Bunin cursed days. Bunin I

And there is something amazing all around: for some reason almost everyone is unusually cheerful, - no one you meet on the street, just a radiance comes from the face:

- Yes, you are full, my friend! In two or three weeks, he himself will be ashamed ...

Cheerfully, with cheerful tenderness (out of pity for me, the stupid one), he squeezes his hand and runs on.

Today again the same meeting, Speransky from Russkiye Vedomosti. And after him I met an old woman in Merzlyakovsky. She stopped, leaned on a crutch with trembling hands, and wept:

- Father, take me to educate! Where are we to go now? Russia disappeared, for thirteen years, they say, disappeared!

I was at a meeting of the Writers' Book Publishing House. Huge news: Constituent Assembly dispersed"!

About Bryusov: everything is turning to the left, "almost a uniformed Bolshevik." Not surprising. In 1904, he extolled the autocracy, demanded (quite Tyutchev!) The immediate capture of Constantinople. In 1905 he appeared with "Dagger" in Gorky's "Struggle". From the beginning of the war with the Germans, he became a jingoistic patriot. Now Bolshevik.

From the first of February they ordered to be a new style. So in their opinion now is the eighteenth.

Yesterday I was at a Wednesday meeting. There were many young people. Mayakovsky, who, on the whole, behaved rather decently, although all the time with a kind of boorish independence, flaunting a straight-forward directness of judgment, was in a soft shirt without a tie and for some reason with his jacket collar turned up, as badly shaved individuals walk, living in nasty rooms , in the morning in the toilet.

Read Ehrenburg, Vera Inber. Sasha Koyransky said about them:

Howling Ehrenburg,

greedily catches

Inber call him, -

Neither Moscow nor Petersburg

They will not replace Berdichev.

In the newspapers - about the beginning of the offensive of the Germans. Everyone says: "Oh, if only!"

We went to the Lubyanka. In places "rallies". Red-haired, in a coat with an astrakhan round collar, with curly red eyebrows, with a freshly shaved face in powder and with gold fillings in his mouth, monotonously, as if reading, speaks of the injustices of the old regime. A snub-nosed gentleman with bulging eyes angrily objects to him. Women hotly and inappropriately intervene, interrupting the dispute (principled, in the expression of the redhead) with particulars, hasty stories from their personal lives, which should prove that the devil knows what is going on. Several soldiers, apparently, do not understand anything, but, as always, they doubt something (or rather, everything), and shake their heads suspiciously.

A muzhik approached, an old man with pale swollen cheeks and a wedge-shaped gray beard, which he, approaching, curiously thrust into the crowd, stuck between the sleeves of two gentlemen who were silent all the time, only listening: he began to listen attentively to himself, but also, apparently, nothing not understanding anything and not believing in anyone. A tall, blue-eyed worker and two more soldiers approached with sunflowers in their fists. The soldiers are both short-legged, chewing and looking incredulously and gloomily. An evil and cheerful smile plays on the face of the worker, disdain, he stood sideways near the crowd, pretending that he paused only for a minute, for fun: they say, I know in advance that everyone is talking nonsense.

The lady hurriedly complains that she is now without a piece of bread, she used to have a school, and now she dismissed all the students, since there is nothing to feed them:

- Who got better from the Bolsheviks? Everyone got worse, and first of all, we, the people!

Interrupting her, some smeared bitch naively intervened and began to say that the Germans were about to come and everyone would have to pay for what they had done.

“Before the Germans come, we will slaughter you all,” the worker said coldly and walked away.

The soldiers confirmed: "That's right!" - and also left. The same was said in another crowd, where another worker and an ensign were arguing. The ensign tried to speak as softly as possible, choosing the most harmless expressions, trying to influence logic. He almost fawned, and yet the worker shouted at him:

“Your brother needs more silence, that’s what!” There is nothing to spread propaganda among the people!

K. says that they had R again yesterday. He sat for four hours and all the time read senselessly someone's book about magnetic waves lying on the table, then drank tea and ate all the bread they were given. He is by nature meek, quiet, and by no means impudent, but now he comes and sits without any conscience, eats all the bread with complete inattention to the owners. The man is falling fast!

Blok openly joined the Bolsheviks. I published an article that Kogan admires (P.S.). I haven't read it yet, but I supposedly told Ehrenburg about its contents - and it turned out to be very true. The song is not cunning at all, and Blok is a stupid person.

From Gorky's Novaya Zhizn:

"FROM today even for the most naive simpleton, it becomes clear that not only about some kind of courage and revolutionary dignity, but even about the most elementary honesty in relation to the policy of people's commissars, one cannot speak. Before us is a company of adventurers who, for the sake of their own interests, for the sake of delaying for a few more weeks the agony of their dying autocracy, are ready for the most shameful betrayal of the interests of the motherland and the revolution, the interests of the Russian proletariat, in whose name they are outrageous on the vacant throne of the Romanovs.

From Power of the People:

“In view of the repeatedly observed and repeated every night cases of beatings of those arrested during interrogation in the Soviet of Workers' Deputies, we ask the Council People's Commissars protect against such hooligan antics and actions…” This is a complaint from Borovichi.

From the Russian Word:

Tambov peasants, the village of Pokrovsky, drew up a protocol:

“On January 30, we, the society, pursued two predators, our citizens Nikita Aleksandrovich Bulkin and Adrian Aleksandrovich Kudinov. According to the agreement of our society, they were pursued and killed at the same time.

This “society” immediately developed a peculiar code of punishment for crimes:

- If someone hits someone, then the victim must hit the offender ten times.

- If someone hits someone with a wound or with a broken bone, then the offender will be killed.

- If anyone commits theft or who accepts stolen goods, then take his life.

- If someone commits arson and is discovered, then take his life.

Soon two thieves were caught red-handed. They were immediately "tried" and sentenced to death penalty. First they killed one: they smashed his head with a steelyard, pierced his side with a pitchfork and the dead man, stripped naked, threw him on passing road. Then they moved on to another...

You read this every day now.

On Petrovka, monks break ice. Passers-by celebrate, gloat:

– Aha! Kicked out! Now, brother, they will!

