Current page: 58 (total book has 58 pages) [accessible reading excerpt: 38 pages]

Fires blazed up in the middle of the square.

Thundered, rampaged "La Marseillaise".

As always - inviting and jubilant!

Author's conclusion

I started writing this novel on September 3, 1972, and finished on New Year's Eve, January 1, 1975; over the roofs of ancient Riga, rockets burned with a clapping, the chime of glasses was heard from the neighbors, when I, a diligent chronicler, dragged the bundle with the corpse of Rasputin into the hole, drove the homeless minister around the capital.

So, the point is set!

They say that an English novelist from his youth saved up materials about a certain historical person, and by his old age he turned out to have a whole chest of papers. Making sure that everything was collected, the writer mercilessly burned all the materials at the stake. When asked why he did this, the novelist replied: “The unnecessary burned out, but the necessary remained in the memory ...”

I didn't burn the chest with Rasputin materials, but selecting the right one was the most painful process. The volume of the book forced me to abandon many interesting facts and events. The novel included only an insignificant fraction of what was learned about Rasputinism. I confess that I had to be extremely economical, and sometimes I tried to consolidate on one page what could be safely expanded into an independent chapter.

We usually write - “the bloody reign of the tsar”, “the cruel regime of tsarism”, “the corrupt clique of Nicholas II”, but the words have already been erased from frequent use: it is difficult for them to withstand the semantic load. There was a kind of amortization of words! I wanted to show those people and those conditions of life that were overthrown by the revolution, so that these stamped definitions would regain visual visibility and actual weight.

According to the definition of V. I. Lenin, “the counter-revolutionary era (1907-1914) revealed the whole essence of the tsarist monarchy, brought it to the“ last line ”, revealed all its rottenness, vileness, all the cynicism and depravity of the royal gang with the monstrous Rasputin at its head ... »

Here about this I wrote!

Probably, they can reproach me for the fact that, describing the work of the tsarist Ministry of Internal Affairs and the police department, I did not reflect in the novel their fierce struggle against the revolutionary movement. As a matter of fact, these two powerful levers of the autocracy are occupied with me by intradepartmental squabbles and participation in Rasputin's intrigues.

And there is. I don't mind!

But I wrote about the negative side of the revolutionary era, warning the reader on the title page that the novel was about the disintegration of the autocracy. Please understand me correctly: based on the ideas of the author's ethics, I deliberately did not want to fit two incompatible things under one cover - the process of the growth of the revolution and the process of strengthening Rasputinism. Moreover, I have already reflected the work of the tsarist Ministry of Internal Affairs in suppressing the revolutionary movement in my two-volume novel “In the backyard of the great empire”, and I did not want to repeat myself. In part, I was guided by the testament of the democratic critic N. G. Chernyshevsky, who said that it was impossible to demand from the author that wild garlic in his work should also be fragrant with forget-me-nots! A Russian proverb confirms this rule: if you chase two hares, you won't catch a single one... Now I must make a frank confession. It seems that who else, if not me, the author of the book on Rasputinism, is given to know about the reasons that made Rasputin an influential person in the empire. So I am the author! I find it difficult to give a precise answer to this tricky question.

Memory brings me back to the first pages.

Rasputin drinks vodka, quarrels and roams in front of people, he is obscene and steals, but ... You must admit that there were many reasons for Rasputin's imprisonment, but I see no reason for bringing this person to the fore.

Only a limited person can think that Rasputin came to the fore thanks to his sexual potency. Believe me that the whole history of the world does not know of a case where a person has come to the fore thanks to these qualities. If we take a closer look at the well-known figures of favoritism, at such bright and original personalities as the Duke Biron, the Shuvalov family, the Orlov brothers, Prince Potemkin-Tavrichesky, Godoy in Spain or Struensee in Denmark, we will see a picture completely opposite to Rasputinism. Having shown at some point purely masculine qualities, the favorites then acted as prominent statesmen with a sharp grip on administrative talents - it was for this that they were valued by the crowned admirers.

I may be objected to by the example of Potemkin ... Yes, this man was not a clean person. But while he had great vices, he also had great virtues. Potemkin built cities, populated the gigantic expanses of the uninhabited steppes of the Black Sea region, he made Crimea a grape paradise, this sybarite knew how to heroically withstand a barrage of Turkish cannonballs when his adjutants' heads were torn off their shoulders; the smartest people of Europe traveled to distant lands only to enjoy a conversation with the Russian Alcibiades, whose speech shone with wit and aphorism.

What comparison can there be with Rasputin! It is known from the history of favoritism that, having received a lot from the queens, the Russian courtesans knew how to spend money for the benefit not only for themselves. They collected collections of paintings and minerals, valuable books and engravings, entered into correspondence with Voltaire and Diderot, sent foreign architects and painters, orchestras and opera companies to St. Petersburg, they invested in the creation of lyceums and cadet corps, after which art galleries and palaces remained with parks that have survived to this day as valuable monuments of the Russian past.

And what has come down to us from Rasputin?

Dirty jokes, drunken burps and vomit...

So I ask again - where are the reasons that could specifically justify his rise?

I do not see them. But I… guess about them!

My author's opinion is this: at no other time could a "favorite" like Rasputin appear at the Russian court; even Anna Ioannovna, who adored all sorts of deformities of nature, would not let such a person on her doorstep. The appearance of Rasputin at the beginning of the 20th century, on the eve of the revolutions, in my opinion, is quite natural and historically justified, because any vile trash flourishes best of all on the rot of decay.

“God's anointed ones” had already degraded to such an extent that they regarded the abnormal presence of Rasputin with their “highly named” persons as a normal phenomenon of autocratic life. Sometimes it even seems to me that Rasputin was to some extent a kind of drug for the Romanovs. It became necessary for Nicholas II and Alexandra Feodorovna in the same way that a drunkard needs a glass of vodka, as a drug addict needs a regular injection of a drug under the skin ... Then they come to life, then their eyes shine again!

And it is necessary to reach the highest degree of decomposition, moral and physiological, in order to consider communication with Rasputin "God's grace" ...

I probably do not quite understand the reasons for the rise of Rasputin, also because I try to reason sensibly. To understand these reasons, obviously, one must be abnormal. It is possible that we even need to go crazy to the state in which the last Romanovs were - then Rasputin will become one of the things necessary for life ...

With this I will allow myself to end the novel.

A novel is a house with open doors and windows.

Everyone can settle down in it as it is more convenient for him.

The genre of the novel is good because it leaves the author the right to leave something unsaid in order to leave room for the reader's conjecture.

Without this conjecture, no novel can be considered complete.

Comments

We consider it necessary to acquaint readers with the author's preface to the first complete version of the novel. (Ed.)

From the author

The novel "Unclean Power" I consider the main success in my literary biography, but this novel has a very strange and too difficult fate ...

I remember that I had not yet started writing this book, when even then I began to receive dirty anonymous letters warning me that they would deal with me for Rasputin. The threats wrote that you, they say, write about anything, but just don’t touch Grigory Rasputin and his best friends.

Be that as it may, the novel "Unclean Power" was written, and soon I had an agreement with Lenizdat. In anticipation of the release of the novel as a separate book, I submitted it for publication to the magazine Our Contemporary. The editors of the magazine informed that the novel, which is too voluminous, will be printed in a strong reduction.

However, when it came out, I - in the magazine - found not my own, but someone else's name "At the last line", the very first pages of the publication were written not by me, but by someone else's hand. In fact, under the title "At the last line," the reader received not an abridged version of the novel, but only fragments from it, by which it was impossible to judge the entire book.

But even these passages turned out to be quite enough to excite L. I. Brezhnev’s inner circle, who saw themselves and all the sins of their camarilla in scenes of corruption at the court of Nicholas II, in pictures of plunder and venality. Not without reason, in the middle of the publication of my novel, the wives themselves wished to “edit” it - the same L. I. Brezhnev and M. A. Suslov.

The first blow was inflicted on me by M. V. Zimyanin, who demanded me “on the carpet” to inflict reprisals on me. Then a devastating article by Irina Pushkareva appeared (I still don’t know who she is), which served as a signal for a general persecution of me. After that, “heavy artillery” came into action - in the person of M. A. Suslov, and his speech, directed against me personally and my novel, was obsequiously picked up by the pages of Literaturnaya Gazeta.

Lenizdat, of course, immediately broke the contract with me, but at the same time terminated the contract for the publication of the popular book by M.K. Kasvinov "Twenty-three steps down", because our materials were largely identical.

Many years passed, a vacuum of ominous silence developed around my novel and my name - they simply hushed me up and did not print. Meanwhile, historians sometimes told me: we don’t understand why you were beaten? After all, you did not discover anything new, everything that you described in the novel was published in the Soviet press back in the twenties ...

