In the middle of the 19th century, the village of Speshnevo-Podlesnoye in the Dankovsky district of the Ryazan province was known to many rural owners in Russia. Nikolai Petrovich Shishkov (1791-1869), one of the main specialists in beet sugar production in Russia at that time, lived here.

The Shishkov family has been known in Rus' since the beginning of the 15th century. A champion of cleanliness, famous at the beginning of the 19th century, belonged to him. Russian language Admiral Alexander Semenovich Shishkov; Nikolai Petrovich's father was his nephew. From birth, Nikolai Petrovich was brought up in the house of his grandfather, Andrei Timofeevich Bolotov, the founder of Russian agricultural science. Studied at Moscow University. He met the War of 1812 in the army as a cuirassier officer. Taking part in the Battle of Borodino, he was shell-shocked, after treatment he returned to duty and reached Paris with the army. He wrote memoirs about Kutuzov, published in 1866.

At the beginning of January 1817, Nikolai Petrovich retired and settled in the family estate in the village of Speshnevo. Here he found the farm in great disarray and began to restore it. Passionate the latest achievements agrochemical science, became interested in the beet sugar production that was emerging in Russia in those years.

The first attempt to build a beet sugar factory was made by N.P. Shishkov in 1826. The plant was set up according to the method of A.I. Gerard, but the first experiment was unsuccessful: productivity was low. In 1830, Nikolai Petrovich sowed beets on his farm. At the same time, a new sugar factory was built and put into operation, which played the role of an experimental and training base for the Russian sugar industry. Many important elements modern technology Sugar making was first tested and put into practice here.

In 1834 N.P. Shishkov reported on his experiments in sugar production at the Moscow Society of Agriculture. After that, he headed the Sugarmakers Committee, organized under the Society. The Committee published “Notes” - the first special publication on beet sugar production.

Plant N.P. Shishkova was one of the first in Russia. In 1837, at an exhibition in Ryazan, opened in honor of the arrival of the Tsarevich, sugar production had only one manufacturer as its representative - Guards Captain Shishkov from Dankovsky district.

In 1837-1841 N.P. Shishkov developed his own version of “hot soaking of beets” - a prototype of modern diffusion. In 1845, at the Speshnevsky plant, carbon dioxide was used for the first time in Russia to purify sugar juices. A polarimeter was used to determine sugar, and centrifuges were used to separate crystalline sugar. At the end of the 1850s, the plant had two hydraulic screw presses designed by Shishkov. The plant operated for 21 days and produced 924 pounds of granulated sugar.

The printed works of N.P. played a major role in the development of the beet-sugar industry in Russia. Shishkova, among them - “Experience of accounting for work in beet-sugar production” (1842) and “Review of beet-sugar production”. To disseminate the experience of organizing production N.P. Shishkov accepted apprentices to the plant for free.

In 1847, on his initiative, the Lebedyansky Society of Agriculture was established. Almost exclusively through his efforts, the “Notes of the Lebedyan Society” were published annually; The 22 volumes of these “Notes” contain extensive material on all issues and needs of agriculture. With the publication of “Notes” Nikolai Petrovich repeated the feat of his grandfather - A.T. Bolotov, who at the end of the 18th century, mainly on his own, was able to publish about 40 volumes of the agronomic magazine “Economic Store”.

Nikolai Petrovich did a lot to improve the well-being and life of the peasants. Long before peasant reform used civilian labor on the estate. Using his own funds, he built 22 of the most comfortable huts for the peasants. These Gerardian-type buildings, heated by Vysheslavtsev stoves, each had three windows. In the middle of the 19th century, he built and opened a school for peasant children in the village of Speshnevo.

During the preparation of the peasant reform of 1861, Nikolai Petrovich was invited to participate in absentia in the work of the Editorial Commissions to develop the Regulations of February 19. The Lebedyansky Society of Agriculture, led by him, which united leading rural owners, many of whom took part in the preparation of reform projects, is called the “cradle” of this reform.

Nikolai Petrovich Shishkov remained the permanent president of the society until 1862, and at the same time was an honorary member of the council of the Moscow Society of Agriculture and the Sericulture Committee.

