I haven’t read Solzhenitsyn, but I condemn him. I haven’t read it, but I condemn it! Born into a family of an artist and pianist, he became a poet

Few people remember that the phrase “I haven’t read it, but I condemn it” was originally said in the direction of the great poet. “I haven’t read Pasternak’s novel, but I condemn it” - approximately this maxim amounted to the avalanche of criticism that poured out in 1958 from the lips of Moscow writers and “letters from workers” published by various newspapers after the publication of Doctor Zhivago.

Among many other opinions, a letter from worker Philip Vasiltsev especially vividly reflected the general mood: “What kind of opportunity is this? Newspapers are writing about some Pasternak. As if there is such a writer. I still didn’t know anything about him, I’ve never read his books. .. But it’s clear that he doesn’t like the October Revolution. So this is not a writer, but a White Guard...”

Over time, “Pasternak” itself and references to his novel were “erased” from the phrase, and it, acquiring an ironic meaning, became a cult.

In his autobiography, Boris Pasternak will write about himself: “I was born in Moscow, on January 29 of the Old Style (February 10), 1890. I owe much, if not all, to my father, academician of painting Leonid Osipovich Pasternak, and to my mother, an excellent pianist.” In the life of Boris Pasternak, who was both a great poet and a “perfect child,” there were many paradoxes.

Born into a family of an artist and a pianist, he became a poet.

Father - academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, maintained friendships with famous artists - I. Levitan, V. Polenov, M. Vrubel and others. Mother - an excellent musician, organized yesterday, which was often attended by A. N. Scriabin and S. V. Rachmaninov . Boris Pasternak drew well from childhood, and began composing music at the age of thirteen. But he never became a composer (or an artist), although he was preparing for an exam at the course of the composition department of the Moscow Conservatory. “I tore music, the beloved world of six years of work, hopes and anxieties, out of myself, as one parted with the most precious,” the poet would later write.

Was not accepted into the Moscow gymnasium, but the next year he entered it immediately into the second grade

Boris Pasternak was not accepted because of the percentage norm, which prohibited the enrollment of more than 3% of “persons of the Jewish faith” (Jews) in gymnasiums and universities in both capitals. By the way, Vladimir Mayakovsky also studied at the same gymnasium, only together with Pasternak’s older brother.

He lived a long creative life - and all his poems can be fit into one small book.

Although Boris Pasternak began writing poetry quite late (about 20 years old), his first poetic lines were published already in 1913. And during his life, the poet witnessed one civil war, two world wars and several revolutions.

The poet's parents and his sisters left Soviet Russia for Germany in 1921. And Boris Pasternak remained...

The poet’s relatives left because of his younger sister Josephine, who dreamed of studying philosophy, but due to the “incorrect” social origin that replaced the “national characteristic”, she was not admitted to Moscow University. And, by the way, this amazing attachment to his homeland will manifest itself again - much later. When the writer is persecuted and driven out of the USSR, he will not want to leave again... As one of his contemporaries writes about the poet: “Pasternak loved everything Russian and was ready to forgive his Motherland all its shortcomings.”

He sang the revolution, but was tired of being its “mouthpiece” (and it was really not easy to be one. Mayakovsky became - and put a bullet in his forehead).

The first epic poem about the revolution written by the poet is “Nine Hundred and Fifth”. Memories of youth here are mixed with revolutionary events. After its publication, the poet began to be called “Our Pasternak!” And one of Boris Pasternak’s last works is “Doctor Zhivago,” where the story of the life and mental suffering of an ordinary person is intertwined with the history of the country, devastation, and repression. Both things are about the revolution... and both things are united by their autobiographical nature... But if the poem marked the beginning of the recognition of the poet’s “reliability,” then the novel actually put an end to both his career and his life.

So what is this novel for which Boris Pasternak - here is another paradox - was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature and was subjected to organized persecution?

What kind of dirty trick did I do?
Am I a murderer and a villain?
Boris Pasternak

The period of favorable recognition of Pasternak's work, when his large one-volume work was constantly republished, and the poet himself actively participated in the work of the USSR Writers' Union, was short-lived. This was partly facilitated by the fact that Boris Pasternak periodically stood up for someone (from among those who were recognized as “enemies of the people”): in 1935 - for Akhmatova’s husband and son (wrote letters to Stalin), in 1937 - for Tukhachevsky ( refused to sign a letter approving the execution). During the years of evacuation, he helped many, including the daughter of Marina Tsvetaeva (they say that Boris Pasternak once had a light “epistolary romance” with the poetess herself, who died in 1941). And all this at a time when almost everyone knew that expressing one’s protest even in the mildest form was tantamount to suicide.

