The story was fascinating because I knew nothing about the pioneers. Pioneers - Heroes Stories about pioneers for children are short

On May 19, 1922, the second All-Russian conference of the Komsomol adopted a decision to establish pioneer detachments throughout the Soviet Union. This date is considered the birthday of the pioneer. The pioneer movement lasted almost 70 years and, despite the fact that it was abolished a quarter of a century ago, every Russian knows who the pioneers are and can recognize them in old photographs and postcards by their red tie, cap and white shirt. the site has collected ten little-known and unusual facts about the pioneers and their activities.

At the initiative of Krupskaya

The pioneer movement in the USSR was created on the initiative of Nadezhda Krupskaya. In November 1921, Krupskaya, during several public speeches, proposed to the Komsomol to create a new children's organization based on the principles of the scout movement. The ruling elite had a negative attitude towards the scouts because of their rejection of the revolution, and therefore they reacted negatively to Krupskaya's proposal. Later, the leaders of the Komsomol reconsidered their decision and approved the initiative, deciding to create a children's communist movement from the new organization. It was decided to call the members of the organization pioneers, which means "pioneer" in French. Changed scout symbols became the attributes of the movement: a red tie and a white shirt instead of green scout ones.

The pioneer movement lasted almost 70 years. Photo: Museum of Printing and Publishing

There was no knot on the tie

Initially, the pioneer tie was not tied around the neck, but fastened with a clip. It depicted a sickle and a hammer, the inscription "Always ready!" and a bonfire in the foreground. The fire consisted of five logs and three flames, which meant five continents and the Third International - the Comintern, which was supposed to kindle the fire of revolution on them. When the Comintern was dissolved, they decided to remove the clamps. This was explained by the complexity of their manufacture. Since then, the pioneer tie has been knotted.

Pioneer song from the opera "Faust"

If you listen closely, you can hear the music from the opera Faust in the famous pioneer song “Rise like fires, blue nights”. This is no coincidence! In May 1922, composer Alexander Zharov was instructed to write a patriotic pioneer song as soon as possible. During a visit to the opera "Faust" at the Bolshoi Theater, Zharov heard the "March of the Soldiers" by composer Charles Gounod and was greatly impressed. This composition was taken as a basis: it was processed and adapted for the bugle. The song quickly caught on and became very memorable and famous.

The pioneer had to be brave, smart and strong. Photo: Museum of Printing and Publishing

From Spartacus to Lenin

In the year of the creation of the pioneer organization, the movement was named after Spartak: the leaders of the Komsomol considered that such a name would symbolize the strength, courage and patriotism of the members of the organization. The whole name sounded like this: children's communist groups named after Spartak. The pioneer movement bore this name for two years. In 1924, after the death of Lenin, the organization was given the name of the leader, and in 1926 a new official name appeared: the All-Union Pioneer Organization. V. I. Lenin. It remained until the end of the existence of the movement.

Be ready!

Pioneer motto "Be prepared!" moved to the Soviet Union from Great Britain. The first letters of the phrase “be prepared” coincided with the abbreviation of the founder of the scouting movement in Great Britain, Colonel Baden-Powell, so the phrase quickly took root in the country. In the Soviet Union, the motto was somewhat modified: the full expression sounded like "Pioneer, be ready to fight for the cause of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union!". The response was the phrase "Always ready!".

More than 210 million people have joined the ranks of the pioneers. Photo: Museum of Printing and Publishing

Hero Pioneers

During the Great Patriotic War, did the pioneers, along with the adults, defend their homeland from the fascist invaders? They helped the soldiers at the front, in the rear, in the underground, many pioneers became partisans and scouts. For military merits, tens of thousands of pioneers were awarded medals and orders, and four - Valya Kotik, Lenya Golikov, Marat Kazei and Zina Portnova - were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

11 year old worker

The pioneers were engaged in socially useful activities: they collected scrap metal, waste paper, planted flowers and trees, and raised animals. Awards were given to the best of the best. From the entire list of distinguished children, a pioneer from Tajikistan, Mamlakat Nakhangova, stands out. An 11-year-old girl seven times overfulfilled the norm for an adult to pick cotton and was awarded the Order of Lenin.

Pioneers worked almost on a par with adults. Photo: Museum of Printing and Publishing

The first Timurovites

The Timur movement in the Soviet Union was born after the publication of the book "Timur and his team" by Arkady Gaidar. The Timurites were exemplary pioneers who unselfishly helped all those in need. The first detachment of Timurites appeared in 1940 in the city of Klin, where Gaidar wrote his story. The squad consisted of only six members. The guys helped the employees of orphanages, hospitals, took care of the elderly, harvested, and during the war years they took patronage over the families of soldiers. The Timur movement is still preserved in many Russian cities.

"Zarnitsa"

Even while they were in summer camps, the pioneers worked hard, engaged in community service, and lived according to a strict daily routine. The children's leisure time was also not at all childish: the main entertainment in the summer camps was "Zarnitsa" - a military sports game that was very similar to the military exercises of soldiers. As part of the game, each of the two teams had to capture the opponent's flag as quickly as possible. Each participant was given shoulder straps. If one shoulder strap was torn off for some team member, he could not run and just walked, and if both shoulder straps, he was “killed”.

The motto of the pioneers was the phrase "Be ready!" and "Always ready!" Photo: Museum of Printing and Publishing

Millions of pioneers

In September 1991, at the XXII Congress of the Komsomol, the role of the Komsomol was declared exhausted, and the Komsomol organization, together with the Lenin All-Union Pioneer Organization, officially ceased to exist. The pioneer movement has become a big page in the history of Russia. During the 69 years of the movement's work, more than 210 million people have joined the ranks of the pioneers.

Seventeen-year-old Nika knows for sure that the acclaimed anime film about the war and the pioneer heroes "First Squad" is a ciphered message. Will she be able to unravel the secrets of the occult departments of the Nazi and Soviet secret services? In the course of a dizzying investigation, Nike is forced to take on a dangerous mission: to save the Earth from the Third World War and prevent a catastrophe in the World of the Dead. The events of the film and manga "First Squad" take on terrible and subtle meanings ...

Lenya Golikov Korolkov Mikhailovich

Marat Kazei Vyacheslav Morozov

Pioneers-heroes - Soviet pioneers who accomplished feats in the years of the formation of Soviet power, collectivization, the Great Patriotic War. The official list of "pioneer-heroes" was issued in 1954 with the compilation of the Book of Honor of the All-Union Pioneer Organization. V. I. Lenin. Artistic documentary story. Artist V. Yudin. http://ruslit.traumlibrary.net

Valya Kotik Huseyn Najafov

Pioneers-heroes - Soviet pioneers who accomplished feats in the years of the formation of Soviet power, collectivization, the Great Patriotic War. The official list of "pioneer-heroes" was issued in 1954 with the compilation of the Book of Honor of the All-Union Pioneer Organization. V. I. Lenin. Artistic documentary story. Artist V. Yudin. http://ruslit.traumlibrary.net

Borya Tsarikov Albert Likhanov

Pioneers-heroes - Soviet pioneers who accomplished feats in the years of the formation of Soviet power, collectivization, the Great Patriotic War. The official list of "pioneer-heroes" was issued in 1954 with the compilation of the Book of Honor of the All-Union Pioneer Organization. V. I. Lenin. Artistic documentary story. Artist V. Yudin. http://ruslit.traumlibrary.net

Tolya Shumov Sofia Urlanis

Pioneers-heroes - Soviet pioneers who accomplished feats in the years of the formation of Soviet power, collectivization, the Great Patriotic War. The official list of "pioneer-heroes" was issued in 1954 with the compilation of the Book of Honor of the All-Union Pioneer Organization. V. I. Lenin. Artistic documentary story. Artist V. Yudin. http://ruslit.traumlibrary.net

Vitya Korobkov Ekaterina Suvorina

Pioneers-heroes - Soviet pioneers who accomplished feats in the years of the formation of Soviet power, collectivization, the Great Patriotic War. The official list of "pioneer-heroes" was issued in 1954 with the compilation of the Book of Honor of the All-Union Pioneer Organization. V. I. Lenin. Artistic documentary story. Artist V. Yudin. http://ruslit.traumlibrary.net

Cards of fate Natalya Kolesova

To begin with, it is worth warning about the main thing: the debut book of the Novokuznetsk writer can be called a novel only conditionally. Many authors have a "favorite size"; it seems that this is a story for Natalia Kolesova. "Maps of Destiny" is actually a collection of stories, united by a common world and linked into a single whole by the method of "while away the night with stories." Obviously, at least some of them were written at different times and at different levels of skill. Therefore, for those who like long stories and do not like collections, it is better not to take this book in their hands. "Cards of Destiny"...

Traveling Without a Map Graham Green

Graham Greene is the author of a rich memoir heritage, which includes his autobiographical books "Part of Life" and "Ways of Salvation", travel notes "Journey Without a Map", literary diaries "Roads of Lawlessness", "In Search of a Hero", a huge number of articles and essays "How seldom does a novelist turn to material at his fingertips!" - Grin lamented, but he himself traveled the entire planet in search of this material. Vietnam and Cuba, Mexico and the USA, Africa and Europe have found a place in his "Greenland". “I have always been drawn to those countries where the political…

Paradise cards Dmitry Veprik

If you are offered to go in search of a world more incredible than Atlantis, Utopia or the Great Ring, do not rush to refuse. Who knows, maybe you will find yourself along the way. Do not rush to agree - perhaps, having found yourself, you will realize that you have nowhere to return. This is exactly what happens to the heroes of Dmitry Veprik's novel "Maps of Paradise", who went on a risky space expedition...

Fools and Heroes Yan Valetov

Ukraine, torn apart after the disaster of the Dnieper cascade of dams, turned into a No Man's Land, a Zone where there are no laws and mercy... Arms dealers with deputy badges on their chests... Deadly fights in the mangrove swamps of Cuba... Living robots, into which the mysterious Temple turns children... Spy games on the streets of London's Covent Garden ... Heroes involuntarily, scoundrels by conviction, victims by chance - in the new book of the No Man's Land tetralogy: Fools and Heroes.

Hello land of heroes! Vlad Silin

Of the five races that inhabit the universe, only people have a special honor - to be the dominion of heroes. Asuras and pretas, divas and kinkars live according to different laws. Having got involved in a dangerous spy story, cadet Shepetov is ready to defend the honor of his race. Amazing adventures await him, deadly intrigues of asuras and secrets of alien dominions.

Hero's Detour Sergei Ivanov

The adventures of the hero Svetlana, who got from our world into the fairy-tale world, continue! This time he has to save Raul, the little son of King Elding Louis and his mistress, Countess Giselle de Compre, who rightfully occupies a high place in the Guild of Mages. After all, Raul was kidnapped by the terrible master of the Order of the Sword, Duke Ludwig, an old enemy of both King Louis and Svetlana. Svetlana's eternal enemy, the sorcerer Zodiar, a young witch, a vampire-aristocrat and monstrous monsters that feed on magic intervene in an already complicated game ... To perform feats here ...

100 great heroes Alexey Shishov

The book of the military historian and writer A.V. Shishov is dedicated to the great heroes of different countries and eras. The chronological framework of this popular encyclopedia is from the states of the Ancient East and antiquity to the beginning of the 20th century. (The heroes of the bygone century can be devoted to a separate volume, and even more than one.) The word "hero" came into our worldview from ancient Greece. Initially, the Hellenes called the heroes of the legendary leaders who lived on the top of Mount Olympus. Later, this word began to be called military leaders and ordinary soldiers famous in battles, campaigns and wars. Undoubtedly,…

Who took the Reichstag. Heroes by default... Nikolay Yamskoy

How did the events that led to the beginning of the Great Patriotic War actually develop? Who are the real heroes of hoisting the banner of the Soviet Union over the Reichstag? Why and who needed to rewrite the history of the capture of the citadel of the Third Reich? Based on recently declassified archival documents and author's research, the book gives a real picture of the course of the Great Patriotic War. Particular attention is paid to the Berlin operation of 1945 and the restoration of historical justice in relation to real heroes who accomplished a great feat in…

Marat Kazei Pioneer-hero Marat Kazei was born in 1929 in a family of fiery Bolsheviks. They called him such an unusual name in honor of the seaworthy vessel of the same name, where his father served ...

Marat Kazei

Pioneer-hero Marat Kazei was born in 1929 in a family of fiery Bolsheviks. They called him such an unusual name in honor of the seaworthy vessel of the same name, where his father served for 10 years.

Soon after the start of World War II, Marat's mother began to actively help the partisans in the capital of Belarus, she sheltered wounded fighters and helped them recover for further battles. But the Nazis found out about this and the woman was hanged.

Soon after the death of his mother, Marat Kazei and his sister joined the partisan detachment, where the boy became listed as a scout. Brave and flexible, Marat often easily made his way into Nazi military units and brought important information. In addition, the pioneer participated in the organization of many acts of sabotage at German facilities.

The boy also demonstrated his courage and heroism in direct combat with enemies - even when he was wounded, he gathered his strength and continued to attack the Nazis.

At the very beginning of 1943, Marat was offered to go to a quiet area, far from the front, accompanying his sister Ariadne, who had significant health problems. The pioneer would have been easily released to the rear, since he had not yet reached the age of 18, but Kazei refused and remained to fight on.

A significant feat was accomplished by Marat Kazei in the spring of 1943, when the Nazis surrounded a partisan detachment near one of the Belarusian villages. The teenager got out of the ring of enemies and led the Red Army to help the partisans. The Nazis were dispersed, the Soviet soldiers were saved.

Recognizing the considerable merits of the teenager in military battles, open combat and as a saboteur, at the end of 1943 Marat Kazei was awarded three times: two medals and an order.

Marat Kazei met his heroic death on May 11, 1944. The pioneer and his comrade were walking back from reconnaissance, and suddenly the Nazis encircled them. Kazei's partner was shot by enemies, and the teenager blew himself up on the last grenade so that they could not capture him. There is an alternative opinion of historians that the young hero so wanted to prevent the fact that if the Nazis recognized him, they would severely punish the inhabitants of the entire village where he lived. The third opinion is that the young man decided to deal with this and take with him a few Nazis who came too close to him.

In 1965, Marat Kazei was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. A monument to the young hero was erected in the capital of Belarus, depicting the scene of his heroic death. Many streets throughout the USSR were named after the young man. In addition, a children's camp was organized, where students were brought up on the example of a young hero, and the same ardent and selfless love for the Motherland was instilled in them. He also bore the name "Marat Kazei".

Valya Kotik

Pioneer-hero Valentin Kotik was born in 1930 in Ukraine, into a peasant family. When the Great Patriotic War began, the boy managed to unlearn only five years. During his studies, Valya showed himself to be a sociable, smart student, a good organizer and a born leader.

When the Nazis captured the hometown of Vali Kotika, he was only 11 years old. Historians claim that the pioneer immediately began to help adults collect ammunition and weapons, which were sent to the firing line. Valya and his comrades picked up pistols and machine guns from the places of military clashes and secretly passed them to the partisans in the forest. In addition, Kotik personally drew caricatures of the Nazis and hung them in the city.

In 1942, Valentin was accepted into the underground organization of his hometown as a scout. There is information about his exploits committed as part of a partisan detachment in 1943. In the autumn of 1943, Kotik obtained information about a communication cable buried deep underground, which was used by the Nazis, and it was successfully destroyed.

Valya Kotik also blew up warehouses and trains of the Nazis, sat in ambushes many times. Even a young hero learned for the partisans information about the posts of the Nazis.

In the autumn of 1943, the boy again saved the lives of many partisans. While standing at his post, he was attacked. Valya Kotik killed one of the Nazis and informed his comrades-in-arms about the danger.

Valya Kotik was awarded two orders and a medal for his many heroic deeds.

There are two versions of the death of Valentin Kotik. The first is that he died at the beginning of 1944 (February 16) in a battle for one of the Ukrainian cities. The second is that the relatively slightly wounded Valentine was sent on a wagon train to the rear after the fighting, and this wagon train was bombed by the Nazis.

In Soviet times, all students knew the name of the brave teenager, as well as about all his accomplishments. A monument to Valentin Kotik was erected in Moscow.

Volodya Dubinin

Pioneer-hero Volodya Dubinin was born in 1927. His father was a sailor and in the past - a red partisan. From a young age, Volodya demonstrated a lively mind, quick wit and dexterity. He read a lot, took photographs, made aircraft models. Father Nikifor Semenovich often told the children about his heroic partisan past, about the formation of Soviet power.

At the very beginning of the Great Patriotic War, my father went to the front. Volodya's mother went with him and his sister to relatives near Kerch, in the village of Stary Karantin.

Meanwhile, the enemy was approaching. Part of the population decided to join the partisans, hiding in the nearby quarries. Volodya Dubinin and other pioneers asked to join them. The main partisan in the detachment, Alexander Zyabrev, hesitated, agreed. There were many chokepoints in the underground catacombs that only children could penetrate, and so, he reasoned, they could scout. This was the beginning of the heroic activity of the pioneer hero Volodya Dubinin, who many times rescued the partisans.

Since the partisans did not sit silently in the quarries, after the Nazis captured the Old Quarantine, but arranged all sorts of sabotage for them, the Nazis staged a blockade of the catacombs. They sealed all the exits from the quarries, filling them with cement, and it was at this moment that Volodya and his comrades did a lot for the partisans.

The boys penetrated narrow crevices and reconnoitered the situation in the Old Quarantine captured by the Germans. Volodya Dubinin was the smallest in physique and one day he was the only one who could get out to the surface. His comrades at that time helped as best they could, diverting the attention of the Nazis from those places where Volodya got out. Then they were active in another place, so that Volodya could return to the catacombs just as unnoticed in the evening.

The boys not only scouted the situation - they brought ammunition and weapons, medicine for the wounded and did other useful things. Volodya Dubinin differed from everyone in the effectiveness of his actions. He deftly deceived the Nazi patrols, making his way into the quarries, and, among other things, accurately memorized important numbers, for example, the number of enemy units in different villages.

In the winter of 1941, the Nazis decided once and for all to put an end to the partisans in the quarries under the Old Quarantine by flooding them with water. Volodya Dubinin, who went into intelligence, found out about this in time and promptly warned the underground about the insidious plan of the Nazis. In order to

in time, he returned to the catacombs in the middle of the day, risking being seen by the Nazis.

The partisans urgently put up a barrier, building a dam, and were saved thanks to this. This is the most significant feat of Volodya Dubinin, which saved the lives of many partisans, their wives and children, because some went into the catacombs with their whole families.

At the time of his death, Volodya Dubinin was 14 years old. This happened after the new year 1942. On the orders of the partisan commander, he went to the Adzhimushkay quarries to establish contact with them. On the way, he met the Soviet military units, which liberated Kerch from the Nazi invaders.

It only remained to rescue the partisans from the quarries, neutralizing the minefield that the Nazis had left behind. Volodya became a guide to the sappers. But one of them made a fatal mistake and the boy, along with four fighters, was blown up by a mine. They were buried in a common grave in the city of Kerch. And already posthumously the pioneer hero Volodya Dubinin was awarded the Order of the Red Banner.

