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Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev
Virgin land
1
If there is bread, there will be a song... It’s not for nothing that they say so. Bread has always been the most important product, the measure of all values. And in our age of greats scientific and technical achievements it forms the fundamental basis of the life of peoples. People have escaped into space, conquered rivers, seas, oceans, extracted oil and gas in the depths of the earth, mastered the energy of the atom, and bread remains bread.
A special, reverent, holy attitude towards bread is inherent in the citizens of the country with ears of corn in their coat of arms. I can say that I have known it from a young age.
My father is a worker, my grandfather is a peasant, I experienced myself in both factory and rural work. I started out as a worker, but during the years of devastation, when the plant was stopped for a long time, I had to learn plowing, sowing, mowing, and I understood what it meant to grow bread with my own hands. He became a land surveyor, worked in Kursk villages, in Belarus, in the Urals, and later, when he again became a metallurgist, time itself did not let him forget about bread. Together with other communists, he went to villages, fought with his fists at gatherings, and organized the first collective farms.
You could say: only four years at the beginning labor activity were given entirely to the village. Or you can do it another way: four whole years. He began working as a land surveyor at the very beginning of collectivization, and returned to the plant when it was largely completed. These years - from 1927 to 1931 - are equal to an era in the history of the country. By dividing up the land for agricultural artels, we realized that we were not just destroying boundaries, but were helping the socialist reconstruction of the village, reshaping the entire thousand-year-old way of peasant life.
I say this because city and village, factory and field, industry and agriculture have become close to me. In Zaporozhye, as I already wrote about, the main attention had to be paid to the restoration of industry, but collective farm affairs also required tireless care. In Dnepropetrovsk, the city and the village took approximately equal time in work. In Moldova, agriculture came to the fore, but industry, created almost anew there, also did not allow itself to be forgotten. So these worries walked side by side, like two parallel lines that were not allowed to intersect, but for me they intersected.
And today, on my desk in the Kremlin, reports regularly appear on the progress of spring sowing, on the state of seedlings, and on the pace of harvesting. Out of long-standing habit, I call different zones countries and when I hear comrades from Kuban, from the Dnieper region, Moldova, the Volga region, Siberia, I can already feel from their voices what kind of bread they have. If, say, there is no rain in the virgin lands before June 15, I know that I will have to lose several centners from the harvest. If there is no rain before the end of the month, drop more... At such moments you look out of the window at Moscow, and before your eyes there are endless virgin fields, the concerned faces of combine operators, agronomists, district committee members, and, being far from these people dear to me, I again feel myself next to them.
Virgin land has firmly entered my life. It all started on a frosty Moscow day in 1954, at the end of January, when I was summoned to the CPSU Central Committee. The problem itself was familiar; that day was not the first time I learned about virgin lands, and the news was that they wanted to entrust the massive uplifting of virgin lands to me. It needs to start in Kazakhstan next spring, the deadlines are very tight, the work will be difficult - they did not hide this. But they added that at the moment there is no more important task for the party than this. The Central Committee considers it necessary to send P.K. Ponomarenko and me there.
The point is, I heard, that things are not going well in the republic. The leadership there is working the old fashioned way, and new tasks, apparently, will not be up to them. In connection with the rise of virgin soil, we need a different level of understanding of everything that we have to do in these vast steppes.
The main thing we were entrusted with was to ensure the recovery of virgin soil. The matter, I knew, was going to be extremely difficult. And first of all you need to find correct solution organization of such an important task. It was not just about raising the grain industry in one republic, but about a radical solution to the grain problem throughout the entire Soviet Union.
Already in the fall it was necessary to take bread from the virgin lands! Definitely this fall!
So, my life again, for the umpteenth time, took a sharp turn.
On January 30, 1954, a meeting of the Presidium of the Central Committee was held to discuss the situation in Kazakhstan and the tasks associated with the rise of virgin lands. A couple of days later I flew to Alma-Ata.
At that time I didn’t think that after so many years I would feel the need to talk about this unforgettable period of my life. Without fear of repeating myself, I will say that, again, I did not keep any notes or diaries on the virgin lands. There was no time for that, but I don’t think there’s any point in regretting it.
I remember V. I. Lenin’s afterword to the book “State and Revolution”. He writes in this afterword how he began to prepare another chapter, but there was not enough time - the eve of October prevented him. “One can only rejoice at such a ‘interference’...,” notes Vladimir Ilyich with humor, “it is more pleasant and more useful to carry out the ‘experience of revolution’ than to write about it.” These Leninist words are a message to all of us.
In the virgin lands, millions of Soviet people continued to make the experience of revolution, multiplied in the new historical conditions of its conquest, and created living experience of the victorious construction of developed socialism. Therefore, the years that were completely given to this land remain memorable and dear to me forever.
It was my first time in Almaty. But I'm with someone very warm feeling looked around the city. He has long been close to me, I loved him in absentia just like Kamenskoye, Dnepropetrovsk or Zaporozhye.
I, like many front-line soldiers, did not immediately manage to find the address to which my loved ones were evacuated to the rear. Eight long, anxious months passed until the time when the first letter from my wife with the return address found me at the front: Alma-Ata, Karla Street Marksa, house 95. From this letter I learned the name of the people who sheltered my family - the Baybusynovs Tursun Tarabaevich and his wife Rukya Yarulovna. I found their little house, similar to thousands of others in what was then almost entirely one-story Alma-Ata. My wife wrote during the war that in the summer the house was surrounded by green trees, and under the window a ditch gurgled quietly. But now it was February, the irrigation ditch was empty, and the bare trees, wet from the approaching thaw, were dropping drops of moisture from their branches. For some reason, I immediately vividly, almost visibly remembered many days of the war. Should I come in? We must say thank you to the kind Kazakh family, bow to the walls in which, instead of four people, seven lived together in those difficult years. But I decided to wait for my wife and, if possible, come here together.
I walked further down the streets, knowing what it was The best way make a first impression of the city where you will live and work. I looked into the market, which can tell a lot to an experienced eye. This is a kind of barometer of the economic life of any locality, a mirror of the customs and traditions of its population. The Alma-Ata bazaar, noisy, crowded, colorful, gave me a lot of instructive information. I liked the whole colorful appearance of the city.
Somehow it turned out that I had to live in it at different addresses. At first they settled outside the city, in a rest house, about five kilometers from the now famous Medeo skating rink (it didn’t exist then). A place of exceptional beauty. Gardens, paths, fresh air, a talkative river running from the mountains. And the mountains themselves are nearby - darkening blue, sparkling with snowy peaks. On my last visit to Kazakhstan, in September 1976, I looked into this holiday home, decided to find my room, confidently went up to the second floor, found a familiar door and began to tell my companions that there was a work table near this window, and a sofa on the side ...
“No, Leonid Ilyich,” the sister-hostess smiled. – You were mistaken by two whole doors.
This case speaks not so much about the imperfection of human memory as about the speed of change. Not only the holiday home, which has been extensively rebuilt - the whole of today's Alma-Ata is not at all similar to the previous one. Now it is a huge, modern city with almost a million people, beautiful and unique. It is being built on a grand scale, according to a well-thought-out plan and, I would say, with love. Here you will not see dull, monotonous neighborhoods, the architecture of new buildings is original, not a single large building is the same as another.
