- Ilya, you position yourself as an independent publisher. What does it mean?

At a time when I did not yet have my own publishing brand, I prepared a book for publication from start to finish, and published it on the basis of a partnership with some publishing house. And it was very important for me that it was a well-known publishing house. Books from an unknown publisher (and from an unknown publisher) sell poorly. I have seen this from my own experience. For a long time I worked at the Terevinf publishing house - as an employee. And as an independent publisher he began to publish books together with Terebinth. But this publishing house specialized in publishing literature on therapeutic pedagogy. It does not occupy a serious position in the children's literature market. When the same books that I published some time ago under the auspices of Terevinf were published by the Belaya Vorona publishing house, the demand for them turned out to be many times greater. And it’s not just about the buyers, but also about the merchandisers. If a book is published by an unknown publisher, the application for it includes 40 copies. And books from a well-known publishing house are ordered immediately in quantities of 400 pieces.

Why were your proposals interesting for such a publishing house as Samokat, for example? Did your publishing program differ in something that the publishing house itself could not implement? Or was it some unexpected and promising project?

I propose not just to publish a separate book. And not even a series of books. Along with the book, I offer ideas for its positioning and promotion. And the word “project” is the most correct one here. I offer the publishing house a ready-made project - a book layout with illustrations and comments. The work on acquiring copyright has also already been done.

- Do you buy the rights to the book yourself? Do copyright holders agree to transfer rights to a private party?

In the area where I work - yes. For the most part, I deal with books by forgotten authors who have had little publication or have unpublished works. An older author or his successor is usually happy when he has the opportunity to see a book published or reprinted. The only difficulty is that they do not always agree to transfer exclusive rights to a potential publisher. But this most often does not interfere with the promotion of the book. I believe that my work is marked by special publishing qualities.

- So what is the main idea of ​​your project?

In hindsight, the project looks much more harmonious than it seemed at first. When I decided to get into publishing, I started simply by republishing my favorite children's books. I was born in 1967. That is, the books that I planned to republish belonged to the late fifties - seventies. Then I had no preferences other than nostalgic ones - for example, to publish Russian literature. My first book was “A Dog’s Life” by Ludvik Ashkenazy, translated in the 1960s from Czech. In 2011, it was published by the Terevinf publishing house with my comments, an article about the author of the book and about my publishing claims at that time. Irina Balakhonova, editor-in-chief of the Samokat publishing house, liked what I did. And after some time, Irina told me that Samokat would like to publish books by two St. Petersburg writers - Valery Popov and Sergei Wolf. Would I take it on? Maybe they need to be designed in a special way. But the editor was not given any special role in preparing these books for publication, and this was not very interesting to me. So I said that I was ready to take on the job - but I would build it differently. I got out everything that Wolf wrote, and everything that Popov wrote, and I read it all. I read books by Valery Popov in my youth. But I had never heard of Sergei Wolf before (except that I came across this name in the diaries of Sergei Dovlatov). I compiled collections, invited illustrators who, it seemed to me, could cope with the task, and the books came out. They turned out to be quite successful in the book market. I began to think in which row they could stand. What kind of writer's circle is this? And then it occurred to me that the project should be connected with the literature of the Thaw. Because this is something special, marked by the special achievements of Russian literature as a whole. You can also localize the project - take only books by Leningrad authors of that time. But, of course, at the beginning of my publishing career, I could not say that I conceived a project to reprint “Thaw” literature. This concept now looks harmonious.

Wait, but the books by Wolf and Popov are from the 70s, no? And “thaw literature,” as I understand it, is the literature of the mid-50s-60s?

Do you think that books of the 70s can no longer be considered “thaw” literature?

But it seems to me that the “thaw” has a historically defined framework? Does it end with Khrushchev's removal?

I'm not talking about the "thaw" as a political phenomenon. I mean a certain kind of literature that arose during this period and continued to exist for some time. It seems to me that we can talk about some general features that were characteristic of this literature, which I characterize as “Thaw”. Writers of this period are people born in the late 30s - early 40s...

- Survived the war in childhood.

And those who did not receive a Stalinist education. These are not “children of the 20th Congress”; they did not have to break anything in themselves - neither politically nor aesthetically. Young St. Petersburg guys from intellectual families affected by repression or otherwise suffered during the era of terror. People who entered literature on the ideological and aesthetic negation of previous values. If they were guided by something in their work, it was more likely to be Hemingway and Remarque, and not Lev Kassil, for example. They all started out as adult writers. But they were not published, and therefore they were squeezed out into children's literature. Only there could they earn a living through literary work. The specifics of their education also affected this. They were all “poorly educated.”

Do you mean they didn't know foreign languages? That they did not have a gymnasium or university background, like the writers of the beginning of the century?

Including. Pasternak and Akhmatova could make a living from literary translations. But these couldn’t. Valery Popov, for example, graduated from the Electrical Engineering Institute. Andrei Bitov said to himself: what were we supposed to do? We were savages. And they wanted to exist in the humanitarian field. So I had to “go” into children’s literature. But they came to children's literature as free people. They did not adjust or adjust. They wrote as they thought necessary. In addition, their own works found themselves within a very high-quality context: at this moment they began to translate modern foreign literature, which was completely impossible before, and the works of Salinger and Bel Kaufman appeared. Suddenly, writers of the older generation began to speak completely differently. “The Road Goes Away” by Alexandra Brushtein, a new pedagogical prose by Frida Vigdorova, has appeared. A pedagogical discussion arose... All this together gave rise to such a phenomenon as Soviet “thaw” literature...

But my interests do not end there. "Republic SHKID" or "Conduit. Shvambrania" are books from a different period that I am republishing. Although now the word “reissue” will not surprise anyone...

This is true. Today, everything and anything is being reissued. But do you think your reissues are significantly different from what other publishers do?

Well, I hope they differ in the level of publishing culture. Have I learned something in ten years? For example, the fact that, when taking on a reprint, you need to find the very first edition, or even better, the author’s manuscript in the archives. Then you can understand a lot. You can find censored notes that distort the original intent of the author. You can understand something about the author’s quest, about his professional development. And you can find things that existed until now only in manuscript. In addition, in the reprints that I prepare, the editor and his comments play a special role. My task is not just to introduce the reader to the first edition of the seemingly famous work of Lev Kassil, but with the help of comments, with the help of a historical article, to tell about the time that is described in the book, about the people of that time. In bookstores you can find a variety of publications of the “Republic of SHKID” in different price categories. But I hope the reader will buy my book for the sake of comments and a behind-the-text article. This is almost the most important thing here.

