Bernshtein Ilya independent publisher. “What’s the most scandalous thing we’ve done lately? ‒ Thank you very much for the interview.

Modern parents have the idea that Soviet children's and adolescent literature is all about “children about animals” and uplifting stories about pioneer heroes. Those who think so are mistaken. Since the 1950s, books in which the young heroes the divorce of parents, the first loves and yearnings of the flesh, the illness and death of loved ones, difficult relationships with peers. Ilya Bernshtein, publisher and compiler of the Ruslit, Native Speech and How It Was series, spoke to Lenta.ru about Soviet children's literature, which many have forgotten.

“Lenta.ru”: When we now say “Soviet children’s literature,” what do we mean? Can we operate with this concept or is it some kind of “average temperature in the hospital”?

Of course, clarification is required: a huge country, a long period of time, 70 years, a lot has changed. I chose a rather local area for research - the literature of the Thaw, and even of the capital's flood. I know something about what happened in Moscow and Leningrad in the 1960s and 70s. But even this period is difficult to comb with one brush. At this time, very different books were published. But there I can at least highlight certain areas.

Nevertheless, many parents see this conventional Soviet children's literature as a single whole, and their attitude towards it is ambivalent. Some people believe that modern children only need to read what they themselves were read in childhood. Others say that these books are hopelessly outdated. And what do you think?

I think that there is no such thing as outdated literature. It is either initially worthless, dead at the moment of its birth, so it cannot become obsolete. Or a good one, which also does not become outdated.

Both Sergei Mikhalkov and Agnia Barto wrote many real lines. If we consider the entire work of Mikhalkov, then there will be quite a lot of bad things, but not because something has changed and these lines are outdated, but because they were stillborn from the very beginning. Although he was a talented person. I like his “Uncle Styopa”. I really think that:

“After tea, come in -
I'll tell you a hundred stories!
About the war and about the bombing,
About the big battleship "Marat"
How I was a little wounded,
Defending Leningrad" -

Not bad lines at all, even good ones. The same thing - Agnia Lvovna. Even more so than Mikhalkov. In this sense, I have more complaints about Sapgir. He definitely fits into the frame of the intellectual myth. Although he wrote such verses. Read about the queen of the fields, corn.

What do you think of Vladislav Krapivin, who gave birth to the myth that the pioneer is the new musketeer?

It seems to me that he is not a very strong writer. Moreover, for sure good man doing an important big job. A talent nurturer - he has a bonus. As a person, as an individual, I have unconditional respect for him. But as a writer, I would not put him above Mikhalkov or Barto.

It just seems to me that this is good prose. Everything except the book “The Mystery of the Abandoned Castle,” which is no longer even entirely Volkov’s (the illustrator of all Volkov’s books, Leonid Vladimirsky, said that the text of “The Castle” was added and rewritten by the editor after the author’s death). And this is certainly better than Baum. Even “The Wizard of Oz,” which is essentially a loose retelling of “The Wizard of Oz.” And the original Volkov, starting with Urfin Deuce, is straight up real literature. No wonder Miron Petrovsky dedicated it to him big book, quite panegyric.

After all, we generally have a bad idea of ​​Soviet children’s literature. It was a huge country. There was not only the Children's Literature publishing house, but also fifty other publishing houses. And we don’t know at all what they released. For example, although I was already an adult, I was shocked by a book by a Voronezh writer Evgenia Dubrovina “Waiting for the Goat”. He was then the editor-in-chief of the Krokodil magazine. The book was published by the Central Black Earth Publishing House. Incredible in its literary merits. Now it has been republished by the Rech publishing house with original illustrations.

The book is pretty scary. It's about the first post-war years, mortally hungry in those parts. About how a father returned home from the war and found his grown sons completely strangers. It is difficult for them to understand each other and get along. About how parents go in search of food. It’s literally scary to turn every page, everything is so nervous and tough. The parents went after the goat, but died along the way. The book is truly terrible, I did not dare to republish it. But perhaps the best I've ever read.

There is one more important point. Modern young parents have a false idea that Soviet children's literature may have been good, but due to ideological oppression, due to the fact that society did not raise and solve a whole series of important issues, the child’s problems were not reflected in the literature. Teenage for sure. And something important that you need to talk about with modern teenager, - divorce of parents, betrayal of friends, a girl falling in love with an adult man, cancer in the family, disability, etc. - is not present at all in it. That's why we are so grateful to the Scandinavian authors for raising these topics. But it is not so.