In 1947, attitudes towards the poet began to change. The newspaper “Culture and Life” published a publication “On the poetry of B. Pasternak.” In it, the poet was accused of “... being at odds with the new reality... speaking with hostility and even anger about the Soviet revolution...”.

Two years after the persecution began, Boris Pasternak’s wife was arrested by the NKVD. The poet himself was not touched. Pasternak will write about this: “She was imprisoned because of me, as the person closest to me... in order to extract from her through painful interrogations... testimony for my prosecution...”.

But it is still a mystery, shrouded in darkness, as to why the poet himself was not taken to the Lubyanka. This is another painful paradox in his life - Boris Pasternak was tormented by the fact that he was free when his relatives and friends were imprisoned or had long since passed away.

Soon after these events, Pasternak will suffer his first heart attack...

In 1955, the novel Doctor Zhivago was completed. The manuscript was sent to several editors, but none of them decided to publish it. In the end, when the work attracted the attention of an Italian publisher, Doctor Zhivago saw the light of day - it was published in Italy in 1957. A year later, Boris Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. But the poet’s happiness was short-lived - persecution was immediately launched in the newspapers. Boris Pasternak was openly called Judas.

The writer refused the prize, placing himself in line with two other “rebels” - Leo Tolstoy and Jean Paul Sartre.

Having learned that at a meeting of the Moscow Union of Writers, there was talk of asking the Government to deprive the poet of citizenship and expel him from the USSR, Boris Pasternak would write to Nikita Khrushchev: “Dear Nikita Sergeevich... I learned that the government “did not fix there would be no obstacles to my departure..." For me this is impossible. I am connected with Russia by birth, life, work. I do not imagine my destiny separately and outside of it."

When despair reached its limit, Pasternak wrote a poem.

I disappeared like an animal in a pen.
Somewhere there are people, will, light,
And behind me there is the sound of a chase,
I can't go outside.
Dark forest and the shore of a pond,
They ate a fallen log.
Let him be cut off from everywhere.
Whatever happens, it doesn't matter.
What kind of dirty trick did I do?
Am I a murderer and a villain?
I made the whole world cry
Over the beauty of my land.

Soon he had a second heart attack, and after some time, Pasternak began coughing up blood. The poet was diagnosed with cancer. Boris Pasternak died on May 30, 1960 at 23:20. His last words were a request not to forget to open the window...

There will be no one in the house
Except at dusk. One
Gray day in the doorway
Undrawn curtains.
The flakes will fall and see:
Blue and sun, peace and quiet.
So we too will be forgiven,
Let's believe, live and wait.

So that the younger generation would know and remember the poet, the staff of the Boris Pasternak Library in the Western District held a reading of the novel “Doctor Zhivago” on the birthday of the great poet.

Tatiana Protasova

In March 1958, a delegation from the Writers' Union went to Sweden. Here the long-circulated rumors about Boris Pasternak's nomination for the Nobel Prize were confirmed.

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A month later, the Soviet ambassador to Sweden received a telegram intended to influence the Nobel Committee: the ideological commission of the CPSU Central Committee reported that the Soviet Union would highly appreciate the award of the Nobel Prize to Mikhail Sholokhov, and the nomination of Pasternak would be perceived as an unkind act towards the Soviet public.

By the end of the year, information appeared in the Swedish press that the Academy was still inclined to give the prize to Pasternak. To avoid a scandal and deprive the Western press of the opportunity to make a fuss about the novel Doctor Zhivago, banned in the USSR, the Writers' Union proposed urgently publishing the work in a small edition.

However, in the cultural department this proposal was considered inappropriate; they were already closely involved in developing a secret program of action in the event that the Prize was awarded to Pasternak.

Finally, in October it was officially announced that the writer was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Pasternak sent a telegram to the Swedish Academy: “Endlessly grateful, touched, proud, surprised, embarrassed.” In the Union, the flywheel of persecution of Boris Pasternak was immediately launched.

Moscow Radio commented on this event as follows: “Awarding the Nobel Prize for the only work of average quality, which is Doctor Zhivago, is a political act directed against the Soviet state.” The Nobel Committee was accused not only of political interests, but also of inciting the Cold War.

