Poor poet. Singer of the working masses. Responses in literature

Seventy years ago, on May 25, 1945, the first Soviet writer and order bearer, Demyan Bedny, died. He quickly went from the lower classes - the peasants - to the “classic of proletarian poetry.” Poor lived for many years in the Kremlin, his books were published in large editions. He died, leaving a very ambiguous memory of himself, especially among the creative intelligentsia, of which, in fact, he himself never became a part.

Bastard of the Grand Duke

Efim Alekseevich Pridvorov (1883-1945) - that was actually the name of Demyan Bedny - from a young age he searched for the truth and walked into the fire of enlightenment. He walked, trying to establish his literary talent. The son of a peasant, he became not only one of the first poets of Soviet Russia, but also the most temperamental of the many subverters of the old culture.

A peasant in the village of Gubovki, Aleksandrovsky district, Kherson province, until the age of seven, Efim lived in Elisavetgrad (now Kirovograd), where his father served as a church watchman. Later he had a chance to take a sip of the peasant's share in the village - together with the “amazingly sincere old man” grandfather Sofron and his hated mother. Relationships in this triangle are a haven for lovers of psychoanalysis. “Mother kept me in a black body and beat me to death. Towards the end, I began to think about running away from home and reveled in the church-monastic book “The Path to Salvation,” the poet recalled.

Everything in this short memoir is interesting - both the embitterment of an unloved son and his confession of a passion for religious literature. The latter soon passed: atheistic Marxism turned out to be a truly revolutionary teaching for young Efim Pridvorov, for the sake of which it was worth renouncing both the past and everything most cherished that was in him, except, probably, the love for the common people, for “grandfather Sofron.” Efim ended up in the school of military paramedics in Kyiv, and the then fashionable Marxism fit well with the boyish dissatisfaction with army discipline and other manifestations of autocracy.

However, in those years, the future Demyan remained well-intentioned. Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich himself (a poet and curator of military educational institutions) allowed the capable young man to take gymnasium exams as an external student for admission to the Faculty of History and Philology of St. Petersburg University. By the way, Bedny later supported the rumor that the Grand Duke gave him the “court” surname... as his bastard.

At the university, Efim Pridvorov finally came to Marxism. At that time, he composed poetry in Nekrasov’s civic spirit.

But over the years, his beliefs became more and more radical. In 1911, he was already published in the Bolshevik Zvezda, and the very first poem was so loved by left-wing youth that its title - “About Demyan the Poor, a Harmful Man” - gave the poet a literary name, a pseudonym under which he was destined to become famous. The nickname, needless to say, is successful: it is remembered right away and evokes the right associations. For Zvezda, Nevskaya Zvezda, and Pravda, this sincere, caustic author from the people was a godsend. And in 1914, an astonishing quatrain flashed through a witty poetic newspaper hack:

There is poison in the factory,
There is violence on the street.
And there’s lead and there’s lead...
One end!

And here the point is not only that the author cleverly linked the death of a worker at the Vulcan plant, who was shot by a policeman at a demonstration, with factory lead poisoning. The laconic text has a poetic substance that sets it apart from other poetic journalism. To Demyan’s credit, many years later, at a meeting with young writers in 1931, he recognized this old miniature as one of his successes.

Fighting with censorship, the poet composed “Aesop’s Fables” and a cycle about the merchant Derunov: from his pen, rhymed swear words addressed to the autocracy and anthems of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Party came out almost daily. Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin) from his “distance” called on his comrades to nurture Demyan’s talent. Joseph Stalin, who headed the party press in 1912, agreed with him. And all his life the poet was proud of the fact that he collaborated with the leaders long before October.

So that I don't hit small game,
And he would hit the bison wandering through the forests,
And by the fierce royal dogs,
My fable shooting
Lenin himself often led.
He was from afar, and Stalin was nearby,
When he forged both “Pravda” and “Star”.
When, having glanced at the strongholds of the enemy,
He pointed out to me: “It wouldn’t be a bad idea to come here.”
Hit with a fabulous projectile!

“The Red Army has bayonets...”

During the Civil War, Demyan Bedny experienced the highest rise in popularity. His talent was perfectly adapted to working under time pressure: “Read, White Guard camp, the message of Poor Demyan!”

The most masterly of the propaganda of those years was called “The Manifesto of Baron von Wrangel” - a reprise on a reprise. Of course, all this had nothing to do with the real Peter Wrangel, who spoke Russian without an accent and received orders for fighting the Germans in World War I, but such is the genre of unfriendly cartoon. The poet dragged in everything he could here, portraying the general of the Russian army as “Wilhelm the Kaiser’s servant.” Well, after the war, anti-German sentiments were still strong - and Demyan decided to play on them.

It is possible that this is the best example of Russian macaroni poetry (a type of comic poetry characterized by a mixture of “French with Nizhny Novgorod”): if only Ivan Myatlev and Alexei Konstantinovich Tolstoy just as witty and abundantly introduced foreign words into the Russian rhymed text. And the phrase “We will watch” has become a catchphrase.

Definitely, in the white camp there was no satirist equal in enthusiasm and skill! Poor in Civil outplayed all the venerable kings of journalism of the Silver Age. And he won, as we see, not only by “following the reader, and not ahead of him” with ditty democracy: neither Nekrasov, nor Minaev, nor Kurochkin would have refused the “baron’s little thing.” Then, in 1920, perhaps the best lyric poem by the militant leader of the working class, “Sadness,” was born.

But - a provincial stop...
These fortune tellers... lies and darkness...
This Red Army soldier is sad
Everything is going crazy for me! The sun shines dimly through the clouds,
The forest goes into the deep distance.
And so this time it's hard for me
Hide my sadness from everyone!

On November 1, 1919, in a few hours, Demyan wrote the front-line song “Tanka-Vanka.” Then they said: “Tanks are Yudenich’s last bet.” The commanders feared that the soldiers would falter when they saw the steel monsters. And then a slightly obscene but coherent song appeared, at which the Red Army soldiers laughed.

Tanka is a valuable prize for the brave,
She is a scarecrow to a coward.
It’s worth taking the tank from the whites -
White people are worthless.

The panic disappeared as if by hand. It is not surprising that the party valued an inventive and dedicated agitator. He knew how to intercept an opponent's argument, quote it and turn it inside out to benefit the cause. In almost every poem, the poet called for reprisals against enemies: “A fat belly with a bayonet!”

Adherence to the simplest folklore forms forced Demyan Bedny to argue with modernists of all directions and with “academicians.” He consciously adopted a ditty and a patter: here is both a simple charm and an undoubted trump card of mass accessibility.

