Mikhail Zoshchenko - biography, information, personal life. Full biography of the writer Mikhail Zoshchenko
Zoshchenko Mikhail Mikhailovich - Soviet satirist writer, playwright, Russian officer, hero of the First World War.
Mikhail Zoshchenko was born in, on the Petersburg (Petrograd) side, in house number 4 on Bolshaya Raznochinnaya Street, in the family of an artist. Father - Mikhail Ivanovich Zoshchenko (1857-1907), an itinerant artist, descended from Poltava nobles. Mother - Elena Osipovna, née Surina (1875-1920), Russian noblewoman. In her younger years, she served as an actress in the theater, and also wrote stories about poor people, which she later published in the Kopeika magazine.
Combat youth
After graduating from high school, in 1913, Zoshchenko entered the law faculty of St. Petersburg University. However, his family was extremely poor and was unable to pay for university tuition. During the holidays, Zoshchenko even had to work part-time as a controller at the Caucasus railway, but there were still not enough funds. I had to leave the university.
1914 The First struck World War. Young Zoshchenko was enrolled as a cadet in Pavlovskoe military school. Initially, Mikhail served as a volunteer, but later he became a cadet non-commissioned officer.
On February 1, 1915, Mikhail Zoshchenko, who completed accelerated military courses, received the rank of ensign and was enlisted in the army infantry. He was sent to serve in the Kiev Military District, from there he was sent to recruit recruits to and. In March 1915, Zoshchenko arrived in the active army. He served in the 16th Mingrelian Grenadier Regiment in the Caucasian Grenadier Division as a junior officer in a machine gun team. In November 1915, Zoshchenko was wounded for the first time. The wound was light, from shrapnel in the leg.
In November 1915 “for excellent fighting» Zoshchenko was awarded the Order of St. Stanislav, 3rd class with swords and bow. In December 1915 future writer was promoted to second lieutenant and appointed head of the machine gun team. In February 1916, the hero was awarded another military award - the Order of St. Anne, 4th degree, with the inscription “For bravery”; in July 1916, he was promoted to lieutenant.
On July 19, 1916, Lieutenant Zoshchenko, along with his soldiers, became a victim of a German gas attack. Once in the hospital, Mikhail survived, but after gas poisoning, he, still a very young man, received a terrible diagnosis - a heart defect. Doctors declared him a category 1 patient, that is, fit only for reserve service. In September 1916, Mikhail Zoshchenko was awarded another military order - St. Stanislav, 2nd class with swords. Despite the persuasion of doctors, on October 9, 1616, he returned to the active army. A month later, Mikhail was again awarded, this time with the Order of St. Anne, 3rd degree. The next day, Zoshchenko was promoted to staff captain and appointed to the position of company commander. After quite a short time he was already temporarily acting battalion commander. In January 1917, Zoshchenko was promoted to the rank of captain and awarded the Order of St. Vladimir, 4th degree. Thus, for participation in the First World War, the future classic Soviet literature received five military orders. It is difficult to imagine that a cowardly person would be able to deserve so many serious military awards. I ask the reader to take note of this fact from the writer’s biography.
In February 1917, Mikhail Zoshchenko was transferred to the reserve. The illness caused by poisoning with German gases made itself felt.
Zoshchenko returned to Petrograd, and in the summer of 1917 he was appointed to the most important position of commandant of the Petrograd Post Office, and all mail and telegraphs were also subordinate to him. True, Zoshchenko did not stay in this position for long. Soon Mikhail left for, where he was appointed to the position of adjutant of the Arkhangelsk squad. While in Arkhangelsk, Zoshchenko had a real opportunity to emigrate to France. However, despite the fact that many nobles and officers were forced to choose this path, Zoshchenko took a different path, he took the side of the revolution.
At the beginning of 1919, despite old wounds, Zoshchenko joined the Red Army. Now he is a regimental adjutant in the 1st Model Regiment of the Village Poor. In the winter of 1919, Zoshchenko took part in the battles near Narva and. In April 1919 he suffered a heart attack. At the hospital Zoshchenko was determined to be unfit for military service, he was demobilized “cleanly.” However, he again entered the service, this time as a telephone operator in border guard.
In the early 20s. Zoshchenko managed to change a lot of different professions in order to earn money. He was many things: a court secretary, an instructor in breeding chickens and rabbits, a criminal investigation agent, a carpenter, a shoemaker, and a clerk. Let's give interesting fact, speaking about Zoshchenko’s skill. It was in 1950. Once, Zoshchenko’s friend, writer Yuri Olesha, had his pants torn. Zoshchenko took it and sewed them up, and did it so skillfully that one could only be amazed.