In the courtyard of a house on Povarskaya Street, a soldier in a leather jacket is chopping wood. A passing peasant stood and looked for a long time, then shook his head and said mournfully:

- Oh, so yours so! Ah, deseltir, so yours so! Russ is gone!

In the “Power of the People” editorial: “The terrible hour has come - Russia and the Revolution are perishing. All to the defense of the revolution, which so recently shone so radiantly on the world!” - When she shone, your shameless eyes?

In Russkiy Slovo: “The former chief of staff, General Yanushkevich, was killed. He was arrested in Chernigov and, by order of the local revolutionary tribunal, was escorted to Petrograd to the Peter and Paul Fortress. On the way, the general was accompanied by two Red Guards. One of them killed him with four shots at night when the train was approaching the Orebezh station.

Bunin began writing his Cursed Days in 1918, in Moscow, and finished in 1920, in Odessa. In general, this diary entries(which is confirmed by comparing the records of the Odessa period - Bunin and his wife, Vera Muromtseva-Bunina: the same events and meetings were described, that is, the basis is purely documentary), which the author subsequently processed a little, and in 1925-27. partially published in the Parisian émigré newspaper Vozrozhdenie. Fully, separate edition, they came out in 1936. In the USSR, "Cursed Days" were tightly banned, which is why they liked to read them from time to time on the radio station "Freedom", choosing shock fragments.

Bunin I. A. Cursed days

St. Petersburg: Lenizdat, Team A, 2014. - 288 p. - (Lenizdat-classic). - ISBN 978-5-4453-0648-1.

And it was difficult to choose, because "Cursed Days" is simply saturated with hatred for Soviet power, to Bolshevism, communism and to the masses in general.

The revolution broke Bunin's life. Literally - by 1917, Bunin was one person, a famous Russian writer (one of the five best contemporary writers), an honorary academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, a non-poor and free 47-year-old man, who rightfully takes his place and is pleased with this. Three years later, the 50-year-old Bunin permanently emigrated (essentially fled) from Russia.

The "Cursed Days" describes, as they say, in real time a transitional period - stability and prosperity are replaced by lack of rights and poverty, the foundations of the old power - a chaotic new order; gradually, one after another, the hopes for a quick return to the old good life. The realization that Soviet power has come for a long time is superimposed on all the new outrages and crimes (in Bunin's understanding) of this power. The world is crumbling. Traditions are broken, the new - blood-red, ruthless and disgustingly senseless, is coming.

If you look through the eyes of Bunin, and this is obtained without any particular problems, given his literary talent, his undeniable ability to observe and notice the details of life, then Bunin's hatred for the various leaders of the Revolution who broke his life is understandable. He, in general, is not shy in expressions. His Lenin is a “planetary villain”, “a rabid and cunning maniac”, “a degenerate, a moral idiot from birth”.

Well, the leaders are understandable, the performers are Chekists, commissars who have risen “from rags to riches”, it’s also understandable - however, Bunin abundantly pours out hatred for the people as a whole, and already at some biological level: “The voices are uterine, primitive. The faces of the women are Chuvash, Mordovian, the faces of the men, everything is as if by selection, criminal, others are directly Sakhalin. “And how many faces are pale, high cheekbones, with strikingly asymmetrical features among ... the Russian common people - how many of them, these atavistic individuals, coolly mixed with Mongolian atavism! All, Muroma, White-eyed Chud ... ". Unalloyed hatred of the "loud".

The intensity of hatred in Cursed Days surprised even those who, to put it mildly, did not like the Bolsheviks. A good illustration of this surprise are the words of Bunin's mistress Galina Kuznetsova, who wrote in her Grasse diary: “Ivan Alekseevich ... gave his Cursed Days. How heavy is this diary!! No matter how right he is, it is hard to accumulate anger, rage, rage at times. Zinaida Gippius also did not like either the Bolsheviks or the Soviet regime, and her diaries are evil, but there is a huge distance between this malice and Bunin's hatred.

It would be easiest to explain such passages of Bunin by the well-known excessive emotionality, hypersensitivity of Bunin, for whom the world is always dualistic, and on the side of good, only that in this moment Bunin likes it. Everything else is evil. Bunin repeatedly wrote about himself that he perceives people not with his mind, but with his gut, and not only people, but also all sorts of phenomena and their manifestations, for example, attending a rally organized by the Odessa Bolsheviks for some reason, Bunin perceives what is happening with details - visual, sound, the red color of posters and flags makes him - physically - sick. All this, of course, played a role, but something else is also important.

Bunin, in general, did not idealize the people even before the Revolution - he constantly visited “his” village, talked with the peasants, and in 1917 too, and had no illusions about them, on the contrary, he said more than once that Russian intellectuals at first they themselves created the mythical image of the “God-bearing man”, and then they were severely disappointed when the image diverged from reality. Somewhere in Bunin there was an explanation for this - they say, this myth was started by Russian landowners (and their children), who came to their native villages for the summer, where they were greeted with caress by servants, but these landowners did not get to the real peasant. Maybe so. In any case, Bunin, more or less knowing the peasant nature, did not encounter non-peasant masses. Yes, and it’s one thing in the village to communicate with familiar peasants on their own terms, when you can interrupt such communication at any time, besides, when all these peasants live according to royal laws, respectively, Bunin (or some other gentleman) was initially protected. Another thing is when the laws have disappeared, and there is no protection, moreover, the Bunins suddenly found themselves among the oppressed social minority, in a situation where anyone can offend an artist ... This lack of freedom, dependence, the inability to avoid communication with people who were sincerely considered inferior by Bunin, of course However, the writer infuriates to the point of impossibility, which is manifested in his diaries.

Bunin's "hatred of the people" is addressed precisely to the people that he saw on Moscow and Odessa squares and streets in the years civil war- for him, this people consisted of morally decomposed, idle soldiers, vicious proletarians, constantly promising the bourgeois a knife in their fat belly, hysterical students and foolish singers of the World Revolution ... Say, all these Morlocks were sitting somewhere in the suburbs and basements, and before they were not visible in such terrible numbers, and those who were visible, they behaved appropriately, they immediately came in large numbers, and opened up, showed themselves ...

