25 years ago, in June 1992, a prominent orientalist, historian-ethnographer, poet and translator passed away. long time remained underestimated, - Lev Gumilyov. He inherited from his parents not fame and recognition, but years of repression and persecution: his father Nikolai Gumilyov was shot in 1921, and his mother, Anna Akhmatova, became a disgraced poetess. Despair after 13 years in the camps and constant obstacles in pursuing science was compounded by mutual misunderstandings in the relationship with the mother, writes Kulturologia.
On October 1, 1912, a son, Lev, was born to the spouses Anna Akhmatova and Nikolai Gumilyov. In the same year, Akhmatova's first poetry collection "Evening" was published, followed by the collection "Rosary", which brought her recognition and brought her to the literary avant-garde. The mother-in-law offered the poetess to take her son up for raising - both spouses were too young and busy with their own affairs. Akhmatova agreed, and this was her fatal mistake. Until the age of 16, Leo grew up with his grandmother, whom he called "the angel of kindness," and rarely saw his mother.
His parents soon separated, and in 1921 Lev learned that Nikolai Gumilyov had been shot on charges of a counter-revolutionary conspiracy. In the same year his mother visited him, then disappeared for 4 years. "I realized that no one needs it," Lev wrote in despair. He could not forgive his mother for being alone. In addition, his aunt formed in him the idea of an ideal father and a "bad mother" who abandoned an orphan.
Many of Akhmatova's acquaintances assured that in everyday life the poetess was completely helpless and could not even take care of herself. She was not published, she lived in cramped conditions and believed that with her grandmother, her son would be better. But when the question arose about Lev's admission to the university, she took him to Leningrad. At that time, she married Nikolai Punin, but she was not the mistress in his apartment - they lived in a communal apartment, together with his ex-wife and daughter. And Lev was there at all on bird's rights, he slept on a chest in an unheated corridor. In this family, Leo felt like a stranger.
Gumilyov was not admitted to the university because of his social origin, and he had to master many professions: he worked as a laborer in the tram management, a worker on geological expeditions, a librarian, an archaeologist, a museum worker. In 1934, he finally managed to become a student at the Faculty of History at Leningrad State University, but a year later he was arrested. Soon he was released "for lack of corpus delicti," in 1937 he was reinstated at the university, and in 1938 he was again arrested on charges of terrorism and anti-Soviet activities. This time he was sentenced to 5 years in Norillag.
At the end of his term in 1944, Lev Gumilyov went to the front and went through the rest of the war as a private. In 1945, he returned to Leningrad, recovered again at Leningrad State University, entered graduate school, and after 3 years he defended his Ph.D. thesis in history. In 1949 he was arrested again and sentenced without charge to 10 years in the camps. Only in 1956 was he finally released (finally rehabilitated in 1975).
At this time, the poetess lived in Moscow with her friends the Ardovs. Rumors reached Lev that she spent the money received for the transfers on gifts to Ardov's wife and her son. It seemed to Leo that his mother was saving on parcels, rarely wrote and was too frivolous about him. Lev Gumilyov was so offended by his mother that he even wrote in one of his letters that if he were the son of a simple woman, he would have become a professor long ago, and that his mother "does not understand, does not feel, but only languishes." He reproached her for not bothering to get him released, while Akhmatova feared that petitions on her behalf could only aggravate his situation. In addition, those around her convinced her that her troubles could harm both her and her son. Gumilyov did not take into account the circumstances in which his mother had to stay (in 1949 a criminal case was opened against the poetess), and the fact that she could not write to him frankly about everything, since her letters were censored.
After his return, the misunderstanding between them only intensified. It seemed to Anna Andreevna that her son had become overly irritable, harsh and touchy, and he still accused his mother of indifference to him and his interests, of a disdainful attitude towards his scientific works.
In 1957, Akhmatova returned to the poem "Requiem", on which she began work back in the 1930s. The idea of "Requiem" is directly related to the second arrest of Gumilyov. In the 1960s, the poem got into samizdat, and then it was read by Gumilev, who did not like it. Resentment at the lack of maternal attention, at the lack of efforts on her part to free him, in his eyes, belittled the value of the poem. "Requiem is written in memory of the dead ..." "She wrote" Requiem ", she buried me ..." - this was the reaction of her son.
AT 5 recent years They did not see each other in Akhmatova's life, and when the poetess fell ill, strangers took care of her. Lev Gumilyov defended his doctoral dissertation in history, followed by another - in geography, although he never received the title of professor. In February 1966, Akhmatova had a heart attack, her son came from Leningrad to visit her, but the people who looked after her did not let him into the ward, allegedly protecting the weak heart of the poetess. On March 5, she was gone.
Mother and son never found a way to each other, did not understand and did not forgive. Both were victims of a terrible time. However, as some researchers believe, in the long-term dispute between mother and son, where both were somehow guilty to each other, Akhmatova's poem "Requiem" drew a line, making both mother and son wiser.
Lev Gumilyov survived his mother by 26 years. At 55, he got married and spent the rest of the days in peace and quiet. With his wife, artist Natalya Simonovskaya, Lev Nikolaevich lived for 24 years - until the very death of the scientist. This marriage was called ideal - the wife devoted her whole life to it, leaving her job, Moscow and the old circle of acquaintances.
In everyday life, Gumilyov was extremely unassuming and somewhat eccentric, did not like to rest, adhered to the ritual side of Orthodoxy all his life, honored Orthodox holidays and incited friends and disciples to be baptized. He smoked until the end of his life - always the same cigarettes "Belomorkanal", setting fire to a new cigarette from a burned out one. Gumilyov was a Turkophile from a young age and since the 1960s he often signed his letters with the nickname "Arslan-bek" (translation of the name "Lev" into Turkic).
The scientific heritage of Lev Nikolaevich Gumilyov includes 12 monographs and more than 200 articles. Since the 1960s, he began to develop his own passionate theory of ethnogenesis, with the help of which he tried to explain the laws of the historical process. Gumilev's major contribution to science is the theory of periodic moisture in central Eurasia and the popularization of the history of nomads. Gumilev's views, which went far beyond the generally accepted scientific concepts, still cause controversy and heated debate among historians, ethnologists and other scientists.
Lev Nikolaevich Gumilyov. Born September 18 (October 1) 1912 in St. Petersburg - died June 15, 1992 in St. Petersburg. Soviet ethnologist, archaeologist, orientalist, writer, translator.
Lev Gumilyov was the only child in the marriage of famous poets Nikolai Gumilyov and Anna Akhmatova. During Akhmatova's pregnancy, the couple were in Italy; there is almost no information about this trip. Returning to Russia, Nikolai and Anna spent the entire second half of July and the beginning of August 1912 in Slepnev, Bezhetsk district, the estate of the poet's mother, Anna Ivanovna Gumileva. The birth of the heir was an expected event, because the marriage of Gumilyov's elder brother, Dmitry, turned out to be childless, and at the village gathering the peasants were promised to forgive their debts if a boy was born.
