Encyclopedic Dictionary of winged words and expressions

KUKHARKIN'S CHILDREN

Original source - the notorious circular (1887) of the Russian Minister of Education Ivan Davidovich Delyanov (1818-1897). By this circular, approved by Emperor Alexander III and received in society the ironic name "about the cook's children" (although they were not mentioned there), it was instructed that the educational authorities admit to the gymnasium and progymnasium only wealthy children, that is, “only those children who are in the care of persons representing sufficient assurance of proper home supervisionand in providing them with the convenience they need for learning. "

And further in the circular it was explained that “with the unswerving observance of this rule, grammar schools and progymnasiums will be freed from the children of coachmen, lackeys, cooks, laundresses, small shopkeepers and the like, who, except perhaps gifted with extraordinary abilities, should not be taken out of the environment to which they belong " (Rozhdestvensky S.V. Historical sketch of the activities of the Ministry of Public Education. St. Petersburg, 1909).

Allegorically - about children from poor, socially unprotected families.

REPORT

minister of Public Education I. Delyanov

"On the reduction of gymnasium education" (1887)

As a result of the assumption that took place in the conference with my participation, from among the ministers of the interior, state property, the administrator of the Ministry of Finance and the chief prosecutor of the Holy Synod, I had the good fortune to ask the permission of Your Imperial Majesty to submit to the Committee of Ministers a proposal for admission to the gymnasium and gymnasiums for children of only some estates not lower than merchants of the 2nd guild.

Your Imperial Majesty, having comprehensively discussed this assumption, deigned to express the idea in my most submissive report on May 23 that, recognizing this measure as untimely and inconvenient, you would think it best to achieve the goal of averting the influx of children into the gymnasium and gymnasium of children who do not match their home environment secondary education, in any other way, and you were all-merciful to command me to enter into new considerations on this issue.

Imbued with the thought of Your Majesty, I considered it necessary to consult with the persons indicated above, with the exception of Count Tolstoy, who is now in the absence of a real privy councilor, and we, in view of Your Majesty's remarks, have assumed that regardless of the increase in fees for teaching, it would at least be necessary to explain to the administrations of gymnasiums and pro-gymnasiums so that they admit to these educational institutions only those children who are in the care of persons who represent sufficient guarantees in proper home supervision over them and in providing them with the convenience necessary for their studies. Thus, with the unswerving observance of this rule, the gymnasium and progymnasium will be freed from admission to them of the children of coachmen, lackeys, cooks, laundresses, small shopkeepers and the like, whose children, except perhaps gifted with genius, one should not at all strive for secondary and higher education.At the same time, not finding it useful to facilitate the preparation of children in the gymnasium and gymnasium with state funds, the meeting expressed that it would be it is necessary to close the preparatory classes for them, now stopping the admission to them. The implementation of this last measure has already been followed, according to my most submissive report on April 11, by the preliminary Highness of Your Imperial Majesty permission.

If Your Majesty deigns to finally approve the above assumptions, then now you only have to enter the Committee of Ministers with the submission:

1) on the limitation of the known percentage of admission to the gymnasium and gymnasium of Jewish children,to which can be usefully applied and suggested by a special commission chaired by the Secretary of State Count Palen measure to prevent Jewish children from entering the gymnasium and gymnasium lower class and

2) on the provision to the Minister of Public Education, as amended by Art. 129 of the charter of universities on August 23, 1884, the right to determine fee for listening to lectures, not embarrassed by the now established 50-ruble norm.

Upon bringing these assumptions to fruition, I accept the duty of all the submissiveness to ask Your Highest Imperial Majesty's permission.

As for before reducing the number of gymnasiums and gymnasiums, with the transformation of some of them to real and industrial schools, I am happy to report all the more that, in view of the command expressed in my report on March 29, Your Imperial Majesty, I have already collected comparative statistics on the number of students, the number of parallel classes and the means of maintaining gymnasiums and gymnasiums, and also made an idea about the possibility of closing or transforming them , depending on the local conditions and the funds allocated for them from the treasury or from zemstvos and city societies; but further on this assumptions are now suspended until resolving the issue of transforming real and opening industrial schools, since without this it is impossible either to transform the gymnasium and the gymnasium, or to close them, because the students of these institutions, upon the closure of the gymnasium or gymnasium in any locality, would be deprived of the opportunity to continue their education in the absence of a corresponding educational institution, which would put local societies into an extremely difficult situation. However, it can be hoped that with the above measures enforced the number of students in gymnasiums and gymnasiums will be significantly reduced and their composition will improve, which is especially important because student misdirection depends not on the number of gymnasiums and grammar schools, but on the quality of the students and the overflow of each of them individually. "

Lies as truth ... But did you, reader and "accomplice", have to think about the fact that in politics, the lie plays exactly the same role, or rather, it performs the same functions as the TRUTH.And hence - and the irresistible temptation to take advantage of lies, lies to achieve their own goals:

- Perhaps, they won't notice, they "shave" for a sweet soul! And after all, they are silent - it does not mean that they do not notice, but it is too lazy to get involved with some especially loudly shouting "propagators" of new ideas. … But is our silence always justified, on which illiterate or arrogant political adventurers try to earn "political capital"? And again about the cooks and their children

From the Internet. Diary of a Writer Due to one common mistake.

Very often they quote Lenin's words that every kukhaka should be able to run the state.

Indeed, V.I. Lenin in his work "Will the Bolsheviks Retain State Power" (v. 34, p. 315) wrote: "We are not utopians. We know that any laborer and any cook is NOT capable immediately take over the government. In this we agreed with the academicians, both with Breshkovskaya and with Tsereteli. "

That is, he spoke about the RIGHT, the possibility of "cook's children", children of "commoners" to receive a MODERN education and about the RIGHT to participate in the management of the affairs of the state and society.

In this way, Lenin said the exact opposite of what the entire democratic press ascribes to him, while assenting to almost the entire intelligentsia.

- No, my friend, Lenin wrote, first of all, about something completely different: that there should be a chance to get higher education all, incl. and children have kukharaki (it sounds more modern, who wants to find it in the Internet).

THE FIRST discussion "about the cook's children" began ... .. June 30, 1887 - when was adopted in Russia the decree banning the admission of the children of commoners to the gymnasium ("the decree on the cook's children").

On this occasion, Alexander III also left a resolution, with his own hand inscribed on the court testimony of a peasant woman who announced that her son wanted to study: "This is awful, man, but he also climbs into the gymnasium!".

Alexander III did not discuss the role of the state in higher education, professing a much simpler approach to the state of the country, almost 90 percent of the population did not even know how to read and write. "And thank God!" - he imposed a resolution on a report from the Tobolsk province, reporting low literacy in it.

By the way, the Russian students of the 19th century responded to the decree on June 30 with mass gatherings of solidarity with the “commoners” “deprived” of the right to education. Our "home-grown" "democrats" -liberals, of course, are against "cook's children" in government!

The history of the school uniform has attracted the attention of researchers more than once. However, in works devoted to the pre-revolutionary male gymnasium uniform, the main emphasis was placed on the study of its material, cut, the appearance of various elements, that is, everything that is included in the concept of "uniformology" 1. Only the regular author of Rodina, relying on some legislative documents and memoirs, touched upon the problem associated with various deviations from the established form. The researcher believes that such manifestations were due to "daring" and "force", romantic moods of young people or financial difficulties of their parents. However, the surviving sources say that in the second half of the 19th century. the deliberate violation of uniform by high school students became widespread. This "epidemic" was discussed by officials of the Ministry of Public Education at various levels and qualified as a serious violation of the disciplinary regime. Using the example of St. Petersburg gymnasiums, we will try to figure out what caused such misconduct and what kind of crisis phenomena in school they testified.