Any diary is a subjective chronicle, Bunin's is no exception, and if we discard the obvious emotional excesses, there will remain a very interesting picture of the first years of Soviet power, with many details, everyday details, for example, that the time was advanced by 2 hours, and when it was nine in the evening " according to tsarist time”, according to the Soviet time it was eleven (there was such a decree of the Council of People's Commissars in May 1918, “in order to save on lighting materials”).

It is also important that Bunin, being a notorious egocentric on a personal level, was an equally ardent extrovert in relations with the world, he was, so to speak, information dependent - whenever possible, every day, often for the last pennies, he bought newspapers, he simply could not live without to get news; so it was during the Civil War, and after - when Bunin from 1940 to 1944. sat in isolation in Grasse, buying French and Swiss newspapers (but there he had a good radio and was able to listen to a lot of things - Moscow, Berlin, London, etc.). Therefore, Bunin abundantly quotes the news that interested him from Soviet newspapers(of course, with caustic comments), and all this is everyday details, excerpts from newspapers, retelling of rumors and conversations with the most different people, creates a complex picture of what is happening, albeit written mainly in gloomy colors.

Bunin's creed regarding the Revolution he himself expressed as follows: "Did not many people know that the Revolution is only a bloody game of changing places, always ending only in the fact that the people, even if they managed to sit, feast and rage for a while in the master's place, does it always end up out of the fire and into the frying pan?”

The book was first published back in the USSR, in 1990, with a circulation of 400,000 copies by the publishing house " Soviet writer”, then reprinted several times.

Valuable historical source, a document of the era, written by the master's hand. A must read for anyone interested in the history of Russia, the history of the Civil War.

In 1918-1920, Bunin wrote down his direct observations and impressions of events in Russia in the form of diary notes. He called 1918 "damned", and from the future he expected something even more terrible.

Bunin writes very ironically about the introduction of a new style. He mentions “the beginning of the German offensive against us”, which is welcomed by everyone, and describes the incidents that he observed on the streets of Moscow.

A young officer enters the tram car and embarrassedly says that he "cannot, unfortunately, pay for the ticket."

The critic Derman returns to Moscow - he fled from Simferopol. He says that there is "indescribable horror", soldiers and workers "walk up to their knees in blood." Some old colonel was roasted alive in a locomotive furnace.

"The time has not yet come to examine the Russian revolution impartially, objectively..." This is now heard every minute. But real impartiality will never happen anyway, and our "partiality" will be very dear to the future historian. Is “passion” only important? revolutionary people»?

In hell on the tram, clouds of soldiers with sacks are fleeing from Moscow, fearing that they will be sent to defend St. Petersburg from the Germans. The author meets a boy soldier, ragged, skinny and drunk to smithereens. The soldier stumbles upon the author, staggers back, spits on him and says: "Despot, you son of a bitch!"

Posters are pasted on the walls of houses, accusing Trotsky and Lenin of being bribed by the Germans. The author asks a friend exactly how much these scoundrels received. A friend with a grin replies - decently.

Again, some kind of demonstration, banners, posters, singing in hundreds of throats: "Get up, get up, work people!" Voices uterine, primitive. The women's faces are Chuvash, Mordovian, the men's, all as if by choice, criminal, others are directly Sakhalin. The Romans put marks on the faces of their convicts. Nothing needs to be put on these faces, and everything is visible without any stigma.

The entire Lubyanka Square glistens in the sun. Liquid mud splatters from under the wheels, soldiers, boys, trading in gingerbread, halva, poppy tiles, cigarettes - real Asia. Soldiers and workers passing by in trucks have triumphant faces. In the kitchen of a friend - a fat-faced soldier. He says that socialism is now impossible, but the bourgeois must be cut.

Odessa, April 12, 1919 (old style). Dead, empty port, filthy city. The post office has not been working since the summer of 1917, since the first time, in a European way, the "Minister of Posts and Telegraphs" appeared. At the same time, the first "Minister of Labor" appeared, and all of Russia stopped working. Yes, and the Satan of Cain's malice, bloodthirstiness and the wildest arbitrariness breathed on Russia precisely in those days when brotherhood, equality and freedom were proclaimed.

The author often recalls the indignation with which he was greeted by supposedly all black images of the Russian people. People were indignant, nourished by the very literature that for a hundred years dishonored the priest, the layman, the tradesman, the official, the policeman, the landowner, the prosperous peasant - all classes except the horseless "people" and tramps.

Now all the houses are dark. The light burns only in robber dens, where chandeliers are blazing, balalaikas are heard, walls hung with black banners with white skulls and inscriptions: “Death to the bourgeois!” are visible.

The author describes a fiery fighter for the revolution: saliva in his mouth, eyes fiercely looking through a crookedly hanging pince-nez, a tie crawled out onto a dirty paper collar, a vest dirty, dandruff on the shoulders of a short jacket, greasy, liquid hair is disheveled. And this viper is obsessed with "fiery, selfless love for man", "thirst for beauty, goodness and justice"!

There are two types of people. In one, Rus predominates, in the other, Chud. But in both there is a terrible changeability of moods and appearances. The people themselves say to themselves: "From us, as from a tree, there is both a club and an icon." It all depends on who is processing this tree: Sergius of Radonezh or Emelka Pugachev.

“From victory to victory - new successes of the valiant Red Army. Execution of 26 Black Hundreds in Odessa...”

The author expects that a wild robbery will begin in Odessa, which is already underway in Kyiv - a "collection" of clothes and shoes. Even during the day, the city is creepy. Everyone is sitting at home. The city feels conquered by someone who seems to the inhabitants more terrible than the Pechenegs. And the conqueror sells from stalls, spits seeds, "covers obscenities."

Along Deribasovskaya, either a huge crowd is moving, accompanying the red coffin of some swindler, pretending to be a "fallen fighter", or black jackets of sailors playing the accordion, dancing and screaming: "Oh, apple, where are you going!".

The city becomes "red", and the crowd filling the streets immediately changes. On the new faces there is no routine, no simplicity. All of them are sharply repulsive, frightening with evil stupidity, a gloomy lackey challenge to everything and everyone.

