Zadornov Nikolay Pavlovich. Pedigree. After my father passed away, I became his obedient son.

From the speech of Mikhail Zadornov
on the program “Country Duty”:

- I would really not like it if, looking at
me, people who read my father's books,
recalled the saying: “Nature rests on children”

QUOTE FROM THE GREAT RUSSIAN ENCYCLOPEDIA:

Nikolai Pavlovich Zadornov. Outstanding Soviet writer (1909 – 1992). He worked as an actor and director in theaters in Siberia and the Far East.

He has written several cycles of historical novels. Lots of essays, articles and stories. Nikolai Zadornov's novels have been translated into many languages ​​of the world.

Laureate of the Stalin Prize (1952) Awarded orders and medals.

Father of M. Zadornov, Russian humorist writer.

QUOTE FROM THE AMERICAN LITERARY ENCYCLOPEDIA:

Zadornov raised layers of the history of peoples hitherto unknown to civilization. He colorfully depicted their life, spoke with deep knowledge about morals, habits and family disputes, misfortunes, everyday troubles, about the craving for the Russian language, Russian rituals and way of life.

His novel “Father Cupid,” which became a classic in his homeland, has been translated into many languages. Despite the fact that there is no party theme in his works, the writer was awarded the highest post-war award of the USSR - the Stalin Prize. This is an unprecedented case in Soviet literature.

QUOTE FROM THE ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITISH LITERARY:

Without N. Zadornov's historical novels it is impossible to have a complete understanding of the development of Russian history and Russian literature.

Orthodox Marxist critics often made harsh assessments of the novels, considering them apolitical, devoid of a party view of literature. Indeed, the writer’s work does not fit into the “Procrustean bed” of socialist realism, the fundamental method of literature of the Soviet period.

The intense action of his books includes hundreds of historical figures. Next to Nevelsky and Muravyov are the Governor of Kamchatka Zavoiko, the English Admiral Price, Admiral Putyatin, the writer Goncharov, Chancellor Nesselrode, Emperor Nicholas I, the famous navigator Warrior Andreevich Rimsky-Korsakov, the Japanese diplomat Kawaji and others. In his works there is a living history.

Three books of the writer “Tsunami”, “Heda”, “Shimoda” were published in Japan, which testifies to the veracity of the life story of Russian sailors told in these books in Japan, which was still closed and dangerous for foreigners.

FROM MIKHAIL ZADORNOV'S FOREWORD TO THE NOVELS OF NIKOLAY ZADORNOV

"Tsunami", "Heda", "Shimoda", "Hong Kong" and "Mistress of the Seas"

For more than two hundred years, Japan was a closed country. That's why she didn't have ships. Fishermen were allowed to have small boats and leave the shore only within sight. And any foreigner who set foot on Japanese soil without permission was to be executed.

How did it happen that after a shipwreck, more than eight hundred Russian sailors and officers were allowed by the highest authorities of Japan to live in coastal villages for almost a year during the period of the most stringent samurai laws? What extraordinary, romantic, adventure, espionage, diplomatic stories ensued as a result? My father described this incredible but true story in his “Russian Odyssey” so accurately that his novels were published even in Japan.

Most historians in the world today are confident that mothballed Japan was first “unsealed” by American “diplomacy”: a military squadron approached the Japanese shores, aimed guns, threatened... The Japanese were frightened to let them onto their land, and then, as in Hollywood films, the Americans very The Japanese liked their height, beautiful military uniform, Coca-Cola and Marlboro... The famous opera-melodrama Madama Butterfly was even written about those events.

Recently I had the opportunity to talk with a high-ranking official from the Russian Foreign Ministry. Even he did not know that the “discovery” of Japan did not happen due to the will of American cannon diplomacy, but thanks to the friendliness and culture of Russian sailors and officers. It is not for nothing that in our time in the Japanese village of Heda there is a museum opened by the Japanese in memory of those real events after which their iron samurai curtain first opened. In this museum, in the central spacious hall, the first Japanese high-speed sailing ship, which was built on Japanese soil with the help of Russian officers that year, is exhibited.

I was in this village. One elderly Japanese woman proudly told me that blue-eyed Japanese children are still sometimes born in their village.

Today, when a peace treaty between Russia and Japan has not yet been signed, and children in Japanese schools, thanks to American films, think that even atomic bombs were dropped on their cities by the Russians, my father’s novels are more timely than ever!

"Captain Nevelskoy" and "War for the Ocean".

My father believed that many Russian scientists and travelers who made the greatest discoveries in history were unfairly forgotten. And he wanted to draw attention with his novels to those events in Russian history that people now don’t like to mention in the West, where historians believe that everything important in the world happened at European orders.

For example, during the Russian-Turkish War, defeating the Russian army in the Crimea and the Black Sea, the allied forces of the French and British decided to make Kamchatka and Russian Primorye their colonies, taking them away from Russia. Africa and India seemed not enough for them. The allied military squadron approached the shores of the Russian Far East. However, a handful of Russian Cossacks, with the help of peasant settlers, without any decrees from St. Petersburg, so defeated the insatiable colonialists that European Western historians forever erased this battle from their chronicles. And since the French and Germans worked in the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs under the tsars, there was no mention of these Far Eastern battles in Russia.

Such a victory became possible not only thanks to the heroism of Russian soldiers and officers, but also to the geographical discoveries that were made by one of the most worthy Russian officers, Captain Nevelskoy, several years before the Russian-Turkish War. He practically brought Russia to the shores of the Pacific Ocean, clarified the incorrect maps that were used in the West, proved that Sakhalin is an island, and the Amur is no less a deep river than the Amazon!

My father was not a party member. He was too romantic to live in the unromantic party present. He lived in dreams of our noble past. In his novels, as if on a large-format stage, tsars, officers, sailors, and settlers take part at once... Cossacks and Decembrists... Their wives and loved ones... Despite the obviously adventure plots of the novels with incredible, sometimes even romantic situations, the father always remained historically reliable. If he were a humorist, I would advise his novels to be published under the heading “You Can’t Invent It on Purpose.”

FROM THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE WRITER, STATE PRIZE WINNER - N. ZADORNOV

(1985)

From an early age, Vladivostok, which I visited, made a strong impression on me. For the first time in my life I saw the sea, the train, passing through the tunnels under the city at night, stopped at the last station in Russia. Crowds of Chinese coolies surrounded every carriage, offering their services. The night was hot, southern. Behind the carriages, on the other side of the station, spacious warehouses were visible, and behind them towered the bulk of ocean-going ships standing somewhere nearby. At that time, Vladivostok was a transit port and processed a large amount of foreign cargo. The first English sailor, in whom I was ready to see a hero from the books of sea novelists, swung a bottle at me when in a cafe I addressed him with a friendly phrase, touching him on the shoulder. This was my first English practice lesson. At that time and in that environment, there was no point in touching someone on the shoulder. These were not literary heroes. The city, with its noisy life, port, Russian and Chinese theaters, with picturesque bays, made such an impression on me that my head turned towards the Pacific Ocean for the rest of my life.

When my wife and I moved to Komsomolsk-on-Amur, what was around me turned out to be much more interesting than made-up actors with glued-on beards and theatrical scenery. At night I saw a real moon, not a cardboard one.

I walked through the taiga on foot, and on boats, and on motorboats, on my own and from the editorial office of the city newspaper, for which I wrote essays. I learned how to sail a Nanai boat and walk on a birch bark frame. In winter and summer I visited Nanai camps. I saw shamanism.

I continued my walks through the taiga. I was not a hunter, but as a hunter, I made my circles around Komsomolsk wider and wider. We all began the history of Komsomolsk from the first day its builders disembarked from the ships. No one knew what happened before. I wanted to talk about this.

FROM AN INTERVIEW WITH MIKHAIL ZADORNOV

ON TV (1995)

In the restaurant of the Central House of Writers in the late eighties - my father was still alive - a venerable, I would even say, seasoned Soviet writer approached me and asked if I was a descendant of Nikolai Zadornov, who wrote such interesting historical novels. I replied: “Yes, descendant. More precisely, a son. After all, a son is a descendant.” He was surprised: “What, didn’t Nikolai Zadornov live in the nineteenth century?”

I understand why venerable and seasoned Soviet writers thought so about my father. He never took part in the struggle between writers' groups, did not subscribe to any appeals, did not make friends with someone against someone. to get yourself on the right list. His name was mentioned only once in an obituary, when Alexander Fadeev died. My father said that later his friends called him and congratulated him on his unprecedented success. After all, the list of those who signed the obituary was headed by members of the Central Committee! But most importantly, my father practically never visited the Central House of Writers restaurant! And those who were not seen there were considered to have lived in the last century. Isn't this a compliment to the authenticity of his novels?

FROM MIKHAIL ZADORNOV'S FOREWORD TO THE NOVELS

"Father Cupid" and "Gold Rush".

In our youth, we read with enthusiasm Fenimore Cooper, Mine Reed... The romance of the conquest of new lands! But we had all this too. With only one difference: our ancestors, when exploring new lands, came not with weapons in their hands, but with faith and love. They tried to convert the natives to the Orthodox faith without exterminating them or driving them into reservations. My father jokingly called the Nivkhs, Nanais and Udeges “our Indians.” Only less promoted and promoted than the Mohicans or Iroquois.

When my father and mother got married, they were denounced to the NKVD. In particular, from my mother’s ex-husband. And then they did what few were capable of. We went as far as possible from the “demonic” center that lives on denunciations. And where? In Komsomolsk-on-Amur! As if anticipating a joke of that era: there is nowhere to exile beyond Komsomolsk anyway. My father headed the literary department at the local theater. He was an assistant director. Although he had no directing education. It’s just that the artistic director of the theater recognized his father’s ability to observe life. And when one of the actors fell ill, he was assigned to replace them in the episodes. By the way, now his memorial plaque hangs in front of the entrance to this theater.

While working in the theater, my father decided to write a novel about how the first Russian settlers came here long before the construction of Komsomolsk. The novel is romantic. In some ways it’s an adventure. In the tradition of Mayne Reed, Fenimore Cooper and Walter Scott...

From an article by writer G.V. Guzenko (1999):

- “The novel “Father Cupid Nikolai Zadornov wrote in such pure and at the same time figurative Russian language that it must be included in the secondary school curriculum.”

In my youth, “Father Cupid” was my favorite novel. Finishing reading it again, each time I got the feeling that our future is no less comfortable than the life of the heroes of my father’s novel. In general, I love books that are like visiting friends, where you want to stay longer. But what inspired me most was that I was born between the publication of the novel and the award of the Stalin Prize. Maybe that’s why I have such a joyful life, that my parents “designed” me into the most joyful period of my life!

The book was written in Komsomolsk-on-Amur before the war. When my father brought the manuscript to Moscow, Soviet editors refused to publish it, since only openly heroic literature was in demand. Somehow the novel ended up on A. Fadeev’s desk. Fadeev read it and realized that the publishing house would not even listen to his advice, although he was the secretary of the USSR Writers' Union. In the hope that it would be approved from above, he handed it over to Stalin.

There was a war going on. Despite this, the “owner” ordered “Cupid the Father” to be printed immediately. Even the publishing house was surprised. In the novel there are no war heroes, regional committee secretaries, commissars, calls: “For the Motherland! For Stalin!"…

Later, Fadeev secretly told my mother, when he was visiting us in Riga, that O Stalin told him about “Father Amur”: “Zadornov showed that these lands are originally ours. That they were mastered by the working man, and were not conquered. Well done! His books will be very useful to us in our future relations with China. It must be published and noted!”