To look after the pupils

From the very beginning, the introduction of mandatory uniforms was motivated not only by the need to form in young people a sense of belonging to a certain corporation, respect for the uniform, but also by the solution of a completely utilitarian task - "facilitating supervision" of pupils 2. This "supervision" has become especially relevant since the 1830s, when several male state gymnasiums appeared simultaneously in St. Petersburg for the first time, and students could be identified on the street by the color of the edging on their headdresses. This tradition continued until the mid-1860s: the First Gymnasium was assigned a red edging, the Second - white, the Third - blue, the Fourth - green, the Fifth - orange, the Sixth - crimson, the Seventh - black 3. Nevertheless, in the first half of the XIX century. there has not yet been a clear set of guidelines on how pupils should be disciplined in appearance outside of their schools. The only thing that was paid close attention to was the constant wearing of uniforms, cleanliness and tidiness, as well as the display of "due respect" not only to members of the imperial family, but also to "all generals, staff officers, chiefs and colonels." By "due respect" was meant the obligatory removal of the cap when meeting with the mentioned persons. This requirement, by the way, meant that the students were aware of the corresponding insignia and, of course, the unmistakable "recognition" of the representatives of the ruling dynasty in the face. For ignoring him, the student could be arrested and sent to the guardhouse 5.

In the late 1830s - early 1840s. directors of St. Petersburg gymnasiums began to publish special guidelines for parents, which, in particular, contained information of a regulatory nature regarding the appearance of students 6. A high school student who came to school from home "in disarray" was sent back as punishment 7. Pupils were given annual tickets, which they always had to carry with them. On their reverse side, rules of conduct began to be prescribed, which so far were quite lapidary, but included a clause on the need to have "decently cut" and combed hair, always be in uniform, buttoned up with all buttons, as well as the traditional requirement to take off the cap before imperial persons and superiors. These rules were intensively hammered into the heads of the gymnasium students: every Saturday before they were dismissed home they were collected and the corresponding instructions were read aloud.

On October 7, 1850, a circular of the trustee of the St. Petersburg educational district was issued, according to which the directors, inspectors and class supervisors of the gymnasiums had to "strictly monitor the observance of the uniform by the pupils always and everywhere." However, no special mechanisms for controlling the appearance of students have yet been developed, so the latter periodically strove to appear in public places in a particular dress. Even a very strict punishment for such an offense, namely imprisonment in a punishment cell for bread and water, did not stop the high school students. In general, it was believed that gymnasiums, as educational and not educational institutions, should not control the pastime of students in their free time, because it is the direct responsibility of their parents or guardians. As for disciplinary offenses related to appearance, at this stage, they primarily meant sloppiness, manifested in the absence of a neat haircut, wearing a tattered overcoat or a crumpled cap 10.

"They are not allowed anywhere in the gymnasium uniform"

The situation began to change significantly in the early 1860s. From parents, some governors of provinces and leaders of the nobility, the ministry received complaints about the lack of supervision over the behavior of schoolchildren in public places, which led, among other things, to the fact that they did not observe "uniforms in dress and decency in circulation." On September 13, 1864, a new circular of the trustee appeared "On the non-admission of high school students to public places." The district authorities were very concerned that "pupils of gymnasiums visit hotels, coffee shops, where public dance evenings are allowed, some festivities, of which a distinctive feature is outrage, and in St. Petersburg there is also a Passage in the evenings." From the text of the circular it is clear that by this time the police were taking part in the supervision of the students, who did not allow them to join the amusements of adults. It was in order to avoid these restrictions and to get inaccessible pleasures that high school students violated one of the most important disciplinary rules and appeared on the streets of the city, dressed in a particular dress, in which they were often helped ... by their parents. This small detail suggests that many fathers and mothers did not approve of school bans on their sons' leisure time. For "deceptions of this kind" the trustee threatened to be fired from the gymnasium 12.

At the beginning of the reign of Alexander II, another reason for the deviations of schoolchildren from the established uniform appeared. The fact is that during this period there was a real leapfrog with uniforms, including with a gymnasium dress 13. For a short period of time (1850-1860s) it changed three times. Apparently, the parents simply did not keep up with these changes or did not want to spend extra money. So, in the 1865/66 academic year, the time allotted for the wearing of the old gymnasium uniform expired. However, many continued to wear it, and according to the trustee, it was not at all "shabby", which it should have been after two years (therefore, for some reason, it continued to be ordered by the tailor again), and also mixed the old uniform with the new or a uniform dress with a particular. As a result, a picture was observed when there were blue buttonholes on the coat, and red on the coat, with a uniform dress - a particular hat, etc. 14

In the 1870s. there was an even greater tightening of supervision over pupils outside the walls of educational institutions. Obviously, the Ministry of Public Education tried to establish total control over the free time and private life of students 15. The tougher, more petty, and intolerable this supervision became, the more diligently and sophisticated the schoolboys tried to bypass it. In May 1879, in St. Petersburg, two meetings of directors of gymnasiums, pro-gymnasiums and real schools were held in St. Petersburg with the district trustee. They, in particular, noted the increased complexity of the supervision of pupils. Teachers believed that it was not least caused by changes in uniforms established by the gymnasium charter of 1864. This document replaced the traditional school caps with multi-colored edging on caps with "silver emblems". The latter were an abbreviation consisting of the number and the name of the educational institution framed by laurel branches. To hide their belonging to a gymnasium or a real school and to avoid punishment, students began to resort to various tricks. Some swiftly turned away from adults, whom they suspected of some bosses in order to hide this sign, others specially ordered small-sized badges, consisting only of twigs without letters, or even removed them from their hats 16. Some senior pupils, at their own peril and risk, put on student uniforms (possibly borrowed from older brothers or acquaintances), explaining their behavior by the fact that "they are not allowed to go anywhere in gymnasium uniforms." In addition, adult students avoided wearing schoolbags on their backs, as this gave them a "childish" look. Petersburg teachers asked to abolish at least this disciplinary requirement for pupils of the "upper" (that is, 5th - 8th) grades, referring to the example of foreign educational institutions and to the "dubious" hygienic benefits of school bags 18. But the ministry stood its ground and was not going to make any disciplinary indulgences.

"School revolution"

By the beginning of the XX century. the formed system of extracurricular supervision (constant and "sudden" duty of teachers on the streets, in city gardens and parks, theaters and other places of public amusement) began to fail. It was no longer only the students and their parents who were burdened by it. It aroused criticism from many teachers, who saw in the extracurricular duties and "catching" schoolchildren who violate the established rules, not a pedagogical, but a police measure. It is no accident that during the events of the "school revolution" of 1905-1907. one of the requirements was the complete elimination of the supervision system and the mandatory wearing of uniforms outside classes. An additional argument was the fact that the student's uniform, along with the student's, became in the fall of 1905 a kind of "black mark". Cases of attacks on high school students by soldiers, shopkeepers and other "hooligan elements" have become more frequent. On November 17, 1905, the sovereign's permission to abolish the obligatory wearing of uniforms for students of secondary educational institutions followed. However, this concession was temporary. Once the revolution was over, all disciplinary norms gradually returned to normal.

