Anatoly Ignatievich Pristavkin was born on October 17, 1931 in the city of Lyubertsy, Moscow region. During the war, the boy was left an orphan (his mother died of tuberculosis, his father was at the front) and began to wander, and then ended up in an orphanage. In 1944, the orphanage in which he was raised was transferred to North Caucasus- in the territory from which Chechens were deported.
Anatoly studied at a vocational school and worked from the age of 12. At the age of 14, he ran away from the orphanage, worked in Sernovodsk at a cannery, then at the airfield in Zhukovsky.
After the war, Pristavkin began to participate in amateur performances and began to write poems himself, which were soon published in the newspaper.
In 1952, he graduated from the Moscow Aviation College and worked as an electrician, radio operator, and instrument operator.
After serving in the army, he entered the Literary Institute. M. Gorky, who graduated in 1959, studied at Lev Oshanin’s poetry seminar. In 1958, he made his debut as a prose writer (the cycle of stories “War Childhood” was published in the magazine “Youth”).
In the early 1960s, Anatoly Pristavkin went to the Bratsk Hydroelectric Power Station, worked in a team of concrete workers on the foundation pit of the future station, and at the same time was a correspondent for " Literary newspaper"on the construction of a hydroelectric power station. During these years, he wrote the documentary stories "My Contemporaries" (1959); "Bonfires in the Taiga" (1964); "Lapia Country" (1960); the novel "Dove" (1967).
Returning to Moscow, Pristavkin did not abandon the “Siberian” topic; he wrote essays about the construction of the BAM. Anatoly Pristavkin became widely famous thanks to the story “A Golden Cloud Spent the Night...” published in 1987, about Russian children sent at the end of the war to a boarding school in Chechnya, from where at that time all of them were deported local residents. The story was translated into all European languages.
In 1999, he wrote a three-volume documentary-based crime novel, The Valley of the Shadow of Death, which summarized his work on the clemency board. In 2000, his novel "Offended by the Zone" (2000) was published, in 2005 - three stories: "Judgment Day", "The First Day - the Last Day of Creation" (in the magazine "Neva") and "My Distant Carriage" (in the magazine "October"). Among the others famous works- "Cuckoo", "Soldier and Boy", "Drunken Heart Syndrome", "Ryazanka" and others. His novels and stories have been translated into many languages of the world and have been published in more than forty countries.
Anatoly Pristavkin in addition literary activity He was engaged in social work, collaborated with magazines, and taught.
He was a member of the Union of Cinematographers, and since 1961 he was a member of the Union of Writers of the USSR (in 1991-1992, co-chairman of the Secretariat of the Board of the Union of Writers of the USSR).
From 1963 to 1966 he served on the editorial board of the Young Guard magazine.
Since 1981 he taught at the Literary Institute, led a prose seminar; was an associate professor at the department of literary excellence.
Since 1988, Anatoly Pristavkin was co-chairman of the April writers' association at the Moscow writers' organization of the Writers' Union of the RSFSR (Russia), and editor-in-chief of the April magazine.
He was a member of the Temporary Monitoring Commission for the Observance of Constitutional Rights and Freedoms of Citizens, a member of the executive committee of the Russian Pen Center.,
In 1992-2001, Anatoly Pristavkin worked as chairman of the Commission on Pardons under the President of Russia. He was one of the authors of the booklet "How to Write a Petition for Pardon" in the Know Your Rights series, published by the Community Center for Advancement of Criminal Justice Reform. When the commission was disbanded, Anatoly Pristavkin, in the status of an adviser to the President of the Russian Federation (from December 29, 2001, March 30, 2004, by Decree of the President of the Russian Federation, he was reappointed to this position) took part in the work of regional pardon bodies, traveled to zones and colonies, and interacted with international organizations, including the Council of Europe. In April 2004, the premiere of the series of documentaries “The Sky in a Cage” took place, the author and presenter of which was Pristavkin.
Anatoly Pristavkin is a laureate of the 1988 USSR State Prize in the field of literature, art and architecture for the story “The Golden Cloud Spent the Night.” For the story "Kukushata" (1989) Pristavkin received the All-German National Prize for Children's Literature.
In 2002, he became the laureate of the Alexander Men International Prize for his contribution to the development of cultural cooperation between Russia and Germany in the interests of the peaceful construction of the European House.
Anatoly Pristavkin was married, he has three children and four grandchildren.
The material was prepared based on information from RIA Novosti and open sources
- Lyubertsy, Moscow region, RSFSR, USSR
Anatoly Ignatievich Pristavkin(October 17, Lyubertsy (Moscow region) - July 11, Moscow) - Soviet and Russian writer, public figure.
Biography
Born into a working-class family. During the war, he was left an orphan (his mother died of tuberculosis, his father was at the front), was brought up in an orphanage, studied at a vocational school, and worked in a cannery in Sernovodskaya. After the war, he began to participate in amateur performances, began to write poetry himself - they were soon published in the newspaper. In 1952 he graduated from the Moscow Aviation College. He worked as an electrician, radio operator, instrument operator.
After serving in the army, Pristavkin entered the University, where he studied at Lev Oshanin’s seminar and graduated in 1959. At the same time, Pristavkin made his debut as a prose writer - in No. 6 of the magazine “Youth” for 1959, a cycle of stories “Military Childhood” was published. During the construction of the Bratsk Hydroelectric Power Station, he became a staff correspondent for Literaturnaya Gazeta, while simultaneously working in a concrete crew.
During these years, he wrote the documentary stories “My Contemporaries” (1959); “Bonfires in the Taiga” (1964); "Seliger Seligerovich" (1965); the novel “The Dove” (1967), based on which a film of the same name was made in 1978. In the 70s and 80s, the stories “Soldier and Boy”, “Radio Station Tamara”, and the novel “Town” were published. Since 1981, A. Pristavkin taught at, led a prose seminar; Associate Professor of the Department of Literary Arts.
