Which writers were born in Mikhailovskoye. Garin-Mikhailovsky Nikolay Georgievich

Kapitonova, Nadezhda Anatolyevna From the pages of radio programs: N. G. Garin-Mikhailovsky / N. A. Kapitonova // Historical readings. Vol. 10. 2007. P.383-407

BY RADIO PAGES

1. Garin-Mikhailovsky

The life of Nikolai Georgievich Garin-Mikhailovsky is so rich in events, work, and creativity that it is worth writing a novel about him. He can be called a unique person: he is both a writer (his famous tetralogy “Tema’s Childhood”, “Gymnasium Students”, “Students” and “Engineers” became a classic), and a talented travel engineer (it was not for nothing that he was called the “Knight of the Railways”) , journalist, fearless traveler, good family man and educator. Savva Mamontov said about him: “He was talented, talented in every way.” Garin-Mikhailovsky was not only a great worker, but also a great lover of life. Gorky called him “The Cheerful Righteous Man.”

He is also interesting to us because he built a railway in the Southern Urals. We can say that he connected Chelyabinsk with Europe and Asia, lived with us for several years in Ust-Katav, and lived for some time in Chelyabinsk. He dedicated several stories and a novella to the Urals: “Leshy swamp”, “Tramp”, “Grandmother”.

In Chelyabinsk there is a street named after Garin-Mikhailovsky. Until recently, there was a memorial plaque with his name on the building of our station, which was unveiled in 1972. Now, unfortunately, she has disappeared. Chelyabinsk residents simply must return the memorial plaque with the bas-relief of Garin-Mikhailovsky to its place!

The beginning of the life of Garin-Mikhailovsky

Nikolai Georgievich was born on February 20, 1852 in St. Petersburg, in the family of the famous general and hereditary nobleman Georgy Mikhailovsky. The general was so respected by the tsar that Nicholas I himself became the godfather of the boy who was named after him. Soon the general resigned and moved with his family to Odessa, where he had an estate. Nikolai was the eldest of nine children.

The house had its own strict education system. The writer talked about it in his famous book “Childhood of the Theme”. When the boy grew up, he was sent to the famous Richelieu gymnasium in Odessa. Having graduated from it, he entered the Faculty of Law at St. Petersburg University in 1871, but his studies did not work out, and the next year Nikolai Mikhailovsky brilliantly passed the exams at the Institute of Railway Engineers and never regretted it, although his work was incredibly difficult. He realized this during his student practice. There was a moment when he almost died. In Bessarabia, he worked as a fireman on a steam locomotive, he was very tired from unaccustomed conditions, and the driver took pity on the guy, threw coal into the firebox for him, he was also tired, and both fell asleep on the road. The locomotive was running out of control. Only by a miracle did they escape.

Nikolai Mikhailovsky's work on the railway

After graduating from the institute, he took part in the construction of a road in Bulgaria, then was sent to work at the Ministry of Railways. At the age of 27, he married the daughter of the Minsk governor, Nadezhda Valeryevna Charykova, who became his wife, friend, and mother of his children for the rest of his life. She far outlived her husband and wrote a good book about him. Mikhailovsky did not work at the ministry for long; he asked to build the Batumi railway in Transcaucasia, where he experienced a number of adventures (attacked by robbers and Turks). You can read about this in his story “Two Moments”. And there he could have died. In the Caucasus, he seriously encountered embezzlement and could not come to terms with it. I decided to radically change my life. The family already had two children. I bought an estate in the Samara province, 70 kilometers from the railway, next to the impoverished village of Gundurovka.

"Several years in the village"

Nikolai Georgievich turned out to be a talented business executive and reformer. He wanted to transform a backward village into a prosperous peasant community. He built a mill, bought agricultural machinery, planted crops that local peasants had never known before: sunflowers, lentils, poppy. I tried to breed trout in the village pond. He selflessly helped peasants build new huts. His wife set up a school for the village children. IN New Year They organized Christmas trees for peasant children and gave them gifts. In the first year we had excellent harvests. But the peasants mistook these good deeds of Mikhailovsky for the eccentricities of the master and deceived him. Neighboring landowners took the innovations with hostility and did everything to nullify Mikhailovsky’s work - they burned the mill, destroyed the harvest... He held on for three years, almost went bankrupt, became disillusioned with his business: “So this is how my business ended!” Leaving the house behind, the Mikhailovsky family left the village.

Later, already in Ust-Katav, Mikhailovsky wrote the essay “Several Years in the Village,” where he analyzed his work on the land and realized his mistakes: “I dragged them (the peasants) to some kind of paradise of my own... an educated person, but acted , like an ignoramus... I wanted to turn the river of life in a different direction." This essay later found its way to the capital.

The Ural period of Mikhailovsky’s life

Mikhailovsky returned to engineering. Was assigned to the construction of the Ufa Zlatoust road (1886). First there was survey work. For the first time in the history of railway construction in Russia there were such difficulties: mountains, mountain streams, swamps, impassability, heat and midges in summer, frost in winter. The Kropachevo Zlatoust section was especially difficult. Mikhailovsky later wrote: “8% of prospectors left the scene forever, mainly from nervous breakdown and suicide. This is the percentage of the war.” When construction work began, it was no easier: exhausting work, no equipment, everything by hand: shovel, pick, wheelbarrow... It was necessary to blow up rocks, make supporting walls, build bridges. The road was built at state expense, and Nikolai Georgievich fought to reduce the cost of construction: “you can’t build it expensively, we don’t have the funds for such roads, but we need them like air and water...”.

He drew up a project for cheaper construction, but his superiors were not interested in it. Nikolai Georgievich fought desperately for his project and sent a 250-word telegram to the ministry! Unexpectedly, his project was approved and assigned to the heads of the site. Nikolai Georgievich described the history of this struggle in the story “Option”, where he is recognizable in the image of engineer Koltsov. “Option” he wrote in Ust-Katav. I read it to my wife, but immediately tore it up. The wife secretly collected the scraps and glued them together. They published it when Garin-Mikhailovsky was no longer alive. Chukovsky wrote about this story: “No fiction writer has ever been able to write so captivatingly about work in Russia.” This story was published in Chelyabinsk in 1982.

But let's go back to the time of construction of the railway. From a letter to his wife (1887): “... I’m in the field all day from 5 am to 9 pm. I’m tired, but cheerful, cheerful, thank God, healthy...”

He did not deceive his wife, talking about cheerfulness and cheerfulness. He really was a very energetic, fast, charming person. Gorky later wrote about him that Nikolai Georgievich “took life as a holiday. And unconsciously made sure that others accepted life that way.” Colleagues and friends called him "Divine Nika". The workers loved it very much, they said: “We’ll do everything, father, just order it!” From the memoirs of an employee: “... Nikolai Georgievich’s sense of the terrain was amazing. Ride through the taiga on horseback, drowning in swamps, as if from a bird’s eye view, he unmistakably chose the most advantageous directions. And he builds like a magician.” And, as if he were responding to this in a letter to his wife: “They say about me that I do miracles, and they look at me with big eyes, but I find it funny. So little is needed to do all this. More conscientiousness, energy, enterprise, and these seemingly terrible mountains will part and reveal their secret, invisible to anyone, not marked on any maps, passages and passages, using which you can reduce the cost and significantly shorten the line.”

And we can give many examples of “cheaper” road construction: a very difficult section on the pass near the Suleya station, a section of the road from the Vyazovaya station to the Yakhino junction, where it was necessary to make deep excavations in the rocks, build a bridge over the Yuryuzan River, lead the river into a new channel, pour thousands of tons of soil along the river... Anyone who passes the Zlatoust station never ceases to be amazed at the railway loop invented by Nikolai Georgievich.

He was one person: a talented prospector, an equally talented designer and an outstanding railway builder.

In the winter of 1887, Nikolai Georgievich settled with his family in Ust-Katav. There is a small monument in the cemetery near the church. The daughter of Nikolai Georgievich Varenka is buried here. She lived only three months. But here the son of Gary (George) was born, who gave a new name to the writer. Unfortunately, the house where the Mikhailovskys lived has not survived in the city. On September 8, 1890, the first train arrived from Ufa to Zlatoust. There was a big celebration in the city, where Nikolai Georgievich gave a speech. Then the government commission noted: “Ufa Zlatoust road... can be recognized as one of the outstanding roads built by Russian engineers. The quality of work... can be considered exemplary.” For his work on the construction of the road, Nikolai Georgievich was awarded the Order of St. Anne. It would not be superfluous to say that the well-known “Europe Asia” sign, installed at the highest point of the South Ural Railway, was made according to the design of Garin-Mikhailovsky.

Mikhailovsky also visited Chelyabinsk in 1891-1892. At that time, the road construction department was located in a two-story house on Truda Street next to today’s geological museum. The house was demolished in the 80s of the last century. Now there is a monument to Sergei Prokofiev in this place. It would be nice to move this monument to the Philharmonic (it was planned there!), and in this place to erect a monument to those who built the railway, including Garin-Mikhailovsky! The village in which Garin-Mikhailovsky then lived is no longer on the map of Chelyabinsk.

Writer Garin-Mikhailovsky

In the winter of 1890-1891, Nadezhda Valerievna became seriously ill. Mikhailovsky left his work on the road and took his family to Gundurovka, where it was easier to live. The wife has recovered. In his spare time, Nikolai Georgievich began writing memoirs about his childhood (“Tema’s Childhood”). In early spring, at the very time of the mud, an unexpected and rare guest came to them from St. Petersburg already famous writer Konstantin Mikhailovich Stanyukovich. It turns out that Nikolai Georgievich’s manuscript “Several Years in the Country” came to him, and he was fascinated by it. And he came to such a distance and wilderness to meet the author and offer to publish an article in the magazine “Russian Thought”. We talked, Stanyukovich asked if there was anything else written. Mikhailovsky began to read his manuscript about childhood. Stanyukovich warmly approved of her, offered to be her “godfather,” but asked her to come up with a pseudonym, because The editor-in-chief of "Russian Thought" at that time was Mikhailovsky's namesake. I didn’t have to think long, because one-year-old Garya came into the room, looking at the stranger very unfriendly and warily. Nikolai Georgievich took his son on his lap and began to calm him down: “Don’t be afraid, I’m Garin’s dad.” Stanyukovich immediately grabbed it: “that’s the pseudonym Garin!” And the first books were published under this name. Then a double surname appeared: Garin-Mikhailovsky.

In the summer of 1891, Mikhailovsky was appointed head of the survey party to prepare the construction of the West Siberian Railway on the Chelyabinsk Ob section. Again, the search for the most successful and convenient options for laying the road. It was he who insisted that a bridge across the Ob be built near the village of Krivoshchekovo. Nikolai Georgievich wrote then: “For now, due to the lack of railways, everything is sleeping here... but someday it will sparkle brightly and strongly here, on the ruins of the old new life...". It was as if he knew that on the site of a small station the city of Novonikolaevsk would arise, which would later become the huge city of Novosibirsk. A large square near the Novosibirsk station bears the name of Garin-Mikhailovsky. On the square there is a monument to Garin-Mikhailovsky. Over the course of 6 years, a road stretched from Samara to Chelyabinsk (over a thousand kilometers), and then further.

While Nikolai Georgievich was busy building the railway, literary fame came to him. In 1892, the magazine "Russian Wealth" published "Childhood Topics", and a little later "Russian Thought" "Several Years in the Village". About the last work, Chekhov wrote: “Previously, there was nothing like this in literature of this kind, both in tone and, perhaps, sincerity. The beginning is a little routine and the end is upbeat, but the middle is pure pleasure. It’s so true that there’s more than enough.” Korney Chukovsky joins him, saying that “Several Years in the Country” reads like a sensational novel, “for Garin, even conversations with the clerk about manure are exciting, like love scenes.”

Garin-Mikhailovsky moved to St. Petersburg and took up publishing a magazine (1892). He mortgaged his estate, bought “Russian Wealth”, and in the very first issue published stories by Stanyukovich, Korolenko, Mamin-Sibiryak, who became his friends.

Garin-Mikhailovsky works a lot, sleeps 4-5 hours a day, writes a continuation of “Childhood Theme”, articles about road construction, theft in construction, fights for state support for construction, signs under them as a “practical engineer” The Minister of Railways knows whoever writes articles he dislikes threatens to fire Mikhailovsky from the railway system. But Garin-Mikhailovsky is already known as an engineer. He is not left without work. Designs the road Kazan Sergiev Vody. Continues to fight embezzlement on the railway. Garin-Mikhailovsky was not a revolutionary, but he met Gorky and helped the revolutionaries with money.

Working on the railroad does not allow him to sit at a desk; he writes on the go, on the train, on scraps of paper, office book forms. Sometimes a story is written in one night. I was very worried when I sent my work and baptized it. Then he was tormented that he had written it wrong, and sent corrections by telegram from different stations. As far as I know, he was the only Russian writer who wrote his works by telegraph" (S. Elpatievsky). Garin-Mikhailovsky is the author of not only the famous tetralogy, but also novels, short stories, plays, and essays.

Garin-Mikhailovsky and children

It's time to talk about main love Nikolai Georgievich. These are children. From a letter to his wife (1887): “I love you, my joy, and my children more than life itself; I remember you with joy and pleasure...”. He had 11 children of his own and three adopted ones! Even in his youth, he and his bride took an oath. "We will never lay a finger on our children." And indeed, children were never punished in his family; one dissatisfied look from him was enough. He really wanted the children to be happy, in one of the stories he writes: “... after all, if there is no happiness during childhood, when will there be it?” Not long ago, on Moscow radio, they read Garin-Mikhailovsky’s wonderful story “Confession of a Father” about the feelings of a father who punished his little son and then lost him. It would be nice if this show was repeated.

Children surrounded him everywhere; other people's children called him Uncle Nika. He loved to give gifts to children and organize holidays, especially New Year trees. He made up fairy tales on the fly and told them well. His children's fairy tales were published before the revolution. He talked to the children seriously, as equals. When Chekhov died, Nikolai Georgievich wrote to his 13-year-old adopted son: “The most sensitive and sympathetic person and, probably, the most suffering person in Russia has died: we probably cannot even understand now the full magnitude and significance of the loss that this death brought... And what do you think about this? Write to me..." His letters to already adult children have been preserved. He saw little of the children and did not impose his beliefs on them, but his influence on the children was enormous. They all grew up to be worthy people: Sergei became a mining engineer, Georgiy (Garya) studied abroad before the revolution, ended up in forced emigration, knew 14 languages, was a specialist in international law, and translated his father’s works into foreign languages. He returned to the USSR in 1946, but died soon...

Garin-Mikhailovsky dedicated his first and most expensive book, “The Childhood of Theme” (1892), to his childhood. This book is not only memories of my own childhood, but also reflections on the family, moral education of a person. He remembered his cruel father, the punishment cell in their house, the floggings. The mother protected the children and told the father: “You should train puppies, not raise children.” An excerpt from “Tema’s Childhood” became the book “Tema and the Bug,” one of the first and favorite books of children of many generations in our country.

Continuation of "Childhood Themes" "Gymnasium Students" (1893). And this book is largely autobiographical, “everything is taken directly from life.” The censorship protested against this book. Garin-Mikhailovsky writes that the gymnasium turns children into stupid people and distorts their souls. Someone called his story “An invaluable treatise on education... how not to educate.” The books then made a huge impression on readers, especially teachers. A flood of letters poured in. Garin-Mikhailovsky put the following words into the mouth of his hero from “Gymnasium Students” (teacher Leonid Nikolaevich): “They say it’s too late to start talking about education, they say it’s an old and boring issue, resolved long ago. I don’t agree with this. There are no resolved issues on earth, and the question of education is the most acute and painful for humanity. And this is not an old, meager question; it is an eternally new question, because there are no old children."

The third book by Garin-Mikhailovsky “Students” (1895). And in this book his life experience, observations that even in his student days human dignity was suppressed, the task of the institution is not to make a person, but a slave, an opportunist. Only at the age of 25, when he began to build his first road, began to work, only then did he find himself, gain character. It turned out that the entire first 25 years of his life was a longing for work. Since childhood, an ebullient nature had been waiting for a living cause, but family, gymnasium, and institute killed this thirst. The fourth book "Engineers". It was not completed. And it was published after the writer’s death (1907). Gorky called these books by Garin-Mikhailovsky “a whole epic of Russian life.”

Garin-Mikhailovsky traveler

Work on the railway, painful work on books. Nikolai Georgievich was very tired and decided to “rest” and travel around the world (1898) through the Far East, Japan, America, and Europe. This was his long-time dream. He had traveled all over Russia for a long time and now he wanted to see other countries. Garin-Mikhailovsky got ready to travel, and just before leaving he was offered to take part in a large scientific expedition to North Korea and Manchuria. He agreed. It was a very difficult, dangerous, but extremely interesting journey through unknown places. The writer traveled 1,600 kilometers with the expedition on foot and on horseback. I saw a lot, kept diaries, listened to Korean fairy tales through a translator. Later he published these tales for the first time in Russia and Europe. We published these fairy tales in 1956 and, unfortunately, have not republished them since.

Garin-Mikhailovsky visited Japan, America, and Europe. It’s interesting to read his lines about returning to Russia after such a trip: “I don’t know about anyone, but I was overcome by a heavy, downright painful feeling when I entered Russia from Europe... I’ll get used to it, I’ll get drawn into this life again, and maybe , it will not seem like a prison, horror, and even more depressing from this consciousness.”

