Russian Army in the Great War: Project file: Petrov Vsevolod Nikolaevich. Memoirs and fiction

For the first time in Russia, Vsevolod Petrov's story "Turdeyskaya Manon Lesko", previously published in the magazine " New world". Petrov's memoirs about the poets Mikhail Kuzmin and Daniil Kharms, about the art historian Nikolai Punin, who was the husband of Anna Akhmatova, and also about the painter and graphic artist Nikolai Tyrsa are included as appendices to it. In addition, the book contains articles by Oleg Yuryev and Andrey Uritsky devoted to the story.

Vsevolod Nikolaevich Petrov (1912-1978) did not catch the dawn of pre-revolutionary Russian culture, but he associated himself with it, constantly being present in the circle of those people who kept its fragments from oblivion and testified to its continued existence by the very fact of their lives. Of course, one of the main refuges for him was the apartment of Mikhail Alekseevich Kuzmin (more precisely, a room in a communal apartment). Apparently, Kuzmin greatly influenced Petrov. In 1932, Petrov, being an external student of the 3rd year of the Faculty of History, joined the Russian Museum, where he worked with the archives of Nikolai Benois and met Nikolai Punin, and then - through him - Anna Akhmatova.

In the late 30s, Petrov became the interlocutor of Daniil Kharms: “ The most important property writer he considered authoritativeness. The writer, in his opinion, must put readers before such indisputable evidence that they do not dare to utter a word against it. In 1939, Harms, anticipating the war, would tell him: “In prison you can remain yourself, but in the barracks you can’t, it’s impossible!” Who could have known that in just three years he would not be in prison or in the barracks, but in psychiatric hospital where he would die in early 1942 from starvation. Petrov would later write in his memoirs: "The people I'm talking about were themselves phenomena of art."

With the outbreak of World War II, Petrov, like millions of others, ended up at the front. Oleg Yuriev suggests that after demobilization, he apparently came across Vera Panova's bestseller: the socialist realist novel "Companions", published in print in 1946 and awarded Stalin Prize. The book struck Petrov with something (very likely, mediocrity), and he made her a kind of remark: the story "Turdeyskaya Manon Lescaut."

Ivan Limbakh Publishing House

The plot of the book is extremely short. Main character, a refined officer from those who were pursued and imprisoned by the Chekists, rides in a military hospital train and falls in love with the girl Vera along the way. She cheats on him and eventually dies when a bomb hits the house. The relationship between Vera and the officer is constantly criticized by the "collective", outlined without details and almost invisible. Such "collectives" are often found in Soviet literature and Soviet cinema: they ridicule and condemn, but certainly in a friendly way. Their participants savor certain situations from someone else's life, inventing vulgar jokes and looking for new details with particular pleasure. In this situation, it does not matter whether Vera continues to invite men to her place or not, because any choice of hers will be discussed by fellow travelers from the position of omnipresent control, which cannot but arise at the front. However, Vsevolod Petrov is not a Soviet writer, therefore he sends the collective consciousness beyond the boundaries of the main narrative line, where it appears only as one of the many blind spots, as some kind of bumpy folk trail that seems to look through the forest and leads to hidden well-oiled mechanisms of the era. Despite the fact that the action of "Turdean Manon Lescaut" takes place in the Second world war, this war, until the last moment, also remains such a blind spot: explosions, planes, wagon trains - all this is just a given, a fact that should not be put up with, but it is pointless to protest against. Therefore, a love story immediately comes to the fore, crushing the landscape, the participants, and the path that is rapidly losing its meaning. That is, reality is subjected to simplification by Petrov in the name of implementing a personal utopia of happiness, which Oleg Yuryev speaks about. The main character doesn't really care about anything. He rides through the snow-covered fields, reads The Sufferings of Young Werther and compares his beloved, Vera, with Manon Lescaut, whose presence, in essence, also becomes part of his personal utopia project: “I thought about how empty my existence is, and about that life itself is nothing, a smooth straight line running into space, a rut on a snowy field, a disappearing nothing. "Something" begins where the line intersects with other lines, where life enters someone else's life. Any existence is insignificant if it is not reflected in anyone or anything. A person does not exist until he looks in the mirror.