The author recalls the Field of Mars, where, as a kind of sacrifice to the revolution, the comedy of the funeral of "heroes who fell for freedom" was performed. According to the author, this was a mockery of the dead, who were deprived of an honest Christian burial, boarded up in red coffins and unnaturally buried in the very center of the city of the living.

The caption under the poster: "Don't stare, Denikin, on a foreign land!"

In the Odessa "Cheer" a new manner of shooting - over a closet cup.

"Warning" in the newspapers: "Due to the complete depletion of fuel, electricity will soon be out." In one month, everything was processed - factories, railways, trams. No water, no bread, no clothes - nothing!

Late in the evening, together with the "commissar" of the house, they come to the author to measure the length, width and height of all the rooms "for the purpose of compaction by the proletariat."

Why a commissioner, why a tribunal and not just a court? Because only under the protection of such sacred revolutionary words can one so boldly walk knee-deep in blood.

Main feature Red Army soldiers - promiscuity. A cigarette is in his teeth, his eyes are cloudy, insolent, a cap is on the back of his head, “hair” falls on his forehead. Dressed in team rags. Sentinels sit at the entrances of requisitioned houses, lounging in their chairs. Sometimes just a tramp sits, a browning on his belt, a German cleaver hangs from one side, and a dagger from the other.

Calls in a purely Russian spirit: "Forward, relatives, do not count the corpses!".

Fifteen more people are shot in Odessa and a list is published. From Odessa sent "two trains with gifts to the defenders of St. Petersburg", that is, with food, and Odessa itself is dying of hunger.

1917–1919 cursed days

Ivan Alekseevich Bunin."Cursed Days":

The last time I was in St. Petersburg was at the beginning of April 17. Something unimaginable had already happened in the world then: the greatest country on earth was thrown to the mercy of fate - and not just sometime, but during the greatest world war. The trenches stretched for another three thousand miles in the west, but they had already become mere pits: the matter was over, and ended with such nonsense that had never happened before, for the power over these three thousand miles, over the armed horde, into which an army of many millions was turning, was already passed into the hands of "commissioners" from journalists like Sobol, Iordansky. But it was no less frightening in the rest of Russia, where a huge life, settled for centuries, was suddenly cut short and some kind of bewildered existence reigned, causeless idleness and unnatural freedom from everything that human society is alive with.

I arrived in Petersburg, got out of the carriage, walked along the station: here, in Petersburg, it seemed to be even more terrible than in Moscow, as if more people, completely unaware of what to do, and completely senselessly staggering around all the station premises. I went out onto the porch to take a cab: the cabman also did not know what to do - to drive or not to drive - and did not know what price to charge.

European, I said.

He thought and answered at random:

Twenty cents.

The price was at that time still completely ridiculous. But I agreed, sat down and drove off - and did not recognize Petersburg.

There was no longer life in Moscow, although the new rulers went on, crazy in their stupidity and feverish imitation of some supposedly new system, a new rank, and even a parade of life. The same, but in superlatives, was in St. Petersburg. Conferences, meetings, rallies were continuously going on, appeals and decrees were issued one after another, the famous “direct wire” worked furiously - and whoever did not shout, did not then command along this wire! - government vehicles with red flags were constantly rushing along Nevsky, overcrowded trucks rumbled, some detachments with red banners and music beat off the pace too smartly and clearly ... Nevsky was flooded with a gray crowd, soldiers in overcoats turned over, idle workers servants and all sorts of yarygs who traded from stalls and cigarettes, and red bows, and obscene cards, and sweets, and everything you ask for. And on the sidewalks there was rubbish, the husks of sunflowers, and on the pavement lay manure ice, there were humps and potholes. And halfway along the cab driver unexpectedly said to me what many men with beards had already said then:

Now the people, like cattle without a shepherd, will spoil everything and destroy themselves.

I asked:

So what to do?

Do? - he said. - There is nothing to do now. Now the sabbath. Now there is no government.

I looked around, at this Petersburg ... "That's right, the Sabbath." But in the depths of my soul, I still hoped for something, and in the complete absence of the government, I still did not quite believe it.

However, it was impossible not to believe.

I felt this especially vividly in St. Petersburg: in the millennium and huge house ours happened great death, and the house was now dissolved, wide open and full of an innumerable idle crowd, for which there was nothing sacred and forbidden in any of his chambers. And among this crowd, the heirs of the deceased rushed about, crazy from worries, orders, which, however, no one listened to. The crowd staggered from room to room, from room to room, not for a moment ceasing to gnaw and chew sunflowers, for the time being only glancing, for the time being silent. And the heirs rushed about and spoke incessantly, in every possible way adjusted to her, assured her and themselves that it was she, the sovereign crowd, who forever broke the "fetters" in her "sacred anger", and everyone tried to convince themselves and her that on in fact, they are not at all heirs, but only temporary administrators, as if authorized by her to do so.

I saw the Field of Mars, on which they had just performed, as a kind of traditional sacrifice of the revolution, the comedy of the funeral of the heroes who allegedly fell for freedom. What a need, that it was, in fact, a mockery of the dead, that they were deprived of an honest Christian burial, boarded up in red coffins for some reason and unnaturally buried in the very center of the city of the living! The comedy was performed with complete frivolity and, having offended the modest ashes of the unknown dead with pompous eloquence, they dug up and trampled the magnificent square from end to end, disfigured it with mounds, poked high bare poles in long and narrow black rags on it and for some reason fenced it with planks fences, on hastily knocked together and vile no less than poles in their savage simplicity. ‹…›

There was then Easter in the world, spring, and an amazing spring, even in St. Petersburg there were such beautiful days which you can't remember. And over all my then feelings, immense sadness prevailed. Before leaving, I was in the Peter and Paul Cathedral. Everything was wide open - both the fortress gates and the cathedral doors. And idle people wandered everywhere, looking and spitting seeds. I, too, walked around the cathedral, looked at the royal tombs, said goodbye to them with a bow to the ground, and, having stepped out onto the porch, I stood in a daze for a long time: all boundless spring Russia unfolded before my mental gaze. Spring, Easter bells called to feelings of joy, Sunday. But a vast grave gaped in the world. Death was in this spring, the last kiss ...

