Poor, Demyan (real name and surname - Efim Alekseevich Pridvorov) - a communist poet (13.4 1883, the village of Gubovka, Kherson province. - 25.5.1945, Moscow). Born into the family of a peasant who served as a church watchman in Elizavetgrad (now Kirovograd) and spent his early years not in the village, but in this city. Hatred for his mother, who constantly beat him, early gave rise to anger at life in the boy's soul.

In 1896-1900 he studied at the military paramedic school in Kyiv, and in 1904-08 at the historical and philological faculty of St. establishments). Based on this fact, the vain Demyan later spread rumors that he was the illegitimate son of this member of the imperial family.

Demyan's first poems were published in 1899. In 1912 he entered the RSDLP, from the same time began to be published in the party newspapers Zvezda and Pravda. In 1913 a collection appeared fables. Lenin himself called on the Bolsheviks from abroad to nurture the "talented poet."

"Proletarian poet" Demyan Bedny

Poor wrote pseudo-folk political rhymes, which during the revolution had a sharp propaganda character. Thanks to their primitive content and easily accessible form, they have become widely known among the people. After the revolution, Bedny, among other things, actively engaged in cynical anti-religious propaganda, the baseness of which was branded by Sergei Yesenin in the poem " Message to the "evangelist" Demyan».

Poor lived in the Kremlin, next to the apartments of the Bolshevik leaders, in verse he constantly extolled Lenin and Trotsky. In response, Trotsky praised Demyan (“this is not a poet who approached the revolution, descended to it, accepted it; this is a Bolshevik of a poetic kind of weapon”). In 1918, Bedny was assigned a special personal carriage for traveling around the country, and later a Ford car. In the first Soviet decade, the circulation of his books exceeded two million. He is said to have been personally present at the execution and burning of the body. Fanny Kaplan.

In 1923, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee awarded Demyan the Order of the Red Banner. This was the first time a writer was awarded a military order. Communist "critics" wrote several laudatory books about Bedny's mediocre poetry, and the People's Commissariat of Education Lunacharsky equated him in talent with Maxim Gorky.

During internal party struggle 1926-1930s Demyan obsequiously supported the line of Stalin, who was the clear favorite in it. In 1929, he personally went to help carry out collectivization in the Tambov province.

Joseph Stalin and Writers. Demyan Bedny, 1 episode

However, at the end of 1930, Bedny's exclusive position in literature was shaken. On December 6, 1930, the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks condemned Demyan’s poetic feuilletons “Get off the stove” and “Without mercy”, published in Pravda, by a special resolution, stating “recently, false notes began to appear in Comrade Demyan Bedny’s feuilletons, expressed in indiscriminate slandering of "Russia" and "Russian". The main reason for the criticism, not mentioned in the resolution, apparently consisted in the fact that the last feuilleton mentioned the uprisings in the USSR and the assassination attempt on Stalin, despite the ban on discussing such topics as “false rumors”.

Demyan immediately complained to Stalin, but received a rather harsh letter from him in response (dated 12/12/1930). In order to earn forgiveness, the fabulist began to write even baser glorifications of the Leader and communism, but he continued to be criticized. In 1934, Poor was still elected to the presidium of the board Union of Writers, but on First congress Union in the same year was accused of political backwardness. Soon the libretto of Poor for a comic opera was sharply attacked. Bogatyrs(1936). On the eve of the impending war with Nazi Germany, Stalin was already flirting with might and main with Russian patriotic feelings. Demyan was again accused of a slanderous interpretation of Russian history and a satirical distortion of events related to the baptism of Russia, and in 1938 he was expelled from the party and the Writers' Union "for moral decay."

During World War II, Bedny wrote anti-German fables and pamphlets; however, he never managed to fully regain his former position. The party resolution of 24.2.1952 (already after Demyan's death) subjected the publications of his books of 1950 and 1951 to an ideological destruction. for "gross political distortions", which arose primarily because these editions included the original versions of Bedny's works instead of later, politically revised ones. Nevertheless, Soviet literary criticism later continued to give Poor a place of honor on its pages.

real name Demyan Bedny

Male name: (Greek) benevolent

The character of the play "Barbarians"

Namesake of Shifrin and Kopelyan

Film director Dzigan

Russian satirist, screenwriter and humorist Smolin

Writer Zozulya

Journalist and writer Permitin by name

Actor Kopelyan named

The name of the variety artist Shifrin

What was the name of the eldest of the Cherepanovs - the creators of the first steam locomotive in Russia?