Zina Portnova

Zina Portnova accomplished several feats and acts of sabotage against the Nazis, being a member of the underground organization of the city of Vitebsk. The inhuman torments that she had to endure from the Nazis will forever be in the hearts of her descendants and after many years fill us with sorrow.

Zina Portnova was born in 1926 in Leningrad. Before the start of the war, she was an ordinary girl. In the summer of 1941, she went with her sister to her grandmother in the Vitebsk region. After the outbreak of the war, German invaders came to the area almost immediately. The girls could not return to their parents and stayed with their grandmother.

Almost immediately after the start of the war, many underground cells and partisan detachments were organized in the Vitebsk region to fight the Nazis. Zina Portnova became a member of the Young Avengers group. Their leader, Efrosinya Zenkova, was seventeen years old. Zina turned 15.

The most significant feat of Zina is the case of poisoning more than a hundred Nazis. The girl managed to do this while acting as a kitchen worker. She was suspected of this sabotage, but she herself ate the poisoned soup and was abandoned. She herself miraculously remained alive after that, her grandmother departed her with the help of medicinal herbs.

Upon completion of this case, Zina went to the partisans. Here she became a Komsomol member. But in the summer of 1943, a traitor uncovered the Vitebsk underground, 30 young people were executed. Only a few managed to escape. Zina was instructed by the partisans to contact the survivors. However, she did not succeed, she was recognized and arrested.

The Nazis already knew that Zina was also a member of the Young Avengers, they only did not know that it was she who poisoned the German officers. They tried to “split” her so that she would betray those members of the underground who managed to escape. But Zina stood her ground and actively resisted at the same time. During one of the interrogations, she snatched a Mauser from a German and shot three Nazis. But she could not escape - she was wounded in the leg. Zina Portnova could not kill herself - a misfire came out.

After that, angry fascists began to brutally torture the girl. They gouged out Zina's eyes, stuck needles under her nails, burned her with a red-hot iron. She just wanted to die. After another torture, she threw herself under a passing car, but the German nonhumans saved her in order to continue the torture.

In the winter of 1944, exhausted, crippled, blind and completely gray-haired, Zina Portnova was finally shot in the square along with other Komsomol members. Only fifteen years later this story became known to the world and Soviet citizens.

In 1958, Zina Portnova was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union and the Order of Lenin.

Alexander Chekalin

Sasha Chekalin accomplished several feats and died heroically at the age of sixteen. He was born in the spring of 1925 in the Tula region. Taking an example from his father, a hunter, Alexander knew how to shoot very accurately and navigate the terrain in his years.

At fourteen, Sasha was accepted into the Komsomol. By the beginning of the war, he had completed the eighth grade. A month after the Nazi attack, the front became close to the Tula region. Chekalina's father and son immediately joined the partisans.

The young partisan showed himself in the first days as a smart and brave fighter, he successfully obtained information about the important secrets of the Nazis. Sasha also trained as a radio operator and successfully connected his detachment with other partisans. The young Komsomol member also arranges very effective sabotage against the Nazis on the railway. Chekalin often sits in ambush, punishes defectors, undermines enemy posts.

At the end of 1941, Alexander fell seriously ill with a cold, and in order for him to heal, the partisan command sent him to a teacher in one of the villages. But when Sasha got to the designated place, it turned out that the Nazis arrested the teacher and took him to another settlement. Then the young man climbed into the house where they lived with their parents. But the headman-traitor tracked him down and informed the Nazis about his arrival.

The Nazis laid siege to Sasha's home and ordered him to come out with his hands up. Komsomol started firing. When the ammunition ran out, Sasha threw a "lemon", but it did not explode. The young man was taken. For almost a week he was tortured very cruelly, demanding information about the partisans. But Chekalin did not say anything.

Later, the Nazis hanged the young man in front of the people. A sign was attached to the dead body that all partisans were executed in this way, and it hung in this form for three weeks. Only when the Soviet soldiers finally liberated the Tula region, the body of the young hero was buried with honor in the city of Likhvin, which was later renamed Chekalin.

Already in 1942, Chekalin Alexander Pavlovich was posthumously given the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

Lenya Golikov

The pioneer hero Lenya Golikov was born in 1926 from the villages of the Novgorod region. The parents were workers. He studied for only seven years, after which he went to work at the factory.

In 1941, the Nazis captured Leni's native village. Having seen enough of their atrocities, the teenager, after the liberation of his native land, voluntarily joined the partisans. At first they did not want to take him because of his young age (15 years), but his former teacher vouched for him.

In the spring of 1942, Golikov became a full-time partisan intelligence officer. He acted very cleverly and courageously, on account of his twenty-seven successful military operations.

The most important achievement of the pioneer hero came in August 1942, when he and another scout blew up a Nazi car and captured documents that were very important for the partisans.

In the last month of 1942, the Nazis began to pursue the partisans with a vengeance. January 1943 was especially difficult for them. The detachment, in which Lenya Golikov also served, about twenty people, took refuge in the village of Ostraya Luka. We decided to spend the night quietly. But a traitor from the locals betrayed the partisans.

One hundred and fifty Nazis attacked the partisans at night, they bravely entered the battle, he left the ring of punishers only six. Only at the end of the month they got to their own and said that their comrades died as heroes in an unequal battle. Among them was Lenya Golikov.

In 1944, Leonid was given the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

Made and sent by Anatoly Kaydalov.
_____________________ FULL TEXT OF THE BOOK

Young friends!
M. Gorky. Pioneers
Resurrection. Hawks. Story. Rice. I. Godin and A. Golubev.
Leaflets. (An excerpt from the story about the childhood of S. M. Kirov.) Fig. V. Vinokura
M. Vodopyanov. In Siberia. Story
S. Mogilevskaya. The Tale of the Loud Drum. Rice. A. Itkina
I. Shvedov. Eaglet. Poetry
L. Panteleev. Green berets. Story. Rice. A. Itkina
E. Bagritsky. Death of a Pioneer. Poetry
N. Lupsyakov. Machine gun. Story. Rice. V. Makeeva
K. Simonov. The major brought the boy on a carriage. Poetry
B Lavrenyov. A big heart. Story. Rice. I. Pakholkova
I. Utkin. Ballad about Zaslonov and his adjutant. Poetry
P. Zvirka. Nightingale. Story. Rice. B. Rytman
A. Zharov. March of Young Pioneers. Sgihi
A. Aleksin. Seva Kotlov beyond the Arctic Circle. Chapters from the story. Rice. N. Ustinova
B. Zheleznikov. Astronaut. Story Fig. N. Zeitlina
L Tvardovsky. For the feat of the century. Poetry

The authors of this book, each in their own way - some in verse, some in prose, some in drawings - reflected the diversity of our life and showed how our children - schoolchildren and pioneers - participate in it, spoke about the children of the revolution - the predecessors of today's pioneers. told about pioneer honor, about pioneer glory.

YOUNG FRIENDS!

No matter how old you are, no matter what month you are born - you are all birthday on May 19th. On this day, in 1922, the pioneer organization named after Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was born - our glorious multi-million red-tie Pioneer.
The birthday of the pioneer organization is not only a holiday for children. This is our common holiday.
Almost all of us adults, each at one time or another, were pioneers. For many, the years are still fresh in their memory, when they looked at the guys with pioneer ties with curiosity, as if they were a curiosity.
Now in our country there is no corner where red ties do not flash; There is no city, town or village where the Pioneer gangs do not trumpet loudly, calling on the children to study, to work, to fight for the cause of communism.
The whole country celebrates a glorious date - the birthday of the Pioneers, a children's communist organization, because we don’t have a person whose heart has not been warmed by the heat of a pioneer fire, and because we don’t have such deeds, great or small, to whom we would not give our skillful hands, keen eyes, cheerful ingenuity are our pioneers. Even into space, into the expanses of the Universe, the first to escape and circled the entire globe was the pupil of Pioneer Yuri Gagarin.
Our great leader and teacher Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, talking with the guys, liked to say:
- When you grow up, of course, you will become a good communist!
The dream of Vladimir Ilyich came true. Millions of pioneers, growing up, become good Komsomol members, and then good communists.
You guys are the heirs of the great deeds of the Bolshevik-Leninists. You build our bright future. You live under communism.
So be everywhere and in everything, in learning and work, real pioneers, going ahead, constantly discovering new things for the sake of human happiness.
The authors of this book, each in their own way - some in verse, some in prose, some in drawings - wanted to reflect the diversity of our life and show how our children, schoolchildren and pioneers, participate in it, tell about the children of the revolution - the predecessors of today's pioneers, talk about pioneer honor, pioneer glory, a great future.
Happy pioneer spring to you, dear guys! Happy holiday!

M. Gorky
TO PIONEERS

What are pioneers?
Pioneers were people who settled new, newly discovered lands.
Many famous scientists are called pioneers: Louis Pasteur, the founder of bacteriology; Curie, who discovered radium, Professor Dokuchaev, who, exploring Russian soils, opened the way for a new science - geochemistry. Karl Marx can be called a pioneer - he illuminated the entire history of mankind with a new light and showed the working people of the whole world the only straight road to freedom. Vladimir Lenin, the first to boldly lead the working class along the path indicated by Marx, can also be called a pioneer.
Any social work that expands and deepens the growth of universal human culture and serves the interests of the working classes has had, has and will have its pioneers.
You guys are the children, brothers and sisters of the pioneers of the social revolution, the children of the builders of the new world, you too are entering a new land that has just been opened to you, you will populate it as masters of all its treasures, as free workers for yourself.
Before you is a wonderful, heroic work: to continue the greatest, heroic, just cause begun by the fathers.
You must see everything, study everything, arm yourself with knowledge and not disdain any kind of work.
You Pioneers must walk boldly and straight along the road opened before you by Lenin.
Forward, pioneers!
Hawks are not birds or airplanes. Hawks. These are pioneer boys.
As now the pioneers help the party and the Komsomol in all matters, so in the revolution of 1905 the pioneer boys helped their fathers in the struggle for freedom.
The hawks guarded the rallies together with the worker vigilantes. they sat on patrols on workers' May Days, were liaison officers, distracted the gendarmes and spies.
For speed in business, ingenuity and fearlessness, the workers called these guys hawks.
These were the very first pioneers in Russia.
Vasil and the hawks made their way to the Paninsky garden. Yegorka balked: he's already been here - that's enough! He still remembers how the watchman almost tore off his ear, and in addition, his mother beat him for a torn shirt. This is not counting the hands scratched in the gooseberry bushes.
Vasil looked at him with contempt:
- Bagel with poppy seeds! He cannot understand: this is not prank. And in the garden now there is no gooseberry, no watchman.
- Just srobel, - Romka explained and added various other words, not very pleasant for Egorka.
But Yegorka flatly refused to climb into the garden.
The guys climbed over a high brick fence. Me-shyli felt boots - big, not on the leg. We jumped into a fluffy, deep snow.
In the garden scattered along the fence. Everyone has chosen a "loopholes" for themselves - a hole in a brick wall, made just for beauty, but for the benefit of the guys. Through these holes one could see a piece of the street and talk like a pipe.
Vasyl took up a position at the second loophole from the corner.
Romka settled down on an old crooked willow that grew opposite the People's House.
The fingers on his hands soon became stiff, his legs became cold, but Romka was afraid to move, so as not to reveal himself.
At the entrance of the house, snow dust sparkled in the light of lanterns. On the cobblestones, the policeman, the owner of the street, the fierce enemy of all the boys, clattered with his shod boots. If only he hadn't spotted Romka!
Finally, a window lit up in the basement. Romka instantly slid down from the tree, waited until the policeman had disappeared at the end of the street, and jumped into the entrance.
The performance ended in the auditorium, and the audience began to disperse; there was noise and crowding in the cloakroom. Together with the audience, the delegates of the First St. Petersburg Party Conference, which had secretly met here, also left the People's House.
On the second floor, Romka opened the door to the room next to the lobby. There were a lot of randomly pushed chairs in the room. Facing the door stood a small man with a high forehead. In the beard and mustache, the redheads gleam, in the eyes - golden sparks. He put on his overcoat and said to Uncle Yefim:
- We did a very good job today, Efim Petrovich. The vote showed that the Bolsheviks had the upper hand.
Romka wanted to close the door, but the speaker noticed him and asked:
- Who do you want, young man?
- Uncle Efim for me, - Romka answered and blushed: before that, he didn’t get it in an adult way.
Yefim Petrovich looked around.
- This is our hawk, Vladimir Ilyich. Is everything all right? he asked Romka.
- Look like that's it.
- Can we be sure? asked Vladimir Ilyich.
- Yes! Romka answered firmly and felt like an adult again.
He got out with the crowd to the street, ran along the fence and pressed his back against the second loophole. I could hear someone blowing through the hole in the wall and breathing loudly. Romka seized a convenient moment and angrily whispered to Vasily into the speaking tube:
- Tell them to sit quietly and not puff.
The boys fell silent, but then Fedyunka began to tell that in St. Petersburg not live horses, but “electric” horses would carry the horse-drawn carriage, and that all those horses in invisible caps and in a foreign language were called “tram”. Fedyunka wanted to tell something more interesting, but he received a slap from Vasil and fell silent.
Romka peered intently at the people passing by. The doors of the People's House had already stopped slamming, and the street was empty. Have you overlooked? He even felt hot, and his ears rang from the tension. Somewhere from the side of Rasstannaya Street shouts were heard, and a policeman hurried there. "Probably a fight," Romka thought.
Two people came out of the entrance of the People's House. One was long and thin - this is Uncle Yefim, and in the second, dressed in a dark coat and a high lambskin hat, Romka recognized a man with a golden spark in his eyes.
Some gentleman in a long overcoat and a bowler hat emerged from around the corner, with a cane in his hands. With a small, quick step, he followed Uncle Yefim and his companion. He walked stealthily like a cat, and even the snow did not creak under his feet.
It was a spy.
Romka knew that the spy would now follow Uncle Yefim's companion like a shadow and, somewhere along the way, point him out to the gendarmes, and they would arrest him and put him in jail, just as they put Romka's father in jail.
The times were hard. It was 1906, the second year of the Russian revolution. The tsar did not spare patrons, did not skimp on prisons for revolutionary workers. But the workers did not give up. Romka went towards the spy.
The bastard was gaining momentum. Suddenly, in front of him, as if from under the ground, a boy appeared in a jacket that did not fit his height and in a hat pulled down over his eyes.
- Uncle, tell me
Spike just waved his hand.
- Well, you!
But the boy walked beside him, and it was clear that he would not back down until the issue that occupied him was resolved.
And so they walked side by side: a gendarme servant in the clothes of a master and a St. Petersburg boy in holey felt boots and beggarly clothes, but with a pure and bold heart.
- Uncle! - Romka suddenly shouted that there were forces when they caught up with the brick fence, and stood on the panel, blocking the path of the enemy.
At the same instant, Romkin's hawks and Vasil'ev's hawks began to fall down from the fence onto the bacon.
Vasil stood on top of a brick wall and commanded:
- Fedyunka, jump on his back, the devil! Semka, run ahead!
- Be brave, don't be shy! Give it up! Rom encouraged.
Fedyunka jumped off the wall, but his grandfather's boots fell off his feet, and someone in the heat of the dump kicked this boots to the side.
Vasil was already downstairs. The boys all together surrounded the master, shouting something, complaining about someone, shaking their fists at each other and clinging to the spy's hands. Spyk tried to tear them away from him, free himself, cursed and finally yelled: “Kar-r-aul!” - but his cry was drowned in a childish hubbub.
Yegorka appeared from somewhere. He grabbed a felt boot lying on the panel and, with a triumphant cry, rushed into the dump.
The bastard slipped and fell, dragging the guys with him, the bowler hat flew off his head.
Romka got out of the crowd of children and looked around. He was hot, he was breathing heavily.
A long shadow emerged from the darkness. It was Uncle Yefim returning. He was already alone.
- What are you brawling about? Yefim Petrovich murmured, pretending to be angry. Here I am now! Well, go away!
The hawks immediately scattered to the sides, and Uncle Yefim helped the bastard to his feet. But the bastard angrily pushed him away, slammed down the bowler hat, which Vasyl obligingly gave, snatched a whistle from his pocket, and began to whistle with all his might.
The policeman didn't show up. He had been distracted by vigilante workers earlier. Cursing savagely, the spy ran towards the police station.
Fedyunka stood by the wall. He put both feet in one felt boot and could not move. Because of his grandfather's felt boots to him. did not have to participate.
Romka snatched the boots from Yegorka:
- I also found a brave one - to fight with someone else's felt boots1
The guys surrounded Uncle Yefim.
- Run to the corner of Rasstannaya, - Efim Petrovich ordered Vasil.
Vasil rushed off. Uncle Yefim walked down the street. The boys followed him. They walked in silence, looking at Uncle Yefim and waiting for what he would say. And he just chuckled slyly in his mustache.
- Well, what is there to talk about, - he finally said. - They provided great help to the combatants, they fulfilled an important assignment. Helped a dear person. So that...
They were now walking along the street and were her masters.
Powdered snow.
An old, crooked willow stood in elegant hoarfrost.
The street was clean.