Anatoly Pristavkin gained worldwide fame from the story “The Golden Cloud Spent the Night”, published in 1987, touching on the theme of the deportation of the Chechen people in 1944. In his work, the author tried to speak frankly about what he himself experienced and what painfully burned his soul - the world is not worthy of existence. if he kills children. In 1988 she was awarded the USSR State Prize. Within a few years after its publication, the story was translated into more than 30 languages. In May 1990, a drama film of the same name based on the story “The Golden Cloud Spent the Night” was released (Gorky Film Studio, 1989, director Sulambek Mamilov).
In 1988, the story “Cuckoo” appeared. In 1990 she was awarded the All-German national award on children's literature. The stories “Soldier and Boy”, “Cuckoo”, novels “Town”, “Ryazanka” (1991), “Valley of the Shadow of Death” (2000), “My Distant Carriage” (2004), documentary story “Quiet Baltic” (1990) , a collection of fairy tales "The Flying Auntie" (2007) has also been translated into many foreign languages. The works of A. Pristavkin were translated by Slavists, laureates of prizes in the field of literary translation, Thomas Reschke (Germany), Michael Glaney (Great Britain), Lars-Erik Blomkvist (Sweden), Miura Midori (Japan) and others. On French Pristavkin's story was translated by Vladimir Nabokov's granddaughter Antoinette Roubishou.
In 1991, he headed the council of the independent writers' movement "April" at the Moscow writers' organization of the Union of Writers of the RSFSR. At the same time, he joined the steering committee of the international abolition movement. death penalty"Hands off Cain." He was the secretary of the Writers' Union of the Russian Federation, a member of the Union of Cinematographers of Russia, a member of the NIKA Film Academy, a member of the Board of Trustees of the All-Russian Sambo Federation, a member of the executive committee of the Russian PEN Center. For many years he was a permanent member of the jury International Festival films about human rights "Stalker". Since December 2008, the film festival has annually awarded a special Prize named after Anatoly Pristavkin.
Since 1992, Anatoly Pristavkin has been Chairman of the Commission on Pardons under the President of the Russian Federation, and since December 2001, Advisor to the President of the Russian Federation on pardon issues. A. Pristavkin’s work as chairman of the first all-Russian commission on pardons was awarded with Gratitude from the Presidents of Russia B. N. Yeltsin and V. V. Putin. A. Pristavkin’s work experience in the Pardon Commission was reflected in his documentary novel “The Valley of the Shadow of Death.”
In 2002, Anatoly Pristavkin became the laureate of the international Alexander Men Prize for his contribution to the development of cultural cooperation between Russia and Germany in the interests of the peaceful construction of the European House.
In 2008, shortly before his death, he managed to finish the novel “King Montpassier Marmalage the First.” This is, in many ways autobiographical work, was conceived by him back in the late 1980s, but in 1991, during the riots in Riga, the manuscript of the novel disappeared from hotel room, while Pristavkin on the barricades called on the troops to stop the violence. The work uses fragments of the author's research dedicated to the life and work of Grigory Karpovich Kotoshikhin, clerk of the Ambassadorial Prikaz, forced to flee to Sweden from persecution by the Moscow Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich and executed in Stockholm on charges of domestic murder in 1667. The first reader of the novel's manuscript was the writer's close friend, President of the Russian Book Union Sergei Stepashin, who wrote a voluminous preface to the book. The novel was presented to the public by Marina Pristavkina at the opening of the Moscow International book exhibition in September 2008.
Memory
By decree of the President of Ingushetia Murat Zyazikov, A. Pristavkin was posthumously awarded the Order of Merit for outstanding services in the field of literature: humanity and friendship between peoples.
The works of Anatoly Pristavkin are included in the Collected Works in five volumes (2010, AST Publishing House). Introductory articles by Marina Pristavkina and Doctor of Philology, Professor Igor Volgin.
In 2011 Tambovsky youth theater staged the play “Kukushata” (directed by Natalya Belyakova) based on the story by A. Pristavkin “Kukushata, or a plaintive song to calm the heart.”
For the writer’s eightieth birthday, which was celebrated in 2011, a documentary“Anatoly Pristavkin. Contents" (TV channel "Russia-Culture", author and director Irina Vasilyeva).
In Switzerland in 2011, on the initiative and with the support of Doctor of Law, founder and president of the Swiss-Russian Cooperation Council, Werner Stauffacher (†2012), it was published on German the novel “My Distant Carriage” translated by a friend of the writer, Slavist and translator Thomas Reschke.
In October 2012 in Bereznikovsky drama theater The premiere of the play “My Distant Carriage” took place. The play based on the story of the same name by A. Pristavkin was written by playwright Yaroslava Pulinovich. Staged a play artistic director theater Denis Kozhevnikov, and the artist of the performance became the Laureate of the National theater award“Golden mask” Dmitry Aksyonov. The performance took place with the support of the Ministry of Culture, Youth Policy and Mass Communications Perm region. In July 2014, the performance took part in the International theater festival“Voices of History” in Vologda.
Anatoly Ignatievich Pristavkin (October 17, 1931, Lyubertsy (Moscow region) - July 11, 2008, Moscow) - Soviet and Russian writer, public figure.
Born into a working-class family. During the war, he was left an orphan (his mother died of tuberculosis, his father was at the front), and was brought up in orphanage, studied at a vocational school, worked in Sernovodsk at a cannery. After the war, he began to participate in amateur performances, began to write poetry himself - they were soon published in the newspaper. In 1952 he graduated from the Moscow Aviation College. He worked as an electrician, radio operator, instrument operator.