Start literary activity
Of course, the rich military experience, multiplied by the gigantic experience of the Itinerant worker, became the writer’s invaluable life luggage. Starting my writing activity, Zoshchenko was still a very young man, only 26 years old. However, due to the many difficult trials that befell him, even at that age he was already an “experienced man.”
So, in 1919, Mikhail Zoshchenko appeared on the threshold of the literary studio, which at that time was headed by K. I. Chukovsky. The young man said that he wanted to become a writer. The writer M. Slonimsky, a friend of Zoshchenko, later recalled a short man with a handsome and dark face, as if in a matte photograph, who introduced himself as Zoshchenko. Subsequently, the famous writing group “Serapion Brothers” was formed from the participants of the literary studio. It included M. Zoshchenko, I. Gruzdev, Vs. Ivanov, V. Kaverin, L. Lunts, N. Nikitin, E. Polonskaya, M. Slonimsky, N. Tikhonov, K. Fedin. The main concept of the group was the search for new artistic forms in the context of the events of the revolution and civil war.
In 1920, Mikhail Zoshchenko tied the knot. His chosen one is Vera Kerbits-Kerbitskaya, the daughter of a retired colonel, a Polish nobleman. Soon their son Valery was born. However, alas, Zoshchenko turned out to be a man extremely unadapted to ordinary life. family life. Literature was his main love and passion. He and his wife lived for forty years, but all these years were filled with constant quarrels and reconciliations.
1920-1921 - attempt at writing. Zoshchenko wrote his first stories: “Old Woman Wrangel”, “War”, “Love”, “Female Fish”, as well as the famous “Stories of Nazar Ilyich, Mr. Sinebryukhov”. After the first edition, it was a resounding success. In the blink of an eye, Zoshchenko became incredibly popular. Quoted everywhere witty phrases From his wonderful stories, they very quickly became popular expressions among the people. In 1923, the collection “ Humorous stories”, in 1926 - “Dear Citizens”. Zoshchenko performed in front of numerous audiences, he traveled all over the country, and the success of his works was enormous. From 1922 to 1946 Zoshchenko was published and reprinted about 100 times. A collection of works was even published in 6 volumes. In their early works Mikhail Zoshchenko created a special type of hero: a certain Soviet citizen who has no basic values, uneducated, unspiritual, but fully armed with a new, high degree of freedom, he is confident in himself and therefore constantly finds himself in extremely comical situations. As a rule, Zoshchenko’s stories were told on behalf of an individual narrator, which is why literary scholars defined his style as “fantastic.”
In 1929, Zoshchenko published the book “Letters to a Writer.” The book consisted of letters from readers and the writer's comments to them. Zoshchenko wrote that he wanted to show life, genuine and undisguised, of genuine and living people with all their desires, tastes, and thoughts. This was Zoshchenko’s first attempt to change his literary role. However, since everyone is accustomed to seeing Zoshchenko only as an author humorous stories, many readers greeted this experience with bewilderment.
August 17, 1933 large group Soviet writers and artists visited the grandiose Stalinist construction project - the White Sea Canal, among them was Zoshchenko. The trip was organized for purely propaganda purposes. The Soviet creative intelligentsia was shown using living material how “enemies of the people” are re-educated. After this trip, Zoshchenko was forced to write a propaganda piece telling how people in Stalin’s camps were successfully re-educated: a work called “The Story of One Life.” In reality, Zoshchenko was extremely depressed by this trip. Historical reference: About 700 people died every day during the construction of the White Sea Canal.
In 1933 Zoshchenko published new story"Youth Restored" The work was a kind of psychological research; it touched on issues of the subconscious. The story aroused great interest in the scientific community; the famous physiologist and academician even began to invite Zoshchenko to attend his famous “Wednesdays”. As a continuation of the story “Youth Restored,” a collection of short stories was written called “The Blue Book.” Zoshchenko again appears in a role unusual for critics: in The Blue Book the writer touched on serious philosophical ideas, and the psychological aspects of existence were clearly manifested in his work. The publication of the Blue Book caused a flurry of devastating articles in leading party publications. An exhaustive directive was issued from above regarding Zoshchenko: to print only feuilletons and nothing more. From that time on, only work in the children's magazines "Chizh" and "Hedgehog", for which Zoshchenko wrote stories, allowed the writer to show his talent. It is worth noting that Zoshchenko considered the Blue Book the most significant work, of all those written by him.
