of Pauline Viardot. To the question “What is your state of mind?” Oleg answered: at the age of 18 there was “expectation of great things to come,” at the age of 96 there was “gratitude.”

Interviewed by Elena Alekseeva

Photo by Anna Galperina

Oleg Vasilievich Volkov

Plunge into darkness

White Book of Russia

Oleg Volkov's autobiographical narrative covers the period from 1917 to the seventies. The book recreates the circumstances of the life of a person who was subjected to illegal persecution, but who managed to maintain a sense of human and civic dignity, love for the Motherland, and who worked a lot in the field of national culture.

A few introductory notes. (Instead of a foreword)

Chapter first. The beginning of a long journey

Chapter two. I'm wandering

Chapter three. In Noah's Ark

Chapter Four. Garrotte

Chapter five. In the land of unafraid birds

Chapter six. At a crossroads

Chapter seven. Sixty more months to live

Chapter eight. And behold, a pale horse

Chapter Nine. And the winds return to normal

Chapter ten. On the road of the Decembrists

Afterword

E.F. Volodin. Afterword

I got up late, and on the road I was caught in the night in Rome.

F. I. Tyutchev. Cicero.

And I looked, and behold, a pale horse, and its rider, whose name was death, and hell followed him...

Revelation of St. John (ch. 6, verse, 8)

I dedicate it to Olga, my daughter

A FEW INTRODUCTORY STROKES

(instead of a foreword)

Bare whitewashed walls. Bare window square. A blind door with a peephole. A bright, never-fading lapel hangs from the high ceiling. In its blinding light, the chamber is especially empty and sterile; everything is tough and clear. Even the folds of the blanket on the flat bed seemed stiff.

This light is an obsession. Source of unconscious anxiety. You can’t isolate yourself from it, you can’t get distracted. Whether you walk like a pendulum with turns every five steps, or, dizzy, sit on a stool, your eyes, tired of the familiar streaks of paint on the bucket, cracks in the plaster, cracks between the floorboards, from the heads of bolts in the door counted a hundred times, against their will, turn upward, so that here and, blinded, rush to the corners. And even after the evening check-in, when you are allowed to lie down and plunge into the languid oblivion of the night, through the rushing half-memories, half-dreams, you feel yourself in a cell, you are not freed from the oppressive inability to leave, to get rid of this light hitting your eyes. Soulless, persistent, penetrating everywhere. Filling with endless fatigue...

This nakedness of objects under constant strong lighting gives rise to heightened ideas. Reason throws away the shading, softening covers, and for short moments you see everything around you and your destiny with hopelessly sober eyes. This is the cheek-beam of a searchlight, with which border guards will suddenly snatch out of the darkness dark coastal stones or a sand spit jutting into the sea with grey-winged seabirds settled on it, taken by surprise.

I remember that it was in this solitary confinement of the Arkhangelsk prison, where I was kept for about a year, during one of the endless hours of vigil with a light bulb constantly guarding, erasing the lines between day and night, that it was especially mercilessly and nakedly revealed to me how great and menacing the “flaming world” surrounding us was. abyss..." How irresistible are the forces of the evil that has flooded the world! And all attempts to fence himself off from him with the barriers of faith and myths about the divine beginning of life seemed pitiful and untenable.

A thought, like a merciless ray, ran through the pictures of the past years, filled with memories of cruel persecution and reprisals. No no! Such unbridled revelry, such disgrace and ridicule of the moral foundations of life would have been impossible if the world had been led by a supreme good power. The concepts of love, compassion, mercy are being burned out of everyday life with a hot iron - but the heavens have not opened...

