Zinaida Kurbatova: “If you do the right, important thing, then there will be help. The entire 20th century was refracted in it

Colleagues at the Pushkin House, where Likhachev headed the department of ancient Russian literature for almost half a century, first of all remember his active civil position(the academician saved many historical monuments– in particular Nevsky Prospekt, Peterhof Park) and courage.

“It wasn’t scary with him,” recalls Tatyana Krasnoborodko, custodian of Pushkin’s manuscripts. “There were difficult situations, and then he said: “Don’t be afraid, I will be there for you.” And we stopped being afraid. He took everything upon himself.

In the family, he also took charge of everything. And he subjugated everyone to himself.

The academician's granddaughter Zinaida Kurbatova, an artist and television journalist, bears her father's surname. But you can feel the truly Likhachev character in her. At least he talks about his famous grandfather honestly, without trying to soften the colors.

“Grandfather was a powerful man, I would even say despotic. Although in last years He is often remembered as a gentle and quiet person; it is not difficult to understand that such a person could not have survived what his grandfather experienced.

Nikita Mikhalkov is an example of an enemy

– Did he have ill-wishers?

- Certainly. The brighter a person is, the more enemies he has. He had enemies in the scientific community who believed that “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” was a fake. And among those living today... Nikita Mikhalkov is an example of an enemy. He and his grandfather even had a television controversy. My grandfather said: “You can’t make money from culture.” Mikhalkov argued the opposite. Somehow in a mansion on Gogolevsky Boulevard, which was rented out, there was a fire at night after the banquet. The oak hall, unique stucco molding and parquet burned down. Grandfather was indignant: “This is what the desire to make money from culture leads to!” - and added sarcastically: “For Mikhalkov, culture is his films.”

Naturally, my grandfather also had contacts with the authorities. difficult relationships, first secretary Leningrad Regional Committee CPSU Romanov called him more than once when his grandfather sheltered unreliable people in his department. But it was quite difficult to scare grandfather, because he was a shot sparrow. The story with Romanov ended without consequences for the family, although when perestroika began, journalists asked me: wasn’t your mother killed in order to put pressure on your grandfather? This is absolute nonsense, my mother’s death is a tragic incident...

After Solovki I couldn’t stand cards

Dmitry Likhachev's daughter Vera died at the age of 44 when she tried to catch a car - while voting, the woman ran out onto the road and was hit by a minibus. After the death of her mother, 15-year-old Zinaida remained to live under the same roof with her grandparents.

“Dad immediately separated from us because it was difficult to get along with grandfather. In our family, only he made decisions. When we sat down at the table, first the dish was served to grandfather, he was the first to take a spoon - in general, everything happened as was customary in merchant families, since grandfather had a merchant background. There were strict prohibitions in the house: you could talk on the phone only about business and for no more than five minutes, discos were a waste of time, and so on.

– It must have been difficult for the young girl to find mutual language with the “man of the nineteenth century,” as Dmitry Sergeevich was called?

– I cannot say that I had a simple and joyful adolescence and youth. You see, like my grandfather big influence Solovki provided. Let me explain: a home boy from a very decent, intelligent family at the age of 21 ends up in a camp where not only wonderful scientists, but also criminals served their sentences. And what they were doing there, one can only guess... Since then, he hasn’t taken out cards - we didn’t have a single deck in our house. One day my grandfather came to his dacha in Komarovo and saw me playing fool with the children of academicians. A very strict conversation took place on this matter. Moreover, since on Solovki the grandfather apparently saw enough fallen women, he believed that it was necessary to fight all manifestations of vulgarity - I was forbidden to use cosmetics. My grandfather believed that I should dress very modestly for classes. Therefore, I wore my mother’s things until I was 20. My grandfather was against my entering the Academy of Arts. Because artists are bohemians. “You’ll stay up late and drink,” although I, an excellent student and a good girl, gave no reason for concern...

-Are you offended by your grandfather?

– It’s hard to say... There was a feeling that everything could have been different. In any case, I try to pamper my daughter, based on the opportunities that we have. In my case, my grandfather went too far. But there were also advantages to his upbringing - for example, money has no value to me now.

Likhachev lived 93 years - and until last day was in good intellectual shape.

“He wanted to achieve a lot both in science and in social activities, so he always thought about health and consciously strived for longevity.

-What did he do for this?

“There was always a strict routine in the house, which in itself is useful. We ate lunch and dinner strictly according to the hour. Grandma was a great cook. There was always a choice of dishes on the table - two soups and several side dishes were served for lunch. Grandfather went to bed early, got up early, and rested for an hour or two after lunch. He was not interested in sports - he considered it not a very decent pastime. But grandfather walked outside for several hours at a time, at the dacha.

Fools and beggars burst into the house

– What did Dmitry Sergeevich’s wife do?

– My grandmother, Zinaida Aleksandrovna, in her youth worked as a proofreader at the publishing house of the Academy of Sciences. There I met my grandfather, in 1936 they got married, in 1937, in a terrible, hungry time, they had twins. Then the grandmother no longer worked, she ran the household. She had to subordinate her entire life to her grandfather. She was also a believer and in her youth she pulled down a girl who came to encourage her to join the Komsomol down the stairs. She loved to receive guests, but only friends and grandfathers’ acquaintances came to our house. Neither I nor my parents could invite their friends. After the death of her grandfather, my grandmother lost interest in life and outlived my grandfather by only a year and a half...

While grandfather was alive, our phone was ringing off the hook and the doorbell was constantly ringing. Anyone could have broken in on us - holy fools, cliques, beggars. Grandfather, when he could and could not, helped people. He treated me strictly, and I couldn’t tell him: “I want shoes,” for example. Strangers often asked for money, and he did not refuse them. And how many children he sent to schools and universities!

– It feels like, despite the “excesses,” Dmitry Sergeevich taught you a lot.

– It is not reading morals that educates, but what the child observes. Since childhood, I have seen that everyone around me is busy with business. Now sometimes I can allow myself not to think about work, lie around, read, but I’m a workaholic - that’s how I was raised. I can work for an idea, as my grandfather did - after all, many of his positions were public, unpaid.

– How do you feel about the word “intellectual”?

– For me, an intellectual is a person who has his own position. I know practically no intelligent people in Moscow and St. Petersburg. No matter what happens, everyone is silent. If grandfather only thought about his scientific career, he would not be such a person. Sometimes he did something to the detriment of himself and his loved ones. A typical case is that my father, an architect, in his youth worked in Speransky’s workshop on a project for the construction of the Leningrad Hotel. And my grandfather sharply opposed this in the press. Dad had to give up his job because his colleagues started looking at him askance, and grandfather didn’t even think about how his position would affect his relative. Can you imagine that one of our intellectuals, with their developed sense nepotism, behaved like that?

Dmitry Likhachev with his granddaughter Zinaida on his 90th birthday. Pushkin House. 1996
Photo from the personal archive of Zinaida Kurbatova

– Zinaida, a lot has been written about Academician Likhachev, but how do you remember your grandfather?

“Unfortunately, I never fully understood what kind of person he was. It was too complex and harsh. How I now regret that I did not think to ask him about very, very many things, that I talked too little with him and with the great people from his circle. With the same uncle Sasha Panchenko, who has now also left...

As a television journalist, I constantly have to meet people, and every now and then I hear that if Dmitry Sergeevich were alive, he would help. Grandfather was always approached on a variety of issues, starting with requests to prevent some mistake, correct an injustice, support something, help someone.

My grandfather had one amazing trait. Many people now simply don’t understand what it’s like to put public interests above personal and family interests. I understand that people largely reflect the time they have been given, and yet...

When construction of the Leningrad Hotel began, my grandfather immediately began to speak out in the press against the construction of a multi-story monster. The hotel spoiled the view of the embankment, and besides, because of it, it was necessary to demolish the Pirogov Museum. The project was carried out by the studio of the architect Speransky, among his employees was the young architect Yuri Kurbatov - my dad, grandfather’s son-in-law. As a result, dad had to look for another job - his colleagues began to look at him askance.

– How did your grandfather react to your son-in-law’s troubles?

“Grandfather, it seems, never found out about this.”

