, village Grodekovo Primorsky Territory , transit prison) - Russian poet, prose writer, journalist.

August 20 1914 mobilized; allWorld War I spent onAustrian front (not counting a short stay in the hospital at the end of 1914). Demobilized 1 April 1917 in the rank of second lieutenant, returned to Moscow. He was under investigation as a secret officer of the security department, but was acquitted ... https://en.wikipedia.org/
Nesmelov's poetry was already known in the 1920s, it was highly valued Boris Pasternak , Marina Tsvetaeva , Nikolai Aseev , Leonid Martynov , Sergey Markov and others. The poet's biography makes different impressions, especially on a person brought up in the Soviet Union. I do not presume to argue on this topic, the matter is worthless and the past. But the poetry of Arseny Ivanovich strikes me to the core, both as a Russian person and an officer of the Soviet and Russian Army. And I'll start with what I wrote myself https://fotki.yandex.ru/users/borisovmitia/album/149801

Dmitry Borisov
ARSENY NESMELOV
Poet, Russian officer
from a Russian officer
Love for Russia is all there is
Shoulder straps, Valor is Honor,
Can't describe, can't convey
What I absorbed with milk, and my mother
With your father put into your mind.
And you go into a bloody battle
And your companions -
Soldiers, sons of the motherland,
Shoulder to shoulder, on the attack, in death,
Rows slender as is,
Bayonet stubbornly lay the path,
They go to the enemy.
You walk in a closed chain,
Blade to the right - Bosh is mortal,
Hit to the left - there are no two,
Blood splashes redden down!
The fight is over. And many are not
And the infirmary is full...
And you finished a new verse
Peaceful lines about them:
“* ... And the forest rustled not more muffled,
Was the same autumn forest.
And the hare, pointing his ears,
Climb on the bump with a picture. ”

* lines from a poem by Arseny Nesmelov
"Wounded".
v. Zhiguli, 08.10.2013

Many of Nesmelov's poems are of a narrative-ballad nature, some of them are simply entertaining, but he also knew how to express his serious human aspirations in lines about nature, in philosophical lyrics and in poems about war ...

AUGUST 27, 1914
Copper, dashing music played,
Sveyan trumpeters, women's crying ceased.
From the military platform of the Brest railway station
The Phanagoria Regiment is being escorted to Poland!
The officers are slender, ears on top,
The grenadiers are fine, like junkers ...
Cool cars, red cars,
Waving hands, loud cheers.
Wagons trembled, chains clang,
The first echelon rushed to the west.
Yellow shoulder straps, Suvorov banner,
In anticipation of glory, every brow!
They flew away and disappeared. flashes like a dot,
Disappears, the red light goes out ...
Oh, the soul is empty, oh, what anguish,
Will you come back again, dear friend!
A sad night fell harshly over Moscow,
Over Moscow tired sleep and silence.
The pillows of tomorrow's widows crumple,
They say in a humble voice: "War!"

Suvorov Banner
Retreat!- and the guns fell silent,
The machine gun drummer fell silent.
Beyond the burning village
The Phanagoria regiment withdrew.
This morning killed the best
Officers. The commander is smitten.
And a very young lieutenant
Our fourth received a battalion.
And with the battalion there was a banner,
And the lieutenant prayed in a terrible hour,
For heaven to take pity on us,
For God to save our shrine.
But they trembled on the left and on the right, -
The enemy pounced like a bear
And the protection of the banner - with glory
All that was left was to die.

And then, I swear, a lot of eyes
That forever captured a moment, -
Generalissimo Suvorov himself
At the holy banner arose.
He was thin, he had a powdered pigtail,
With a star was his uniform.
He shouted: “Follow me, Phanagorians!
With God, battalion commander!
And burned his order like lava,
All hearts: the holy shadow is calling!
Rushed on the left, ran on the right,
To, colliding, rush forward!
Bayonet strike fury
The enemy did not demolish; we went like a hurricane
Only the commander of the young
We brought the dead to the village ...
And at the coffin - everyone will remember this
Chronicler of front-line life, -
Suvorov himself wept: twice at night
The guards saw him.

SOLDIER'S SONG
A company of soldiers went to the position,
Airplanes hover over it.
One of them aptly threw the bomb
And got into the middle of the squad.
You, company, are not far away -
Every single one is here!
The captain lost half his head,
The drummer is dead, but the drum is intact.
The captain got up - he got up bloodied! —
And ordered the drummer to get up.
Raised by the team, as if in battle,
He is dead to his dead company!
And through the fields a bloody swamp
Under the drum an ominous fraction
The company moved to an unknown land,
Where the priests promise paradise.

Strictly, approximately equal rows ...
The one without an arm, and the other without a head,
And for the legless and many others
The guns were crossed by their comrades.
Long way to paradise, perhaps, to go -
There is no such path on a two-way street;
However, without a map, the route is known, -
Thousands of warriors are wandering towards paradise!
They ride on horseback, they rattle on tanks,
Airplanes are flying there.
And a dead man salutes a dead man,
Famously raising the hilt to the face.
Here are the halls that were built of old,
Here at the gate is a bent key.
Elders-ascetics, step aside, -
The sabers are taken up by the officers.
And he reports with a parched mouth:
“They died honestly in combat labor!”

Arsenij Niesmiełow
PIOSENKA ŻOŁNIERSKA
Na pierwszą linię szła kompania w bój,
Aeroplanów krążył nad nią rój,
Co na kompanię rzucały grad bomb,
Jeden wcelował bombą prosto w nią.
Musiałaś ty, kompanio, pecha mieć:
Wszystkich żołnierzy zabiło na śmierć,
Kapitan stracił głowy górne pół,
Z dobosza został werbel oraz doł.
Kapitan jednak mimo wszystko wstał
I doboszowi rozkaz "Powstań!" dał,
Kompanię zebrał jakby nigdy nic
Sam martwy, martwym kazał dalej iść.
Przez pole bitwy w krwawym błocie brnąc
Pod werbla warkot w przyfrontową noc
Poszła kompania hen, na świata skraj,
Gdzie, jak mawiają w cerkwi, czeka raj.

Idą czwórkami, miarowy ich krok,
Jedni bez głowy, drudzy znow bez rąk,
A nieborakow, co nie mają nog,
Koledzy niosą tam, gdzie mieszka Bog..
Raj? I bez mapy wiadomo, gdzie on:
Żołnierze ciągną doń ze wszystkich stron,
Piechotą, konno, do niebiańskich bram,
Aeroplany też zmierzają tam.
Wita się z martwym pułkiem martwy pułk,
Szable z szacunkiem unosząc do czół,
Oto już rajskich koszar widać płot,
Oto już z kluczem czeka święty Piotr.
Hej, święci, z drogi! Pozwólcie nam wejść!
Oficerowie martwi prężą pierś,
Meldunek niesie się wśród gwiazd:
„Śmiercią żołnierską poległ każdy z nas!”

tlum. Michal B. Jagiełło

SISTER
deceased
You're just a broken girl
Smorgon spoiled you.

Lisped: "Fire!"

And looks squinting and avid,
Like a sparrow to a mirabelle
And I thought the lamp
And silence, and the cradle.

After all, I am a poet, and my eye is a magnifying glass,
I smelled the darkness of your prison
But as if the hut screeched,
Hearing: be afraid of sublimate!

And now sullenly from drabant
I will know your fate.
How scary you were without a bow
In a pine-scented coffin!

But I will drink without tears
You, sleeping child,
Forerunners waved Zane
Other people going for revenge.

And your image is lovingly drawn
From the bluest blue
And those who led you to torture ...
- Hey you!

MEMORY
Trouble the heart of cities
Half-forgotten names:
Przemysl, Kazimierz, Razvadov,
Fights on the Vistula and on the San ...
Isn't it there, with a field bag
With a gleam that has not yet faded,
I wandered, young and alive,
Through plowlands and copses?
And the echo in the heart did not stop
Those days when with bold courage
Eleventh Grenadier
The Phanagoria regiment went into battle!
And I screamed and led the chains
In the spaces of menacing, boundless,
And the church was white in the distance,
All in round clouds of shrapnel ...
And after - there was a smoky bivouac,
Bonfires smoldered like conflagrations,
And sleep, rest darkness,
Barely touched the soul.

And how many times, languishing without sleep,
I thought, hidden by a heavy haze,
What are you, the last war,
Storm over the earth.
A brief thunder rumbles
To never cry again
And the sky is shining blue
Over sorrowful Poland will hang.
Only we will not survive -
A great explosion will crush the first! ..
And affirmatively from darkness
Cannon flares flickered.
Premonitions and our mind,
Your guesses are nonsense gossip:
Does this pencil live?
In the hand of a fifty year old!
I'm not under the little hill
Where on the cross the name disappeared
And more terrible thunder
Already roaring over others!
The caterpillar rattles
Heavy tank column
And muffles, as in the old year,
And an exclamation of courage and groans ...

Arsenij Niesmiełow
PAMIĘĆ
Know cieniem się na duszy kładą
Nazwy na poly zapomniane:
Przemyśl, Kazimierz and Rozwadow,
Walki nad Wisłą i nad Sanem.
Czy to nie tam pelen zapalu,
Z nowiutką raportówką, młody,
Pośrod bezdroży wojowałem,
Szukając chwały i przygody?
I do dziś dnia kolacze w sercu
Wspomnienie, jak się bił w Galicji
Nasz 11 grenadierski
Waleczny pułk Fanagoryjski!
Tam do ataku w tyralierach
Parliśmy szlakiem pobojowisk,
A gdzieś w oddali kościół bielał
W okrągłych dymkach szrapnelowych.
Po walce noc spowita dymem,
Ogniska i pogorzeliska,
I utęskniony sen-spoczynek,
Co ledwie przyjdzie, zaraz pryska.

Ilez to razy na biwakach,
Marzyłem, ni to śpiąc, ni drzemiąc,
Że ty, ostatnia wojno świata,
Szybko przetoczysz się nad ziemią.
Zagrzmisz i znikniesz już na wieki,
Ludzie zmądrzeją i dorosną,
I nieba nieskalany błękit
Nad poranioną zalśni Polską...
I tylko my nie doczekamy,
Zginiemy w galicyjskim błocie -
Na potwierdzenie tuż nad nami
Przeleciał z wyciem ciężki pocisk.
Marzenie były tylko bzdura,
Brednią przeczucie, przepowiednia!
Przeżyłem... Oto trzyma pióro
Dłoń moja pięćdziesięcioletnia...
Nie leżę w grobie, nie poległem
I nie przepadło moje imę.
Burza straszniejsza od poprzedniej
Szaleje dzisiaj nad innymi!
Jazgot gąsienic zgrzyta w uszach,
I dudni pod czołgami ziemia...
Jak dawniej wojna know zagłusza
Odgłosy mestwa i cierpienia.