In the mid-thirties, during the dress rehearsals for the bloody mysteries of the thirty-seventh, I managed to go through the circles of two investigations and subsequent imprisonments in the Solovetsky camp. Now, being on the threshold of the third term, I felt with my whole being, with my skin, the complete impunity of violence. And if before this sudden insight - or darkness? - having cut off the wings of hope, I, with a passion intensified by persecution, resorted to secret prayer of consolation, stubbornly clung to the faith of my fathers and was in a sacrificial mood, then after that it became impossible for me to even force myself to cross myself... And those already rejected from me remembered the secret services, committed in the Solovetsky camp by a priest who died later.

That was the period when clergy were dressed in camp pea coats and had their hair cut and shaved forcibly. For sending any requests they were shot. For laymen who resorted to the help of religion, an extension of the term was introduced - a five-year “appendage”. And yet Father John, no longer the former handsome priest in a cassock and with a beard, but a stooped, weak and humiliated prisoner in a dirty, patched uniform, with ugly shortened hair - he was cut and shaved tied up - occasionally managed to get out of the zone: someone... then he got him a pass through the gate of the monastery fence. And he went into the forest.

There, in a small clearing covered with young pine trees, a group of believers were gathering. The antimensions and utensils needed for the service, kept with great caution by reliable and fearless people, were brought. Father John put on his stole and veil, wrinkled and worn, and began in a low voice. He shouted and the quiet singing of our timid choir carried away to the empty northern sky; they were swallowed up by the thicket surrounding the moss...

It was scary to be ambushed, we could see the Vokhrovites jumping out from behind the trees - and we tried to leave with all our thoughts to the mountain intercessors. And sometimes it was possible to get rid of oppressive worries. Then the heart was filled with blissful peace and a “brother in Christ” was seen in every person. Joyful, enlightened moments! Love and faith were seen as weapons against the hatred that tears people apart. And legends familiar from childhood about the first centuries of Christianity were resurrected.

It seemed like there was some kind of connection between this handful of persecuted prisoners, listening with faith and hope to every word of Father John, and the saints and martyrs born of persecution. Perhaps two thousand years ago, the apostles, with the same weak and cold voice, inspired courage and hope in the doomed, frightened by the murmur of the crowd on the benches of the circus and the roar of predators in the vivarium, with which now this persecuted Russian so simply and sincerely admonishes us approaching the cross priest Modest, unknown and great...

We dispersed one by one so as not to attract attention.

Three-tiered bunks under the echoing arches of the ruined cathedral, filled with motley people, marked by fear, ready to do anything to survive, with their infighting, cruelty, abuse and squalor, very soon absorbed the vision of a swampy clearing facing the temple, pure, like the legend of Orthodox saints. But they were not forgotten...

After all, it was not the secularized church that overcame evil, but simple words of love and forgiveness, gospel covenants that seemed to answer the eternal craving of people for goodness and justice. If at different times the church’s right to power in the world and the persecution of dissent were disputed, then no government regulations, social reforms or theories ever encroached on the original Christian virtues. Religion and the clergy were abolished and the truths of the Gospel were crucified and remained unshakable. That is why faK was stunned and frightened by the openly proclaimed principles of proletarian “morality”, which rejected the irrelevant concepts of love and goodness.

Over the expanses of Russia with its churches and bell towers, from century to century, reminding us with the radiance of crosses and the voices of bells about high spiritual truths, calling to “raise the eyes of grief” and think about the soul, about good deeds, awakening in the most hardened hearts the voice of conscience, fiercely and mercilessly winds blew up, carrying the seeds of cruelty, turning away from spiritual quests and demanding renunciation of Christian morality, from their fathers and traditions.

Class hatred and inflexibility were preached. Denunciation and betrayal were encouraged. The “good ones” were ridiculed. Tolerance of other people's opinions, human sympathy and kindness were outlawed. The descent into the abyss of lack of spirituality began, the erosion and destruction of the moral foundations of society. They had to be replaced by the norms and laws of class struggle, which opened the way for misanthropic theories that gave rise to fascism, the chaff of zoological nationalism, and racist slogans that stained the pages of the history of the 20th century with blood.

