Ilya Bernstein

Everyone's Personal File publishes an article by Ilya Bernstein, an independent publisher specializing in Soviet-era children's and adolescent literature, about the writer Leonid Solovyov, who was repressed for “anti-Soviet agitation and terrorist statements” and rehabilitated before the end of his sentence. For the first time, the article was published among additional materials to Leonid Solovyov's story "The Enchanted Prince" (a sequel to "The Troubled One" about the adventures of Khoja Nasreddin), published by the author of the article. By the way, the story "The Enchanted Prince" was written entirely by the author in the camp, where Solovyov was officially "allowed to literary work" - which is surprising in itself. In his article, Ilya Bernstein analyzes the investigative case of Leonid Solovyov and comes to unexpected conclusions - the behavior of the writer during the investigation reminds him of a "roguish" novel.

About how the future author of "The Enchanted Prince" became "a prisoner Leonid Solovyov, a writer held at 14 l / o Dubravlag, Art. 58 p. 10 h. 2 and 17-58 p. 8, term - 10 years "(this is how the statement was signed to the head of the Dubravlag department), we know from two documents: his investigation file and a request for rehabilitation sent to the USSR Prosecutor General in 1956 ... The first one is not fully available to us - some pages (about 15 percent of their total number) are hidden, "sewn up" in sealed envelopes: they are opened in the FSB archive only at the request of close relatives, whom Solovyov does not have left. From the petition to the Prosecutor General, we know that during the investigation no confrontation with witnesses for the prosecution - we know their testimony only in a brief summary of the investigator. This is also a very significant gap, which does not allow, for example, to evaluate the role played in the arrest and conviction of the writer Viktor Vitkovich - Solovyov's co-author on the scripts of the films "Nasreddin in Bukhara" and "Nasreddin's Adventures". They wrote the scripts together in 1938 and in 1944, respectively, and, according to Vitkovich, in his stories Solovyov included plot moves and dialogues invented by the co-author: “I literally begged him to take all the best from the script. He did this not without internal resistance. This strengthened our friendship ... On the title page, I read that our general scenario was the basis, and I again resolutely rebelled ... Was there any politeness; I blotted out the footnote with my hand "(V. Vitkovich." Circles of life ". M., 1983. pp. 65–67). We do not know Soloviev's version, but Vitkovich (who was not arrested) was given a lot of space in the interrogation protocols. However, Solovyov later wrote about him in his petition, and we will return to this later. From the "camp" memoirs we know how the interrogations were conducted and how the interrogated behaved. The usually unsubstantiated absurdity of accusations under “political” articles and the falsity of the protocols are also known. And we read Solovyov's "case" from this angle. What false evidence of alleged crimes did the investigator present? What line of defense did the accused take? Did you behave with dignity, rejecting your mistake, or quickly "broke"? Have you spoken out someone? Solovyov's behavior during the investigation in many ways does not correspond to the usual ideas. The reason for this is the peculiarities of the personality and fate of Leonid Vasilyevich, as well as circumstances that are not known to us (maybe something will change when the above-mentioned envelopes with seals are opened).

So, "Investigative case on charges of Leonid Vasilyevich Solovyov, number R-6235, production year 1946, 1947". It opens with the "Arrest Decree" drawn up by Major Kutyryov (I remind you that the ranks of the state security officers were two stages superior to the general military, that is, the MGB major corresponded to an army colonel). Date of compilation - September 4, 1946, despite the fact that the evidence incriminating the writer was obtained in January. In general, the case turned out to be serious - it took a long time to prepare, and was conducted by great ranks - the second signature on the Resolution belongs to “Beginning. department 2-3 2 Main Control. Ministry of State Security of the USSR "Lieutenant Colonel F.G. Shubnyakov - a notable person in the history of Soviet repressive organs. 2nd Main Directorate - counterintelligence, Fyodor Grigorievich later visited both the head of this department and a resident in Austria (in the mid-1950s), but he is best known for his personal participation in the murder of Mikhoels. What was Solovyov charged with?

“The members of the anti-Soviet group arrested by the Ministry of State Security of the USSR in 1944 - writers LN Ulin, SA Bondarin. and Gekht A.G. showed that Soloviev A.The. is their adherent and in conversations with them spoke out about the need to change the existing system in the Soviet Union on a bourgeois-democratic basis. From the side of L.V. Solovyov manifestations of terrorist sentiments against the head of the CPSU (b) and the Soviet government were repeatedly noted. The presence of terrorist sentiments in L.V. Solovyov Fastenko A.I., arrested in January 1945, confirmed. On January 12, 1945, Fastenko testified: "... Solovyov expressed terrorist intentions towards the party around February 1944, declaring:" To change the existing situation in the country, it is necessary to remove the leader of the party, "and later said that he was personally ready to commit a terrorist act against the leader of the party, accompanying it with offensive language. " L.V. Soloviev has an anti-Soviet influence on politically unstable people from among his circle. "

Terrorism is a firing article; in the harsher thirties, Solovyov would have had little chance of saving his life. But anti-Soviet agitation, on the contrary, is a duty charge, the main means of fulfilling a plan to supply the Gulag system with free and disenfranchised labor. That is, the pragmatic (it will still not be possible to get an acquittal) task of the person under investigation is to try to convince the investigator to re-qualify the case, to present it in such a way that the main thing is chatter that is relatively safe for the country by mixing a terrorist note. Apparently, Solovyov succeeded (or the writer was just lucky), in any case, the sentence - ten years of forced labor camps - was relatively mild.

The investigation lasted six months: the first of 15 interrogations took place on September 5, 1946, the last on February 28, 1947. There was no trial, the verdict was passed by the CCO, and three months later, on June 9; Solovyov spent ten months in jail. The first protocols fit well into the familiar scheme: night interrogations for many hours - for example, from 22.30 to 03.20, - following one after the other. (We remember that during the day, the beds in the cell are raised and attached to the walls: "They were allowed to lower them from eleven to six in the morning by a special signal. At six - rise, and until eleven, you can't lie down. Just stand or sit on stools" , "Steep route.") Solovyov, exhausted by interrogation, had two and a half hours to sleep these days.

But this was only at the beginning. Already from October 12, from the eighth interrogation, everything is simplified, and in the end it becomes completely formal: the investigator fit into one and a half to two hours and tried to manage until the end of the working day prescribed by the Labor Code. The reason, apparently, is that Solovyov did not become a tough nut to crack for the investigator, Lieutenant Colonel Rublev (who, by the way, shortly before that, in June 1945, was the indictment in the Solzhenitsyn case). Here is what Leonid Vasilyevich himself wrote in a petition for rehabilitation ten years later:

“Rublev tirelessly instilled in me:“ They don't get out of here. Your destiny is predetermined. Now everything depends on my investigative characteristics - both the term of the sentence and the camp where you will be sent. There are camps from which no one returns, but there are also easier ones. Take your pick. Remember that your recognition or non-recognition does not matter, it is just a form "...

I only thought about getting out of the remand prison as soon as possible - even to a camp. There was no point in resisting in such conditions, especially since the investigator told me: “There will be no trial over you, do not hope. We'll let your case go through a Special Meeting. " In addition, I often, with my confessions, paid off the investigator - from his insistent demands to testify against my acquaintances - writers and poets, among whom I did not know criminals. The investigator told me more than once: "You are blocking everyone with your broad back, but they are not blocking you too much."

All the methods of investigation described by Leonid Solovyov are well known and took shape long before 1946. (Several years later, already in the camp, Solovyov will include the scene of the interrogation of Khoja in the novel "The Enchanted Prince". Those familiar with the writer's personal experience read it with special feeling) Why did he not resist, although "physical measures ... were not used" (starved , they were not allowed to sleep, but they did not beat)? It is possible that his behavior during the investigation was well thought out: Solovyov decided to get out of the rut, presenting himself in a not very typical for the "enemy of the people", but evoking understanding and even sympathy from the investigator (which fits well both in archetypal ideas and in his , Solovyova, real circumstances).

