Books recommended by feminists. You will never ask me

The poetess, whose name has become the "female face" of the Russian revolutionary movement, Anna Barkova devotes her whole life to defending the rights of the individual and serving literature. Anna Alexandrovna is a fighter for human freedom, boldly declaring herself in the Soviet period. The advanced views of the poetess are expressed not only in poems, but also in everyday life, leading to problems with employment. Despite this, Barkova continues to create more and more new poems, showing rare stamina and endurance. Even the conclusions and subsequent references do not reconcile the poetess with the foundations of the world of that period. Anna Aleksandrovna continues to create, revealing her own talent more and more.

The lines that came out from Barkova's pen have incredible emotional power. The rebellious spirit of the poetess contributes to the deepest sensual coloring of her creations, and the originality of the topics raised in the poems invariably attracted the attention of readers of the Soviet period, remaining remarkable in the new century. Anna Alexandrovna uses a variety of techniques in order to best reveal the topic. Barkova's advanced views contribute to the use of such trends as dolnik and accented verses.

From the anthology of Evgeny Yevtushenko "Ten centuries of Russian poetry"

Few people remember that one of the most published foreign books in the Stalinist Soviet Union, and even in excellent translations, was Anatole France's The Gods Are Thirsty. On its pages, the self-devouring of Jacobinism was carried out, the brutal roar of the crowd greeted the executions of "enemies of the people", yesterday's accusers became tomorrow's victims, and their accusers - the victims of the day after tomorrow, just like in the years of our native terror.

It is impossible to imagine that any 9-year-old boy would read this book today. But in 1941, at the age of 9, having just finished the first grade, I opened with rapture and horror the carrot-colored volume with the title “The Gods Are Thirsty”, published by the Aca-demia publishing house, trying to understand where both of my grandfathers had disappeared and why adults avoid talking about it.

But this foreign book was not the only one explaining our own history to me. In 1931, a year before my birth, the novel by Anatole France, which resonated with the demonic roll call of the French and Russian revolutions, was read by 30-year-old Anna Barkova - Anna Tretya in Russian poetry after Anna Bunina (1774-1829) and Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966):

I treat literature dryly,

I am not friends with the faithful VAPP
And support for the woeful spirit
In Anatole France I find.

The gods are thirsty... Let's be patient
Wait until they are fed.
Ruthlessly trampling on an olive branch
Our days are thirsty for blood.

All will pass. broken trough
We will see before us again.
Maybe by chance we will be full,
Maybe you have to go hungry.

They treated us with an empty nut.
We died for obvious nonsense.
So appreciate the wise smile
And nothing blurred vision.

I do not want to swallow indiscriminately
Food approved by the censor.
Only the great France is my support.
He will help you to wait and endure.

In 1918, after the sixth grade of the gymnasium, Anna Barkova went to work at the editorial office of the Ivanovo newspaper Rabochy Krai. She changed into a dress of a female worker - black and long. She chose a metaphor as a pseudonym - Kalika Crossing. And when asked what kind of environment would be useful for her creativity, she prophetically joked: “Katorga!”

The first and only lifetime collection of poems by Anna Barkova "Woman" was published in 1922 with a preface by A.V. Lunacharsky:

“Look: A.A. Barkova has already developed her own peculiar form - she almost never resorts to meter, she loves assonances instead of rhymes, she has completely personal music in verse - tart, deliberately rude, direct to the impression of spontaneity.

Look: it has its own content. And what! From the impulses of purely proletarian cosmism, from revolutionary violence and concentrated tragedy, from sharp, painful insight into the future to the most sincere lyrics of noble and rejected love.

Lunacharsky invited Anna Alexandrovna to work in his secretariat, even gave her a corner in her own apartment in the Kremlin. But one day, from a conversation between Lunacharsky and Bogdanov about Lenin, a phrase reached her that highlighted the inside of the revolution. Barkova preserved this phrase in verse:

Here's to the bloody loss

The goal we have achieved:

Yes, he was a great dictator,

That, perhaps, was Cromwell.

Struck by the cynicism of the corridors of power, she lost confidence in her philanthropist, and in a letter to her friend she sarcastically remarked that sometimes she wants to set fire to his Kremlin apartment. The Gepeushniks intercepted the letter and handed it over to Lunacharsky. He announced to Barkova that she could no longer work for him. But, perhaps even earlier, she herself decided to leave the Kremlin, when the masterly glance of Stalin, who was taking power into the hands of Stalin, slipped over her and she remembered how Anatole France described Marat: “He looked around with yellow eyes piercing through and through, as if he were the enthusiasm of the crowd of enemies of the people who were to be exposed, traitors who were to be punished.

Gradually, previously open doors began to close before her. Her poems were bitter and bitter.

Soaked in blood and bile
Our life and our affairs.
The insatiable heart of a wolf
Fate gave us fate.
Tearing with teeth, claws,
We kill mother and father
We do not throw a stone at the neighbor -
We pierce the heart with a bullet.
A! Shouldn't you think about it?
No need - well, if you please:
Give me universal joy
On a platter like bread and salt.

She laid out the road to hard labor with her own poems. Here is her calendar camp: the first five years (1934-1939) she finishes in Karlag; then - more than eight years serving in Abez, near the Arctic Circle (1948-1956); finally, seven years - in the Siberian and Mordovian camps (1958-1965).

Hard labor requested in a dashing young joke did not work in the singular. There was a lot of hard labor. Here is a description of one of them:

Since 1965, Barkova has been living in Moscow. But she won't be able to print a single line. In the editorial offices, only one thing could be advised to the eternal camper: to give up her own life, her tragic experience. She replied to this in one of her letters:

“Rise above hate? To rise above 30 years of your slavery, exile, persecution, infamy of all kinds? I can not! I am not a holy man. I am just a man. And only for this, the chariot of history for 30 years crushed me under the wheels. But it didn't completely crush. Left severely crippled, but alive.

Before her death, the hospital ward began to seem like a prison to her. One day she came down from the third floor and fell down. When they picked her up, she was eager to catch up with her party, from which she allegedly lagged behind after the bath.

Prison and camp can take away everything from a person except God and poetry - this saving and most enduring art in the world. Poetry is memorable because it thinks through the music of words. Other people's poems can be read without books in hand. You can write poetry without a pencil and paper - only in memory. Poetry is not confiscable because memory cannot be confiscated. Poetry is inseparable from the soul, like conscience. One poetic tanka remembered for a lifetime, which will fit on a child's palm, can weigh more than all the military tanks in the world. Poets can be killed, but poetry cannot be killed. Poets are indestructible, even if they are humiliated. Poets can be banished, as was the case with Dante, but their poetry is not banished. The entire execution and torture system turned out to be helpless in the face of poetry. Nikolai Gumilyov, Osip Mandelstam, Marina Tsvetaeva, and many others, and among them Anna Barkova, are not victims, but winners. Crippled, but alive.

Old woman

A cursed cloud hung,

What will happen - hail or thunder?

And I see a strange old woman,

Ancient antiquity eyes.

And her gait is aimless,

In the hand is a wretched stick.

Sick? Maybe a hangover?

Crazy for sure.

Where are you going, grandma?

A storm will begin - do not endure.