08
Oct
2012

Descent into darkness (Oleg Volkov)

Format: audiobook, MP3, 96kbps
Oleg Volkov
Year of manufacture: 2011
Genre: Biographies and Memoirs
Publisher: Can't buy it anywhere
Executor: Erisanova Irina
Duration: 20:04:55
Description: This main book by the oldest Russian writer Oleg Vasilyevich Volkov is his story about twenty-eight years spent in Soviet prisons, camps and exiles. The authenticity of the events described makes the book a document of modern history on a par with A. I. Solzhenitsyn’s “The Gulag Archipelago.” At the same time, this is a novel of such artistic power, such linguistic purity, which has not been seen in Russian literature for a long time.
First of all, “Descent into Darkness” is a book about the preservation of human dignity in inhuman conditions, about the victory of the human spirit over the forces of evil. This book is about the true new martyrs for the faith, who are spoken of here with great love. The book was published by the Spaso-Preobrazhensky Solovetsky Monastery. It was written by Oleg Vasilievich Volkov, born in 1900. A nobleman, a graduate of pre-revolutionary Tsarist Russia, a famous Russian writer of extraordinary spirit. A man who miraculously survived the Bolshevik meat grinder. He had to go through the circles of hell in order to see the light and gain inner freedom. 27 years of prisons, camps and exile. He lived to be 97 years old with excellent clarity of mind. Became a legend of the 21st century. After his death, they wrote about him: “His death, despite his old age, is shocking. The fortress that protected us fell. Now we have to do it ourselves”...

Read by edition: M. Soviet writer 1989
Digitized by: alkoshmarik
Cleaned: makys

Oleg Vasilyevich Volkov (1900-1996) - Russian prose writer, publicist, memoirist. He published under the pseudonym Osugin, which in a number of sources (including Wolfgang Kazak) is named as his real surname.
His father was the director of the board of the Russian-Baltic factories, his mother was from the Lazarev family (granddaughter of Admiral Lazarev). He grew up in St. Petersburg and on his father's estate in the Tver province. He attended the Tenishev School, which combined education in science and craft (he was a classmate of Vladimir Nabokov). In 1917 he entered Petrograd University, but did not become a student. In 1917–1919 he lived on the family estate (Nikolskaya volost, Novotorzhsky district, Tver province). In 1922-28 he worked as a translator at the Nansen mission, for an Associated Press correspondent, for concessionaires, and at the Greek embassy.
In February 1928, he was arrested, refused to become an informer, was sentenced to 3 years in a camp on charges of counter-revolutionary agitation, and was sent to SLON. In April 1929, the camp term was replaced by deportation to the Tula region, where he worked as a translator of technical literature. In March 1931, he was arrested again and sentenced to 5 years in a camp on charges of counter-revolutionary agitation. Was sent to SLON again. In 1936, the remaining term was replaced by exile to Arkhangelsk, where Volkov worked in a branch of the Research Institute for Electrification of the Forestry Industry. On June 8, 1936, he was arrested again, sentenced to 5 years in prison as a “socially dangerous element” and sent to UkhtPechLag. In 1941 he was released and began working as a geologist in the Komi Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.
In March 1942, he was arrested again and sentenced to 4 years in a camp on charges of counter-revolutionary agitation. In April 1944 he was released due to disability and moved to Kirovabad, where he worked as a teacher of foreign languages, in 1946 - 50 he lived in Maloyaroslavets and Kaluga, worked as a translator in Moscow publishing houses. In 1950, he was arrested for the fifth time and was exiled to the village of Yartsevo (Krasnoyarsk Territory), where he worked as a carpenter and then as a trapper. In 1955 he was released from exile and came to Moscow.
Volkov became a writer and in 1957, on the recommendation of S. Mikhalkov, a member of the USSR Writers' Union. He published over a dozen books (stories, short stories and essays), and also translated the works of Balzac, Zola and other French writers, and “Greek Civilization” by A. Bonnard. He attached particular importance to the struggle for the preservation of nature and ancient monuments; he is considered one of the founders of the Soviet environmental movement.
His autobiographical main work, “Plunge into Darkness,” written in the early 60s and not published by A. Tvardovsky in the magazine “New World,” was first published in Paris in 1987.