Ivan Limbakh Publishing House

I would venture to suggest that Manon Lescaut - the heroine of the novel of the same name by Abbé Prevost, a girl of free morals who exhausts her lover - and the Chevalier de Grieux turn into an allegory of the 18th century in Petrov's work. In turn, the main characters of the story are in a situation of transition: on the one hand, they soviet girl and an officer, on the other, an imperfect variation of the allegory, a shadow on the walls of a Platonic cave. Gradually, an additional space of another culture is formed in the story - the aristocratic one, with which the narrator associates himself. And for the aristocracy, war was originally a way of life, so Petrov does not take it into account, becoming - in some way - a natural state (this is also connected with the phenomenon of a totalitarian society, where people sometimes felt war as a relief to their lot: after all, at the front at least an enemy appears who is not visible in the repressions). Moreover, according to Walter Benjamin, in the allegory “any person, any thing, any circumstance can serve as a designation for anything”, and “this possibility brings to the profane world a devastating and yet just sentence: it is characterized as a world in which details are not are of particular importance." From here - from the allegorical to And denia - the narrator's disinterest in change, his detached observation, results. It focuses on Faith, and at the same time her death does little to change the very spirit of the story, since in allegory - I will again refer to Benjamin - the completed story "stretches before the viewer's gaze like a petrified prehistoric landscape", that is, it does not open up in the light of deliverance or redemption, as happens in romantic literature. Therefore, the narrator is characterized, for example, by the following maxims: “Romanticism breaks the form, and the disintegration of style begins with it. There is youth and rebellion. And the burghers are rioting. The great and perfect Goethe treated the romantics with disdain, because he saw them as philistines.

One more thing should be mentioned actor: doctor Nina Alekseevna, who is deliberately left in the shadows, playing the role of a confidante (for Prevost, such an attorney is Tiberzh, a friend of the cavalier de Grie). On behalf of Nina Alekseevna, reason speaks in the novel, this constant companion of any text of the Enlightenment, to which Petrov refers the reader. However, there is no dictate in the voice of reason: it rather complements the narrator's speech, expresses his own doubts and hopes, in a word, replaces the chorus of ancient tragedy. A secondary at first glance, the character is filled with love as he watches the plot unfold. In general, Nina Alekseevna is a figure of a witness, and testimony for Petrov was very important, judging by the memoirs he left.

If we remember that the story was created under the conditions of the ideological and heroic perception of the Second World War, it becomes clear that "Turdeyskaya Manon Lescaut" is a veiled provocation. In fact, Petrov is secretly terminating the well-known tacit agreement between literature and the state, which implies that literature certainly owes something to someone. Petrov - in his usual manner - avoids this and plays out an eighteenth-century drama, a stylization that is an almost imperceptible challenge (and some would say that it is blasphemy). The myth of war dissipates like smoke from a shell, exposing a funnel, some kind of naked wound that marks everyone. Petrov constantly marks breaks: with the past, with the Soviet world, and finally with the girl Vera. After all, breaking with something or someone, we become free, and freedom does not have to be sweet, which does not negate the desire for it. So the boy in Kuzmin's Adventures of Aimé Leboeuf, breaking into his lover's room and barely beginning to confess his love to him, accidentally finds a girl under the covers and runs out.

Vsevolod Petrov. Turdeyskaya Manon Lescaut. One Love Story: A Tale; Memories. - St. Petersburg: Ivan Limbakh Publishing House, 2016. - 272 p.