– Zinaida, is it difficult to be the granddaughter of Academician Likhachev?

- Difficult. I was brought up in strictness, they even went too far. This is when my mother passed away. My grandfather constantly reminded me that I should be dressed very modestly, in no case better than other students at the Academy of Arts.

Grandfather always said: “What is permissible for others, you cannot do. You receive special, close attention, and little things become unforgivable, monstrous mistakes in people’s eyes.” In general, he was categorically against any privileges, he believed that it was indecent. One day - he was already about eighty years old - he went to the clinic, and he was recognized and taken to the doctor’s office without a queue. Grandfather returned upset. He says: “What a shame! I leave the office, and Academician Boris Petrovich Nikolsky is sitting in the general queue. Also, he could have passed through an acquaintance just like that, but he didn’t. What a man!” He was in a bad mood for a long time.

Five years have passed - but it seems like he was alive just yesterday... It’s like just yesterday I saw my grandfather slowly, leaning on a stick, walking along a path strewn with leaves in Komarovo. And sometimes I walk past ours old apartment, the lights are on in the windows and it seems that grandfather is sitting in his office at his typewriter. I think I hear his voice: “An intelligent person should not clog up his speech with jargon!” I still remember my grandfather’s instructions about how an intelligent person should behave, although I don’t follow everything.

– And how should an intelligent person behave?

– An intelligent person is obliged to keep a diary. You can talk on the phone only for business purposes and for no longer than two minutes. The answering machine is an absolutely indecent invention. Children at the table should be silent, only if they speak to you, you need to answer. Sports and dancing are a pointless waste of time. The main thing is self-education, you need to read a lot. An intelligent person must throughout his life collect good library by specialty. And my grandfather also said: “Study more music, I’m so sorry that I wasn’t taught to play the piano. Pray at night and cross your pillow, read “Our Father.”

“Compliance with such requirements is indeed not easy.

- Grandfather generally had a very a strong character. Tough, unapologetic, heavy. Grandfather's brothers were completely different - also very beautiful people, talented, hard-working, but at the same time a little, you know, bon vivants.

– What do you think explains that Dmitry Sergeevich was an exception even from family rule?

“His interests were formed under the influence of a friend’s library, which was kept in our house during difficult years. Grandfather became the only humanist in the family; there were only engineers around. By the way, his family did not approve of his choice. Then the university influenced him - teachers, students, the environment itself, but most of all, in his own words, Solovki. There at that moment there was the flower of science, art, and the old Russian officers; the meeting with them could not but affect the survivors.

– Have you ever been to Solovki yourself? And as the granddaughter of Dmitry Sergeevich, and as a journalist?

– Yes, I came there with my grandfather’s memories and a book where he outlined everything on the plan - where his cell was, where which companies were. Everything is rapidly disappearing before our eyes. In my grandfather's cell, the museum made an accounting department with European-quality renovation. What can you do, they are retaking territory from the monastery, they need to establish themselves, there is no time for “ELEPHANT” and its inmates.

I often feel uneasy at how quickly the present becomes the past. Recently I was sent a script written for TV journalist Svanidze. There was the following phrase: “Likhachev was generally lucky on Solovki.”

– And this, and the fact that later, in Norilsk, things were much worse for the prisoners. And still there are formulations that in some cases, in my opinion, are unacceptable. How lucky is it in the camp? Yes, grandfather returned, but absolutely sick.

Now only my grandfather’s nephew remembers this, Sergei Mikhailovich Likhachev, and he is almost 80 years old. Recently, Sergei Mikhailovich told me how his grandfather visited them in Moscow in the mid-1930s, how he lay all the time, could only eat porridge on the water, what pain he had. My great-grandmother, Vera Semyonovna, said: “I don’t know how Mitya will live, how will he survive?” In general, he died many times; his health, contrary to his character, was weak. Grandfather had an amazing will to live and a consciousness of what he was obliged to do. He even worked while lying in bed. I began to feel better only in the early 60s, after surgery.

I still remember how my grandfather died in the hospital. Already unconscious, he drove away someone invisible, tried to get up and take a stick. He shouted: “Go to hell!”, although I had never heard such words from him in my life. He really didn't want to die.

– There is a presidential decree according to which one of the St. Petersburg streets should be named after Dmitry Sergeevich, but, as far as I know, it has not yet been implemented.

– This is a whole story, and not a very beautiful one. Grandfather’s colleague Boris Fedorovich Egorov, who heads the Academy of Sciences commission on Likhachev’s heritage, proposed naming the embankment opposite the Pushkin House in his honor. This would be logical, especially since this embankment does not have a name, and grandfather was against renaming. Boris Fedorovich’s idea was supported by Daniil Aleksandrovich Granin, Alexander Aleksandrovich Fursenko, Lyudmila Alekseevna Verbitskaya, Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovsky, and other respected people. The governor forwarded their appeal to the toponymic commission, but it refused.

- Do you know, why?

– Just from hearsay, I was not invited to this meeting. Later I found out that some kind of construction is planned on this embankment with the participation of the British and French and that some people are interested in this influential officials. Why do they need some Likhachev? Well, let it be the Embankment of Europe, I don’t mind, it’s not a bad name. Another thing is worse: since there is no escape from the presidential decree, they decided to name an alley in the Vyborg district after Likhachev. I really hope that the members of the commission themselves do not know what kind of place this is, otherwise it would be a mockery. The supposed “Likhachev Alley” is an unnamed path where residents of the surrounding houses walk their dogs. There is not and will not be a single house there, since this is a security zone. Accordingly, there is not and never will be the address “Petersburg, Academician Likhachev Street, building one.” It's quite offensive, so it's better not to say anything at all. It turned out even sadder with grandfather's things.

- Tell me.

– At one time, my cousin, who has lived abroad for a long time, wanted to take my grandfather’s things to England - there is a museum of honorary doctors in Oxford. This was after the director of the Pushkin House said that he could not accept grandfather’s things, since there was no space, and the library was not interesting at all. Then my cousin suggested the English version. I convinced her that this was wrong, I was sure then that my grandfather’s medals and robes, his typewriter, his desk should remain in Russia, in St. Petersburg.

We gave the library to my grandfather's students. Now grandfather’s books on the specialty are in places where they were not taken. To be honest, this is very offensive, especially since around the same time the Pushkin House acquired the library of a folklorist with sponsorship money. I can’t say anything, he is a worthy scientist, but still not Dmitry Sergeevich! Not to mention that the Pushkin House owes a lot to my grandfather. For example, when Prince Charles arrived and offered to give money for a facsimile edition of Pushkin's manuscripts, he did this only because he knew his grandfather.

Now, after 5 years have passed since my grandfather’s death and two and a half years after his things were given to the City History Museum, I’m not sure that I did the right thing...

- And what happened?

– At first everything was very nice. The museum staff came, looked at everything, said that they were very interested and that the more we gave them, the better. I gave away things and gave everything: orders, robes (my grandfather’s Oxford mantle was the only one in St. Petersburg. Akhmatova’s mantle disappeared somewhere, and for the Anna Andreevna Museum they sewed a mantle based on my grandfather’s mantle), a collection of diplomas, office furnishings, from the carpet to typewriter, gifts that grandfather received from all over the world.

At first they promised us a special exhibition, later they explained to me that no one promised anything, and then I learned third-hand that some of the things ended up in one folk museum. Apparently they were considered superfluous. I rushed there, everything was confirmed. Without any inventory, they were given two boxes with Dmitry Sergeevich’s belongings, including part of his diplomas, which grandfather valued very much.

Personally, I don’t understand how a competent museum worker can break up a collection, because it’s only interesting when it’s complete. In short, I saw my grandfather’s cap, the carpet, the records, and I felt very sad. True, then at the Museum of the History of the City there was an exhibition of new acquisitions, there was also a corner dedicated to my grandfather, but I didn’t go there. It was hard to look at the remains of familiar things.

– Does it really hurt you when they speak or write badly about Dmitry Sergeevich?

– I try not to pay attention. A person of this level cannot be spared from gossip, rumors, and malice. As you know, stones are thrown only at fruit-bearing trees, but pugs have barked and will continue to bark at elephants.