Lev Gumilyov was born on September 18 (October 1) 1912 in the maternity hospital of Empress Alexandra Fedorovna on the 18th line of Vasilyevsky Island in St. Petersburg. A few days later, the child was transported to the Gumilevs' house in Tsarskoe Selo, he was baptized on October 7, according to the old style. Contemporaries in their memoirs pointed out that Akhmatova quickly freed herself from maternal concerns, and almost from the first day of his life, Lev Gumilyov was in the care of his grandmother. The circumstances of the poetic life of the young Gumilev family are conveyed by V. V. Gippius' humorous poem "On Fridays in Hyperborea", given in the sidebar.
In the summer of 1917, due to the threat of a pogrom, A.I. Gumilyova left her family estate in Slepnev and left for Bezhetsk, and the peasants allowed her to take the library and some of the furniture to her. Akhmatova and N. Gumilyov officially divorced in 1918 at the initiative of Anna Andreevna. At the end of August 1918, A.I. Gumilyova and her grandson moved to Petrograd to live with N. Gumilyov. Gumilyov took his son with him, going to the city on literary affairs, and took him to A. Akhmatova, who then lived with the orientalist V.K.Shileiko. By this time, Lev Nikolayevich himself attributed the first fascination with history.
In the summer of 1919, A.I. Gumilyova with her son's second wife, Anna Nikolaevna Engelhardt, and their children left for Bezhetsk, where Nikolai Stepanovich periodically visited for a day or two. The last time father and son saw each other in Bezhetsk was in May 1921. The evidence of how Lev Gumilev received the news of his father's death is extremely contradictory.
In the city of the Gumilevs, together with their relatives - the Kuzmin-Karavaevs - they rented an apartment on Rozhdestvenskaya Street (now Chudova) in a wooden house that occupied the entire second floor; over time, due to the compaction, a single room remained. Anna Ivanovna Gumilyova, as best she could, tried not to fit into the new Soviet reality: among her acquaintances, clergymen and, in general, people "from the former" prevailed, the correspondence with A. Akhmatova was dated according to the church calendar. Nevertheless, she understood that her grandson would have to live with Soviet power, and in one of the letters she asked Akhmatova to "correct" her son's birth certificate, which did not contain evidence of his noble origin.
In addition to her grandmother, Alexandra Stepanovna Sverchkova ("Aunt Shura", 1869-1952) played an important role in the upbringing of L. Gumilyov; she even wanted to adopt him. It was at the expense of AS Sverchkova's teacher's salary (62 rubles) and Akhmatova's monthly transfers from her pension (25 rubles) that the family existed; a vegetable garden located outside the city provided substantial assistance. In this environment, Lev Gumilev grew up and was brought up from 6 to 17 years old. A. Akhmatova visited her son during this period twice - on Christmas Day 1921 and in the summer of 1925 (from 21 to 26 July). In June 1926, Lev and his grandmother visited Leningrad.
Gumilyov studied in three schools in Bezhetsk - the 2nd Soviet (formed by the merger of the female gymnasium and the real school), the railway (A. Sverchkova taught there) and the 1st Soviet (in 1926-1929). For a number of reasons, Leo's relationship with his classmates did not work out, according to memoirs: “Lev kept himself apart. We were all pioneers, Komsomol members, he did not join anywhere, at breaks, when everyone was playing, he stood aside. " At the same time, the school council of the 2nd Soviet school voted to deprive Lev Gumilyov - as "the son of a counter-revolutionary and alien class element" - the textbooks that were due to each student. In the railway school, Lev was exclusively influenced by the teacher of literature and social studies A.M. Pereslegin (1891-1973), they corresponded until the end of Alexander Mikhailovich's life. While studying at the 1st Soviet school, teachers and classmates appreciated Leo's literary abilities, he began to write for the school newspaper "Progress", and for the story "The Mystery of the Sea Depth" he was awarded a cash prize from the school council. He was also a regular visitor to the Bezhetsk City Library.
Lev Gumilyov even spoke in the library with reports on contemporary Russian literature and led the literary section in the Book Friends Club. However, attempts to write poetry reminiscent of N. Gumilyov's theme - "exotic" - were harshly suppressed by his mother, and L. Gumilyov returned to poetry already in the 1930s.
In the summer of 1930, after graduating from school, Lev Gumilyov decided to enter the German department of the Pedagogical Institute, for which he prepared for about six months, studying the language in courses. Due to his noble origin, the commission refused even to accept the documents, and he left for Bezhetsk. There is a version (based on the words of Gumilyov himself) that Punin kicked him out. After returning, a relative arranged for Lev as a laborer at the plant. Sverdlov, located on Vasilievsky Island, from there he moved to the "Service of Steel and Current" (tram depot). In 1931 he transferred to the courses of collectors of geological expeditions. Geological expeditions at the time of industrialization were formed in large numbers, there was a constant lack of staff, so little attention was paid to social origin. Gumilyov later recalled that in none of his early (before university) expeditions did he feel like an outcast, he was treated no worse than others.
On June 11, 1931, Gumilyov went to the Baikal region - to Irkutsk. A. Akhmatova accompanied him from the Moscow railway station. The base of the expedition was Slyudyanka, the main research area was the Khamar-Dabana mountains. Judging by the memoirs of a colleague - A. Dashkova, - he did not show much interest in the expedition, but proved himself to be a reliable comrade. Because of early winter the expedition ended in early August. Since then, almost every summer Lev Gumilev went on various expeditions - first geological, then - archaeological and ethnographic; in total, according to the calculations of biographers, in 1931-1967 he participated in 21 expedition seasons. The work allowed him to eat well and earn a little, making Lev independent of his mother and N. Punin.
Having stopped in Stalinabad, Gumilyov went to the Gissar Valley, where, before the conflict with the chief, he worked as a laboratory assistant-helminthologist, after which he was expelled for violation of labor discipline. After that, he moved to the Vakhsh valley and got a job at a malaria station in the Dangara exemplary state farm. They paid well here (by the standards of the 1930s) and there were no problems with food.
Here, Gumilyov, in live communication with farmers, learned the Tajik language and of all the languages that he studied, he knew it best.
Returning from the expedition in 1933, Lev Gumilyov stayed in Moscow, where he closely communicated with O. Mandelstam, who saw in him "the continuation of his father." In the autumn of the same year, Gumilev found literary work - translating the poems of the poets of the national republics of the USSR from interlinear translations.
At Mandelstam's, he met E. Gershtein, the doctor's daughter, who then served in the Central Bureau of Scientists at the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions; an idea arose to help Lev join the trade union, which would help get rid of the status of "disenfranchised". Despite the fact that this was not successful, their acquaintance lasted about 60 years.
On December 10, 1933, the first of four arrests of Gumilyov took place. This happened at the apartment of V.A.Eberman, an orientalist, whom Lev consulted about translations from Arabic. He spent 9 days in custody, after which he was released without charge, he was never even interrogated.
In the 1930-1940s, realizing his attraction to historical science, he composed his own poetry and prose; at the turn of the 1950s-1960s he translated poetry from the Persian language. Since 1931, he took an active part in geological and archaeological expeditions (in total, until 1967, he took part in 21 expedition seasons).