But if you remove books by European authors from a modern bookstore, then only Mikhalkov, Barto and Uspensky will remain from ours.

I'm not saying that those Soviet teenage books can be bought now. I say that they were written by Soviet authors and published in the Soviet Union in large editions. But since then they really haven’t been republished.

So Atlantis sank?

This is the basis of my activity - to find and republish such books. And this has its advantages: you get to know your country better, the child has a common cultural background with his grandparents. I can name more than one notable book on all the topics that I have just listed.

Name it!

What kind of Lately what was the most scandalous thing? Orphanage? Pedophilia? There is a good book Yuri Slepukhin “Cimmerian Summer”, teen romance. The plot is this: the father returns home from the front and becomes a big Soviet boss. While dad was at the front, my mother, unknown from whom, became pregnant, gave birth and raised a boy until he was 3 years old. At the same time, the family already had a child - the eldest girl. But not the main character - she was born later. Dad said that he was ready to make peace with his wife if they took this boy to an orphanage. Mom agreed, and the older sister did not object. This became a secret in the family. main character, who was born later, accidentally finds out this secret. She is outraged and runs away from her cozy home in Moscow. And the boy grew up in an orphanage and became an excavator operator somewhere, conditionally - at the Krasnoyarsk hydroelectric power station. She is going to this brother of hers. He persuades her not to fool around and return to her parents. She's coming back. This is the one story line. Second: after 9th grade, the heroine goes on vacation to Crimea and finds herself at an excavation site. There she falls in love with a 35-year-old associate professor from St. Petersburg, who, in turn, is in love with archeology. They develop love. Absolutely carnal, in the 10th grade she moves to live with him. The book was published by a major publishing house and is very typical for its time. This is the 1970s.

What else? Oncology? Here is a book by a good writer Sergei Ivanov, author of the script for the cartoon “Last Year’s Snow Was Falling.” "Former Bulka and his daughter" called. It's about childhood betrayal: how one girl betrays another. But another topic is developing in parallel - my dad is diagnosed with cancer. “Former Bulka” is just dad. He ends up in the hospital. And although he himself recovers, his roommates die. This is such a teen book.

“Let it disagree with the answer” by Max Bremener. This is a book published before the thaw. It describes a school where high school students take money from kids. They are covered by the school management. A certain young man rebels against this, and he is threatened with expulsion under a falsified pretext. His parents, who are frightened by the school administration, oppose him. The only one who helps him is the head teacher, who has just returned from the camp. Unrehabilitated old teacher. The book, by the way, is based on real events.

Or a story Frolova "What's what?", which I republished. Worse than Salinger. There is a strong Soviet family: dad is a war hero, mom is an actress. Mom runs away with the actor, dad drinks. Nobody explains anything to a 15-year-old boy. And he has his own busy life. There is a girl classmate with whom he is in love. There is a girl who is in love with him. And there is a classmate’s older sister who strokes him with her foot under the table. Or in tights she stands in the doorway so that the light falls on her. And the hero forgets about his first love, because the magnet is stronger here. He gets into a terrible fight with a classmate who spoke vilely about his mother, and runs away from home to find his mother. This is a story from 1962.

And such books were more a tradition than an exception.

When and by whom was this tradition started?

This is what I think happened in the late 1950s. A generation of young people who had no Stalinist experience in education came to literature. Conventionally, the Dovlatov-Brodsky circle. They didn’t have to overcome anything in themselves after the 20th Congress. They were from a dissident circle, with parents who had served time. If we talk about teenage literature, these are Valery Popov, Igor Efimov, Sergei Volf, Andrey Bitov, Inga Petkevich and others. They rejected previous experience. Remember how in “Steep Route” Evgenia Ginzburg looks at her son Vasily Aksenov, who came to her in Magadan in some kind of terribly colorful jacket, and says to him: “Let’s go buy you something decent, and from this we’ll make a coat for Tonya.” . The son replies: “Only over my corpse.” And she suddenly realizes that her son rejects her experience not only politically, but also aesthetically.

So these authors could not appear in adult literature for censorship reasons, but they did not have an education, which saved the previous generation who found themselves in their situation. Bitov told me: “Do you understand why we all came there? We didn't know any languages. We couldn’t do translations like Akhmatova and Pasternak.” There were the same editors, aesthetic dissidents, at Kostya and at the Leningrad Department of Children's Literature. They were no longer in Pioneer. Or look at the composition of the authors in the “Fiery Revolutionaries” series: Raisa Orlova, Lev Kopelev, Trifonov, Okudzhava. They published books about revolutionaries. Who were the revolutionaries? Sergey Muravyov-Apostol and others. The history of publishing and editorial activity and thought in this country is a separate topic.