The first response in the Soviet press was a devastating article in Literaturnaya Gazeta. In it, Pasternak received the role of bait on the rusty hook of anti-Soviet propaganda carried out by the West. This was followed by a publication in Novy Mir, in which it was announced that the magazine would not publish the novel Doctor Zhivago. The main reason was that the book is filled with the spirit of rejection of the socialist revolution.

Pasternak was summoned to a meeting of the Writers' Union, which insisted on depriving him of Soviet citizenship. It didn’t come to this, but the writer was expelled from the trade union by a majority vote. The wording of this decision read: “for actions incompatible with the title of a Soviet writer.”

After this wave of insults and humiliation, Pasternak decided to refuse the prize, sending a corresponding telegram to Stockholm. However, there was no reaction to this from the Soviet authorities. The first secretary of the Komsomol Central Committee, Vladimir Semichastny, supported the idea of ​​expelling Pasternak from the country.

Meanwhile, the press continued to mock the writer. Literaturka published letters from individual readers allegedly coming from all over the country - a certain strong voice of Soviet people outraged by the shameful libel of Doctor Zhivago.

Among those expressing anger and contempt was senior excavator operator Philip Vasiltsov: “No, I haven’t read Pasternak. But I know: literature without frogs is better.” Oil worker Rasim Kasimov from Baku echoed him: “As an ordinary Soviet reader, I was deeply outraged by the political and moral decline of Pasternak. There is and cannot be a place for people like him among Soviet writers.”

Accusatory rallies took place in workplaces, institutes, factories, and creative unions, where collective insulting letters were drawn up demanding punishment for the disgraced writer, poet and translator.

In April 1960, the hounded Pasternak began to feel the external symptoms of a fatal illness: the dirty campaign announced against him weakened his health and accelerated the development of lung cancer. A month before his death, at the beginning of May 1960, in anticipation of his imminent death, the writer asked his friend for confession.

Hundreds of people came to Boris Pasternak's funeral. Despite the disgrace, Naum Korzhavin, Bulat Okudzhava, Andrei Voznesensky, Kaisyn Kuliev stood at the master’s coffin...

Exact quote “I haven’t read it, but I condemn it” not recorded anywhere.

The closest in form and conditions of the myth are the words of A.V. Sofronov at the all-Moscow meeting of writers on October 31, 1958:

“Sometimes it seems to us that outside Moscow, outside the Soviet Union, there is little interest in the details of our literature. It turns out that this is not the case. Even there, in this small Chilean city of Valparaiso, the writer Delmag was very thoroughly informed about some of the events of our literature. So, he told me: “You are behaving strangely with Boris Pasternak, he is your enemy.” I didn’t read the book then and I haven’t read it now. I say: “You know, this is a very strange man, mistaken, with a false philosophy, we consider him somewhat of a holy fool.” He says: “Come on, what a holy fool he is! He is not a holy fool at all. He outlined his entire political program - the program of denying the October Revolution - very clearly, in great detail and very harmful to you, because this book (and it had been distributed for a year and a half before receiving the Nobel Prize, mainly in English and even in Russian) brings harm here and is a banner of anti-Soviet propaganda."

Sofronov cites responses to Pasternak's book from other people, but he himself does not try to analyze its content, admitting that he has not read it. The writer is excused by the fact that Doctor Zhivago is a very large and difficult to read text.

Also, another source of the myth may be a letter from reader Philip Vasiltsev, published in Literaturnaya Gazeta on November 1, 1958.

"FROG IN THE SWAMP"

What kind of opportunity? Newspapers write about some Pasternak. As if there were such a writer. I still knew nothing about him, I had never read his books. And I love our literature - both classical and Soviet. I love Alexander Fadeev, I love Nikolai Ostrovsky. Their works make us strong... We have many good writers. These are our friends and teachers. Who is Pasternak? Readers of his works can see that he did not like the October Revolution. So this is not a writer, but a White Guard. We, Soviet people, know for sure that after the October Revolution the human race rose up... Let's say the frog is dissatisfied and still croaks. And I, a builder, have no time to listen to her. We're busy. No, I haven't read Pasternak. But I know: literature is better without frogs.

Philip Vasiltsev, senior excavator operator"

Vasiltsev’s emotional letter, of course, is not a standard of literary criticism in terms of the level of argumentation, which “reader’s letters” to newspapers are rarely distinguished by, but it is also not a clear example of criticism of B. L. Pasternak.