Unfortunately, the editors of Lenizdat, rejecting my novel, were again guided by the opinion of Irina Pushkareva, who wrote for the same editors: “After reading the manuscript of the novel by V. Pikul, it remains unclear why the author needed to raise stories long forgotten and buried in a landfill events and facts of secondary importance. And for me, the author, it remained unclear why the events on the eve of the revolution, which involuntarily brought its beginning closer, turned out to be “in the dustbin” and why they seem “secondary” to critics?

But let's not forget that this was written in that barren and filthy time, which is now commonly called the "era of stagnation", and therefore our supreme bosses did not at all want the reader to look for deplorable analogies - between the events of my novel and those blatant outrages that were happening in the circle of the Brezhnev elite. Really, doesn't little darling Churbanov look like Grishka Rasputin? Looks like! How similar, only he didn’t have a beard ...

These, I think, are the main reasons why the novel provoked such a furious reaction in the highest echelons of power. But now times have changed, and I will be happy if the reader - finally! - will see my novel under its real name and in full.

* * *

In the creative fate of Pikul, work on the novel "Unclean Power" became an important stage that brought deep satisfaction. But in his personal life, it was a catastrophically difficult time, leaving deep traces that did not heal until the end of his life ...

On the basis of an agreement signed on May 28, 1973 with Lenizdat, Valentin Savvich sent the manuscript to his usual address. (It so happened that for many years the books of Pikul, who had never been a member of the party, were published by the party publishing house, which is under the auspices of the Leningrad regional committee of the CPSU.) "Unclean Force" fell into the obkom structure, where the first readers of the manuscript were censors, editors and reviewers who specialized mainly in the products of the party apparatus.

According to the stories of Valentin Savvich, he went to this novel for more than ten years. How much material was "shoveled"! Not counting small newspaper and magazine notes, of which he looked through many hundreds, "the list of literature lying on the author's desk," attached to the manuscript, included 128 titles.

I am holding it in my hands now. This is not just a bibliography - it contains the author's opinion about what he read. I can't resist quoting at least selectively:

4. ALMAZOV B. Rasputin and Russia. Grünhut Publishing House, Prague, 1922. The book is saturated with errors, and therefore almost never used it in his work.

20. BUCHANAN, George. My mission in Russia. Per. from English. D. Ya. Bloch. "Obelisk", Berlin, 1924. Finally, the lousy Soviet translation of memoirs with the appendix of A. Kerensky's article THE END OF THE ROYAL FAMILY in the GIZ edition (M., 1925).

25. VYRUBOVA A. A. Her Majesty's maid of honor. Intimate diary and memories. 1903–1928, Riga, no year. This unthinkable lie was not used in the work.

73. V. P. OBNINSKY No date. The last autocrat. Berlin, ca. 1912. As you know, circulation approx. 500 copies was almost completely destroyed by the tsarist secret police, 1 copy. There are books in Moscow, I have another one.

101. Simanovich A. S. Rasputin and the Jews. Notes of Rasputin's personal secretary. Riga, b / g.

Remember, reader, these books and Pikul's comments. Two reviews were given to "Unclean Force", different in form and content, but similar in their categorical rejection of the book. Perhaps their lengthy consideration does not deserve attention, but it is instructive from the point of view of showing the inconsistency of concepts based on a momentary fad, on the mood and opinion of those standing above ...

So, senior researcher of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, candidate of historical sciences Pushkareva I. M. wrote after reading the manuscript:

– “poor knowledge of history (?! – A.P.) brings the author to the camp of our ideological opponents abroad”;

– “in Pikul’s novel, in contradiction with the established views in Soviet historical science, the revolutionary era of the beginning of the 20th century, illuminated by the genius of V. I. Lenin, is called nothing less than the “era” of Rasputinism”;

Neglecting Marxism-Leninism, contradicting established views, expressing his understanding, etc. - at that time this was not at all praise. Now this assessment of the author's behavior at that time can be perceived as an order for personal courage, for his contribution to democracy and openness.

- “the literature that“ lay on the table ”of the author of the novel (judging by the list that he attached to the manuscript) is small ...”;

- "a novel ... nothing more than a simple retelling ... of the writings of white emigrants - the anti-Soviet B. Almazov, the monarchist Purishkevich, the adventurer A. Simanovich, etc."

As for Almazov, I hope you remember Pikul's opinion? But the "adventurer" really used. And what self-respecting writer will ignore the notes of the “adviser and secretary appointed by the tsar Rasputin”, almost completely unknown to a wide circle of readers, just because he is not of “Soviet blood”. Moreover, according to eyewitnesses, smart, with a good memory, strong, lived to be a hundred years old (he died in 1978), the secretary "vouched for the full correspondence of the facts he presented to reality." By the way, much later, after the publication of "Unclean Forces", Simanovich's notes were published in the journal "Slovo" under the heading "From the First Word".

The editorial conclusion, signed by the head of the editorial office of fiction E. N. Gabis and senior editor L. A. Plotnikova, contradicted the review only in part of the statement that “the author, of course, has the most extensive (! - A.P.) historical material,” but there was unanimity on the merits of the final conclusions: “V. Pikul’s manuscript cannot be published. It cannot be considered a Soviet historical novel, the origins of which originate in the 20th century in the work of A. M. Gorky ”(Pushkarev).

“The manuscript of the novel by V. Pikul “Unclean Force” cannot be accepted for publication, because ... it is a detailed argument for the notorious thesis: the people have such rulers as they deserve. And this is insulting for a great people, for a great country, which October 1917 clearly showed” (editorial conclusion).

So the funeral of "Unclean Forces" took place.

Lenizdat terminated the contract, but Valentin Savvich did not despair - he handed over his work to the editors of the Our Contemporary magazine.

Since the manuscript of the novel was quite voluminous, about 44 author's sheets, the editors suggested that the author shorten the novel. Valentin Savvich agreed to shorten the novel, but he himself did not take any part in this, because at that time his wife, Veronika Feliksovna, was seriously ill.

An abridged version of the novel was published in Nash Sovremennik magazine from No. 4 to No. 7 in 1979 under the title "At the last line". It should be noted that neither the title nor the published version of the novel, to put it mildly, brought satisfaction to Valentin Savvich.

Before readers had time to get acquainted with the ending of the novel, as in the newspaper "Literary Russia" dated July 27, Pushkareva's article "When the sense of proportion is lost" appeared. These were rehashings of the negativisms of the review, squared by the realization of the futility of the first attempts to completely close an undesirable topic.

The banner of the campaign against Pikul was also picked up by the critic Oskotsky:

– “the novel clearly showed the unhistorical nature of the author’s view, which replaced the social-class approach to the events of the pre-revolutionary period with the idea of ​​the self-decomposition of tsarism”;

- "in the novel "At the last line" -" Vyrubova's memoirs ", the forgery of which is accepted as authentic" (?! - A.P.).

But it was a trifle, so to speak, - flowers. "Berries" followed after the performances of M. Zimyanin and M. Suslov.

A meeting of the secretariat of the Board of the Writers' Union of the RSFSR was held, where the publication of the novel in the journal Our Contemporary was recognized as erroneous. In essence, the secretariat of that time carried out an act of discrediting not only "Unclean Forces", but also the entire work of V. Pikul.

In one of the letters, Valentin Savvich expressed his condition as follows: “I live in stress. They stopped printing me. How to live - I do not know. The writing didn't get worse. I just don’t like the Soviet government…”

From many libraries, the remnants of the magazines "Our Contemporary" with the publication of the novel began to be withdrawn. I am writing “leftovers” because the bulk of the magazines were immediately “withdrawn” by readers, the book went from hand to hand, began its life.

What kind of will and faith one had to have in order to survive in an atmosphere of misunderstanding and persecution. During this difficult period, Valentin Pikul lost his wife.

The ice broke only in 1988.

Unexpectedly, the Krasnoyarsk book publishing house offered to publish the novel “At the last line”, to which Pikul offered to publish “the novel“ Unclean Forces ”, which was still unknown at that time. A photocopy was urgently made, and the manuscript went to distant Krasnoyarsk.

We should pay tribute to Doctor of Historical Sciences V. N. Ganichev, who personally knew V. Pikul, who wrote a short preface, which significantly calmed the nerves of some doubting publishers.

While the Siberians were working on the manuscript, a request came from the Voronezh magazine Podyem to publish the book, which was done starting with the first issue in 1989.

Their countrymen from the Central Black Earth Book Publishing House, represented by the director A. N. Sviridov, also became interested in the long-suffering novel and, having received a “go-ahead” from the author, released a two-volume edition of “Unclean Forces” with a circulation of 120,000 copies.