For many years in the summer he lived in the village of Speshnevo, leaving for Moscow only for the winter. But in the last years of his life, due to deteriorating health, he was forced to live permanently in Moscow, where he died. He was buried in his beloved Speshnevo, with whom he was associated best years his activities. To perpetuate the name of N.P. Shishkova The Moscow Society of Agriculture established the Shishkova Scholarship at its agricultural school.

Nikolai Petrovich’s son, Leon Nikolaevich Shishkov (1830-1909), an outstanding Russian chemist of the 19th century, was born and lived in the village of Speshnevo. Great-grandson A.T. Bolotova, according to maternal line the great-grandson of George XII - the last king of Georgia, of all the sons of Nikolai Petrovich, only one - Leon had all-Russian and even European fame.

Having received a home upbringing and education, young Leon Shishkov in 1845 was assigned to the Artillery School in St. Petersburg, which at that time was one of the best educational institutions for teaching natural sciences. Among Shishkov's teachers were outstanding scientists: Hess (chemistry), Lenz (physics), Ostrogradsky (mathematics). Since 1860, Leon Nikolaevich himself began to teach at the Mikhailovsky Artillery Academy.

Main works of L.N. Shishkov relate to the chemistry of explosives. In the early 50s of the nineteenth century, he began to study fulminate acid and its salts - silver fulminate and mercury fulminate. This work led him to obtain a new substance, which he called isocyanuric acid. The report on the first results of the work was published in 1855. His research was important scientific significance and allowed, in addition, to give practical recommendations to improve the manufacturing technology of mercury fulminate, the use of which for primer fuses was then associated with the improvement of weapons Russian army. In 1856, the scientist was sent abroad and continued researching explosives in the laboratories of major foreign chemists. Together with R. Bunsen in Germany, he studied the combustion of black powders, and in the laboratories of Dumas and Wurtz in France, explosive acid. At the same time, he was the first to obtain and describe previously unknown substances: tetranitromethane, trinitromethane, bromonitromethane and others.

Numerous works by L.N. Shishkov's works were published in foreign chemical journals and brought him great fame among chemists in Western Europe and Russia. In 1857 J.B. Dumas reported the results of research to L.N. Shishkov concerning explosive acid, at the French Academy of Sciences. This was the first time that the work of a Russian scientist was considered at the French Academy. L.N. Shishkov, among 12 young chemists, mostly foreigners, participated in the founding of the Paris Chemical Society in 1857, which still exists today.

The successful activity of young scientists in Russia was hampered by the lack of well-equipped laboratories even in leading scientific institutions and educational institutions. The first such laboratory in Russia was the laboratory created by L.N. Shishkov at the Artillery Academy. A.M. Butlerov wrote: “As for laboratories, the laboratory of the Artillery School in St. Petersburg is undoubtedly the most extensive, the best in design of all that I have seen so far and in this respect interesting.” In the early 60s, D.I. often visited here. Mendeleev, which can be read about in his diaries. At meetings of chemists in the laboratory of the Academy and in others scientific centers Petersburg, the idea of ​​the need to form a Chemical Society in Russia was firmly established. L.N. Shishkov was among the initiators and first members of the Russian Chemical Society, founded in 1868.

In 1865 L.N. Shishkov, a professor at the Mikhailovsky Artillery Academy, retired and settled in the village of Speshnevo. He devoted a lot of time to zemstvo activities: he was a member of the district and provincial zemstvo assemblies, an honorary justice of the peace, and even the leader of the nobility of the Dankovsky district. In 1869, St. Petersburg University awarded him the degree of Doctor of Chemistry. Since the beginning of the 1870s, L.N. Shishkov worked on several commissions of the Moscow Society of Agriculture, was a member of the Society's council, and was elected its honorary member.

He took an active part in the work of the Russian Technical Society and became the first chemist elected to its honorary members. In 1889 he participated in the creation of a laboratory at the Free Economic Society, and from 1883 - in the Academic Council of the Mikhailovsky Artillery Academy.

Leon Nikolaevich did not stop studying science, even while living on the estate. In Speshnevo, he set up a home laboratory in which he studied milk. The laboratory appeared in connection with the need to control the technological processes of sugar production. At that time, he was also interested in the problems of agricultural distillation (he owned a distillery in the village of Sugroby).