After serving in the army, Pristavkin entered the Literary Institute. A. M. Gorky, where he studied in Lev Oshanin’s seminar and graduated in 1959. At the same time, Pristavkin made his debut as a prose writer - in No. 6 of the magazine “Youth” for 1959, a cycle of stories “Military Childhood” was published. During the construction of the Bratsk Hydroelectric Power Station, he became a staff correspondent for Literaturnaya Gazeta, while simultaneously working in a concrete crew.
During these years, he wrote the documentary stories “My Contemporaries” (1959); “Bonfires in the Taiga” (1964); "Lapia Country" (1960); the novel “The Dove” (1967), based on which a film of the same name was made in 1978. In the 70s and 80s, the stories “Soldier and Boy”, “Radio Station Tamara”, and the novel “Town” were published. Since 1981, A. Pristavkin taught at the Literary Institute, led a prose seminar; Associate Professor of the Department of Literary Arts.
Anatoly Pristavkin gained worldwide fame from the story “A Golden Cloud Spent the Night...” published in 1987, touching on the topic of deportation. Chechen people in 1944. In his work, the author tried to speak frankly about what he himself experienced and what painfully burned his soul - the world is not worthy of existence if it kills children. In 1988 she was awarded the USSR State Prize. Within a few years of its publication, the story was translated into more than 30 languages. In May 1990, a drama film of the same name based on the story “The Golden Cloud Spent the Night” was released (Gorky Film Studio, 1989, director Sulambek Mamilov).
In 1988, the story “Cuckoo” appeared. In 1990 she was awarded the All-German National Prize for Children's Literature. The stories “Soldier and Boy”, “Cuckoo”, novels “Town”, “Ryazanka” (1991), “Valley of the Shadow of Death” (2000), “My Distant Carriage” (2004), documentary story “Quiet Baltic” (1990) , a collection of fairy tales “The Flying Auntie” (2007) has also been translated into many foreign languages.
In 1991, he headed the council of the independent writers' movement "April" at the Moscow writers' organization of the Union of Writers of the RSFSR. At the same time, he joined the steering committee of the international movement for the abolition of the death penalty, “Hands Off Cain.” He was the secretary of the Writers' Union of the Russian Federation, a member of the Russian Cinematographers' Union, a member of the NIKA Film Academy, and a member of the executive committee of the Russian PEN Center. For many years he was a permanent member of the jury of the Stalker International Human Rights Film Festival. Since December 2008, the film festival has annually awarded a special Prize named after Anatoly Pristavkin.
Since 1992, Anatoly Pristavkin has been Chairman of the Pardon Commission under the President of the Russian Federation, and since December 2001, Advisor to the President of the Russian Federation on pardon issues. A. Pristavkin’s work as chairman of the first all-Russian commission on pardons was awarded with Gratitude from the Presidents of Russia B.N. Yeltsin and V.V. Putin. A. Pristavkin’s work experience in the Pardon Commission was reflected in his documentary novel “The Valley of the Shadow of Death.”
In 2002, Anatoly Pristavkin became the laureate of the Alexander Men International Prize for his contribution to the development of cultural cooperation between Russia and Germany in the interests of the peaceful construction of the European House.
In 2008, shortly before his death, he managed to finish the novel “King Montpassier Marmalage the First.” This largely autobiographical work was conceived by him back in the late 1980s, but in 1991 the manuscript of the novel disappeared from a hotel room in Riga. The work uses fragments of the author's research dedicated to the life and work of Grigory Karpovich Kotoshikhin, a clerk at the Ambassadorial Prikaz, who was forced to flee to Sweden from persecution by the Moscow Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich and executed in Stockholm on charges of domestic murder in 1667.
During the ten years - from 1992 to 2001 - that the Pardon Commission headed by Pristavkin existed, 57 thousand prisoners had their sentences commuted, and for almost 13 thousand the death penalty was commuted to life imprisonment.
By decree of the President of Ingushetia Murat Zyazikov, A. Pristavkin was posthumously awarded the Order of Merit for outstanding services in the field of literature: humanity and friendship between peoples.
In August 2008, in the city of Gudermes (Chechen Republic, Russia), Novoselskaya Street was named after Anatoly Ignatievich Pristavkin.
The works of A. Pristavkin were translated by famous Slavists, winners of prestigious awards in the field of literary translation, Thomas Reschke (Germany), Michael Glaney (Great Britain), Lars-Erik Blomkvist (Sweden), Miura Midori (Japan) and others. A. Pristavkin’s story was translated into French by Vladimir Nabokov’s granddaughter Antoinette Roubishou.
In 2009, the premiere of the play “The Golden Cloud Spent the Night” took place at the National Youth Theater of the Republic of Bashkortostan named after Mustai Karim, which became a real event not only on the scale of the republic, the country, but also the world. The play, directed by the chief director of the Russian theater troupe Musalim Kulbaev, took part in the VII Republican Festival “Theater Spring 2009” (Ufa); at the All-Russian Theater Festival Golden mask(Moscow, 2010); at the International Art Festival for Children and Youth “Golden Turnip” (Samara), at the X International Theater Festival “Voices of History” (Vologda). At the V International Festival of Russian Theaters of Russia and foreign countries“Bridge of Friendship 2009” performance was recognized as the best of all presented.
In October 2012, the premiere of the play “My Distant Carriage” took place at the Berezniki Drama Theater. The play based on the story of the same name by A. Pristavkin was written by playwright Yaroslava Pulinovich. The performance was staged by the artistic director of the theater Denis Kozhevnikov, and the artist of the performance was the Winner of the National Theater Award Golden Mask Dmitry Aksenov. The performance was created with the support of the Ministry of Culture, Youth Policy, Mass Communications of the Perm Territory.