This is not a legend: his propaganda really inspired ideological Red Army soldiers and turned hesitant peasants into sympathizers. He covered many miles of the Civil War on a cart and an armored train, and it happened that he accurately hit distant front-line “tanks” from Petrograd and Moscow. In any case, the Order of the Red Banner was well deserved by Bedny: the military order was for combat poetry.

Court poet

When the Soviet system was established, Demyan was showered with honors. He - in full accordance with his real name - became a court poet. He lived in the Kremlin and shook hands with the leaders every day. In the first Soviet decade, the total circulation of his books exceeded two million, and there were also leaflets. By the standards of the 1920s–1930s, this was a colossal scale.

The former rebel now belonged to the officialdom, and, to be honest, his fame, not based on talent, was ambiguous. Sergei Yesenin liked to call his “colleague” Efim Lakeevich Pridvorov. However, this did not prevent Demyan from being at the epicenter of historical events. For example, according to the testimony of the then commandant of the Kremlin, Baltic Fleet sailor Pavel Malkov, the proletarian poet was the only person, with the exception of several Latvian riflemen, who saw the execution of Fanny Kaplan on September 3, 1918.

“To my displeasure, I found Demyan Bedny here, running at the sound of the engines. Demyan’s apartment was located just above the Automotive Armored Detachment, and along the stairs of the back door, which I forgot about, he went straight down into the courtyard. Seeing me with Kaplan, Demyan immediately understood what was going on, nervously bit his lip and silently took a step back. However, he had no intention of leaving. Well then! Let him be a witness!

To the car! – I gave a curt command, pointing to a car standing at a dead end. Shrugging her shoulders convulsively, Fanny Kaplan took one step, then another... I raised the pistol...”

When the body of the executed woman was doused with gasoline and set on fire, the poet could not stand it and lost consciousness.

“He approached the altar with mockery...”

From the first days of October, the revolutionary poet conducted propaganda not only on topical issues of the Civil War. He attacked the shrines of the old world, and above all Orthodoxy. Demyan kept putting up caricatures of priests (“Father Ipat had some money…”), but that wasn’t enough for him.

The poor even took Pushkin as an ally in his poetic Preface to the Gabrieliad, unequivocally declaring about the great poet: “He approached the altar with mockery...” Such a militant atheist Demyan - it’s better not to come up with an anti-God agitation, because he’s not an infidel, not a foreigner, but a proletarian of peasant origin, an undoubted representative of the majority.

First - a book of poems “Spiritual Fathers, Their Thoughts are Sinful”, endless rhymed feuilletons against the “church dope”, and later - the ironic “New Testament without the flaw of the Evangelist Demyan”, in which Bedny tried to rethink the Scripture with a ditty.

These attempts caused consternation even against the backdrop of the hysterical anti-religious propaganda of Emelyan Yaroslavsky. It seemed that Demyan had been possessed by a demon: with such frenzy he spat at the already defeated icons.

In Bulgakov's main novel, it is his features that are discerned in the images of Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz and Ivan Bezdomny. And what is true is true: Poor, with great power of vanity, passionately desired to remain in history as the number one fighter against God. To do this, he rhymed the subjects of Scripture, diligently lowering the style to the “bottom of the body.” The result was an absurd story about alcoholics, swindlers and red tape with biblical names... Demyan had grateful readers who accepted this ocean of mockery, but “A Testament without Flaw” was embarrassed to be republished even during the years of new anti-religious campaigns.

In the obscene poem, Poor appeals to the well-known anti-church plot of the Gospel of Judas. The shocking idea of ​​rehabilitating “the first fighter against Christian obscurantism” was in the air then. Actually, already in the decadent tradition of the early twentieth century, interest in the controversial figure of the fallen apostle appeared (remember Leonid Andreev’s story “Judas Iscariot”). And when in the streets they sang at the top of their voices, “We will climb into heaven, we will disperse all the gods...”, the temptation to exalt Judas was impossible to avoid. Fortunately, the leaders of the revolution turned out to be not so radical (having received power, any politician involuntarily begins to cruise towards the center) and in Lenin’s “plan for monumental propaganda” there was no place for a monument to Judas.

The routine of “literary propaganda work” (this is how Demyan himself defined his work, not without coquetry, but also with communard pride) gave rise to such rough newspaper poetry that sometimes the author could be suspected of conscious self-parody. However, satirists and parodists usually do not see their own shortcomings - and Bedny quite complacently responded in rhyme to topical events in political life.

The poet created volumes of rhymed political information, although they became outdated day by day. The authorities remembered how effective an agitator Demyan was during the Civil War, and his status remained high in the 1920s and early 1930s. He was a real star of Pravda, the main newspaper of “the entire world proletariat,” and wrote widely propagated poetic messages to party congresses. He was published a lot, glorified - after all, he was an influential figure.

At the same time, people were already laughing at the pseudonym Bedny, retelling anecdotes about the lordly habits of the worker and peasant poet, who had collected an invaluable library in the revolutionary turmoil and NEP frenzy. But at the top, the everyday addictions of the non-poor Poor were tolerated.

“In the tail of cultural Americas, Europe...”

The problems started because of something else. The misanthropic attitude towards the Russian people, their history, character and customs, which appeared every now and then in Demyan’s poems, suddenly aroused the indignation of patriotic leaders of the CPSU(b). In 1930, his three poetic feuilletons - “Get Off the Stove”, “Pererva” and “Without Mercy” - gave rise to a harsh political debate. Surely, the poet did not spare derogatory colors, castigating the “birth traumas” of our history.

Russian old grief culture -
Stupid,
Fedura.
The country is immensely great,
Ruined, slavishly lazy, wild,
In the tail of cultural Americas, Europe,
Coffin!
Slave labor - and predatory parasites,
Laziness was a protective tool for the people...

The Rappites, and above all the frantic zealot of revolutionary art Leopold Averbakh, greeted these publications with delight. “The first and tireless drummer - the poet of the proletariat Demyan Bedny - gives his powerful voice, the cry of a fiery heart,” they wrote about them then. “Demyan Bedny embodied the party’s calls in poetic images.” Averbakh generally called for “the widespread desecration of Soviet literature”...