Every time I fly here, I tell my old friends:
“Here I come again to you as close people!” When my family moved to Alma-Ata, we settled in wooden house the peasant type is still there, in the Small Gorge. The house has now been demolished. Then we moved to the center, on Dzhambula Street, into an experimental building made of sand slabs. Apparently they were not very strong - the building has not survived. The house that sheltered my family during the war is no longer there; today the cheerful jets of a large fountain gush out in that place. And only one house, on the corner of Furmanov and Kurmangazy streets, has survived to this day. But I had to live in it only during the last months of work in Almaty.
And then, at the beginning of February 1954, having barely looked around the new place, I had to attend the plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan. I must say that many speakers spoke self-critically and harshly about affairs in the republic. P.K. Ponomarenko and I listened attentively, but did not speak ourselves. When the time for elections approached, a representative of the CPSU Central Committee informed the plenum participants that the Presidium of the Central Committee recommended electing Ponomarenko as first secretary, and Brezhnev as second.
P.K. Ponomarenko and I worked hand in hand, achieving the same goal; we both had enough worries and things to do. As for me, I always appreciated and respected Panteleimon Kondratievich both as the “main partisan” who led the entire war of popular resistance behind enemy lines, and as a skillful organizer and reliable comrade.
At the end of the plenum, thanking the participants, he said just a few words on behalf of both of us:
– I hope we can justify your trust. Let's work and work! I think that in two years we will be able to report to the Central Committee on the implementation of the tasks currently assigned to the Kazakh party organization.
Looking ahead, I will say that exactly two years later, when I was already the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan, I reported to the 20th Congress of the CPSU that the party’s great task of raising virgin soil had been completed with honor.
2
A huge amount of work fell on us all at once. Today, after years, looking through the documents of that time, I think how it was possible to do so much and keep up with everything? But, apparently, our body is designed in such a way that it adapts even to unimaginable overloads - both nervous and physical. Again you remember the war: people there were at the limit of human capabilities - they did not sleep enough, were malnourished, got wet in the trenches, lay in the snow for days, threw themselves into icy water - and almost did not suffer from colds and other “peaceful” diseases. Something similar was observed in the virgin lands.
I have already had to compare the virgin epic with the front, with the grandiose battle that the party and the people won. The memory of the war never leaves us, the front-line soldiers, but the comparison is accurate. Of course, there was no shooting, bombing, or artillery shelling in the virgin lands, but everything else resembled a real battle.
To start it, it was necessary first, to speak in the same military style, to regroup forces, tighten up the rear, and it was not easy. Following the plenum, the VII Congress of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan was held, which provided an analysis of the state of affairs. He recognized the work of the Bureau and Secretariat of the Central Committee of the previous composition as unsatisfactory.
I'll explain why. In the land of the richest natural opportunities, where there were hundreds of collective farms, state farms and MTS, where tens of thousands of tractors and combines worked in the fields, where in addition to land suitable for arable land there were millions of hectares of hayfields and pastures, the production of grain, meat, cotton, wool in comparison with the pre-war the level did not increase, and sometimes even fell. Milk yields were lower than in 1940, grain harvested was 5-6 centners per hectare, cotton - only 10 centners, potatoes - no more than 60 centners per hectare.
By that time, even such regions of the country that had been completely devastated by the war, such as Kuban, Ukraine, and the Don, had restored what had been destroyed and began to increase harvests and livestock productivity. And here, although 1953 turned out to be an extremely favorable year in the republic, due to lack of food. One and a half million heads of livestock died. They kept him in the bitter winters under open air, did not even have primitive sheds, saying: “It’s always been like this with us.” I will add that among the collective farm chairmen many had elementary education, and three hundred were simply illiterate.
Of course, a serious condition Agriculture in Kazakhstan it was explained and objective reasons. It reflected the neglect of this most important industry throughout the country, which was directly and frankly stated by the party at the September Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee in 1953. However, even against the general background, things in Kazakhstan looked depressing. Another difficulty was that some local leaders resigned themselves to difficulties and acted on the principle of “wherever the curve takes them.”
“The leadership of such a large republic turned out to be beyond our capabilities,” said Secretary of the Central Committee I. I. Afonov, who was directly in charge of agriculture, at the congress. “We don’t control events, but rush around like bad firefighters.” We put out the “fires” that endlessly arise in one place or another. The main form of our leadership is not even papers, but credentials.
After such confessions, it was no longer surprising that there was no initiative on the part of the regional party committees. If anyone tried to improve the matter, it looked quite “original”. Let's say the Aktobe region took the initiative to create a one and a half year supply of feed for livestock. Such a noble cause was approved, the obligation was published in the newspapers. But any initiatives should, as is known, be based primarily on internal forces, for unused reserves. This is their main value. Aktobe residents acted differently. Following the resounding commitment, they sent a letter to the Council of Ministers of the Kazakh SSR: so, they say, and so that we can fulfill our obligations, urgently give us an additional three hundred tractors, six thousand tons of kerosene, so much autol, grease, spare parts. In a word, help us become heroes if you don’t want to disgrace yourself with us.
All my experience in leadership work - party, Soviet, army, economic - has long ago convinced me: dependency, the desire to improve matters at the expense of others, like a litmus test, shows what this or that comrade is capable of. Since we were faced with the rise of virgin soil, with the promised national assistance, dependency could acquire dangerous proportions. That is why I considered it necessary to take a special note of this phenomenon.
I have had to talk more than once about caring for personnel. Of course, we are talking about people who have proven in practice that they know how to work. It's about not about forgiveness: incapable and dishonest workers must be decisively replaced. Here we had to make sure that the leaders different levels in the republic they were often nominated, so to speak, on grounds of friendship. This should have been stopped immediately, and P.K. Ponomarenko and I took a tough position. And so that there were no offended people, they stated this openly and directly. So, already in one of my first speeches - to the voters of Alma-Ata in March 1954 - I said:
– In connection with the enormous tasks now facing the party organization of Kazakhstan, the importance of correct selection and personnel placement. The VII Congress of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan opened serious shortcomings and mistakes in working with personnel, indicating that some managers, having lost a sense of responsibility, selected employees not based on business qualities, but on the principle of personal loyalty. We can't put up with this. In the republic there are many quite mature, experienced people, prepared for promotion to leadership positions, who are capable of solving the tasks set by the party.
Selecting strong-willed commanders and tightening up the rear, we eagerly awaited the party’s decision to begin the uplifting of virgin soil. And at the very end of February 1954, the historic February-March Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee began, which adopted a resolution “On the further increase in grain production in the country and on the development of virgin and fallow lands.”
The great battle in the Kazakh steppes has begun. It unfolded over a huge geographical area. Northern Kazakhstan extends from west to east for 1300 and from north to south for 900 kilometers. The total area of the six current (previously there were five) regions located on this territory - Kustanai, Tselinograd (formerly Akmola), North Kazakhstan, Kokchetav, Turgai and Pavlodar - exceeds 600 thousand square kilometers. It's much more territory a state like France. And in this vast space, 250 thousand square kilometers of fertile steppes had to be re-plowed - an area larger than the size of all of England.