In 1934 he entered the Leningrad State University at the newly restored Faculty of History.
Among Gumilyov's teachers were world-class scientists - Egyptologist V.V. Struve, antiquarian S. Ya. Lurie, Sinologist N.V. Kyuner, the latter he called his mentor and teacher. Kühner helped Gumilev in prison, sent him books to the camp. Gumilyov also called his mentor Alexander Yuryevich Yakubovsky, who taught a course in the history of the Caliphate. Well new history read by Evgeny Viktorovich Tarle, who gave Gumilyov an excellent mark in the winter session of 1937.
In 1935 he was arrested for the second time, but thanks to the intercession of many literary figures, he was released and reinstated at the university.
Much has been written about the reasons for the arrest, but all authors agree that Gumilev and N. Punin fell under a wave of repression against the Leningrad intelligentsia that followed the assassination of S. M. Kirov. The Gumilyov case was preserved in the Central Archives of the FSB of the Russian Federation, and its materials were published by A.N. Kozyrev in 2003. The author of the denunciation of Lev Gumilyov was his classmate Arkady Borin, who was in the House on the Fontanka (his first report was dated May 26). Characteristically, however, Borin was arrested on September 1 on charges of creating a youth terrorist group.
After the arrest, both Gumilev and Punin confessed, and Punin at the very first interrogation. Gumilyov confessed to anti-Soviet conversations and "terrorist sentiments", as well as the authorship of the anti-Soviet (dedicated to the murder of Kirov) poem "Ecbatana", although its text was not found. A.N. Kozyrev assumed that the ultimate goal was the arrest of Akhmatova, since the head of the NKVD Directorate for Leningrad region L.M. Zakovsky even submitted to the People's Commissar G. G. Yagoda a memorandum, where he asked for a warrant for the arrest of Akhmatova.
Anna Andreevna a week after the arrest of her husband and son went to Moscow, where she stayed with E. Gershtein, it was from her that Emma Grigorievna learned about the arrest of Gumilyov. Then Akhmatova moved to the Bulgakovs' apartment. Further events are known in several versions. According to the memoirs of E. Gershtein, she took Akhmatova to L. Seifullina, but she herself was not present during their conversation. According to Akhmatova herself, Seifullina called Poskrebyshev in her presence, and the next day (October 31) sent a letter addressed to the Secretariat of the Central Committee. According to E.S.Bulgakova's version, Akhmatova copied the draft letter to Stalin at their apartment. Elena Sergeevna accompanied Anna Andreevna to the Kremlin, and then she went to Pilnyak. The letter said: “The arrest of the only two people close to me inflicts such a blow on me that I can no longer bear. I ask you, Iosif Vissarionovich, to return my husband and son to me, confident that no one will ever regret it. ".
On November 2, Akhmatova went to the Pasternaks, and by lunchtime Pilnyak also arrived, who persuaded him to write a letter to Stalin, which Boris Leonidovich took the very next day. By that time, Stalin had already read Akhmatova's letter, imposing a resolution: "T. Berry. Release both Punin and Gumilyov from arrest and report their execution. I. Stalin ".
Already on November 3, the "Decree on changing the measure of restraint" was signed, according to which Gumilyov and Punin were to be "immediately" released, and on November 4 the investigation was closed, and all the detainees were released right in the middle of the night, and Punin asked to leave them until morning.
Gumilev briefly described the events after his arrest: "Punin returned to work, and I was expelled from the university."
The expulsion became a disaster for Gumilyov, since he was left without housing and means of subsistence (the scholarship for a student of the history faculty was then quite large - 96 rubles, not counting the bread allowance of 23 rubles). Gumilyov, by his own admission, was starving in the winter of 1935-1936, but Akhmatova insisted that he should live with her. On the other hand, in the same winter, Lev Nikolaevich wrote his first scientific work. Already in January 1936, Punin and Akhmatova began to petition for its restoration.
In the summer of 1936, under the patronage of M.I.Artamonov, Gumilyov got a job on an archaeological expedition to the Don, excavating the Khazar settlement of Sarkel. After his return to Moscow in September, the hope arose to arrange him at Moscow University, but not at the Faculty of History, but at the Faculty of Geography, which Lev was offended by. However, at the end of October he was restored to Leningrad State University, and the decision was made personally by the rector - Mikhail Semyonovich Lazurkin. In the semester of 1937, Gumilev began to work with N. V. Küner, who was then the head of the department of ethnography of East and South-East Asia at the Institute of Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR; Kuehner even recruited Gumilev to work in his department.
In general, the life of Gumilev from the winter of 1936-1937 to the spring of 1938 is poorly reflected in the sources, there are only a few pieces of evidence. Judging by the memoirs of contemporaries, he was then experiencing an affair with a graduate student of the Academy of Sciences, a Mongolian Ochiryn Namsrajav, their relationship continued until his arrest. In the 1970s, they resumed their correspondence, which was not interrupted until the very death of Gumilyov.
In 1938 he was arrested for the third time and received five years in the camps, serving his sentence in Norilsk.
On the night of March 10-11, 1938, Gumilyov was arrested. He linked his arrest with a lecture by Lev Vasilyevich Pumpyansky on Russian poetry at the beginning of the century.
Several eyewitnesses report about Gumilyov's life in Norillag, whose testimonies strongly contradict each other. A lot of negative information is contained in the memoirs of D. Bystroletov, which were used by D. V. Polushin and L. S. Klein. It is also mentioned there for the first time that Lev Nikolaevich, allegedly, was engaged in a dissertation in the camp. In fact, in 1945, Gumilyov wrote to N.V. Küner about his camp attempts to engage in scientific work: in Norilsk he read the works of E. Taylor, L. Ya. Sternberg, and after his liberation, already near Turukhansk, “he collected folklore demonological material among the Tungus and Kets. ". However, it was completely impossible to engage in systematic work on a dissertation in the absence of sources and literature.
Many details were reported by S. Snegov, who was friends with Gumilev in prison. He wrote that in the summer he and Gumilev loved to relax on the banks of the Ugolny Brook, covering their faces with towels (from “satanic” mosquitoes), and argued on burning topics: “Is Kaspar Schmidt higher ... Friedrich Nietzsche and is there a rational sense in the pragmatism of James Lewis ... ". Once the prisoners staged a camp tournament of poets, which, to the displeasure of Gumilyov, won Snegov. The offended Leo even challenged his comrade to a duel. During 1940-1944 he composed fairy tales in verse "A Visit to Asmodeus" and "Magic Cigarettes", a poetic historical tragedy in two films "Death of Prince Jamuga, or Civil War". Many poems of the Norilsk period have been lost. Sergei Snegov mentioned a poem about scurvy, Elena Cheruvimova wrote that Gumilyov dedicated one of his poems to her. Lev Nikolayevich also wrote prose: both of his stories, "The Hero of El Cabrillo" and "Tadu Vacca", are dated in 1941, but their existence became known only after his death (homemade notebooks were preserved in the archive). From the memoirs of Snegov, a comic lecture in the jargon "The History of the Fall of the Netherlands from Spain" is also known. According to S. Belyakov, “for Gumilyov, 'The story of the fall of the Netherlands ...' was primarily a literary game designed for an intelligent, but already sophisticated in thieves 'jargon and thieves' concepts.