Bullying
The Great Patriotic War began. Mikhail Zoshchenko, a veteran of the First World War, tried to get to the front. But his state of health was such that this was out of the question. By order from, Zoshchenko, along with the poetess, was taken from besieged Leningrad. While evacuated in Almaty, Zoshchenko continued to work on the creation of the Blue Book. In 1943, several chapters from this stunning scientific and philosophical study about the subconscious were published in the magazine “October”. The chapters are published under the title “Before Sunrise.” The reviews of leading scientists of that time who were involved in the study of the subconscious are extremely interesting. They noted that in his book Zoshchenko was able to anticipate many of the discoveries of science about the unconscious by decades.
However, party leaders perceived the publication of the book completely differently. Immediately after the publication of the first chapters of Before Sunrise, hysteria erupted. Streams of abuse literally poured down on the writer. No matter how they branded him and no matter what they called him, every little literary mongrel tried to bite as painfully as possible. There were even voices about the cowardice allegedly shown by Zoshchenko during the Great Patriotic War. Of course, such statements were idiotic lies. Mikhail Zoshchenko - a Russian officer, a hero of the First World War, a holder of 5 orders, a participant in the Civil War, a man who became disabled due to poisoning by German gases - simply could not be a coward. In despair, Zoshchenko wrote: The letter contained a request to personally familiarize himself with his work, or to instruct critics to analyze his book in more detail. In response, he receives another portion of meaningless lampoons. His book was called “nonsense, needed only by the enemies of our homeland.”
In 1946, Leningrad party leader A. Zhdanov, in his report, called Zoshchenko’s book a “disgusting thing.” The last of the stories Zoshchenko published, “The Adventures of a Monkey,” was regarded as a vulgar libel on Soviet life and Soviet people. The writer was accused of being anti-Soviet. At a meeting of the Writers' Union, Zoshchenko stated that the honor of a Russian officer and writer does not allow him to come to terms with being called a “coward” and a “scum of literature.” He was expelled from the Writers' Union, the writer's books were removed from libraries. The activities of the Leningrad literary magazines “Zvezda” and “Leningrad” were subjected to severe criticism. The Zvezda magazine was publicly flogged (a special party resolution stated “to close access to the magazine to the works of Zoshchenko, Akhmatova and the like”), and Leningrad was completely closed.
Last years
In 1953, after Stalin died, Zoshchenko was reinstated in the Writers' Union. In 1954, Zoshchenko and Akhmatova were invited to a meeting with English students. It is surprising that such a meeting took place at all, since both writers were in deep disgrace, they were not published and were persecuted in every possible way. A rather comical reason was the reason for this rendezvous. The young Englishmen asked to show them where the graves of Zoshchenko and Akhmatova were located; they were sure that both authors had died long ago. Imagine the amazement of the foreign guests when they were promised to present both writers alive. Laughter through tears. At the meeting, Zoshchenko again, in the presence of the British, expressed his opinion about the erroneous resolution of the CPSU (b) of 1946, for which he was again persecuted for the second round.
The last years of his life Zoshchenko lived in a dacha in. He no longer had the strength to fight for the truth. Zoshchenko's literary activity came to naught, the writer was in a state of severe depression.
On July 22, 1958, Mikhail Mikhailovich Zoshchenko died due to acute heart failure. The authorities forbade him to be buried on the Literary Bridge of the Volkovsky Cemetery. He was buried in Sestroretsk. As eyewitnesses said, Zoshchenko, always extremely gloomy during his life, smiled in his coffin.
Mikhail Zoshchenko is a man who has lived many lives: the war of a citizen, a writer. The writer is extremely decent, sensitive, and does not make deals with his conscience. A wit and talent that was rare, even in the rich Russian land.
Dmitry Sytov
Biography and episodes of life Mikhail Zoshchenko. When born and died Mikhail Zoshchenko, memorable places and dates important events his life. Writer quotes, Photo and video.
Years of life of Mikhail Zoshchenko:
born July 28, 1894, died July 22, 1958
Epitaph
“Brother writers! in our destiny
Something fatal lies:
If we all, not believing ourselves,
We chose something else -
It wouldn’t be, for sure, I agree,
Pathetic scribblers and pedants -
If only it wouldn't be the same, friends,
Scotts, Shakespeares and Dantes!
To exalt one, struggle
Carrying away thousands of the weak -
Nothing comes for free: fate
He asks for redemptive sacrifices."
From the poem “In the Hospital” by Nikolai Nekrasov
"I'm so sad today,
So tired of painful thoughts,
So deeply, deeply calm
My tortured mind,
What an illness that oppresses my heart,
Somehow it makes me bitterly happy -
Meeting death, threatening, coming,
I would go myself... But the sleep will refresh -
<...>
And the illness that crushes strength,
Tomorrow will be just as tormenting
And about the proximity of the dark grave
It is also clear to the soul to speak..."