The name of the satirist Smolin

His name means "silent"

The name of the actor Berezin

The name of the actor Kopelyan

Man's name

Kopelyan

Painter Cheptsov

Painter Chestnyakov

Kopelyan or Shifrin

Writer Permitin

Actor Berezin

Shifrin, Kopelyan

Actor... Kopelyan

Artist Chestnyakov

The name of the humorist Shifrin

Comedian Shifrin (name)

Shifrin, Shtepsel and Demyan Poor (name)

The eldest of the Cherepanov brothers

Shifrin, Plug and Demyan Poor

Shifrin, Kopelyan and Plug (name)

Full form of the name Fima

. "straw hat" (actor's name)

Fima matured

Name of Plug, Tarapunka's partner

Artist Shifrin

Colloquial form of the name Ephraim

Berezin

Artist Berezin

The name of the revolutionary Babushkin

Shifrin's name

Fima officially

Satirist Smolin

Comedian Shifrin

Common name for a Jewish guy

famous male name

Berezin or Kopelyan

Artist... Kopelyan

Nice name for a Jewish boy

Kopelyan's name

Male name (Greek benevolent)

The character of the play by M. Gorky "" Barbarians "" (1905)

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 accuser and an atheist, he took his village nickname as a pseudonym. This pseudonym was also mentioned in his poem "About Demyan Bedny, a harmful peasant."

He owns a rare gift
From failure to climb into failure!
Balalaykin not without reason
Lenin himself called him!

Yes Judas in addition
I didn't call him for nothing!
Who set the task
Tear down the foundations of October!
(Quote from the poem "Double 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. A member of the RSDLP since 1912, from the same year he published in Pravda.

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

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

In 1930, Demyan Bedny was increasingly criticized for anti-Russian sentiments (expressed in his feuilletons “Get off the stove”, “Without mercy”, etc.). He writes an irritated complaint to Stalin, but receives an even more angry letter in response.

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

In 1936, the poet wrote the libretto for the comic opera Bogatyrs (about the baptism of Russia), which outraged Molotov, who attended the performance, and then Stalin. The Arts Committee, in a special resolution, sharply condemned the performance as unpatriotic. In 1938, Demyan Bedny was expelled from the party and evicted from the Kremlin, he was no longer published.

Demyan Bedny(real name Efim Alekseevich Pridvorov; April 1, 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.