Gumilyov's main social circle was made up of intellectuals - poet Mikhail Doroshin (Misha), chemist Nikanor Palitsyn, engineer, “Renaissance connoisseur, wisdom and poetry admirer” Yevgeny Reikhman and astrophysicist Nikolai Kozyrev, who had served since 1936 on the “Pulkovo case”. He entered the Norillag only in the summer of 1942, their communication spurred Gumilyov's interest in natural sciences.
On October 13, 1944, the Turukhansk regional military registration and enlistment office called Gumilyov into the ranks of the Red Army. After a short stop in Krasnoyarsk, he ended up in the training unit, and from there - to the war. In December, the train reached Moscow, from the Kievsky railway station, he phoned V. Ardov and V. Shklovsky, and also met with N. Khardzhiev and I. Tomashevskaya. Next, Private Gumilyov was sent to Brest, where he was trained as an anti-aircraft gunner and sent to the front shortly before the start of the Vistula-Oder offensive. He served in the 1386th anti-aircraft artillery regiment of the 31st anti-aircraft artillery Warsaw Red Banner Order of Bogdan Khmelnitsky Division. The division was used as a front-line reserve.
During military service an incident occurred with Gumilyov: there were supplies left in the houses abandoned by the Germans, which were willingly used by the advancing Soviet soldiers... Once Lev Nikolayevich was carried away by pickled cherries found in some house, and only got to his own three days later. The credibility of this story is confirmed by a letter from E. Gerstein dated April 12, 1945. According to indirect data, it can be determined that he began service in another unit, and was assigned to the 1386 anti-aircraft artillery regiment after this incident.
At the beginning of March, private Gumilyov was grateful “for excellent fighting when breaking through the heavily fortified defense of the Germans east of the city Stargard and the capture of important communication centers and strong strongholds of the German defense in Pomerania. " Gumilev was present at the capture of Altdamme on March 20, 1945.
After demobilization he graduated from the Faculty of History as an external student, in 1948 he defended his thesis for the degree of candidate historical sciences.
In 1949 he was again arrested, the charges were borrowed from the 1935 investigation file; was sentenced to 10 years in camps, served his sentence in Kazakhstan, Altai and Siberia.
In 1956, after the XX Congress of the CPSU, he was released and rehabilitated, worked for several years in the Hermitage, from 1962 until his retirement in 1987, he was on the staff of a research institute at the Faculty of Geography of Leningrad State University.
In June 1957, Lev Nikolaevich received an offer from the Institute of Oriental Studies to publish a monograph. In December of the same year, he handed over to the editorial and publishing department of the institute the manuscript "Hunnu" - a revised "History of Central Asia in Antiquity". The manuscript was reviewed slowly, and in February 1959 it was returned to the author for revision. He was dissatisfied, but the remarks were followed, and at the end of April 1960 the Publishing House of Oriental Literature published his first book - "Hunnu: Central Asia in Ancient Times".
In 1961 he defended his thesis for the degree of Doctor of Historical Sciences, in 1974 he defended his second doctoral thesis - in geography, but the degree was not approved by the Higher Attestation Commission. The scientific heritage includes 12 monographs and over 200 articles.
Since the 1960s, he began to develop his own passionate theory of ethnogenesis, with the help of which he tried to explain the laws of the historical process. The overwhelming majority of professional historians and ethnologists consider it unscientific; Gumilev's really major contribution to science is considered to be the theory of periodic moisture in central Eurasia and the popularization of the history of nomads. V historical research LN Gumilyov adhered to ideas close to Eurasianism.
In 1964-1967, Gumilyov published 14 articles in the "Bulletin of Leningrad State University", united in the cycle "Landscape and Ethnos", 9 of which were devoted to ethnogenesis. According to S. Belyakov, the passionary theory of ethnogenesis had to answer three questions:
1. What is ethnos and what place does it occupy in the historical process?
2. What laws determine the emergence and development of an ethnos?
3.How do ethnic groups interact with each other?
Gumilev used the Greek word "ethnos" instead of the more common Latin word "nation" as less politicized. The term "ethnos" was universal, neutral, and purely scientific. However, back in 1968, when communicating with N.V. Timofeev-Resovsky, Gumilyov could not give a clear definition of ethnos, in fact repeating the definition of S.M. Shirokogorov, who introduced it into Russian science. At the same time, the main part of his main work - "Ethnogenesis and the Biosphere of the Earth" - is devoted precisely to the properties of the ethnos, and not to passionarity.
For the first time, they began to talk and write about Gumilyov's belonging to Eurasianism in the late 1970s; in numerous interviews in the 1980s, Lev Nikolayevich himself also willingly called himself a Eurasian. Nevertheless, according to many modern researchers, despite some commonality, the views of Gumilev and the Eurasians differed on fundamental issues. According to S. Belyakov, the main points of the discrepancy are as follows:
1. The Eurasians included all the peoples of the Soviet Union in the “Eurasian nation” or “multinational personality”, and Gumilev counted at least seven super-ethnic groups in the USSR.
2.Gumilev hardly touched political views Eurasians and their state-legal theory. Question about state structure and the form of government was generally of little interest to him.
3. Gumilyov, who criticized the West a lot and willingly (especially in the last years of his life), did not criticize either liberal democracy, or the market economy, or even more so the rule of law. From his point of view, excessive borrowing of the achievements of the West is bad only because Russia is simply not ready to accept them. He believed that the Russian super-ethnos is 500 years "younger" than the Romano-Germanic.
4. Gumilev did not join the Eurasian criticism of Catholicism, completely ignored theological issues that so occupied the Eurasians.
Thus, Gumilyov can be considered a Eurasian in the literal sense of the word - a supporter of the Russian-Turkic-Mongolian brotherhood. For Gumilev, Eurasianism was not political ideology, but the way of thinking. He tried to prove that Russia is a continuation of the Horde, and many Russian people are the descendants of the baptized Tatars, for which he spent the last fifteen years of his life.
These views were expressed in his later works - the essays "Echo of the Battle of Kulikovo", "Black Legend", the popular book "From Russia to Russia", the monograph " Ancient Russia and the Great Steppe ". Briefly, their content is as follows: Alexander Nevsky helped Khan Batu to stay in power and in return "demanded and received help against the Germans and Germanophiles." The Tatar-Mongol yoke, in fact, was not a yoke, but was an alliance with the Horde, that is, the Russian-Tatar "symbiosis" (in particular, Sartak was twinned with Alexander Nevsky). Mongol-Tatars are the defenders of Russia from German and Lithuanian threats, and the Battle of Kulikovo was won by the baptized Tatars, who went into the service of the Moscow prince. Grand Duke Dmitry Ivanovich fought on the Kulikovo field against "the aggression of the West and the horde of Mamai allied with it."