A. Golubeva
LEAFLETS
(Excerpt from stories about the childhood of S. M. Kirov)

Seryozha Kostrikov, a student of the Kazan Industrial School, came to visit his grandmother in the city of Urzhum during the summer holidays. His friend Sanya introduces Seryozha to the exiled revolutionary Pavel Ivanovich. Pavel Ivanovich invites the guys to visit him.
Seryozha had long wanted to meet the exiles. And finally met with a real political!
- Sanya, let's go to the student tomorrow, - said Seryozha to Sanya.
And the next day in the evening they went to the yellow house under the mountain.
- Ah, come guests to gnaw bones! - an unfamiliar exile, an elderly and tall man, met them, smiling, in the passage. - Well, come on, guys, to the table!
Seryozha and Sanya went into the room. The exiles drank tea. Pavel Ivanovich introduced his comrades to the others. Nine people lived in the house. Seryozha and Sanya found out that there were young and old here, there were students and workers, that the name of the tall elderly exile who met them was Zbtkin, that he was a worker, a mechanic at the Putilov factory.
On the first evening Seryozha and Sanya sat and talked with the exiles for an hour. Two days later they again went to the house under the mountain. Now they were invited not only by Pavel Ivanovich, but also by the locksmith Zbtkin and everyone else.
“I see that you guys are good and, in my opinion, you know how to keep silent,” said locksmith Zbtkin after three weeks.
"We can!" - Seryozha wanted to shout, but was too shy.
- In this case, friends, caution is needed. We need some help.
- What should be done? - asked Seryozha; His hands were trembling with excitement.
- Flyers!
And locksmith Zbtkin began to tell and explain to his comrades how to print leaflets. There were a lot of rabbits: you need to buy glycerine with gelatin in a pharmacy. There is only one pharmacy in the city. You can not buy right away; you need to go to the pharmacy in turn, so that the bald and fat atokar is not surprised: why do the guys have so many vials of glycerin?
Then, from glycerine, it is necessary to boil the composition of the ointment. And then print leaflets
- Well, did you understand everything? - asked Zbtkin.
- All!
For eight days, Seryozha and Sanya went to the pharmacy for glycerin. Then they cooked the composition of the vrbde ointment.
And at night, when everyone at home was asleep, Seryozha and Sanya went to the old bathhouse.
Here they hung a bath window with a cotton blanket, lit a lantern and began to print leaflets. The leaflets used to say why the poor live poorly, but the rich live well, and who is to blame for that. At the bottom, at the very end of the leaflets, it was written in large letters: “Kill the king! Long live the revolution!"
If the policemen caught Seryozha and Sanya with such leaflets, they would immediately put them in jail.
Seryozha and Sanya were typing, while they themselves listened to see if anyone was coming. Seryozha twice ran out to look into the street. The street is quiet, dark. Only grasshoppers are crackling in the grass, and at the end of the street a dog is barking.
They worked until morning, and when the sun rose, the shepherd played and drove the cows into the field, Seryozha ran to the exiles.
- We have everything ready, - he said to Zotkin. - Three hundred leaflets came out!
- Well done boys! - praised the locksmith. - Now you have the last and most dangerous thing to do: tonight you need to scatter these leaflets around the city, in the bazaar and on the Malmyzhsky tract. Look, do not fall into the clutches of the policemen. Be careful.
- We will! Seryozha replied.
Night has come. Seryozha and Sanya began to gather. They hurriedly shoved leaflets into their pockets, stuffed them into their bosoms. Their shirts were bulging, their pockets were swollen.
- First let's go to the market, then - to the Malmyzhsky tract, - said Seryozha.
They put out the lantern and went out of the bathhouse into the yard. Then cautiously, on tiptoe, they walked across the yard and out into the street.
The city was asleep.
They walked quickly and silently through the quiet, sleepy city and soon reached the bazaar.
- Start - Seryozha said in a whisper.
Bending down, they ran to the empty wooden stalls on which the peasants were placing their goods - krinki with milk. Silently and quickly Seryozha and Sanya scatter
Bali on the shelves flyers. Cracking and snorting could be heard from all sides. It was unharnessed horses chewing hay. On wagons and under wagons the peasants, who had arrived for the market day, slept. Sometimes sleepy people stirred and got up. Seryozha and Sanya immediately hid behind the counters; when everything calmed down, they went back to work. Soon all the stalls were covered with white leaflets.
- Well, it's ready! - Seryozha whispered. - Now we are running to the Mal-myzhsky tract.
And they ran. It was not so close to the highway, and the work had to be finished before morning. At one of the houses with a high fence and a carved iron gate, Seryozha stopped, pulled out several leaflets from his pocket and flung them over the high fence into the garden. Sanya got scared, grabbed his hand. In this house lived the largest Urzhum chief - police officer Peneshkevich.
- Let's run!
Seryozha pushed Sanya in the side, and they rushed at full speed. When the street was left behind, Seryozha said in a whisper:
- Let him know that the revolutionaries do not sleep at night!
Behind the city garden, the guys took off their boots and crossed Ur-
beetle wade. On the other side of the river, the Mal-myzhsky tract immediately began. On both sides of it was a dark forest. As soon as Seryozha and Sanya got to him, suddenly a short piercing whistle was heard somewhere behind. They seemed to be very close. Seryozha and Sanya rushed headlong into the forest. It could hide from the chase.
After the first whistle, a second whistle rang out, and finally everything was silent.
- Stop! - Seryozha stopped Sanya. - Where did you accelerate? We need to distribute flyers.
- Right! - said Sanya, taking a breath.
They went along the road and left the leaflet here and there: by roadside bushes, in ditches and by the road.
Half an hour later, every single leaflet was scattered.
- You know, Sanya, let's go back the other way, - thought Seryozha. - The whistle was a policeman. Maybe the policemen are guarding us at the ford.
The road went through a swamp. The guys often fell into the cold water. The branches of the trees whipped them in the face.
- It's okay, we'll come home - we'll dry off, - Seryozha encouraged his comrade.
It started to get light. Wet, tired, but satisfied, the friends returned home.
They perfectly fulfilled the instructions of the exiled revolutionaries.

M. Vodopyanov
IN SIBERIA

I was not yet eight years old when my father quarreled with my grandfather and decided to leave my native places. Our family then made a great journey. Probably, I would not have remembered this journey if there had not been a meeting in a foreign land that I could never forget. I remember her even now.
We left for Siberia, settled either in a large village, or in a small town - Taishet. My father got a job as a loader at the railway station. At first, everything seemed to work out well. They rented a small wooden bathhouse on the outskirts for a modest plug and settled down in it almost as comfortably as in a hut. Only our quiet life did not last long.
Quite unexpectedly, the father was arrested. Mother was left in a foreign land without relatives and friends, with two children: me and my sister Tanya, who was not yet a year old.
We did not know anything about the fate of the father. Mother went to daily work: she brought to the station, by the time the trains arrived, pies of her own making, for which I was only drooling in vain: she sold pies to passengers, and bought something simpler for us. Our life was not rich before, and then it became completely difficult.
Finally, almost a year later, a letter arrived from my father. How strange, it was written by himself, although his father was illiterate
Here, approximately, is what he wrote from the Irkutsk prison:
“Hello, my dear Maria and children Misha and Tanya!
I send you a deep bow and wish you all good health. I'm in jail, I don't know why. At first I was accused of complicity in the theft of some kind of scratch while unloading a wagon with a factory. Then oovinyli, as if I was standing near the barracks during a political meeting, and everyone was interrogating who was at this meeting. It is like this: maybe among our unskilled workers there were political ones, but this is not my business. And at all interrogations I said only what I really knew: I died after unloading coal, sat down to rest in the shade behind the barracks, and even took a little nap.
I'm in jail with the politicals. Political, I tell you, very good people. Here they taught me to read and write.
If you can, come visit. I asked, they say they will let me in. I am very bored. I remain alive and well - your Vasily.
From this letter, I first learned that there are some "political" people.
Soon the mother, with her little sister in her arms, went to see her father.
“Live as long as you can,” she said to me in parting. “I left you some bread, that’s enough.” And if anything else is needed, ask people - maybe people won’t get around you. I'll be back soon
So I was left alone, my own master, and began to live as a free Cossack. Walked with friends until late at night. Either we went fishing to the Biryusyo River, then into the forest, then we played money all day long. It was at this time that a meeting took place that I will remember for the rest of my life.
Mushrooms have already appeared in the taiga thickets that surrounded Taishet from all sides. The berries have not yet come down. And for a bucket of berries you could get the money that each of us needed.
And then one day with two comrades - Andrei Dubinin and Vitya Somov - we climbed quite far into the thicket. It was a clear afternoon, but in the dark wilderness of the forest there was such a gloomy silence that it seemed as if night was approaching. Unaccountably submitting to the severity of the nature around us, we also fell silent. It even became a little uneasy, but no one, of course, did not give a sign that he was a coward.
In those days, on everyone's mind were escaped prisoners who were driven to hard labor along the Siberian Highway. The city was excited by this event. Adults on the sly from the guys discussed the escape. The merchants began to lock their shops more tightly, and the escaped convicts seemed to the policemen at every step. The case happened not far from Taishet, and it was quite possible that the fugitives were hiding somewhere nearby.
I clearly remember the burning shame that seized me when Andreika said contemptuously:
- Are you a coward, or what? .. Then there is nothing to go into the forest! I would sit at home.
Everyone fell silent. And suddenly, in the ensuing silence, we heard a quiet, indistinct sound, like a groan.
I don't know about my comrades, but I was very frightened.
- Well, what are you? - Andreika asked a minute later. - You never know what will seem in the forest. That's what the forest is for.
But the groan came again. He was so weak that if Iash's hearing had not been extremely strained, then perhaps we would not have heard him. But we perceived every noise with such heightened sensitivity that it seemed that a little more and we would hear the grass growing.
“Maybe the bear is sleeping somewhere,” I said at last, “or some kind of animal has been hit?”
The comrades were silent. We waited for a while to see if the sound would repeat, but everything was quiet.
I would like to firmly tell myself and convince my comrades that nothing happened, that we just imagined the sighs, and nocKcf-ry to get away from the suspicious place. But that would be cowardice. We consulted how to be, and decided to investigate the mystery of the incomprehensible sound.
Cautiously, stealthily, we went in single file to a group of bushes, from where these mysterious groans seemed to be heard. Andrew went first. As soon as he parted the bushes, he immediately stopped. A man in iron handcuffs was lying on the ground in an awkward position. He didn't move. The eyes were closed. A dark beard and mustache covered the lower part of the face. The fugitive appeared to be dead.
- Uncle, and uncle! - Andreika asked quietly. - Are you alive or not?
- Pnt - plaintively, like a child, the man asked.
From that moment on, we no longer had any fear. It was replaced by a completely new feeling - responsibility for a person's life. Whoever he was, his fate was in our hands. We alone could either help him or let him die - and, of course, we did not choose!
Andreika immediately drove me to the forest lake for water.
When I returned with a pail of muddy, greenish water, the fugitive had already been transferred to a soft bed of branches and moss. It was only then that I noticed that he was wounded: the guys bandaged his shoulder with pieces of chintz torn from his own shirt. Andrey and Vitya were driving midges away from the motionless body. They wanted to take the bucket away from me and give the man a drink, but I could not allow this: since I went to the lake, I already had the right to drink it myself.
From the moment I brought water to his lips, we did not part for four days. This happened because the guys quite rightly reasoned:
- Your mother is not here. Sit here, and we will get milk, bread, and what else we have to bring.
I agreed and they left. It still hurts me that I was too young then: I didn’t understand a lot, I forgot a lot. I remember that I made a hut out of branches, made a fire, picked berries, and even cooked mushroom stew for someone wounded. I also remember that we talked quite a lot. The wounded man asked me about my life, about my family, and I, having taken courage, asked him a direct question:
- Why were you arrested, uncle? Who was killed or stolen?
He only smiled and told me that he had never stolen or killed in his life, but that the tsarist government was shackling so many people just because they wanted to change the order: to take away land and factories from the rich and make life good for such simple people. people like my parents and n myself
This lifted me up a lot in my own eyes: no one has ever spoken of me as a person and has never spoken to me so seriously, like a human being. When I found out that people like him are called political, it seemed to me that I already understood everything. Not for nothing that my father praised them in his letter!
The wounded man recovered quickly. The grave condition in which we found him was due not so much to injury as to hunger and thirst. Andreyka and Vitya brought enough food for us from Tayshet for two of us, and sitting with the politician, I was completely satisfied with my fate. But we also had other very important concerns: we had to get rid of the hated handcuffs, but how? Get decent clothes, but where? We decided to save this, who has become our dearest person, at all costs. He gave us a very strong feeling for himself.
Vitka Somov once said:
- When they arrest me, I will also run away and endure everything, as he endures. Therefore, freedom is the most precious thing, and it is better to die in the taigyo than to live in hard labor!
Our new friend asked me not to talk about meeting him in the city. We made a terrible oath to this. I also said all the solemn words that I could think of, although, in fact, none of this was required of me: after all, I was sitting hopelessly in the forest and there was no one for me to let slip. Later, I often asked myself the question: why did we love this man so much, why did we set about saving him so ardently?
After all, it was not at all that we were carried away by unusual circumstances. Time has erased from my memory those wonderful conversations that he had with us around the fire, but I still seem to see our little hut and my comrades in front of me, who, with bated breath, afraid to move, listened to Uncle’s conversations (as he himself asked to call myself). Apparently, there was something in his words that made our childish souls worry. We felt that fate brought us together with a great wonderful person. From him we learn
or that in our country the people are oppressed, that the best people do not spare their lives for the sake of their liberation. And with what words he managed to convey this to us, I can’t repeat it.
Andreika and Vitya, using incredible resourcefulness, using all the boyish cunning they were capable of, got a file in the city. Then they got quite good boots, a cap, a jacket and trousers. They brought scissors, and Uncle neatly trimmed his beard. Released from handcuffs, decently dressed, he turned out to be handsome and stately.
- I would only get to Krasnoyarsk! - said Uncle. - There is one. I will get a passport, and I will start fighting for the people again.
- Just don't get caught more! - Andrey asked. - Do you know how difficult it is to get a file
Uncle laughed. We didn't immediately understand why. Only when he added, already seriously, that it was impossible for him to get caught again, since he had fled twice and they would definitely hang him on the third, we realized that Andreika had said nonsense and that the file was not the issue.
It's time for goodbye. I remember him very well, as well as the last words of Uncle.
We stood by an extinguished fire, among huge pines and cedars. Evening came, and the taiga surrounded us with a solid black wall, through which our friend had to pass.
Uncle thought about something. Finally he said:
- Dear Guys! I will never forget you. But I would like you to remember me too. The day will come when the people who are now handcuffed will win. And then I would like to meet you again, Thank you, my dear, glorious comrades and saviors
Seven years later, when the revolution had already taken place, I remembered these words and hoped for a long time that now I would definitely meet the victorious Uncle
And the four days spent with him forever remained the brightest memory of my childhood.

S. Mogilevskaya
THE TALE OF THE LOUD DRUM

The drum hung on the wall between the windows, just opposite the bed where the boy slept.
It was an old military drum, heavily worn on the sides, but still strong. His skin was taut, and there were no sticks. And the drum was always silent, no one heard his voice.
One evening, when the boy went to bed, the boy's grandparents entered the room. In their hands they carried a round bundle wrapped in brown paper.
"Sleep," said Grandma.
- Well, where do we hang it? - said grandfather, pointing to the bundle.
“Above the crib, over his crib,” Grandma whispered.
But grandfather looked at the old military drum and said:
- No. We will hang it under the drum of our Larik. This is a good place.
They unwrapped the package. And what? It contained a new yellow drum with two wooden sticks. Grandpa hung it under the big drum and left the room with Grandma.
And then the boy opened his eyes. He opened his eyes and laughed, because he was not sleeping at all, but pretending.
He jumped off the bed, ran barefoot to where the new yellow drum hung, pulled a chair closer to the wall, climbed on it and picked up the drumsticks.
First, he softly hit the drum with just one stick. And the drum cheerfully responded: tram-there! Then he struck with the second stick. The drummer answered even more cheerfully: tram-there-there!
What a nice drum!
And suddenly the boy looked up at the big military drum. Before, when there were no these strong wooden sticks, even from a chair it was impossible to reach it. And now?
The boy stood on tiptoe, reached up and struck the bass drum hard with his stick. And the drum hummed to him in response, softly and sadly
It was a very, very long time ago. Grandmother was then a little girl with thick pigtails.
And my grandmother had a brother. His name was Larik. He was a cheerful, handsome and brave boy. He was the best at gorodki, he was the fastest skater, and he also studied the best.
In early spring, the workers of the city where Larik lived began to gather a detachment to go fight for Soviet power.
Larik was then thirteen years old.
He went to the commander of the detachment and said to him:
Sign me up for the squad. I'll go fight the whites too.
- And how old are you? - asked the commander.
- Fifteen! - without blinking, answered Larik.
- Like? - asked the commander. And he repeated again: - As if?
- Yes, - said Larik.
But the commander shook his head.
- No, you can't, you're too young.
And Larik had to leave with nothing.
And suddenly near the window, on a chair, he saw a new military drum. The drum was beautiful, with a gleaming copper rim, with skin tightly stretched. Two wooden sticks lay side by side.
Larik stopped, looked at the drum and said:
- I can play the drum
- Really? - the commander was delighted. - Try it!
Larik threw the drum straps over his shoulder, took
hands with sticks and hit one of them on the tight top. The stick bounced like a spring, and the drum answered with a cheerful bass: boom!
Larik hit with another wand! Boom! the drum answered again.
And even then Larik began to drum with two sticks.
Oh, how they danced in his hands! They just didn't know how to hold back, they just couldn't stop. They played such a fraction that I wanted to get up, straighten up and step forward!
One-two! One-two! One-two!
And Larik remained in the detachment.
The next morning the detachment left the city. When the train started moving, Larpka's cheerful song was heard from the open doors of the car:
Bam-bara-bam-bam! Bam-bam-bam1 Ahead of all the drum, Commander and drummer.
Larik and the drum immediately became comrades.
In the morning they got up before everyone else.
- Hello, buddy! - Larik said to his drum II lightly slapped it with his palm.
"Health-rb-in!" - the drum hummed in response. And they set to work.
The detachment did not even have a forge. Larick with a drum were the only musicians. In the morning they played a wake-up call:
Bam-bar-bam!
Bam-bam-bay!
Good morning,
Bam-bar-bam!
It was a great morning song!
When the detachment was marching, they had another song in store. Larik's hands never got tired, and the voice of the drum did not stop all the way. It was easier for the fighters to walk along the swampy autumn roads. Singing along to their drummer, they went from halt to halt, from halt to halt...
And in the evening, at halts, the drum also had work to do. It was difficult for him alone, of course, to cope. He was just getting started;
Eh1 Bam-bara-bam,
Bam-bar-bam!
More fun than everyone
Drum!
Wooden spoons were immediately picked up:
And we also hit smartly!
Bim-bnri-bbm,
Bim-beery-bom!
Then four scallops entered;
We will not leave you!
Beams-bams, beams-bams!
And already the last began harmonicas.
Now that was fun! Such a wonderful orchestra could be listened to at least all night long.
But the drum and Larina had one more song. And this song was the loudest and most needed. Wherever the fighters were, they immediately recognized the voice of their drum from a thousand other drum voices. Yes, if necessary, Larik knew how to sound the alarm
Winter has come. Spring has come again. Larin was already in his fifteenth year.
The Red Guard detachment again returned to the city where Larik grew up. The Red Guards went as scouts in front of a large, strong army, and the enemy ran away, hiding, hiding, striking from around the corner.
The detachment approached the city late in the evening. It was dark, and the commander ordered to stop for the night near the forest, not far from the railroad tracks.
- I haven't seen my father, mother and younger sister for a whole year, - Larik told the commander. - I don't even know if they are alive. Can I visit them? They live behind that wood
- Well, go, - said the chief.
And Larik went. He walked and whistled softly. Underfoot, water gurgled in shallow spring puddles. It was light from the moon. Behind Larik's back hung his comrade-in-arms - a military drum.
- Do they recognize him at home? No, the younger sister, of course, will not know. He felt two pink gingerbread cookies in his pocket. This hotel he has in store for her
He approached the edge. How good it was here! The forest was quiet, quiet, all silvered by moonlight.
Larik stopped. A shadow fell from a tall spruce. Larik stood, covered by this black shadow.
Suddenly, a dry branch clicked softly.
One is on the right. The other is on the left. Behind the back
People came to the edge. There were many. They walked in a long line. Rifles up. Two stopped almost next to Larik. On the shoulders - White Guard epaulettes. One officer said to the other very quietly;
- Some of the soldiers come from the side of the forest, the other - along the railway line. The rest come from behind.
- We will close them in a ring and destroy them, - said another.
And, stealthily, they passed by.
These were enemies.
Larik took a deep breath. He stood in the shadows. He was not noticed.
Larik rubbed his hot forehead with his hand. All clear! So, part comes from the forest, part comes from the rear, part - along the railroad track
The Whites want to encircle them and destroy them.
You need to run there, to your own, to the Reds. You need to be notified, and as soon as possible.
But will he make it? They can get ahead of him. They might grab it along the way
No! You need to do it differently.
And Larik turned his war drum towards him, took out wooden sticks from behind his belt and, waving his arms widely, struck the drum.
Anxiety!
It sounded like a shot, like a thousand short gunshots.
Anxiety!
The whole forest clicked off, buzzed, drummed with a loud echo, b; udao near each tree stood a small brave drummer and beat the war drum.
Larik stood under the spruce and saw how enemies rushed towards him from all sides. But he didn't move. He only pounded, pounded, pounded his last song of battle alarm on the drum.
And only when something hit Larik in the temple and when he fell, the drumsticks themselves fell out of his hands
Larik could no longer see how the red soldiers rushed towards the enemy with rifles at the ready, and how the defeated enemy fled both from the side of the forest, and from the side of the city, and
from where the thin lines of the railway track shone.
In the morning it was quiet again in the forest. The trees, shaking off drops of moisture, raised their transparent tops to the sun, and only the old spruce had wide branches lying completely on the ground.
The soldiers brought Larin home. His eyes were closed.
The drum was with him. Only the sticks remained in the forest, where they fell from Larik's hands.
And the drum was hung on the wall.
He hummed for the last time - loudly and sadly, as if saying goodbye to his glorious comrade in arms.
That's what the old war drum told the boy.
The boy quietly climbed out of his chair and tiptoed back into bed.
He lay there for a long time with his eyes open, and it seemed to him that he was walking along a wide beautiful street and was beating hard on his new yellow drum. The voice of the drum is loud, bold, and together they sing Larik's favorite song:
Bam-bara-bam, Bam-bara-bam, Ahead of all the drum. Commander and drummer.