Petrov Vsevolod Nikolaevich Orthodox. A native of Kyiv. Educated in Kiev Vladimir cadet corps. He entered the service on 08/31/1900. Graduated from Pavlovsk military school (1902). Released by Lieutenant (Art. 08/10/1902) in the 24th infantry. Simbirsk regiment. Transferred to the 7th pontoon battalion (11/12/1902). Seconded to L-Guards. Lithuanian regiment (04/02/1903). 04/04/1903 transferred to the same regiment. Lieutenant Mrs. (Art. 10.08.1906). Graduated from the Imperial Nikolaev Military Academy (1910; 1st class). Headquarters Captain Guards (pr. 05/26/1910; art. 05/23/1910; for excellent achievements in the sciences). The census command of the company was serving in the 165th infantry. Lutsk regiment (02.11.1910-03.11.1912). Renamed Captains of the General Staff (Article 05/23/1910). Art. adjutant of the headquarters of the 42nd infantry. divisions (01/22/1913-05/16/1915). Member of the World War. I.d. headquarters officer for instructions from the headquarters of the 24th army. Corps (16.05.-06.07.1915). I.d. headquarters officer for assignments at the headquarters of the 10th army. corps (from 07/06/1915). Lieutenant colonel (pr. 12/06/1915; art. 12/06/1915; for distinction in service) with approval in the position. On 03/13/1916 in the same rank and position. I.d. Chief of Staff of the 7th Turkestan Str. Division (since 05/09/1916; on 01/03/1917 in office). On 01/03/1917 Art. in the rank of Lieutenant Colonel established on 12/06/1914. For the difference i.d. headquarters officer for assignments at the headquarters of the 24th army. corps was awarded the St. George weapon (VP 01/24/1917; for the battle 04/27/1915). Colonel (pr. 08/15/1917; art. 12/06/1916). At the end of 1917, he formed the Gaidamatsky Cavalry Regiment named after Ukrainians on the Western Front. K. Gordienko. In 01.1918 he led the regiment from Belarus to Kyiv. Participated in the suppression of the Bolshevik uprising in Kyiv in 01.-02.1918, in resisting the advance of Muravyov's troops on Kyiv. In 02.-03.1918 the commander of the 3rd kuren of the Separate Zaporozhye detachment (commander K. Prisovsky). Later, the commander of the 1st Zaporozhye named after. K. Gordienko Regiment of Cavalry Gaidamaks as part of the Zaporozhye Corps. From 06.1918 - at the disposal of the Chief of the General Staff of the Ukrainian State. From 07/29/1918 - Chief of Staff of the 12th Infantry. divisions of the Army of the Ukrainian State. From 08.1918 - at the disposal of the Chief of the General Staff of the Ukrainian State. From 10/14/1918 - assistant head of the training department for infantry schools of the Main School Directorate of the Military Ministry of the Ukrainian State. From 10/28/1918 - Assistant Head of the 2nd Kiev United Junker School. From 12/01/1918 - Assistant Chief of the Instructor's School of Officers. From 12/22/1918 - head of the Zhytomyr cadet school. While holding this position, on March 13, 1919 he was shell-shocked in battle, but remained at the head of the school. From 06/02/1919 - commander of the Volyn group of the army of the UNR. From 07/09/1919 - Minister of War of the UNR. From 05.11. 1919 - Deputy Minister of War of the UNR. From 05/01/1920 - infantry inspector of the Army of the APR. From 10/05/1920 - cornet general. From 03.1921 - 1st Quartermaster General of the General Staff of the UNR. From 08/19/1921 - Chief of the General Staff of the UNR. In 06.1922, at his own request, he retired from the reserve. In exile he lived in the city of Khust, taught at the city Ukrainian State Gymnasium. He lectured at the Ukrainian Higher Pedagogical University in Prague, taught at the Ukrainian Real Gymnasium in Modzhar. Member of the Ukrainian Historical and Philological Association (1923-45). 14.03.-15.03.1939, being in the city of Khust at that time in Carpathian Ukraine, he refused to take command of the Armed Forces of the Carpathian Ukraine, but agreed to help the headquarters of the local Sich. 06/30/1941 in Lvov, after the proclamation of the revolutionary wing of the OUN (Bandera) of the Ukrainian government, headed by J. Stetsko, joined it as a minister of war. During World War II, he took an active part in negotiations with the Germans regarding the fate of Ukraine and Ukrainians. Several times he received offers to lead the Ukrainian Liberation Army (1943) and the Ukrainian National Army (1945), but refused. He was one of the closest advisers to the commander of the Ukrainian national army General P. Shandruk. From 1945 he was in exile in West Germany. He died in a displaced persons camp in Regensburg. Awards: Order of St. Anne, 3rd class. (1907); St. Stanislaus 2nd class (1913; 04/08/1914); St. Vladimir 4th Art. with swords and a bow (VP 01/31/1915); swords to the Order of St. Stanislav 2nd class (VP 05/15/1915); St. Anne 4th st. (approved by VP on 07/02/1915); St. Anne 2nd Art. with swords (approved by VP on 03/13/1916); St. George's weapon (VP 01/24/1917). Bestowing seniority in the rank of Lieutenant Colonel from 12/06/1914 (2nd addendum to the VP on 08/15/1916; on the basis of the order for the military department of 1916 No. 379, 483 and 535).