Garin-Mikhailovsky wrote interesting reports about his expedition to North Korea. After returning from the trip, he was invited to the Tsar in the Anichkov Palace. Nikolai Georgievich prepared very seriously for the story of what he had seen and experienced, but it turned out that his story was of no use to anyone. royal family wasn’t interested, the queen was clearly bored, and the king was drawing women’s heads. The questions asked were completely irrelevant. Then Nikolai Georgievich wrote about them “These are provincials!” But the tsar still decided to award Garin-Mikhailovsky the Order of St. Vladimir. The writer never received it because he and Gorky signed a letter of protest against the beating of students at the Kazan Cathedral. Nikolai Georgievich was expelled from the capital for a year and a half.

The railroad again

In the spring of 1903, Garin-Mikhailovsky was appointed head of the survey party for the construction of a railway along the southern coast of Crimea. Nikolai Georgievich investigated the possibilities of laying a road. He understood that the road should pass through very picturesque places and resorts. Therefore, I developed 84 (!) versions of the electric road, where each station had to be designed not only by architects, but also by artists. Each station had to be very beautiful and non-standard. He then wrote: “I would like to finish two things: the electric road in Crimea and the story “Engineers.” But he did not succeed in either one or the other. Construction of the road was supposed to begin in the spring of 1904, and in January the Russian-Japanese War began ...

The Crimean road has not yet been built! And Garin-Mikhailovsky went to the Far East as a war correspondent. He wrote essays, which later became the book “Diary during the War,” which contained the real truth about that war. After the revolution of 1905, he came to St. Petersburg for a short time. He donated a large sum of money for revolutionary needs. He did not know that from 1896 until the end of his life he was under secret police surveillance.

Care of Garin-Mikhailovsky

After the war, he returned to the capital, threw himself into social work, writing, wrote articles, plays, tried to finish the book “Engineers”... He did not know how to rest, he slept 3-4 hours a day. His wife tried to persuade him to rest, and he answered her: “I’ll rest in the grave, I’ll sleep there.” He probably didn't realize how close he was to the truth in his prophecy. On November 26, 1906, Nikolai Georgievich gathered friends, talked and argued all night (he wanted to create new theater). They separated in the morning. And at 9 am it’s work again. In the evening, Garin-Mikhailovsky at a meeting of the editorial board of Vestnik Zhizn, again controversy, his bright, heated speech. Suddenly he felt bad, he went into the next room, lay down on the sofa and died. After the autopsy, the doctor said that the heart was healthy, but paralysis occurred due to extreme fatigue.

The family did not have enough money for the funeral, so they had to collect it by subscription. Garin-Mikhailovsky was buried at the Volkov cemetery in St. Petersburg.

Much has been written about Garin-Mikhailovsky, there are books, articles, memoirs. But, probably, the most accurate characteristics were given to him by Korney Chukovsky (essay “Garin”). I would like to present the entire essay here, but it is long 21 pages. Here are just a few lines from the essay:

“Garin was short, very agile, dapper, handsome: his hair was gray, his eyes were young and quick... All his life he worked as a railway engineer, but also in his hair, in his impetuous, uneven gait and in his unbridled, hasty , hot speeches always felt what is called a broad nature an artist, a poet, alien to stingy, selfish and petty thoughts...

It seems to me that the most important thing is that for all his emotional outbursts, for all his inconsiderate, unbridled generosity, he was a businesslike, businesslike man, a man of numbers and facts, accustomed from a young age to all economic practices.

This was the uniqueness of his creative personality: the combination of a high structure of soul with practicality. A rare combination, especially in those days... He was the only contemporary fiction writer who was a consistent enemy of mismanagement, in which he saw the source of all our tragedies. In his books, he often insisted that Russia is completely in vain to live in such humiliating poverty, since it is the richest country in the world...

And he looked at the Russian village, and at Russian industry, and at the Russian railway business, and at the Russian family way of life just as busily and thoughtfully; he made, as it were, an audit of Russia in the eighties and nineties... Moreover, like any practitioner, he has goals always specific, clear, close, aimed at eliminating some specific evil: this needs to be changed, rebuilt, but this needs to be completely destroyed. And then (in this limited area) life will become smarter, richer and more joyful..."

It is a great pity that during Garin-Mikhailovsky’s lifetime his views on the reorganization of Russia were not appreciated in the country.

The Southern Urals can be proud that such a person is directly related to it.

Storytellers of Russia and the USSR

Victor Eremin

The Book of Happiness; Chicken Kud; Parrot; Korean fairy tales.

Nikolai Georgievich Garin-Mikhailovsky

“Children were a source of lasting joy for him. He relaxed with the children, with the children he laughed like a child and trembled with their small, so funny, so naive joys. And we, the children, greedily seized his free moments, surrounded him, each pulled him in his own direction and asked for more and more new fairy tales, which he created right there on the spot, created with inimitable skill. And then it was our turn - Nikolai Georgievich persistently demanded fairy tales from us, and our inexperienced naive attempts made him laugh contagiously and encouragingly” (B.K. Terletsky).

Nikolai Georgievich Mikhailovsky was born on February 20, 1852 in St. Petersburg. His father, Georgy Antonovich Mikhailovsky, was from an ancient noble family, Ulan, awarded the Order of St. George for his exploits. Out of respect for the warrior, Emperor Nicholas I personally became the godfather of his eldest son Nicholas. The boy’s mother, nee Glafira Nikolaevna Tsvetinovich, came from Serbian nobles.

After the death of Nicholas I and the end of the Crimean War, Georgy Antonovich retired with the rank of general and moved with his family to Odessa, where he had his own house and estate near the city. The future writer spent his childhood there. I’ll note right away that military general Mikhailovsky turned out to be a useless entrepreneur, and therefore during the years of reforms of Alexander II, the family slowly went bankrupt. This happened so slowly that it actually did not affect Nikolai’s youth.

The boy received his initial education at home, then he was sent to a German school, from where he entered the Odessa Richelieu Gymnasium. In 1871, Mikhailovsky became a student at the Faculty of Law of St. Petersburg University, but failed the first session. In 1872 he successfully entered the Institute of Railways. This is how the main one was found life path a brilliant writer and survey engineer.

After graduating from the institute, civil engineer Mikhailovsky was sent to Bulgaria and Moldova, which had just been liberated from the Turks. He participated in the construction of a port in the Burgas region, as well as the Bender-Galician railway, which connected Moldova with Bulgaria. The young man worked in the Balkans for 4 years.

In 1879, Nikolai Georgievich married the daughter of the Minsk governor, Nadezhda Valerievna Charykova. And here we will have to talk about the most important personality traits of Nikolai Georgievich. Firstly, he was an unusually charming person, women easily fell in love with him, and as for men, he knew how to persuade and pacify even the toughest creditors. Secondly, Mikhailovsky was an extremely frivolous person and did things for which anyone else would certainly have suffered; suffice it to say that having a large family, 11 of his own and 3 adopted children, he managed to squander the capital of his two millionaire wives in the shortest possible time (shortly before his death, the writer, having received a loan, hired a private train and traveled on it to Paris to buy fruit for banquet in honor of receiving this loan, etc.). But at the same time, thirdly, Mikhailovsky was very thrifty and prudent when it came to public money and the common good of Russia.

After his marriage, Nikolai Georgievich asked to build the Batumi railway in Transcaucasia, where he was almost killed by Turkish bandits.

Since he already had children, Mikhailovsky decided not to take any more risks and become a landowner. With his wife's money, he bought an estate in the Samara province and organized a scientifically based, profitable farm there. However, the peasants mistook his good deeds for the master’s eccentricities - they burned the farm in mockery and destroyed the harvest. After 3 years, when his wife’s money ran out, Mikhailovsky had to return to engineering.

Since 1886, Nikolai Georgievich built tunnels, bridges, and laid railways. He worked in Ufa, in the Kazan, Kostroma, Vyatka, Volyn provinces and in Siberia. He is considered the founder of the city of Novonikolaevsk (Novosibirsk). Since April 1903, Mikhailovsky led the expedition to carry out design work for the construction of a railway on the southern coast of Crimea.

At first, the family followed the breadwinner. In the winter of 1887 they lived in Ust-Katav (near Chelyabinsk). The Mikhailovskys’ first daughter, 3-month-old Varenka, died there. Their eldest son Garya (George) was born there.

In the winter of 1890-1891, Nadezhda Valerievna became seriously ill. Mikhailovsky took a leave of absence and took his family to a ruined Samara estate. His wife recovered, and Nikolai Georgievich, out of boredom, decided to write memories of his childhood. He had made attempts to engage in literature before this. In the early spring of 1891, at the height of the mud, the outstanding Russian writer and marine painter Konstantin Mikhailovich Stanyukovich came to them from St. Petersburg. He accidentally came across Mikhailovsky’s manuscript “Several Years in the Country,” and he decided to get to know the author. Nikolai Georgievich read a fragment from his memoirs to the guest, and he offered to give them to the Russian Thought magazine. Since the editor-in-chief of this publication was the namesake of Nikolai Georgievich, a pseudonym was required. They started to come up with ideas. And then little Gary ran into the room. The father took the baby in his arms and said with a laugh:

- I'm Garin's dad!

To which Stanyukovich replied:

- Here is the pseudonym - Garin!

The writer's first books were published under this name. Then a double surname appeared - Garin-Mikhailovsky.

Nikolai Georgievich entered the literary field in 1892 with the memoir “Tema’s Childhood” and the story “Several Years in the Village.” Readers welcomed the talented author. Over time, the memoirs became a tetralogy: “Theme’s Childhood” (1892), “Gymnasium Students” (1893), “Students” (1895), “Engineers” (published 1907). It is considered the best of everything that Garin-Mikhailovsky created.
In 1895, in Samara, the writer met Vera Alexandrovna Sadovskaya, née Dubrovina. This millionaire donated huge sums to his engineering and literary adventures. The romance that began ended with Nikolai Georgievich’s divorce from Charykova and his wedding to Sadovskaya. From that time on, the writer began to appear in society, accompanied by two wives! The women were forced to make friends and humbly accept the whims of their common husband. The writer had no intention of abandoning any of them. Although his salary for maintenance is so large family there wasn’t enough, everyone lived on Sadovskaya’s money. Garin-Mikhailovsky even wrote a play about his life with two wives; it was staged at the Samara Theater, and the entire unusual family was present at the premiere.

The writer did not forget about himself. Tired of constant survey and construction expeditions, he decided to make a round-the-world trip in 1898 along the Far East-Japan-America-Europe route. The wives agreed.

Just before his departure, Mikhailovsky was offered to take part in a large scientific expedition to North Korea and Manchuria. Since Korea had previously pursued a policy of self-isolation, this was the first large-scale foreign scientific expedition in those places. It would have been criminally stupid to refuse it. And the writer agreed.

The journey turned out to be very difficult and dangerous. The expedition walked and rode horses for 1,600 km. And no matter where she appeared, local authorities gathered storytellers who, through translators, told folk tales to Nikolai Georgievich - such was the whim of the writer. Everything was recorded and resulted in a unique book, “Korean Fairy Tales.” The author published it in 1899, after which it was translated into many languages ​​of the world.

With the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War, Garin-Mikhailovsky went to the Far East as a war correspondent. There he remained until the beginning of the first Russian revolution and the end of the war.

Upon returning to St. Petersburg, the writer continued to work on the story “Engineers”, and also took part in the work of the Bolshevik magazine “Bulletin of Life”. On the evening of December 10, 1906, a stormy meeting of the journal's editorial board took place, and Garin-Mikhailovsky spoke energetically at it. Suddenly he felt bad, he went into the next room, lay down on the sofa and died. The writer suffered from cardiac paralysis from overwork.

Since the day before, Nikolai Georgievich, out of his frivolity, gave a large sum to the cause of the revolution, and both of his families were already ruined by that time, money had to be collected for the funeral by subscription. The burial of Nikolai Georgievich Garin-Mikhailovsky took place at the Volkovskoye cemetery in St. Petersburg.

“All on the move, on the fly was this well-built man, of medium height, with thick white hair... Easy to use, able to talk to everyone - from a peasant to a society lady inclusive. An interesting storyteller, graceful in his engineering jacket, he made a charming impression on most of those who met him.” This is what theater and literary observer Alexander Smirnov (Treplev) wrote about Nikolai Garin-Mikhailovsky. February 20 marked the 160th anniversary of the birth of Nikolai Georgievich Garin-Mikhailovsky.

Nikolai Georgievich Garin-Mikhailovsky (1852-1906)

Nikolai was born in St. Petersburg into a middle-class noble family. His father was Georgy Mikhailovsky, an Uhlan officer from the Kherson province, who, however, almost did not live on his estate, but settled in the capital. There he married Glafira Cvetinović, a noblewoman of Serbian origin. From this marriage a son was born, who was named Nikolai.

In 1871, after graduating from high school, the young man entered the Institute of Railways, where he first tried to write. However, the editors of one of the capital's magazines rejected his story from student life without any explanation. This failure discouraged the young author from pursuing literary creativity for many years.

Mikhailovsky's last year of study coincided with the Russian-Turkish War. He received his diploma as a railway engineer in the summer of 1878, when the battles here were already ending. The young specialist was sent to Bulgaria, which had already been liberated from the Turks, to the position of senior technician, where he participated in the restoration of the seaport and the construction of new highways. Subsequently, the experience and professional recognition gained in the Balkans allowed the young engineer to get a job in the railway department, where for several years he participated in the laying of steel lines in Bessarabia, Odessa province and Transcaucasia.

Mikhailovsky rose to the position of head of the Baku section of the railway, but at the end of 1883, unexpectedly for his colleagues, he submitted his resignation. As the engineer himself explained, he did this “due to his complete inability to sit between two chairs: on the one hand, to look after state interests, on the other, personal and economic interests.”

However, it is now clear that the real reason Mikhailovsky's departure from engineering was his fascination with the ideas of the populists, who were active in Russia at that time. Then many Russian intellectuals joined this trend, setting themselves the task of “educating the common people.”

It was with the ideas of populism that the Samara period of the 30-year-old engineer’s life began. Mikhailovsky decided to educate the peasants not with words, but with concrete deeds, for which in 1883 he bought an estate in the Samara province (later the village of Gundorovka) for 75 thousand rubles. Here Nikolai Georgievich settled with his wife and two children. The Mikhailovsky couple hoped to teach local peasants how to cultivate and fertilize the land using European methods and raise the general level of their culture. Imbued with populist ideas, Mikhailovsky wanted to introduce elections in communal government and attract rich villagers to the cause, whom the classics of Marxism-Leninism later called kulaks.

But all the innovations of the “good landowner” ultimately ended in complete failure. The men greeted all his endeavors with distrust and murmur, categorically refusing to plow and sow “the German way.” As for the local kulaks, as soon as they heard about the transfer of capital “for the benefit of society,” they entered into an open conflict with the new landowner, setting him on a series of nightly arson attacks. In just one summer, Mikhailovsky lost his mill and thresher, and in September, when all his granaries burst into flames, he also lost the harvest he had collected with such difficulty.

Almost going bankrupt, the “good gentleman” decided to leave the village that had rejected him and return to engineering work. Having hired a skilled manager for the estate, Mikhailovsky in May 1886 entered service on the Samara-Zlatoust Railway. Here he was immediately entrusted with the construction of a site in the Ufa province, from which the great Trans-Siberian Railway subsequently began.

Writer and journalist

In his free time from laying rail tracks, Mikhailovsky wrote the documentary story “Several Years in the Village,” where he outlined the story of his unsuccessful socio-economic experiment in Gundorovka. While in Moscow, he showed this manuscript to Konstantin Stanyukovich, the author of sea novels, who had great influence in literary circles. The venerable writer, after reading several chapters, was delighted with them. However, the young author considered his work still raw, requiring thorough refinement.

Mikhailovsky continued to work on the manuscript in those months while the construction of the Ufa-Zlatoust railway section was underway. At the same time, he began writing the autobiographical story “The Childhood of Thema,” which in many ways became his entry into great literature. Both of these books were published with a short break in 1892 and received high critical acclaim.

So that he would not be reproached for inattention to his main work, the travel engineer put a pseudonym on the covers of the books - Nikolai Garin, which, according to the author, came from the name of his son Georgy, whose family name was simply Garya. Subsequently, this is how he signed his other works, and then took a double surname - Garin-Mikhailovsky.

The continuation of “Childhood Theme” was the stories “Gymnasium Students” (1893), “Students” (1895) and “Engineers” (1907), which were eventually combined into an autobiographical tetralogy. This cycle remains to this day the most famous part of Garin-Mikhailovsky’s work, and “Theme’s Childhood” is considered by critics to be the best part of the entire tetralogy.

He wrote many articles and stories for periodicals and became closely acquainted with many journalists. Among them was Samara reporter Alexey Peshkov, who signed his materials with the pseudonyms Maxim Gorky and Yehudiel Khlamida.

This is how Gorky later recalled the restless railway engineer: “When Samara Gazeta asked him to write a story about the mathematician Lieberman, after much persuasion, he said that he would write it in a carriage, on the way somewhere to the Urals. The beginning of the story, written on telegraph forms, was brought to the editorial office by a cab driver from the Samara station. At night a very long telegram was received with amendments to the beginning, and... the end of the story arrived, it seems, from Yekaterinburg. It’s surprising that he was able to write his stories at all, given his restlessness...”

Traveled halfway around the world

In addition to the Samara-Zlatoust Railway, in the 1890s Garin-Mikhailovsky also led sections for laying steel lines in Siberia, the Far East and Crimea. He traveled a lot around Russia and the world, and in 1898 he traveled around the world on a Russian ship.

Acquaintance and communication with Gorky, who was fond of Marxism and was personally acquainted with the largest figures of the RSDLP, contributed to the radicalization of Mikhailovsky’s political views. He hid underground workers on his estate and kept illegal literature, in particular Lenin’s Iskra. In December 1905, while in Manchuria, Nikolai Georgievich brought a batch of revolutionary propaganda publications here for distribution.