And suddenly, in December 1930, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks adopted a resolution condemning Demyanov’s feuilletons. At first, the resolution was associated with the name of Vyacheslav Molotov, and Bedny decided to take the fight: he sent a polemical letter to Joseph Stalin. But very quickly I received a sobering answer:

“When the Central Committee was forced to criticize your mistakes, you suddenly snorted and began shouting about a “noose.” On what basis? Maybe the Central Committee has no right to criticize your mistakes? Maybe the decision of the Central Committee is not binding for you? Maybe your poems are above all criticism? Do you find that you have contracted some unpleasant disease called “arrogance”? More modesty, Comrade Demyan...

The revolutionary workers of all countries unanimously applaud the Soviet working class and, above all, the Russian working class, the vanguard of the Soviet workers, as their recognized leader, pursuing the most revolutionary and most active policy that the proletarians of other countries have ever dreamed of pursuing. The leaders of the revolutionary workers of all countries are eagerly studying the most instructive history of the working class of Russia, its past, the past of Russia, knowing that in addition to reactionary Russia there was also a revolutionary Russia, the Russia of the Radishchevs and Chernyshevskys, the Zhelyabovs and Ulyanovs, the Khalturins and Alekseevs. All this instills (cannot help but instill!) in the hearts of Russian workers a feeling of revolutionary national pride, capable of moving mountains, capable of working miracles.

And you? Instead of comprehending this greatest process in the history of the revolution and rising to the height of the tasks of the singer of the advanced proletariat, they went somewhere into the hollow and, confused between the most boring quotes from the works of Karamzin and no less boring sayings from Domostroi, began to proclaim to the whole world , that Russia in the past represented a vessel of abomination and desolation, that today’s Russia represents a continuous “Pererva”, that “laziness” and the desire to “sit on the stove” is almost a national trait of Russians in general, and therefore of Russian workers, who, having done Russians, of course, did not stop being part of the October Revolution. And you call this Bolshevik criticism! No, dear Comrade Demyan, this is not Bolshevik criticism, but slander against our people, the debunking of the USSR, the debunking of the proletariat of the USSR, the debunking of the Russian proletariat.”

Already in February 1931, Bedny repented, speaking to young writers: “I had my own “holes” in the line of satirical pressure on the pre-October “past””...

After 1930, Demyan wrote a lot and angrily about Trotsky and the Trotskyists (he began back in 1925: “Trotsky - quickly place a portrait in Ogonyok. Delight everyone with the sight of him! Trotsky prances on an old horse, Shining with crumpled plumage ..."), but the leftist deviation, no, no, and even slipped. The new embarrassment was worse than the previous one, and its consequences for the entire Soviet culture were colossal.

The old scandal had almost been forgotten, when suddenly someone pushed the poet to come up with a farce about the Baptism of Rus', and even to caricature the epic heroes... The comic opera “Bogatyrs” based on Bedny’s libretto was staged at the Moscow Chamber Theater by Alexander Tairov. Left-wing critics were delighted. And many of them disappeared during the next purges...

Molotov left the performance indignant. As a result, the Central Committee’s resolution to ban the play “Bogatyrs” by Demyan Bedny on November 14, 1936 marked the beginning of a large-scale campaign to restore the old foundations of culture and “master the classical heritage.” There, in particular, it was noted that the Baptism of Rus' was a progressive phenomenon and that Soviet patriotism is incompatible with mockery of native history.

"Fight or Die"

For “Bogatyrs,” a year or two later, Demyan, a party member since 1912, was expelled from the CPSU(b) and the Writers’ Union of the USSR. An amazing fact: they were kicked out of the party, essentially, for their disrespectful attitude towards the Baptism of Rus'! “I am being persecuted because I wear the halo of the October Revolution,” the poet used to say among his loved ones, and these words were delivered to Stalin’s table in a printed “wiretap.”

Back in the fall of 1933, Osip Mandelstam created the famous “We live without feeling the country beneath us” - a poem about the “Kremlin highlander”: “His thick fingers, like worms, are fat...”

There was a rumor that it was Bedny who sometimes complained: Stalin took rare books from him, and then returned them with grease stains on the pages. It’s unlikely that the “highlander” needed to find out where Mandelstam learned about “fat fingers,” but in July 1938, the name of Demyan Bedny suddenly seemed to disappear: the famous pseudonym disappeared from the newspaper pages. Of course, work on the collected works of the proletarian classic was interrupted. He prepared for the worst - and at the same time tried to adapt to the new ideology.

Demyan composed a hysterical pamphlet against “hellish” fascism, calling it “Fight or Die,” but Stalin sarcastically threw out: “To the latter-day Dante, that is, Conrad, that is... Demyan the Poor. The fable or poem "Fight or Die" is, in my opinion, an artistically mediocre piece. As a critique of fascism, it is pale and unoriginal. As a criticism of the Soviet system (don't joke!), it is stupid, although transparent. Since we (the Soviet people) already have quite a bit of literary rubbish, it is hardly worth multiplying the deposits of this kind of literature with another fable, so to speak... I, of course, understand that I am obliged to apologize to Demian-Dante for the forced frankness. Respectfully. I. Stalin."

Demyan Bedny was driven out with a filthy broom, and now poets who resembled white-cowed men were in honor. Vladimir Lugovskoy wrote distinctly “old regime” lines: “Rise up, Russian people, for mortal combat, for a formidable battle!” - and together with the music of Sergei Prokofiev and the cinematic skill of Sergei Eisenstein (the film “Alexander Nevsky”), they became key in the pre-war heroics. The rapid rise of the young poet Konstantin Simonov with the tradition of military glory was linked even more tightly.

Demyan was finally excommunicated from the Kremlin, not only figuratively, but also literally. Disgraced, he was forced to move to an apartment on Rozhdestvensky Boulevard. He was forced to sell off relics from his very library. The poet tried to return to the literary process, but it did not work. Fantasy seemed to work well, he even came up with the image of a dual, according to the Indian model, deity “Lenin-Stalin”, which he sang - excitedly, fussily. But he was not allowed further than the threshold. And his character was strong: in 1939, at the peak of disgrace, Bedny married actress Lydia Nazarova - Desdemona from the Maly Theater. They had a daughter. Meanwhile, the bullets passed close: Demyan at one time collaborated with many “enemies of the people.” They could well have treated him like Fanny Kaplan.

It's good to smoke it...
Beat the damned fascist
Don't let him breathe!

In the most difficult days of the Great Patriotic War, he wrote: “I believe in my people with an indestructible thousand-year-old faith.” The main publications of the war years were published in Izvestia under the pseudonym D. Boevoy with drawings by Boris Efimov. The poet returned, his poems appeared on poster stands - as captions for posters. He loved calls:

Listen, Uncle Ferapont:
Send your felt boots to the front!
Send urgently, together!
This is what you need!