P.P. Semenov-Tyan-Shansky wrote in 1901: “Shishkov, one of the best chemists of his time in Russia, became even more famous after the liberation of the peasants for his exemplary farming, based on improved field cultivation and reasonable application of agriculture chemical knowledge of the owner, on the development of cattle breeding and feeding cattle with stillage from the distillery, which was set up in an exemplary manner after the introduction of the excise system, which now has an annual turnover of about 53,400 rubles.”

In addition to the village of Speshnevo with its farm, Leon Nikolaevich Shishkov also owned the village of Sugroby, located 12 versts from Speshnevo. Both estates contained 1,262 acres of land; of which 1,175 are convenient, 940 are arable, 75 are forests, 172 are meadows and pastures, and 13 acres are farmsteads.

In 1892, the estate had 385 heads of cattle, including 75 dairy cows, 150 purchased oxen for fattening, 125 horses, 262 sheep and 16 pigs.

Crop rotations were practiced on the estate: four-field and three-field. On average, 169 acres were fertilized over eight years. Not a single tithe was rented out.

The main feature of the Speshnevsky farm was that not a single branch of the economy was especially advanced, but none lagged behind; the care of a knowledgeable owner was visible in everything. The foundation of the farm was based on the idea of ​​producing everything on the farm: improving livestock by selection, seeds by sorting. According to L.N. Shishkov, this farming system guaranteed him against many losses: grain and livestock adapted to local climatic and soil conditions. The cultivation of the fields, especially the potato fields, was carried out very carefully. To cultivate the land, advanced equipment was used, including those of our own design and manufacture: Shishkov’s quick plow, cob shot, and threshing machine. The estate brought constant income.

L.N. died Shishkov in the village of Sugroby, buried in the village of Speshnevo.

After the death of L.N. Shishkov, the Russian Physico-Chemical Society, in memory of him, established an international prize named after him for outstanding work in the field of research on protein substances, milk, and mercury fulminate. Prize named after L.N. Shishkova was awarded twice: in 1912 - G.A. Tamman (Germany) and in 1916 - V.S. Gulevich (Russia).

The Shishkovs' estate complex was located on the northern outskirts of the village of Speshnevo-Podlesnoe. The entrance to the estate on the eastern side was marked by two stone pillars with a gate. All outbuildings did not shine with the elegance of architecture, but were practical, expedient, durable and cheap. The buildings were built with special taste from brick and wild stone, covered with cardboard soaked in oil, with cement in boiled oil applied to its surface.

The house, which was part of the estate complex, is one-story, stone, built in the first quarter of the 19th century. Its main facade was highlighted by a wide risalit with a low pediment crowning it, decorated with crackers, and a large semi-circular window of the tympanum. In front of the main entrance there is a porch with steps the full width of the projection and a canvas canopy. Opposite the entrance to the house was a sundial that stood in the middle of a spacious courtyard, part of which was occupied by flower beds. The house has not survived.

Next to the house there was a garden with flower beds, benches and a gazebo. There were many exotic plants growing in the garden. There is also a small tree nursery here.

The second estate building housed L.N.’s laboratory. Shishkova (the house has not survived).

Nearby there were a stable, a barn, a drying shed and other outbuildings, which are now also destroyed.

To the north of the buildings there was an extensive garden that sloped down to the ravine. From the west, the estate was limited by two ponds, near which stood a sugar factory built by N.P. Shishkov in 1830. On the south side there is a small park.

To the east of the entrance gate of the estate, across the road, there is the Church of the Sign of the Blessed Virgin Mary, built in 1758 by the actual state councilor, Prince Fyodor Andreevich Baryatinsky. The refectory of the church with the chapel of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker and the bell tower were built in 1859 by N.P. Shishkov.

The temple was built in Baroque style. Its cuboidal two-height volume is crowned by a high flared dome with lucarnes and a light drum with an onion. The lower tier is decorated with corner pilasters, cornices and baroque platbands, above which hewn sandriks in the form of a gable roof are visible. Small second-light windows are also decorated with baroque frames “dryers”. The apse is faceted and has one window opening facing east. The remaining four sides are decorated with false windows, corner pilasters and cornices. The refectory is wider than the temple part. The decor of the refectory repeats the decor of the temple.