The eightieth anniversary of the writer’s birth, which was celebrated in 2011, was dedicated to the documentary film “Anatoly Pristavkin. Contents" (TV channel "Russia-Culture", author and director Irina Vasilyeva).
Writer
Laureate of the USSR State Prize (1987)
Anatoly Pristavkin was born on October 17, 1931 in the city of Lyubertsy, Moscow region.
Pyotr Pristavkin, the writer’s grandfather, was considered a revolutionary in the village. Returning from St. Petersburg in 1905, he told his fellow villagers about the strikes, for which the authorities took him into custody, sending a company of soldiers.
Ignat Petrovich Pristavkin, the writer’s father, worked as a carpenter, cabinetmaker, and gas worker. The father himself knocked or made for the children new shoes. Before the war, the Pristavkin family and their relatives lived in a wooden communal apartment - 8 people for 8 square meters. The parents had a bed, Anatoly had a sofa, the sister had a stroller, the rest of the adults slept on the floor - with their feet under the bed and their heads under the table, and the one who got up to work first stepped over the others.
Anatoly Pristavkin himself considered childhood the happiest period of his life, despite the fact that his mother Evdokia Artemovna was terminally ill.
Anatoly was brought up on films - “Chapaev”, “Kotovsky”, “Salavat Yulaev”, “Shchors”, read the works of Barto and Chukovsky, and later - Panteleev. His story “The Hours” became the boy’s favorite work. When the war began, Pristavkin was in his 10th year. His father went to the front, and his mother soon died of tuberculosis. Ignat Pristavkin inherited the fortitude and firmness of his grandfather, which he showed at the front, where he fought for 4 years; numerous Smolensk relatives of the Pristavkins went into partisans in 1941 before the arrival of the Soviet army.
Meanwhile, Anatoly was a wanderer throughout the war, and everything that homeless children got during the war fell in full to his share. Children of repressed people, military personnel, and orphans lived in orphanages, among them there were well-read boys who told novels with continuations, stretched out over many evenings - this is how Anatoly became acquainted with the works of Hugo. Some guys portrayed movies in their faces - Pristavkin knew the film “Circus” by heart in the orphanage, and he himself retold the film “The Thief of Baghdad,” which made a huge impression on him, many times.
In 1944, the boy ended up in the North Caucasus, where, after the deportation of the Chechens, Moscow street children were sent to populate the territories that had become empty. Since that time, Anatoly Ignatievich kept a finca made for a child’s hand. About that time, Pristavkin will say some time later: “In the very middle of the war, the rear presented a fantastic picture: soldiers and refugees, speculators and disabled people, women and teenagers who stood several shifts at the machines, street children and swindlers... We were children of war and in this colorful environment we felt like fry in water. We knew how to do everything, understood everything and, in general, were not afraid of anything, especially when there were many of us.”
However, the courage of these “young ones” had completely different roots and did not resemble the usual boyish recklessness - it was the courage of despair, which, willy-nilly, a child who found himself in extreme circumstances and in poverty at the last limit had to develop in himself. Later, in the novel “The Dove,” the author found surprisingly precise words to express this relationship: “The war pierced us through and through, like a bomb pierces a multi-story building.”
Pristavkin was prompted to become a writer by chance... The children were transported in freight train cars for almost a month, and were given a piece of bread a day. In Chelyabinsk, where they were brought, there was a canteen at the station, which was besieged by refugees, and the children could not get through the crowd of adults. Then their teacher Nikolai Petrovich began shouting to people to let the children through. And the children walked through the crowd along the vacated space, as if along a corridor. This theme formed the basis of Anatoly Pristavkin’s first story, “The Human Corridor.”
Pristavkin began working at the age of 12. For the orphanage residents, the path to life lay through a vocational school, a factory, an evening school or a technical school. And Anatoly, at the age of 14, when fate threw him to the Caucasus, near Sernovodsk, washed cans at a cannery in the village of Asinovskaya, and at the age of 15 he got a job in the radio laboratory at an aircraft factory, and this place became almost home for him for many years.
From 1946 to 1951, the future writer studied at the aviation technical school in the evening department. All this time, Anatoly was most interested in books. Pristavkin tried to drown out the feeling of hunger by reading, thought about what he read, and memorized entire pages of poetry. After the war, Anatoly began to read poetry on stage and act in amateur performances, and this hobby remained with him for a long time. long years. “Vasily Terkin” performed by him was very popular, and during the period when Pristavkin passed military service, the army authorities took him from unit to unit, classifying his performances as important “educational events.”
Then he wanted to try his hand at writing himself. At first, Anatoly tried to write a play, and later began to write poetry himself. At first he read them from the stage, later he decided to propose them for publication, and several poems were published.
Returning from the army in 1954, he entered the Gorky Literary Institute, beginning to study in the poetry seminar of Lev Oshanin, who was the first to notice and approve of his stories. In 1959, they were first published in the magazine “Youth”. Later Anatoly tried to write several short stories about what he had to experience during the war. Pristavkin at that time had very unclear ideas about how the composition of the story was built, so he began to present fragments of memories in the form of prose poetry. Many fragments were based not on completed plots, but only vivid impressions, a detail etched in my memory, a small episode. These unexpected works came to the author almost in finished form - at lectures, seminars, and on the road. He wrote a cycle called “War Childhood.” Readers and critics immediately drew attention to this publication; Pristavkin’s cycle opened up a layer of life unknown to literature, and determined not only one of the main themes of the author’s work, but also one of his genre preferences - stories written in the first person were excerpts from a diary , monologues of the hero, presented in the manner of confessional prose.