I'm waiting for a memorial service. I quit

Yes, only there is no one to sing.

All my roads are well traveled,

And there was no happiness anywhere.

Burning in the fire, frozen,

Drowned in blood and water.

The dress is all worn out on me,

And I have nothing to wear in the coffin.

I've been wandering dead for a long time

Yes, only there is no one to sing.

Pen for human cattle.

Entered here - do not rush back.

On the bunk tags. On the shoulders - a pea jacket.

And the thieves' spasm of the meeting,

A chance meeting, somewhere out there, in the hallway.

Only an eunuch or a monk will condemn.

On the watch there is a cabin for dates,

With a cynical joke put a bed there

It is allowed to sleep with a legal husband.

The country of holy pathos and construction,

Is it possible to fall more terrible and easier -

Is it possible on this mean bunk

To corrupt forever marital passion!

Under laughter, hooting and whistles,

By permission of the evil scoundrel...

No, better, better candid shot,

So honestly piercing hearts.

Again barracks dress,

Treasury ostentatious comfort,

Again state-owned beds -

Shelter for the dying.

me even after the punishment,

As you can see, punishment awaits.

Will you understand my anguish

At unopened gates?

Flattened and pressed into the dirt

I have a dull wheel...

Would sit in a tavern sad

The alcoholic Picasso...

Oh, if only for my sins

Missing me abyss!

No funeral nonsense

Get into the jaws of the noseless!

How ours perished, like those

Who didn't come back.

Like those who are in the permafrost

They lie incorruptible.
1972

Russian longing

excerpt

No, we are not God's children

And they won't let us into heaven

Ready for the light

We have a big shed.

There are crooked bunks,

Out of tune with the board board,

And there we are waiting for a wide

Russian sadness.

Anna the Third

Who were you - Anna Barkova?

Trans-Siberian, tag, barracks ...

One skinhead said:

“Baba in the camp is not new.

We decided - only sucks:

“This one is possible and necessary. Werniak".

But this boisterous cow -

the one that brought a freight train to the camp,

so butted her foot in two words,

that one thug bent,

like a question mark.

She was not like us all.

She did not tolerate animals in uniform.

Frans read Anatole to us,

She called herself a Francis-Birge.

The mind is noble, and the daughter of a porter.

Didn't play the commissioner

at least she was with Lunacharsky on “you”.

And we were so shocked by reading,

that the prisoners gave her flowers.

She was fair, but harsh.

And she wrote verses luckily.

Penetrated the whole soul, ready

Even the Caucasian cook in the dining room

did something to her like pilaf,

called her "baba-kunak".

Anna Alexandrovna Barkova (July 16, 1901, Ivanovo-Voznesensk - April 29, 1976, Moscow) - Russian poetess; She also wrote prose and journalism.

She studied at the gymnasium in Ivanovo-Voznesensk (where her father worked as a doorman); since 1918, she collaborated in the Ivanovo newspaper "Working Land" under the leadership of A.K. Voronsky. She appeared in the press with poems that were noticed and highly appreciated primarily by "left" criticism. In 1922 he moved to Moscow at the invitation of A. V. Lunacharsky, whose secretary he worked for a short time; later, due to the conflict, he leaves his secretariat and tries to get a job in various newspapers and publishing houses in Moscow.

In 1922, her only lifetime book of poems “Woman” was published (with an enthusiastic foreword by Lunacharsky), the next year the play “Nastasya Koster” was published in a separate edition.
Early 1920s - the pinnacle of the official recognition of Barkova; her poems become widely known, they begin to talk about her as the “proletarian Akhmatova”, the exponent of the “female face” of the Russian revolution. Her lyrics of these years are really deeply original, she effectively expresses the rebellious (revolutionary and god-fighting) aspirations of the “fighting woman”, masterfully using a rich arsenal of poetic techniques (in particular, dolnik and accent verse, firmly established by that time in Russian poetry).

However, Barkova's rebellious nature quickly brings her into deep conflict with Soviet reality. It cannot find a place for itself in official literary and near-literary structures.

At the end of 1934, she was arrested for the first time and imprisoned for five years in Karlag (1935-1939), in 1940-1947. she lives under administrative supervision in Kaluga, where in 1947 she was arrested again and this time imprisoned in a camp in Inta, where she was until 1956. During this period, the poetess wrote about herself like this

In 1956-1957 she lived in Ukraine in the village of Shterovka near the city of Lugansk.

On November 13, 1957, despite the "thaw", she was arrested for the third time (as before, on charges of anti-Soviet agitation) and imprisoned in a camp in Mordovia (1958-1965).

Since 1965 he lives in Moscow, in a communal apartment, receiving a small pension.

All these years, Anna Barkova continues to write poetry, many of which reach great artistic power and are among the most important documents of the “camp literature” of the Soviet period.

Anna Aleksandrovna Barkova died on April 29, 1976. The urn with her ashes was buried at the Moscow Nikolo-Arkhangelsk cemetery (section 1-9, columbarium 3, section 3-b).

The publication of her works began only in the 1990s; several collections of poems were published in Ivanovo and Krasnoyarsk. One of the most complete publications is the book “... Forever not the same” (M .: Sergei Dubov Fund, 2002). Barkova's diaries and prose ("Eight chapters of madness": Prose. Diaries. M .: Sergei Dubov Foundation, 2009) have also been published.

After all, this is a monument to despair -

A verse of a cracked cry...

A. Barkova

A little-known, but extraordinarily talented woman with a unique destiny, A.A. Barkov.

Anna Aleksandrovna Barkova (1901-1976), better known as a poetess and a legendary political prisoner (three terms in the camps ... "for thoughts"), more than half a century ago, in her original talented prose, she prophetically "drew" much of what has happened to us in recent decades.

Yevgeny Yevtushenko, compiling his anthology "Strophes of the Century", called Anna Barkova one of the best Russian poetesses of the 20th century and compared it with Akhmatova and Tsvetaeva. Barkova was not broken by decades of Stalinist camps, nor by barracks and communal apartments, where she lived defiantly freely, side by side with people completely distant from her, before whom she never hid either her education or political views. The tragic fate of the remarkable Russian poet Anna Alexandrovna Barkova, whose work should rightfully be inscribed in the context of Russian and world culture, deserves to be known to the broad masses of readers.

Barkov in the 1930s

For a long time, the name of Barkova was simply “turned off” from the literary process, and yet her poetic debut was brilliant. At the dawn of her youth, in the distant 1920s, a girl from the provincial workers' town of Ivanovo-Voznesensk came under the attention of Lunacharsky, the People's Commissar of Education himself, who in a letter to Barkova predicted a great future for her: “I fully admit the idea that you will become the best Russian poetess for all the past time of Russian literature. Blok, Bryusov, Pasternak spoke positively about her work ... She reached a position that others could only dream of. In 1922, Barkova moved to live in Moscow, becoming the personal secretary of Lunacharsky, who hopes to “sculpt” her into a “great proletarian poetess”, a scale no lower than that of another Anna - Akhmatova. In the same year, the first and only lifetime collection of poems by Barkova "Woman" was published in Petrograd. The lyrical heroine of the book is “an Amazon with a formidable weapon”, an ardent herald of new truth, new love and beauty, which came with the revolution to replace the old ones. “Jeanne d'Arc of modern poetry” called Barkova one of the literary critics of that time.