Later, when the Stalin Prize was renamed the State Prize, my father continued to call himself proudly the laureate of the Stalin Prize. Why? Yes, because State Prizes have already been handed out left and right. Sold by officials for bribes. To receive this prize in the 80s or 90s, it was necessary not to write a talented work, but to draw up documents with talent and “correctly” submit them to the prize award committee.

I remember one of the Soviet monster writers, also visiting us in Riga, boasted about the prize he had just received from the hands of Brezhnev himself. And then his wife, while walking along the beach, complained to my mother: “I lost so much health while we gave him this bonus. I spent so much money on gifts, my grandmother’s earrings, and I pawned them!”

My father did not want to consider himself a laureate of the prize he had procured. And it was impossible to “wrestle” the Stalin Prize from the “owner”. My father did not rename his laureate for the sake of time. He had no one to fear. He was non-partisan. For this, at that time, “immorality” they could not even kick him out of the party!

One of his behests, given to me when I was still at the institute: “Do not join the party, no matter how much you lure you in, so that you won’t be kicked out. If you join, you will become a slave. Stay free. This is above all ranks and titles.”

FROM VARIOUS INTERVIEWS WITH MIKHAIL ZADORNOV,

IN WHICH THEY ASKED HIM ABOUT HIS FATHER.

(1993 – 2006)

Despite the laureate awarded to “Sam”, my father never, even during the period of the cult of personality, idolized Stalin.

I remember the day when Stalin died. I was sitting on a potty in our Riga apartment and looking out the window - large, right down to the floor. Along the street, outside the window, crying people were walking: Latvians and Russians - all in mourning. Even Latvians cried in Riga. They ordered us to cry, and we cried, amicably and internationally. I remember mourning Riga, and how my older sister cried. She was eleven years old. She didn't understand anything. She cried because the teachers and passers-by were crying... She felt sorry not for Stalin, but for the teachers and passers-by. My father came into our room and said: “Don’t cry, daughter, he didn’t do much good.” My sister was so surprised by my dad’s words that she immediately stopped crying. I thought about it. Naturally, I didn’t understand anything then, but I didn’t want her to cry so much that I began to prove to her in support of my father’s words and give examples why Stalin was not a good uncle. For example, it has been raining in Riga for three months. And they didn’t take me to the sandbox. But Stalin could do anything! Why didn’t he think about us children, who, like me, wanted to go to the sandbox!

It was, by the way, 1953! Well, he couldn’t have foreseen then how quickly times would change... My father simply believed that he had to be honest with his children.

I also remember the day when they announced that Beria had been arrested. Mom and Dad drank wine that evening so that we, the children, would not have such a terrible youth as theirs.

I was already twelve years old. At school they began to instill in us that the Soviet Union is the best country in the world, and that in capitalist countries it is not good people who live, but stupid and dishonest people. My father called me into his office and said: “Keep in mind that what they say at school is often not entirely correct. But it’s necessary. When you grow up, you will understand.” I was very upset then too. My father deprived me of faith that I was born in the best country in the world.

Father never imposed his views on us, children, in an argument. I believed that children should figure out everything themselves with their own minds... They just sometimes need to be hooked with some thought, connected, throw the desired thought into the folds of the brain, like into unplowed, unfertilized beds, in the hope that someday the “seed” will sprout!

The main room, which we were not allowed to enter without permission, was his office with a library, looking at which I thought with horror that I would never re-read so many books in my life. He bought books not only for himself, in order to know history and literature. He saw how my sister and I, out of curiosity, sometimes pulled out some book or album from the shelves, looked at the pictures and tried to read, not always understanding what was written there. He collected this library for our sake! He believed that books can develop in a child interests that will protect him in life from the philistine burden.

One day, when I was about ten years old, he called me into his office and showed me an old book he had bought with amazingly beautiful engraving pictures. The title of the book was mysterious and romantic: “Frigate “Pallada”.” The word “frigate” smacked of something real, masculine, military... Sea battles, sails, tanned faces with scars and, of course, other countries with their romantic dangers. Pallas, on the contrary, is something elegant, majestic, proud and unapproachable. By that time I already knew some of the myths. I liked Pallas more than other Greek gods. There was a sense of dignity about her. She did not take revenge on anyone, like Hera, did not intrigue, like Aphrodite, and did not eat children, like her father Zeus.

From that day on, for a year, my dad and I retired two or three times a week to his library, where he read aloud to me about the round-the-world voyage of Russian sailors, and for an hour and a half, my father’s office became our frigate: in Singapore we were surrounded by numerous merchant junks, in Cape Town we admired Table Mountain, in Nagasaki samurai came on board, in the Indian Ocean our sailors managed to shoot the approaching column of a tornado from their onboard cannons in time...

Of course, times have changed since then. New biorhythms have taken possession of a new generation. When recently in one of the Moscow orphanages I advised the children to read “The Frigate Pallas,” one of the children asked: “Is it written about goblins?”

The poor generation, deafened by Hollywood, pop music and reality shows. How many fewer happy moments will it receive in life if, listening to music with seven notes, it hears only three?

If it weren’t for my father... I would have been raised by my Moscow semi-party environment on fashionable literature and would have lived a sad, not joyful, although fashionable, life.

Dad loved to walk along the seashore in Jurmala. He could stop on the shore and watch the sunset motionless. One day, on the bank of the river, he drew my attention to how at sunset the birds quieted down and the grasshoppers began to chirp. He believed that people who don’t listen to nature have flat pleasures, like three-note music: a restaurant, a party, sex, a casino, a new purchase... Well, it’s still joyful if you took the wheels off your neighbor’s car or the tax office came to your colleagues’ office .

Once, at five in the morning, after some regular night presentation, I called one of my fellow writers to the shore of the Baltic Sea in Jurmala to admire the sunrise. He looked at the sun rising above the horizon for about three seconds, then said sadly: “You know, Galkin’s popularity is not falling. How do you explain this?” I have a good attitude towards Galkin, but I didn’t want to think about his popularity at sunrise. I looked at my colleague. Unhappy! He will never be able to distinguish fish soup cooked over a fire with a firebrand stewed in it from fish soup from a bag.

The father knew the truth: nature is a manifestation of God on Earth. Whoever does not feel it has no Faith!

He and my mother raised my sister and me as if on the sly, so that we wouldn’t realize that they were raising us.

When I turned seventeen, during the student holidays, instead of letting me and my girlfriend go to Odessa for the summer, my father sent me to work on a botanical expedition as a laborer for two months on the Kuril Islands. Now I understand, he wanted me to fly across the entire Soviet Union, I understood, seeing the taiga, islands, seas, oceans, that I still live in the best country in the world.

With short remarks, like homeopathic doses, dad sometimes tried to cool down in me the delight that I felt along with the crowd, hypnotized by the press, and the “cartoon”, as he called it, revolutionaries!

The end of perestroika. First Congress of Deputies. Gorbachev, Sakharov... Screams in the stands. For the first time, looking at live reports from the Palace of Congresses, we felt the first breaths of glasnost and freedom of speech. We saw those who subsequently began to call themselves with the big word “democrats”. I was watching TV, my father stood behind me, then suddenly he waved his hand and half said:

- That those were thieves, that these... Only the new ones will be smarter! And therefore - they will steal more!

- Dad, this is democracy!

— Don't confuse democracy with squabbles.

Quite a bit of time has passed, and I and all my intelligent friends now, when discussing our politicians, speak not of democrats, but of “so-called democrats.” Like, I don’t want to dirty the word “democracy”.

In 1989, having returned from my first tour of America, I enthusiastically talked about my impressions with my family. This is what my father usually did when returning from travels. My father listened to my admirations with a restrained smile, without interrupting, and then said only one phrase: “I see you still haven’t understood anything. Although I brought a good sheepskin coat!”

I was very offended. For my trip, for the perfection of America, for Western democracy, freedom, for the future that I pictured in my imagination for Russia. We had a fight. My father could not explain to me what he meant. Or I just didn't want to understand him. I was already a star! Thousands of spectators gathered at my performances. True, I remembered his words, which he said to end our argument: “Okay, let's not quarrel. You will probably visit the West more than once. But when I'm gone, remember, it's not that simple! Life is not black and white television."

It was as if he knew then that in five years I would radically change my opinion about America.

Sometimes it seems to me that parents pass away so that their children begin to listen to their advice. How many of my acquaintances and friends now remember the advice of their parents, after their death.

After my father passed away, I became his obedient son!

Now that my father is gone, I remember our quarrels more and more often. I am grateful to him, first of all, for the fact that he was not a philistine. Neither the communists, nor the “democrats”, nor journalists, nor politicians, nor the West, nor the writer’s community could force him to think as is customary. He was never a communist, but he also did not fall under the influence of dissidents.

Only we, his closest ones, knew that he believed in God. He had an icon in his hiding place left from his mother. And her cross. Shortly before his death, realizing that he would soon pass away, he baptized me, unbaptized, thereby making it clear that someday I, too, would need to be baptized.

And he considered dissidents to be traitors. He convinced me that they would all soon be forgotten. All you have to do is change the situation in the world. I defended “dissidents” with all the zeal of my youth. My father tried to convince me:

- How can you fall for these “figs in your pocket”? All these “revolutionaries” about whom the West is so loud today pretend to be daredevils, but in fact, they are walking theatrically, with their chests open, into an embrasure in which there has been no machine gun for a long time.

- How can you, dad, say that? Your father died in prison in 1937 and it is not even known where his grave is. My mother’s parents suffered from the Soviet regime because they were of noble origin. Mom couldn’t really finish her studies. After you've written novels about Japan, you're under surveillance. The KGB considers you almost a Japanese spy. And these people left the country precisely because of such humiliation!

My father most often did not respond to my passionate attacks, as if he was not sure that at over forty years old I had matured enough to understand what was happening to him. But one day he decided:

- KGB, NKVD... On the one hand, you, of course, say everything correctly. But it's not that simple. There are different people everywhere. And, by the way, if it weren’t for the KGB, you would never have visited America. After all, one of them allowed you to leave and signed the papers. In general, I think that we have someone very smart up there, and they specially released you to America so that you would notice something that others cannot notice. And as for dissidents and emigrants... keep in mind, most of them left not the KGB, but the Ministry of Internal Affairs! And they are not dissidents, but... swindlers! And mark my words, as soon as it is profitable for them to return, they will all run back. America will still tremble from them. They themselves will not be happy that they persuaded the Soviet government to release these “revolutionaries” to them. So it's not that simple, son! Someday you will understand this,” the Father thought again for a while and, as if not adding, but emphasizing what was said, “most likely you will understand.” And if you don’t understand, it’s okay. You can also live a completely decent life as a fool. Especially with such popularity as yours! Well, you'll be a popular fool. Good too. By the way, they pay well for this in any society!

Naturally, after such a conversation we quarreled again.

Dad did not have a technical education. He could not determine with mathematical precision the formula for today's fool. He was a writer.

Recently I had the opportunity to talk with a wise man. Formerly a mathematician. Now he is a philosopher. How fashionable it is to say these days – “advanced”. He explained to me his philosophy: most people in the world perceive life as a bipolar dimension. In fact, life is multipolar. The multipolar structure of the world underlies all Eastern teachings and religions. Human life is not an oscillation of electric current between plus and minus. The plus and minus that Western Hollywood philosophy relies on ultimately leads to a short circuit.