« question What was your irresponsibility expressed in?

answer First, I broke up with my wife because of my drunkenness and cheating and was left alone. I loved my wife very much, and breaking up with her was a disaster for me. Secondly, my drunkenness increased. My sober working periods became less and less, I felt that a little more, and my literary activity would be completely impossible, and I, as a writer, would be over. All this contributed to the emergence of the darkest pessimism in me. Life seemed to me devalued, hopeless, the world - meaningless and cruel chaos. I saw everything around in a dark, joyless heavy light. I began to shun people, I lost my previously inherent cheerfulness and cheerfulness. It was at the time of the greatest aggravation of my spiritual crisis that the greatest aggravation of my anti-Soviet sentiments (1944-1946) occurred. I myself was sick, and the whole world seemed to me sick too. "

(Interrogation records are quoted with minor cuts.)

« question Why do you call yourself single when you were married and also had friends?

answer My drunkenness, a hectic life, my relationship with tramps and vagabonds from the Arbat pubs, whom I brought in whole groups to visit my home, led to the fact that my wife and I had a final breakup. Early in the morning she left for work, returning only late in the evening, went to bed right there, I was alone all day. I was faced with the question of the complete impossibility of continuing such a life and the need for some way out.

questionWhere did you start looking for a way out?

answer I was seriously thinking about suicide, but what stopped me was that I would die all soiled. I began to think about outside interference in my fate and most often dwelt on the NKVD organs, believing that the task of the NKVD includes not only purely punitive, but also punitive and corrective functions.

At the beginning of 1945, after several hallucinations, I realized that my psychic sphere was completely upset and the time had come for a decisive act. I went to the first art cinema on Arbat Square, where I found out the switchboard number from the NKVD officer on duty, began to call and ask to connect me to the NKVD literary hotel.

question What for?

answer I wanted to say that I am standing on the edge of an abyss, that I ask you to isolate me, let me come to my senses, then listen humanly and take me in hard blinders for the period that is necessary to shake out all the moral dirt.

question Have you phoned the NKVD?

answer I phoned the person on duty, told him where I was calling from and who I was, and waited for an answer. At this time, the director of the cinema, sympathetically questioning me and seeing my grave mental state, put me in touch with Bakovikov, an employee of the editorial office of the newspaper "Red Fleet", where I worked before demobilization, I told Bakovikov about my serious condition, asked him for some help.

question What help did you get?

answer Bakovikov got me placed in a neuropsychiatric hospital for disabled veterans of the Patriotic War, where I stayed for 2 months. I left in a more or less calm state, but with the same feeling of heaviness on my soul.

I will not argue that Solovyov was playing a trick on the investigator (who, for example, could easily verify the authenticity of the story with the call to the NKVD), but the benefits of such a strategy of conduct during the investigation are obvious, especially for the accused of terrorism: what kind of danger can a downed drunkard pose to the country? And how can you seriously consider him as an anti-Soviet agitator? It is clear - the green serpent beguiled. "I find it difficult to give exact formulations of my statements in a drunken state, since, having sober up, I definitely do not remember anything and learn about what happened only from the words of other persons."

But this applies only to "terrorist" statements. The writer retells his other speeches to the investigator with readiness, in great detail. One could assume that this is the work of Rublev, which Solovyov agreed to ascribe to himself on pain of getting into the camp, "from where they do not return." But when one gets acquainted with the confessionary testimony of the writer, doubts arise in this: the lieutenant colonel could not come up with such a thing. Everything is very thought out, literary perfected and polemically pointed. Solovyov seems to be setting out a program for reforming the country, relating to all sectors of its economy and all areas of social and cultural life. As if he had been working on it for a long time alone and now presents his results to a small but competent audience.

Political system. "The statehood of the USSR is devoid of flexibility - it does not give people the opportunity to grow and fully realize their intellectual and spiritual powers, which threatens ossification and death in case of war."

Industry."The complete nationalization and centralization of industry leads to an extraordinary cumbersomeness, does not stimulate labor productivity, and therefore the state is forced to resort to coercive measures, since wages are very low and cannot serve as an incentive to increase labor productivity and to retain personnel at the enterprise." "The workers are now essentially entrenched in factories, and in this sense we have made a leap back, returning to the long gone days of forced labor, always unproductive." "I also talked about the need to relieve the state from the production of small consumer goods, transferring their production to handicraftsmen and artels."

Agriculture. “On the issue of collective farms, I said that this form did not justify itself, that the cost of workdays in most collective farms is so small that it does not stimulate the labor of collective farmers at all, and some of the collective farmers, being grain producers, are themselves without bread, since they are not. the whole harvest goes to the state. " “After the end of the war, upon the return of the demobilized, who saw with their own eyes the situation of the peasantry in the West, the political situation in our village will be greatly aggravated; there is only one way to improve the health of collective farms - a serious and immediate restructuring of them on new principles. " "The collective farms must be given a different form, leaving only the grain wedge in collective use - the basis, and the rest should be left to the collective farmers themselves, significantly expanding the household plots for this purpose."

International trade. "The USSR must establish brisk trade ties with America, establish a gold exchange rate for the ruble and drastically raise wages."

Literature."The unification of literature, the absence of literary groups and the struggle between them have led to an incredible decline in the literary level of the country, and the government does not see this, being concerned only with one thing - the preservation of the existing order." “Our literature is like a race of runners with tied legs, writers only think about how not to say something superfluous. Therefore, it is degrading and today has nothing to do with the great literature that brought Russia worldwide fame. The nationalization of literature is a destructive absurdity, it needs free breathing, the absence of fear and a constant desire to please the authorities, otherwise it dies, which we see. The Union of Soviet Writers is a government department, disunity reigns among writers, they do not feel literature as a matter of blood and work as if for the owner, trying to please him. "

Public relations.“The intelligentsia does not occupy the place that belongs to it by right, it plays the role of a servant, while it should be the leading force. Dogmatism reigns supreme. The Soviet government keeps the intelligentsia in a black body, in the position of a teacher or student in the house of a wealthy merchant or a retired general. She is demanded of courage and daring in the field of scientific thought, but she is constrained in every way in the field of scientific and political, and intellectual progress is a single, complex phenomenon. In the USSR, the intelligentsia is in the position of a person who is demanded of both the valor of a lion and the timidity of a hare. They shout about creative daring and bold innovation - and are afraid of every fresh word. The result of this situation is the stagnation of creative thought, our lag in the field of science (atomic bomb, penicillin). For the fruitful work of people, an appropriate material environment and a moral atmosphere are needed, which are not available in the USSR. " (Indirect evidence of Lieutenant Colonel Rublev's non-participation in drawing up Solovyov's "program" is lexical: wherever the writer speaks of daring, the investigator writes down "torments" in the protocol.)

In my opinion, this is a completely extraordinary text, surprising not only for the inconsistency of time and circumstances. In later and more "vegetarian" times, under Khrushchev and - even more so - under Brezhnev, after the XX and XXII party congresses, a dissident movement arose in the country, a discussion about the fate of the country began (albeit in samizdat or in intellectual kitchens) and ways of reforming it. But even then, it was mainly carried out from the position of socialist, "true" Marxism-Leninism, purged of Stalinism.

Solovyov in his testimony appears to be a supporter of a different, "liberal-soil" ideology. Here again a parallel arises with Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who, almost thirty years later, will set forth very similar theses: "The grief of that nation whose literature is interrupted by the intervention of force: this is not just a violation of" freedom of the press ", it is the closure of the national heart, the excision of national memory" (Nobel Lecture on Literature, 1972). “Our“ ideological ”agriculture has already become a laughing stock for the whole world ... because we do not want to admit our collective farm mistake. One way out for us to be a well-fed country: to abandon compulsory collective farms ... Primitive economic theory, which declared that only the worker gives rise to values, and did not see the contribution of either organizers or engineers ... All the millstones that drown you were awarded you by the Advanced Teaching. And collectivization. And the nationalization of small crafts and services (which made the life of ordinary citizens unbearable) ”(“ Letter to the Leaders of the Soviet Union ”, 1973).

In Solovyov's testimony, the form is no less surprising than the content. He does not use the words "slander", "betrayal", "fabrications" and the like. This is the vocabulary of investigative questions, but not the answers of the defendant. Solovyov willingly and in detail expresses his views, not giving them an assessment and not showing remorse. The answers are calm, full of respect for the topic and the very procedure for exchanging views with the lieutenant colonel.