Not only we raised virgin soil, but also Altai region, Krasnoyarsk region, Novosibirsk and Omsk regions, Volga region, Ural, Far East. Many people probably know that total area The amount of virgin and fallow lands developed in the country now amounts to 42 million hectares. Of these, 25 million have been plowed in Kazakhstan. And 18 million hectares of this amount of land were raised in the Kazakh steppes in 1954 and 1955.
The numbers are amazing, but virgin lands are not only arable land. This includes housing, schools, hospitals, kindergartens, nurseries, clubs, and new roads, bridges, airfields, and livestock buildings, elevators, warehouses, factories - in a word, everything that is necessary for the normal life of the population, for developed modern agricultural production.
I don’t have the opportunity to tell in detail how it happened - day after day, event after event. Much has been written about the virgin lands, about the difficulties of its development, about the exploits and destinies of the pioneers of the virgin lands. I would like to remind you only about the main directions of our activities, about the strategy and tactics that we followed so that the virgin lands from the very beginning become what they have become now. Land management of new and expanding old farms; selection of sites for estates of newly created state farms; reception and accommodation of hundreds of thousands of people in a completely uninhabited steppe; the enormous construction of dozens and then hundreds of state farm settlements at once; selection of many thousands of specialists; creating friendly, cohesive teams from a diverse mass of people; the very rise of virgin soil and the first spring sowing... And all this had to be done not one by one, but at once, simultaneously.
To make it clear to the reader, for example, the scale of work to strengthen local leadership, which should have been carried out within a very short term, I will say that in 1954 alone, more than five hundred new secretaries of district party committees and secretaries of primary party organizations, thousands of collective farm chairmen, agronomists, livestock specialists, engineers, and mechanics were considered and recommended for work in the virgin lands. Among them were many excellent local workers, and even more were visitors. The Central Committee of the CPSU, Union ministries, and many republics and regions of the country provided us with enormous assistance, generously sharing their personnel with the virgin lands.
The USSR Ministry of State Farms created a special headquarters for the selection of specialists. The headquarters rooms resembled train station premises, so many people crowded in them. I went to this headquarters and received people for weeks from early morning until midnight. I myself never spared time to have a detailed, thorough conversation with everyone who was planning to go to virgin lands. It was important that the person understood the complexity and depth of the plan, imbued with faith in the intended work and served it with full dedication. When getting to know people, I asked whether the person was willing to go, what his experience was, whether he was healthy, and whether the family had any objections to the move. There were no less counter questions: when to go, how much land is on the state farm, what is it like, where will the people come from, how much equipment will be allocated, what should you take with you at first?
Right there, in the corridors of the ministry, during breaks between conversations, future directors selected specialists for themselves. This is how the famous five were formed: director, chief agronomist, Chief Engineer, civil engineer, chief accountant. Subsequently, we began to select not just fives, but six leaders - the “clip” also included the deputy director for economic affairs, without whom, as experience has shown, it was difficult to solve the most important problem in the virgin lands of life, resettlement, food, and cultural services for people.
In my office at the Central Committee there was a large map of Kazakhstan. Just as in the old days at the front I marked on maps the location of army units, areas of their operations and directions of attacks, so now on the map of the republic I marked the location of hundreds of farms and strongholds. The circles on it indicated the main offensive bases - the cities, stations, and villages closest to the development areas, lost in the vast steppe. Old collective and state farms were marked with green and red flags, which also significantly expanded the sowing wedge due to virgin lands. And in red are the estates of new state farms that had yet to be created. In 1954, 90 red flags appeared on the map. And by the beginning of 1956 - 337!
Usually in memoirs they write how the directors of state farms, together with the main specialists, went to the steppe, having in their pockets only an order of their appointment, a bank account number and a seal. They came, drove a peg into the ground with the name of the state farm and began to act... That’s right, that’s how it was. But many of my old friends, paying tribute to romance, forget one essential detail: they hammered the peg not just anywhere, but in a strictly designated place. And in addition to the order and the seal in their pocket, the directors of state farms also had briefcases, and in them were maps of land plots for land management of new farms. There was more than enough romance in the virgin lands, as well as difficulties. However, one cannot present the matter lightly: they came, they say, scattered across the steppe and let’s plow everywhere, fortunately there is a lot of land around.
Builders have such a concept - zero cycle. These are works related to the location of the building on the territory, the construction of its foundation and underground communications. The work is labor-intensive and hardly noticeable from the outside, but it must be done before starting to erect the building itself. In agriculture with zero cycle you can compare land management work, because land management is a kind of general plan, which determines the contour and nature of the economy, the location and size of its fields, meadows, pastures, places for building estates, sources of water supply and much more, a very important factor in life and production.
From the first days, an operational working group on virgin lands was formed as if by itself in the Central Committee of the Party of the Republic. Then it was called differently: some as a worker, some as an operational headquarters, some as a republican virgin headquarters. Indeed, its activities resembled front-line headquarters. I had to lead it. This group was not officially created, there were no specially designated people in it, they all occupied their usual posts, but all were directly related to agriculture. In addition to me, this group included: Secretary of the Central Committee for Agriculture Fazyl Karibzhanovich Karibzhanov, heads of the agricultural and state farm departments of the Central Committee Andrei Konstantinovich Morozov and Vasily Andreevich Liventsov, Minister of Agriculture of the Republic Grigory Andreevich Melnik and Minister of State Farms Mikhail Dmitrievich Vlasenko, a number of other senior officials. Of course, hundreds and hundreds of people visited the Central Committee on Virgin Lands matters, but the comrades listed above constituted the headquarters that directed the enormous work.
The allocation of land for plowing became a hasty and unprecedented scale affair. And if we talk about who was the first to move into the endless steppes, then these were scientists, hydraulic engineers, botanists, land managers, and agronomists. First of all, I want to remember them with a kind word.
Fertile lands do not lie all over each other. They had to be found, evaluated, delineated, and determined which of them were suitable for grain crops, which for meadows, pastures. Almost a third of the territory of Kazakhstan - 100 million hectares - had to be studied by land managers. The Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR alone created and sent 69 complex expeditions and detachments to the steppes. Specialists from academies, institutes and experimental stations throughout the country took part in the study and assessment of lands. Thousands of soil scientists, botanists, hydraulic engineers, land managers, and agronomists from Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Belarus examined 178 regions of the republic and initially identified 22.6 million hectares of arable land. These lands in the form detailed maps soils, their vegetation cover, strictly designated water sources and raw materials for the production of local building materials They were presented to district, and then regional and republican organizations.
I had a diploma in land surveying. Both as the Secretary of the Central Committee of such a large republic, and as a specialist in land management, I was extremely interested in all this. Scientists helped us quickly find our way, identified six well-defined natural and economic zones on the territory of the republic, gave clear recommendations where to sow grain, where to cultivate livestock, where to combine both, where to develop irrigation.
At that time, I made many pleasant acquaintances with Kazakh comrades. I fell in love with the Kazakhs at the front. These were thorough, modest people, efficient and brave fighters and commanders. In the moments of respite between battles, they greatly missed their homeland, the spacious feather grass steppes. Having heard a melodic and sad song of a Kazakh, you would come up and ask:
-What are you singing about?
- I sing about the steppe. I sing about the herd. I remembered the girl...
- You can miss a girl. About the house too. And the steppe... Why is it worse, this Ukrainian steppe?
