Zadornov, nikolai pavlovich. Pedigree Nikolay Zadornov all

Nikolai Pavlovich was born on December 5, 1909 in Penza. He studied at the Penza school, published in the newspaper "Rabochaya Penza". The writer's youth passed in Chita, where his father was sent to work. He also received his education there. From 1926 to 1935 Nikolai Zadornov worked as an actor in theaters in Siberia and the Urals. At the same time, he began to publish - first in Bashkir newspapers, then returned to the Far East and actively participated in the All-Union shock construction project of Komsomolsk-on-Amur (for which he was later awarded the badge of an honorary builder of the city). Since then, the Far East has been the main scene of action in his works.

During the Great Patriotic War Nikolai Zadornov worked as a traveling correspondent for Khabarovsk radio and for the Khabarovsk newspaper Tikhookeanskaya Zvezda.

Nikolai Zadornov owns two cycles of historical novels about the development of the Far East by the Russian people in the 19th century, about the exploits of explorers. The first cycle consists of 4 novels: "Distant Land" (books 1-2, 1946-1949), "First Discovery" (1969, first title - "Towards the Ocean", 1949), "Captain Nevelskoy" (books 1-2, 1956-58) and War Overseas (Books 1-2, 1960-62). The second cycle (about the development of the Far East by peasants-settlers) - the novels "Cupid Father" (books 1-2, 1941-46) and "Gold Rush" (1969). In 1971 he published the novel "Tsunami" - about the expedition of Admiral E. V. Putyatin to Japan in 1854-55. He also wrote a novel about modernity "Yellow, Green, Blue ..." (Book 1, 1967), a book of travel essays "Blue Hour" (1968) and others. His works have been translated into many languages ​​of the world, including French, Japanese, Czech, Romanian, Bulgarian.

Nikolai Pavlovich was awarded the State Prize of the USSR (1952) for the novels "Cupid Father", "Distant Land", "To the Ocean". He was awarded 3 orders and medals. In the last years of his life, the writer worked on works that he did not manage to finish: the cycles "Great Voyages", "Lady of the Seas".

From 1946 until his death, Nikolai Pavlovich Zadornov lived in Riga, was awarded the title "Honored Art Worker of the Latvian SSR". His life was cut short during the collapse of the USSR. The writer passed away on September 18, 1992. In Penza, on the house where the writer lived (Revolutsionnaya St., 45), a memorial plaque was unveiled.

From a speech by Mikhail Zadornov
on the program "Duty in the country":

- I would really not like that, looking at
me, people who read my father's books,
recalled the saying: "Nature rests on children"

QUOTE FROM THE GREAT RUSSIAN ENCYCLOPEDIA:

Nikolai Pavlovich Zadornov. Outstanding Soviet writer (1909 - 1992). He worked as an actor and director in theaters in Siberia and the Far East.

He wrote several cycles of historical novels. Lots of essays, articles and stories. Nikolai Zadornov's novels have been translated into many languages ​​of the world.

Laureate of the Stalin Prize (1952). Decorated with orders and medals.

Father of M. Zadornov, a Russian humorist writer.

QUOTE FROM AMERICAN LITERARY ENCYCLOPEDIA:

Zadornov raised the layers of the history of peoples hitherto unknown to civilization. He colorfully portrayed their life, with deep knowledge told about manners, habits and family disputes, misfortunes, everyday troubles, about the craving for the Russian language, Russian rituals and way of life.

His novel "Cupid Father", which has become a classic in his homeland, has been translated into many languages. Despite the fact that there is no party theme in his works, the writer was awarded the highest post-war award of the USSR - the Stalin Prize. This is an unprecedented case in Soviet literature.

QUOTE FROM BRITISH LITERARY ENCYCLOPEDIA:

Without N. Zadornov's historical novels, it is impossible to have a complete idea of ​​the development of the history of Russia and Russian literature.

Orthodox Marxist critics often made harsh assessments of the novels, considered them apolitical, devoid of a party view of literature. Indeed, the writer's work does not fit into the "Procrustean bed" of socialist realism - the fundamental method of literature of the Soviet period.

Hundreds of historical figures are included in the intense action of his books. Next to Nevelskoy and Muravyov are Kamchatka Governor Zavoiko, English Admiral Price, Admiral Putyatin, writer Goncharov, Chancellor Nesselrode, Emperor Nicholas I, the famous navigator Warrior Andreevich Rimsky-Korsakov, Japanese diplomat Kavadzi and others. In his works - a revived story.

Three books by the writer "Tsunami", "Heda", "Shimoda" were published in Japan, which testifies to the truthfulness of the story of the life of Russian sailors in Japan, which is still closed and dangerous for foreigners, told in these books.

FROM A FOREWORD BY MIKHAIL ZADORNOV TO THE NOVELS OF NIKOLAY ZADORNOV

Tsunami, Heda, Shimoda, Hong Kong and Lady of the Seas

For more than two hundred years, Japan has been a closed country. Therefore, she did not have ships. Fishermen were allowed to have small boats and leave the coast only within sight. And any foreigner whose foot stepped on the land of Japan without permission was to be executed.

How did it happen that more than eight hundred Russian sailors and officers after the shipwreck were allowed by the highest authorities in Japan during the period of the most stringent samurai laws to live in coastal villages for almost a year? What extraordinary, romantic, adventure, espionage, diplomatic stories have resulted? Father described this incredible, but reliable story in his "Russian Odyssey" so accurately that his novels were published even in Japan.

Most historians in the world today are sure that the mothballed Japan was first "unsealed" by American "diplomacy": a military squadron approached the Japanese shores, aimed the guns, threatened ... the Japanese liked their height, beautiful military uniform, Coca-Cola and "Marlboro" ... The famous opera-melodrama "Madame Butterfly" was even written about those events.

I recently had the opportunity to speak with a high-ranking official from the Russian Foreign Ministry. Even he did not know that the "discovery" of Japan did not happen at the behest of American cannon diplomacy, but thanks to the friendliness and culture of Russian sailors and officers. No wonder in the Japanese village of Heda in our time there is a museum opened by the Japanese in memory of those real events after which their iron samurai curtain first opened. In this museum, in the central spacious hall, the first Japanese high-speed sailing ship is exhibited, which was built on Japanese soil with the help of Russian officers that year.

I have been to this village. An elderly Japanese woman proudly told me that blue-eyed Japanese children are still sometimes born in their village.

Today, when the peace treaty between Russia and Japan has not yet been signed, and children in Japanese schools, thanks to American films, think that even atomic bombs were dropped on their cities by the Russians, the father's novels are like never before!

"Captain Nevelskoy" and "War over the Ocean".

Father believed that many Russian scientists and travelers who made the greatest discoveries in history were unjustly forgotten. And he wanted to draw attention with his novels to those events in Russian history, which they do not like to mention now in the West, where historians believe that all the main things in the world happened at European behest.

For example, during the Russian-Turkish war, defeating the Russian army in the Crimea and the Black Sea, the allied troops of the French and British decided to make Kamchatka and Russian Primorye their colonies, taking them away from Russia. Africa and India were not enough for them. An allied military squadron approached the shores of the Russian Far East. However, a handful of Russian Cossacks, with the help of migrant peasants without any decrees from Petersburg, so defeated the insatiable colonialists that European Western historians forever deleted this battle from their chronicles. And since the French and Germans worked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia under the tsars, there was no mention of these Far Eastern battles in Russia either.

Such a victory became possible not only thanks to the heroism of Russian soldiers and officers, but also to the geographical discoveries that one of the most worthy Russian officers, Captain Nevelskoy, made a few years before the Russian-Turkish war. He practically brought Russia to the shores of the Pacific Ocean, clarified the incorrect maps used in the West, proved that Sakhalin is an island, and the Amur is no less a full-flowing river than the Amazon!

The father was not a party member. He was too romantic to live in a non-romantic party present. He lived in dreams of our noble past. In his novels, as on a wide-screen stage, tsars, officers, sailors, and immigrants take part at once ... Cossacks and Decembrists ... Their wives and loved ones ... Despite the obviously adventure plots of novels with incredible, sometimes even romantic situations, his father always remained historically reliable. If he were a humorist, I would advise his novels to be published under the heading "You Can't Think of It on Purpose."

FROM THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE WRITER, LAUREATE OF THE STATE PRIZE - N. ZADORNOV

(1985)

From an early age, Vladivostok, which I had to visit, made a strong impression on me. For the first time in my life I saw the sea, the train, passing through tunnels under the city at night, stopped at the last station in Russia. Crowds of Chinese coolies surrounded each carriage, offering their services. The night was hot, southern. Behind the carriages, on the other side of the station, one could see spacious warehouses, and behind them towered the masses of ocean-going ships standing somewhere nearby. Then Vladivostok was a transit port and handled a large amount of foreign cargo. The first English sailor, in whom I was ready to see a hero from the books of sea novelists, brandished a bottle at me when in a cafe I addressed him with a friendly phrase, touching him on the shoulder. This was my first English practice lesson. At that time and in that environment, they did not touch the shoulder in vain. These were not literary heroes. The city with its bustling port life, Russian and Chinese theaters, with picturesque bays, made such an impression on me that my head turned to the Pacific Ocean for the rest of my life.

When my wife and I moved to Komsomolsk-on-Amur, what was around me turned out to be much more interesting than the make-up actors with glued beards and theatrical scenery. At night I saw a real moon, not a cardboard one.

I walked through the taiga on foot, and on boats, and on boats, by myself and from the editorial office of the city newspaper, for which I wrote essays. He learned to sail in a Nanai boat, to walk on a birch bark gingerbread man. In winter and summer, I visited the Nanai camps. I saw shamanism.

I continued my walks through the taiga. I was not a hunter, but, as a hunter, I made my circles around Komsomolsk more and more wider. We all began the history of Komsomolsk from the first day of disembarkation from the steamers of its builders. Nobody knew what happened before. I wanted to tell you about it.

FROM INTERVIEW WITH MIKHAIL ZADORNOV

ON TELEVISION (1995)

In the restaurant of the Central House of Writers in the late eighties - my father was still alive - a venerable, I would even say, a seasoned Soviet writer approached me and asked if I was a descendant of Nikolai Zadornov, who wrote such interesting historical novels. I replied: “Yes, descendant. More precisely a son. After all, a son is a descendant. " He was surprised: "How, did Nikolai Zadornov not live in the nineteenth century?"

I understand why venerable and inveterate Soviet writers thought so about my father. He never took part in the struggle between groups of writers, did not subscribe to any appeals, did not make friends with someone against someone. to put yourself on the right list. His name was mentioned only once in the obituary, when Alexander Fadeev died. My father said that later his friends called him and congratulated him on his unprecedented success. After all, the list of those who signed the obituary was headed by members of the Central Committee! But most importantly, my father practically never visited the CDL restaurant! And those who were not seen there were considered to have lived in the last century. Is this not a compliment to the authenticity of his novels!