Ferapont is mentioned here not only for the sake of rhyme: the collective farmer Ferapont Golovaty at that time contributed 100 thousand rubles to the Red Army fund. The keen eye of the journalist could not help but grasp this fact.

Re-educated by party criticism, now Pridvorov-Bedny-Boevoy sang the continuity of the country’s heroic history with the victory on the Kulikovo Field and exclaimed: “Let us remember, brothers, the old days!” He glorified Rus':

Where the word of the Russians was heard,
The friend has risen, and the enemy has fallen!

New poems have already begun to appear in Pravda, signed by the familiar literary name Demyan Bedny: allowed! Together with other poets, he still managed to sing the glory of Victory. And he died two weeks later, on May 25, 1945, having published his last poem in the newspaper Socialist Agriculture.

According to a not entirely reliable legend, on the fateful day he was not allowed into the presidium of a certain ceremonial meeting. Bedny’s evil genius, Vyacheslav Molotov, allegedly interrupted the poet’s movement towards the chair with a question and shout: “Where?!” According to another version, his heart stopped at the Barvikha sanatorium during lunch, where actors Moskvin and Tarkhanov were sitting at the table next to him.

Be that as it may, the next day all newspapers of the USSR reported the death of “the talented Russian poet and fabulist Demyan Bedny, whose fighting word served the cause of the socialist revolution with honor.” He did not live to see the Victory Parade, although in one of his last poems he spoke about “victorious banners on Red Square.” Demyan’s books were again published by the best publishing houses, including the prestigious “Poet’s Library” series. But he was reinstated in the party only in 1956 at the request of Khrushchev as a “victim of the cult of personality.” It turned out that Bedny was the favorite poet of the new first secretary of the CPSU Central Committee.

Demyan Bedny (real name Efim Alekseevich Pridvorov; April 1 (13), 1883, Gubovka, Alexandria district, Kherson province - May 25, 1945, Moscow) - Russian, Soviet writer, poet, publicist and public figure. Member of the RSDLP (b) since 1912.

Having experienced in childhood the great influence of his uncle, a popular denouncer and an atheist, he took his village nickname as a pseudonym. He also mentioned this pseudonym in his poem “About Demyan Poor, a harmful man.”

He has a rare gift
Climb from the hole into the hole!
It’s not without reason that Balalaika
Lenin himself nicknamed him!

Yes, Judas to boot
It’s not for nothing that he nicknamed him!
Who set the task
Rip off the foundations of October!
(Quote from the poem “Twin Wave”)

Poor Demyan

Born into a peasant family. In 1896-1900 he studied at the military paramedic school, in 1904-08 - at the philological faculty of St. Petersburg University. The first poems were published in 1899. Member of the RSDLP since 1912, from the same year he was published in Pravda.

During the Civil War, he carried out propaganda work in the ranks of the Red Army, for which he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner in 1923. During the internal party struggle of 1926-1930. actively and consistently defended Stalin's line, for which he received various benefits in life, including an apartment in the Kremlin and regular invitations to meetings with the party leadership, and collected one of the largest private libraries (over 30 thousand volumes).

One copy of each book published in the USSR ended up in D. Bedny’s personal library. The complete collected works were published (interrupted at volume 19).

In 1930, Demyan Bedny increasingly came under criticism for his anti-Russian sentiments (expressed in his feuilletons “Get Off the Stove,” “Without Mercy,” etc.). He writes an irritated complaint to Stalin, but in response receives an even more angry letter.

Probably the poet did not take party criticism enough. In 1934, Stalin showed I.M. Gronsky a notebook with notes of insulting characteristics that a drunken Demyan gave to prominent figures of the party and government.

In 1936, the poet wrote the libretto of the comic opera “Bogatyrs” (about the baptism of Rus'), which outraged Molotov, who visited the performance, and then Stalin. The Arts Committee, in a special resolution, sharply condemned the performance as anti-patriotic. In 1938, Demyan Bedny was expelled from the party and evicted from the Kremlin; they stopped publishing him.

On April 13, 1883, Efim Pridvorov, better known by his literary pseudonym Demyan Bedny, was born. At one time, he managed to please Lenin, thanks to which he gained fame as the main revolutionary poet-agitator. In the end, he failed to catch new trends and ended up in humiliating disgrace. Life recalls the life story of the main revolutionary poet and fabulist.

According to the official version, known from the words of Bedny himself, he was born in April 1883 in the Kherson province into a very poor family. My father worked as a church watchman and often lived in the city. Yefim stayed with his mother, who created at home something like an inn for visitors. The location of the house was convenient, so the inn was popular. According to the writer, his mother led a dissolute lifestyle: heavy drinking, promiscuous sexual relations with strangers. She was a cruel woman and beat him constantly. In turn, her father, who occasionally came to visit them, beat her.

The main idol of little Efim Pridvorov was the head of local horse thieves. Nevertheless, in this atmosphere he learned to read and write. And after some time, his father took him to the city, away from the corrupting influence of his mother. And then they managed to get him into the Kyiv Military Paramedic School. Moreover, at the "state cost". That is, he not only did not pay for training, but also lived on full state boarding throughout his studies. Later, his father was killed, and Bedny, until the end of his life, believed that the organizer of the murder was his mother, who persuaded two random lovers to kill him.

After graduating from school, he was supposed to serve for several years as a military paramedic in the army, but in some incredible way he managed to end up at St. Petersburg University. It was possible to enter the university only if you had a gymnasium behind you, and not a paramedic school. So this could only be done with very high patronage.

He was supported by the Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich himself, who led all military educational institutions in the empire. During one of his inspection trips, he was introduced to a young man who was considered one of the most diligent students. And who wrote loyal poems. And the Grand Duke himself was a great lover of poetry. This is how their acquaintance happened, thanks to which Pridvorov eventually ended up at the university, passing the gymnasium external program.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Demyan Bedny - Russian Soviet poet, Fyodor Dmitrievich Panfilov - delegate from Ukraine (from left to right) during the VIII Congress of the RCP (b). March 18–23, 1919, Moscow. Photo: © RIA Novosti, Wikipedia

Having already become famous, Bedny loved to tell everyone his biography, flaunting the most disgusting moments. “My mother, comrades, was *** ***,” he told his stunned listeners.

However, not everyone believed these stories. Inventing a hard, beggarly life for yourself, full of hardships since childhood, was the most popular trend of writers in the first decades of the 20th century. This immediately increased interest in the author’s personality many times over. He even took a pseudonym for himself in accordance with prevailing trends. Literature at the beginning of the century was literally filled with Gorky, Pribludny, Hungry and others. Meanwhile, the editor-in-chief of the Soviet Izvestia, Gronsky, who knew Bedny well even before the revolution, argued that the Grand Duke helped the young Pridvorov for a reason.

