German rifle 44. History of the first assault rifle Sturmgewehr Stg.44

How it was done in the USSR
Varyag reminds us in time - “How it was done in the USSR”
Hot summer of 1972
"Among the catastrophic fires of the last 30 years, one can name the natural disaster of 1972, when forest and peat fires engulfed more than a dozen regions of central Russia. The fire burned over an area of 1,800 thousand hectares. 460 thousand hectares of forest burned in the Gorky region, in the Mari Autonomous republic - 195 thousand, in Moscow and Penza regions- 25 thousand each
The extreme fire danger period was characterized by high temperature air, critically low relative humidity, moderate to strong winds and exceptionally low rainfall. Even the winter of that year was unusually mild. In some areas the last time snow fell was in December. February was full of sunny days. Spring and summer passed without rain. The temperature in the shade exceeded 30 degrees. Due to the unusually dry and hot weather, which long time persisted in many regions of central Russia; already in July, massive forest and peat fires arose, which in August took on the character natural disaster. In the third ten days of August in these regions, over 650 thousand hectares of forest, about 35 thousand hectares of peat, and 4900 peat stacks were engulfed in fire.
When the entire Moscow region began to smoke, the first thing the regional committee of the CPSU did was to create a fire-fighting headquarters. It was headed by the first secretary of the regional committee V.I. Konotop. People's controllers were raised to their feet. The whole country helped fight the fire. The then Minister of Defense, Marshal Grechko, temporarily moved to Shatura, and Konotop also moved there. There was a system that had everything: people, technology, and discipline. And yet, 19 villages burned down in the Moscow region alone. And more than 70 thousand people took part in extinguishing the fires, including 24 thousand military personnel. The fire reaped a terrible harvest: forest and peat fires in the Moscow region claimed the lives of 104 people. There was so much smoke that the Ministry of Railways had to change train routes on the approaches to the capital. At a meeting of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee, the question was considered: why did fires spread from peat bogs to forests? The tough measures that were taken are evidenced by the fact that the meeting of the country's highest political body entrusted the general leadership of extinguishing fires to the First Deputy Minister of Defense of the USSR. The burning areas were divided into squares, and 9 specially mobilized pipeline brigades were brought in there. Water was supplied through pipes continuously in any direction, and the outcome of the “battle” was a foregone conclusion. The peat bogs were literally “packed” with a thick layer of water, and then the fire was knocked out in the forests.
During the period of the greatest development of fires, about 360 thousand people were simultaneously involved in fighting them, including over 100 thousand military personnel of the civil defense forces, engineering and other troops, as well as up to 15 thousand units of earth-moving and other equipment.”
Http://www.kbzhd.ru/education/index.php?ID=8497
By the way, in 1972 I myself took part in extinguishing the beginnings of a forest fire (with an area of several tens of meters, but it could have blown up). We were walking with the guys to the cupazzo - and there it was, on fire. They put it out. They all came home black, covered in soot. Instead of the expected pussy, we received gratitude from our parents...

__________________________________________________

How it is in our bright democratic present

In our bright democratic present.
Light probably from the fires. Although what kind of light is there during peat fires? Well, what it is.

And of course, the insidious Bolsheviks who drained the swamps are to blame for everything. The question is interesting in principle, but I have not yet found more detailed materials, especially regarding the relationship between drainage and current fires.

To catch up, so to speak. Ukraine and Belarus offered their assistance in extinguishing the fires. Nice.

The abnormal heat that has gripped Central Russia, including Moscow, since the end of June, and the almost complete absence of rains and cyclones that could bring at least temporary relief, recall the sultry summer of 1972 to Muscovites. The Izvestia columnist tried to reconstruct the chronology of events based on publications of that time, documents and eyewitness memories.

“In Moscow over the past 100 years,” Izvestia wrote on July 13, 1972, “only four times—in 1941, 1946, 1948, 1956—June was warmer than this.” There was no panic, however, either in the press or on television. Only careful notes “From the editorial notebook” about the poorly equipped beaches of local reservoirs, which are so important in the heat, and about the need to establish trade in non-alcoholic soft drinks.

There was also a breakdown of the assortment: “Uninterrupted trade in beer, lemonade, mineral water..." And non-binding observations: "For many days in a row we have been listening with special attention to the weather report: it's hot..." And then - advice on how to quench your thirst in the heat and how to cool yourself down. Green tea, if believe them, it's better cold water. Today doctors would argue with this statement, but then the argument made no sense: green tea was almost not sold, and very rarely would it occur to anyone to drink this tea.

The forecast for August, published on July 27, no matter how skeptical we are about the promises of weather forecasters, is striking in its inaccuracy: “In the fourth and fifth five-day days, hot days will be replaced by cool weather with daytime temperatures of 15-20 degrees.” There was nothing even close to this. And that’s the only reason why the summer of 1972 is now perceived as a complete analogue of today’s situation: then, for the only time in history, all three months turned out to be warmer than usual.

According to weather services, June 1972 exceeded the norm by almost a degree (in 2010 - by 2.2 degrees), July became the third warmest month in the history of meteorological observations (July 2010 is 7.7 degrees ahead of the norm), and August 1972 exceeded the norm by 4 degrees and set an absolute record. With precipitation - the same picture. In June of this year, 62 mm fell (in 1972 - 40 mm), in July - so far - only 12 mm against 94 mm according to the norm and 25 mm of rain that fell on Muscovites in July 1972. And it’s not that there weren’t rains all this time - they happened, but sporadically. The heat did not subside, the humidity increased, it was impossible to breathe...

Everyone saw and felt this, but there was nowhere to read about it. Today it is difficult to imagine how little information about the consequences of weather anomalies leaked into the press in those years, and how journalists had to dodge in order to write at least something about a forbidden subject.

Note "Mole" against fire" about how in two villages near Moscow Vasyutino and Alekseevo they tested new technology for extinguishing peat bogs, published on August 15 in Izvestia under the heading “In the fight against the elements,” sincerely glorifies the feat Soviet man, but does not hint at the real situation. “The new task of the workers of the experimental laboratory, which is led by the experienced hydraulic engineer D. Kushnarev,” wrote its author V. Letov, “includes not extinguishing fires, but their localization, but nevertheless, fire experts have already noted that the help of Muscovites in the fight against "The disaster turned out to be truly decisive in the Pavlovsky Posad area." That is, it is already clear that the peat is burning, but the scale of the fires is unclear to readers. The scale of the disaster was obvious only to the population, which over these months had become accustomed, even in the center of Moscow, to the constant smell of burning and dense haze that obscured the sun.

“Smoky haze” - these words from weather forecasts, repeated throughout August 1972, can be considered the most daring and honest publications. If today the smell of burning is sometimes felt in certain areas of the Moscow region, then 38 years ago, starting on the 20th of August, it was also present on Tverskaya (at that time still bearing the name of Gorky). It was sometimes impossible to distinguish faces a few meters away. Heart patients suffered heart attacks, hospitals were overcrowded, mortality in the center of Moscow increased... On July 25, 1972, in 30-degree heat, the brilliant actor and clown Leonid Yengibarov died of a heart attack. The central press did not consider this event worthy of mention.

It was also not reported that in August the mobilization of reservists began to extinguish fires near Moscow, mainly in the vicinity of Shatura and Noginsk, where there were especially massive fires. Eyewitnesses recall that they took reserve officers of the second category, that is, over 40 - mainly those with " military specialty"Chemical protection was listed. And then they began to take construction workers. At dawn they brought home a summons to the military registration and enlistment office demanding that they appear at eight in the morning with their things at collection point- it was located somewhere near Belorusskaya. Why over 40? Because the “old men” were not subject to conscription in the event of hostilities. True, there was no war in the surrounding area, but they still took those who were older, regardless of age, illness and regalia. Factory directors, lab managers, doctors of sciences were sent to fires... Even veterans of the Great Patriotic War, who at that time were around 50. Most were from higher education. At first, relatives received letters from them, folded into triangles, like during the war. The reservists were put on special equipment on caterpillar tracks to dig out the burning areas of the forest. Participants in the events remember how they were mobilized by order of martial law, and everyone expected to eventually receive a full salary, to which they had every right. And they were paid only three-quarters of their salaries, as they were called up for officer retraining courses.

Newspapers, meanwhile, reported on the timely harvest (without focusing on its small quantity) and on the successful preparation for the upcoming Olympics-72 - the same one in Munich, notorious for the terrible terrorist attack carried out by the Black September group. And the reservists extinguished the fires right up to mid-September, until the order for demobilization came - nature had mercy, the rains came.

It would be nice if we didn't have to wait so long...

Plan:

1 Prerequisites for drought
2 July and August 1972
3 Fighting the elements
4 Press coverage

Introduction

Drought in the USSR in 1972- a complex of unfavorable weather conditions observed in June-August 1972 in the central zone of the European part of Russia. The summer of 1972 was unprecedentedly hot and dry throughout the European part of Russia; in some areas of central Russia, practically not a drop of precipitation fell.