During his studies, several more poems by Pristavkin were published. And the writer himself, in 1959, after graduating from the Literary Institute, left to build the Bratsk hydroelectric power station. Anatoly Pristavkin connected his life and work with Bratsk for many years - he worked in a team of concrete workers on the pit of the future station. While still a student, during a summer internship, Pristavkin first came across its construction, and the people creating an industrial center in the remote taiga made an impact young writer the strongest impression - in the first Siberian essays the author showed the diverse characters of the heroes and managed to convey the amazing atmosphere of those places.
Later Pristavkin became a correspondent for Literaturnaya Gazeta, and in 1961 he joined the Writers' Union. His books dedicated to Siberians were published - “Lapia Country”, “Notes of My Contemporary”, “Bonfires in the Taiga”. Returning to Moscow, Pristavkin often flew on long business trips to the Angara, to places associated with his youth, and went on expeditions to the construction sites of new power plants - Ust-Ilim and Boguchany. Anatoly Pristavkin was called “the chronicler of our time,” and for the story “Angara River” he was awarded the prize of the Union of Writers of the USSR.
After the publication of “War Childhood,” the writer did not address his sad experience for a long time. Pristavkin himself explained why this break lasted almost two decades: “I was not only afraid to write about those terrible war days, I was afraid to touch them even with my memory: it was painful, I didn’t even have the strength to re-read my previously written stories.”
However, the fear was overcome, and he wrote the story “The Soldier and the Boy,” published in the magazine “Znamya” in 1977. And although Pristavkin wrote it back in 1971, the manuscript lay in the editorial office for almost 7 years. The story “The Soldier and the Boy” was the result of the author’s emotional “explosion” - he would not return to the topic of orphanages and tragic circumstances war, if not for the strong desire to be freed from painful things.
The years separating the cycle of stories “War Childhood” from the story “Soldier and Boy” were not a time of creative downtime for Pristavkin. The writer actively mastered life material that was new to him, worked a lot and successfully in documentary prose, wrote novellas and short stories. He continued to work on documentary films later, becoming a recognized master of this genre, constantly developing it in different directions.
The search for old friends repeatedly brought him to the construction of KamAZ; after these trips, the essay “Master” was born, which first saw the light on the pages of the Literary Gazette in the mid-1970s, and the novel “Thief Town” in 1985.
In other works of Pristavkin, written in the first person, confession is understood by him in the most direct, original sense of the word. Anatoly Ignatievich, hospitably opening the doors, introduces the reader into his home, into his inner world. This is how “Siberian Novels”, “Seliger Seligerovich” in 1964, “From All Sorrows”, and later “Till Your Field” in 1981 were written. Readers will learn about his hungry childhood, difficult post-war youth, years spent in Bratsk, and various trials.
Pristavkin fully succeeded in this in the story “White Hill” - in it the author appears as a mature man who has experienced a lot, the father of two children. When the family that played an extremely important role in his life breaks up, he is confused because he cannot imagine how to live further. It was at this moment that the writer’s father invites him to take a trip to his homeland - the Smolensk region, to the village of Bely Kholm. The story tells about this journey of the Pristavkins to the places where their family lived for many centuries. The life of several generations of the Pristavkin family becomes a fact of literature; the author reveals it to readers as a snapshot of the history of the life of the people. In the story "White Hill" we are talking about complex connection generations, which the author himself constantly feels.
In the early 1980s, Pristavkin wrote the story “The Golden Cloud Spent the Night.” In his work, the author tried to speak frankly about what he himself experienced, and what painfully burned his nerves - the world is not worthy of existence if it kills children. After the first collective reading of the story in a circle of friends, a friend came to Pristavkin and asked for the manuscript to read at home, another friend asked for it for his son, and a third for a colleague. By the time it was published in Znamya magazine in 1987, the story had been read by at least 500 people. One day I came home to Anatoly Ignatievich completely stranger from Leningrad and said that, at the request of his comrades, he must read the story in order to tell about it at home. The manuscript somehow reached Belarus without the participation of the author, and at the VIII Congress of USSR Writers, Ales Adamovich said a few words in his speech in support of it. Many people have read it famous writers, poets and critics - all this became colossal support for Pristavkin.
The story was published by Georgy Baklanov, a front-line writer who had recently been appointed editor-in-chief of the Znamya magazine. Pristavkin was the first to show how the forced deportation of an entire people took place - being a witness to those tragic events, he was able to create a wise and good work. Anatoly Ignatievich spoke about how he felt when he was sent to the Caucasus, known to the boy only from the picture on the box of a Kazbek cigarette - a highlander on a horse, in a burka and snowy peaks behind his powerful shoulders. A war against an entire people, seen through the eyes of a child who does not understand the meaning or purpose of what is happening.
The main advantage of the story is that it is the childish consciousness and actions of an orphanage child, who was mocked by a whole cohort of all kinds of “educators,” that turn out to be purer, nobler, wiser than the consciousness and actions of thousands of adults, blinded by rage and mercilessly destroying each other. Golden cloud- this is the soul of a child, purity and insecurity. This is an enchanting vision that warms the heart and makes it beat in alarm - will this cloud break on the mountain peaks?
The story “The Golden Cloud Spent the Night” was filmed at the Gorky Film Studio by director Sulambek Mamilov, an Ingush who real life experienced all the events described by the author. I received the story world recognition- within a few years after its release, it was translated into more than 30 languages, its total circulation was 4.5 million copies in Russia alone, and Anatoly Pristavkin himself became a laureate of the USSR State Prize in 1987.