Family

Father - Nikolai Werner-Petrov, captain (later major general) of the engineering troops, a descendant of a Swede captured by the troops of Peter I (hence the name Petrov) during the Northern War. Mother came from the Norwegian family Shtrolman.

Russian army officer

Being an officer of the Russian army, he organized military training in national languages in his company, which the soldiers called up from the outskirts of Russia spoke better than Russian (in this regard, he divided the company into subgroups on a national basis). He achieved successful results, but the authorities and many colleagues negatively reacted to such an experience as threatening the unity of the army. One of the officers called Petrov "Mazepin".

After hetman P. P. Skoropadsky came to power, he was removed from his post, lived in Kyiv, having given a written undertaking not to leave, was forced to earn a living by unloading wagons. Then he was returned to the army and appointed chief of staff of the 12th division, but was soon removed from his post on suspicion of having links with the rebels (symon Petlyura's supporters). He worked for a short time in the Main Directorate of Military Schools, in the last period of the existence of the Hetman regime he was appointed chief commandant of the Left-Bank Ukraine to fight the insurgents (such an appointment testified to the extreme degree of confusion of the authorities).

One of the first Ukrainian senior officers who supported Symon Petliura. From the beginning - the commander of the Volyn group, was appointed to this post by the command of the army of the Ukrainian People's Republic (UNR), participated in the battles against the Bolsheviks. Then he was the head of the Zhytomyr military cadet (“youth”) school. In 1919 - Minister of War of the Ukrainian People's Republic. C - inspector Ukrainian army(by this time she was already on the territory of Poland), cornet general. V was appointed to the post of Chief of the General Staff of the UNR Army, participated in the organization of the insurrectionary movement on the territory of Ukraine. Creator of military courses for foremen of the UNR in Kalisz, taught military history at them.

Life in Czechoslovakia

Then he moved to Czechoslovakia, where from 1923 he taught the history of the Ukrainian army and physical education at the Ukrainian Higher pedagogical institute named after Mikhail Drahomanov in Prague. B - - teacher physical education at Charles University and the Czech Polytechnic Institute. C is a corresponding member of the Ukrainian Military Historical Society in Warsaw, c is a member of the Ukrainian Sociological Institute (in Prague) and the Ukrainian Historical and Philological Society (in Prague), where he delivered essays on military geography, history and physical education. V is one of the founders, deputy chairman and scientific secretary of the Ukrainian Military Scientific Society in Prague, where he also read reports on military strategy, politics, sociology, history and geography. He taught gymnastics at the Ukrainian real gymnasium in Rzhevnitsy, and since 1934 - in Modrzhany, near Prague. In 1929 he joined the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). In -1931 he published his memoirs about the events in Lvov civil war on the territory of Ukraine.