But behind the Kremlin wall, she saw the double morality of the Bolshevik government (“One face is for the initiated, / The other is for the naive masses ...”) and did not want to live by their rules. Three years wandered in strange corners.

Memorial plaque on the former gymnasium

What supported her then? What prevented you from completely dissolving in the dull everyday life of Russian everyday life? First of all - nature, character, the original inner strength inherent in it. “From the age of eight,” Barkova later writes in her diary, “one dream is about the greatness of power through spiritual creativity.”

Even in her youth, Barkova discovered something that attracted her and at the same time repelled those around her. A person who came from the very bottom of the city, she initially carried a certain secret anxiety. “Fiery-red, with slightly curly hair, a long braid, serious eyes with a piercing look,” this is how the high school student Barkova was remembered by one of her peers. The girl from the "muddy hut" was drawn to culture, to Dostoevsky, Nice, Edgar Allan Poe.

Only in the books revealed something strange to me

Through Russian gray dust

Through despondency cursed

I dreamed of someone else's reality, -

Later Barkova will write, peering into the beginning of his life.

Gymnasium where A.Barkova studied

Anna writes poetry under the pseudonym "Kalika - Crossing", published in newspapers and magazines. A strange pseudonym for a 20-year-old girl, beggars, holy fools, "God's" wanderers have long been called kaliks in Rus'. The people considered them not only blessed, but also revered as prophets, people close to God. One gets the impression that along with the literary name, the poetess chose her fate.

Before many, she understood the black abyss of power, today called the cult of personality.

Let our goal be dearer to us

Mothers, and brothers, and fathers.

After all, you have to shoot, maybe

To your favorite face.

…………

This book is a hot coal

(See my chest open?)

In the name of sending a friend to the chopping block,

We destroy our home and family. (1927)

Barkova's poems of the late 20s and early 30s are full of the realities of the unsightly Soviet reality of the era of the birth of the Stalin personality cult: the standardization of life in all its guises, the replacement of the individual-personal "I" by the faceless "we" (remember the novel by E. Zamyatin), the ubiquitous the practice of total betrayal and denunciation, a new, even worse slavery to replace the old one, the creation of new idols, more cruel and terrible than the old ones, instead of the intended paradise on earth, the construction of a huge universal barrack-prison.

We were naive. dreamed

Lead humanity to heaven.

Good to find the tablets,

Climbing up the new Sinai.

And instead:

With servile obedience together

We make a bloody share

Then, to build an unnecessary

Reinforced concrete paradise.

Since the end of the twenties, it has ceased to be printed for ideological reasons. "Woman" remained the only book published during her lifetime by Anna Barkova.

After the resignation of Lunacharsky, Barkova works in the Pravda newspaper. Hard times have begun. And Anna Alexandrovna had a rebellious character, she did not know how to be silent or say “yes” where the soul screamed “no”. In December 1934, when the assassination of Kirov was discussed in a narrow circle of Pravdists, Anna threw a careless phrase: "They killed the wrong one." Someone brought it. As a result, Anna Alexandrovna Barkova was arrested for "systematic conduct of ... anti-Soviet agitation and the expression of terrorist intentions." She was placed in the Butyrsky isolation ward even without the permission of the prosecutor.

On December 31, 1934, Anna Aleksandrovna Barkova was sentenced by a Special Meeting to 5 years in the Gulag. Only those who have gone through this can understand what Barkova was going through then. Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn conveys this state in this way: “Arrest is an instant, striking transfer, transfer, transfer from one state to another.” And in the same place: “The Universe has as many centers as there are living beings in it. Each of us is the center of the universe, and the universe splits when they hiss at you: “You are under arrest!”

It seemed that life was over. Wherever she is sent, there will be no poetry, there will be no spiritual creativity. And she writes a statement addressed to People's Commissar Yagoda, where she asks to subject her to the highest measure of punishment, i.e. shoot… People's Commissar Yagoda, trembling, imposes a resolution on the letter: "Do not send it far." She is sent to Karlag (Kazakhstan).

Lyrical waves, it's too late!

It is necessary to say goodbye to the song fate.

I hear a roar sweet and menacing,

But your disturbing surf was late.

To meager and pitiful questions

The answers are more and more painful, more and more angry.

You, my life, a spoiled sketch

Great creation, decay! (1930)

It is amazing, but it is in the camp that the world space of history will open before her. Here she will hear the voices of the heroes of past eras, who make her believe in the inexhaustible possibilities of the human spirit. Here she will discover something in herself that she simply did not know before. Barkov becomes an outstanding Russian poet not in the "freedom", but in the Gulag. Paradox!

Much more will be written about the diversity of Barkova's camp poetry. About her amazing psychologism in revealing people who find themselves behind barbed wire. On the symbolic multidimensionality of her image of Russia. About her prophetic poetic forecasts. However, even now it is clear that Barkova's poetry is far ahead of her contemporary literature in terms of philosophical, social, political outlook on the future.

Rus.

Trampled by Tatar horses,

And tortured in robbery orders,

And Petrovsky beaten by experience,

And Peter's club brought up.

And stormed by the Prussians,

And robbed by her circle.

You were all twisted by currents.

Confused by other people's skills.

You are facing Europe

Up on its hind legs above the abyss,

Bewildered, bewildered

It was thrown into the same abyss.

And you are alive, alive - alive,

And you repeat one thing: sickly!

I feel someone with an iron hand

Will lift me over the abyss again.

(As if in our “upturned” time, this poem “Rus” was written.) The date under the poem is 1964 ...

She left Karlag Barkova in 1939, lived in the war and the first post-war years under administrative supervision in Kaluga. And in 1947 she again found herself in the camps, this time in Vorkuta, under the same Article 58.

All these years she wrote poetry, two poems and more than 160 poems appeared in the camps - these are only those already known, published in recent years. And what! Perhaps best of all, she explained her spiritual feat herself, and just in camp verses:

As our woeful spirit is tenacious,

A greedy heart is deceitful!

Poetry's ringing key

Breaks into the depths of the ditch.

In some poor land

Scurvy, swamps, barbed fences

I love and sing about love

One of the best songs.

Freed in 1956, Barkova came to Moscow, but the capital met her unfriendly. Despite all the efforts, she did not receive a residence permit or a roof over her head.

Anna Alexandrovna was forced to accept the invitation of her roommate Valentina Ivanovna Sapagina and settled in Shterovka, Voroshilovgrad region.

Just one year of respite, freedom with a loss of civil rights. At this time, Barkova wrote prose, in which her amazing foresight was once again manifested. In the story "How the Moon Is Made" Barkova presented two future Kremlin coups at once: the anti-Khrushchev conspiracy of 1964 and Gorbachev's perestroika of the 80s.

Anna Aleksandrovna warned contemporaries who did not listen to her: but those who were supposed to observe the “ideological virginity” of slaves were eavesdropping. In a letter to a Moscow acquaintance, Barkov sends a satirical story about Molotov. The hero of the story - Molotov - is rude, sharp, merciless. As a result of the denunciation, Barkova was arrested for the third time and went on her third "journey".