In 1986, the magazine "Ogonyok" and "Literaturnaya Gazeta" began to publish poetic works of Nikolai Gumilyov, the editorial staff were in touch with his son. In December 1986, Lev Gumilyov traveled to Moscow for the anniversary of D.S.Likhachev and read his father's poems at the Central House of Writers, making a strong impression. In the same year, the course "Ethnology" was returned to Leningrad State University.
In March 1987, Gumilyov sent a letter to the Central Committee of the CPSU addressed to A.I. Lukyanov with a complaint that scientific journals and publishing houses did not publish his books and articles. The result was that in the second half of 1987 and 1988, 2 books and 14 articles by Gumilyov were published, more than in the 10 previous years. In 1989, "Ethnogenesis and the Biosphere of the Earth" and "Ancient Russia and the Great Steppe" were published with a difference of six months. "Ethnogenesis" was published with a review by D. S. Likhachev, the foreword was written by R. F. Its. Its, who never agreed with the theories of Lev Nikolaevich, described the treatise as literary work, but at the same time stipulated that "he does not know a single ethnographer who accepts this original theory of ethnogenesis."
The peak of Gumilyov's popularity came in 1990, when 15 lectures of Lev Nikolaevich were recorded on Leningrad television, his interviews were constantly published in leading literary magazines. On May 15, 1990, at a meeting of the Section for Synergetics of Geographical Systems of the Russian Geographical Society, dedicated to the 25th anniversary of the passionary theory of ethnogenesis, L.G. Kolotilo made a proposal to nominate Gumilyov as a full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, bypassing the election of a corresponding member. On the same day, this proposal was announced by the participants of the round table on Leningrad television in the program “Zerkalo”, where Lev Nikolayevich himself, A. M. Panchenko, K. P. Ivanov and L. G. Kolotilo took part. Ultimately, Gumilyov was not elected an academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences. On December 29, 1991, he was elected a full member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences (RANS), created in opposition to the official and "bureaucratic" Academy of Sciences of the USSR. In those days, the status and future of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences were still unclear, but he was proud of his title and until the end of his life he signed letters “Academician of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences L. N. Gumilyov”.
Having retired in the summer of 1987 at the age of 75 (he remained a leading research assistant at the geofacies), Gumilev did not reduce his scientific and publication activity. However, shortly after moving to Kolomenskaya Street - the first separate apartment in his life - Lev Nikolayevich suffered a stroke and was partially paralyzed. Later he recovered, continued to write and receive guests, but could not fully recover. Added to the consequences of stroke and ulcers was a leg disease, due to which he was taken to classes by the arms in the early 1980s. In the fall of 1990, he gave his last lecture. Since the fall of 1991, he began to be bothered by pain in the liver. On April 7, 1992, he was hospitalized with a diagnosis of cholelithiasis and chronic cholecystitis. After discharge, the condition worsened again. It is characteristic that he began to say goodbye to old acquaintances with whom he could not communicate for decades. He sent messages to E. Gerstein and Ochiryn Namsrajav.
On May 23, 1992, Gumilyov underwent an operation to remove his gallbladder; almost all relatives and friends of the scientist considered it unnecessary. Heavy bleeding began. Thanks to A. Nevzorov, the news of this spread throughout the country, there were many donors and donors.
Judging by the descriptions of K. Ivanov, two last weeks Gumilyov spent his life in a coma, and from May 28 was connected to life support equipment. On June 15, it was decided to turn off the equipment and report his death, which was done at about 23:00.
On June 20, a civil funeral service was held in the Great Memorial Hall of the Geographical Society, and a funeral service was held in the Church of the Resurrection of Christ at the Warsaw railway station. After a series of bureaucratic delays, the body was buried at the Nikolskoye cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra.
The famous historian Lev Gumilyov is the son of the legendary poets Nikolai Gumilyov and Anna Akhmatova. In his youth, he was repressed and visited the camps. As a scientist, Gumilyov is best known for his passionate theory of ethnogenesis and studies of the East.
Childhood
Lev Gumilyov was born on October 1, 1912 in St. Petersburg. He was the only child of his parents. In 1918, Akhmatova and Gumilyov divorced. Then the Civil War began. Lev saw his father for the last time in 1921 in Bezhetsk. Soon the poet Nikolai Gumilyov was shot by the Bolsheviks (he was accused of participating in an anti-Soviet conspiracy).
Later, the child grew up with his paternal grandmother. In 1929, Lev Gumilev, who graduated from school, moved from Bezhetsk to Leningrad to his mother. He began to live in a communal apartment in the Fountain House, where his stepfather and his numerous relatives were his neighbors. Due to his aristocratic origin, Gumilev experienced difficulties in entering a higher educational institution.
Youth
In 1931, Lev Gumilev entered courses in a geological expedition. This was followed by a long journey to the east of the country. It was then that interests were formed that determined Gumilyov as a historian and scientist in general. The young man visited Tajikistan, in the Baikal region. In 1933, after returning from the expedition, Gumilev Lev ended up in Moscow.
In the Mother See, the young man became close to the poet Osip Mandelstam, who considered him "a continuation of his father." At the same time, Gumilev began to work in the literary sphere - he translated poems by poets of different Soviet nationalities. In the same 1933, Lev was arrested for the first time (the arrest lasted 9 days). The problem was the "unreliability" of the writer. The origin and social circle affected. His patron Osip Mandelstam will soon be repressed.
In 1934, Gumilev Lev, despite the status of a disenfranchised, entered the Leningrad University, where he chose the Faculty of History. As a student, the young man lived in want and poverty, often turning into natural hunger. His teachers were bright and distinguished scientists: Vasily Struve, Solomon Lurie, Eugene Tarle, Alexander Yakubovsky and others. Lev Nikolayevich considered the Sinologist Nikolai Kuhner to be his main teacher and mentor.
After returning from a new expedition, Gumilyov was arrested a second time. It was 1935. The day before, Kirov was killed in Leningrad, and massive repressions began in the city. During interrogation, Gumilyov admitted that his public conversations were anti-Soviet in nature. Together with him, Punin's stepfather was arrested. Anna Akhmatova stood up for the men. She persuaded Boris Pasternak to write a pleading letter to Joseph Stalin. Soon both Punin and Gumilyov were released.
In the camp
Due to the arrest, Lev was expelled from the university. Under patronage, however, he became a member of an archaeological expedition that explored the ruins of the Khazar city of Sarkel. Then Gumilyov was reinstated at Leningrad State University. However, already in 1938, at the height of the repression, he was arrested again and this time sentenced to a 10-year term in the Gulag.
The Norilsk camp became the place where Lev Gumilyov was serving his sentence. The biography of the young intellectual was similar to the biographies of many of his other contemporaries from the same environment. In the camp, Gumilyov ended up with many scientists and thinkers. Zek was helped by his teachers and comrades. So, Nikolai Küner sent books to Gumilyov.