Tlum. Michal B. Jagiełło

MOTHERLAND
Russia! From a terrible delirium
A two-year fatal struggle
Your golden victory
He enthrones the golden...

Under the sign of great fortune
The last days are passing by
And again the old tasks
Their lights lit up.

Steppe snowy spaces,
Lesov blue line ...
Planned the motto of the All-Slavic
On the ringing metal of the shield...

Russia! Dozens of adverbs
Resurrect your being.
Heroes lifted on their shoulders
Your great grief.

But the strength of the enemies is at sunset,
But rush, Holy Land,
Your radiant hosts
To the high strongholds of the Kremlin!

OWL
You're the muzzle of the muzzle of a revolver
I met blue on the arable land,
Where sprawling chimera
A bristling battle crawled.

And without deceit, without concealment
Playing death, walking in the darkness
Unscrew the nuts on the rails
At the armored train in the rear.

Night bird, glow in the smoke
You threw a wing in our eyes,
But subsided, hitting to the bottom,
Raging thunderstorm.

No one's bed headboard
Won't gut a hurricane.
The starchy bloodlessness lay down
On a rusted scimitar.

So by concrete roof verification,
Verdun or Ossovets,
What did not have time to distort
Enemies grenade to the end -

Cheerful women townspeople
They lead to the underground casemate,
To, like a sponge, screeching and neighing
About a formidable stone to squeeze.

What's the deal with a flock of thawed
To us, beakless watchmen,
Whose memory is a dilapidated skeleton
Reverently guarding.

As an axiom, without effort,
Accept meekly and lightly
Your pierced wings
And a speechless hollow.
And wait for the night.

WOUNDED
He walked, making his way more often,
Crunchy and breaking - climbed,
And the wind, the roaring dragon,
He took off to overturn the forest.

Fell, choking then
Unable to break longing.
For a moment, rustling the hood,
Passed before the fallen mother.

And the forest rustled not muffled,
Was the same autumn forest.
And the hare, pointing his ears,
Climbed on a bump with a picture.

AUSTRIAN
His face turned black.
He lies motionless in the cart,
Our part, passing by,
Around the poor fellow crowded into a ring.

My comrade, beardless youth,
Offers him cigarettes...
And in Polish to our questions
The wounded man whispers: "The end is near..."

And to our timid words,
Smiling weakly and palely,
He whispers slowly: "Vshistko one ..."
And blue creeps near the lips.

Everyone knows that a wound in the stomach -
This is death ... "I will die in a day" ...
Lieutenant of consolations and jokes
He won't believe, he won't understand...

Hearing distant shots...
Our faces are gloomy and strict ...
We're walking down a dirty road
No hope of going back.

To the repertoireValeria Leontieva includes two songs by composer Vladimir Evzerov to the verses of Arseny Nesmelov: “Everyone wants to love” ("Song of the Year 1999") and "Wolf Passion" ("Song of the Year 2002"). I hope that there will be a composer for the wonderful military poems of the poet.

"... You're just a broken girl,
Smorgon spoiled you.
Staff moth, trembling with relish,
She lisped, "Fire!"

Valery Leontiev's song "Everyone wants to love, both a soldier and a sailor ..." I think everyone knows. And the fact that it was originally a poem called "Interventions" is not (and I did not know). In general, get acquainted: the poet Arseny Ivanovich Mitropolsky (literary pseudonym - Arseny Nesmelov).
And here is the text of the poem "Interventions" without changes:

Serb, Bosnian soldier, and English sailor
We waited at the bridge for a quick-eyed seamstress.
Everyone thought mine! Each tenderness brought her
And for the girl's eyes, and for the tender neck ...

And they sat down as enemies on the bench,
Serb, Bosnian soldier, and English sailor.

The Serb loved his Danube. Englishman long ago
Loved nothing but a pipe and whiskey...
The girl didn't go. It was getting dark.
The clouds lowered their low shroud to the water.

And the soldier looked at the sailor as close,
As if he was a friend or knew each other for a long time.

Smoked, saying in their own language
Everyone something about the fact that Russia is a swamp.
Lit up on their faces gilding
From puffs ... And there, far away, on the river,

The Russian guy sang something mournful...
Each grumbled gloomily in their own language.

And then in the tavern, where the double bass was buzzing,
Grunting displeasedly at shrill violins,
They drank fiery alcohol and foamed kvass
And each other through the smoke sent smiles.

Through the flooded table, untidy and unsteady,
By the window, in the tavern, where the double bass was buzzing.

Everyone wants to love, both soldier and sailor,
Everyone wants to have both a bride and a friend,
Only days are hard, only our days are a blizzard,
They are only a blizzard that has swirled the darkness.

So they shouted, understanding each other,
A black Serbian soldier and an English sailor.

The poem was remade into a song after the “Yugoslav conflict”, “Serb, Bosnian soldier” was replaced by “Yugoslav soldier”, highlighted fragments about the attitude of the interventionists towards Russia, etc. were thrown out. And it turned out to be a positive song. But now we are primarily interested not so much in Nesmelov's literary heritage, although it certainly reflects Nesmelov's worldview, but rather in his white-fascist activities.

Further for reference: Arseniy Ivanovich Nesmelov (Mitropolsky) was born in 1889 in Moscow, graduated from the cadet corps. He was a career officer, first in the tsarist army, then in Kolchak's. In early November 1917, he took part in the Moscow uprising of the Junkers. A few weeks later he left Moscow for the Urals (in the city of Kurgan), later - for Omsk, where he joined the troops of A.V. Kolchak. He was adjutant of the commandant of Omsk, Lieutenant Colonel Kataev, at the same time he received the rank of lieutenant. Retreating along with the White Army, in the early spring of 1920 he ended up in Vladivostok, where he took up journalism and literary activity under the pseudonym Nesmelov (the first poem published signed by Arseny Nesmelov, just “Interventions”).

In 1924 (after the fall of the Far Eastern Republic) he crossed the Amur Bay and went on foot to China. Collections were published in Harbin: "Bloody Reflection", "Without Russia", "Way Stop", "White Flotilla", in Shanghai in 1936 - a book of Nesmelov's military prose. In Harbin, Nesmelov becomes close to the leader of the All-Russian Fascist Party, Konstantin Rodzaevsky, and begins to publish in the journal Nation. Until 1929, it was published in the USSR (the newspaper "Soviet Siberia", the magazine "Siberian Lights"). In August 1945, he was arrested in Harbin by SMERSH and sent to the USSR. In December of the same year, he died of a stroke (or from a cold - according to various sources) in the prison of the Grodekovo border station.

Information from A. Buyakov's article about Nesmelov "Russian poet and fascist": from the search list of the UNKGB for the Khabarovsk Territory on A. Nesmelov (August 1945):

« Mitropolsky Arseny Ivanovich. 1889 year of birth. Russian. Former officer of the White Army. Since 1924 he has been an immigrant. A well-known poet among the emigration, writes under the pseudonym "Arseniy Nesmelov". Since 1941 - a cadet of evening political training courses organized at the intelligence school in Harbin. At the end of the course, he was enrolled as an official employee of the 4th department of the JVM and worked on courses for propagandists. Read the subject of literary and artistic propaganda. During the courses he had a pseudonym "Drozdov". In May 1944 he was transferred to the 6th department of the mission, where he worked until the occupation of Harbin by the Red Army. He was a member of the fascist party and the author of anti-Soviet works, which he published under the literary pseudonym Drozdov, Dozorov. Collaborated in all emigre newspapers and magazines, where articles, stories and poems were placed.

Personal characteristics: medium height, baggy figure with a small belly, blond hair with gray hair, combs her hair with a parting on right side, blue eyes, wrinkled face, wears glasses. Lives in Harbin…”

According to A. Buyakov (a specialist in the history of Russian special services), for the last four years of his life, Nesmelov “was a staff member of the main Japanese military mission in Manchuria (Harbin). The mission was established in 1931 after the Japanese troops occupied Manchuria and operated until the end of August 1945. It consisted of 6 numbered departments and a special department. In fact, the JVM was one of the special services of Japan, which performed the function of a political investigation in the emigrant environment and controlled all areas of her life. She also identified Soviet intelligence agents and, with the help of various emigrant associations, carried out active sabotage, reconnaissance and propaganda work against the USSR.

The 4th department of the JVM, in which Arseniy Nesmelov worked, was in charge of the training of intelligence officers, propagandists and agitators, supervised the training and deployment of intelligence officers to the territory of the Soviet Union. He had his bases in Imianpo and Shitouazzi, where practical exercises were conducted with scouts. The department was in charge of the school of propagandists and agitators in the city of Harbin, which existed until April 1945. The head of the department until June 1945 was Major Yamagata. In the event of an invasion of Japanese troops into the territory of the Soviet Union, the school trained personnel who were supposed to be conductors of Japanese policy among Soviet people, to unite them in the struggle against the communist regime.

Arseny Ivanovich read his lectures in this school in a pro-Japanese spirit. He read masterfully, relying on a good knowledge of Russian and Soviet literature. The content of Nesmelov's lectures, his teaching abilities were highly appreciated by the Japanese command, and he was transferred to the key - the 6th department of the JVM, which included only people who had undergone a thorough check and enjoyed the full confidence of the Japanese. This department was engaged in overseeing the ideological moods of Russian emigrants, and also carried out agitation and propaganda work among them, trying to discourage them from feeling Russian patriotism, love for the motherland, replacing them with love for Japan. He also suppressed any dissent among emigrants.

The department was headed by a Japanese military official, Tsuruga. Almost all Russian journalists, writers and poets were employees of this department, given that there were not so many of them. Against their background, several Russian emigrants stood out with their views and actions. S. Trufanov occupied a special place among them. Trufanov was a censor and, according to the majority of the Russian diaspora, a strangler of the living Russian word. At his insistence, L. Tolstoy's novel "War and Peace" was withdrawn from the libraries of the Russian emigration as evoking feelings of Russian patriotism. Another journalist - Talyzin - was engaged in the glorification of everything Japanese. The same position was held by two brothers, both writers, Zaerko. One of them led the amateur art circle of Russian youth at BREM. A number of other writers and journalists were of the same kind.