1972 was the only year in Moscow where all three summer months (June, July and August) were warmer than normal. Also, this year's drought was the most severe in the entire 20th century.

The severe drought has caused severe forest fires. In 1972, 6,500 square kilometers of forest burned in the RSFSR (about a seventh of the area of the Moscow region). In the Moscow region alone, fire burned 19 villages, killing 104 people. Dyakov, Anatoly predicted drought based on observations of the Sun.

1. Prerequisites for drought

The winter of 1971-1972 was severe and relatively light in snow. Severe frosts persisted in Moscow until mid-March. As a result, the soil was unable to accumulate large quantities moisture reserves.

Already in May-June 1972, soil drought began to be observed. Due to drought, spring wheat, barley, and oats died. Winter crops survived in some places where there was a fairly large snow cover in winter.

2. July and August 1972

Unprecedented heat came to central Russia after the formation of the so-called “blocking anticyclone,” which occurred in the first ten days of July. At the same time, the last precipitation fell.

During the summer of 1972, the temperature exceeded +30 °C in Moscow 26 times, and only 82 mm of precipitation fell in the summer, of which 62 mm fell in June. During July and August, only 20 mm of precipitation fell.

The drought broke out shortly after the arrival of the anticyclone. For a month and a half, practically not a drop of precipitation fell. Fires of peat bogs and forests began, and Moscow was shrouded in smoke for a long period of time. The army was brought in to put out the fires, but the fires destroyed entire villages.

The smog was so dense that it was impossible to see the other from one bank of the Moscow River.

The drought covered an unprecedented territory - the Volga region, where the heat reached almost 40 °C, the Urals, and to a slightly lesser extent - the North-West of Russia. However, in Moscow, probably due to heavy smoke, the temperature never reached 35 degrees, and at night sometimes dropped below +10 degrees.

August 1972 became unusually warm and dry throughout the European territory, and is the warmest until 2010 for Moscow ( average temperature+20.6 °C), and Kharkov (average temperature +23.9 °C), and a number of other cities. July 1972 was the warmest until 2010 in Leningrad (St. Petersburg) (average temperature +22.1 °C).

Extreme heat also affected southern Russia. In some places not a drop of precipitation fell.

The drought gradually moved from the southern regions of Russia to the north, as the anticyclone spread and intensified.

3. Fight against the elements

Due to peat fires, Moscow was shrouded in smog. In 1972, 6,000 hectares of forest burned in the Moscow region, and more than 3,000 forest and peat fires were recorded. Smog stayed in Moscow for at least a month. People could not leave the house; they could not breathe.

The situation with peat fires was critical. The army was brought in to extinguish them, but the situation was only reversed on August 23, when the blocking anticyclone disintegrated, and all the fires were finally extinguished only by September 10.

For Soviet Union drought became a real disaster. Purchases of grain abroad began, and an air conditioning plant was opened for the first time in Baku. Gold and foreign exchange reserves were spent on the purchase of grain - 486 tons of gold were sold abroad (≈22 billion dollars at the current cost of gold).

More than 30 thousand volunteers were recruited to extinguish the fire, including collective farm workers, workers, police officers and 24 thousand firefighters. Earth-moving vehicles were used (almost 15 thousand self-propelled earth-moving vehicles) and more than two and a half thousand fire engines and pumping devices, which worked continuously for 14-20 hours a day. The volume of water that was poured onto the fires from above and pumped into the burning peatlands using pipelines was about 90 thousand tons per day.

The fight against the fire was controlled by the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee, and the extinguishing was headed by the Minister of Defense of the USSR, Marshal Grechko, who settled for almost two months in Shatura, near Moscow, which became the center of the fires. The most difficult situation developed in Shatura, Orekhovo-Zuevsky, Yegoryevsky, Noginsky and Pavlovo-Posad districts Moscow region . In addition to the Moscow region, the fire raged in Tver, Vladimir, Kostroma, and to a lesser extent, in other regions.

4. Press coverage

The press paid relatively little attention to the drought. Photos of this natural disaster were rarely published in newspapers, and events related to the fires were sparingly covered on television. However, it was not possible to completely hide information from the population. A gathering of volunteer detachments was organized to extinguish the fires. There was large-scale propaganda regarding the medical side of the incident, but there were still recommendations - do not go outside unnecessarily, wear a gauze bandage and drink plenty of fluids.

Notes

1 2 3 4 Weather in Moscow in August 1972 - thermo.karelia.ru/weather/w_history.php?town=msk&month=8&year=1972
40 years ago, meteorologists said the same words about the causes of heat - news.gismeteo.ru/news.n2?item=63417213582
Fires in the Moscow region in 1972 - eco.rian.ru/ecovideo/20100806/262064030.html
Yuri Rost. Article about Dyakov - www.yury-rost.ru/portrets/century/item9/
Weather in Moscow in January 1972 - thermo.karelia.ru/weather/w_history.php?town=msk&month=1&year=1972
Weather in Moscow in March 1972 - thermo.karelia.ru/weather/w_history.php?town=msk&month=3&year=1972
1 2 Weather in Moscow in July 1972 - thermo.karelia.ru/weather/w_history.php?town=msk&month=7&year=1972
Summer 1972. How it was - news.gismeteo.ru/news.n2?item=63417213582
Video of the first channel. As it was 38 years ago. - news.gismeteo.ru/video.n2?item=63417203529
Smog 1972 - www.1tv.ru/news/social/159175
Weather in Saratov in July 1972 - thermo.karelia.ru/weather/w_history.php?town=sar&month=7&year=1972
Weather in Orenburg in July 1972 - thermo.karelia.ru/weather/w_history.php?town=sar&month=7&year=1972
Weather in St. Petersburg in August 1972 - thermo.karelia.ru/weather/w_history.php?town=spb&month=8&year=1972
Weather in Astrakhan in July 1972 - thermo.karelia.ru/weather/w_history.php?town=ast&month=7&year=1972
How forests burned in 1972 - news.bcm.ru/doc/9687
30 thousand volunteers fought the fire element - eco.rian.ru/ecovideo/20100806/262064030.html
Air conditioners began to be produced in Baku after 1972 - www.vesti.ru/doc.html?id=378604&photo_id=444889&p=1&fr=0
Is there enough bread? - www.aif.ru/money/article/36408
Fire element of 1972 - eco.rian.ru/ecovideo/20100806/262064030.html

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SUMMER 1972

Chapter Six

And the summer of seventy-two came. The summer in which everything crossed came together.

It started with heat, everything was blooming wildly, especially lilacs... Especially on Tsvetnoy Boulevard. Snow-white, soft lilac, violet-lilac... Oh, how many lilacs there were on Tsvetnoy Boulevard at the beginning of that summer!...

And all - in the stuffy poplar snow...

The heat was completely southern, thick, velvety...

SUMMER 1972. The greatest summer of my life.

This is a whole life, terrible and beautiful, strangely contained in one summer...

There are probably times in every person’s life: days, weeks, months when time behaves in an incomprehensible way. When days contain years, weeks - centuries, and months - entire eras...

This summer EVERYTHING ended for me.

And – EVERYTHING began.

...And this summer began cheerfully and carefree. It was hot from the very first days of June. Juicy, long-awaited heat after a harsh winter and gloomy spring. The lilacs were blooming like crazy... Not only on Tsvetnoy Boulevard, but also in small parks, in courtyards - lilac and purple clouds everywhere... lilacs burst from behind every fence...

We opened it with Tanyushka Nestrueva.

And it happened like this.

There was little work at the beginning of summer. Sitting in the office and chatting is boring, hot... Tanya and I went for a walk during the lunch break. And we walked for two, three hours. We wandered through the streets and courtyards of Old Moscow, we both adored it. Once we wandered onto Sretensky Boulevard and SAW THE ROOF!...

How come I haven’t seen this roof before? Strange, incomprehensible, but true.

But Natasha Duchesne and I walked along this boulevard more than once, back in that spring of 1970, when we wandered around Moscow like crazy, and talked only about the Clown... Only him and about him... So we had no time roofs Because only the playpen loomed before my eyes. The arena was higher than all the rooftops! The playpen was equal to the world. And only our eyes were fixed on him... Mine, that’s for sure. I won’t say that about Duchesne. After all, she had some kind of other life. But when we joined together for this wandering around Moscow, everything except the arena and the Clown on it disappeared from our field of vision...

And so Tanya and I saw the Roof!

A huge house on the corner of Sretensky Boulevard and Frolov Lane. And if you tilt your head back, you will see attics... turrets... spiers... and a clock on the main tower... Probably, you can see something fabulous in the Baltics. Or in Holland, in the country of my beloved Andersen, where I have never been and are unlikely to ever be. And here - such a miracle from a fairy tale!