Biography
Career
E. A. Pridvorov was born on April 1 (13), 1883 in the village of Gubovka (now the Alexandria district of the Kirovograd region of Ukraine) in a peasant family.
Having experienced in childhood the great influence of his uncle, a popular accuser and an atheist, he took his village nickname as a pseudonym. This pseudonym was first mentioned in his poem “About Demyan Bedny, a harmful peasant” (1911).
In 1896-1900 he studied at the Kyiv military medical school, in 1904-08. at the Faculty of Philology of St. Petersburg University. The first poems were published in 1899. They were written in the spirit of official monarchist "patriotism" or romance "lyrics". Member of the RSDLP since 1912, from the same year he published in Pravda. The first book "Fables" was published in 1913, later he wrote a large number of fables, songs, ditties and poems of other genres.
During the Civil War, he conducted propaganda work in the ranks of the Red Army. In his poems of those years, he extolled Lenin and Trotsky. Trotsky praised Demyan Bedny as "a Bolshevik of a poetic kind of weapon" and in April 1923 awarded him the Order of the Red Banner (the first award for literary activity in the USSR).
Total circulation of books D. Poor in the 1920s amounted to over two million copies. The poet was declared a classic during his lifetime, People's Commissar A. V. Lunacharsky praised him as a great writer, equal to Maxim Gorky, and the head of the RAPP L. L. Averbakh called for "widespread denigration of Soviet literature."
During the inner-party struggle of 1926-1930, he began to actively and consistently defend the line of I.V. Stalin, for which he received various blessings in life, including an apartment in the Kremlin and regular invitations to meetings with the party leadership. A collection of his works began to be published (interrupted at volume 19). Creativity Demyan Bedny A number of publications were devoted to it: only A. Efremin, one of the editors of the collected works, published the books “Demyan Poor at School” (1926), “Demyan Poor and the Art of Agitation” (1927), “Demyan Poor on the Anti-Church Front” (1927 ) and Thunder Poetry (1929).
Demyan Bedny was a major bibliophile, well versed in the history of the book, collected one of the largest private libraries in the USSR (over 30 thousand volumes).
Opala (1930-1938)
On December 6, 1930, the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, by its decree, condemned Poor's poetic feuilletons "Get off the stove" and "Without mercy", published in Pravda, for anti-Russian attacks. Demyan complained to Stalin, but received a sharply critical letter in response:
What is the essence of your mistakes? It consists in the fact that criticism of the shortcomings of the life and life of the USSR, criticism that is obligatory and necessary, developed by you at first quite aptly and skillfully, carried you away beyond measure and, having carried you away, began to develop in your works into slander on the USSR, on its past, on its present ... [You] began to proclaim to the whole world that Russia in the past was a vessel of abomination and desolation ... 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 the October Revolution, of course, they did not cease to be Russian. And this is what you call Bolshevik criticism! No, highly esteemed Comrade Demyan, this is not Bolshevik criticism, but slander against our people, debunking the USSR, debunking the proletariat of the USSR, debunking the Russian proletariat.
- Stalin's letter to Demyan Bedny
After criticism of the leader Poor began to write emphatically party poems and fables (“Wonderful Collective”, “Hedgehog”, etc.). In the poems of the 1930s, Demyan constantly quotes Stalin, and also uses Stalin's words as epigraphs. He enthusiastically welcomed the demolition of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior: “Under the crowbars of the workers it turns into rubbish / The ugliest temple, an unbearable shame” (1931, Epoch). In the poems "No Mercy!" (1936) and Truth. The Heroic Poem (1937) mercilessly branded Trotsky and the Trotskyists, calling them Jews, bandits and fascists. By the 50th anniversary (1933), the poet was awarded the Order of Lenin.
However, party criticism Demyan continued, at the 1st Congress of Soviet Writers he was accused of political backwardness and struck off the list of those awarded orders. In 1935, a new scandal and great dissatisfaction with Stalin was caused by a notebook found by the NKVD with records of insulting characteristics that Demyan gave to prominent figures of the party and government. In 1936, the poet wrote the libretto for the comic opera Bogatyrs (about the baptism of Russia), which outraged Molotov, who attended the performance, and then Stalin. The Arts Committee in a special resolution (November 15, 1936) sharply condemned the performance as unpatriotic. Stalin, in a letter to the editors of Pravda, regarded the performance as "literary rubbish" containing "stupid and transparent" criticism not of the fascist, but of the Soviet system.