Everything that the modern philosopher explained to me was probably accurate from a mathematical point of view, but complicated for a simple bipolar man in the street. And most importantly, I knew all this a long time ago from my father, who did not use such sophisticated words as multipolar systems in his speech. He tried to explain to me very clearly that “everything is not so simple.” Not everything is divided into “plus” and “minus”.

How I would like today for my father to hear that I finally began to listen to his words and also... so that at least once I would come down to earth and hear: “How stupid they are!” and applause from the audience!

I regret that he passed away, although with the hope that his children would become wiser, but with uncertainty for this hope!

Speech by Mikhail Zadornov on Khabarovsk television (2006): “Thanks to my father, I have often demonstrated knowledge in my life that was unknown even to specialists. “I remember my father telling me that the Chinese live according to the wisdom of Confucius, so their teachers have always received more than the military. This is the key to the power of their nation, which is primarily confirmed by the birth rate. “I was recently in China and I really surprised the guide with the question: “How much does a professor earn and how much does a general earn?” The guide noted that none of the Russians had ever asked this. I replied that I had read Confucius and I was very interested in how it happened that in five thousand years all the empires collapsed, but China survived. And the guide said that indeed, their teachers still receive more than the military. Q.E.D. That’s why the country didn’t collapse, but also filled the whole world with its products. And if this continues, then the Shuttles for the Americans will soon be assembled according to American patterns, but in China

FROM THE BIOGRAPHY OF NIKOLAY ZADORNOV.

(LITERARY DICTIONARY OF THE USSR):

After the war, the Secretary of the USSR Writers' Union A. Fadeev invited the young writer N. Zadornov to go to Latvia to strengthen friendship with Latvian writers. Nikolai Zadornov agreed to move to the west of the country, where, according to him, in the archives he could study history, diplomacy, maritime affairs... - everything that was necessary to write his planned novels.

FROM AN INTERVIEW WITH MIKHAIL ZADORNOV IN LATVIA. (1993)

Latvian writers respected their father for the fact that he did not want to join the party, for the fact that he did not become secretary of the Writers' Union, for the fact that he never got involved in political intrigues. In turn, their father took them to the Far East, showed them the taiga, the Amur, the soulful Siberians... He believed that in life people were the same as the heroes of his novels, with dignity, and that people with culture could not have national enmity. He always boasted of his friendship with the Latvians.

I often wonder why my father passed away so quickly and unexpectedly? Most likely, he experienced a complete collapse of all ideals. Especially those that he formed in Latvia. As soon as times changed, Latvian writers turned their backs on him. They forgot about who translated them into Russian, thanks to which they received good fees, and about what excursions to protected areas their father organized for them... At one time he helped the magazine “Daugava”, and as soon as Latvia became an independent country , the editors of the magazine declared him crazy. In addition, the owner of the house where our apartment was showed up. My father understood that sooner or later we would be evicted. It was too much for his dignity. The body began to give out, not wanting to live in humiliation. For my father, there was no greater humiliation than the inability to defend Russia when it was insulted. He had a presentiment of what life would do to his ideals, and he did not want to see it.

He also secretly believed that Russia would one day come to life. But when he realized how it “comes to life” under the control of dissidents, emigrants and, as we now say, “democrats,” his body simply did not want to exist in this anymore.

QUOTE FROM MIKHAIL ZADORNOV’S INTERVIEW “AiF” 1992

For me, Riga, Jurmala with its beach have always been the land that gave me strength. Now I don’t like to visit Latvia, and my mother’s dream is to leave Riga. My father just died there. Several serious stresses brought him to his grave. Three owners showed up at our apartment at once, allegedly living there until the forties. It seems that these gentlemen lived in a communal apartment. But most importantly, we somehow suddenly became strangers in this country and strangers to each other.

On one of the last days of his life, I walked my father through his office, where we once read “The Frigate Pallas.” He no longer had the strength to go outside. Even while walking in the room, he held on to me with both hands. I opened the windows wide. Opposite, the park in which he loved to walk was already green. The full-blooded spring was breathing through the window! The father asked to be taken to the shelf with his books. He looked at them for a long time, then he said to me: “I loved these people!” I realized that he was talking about the heroes of his novels. He said goodbye to them. These were practically the last words I heard from him.

Apparently, he didn’t want to remember the real people who surrounded him in life...

FROM AN ARTICLE BY WRITER G.V. GUZENKO (1999):

“For books like these that Nikolai Zadornov wrote, the writer needs to erect a monument on the banks of the Amur!”

FROM AMUR TO DAUGAVA

From an article about the writer N.P. Zadornov, published in one of the magazines in the Far East:

On the occasion of the 90th anniversary of Nikolai Pavlovich Zadornov (1909 – 1992), a monument to the writer was erected in Khabarovsk above the Amur Father.

In memory of the writer, who did a lot for the Far East, the authorities of the city of Khabarovsk allocated a beautiful place for the monument on the banks of the Amur, where Nikolai Zadornov loved to visit. His son Mikhail, a famous satirist, said that it was in this place in 1966 that he and his father first went to the banks of the Amur River and swam in it. Now there will be a monument to Zadornov Sr. in this place. The author of the project, sculptor Vladimir Baburov, admitted that at first the monument did not work out for him, since he tried to sculpt Zadornov Sr., having only his photographs on hand. But then, having met Mikhail Zadornov, I realized that the son was very similar to his father, and some of the father’s details were sculpted from the son.

The monument to Nikolai Zadornov stands not far from the monument to Muravyov-Amursky. We owe it to the great Siberian governor for signing a border treaty with China. Under him, the dream of the great Russian thinker came true, and “Russia grew with Siberia.” It is interesting that in the early 80s, money for the monument to Muravyov-Amursky was transferred not only by Zadornov the father, but, at his request, by his son, who was already a popular satirist by that time.

MOTHER

FROM MIKHAIL ZADORNOV’S ESSAY “MOMS AND WARS” 2000 When I come to Riga, my mother and I often watch TV together. Mom is already over ninety. She was never a member of any party, was not a member of a trade union, the Komsomol, and did not sing patriotic songs in a choir. She didn’t keep pace with anyone, didn’t change her views depending on the change of portraits on the walls, didn’t burn party cards and didn’t clearly repent of her devotion to previous portraits. Therefore, despite his age, he still thinks more soberly than many of our politicians. Having once watched a report from Sevastopol, she said: “Now the Turks can demand Crimea from Ukraine. After all, according to the agreement with Russia, they had no right to it while it was Russian.” But most of all the news worries her about Chechnya. My grandfather, her father, a tsarist officer, served in the Caucasus at the beginning of the century. Mom was born in Maykop, then lived in Krasnodar. “There will be nothing good in Chechnya,” she insistently repeats, listening to even the most optimistic forecasts and assurances of those entrusted to the government. – They don’t know Caucasians, they don’t know history. Mom naively believes that politicians and generals, just like her, worry about the Motherland, but they make mistakes all the time because they received a non-aristocratic education. Sometimes, very gently, I try to prove to my mother what her main mistake is. It evaluates our leaders by placing them in its coordinate system. They exist in a completely different dimension. As stupid as it may seem, I start telling her about the oligarchs, about oil prices, about war as a super-profitable business. What’s even stupider is that such conversations often make me excited, forgetting about my mask of a cynic, and fantasizing passionately about various historical topics. As a rule, because of my fantasies, my mother, sitting in a chair, begins to doze off, while continuing to nod her head, as if in agreement with me. In fact, it is her brain, unspoiled by excessive politicization, that is resourcefully fenced off by sleep from the garbage that fills the heads of average Russians today. And mine too.

FROM A NEWSPAPER PUBLICATION IN RIGA. (1998)

PAGES OF THE PAST CENTURY THROUGH THE EYES OF STOLBOVA

NOBLEWIDES, DAUGHTERS OF A ROYAL OFFICER, WIVES

FAMOUS RUSSIAN WRITER AND MOTHER

POPULAR SATIRIST

ELENA MELKHIOROVNA ZADORNOVY

Helen, daughter of Melchior

Such meetings do not happen often; they are usually called a gift of fate, which means luck. Not in novels or in films - in an ordinary Riga apartment I was plunged headlong into the events of the 17th and First World Wars, Stalin's five-year plans and the Great Patriotic War. Their witness and direct participant, at almost 90 years old, remembered the smallest details of the past century. She kept at home the family coat of arms “White Swan” and a whole portfolio of documents from an ancient family, dating back to the era of the Polish king Stefan Batory. And this was the most valuable asset of Elena Melkhiorovna, born a noblewoman of the old Pokorno-Matusevich family, married to Zadornova.

...At the age of nine she was led to execution. Together with mom and dad. It was a crazy year in '18. August. Heat. We walked along dried grass. She thought: “The grass will grow, but I won’t be there...” The girl’s whole fault was that she happened to be born into the family of the Tsar’s officer Melchior Justinovich Pokorno-Matusevich... Both before and after that day, fate threw up many turbulent events. However, first things first...

1914th. Childhood

Little Lilya was raised as was customary in noble families: she was dressed up, pampered; Until the age of three, nannies worked with her; from the age of six, the girl began to teach music. Her talent for piano and vocals was remarkable. If life had turned out differently, she could have become a singer... But when she was five years old, the First World War began.

— The day was hot. Ice cream makers, as always, drove their carts through the streets and shouted loudly: “Ice cream! Ice cream!” Mom usually gave me money, I ran up and bought these “lickers”, as we called them then...

On this day, her mother was sent a parcel with a particularly fashionable light coat - she ordered clothes from Warsaw. There was also a beautiful coat for little Lily. At five in the evening, as usual, we went for a walk, and since it became cooler, we put on new coats. But she especially remembered the day because the ice cream makers soon disappeared from the streets. This was the beginning of the First World War - through the eyes of a five-year-old girl.

Batum

My father, who graduated from the military school in Dinaburg and had been a tsarist officer since 1903, was mobilized and sent to Batum, to the Turkish front, as the commandant of one of the fortresses. Lilya and her mother went to see him.

— The windows of the room we rented in Batum overlooked the street along which the new commander-in-chief of the Russian army, Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, uncle of Nicholas II, was passing from the station... Then, sitting in a phaeton, my mother and I watched the parade organized in his honor.

And after the parade there was a gala dinner on the boulevard, and Lila got a lot of punishment from her mother for dipping bread into a plate of borscht...

The first thing the commander-in-chief ordered was to evict the officers' families a hundred miles from the city. More than a hundred noble girls - sisters of mercy - came to Batum, the officers' heads were spinning, quarrels and duels arose... My father rented Tchaikovsky's dacha with a large beautiful fountain near Batum. One day, Lilin's beloved kitten drowned in a fountain. She cried bitterly until her father brought her a letter from a drowned kitten. In his message, the furry sufferer explained to the girl the reason for his death: he behaved badly, chased birds, for which he was punished. So unobtrusively, the father reassured his daughter, and at the same time taught a lesson: you cannot do evil...

In winter, Lilya went to kindergarten, which was run by the baroness sisters. One day they spoke French, the next in German, they read and drew a lot.

"Discard it!"

...There were battles on the Turkish front. When the father went with the troops to capture Trebizond, the mother and daughter went back to Maykop... In 17, Lilya went to the first grade of the gymnasium. On the day when the tsar abdicated the throne, a girl brought up in the strict traditions of noble etiquette, having listened to the high school girls, returned home with the words: “That’s it. No more comments to me: there is no tsar, I do what I want.”

The 18th arrived. The fronts were falling apart. Soon the father returned home. A terrible time has come. Maikop passed from hand to hand... The day before, the Bolsheviks scattered leaflets in the city. Pogroms were expected. At 8 am everyone was awakened by the first salvos. Lily's mother, looking out the window, saw crowds of people running. Grabbing her little daughter and not even throwing on a blouse, she rushed out into the street. The father rushed after her, grabbing a shawl as he went to cover her shoulders.