FROM A FOREWORD BY MIKHAIL ZADORNOV TO THE NOVELS

"Cupid Father" and "Gold Rush".

In our youth, we read with passion Fenimore Cooper, Mine Reed ... The romance of the conquest of new lands! But we had all this too. With only one difference: our ancestors, exploring new lands, did not come with weapons in their hands, but with faith and love. They tried to convert the natives to the Orthodox faith without exterminating them or driving them to the reservation. My father jokingly called the Nivkhs, Nanai and Udege "our Indians." Only less promoted and promoted than the Mohicans or the Iroquois.

When my father and mother got married, they were denounced by the NKVD. In particular, from my mother's ex-husband. And then they did what few were capable of. We left as far as possible from the "demonic" center living on denunciations. And where? In Komsomolsk-on-Amur! As if anticipating an anecdote of that era: further than Komsomolsk, there is still nowhere to exile. My father headed the literary department at the local theater. Was an assistant director. Although he did not have a director's education. It's just that the artistic director of the theater guessed in his father the ability to observe life. And when one of the actors fell ill, he was instructed to replace them in the episodes. By the way, now his memorial plaque hangs in front of the entrance to this theater.

While working in the theater, my father decided to write a novel about how the first Russian settlers came here long before the construction of Komsomolsk. The novel is romantic. In some ways - adventurous. In the tradition of Mine Reed, Fenimore Cooper and Walter Scott ...

From an article by the writer G.V. Guzenko (1999):

- “The novel“ Cupid Father Nikolai Zadornov wrote in such a pure and at the same time figurative Russian language that it must be included in the secondary school curriculum. ”

In my youth, "Cupid Father" was my favorite novel. Finishing reading it once again, each time I got the feeling that our future is no less comfortable than the life of the heroes of my father's novel. In general, I love books in which, like visiting friends, where I want to stay longer. But most of all I was inspired by the fact that I was born between the publication of the novel and the award of the Stalin Prize. Maybe that's why I had such a joyful life that my parents "designed" me in the most joyful period of their life!

The book was written in Komsomolsk-on-Amur before the war. When my father brought the manuscript to Moscow, the Soviet editors refused to publish it, since only frankly heroic literature was in demand. Somehow the novel ended up on the table with A. Fadeev. Fadeev read it and realized that the publishing house would not even listen to his advice, although he was the secretary of the USSR Writers' Union. In the hope that it would be approved from above, he conveyed it to Stalin.

There was a war going on. Despite this, the "owner" immediately ordered "Amur-Father" to be published. Even the publishing house was surprised. In the novel there are no war heroes, secretaries of regional committees, commissars, appeals: “For the Motherland! For Stalin!"…

Later, Fadeev secretly told my mother when he was visiting us in Riga that O Stalin told him about the "Cupid Father": "Zadornov showed that these lands are primordially ours. That they were mastered by a working person, and were not conquered. Well done! His books will be very useful to us in our future relations with China. It must be published and celebrated! "

Later, when the Stalin Prize was renamed the State Prize, my father continued to call himself proudly the winner of the Stalin Prize. Why? Because the State Prizes have already been handed out to the right and to the left. Sold by officials for bribes. To receive this award in the 80s or 90s, it was necessary not to write a talented work, but to draw up the documents with talent and “correctly” submit them to the awarding committee.

I remember one of the Soviet monster writers, who was also our guest in Riga, boasting about the prize he had just received from the hands of Brezhnev himself. And then his wife, walking along the beach, complained to my mother: “I lost so much health while we gave him this prize. So much money was spent on gifts, grandmother's earrings, and they pawned! "

My father did not want to consider himself a laureate of the procured - "punched" - prize. And the Stalin Prize could not be “knocked out” from the “owner”. His father did not rename his laureate for the sake of time. He had no one to fear. He was non-partisan. For this, at that time, "immorality" he could not even be expelled from the party!

One of his behests, given to me when I was still studying at the institute: “Do not join the party, no matter how you entice, so that there is no place to expel. If you enter, you will become a slave. Stay free. This is above all titles and titles. "

FROM VARIOUS INTERVIEWS WITH MIKHAIL ZADORNOV,

IN WHICH HE IS ASKED ABOUT THE FATHER.

(1993 - 2006)

Despite the laureate awarded by "Sam", my father never, even during the period of the personality cult, idolized Stalin.

I remember the day Stalin died. I sat on a pot in our Riga apartment and looked out the window - a large one, right up to the floor. Down the street, outside the window, there were crying people: Latvians and Russians, all in mourning. Even Latvians cried in Riga. They ordered to cry, and they cried, amicably and internationally. I remember the funeral Riga, and how my older sister cried. She was eleven years old. She didn't understand anything. She cried because teachers, passers-by were crying ... She felt sorry not for Stalin, but for teachers and passers-by. A father came to our room with her and said: "Don't cry, daughter, he did not do so much good." The sister was so surprised at Dad's words that she immediately stopped crying. I thought about it. Naturally, I didn’t understand anything then, but I didn’t want her to cry that I began to prove to her in support of my father’s words and give examples of why Stalin was not a good uncle. For example, in Riga it has been raining for three months already. And I was not taken to the sandbox. But Stalin could do anything! Why didn't he think about us children, who, like me, wanted to go to the sandbox!

It was, by the way, 53rd year! Well, he could not have foreseen then how quickly times would change ... It's just that the father believed that one had to be honest with the children.

I still remember the day when it was reported that Beria had been arrested. Mom and Dad drank wine that evening so that we children would not have such a terrible youth as theirs.

I was already twelve years old. At school, they began to instill in us that the Soviet Union is the nicest country in the world, and that in capitalist countries live not kind people, but stupid and dishonest people. My father called me into his office and said: “You must bear in mind that at school they often do not speak quite correctly. But this is how it should be. You will grow up - you will understand. " I was also very upset then. My father deprived me of the faith that I was born in the best country in the world.

Father never imposed on us, children, his views in a dispute. He believed that children themselves should reach everything with their own minds ... They just need to sometimes hook them with some thought, connect them, throw the necessary thought into the folds of the brain, like into unplowed, unfertilized beds, in the hope that someday the "grain" will sprout!

The main room, where we were not allowed to enter without permission, was his study with a library, looking at which I thought with horror that I would never reread so many books in my life. He bought books not only for himself, in order to know history and literature. He saw how my sister and I, out of curiosity, sometimes pulled out some book or album from the shelves, looked at the pictures and tried to read, not always understanding what was written there. He collected this library for us! He believed that books can develop in a child interests that will protect him in life from the philistine burden.

Once, when I was about ten years old, he called me into his office and showed me what he had bought an old book with amazingly beautiful engraving pictures. The book was called mysteriously and romantically: "Frigate" Pallada "". The word "frigate" gave off something real, masculine, military ... Sea battles, sails, sunburnt faces with scars and, of course, other countries with their own romantic dangers. Pallas, on the contrary, is something graceful, majestic, proud and unapproachable. By that time, I already knew some of the myths. I liked Pallas more than the rest of the Greek gods. There was dignity in her. She did not take revenge on anyone, like Hera, did not intrigue, like Aphrodite, and did not devour children, like her father Zeus.

From that day on, for a year, my dad and I retired two or three times a week in his library, where he read aloud to me about the round-the-world voyage of Russian sailors, and for an hour and a half, my father's office became our frigate: in Singapore we were surrounded by numerous junks of merchants, in Cape Town we admired the Table Mountain, in Nagasaki samurai came to us on board, in the Indian Ocean our sailors managed to shoot an approaching tornado column from their onboard cannons in time ...

Of course, times have changed since then. New biorhythms have taken possession of the new generation. When recently in one of the Moscow orphanages I advised children to read "Frigate Pallada", one of the children asked: "Is it written about goblins there?"

A poor generation stunned by Hollywood, pop and reality TV. How many happy moments will it receive in life if, listening to music of seven notes, it hears only three?

If not for my father ... I would have been brought up by my Moscow half-party environment on fashionable literature and would have lived a sad, not joyful, albeit fashionable, life.

Dad loved to walk along the seashore in Jurmala. He could stop on the shore and watch the sunset motionless. Once, on the bank of the river, he drew my attention to how at sunset the birds calm down and grasshoppers begin to chirp. He believed that people who do not hear nature have pleasures as flat as three-note music: a restaurant, a party, sex, a casino, a new purchase ... ...

Once one of my fellow writers at five in the morning, after some regular night presentation, I called to the Baltic Sea coast in Jurmala to admire the sunrise. He looked at the sun rising above the horizon for three seconds, then said sadly: "You know, but Galkin's popularity is not falling. How do you explain this?" I have a good attitude to Galkin, but I didn't want to think about his popularity at sunrise. I looked at my colleague. Unhappy! He will never be able to tell the difference between a fish soup boiled over a fire with a firebrand stewed in it and a bag of fish soup.

The father knew the truth: nature is the manifestation of God on Earth. Those who do not feel it have no Faith!

She and my mother raised my sister and me as if surreptitiously, so that we would not guess that they were raising us.

When I turned seventeen, during my student holidays, instead of letting me and my girlfriend go to Odessa for the summer, my father sent me to work on a botanical expedition as a laborer in the Kuril Islands for two months. Now I understand, he wanted me to fly across the entire Soviet Union, and after seeing the taiga, islands, seas, oceans, he understood that I still live in the best country in the world.

With short remarks, like homeopathic doses, dad sometimes tried to cool down in me the delight that I felt along with the crowd, hypnotized by the press, and "cartoonish", as he said, revolutionaries!

End of perestroika. First Congress of Deputies. Gorbachev, Sakharov ... Shouts in the stands. For the first time, looking at live reports from the Palace of Congresses, we felt the first sighs of publicity and freedom of speech. We saw those who later began to call themselves the loud word "democrats". I was watching TV, my father was standing behind me, then suddenly waved his hand and half said:

- That they were thieves, that these ... Only new ones will be smarter! And therefore - they will steal more!

- Dad, this is democracy!

- Do not confuse democracy with squabbles.

Very little time has passed, and I and all my intelligent friends now, talking about our politicians, speak not of democrats, but "so-called democrats." Like, I don’t want to dirty the word “democracy”.

In 1989, after returning from my first tour of America, I enthusiastically talked about my impressions with my family. This is what my father used to do when he returned from his travels. My father listened to my admiration with a restrained smile, without interrupting, and then said only one phrase: “I look, you still don't understand anything. Although he brought a good sheepskin coat! "

I was very offended. For my trip, for the perfection of America, for Western democracy, freedom, for the future that I drew in my imagination for Russia. We had a falling out. My father could not explain to me what he meant. Or I just didn't want to understand him. I was already a star! Thousands of spectators gathered for my performances. True, I remember his words, which he said to end our dispute: “Okay, let's not quarrel. You will probably visit the West more than once. But when I’m gone, remember, it’s not that simple! Life is not black and white television. "

As if he knew then that in five years I would radically change my opinion about America.