Last years (1938-1945)
In July 1938 Demyan Bedny was expelled from the party and from the Writers' Union with the wording "moral decay". He was no longer printed, but the objects that bore his name were not renamed.
Demyan Poor, who fell into disgrace, was in poverty, was forced to sell his library and furniture. He composed new praises of Lenin-Stalin, but in a conversation with relatives he spoke extremely negatively about the leader and the rest of the party elite. Stalin knew about this, but did not subject the poet to repression this time either.
With the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, publications resumed, first under the pseudonym D. Fighting, then towards the end of the war, under the original pseudonym. In anti-fascist poems and fables, Bedny, in complete contradiction with his previous works, urged the brothers to "remember the old days", claimed that he believed "in his people" and at the same time continued to praise Stalin. Demyan's new "poems" remained unnoticed. He did not manage to return both the former position and the location of the leader.
D. Poor died May 25, 1945. He was buried in Moscow at the Novodevichy Cemetery (plot No. 2). The last critical party resolution concerning the poet was issued posthumously. On February 24, 1952, two collections by D. Bednoy (“Favorites”, 1950 and “Native Army”, 1951) were subjected to an ideological defeat for “gross political distortions”: as it turned out, these editions included the original versions of Bedny’s works instead of later ones, politically recycled. In 1956, Demyan Bedny was posthumously reinstated in the CPSU.
Awards
Order of the Red Banner, 1923
Order of Lenin, 1933
Memory
Bednodemyanovsk was the name of the city of Spassk in the Penza region in 1925-2005.
Demyan Bedny, Demyanovsky rural settlement, Zherdevsky district, Tambov region.
Demyan Bedny Islands (discovered in 1931).
Motor ship "Demyan Poor"
The name of Demyan Bedny was given to the streets in many cities of the former USSR, including:
Russia: Belgorod, Vladimir, Volgograd, Donetsk (Rostov region), Ivanovo, Izhevsk, Irkutsk, Kemerovo, Krasnoyarsk, Moscow (Khoroshevo-Mnevniki), Novosibirsk, Omsk, St. Petersburg, Torzhok, Tomilino, Tomsk, Tyumen, Ufa, Khabarovsk , Chernyakhovsk, Kaliningrad region, Yaroslavl
Ukraine: Kyiv, Genichesk, Dnepropetrovsk, Donetsk, Kirovograd, Korosten, Kremenchug, Kharkiv.
Belarus: Minsk, Gomel.
Kazakhstan: Almaty, Aktobe, Karaganda.
Interesting Facts
Demyan Bedny participated in the persecution of M. A. Bulgakov. There is also an entry in Bulgakov’s diary: “Vasilevsky said that Demyan Bedny, speaking to a meeting of Red Army soldiers, said:“ My mother was bl..b ... ””.
The execution of F. E. Kaplan took place in the presence of Demyan Bedny, who asked to see the execution in order to get an “impulse” in his work. The victim's corpse was doused with gasoline and burned in an iron barrel in the Alexander Garden.
Responses in literature
Demyan Bedny is present as a character in V.P. Aksenov's novel "The Moscow Saga".
Message to the "evangelist" Demyan
In April - May 1925, two Soviet newspapers, Pravda and Bednota, published an anti-religious poem Demyan Bedny"The New Testament without a Defect by the Evangelist Demyan", written in a mocking and mocking manner. In 1925-1926, a vivid poetic response to this poem began to spread in Moscow under the title “Message to the Evangelist Demyan”, signed with the name of S. A. Yesenin. Later, in the summer of 1926, the OGPU arrested the poet Nikolai Gorbachev, who confessed to the authorship of the poem. However, neither his biographical data nor literary work gave grounds to consider him the real author of the work.
Here are a few lines from the "Message to the Evangelist Demyan":
I often think why he was executed,
Why did he sacrifice his head
For the fact that, the enemy of Saturdays, He is against all rot
Have you raised your voice boldly?
Is it because the proconsul Pilate is in the country,
Where the cult of Caesar is full of both light and shadow,
He is with a bunch of fishermen from poor villages
For Caesar recognized only the power of gold?
...
No, you, Demyan, did not offend Christ,
You didn't touch him with your pen in the least.
There was a thief, Judas was.
You just weren't enough.
You are blood clots at the Cross
He dug his nostril like a fat boar.
You only grunted at Christ,
Efim Lakeevich Pridvorov.
There is an assumption that the events associated with the "New Testament without a flaw Evangelist Demyan" and "Message ..." served as one of the impetuses for the writing of M. A. Bulgakov's novel "The Master and Margarita", and Demyan Bedny became one of the prototypes of Ivan Bezdomny.