« question What motives prompted you to embark on such an anti-Soviet path?

answer I must say that I have never been a completely Soviet person, that for me the concept of "Russian" has always overshadowed the concept of "Soviet."

All this reminds, in today's language, “subtle trolling” of the opponent. He is trained to dig deeply hidden (and more often completely absent) sedition in the testimony, casuistic methods of "catching" - Solovyov's testimony is so excessive that Rublev is often baffled by them and does not undertake to spin the flywheel of accusations further. Many lines of inquiry were cut off by himself - he stops questioning "at the most interesting place." I will cite another passage, again referring to the late Solzhenitsyn:

« answerI put forward the wording that there are Russian writers, and there are writers in Russian.

questionDecipher the meaning of these words of yours.

answer I referred to Russian writers as writers whose life is inextricably linked with the historical destinies, joys and sorrows of Russia, with its historical significance in the world. As for the writers in Russian, I attributed the “southwestern school”, inspired by V. Kataev, Yu. Olesha and others. Most of the representatives of this group, such as the poet Kirsanov, in my opinion, are completely indifferent to what to write about. For them, literature is just an arena for verbal juggling and verbal balancing act. "

(It is interesting that Solovyov divides into “Russians” and “Russian-speaking” not at all on the basis of nationality, referring, in particular, to the latter Kataev and Olesha.)

How does the testimony of the prosecution witnesses fit into this situation (the “investigator-defendant” relationship, the self-incrimination of Solovyov) (the investigation and the court did not apply to the defense witnesses in those years)? What did Leonid Vasilyevich himself say about them, to whom did he "point"? In general, his line of behavior can be described as follows: "compromising - only about those already convicted, all others - and above all, those arrested - to shield them as much as possible."

“The gray ones never supported me, she put me down; her political views were stable ”; “Rusin, Vitkovich, Kovalenkov told me more than once that I must stop drunkenness and chatter, meaning by this anti-Soviet talk”; “I don’t remember the names of the writers named by Ulin”; "Rusin said that I had put him in a false position and that in future conversations on political topics I must watch myself, otherwise he would have to inform the appropriate authorities about my anti-Soviet attacks."

And vice versa: "Egorashvili inspired me with the idea that it is necessary to distinguish the real goals of the state from its declarations, slogans and promises, that all promises, manifestos, declarations are nothing more than scraps of paper"; “Nasedkin said: collective farms are a dogmatic, invented form of rural life, if the peasants somehow drag on their existence, it is solely due to the fat layer accumulated during the NEP years”; "Makarov stated that the elimination of the kulaks is essentially the beheading of the village, the elimination of the healthiest, industrious and initiative element from it" (writer Ivan Makarov was shot in 1937, literary critic David Yegorashvili and poet Vasily Nasedkin in 1938).

This situation, apparently, suited the investigator. He was not particularly zealous, satisfied with the detailed confessions; Rublev did not set himself the task of creating a large "resonant" case with many accused.

Apparently, that is why other persons involved in his case did not share the fate of Solovyov. And above all - Viktor Vitkovich, who was with him in "friendly and business relationships." It is difficult for us to imagine what it would be like to be close comrades and co-authors for many years, and then give accusatory testimony against each other (“I argued that collective farms are unprofitable, and because of the low cost of a workday, collective farmers have no incentive to work. Vitkovich agreed with me on this. ... Victor basically shared my anti-Soviet views on literary issues ”- of all the witnesses for the prosecution, only Vitkovich Solovyov said this). There is no evidence of Vitkovich in the open part of the case, but this is what Solovyov writes in his petition: “I saw Vitkovich on my return from the camps, and he told me that he gave his evidence against me under incredible pressure, under all kinds of threats. However, his testimony was restrained; As far as I remember, the most difficult accusation emanating from him was as follows: "Solovyov said that Stalin would not share with anyone the glory of a great commander and winner in the Patriotic War, and therefore he will try to push Marshals Zhukov and Rokossovsky into the shadows."

A photograph testifies to the meeting "upon return": two elderly people are sitting on a bench. One will live another quarter of a century, the other will die in 1962. But their best books have already been written: Vitkovich's fairy tales ("The Day of Miracles. Funny Tales", co-authored with Grigory Yagdfeld) and a dilogy about Hodja Nasreddin. The one that Leonid Vasilyevich reported during interrogation:

« question What statements and petitions do you have to the prosecutor during the investigation of your case?

answer I have no petitions or applications for the investigation. I would ask the investigation and the prosecutor's office, upon completion of my case, to send me to serve my sentence in a prison, and not in a camp. In prison I could write the second volume of my work "Nasreddin in Bukhara".

Ilya Bernstein - about adult themes of children's literature, the era of the thaw and the book tastes of different generations

Philologists relatively recently realized that Russian literature for children, especially at the time of its heyday - the era of the thaw in the USSR, tells no less deeply about its time and people than adult literature. Ilya Bernstein was one of the first to discover this treasury, independent publisher... He began to publish children's books with commentary on several hundred pages. And they diverge, becoming popular reading among adults who once grew up on "Denis's Tales" or "Dunno on the Moon." The publisher told in more detail about his projects, personal path and children's literature in an interview with Realnoe Vremya.

"The time was like this: youth, impudence, hats and extremely low professional requirements"

Ilya, your path to the book and publishing world has been difficult and long. Tell us what you went through before you became what they call an "independent craft publisher"?

When I had to choose my future profession, it was 1984, and my ideas about opportunities were very narrow. The previous two generations of my "ancestors" walked the same road: in the company that gathered in my parents' house, all the men were candidates of technical sciences and headaches. I had neither the ability nor interest in this. But people around were skeptical about any other specialty for a man.

I followed the path of least resistance, trained as a software engineer and even worked in my specialty for a while. Fortunately for me, the 90s soon came, when there was a choice - either to leave the country, as the absolute majority in my environment did, or to stay and live in a new situation, when all niches were opened and it was possible to do anything.

I loved books since childhood. Precisely as an object - I liked a lot about them besides the text and illustrations. I read the output, memorized the names of the typefaces, I was worried. If the books were with commentary, I often read them before the text. Growing up, I became a book collector. Every day, returning from work, I made a transfer at the Kuznetsky Most, where the speculator book market had been functioning for many years. In the dark (especially in winter), silent people walked or stood, approached each other, exchanged secret phrases, stepped aside and exchanged books for money. I spent an hour there almost every day and spent all the money that I earned as a "young specialist".

But I didn't buy books to read them. I read a few percent from my large library. At that time, the book was a rarity, an object of hunting. I had a sporting interest. And I did not understand what to do with this interest. The first thing that came to mind was collecting. Litpamyatniki, Academia, Aquilon - the standard way. And if they asked me how I see my future, I would answer (maybe I did) that I would be a seller in a second-hand bookstore, but not in Russia, but next to some Western university. But all this was speculative, and then I was not going to do anything for this.

Then I caught such a fish in troubled water: many, having earned their first money, decided that the next thing they would do was to publish a newspaper. And I became the editor of such newspapers. These editions rarely made it to the second or third issue, although they started violently. So in a couple of years I have edited half a dozen different newspapers and magazines on a variety of topics, even religious ones. The time was like this: youth, adventurism, impudence, hats and extremely low professional requirements, and moral ones too - everyone was deceiving each other in some way, and I am embarrassed to remember many things that I did then.

Then, as a result of all this, an editorial board was formed - a photographer, designer, proofreader, editor. And we decided not to look for the next customer, but to create an advertising agency. And in him I was a person who was responsible to the customer. These were terrible times of night vigils in the printing house. And it all taxied on the fact that for five years I had my own small printing house.

“I loved books since childhood. Precisely as an object - I liked a lot about them besides the text and illustrations. I read the output, memorized the names of the typefaces, I was worried about that. " Photo philologist.livejournal.com

- How did the regular economic crises in the country affect you?

I am literally their child. They changed the situation a lot. I had a printing house, a design department, and I was proud to say that all of my employees have higher art education. And then the crisis began, I had to fire people and become a designer myself, make various booklets, brochures, exhibition catalogs, albums.