Ivan Alekseevich Bunin.From the diary:

June 11, 1917. <…> No laws - and all power, all, except, of course, us. For some reason, the will of "free" Russia is expressed only by soldiers, peasants, and workers. Why, for example, is there no council of noblemen, intellectuals, philistine deputies?

Ivan Alekseevich Bunin."Cursed Days":

January 1 (old style) 1918. Moscow. This cursed year is over. But what's next? Maybe something even more terrible. Even probably so.

And there is something amazing all around: for some reason almost everyone is unusually cheerful, - no one you meet on the street, just a radiance comes from the face:

Yes, you are full, my friend! In two or three weeks, he himself will be ashamed ...

Cheerfully, with cheerful tenderness (out of pity for me, the stupid one), he squeezes his hand and runs on. ‹…›

7 January. I was at a meeting of the "Book Publishing House of Writers" - great news: the "Constituent Assembly" was dispersed! ‹…›

February 5th. From the first of February they ordered to be a new style. So in their opinion now is the eighteenth.

Yesterday I was at a Wednesday meeting. There were many young people. Mayakovsky, who, on the whole, behaved rather decently, although all the time with a kind of boorish independence, flaunting a straight-forward directness of judgment, was in a soft shirt without a tie and for some reason with his jacket collar turned up, as badly shaved individuals walk, living in nasty rooms , in the morning in the toilet. ‹…›

We went to the Lubyanka. In places "rallies". Red-haired, in a coat with an astrakhan round collar, with curly red eyebrows, with a freshly shaved face in powder and with gold fillings in his mouth, monotonously, as if reading, speaks of the injustices of the old regime. A snub-nosed gentleman with bulging eyes angrily objects to him. Women hotly and inappropriately intervene, interrupting the dispute (principled, in the expression of the redhead) with particulars, hasty stories from their personal lives, which should prove that the devil knows what is going on. Several soldiers, apparently, do not understand anything, but, as always, they doubt something (or rather, everything), and shake their heads suspiciously.

A muzhik approached, an old man with pale swollen cheeks and a wedge-shaped gray beard, which he, approaching, curiously thrust into the crowd, stuck between the sleeves of two gentlemen who were silent all the time, only listening: he began to listen attentively to himself, but also, apparently, nothing not understanding anything and not believing in anyone. A tall, blue-eyed worker and two more soldiers approached with sunflowers in their fists. The soldiers are both short-legged, chewing and looking incredulously and gloomily. An evil and cheerful smile plays on the face of the worker, disdain, he stood sideways near the crowd, pretending that he paused only for a minute, for fun: they say, I know in advance that everyone is talking nonsense.

The lady hurriedly complains that she is now without a piece of bread, she used to have a school, and now she dismissed all the students, since there is nothing to feed them:

Who got better from the Bolsheviks? Everyone got worse, and first of all, we, the people!

Interrupting her, some smeared bitch naively intervened and began to say that the Germans were about to come and everyone would have to pay for what they had done.

Before the Germans come, we will cut you all, - the worker said coldly and walked away.

The soldiers confirmed: "That's right!" - and also departed. ‹…›

On Passionate crowd.

Came and listened. A lady with a clutch on her hand, a woman with an upturned nose. The lady speaks hastily, blushes with excitement, gets confused.

This is not a stone for me at all, - the lady hastily says, - this monastery is a sacred temple for me, and you are trying to prove ...

I have nothing to try, - the woman interrupts impudently, - for you it is consecrated, but for us stone and stone! We know! Seen in Vladimir! The painter took a board, smeared it on it, here's God for you. Well, pray to him yourself.

After that, I don't want to talk to you.

And do not say!

A yellow-toothed old man with gray stubble on his cheeks is arguing with a worker:

Of course, you have nothing left now, neither God nor conscience, - says the old man.

Yes, it's gone.

You shot the fifth peaceful people out there.

Look you! But as you three hundred years shot?

On Tverskaya, a pale old general in silver glasses and a black cap sells something, stands timidly, modestly, like a beggar ...

How amazingly quickly everyone gave up, lost heart! ‹…›

February 10th.‹…› “The time has not yet come to understand the Russian revolution impartially, objectively…” You hear this every minute now. Impartially! But real impartiality will never be the same. And most importantly: our "partiality" will be very, very expensive for the future historian. Is the "passion" only of the "revolutionary people" important? But we are not people, are we? ‹…›

February 16th. At night. Saying goodbye to Chirikov, I met a soldier boy on Povarskaya, ragged, skinny, foul, and drunk to smithereens. He poked me in the chest with his muzzle and, staggering back, spat on me and said:

Despot, you son of a bitch! ‹…›

February 20th.‹…› We met M. He says that he has just heard that the Kremlin is being mined, they want to blow it up when the Germans arrive. I was just looking at that time at the amazing green sky above the Kremlin, at the old gold of its ancient domes ... The Grand Dukes, the towers, Spas-on-Bora, the Archangel Cathedral - how much everything is dear, blood and only now properly felt, understood! Blow up? Everything can be. Now everything is possible. ‹…›

February 22.‹…› Nikitskaya without lights, sepulchral dark, black houses rise in the dark green sky, seem very large, stand out somehow in a new way. There are almost no passers-by, and those who walk are almost running.

What are the Middle Ages! Then at least everyone was armed, the houses were almost impregnable ...

At the corner of Povarskaya and Merzlyakovsky two soldiers with guns. Guards or robbers? Both. ‹…›

24 February. The other day I bought a pound of tobacco and, so that it would not dry out, I hung it on a string between the frames, between the windows. Window to the courtyard. Today at six in the morning something bang in the glass. I jumped up and saw: I have a stone on the floor, the windows are broken, there is no tobacco, and someone is running away from the window. - Robbery everywhere! ‹…›

2nd of March."The libertine, drunkard Rasputin, the evil genius of Russia." Of course the guy was good. Well, what about you, who didn’t get out of the Bears and Stray Dogs?