The result of his trips to the Far East were the travel essays “Across Korea, Manchuria and the Liaodong Peninsula” and the collection “Korean Tales”. Gorky recalled: “I saw drafts of his books about Manchuria... It was a bunch of various pieces of paper, railway forms, lined pages torn from an office book, a concert poster and even two Chinese business cards; all this is covered with half-words, hints of letters. “How do you read this?” “Bah! - he said. “It’s very simple, because it was written by me.” And he quickly began to read one of the cute fairy tales of Korea. But it seemed to me that he was reading not from the manuscript, but from memory.”

In general literary creativity brought Garin-Mikhailovsky wide fame during his lifetime. The best of his works have survived the author. The first time the collected works of Garin-Mikhailovsky in eight volumes was published back in 1906-1910.

Nikolai Georgievich’s ebullient nature simply abhorred peace. He traveled not only all over Russia, but also many countries of the world. He wrote novels and short stories in any environment - in a carriage compartment, in a steamboat cabin, in a hotel room, in the hustle and bustle of a station. And even death overtook him, as Maxim Gorky put it, “on the fly.”

Garin-Mikhailovsky died of cardiac paralysis in St. Petersburg, during an editorial meeting of the journal “Bulletin of Life”. After the performance, he suddenly felt ill, he went into the next room, lay down on the sofa, and died. This happened on November 27 (December 10), 1906, when Nikolai Georgievich was only 55 years old. He was buried on the Literary Bridge of the Volkovsky Cemetery.

N.G. GARIN-MIKHAILOVSKY (1852-1906)
Brief curriculum vitae

• Collected works. In 5 volumes - M.: Goslitizdat, 1957-1958.
• T.1. Childhood Topics; High school students / Enter. article by V.A. Borisova, 1957. - 522 pp., portrait.
• T.2. Students; Engineers, 1957. - 563 p.
• T.3. Essays and stories, 1888-1895, 1957. - 655 p.
• T.4. Essays and stories, 1895-1906, 1958. - 723 p.
• T.5. In Korea, Manchuria and the Liaodong Peninsula; Around the world; Korean fairy tales; Fairy tales for children; Plays; Memoirs, articles, 1894-1906, 1958. - 719 p.
• Selected Works / Intro. article by A. Volkov. - M.: Goslitizdat, 1950. - 300 p., portrait.
• Childhood Topics; Gymnasium students: Stories. - M.: Pravda, 1981. - 447 p., ill.
• Students; Engineers: Stories. - M.: Pravda, 1981. - 528 p., ill.
• Childhood Topics; Gymnasium students. - M.: Artist. lit., 1974. - 384 p.
• Students; Engineers: Stories. - M.: Artist. lit., 1977. - 389 p.
• Stories / Enter. article by Yu. Postnov. - Novosibirsk: Zap.-Sib. book publishing house, 1976. - 648 pp., ill. Contains.: Childhood Topics; High school students; Students.
• Childhood Topics; Gymnasium students. - M.: Artist. lit., 1972. - 440 p.
• Childhood Topics: From a family chronicle / Preface. K. Chukovsky. - M.: Sov. Russia, 1977. - 239 p., ill.
• Stories and essays / Enter. article by K. Chukovsky. - M.: Artist. lit., 1975. - 836 p.
• Novels and stories / Afterword. O.M. Rumyantseva. - M.: Moscow. worker, 1955. - 552 pp., ill. - (B-ka of youth).
• From the diaries of a trip around the world: Through Korea, Manchuria and the Liaodong Peninsula / Enter. article and comment. V.T. Zaichikova. - M.: Geographgiz, 1952. - 447 p., ill., map.
• From an explanatory note from the head of the V survey party, engineer N.G. Garin-Mikhailovsky, addressed to the chairman of the commission for West Siberian surveys. - In the book: Goryushkin L.M., Bochanova G.A., Tseplyaev L.N. Novosibirsk in the historical past. Novosibirsk, 1978, pp. 243-247.

• Letters from N.G. Garin-Mikhailovsky to his wife N.V. Mikhailovskaya: 1887-1897. / Publ., preface. and note. I. Yudina. - Sib. Lights, 1979, N 8, pp. 172-184.
• Letters of one year: From the letters of N.G. Garin-Mikhailovsky to N.V. Mikhailovskaya (1892) / Preface. and publ. I. Yudina. - Sib. Lights, 1966, N 12, pp. 142-162.
• Letters to his wife and son from the Far East (1904-1906) / Preface, publ. and note. I. Yudina. - Sib. lights, 1970, N 12, pp. 152-163.

BASIC LITERATURE ABOUT LIFE AND CREATIVITY
N.G.GARIN-MIKHAILOVSKY

• M i r o n o v G. M. Poet of impatient creation: N. G. Garin-Mikhailovsky. Life. Creation. Society activity. - M.: Nauka, 1965. - 159 p., ill.
• Yu d i n a I. M. N. G. Garin-Mikhailovsky: Life and literary society. activity. - L.: Science, Leningrad. department, 1969. - 238 p., ill. - Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Institute of Russian. lit. (Pushk. house).
• T y n i a n o v a L. N. Indomitable Garin: A Tale. - M.: Det. lit., 1974. - 143 pp., ill. Journal option: Sib. Lights, 1972, No. 1, pp. 84-195. - (Under the name "Wide World").
• G a l i sh i n A. A. Garin-Mikhailovsky in the Samara province. - Kuibyshev: Book. publishing house, 1979. - 120 pp., ill.
• M i r o n o v G. M. Garin N.: Krat. lit. encyclopedia. T.2. - M., 1964, p.66-68, portrait.
• Garin N. - In the book: Russian writers: Biobibliogr. dictionary. - M., 1971, pp. 231-233.
• Z e n z i n o v N. A., R y z h a k S. A. I envy the people of the future. - In the book: Zenzinov N.A., Ryzhak S.A. Outstanding engineers and scientists of railway transport. M., 1978, pp. 120-132, portrait.
• Same. - Science and Life, 1978, N 10, pp. 105-109.
• Lezinsky M.L. Road: About the design of Crimea. electr. railway - In the book: Lezinsky M.L. Personally involved. Simferopol, 1980, pp. 114-119.
• Chelyshev B. D. Garin. - In the book: Chelyshev B.D. Russian writers in Moldova. Chisinau, 1981, p.92-103, ill.

• M o s e s o v A. Writer-democrat. - Preschool. education, 1982, N 4, pp. 42-45.
• N. N. N. Thirst for harmony: To the 75th anniversary of the death of N.G. Garin-Mikhailovsky. - Family and school, 1981, N 12, pp. 44-45, portrait.
• Vorobchenko V. I envy the people of the future: N.G. Garin-Mikhailovsky in Bulgaria and Moldova. - Codry, 1980, N 7, pp. 141-146, portrait.
• N a u m o v I. Audience. - Sat down. youth, 1977, N 3, pp. 60-61, ill. - (Club of Russian classics).
• Ovanesyan N. Writer, engineer, traveler. - In the world of books, 1977, No. 2, p. 71.
• Example B. Brave dreamer: To the 125th anniversary of the birth of N.G. Garin-Mikhailovsky. - Ogonyok, 1977, N 9, pp. 18-19, portrait.
• Rybakov V. Results of a prosperous childhood: About an autobiography. tetralogy. - Family and school, 1977, N 3, pp. 47-50, portrait.
• Dzhapakov A. The key to the treasured door: To the biogr. N.G. Garin-Mikhailovsky. - Ural, 1976, N 10, pp. 182-187, ill.

MEMORIES OF N.G. GARIN-MIKHAILOVSKY

• N.G. Garin-Mikhailovsky in the memoirs of his contemporaries / Comp., author. preface and note. I.M. Yudina. - Novosibirsk: Zap.-Sib. book publishing house, 1967. - 175 pp., portrait. The book includes memoirs of K. Chukovsky, N.V. Mikhailovskaya, P.P. Rumyantsev, E.N. Boratynskaya, A.V. Voskresensky, B.K. Terletsky, M. Gorky, F.F. Ventzel, S. Skitalets, S.Ya. Elpatievsky, A.I. Kuprin, V.V. Veresaev, A.Ya. Brushtein.
• Gorky M. About Garin-Mikhailovsky. - Paulie. collection op., vol.20. M., 1974, pp. 75-90.
• Kuprin A. In memory of N.G. Mikhailovsky (Garin). - Collection soch., vol. 9, M., 1973, pp. 43-47.
• Chukovsky K. Garin. - Collection op., vol.5. M., 1967, pp. 700-721, portrait.
• Safonov V. Memories of Garin-Mikhailovsky. - Zvezda, 1979, N 6, pp. 179-187.

N.G. GARIN-MIKHAILOVSKY AND NOVOSIBIRSK

• Sheremet'ev N. I envy the people of the future. - In the book: Our fellow countrymen. Novosibirsk, 1972, p.13-30, portrait.
• G o r u sh k i n L. M. N. G. Garin-Mikhailovsky and his “variant on Krivoshchekovo”. - In the book: Goryushkin L.M., Bochanova G.A., Tseplyaev L.N. Novosibirsk in the historical past. Novosibirsk, 1978, pp. 28-32.
• B a l a n d i n S. N. Novosibirsk: History of urban planning. 1893-1945 - Novosibirsk: Zap.-Sib. book publishing house, 1978. - 136 p. ill. On pp. 4-7, 12 about N.G. Garin-Mikhailovsky.
• And other cities had to make room: Pages of the history of Novosibirsk. - In the book: The streets will tell you... Novosibirsk, 1973, pp. 5-28, ill. On pp. 5-10 about N.G. Garin-Mikhailovsky.

• 3 k about in N. From the cohort of wrestlers. - Sov. Siberia, 1983, January 19. - (Glorious names).
• Z o r k i y M. ... And here the city was founded. - Evening. Novosibirsk, 1977, February 17.
• Kurchenko V. Everyone must prove love. - Youth of Siberia, 1977, February 19, portrait.
• Lavrov I. Writer of our city. - Evening. Novosibirsk, 1977, February 18, portrait.
• The memory of him is alive... - Evening. Novosibirsk, 1977, February 19. Four articles dedicated to the 125th anniversary of the birth of N.G. Garin-Mikhailovsky.
• N echa e v K. N. Garin-Mikhailovsky is the founder of Novonikolaevsk. - Sib. Lights, 1962, N 7, pp. 161-163. - Lit. sublinearly note
• N echa e v K. Writer, engineer, dreamer. - Evening. Novosibirsk, 1959, July 8. - (Know the history of your hometown).
• Petrov I. The beginning of the great construction: From the history of the Trans-Siberian Railway. railway - Earth Sib., Far East, 1981, N 4, p. 64. - 3 s. region Including about N.G. Garin-Mikhailovsky.
• Pikulev D. The first bridge across the Ob. - Sov. Siberia, 1968, May 18.
• Istomina I. What the relic told about: About ed. photographs of N.G. Garin-Mikhailovsky, stored in Novosibirsk. region local historian museum. - Evening. Novosibirsk, 1983, February 17, portrait.
• V akh rush e v S. Ancient secretary: Item of N.G. Garin-Mikhailovsky in the region. local historian museum. - Evening. Novosibirsk, 1963, September 6.
• Fundraising has begun for a monument (to N.G. Garin-Mikhailovsky in Novosibirsk). - Evening. Novosibirsk, 1983, February 19.
• A L E K S A N D R O V A I. ... And the city remained. - Evening. Novosibirsk, 1983, March 1.
• Fedorov V. Neighborhoods rise above the Ob. - Sov. Siberia, 1983, March 10.

  Two articles about the evening at the Palace of Culture. M. Gorky, dedicated to the memory of N.G. Garin-Mikhailovsky.

• "N.G. Garin-Mikhailovsky": Results of the competition [Conducted ed. gas. "Evening Novosibirsk" and Novosibirsk. org. volunteer island of book lovers]. - Evening. Novosibirsk, 1983, February 25.

• N.G. Garin-Mikhailovsky Square. - In the book: The streets will tell you... Novosibirsk, 1973, p.69-71, ill.
• Kaiko in A. Named after Garin-Mikhailovsky. - Sov. Siberia, 1983, April 17, ill. - (The squares of our city).

The name of this most beautiful man, endowed with versatile talents, bears an equally beautiful place in Crimea on the Laspi pass -Garin-Mikhailovsky Rock. The newlyweds of Sevastopol included this place in their wedding ritual, but probably few people think about the fact that Nikolai Georgievich, among other things, also raised 11 natural and three adopted children .
Last big one achievement of Soviet times (and there were no others) in road construction in Crimea - highway Yalta-Sevastopol (1972 ), as you know, was designed based on the research materials of a brilliant Russian railway engineer N. G. Garin-Mikhailovsky.

• Routes for independent travel along the Sevastopol – Yalta highway (M18 highway, 80 km) to Laspi Bay and Cape Sarych

Among his other amazing deeds was a trip around the world, the publication of Korean fairy tales in Russian and the founding of a city Novosibirsk.
A very small selection of materials about Garin-Mikhailovsky, I hope, will arouse great interest in his personality and, in any case, surprise.

Well, one detail (point) of our project: among other things, the father of Nikolai Garin-Mikhailovsky - Georgy Antonovich Mikhailovsky was a general of the Life Guards Ulansky shelf! Sarmat, however. It is significant that, like another famous engineer of aristocratic origin, Somov-Girey, Garin-Mikhailovsky assessed the tsar Nicholas II as an uninteresting, poorly educated person - “ infantry officer «, « these are provincials " - already about the entire imperial family.

• A small note about the name of the most famous hero Garin-Mikhailovsky - Artemiya Kartasheva . Kardash- brother, brother in Turkic languages ​​and in Cossack culture. This is an ancient tradition of nomadic culture: cutting the palm with a sharp blade, placing a cup of wine under a strong handshake, from which the general blood flows, drink and hug. The German “Bruderschaft” is just a meaningless copying of a very complex and important Scythian custom. Twinning did not arise, of course, in battle. The steppe created many dangers during hunting and on the way of trade caravans. For all who valued adventure above all else, risking their lives for strangers was the highest pleasure. But, the flip side of this glorious surname Kartashev is the rejection of everyday gray life. This is what did " Childhood Themes"classic. Restless little romantics and adventurers appear and appear in every new generation.

This review contains materials from which you can make a good course work, an essay, a short excursion text or a five-minute report in a classroom:

2. Maxim Syrnikov. Where did I come from...

3. Byaly G. A. Garin-Mikhailovsky // History of Russian literature :

4. Maxim Gorky. About Garin-Mikhailovsky

5. Wanderer. Garin-Mikhailovsky

6. G. Yakubovsky,Yatsko T.V. N.G. Garin-Mikhailovsky - founder of the city of Novosibirsk

7. Engineering surveys by Garin-Mikhailovsky in Crimea

1. Garin-Mikhailovsky. Russian biographical dictionary

(http://rulex.ru/01040894.htm)

Garin is the pseudonym of the fiction writer Nikolai Georgievich Mikhailovsky (1852 - 1906). He studied at the Odessa Richelieu Gymnasium and at the Institute of Railway Engineers. Having served for about 4 years in Bulgaria and during the construction of the Batumi port, he decided to “sit down on the ground” and spent 3 years in a village in the Samara province, but business on an unusual basis did not go well, and he devoted himself to railway construction in Siberia. He entered the literary field in 1892 with the successful story “The Childhood of the Theme” (“Russian Wealth”) and the story “Several Years in the Village” (“Russian Thought”). In “Russian Wealth” he then published “Gymnasium Students” (the continuation of “The Childhood of the Subject”), “Students” (the continuation of “Gymnasium Students”), “Village Panoramas” and others. Garin’s stories were published as separate books. The collected works were published in 8 volumes (1906 - 1910); Also published separately: “On Korea, Manchuria and the Liaodong Peninsula” and “Korean Tales”. As a specialist engineer, Garin passionately defended the construction of cheap railways in Novoye Vremya, Russian Life and other publications. The most famous of Garin’s works—the trilogy “Childhood Themes,” “Gymnasium Students,” and “Students”—is interestingly conceived and, in places, executed with talent and seriousness. “Theme’s Childhood” is the best part of the trilogy. The author has a living sense of nature, there is a memory of the heart, with the help of which he reproduces child psychology not from the outside, like an adult observing a child, but with all the freshness and completeness of childhood impressions; but he has absolutely no ability to separate the typical from the random.

The autobiographical element dominates him too much; he clutters the story with episodes that violate the integrity of the artistic impression. The lack of typicality is most noticeable in “Students,” although there are very vividly written scenes in them. - Wed. Elpatievsky, “Close Shadows”; Kuprin, “Works”, volume VI. S.V. Literary encyclopedia in 11 volumes, 1929-1939: (Fundamental electronic library “Russian literature and folklore” (FEB) - http://feb-web.ru/)

GARIN is the pseudonym of Nikolai Georgievich Mikhailovsky.

A traveling engineer by training, who participated in the construction of the Siberian Railway and the port of Batumi, a landowner, a zemstvo, G. was connected with the old order by numerous threads. But very soon, work on a private railroad showed him the impossibility of simultaneously serving the interests of capital and society. G. decided to embark on the path of social reformism, practical populism, he undertook the experience of socialist reorganization of the village. To achieve this goal, G. acquired an estate in Samara province. The results of this social experiment, which ended in complete failure, are described by G. in the “historical essay” “In the Village.” G. at times sympathized with Marxism. He supported financially the newspaper “Samara Vestnik” when it was in the hands of Marxists, and was a member of its editorial board. In 1905 he actively helped the Bolsheviks.