Young writers were uncompromising people. Everything they did was without a fig in their pocket, absolutely honestly. Some people didn’t succeed with children’s literature, like Bitov, who nevertheless has two children’s books - “Journey to a Childhood Friend” and “Another Country.” And what these authors wrote was not the legacy of the writers of the 1920s and 30s. These were conventional Hemingway and Remarque. At this point, Kaufman's Up the Downstairs, Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, and Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye were as influential on children's literature as Carlson and Moomintroll. They showed what an adult writer can do in juvenile literature. These books ended up in libraries.

But still they weren’t republished en masse?

That's not the point. Back then, even what is now an absolute classic was not reissued en masse. For decades, “Republic of Shkid” or “Conduit and Shvambrania” fell out of publishing plans. This is another important point: during the thaw, books about childhood in the 1930s, which previously could not be released for censorship reasons, were republished.

There were entire trends in children's literature that are now almost forgotten. For example, tradition historical novels for children, unusually meticulously made. My favorite writers Samuella Fingaret or Alexander Nemirovsky worked in this genre. These people did not take the easy path - say, take stories from Plutarch and make a story out of them. They, using this as background, wrote original works from ancient Greek, ancient Phoenician or ancient Chinese history. For example, at Fingaret there is a book "Great Benin". It's about the kingdom of Benin, which existed before the Portuguese came to Africa. They discovered the secret of tin casting, and their sculptures - the heads of their ancestors - are still kept in museums.

Or is there Sergey Grigoriev, Volga region writer. He has a wonderful book "Berka the Cantonist" about a Jewish boy sent to cantonism. The Jews had a high recruitment rate. Since they were cunning - they married their children early so as not to be drafted into the army - a whole system of cantonist schools was invented, that is, children's military schools, where children were recruited from the age of 10. They did it by force. When a person reached 18 years of age, he was sent to the army, where he had to serve another 25 years. And so Berka is accepted as a cantonist. All this is written with such knowledge of the details, with so many non-Yiddish quotes, of which there are plenty, but all the features of training in the cheder are spelled out, the topics that were discussed in religious training. Moreover, Sergei Grigoriev is not a pseudonym. He is a real Russian person.

Or there was another writer Emelyan Yarmagaev. The book is called "The Adventures of Peter Joyce". It's about the first settlers to America, like the Mayflower. I once learned from there, for example, that the first slaves were whites, that the first settlers on the Mayflower were all slaves. They sold themselves for 10 years to pay for the journey to America. These were not even Quakers, but such religious “ultras”, for whom religious freedom, independent reading and study of scripture was so important that in England at that time they were persecuted. This book by Emelyan Yarmagaev describes the details of their Quaker theological disputes. And the book, by the way, is for 10-year-old children.

All this is certainly complete Atlantis - it has sunk and is not being republished.

Master classes by a Moscow independent publisher and editor always attract attention creative people, wherever he spends them. Pskov was no exception. He came to us at the International Book Forum “Russian West” and shared with the audience the secret of his publishing success, as well as his thoughts about reading and, in fact, about books. And secrets are just that, so that the correspondent “ Pressaparte“I was interested in them, so that later I could tell our readers in confidence.

Ilya Bernstein put the main secret of a successful publisher in his “Editor's Book or 4 in 1.” Layout designer, literary, art and scientific editor: these are the four specialties that a book publisher combines and which need to be mastered by anyone who wants to rush into this exciting and stormy publishing sea. Despite the fact that the publisher accepts these four specialties as independent of each other, he sees his success precisely in the combination of all four. To be able to feel the text in order to arrange it on the pages and make it readable, to be a competent literary editor, to know what book design is, to explain to the reader certain concepts in the book, this is the complex that Ilya Bernstein uses in his work.

His second secret is that... “You don’t need to invent anything,” the publisher convinces. The text, in his opinion, only needs to be carefully studied and understood in order to select the appropriate design and illustrations.

Ilya expressed an interesting thought that runs counter to what is currently dominant in society. He believes that there is no need to put age restrictions on books, and the reader’s freedom to read what he wants should not be taken away. “Every age finds its own in a book,” said a publisher in Pskov. And as a businessman, he explains that books must satisfy consumer needs, the book must meet the reader’s expectations, in which case it will be successful and reprinted several times.