Some on rulers and phaetons, some on foot - people fled to the bridge, along which the retreating White Guards were already moving. Civilians were not allowed through. To hide from the bullets whistling around us, we went down to the very shore. But they only managed to reach the mill - officers ran towards them shouting: “Don’t go any further, there are Reds there!” - and rushed to swim.

We spent the night in a barn on hay. Large rats were running nearby. The night was moonlit. In the morning, the Red Army soldiers came to inspect the mill, one of the residents of the neighboring houses showed them where the officer’s family was hiding... At that moment, the Pokorno-Matusevichs were standing in the alley. Seeing them, the Reds with swords drawn rushed at their father. Without hesitation for a second, Lilina’s mother hugged him and covered him with herself. This stopped the soldiers.

Then all three were taken to the regiment. To be shot. Intoxicated with victory and alcohol, the Red Army soldiers shouted: “Take them out!” But no one undertook to carry out the sentence: everyone was drunk. They took me to another regiment. And then fate intervened. The regiment commander turned out to be a man who had fought on the Turkish front together with Melchior Iustinovich. He respected Lily's father because, unlike other officers, he never beat soldiers, considering it a humiliation of his dignity. Considering Pokorno-Matusevich to be an exceptionally noble person, the commander ordered the family to be released... Elena Melkhiorovna was afraid of crowds until the end of her life.

They returned to the city through looted streets. Cards were scattered everywhere around rich mansions: on the eve of the pogrom, the intelligentsia amused themselves with preference and solitaire... A search was underway in the house of the manufacturer Terziev, where they rented an apartment. But no one was touched, the owner’s daughters managed to change into maids and thus escaped...

The family of the nobleman Savateev, a Marxist by conviction, lived in the same house with them. Under the Bolsheviks, he held a high post - chairman of the city executive committee. Savateev was imprisoned under the Whites. When the Reds arrived, he was released. Savateev returned home. The next day, the White Guards recaptured the city. Already at five in the evening they came to arrest Savateev. That same night he was hanged in the square.

"Remember your last name"

In March 20, Denikin retreated, and the Bolsheviks again came to Maykop. On May 20, former tsarist officers were summoned to register at the Kavkazskaya station (now the city of Kropotkin). Saying goodbye, the father hugged his daughter with the words: “Little one, remember your real name - Pokorno-Matusevich.” All the officers who left with him were shot. The father was saved by a miracle. Having given money to the guard, he asked to buy bread, and when he walked away, he took his documents from the table and ate them mixed with black bread. Instead of being shot, he was sent to labor colonies like the Gulag for three years.

“We lived with friends,” Elena Melkhiorovna recalled. “They treated me terribly; my mother walked around in my father’s shoes.” She grabbed any job. For two years I did not attend gymnasium, because in winter I had nothing to wear. The family shoemaker Zyuzyukin offered my mother a job: she cut out blanks for fashionable white shoes from coarse tea towels. Somehow they made ends meet.

Twist of fate

— In 1923, my father returned from the camps completely ill. Every month he went to report to the GPU, and his mother waited for him on the corner. At the age of 60, my father was purged by the Soviet apparatus, was left without work and went to study accounting courses.

After school in 1928, Elena was accepted into the Krasnodar Music College - immediately into the second year. But there were no opportunities to study—you had to pay for your studies. So she did not become a pianist. A month later she married a young man who had long been in love with her. In 1930 a son was born, they named him Lolliy. Elena dreamed that he would become a violinist or a diplomat...

The husband was registered in Moscow - in the Ministry of Heavy Industry, and worked at various construction sites: near Kashira, in Stalingrad, Sevastopol, Izhevsk, Krasnodar, Ufa... The family traveled around the country with him. In Izhevsk and Krasnodar, Elena worked as a proofreader in publishing houses. And when they moved to Ufa for the construction of a large plant, she was hired by the factory newspaper. And one day…

One day, a journalist from a city newspaper, Nikolai Zadornov, appeared at the editorial office. Elena criticized his essay to smithereens. This is where love began.

“His father was arrested, accused of sabotage and died in prison. This stain remained on Nikolai Pavlovich all his life. As for me - noble origin. Our common destinies made us very close.

When her husband went to a sanatorium for a month, Elena left home. Soon a terrible scandal arose: how could it be that a journalist stole the engineer’s wife? My husband sent me a threatening letter. With this letter she went to the registry office, and there they issued a divorce without any trial. And the secretary of the regional committee, a Bashkir, meeting Zadornov, patted him on the shoulder: “Well done!” Nevertheless, we decided to leave for Moscow - away from trouble.

In Moscow, Nikolai Pavlovich, who had been fond of theater since his youth, met an acquaintance at the actor's labor exchange, director Voznesensky, who went through Stalin's camps in the 1930s. He persuaded him to go to Komsomolsk-on-Amur, where the actors who were serving time built a theater with their own hands. So Elena found herself at the end of the world.

"I'll give you a sign..."

The war came to the Far East on Monday - after all, there was a seven-hour difference from Moscow. Mobilization began. On July 9 they decided to register their marriage. We stood in line at the registry office from morning until five in the evening. I saw my husband off in tears. And at night the knock on the window returned. The commission turned me down due to severe myopia.

Throughout the war, Nikolai Pavlovich worked at Khabarovsk radio, and served as a special correspondent on the Japanese front. In August 1942, daughter Mila was born. And a month later, Elena’s father died in German-occupied Krasnodar. Then she did not yet know about her father’s death: there was no connection with Krasnodar. But the little daughter cried so much that day that she wrote down the date. Once Melchior Iustinovich, who was fond of astrology and occult sciences, told her: “If I die without you, I will give you a sign.” And so it happened. The spiritual connection between father and daughter was very strong.

To this day, the place where my father is buried is unknown: the Germans did not keep records. Maybe that's why it seems like he never left. But it’s really nearby: in the yellowed pedigree sheets, in letters, in photographs - and in memory...

FROM A NEWSPAPER PUBLICATION IN RIGA. (2005)

Until her last days, Elena Melkhiorovna Zadornova retained a clear mind, good memory and the kindness of a truly intelligent person who knew a lot about life. In 2003, Elena Melkhiorovna passed away. “Only from that moment,” admitted Mikhail Zadornov, “I realized that my childhood was over.”

LITHUANIAN RELATIVES

On his mother’s side, Mikhail Zadornov had noble roots, on his father’s side, there were priests, teachers, doctors and peasants in the family.

Journalist: — You and your sister Lyudmila are persistently trying to restore the family tree. And it seems they even discovered family ties in Lithuania?

— My maternal grandfather was a tsarist officer, his brothers lived in Lithuania. When Lithuania separated after the revolution (I don’t understand why the Baltic countries don’t like Lenin, because thanks to him they gained independence for the first time in 200 years), grandfather lost all ties with his brothers. Nowadays, my sister started researching family roots and sent inquiries everywhere. And one day they sent us our family tree from Lithuania. It was so interesting to read and look at.

And then I went to Lithuania for concerts. And on the local radio they asked me half-jokingly: “Why do you come to us so often?” I answered: “Because I belong here, my ancestors lived here.” And I named the surname Matuszewicz from Zarasai. Our relatives apparently came to Zarasai from Poland when the Warsaw-St. Petersburg road was being built.

Suddenly the editor rushes into the room and says that Matuszewicz is calling from Zarasai and asks why his name is being mentioned on air? The next day I went to visit him and saw a nice man... with the profile of my mother. It turned out that this is my second cousin!

He showed me a family album, which he kept in the garden during the Soviet era and only recently dug up. “I found almost all the relatives except two branches,” he said. “Maybe you recognize someone?” I look - and there is a wedding photo of my grandparents - the same as my mother's.

My Lithuanian second cousin showed me a monument to the Matuszewicz family at the Zarasai cemetery. This is how I found relatives on my mother’s side and even our family cemetery.

As I looked at him, my second cousin boasted:

- We take care of this cemetery!

- Well done! Impressive!

- Like?

- Yes, but it’s too early for me to come here! Besides, I am a Russian citizen. Your authorities will not allow me here.

FROM MIKHAIL ZADORNOV’S ESSAY “MOMS AND WARS” 2000 If mom falls asleep during the “News,” she doesn’t do it for long; she wakes up toward the end. For dessert, the News always talks about something, as they say, “positive.” The stern, slightly bitter voice of the announcer at the beginning of the news becomes kinder towards the end of the program. It becomes like the voice of a Soviet announcer who tells us about our industrial successes, about how much steel and iron was smelted and soda produced per capita. Since nowadays they have forgotten about the soul, the announcer, in the same voice of a storyteller, tells us about a hippopotamus born in the Moscow Zoo or the wedding of a gypsy baron. One day my mother opened her eyes when they were showing the Moscow Hat Ball. Yes! In distant Russian cities there are funerals of paratroopers, hunger, radiation, an increased degree of hatred, a hopeless future, an illogical life, and on the screen there is a hat ball! There are so many hats here. And they look like wheels, and like bonfires smoldering on their heads, and like flower beds, and like kimonos, and like branches of some strange plants, and like thatched roofs. After what we heard at the beginning of the News, such a ball of hats seems like a kind of fiesta in a madhouse. Seeing the priest at the hat ball, my mother perked up. “Only the heads of faiths can resolve all the conflicts in the world,” she tells me. “You pitch this idea to someone when they interview you.” I agree: “Indeed, war between nations is impossible, we have fought! Now if there is a world war, it will be between the flocks. You're right. We should mention this in some interview.” One of the businessmen's wives shows off his hat, which looks like a burdock leaf with a crow's nest on top! She proudly tells TV viewers that her hat was consecrated by her personal friend, the ruler, who exclusively absolves her exclusive sins in his exclusive boutique-temple, and therefore she expects to receive one of the exclusive prizes at the ball. “Thank God that at least our president is not at this ball,” says my mother. She believes our president, she constantly gives me evidence of his devotion to Russia. I also want to believe him, but I’m still afraid. I need the war in Chechnya to end first!

DAUGHTER

...Since childhood, she loved all animals indiscriminately. As if coming to us from outer space, she also knew that animals are kinder than people. When her daughter was ten years old, she begged the janitor at a children's camp to give her a kitten, which he was carrying to drown. However, she later threw the kitten to me. From a cowardly, disheveled lump, he turned into a smug, overweight garden cat. He still lives in my yard. On the gate I wrote “Beware of the angry cat.” In fact, the rescued man turned out to be such a good-natured person that he is afraid of butterflies flying past him, the sight of a raven turns pale and hides under the bushes from dragonflies...

When my daughter grew up and cartoons could no longer remain a lifeline from the disappointments that fell upon her, so that she would not be completely disappointed in life by looking at people, we took her on a trip to Africa to look at the animals...

From the story “Dreams and Plans” by Mikhail Zadornov We are leaving Africa. A farewell look at Kilimanjaro. Unfortunately, my father never found out that I managed to make his dream come true - to travel to my heart's content! In recent months, my father has been very ill. When he passed away - his daughter was two years old at the time - he baptized her, blessing her. Then - it was already difficult for him to speak - he looked at me carefully, and I understood this look: “Don’t forget to read to her what we read with you in childhood. She will need this someday." In recent years, my father and I have quarreled especially a lot. I did not accept his views, I believed in capitalism with a human face and did not agree that squabbling and democracy were the same thing. He once told me: “If you raise your children, then you will become wiser!” I think that while raising me, my father understood a lot in life. Now it's my turn to get smarter!