- So this is in some way a special genre - a “commented book”?

Let's put it this way: this is a transfer of the tradition of scientific publication of literary monuments to literature created relatively recently, but also belonging to a different time. The comments I provide in my books are not at all academic. But no literary critic should wince when reading them - at least that’s the task I set myself.

- How are books selected for the annotated edition?

The main criterion is artistry. I believe that I should republish only those texts that change something in the composition of Russian prose or poetry. And these, first of all, are works in which the main thing is not the plot, not the characters, but the way the words are composed. For me, the “how” is more important than the “what.”

- Your books are published by a publishing house specializing in children's and teenage literature, so the question arises to whom they are addressed. For example, I had a very difficult feeling when I read “The Girl in Front of the Door” by Maryana Kozyreva. It seems to me that not a single modern teenager, if he is not “in the know,” will understand anything - despite the comments. But if a book is chosen for its linguistic and artistic merits, they, it seems, should “work” on their own, without commentary. Is there a contradiction here?

- In my opinion, no. Maryana Kozyreva wrote a book about the repressions of the 30s and life in evacuation. This is a completely successful work from an artistic point of view. And it makes it possible to raise this topic and accompany the text with historical comments. But I don’t deny that this book is not for teenagers. Maryana Kozyreva wrote for adults. And Cassil wrote “Conduit” for adults. The address of the book changed during the process of publishing the book.

It seems to me that this was typical of the literature of that time. “The Golden Key,” as Miron Petrovsky writes, also had the subtitle “a novel for children and adults”...

In general, from the very beginning I made books with a vague age appeal - those books that were interesting to me. The fact that these books are marketed as juvenile literature is a publishing strategy. Teen books sell better than adult books. But I can’t exactly define what a “teenage book” is.

Are you saying that smart teenagers aged 15-16 read the same things as adults? That there is no clear boundary?

And even at an earlier age, an aesthetically “pumped up” teenager reads the same things as an adult. He is already able to feel that the main thing is “how” and not “what”. At least I was that way as a teenager. And, it seems to me, the period from 13 to 17 years is the period of the most intensive reading. I read the most important books for me during this period. Of course, it is dangerous to make one’s own experience absolute. But a person retains a high reading intensity only if he is professionalized as a humanist. And in adolescence, the basic ways of reading are laid down.

That is, you still have a teenager in mind when you prepare a book for publication. Why else would you need illustrations?

Illustrations are important for understanding the text. And I attach great importance to the visual image of the book. I have always published and continue to publish books with new illustrations. I am looking for contemporary artists who, from my point of view, can cope with the task. And they draw new pictures. Although the dominant trend in modern book publishing is different. Books, as a rule, are republished with the same illustrations that the grandparents of today's teenagers remember.

This is very clear. This makes the book recognizable. Recognition appeals to people's nostalgic feelings and ensures good sales.

Yes. But in this way the idea is established that the golden age of Russian book illustration is in the past. The golden age is Konashevich. Or at least Kalinovsky. And modern illustrators are terrible at creating such things... And in reviews of my books (for example, in reader reviews on the Labyrinth website), the same “motive” is often repeated: they say, the text is good, but the pictures are bad. But now is the time for new visuality. And it is very important that it works for a new perception of the text. Although this is, of course, not easy.

- And it’s debatable, of course... But it’s interesting. It was very interesting talking with you.

The conversation was conducted by Marina Aromshtam

____________________________

Interview with Ilya Bernstein

Galina Artemenko

Into history on the “Scooter”

In St. Petersburg, the All-Russian Literary Prize named after S. Ya. Marshak, established by the publishing house “Detgiz” and the Union of Writers of St. Petersburg, was awarded for the tenth time.

The winner in the category “Best Author” was Mikhail Yasnov, the best artist was St. Petersburg illustrator, designer, member of the Union of Artists of Russia Mikhail Bychkov, who illustrated over a hundred books. The “Best Book” award was awarded to the work of Leonid Kaminsky, a collector and illustrator of children’s folklore, and the publishing house “Detgiz” for “The History of the Russian State in excerpts from school essays.”

The only Muscovite to receive the highest award was publisher Ilya Bernshtein, who became the best in the category “For Publishing Dedication.” The award presentation took place at the Central Children's City Library of St. Petersburg at noon on October 30, and that same evening Ilya Bernstein gave a lecture “Children's Literature of the Thaw: the Leningrad School of Children's Literature of the 1960s - 1970s” in the St. Petersburg space “Easy-Easy.” The proceeds from the lecture were directed to charitable purposes.

Ilya Bernstein presented a series of books “Native Speech”, which are published by the Samokat publishing house. It includes books that convey the atmosphere of the Leningrad literary environment of the 1960s and 1970s, presenting names and topics that arose at that time. Among the books in the series are works by Valery Popov, Boris Almazov, Alexander Krestinsky, and Sergei Wolf.

The series was born like this: the publisher was offered to reissue two books by Sergei Wolf. But it is not Ilya Bernstein’s rules to simply republish books - he actually publishes them anew, looking for illustrators. He read Wolf, then Popov and decided to make a series: “All these writers entered literature after the 20th Congress, most of them were familiar in one way or another, friendly, many of them are mentioned by Sergei Dovlatov in his notebooks.”

But the main thing that the publisher notes is that these writers did not set themselves “children’s goals” in children’s literature. After all, in essence, children’s literature is a bright plot, an interesting plot that won’t let go of the reader, funny characters, and an obligatory didactic component. But for these authors, the main thing was something else - the interaction of words in the text. The word became the main character. They didn't lower the bar in any sense, talking to the child reader about a variety of things.

Now there are eight books in the series, including “Look - I’m growing” and “The most beautiful horse” by Boris Almazov, “We are not all handsome” by Valery Popov, “Tusya” by Alexander Krestinsky, “My good dad” by Viktor Golyavkin and “We and Kostikom" by Inga Petkevich, "Somehow it turned out stupid" by Sergei Volf and "What's what..." by Vadim Frolov. By the way, Frolov’s once famous story, published back in 1966, is still included in compulsory extracurricular reading programs in Japanese schools; in the USA the author is called the “Russian Salinger”. And in our country, as Bernstein reported, after the book was republished, they recently refused to put it in a prominent place in one of the prestigious bookstores, citing the fact that “its labeling “12+” does not in any way coincide with its too adult content.” The story is a coming of age story

A 13-year-old teenager in whose family a dramatic conflict occurs: his mother, having fallen in love with another man, leaves home, leaving her son and three-year-old daughter with her husband. The boy is trying to understand what is happening...