A new literary baseness, below which, it seems, there is nowhere to fall: some kind of “Musical snuffbox” has opened in the most vile tavern - speculators, cheaters, public girls are sitting and eating pies for a hundred rubles each, drinking hypocrisy from teapots, and poets and fiction writers ( Alyoshka Tolstoy, Bryusov, and so on) read their own and other people's works to them, choosing the most obscene. Bryusov, they say, read "Gavriiliada" (a youthful poem by A. S. Pushkin. - Composition.), saying everything that is replaced by ellipses in full. Alyoshka dared to offer to read to me - a big fee, he says, we'll give.

"Get out of Moscow!" It's a pity. During the day, she is now surprisingly vile. The weather is wet, everything is wet, dirty, there are holes on the sidewalks and on the pavement, bumpy ice, and there is nothing to say about the crowd. And in the evening, at night it is empty, the sky from the rare lanterns turns black dull, gloomy. But here is a quiet lane, completely dark, you go - and suddenly you see an open gate, behind them, in the back of the courtyard, a beautiful silhouette old house, softly darkening in the night sky, which here is completely different from that above the street, and in front of the house a hundred-year-old tree, the black pattern of its huge sprawling tent ... ‹...›

I read about corpses standing at the bottom of the sea - killed, drowned officers. And here is the Musical Snuffbox. ‹…›

They decided to slaughter everyone without exception, everyone up to the age of seven, so that later not a single soul would remember our time.

I ask the janitor

What do you think, right?

Sighs:

Anything is possible, anything is possible.

And will the people allow it?

Allow, dear sir, still how to allow something! And what are you going to do with them? The Tatars, they say, ruled us for two hundred years, but then was there really such a liquid people?

They walked along Tverskoy Boulevard at night: Pushkin bowed his head sadly and low under a cloudy sky with gaps, as if he was saying again: “God, how sad is my Russia!”

And not a soul around, only occasionally soldiers and whores. ‹…›

March 23. The entire Lubyanka Square glistens in the sun. Liquid mud splashes from under the wheels. And Asia, Asia - soldiers, boys, trading in gingerbread, halva, poppy tiles, cigarettes. Oriental cry, dialect - and what vile even in complexion, yellow and mouse hair! Soldiers and workers, now and then rumbling on trucks, have triumphant faces. ‹…›

March 24.‹…› I bought a book about the Bolsheviks published by Zadruga. Terrible gallery of convicts!

April 12 (old style) 1919. Odessa. Twelve years ago, V. and I arrived in Odessa that day on our way to Palestine. What fabulous changes since then! A dead, empty port, a dead, filthy city ... Our children, grandchildren will not even be able to imagine the Russia in which we once (that is, yesterday) lived, which we did not appreciate, did not understand - all this power, complexity, wealth, happiness… ‹…›

15 April. Opposite our windows stands a tramp with a rifle on a rope over his shoulder - a "red policeman." And the whole street trembles at him in a way that it would not tremble before at the sight of a thousand of the most ferocious policemen. Actually, what happened? About six hundred of some "Grigorievites" came, bow-legged boys led by a bunch of convicts and swindlers, who took the richest city full of millions! All died of fear, prizhukulis. Where, for example, are all those who so smashed the volunteers a month ago? ‹…›

19 April. Now all the houses are dark, the whole city is in darkness, except for those places where these robbers' dens - chandeliers are blazing there, balalaikas are heard, walls hung with black banners, on which are white skulls with inscriptions: "Death, death to the bourgeois!"

I am writing by a smelly kitchen lamp, burning down the rest of the kerosene. How painful, how insulting. My Capri friends, the Lunacharskys and Gorkys, guardians of Russian culture and art, who flew into holy anger at every warning of some Novaya Zhizn by the “tsar’s guardsmen,” what would you do to me now, having captured me behind this criminal writing while stinking kaganets, or how I will thievishly shove this scripture into the cracks of the eaves? ‹…›

The 21st of April.‹…› “From victory to victory - new successes of the valiant Red Army. Execution of 26 Black Hundreds in Odessa…» ‹…›

Just now I read about this execution of twenty-six somehow stupidly.

Now in some kind of tetanus. Yes, twenty-six, and not someday, but yesterday, with us, near me. How to forget, how to forgive the Russian people? And everything will be forgiven, everything will be forgotten. However, I also just trying horrified, but really I can’t, real susceptibility is still not enough. This is the whole hellish secret of the Bolsheviks - to kill the susceptibility. People live by the measure, their susceptibility and imagination are also measured out - step over the measure. It's like the price of bread, beef. "What? Three roubles?!” And appoint a thousand - and the end of amazement, screaming, tetanus, insensitivity. "How? Seven hanged?!” - “No, dear, not seven, but seven hundred!” - And there is certainly tetanus - seven hanging ones can still be imagined, but try seven hundred, even seventy! ‹…›

22 April. In the evenings terribly mystical. It's still light, but the clock shows something ridiculous, night. Lanterns are not lit. But in all sorts of "government" institutions, in emergency situations, in theaters and clubs "named after Trotsky", "named after Sverdlov", "named after Lenin", glassy pink stars burn transparently, like some kind of jellyfish. And along the strangely empty, still bright streets, in cars, on scorchers - very often with dressed up girls - all red aristocracy rushes to these clubs and theaters (to look at their serf actors): sailors with huge brownings on their belts, pickpockets, criminal villains and some shaved dandies in service jackets, in the most depraved riding breeches, in smart boots without fail with spurs, all with gold teeth and big, dark, cocaine eyes ... But it’s creepy even during the day. The whole huge city does not live, sits at home, goes out a little. The city feels conquered, and conquered as if by some special people, which seems much more terrible than, I think, seemed to our ancestors of the Pechenegs. And the conqueror staggers, trades from stalls, spits seeds, "covers obscenities." Either a huge crowd is moving along Deribasovskaya, accompanying for entertainment the coffin of some swindler, who is certainly given out as a "fallen fighter" (it lies in a red coffin, and in front of orchestras and hundreds of red and black banners), or groups of people playing the accordion, dancing and screaming black :

Hey apple,

Where are you going!

In general, as soon as the city becomes "red", the crowd that fills the streets immediately changes dramatically. A certain selection of faces is being made, the street is being transformed.

How I was shocked by this selection in Moscow! Because of this, most of all, he left there.

Now the same thing in Odessa - from the very holiday when the "revolutionary people's army" entered the city, and when even on cab horses red bows and ribbons burned like a fever.