From a poem by Nikolai Nekrasov
Biography
A difficult and unfair fate befell the wonderful writer Mikhail Zoshchenko. It’s hard to imagine how much the author of Lyolya and Minka, a humorist and satirist, endured during the war years at the front. During the war he received five orders, was gassed and permanently crippled. But Zoshchenko was broken not by heart disease, but by sudden total disgrace and oblivion after several years of all-Russian popularity.
Zoshchenko fought bravely during the First World War and was eager to volunteer for the front during the Great Patriotic War - but he was not taken because serious illness heart, consequences of poisoning. Zoshchenko's literary talent was revealed during the interwar period, and the writer immediately became popular: after his first publications, his comic stories were printed and reprinted in huge editions.
But Zoshchenko’s life’s work was not stories. During the Great Patriotic War to evacuation, where he was sent as unfit for military service, the writer took with him not things, but notebooks with the work of his largest and most important book, “Before Sunrise.” He worked on it for 10 years, and finally, in 1943, the book was published: the first chapters began to be published in the magazine “October”.
And this was the beginning of the end for Zoshchenko. He was severely criticized; the magazines in which he worked were closed, Zoshchenko was expelled from the Writers' Union, he was banned from working, former colleagues stopped all communication with their former idol. Zoshchenko’s book was called anti-Soviet, vulgar and disgusting, and the behavior of himself, who was evacuated during the war for health reasons, was called unworthy.
Only 8 years later did the writer have a chance to rehabilitate himself. At a meeting between him and Anna Akhmatova with students from Great Britain, both writers were asked how they felt about their disgrace. Zoshchenko did not admit any guilt, insisting that his conscience was clear and he did not agree with the party’s resolution. After this, the end was finally put to Zoshchenko.
The writer’s health, already fragile, became even worse. He was tortured long periods depression; Zoshchenko could no longer work. He died of acute heart failure at his dacha in Sestroretsk. Zoshchenko’s funeral on the Literary Bridges was prohibited, and his grave is located there, in Sestroretsk.
Life line
July 28, 1894 Date of birth of Mikhail Mikhailovich Zoshchenko.
1913 Graduation from high school.
1914 Enrollment in the Pavlovsk Military School.
1915 Completion of accelerated wartime courses, promotion to ensign. Wound. Receiving the Order of St. Stanislaus, III degree.
1916 Receiving the Order of St. Anne IV degree, Order of St. Stanislaus II degree and Order of St. Anne II degree. Appointment as company commander.
1917 Zoshchenko was nominated for the Order of St. Vladimir, IV degree. Appointment as head of posts and telegraphs and commandant of the Petrograd post office.
1919 Joining the Red Army.
1920-1922 Visit to the literary studio of K. Chukovsky.
1922 Zoshchenko's first publications.
1939 Awarding the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.
1941 Evacuation to Alma-Ata, work in the script department of Mosfilm.
1943 Moving to Moscow, working in the editorial office of the Krokodil magazine. Publication of the first chapters of the book “Before Sunrise”.
1946 Resolution of the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on the closure of the magazine “Leningrad” with criticism of Zoshchenko. Expulsion from the Writers' Union. Translation work.
July 22, 1958 Date of death of Mikhail Zoshchenko.
1968 First publication of the story “Before Sunrise” in the USA.
1987 The first publication of the story “Before Sunrise” in Russia.
Memorable places
1. House No. 4 on the street. B. Raznochinnaya in St. Petersburg, where in the quarter. No. 1 writer born.
2. Imperial St. Petersburg University (now St. Petersburg State University), where Zoshchenko studied for 1 year.
3. Arkhangelsk, where Zoshchenko served as adjutant of the Arkhangelsk squad in 1917.
4. Alma-Ata, where Zoshchenko was evacuated during the Great Patriotic War.
5. Apartment No. 119 in building 4/2 on Malaya Konyushennaya Street. in St. Petersburg, where Zoshchenko lived from 1954 to 1958; now - the Literary and Memorial Museum of the Writer.
6. Zoshchenko’s dacha in Sestroretsk, where the writer died; now it is a monument of cultural and historical heritage. Address: Polevaya st., 14-a.
7. City cemetery in Sestroretsk, where M. Zoshchenko is buried in plot No. 10.
Episodes of life
Zoshchenko came from a poor family and was expelled from the university for non-payment. Throughout his life, he tried many professions to earn money: he worked as a court secretary, a criminal investigation agent, an instructor in breeding chickens and rabbits, and a shoemaker.
Since 1922, Zoshchenko's books have been published about 100 times, including a six-volume collected works.