In his Moscow publishing house, Ilya Bernstein began work on a series of books on military topics, “How It Was.” To the 70th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War he plans to republish books about the war, where possible with the original text restored and with the addition of scholarly commentary. He already knows that the series will include works by Viktor Dragunsky, Vadim Shefner, Vitaly Semin and other writers who witnessed events at the front. In the future, the publisher will continue to work on publishing books on military topics. “Somehow it turns out that books about war are always relevant,” the publisher is sure.

« Pressaparte»

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

Ksenia Moldavskaya → Can we meet on Friday?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

KM→ Will you?

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

KM→ Will you publish it?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‒ Do they want a different relationship model?

Certainly!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Thank you very much for the interview.

The conversation was conducted by Evgeny Zherbin
Photo by Galina Solovyova

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

Books in the Ruslit series

Ilya Bernstein

“Everyone’s Personal Business” publishes an article by Ilya Bernshtein, an independent publisher specializing in children’s and teenage literature Soviet period, about the writer Leonid Solovyov - repressed for “anti-Soviet agitation and terrorist statements” and rehabilitated before the end of his prison term. The article was first published in additional materials to Leonid Solovyov’s story “The Enchanted Prince” (the continuation of “The Troublemaker” about the adventures of Khoja Nasreddin), published by the author of the article. By the way, the story “The Enchanted Prince” was written entirely by the author in the camp where Solovyov was officially “allowed to do literary work” - which in itself is surprising. In his article, Ilya Bernstein analyzes the investigative case of Leonid Solovyov and comes to unexpected conclusions - the writer’s behavior during the investigation reminds him of a “rogue” novel.

About how the future author of “The Enchanted Prince” became “the prisoner Leonid Solovyov, a writer held at 14 l/o Dubravlaga,” art. 58 clause 10 part 2 and 17-58 clause 8, term - 10 years” (this is how the application was signed to the head of the Dubravlag department), we know from two documents: his investigative file and the petition for rehabilitation sent to the Prosecutor General USSR in 1956. The first is not completely accessible to us - some pages (approximately 15 percent of their total number) are hidden, “sewn up” in sealed envelopes: they are opened in the FSB archive only at the request of close relatives, whom Solovyov no longer has. From the petition to the Prosecutor General we know that during the investigation no confrontations with prosecution witnesses - their testimony is known to us only in summary investigator. This is also a very significant gap, which does not allow, for example, to evaluate the role played in the arrest and conviction of the writer Viktor Vitkovich, Solovyov’s co-author on the scripts for the films “Nasreddin in Bukhara” and “The Adventures of Nasreddin.” The two of them wrote the scripts together in 1938 and 1944, respectively, and, according to Vitkovich, Solovyov included plot devices and dialogues invented by his co-author in his stories: “I literally begged him to take the best from the script. He did this not without internal resistance. This strengthened our friendship... On the title page I read that it was based on our general scenario, and I again resolutely rebelled... Was there any time for politeness; I blotted out the footnote with my own hand” (V. Vitkovich. “Circles of Life.” M., 1983, pp. 65–67). Solovyov’s version is unknown to us, but in the interrogation protocols Vitkovich (who was not arrested) is given a lot of space. However, Solovyov later wrote about him in his petition, and we will return to this later. From “camp” memoirs we know how interrogations were conducted and how those interrogated behaved. The usually unproven absurdity of accusations under “political” articles and the falsity of the protocols are also known. And we read Solovyov’s “case” from this angle. What false evidence of imaginary crimes did the investigator present? What line of defense did the accused choose? Did you behave with dignity, rejecting the outrageous lies, or did you quickly “break down”? Did you slander anyone? Solovyov’s behavior during the investigation largely does not correspond to the usual ideas. The reason for this is the personality and fate of Leonid Vasilyevich, as well as circumstances unknown to us (maybe something will change when the above-mentioned envelopes with seals are opened).

So, “Investigation case on charges Solovyova Leonida Vasilyevich, number P-6235, year of production 1946, 1947.” It opens with an “Arrest Resolution” drawn up by Major Kutyrev (let me remind you that the ranks of state security officers were two levels higher than the combined arms ones, i.e. an MGB major corresponded to an army colonel). The date of compilation is September 4, 1946, despite the fact that the testimony incriminating the writer was obtained in January. In general, the matter turned out to be serious - it took a long time to prepare, and was carried out by high officials - the second signature on the Resolution belongs to “Beg. departments 2-3 2 Main. Ex. MGB of the USSR" to Lieutenant Colonel F.G. Shubnyakov is a notable person in the history of Soviet repressive bodies. 2nd Main Directorate - counterintelligence, Fyodor Grigorievich later became both the head of this department and a resident in Austria (in the mid-1950s), but he is best known for his personal participation in the murder of Mikhoels. What was Solovyov charged with?