Thus, from the very beginning of its appearance, uniforms were not only a tool for disciplining high school students within the school walls, but also a means of extracurricular control over their behavior. She has always labeled "student", and therefore incomplete in comparison with adults, the position of its owners. In the first half of the XIX century. the main reasons for disciplinary violations of pupils concerning appearance were, first of all, their carelessness and inattention. However, in the future, with the tightening of supervision, deviations from the rules acquired a massive, deliberate and in some cases openly protesting character.

* The study was supported by a grant from the Russian Humanitarian Science Foundation, the project "Disciplinary experience of the Russian pre-revolutionary school: theory and practice" N 15-06-10078.

1. Khoroshilova O.A. "Blue beef", "tonnyags" and "cornets". Form of gymnasium students of imperial Russia // Theory of fashion. Clothing. Body. Culture. 2012. No. 26; Khoroshilova O.A. Costume and fashion of the Russian Empire. The era of Nicholas II. M., 2013; Popov S.A. Uniform of students and pupils of pre-reform Russia. M., 2016.
2. RGIA. F. 733. Op. 20.D. 74.L. 7-8.
3. Rules for pupils of gymnasiums and gymnasiums of the St. Petersburg educational district. SPb., 1866. є 19.
4. TsGIA SPb. F. 174. Op. 1.D. 66.L. 3ob; D. 299.L. 17, 22ob-23.
5. Collection of orders for the Ministry of Public Education. SPb., 1866. T. 2. N 31; TsGIA SPb. F. 139. Op. 1.D. 4434. L. 1-1ob; F. 174. Op. 1.D. 344.
6. Postels AF A guide for parents who want to send their children to the 2nd St. Petersburg gymnasium. SPb., 1839; Information necessary for those wishing to place their children in the first St. Petersburg gymnasium. SPb., 1848.
7. Postels AF Decree. op. є 19.
8. TsGIA SPb. F. 174. Op. 1.D. 1809.L. 2ob, 4, 13.
9. TsGIA SPb. F. 114. Op. 1.D. 1446.L. 5.
10. TsGIA SPb. F. 174. Op. 1.D. 1809.L. 13ob.
11. TsGIA SPb. F. 139. Op. 1.D. 6274.L. 1.
12. Kryukovskaya A. Alphabetical collection of decrees and orders for the St. Petersburg educational district for 1858 - 1876, extracted from the circulars published by the district. SPb., 1877. N 28.
13. Khoroshilova O.A. "Blue beef" ... S. 15-16.
14. Kryukovskaya A. Alphabetical collection of resolutions and orders for the St. Petersburg educational district for 1858 - 1876, extracted from the circulars published by the district. SPb., 1877.S. 44-45.
15. Rules on penalties for pupils of gymnasiums and gymnasiums of the department of the Ministry of Public Education. May 4, 1874 // Collection of current rules and orders of the Ministry of Public Education on penalties from pupils of gymnasiums and real schools. Odessa, 1913.
16. TsGIA SPb. F. 139. Op. 1.D. 6934.L. 13ob; F. 136. Op. 2.D.632.Sheet 3 - 5.
17. TsGIA SPb. F. 439. Op. 1.D. 5863.L. 10.
18. TsGIA SPb. F. 139. Op. 1.D. 6934.L. 17ob.-18ob.
19. Pashkova T.I. "Death to bureaucracy!" Petersburg gymnasium students on school reform // Rodina. 2011. N 12.S. 139.

In June, news spread around the city, leaving no one indifferent. The gymnasium is being closed! Everyone was indignant. Even those who never knew about the existence of such an educational institution in Elektrogorsk. What happened? Who got in the way of our gymnasium? Let's try to figure it out.

The concept of "gymnasium" came from pre-revolutionary Russia. The only goal of these educational institutions at that time was to prepare for the subsequent admission to the gymnasium.

In the early nineties of the last century, progymnasiums are experiencing their rebirth. They were significantly renewed, the structure and essence of the work changed. The official definition of the gymnasium today sounds like this: "An educational institution for children of preschool and primary school age with the priority implementation of one or more areas of development of pupils and students." The status of a gymnasium is assigned officially and only after appropriate attestation and accreditation.

Progymnasium - state educational institution. All educational services are provided free of charge.

In Elektrogorsk, the gymnasium began to work in 1998: until 2003 as "School-kindergarten No. 1", since January 2003, having received state accreditation, as "Pro-gymnasium No. 1". The educational institution enjoys great love from the parents of students. And it was the parents who were the first to sound the alarm when they learned that the gymnasium could be closed. Thanks to their perseverance, a working commission was created to address the issues of the functioning of the MOU "Progymnasium No. 1", which included representatives of the city administration, the director of the gymnasium and the parents of students.

Representatives of the parental initiative group shared with us their opinion about the current events.

Kharkiv Hope:

We were not provided with any documents on the closure of the gymnasium. Toptygina Svetlana Sergeevna telephoned the director of the gymnasium Tatiana Viktorovna Minyaytseva, Tatiana Viktorovna informed the teachers, the teachers informed us, the parents. We all got together, and our common opinion is: we do not want the gymnasium to be closed. We are for the progymnasium to remain exactly in the form in which it was.

What do I like about the gymnasium? I like the learning system itself. Here is an individual approach to each child. For example, if a child reads poorly, he is given one literature, if well, another. We, parents, buy workbooks for children: everything is in pictures, accessible, intelligible. Children are developed and disclosed here. And the child is actively involved in the educational process. I love that there are 10 more extra clubs in the afternoon.

All teachers and educators have a very high level of education and training. The working hours of the gymnasium are from 8-00 to 18-00, which is very important for us, parents, since many work in other cities and do not have the opportunity to take their children home early. Children have three meals a day, there is a quiet hour in the first grade. It's a pity to lose this.

Alexey Prokhorov:

We, the parents, asked the city administration questions about financing. We were told that if the gymnasium was closed and the children were transferred to a general education school, the administration would win a maximum of 2 million rubles. It turns out that the issue with finances is not as acute as they say.

Look: 13 million rubles. - total expense "garden-progymnasium". If the gymnasium is closed, the savings will amount to about 2 million rubles. These are the costs for teachers, since we pay for the costs of feeding the children ourselves. Utility bills, kitchen work, transport, electricity - all numbers will remain the same. The total area of \u200b\u200bthe building will not decrease from the closure of the gymnasium; it will also need to be heated, illuminated, etc.

RUB 2 million - this is not so much money even for such a small town like ours. In order for there to be some kind of significant savings in finances, it is necessary to close the entire gymnasium, together with the kindergarten.

Therefore, it makes sense to close only the school part of the gymnasium, to lose such an educational institution, we, parents, do not see. I do not think that the closure of children's institutions will paint the face of our city leaders.

Read the continuation on the 3rd page

Gymnasium: Can't Leave Close?

(continued, beginning on the 1st page)

13 July, a regular meeting of the working commission took place. From the protocol: “Chairman of the Education Committee of the city of Elektrogorsk, Toptygina S.S. announced the decision of the administration of Elektrogorsk to divide the gymnasium into a kindergarten and a school. At the same time, the school territorially remains in the premises of the gymnasium number 1, but the classes are legally related to the lyceum of Mr.Electrogorsk by order of the head of Elektrogorsk. At the same time, the groups of the kindergarten Progymnasium No. 1 are transferred to another kindergarten (a specific institution has not yet been determined) with the probable further separation into an independent kindergarten (subject to additional enrollment in the preparatory group).