“Tanya, I want to go there!”

And we went to look for a way out onto the roof...

We went into every entrance, fortunately it was a time when people in Moscow did not yet know about combination locks on entrance doors. We entered every entrance; there were wide ancient staircases with mighty steps, high heavy doors, there was an aroma of the nineteenth century, or maybe the eighteenth. We took the elevator to the top floor, but... there was no exit to the attic anywhere! So we explored the entrances leading onto the boulevard and alleys. And then we saw a high arch. And they entered the courtyard...

It was deserted, without a single tree, half bathed in the hot sun, half in cool deep shade, such a typical St. Petersburg courtyard. The doors of the entrances also opened here. We immediately headed to the entrance - in the very depths of the yard.

It turned out to be a back staircase. Ajar shabby doors, trash cans on the landings, the smells of the kitchen... and again I remember Dostoevsky’s Petersburg... It seems that now Raskolnikov, pale from hunger, will come down the dusty stairs from above... with an ax under his arm... or some cook with a basket...

The elevator didn't work. We walked upstairs. Age-old dust on the window panes, on the railings, on the steps... It seems that they haven’t swept here since the last century.

The stairs are narrow, the steps are steep... We walked in silence, conspiratorially, it seemed that in response to our voices a fat cook in a filthy apron might look out of any door...

Finally, we made it to the top floor. Ah!... Another staircase led upstairs - to the slightly open door to the attic...

...Inside the semi-dark dusty tower lived a terrible hundred-winged monster, which, upon our appearance, beat its wings noisily, deafeningly, raising clouds of dust... soared somewhere up to the ceiling... for a moment the turret became completely dark, like in a well... And the next moment , crumbling into hundreds of lumps, the monster flew out through the small narrow windows under the roof... They were pigeons. Hundreds of pigeons who have chosen this tower as their habitat.

The staircase leading to the hatch in the ceiling was thickly strewn with bird droppings and feathers, as if covered with a soft carpet...

The hatch opened easily, there were no locks anywhere.

So we ended up in the second tower. More precisely, on the second level of the tower. The mechanisms of huge clocks lived here. The same clock that was visible from the street. Some of them were turned towards the boulevard, others - towards Turgenevskaya Square, others - towards the Post Office. (It’s strange, but when I ran to the Post Office to get my father’s letters, I didn’t notice this fairy-tale house. I was focused on something else).

There was a small window in this sentry tower. It looked into the courtyard. Through the window one could easily climb out onto the roof. It’s strange that there was no other exit to the roof - only through this window. And not everyone could climb through it, but only a person of a certain build. Fortunately, Tanya and I had just such a build. We could have crawled through a narrower window.

And under the window (on the roof side) there was a small iron stepladder with two steps...

The house is rectangular, with a turret on each corner. All the turrets are different, so Andersen-esque, fabulous...

The roof is dotted with attic windows and chimneys, like mushrooms... That was once the work of chimney sweeps!...

The roof was a faded red color, a rain-worn color, like an old, working circus carpet... It’s a pity that it wasn’t tiled. But it would be impossible to run on the tiles. And for this one - please!

The wide windows of numerous attics also looked out onto the roof. These were artists' workshops. It was easy to verify this by looking into any of them. Many were wide open... But - strangely - not a single artist was found at his easel. Everyone left on some business. Or at this lunch hour, somewhere in the depths of their attics, they were preparing a simple artistic meal for themselves.

So only Tanya and I, pigeons and butterflies were walking on the roof...

And there was also a lion living here! He sat at the very edge of the cornice, guarding the clock tower, and looked thoughtfully towards the Post Office. It was as if he was dreaming of a cherished letter that never arrived... The lion’s gaze was very lively, although the lion himself was stone.

Having walked around this entire kingdom-state, we returned through a narrow window to the clock tower.

In a dark corner they found a large stepladder. They placed it against the hatch in the ceiling of the tower...

And - here we are even higher! At the very top of the tower! On a bridge with narrow railings. And under the very dome of the tower, under its pointed top, crowning this fairy-tale house, there is... a bell! And on the edge of the cast-iron bell one could see and feel the cast-iron letters left here for the rare walkers on this roof. The inscription stated that this house was built in 1899-1902 and belongs to the Rossiya insurance company.

A small, tongueless bell, in which the wind curled like a snail... A mysterious bell, not visible from the street. Not visible to anyone, but only to those who are now standing on this narrow bridge, holding on to these thin railings and looking at the huge, endless Moscow... at the ancient, beautiful city... the best in the world!

The next time the three of us came here, with Jean-Christophe. Grabbing your pantomime costumes. Tanya also happened to have a black tights. And I didn’t forget to take my patched umbrella, red raincoat and camera.

And we performed pantomimes. Various funny scenes. Right on the roof - like on stage. And the residents of the house opposite - across a narrow alley - looked at us in surprise from their balconies and windows...

From that trip to the roof there were photographs showing how young and skinny we were, like grasshoppers.

And June 13th came. And Jean-Christophe and I decided to go to the girl Ruza, his friend. He has long wanted to introduce us, because Ruza also writes poetry.

Jean-Christophe came to pick me up after work at the Mosconcert, and we set off on foot to Sokolniki. It was very close to my work...

...These were still old Sokolniki, there were many two-story wooden houses. Sokolniki is a city within a city. And in general, Moscow is cobbled together from many different cities, towns and villages. And every corner of Moscow has its own atmosphere, its own aroma and its own comfort...

There are crazy lilacs in all the front gardens...

Red trams fly past... red ringing needles, stitching together the times and eras of my life...

We encounter Ruza at the door of her apartment. She is delighted and embarrassed:

- Oh, guys, it’s great that you came, but I’m in a hurry to go to the litho... to the litho association - here, nearby, at the housing office... I promised to be there and I’m already late... Would you like us to go together?

“Let's go,” we said.

A middle-aged man of very short stature was sitting at a large table. Lively, attentive eyes and a friendly smile. It was Simon Bernstein, head of the literary association. Everyone addressed him simply as “Simon,” although he was twice the age of everyone present.

- Oh, come in, come in! – he said, seeing us through the open doors.

The room was packed with young guys. There were only two girls - Ruza and me. The chairs were close together. It was hot, the windows were wide open, lilacs were rampant outside the windows, the room was on the first floor, and lilacs were impudently breaking into the windows... Someone brought chairs from somewhere else. Finally, everyone sat down.

– Will you read something to get acquainted? – Simon asked me and Jean-Christophe.

“Sorry, I’m not writing,” Jean-Christophe became embarrassed, “I’m just here for company.”

“I’ll read it,” I said. And I read “The Tale of the Spider Who Stopped Time.”

In the kingdom across the river,

In pink tulips,

Once upon a time there lived a wonderful people,

Downright strange.

I could not sleep for at least a hundred nights,

Couldn't eat for a week

Soiled to the ears

Blue watercolor.

I flew over that country

Seraphim is wonderful,

And those people composed

The best of songs.

I didn’t sweep the dust from the corners,

Being exalted -

That's why all the trouble

Came out in the kingdom.

Maybe angry at first

Not wanting at all

There from the dust - on the clock

The spider started...

The spider didn't know about laziness

And on the long arrows

It's already on the third day

Spun a web.

I had to remove it with a rag

Daring from there!

But how could they know about this?

Subtle natures?

The arrows became - and fate

They blamed it...

Abandoned in the corner

Dusty easels...

In the kingdom across the river

The tulips have bloomed...

There, exhausted by melancholy,

They go to bed early.

They eat out of grief every day.

And out of terrible boredom

They are starting to die out...

Here's the thing.

– Can we do it again? – a loud, cheerful voice rang out from the depths of the room. A bearded guy with glasses and a white-toothed smile looked at me in such a way that I felt uneasy. One could get burned by this look... “Again about the spider!” he asked.

And I read about the spider again. And then I read other poems - about the circus and about the clown. Simon listened very carefully, and so did the others. Opposite me sat a man who looked indecently like Pushkin. Well, a copy of Pushkin! It was funny. He listened, closing his eyes, shaking his curly head, framed by lush sideburns... Then Simon spoke to me very Nice words. Then others read, some poetry, some prose. “Pushkin” read poetry “under Tsvetaeva.” Such a cocktail in one person! And a bearded guy with glasses read a story about Buddha. About reincarnation. Curious... This question has always worried me too.

...When everyone was already leaving, a bearded guy came up to me. He was tall, a head taller than me, and he had funny black crew-cut hair. This hedgehog made him seem even taller. He said:

– My name is Viktor Krotov. I'd like to meet you. May I know your phone number?

He looked at me as no one had ever looked at me in my life. His dark brown eyes shone and radiated a magical, gentle warmth... His gaze made me feel hot and joyful.