“Members of an anti-Soviet group arrested by the USSR MGB in 1944 – writers Ulin L.N., Bondarin S.A. and Gekht A.G. showed that Solovyov L.V. is their like-minded person and in conversations with them he spoke about the need to change the existing system in the Soviet Union on bourgeois-democratic principles. From the side of Solovyov L.V. Manifestations of terrorist sentiments against the leader of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and the Soviet government were repeatedly noted. The presence of terrorist sentiments in Solovyov L.V. confirmed A.I. Fastenko, arrested in January 1945. On January 12, 1945, Fastenko testified: “... Solovyov expressed terrorist intentions towards the party to me around February 1944, declaring: “To change the existing situation in the country, it is necessary to remove the leader of the party,” and later stated that he was personally ready commit a terrorist act against the leader of the party, accompanied by insulting language.” “Solovyov L.V. exerts an anti-Soviet influence on politically unstable individuals from among his circle.”

Terrorism is a death sentence; in the harsher thirties, Solovyov would have had little chance of saving his life. But anti-Soviet agitation, on the contrary, is a routine accusation, the main means of fulfilling the plan to supply the Gulag system with free and powerless labor force. That is, the pragmatic (it’s still not possible to achieve an acquittal) task of the defendant is to try to convince the investigator to reclassify the case, to present it in such a way that the main thing there is chatter that is relatively safe for the country, mixing in a terrorist note. Apparently, Solovyov succeeded (or the writer was simply lucky), in any case, the sentence - ten years in forced labor camps - was relatively mild.

The investigation lasted six months: the first of 15 interrogations took place on September 5, 1946, the last on February 28, 1947. There was no trial, the verdict was made by the OSO, and three months later, on June 9; In total, Solovyov spent ten months in prison. The first protocols fit well into the pattern familiar to us: night long interrogations - for example, from 22.30 to 03.20 - following one after another. (We remember that during the day the beds in the cell are raised and attached to the walls: “They were allowed to be lowered from eleven to six in the morning by a special signal. At six - rise, and you cannot lie down until eleven. You can only stand or sit on stools,” - Evgenia Ginzburg , “Steep route.”) Solovyov, exhausted by interrogation, was given two and a half hours to sleep these days.

But that was only the beginning. Already from October 12, from the eighth interrogation, everything was simplified, and in the end it became completely formal: the investigator did it in one and a half to two hours and tried to finish it before the end of the working day prescribed by the Labor Code. The reason, apparently, is that Solovyov did not become a tough nut to crack for the investigator, Lieutenant Colonel Rublev (who, by the way, shortly before, in June 1945, drew up the indictment in the Solzhenitsyn case). This is what Leonid Vasilyevich himself wrote in a petition for rehabilitation ten years later:

“Rublev tirelessly inspired me: “They don’t go free from here. Your fate is predetermined. Now everything depends on my investigative characteristics - both the sentence and the camp where you will be sent. There are camps from which no one returns, but there are easier ones. Choose. Remember that your recognition or non-recognition does not matter, it is just a form”...

I only thought about how to quickly escape from the investigative prison somewhere - even to a camp. There was no point in resisting under such conditions, especially since the investigator told me: “There won’t be a trial against you, don’t get your hopes up. We’ll put your case through a Special Meeting.” In addition, I often, with my confessions, seemed to pay off the investigator - from his persistent demands to give incriminating evidence against my acquaintances - writers and poets, among whom I did not know the criminals. The investigator told me more than once: “You block everyone with your broad back, but they don’t really block you.”

All the investigative techniques described by Leonid Solovyov are well known and developed long before 1946. (Several years later, already in the camp, Solovyov included in the story “The Enchanted Prince” the scene of Khoja’s interrogation. Familiar with personal experience the writers read it with a special feeling) Why didn’t he resist, although “measures of physical coercion... were not used” (he was hungry, they didn’t let him sleep, but they didn’t beat him)? It is possible that his behavior during the investigation was thoughtful: Solovyov decided to get out of the dark rut, presenting himself in an image that was not very typical for an “enemy of the people,” but evoked understanding and even sympathy from the investigator (fitting well both into archetypal ideas and into his , Solovyova, real circumstances).