At one time, Uncle Sasha Panchenko, grandfather’s student and great scientist, liked to say “rotten intelligentsia.” Grandfather was angry, and 20 years ago I was offended to hear this. And Panchenko simply, apparently, looked ahead. Unfortunately, domestic intellectuals are now mostly either crushed, lethargic, or lured. It’s unpleasant for them to remember their brave grandfather, bright person who always had his own opinion and was never afraid of anyone.

– Tell us about your grandmother, what kind of person she was, what kind of relationship she had with Dmitry Sergeevich?

– Grandma Zinaida Aleksandrovna, after whom I was named, came from Novorossiysk, but became a real St. Petersburger. In particular, she managed to independently and quite quickly get rid of the southern dialect; you would never recognize her as a native of the south.

The meaning of my grandmother's life was to serve my grandfather. She lived by his interests, did everything to make him comfortable, delved into all his problems, all his plans. They were an exceptionally friendly couple, experiencing both good and bad together. And now they lie side by side. Thanks to the government for helping to put a cross on my grandparents’ grave. At one time, grandfather drew what he would like to see. At least his will was fulfilled.

– A very personal question, but are you going to somehow mark the five-year anniversary of Dmitry Sergeevich’s departure?

– We will go to the cemetery in Komarovo to remember my grandfather Mitya, academician Dmitry Likhachev. Employees of the ancient Russian literature sector of the Pushkin House always come with flowers on this day. None of his best friends were left alive - grandfather was destined to outlive everyone, as well as two brothers and a daughter - my mother.

Once upon a time we didn’t have a family – a real Likhachev clan. On September 30, grandma always baked pies to celebrate her name day. There were several birthday girls - now there is no family, and only my daughter Vera has an Angel Day.

A sad date coincided with a holiday - this always happens in life.

Saint Petersburg

We are talking about Dmitry Sergeevich Likhachev. Journalist Zinaida Kurbatova, the granddaughter of a philologist and educator, at our request, spoke frankly about her grandfather’s legacy and legacy and why her attempt to create a museum of an academician has not yet been successful.

There is a common phrase that history does not tolerate the subjunctive mood. But how often, when we are in despair because we are unable to change the course of events, we say to ourselves: “If only…”. So I can start sad story about the legacy of my grandfather Dmitry Likhachev. Now, if my mother, Vera Likhacheva, the beloved daughter of an academician, a professor at the Academy of Arts, had been alive, then everything would have turned out differently. Maybe my grandfather thought so too. After all, he hoped that his daughter Vera would continue his work, he trusted her, they wrote articles together, he said with pride: “Vera has my character. She's a fighter." But Vera Dmitrievna Likhacheva died in a car accident on September 10, 1981. I'm in last time saw my mother at breakfast before heading to school. After her death, grandfather will live another eighteen long years. These will be bright years: perestroika will begin, previously banned books will be published, grandfather will come up with and create a Cultural Foundation, attract the “first lady of the USSR” Raisa Gorbacheva to work in it, the Foundation will do a lot of brilliant and important things. Grandfather will finally publish his “Memoirs”, which could not be published in Soviet time. He will write memories about his beloved daughter, hide them away, bury them in books at the dacha. To the farthest corner. So that they would not be found and destroyed by people who did not love Vera. On this notebook he will write: “Zina and her children.” That is, I should have found this notebook, but everything turned out differently. It turned out bitter and unfair. And who promised that everything should be fair?

After the death of his daughter, my mother, grandfather will be destined to live another eighteen long years

So, in order. We all lived together - grandfather, grandmother and the families of his two daughters - in an apartment on Muzhestva Square, an ordinary brick house, but the apartment was large. Grandfather loved the outskirts: green parks, silver ponds... When grandfather died, a very sick grandmother, Zinaida Aleksandrovna, remained in the apartment. It was a very difficult period. Soon a certain Alexander Kobak appeared in the house, who invited the grandmother to sign a paper that she agreed with the formation of the Likhachev Foundation. The 92-year-old grandmother put her signature, not quite understanding, however, what and why this Fund was for - she didn’t care. Her Mitya was no longer alive, and she wanted to quickly connect with him. At the same time, my aunt Lyudmila Likhacheva, the second daughter of my grandparents, became terminally ill. It turned out that the grandmother and aunt died almost simultaneously: the grandmother did not want to live without her beloved husband, and three months after her Lyudmila also died. At the Komarovskoye cemetery there was now a whole necropolis of the Likhachev family. I didn’t know about any of my grandfather’s orders regarding the inheritance. It turned out that he bequeathed the archive to the Pushkin House, and all the contents of the apartment, all the valuables, which, of course, were few, and copyrights to his daughter Lyudmila. The archives were given to the Pushkin House during my grandmother’s lifetime. Lyudmila destroyed part of her grandfather’s diaries and censored some records about the family. This was the beginning of the misfortunes associated with the archives. When Professor Gelian Prokhorov, my grandfather’s student, found out about this, he cried out: “How can you destroy Likhachev’s notes!” But it was already too late.

As a result of the chain of deaths, the only heir became Lyudmila’s daughter, my cousin, named Vera. Since 1982 she lived abroad. And he lives there to this day. She immediately sold the dacha in Komarovo. A small part of the books ended up in the village library thanks to local historian Irina Snegova. In these books she also found a brown notebook, my grandfather’s memories of my mother. I am very grateful to Irina for giving me these memories, this notebook. I donated books on my specialty to the Pushkin House: for several months, employees came to my apartment, sorted it out, and took away what they needed. Finally the day came to remove all these volumes along with my grandfather’s huge bookcase. Gelian Mikhailovich Prokhorov helped me. Now the books are in the department that my grandfather led for many decades. We agreed with my cousin, and all the rarities, all the furnishings of the office were given to the Museum of the History of the City, whose director Boris Arakcheev verbally promised to arrange a separate exhibition or even Likhachev’s office. There is no exposition, no office. In response to all my questions they answered me: “You are not an heir.” I tried to encourage my cousin to communicate with museum workers, to make demands, to control. In vain. From Manchester everything looks different. Now Dmitry Sergeevich’s things that we transferred are in different funds. And the City History Museum is not going to change anything. For several years now I have been writing letters to various authorities, asking the powers that be about the Likhachev Museum. Recently, the City Culture Committee responded to me with a letter saying: “The creation of a Likhachev Museum is not possible.” And it was explained that such a decision was made collectively, together with employees of the Likhachev Foundation and employees of the Pushkin House. I don’t know whether museum workers and curators were actually at the meeting where such a decision was made.

On November 28, 2016, on my grandfather’s birthday, Governor Georgy Poltavchenko said that there would be a Likhachev Museum. Now the committee subordinate to him refuses this. Somehow illogical. In response to a letter to the executive director of the Likhachev Foundation, Kobak received the answer: “The Likhachev Foundation - public organization and is not involved in museums.” So where is the logic? If the Likhachev Foundation is not involved in museums, why did this Foundation, together with the Committee on Culture, render a verdict that the exhibition cannot be created? I can only guess. The reasons for such an attitude towards the memory of a great man who did so much for the country and the city can only be laziness, indifference and arrogance. Qualities that have been so characteristic of my native St. Petersburg in recent years. Well, as for the Likhachev Foundation, the secret here, apparently, is that its leadership does not need a “competing company”: after all, if there is a museum, then the money will go there, past the Foundation.

I am not a museum worker, but I understand perfectly well that modern museum can be done without memorial objects - it can be virtual, based on documents and photographs. And all the family photo albums and rare documents remained with me.

Now there is confidence that a small museum will be organized on Solovki, where my grandfather served his sentence in the Gulag. We agreed on this with Igor Orlov, the governor of the Arkhangelsk region. He is a fast-moving person, a good owner, and quickly made this decision. We also discussed the option of an exhibition in the Arkhangelsk Museum, but settled on Solovki. Orlov asked His Holiness for a blessing for the museum, and it was recently received. We decided to move the barracks outside the monastery, which is directly subordinate to the patriarch, and make an exhibition there. The barracks are indirectly, but connected with the name of the grandfather: they housed a children's colony, where the young prisoner Likhachev often visited, rescuing difficult teenagers. This is an important aspect of his stay in the Solovetsky special purpose camps, about which little is known. Likhachev believed that children of prisoners should be kept in separate barracks, that with adult criminals they would most likely die. Excursions about Likhachev could well be held on Solovki. Show, for example, the “Likhachevsky Stone”: on it the grandfather and his friend, the nephew of the famous writer Korolenko, carved their last names. So that the memory of them remains if they die. Grandfather survived. Vladimir Korolenko was shot on the island in 1937.