Meanwhile, the Great Patriotic War began. Many prisoners tried to get to the front. Gumilyov ended up in the Red Army only in 1944. He became an anti-aircraft gunner, participated in several offensive operations. His army entered the German city of Altdam. Gumilyov received medals "For the victory over Germany" and "For the capture of Berlin." In November 1945, the already free soldier returned to Leningrad.
New term
After the war, Gumilyov got a job as a firefighter at the Institute of Oriental Studies. This position made it possible to study in the rich library of the Academy of Sciences. Then Gumilyov, at the age of 33, defended his diploma on the theme of Central Asian terracotta figurines. In 1948, it was the turn of the dissertation on the Turkic Kaganate. The scientist's life did not take long.
In 1949, Gumilyov was again in the camp. This time, the reason for his persecution was, on the one hand, in the "Leningrad affair", and on the other, in pressure on the historian's mother, Anna Akhmatova. Lev Nikolayevich was in the camp until the XX Congress of the CPSU and the rehabilitation that followed. Anna Akhmatova dedicated her son a poem "Requiem" about Soviet repressions. Gumilyov's relationship with his mother was extremely complex and contradictory. After his final return from the camp, Lev Nikolaevich quarreled with Akhmatova several times. Anna Andreevna died in 1966.
For the first three years at large, Gumilev was a senior researcher at the Hermitage library. At this time, the scientist processed his own working drafts, written in the camps. In the second half of the 1950s. Lev Nikolayevich talked a lot with the orientalist Yuri Roerich, the founder of the Eurasian theory Peter Savitsky and Georgy Vernadsky.
Gumilyov's first articles were published in 1959. The scientist had to struggle for a long time with the prejudice and suspicion of the scientific community towards his personality. When his materials finally began to appear in print, they immediately earned universal recognition. The historian's articles appeared in the editions "Bulletin of Ancient History", "Soviet Ethnography", "Soviet Archeology".
"Hunnu"
The first monograph by Lev Gumilyov was the book "Hunnu", the manuscript of which he brought to the Institute of Oriental Studies in 1957 (it was published three years later). This work is considered the cornerstone of the researcher's creativity. It was in it that the ideas that later Gumilev developed throughout his scientific career were first laid. This is the opposition of Russia to Europe, an explanation of social and historical phenomena natural factors (including the landscape) and the earliest references to the concept of passionarity.
The work "Hunnu" received the greatest recognition from Turkologists and Sinologists. The book was immediately noticed by the main Soviet Sinologists. At the same time, already the first monograph by Gumilyov found principled critics. Further work of Lev Nikolaevich also evoked directly opposite assessments.
Russia and the Horde
In the 1960s. the theme of Russian medieval history became the main one in the works published by Lev Gumilyov. Ancient Russia interested him from many sides. The scientist began by conducting a study of "The Lay of Igor's Campaign", giving it a new dating (the middle, not the end of the XII century).
Then Gumilev took up the topic of the empire of Genghis Khan. He was interested in how a state emerged in the harsh steppe Mongolia that conquered half of the world. Lev Nikolaevich dedicated the books to the Eastern hordes "Huns", "Huns in China", "Ancient Turks", "Search for a fictional kingdom".
Passionarity and ethnogenesis
The most famous part of the scientific legacy left by Lev Gumilev is the theory of ethnogenesis and passionarity. The first article on this topic was published by him in 1970. Gumilyov called passionarity the over-intense activity of a person in his striving to achieve a certain goal. The historian superimposed this phenomenon on the doctrine of the formation of ethnic groups.
Lev Gumilyov's theory said that the survival and success of a people depends on the number of passionaries in it. The scientist did not consider this factor to be the only one, but he defended its importance in the process of formation and displacement of ethnic groups by competitors.
Lev Gumilyov's passionary theory, which caused serious scientific controversy, said that the cause of the emergence of a large number of leaders and extraordinary personalities is cyclical passionary impulses. This phenomenon was rooted in biology, genetics and anthropology. As a result of it, super-ethnic groups arose, Lev Gumilyov believed. The scientist's books included hypotheses about the causes of the origin of passionary impulses. The author also called them energy impulses of a cosmic nature.
Contribution to Eurasianism
As a thinker, Gumilyov is considered a supporter of Eurasianism - philosophical teaching about the roots of Russian culture, rooted in the synthesis of European and nomadic Asian traditions. At the same time, the scientist in his works did not touch on the political side of the dispute at all, which markedly differed from many adherents of this theory. Gumilev (especially at the end of his life) criticized Western borrowing in Russia a lot. At the same time, he was not opposed to democracy and the market economy. The historian only believed that the Russian ethnos, due to its youth, lags behind the Europeans and therefore is not ready to adopt Western institutions.
The original author's interpretation of Eurasianism was reflected in several works written by Lev Gumilev. "Ancient Russia and the Great Steppe", "Black Legend", "Echo of the Battle of Kulikovo" - this is just an incomplete list of these works. What is their main message? Gumilyov believed that Tatar-Mongol yoke in fact it was the alliance of the Horde and Russia. For example, Alexander Nevsky helped Batu, and in return received support in the fight against the Western crusaders.
Khazaria
One of the most controversial works of Gumilyov is "The Zigzag of History". This essay touched upon the little-studied topic of the Khazar Kaganate in the south. modern Russia... In his work, Gumilev described the history of this state. The author elaborated on the role of Jews in the life of Khazaria. The rulers of this state are known to have converted to Judaism. Gumilyov believed that the kaganate lived under the Jewish yoke, which was ended after the campaign Kiev prince Svyatoslav Igorevich.
Last years
With the beginning of perestroika, the poems of Nikolai Gumilyov reappeared in the Soviet press. His son contacted Literaturnaya Gazeta and Ogonyok, helped to collect materials and even read his father's works at public events. Glasnost also increased the circulation of Lev Nikolaevich's books. In the last Soviet years many of his works were published: "Ethnogenesis", "Ethnogenesis and the biosphere of the Earth", etc.
In 1990, Leningrad television recorded a dozen lectures of the historian. This was the pinnacle of his lifetime popularity and fame. The next year, Gumilyov became an academician of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences. In 1992, Lev Nikolaevich underwent an operation to remove the gallbladder. As a result, she developed profuse internal bleeding. The last days the scientist spent his life in a coma. He passed away on June 15, 1992 at the age of 79.
ღ Mom, dad, I - Friendly family? Why did the only son of Akhmatova leave her? ღAnna Akhmatova with her son
September 18, old style (October 1, new) will mark 103 years since the birth of Lev Gumilyov - a world-famous ethnographer, archeologist and orientalist, son of famous poets Silver Age Anna Akhmatova and Nikolai Gumilyov.
The creator of the passionate theory of ethnogenesis, which interprets the laws of the historical process in such a way that science still does not lose interest in it, lived a difficult life in which love of creativity and research, consistency in a chosen business, world recognition coexisted with family drama and the stigma of the son of an enemy of the people ...
Mom, dad, am I a close-knit family?
Little Leo lost his father twice. First legally, on paper: in 1918, his parents divorced. The initiator of the breakup was Anna Akhmatova, since the relationship of the poets went wrong long before the official separation, back in 1914, four years after the marriage.