01
May
2015

Star's Revenge 3. Descent into darkness (Petukhov Yuri)

Format: audiobook, MP3, 192kbps
Author: Petukhov Yuri
Year of manufacture: 2015
Genre fiction

Artist: BIGBAG
Duration: 16:21:52
Description: Returning from the Haven, Ivan understands that the Earth is ruled not by legally elected rulers, but by several mega-concerns (the Syndicate, the Eighth Heaven), and thousands of “Black Good” sects have already entangled the globe. Ivan tries to enlist the help of his old friends and find Gug Chlodrik the Violent. But this is not easy to do, since for several years he has been whileing away his days in the underwater penal servitude of the ruined planet Girgeya. In this pitch black...

29
Aug
2010

Full immersion (Tatiana Korsakova)

Year of manufacture: 2010
Genre: romance novel
Publisher: Can't buy it anywhere
Author: Tatyana Korsakova
Performer: Tatyana Telegina
Duration: 11:53:00
Format: Mp3, 128 kbps
Description: The heroine of the book has a difficult fate. From her father, an escaped Cuban student, she inherited a bright exotic appearance and the name Simona, which she is equally ashamed of and tries to hide. He disguises his tropical beauty with dull and shapeless clothes, and shortens his name to simple Sima. Because of her strong resemblance to her father, whom she has never seen, her mother dislikes her. For her, Sima is a mistake of youth that follows...

16
Aug
2018

Dive into the Sun (Bryn David)

Author: Bryn David
Year of release: 2018
Genre: Science fiction
Publisher: DIY audiobook
Performer: Orobchuk Sergey
Proofreading assistance: : Elensule
Duration: 11:26:02
Description: Every species in the Universe gained consciousness after going through the Exaltation, receiving intelligence from their alien mentors, their race of patrons. Everyone except people. People rushed to the stars on their own, going through their own evolution. Or did some mysterious civilization begin the process of Ascension on Earth many millennia ago? And if so, then why did you leave humanity?

25
Feb
2010

Immersion. Third project (Maxim Kalashnikov, Sergey Kugushev)

Year of manufacture: 2007

Genre: political bestseller
Publisher: Audiobook
Performer: Rodion Prikhodko
Duration: 26:05:15
Description: Why did Russia fall - the USSR, and not the USA, although the chances of death were almost the same? Why are we the only ones of all the civilizations on Earth who completely lost the 20th century? Why did our elite make the collapse of the state the meaning of their activities? For what reasons did history take a disastrous trajectory for the Russians? And who, in fact, destroyed us? West? USA? Or is there some other force besides these famous players? And, most importantly,...

27
Sep
2009

Maxim Kalashnikov, Sergey Kugushev Third project: Immersion

Year of manufacture: 2007
Author: Maxim Kalashnikov, Sergey Kugushev
Performer: Rodion Prikhodko
Genre: political bestseller
Publisher: Audiobook
Duration: 28:00:00
Description: At the beginning of the third millennium, the great and mighty Soviet Union - “USSR Incorporated” - is revered as the main force in the world. Moscow keeps the whole world dependent on its oil. More and more robotic, environmentally friendly enterprises are coming into operation. Russian dominance in the air and near space is undeniable. Western scientists willingly go to work in Soviet institutes. Only at...

15
Mar
2013

Doors in the Dark (Andrey Cruz, Maria Cruz)

Format: audiobook, MP3, 128kbps
Author: Andrey Cruz, Maria Cruz
Year of manufacture: 2013
Genre fiction
Publisher: Andrey Kravets Audio Portal
Performer: Andrey Kravets
Duration: 15:52:38
Description: What lengths do people go to in order to achieve their goals? What lengths are you willing to go to to escape the dark and dangerous world in which you find yourself? What will you do to stay with the woman you love? What will you sacrifice for her? Why, despite everything, man remains the most terrible enemy of man? And how can one remain human in a place where it is difficult for them to remain? Cycle "On the Threshold of Darkness" ...