Journalist: Did you read any books to your daughter as a child? How do you like your father to read any books out loud?

- Yes. I also managed to put together a good library for Lena. When she was only eight years old, I read to her in this library with the expression... no, I didn’t read it - I played Gogol’s “The Inspector General.” He ran around the room for everyone, waving his arms! After that, she and I were in a good mood for a month.

By the way, thanks to my daughter, I unexpectedly realized that sometimes giving up some adult interest for the sake of a child revives the mood. One day I really needed to watch the evening News. In Chechnya, a mess began again. My daughter came up with a rubber ball and asked me to play basketball with her. In the sports room, I made a gymnastics wall for her - children love to climb higher and look down on their parents - and attached a children's basketball hoop under the ceiling.

We always played honestly: she stood tall, and I was on my knees. My awkward, clumsy movements amused her more than the clown spanking on the arena at the circus.

At that moment, when I had just sat down like a man in front of the TV, my daughter’s eyes were so pleading that I could not refuse her. Of course, when we started playing with her, I was upset that I wouldn’t watch “The News.” And when we finished, I didn’t even think about them. So my daughter taught me in time to give up what we sometimes consider necessary, but in fact this necessary is simply the result of the generally accepted “this is how it should be.” Well, would I watch “News”? I would be upset for the whole coming night! After all, we have

If you want to drink to your repose, look at the latest news!

To this day, when I get sad, I remember our match, which she, of course, won! No, in which we both won!

From the diary of Mikhail Zadornov In the fifties, there were no such toys as there are now in children's stores. There weren’t even cars that children now drive around all the parks, joyfully pressing on the pedals and imagining themselves as cool adults. The first time I saw a pedal machine was when I was already 14 years old. I looked at her and thought: “Why am I already so old?” During that Soviet toyless childhood, my father made some toys for me himself with our Russian ingenuity. For example, he made soldiers from simple bottle caps. Whole armies! At that time we could only dream about tin soldiers. He taught me too. First, from some colored piece of paper we cut out a strip as wide as the height of the cork, wrapped the cork in it and tied the ribbon tightly with thread in the middle. With a good imagination, the result was a soldier! In a colored uniform, tied at the waist with a soldier's belt - a thread. Colored thread belts were worn by officers. Pancake caps cut from the same paper were glued onto the cork on top. Dad and I made entire armies out of our own traffic jams and those collected from all our neighbors. Our real battles took place in his office between the cabinets, under the table and behind the chairs. Empty shoe boxes served as fortresses. And the observation tower is a floor lamp.

After the incident when I went with my daughter to play basketball, refusing the “News”, I understood why my dad never refused my request to play in traffic jams in the evening!

Journalist: What other books have you read to your daughter?

- Sherlock Holmes, Pushkin's fairy tales, Yesenin's poems... I understood that the poems of Akhmatova, Mandelstam, Pasternak and other fashionable ones today, but for me personally, cold poets will be forced to read them at school. In the school curriculum, in my opinion, it is wrong to pay excessive attention to the poems of some poets simply because they were considered anti-Soviet in our time. Contrary to the past! But what do children have to do with it? In Soviet times there were many more interesting writers than anti-Soviet ones. It seemed to me necessary to connect my daughter with warm poetry from childhood. Not to the poetry that is “anti”, but that which is “for”!

It’s interesting that Lena fell in love with Pushkin’s poems and fairy tales so much that when, during one of my conversations with friends, she heard that a person’s soul is reborn, she told me that in a past life she was Pushkin!

True, she was then five years old.

Journalist: Have you read Dumas to her? Like "The Three Musketeers"?

- I started. But something didn't work out.

Journalist: Why? This is real “action” for children?

— Apparently the novel, as you say, was “action” for the children of our generation. After the Hollywood “action” films, he already looks like Prishvin compared to “The Adventures of Major Pronin”. She even expressed an interesting thought to me, which I thought about, and we stopped reading “The Three Musketeers”: “D'Artagnan is disgusting. Bonacieux sheltered him, and he seduced his wife and also mocked him. And his friends are murderers. So many people were killed because of the pendants of the unfaithful queen. I don't like this book."

Journalist: Did she express her opinion about anyone else that you remember?

— About Mayakovsky. But that was later, when they took it at school. I remember she asked such a question that I was speechless: “Dad, was Mayakovsky making fun of himself in poetry?” "Why?" “Well, how could he write seriously: “I take a priceless load out of my wide trousers with a duplicate” - this is an obvious joke! What are you doing? He's a great funny poet! Remember: “He moved a thousand provinces in his skull.” Absolutely a horror story!”

After her words, I thought for the first time. What if she's right? Maybe Mayakovsky, being a verbal tightrope walker, really walked on a razor’s edge, mocking the wicked Soviet deputies in many poems? And the Soviet of Deputies did not recognize the soul of the mockingbird poet behind his bright images and rich metaphors? Maybe this was the poet’s main disappointment, that his pamphlets were mistaken for panegyrics?

Sometimes children express very fresh thoughts! Children have a lot to teach today's parents. Their impressions of life and the knowledge that they brought with them from Space have not yet been soiled by our “this is how it should be” and “this is how it should be.”

Journalist: Is she a good student? An excellent pupil?

Thank God no! My mother once asked teachers to be strict and picky with me. So we asked the school not to give our daughter inflated grades under any circumstances. Moreover, I told her: “I don’t care about your grades, I care about your knowledge and also your life interests.” I understand that this is probably not pedagogical, but I have always been afraid of dealing with excellent students in life. In short, I wouldn’t go into reconnaissance with an excellent student. He will immediately sell everything for a fiver. A five can be a grade in childhood, five thousand dollars in adolescence, and five million in old age. Most of today's Russian democrats who are in power were excellent students in schools! And how many excellent students I have seen - children of rich parents. Many of them bought A's in order to show off their children. Here he is, they say, we have an excellent student! And then their children, after finishing school, got hooked on drugs. Because neither grades nor parents’ money protect their children from drugs. Interests only! If my daughter continues to be interested in questions like “Why was Mayakovsky such a cool poet that he wrote “I take out my purple book from my wide trousers,” she will no longer have time for drugs. After all, such questions will be more than enough for her life.

When we were with her in Crete, in the Knossos Palace, she asked the guide: “Could Theseus deceive everyone?” "In what sense?" - asked the guide. “Well, for example, go into a labyrinth, stand in it and come out without fighting the monster, and then tell everyone that he killed it. They believed him, they didn’t let the Minotaur eat anymore, and the monster died!”

Journalist: And what about the guide?

— The guide was very surprised. I thought about this question and couldn’t find anything better to answer: “Actually, of course I could!” - and thought even more deeply.

Besides our joint readings, it was important for me to travel around the world with her. Now there is such an opportunity. It was in our childhood that I was forced to travel through books, sitting in my father’s library. Of course, we completed with her the program obligatory for modern children of wealthy parents: Vienna, Paris, Israel... Yes, I almost forgot, the United Arab Emirates! These routes are now a mandatory program for our “cool” skaters. But in the free program we also visited Russian cities that the children of rich people don’t even know about: Vladivostok, Khabarovsk, Novosibirsk... We celebrated the New Year in Akademgorodok, where I dreamed of working. After I realized that due to health reasons I would not become an astronaut, I decided to become an academician - I will always have enough health to become an academician. We visited the Urals at the excavations of the ancient city of Arkaim, which dates back more than 2000 BC... We drove along the Ussuri region by car... We traveled around Africa, celebrated the New Year on Kilimanjaro, were in Koktebel and Kara-Dag, walked the Botkin trail along the slopes of Ai Petri ... I tried to unobtrusively take her somewhere so that she could feel the energy of Russia and so that she would be inspired to love nature! So that she can see something that no one except her father will even advise her to see.

In Magnitogorsk, I asked to show us the world’s largest Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works, where one rolling mill is one and a half kilometers long, and in Chelyabinsk there is one of the most modern pipe-rolling shops. She was with a friend and, oddly enough, they were interested in it because they grew up in the Baltic states. There, like in the West, children have no impressions except from quarrels with parents who do not want to let them go to the disco. And then both of their eyes began to sparkle, their pupils, captive to Western education, began to move. No joke, they saw molten metal for the first time! And how the steelworkers stir it with a big “ladle”. And after visiting Arkaim, where the scientist Zdanovich told and showed that every house in the oldest Russian city had its own bronze smelting furnace, the daughter went into the encyclopedia, double-checked the scientist whether bronze really appeared in Europe five hundred years later than in our country. Ural?

It would seem, why does the girl need all this? Yes, to hear in life not two notes, but seven! So that someday, even when I’m no longer there, a world of multipolar sensations, and not bipolar pleasures, will open up before her!

Journalist: And which city did she like best?

- Vladivostok!

Journalist: Why? Architecture, nature, river, embankment?

“She didn’t expect that at the end of the world there could be such a beautiful city, surrounded by taiga, and inside there was a bay with the cool name “Golden Horn.”

Journalist: Well, were you also interested in visiting places where stars of your rank do not go?

- And how! Moreover, by showing her all this, I myself made important conclusions. At the same Ural factories, for example, workers receive no more than 300-400 dollars a month, and the owners of the factories - local oligarchs - have guns with diamond front sights. They are super millionaires! The foreman who took me around one of these factories, by the way, he had two higher educations, complained about the complete disrespect of the owners for the workers. True, he warned me not to mention this on stage, otherwise he would be fired.

Then I had an argument with one of these Russian capitalists with a big human face. He tried to prove that they do a lot of charitable work for the same workers. For example, a ski resort was built near Magnitogorsk. I laughed: “What kind of workers is this for? Don’t make me laugh, I have a cold on my lip, it’s funny to laugh! The ski resort near Magnitogorsk is needed in order to lure the president and, after he beautifully slides down the mountain in front of photo reporters and television cameras, to beg something from him.” “But we also built a water park with a hotel!” — the oligarch continued to insist on his charity. “And this is generally the most direct income!”

We finally quarreled with him, arguing about the Soviet past. He argued that only now has a truly noble moral time arrived for Russia. And that this is the merit of today's Democrats. I reminded him that the same Magnitogorsk plant, from which he makes his money, by the way, was built by the Soviet government, by order of Stalin. And it was built in such a way that it is still profitable. It’s not for me to explain to him which one! The objection was common: Stalin built it all on blood, killing thousands of people. Here I could not stand it: “But from this he did not have diamond front sights on his own gun, nor did he save stolen money in offshore bank accounts. Yes, these factories are built on blood. But you, today’s “democrats,” get your money from this very blood. You are even worse than Stalin!”

Returning to Moscow, I talked with one of the local bankers. I asked him, is it really impossible to introduce a law in the state so that the owners of enterprises have the right to take only a certain percentage of the profit? 10 or 20 percent. And the state should ensure that they comply with this law. The banker answered me, almost without thinking: “Of course, everything is possible. True, they will steal it anyway. But if the state properly controls financial flows, no more than 10 percent will be stolen.” It will be like in civilized countries, which means within the European standard of theft.

So, thanks to my daughter, with whom we visited these giant plants, I practically understood for myself the main starting point for the national idea of ​​reviving the Russian economy.

Today we are ruled by hucksters. And in power, and in politics, and in economics! And people who create should rule, not those who trade. The Creator created us in His own image. That is, creators! The word "worker" is made up of the syllables "ra" and "bo", which means "light" and "god". This is a divine word. Since slave owners began to rule the world, they shortened it to “slave” and tried to get people to change their attitude towards this word over thousands of years as something plebeian. I'm not saying there shouldn't be traders. They are needed too. Only they must play according to the laws of the working man, and not we according to their laws. If merchants help creators, then they also become creators. Otherwise they are creatures!