On these faces, first of all, there is no ordinary, simplicity. All of them are almost entirely sharply repulsive, frightening with evil stupidity, some kind of gloomy lackey challenge to everything and everyone.

And now for the third year something monstrous has been going on. The third year is only baseness, only dirt, only brutality. Well, at least for laughter, for fun, something not that good, but simply ordinary, something simply different!

From the diary:

June 27 / July 10, 1919. In the evening on the boulevard, but we do not meet any of our acquaintances. We walk along the boulevard. We stop at the stairs under the monument to Richelieu, spared by the Bolsheviks. Not far from us we see two young ladies, very coquettishly dressed, and young man. Everyone has a bandage with the letters “Ch. TO.". They stand with lively faces, laughing at something ... I look at Jan, he, turning pale as a sheet, with a distorted face, says:

This is where our destiny depends. And how they are not ashamed to go out to people with their stigma!

I peer into their faces, trying to remember: the young ladies are brunettes, rather pretty, with black eyes, thin, of medium height - young ladies like young ladies, typical Odessa women. A young man with the most ordinary face in a French jacket, with a foppish cut, with a stack in his hand.

I try to take Jan away as soon as possible, although I want to follow this trio. I give you my word not to come here again, because he is very careless and, moreover, I see that such a sight causes him unbearable suffering. ‹…›

All the way, Jan cannot calm down. He even slumped at once. And everything repeats:

No, this is a different tribe. Previously, executioners were ashamed of their craft, lived in solitude, trying not to catch the eye of people, but here they are not embarrassed not only to go out into a crowded place, but even put a brand on themselves, and this is twenty years old!

Now you have to walk along secluded streets.

Valentin Petrovich Kataev:

Almost every day, in any weather, Bunin walked around the city for several hours in a row. It was walking, not walking, fast easy step, in a short demi-season metropolitan coat to the knees, with a cane, in a professor's yarmulke instead of a hat - impetuous, intensely attentive, lean. ‹…›

I watched Bunin at a soldier's flea market, where he stood in the middle of the crowd with a notebook in his hands, calmly and leisurely writing ditties in his clear cuneiform script, which were shouted out by two brothers - Black Sea military men, dancing famously, putting their hands on each other's shoulder and shaking with wide "flares" , - fashionable "apple" or "Deribasovskaya". ‹…›

I remember the fainting, nauseating smell of sesame oil, garlic, caustic human sweat.

But Bunin did not pay any attention to this and calmly worked, covering page after page with his notes.

The most striking thing was that absolutely no one paid any attention to him, despite his professorial appearance, which in no way blended with the market crowd, and perhaps precisely because of this appearance: who knows who they took him for? Even then the thought occurred to me: are they not taking him here - this thin, bony gentleman in an eccentric hat, with an automatic pen in his hand - for some kind of bazaar graphologist, conjurer, magician or fortune teller who sells leaflets with "happiness", which was quite in the spirit of the times.

Vera Nikolaevna Muromtseva-Bunina.From the diary:

June 30 / July 13, 1919. Three more or less intelligent people enter, and after them, beep-legged, muzzled Red Army soldiers tumble in, beating their Berdans. Jan, wearing glasses, with an unusually ferocious look, unexpectedly declares to me:

You have no right to search my place! Here's my passport. I am old enough to fight.

And maybe you have some supplies, - politely asks the young man who was indignant with the owner.

Unfortunately, I don’t have stocks, - Jan says abruptly and angrily.

What about weapons? - the leader of the gang asks even more politely.

I have not. However, it's up to you, do a [search] - he rushes to turn on the electricity.

In the light, I was frightened by his pale, menacing face. Well, it will matter why he annoys them, - flashed through my head.

But the soldiers began to back away, and the young man bowed with the words:

I'm sorry.

And everyone left quietly one by one.

We sat in silence for a long time, unable to utter a word.

Valentin Petrovich Kataev:

He was easy-going and liked to wander around different cities and countries. However, he got stuck in Odessa: he did not want to become an emigrant cut off by a slice; stubbornly hoped for a miracle - for the end of the Bolsheviks <...> and for a return to Moscow to the sound of the Kremlin bells. In which? He probably didn't see it clearly. To the old, familiar Moscow? This is probably why he stayed in Odessa when, in the spring of 1919, it was occupied by units of the Red Army and Soviet power was established for several months.

By this time, Bunin had so compromised himself with counter-revolutionary views, which, by the way, he did not hide, that he could have been shot without any talk, and probably would have been shot if it were not for his older friend, the Odessa artist Nilus, who lived in the same house where the Bunins lived. , in the attic described in Chang's Dreams, not in a simple attic, but in an attic "warm, fragrant with a cigar, carpeted, lined with antique furniture, hung with paintings and brocade fabrics ..."

So, if this same Nilus had not shown frantic energy - he telegraphed Lunacharsky to Moscow, almost on his knees he begged the chairman of the Odessa Revolutionary Committee - it is still not known how the matter would have ended.

One way or another, Nilus received a special, so-called "safety certificate" for the life, property and personal integrity of Academician Bunin, which was pinned with buttons to the lacquered, rich door of the mansion on Knyazheskaya Street.

‹…› A detachment of armed sailors and soldiers of the special department approached the mansion. Seeing blue collars and open orange short fur coats through the window, Vera Nikolaevna silently slid down along the wall and lost consciousness, and Bunin, sharply thumping his heels on the rubbed parquet, went up to the door, stopped in his tracks on the threshold, strangely throwing back his outstretched arms with clenched from all sides. force with his fists, and convulsions ran over his whitened face with a trembling beard and terrible eyes.

If at least someone dares to step over the threshold of my house ... - he did not shout, but somehow terribly gnashed, playing with his jaws and exposing his yellowish, strong, sharp teeth, - then I will gnaw the throat of the first person with my own teeth, and then let them kill me! I don't want to live anymore! ‹…›

But everything turned out well: the special officers read the safe-conduct with a Soviet seal and signature, they were very surprised, even someone cursed softly at the address of the Revolutionary Committee, but ‹…› silently withdrew along the silent, deserted street.