Boris Almazov’s book “Look - I’m Growing” was marked “6+”. For those who did not read it in childhood, let me remind you that the action takes place in a post-war pioneer camp near Leningrad, where children rest, one way or another traumatized by the war-blockade, evacuation, and the loss of loved ones. It is impossible to leave the camp territory - there is demining all around, and nearby German prisoners are rebuilding a bridge. One of the boys, who nevertheless left the territory, met the prisoner and... saw a person in him. But his friends don't understand this...

Ilya Bernstein notes that the “Native Speech” series did not initially involve commentary and a scientific apparatus. But the publisher wondered: what was the gap between what the author thought and what he was able to say? The books were written in the sixties, the writers had a lot to say, but not everything. External and internal censorship was in place. Thus, the book “Tusya” by Alexander Krestinsky - a story about a little boy who in the second half of the thirties lives with his mother and father in a large communal apartment in Leningrad, included his later story, written already in 2004 in Israel a year before the author’s death "Brothers." And this is actually the same story of the boy, only now Alexander Krestinsky speaks directly about repressions, arrests, and what hard labor one of his brothers went through and how the other died. This story is no longer accompanied by illustrations, but by family photographs from the Krestinsky archives.

Boris Almazov’s book “The Most Beautiful Horse” also includes two later works by the author - “Thin Rowan” and “Zhirovka”, where Almazov tells the story of his family. They are also accompanied by family photographs.

Bernstein at the Samokat publishing house is making another book series, “How It Was,” the goal of which is to tell modern teenagers about the Great Patriotic War honestly, sometimes as brutally as possible. The authors are again people of those times, who went through the war, who lived through the war - Viktor Dragunsky, Bulat Okudzhava, Vadim Shefner, Vitaly Semin, Maria Rolnikite, Itzhak Meras. And now, in each book in the series, the work of fiction is supplemented by an article by a historian setting out today’s view of the events described.

When asked how much modern children and teenagers need these books, how they are read and will be read, the publisher answered: “Edition of any kind, saving time, accumulating and comprehending experience, is important as a tribute to the memory of those who earned this experience, and those to whom is this addressed now? I don’t have any special mission, maybe these books will help you understand what’s happening today and make your choice.”

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‒ Ilya, in your interviews you often talk about your activities as a “publisher-editor.” Is this your special personal position in the publishing world or can you learn this somewhere and make it your profession?

I'll try to answer. There have been several civilizational trends in history. For example, industrial. This is the era of standard products that are mass produced. This is the era of the assembly line. The product should be designed accordingly, and the method of promoting the product after release should be the same standard. And this industrial method was a very important thing in its time. This is a whole civilizational stage. But he's not the only one.

There is also non-industrial production. Some brew craft beer, some sew trousers, some make furniture. Today this is an increasingly common activity, at least in the world of megacities. And I am a representative of just such a world of non-industrial activity. And since this business is underdeveloped and new, everything has to be built from the very beginning: from a system for training specialists to a system for distributing finished books. Our publications are even sold differently from other books: they do not fall into the usual consumer niches. The store merchandiser, having received them, finds himself in a difficult situation. He doesn’t know where to define such a book: for a child’s book it is too adult, for an adult it is too childish. This means that it must be some other way of presenting, selling and promoting. And that’s pretty much the same with all aspects of this matter.

But, of course, this is not a combination of some unique individual qualities of one person. This is normal activity. She just needs to study differently, do it differently.

- So what is it - back to the Middle Ages, to workshops working to order? Towards a system of masters and apprentices?

We actually called it a “shop” structure at some point. And I really teach, I have a workshop. And in it we really use terms such as student, journeyman for simplicity.

It is assumed that someday the apprentice should become a master, having defended some of his master's ambitions in front of other masters, and receive the right, the opportunity to open his own workshop. And other masters will help him with this.

This is how it should be - the way it once was: a workshop, with a workshop banner. I'm not sure if I have any followers in this. But I try to build it exactly in this form. And I don’t see any problem in this.

The problems lie elsewhere. In our country, everything has been sharpened since school in such a way that (to exaggerate a little) a person either draws or writes. And if he draws, he usually writes with errors. And if he writes, then he does not know how to hold a pencil in his hand. This is just one example. Although relatively not so long ago it was completely natural for a guards officer to easily write poetry in the album of a county young lady or draw quite decent graphics in the margins. Just a hundred - a hundred and fifty years ago!

‒ There is also an economic component to the question of your profession. You said in one of your interviews that industrial civilization creates a lot of cheap goods that are available to people. And what you are doing is a rather expensive, “niche”, as they say now, product. Right?

If I were Henry Ford, I would be competing with the entire auto manufacturing world for millions of consumers. If I make something completely atypical, not mass-produced, in my workshop, I naturally don’t have many consumers. Although not so little. I believe that any most exotic product can be sold today. I still have it quite understandable... But I don’t have competition and all its costs. There is no fear that my product will be stolen from me. No one will make a book exactly like mine anyway! In general, by and large, nothing can be taken away from me. You can’t even take my business away from me, because it’s all in my head. Yes, let’s say my circulation will be seized, in the worst case. So I'll do the following. But, in any case, 90% of the cost of the goods is always with me. And I can't be kicked out of my company. No one will be able to make the Ruslit-2 series, for example. That is, he can publish something, but it will be a completely different product. It's like a master's mark. People go to a specific master, and they are not at all interested in another workshop. That's not their interest.

‒ Do they want a different relationship model?

Certainly!

And relationships with students in the workshop other than with employees in the company. I am not afraid that my employees will be lured away for a higher salary, or that an employee will leave and take some “client base” with him. Fortunately, we are also freed from all these business ills.

- Everything is more or less clear with the organization of work. Is the very idea of ​​commented publications your own idea or the result of some surveys or contacts with readers?

Here again: the industrial method involves some special technologies and professions: marketing, market research, conducting surveys, identifying target groups. Individual production initially assumes that you do, in general, for yourself, in the way that interests and pleases you; you do for people like you. Therefore, many traditional issues that are mandatory for ordinary business simply do not arise. Who is your target audience? Don't know! I do what I think is necessary; things that I like; what I can do, not what people buy. Well, maybe not quite so radically... Of course, I think about who might need it. But to a large extent, in such a business, demand is formed by supply, and not vice versa. That is, people did not know that such books existed. It never occurred to them that they needed “Captain Vrungel” with a two-hundred-page commentary.