As if he was even his illegitimate father: “Much in the biography and behavior of Bedny is not completely clear. I advise you to go to Vera Rufovna Pridvorova. Take an interest, especially in the origins of Bedny. You probably know that Bedny was the son of Konstantin Konstantinovich Romanov? No be surprised. After all, it was no secret to anyone that on Bedny’s desk there was a portrait of Konstantin Konstantinovich. When I met him even before the revolution, he was then a white-lining student at the university. Then, when Bedny joined the revolutionary movement, he came to the commandant of the imperial court and asked to return everything that Demyan had from K.R. Poor returned... All this was told to me by Demyan himself when he had to decide the issue of his family.”

However, there is no convincing evidence for this version, except for Gronsky’s words. Only once in his poem “Bitter Truth” did Bedny make a vague hint:

"From the splendor of honors, from the host of princes,

I fled as if from a sinful obsession."

However, this passage can be interpreted in two ways. For example, like the fact that the splendor of honors never interested him (although here, of course, he was disingenuous). One way or another, on the topic of connections with the “host of princes” in Soviet times, he preferred to prudently remain silent.

Pridvorov remained a student for several years, but never completed his studies. And then the war began and, as a military paramedic, he was mobilized to the front. But already in 1915, he was inexplicably recalled to the reserve without any apparent reason. In all likelihood, again it was not without mysterious patronage. But by this time Efim Pridvorov was no longer there. Demyan Bedny appeared.

Harmful man

Demyan Poor Soviet poet, Georgi Dimitrov leader of the Bulgarian and international communist movement and Henri Barbusse French writer, journalist and public figure at the First Congress of Soviet Writers. 1934 Photo: © RIA Novosti, Wikipedia

While still a student at the Kyiv school of paramedics, Pridvorov wrote loyal poems. However, his talent was clearly insufficient to be noticed in literary circles. There were patriotic poets who were much more talented. As, indeed, the opposition. Therefore, Bedny’s literary rise always went hand in hand with politics.

In the early 1910s, he joined the Bolsheviks. Their semi-legal newspapers became a platform for his first poems and fables. Even then, Bedny’s special style stood out and became distinct. This was not poetry in the form in which readers and listeners were accustomed to perceive it, but poetic propaganda. Poor wrote on request and always on the topic of the day, ridiculing the current regime, the Mensheviks, the Cadets and everyone else whom the Bolsheviks ordered to “literally kill.”

Bedny's poems were demonstratively artless and popular-primitive, but easy to remember. It cannot be said that behind them stood a genius or even an outstanding literary talent. But this was not necessary, because Lenin himself liked Bedny.

Lenin himself was not at all interested in art and understood nothing about it. Even during the heyday of the Soviet personality cult of Lenin, when he was officially considered a brilliant specialist on any issue, it was regrettably admitted that Ilyich “had no time for art at all.” Music “upset” him; he tried to wipe the Bolshoi Theater off the face of the earth, despite the objections of his comrades; he considered opera and ballet to be reactionary and landowner art.

He was slightly interested in art solely as a propaganda tool. That's why he paid attention to Bedny. Lenin was not a proletarian by birth and upbringing, and practically did not interact with living workers, but he was sure that it was Bedny’s crudely artless and often pseudo-folklore style that was ideal for workers. This is exactly what they will understand and accept. So Bedny turned out to be a full-time party writer, or a “Bolshevik poet,” as he liked to call himself. It is no coincidence that in 1923 Trotsky awarded him the Order of the Red Banner with the wording: “A sharp shooter at the enemies of the working people, a valiant cavalryman of the word.”

After the Bolsheviks came to power, Bedny found himself no longer the spokesman of a run-of-the-mill revolutionary party, but of the government of a huge country. He moves to a Kremlin apartment. Lenin, who believed in his talent, ordered that Bedny be given a special carriage with all the amenities that were not inferior to the general’s, in which he traveled around the fronts. He spoke to the Red Army soldiers with his propaganda, sometimes obscene and greasy, sometimes pretentious and populist.

In the early years of the 20s, Bedny was considered a leading literary propagandist. His ditties, songs, poems, fables and poems were published in millions of copies. Lunacharsky compared him to Gorky himself. Which the latter clearly did not like, although at one time he advised the Bolsheviks to pay attention to him, he did not consider Poor to be his equal. However, Bedny also had critics, but not from among the “old regime” figures, but from the Proletcultists. Writers who claimed to be proletarian writers accused Bedny of being a false proletarian and only imitating imaginary workers whom he had never known.

And indeed, his way of life was extremely far from ascetic. He lived in the Kremlin, had a servant, traveled to resorts, had a personal Ford car, despite the fact that at that time the number of personal cars in the whole country could be counted on one hand. When in 1925 they tried to take away his personal railway carriage from Bedny, he went all the way to Stalin himself and made sure that the carriage was left for him without harming his pride.

Demyan Zhalky

At the end of the 20s, Bedny's importance for propaganda began to fade. Times have changed, Stalin proclaimed writers the engineers of human souls. They were supposed to help create a new Soviet man. The poor man was not suitable for this role, he always followed the lead of the crowd, its instincts, he appealed to them. But he could not transform it in the way the authorities needed.

Although Bedny always unerringly chose political patrons, first Lenin, then Stalin, and although he still carried out propaganda party orders on the topic of the day, he was needed less and less.

In addition, Bedny constantly pressed Stalin with requests of a material nature. At the same time, when he asked for something, he simultaneously staged a mocking comedy. They say, I need this and that, but not at all for myself, I myself am an ascetic and unmercenary, I need this only for revolutionary creativity.

In the end, clouds gradually began to gather over Poor. In 1930, the Central Committee directly criticized Bedny's two new feuilletons, published in Pravda. The poor man, out of habit, complained to Stalin in his signature style, but unexpectedly received a detailed and angry rebuke: “When the Central Committee was forced to criticize your mistakes, you suddenly snorted and began shouting about a “noose.” On what grounds? Maybe the Central Committee has no right criticize your mistakes? Maybe the decision of the Central Committee is not necessary for you? Maybe your poems are above all criticism? Don’t you think that you have contracted some unpleasant disease called arrogance? More modesty, Comrade Demyan... What is the essence of your mistakes? It consists in the fact that criticism of the shortcomings of life and everyday life of the USSR, an obligatory and necessary criticism, developed by you at first quite accurately and skillfully, captivated you beyond measure and, having captivated you, began to develop in your works into slander of the USSR, its past, his present."