In 1930-1940 M. Zoshchenko wrote approximately 20 plays, including one in collaboration with E. Schwartz (“Under the Linden Trees of Berlin”).
The story "Before Sunrise", which infuriated Stalin, was very biographical. In it Zoshchenko on by example tried to understand the workings of the human psyche.
Alexander Filippenko reads M. Zoshchenko’s story “A Dog’s Scent”
Testaments
“Generally speaking, it is not known how much a person needs. Probably more than what he needs, and no less than what he wants.”
“War will become absurd, I think, when technology reaches an absolute hit.”
“You have some strange attitude towards life - as a reality that is eternal. Make money! Take care of the future! How funny and stupid is it to position yourself in life as in your home, where you will live forever? Where? At the cemetery. All of us, gentlemen, are guests in this life - we come and go.”
Condolences
“He could never write according to a “stencil”, as required, or express “well-known truths” - he was always looking for new, his own, untrodden paths.”
Korney Chukovsky, writer
“Zoshchenko’s language enveloped, bewitched - it turned out to be very suitable in a variety of situations in life... Laughter, sadness, bitterness - everything is woven together in the complex novelty of it best works, in their verbal connection."
Mikhail Slonimsky, writer
“Over the years of many years of friendship, I had never heard him laugh: his small mouth with white, even teeth rarely formed a soft smile. While reading his stories, he was sometimes forced to stop - he was disturbed by the deafening, almost pathological laughter of the audience, and then the look of his beautiful black eyes became especially thoughtful and sad. Softness and hardness - these two opposite concepts did not at all contradict each other in him. But there was also something else, shunned, deeply hidden - a tendency towards loneliness, towards the solitude of reflection?
Veniamin Kaverin, writer
Life and art Mikhail Zoshchenko
Mikhail Mikhailovich Zoshchenko was born in 1895 into the family of a poor itinerant artist, Mikhail Ivanovich Zoshchenko and Elena Iosifovna Surina. After graduating from high school, he studied at the Faculty of Law of St. Petersburg University. Without completing his studies, in 1915 he volunteered for the active army, so that, as he later recalled, “to die with dignity for his country, for his homeland.” On the eve of the February Revolution, he was already a battalion commander, a holder of four military orders, and a staff captain. After October revolution he became a border guard in Strelna, then was transferred to Kronshdat. He was demobilized due to illness (during the fighting, Zoshchenko was poisoned with gases, as a result of which he developed a heart defect). This is how he himself writes about it: “I took part in many battles, was wounded, poisoned with gases. Ruined my heart...” After demobilization, Zoshchenko took up a variety of professions. He was: a criminal investigation agent in Petrograd, an instructor in rabbit breeding and chicken breeding at the Mankovo state farm in the Smolensk province, a policeman in Ligov, again in the capital - a shoemaker, a clerk and an assistant accountant in the Petrograd port...
Here is a list of who Zoshchenko was and what he did, where life threw him before he sat down at the writing table.
This list is necessary. These boring, dry lines of tedious enumeration make it possible to understand where Zoshchenko got the material for all his stories, novellas, and feuilletons.
Published in 1922, “Nazar Ilyich’s Stories of Mr. Sinebryukhov” attracted everyone’s attention. Against the background of short stories of those years (and the short story was then the dominant type literary work) the figure of the hero-storyteller, a seasoned, experienced man, Nazar Ilyich Sinebryukhov, who went through the front and saw a lot in the world, stood out sharply. This is so reminiscent of the biography of Zoshchenko himself...
The works written by the writer in the 20s were based on specific and very topical facts, gleaned either from direct observations or from reader letters. And a great many of them came. “He didn’t walk around people with a pencil. The people themselves, pushing each other aside, vying for his pencil.” Letters came about riots in transport and in hostels, about the New Economic Policy and funny incidents in everyday life, about townspeople and ordinary people. Often his stories were built in the form of a casual conversation with himself, with the reader.
In his series of satirical works, Zoshchenko angrily ridiculed those who, by any means, tried to achieve individual happiness, not caring about everything human (“Famousness”, “Grimace of Nepa”, “Lady with Flowers”, “Nanny”, “Marriage of Convenience”).
Satire, like all Soviet fiction, changed significantly in the 30s. During this period, Zoshchenko was seized by the idea of merging satire and heroics. Theoretically, this thesis was proclaimed by him at the very beginning of the 30s, and practically realized in “Youth Restored” (1933), “The Story of One Life” (1934), the story “The Blue Book” (1935) and a number of other stories of the second half 30s. During the same period, Zoshchenko wrote two more large cycles of stories: stories for children and stories about Lenin.