‒ What follows seems clear: they saw such a book, looked at it, were surprised at first, then they liked it...

And when such a proposal arose, they will already be looking for it, they will be looking for just such publications. Moreover, it turns out to be incomprehensible and strange that this did not happen before.

‒ You think that comments in the book are necessary. Why? And do you think comments can harm the perception of a text as artistic?

I don't think they are necessary. And yes, I think they can do harm. That's why I separate them - there are no page-by-page comments in my books. I believe that a page-by-page comment, even something as seemingly innocent as an explanation of an incomprehensible word, can really destroy the artistic fabric of the narrative.

I don't think comments are necessary at all. I even had the following agreement at home with my children: if we watch a movie together, don’t give dad the remote control. This meant that I did not have the right to stop the action at some important, from my point of view, moments in order to explain what the children (again, from my point of view) did not understand. Because I – and I’m not the only one, unfortunately – have such a stupid habit.

But for those who are interested, it should be “explained”: separate, differently designed, clearly separated.

- Both from your comments and from the selection of works for publication, it is clear that the topic of war is, on the one hand, relevant for you, and on the other, you have a special attitude towards it. For example, in one of your interviews you said that a war cannot be won at all. This is not entirely consistent with current government trends. Do you think it is possible to find a balance between respect for ancestors and turning war itself into a cult?

I would say that this is generally a matter of respect for a person. It's not about ancestors. After all, what is a great power? If a great power is a country whose citizens have a good life, where the state’s efforts are aimed at ensuring that the elderly have a good pension, everyone has good medicine, the young have a good education, so that there is no corruption, so that there are good roads, then these questions don't even arise. These questions, in my opinion, are a consequence of a different idea of ​​greatness, which absolutely does not correspond with me. And this is usually a derivative of national inferiority. A feeling of inferiority, unfortunately, in our country - source of the national idea. A kind of inferiority complex. And therefore our answer to everyone is always the same: “But we defeated you. We can do it again."

- On the issue of literature and the state. Tell me, were Soviet teenage books heavily censored or were they already written within certain limits?

Both. And they were further censored by editors, including after the death of the author. I have a separate article about this in the publication of Deniskin’s Stories - about how Deniskin’s Stories were censored and edited, how Deniskin’s Stories were shortened - although, it would seem, what is there to censor? And this is discussed there using a large number of examples.

‒ One of your publications is “Conduit and Shvambrania” by Lev Kassil. You write that the original author’s version was very different from the current well-known text. Why couldn’t it have just been published instead of comments?

- I released “Conduit and Shvambrania” in the original version. This is what Lev Kassil wrote and published for the first time. These are two separate stories, very different from the later author’s combined version. For example, because the scene of action is the lands where the Volga Germans lived compactly. This is the city of Pokrovsk - the future capital of the first autonomy in our country, the Autonomous Republic of Volga Germans. Since the action of “Conduit” and “Schwambrania” takes place during the First World War, this is a time of anti-German sentiment, anti-German pogroms in cities. All this happened in Pokrovsk. Kassil wrote quite a lot about this, writing with great sympathy for his German friends and classmates. There was also a significant Jewish theme in the text. Naturally, all this was not included in the later version. And here we can already talk about censorship, about a combination of internal and external censorship. Such historical circumstances require commentary.

‒ You publish a lot of relatively old books, from the 1920s to the 1970s. What can you say about modern teenage literature?

It seems to me that she is on the rise now. And I expect that it is about to reach a completely new level, to some kind of peak, like in the 20s and 60s. Literature is generally not spread evenly over time. There was a Golden Age, there was a Silver Age. I think that even now the blossoming is close, because a lot has already been accumulated. There are a lot of authors working, a lot of decent, even very decent books have been written, wonderful books are about to appear.

‒ And what outstanding modern teenage books could you name? Or at least attractive to you personally?

No, I'm not ready for that. First of all, I read relatively little these days, to be honest. I'm actually not one of those adults who likes to read children's books. I don’t read children’s books for myself. And secondly, it so happens that I know the people who write books much better than their works.

- What do you attribute this rise to now? Does it have any external reasons or are these simply internal processes in literature itself?

I don’t know, this is a complex thing, you can’t explain it that way. I think it's all inclusive here. After all, what is the Golden Age of Pushkin or the Silver Age of Russian poetry connected with? There are probably special studies, but I can only state this.

This is exactly what I really want. On the contrary, I don’t want to just continue doing what I’m already good at. Something new has become interesting, but you don’t do it because your previous business is doing well. I don't work like that.

- Thank you very much for the interview.

The conversation was conducted by Evgeny Zherbin
Photo by Galina Solovyova

_________________________________

Evgeniy Zherbin, holder of the “Book Expert of the 21st Century” diploma, member of the children’s editorial board of “Papmambuka”, 14 years old, St. Petersburg

Books in the Ruslit series

Ilya Bernstein - about adult themes of children's literature, the Thaw era and book tastes of different generations

Philologists have relatively recently realized that Russian children's literature, especially during its heyday - the Thaw era in the USSR, tells no less deeply about its time and people than adult literature. One of the first to discover this treasury was Ilya Bernstein, an independent publisher. He began publishing children's books with several hundred pages of commentary. And they diverge, becoming popular reading among adults who once grew up reading Deniska’s Stories or Dunno on the Moon. The publisher spoke more about his projects, personal journey and children’s literature in general in an interview with Realnoe Vremya.

“The time was like this: youth, impudence, mischief and extremely low professional requirements”

Ilya, your path to the book and publishing world was not easy and long. Tell us what you had to go through before you became what they call an “independent craft publisher”?

When I had to choose my future profession, it was 1984, and my ideas about the possibilities were very narrow. The previous two generations of my “ancestors” followed the same, generally speaking, path: in the company that met in my parents’ house, all the men were candidates of technical sciences and heads of labs. I had neither ability nor interest in this. But those around him were skeptical about any other profession for a man.

I followed the path of least resistance, trained as a software engineer and even worked in my specialty for some time. Fortunately for me, the 90s soon arrived, when a choice arose - either leave the country, as the absolute majority in my circle did, or stay and live in a new situation, when all niches opened up and it was possible to do anything.