But all this time I wanted to make books. I remembered this and easily parted with my relatively successful and monetary pursuits if it seemed to me that the door to a more bookish world was opening. So from a manufacturer of advertising printing I became a designer, then - a book designer. Life sent me teachers, for example, Vladimir Krichevsky, an outstanding designer. In the course of a generally casual acquaintance, I offered him to work for him for free, if only he would teach me. And it seems to have given me more than any other teaching (and certainly more than regular "high school").

When I became a designer, it turned out that in small publishers there is a need for total editing. That is, it would be nice if the designer could work both with illustrations and with text, be able to add and shorten. And I became such a versatile editor who does literary, artistic and technical editing myself. And to this day I remain so.

And 10 years ago, when there was another crisis and many publishers left the market, and the rest reduced the volume of production, I decided to make books as I could: all by myself. And he began with my favorite children's books - those that, as I thought, had undeservedly dropped out of cultural use. In 2009, my first book was published - "A Dog's Life" by Ludwik Ashkenazy with illustrations by Tim Yarzhombek, I not only prepared it, but also financed the publication. Publisher listed on title page, was engaged in sales. I made a dozen (or slightly more) books, was noticed by colleagues, other publishers offered to cooperate with them. First "Scooter", then "White Crow". It was then that there was a boom in small children's publishing houses.

Accidents have always played an important role in my life. I discussed with colleagues the publication of books with large complex commentaries. While they were thinking whether to agree to this (I needed partners, the projects promised to be expensive), in my mind everything was already "built", so when everyone refused, I had to open my own publishing house for this. It is called Publishing Project A and B, and the last two dozen books have been published under this brand.

- How is the work of your publishing house or, as it is also called, workshop arranged?

This is largely dictated by the economic situation. I don’t have the money to hire qualified employees, but I must somehow attract people to want to work for me. And I propose to recreate some kind of pre-industrial production and education. This is now in use all over the world. This is not an assembly-line production of a book, when it has many performers and everyone is responsible for their own area.

I create, as it were, a medieval workshop: a person comes, he doesn’t know how to do anything, he is a student, he is taught on working material, he is given a job in accordance with his qualifications, and this is not a school problem, but a real book. I pay him not a scholarship, but a small salary, which is less than what I would pay a ready-made specialist, but he gets education and practice. And if my student wants to open his own workshop, I will help, I can even donate the idea of \u200b\u200bthe first book or I will bring it with publishers that agree to publish his book.

I have never worked with publishers as an employee, only as a partner. The book legally belongs to me, the copyright is on me. The publisher pays me not a fee, but shares the proceeds with me. Of course, the publishing house does not like this situation, it is ready to go for it only if it understands that it cannot make such a book itself, or if it is too expensive. You must be able to make such books, for the sake of which the publisher agrees to accept your terms.

I'm not doing what I'm not interested in, but presumably successful. This has not happened in my practice yet, although it would be high time. Rather, an idea arises, and I implement it. I always start a series, this is correct from a marketing point of view: people get used to the design and buy a book without even knowing the author, due to the reputation of the series. But when serial production is established, five to ten such books have been made, it ceases to be interesting to me, and the following idea appears.

Now we are releasing the Ruslit series. At first it was conceived as "Literary Monuments", but with reservations: books written in the 20th century for adolescents, provided with commentaries, but not academic, but entertaining, multidisciplinary, not only historical and philological, but also socio-anthropological, etc. P.

“I have never worked with publishing houses as an employee, only as a partner. The book legally belongs to me, the copyright is on me. The publishing house does not pay me a fee, but shares the proceeds with me. " Photo papmambook.ru

"We are like pioneers who simply staked out the plots and move on"

- How did you come to write big, serious commentaries on children's books?

I also made comments in other episodes, it was always interesting to me. I am such a bore who, while reading a book to a child or watching a movie together, can suddenly stop and ask: "Do you understand what I mean?"

I was lucky, I found colleagues who are professional philologists and at the same time cheerful people for whom the framework of the traditional philological commentary is narrow. Oleg Lekmanov, Roman Leibov, Denis Dragunsky ... I will not list them all - suddenly I will forget whom. We have published 12 Ruslit books. There are plans for the next year or two.

It so happened that these commentary books suddenly fired. Previously, if there was a request for such a thing, then in a latent, hidden form, there was nothing of the kind, it never occurred to anyone. But now that it is there, it seems self-evident that it is possible to publish Deniskin's stories with a two-hundred-page scientific apparatus.

Who needs it? Well, for example, grown-up readers of these books, those who loved these books and want to understand what the secret was, check their impressions. On the other hand, the children's literature that we choose gives us the opportunity to try out a new genre - these are not comments in the generally accepted sense of the word (explanation of incomprehensible words and realities, bio-bibliographic references), but a story about the place and time of action, which is based on the text ...

We explain many points that do not require explanation, but we have something to tell about this. Sometimes it's just our childhood, with which we are closely connected and know a lot that you can't read in books. This even applies to Dragoons. We are younger than Deniska, but then reality changed slowly, and it is not difficult for us to imagine what happened ten years earlier.

- Previously, no one was engaged in commenting on children's literature?

Until recently, children's literature was not considered by serious philologists as a field of professional activity. The Silver Age is different! And some Dunno - this is not serious. And we just ended up in the Klondike - this is a huge number of discoveries, we do not have time to process them. We are like pioneers who simply staked out the plots and move on: it’s so interesting that there’s next, that there is no time and desire to develop an open plot. This is unknown. And any touch to this and a trip to the archive opens an abyss. And the novelty of our adult-about-child approach also allows us to use interesting research optics. It turned out to be very “canal”.

- And who buys?

Humanitarian-oriented people buy. Those who buy all kinds of intellectual adult literature. It is becoming a kind of intellectual literature for adults. Despite the fact that there is always the actual work made for children, large typed, with "children's" pictures. And the commentary is removed at the end, it does not interfere with getting an immediate impression. You can read a book and stop there. Although the presence of a lengthy commentary, of course, makes the book more expensive.

"They could write for children without lowering their demands on themselves, without kneeling, either literally or figuratively."

It is clear that the situation with the literature is not constant. One would assume that at any time there are great, good, average and bad writers, their percentage is roughly comparable. And at any time, outstanding works are created. But it is not so. There was the Golden Age, the Silver Age, and between them - not so densely. And during the years of the thaw, many good children's writers appeared, not just because freedom came (albeit very limited). There are many factors involved. A lot depends on the coincidence of circumstances, on personalities.

The Thaw is the pinnacle of Russian children's literature, then many bright and free talented people entered Detlit. The thaw did not abolish censorship, but gave birth to a desire to try to "bypass the slingshot." The writers still could not publish their bold "adult" texts. And children's literature, in which there was much less censorship, allowed those who, in a situation of free choice, most likely would not have chosen children's literature, could realize themselves.

There was also, so to speak, a "business approach". If you read what Dovlatov published in the magazine "Koster", it will become awkward - this is an outright opportunistic hack. But there were many "adult" writers who were sick of this even in detail.

Informal literary groups were formed. I have a series "Native speech" in the publishing house "Samokat" - this is the Leningrad thaw literature. When I started to publish this, I did not even imagine what such a phenomenon was. But from the results of the "field research" it became clear that these books and these authors have a lot in common. Victor Golyavkin, Sergei Wolf, Igor Efimov, Andrey Bitov, many of those who are now living and writing, for example, Vladimir Voskoboinikov, Valery Popov. The circle, which is usually defined through the names of Dovlatov and Brodsky, is people of approximately the same time of birth (pre-war or war years), children of repressed (or miraculously non-) parents, brought up outside the Stalinist paradigm, which, relatively speaking, the 20th Congress of the CPSU did not to which he did not open his eyes.

And they could write for children without lowering their demands on themselves, without kneeling down either literally or figuratively. They not only did not abandon the ideas and tasks of their adult prose, not only did they not resign themselves to the censorship oppression, but even in children's literature they were not guided by considerations "Will the little reader understand this?" This is also one of the important conquests of the thaw - then not only books ceased to be edifying, didactic and ideologically loaded, the general tone changed.