In the same year, 1989, the book, tastefully designed by the artist V. Bakhtin, was published in a 100,000th edition by the Krasnoyarsk book publishing house.

“A boring, wordy, loose narrative” (according to Oskotsky) was snapped up at one moment. The phrase, which gradually became withered, came to life: "A book is the best gift."

The next year, under the influence of reader demand, the circulation of the book increased dramatically: 250 thousand copies of the book were published by the Leningrad Rosvideofilm, 200 thousand by the Moscow Military Publishing House.

Speaking about the Dnepropetrovsk publishing house "Promin", which published "Unclean Force", I recall here with special warmth its director, Sirota Viktor Andreevich, who greatly appreciated Valentin Savvich.

And then there was "Roman-newspaper" (editor-in-chief V. N. Ganichev) with its more than three million circulation. The first three issues in 1991 were given to the novel "Unclean Power".

The pompous phrases of the reviews have faded, but the interest in the book and the demand for it do not weaken ...

May the reader forgive me for the lengthy comment. But it is "Unclean Force" that, in my opinion, is the cornerstone in understanding and, if you like, in knowing the character, creativity, and indeed the whole life of Valentin Pikul.

Annotation:
"Unclean Power" - a book that Valentin Pikul himself called "the main success in his literary biography" - tells about the life and death of one of the most controversial figures in Russian history - Grigory Rasputin - and develops under Pikul's pen into a large-scale and fascinating narrative about the most paradoxical, probably, for our country, a period - a short break between the February and October revolutions ...

I have not read this book, but I have listened to it. I listened to the voice acting of Sergei Chonishvili. All at the highest level. Interesting, captivating, in faces.
BUT! Disappointingly abruptly, harshly, unexpectedly. Like a tub with ... filler!
The emperor appeared before me as an uneducated, bloodthirsty, and useless henpecked man.
The Empress is an ambitious slut and hysterical.
Very hard-hitting images that go against everything I've ever read. It left a nasty aftertaste. But it's well written and voiced just amazingly well.
In any case, there is something to think about on a large and small scale.

Well
Criticism (because the abstract does not really reveal the nature of this book):
Pikul's works conveyed an unofficial, though very rarely incorrect, view of historical events. His novels were censored. The author could not print what he wanted.
Pikul's historical works have often been and continue to be criticized for careless handling of historical documents, vulgar, according to critics, style of speech, etc.
Most of all, in this sense, his last completed novel "Unclean Power" (magazine version: "At the last line") went to, despite the fact that the author himself considered it "the main success in his literary biography."
The novel is dedicated to the period of the so-called. "Rasputinism" in Russia. In addition to the story of the life of G. Rasputin, the author historically incorrectly depicted the moral character and habits of the last Russian emperor Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra Feodorovna (now classified as holy martyrs by the Russian Orthodox Church), representatives of the clergy (including the highest). In the same manner, almost the entire royal environment and the then government of the country are depicted. The novel has been repeatedly criticized by historians and contemporaries of the events described for its strong discrepancy with the facts and the "tabloid" level of narration. For example, A. Stolypin (the son of the former Prime Minister P. A. Stolypin) wrote an article about the novel with the characteristic title "Crumbs of truth in a barrel of lies" (first published in the foreign magazine "Posev" No. 8, 1980), where, in particular, the author said: “There are many places in the book that are not only incorrect, but also base and slanderous, for which, in a state of law, the author would answer not to critics, but to the court.”
The Soviet historian V. Oskotsky in the article "Education by history" (the newspaper "Pravda" for October 8, 1979) called the novel "a stream of plot gossip."

In a reference article about V. Pikul in the newspaper Literary Russia (No. 43, October 22, 2004), literary critic V. Ogryzko spoke about the effect the novel had on writers at that time:
The publication in 1979 in the journal Our Contemporary (Nos. 4-7) of the novel At the Last Line caused more than just furious controversy. Among those who did not accept the novel were not only liberals. On July 24, 1979, Valentin Kurbatov wrote to V. Astafiev: “Yesterday I finished reading Pikulev’s Rasputin and I angrily think that the magazine has very much soiled itself with this publication, because such a ‘Rasputin’ literature in Russia has not yet been seen in the most dumb and shameful time. And the Russian word has never been so neglected, and, of course, Russian history has never been exposed to such disgrace. Now, even in the latrines, they seem to write more neatly” (“Infinite Cross”, Irkutsk, 2002). Yuri Nagibin, in protest after the publication of the novel, resigned from the editorial board of the journal Our Contemporary.
Despite this, the widow of V. Pikul believes that "... it is" Unclean Force "that, in my opinion, is the cornerstone in understanding and, if you like, in knowing the character, creativity, and indeed the whole life of Valentin Pikul."

Mikhail Veller in his book Perpendicular put it this way:
... all historians, on a signal, began to write that Pikul was misrepresenting history. It is not true. Pikul did not distort the story. Pikul used history. He took those versions that he liked best because of their scandalousness and sensationalism. He took in historical figures those features that he liked more and were more suitable for this book. As a result, the books turned out to be quite fascinating.

Based on the materials of the article of the same name by S. Fomin ("Russian Bulletin" of December 19, 2003 http://www.rv.ru/content.php3?id=1402) and "Encyclopedia of Great Russian Films. "Agony" (http://top-rufilms.info/p1-84.html), with additions and comments by the author.

Year after year, and several times a year, TV "Culture" (as well as some other TV channels) again and again shows E. Klimov's film "Agony" - a film so popular since 1985, as full of old ones (already from 1916\1917) of false myths about G.E. Rasputin and the Royal Family. (I don’t track it on purpose, but in 2010 on the Kultura channel in December I got, it seems, already on the third show).
It would seem that in recent years a lot has already been written about the streams of slander and lies that fell upon the Tsar's family under the Provisional Government (from March to November 1917) and then in the Soviet of Deputies. Having begun as streams of dirty rumors back in 1916, they then turned into stormy stinking streams. If before the February Revolution these streams flooded only drunken and hysterical Petrograd, then the Provisional Government deliberately and purposefully brought them down on all of Russia.
And now, it turns out, the vile nine-month flow of slander in 1917 was enough for a long time. For a very long time ... For almost 100 years!
We'll have to talk about all this in more detail.

INTERIM GOVERNMENT. FALSE AND SLANDING IN "THE MOST FREE COUNTRY"
After the February Revolution of 1917, almost all newspapers and magazines were literally filled with slander and often absolutely fantastic lies - and no one could speak out against this (I remind you that monarchist newspapers and organizations were banned immediately after the abdication of the Sovereign). This fetid stream flowed like a wide river from the pages of books, from postcards, caricatures, from the theater stage and from the screens of the cinema. The theaters were filled with vicious farcical performances. In Petrograd there were plays by M. Zotov "Grishka Rasputin"; in Moscow, except for those listed - "Tea at Vyrubova's"; in Vyborg already on April 27, 1917, the premiere of the play "Tsarskoye Selo Grace" by a certain "Marquise Dlyokon" (S. Belaya) took place, in which, in all, blatant lies were peppered with foul language and even pornography - and, in modern slang, "people" in both capitals enthusiastically “hawal” all this, but not always, and not everywhere.
During March-November 1917, more than ten films about Grigory Rasputin were released. The first such film was the two-episode "sensational drama" "" Dark Forces - Grigory Rasputin and his associates "" (produced by G. Liebken joint-stock company; Grigory Libken is a well-known sausage manufacturer and director of the Magic Dreams film studio, which "became famous" scandals as early as the 1910s). The picture was staged in record time, within a few days: on March 5, the newspaper "Early Morning" announced it, and already on March 12 (! - 10 days after the abdication!) It was released on cinema screens. It is noteworthy that this first false film as a whole failed and was successful only in the outskirts of small cinemas, where the audience was simpler .... Later, judging by press reports, the demonstration of the film caused a stir in the Tyumen cinema "Giant", where the audience met with "Grishka the horse thief, Grishka the arsonist, Grishka the foolish, Grishka the lecher, Grishka the seducer". However, it was not Rasputin's adventures in the palace that caused the excitement and excitement in the hall, but the demonstration of Khioniya Guseva's attempt on Rasputin in 1914 and his murder in the palace of Prince Yusupov.
It must be said that the appearance of these films led to the protest of a more educated public because of their ""pornographic and wild eroticism"". In order to protect public morality, it was even proposed to introduce film censorship (and this was in the first days of the revolution!), Temporarily entrusting it to the police. A group of filmmakers petitioned the Minister of Justice of the Provisional Government A.F. Kerensky to ban the demonstration of the film "Dark Forces - Grigory Rasputin" and stop the flow of "film dirt and pornography". Of course, this did not stop the further spread of the kinorasputiniada across the country. G. Liebken's firm launched another series - "Rasputin's Funeral". In order to somehow support the shattered reputation, the company donated 5,000 rubles to the disabled and reported this in the newspapers. Other films "on the topic" followed: "People of Sin and Blood", "Holy Devil", "Mysterious Murder in Petrograd on December 16", "Trading House Romanov, Rasputin, Sukhomlinov, Myasoedov, Protopopov and Co.", "Tsar's Oprichniks", etc. Most of them were issued by the same joint-stock company of G. Liebken.
Streams of dirty falsification spilled over the whole country. Those who "overthrew the autocracy" were in power, and they needed a justification for this overthrow. They needed it all the more because, as the main Russian liberal P. Milyukov testified back in May 1917, the people throughout Russia (except perhaps Petrograd and two other three large cities) were set up monarchically. And in general, by October 1917, massive flows of slander about Rasputin and the Royal Family did their job - the country believed in this lie.