“Lord,” lightning flashed through my head, “but he loves me!”

And it was an incredible, fabulous truth. Because my future husband was looking at me. Only we didn’t know about it yet – neither he nor I.

“Come to us again,” Simon told me.

He jumped off his chair, left the table, and it turned out that he was a dwarf. At the same time, he was not at all embarrassed by his small stature; he was a cheerful and confident person. And when we walked to the metro - Simon, my new friend Victor, Jean-Christophe and me - Simon made us laugh endlessly, told some stories and read funny poems, it turned out to be his own. He completely charmed me.

A letter from the Literary Institute was waiting for me at home: I passed the creative competition and was admitted to the exams!

...The next day Victor called me at work. At lunchtime we met in the park near the Lermontov monument - opposite the Red Gate.

“By the way, yesterday I was at this litho for the first time,” he said. - A friend called.

- And I just happened to...

I don’t remember when he told me about his student whom he was training in mathematics. The student did not call him Viktor Gavrilovich, as a student should call his teacher, but simply Le Havre. I really liked it.

- This name suits you - Le Havre. I will call you that too. Sometimes.

...And we went to Sretensky Boulevard - to the Roof...

...From that day on it became Our Roof...

...And will remain ours forever...

And there were many hot, scorching days... June, early July... they all merged in my memory into one endless day... hot, very hot... and there was already a smell of smoke, and there was already a smell of burning... because the peat bogs in the north of Moscow began to burn from the heat...

...And right under our beloved house on Sretensky Boulevard, under Our Roof, with some stupid ferocity, in those days they destroyed the library named after. Turgenev - "Turgenevka", a dear, old mansion... An iron "woman" arrived and began to destroy... I felt sorry for Turgenevka as a person. Like an old, kind, wise person, whom they decided to get rid of for some reason... she disturbed someone... Apparently, she disturbed the metro construction workers - they were building the Turgenevskaya station in this place. The brainless “woman” hastily destroyed it - and brick dust rose high into the air...

...Scorching and dusty days...

...I don’t remember when he told me about his daughter... and that he was going to have a son in the fall... Yes, just like that... we are a lifetime late to meet!...

By the way. I forgot to say that the clocks on the tower showed completely different times! And in general, they didn’t go. Apparently no one had started them for a long time. Le Havre and I tried to start them. Clock mechanisms had levers. Thus, by pressing a lever inside the tower, it was possible to move the hands on the dials. But all the watches behaved completely differently. And this needs special mention.

Those watches that looked at the boulevard were very, unusually pliable. The lever rotated easily, effortlessly, and the hands on the dial moved briskly and cheerfully. We called them the clock of the Past Time. They seemed to be chattering like magpies: “Do you want to travel to the Past? Please! What year would you like?... No problem!”

The clock that looked at the square was no longer so responsive, the lever rotated with difficulty, and the hands on the dial moved slowly, barely... We called them the clock of the Present Time. Our present was indeed viscous, minutes melted, flowed like amber resin in the sun, lengthened to hours... they contained silence and poetry, many poems, mine and his... they contained words, bitter and happy, and hot sunsets in a narrow window... all this never-ending summer... the longest summer in our entire lives...

But we were unable to move the hands on the third clock. No matter how hard we tried. We tried with all our might to lean on the lever of the clock mechanism with four hands, but in vain! These hours were silent and unanswered. And we called them the clock of the Future Time. The future was hidden from us. It didn’t want to open a crack for us...

In this tower we were surrounded by our past, our present and our future. And time flowed in a special way inside this tower... Having stayed in the tower for half an hour, one could live for years during this time...

...And our roof smelled of oil paint for a whole week - like an artist’s studio. Goodbye red roof! Workers came with buckets and long brushes like mops, and in a few days they repainted our roof green, and it now looked like a summer lawn... over which white mayflies circled...

We were constantly watched by a lion, Lyovushka, who sat without ever changing his position, as if he was guarding the Clock of the Future...

...Walking, wandering, burning a candle under the roof...

... A small badge - a clown - with his hands chained with a chain, this is a kind of chain-jumping rope, and on the back there is a poem scrawled: “Let Red and White learn to jump over the chain.” And I still keep this badge...

...A bouquet of wildflowers... when I was alone on the roof - there, at the very top, under the bell, and Le Havre went into the tower and left these flowers for me...

...And how we went to the circus tent with his mother!... And then, after the performance, having walked my mother to the metro, we wandered somewhere for a long time... and wandered into a vacant lot near a cement plant... where everything was covered with bluish cement dust, and that was looks like a lunar landscape... and we stood, bitterly embracing among this lunar desert, and it seemed that there was no one in this world except the two of us... And I remember this cement wasteland to this day...

...And on my birthday, in the morning, in the metro, at the Mayakovskaya station, I was given a wonderful little book of poems, a book of his three-line poems, so tiny, a little larger than a postage stamp, bound with his hands, and the poems in it were written by hand, and all the poems are about us... Such a book can be worn in a medallion on your chest, where each tercet is like a prayer...

...And then we went to visit the artist Kapterev.

There are encounters in life that could not have happened. Without them, your life is not yours. And you are not you at all. Until that day, I thought that this had happened three times in my life: Engibarov, my girls from the gallery on Sadovo-Spasskaya and Le Havre.

And when Le Havre said: “I want to introduce you to the artist Valery Kapterev,” I had no idea what it would lead to. And what will it become for me?

We went in a whole crowd: Le Havre, his pregnant wife Tanya, Simon Bernstein, Jean-Christophe and me.

We went to visit the artist Kapterev, not realizing that we would meet three artists at once! And with a wonderful poet.

...When we left the Rechnoy Vokzal metro station to continue walking through the thickets of green courtyards, at that time the bells rang... in an ancient temple with blue domes, behind a pond with reeds, in the small village of Aksinino, which continued to stubbornly live in the middle of the city... Just at that moment they rang... and the quiet ringing floated over us in gentle waves as we walked from the metro, delving into the green courtyards...

Here, in the north of Moscow, it seems like a continuous forest, or a park, or a village, there is more land than asphalt, and rustling, tall grass everywhere... and the free bloom of golden perky buttercups, naive daisies and impudent colza... And so we we walked, inhaling the delicious fresh air, although it was hot, we still felt that there was water close by, a lot of water, just beyond the Leningradskoye Highway there was the Khimki Reservoir with seagulls and boats... and the seagulls were flying over the street along with the sparrows...

And the bells sang, and we wanted to walk for a long, long time, breathe and listen... and ahead of us was a meeting with amazing people. Le Havre met them the day before at the artist Otarov’s place, and was invited to visit. He asked: “Can I come not alone?”

- Amazing! – he heard in response. - Bring all your friends. I'll show you my paintings. Although we don’t live at home now, but with friends, I still took some of the paintings from home - for showings. Come!

In those years, home exhibitions of paintings were the only opportunity for many artists to show the world what you do. If you don’t want to paint “steam locomotives” (chimneys of factories and combines in the fields, portraits of frontline workers National economy and military leaders), then your way to the exhibition halls is barred. The world may not know about you if your house is not open to friends, acquaintances, their acquaintances, and so on... Be prepared for the fact that every now and then a crowd of strangers will pour into your house who have come to look at the paintings. And so, having met the artist Valery Kapterev only yesterday, Le Havre was already leading, albeit a small, but still a crowd “to look at the paintings.”

The Kapterevs lived that summer in the Rechnoy Vokzal metro area, not far from my house. This was the apartment of the artist Valery Volkov, who and his wife went to France for the summer. The Volkovs left for France, and the Kapterevs fled from their communal apartment on Kadashevskaya embankment. Kapterev was busy getting an apartment that hot, smoky summer.

He was a strong, slightly stooped man of about seventy. He had a large head, the forehead of Socrates, blue, sharp eyes and a funny, perky beard. There was no mustache. “A beard is the beauty of a man, but a cat has a mustache,” he said with a sly smile.

His wife is small and thin, like a reed, but her narrow face, huge radiant eyes, similar to the eyes of a fairytale prophetic bird, graceful hook-nosed profile, her hands, the thin and sensitive hands of a pianist and ballerina made her appearance very significant and exciting. At first glance it was clear: Lyudmila Fedorovna is an extraordinary woman. Valery Vsevolodovich called her affectionately – Lucy, and also – Cat. She is his Valery, and also his Cat. She explained to us that their family is a cat family, that she and her husband are cat fans, and both are clearly of the cat breed.

He was the same age as the century, which he was very proud of, and Lyudmila Fedorovna was five years younger than him. In 1972, they were both already elderly people, but after a few minutes of communication you forgot about it...

...The round floor lamp was shining, the smell of lilac poured in through the open window... Valery Vsevolodovich took his paintings out from behind his chair to arrange a show.

His paintings (small format, on cardboard, he called them “putties”) were like windows - into other dimensions of life, into other worlds...