Sometimes it seems to me that parents leave this life so that the children begin to nevertheless listen to their advice. How many of my acquaintances and friends now remember the advice of their parents, after their death.

After my father passed away, I became his obedient son!

Now, when my father is gone, I more and more often remember our quarrels. I am grateful to him first of all for the fact that he was not an ordinary person. Neither communists, nor "democrats", nor journalists, nor politicians, nor the West, nor the writers' crowd could make him think the way it is customary. He was never a communist, but he also did not fall under the influence of dissidents.

Only we, his closest ones, knew that he believed in God. He had an icon left from his mother in his hiding place. And her cross. Not long before his death, realizing that he would soon die, he baptized me, unbaptized, making it clear that someday I also need to be baptized.

And he considered dissidents to be traitors. Convinced me that they will soon be forgotten. It is only necessary to change the situation in the world. I defended the "dissidents" with all the agility of my youth. My father tried to convince me:

- How can you fall for these "figs in your pocket"? All these "revolutionaries", about whom the West is ringing so much today, pose as daredevils, but in fact, they walk theatrically, with an open chest, to an embrasure in which there has been no machine gun for a long time.

- How can you, papa, say that? Your father in '37 died in prison and it is not even known where his grave is. Mom's parents suffered from the Soviet regime, because they were of noble origin. Mom could not really finish her studies. After you wrote novels about Japan, you are being followed. In the KGB, you are considered almost a Japanese spy. And these people left the country precisely because of this humiliation!

My father most often did not respond to my ardent attacks, as if he was not sure that I had matured at forty-odd years before he understood what was happening. But one day he decided:

- KGB, NKVD ... On the one hand, you, of course, say everything correctly. But it’s not that simple. There are different people everywhere. And, by the way, if it weren't for the KGB, you would never have been to the same America. After all, one of them allowed you to leave, signed the papers. In general, I think that we have someone very smart up there, and you were specially released to America so that you would notice something that others cannot notice. And as for the dissidents and emigrants ... keep in mind, most of them left not from the KGB, but from the Ministry of Internal Affairs! And they are not dissidents, but ... crooks! And mark my word, as soon as it is profitable for them to return - they will all run back. America will still shudder from them. They themselves will not be happy that they tried to persuade the Soviet government to release these "revolutionaries" to them. So it's not that simple, son! Someday you will understand this, - the Father again thought for a while and, as it were, did not add, but emphasized what was said, - Most likely you will. And if you don't understand, that's okay. You can also live a pretty decent life as a fool. Moreover, with such popularity as yours! Well, you'll be a popular fool. Good too. For this, by the way, they pay well in any society!

Naturally, after such a conversation, we quarreled again.

Dad had no technical education. He could not determine with mathematical precision the formula of today's fool. He was a writer.

I recently had the opportunity to talk with a wise man. In the past, a scientist-mathematician. Now he is a philosopher. As it is fashionable to say nowadays - "advanced". He explained to me his philosophy: most people in the world perceive life as a bipolar dimension. In fact, life is multipolar. The multipolar structure of the world underlies all Eastern teachings and religions. Human life is not a fluctuation of electric current between plus and minus. The ups and downs that Western Hollywood philosophy relies on eventually lead to short circuits.

Everything that a modern philosopher explained to me was probably accurate from a mathematical point of view, but tricky for a simple bipolar man in the street. And most importantly, I knew all this for a long time from my father, who did not use such sophisticated words as multipolar systems in his speech. He tried to explain to me very clearly that "everything is not so simple." Not everything is divided into plus and minus.

How I wish that today my father heard that I still began to listen to his words and more ... so that at least once I went down to the ground and heard: "What are they so-py!" and the applause of the concordant audience!

I regret that he passed away with the hope that his children would grow wiser, but with uncertainty for this hope!

Speech by Mikhail Zadornov on Khabarovsk television (2006): - Thanks to my father, I often showed knowledge in my life that were unknown even to specialists. - I remember how my father told me that the Chinese live according to the wisdom of Confucius, so their teachers at all times received more than the military. This is the guarantee of the power of their nation, which is primarily confirmed by fertility. - Recently I was in China and very much surprised the guide with the question: "How much does the professor get and how much does the general get?" The guide noted that none of the Russians had ever asked that. I replied that I had read Confucius and I was very interested in how it happened that in five millennia all empires collapsed, and China survived. And the guide said that, indeed, their teachers still receive more military personnel. Q.E.D. That is why the country did not collapse, but also flooded the whole world with its products. And if this goes on, then the "Shuttles" for the Americans will soon be assembled according to American patterns, but in China

FROM NIKOLAY ZADORNOV'S BIOGRAPHY.

(LITERARY DICTIONARY OF THE USSR):

After the war, the Secretary of the Union of Writers of the USSR A. Fadeev invited the young writer N. Zadornov to go to Latvia to strengthen friendship with Latvian writers. Nikolai Zadornov agreed to move to the west of the country, where, according to him, in the archives he could study history, diplomacy, maritime affairs ... - everything that was necessary to write the planned novels.

FROM INTERVIEW BY MIKHAIL ZADORNOV IN LATVIA. (1993)

Latvian writers respected their father for not wanting to join the party, for not becoming the secretary of the Writers' Union, for never getting involved in political intrigues. In turn, their father took them to the Far East, showed them the taiga, the Amur, the sincere Siberians ... He believed that in life people are the same as the heroes of his novels, with dignity, and that people cannot have cultural ethnic enmity. He always bragged about his friendship with Latvians.

I often wonder why my father passed away so quickly and unexpectedly? Most likely, he had a complete collapse of all ideals. Especially those that formed with him in Latvia. As soon as times have changed, as the Latvian writers turned away from him. They also forgot who translated them into Russian, thanks to which they received good royalties, and what excursions to the protected areas their father arranged for them ... At one time he helped the magazine "Daugava", and as soon as Latvia became an independent country , the editors of the magazine declared him crazy. In addition, the owner of the house where our apartment was located turned up. Father understood that sooner or later they would evict us. It was too much for his dignity. The body began to fail, not wanting to live in humiliation. For the father, there was no greater humiliation than the inability to defend Russia when she was insulted. He had a presentiment of what life would do with his ideals, and did not want to see it.

He, too, secretly believed that Russia would someday come to life. But when he realized how she “comes to life” under the control of dissidents, emigrants and, as we now say, “democrats”, his body simply did not want to continue to exist in this.

QUOTE FROM INTERVIEW BY MIKHAIL ZADORNOV "AiF" 1992.

For me, Riga, Jurmala with its beach has always been the land that gave me strength. Now I do not like to be in Latvia, and my mother's dream is to leave Riga. My father just died there. Several serious stresses brought him to the grave. Three owners turned up at our apartment at once, allegedly living there until the fortieth year. It seems that these gentlemen lived in a communal apartment. But most importantly, we somehow unexpectedly became strangers in this country and strangers to each other.

In one of the last days of his life, I walked my father through his office, where we used to read "Frigate Pallada". He no longer had the strength to go out into the street. He was walking in the room and held on to me with both hands. I opened the windows wide. Opposite the park, in which he loved to walk, was already green. Spring was pouring through the window! The father asked to take him to the shelf with his books. I looked at them for a long time, then told me: "I loved these people!" I understood that he was talking about the heroes of his novels. He said goodbye to them. These were practically the last words that I heard from him.

Apparently, he did not want to remember the real people who surrounded him in life ...

FROM THE ARTICLE OF THE WRITER G.V. GUZENKO (1999):

"For such books written by Nikolai Zadornov, the writer needs to erect a monument on the banks of the Amur!"

FROM AMUR TO DAUGAWA

From an article about the writer N.P. Zadornov, published in one of the magazines in the Far East:

On the occasion of the 90th anniversary of Nikolai Pavlovich Zadornov (1909 - 1992), a monument to the writer was erected in Khabarovsk above Amur-father.

In memory of the writer who did a lot for the Far East, the authorities of the city of Khabarovsk allocated a beautiful place for a monument on the banks of the Amur, where Nikolai Zadornov loved to be. His son Mikhail, a well-known satirist, said that it was in this place in 66 that he for the first time with his father went to the bank of the Amur and bathed in it. Now at this place there will be a monument to Zadornov Sr. The author of the project, sculptor Vladimir Baburov, admitted that at first he did not succeed in the monument, since he tried to sculpt Zadornov Sr., having only his photographs in his hands. But then, having met Mikhail Zadornov, I realized that the son was very similar to his father, and he sculpted some of the father's details from his son.

The monument to Nikolai Zadornov stands not far from the monument to Muravyov-Amursky. We owe the great Siberian governor the signing of a border treaty with China. Under him, the dream of the great Russian thinker came true, and "Russia grew into Siberia." It is interesting that the money for the monument to Muravyov-Amursky in the early 80s was transferred not only by Zadornov-father, but at his request and by his son - already by that time a popular satirist.

MOTHER

FROM THE SKETCH OF MIKHAIL ZADORNOV "MOTHER AND WAR" 2000 When I come to Riga, my mother and I often watch TV together. Mom is already over ninety. She was never in any party, was not a member of the trade union, the Komsomol, did not sing a chorus of patriotic songs. She did not step in step with anyone, did not change her views depending on the change of portraits on the walls, did not burn party membership cards and did not clearly regret her devotion to previous portraits. Therefore, despite his age, he still thinks more soberly than many of our politicians. After watching a report from Sevastopol once, she said: “Now the Turks can demand Crimea from Ukraine. After all, according to the agreement with Russia, they had no right to him while he was Russian. " But Chechnya worries her most of all from the news. My grandfather, her father, a tsarist officer, served at the beginning of the century in the Caucasus. Mom was born in Maykop, then lived in Krasnodar. “There will be nothing good in Chechnya,” she persistently repeats, listening to even the most optimistic forecasts and assurances from persons trusted to the government. - They don't know Caucasians, they don't know history. Mom naively believes that politicians and generals, like her, worry about the Motherland, but they make mistakes all the time, because they received a non-aristocratic education. Sometimes, very gently, I try to prove to my mother what her main mistake is. She evaluates our leaders by placing them in her coordinate system. They exist in a completely different dimension. No matter how stupid it is, I start to tell her about the oligarchs, about oil prices, about the war as a super-profitable business. What is even more stupid, from such conversations I often turn on, forgetting about my mask of a cynic, and fantasize fervently on various historical topics. As a rule, from my fantasies, my mother, sitting in a chair, begins to doze, while continuing to nod her head, as if in agreement with me. In fact, it is her brain, unspoiled by excessive politicization, cleverly fencing itself off from the rubbish that is overflowing with the heads of average Russians today. And mine as well.