Bolsheviks, USSR. TWO WAVES OF SLANDER ABOUT RASPUTIN AND THE ROYAL FAMILY
The Bolsheviks after October 1917 approached the matter more fundamentally. Of course, the film waste about Rasputin received a second wind, but much wider and deeper steps were taken to falsify history. The multi-volume Protocols of the Extraordinary Investigation Commission created by the Provisional Government, falsified by P. E. Shchegolev and others, were published; from beginning to end forged by the same P. Shchegolev with the "red count" A. Tolstoy ""diaries"" by A. Vyrubova. In the same row is the widely shown play "A. Tolstoy's" Conspiracy of the Empress. many documents relating to the Royal Family, including the Diaries of Nicholas II, as well as documents on the murder of the Royal Family (the so-called "Yurovsky Note") - a solid and "solid" foundation was laid for future falsifications by both historians and and "engineers of human souls", Soviet writers.
It was only around 1930 that this company of falsifying history and mass stupidity of people began to wane - the new generation, entering adulthood in the Soviets, was already sufficiently zombified.
***
A new campaign of massive stupidity and falsification of the history of the Tsar's family and Tsarist Russia began to unfold in the USSR in the second half of the 1960s and into the 1970s. Why exactly then? Let me remind you that in those years in the West, a lot of attention of the press, radio and TV was attracted by a long trial to identify Anna Anderson, who proved that she was Anastasia Romanova, the surviving daughter of Nikolai and Alexandra. A series of trials took place in Germany from 1961 to 1977, and until the very end of the trial, many were convinced that Anderson was right. The sympathies of many were on her side, and a wide interest in the history of the Royal Family arose in the West. In 1967, Robert Massey's Nicholas and Alexandra, the first book by a foreign author, was published in the United States and gained wide popularity. And in 1969, a film based on this book (under the same name) was already shot in Hollywood, which immediately gathered a huge audience even by Hollywood standards.
Finally, let me remind you that in the USSR itself, approximately from the beginning of the 1970s, pilgrimage to the Ipatiev house in Sverdlovsk began, although the KGB reports on Sverdlovsk more than once noted bouquets of flowers lying in the mornings on the sidewalk near this house.
Of course, all this could not go unnoticed by the leadership of the KGB and the Politburo. A “government order” like “our answer to Chamberlain” began to take shape as early as 1966.
Significant works of the 1960s and 1970s, when no one was allowed to talk about it aloud, were M. Kasvinov's book "Twenty-three steps down", V. Pikul's novel "At the last line" and the film directed by E. Klimov "Agony". The work of an almost unknown historian, a novel by a writer popular by that time, and the work of a famous film director.
As I wrote above, the false and, I will add, in many details and in general blasphemous in essence, the film "Agony" is shown from time to time by some central TV channels, even to this day. So, in December 2006 the film was shown on the 5th channel, and on July 8 of this year. - on the TV channel ... "Culture", and again - on November 7 this year.
Let me remind you that Agony was filmed in the 1970s, and, of course, a film about the Royal Family could not have been different then. But even the fact that Nikolai and Alexandra were shown, albeit weak and unworthy, but living people (who could cause at least a little, if not sympathy, then pity), even this determined the difficult fate of the film (in the USSR it was released only ten years after the end of filming, in 1985). We will talk about this in more detail later, and also tell you more about the opuses of M. Kasvinov and V. Pikul.

"TWENTY-THREE STEPS DOWN" by Mark Kasvinov.
With its documentation, the opus of Mark Kasvinov, published in 1972-1974. in the Leningrad magazine "Zvezda", attracted a considerable number of readers. For the first time, the Soviet reader was able to get acquainted with a wider range of facts than in the traditionally strictly metered works of Soviet historians, who were subjected to severe ideological inspection by Goslitov officials and self-censorship. Judging by the links, the author had access to many archives, including Polish, Czechoslovak, Austrian and Swiss, closed party and personal archives; books, many of which were not even in our special stores. This unwittingly inspired some confidence. Of course, despite the fact that the content of the book itself was sustained completely in the spirit of the former lies and slander against the Royal Family, only wrapped in new wrappers of pseudo-documentary, carefully selected for the main old Bolshevik assessment. A brief annotation even in 1988 testifies:
“The 23 years of the reign of the last representative of the Romanov dynasty were marked by many serious crimes, and the people pronounced their just verdict on him. Book by M.K. Kasvinov tells about the life and inglorious end of Nicholas the Bloody, gives a worthy rebuff to those bourgeois falsifiers who tried and are trying to present him as an innocent victim.
But who is the author himself? Before the publication in 1995 of the second volume of the Russian Jewish Encyclopedia, it was difficult to answer this question. On the pages of this edition we read:
"KASVINOV Mark Konstantinovich (1910, Elizavetgrad, Kherson province - 1977, Moscow), journalist, historian. Graduated from ist. f-t Zinoviev ped. in-ta. From 1933 - corr., head. foreign policy otd. "" Teacher's newspaper ""; printed in the center. newspapers, prepared materials for the radio. In 1941-45 - at the front, in 1945-47 he served in Germany and Austria. In Vienna, he edited gas. owls. Occupation Forces "Osterreichische Zeitung". From 1947 he worked on the radio, in the department of broadcasting to German-speaking countries. Since the late 1960s collected materials for the book ""Twenty-three steps down"" (journal published in 1972; the chapter ""Evenings in a tavern on Taganka"" dedicated to the history of the Black Hundreds movement) was removed by censorship ... "".
The first mass edition of the book was published in 1978 and 1982. in Moscow and in 1981 in the Bulgarian Partizdat. The second edition saw the light only after the beginning of perestroika - in 1987. A third edition followed the same year.
Then there was a "volley ejection" (according to the well-known model of the book "The CIA against the USSR" by N. N. Yakovlev): Moscow - reprints of 1988 and 1989, Alma-Ata - 1989, Frunze - 1989, Tashkent - 1989. Finally, in 1990, the 3rd revised and enlarged edition was published in Moscow. The total circulation was about a million copies. Undoubtedly, this is the product of a far from ordinary ideological operation of the special services.

"EVIL FORCE" by Valentin Pikul
Less than a year after the publication of the first separate edition of the book by M. Kasvinov, the magazine "Our Contemporary" began printing the novel "At the last line" by the then popular and undoubtedly talented writer V. S. Pikul. There is also another interesting coincidence. According to the writer, he sat down for the novel on September 3, 1972 - chronologically, after the appearance of the beginning of Kasvinov's book in the magazine (the August issue of Zvezda, 1972). V. Pikul completed it on January 1, 1975. "Our Contemporary" published it in four issues in 1979. Behind the anti-Jewish and anti-stagnant (choking the Russian beginning) pathos, the editors overlooked the anti-Russian (implicit and for the most carried away author) lining.
""... The demon beguiled him to compose this false and slanderous novel about Nicholas II and Grigory Rasputin," A. Segen, the current head of the prose department of "Our Contemporary", evaluates this work of Pikul. - What for? Unclear. Knowing, for example, that the scar on [Emperor] Nikolai’s head was left from the time of his trip to Japan, where an overly zealous samurai attacked the Russian Tsar with a saber, Pikul composed a scene in which young Nikolai urinates in an Orthodox Serbian church and receives a well-deserved blow for this a saber to the head from a Serbian policeman. And such examples in Pikul's novel are a dime a dozen. This is all the more offensive, since Valentin Savvich was a truly remarkable writer and patriot of our Motherland!"
The first separate edition of V. Pikul's novel was published precisely in the year of the "volley ejection" of M. Kasvinov's book (1989). Since then, this work, published under the title "Unclean Force", was published annually in mass editions until 1995. During this time, the total circulation of the two-volume edition amounted to more than 700 thousand copies.
1990 The height of the prayer standing of the Orthodox for the glorification of the holy Royal Martyrs. "July 13," writes A. Segen, "Pikul celebrates his 62nd birthday. Three days later, on July 16, he does not feel well all day, and on the night of the 16th to the 17th, precisely on the anniversary of the night of the execution of the Royal Family, Valentin Savvich dies of a heart attack. What is it? The Omen? If so, a sign of what? The fact that Tsar Nicholas called him to court, or the fact that the Tsar forgave the writer? .. ""
One way or another, Pikul's "Unclean Power" is in the same unclean series of falsifications of history as Kasvinov's "Twenty-three Steps Down" and Elem Klimov's "Agony".