29
Jul
2016

In the time of Nefertiti (M.E. Mathieu)

Format: PDF, Scanned pages
Author: M.E. Mathieu
Year of manufacture: 1965
Genre: Popular science literature
Publisher: Art
Russian language
Number of pages: 180
Description: The book by the classic of Egyptology M. Mathieu is dedicated to Egyptian art during the reign of the pharaohs Akhenaten and Tutankhamun. It tells about the excavations of ancient Egyptian cities, the famous tomb of Tutankhamun, the architecture, sculpture and painting of the Egyptians. Designed for anyone interested in the culture and art of Ancient Egypt. Screenshots

20
but I
2015

Duel in the dark (Tatyana Shubina)

ISBN: 5-94538-081-4-1
Format: FB2, eBook (originally computer)
Author: Tatyana Shubina
Year of manufacture: 2002
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Publisher: Veche
Russian language
Number of pages: 256
Description: Life is interesting for naughty people, but sometimes very troublesome. Galya did not listen and ended up in a frantic space. And there... Evil witches, werewolves, goblins and even a serial killer. Well, why did Dimka get it? He had no idea about his powerful enemies and even his patrons... And the duel between Darkness and Light began. Who has won? Only those who read this book will know about this. ...

11
Oct
2010

In the name of the Rating (Sergey Musanif)

Format: 128kb/s MP3
Year of manufacture: 2010
Genre fiction
Publisher: DIY Audiobook
Author: Sergey Musanif
Performer: Gennady Korshunov
Duration: 12:10:58
Description: Homer, Sophocles, Euripides, Virgil... They wrote a lot of words about the Trojan War, but at the end of the twenty-first century, human technology has stepped so far forward that television viewers can see the events of bygone days with their own eyes. Mighty Hector, invulnerable Achilles, cunning Odysseus, power-hungry Agamemnon, unlucky Menelaus, beautiful Helen, loving Paris, Greater and Lesser Ajax, Aeneas the Founder...

26
Feb
2013

A month in France (Viktor Nekrasov)

Format: audiobook, MP3, 96kbps
Author: Victor Nekrasov
Year of manufacture: 2013
Genre: Contemporary prose
Publisher: Can't buy it anywhere
Performer: Petrov Kirill
Duration: 04:40:56
Description: V. Nekrasov did not come to literature as a writer, he came as a soldier who had seen the everyday life of war and strived only to tell the truth about them...,” critics wrote about him. And it was true, and a very unpleasant one at that... In 1954, his story “In My Hometown” was published in the magazine “Znamya”, for the publication of which Nekrasov was subjected to “severe party criticism”, and the editor of the magazine Vs. ...

11
Apr
2013

In the power of a woman (Erlend Lu)

Format: audiobook, MP3, 96kbps
Author: Erlend Lu
Year of manufacture: 2013
Genre: Romance
Publisher: Can't buy it anywhere
Performer: Vyacheslav Gerasimov
Duration: 05:50:46
Description: Debut novel by the author of "The Best Country in the World" and "Naive. Super"; It is in this book that the influence of the writer whom Lou called his teacher, Richard Brautigan, is most clearly visible. The main character falls under the power of a determined young woman and narrates in the self-ironic manner characteristic of Lou’s heroes about his joys and ordeals, losses and gains, internal evolution and attempts to remain himself. Add. info...