Nesmelov was somewhat different from them. According to the testimonies of the former emigrants themselves, who knew him well, this difference was small and consisted only in the fact that, against the background of these stranglers from poetry and prose, he strove to be more tolerant of the literary heritage of the great Russian classics. On the whole, he pursued among the Russians in exile the policy that the Japanese needed, considering the Russians as people of an inferior race, like a thoughtless herd of slaves.

In August 1945, one of the operational-search groups of the territorial bodies of state security and military counterintelligence "SMERSH" tracked down and arrested Arseniy Nesmelov. After the first interrogation, he was sent to a filtering and transit camp in the village of Grodekovo, where he died of a cold in September.

Information from E. Vitkovsky's article "Formula of Immortality": In response to Li Meng's request from Chicago dated February 24, 1998, the Moscow Prosecutor's Office replied as follows:

« Your request for the biographical data of Arseny Ivanovich Mitropolsky (pseudonym Arseniy Nesmelov) has been considered by the Moscow Prosecutor's Office. I inform you that Mitropolsky Arseniy Ivanovich, Russian, was born in Moscow in 1889, arrested on November 1, 1945 on suspicion of counter-revolutionary activities. The place of arrest is unknown. On December 6, 1945, he died in a hospital for prisoners of war, in connection with which the criminal case was closed on December 31, 1945 by the SMERSH counterintelligence department of the Primorsky Military District. Not rehabilitated. The case was sent to the Chief Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation to resolve the issue of rehabilitation.
Head of the Department for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repressions
V.M. Zaitseva»

In addition, in the article A. Buyakov writes that in the state archive of the Khabarovsk Territory there is a personal file of Arseniy Mitropolsky with a personal card of the BREM Nesmelov, in it “ about six sheets, although the continuous numbering remaining on the last sheets allows us to assert that the file consisted of a maximum of 115-117 sheets". According to Buyakov, in the 50s or at the end of the 80s, when the BREM archive was transferred from the central operational archive of the former KGB of the USSR to the Khabarovsk archive or later, in the archive itself, someone considered that many did not need to know about the negative or other facts of the poet's biography". And what was in those other destroyed documents - one can only guess.

So, we see the following picture: Arseniy Nesmelov is a white officer, a participant in the Ice Campaign, a collaborator, a Russian fascist, a BREM member, and, moreover, NOT rehabilitated.

In our country, there is a tendency to unofficially rehabilitate criminals and traitors through memorial plaques and monuments: Mannerheim in St. Petersburg, Kolchaki in several cities, Krasnov in Rostov-on-Don, etc. This is happening in Russia. And now it's also starting to creep into China.

In Harbin, he took the initiative to install a memorial plaque to Arseny Nesmelov "Russian Club" with the support of the following organizations and figures: the Primorsky branch of the Russian Geographical Society (otherwise called the Society for the Study of the Amur Territory), the publishing house "Frontier" (which published Nesmelov's collected works in 2006), Amursky State University, Primorsky branch of the Union of Journalists of the Russian Federation, the outstanding Chinese Russianist Professor Li Yanling, the famous Russian writer Leonid Yuzefovich.

The intention to install a commemorative plaque in Chinese Harbin, and even on the central tourist street of Zhongyandajie - Harbin's Arbat, causes bewilderment, where tens of thousands of people will contemplate it daily. The desire of our “former” de-Sovietizers is understandable, the participation of the Russian Consul General in Shenyang, Sergei Paltov, in this initiative is incomprehensible. After all, it is difficult to suspect him of ignorance of the historical accounts of the Chinese to the Japanese during the period of occupation and genocide. It is no less difficult to suspect him of ignorance of the current level of anti-Japanese sentiment in China in general and, in particular, in the Northeast, which suffered first of all. What will the Harbin administration look like if it approves the installation of a memorial plaque to a Japanese intelligence officer? After all, one must understand that the request for approval was submitted by “respectable people” with proper justification and the Chinese are unlikely to delve into the subtleties. What political consequences can this have in bilateral relations between Russia and China? After all, the sediment will definitely remain. Once again, they aim at communism, but end up in Russia.

In general, a sketch of a memorial plaque to Nesmelov with an inscription in three languages ​​is already ready and is just waiting for permission from the Chinese authorities to install it.

Here is what the journalist and writer Vasily Avchenko writes about him: “ Neither the grave nor the archive remained of Nesmelov. Now it is important for us not what barricades history put him on, but the fact that he is an excellent poet and author of the wonderful “trench” (or “ensign”) prose of the First World War". Wow, great poet...

"He has eyes like gimlets,
Hiding under the low-browed skull,
In their colorlessness, in the whitishness of a sheep
Interspersed with a spark of dull ferret malice.

I raise the revolver slowly,
Squeezing my eyes, I enrich the experience:
How the rebellious hooligan dies
Rising up the hair of Europe?"
("Enemies")

Arseny Nesmelov(real name and surname Arseniy Ivanovich Mitropolsky, other aliases - A. N-ov, A. N-lov, A. Arseniev, N. Arseniev, Arseny Bibikov, Senya Smelov, Nikolai Dozorov, N. Rakhmanov, Anastigmat, Aunt Rozga, Non-dust; June 8 (20) June, Moscow - December 6, the village of Grodekovo, Primorsky Territory, a prison for transitory people) - Russian poet, prose writer, journalist.

Biography

Born in Moscow in the family of a court adviser, secretary of the Moscow district military medical department I. A. Mitropolsky, who was also a writer. The younger brother of the Russian writer and editor I. I. Mitropolsky.

Bibliography

• Mitropolsky A. Military pages: [Prose and poetry]. M.: Ed. A. P. Gamova, 1915. - 48 p.
• Poetry. - Vladivostok: Type. Military Academy, 1921. - 64 p.
• Tikhvin (Story). Vladivostok: Type. "Far outskirts", 1922. - 14 p.
• Ledges: Poems / Region. A. Stepanova. Vladivostok: Type. Joseph Korot, 1924. - 32 p.
• Bloody reflection: Poems. Harbin, 1929. - 32 p. (wrong on cover - 1928)
• Without Russia. Harbin: Ed. N. A. Gammera, 1931. - 64 p.
• Across the Ocean: [Poem]. Shanghai: Hippocrene, 1934. - 21 p.
• War stories. Shanghai, 1936.
• Dozorov N. Georgy Semyon: Poem. Bern [Shanghai], 1936. - 18 p.
• Dozorov N. Only such! Shanghai: Ed. Shanghai Department of the WFTU, 1936. - 70 p.
• Station. Harbin, 1938. - 30 p.
• Protopopitsa: Poem. Harbin, 1939. - 16 p.
• White Flotilla: Poems. Harbin: Ed. A. I. Mitropolsky, 1942. - 63 p.
• Selected Prose / Ed. and with comments. E. Stein. Orange: Antiques, 1987. - 151 p.
• Without Russia. Volume One / Ed. and with comments. E. Stein. Orange: Antiques, 1990. - 479 p.
• Without Moscow, without Russia: Poems. Poems. Stories / [Comp. and comment. E. Vitkovsky and A. Revonenko; Foreword E. Vitkovsky]. - M.: Moskovsky worker, 1990. - 461, p.
• Collected works. In 2 vols. / Comp. E. Vitkovsky, A. Kolesov, Li Meng, V. Rezvy; Foreword E. Vitkovsky; Comment. E. Witkowski, Li Meng. Vladivostok: Frontier, 2006.
  • T. 1: Poems and poems. - 560 p.
  • T. 2: Stories and novels. Memoirs. - 732 p.
• In the artistic world of Harbin writers. Arseny Nesmelov: materials for a creative biography. In 3 volumes / Comp. and comment. A. Zabiyako, V. Rezvogo, G. Efendiyeva. Blagoveshchensk: ed. AmSU, 2015.
  • T. 1. Part 1. - 348 p.; Part 2. - 395 p.

Musical works based on the poet's verses

Valery Leontiev's repertoire includes two songs by composer Vladimir Evzerov to the verses of Arseny Nesmelov: "Everyone wants to love" ("Song of the Year 1999") and "Wolf Passion" ("Song of the Year 2000").

Notes

Literature

• A. V. Pigin. Old Russian and folklore legend in Arseny Nesmelov's poem "The Forgiven Demon". - Proceedings of the Department ancient Russian literature, 61, 2010.

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Arseny Nesmelov
Harbin, 1930s
Name at birth:	Arseny Ivanovich Mitropolsky
Aliases:	A. Arseniev, N. Arseniev, Arseny Bibikov, Senya Smelov, Nikolai Dozorov, N. Rakhmanov, Anastigmat, Rod, Non-dust
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Occupation:	poet, prose writer, journalist
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Arseny Nesmelov(real name and surname Arseniy Ivanovich Mitropolsky, other aliases - A. N-ov, A. N-lov, A. Arseniev, N. Arseniev, Arseny Bibikov, Senya Smelov, Nikolai Dozorov, N. Rakhmanov, Anastigmat, Aunt Rozga, Non-dust; June 8 (20), Moscow - December 6, the village of Grodekovo, Primorsky Territory, a prison for transitory people) - Russian poet, prose writer, journalist.

Biography

Born in Moscow in the family of a court adviser, secretary of the Moscow district military medical department I. A. Mitropolsky, who was also a writer. The younger brother of the Russian writer and editor I. I. Mitropolsky.

In the early spring of 1920, he ended up in Vladivostok, where he took up journalism and literary activities, taking as a literary pseudonym the name of a comrade who died near Tyumen. In May 1924, along with several other former white officers on foot (thanks to the map given to him in Vladivostok by V.K. Arsenyev), he crossed the Soviet-Chinese border. Settled in Harbin. He actively collaborated in local Russian-language periodicals (the magazines "Frontier", "Ray of Asia"; the newspaper "Rupor", etc.): published stories, poems, reviews, feuilletons, articles about literature. For some time he edited the page "Young Reader of Frontier" (an appendix to the Rupor newspaper).

Member of the All-Russian Fascist Party, commissioned by which he wrote a collection of journalistic poems “Only such” and the poem “Georgy Semyon”, published not under the main pseudonym, but under the name “N. Dozorov.

Since 1941 - a cadet of evening political training courses organized at the intelligence school in Harbin. At the end of the course, he was enlisted as an official employee of the 4th department of the Japanese Military Mission, worked at the courses of propagandists. I read the subject "Literary and Artistic Agitation". During the courses he had a pseudonym "Drozdov". In May 1944 he was transferred to the 6th department of the mission, where he worked until the occupation of Harbin by the Red Army in 1945.

In August 1945 he was arrested and taken to the USSR. According to an official certificate, he died on December 6 of the same year in a transit prison in Grodekovo (now the village of Pogranichny in the Border District of Primorsky Krai).