“Clay horses running away in the rain”, “Pitcher, gladiolus and lizard”, “Child of the monster”, stained glass painting “Earth and Sky”, “Dancing Dervishes”... The paintings were very picturesque, musical, there was a fragrance from them... He took them out , like a magician, and every time I heard a surprised and enthusiastic “Ah!...” inside me.

Strength and energy emanated from this man. And the eyes—sharp, blue—looked youthful and mischievous. He showed pictures and looked at each of us quickly and piercingly.

And then he took out another picture...

“Evening bells,” he said.

...The sunset was blazing... the blue domes of the temple swayed from the evening ringing... birds flew through the sunset... bushes of blooming lilacs rose to the very domes... and the young monk, embarrassed by all this beauty, bowed his head before her... Lord, what a beauty, Lord! What to do with this, Lord? How to embrace, how to comprehend? And lilac, lilac, Lord, its heavy purple clusters... how can you fit this whole world into your heart?... Why did you create it so beautiful? so intoxicating... so uncontrollably passionate... And is there any meaning in vows and renunciations?... And is there no sin in vows and renunciations... for we put a veto on the Divine beauty, on the creation of God, which was created for us, for our sake, for our joy...

And I understood that in front of me was a great artist.

I looked at this picture - as if through an open window... as if through a window wide open into a warm, living fairy tale... And I breathed lilacs... and plunged into the glow of the sunset... into the ringing of bells... I felt like a bird and a lilac, and this monk... It seemed to me that I Never in my life have I seen a painting that would bring me so much joy and sadness at the same time. I couldn’t get enough, I couldn’t get enough of it, I wanted to absorb it all... dissolve in it... like this, at the same time: absorb - and dissolve, is this possible?

I understood that I had met the main picture of my life. And if I feel bad, I will remember her. And if I feel good, I will remember her. This picture for me represents the fullness of life.

(And if... if someone had told me then that years would pass, and this painting would hang on the wall of my room, and the evening rays of the sun would illuminate it every day, making the domes, brushes of purple lilacs and orange sunset...And my memory of the day when I met the Kapterevs...)

...And then Valery Vsevolodovich gave us a notebook and asked each of us to write our impression of the paintings. He said:

- This is a tradition. Everyone who comes to us for the first time writes something in this notebook. And if you don't mind, you can leave your phone number.

How can I write in a few sentences about what I have experienced now?... I wanted to say so much!...

And, of course, I left my phone number.

– And Valery makes tiger jumps in this crazy heat! - said Lyudmila Fedorovna. “He promised me that he would find an apartment for us this summer.” But what does it cost him! All these endless trips, queues outside offices and communication with officials... I couldn’t stand it.

– You, Lucy, don’t need to do this. You are a poet.

– The fact is that returning to a communal apartment is impossible. Valery has already had two heart attacks... But this is his native home! He was born there and lived with his parents before the revolution. It was then that a crowd of alcoholics moved into the apartment... The only thing I will be sorry to part with is the view from the window. The window looks straight at the Kremlin! At one time, Lentulov’s painting “Moscow” hung in our house. One Moscow is outside the window, the other is on the wall, just opposite the window. And when the sun’s rays fell on the painting during sunset... the effect was amazing! In general, I adore Zamoskvorechye. Old poplars in our yard... Of course, it will be a pity to part with all this... But we are talking about survival. If we stay in this communal apartment, we will die...

- Lucy, we won’t die. I promise you: we will have an apartment this summer!

– Thanks to our good friends, Volkov. They went to Paris for the summer and left us the keys to their apartment. It's wonderful here! The air is amazing, and these luxurious lilacs outside the window... It’s like being in the country. Here is a workshop in the third room, Valery can work, he has already painted this lilac. He loves to paint lilacs! He writes them every summer.

Lyudmila Fedorovna was arranging cups on a small table and pouring tea, Tatyana and I helped her.

– What do you think of Volkov’s paintings? More precisely, two Volkovs. This is Father, Alexander Volkov, “The Descent from the Cross.” A brilliant thing, isn't it? Written in the twenties, but so modern! Formally - cubism. But how much expression, passion, suffering... And these are the works of his eldest son, Valery Volkov, the owner of this lovely apartment. Amazing “Oriental Bazaar”... I love this work! And this is a portrait of his wife Svetlana. Her real name is Claire, which means "Bright One" in French. She lived her youth in France, this is her homeland. More precisely, she was born in Baghdad, and lived her childhood and youth in France, her parents were first-wave emigrants. And after the war they returned to Russia... This is how it happens.

And then there was tea, and its smell merged with the smell of lilac, which is both in the painting “Evening Bells” and outside the window, and there the jasmine had already bloomed and lit up with its bright white star flowers, and Lyudmila Fedorovna read poetry about jasmine...

The evening smells of tea and jasmine,

Moonlight blazing in the garden...

Starting slow and long

The conversation goes up...

And I realized that before us was a great Poet.

And she also read about Socrates, and it seemed to me that Socrates was here, sitting with us at the same table, with a blue bowl in his hands... and looking at us with a sharp, blue gaze...

And the butterflies flew towards the fire

and they fell and fell, charred...

The year unfolded into centuries,

like the world, vast and round...

And I, all of Tsvetaeva, and all of Akhmatova, from cover to cover... it seemed to me that here they are - two stars of Russian poetry. But here it is - the third star, which since that evening has been shining brighter for me than the other two...

Lyudmila Oknazova... Some of her friends, listening to her last name, will exclaim: “Oknazova - these are the windows of the call!”

Yes it is. It’s as if the windows of a call have opened before us...

And we also read back that evening. And Le Havre read his poems, and Simon, and I. It turned out to be such an amazing poetic tea party: with the moon as a floor lamp, with the smell of evening lilac and jasmine from the window... and the faces of beautiful people around a small cozy table...

And I really didn’t want to leave!…

We said goodbye, and I was struck by the eyes of this little woman. I didn’t yet know what was looking at me... my future godmother.

...When Le Havre and I came back to Sokolniki for the litho, on this, my second visit here, I met Misha Fainerman and Volodya Kazarnovsky. Volodya also enters the Literary School, but in prose. He let me read his stories.

I called Le Havre at night: “A new Gogol has been born in Russia!”

Misha read his poems in litho in a quiet, stuttering voice. Free verse. They fascinated me...

“I really liked your poems,” I told him.

“I don’t like yours,” he said. – I don’t like rhymed poetry at all.

– But I also write free verse.

Thus began our friendship, which from that day lasted for the rest of our lives: both with Misha and with Volodya.

And then - after many years - I will be destined to become the editor and compiler of Misha’s first book and Volodina’s first.

Poetry evening in the Central House of Writers, in the Small Hall. Not only professional poets perform, but also everyone who wants to. You just need to send a note to the presenter - translator Levin. (Or Levi? Because of my excitement, I didn’t really understand). There are many people who want to speak. Therefore, a limit has been set: two poems.

I've read two.

The presenter said:

– Read more.

– What about the limit?

- Read!

And after each next poem he said with a smile: “More!” I read five or six poems, they applauded me for a long time... It’s a pity that Le Havre was not in the hall. At that time he was on a business trip in Chisinau. But there was Simon, another people from our litho, there was “Pushkin”. He listened as I read, closing his eyes and shaking his leg.

The evening is over. People are seething in the foyer... Some guy wants to introduce me to the famous poetess Rimma Kazakova. I asked:

– This is necessary for your future. I've already spoken about you. She is waiting for you!

He grabs my hand and drags me somewhere...

-Where are you taking me?

- She is waiting for you in the cafe. It will be convenient for you to communicate there...

And now we are already at the door of the cafe... Empty. Kazakova sits at only one table. And next to her is Kashezheva. Two celebrities. When they see us, they smile welcomingly...

- Well, go! They are waiting for you! – whispers the organizer of my destiny who came from nowhere. - Go!

And I’m standing in the doorway and can’t move. Some force chained me to the threshold. And in front of me, it was as if an invisible barrier had been erected... Like in the pantomime “Glass”... And it seems to me that if I pass through this barrier, something terrible will happen... something irreparable will happen to me... Horror seized me.

I see the friendly smile of the famous poetess... I hear the impatient whisper of well-wishers... And - turning around abruptly - I run away...

-Where are you going?! She’s waiting for you!...” the uncle shouts after me.

...I fly out into the street... here, at the entrance, our people are standing - from Lito, we are walking in a crowd to Mayakovka, next to us is Simon, a small, cheerful, amazing person. And it seems to me that I am looking at him not from top to bottom, but from bottom to top...

I went to Litconsultation to see Boris Glebovich. She reported that she had passed a creative competition at the Literary Institute and talked about the Evening at the Central House of Writers, and how they allowed me to break the rules.