In order to avoid the temptation to interpret this decision according to their own understanding, they turned for a comment to S.S. Toptygina.

S.S. Toptygina refused to answer questions.

Well, you will have to analyze what you have heard, seen and read on your own.

1. Orally, without providing official documents, the director of the gymnasium was informed about the closure of the institution. Educators have received notice of layoffs since September 1. Conclusion: unlawful actions were taken to close the institution without publicity.

2. Unexpectedly for high officials, the parents managed to organize themselves and demanded an explanation. We received an answer - the budget for next year lacks 13 million rubles, which are necessary to finance the gymnasium. The crisis!

Conclusion: the answer is false. In order not to include in the 2010 budget funds for financing the pro-gymnasium, the Ministry of Finance of the Moscow Region needs good reasons. There are no such indications from above. That is, there are no official documents at the regional or federal level that cancel funding for institutions of this type. Consequently, to save 13 million rubles. on children - initiative from below, i.e. from the head of the city. What for?

Assumption: to have time by autumn (when the budget of the region for 2010 is finally drawn up) to report on the reduction of expenses, which today the leadership of the region welcomes - a crisis!

3. Parents demand an appointment with the head of the city. ON. The skorokhod does not accept them. The parents insist, demand a financial report on the maintenance of the gymnasium, and invite a representative of the Ombudsman in the Moscow Region to the city. The arrival of the representative forces the responsible officials of the administration to accept the parents and announce the data on the costs of the institution. It turned out that 13 million rubles. - the costs of maintaining the entire institution together with the kindergarten. The school "pulls" a maximum of 2 million rubles. Confusion. The administration is taking a time out.

Conclusion: the deception is revealed, we must look for other ways.

On one of the hot August days of 1882, a thin red-haired young man, Vasily Vasilyevich Rozanov, descended on the platform of the Bryansk station of the Oryol-Vitebsk railway. Twenty-six-year-old Rozanov had just finished a full course of sciences in the Faculty of History and Philology at the Imperial Moscow University and on August 1, 1882, he was sent to teach history and geography at the Bryansk men's gymnasium. Vasily Vasilyevich will be approved by the university council only on September 18 in the degree of the candidate, which was relying on the successful completion of the course.

Years will pass, and the greatest Russian philosophers and writers will utter the loudest words to the address of the former timid candidate-philologist and will give him the very first places in the pantheon of Russian and world culture. The fact is that Rozanov will eventually turn into a great Russian philosopher, or, as one of my institute teacher said, into the most Russian of the great philosophers ... “V.V. Rozanov, Russian Nietzsche,” wrote the main man of Russian Symbolism, Dmitry Sergeevich Merezhkovsky ... - I know that such a comparison will surprise many; but ... this thinker, with all his weaknesses, in other insights is just as brilliant as Nietzsche, and perhaps even more than Nietzsche, native, primordial ... "

“… Rozanov is dear to us… with his secret, his one-of-a-kind, dark and passionate love songs,” Aleksandr Blok sang along to Merezhkovsky, implying Rozanov's unchanging passion for the metaphysics of sex.

And in 1973, when Rozanov was not published in the Council of Deputies and they were not going to publish, our unforgettable almost countryman (he served for some time as a librarian in the technical library on the 1st Bryansk) Venichka - Venedikt Vasilyevich Erofeev - wrote about him: “This vile, poisonous fanatic, this toxic old man, he - no, he did not give me a complete remedy for moral infirmities - but saved my honor and breath (no more, no less: honor and breath). All thirty-six of his works, from the puffiest to the smallest, pierced my soul and now stick out in it, like three dozen arrows stick out in the belly of Saint Sebastian ... "

About Bryansk gymnasiums

And now, having already earned at least part of such an exceptional literary reputation, Vasily Vasilyevich Rozanov suddenly recalled his long-time visit to Bryansk and the impressions of his first job: “I remember the evening of a hot summer day, when, a permanent resident of either the capital or a large provincial city, I for the first time entered the county town of our black earth strip.<…> Of course, the station is five miles from the city ... Exhausted Vanya (the cabbies were then called "Vanka" - author's note) trudged through the dust. Gardens flashed, but the street stretched. We entered the town. And it became so sweet to me when, in the golden rays of the sun, I saw smart, well-dressed ladies stretching along the sidewalk from the church, white, small and beautiful, and looking at my Vanya and me with extreme curiosity and not without amazement. “How can you not look at me when I am a student and go to educate them ...” The path from the station to the Bryansk center is quite recognizable for our contemporary. For example, the "white, small and beautiful" church that met Rozanov at the entrance to Bryansk is the Tikhvin church that still exists today.

The house on Moskovskaya Street, to which the exhausted Rozanov Vanya was heading, is still intact. The current address of the house is st. Kalinin, 91a. It was here, on the second floor, that the Bryansk men's gymnasium was located. In the gymnasiums, they took the course of the first four gymnasium classes, and then went to finish their studies in those cities where there were full gymnasiums. The Bryansk men's gymnasium, in which Vasily Vasilyevich Rozanov was to serve, was established on December 7, 1876 and began its work on July 1, 1877. For the maintenance of the gymnasium, the Bryansk city society and the Bryansk district zemstvo were annually allocated 3 thousand rubles, to which the State Treasury added 8 550 more.

Contemporaries were not very happy with the conditions under which the students of the Bryansk gymnasium acquire knowledge: “... The classes are dissatisfied with spaciousness ... teaching in one class is clearly audible in another,” and under the classes there was generally a drinking establishment. And in the district of such establishments - from cognac to porter - there were more than enough ... Bryansk residents were not satisfied with the quality of knowledge released in the gymnasium: “In the crowd of Bryansk residents on the market, for example, speech quickly passed“ to existing educational institutions and angrily fell upon the gymnasium: "It's better to have a city school" - it is really overflowing with students. "But what is better: they don't teach any skill there?" ...

However, when Rozanov arrived in Bryansk, the order in the gymnasium was still the same. Vasily Vasilyevich recalled on the pages of his book "The Twilight of Enlightenment", published in St. Petersburg in 1899: "The licentiousness reached ... to the point that the teacher of new languages, for example, only attended the gymnasium on the 20th day of each month (on the 20th of each month he was paid to employees in imperial Russia salary. - Author's note) and the students, laughing, told him this in the lesson in the face, and the boss himself took the math teacher from the lesson to play checkers, leaving the class to the supervisor, and also not hiding from the students why it was taken from them teacher. It is not surprising that, with rare exceptions, the students who moved from this gymnasium to the neighboring full gymnasiums to finish the course were no longer able to finish the course there. "

Nevertheless, already in August 1882, Rozanov managed to find himself a fairly decent teaching load in Bryansk. In addition to the history and geography that was originally due to him, on August 17, he received a watch for the vacant position of the second teacher of ancient languages \u200b\u200b- and began to teach Latin in the 1st grade of the male gymnasium. On August 23, he asks the teachers' council to allow him to teach geography in the women's gymnasium, which Rozanov was also not denied. Later he also read a story to 3rd grade students.

The Bryansk women's gymnasium, opened in 1881, was relatively close to the men's gymnasium. Its building has also survived, its current address is Kalinin, 84. For many years there was a vocational school № 5. A young part-time worker, thus, from time to time "during a five-minute break had to go from one institution to another about half a mile away." In the end, Vasily Vasilyevich turned out to be, judging by the number of teaching hours, the most demanded of the gymnasium teachers in Bryansk ... By the beginning of 1884, lessons and class leadership in the male gymnasium brought Rozanov an annual income of 1,410 rubles, and the female gymnasium gave about 200 rubles.