The poor man was confused and nervous. The poet decided that the best thing was to switch to praising the leader and began to write emphatically loyal poems glorifying Stalin. But that didn't help him. In 1932, Stalin ordered his eviction from the Kremlin apartment, and Bedny threw a natural tantrum due to the fact that he was moved to a “rat barn with plywood partitions.” The poor man, as usual, claimed that he was an ascetic and could live anywhere, but he couldn’t create in this “ass”.

In 1933, on the occasion of his 50th anniversary, Bedny was awarded the Order of Lenin. He took this as a sign of the end of his disgrace and after some time began to beg Stalin for a dacha: “The following circumstance had a hard impact on my health: from the autumn of 1931 to this day, I have neither winter nor summer healthy rest, languishing in the city without a break. would I like? Essentially, not much: to have something done for me that I don’t have the opportunity to do myself, no possibility. At best, the economic department of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee could get my awkward log house to hell and build for me a more decent wooden dacha of 4 rooms –5 with the necessary residential buildings<… >Dear Joseph Vissarionovich, I would be dejected if you thought for a second that my letter was dictated by even the shadow of “personal” interest. I have nothing personal here. This, if you like, is a purely professional need for the poet."

Following the “purely professional need of a poet,” Bedny had a new need. In his unsurpassed style, he began to beg Stalin for a new car: “Comrade Yezhov, to my sighs that the dacha is a “dream” from which pincers cannot tear me away, but its 40-kilometer reach for my broken (and now gone into capital) repair) the Ford is rather weak, he told me categorically: you will get a new car. May, June have passed, July is coming. Yezhov - for reasons known to him, and not to me - is hiding from me like the devil from incense."

Apparently, Bedny, no longer poor for a long time, simply tired of Stalin with his endless “poetic needs” and the maximum favored nation regime was turned off for him. The following year, 1936, his comic opera “Bogatyrs” was completely destroyed for “spitting on the past.”

After harsh criticism, Bedny was seriously frightened and tried to justify himself to the secretary of the Writers' Union, Stavsky, who reported to the top: “Demyan Bedny, admitting that he made a huge mistake, explains it with his misunderstanding of the material and his stupidity<…>Demyan indicated that he was having an attack of sugar sickness. He said that he did not want to die with the stigma of being an enemy of the party<…>Further, asking not to be included in the transcript, Demyan said that his enemy was his library. This was pointed out to him, but he did not understand it. He said that he would burn his library."

Photo: © RIA Novosti/Petrov, Wikipedia

After Bedny’s devastating criticism, all Soviet bohemia rejoiced. The poor man was the type of person who boasts and mocks the defeated, feeling himself to be on the winning side. Both by order and from the heart, he mocked, mocked and mocked the bourgeoisie, monarchists, priests, believers, Socialist Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, White Guards, Trotskyists, Zinovievites, disgraced poets and writers, kulaks, intellectuals and everyone else who at least once fell under the party roller. But as soon as Comrade Stalin raised his eyebrow in bewilderment, Bedny began to clutch his heart, faint, shake his diabetes certificate, and conjure that he was just a fool and not guilty of anything. Of course, other writers who did not like Bedny for his arrogance did not miss the opportunity to rejoice at his humiliating fall. State Security reported on bohemian conversations in connection with the defeat of Bedny:

"Satirist Romanov: It was good that they slammed. Demyan takes advantage of his order, connections and rudeness. This time it didn’t work out."

Writer Olesha: “Demyan got fed up, Demyan got punched in the face.”

Poet Lebedev-Kumach: “We need to remove the swearing from the stage and from the poetry that Demyan spreads and makes this swearing the official language of Soviet poetry.”

Actor Paul: “I’m very glad that they hit Demyan: he was so arrogant that he gave two fingers.”

Writer Bulgakov: “It’s a rare case when Demyan, given his character, will not gloat - this time he himself fell victim - and not giggle at others. Now let him feel it himself.”

Director Eisenstein: “I haven’t seen the play, but I’m extremely pleased at least that they gave Demyan a great time. Serves him right, he’s too arrogant.”

In general, the rejoicing was universal; Bedny’s personality was too odious in creative circles. Of course, if he had great talent, Poor would certainly be forgiven for his disgusting habits. But the fact of the matter is that no one saw much talent in him. Many considered him an upstart who accidentally caught the eye of Lenin, who had no understanding of art, at the right time, with his propaganda ditties.

Poor responded by writing the poem “Fight or Die,” in which he compared himself to the new Dante, who descended into fascist hell. However, some moments of the work, if desired, made it possible to draw certain parallels with the Soviet Union and even hinted at the recent history of the defeat of Bedny. He brought his poem to Mehlis to read, who gave it to Stalin himself for review.

He was brief and categorical: “I reply with a letter addressed to Demyan, which you can read to him. To the newly-minted Dante, i.e. Conrad, that is... Demyan the Poor. The fable or poem “Fight or Die”, in my opinion, is artistically mediocre thing. As a criticism of fascism, it is pale and unoriginal. As a criticism of the Soviet system (don't joke!), it is stupid, although transparent. Since we already have a lot of literary trash, it is hardly worth multiplying the deposits of this kind of literature with another fable , so to speak... I, of course, understand that I am obliged to apologize to Demian-Dante for the forced frankness."

Ultimately, in 1938, Bedny was expelled from the party and from the Writers' Union under the pretext of his moral decay. Literary activity was virtually closed to him. But he got off easy, at that time many were losing their lives, but Stalin still took pity on Bedny, whom he had been making fun of lately.

Last years

After being expelled from the party, he came under the supervision of the NKVD. The security officers reported on the exasperation of the former court poet: “D. Bedny’s embitterment is characterized by the following statements of his among those close to him: “I became a stranger, I went into circulation. The era of Demyan Bedny is over"<….>After the decision to expel him from the party, D. Bedny is in an even more embittered state. He mocks the CCP ruling: “First they cheapened me - they declared that I was morally corrupt, and then they declared that I was a Turkish spy.” Several times D. Bedny spoke about his intention to commit suicide.”

However, it still didn’t come to that. Deprived of the opportunity to publish, Poor lived by selling his rich library, which he was proud of, and antique furniture. With the outbreak of the war, he began to be published again in leading newspapers, in some cases under the new pseudonym Boevoy. This time he wrote patriotic poems and fables. But Demyan was no longer the same, and the time was not the same. His new image did not receive a significant response; he never managed to become one of the main front-line poets.