It’s strange to me that the officials of St. Petersburg or the Likhachev Foundation do not consider it their duty to perpetuate the memory of the first honorary citizen of the city in modern history. The list of how much Likhachev has done is endless. It’s easier to say that my grandfather was unable to be protected. All his life he fought against the destruction of architectural and historical monuments. His first article on this topic in Literaturnaya Gazeta was published in January 1955. It was dedicated to the protection of the wooden churches of the Russian North and the stone Krasnogorsk Bogoroditsky Monastery near the city of Pinega. Last year I was there - ruins. He also failed to save the Church of the Savior on Sennaya. He sent a telegram to the head of the city, but he said: “I will receive this telegram tomorrow.” And the church was blown up - this story was told to me at one time by the late academician Alexander Panchenko. I myself remember how in Sestroretsk my grandfather liked the hut from Peter’s time. He walked around her, taking photographs. I sent a letter to the city leadership stating that this hut should be declared a monument and cannot be demolished. What do you think? They tore it down a week later. Now, driving past, I see four birch trees that grew under the windows of that hut. Why did it have to be destroyed? Out of spite. But my grandfather got his way much more often. For example, everyone knows the Leningrad Hotel, now St. Petersburg, on the Neva embankment - so, according to the original design, it should have been high-rise, vertical. Likhachev fought against the skyscraper, fought like a lion, and the hotel was made horizontal. Today I think how good it is that my grandfather is no longer alive: he would not have survived the skyline of St. Petersburg spoiled by Mont Blanc and other structures. Among the monuments he saved was the entire Nevsky Prospekt, which they wanted to disfigure by making absolutely all the first floors of the buildings the same - with glass and concrete display cases. Thanks to him, it was possible to preserve the historical appearance of Novgorod, restore the estate of Alexander Blok Shakhmatovo, create a museum of Pushkin in Zakharovo, Mendeleev in Boblovo, and make Mon Repos Park near Vyborg a museum-reserve. He defended the house of Marina Tsvetaeva in Borisoglebsky Lane in Moscow, which they wanted to demolish. It was he who sounded the alarm when there was a fire in the Library of the Academy of Sciences: he went to Moscow and banged his fist on the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He protested against the insane project of turning the northern rivers, thanks to him, the creator of the theory of ethnogenesis, Lev Gumilyov, was published and then the creator of the theory of ethnogenesis appeared on television with lectures, although their views were different.

The Soviet and then the Russian Cultural Foundation under his leadership was a real militant organization: thanks to the enormous international authority of his grandfather, he returned cultural values to Russia, was engaged in restoring spiritual and cultural ties between Russians abroad and the Fatherland, looked for young talents throughout the country, defended our great small cities and museums of the Russian province. When the draft manuscript of “Fathers and Sons” was put up for auction at the Sotheby’s auction house in London, Likhachev called the then Prime Minister of the USSR Nikolai Ryzhkov and explained that everything needed to be done to ensure that the manuscript ended up in Russia. Bought. My grandfather was especially proud of this operation. And the academician himself transported Turgenev’s things across the border in order to return them to the writer’s estate, Spasskoye-Lutovinovo. Many Russian emigrants responded to Dmitry Sergeevich’s call to transfer their libraries and archives to their homeland, donating the most precious thing to the Cultural Foundation - hundreds of storage units. They did this primarily because they believed in Likhachev. For several years, the De Beers company, at the request of the academician, sponsored the “Return” program: they managed to return to their homeland letters from Tsvetaeva, Bunin, Remizov, the huge archive of Mark Aldanov, complete sets of the magazines “Modern Notes”, “Numbers”, the almanac “Air Routes” ", photographs with autographs of Fyodor Chaliapin, Anna Pavlova, Matilda Kshesinskaya. Grandfather became friends with Lydia Borisovna Varsano, a very wealthy Frenchwoman of Russian origin, and she helped young musicians, wards of the New Names program, among whom was pianist Denis Matsuev. When the heat was turned off in the Pushkin House in the early 1990s, Likhachev said that he would leave the Academy of Sciences if heat was not provided. Dali.

Grandfather was a real fighter, and his voice was not at all quiet, although in relation to him the expression “quiet voice of an intellectual” came into use. It was a loud, even very loud voice. How can you live such a life, do so much and be quiet? Impossible.

After his death, the archive of Dmitry Sergeevich Likhachev went to the Pushkin House, where he worked for more than sixty years. Scattered notebooks with notes remained: these are translations of fragments English books about the gardens and parks that Likhachev was so keen on and about which he wrote in recent years; plans for the near future. There are also notebooks where grandfather wrote down thoughts not only for memory, but, probably, for future work. In very small beaded handwriting, most likely in recent months life, in 1999, he wrote: “Atheism gives nothing. On the contrary, he takes something away from the world, makes it empty. Faith in God, on the contrary, expands the world, makes it significant, fills it with meaning. This meaning is different in different religions, but at the same time it is always rich and in some respects the same, because it presupposes the immortality of the soul... This meaning unites people.”

I keep these notes and letters at home. For example, messages addressed in the summer of 1988 to me, my husband and daughter Vera, who was then infant. We, still students at that time, were on vacation in Estonia; my grandparents lived in a dacha in Komarov. Each letter included a message from both grandmother and grandfather. We are all accustomed to this style of communication. There were no secrets from anyone. Grandfather always asked grandmother to fill in if he forgot something. This is how grandfather’s famous memoirs about Leningrad blockade"How we stayed alive."

“Dear Zinochka and Verochka! Our weather is rainy and cold. Grandfather is going to London for three days. The magazine “Our Heritage” is printed there, and on August 23 there will be a reception at which the finished magazine will be presented. Grandfather is traveling with Enisherlov. Maybe Myasnikov will join. Yesterday my grandfather was filmed by the Sverdlovsk studio. A film about the Old Believers. We almost never have guests. Once the Granins came. More often on business, you have to give tea, and sometimes<кормить>lunch. Now it’s very difficult for me to cook...” - this is what my grandmother writes.

On the following pages, the grandfather’s firm handwriting: “Dear Zinochka, Igor and Verochka. We really miss. I have too much work to do. And I really don’t want to work. Either from fatigue. Either from meaninglessness. They call, come, and ask all the time. I often refuse, but often I cannot refuse, because I need help. I am very concerned about my grandmother's health. She gets tired immediately and has sudden attacks of weakness. Today I’m going to the city, and tomorrow we’ll go to our doctor, Tamara Grigorievna. Age takes its toll, but I’m stronger than my grandmother. This is also very bad. We all think and talk about Verochka - what she is like.”

Grandfather and grandmother were married couple, which everyone around admired. But if Likhachev’s life has been studied quite well, and more than one biographical book has been written, then little is known about his life partner. As well as some tragic family situations.

Of course, at that time in the USSR there were much richer, hospitable houses and luxury dachas. But it's usually at home great artists, favorites of the party and government, apartments of Soviet bars, like the descendants of Alexei Tolstoy, the official “writer’s generals”. The Likhachevs were neither Soviet bars, nor, of course, party favorites - on the contrary. They did not receive the house as a gift from the country's leaders or by inheritance. By the way, foreigners were surprised at the dacha in Komarov. This is an apartment in a wooden barracks, with cardboard walls, and a kitchen of four square meters. A garden containing one apple tree and one bench. The St. Petersburg apartment is also in a new building, with small rooms and low ceilings. The Likhachevs created their home, their idyll themselves, in spite of all the circumstances of life. They built it together, otherwise it was impossible. In the 1930s, a strong family is the only way to withstand the surrounding horror and chaos. During the blockade, the “Leningrad Affair” and ideological studies, this is the only way to survive.