After the collapse of Czechoslovakia and the occupation of the Czech Republic by the Germans, he was a factory worker and continued to participate in the public life of the Ukrainian emigration. After the start of the Great Patriotic War, Stepan Bandera's supporters from the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists nominated him for the post of Minister of War of Ukraine. He was elected chairman of the Ukrainian National Committee in absentia. However, he did not really start these duties, since the Germans severely suppressed the "Bandera" initiative. He continued to work in the factory.

last years of life

V moved to Bavaria, lived in a camp for displaced persons near Munich, from 1947 - in Augsburg. Two days before his death, he was elected a full member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society. He died of a serious illness caused by malnutrition and overwork.

Proceedings

Viyskovo-historical practices. Remember. Kiev, 2002.
Suspіlstvo i vіysko: Sots.-іst. fig. Prague; Berlin, 1924;
Ususpіlnennya vіyskovykh znan // Student's visti. Prague, 1926. No. 6. P. 6-11;
Remember the Hours of the Ukrainian Revolution (1917-1921). Lviv, 1927-1931. Ch.I. To the Beresteisky world. 1927; Part 2. View of the Beresteisky world to the zaynyattya Poltavi. 1928; Part 3. From the Crimean campaign to the Hetman's coup. 1930; Part 4. Hetmanate and rebellion Directories. 1931.
Strategic operations of Bohdan Khmelnytsky during the war of 1648-1649 // Military Ukraine. K., 1993. No. 6-8.

Family

Russian army officer

One of the first Ukrainian senior officers who supported Symon Petliura. From the beginning - the commander of the Volyn group, was appointed to this post by the command of the army of the Ukrainian People's Republic (UNR), participated in the battles against the Bolsheviks. Then he was the head of the Zhytomyr military cadet ("youth") school. In 1919 - Minister of War of the Ukrainian People's Republic. C - inspector of the Ukrainian army (by this time it was already in Poland), cornet general. V was appointed to the post of Chief of the General Staff of the UNR Army, participated in the organization of the insurrectionary movement on the territory of Ukraine. Creator of military courses for foremen of the UNR in Kalisz, taught military history at them.

Life in Czechoslovakia

Then he moved to Czechoslovakia, where from 1923 he taught the history of the Ukrainian army and physical education at the Ukrainian Higher Pedagogical Institute named after Mikhail Dragomanov in Prague. B - - teacher of physical education at Charles University and the Czech Polytechnic Institute. C is a corresponding member of the Ukrainian Military Historical Society in Warsaw, c is a member of the Ukrainian Sociological Institute (in Prague) and the Ukrainian Historical and Philological Society (in Prague), where he delivered essays on military geography, history and physical education. V is one of the founders, deputy chairman and scientific secretary of the Ukrainian Military Scientific Society in Prague, where he also read reports on military strategy, politics, sociology, history and geography. He taught gymnastics at the Ukrainian real gymnasium in Rzhevnitsy, and since 1934 - in Modrzhany, near Prague. In 1929 he joined the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). In -1931 he published in Lvov his memoirs about the events of the civil war on the territory of Ukraine.

last years of life

Proceedings

Viyskovo-historical practices. Remember. Kiev, 2002.
Suspіlstvo i vіysko: Sots.-іst. fig. Prague; Berlin, 1924;
Ususpіlnennya vіyskovykh znan // Student's visti. Prague, 1926. No. 6. P. 6-11;
Remember the Hours of the Ukrainian Revolution (1917-1921). Lviv, 1927-1931. Ch.I. To the Beresteisky world. 1927; Part 2. View of the Beresteisky world to the zaynyattya Poltavi. 1928; Part 3. From the Crimean campaign to the Hetman's coup. 1930; Part 4. Hetmanate and rebellion Directories. 1931.
Strategic operations of Bohdan Khmelnytsky during the war of 1648-1649 // Military Ukraine. K., 1993. No. 6-8.