Vera Nikolaevna Muromtseva-Bunina.From the diary:

I cannot see them. All their flesh is disgusting to me, the human flesh, somehow all of which came out, - Yang says now almost always when we walk along the crowded streets.

Ivan Alekseevich Bunin

cursed days

Moscow, 1918

And there is something amazing all around: for some reason, almost everyone is unusually cheerful - you won’t meet anyone on the street, just a radiance comes from the face:

- Yes, you are full, my friend! In two or three weeks, he himself will be ashamed ...

Cheerfully, with cheerful tenderness (out of pity for me, a stupid one), he squeezes his hand and runs on.

Today again the same meeting - Speransky from Russkiye Vedomosti. And after him I met an old woman in Merzlyakovsky. She stopped, leaned on a crutch with trembling hands, and wept:

- Father, take me to educate! Where are we to go now? Russia disappeared, for thirteen years, they say, disappeared!

I was at a meeting of the "Book Publishing House of Writers" - great news: the "Constituent Assembly" was dispersed!

About Bryusov: everything is turning to the left, "almost a uniformed Bolshevik." Not surprising. In 1904, he extolled the autocracy, demanded (quite Tyutchev!) The immediate capture of Constantinople. In 1905 he appeared with "Dagger" in Gorky's "Struggle". From the beginning of the war with the Germans, he became a jingoistic patriot. Now Bolshevik.

From the first of February they ordered to be a new style. So in their opinion now is the eighteenth.

Yesterday I was at a Wednesday meeting. There were many young people. Mayakovsky, who, on the whole, behaved rather decently, although all the time with a kind of boorish independence, flaunting a straight-forward directness of judgment, was in a soft shirt without a tie and for some reason with his jacket collar turned up, as badly shaved individuals walk, living in nasty rooms , in the morning in the toilet.

Read Ehrenburg, Vera Inber. Sasha Koyransky said about them:

Howling Ehrenburg,
Inber eagerly catches his cry, -
Neither Moscow nor Petersburg
They will not replace Berdichev.

In the newspapers - about the beginning of the offensive of the Germans. Everyone says: "Oh, if only!"

We went to the Lubyanka. In places "rallies". Red-haired, in a coat with an astrakhan round collar, with curly red eyebrows, with a freshly shaved face in powder and with gold fillings in his mouth, monotonously, as if reading, speaks of the injustices of the old regime. A snub-nosed gentleman with bulging eyes angrily objects to him. Women hotly and inappropriately intervene, interrupting the dispute (principled, in the expression of the redhead) with particulars, hasty stories from their personal lives, which should prove that the devil knows what is going on. Several soldiers, apparently, do not understand anything, but, as always, they doubt something (or rather, everything), and shake their heads suspiciously.

A muzhik approached, an old man with pale swollen cheeks and a wedge-shaped gray beard, which he, approaching, curiously thrust into the crowd, stuck between the sleeves of two gentlemen who were silent all the time, only listening: he began to listen attentively to himself, but also, apparently, nothing not understanding anything and not believing in anyone. A tall, blue-eyed worker and two more soldiers approached with sunflowers in their fists. The soldiers are both short-legged, chewing and looking incredulously and gloomily. An evil and cheerful smile plays on the face of the worker, disdain, he stood sideways near the crowd, pretending that he paused only for a minute, for fun: they say, I know in advance that everyone is talking nonsense.

The lady hurriedly complains that she is now without a piece of bread, she used to have a school, and now she dismissed all the students, since there is nothing to feed them:

- Who got better from the Bolsheviks? Everyone got worse, and first of all, we, the people!

Interrupting her, some smeared bitch naively intervened and began to say that the Germans were about to come, and everyone would have to pay for what they had done.

“Before the Germans come, we will slaughter you all,” the worker said coldly and walked away.

The soldiers confirmed: "That's right!" - and also left.

The same was said in another crowd, where another worker and an ensign were arguing. The ensign tried to speak as softly as possible, choosing the most harmless expressions, trying to influence logic. He almost fawned, and yet the worker shouted at him:

“Your brother needs more silence, that’s what!” There is nothing to spread propaganda among the people!

K. says that they had R again yesterday. He sat for four hours and all the time read senselessly someone's book about magnetic waves lying on the table, then drank tea and ate the bread they were given. He is by nature meek, quiet, and by no means impudent, but now he comes and sits without any conscience, eats all the bread with complete inattention to the owners. The man is falling fast!

Blok openly joined the Bolsheviks. I published an article that Kogan admires (P.S.). I haven't read it yet, but I supposedly told Ehrenburg about its contents - and it turned out to be very true. The song is generally simple, and Blok is a stupid person.

From Gorky's Novaya Zhizn:

“From today, even for the most naive simpleton, it becomes clear that not only about some kind of courage and revolutionary dignity, but even about the most elementary honesty in relation to the policy of people's commissars, one cannot speak. Before us is a company of adventurers who, for the sake of their own interests, for the sake of prolonging for a few more weeks the agony of their dying autocracy, are ready for the most shameful betrayal of the interests of the motherland and the revolution, the interests of the Russian proletariat, in whose name they are rampaging on the vacant throne of the Romanovs.

From Power of the People:

“In view of the repeatedly observed and repeated every night cases of beatings of those arrested during interrogation in the Soviet of Workers' Deputies, we ask the Council of People's Commissars to protect against such hooligan antics and actions ...” This is a complaint from Borovichi.

From the Russian Word:

Tambov peasants from the village of Pokrovsky drew up a protocol: “On January 30, we, the society, pursued two predators, our citizens Nikita Alexandrovich Bulkin and Adrian Alexandrovich Kudinov. According to the agreement of our society, they were pursued and killed at the same time.

This “society” immediately developed a peculiar code of punishment for crimes:

- If someone hits someone, then the victim must hit the offender ten times.

- If someone hits someone with a wound or with a broken bone, then the offender will be killed.

- If someone commits theft, or whoever accepts stolen goods, then take life.

- If someone commits arson and is discovered, then take his life. Soon two thieves were caught red-handed. They were immediately "tried" and sentenced to death. First, they killed one: they smashed his head with a steelyard, pierced his side with a pitchfork, and the dead man, stripped naked, was thrown onto the road. Then they moved on to another...