FROM NEWSPAPER PUBLICATIONS IN RIGA. (1998)

THE PAGES OF A PAST CENTURY IN THE EYES OF POSTLUMINOUS

Gentlemen, daughters of a royal officer, wives

A FAMOUS RUSSIAN WRITER AND MOTHER

POPULAR SATIRIST

ELENA MELKHIOROVNA ZADORNOVA

Elena, daughter of Melchior

Such meetings do not happen often, they are usually called a gift of fate, which means they are lucky. Not in novels and not in movies - in an ordinary Riga apartment I was immersed in the events of the 17th and First World Revolutions, Stalin's five-year plans and the Great Patriotic War. Their witness and direct participant, in her almost 90 years, remembered the smallest details of the past century. She kept at home the family coat of arms "White Swan" and a whole portfolio of documents of an ancient family, dating back to the era of the Polish king Stefan Batory. And this was the most valuable property of Elena Melkhiorovna, a born noblewoman of the old Pokorno-Matusevich family, married to Zadornova.

... At the age of nine she was taken to be shot. Together with my mother and father. It was a crazy 18th year. August. Heat. We walked on the dried grass. She thought: "Here the grass will grow, but I will not be ..." All the girl's fault was that she happened to be born in the family of the tsarist officer Melchior Iustinovich Pokorno-Matusevich ... Both before and after this day, fate threw up a lot of stormy events. However, first things first ...

1914th. Childhood

Little Lilya was brought up, as was customary in noble families: they dressed up, pampered; Until the age of three, nannies worked with her, from the age of six they began to teach the girl music. She had remarkable talent for piano and vocals. If life were different, she could become a singer ... But when she was five years old, the First World War began.

- It was a hot day. As always, the ice cream workers were driving their carts through the streets and shouting loudly: "Ice cream! Ice cream!" Mom usually gave me money, I ran up and bought these "licks", as we called them then ...

On this day, her mother was sent a parcel with a particularly fashionable light coat - she ordered clothes from Warsaw. There was also a beautiful coat for little Lily. At five in the evening, as usual, we went for a walk, and since it got colder, we put on new coats. But she especially remembered the day because soon the ice cream makers disappeared from the streets. This was the beginning of the First World War - through the eyes of a five-year-old girl.

Batum

Father, who graduated from the military school in Dinaburg and since 1903 was a tsarist officer, was mobilized and sent to Batum, to the Turkish front, as commandant of one of the fortresses. Lilya and her mother went to see him.

— The windows of the room we rented in Batum overlooked the street along which the new commander-in-chief of the Russian army, Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, uncle of Nicholas II, was passing from the station ... Then, sitting in the phaeton, my mother and I watched the parade in his honor.

And after the parade, there was a gala dinner on the boulevard, and Lilya suffered a lot from her mother for dipping bread into a plate of borscht ...

The first thing the commander-in-chief ordered was to evict the officers' families a hundred miles from the city. More than a hundred noble girls - sisters of mercy came in large numbers in Batum, the officers were dizzy, quarrels, duels arose ... My father rented Tchaikovsky's dacha with a large beautiful fountain near Batum. Once Lilin's beloved kitten drowned in the fountain. She cried bitterly until her father brought her a letter from the drowned kitten. In his message, the fluffy sufferer explained to the girl the reason for his death: he behaved badly, chased birds, for which he was punished. So unobtrusively, the father reassured his daughter, and at the same time taught a lesson: you cannot do evil ...

In winter, Lilya attended a kindergarten run by the baroness sisters. One day they spoke French, the other German, they read and drew a lot.

"Expenditure!"

... There were battles on the Turkish front. When the father, together with the troops, went to the capture of Trebizond, the mother and daughter went back to Maikop ... In the 17th Lilya went to the first grade of the gymnasium. On the day the tsar abdicated the throne, the girl, brought up in strict traditions of noble etiquette, having listened to high school girls, returned home with the words: "That's it. No more comments to me: there is no tsar, I do what I want."

The 18th came. The fronts were falling apart. Father soon returned home. A terrible time has come. Maikop passed from hand to hand ... The day before, the Bolsheviks scattered leaflets in the city. Pogroms were expected. At 8 am everyone was awakened by the first volleys. Lily's mother, looking out the window, saw crowds of people running. Grabbing her little daughter and not even throwing on her blouse, she rushed into the street. Father rushed after her, grabbing a shawl as he walked to cover her shoulders.

Some on rulers and phaetons, some on foot - people ran to the bridge, along which the retreating White Guards were already moving. Civilians were not allowed through. To hide from the bullets whistling around, we went down to the very shore. But they only managed to reach the mill - the officers ran to meet them, shouting: "Don't go further, there are red ones!" - and rushed to swim.

We spent the night in a barn in the hay. Big rats were running nearby. The night was moonlit. In the morning the Red Army soldiers came to inspect the mill, one of the residents of the neighboring houses pointed out to them where the officer's family was hiding ... At that moment the Pokorno-Matusevichs were standing in the alley. Seeing them, the red ones with their sabers baldly rushed at their father. Without hesitation for a second, Lilina's mother hugged him and covered him with herself. This stopped the soldiers.

Then all three were taken to the regiment. To be shot. Intoxicated with victory and alcohol, the Red Army men shouted: "Take them out!" But no one undertook to carry out the sentence: everyone was drunk. They took me to another regiment. And then fate intervened. The regiment commander turned out to be a man who had fought on the Turkish front together with Melchior Justinovich. He respected Lily's father for the fact that, unlike other officers, he never beat soldiers, considering it a humiliation of his dignity. Considering Pokorno-Matusevich an exceptionally noble man, the commander ordered the family to be released ... Elena Melkhiorovna was afraid of the crowd until the end of her life.

They returned to the city along the plundered streets. Maps were scattered everywhere around the rich mansions: on the eve of the pogrom, the intelligentsia was having fun with preference and solitaire ... The house of the manufacturer Terziev, where they rented an apartment, was searched. But no one was touched, the owner's daughters managed to change into maids and thus escaped ...

The family of the nobleman Savateev, a Marxist by conviction, lived in the same house with them. Under the Bolsheviks, he held a high post - the chairman of the city executive committee. Under the White Savateev he was in prison. When the Reds came, he was released. Savateev returned home. The next day, the White Guards recaptured the city again. Already at five in the evening Savateev arrived to arrest. On the same night he was hanged in the square.

"Remember your last name"

In March 20, Denikin retreated, and the Bolsheviks came to Maikop again. On May 20, former tsarist officers were summoned for registration at the Kavkazskaya station (now the city of Kropotkin). Saying goodbye, the father hugged his daughter with the words: "Little, remember your real name - Pokorno-Matusevich." All the officers who had left with him were shot. Father was saved by a miracle. Having given money to the guard, he asked to buy bread, and when he left, he took his documents from the table and ate them mixed with black bread. Instead of being shot, he was sent to labor colonies such as the GULAG for three years.

- We lived with friends, - Elena Melkhiorovna recalled. - They were terribly worn out, mom wore daddy's shoes. She grabbed at any job. For two years I did not attend the gymnasium, as there was nothing to put on in winter. The family shoemaker Zyuzyukin offered her mother to earn some money: she cut out blanks for fashionable white boots from rough-canvas tea towels. Somehow they made ends meet.

Twist of fate

- In the 23rd year, a completely sick father returned from the camps. Every month he went to check in at the GPU, and his mother was waiting for him at the corner. At the age of 60, my father fell under the purge of the co-apparat, was left without work and went to study at the courses of accountants.

After school, in the 28th year, Elena was admitted to the Krasnodar Music College - right away for the second year. But there were no opportunities to study - you had to pay for the studies. So she didn't become a pianist. A month later, she married a young man who had long been in love with her. In the 30th, a son was born, they named him Lolly. Elena dreamed that he would become a violinist or diplomat ...

My husband was listed in Moscow - in the Ministry of Heavy Industry, and worked at various construction sites: near Kashira, in Stalingrad, Sevastopol, Izhevsk, Krasnodar, Ufa ... Together with him the family traveled around the country. In Izhevsk and Krasnodar, Elena worked as a proofreader for publishing houses. And when we moved to Ufa, to build a large plant, they took her to the factory newspaper. And one day…

Once a journalist from the city newspaper, Nikolai Zadornov, appeared in the editorial office. Elena criticized his essay to smithereens. This is where love began.

“His father was arrested, charged with sabotage, and died in prison. This spot remained on Nikolai Pavlovich all his life. As on me - noble origin. The common destiny made us very close.

When her husband left for a sanatorium for a month, Elena left home. Soon a terrible scandal arose: how so - the journalist took his wife away from the engineer! The husband sent a threatening letter. With this letter, she went to the registry office, and there, without any trial, they wrote out a divorce. And the secretary of the regional committee, the Bashkir, meeting Zadornov, patted him on the shoulder: "Well done!" Nevertheless, they decided to leave for Moscow - out of trouble.

In Moscow, Nikolai Pavlovich, who was fond of theater from his youth, at the acting labor exchange met a friend of the director Voznesensky, who went through Stalin's camps in the 30s. He persuaded him to go to Komsomolsk-on-Amur, where the actors who were serving time built a theater with their own hands. So Elena came to the ends of the world.

"I'll give you a sign ..."

The war came to the Far East on Monday - after all, seven hours behind Moscow. Mobilization began. On July 9, they decided to get married. We stood in line at the registry office from morning to five in the evening. She saw off her husband in tears. And at night, a knock on the window - came back. The commission turned down due to severe myopia.

Throughout the war, Nikolai Pavlovich worked on the Khabarovsk radio, went through the special correspondent and the Japanese front. In August 1942, daughter Mila was born. And a month later, Elena's father died in the German-occupied Krasnodar. Then she did not know about the death of her father: there was no connection with Krasnodar. But the little daughter that day cried so much that she wrote down the date. Once Melchior Justinovich, who was fond of astrology and the occult sciences, told her: "If I die without you, I will give you a sign." And so it happened. The spiritual bond between father and daughter was very strong.

To this day, the place where the father is buried is unknown: the Germans did not keep registration. Maybe that's why it seems like he didn't leave. But in fact it is nearby: in the yellowed sheets of the pedigree, in letters, in photographs - and in memory ...

FROM NEWSPAPER PUBLICATIONS IN RIGA. (2005)

Until the last days, Elena Melkhiorovna Zadornova retained a clear mind, good memory and the kindness of a truly intelligent person who knows a lot about life. In 2003, Elena Melkhiorovna passed away. "Only from that moment," Mikhail Zadornov admitted, "I realized that my childhood was over."

LITHUANIAN RODNIA

On the mother's side, Mikhail Zadornov had noble roots, on his father's side there were priests, teachers, doctors and peasants in the family.

Journalist: - You, together with your sister Lyudmila, are persistently trying to restore the family lineage. And you even seem to have discovered family ties in Lithuania?