Rozanov, apparently, found a common language with colleagues at school. In his spiritual testament, written already in 1899 in St. Petersburg, Vasily Vasilyevich, as his comrades, "especially knowledgeable" in his personal life, recalls fellow philologists: Ivan Ignatievich Penkin, who became the inspector (otherwise the director) of the Bryansk gymnasium by 1885, the calligraphy teacher Vasily Nikolayevich Nikolaev (simple, according to Rozanov, kind and a non-judgmental person whose daughter Tatiana was baptized by Vasily Vasilyevich) and Russian language teacher Demyan Ivanovich Plyutichevsky.

In addition, it seems that good relations first developed between Rozanov and the first teacher of ancient languages \u200b\u200bin the Bryansk male gymnasium, Sergei Ivanovich Sarkisov. Sergei Ivanovich, according to local historians, suggested to Rozanov the idea to publish the first book at his own expense. This is exactly how in 1884 Sarkisov published his "Grammar of the Armenian Language".

However, over time, relations with Sarkisov could deteriorate. The fact is that the first wife of Rozanov, who left Vasily Vasilyevich in 1887, preferred Sarkisov over her husband as a writer and interlocutor, and even Vasily Ilyich Smirnov, the acting accountant of the Bryansk men's gymnasium, with whom she often talked about her Spanish studies. history. “I never could hear without pain how, vanity in front of some Smirnovs or Sarkisovs, who barely remember what the Middle Ages were, you began to talk about your occupations by Blanca of Castile, which they had never heard of ...” - wrote irritated wife Rozanov in 1890.

With Ivan Ignatievich Penkin, Rozanov later served in the Elets gymnasium, and dedicated lines full of sympathy to him in his Literary Exiles.

I. I. Penkin began his school ministry back in 1873 and played an important role in the life of Bryansk in the 1880s. A deeply religious person, Orthodox, who preserved the customs of Moscow Russia in his everyday life - for example, “the custom that strictly forbade a father to take his child in his first year of life” - Ivan Ignatievich opened in 1888 the first parish school in Bryansk (not school). This school was organized at the Church of the Assumption, the school building also survived, it now houses the Vasilich cafe at the very beginning of Uritsky Street (former Uspenskaya Street), at the intersection with Kalinin Street (formerly Moscow) ...

I.I.Penkin's career took shape in the end: in 1903 he received the rank of general of the actual state councilor, was awarded the orders of St. Anna 2nd, St. Vladimir 3rd and St. Stanislav 1st degrees, to 1917 headed the Oryol Alekseevskaya gymnasium, the pedagogical council of the Oryol Nikolayevskaya women's gymnasium, was an indispensable member of the Society for Assisting the Poor Pupils of the same Nikolaevskaya Women's Gymnasium, an honorary member of the Diocesan School Council, comrade (deputy) chairman of the Orthodox Peter and Paul Brotherhood ...

"Bad teacher"

But Rozanov did not like the teaching, he considered himself a nasty teacher and called on his superiors to witness this: "Count Kapnist could not but know from the audit of the Bryansk gymnasium ... that I am a very bad teacher ..."

Many of his students would also agree with Vasily Vasilyevich, especially those who came into contact with him after Bryansk. For example, the famous writer Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin, whom Rozanov expelled from the 4th grade of the Elets gymnasium, in the novel "Kashcheev's Chain" wrote a completely murderous portrait of an unloved teacher, he even recalled the contemptuous nickname given to Rozanov by his students: "The next day, as always, very strange, came to the Goat class; his whole face was even pink, with red hair sticking out in different directions, his eyes were small, green and sharp, his teeth were completely black and splashed with saliva far away, the leg was always behind the leg, and the tip of the lower leg trembled, the pulpit trembled under it, under the pulpit the floorboard is shaking. " And in his diary, the same Prishvin says about Rozanov the teacher: “He is clearly sick in his appearance, unjust, arouses disgust in the pupils of the junior grades, but from the senior grades, from the eighth graders ... childish disgust for the physical Rozanov. "

In his later works Rozanov himself recalled from time to time some of his Bryansk students, at least with sympathy: “… Arkady Lyubomudrov was in the Bryansk gymnasium. Poor little boy - he was from a ruined noble family - God knows where, he fell in love with everything coming from the ancient world, every line, every thing; it seems that he became attached to him with some kind of artistic love; Near-sighted almost to the point of blindness, he reread everything about him that he could, that he could get in a small county town; I was a history teacher there, and once, I remember, I became convinced that he knew more clearly some detail in the development of the Greek tragedy than I do; to this day I cannot forget his living, sparkling with imagination and wit, stories and arguments, of course childish, about his school affairs. At the same time, he was surprisingly spiritually graceful, meek, delicate. Of course he was kicked out. "

Another Bryansk pedagogical experience can be considered Rozanov's undoubted success. The fact is that his student in the Bryansk women's gymnasium was a descendant of an ancient Lithuanian family, Princess Vera Ignatievna Gedroyts (1876 -1932). Vera Ignatievna grew up in the village of Slobodishche, Bryansk district, Oryol province, on the estate of her father, the collegiate registrar, Prince Ignatius Ignatievich Gedroyts. Prince Ignatius Ignatievich was a notable public figure in the Bryansk region: a magistrate in Dyatkovo, Foshnyanskaya and Lyubokhonskaya volosts, chairman of the county congress of justices of the peace, a vowel of the Bryansk district zemstvo, etc.

So, over time, Princess Vera Gedroyts became almost the first Russian woman surgeon, doctor of medicine. She graduated from the University of Lausanne, passed the exam at the Imperial Moscow University, served as the chief surgeon of the Maltsov factories hospitals, and in 1909 received the position of an intern at the Tsarskoye Selo Palace Hospital. Here, during the First World War, Vera Ignatievna taught Empress Alexandra Feodorovna and her daughters the art of healing and caring for the wounded. In addition, Princess Gedroyts wrote poetry and prose, considered herself a student of Nikolai Gumilyov ... In the first days after being transferred to Tsarskoe Selo, on August 6, 1909, Vera Ignatievna wrote to Rozanov, who was then living in St. Petersburg: “Dear Vasily Vasilyevich. Meeting with your articles that fascinate me, I wanted to renew my acquaintance with you, if only you are the same teacher of the Bryansk women's gymnasium, about which I, your student, have the brightest memory. Now I am a doctor, I am moving to live in Tsarskoe Selo as a surgeon at the Tsarskoye Selo court hospital and would be very glad to see my unforgettable teacher ... "

The government, in its assessment of Rozanov's teaching work, was, perhaps, closer to Princess Gedroyc. On January 31, 1887, Vasily Vasilyevich Rozanov, the teacher of history and geography of the Bryansk progymnasium, was awarded the Order of St. Stanislav 3rd degree. Rozanov received the medal badge and diploma No. 1024 on April 28, 1887.

Bryansk gamblers and "tea ladies"

What kind of city was it - the district Bryansk of the 1880s, in which Vasily Vasilyevich Rozanov spent, perhaps, the most painful years of his life, where he earned a nervous tic, rotten teeth and the habits of a school sadist?