"AGONIA" by Elem Klimov
Mosfilm", 1975. In 2 series. Script by S. Lungin and I. Nusinov. Director E. Klimov. Cameraman L. Kalashnikov. Artists Sh. Abdusalamov and S. Voronkov. Composer A. Schnittke. Cast: A. Petrenko, A. Romashin, A. Freindlich, V. Line, M. Svetin, V. Raikov, L. Bronevoy, G. Shevtsov and others.
Perhaps none of the "shelf" paintings were born so painfully and for so long. Work on the film began in 1966. It was filmed in 1974. Passed in 1975. Released on screens in 1985. Director Elem Klimov said about this: ""Agony" is half of my life. The film abruptly turned my whole fate. In working on it, I tasted everything - joy, and luck, and despair. If I could tell everything that happened on this film and around it, then it would probably turn out to be a real romance ... "
As far as I understand, the talented director Elem Klimov, having received a state order for this topic, made his way from the original completely distorted and farcical, kondo-Bolshevik understanding of history, to the truth, but got stuck halfway, on half-truth - and in those years he could not find the truth about the Royal Family in the archives of the USSR, no matter how much I search. But let's talk about this in more detail.
Some concrete facts of his biography played some (not yet quite clear role) in this.
October 1942 First-grader Elem leaves Stalingrad with his little brother Herman and his mother. Houses blazed up to the sky. The fuel spilled into the river after the bombing was fuming. Burning Volga. The city was on fire. ""... We reached Sverdlovsk," the director recalled, "then we were transplanted and taken to the village, it's 20 miles from the city, which was called Koptyaki, now the whole world knows it ... Then I found these pits, where they were, so they are called ""Royal pits"" in the forest, climbed into this pit, the guys took a picture of me there. And in this pine forest I think: My God, but no one knows about this, I found out by chance. But there must be some sign here, some call sign. I look, one pine tree - it’s not so thick - the skin is peeled from it, it stands white, it blooms, it grows, it lives, but someone is like a sign - then you couldn’t even talk about it - so that’s how things are "").
Probably, communication with the actor Georgy Danilovich Svetlani (Pinkovsky, 1895-1983) was not in vain. He played the only major role in his life in the film "Sport, Sport, Sport" (1970) by E. Klimov - a tape that preceded "Agony".
Klimov received a proposal to stage a picture of the tsar's favorite from Ivan Alexandrovich Pyryev himself: "Grishka Rasputin! This is a figure ... I beg you - get it and read the interrogation protocols of the Provisional Government Commission, in which Alexander Blok worked. And, most importantly, do not miss Rasputin there !"
This, we recall, is about the falsified Shchegolev documents of the Extraordinary Investigation Commission of the Provisional Government. Then E. Klimov told: - I agree with Semyon Lungin and Ilya Nusinov, and the three of us are leaving for the Moscow region to write the script. He was then called "Antichrist" (20).
- We are talking about Ilya Isaakovich Nusinov (1920-1970), the son of an old Bundist who was arrested in 1949 and died in Lefortovo prison, and Semyon Lvovich Lungin (born 1920), who also suffered during the post-war campaign against cosmopolitanism.
In May 1966, the Luch association approved an application for the script "Holy Elder Grishka Rasputin" ("Messiah"). In August, the script was already discussed at the artistic council. It was called "Antichrist". “In my first films, I had a bias towards satire,” Klimov said. “He also made himself felt in The Antichrist. The film was conceived in a farcical vein. We had, as it were, two Rasputins. The other is folklore-legendary. The image of the "folklore Rasputin" was made up of incredible rumors, legends, anecdotes that at one time went about Rasputin among the people. Everything was exaggerated, caricatured, grotesque. As if, being a German spy, he was in the most incredible way made his way to the royal palace, crawled almost through the chamber pot of the empress, got through a secret passage behind the front line, etc. etc. "
Here Klimov, boastfully declaring that he had read ""on the topic"""tons of literature"", for some reason not named by him, deliberately, to put it mildly, misleads (this time readers): they were not folk tales, but prudent inventions of the enemies of the Tsar and His Russia.
“We have already chosen nature for filming,” writes Klimov, _ and it seemed that everything was in order. In any case, I experienced an extraordinary spiritual uplift and did not yet understand that the atmosphere in the state had changed. And now I'm returning to Moscow with a finished script. I bring it to Pyryev, I show my storyboards
The discussion of the script at the artistic council went off with a bang. Pyryev was pleased: “I haven’t read such a professional script for a long time. The genre of the thing is exactly sustained. A farce is a farce. Today it is the most interesting, convenient and intelligent look at the last days of the Romanovs. Rasputin is shown in the script as a positive character. And this is good. irrepressible force of the people. This force exists not only in Rasputin, but also in the people. The people are shown as wise - stories, legends, parables ...
On August 30, 1966, the literary script "Antichrist" was submitted for approval to the Main Screenwriting and Editorial Board (GSRK).
Staff editors rejected it. E. Surkov, the editor-in-chief of the GSRK, suggested that the authors finalize the script: "A film about Rasputin can and should become a film about the need for a revolution, about its inevitability, but also about kindness, justice. In short, it should be a film that tells about what the party saved Russia from in the October days and what was tsarist Russia against which the Bolsheviks fought.
In April 1968, after the death of Pyryev, work on the film was stopped. Five days after the stop (April 14), E. G. Klimov addressed a letter to the Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, P. N. Demichev: “In recent years, there has been considerable interest in the West in the events of Russian history in the first quarter of the 20th century. For several years now, the film "Doctor Zhivago" has been on the screens, enjoying incredible success even for commercial cinema. The memoirs of Prince F. F. Yusupov, telling about the last days of the autocracy and the murder of Rasputin, were published in huge editions in many countries. These memoirs were immediately filmed by French director Robert Hossein and American television. Recently, a message was published that the largest American producer Sam Spiegel began work on the super action movie "Nicholas and Alexandra", in the center of which are the images of Nicholas II, the Tsaritsa and Rasputin..."
Attached to the letter was a translation of an article from a French magazine about this new American film based on Massey's book Nicholas and Alexandra. Part of it was supposed to be filmed in the USSR. The release was planned for 1969. The letter itself ended with the words: “Now the time has not yet been lost, we still have the opportunity to release our film on the Soviet and world screen before the American picture is completed, and thus neutralize its influence on the viewer. Our film (it is called "Agony") can have very high distribution prospects both domestically and abroad. It can become a serious weapon of counter-propaganda. The rejection of its production frees the American cinematography from the battlefield in the ideological struggle. The high addressee was assured: ""if any comments or suggestions are made, we will try to make the necessary changes to the script without disrupting the earlier scheduled release dates for the picture"".
The change in the name ("Agony" instead of "Antichrist") in the text of the letter should be taken as a transfer of the center of gravity (to appease the "outsiders") from the personality of G. E. Rasputin to the interpretation of the historical events of the pre-revolutionary period officially adopted by the Soviet ideology . All this, of course, was done exclusively for the "" "sleep"" of the guards.
Documents have been preserved that testify to the subject of concern.
"" The figure of Rasputin, - considered the chairman of the Committee on Cinematography under the Council of Ministers of the USSR A. V. Romanov, _ despite all its repulsive essence, in some episodes of the script it suddenly acquires features that allow one to admit the idea that this person, in some to the extent expressing the aspirations of the people "" (27).
""The figure of Rasputin is placed at the center of this work, the interpretation of his actions and actions in individual episodes is given without the necessary social clarity"", - such a conclusion was made by the head of the department of culture of the Central Committee of the CPSU I. Chernoutsan and the head of the sector F. Yermash.
Filming began in August 1973, but was interrupted several times. On October 10, 1974, Klimov was given a list of amendments for mandatory execution from Goskino. The director resisted, but not everything could be defended. For example, the demand to remove the Tsarevich came from Yermash himself: “Are you out of your mind? How can we show this boy, who was elevated to the rank of a holy martyr in the West? and for what they were executed at all ... otherwise, in passing, no, it won’t work! .. "
But most of all, of course, the authorities were afraid of the moment of possible allusions. There was an episode in the film in which Vyrubova sighed heavily about the tsarist prime minister Goremykin: "Oh God, God! At such an age to rule such a country!" Yermash, catching a hint of the Kremlin elders, immediately said to Klimov: "I beg you! I beg you! Cut it out immediately so that it doesn't even go beyond the editing room!"
The film "Agony" was finished in the final version in 1975. But the picture was not released on the screen for a long time. There were rumors that someone from the top party leadership looked at it and was dissatisfied.
An opinion is known dated August 1, 1975, that is, after all the revisions of the script, the chairman of the KGB of the USSR Yu. V. Andropov: Lungin and I. Nusinov, which shows the "Rasputin" period of the Russian Empire. According to the information available in the security agencies, this film distorts the historical events of that time, unjustifiably much attention is paid to showing the life of the Royal Family ... "
For three years the painting lay motionless. There was complete uncertainty.
In 1978, the film was returned to Klimov for revision. They allowed me to finish something, remount it. Taking the opportunity, the director improved something. And besides, he introduced a quote from Lenin, filmed his friend Yuri Karyakin and Larisa Shepitko in the episode. As soon as he managed to finish all this, a book about Rasputin "At the last line" by Valentin Pikul appeared and a huge scandal erupted. "Agony" was decided not to be released on the screen.
For five years, Klimov was not allowed to shoot anything. Only after the tragic death in a car accident of Larisa Shepitko was he allowed to complete the painting "Farewell to Matyora" begun by his wife.
Finally, there was light at the end of the tunnel. Klimov was asked to make two versions of Agony. One - full, for abroad. Another (truncated by an hour) - for the Soviet audience. The director agreed only to the full version.
I will quote an even longer excerpt from S. Fomin's article "Protracted Agony":
http://www.rv.ru/content.php3?id=1402
From the memoirs of E. Klimov: “I still repent that I refused the final. This is an episode of Rasputin's funeral. I wanted to make this scene very strict. Here is the body (a stuffed animal, of course, because Petrenko, after all the upheavals that he had to endure on these shootings, of course, would not lie in a coffin). Close-up, medium. Here is the priest at the tomb, who with hatred sings the funeral service for this "reptile". Here is the Tsarina, Vyrubova, the Tsar, next to her daughter. And the boy is standing - the Tsarevich, whom he is holding, is almost covered by the huge hand of the sailor-nanny. And the boy, he's definitely made of porcelain. He looks around, looks at his father and suddenly turns to some disturbing sound. And we see his profile, which could later be printed on all medals and coins. And a wide, snow-covered field, across which some strange creatures are running, advancing from everywhere: giants, dwarfs, holy fools of inconceivable beauty ... Soldiers holding a strict chain look out from behind their shoulders. And then the Tsaritsa appears and with her Vyrubova. They look into the eyes of these people, looking for and not finding a new Rasputin.
So I also cut out this fragment. Himself, with my own hands! And how the Queen approaches the sleigh and shouts with a strong accent: “I hate it! I hate this country!" "That's not in the movie either."
How it is necessary to hate Russia, its past and future, in order to see, shoot like that, and then, after many years, also write, youthful: here, they say, what I am. And at the same time, lie like this: “While working on the picture, I read tons of literature, tons! Spent many months in the archives. It seemed that he knew everything about Rasputin.
But how could it be, after reading so much literature, not to understand where the truth is and where the lie is? (Unless, of course, there was a desire to know the truth, and not act according to someone else's instructions.)
The fate of the tape after 1975 was discussed at the "highest level" (secretaries of the Central Committee of the CPSU) was discussed at least twice more: in 1979 and 1981. By the decision of the Central Committee of the CPSU of April 9, 1981, "Agony" was given a "green light", but so far only for a foreign audience. In 1982 Agony won the prestigious FIPRESCI award at the Venice International Film Festival. With the beginning of perestroika, "Agony" was immediately taken off the shelf and went on the wide screen (1985). Her hour has come.
But that was another option. Quite symptomatic was the transition from the purely artistic in the first version to the historical and chronicle (in the final version) presentation of the material. Film critics note "the copious inclusion of chronicles and documentary-like scenes" in the film. All this, again, was supposed to make the viewer believe in the "truth" offered to him by the authors. And most importantly: the Soviet audience was prepared for the perception of Klimov's tape, on the one hand, by Pikul's novel, on the other, by Kasvinov's book.
Of course, even then, when not a single truthful line about Grigory Efimovich had yet been printed, not everyone swallowed the poisonous bait. Known, for example, the reaction of Rasputin's fellow villagers, who then received special attention. "" On the day of the premiere, as a sign of protest, the inhabitants of Pokrovsky, almost every one left the hall, having overlooked the tapes and to the middle ""