— My maternal grandfather was a tsarist officer, his brothers lived in Lithuania. When, after the revolution, Lithuania separated (I don’t understand why the Baltic countries do not like Lenin, because thanks to him they gained independence for the first time in 200 years), my grandfather lost all ties with his brothers. Already today, my sister has taken up the study of family roots, sending inquiries everywhere. And once they sent us our family tree from Lithuania. It was so interesting to read, to consider.

And then I went to Lithuania for concerts. And on the local radio, they asked me half in jest: "Why do you come to us so often?" I replied: “Because I am one of my own, my ancestors lived here.” And he called the surname Matushevich from Zarasai. Our relatives apparently came to Zarasai from Poland when the Warsaw-Petersburg road was being built.

Suddenly the editor rushes into the room and says that Matushevich is calling from Zarasai and asking why his name is mentioned on the air? The next day I went to visit him, and I saw a nice man ... with the profile of my mother. It turned out to be my second cousin!

He showed me a family album, which he kept in the garden during the Soviet era and only recently dug it out. “I found almost all relatives except two branches,” he said. "Maybe you recognize someone?" I looked - and there was a wedding photo of my grandparents - the same as that of my mother.

My second cousin Lithuanian brother showed me a monument to the Matushevich family at the Zarasai cemetery. So I found relatives on my mother's side and even our family cemetery.

When I looked at him, my second cousin boasted:

- We are looking after this cemetery!

- Well done! Impressive!

- Like?

- Yes, but it's too early for me to come here! Moreover, I am a Russian citizen. Your authorities will not admit me here.

FROM THE SKETCH OF MIKHAIL ZADORNOV "MOTHER AND WAR" 2000 If during the "Novosti" mother falls asleep, then not for long, by the end she wakes up. For dessert, “Novosti” always talks about something, as they say, “positive”. Severe, with a bitterness at the beginning of the news, the voice of the announcer is kinder by the end of the program. He becomes like the voice of a Soviet announcer who tells us about our industrial successes, about how much steel and pig iron smelted and soda ash per capita. Since now they have forgotten about the soul, the announcer, in the same voice of a storyteller, tells us about a hippo born in a Moscow zoo or the wedding of a gypsy baron. One day my mother opened her eyes when they were showing the Moscow Hats Ball. Yes! In distant Russian cities, the funeral of paratroopers, hunger, radiation, an increased degree of hatred, a hopeless future, an illogical life, and a ball of hats on the screen! There are a lot of hats here. They look like wheels, and fires smoldering on their heads, and flowerbeds, and kimonos, and branches of some strange plants, and thatched roofs. After what we heard at the beginning of Novosti, such a ball of hats seems to be a kind of fiesta in an insane asylum. Seeing the priest at the ball of hats, my mother started. “Only the heads of confessions can settle all conflicts in the world,” she tells me. "You pitch this idea to someone when they interview you." I agree: “Indeed, a war between peoples is impossible, they fought! Now, if there is a world war, it will be between the flocks. You're right. We need to mention this in some interview. " Some of the businessmen's wives are showing off their burdock-leaf hat with a crow's nest at the top! She proudly tells the viewers that her hat was consecrated by her personal friend, the lord, who exclusively absolves her exclusive sins in his exclusive boutique-temple, and therefore she is counting on a ball for one of the exclusive prizes. “Thank God that at least our president is not at this ball,” says my mother. She trusts our president, she constantly brings me evidence of his loyalty to Russia. I also want to believe him, but I'm still afraid. I need the war in Chechnya to end first!

DAUGHTER

... Since childhood, she loved all animals indiscriminately. As if coming to us from space, I still knew that animals are kinder than people. When her daughter was ten years old, she begged the janitor in the children's camp to give her a kitten, which he was carrying to drown. The kitten, however, then tossed me. From a cowardly disheveled lump he turned into a smug fat garden cat. He still lives in my yard. On the gate I wrote "Beware, angry cat." In fact, the rescued person turned out to be such a kind-hearted person that he is afraid of butterflies flying past him, from the sight of a crow turns pale and hides under bushes from dragonflies ...

When my daughter grew up and the cartoons could no longer remain a lifeline from the disappointments that had piled on her, so that she would not finally be disappointed in life, looking at people, we took her on a trip to Africa to look at animals ...

From the story "Dreams and Plans" by Mikhail Zadornov We are leaving Africa. Farewell look at Kilimanjaro. Unfortunately, my father never found out that I was able to make his dream come true - to travel plenty! During the last months my father was very ill. Leaving this life - his daughter was then two years old - he baptized her, blessing her. Then - it was already difficult for him to speak - he looked at me attentively, and I understood this look: “Don't forget to read what we read with you in childhood. It will come in handy someday. " In recent years, my father and I have quarreled a lot. I did not accept his views, believed in capitalism with a human face and did not agree in any way that squabbling and democracy are one and the same. Once he told me: "If you bring up your children, then you will wiser!" I think that raising me, my father understood a lot in life. Now it's my turn to grow wiser!

Journalist: When you were a child, you read your daughter, how do you like your father aloud any books?

- Yes. I also managed to put together a good library for Lena. When she was only eight years old, I read to her in this library with the expression ... no, I did not read it - I played Gogol's "Inspector General". He himself ran around the room for everyone, waving his hands! After that, we had a good mood with her for a month.

By the way, thanks to my daughter, I realized, unexpectedly for myself, that sometimes giving up some kind of adult interest for the sake of a child revives the mood. One day I really needed to watch the evening News. In Chechnya, confusion began again. My daughter came up with a rubber ball and asked me to play basketball with her. In the sports room, I made a gymnastic wall for her - children love to climb higher and look down on their parents - and attached a children's basketball hoop to the ceiling.

We have always played fair: she is full-length, and I am on my knees. My awkward clumsy movements amused her more than clown spanking about a circus arena.

My daughter's eyes were at the moment when I just sat down like a man in front of the TV, so begging that I could not refuse her. Of course, when we started playing with her, I was upset that I would not watch the "News". And when they finished, I didn't even think about them. So my daughter taught me to give up on time what we think is sometimes necessary, but in fact it is necessary just the result of the generally accepted "it is necessary". Well, would I watch the "News"? Would be upset for the whole coming night! After all, we have

if you want to drink to the peace - watch the latest news!

Even now, when I feel sad, I remember that match of ours, in which she, of course, won! No, in which we both won!

From the diary of Mikhail Zadornov In the fifties, there were no toys like now in children's stores. There were not even cars on which children now, happily pressing on the pedals and imagining themselves to be cool adults, drive in all the parks. I first saw a pedal typewriter when I was already 14 years old. I looked at her and thought: "Why am I already so old?" In that Soviet, toy-free childhood, my father made some toys for me himself with our Russian ingenuity. For example, I made soldiers from simple bottle caps. Whole armies! At that time we could only dream of tin soldiers. He taught me too. First, from some colored piece of paper, we cut out a strip the width of the cork, the cork was wrapped in it and in the middle the ribbon was tied tightly with a thread. With a good imagination, it turned out to be a soldier! In a colored uniform, intercepted at the waist with a soldier's belt - thread. Colored thread-belts relied on officers. On top of the cork were glued to the cork pancakes-caps cut out of the same paper. Dad and I made whole armies out of our own and collected from all the neighbors of traffic jams. We had real battles in his office, between the cupboards, under the table and behind the chairs. Empty shoeboxes served as fortresses. And the observation tower is a floor lamp.

After the incident when I went with my daughter to play basketball, having refused Novosti, I understood why my dad never refused my request to play in traffic jams in the evening!

Journalist: What other books have you read to your daughter?

- Sherlock Holmes, Pushkin's tales, Yesenin's poems ... I understood that the poems of Akhmatova, Mandelstam, Pasternak and other fashionable today, but for me personally, cold poets will make her read at school. In the school curriculum, in my opinion, they pay too much attention to the verses of some poets just because they were considered anti-Soviet in our time. Contrary to the past! But what has the kids got to do with it? In Soviet times, there were many more interesting writers than anti-Soviet ones. It seemed to me necessary to connect my daughter to warm poetry from childhood. Not to that poetry, which is "anti", but which is "for"!

It is interesting that Lena fell in love with Pushkin's poems and fairy tales so much that when, during one of my conversations with friends, she heard that a person's soul was being reborn, she told me that in a past life she was Pushkin!

True, she was then five years old.

Journalist: Have you read Dumas to her? For example, The Three Musketeers?

- I started. But something didn't work out.

Journalist: Why? This is a real "action" for children?

- Apparently the novel, as you say, "action" was for the children of our generation. After the Hollywood "action" he already looks like Prishvin compared to "The Adventures of Major Pronin". She even told me an interesting idea, which I thought about, and we stopped reading The Three Musketeers: “D'Artagnan is disgusting. Bonacieux took him in, but he seduced his wife and also mocked him. And his friends are murderers. So many people have been killed because of the unfaithful queen's pendants. I don’t like this book. ”

Journalist: Has she expressed her opinion about anyone else that you remember?

- About Mayakovsky. But that was only later, when they passed it at school. I remember asking such a question that I was numb: "Dad, was Mayakovsky kidding himself in poetry?" "Why?" “Well, how could he write seriously:“ I take it out of wide trousers with a duplicate of the priceless load ”- this is an obvious joke! What are you doing? He's a great poet-funny! Remember: "He moved a thousand provinces in his skull." Generally a horror story! "

After her words, I thought for the first time. What if she's right? Maybe Mayakovsky, being a verbal balancing act, really walked on the edge of a razor, mocking in many verses over the kondova conspiracy? And the Council of Deputies, behind his vivid images and juicy metaphors, did not recognize the soul of the mockingbird poet? Maybe this was the poet's main disappointment that his pamphlets were mistaken for eulogies?

Sometimes children have very fresh thoughts! Children have a lot to learn from today's parents. Their impressions of life and the knowledge that they brought with them from the Cosmos have not yet been tainted by our "it should be" and "it should be."

Journalist: Does she study well with you? An excellent pupil?

Thank God no! My mother once asked teachers to be strict and picky about me. So we asked at school not to overrate our daughter in any way. Moreover, I told her: “I don’t care about your grades, I am worried about your knowledge and also your vital interests”. I understand this is probably not pedagogical, but I was always afraid to deal with excellent students in life. In short, I would not have gone to reconnaissance with an excellent student. He will immediately sell everything for the "five". A five can be an estimate in childhood, five thousand dollars in adolescence, and five million in old age. Most of today's Russian democrats who are in power were excellent students in schools! And how many excellent students I have seen - children of wealthy parents. Many of them were bought for the sake of bragging about their children. Here he is, they say, we have an excellent student! And then their kids, after finishing school, got addicted to drugs. Because neither the grades, nor the money of the parents of the children can protect them from drugs. Only interests! If my daughter will continue to be interested in questions like “Why Mayakovsky was such a cool poet that he wrote“ I take my purple book out of wide trousers, ”she will no longer have time for drugs. After all, such questions for her life are more than enough and with a tail.