In addition to his family, Likhachev also built another house in 1970: The Department of Old Russian Literature in the Pushkin House ceased to be only the scientific sector of the institute. Likhachev gathered faithful disciples, for whom, if necessary, he stood strong. Their joint scientific works became known throughout the world. Likhachev and his students were also incredible popularizers of Russian antiquity. Thanks to the academician Old Russian culture became so significant that it was discovered not only by specialists. Likhachev takes care of provincial scientists; he organizes trips for his students to the provinces, where they visit monasteries and give lectures at local universities. They also compile books for children - retellings of Russian chronicles. Among the students there are outstanding ones: for example, the future academician Alexander Panchenko. The “sector workers” wrote humorous poems, one of which became the department’s anthem - “In the house that DS built.”

It was October 1934. A young man came to the Leningrad branch of the publishing house of the Academy of Sciences to get a job. While he modestly waited for an audience with the director, young female employees looked at him with curiosity. Among them is proofreader Zina Makarova: she immediately liked the visitor. Tall, handsome, intelligent... And he was also very poorly dressed. In late autumn - in summer canvas shoes, carefully polished with chalk. A thought immediately flashed through her mind: he probably had big family, children. But in the publishing house the salaries of employees are small. It was clear that the applicant was timid and unsure of himself: he had probably been knocking around for a long time in search of work. When the director left the office, the determined Zina immediately began to ask him: “Take this young man come to our publishing house, take it!” The visitor was Dmitry Likhachev, a future academician, a great scientist. Zinaida Makarova will marry him, save his life several times, become his support, support, best friend.

There were less than two months left before Kirov’s murder, and six months before the “Kirov stream,” that is, the expulsion of all unreliable people from Leningrad. But even in October 1934, Leningrad was very restless. Windowless vans with the sign “Bread” drive around the city at night. And the next morning people find out: they took a neighbor, a colleague, a relative. They talk about it in whispers, they are afraid. The Leningrad branch of the publishing house of the Academy of Sciences is headed by Mikhail Valerianov. In his youth, before the revolution, he worked as a page maker, a highly qualified typesetter at the Printing Yard. Then, before the revolution, the chief engineer here was Sergei Mikhailovich Likhachev. Valerianov remembered Dmitry as a little boy. Mitya loved books, he liked to watch the typesetters at work. And now he is looking for a job. Valerianov took it. At that time, the publishing house of the Academy of Sciences was filled with “former people.” This is a completely official term that was used in relation to nobles, officers of the tsarist army, priests and their children, and merchants. Many of them will soon be arrested, shot, and expelled from Leningrad. Dmitry Likhachev's friend, Mikhail Steblin-Kamensky, a nobleman, left home with his wife every day - to the Philharmonic, to visit, and then for a long time, on foot through the night city, they returned home. They were playing for time because they knew that they could be arrested at any moment.

There was a legend in our family. Grandfather was embarrassed to meet grandmother, so his friend, Steblin-Kamensky, introduced him to the girl. Well, then, eighty years ago, in the intelligent circles of Leningrad, the rules still remained good manners pre-revolutionary times. Soon they started dating. We went for a walk to the islands, favorite vacation spots for many generations of Leningraders: Elagin, Kamenny, Krestovsky. Mitya - that’s what his loved ones called him - spoke, Zina listened. Pretty soon she recognized him main secret. He was arrested on political charges and served time in Solovki. People knew about the Solovetsky special purpose camp. They told terrible things about him. To be there meant to go through all the circles of hell. And this unsociable young man with blue eyes, modest, shy even for that time, was in this hell. She knew how to listen, and he told her. Of course, not all. The worst thing was impossible to remember. My memory refused, it didn’t want to recreate the details.

At the end of the 1920s, the Soviet government began to fight all companies, circles, and journals where thinking people and, of course, young people gathered. Mitya Likhachev also had such a group of intelligent, well-read friends. They were in their twenties. And so they came up with the comic Space Academy of Sciences - CAS. How joyful the future seemed to them! It was a hard time, but they were very young. They wanted to be happy. We would gather at someone’s house and exchange books. They made reports and argued. Mitya read a serious report about the dangers of the new spelling. About the fact that the spelling introduced Soviet power supposedly to simplify the written language, abolishing some letters and changing the spelling of words is “damage and decline in Russian literacy.” A few days later, Mitya and his friends decided to congratulate one of the members of the circle, Dmitry Kallistov, with a comic telegram. It said that the Pope was sending congratulations. This was enough for the investigator to open a case about counter-revolutionaries, develop it, and receive a promotion.

In the investigative file it was said: “According to the testimony of members of the KAN, it was established that at the end of December 1927, at the 54th meeting, a member of the KAN, Dmitry Sergeevich Likhachev, in his report on Bero’s book “What I Saw in Moscow,” published abroad, cited statistics of those executed bodies of the GPU during the revolution... He, Likhachev, made a report on the topic “Traditions of holy Russian spelling.” The report boiled down to the fact that Russia, after the change in spelling, is deprived of the grace of God...

Dmitry Pavlovich Kallistov read anti-Soviet articles to some members of the KAN. Members of KAN obtain prohibited literature and newspapers. At the same time, it became known that the above-mentioned Dmitry Pavlovich Kallistov kept in his apartment a secret report on the white-emigrant press issued by the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, which he read to his anti-Soviet friends.

In order to prevent further growth of this circle, on the night of February 8th of this year. the following members were arrested: Rosenberg Eduard Karlovich, Kallistov Dmitry Pavlovich, Likhachev Dmitry Sergeevich, Terekhovko Anatoly Semenovich, Rakov Vladimir Tikhonovich, Moshkov Petr Pavlovich ... "

On February 8 they came for Mitya. They looked for books and found banned publications. It was clear: a provocateur had infiltrated the Space Academy. Although only close friends were accepted there. Our own. Other members of the Space Academy and some senior mentors were also arrested. They also took the girl whom Mitya was courting - Valya Morozova. She was 17 years old. She, a schoolgirl, asked to give her a ball to her cell. Then they finally released her.

...After being in a cell on Shpalernaya and grueling interrogations, they are given sentences. Some are three years old, and Mitya Likhachev, Volodya Rakov, Eduard Rosenberg are five years old. They were supposed to serve them on Solovki. There were no other terms then, but later 10 and 25 years appeared, and then the five-year term began to be called “children’s”. The horrors began from the very moment the prisoners were sent to Solovki: people suffocated in the hold of the steamship Gleb Bokiy. But even this nightmare could not obscure the meeting of the future researcher of ancient Russian literature and history with the mighty northern monastery.

At first, Mitya worked as a laborer, a “vreedl,” that is, a temporary horse worker. Simply, he carried loads on himself. Every day could be the last. Many times he was on the verge of death. The pass was stolen - an old criminal helped out - the pass was planted. One time Mitya went into the forest without permission and was discovered by one of the camp commanders. He chased him on horseback and tried to shoot him, but Mitya escaped. Then came typhus, from which hundreds of prisoners died. And again he miraculously survived.

And the most important thing for him Solovetsky history. That day, his parents and brother came to visit him. But the prisoners escaped, and to intimidate the others they planned a mass execution. Everything was done at night; Dmitry Likhachev was also supposed to be shot, but he hid, and in the confusion they forgot about him.

But Mitya remained a scientist. In the camp I wrote down and studied the thieves' argot of criminals. I wrote an article about this, it was published in the Solovetsky Islands magazine, which was published in the camp. Then a second article appeared - about card games of criminals. Likhachev knew the vocabulary of thieves very well, obscenities. And one day it saved his life. The Urks lost it at cards. After all, sometimes they played on people. The loser had to kill one of the neighbors in the barracks. The choice fell on Mitya. The knife was already raised above him when Likhachev sent the attacker towards his mother. Yes, it’s so ornate and multi-story that the idiot pulled back his hand with the knife: “Student, you’re one of ours!” The criminals took him for one of their own, a thieve.