Ya. Shvedov
EAGLE

Eaglet, Eaglet, fly higher than the sun
And look at the steppes from the heights!
Forever silent merry lads,
I was the only one left alive.

Eaglet, eagle, shine with plumage.
Outshine the white light.
I don't want to think about death, believe me
At sixteen boyish years.

Eaglet, Eaglet, explosive grenade
From the hill of the enemy swept away.
I was called an eagle in the detachment.
Enemies are called an eagle.

Eaglet, eagle, my faithful comrade,
You see that I survived.
Fly to the village, tell your dear.
Like a son, send him to be shot.

Eaglet, eagle, winged comrade.
The distant steppes are on fire.
Komsomol eagles rush to help,
And life will return to me.

Eaglet, eagle, trains are coming.
Victory by struggle is decided.
In the power of an eagle, millions of eagles,
And the country is proud of us.

L. Panteleev
GREEN BERETS

The events that the writer L. Panteleev tells about belong to very distant times. After the civil war, famine and devastation reigned in our country. Thousands of children were left homeless and without parents. For these homeless children, the Soviet government opened boarding schools, schools, colonies, orphanages. But the young republic of workers and peasants did not have enough money. After all, factories and factories did not work, the village was ruined
L. Panteleev in those years was also homeless, he was brought up in the Leningrad school-commune named after Dostoevsky, or in "Shkida", as its pupils called this school in abbreviated form. All this can be learned from the story itself. And the life and adventures of the Shkid people are described in more detail in the story “The Republic of Shkid” by G. Belykh and L. Panteleev.
I have never been a pioneer, although by age I could well wear a red tie for more than one year, and even for several years. And not only was I not a member of a pioneer organization, but for some time I considered all the young pioneers to be my mortal enemies.
Here's how it turned out.
For some reason, Shkida didn't go to the dacha that summer. All summer we languished in the city.
I remember a hot June afternoon, an afternoon when all the windows in all classrooms and bedrooms were wide open and still there was nothing to breathe in the rooms. The Shkidians, brutalized by the heat, those who are left without vacations and walks for “good” behavior, loiter from room to room, trying to read, lazily playing cards and scolding the Chaldeans, by whose mercy they sit on this stuffy sunny day locked up.
Oh, if only it would rain, if only there would be thunder, or something! ..
And suddenly - what is it? It seems, and in fact thunder? No, it's not thunder. But outside the windows something rumbles, rumbles, approaches. Wait, brothers, but this is a drum! .. Drum roll! Where? What? Why?
And then we hear in the next room, in the dining room, someone's jubilant voice:
- Guys! Guys! Flow! The Boy Scouts are coming!
We rushed to the windows. Covered window sills.
Along Petergofsky Prospekt - from the Oovodny Canal to the Fontanka - about thirty boys and girls, in white shirts, blue short pants and skirts, and with red ties around their necks, were moving with a not very clear marching step to the drum roll. Under their armpits they held (as hunters hold a gun with the muzzle down) "staves" - long round sticks, with which the Boy Scouts walked along the streets of Petrograd not long ago. Only the head of these guys, a long-legged guy with a shaved head, was without a staff, and a small drummer, walking in front of everyone, and a standard-bearer, performing behind him. On the red velvet banner we saw the words:
Factory "Red Bavaria".
Of course, the Skids could not admire this spectacle in silence. No sooner had the drum approached our windows than one of the high school students whistled deafeningly. From a neighboring window they shouted:
- Du!
- Du! Du! - picked up on all the windowsills.
The white shirts continued their regular pace, only the little drummer, deafened by the whistle of the robbers, shuddered, stumbled and looked frightened at our windows.
- Hey, you! Retired goat drummer! - the shkydtsy cackled. - Look, you will lose your tambourine!
- Hey you barefoot!
- Gogochki!
- Holos!
- Boy scouts are undercut! ..
But then behind us we heard an angry cry:
- What kind of disgrace is this?! Get out of the window sills this very minute!
Vikniksor stood at the door of the classroom, his pince-nez gleaming menacingly. However, this time neither this brilliance nor the angry voice of our president made a strong impression on us.
- Victor Nikolaevich! - Yankel called. - Come here, look! The Boy Scouts are coming!
Smiling incredulously, Vikniksor approached, the guys stepped aside, and he, bending down, looked out into the street.
- Enough of you, what a boy scout! he said. “These are not scouts, they are young pioneers.
For many of us, this was a completely new, unheard-of word.
The drum beat quieter and duller, a detachment of barefoot was approaching, probably, Kalinkin bridge, and we surrounded Vikniksbra and vied with each other asking him: what kind of news is this - young pioneers?
- Young Pioneers is a newly created children's communist organization, - said Vikniksbr. - Pioneer - this means: pathfinder, discoverer, scout If you have not forgotten Fenimbre Cooper, you do not need to explain
No, we certainly haven't forgotten Fenimbre Cooper. But Cooper had nothing to do with it. And the Boy Scouts too. We knew that these guys, over whom we had just laughed so wildly and after whom we hooted so furiously, were our Soviet guys. Whether we felt ashamed, I won’t say, but I only remember that we ourselves had a terrible desire to tie our neckties and walk the streets with sticks in our hands.
And at dinner, when, having stuffed our stomachs with millet porridge, we were finishing our liquid cocoa, without milk and without sugar, Kblka Gypsy got up and asked for words.
“Viktor Nikolaevich,” he said, “is it possible for us to organize a detachment of young pioneers too?”
Vikniksbr frowned and strode across the dining room.
- No, guys, - he said after a pause, - we can't.
- Why?
- But because we have a shkbla, as you know, of a prison or, more precisely, a semi-prison type
- Aha! .. I see! The snout did not come out! - shouted someone behind the pillar of the fourth section.
Vikniksbr turned and looked around for the culprit.
- Ebnin, get out of the dining room, - he said.
- For what? - Yapbnchik was furious.
“Get out of the dining room,” Vikniksbr repeated.
- For what, I ask?
- For being rude.
- For what rudeness?! I, Viktor Nikolaevich, didn’t say about you - they didn’t come out with a snout. It's not you, it's us who didn't come out with a snout.
- Ebnin, you have a remark in the Chronicle, - just as non-perturbedly announced the head of the school and, turning to the pupils. continued: - No, guys, as I already explained to you. we, unfortunately, have no right to establish in our school either a Komsomol organization or a pioneer
On this subject, as, indeed, on any other, Vikniksor could talk for hours. He explained to us for a long time why we, former offenders, homeless children, hooligans, arsonists and vagabonds, do not have the right to be even in a children's political organization. But we didn't listen to Wickniksbra. We were not interested.
“Okay,” we thought. “What is there. It is impossible so it is impossible - not to get used. You never know what we are not allowed to do, hard-to-educate shkets. We lived without ties, we will live without them further”
We all quickly calmed down, and only the Japanese, who really got a remark in the Chronicle, became even more angry at both the Chaldeans and the pioneers. As soon as he saw from the window or on a walk a boy with a red tie, the Japanese lost the remnants of self-control and attacked the young pioneer with all the ardor that he was capable of. I will not lie - often we did not lag behind our friend. Maybe envy played a role here, the fact that we “didn’t come out with a snout”, or maybe we were just tomboys at that time who were just waiting for an opportunity to start a fight or a squabble.
One Sunday we went with the whole school for a walk in Ekateringof. I don’t know what is there now, but in our time it was a rather large and rather lousy, dirty and neglected park. The Yekateringofka river flowed through the park, and farther away there was something like a pleasure garden with a small restaurant and a boardwalk, where wrestlers, coupletists, conjurers and jugglers performed in the evenings. During the day, the platform was not working, the garden was open to everyone, and I remember that we always rushed there first of all, because in the garden, on its paths strewn with yellow sand, at any time of the day or night you could get a decent cigarette butt.
But this time something much more interesting awaited us in the lard than the half-smoked Nepman Sapho and Zephyr No. 6. Not far from the entrance, in the open air, at a buffet table, a powerfully built mustachioed man in a spacious flaky suit was sitting and drinking beer. Seeing the ego hero, we froze. Which of us has not had a chance to see him - if not in the cinema, not in the circus and not on the stage, then at least on posters and photographs! Yes, there was no doubt, in front of us was the “Russian hero” Ivan Poddubny, the champion of Russia in wrestling and weight lifting.
Surrounding the table, we froze in reverent silence. But he did not look at us - he was probably used to the fact that they were constantly staring at him - he sipped beer from a mug and lazily ate it with soaked peas.
I remember that we noticed that the iron chair, on which Poddubny was sitting, went four inches into the sand and continues to sink into it.
“Everything will go away,” whispered the one-eyed Mummy.
“Not all of them will leave,” the Merchant answered in the same whisper.
There was an interesting bet. But he was not destined to take place. It was at that moment that we heard a heart-rending scream behind us, looked around and saw the first-grader Yakushka, who was rushing at full speed from the garden gate towards us. He ran, absurdly waving his arms, and shouted in a thin voice:
- Guys! Guys! Hurry! Run! Pioneers of Yaponchik are beating! ..
We gasped, looked at each other and, forgetting Ivan Poddubny, with a wild battle cry rushed to where little Yakovlev showed us the way.
He brought us to the bank of Yekateringofka. And we saw something that made us grit our teeth.
The frail Yapbnchik rolled on the grass in an embrace with the same frail boy in a pioneer uniform, and several other pioneers rushed towards him, trying to drag him or hit him. We had no time to consider what was happening there, who was right and who was wrong.
The trumpet voice of the Merchant rang out:
- Bastards! Beat ours?!
And, growling, we rushed to the rescue of the Japanese.
We later found out what happened. Arriving together with everything in Ekateringof, the Japanese did not go into the garden, but turned aside and headed to his favorite places - to the bank of the river, where under the shade of a silvery spreading willow, among dusty burdocks and flying dandelions, it was always so nice to dream and think. A book and a notebook were hidden behind the belt of the Japanese, he planned to sit, read, compose poetry. And suddenly he comes and enters that in his place, by the very weeping willow, where he sat and dreamed so many times, he stands stretched out like a soldier , and putting to yoga, like a gun, a staff, some kind of karapet with a pioneer tie.
Jap stopped and fixed an angry, hypnotic look at the pioneer. It did not work, he continued to stand like an idol.
Then the Japanese asked what he needed here.
Pnoner not only did not answer, but did not raise an eyebrow either. Then it turned out that they had some kind of war game going on here and this guy was on the clock, and the sentry, as you know, is not supposed to talk to strangers. But the Japanese could not know this. At first he was taken aback, then he became furious, and then, seeing that it was not a man standing in front of him, but a statue, he grew bolder and began to offend the pioneer. After that, he swore to us that he did not touch this guy, but only “verbally dived” him. But we knew well the sharpness of the Yaposhka language and understood what it was like for the pioneer from this pick.
In a word, the matter ended with the pioneer listening, listening, enduring, enduring, and finally could not stand it, looked around and, without further ado, lashed the Japanese with his staff on the neck.
The Japanese did not differ in either strength or courage, he did not know how to fight and did not like, but then either the pioneer staff turned out to be too strong, or the opponent did not look so scary, only the Japanese did not hesitate, rushed at the little sentry, knocked him down and began to beat with his thin little fists. The pioneer answered the blows to the best of his ability. Until the last minute, this courageous man apparently remembered that he was a sentry, and fought in silence. But when the Japanese got close to his neck and began to choke him, the sentry could not stand it, raised his head and began to call for help. Other pioneers rushed in and rushed to separate them. Yakushka, who was walking nearby, ran up to the noise. We showed up in a minute.
I don’t know how it would all have ended and what dimensions this Ekateringof massacre would have taken if the long-legged pioneer leader had not arisen on the horizon. We heard the trill of his foot-whistle and immediately saw how he rushes to the river on his long legs, like those of an ostrich.
- Sha! Sha! - he shouted, waving his long arms. - Guys, sha! What's going on here? Sha, I say!!
Pioneers break away from the attacking Skids, huddled together.
- Kostya, Kostya, we are not to blame! - they yelled at each other. - It was the shelters who attacked us
- What-o-o?! - he shouted and turned - not to us, but to his pioneers. - What else are "shelter"? What is the expression "shelter"? Where are you - do you live under capitalism? .. Well, guys, cut it off, - he turned to us. - Quickly! .. Who did I tell? So that your feet are not here
We understood him and for some reason unquestioningly obeyed: we turned and walked away.
And then we saw our teacher Ellanlum. Her red, steamed and angry face peeked out from behind the bushes. As it turned out, she saw everything or almost everything.
- Good, she said, when we approached the bushes. - Nothing to say, good! Ugh! Shame! A shame! An indelible shame on the entire region! Can you go to public places with you? You can only go to a desert island with you!
And, ordering us to line up, Ellanlum announced:
- Well, quickly to school! Everything will be reported to Viktor Nikolaevich.
Not only did we have to interrupt our walk ahead of time, without collecting a single cigarette butt, not seeing Poddubny and not enjoying the other delights of Yekaterinhof, it turned out that we were also threatened with a big conversation with Vikniksor.
All the way we grumbled at the Japanese. And he grinned guiltily, sniffed and, in a voice trembling with excitement, tried to explain to us that it was not his fault, that he was only “verbally diving”, and did not think to fight with this bare-legged
I don’t know what happened: either Ellanlum didn’t report the fight to the headmaster after all, or Vikniksor, for some higher pedagogical reasons, decided not to proceed further with this matter, only a major conversation between us never took place.
But there was another conversation. After supper, the Japanese sought out Panteleev and Yankel. Secluded in the upper restroom, the slammers sat there and smoked one “chinarik” for two.
- Guys, - the Japanese addressed them in some unusual, solemn voice, - I have a serious conversation with you.
- Vali, - answered Yankel, somewhat surprised.
- No, not here.
- And what? Secret?
- Yes. The conversation is confidential. Let's go to the White Hall, there seems to be no one there now.
"Slam" was the name given to the homeless for an alliance between two friends. Slams had to share everything between themselves, protect each other and help each other in trouble.
Intrigued slammers took one last puff, spat a cigarette butt and went down after the Japanese. At the door of the White Hall, the Japanese looked around and said:
I'm just warning you: don't be rude.
In the farthest corner of the hall, he looked back once more, even looked at the ceiling for some reason, and only after all these precautions did he say:
- That's my idea! I thought a lot and came to the following decision: if we do not have the right to legally organize a Komsomol or pioneer cell in our country, then
- Means? Yankel was worried.
- The most elementary logic suggests that if a legal one is not possible, then it remains for us to establish an illegal one.
- What - illegal? - Panteleev did not understand.
- Illegal organization.
- What organization?
- Youth communist.
The Skids looked at each other. They chuckled. They smiled. I obviously liked the idea.
“Won’t they give us a hat?” - he said, thinking. Yankel.
- And what about you, such a luxurious hat? It depends on us that the organization is well conspiratorial
Under such circumstances, Yunkom, an underground organization of the Young Communards, was born. This event has long been included in the history of the Shkid Republic, it was told to the world on other pages, and I will not repeat myself.
I will only remind you that upon joining the organization, each new member had to take an oath, pledging to remain silent and not to betray his comrades. Not everyone was accepted into the organization. Before being accepted, one had to pass a serious test.
Several times a week, the Yunkomites gathered somewhere in the ruins of an old wing or in an abandoned Swiss room under the main staircase and, in the liquid light of a candle stub, carried out secret activities. In underground circles we studied the history of the Communist Party and the international revolutionary movement. Studied the history of the Komsomol. They even began to study political economy.
Lectures were given to us by the most well-read of us - Zhorka the Japanese, and, to tell the truth, we often listened to him much more attentively than some of our teachers.
We were happy. We walked the earth, filled with pride from the consciousness that behind us is a terrible, exciting secret.
When under the windows of our class a pioneer detachment from the Krasnaya Bavaria plant or from Putilovets now passed under the drum roll, we did not whistle, did not laugh, did not hoot. We silently, from top to bottom (and not only because we were looking out of the windows, but they were walking along the street) looked at them, looked at each other and grinned condescendingly.
“Stomp, stomp, little brothers,” we thought. With you, dear children, it's all a game, fun, but with us "
“Oh, if only they knew!” we thought. And, to be honest, we really wanted them to know. But the pioneers, of course, for the time being could not know anything, although, as it turned out later, they remembered our existence very well.
And it turned out this way. One evening, several high school students - Yankel, Kupets, Panteleev and Mamochka - having received permission from the teacher on duty, went to the cinema. The four had no sooner gone out into the street, and no sooner had the guard Meftakhudyn closed the iron gates behind them than the guys called out from the opposite side of Kurlyandskaya Street:
- Hey, Dostoevsky!
Two boys and one girl in pioneer ties were walking towards the Skids. The Skids looked at each other and hesitantly moved towards them.
In the middle of the pavement, both of them converged.
“We are here for you,” the girl said.
- Merey! Bonjour! Sil wu plyo, - answered Yankel, bowing gallantly and shuffling his bare foot.
What have we done to deserve such an honor? the Merchant boomed, also making some kind of musketeer gesture.
- Okay, stop talking, - said the pioneer. She was a little older and a little taller than her companions. “We came on business,” she said. “Only it’s very difficult to get to you. We've been standing for forty minutes.
- It's all the same with you - began one of the pioneers, the smallest, with a blond tuft.
But the girl stabbed him in the side so deftly and so hard that he froze and stopped. We understood what the blond wanted to say: as if we were in prison.
- Yes, you are right, sir, - Yankel turned to him. - It is not easy to get to us. We have a privileged boarding school. Like Cambridge or Oxford. Have you heard of these?
“Guys, we didn’t come to you to joke, but on business,” the girl said angrily. “Can you speak like a human being?”
- Oh, milady, do me a favor! Yankel exclaimed.
- Then listen! We want to take patronage over you and help you organize a pioneer squad in your boarding school.
The quarrelsome mood immediately left the Skids.
- patronage? - asked Yankel, scratching at the back of his head - Hm. Yes. This is interesting. But, by the way, we already have bosses - the Trade Port.
- Yes? And the pioneers? Why didn't your bosses help you organize a pioneer team? We will personally assist you.
What could we say to this girl? That we have no right to be in a children's political organization? That we are juvenile delinquents? That we have an orphanage with a semi-prison regime?
And then Mom came to the rescue. In fact, he certainly committed a crime. He had broken, or was about to break, an oath.
- Thanks, chick! - he squeaked, playfully winking at the pioneer with his only eye. - Thank you. We already have,
The Skids have gone cold. All eyes turned to Mommy.
- What do you have? - did not understand the pioneer.
“What you need is what you have,” Mommy answered just as coquettishly.
- Pioneer organization? Squad?
Mom cast a bewildered glance at her comrades. But now it was not his comrades who were looking at him, but three predatory beasts.
- I ask: do you have a pioneer organization?
- Yeah, - Mommy squeezed out with difficulty. - Sort of.
The Skids got excited.
- Guys, let's go, we're late, - said Yankel.
And, waving his hand to the pioneers, he was the first to walk towards Petergofsky Prospekt.
Around the corner, the Skids stopped. The merchant coughed ominously.
- Well, Mommy, - he said after an ominous pause, - you have.
- For what? - Mummy murmured. - I didn't say anything. I just said "like"
Having discussed this issue on the go, we decided that Mommy "served mercy. After all, in the end, he really saved us, rescued us from a very difficult situation. And besides, we were in a hurry to the cinema. And, after conferring, we decided to show indulgence this time and forgave Mommy.
And two days later, our underground organization failed in the most stupid way. Janitor Meftakhudyn, walking around the school grounds late in the evening, noticed a pale trembling light in the ruins of the wing, heard muffled voices coming from under the stairs, and, deciding that bandits were sleeping in the ruins, rushed with all his might for help to Vnknik-sor.
Thus our entire little organization was captured on the spot. Not a single underground worker managed to escape.
We expected a brutal reprisal. But there was no reprisal. After carefully considering this issue and discussing it at the pedagogical council, Vikniksor allowed our organization to legally exist.
And now our Junk from the dark underground came out into the sunlight
We got a room - a room where the school museum used to be. We have our own newspaper. The number of members of the Yunkom began to grow. A new charter and a new program were approved. A central committee was elected. The Young-Com reading room was opened.
The only thing we didn't have were uniforms. We didn't even have any ties or badges.
But then one evening, when we were finishing supper, Vikniksor entered the dining room with a cheerful and even valiant step. From the very sight of him one could guess that he was going to tell us something very pleasant. And so it turned out. After walking around the dining room and touching his earlobe several times, Vikniksor stopped, coughed impressively and announced solemnly:
- Guys! I can make you happy. I managed to get for you through the provincial department of public education twenty pairs of trousers and almost the same number of berets.
- What?
- Where?
- To the cinema?
- In which? - shouted the Skids.
- Not tickets, but berets, - Vikniksor corrected us with a benevolent smile, - Velvet berets with ribbons And most importantly - imagine! - it turned out that these ribbons are our national colors!
We shouted "Hurrah" in unison, although not everyone understood
what ribbons and what national colors our president is talking about.
“Viktor Nikolaevich,” Yankel said, rising, “and what are our national colors?”
- Eh, Black, Black, how you are not ashamed, brother! Vikniksbr grinned good-naturedly. “Don't you know your national flag? Sunflower colors: black and orange!
We were intrigued. There was an incredible uproar. The Skids unanimously demanded that they be shown these berets with national sunflower-colored ribbons.
Smiling, Wiknixbure raised his hand.
- Good, - he said. - Duty officer, please go upstairs and ask the housekeeper on my behalf to take one.
Two minutes later, the duty officer returned, and we got the opportunity to see this original headdress with our own eyes. A dark green velvet or plush beret with a shaggy pomponchik on top was really decorated on the side with two short St. George ribbons.
The Shkydians silently and even with a certain fear examined and felt this amazing work of sewing art, it is not known how and from where it got into the warehouse of the gubna-rbba. As soon as the beret was on all four tables and again found itself in the hands of Wikniksbra, he said:
- I managed to get such berets, unfortunately, only seventeen pieces. Unfortunately, not enough for everyone. I figured out how to distribute them among you, and came to the following decision. We will give the right to wear berets to the best of the best, our advanced, our avant-garde - the members of Junkbma.
This time, no one shouted "Hurrah", even the Yunkbm people were silent for some reason, and no one looked at them with envy. Only some newcomer from the second section, offended by Wicknixbra, shouted:
What are we, redheads?
“No, Petrakov,” Vikniksor said affectionately, “you are not red-haired. But you have not yet earned the honor of being a member of the Young Communards. Achieve this, and one day you too will get the right to wear a uniform.
This word made many of us wince and wary.
“Viktor Nikolaevich,” the Merchant rose above the table, “but what, is it really necessary? ..
- What is required?
- Wear these berets?
- Yes, Offenbach, of course, like any other form.
We clearly pictured the Merchant in this children's hat with a pink pom-pom on top, and we felt uncomfortable. Many of us had bad premonitions, And these premonitions, alas, very soon came true.
That same evening, Merchant approached Yankel and Yaponets, who were discussing the next issue of the Yunkom newspaper, and said:
- That's what, timidly Cross me out.
- Where? What? Why?
- From Yunkom. I'm getting out, I'm getting out
In vain did we persuade him: his decision was unshakable. The merchant was forever lost to our organization.
The rest were more or less steadfast.
I say "more or less" because to walk the streets in these Hamletian headdresses really required a lot of stamina and heroism. Especially when you consider that the chintz trousers that Vikniksor got us turned out to be the most fantastic colors: blue, light green, canary yellow
Where are the pioneers with their short pants and kumach ties! The city soon got used to the pioneers. Some looked at them with pride and love, others with hidden hatred. As for the Yunkomites, the population of Petrograd could not get used to their uniform. There was no case that a person walked down the street and, having met a Yunkom member,
didn’t flinch, didn’t look back and didn’t say something like: “Eva, how dressed up, you fool!” or: “Well, a scarecrow with a pom-pom! ..”
When we were marching in formation, there was still back and forth in the formation, we were soldiers, we felt the elbow of a neighbor - to go alone was unbearable torture.
And not everyone survived this torture.
Could not stand it, by the way, and one-eyed Mummy.
That's what happened one Saturday night.
Three Shkydtsy, three Yunkomites, three members of the central committee - Yankel, Yaponets and Panteleev, having received vacation certificates, cheerfully and cheerfully walked along Petergofsky Prospekt towards the center. Somewhat ahead of them, on the other side of the street was Mummy. He also walked rather quickly and was also wearing a Yunkomovsky beret, but the beret he caught, as luck would have it, was very large, flat, so that the frail Mamochka looked from a distance like some kind of russula or grebe. One of the Yunkomites saw him, the guys laughed, joked a little about Mamochkin's account, and again got carried away with the conversation. But here Yankel, throwing an absent-minded glance at the opposite pavement, suddenly stopped and exclaimed:
- Guys, wait, where is Mommy?
Mommy was just there, and he was gone. He was neither in front nor behind, neither to the left nor to the right. In broad daylight, a man disappeared, fell through the ground, turned into invisible.
With gaping mouths, the Skids stood on the edge of the pavement II and watched. And then their gaping mouths rounded even more. The children saw Mom. He came out of some entrance, furtively looked around and walked quickly, almost ran to the tram stop. On Mayochka's machine-cut head, there was a black knot of his usual bandage. There was no beret on the head. He obviously migrated either into his pocket or in his bosom.
The Junkboys looked at each other grimly.
- Good goose! - through his teeth said the Japanese.
- Oh, you lousy renegade! Yankel exclaimed.
Without saying a word, the Yunkomites rushed after their weak-willed comrade, but he, as if expecting or anticipating a chase, quickened his pace, and before the Skids had time to call out to him, Mamochka jumped onto the sausage of a just-moving tram and was gone.
Frankly, we had no right to judge him too harshly. In our hearts, each of us understood Mommy well. But we were leaders, leaders, and we had no right to forgive cowardice and cowardice.
- Judge! Yankel exclaimed.
- Exclude! - Said the Japanese.
The third could only demand the guillotine or execution.
In any case, on Monday morning, upon returning from vacation. Very unpleasant things awaited Mom. But on Monday, Mommy didn't show up in Shkyde. He did not return on Tuesday either. And on Wednesday afternoon, Vikniksbrug received a phone call from the district police station and was told that his pupil, Fyodorov Konstantin, was being treated at the surgical department of the Alexander City Hospital.
Taking two high school students with him, Vikniksor immediately went to the hospital.
Mom was unconscious. Contrary to custom, the bandage on his head was not black, but white. Pointy Mamochkin's nose became even more pointed, his lips were parched.
A police officer was sitting by Mommy's bed and writing something in a notebook. A black leather jacket and a wooden Mauser holster peeked out from under a white coat.
When we learned that on Saturday evening Mamochka, beaten to the point of insensibility, was brought to the hospital from the Pokrovsky market, we felt uneasy. Why could a thirteen-year-old shelter boy be beaten in the market? From experience we knew that only for theft. No wonder in those years the local punks sang a song:
In English, at Pokrovka, there are women, two merchants, And all the guys are scolding Dostoevsky indiscriminately ..
Yes, the market was fraught with many temptations in those years, and there were many cases when the Skids, especially beginners, came across such ugly activities as free treats with nuts, apples, sweets, etc. But - Yonkomovets ?! School Vanguard
- No, no, - the police officer reassured Vnkpiksbra, - there can be no talk of any theft
What happened to Mamochka at the Pokrovsky market received quite a lot of publicity in the city at that time. There was even an article in one of the Petrograd newspapers, I think in Smena
On his way to Malaya Podyacheskaya, where his older family brother lived. Mom passed through Pokrovka He went straight through the market, probably in order to shorten the path. On this day, his brother promised to take him to the circus and Mommy was afraid to be late.
The market was already closing, the people were dispersing, the merchants were folding their chests and awnings.
And then Mommy saw something that made him instantly forget about the circus, and about his brother, and about everything in the world.
Three young Nepmen, three red-faced, tipsy butchers, surrounded a large slatted chest, in which merchants usually keep watermelons, cabbage, or live poultry, and with wild drunken laughter poked into this chest with sticks and a disheveled janitor's broom.
- Well, talk, jerk! - growled one of them, the most red-cheeked, tall, in a red, blood-stained apron. - Say, repeat after me: “I am a turkey - red snot”
Mommy came closer and was horrified to see that in the box, crouched, in an uncomfortable position, was sitting a small blond boy in a tattered white shirt and a red tie knocked to the side. In this boy, Mommy easily recognized one of those who came to Shkyda to take patronage over them.
- Well, repeat! - the marketers pressed on the boy. - Repeat, they tell you: “I am a turkey - I renounce red snot”
- Let me go! I'm late! - holding back tears, the boy asked with his last strength.
- Renounce, paskuda, it will be worse! Well!..
And the dirty broom got into the boy's face again.
Mom couldn't watch anymore.
- What are you doing, you bastards?! he shouted, rushing to the butchers.
The merchants looked around and widened their eyes.
- And what is this goat?
- Are you, I say, bullying the guy? Do you think it's big?
- Oh, you eyeless frog! growled the kid in the apron. Come on, join the company!
And he stretched out his thick, hairy hand to grab Mommy by the scruff of the neck. But Mommy was not one of those. He
managed to bite the butcher painfully on the hand, jumped aside, turned around and kicked his opponent with all his might with his bare heel in the stomach.
Further, as they say, Mommy did not remember.
Three hefty butchers from Yaroslavl beat him so that there was no living place left on him. Mom was brought to the hospital with almost no pulse. And during the day the doctors did not know whether he would survive or not.
No documents were found with Mommy. Only on the third day, the agent of the criminal investigation, studying Mamochka's clothes, found in the pocket of bright yellow trousers a green velvet beret, and in the lining of this beret - a certificate folded eight times, from which it followed that Fedorov Konstantin, 13 years old, a pupil of the Petrograd School of Social Security. individual education named after F. M. Dostoevsky, goes on home leave until 9 am on August 14, 1922.
Thanks to the doctors and nurses of the Alexander City Hospital. They got Mommy out, saved his life.
To be honest, I don't remember at all how and when Mamochka returned to Shkyda. It seems that after the hospital, he spent a few weeks at home, with his brother. I also don't remember what they did to the butchers. I know that they were judged and condemned. But how and by how much - I don’t want to lie, I don’t remember. To tell the truth, we were not up to it then: Junkbm was going through troubled times, strife began in the committee, and the story with Mammy somehow by itself faded into the background.
But here's what I remember well.
Nice September day. In the class of the fourth department-ii there is a lesson of ancient history. Squeaking with his old, reddish boots, Vikniksor walks around the classroom and enthusiastically tells about the unfading exploits of the Spartan warriors. Among us is Mommy. He sits in his usual place, on the "Kamchatka". This place Mommy has been stubbornly defending for more than a year. No matter how much they persuade
his Chaldeans to move closer, he refuses, assures him that he can see better in the back row. But "what" he can see better, he, of course, is silent about sToivf. The thing is that Mommy is an avid gambler
The day is sunny and soft. Outside the open windows, trams chime, heavy rolling carts rumble, hooves clatter, from the opposite sidewalk we hear the cries of seed vendors. For us, all these noises merge into one monotonous roar.
But something new breaks into this boring street music. Wait, it looks like thunder! No, it's not thunder, it's a drum. Yes, yes, drum roll. It is getting closer, closer, it is already very close, and now, blocking the drum, the pioneer horn sang throughout the street, throughout the city.
We no longer sat and listened. We stared pleadingly at Wicknixbra.
- Viktor Nikolaevich, can I?
Vikniksor walked around the classroom, touched his earlobe, frowned, chewed his lips.
“You can,” he said.
We rushed to the windows, stuck like flies around the window sills.
Pioneers walked along the street from the Oovodny Canal towards the Kalinkin Bridge. It was the same detachment familiar to us from the Krasnaya Bavaria plant, but now there are much more pioneers.
The drum tapped out a clear fraction, the guys took a step like a soldier, sang, a silver horn was poured and a fiery banner burned over the heads of the young pioneers.
This time we were very quiet.
And the pioneers came up to our windows, and suddenly their lanky leader ran a little ahead, turned to face the detachment and waved his hand. The drum and bugle fell silent at the same time, and all the pioneers - and there were already a hundred of them - turned their heads in our direction at once and, without breaking their step, shouted loudly and unanimously three times in a row:
- Vp-pa!
- Ur-ra!
- Hooray!!
Stunned, we froze on our feet.
And then Yankel looked around and said:
- Mommy, my child, and you know - these ovations refer to your person.
Mommy was surprised, blushed, craned his neck and suddenly recognized in the drummer, who was still holding the sticks raised above the drum, that same blond-haired boy from the Pokrovsky market. I don't know what Mommy felt at that moment. But he realized, probably, that some kind of response was expected from him. And, blushing even thicker, he leaned down and shouted in his squeaky, hoarse voice, not strengthened after his illness:
- Hey you, bare-footed, you will lose the tambourine! ..
After that, some people assured me that Mommy was a fool. No, he wasn't stupid. It was just that he was a real skidets, did not know how to be gentle and did not find any other way to express his feelings.