Previously, there was a clear hierarchy in children's literature. There is a small child, there is an adult. The adult is smart, the child is stupid. The child makes mistakes, and the adult helps him to improve. And here, over and over again, the child turns out to be deeper, thinner, smarter than an adult. And the adult is shocked.

For example, in the story "The Girl on the Ball": Deniska learns that "she" has left - the artist Tanechka Vorontsova, whom he saw only in the arena and in his dreams. How does dad react? "Come on, let's go to a cafe, eat ice cream and drink some citro." And the child? Or in another story: "How did you decide to give a dump truck for this worm?" “How can you not understand ?! After all, he is alive! And it shines! "

“Dragoonsky is a skilful fighter of the censorship front, he was not a dissident - a man from the pop world, successful, and one cannot represent him as a writer“ from the underground ”and a victim of censorship. It would be more correct to talk about censoring his stories after death. It’s a nasty thing, and it’s all the time. ” Photo donna-benta.livejournal.com

On the other hand, in pedagogy, the role of an adult, looking downward, underwent a noticeable revision during the thaw, and this benefited literature.

A lot has changed in aesthetics. Those who came to children's literature, the conventional circle of Dovlatov, tried to patch up, to link the broken connection of times - after all, it was still possible to find those who found and remembered the Silver Age, for example. After all, young people, in their own words, according to Brodsky, came to literature "from cultural oblivion." Bitov told me: the previous generation was decently educated, knew languages, and when writers could not publish, they had other opportunities - literary translation, academic careers. “And we, yesterday's engineers, had no other opportunity but to go into children's literature.” On the one hand, they were brought up on the newly arrived European modernism: Hemingway, the writers of the "lost generation", Remarque. And with this they came to children's literature. Children's literature was then drawn from various sources.

- You said that there was some kind of censorship in children's literature. What exactly was censored?

Dragoonsky is a skilful fighter of the censorship front, he was not a dissident - a man from the pop world, successful, and one cannot represent him as a writer "from the underground" and a victim of censorship. It would be more correct to talk about censoring his stories after death. It’s a nasty thing, and it’s all the time. A simple comparison between lifetime and posthumous editions reveals hundreds of changes. They can be divided into several categories: for example, it is decency. For example, in the story "The Wheels of Tra-Ta-Ta Sing" Deniska is traveling by train with his dad, they spend the night on the same shelf. And dad asks: “Where are you going to lie down? At the wall? " And Deniska says: “On the edge. I drank two glasses of tea, I have to get up at night. " In thaw times, not so sanctimonious, there was no crime in this. But there is no tea in modern editions.

Another, more complex and paradoxical, type of editing. Editing requires rules and regulations that the editor is trained in, and he can help an inept author to correct obvious flaws. This is often needed. But in the case of a truly literary text, any editorial smoothness is worse than the author's roughness.

When I was working with Golyavkin's story "My Kind Dad", I got a tsar's gift - his own revision: before his death, he was preparing a reprint, took his book from the shelf and straightened it by hand (I assume that he restored what he once came with to the editor). Imagine two versions of the dialogue: in one "said", "said", and in the other - "flared up", "grunted" and "hissed". The second option is editorial revision: the basics of the profession - you cannot put the same root words next to each other. But "said, said, said" it is better: this is how the child's speech, his character and manners are conveyed, it is he who tells, and not an adult. And deliberate correctness betrays the censor.

Dragoonsky was a spontaneous modernist, many of his techniques are straight out of a textbook on the history of 20th century literature. Let's say a stream of consciousness. A long period without dots, with endless repetitions, as if Deniska was talking excitedly, waving his hands: "And he to me, and I to him ..." This was under Dragunsky, but in the current editions the text was cut into neat phrases, cleaned out, repetitions removed, words of the same root nearby, everything is clean (we restored the old version in our publication).

Dragoonski is very sensitive to the word, he wrote "crumb", not "crumb", but the editor corrected it. A book like Deniskin's Stories, an undoubted literary achievement (that is, first of all, not “what”, but “how”), is a text where all words are in their place, and one cannot be replaced with another without significant losses. Not all children's writers make such stylistic requirements for themselves, but everything is precise, subtle, a lot of necessary trifles. For example, the story "From top to bottom obliquely" (about the painters who left their equipment, and the children misbehaved). In the commentary, we write that the house painter was not accidentally called Sanka, Raichka and Nelly, this is an obvious social cut: the limit woman Sanka, the dandy Nelly and Raechka - my mother's daughter, did not enter the institute the first time, and earns work experience. Dragoonsky is, of course, playing an adult game, it is read by his circle, but this is also a feature of Russian children's literature of the Thaw: in principle, it does not have a clear age orientation and much is embedded in it. These are not figs in your pocket, but rather "for insiders".

"Books about the Great Patriotic War, despite the powerful patriotic trend, parents are in no hurry to buy"

- What children's books amazed you as an adult? For example, I recently read the story "Sugar Child", we had an interview with its author Olga Gromova.

- "Sugar Child" is a brilliant book (by the way, I published a book about the same thing - both repressed parents and life in evacuation in Uzbekistan - "Girl in front of the door", written on the table in censored times and published only in samizdat. Very And a child of 7-10 years old will be quite tough).

The USSR is a huge country, the literary word was very significant, many people wrote and a lot of things were written. We have touched only the very tops. If someone just undertook to read a selection for half a century of some regional magazine like "Siberian Lights" or "Ural Pathfinder", he would probably find there so many treasures that no one knows.

I don't have time to publish all the books I want. This trend, in the creation of which I played an important role - the re-edition of the Soviet - already somewhat limits me. And I postpone or even cancel the planned. For example, I was thinking about publishing books by Sergei Ivanov. He is known as the author of the script for the cartoon "Last year's snow was falling," but apart from "Snow" he wrote a lot of good things. "Olga Yakovleva", "Former Bulka and His Daughter" (by the way, they seriously talk about death, part of the action takes place in an oncological hospital - this topic, according to popular opinion, was not touched upon in Soviet detlita). But my main shock from acquaintance with the unread in childhood - "Waiting for a goat" by Evgeny Dubrovin. The book is so intense, so scary, that I did not dare to take it. It's about the post-war famine in the late 1940s. And then Rech republished it - well, in such a way, as it were.

“I don't have time to publish all the books I want. This trend, in the creation of which I played an important role - the re-edition of the Soviet - already somewhat limits me. And I postpone or even cancel what I have planned. " Photo jewish.ru

Many children's writers with whom we spoke say that in Russia parents do not accept children's literature in which controversial topics are raised (for example, suicide, incest, homosexuality), although such books are received calmly in the West. How do you feel about this?

In the West, it is probably believed: if something exists and a child can face it, literature should not pass by. Therefore, incest and pedophilia are quite a "topic". But in fact, about the same rejection from our parental community exists in relation to traditional, completely open topics. I am building on personal experience - traded many times at book fairs in different cities. And I talked a lot with my parents.

Books about the Great Patriotic War, despite the powerful patriotic trend and great efforts of the state, parents are in no hurry to buy. “It’s hard, why is it, you don’t have something more fun?” The fact that the lack of empathy, the ability to empathize, the lack of a special attitude towards the development of empathy is one of the main features of modern Russian society. This can be seen from here, on the other side of the book counter.

People do not want to buy a book about a disabled child or an incurable disease, or about death in general, because it is “indecent” or conflicts with their pedagogical attitudes. It is hard - "he grows up and learns himself, but for now it is not necessary." That is, the problem is not at all in promoting texts about incest, heavy dramatic books are badly sold and bought, parents themselves do not want to read it. Well, not all, but in bulk.

- What do you think about contemporary teenage literature in Russia?

I am not doing this as a publisher yet, but this year I hope to publish the first modern book, written now about the 90s. It seems to me that in order for it to flourish, it is necessary to professionalize the environment. For 10 great books to appear, you need to write and publish 100 just good ones. To learn how to tell stories well. And this, in my opinion, has already been achieved. I'm not sure if there are 10 great books written, but that there are 25 or even 50 good ones I can guarantee. New children's writers now write in such a way that it is difficult for the expert council of the book award to choose the winners.