During the Great Patriotic War, Mikhail Zoshchenko lived in Alma-Ata. The tragedy of besieged Leningrad, the terrible attacks near Moscow, the great battle on the Volga, the battle on the Kursk Bulge - he felt all this deeply. In an effort to contribute to the common cause of defeating the enemy, Zoshchenko writes a lot on front-line topics. Here are screenplays for short films and small satirical plays(“Cuckoo and Crows”, Fritz’s Pipe”), and a number of short stories “From the Stories of a Soldier”, and humoresques published in “Ogonyok”, “Crocodile”, “Red Army Soldier”, and the film story “Soldier’s Happiness”.
In the 50s, Mikhail Zoshchenko created a number of stories and feuilletons, a cycle of “Literary Anecdotes”, and devoted a lot of time and energy to translations. The translation of the book by the Finnish writer M. Lassila “For Matches” stands out with particular skill.
Mikhail Mikhailovich Zoshchenko was born on July 28 (August 9), 1894 in St. Petersburg. His father was an artist, his mother wrote stories, played amateur theater. In 1907, the head of the family died, and difficult times began for the family. financially times, which did not prevent the future writer from entering the gymnasium. After completing his studies there, Zoshchenko became a student at the Faculty of Law of the Imperial St. Petersburg University, from where he was expelled for non-payment.
In September 1914 he was enrolled in the Pavlovsk Military School. After completing accelerated wartime courses that lasted four months, Zoshchenko went to the front. He received several awards, including the Order of St. Anne, fourth degree, with the inscription “For bravery.” In 1917 he returned to peaceful life due to worsening illness. In a couple of years I managed to change several professions. Despite his exemption from military service, in 1919 he volunteered for active service in the Red Army. In April he was declared unfit and demobilized, but he joined the border guard as a telephone operator. After returning to Petrograd, Zoshchenko again began to constantly change professions. In addition, he began to attend the literary studio of Korney Chukovsky, which later turned into a club of modern writers.
On February 1, 1921, a new literary association appeared in Petrograd, called the Serapion Brothers. Among its members was Zoshchenko. Soon the writer made his debut in print. The stories, published in the 1920s, brought him enormous popularity. He began working with satirical publications, traveling around the country, speaking to the public reading short works. In the 1930s, Zoshchenko turned to a large form. Among other things, the story “Youth Returned” and the collection of everyday short stories and historical anecdotes “The Blue Book” were written at this time.
At the very beginning of the Great Patriotic War, Zoshchenko tried to go to the front, but he was declared unfit for military service. Then he joined the fire defense group. In September 1941, he was evacuated from Leningrad - first to Moscow, then to Alma-Ata. Zoshchenko lived there until 1943, after which he returned to the capital. During the war, he composed for the theater, wrote scripts, stories, feuilletons, and worked on the book “Before Sunrise.” Publication of the latter began in August 1943. Then only the first part was published in the magazine “October”. Then, from the Agitprop of the Central Committee, the editorial board of Oktyabr received an order to stop publication. They stopped publishing the story, and a large-scale anti-Zoshchenko campaign began.
The writer returned from Moscow to Leningrad, his affairs gradually began to improve, but in 1946 a new and even more terrible blow followed. It all started with the fact that the Zvezda magazine, without Zoshchenko’s knowledge, published his story “The Adventures of a Monkey.” On August 14, the organizing bureau of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks issued a resolution “On the magazines Zvezda and Leningrad.” Zoshchenko was expelled from the Writers' Union, deprived ration cards. Hard times began, he and his family had to literally survive. From 1946 to 1953, Zoshchenko earned money through translations and also worked as a shoemaker, which he mastered in his youth. In June 1953 he was readmitted to the Writers' Union. The boycott ended for a short time. In the spring of 1954, Zoshchenko was invited to a meeting with English students. Answering a question from one of them regarding the 1946 resolution, Zoshchenko said that he could not agree with the insults addressed to him. This led to a new round of bullying.
The last years of the writer’s life were spent at a dacha in Sestroretsk. On July 22, 1958, Zoshchenko died. The cause of death was acute heart failure. The writer was buried in the cemetery in Sestroretsk.
Brief analysis of creativity
Zoshchenko's greatest fame came from satirical works- mostly stories. The writer was rich life experience- He went to war and managed to change many professions. In the trenches, on public transport, in kitchens communal apartments, in pubs Zoshchenko overheard lively everyday speech, which became the speech of his literature. As for the hero of the writer’s works, he said the following about him: “Each of us has certain traits of a tradesman, an owner, and a money-grubber. I combine these characteristic, often shaded features in one hero, and then this hero becomes familiar to us and seen somewhere...” As literary critic Yuri Tomashevsky noted, in Zoshchenko’s work it is not the person himself who is ridiculed, but the “sad traits” of human character.