The meaning of both quotes: “I haven’t read Pasternak’s books, but actions/political views I condemn Pasternak.”

Recently, the CIA declassified documents from which it follows that agents of this intelligence agency purposefully promoted Pasternak’s novel “Doctor Zhivago”... “This book should be published in mass circulation, in the maximum number of editions for subsequent active discussion by the world community, and also submitted for the Nobel Prize.” - says one of the spy instructions...

Thanks to a secret CIA program, the novel “Doctor Dead” (as the readers themselves quite rightly called this graphomaniac - I don’t know a single person who would read it to the end) was distributed with a circulation of about 10 million copies around the world, and after some time was awarded Ig Nobels...

Personally, this news did not cause any surprise to me, since ours (and world literature) has long been captured by the eternal privatizers and no one is simply rewarded in it. If the author of this opus had not been the Jew Pasternak, but some Russian Petrov, he would not have seen the prestigious prize like his ears...

In addition, we should not forget about the information war, which in the world around us does not subside for a minute. With the help of dissident words, the United States tried to destroy the USSR and, unfortunately, they succeeded very well. That’s why any award, then or now (take, for example, Zvyagintsev’s “Leviathan” nominated for an Oscar, where he paints his homeland with the blackest colors) is a purely political decision...

Look who received the same Nobel Prizes in Literature: Solzhenitsyn, who fled to the West, with his monstrously cumbersome “Gulag Archipelago”, all of whose “dignity” lies only in its extreme anti-Sovietism. It is completely impossible to read it. Heavy syllable, confused thoughts... It seems that he deliberately distorted the Russian language, wanting to load his reader as much as possible. Or maybe he simply didn’t own the “great and mighty”...

Next comes Brodsky - a rare Russophobe and troublemaker, whom his fellow tribesmen present for some reason as “the greatest Russian writer”... Still, the clever Kuprin correctly noted: “Every Jew is born into the world with the destined mission of being a Russian writer”... Akhmatova is like that spoke about the special operation to expel Brodsky from the USSR: “What a biography they are making for our Redhead! It’s as if he hired someone on purpose”...

Thank God, now we know the true reason for the so-called. “genius and greatness” of all these Brodsky-uglies... And it is simple to the point of banality - it turns out that it is the Zionists and Tsrushniks who decide who and when to make “the best in literature”... In a word, I have not read Pasternak (due to his prosaic lack of talent) but I condemn ...

P.S. The other day, Belarusian writer Svetlana Alexievich became another laureate of the prestigious Nobel Prize in Literature. It would seem that we should rejoice at this fact - not so many Slavic masters of words have been and are recognized by the arrogant West (despite the fact that Russian literature has been and remains the best in the world), but still there is one point that turns me away from the freshly baked classic … The fact is that Alexievich (judging by her numerous interviews) is a convinced Russophobe, putting the Soviet Union on the same level as Nazi Germany and opposing (as she puts it) “Russia’s seizure of Crimea”...

Unfortunately, the years fly by, but in our prosaic and completely predictable world nothing changes: just as the CIA officers supported and promoted outright anti-Soviet and Russophobes (like Pasternak and Brodsky), they continue to do so... It is clear that if Alexievich wrote about the tragedy of the residents of Donbass , she will not see this prize - the Nobel Prize, like thirty pieces of silver, is given only for betrayal. This means that the next literature laureates from our country may well be such writers (sorry, writers) as Shenderovich or Svanidze...

Korney Chukovsky congratulates Boris Pasternak on being awarded the Nobel Prize

On October 23, 1958, the Nobel Prize in Literature was announced to the writer Boris Pasternak. Before that, he had been nominated for the prize for several years, from 1946 to 1950. In 1958, his candidacy was proposed by the previous year's laureate, Albert Camus. Pasternak became the second Russian writer after Ivan Bunin to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.

By the time the prize was awarded, the novel Doctor Zhivago had already been published, published first in Italy and then in the UK. In the USSR, there were demands for his expulsion from the Writers' Union, and his real persecution began from the pages of newspapers. A number of writers, in particular Lev Oshanin and Boris Polevoy, demanded that Pasternak be expelled from the country and deprived of his Soviet citizenship.

However, the novel, published abroad, was published in huge numbers, for which the author was entitled to royalties of almost ten million dollars, but Pasternak could neither travel abroad nor receive the due remuneration. In the USSR, Doctor Zhivago was published in a small edition and was available only “for internal use” to high-ranking officials of the CPSU Central Committee.