- No worse. Only ours is a completely different steppe... And now, years later, I am happy to see how Soviet cadres of Kazakh nationality have grown. Among them are major party and economic workers, outstanding scientists, talented specialists from all fields, and wonderful cultural masters.
I cannot help but note that the Kazakhs as a whole, the overwhelming majority, greeted the party’s decision to plow up the feather grass steppes with great enthusiasm and approval. Raising virgin soil for the Kazakhs was not an easy task, because for many centuries the Kazakh people were associated with cattle breeding, and here many, many had to break the entire previous way of life in the steppes, become grain growers, machine operators, and grain farming specialists.
But the local residents had the wisdom and courage to take the most active, heroic part in the uplifting of virgin soil. The Kazakh people rose to the height of history and, understanding the needs of the entire country, showed their revolutionary, internationalist traits.
My friendship with Dinmukhamed Akhmedovich Kunaev has continued for almost a quarter of a century. Then he was the president of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR, and, naturally, we had to meet in the very first days of my stay in Alma-Ata. By education, a mining engineer, a specialist in non-ferrous metals, he was not a man of a narrow sphere, he thought in a state-oriented manner, broadly, boldly, and expressed original and deep judgments about the enormous resources and prospects for the development of Kazakhstan. This calm, sincere, charming man also had a strong will and adherence to party principles. He soon became Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Republic, and now heads the party organization of Kazakhstan and is a member of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee.
Dimash Akhmedovich (this is how everyone addresses him in a friendly manner; in everyday life no one uses his full name - Dinmukhamed) recommended me as a consultant on virgin lands Director of the Institute of Soil Science Umirbek Uspanovich Uspanov. The institute headed by this serious scientist had huge material according to the soil characteristics of Kazakhstan. The employees of this institute contributed a lot in everything related to the placement of new state farms.
I also remember with pleasure the head of the land management department of the Ministry of Agriculture of the Republic, Vasily Aleksandrovich Sheremetyev. This was an original person. Both summer and winter he walked around without a headdress, in a soldier’s tunic, boots, and with his invariable field bag on his side. Behind long years working in Kazakhstan, he walked far and wide, knew the steppes not by eye, but, as they say, by touch. This man was absolutely indispensable when choosing locations for the central estates of state farms. His field bag seemed to me like a fabulous treasure: Vasily Alexandrovich took cards from it; diagrams, notebooks with the names of hundreds of rivers, tracts, hills, low-wind places, as well as with many names of local residents, experts on this land. He invariably demanded that they be included in the commissions for the creation of new farms, and the old elders willingly helped us.
Having learned that I was familiar with land management, Sheremetyev was incredibly happy and addressed me as a colleague, sometimes even somewhat abusing this, demanding intervention in minor issues that could have been resolved without me. But intervention was often required. And serious. One day he came running to me excitedly, with a pile of land management maps sent, it seems, from the Kokchetav region:
- Look what they're doing! They added new areas to the old lands without any characteristics of the fields. I called the district, I was indignant, but they calmly answered me: they say, why are you making noise, we have been plowing the land for several years, spring will come, the snow will melt, and it will immediately be clear where to plow.
We were talking about collective farms, which were also allocated new lands for development. The people there had been working in the steppe for a long time and, naturally, considered themselves such experts on it that you couldn’t even get close to it. It was necessary to overcome this psychology, fight the simplified approach and demand that the selection of virgin lands everywhere be carried out strictly scientifically.
It was necessary to act not only quickly, but also deeply, for centuries. For such a noble goal there was no need to spare time and effort. Often staying in the Central Committee until late at night, I again and again looked through maps and justifications for dozens of farms before they were finally formalized by the decision of the Council of Ministers of the Republic and the order of the USSR Ministry of Agriculture.
It is known that 1954 brought, given the considerable amount of doubts that existed among some, enormous success in the development of virgin lands. Instead of 13 million hectares in the country, 19 million were plowed. Kazakhstan also exceeded the plan for land recovery. Needless to say, how inspired this was, how much confidence it gave me in the work I had started. Having summarized the first experience and weighed the country’s capabilities, the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR adopted a new resolution “On the further development of virgin and fallow lands to increase grain production.” Kazakhstan was to create an additional two hundred and fifty new state farms.
(in fact, based on Brezhnev’s memoirs, books were written by a group of professional journalists). For this trilogy, L. Brezhnev was awarded the Lenin Prize for Literature in April 1980.
The trilogy was published in the magazine “New World” in 1978 (in No. 2 - “Small Land”, in No. 5 - “Renaissance”, in No. 11 - “Virgin Land”). In the same “New World”, in No. 11 for 1981, additional chapters “Life by the Factory Horn” and “Feeling of the Motherland” were published, and in No. 1 for 1983 - the chapters “Moldavian Spring”, “Cosmic October” and “The Word” about communists."
The study of books was included in the school literature curriculum.
"Renaissance"
"Virgin Land"
Continuation
Authorship of the trilogy
There is an assumption that the awarding of Alexander Murzin in February with the Order of Friendship of Peoples “for many years of fruitful work and in connection with the 50th anniversary,” and Arkady Sakhnin with the Order of the October Revolution, was a kind of “fee.”
According to other sources, the entire trilogy was written by Anatoly Agranovsky.
Also mentioned as participants in the writing of the memoir trilogy are: CEO TASS Leonid Zamyatin and his first deputy Vitaly Ignatenko, who received the Lenin Prize in 1978 for the script of the documentary “The Tale of a Communist” (it is believed that their role in writing the memoirs was controlling). It is also mentioned that Brezhnev’s assistant A.M. Aleksandrov-Agentov advised the “memowriters”.
The initiative to create the trilogy is attributed to K. U. Chernenko, who became a candidate member of the Politburo, and L. M. Zamyatin.
This book is a historical document. Leonid Ilyich did not write this book, but it was written from his words and based on the diaries of his political assistant. When they ask me a question about “Malaya Zemlya”: “Did Leonid Ilyich write this book?” - I say that I did not write, but he is the author of this book, since it was written from his words, but literary processed by people who owned the pen. Brezhnev did not own a pen. After writing “Little Land,” our group prepared 11 more chapters, which were collected in one book, but it was never published. I have the only copy of this book. The Vagrius publishing house offered me to publish it. I said I had no objection. These chapters tell about Leonid Ilyich’s stay in Moldova and the conquest of space. There is also a chapter that can be called his political testament.
The authorship of the continuation of the trilogy is definitely unknown. “Moldavian Spring” and “Cosmic October”, according to the memoirs of A.P. Murzin, were written by two different Komsomolskaya Pravda journalists, both of whom had the initials “V. G." According to the memoirs of the same A.P. Murzin, a continuation of Brezhnev’s memoirs was also planned under the title “At the Post of General Secretary,” the author of which was to be another Komsomolskaya Pravda journalist with the initials “V. D."
Humor about the trilogy
Regarding one of the books in the trilogy, its real author Alexander Murzin composed a ditty:
“Virgin Virgin Land appeared -
The whole country was surprised:
How did the leader concoct it -
If he doesn’t understand a damn thing?”
A joke that appeared at that time also became popular:
After being presented with the Lenin Prize, Brezhnev sits in his chair and plays with his laureate badge.
Mikhail Suslov looks into the General Secretary’s office:
- Listen, Mikhailo Andreevich, have you read “Little Earth”? Did you really read to the end?