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

E. A. Pridvorov was born on April 1 (13), 1883 in the village of Gubovka (now the Alexandria district of the Kirovograd region of Ukraine) into a peasant family.

Having experienced in childhood the great influence of his uncle, a popular accuser and an atheist, he took his village nickname as a pseudonym.

This pseudonym was also mentioned in his poem "About Demyan Bedny, a harmful peasant."

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. They were written in the spirit of official monarchist "patriotism" or romance "lyrics". Member of the RSDLP since 1912, from the same year he published in Pravda. The first book "Fables" was published in 1913. During the Civil War, he conducted propaganda work in the ranks of the Red Army, for which he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner in 1923 (the first award for literary activity in the USSR). In his poems of those years, he extolled Lenin and Trotsky.

During the inner-party struggle of 1926-1930, he began to actively and consistently defend the line of I.V. Stalin, for which he received various blessings in life, including an apartment in the Kremlin and regular invitations to meetings with the party leadership. Demyan Bedny was a major bibliophile, well versed in the history of the book, collected one of the largest private libraries in the USSR (over 30 thousand volumes). The complete collection of his works began to be published (interrupted at volume 19). In the 1920s a large number of brochures with his agitation poems were published in mass circulation in the capitals and provinces.

In 1930, Demyan Bedny was increasingly criticized for anti-Russian sentiments (expressed in his feuilletons “Get off the stove”, “Without mercy”, etc.).

After criticizing the leader, Bedny began to write emphatically party poems and fables (“Wonderful Collective Wonder”, “Hedgehog”, etc.). In the poems of the 1930s, Demyan constantly quotes Stalin, and also uses Stalin's words as epigraphs. A new scandal and great dissatisfaction with Stalin was caused by a notebook found by the NKVD with records of insulting characteristics that the drunken Demyan gave to prominent figures of the party and government.

In 1936, the poet wrote the libretto for the comic opera Bogatyrs (about the baptism of Russia), which outraged Molotov, who attended the performance, and then Stalin. The Arts Committee, in a special resolution, sharply condemned the performance as unpatriotic. In 1938, Demyan Bedny was expelled from the party and from the Writers' Union with the wording "moral decay". He was no longer printed, but nevertheless, the objects that bore his name (the city of Bednodemyanovsk) were not renamed. Demyan Poor, who fell into disgrace, was in poverty and was forced to sell his library. He composed new praises of Lenin-Stalin, but in a conversation with relatives he spoke extremely negatively about the leader and the rest of the party elite. Stalin knew about this, but did not subject the poet to repression this time either.

With the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, publications resumed, first under the pseudonym D. Fighting, then towards the end of the war, under the original pseudonym. In "military" poems and fables, Bedny completely contradicted his works written in the 1930s, urged the brothers to "remember the old days", claimed that he believed "in his people" and at the same time continued to praise Stalin. Demyan's new "poems" remained unnoticed. He did not manage to return both the former position and the location of the leader.

The last critical party resolution concerning the poet was issued posthumously: on February 24, 1952, the publications of D. Bedny in 1950 and 1951 were subjected to an ideological defeat for "gross political distortions": these publications included the original versions of Bedny's works instead of later, politically revised ones. In 1956, Demyan Bedny was posthumously reinstated in the CPSU.