The writer Lev Anninsky said: “A golden cloud spent the night...” I read, not yet published. Neither before nor since have I experienced such a shock from what I read! The story of street children who were evacuated to Chechnya during the war, just at the time when the indigenous people were being expelled from Chechnya... When I read this, Chechnya had not yet become the most problematic point in Russia, but Anatoly Pristavkin had already identified this problem in some way. then with his unheard-of literary and human flair. The deported Chechens responded by hating these Russian boys, who unwittingly found themselves in the epicenter of hostility and hatred. Although what could these Russian boys, left without parents, be responsible for? It shocked me even then, but I thought then, in the late 80s: “No, everything will work out!” No, it didn’t work out... Hatred was sown, and it still had to be overcome, and at what cost... Reading Anatoly Pristavkin, for the first time I felt the abyss into which we are sliding. It is not enough to expose communism. It's all one scary tangle! And Anatoly Pristavkin knew this.
Following this, in 1989, Pristavkin’s no less tragic story “Kukushata” was published, which became the last part of a trilogy, including the stories “The Soldier and the Boy” and “The Golden Cloud Spent the Night.” The readers are again presented with an orphanage, but not an ordinary one, but a special one, where the children of “enemies of the people” were gathered. Their surnames were changed - they all became Kukushkins, “cuckoo children” - born by chance. In 1992, the writer received the All-German National Prize for Children's Literature for the story "Cuckoo".
Pristavkin said in an interview: “Women from noble families worked as teachers in our orphanage. I called them “crumbs from Stalin’s table.” They were thrown into the most menial jobs - serving prisoners and street children. And they gradually instilled in us that nobility that was inherent in the Russian nobility. We despised them, robbed them, hit them on the hands with a piano lid when they tried to play romances for us. But still this music penetrated our souls.
This entire foundation was laid, in my opinion, by the era Silver Age- by its poets, its intelligentsia. It was she who accumulated that layer of spiritual “black soil” on which the sprouts of humanity appeared. And we washed away this black soil. They eroded the culture that we inherited from our ancestors and squandered incredible wealth. Magnificent paintings by Raphael from the Hermitage were sold, palaces and churches were turned into stables, gold frames of icons were melted down into ingots in order to buy something abroad... And without culture, it is impossible to raise a normal generation. Children should absorb it with their skin. What will our modern children absorb? Series? So their quality is even lower than the latest Soviet hack. Or will they be brought up by the example of their oligarch neighbors who have everything, and you have nothing? But this does not instill in a person either culture or respect - only envy, the desire to become the same. And what is the way to become the same? Go and rob.
Two weeks ago I was in a Moscow pre-trial detention center where teenagers are imprisoned. It turned out that out of 6 people, five were caught because they stole or took away mobile phones. They have been in pre-trial detention for two months. And even if they are eventually released, are you sure that they will become better people after this experience? Who are we raising? We raise animals!”
In the novel “Ryazanka”, published in 1990, the author shows a hopeless, half-starved life common man, which is a chain of humiliation and joyless struggle for existence. The title of the novel, consisting of short stories, is given by the name railway from the writer's childhood. This work was written in 1965-1983 and published in the magazine “Znamya”. Anatoly's father becomes one of the main characters of the novel. “Ryazanka” secures the image of Pristavkin people's defender. This is also facilitated by the small journalistic book “Quiet Baltic”, published in Riga.
In those years, Anatoly Pristavkin acted as an active public figure in the literary field. He becomes one of the co-chairs of the first independent writers' organization "April", Special attention Human rights activists who have left the camps are turning to the author. In 1992, human rights activist Sergei Kovalev, at that time the Commissioner of the President of the Russian Federation for Human Rights, invited Anatoly Ignatievich to head the newly created Commission on Pardons under the President of the Russian Federation.
Anatoly Pristavkin very accurately described the doubts he had to go through: “At all times, Rus' has had enough murderers, rapists, and thugs, and learning about them is only funny in books, but reading their deeds in life or just coming into contact with probably no less dangerous than meeting them on high road. Yes, if only they could come into contact... At the same time, be the final authority in their fate and decide, in essence, to dispose of someone else’s life. Is it possible for any person to be above God?!”
Anatoly Ignatievich endured 9 years of such a life - from January 1992 to December 2001 - and described his feelings in detail in the three-volume work “The Valley of the Shadow of Death” in 2000, a research novel on criminal topics. “I was sitting in Riga and writing a novel about Grigory Kotoshikhin,” said Pristavkin. — In the 17th century there was a high-ranking official of the Ambassadorial Prikaz who fled from intrigues to Sweden, wrote there wonderful essay about Russia and out of the breadth of his soul, he killed the owner of the house in which he lived. I found the court materials there, the place where he was executed. The novel was about a third written when they called me and said that my candidacy had been approved and I had to get to work. “Okay, I say, but let me finish the novel first.” “Of course, we don’t insist, but the execution list lies here.” If I don’t go, 50 people will be shot. As they say, “they will blame it on the revolution.” Then I saw these yellow daddies with a red letter “R”. What was I supposed to do, write another 10-15 pages, knowing that people would be killed because of you? I put an ellipsis, which is still there, because I thought that in six months I would return to him, packed my suitcase and came to Moscow. If a person is killed at your doorstep, then no matter what you write at that time, it will not be worth anything in your understanding...”
During the period that the Pardon Commission headed by Pristavkin existed, 57 thousand prisoners had their sentences commuted, and for almost 13 thousand the death penalty was commuted to life imprisonment.
In 2001, Anatoly Pristavkin’s book “Drunken Heart Syndrome” was published - a set of nostalgic memories of feasts with friends, many of whom have already passed away. Sometimes the author deviates from the stated topic, and the readers are presented with stories, episodes, and the fates of people with whom fate brought Pristavkin together at various stages of his life. On the pages of the story, readers meet A. Kapler, A. Kuznetsov, Yu. Kazakov, M. Roshchin, E. Sherman, G. Sadovsky, V. Griner.