Registration card for A. Barkova

The third term (1957-1965) does not pass in such difficult conditions as before. The times of the "thaw" briefly touched the places of detention. Anna Alexandrovna, due to her age and illnesses, was not in general work. Barkova with her difficult character, evil tongue, intransigence to the meanness of others annoys many.

The beginning of Barkova's rehabilitation was the fact that Lunacharsky's letters to Barkova were published in the next volume of Izvestia of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Moscow friends seized on this fact like a straw. And began long walks through the authorities, they turned to Fadeev, Tvardovsky. And already at the beginning of the Brezhnev era, Anna Alexandrovna was pulled out of the camp. In 1965, she was rehabilitated and sent to an invalid camp in Potma, Mordovian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. Only in 1967, Anna Alexandrovna was able to return to the capital, having received a room in the center of Moscow on Suvorovsky Boulevard, in which, like in a cell, the light was constantly on. A room in a communal apartment, bars on the window.

In the last years of life

Finally, fate gave Anna Alexandrovna several quiet years among her favorite books, old and new friends. During these years she worked continuously. Several times she offered her poems to various Moscow magazines, but they were not accepted anywhere: “There is no optimism, there is no life-affirming beginning.” Not a single line will ever appear in print during his lifetime. And to live after the third liberation is another ten years.

Barkova spends her entire pension on books, leaving a little for bread, butter, tea and cheese. She is attracted in books by what was characteristic of herself - sharpness of mind, observation, causticity. She loved philosophical and historical literature. But evil fate seems to weigh on the poor old woman. First - a sore throat - difficult to swallow, and finally, doctors report that she has cancer of the esophagus.

She died long and hard. In the hospital, she was treated amazingly, just perfectly, but what happened to her was what happened to many who had been in the places she had been. One Russian writer said that a person who has been there, if he goes to the hospital, will not be able to pronounce the word "ward", but pronounces "camera".

Again barracks dress,

Treasury ostentatious comfort,

Again state-owned beds -

Shelter for the dying...

me even after the punishment,

As you can see, punishment awaits.

Will you understand my suffering

At unopened gates?

Flattened and pressed into the dirt

My dumb wheel...

Would sit in a tavern dull

An alcoholic Picasso!

Anna Alexandrovna loved life too much and, of course, she was afraid of death, but when she felt the end, she asked to be buried in church ... She was afraid of oblivion. The realization that the terrible experience of her life, as well as the experience of thousands of other comrades in fate, was not able to change the environment that frightened her most of all.

Soaked in blood and bile

Our lives and our deeds

The insatiable heart of a wolf

Fate gave us fate.

Tearing with teeth, claws,

We kill mother and father.

We do not throw a stone at the neighbor -

We pierce the heart with a bullet.

Don't you need to think about it?

No need - well, if you please:

Give me universal joy

On a platter like bread and salt.

1928

First one-volume collected works, 2002

Barkova chose the fate of an unknown poetess, but she did not want to be a forgotten poetess. To go through all the torments of hell, to die and be resurrected, to love so much and hate so much and at the same time remain unheard - this terrified Barkova.

She denied comfort in anything, including literature. Therefore, her path could never completely coincide with the path of those for whom culture is their home, saving in the most difficult moment from the icy, cruel wind of life. Barkova simply could not exist without this wind. He was poetry to her. He cannot be heard - the blizzard-rebellious voice of Anna Barkova!

Though the soul scattered in snowstorms,

Everything is sung in dead snow,

Although there are few saints left, -

I keep the last one.

Let under the burden of failure

And I'll fall under someone's laughter

The Russian wind will mourn me,

How he mourned us all.

Maybe in five generations

Through the terrible flood of time

The world will mark an era of turmoil

And mine among other names.

Collection of Barkova 2009

Barkova loved life in its spiritual and creative essence too much to sacrifice her soul to pessimism. She was afraid of oblivion, she was afraid to remain in the memory of people as a witch on a broomstick ... Thank God, her poems are printed, books are published. They are read. They care. Encourage empathy. The prophecy of the poetess who wrote in her testamentary verses is coming true: "Above all is the power of the spirit and love." Let us remember this testament of Anna Barkova. Anna Alexandrovna Barkova passed her thorny earthly path with dignity, without losing face.

Preach new truth

To marry her to disgrace,

And dry autumn leaves

Scatter your treasures.

And the fate of the messiahs is doomed,

Darkened by all the clouds.

With humility to take alms,

Believe in what others see

To sacrifice everything, and in recompense -

The shackles and pads are tight.

And the fate of the Messiah is not new:

To be hungry, cold, decayed,

To be crucified and spat on by all,

Buried and resurrected.

POEMS BY ANNA BARKOVA

"In the daytime they are all like gunpowder..."

During the day they are all like gunpowder,

And at night they are quiet as mice.

They listen to every whisper

which is heard from somewhere.

There, on the stairs... My God! Who is this?

Call... To whom? Isn't it for me?

And the heart aches, and the heart aches!

And with a conscience - rigmarole!

Every little step is remembered

My God! Isn't it for this?

With such a suspicious - how stupid!

I drank vodka and ate meatballs!

They get up in the morning. Swelling under the eyes.

But the fear went away with the night.

And a song is whistled about the wide country,

Where it breathes so freely ... and so on.

1954

spell

I will look into your eyes

I will curse you forever.

You can't forget me

And get rid of melancholy.

I'm with the fog - out the window - into your house

And in the fog I melt gray.

You will pass through familiar places

In the alleys of the dark, deaf

You will hear these verses.

And you'll see I'm waiting on the corner

And dissipate into the evening mist.

I will curse you forever.

I am in yours, you are in my captivity.

1974

Eight years is like one year old

Eight years, like one year old,

I got it right, my friend.

And now it's useless to guess

What is in the darkness - the rise or the abyss.

Smiling in the face of adversity

I sing something easy

Only together, neither next nor next

You will not go, dear friend.

1955

***

I love with malice, with suffering,

With heavy choking breath,

With a moment of flying joy,

Ivan Tolstoy:

"" Longing Tatar ""

My Volga melancholy, Tatar,
Old and ancient longing,
My share is poor and royal,
Steppe, feather grass, running centuries.

On the salty Kazakh steppe
I walked with my head uncovered.
Thirsty grass dying babble,
Wind and wolves sullen howl.

So go without thoughts and without fear,
Without a path, on wolf lights,
To triumph, shame or execution,
Wasting energy, not counting the days.

Behind a prickly barrier
A faded once red flag
Ahead - death, revenge, reward,
Sun or wild angry iraq.

Angry darkness, blazing with bonfires, -
Big cities are burning
Choked in purulent shame,
In the throes of forced labor.

Everything will burn, everything will be blown to ashes.
Why does it hurt so much to breathe?
You are closely related to the Europeans,
Dark Tatar soul.

Frankly, the name of Anna Barkova is not well known. Although with such a surname to be a poet is no wonder. But Anna Alexandrovna has nothing to do with the famous 18th-century Russian stalker Ivan Barkov. She is simple, very simple. Andrey, let's start like this - with the biography of Anna Barkova. This biography immediately puts things in their place.