The northern and southern facades each have two window openings and one false window next to the bell tower. The bell tower is two-tiered with two vestibules, the vestibules are double-height. The western facade of the lower tier of the bell tower in the center is decorated with a beautiful arch with a round false window, in which a cast-iron icon depicting the Mother of God was inserted. At the corners of the first tier there are paired pilasters. The entrance is framed by a Baroque architrave with the image of a Maltese cross. The same crosses are on the frieze of the second tier of bells. The second tier of the bell tower is octagonal and has strongly elongated proportions. It is crowned by a high vault with a dormer and a dome. The shape of the vault is unusual: it resembles a bell.

The Shishkov family necropolis is located near the southern wall of the refectory. On the base of the wall there were several cast-iron tombstones, now stolen, and a slab with an inscription about the time the refectory was built. Near the place where the burials were located, two black marble tombstones from the graves of N.P. have been preserved. Shishkova and P.N. Shishkova.

A few meters south of the church there was a parish school building.

Currently, what remains of the estate is a park, restored by a self-garden, an orchard, one of the two ponds (the upper one) and the lower dam. The layout of the foundations is traced. Manor Park cut down by local residents. The surviving temple is in disrepair and has no roof. During recent years it was badly damaged: the window bars were broken, the icon hanging above the entrance, and memorial cast-iron plaques from the base of the temple were stolen. The parish school was dismantled into bricks. Some of the marble monuments were stolen, including the tombstone from the grave of L.N. Shishkova and a marble tombstone in the form of a sitting angel, installed by Leon Nikolaevich on the grave of his wife.

Popov B.A., Klokov A.Yu., Chunikhina E.I. Speshnevo-Podlesnoe - the Shishkovs' estate // Russian provincial estates. - Voronezh, 2001.

Photos of the Shishkovs, the house, as well as a diagram of the estate can be viewed.

Shishkov Nikolai Georgievich – Deputy Chief of Armaments of the Air Force, Lieutenant General Engineer.

Born on March 30, 1920 in the village of Sharapovo, Kupliyamsky volost, Yegoryevsky district, Ryazan province (now Shatursky district, Moscow region). Russian. Since 1930 he lived in the city of Yegoryevsk, Moscow region. In 1937 he graduated from 10 classes of school, in 1941 – 4 years from the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics of Moscow state university. In the summer of 1941, he participated in the construction of defensive lines on the approaches to Moscow.

In the army since September 1941. In February 1945 he graduated from the engineering faculty of the N.E. Zhukovsky Air Force Engineering Academy.

Member of the Great Patriotic War: in March-June 1944, he underwent combat training as an aircraft mechanic, flight technician and senior air squadron technician in the 18th Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment (Western and 3rd Belarusian fronts). Participated in battles in the Vitebsk and Orsha directions.

In November 1945, he completed special courses in jet technology at the N.E. Zhukovsky Air Force Engineering Academy. In 1945-1946 - senior military acceptance technician at engine-building aircraft plant No. 26 (Ufa), in 1946-1947 - senior department officer in the Air Force Engine Orders and Acceptance Directorate. From 1947 - military representative, and in 1949-1954 - deputy senior military representative at engine-building aircraft plant No. 45 (Moscow).

In 1954 he graduated from the Higher Engineering Courses on New Technology at the Moscow Higher technical school. In 1954-1959 – senior military representative at engine-building aircraft plant No. 45 (Moscow). From 1959 - Deputy Head of the Air Force Air Force Orders and Acceptance of Serial Aircraft; in 1961-1965 - Head of a department in the Air Force Experimental Construction and Serial Orders Directorate.

In 1965-1968 he served on special assignments under the Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force. In 1968-1973 - Deputy Chairman of the Scientific and Technical Committee of the Air Force, in 1973-1983 - Deputy Chief of Armaments of the Air Force. Contributed huge contribution to equip the domestic air force with new types aviation technology and weapons.