E. Bagritsky
DEATH OF A PIONEER

Refreshed by the storm.
The leaf is shaking.
Ah, green stumps
Double whistle!
Valya, Valentina,
What's wrong with you now?
White Chamber.
Painted door.
Thinner than a web
From under the skin of the cheeks
Smoldering scarlet fever
Mortal flare.
You can't speak
Lips are hot.
They are conjuring over you
Smart doctors.
Petting the poor hedgehog
Sheared hair.
Valya, Valentina,
What happened to you?
The air is inflamed.
Black grass.
Why from the heat
Headache?
Why crowded
In the sublingual moan?
Why eyelashes
Blowing a dream?
Doors open.
(Sleep. Sleep. Sleep.)
Leaning over you
Crying mother:
"Valenka, Valyusha!
It's hard in the hut.
I am a cross
Brought gebo.
The whole economy is abandoned,
You can't fix it right now.
Dirt is not good
In our upper rooms.
The chickens are not closed.
A pig without a trough
And the cow is mooing
Angry with hunger.
Do not resist, Valenka,
He won't eat you.
Golden, small
Your baptismal cross.

Rumpled on the cheek
Long tear.
And in hospital windows
A storm is moving.

Valya opens
Troubled eyes.

From the roaring seas
cloudy country
Clouds are floating.
Full of showers.

Above the hospital garden.
Stretched out in a row.
Behind a dense squad
The squad is moving.
Zips like ties
They fly in the wind.

In the rainy glow
cloud layers
Like a shape
Thousand heads.

The dam collapsed
And go out to fight
Satin blouses
In a blue storm.

Pipes. Pipes. Pipes
Raise howl.

Above the hospital garden
Above the water of the lakes.
Squads are moving
For the evening gathering.
They block out the light
(The distance is black-black).
Pioneers of Kuntsev,
Pioneers of Setun,
Pioneers of the Nogin factory.

And bent down below
Mother languishes:
Baby palms
Don't kiss her.
Burnt stuffiness
Lips do not refresh.
Valentine more
You don't have to live.

"I didn't collect
Is it good for you?
Silk dresses.
Fur and silver
didn't I hoard?
Didn't sleep at night.
She milked all the cows.
Protected the bird.
To have a dowry
Strong, unbreakable.
So that the veil to the face.
How do you go to the crown!
Don't resist, Valenka!
He won't eat you.
Golden, small.
Your baptismal cross.

Let the hateful sound
poor words -
Youth has not died
Youth is alive!

We were led by youth
On a saber hike.
We were abandoned by youth
On the Kronstadt ice.

War horses
They took us away
On a wide area
They killed us.
But in feverish blood
We were rising
But the eyes are blind
We opened.

Arise Commonwealth
Crow with a fighter -
Strengthen your courage
Steel and lead.

So that the earth is harsh
Has bled out
So that youth is new
Rising from the bones.

So that in this tiny
Tele - forever
Our youth sang
Like spring water.

Valya, Valentina.
You see - to the south
Base Banner
Curls on a cord.

red flag
Curls over the mound.
"Valya, be ready!" -
Thunder screams.

In the green of the lawn
Drops how to pour!
Valya in a blue shirt
Gives off fireworks.

Quietly rises
Ghostly light,
Above the hospital bed
Children's hand.

"I am always ready!" -
Hear around.
On a woven rug
The cross falls.

And then powerless
Falling hand -
In plump pillows
In the pulp of a mattress.

And in hospital windows
Blue warmth.
From the big sun
The room is light.

And leaning into bed.
Mother languishes.

Behind the fence to the chiffchaff
Grace now.