In conclusion of his article "Protracted agony" S. Fomin writes:
Be that as it may, these three works - books by Kasvinov, Pikul and Klimov's film - played a strong role in shaping the consciousness of Soviet people on the eve and in the early years of the so-called. "perestroika". It is precisely on the basis of such "works" and various falsified "documents"," Doctor of Historical Sciences Yu. unreliability that poisoned the public consciousness.
Let's hope that this poisonous dope still dissipates in recent years.
***

For those who want to know more about G.E. Rasputin, I recommend reading more, for example, my article "The Truth and Falsehood about Rasputin" (

Dmitry Bykov: Well, in 1989, the project "One Hundred Years - One Hundred Books" finally got to the release of Valentin Pikul's novel "Unclean Power".

The history of this novel is amazing. First, it was completed in its entirety in the mid-seventies, submitted to several publishing houses, submitted to the magazine Our Contemporary. Everyone understood that it was impossible to print it, and yet they printed it. They printed it in a greatly abbreviated form, about one and a half times, and, frankly, distorted.

These four issues of Our Contemporary, inhumanly shabby, are still kept at our house, because they always went from hand to hand, because it is interesting. We subscribed to many magazines, but very rarely did we manage to get so lucky. Usually everything interesting is published somewhere by others, sometimes in some most unexpected "Technique of Youth", like the Strugatskys. And here we are. We subscribed to Nash Sovremennik, a rather boring soil journal, and bam! - Pikul's most popular novel.

Pikul generally considered this book to be his best. It was called "Unclean Force", as a result it was called "At the last line." In 1979, she was honored with a dressing directly from Suslov. Alexander Yakovlev, later the architect of perestroika, saw in this novel - quite rightly - anti-Semitism and wrote a rather harsh article.

Yakovlev told me, I remember how I read this book and was amazed at the completely open sermon of anti-Semitism that was contained there, and discussed it with Gromyko during my dinner. He then served in Canada, and Gromyko came to Canada to visit, they had dinner and Yakovlev asked: "What is this being done?" And Gromyko said: "Yes, you know, I'm also perplexed."

At the top, the novel aroused strong displeasure, but I think that this displeasure to a large extent did not depend on the fact that there was supposedly anti-Semitism there. Indeed, there was, in general, you can see it there. But the problem with this novel is not anti-Semitism. The problem with the novel is that it shows the decay of the top.

Of course, Pikul did everything possible to support himself from all sides. He wrote: “Yes, there are no revolutionaries in my novel, there are no underground members, there are no communists. But I have already described all this in the two-volume novel “In the Backyard of a Great Empire” and I see no reason to repeat myself. Of course, if he had inserted a couple of scenes with Lenin in Zurich or, say, with Dzerzhinsky in hard labor, maybe the book would have acquired a slightly more Soviet sound.

But in fact, the novel was written about the degeneration of the Soviet elite. And then there were four works that, in fact, existed semi-legally, but were very popular. The first is the completely legal, but difficult to obtain work of the completely Soviet historian Kasvinov “Twenty-three steps down”. Here, you see, they described, in fact, the steps down the Ipatiev House, and the twenty-three years of the reign of Nikolai Romanov were described as descending the historical stairs into a terrible basement, a bloody basement in which the history of the Russian monarchy ended.

I must say that this book was written from an extremely objective position, not so frenzied Marxist, and, in general, it even contained some sympathy for the emperor and his family, although this had to be read between the lines.

The second such text - I don’t know to what extent the film can be called a text, but nevertheless - was the picture Agony by Elem Klimov based on the script by Lungin and Nusinov. The picture was also mutilated, it was supposed, as Klimov said, to shoot it as a myth, with two Rasputins: one real, the other existing in the popular imagination. But nevertheless, it was such one of the main texts about the Soviet empire - both about the Russian Empire and about Soviet parallels, which, precisely because of these completely obvious parallels, could not be published in any way.