When we were with her in Crete, in the Palace of Knossos, she asked the guide: "Could Theseus deceive everyone?" "In what sense?" The guide asked. “Well, for example, go into the labyrinth, stand in it and leave without fighting the monster, and then tell everyone that he killed him. They believed him, they didn't give the Minotaur any more food, the monster died! "

Journalist: And what is the guide?

- The guide was very surprised. I thought about this question and found nothing better than to answer: "Actually, of course I could!" - and thought even more.

In addition to our joint readings, it was important for me to travel around the world with her. Now there is such an opportunity. It was in our childhood that I had to travel through books, sitting in my father's library. Of course, we have fulfilled with her a program that is obligatory for modern children of well-to-do parents: Vienna, Paris, Israel ... Yes, I almost forgot, the United Arab Emirates! These routes are now a must for our "cool" skaters. But in the free program we also visited Russian cities, which the children of the rich do not even know about: Vladivostok, Khabarovsk, Novosibirsk ... We celebrated the New Year in Akademgorodok, where I dreamed of working. After I realized that for health reasons I would not become an astronaut, I decided to become an academician - I always have enough health for an academician. We visited the Urals at the excavations of the ancient city of Arkaim, which is more than 2000 BC ... We drove by car along the Ussuriysk Territory ... We traveled across Africa, celebrated the New Year on Kilimanjaro, were in Koktebel and Kara-Dag, walked Botkin's path along the slopes of Ai Petri ... I tried to unobtrusively take her out somewhere, so that she could feel the energy of Russia and so that she could be "struck" by her love of nature! So that she can see what, except for her father, no one will even advise her to look.

In Magnitogorsk, I asked to show us the world's largest Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works, where one rolling mill is one and a half kilometers long, and in Chelyabinsk there is one of the most modern pipe-rolling shops. She was with a friend and, oddly enough, they were interested in it, because they grew up in the Baltics. There, as in the West, children have no impressions, except from quarrels with their parents, who do not want to let them go to the disco. And then the little eyes of both sparkled, the pupils, unwilling to the Western education, began to move. No joke, they saw molten metal for the first time! And how steelmakers stir it with a big "ladle". And after visiting Arkaim, where the scientist Zdanovich, told and showed that each house of the most ancient Russian city had its own furnace for smelting bronze, the daughter climbed into the encyclopedia, rechecked the scientist, whether bronze really appeared in Europe five hundred years later than we have on Urals?

It would seem, why does the girl need all this? Yes, in order to hear not two notes in life, but seven! So that someday, even when I’m gone, the world of multipolar sensations, and not bipolar pleasures, opens up in front of her!

Journalist: And which city did she like the most?

- Vladivostok!

Journalist: Why? Architecture, nature, river, embankment?

- She did not expect that at the end of the world there could be such a beautiful city, around the taiga, and inside the bay with the cool name "Golden Horn".

Journalist: Well, were you also interested in visiting places where the stars of your rank do not go?

- And how! Moreover, showing her all this, I myself drew important conclusions. At the same Ural factories, for example, workers receive no more than $ 300-400 a month, and from the owners of the factories - local oligarchs - guns with diamond flies. They are super millionaires! The foreman who took me around one of these factories, by the way, he had two higher educations, complained about the complete disrespect of the owners for the working staff. True, he warned me not to mention this from the stage, otherwise he would be fired.

Then I had a dispute with one of these Russian capitalists with a big human face. He tried to prove that they do a lot of charitable deeds for the same workers. For example, a ski resort was built near Magnitogorsk. I laughed, “What kind of workers is this for? Do not tell me, I have a cold on my lip, it’s dumb to laugh! A ski resort near Magnitogorsk is needed in order to lure the president and, after he has beautifully slid down the mountain in front of photo reporters and television cameras, to beg for something from him. " "But we have also built a water park with a hotel!" - the oligarch continued to insist on his charity. "And this is generally the most direct income!"

We finally quarreled with him, arguing about the Soviet past. He argued that only now had come a truly noble moral time for Russia. And that this is the merit of today's democrats. I reminded him that the same Magnitogorsk Combine, from which he has his grandmother, by the way, was built by the Soviet government, by order of Stalin. And it was built in such a way that it still makes a profit. Not for me to explain to him what! The objection was common, they say, Stalin built it all on blood, killing thousands of people. Then I could not stand it: “But from this he did not have diamond flies on his own gun, did not save the stolen money in offshore banks. Yes, these factories are built on blood. But you, today's "democrats", have your money from this very blood. You are even more terrible than Stalin! "

Back in Moscow, I talked to one of the local bankers. I asked him, is it really impossible to introduce such a law in the state that the owners of enterprises have the right to take for themselves only a certain percentage of the profit? 10 or 20 percent. And the state should make sure that they comply with this law. The banker answered me, almost without thinking: “Of course, anything is possible. True, they will steal it anyway. But if the state correctly controls financial flows, then no more than 10 percent will be stolen. " It will be like in civilized countries, which means - within the European standard of theft.

This is how, thanks to my daughter, with whom we visited these giants-plants, I practically understood for myself the main starting point for the national idea of ​​reviving the Russian economy.

Merchants rule us today. And in power, and in politics, and in the economy! And people who create, not trade, should rule. The Creator created us in his own image. That is, the creators! The word "worker" consists of the syllables "ra" and "bo", which means "light" and "god". This is a divine word. Since the slave owners began to rule the world, they reduced it to "slave" and tried to make people change their attitude to this word for thousands of years as to something plebeian. I am not saying that there should be no merchants. They are also needed. Only they should play according to the laws of the working man, and not us according to their laws. If merchants help creators, then they also become creators. Otherwise they are creatures!

You see what thoughts sometimes come to mind, if you are seriously engaged in raising children!

However, I would not want to get the wrong impression that my daughter and I are in such an angelic relationship. Unfortunately, like everyone else, we quarrel, and quite harshly. It can be hard and sad. Now she is in the most difficult age. For some reason, children in the years of maturation in Russia began to be called the disgusting word "teenager". While there is a good Russian word "teenager". Even one of the children wrote in a school essay that Dostoevsky was the author of the novel "Teenager".

However, I try to restrain myself, not to shout at her. When she was twelve years old, we once had a big fight. Up to the point that I wanted to punish her with a belt. She had a hysteria, she cried so much that I gave her my word never in my life to yell at her again. It is difficult, but you have to keep your word. Once or twice he only said to her: “I remember what I promised you, but you brought me on, so now I will shout and I will not be any more”.

I'm not sure if I'm right. In any case, valocordin had to be taken more than once in recent years.

When I think about the eternal problem of "fathers and children", about how angry parents, including myself, instead of a sedative pill, I sometimes recall the couplet of the young poet A. Alyakin:

For night suffering, for mental anguish,

Our children will be avenged for us by our grandchildren!

I am sure that she will grow up and understand me, as I belatedly understood my parents. Of course, I would like her to do it early, while she still has me.

All doctors unanimously say: all the best is laid in a child under 12 years old. Then, those feelings that are embedded in it are simply formatted by society. They are structured, brought into a certain system, often narrowing the child's creative potential. I don't want to do this. Yes, she did not conduct a large symphony orchestra at the age of five. And great! But we played basketball with her. We read books. She, like me, is a socially capable child. Therefore, for a long time he will be a person without specific occupations. Let it go! But, I am sure that our reading in the library, playing basketball and traveling will help her out more than once in her life!

By the way, according to numerous psychics, my brain was dormant until the age of twenty-seven. I woke up only after the first time I recovered from drunkenness. Of course, I do not wish this to my daughter. Therefore, I honestly tell her how bad her father was in her youth. Why am I doing this? Because children always do not want to be like their parents! And they especially do not like it when parents lie.

I am going to bequeath to her, like my father to me, a sense of humor, intransigence to betrayal, devotion to friends and an inquisitive mind. This is what I understand - a real legacy! Not like a house with a lake in Switzerland, which any child can drink or smoke ...

Journalist: By the way, about the sense of humor. Do you think it was inherited by her?

- Hope. True, when she was four years old, she first got backstage at my concert in St. Petersburg. The four thousandth hall. In such a hall, the audience laughs especially, as if turning on each other with their own critical mass. Satisfied with the success, I left the stage, and she looks at me and cries:

- What - I ask - happened?

- Dad, why is everyone laughing at you?

But the years passed ... Since then, she has been behind the scenes more than once and, I am sure, can no longer imagine life without an ironic attitude towards her. Recently, for example, I watched how our mother's friends say goodbye when they leave us:

- Dad, did you notice? This is definitely for you. They kiss and at the same time say "kiss". That is, as if the one who was kissed is completely stupid and does not understand that he was kissed. Insert in "Only our man!"

I like that she is in love with KVN. Moreover, in KVN as a whole and in all its participants by name. In general, I think it is very great that KVN has revived in our country, and even so powerfully. And here they play everywhere: in institutes, schools, kindergartens, nurseries and ... even in the zones! Is this not a saving deposit of All Russia? No other country in the world has such a youth game. KVN united all quick-thinking young people. Almost replaced the Komsomol in the best sense of the word. By the way, she has many friends among KVNschikov. She also introduced me to many KVN players. Most of them are very capable. They just a little lack professionalism, but they know how to "light". Our generation needs to learn this from them. And they also have something to learn from us! This is how, in fact, the problem of "fathers and children" is easily solved.

Journalist: In what other ways did your daughter try to be like you?

- She especially respected me at the age of five or six, when she saw that, despite my age, I could walk on my arms. Soon I also learned to do an upside-down stance. Tumbling all day, everywhere: on the beach, on lawns, at home, at a party. Apparently, like me, she likes to see the world not upside down, as we are used to, but as it should be. Then, when I saw how I sat on the stage on the split, I learned this as well. Only, unlike me, it does not hurt her.

Journalist: It must be difficult for her to be the daughter of Zadornov among her friends? Everyone knows you. There should be increased attention to it.

- On the one hand, my name gives her a certain pride. On the other hand, she is, of course, a burden to her. Too often in adolescence, children are cruel, they try to say something nasty about mom or dad, especially if they are famous people.

But, in my opinion, she endures this "misfortune" with dignity. By the way, she herself asks me not to show her anywhere, not to involve her in any actions or TV shows, as famous parents often do with their children. In this sense, I think she is right. I have never promoted her, excuse the hackneyed word! Now, for the first time, in a conversation with you, I am telling you about it in such detail. And that is because she has already grown up. So, let him continue to strive for independence. He is trying to become a person, without taking into account his father's name. I once said to her: "Daughter, there are those who were defeated in battle, and there are those who surrendered without a fight." In my opinion, she is not going to give up. I recently asked her:

- Maybe you want to change your surname?

We must give her credit, she thought at first, then answered quite confidently:

- No I do not want to!