You see what thoughts sometimes come to mind if you are seriously involved in raising children!

However, I would not want to give the wrong impression that my daughter and I have such an angelic relationship. Unfortunately, like everyone else, we quarrel, and quite violently. It can be hard and sad. Now she is at her most difficult age. For some reason, in Russia, children in their puberty years began to be called the disgusting word “teenager”. While there is a good Russian word “teenager”. Even one of the children wrote in a school essay that Dostoevsky is the author of the novel “Teenager”.

However, I try to restrain myself and not shout at her. When she was twelve years old, we once had a big quarrel. To the point where I wanted to punish her with a belt. She became hysterical, she cried so much that I promised her that I would never yell at her again in my life. It can be difficult, but you have to keep your word. I only told her once or twice: “I remember what I promised you, but you drove me crazy, so now I’ll shout and won’t do it again.”

I'm not sure I'm right. In any case, I have had to take Valocordin more than once in recent years.

When I think about the eternal problem of “fathers and sons”, about how angry parents, including myself, get instead of a calming pill, I sometimes remember the couplet of the young poet A. Alyakin:

For the night's suffering, for the mental anguish,

Our grandchildren will take revenge on our children for us!

I am sure that she will grow up and understand me, as I belatedly understood my parents. Of course, I would like her to do this earlier, while she still has me.

All doctors unanimously say: all the best is instilled in a child under 12 years of age. Then, those feelings that are invested in it are simply formatted by society. They are structured and brought into a certain system, often narrowing the child’s creative potential. I don't want to do this. Yes, she did not conduct a large symphony orchestra at five years old. And wonderful! But we played basketball with her. We read books. She, like me, is a generally capable child. Therefore, for a long time he will be a person without specific occupations. Let it go! But, I am sure that our reading in the library, playing basketball and traveling will help her out more than once in her life!

By the way, according to numerous psychics, my brain generally dozed until I was twenty-seven. I woke up only after I recovered from drunkenness for the first time. Of course, I don’t wish this on my daughter. Therefore, I honestly tell her about how bad her father was in his youth. Why am I doing this? Yes, because children always don’t want to be like their parents! And they especially don’t like it when parents lie.

I am going to bequeath to her, like my father to me, a sense of humor, intransigence to betrayal, devotion to friends and an inquisitive mind. This is what I understand - a real legacy! Not like a house with a lake in Switzerland, which any child can drink or smoke...

Journalist: By the way, about a sense of humor. Do you think it was passed on to her by inheritance?

- Hope. True, when she was four years old, she first went backstage to my concert in St. Petersburg. Four thousand room hall. In such a hall, the audience laughs especially, as if inciting each other with their own critical mass. Pleased with my success, I left the stage, and she looked at me and cried:

“What,” I ask, “happened?”

- Dad, why is everyone laughing at you?

But the years passed... She has been behind the scenes more than once since then and, I am sure, she can no longer imagine life without an ironic attitude towards her. Recently, for example, I watched how our mother’s friends said goodbye when they left us:

- Dad, did you notice? This is definitely for you. They kiss and say “kiss” at the same time. That is, as if the one who was kissed is completely stupid and does not understand that he was kissed. Insert into “Only our man!”

I like that she is in love with KVN. Moreover, in KVN as a whole and in all its participants by name. In general, I think it’s very cool that KVN has been revived in our country, and so powerfully too. And here they play everywhere: in institutes, schools, kindergartens, nurseries and... even in zones! Isn’t this the saving inclination of All Rus'? There is no such youth game in any country in the world. KVN united all fast-thinking young people. Almost replaced the Komsomol in the best sense of the word. By the way, she has many friends among KVN players. She introduced me to many KVN players. Most of them are very capable. They only lack a little professionalism, but they know how to rock things. Our generation needs to learn this from them. And they also have a lot to learn from us! This is how, in fact, the problem of “fathers and sons” is easily solved.

Journalist: In what other ways did your daughter try to be like you?

“She especially respected me when I was five or six years old, when she saw that, despite my age, I could walk on my hands.” Soon I also learned how to do a stand upside down. I tumbled all day long, everywhere: on the beach, on the lawns, at home, at a party. Apparently, like me, she likes to see the world not upside down, as we are used to, but as it should be. Then, after seeing how I did the splits on stage, I learned how to do this too. Only, unlike me, it doesn’t hurt her.

Journalist: It’s probably not easy for her to be Zadornov’s daughter among her friends? Everyone knows you. There should be increased attention to it.

“On the one hand, my last name gives her some pride. On the other hand, it is, of course, a burden to her. Too often in adolescence, children are cruel and try to say something nasty about mom or dad, especially if they are famous people.

But, in my opinion, she endures this “trouble” very well. By the way, she herself asks me not to show her anywhere, not to involve her in any actions or TV shows, as famous parents often do with their children. In this sense, I think she is right. I have never, excuse the hackneyed word, promoted her! Now, for the first time, in a conversation with you, I am talking about it in such detail. And that’s because she has already grown up. So, let him continue to strive for independence. Trying to become an individual, without taking into account his father's last name. I once told her: “Daughter, there are those who are defeated in battle, and there are those who surrender without a fight.” I don't think she's going to give up. Recently I asked her:

- Maybe you want to change your last name?

We must give her credit, she thought at first, then answered quite confidently:

- No I do not want to!

What is valuable to me is that she actually thought at first. This means that my last name sometimes really depresses her. Obliges. As they say now, it's loading.

Journalist: Have you ever shared a drink with your guests at the table? Did you make any toasts in her honor? If “yes,” then which one of them stood out to you the most?

“On the last New Year’s Eve, I literally told her the following: “By solving your problems, I have become a lot smarter!” The ancients were probably right when they said that children come to their parents to improve them. Thanks to you, daughter, dealing with your problems, I have definitely changed for the better. In short, you have already completed your task. She raised me and my mother. Now she must help us fulfill our task - to educate you! And that means at least sometimes you have to obey.”

Journalist: Her name is Lena. Was she named after your mother?

Yes, my mother’s name was Elena, my daughter’s name was Lena, and my daughter’s mother was also Lena. Therefore, you can simply call me Lenin! Such a pseudonym would suit me better than some! But, unfortunately, it has already been used in history.

As my friends say, my daughter looks like me, but she’s pretty.

So far I have not managed to raise my daughter as a full-fledged Asian. Europe is pulling it over!

Nikolai Pavlovich Zadornov(1909-1992) - Russian Soviet writer, Honored Cultural Worker of the Latvian SSR (), laureate of the Stalin Prize of the second degree (). Father of Mikhail Zadornov.

Biography

Nikolai Pavlovich Zadornov owns two cycles of historical novels about the development of the Far East by the Russian people in the 19th century, about the exploits of explorers. The first cycle consists of 4 novels: “The Far Land” (books 1-2, -), “First Discovery” (, first title - “To the Ocean”, 1949), “Captain Nevelskoy” (books 1-2, -) and "Ocean War" (books 1-2, -). The second cycle (about the development of the Far East by peasant migrants) is thematically related to the first: the novels “Cupid the Father” (books 1-2, -1946) and “Gold Rush” (1969). In 1971, he published the novel “Tsunami” - about the expedition of Admiral E.V. Putyatin to Japan in -1855. He also wrote a novel about modernity “Yellow, Green, Blue...” (Book 1), a book of travel essays “The Blue Hour” () and others.

The son of Nikolai Pavlovich Zadornov is Mikhail Zadornov, a famous satirist writer.

Sources

• Kazak V. Lexicon of Russian literature of the 20th century = Lexikon der russischen Literatur ab 1917 / [trans. with German]. - M. : RIC "Culture", 1996. - XVIII, 491, p. - 5000 copies. - ISBN 5-8334-0019-8.

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Links

• . Retrieved August 17, 2008. .
• . Retrieved August 17, 2008. .
• (Russian) . Retrieved November 5, 2009.
• - official website of the library named after Nikolai Zadornov

Excerpt characterizing Zadornov, Nikolai Pavlovich

Having given two ends along Podnovinsky, Balaga began to hold back and, returning back, stopped the horses at the intersection of Staraya Konyushennaya.
The good fellow jumped down to hold the horses' bridles, Anatol and Dolokhov walked along the sidewalk. Approaching the gate, Dolokhov whistled. The whistle responded to him and after that the maid ran out.
“Go into the yard, otherwise it’s obvious he’ll come out now,” she said.
Dolokhov remained at the gate. Anatole followed the maid into the yard, turned the corner and ran onto the porch.
Gavrilo, Marya Dmitrievna’s huge traveling footman, met Anatoly.
“Please see the lady,” the footman said in a deep voice, blocking the way from the door.
- Which lady? Who are you? – Anatole asked in a breathless whisper.
- Please, I've been ordered to bring him.
- Kuragin! back,” Dolokhov shouted. - Treason! Back!
Dolokhov, at the gate where he stopped, was struggling with the janitor, who was trying to lock the gate behind Anatoly as he entered. Dolokhov, with his last effort, pushed the janitor away and, grabbing the hand of Anatoly as he ran out, pulled him out the gate and ran with him back to the troika.