Dmitry Sergeevich did not tell anyone about this. And he didn’t write it in his memoirs. The son of one of his cell neighbors told about this incident. Likhachev already realized his mission. He must become a great scientist. And Mitya recorded what he experienced and learned in the camp: words, conventional signs, drawings. He understood perfectly well that he had become a participant in an incredible historical event. Moreover, he took some rarities from Solovki. He put them in a box, which he called " family museum" There was a spoon with inscriptions - an indispensable part of a prisoner's property. And an English dictionary - Mitya Likhachev in the camp tried not to forget the language he studied at Leningrad University.

After the horrors he experienced, his character became very difficult. After the camp, when his license was impaired, when he could be arrested again, deported, he perceived every unexpected event in only one way - negative, he predicted worst option. He was constantly wary of informers and informers. This remains for life. That’s also why it was always difficult with him. But Zina Makarova agreed to his marriage proposal. He took it on the tram when they were returning from a walk on the islands. She said yes without hesitation. It was main man her life. Now she knew that she would do everything for him. Will be able to give up a lot, if necessary, change. And so it happened.

There was no wedding. The young could not even buy elegant clothes, wedding rings Back then it was generally not customary to wear it, and they didn’t say: “they had a wedding,” they said: “they signed.” Photographs taken shortly after the remarkable event have been preserved. Sitting to the side is Zina's father, Alexander Alekseevich Makarov, a modest employee. He is clearly shy and feels awkward. Zina and Mitya now settled in a communal apartment with Mitya’s parents, Vera Semyonovna and Sergei Mikhailovich Likhachev. The house stood on Lakhtinskaya Street on the Petrograd side, the apartment was located on the top floor - dark, the rooms were small. But they were happy. Together they took “hack work” to the house for earning extra money, and sat down at the table with the older Likhachevs. Zina was an excellent cook. Sergei Mikhailovich liked her. The mother-in-law believed that her beloved son had married a girl too simple origin, from the people.

Zinaida Aleksandrovna Makarova was born in 1907 in Novorossiysk. My father worked as a salesman in a store for wealthy relatives. Mom was a housewife. Zina is the eldest of the children. She had three brothers: Vasya, Kolya and Lenya. In Novorossiysk they survived Civil War. Nobles, tsarist officers, merchants - everyone whom the Bolsheviks could shoot - fled through the Novorossiysk port from the Bolsheviks. Zina once saw a meeting of two middle-aged women in church. One rushed to the other with tears: “Princess, you are here too!” In 1920, there was a typhus epidemic, Zina fell ill, but recovered, but her mother died. At the age of 13, the girl was left an orphan and the older sister of three boys. Father's only assistant. She studied well at school, but she had to run the household and provide housework for her brothers. Grandmother always remembered and later told how she sewed a shirt for brother Kolya, but did not calculate it, and the sleeves turned out to be short.

Zina was dark-haired and dark-skinned. A true southerner. She swam beautifully and easily crossed Tsemes Bay. Many photographs have been preserved: she and her friends in swimsuits on the beach. Zina is slender, tall, height - 172 cm. At that time she was too tall and thin, now they would say - a model, but then plump girls were in fashion. She had many friends and was always the center of attention. She really wanted to study and become a doctor. But oh higher education and it was impossible to dream. I had to work and raise my brothers. Probably, these childhood circumstances made her like this - responsible, reliable, always ready to help. The family was supported by her. She was very religious. And capable of action. She recalled how a female agitator came to their home and called on her and her brothers to join the Komsomol. Zina pulled her down the stairs. And then - a new misfortune: the youngest Lenya died from electric shock. After burying him, the family decided to leave for Leningrad in search of better life. Zina had absolute literacy, and she got a job as a proofreader at the publishing house of the Academy of Sciences.

Dmitry Likhachev - one of the St. Petersburg intellectuals. The family read a lot and had a box at the Imperial Mariinsky Theater. True balletomanes, they saw both the “short-legged” Kshesinskaya and Karsavina. Vera Semyonovna Likhacheva came from a family of very wealthy Old Believers merchants and was distinguished by some snobbery. She had many acquaintances in the artistic community. In the summer they rented a dacha in Kuokkala, now it is Repino. Before the revolution, Chukovsky, Repin, Kulbin lived here, on the shores of the Gulf of Finland... My grandfather remembered his neighbors forever.

All three Likhachev sons are handsome and very successful. Yura and Misha are engineers. And suddenly Mitya, my mother’s favorite, married a simple girl who speaks with a southern accent and pronounces a soft “g”, just like housekeepers. Since childhood, this Zina was not used to reading, going to the philharmonic or the theater, or playing croquet. Her element, of course, is cooking borscht. In a word, a commoner. Mitya and Zina were so different that from the outside it was not entirely clear why they were together, what connected them. But, probably, this was the secret of their mutual attraction and strong relationship. He - northern man, reserved, tough, even gloomy after the camp. In his wife, Dmitry received something that was not in his own character. Zinaida had purely southern vitality, optimism, and openness. She enjoyed cooking and always sang romances and popular songs. Gradually the spouses changed. Dmitry has changed. He had incredible complexes - a poor, useless camp prisoner in torn galoshes. His older brother Mikhail, who by that time had made a good career as an engineer in Moscow, made fun of him. His parents often scolded him, and even loving father called him a hungry man. And he reproached me for choosing a meaningless profession. Who needs philologists? It's different being an engineer. Now, until the end of his days, Dmitry had a strong rear, his beloved wife and her constant support. There was a man who always looked at him with loving eyes and considered him an outstanding scientist.

Zina quickly became a real Leningrader. She overcame her southern accent, her soft “g”, and now she had an intelligent, correct speech. Before her marriage, she spent a lot of time with her friends and loved noisy gatherings with a guitar and gramophone. Zina constantly supported her father and brothers. But, having become Dmitry’s wife, she practically stopped meeting with friends and family, all her time was devoted to her husband. After the war, she invited her only surviving front-line brother Vasily to the house. And only on those days when my husband was on a business trip.

This girl became the lifelong friend of the future academician. And she immediately began to help him in everything, selflessly, energetically. With all his southern temperament. She had practicality and the ability to win people over. She decided that precious Mitya should have her criminal record expunged. Otherwise, a new arrest may follow. What should I do? A plan came to her mind. A lady worked at the publishing house, scientific proofreader Ekaterina Mastyko, who in her youth had fun in the same company with the future People’s Commissar Krylenko. Zina begged her to go to Moscow and ask for Mitya Likhachev... Zina found money for the trip and gave Mastyko her best jacket. And everything worked out. The trip was successful, Krylenko explained what to do and who to contact. The conviction was cleared. Just before the war, Likhachev got a job at the Institute of Russian Literature, otherwise Pushkin House, in the Department of Old Russian Literature. On the eve of the war, he defended his PhD thesis on the Novgorod chronicles.

And on August 4, 1937, he and Zinaida had twins, two girls. The nanny approached the woman in labor and said with sympathy: “Don’t be upset, honey. They don't live long." Times were hard. The birth of twins meant that the parents were in dire straits unless the father was a Red Army commander and National artist. Dmitry did not earn much then, Zina had to quit her job. Sergei Mikhailovich helped. “You’re so sad, Zinochka,” he said and secretly handed Zina a few rubles.

The girls turned out to be very different. Vera was blonde with blue eyes and elongated features, all of the Likhachev breed. Fast, smart, brave. Lyudmila inherited her southern appearance: black, dark, snub-nosed. And her character was completely different. Shy and sickly, she began to walk late. I was too lazy to run after the ball. In all the childhood photographs she has this expression on her face as if she is about to cry.

The children had a nanny, Tamara, a peasant woman who had fled from a dispossessed village. She lived with the family: then it was a common thing.

On September 8, 1941, the blockade of Leningrad began, and already in October, famine began. They did not evacuate: it was very difficult, only certain enterprises and factories left the city. Professionals with families. The children were evacuated, but the Likhachevs decided not to part with their girls. If we die, then we all die together. They survived the worst blockade winter of 1941–1942 in Leningrad. The Likhachev family was starving, like everyone else. We survived thanks to Zina. And then every day for decades, Dmitry Sergeevich told his daughters and then granddaughters at dinner: “You all live thanks to your grandmother. She saved us during the blockade."