Boris Glebovich was terribly happy, ran to the head of the Literary Consultation, talked to him about something for a long time, returned and said that they would try to help me with my admission.

The help was very simple: the head of the Literary Consultation, at the request of Boris Glebovich, called the institute’s admissions committee and asked that they “not cut me down” during the exams. After the creative competition, when a lot of people were eliminated, there were still four people left per place, and out of four, only one should have remained in the end, and three - excuse me. They - there - agreed like this: they will give me the grades that I deserve. There will be no deliberate cutting. But they won’t inflate either. If in a fair fight I earn three or two points and fail, then it will be my personal failure, and not someone’s malicious intent.

– You will have the opportunity to get your real grades. They won’t cut you,” said Boris Glebovich. - Well, this is the maximum that we can do for you.

- This is more than enough. Thanks a lot!

- My pleasure. Wish you luck!

Actually, “Pushkin’s” name was Venya. Veniamin Mikhailovich Volokh. He was already an adult uncle and taught descriptive geometry at some institute.

When the whole group of us walked from the House of Writers to Mayakovka, he suggested we go to his friend, the artist Vasya Sitnikov, to see new paintings. Vasya does not exhibit, so he is very happy when Venya brings viewers to him.

- Yes, even tomorrow.

...We met at the Semenovskaya metro station. For some reason, no one else came except me. (Le Havre was then in Chisinau on a business trip.)

Venya said:

“They don’t want to deal with a crazy person.”

– Is Sitnikov crazy?

- Of course not. Simply a genius. And also a dissident. For which he periodically sits in a psychiatric hospital. Aren't you afraid to visit someone like this?

The artist Vasily Sitnikov lived in a one-room apartment. So this is what geniuses look like and how they live!

He was wearing a tattered, as my grandmother would say, old checkered shirt, with his sleeves rolled up, disheveled hair, and a rumpled face. The look is unsociable, wild.

We looked at the pictures, Venya spoke (it was clear that he comes here often), Vasya was silent, muttered something a couple of times, Venya translated his muttering into universal language: “Vasya is glad that we came.” He ate and slept in the kitchen; there was a shabby sofa there. Cans of paints. Rags. Empty bottles. A smoked kettle on a two-burner gas stove. The room, about twenty meters, served as a workshop. There were a lot of paintings, the entire space of the workshop was filled with paintings. They stood leaning against each other. And in all the pictures - domes, temples, cathedrals, monasteries, crunchy, creaky, hurting the eyes White snow... It seemed that his painting was three-dimensional, had sound and smell... The snow creaked frostily... the smell was pungent, chilling...

There were also graphics, sheets of Whatman paper scattered everywhere. And for all of them there were only two characters: a naked woman, the same everywhere, with dark, long hair fluttering as she ran, she was rapidly running away from the completely naked Vasya, both were like ancient gods, just as beautiful, muscular, passionate. Passions were boiling on the Whatman paper, bubbling... The woman runs away and runs away, pressing her large round breasts with her hands, looking back at Vasya in horror, and he, mad with passion, is about to overtake her...

...We walked to the metro, and Pushkin said that he was going to Israel. Literally sitting on suitcases. It turns out that his parents emigrated several years ago, settled there, and now sent him a challenge. For two. To Venya and his wife. But Venya doesn’t have a wife, although he is already old, the same age as my parents. But Pushkin - a kind person, he wants to make some Russian girl who wants to emigrate happy. This is done very simply: a fictitious marriage. They travel like spouses to Vienna, and then - who goes where...

It turns out that Pushkin planned to make me happy. From the very time I first came to the litho in Sokolniki and read my poems there.

“You have no future in this country,” he said with conviction. – You need to leave, and as soon as possible.

- This is impossible.

- Why?

– There are two reasons. I can't live without the Russian language. And I can’t leave my loved ones. Knowing that I will never see them...

– No one will take away the Russian language from you. You will continue to write in Russian. Gradually drag close people to you...

I just smiled bitterly at this.

– But the main thing is who needs me THERE?

– You are a talented person, and talented people are needed everywhere. But in the Soviet Union your talent will wither,” he said with conviction.

- Why do you think so?

- Because you won’t publish a single line of yours here. And as we know, a writer does not exist without a reader.

“This is a pure coincidence,” he said and repeated with conviction: “You have no future in this country.”

- And there?…

- There is freedom there. This is the main thing. There you will decide your own destiny. It all depends on the person, on you personally.

- No. I can't live without those I love. And without a native language. If you want, call it my weakness.

He didn't argue with me. Didn't convince me otherwise. Simply said:

– Think again. So as not to regret later.

Well, I thought... Well, I thought. Yes, it would be funny to be in Vienna with Venya... And then - on all four sides! For example, to Spain - to the homeland of our ancestors... Was it in vain that I learned the language from a self-instruction manual? My dream will come true: I will learn to dance flamenco!

And so, I imagined this for a moment: I was alone, somewhere there, in Europe... And such melancholy overwhelmed me! Well, first of all, my mother will not survive my departure - that’s for sure. (My little sister will survive. But what will she think of me?... So, she ran away from difficulties, wanted an easy life...) But the main thing is that I won’t survive this myself. After all, I will never see My Clown again... And Le Havre and I will never go to Our Roof again... No, gentlemen, this is not my path.

And it’s not even a matter of whether I will regret the lost opportunities or not (about all the books that may have ever been published somewhere...) Even if I do regret it (in a sad moment, yes, sometimes) - but still! This is not my way. That’s how I feel... But I want to go with my own people! Why should a person follow someone else's path? Even if this one, the other one, is covered with precious stones or roses... banknotes or published books...

And somewhere at this time, MY path, not taken by me, will be yearning for me...

And no one else will walk along it - because it is not covered with anything so attractive. Only pain, loss and suffering. That’s how I feel... Although... somewhere out there, in the distance, great joy glimmers... if my inner vision serves me right. Sometimes in the evenings, at sunset, I see this very clearly... (But whether this is so or not, whether great joy awaits me in the distance or not, I will never know if I follow someone else’s path.)

And my path will remain forever untraveled by anyone... and will be overgrown with dry grass...

No way! I won’t go to any Vienna with Venya.

In the corridor of the Mosconcert I ran into Boyko, he was joyful:

– Got a tour for our studio! To Crimea! For the whole of August. So get ready!

- And I, Anatoly Ivanovich, am not going anywhere.

– What do you mean “not going”?

– I have entrance exams in August. To the Literary Institute. I passed a creative competition.

- Oh, congratulations! Well done! I knew you could do it! Congratulations!

– I haven’t done that yet, it’s too early to congratulate.

– You will do it, I have no doubt. Well, good luck to you here. So we'll see you in the fall?

- We'll see you in the fall.

...And then Le Havre came from Chisinau, and we lit our candle under the roof... and it was clear that everything was completely hopeless, because... because his daughter was not yet four years old, and his son should be born in the fall...

I will cry about this summer...

About every day - under the sign of Cancer...

…Sunday morning was surprisingly clear and sunny. The wind carried smoke and fumes away from the city. But it was scorching mercilessly - from the very morning.

We lay on the roof, on the hot manhole cover, feeling its warmth and roughness with our backs, and looked at the sky... It belonged to us. The sky looking down on us blue eyes eternity, and this heat, like the caress of the sky, and this melancholy, bordering on delight.

The stub of a candle under the stairs, a stopped clock, turrets and doves... everything here was ours. Here. But down there there was another life. For which we are late...

And if someone (or Anyone) had told us then:

“Be patient, guys, thirteen years apart, just thirteen years - and your time will come,” - would it be easy for us to hear these words? Would it be easy for us to live these thirteen years? And to make nonsense and mistakes, measured out to us by fate - would it be easier, knowing that a new meeting is still ahead?...

And if you are destined to go through potholes and potholes, if you need it for some reason, if you are destined to get sick and recover, and without getting sick you won’t get well and won’t gain immunity, this is clear, then it is unlikely that you will be able to jump over all this crooked space in one fell swoop... And it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to fly over it if you haven’t grown wings yet... So gallop, stumbling...

And the meeting, which seemed endlessly late, was actually early. She was from the future. She was like hope. Like a promise. And not goodbye at all. She was not sent to us to complain at all. But who knew then?...

How far human eyes see... How short-sighted we all are. Even those of us who consider ourselves farsighted. Like me, for example.

– Do you know that there was already a woman named Nush in the world?

– By the way, she’s also a circus performer.

– What kind of circus performer am I? I'm only dreaming...

- Still a circus performer.

- And who is she, this Nush?

– Wife of the French poet Paul Eluard. You are somewhat similar to her...

And he brought and presented me with a collection of Eluard’s poems. And there were poems about the circus performer Nush. And her portrait. It's a pity that she's been gone for a long time. You could send her regards. Nush from Nush...