Add. information: Read from the publication: M., Olma-Press, 1997
Digitized by: knigofil
Cleared by: sky4all

03
May
2011

A Kiss in Time (Alex Flynn)

ISBN: 978-5-699-48116-3
Format: RTF, OCR without errors
Author: Alex Flynn
Year of manufacture: 2011
Genre: fantasy, novel
Publisher: Eksmo, Domino
Russian language
Number of pages: 480
Description: In the new book by Alex Flynn, an original modern interpretation of the classic fairy tale plot, Talia, a princess from the kingdom of Efrasia who has slept for three hundred years, is woken up with a kiss by an ordinary American young man. Freedom-loving Talia does not want to stay in the castle where her parents kept her locked up, fearing a new curse from the evil sorceress. The princess sets off with her savior Jack to a new world...

21
Feb
2017

Kings in the Dark (Moorcock Michael)

Format: audiobook, MP3, 128kbps
Author: Moorcock Michael
Year of release: 2017
Genre: Heroic Fantasy
Publisher: DIY Audiobook
Performer: Orobchuk Sergey
Duration: 01:11:50
Description: Fleeing from pursuit, Elric of Melnibon and Moonglam find themselves in the terrible Troos Forest, where they meet the beautiful Zarinia from Karlaak. The desire to take revenge on the ogres almost ends tragically for Elric and his friends; they end up in the tomb of the king from under the Hill.

09
Dec
2017

A ray in the darkness (Chernyak S.Ya.)

Format: DjVu, Scanned pages
Author: Chernyak S.Ya.
Year of manufacture: 1965
Genre: documentary story, history
Publisher: Politizdat
Series: Stories about the affairs and people of the party
Russian language
Number of pages: 161
Description: “A Ray in the Dark” is a documentary story about the unknown exploits of the Kyiv underground during the Great Patriotic War. Led by the former secretary of the party organization of the People's Commissariat of Finance of the Ukrainian SSR, Grigory Kochubey, who escaped from a prisoner of war camp, the brave souls created a widely branched party organization “Death to the German occupiers!” Its combat groups operated in a number of cities...

Volkov Oleg Vasilievich

Plunge into darkness

Oleg Vasilievich Volkov

Plunge into darkness

White Book of Russia

Oleg Volkov's autobiographical narrative covers the period from 1917 to the seventies. The book recreates the circumstances of the life of a person who was subjected to illegal persecution, but who managed to maintain a sense of human and civic dignity, love for the Motherland, and who worked a lot in the field of national culture.

A few introductory notes. (Instead of a foreword)

Chapter first. The beginning of a long journey

Chapter two. I'm wandering

Chapter three. In Noah's Ark

Chapter Four. Garrotte

Chapter five. In the land of unafraid birds

Chapter six. At a crossroads

Chapter seven. Sixty more months to live

Chapter eight. And behold, a pale horse

Chapter Nine. And the winds return to normal

Chapter ten. On the road of the Decembrists

Afterword

E.F. Volodin. Afterword

I got up late, and on the road I was caught in the night in Rome.

F. I. Tyutchev. Cicero.

And I looked, and behold, a pale horse, and its rider, whose name was death, and hell followed him...

Revelation of St. John (ch. 6, verse, 8)

I dedicate it to Olga, my daughter

A FEW INTRODUCTORY STROKES

(instead of a foreword)

Bare whitewashed walls. Bare window square. A blind door with a peephole. A bright, never-fading lapel hangs from the high ceiling. In its blinding light, the chamber is especially empty and sterile; everything is tough and clear. Even the folds of the blanket on the flat bed seemed stiff.

This light is an obsession. Source of unconscious anxiety. You can’t isolate yourself from it, you can’t get distracted. Whether you walk like a pendulum with turns every five steps, or, dizzy, sit on a stool, your eyes, tired of the familiar streaks of paint on the bucket, cracks in the plaster, cracks between the floorboards, from the heads of bolts in the door counted a hundred times, against their will, turn upward, so that here and, blinded, rush to the corners. And even after the evening check-in, when you are allowed to lie down and plunge into the languid oblivion of the night, through the rushing half-memories, half-dreams, you feel yourself in a cell, you are not freed from the oppressive inability to leave, to get rid of this light hitting your eyes. Soulless, persistent, penetrating everywhere. Filling with endless fatigue...