Natalia Fedorova

reference

Ilya Bernstein- an independent editor, commentator and publisher, laureate of the Marshak Prize in the "Project of the Decade" nomination, is engaged in the republishing of Soviet children's classics and works of the "thaw" period with commentary and additional materials. Publisher ("Publishing Project A and B"), editor, commentator, compiler of the series "Ruslit" ("A and B"), "Rodnaya Rech" and "How It Was" (together with the publishing house "Samokat") and other publications.

galina artemenko

Into history on & nbsp "Scooter"

In St. Petersburg for the tenth time, the All-Russian Literary Prize named after S. Ya. Marshak, established by the publishing house "Detgiz" and the Writers' Union of St. Petersburg.

Mikhail Yasnov became the winner in the "Best Author" nomination, Mikhail Bychkov, a St. Petersburg illustrator, designer, member of the Union of Artists of Russia, who illustrated over a hundred books, was named the best artist. The prize "For the best book" was awarded to the work of Leonid Kaminsky, a collector and illustrator of children's folklore, and the publishing house "Detgiz" for "The history of the Russian state in excerpts from school essays."

The only Muscovite who received the highest award was the publisher Ilya Bernstein, who became the best in the nomination “For Publishing Devotion”. The award ceremony took place in the Central Children's City Library of St. Petersburg at noon on October 30, and on the same evening Ilya Bernstein gave a lecture "Children's Literature of the Thaw: The Leningrad School of Children's Literature of the 1960s - 1970s" in St. Petersburg's "Easy-Easy" space. The collection from the lecture was directed to charity.

Ilya Bernstein presented a series of books "Native Speech", which are published by the Samokat publishing house. It includes books that convey the atmosphere of the Leningrad writing environment of the 1960s - 1970s, present names and themes that arose at that time. Among the books in the series are works by Valery Popov, Boris Almazov, Alexander Krestinsky, Sergei Wolf.

The series was born like this: the publisher was offered to republish two books by Sergei Wolf. But it is not in the rules of Ilya Bernstein to simply republish books - he actually publishes them anew, looking for illustrators. He read Wolf, then Popov and decided to make a series: "All these writers entered literature after the XX Congress, most of them were somehow familiar, friendly, many of them are mentioned in his notebooks by Sergei Dovlatov."

But the main thing that the publisher notes is that in children's literature these writers did not set themselves “children's tasks”. Indeed, in fact, children's literature is a vivid plot, an interesting plot that does not let the reader go, funny characters, an obligatory didactic component. But for the named authors, the main thing became something else - the interaction of words in the text. The word became the main character. They in no way lowered the bar by talking to the child reader about all sorts of things.

Nowadays there are eight books in the series, including "Look - I am growing" and "The most beautiful horse" by Boris Almazov, "We are not handsome" by Valery Popov, "Tusya" by Alexander Krestinsky, "My good dad" by Viktor Golyavkin and "We are with Kostik "by Inga Petkevich," Somehow it was stupid "by Sergei Wolf and" What's what ... "by Vadim Frolov. By the way, Frolov's story, which was famous in our time, was published back in 1966, is still included in the programs of compulsory extracurricular reading in Japanese schools, in the USA the author is called "Russian Salinger". And here, as Bernstein said, after the reprint of the book, they recently refused to put the book in a prominent place in one of the prestigious bookstores, motivating this by the fact that "its labeling" 12+ "does not coincide in any way with too adult content." The tale is a growing up story

A 13-year-old teenager, in whose family a dramatic collision occurs: a mother, having fallen in love with another man, leaves home, leaving her son and three-year-old daughter with her husband. The boy is trying to figure out what's going on ...

Boris Almazov's book "Look - I am growing" was marked "6+". For those who did not read it in childhood, let me remind you that the action takes place in a post-war pioneer camp near Leningrad, where children are resting, somehow traumatized by the war-blockade, evacuation, loss of loved ones. It is impossible to leave the territory of the camp - demining is everywhere, and not far from the captured Germans are restoring the bridge. One of the boys, who nevertheless left the territory, met the prisoner and ... saw a man in him. But his friends don't understand this ...

Ilya Bernstein notes that the series "Native Speech" did not initially involve commentary and scientific apparatus. But the publisher wondered: what was the gap between what the author thought and what he was able to say? Books were written in the sixties, writers could say a lot, but not everything. External and internal censorship worked. So the book "Tusya" by Alexander Krestinsky - a story about a little boy who in the second half of the thirties lives with his mom and dad in a large communal Leningrad apartment, included a later story, written already in 2004 in Israel a year before the author's death "Brothers". And this is actually the same story of the boy, only now Alexander Krestinsky speaks directly about repressions, about arrests and about what kind of hard labor one of his brothers went through and how the other died. This story is no longer accompanied by illustrations, but family photographs from the Krestinsky archives.

Boris Almazov's book "The Most Beautiful Horse" also includes two later works of the author - "Thin Rowan" and "Fat", where Almazov tells the story of his family. They are also accompanied by family photos.

Bernstein at the Samokat publishing house makes another book series "How It Was", the purpose of which is to tell modern teenagers about the Great Patriotic War honestly, sometimes as harshly as possible. The authors are again people of those times who have gone through the war - Victor Dragunsky, Bulat Okudzhava, Vadim Shefner, Vitaly Semin, Maria Rolnikaite, Itzhak Meras. And now, in each book of the series, a work of art is supplemented by an article by a historian, setting out today's view of the events described.

When asked how much modern children and adolescents need these books, how they are read and will be read, the publisher answered: “A publication of any kind that saves time, accumulates and comprehends experience is important as a tribute to the memory of those who have earned this experience, and those who to whom it is addressed now. I have no special mission, maybe these books will help me understand what is happening today and make my choice. "

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- Ilya, in your interviews you often talk about your activities as a “publisher-editor”. Is this your special personal position in the publishing world or can you learn it somewhere, make it your profession?

I'll try to answer. There have been several civilizational trends in history. For example, industrial. This is the era of mass-produced generic products. This is the era of the assembly line. The design of the product should be carried out in an appropriate way, the way of promoting the product after release should be the same typical. And such an industrial way was a very important thing in its time. This is a whole civilizational stage. But he's not the only one.

There is also non-industrial production. Someone brews craft beer, someone sews trousers, someone makes furniture. Today it is more and more common occupation, at least in the world of megacities. And I am a representative of just such a world of non-industrial activity. And since this is an underdeveloped and new business, here you have to build everything from the very beginning: from the system of training specialists to the distribution system of finished books. Our publications even sell differently from other books: they do not fall into the usual consumer niches. The store merchant, having received them, finds himself in a difficult situation. Where to define such a book, he does not know: for a child it is too adult, for an adult - too childish. This means that it must be some other way of presenting, selling and promoting. And something like this with all aspects of this case.

But, of course, this is not a combination of some unique individual qualities of one person. This is a normal activity. She just needs to study in a different way, to deal with it in a different way.

- So what is it - back to the Middle Ages, to custom-made workshops? A system of craftsmen and apprentices?

We did call it at some point the “shop” structure. And I really teach, I have a workshop. And in it we really use terms like apprentice, apprentice, for simplicity.

It is assumed that someday the apprentice should become a master, having defended some of his master's ambition before other masters, and get the right, the opportunity to open his workshop. And other masters will help him in this.

So it should have been - the way it once was: a workshop, with a workshop banner. I'm not sure if I have followers on this. But I try to build it in this way. And I don't see any problem in this.

The problem lies elsewhere. Everything has been sharpened from school so that (slightly exaggerating) a person either draws or writes. And if he draws, then he usually writes with errors. And if he writes, then he does not know how to hold a pencil in his hand. This is just one example. Although comparatively not so long ago it was completely natural for a guard officer to easily write poetry to an album of a county lady or draw quite decent graphics in the fields. Only a hundred - one hundred and fifty years ago!

- There is also an economic component to the question of your profession. You said in one of your interviews that the industrial civilization creates a lot of cheap goods that are available to people. And what you are doing is a rather expensive, “niche”, as they say now, product. Right?