Strange... Why is everything like this? If kinship of souls means the impossibility of being together. Why is this always the case in life? Or am I really destined to become a nun? Should I dress in long black clothes and shut myself up in a small cell? And take a vow of silence... After all, I once dreamed about this...

We live on the roof.

On a high Moscow roof -

Bright green, like a clearing.

We won't see her turn yellow

In autumn...

We kiss,

One-day butterflies,

Showering each other

With the bright pollen of your wings...

Hiding behind the pipes

From the artist who lives in the attic

And running on the roof with a net.

Look like gnomes

Old and small

Smiling,

With green braids of grass

On top of heads.

Warm, August...

And ahead of us -

All day.

You say:

. - Let's not swear

But let's never stop loving each other!

. - We just won’t make it until evening...

And you are cheerful -

You believe in immortality.

But what will happen to me?

God,

When the cold comes,

And a green roof

Covered in dark snow...

And I will sit

All in frost -

Like gray pollen,

January butterfly.

And remember...

...And then there was such a terrible heat, completely abnormal! In those days - on the radio, on TV, on the streets - everyone was talking about only one thing: “Fires!...” “Have you heard? Everything is burning!..."

Forests in the Vladimir region are burning, peat bogs are blazing... Animals and birds are dying in the forests... Fires are getting closer and closer to Moscow...

Smoke... fumes... heavy, suffocating smog descended on the city...

It is difficult to breathe both day and night. At night the heat does not subside. In the morning, looking out the window, you don’t see the neighboring houses - everything is shrouded in whiteout... All day long, lanterns are burning in the whiteout... Cars drive almost to the touch along muddy roads, in the jelly of a bitter fog, with their headlights on... Heat... smoke... smells like burning...

In the Mosconcert, near the square of three stations, with windows facing the south side, directly onto the hot street, there was not a planning department located here, but a small hell... Smoke, the stench of gasoline and exhaust gases poured into the open windows. In those years, gasoline was disgusting, and trucks rumbled down our street...

Everyone dreamed of rain, but there was no rain for a month. You can bring a towel from home and, after wetting it under the tap, place it on your head or chest. You can even bring a basin and fill it with cold water, place it under the table and put your feet in it. It’s easier this way. For a few minutes. “Oh, I can’t, I’m dying,” lamented the woman at the window, who had a bad heart, and the sun was mercilessly blazing right on her!

Everyone dreamed of rain... like manna from heaven...

On the streets there are gigantic queues at kvass stalls, ice cream makers, and soda fountains.

Sometimes someone in line couldn’t stand it and fainted.

There were not enough ambulance crews. They took students. There have never been as many heart attacks and strokes as happened in the summer of seventy-two in Moscow.

The boulevards are covered with yellow, dry leaves... The poplars and chestnuts seem to have been burned by fire... The heat has stripped and exposed them like napalm. In the middle of summer, bare branches stick out... and it’s scary.

Everyone dreamed of rain... People, trees, birds...

We wandered with Le Havre along the shore of the Khimki Reservoir. Even near the water you can’t breathe. Then they sat on a dusty bench in the shade of old trees that had not yet lost their leaves, and were sad. We had a lot to be sad about...

Late in the evening I called him and read the poem:

Above us is a maple tree,

Holding hands tightly...

Pushkin invited Jean-Christophe and me to visit his friends.

We read poetry, drank Georgian tea with mint gingerbread, and thought about the pros and cons of emigration. Pushkin called on everyone present to persuade me, to convince me that I had no future in this country, Jean-Christophe looked scared and muttered:

– Actually, we have other plans... we are preparing a program...

Chapter Six SPRING TURNING INTO SUMMER... It was May 12th. I went to the circus to congratulate Jadwiga on her birthday. And they told me: “She fell. Now in the hospital.” Jadwiga fell! A shooting star fell... It broke into many fragments... I’m going to see her at the hospital. She lies on a stretch, all

Chapter V. Seasons - spring and summer She is only nine days old. But both the fields and the mountains know: Spring has come again. Basho Admiring sakura (The cake is more important than the flowers) There are no strangers between us! We are all each other’s brothers Under the cherry blossoms. Issa The cake is more important than the cherry blossoms .Japanese proverbSakura blossoms

Chapter Six Summer in the Village At the beginning of January 1837, she returned with her children to Nohant. She needed to take care of the estate, because she finally became its sovereign mistress; she needed peace to finish “Mauprat”; she wanted to be closer to Michel and so

CHAPTER 8 Summer of 1875 in Pavlovsk We spent the summer of 1875 in Pavlovsk, but I became acquainted with Pavlovsk several months before we moved there to the dacha, and it cannot be said that this first acquaintance made a pleasant impression on me. For example, I saved about this

Chapter Nine Summer of the fourteenth year I The summer of the fourteenth year turned out to be rainless and hot. Everyone who had the slightest opportunity left the city. Petersburg was depopulated. As always, he took advantage of the short respite to hastily rejuvenate, and, plunging into Erebus

Chapter II Summer 1915 What does it mean to restore a troupe scattered throughout Europe in preparation for a tour? First, gather the dancers. The first American “project” in 1912 involved at most three dozen artists. This time the bar is raised higher: six are needed

CHAPTER XVII. SUMMER 1905 From the Kerzhensky forests we return to St. Petersburg. From being outside of time - to April 1905. A professor fired for sedition, whose works are not allowed to be performed in the capital, at this time takes the position of an open enemy of the existing order.

Duration of the weather anomaly

early July - early September

Critical date

end of July

Dead Consequences

Severe drought caused severe forest fires. In 1972, 6,500 square kilometers of forest burned in the RSFSR (about a seventh of the area of the Moscow region). In the Moscow region alone, fire burned 19 villages, killing 104 people.

Prerequisites for drought

The winter of 1971-1972 was severe and relatively light in snow. Severe frosts persisted in Moscow until mid-March. As a result, the soil was unable to accumulate large amounts of moisture reserves.

July and August 1972

Unprecedented heat came to central Russia after the formation of the so-called “blocking anticyclone,” which occurred in the first ten days of July. At the same time, the last precipitation fell.

The smog was so dense that it was impossible to see the other from one bank of the Moscow River.

The drought covered an unprecedented territory - the Volga region, where the heat reached almost 40 °C, the Urals, and to a slightly lesser extent - the North-West of Russia. However, in Moscow, probably due to heavy smoke, the temperature did not reach 35 degrees, and at night sometimes dropped below +10 degrees.

August 1972 became unusually warm and dry throughout European territory country and is one of the warmest for Moscow (average temperature +20.6 °C, warmer only in 1938 and 2010), Kharkov (average temperature +23.9 °C) and a number of other cities. July 1972 was the warmest until 2010 in Leningrad (St. Petersburg) (average temperature +22.1 °C).

Abnormally intense heat also affected the south of Russia. In some places not a drop of precipitation fell.

The drought gradually moved from the southern regions of Russia to the north, as the anticyclone spread and intensified.

Fighting the elements

The situation with peat fires was critical. Numerous units of the Soviet army in several military districts were brought in to extinguish them, but the situation was only reversed on August 23, when the blocking anticyclone disintegrated, and all the fires were finally extinguished only by September 10.

More than 30 thousand volunteers were recruited to extinguish the fire, including collective and state farm workers, city residents, police officers and 24 thousand firefighters. Earth-moving vehicles were used (almost 15 thousand self-propelled earth-moving vehicles) and more than two and a half thousand fire engines and pumping devices, which worked continuously for 14-20 hours a day. The volume of water that was poured onto the fires from above and pumped into the burning peat bogs using pipelines was about 90 thousand tons per day.

The fight against the fire was controlled by the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee, and the extinguishing was headed by the Minister of Defense of the USSR, Marshal Grechko, who settled for almost two months in Shatura, near Moscow, which became the center of the fires. The most difficult situation developed in the Shatura, Orekhovo-Zuevsky, Egoryevsky, Noginsky and Pavlovo-Posad districts of the Moscow region. In addition to the Moscow region, the fire raged in Tver, Vladimir, Ryazan, Kostroma, and to a lesser extent, in other regions of the RSFSR.

Media coverage

A gathering of volunteer detachments was organized to extinguish the fires. There was no large-scale propaganda regarding the medical side of the incident, but there were still recommendations - do not go outside unnecessarily, wear a gauze bandage and drink plenty of fluids.