It is clear that Klimov's film nevertheless had an absolutely Soviet and clearly Soviet pathos. But nevertheless, there was a feeling of great sympathy for Nikolai, played by Romashin, for Vyrubova, played by Freindlich. In general, everyone was somehow sorry. And the empire was sorry. And Rasputin-Petrenko looked like a completely charming character in general.

The third such text, which was very limitedly available at that time, was a copy of the alleged diaries of Vyrubova, which was widely circulated in samizdat, and which was published in the journal Byloye. Of course, this fake had nothing to do with Vyrubova and her diaries, but I remember well that this fake was very popular among the Soviet intelligentsia.

And many, by the way, studied that situation based on the play by Tolstoy and Shchegolev “The Conspiracy of the Empress”. This play was absolutely yellow, absolutely scandalously boulevard, very offensive to the entire Romanov clique, as it was called at that time, but nevertheless it was all popular. Why? Because the parallels were striking.

And finally, the fourth such text is a novel by Pikul, who was then, to a certain extent, the banner of the so-called Russian party. What is the Russian party? Yes, there were then pochvenniki. Pochvenniks always offer themselves to the authorities as the blacksmiths of a repressive project: give it to us, and we will hand over all these Jews! Why should they be transferred? Yes, they are all liberals, they are all pro-Americans, they are all intellectuals! But we are real. They considered themselves to be real, primordially, on the basis of the fact that they wrote very badly. And so they offered themselves all the time as an instrument of the new oprichnina.

It must be said that Valentin Savvich Pikul, a remarkable prose writer, belonged, in general, if not organizationally, then ideologically, to the party of Our Contemporary. And, of course, he criticized the authorities. Of course, they all criticized the authorities, but not from the left, like liberals, but from the right. Because it is not cruel enough, because it is not ideological enough, because it does not press hard enough on Jews and other nationalists. “There is no need to help the nationalists, there is no need to build an empire, we need to give power to our Russians!” - it was on this basis that they criticized, of course, corruption, and depravity, and ideological emptiness.

Strictly speaking, Pikul's novel is about how the Jews destroyed Russia. Here is Manasevich-Manuilov, who, by the way, also acts in Klimov's film, a Jewish journalist, schemer, manipulator who controls Rasputin and with his help knocks the tsar off his pantalik. Here is the entire Jewish press, here is a whole conspiracy ... which is written in full text by Pikul. By the way, describing the same Manasevich, he utters a sacred phrase: "A handsome fat boy attracted the attention of famous ...". It was some kind of wild courage in Soviet times, it was believed that ... does not exist, and it is not known whether Jews exist.

In short, all this incredible courage at that time pursued the only goal - to show the authorities that she was again going down twenty-three steps, she was again repeating the terrible path of Nikolai Romanov, which led him to the Ipatiev House. Probably, indeed, the number 23 is somehow fatal in a certain sense. Brezhnev, however, reigned longer, but nevertheless, Nikolai Romanov’s 23 years is indeed a bit too much, and therefore his too late abdication, apparently, could not save anything, could only hasten death. And in general he was betrayed, what to talk about?

If we talk about the objective result, then here the interesting begins. Once upon a time, Vladimir Novikov ironically called Russia the country that reads Pikul and Semenov the most. Yes, but not only them, of course. But I must tell you that against the background of the current mass culture and paraliterature, Pikul and Semenov are titans of thought. Yes, these are, of course, really rotary machine sharks.

These writers, even if they wrote fiction for those times, knew history very well, owned many closed sources. Pikul's library in Riga, where he lived, consisted of 20 thousand volumes, and there were unique rarities. He dug through a huge amount (I think no less than Solzhenitsyn) of archives relating to 1912-1917, the period of the most gloomy reaction. Naturally, he supported himself with Lenin's epigraph about a bloody gang headed by the monstrous Rasputin.

He is a post-Stolypin reaction, from 1911, and even a pre-Stolypin one, starting about a year from 1903, and indeed a reaction from 1907, when the revolution was crushed, Stolypin as such from 1907, until he was killed, until 1911 - he studied all this enough thoroughly. It must be said that, like all Russian conservatives, he was perhaps too enthusiastic about Stolypin. But it must be said that in the novel "At the Last Line" there are no illusions that Stolypin could save the day. It is quite clearly written there that everything was rolling into the abyss.

And look, what an interesting thing turns out. Pikul was, of course, a man of very conservative, very grounded views. When he painted ideological things, like, for example, some of his miniatures, all his talent disappeared somewhere. But when he wrote the actual material, history, Weller is right here, who was and remains one of the few supporters of such a writer's rehabilitation of Pikul.

It was believed that Pikul was a vulgar person. But we must not forget that Pikul is an appetizing, fascinating storyteller. This is especially evident in the wonderful novel "Favorite" about the era of Catherine. This can be seen from The Pen and the Sword, Word and Deed, the best Russian novel, I think, after Lazhechnikov, about the story of Anna Ioannovna. "Word and Deed" is a great book, because in it the whole horror of Bironism is captured with incredible force and disgust.

And strictly speaking, even his “Three Ages of Okini-san” is also a very decent essay. Yes, he has a lot! "Paris for three hours", "Pen and sword". You can have different attitudes to his "Requiem Caravan PQ-17", but nevertheless, when he did not touch on the immediate history, the old one came out juicy, colorful, appetizing, and disgusting. In general, he is a serious writer.

And when Pikul describes the decay of the Rasputin monarchy, the monarchy of Rasputin's time, the monarchy that is directly controlled by our friend, when he describes the full depth of this rot, this decay, one cannot help but take away from him both his pictorial power and persuasiveness. And the main thing here is what is interesting: Pikul admires some of his heroes. The same Manasevich-Manuilov, whom he hates, the same Andronnikov (Bag), right? But most of all, of course, he admires Rasputin.

I was recently asked whether Rasputin can be called a trickster. Objectively no, objectively he was a rather dull fellow. But the Rasputin described by Radzinsky, and especially the Rasputin described by Pikul, can be called a trickster. This is a jester at the throne, a man of incredible physical and moral strength, great attraction, a merry fellow, a reveler. And here is this famous Madeira Rasputin, Madeira with a boat on the label, and his indestructibility, and his endless women, his fascinating relationship with Vyrubova and the queen, and especially, of course, such a mysterious legend that Badmaev, the great doctor, treats him some means to maintain male power.

All this legendary, and erotic, and cunning, and stupid, and somewhat naive figure, who allowed himself to be so foolishly lured into a trap and killed, develops in Pikul into some strange symbol of the indestructibility and cunning of the people. Here is his Rasputin - this is such a folk hero, a little like Ulenspiegel. And he's terribly charming he comes out. Probably, this was one of the reasons why the book was banned, a separate edition was not published under the Soviet regime, and Pikul himself was deprived of publication for a long time.

Because he makes Rasputin incredibly charming. And when, after the death of Rasputin, they remember him and sing: “God rest with the saints, he was such a man, he liked to drink, eat and ask for another,” we also somehow begin to mourn for him. A great, in essence, insignificant, naive, amazingly talented, amazingly stupid person who flew higher than he was supposed to, and died on this.

Please note that both Rasputin and Nikolai were in fact quite frequent heroes of Russian poetry of that time. After all, Bunin in the poem "God's little man", and Gumilyov in the poem about Rasputin - “He enters our proud capital - God, save! - enchants the queen of boundless Russia ", and Antokolsky - a variety of poets dedicated poems to him. There was something in him.

And this legendary figure of Rasputin defeats both Pikul's prejudices and his rather conservative views. She turns his novel "Unclean Power" into an insanely fascinating read. As the Moscow Art Theater Theater Hall correctly said, in my opinion, Markov, yes, Markov, about Bulgakov’s play “Batum”: “When a hero disappears, you want him to appear sooner, you miss him.” And indeed, everything that does not concern Rasputin in this novel is such a rather amusing exotic from the time of the collapse of the empire. But Rasputin appears, and immediately there is an electrical voltage. He managed to write about it.

Needless to say, there have been such attempts. There was, say, a three-volume novel by Nazhivin, published in exile, rather boring, to tell the truth, although there are brilliant places there and Gorky highly appreciated it. But Pikul managed to write a cheerful picaresque novel about the collapse of the empire, sometimes scary, sometimes disgusting, but cheerful in its main intonation.

And when we observe today the various crooks exposed by Navalny, we, of course, understand that Navalny is right, but at the same time we look at them with some very Russian enthusiasm. Well done guys! How cunningly they do it all! Wrong, of course, but how do they do it!

Andrei Sinyavsky was absolutely right when he said that a thief in a Russian fairy tale is an aesthetic figure, he is a rogue, he is the hero of a rogue novel. It's nice to follow him, he's an artist, an artist. And Pikul's Rasputin is the same artist. This is often the case with writers who manage to fall in love with the subject of their portrayal. To tell the truth, in none of his novels did Pikul achieve such an effect. He had never been such a charming scoundrel.