Vsevolod Nikolaevich Petrov(1912-1978) - Russian art critic, writer, memoirist, museum worker, connoisseur of Russian art.

Biography

Vsevolod Nikolaevich Petrov belonged to the ancient noble family of the Petrovs. He came from a family of Yaroslavl and Novgorod Petrovs, who gave Russia famous engineers, scientists, statesmen.

Born on April 13, 1912 in the family of N. N. Petrov, an oncologist, academician (in St. Petersburg, the Institute of Oncology bears his name). The grandson of the scientist, engineer-general N.P. Petrov, since 1900 - a member of the State Council (depicted in the famous painting by Repin State Council May 7, 1901).

Graduated from the 1st Soviet high school in Leningrad (among his classmates was Pavel Zaltsman).

From 1929 to 1934 he studied at Leningrad University.

Since 1931 - an employee of the Department of Manuscripts of the Russian Museum, where he entered as a 2nd year student. Since 1934, he was an employee of the Drawings Section of the Russian Museum, then he was an employee of the Manuscripts Department, the Soviet Art Department, the Engravings Section, the Drawings Section and a senior researcher in the Sculpture Department. (in 1939)

Pupil and friend of N. N. Punin. I found in the Benois archive a graphic sketch made by him - a portrait of I. Annensky, after which Punin introduced him to Akhmatova, who highly appreciated Annensky. He was a member of the circle of M. Kuzmin. Under the influence of M. Kuzmin, he began to write fiction and continued to do so until the end of the 1940s; The most famous was written in 1946, but published 60 years later, the story “Turdeyskaya Manon Lesko”, dedicated to the memory of Mikhail Kuzmin.

Was friends with the artists Vl. Lebedev, N. Tyrsoy, T. Glebova, V. Kurdov and others. He was also close to Oberiut writers, including D. I. Kharms, who dedicated the story “Historical Episode” from the late cycle “Cases” to Petrov.

Member of the Great Patriotic War. In July 1941 he was mobilized and spent the first blockade winter in Leningrad.

After the end of the war, he returned to the Russian Museum as a senior researcher in the Department of Painting. In the late 1940s, when a campaign was launched to combat cosmopolitanism and formalism, V. N. Petrov's reputation in the Russian Museum suffered.

On March 7, 1949, after considering his “case” at a general meeting of employees, Petrov was fired from the Russian Museum. A month and a half later, he wrote to the local committee of the Russian Museum an application for reinstatement in the service, on April 28, 1949, but was not reinstated.

author numerous articles, research work on the history of Russian sculpture of the era of classicism, on the artistic association "World of Art". Wrote a monograph on the work of V. V. Lebedev. He wrote about many artists, including V. Borisov-Musatov, N. Altman, V. Konashevich, A. Pakhomov, Yu. Vasnetsov, T. Shishmareva.

After the war he lived in Leningrad on the street. Mayakovsky, 11, apt. 58. The apartments in this house were remodeled after the war, and Petrov's apartment included rooms from the former apartment 8, where D. I. Kharms lived.

Personal life

Since 1950, he was married to Marina Nikolaevna Rzhevuskaya (1915-1982), a cousin and close friend of the second wife of D. I. Kharms, Marina Vladimirovna Malich.

portraits

There are portraits of V. N. Petrov by T. N. Glebova (1930s), T. V. Shishmareva (1969).

Proceedings

Petrov left memoirs, partially published after his death, diaries and notebooks, prose (during his lifetime it was not published, although it was read privately). In the censored press during his lifetime, he published only books and articles on the history of Russian art. IN last years During his lifetime, he was visited, among others, by figures of the “second” Leningrad culture (A. N. Mironov and others).