That's all!
But the song
I refuse to wait.

A song arises
In the chat of the guys.

And the song comes out
With the clatter of steps

To a world wide open
Fury of the winds.

N. Lupsyakov
MACHINE GUN

K. Simonov
MAJOR BRING THE BOY ON THE CARRIAGE

The major brought the boy on a carriage.
Mother died. The son did not say goodbye to her.
For ten years in this and that world
These ten days will be credited to him.

He was brought from the fortress, from Brest,
Was scratched by bullets lafegue.
It seemed to the father that the place was more reliable
From now on, there is no child in the world.

The father was wounded and the cannon was broken.
Tied to a shield to keep from falling.
Clutching a sleeping toy to your chest,
The gray-haired boy was sleeping on the gun carriage.

We went to meet him from Russia.
Waking up, he waved his hand to the troops.
You say there are others.
That I was there and it's time for me to go home

Here this grief is known by hearsay,
And it broke our hearts.
Who ever saw this boy.
He won't be able to come home.

I must see with those same eyes.
With which I cried there in the dust.
How will that boy come back with us
And kiss a handful of his land.

For everything that we cherished with you.
Called us to battle in the law of Binsk.
Now my home is not where it used to be
And where he is taken from the boy.

Far away, in the mountains of the Urals,
Your boy is sleeping. Tested by fate
I believe we are at all costs
I'll see you eventually.

But if not when the date comes
Him like me to go on days like this
Following the father, by right, as a soldier,
Saying goodbye to him, you remember me.

Minsk highway. 1941.

Boris Lavrenyov
A BIG HEART

He stood in front of the captain - snub-nosed, with high cheekbones, in a short coat with a red beaver collar. His round nose turned purple from the cold steppe dry wind. The peeled, blue lips trembled, but the dark eyes were intently and almost sternly fixed on the captain's. He did not pay attention to the Red Navy, who, curiously, surrounded him, an unusual thirteen-year-old visitor to the battery - this harsh world of adults, people scorched by gunpowder. He was shod not for the weather: in gray canvas shoes, worn out on the toes, and shifted from foot to foot all the time, while the captain sorted out the accompanying note brought from the headquarters of the section by the Red Navy liaison officer who brought the boy:
“He was detained in the morning at the front line. According to his testimony, he watched the German forces in the area of ​​​​the Novy Put state farm for two weeks. He is sent to you as he could be useful for the battery”
The captain folded the note and slipped it over the side of the sheepskin coat. The boy continued to look at him calmly.
- What is your name?
The boy straightened up, threw up his chin, and tried to click his heels, but his face crumpled, he looked frightened at his legs and, bowing his head, hurriedly said:
- Nikolai Vikhrov, Comrade Captain.
The captain looked at his shoes and shook his head.
- Your wet shoes are out of season, comrade Vikhrov. Feet stiff?
The boy looked down. He tried his best to keep from crying. The captain thought about how he made his way in these shoes through the steppe, iron from frost. He himself became chilly. He shrugged his shoulders and, stroking the boy's red cheek, said:
- Welcome! We have a different fashion for shoes Lieutenant Kozub!
The burly little lieutenant saluted the captain.
- Order the administrative officer to immediately find and bring me to the casemate "felt boots of the smallest size.
"Casemate - sheltered from shells and bombs in fortresses
The goat ran at a trot to carry out the order. The captain took the boy by the shoulder.
- Let's go to my house. Warm up - let's talk.
In the commander's casemate, crackling and humming, the stove was blazing. The Red Navy man was stirring the coals with a stump. The orange otoleskis trembled against the white wall. The captain took off his sheepskin coat and hung it on a hook. The boy, looking around, stood at the door. He was probably struck by this vaulted subterranean room, the repaulin sparkling with enamel white, bathed in the strong light of the lamp.
- Undress, - suggested the captain. - It's hot here, like on the Artek beach in July. Get warm!
The boy pulled off his coat from his shoulders, carefully folded it with the lining outward, and, standing on tiptoe, hung it over the captain's short fur coat. The captain liked his careful attitude to clothes. Without a coat, the boy turned out to be small and very thin. The captain thought he must have been very hungry.
- Sit down! Eat first, then work. There was, you know, in the old days some commander who said that the way to the heart of a soldier runs through the stomach. The man was pretty smart. A fighter with a full belly is worth five hungry ones Do you like strong tea?
The captain filled his thick faience mug to the top with a dark, fuming liquid. He cut off a healthy slice of a loaf, heaped butter on it to the thickness of a finger and crowned this structure with a layer of smoked brisket.
The boy glanced at this monstrous sandwich almost in fear.
- Put sugar!
And the captain pushed forward to the guest a piece of a six-inch cartridge case, stuffed with bluish, sparkling, like snow, pieces of refined sugar. The boy looked at the captain with a strange look from under his brows, carefully took a piece of sugar and put it next to the cup.
- Wow! - the captain laughed. Here, brother, they don’t drink tea like that. It's just spoiling the drink.
And he splashed a heavy lump of sugar into the mug. The boy's thin face wrinkled, and uncontrollable, very large tears poured from his eyes onto the table. The captain sighed, moved closer and hugged the guest's bony shoulders.
- Well, it's full! - He said cheerfully. - Drop it! What was, then floated away. Here you will not be offended. You see, I have such a baboon like you, only they call it Yurka. And in everything else - like two drops of water, and the nose is the same, a button.
The boy wiped away his tears with a quick and bashful gesture.
- It's nothing, comrade captain, I didn't take care of myself. I remembered my mother.
- Look what - the captain drawled. - Mom? Mom is alive?
- Alive. - The boy's eyes lit up. - Only we are hungry. Mom used to pick potato peels from the German kitchen at night. Once a sentry caught her. By hand - butt Until now, the hand does not bend
He pursed his lips, and tenderness escaped his eyes. They gave birth to a hard and sharp brilliance. The captain patted him on the head.
- Be patient, Mom will help out. Lie down, take a nap.
The boy looked pleadingly at the captain:
- Then I don't want to sleep. Let me tell you about them first.
There was such intensity of stubbornness in his voice that the captain did not insist. He moved to the other end of the table and took out a notepad.
- Okay, come on! .. How many Germans do you think are on the farm?
The boy answered quickly, without hesitation:
- The first is an infantry battalion. Bavarians. 176th Regiment of the 27th Division. Arrived from Holland.
The captain was surprised at such accuracy of the answer:
- How did you know that?
- I saw numbers on shoulder straps. Heard how they talked. I studied German well at school, I understand everything. Then a company of motorcycle-machine gunners. A platoon of medium tanks. Trenches along the northern edge of the state farm. Two pillboxes with field and anti-tank guns. They are strongly fortified, Comrade Captain. All the time cement was hauled by trucks. I peered out the window.
- Can you pinpoint the exact location of the pillboxes? - asked, leaning forward, the captain. He suddenly realized that before him was not an ordinary boy, but a very sharp-sighted, conscious and accurate intelligence officer.
- They have a big pillbox on the melon plant behind the old current. And the other
- Stop! the captain interrupted. “It's great that you tracked everything down so well. But, you see, we did not live in your state farm. Where melon, where the current - we do not know. And naval ten-inch artillery, my friend, is a serious thing. Let's start nailing at random, we can chop up a lot of excess, until we put it on the point. And there, after all, our people are there And your mother
The boy looked at the captain in bewilderment.
“So, Comrade Captain, don’t you have a map?”
- There is a map. Can you figure it out?
- Here's another one, - the boy said with casual superiority, - my dad is a surveyor. I can draw maps myself. Dad is also in the army now. He is the commander of the sappers! ”He added with pride.
- It turns out that you are not a boy, but a treasure, - the captain joked, deploying a staff half-kilometer on the table.
The boy knelt on a stool and bent over the map. His face brightened, his finger rested on the paper.
- Here, - he said, smiling happily, - as if on the palm of his hand. What a good card you have! Detailed as a plan Here, behind the ravine, there is an old current.
He understood the map unmistakably like an experienced topographer, and soon a palisade of red crosses, inflicted by the captain's hand, stained the map in all directions, pinpointing targets. The captain was pleased.
- Very good, Kolya! - He approvingly patted the boy on the shoulder. - Just great!
And the boy, for a moment ceasing to be a scout, pressed his cheek against the captain's palm like a child. The caress restored him to his true age. The captain folded the map:
- And now, Comrade Vikhrov, in order to discipline - sleep!
The boy didn't resist. His eyes were drooping from hearty food and warmth. He yawned sweetly, and the captain kindly laid him on his bunk and covered him with a sheepskin coat. Then he returned to the table and sat down to draw up the initial calculations. He got carried away and did not notice the time. A quiet call interrupted him from work:
- Comrade captain, what time is it?
The boy sat on the bunk anxious. The captain joked:
- Sleep! What is your time? A fight starts - wake up.
The boy's face darkened. He spoke quickly and insistently:
- No no! I need back! I promised my mother. She will think that I was killed. When it gets dark, I'll go.
The captain was amazed. He could not even imagine that the boy was seriously going to make a second terrible journey through the night steppe, which he accidentally succeeded once. It seemed to the captain that his guest was not quite awake and was talking half asleep.
- Nonsense! - the captain got angry. - Who will let you in? Even if you don’t get caught by the Germans, then at the state farm you can fall under our shells. Sleep!
The boy frowned and blushed.
- I won't get caught by the Germans. They sit at home from the frost at night. And I have all the tracks by heart Please let me go.
He asked stubbornly and relentlessly, and for a moment the captain thought: “But what if the whole story of the boy is a deliberate comedy, a deception?” But, looking into the clear children's pupils, he dismissed this assumption.
- You know, Comrade Captain, that the Germans do not allow anyone to leave the state farm. If they miss me in the morning and don't find me, it will be bad for my mother.
The boy was clearly worried about the fate of his mother.
- I understand everything, - said the captain, taking out his watch. - It's sixteen thirty now. We will walk with you to the observation post and check everything again. When it gets dark, you will be shown. Clear?
At the observation post, placed close to the infantry positions at the turn, the captain sat down to the rangefinder. Oit saw the hilly Crimean steppe, covered with blue stripes of snow blown into the beams by the winds. The pink light of sunset was dying over the fields. On the horizon, the gardens of a distant state farm darkened in a narrow strip.
The captain gazed for a long time at the arrays of these gardens and the white flecks of buildings between them. Then he called the boy:
- Well, look! Maybe you can see your mom.
Smiling at the captain's joke, the boy looked through the eyepiece.
The captain slowly turned the horizontal steering wheel, showing the guest a panorama of his native places. Suddenly Kolya pulled away from the eyepieces and, with boyish joy, tugged at the captain's sleeve:
- Birdhouse! My birdhouse, Comrade Captain! Honest pioneer!
Surprised, the captain bent down to the eyepiece. In the field of view, rising above the grid of bare poplar tops, above the green, stained with rust, roof, a tiny square darkened on a high pole. The captain saw him quite distinctly against the pale blue sky. And this prompted him to an unexpected thought. He took Kolya by the elbow, took him aside and spoke quietly to the boy under the bewildered looks of the Red Navy rangefinders.
- Understood? the captain asked.
And the boy, beaming all over, nodded his head.
the sky darkened. From the sea pulled the icy sharpness of the winter wind. In the course of the message, the captain led Kolya to the line. He called the company commander, told him briefly the case and ordered the boy to be taken secretly abroad. Two Red Navy sailors sank with the boy into the darkness.
And the captain looked after him until the new felt boots, brought to the boy in the command casemate by the head of the battery, stopped turning white. The captain waited anxiously to see if there would be sudden shots in that darkness. But everything was quiet, and the captain went to his battery.
He did not sleep at night. He drank tea and read endlessly. Before dawn, he was already at the observation post. And as soon as it brightened in the east and it was possible to distinguish a tiny square on this brightening strip, he gave the command. The first sighting volley of the tower split the silence of the winter morning. Thunder slowly rolled over the fields. And the captain saw how the dark square on the pole swung twice and, after a pause, a third time.
- Flight to the right, - the captain translated for himself and ordered the second volley.
This time, the birdhouse did not move, and the captain moved on to fire with both towers. With the excitement of an artilleryman, he watched how blocks of concrete and logs flew up in the smoke of explosions. He chuckled and after three volleys shifted his fire to the second target. And again the birdhouse carried on a friendly mute conversation with him. The fire hit where the red X on the map marked the fuel and ammunition depot. This time the captain was lucky from the first salvo. A wide swath of pale fire blazed over the horizon. Everything disappeared in a cloud of smoke: trees, roofs, a pole with a dark square. The explosion was very strong, and the captain was worried about what this explosion could do.
Phone beeped. From the frontier they asked for a ceasefire. The Marine Corps, which went on the attack, had already advanced towards the German trenches.
Then the captain jumped into the sidecar of a motorcycle and rushed across the field to the line. Machine-gun crackling and grenade strikes were heard from the state farm.
The stunned Germans, having lost their strongholds, resisted weakly. Cheerful semaphore flags were already blinking from the outskirts, reporting on the withdrawal of the enemy.
Leaving the motorcycle, the captain ran straight across the steppe, to the place where even the day before the appearance of a man had caused a flurry of lead. Gray-white smoke of burning gasoline floated over the gardens of the state farm, and exploding shells roared dully in it. The captain hurried to the green roof between the bruised poplars. Even from a distance, he saw a woman wrapped in a scarf by the gate. The boy was holding her hand. Seeing the captain, he rushed to meet him. The captain immediately grabbed the boy and squeezed him. But the boy evidently did not want to be small at that moment. He dug his hands into the captain's chest and struggled out of his embrace. The captain released him. Kolya stood in front of him, putting his hand to the red cap:
- Comrade captain, scout Vikhrov completed the task.
A woman with tortured eyes and a weary smile approached and held out her hand to the captain:
- Hello! .. He was waiting for you. We were all waiting. Thank you family!
And she bowed to the captain with a good, deep Russian bow. Kolya stood next to the captain.
- Well done! Did a great job!.. Was it scary in the attic when we started shooting? - asked the captain, drawing the boy to him.
- Scary! Oh, how terrible, comrade captain! - the boy answered frankly. - As the first shells hit, so everything staggered, as if falling through. I almost waved from the attic. It just became embarrassing. He began to say to himself: “Sit, sit!” And so he sat until the warehouse exploded. And then I don’t remember how I ended up below.
And, embarrassed, he buried his face in the captain's sheepskin coat, a small Russian man, a thirteen-year-old hero with a big heart - the heart of his people.

Joseph Utkin
BALLAD ABOUT ZASLONOV AND HIS ADJUTANT
"Konstantin Zaslonov - the legendary commander of the partisan detachment, Hero of the Soviet Union.

Hitlerites say:
- Boy Zhenya! Where is the squad?
Where is Zaslonov? All
Tell
- Don't know...

Where is the weapon? Where is the warehouse?
Say - money, chocolate.
No - a rope and a butt.
Understood?
- I don't know...

The enemy is burning Zhenka with a cigar.
Zhenya is patient, Zhenya is waiting,
Silent during interrogation
Barriers will not be thrown.
Morning. Square. Sun. Light.
Gallows. Village council.

The partisan is not visible.
Zhenya thinks: “Kaput,
Ours, apparently, will not come,
I'm dying, you see."
I remembered my mother. Father. Family.
Dear sister.
And the executioner one bench
Puts on another.
- Climb -
Well, everything!
And Zhenka got in.

Above is the sky. To the right is the forest.
With sad eyes
He looked across the sky.
He looked again at the forest.
I looked and froze.

Is this real or a dream?!
Rye, field - from three sides -
The partisans are rushing.
Ahead Barriers - jump.
Closer closer!

And the executioner
Busy with his work.
I measured the loop - just right.
He chuckled, waiting for the order.

An officer:
- Last time-
Where are the partisans?
Where is Zaslonov?

Zhenya: - Where?
On land and on water.
Both in oats and in bread.
Both in the forest and in the sky.
On the floor and in the field.
Outdoors and at school.
In the church. In a fisherman's boat.
In a hut behind a wall.
You, fool.
Behind the back!

The enemy looked back and - clap
On the ground with a groan:
Stranger right in the forehead
Satisfied Zaslonov.