D. B. was born on April 1 (13), 1883 in the village. Gubovka, Alexandria Uyezd, Kherson Province. This is a large Ukrainian village, cut through by the Ingul River, which separates the left - Ukrainian part of the village from the right, which has long been occupied by military settlers. Grandfather D. B., Sofron Fedorovich Pridvorov, still remembered the times of settlement well. Mother, Ekaterina Kuzminichna, was a Ukrainian Cossack woman from the village of Kamenki. An exceptionally beautiful, tough, cruel and promiscuous woman, she deeply hated her husband, who lived in the city, and took out all her heavy hatred on her son, whom she gave birth to when she was only 17 years old. With kicks, beatings and abuse, she instilled in the boy a terrifying fear, which gradually turned into an insurmountable disgust for his mother that remained forever in his soul. "... An unforgettable time, a golden childhood ..." - the poet later ironically recalls this time of his life. Efimka is barely 4 years old. It was a holiday - a terrible stuffiness. Beaten and tearful as usual, Yefimka, trailing after his mother, found himself at the shopkeeper's, Gershka. Crawling into a corner, he became an unwitting witness to the shameless scene played out right there on the sacks, in front of the shocked child. The boy wept bitterly, and his mother beat him furiously with a stick all the way. Father, Alexei Safronovich Pridvorov, served in the city, 20 miles from Gubovka. Coming home on a visit, he beat his wife with a mortal battle, and she returned the beatings to her son a hundredfold. Returning to his service, his father often took Yefimka with him, who, like a holiday, was waiting for these happy respite. Until the age of 7, Yefim lived in the city, where he learned to read and write, and then until the age of 13 in the village with his mother. Opposite the mother's house, right across the road, there was a tavern (tavern) and a rural "reprisal". For whole days Yefimka sat on the mound and looked into the face of village life. Voiceless, silent, enslaved Russia, having plucked up courage in a tavern, wildly bawled obscene songs, vilely used foul language, raged, raged, and then humbly atoned for her tavern heresies by repentance in the "cold". Right there, side by side with the "cold" one, where there was a struggle with the individual vices of drunken Gubovites, the Gubov life unfolded in all the noisy expanse on the field of social struggle: village gatherings roared, dejected non-payers staggered, dissatisfied complainants yelled and demanded, and, rattling with all the strings rural justice, "punishment" instilled in the Gubov peasants respect for the foundations of the landlord system. And the boy listened and learned. More than once among the characters he had to meet his own mother. Ekaterina Kuzminichna was rarely at home and, indulging in drinking parties and fights with enthusiasm, contributed a lot to deviations from the formal and legal order in Gubovka. Hungry, the boy knocked on the first hut he came across. “So I grew up,” D. B said smiling, “I got used to catering: where you come, there is your house.” In the evenings, climbing onto the stove, Yefimka shared with his grandfather a store of worldly observations. And on Sundays, the grandfather took his grandson with him to the tavern, where the boy's worldly education was completed in a drunken child. At home, tipsy, grandfather liked to reminisce about the old days, about the settler times, about the lancers and dragoons, who were fasting throughout the Kherson region. And the grandfather's imagination, warmed up by vodka, willingly drew idyllic pictures of serf antiquity. "As it used to be, for the settlement ..." - began the grandfather. It turned out that it was impossible to wish for a better order than the patriarchal antiquity. Any innovation here is an unnecessary insert. But when sober, my grandfather said something else. He told his grandson with hatred about Arakcheevism, about the lordly favors: how settlers were punished with sticks, how men were exiled to Siberia, and women, torn from babies, were turned into dog feeders. And these stories forever cut into the memory of Efimka. "Grandfather told me a lot. His stories were harsh and simple and clear, And after them My infant dreams were disturbing ..." For a lively and impressionable boy, the time of heavy reflections came. He snatched up his grandfather's stories on the fly and struggled in anxious thoughts. On the one hand, the grandfather, as it were, demanded justification for the serfdom, on the other hand, he planted a sworn hatred of antiquity with the everyday truth of his stories. And imperceptibly, a vague idea of ​​two truths was born in Yefimka's brain: one - unctuous and reconciling, embellished with the dreamy lie of his grandfather, and the other - the harsh, intractable and merciless truth of peasant life. This duality was supported in the boy by a rural upbringing. Having learned to read and write early, under the influence of a village priest, he began to read the psalter, "Cheti-Minei", "The Way to Salvation", "Lives of the Saints" - and this directed the boy's imagination to a false and organically alien path. Gradually, a desire to enter a monastery even developed and became firmly established in him, but the grandfather insultingly ridiculed the boy’s religious dreams and in his talkative conversations paid a lot of attention to the hypocrisy and trickery of the priests, church deceit, and so on. Efimka was assigned to a village school. He studied well and willingly. Reading plunged him into a fairy-tale world. He recited Yershov's "Humpbacked Horse" as a memento and almost never parted with "Robber Churkin". Every penny that fell into his hands, he instantly turned into a book. And the boy had nickels. In its strategic position (against the "reprisal" and the tavern and not far from the road) the House of the Courtyard was something like a visiting yard. The camp officer, and the police officer, and the rural authorities, and passing wagon trains, and horse thieves, and the sexton, and the peasants called to "reprisal" looked here. In the midst of this motley crowd, the boy's receptive imagination is replenished with images of future "entertainers", "administrators", "street", "farm laborers", "rebellious hares" and "guardians". Along with the knowledge of life, Efimka also acquired business skills here, and soon he begins to labor in the role of a rural clerk. For a copper penny, he composes petitions, gives advice, performs various assignments and fights in every possible way against "reprisal". From this struggle with "reprisal" and originates his literary career. And the influx of everyday experience is growing, expanding, and hundreds of new stories are accumulating. For a short time, the literate Yefimka also becomes necessary for her mother. Whether as a result of constant beatings or some other perversion of nature, apart from Efimka, Ekaterina Kuzminichna had no more children. This gave her a strong reputation as a progeny insurance specialist. There was no end to this kind of insurance from hunters. Ekaterina Kuzminichna deftly supported the deception. She gave the women all sorts of drugs, gave them infusions of gunpowder and onions. Gubovsky girls regularly swallowed and regularly gave birth to the due date. Then Efimka was involved in the case. As a literate man, he scribbled a laconic note: "the baptized name is Maria, with this a silver ruble," and "the secret fruit of unhappy love" was forwarded along with the note to the city. The guys knew that Efimka was privy to all the secret operations of his mother and, catching him in a dark corner, they asked: "Did Pryska go to your mat? Tell me." But Efimka kept the girlish secrets tightly. In addition, as a literate boy, the boy earned nickels by reading the psalter for the dead. These nickels were also usually drunk by the mother. The services rendered by the boy to the mother did not make the latter more affectionate towards the son. She still tyrannized the boy, still left him for whole days without food and indulged in shameless revelry. Once a boy, completely starving, searched all corners of the hut, but did not find a crumb. In desperation, he lay down on the floor and wept. But, lying down, I suddenly saw a wondrous sight under the bed: a dozen or two nails were driven into the wooden bottom of the bed, and the following were suspended from the nails on strings: sausage, fish, bagels, sugar, several bottles of vodka, sour cream, milk - in a word, a whole shop. Informed of this, grandfather Sofron grunted: "That's why she, the bitch, is always so red!" - But the hungry old man and the boy were afraid to touch the supplies. D. B. relates one of the darkest memories of his childhood to this time. He is 12 years old. He is dying - probably from diphtheria: his throat is blocked to complete dumbness. He was communed and laid under the icons. Here is the mother - bare-haired, drunk. She sews a death shirt and yells cheerful tavern songs at the top of her voice. The boy is in pain. He wants to say something, but only moves his lips soundlessly. Mother bursts into drunken laughter. The cemetery watchman Bulakh enters - a drunkard and a cheerful cynic. He joins in the singing of his mother. Then he comes up to Efimka and good-naturedly resonates: “Well, Efimash, let’s give a fuck ... Where are you good? Someone let my father know that Yefimka was dying. Meanwhile, the abscess burst. The boy woke up from terrible screams. It was dark. Drunk mother lay on the floor and squealed in a frantic voice under the blows of her father's boot. Father waved 20 versts out of the city, found mother in a drunken abyss, and dragged her home by her scythes. From this memorable night, a turning point in Yefimka's life begins. His mother stopped beating him, the boy began to resolutely fight back and began to run to his father more often.