« question What was your irresponsibility?

answer Firstly, I separated from my wife because of my drunkenness and infidelity and was left alone. I loved my wife very much, and breaking up with her was a disaster for me. Secondly, my drinking increased. My sober working periods were becoming shorter and shorter, I felt that a little more and my literary activity would be completely impossible, and I would be finished as a writer. All this contributed to the emergence of the darkest pessimism in me. Life seemed to me devalued, hopeless, the world - a meaningless and cruel chaos. I saw everything around me in a dark, joyless, heavy light. I began to avoid people and lost my previously inherent gaiety and cheerfulness. It was during the time of the greatest aggravation of my spiritual crisis that the greatest aggravation of my anti-Soviet sentiments occurred (1944–1946). I myself was sick, and the whole world seemed sick to me too.”

(Interrogation protocols are quoted with minor deletions.)

« question Why do you call yourself single when you were married and also had friends?

answer My drunkenness, disorderly life, connections with tramps and tramps from Arbat pubs, whom I brought in whole groups to visit my home, led to the fact that my wife and I had a final break. Early in the morning she went to work, returning only late in the evening, she went straight to bed, I was alone all day. I was faced with the question of the complete impossibility of continuing such a life and the need for some kind of way out.

question Where did you start looking for a way out?

answer I seriously thought about suicide, but what stopped me was the fact that I would die all dirty. I began to think about outside interference in my fate and most often my thoughts focused on the NKVD bodies, believing that the task of the NKVD included not only purely punitive, but also punitive-corrective functions.

At the beginning of 1945, after several hallucinations, I realized that my psychic sphere I was completely upset and the hour for a decisive action had come. I went to the first art cinema on Arbat Square, where I found out the switchboard number from the NKVD theater duty officer, began calling and asking to be connected to the NKVD literary hotel.

question For what?

answer I wanted to say that I was standing on the edge of an abyss, that I was asking you to isolate me, let me come to my senses, then listen to me as a human being and put tight blinders on me for the period necessary to shake out all the moral dirt.

question Have you reached the NKVD?

answer I got through to the person on duty, told him where I was calling from and who I was, and began to wait for an answer. At this time, the director of the cinema, sympathetically questioning me and seeing my difficult mental condition, connected me with Bakovikov, an employee of the editorial office of the newspaper “Red Fleet”, where I worked before demobilization, I told Bakovikov about my serious condition, asked him for some help.

question What help did you receive?

answer Bakovikov managed to place me in a neuropsychiatric hospital for disabled veterans of the Patriotic War, where I stayed for 2 months. I came out in a more or less calm state, but with the same feeling of heaviness in my soul.”

I will not say that Solovyov was playing a prank on the investigator (who, for example, could easily verify the authenticity of the story with the call to the NKVD), but the benefits of such a strategy of behavior during the investigation are obvious, especially for someone accused of terrorism: what danger can a degenerate drunk pose to the country? And how can one seriously consider him as an anti-Soviet agitator? It’s clear that the green serpent has misled me. “I find it difficult to give the exact wording of my statements when drunk, because, having sobered up, I definitely don’t remember anything and I learn about what happened only from the words of other people.”

But this applies only to “terrorist” statements. The writer recounts his other speeches to the investigator readily, in great detail. One could assume that this is Rublev’s work, which Solovyov agreed to attribute to himself under the fear of ending up in a camp “from where they do not return.” But when reading the writer’s confession, doubts arise about this: the lieutenant colonel could not have come up with such a thing. Everything is very thoughtful, literary, and polemically sharpened. Solovyov seems to be setting out a program for reforming the country, affecting all sectors of its economy and all areas of social and cultural life. It’s as if he worked on it alone for a long time and is now presenting his results to a small but competent audience.

Politic system.“The statehood of the USSR is inflexible - it does not give people the opportunity to grow and fully realize their intellectual and spiritual powers, which threatens ossification and death in the event of war.”

Industry.“Complete nationalization and centralization of industry leads to extraordinary cumbersomeness and does not stimulate labor productivity, and therefore the state is forced to resort to coercive measures, since wages are very low and cannot serve as an incentive to increase labor productivity and to retain personnel in the enterprise.” “Workers are now essentially fixed in enterprises, and in this sense we have taken a leap back, returning to the long-gone days of forced labor, always unproductive.” “I also spoke about the need to relieve the state from the production of small consumer goods by transferring their production to artisans and artels.”