In the second half of the 1930s and early 1940s, Zoshchenko turned to children's literature. This is how the cycles “Lelya and Minka” and “Stories about Lenin” appeared. They included short texts based on the genre of moralizing stories.
The most important role in literary heritage Zoshchenko plays the autobiographical and scientific story “Before Sunrise,” which the writer himself considered the main work of his life. He began collecting material for it back in the mid-1930s. In a letter to Stalin, Zoshchenko noted that the book “was written in defense of reason and its rights”, that it “contains scientific topic about conditioned reflexes Pavlova" and, "apparently", its "useful applicability to human life”, that in this case “Freud’s gross idealistic mistakes were discovered.” During the writer's lifetime, the story was never published in full. This first happened only in 1973, and in the USA. In Russia, “Before Sunrise” was published in its entirety only in 1987.
Born on July 29 (August 10), 1895 in St. Petersburg in the family of an artist.
Childhood impressions - including difficult relationships between parents - were reflected both in Zoshchenko’s stories for children (Overshoes and Ice Cream, Christmas Tree, Grandma’s Gift, Don’t Lie, etc.) and in his story Before Sunrise (1943). First literary experiments relate to childhood. In one of his notebooks, he noted that in 1902-1906 he had already tried to write poetry, and in 1907 he wrote the story Coat.
In 1913 Zoshchenko entered the Faculty of Law of St. Petersburg University. His first surviving stories date back to this time - Vanity (1914) and Two-kopeck (1914). His studies were interrupted by the First World War. In 1915, he volunteered to go to the front, commanded a battalion, and became a Knight of St. George. Literary work did not stop during these years. Zoshchenko tried his hand at short stories, epistolary and satirical genres (he composed letters to fictitious recipients and epigrams to fellow soldiers). In 1917 he was demobilized due to heart disease that arose after gas poisoning.
Upon returning to Petrograd, Marusya, Meshchanochka, Neighbor and other unpublished stories were written, in which the influence of G. Maupassant was felt. In 1918, despite his illness, Zoshchenko volunteered for the Red Army and fought on the fronts Civil War until 1919. Returning to Petrograd, he earned a living, as before the war, different professions: shoemaker, joiner, carpenter, actor, rabbit breeding instructor, policeman, criminal investigation officer, etc. In the humorous Orders on railway police and criminal supervision written at that time, Art. Ligovo and other unpublished works can already feel the style of the future satirist.
In 1919 Zoshchenko studied at creative studio, organized by the publishing house "World Literature". The classes were supervised by K.I. Chukovsky. Recalling his stories and parodies written during his studio studies, Chukovsky wrote: “It was strange to see that such a sad man was endowed with this wondrous ability to powerfully make his neighbors laugh.” In addition to prose, during his studies Zoshchenko wrote articles about the works of A. Blok, V. Mayakovsky, N. Teffi and others. At the Studio he met writers V. Kaverin, Vs. Ivanov, L. Lunts, K. Fedin, E. Polonskaya and others, who in 1921 merged into literary group"Serapion Brothers", which advocated freedom of creativity from political tutelage. Creative communication was facilitated by the life of Zoshchenko and other “serapions” in the famous Petrograd House of Arts, described by O. Forsh in the novel Crazy Ship.
In 1920-1921, Zoshchenko wrote the first stories that were subsequently published: Love, War, Old Woman Wrangel, Female Fish. The cycle Stories of Nazar Ilyich, Mr. Sinebryukhov (1921-1922) was published as a separate book by the Erato publishing house. This event marked Zoshchenko's transition to professional literary activity. The very first publication made him famous. Phrases from his stories acquired character catchphrases: "Why are you disturbing the chaos?"; “The second lieutenant is wow, but he’s a bastard,” etc. From 1922 to 1946, his books went through about 100 editions, including collected works in six volumes (1928-1932).
By the mid-1920s Zoshchenko had become one of the most popular writers. His stories Bathhouse, Aristocrat, Case History, etc., which he often read himself in front of numerous audiences, were known and loved in all levels of society. In a letter to Zoshchenko A.M. Gorky noted: “I don’t know of such a relationship between irony and lyricism in anyone’s literature.” Chukovsky believed that at the center of Zoshchenko’s work was the fight against callousness in human relationships.