P. Zvirka
Nightingale

A small detachment of Nazi troops entered the village immediately after dinner. In truth, it was only where the village used to stand, for on both sides of the street there were only charred ruins. The trees of the orchards, barely budding, stood bare and charred.
The lieutenant, sitting on the cart of the camp kitchen, glanced first at the map laid out on his knees, then at the sad traces of the war, and seemed to be searching for something with his eyes. There was not a single living soul around. A flock of butterflies hovered in abandoned gardens over charred sunflowers and beds of miraculously preserved poppies.
The dusty, gray faces of the soldiers spoke of extreme fatigue, their legs gave way.
At the end of the village, where the road turned into a nearby darkening forest, diverging into three country roads with little access, the officer stopped the detachment. The anxious glances of the soldiers hopefully rushed to the commander, who jumped off the wagon and began to examine the area through binoculars.
During this short respite, when the soldiers could wipe their sweaty foreheads and straighten their duffel bags, a bird suddenly sang. Iridescent ringing in the air, this song awakened the silence of a summer day. The trilling birds fell silent for a short time, then they rang even stronger and more distinctly. Not only the soldiers, but the lieutenant himself listened for a moment, and then began to search the bushes. Parting the branches of a roadside birch forest, they saw a boy on the edge of the ditch. Barely noticeable in the grass, in a khaki jacket, without a hat, his bare feet down into the ditch, he was diligently chiseling some piece of wood, resting it on his chest.
- Hey, you! - shouted the lieutenant and with a gesture called the boy.
Stopping work and hastily putting the knife into his jacket pocket, brushing off the chips, the thirteen-year-old boy approached the lieutenant.
“Show me,” the lieutenant said in Lithuanian.
The boy took a piece of wood out of his mouth and wiped it off.
saliva from it and handed it to the lieutenant, looking at him with blue cheerful eyes. It was a simple birch pipe.
- Skillful boy, skillful! - the lieutenant shook his head, and for a moment his angry, unpleasant face was softened by a smile that had an infectious effect on the soldiers standing nearby and watching.
Everyone was surprised at the simplicity of this musical instrument.
- Who taught you this? the lieutenant asked again, this time without a smile.
- I myself, sir, I can also cuckoo
The boy chuckled. Then he again put the wet pipe into his mouth, pressed it with his tongue, and whistled.
- Tell me, whistler, are you alone here? the lieutenant continued.
- No, there are many of us. Only most of all sparrows, crows and partridges. Nightingale I am the only one
- Bastard! - interrupted his officer. - I'm asking you: there are no more people here?
- No, - the boy answered. - When your people began to shoot and the village caught fire, everyone shouted: "The animals, the animals are coming!" - they took and fled in all directions.
- Why didn't you run away?
- I wanted to see the animals. When we went to the city, for fifty dollars they showed a cat, big, from a calf.
- Apparently, you fool, - the lieutenant said, addressing the soldiers in his own language. - Tell me, little one, do you know this road through the forest to Surmontai? Isn't that what she's called?
- How could I not know, sir, - the boy answered confidently. - And we went there to fish to the mill. There are such pikes that two-month-old caterpillars are swallowed alive.
- All right, go ahead. If you bring it down soon, you'll get this.” The lieutenant showed the boy a lighter. Understood?..
The squad moved. In front of the camp kitchen, next to the lieutenant, not for a moment ceasing to play his pipe, imitating now a nightingale, now a cuckoo, a boy was walking. Waving his arm in time, he now knocked down roadside branches of trees, then collected cones and seemed preoccupied only with himself. The forest became thicker, the road meandered between clearings, overgrown with birches, and again turned into a dark pine forest.
- And what do the people here say about the partisans? Are they found in your forest? the lieutenant asked.
- There are no such. Russula is, birch boletus and mushrooms, - the boy answered without blinking.
Realizing that it was not worth indulging in further conversations with such a thing, the German fell silent.
In the very depths of the forest, in a young and dense spruce forest, from where a bend in the road could be seen, lay several people. They lay not far from each other; Nearby were their guns, leaning against a tree. From time to time they quietly exchanged a word or two, carefully moving the branches of trees away, carefully looking around the forest.
- Do you hear? - said one of them, looked at his comrades, got up a little and turned his head in the direction from which, through the obscure noise of the forest, came the distant trill of a nightingale.
- Didn't it seem to you? - asked the other, listened and heard nothing, but nevertheless took out four grenades from under the stump and put them in front of him.
- Well, and now?
The song of the bird became more and more distinct. The one who first heard him began counting carefully:
- One, two, three, four - and counted the score with his hand. - A detachment of thirty-two people, - he finally said, carefully listening to the trills of a bird that speaks such a clear, but only understandable language for partisans.
Suddenly there was a cuckoo call.
- Two machine guns, - he determined by the sounds coming from him.
- Let's start, -said, taking up a gun, a bearded man, all girded with machine-gun belts.
- Hurry up, - laying down the grenades, answered the one who listened to the trills of the bird, - They are waiting for us there. Uncle Styapa-som and I will skip them, and when you start, we will fry
on them from the rear. Don't forget the Nightingale if anything happens. He hasn't eaten anything since yesterday, poor fellow.
After some time, a detachment of Germans appeared near a young spruce forest. The nightingale was still filled with the same heat, but for those who understood the language of its trills, this was only a repetition of what was already known to people hiding in the thick of the forest.
When the soldiers came to a small clearing, a whistle echoed from the bushes to the singing of a nightingale. The boy, who was walking along the edge of the path, darted into the thicket of the forest.
The gunned volley that broke the silence knocked the lieutenant off his feet, he did not even have time to raise his weapon. He fell down the dusty path. One after another, struck down by a well-aimed bullet, the soldiers fell. Moans, screams of horror, confused cries of commands were in the air.
But soon the forest calmed down again, and only the soft, sandy soil drank plenty of enemy blood.
The next day, at the very end of the village, at the crossroads, in his usual place, near the ditch, the thirteen-year-old boy was again sitting and planing something out of wood. From time to time he vigilantly looked around the road leading to the village. It seemed like he was expecting something again. And again a wonderful melody shimmered in the air, which a too accustomed ear would not have distinguished from a nightingale trill.

A. Zharov
MARCH OF YOUNG PIONEERS

Raise the fires
Blue nights!
We are pioneers
Workers' children.
The era is coming
Light years.
Pioneer's Call:
"Always be ready!"

Young and brave.
friendly crowd
Let's be ready
To work and fight.
Let's be an example
Struggle and labors.
The call of the pioneer;
"Always be ready!"

joyful step,
With a cheerful song
We perform
For Komsomol.
The era is coming
Light years.
Pioneer's Call:
"Always be ready!"

We roar together
Song of the daring
For the pioneers
World family.
Let's be an example
Struggle and labors.
Pioneer's Call:
"Always be ready!"

We raise
Scarlet banner.
workers children,
Feel free to follow us!
The era is coming
Light years.
Pioneer's Call:
"Always be ready!"
1922

A. Aleksin
SEVA OF BOILERS IN THE POLIC CIRCLE

A few years ago, Anatoly Aleksin's story "The Extraordinary Adventures of Syova Kotlov" was published. Now A. Alek-sin has written a continuation of this story - "Seva Kotlov beyond the Arctic Circle." We publish chapters from it in this book.

I WILL BE A CORRESPONDENT

That evening, when dad announced at the “family quartet” (our family consists of four people) that we were going to Zapolyarsk, I sang a famous song that I broadcast on the radio almost every day:
We, friends, are going to distant lands! ..
But the next day, on the way to school, I suddenly felt sad. I thought that soon the alley, along which I had been running in the mornings for five and a half years, waving my briefcase, to school, would be far, far away from me. And no one will shout to me in the morning: “Great, Kotelok!” And no one will even know that my name is Kotelkom. Maybe they will come up with another nickname for me, which I will never get used to anyway (well, for example, they will begin to call me “steam boiler” or something like that). Or maybe they won't give you a nickname at all.
From all these thoughts, I had such an air that the chairman of the council of the detachment, Tolya Bulanchikov, said in his usual unhurried and respectable voice:
- I see. Seva, that you are in deep thought. And this is very good: we just need your ingenuity and your rich creative imagination, so to speak!
- You will soon no longer have my rich imagination, - I said in a grave voice.
- Pet? Why? You are wrong After all, summer will come soon, and we will have a city Pnoner camp in the school yard - so we want you to come up with some exciting summer things
Tolya recently began to speak, as if on behalf of the entire council of the detachment: “we want”, “we are waiting for you!”
“I won’t be with you in the summer,” I said softly and sadly.
- We understand, you will probably go to a country camp, right? But then you come back, and then
“I will never return to you,” I said even more sadly.
Tolya Bulanchikov looked at me with surprise and even fear:
- You might think that you were going to die!
- No, I will not die. But I will go very, very far. To the city of Zapolyarsk
A few minutes later, our entire class knew about this news. And then I felt even more uncomfortable: I realized that the guys did not want to part with me. And even those who as I thought, they would like to get rid of me. No, no one wanted to get rid of me
- You will always be with us, dear Seva! We won't forget you! Tolya Bulanchikov said solemnly.
- Here's another, grave speech started! - exclaimed sarcastically Galya Kalinkina, whom we recently elected as the editor of the wall newspaper for this very malice of hers, which Tolya Bulanchikov called "the ability to think critically." - Let's better make sure that he does not part with us.
- It's impossible - I said. - Mom has already packed.
- No, you didn’t understand me, - Galya began to explain, - I want you not to part with us in a figurative sense of the word
- How is it - B figuratively?
- And it's very simple. I came up with something: you will be our special correspondent beyond the Arctic Circle! You will send all sorts of interesting notes to each issue of the wall newspaper (which means at least three times a month!) We will read them and, as it were, talk with you, we will hear your voice. So we will not part!
This is cool! Well done, Galya!.. It's wonderful! - shouted from all sides. - We will now have our own correspondent!
- That's good, if we all all parted in different directions - and then we would have correspondents everywhere! - our detachment poet Tymka Lapin got carried away.
- No, why should we all disperse and thereby destroy the team? - Tolya Bulanchikov objected. - Then
there will be no one to read the wall newspaper - everyone will only write! .. In general, Galya's proposal is very reasonable. A sensible, I would say, proposal.
- Still would! - exclaimed Tymka Lapin. - Let him tell us about all his affairs beyond the Arctic Circle, about all the life there, and then, right after school, the whole class will come to Zapolyarsk to work. A? ZdorovoM I read that some graduates do just that: the whole class is sent to different shock facilities! Let's go, shall we?
- Let's! Let's go to shock facilities! - everyone shouted and began to slap Tymka on the shoulder so happily that he even squatted down.
- Well, - I agreed, - I will be your correspondent. Right from the fall By the first of September I will send the first article!
- No, we're all just going to die of impatience! - Galya Kalinkina did not agree with me. - You, as soon as you arrive, write right away. Better yet, send your first correspondence from the road. You know, there are "travel notes" like that. Here you come
- But summer is already coming And our wall newspaper will be closed until September.
- The newspaper will be published without interruption! Galya said. She always abbreviated the word “wall newspaper” and simply said “newspaper”: it sounded more solid. - After all, in the summer here, in the yard, there will be a city pioneer camp, and it will also not do without a newspaper!
- All right, I'll write to you as soon as I arrive.

"IDEA NUMBER ONE"

It came to my mind completely unexpectedly, like all my most brilliant ideas. It was the very first idea "that dawned on me beyond the Arctic Circle. But I'm getting ahead of myself again
And it was like that. Returning with my new (polar!) friend Ryzhik from the theater, I noticed a long line near one of the shops.
“They are behind the furniture,” said Vovka Ryzhik. “We have a lot of houses being built in Zapolyarsk, people are moving into new apartments, which means that everyone needs furniture. Here it is not enough. You cannot immediately transport so many cabinets and sofas along the Yenisei!
I realized that my mother and I would have to stand for more than one day in such a long tail.
“We even have a bookcase for books and a home-made table at home,” Vovka Ryzhik continued. “You’ll come and see.” I made it in the school carpentry workshop under the guidance of Van Vanych.
- Under the leadership of whom?
- Van Vanycha! Well, our teacher of labor is called Ivan Ivanovich, and he is very energetic and always demands: “Do not waste time on trifles!” Here we are for speed, so as not to waste time on trifles, his name and patronymic were shortened. "Van Vanych" turned out.
- Interesting And we at our school, in Moscow, also made stools ourselves, - I remembered. - Not only for ourselves, but for the tenants from the new house, which was built near our school. Tymka Lapin, a detachment poet, even composed poems about it.
I stopped and, remembering that Ryzhik was a future artist (he really dreamed about it!), I recited with maximum expression:
Ah, children, children, children. Let's break the stools! We will put them in the kitchen - And we will glorify our squad!
Remembering these verses, I again felt sad for my school, for my comrades, for Vitik-Nytik, who was there, in Moscow, my most faithful friend.
- You know how many close friends I had in Moscow! - I said.
Ryzhik frowned:
- A person cannot have many close friends. There can be only one true friend, and for life! So I think And all the rest - just like that, comrades or acquaintances Here, for example, my father is a friend for life! We don't have a mother
"And you'll never have any more friends?" I got excited.
All the sad memories immediately flew out of my head: I really wanted to become a “true friend” for Ryzhik, and “so that for life.” But he did not answer my question, as if he had not heard it, and again I felt uneasy.
And ten days later I remembered that it was time to send my next correspondence to Moscow. I knew that the malicious Galya Kalinkina, who from here, from afar, did not seem to me at all malicious, but, on the contrary, kind and very pretty, that our respectable Tolya Bulanchikov, and our highly conscious Natasha Mazurina, and Vitik-Nytik, who was in love with me, and even compassionate Lyolka Mukhina - everyone is waiting for me to report on some wonderful things that I personally invented and organized. After all, Tolya Bulanchikov said this to me in parting:
“You already turn around there in full breadth; let them know what kind of enterprising children our school and our pioneer detachment bring up!”
But after all, I haven’t turned around yet “in full breadth”. What was there to write about? And it was also impossible not to write, because my Moscow friends might have thought that I was not at all going to prove to everyone here in Zapolyarsk “what kind of enterprising guys our school and our pioneer detachment bring up” under the leadership of Tolya Bulanchikov.
What to write about?
And suddenly I jumped straight from the balcony to the desk. grabbed a pen and quickly scribbled on paper:
"Idea number one"! I decided to call this note this way, because I want to tell in it about my very first idea, which was born here, beyond the Arctic Circle, among blizzards, snowstorms, undersized bushes and polar nights. That is, there is nothing like this yet - no blizzards, no polar nights, but there are only undersized shrubs, but all this will come soon. And so, preparing to fight against natural difficulties, I decided to come up with something that would make life for- polar explorers are easier and more joyful!
And I must tell you guys, my dears, that a lot of residential buildings are being built here, and if you walk along the main streets, you won’t distinguish them from Moscow either. But there is not enough furniture yet: after all, the city is still quite new, it is just being built, and everyone, therefore, needs furniture. And so I decided to propose that the carpentry workshop of the school where I will soon be studying be urgently renamed into a “furniture workshop” and begin to produce various furniture for the local population: whatnots, chairs, tables, stools "
Here I wanted to stop, but my pen did not stop in any way, it directly tore further along the paper and, against my will, dragged me along. I continued to write:
“All the pioneers here were overjoyed when I presented my plan to them. And all, as one, began to exclaim: “These are the kind of enterprising guys brought up by the Moscow school and the Moscow pioneer detachment! Thanks to them for such guys! .. "And then everyone gathered in the pillars" workshop, in no time redid the sign on the doors, wrote: "Furniture shop", and immediately grabbed planers, saws and chisels! The work went so hot that soon, I'm sure, the shortage of furniture in the city will be completely eliminated! Or almost completely. Especially since all the schools, of course, will pick up our initiative! I offered to donate the finished products directly to the furniture store. And the store manager was very happy and also exclaimed: "Ah , what kind of enterprising children are brought up by the Moscow school and the Moscow pioneer detachment! .. "
Then I hardly took a breath, re-read my correspondence and noticed with horror that the second half of it was a complete lie. Or, better to say, fantasy! In the first half, I simply wrote about my intentions, but in the second I wanted to cross out this second half, but I felt very sorry: it was too great and beautiful everything was painted there! I imagined how happy all my Moscow friends would be, how proud they would be of me, and I couldn't cross it out, I just couldn't raise my hand!..
Hastily, so as not to change my mind, I put this correspondence in an envelope, took it to the post office, sent it by registered mail, and hid the receipt in the side pocket of my jacket.
And only then I was truly horrified: “What if my friends find out the truth? What a shame! They just refuse me! They will despise me! And they will be right. What to do? How to proceed?"
And I decided: it is necessary to make sure that every line of my letter becomes true!
And then it turns out that I just got ahead of myself, or, as they say, “anticipated” events.
I immediately rushed off to look for Vovka Ryzhik, who, just that day, intended to go into the schoolyard in the morning to meet the guys there and, as he put it, “knock the ball” a little, that is, play football.

FANTASY BECOMES REALITY

Two days later, I went with Ryzhik to school, where I was to sit at the desk in a few months. I walked and quietly sang to myself under my breath: “We were born to make a fairy tale come true! ..” This song was very suitable at that moment, because I really needed to make that “tale” that I depicted “come true” sent on paper and by registered mail to Moscow.
But after all, Ryzhik knew nothing about this letter and therefore said:
- Stop whining! You don't have any hearing!
Alas, my older brother Dima told me the same thing. And just like Dima, I answered Ryzhik:
- I'm not going to sing in the theater
Vovka Ryzhik did not argue. In general, he was in a good mood that morning: after all, two days ago I revealed to him all my plans for a furniture shop! Vovka Ryzhik immediately ran home to Van Vanych, and my "idea number one" was also to his liking. Together they phoned many children, and almost all of them promised, despite the holidays, to come to school by the agreed hour. Moreover, some of them themselves did not stop carpentry in the workshop even in the summer.
And then, two days ago, in order for everything to exactly match my note, I suggested to Vovka Ryzhik:
- Let's write on the doors of the carpentry workshop: "Furniture shop."
- But there is still no workshop, - Vovka Ryzhik objected. - When we create it, then we will write it!
Honestly, sometimes with his “high consciousness” he reminded me of our boring, terribly fair Natasha Mazurina.
- Yes, you understand: a sign is a very important thing! - I convinced Vovka Ryzhik. - How is it in cinemas? First, they write an ad, put up a poster, and then they show a new film. And if they didn't put up posters, no one would know what was on the screen, and no one would go to the cinema. So it is with us: we will write a sign - everyone will know!
- All right, - Vovka Ryzhik finally agreed. - Since the idea is yours, let it be your way!
Now, when we were walking to the school to meet the future "furniture makers" there, the sign, gleaming with fresh paint, was already hanging on the doors.
About thirty guys came from different classes. Vovka Ryzhik began to introduce me and told everyone:
- Seva Kotlov from Moscow! Seva Kotlov from Moscow!..
And everyone shook my hand so hard, as if they were sure that I must be a good guy and deserve all respect. And all because I was from Moscow!
Everyone started asking me about Moscow. Did I meet Yuri Gagarin at the airport or did I only see him on TV? Was I on Red Square on Pioneer Day, May 19? Did you take the metro to Filey or only on the old lines? Did I swim in the Moskva pool and is it good to swim in it? .. I realized: they, far from Moscow, wanted to always be with her and therefore everyone knew about her, as about a native person who, although he lives far away, but still the dearest!
And when Vovka Ryzhik told me that it was my idea to arrange a “furniture shop”, everyone began to praise me:
- Well done! And how did it get into your head? So we didn’t think of it, but you just arrived and immediately thought of it!
- What's so amazing about that? Moskvich!
For the first time I realized that "Muscovite" is not just an ordinary word, but, as it were, an honorary title. Say to yourself: "Muscovite" - and they already look at you in a special way and expect something good from you.
And then the guys began to invite me to their school for good, assuring me that it was the best in the city.
“He will study with us, don’t worry,” Vovka Ryzhik reassured everyone in such a tone as if he were the director of the school or even the head of the ronb. “I have already thought about this question: Seva is just approaching us in the district!
- He generally suits us! .. Very suitable! voices answered.
Van Vanych, the teacher of labor, who was busily walking around the workshop in a black work overall, did not like the enthusiasm addressed to me.
“We’ll see about that,” he said in a hoarse voice, stroking his graying mustache, “does he fit or not!” Submitting ideas is, you know, half the battle. And we'll check it at a real job. Let's test it for strength!
This immediately spoiled my mood: I could not stand the test of strength, because in Moscow I mainly gave ideas, thought through all sorts of stunning deeds, and the rest carried them out. That is, of course, I also took part in something, and I also worked in the workshop, but lately Tolya Bulanchikov protected me, because he considered me the “main think tank” of the or-series council. In general, I could put together a stool with someone for a couple, but making a bookcase or a table is hardly possible.
Van Vanych slyly winked at me: now, they say, we will find out what you are!
Van Vanych's face seemed very familiar. Any person who saw him would immediately say: “We met somewhere!” This is how we usually imagine advanced revolutionary workers: deep wrinkles on the cheeks and on the forehead, mustaches with gray hair and intelligent, restless eyes. Van Vanych, it turns out, came to school from production - from a metallurgical plant, where he worked in the shop as a foreman.
- Nothing to waste time on trifles! Do it like that, but talk like that! .. - said Van Vanych, somehow in a special way, in a worker's way, wiping his hands with a rag to the very elbows.
- Right! We must get down to business as soon as possible, - I supported Van Vanych, - otherwise other schools will sniff out and skip
- Look what you are: sniff out! - Van Vanych shook his head angrily. - And let them sniff it out: there will be more furniture!
- Certainly! Let them sniff! .. - I thought to myself. - But only we must be the first to start: after all, we came up with it! ..
All the guys broke up, as it were, according to their professions: some undertook to make tables, others - whatnots, others - chairs, and fourth - painting
- I'll paint! I volunteered right away. It seemed to me that swinging a brush was perhaps easier than sawing, planing and hammering nails.
- No, we'll take care of the whatnots! - Vovka Ryzhik pulled me by the sleeve.
- And I'm just good at painting! From early childhood he loved, you know, coloring pictures, and then fences, like Tom Sbyer! ..
- Tom Sawyer did not paint the fences, he forced others to cunning. And you are the same worker, right? You are probably the only one who can give ideas! - Vovka whispered all this quietly: he did not want to disgrace me in front of his comrades. And he loudly declared: - Seva and I will be a “shelf brigade”!
“I don’t know how,” I pleaded again in a whisper.
- Nothing, stay close and watch. And in the evenings, at our house, you will learn a little!