Agriculture.“On the issue of collective farms, I said that this form has not justified itself, that the cost of workdays on most collective farms is so low that it does not stimulate the work of collective farmers at all, and some collective farmers, being bread producers, themselves sit without bread, because the entire harvest goes to the state.” “After the end of the war, upon the return of the demobilized, who saw with their own eyes the situation of the peasantry in the West, political situation in our village it will become very aggravated; There is only one way to improve the health of collective farms - this is a serious and immediate restructuring of them on new principles.” “Collective farms should be given a different form, leaving only the grain wedge - the basis - for collective use, and everything else should be left to the collective farmers themselves, significantly expanding their household plots for this purpose.”

International trade.“The USSR must establish lively trade relations with America, establish a gold exchange rate for the ruble and decisively increase wages.”

Literature.“The unification of literature, the absence of literary groups and the struggle between them have led to an incredible decline in the literary level of the country, and the government does not see this, being concerned with only one thing - protecting the existing order.” “Our literature is like a race of runners with tied legs; writers only think about how not to say anything unnecessary. Therefore, it is degrading and today has nothing in common with the great literature that brought Russia worldwide fame. The nationalization of literature is a destructive absurdity; it needs free breathing, the absence of fear and the constant desire to please the authorities, otherwise it perishes, which is what we see. The Union of Soviet Writers is a government department; disunity reigns among writers; they do not feel that literature is a vital matter and work, as it were, for the owner, trying to please him.”

Public relations.“The intelligentsia does not occupy the place that rightfully belongs to it; it plays the role of a servant, while it should be the leading force. Dogmatism reigns supreme. Soviet government keeps the intelligentsia in a black body, in the position of a teacher or student in the house of a rich merchant or retired general. They demand courage and daring from her in the field of scientific thought, but they constrain her in every possible way in the field of scientific and political thought, and intellectual progress is a single, complex phenomenon. In the USSR, the intelligentsia is in the position of a person who is required to simultaneously have the valor of a lion and the timidity of a hare. They shout about creative daring and bold innovation - and are afraid of every fresh word. The result of this situation is the stagnation of creative thought, our lag in the field of science ( atomic bomb, penicillin). For people to work fruitfully, an appropriate material environment and moral atmosphere are needed, which do not exist in the USSR.” (Indirect evidence of Lieutenant Colonel Rublev’s non-participation in drawing up Solovyov’s “program” is lexical: wherever the writer talks about daring, the investigator writes down “torment” in the protocol.)

In my opinion, this is a completely extraordinary text, surprising not only for its inconsistency with the time and circumstances. In later and more “vegetarian” times, under Khrushchev and - even more so - under Brezhnev, after the XX and XXII Party Congresses, a dissident movement arose in the country, and a discussion began (even if only in samizdat or in the kitchens of the intelligentsia) about the fate of the country and ways to reform it. But even then, it was mainly carried out from the positions of socialist, “true” Marxism-Leninism, cleared of Stalinism.

Solovyov in his testimony appears to be a supporter of a different, “liberal-soil” ideology. Here again a parallel arises with Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who almost thirty years later would present very similar theses: “The grief of that nation whose literature is interrupted by the intervention of force: this is not just a violation of “freedom of the press,” it is the closing of the national heart, the excision of national memory.” (Nobel Lecture in Literature, 1972). “Our “ideological” Agriculture has already become a laughing stock for the whole world... because we don’t want to admit our collective farm mistake. There is only one way out for us to be a well-fed country: to abandon forced collective farms... Primitive economic theory, which declared that only the worker gives birth to values, and did not see the contribution of either organizers or engineers... All the millstones that drown you were awarded to you by the Advanced Teaching. And collectivization. And the nationalization of small crafts and services (which made the life of ordinary citizens unbearable)” (“Letter to the leaders Soviet Union", 1973).

In Solovyov's testimony, the form is no less surprising than the content. He does not use the words “slander”, “betrayal”, “fabrication” and the like. This vocabulary is the investigator's questions, but not the defendant's answers. Soloviev willingly and in detail sets out his views, without evaluating them and without demonstrating remorse. The answers are calm, full of respect for the topic and the very procedure of exchanging opinions with the lieutenant colonel.

« question What motives prompted you to take such an anti-Soviet path?

answer I must say that I have never been a completely Soviet person, that for me the concept of “Russian” has always obscured the concept of “Soviet.”