I have loved books since childhood. Just as an object - I liked a lot about them besides the text and illustrations. I read the output data, memorized the names of the typefaces (fonts), it worried me. If books had commentaries, I often read them before the text. As I grew up, I became a book collector. Every day, returning from work, I changed trains at Kuznetsky Most, where a speculative book market operated for many years. In the dark (especially in winter), silent people walked or stood, approached each other, exchanged secret phrases, stepped aside and exchanged books for money. I spent an hour there almost every day and spent all the money I earned as a “young specialist.”

But I didn’t buy books to read them. From my large library I have read only a few percent. At that time, the book was a rarity, an object of hunting. I was possessed by a sporting interest. And I didn’t understand what to do with this interest. The first thing that came to mind was collecting. Literary monuments, Academia, “Aquilon” - the standard path. And if they asked me how I see my future, I would answer (maybe I did) that I would be a salesman in a second-hand bookstore, but not in Russia, but next to some Western university. But all this was speculative, and then I had no intention of doing anything about it.

Then I caught this fish in troubled waters: many, having earned their first money, decided that the next thing they would do would be publishing a newspaper. And I became the editor of such newspapers. These publications rarely made it to the second or third issue, although they got off to a stormy start. So in a couple of years I edited half a dozen different newspapers and magazines on a variety of topics, even religious ones. The time was like this: youth, adventurism, impudence, mischief and extremely low professional standards, and moral ones too - everyone deceived each other in some way, and I feel embarrassed to remember much of what I did then.

Then, as a result of all this, an editorial team was formed - photographer, designer, proofreader, editor. And we decided not to look for the next customer, but to create an advertising agency. And I was a person in it who was responsible to the customer. These were terrible times of night vigils in the printing house. And it all culminated in the fact that for about five years I had my own small printing house.

“I have loved books since childhood. Just as an object - I liked a lot about them besides the text and illustrations. I read the output, memorized the names of the typefaces (fonts), it worried me.” Photo philologist.livejournal.com

- How did the economic crises that regularly occurred in the country affect you?

I'm literally their child. They made a big difference. I had a printing house, a design department, and I proudly said that all my employees had a higher art education. And then the crisis began, I had to fire people and become a designer myself, making various booklets, prospectuses, exhibition catalogs, albums.

But all this time I wanted to make books. I remembered this and easily parted with my relatively successful and money-making pursuits if it seemed to me that the door to a more bookish world was opening. So from a manufacturer of advertising printing I became a designer, then a book designer. Life sent me teachers, for example, Vladimir Krichevsky, an outstanding designer. In the course of a generally casual acquaintance, I offered to work for him for free if only he would teach me. And it seems to have given me more than any other teaching (and certainly more than regular “high school”).

When I became a designer, it turned out that in small publishing houses there is a need for total editing. That is, it would be nice if the designer could work with both illustrations and text, and be able to both add and shorten. And I became such a versatile editor who does literary, artistic and technical editing myself. And I still remain that way.

And 10 years ago, when there was another crisis and many publishing houses left the market, and the remaining ones reduced the volume of their output, I decided to make books as I already knew how: all by myself. And I started with my favorite children's books - those that, as I believed, had undeservedly fallen out of cultural use. In 2009, my first book was published - “A Dog's Life” by Ludwik Ashkenazy with illustrations by Tim Jarzombek; I not only prepared it, but also financed the publication. The publisher listed on the title page handled sales. I made a dozen (or a little more) books, was noticed by colleagues, and other publishing houses offered to collaborate with them. First “Scooter”, then “White Crow”. At that time there was a boom in small children's publishing houses.

Accidents have always played an important role in my life. I discussed with colleagues the publication of books with large, complex commentaries. While they were thinking whether to agree to this (I needed partners, the projects promised to be expensive), everything was already “being built” in my mind, so when everyone refused, I had to open my own publishing house for this. It is called “Publishing Project A and B”; the last two dozen books were published under this brand.

- How does the work of your publishing house or, as it is also called, workshop work?

This is largely dictated by the economic situation. I don't have the money to hire qualified employees, but somehow I have to attract people so that they want to work for me. And I propose to recreate some kind of pre-industrial production and education. This is now in use all over the world. This is not an assembly line production of a book, when it has many performers and each is responsible for their own section.

I’m creating a kind of medieval workshop: a person comes, he doesn’t know how to do anything, he’s a student, he’s taught using working material, given a job in accordance with his qualifications, and this is not a school problem, but a real book. I don’t pay him a stipend, but a small salary, which is less than what I would pay to a ready-made specialist, but he gets education and practice. And if my student wants to open his own workshop, I will help, I can even give him the idea for the first book or put him in touch with publishers who will agree to publish his book.

I have never worked with publishing houses as an employee, only as a companion. The book legally belongs to me, the copyright is registered in my name. The publisher does not pay me a fee, but shares the proceeds with me. Of course, the publishing house does not like this situation; it is ready to do this only if it understands that it cannot make such a book itself, or if it will be too expensive. You need to be able to make books that will make the publishing house agree to accept your terms.

I don't do things that I'm not interested in that are supposedly successful. This has not happened in my practice yet, although it’s time. Rather, an idea arises and I implement it. I always start a series, this is correct from a marketing point of view: people get used to the design and buy the book, even without knowing the author, due to the reputation of the series. But when mass production is established, five to ten similar books are made, it ceases to be interesting to me, and the next idea appears.

Now we are releasing the Ruslit series. At first it was conceived as “Literary Monuments”, but with reservations: books written in the 20th century for teenagers, provided with comments, but not academic, but entertaining, multidisciplinary, not only historical and philological, but also socio-anthropological, etc. P.

“I have never worked with publishing houses as an employee, only as a companion. The book legally belongs to me, the copyright is registered in my name. The publisher does not pay me a fee, but shares the proceeds with me.” Photo papmambook.ru

“We are like pioneers who simply staked out plots and move on”

- How did you come to write large, serious comments on children's books?

I also made comments in other episodes, it was always interesting to me. I’m the kind of bore who can easily, while reading a book to a child or watching a movie together, suddenly stop and ask: “Do you understand what I mean?”

I was lucky, I found colleagues who are professional philologists and at the same time cheerful people, for whom the framework of traditional philological commentary is too narrow. Oleg Lekmanov, Roman Leibov, Denis Dragunsky... I won’t list them all, in case I forget someone. We have published 12 Ruslita books. There are plans for the next year or two.

It so happened that these books with commentaries unexpectedly took off. Previously, if there was a request for such a thing, it was in a latent, hidden form; there was nothing like it; it never occurred to anyone. But now that this exists, it seems self-evident that Deniska’s Stories can be published with a two-hundred-page scientific apparatus.