Of Garin’s works, the most artistic stories are: “Tema’s Childhood”, “Gymnasium Students”, “Students” and “Engineers”. The life of landowners and intelligentsia (students, engineers, etc.) is shown in connection with the psychology of the main actor, Kartasheva. His volitional and moral instability makes him similar to the hero of M. Gorky’s novel, Klim Samgin.

The significance of G.'s stories lies in their vivid depiction of the social atmosphere before the revolution of 1905, that time when the system of “classical” education stifled and crippled young people. Patriarchal philistine life with early years disfigured the child, the school continued and completed what it had started. Some grew up crippled without will and conviction, like Kartashev, others ended tragically, like the young philosopher Berende. Only the most persistent steeled themselves and embarked on the revolutionary path (G. touches on the last topic in passing). The first two stories - “Tema's Childhood” and “Gymnasium Students” - are artistically more consistent. The psychology of childhood, adolescence and adolescence is conveyed in them with captivating warmth and freshness.

The types of boys, girls, teachers, and parents are drawn vividly and vividly. G.'s prose is characterized by lively dialogue and soft lyricism.

Bibliography:

I. Complete collection. essay, in appendix. to “Niva” for 1916; Collection works., 9 vols., ed. “Knowledge”, St. Petersburg, 1906-1910; in ed. “Liberation”, vol. X-XVII, St. Petersburg, 1913-1914; were not included in the collection. comp.: On Korea, Manjuria and the Liaodong Peninsula, Korean Tales, ed. “Knowledge”, St. Petersburg, 1904. In recent years, republished: Childhood Topics, ed. 8th, Guise, P., 1923 (same, Guise, M. - Leningrad, 1927); Gymnasium students, Guise, M. - L., 1927 (for youth).

II. A. B. (Bogdanovich A. I.), Critical. notes, “God’s World”, 1895, V (about “Gymnasium students”); Nikolaev P., Issues of life in modern literature, 1902 (“Gymnasium students”, “Village panoramas”, “Students”); Elpatievsky S., Close Shadows, St. Petersburg, 1909; His own, N. G. Garin-Mikhailovsky, recollection, magazine “Krasnaya Niva”, 1926, ? 19; Lunacharsky A.V., Critical. etudes (“Russian literature”), ed. book sector Gubono, L., 1925, ch. IV (this chapter is printed.
originally in the journal. “Education”, 1904, V); Gorky M., N.G. Garin-Mikhailovsky, journal. “Kr. nov”, 1927, IV; His own, Sochin., vol. XIX, Berlin, 1927.

III. Vladislavlev I.V., Russian writers, ed. 4th, Guise, 1924; His, Literature of the Great Decade, vol. I, Guise, M., 1928.

2. Maxim Syrnikov . Where did I come from...

and here is from the live journal of the now living (and no less amazing descendant of N. Garin) Maxim Syrnikov:

Great-grandfather's name was Nikolai Georgievich Mikhailovsky, also known as the writer Garin-Mikhailovsky. If you haven’t read “Tyoma’s Childhood” in its entirety or haven’t watched the film based on this book, then perhaps you at least remember the story of the old well from which Tyoma pulled out the bug...

He was also a traveler and builder of TransSib. And the city of Novosibirsk owes its appearance on the map to him. However, so much has been written about him that if you are interested, you can easily find it.

They had many children.

My grandmother, whom I never found in this World, is in a large family photograph in the back row on the right.

A young man in the same row, similar to Blok - Sergey Nikolaevich, graduate of the page corps, friend of the count

Next to him - Artemy Nikolaevich, prototype Literary Topics. He fought with the Bolsheviks, sailed with the last ship to Istanbul, went crazy there and died.

Sitting in the front row Georgy Nikolaevich Mikhailovsky . A man with an amazing biography. In a few years, he will become the youngest comrade (currently deputy) of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sazonov, in the entire history of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Then, when Trotsky disperses the ministry, he goes on foot across the whole country to Denikin, then he will work for Wrangel in the international department. Next - Türkiye, France, Czech Republic, Slovakia. He taught, wrote poetry, published books. When the Soviet Army entered Bratislava, he came to the commandant of the city and said that he himself was Russian and wanted to serve Russia. Two years later he died in the Donetsk camps.

Fourteen years ago, the publishing house of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs published a two-volume set of his notes “ From the history of the Russian foreign policy department. 1914-1920″ - with a preface in which the unknown editor wrote: “..the author’s trace is lost in emigration”...

The son of Georgy Nikolaevich, Nikolai Georgievich - Nick's uncle, is alive and almost healthy, lives in Bratislava. We correspond with him by email.

I also know quite a lot about Garin-Mikhailovsky’s father, my great-great-grandfather. His name was Georgy Antonovich, he was the general of the Life Guards Ulan regiment. The godfather of his children, including my great-grandfather, was the Emperor, Nikolai Pavlovich.

And my great-grandfather himself, although he was not a military man, had been to war. In 1887, while in the active army, he supervised the construction of a railway in Bulgarian Burgas, liberated by the Russians from the Turks.

http://kare-l.livejournal.com/117148.html Reaction-culinary journal.
I don't want a constitution. I want sevruzhin with horseradish.

3. Byaly G. A. Garin-Mikhailovsky // History of Russian literature : In 10 volumes / USSR Academy of Sciences. Institute of Russian lit. (Pushkin. House).
T. X. Literature 1890-1917. - 1954. - P. 514-528.

1
Nikolai Georgievich Garin-Mikhailovsky began his literary career as a middle-aged man. When did his first works appear? Childhood Themes" And " Several years in the village", the novice author was forty years. He was a talented travel engineer; His bold experiments in the field of agriculture were also known.
The wealth of practical experience pushed him towards writing. Subsequently, Garin liked to say that in his writings there are no fictitious images at all, that his plots are taken directly from life. He considered himself an observer fiction writer and often pointed to his pre-writing life, to the biography of the engineer Mikhailovsky, as a direct everyday source of the writer Garin’s fiction.

N. G. Mikhailovsky was born in 1852 into the family of a wealthy nobleman Kherson province Georgy Antonovich Mikhailovsky, whose vivid portrait was drawn by the writer in “The Childhood of Theme.” He studied at Odessa- first in a German school, then in the Richelieu gymnasium, depicted in “Gymnasium Students.” In 1869, he graduated from high school and entered St. Petersburg University at the Faculty of Law. Unable to withstand the tests during the transition to the second year, N. G. Mikhailovsky transferred to Institute of Railways. This step determined his fate. Mikhailovsky found his calling in his work as an engineer. After graduating from the institute in 1878, he devoted himself to work on the construction of railways with enthusiasm and passion. In this work, his extraordinary technical talent developed and his abilities as a major organizer emerged. Having already become a famous writer, Mikhailovsky did not abandon his engineering activities. Russian railway construction owes a lot to N. G. Mikhailovsky: a number of new railways were created with his close participation. He worked on the construction Bender-Galackiy railway, Batumi, Ufa-Zlatoustovskaya, Kazan-Malmyzh, Krotovko-Sergievskaya and some others. Death prevented the implementation of two equally dear plans for him: the completion of the story “Engineers” and the construction of the south coast road in Crimea. Promotion of narrow gauge railways worried N. G. Mikhailovsky no less than magazine and literary enterprises. He pursued the idea of ​​building narrow-gauge, mainly access roads, in practice and in the press for many years, attacking its opponents and overcoming the barriers of ministerial bureaucracy and professional routine.

Engineer Mikhailovsky's struggle with government officials more than once led him into sharp clashes with his superiors and at times forced him to leave his favorite job. After his first resignation in 1880, Mikhailovsky, then still far from literary plans, decided to take up rational agriculture. He bought estate in Buguruslan district of Samara province, in order to carry out a previously conceived socio-economic experiment there in the spirit of that utopian projectism that was characteristic of the liberal populism of the 80s and 90s. Mikhailovsky sought not only to technical rationalization and mechanization of his economy.

« The program was to, without sparing effort and sacrifice, turn the river of life into the old channel, where the river flowed many years ago, restoration of the community, destruction of the kulaks “- this is how Mikhailovsky formulated his goals at that time many years later in the essays “ In the hustle and bustle of provincial life".1

The experiment of N. G. Mikhailovsky, by its very utopian essence, was doomed to failure. The experimenter's enormous energy and dedication led to nothing. The embittered kulaks, evicted by Mikhailovsky from his possessions and then returning to their old places as ordinary community members, ruined the organizer of the community with systematic arson. In addition, the ordinary mass of middle peasants showed indifference and distrust of the liberal-populist ideas of their landowner.

The failed experiment cost Mikhailovsky a large fortune; he lost several years of his life for nothing, but as a result of his economic collapse he acquired a sober consciousness of the worthlessness of liberal-populist reformism. He also gained literary fame. Set forth by him more for himself than for publication, the history of his economy turned out to be a significant literary work. In 1890, the manuscript was read at a meeting of writers in the presence of N. N. Zlatovratsky, N. K. Mikhailovsky, V. A. Goltsev, K. S. Stanyukovich and others and attracted their attention. Interested in the personality of N. G. Mikhailovsky and his work, Stanyukovich visited the writer on his estate in 1891. Having familiarized himself with excerpts from “Tema’s Childhood,” Stanyukovich did not hesitate to recognize the author’s literary talent. This meeting strengthened N. G. Mikhailovsky in his literary plans; she turned him from an amateur writer into a professional writer. In the same 1891, N. G. Mikhailovsky met with A. I. Ivanchin-Pisarev and, under his influence, became interested in the project of updating “Russian Wealth”. He mortgaged his estate and provided funds to purchase the magazine from its owner L. E. Obolensky. The magazine passed into the hands of the populist artel of writers, and N.G. Garina’s wife, Nadezhda Valerianovna Mikhailovskaya, became its official publisher. In 1892, “Several Years in the Village” was published in “Russian Thought”, and “The Childhood of the Subject” was published in the updated “Russian Wealth”. N. Garin is firmly established in literature.

2
The main content of Garin’s essays “Several Years in the Village” is skepticism towards all kinds of attempts to change folk life based on beautiful dreams and projects, divorced from the real direction of historical life. The author's technical and economic measures, which he talks about in his essays, are undoubtedly rational; they all seem to be inclined towards the people's benefit, the peasants understand this, they value “justice”, “kindness” and the energy of their leader-guardian, and meanwhile the matter is unraveling, a whole series of unforeseen obstacles destroys the well-established machine with shocks, and everything ends in collapse. A sense of the complexity of life permeates Garin's book from beginning to end. The futility of social philanthropism, the unreality of the policy of partial improvements unfolds before the reader with the convincing power of a living example and truthful testimony. The people, as Garin shows, strive for a radical land transformation on a national scale and therefore cannot help but be skeptical of any attempts to “bless” their individual part on a local and limited scale. The desire of the “individual” to lead the “crowd” strongly smacks of feudal overtones in the eyes of the peasants, and the populist-minded liberal landowner, in conversations with the peasants, has to heartily cut off the analogies that involuntarily arise in them with feudal times. In addition, the people are far from satisfied with strengthening communal orders while maintaining the modern system of land relations; his dreams are much more radical.

Thus, by depicting the clash of the economic program of the liberal populist with the broad democratic aspirations of the peasant masses, Garin establishes the true scale of the late populist reformism. Remembering the severe personal failure, the collapse of his cherished hopes and plans, Garin was very far from blaming the masses for his failure. In his book there is no feeling of resentment, no obvious or hidden disappointment in the people. On the contrary, Garin’s personal failure became his literary victory precisely because he understood and showed the masses not as an element of inert resistance, but as a living and creative force.

What was usually interpreted as the notorious peasant “long-suffering”, in Garin’s portrayal takes on a completely different meaning: perseverance, endurance, self-defense.

In his narration, Garin also reveals features of peasant inertia and backwardness, but these features for him are a consequence of the abnormal conditions of peasant life: without land, without knowledge, without working capital, the peasant “withers” just like a sleepy fish in a cage; the free flow of the river of life will revive and strengthen him. In historically national character for this there is everything necessary: ​​“strength, endurance, patience, steadfastness, reaching the point of greatness, clearly making it clear why the Russian land “began to exist”” (IV, 33).

“Please read in Russkaya Mysl, March, “Several Years in the Village” by Garin,” wrote A.P. Chekhov to Suvorin on October 27, 1892. - Previously, there was nothing like this in literature of this kind in tone and, perhaps, sincerity. The beginning is a little routine and the end is upbeat, but the middle is a complete delight. It’s so true that there’s more than enough.”1

3
Under the influence of the famine of 1891 and the cholera year that followed, the conclusions he came to in the essays “Several Years in the Country” became even stronger in Garin’s mind.
The collection of stories “Village Panoramas” (1894), the stories “Christmas Eve in a Russian Village” and “On the Move” (1893) are dedicated to the life of devastated villages, reduced to extreme impoverishment. “In uncultured conditions, people, animals, and plants run wild in the same way,” is the epigraph to one of the stories included in “Village Panoramas” (“Matryona’s Money”). Garin sees two poles of rural savagery: the physical degeneration of the peasant masses under the influence of poverty and hunger and the moral savagery of the kulak elite of the village. The second kind of savagery is presented in the story “Wild Man” (collection “Village Panoramas”). The hero of the story is the kulak, the son-killer Asimov, who has completely gone into cruel accumulation, lost his human appearance and is completely devoid of any moral inclinations. This savagery is hopeless and incorrigible: man has turned into a wild beast, cutting off moral ties with human society. But “savagery” of the first kind in itself carries a source of revival: under the influence of the famine disaster, the people do not just wilt and wither, they distinguish themselves as “righteous”, enlightened by the ardent instinct of mutual assistance (“In the Village”), energetic and active ascetics mother's love(“Akulina”), bearers of the dream of justice, which should finally come to the unfortunate poor people now forgotten on this languid land (“Christmas Eve in the Russian Village”).

The motif of the “unsettled land” that sounds in a series of village stories by Garin is filled with specific and even practical content. For Garin, the unsettled state of the earth is, first of all, cultural and technical backwardness, an incorrect, outdated organization of man’s struggle with nature. Technical progress will ease the situation of the people, save them from final destruction, and in the future, when the social system changes, it will put a person freed from exploitation face to face with nature, with an impersonal and strong enemy, but “an honest, generous, conscientious enemy.”

Portraying the mood of the masses, Garin enthusiastically traces the sprouts of technical thought among the people. In the story “On the Move,” the worker Alexey, while discussing grain prices, vaguely, gropingly, comes across the idea of ​​an elevator; Moreover, it turns out that not only his economic instinct, but also his oppositional feeling led him to the technical idea. Thus, Garin uses technology as an instrument of social justice.

The enthusiasm for technical progress was reflected in a number of Garin’s stories from the lives of engineers. In the early essay “Option” (1888), the cheap and rapid construction of railways is considered as a national heroic feat of our time, equal to the greatest victories of the people in the past. Engineer Koltsov, who proposed the technically most feasible option for the path and managed to defend this option, is presented by the author as a bright, bold, almost heroic figure. The story of his struggle for his technical version is conveyed with inspiration and elation, like a story about an epic feat.

Labor heroism equally captivates the writer, no matter what it manifests itself in: whether it is a feat of the living research thought of an engineer or the inconspicuous but talented work of an ordinary machinist. The masterly work of the machinist Grigoriev in the story “In Practice” evokes in the author a feeling of both aesthetic and civic delight. Not limiting himself to an objective sketch of the portrait of this master of the railway craft, the writer complements his story lyrical digression, -
a hymn in honor of unknown workers, heroically working in hard labor conditions, risking their lives every day.

Garin primarily blames the intelligentsia for the lack of interest in the technical transformation of the country, in practical science and accurate knowledge. The people are already becoming aware of the need for technical progress, but they do not have the knowledge; The intelligentsia has knowledge, but no program and goals, no consciousness of new tasks. He comes to this conclusion in the above-mentioned story “On the Move.” In the same story there is one detail that reveals Garin’s attitude towards the intelligentsia. There is an episodic figure of a cholera hospital doctor who viciously hates the people and speaks of them with cold contempt. This doctor studied in the 70s, at the very height of the “idealism” to which he paid tribute in his time. He now recalls his past hobbies with a contemptuous grin: “There was a thing... he was playing the fool” (VIII, 196). This episodic figure is one of the most hated for Garin.

Of course, Garin is far from blaming the intelligentsia for the loss of populist ideals - he himself parted with them. He denies a passive attitude towards life, refusal of social struggle. Struggle, according to Garin, is the perpetual motion machine of life, its heroic beginning. For the happiness of experiencing at least a short burst of heroism real person will not think about giving his life, because at that moment they will burst into flames best qualities his character: generosity, courage, altruism. Garin speaks about this in the story “Two Moments” (1896-1901), the hero of which, under the influence of a sudden impulse, despising prudent warnings, rushes into the stormy sea to save people unknown to him and in his impulse carries others along with him.

Garin protested against the sentiments of intellectual renegadeism and against all sorts of retrospective utopias. In the pamphlet story “Life and Death” (1896), he contrasts “The Master and the Worker” by L. Tolstoy with two other heroes of the opposite type, who lived a different life and died a different death. One of them is a zemstvo doctor, a seemingly inconspicuous worker, faithful to the traditions of the 60s, who devotes all his strength to the outwardly not bright, but essentially heroic struggle for “ideals.” better life, more fair and more equal" (VIII, 209), the other - a researcher-traveler, the son of a craftsman, a real hero of science, freezes in the snows of Siberia "with his hand raised high, with a treasured diary in it. The great man moved until the last moment. Forever forward. Yes, forward, but not back, not to where Count L.N. Tolstoy is calling” (VIII, 211).