125 grams of bread, put on the cards, had to be redeemed in the store. The queues were terrible. And the frost is minus forty. Zinaida got up at two in the morning, put on all her warm clothes and went to take her place in line for bread. The police dispersed such queues. But people hid in the courtyards and then returned to their places. And so every morning. Zinaida also went to Malaya Nevka to fetch water: it was her responsibility. Sometimes a nanny helped. At the flea market, she exchanged her dresses and her mother-in-law’s gold rings for bread. It was very dangerous - they could kill. They could have put chalk instead of flour. Dmitry Sergeevich became very weak, and by spring he became dystrophic. He never went for bread or water; his wife did all this and relieved him of all responsibilities. And he was studying scientific work. At the beginning of 1942, Likhachev received an assignment from the city leadership. Together with the historian Tikhanova, they wrote the book “Defense of Ancient Russian Cities.” A thin book on bad paper - it was distributed to soldiers to increase morale. In the trenches, Arkasha Selivanov, a friend of Mitya’s youth and also a former prisoner, also received it. He was happy - it means Mitya is alive.

On March 1, Sergei Mikhailovich Likhachev died of hunger. Zina took his body on a children's sled to the park: from there the dead were taken and buried in mass graves. Dmitry Sergeevich was very close to his father and had a hard time coping with this loss. Fully occupied with her family, Zina rarely visited her father; he lived on the other side of the city. One day she came to his communal apartment and found out that Alexander Makarov had died of hunger. It was never found out which cemetery the body was taken to. Many other relatives also died from exhaustion.

Having survived a terrible famine, the Likhachevs no longer wanted to evacuate. But then Dmitry Sergeevich was called to the police station. They scared me and pretended to be arrested. Tempered by the Solovki, he already knew how to behave. Then they simply crossed out his registration in his passport. And then the couple were forced to evacuate to Kazan, along with academic institutions.

Many details of that period remained blank spots. Letters have been preserved. Likhachev wrote to his wife from Leningrad. The family remained in Kazan, and he, in already liberated Leningrad, tried to settle down and call his family. Then a new misfortune befell him: his documents were stolen. Apparently, this is what he tried to talk about in the letter, but, of course, between the lines. During the evacuation, my daughter Vera became very ill and almost died.

Here are some letters that Likhachev, while in Leningrad, sent to his family in Kazan.

“8.11.44. Dear Zinochka and mommy. Yesterday I was at Aunt Olya’s, then at Varv’s for dinner. Pavel. She cooked a pie, a wonderful soup, unsalted cookies, etc. She also had Lyubov Grigorievna and Elizaveta Ivanovna. Anastasia Pavlovna, of course, was 3 hours late. Then in the evening I visited Peterson. I drank tea with fruit, etc. The Likhachevs live not bad. Today I’m going to Aunt Lyuba to pick up a parcel and I’ll call Anastasia Pavlovna from her, since Ninochka is going on vacation to Yurik. How good it is! Well done Ninochka. They have Yura's photographs everywhere in their home. Today I’ll find out about the mountains. station about tickets. I want to leave on the 10th. Since on the ninth I will receive money from Zhakt for repairs and wages. I won’t bring any shoes or galoshes for the children. I kiss you deeply. Again no letters from you. Only received 2 these days (4 days ago). Mitya."

“Dear Zinochka and mommy! I was supposed to leave on the 11th and already had a ticket to Kazan on the 10th, but on the 10th it turned out that I had to stay for a week. It's terribly annoying. I really want to leave as soon as possible, but I have no luck. I'll come and tell you. I think that I will be able to leave around Saturday or Sunday. I’ll try to look for galoshes for children, but so far I haven’t come across children’s ones. I bought five oblique notebooks. Don't be bored - everything will be fine. Don’t worry about your health: I don’t do physical work. And the room is relatively warm: I heat the stove with the remains of the boards from the ceiling. I kiss everyone deeply. Mitya. 11/13/44."

They finally returned to Leningrad. Life seemed to be getting better. But then the Leningrad Affair began. This also affected the research staff of the Institute of Russian Literature. Likhachev was “worked through.” Now few people know this word, but then it had a very real sinister meaning. The person was seated on the stage facing the audience; there were colleagues in the assembly hall. The responsible party worker began to aggressively analyze the biography, scientific works, and views of the person being studied. The rest had to speak, discussing the biography and actions of the unfortunate man, and adding something. It was unbearable. And it could also end in arrest. Likhachev, they say, when they were working on him, looked at the ceiling. So that his colleagues do not see his tears...

Fate decreed that he had to become what he became. She protected him for something very important: scientific works, social activities, protection of architectural and historical monuments, struggle for Russian culture and defense of its interests. Death seemed to follow him on his heels and let him go every time.

In 1949, Likhachev went to a barber, who accidentally cut him while shaving. Blood poisoning began. The children remembered how he lay on the bed and quietly moaned in pain. Zina was sitting by the bed. “Go work in a publishing house, they will remember you there. Take care of the children." They said goodbye and he was taken to the hospital. He should have died. But Misha’s older brother, who lived in Moscow and held a high position, managed to obtain penicillin, which was rare at that time. Antibiotics had only just become available at that time. ordinary people were not relied upon. Misha did the impossible: penicillin was delivered to Leningrad, and Dmitry survived. They had not just a family, but a real clan. The brothers were friendly and always helped each other.

The Likhachev daughters grew up, Vera entered the Academy of Arts at the art history department, Lyudmila entered the art history department of Leningrad University. Both got married almost simultaneously: Vera - to the architect Yuri Kurbatov, Mila - to the physicist Sergei Zilitinkevich. Dmitry Sergeevich kept everyone in his household strictly. The daughters were not allowed to separate; everyone had to live together. He was the head of the family. He was the first to take a spoon at the table, he determined the entire strategy. Having created such a family with unmodern rules of life, he resisted the surrounding Soviet realities. And this is a story that can also be endlessly surprising.

Despite the outward prosperity, everything was not so simple. Likhachev was being watched. He was actually in disgrace - a former camp inmate, unreliable. He was not allowed to go abroad, despite a lot of invitations from dozens of universities around the world. Nowhere except Bulgaria. Since then and to this day, the cult of Likhachev has existed in Bulgaria. All the correspondence that came to him from abroad was roughly torn and glued together. The letters were read. Sometimes the party leaders of the city called, the first secretary of the regional committee, Grigory Romanov, especially tried. After all, according to their ideas, Likhachev created a nest in his department, where he warmed up anti-Soviet people.

Back in the early 1960s, Likhachev began to speak out against the demolition of churches and architectural monuments, and against ill-conceived high-rise construction in old cities. He wrote articles for newspapers, but he was not invited to television: there was a ban. He greatly irritated those in power. In 1975, he did not sign a letter against Academician Sakharov and was beaten on the stairs of his house. “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” saved me: there were pages with the text of the report in my coat, and they softened the blow. In the spring of 1976, the Likhachevs’ apartment was set on fire. The police directly said that they would not look for anyone and the case would be closed. It was an act of intimidation.

In 1978, a whole series of misfortunes began. The husband of Lyudmila's daughter was arrested. The case was related to financial fraud. Dmitry Likhachev did not particularly sympathize with his son-in-law. But the main thing for him was to preserve the family, its integrity. Reputation. He himself was looking for lawyers, to whom he paid considerable money for those times. He went to these lawyers, was humiliated, and returned broken and pale. But he was already 72 years old. But he did it for his daughter. She was capricious and prone to hysteria, and could not take a hit. They - father and mother - are the most important, they are the support of the family. My son-in-law left the camp in 1984. While he was serving his sentence, his daughter, the Likhachevs’ granddaughter, Vera, married dissident Vladimir Tolts, a man much older than her, unemployed. This was, of course, not the best groom for those times. Together they go abroad. Dmitry Sergeevich begged his granddaughter to wait, because her father is in prison, but the young people build their lives as they want. Created by such efforts, the Likhachev House begins to fall apart.