Creation

Nesmelov's poetry was already known in the 1920s, it was highly valued by Boris Pasternak, Marina Tsvetaeva, Nikolai Aseev, Leonid Martynov, Sergey Markov and others. Valery Pereleshin, a representative of the younger generation of Harbin poets, put Nesmelov very highly and considered him, if not his own a teacher, then a person to whom he owes his entry into literature; in the 1970s and 1980s, he made an invaluable contribution to the collection of Nesmelov's dispersed literary heritage.

Many of Nesmelov's poems are of a narrative-ballad nature, some of them are simply entertaining, but he also knew how to express his serious human aspirations in lines about nature, in philosophical lyrics and in poems about war.

.

Bibliography

• Mitropolsky A. Military pages: [Prose and poetry]. M.: Ed. A. P. Gamova, 1915. - 48 p.
• Poetry. - Vladivostok: Type. Military Academy, 1921. - 64 p.
• Tikhvin (Story). Vladivostok: Type. "Far outskirts", 1922. - 14 p.
• Ledges: Poems / Region. A. Stepanova. Vladivostok: Type. Joseph Korot, 1924. - 32 p.
• Bloody reflection: Poems. Harbin, 1929. - 32 p. (wrong on cover - 1928)
• Without Russia. Harbin: Ed. N. A. Gammera, 1931. - 64 p.
• Across the Ocean: [Poem]. Shanghai: Hippocrene, 1934. - 21 p.
• War stories. Shanghai, 1936.
• Dozorov N. Georgy Semyon: Poem. Bern [Shanghai], 1936. - 18 p.
• Dozorov N. Only such! Shanghai: Ed. Shanghai Department of the WFTU, 1936. - 70 p.
• Station. Harbin, 1938. - 30 p.
• Protopopitsa: Poem. Harbin, 1939. - 16 p.
• White Flotilla: Poems. Harbin: Ed. A. I. Mitropolsky, 1942. - 63 p.
• Selected Prose / Ed. and with comments. E. Stein. Orange: Antiques, 1987. - 151 p.
• Without Russia. Volume One / Ed. and with comments. E. Stein. Orange: Antiques, 1990. - 479 p.
• Without Moscow, without Russia: Poems. Poems. Stories / [Comp. and comment. E. Vitkovsky and A. Revonenko; Foreword E. Vitkovsky]. - M.: Moskovsky worker, 1990. - 461, p.
• Collected works. In 2 vols. / Comp. E. Vitkovsky, A. Kolesov, Li Meng, V. Rezvy; Foreword E. Vitkovsky; Comment. E. Witkowski, Li Meng. Vladivostok: Frontier, 2006.
  • T. 1: Poems and poems. - 560 p.
  • T. 2: Stories and novels. Memoirs. - 732 p.
• In the artistic world of Harbin writers. Arseny Nesmelov: materials for a creative biography. In 3 volumes / Comp. and comment. A. Zabiyako, V. Rezvogo, G. Efendiyeva. Blagoveshchensk: ed. AmSU, 2015.
  • T. 1. Part 1. - 348 p.; Part 2. - 395 p.

Musical works based on the poet's verses

Valery Leontiev's repertoire includes two songs by composer Vladimir Evzerov with lyrics by Arseny Nesmelov: "Everyone wants to love" ("Song of the Year 1999") and "Wolf Passion" ("Song of the Year 2000").

Write a review on the article "Nesmelov, Arseniy Ivanovich"

Notes

Literature

• A. V. Pigin. Old Russian and folklore legend in Arseny Nesmelov's poem "The Forgiven Demon". - Proceedings of the Department of Old Russian Literature, 61, 2010.

see also

• Vladivo-Nippo (ja:浦潮日報)

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An excerpt characterizing Nesmelov, Arseny Ivanovich

“Tomorrow I will be in a different, more peaceful place. And I hope Caraffa will forget about me for a while. Well, what about you, Madonna? What will become of you? I can't help you out of jail, but my friends are powerful enough. May I be of service to you?
“Thank you, monsignor, for your concern. But I don't have vain hopes, hoping to get out of here... He will never let me go... Not my poor daughter. I live to destroy it. He should not have a place among people.
– It is a pity that I did not recognize you earlier, Isidora. Perhaps we could become good friends. Now goodbye. You can't stay here. Dad will definitely come to wish me "good luck." You don't need to meet him here. Save your daughter, Madonna... And don't give up to Caraffe. God be with you!
“Which God are you talking about, monsignor?” I asked sadly.
- Surely, not about the one to whom Caraffa prays! .. - Morone smiled in parting.
I stood still for a moment, trying to remember in my soul the image of this wonderful person, and waving goodbye, went out into the corridor.
The sky opened up with a flurry of anxiety, panic and fear!.. Where was my brave, lonely girl now?! What prompted her to leave Meteora?.. For some reason, Anna did not answer my insistent calls, although I knew that she could hear me. This instilled even greater anxiety, and I only held out with the last of my strength so as not to succumb to the panic that burned my soul, because I knew that Caraffa would certainly take advantage of any of my weaknesses. And then I'll have to lose before even starting to resist...
Having retired to “my” chambers, I “licked” old wounds, not even hoping that they would ever heal, but simply trying to be as strong and calm as possible in case of any opportunity to start a war with Caraffa ... It makes no sense to hope for a miracle it was, because I knew perfectly well that in our case no miracles were foreseen ... Everything that happens, I will have to do only myself.
Inaction killed, making me feel forgotten, helpless and unnecessary by everyone... And although I knew perfectly well that I was wrong, the worm of "black doubt" successfully gnawed at the inflamed brain, leaving a bright trace of uncertainty and regrets there...
I did not regret that I was at Karaffa myself ... But I was terribly afraid for Anna. And also, I still could not forgive myself for the death of my father and Girolamo, my beloved and best people in the world for me ... Will I ever be able to avenge them? .. Isn't everyone right when they say that Caraffa cannot be defeated ? That I won't destroy it, but just die stupidly myself?.. Was the North really right in inviting me to go to Meteora? And did the hope to destroy the Pope all this time lived only in me alone?! ..
And one more thing... I felt that I was very tired... Inhumanly, terribly tired... Sometimes it even seemed - wouldn't it really be better to go to Meteora?.. After all, someone went there?.. And why They didn't care that people were dying around them. It was important for them to LEARN, to receive the secret KNOWLEDGE, since they considered themselves exceptionally gifted ... But, on the other hand, if they really were so “exceptional”, then how could they forget the simplest, but in my opinion, our commandment is very important - do not go to rest while others need your help ... How could they close up so easily without even looking around, without trying to help others? .. How did they calm their souls? ..
Of course, my “indignant” thoughts did not concern the children in Meteora in any way ... This war was not their war, it concerned only adults ... And the kids still had to go long and hard along the path of knowledge in order to be able to protect your home, your relatives and all the good people living on our strange, incomprehensible Earth.
No, I was thinking about adults... About those who considered themselves too "special" to risk their "precious" life. About those who preferred to sit out in Meteor, inside its thick walls, while the Earth bled and the same gifted as they went to death in droves...
I have always loved freedom and valued the right of free choice of each individual. But there were moments in life when our personal freedom was not worth millions of lives of other good people... In any case, that's what I decided for myself... And I wasn't going to change anything. Yes, there were moments of weakness when it seemed that the sacrifice that was being made would be completely senseless and in vain. That she would not change anything in this cruel world ... But then the desire to fight returned again ... Then everything fell into place, and with all my being I was ready to return to the “battlefield”, despite how unequal I was war...
Long, hard days crawled like a string of the “unknown”, and still no one bothered me. Nothing changed, nothing happened. Anna was silent, not responding to my calls. And I had no idea where she was, or where I could look for her...
And then one day, mortally tired of empty, endless waiting, I decided to finally fulfill my old, sad dream - knowing that I would probably never be able to see my beloved Venice in a different way, I decided to go there with a "breath" to say goodbye ...
It was May outside, and Venice was dressing up like young bride celebrating your most beautiful holiday - the holiday of Love ...
Love hovered everywhere - the very air was saturated with it! .. Bridges and canals breathed it, it penetrated into every corner of the elegant city ... into every fiber of every lonely soul living in it ... For that one day, Venice turned into a magical flower love - burning, intoxicating and beautiful! The streets of the city literally “drowned” in a myriad of scarlet roses, lush “tails” hanging down to the very water, gently caressing it with fragile scarlet petals ... All Venice was fragrant, exhaling the smells of happiness and summer. And for that one day, even the most gloomy inhabitants of the city left their homes, and smiling with all their might, they expected that on this beautiful day, even they, sad and lonely, would be smiled by capricious Love ...
The holiday began from the very early morning, when the first rays of the sun were just beginning to gild the city canals, showering them with hot kisses, from which they, embarrassingly flashing, were filled with bashful red highlights ... Right there, not even letting you wake up properly, under the windows the city's beauties were already tenderly sounding the first love romances... And the magnificently dressed gondoliers, decorating their polished gondolas in festive scarlet, patiently waited at the pier, each hoping to seat the brightest beauty of this wonderful, magical day.
During this holiday, there were no prohibitions for anyone - young and old poured into the streets, tasting the upcoming fun, and tried to take the best places on the bridges in advance in order to get a closer look at the passing gondolas carrying the famous Venetian courtesans as beautiful as spring itself. These one-of-a-kind women, whose intelligence and beauty were admired by poets, and whom artists embodied forever in their magnificent canvases.

I always believed that love can only be pure, and I never understood and did not agree with betrayal. But the courtesans of Venice were not just women from whom love was bought. Apart from the fact that they were always extraordinarily beautiful, they were all also superbly educated, incomparably better than any bride from a rich and noble Venetian family ... Unlike the very educated noble Florentines, the women of Venice in my time were not even allowed to enter to public libraries and to be “well-read”, since the wives of noble Venetians were considered just a beautiful thing, a loving husband closed at home “for the good” of his family ... And the higher the status of the lady, the less she was allowed to know. Courtesans, on the contrary, usually knew several languages, played musical instruments, read (and sometimes wrote!) poetry, knew philosophers very well, understood politics, sang and danced superbly ... In short, they knew everything that any noble woman (in my opinion) was obliged to know. And I always honestly believed that if the wives of the nobles knew at least the slightest bit of what the courtesans knew, loyalty and love would forever reign in our wonderful city ...

Andrey Mozhaev

(literary and historical essay)

To my children.
And also - to the writer, poetess, collector of Russian memory Elena Semyonova,
beautiful brave woman who inspired the author to this
free essay.