Who needs it? Well, for example, grown-up readers of these books, those who loved these books and want to understand what the secret was, to check their impressions. On the other hand, the children's literature that we choose gives us the opportunity to try out a new genre - these are not comments in the generally accepted sense of the word (explanations of incomprehensible words and realities, bio-bibliographic information), but a story about the place and time of the action, which is based on the text .

We explain many points that do not require explanation, but we have a lot to say about it. Sometimes it’s just our childhood, with which we are strongly connected and know a lot that you can’t read in books. This even applies to Dragunsky. We are younger than Deniska, but then reality changed slowly, and it is easy for us to imagine what it was like ten years earlier.

- Has anyone commented on children's literature before?

Children's literature was not considered by serious philologists until recently as a field of professional activity. Whether it's the Silver Age! And some Dunno is not serious. And we just ended up in the Klondike - there is a huge number of discoveries, we don’t have time to process them. We are like pioneers who have simply staked out plots of land and move on: we are so interested in what is next that we have no time or desire to develop an open plot. This is the unknown. And any touch to this and a trip to the archive opens an abyss. And the novelty of our approach “in an adult’s way about a child’s” also allows us to use interesting research optics. It turned out that this is very “canal”.

- And who buys?

Humanitarian-oriented people buy. The same ones who buy all kinds of intellectual adult literature. It becomes a kind of intellectual literature for adults. Despite the fact that there is always the actual work made for children, large typed, with “children’s” pictures. And the comment has been moved to the end, it does not interfere with getting a direct impression. You can read a book and stop there. Although the presence of a lengthy commentary, of course, makes the book more expensive.

“They could write for children without lowering their demands on themselves, without kneeling either literally or figuratively.”

It is clear that the situation with literature is not constant. One might assume that at any given time there are great, good, average and bad writers, the percentage being roughly comparable. And outstanding works are created at any time. But it is not so. There was a Golden Age, a Silver Age, and not so much between them. And during the Thaw years, many good children's writers appeared, not simply because freedom came (albeit very limited). There are many factors here. A lot depends on the combination of circumstances and on personalities.

The Thaw is the pinnacle of Russian children's literature; then many bright and free talented people entered the thaw. The Thaw did not abolish censorship, but it gave birth to the desire to try to “bypass the slingshots.” Writers still could not publish their bold “adult” texts. And children's literature, in which there was much less censorship, allowed those who, in a situation of free choice, most likely would not have chosen children's literature, to realize themselves.

There was also, so to speak, a “business approach.” If you read what Dovlatov published in the magazine “Koster”, it will become awkward - this is outright opportunistic hack work. But there were many “adult” writers who were disgusted by this even in detail.

Informal literary groups were created. I have a series “Native Speech” in the publishing house “Samokat” - this is Leningrad literature of the Thaw. When I started publishing this, I didn’t even imagine that such a phenomenon existed. But based on the results of the “field research,” it became clear that these books and these authors have a lot in common. Viktor Golyavkin, Sergey Volf, Igor Efimov, Andrey Bitov, many of those living and writing today, for example, Vladimir Voskoboynikov, Valery Popov. The circle that is usually defined through the names of Dovlatov and Brodsky is people of approximately the same time of birth (pre-war or war years), children of repressed (or miraculously not-) parents, brought up outside the Stalinist paradigm, which, relatively speaking, the 20th Congress of the CPSU did not to which he did not open his eyes.

And they could write for children without lowering their demands on themselves, without kneeling either literally or figuratively. Not only did they not abandon the ideas and tasks of their adult prose, not only did they not resign themselves to censorship, but even in children’s literature they were not guided by the considerations “will the little reader understand this?” This is also one of the important achievements of the Thaw - then not only did the books cease to be edifying, didactic and ideologically loaded, but the general tone changed.

Previously, children's literature had a clear hierarchy. There is a small child, there is an adult. The adult is smart, the child is stupid. A child makes mistakes, and an adult helps him correct himself. And then, time after time, the child turns out to be deeper, subtler, and smarter than the adult. And the adult is shocked.

For example, in the story “The Girl on the Ball”: Deniska finds out that “she” has left - the artist Tanechka Vorontsova, whom he saw only in the arena and in his dreams. How does dad react? “Come on, let’s go to a cafe, eat ice cream and drink some soda.” And the child? Or in another story: “How did you decide to give up a dump truck for this worm?” “How come you don’t understand?! After all, he is alive! And it glows!”

“Dragunsky is a skilled fighter on the censorship front, he was not a dissident - he is a man from the world of pop, successful, and one cannot imagine him as a writer “from the underground” and a victim of censorship. It would be more correct to talk about censoring his stories after his death. This is a disgusting thing, and it happens all the time.” Photo donna-benta.livejournal.com

On the other hand, in pedagogy, the role of an adult looking down from above underwent a noticeable revision during the Thaw, and this benefited literature.

A lot has changed in aesthetics. Those who came to children's literature, Dovlatov's conventional circle, tried to patch up, to connect the broken connection of times - after all, it was still possible to find those who saw and remembered the Silver Age, for example. After all, young people, in their own words, according to Brodsky, came to literature “from cultural oblivion.” Bitov told me: the previous generation was decently educated, knew languages, and when writers could not publish, they had other opportunities - literary translation, an academic career. “And we, yesterday’s engineers, had no other option but to go into children’s literature.” On the one hand, they were brought up on the newly arrived European modernism: Hemingway, the writers of the “lost generation”, Remarque. And with this they came to children's literature. Children's literature then drew from various sources.

- You said that there was some kind of censorship in children's literature. What exactly was censored?

Dragunsky is a skilled fighter on the censorship front, he was not a dissident - he is a man from the world of pop, successful, and one cannot imagine him as a writer “from the underground” and a victim of censorship. It would be more correct to talk about censoring his stories after his death. This is a nasty thing, and it happens all the time. A simple comparison of the lifetime edition and the posthumous edition reveals hundreds of changes. They can be reduced to several categories: for example, this is decency. Let’s say, in the story “The Wheels of Tra-ta-ta Sing,” Deniska travels on a train with her dad, they spend the night on the same bunk. And dad asks: “Where will you lie down? At the wall? And Deniska says: “On the edge. After all, I drank two glasses of tea, I’ll have to get up at night.” In the Thaw times, which were not so sanctimonious, there was no crime in this. But in modern editions there is no tea.

Another, more complex and paradoxical type of editing. Literary editing involves rules and regulations that the editor is trained in, and he can help an inept author correct obvious flaws. Often this is necessary. But in the case of a truly artistic text, any editorial smoothness is worse than the author’s roughness.