“The city was terribly poor and just as lazy,” Rozanov wrote about Bryansk. - The city is ancient, one of the most ancient in Russia, but in which at this point in time there is almost one philistine, that is, householders, and visitors, that is, officials and various businessmen, "colonists". It was divided into two bands: the old philistinism, the immemorial local grandfather, illiterate and illiterate, and, so to speak, people of the American type, strangers, educators who treated this philistinism, taught, managed it, bought food and tobacco from him in the shops , they rented apartments from him and through all this they scattered in his mass a beneficent salary, on which, having received the little things in their hands, these philistines bought everything in the provincial city and brought back to them again as food for the Americans. In this circuit between the treasury and the shop was the local old, native economic life. People rubbed against each other. And the dust from this friction fell in the form of manna from heaven on the inhabitants. “God has nourished - no one has seen,” as we say, when they leave for dinner. There were also large, even huge enterprises. Residents or bourgeois looked at them as a monster next to them, as at enormous wealth and enormous power, and wisdom, and science, but brought "from overseas" and placed near them without their knowledge and demand, without their need and interest, except curiosity ... In general, the town did not live together, crumbly life. He lived lazily, idly. Nobody cared about anyone. He lived freely and in this sense joyfully. Poor. I think most of our small towns are the same. There were about sixteen thousand inhabitants in it. "

Of the Bryansk attractions, few were remembered by Rozanov - for strange, to tell the truth, reasons. For example, “the best church, where the disciples were“ brought ”to the all-night vigil and the liturgy," remained in the memory because “it was hardly attended by the worshipers (the people); to such an extent unconsciously everyone felt that the atmosphere brought into the temple by the 'students' was in disharmony with the fact that in the temple they were used to looking for and finding worshipers! " And Vasily Vasilyevich once recalled a fire in the Bryansk police station: “... at the fire (in Bryansk) one retired policeman said:“ Sorry, what kind of bugs! ”- and pointed to his finger? joint. I even shuddered. " Rozanov wanted to feed these bugs to the revolutionaries "Sonya Perovskaya and Vera Figner" ...

In the eyes of Rozanov, the main male entertainment in Bryansk in the 1880s was a card game, during which, in addition, the city gossip quickly diverged: “The inhabitants ... played cards. This I later learned, absorbed into the life of the town. Everyone played - strong, bright, risky, played and lost and won ... ”. And one more thing: “Live 'in Argos' in the nineteenth century ... So I survived for five years in Bryansk ...“ Why did you not go off worms then: you would have taken a remise ”. - "So came the tambourines, king and queen?" - "And they heard that the married woman got along with the postmaster." - "And that young lady is too old." - "Will there be an audit?" - “No, there will be no revision” ...

Bryansk women had their own entertainment. “The women constantly drank tea,” Rozanov recalled. - This tea appeared in the middle of the day, in the morning, in the evening, and again whenever someone came to visit. And they constantly visited each other with whole families, with children, the very young ... "

"Guest workers" of the 1880s

However, the main sensation in Bryansk in the 1880s was ... Jews. Later Rozanov would devote many pages to this ancient Eastern people in his works ... But now he simply joined the general Bryansk surprise.

The fact is that the free residence of Jews in Bryansk was prohibited. The Pale of Settlement, beyond which this residence was allowed, passed beyond the Vygonichi, where the Mglinsky district of the Chernigov province began. Legal rabbis (there were also secret ones), medical Jews, Jews who wanted to establish factories and plants, etc., had the right to cross the Pale of Settlement and freely settle throughout Russia, including in Bryansk. Thus, in Bryansk, according to the 1860 census, there were only 35 Jews.

A year before Rozanov's arrival in Bryansk, according to the one-day census on September 2, 1881, 376 souls of both sexes were counted in Bryansk. And this is only legally living. But how many cases of passage through the Pale of Settlement were carried out on forged documents. And there were enough illegal migrants.

And so the city authorities began to sound the alarm, as local residents could not withstand the competition with the "guest workers" - and found themselves on the sidelines of life. Rozanov wrote in The Twilight of Enlightenment (1899) about Bryansk: “In the same town of the Oryol province, near the famous Bryansk steel works and not far from the Maltsevsky factory district ... I had to hear a conversation in a crowd of townspeople:“ Whenever there are Jews, we would have walked without boots. " And in fact, all the crafts in this town were already captured or captured by the Jews. Hat-makers, tailors, furriers, not to mention the watchmakers, who seem to be Jews throughout Russia - everything was in the hands or passed into the hands of Jews. " Elsewhere, Rozanov adds that in Bryansk "various accessories of the funeral procession, among other things, crosses, are made by Jewish artisans." Finally, Vasily Vasilyevich summed up the result, unhappy for Bryansk: “In general, in my time, the town tilted sideways with its Russian side, and straightened up with its Jewish side. The whole street was made up of Jewish hats, all the binders in the city were Jews, and for some reason there were awful many Jews "making vinegar" ... "

Rozanov, however, paid attention to other things. At first, these were observations, let's say, aesthetic and everyday ones, which gradually acquired a religious and philosophical subtext: “In Bryansk, I saw many Jews in the baths (on Thursdays they steam up terribly) - and they are all“ something different ”. In this form, they are good, recognized, the world needs. I think they are needed. We must not forget that their Bible, of course, warmed the world - this terrible, cold Greco-Roman world, and especially the Roman ... "

However, Rozanov also had pedagogical impressions of the Bryansk Jews: “... I observed stony silence or extreme brevity in some extremely gentle Jewish boys of the first and second grade when I was a teacher in the Bryansk gymnasium. There is always an extremely intelligent gaze. " Rozanov, just in case, was not "gay" ...

First wife and first book

Rozanov did not come to Bryansk alone: \u200b\u200bwith him was his first wife, the forty-two-year-old bitch Apollinaria Prokofievna Suslova - and the manuscript of his first book, the philosophical treatise On Understanding. Suslova did not like the book On Understanding, but more on that later.

Apollinaria Prokofievna, the daughter of the rich former serf of the counts Sheremetevs, was brought up already as a "noble", in a Moscow private boarding house on Tverskaya Street. This lady left a definite mark in Russian literature. In a sense, Bryansk could be proud that Dostoevsky's own mistress lived here for four years, who took the classic away from the bed of his dying first wife - and left for the sake of some Spanish student, who had already fled from Suslova out of fright. True, the millionaire parent financed his daughter's eccentricities well. Suslova could, on her father's scholarship, support Dostoevsky, who had lost a lot on roulette, and a windy Spanish macho. Fyodor Mikhailovich, after "relations" with Apollinaria, created a whole gallery of chatty heroines, as they say, "with cockroaches in their heads", in each of which it is easy to find a piece of Suslova.

Suslova herself showed Dostoevsky's only letter addressed to her to any acquaintance, as if it were some order. “Draped in love for Dostoevsky,” Rozanov would say later.

In her youth, Apollinaria Prokofievna walked with a haircut and earned the nickname "vice nihilist" in the Herzen family, during the Rozanov period Suslova's views noticeably improved and she became a "French legitimist", "waiting for the Bourbons to triumph in France." Finally, in her old age, Apollinaria was the assistant to the chairman of the Sevastopol branch of the Black Hundred Union of the Russian People. Our heroine has done, thus, a full arc from extreme left to extreme right political views. However, poor Rozanov was apparently no longer up to the political views of his wife.