BRIEF BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION: Arseniy Ivanovich Mitropolsky (pseudo-Nesmelov), 1889-1945 Born in Moscow, in the family of a state councilor. Graduated from the Nizhny Novgorod Cadet Corps. The first publications of poems - the magazine "Niva", 1912. From August 1914 he fought on the Austrian front, lieutenant, had four awards. In 1915, the first book of poems and essays, Military Pages, was published. On April 1, 1917, he was expelled to the wounded reserve. Member of the uprising of the Junkers in Moscow against the Bolshevik government. Since 1918 - an officer in the army of Admiral Kolchak. At one time he was the adjutant of the commandant of Omsk. Member of the Siberian Ice Campaign. From 1920 to 1924 he lived in Vladivostok. A collection of poems was also published there. Hiding from arrest and execution, he went to China with the help of a map given to him by V. Arsenyev. Since then he lived in Harbin, where all his books were published. He became the most famous poet in all emigration. He corresponded with M. Tsvetaeva. At home he was known to a very narrow circle of poets, among them - Pasternak. In September 1945 he was arrested and soon died in a prison near Vladivostok.

He, a nobleman and Muscovite, was called the "Boyan of Russian Harbin." He is the brightest poet not of one emigration, but of all our literature. And it is not his fault that to this day, few people know about him. Unlike his contemporary Nikolai Gumilyov, the same desperately brave officer and poet closest in spirit, Arseniy Nesmelov (Metropolsky), a lieutenant of the Suvorov Phanagoria regiment, did not manage to establish his poetic name before the Patriotic German War and Revolution. This took place later. And the Soviet government did everything to ensure that the poetry of its enemy, a participant in the Junker uprising in Moscow and the Siberian Ice Campaign, an officer of Kolchak's troops, never reached the minds and hearts of his subjects. But in spite of everything, this poetry became known - even to a small number of people until now.

Fate decreed that I first heard these fiery lines at the end of the sixties, still at the age of half a child, from my father. And often heard them after, grew up with them, comprehended that undistorted historical reality that stood behind them. My father, in moments of rest and mood, liked to recite from poets close to him in spirit. He read wonderfully and also sang wonderfully. And now, along with the lines of the romance "Burn, burn, my star", forever associated with the name of Admiral Kolchak, he also necessarily put stanzas of Nesmelov's poems. And those poetic images entered my imagination forever.

I remember it as if it was yesterday: a late summer evening, my father driving his beloved Volga, his thickest, with gray already, hair, beard and mustache arrows. Past, outside the windows, flying fields, copses. They missed the bridge over Chekhov's Lopasnya. Coming soon - Ok...
A deep baritone, turning into a bass - the father selflessly deduces about the shining cherished "star of love". Then he reads from Gumilyov about young brig captains salted by the winds with lace cuffs around their wrists. Or this is the “Suvorov banner” of the four times awarded lieutenant Mitropolsky (poetic name - Nesmelov) about the battles of that Patriotic German:
"Retreat!" - and the guns fell silent,
The machine gun drummer fell silent.
Beyond the burning village
The Phanagoria regiment withdrew.
This morning killed the best
Officers. The commander is smitten.
And a very young lieutenant
Our fourth received a battalion.
And with the battalion there was a banner,
And the lieutenant prayed in a terrible hour,
For heaven to take pity on us,
For God to save our shrine.
But they trembled on the left and on the right, -
The enemy pounced like a bear
And the protection of the banner - with glory
All that was left was to die.
And then, I swear - a lot of eyes
That forever captured the moment
Generalissimo Suvorov himself
At the holy banner arose.
He was thin, he had a powdered pigtail,
With a star was his uniform.
He shouted: "Follow me, Phanagorians!
With God, battalion commander!"
And burned his order like lava,
All hearts: the holy shadow is calling!
Rushed on the left, ran on the right,
To, colliding, rush forward!
Bayonet strike fury
The enemy did not demolish; we went like a hurricane
Only the commander of the young
We brought the dead to the village...
And at the coffin - everyone will remember it
Chronicler of front-line life -
Suvorov himself wept: twice at night
The guards saw him."

Later, years later, I will understand why my father built such a series of favorite poems: Nesmelov belongs to the tradition of warrior poets, where Denis Davydov, Bestuzhev-Marlinsky, Lermontov, Gumilyov and many more are in a single ranks. True, the experience of the latter is weighed down by the bitter knowledge of the civil war, the most terrible of wars. Although many of our classics had a premonition of this.

In the Soviet Union, Nesmelov was more or less fully known in the circle of writers and officers of the Far East after the end of World War II, after the victory over Japan. How fate sometimes unfolds! The poet was arrested in Harbin and executed in 1945 in a prison near Vladivostok. And after that, in the homeland, they began to read his poems, memorize them from each other's voices. To copy and store them meant dooming yourself to camp terms.

And another paradox - the poet's poems were recognized thanks to the outstanding writer Vsevolod Nikanorovich Ivanov, whom Nesmelov himself considered an apostate of the White Idea. The fact is that Ivanov, Marine officer and a former employee of the press service of Admiral Kolchak, returned, recognized power. And he also carried living knowledge about emigration, about the past, and that poetry. From Ivanov, she diverged in a circle of trusted people, passed on. Nesmelov himself impartially described his attitude towards his former ally. Here contradictions in destinies were expressed - the time was cruel, did not incline to compromises. It is not for us now to judge those people: who was right or wrong before whom, how much more right or how much less? It would be better for us to think about ourselves ... Here are these verses to Ivanov:
"We are polite. You asked for a match
And held out a black cigarette case,
And here is the fire - a condition of decency -
You have to cut it out of the lighter.
The smoke hung like a lilac branch.
We talk, bringing foreheads together peacefully,
But that meeting - the speed of a decade! -
I would require a different fire ...
They would grab, if on foot, for revolvers,
They would have been cut down on top, on a gallop ...
He called. To the Chinese: “I will be narzan!”
He squinted - "and a glass of cognac" ...
The car is knocking, the carpet floor is shaking,
The bass string screams.
I perfectly see: you miss,
And boredom, boy, we have in common.
Let us be enemies, we are not alien to each other,
How alien to both this sleepy life.
And it is not clear, right, why are you
Do you bear the yoke of a completely different fate?
We remember the past without malice.
Like music. It sang and burned...
We are not equal, but still we are similar,
Like triangles with equal angles.
Both of us were rocked by bad weather.
Both of us, in the night, were awakened by a horn ...
We are the children of the eighteenth year,
Thirtieth year. We are the past, my friend!
What to complain! Everything comes with a deadline
Disappear, sink everyone is dressed up,
You will get into the purge in Vladivostok,
The birdless will eat me abroad.
He bowed his eyelashes, as they bow the banner,
In past battles, a tattered flap ...
- I'm really sorry that you're not with us yet.
- Do not lie: with whom? And ... let's drink cognac."

My father, at that time a naval officer-engineer and a young writer, served from the forty-seventh to the fifty-third years in Port Arthur, built a runway for a naval aviation airfield and met the Korean War there. Then he already achieved his resignation and completely immersed himself in journalism, writing already in Vladivostok. Then he met Vsevolod Nikanorovich, who for a long time became his eldest friend - in years and experience. And from this friend a lot of forbidden or slanderous things were learned. Including foreign poetry. And some of this knowledge was later passed on to me.

Then their friendship continued in Khabarovsk. The cultural capital of the Far East, at that time inhabited by the intelligentsia, exiled or released from the camps, and fragments of the ancestral Cossacks, for a long time preserved the memory of two stately writer-officers with perfect bearing, who often walked along the boulevards during conversations, from hill to hill. We sat up in restaurants, danced to the orchestra in the House of Officers of the Far Eastern Military District, which is next to the park, surrounded by old clumsy “long-armed” elms at the very cliff above the Amur. Both were witty, unrestrained in language and were known as "a thunderstorm of ladies' hearts." It cost nothing to the father, for example, in public, and even more so in women's society, to read at least such a poem by Nesmelov:
Companion.
"You called me from school to the dark garden
Under a quiet elm, on an old bench.
You came as a cheerful girl
In my student room.
And the evil rebellious boy,
Who accumulated arrogant verses,
I injected flashes into a childish heart
Heavy, dark music of the elements.
And these days the warmth of your palms
And the fresh cold of unruly lips
Seemed to me azure and bottomless
Venetian blue lagoons...
And in old Poland, digging into the clay,
Sights searching the distance,
Whistling like an ocarina
I didn’t see you in the smoke of battle ...
And found when the steel grasshopper
He stopped cracking, telling all the tapes,
A girl from a Polish town -
Your smile and your eyes.
When the country burned in the uprisings,
As the map burns on a candle,
You took me out of the Urals
The hand resting on my shoulder.
In all the ways of my dissolute life
I heard your unhurried step.
Your names holy yarrow -
Like a jewel - saves the soul!
And if the mouth is toothless, empty
Old age will open with illness on the hump,
With the last verse I salute
You, golden-eyed, you!"

Soon Ivanov left for Moscow. The authorities at the very top used his name as a screen, as an example of "humane treatment of repentant enemies." But in fact - put in the famous "golden cage". Officially elevated to the classics. Wide and noisy meetings with readers were arranged, etc. But novels and memoirs were not published. In the sixty-first year, Literaturnaya Gazeta, in an article by the then young editor Inna Petrovna Borisova, mentioned those works from desk author. An instant call from Minister of Culture Furtseva himself followed, a tantrum in the style of a communal kitchen squabble: “Soviet writers cannot have unpublished novels!”

A little later, my father also ended up in Moscow. It happened just in time. In Khabarovsk, the leaders of the regional branch of the Union of Writers collected a case against him about anti-Sovietism. She announced essays, the first novels and stories, where he defended the right of a person to be the master of his life's work, opposed the predatory felling of cedar forests, the destruction of taiga rivers by mole rafting, extinction, the soldering of small peoples, and much more. Also, he was accused of propaganda, citing forbidden literature. The father, the son of the “enemy of the people”, who was tortured back in the thirty-fifth year for love of freedom and caustic jokes about Stalin and other leaders, he, deprived of civil rights until the war, did not have to count on any indulgence. Fortunately, the case was not put into production. Father received an unexpected call from Ivan Pyriev, director and director of Mosfilm, who was then almost omnipotent in the cinematographic and ideological system. The second, even more dangerous, attempt will mature by the second half of the seventies. Then Brezhnev will personally stop it.