Two weeks after the end of the war, on May 25, 1945, Demyan Bedny died at the age of 62. Despite his disgrace, he was given appropriate posthumous honors: an obituary in central newspapers on behalf of the government and leading Soviet writers, a farewell ceremony in the hall of the Writers' Union. However, they buried him not in the Kremlin wall, but in the Novodevichy cemetery.

(real name and surname - Efim Alekseevich Pridvorov)

(1883-1945) Soviet poet

Efim Alekseevich Pridvorov, the future proletarian poet Demyan Bedny, was born in the Kherson region, in the village of Gubovka, into a peasant family. His childhood was full of adversity and deprivation. The boy spent the first years of his life in the city of Elizavet-grad, where his father served as a church watchman.

Bedny later recalled in his biography: “The two of us lived in a basement closet on our father’s ten-ruble salary. Mother lived with us for rare times, and the less often these times happened, the more pleasant it was for me, because my mother’s treatment of me was extremely brutal. From the age of seven until I was thirteen, I had to endure a hard life together with my mother in the village with my grandfather Sofron, an amazingly sincere old man who loved and pitied me very much.”

After some time, the future poet finds himself in the barracks environment of the Kyiv military paramedic school, graduates from it and serves in his specialty for some time. But the very early awakened passion for books and interest in literature do not leave Efim. He is engaged in self-education a lot and persistently, and already at the age of twenty, having passed an external exam for a gymnasium course, he becomes a student at the Faculty of History and Philology of St. Petersburg University.

This was in 1904, on the eve of the first Russian revolution. During the years of university study, in an environment when gatherings, manifestations, and demonstrations were in full swing within the walls of the “temple of science” on Vasilievsky Island, a complex process of formation and development of the personality of the future poet took place. In the same autobiography, Bedny wrote: “After four years of a new life, new meetings and new impressions, after the stunning reaction of subsequent years for me, I lost everything on which my philistine, well-intentioned mood was based.”

In 1909, a new literary name appeared in the magazine “Russian Wealth” - E. Pridvorov. Then, for the first time, poems signed with this name were published. But these poems and friendship with the veteran populist poetry P.F. Yakubovich-Melshin were only a short episode from the life and creative path of the poet. The name of the character in one of Pridvorov’s first poems, “About Demyan the Poor, a Harmful Man” (1911), becomes his literary pseudonym, popular among millions of readers. Under this pseudonym, from 1912 to 1945, his works appeared on the pages of newspapers and magazines.

Demyan Bedny in his work, at first glance, is traditional, committed to the form, rhythm, and intonation of the verse that has been tried by many. But this is only a superficial and deceptive impression. Just like his predecessor and teacher Nekrasov, Demyan Bedny is a brave and ever-searching innovator. He fills traditional forms with new, ebullient and sharp content of the era. And this new content inevitably updates the old form, allowing poetry to fulfill hitherto unknown tasks of great importance - to be close and accessible to the hearts of contemporaries.

Striving for the main thing - to make the work understandable, intelligible for any reader, Demyan Bedny, in addition to his favorite fable, also used such easily accessible genres as a ditty, folk song, fairy tale, legend (all these genres are masterfully combined, for example, in the story “About the land, about freedom, about the working share”). He also wrote poems based on the comic effect of mixing different styles, such as “The Manifesto of Baron von Wrangel.” Here is an example from the “Manifesto...”:

Ihi fate an. I'm sewing.

Es ist for all Soviet places.

For Russian people from edge to edge

Baronial Unzer Manifesto.

You all know my last name:

Ihy bin von Wrangel, Herr Baron.

I am the best, the sixth

There is a candidate for the royal throne.

Listen, red Soldaten:

Why are you attacking me?

My government is all democratic,

And not some kind of calling...

Extreme clarity and simplicity of form, political relevance and acuteness of the topic made D. Bedny’s poems beloved by the widest audience. Over more than three decades of his creative activity, the poet captured the entire kaleidoscope of events in the country’s socio-political life.

The poetic heritage of Demyan Bedny personifies the continuity of his poetry in relation to his great predecessors. His work bears expressive signs of the fruitful influence of N.A. Nekrasov and T.G. Shevchenko. From them he learned, among other things, the unsurpassed skill of using the richest sources of oral folk art. There is, perhaps, no type and genre in Russian poetry to which, based on the characteristics of the theme and material, Demyan Bedny would not resort.

Of course, his main and favorite genre was the fable. She helped in the pre-revolutionary ode to hide seditious thoughts from censorship. But, besides Demyan Bedny, the fabulist, we know Demyan Bedny, the author of poetic stories, legends, epic and lyrical-journalistic poems, such as, for example, “Main Street” with its amazing laconicism, precise rhythm, patriotic intensity of every image, every words:

Main Street in a frantic panic:

Pale, shaking, as if mad.

Suddenly stung by mortal fear.

He rushes about - a starched club businessman,

A rogue usurer and a swindling banker,

Manufacturer and fashion tailor,

Ace-furrier, patented jeweler,

- Everyone rushes about, anxiously excited

Rumble and screams, audible from afar,

Among the bonds of the money changer...

Demyan Bedny is known as a master of the poetic feuilleton, catchy, striking epigrams, and poems of small form but significant capacity. The poet-tribune, poet-accuser was always ready to go to the farthest corner of the country to meet with his readers. Demyan Bedny once had an interesting conversation with the organizers of his trip to the Far East. He was not interested in the material side. “Is there sun? - he asked. - Eat. - Is there Soviet power? - Eat. “Then I’ll go.”

The years that have passed since the death of the poet are quite a significant period for what he created to be tested by time. Of course, of the huge number of works by Demyan Bedny, not all retain their former significance. Those poems on particular themes of revolutionary reality, in which the poet failed to rise to the heights of broad artistic generalization, remained simply an interesting evidence of the time, valuable material for the history of the era.

But the best works of Demyan Bedny, where his talent was fully revealed, where a strong patriotic thought and a passionate feeling of a contemporary of important events in the history of the country were expressed in artistic form - these works still retain their strength and effectiveness.

Characterizing the features of Russian literature, A.M. Gorky wrote: “In Russia, each writer was truly and sharply individual, but everyone was united by one persistent desire - to understand, feel, guess about the future of the country, about the fate of its people, about its role on earth.” . These words are the best fit for assessing the life and work of Demyan Bedny.