- Well, Leonid Ilyich, I read it. A wonderful work from a literary point of view, our people need it!
-Are you not deceiving me?
- Have I deceived anyone at least once in my life?
- I don't remember?
- And even more so...
- Okay, call me Pelsha...
Pelshe comes into Brezhnev’s office:
- Listen, Pelsh Yanovich...
- I’m not Pelsh Yanovich...
- Sorry, I got confused... Arvid Pelshevich, have you read my little land?
- Twice.
- How do you feel?
- A wonderful work from a literary point of view, our people need it! Forgive me Leonid Ilyich, I need to run...
- Where are you in a hurry?
- I want to read your book for the third time.
Left alone in the office, Brezhnev said thoughtfully:
- It’s so nice, everyone likes my “Little Land”... Maybe I should read it too?
Another joke:
What is hypermodesty?
- Win the war, turn virgin soil, revive the country - and remain silent about it for twenty years...
Brezhnev is a great agronomist: he collected the largest harvest from Malaya Zemlya.
Another anecdote that appeared immediately after his death:
They will bury him in “Virgin Land”, cover him with “Malaya Zemlya” - the main thing is that “Renaissance” does not occur.
Notes
When in February 1978 in the magazine “ New world”, and after it “Malaya Zemlya” appeared in other publications, even slow-witted readers (like me, a student of grade 9 “A” high school No. 19 of the city of Saratov) understood that the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev himself did not write this book: everything in it was built too skillfully. Moreover, “Malaya Zemlya” was followed by “Renaissance” (No. 5 of “New World” for 1978) and “Virgin Land” (No. 11). Three years later, in the same magazine, in issue No. 11 of 1981, two more chapters of memoirs were published: “By the factory whistle” and “Feeling of the Motherland.” A little over a year later, after the death of L.I. Brezhnev, in No. 1 for 1983, three more parts appeared: “Moldavian Spring”, “Cosmic October” and “The Word about the Communists”. There was no doubt that a seasoned shark of a pen, or even a whole school of sharks, worked on the text of the memoirs of the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee. I was curious: who actually created the memoirs of L.I. Brezhnev?
Clarity was brought in 1991 by one of the real authors, a famous journalist and songwriter, a former editor of Pravda in the agriculture department, by that time a personal pensioner of union significance, Alexander Murzin, who published an essay in Komsomolskaya Pravda about his work on Brezhnev’s memoirs :
, who worked for Izvestia, wrote “Renaissance”. "Malaya Zemlya" came from the pen of Arkady Sakhnin. Although he was not on the staff of Komsomolskaya Pravda, for a long time He published his brilliant essays and articles there. I, in the 1960s, a member of the editorial board of this newspaper, became the author of "Virgin Land". I named Agranovsky and Sakhnin openly only because their names, like mine, have already been published more than once in the press under the heading of “involved.” Although I heard that the family of the now deceased Agranovsky denies his connection with the highest memoirs. And Sakhnin actually threatened to sue me and accuse me in print of libel, as soon as I dared to speak out myself or drag Arkady Yakovlevich into the case. The author of the “Moldavian Spring”, V.G., thought the same thing. - and another person with the initials V.G. - author of "Cosmic October" (both are former well-known journalists of Komsomolskaya Pravda). So, of the five real creators of memoirs, I remained the only keeper of this secret, ready to honestly tell about it.”
Cover of the book of memoirs by L.I. Brezhnev "Small Land"
As can be seen from the quote, Alexander Murzin was not proud of his work for L.I. Brezhnev and the very readiness to talk about it in 1991 required courage that other co-authors did not have. But as Soviet society became Russian, the Brezhnev years from the damned past turned into a golden age, which is easy and pleasant to remember.
Decades after the confessions, Alexander Murzina “the second V.G.” - Patriarch of Russian scientific journalism Vladimir Gubarev - dedicated to work on the memoirs of L.I. Brezhnev already wrote an entire chapter of his memoirs “My Pravda: Big Secrets of a Big Newspaper”:
“...There was one secret in the life of Pravda, which only a few people knew about. We are talking about the memoirs of the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee L.I. Brezhnev. I wrote the chapter "Cosmic October". Compared to Anatoly Agranovsky, Arkady Sakhnin, Alexander Murzin, Vitaly Ganyushkin, my task was complicated by the fact that I worked “in a partisan manner”: I was forbidden to contact employees of the military-industrial commission and carefully hide it from D.F. Ustinov and his entourage, that I am engaged in such memories. Pravda became the “roof”. All meetings and business trips necessary to prepare the memoirs were presented as the fulfillment of Pravda tasks. “Use this opportunity,” Afanasyev [editor-in-chief of Pravda in 1976-1989 - A.F.] told me, “not everyone is given this”…”
The stories of Alexander Murzin and Vladimir Gubarev coincide in many ways. First of all, from them we learn the names of the real authors and the distribution of topics between them. But, of course, not only journalists were involved in the creation of the secretary general’s memoirs. Alexander Murzin writes:
“In April 1977, V.N. called me. Ignatenko, deputy editor-in-chief of Komsomolskaya Pravda, invited L.M. Zamyatin and added intriguingly:
- You'll see a lot of us there. There is such a responsible and honorable task that you would never guess...
Leonid Mitrofanovich Zamyatin, General Director of TASS, told the audience about his recent personal discovery. Touching and delighted, he told how he had recently traveled by train with K.W. Chernenko and L.I. Brezhnev and the Secretary General recalled their childhood, youth, maturity - all their lives. What amazing events he experienced! And how his biography agrees with the history of our Motherland!
Zamyatin and Chernenko began to unanimously persuade Ilyich to recreate the epoch-making memoirs, but he modestly objected, pointing out that he was busy. Although he seemed to agree to work on such a book with a group of appointed assistants. So we were recommended to help Comrade Brezhnev - collect facts, draft texts...
The proposal was incredibly shocking. Although how can one not help an elderly, extremely busy person, especially the head of the country?”
So, using modern terminology, the managers of the Malaya Zemlya project were TASS General Director Leonid Zamyatin and his deputy Vitaly Ignatenko (Murzin called his former position in Komsomolskaya Pravda - a forgivable error of memory).
Leonid Zamyatin spoke in detail about his role in creating the memoirs of the General Secretary in an interview with Kommersant-Vlast magazine:
“...the whole epic arose almost by accident. It’s just that Brezhnev, especially in his old age, loved to remember his war years and, most often, those terrible months near Novorossiysk, when a handful of soldiers under the command of Caesar Kunikov really accomplished a feat, holding a small piece of land on a cape in Tsemes Bay. And I really wanted someone to write about it.
One day, I think in 1977, we were on the train to present Tula with the Hero Star. And I was unexpectedly invited into the carriage with Brezhnev. And Chernenko, assistant general Sasha Bovin and Leonid Ilyich’s personal secretary Galina Doroshina are already sitting there.
“Well,” says Leonid Ilyich offendedly, “how much I ask you to write about “Little Land”, about the soldiers who died, and it’s all in vain. Maybe you'll take it?
Chernenko, of course, is right there.
- That's right, Leonid Ilyich, people have been waiting for your memories.
I stand dumbfounded.
- Well, I don’t know how to write books. Here Bovin is that jack of all trades. Besides, he heard your stories.