But back to the early sixties. In the capital, the friendship of his father with Ivanov continued. And soon their trip to the former Yekaterinburg-Sverdlovsk will take place. It is surprising that they repeated - albeit at a different time, in different circumstances, and even in reverse order - the very path of their beloved poet Arseny Nesmelov. It was in his native capital that the twenty-eight-year-old Phanagorian lieutenant Arseniy Mitropolsky gave the first battle to the Reds. From here, his path lay to the Urals already in the rank of a white officer. Moscow is the birthplace of the White Cause.
"We are white. This is the first time
We are baptized by Moscow people.
The brave and the young
Rifles are being taken now.
And the onslaught is the first to crush
frightened enemy,
And the milestones of victory are set,
And their lives are cheap.
To Nikitskaya, to Sivtsev Vrazhek!
You can't cross the Arbat.
Here the junker stands guard,
His eyes are on fire.
And there, behind the bars of the square,
At stunted autumn lindens,
Shooting from a revolver
And the voice of screaming is hoarse.
A shot in the dark - a star
From fiery red veins,
And creeping before me
He put the rifle in his shoulder.
And here we are in an unequal battle,
But our victorious step is firm -
After all, it runs ingloriously everywhere,
The enemy is retreating everywhere.
The fighter strains his nerves,
Delight on the face of a young man,
But the junker reserves
Exhausted to the end!
- Forward! Help Creator! -
And again a gun in his hands.
But the layman locked himself in
Like a rat, he sits in houses.
We occupied the Kremlin, we are everywhere
Under the wet cover of darkness
And yet only a miracle
We commit to victory.
After all, we are locked in the enemy
The ring that closed us
And from the Kremlin tower - to the guards
The midnight hour strikes resoundingly."

That trip of the father with Ivanov to the Urals turned out to be especially significant. One went on business to a film studio; the other to a reader's conference.
Yekaterinburg-Sverdlovsk is a city that bears the burden of one of the cruelest historical crimes. Once, as part of the troops of General Kappel, he was liberated by Arseniy Nesmelov.
"Volunteers sang. Dusty cars
They rushed west in the clatter of wheels.
Cannons poked out from the bronze platform.
Push and win! or downhill.
Here is Kamyshlovo. The Reds were driven away.
Dawn will rush us to Yekaterinburg:
There is our Emperor. We already dreamed
On the liberation of the Russian Tsar.
Reduced versts - less haul
It remained to rush to you, Ural.
On its foothills, on green hills
A young, successful battle rumbled.
And again victory. We drive tighter
Red detachments in a tight ring.
Why are there no songs, brothers, why
Does the messenger from headquarters have a dead face?
Why is the gray-whiskered warrior crying?
In every heart - like all conflagrations of cinders.
In Yekaterinburg, bow your head,
The meek Sovereign died a martyr.
Speech freezes, words freeze,
Eyes widened in terror.
It was, brothers, like a thunderclap,
This beat is not to be forgotten.
A gray-haired officer came out. Large
He raised his hands to the sky, turned to us:
- Yes, the Tsar is gone, but Russia is alive,
Motherland Russia remains to us.
And he called a soldier to new victories,
Behind the Ural Ridge, a war reared up.
With each anniversary, a remote date;
The farther away she is, the scarier she is."

In Sverdlovsk, Ivanov, as a master, was invited to the first secretary of the regional committee, and he insisted on my father's invitation. Then I pass it on as I heard it, remember it and tell it to my children.
The owner of the region at that time was Kirilenko, Brezhnev's sister-in-law and soon a prominent member of the Politburo. In his office, he delivered a welcoming speech, praised the educational power of "Soviet literature" and finally offered a tour of the city of glorious revolutionary traditions. Asked what guests would like to see? Ivanov called the Ipatiev House. There was a pause. Following Kirilenko picked up the phone, called the head of the department of culture. An obliging-looking man entered, far from being old. His surname turned out to be Yermash - he will soon become the long-term chairman of the USSR State Cinematography. The owner asked what condition the house was in and could it be shown to Moscow guests? Yermash hesitated - they had no keys. “So where are they?” - Should be at the watchman's. - Where is the watchman? - He lives nearby. So get in touch and call. Let it be ready. - I'm listening. - Yes, and order to give the guests a car. To be taken and then delivered where required.
But Ivanov refused the car. He wanted to walk and see the city. And he remembers the way to the house very well. Kirilenko was slightly surprised and delighted: so he visited them? - Yes. The last time - in the year 18... The first secretary was more surprised: - You must have been white before the capture? - Not. I was just after, with Kappel's troops. I was sent by Admiral Kolchak to inform about the work of the group of investigator Sokolov ...
After these words, there was a complete silence for a long time.

The watchman waited on the spot and unlocked the house. It was still completely untouched, as in the eighteenth, but empty - all things and furniture had long been taken out. Vsevolod Nikanorovich walked through the rooms, told who and where was located, where the internal guards were located, and how everything looked.
And then they went down to the basement along the same steps. Father often recalled how then his heart began to beat, then to stop.
The gloomy low basement was all saturated with a sense of villainy. Even the stale, damp air pressed as he talked about it. What can we say about the walls, heavily chipped by bullets? Ivanov showed who and where of the executed were sitting, standing, where they were shooting from. But most of all struck, literally - shouted, the back door leading to the yard. It was through her that the bodies, riddled with bullets and, for reliability, then punctured with bayonets, were carried out, and thrown into the back of a running truck. So, this door was upholstered with tin from the inside. The tin was swollen, painted with the blackest Kuzbasslak. And it looked like a coffin lid against the wall.

Nesmelov has a small but extremely meaningful poem. It shows the typical attitude of the intelligentsia to the Tsarist power and the Family before the revolution and during it. And the final line-word-cry expresses the value revolution of exceptional historical importance that took place in the minds and hearts after the execution. A revolution that is taking place more and more in our days and diluting the personal positions of people in approval, acceptance, justification of the event and everything behind it, or in dissociation and condemnation. It seems that the further, the more serious this personal ideological divorce in society will be. Today's comprehension of the past is already growing out of it, and after that - a way of thinking, deeds, value orientations. That is, something that will largely determine the future.
"I don't feel sorry for the non-Russian queen.
The heart does not break into a run
And it does not beat like a wounded bird,
Tears do not boil from under the eyelids.
Indifferently, not grieving, I look
To the suffering of a weak king.
From the basement pours its light
Russia has a new dawn.
Their leather creak is inevitable:
"We're going to kill you now..."
It can be in the heart ... the forehead ... or it can be past -
Giving hope, sweet play...
I do not feel sorry for the perished power.
Lips are touched by cold, bitter laughter...
Only a nail in the chest unnecessary-rusty:
"Not children ... not theirs ... what a sin..."
And love!"

Yes, after this murder, there was a woman's cry in the villages for an innocent prince, for beautiful girls, grand duchesses. Yes, confessor Patriarch Tikhon, on behalf of the Church, called the atrocity by his own name, anathematized new power.

I will give as an example one fact that I heard from my father and which today, perhaps, no one knows anymore. One day, after Ivanov published some of his memoirs, he received a package from the Far East. The old Bolshevik, mistaking the writer for "one of his own", sent a notebook of reminiscences. He was in the protection of the Ipatiev House and participated in the destruction of the bodies of the dead. The same man guarded at Ganina Yama, where in the forest they burned bodies on huge bonfires, pouring acid over them to increase heat and decomposition. Then the rest was supposed to be thrown into adits and blown up. While this was going on, the driver suddenly disappeared. It was ordered to be found. The narrator found him in the nearest village to the place. He was sitting on the street surrounded by men, drinking moonshine and talking about the execution. The men stood with a gloomy menacing look. The narrator, who arrived in time, took out his revolver, ordered them to disperse, and led away the half-drunk driver, fearing that he would be torn to pieces. When he arrived, he reported what had happened. The team immediately began to put out the fires. The remaining parts of the bodies were thrown into the back and drove off into the night. Off-road we drove into an open area, no one knows where, stalled. The nearby cannonade of the Kappelites was already hanging over the district. Then they decided to bury the remains. They chose a featureless place, buried it, disguised, as far as possible, the freshly dug one. The narrator ended with the words that he did not remember this place at all in the darkness and confusion, there were no special landmarks there, and it is hardly possible to find it now.
It is difficult now to check whether this person wrote the truth. But there are materials from the investigation of the Sokolov group, which were hunted by Soviet intelligence for a long time, because of which many, including Sokolov himself, paid with their lives. There are countless and endless attempts to falsify everything related to these events. And there is, finally, Lenin's statement after the loss of Yekaterinburg that the grave of the Tsar will never be found ...
At the very end of his message, the old Bolshevik wondered why not a single magazine wanted to print these memoirs of his. He asked Vsevolod Nikanorovich to assist in this. Even until the end of his life, that man did not understand anything and still considered the event a revolutionary heroic and just retribution!

Of course, this murder was ritual and symbolic for all forces and parties at once, no matter how anyone now denies it even among church leaders. After all, the Sovereign was not only forced to leave the throne in violation of the law, but the Sacrament of Confirmation to the Kingdom was never removed from him by the Council of Bishops. He remained sacred. It is no coincidence that Lenin let slip that at that time the only disastrous thing for their power would be a call for the restoration of the Kingdom. Therefore, with such fury, people were exterminated for prayers to the icon Mother of God"Sovereign", these icons themselves and all those who kept them and simply called themselves monarchists were exterminated.

Alas, the white leaders could not raise such a banner. There were many liberal Republicans among them. Although they were loyal to the oath, there were also the throne: generals Dieterikhs, Markov, Drozdovsky, Keller and others. There were many military officers-monarchists. And on the other hand, this banner was not raised because in the governments - at the same Kolchak - there were both Cadets and Socialist-Revolutionaries. After all, there was a war of ideologies and it was under the conditions of propaganda of Bolshevism. The main issue was the land, the peasant. It depended on him who the community would follow. Lenin, in his decree, cynically stole and used the agrarian program of the Socialist-Revolutionaries, and crushed the Socialist-Revolutionaries themselves. This program promised socialization, that is, the allocation of land to consumers and shares of workers with the payment of tax by them. In fact, the Bolsheviks, upon coming to power, introduced a surplus appraisal, which ransacked the villagers, and slave communes. In central Russia, the peasants soon learned the value of the slogans of the Bolsheviks. But it was too late - any discontent was suppressed by executions. Well, beyond the Volga, the Urals, they did not know this from personal experience and willingly listened to the temptation. For this, Kolchak needed the Socialist-Revolutionaries with their activities and influence.