When I was working with Golyavkin’s story “My Good Dad,” I received a royal gift - his own editing: before his death, he was preparing a re-edition, took his book from the shelf and corrected it by hand (I assume that he restored what he had once come with to the editor). Imagine two dialogue options: in one “said”, “said”, and in the other - “flashed”, “muttered” and “hissed”. The second option is an editorial edit: the basics of the profession - you cannot put words with the same root next to each other. But “said, said, said” is better: this is how the child’s speech, his character and manners are conveyed; he is the one telling the story, not an adult. And deliberate correctness betrays the censor.

Dragunsky was a spontaneous modernist; many of his techniques were straight out of a textbook on the history of literature of the 20th century. Let's say stream of consciousness. A long period without dots, with endless repetitions, as if Deniska was excitedly telling the story, waving her hands: “And he to me, and I to him...” This was under Dragunsky, but in the current editions the text is cut into neat phrases, cleaned up, repetitions and cognates are removed nearby, everything is clean (we restored the old version in our edition).

Dragunsky is very sensitive to the word, he wrote “myakushek”, not “myakish”, but the editor corrected it. A book like Deniska’s Stories, an undoubted literary achievement (that is, first of all, not “what”, but “how”), is a text where all the words are in their place, and one cannot be replaced by another without significant losses. Not all children’s writers place such stylistic demands on themselves, but with him everything is precise, subtle, and has a lot of necessary little details. For example, the story “Top to bottom diagonally” (about painters who left their equipment and the children got into trouble). In the commentary we write that it was no coincidence that the painter’s names were Sanka, Raechka and Nellie, this is an obvious social cross-section: the shopkeeper Sanka, the fashionista Nellie and Raechka are mother’s daughter, did not go to college the first time, and are earning seniority. Dragunsky, of course, is playing an adult game, this is read around him, but this is also a feature of Russian children's literature of the Thaw: it fundamentally does not have a clear age orientation and a lot is included in it. These are not figs in your pocket, rather things “for your own people.”

“Despite the powerful patriotic trend, parents are in no hurry to buy books about the Great Patriotic War”

- What children's books amazed you as an adult? For example, I recently read the story “Sugar Baby”, we had an interview with its author Olga Gromova.

- “Sugar Baby” is a brilliant book (by the way, I published a book about the same thing - both repressed parents and life in evacuation in Uzbekistan - “The Girl in Front of the Door”, written on the table in censored times and published only in samizdat. Very I recommend it. And a child of 7-10 years old will be quite capable).

The USSR is a huge country, the literary word was very significant, many people wrote and a lot of things were written. We have only touched on the very top. If someone simply took up the task of reading half a century’s worth of some regional magazine like “Siberian Lights” or “Ural Pathfinder,” he would probably find so many treasures there, unknown to anyone.

I don’t have time to publish all the books I want. This trend, in the creation of which I played a significant role - the re-release of the Soviet one - is already somewhat limiting for me. And I postpone or even cancel what I planned. For example, I was thinking about publishing books by Sergei Ivanov. He is known as the author of the script for the cartoon “Last Year’s Snow Was Falling,” but besides “Snow,” he wrote a lot of good things. “Olga Yakovleva”, “Former Bulka and his daughter” (by the way, it seriously talks about death, part of the action takes place in an oncology hospital - this topic, according to popular opinion, was not touched upon in Soviet children’s literature). But my main shock from meeting something I had not read as a child was “Waiting for the Goat” by Evgeniy Dubrovin. The book is so intense, so scary, that I didn't dare pick it up. It's about the post-war famine, late 1940s. And then Rech republished it - well, in that “exactly” way.

“I don’t have time to publish all the books I want. This trend, in the creation of which I played a significant role - the re-release of the Soviet one - is already somewhat limiting for me. And I postpone or even cancel what I had planned.” Photo jewish.ru

Many children's writers with whom we spoke say that in Russia parents do not accept children's literature that raises controversial topics (for example, suicide, incest, homosexuality), although in the West such books are greeted calmly. How do you feel about this?

In the West, it is probably believed that if something exists and a child can encounter it, literature should not be passed by. Therefore, incest and pedophilia are quite a “topic”. But in fact, approximately the same rejection among our parental community exists in relation to traditional, completely open topics. I am based on personal experience - I have sold many times at book fairs in different cities. And I talked a lot with my parents.

Parents are in no hurry to buy books about the Great Patriotic War, despite the powerful patriotic trend and great efforts of the state. “It’s hard, why is this, don’t you have anything more fun?” It is a fact that the lack of empathy, the ability to empathize, and the lack of a special focus on developing empathy is one of the main features of modern Russian society. This can be seen from here, on the other side of the book counter.

People don’t want to buy a book about a disabled child or an incurable illness or death in general because it is “indecent” or conflicts with their pedagogical principles. It’s hard - “he’ll grow up and find out for himself, but for now there’s no need.” That is, the problem is not at all in the promotion of texts about incest; heavy dramatic books are selling and selling poorly; parents themselves do not want to read it. Well, not all, but for the most part.

- What do you think about modern teenage literature in Russia?

I'm not doing this as a publisher yet, but this year I hope to publish the first modern book now written about the 90s. It seems to me that in order for prosperity to come, the environment needs to be professionalized. In order for 10 outstanding books to appear, you need to write and publish 100 simply good ones. To learn how to tell stories well. And this, in my opinion, has already been achieved. I'm not sure that 10 outstanding books have been written, but I can guarantee that 25 or even 50 good ones have been written. New children's writers are now writing in such a way that it is difficult for the book award expert committee to choose winners.

Natalia Fedorova

Reference

Ilya Bernstein- an independent editor, commentator and publisher, winner of the Marshak Prize in the “Project of the Decade” category, reprinting Soviet children's classics and works from the “Thaw” times with commentaries and additional materials. Publisher (“Publishing Project A and B”), editor, commentator, compiler of the series “Ruslit” (“A and B”), “Native Speech” and “How It Was” (together with the publishing house “Samokat”) and other publications.

At the non/fiction fair of intellectual literature held at the end of November, independent publisher Ilya Bernstein celebrated a kind of anniversary: ​​he prepared and published fifty books. Why not a reason to talk?

Ksenia Moldavskaya → Can we meet on Friday?

Ilya Bernstein ← Just come in the morning: Shabbat is early these days.

KM→ What does observing Shabbat mean to you? A question of faith? Self-awareness? Anything else that I can't articulate?