Andrey Gavrilov: You know, Ivan, the biography of Anna Barkova is practically the history of our country in the 20th century. Here it is quite difficult to take and simply say: she was born, lived, studied ... She was born in Ivanovo-Voznesensk, where her father worked as a doorman, which, according to various diary entries and testimonies of her few friends or eyewitnesses who have survived to this day, she told him could not forgive. She believed that this was an unworthy job, especially since there were ancestors behind her - grandfathers, great-grandfathers, Volga barge haulers, romance, and so on.

Ivan Tolstoy: Yes, I remember that in Russian literature there was a footman, that is, a porter, and he, of course, greatly spoiled the biography of his famous son in his time, I, of course, mean Demyan Bedny, whom Yesenin in one of his evil epigrams called it not by chance "Efim Lakeevich Pridvorov"". Pridvorov - was his real name. But this is not Barkova's case, right, Andrey? Barkova overcame her father.

Andrey Gavrilov: I don't know. She rejected him. Once rejected, then, probably, did not overcome. Given that he appeared in her poems, in general, her family surfaced in some poems, rather bitter poems, I think that I did not completely overcome it. Well, God bless her, after all, we are not analyzing her family relationships. Since 1918, Anna Barkova collaborated in the Ivanovo newspaper "Working Land", her immediate supervisor was our famous critic Voronsky in the future. According to some reports, it was Voronsky who became the driving force that, as a result, lured Lunacharsky to Ivanovo-Voznesensk, because Voronsky began to write that it was in Ivanovo-Voznesensk that that new literary life, that new art, was in full swing. which, as he sincerely believed, should replace the bourgeois one, with which the revolutionary masses were so eager to put an end to.

Ivan Tolstoy: But, of course, it goes back to pre-revolutionary propaganda that proletarian literature should be born in small proletarian homelands. And here is a vivid example of Barkova. By the way, both Voronsky and Lunacharsky really began to raise Barkova precisely because they were waiting for a genius from the people's smoked-out proletarian depths.

Andrey Gavrilov: I think that they paid attention to it for this reason, but they began to raise it for other reasons. Voronsky and Lunacharsky, with all that we can present to them as a great historical account, had good taste, this is known, and Barkova's poems, if they were worthless, could not rise, even despite such support. And yet, Lunacharsky noticed her and moved her to Moscow in 1922. He, of course, did not move, he invited her and offered her a job (and then, probably, the most fanatical fact in her biography, considering everything that followed) - a job in the Kremlin, she worked for Lunacharsky in the Kremlin. It was this fact that played the first, very unpleasant role in the biography. The fact is that Lunacharsky at first enjoyed her great confidence, he introduced her to literary circles, she read her poems. By the way, after the first reading, proletarian critics and poets attacked her and tried to stigmatize her, and it is curious that two positive responses to her poems that have come down to us belong to such not quite proletarian writers as Boris Leonidovich Pasternak and Alexander Blok, who even wrote in his diary: "Poetess Anna Barkova from Ivanovo-Voznesensk read her poems. Two interesting "". I'm quoting from memory, but I convey the meaning exactly. For Alexander Blok, the epithet "not without interest" was equal to the praise of some other, more emotional poet.
And finally, the case that turned the life of our heroine. Barkova, who was present at many of Lunacharsky's conversations, including bellboys, kitchen conversations, and confidential ones, was very soon struck by the duplicity of the Bolshevik leadership, when one thing was said from the stands, and something completely different was said among themselves, and in one of her private letters she wrote how she thought, an innocent phrase, that it was already completely impossible with the owner, he was so annoying, "" burn his apartment to hell "". And everything would be fine, but the apartment was in the Kremlin.
And when her letter was intercepted, and, of course, her correspondence, like all those who worked in the Kremlin or worked with the powerful at that time, was looked through, and as soon as this phrase was noticed, she was immediately soldered an attempt to set fire to the Kremlin, or at least the desire to set fire to the Kremlin. Fortunately, the times were not quite cannibalistic yet, and she ""only"" lost her job. Nevertheless, she continues to work, works in newspapers, magazines, publishing houses. One of her works was something like a court chronicler. She did not go, perhaps, to court hearings, but, nevertheless, the court chronicle is what she was instructed to describe.
And here it must be said that in 1922, just when Lunacharsky moved her to Moscow, her only lifetime book of poems "Woman" was published. Lunacharsky wrote a rather laudatory foreword there. In preparation for this program, I re-read Lunacharsky's preface. What can I say? At one time Bukharin wrote a preface to Ehrenburg's Julio Jurenito. This preface is read with delight even now, as an example of literary criticism, penetration into the material. Lunacharsky's preface is forgotten, and thank God. It is empty. It is really enthusiastic, it tries to help the young author, but I did not find anything that would be interesting for us to get there now.
In general, the beginning of the 20s, despite the fact that she lost her job with the mighty of this world, this is probably the peak of her official recognition, she was even called "" proletarian Akhmatova "". She did not react for quite a long time to this nickname, at least I did not find any of her responses, and only many years later, when she was told the phrase that "" you write no worse than Akhmatova "", she allowed herself to answer: " "Well, that's not praise for me." Barkova's early poems, until the end of the 20s, are really a sample of lyrics that critics could well compare or compare with Akhmatova's lyrics.

Ivan Tolstoy: Let's give some example of these early verses.

Enemies on the other side
My old friend.
Oh death come to me
From lovely hands!

I won't sleep tonight...
Tomorrow, my friend
I will look at you tenderly
And I'll cock the trigger.
It's time for you to rest
Oh, how tired you are!
Kiss the bullet in the chest
And I'm in the mouth.

Andrey Gavrilov: I just want to say here that this was written several years before Lavrenev's story ｫ1941” - an obvious plot roll-call, but probably completely accidental. By the way, which is typical for the entire work of Anna Barkova, be it prose, which we have not yet talked about, be it poetry, then some completely otherworldly gift of foresight. Sometimes, when you read some of her poems, in the first second you don’t always understand what era it is about, because you really want to attribute it to today. Or, if you recall her prose (we'll talk about it later), the complete feeling that some passages, some paragraphs, fragments, chapters were written by our contemporary, and only then, when you look at the date of writing at the end of the publication, do you understand that half a century , probably passed between the date of writing and today's our assessment.

Ivan Tolstoy: As an example of confirmation of what you, Andrei, are now talking about, here is a poem by Barkova, absolutely timeless.

The course of the planets is disrupted.
The worlds dance like me.
There is no center now.
Chaos is everywhere.

No center in my soul
I can't find boundaries
I dance all the more fervently, fighting
On the white pages.

The cosmic anthem is not sung, -
Squeals, whistles and howls ...
I'll check for how many more years
In the universal I am a dancer?

Andrey Gavrilov: What year is this?

Ivan Tolstoy: I haven't installed, it seems to be 1927.

Andrey Gavrilov: Since about 1925-27, such notes have appeared in Barkova’s poetry, and that timeless verse that I spoke about, or, rather, that timeless manner of poetry that I spoke about, from my point of view, began to manifest itself especially sharply in her in 1931.
1931, still, as I just said, not quite a cannibalistic time, it seems that there are still some hopes, but, nevertheless, here, listen:

We all screamed a lot
Praise for struggle and work.
Too long the flames burned
Would you like to take a sip of ice?
Didn't achieve goals
And we prevent others from reaching.
Everything was on fire. And now they burned
Turned to ashes and smoke.
Recklessly loving freedom
We brought up a slave race,
Prepared bread and honey
For the coming smart gentlemen.
A new caste is born
Merciless like rock.
Belated sobriety, hello
We are at the feet of the enemy.