September 1981 was warm. Dmitry Sergeevich and Zinaida Aleksandrovna were vacationing in the Pushkin Mountains. On September 10, their daughter Vera Likhacheva was hit by a car and died without regaining consciousness. She was always in a hurry to live, she was fast and brave. By that time, at 44 years old, she had already made a career, was a brilliant art critic, a professor at the Academy of Arts, and taught a course on Byzantine art. We were thinking about how to inform the Likhachevs about the tragedy. After all, Vera is Dmitry Sergeevich’s beloved daughter, his hope. Together with her, he wrote several scientific articles, always consulted with her, and was so close to her. Life seemed to fade away. A little later, the academician will write memoirs about his daughter. Grief changed him. My wife Zinaida has become even closer. Now they had to raise me together, a granddaughter left without a mother, named after her grandmother Zina. In their arms was a weak and nervous Lyudmila, who cried and fainted every day. But only the closest and most devoted friends of the family knew about this.

Outwardly everything was the same. Likhachev helped many. He helped with admission to university and graduate school, even helped with money. There were many petitioners. Likhachev considered it his indispensable duty to help those who, like him, had been in Stalin’s camps. The views of Lev Gumilyov were not close to him, but it was he who did everything so that the first book of the “romantic scientist,” as he called Lev Nikolaevich, was published. He brought Gumilyov on television so that his lectures would be recorded. This is the highest nobility - not to waste time on trifles, not to interfere with those who stand in different positions. In 1981, a terrible year for the Likhachev family, he also supported Varlam Shalamov.

With the beginning of perestroika, a new time began for Likhachev. He spoke at Central television, and then they started showing it more and more. Thanks to this, the country recognized him. He headed the Soviet Cultural Foundation, where, thanks to the effective support of Raisa Gorbacheva, he did a lot. Without Likhachev, the Cultural Foundation sank into oblivion.

He finally became a traveller, and already at an advanced age he traveled to Paris, Rome, Tokyo, New York, and London. Sometimes Zinaida Alexandrovna went with him. He loved traveling with her. He did a lot for culture: organizing museums, restoring estates, returning archives to his homeland, publishing previously banned literature - all this took a lot of time and took energy. They started to reward him. He became the first honorary citizen of his native St. Petersburg, the first to receive the Order of St. Andrew the First-Called, restored in the new Russia, which he immediately gave to the Hermitage. His wife still looked at him with loving eyes and was even jealous of the numerous ladies who were surrounded by him. But in one interview, Likhachev said: “There was no happy ending.” The house he had built with such difficulty fell apart before his eyes. There is only one true friend left - his wife Zinaida.

In September 1999, D.S. Likhachev died in St. Petersburg on hospital bed. He really didn't want to leave. Having already lost consciousness, he shouted to someone: “Get away from me, devils!” - and waved his hand, which contained an imaginary stick. He called his wife: “Zina, come!” The last thing that remained in his almost blacked out consciousness was the thought that Zina, as always, would save him. And he will survive.

The civil funeral service lasted for the whole day, almost the whole of St. Petersburg came to say goodbye to the academician, people came from other cities, they walked and walked in an endless stream. The modest cemetery in Komarov could not accommodate everyone who came to say goodbye.

Having become a widow, Zinaida Likhacheva lost the meaning of life. She fell ill and never got up again. She outlived her husband by a year and a half and rested next to him in the Komarovskoye cemetery.

VOICE OF BLOOD.
APPLE FROM APPLE TREE. UNIT OF SOCIETY. KAZH-
WE HAVE STUDYED ONE OF THESE CONCEPTS WITH VERY PARTIAL PART -
STEW. FAMILY THOUGHT, FOLLOWING LEO TOLSTOY, DID NOT GIVE
WE REST. WE FOUND RELATIVES OF THOSE WHO INTRODUCED RUSSIAN
THE CONCEPT OF “INTELLIGENCE” WAS COMMONLY AND DIAGNOSED LENIN,
BUILT THE ROAD OF LIFE AND BECATED TO THE HERMITAGE A COLLECTION OF MA-
FUCKING DUTCHES. SCIENTISTS, ACTORS, COSMONAUTS, TV JOURNAL
LISTS, MUSICIANS AND STATE DUMA DEPUTY SAY THANK YOU
FOR PARENTS - IN THE PEDAGOGICAL POEM OF THE MAGAZINE "SOBAKA.RU".
Texts: Vitaly Kotov, Vadim Chernov, Svetlana Polyakova,

Sergei Minenko, Sergei Isaev

VERA AND ZINAIDA KURBATOVY
The great-granddaughter of Academician Likhachev did not become scientists,

but they founded their own dynasty - television journalists. Zinaida: In our family they used to say: to whom much is given, much is asked. And as a child, I never had a second to spare. If I brought a four, my grandmother would ask: “Why not five?” I didn’t watch TV, didn’t walk in the yard, but studied at an English school, went to a French tutor, studied music and drawing. Sometimes sports sections were added to this. But their grandfather did not encourage them, he was a man Silver Age

but they founded their own dynasty - television journalists. Although it was generally not customary to raise one’s voice in the family. Coming home from school, I spoke a little louder, and they reproached me, saying that it was vulgar. It was important to be able to restrain your feelings, and to experience grief inside is right and worthy. When I entered the Academy of Arts, my grandparents said that the students there were poor students, visitors from other cities, so in no case should you stand out with your clothes. I was dressed simpler than others, so as not to embarrass anyone with my well-being. We had albums with photographs of pre-revolutionary Russia, and as an example they showed me the Tsar’s daughters, dressed in identical modest dresses.

but they founded their own dynasty - television journalists. We used to live as a large family in one apartment: grandparents, my parents’ family and my aunt’s family with her daughter. Grandfather did not want his daughters to be separated; this was part of the patriarchal way of life. There was a folding table that could seat up to forty people; we still have it to this day. Everyone sat down at the table together; it was not customary to be late for dinner or eat alone. Grandfather was the first to serve the plate; grandmother sat by the coffee pot and samovar. There were no advantages for children, everything was divided into equal parts. Perhaps it was due to the blockade. Grandfather and grandmother said that from the first days they shared food equally and thanks to this they saved their lives. And in those families where bread was given to children, the parents died first, followed by the children. The blockade experience also affected us in the fact that nothing was thrown away. You had to eat everything that was on the plate. Grandma was collecting crumbs from the table. The apples were drying.

but they founded their own dynasty - television journalists. The family loved feasts, this is a professorial tradition. When grandfather’s students came to us, they were always treated to food, because they were poor students, and the professor received much more both before the revolution and during Soviet times. They treated everyone who came into the house - from scientists to couriers. I remember when my husband first came to visit, my grandmother rushed to feed him - he was a boarder, and my grandmother admired how well he ate. And at home, grandfather always gave coats to his students. They were embarrassed, and he explained that this is also a tradition.

but they founded their own dynasty - television journalists. It was customary for us to make toys for the Christmas tree with our own hands, to make gifts for the holidays. Here my dad worked with me a lot, he told me about architecture using the example of paper models that we made with him. And my grandfather encouraged me to make books myself and allowed me to type on his typewriter. In Komarovo, my comrades and I published the Indian Time magazine, where, in addition to comics about the adventures of the Indians, there were also scientific articles that we wrote ourselves. Grandfathers I knew brought me books about Indians in English. This is also an art - to notice what a child likes and guide his development. From scientific activity grandfather was distracted by the physical. He loved to work in the garden, he had a whole library on floriculture. I remember how in the fall my grandfather dug up the roots of dahlias and put them in boxes. He brought pink geranium from Bulgaria, which he considered a medicinal plant. We gave it to all our neighbors in Komarovo. There is still a huge jasmine bush growing there; my grandfather carefully watched when it bloomed in order to collect the flowers.

, when sports were considered a waste of time, and believed that for good health it was enough to walk at a brisk pace and follow a daily routine. Idleness was considered the greatest sin. Grandparents said that all quarrels, intrigues, and hysterical acts occur when a person is not busy with work. I entered the Russian department of the philological department, where my great-grandfather studied. A particularly important subject was Old Russian literature- Of course, I couldn’t pass it badly. When I left the exam, the teacher breathed a sigh of relief: she was Likhachev’s student. Only at that moment did the group find out who my great-grandfather was. Even then I wanted to become a journalist, and not study science, so I transferred to the journalism department. From my second year I started working at Radio Russia, then got myself an internship at NTV, where I stayed for a year and a half.