IS← Well, faith, probably, and self-awareness, and something that you can’t formulate, too.

I have a sister, eleven years older than me. In the mid-seventies, at the time of the “religious revival of math school students,” she became an observant Jew and, in general, still remains so. My sister was an authority for me in every sense - both moral and intellectual. Therefore, from childhood I was very sympathetic to her beliefs and went to the synagogue at a tender age. At first, “technically,” because I found some elderly relatives who needed, for example, help to buy matzo. Then I started going on holidays, but not inside yet, just hanging out on the street. A gradual drift, quite natural: first - without pork, then without non-kosher meat, and so on. I don’t think I’ll ever come to the “Danish” version, but I go to synagogue and keep the Sabbath.

KM→ But you still don’t wear a kippah.

IS← There is no such commandment to wear a kippah all the time. In the everyday life of an Orthodox Jew there is something that is “according to the Torah”, and there is something that is “according to the sages.” The latter is important and interesting for me, but not strictly necessary. But, in general, I often wear a kippah at home.

KM→ By the way, about the sages. When we met you, you were working at the smart publishing house Terevinf...

IS← No. I collaborated with them, both as a freelancer and as a fan and friend. “Terevinf” was first the editorial and publishing department of the Center for Curative Pedagogy, and until now its main focus is books about children with developmental disorders. When I decided to start my own publishing activity in 2009, I suggested that they expand their range. This is how the series of books “For Children and Adults” arose, and Terevinf and I became partners.

I spent many years editing books for money. I started in the mid-nineties, trained myself to be a book designer and book editor. I did the text, the design, and the layout. I wanted to become a publisher, but at the same time I was aware of my intellectual ceiling. It’s difficult for me to read complex adult books, much less understand them at such a level that I can comment on them and understand the intent as well as the author. Here's something for children and teenagers - I'm quite knowledgeable about this: I can evaluate how it's done, see the strengths and weaknesses, and I can certainly comment on it. In general, I have a desire to explain, tell, “introduce into the cultural and historical context” - such tediousness. When we sit down to watch a movie, my children say to me: “Just under no circumstances press pause to explain.” The fact that I love to explain and the fact that I am clearly aware of my capabilities led me to choose children's literature as a professional and business field.

KM→ Your “Terevinf” books are clearly from your childhood. Now it’s clear that your choice is based on something other than personal reading experience.

IS← I started making a series of books “How It Was” with Samokat, because the history of the war became part of the ideological struggle and began to be privatized by the “warring parties.” And I tried to achieve objectivity - I began to publish autobiographical war prose, commented on by modern historians. When I made the first four books, it became clear that this was, in general, a move, and now I am positioning this series as “The Russian Twentieth Century in Autobiographical Fiction and Commentary by Historians.” I have now begun to create a large product with media content around the work of art - video comments, a website commenting on the book - all this in search of ways to “explain”.

KM→ A commentary on “Conduit and Shvambrania” was written to you by Oleg Lekmanov, and now the reader is shuddering at how tragic Kassil’s book is. In childhood there was no such feeling, although it was clear that the last roll call was a harbinger of tragedy.

IS← Well, it’s difficult to speak objectively here, because we know how it all ended for these people - literary heroes and their real prototypes. And about Oska, who, in fact, is the main character - certainly in an emotional sense - we know that first he became an orthodox Marxist, and then he was shot. This colors the text so emotionally that it is impossible to perceive it in abstraction. But the book doesn't seem tragic to me. It is reliable, it talks about a terrible time, and our knowledge of this gives the depth of tragedy that you felt. The main difference between my publication and the usual ones is not in tragedy, but, first of all, in the national theme. The scene of action is Pokrovsk - the future capital of the Republic of the Volga Germans, and then the center of the colonist lands. In 1914, anti-German sentiments were very strong in Russia and German pogroms occurred, and the book is permeated with anti-xenophobic pathos. The hero sympathizes with the insulted Germans, and in 1941 this text became completely unprintable. It was necessary to remove entire chapters and rename the remaining German heroes.

Quite a lot of Jewish stuff was also confiscated. The episode about “our cat, who is also a Jew” is the only one left. The original edition had a lot to say about anti-Semitism. Kassil had an anti-Semitic bonna, he was insulted in class... When preparing the 1948 edition, this, naturally, was also removed.

Interestingly, in the process of preparing comments, I learned that Lev Kassil’s grandfather Gershon Mendelevich was a Hasidic rabbi from Panevezys, which is already non-trivial, he headed the Hasidic community of Kazan.

KM→ According to the book, one gets the impression that the family was progressive, if not atheistic...

IS← Well, I suspect that this is not entirely true, just like Brustein. I doubt that it’s downright atheistic... The Cassilis chose a secular life, but they hardly abandoned Jewishness. Probably, medical education shifts thinking in a conventionally “positivist” direction, but there are big doubts that he would start eating ham straight away. Although, of course, everyone has their own story. But Anna Iosifovna, the mother, was from a traditional Jewish family, and father Abram Grigorievich was an obstetrician, which is also a traditional (partly forced) choice of a Jewish doctor. And my grandfather was a Hasid. But this still needs to be investigated.

KM→ Will you?

IS← I don’t. During my work I come across many interesting, not yet explored things. But I’m not a philologist or a historian. With “Republic of SHKID” we actually found a topic that could turn everything upside down, but no one has tackled it yet. There is such a story, “The Last Gymnasium,” written by other Shkidovites, Olkhovsky and Evstafiev, respected people and friends of Panteleev from Belykh. It describes a completely different reality, much more terrible, much more similar to the one reflected on the pages of brochures of the 1920s, such as “On Cocaineism in Children” and “The Sexual Life of Street Children.” And the children, and the teachers, and the director Vikniksor do not fit into the images created by Belykh and Panteleev, and are even less similar to the heroes of the film adaptation by Gennady Poloka.

KM→ Will you publish it?

IS← No, she is artistically untenable. This is Rapp’s kind of non-literary literature. But I’m making “The Diary of Kostya Ryabtsev,” with a story about pedagogical experiments of the 1920s: about pedology, and about the color-tone plan, and about integrated and team teaching methods, and other non-trivial ideas. This is a personal story for me. My grandmother was a pedologist, Raisa Naumovna Goffman. She graduated from the pedological faculty of the 2nd Moscow State University, probably studied with Vygotsky and Elkonin. And in the Terevinf edition of “The Diary of Kostya Ryabtsev” I placed a photograph of my grandmother at work.