For great services in the development and development of weapons and military equipment By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR dated December 21, 1982, Lieutenant General-Engineer Nikolai Georgievich Shishkov was awarded the title of Hero Socialist Labor with the presentation of the Order of Lenin and the Hammer and Sickle gold medal.

In January 1983 - August 1989 - Chief of Armaments of the Air Force - Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force for Armaments. Since August 1989, Colonel General of Aviation N.G. Shishkov has been retired.

Lived in Moscow. Died on August 29, 1999. He was buried at the Garrison Cemetery in the village of Monino, Shchelkovsky district, Moscow region.

Colonel General of Aviation (1984). Awarded 2 Orders of Lenin (09/06/1978; 12/21/1982), Orders of the Patriotic War 1st degree (03/11/1985), Red Banner of Labor (12/16/1972), 2 Orders of the Red Star (12/30/1956; 07/22/1966), medal “For Military Merit” (11/19/1951), other medals.

Laureate of the USSR State Prize (1976).

Military ranks:
Lieutenant technician (11/21/1942)
Senior technician-lieutenant (02/31/1945)
Engineer-Captain (10/11/1946)
Engineer Major (10/18/1950)
Engineer-Lieutenant Colonel (11/5/1953)
Engineer-Colonel (12/12/1959)
Major General of Engineering and Technical Service (06/16/1965)
Major General Engineer (11/18/1971)
Lieutenant General Engineer (04/25/1975)
Colonel General of Aviation (02/3/1984)

Shishkov Alexander Semenovich born 9(20).III.1754 in St. Petersburg - writer.

He received his primary education at home in the spirit of extreme religiosity and official patriotism.

In 1771 he graduated from the Naval Cadet Corps.

Alexander Semenovich's career began in Arkhangelsk.

In 1776 he accompanied Russian ships from Kronstadt to the Black Sea. The journey took three years, during which Shishkov visited Italy, Greece, and Turkey. At the end of the trip he was promoted to lieutenant and left at the Marine cadet corps. Since that time, he has been intensely involved in marine sciences: he translates the French book “The Art of the Sea” and compiles a trilingual maritime dictionary. At the same time, Shishkov’s literary interests awakened: he translated the French melodrama “Blessings Win Hearts” and the German “Children’s Library” by Campe.

First original piece of art Alexander Semenovich - the play “Slavery” (1780), in which Catherine II is glorified, who donated a significant amount of money for the ransom of Christian slaves in Algeria. His rapid rise in the ranks began during the reign of Paul I. He received successively the ranks of captain of the first rank, squadron major and adjutant general. During the same period, Shishkov delved into the study of the Church Slavonic language, basing his thoughts on the Russian and Old Church Slavonic languages ​​on the etymological principle, which was later enshrined in his “Experience of a Derivative Dictionary...” (1833).

In 1796 Alexander Semenovich became a member Russian Academy Sci. The results of the writer’s philological works are presented in his books:

“Discourse on the old and new syllables of the Russian language” (1803),

“An addition to the discussion about the old and new syllables of the Russian language” (1804).

In the field of philology, Shishkov was an amateur, but skillfully pursued his reactionary views on the development of the Russian language. He argued that the Russian language is identical to Church Slavonic. Later, in the book “Discourse on the Eloquence of the Holy Scriptures...”, he came to the conclusion that the Russian language is the language of secular books, while Church Slavonic is the language of spiritual books. His ideas were directed against sentimentalism represented by its apologists Karamzin and Dmitriev. Shishkov relied on Lomonosov's teaching about three styles - high, medium and low, asserting the inadmissibility of mixing them. Thus, he opposed rapprochement literary language with conversational

In 1803, after the appearance of “Discourse on the Old and New Syllables of the Russian Language,” a controversy broke out between the Shishkovists and the Karamzinists. It reached particular acuteness after the creation of the “Conversation of Lovers of the Russian Word” and the literary society “Arzamas”, which defended the Karamzinist line in matters of language and literature.