It is not surprising that when such notes began to appear in her poems, although this was not published, and very many of these poems were not known to contemporaries, some kind of discord began between the official literary life and Anna Barkova. She herself was well aware that there was no place for her in official literary and near-literary circles and structures. As it was possible at the beginning of the 30s or even at the end of the 20s, the direction of the country's development was more or less clear, but not yet as merciless and hopeless as one could write:

Soaked in blood and bile
Our life and our affairs.
The insatiable heart of a wolf
Fate gave us fate.
Tearing with teeth, claws,
We kill mother and father
We do not throw a stone at the neighbor -
We pierce the heart with a bullet.
A! Shouldn't you think about it?
No need - well, if you please:
Give me universal joy
On a platter like bread and salt.

Remember, in 1925 a huge "Anthology of Soviet Poetry" was published, edited, if I'm not mistaken, by Yezhov.

Ivan Tolstoy: Yezhov and Shamurin.

Andrey Gavrilov: Not that Yezhov.

Ivan Tolstoy: But that Shamurin. And Anna Barkova is included there.

Andrey Gavrilov: But not these verses. There was no place for such poems even in that, in general, non-political "Anthology", which allowed itself a lot, so much that it was not reprinted for 70 or 65 years, there was no place for such poems in such an "Anthology".

Ivan Tolstoy: On December 1, 1934, as you know, Sergei Mironovich Kirov was shot dead in Leningrad, and arrests began, widespread and indiscriminate. Anna Barkova fell victim to the persecution and search for enemies. She was arrested in December 1934 and in March 1935 she ended up in the Butyrka detention center, from where she wrote a letter to the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs asking her not to exile her, but to subject her to capital punishment, to execution. Why? Because she wrote that she was ill and could not stand the prison and camp conditions. The reason for which she was arrested was quite simple and common at that time - there was talk among themselves about who killed Sergei Mironovich Kirov, and Barkova threw through her teeth: "They killed the wrong one!". In general, she was incredibly sharp and unrestrained with her tongue. So, the first Barkov term began, which lasted five years - from 1934 to 1939 - and then even more frightening, metaphysically frightening notes appeared in her poetry.

Steppe and sky, and wild wind,
Yes, death, yes meager depravity.
Yes. I see, oh great God,
There is a great hell.
Only he is not there, not behind the coffin,
He's right here, surrounding me
Anger of a maddened blizzard,
Hotter than pitch and fire.

Andrey Gavrilov: You know, Ivan, here I want to make such a small footnote and go back half a step. Indeed, for many, the murder of Kirov was some kind of frontier, after which it all began. There is a lot of evidence about this, how many times have I read that the assassination of Kirov is a turning point in our policy, and every time I read this, I had the feeling that now, from the 21st century, we are looking at this story, and we are so wise , like sixth-graders, those sixth-graders who write essays "Dostoevsky did not understand" and "Pushkin could not reveal"". Here we are looking at this era, and we think: why didn’t you notice before, how could you be so naive, did you really need to shoot one of your “own” high-ranking people in order for you to have doubts? I never believed that the whole people, the whole country were walking blindly and - suddenly - a shot in 1934 and an epiphany began. I knew it was impossible. Why did I ask for a half step back? Because I found evidence in Barkova's poems that, yes, it was impossible and no, the whole country did not go, stupidly thinking that it was good. Here is mine, already quoted, 1931.

I see everything ghostly and stuffy,
And a long corridor
And a number of indifferent rifles,
Point-blank...

"Team... Volley... Body fall.
Dawn gloom and haze.
The usual simple thing
Nothing terrible
People leave without question
In the familiar clear world
And kneads a cigarette
Calm Commander
Banners of fiery song
Throw up and down
And in the corridor stuffy mold
And a feast of hungry rats

Here is a poem without a title. What can I say here, before 1934, before the stupid phrase, before the landing and before the assassination of Kirov, which seemed to have aroused some suspicions among the majority of the intelligentsia, there were still more than 3 years left.

Ivan Tolstoy: Of course, despair begins to take Anna Barkova, despair becomes her muse, her main theme, she begins to hate not only her fate and not only herself, the victim of all these unfortunate circumstances, she begins to hate the whole world around her, and this terrible, sublimely poetic psychosis , of course, should be understood as the absolute, extreme despair of a person who, of course, on the one hand, gives an account of his own words, and, on the other hand, this is such a height of restlessness that we cannot directly condemn the woman of the poet who writes this:

I would like the most, the most terrible,
Transformations of blood, water and fire,
So that no one remembers yesterday
And no one would wait for tomorrow.

So that people, whitened with respectable gray hairs,
Killed and raped at every gate
To bastards their infamy
raised like a banner
And with a mocking smile they went to the scaffold.

It’s already impossible to comment here, this is already an incredibly black world, but this is the black world of a person who is driven between the shoulder blades with a butt into this worldview.

Andrey Gavrilov: When I think of the various testimonies of what went through the minds of the people sent to the camps. We know that there were those who believed that this was a mistake of the party, there were those who believed that this was not exactly a mistake of the party, not only a mistake in relation to me, everyone is guilty, but I am not guilty, we knew those who considered whatever it may be, but we must, nevertheless, putting our lives on the altar of patronymic and further spitting blood to go to a brighter future, among all these voices, which, no matter how honest they are, nonetheless merge into what - a pink bouquet, these lines by Barkova, this voice is valuable to me because it still gives us a very, very diverse palette. Here I would compare her a little, in no way comparing or directly comparing the lines or the life path, with Shalamov, a man who, perhaps, did not call for such a thing, but, nevertheless, who had not the slightest illusions about the life around him.

Ivan Tolstoy:

"Hate a Friend"

Sick of a forgiving disease
The human race is tired.
This book is a hot coal
Everyone gets burned who reads

More than an enemy, fight a friend
Historical law dictates.
That criminal who love is an affliction
Too heavy these days.

He walks a tangled path
And hides from the sun like a thief.
'Cause love forgives too much
And apostasy and disgrace.

Let our goal be dearer to us
Mothers and brothers and fathers.
After all, you have to shoot, maybe
To your favorite face.

Retribution for a right court is not easy, -
Freeze heart and mouth
Tenderness mighty and cursed
Not burdensome.

Hate is clear and frank
Hatred is directed towards the enemy
That's love - forgives all treason,
And she is a painful disease.

This book is a hot coal.
Do you see my open chest?
We hate each other in the name
We curse the family in the name.

Andrey Gavrilov: As you already said, Ivan, Anna Barkova ended up in Karlag for five years, where she spent the period from 1935 to 1939. In 1940 she settled in Karlag under administrative supervision, where she lived until 1947. There is an interesting detail here. When the war began, the local GB, whatever it was called at that time, came to check the politically unreliable for possible treason, possible betrayal in case the enemy was very close or already practically in the city. And she was subjected to, let's say in modern terms, an interview. But even the KGB, even at that time, even though she served 5 years as politically unreliable, were forced to admit that the concepts of treason and betrayal were so alien to her character that things did not go beyond this interview-conversation, they left her behind . In 1947 she was arrested again. By the way, Ivan, she was arrested for what, or why, would that be more accurate?