Courage, fortitude, the ability and inclination towards heroism, energy, faith in life - all these qualities, according to Garin, are developed least often in representatives of the exploiting classes, and most often in working people who have gone through a harsh school of life and have managed to absorb the ideals of culture and public duty.

This is how the unity of three categories of social life, characteristic of him, takes shape in Garin’s consciousness: the ideological category - science, culture, exact knowledge; moral - courage, faith in life, struggle; socio-political - democracy, service to public duty.

4
The most striking evidence of an anti-human organization modern society, his “unsettledness,” was for Garin the abnormal position of children in this society. The theme of childhood appears in different forms throughout literary activity Garin and is closely connected with his other favorite motifs. In the period of childhood and adolescence, Garin sees the germs of the most noble human qualities, which with persistent and evil systematicity are distorted and eradicated by contemporary society. The question is how little man, instinctively active, generous and potentially heroic, turns as a result of bad social influences into a flabby, unstable, weak-willed man in the street - Garin made this large and complex socio-psychological question the subject of his most significant work, the well-known trilogy “ Childhood Themes"(1892), " High school students" (1893) and " Students (1895).

IN early childhood Topic Kartashev possesses all the qualities, the natural and free development of which should have made him a real person, an excellent worker of society, an active builder of life. The boy is brave and enterprising, he is all trembling with a vague but strong desire for the unknown, he is drawn to distant shores and to foreign, mysterious countries; he is full of instinctive respect for simple and honest people; in him lives that natural feeling of democracy, which erases the boundaries of class and turns the general's son into a member of a violent gang of street urchins. But from childhood, the shameful humiliation of flogging falls upon him; the gymnasium uniform puts a sharp and impassable line between him and his comrades; The school persistently and systematically instills the poison of moral decay, demandingly accustoming people to fiscalism and denunciation. You have to live in these conditions, you need to adapt to them or enter into struggle with them, but neither the school nor the family teaches struggle: both here and there, submission and reconciliation with circumstances are recognized as the highest virtue. This is how a long series of falls and difficult compromises with conscience begin in Kartashev’s life - this direct path to betrayal and renegade. The first betrayal he committed in childhood towards his schoolmate Ivanov is experienced with severe emotional anguish, with pain and hopeless melancholy, as a true tragedy. But words are immediately heard that inspire little Kartashev with the idea of ​​the reparability of the misfortune, of conditions mitigating his guilt, of the possibility of reconciliation between him and the victim of his cowardice; Kartashev’s act is enveloped in sublimely hypocritical words, the purpose of which is to reconcile him with himself.

The paths of Kartashev and Ivanov meet more than once, but these paths never merge. Ivanov goes into the revolutionary struggle, Kartashev remains in the philistine environment. Ivanov flashes on Kartashev’s path and passes through his life, as a reminder of his, Kartashev’s, moral inferiority and at the same time as something alien and hostile to him. Throughout the entire trilogy, Kartashev continuously comes into contact with Ivanovo’s revolutionary beginning. Even in the gymnasium, not sympathizing with the radical circle, he tries to get closer to it, obeying some vague instinct of social mimicry. Being a member of the young community of advanced high school students, he is constantly unconsciously looking for a path that would allow him to reconcile belonging to the circle
while maintaining their usual everyday connections. Coming into contact with revolutionary ideas through books, he feels the contrast between the world where books invite him and the course of his usual life, in the orbit of which he can only imagine himself - as he is. Alone with himself, he looks at these books as the work of an inexperienced idealist who does not know life, which has its own, completely different laws. This contradiction between the book and life often forces him to take a pessimistic Pechorin pose: “life is an empty and stupid joke,” but his whole being pulls him toward reconciliation with this life, although it has already lost its immediate charm and living colors for him.

Kartashev lost the sense of “sacredness of life” at an early age. This is very clearly reflected in his perception of nature. Like books, nature is also felt by him as something deceptive, fantastic, instilling vague, unrealistic hopes. Kartashev no longer has a complete experience of nature; for his flawed worldview in huge world Only the beauty of individual “moments”, highlights, scattered “impressions” that are not united into the overall picture is accessible to nature.

Ivanov’s revolutionary, effective attitude towards the world and society is irreconcilably hostile to Kartashev’s passive pursuit of individual “moments” in life. Kartashev realizes this more and more clearly and at times reaches the point of open, active renunciation of everything that is connected with Ivanov, comes from him, or resembles him.

Hostile to the revolutionary current, regardless of the shades of revolutionary thought of the 70s, Kartashev still feels the need to be somewhere close to this current. This feature of Kartashevism, outlined in the trilogy, was developed by Garin several years later in the continuation of the trilogy, in the unfinished story “Engineers”. In the story “Engineers,” Garin made an unsuccessful attempt to show the revival of Artemy Kartashev. The long chain of falls of Kartashev ended. In "Engineers" another chain begins - successes and ascensions. Each life step of Kartashev on a new path little by little cleanses him of the dirt that stuck to him during his school and student years. Living labor and communication with working people cure in Garin’s new story what was previously presented as an incurable disease of the soul. Sister Kartasheva, an active participant in the revolutionary movement, arranges for Artemy’s personal happiness and considers a social revival possible for him. Kartashev, for example, gives his revolutionary sister, a member of Narodnaya Volya, money for revolutionary work and wants to maintain some kind of external connection with revolutionary circles. Among his fellow engineers, he is known as a “red” and not only does not destroy this idea, but tries to support it. He is also flattered by the fact that in the memories of some school comrades, thanks to his membership in the circle, he retained the reputation of a “pillar of the revolution.”

The image of Kartashev, as given in “Engineers,” loses significantly in its character. The story of a typical phenomenon turns into a story about an exceptional case, about an almost miraculous reincarnation of a person. Meanwhile, in the previous parts of the novel it was clearly and convincingly shown that people like Kartashev are not capable of rebirth. Therefore, according to ideological and artistic value“Engineers” is significantly inferior to “Childhood Themes”, “Gymnasium Students” and “Students”.

5
In the essays “Several Years in the Country,” Garin followed the path of Gleb Uspensky with his sober, skeptical attitude towards populist illusions. In the field of genre and style, he also continues in this work the traditions of the radical democratic essay of the 60s and 70s. Artistic sketches of pictures of village life, alternating with the author's arguments of a journalistic nature, with economic excursions, with pieces of business prose - all this manner in Garin is associated primarily with G. I. Uspensky.

As for the famous Garin-Mikhailovsky trilogy, threads stretch to it both from the classic tales of “childhood” for Russian literature and from the cultural and historical novel of Turgenev. Turgenev’s novel, as we know, left a noticeable imprint on the entire literary movement of the 70s and 80s, and the radical democratic novels, stories and short stories of that time, which sought to reflect the new man of the era, new shades of social thought, and the change of ideological generations, largely revealed its literary kinship with Turgenev’s novel.

Along with this type of narration, side by side with it, another type of cultural-historical story developed, partly similar to Turgenev’s, and to a large extent opposite to it. We are talking about stories and novels like “Nikolai Negorev” by I. Kushchevsky. At the center of these novels there is also a “new” man who personifies the “trends of the times,” but this is a socially and ethically inferior person, and the “trends of the times” are hostile to the progressive aspirations of the era. Displaying and often exposing the social renegadeism of the intelligentsia, analyzing the process of “transforming a hero into a lackey,” as Gorky put it, is the task of this type of work.

The theme of “turning a hero into a lackey” in various forms and forms occupied a prominent place in the literature of the 80s. Reactionary and right-wing populist writers tried to turn the issue inside out, turning the lackey into a hero; they tried to justify and poeticize the figure of the renegade, to present him as a tragic victim of “false theories,” a person atoning for his past “delusions” at the cost of severe mental suffering. Democratic writers countered this trend, widespread in the literature of the 80s and 90s, with the struggle for a heroic beginning in life. The struggle was expressed both in the direct exposure of renegadeism, and in the affirmation of the ethical value of social heroism, the moral beauty of feat, even if fruitless, and in psychological analysis the emergence of social feeling among the ordinary intellectual, in depicting his transition from lack of ideas and lack of faith to public interests and aspirations. Garin’s trilogy also finds its place in this literary movement, directed against “the transformation of the hero into a lackey.”

Garin's merit lies in the fact that he made an attempt to paint a broad picture reflecting this process. He showed the social mechanism of the gradual, almost imperceptible eradication in a person of the inclinations of social activity, the desire to rebuild life. At the same time, he revealed not only the socio-political content of the renegadeism of the bourgeois intelligentsia, but also the defectiveness of its general attitude towards the world, the grinding and decomposition of its psyche. He further showed the methods and forms of conscious and unconscious adaptation of people of this type to the revolutionary environment around them; he showed, therefore,
the possibility of dangerous external proximity to the revolution of people internally alien and hostile to it.

6
Garin's main works - "Village Panoramas", "Childhood of Theme", "Gymnasium Students" and "Students" - were published in "Russian Wealth", and his wife's name was on the cover of the magazine. Garin was therefore perceived by wide reading and literary circles as one of the ideological inspirers of the magazine, as a comrade-in-arms and like-minded person of his namesake N.K. Mikhailovsky. In reality this was not the case. Garin entrusted Mikhailovsky with the leadership of the magazine not so much as a theorist and leader of populism, but as the talented “cook” of literary cuisine, which he considered him to be. In Mikhailovsky, Garin also saw an educated publicist and believed that he would be able to demonstrate an understanding of the new demands of Russian and European life, giving rise to new social and literary movements.

In the very first years of the existence of Russian Wealth, Garin became convinced of the fallacy of his calculations and, with his characteristic ardor and directness, more than once expressed sharp dissatisfaction with both the general spirit of the magazine and the work of its individual employees. Thus, the economic arguments of populist publicists literally infuriated N. Garin. “...a limited populist with all the powerlessness and weakness of the populist’s thought,” he wrote in 1894 about N. Karyshev. - So naive that it’s embarrassing to read. This huge colossus of our life is not going that way and that is not how it is going: is it really not visible? How long will we sing fairy tales that we ourselves don’t believe, and won’t give people weapons of struggle... Beat these originalists who have hit the wall and are fraudulently diverting your attention: You can’t read Yuzhakov, Karyshev makes you want to vomit - after all, this is a common cry... Really This whole company is good for drinking, but not for doing something new, but the old one has failed. There is nothing fresh and life goes its own way and does not peek into our magazine, like the sun into a musty cellar.”1

Garin was not satisfied with the fiction department of the magazine either. He hotly reproached the editor of this department, V.G. Korolenko, for “serving the public only warmed-up dishes of the old cuisine.” In 1897, things came to a complete break with Russian Wealth. All scores with populism were thus settled. Garin's public sympathies found a different direction: by that time he had become an ardent supporter of young Russian Marxism. It is unlikely that Garin imagined with complete clarity the entire theoretical depth of Marxist teaching, but he was able to see in Marxism that “new thing” that replaced the dilapidated, failed populism. In Marxism he also found support for his propaganda of technological progress.

“He was attracted by the activity of Marx’s teaching,” Gorky wrote about Garin, “and when in his presence they talked about the determinism of Marx’s philosophy of economics - at one time it was very fashionable to talk about this - Garin argued fiercely against it, as fiercely as, subsequently, argued against the aphorism of E. Bernstein: “The final goal is nothing, movement is everything.”

“This is decadent! - he shouted. “You cannot build an endless road on the globe.”
“Marx’s plan for the reorganization of the world delighted him with its breadth; he imagined the future as a grandiose collective work carried out by the entire mass of humanity, freed from the strong shackles of class statehood.”1

IN 1897 year, Garin does a lot of work on organizing the first Marxist newspaper in Russia « Samara Bulletin" He becomes its publisher and a member of the editorial team. He now publishes his new works in the journals of legal Marxism - “God’s World”, “Life”, “Beginning”. His “Village Drama” appears in the first book of Gorky’s collections of the “Knowledge” partnership.

7
At the end of the 90s and at the beginning of the 20th century, Garin continued to develop his old themes and motifs. As before, he writes essays and stories from village life; still occupies it children's world, psychology of the intelligentsia, problem of family and education etc. But the motif of the “unsettledness” of the earth, society, and world now acquires special poignancy and emotionality under his pen. The artistic representation of a fact no longer satisfies him. Observation and analysis give way to direct denunciation, pamphlet and appeal. The author's voice increasingly intrudes into the narrative, but not for explanations, calculations and economic calculations, not even for polemics, as was the case before, but for angry attacks, accusations, for indignant indications of the unnaturalness, the outright criminality of the entire structure of modern society. Garin increasingly puts the author’s thoughts into the speeches of his characters, making his heroes the mouthpiece of his own indignation.

« It's scary not to die... it's good to be dead, but how to live? Dog people are meaner", says the janitor Yegor in the story " Dima Palace"(1899; I, 124), expressing his and author's attitude to the situation of children, to the criminal division of them into “legal” and “illegal”. “A dog will never touch a small puppy, but he, Dima, is driven away by his own blood and doesn’t want to know.” “...it’s a sin, I say, to steal and hide someone else’s thing, but you steal and hide a child’s soul.” Here he calls the organizers and guardians of modern society executioners, crippling and killing living souls. Garin throws the same nickname of executioners at these people, the pillars of society, respectable liberal figures, fathers of families in another story (Pravda, 1901), putting it in a letter from a suicidal woman who could not stand the hell that is called a respectable philistine bourgeois family. “And you are all swindlers, bloodsuckers, robbers,” cries an old Jew frantically, being evicted from his home.

All of Garin's stories in the second period of his activity are filled with these frenzied screams, excited voices, demanding, indignant exclamations. The mood of the author, who understands the complexity and complexity of life, the futility of individual efforts in the fight against its inexorable course, is expressed by the same tragic exclamations as the immediate feeling of his simple heroes: “But what can we do? How can the poleschuk return his lost paradise?.. Damnation! Three curses! What should we do?

A heightened perception of the tragedy and social untruth of everyday life in modern society from top to bottom - this is characteristic feature Garin's works of the late 90s and early 20th centuries.

IN 1898 year N. Garin undertakes trip around the world. He travels through all of Siberia, through Korea and Manchuria, to Port Arthur, he also visits China, Japan, the Sandwich Islands, America. He observes Korea and Manchuria with special attention, being interested, as always, in the life and customs of the inhabitants, the productivity of the area, and its economic structure. This trip provided Garin with material for interesting travel essays “Pencil from Life”, published in 1899 in “World of God” and then published as a separate book “ In Korea, Manchuria and the Liaodong Peninsula" Having become interested in Korean folklore, Garin, with the help of a translator, diligently wrote down the tales that he heard from hospitable Koreans. These recordings were also published in 1899 as a separate book (“ Korean fairy tales"). During the Russo-Japanese War, Garin went to the war zone as a correspondent for the liberal-bourgeois newspaper “News of the Day.” His correspondence, imbued with a democratic mood, was cruelly curtailed by military censorship. At the end of the war, they were published in a separate publication (“War. Diary of an Eyewitness”). Traveling and working as a war correspondent broadened Garin's horizons. He became especially interested in the life of oppressed peoples. He does not bring a shadow of indifferent ethnography into his depiction of the life of oppressed peoples; on the contrary, his sketches of their life are always imbued with a special sense of respect for someone else’s, sometimes incomprehensible and distant way of life. At the same time, he sees in the life of these peoples not only adversity and hardship, but always discovers elements of a unique culture, beauty and high poetry.

The round dance of young Chuvash women singing the spring anthem evokes his admiration for the creative power of the oppressed people (“In the turmoil of provincial life,” 1900). In the essays “Across Korea, Manchuria and the Liaodong Peninsula,” the national type of Nenets, depicted in a few quick strokes, emerges before the reader: “Motionless, like a statue, in his white robe, as white as his husky, his polar bear, his white sea and white nights, lifeless, silent, like the eternal silence of the grave” (V, 60). There we will also find another national type of the Russian north - the type of Ostyak, which “challenges its pitiful right to existence from the formidable water element, from the owner of the remote taiga - the bear” (V, 61). Speaking about these peoples, Garin will not fail to mention the people of “culture” who bring their terrible gifts to the inhabitants of the north: syphilis and vodka. In these same essays and in “Korean Tales,” Garin painted a poetic image of the peaceful Korean people, showing their everyday life and customs, their economic life, their beliefs, legends and the general national psychological appearance: humor, good nature, amazing nobility.

In Garin's later essays, interest in the life of peoples prevails over all others. Even " Diary during the war"(1904), along with descriptions of military operations, is filled with essays and pictures of the life of the Chinese people. Garin dives into “this archive of five thousand years of culture” and devotes entire pages to the agricultural methods of the Chinese, their ability to “use the land, fertilize it, nurture it,” their work habits, their complex and subtle games and, as always, their national character.

Looking closely at the life of the peoples whom Garin included in the scope of his observations, and at the lives of individual people, he notes with particular sensitivity and with joyful triumph signs of a turning point, new growth, signs of revival, symptoms of imminent or already beginning changes. The feeling of the end of immobility, the premonition of a renewal of life, is a characteristic feature of Garin’s later literary works. The basis of this feeling is his belief in the existence of immutable social laws according to which life develops and moves forward. He refuses to accept the version of the notorious Chinese immobility without evidence. In the monotony and dragging vegetation of the Russian province, whose life is depicted in the essays “In the Turmoil of Provincial Life” (1900), he traces the growth of democratic forces. He sees the guarantee of the movement in a small, still advanced circle, developing new ethical and socio-economic truths, “tested not by a finger put to the forehead, but by world science.” He sees how, under the influence of the revival of industrial life, the mental demands of the people are growing, and with enthusiasm he says that young carpenters and beekeepers are learning to read, subscribe to magazines, and become interested in Gorky.