This nakedness of objects under constant strong lighting gives rise to heightened ideas. Reason throws away the shading, softening covers, and for short moments you see everything around you and your destiny with hopelessly sober eyes. This is the cheek-beam of a searchlight, with which border guards will suddenly snatch out of the darkness dark coastal stones or a sand spit jutting into the sea with grey-winged seabirds settled on it, taken by surprise.

I remember that it was in this solitary confinement of the Arkhangelsk prison, where I was kept for about a year, during one of the endless hours of vigil with a light bulb constantly guarding, erasing the lines between day and night, that it was especially mercilessly and nakedly revealed to me how great and menacing the “flaming world” surrounding us was. abyss..." How irresistible are the forces of the evil that has flooded the world! And all attempts to fence himself off from him with the barriers of faith and myths about the divine beginning of life seemed pitiful and untenable.

A thought, like a merciless ray, ran through the pictures of the past years, filled with memories of cruel persecution and reprisals. No no! Such unbridled revelry, such disgrace and ridicule of the moral foundations of life would have been impossible if the world had been led by a supreme good power. The concepts of love, compassion, mercy are being burned out of everyday life with a hot iron - but the heavens have not opened...

In the mid-thirties, during the dress rehearsals for the bloody mysteries of the thirty-seventh, I managed to go through the circles of two investigations and subsequent imprisonments in the Solovetsky camp. Now, being on the threshold of the third term, I felt with my whole being, with my skin, the complete impunity of violence. And if before this sudden insight - or darkness? - having cut off the wings of hope, I, with a passion intensified by persecution, resorted to secret prayer of consolation, stubbornly clung to the faith of my fathers and was in a sacrificial mood, then after that it became impossible for me to even force myself to cross myself... And those already rejected from me remembered the secret services, committed in the Solovetsky camp by a priest who died later.

Oleg Vasilievich Volkov

Plunge into darkness

White Book of Russia

...I got up late, and on the road I was caught in Rome at night.

F. I. Tyutchev. Cicero.

And I looked, and behold, a pale horse, and its rider, whose name was death, and hell followed him...

Revelation of St. John (ch. 6, verse, 8)

I dedicate it to Olga, my daughter

A FEW INTRODUCTORY SPOTS (instead of a foreword)

...Bare whitewashed walls. Bare window square. A blind door with a peephole. A bright, never-fading lapel hangs from the high ceiling. In its blinding light, the chamber is especially empty and sterile; everything is tough and clear. Even the folds of the blanket on the flat bed seemed stiff.

This light is an obsession. Source of unconscious anxiety. You can’t isolate yourself from it, you can’t get distracted. Whether you walk like a pendulum with turns every five steps, or, dizzy, sit on a stool, your eyes, tired of the familiar streaks of paint on the bucket, cracks in the plaster, cracks between the floorboards, from the heads of bolts in the door counted a hundred times, against their will, turn upward, so that here and, blinded, rush to the corners. And even after the evening check-in, when you are allowed to lie down and plunge into the languid oblivion of the night, through the rushing half-memories, half-dreams, you feel yourself in a cell, you are not freed from the oppressive inability to leave, to get rid of this light hitting your eyes. Soulless, persistent, penetrating everywhere. Filling with endless fatigue...

This nakedness of objects under constant strong lighting gives rise to heightened ideas. Reason throws away the shading, softening covers, and for short moments you see everything around you and your destiny with hopelessly sober eyes. This is the same beam of a searchlight with which border guards suddenly snatch out of the darkness dark coastal stones or a sand spit jutting into the sea with grey-winged seabirds settled on it, taken by surprise.