Anatoly Ignatievich became the head of a creative seminar at the Literary Institute. Over time, the writer came to the conclusion that creative laboratory is a mutual school that helps to keep abreast of new trends, searches in literature and inspires optimism and confidence that it is worth working in the hope of a better future for literature. Anatoly Pristavkin noted students who are able to search, make mistakes and discover something in themselves that they themselves are not aware of. During his studies, Pristavkin invited one of the writers - Galina Belaya, Mikhail Roshchin, Yuri Karyakin, Georgy Kunitsyn came, and took his students to Peredelkino to meet with Arseny Tarkovsky.
Leo Tolstoy’s former secretary N.N. Gusev, having learned about Pristavkin’s work, asked him to read the stories, and then gave him a photograph, where in the dedicatory inscription he quoted Tolstoy’s words: “First know what has been done before you, and then try to create it yourself.” "
Pristavkin published more than 25 books, his novels and stories have been translated into many languages of the world. In 2005, the stories “The Day of Judgment”, “The First Day - the Last Day of Creation” were published in the magazine “Neva” and “My Distant Carriage” in the magazine “October”.
In 2002, Anatoly Pristavkin became the laureate of the Alexander Men International Prize for his contribution to the development of cultural cooperation between Russia and Germany.
In 2008, shortly before his death, Pristavkin completed the novel “King Montpassier Marmalage the First.” This autobiographical work was conceived by him back in the late 1980s, but in 1991 the manuscript of the novel disappeared from a hotel room during civil unrest in Riga, when Soviet troops entered there.
Anatoly Pristavkin died on July 11, 2008 in Moscow after a serious illness.
He was buried at Troekurovskoye Cemetery in Moscow.
In August 2008, in the city of Gudermes, one of the streets was named after Anatoly Ignatievich Pristavkin. The writer Alexander Arkhangelsky said: “Usually, two qualities are rarely combined and coexisted in a writer: social passion and real great literary talent. Anatoly Ignatievich is a rare exception to this rule. And “A Golden Cloud Spent the Night...” will forever remain part of the Russian classics, and what he did as a public figure in the mid-1990s and in the 2000s, working on the Pardon Commission, will remain bright historical legend of our era. Personally, I am very sad that such a nice person has passed away, who was not at all burdened and tired of his fame, as too often happens with famous people. It was easy to talk to him not about his literary fame, undoubted and deserved, but, for example, about the problem of the district library. And not about district libraries in general, but about a specific library that urgently needs help. He saw not a problem, but a person. He saw this unfortunate district librarian, who sits at his shabby desk and does not know where he can get the book that his reader asks him to read. This is the main thing that distinguished Anatoly Ignatievich Pristavkin from many: he saw not a problem, but a person.”
Text prepared by Andrey Goncharov
, RSFSR, USSR
Anatoly Ignatievich Pristavkin(October 17, Lyubertsy (Moscow region) - July 11, Moscow) - Soviet and Russian writer, public figure.
Biography
The grave of Anatoly Pristavkin at the Troekurovsky cemetery in Moscow
Born into a working-class family. During the war, he was left an orphan (his mother died of tuberculosis, his father was at the front), was brought up in an orphanage, studied at a vocational school, and worked in a cannery in Sernovodskaya. After the war, he began to participate in amateur performances, began to write poetry himself - they were soon published in the newspaper. In 1952 he graduated from the Moscow Aviation College. He worked as an electrician, radio operator, instrument operator.
After serving in the army, Pristavkin entered the university, where he studied at Lev Oshanin’s seminar and graduated in 1959. At the same time, Pristavkin made his debut as a prose writer - in No. 6 of the magazine “Youth” for 1959, a cycle of stories “Military Childhood” was published. During the construction of the Bratsk Hydroelectric Power Station, he became a staff correspondent for Literaturnaya Gazeta, while simultaneously working in a concrete crew.
During these years, he wrote the documentary stories “My Contemporaries” (1959); “Bonfires in the Taiga” (1964); "Seliger Seligerovich" (1965); the novel “The Dove” (1967), based on which a film of the same name was made in 1978. In the 70s and 80s, the stories “Soldier and Boy”, “Radio Station Tamara”, and the novel “Town” were published. Since 1981, A. Pristavkin taught at, led a prose seminar; Associate Professor of the Department of Literary Arts.
Anatoly Pristavkin gained worldwide fame from the story “A Golden Cloud Spent the Night”, published in 1987, touching on the theme of the deportation of Chechens and Ingush in 1944. In his work, the author tried to speak frankly about what he himself experienced and what painfully burned his soul - the world is not worthy existence if he kills children. In 1988 she was awarded the USSR State Prize. Within a few years of its publication, the story was translated into more than 30 languages. In May 1990, a drama film of the same name based on the story “The Golden Cloud Spent the Night” was released (Gorky Film Studio, 1989, director Sulambek Mamilov).
In 1988, the story “Kukushata” appeared. In 1990 she was awarded the All-German National Prize for Children's Literature. The stories “Soldier and Boy”, “Cuckoo”, novels “Town”, “Ryazanka” (1991), “Valley of the Shadow of Death” (2000), “My Distant Carriage” (2004), documentary story “Quiet Baltic” (1990) , a collection of fairy tales “The Flying Auntie” (2007) has also been translated into many foreign languages. The works of A. Pristavkin were translated by Slavists, laureates of prizes in the field of literary translation, Thomas Reschke (Germany), Michael Glaney (Great Britain), Lars-Erik Blomkvist (Sweden), Miura Midori (Japan) and others. Pristavkin's story was translated into French by Vladimir Nabokov's granddaughter Antoinette Roubishou.