During the period of the rapid rise of the revolutionary movement in 1905, fellow travelers from the bourgeois environment came into the ranks of the revolution. Among these fellow travelers of the revolution was Garin. Having learned that his eldest sons were taking part in underground activities, he wrote: “I kiss Seryozha and Gary and bless them for their noble work, which, if they remain alive, they will always remember with joy. And what wonderful memories these will be at the dawn of their youth: fresh, strong, juicy.” " Don't be afraid for the children, he convinced his wife. - We live in such troubled times and the question is not how long to live, but how to live".1

As his wife testifies, during his stay in Manchuria, Garin even carried out illegal work to distribute Bolshevik literature in the army.2

In 1906, he joined the editorial board of the Bolshevik magazine “Bulletin of Life,” designing at the same time the creation of a new body in which the literary and artistic department would be organically merged with the socio-political one. On November 27, 1906, with the participation of Garin, the organization of such a magazine was discussed at the editorial meeting of Vestnik Zhizn. Here, by the way, Garin’s one-act dramatic sketch “Teenagers,” from the life of revolutionary youth, was read. At this editorial meeting, Garin died suddenly.

Over the course of fifteen years of his literary activity (1892-1906), Garin affirmed an understanding of life as creativity, as work to restructure the world.

“He was a poet by nature,” M. Gorky writes about him, “you could feel it every time he talked about what he loved and what he believed in. But he was a poet of labor “, a person with a certain bias towards practice, towards business.”

1. This is evidenced by both his literary works and the very life of “this talented, inexhaustibly cheerful man.”
2. Garin reflected in his works that period of our history when the unfolding labor movement began to attract broad democratic sections of the population, when life itself confirmed the views of Marxists, when “social democracy appears in the light of day, as a social movement, as the rise of the masses , as a political party."
3. He himself was a prominent representative of this period in his struggle against populist dogma, against social stagnation, and against the renegadery of the bourgeois intelligentsia. Garin was far from a clear understanding of the specific ways and methods of transforming society, but he was able to realize the necessity and inevitability of a great restructuring of human relations.
Garin went down in the history of Russian literature as a democratic writer, as a major representative of critical realism of the late 19th century. His work is imbued with a spirit of activity, hatred of obsolete Life Forms and bright optimism.

4. Maxim Gorky
About Garin-Mikhailovsky

Occasionally in our world there are people whom I would call cheerful righteous people.
I think that their ancestor should not be recognized as Christ, who, according to the testimony of the Gospels, was still a bit of a pedant; the ancestor of the merry righteous is probably Francis of Assisi: great artist love for life, he loved not in order to teach love, but because, possessing the most perfect art and the happiness of enthusiastic love, he could not help but share this happiness with people.

I am talking specifically about the happiness of love, and not about the power of compassion, which forced Henri Dunant to create the international organization of the Red Cross and creates such characters as the famous Dr. Haass, a humanist practitioner who lived in the difficult era of Tsar Nicholas the First.

But life is such that pure compassion no longer has a place in it, and it seems that in our time it exists only as a mask of shame.

Merry righteous people are not very large people. Or maybe they don’t seem large because, from the point of view of common sense, they are hard to see against the dark background of cruel social relations. They exist contrary to common sense; the existence of these people is completely unjustified by anything other than their will to be who they are.

I was lucky enough to meet about six cheerful righteous people; the most prominent of them is Yakov Lvovich Teitel, a former judicial investigator in Samara, an unbaptized Jew.

The fact that the judicial investigator was a Jew served as a source of countless hardships for Yakov Lvovich, for the Christian authorities looked at him as a stain darkening the purest brilliance of the judicial department, and tried in every possible way to knock him out of the position that he took, it seems, back in “ era of great reforms." Teitel - live, he himself spoke about his war with the Ministry of Justice in the book “Memoirs”, published by him.

Yes, he is still living well; his seventieth or eightieth birthday was recently celebrated. But he follows the example of A.V. Peshekhonov and V.A. Myakotin, who - as I heard - “do not count, but count down” the years of their lives. Teitel’s quite respectable age does not in the least prevent him from doing his usual work, to which he devoted his entire life: he still tirelessly and cheerfully loves people and just as diligently helps them live, as he did in Samara in 95-96.

There, in his apartment, all the most living people gathered weekly, interesting people the city, however, is not very rich in such people. He visited everyone, starting with the chairman of the district court, Annenkov, a descendant of the Decembrist, a great wise man and a “gentleman,” including Marxists, employees of the “Samara Vestnik” and employees of the Samara Gazette, which was hostile to “Vestnik” - hostile, it seems, not so “ideologically” ”, as in the strength of competition. There were liberal lawyers and young people of unknown occupation, but with very criminal thoughts and intentions. It was strange to meet such people as “free” guests of the judicial investigator, especially strange since they did not at all hide their thoughts or intentions.

When a new guest appeared, the owners did not introduce him to their friends, and the newcomer did not bother anyone, everyone was sure that a bad person would not come to Yakov Teutel. Unlimited freedom of speech reigned.

Teitel himself was a fiery polemicist and sometimes even stamped his feet on a co-questioner. He is all red, his gray, curly hair stands on end furiously, his white mustache bristles menacingly, even the buttons on his uniform move. But this did not frighten anyone, because Yakov Lvovich’s beautiful eyes shone with a cheerful and loving smile.

The selflessly hospitable hosts Yakov Lvovich and Ekaterina Dmitrievna, his wife, placed a huge dish of meat, fried with potatoes, on a huge table, the audience got their fill, drank beer, and sometimes thick purple, probably Caucasian wine, which had a taste of manganese-acidic potassium; On white, this wine left indelible stains, but had almost no effect on heads.

After eating, the guests began a verbal battle. However, fighting also began during the saturation process.

It was at Teitel’s that I met Nikolai Georgievich Mikhailovsky-Garin.

A man in the uniform of a railway engineer came up to me, looked into my eyes and spoke quickly, unceremoniously:
- It's you - Gorky, right? You write well. As for Chlamys, it’s bad. This is you too, Chlamys?

I myself knew that Yehudiel Chlamida wrote poorly, I was very upset by this, and therefore I did not like the engineer. And he leered at me:
- You are a weak feuilletonist. A feuilletonist should be a bit of a satirist, but you don’t have that. There is humor, but it is crude, and you do not use it skillfully.

It’s very unpleasant when a stranger jumps up on you like that and starts telling the truth to your face. And even if he was mistaken in something, he is not mistaken, everything is correct.

He stood right next to me and spoke so quickly, as if he wanted to say a lot and was afraid that he would not have time. He was shorter than me, and I could clearly see his thin face, adorned with a well-groomed beard, a beautiful forehead under grayish hair and surprisingly young eyes; They looked not quite clearly, as if affectionately, but at the same time defiantly, fervently.

- Don't you like the way I talk? - he asked and, as if asserting his right to say unpleasant things to me, he identified himself: - I am Garin. Have you read anything?

I read his skeptical “Essays on a Modern Village” in “Russian Thought” and heard several funny anecdotes about the author’s life among the peasants. Severely received by populist criticism, I liked the “Essays” very much, and the stories about Garin portrayed him as a man “with imagination.”

Essays are not art, not even fiction,” he said, clearly thinking about something else, “this was evident from the absent-minded look of his youthful eyes.

I asked: is it true that he once sowed forty acres with poppy seeds ?

Why must it be forty? - Nikolai Georgievich seemed indignant and, frowning his beautiful eyebrows, he counted with concern: - Forty sins away if you kill a spider, forty forty churches in Moscow, forty days after giving birth a woman is not allowed into church, forty mouth, the forty bear is the most dangerous. The devil knows where this magpie chatter comes from? How do you think?

But apparently he was not very interested in knowing what I thought, because immediately, clapping me on the shoulder with his small, strong hand, he said with admiration:
- But If only you, my friend, had seen this poppy when it bloomed !
Then Garin, jumping away from me, rushed into the verbal battle that flared up at the table.
This meeting did not arouse my sympathy for N.G.; I felt something artificial in him. Why did he count the s’oroks? And it took me a while to get used to his lordly swagger, to his “democracy,” in which at first I also thought there was something ostentatious.
He was slender, handsome, moved quickly, but gracefully; one felt that this speed was not from nervous instability, but from an excess of energy. He spoke as if casually, but in fact he spoke in very deft and uniquely constructed phrases. He was remarkably skilled in introductory sentences, which A.P. Chekhov could not stand. However, I never noticed N.G. the habit of lawyers to admire their eloquence. In his speeches it was always “crowded for words, spacious for thoughts.”

From the first meeting he must have often created an impression that was not very beneficial to himself. The playwright Kosorotov complained about him:
“I wanted to talk to him about literature, but he treated me to a lecture on the culture of root crops, then said something about ergot.

And Leonid Andreev to the question: how did he like Garin? - answered:
-Very sweet, smart, interesting, very! But - an engineer. It’s bad, Alekseyushka, when a person is an engineer. I'm afraid of the engineer dangerous man! And you won’t notice how he will fit some extra wheel for you, and you will suddenly be rolling on someone else’s rails. This Garin is very inclined to put people on his rails , yes, yes! Assertive, pushing...

Nikolai Georgievich was building a railway line from Samara to the Sergievsky sulfur waters, and this construction was associated with many different anecdotes.

He needed a locomotive of some special design, and he told the Ministry of Railways about the need to buy a locomotive in Germany.

But the Minister of Railways or Witte, having prohibited the purchase, suggested ordering the locomotive in Sormovo or at the Kolomna factories. I don’t remember, through what complex and daring tricks Garin I bought the locomotive abroad after all and smuggled it to Samara ; it must have saved several thousand in money and several weeks of time, more valuable than money.

But he enthusiastically boasted as a youth not about saving time and money, but precisely about managing to smuggle in a locomotive.

This is a feat! - he exclaimed. - Isn't it true?

It seemed that the “feat” was caused not so much by the force of business necessity, but by the desire to overcome the obstacle presented, and even more simply: the desire to make trouble. As in any talented Russian person, a penchant for mischief was very noticeable in the character of N.G.

He was kind, too, in Russian. He scattered money as if it were weighing him down and he disdained the multi-colored pieces of paper for which people exchange their strength. His first marriage was to a rich woman, it seems, the daughter of General Cherevin, a personal friend of Alexander III. But he spent her million-dollar fortune in a short time on agricultural experiments and in 95-96 he lived on his personal earnings. He lived large, treating his friends to exquisite breakfasts and lunches and expensive wine. He himself ate and drank so little that it was impossible to understand: what fueled his indomitable energy? He loved to give gifts and generally loved to do something nice for people, but not in order to win them over in his favor, no, he easily achieved this with the charm of his talent and “dynamism.” Taking life as a holiday, he unconsciously made sure that those around him accepted it the same way.

I also turned out to be an involuntary participant in one of the jokes created by Garin. One Sunday morning, I was sitting in the editorial office of the Samara Newspaper, admiring my feuilleton, which had been trampled by the censor like an oat field by a horse. The watchman came in, still completely sober, and said:
— The watch was brought to you from Syzran.

I haven’t been to Syzran, I didn’t buy a watch, which I told the guard about. He left, muttered something behind the door and appeared again:
- The Jew says: you have a watch.
- Call me.
An old Jew in an old coat and an incredibly shaped hat came in, looked at me incredulously and put a piece of tear-off calendar on the table in front of me; on the sheet in Garin’s illegible handwriting was written: “To Peshkov Gorky” and something else that could not be understood.

— Engineer Garin gave this to you?

- Do I know? “I don’t ask what the buyer’s name is,” said the old man.

I extended my hand and offered him:
— Show me your watch.

But he stepped back from the table and, looking at me as if I were drunk, asked:
- Maybe there is another Peshkov-Gorkov - no?
- No. Give me a watch and leave.
“Well, okay, okay,” said the Jew and, shrugging his shoulders, left and did not give me the watch. A minute later, the watchman and the dray driver brought in a large, but not heavy box, placed it on the floor, and the old man suggested to me:
- Write down what you received on the note.
- What is this? - I inquired, pointing to the box; the Jew answered indifferently:
- You know: a watch.
- Wall ?
- Well, yes. Ten o'clock .
- Ten watches ?
- Let there be some.

Although all this was funny, I was angry, because Jewish jokes are not always good. They are especially bad when you don’t understand them or when you have to play a stupid role in the joke yourself. I asked the old man:
- what does all this mean?
- Think about it, who goes from Samara to Syzran to buy a watch?

But for some reason the Jew also became angry.
- Why should I think? - he asked. - They told me: do it! And I did. “Samara newspaper”? Right. Peshkov-Gorkov? And that's true. And sign the note. What do you want from me?

I didn't want anything anymore. And the old man, apparently, thought that he had been drawn into some kind of dark history, his hands were shaking, and he was wringing the brim of his hat with his fingers. He looked at me in such a way that I felt guilty of something in front of him. Having released him, I asked the guard to put the box in the proofroom.

Five days later Nikolai Georgievich appeared, dusty, tired, but still cheerful. And the engineer’s jacket he’s wearing is like his second skin. I asked:
- Did you send me the watch?
- Oh, yes! Me, me. And what?

And, looking at me with curiosity, he also asked:
- What do you plan to do with them? I don't need them at all.

Then I heard the following: While walking at sunset in Syzran, along the banks of the Volga, Nikolai Georgievich Garin-Mikhailovsky saw a Jewish boy fishing.

- And everything, you know, my friend, was surprisingly unsuccessful. The ruffs peck greedily, but out of three, two fall off. What's the matter? It turned out that he was fishing not with a hook, but with a copper pin.

Of course the boy turned out to be handsome and of extraordinary intelligence . A man far from naive and not very good-natured, Garin extremely often met people of “extraordinary intelligence.” You see what you really want to see.

“And having already experienced the bitterness of life,” he continued to tell. — Lives with his grandfather, a watchmaker, learns his craft, he is eleven years old. He and his grandfather seem to be the only Jews in the city. And so on. I went with him to my grandfather.

The store is nasty, the old man repairs lamp burners and polishes samovar taps. Dust, dirt, poverty. I have fits of... sentimentality.

Offer money? Awkward. Well, I bought all his goods and gave the boy money. Yesterday I sent him books .

And quite seriously N.G. said:
“If you have nowhere to put this watch, I’ll probably send for it.” Can be given to workers on the branch.

He told all this, as always, hastily, but somewhat embarrassedly, and as he spoke, he somehow waved everything off with a short, sharp gesture with his right hand.

Sometimes he published in “Samara Gazeta” short stories. One of them is “Genius” - the true story of the Jew Lieberman, who independently came up with differential calculus. That’s right: a semi-literate, consumptive Jew, working with numbers for twelve years, discovered differential calculus and when he learned that this had already been done long before him, he, stricken with grief, died of a pulmonary hemorrhage on the platform of the Samara station.

The story was not written very skillfully, but N.G. told the editorial office in words the story of Lieberman with amazing drama. He generally spoke excellently and, often, better than he wrote. As a writer, he worked in completely unsuitable conditions, and it is surprising that he could, with his restlessness, write such things as “Tema’s Childhood,” “Gymnasium Students,” “Students,” “Clotilda,” “Grandmother.”

When Samara Gazeta asked him to write a story about the mathematician Lieberman, he, after much persuasion, said that he would write it in a carriage, on the way somewhere to the Urals. The beginning of the story, written on telegraph forms, was brought to the editorial office by a cab driver from the Samara station. At night a very long telegram was received with amendments to the beginning, and a day or two later another telegram:
“Do not print what was sent, I will give you another option.” But he did not send another version, and the end of the story, it seems, arrived from Yekaterinburg.

He wrote so illegibly that the manuscript had to be deciphered, and this, of course, changed the story somewhat. Then the manuscript was rewritten in characters that typesetters could understand. It is quite natural that, reading the story in the newspaper, N.G. said, wrinkling his face:
“Devil knows what I’ve spun here!”

It seems that he said about the story “Granny”:
- This was written one night, at the postal station. Some merchants were drinking and cackling like geese, and I was writing.

I saw drafts of his books about Manchuria and “Korean Tales”; it was a bunch of various pieces of paper, forms from the “Traction and Propulsion Service Department” of some railroad, lined pages torn from an office book, a concert poster, and even two Chinese business cards; all this is covered with half-words, hints of letters.

How do you read this?
- Bah! - he said. - It’s very simple, because it was written by me.

I think that he treated himself, a writer, with distrust and injustice. Someone praised “Tema’s Childhood”.
“Nothing,” he said, sighing. - Everyone writes well about children, it’s difficult to write badly about them.

And, as always, he immediately ducked to the side:
- But it’s difficult for masters of painting to paint a portrait of a child; their children are dolls. Even Van Dyck’s “Infanta” is a doll.

S.S. Gusev, the talented feuilletonist “Word-Verb”, reproached him:
- It’s a shame that you write so little!
“It must be because I’m more of an engineer than a writer,” he said and smiled sadly. - I also seem to be an engineer of the wrong specialty; I would need to build not along horizontal lines, but along vertical lines. It was necessary to take up architecture.

But he spoke about his work as a railway worker beautifully, with great fervor, like a poet.

And he also spoke excellently and enthusiastically about the themes of his literary works.
I remember two: on the ship between Nizhny and Kazan, he said that he wanted to write a big novel on the theme of the legend of Qing Giu-tong, the Chinese devil who wanted to do good to people; In Russian literature, this legend was used by the ancient novelist Rafail Zotov. Garin's hero, a good, very rich manufacturer, who became bored with life, also wanted to do good to people.