In the collections of stories of the 1920s, Humorous Stories (1923), Dear Citizens (1926), etc. Zoshchenko created a new type of hero for Russian literature - a Soviet person who has not received an education, has no skills in spiritual work, does not have cultural baggage, but strives to become a full participant in life, to become equal with “the rest of humanity.” The reflection of such a hero produced a strikingly funny impression. The fact that the story was told on behalf of a highly individualized narrator gave literary scholars grounds to determine creative manner Zoshchenko as “fantastic”. Academician V.V. Vinogradov, in his study Zoshchenko’s Language, examined in detail the writer’s narrative techniques and noted the artistic transformation of various speech layers in his vocabulary. Chukovsky noted that Zoshchenko introduced into literature “a new, not yet fully formed, but victoriously spreading extra-literary speech throughout the country and began to freely use it as his own speech.” Zoshchenko’s work was highly appreciated by many of his outstanding contemporaries - A. Tolstoy, Y. Olesha, S. Marshak, Y. Tynyanov and others.
In 1929, having received Soviet history title "the year of the great turning point", Zoshchenko published the book Letters to a Writer - a kind of sociological study. It consisted of several dozen letters from the huge reader mail that the writer received, and his commentary on them. In the preface to the book, Zoshchenko wrote that he wanted to “show genuine and undisguised life, genuine living people with their desires, taste, thoughts.” The book caused bewilderment among many readers, who expected only more funny stories from Zoshchenko.
Soviet reality could not but affect emotional state a sensitive writer prone to depression from childhood. A trip along the White Sea Canal, organized in the 1930s for propaganda purposes for large group Soviet writers, made a depressing impression on him. But after this trip he wrote about how criminals are re-educated in the camps (The Story of One Life, 1934). An attempt to get rid of a depressed state and correct one’s own painful psyche was a kind of psychological study - the story Youth Restored (1933). The story caused an interested reaction in the scientific community that was unexpected for the writer: the book was discussed at numerous academic meetings, reviewed in scientific publications; Academician I. Pavlov began to invite Zoshchenko to his famous “Wednesdays”.
As a continuation of Youth Restored, a collection of short stories, The Blue Book (1935), was conceived. Zoshchenko considered the Blue Book to be a novel in its internal content and defined it as " a short history human relations" and wrote that it "is not driven by a novella, but philosophical idea, which makes it." Stories about modernity were interspersed in this work with stories set in the past - in different periods of history. Both the present and the past were given in perception typical hero Zoshchenko, not burdened with cultural baggage and understanding history as a set of everyday episodes.
After the publication of the Blue Book, which caused devastating reviews, Zoshchenko was actually prohibited from publishing works that went beyond “positive satire on individual shortcomings.” Despite his high writing activity (commissioned feuilletons for the press, plays, film scripts, etc.), Zoshchenko’s true talent was manifested only in the stories for children that he wrote for the magazines “Chizh” and “Ezh”.
In the 1930s, the writer worked on a book that he considered the most important in his life. The work continued during the Patriotic War in Alma-Ata, in evacuation, since Zoshchenko could not go to the front due to serious illness hearts. In 1943, the initial chapters of this scientific and artistic study of the subconscious were published in the magazine "October" under the title Before Sunrise. Zoshchenko examined incidents from his life that gave impetus to severe mental illness, from which doctors could not save him. The modern scientific world notes that in this book the writer anticipated many discoveries of science about the unconscious by decades.
The magazine publication caused such a scandal, such a barrage of critical abuse was rained down on the writer that the publication of Before Sunrise was suspended. Zoshchenko addressed a letter to Stalin, asking him to familiarize himself with the book “or give orders to check it more thoroughly than has been done by critics.” There was no answer. The press called the book “nonsense, needed only by the enemies of our homeland” (Bolshevik magazine). In 1946, after the release of the resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks “On the magazines Zvezda and Leningrad,” the party leader of Leningrad A. Zhdanov recalled in his report the book Before Sunrise, calling it a “disgusting thing,” see APPENDIX.
The 1946 resolution, which criticized Zoshchenko and Anna Akhmatova, led to their public persecution and a ban on the publication of their works. The reason was the publication children's story Zoshchenko Adventures of a Monkey (1945), in which there was a hint that in Soviet country monkeys live better than humans. At a writers' meeting, Zoshchenko stated that the honor of an officer and a writer does not allow him to come to terms with the fact that in the Central Committee resolution he is called a "coward" and a "scum of literature." In 1954, at a meeting with English students, Zoshchenko again tried to express his attitude towards the 1946 resolution, after which the persecution began in the second round.
The saddest consequence of this campaign was the exacerbation of mental illness, which did not allow the writer to work fully. Its restoration in the Writers' Union in 1953 and the publication of the first long break books (1956) brought only temporary relief to his condition.