In 1991, he headed the council of the independent writers' movement "April" at the Moscow writers' organization of the Union of Writers of the RSFSR. At the same time, he joined the steering committee of the international movement for the abolition of the death penalty, “Hands Off Cain.” He was the secretary of the Writers' Union of the Russian Federation, a member of the Union of Cinematographers of Russia, a member of the NIKA Film Academy, a member of the Board of Trustees of the All-Russian Sambo Federation, a member of the executive committee of the Russian PEN Center. For many years he was a permanent member of the jury of the Stalker International Human Rights Film Festival. Since December 2008, the film festival has annually awarded a special Prize named after Anatoly Pristavkin.
Since 1992, Anatoly Pristavkin has been Chairman of the Pardon Commission under the President of the Russian Federation, and since December 2001, Advisor to the President of the Russian Federation on pardon issues. A. Pristavkin’s work as chairman of the first all-Russian commission on pardons was awarded with Gratitude from the Presidents of Russia B. N. Yeltsin and V. V. Putin. A. Pristavkin’s work experience in the Pardon Commission was reflected in his documentary novel “The Valley of the Shadow of Death.”
In 2002, Anatoly Pristavkin became the laureate of the Alexander Men International Prize for his contribution to the development of cultural cooperation between Russia and Germany in the interests of the peaceful construction of the European House.
In 2008, shortly before his death, he managed to finish the novel “King Montpassier Marmalage the First.” This largely autobiographical work was conceived by him back in the late 1980s, but in 1991, during riots in Riga, the manuscript of the novel disappeared from a hotel room, while Pristavkin was at the barricades calling on the troops to stop the violence. The work uses fragments of the author's research dedicated to the life and work of Grigory Karpovich Kotoshikhin, clerk of the Ambassadorial Prikaz, forced to flee to Sweden from persecution by the Moscow Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich and executed in Stockholm on charges of domestic murder in 1667. The first reader of the novel's manuscript was the writer's close friend, President of the Russian Book Union Sergei Stepashin, who wrote a voluminous preface to the book. The novel was presented to the public by Marina Pristavkina at the opening of the Moscow International Book Exhibition in September 2008.
Memory
By decree of the President of Ingushetia Murat Zyazikov, A. Pristavkin was posthumously awarded the Order of Merit for outstanding services in the field of literature: humanity and friendship between peoples.
The works of Anatoly Pristavkin are included in the Collected Works in five volumes (2010, AST Publishing House). Introductory articles by Marina Pristavkina and Doctor of Philology, Professor Igor Volgin.
In 2011, the Tambov Youth Theater staged the play “Kukushata” (directed by Natalya Belyakova) based on the story by A. Pristavkin “Kukushata, or a plaintive song to calm the heart.”
For the writer’s eightieth birthday, which was celebrated in 2011, a documentary film “Anatoly Pristavkin. Contents" (TV channel "Russia-Culture", author and director Irina Vasilyeva).
In Switzerland in 2011, on the initiative and with the support of Doctor of Law, founder and president of the Swiss-Russian Cooperation Council, Werner Stauffacher (†2012), the novel “My Distant Carriage” was published in German, translated by a friend of the writer, Slavist and translator Thomas Reschke.
In October 2012, the premiere of the play “My Distant Carriage” took place at the Berezniki Drama Theater. The play based on the story of the same name by A. Pristavkin was written by playwright Yaroslava Pulinovich. The performance was staged by the artistic director of the theater Denis Kozhevnikov, and the artist of the performance was the Laureate of the national theater award “Golden Mask” Dmitry Aksenov. The performance took place with the support of the Ministry of Culture, Youth Policy and Mass Communications of the Perm Territory. In July 2014, the performance took part in the International Theater Festival “Voices of History” in Vologda.
In April 2015, at the 20th regional theater festival “Student Spring” in Tyumen, participants theater studio Tyumen State Medical University brought to life the heroes of A. Pristavkin’s stories in the production “Children of War”. (dir. Mikhail Goncharov)
In November 2015, the best student of the Russian Language Center “Rus” (Greek Republic), Apostolis Karagounis, was awarded a scholarship named after Anatoly Pristavkin for his success in studying Russian as a foreign language.
In July 2015, on the day of memory of Anatoly Pristavkin, in the publication “ Russian newspaper» published an interview with the writer’s daughter, Maria Pristavkina.
To the eighty-fifth anniversary of the writer’s birth, which was celebrated on October 17, 2016, his readers dedicated various cultural events: literary evenings (Pskov Regional Library, Kupchinskaya Library of St. Petersburg), exhibitions (Murmansk Regional local history museum, Museum of Lyubertsy, Moscow Region), oral journals (Library of the village of Krasnoflotsky, Yeisk) and many others, , , .
In June 2017, on the main stage of Red Square as part of the largest super final in Russia literary competition for children “Living Classics”, schoolboy Alexander Globenko read an excerpt from the story “Photography” by A. Pristavkin. As Rossiyskaya Gazeta reported in its publication: “Photography” by Anatoly Pristavkin, with a searing story about children who did not see their father back from the war, Stavropol resident Sasha Globenko forced the spectators who took all the seats in the open amphitheater Main stage, brush away your tears"
On January 12, 2018, the best student of the Russian Language and Culture Center “Rus” (Greek Republic) for the second year in a row received a scholarship named after A. Pristavkin, which was awarded by the writer’s widow Marina Valasa-Pristavkina.
As part of the musical and poetic evening “Poetry of Spring, Poetry of War, Poetry of Victory”, held by Activists of the All-Russian Popular Front in the Kamchatka Territory on the eve of the 73rd anniversary of the Victory Soviet people in Great Patriotic War, the young actress Elizaveta Mishanina read an excerpt from Anatoly Pristavkin’s story “The Golden Cloud Spent the Night.”