sings Dem'yan Bedniy (Efim Oleksiyovich Pridvorov, 1883-1945), author of anti-religious verses, including "The Gospel of Dem'yan".

1896 Ivan Ogіenko graduated from the Pochatkov school in Brusilov. Dali started at the Kiev military paramedic school. My comrade-in-training Yukhim Pridvorovim (the future Russian poet Dem "Jan Bedniy") edited the manuscripts of the monthly "My Library".

Vadim Alekseevich’s cousin, Vera Pridvorova, Demyan Bedny’s daughter-in-law, now deceased, lived in Moscow and asked him before, and when I arrived, she asked me: “Persuade Vadim, persuade! I have two separate apartments. I will transfer one apartment to you, and we will live together.”

In the 1980s, Tamara Pridvorova, the daughter-in-law (son's wife) of Demyan Bedny, worked at the Institute of History of the USSR of the USSR Academy of Sciences (now the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences).

“Once Demyan got up from the table and said: “Now I will read to you what I don’t read to anyone and will never let you read. Let them print after my death.” And he took out a thick notebook from the depth of the table. These were purely lyrical poems of extraordinary beauty and sonority, written with such an influx of deep feeling that my husband and I sat spellbound. He read for a long time, and a completely different person appeared before me, turning a new side of his deep inner world. It was unlike anything that Demyan Bedny wrote. When he finished, he stood up and said, "Now forget about it."

All these notebooks - and there were many of them - after ten years were burned in a moment of despair in front of the eldest son. “In vain,” recalls the son, “I asked him not to burn notebooks ... The father growled and, turning purple with anger, destroyed what he had kept all his life. “You have to be such a blockhead as you not to understand that nobody needs it!”. And nothing remained of all the wealth of Demyanova's lyrics. This loss, of course, cannot be made up for by a random impromptu thought preserved in the son's memory. On a walk in the spring of 1935, he asked his father a question: where does the belief come from, as if the cuckoo counts the years of life? And he received an answer so different from the verses known to us that it is worth quoting it:

Spring blissful peace... The willows leaned over the river, Counting the years to come. How much longer do I have to live? I listen in sensitive silence to the Cuckoo, out of fashion. One... two... Believe? Make it hard? I don't have long to live... I'll play the last scene And retire into the crowd of shadows... And life - The closer to the slope of days, The more you know its price.