A good-natured dreamer, he imagined himself to be Robert Owen, did a lot of funny things and, hounded by people of common sense, died in the mood of Timon of Athens.

Another time, at night, sitting with me in St. Petersburg, he absolutely amazingly told me an incident that he wanted to depict:
- On three pages, no more!

The story, as far as I remember it, is this: a forest watchman, a man deep in himself, depressed by a lonely life and only sensing the beast in a person, goes towards nightfall to his lodge. I overtook the tramp and went together.

A sluggish and cautious conversation between people who mutually distrust each other. A thunderstorm is gathering, there is tension in nature, the wind is rushing over the ground, the trees are hiding behind each other, there is an eerie rustling sound. Suddenly the watchman felt that the tramp was seduced by the desire to kill him. He tries to walk behind his fellow traveler, but he, clearly not wanting this, walks next to him. Both fell silent. And the watchman thinks: no matter what he does, the tramp will kill him - fate! They came to the lodge, the forester fed the tramp, ate himself, prayed and lay down, and left the knife with which he cut bread on the table, and even before lying down, he examined the gun that stood in the corner by the stove. A thunderstorm broke out. Thunder in the forest is especially eerie and lightning is even more terrifying. The rain is lashing, the lodge is trembling, as if it had fallen off the ground and was floating. The tramp looked at the knife, at the gun, stood up and put on his hat.
- Where? - asked the forester.
- I'll leave, to hell with you.
- For what?
- I know! You want to kill me.

The watchman grabbed him and said:
- That's enough, brother! I thought: you want to kill me. Don't go!
- I'll leave! If both of them thought about it, it means: you can’t live alone.

And the tramp left. And the watchman, left alone, sat down on a bench and began to cry with stingy, peasant tears.

After a pause, Garin asked:
- Or maybe you don’t need to cry? Although he told me: I cried bitterly. I ask: “About what?” “I don’t know, Nikolai Egorovich,” he said, “I felt sad.” Maybe make sure that the tramp doesn’t leave, but says something, for example: “Here, my brother, what kind of people we are!” Or simply: would they go to bed?

It was clear that this topic worried him very much and that he acutely felt its dark depths. He spoke very quietly, almost in a whisper, in quick words; it was felt that he perfectly saw the forester, the tramp, the blue shine of lightning in the black trees, heard thunder, and howls, and rustling. And it was strange that this graceful man, with such a delicate face and the hands of a woman, cheerful, energetic, carried such heavy topics. This doesn’t seem like him; the general tone of his books is light and festive. N.G. Garin smiled at people, saw himself as a worker needed by the world, and had a cheerful, captivating
the self-confidence of a person who knows that he will achieve everything he wants. Meeting him often, although always “hurriedly”, because he was always in a hurry somewhere, I only remember him cheerful, but I don’t remember him thoughtful, tired, preoccupied.

And he almost always spoke about literature hesitantly, constrainedly, and in a lowered tone. And when, after a long time, I asked him:
— Did you write about the forester?

He said:
- No, this is not my topic. This is for Chekhov; his lyrical humor is needed here.

I think he considered himself a Marxist because he was an engineer. He was attracted by the activity of Marx’s teaching, and when in his presence they talked about the determinism of Marx’s philosophy of economics - at one time it was very fashionable to talk about this - Garin fiercely argued against it, just as fiercely as he later argued against E. Bernstein’s aphorism: “ The final goal is nothing, movement is everything.”

- This is decadent! - he shouted. - You cannot build an endless road on the globe.

Marx’s plan for the reorganization of the world delighted him with its breadth; he imagined the future as a grandiose collective work carried out by the entire mass of humanity, freed from the strong shackles of class statehood.

He was a poet by nature, you could feel it every time he talked about what he loved and what he believed in. But he was a poet of labor, a man with a certain bias towards practice, towards business. I often heard extremely original and bold statements from him. For example, he was sure that syphilis should be treated with a typhus vaccine, and claimed that he knew of more than one case when syphilitic patients were cured after suffering from typhus. He even wrote about it: this is how one of the heroes of his book “Students” was cured. Here he almost turned out to be a prophet, because progressive paralysis is already beginning to be treated with a vaccination of Plasmodium fever and medical scientists are increasingly talking about the possibility of “paratherapy”.

In general, N.G. He was versatile, gifted in Russian, and scattered in all directions in Russian. However, it was always surprisingly interesting to listen to his speeches about protecting the tops of root crops from pests, about ways to combat the rotting of sleepers, about babbitt, automatic brakes - he talked about everything fascinatingly.

Savva Mamontov, the builder of the Northern Road, being in Capri after N.G.’s death, remembered him in these words:

He was talented, talented in every way! Even wore his engineer's jacket with talent .

And Mamontov had a good sense of talented people, lived his whole life among them, put many people like Fyodor Chaliapin, Vrubel, Viktor Vasnetsov - and not only these - on their feet, and he himself was exceptionally, enviably gifted.

Returning from Manchuria and Korea, Garin was invited to the Anichkov Palace to the Dowager Tsarina; Nicholas II wished to listen to his story about the journey.

— These are provincials ! - Garin said, shrugging his shoulders in bewilderment. after the reception at the palace .

And he told about his visit something like this:
“I won’t hide it: I walked towards them very pulled up and even somewhat timid.

Personal acquaintance with the king of one hundred and thirty million people is not an entirely ordinary acquaintance. I couldn’t help but think: such a person must mean something, must impress. And suddenly: a handsome infantry officer sits, smokes, smiles sweetly, occasionally asks questions, but still It’s about what should interest the king, during whose reign the truly great Siberian Road was built and Russia travels to the shores of the Pacific Ocean, where it is not met by friends at all and not joyfully. Maybe I’m thinking naively, a king shouldn’t talk about such issues with a little man? But then - why invite him to your place? And if you call, then know how to take it seriously and don’t ask: do Koreans love us? What's your answer? I also asked and unsuccessfully:

“Who do you mean?” I forgot that I was warned: I cannot ask, I must only answer. But how can one not ask if he himself asks sparingly and stupidly, and the ladies are silent? The old queen raises one eyebrow or the other in surprise. The young woman next to her, like a companion, sits in a frozen pose, her eyes are stony, her face is offended.

Outwardly, she reminded me of one girl who, having lived until she was thirty-four years old, was offended by nature because nature imposed on women the obligation to give birth to children. And - the girl didn’t have any children, or even a simple romance. And the queen’s resemblance to her also somehow disturbed and embarrassed me. In general it was very boring .

He told all this very hastily and as if annoyed that he had to tell something uninteresting.

A few days later he was officially notified that the tsar had given him an order, it seems, of Vladimir, but he did not receive the order, because he was soon administratively expelled from St. Petersburg for signing a protest with other writers against the beating of students and the public demonstrating at Kazansky cathedral

They laughed at him:
- Did the order slip away, Nikolai Georgievich?
“Damn them,” he was indignant, “I have a serious matter here, and now I have to go!” No, think about how stupid this is! We don't like you, so don't live or work in our city! But in another city I will remain the same as I am!

A few minutes later he was already talking about the need for afforestation in the Samara province in order to block the movement of sands from the east.

He always had broad projects in mind, and perhaps most often he said:
- We have to fight.
It was necessary to fight against the shallowing of the Volga, the popularity of Birzhevye Vedomosti in the provinces, the spread of ravines, and in general - fight !

— With autocracy , - the worker Petrov, a Gaponovite, told him, and N.G. asked him cheerfully:
— You are unhappy that your enemy is stupid, you want to be smarter, stronger ?

Blind Shelgunov, an old revolutionary, one of the first Social Democratic workers, inquired:
- Who said this? Well said.

It happened in Kuokkala, in the summer of 1905. N.G. Garin brought me 15 or 25 thousand rubles to transfer to L.B. Krasin at the party cash desk and ended up in a very motley company, modestly speaking. In one room of the dacha, two not yet exposed provocateurs were sitting with P.M. Rutenberg - Yevno Azef and Tatarov.

In another, the Menshevik Saltykov talked with V.L. Benois about the transfer of “Liberation” transport equipment to the St. Petersburg committee and, if I’m mistaken, the not yet exposed Dobroskok, Nikolai Zolotye Ochki, was also present. My neighbor in the dacha, pianist Osip Gabrilovich, was walking in the garden with I.E. Repin; Petrov, Shelgunov and Garin were sitting on the steps of the terrace. Garin, as always,
He was in a hurry, looked at his watch and, together with Shelgunov, taught Petrov, who still believed in Gapon, to disbelief. Then Garin came to my room, from which there was an exit to the gate of the dacha.

A massive, thick-lipped, pig-eyed Azef, in a dark blue suit, a portly, long-haired Tatarov, looking like a cathedral deacon in disguise, walked past us to the train, followed by the gloomy, dry Saltykov, and the modest Benois. I remember Rutenberg, winking at his provocateurs, boasted to me:
- Ours are more solid than yours.
“How many people do you have,” Garin said and sighed. - You live an interesting life!
- Should I envy you?
- What about me? Here I am driving back and forth, as if I were the devil’s coachman, and life is passing, soon - sixty years, and what have I done?
- “Tema’s Childhood”, “Gymnasium Students”, “Students”, “Engineers” - a whole epic!
“You are very kind,” he grinned. - But you know that all these books might not have been written.
- Obviously, it was impossible not to write.
- No, you can. And in general, now is not the time for books...

It seems that for the first time I saw him tired and as if in some despondency, but this was because he was unwell, he was feverish.

“You, my friend, will soon be imprisoned,” he suddenly said. - premonition. And they will bury me - also a premonition.

But a few minutes later, over tea, he was himself again and said:
— The happiest country is Russia! There is so much interesting work in it, so many magical opportunities, so many difficult tasks! I have never envied anyone, but I envy the people of the future, those who will live thirty, forty years after us. Well, goodbye! I'm off.

This was our last date. He died “on the move,” - he participated in some meeting on literary matters, made a heated speech, went into the next room, lay down on the sofa, and cardiac paralysis cut short the life of this talented, inexhaustibly cheerful man.
1927

NOTES
First published in the magazine “Krasnaya Nov”, 1927, issue 4, April, under the title “N.G. Garin-Mikhailovsky”.
The memoirs were written in February-March 1927 in Sorrento.
There was an inaccuracy in M. Gorky’s essay. In fact, the name of the Jew who served as the prototype for the hero of N.G. Garin-Mikhailovsky’s story was Pasternak.

5. Garin-Mikhailovsky

Wanderer

Once, going into the editorial office of the Samara Newspaper, in Samara, in the late nineties, I met there a gray-haired man of lordly appearance, unfamiliar to me, who was talking with the editor and, upon my appearance, raised his beautiful and completely young, hot eyes at me.
The editor introduced us.
The gray-haired man introduced himself with some special ease, shaking my hand with his small, sleek hand.
- Garin! - he said briefly.
— This was the famous writer Garin-Mikhailovsky, whose works then often appeared in “Russian Wealth” and other thick magazines. His “Village Sketches” was examined with great attention and praise by serious critics, and his brilliant story “Tema’s Childhood” was recognized as first-class.

Meeting at provincial town with a real writer who came from the capital was unexpected for me.

Garin was remarkably handsome: of medium height, well built, with thick, slightly curly gray hair, with the same gray, curly beard, with an elderly, already touched by time, but expressive and energetic face, with a beautiful, thoroughbred profile, he made an unforgettable impression .

“How handsome he was in his youth!” - I involuntarily thought.

The extraordinary old man was handsome even now - with gray hair and huge, youthfully fiery eyes, with a lively, moving face. This face of a man who had lived a lot and was still full of life, gray and still young - precisely the result of these contrasts - attracted attention and was beautiful not only because of its natural beauty, but also because of the whole range of some indomitable and great experiences that showed through in its features.

Garin soon left, but the editors talked about him for a long time.

It turned out that he was planning a production of his newly written play at the city theater, which had not yet been published or staged anywhere.

They said that The play is autobiographical in content and in it Garin portrays himself and his two wives: the first, whom he divorced long ago, and the second, a young one. From both of them, Garin has a lot of children, and the wives, contrary to usual, know each other and are very friendly, go to visit each other, and at the performance of the play they will sit in the same box with Garin and the children - the whole family.

The play on this occasion was predicted to be a scandalous success and a full collection .

I don’t remember now the title of this play: it didn’t appear in Garin’s collected works, it wasn’t staged anywhere else, but it was staged in Samara then and was a great success in a crowded theater. Garin and his family sat defiantly in the literary box between his two wives, as if not noticing the piquancy of his position, representing the main interest for the assembled public. The play raised the problem of peaceful resolution family drama, experienced, as everyone knew, by the author himself, who was present at the performance along with its living main characters.

Why Garin did this original experiment, I don’t know, but it was in his spirit.

It was the whim of an eccentric: strange episodes happened to Garin all his life.

He traveled around the world, visiting Korea and Japan. In Russia he was mainly engaged in engineering: he was an experienced civil engineer, he built one railway track of not very large size; was one of the contenders for the failed construction of the south coast road in Crimea ; from time to time he briefly became a landowner and amazed experienced people with the fantastic nature of his agricultural enterprises. So, for example, he once sowed almost a thousand dessiatines with poppy seeds, and when, of course, he went broke on it, he still recalled with admiration the beauty of the fields covered with “red flowers.”

He was engaged in forestry, rented estates, and took on government contracts. Sometimes he became a rich man, but immediately started something hopelessly fantastic and again found himself penniless . In the days of wealth, he confused everyone with his aimless generosity: if a chicken ordinary time cost fifteen kopecks in the village, then, when buying provisions for his employees, he ordered to pay for a chicken not fifty dollars or a ruble, which would have been at least consistent with something, but about five rubles, and this turned upside down in the minds of the population all ideas about cheapness and high cost. At the moments of his hectic enterprises, Garin squandered money, scattering gold literally by the handful, without counting, as if his main goal was to bring pleasure to both people and himself with this insane generosity. All of Garin's commercial enterprises, conceived broadly and talentedly, mostly failed due to his indifference to money and childish gullibility towards the people who robbed him. He knew perfectly well that he was being robbed, but he found it natural, as long as the job was done.

And indeed: things were done, then they failed, but Garin was not embarrassed - he immediately began to glow with some new idea that seemed “beautiful” to him.

There was a case when he the estate was sold at auction to pay off debts.

At the third blow of the hammer, Garin suddenly appeared and deposited the money that he had just managed to borrow from someone.

Garin's creditors told me that one day, tired of endless delays, they invited him to a meeting, firmly deciding to deal with him mercilessly. But Garin, who appeared, bewitched them so much that they, without knowing how, again succumbed to the charm of his personality: listening to Garin’s eloquence, they again believed in obvious fantasies.

Garin seemed to take his affairs lightly, as if he was playing with life, almost always putting everything he had on the line.

He always “ danced on the volcano ”, his whole business activity was like a desperate steeplechase.

And Garin really spent his whole life wandering around the world in the eternal frenzy of his risky enterprises: either he sailed on an ocean-going steamer across the Atlantic Ocean, making a trip around the world for some reason, along the way becoming interested in the life of the islanders or “Korean fairy tales,” then he flew to Paris, then ended up in the south of Russia, from where he quickly, with a courier, rushed to the Volga or the Urals.

He wrote mostly on the road, in the carriage, in the cabin of a ship or in a hotel room: editors often received his manuscripts, written from some random station along his route.
He wrote not for fame and not for money, but like a bird sings , so Garin wrote - out of internal need. It turned out by chance that the stories and short stories, essays and pencil sketches with which he sometimes amused himself revealed extraordinary talent, but Garin could not take his talent seriously and wrote only a tenth of what he should have written, without showing even a hundredth part of the wealth that lay in his soul. For him, the main thing was life itself, playing with obstacles, the excitement of risk, the embodiment of beautiful fantasies in reality, a constant mad leap over the edge of the abyss.

Garin remained an ardent young man until his gray hair.

“The Childhood of Theme” is his best work, written clearly, densely, brilliantly and in strong language, where, it seems, you will not find a single superfluous or out of place word.

Soon after the first meeting, I had to get to know Garin better: he often visited Samara while passing through, since he had some “business” on the Volga.

After two or three months, the driver returned to Samara and resigned from his position.
- Why? - I asked. - You didn’t like it, or what?
- My heart couldn’t stand it! I could not indifferently see how everything was dying there before my eyes - beautiful English cars were rusting in the open air, covered with snow; a magnificent stud farm - what queens, what thoroughbred horses! — they fall and die one after another.
- Where do they fall from?
- Yes, from hunger! Nikolai Georgievich did not order the preparation of food for the winter. Everyone died of hunger - it was painful to watch, I couldn’t stand it and left, not because I received my salary sloppily, that would be nothing, I can get by, but that’s how it is!
It turned out that Garin, carried away by some new fantasies and experiencing some kind of hot “excitement,” “forgot” about his estate - and everything went to dust.