But even this was not the main reason for the rejection of the slogan of monarchism, the rejection of the temporary until the convocation and decisions of the All-Russian Constituent Assembly. The fact is that the domestic bourgeoisie refused financial and other support to the White forces. They did not have support on industrial centers either, they could not resist the Bolsheviks for a long time without help in supplying, arming the countries allies of Russia along the Entente. And those categorically did not accept the Kingdom and, in addition, had their own goals. While the white troops were weak and unarmed, help was coming. As soon as the complete crushing of the red power was brewing, help was cut short, and everything possible was done to disunite the front actions of the White armies. Conditions for the future were put forward: direct intervention in domestic politics, concessions, ownership of resources, and even territorial claims. The leaders of the whites did not go to such agreements. And the armies, without ammunition, rolled back from the last victory line. Bolshevik propaganda among the population accused the whites of exactly what they refused, and frightened them with new serfdom and executions. Although it was the Bolsheviks who did what they accused the enemy of. So, from the very beginning there was a secret sale through the emissaries of the treasures of the State at the most bargain prices. We decided to sell the regalia and the Great Imperial Crown. When the President of the United States Woodrow Wilson found out about this, he urgently appealed to the country not to make a deal. Such a purchase of the historical shrines of Russia in trouble will turn into an indelible shame for the entire nation until the end of time! And his call was heard all over the world. Lenin, Trotsky and the whole company had to calm down for a while.
But in the end, the Entente nevertheless collided with the Reds, withdrew troops from their already limited coastal footholds and stopped helping the Whites on the bail of the introduction by the Bolsheviks of the liberal NEP, convertible gold coins and free trade, the movement of capital.

These were the real conditions of those years in general terms. Knowledge about them is still distorted by officialdom. Or, it is hushed up. And that was the special value of such people as Vsevolod Nikanorovich Ivanov, who knew the subject thoroughly and revealed this background to the extent possible in the most “silent” years. Well, what can we say about Nesmelov's poetry? She expressed what was impossible to say in the sub-Soviet press. And even more - is it not for us, today, that these lines of the poem "The Kingslayer" are also addressed:
"We are now serving panikhidas,
With magnificent generosity we burn the palm,
We put faces next to the image,
We are going to the Tsar's memorial.
We keep malice towards the killers,
To quench your own sin
But they sent the King to the slum
Is it not with everyone, alas, with us?
How many killers were there? Twelve,
Eighteen or thirty-five?
How could it be so...
Do not defend the sovereign?
Only a handful of this enemy,
As pollen would boldly:
Loyal subjects - one hundred and forty
Called millions.
There are many lies in our late lamentation,
The most hypocritical chatter
Didn't he pour poison for everyone
Some kind of poison that poisoned the days.
And is it one, is it one name -
A victim of terrible bats?
No, for a long time we are angry at night
They killed their kings.
And a curse fell on everyone
All of us are anxious chest:
Are you closing the house of Ipatiev,
Some old bloody way"?!

In the same way, in those years, the background of the capture, the death of Admiral Kolchak, this most dangerous banner-name for the Bolsheviks after the Sovereign, was recognized. How difficult, how painful it is to rake mountains of lies in this inverted looking-glass world, soaked in still quite hot alien blood! But without this there is no future, but there is one ongoing nightmare-fainting.

The White Army was only a throw across the Volga to Moscow - and the war was over. Everything is prepared, the highest morale in the troops. The red units are demoralized, they scatter. Trotsky rushes on his armored train with punitive inter-detachments along the front line, arranges executions-decimations. Lenin and the Central Executive Committee, preparing to flee, threaten to leave "scorched earth" behind them.
And at that main hour, when the general offensive was unfolding, the allies stopped the supply of ammunition to the front. And this despite the fact that the bank of Japan was under the guarantee of the transfer of funds, some of the gold reserves of the Empire, intended specifically for supply! But for Japan, for example, it has always been more important to achieve the rights to own the Far East. And they were denied this. Admiral Kolchak, one of the most slandered in new history people, did not even consider himself entitled to waste the bulk of the gold reserves, which was in the echelon at the Headquarters and was intended to restore the country's economy after the victory. And both the Bolsheviks and the “allies” took advantage of this concept of honor. The principle of operation of the latter will be clearly formulated later, in the forty-fifth year. At a meeting with Churchill, the issue of extradition to Stalin for mass execution of seventy thousand Cossacks with their wives, children and the elderly in a camp near Lienz was decided. Then the meaning of this extradition was formulated as follows: "It became possible to destroy one part of the Russian barbarians with the hands of another part of the Russian barbarians." What happened.

Let's go back to nineteen. Losing ammunition, the white units rolled back beyond the Urals. The Great Siberian Ice Campaign began. We walked with battles, in severe frosts, starving. Viscous snow, ammunition is worn out, there is almost no ammunition. Requisitions, fights with the red partisans. Soon these gullible peasants will howl like an animal from "their" long-awaited power ... This path through all of Siberia, through the ice hummocks of Lake Baikal to Chita, was terrible. Arseny Nesmelov left a number of his poems about him. And this, about the faithful rifle No. 5729671, directly stands in the tradition of those works of Pushkin, Lermontov that tell through images of weapons about the hero’s military spirit - the oldest tradition dating back to the epic:
"Two bullets left a mark on the bed,
But your birch butt is strong.
... Only your shot sounded as if stricter,
Only you were nicer to the soldiers!

In the hands of a fighter, not thinking about changing,
You thundered and glowed the trunk
At Osovets, at Lvov, at Tyumen,
And now you guard Tobol.

My old friend, do you remember the battle at Gorki,
Yalutorovsk, Shmakovo and Irbit?
Everywhere, everywhere our enemy, our evil enemy
Was powerfully crushed, thrown back and broken!

And there, in the forest? Scratching on the butt,
Shrapnel stung me in the chest...
How hard it was then for the detachment!
Another soldier owned you for two days...

He was killed. Some new warrior
Found you and loaded you in battle
But was he worthy of keeping you
And did you understand your eloquence?

Or maybe a shrill grenade
Broke your steel hot barrel...
... And now I found you in the hands of a soldier,
So the chance brought us to see each other!

Farewell again. Wandering in a formidable circle,
I'm waiting for a meeting on new shores,
And I know you, my friend,
Do not be captured, do not be in the hands of enemies!

During this long retreat, the Bolshevik elite conducted secret negotiations through its agents with the organizers of a political conspiracy against the admiral, with British military advisers, the French general Janin and other command of the Czech corps of former prisoners of war, which after October rose under the banner of the White Army. Lenin proposed: in exchange for the extradition of Kolchak - a free exit to his homeland with weapons and the gold of Russia that was at the Headquarters. And the Czechs go for it - they took advantage of the fact that the Russian units got stuck in battles and would not have had time to pull together and save their Supreme Ruler. He was arrested and locked up in a train car.

Yes, he was cruel - far from being crueler than the Bolsheviks - in that all-Russian battle, but he also knew how to love his Motherland, to love a woman. He, Kolchak, is a military admiral, scientist, developer of the famous mine and mine tactics that served the Fatherland in the next war! He, glorified by his bitter love for a woman he once met unexpectedly, and who carried this love high, this inextinguishable star of his romance, to the end of his death! He is a polar sailor, explorer, rescuer, fanned by the heroism of the North! Those romantic campaigns brought the highest glory to the sailors, their Fatherland. The world dreamed of the Arctic. How beautiful are Nesmelov's lines about her!
"... To the pole. The heart is full of powder
Joy, he sees, bending over the map:
In gentle palms carries away the ball
Blue-eyed Solveig - Arctic.
Like a bride, she is tender
Like a bride, she is ruthless.
She's like a gift
This boat, air, sailing.
Whispers: "I'll come down to you with a radiance,
I will put the cold around like a fence.
Thirty-three years lying in ice
You will be, beloved, desired, chosen!
The ball falls. For six months - night.
Companions are dead. Loneliness.
You need to move, pray, but
Sleep, just want to sleep endlessly.
"Give your head to my knees,
Warm yourself with the cold of virginity.
Thirty-three years in ice, in a dream
You'll be waiting for a cruiser from Norway!"...

So, the national hero was bought and sold in the meanest way for Russian money by foreigners, to whom he entrusted weapons, and "benefactors of the human race", beautiful-hearted supposedly "Kremlin dreamers", enthusiastically praised by so many lively, the most popular pens in the world.

But even before the dispatch of the captive Kolchak, an event occurred that became the legend of the White Movement. And with the same legend it fanned the name of the officer and poet Nesmelov-Mitropolsky. In a completely incomprehensible way, he managed to break through to the cordoned off platform and say goodbye to the admiral. Arseny Nesmelov turned out to be the man who, on behalf of the entire Russian army, saluted the hero for the last time.
I remember with what restrained force my father often recited this poem from memory, and what an impression it made on me, a boy, in blurred times of triumphant lies and insignificance:
In Nizhneudinsk
"The day blossomed and was crystal,
A long step creaked in the snow.
Hung over the station building
Helplessly non-Russian flag.

And I remember the echelon links,
Quiet, as if lifeless.
Stood by the blue wagon
Ruddy Czech watch.
And it was definitely funeral
Protection gloomy ring,
But suddenly, for a moment, in a mirror glass
A stern face flashed.
Mouth, already without a drop of blood,
Severely clenched lips! ..
Eyes, broken eyebrows,
And between them - His trait -
That fold of pain, tension,
In which there is fatal ...
The hand itself began to move,
And as I passed, I saluted.
And this gesture in the fierce frost,
In that mother-of-pearl silence, -
My last was a salute
Salute of the heart and soul!
And he answered me with a lean
Your beautiful head...
And the locomotive with a distant groan
Someone called from the blue.
And I was sad. And malleable
Snow creaked in front of the car:
That with a tilted rifle
A ruddy Czech stepped towards me.
And the brakes rumbled -
The clang approached, flew by,
The Czechs rushed off the Admiral
To Irkutsk - to be tortured and shot!"

After that, Nesmelov spent a short time in the "wild steppes of Transbaikalia" with Baron Ungern. The latter disgusted him with his whole image. The poet did not tolerate dictators: be it a baron or, later, Stalin, Hitler, or others, smaller. Here are the epic-tale-like ruthless lines he left for centuries about the “black Daurian baron”:
"To the ravine,
where the grass turned red with blood,
where death overturned the corpses on the slope,
pulling the hat on the very eyebrows,
the baron rides up on a black horse.

He will walk down to the chopped corpses,
and looks into their faces
leaning from the saddle
and the horse spins, settling with croup,
and in the foam of fright his bit.