The reactionary meaning of Shishkov's speech against the poetics of sentimentalism is obvious. In the writings of the Karamzinists, according to the writer, the foundations of protective ideology were shaken. For Alexander Semenovich, with his commitment to the autocratic-serf state, a person was, first of all, and first of all, a person whose interests were completely subordinated to the interests of the autocratic state. From this point of view, Shishkov was quite happy with classicism. Shishkov believed that attention to inner world personality came from France, where a revolution had recently occurred. He directed all his anger at imitating French literature and French, believing that the works of Karamzinists are devoid of national soil and grown on foreign soil. In the mouth of the writer, indignation at the imitation of the French language and literature had a very definite reactionary meaning. From this it is clear that the language, style, and poetics of sentimentalism could not satisfy the “archaist” Shishkov. The Karamzinists tried to bring the Russians closer together colloquial with literary. The poetics of sentimentalism served to express the thoughts and feelings of a private person, his personal hopes and hopes. Shishkov A.S. argued the need to turn to the Old Church Slavonic language, incomprehensible to the people, but which, in his opinion, contributed to the establishment of a high style adopted to express official patriotic feelings. All this did not exclude the validity of many of Shishkov’s critical remarks addressed to the sentimentalists (cultivation of small genres, sentimental-pastoral coloring of the works of Karamzinists, etc.). This also attracted Krylov and Derzhavin to Shishkov’s “Conversation”. But the essence of the teachings of Shishkov A.S. was deeply reactionary. The literary struggle between the Shishkovists and the Karamzinists had an ideological basis: the dispute was about the anti-humanistic and humanistic development of Russian literature.

Shishkov, in addition to linguistic works, wrote several children's stories. The works included in his “Collected Children's Stories” (1806) have no artistic value due to their rhetorical and didactic nature.

Didn't stop until 1828 government activity Shishkova A.S.

He was Secretary of State, President of the Russian Academy, member State Council, Minister of Public Education. In these posts he showed himself to be an extreme reactionary.

Nikolay Eselev

On the land of Tver

Nature has abundantly endowed the Tver land with beauties. You are always captivated and enchanted by its unique landscapes: numerous rivers carrying their clear waters to Mother Volga; more than five hundred lakes look into the sky with their blue eyes; countless oak groves and copses, meadows embroidered with wildflowers, pine forests and birch groves. And I would like to imagine the very young Vyacheslav Shishkov on Tver soil.

In 1973, it will be one hundred years since Vyacheslav Shishkov was born on the banks of the wide Mologa, in the then small ancient town of Bezhetsk. Here he spent his childhood, adolescence and youth. Everything seen and experienced in the Upper Volga region was subsequently echoed in the writer’s numerous stories, novellas and novels.

“My grandfather on my father’s side,” writes Vyacheslav Shishkov in his autobiography, “is the landowner of the Bezhetsk district Dmitry Alekseevich Shishkov, and my grandmother is his serf peasant from the village of Shishkovoy Dubrovy, Elizaveta Danilovna. My father Yakov Dmitrievich lived in his grandmother’s hut; he was taught to read and write by a sexton and a priest. From an early age he was brought to the city and given as a “boy” to the hotel palace, merchant Pervukhin.”

After struggling for five years, Yakov Dmitrievich left Pervukhin for St. Petersburg, where he worked for fifteen years - first as a clerk, and then became a store manager in Apraksin Dvor. At the end of his life, old man Pervukhin writes a letter to Yakov Dmitrievich and calls him to Bezhetsk. “Here, Yakov,” Ivan Ivanovich Pervukhin told him, “choose any of my three daughters, get married, take a shop, a house and trade like an owner, and I will soon die.”

Yakov Dmitrievich chose the merchant's youngest daughter, Ekaterina Ivanovna. The father-in-law actually died soon. He left an unenviable legacy: a wooden an old house on Vozdvizhenskaya Street and a shop with “red” goods in Gostiny Dvor.

Once upon a time in his youth, landowner Dmitry Shishkov fell in love with the beautiful singer, serf peasant woman Elizaveta, and raised a son and daughter with her. But a few years later, at his mother’s request, he married the daughter of a wealthy landowner. Insulted, Elizabeth and her children left Dmitry.

The landowner still retained some feelings for his children. He gave them his last name and later, when his son Yakov’s trading business fell into disrepair, he helped him.