"WITH PIONEER GREETINGS"

The first batch of our homemade bookcases, tables and chairs was ready! At my suggestion, a sign was glued to each item with the inscription: “Furniture shop “With pioneer greetings!” This name of the workshop was very successful: a person will sit on a chair - and he will know that we welcome him; lean on the table - and also remember his young pioneer years.
But the director of the furniture store, it turns out, did not want us to greet him at all, and did not greet us with that joyful exclamation that I mentioned in my correspondence. No, he did not cry out with happiness: “Oh, what initiative guys are being brought up by the Moscow school and the Moscow pioneer detachment!” He, on the contrary, hesitated for a very long time, shook his head and said that it would be good for us to send our furniture not to the store, but to the “skillful hands” exhibition. But we explained to him that we made our bookcases, tables and chairs not for exhibitions, but for people: so that they would have something to sit on, something to dine on and where to put their books.
A few days later, a whole commission arrived at our school. She looked around and felt our “finished products” for a long time, knocked on the shelves, sat down in full force
on chairs, leaned on tables with such force that I thought they would crack and shatter into pieces. But they didn't crack or shatter.
- Come on, come on, - Van Va-nych encouraged the commission. - You can even climb onto the table with your legs and jump on it to check, although in life this is done quite rarely. Our products will withstand the strength test!
And she really survived. The authoritative commission stated that as a "temporary measure" our furniture could be sold, but at a very low price.
- That's fine! - I exclaimed. - We give it away completely free of charge: we don’t need anything, well, we just don’t need anything at all! And people will be happy: the quality is high and the price is low! And in general, they will write a note about our furniture in the gas station, so go away!
The commission also said that our products would probably be suitable for youth hostels, but that all this should first be “tested on the buyer”. Therefore, they were going to put the furniture in the store and see how the buyer would react to it: whether he would rush at it headlong or, on the contrary, jump headlong to the side!
It was dangerous: who knows, the buyer! You never know with what mood he will come to the store. Maybe he won’t figure it out yet and write a note about our products, but not in the newspaper, as I wanted, but in the Book of Complaints. Everything can be.
But I had no intention of sitting back and waiting for what the customers, whom the store manager for some reason called "consumers", would do. I came up with a great plan, bold and very simple! I immediately revealed it to Vovka Ryzhik, and he also approved it.
Arriving home, I immediately gathered our entire “family quartet”.
- Tomorrow morning, - I said, - you will have to complete one combat mission.
- Which? they all asked in unison.
- Buy one bookcase, one table and one chair. But don't just buy!
And then I explained in detail how exactly this will need to be done.
The next morning, all four of us went straight to the opening of the furniture store. Even from a distance, I saw Vovka Ryzhik and his father, the artist Vladimir Nikolayevich, who managed to arrive before us.
As soon as the store opened, the line immediately, as they say, rushed inside. And we, too, "gushed" The director of the store was pacing just near the whatnots, chairs and tables with signs that merrily addressed each customer: "With pioneer greetings!"
Even the day before, we agreed that we would not show our family relationships in the store: everyone came on their own!
My mother was the first to “quite by chance” pay attention to our furniture - she enthusiastically shouted at the whole store:
- Oh, what an interesting novelty! How simple and how elegant!
- And most importantly - how cheap - my brother Dima sullenly supported my mother.
“Just think,” Mom continued, “and all this was done by our schoolchildren! Our children! Our change!
To be honest, I did not expect this from my mother. She, it turns out, miraculously "reincarnated."
- It would be just a sin not to support the children and not to buy this furniture, - not quite successfully, as it seemed to me, dad entered into the conversation.
- No, you are wrong, - "reincarnating", as he liked to put it, in an intelligent buyer, Vladimir Nikolaevich quietly and softly spoke. - What does "pochyn" have to do with it? We shouldn't have to buy bad furniture just for the "reason". It would be wrong. And even non-pedagogical! And this furniture deserves all praise, regardless
depends on who made it. For example, I would not even have guessed that it was not factory!
- And I just dreamed of sitting on such chairs all my life! And to keep books on such bookcases! Mom exclaimed again.
- And I also dreamed - Dima mumbled.
- And I, too, - dad supported much more cheerfully.
And my mother continued:
- Simplicity, even some deliberate rudeness of work - it's so fashionable now!
- No, you pay attention to the price, - the unhurried, intelligent buyer in the person of Vladimir Nikolayevich entered again. - It's actually for nothing! For free! I buy a table without hesitation!..
“You just don’t have enough dining table,” I thought, “so you won’t regret your purchase! ..”
“I’ll buy a bookcase for books,” my mother said to the reseller.
Around our furniture there was already a whole crowd of buyers.
- How lovely!
- Here it is, labor education! Bears fruit!
And everyone appreciated the “low price” very highly. In a word, many wanted to buy products from the furniture workshop “With pioneer greetings!”.
But then, pushing everyone aside, a very agile young man in a tunic, with a thick briefcase in his hands, burst forward.
- Excuse me, comrades, but wholesale buyers always and everything in the first place! This furniture is very suitable for our youth hostel: simple, cheap and convenient! I'm the commandant of the dorm, and I buy everything at once!..
He wiped his forehead with a handkerchief and sighed happily. What’s more, he’s so lucky! Managed to buy! I immediately realized that a “wholesale buyer” is one who grabs “everything cpajy” and leaves nothing for others.
There was a buzz all around:
- I must say that our guys do not stop there!
The store manager pushed his way forward with difficulty and reassured the customers:
- Do not worry, comrades! Representatives of the furniture workshop “With pioneer greetings!” are present here, - he pointed to Vovka Ryzhik and me, - and we will ask them to convey all your wishes directly to the destination.
- Yes, yes, we will definitely hand them over to their intended purpose, - I assured the buyers.
And when we went out into the street, I said to Vovka Ryzhik:
- Everything is fine! Everything is honest and noble: after all, the furniture is really good! And almost free. And so they still would not believe, doubted, until the evening they felt
- Of course, good! - unexpectedly, already seriously, my mother agreed. - I didn’t even think that you could do that. I’ll just gladly put this bookcase in my room!
In general, my fantastic correspondence “Idea number one” suddenly became pure truth! I just "anticipated" events a little

B. Zheleznikov
ASTRONAUT

The new one sat on the last desk. It was impossible not to notice him: he had bright red hair.
- We have a newcomer, - said Lyovushkin.
- Where did you come from? I asked.
- Our house was demolished. And we got a new apartment.
- Your last name?
- Knyazhin.
- How did you study physics?
- This is my favorite subject.
Still, he was very red, and I involuntarily looked at his hair and did not see his face.
I started explaining the new formulas. Every time I turned to the blackboard to write a formula or draw a drawing, Lyovushkin whispered and giggled behind my back.
“Don’t interfere with listening,” the voice of Knyazhin reached me.
I looked around: Lyovushkin had such a confused look, as if he had taken a sip of hot tea, he was badly burned and did not know whether to send this tea or swallow it.
“Knyazhin,” I said, “go to the blackboard and solve the problem using the new formula.
He quickly solved the problem and clearly, without hesitation, explained everything. I liked the way he answered. Many of the guys in the class said extra words, but there were no Knyazhins.
After the bell, when I left the classroom, I heard Lyovushkin's voice:
- Did you see which one? I disturb him. The first day and already putting things in order. Academician Fok!” You can’t move.
"Academician Fok is a famous Soviet physicist, laureate of the Lenin Prize.
“I myself know that he is red,” Knyazhin answered calmly. “And you are a fool to tease me. This is absolutely correct.
A week later, I saw the lists of guys enrolled in different circles at the senior counselor. Knyazhin was the first to enroll in the physics circle. “Good,” I thought. “Knyazhin is the right guy.”
I leafed through the lists of other circles, and in each list I came across the name Knyazhin. And in zoological, and in mathematical, and in sports. Only he did not enroll in a singing circle.
At recess I called out to Knyazhin.
- Why did you enroll in all the circles? - I asked. - In my opinion, this is somewhat frivolous.
“I need it,” he replied.
- Maybe you don't know what fascinates you the most?
- No, I know, - he answered stubbornly. - But I need to. This is my secret.
“It’s a secret or not a secret,” I said, “but you don’t have to come to the physical circle classes. If you work in zoological, mathematical and sports circles, then you will not have time for physics.
Knyazhin was very upset and even turned pale. I regretted that I spoke to him so harshly: after all, he is still a boy.
- I must know everything, I must be indispensable, - he said. - I will be a pilot of a spaceship. And I didn't tell anyone, but you made me.
- Ah! I drawled. And for the first time I looked him straight in the face. Under a red forelock, he had a prominent forehead, and his eyes were blue and desperate.
“This one will fly,” I thought, “this one will fly!” I remembered how during the war I jumped with a parachute and how scary it is when you jump into the void. You look at a distant land, at trees that look like nothing more than bumps of moss, at rivers with a rain stream, and whether you like it or not, you think: what if the parachute does not open? And then the earth becomes not desirable, but terrible. “But those who fly into space will be even worse. But this one will fly anyway.
"Then I don't mind, if that's the case," I said.
"Thank you," replied the Prince.
For three months he did not miss a single class of the physical circle, And then he suddenly stopped walking. And in the classroom he was absent-minded and even lost weight.
“Knyazhin,” I asked, “why did you leave the circle?” Can't make it?
He looked up at me. They were the eyes of another person. They were not desperate, but sadder and lost their blue color.
“I will still go,” he replied.
Levushkin told me (he became friends with Knyazhin):
- He's in big trouble. I can't tell, but it's a big nuisance.
I decided to talk to Knyazhin the other day, but chance brought us together on the same evening. I was standing at the counter in a bookstore and suddenly heard a familiar voice behind me:
- Is there anything new?
- Boy, - the girl-seller answered, - there can't be something new every day. You would come twice a week.
I looked back. Knyazhy stood in front of me, but there was something unfamiliar in his expression. I did not immediately guess, and then I realized: he had glasses on his nose. Small children's glasses with a white metal frame.
We stood in silence for a minute. Knyazhin turned crimson red, his cheeks, ears and even nose turned red.
“Ah, Knyazhin,” I said.
I didn’t have time to add anything else, he took to his heels.
I ran after him.
- Princes! - I shouted. - Knyazhin, wait!
A man looked at me, and a woman called out:
- Hold the boy!
Then the Prince stopped. He did not look at me, took off his glasses and bowed his head low.
- Aren't you ashamed? How many people wear glasses and are not ashamed of it. I'm sorry, I think this is stupid.
He said nothing.
- Run away because of such nonsense. And Lyovushkin said: Knyazhin is in big trouble. Nonsense!
Then he raised his head and said softly:
- But now they won’t take me as a pilot, I found out - they don’t take short-sighted people, and I won’t drive spaceships. I hate these glasses.
Ah, here's the thing! That's why he's so miserable and thinner. His first dream was shattered into pieces, and he suffered. One, silently.
- In vain you suffer so much, - I said at last. - You will fly on a spaceship as an astronomer, engineer or doctor.
"So you think I can still hope?" Can? - He grabbed my words with joy. - How did I not realize it myself? Just stupid, that's for sure.
He was so happy! And I thought: “It’s good when a person has a clear goal in life and everything is ahead.”

A. Tvardovsky
FOR THE FEAT OF THE CENTURY

On the feat of the century majestic.
For the happiness of all people
Sickle and hammer power
Leads siibv and daughters.

Homeland of peace and freedom.
Let the enemies threaten you:
Your peoples are always with you -
For a friend friend.
For brother brother.

Our strength is invincible.
Under the red flag
And opened a new way to the earth,
And directed to the starry land.

Soar, Lenin's banner.
We fall the way forward.
Under it goes half the world with us.
The day will come -
The whole world will go.

On February 11, 1930, Valya Kotik was born - the youngest Hero of the Soviet Union, a young reconnaissance partisan. Along with him, many children performed feats in the war. We decided to recall a few more pioneer heroes of World War II.

Valya Kotik

1. Valya Kotik was born into a peasant family in the village of Khmelevka, Shepetovsky district, in the Kamenetz-Podolsk region of Ukraine. This territory was occupied by German troops. When the war began, Valya had just entered the sixth grade. However, he accomplished a lot. At first, he was collecting weapons and ammunition, drawing and pasting caricatures of the Nazis. Then the teenager was entrusted with more significant work. On the boy's account, he worked as a liaison in an underground organization, several battles in which he was wounded twice, a break in the telephone cable, through which the invaders were connected with Hitler's headquarters in Warsaw. In addition, Valya blew up six railway echelons and a warehouse, and in October 1943, while on patrol, he threw grenades into an enemy tank, killed a German officer and warned the detachment in time about the attack, thereby saving the lives of soldiers. The boy was mortally wounded in the battle for the city of Izyaslav on February 16, 1944. After 14 years, he was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. In addition, he was awarded the Order of Lenin, the Order of the Patriotic War of the 1st degree and the medal "Partisan of the Patriotic War" of the 2nd degree.

Petr Klypa

2. When the war began, Petya Klype was in his fifteenth year. On June 21, 1941, Petya, together with his friend Kolya Novikov, a boy a year or a year and a half older than him, who was also a pupil in the music platoon, watched a movie in the Brest Fortress. It was especially crowded there. In the evening, Petya decided not to return home, but to spend the night in the barracks with Kolya, and in the morning the boys were going to go fishing. They did not yet know that they would wake up among the thundering explosions, seeing blood and death around them ... The assault on the fortress began on June 22 at three o'clock in the morning. Jumping out of bed, Petya was thrown against the wall by the explosion. He hit hard and lost consciousness. Coming to his senses, the boy immediately grabbed his rifle. He coped with the excitement and helped his senior comrades in everything. In the following days of defense, Petya went to reconnaissance, carried ammunition and medical supplies for the wounded. Risking his life all the time, Petya performed difficult and dangerous tasks, participated in battles and at the same time was always cheerful, cheerful, constantly sang some song, and the mere sight of this daring, resilient boy raised the spirit of the fighters, added strength to them. What can we say: since childhood, he chose a military vocation for himself, looking at his older lieutenant brother, and wanted to become the commander of the Red Army (from the book by S.S. Smirnov "Brest Fortress" - 1965) By 1941, Petya had already served for several years in the army as a pupil of the regiment and during this time he became a real military man.
When the situation in the fortress became hopeless, they decided to send children and women into captivity to try to save them. When Petya was told about this, the boy was indignant. “Am I not a Red Army soldier?” he asked the commander indignantly. Later, Petya and his comrades managed to swim across the river and break through the ring of Germans. He was taken prisoner, and even there Petya was able to distinguish himself. The guys were attached to a large column of prisoners of war, which, under a strong escort, was led beyond the Bug. They were filmed by a group of German cameramen - for the military chronicle. Suddenly, all black from dust and powder soot, a half-dressed and bloodied boy, walking in the front row of the column, raised his fist and threatened right into the camera lens. I must say that this act seriously infuriated the Germans. The boy was almost killed. But he survived and lived for a long time.
It does not fit in my head, but the young hero was imprisoned for not denouncing a comrade who committed a crime. Of the prescribed 25 years in Kolyma, he spent seven.

Vilor Chekmak

3. Vilor Chekmak, a partisan resistance fighter, had just finished 8 classes by the beginning of the war. The boy had a congenital heart disease, despite this, he went to war. A 15-year-old teenager, at the cost of his life, saved the Sevastopol partisan detachment. November 10, 1941 he was on patrol. The guy noticed the approach of the enemy. Having warned the detachment of the danger, he alone accepted the battle. Vilor fired back, and when the cartridges ran out, he let the enemies close to him and blew himself up with a grenade along with the Nazis. He was buried at the cemetery of WWII veterans in the village of Dergachi near Sevastopol. After the war, Vilor's birthday became the Day of the Young Defenders of Sevastopol.

Arkady Kamanin

4. Arkady Kamanin was the youngest pilot of World War II. He started flying when he was only 14 years old. This is not at all surprising, given that the boy had before his eyes the example of his father, the famous pilot and military leader N.P. Kamanin. Arkady was born in the Far East, and subsequently fought on several fronts: Kalinin - from March 1943; 1st Ukrainian - from June 1943; 2nd Ukrainian - since September 1944. The boy flew to the headquarters of divisions, to the command posts of the regiments, handed over food to the partisans. The teenager was awarded the first award at the age of 15 - it was the Order of the Red Star. Arkady saved the pilot who crashed in the neutral zone of the Il-2 attack aircraft. Later he was also awarded the Order of the Red Banner. The boy died at the age of 18 from meningitis. During his, albeit short, life, he made more than 650 sorties and flew 283 hours.

Lenya Golikov

5. Another young Hero of the Soviet Union - Lenya Golikov - was born in the Novgorod region. When the war came, he finished seven classes. Leonid was a scout of the 67th detachment of the fourth Leningrad partisan brigade. He participated in 27 combat operations. On account of Leni Golikov, 78 Germans were killed, he destroyed 2 railway and 12 highway bridges, 2 food and feed depots and 10 vehicles with ammunition. In addition, he was the escort of a convoy with food, which was taken to besieged Leningrad.
The feat of Leni Golikov in August 1942 is especially famous. On the 13th, he was returning from reconnaissance from the Luga-Pskov highway, not far from the village of Varnitsy, Strugokrasnensky district. The boy threw a grenade and blew up the car with the German major general of engineering troops, Richard von Wirtz. The young Hero died in battle on January 24, 1943.

Volodya Dubinin

6. Volodya Dubinin died at the age of 15. The pioneer hero was a member of a partisan detachment in Kerch. Together with two other guys, he carried ammunition, water, food for the partisans, and went on reconnaissance.
In 1942, the boy volunteered to help his adult comrades - sappers. They cleared the approaches to the quarries. There was an explosion - a mine was blown up, and with it one of the sappers and Volodya Dubinin. The boy was buried in the military grave of the partisans. He was posthumously awarded the Order of the Red Banner.
In honor of Volodya, a city was named, streets in several settlements, a film was made and two books were written.

Marat with his sister Ariadna

7. Marat Kazei was 13 years old when his mother died, and he and his sister went to the partisan detachment. Mother, Anna Kazei, was hanged by the Germans in Minsk because she hid the wounded partisans and treated them.
Marat's sister, Ariadna, had to be evacuated - the girl froze both legs when the partisan detachment left the encirclement, and they had to be amputated. However, the boy refused to be evacuated and remained in the ranks. For courage and courage in battles, he was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War of the 1st degree, the medals "For Courage" (wounded, raised partisans to attack) and "For Military Merit". The young partisan died after being blown up by a grenade. The boy blew himself up so as not to surrender and not bring trouble to the inhabitants of the nearby village.