What she thought at first was dear to me. This means that my surname sometimes really depresses her. Obligates. As they say now, it loads.

Journalist: Have you ever had a drink at the table with guests for her? Any toasts in her honor? If yes, which one do you remember most?

- At the last meeting of the New Year, I told her literally the following: “Solving your problems, I have grown wiser! Probably, the ancients are right when they say that children come to their parents to improve them. Thanks to you, daughter, dealing with your problems, I definitely changed for the better. In short, you have already completed your task. She raised me and my mother. Now I must help us fulfill our task - to educate you! So, at least sometimes you have to obey. "

Journalist: Her name is Lena. Was she so named after your mother?

Yes, and my mother's name was Elena, and my daughter's name was Lena, and my daughter's mother was also Lena. Therefore, you can call me simply - Lenin! Such a pseudonym would suit me more than some! But, unfortunately, it has already been used in history.

As my friends say, my daughter looks like me, but pretty.

Until I managed to raise my daughter to be a full-fledged Asian. Europe is pulling it!

Nikolay Pavlovich Zadornov(1909 - 1992) - Russian, Soviet writer. Honored Worker of Culture of the Latvian SSR (1969). Laureate of the Stalin Prize, second degree (1952).

Not so long ago, they learned about the existence of books by the most interesting Russian writers, the father of the well-known Mikhail Zadornov - Nikolai Pavlovich Zadornov. This is all the more surprising for me, since I studied in an institution profiled in literature with a bias in journalism and then sociology. So, what we just didn’t read or discuss there! Kafra and Baudelaire - of course, not to mention all our classics, and Zadornov was never mentioned! We learned about it only from Mikhail Zadornov. Now we read with interest.

Prominent Soviet writer, State Prize laureate Nikolai Zadornov is known to readers for his historical novels "Cupid Father", "Distant Land", "First Discovery", "Captain Nevelskoy", "War over the Ocean", dedicated to the heroic past of Siberia and the Far East.

Zadornov, Nikolay Pavlovich

Nikolai Zadornov was born on November 22 (December 5), 1909 in Penza to the family of a veterinarian Pavel Ivanovich Zadornov (1875-?) (Later accused of deliberate extermination of livestock and died in prison), grew up in Siberia. After graduating from high school in 1926-1941 he was an actor and director in theaters in Siberia, the Far East, Ufa; a literary contributor to the newspapers Tikhoretskiy Rabochiy, Sovetskaya Sibir, Krasnaya Bashkiria. During the war he worked at the Khabarovsk Regional Radio Committee. During this period, he wrote his first novel, "Cupid Father". In 1946 he moved to Riga, where he lived until the end of his life. In 1969 and 1972 he visited Japan.

Nikolai Pavlovich Zadornov owns 2 cycles of historical novels about the development of the Far East by the Russian people in the 19th century, about the exploits of explorers. The first cycle consists of 4 novels: "Distant Land" (books 1-2, 1946-1949), "First Discovery" (1969, first title - "Towards the Ocean", 1949), "Captain Nevelskoy" (books 1-2, 1956-1958) and "War over the Ocean" (books 1-2, 1960-1962). The second cycle (about the development of the Far East by the peasants-settlers) is thematically connected with the first: the novels "Cupid Father" (books 1-2, 1941-1946) and "Gold Rush" (1969). In 1971 he published the novel "Tsunami" - about the expedition of Admiral E. V. Putyatin to Japan in 1854-1855. He also wrote a novel about modernity "Yellow, Green, Blue ..." (Book 1, 1967), a book of travel essays "Blue Hour" (1968) and others. Stalin Prize of the second degree (1952) for the novels Amur Father, Distant Land, To the Ocean.

The son of Nikolai Pavlovich Zadornov is Mikhail Zadornov, a famous satirist.

From 1946 until his death, Nikolai Pavlovich Zadornov lived in Riga, was awarded the title "Honored Worker of Culture of the Latvian SSR". The writer passed away on September 18, 1992. In the city of Penza, on the house where the writer lived (Revolutsionnaya street, 45), a memorial plaque was unveiled.

It so happened that we most often recall significant and vivid episodes of our national history in connection with any anniversary dates, although often after decades and centuries they determine the most important events of our time. Cases of bygone days, described by the writer Nikolai Zadornov in the historical chronicle " Cupid Father"and in the cycle of novels about the famous Russian captain GI Nevelskoy, seem extremely relevant regardless of memorable dates and historical anniversaries. They reflect the origins of those changes that, by their grandeur, break out of the ordinary phenomena of everyday life.

Today his books are sold in many online stores and are easy to find on sale.

Zadornov Nikolay Pavlovich (1909 - 1992) he lived only nine years in the Far East, but he went down in the history of literary life as a true Far Eastern writer, who devoted all his work to the Far East; historian and researcher of the era of the development of the eastern outskirts of Russia by the Russian people.

NP Zadornov was born in Penza on December 5, 1909 in the family of a veterinarian. Having worked in Central Asia for the prescribed period after graduating from the Kazan Veterinary University (having served "his scholarship"), his father moved with his family to Siberia. Here, in Chita, the future writer spent his childhood. He witnessed the events of the civil war, the battle near Chita, saw a luggage car with a gold reserve. At the age of ten he got acquainted with the books of N. M. Przhevalsky, the newly published book by V. K. Arsenyev "Across the Ussuriysk Territory." By the age of fourteen he was carried away by the theater, played in school plays; without leaving school, he entered a professional theater. Love for art passed from his parents, whose idol was V.E. Meyerhold in Penza. They told their son a lot about the theatrical life of Penza, the first roles of the future famous Soviet director.

After graduating from school, N.P. Zadornov continued his theatrical activities. After three years of work at the Siberian Experimental Theater, he entered the troupe of the Ufa City Theater. The beginning of his journalistic activity in the newspapers of Beloretsk in the Urals, Ufa dates back to this time. He writes about gold mines, oil fields, miners. In the summer of 1937 he brought his story “Mogusyumka and Guryanich” to the publishing house “Soviet Writer” in Moscow. Having registered at the acting labor exchange and having received an invitation to the city of Komsomolsk-on-Amur, NP Zadornov in the fall of 1937 with the last steamer appears in the young city. He works as the head of the literary department of the Komsomolsk Drama Theater and at the same time plays in performances. On theatrical posters and programs of the 1930s. you can find his name among the performers of roles in the plays of N. Pogodin: Volzhanin in "A Man with a Gun" (1938), a train conductor in "Pavel Grekov" (1939), a Japanese in "Serebryanaya Pad" (1939), a philistine in the play "How the steel was tempered "based on the novel by N. Ostrovsky (1939). Many years later, NP Zadornov, who has already become a famous writer, will again meet with the theater of his youth at the rehearsals of the play staged based on his novel "Cupid Father".

In addition to working in the theater, N.P. Zadornov led the Red Army literary circle, traveled a lot, wrote essays for the city newspaper. From the first meeting, the Far East amazed the future writer: “Taiga ... seemed untouched, as if people were taking some small part of its wealth. Far Eastern rivers are clean and transparent. The foliage has fallen, and red twigs are visible everywhere - on the slopes against the background of the blue sky. The sun was setting in this red thicket. We saw the footprints of animals, ”he wrote in his autobiography. An eyewitness to how a modern city grew on the site of the remote village of Permskoye, he could not help but turn to the past, to those who were the first to come to the banks of the great river. “I understood that the past was leaving, that soon everything would change, and no one would see archery or spear hunting anymore. No one will tell you how the first bread was sown. I tried to see as much as possible. " In the nearest villages, where on foot, where on boats and boats, he traveled on his own and on the instructions of the editorial board of the newspaper "Amur Drummer", entering the Nanai camps, in Russian villages meeting with the descendants of the pioneers, and somewhere else by the participants in the resettlement collecting material for a planned book about the first Russian settlers who came to these places on rafts, with their families, to explore these vast spaces. The first volume of the novel "Cupid-Father" was published in the city of Khabarovsk in the last pre-war issues of the magazine "On the Border" (1941. - No. 2, 3). Two books of the novel were published in a separate edition in Dalgiz in 1944, republished in Moscow in 1946. After that, the novel was reprinted many times, translated into many languages ​​of the world.

After 30 years, the writer will again turn to the heroes of his first novel, create its sequel - the novel "The Gold Rush" (1970). Already familiar heroes, their children, who have adapted to local conditions, act in it; new faces appear, new heroes, whose fates are intertwined with those of the settlers.

During the Great Patriotic War, Nikolai Pavlovich worked as a traveling correspondent for the regional radio committee, staying to live in the city of Komsomolsk-on-Amur. The regional radio committee gave him complete freedom of action in the search for materials. Over the years, he wrote 200 essays for the regional newspaper and regional radio about workers and engineers of the city of youth, heroes of the labor front in other cities and villages of the region, about railway workers, builders, aviators. In 1944 he was admitted to the USSR Writers' Union.

In the fall of 1945, N.P. Zadornov, together with other Far Eastern writers, took part as a correspondent for the Khabarovsk regional branch of TASS in the Manchurian liberation campaign together with the troops of the Far Eastern fronts. He traveled a lot in Manchuria and other cities in China, met with various people, Chinese partisans, talked with captured Japanese colonels and generals. What he saw and experienced during the war was later reflected in historical novels about the expedition of Admiral Putyatin to Japan.

Working on the novel "Cupid Father", NP Zadornov hatched the idea of ​​another novel - a book about Captain G. I. Nevelskoy. In the article “How I worked on my books” NP Zadornov writes: “The personality of Nevelskoy interested me very much. He acted as an advanced man, as a patriot and thinker, who clearly sees the future of his homeland, which is in close connection with all the great countries lying in the Pacific Ocean. ... his expedition, in terms of its significance, was more important than all the previously accomplished expeditions to the East and North of our homeland. " On small ships and boats, a motor-sailing ship repeated N.P. Zadornov the path of a naval explorer, made a circle of travels to the places where Russian sailors made their discoveries. To fulfill the plan, other knowledge was needed, which was impossible to obtain far from the center of the country. “You had to know the old society, the navy, the customs, the naval classes of the educational institutions where our discoverers were brought up,” he explains the reason for his departure.

In 1946 N.P. Zadornov left the Far East. At first he lived in Moscow, from 1948 until the end of his life - in Riga. But I came here several times. The new topic required a thorough study of historical and archival materials, numerous sea expeditions of the author himself, most of which repeated the routes of the voyages and campaigns of the heroes of his books. Twenty-five years of work from the concept to its implementation ended in 1962 with the creation of a cycle of novels about G. I. Nevelskoy, three of which: "The First Discovery", "Captain Nevelskoy", "War for the Ocean", constitute a single work. The fourth novel, "Distant Land", stands apart, it is a kind of introduction to the Amur epic. The Distant Land began with the story Mangmu, written in 1940 and telling about the life of the Nanai before the Russian people appeared on the Amur. Subsequently, it became the first part of the novel, the second part of which "Markeshkino's rifle" was completed by the author in 1948. The novels were published in Moscow, Khabarovsk, Riga as they were written, and were well received. In 1952, their author was awarded the State Prize.