Yakov Shishkov had a large family. Besides Vyacheslav, there are two more sons and two daughters. In winter, Elizaveta Danilovna and close relatives of Ekaterina Ivanovna lived with them.

“I grew up in the city,” Vyacheslav Shishkov writes in his autobiography. - In the summer, I went to the village to visit my grandmother, where I spent until late autumn. I loved my grandmother very much and loved the village. “Dubrova” is located among high hills covered with dense coniferous forest. Almost every day my friends and I went to the forest, to the mountains, to pick mushrooms and berries. My comrades were peasant boys, two priests (Alexey and Nikolai Morkovin) and the son of a sexton.

Life was fun, noisy, and autumn, when it was time to go to the city, was always greeted with tears.

Grandma’s hut is small, crooked, with two windows embedded in the ground, but it still lives in my memory like a bright fairy tale.”

Anna Danilovna, the grandmother’s sister, a grumpy old woman by nature, also huddled in this hut, but she loved Vyacheslav no less than her own grandmother. Anna Danilovna washed him in the stove (there was no bathhouse), rubbed the boy with a fresh broom, “doused him with water with incantations and spells from evil spirits" Little Vyacheslav also remembered his grandmother’s brother Nikita Danilovich, “a tall, bald, broad-bearded old man... He was broad-shouldered and strong, spoke in a thick bass voice; in the fall he took me with him to Riga, where all night the kids and I baked potatoes, had fun and listened to his fairy tales.”

Not far from my grandmother’s house was my grandfather’s estate. But there was an alien world there. Grandmother did not let little Vyacheslav there and she herself avoided meeting with the inhabitants of the estate.

Here’s what Vyacheslav Yakovlevich’s cousin Raisa Yakovlevna Shvedova says about this: “Sometimes my grandmother took us to the lake to swim. The road passed through fields sown with rye. It happened several times that Shishkov was driving at that very time. Grandmother will see from afar and immediately tell us: “Children, look how good the cornflowers are, let’s go pick them!” And she will lead us off the road into the rye. She probably didn’t want to, it was hard for her to meet him...”

With his kind and sympathetic heart, little Vyacheslav soon apparently sensed some kind of evil mystery in the relationship between his beloved grandmother and grandfather, and then, of course, he understood the sad meaning of the evil insult inflicted on her, and this brought him even closer to his grandmother.

“One day,” recalls Raisa Yakovlevna Shvedova, “Vyacheslav asks his grandmother:

Grandma, were you young?

Is it really true, my dear, that every person is young...

Were you beautiful? Were you really dancing?

Oh, dear, she was still dancing. It used to be that Dmitry Alekseevich would have guests - two halls full. We will be called to sing. We sing different songs, and then “Blizzard” or “On the Pavement Street”... As soon as I wave my handkerchief and go, the gentlemen clap their hands and shout: bravo-bravo!.. And Dmitry Alekseevich stands there and grins...”

Elizaveta Danilovna fell silent sadly. At such moments, the grandchildren would also become sad... Their affection and love for the old house and their kind grandmother grew. She put a lot of warmth into the soul of her grandson...

Elizaveta Danilovna is one of those sweet and smart Russian grandmothers who gave all their worldly wisdom, tenderness, and kindness to their grandchildren without reserve. These Russian women were their first spiritual mentors, protectors from human insults, irreplaceable educators who opened up to the child a whole world of magnificent fairy tales with their pure, imaginative Russian language, kind and courageous heroes.

And I'll start at grandma's
I ask for tales;
And my grandmother will start for me
Tell a fairy tale:
Like Ivan Tsarevich
He caught the firebird;
How can he get a bride?
The gray wolf got it.
I'm listening to a fairy tale -
The heart just dies;
And the chimney is angry
The evil wind sings.
I'll snuggle up to the old lady...
Quietly speech murmurs, -
And my eyes are strong
A sweet dream will come close.
And in my dreams I dream
Wonderful lands.
And Ivan Tsarevich -
It's like I...

And I can’t help but remember these wonderful poems written by Ivan Zakharovich Surikov when it comes to fairy tales.

Elizaveta Danilovna Danilova was an extraordinary woman.