Demyan Bedny photography

POOR Demyan (Efim Alekseevich Pridvorov) (1883-1945). Soviet poet and writer. Born in the village. Gubovka, Kherson region. He studied at the Kyiv Military Paramedic School and St. Petersburg University (1904-1908). Member of the First World War. Member of the RCP(b) since 1912. Published in the Bolshevik newspapers “Zvezda”1) and “Pravda”. Author of satirical poems, feuilletons, fables, songs, captions for TASS windows. The most famous epic poems of D. Bedny are “About the land, about freedom, about the working share” (1917), “Main Street” (1922). In the 20s, the work of D. Bedny was popular. “Today it would not occur to writers to carry out the “demyanization of literature,” but at that time the issue of reducing the entire diversity of literature to one example was seriously discussed: the poetry of Demyan Bedny” (Historians argue. M., 1989. P. 430). In 1925 the city of Spassk (now in the Penza region) was renamed Bednodemyanovsk.

According to the memoirs of V.D. Bonch-Bruevich, V.I. Lenin “remarkably sensitively, closely and lovingly... treated the mighty muse of Demyan Bedny. He characterized his works as very witty, beautifully written, accurate, and hitting the target.”

Demyan Bedny, having arrived in 1918 together with the Soviet government from Petrograd to Moscow, received an apartment in the Grand Kremlin Palace, where he moved his wife, children, mother-in-law, nanny for the children... The writer had a very good library, from which he borrowed with the permission of the owner books Stalin. They developed excellent, almost friendly relations, but later the leader unexpectedly not only evicted Demyan Bedny from the Kremlin, but also established surveillance on him.

“After the founding congress of the Union of Writers of the USSR,” recalled I. Gronsky, “the question arose about awarding Demyan Bedny the Order of Lenin, but Stalin suddenly opposed it. This was surprising to me, because the Secretary General always supported Demyan. During a face-to-face conversation, he explained what was going on. He took out a notebook from the safe. It contained rather unflattering remarks about the inhabitants of the Kremlin. I noticed that the handwriting was not Demyan's. Stalin replied that the statements of a tipsy poet were recorded by a certain journalist...” (Gronsky I.M. From the past. M., 1991. P. 155). The matter reached the Party Control Committee, where the poet was reprimanded.

M. Canivez writes: “At one time, Stalin brought Demyan Bedny closer to himself, and he immediately became highly honored everywhere. At the same time, a certain person, a red professor named Present, wormed his way into Demyan’s circle of close friends. This person was assigned to spy on Demyan. Present kept a diary, where he wrote down all his conversations with Bedny, mercilessly misinterpreting them... Once returning from the Kremlin, Demyan told about what wonderful strawberries Stalin served for dessert. The presentation recorded: “Demyan Bedny was indignant that Stalin was eating strawberries when the whole country was starving.” The diary was delivered “where it should be,” and with this Demyan’s disgrace began” (Kanivez M.V. My life with Raskolnikov // The Past. M. , 1992. P. 95).

Stalin repeatedly studied and criticized the writer. In particular, in a letter to him he wrote: “What is the essence of your mistakes? It consists in the fact that criticism of the shortcomings of life and everyday life of the USSR, an obligatory and necessary criticism, developed by you at first quite accurately and skillfully, captivated you beyond measure and, captivating you, began to develop in your works into slander of the USSR, its past, his present. These are your “Get Off the Stove” and “No Mercy.” This is your “Pererva”, which I read today on the advice of Comrade Molotov.

You say that Comrade Molotov praised the feuilleton “Get Off the Stove.” It may very well be. I praised this feuilleton, perhaps no less than Comrade Molotov, since there (as in other feuilletons) there are a number of magnificent passages, hitting right on target. But there is still a fly in the ointment that spoils the whole picture and turns it into a continuous "Pererva". That is the question and that is what makes the music in these feuilletons.

Best of the day

Judge for yourself.

The whole world now recognizes that the center of the revolutionary movement has moved from Western Europe to Russia. Revolutionaries of all countries look with hope at the USSR as the center of the liberation struggle of the working people of the whole world, recognizing in it their only fatherland. The revolutionary workers of all countries unanimously applaud the Soviet working class and, above all, the Russian working class, the vanguard of the Soviet workers as their recognized leader, conducting

mu the most revolutionary and most active policy that the proletarians of other countries have ever dreamed of pursuing. The leaders of the revolutionary workers of all countries are eagerly studying the most instructive history of the working class of Russia, its past, the past of Russia, knowing that in addition to reactionary Russia there was also revolutionary Russia, the Russia of the Radishchevs and Chernyshevskys, the Zhelyabovs and Ulyanovs, the Khalturins and Alekseevs. All this instills (cannot help but instill!) in the hearts of Russian workers a feeling of revolutionary national pride, capable of moving mountains, capable of working miracles.

And you? Instead of comprehending this greatest process in the history of the revolution and rising to the height of the tasks of the singer of the advanced proletariat, they went somewhere into the hollow and, confused between the most boring quotes from the works of Karamzin and no less boring sayings from Domostroi, began to proclaim to the whole world that Russia in the past represented a vessel of abomination and desolation, that today’s Russia represents a continuous “Pererva”, that “laziness” and the desire to “sit on the stove” is almost a national trait of Russians in general, and therefore of Russian workers, who, having done Russians, of course, did not stop being part of the October Revolution. And you call this Bolshevik criticism! No, dear Comrade Demyan, this is not Bolshevik criticism, but slander against our people, the debunking of the USSR, the debunking of the proletariat of the USSR, the debunking of the Russian proletariat.

And after this you want the Central Committee to remain silent! Who do you take our Central Committee to be?

And you want me to remain silent because you, it turns out, have “biographical tenderness” for me! How naive you are and how little you know the Bolsheviks..." (Stalin I.V. Collected works. T. 13. pp. 23-26).

“Demyan Bedny died of fear,” writes V. Gordeeva. - He had a permanent place on the presidium, where he habitually went. And suddenly in 1945 something changed. As soon as the poet headed to his usual place during the next celebration, Molotov, flashing his pince-nez glass unkindly, asked him in an icy voice: “Where?” Demyan backed away for a long time, like a geisha. Then he trudged home and died. His own sister told about this” (Gordeeva V. Execution by hanging. A non-fictional novel in four stories about love, betrayal, death, written “thanks to” the KGB. M., 1995. P. 165).

The writer's library has been preserved. “When in 1938 Bedny was forced to sell his wonderful library, I immediately bought it for the State Literary Museum, and it has been almost entirely preserved to this day, except for those books that he kept with him” (Bonch-Bruevich V D. Memoirs, M., 1968, p. 184).