Sanka looked at me like a wolf.
- What a writer I am! I can do an article, your speech, Leonid Ilyich, but no, I can’t handle a book.
The general just waved his hand sadly. Well, I think, thank God, it passed. But after a couple of months Suslov calls me: “How are things going with the book?” - “Which book?” - “What are you doing?! Leonid Ilyich instructed you to write about the feat of the soldiers of the 18th Army, but you didn’t start. Shame! Get started immediately. Gather a small group, and don’t say a word to anyone else. Work in the strictest confidence. So that even members of the Politburo don’t knew. Consider this the most important order of the party."
Leonid Zamyatin's story adds many details, but differs significantly from the memoirs of Alexander Murzin. Leonid Zamyatin and Alexander Murzin (no doubt, from the latter’s words) describe the starting point of work on Brezhnev’s memoirs in the same way: this is a road conversation between L.I. Brezhnev, K.U. Chernenko and L.M. Zamyatin in the winter of 1976-1977. Zamyatin says that they were going to Tula to present the Golden Star; the title of Hero City of Tula was awarded on December 7, 1976, the celebrations with the participation of the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee took place on January 17-19, 1977, so Zamyatin’s message sounds authentic; driving two and a half hours is just the right time to talk in style.
But according to Murzin, the initiators of writing the secretary general’s memoirs were Zamyatin and Chernenko; Zamyatin puts Brezhnev himself in the foreground (“I ask so much to write about “Malaya Zemlya”, about the soldiers who died, and all in vain. Maybe you’ll take it?”), puts Chernenko second (“That’s right, Leonid Ilyich, the people have been waiting for your memories.” ), and puts himself in the shadows - they say, he refused (“I don’t know how to write books”), and it seemed that they had already managed to put the matter on the brakes, but then Suslov intervened - and he had to take it on. Zamyatin’s refusal is hard to believe. Zamyatin could not help but appreciate what career prospects the work on Leonid Ilyich’s memoirs opened up as soon as the word “memoirs” was uttered (in the end, Leonid Mitrofanovich became the head of the department of the Central Committee created personally “for him”).
In Zamyatin’s version, Suslov then appears and gives instructions to immediately begin work in the strictest confidence. As mentioned above, I don’t believe a penny that Zamyatin shirked the honor of working on the memoirs of the General Secretary, but the message about the reception with Suslov and the instructions to work in secret from members of the Politburo seem reliable. Prepare memories of L.I. Brezhnev without the sanction of Suslov (member of the Politburo, second secretary of the Central Committee, who oversaw ideology) would have been a flagrant violation of subordination; professional “organizer”, like K.U. Chernenko (at that moment a “simple” secretary of the Central Committee) was probably organically incapable of doing this. The words about the secret from the Politburo members are confirmed by the story of Gubarev, who was specifically ordered to hide the work on “Cosmic October” from Politburo member D.F. Ustinov and his staff.
The versions of Alexander Murzin and Vladimir Gubarev, on the one hand, and Leonid Zamyatin, on the other, diverge even more in their presentation of further events. Alexander Murzin and Vladimir Gubarev talk about a meeting in the TASS building of all future authors, at which topics were distributed, and then about a meeting of all authors at the CPSU Central Committee. Murzin’s words are partially given above, let’s continue quoting him: “Everyone nodded, and a beaming L.M. Zamyatin happily set about identifying specific topics. ...Agranovsky was the first to choose Ukraine, Sakhnin - war, V.G. - the second - space. And the virgin soil remained behind me as if by itself.”
Vladimir Gubarev recalls: “I don’t know who came up with this idea for Brezhnev’s memoirs, I think it came from Vitaly Ignatenko. One day he called, we arrived and gathered in the office. Zamyatin was on the party's Central Committee. There were several of us. Tolya Agranovsky, Arkasha Sakhnin, Sasha Murzin. Vitaly Gannushkin came later. There was a conversation about how it would be nice to write memoirs. It was already clear, to be honest, from the selection of people who should do what.” And in another place he states: “I was working as a scientific observer for Pravda when I received a special assignment. As mentioned above, during a meeting at the Party Central Committee, I was offered to write the “cosmic part” of my memoirs.”
Murzin wrote his essay 14 years after the events, Gubarev - after 35. Memory errors in such cases are inevitable, but in summary one can get the following picture: Alexander Pavlovich and Vladimir Stepanovich were invited to TASS by Vitaly Ignatenko, Leonid Zamyatin brought the authors up to date, they were assigned topic, a few days later all the authors were at the CPSU Central Committee at a reception with K.U. Chernenko.
But in Leonid Zamyatin’s story no general meetings of the author’s team are mentioned. After the appointment with M.A. Suslov, as he remembers, events developed like this:
“Soon they invite you to see Himself. And Leonid Ilyich says: “At the Institute of International economic relations Lieutenant Colonel Pakhomov is working. He was my assistant in the political department of the 18th Army. Now, though, he’s quite sick, I feel sorry for the man. I got him into college. So, he kept records of fights every day. Take all the notebooks from him, take from Doroshina what I reminded her of, and please, finally write about the soldiers..."
Ignatenko went to Pakhomov, took the diaries and offered to give them to the then famous journalist Arkady Sakhnin.
I called Novy Mir and invited Arkady to my place.
- There is an important party assignment, top secret and very responsible.
He immediately agreed and two months later brought the creation, already typed in one copy. I read it and am silently horrified. Boring, dry, formal. And on every page Brezhnev, Brezhnev, Brezhnev. I give it to Ignatenko - he is in a panic. I’m going to Chernenko and telling him.
- I won’t read it myself - what do I understand about this? But I will report to Leonid Ilyich.
Brezhnev, of course, was terribly upset. I waited so long, but there was no book. And then suddenly he says: “But I read a speech at the last Komsomol congress. The first speech that I myself liked. So lively, smart, bright. Maybe I should offer a book to the person who wrote the speech?”
I go to Ignatenko: “Who wrote the speech?” - "Anatoly Agranovsky." This is wonderful. The best journalist in the country. If only you knew how much I tried to persuade him. Not at all. And it’s not my genre, and I’m sick, and I can’t cope. But we have nowhere to retreat. I'm calling Chernenko. He invites Agranovsky to his place. I don’t know what Konstantin Ustinovich said to Anatoly Abramovich, but Agranovsky returned from him humble. And we got to work. Ignatenko collected the missing material, Agranovsky wrote, I followed political thought.
Leonid Ilyich... was very ill that year and was in the hospital more often than he was at work. Therefore, when we had questions, I wrote a note to Chernenko, and he took it to the Central Clinical Hospital. Three months later the story was ready. It was printed in five copies in the “New World” format and two of them were sent to the hospital. Doroshina read, and Brezhnev sometimes corrected from another copy...
...Then a book, a national reading, performances and operas. And, of course, at the request of the workers - a continuation."
Thus, according to Zamyatin, “Malaya Zemlya” was written and even published first, and only after that they began to prepare other chapters of the memoirs. In such a scheme for general meeting There is simply no place for a group of authors with a distribution of topics.
Before comparing the versions, let's take a closer look at the characters themselves.