A new round of persecution began after he was awarded the Nobel Prize. In particular, two days after the announcement of the decision of the Nobel Committee, Literary Gazette wrote: “Pasternak received “thirty pieces of silver,” for which the Nobel Prize was used. He was awarded for agreeing to play the role of bait on the rusty hook of anti-Soviet propaganda... An inglorious end awaits the resurrected Judas, Doctor Zhivago, and its author, whose lot will be popular contempt.” In Pravda, publicist David Zaslavsky called Pasternak a “literary weed.”

Critical and openly boorish speeches towards the writer were made at meetings of the Writers' Union and the Komsomol Central Committee. The result was the unanimous expulsion of Pasternak from the Union of Writers of the USSR. True, a number of writers did not appear to consider this issue, among them Alexander Tvardovsky, Mikhail Sholokhov, Samuil Marshak, Ilya Erenburg. At the same time, Tvardovsky refused to publish the novel Doctor Zhivago in Novy Mir, and then spoke critically of Pasternak in the press.

Pasternak was supported by the family of Korney Chukovsky, his neighbors at the dacha in Peredelkino. When the Nobel Prize was announced, Korney Ivanovich, together with his granddaughter Lyusha (Elena Tsezarevna Chukovskaya), went to congratulate their neighbor. There were foreign correspondents standing around the house, and a little further on there were people in civilian clothes. Nevertheless, Chukovsky, in an interview with the foreign press, praised Doctor Zhivago and supported Pasternak. Korney Ivanovich’s daughter Lydia also provided great assistance to the disgraced writer.

Also in 1958, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Soviet scientists Pavel Cherenkov, Ilya Frank and Igor Tamm. In this regard, the Pravda newspaper published an article signed by a number of physicists who argued that their colleagues received the prize by right, but that it was awarded to Pasternak for political reasons. Academician Lev Artsimovich refused to sign this article, demanding that he first be allowed to read Doctor Zhivago.

Actually, “I haven’t read it, but I condemn it” became one of the main informal slogans of the campaign against Pasternak. This phrase was originally said at a meeting of the board of the Writers' Union by the writer Anatoly Sofronov, and it is still popular today.

Despite the fact that the prize was awarded to Pasternak “for significant achievements in modern lyric poetry, as well as for continuing the traditions of the great Russian epic novel,” through the efforts of official Soviet authorities, it was to be remembered for a long time only as firmly associated with the novel “Doctor Zhivago.”

Following the writers and academics, labor collectives across the country were involved in the persecution. Accusatory rallies took place in workplaces, institutes, factories, bureaucratic organizations, creative unions, where collective insulting letters were drawn up demanding punishment for the disgraced writer.

Jawaharlal Nehru and Albert Camus approached Nikita Khrushchev with a request to stop persecuting the writer, but this appeal remained unheeded.

Despite his expulsion from the USSR Writers' Union, Pasternak continued to remain a member of the Literary Fund, receive fees, and publish. The idea repeatedly expressed by his persecutors that Pasternak would probably want to leave the USSR was rejected by him - Pasternak wrote in a letter addressed to Khrushchev: “Leaving the Motherland for me is tantamount to death. I am connected with Russia by birth, life, and work.”

Because of the poem “Nobel Prize” published in the West, Pasternak was summoned to the USSR Prosecutor General R. A. Rudenko in February 1959, where he was threatened with charges under Article 64 “Treason”, but this event had no consequences for him, perhaps because the poem was published without his permission.

Boris Pasternak died on May 30, 1960 from lung cancer. According to the author of a book from the ZhZL series dedicated to the writer, Dmitry Bykov, Pasternak’s disease developed due to nervousness after several years of continuous persecution.

Despite the writer’s disgrace, Bulat Okudzhava, Naum Korzhavin, Andrei Voznesensky and his other colleagues came to his funeral at the cemetery in Peredelkino.

In 1966, his wife Zinaida died. The authorities refused to pay her a pension after she became a widow, despite petitions from a number of famous writers. At 38, approximately the same age as Yuri Zhivago in the novel, his son Leonid also died.

Pasternak's exclusion from the Writers' Union was canceled in 1987; a year later, Novy Mir published the novel Doctor Zhivago for the first time in the USSR. On December 9, 1989, the diploma and medal of the Nobel laureate were awarded in Stockholm to the writer’s son, Evgeniy Pasternak.