The future spouses met at the end of 1878. Rozanov was then 22, Suslova - 38. On November 12, 1880, they were married in Moscow by a priest of the 4th Nesvizh grenadier regiment. Before the wedding, one of the best men, an honest Moscow student, told his friends: "Let's take Vaska away" (from the crown), but they did not dare ... Later, Rozanov's friend, theologian Ternavtsev, exclaimed: "The devil, not God, combined an eighteen-year-old boy with a forty-year-old woman!" ... Yes, with what a woman! Think! Dostoevsky's mistress! And that she got to the bottom of in due time. " And another friend Rozanovsky wrote: “It turned out something unimaginable, like the fact that he married Dostoevsky. It is difficult to imagine a more bookish, theoretical, idealistic marriage. "

The character of Rozanov's wife was terrible. She invented monstrous vices that allegedly seized the men close to her, faithfully believed these inventions, did not accept any objections - and told about the invented sins of relatives to everyone she met. Incest was a favorite topic of Suslova's inventions. The father, at whose expense the dreamer Pollinaria lived, wrote to Rozanov after her departure from Bryansk: “Satan and the enemy of the human race settled in my house; in my sixties I have no rest and am accused of the most shameful intentions that are attributed to me ... "

Rozanov, the very difference in age Suslova with which was still a scandal for Bryansk, his wife accused "in connection with one of the cousins" (in 1885, a certain Konstantin Vasilyevich Rozanov taught at the 1st Bryansk parish school - perhaps we are talking about a representative of his family). Dirt poured down the Bryansk living room streams. Rozanov recalled: “... My supposed mistress, having come to the gymnasium, in hysterics demanded the return of her letters, some words of which were cited by Suslova ... From all sides intervening friends and relatives demanded that I deal with my wife, remove her, that is, to the insane asylum ; that it is a crime; but it was just as impossible to deal with it as it was with a blizzard in the steppe; for freedom of action, she moved to Oryol "...

And against this background, the accusations against Rozanov, which Apollinaria generously shared with the Bryansk public at ordinary times, that, yes, her husband is a "vile libertine" and "married money" look completely innocent ... To emphasize the correctness of these words, Suslova, in defiance of Rozanov, who “walked in rags,” demonstrated her wealth, dressed up in silk dresses, handed out gifts to half of Bryansk, informed the whole city about each monetary subsidy received from her parents. “With the flour of your husband you satisfied your vanity, know this, remember, you always dragged me to visit and tried to collect guests at your place, turned on unusual lamps and a fiery coat,” Vasily Vasilyevich reproached her in 1890.

However, the elderly Rozanov's wife also had sexual deviations: “Hugging, actually touching herself — she was madly in love. She almost didn’t like to copulate, I despised the seed (“your dirt”), that I didn’t have children, I was very happy ”...

To his misfortune, Rozanov began in Moscow the philosophical book On Understanding. The experience of studying the nature, boundaries and internal structure of science as integral knowledge. " As a result, in Bryansk, he already had a tome of 737 pages. “… What is the idea of \u200b\u200bthis huge, albeit not perfect… work,” Rozanov himself wrote much later. - I looked at the primordial mind in a person, as a certain first (crystal-like, not amorphous) and as a living second potency; and deepening in the edge of it gave me the opportunity to see everything, to deduce everything that would once develop from it as a science, as a philosophy, but in general as a human understanding of the world.

I must say that Rozanov was very serious about his first book, written in Bryansk. Seven months before his death, on August 8, 1918, he wrote to one of his biographers: “In essence, it is impossible to understand anything in me, to understand in me, without having read and understood the first two chapters of 'On Understanding' ...

Probably, the book "On Understanding" is still waiting for its researcher. The opinions of specialists about it are the most opposite. For example, the great Russian philosopher Vladimir Sergeevich Soloviev (1853 -1900) told a friend that in On Understanding, “Rozanov, who had not read Hegel, with his own mind reached the point where Hegel reached. … It was easier to learn to read in German. " And another great Russian philosopher - and even the biographer of the previous one - Aleksey Fedorovich Losev (1893 -1988) said to his already acquaintance about Rozanov: “If you take and deduce into the theory what he thinks ... you would be horrified. Hegel and all this is sweet water in comparison with him "...

For five years Rozanov saved 25 rubles a month from Bryansk earnings until he saved 1037 rubles to publish 600 copies of his first book. Presumably, even now a rare wife will like such financial transactions of her husband. But Apollinaria Suslov, having sharpened his tongue at Dostoevsky, apparently destroyed the young philosopher as an author. "Suslova scoffed at him, saying that he was writing some stupid book, very insulting ..." wrote Rozanov's daughter, Tatiana. "... He is busy with idiotic work," said Suslova about the writing exercises of her young husband. She set on Vasily Vasilyevich the servants, "all acquaintances and colleagues", at the head of whom she climbed on the poor philosopher and disgraced him with "curses and humiliation." “Suslova was incredibly dirty in her speech,” Rozanov recalled about the manner of his first wife’s communication, “and“ pantaloons ”always flashed in her speech; knowing that it was some kind of illness she had, it was in the mud that I endlessly pitied her. "

“… I never said a simple 'fool' to her, with all the temper and irrepressibility in my word. They lived infinitely badly; painful, scandalous; I was writing then (in Bryansk) a book "On Understanding", and she was sure that my skirts were flashing before my eyes; several times, taking the manuscripts, I went to the hotel, ”continues Rozanov. We do not know in which of the Bryansk houses this uneasy couple rented an apartment. But it is not difficult to find out where the philosopher wrote a significant part of his first book. In one of his letters, Rozanov says which hotel he went to on his “sabbatical”: “I wrote the book, often leaving the torturer for the“ Dudin Hotel ”(Bryansk). I will lay out the leaves and write. Everything "On Understanding" is written with happiness. "

The hotel, which belonged to the Bryansk merchant of the 2nd guild Iosif Vasilyevich Dudin in the 1880s, occupied the second floor of a house that now stands at the corner of Kalinin and Fokin streets (during the time of Rozanov Moskovskaya and Komarevskaya - Komarovskaya). It is one of the oldest brick buildings in Bryansk and can be seen in Rob's first photograph of the city. Dralem in 1871. The gymnasiums in which Rozanov taught were very close.

Vasily Vasilyevich himself told in detail what he was doing at Dudin's hotel: “The book“ On Understanding ”737 pages) was written completely without corrections. Usually it happened like this: in the morning, in "lucidity," after taking a sip of tea, I opened the thick manuscript where I had finished yesterday. The sight of her and that "that's how much has already been done" brought me joy. It was this joy that I put on the needle of writing. Quickly tearing off a corner of a piece of paper, I chalked under my nose, and, as I was in the charm, chalked well. This lasted 15-20-30 minutes (no more) - the greatest tension of thought, imagination, "hope and goodness", until the soul feels tired. In this "intended" I have never corrected anything and there has never been a single crossed out word. Then (rest) I pulled up a thick notebook (in the format of a sheet, magnificent Riga paper) and copied beautifully, happily, calmly "accumulated wealth". This - that "wealth has increased" - again brought me to happiness, meanwhile, during the rewriting, my soul rested; and when the correspondence ended, the soul, as if fresh, again threw itself into the steam of inventions, "discoveries", "new thoughts", tones and overflows of feeling, also for 20 minutes, and all this again chalked up on a new corner of paper. This is how the book was written, in which, in this way, not a single word was crossed out "...