And in August 1921, Nikolai Gumilyov was arrested and shot on charges of a counter-revolutionary conspiracy - the attempts of Akhmatova and the poet's friends to save him did not lead to anything. Gumilev Sr. was rehabilitated posthumously and only in 1992.
The mother could not (did not want to?) Replace the child's deceased father, surround her son with double love and care - on the contrary, we can say that Leo felt like a complete orphan almost from birth. He was not even a year old when his parents left him to be raised by his grandmother Anna Ivanovna, the mother of Nikolai Gumilyov, in order to travel without hindrance, write poetry and literary manifestos, plunge into the bohemian life of both capitals - Moscow and St. Petersburg.
“I am marrying a friend of my youth, Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilyov. He has loved me for three years now, and I believe that my destiny is to be his wife. Do I love him, I do not know ... "
From the letters of Anna Akhmatova
A mother or a woman with a child? 
Nikolay Gumilyov and Anna Akhmatova with their son
Famous, talented women who have had everything except maternal happiness are not such a rarity.
This is not about those who could not have a child - give birth, adopt, but about those who weighed down the role of a mother and hardly recognized the very fact of the existence of offspring. We all remember from school literature lessons that Marina Tsvetaeva, Akhmatova's rival for the title of Queen of the Silver Age, was also an unimportant mother. The poetess openly divided children into beloved and unloved, was, like Akhmatova, helpless in everyday life and indifferent to comfort.
In hungry 1919, unable to feed her daughters, seven-year-old Alya and two-year-old Irina, Tsvetaeva sent them to the Kuntsevo orphanage. Here the youngest died two months later ... Do not judge, that you will not be judged - the Bible wisely says.
We just wanted to emphasize that the dictate of motherhood, imposed by society for centuries: a woman is inferior if she did not give life to a new person! - often becomes the cause of family dramas with unwanted, "abandoned" children and unhappy parents.
“Nikolai Stepanovich has always been single. I can't imagine him being married. Soon after the birth of Lyova (1912), we silently gave each other complete freedom and ceased to be interested intimate side each other's lives. "
Under the wing of grandma 
Lev Nikolaevich Gumilyov with his wife Natalia
The fate of Lev Gumilyov is a difficult paradox when it comes to relationships with loved ones. On the one hand, he was born in a love marriage, was a long-awaited heir. There is a story that in Slepnevo, the Gumilevs' estate near Bezhetsk (now the administrative center of the Bezhetsk district of the Tver region), where Akhmatova lived for the last three months before giving birth, the peasants at the village gathering were promised to forgive their debts if a boy was born.
Nikolai's older brother, Dmitry Gumilyov, did not have children, so the successor of the family was expected with special hopes. On the other hand, from infancy until the age of 16, Leo lived with his grandmother in Slepnevo, and saw his parents several times a year (more often on Trinity, on summer holidays and Christmas), even when they had not yet parted.
Mom and Dad brought toys and books, encouraged their son's interest in literature, history, geography, archeology, architecture, languages, art. Nikolai Gumilev took the grown-up Leo with him on short trips, to literary and scholarly meetings, to museums and cinema; Akhmatova helped with money when she received royalties.
But every day, instead of parents, there was a grandmother next to the boy, loving, caring, watching over his studies, health and nutrition. The grandson was very similar to the untimely departed son: in appearance, character, and abilities.
Soup plate and wooden chest 
Anna Akhmatova
After graduating from school, in 1929, Lev Gumilyov moved to his mother in Leningrad. It was a difficult period for her both in her work and in her personal life. Akhmatova was almost never published, since she was “under suspicion” by the Soviet authorities, she had to earn money through translations.
Concerning female happiness, then it was also controversial: the poetess shared a loved one - art critic Nikolai Punin - with his family. It so happened that for almost ten years Akhmatova with her son and Punin with his wife (the couple did not file a divorce) and daughter lived together in the same apartment.
She herself lived on bird rights, "Anna of All Russia", did not seek to defend any privileges for her son, criticized his poems that imitated the creative manner of his father. For a time he slept on a wooden chest in an unheated corridor; A compassionate neighbor in a communal apartment brought a bowl of soup to mother and son, she also went to the store, helped with the cleaning.
Leo, being for about a year kept by his mother and Punin (the young man was preparing to enter the pedagogical institute at the department German language), in gratitude he helped as much as he could: chopped wood, stoked the stove, but the attitude of the household towards him did not warm up.
"Mother was influenced by people with whom I had no personal contacts and even most of them were not familiar, but she was interested in them much more than I was."
From the memoirs of Lev Gumilyov
Moloch of repression 
Lev Gumilev
Lev Gumilyov felt dislike for himself as the son of an enemy of the people back in school: classmates once even voted for the "son of a counter-revolutionary and alien class element" to be deprived of textbooks. And in 1935 he was arrested for the first time, but everything worked out thanks to the intercession of his mother: Akhmatova wrote a letter to Stalin asking him to release her son.
The second arrest happened on the eve of the Great Patriotic War, and nobody's troubles helped: from 1938 to 1944, Lev Gumilyov spent in the camp. Akhmatova at this time writes the poem "Requiem" about the time of terror, of which her son also became a victim.
Why do people cheat?
In an era when the number of divorces outstrips the number of marriages, somehow I already want to figure out what it is ... →
There is an assumption that the work was dedicated to Leo, but then Akhmatova removed this dedication, fearing to harm the prisoner of Norillag even more. He recalled more than once how the parcels of his mother saved him from starvation or disease, and the letters allowed him not to go mad in the green prison - the taiga.
In 1944, the poetess's son volunteered for the front from the gates of the camp, returned from the war with two medals: "For the capture of Berlin" and "For the victory over Germany." After Lev again ended up in Leningrad, again lived with his mother, their relationship warmed significantly.
For both, a bright streak came after the war: Akhmatova had the opportunity to publish, Lev - to study in graduate school at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences, to travel on archaeological expeditions. But the envious people were not asleep: first, Akhmatova fell into disgrace (in 1948, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks issued a resolution "On the magazines" Zvezda "and" Leningrad ", declaring the poetry of Anna Andreevna alien, ideological, decadent), and then her son ... Gumilyov bitterly joked that before the war he was in prison “for my father”, and after the war - “for my mother” (in 1949-1956).
This woman is sick
This woman is alone
Husband in the grave, son in prison
Pray for me.
<…>I've been screaming for seventeen months
I'm calling you home.
She threw herself at the feet of the executioner,
You are my son and my horror.
Everything is confused forever
And I can't make out
Now who is the beast, who is the man,
And how long to wait for the execution.
From Anna Akhmatova's poem "Requiem"
"It would be better for you if I died in the camp" 
Lev Gumilyov with his mother
The return of Lev Gumilyov from the camp in 1956 turned out to be not the same as before: the son and mother accumulated mutual claims and grievances, both had deteriorated health and both had nothing to live on. Leo believed that his mother was selfish, that she did little to alleviate his fate in imprisonment; Anna Andreevna was not satisfied with the scientific interests of her son, inattention to her well-being.