I remember that it was in this solitary confinement of the Arkhangelsk prison, where I was kept for about a year, during one of the endless hours of vigil with a light bulb constantly guarding, erasing the lines between day and night, that it was especially mercilessly and nakedly revealed to me how great and menacing the “flaming world” surrounding us was. abyss..." How irresistible are the forces of the evil that has flooded the world! And all attempts to isolate ourselves from it with the barriers of faith and myths about the divine beginning of life seemed pathetic and untenable.

A thought, like a merciless ray, ran through the pictures of the past years, filled with memories of cruel persecution and reprisals. No no! Such unbridled revelry, such disgrace and ridicule of the moral foundations of life would have been impossible if the world had been led by a supreme good power. The concepts of love, compassion, mercy are being burned out of everyday life with a hot iron - but the heavens have not opened...

In the mid-thirties, during the dress rehearsals for the bloody mysteries of the thirty-seventh, I managed to go through the circles of two investigations and subsequent imprisonments in the Solovetsky camp. Now, being on the threshold of the third term, I felt with my whole being, with my skin, the complete impunity of violence. And if before this sudden insight - or darkness? - having cut off the wings of hope, I, with a passion intensified by persecution, resorted to secret consoling prayer, stubbornly clung to the faith of my fathers and was sacrificially inclined, then after that it became impossible for me to even force myself to cross myself... And those already rejected from me remembered the secret services that took place in Solovetsky camp by a priest who died later.

That was the period when clergy were dressed in camp pea coats and had their hair cut and shaved forcibly. For sending any requests they were shot. For laymen who resorted to the help of religion, an extension of the term was introduced - a five-year “appendage”. And yet Father John, no longer the former handsome priest in a cassock and with a beard, but a stooped, weak and humiliated prisoner in a dirty, patched uniform, with ugly shortened hair - he was cut and shaved tied up - occasionally managed to get out of the zone: someone... then he got him a pass through the gate of the monastery fence. And he went into the forest.

There, in a small clearing covered with young pine trees, a group of believers were gathering. The antimensions and utensils needed for the service, kept with great caution by reliable and fearless people, were brought. Father John put on his stole and veil, wrinkled and worn, and began in a low voice. He shouted and the quiet singing of our timid choir carried away to the empty northern sky; they were swallowed up by the thicket surrounding the moss...

It was scary to be ambushed, we could see the Vokhrovites jumping out from behind the trees - and we tried to leave with all our thoughts to the mountain intercessors. And sometimes it was possible to get rid of oppressive worries. Then the heart was filled with blissful peace and a “brother in Christ” was seen in every person. Joyful, enlightened moments! Love and faith were seen as weapons against the hatred that tears people apart. And legends familiar from childhood about the first centuries of Christianity were resurrected.

It seemed like there was some kind of connection between this handful of persecuted prisoners, listening with faith and hope to every word of Father John, and the saints and martyrs born of persecution. Perhaps two thousand years ago, the apostles, with the same weak and cold voice, inspired courage and hope in the doomed, frightened by the murmur of the crowd on the benches of the circus and the roar of predators in the vivarium, with which now this persecuted Russian so simply and sincerely admonishes us approaching the cross priest Modest, unknown and great...

We dispersed one by one so as not to attract attention.

Three-tiered bunks under the echoing arches of the ruined cathedral, filled with motley people, marked by fear, ready to do anything to survive, with their infighting, cruelty, abuse and squalor, very soon absorbed the vision of a swampy clearing facing the temple, pure, like the legend of Orthodox saints. But they were not forgotten...

After all, it was not the secularized church that overcame evil, but simple words of love and forgiveness, gospel covenants that seemed to answer the eternal craving of people for goodness and justice. If at different times the church’s right to power in the world and the persecution of dissent were disputed, then no government regulations, social reforms or theories ever encroached on the original Christian virtues. Religion and the clergy were abolished and the truths of the Gospel were crucified and remained unshakable. That is why faK was stunned and frightened by the openly proclaimed principles of proletarian “morality”, which rejected the irrelevant concepts of love and goodness.