At some point, Suslova appeared and begged Rozanov to return home: “It seems that the whole city knew our scandals, and I consulted with everyone (that is, with loved ones) how to live better, what method of a“ married man ”; so, surely, we would have suffered to the grave ... "

The last scandal

But the denouement still came. Suslova had a friend in Moscow, Anna Osipovna Garkavi, married Goldovskaya. Anna Osipovna, in turn, had a stepson, a law student Onisim Borisovich Gol'dovsky. One summer 1886, Suslova invited Onisim Borisovich to stay in Bryansk. Here, on the one hand, Goldovsky became friends with Rozanov. Vasily Vasilyevich called Goldovsky his "spiritual son" and recalled that he "(gratuitously) corrected the whole ... book" On Understanding "and distributed it to shops on a commission."

And Goldovsky also fell in love with the daughter of the priest of the Bryansk Gorne-Nikolskaya Church, Alexandra Petrovna Popova, a student of the St. Petersburg Conservatory in piano, "the most beautiful and poetic Christian girl", marriage with which was impossible for the Jew Goldovsky.

But the mad Apollinaria laid eyes on Goldovsky. He was quite in her taste - both young, like Rozanov, and a southerner, like a Spaniard, to whom Suslova fled from Dostoevsky. Apollinaria finally left her husband alone with his book - and dragged herself in the company of young people "into the forest or in the field" or on "a huge boat trip to the Svensky Monastery" ... But the Bryansk fury did not meet with reciprocity from the Moscow guest - and began her usual song.

When Goldovsky left, she wrote to his mother a disgusting letter about the musical priest, that de Alexandra Petrovna "is one of those virgins who know how to love only in bed." This did not produce any effect, and Suslova saddled her favorite skate, the tales of incest. She told Goldovsky's father that Onisim allegedly had a relationship ... with his stepmother, that is, Suslov's girlfriend. Tactful dad Goldovsky did not even begin to upset his son and show him a letter with this muck.

And now, in a “wild rage” that revenge was not successful, Suslova stole Goldovsky's letter from Rozanov “where, regarding the university riots, he spoke ill of the beginning of the reign of Alexander III and sent the letter to Moscow, to the gendarme administration. Poor Goldovsky went to prison for several months. Suslova and that was not enough. She began to demand that Rozanov wrote to Gol'dovsky under her dictation "letters that were vile in content." He refused, but was forced to give Suslova a promise never to see Goldovsky.

However, when he was passing through Moscow, Rozanov could not resist and called Goldovsky to the hotel to find out how Muscovites bought the book "On Understanding". They bought, I must say, badly - 19 copies in three years ... An acquaintance of Nizhny Novgorod Suslova became an accidental witness of the meeting between Rozanov and Goldovsky. He told the vengeful wife about her husband's violation of the ban. “When, in turn, she went to visit her father in Nizhny, she wrote me a frantic letter from Moscow (and I accompanied her to the station, and in general she left peacefully) so that I could send her things, etc. I never saw her again, ”Rozanov recalled.

In the personal file of Rozanov, stored in the State Archives of the Bryansk Region, there is a petition addressed to the inspector of the Bryansk gymnasium I. I. Penkin with a request to certify a ticket "for travel and residence in all cities of the Russian Empire", which Rozanov, according to the custom of the 19th century, issued to his wife on May 18 1887 From another document we learn that on June 30, 1887 Rozanov was with his father-in-law, the merchant Procopius Suslov, in Nizhny Novgorod. Probably, the gap between the spouses occurred at the turn of May-June 1887, and Rozanov traveled to Nizhny to return his wife.

Vasily Vasilyevich vainly believed that in another city reunification with his wife would be possible, and transferred from Bryansk to Yelets. Rozanov left Bryansk in August 1887, morally murdered: “It was clear ... that I was dying, that I was not needed, that I was finally embittered ... that I was all dying, maybe in debauchery, in maps, or rather , in some pitiful county dust, having written only his "On Understanding", at which everyone laughed ... "

Meanwhile, Bryansk was parting with the future great philosopher somehow in a fatherly way (kindly I.I.Penkin was busy): the collegiate assessor Rozanov was given 100 rubles to move to Yelets and in March 1888 he was enlisted in the army reserve ...

And Goldovsky, by the way, eventually married a literary lady, who was seven years older than him. The marriage seems to have been successful, but the wife outlived her husband for six years ...

The teacher of the military gymnasium, the collegiate registrar Lev Pustyakov, lived next to his friend, Lieutenant Ledentsov. To the latter, he directed his steps on New Year's morning.
“You see, what's the matter, Grisha,” he said to the lieutenant after the usual New Year's greetings.

The writing

What is man? Maybe his appearance and habits, or maybe his thoughts and actions? What is the really important criterion in this very concept? And are external attributes an indicator of a person's true significance? The problem of false values \u200b\u200bis considered in his text by A.P. Chekhov.

The writer, not without a share of his characteristic irony, together with us examines the image of a hero with a speaking surname and draws the reader's attention to several important details. Trivia, before appearing at a dinner with a noble merchant, asked a friend of the lieutenant for a while for the order in order to appear in the eyes of other guests as a more worthy and even influential official. However, A.P. Chekhov immediately clarifies that Pustyakov uttered his request "stuttering, blushing and timidly looking back at the door." At the dinner itself, the hero is in constant worry that his comrade in the service will suspect him of lying and tell everyone about the true origin of the order, however, Trumblyan's stigma turned out to be in the cannon, which reassured both. As a result, Pustyakov proudly carried someone else's order on his chest, regretting only that he did not take something more significant instead, for example, Vladimir, and not Stanislav. “Only this one thought tormented him. For the rest, he was perfectly happy. "

Of course, A.P. Chekhov ridicules the image of those people who seek to show themselves as individuals who they really are not, using the lowest methods. The author believes that the significance of a person is embodied not in his external attributes, and not in his ability to hold a cutlery in the right hand. The measure of true human significance is things that are much higher in moral and ethical terms.

I fully support the writer's point of view. Indeed, the indicator of a person is the depth of his thoughts and moral principles, the purity of his aspirations and the firmness and steadfastness of thoughts. Yes, of course, the shell can say a lot about a person - but what is the point in this if the content lags behind and does not correspond far? One has only to recall a quote from one of the plays by William Shakespeare: "... Only that which is empty from the inside thunders ...".

A good example of an indicator of false values \u200b\u200bis the story of I.A. Bunin "Mr. from San Francisco". The entire society of the upper holds of the ship "Atlantis" literally shines with its wealth, as well as the need to judge by wealth, to live for money and for the sake of money. So the Lord himself from San Francisco, having lived his whole life with one single purpose - to accumulate wealth, as well as at the same time to gain fame and at least some fame in narrow circles, suddenly dies, never being able to enjoy these "values". This hero demonstrated by his own example that in the pursuit of wealth the most important thing that makes a person such is lost: love, mercy and spirituality, as well as sincere, timely joy of life.

In the novel by N.V. Gogol's "Dead Souls" also runs through the idea that the pursuit of false values \u200b\u200bleads to moral degradation. And all those “dead souls” that the author reveals to us in the brightest colors become a telling example of this. Thus, Manilov, Korobochka, Sobakevich, and Nozdryov are surrounded by their own sins, weaknesses and prejudices, on the basis of which they judge themselves and those around them. One considers his own wealth to be true values, another - hoarding, the third - hypocrisy and pretense, and each of them, behind all this screen, misses the main essence of human life and the main, only human values.

Thus, it can be concluded that external attributes are not a measure of true human significance. All the most valuable is inside us - it cannot be touched, it is often difficult to describe, but it can be felt.