So, (1922-1984), in 1977 - special correspondent for Izvestia, (1930-1998) - head of department, member of the editorial board of the newspaper "Soviet Culture", (born in 1938) - scientific columnist for Pravda, Alexander Murzin ( 1929-2006) - head of the agricultural department, member of the editorial board of "Pravda", Arkady Sakhnin (1910-1999) - head of the department of journalism, member of the editorial board of "New World".
The first thing that literally catches your eye on this list is the inequality of names. Anatoly Agranovsky, the most famous of the famous, a symbol of the profession (“a fruit is an apple, a poet is Pushkin, a journalist is Agranovsky”), a living classic, whose work is studied in journalism departments, and dei minoris, unknown outside the workshop. But the smaller brethren are clearly splitting in two: Ganyushkin, Gubarev and Murzin are relatively young people (no one is yet 50), all of them are long-time employees of that very “Komsomolskaya Pravda”, in which Vitaly Ignatenko passed through with enchanting speed (in less than 10 years). a glorious path from trainee to deputy editor-in-chief; and Arkady Sakhnin, almost the same age as Leonid Ilyich, a 67-year-old writer from the New World.
To tell the truth, it is difficult for me to say anything about the work of this writer. From the diaries of Korney Chukovsky we know about the “Sakhnin case”: “July 17, 1955... Now Bek is spending the night with me. He told me the case of Sakhnin, who stole her novel from the exiled Levina. She sent Znamya a novel about Japan. He, as the editorial secretary, informed her that the novel had been accepted and asked her to tell her his biography. She answered, confident that he, who sent her the good news that the novel would be published, was worthy of complete frankness. As soon as he found out that she had been arrested, he stole the novel from her, ripped off a huge fee (the novel was published in both Detgiz and Roman-Gazeta) and did not give her a penny. Now he has been exposed in court, but how did the editors of Znamya try to stir up this case, cover up the fraudster, intimidate Levina and discredit Beck, who opened this case!”
In the comments of E.Ts. Chukovskaya adds: “We are talking about the novel by A.Ya. Sakhnin “Clouds at Dawn”, published in the magazine “Znamya” (1954, No. 2, 3). In the same year, the novel was published in Roman-Gazeta (No. 7, 8), in Detgiz and in Goslitizdat. Meanwhile, the exiled Raisa Semyonovna Levina went to court with a statement that she sent her novel to the editorial office of Znamya, and the magazine’s employee A. Sakhnin borrowed many plot lines, situations and passages from her manuscript and published the book under his own name... The court decided to oblige Sakhnin to pay Levina part of the fee and put her name... “Clouds at Dawn” was republished (without Levina’s name) in 1957, 1965, 1968 and 1975. Other books by A. Sakhnin are about the subversive activities of American imperialism against Chile, against socialist countries, about Polish intelligence in Germany, as well as about the exploits of machinists and submariners.”
To this information we can add that Arkady Sakhnin also wrote about the exploits of security officers, whalers, sappers, merchant marine sailors, tractor drivers, virgin lands, policemen, border guards, vigilantes, divers and a 15-year-old schoolgirl who detained an armed bandit; after the “case” he no longer worked at Znamya and did not publish novels; all his other books were documentary stories and collections of essays.
Sakhnin’s biography has no visible intersections with either the Komsomol journalist Ignatenko or the diplomat Zamyatin. Why Zamyatin or Ignatenko decided to involve Sakhnin in working on the memoirs of the General Secretary is absolutely unclear. Sakhnin published in Komsomolskaya Pravda, and therefore Ignatenko was familiar with him. But Arkady Yakovlevich is 31 years older than Vitaly Nikitich, so it is unlikely that the relationship between them went beyond acquaintance; for example, they could not be friends based on work or spending leisure time together.
However, participation in the preparation of the secretary general’s memoirs is not the first mysterious moment in Sakhnin’s biography. Having been demobilized from the army in 1948, the editor of the divisional newspaper became the executive secretary of the Znamya magazine - an amazing, almost incredible rise: suffice it to say that in 1932-1941 this position was held by Anatoly Tarasenkov, a classic of Soviet literary criticism.
Leonid Zamyatin’s story seems reliable in that Sakhnin was not involved in preparing the leader’s memoirs together or simultaneously with Agranovsky, Ganyushkin, Gubarev and Murzin.
Photo: Vladimir Fedorenko / RIA Novosti
Zamyatin’s story about the organization of literary production also seems reliable: “Ignatenko collected the missing material, Agranovsky wrote, I followed political thought.” Of the authors of the “blanks,” Leonid Mitrofanovich mentions only Sakhnin and Murzin, and mistakenly calls the latter Pravda’s own correspondent for Kazakhstan: “True, the first version of “Virgin Land” was made by Murzin, a former Pravda correspondent for Kazakhstan. Only Agranovsky straightened him out properly. Added grace and brilliance.” He seemed to have seen them only briefly, which is why he didn’t really remember them, leaving communication with them to Vitaly Ignatenko. The main writer for him is Agranovsky.
According to Zamyatin, Agranovsky refused this
work and pacified him K.U. Chernenko. Apparently, this was the case: the general director of TASS was a colleague in writing for the special correspondent of Izvestia and nothing more, but the communist Agranovsky could not disobey the secretary of the CPSU Central Committee.
Murzin and Gubarev do not mention Agranovsky as the editor of their texts. Murzin even claims: “The trinity of conspirators, without hesitation, published only our “blanks”... I’m not sure whether Leonid Ilyich read his memoirs or not, but I read in them, published, what I wrote.” This moment does not inspire confidence.
It is easy to notice that Gubarev and Murzin’s memoirs about working on Brezhnev’s memoirs are written in different manners. Don't get confused. However, there is no stylistic discrepancy between the chapters of “Memoirs”, and attempts to distinguish quotations from “Little Land”, “Renaissance” and “Virgin Land” by style have never been successful. Someone had to bring the journalists, each with their own distinct personality and their own style of writing, to “one common denominator,” and it is logical that this “someone” was “the best journalist in the country.” Anatoly Agranovsky. It seems that it was Vitaly Ignatenko who organized manufacturing process in such a way that the authors of the blanks did not notice the rewrite.
Note next moment in Murzin's story: “Everyone nodded, and a beaming L.M. Zamyatin joyfully set about identifying specific topics... Agranovsky was the first to choose Ukraine, Sakhnin chose war, V.G. the second - space. And the virgin soil remained behind me as if by itself.” Here I want to exclaim: this is the style of Vitaly Ignatenko! This is exactly how he led ITAR-TASS for 20 years: everything was done according to his will, but as if by itself. People, it should be noted, work best when they do not notice that they are being led. Here too, the head of the agricultural department of Pravda, of course, was invited to entrust virgin lands (not space or war!), but he was left with the impression that he himself had chosen a topic close to him. High class, what else can you say.
Gubarev and Murzin do not mention any materials coming from the memoirist himself. Thus, Brezhnev’s “dictations” and his answers to questions from the Central Clinical Hospital, which Zamyatin talks about, were not shown to them. From the stories of Gubarev and Murzin, one may get the impression that the journalists, working on Brezhnev’s memoirs, enjoyed boundless creative freedom. Of course, this was not the case.