Later, namely in 1901, when I was living in Samara “under supervision” and did not have the right to travel outside the city, I wanted to get another friend of mine, a technician, to work for Garin, also on the estate.
Garin, as always, being in the city “passing through” and burdened with a thousand “deeds”, made an appointment at the pier of the ship on which he was leaving: the conversation was supposed to take place in a few minutes, while Garin was boarding the ship.
When my friend and I drove up in a cab to the pier, the third whistle sounded, and the steamer began to slowly separate from the shore: the gangway had already been removed, Garin, in a traveling suit, with a bag over his shoulder, shouted to us from the upper platform of the steamer:
- Quicker! Quicker! Jump on the boat!
There was no time to hesitate or think: we both jumped a fathom distance above the water and found ourselves on a departing steamer.
- That’s great! - Garin said to my friend. - I have already decided to invite you to my work - to an estate near Simbirsk, and now we are going there together.
- What should I do? — I thought out loud. - We must return from the first stop!
- Nonsense! - said Garin. - Seven troubles - one answer: there will still be a trial at the magistrate's office, I will come out as a witness that you left accidentally, we will pay a fine, and no more! Let's go visit me, in Turgenevka!
Garin was not traveling alone, but with a whole company: there was also some young artist, and another draftsman, and someone like Garin’s secretary. Night soon fell; We sat down in the first class cabin to have dinner.
At dinner Garin was in a great mood and talked a lot; He knew how to tell stories artistically, revealing infectious humor, subtle observation and the natural ability of an artist to sketch entire pictures in a few words.

I remember he told various episodes from his travels around the world.
- Do you know when I saw the ocean? When I sailed for a week on this monster, a four-story ocean steamer! It's a whole city. People live there, drink, eat, dance, flirt, play chess and don’t see any ocean, they’ve forgotten about it: no matter what the wave is, nothing is noticeable! We were sitting by a large mirror window on the fourth floor, I was playing chess with someone. Suddenly the ship tilted noticeably, and for just one moment I saw mountains of foamy, shaggy, monstrous waves rising to the very horizon, the ocean looked at me - a gray-haired, enraged old man!
Suddenly he made a figurative comparison with Russian life and the ship of state, on which people sail, playing chess and not seeing what is happening in the ocean.

— They say a new wave is coming, a new dawn is dawning! - he added with a sigh. “And when you remember how many times this dawn rose and never rose, how many times a new wave rose and then turned into calm, then, really, you don’t know where to get away from both this painted dawn and these very waves.”!
Alas! The dawn soon faded. It worked and went out several times after Garin, and the “waves” soon threw him to death.

The entire audience of the wheelhouse, sitting at other tables, listened with extraordinary attention to Garin’s brilliant stories. Finally, when he came out, I was stopped by a man of respectable appearance, who looked like a merchant.

- Tell me, please, who is this handsome old man who is sitting with you?
- This is the writer Garin! - I answered.
- Ahh! - he exclaimed with even greater respect. - Garin!.. I know, I read it! Oh, what a beautiful man!

Garin made such an impression even on those people who did not know that he was the famous writer Garin-Mikhailovsky.

The manor house in Turgenevka, standing separately from the village on the banks of the Volga, on the top of a mountain overgrown with a dense forest, was an interesting, ancient building that had survived almost from Pushkin’s times. When we entered a huge, high hall with a whole row of large Venetian windows, I was struck by the extraordinary size of the fireplace, in which it seemed that it was possible to burn not logs, but whole logs. Antique engravings hung on the walls; one of them represented a frenzied troika that was rushing straight towards the viewer, into the abyss.

- This is my life! - Garin said casually, pointing to the picture with a laugh. - That's the only thing I love!
He changed his clothes, came out to us in high boots, tight blue leggings, a Hungarian jacket with laces, and in this suit he was extremely suitable for the whole atmosphere of the ancient castle in the style of knightly times; Probably, not without coquetry in front of himself, he dressed like that, with a special artistic instinct, guessing the harmony of the setting and costume, or perhaps he felt it unconsciously.

Garin was not the owner of the estate, he only rented it from the real owners, who were apparently slowly but surely approaching ruin and had not looked into the family property for a long time.” noble nest" Garin had a “forestry business” here. He removed a magnificent pine forest “for cutting” and floated the wood down the Volga.

After tea we went to see “forestry”.
- I will now show you the “wooden railway”! - the owner told us.

Of course, this was one of Garin’s “fantasies”: to transport logs to the cliff of the mountain, wooden rails were laid, along which horses rode drogs on special carriage-like wooden wheels. Although these wheels often went off the rails, causing stops, nevertheless, a witty invention eased the burden of transportation. The logs were lowered from the cliff directly to the bank of the Volga along a specially constructed chute through which water was carried so that the logs would not catch fire.

The August day was clear and sunny. The Volga sparkled like a mirror. The green forest hummed loudly under the warm wind. We stood over the cliff and admired the majestic picture of the Trans-Volga region: from the top of the mountain the horizon was visible for a hundred miles around.
Having assigned all the young people who came with us to the case, in the evening Garin, together with me, left on horseback for Simbirsk. We were given a spring carriage with an open top, drawn by three beautiful black horses: Garin loved riding. He and I drove all night along the clear, flat steppe road.
The night was bright, moonlit, enchanted by the silence of the boundless Russian fields.
And it seemed to me that a restless person, who had long ago developed a passion for eternally moving from place to place, would never again want and be able to change his anxious life, full of eternal changes of impressions, for the calm, desk work that he needed, if he wanted to become a “serious” writer.

At dawn we approached Simbirsk from the opposite bank, crossed by boat straight to the steamship pier, where there was already a steamer departing for Nizhny, where Garin was actually going.

Here I intended to part with him and, after waiting for the ship from above, return to Samara, but the eccentric began to persuade me to go with him to Nizhny.

Garin knew how to charm people, and, enchanted, I gave in: he was a very interesting and “beautiful” person, as the merchant who admired him on the ship aptly put it about him.

The journey ended with the fact that upon returning from Nizhny, I was politely invited by the gendarmerie captain, who came to see me on a quiet summer evening in the Samara prison, where I served a month while the case of my “mysterious” absence was examined.

On the day of my release from prison, Garin again found himself “passing through” Samara and, considering himself partly to blame for my “imprisonment,” came to me with company and with a bag of various bottles. Upon entering the apartment, he handed the bag to my mother.

The old lady put two bottles of white wine on the table and we drank.
After Garin left, she told me that there was still a large bottle in the bag that had not been given: it turned out to be champagne of the best brand, with which Garin wanted to welcome my release, but due to a misunderstanding, the bottle remained unopened.

Two years later, while living in Moscow, I was traveling to a Volga village for Christmastide and accidentally met Garin in the carriage. He was, as usual, cheerful and cheerful, joking.
- You are now experiencing an era of literary glory! - he told me. - I sympathize and am very happy for you! I, too, was once in fame, and was “first-class”, and all that! Anything has happened!

- Why were they? - I objected. — You were, are, and will be one of the best Russian writers!

- No, my time has passed, someone else’s time is coming! So it was... so it will be! But I recently bought an estate without a penny in my pocket - what a thing! The former owner even paid the expenses for the deed of sale for me!

- How is this so?

- Yes! An honorable woman who has known me for a long time, we met just like you and I are now. “You, he says, should definitely buy my estate, it suits you, and I would sell it to you.” - “Yes, I don’t have money!” - “Nothing. You don’t need any money!” Well, I bought, I don’t know why, an estate with a transfer of debt - now I’m going there; They say it’s a good estate, beautiful, it’s called White Key, very close from where you’re going! Bah! - Garin suddenly cried out, as if
struck by a sudden thought. - Be sure to come to me on New Year's Eve! Just twenty miles from the station, I’ll send the horses too! Definitely! My whole family is there:
my wife and children, I’m bringing all sorts of trinkets for the Christmas tree. Let's celebrate the New Year together.

I, of course, agreed to come to Bely Klyuch and fulfilled my promise. This was the meeting in 1903.

When I landed at the indicated station on New Year’s Eve, a Garinsky pair of blacks, drawn by a train, or, as they say on the Volga, a goose, was actually waiting for me; There was deep snow all around, the bitter frost was crackling, as it should be in Russia on New Year's Eve.

Out of the cold, perhaps, the blood horses raced like mad, and the driver hung on the reins all the way, as they say, and the black, angry, lathered horses in silver harness rushed like in a fairy tale, showering me with foam from their bits mixed with blood, and a whole cloud of silvery snow dust. We flew twenty miles in an hour - I have never experienced such fast riding on horses!

On a dark night we drove up to the bright lights of the manor house. There the Christmas tree was already shining, and through the frosty windows one could see shadows moving in the room. Near the house there was a pond, now frozen and covered with snow, overshadowed by old willows in a lacy brocade of frosty frost. Must be a beautiful place!

The house was full of guests, the Christmas tree sparkled with lights, someone was playing the piano, and they were going to sing in chorus.

Here I first met Garin’s wife, Vera Alexandrovna Sadovskaya, and their children, then still of school age and below. The eldest daughter's name was Vera, the middle one was Nika, and the little girl was Veronica.

The parents were also Vera and Nika! Vera and Nika ended up giving Veronica. Even when naming their children, the cheerful parent “played” with beautiful words.

Vera Alexandrovna came from a family of millionaires, the Sadovskys, grew up literally in palaces and, uniting her fate with the stormy fate of Garin, had, they say, significant capital, which, of course, was soon spent by her on the broad fantasies of her selflessly beloved husband.

She had been a beauty in her youth, but now, at the age of over thirty, she had become prematurely plump, although she was still pretty; Particularly beautiful were her eyes and her long, almost to the ground, golden, lush hair, which, when loose, could cover her entire figure.

Finally, Garin “rested” in the circle of his loving family, the children adored him, his wife beamed with happiness: after all, for most of the year they only missed and dreamed of him, the eternal traveler, and a real date was a rare holiday for them.

The next morning after breakfast, Garin and his family and I walked around the estate, skied, and after lunch it started to snow, a blizzard blew, a new sleigh pulled up to the entrance, pulled up by a train, black, angry, plump horses rose up like devils and again carried us with him to where -That.

In the spring of 1905, shortly before the sudden end of the war between Russia and Japan, Garin managed to obtain a million-dollar government contract for the supply of hay to the Russian army.

I then lived near St. Petersburg, in Finland, in the dacha area of ​​Kuokkala: many writers and artists lived in those places. Garin also settled in Kuokkala with his family.

Receiving a million-dollar advance inspired him to the highest degree, and a purely Garin-like scattering of money began. First of all, he flew from Kuokkala to Paris “for a minute” on a special train (what was it worth!), bringing from there fresh fruit for the supposed friendly feast and an expensive diamond necklace for his wife. At a party in his small temporary dacha, we ate real French pears, and Vera Alexandrovna, in a necklace sparkling with large diamonds, sat like a bride next to her adored husband and, in response to his jokes, coquettishly lowered her still beautiful eyes.

This was the last ray of happiness in their life, full of vicissitudes. From the very beginning there was a smell of bad forebodings: rumors spread that Garin was surrounded by unreliable people, that he was unlikely to cope with the case, that he would be robbed and brought to trial.

He handed out advances, of course, in handfuls, without looking into the future, without understanding people, and he knew from his vast experience that near such a huge government fire one could not do without theft.

- Come with me! - he invited me. - You will receive five hundred rubles a month from me.

- Why do you need me? - I was surprised. - After all, the hay business, you know, is completely unfamiliar to me!

- I don’t need you to know the hay business! - Garin objected. — Knowledgeable people I have one, but they are all thieves and scammers! So I want to assign at least one honest person to them so that he interferes with them.

I laughed, but after thinking about it, I abandoned the risky venture.

Garin recruited a lot of people for the grandiose organization of haymaking in the fields of Siberia and Manchuria. Soon he hurriedly left.

As one would expect, the delivery was not made on time: rains and some other setbacks prevented it, and at the beginning of July the war unexpectedly ended.

Government millions were spent, the delivery remained unfinished. A scandalous trial lay ahead.

In the fall, Garin returned to St. Petersburg. An alarming time was approaching - the revolution of 1905. Garin again found himself without money, exhausted from wandering around Siberia, upset by the failure of the enterprise, but not discouraged and already inflamed with a new passion - revolution.

Without giving himself any rest or time, he set about organizing a magazine that he himself wanted to publish.

At the editorial meeting, Garin suddenly felt ill, grabbed his heart and cried out: “It’s gone!” - fell dead.

Until the morning he lay on the editorial table, covered with a sheet, gray-haired and scary. The writer Garin-Mikhailovsky, through whose hands millions of rubles passed, died without leaving behind a penny of money. There was nothing to bury .

A subscription was made for his funeral.

Preparing the text - Lukyan Povorotov

G. Yakubovsky,Yatsko T.V.

6. N.G. Garin-Mikhailovsky - founder of the city of Novosibirsk

(http://www.prometeus.nsc.ru/gorod/garin/yazko.ssi)

Nikolai Georgievich Mikhailovsky (literary pseudonym N. Garin) was born on February 8 (20), 1852 in St. Petersburg into a military family. He spent his childhood and youth in Ukraine. After graduating from the Richelieu Gymnasium in Odessa, he entered the law faculty of St. Petersburg University, but then moved to the St. Petersburg Institute of Railways, from which he graduated in 1878.

Until the end of his life, he was engaged in researching routes and building roads - railways, electric, cable cars and others - in Moldova and Bulgaria, in the Caucasus and Crimea, in the Urals and Siberia, in the Far East and Korea. “ His business projects have always been distinguished by a fiery, fabulous imagination ” (A.I.Kuprin). He was a talented engineer, an incorruptible person who knew how to defend his point of view before any authorities. It is known how much effort he put into proving the feasibility of building a railway bridge across the Ob River at its current location, and not near Tomsk or Kolyvan.

A nobleman by birth, N.G. Garin-Mikhailovsky was formed as a personality during the era of social upsurge in Russia in the 60s and 70s. His passion for populism led him to the village, where he unsuccessfully tried to prove the vitality of “communal life.” While working on the construction of the Krotovka - Sergievskie Mineral Waters railway, in 1896 he organized one of the first friendly trials in Russia against an engineer who had wasted public money. He actively collaborated in Marxist publications, and in the last years of his life he provided material assistance to the RSDLP. “ I think he considered himself a Marxist because he was an engineer. He was attracted by the activity of Marx's teachings ”, recalled M. Gorky, and the writer S. Elpatievsky noted that the eyes and heart of N.G. Garin-Mikhailovsky “were turned forward, to the bright democratic future of Russia.” In December 1905, N.G. Garin-Mikhailovsky gave funds for the purchase of weapons to participants in the battles at Krasnaya Presnya in Moscow.

N.G. Garin-Mikhailovsky’s literary work brought him widespread fame. He authored the autobiographical tetralogy “The Childhood of Theme” (1892), “Gymnasium Students” (1893), “Students” (1895), “Engineers” (posthumously - 1907), stories, short stories, plays, travel sketches, fairy tales for children, articles on various issues. The best of his works have survived the author. Until 1917, the complete collection of his works was published twice. Books by N.G. Garin-Mikhailovsky are still being reprinted today and do not linger on the shelves of bookstores and library shelves. Kindness, sincerity, knowledge of the depths of the human soul and the complexities of life, faith in the mind and conscience of man, love for the Motherland and true democracy - all this is still close and dear to our contemporary in the best books of the writer.

N.G. Garin-Mikhailovsky died on November 27 (December 10), 1906 in St. Petersburg during a meeting at the editorial office of the legal Bolshevik magazine “Bulletin of Life”. He is buried on the Literary Bridge of the Volkov Cemetery.

M. Gorky, in his memoirs about N.G. Garin-Mikhailovsky, quotes his words: “The happiest country is Russia! There is so much interesting work in it, so many magical opportunities, so many difficult tasks! I’ve never envied anyone, but I envy the people of the future...”

The history of Novosibirsk, the city whose birth the engineer and writer N.G. Garin-Mikhailovsky so effectively contributed to, confirms these words of his.

7. Engineering surveys of Garin-Mikhailovsky in Crimea

in spring 1903 year in Kastropol a survey party arrived, headed by N.G. Garin-Mikhailovsky, for the construction of a south-bank electric railway connecting Yalta with Sevastopol. Electricity for the road was supposed to be provided by the Chernaya River. From April to November 1903, a research party led by N. Garin-Mikhailovsky was based at the Kastropol dachas of D. Pervushin. At the same time, Garin-Mikhailovsky was working here on his story “ Engineers" Over eight months of work, Garin-Mikhailovsky’s expedition carried out technical and economic calculations on twenty-two route options , their cost fluctuated from 11.3 to 24 million rubles in gold. Garin-Mikhailovsky sought to implement the project thoroughly and, if possible, with minimal costs, minimizing incidental costs as much as possible. To the question “Which road line would be preferable?” he invariably answered: “the one that will cost less when alienating the lands through which it will pass, I recommend that landowners and speculators moderate their appetites.”

Three options for the route Sevastopol - Yalta - Alushta, Simferopol - Yalta, Suren - Yalta were considered. The first option, Sevastopol - Yalta - Alushta, was considered the most expedient and economically feasible, while the road had to pass through the Laspinskaya Valley.

However, the project had critics who put forward the thesis that the proposed road “..meets the ambitions of the Sevastopol city government and the aspirations of thieves-contractors...”.

Garin-Mikhailovsky became interested in design, and for him the South Coast Highway became an unusual structure. The talented one came with Garin-Mikhailovsky artist Panov, who worked on the appearance of the road.

In July 1903, he spent several days visiting Garin in Kastropol. writer A. Kuprin. According to A.I. Kuprin, Mikhailovsky assumed “. .. to create an unparalleled monument of Russian road creativity from a commercial enterprise... » The stations were designed in the Moorish style to serve as a decoration of the coast; the technical elements of the road were decorated with arches, grottoes, and water cascades. Contemporaries who knew the writer-engineer closely recalled how he joked that the construction of the South Coast Railway would be the best posthumous monument for him. Garin-Mikhailovsky admitted to Kuprin that he would like to complete only two things in his life - the electric railway in Crimea and the story “Engineers”. Both undertakings were prevented by his death in 1906.

The Kastropol surveys of N. Garin-Mikhailovsky in 1903 formed the basis for the project of a new highway Sevastopol - Yalta, built in 1972 year.