Ivan Tolstoy: Yes, ""for what"" - not a single prisoner will forgive you such a question. But I'm not a prisoner, I generously forgive. She was arrested in November 1947. But a few months before that, in the summer of 1947, she was going to Moscow, her Kaluga was painfully sick to her, she hated her, and she had the idea to settle in her homeland, in Ivanovo. But for this, she went to Moscow to talk with some people, acquaintances, friends whom she trusted and from whom she wanted, as it were, to verify the correctness of her decision. But these plans were not destined to come true, because she was arrested on the denunciation of the Kaluga landlady and her daughter. Scammers wrote that Barkova ""writes gloomily about Soviet reality and speaks angrily at Comrade Stalin"". Well, communal apartment, so all conversations were heard. She was given ten years in the camp and disenfranchised for five years after serving her sentence. She ended up in the famous Abez camp and, as some of Barkova's few biographers, in particular, Oleg Khlebnikov and Lev Anninsky, write, Barkova's soul came to life in Abezi. She was surrounded by people who could appreciate the originality of her nature. And the poetry began.

Andrey Gavrilov: I want to say, by the way, that Barkova's camp poems are not like any camp poems that I happened to read, moreover, they are not like any literature about camps that I came across or that I looked for and read. The fact is that if you look at her biography, at the dates, we will see that her youth fell on the camps, there was a time when any person is especially in dire need of love, not only romantic, not only sublime, but also physical, when touch is so necessary, when simple human contact is so necessary, something that, naturally, people in the camps are deprived of. And Anna Barkova, with unprecedented honesty, unprecedented sincerity, writes about this side of camp life. I do not undertake to read these poems now, simply because I know for sure that my performance will be so much lower than what Anna Barkova wrote, that I suggest to everyone who would be interested in opening the book themselves and familiarizing themselves with them. I just don't dare to read them. But these are absolutely penetrating verses, from which the skin goes cold, when you imagine young people, women and men, who are forced to steal seconds, minutes, moments of a personal meeting under the terrible, inhuman cackle and laughter of the VOKhrovites. Many lines of Barkova are devoted to this, and I think that these poems are perhaps one of the most powerful of what she wrote.

Pen for human cattle.
Entered here - do not rush back.
There are no rooms here. Wretched cabins.
On the bunk tags. On the shoulders - a pea jacket.
And the thieves' spasm of the meeting,
A chance meeting, somewhere out there
in the canopy.
Without a word, without love. Why are we talking here?
Only an eunuch or a monk will condemn.

On the watch there is a cabin for dates,
With a cynical joke put there
bed:
Here to the prisoner, the poor creature,
It is allowed to sleep with a legal husband.

The country of holy pathos and construction,
Is it possible to fall more terrible and easier -
Is it possible on this mean bunk
To corrupt forever marital passion!

Under laughter, hooting and whistles,
By permission of the evil scoundrel...
No, better, better frank
shot,
So honestly piercing hearts.

Ivan Tolstoy: Indeed, in the camp on Vorkuta, in Abezi, she wrote two poems and more than 160 poems. And these are only those that are known, that have come down to us and that have been published in recent years. Andrey, I still allow myself, for those who cannot get Anna Alexandrovna's poems, to read something.

As our woeful spirit is tenacious,
A greedy heart is deceitful!
Poetry's ringing key
Breaks into the depths of the ditch.
In some poor land
Scurvy, swamps, barbed fences
I love and sing about love
One of the best songs.

And here is another poem, written literally three weeks later, in the same 1955, with somewhat reduced pathos.

We only feel for the rhyme
For aesthetics with hunger mrem.
For the sake of glory, I suffer from typhus,
For the sake of the lines we burn with fire.
Only in the name of literature
Our deeds and sins.
Gushing blood from the torn skin,
For better poetry.

Andrey Gavrilov: I want to say here, just by making a footnote, that after all, those who are interested in this can refer to Anna Barkova's excellent collection, which is called "Forever Not the Same". This book was published in 2002 by the Sergei Dubov Foundation and is still available, it can be bought on the Internet and, for sure, in many bookstores.
Anna Barkova was released in 1956. How pleasant it would be to say: here is the "thaw", the historic congresses of the CPSU, the debunking of the cult of personality, everything is fine, the country is going a different way. True, we know that later, in the 60s and 70s, everything will turn around, but so far, at least for a few years, there is nothing of the kind. In 1956, Anna Barkova, having been released, settled in the village of Shterovka near Lugansk in Ukraine, and already on November 13, 1957, despite the "thaw", she was arrested for the third time and imprisoned in a camp in Mordovia, as before. on charges of anti-Soviet agitation. By the way, it must be said here that Anna Barkova found herself in the Luhansk region fearing just such a development of events. She was in Moscow in 1956, living with friends, and when she saw the preparations for the World Festival of Youth and Students, obviously with the sharp scent of an old convict, she realized that they would begin to check everyone who was in the capital, this would mean additional vigilance of the authorities and, in order to not to let anyone down, she went to Ukraine, to Lugansk. But it didn't save her. As I said, in November 1957 she was arrested for the third time. Ivan, now let's tell you, since you talked about the previous tragic story, what happened this time.

Ivan Tolstoy: This time some really terrible story happened, a monstrous injustice and a real misfortune for Anna Alexandrovna, if you can call the next landing such a misfortune in comparison with the other two that she experienced. They say different things about the reasons for her arrest, someone says that it was another denunciation, in which it was reported that she was listening to Voice of America, someone said that, having received her rehabilitation papers by mail in this Shterovka, Anna Alexandrovna sent a letter to someone, in which she either expressed her dissatisfaction with not publishing it, or with the recall of some edition, or commented on these papers about rehabilitation that had not arrived for too long. In short, she was followed, the letter was intercepted, perused, read and Barkova was arrested once again. That is, after the 20th Congress, a year and a half after that, when, it would seem, everyone who could, all the innocently convicted, as well as "criminals", those who passed under the political article, under the 58th, were released, And - no - Barkova again received a term - 8 years. And those eight years really finished her off. She did not die in the camp during these years, but her mental and mental state was indeed on the verge of normality. There are a number of memories about Barkova during the camp period, there were already vegetarian years even in the camps themselves, and people who left these camps were able to publish their memoirs, some quickly, some not so quickly.

One of the witnesses to the third Barkov term is Irina Verblovskaya, who ended up in the Khrushchev camps under the 58th, political article. Irina Savelyevna was the wife of one of the most famous activists and self-publishers, Revolt Pimenov. Irina Verblovskaya - at our microphone.