If I were Henry Ford, I would be competing with the entire automotive world for millions of consumers. If I do something completely atypical, not mass-produced in my workshop, naturally I don't have many consumers. Although not so little. I believe that any of the most exotic products today can be sold. I still have it quite understandable ... But on the other hand, I do not have competition, and all its costs. There is no fear that my product will be stolen from me. Nobody will make a book like me anyway! In general, by and large, nothing can be taken away from me. You can't even take my business away from me, because it's all in my head. Yes, let's say they arrest my circulation, in the worst case. So I will do the following. But, in any case, 90% of the value of the goods is always with me. And I can't be kicked out of my firm. Nobody will be able to make the Ruslit-2 series, for example. That is, he can publish something, but it will be a completely different product. It's like the mark of a master. People go to a specific master, and they are not at all interested in another workshop. This is not their interest.

- Do they want a different model of relationship?

Sure!

And the relationship with the students in the workshop other than with employees in the company. I am not afraid that my employees will be lured away for a higher salary, or that the employee will leave and take any "client base" with him. Fortunately, we are also relieved of all these ulcers of business.

- With the organization of work, everything is more or less clear. And the very idea of \u200b\u200bcommented editions - is it your own idea or the result of some polls, contacts with readers?

Here again: the industrial method presupposes some special technologies and professions: marketing, market research, conducting surveys, identifying target groups. Individual production initially assumes that you do, in general, for yourself, the way you are interested and like; do for people like you. Therefore, many questions that are traditional, mandatory for ordinary business, simply do not arise. Who is your target audience? I do not know! I do what I see fit; things that I like; what I can do, not what they buy. Well, maybe not quite so radically ... Of course, I think about who might need it. But to a large extent, in such a business, demand is formed by supply, and not vice versa. That is, people did not know that such books exist. It never occurred to them that they needed Captain Vrungel with a 200-page commentary.

- Further, it seems, is understandable: they saw such a book, looked, at first they were surprised, then they liked it ...

And when such a proposal has arisen, they will already be looking for it, they will be looking for just such publications. Moreover, it is already incomprehensible and strange that this was not the case before.

- You think that the comments in the book are necessary. Why? And do you think comments can harm the perception of the text as fiction?

I don't think they are necessary. And yes, I believe they can hurt. Therefore, I breed them - in my books there are no page comments. I believe that a page-by-page commentary, even seemingly as innocent as the explanation of an incomprehensible word, can really destroy the artistic fabric of the narrative.

I don't think comments are necessary at all. At home with the children I even had such an agreement: if we watch a movie together, dad will not be given the remote control. This meant that I had no right at some important, from my point of view, moments to stop the action in order to explain what the children (again from my point of view) did not understand. Because I have - and I'm not the only one, unfortunately - such a stupid habit.

But for those who are interested, the "rationale" should be: separate, differently designed, clearly separated.

- And from your comments, and from the selection of works for publication, it is noticeable that the topic of war for you, on the one hand, is relevant, and on the other, you have a special attitude towards it. For example, in one of your interviews you said that a war cannot be won at all. This is not entirely in line with current government trends. Do you think it is possible to find a balance between respect for ancestors and turning the war itself into a cult?

I would say that this is generally a matter of respect for a person. It's not about ancestors. After all, what is a great power? If a great power is a country whose citizens live well, where the state's efforts are aimed at ensuring that the elderly have a good pension, everyone has good medicine, the young have a good education, so that there is no corruption, so that there are good roads, then these questions don't even arise. These questions, in my opinion, are a consequence of a different idea of \u200b\u200bgreatness, which absolutely does not correspond to me. And this is usually a derivative of national inferiority. AND feeling of inferiority, unfortunately, in our country - source of national idea... A kind of inferiority complex. And therefore our answer to everyone is always the same: “But we won you. We can repeat. "

- On the issue of literature and the state. Tell me, were Soviet teenage books heavily censored or were they already written within a certain framework?

Both. And they were further censored by editors, including after the death of the author. I have a separate article about this in the edition of Deniskin's Stories - about how Deniskin's Stories were censored and edited, how Deniskin's Stories were shortened - although, it would seem, what is there to censor? And it is considered there on a large number of examples.

- One of your publications is "Conduit and Schwambrania" by Lev Kassil. You write that the original author's version was very different from the current generally known text. Why, instead of comments, it was impossible to just publish it?

- I released Conduit and Schwambrania in the original version. This is what Lev Kassil wrote and first published. These are two separate stories, very different from the existing late author's combined version. For example, because the scene of action is the land where the Volga Germans lived compactly. This is the city of Pokrovsk - the future capital of the first autonomy in our country, the Autonomous Republic of the Volga Germans. Since the action of "Conduit" and "Schwambrania" takes place during the First World War, this is the time of anti-German sentiments, anti-German pogroms in the cities. All this was in Pokrovsk. Kassil wrote about this quite a lot, wrote with great sympathy to his German friends and classmates. There was also a significant Jewish theme in the text. Naturally, all this was not included in the later version. And here we can already talk about censorship, about a combination of internal and external censorship. Such historical circumstances just require comments.

- You publish a lot of relatively old books, 1920s - 1970s. What can you say about contemporary teen literature?

It seems to me that she is now on the rise. And I expect that it is about to reach a completely new level, to some kind of peak, like in the 20s and 60s. Literature is generally not smeared evenly over time. There was a Golden Age, there was a Silver Age. I think that prosperity is close now, because a lot has already been accumulated. Many authors are working, many decent, even very decent books have been written, wonderful books are about to appear.

- And what outstanding modern teenage books could you name? Or at least cute to you personally?

No, I'm not ready for that. First, I read relatively little now, to be honest. I'm actually not one of those adults who like to read children's books. For myself, I don't read children's books. And secondly, it so happened that I know the people who write books much better than their works.

- What do you associate such a rise with now? Does it have some external reasons or is it just internal processes in the literature itself?

I don’t know, this is a difficult thing, you cannot explain it that way. I think that everything is in a complex here. After all, what is the Golden Age of Pushkin or the Silver Age of Russian poetry connected with? There are probably special studies, but I can only state this.

This is what I really want. On the contrary, I don’t want to just continue doing what is already good at it. Something new became interesting, but you don't do it because your previous business is going well. I don't work like that.

- Thank you very much for the interview.

Interviewed by Evgeny Zherbin
Photo by Galina Solovieva

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Evgeny Zherbin, holder of the "Book Expert of the XXI century" diploma, member of the children's editorial board of "Papmambuka", 14 years old, St. Petersburg

Books of the Ruslit series

- Ilya, you position yourself as an independent publisher. What does it mean?

At a time when I did not yet have my own publishing brand, I prepared the book for publication from start to finish, and published it on the basis of a partnership with some publishing house. And it was very important for me that it was a well-known publishing house. Books from an unknown publisher (and an unknown publisher) are poorly bought. I was convinced of this from my own experience. For a long time I worked at the Terevinf publishing house - as an employee. And as an independent publisher, he started publishing books together with Terevinf. But this publishing house specialized in publishing literature on curative pedagogy. It does not occupy a serious position in the children's literature market. When the same books that some time ago I published under the auspices of Terevinfa were published by the Belaya Vorona publishing house, the demand for them turned out to be many times greater. And it’s not only the buyers, but also the merchants. If the book is published by an unknown publisher, the application for it includes 40 copies. And books of a well-known publishing house are ordered immediately in the amount of 400 pieces.

How did your suggestions turn out to be interesting for a publishing house like Samokat, for example? Was your publishing program different in some way that the publisher itself could not implement? Or was it some kind of unexpected and promising project?

I suggest not just publishing a separate book. And not even a series of books. Together with the book, I offer ideas for its positioning and promotion. And the word "project" is the most correct here. I offer the publishing house a ready-made project - a book layout with illustrations and commentaries. The copyright acquisition work has already been done.

- Do you buy the rights to the book yourself? Do rightholders agree to transfer rights to an individual?

In the field where I work, yes. I, for the most part, deal with books by forgotten authors, little published or have unpublished works. An elderly author or his heir is usually happy when he gets the opportunity to see a book published or reprinted. The only difficulty is that they do not always agree to transfer exclusive rights to a potential publisher. But most of the time this does not hinder the promotion of the book. I believe that my work has a special publishing quality.