Marya Dmitrievna, finding a tearful Sonya in the corridor, forced her to confess everything. Having intercepted Natasha’s note and read it, Marya Dmitrievna, with the note in her hand, went up to Natasha.
“Bastard, shameless,” she told her. - I don’t want to hear anything! - Pushing away Natasha, who was looking at her with surprised but dry eyes, she locked it and ordered the janitor to let through the gate those people who would come that evening, but not to let them out, and ordered the footman to bring these people to her, sat down in the living room, waiting kidnappers.
When Gavrilo came to report to Marya Dmitrievna that the people who had come had run away, she stood up with a frown and folded her hands back, walked around the rooms for a long time, thinking about what she should do. At 12 o'clock at night, feeling the key in her pocket, she went to Natasha's room. Sonya sat in the corridor, sobbing.
- Marya Dmitrievna, let me see her for God’s sake! - she said. Marya Dmitrievna, without answering her, unlocked the door and entered. “Disgusting, nasty... In my house... Vile little girl... I just feel sorry for my father!” thought Marya Dmitrievna, trying to quench her anger. “No matter how difficult it is, I’ll tell everyone to be silent and hide it from the count.” Marya Dmitrievna entered the room with decisive steps. Natasha lay on the sofa, covering her head with her hands, and did not move. She lay in the same position in which Marya Dmitrievna had left her.
- Good, very good! - said Marya Dmitrievna. - In my house, lovers can make dates! There's no point in pretending. You listen when I talk to you. – Marya Dmitrievna touched her hand. - You listen when I talk. You have disgraced yourself like a very lowly girl. I would do that to you, but I feel sorry for your father. I'll hide it. – Natasha did not change her position, but only her whole body began to jump up from silent, convulsive sobs that choked her. Marya Dmitrievna looked back at Sonya and sat down on the sofa next to Natasha.
- He’s lucky that he left me; “Yes, I will find him,” she said in her rough voice; – Do you hear what I’m saying? “She put her big hand under Natasha’s face and turned her towards her. Both Marya Dmitrievna and Sonya were surprised to see Natasha’s face. Her eyes were shiny and dry, her lips were pursed, her cheeks were drooping.
“Leave... those... that I... I... will die...” she said, with an angry effort she tore herself away from Marya Dmitrievna and lay down in her previous position.
“Natalya!...” said Marya Dmitrievna. - I wish you well. You lie down, just lie there, I won’t touch you, and listen... I won’t tell you how guilty you are. You know it yourself. Well, now your father is coming tomorrow, what will I tell him? A?
Again Natasha's body shook with sobs.
- Well, he will find out, well, your brother, groom!
“I don’t have a fiance, I refused,” Natasha shouted.
“It doesn’t matter,” continued Marya Dmitrievna. - Well, they’ll find out, so why leave it like that? After all, he, your father, I know him, after all, if he challenges him to a duel, will it be good? A?
- Oh, leave me alone, why did you interfere with everything! For what? For what? who asked you? - Natasha shouted, sitting up on the sofa and looking angrily at Marya Dmitrievna.
- What did you want? - Marya Dmitrievna cried out again, getting excited, - why did they lock you up? Well, who stopped him from going to the house? Why should they take you away like some kind of gypsy?... Well, if he had taken you away, what do you think, he wouldn’t have been found? Your father, or brother, or fiancé. And he’s a scoundrel, a scoundrel, that’s what!
“He’s better than all of you,” Natasha cried, standing up. - If you hadn’t interfered... Oh, my God, what is this, what is this! Sonya, why? Go away!... - And she began to sob with such despair with which people only mourn such grief, which they feel themselves to be the cause of. Marya Dmitrievna began to speak again; but Natasha shouted: “Go away, go away, you all hate me, you despise me.” – And again she threw herself on the sofa.
Marya Dmitrievna continued for some time to admonish Natasha and convince her that all this must be hidden from the count, that no one would find out anything if only Natasha took it upon herself to forget everything and not show to anyone that anything had happened. Natasha didn't answer. She didn’t cry anymore, but she began to feel chills and trembling. Marya Dmitrievna put a pillow on her, covered her with two blankets and brought her some lime blossom herself, but Natasha did not respond to her. “Well, let him sleep,” said Marya Dmitrievna, leaving the room, thinking that she was sleeping. But Natasha was not sleeping and, with fixed, open eyes, looked straight ahead from her pale face. All that night Natasha did not sleep, and did not cry, and did not speak to Sonya, who got up and approached her several times.
The next day, for breakfast, as Count Ilya Andreich had promised, he arrived from the Moscow region. He was very cheerful: the deal with the buyer was going well and nothing was keeping him now in Moscow and in separation from the countess, whom he missed. Marya Dmitrievna met him and told him that Natasha had become very unwell yesterday, that they had sent for a doctor, but that she was better now. Natasha did not leave her room that morning. With pursed, cracked lips, dry, fixed eyes, she sat by the window and restlessly peered at those passing along the street and hurriedly looked back at those entering the room. She was obviously waiting for news about him, waiting for him to come or write to her.

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29 Mar

The outstanding Far Eastern writer Nikolai Pavlovich Zadornov spent his entire life studying the topic of the Far East. He was born in Penza on December 5, 1909. The writer’s childhood and school years also came to Chita, where the Zadornov family lived. Since childhood, he touched history. I saw the Japanese occupation, lived in a city that was given life by exiled Decembrists.

At school he was the organizer of a propaganda theater. In the early years of Soviet power, this was considered revolutionary and very modern. After graduating from 8th grade, Zadornov was sent by his father to his homeland, Penza. Without leaving school, in the last school year Nikolai began working in a professional theater, where he was given small weekend roles. In 1926, after graduating from school, he became a professional actor. He traveled with the theater to many cities in Siberia and the Far East; his work in Vladivostok was especially successful.

He tried his hand at journalism. 1937 was a significant year for Nikolai Pavlovich. His first story, “Mogusyumka and Guryanych,” appears in print. And later he moves to Komsomolsk-on-Amur, the city of pioneer builders, with which Zadornov will be connected for nine years of his life.

In the city of his youth, he began working as the head of the literary department of the theater and at the same time collaborated in the local city newspaper and on the radio, and led a circle of soldier-builders. The Komsomol Theater played plays about the Far Eastern border. They were then staged in the best theaters in the capital and throughout the country. In 1939 For playing the role of a Japanese in N. Pogodin’s play “Silver Pad,” Zadornov received gratitude and a certificate from the command of the corps of military construction units, and in 1940. was awarded and received gratitude from the directorate for his work in preparing the play “The Man with a Gun.”

The literary association of Komsomolsk, having decided to publish a collection about the history of the city of youth, instructed Zadornov to write an essay about the village of Perm. His search for material led him to the 60s of the last century, when Russian peasants came to the Far East. Participants in the resettlement who came to the Amur with their children were still living in Komsomolsk at that time. Their memory stored interesting information about the past. This is how the novel “Father Cupid” was born, the first part of which was published in 1940. In Khabarovsk, where the author took his work, the novel was published in the second and third issues of the magazine “At the Turnover” in 1941, before the start of the Great Patriotic War.

More than half a century later, in 1997, the Far Eastern writer Vsevolod Petrovich Sysoev, in one of his speeches regarding the construction of a monument to Zadornov in Khabarovsk, said this: “It’s rare that someone manages to write an eternal book that is republished all over the world. Nikolai Pavlovich wrote such a book, this is “Father Amur” - the best book about Amur.” At the same time, the story “Mangmu” was written - from the life of the Nanai people at a time when only sparsely dispersed clans lived in the region. During the war, while remaining to live in Komsomolsk-on-Amur, Zadornov became the author of 200 essays about the heroes of the labor front for the regional Radio Committee.

In 1944 Nikolai Pavlovich was accepted as a member of the Russian Writers' Union. A year or two before this event, the writer conceived a novel about Nevelskoy. In search of heroes for his essays about the workers of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, Zadornov traveled a lot throughout the Far East to the places where Russian sailors made their discoveries. The writer became increasingly interested in the personality of the admiral.

Nikolai Pavlovich saw in the Russian admiral an advanced patriot and thinker who clearly imagined the future of his homeland as a country in close connection with all the great countries lying in the Pacific Ocean. “There was no due respect for such scientists as Nevelskoy,” he believed. They were hated by the open and secret enemies of Russia, as well as by reactionaries who did not imagine the future of their Fatherland and had never been beyond the Urals. Admiral Nevelskoy made his discoveries in the Far East contrary to orders, at his own peril and risk.”

In the autumn of 1945 The liberation campaign of the Soviet Army against the Japanese militarists began. Together with the writers A. Guy D. Nagishkin, N. Rogal, Yu. Shestakova, Zadornov asked to go to the front. All Far Eastern writers were not enlisted in the army, but were registered as correspondents of the Khabarovsk regional branch of TASS and transferred to China. Zadornov traveled a lot around Manchuria, talking with captured Japanese colonels and generals. What he saw and experienced during the war was later reflected in historical novels about Admiral Putyatin’s expedition to Japan. All these years he studied the life of local peoples, worked in archives and wrote a continuation of the first part of the novel “Cupid the Father.” In 1946, the second book of the novel was published. It was republished in Moscow and Leningrad, then translated into many European languages. The writer continued the novel. A new book, The Gold Rush, was published in 1969.

Since the autumn of 1946, working as the editor of the Russian Almanac and the head of the section of Russian writers in Latvia, he continues to write the stories “Mangmu” and “Markeshkin’s Gun”. The result was the novel “The Distant Land.”
After working in the central archives of the country, in the fall of 1948, the writer returned to Riga and wrote the novel “To the Ocean” in 3 months. Both of these novels were published in 1949, and in 1956-1958 two books of the novel “Captain Nevelskoy” were published. The cycle of novels about the historical feat of the Russian people in the Far East was completed with the publication of the book “The War for the Ocean” (1963).

In 1952, N. P. Zadornov was awarded the USSR State Prize for the creation of historical novels “Father Cupid”, “The Distant Crane”, “To the Ocean”.

The Riga period of Zadornov's life was the longest and most fruitful. On his initiative, a section of Russian writers was created in the Latvian Writers' Union, which he headed. He collected and attracted talented young people, gave lectures on literature, and was the first editor of the literary and journalistic magazine “Parus”, which published works by Latvian authors in Russian.

He was engaged in translations of his novels into Latvian. In the late sixties and seventies, N. Zadornov wrote a trilogy - “Tsunami”, “Shimoda” and “Heda”. The action of these historical novels takes place in the middle of the last century. Crimean War. The south of Russia is on fire. And at this time, Admiral Putyatin goes to the shores of Japan to establish trade, economic, and diplomatic relations with it, the expedition members find themselves in a dramatic situation: the crushing impacts of a tsunami destroy the Russian ship "Diana". Russian sailors remain in Japan and begin to build a new ship to return to their homeland...

In search of material for his work, Nikolai Pavlovich visited Japan twice, lived in the village of Heda, sailed by sea on a fishing boat to the foot of Mount Fuji, where Admiral Putyatin died, and sailed on a ship to Hong Kong. Zadornov was not allowed to access Japanese archival documents. But interesting information about historical figures who interested the writer was told to him by Mr. Kawada, a young scientist from the archives of the imperial court. The trilogy “Heda”, “Tsunami” and “Shimoda”, later united under the common title “The Saga of the Russian Argonauts”, was received with great interest not only by Russian readers, but also by masters of Japanese literature as a completely original phenomenon. In Tokyo, the books were published by Asahi Publishing House.

In 1977-1979, the publishing house “Khudozhestvennaya Literatura” published a six-volume collected works of N.P. Zadornov.
In the last years of his life, Zadornov conceived a series of novels about Vladivostok. The novels “Hong Kong”, “Mistress of the Seas”, “Wind of Fertility” were written and published, and work was underway on the novel “Rich Mane”. In his last completed novel, “The Wind of Fertility,” the writer raised the historical theme of the relationship between Russia and China. With deep knowledge, he revealed the diplomatic, trade, everyday, cultural, and economic ties of peoples.

Many critics, researchers and biographers of Zadornov noted his exactingness towards himself. Nikolai Pavlovich was never satisfied with the first edition. He edited, added, crossed out, Managed, new episodes appeared, dialogues were polished.... The work began all over again.
Nikolai Pavlovich Zadornov died in 1992. in the 83rd year of his life, until his last day he continued to work on the Far Eastern theme.
Japanese criticism has repeatedly noted the Russian writer Zadornov as “a unique artist of nature and man.”

The American Literary Encyclopedia writes that Zadornov “raised layers of the history of peoples hitherto unknown to civilization. He colorfully depicted their life, spoke with deep knowledge about morals, habits, family disputes, love, misfortunes, everyday troubles, craving for the Russian language, Russian rituals and way of life.”

Over the years, the historical novels of N.P. Zadornov do not lose their relevance and interest. This is evidenced by the facts of reprinting of his books. They are still published in various publishing houses throughout the country. Thus, in 2007, the Moscow publishing houses “Veche”, “Terra-Book Club” published his novels “Father Cupid”, “Gold Rush”, “Shimoda”, etc. Publishing house “Priamurskie Vedomosti” in Khabarovsk in In 2008, with the book “Cupid the Father” by N.P. Zadornov, he opened a new series “Literary Heritage of the Amur Region”.

Years of life: 12/05/1909 - 09/18/1992.
Member of the Union of Writers of the USSR, laureate of the State Prize of the USSR, author of the books “Father Cupid”, “Captain Nevelskoy”, “Distant Land”, etc. Lived in the city of Komsomolsk-on-Amur from the autumn of 1937 to 1946.