Working on novels, N.P. Zadornov did not disregard the literary life of Riga. On his initiative, a section of Russian writers was created in the Writers' Union of Latvia, which he headed. He collected and attracted talented young people, gave lectures on literature, was the first editor of the literary and publicistic magazine "Parus", which published works of Latvian authors in Russian. He was engaged in translations of his novels into Latvian. He translated the Latvian novel "Clearance in the Clouds" by A. Upita. A. Fadeev gave a brilliant review of the translation of the novel.

In the 1965-1970s. NP Zadornov is working on a new historical theme: the expedition of Admiral E. V. Putyatin to the shores of Japan to establish Russian-Japanese trade, economic, diplomatic relations. One after another came out the novels: "Tsunami" (1972), "Shimoda" (1980), "Heda" (1980). In search of materials for his works, Nikolai Pavlovich twice visited Japan, lived in the village of Heda, went on a fishing ship to the foot of Mount Fujiyama, where Admiral E.V. Putyatin died, sailed on a ship to Hong Kong. The trilogy, later united under the general title "The Saga of the Russian Argonauts", was received with great interest not only by Russian readers, but also by the masters of Japanese literature as a completely original phenomenon. In Tokyo, the books were published by the Asahi publishing house.

In subsequent years, the novels "Hong Kong" (1982), "Lady of the Seas" (1988) were written and published, opening a new cycle of the writer's works about the relations between Russia and Great Britain in the Far Eastern seas at the end of the 19th century. The Wind of Fertility was the last published novel by the writer (1992), plotting a continuation of the theme raised in the novel The Lady of the Seas. The writer's plans were to create a novel about Vladivostok, the working title of which is "Rich Mane". The novel remained unfinished. The writer died on June 18, 1992.

N.P. Zadornov wrote works on contemporary themes, but his fame and name were brought to him by his historical novels, with which he drew attention to the Russian Far East, its history. Thanks to them, readers of Russia, the CIS countries and foreign countries were able to get acquainted with the history of the development of the Far Eastern territories, the discoverers of the Amur lands. “With everything I wrote, I tried to make up for our historical illiteracy. There are a lot of layers, ambiguities in Russia's relations with its eastern neighbors, it is very important to know how everything really happened, how they developed in reality, what they led to and what they are leading to, ”he answered the question“ Why is there such a persistent addiction to history? ” ...

Historical novels of N.P. Zadornov over the years do not lose their relevance and interest. This is evidenced by the facts of the reprint of his books. They are still published by various publishing houses in the country. So, in 2007 in the Moscow publishing houses "Veche", "Terra-Book Club" his novels "Cupid Father", "Gold Rush", "Shimoda" and others were published. In 2008, with the book of N. P. Zadornov "Cupid Father" opened a new series "Literary heritage of the Amur region".

On May 29, 1999 in Khabarovsk, on the Amur embankment, a monument to the writer was unveiled by the architect V. Baburin; a memorial plaque was installed on the facade of the drama theater in Komsomolsk-on-Amur.

Nikolay Pavlovich Zadornov(1909-1992) - Russian Soviet writer, Honored Worker of Culture of the Latvian SSR (), laureate of the Stalin Prize of the second degree (). Father of Mikhail Zadornov.

Biography

Nikolai Pavlovich Zadornov owns two cycles of historical novels about the development of the Russian people of the Far East in the 19th century, about the exploits of explorers. The first cycle consists of 4 novels: "Distant Land" (books 1-2, -), "First Discovery" (first title - "Towards the Ocean", 1949), "Captain Nevelskoy" (books 1-2, -) and "War for the Ocean" (books 1-2, -). The second cycle (about the development of the Far East by peasants-settlers) is thematically connected with the first: the novels "Cupid Father" (books 1-2, -1946) and "Gold Rush" (1969). In 1971 he published the novel "Tsunami" - about the expedition of Admiral E. V. Putyatin to Japan in -1855. He also wrote a novel about modernity "Yellow, green, blue ..." (Book 1,), a book of travel essays "Blue Hour" () and others.

The son of Nikolai Pavlovich Zadornov is Mikhail Zadornov, a famous satirist.

Sources of

• Cossack V. Lexicon of Russian literature of the XX century = Lexikon der russischen Literatur ab 1917 / [per. with it.]. - M. : RIK "Culture", 1996. - XVIII, 491, p. - 5000 copies. - ISBN 5-8334-0019-8.

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Links

• ... Retrieved August 17, 2008.
• ... Retrieved August 17, 2008.
• (Russian). Retrieved November 5, 2009.
• - the official website of the library named after Nikolai Zadornov

An excerpt characterizing Zadornov, Nikolai Pavlovich

Having given two ends along Podnovinsky, Balaga began to restrain and, returning back, stopped the horses at the crossroads of Staraya Konyushennaya.
The good fellow jumped off to keep the horses by the bridle, Anatol and Dolokhov went along the sidewalk. Approaching the gate, Dolokhov whistled. The whistle answered him, and then the maid ran out.
“Enter the courtyard, otherwise it’s obvious that he’ll come out now,” she said.
Dolokhov remained at the gate. Anatole followed the maid into the courtyard, turned the corner and ran into the porch.
Gavrilo, Marya Dmitrievna's huge visiting lackey, met Anatol.
“Come to my lady,” said the footman in a bass voice, blocking the way from the door.
- Which lady? Who are you? - Anatole asked in a breathless whisper.
- Please, ordered to bring.
- Kuragin! back, - Dolokhov shouted. - Treason! Back!
Dolokhov at the gate, at which he stopped, fought with the janitor who was trying to lock the gate behind Anatol, who had entered. Dolokhov with his last effort pushed the janitor away and grabbed the hand of the run out Anatole, pulled him out of the gate and ran back to the troika with him.

Marya Dmitrievna, finding the tear-stained Sonya in the corridor, forced her to confess everything. Having intercepted Natasha's note and having read it, Marya Dmitrievna, with the note in her hand, went up to Natasha.
“You bastard, shameless woman,” she told her. “I don’t want to hear anything!” - Pushing aside Natasha, who was looking at her with astonished but dry eyes, she locked her with a key and ordered the janitor to let through the gates those people who would come this evening, but not let them out, and ordered the footman to bring these people to her, sat in the living room, waiting kidnappers.
When Gavrilo came to report to Marya Dmitrievna that the people who had come had run away, she got up with a frown and clasped her hands back, walked around the rooms for a long time, pondering what to do. At 12 o'clock in the morning she, feeling the key in her pocket, went to Natasha's room. Sonya was sitting sobbing in the corridor.
- Marya Dmitrievna, let me see her for God's sake! - she said. Marya Dmitrievna, without answering her, unlocked the door and entered. "Disgusting, disgusting ... In my house ... Bastard, girl ... Only I feel sorry for my father!" thought Marya Dmitrievna, trying to appease her anger. "No matter how difficult it may be, I will tell everyone to be silent and I will hide it from the count." Marya Dmitrievna entered the room with decisive steps. Natasha was lying on the sofa, covering her head with her hands, and did not move. She was lying in the very position in which Marya Dmitrievna had left her.
- Good, very good! - said Marya Dmitrievna. “Make appointments for lovers in my house! There is nothing to pretend. You listen when I speak to you. Marya Dmitrievna touched her hand. - You listen when I speak. You disgraced yourself, like the very last girl. I would have done that with you, but I feel sorry for your father. I'll hide it. - Natasha did not change her position, but her whole body began to toss from the soundless, convulsive sobs that choked her. Marya Dmitrievna looked back at Sonya and sat down on the sofa beside Natasha.
- It's his happiness that he left me; yes, I will find him, ”she said in her rough voice; - do you hear what I say? - She put her big hand under Natasha's face and turned her to her. Both Marya Dmitrievna and Sonya were surprised to see Natasha's face. Her eyes were shining and dry, her lips pursed, her cheeks drooped.
“Leave… those… that to me… I… die…” she said, with an evil effort she pulled herself away from Marya Dmitrievna and lay down in her previous position.
“Natalya!…” Said Marya Dmitrievna. - I wish you well. You lie, well, lie there, I will not touch you, and listen ... I will not say how you are to blame. You yourself know. Well, now your father is coming tomorrow, what shall I tell him? A?
Again Natasha's body shook with sobs.
- Well, he finds out, well, your brother, the groom!
“I have no fiancé, I refused,” Natasha shouted.
“All the same,” continued Marya Dmitrievna. - Well, they will find out, why will they leave like that? After all, he, your father, I know him, because if he challenges him to a duel, will it be good? A?
- Oh, leave me, why did you interfere with everything! What for? why? who asked you? Natasha shouted, sitting up on the sofa and looking angrily at Marya Dmitrievna.
- Yes, what did you want? - Marya Dmitrievna cried out, ardently again, - why did they lock you up? Well, who prevented him from going into the house? Why would you, as a gypsy woman, be taken away? ... Well, he would have taken you away, what do you think, he would not have been found? Your father or brother or fiancé. And he is a scoundrel, a scoundrel, that's what!
“He is better than all of you,” Natasha cried, getting up. - If you did not interfere ... Oh, my God, what is this, what is this! Sonya, why? Go away! ... - And she sobbed with such despair, with which people mourn only such grief, which they feel themselves to be the cause. Marya Dmitrievna began to speak again; but Natasha shouted: - Go away, go away, you all hate me, you despise me. - And again threw herself on the sofa.
Marya Dmitrievna continued for some more time to advise Natasha and instill in her that all this must be hidden from the count, that no one would know anything if only Natasha would take it upon herself to forget everything and not show anyone the appearance that something had happened. Natasha did not answer. She didn’t sob anymore, but she felt chills and shivers. Marya Dmitrievna put a pillow on her, covered her with two blankets and herself brought her a linden blossom, but Natasha did not answer her. “Well, let him sleep,” said Marya Dmitrievna, leaving the room, thinking that she was asleep. But Natasha did not sleep, and with her eyes still open, she looked straight ahead from her pale face. All that night Natasha did not sleep, and did not cry, and did not speak to Sonya, who got up several times and approached her.
The next day for breakfast, as Count Ilya Andreevich had promised, he had arrived from the Moscow Region. He was very cheerful: the business with the buyer was going well and nothing any longer delayed him now in Moscow and in separation from the Countess, whom he missed. Marya Dmitrievna met him and announced to him that Natasha had become very unwell yesterday, that they had sent for a doctor, but that now she was better. Natasha did not leave her room that morning. With pursed, cracked lips and dry, fixed eyes, she sat by the window and gazed uneasily at those passing along the street and hastily looked around at those who entered the room. She was obviously waiting for news of him, waiting for him to come or write to her.