The gap widened, and it got to the point that in October 1961, the son refused to come to the hospital to see his mother, who had a second heart attack, and then to her funeral in March 1966 (he simply handed over the money). The poet Joseph Brodsky recalled that Lev once told his mother: "It would be better for you if I died in the camp." According to biographers, in the long-term dispute between Akhmatova and her son, there are no right and wrong, and all the dots on the "i" have not yet been put ...
Gumilyov Jr. himself did not have children.
The outstanding poetess Anna Akhmatova had a chance to experience the oppression of Soviet repression beyond measure. She and her family were constantly out of favor with the authorities.
Her first husband, Nikolai Gumilyov, was shot without trial, her son Lev spent many years in the camps, and her second husband, Nikolai Punin, was arrested twice. The apartment in the Fountain House was monitored and monitored continuously. Akhmatova was persecuted and, having been expelled from the Writers' Union, practically outlawed. In addition, as it is already known today, the final, physical reprisal was prepared for the poetess. The report "On the need to arrest the poetess Akhmatova" No. 6826 / A dated June 14, 1950 was handed over to Stalin by the Minister of State Security of the USSR Abakumov. “To comrade STALIN I.V. I report that the Ministry of State Security of the USSR received intelligence and investigative materials concerning the poetess AA Akhmatova, indicating that she is an active enemy of the Soviet regime. AKHMATOVA Anna Andreevna, born in 1892 (in fact, she was born in 1889), Russian, comes from the nobility, non-partisan, lives in Leningrad. Her first husband, the poet-monarchist GUMILEV, as a participant in the White Guard conspiracy in Leningrad in 1921, was shot by the organs of the Cheka. In hostile activities, Akhmatova is exposed by the testimony of her son L.N. GUMILEV, arrested at the end of 1949, who was a senior researcher at the State Ethnographic Museum of the Peoples of the USSR, and her ex-husband N.N. PUNIN, professor of Leningrad state university... The arrested PUNIN during interrogation at the USSR Ministry of State Security testified that Akhmatova, who came from a landowner family, hostilely perceived the establishment of Soviet power in the country and until recently carried out enemy work against the Soviet state. As PUNIN showed, even in the first years after the October Revolution, Akhmatova came out with her anti-Soviet poems, in which she called the Bolsheviks "enemies, tearing the ground", and declared that "she was not on the path with the Soviet regime."
Beginning in 1924, Akhmatova, together with PUNIN, who became her husband, grouped hostile literary workers around herself and organized anti-Soviet gatherings in her apartment. On this occasion, the arrested PUNIN testified: “Due to anti-Soviet sentiments, Akhmatova and I, conversing with each other, more than once expressed our hatred of the Soviet system, slandered the leaders of the Party and the Soviet government and expressed dissatisfaction with various measures of the Soviet government ... In our apartment, anti-Soviet gatherings were held, which were attended by literary workers from among those dissatisfied and offended by the Soviet regime ... These persons, together with me and Akhmatova from enemy positions, discussed events in the country ... Akhmatova, in particular, expressed slanderous fabrications about the alleged the cruel attitude of the Soviet government to the peasants, was outraged by the closure of churches and expressed her anti-Soviet views on a number of other issues. "
As established by the investigation, in these enemy gatherings in 1932-1935. took Active participation Akhmatova's son - GUMILEV, at that time a student at Leningrad State University. The arrested GUMILEV testified about this: “In the presence of Akhmatova, we at gatherings did not hesitate to express our hostile sentiments ... PUNIN made terrorist attacks against the leaders of the CPSU (b) and the Soviet government ... In May 1934 PUNIN in the presence of Akhmatova figuratively showed how he would have committed a terrorist act against the leader of the Soviet people. " Similar testimony was given by the arrested PUNIN, who confessed that he harbored terrorist sentiments against Comrade Stalin, and testified that these sentiments were shared by Akhmatova: the existing situation in the Soviet Union can be changed in the direction we want only by forcibly eliminating Stalin ... In frank conversations with me, Akhmatova shared my terrorist sentiments and supported malicious attacks against the Head of the Soviet State. Thus, in December 1934, she sought to justify the villainous murder of S. M. Kirov, regarding this terrorist act as a response to the excessive, in her opinion, repression of the Soviet government against the Trotskyist-Bukharin and other hostile groups. " It should be noted that in October 1935 PUNIN and GUMILEV were arrested by the NKVD Directorate of the Leningrad Region as members of an anti-Soviet group. However, they were soon released from custody at the request of Akhmatova.
Speaking about his subsequent criminal connection with Akhmatova, the arrested PUNIN testified that Akhmatova continued to conduct hostile conversations with him, during which she expressed malicious slander against the CPSU (b) and the Soviet government. PUNIN also testified that Akhmatova was hostile to the Resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks "On the magazines" Zvezda "and" Leningrad ", in which her ideologically harmful work was justly criticized. This is also confirmed by the available intelligence materials. So, a source of the UMGB of the Leningrad region reported that Akhmatova, in connection with the Decree of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks "On the magazines" Zvezda "and" Leningrad ", stated: “Poor people, they don’t know anything or have forgotten. After all, all this has already happened, all these words have been said and retold and repeated from year to year ... Nothing new has been said now, all this is already known to everyone. For Zoshchenko this is a blow, but for me it is only a repetition of once heard moral admonitions and curses. " The USSR Ministry of State Security considers it necessary to arrest Akhmatov. I ask for your permission. ABAKUMOV "
In 1935, Akhmatova managed to free her arrested son and husband after a personal meeting with Stalin. But before this happened, both had been "biased" interrogated and were forced to sign false testimonies against Akhmatova - about her "complicity" in their "crimes" and about her "hostile activities." The Chekists manipulated the facts masterly. Numerous undercover denunciations and eavesdropping materials were also constantly collected on Akhmatova. The "case of operational development" on Akhmatova was instituted in 1939. Special equipment has been operating in her apartment since 1945. That is, the case has long been concocted, it remains only to bring it to its logical end - arrest. All that is required is the go-ahead of the Kremlin Master. In 1949, Nikolai Punin and Lev Gumilyov were arrested again. And the head of the MGB, Abakumov, was already rubbing his hands, but Stalin for some reason did not authorize Akhmatova's arrest. On Abakumov's memo, his own resolution appears: "Continue to develop" ... Why didn't the debugged mechanism work? The point here is the behavior of Akhmatova herself. No, she did not know anything about Abakumov's report and least of all worried about herself. But she desperately wanted to save her son. Therefore, she wrote and published a cycle of loyal poems "Glory to the World", including an anniversary ode to Stalin (No. 14 of the "Ogonyok" magazine, 1950). And at the same time she sent a letter to Joseph Vissarionovich with a prayer for her son ("Rodina", 1993, No. 2, p. 51). In fact, for the sake of saving her son, Akhmatova threw her last victim at the feet of the supreme executioner - her poetic name. The executioner accepted the sacrifice. And that decided everything. Lev Gumilyov, however, was still not released, but Akhmatova was not arrested either. Ahead of her were 16 painful years of solitude.