All this resembles, in today’s language, “subtle trolling” of an opponent. He is trained to unearth deeply hidden (and often completely absent) sedition in his testimony, to casuistic methods of “catching” - Solovyov’s testimony is so redundant that Rublev is often baffled by it and does not undertake to spin the flywheel of accusations further. Many lines of inquiry are cut off by himself - he stops questioning “in reality.” interesting place" I will give one more passage, again referring to the late Solzhenitsyn:

« answer I put forward the formulation that there are Russian writers, and there are writers in Russian.

question Decipher the meaning of these words of yours.

answer I considered Russian writers to be writers whose lives are inextricably linked with the historical destinies, joys and sorrows of Russia, with its historical significance in the world. I considered the “southwestern school” to be writers in Russian, the inspirers of which were V. Kataev, Y. Olesha and others. Most representatives of this group, such as the poet Kirsanov, in my opinion, are completely indifferent to what to write about. For them, literature is only an arena for verbal juggling and verbal balancing act.”

(It’s interesting that Solovyov’s division into “Russians” and “Russian-speaking” is not at all based on nationality, referring, in particular, to the latter Kataev and Olesha.)

How does the testimony of prosecution witnesses fit into this situation (the “investigator-person under investigation” relationship, Solovyov’s self-incrimination) (the investigation and the court did not turn to defense witnesses in those years)? What did Leonid Vasilyevich himself say about them, to whom did he “point”? In general, his line of behavior can be described as follows: “compromising things - only about those already convicted, all others - and above all, those arrested - to shield as much as possible.”

“The Grays never supported me, they put me down; her Political Views were distinguished by their stability”; “Rusin, Vitkovich, Kovalenkov told me more than once that I should stop drinking and chatting, meaning by this anti-Soviet talk”; “I don’t remember the names of the writers named by Ulin”; “Rusin said that I had put him in a false position and that from now on in conversations political topics I must take care of myself, otherwise he will have to inform the appropriate authorities about my anti-Soviet attacks.”

And vice versa: “Egorashvili instilled in me the idea that it is necessary to distinguish the real goals of the state from its declarations, slogans and promises, that all promises, manifestos, declarations are nothing more than scraps of paper”; “Nasedkin said: collective farms are a dogmatic, fictitious form of rural life; if the peasants somehow eke out their existence, it is solely due to the fat layer accumulated during the NEP years”; “Makarov stated that the liquidation of the kulaks is essentially the decapitation of the village, the removal from it of the most healthy, hardworking and enterprising element” (the writer Ivan Makarov was shot in 1937, the literary critic David Egorashvili and the poet Vasily Nasedkin in 1938).

This situation apparently suited the investigator. He didn't bother too much, satisfied with the detailed confessions; Rublev did not set himself the task of creating a big “resonant” case with many accused.

Apparently, this is why the other defendants in his case did not share Solovyov’s fate. And first of all, Viktor Vitkovich, who had a “friendly and business relationship” with him. It’s hard for us to imagine what it’s like to be close comrades and co-authors for many years, and then give incriminating evidence against each other (“I argued that collective farms are unprofitable, and collective farmers, due to the low cost of a day’s work, have no incentive to work. Vitkovich agreed with me on this ... Victor basically shared my anti-Soviet views on literary issues” - of all the prosecution witnesses, only Solovyov said this about Vitkovich). There is no testimony from Vitkovich in the open part of the case, but this is what Solovyov writes in the petition: “I saw Vitkovich upon returning from the camps, and he told me that he gave his testimony against me under incredible pressure, under all sorts of threats. However, his testimony was restrained; As far as I remember, the heaviest accusation that came from him was the following: “Soloviev said that Stalin would not share the glory of the great commander and winner of the Patriotic War with anyone, and therefore would try to push Marshals Zhukov and Rokossovsky into the shadows.”

The meeting “on return” is evidenced by a photograph: two middle-aged people sitting on a bench. One will live another quarter of a century, the other will die in 1962. But their best books have already been written: Vitkovich’s fairy tales (“Day of Miracles. Funny Tales,” co-authored with Grigory Yagdfeld) and a dilogy about Khoja Nasreddin. The one that Leonid Vasilyevich reported during interrogation:

« question What statements and petitions do you have to the prosecutor during the investigation of your case?

answer I have no requests or statements during the investigation. I would ask the investigation and the prosecutor's office, at the end of my case, to send me to serve my sentence in prison, and not in a camp. In prison I could write the second volume of my work “Nasreddin in Bukhara.”