Irina Verblovskaya on the Taishet highway. March 1960

Irina Verblovskaya: I met her in the summer of 1958. I first noticed a new woman, very impulsive. They walked together - she and Anna Petrovna Skrypnikova. Anna Petrovna was a very corpulent woman, with restrained manners, she had a certain stamp of a strict teacher. And Anna Alexandrovna was a very lively person, not only impressionable, but also very emotional. And so they walked and talked about something. But about what - who knows. And suddenly I heard Anna Alexandrovna say to Anna Petrovna (it's not hard to guess what they were talking about): "No, I won't forgive them Christ and Marx!" Here, of course, I pricked up my ears, but I didn’t hear anything else - they passed by. It was the first time I saw Anna Alexandrovna. And then we got along pretty quickly. I had some books, she had books, we exchanged. It seems to me that I took Du Gard "The Thibault Family" from her, or maybe I already read it. In general, this book somehow figured. In any case, we didn't get to know each other that easily. She did not give her trust very much, she had quite a lot of camp experience, but she treated me well and, perhaps, confidentially. And as for her poems, which I had already heard then, about her fate, you just need to read everything that is written. She, of course, knew her worth, she understood that she was carrying a cross, such a redemptive cross.

Ivan Tolstoy: Irina Savelyevna, many people remember that Anna Alexandrovna had a bad temper.

Irina Verblovskaya: Of course, it was a bad character! Can anyone talk about this? What can be in the camp complaisant, good character? She has been beaten all her life. She had a completely uncompromising character! But this did not apply to me, firstly, and, secondly, I myself have a bad character. And, thirdly, by nature it is not possible to judge in such extreme conditions. Here it is necessary to judge the measure of decency - where a person does what is possible, and where - what is impossible. What is included in his standard? As in other conditions they say "hand-give" or "not hand-give". She was hands-on. Therefore, everything else can be knocked off.

Ivan Tolstoy: Was it possible at that time in the zone to freely write poetry and keep them?

Irina Verblovskaya: You could write poetry. But nothing was free, because at any moment during the search it could disappear. Of course, it was necessary to hide. But this last term she almost did not write poetry, if not to say that she did not write at all. It's hard to understand. The only explanation for this is that she practically did not have an appropriate environment. Maybe that's why she was drawn to me, although I was a person of a different generation - there is always a big barrier between generations. But during her second term, she wrote, and wrote a lot. Between her second and third terms, she also wrote, although she switched to prose then. By the way, she told me her prose. When I read the published prose, it made less of an impression on me than when she retold it to me. It was such a thick Orwell. And this period, when she was last, and she was for a very long time - she was arrested in 1957 and only in 1965 she was released. Eight years is no joke. When she got to the camp, she was bright red, with very beautiful red curls that somehow framed her very expressive and ugly face. And then she quickly turned absolutely gray and already the image that at first took shape began to change - both outwardly and in essence too. Because to spend eight years in prison, having a lot of camp experience already, in conditions where there is no one to really say a word with, this is a very difficult test. And she didn't write much. And she not only remembered her camp poems well, she renewed them. Not redone, but renewed. There was such a case, it was the spring of 1959, when she came to my barracks and read to me a lot of her poems in a row. Later, already in the wild, at another time, I found out that this was even from young poems, not like the last zone. But now she had to somehow relive what she had written.

Andrey Gavrilov: You know, Ivan, here I want to say a few words about 1956-57, when Anna Barkova lived in freedom near Lugansk. The fact is that relatively recently Barkova's works have been published and continue to be published, which have never been published before, and which have often been preserved by a miracle. In one of the articles I even read kind words addressed to those investigators of the state security agencies who did not throw away and did not throw away (given that we are talking about three terms) Barkova's works, but filed them into the case as material evidence. And now, when these cases were disclosed, declassified, we were given the opportunity to get acquainted with these works. I don't know if it is really possible to thank the KGB investigators for something, I would rather thank the case or fate that ordered these works to reach us. And, of course, those researchers of Barkova's work, who in different cities, primarily in Ivanovo-Voznesensk, are doing everything to preserve her legacy.
So, in 1957, Anna Barkova began to write a lot of prose. She wrote prose even before that, but here it was as if some kind of gate had opened, some kind of gateway. I have already spoken about her prophetic gift and all those who doubt my words, I refer to her story "How the Moon Is Made". When I read this short story, it is less than 100 pages, and in a small book format. This is another book by Anna Barkova, not the one I was talking about, it is called "" Eight chapters of madness. Prose and diaries "", and also published by the Sergei Dubov Foundation in Moscow, but relatively recently, in 2009. It includes works that were not included in the previous volume, partially not included.
So, when I was reading this short story, at some point I began to giggle, because I suddenly realized that I was reading the history of the State Emergency Committee, I was reading the history of the coup. Successful, unsuccessful - I will not reveal the plot of the story, but this is what I recently observed. And then, where I was not, that is, the negotiations of the participants, were published in the Soviet press at that time, and, perhaps, already in the Russian press, and the coincidence of some phrases, some paragraphs was almost textual. Then I suddenly realized that I was not reading the history of the GKChP, I was reading the history of what happened after the GKChP, I was reading the history of Russia, which turned upside down when another elite came to power (maybe democratic, maybe not democratic, now it’s not about that conversation, we are talking about the mechanism of the change of power), and when I happily finished reading this story, it suddenly dawned on me that I was reading a thing written in 1957, and this was not an assessment of the State Emergency Committee, not a change of power in the USSR-Russia, but this a story about how de-Stalinization was carried out. I have never seen a single, let alone a work of art, where it would be so clearly shown that the mechanisms of power change, the mechanisms of behind-the-scenes games, the motivation of the participants, in general, are decomposed as two and two, even if they have different goals, different slogans and different outcomes of their activities. The story is a little scary in that it shows where everything will come to. No less funny, by the way, and then written, in 1957 (funny not in the sense of being funny, but in the sense that somehow the whole story suddenly turns the other way) is the story "Eight Chapters of Madness", which gave the name the whole book. This is a rather large conversation by the standards of Barkova (more than 120 pages) between the heroine and the devil. I don't think that Anna Barkova knew the manuscript of The Master and Margarita in 1957, but the similarity of some ideas, some twists, some plot moves is simply mesmerizing. In the same book, Barkova's dystopia "The Liberation of Gynguania" was published for the first time.
I believe that the whole history of science fiction literature, the whole history of world dystopia should now be read in a completely different way, because the work of Anna Barkova cannot but stand in the bottom row with those great works that we know - "We" Zamyatin, " "Brave New World" by Huxley, "1984" by Orwell and then "The Warning Novel" by the Strugatskys. Here between them stands the story of Barkova. I repeat, you must read it, it is simply necessary.

Now the name of Barkova, thank God, is not in danger of oblivion - books, articles about her, performances dedicated to her are published, exhibitions are held. And a disc was released on her songs, which was recorded by the Leningrad performer, bard, composer Elena Frolova. She turned, first of all, to the lyrical side of Barkova's talent. Most of the poems that she took as material for her songs are poems from the initial period of Barkova's work. Elena Frolova, song lyrics by Anna Barkova.

(Song)

Ivan Tolstoy: Since 1966, having been released after her third - last - term, Barkova lived in Moscow. She died 10 years later in 1976, she was buried in the Moscow church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker in Khamovniki. The urn with her ashes was buried at the Nikolo-Arkhangelsk cemetery.

One of her most recent poems from 1975

I myself, probably dreamed of someone,
And someone will probably wake up now.
That is why there is a sick sadness in the soul ...
Who will wake up? Who will meet the dawn hour?
Who will remember the dream heavy and vague
And he will ask: was this dream a dream?
Who wakes up in an uncomfortable room,
Like in a cold river mist?