- So what is the main idea of \u200b\u200byour project?

In hindsight, the project looks much smoother than originally thought. When I decided to go into publishing, I started simply by reprinting my favorite children's books. I was born in 1967. That is, the books that I planned to republish belonged to the end of the fifties - seventies. Then I had no other preferences, except for nostalgic ones - for example, to publish Russian literature. My first book was Ludvik Ashkenazy's "A Dog's Life" translated from Czech in the 1960s. In 2011, it was published by the Terevinf publishing house with my comments, an article about the author of the book and my then publishing claims. Irina Balakhonova, editor-in-chief of the Samokat publishing house, liked what I did. And after some time Irina told me that Samokat would like to publish books by two Petersburg writers - Valery Popov and Sergei Wolf. Won't I take it on? Maybe they need to be decorated in a special way. But the editor was not assigned any special role in preparing these books for publication, and it was not very interesting to me. So I said that I was ready to get to work - but I would build it differently. I took out everything that Wolf wrote and everything that Popov wrote, and I read it all. I read Valery Popov's books in my youth. And I had never heard of Sergei Wolfe before (except that I met this name in Sergei Dovlatov's diaries). I compiled collections, invited illustrators who, as it seemed to me, could cope with the task, and the books came out. They have proven to be quite successful in the book market. I began to think in which row they could stand. What is this writing circle? And then it occurred to me that the project should be related to the literature of the Thaw. Because this is something special, marked by the special achievements of Russian literature in general. And you can also localize the project - take only books by Leningrad authors of that time. But, of course, at the beginning of my publishing career, I could not say that I had conceived a project to re-publish the "thaw" literature. The concept now looks slimmer.

Wait, but the books of Wolf and Popov are the 70s, no? And "thaw literature", as I understand it, is literature of the mid-50s ‒ 60s?

Do you think that the books of the 70s can no longer be considered "thaw" literature?

But the "thaw", it seems to me, has a historically defined framework? Does it end with Khrushchev's displacement?

I'm not talking about the Thaw as a political phenomenon. I mean a kind of literature that arose during this period and continued to exist for some time. It seems to me that we can talk about some common features that were characteristic of this literature, which I characterize as "thaw". The writers of this period are people born in the late 30s - early 40s ...

- Survivors of the war as a child.

And they did not receive a Stalinist education. These are not “children of the 20th Congress”, they did not have to break anything in themselves - neither politically nor aesthetically. Young St. Petersburg guys from families of the intelligentsia affected by repressions or otherwise suffered during the era of terror. People who entered literature on the ideological and aesthetic denial of former values. If they were guided by something in their work, it was more likely to Hemingway and Remarque, and not to Leo Kassil, for example. They all started out as adult writers. But they were not published, and therefore they were squeezed into children's literature. Only there they could earn a living by literary work. Here the specificity of their education also affected. All of them were "poorly educated".

You mean they didn't know foreign languages? That they did not have a gymnasium or university background, like the writers of the beginning of the century?

Including. Pasternak and Akhmatova could make a living by literary translations. And these - could not. Valery Popov, for example, graduated from the Electrotechnical Institute. Andrei Bitov said to himself: what could we do? We were savages. And they wanted to exist in the humanitarian field. So I had to "go" to children's literature. But they came to children's literature as free people. They didn’t fit and didn’t fit. As they saw fit, they wrote. In addition, their own works found themselves in a very high-quality context: at this moment they began to translate modern foreign literature, which was completely impossible before, the works of Salinger and Bel Kaufman appeared. Suddenly, the writers of the older generation spoke completely differently. Alexandra Brushtein's The Road Leaves Into the Distance, a new pedagogical prose by Frida Vigdorova appeared. A pedagogical discussion arose ... All this together gave rise to such a phenomenon as the Soviet "thaw" literature ...

But my interests are not limited to this. "Republic of SHKID" or "Conduit. Schwambrania ”are books from another period that I am republishing. Although now the word "reprint" will surprise no one ...

It's true. Today everything is being republished. But do you think your reprints differ significantly from what other publishers do?

Well, I hope they differ in the level of publishing culture. Have I learned the same thing in ten years? For example, the fact that, undertaking a reprint, you need to find the very first edition, and even better - the author's manuscript in the archives. Then you can understand a lot. You can find censorship bills that distort the original intention of the author. You can understand something about the author's quest, about his professional development. And you can find things that generally existed until now only in the manuscript. In addition, in the reprints that I am preparing, the editor and his comments play a special role. My task is not only to acquaint the reader with the first edition of the seemingly famous work of Lev Kassil, but with the help of comments, with the help of a historical article, tell about the time described in the book, about the people of that time. In bookstores you can find a variety of publications of "Republic SHKID" in different price categories. But my book, I hope, will be bought by the reader for the sake of comments and a text article. This is almost the most important thing.

- That is, it is in some way a special genre - "commented book"?

Let's put it this way: it is a transfer of the tradition of scientific publication of literary monuments to literature created relatively recently, but also belonging to another time. The comments I provide to my books are not academic at all. But no literary critic should frown when reading them - in any case, this is the task I set myself.

- How are books selected for a commented edition?

The main criterion is artistry. I believe that I should only republish those texts that change something in the composition of Russian prose or poetry. And these are, first of all, works in which the main thing is not the plot, not the characters, but how the words are composed there. For me, "how" is more important than "what."

- Your books are published by a publishing house specializing in children's and teenage literature, so the question arises as to whom they are addressed to. For example, I had a very difficult feeling when I read “The Girl in Front of the Door” by Maryana Kozyreva. It seems to me that not a single modern teenager, if he is not "in the subject", will understand nothing - despite the comments. But if a book is chosen for its linguistic and artistic merit, they seem to have to "work" by themselves, without commentary. Is there a contradiction here?

- In my opinion, no. Maryana Kozyreva wrote a book about the repressions of the 1930s and about life in evacuation. This is quite a well-founded, from an artistic point of view, work. And it makes it possible to raise this topic and accompany the text with historical comments. But I don’t deny that this book is not for teenagers. Maryana Kozyreva wrote for adults. And Kassil wrote Conduit for adults. The addressee of the book changed already in the process of publishing the book.

It seems to me that this was typical of the literature of that time. The Golden Key, as Miron Petrovsky writes, also had a subtitle “a novel for children and adults” ...

In general, from the very beginning I made books with fuzzy age addressing - those books that are interesting to me myself. It is a publishing strategy that these books are marketed as teenage literature. Teen books sell better than adults. But what a "teenage book" is, I cannot define exactly.

Are you saying that smart teenagers aged 15-16 read the same thing as adults? That there is no clear border?

Even at an earlier age, an aesthetically "pumped" teenager reads the same thing as an adult. He is already able to feel that the main thing is “how” and not “what”. At least I was such a teenager. And it seems to me that the period from 13 to 17 years is the period of the most intensive reading. It was during this period that I read the most important books for me. Of course, it is dangerous to make your own experience absolute. But a person retains a high intensity of reading only if he professionalizes as a humanitarian. And in adolescence, the basic ways of reading are laid.

That is, you still mean a teenager when you prepare a book for publication. Why else would you need illustrations?

Illustrations are important for the perception of the text. And I attach great importance to the visual image of the book. I have always published and continue to publish books with new illustrations. I am looking for contemporary artists who, from my point of view, can cope with the task. And they draw new pictures. Although the dominant trend in modern book publishing is different. Books are usually reprinted with the same illustrations that are remembered by the grandparents of today's teenagers.

This is very understandable. This makes the book recognizable. Recognition appeals to people's nostalgic feelings and drives good sales.

Yes. But in this way the notion is affirmed that the golden age of Russian book illustration is in the past. The Golden Age is Konashevich. Or at least Kalinovsky. And modern illustrators sculpt what horror it is ... And in the reviews of my books (for example, in the readers' reviews on the Labyrinth website) the same "motive" is often repeated: they say, the text is good, but the pictures are bad. But now is the time for a new visuality. And it is very important that it works for a new perception of the text. Although it is certainly not easy.

- And debatable, of course ... But - interesting. It was very interesting to talk with you.

Interviewed by Marina Aromshtam

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Interview with Ilya Bernstein