And fury
weary of her delirium,
caucasian Blade,
he's already naked
into the rotting
red army meat
hanging to the ground
immerses the baron.

The horse is mad
he does not listen to spurs,
takes to the ridge
all in moonlight -
frightened by the noise
awakened raven
croaks hoarsely on the black pine.

And the raven croaks
and the rider listens
and the thin face brightens with ice.
Than the exclamations of a bird sound more bleak,
topics
crushed heart,
ring weakens.

The eyes lit up.
In their alarming brilliance -
two tiny sparks.
two thin beams...
But now
returning from a terrible trip,
the baron ordered:
Call a doctor!

And the doctor
cloudy melancholy defenses,
(steps and rattling of spurs in silence),
snapped:
My raven is sick:
seeing me
he did not croak at me!

You will treat him
if the last
I will lose my consolation - I will reckon with you! ..
The doctor left silently
and right there in the front
threw up his hands and committed suicide."

After Ungern, the retreat roads led the poet to Far East, where, in a desperate last defense, General Dieterikhs assembled the Zemsky Sobor of the Amur Region. This cathedral became a mandate, a testament of the White Cause to the descendants, the future Fatherland. The Council called: when Russia becomes free from Bolshevism, to unite all the people of the earth and restore the Orthodox State of the Kingdom ...

The Far Eastern Republic fell. Nesmelov did not emigrate. In Vladivostok, he was registered with the GPU as a former officer. And in the twenty-fourth year, just like the hero of The Quiet Flows the Don, Grigory Melekhov, he learns that his execution is being prepared. And he leaves the taiga, the hills, the fields of kaoliang burning from the heat to Manchuria, to the Russian Harbin.
"Let not a few days pass together,
But here I am not needed and alien,
After all, you are a woman - about the Motherland! -
And, therefore, why
All that is thrown by the heart in anger,
What is said in a rush:
We part on good terms
To never bother
More to each other. Everything that is acquired
I will leave you, forgiving your debts -
All these pastures and pastures
And for me - expanses and paths,
Yes, your language. I don't know better
For foul language and prayers,
He, amazing - from Tyutchev
To Mayakovsky is great.
But compliments are appropriate here -
Only politeness, only chill
Smiles - wonderful excerpt
Here are the verified lines.
I'm going. Above the undergrowth - evening
Empty skies the color of ice.
And with a sigh of relief:
Farewell, I know: Forever.

Since then, Nesmelov lived in Harbin. Lived there for twenty-one years. This Russian city, founded at the beginning of the century, grew before our eyes. Emigrants flocked here. Here, as in all Abroad, there was complete mutual assistance - otherwise you will not survive. At first they took on the most difficult menial work. With the last pennies, they built the House of Mercy for the lonely sick and infirm, a church with a monastic community with him. Settled in quickly. And soon, thanks to the labors of these active, educated and talented people, a new, in fact, city grew up. There was a society with a rich culture, publishing houses and theaters, institutions. Nesmelov's books were published here, and they kept in touch with the whole world from here. Life went on almost as usual: they loved, got together, formed families.
ANNE
"For evenings in the ascetic schema,
For the silence clinging to the porch ..,
For purity. For an affectionate name
For what is woven with your fingers
A touch on my face.
For the stinginess of words. For an oath weight
Them raised from the depths of the soul.
For the generosity of eyes that are like bowls,
Like tenderness bringing ladles.
For the weakness of the hands. For courage. For imaginary
The inevitability of the rejected.
And for the uniqueness
Games without declamation and makeup
With a finale as inspirational as a thunderstorm."

How different is this love lyric from the then revolutionary attitudes of the “human nails” in the Motherland with their “love is not sighs on the bench”, but something like a “glass of water” to quench thirst in between creative work! Well, today's Bolsheviks have creatively developed their views on love already before sex on office tables, so as not to waste time and money in vain ...

But back to Harbin. Soon, and as always "suddenly", the children grew up, dispersed. It was especially painful.
Five handshakes
"You came to me to say goodbye. You hugged me.
Looked into my eyes, said: "It's time!"
Nowadays, at a similar age
Cadets went to cadets.
But not in Konstantinovskoe, dear,
You are going. great ocean
Stretches thousands of miles
To the forests of Canada, to the glades
In those forests, to the big city,
Where - graduated from the university! -
Let's lose our boy
In a foreigner of twenty-three years.
Who will condemn? Vologda and Biysk
Is fidelity of the heart worth keeping? ..
You will even think in English,
Cry and love in a different way.
We are not! No matter where you upload
Storm of the Kostroma wolf army,
Nevertheless, we and Durov, perhaps,
The English cannot be trained.
Five handshakes in a week
So many young flocks will scatter! ..
We will die, and the young will be divided
France, America, China.

Once upon a time, this happened in Harbin and all abroad for a number of understandable everyday conditions. And today in Russia, unable to figure out its past and Russia itself, have we not lived to a sadder place because of the same ongoing, weak-willed fall into insignificance? And do not many, many already in their own home still have longing-nostalgia for it?
ON CHRISTMAS EVE
"Today the wind is from east to west,
And across the frozen Manchurian land
The snow begins to scratch
And he runs, disappearing into the darkness.

With this wind, cold and prickly,
What starts knocking on the window -
To the Trans-Ural silver trees
It would be nice to ditch today.

To rush over the Russian expanse,
Breaking through the blizzard,
Over some Vyatka or Gzhatsk,
Sweep over your native Moscow.

And listen on Christmas Eve
The flutter of the heart of the country,
Look into the rebellious soul
Into its fatal depths.

The springs of her foe did not scrape -
Is it not in the wilderness of swamps and forests
The first sparks ignite
Hidden until the time of sketes,

As in the Tatar region, in deaf years,
As in those dark years when
Russia began in the smoke of battles,
Collected their cities.

She is unsociable, invisible.
Dark boron closes the ring.
Closes the impassive schema
Young, thin face.

But now, as before, once,
Do not overpower Russia trouble.
And sunken eyes are raised
To the golden Star of Bethlehem."

Based on these lines, one might think that Nesmelov was inclined towards a well-known poetic idealization of the present and the desired future. This is not true. He understood that in any case it would be necessary to fight for this future, but for other generations. He clearly understood the state of the mass of people in the Motherland. And with his poetry he left, as it were, a guiding thread for the best to what was killed, expelled, slandered and forgotten. Although he did not shy away from cruel lines that apply to the state in today's Russia:
We
"A stone is a familiar fate for a hungry man.
We were born into a lie. We laugh in pain.
The eyes are covered with a rotten scab.
Kneeling is comfortable and easy.
Powerless tears in our throats.
And only for the weak we know the truth.
Flows instead of blood through the veins of the fuselage.
Breathing fumes, we are strong in spirit.
Hungry - bread, and free - freedom!
Born to crawl - an enviable share!

Life in a foreign land is not easy. In Harbin, during the Japanese occupation, it became even more complicated. The Japanese, with their well-bred hatred of Russia, now shot at the windows, then threw grenades. Then their command decided to mock the Russian faith. Against the church they set up their idol Amaterasu and demanded that Christians bow before their god before the service. The Russians refused. Then the torture and murder began. But the community held firm. And soon something happened to the pagans that happened in the history of Christianity, especially in the first centuries, many times.
Once a hieromonk named Filaret refused to bow to an idol in the square. The Japanese military began the torture. They burned with metal, passed electric current, cut with a knife, mutilated the eye and face. And the monk in prayer asked the Lord Jesus Christ to give him the strength to endure all this. He prayed and felt no pain at all. The amazed executioners left him - it dawned on their consciousness that such tortures could not be endured by a simple human will and the Higher Power was acting against them. Next, the god was removed from the square and the coercion ended.

But the red underground, the Chinese partisans continued to attack. For them, emigrants were class enemies. In addition, over the northern border hung Soviet troops. Life became more and more shaky, almost ghostly. Well, when the offensive began, it became obvious: the existence of Russian Harbin, its world, is living out its last days. Emigrants again - for the umpteenth time! - packed luggage. Arseny Nesmelov decided to stay. The lonely poet had nowhere to retreat and no reason to. Maybe he felt the fulfillment of the meaning of his life ... He was then fifty-six years old.

Yes, with these fates, with these poets and writers, an era was leaving. And what an era!.. It is strange that official literary criticism is in no hurry to recognize their primary place, but singles them out into some kind of “emigrant sub-section”, as if they were sitting on an island and led a fenced-off exotic life of natives, as if they did not express all the same era. Expressed! And they expressed it in such a way that without these books it is impossible to comprehend it objectively. And these authors with their heroes all belong to the same general generation, which has long received the historical name - "lost". The heroes of the books of Hemingway and Remarque, Aldington and Dos Passos, our Grigory Melekhov, Yuri Zhivago and Turbins, the lyrical heroes of Nesmelov, Savin, Turoverov and Terapiano and many, many more, all of them have traveled a common path with the era, but each in his own way. For our heroes and authors, this path turned out to be much more tragic, and they saved their faith.
"We pierced the oceans with our foreheads
Waves of blinding and blind taiga:
Cursed in the lot of apostasy
Fate chained us, not enemies.
We lifted the feat with our shoulders,
Only the heart was our jack;
We didn't know what rest is
In a gilded crown of awards.
Many of us are scattered around the world,
Settled already to the enemy;
We are just a topic dear to the poet,
We are just a footprint in the melting snow.
The winner, of course, is judged
Only the defeated are not judged,
And in the future we will be dressed
golden halo of glory.
And I scream, crumpling the stanza with delight,
Sharp-sighted, angry and tenacious, like a burdock:
- Like a tornado, it will overwhelm descendants
The daring wind of our epics!

It remains to tell the last legend about Arseny Nesmelov. In its spirit, it is almost from ancient Roman early heroics.
Soviet troops occupied Harbin. The poet knew that his name was on the list of the most dangerous enemies. He was waiting to be arrested. I put on my uniform and wrote a note. He poured vodka into a glass and put it on the table, right on this note. When they came to pick him up, he handed over his weapon with the words: "To a Soviet officer from a Russian officer." He pointed to the note. He raised his glass and drank.
The note read: "Shoot me at dawn." The Soviet officer, having read it, replied: “I don’t promise to shoot at dawn, but I will definitely report on your desire.”

An outstanding Russian poet, officer Arseny Nesmelov-Mitropolsky died at the end of forty-five in a prison near Vladivostok. The details of the death are unknown. For some reason I want to think - his last wish was fulfilled.
“If I die, you burn over the grave, shine, my star” ...