I'll give just one example. “Virgin Land” says: “We can say: only four years at the beginning of my working career were entirely devoted to the village. Or you can do it another way: four whole years. He began working as a land surveyor at the very beginning of collectivization, and returned to the plant when it was largely completed. These years - from 1927 to 1931 - are equal to an era in the history of the country." Brezhnev's biography is presented here incorrectly: he worked as a land surveyor in 1927-1930, in the fall of 1930 he entered the Moscow Institute of Agricultural Engineering, studied there for a year, then transferred to the Metallurgical Institute in his native Kamensky. But the university was evening, prerequisite training was a job in production, and Leonid Brezhnev got a job at a metallurgical plant as a fireman in the heat and power shop. This is "straightening" life path(worked as a land surveyor and returned to the factory) comes, undoubtedly, from Leonid Ilyich himself - who else would dare to rewrite the biography of the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee to their liking. But Brezhnev’s instructions were conveyed to Alexander Murzin so skillfully that he did not even remember it.
The following chain of events can be reconstructed. On January 17, 1977, on the way to Tula, L.I. Brezhnev, K.U. Chernenko and L.M. Zamyatin had a conversation about writing the leader’s memoirs; After some time, in February or March 1977, Suslov instructs Zamyatin to “start immediately” and it happens new meeting Zamyatin with Brezhnev; immediately after this, Ignatenko takes the prepared materials and transfers them to Sakhnin; “in two months” he gives Zamyatin and Ignatenko a text that horrifies both of them; the distressed Brezhnev suggests to the hapless memorial writers the idea of involving Anatoly Agranovsky in the case; he initially refuses, but cannot resist K.U. Chernenko’s pressure. Vitaly Ignatenko’s invitation in April 1977 to Zamyatin, in addition to Agranovsky and Sakhnin, Ganyushkin, Gubarev and Murzin, holding an introductory conversation with them, distributing topics and starting work in an expanded format fits well into this series.
As usually happens, answers to some questions immediately give rise to others. In particular, if work on “Little Earth” and “Cosmic October” began simultaneously or almost simultaneously, then why were they published with such a large gap - five years without one month? But more on that next time.
Plan:
- Introduction
- 1 Authorship of the trilogy
- 2 Humor about the trilogy Sources
Introduction
Brezhnev trilogy- books-memoirs “Malaya Zemlya”, “Renaissance” and “Virgin Land”, the author of which was considered Leonid Brezhnev (in fact, based on Brezhnev’s memoirs, the books were written by a group of professional journalists).
For this trilogy, Brezhnev was awarded the Lenin Prize for Literature in April 1980. The circulation of each book was 15 million copies. The books were included in school curriculum on literature. The trilogy was translated and distributed to national libraries in 120 countries. The trilogy was published in the magazine “New World” in 1978 (in No. 2 - “Small Land”, in No. 5 - “Renaissance”, in No. 11 - “Virgin Land”). In the same “New World”, in No. 11 for 1981, additional chapters “On the Factory Horn” and “Feeling of the Motherland” were published, and in No. 1 for 1983 - the chapters “Moldavian Spring”, “Cosmic October” and “The Word of communists."
In the summer of 1987, the books in the trilogy were removed from bookstores and scrapped.
This book is a historical document. Leonid Ilyich did not write this book, but it was written from his words and based on the diaries of his political assistant. When they ask me a question about “Malaya Zemlya”: “Did Leonid Ilyich write this book?” - I say that I did not write, but he is the author of this book, since it was written from his words, but literary processed by people who owned the pen. Brezhnev did not own a pen. After writing “Little Land,” our group prepared 11 more chapters, which were collected in one book, but it was never published. I have the only copy of this book. The Vagrius publishing house offered me to publish it. I said I had no objection. These chapters tell about Leonid Ilyich’s stay in Moldova and the conquest of space. There is also a chapter that can be called his political testament.
1. Authorship of the trilogy
During the years of perestroika, the press began to openly talk about the fact that “literary blacks” created the trilogy for L. I. Brezhnev. As the documents of the Politburo and the memoirs of the participants show, the trilogy was created by decision of the Politburo as part of measures to “increase the authority” of the Secretary General. At the same time, “Renaissance” was written by the famous essayist Anatoly Agranovsky, “Malaya Zemlya” was written by the publicist of the Izvestia newspaper Arkady Sakhnin, and “Tselina” was written by the leading correspondent of the Pravda newspaper Alexander Murzin. According to other sources, the entire trilogy was written by Anatoly Agranovsky. There is an assumption that the awarding of Alexander Murzin in February 1979 with the Order of Friendship of Peoples “for many years of fruitful work and in connection with the 50th anniversary”, and Arkady Sakhnin with the Order October revolution, was a kind of “fee”. The authorship of the continuation of the trilogy is not known for sure; “Moldavian Spring” and “Cosmic October”, according to the memoirs of A.P. Murzin, were written by two different Komsomolskaya Pravda journalists, both of whom had the initials “V. G." Also mentioned as participants in the writing of the memoir trilogy are TASS General Director Leonid Zamyatin and his first deputy Vitaly Ignatenko, who received the Lenin Prize in 1978 for the script of the documentary “The Tale of a Communist” (it is believed that their role in writing the memoirs was controlling). It is also mentioned that Brezhnev’s assistant A. M. Aleksandrov-Agentov advised the “memorists.” The initiative to create the trilogy is attributed to K. U. Chernenko, who in 1977 became a candidate member of the Politburo, and L. M. Zamyatin. According to the memoirs of the same A.P. Murzin, a continuation of Brezhnev’s memoirs was also planned under the title “At the Post of General Secretary,” the author of which was to be another Komsomolskaya Pravda journalist with the initials “V. D."
2. Humor about the trilogy
Regarding one of the books in the trilogy, its real author Alexander Murzin composed a ditty:
“Virgin Virgin Land appeared -
The whole country was surprised:
How did the leader concoct it -
If he doesn’t understand a damn thing?”
A joke that appeared at that time also became popular:
After being awarded the Lenin Prize, Brezhnev sits in his chair and plays with the laureate's badge.
Suslov comes into the General Secretary’s office:
- Mikhailo Andreevich, have you read Malaya Zemlya?
- What a wonderful book, Leonid Ilyich!
After some time, Pelshe dropped in to see Brezhnev:
- Arvid Yanovich, have you read Malaya Zemlya?
- I read it, Leonid Ilyich, twice. Excellent item!
Left alone in the office, Brezhnev said thoughtfully:
- Well, everyone likes it. Maybe I should read it too?
Another anecdote that appeared immediately after his death:
About Brezhnev in the event of his death: we will bury him in “Virgin Land”, cover him with “Malaya Zemlya”, only without “Renaissance”.
Brezhnev is a great agronomist: he collected the largest harvest from Malaya Zemlya.
Remake of the popular song "Stop the Music":
Stop Brezhnev, stop Brezhnev
I ask you, I ask you
Burn the book “Little Earth”
Sources
- Valiullin K. B., Zaripova R. K. History of Russia. XX century Part 2: Tutorial. - Ufa: RIO BashSU, 2002.
- Zemlyanoy C. History on blue eye. His games “Golden Feathers of the Secretary General” // NG - subbotnik. - June 25, 2001. - No. 25 (72).
- 14 stages of the Brezhnev era: what to be proud of and what to be ashamed of
- Review by Leonid Zamyatin
- From the program Namedni 1961-2003: Our Era
This abstract is based on an article from Russian Wikipedia. Synchronization completed 07/11/11 19:07:34
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