To tell the truth, the mystical component of Rasputin's personality, his mysterious gift, his ability to speak blood and teeth, he absolutely discards. He admires this, as Alexander Aronov correctly wrote then, “this Russian Vautrin”, this crook from the bottom, who flew so high. And, in general, he turned out, oddly enough, the only folk hero in all of the then Soviet literature.

Naturally, when the book came out in 1989, it no longer caused the same excitement. But even against the backdrop of 1989, when an abyss of anti-Stalinist literature and emigre prose was being printed, this novel nevertheless thundered. And Valentin Pikul, I think, will remain in Russian literature not just as a novelist, but as one of the great prose writers, oddly enough, great prose writers, with all the inevitable disadvantages. Either way, this book reads like new today.

Well, let's talk about the 1990s, about the book The Defector by Alexander Kabakov, which, one might say, determined the entire literature of the 1990s.

"Devilry". The book, which Valentin Pikul himself called "the main success in his literary biography."

The story of the life and death of one of the most controversial figures in Russian history - Grigory Rasputin - develops under the pen of Pikul into a large-scale and fascinating story about the most paradoxical, perhaps for our country, period - a short break between the February and October revolutions ...

Valentin Pikul
Devilry

I dedicate it to the memory of my grandmother, the Pskov peasant woman Vasilisa Minaevna Karenina, who lived her whole long life not for herself, but for people.

Prologue,
which could be an epilogue

The old Russian history was ending and a new one was beginning. Creeping in the lanes with their wings, the hooting owls of reaction shied away through their caves ... The first to disappear somewhere was the excessively quick-witted Matilda Kshesinskaya, the most unique prima weighing 2 pounds and 36 pounds (a fluff of the Russian stage!); a brutal crowd of deserters was already smashing her palace, smashing to smithereens the fabulous gardens of Babylon, where overseas birds sang in captivating bushes. The ubiquitous newspapermen stole the ballerina's notebook, and the Russian layman could now find out how the daily budget of this amazing woman was formed:

For a hat - 115 rubles.

A person for tea - 7 kopecks.

For a suit - 600 rubles.

Boric acid - 15 kopecks.

Vovochka as a gift - 3 kopecks.

The imperial couple was temporarily kept under arrest in Tsarskoye Selo; At workers' rallies, there were already calls for the execution of "Nikolaska the Bloody", and from England they promised to send a cruiser for the Romanovs, and Kerensky expressed a desire to personally see the royal family to Murmansk. Under the windows of the palace, the students sang:

Alice needs to go back

Address for letters - Hesse - Darmstadt,

Frau Alice rides "nach Rhine",

Frau Alice - aufwiderzein!

Who would have believed that until recently they were arguing:

- We will call the monastery over the grave of the unforgettable martyr: Rasputin! the empress said.

“Dear Alix,” the husband answered respectfully, “but such a name will be misinterpreted among the people, for the surname sounds obscene. The monastery is better called Grigorievskaya.

- No, Rasputinskaya! the queen insisted. - There are hundreds of thousands of Grigorievs in Russia, and Rasputin is only one ...

They reconciled on the fact that the monastery would be called Tsarskoye Selo-Rasputin; before the architect Zverev, the empress revealed the "ideological" plan of the future temple: "Gregory was killed in accursed St. Petersburg, and therefore you will turn the Rasputin Monastery towards the capital with a blank wall without a single window. The facade of the monastery, bright and joyful, turn to my palace ..." March 21, 1917 year, precisely on the birthday of Rasputin, they were going to lay the foundation of the monastery. But in February, ahead of the tsar's schedules, the revolution broke out, and it seemed that Grishka's long-standing threat to the tsars came true:

"That's already it! I will not be - and you will not be." It is true that after the assassination of Rasputin, the tsar lasted only 74 days on the throne. When an army is defeated, it buries its banners so that they do not fall into the hands of the victor. Rasputin lay in the ground, like the banner of a fallen monarchy, and no one knew where his grave was. The Romanovs hid the place of his burial ...

Staff Captain Klimov, who served on the anti-aircraft batteries of Tsarskoye Selo, once walked along the outskirts of the parks; by chance he wandered to the piles of boards and bricks, an unfinished chapel froze in the snow. The officer illuminated its vaults with a flashlight, noticed a blackening under the altar. Having squeezed into its recess, I found myself in the dungeon of the chapel. Here stood a coffin, large and black, almost square; there was a hole in the lid, like a ship's porthole. The staff captain directed the beam of the lantern directly into this hole, and then Rasputin himself looked at him from the depths of non-existence, eerie and ghostly ...

Klimov appeared at the Council of Soldiers' Deputies.

“There are a lot of fools in Russia,” he said. - Isn't it enough to experiment with Russian psychology? How can we guarantee that the obscurantists will not find out where Grishka is lying, as I found out? It is necessary from the beginning to stop all the pilgrimages of the Rasputinites ...

Bolshevik G.V. Yelin (soon the first head of the armored forces of the young Soviet Republic) undertook this business. All in black leather, creaking angrily, he decided to put Rasputin to execution - execution after death!

Today, Lieutenant Kiselev was on duty for the protection of the royal family; in the kitchen he was handed a lunch menu for "citizens of the Romanovs".

“Soup-pottage,” read Kiselyov, marching along long corridors, “smelt risotto pies and cutlets, vegetable chops, porridge-slurry and pancakes with currants ... Well, not bad!”

The doors leading to the royal chambers opened.

“Citizen Emperor,” the lieutenant said, handing over the menu, “let me draw your highest attention ...

Nicholas II put aside the tabloid "Blue Journal" (in which some of his ministers were presented against the backdrop of prison bars, while the heads of others were wrapped around ropes) and answered the lieutenant dully:

– Doesn’t the awkward combination of the words “citizen” and “emperor” bother you? Why don't you just call me...

He wanted to advise that they address him by his first name and patronymic, but Lieutenant Kiselyov took the hint differently.

– your majesty- he whispered, looking at the door, - the soldiers of the garrison became aware of the grave of Rasputin, now they are holding a meeting, deciding what to do with his ashes ...

The empress, all in heightened attention, quickly spoke to her husband in English, then suddenly, without even feeling pain, she tore off a precious ring from her finger, a gift from the British Queen Victoria, almost forcibly pulled it on the lieutenant's little finger.

“I beg you,” she muttered, “you will get anything else you want, just save it!” God will punish us for this villainy...

The state of the empress "was truly terrible, and even worse - the nervous twitches of her face and her whole body during a conversation with Kiselev, which ended in a strong hysterical fit." The lieutenant ran to the chapel when the soldiers were already working with spades, angrily opening the stone floor in order to get to the coffin. Kiselev began to protest:

“Are there really no believers in God among you?”

There were also such among the soldiers of the revolution.

Kiselev rushed to the office telephone, calling the Taurida Palace, where the Provisional Government met. On the other end of the wire was Commissar Voitinsky:

- Thanks! I will report to Minister of Justice Kerensky...

And the soldiers were already carrying the coffin with Rasputin through the streets. Among the local inhabitants, who came running from everywhere, wandered "material evidence" taken from the grave. It was a gospel in expensive morocco and a modest icon tied with a silk bow, like a box of sweets for a name day. From the bottom of the image, the empress drew her name with the names of her daughters with an indelible pencil, Vyrubova signed below; around the list of names are the words: YOUR - SAVE - US - AND HAVE PARTY. The rally started again. Speakers climbed on the lid of the coffin, as if on a podium, and talked about what a terrible animal power lies here, trampled by them, but now they, the citizens of free Russia, are boldly trampling on this evil that will never rise ...

And the ministers conferred in the Tauride Palace.

- It's unthinkable! snorted Rodzianko. - If the workers of the capital find out that the soldiers dragged Rasputin, undesirable excesses may occur. Alexander Fedorych, what is your opinion?

“It is necessary,” answered Kerensky, “to delay the demonstration with the corpse on Zabalkansky Prospekt. I propose: take the coffin by force and secretly bury it in the cemetery of the Novodevichy Convent...

In the evening, near the Tsarskoye Selo railway station, G.V. Yelin stopped a truck hurrying to Petrograd, the soldiers put Rasputin on the back of the car - and they rushed, just keep your hats!

“That’s what I just didn’t drive,” the driver admitted. - And Chinese furniture, and Brazilian cocoa, and even Christmas decorations, but to carry the dead ... and even Rasputin! - this has never happened to me before. By the way, where are you guys going?

- Yes, we do not know. Where are you going, honey?

- To the garage. My "benz" of the court department.

- Take us there. The morning is wiser than the evening…