The outstanding Far Eastern writer Nikolai Pavlovich Zadornov spent his entire life studying the topic of the Far East. He was born in Penza on December 5, 1909. The writer’s childhood and school years also came to Chita, where the Zadornov family lived. Since childhood, he touched history. He saw the Japanese occupation, lived in a city that was given life by exiled Decembrists. At school he was the organizer of a propaganda theater. In the early years of Soviet power, this was considered revolutionary and very modern. After graduating from 8th grade, Zadornov was sent by his father to his homeland, Penza. Without leaving school, in the last school year Nikolai began working in a professional theater, where he was given small weekend roles. In 1926, after graduating from school, he became a professional actor. With the theater he traveled to many cities in Siberia and the Far East, his work in Vladivostok was especially successful. He tried his hand at journalism. 1937 was a significant year for Nikolai Pavlovich. His first story, “Mogusyumka and Guryanych,” appears in print. And later he moves to Komsomolsk-on-Amur, the city of pioneer builders, with which Zadornov will be connected for nine years of his life.

In the city of his youth, he began working as the head of the literary department of the theater and at the same time collaborated in the local city newspaper and on the radio, and led a circle of soldier-builders. The Komsomol Theater played plays about the Far Eastern border. They were then staged in the best theaters in the capital and throughout the country. In 1939 For playing the role of a Japanese in N. Pogodin’s play “Silver Pad,” Zadornov received gratitude and a certificate from the command of the corps of military construction units, and in 1940. was awarded and received gratitude from the directorate for his work in preparing the play “The Man with a Gun.”

The literary association of Komsomolsk, having decided to publish a collection about the history of the city of youth, instructed Zadornov to write an essay about the village of Perm. His search for material led him to the 60s of the last century, when Russian peasants came to the Far East. Participants in the resettlement who came to the Amur with their children were still living in Komsomolsk at that time. Their memory stored interesting information about the past. This is how the novel “Father Cupid” was born, the first part of which was published in 1940. In Khabarovsk, where the author took his work, the novel was published in the second and third issues of the magazine “At the Turnover” in 1941, before the start of the Great Patriotic War.

More than half a century later, in 1997, the Far Eastern writer Vsevolod Petrovich Sysoev, in one of his speeches regarding the construction of a monument to Zadornov in Khabarovsk, said this: “It’s rare that someone manages to write an eternal book that is republished all over the world. Nikolai Pavlovich wrote such a book, this is “Father Amur” - the best book about Amur.” At the same time, the story “Mangmu” was written - from the life of the Nanai people at a time when only sparsely dispersed clans lived in the region. During the war, while remaining to live in Komsomolsk-on-Amur, Zadornov became the author of 200 essays about the heroes of the labor front for the regional Radio Committee.

In 1944 Nikolai Pavlovich was accepted as a member of the Russian Writers' Union. A year or two before this event, the writer conceived a novel about Nevelskoy. In search of heroes for his essays about the workers of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, Zadornov traveled a lot throughout the Far East to the places where Russian sailors made their discoveries. The writer became increasingly interested in the personality of the admiral.
Nikolai Pavlovich saw in the Russian admiral an advanced patriot and thinker who clearly imagined the future of his homeland as a country in close connection with all the great countries lying in the Pacific Ocean. “There was no due respect for such scientists as Nevelskoy,” he believed. They were hated by the open and secret enemies of Russia, as well as by reactionaries who did not imagine the future of their Fatherland and had never been beyond the Urals. Admiral Nevelskoy made his discoveries in the Far East contrary to orders, at his own peril and risk.”

In the autumn of 1945 The liberation campaign of the Soviet Army against the Japanese militarists began. Together with the writers A. Guy D. Nagishkin, N. Rogal, Yu. Shestakova, Zadornov asked to go to the front. All Far Eastern writers were not enlisted in the army, but were registered as correspondents of the Khabarovsk regional branch of TASS and transferred to China. Zadornov traveled a lot around Manchuria, talking with captured Japanese colonels and generals. What he saw and experienced during the war was later reflected in historical novels about Admiral Putyatin’s expedition to Japan. All these years he studied the life of local peoples, worked in archives and wrote a continuation of the first part of the novel “Cupid the Father.” In 1946, the second book of the novel was published. It was republished in Moscow and Leningrad, then translated into many European languages. The writer continued the novel. A new book, The Gold Rush, was published in 1969.

Since the autumn of 1946, working as the editor of the Russian Almanac and the head of the section of Russian writers in Latvia, he continues to write the stories “Mangmu” and “Markeshkin’s Gun”. The result was the novel “The Distant Land.”
After working in the central archives of the country, in the fall of 1948, the writer returned to Riga and wrote the novel “To the Ocean” in 3 months. Both of these novels were published in 1949, and in 1956-1958 two books of the novel “Captain Nevelskoy” were published. The cycle of novels about the historical feat of the Russian people in the Far East was completed with the publication of the book “The War for the Ocean” (1963).

In 1952, N. P. Zadornov was awarded the USSR State Prize for the creation of historical novels “Father Cupid”, “The Distant Crane”, “To the Ocean”.
The Riga period of Zadornov's life was the longest and most fruitful. On his initiative, a section of Russian writers was created in the Latvian Writers' Union, which he headed. He collected and attracted talented young people, gave lectures on literature, and was the first editor of the literary and journalistic magazine “Parus”, which published works by Latvian authors in Russian.
He was engaged in translations of his novels into Latvian. In the late sixties and seventies, N. Zadornov wrote a trilogy - “Tsunami”, “Shimoda” and “Heda”. The action of these historical novels takes place in the middle of the last century. Crimean War. The south of Russia is on fire. And at this time, Admiral Putyatin goes to the shores of Japan to establish trade, economic, and diplomatic relations with it, the expedition members find themselves in a dramatic situation: the crushing impacts of a tsunami destroy the Russian ship "Diana". Russian sailors remain in Japan and begin to build a new ship to return to their homeland...

In search of material for his work, Nikolai Pavlovich visited Japan twice, lived in the village of Heda, sailed by sea on a fishing boat to the foot of Mount Fuji, where Admiral Putyatin died, and sailed on a ship to Hong Kong. Zadornov was not allowed to access Japanese archival documents. But interesting information about historical figures who interested the writer was told to him by Mr. Kawada, a young scientist from the archives of the imperial court. The trilogy “Heda”, “Tsunami” and “Shimoda”, later united under the common title “The Saga of the Russian Argonauts”, was received with great interest not only by Russian readers, but also by masters of Japanese literature as a completely original phenomenon. In Tokyo, the books were published by Asahi Publishing House.

In 1977-1979, the publishing house “Khudozhestvennaya Literatura” published a six-volume collected works of N.P. Zadornov.
In the last years of his life, Zadornov conceived a series of novels about Vladivostok. The novels “Hong Kong”, “Mistress of the Seas”, “Wind of Fertility” were written and published, and work was underway on the novel “Rich Mane”. In his last completed novel, “The Wind of Fertility,” the writer raised the historical theme of the relationship between Russia and China. With deep knowledge, he revealed the diplomatic, trade, everyday, cultural, and economic ties of peoples.
Many critics, researchers and biographers of Zadornov noted his exactingness towards himself. Nikolai Pavlovich was never satisfied with the first edition. He edited, added, crossed out, Managed, new episodes appeared, dialogues were polished.... The work began all over again.

Nikolai Pavlovich Zadornov died in 1992 at the age of 83. Until his last day he continued to work on the Far Eastern theme.
Japanese criticism has repeatedly noted the Russian writer Zadornov as “a unique artist of nature and man.”
The American Literary Encyclopedia writes that Zadornov “raised layers of the history of peoples hitherto unknown to civilization. He colorfully depicted their life, spoke with deep knowledge about morals, habits, family disputes, love, misfortunes, everyday troubles, craving for the Russian language, Russian rituals and way of life.”
Without the historical novels of N. Zadornov today it is impossible to have a complete understanding of the development of historical themes in Russian literature.

Works by Nikolai Zadornov

Zadornov, N.P. Mogusyumka and Guryanych: A Tale / (Nikolai Pavlovich Zadornov). - Riga: Liesma, 1969. - 335 p. - autograph of the author
Zadornov, N.P. Father Cupid: a novel / N. P. Zadornov. - M.: Artist. lit., 1987. - 671 p.
Zadornov, N.P. Faraway land; First discovery: [novels] / N. P. Zadornov; artist V. Chebotarev. - Vladivostok: Dalnevost. book publishing house, 1971. - 648 p.
ZADORNOV, N.P. First discovery. Captain Nevelskoy: Novels / N. P. ZADORNOV. - M.: Voenizdat, 1982. - 704 p.
Zadornov, N.P. Captain Nevelskoy: Novel / N. P. Zadornov. - Riga: Latv. state publishing house, 1958. - 872 p.
Zadornov N.P. Ocean War: A Novel. T. 1 / N. P. Zadornov. - M.: Veche, 2007. - 384 p. - (Sea Odyssey). - ISBN 978 - 5 - 9533 - 2386 - 4.
Zadornov N.P. Ocean War: A Novel. T. 2 / N. P. Zadornov. - M.: Veche, 2007. - 384 p. - (Sea Odyssey). - ISBN 978 - 5 - 9533 - 23867 - 1.
Zadornov, N.P. Gold Rush: 3rd book. novel "Cupid the Father" / N. P. Zadornov. - Khabarovsk: Book. publishing house, 1971. - 448 p.
Zadornov N.P. Tsunami: a novel / N. P. Zadornov. - M.: Veche, 2007. - 384 p. - (Sea Odyssey). - ISBN 978 - 5 - 9533 - 2432 - 8.
Zadornov N.P. Shimoda: novel / N. P. Zadornov. - M.: Veche, 2007. - 448 p. - (Sea Odyssey). - ISBN 978 - 5 - 9533 - 2433 - 5.
Zadornov N.P. Heda: a novel / N. P. Zadornov. - M.: Veche, 2007. - 448 p. - (Sea Odyssey). - ISBN 978 - 5 - 9533 - 2551 - 6.
Zadornov N.P. Hong Kong: novel / N. P. Zadornov. - M.: Veche, 2007. - 416 p. - (Sea Odyssey). - ISBN 978 - 5 - 9533 - 2552 - 3.
Zadornov, N.P. Mistress of the Seas: Novels / (Zadonov Nikolai Pavlovich). - M.: Sov. writer, 1989. - 464 p. : ill. - (Library of the Far Eastern Novel).
Zadornov, N.P. Yellow, green, blue: Roman / (Nikolai Pavlovich Zadornov). - M.: Sov. writer, 1967. - 215 p.
Zadornov, N.P. Wind of Fertility: Novel / (Zadonov Nikolai Pavlovich). - M.: Sov. writer, 1992. - 256 p.
The novel "Wind of Fertility" is about the conclusion of the Aigun Treaty between Russia and China. Diplomatic trade and labor ties are revealed here. And the young sailor Alexei Sibirtsev meets in China a young Englishwoman who is an educator and a teacher of Chinese children. They seem to be experiencing the winds of Chinese fertility. In those years, the foundation of the city and port of Vladivostok began on the coast of Primorye.

Zadornov, N.P. Blue Hour: Essays / (Zadonov Nikolai Pavlovich). - M.: Sov. writer, 1968. - 183 p.
In these essays, the author talks about his trips to the East of the country. Khabarovsk, Komsomolsk-on-Amur, Sakhalin, the Kuril Islands, the Amur estuary, the Okhotsk coast - this is the geography of the essays. The writer is interested not only in the problems of developing the riches of the region, but also in the problems of the moral life of people who have linked their fate with it