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An excerpt characterizing the Drought in the USSR (1972)

Among the young people introduced by Rostov, one of the first was Dolokhov, who was liked by everyone in the house, with the exception of Natasha. She almost quarreled with her brother over Dolokhov. She insisted that he evil person that in the duel with Bezukhov Pierre was right, and Dolokhov was to blame, that he was unpleasant and unnatural.
“I don’t understand anything,” Natasha shouted with stubborn willfulness, “he’s angry and without feelings.” Well, I love your Denisov, he was a carouser and that’s all, but I still love him, so I understand. I don’t know how to tell you; He has everything planned, and I don’t like it. Denisova...
“Well, Denisov is a different matter,” answered Nikolai, making him feel that in comparison with Dolokhov, even Denisov was nothing, “you need to understand what kind of soul this Dolokhov has, you need to see him with his mother, this is such a heart!”
“I don’t know this, but I feel awkward with him.” And do you know that he fell in love with Sonya?
- What nonsense...
- I'm sure you'll see. – Natasha’s prediction came true. Dolokhov, who did not like the company of ladies, began to visit the house often, and the question of who he was traveling for was soon (although no one spoke about it) was resolved so that he was traveling for Sonya. And Sonya, although she would never have dared to say this, knew this and every time, like a redneck, she blushed when Dolokhov appeared.
Dolokhov often dined with the Rostovs, never missed a performance where they were present, and attended adolescentes [teenagers] balls at Yogel’s, where the Rostovs always attended. He paid preferential attention to Sonya and looked at her with such eyes that not only she could not stand this look without blushing, but also the old countess and Natasha blushed when they noticed this look.
It was clear that this strong, strange man was under the irresistible influence exerted on him by this dark, graceful, loving girl.
Rostov noticed something new between Dolokhov and Sonya; but he did not define to himself what kind of new relationship this was. “They are all in love with someone there,” he thought about Sonya and Natasha. But he was not as comfortable with Sonya and Dolokhov as before, and he began to be at home less often.
Since the autumn of 1806, everything again started talking about the war with Napoleon even more fervently than last year. Not only were recruits appointed, but also 9 more warriors out of a thousand. Everywhere they cursed Bonaparte with anathema, and in Moscow there was only talk about the upcoming war. For the Rostov family, the whole interest of these preparations for war lay only in the fact that Nikolushka would never agree to stay in Moscow and was only waiting for the end of Denisov’s leave in order to go with him to the regiment after the holidays. The upcoming departure not only did not prevent him from having fun, but also encouraged him to do so. He spent most of his time outside the house, at dinners, evenings and balls.

XI
On the third day of Christmas, Nikolai dined at home, which had rarely happened to him lately. It was officially a farewell dinner, since he and Denisov were leaving for the regiment after Epiphany. About twenty people were having lunch, including Dolokhov and Denisov.
Never in the Rostov house did the air of love, the atmosphere of love, make itself felt with such force as on these holidays. “Catch moments of happiness, force yourself to love, fall in love yourself! Only this one thing is real in the world - the rest is all nonsense. And that’s all we’re doing here,” said the atmosphere. Nikolai, as always, having tortured two pairs of horses and not having had time to visit all the places where he needed to be and where he was called, arrived home just before lunch. As soon as he entered, he noticed and felt the tense, loving atmosphere in the house, but he also noticed a strange confusion reigning between some of the members of the society. Sonya, Dolokhov, the old countess and a little Natasha were especially excited. Nikolai realized that something was going to happen before dinner between Sonya and Dolokhov, and with his characteristic sensitivity of heart he was very gentle and careful during dinner in dealing with both of them. On the same evening of the third day of the holidays there was to be one of those balls at Yogel (the dance teacher), which he gave on holidays for all his students and female students.
- Nikolenka, will you go to Yogel? Please go,” Natasha told him, “he especially asked you, and Vasily Dmitrich (it was Denisov) is going.”
“Wherever I go on the orders of Mr. Athena!” said Denisov, who jokingly placed himself in the Rostov house on the foot of the knight Natasha, “pas de chale [dance with a shawl] is ready to dance.”
- If I have time! “I promised the Arkharovs, it’s their evening,” Nikolai said.
“And you?...” he turned to Dolokhov. And just now I asked this, I noticed that this shouldn’t have been asked.
“Yes, maybe...” Dolokhov answered coldly and angrily, looking at Sonya and, frowning, with exactly the same look as he looked at Pierre at the club dinner, he looked again at Nikolai.
“There is something,” thought Nikolai, and this assumption was further confirmed by the fact that Dolokhov left immediately after dinner. He called Natasha and asked what was it?
“I was looking for you,” Natasha said, running out to him. “I told you, you still didn’t want to believe,” she said triumphantly, “he proposed to Sonya.”
No matter how little Nikolai did with Sonya during this time, something seemed to come off in him when he heard this. Dolokhov was a decent and in some respects a brilliant match for the dowry-free orphan Sonya. From the point of view of the old countess and the world, it was impossible to refuse him. And therefore Nikolai’s first feeling when he heard this was anger against Sonya. He was preparing to say: “And great, of course, we must forget our childhood promises and accept the offer”; but he didn’t have time to say it yet...
– You can imagine! She refused, completely refused! – Natasha spoke. “She said she loves someone else,” she added after a short silence.
“Yes, my Sonya could not have done otherwise!” thought Nikolai.
“No matter how much my mother asked her, she refused, and I know she won’t change what she said...
- And mom asked her! – Nikolai said reproachfully.
“Yes,” said Natasha. - You know, Nikolenka, don’t be angry; but I know that you will not marry her. I know, God knows why, I know for sure, you won’t get married.
“Well, you don’t know that,” said Nikolai; – but I need to talk to her. What a beauty this Sonya is! – he added smiling.
- This is so lovely! I'll send it to you. - And Natasha, kissing her brother, ran away.
A minute later Sonya came in, frightened, confused and guilty. Nikolai approached her and kissed her hand. This was the first time on this visit that they spoke face to face and about their love.
“Sophie,” he said timidly at first, and then more and more boldly, “if you want to refuse not only a brilliant, profitable match; but he is a wonderful, noble man... he is my friend...
Sonya interrupted him.
“I already refused,” she said hastily.
- If you refuse for me, then I’m afraid that on me...
Sonya interrupted him again. She looked at him with pleading, frightened eyes.
“Nicolas, don’t tell me that,” she said.
- No, I have to. Maybe this is suffisance [arrogance] on my part, but it’s better to say. If you refuse for me, then I must tell you the whole truth. I love you, I think, more than anyone...
“That’s enough for me,” Sonya said, flushing.
- No, but I have fallen in love a thousand times and will continue to fall in love, although I do not have such a feeling of friendship, trust, love for anyone as for you. Then I'm young. Maman doesn't want this. Well, it's just that I don't promise anything. And I ask you to think about Dolokhov’s proposal,” he said, having difficulty pronouncing his friend’s last name.
- Don't tell me that. I do not want anything. I love you like a brother, and will always love you, and I don’t need anything more.
“You are an angel, I am not worthy of you, but I am only afraid of deceiving you.” – Nikolai kissed her hand again.

Yogel had the most fun balls in Moscow. This was what the mothers said, looking at their adolescentes [girls] performing their newly learned steps; this was said by the adolescentes and adolescents themselves, [girls and boys] who danced until they dropped; these grown-up girls and young men who came to these balls with the idea of condescending to them and finding the best fun in them. In the same year, two marriages took place at these balls. The two pretty princesses of the Gorchakovs found suitors and got married, and even more so they launched these balls into glory. What was special about these balls was that there was no host and hostess: there was the good-natured Yogel, like flying feathers, shuffling around according to the rules of art, who accepted tickets for lessons from all his guests; was that only those who wanted to dance and have fun, like 13 and 14 year old girls who put on long dresses for the first time, want to go to these balls. Everyone, with rare exceptions, was or seemed pretty: they all smiled so enthusiastically and their eyes lit up so much. Sometimes even the best students danced pas de chale, of whom the best was Natasha, distinguished by her grace; but at this last ball only ecosaises, anglaises and the mazurka, which was just coming into fashion, were danced. The hall was taken by Yogel to Bezukhov’s house, and the ball was a great success, as everyone said. There were a lot of pretty girls, and the Rostov ladies were among the best. They were both especially happy and cheerful. That evening, Sonya, proud of Dolokhov’s proposal, her refusal and explanation with Nikolai, was still spinning at home, not allowing the girl to finish her braids, and now she was glowing through and through with impetuous joy.

German rifle 44. History of the first assault rifle Sturmgewehr Stg.44

Plan:

Introduction

1. Prerequisites for drought

2. July and August 1972

3. Fight against the elements

4. Press coverage

Notes

Prerequisites for drought

July and August 1972

Fighting the elements

Media coverage

Write a review about the article "Drought in the USSR (1972)"

Notes

An excerpt characterizing the Drought in the USSR (1972)

Women's bag interpretation of the dream book

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German rifle 44. History of the first assault rifle Sturmgewehr Stg.44

Plan:

Introduction

1. Prerequisites for drought

2. July and August 1972

3. Fight against the elements

4. Press coverage

Notes

Prerequisites for drought

July and August 1972

Fighting the elements

Media coverage

Write a review about the article "Drought in the USSR (1972)"

Notes

An excerpt characterizing the Drought in the USSR (1972)

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