“The most precious thing for a person is life.

It is given to him once, and he must live it in such a way that it would not be excruciatingly painful for the aimlessly lived years, so that he would not burn the shame for a vile and petty past, and so that, dying, he could say: all life and all strength were given to the most beautiful in the world. - struggle for the liberation of mankind.

Nikolai Ostrovsky

Nikolai Ostrovsky was born on September 29, 1904 in the village of Viliya in Volhynia in the family of a retired military man.

His father Alexei Ivanovich distinguished himself in the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-1878 and was awarded two St. George Crosses for special courage. After the war, Anatoly Ostrovsky worked as a maltmaker at a distillery, and Ostrovsky's mother, Olga Osipovna, was a cook.

The Ostrovsky family did not live well, but together, they valued education and work. Nikolai's elder sisters, Nadezhda and Ekaterina, became village teachers, and Nikolai himself was admitted ahead of schedule to the parochial school "because of his outstanding abilities," which he graduated at the age of 9 with a certificate of merit. In 1915 he graduated from a two-year school in Shepetovka, and in 1918 he entered the Higher Primary School, later transformed into the Unified Labor School, and became a student representative on the pedagogical council.

From the age of 12, Ostrovsky had to work for hire: a cube-maker, a worker in a warehouse and an assistant fireman at a power plant. Subsequently, he wrote to Mikhail Sholokhov about this period of his life: "I am a full-time stoker and I was a good master when it came to filling boilers."

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Hard work did not interfere with Ostrovsky's romantic impulses. His favorite books were Spartacus by Giovagnoli, Gadfly by Voynich, novels by Cooper and Walter Scott, in which brave heroes fought for freedom against the injustice of tyrants. In his youth, he read Bryusov's poems to friends, having come to Novikov, he swallowed Homer's Iliad, Erasmus of Rotterdam's Praise of Stupidity.

Under the influence of Shepetov's Marxists, Ostrovsky became involved in underground work and became an activist in the revolutionary movement. Brought up on romantic adventurous bookish ideals, he accepted the October Revolution with enthusiasm. On July 20, 1919, Nikolai Ostrovsky joined the Komsomol and went to the front to fight against the enemies of the revolution. He first served in the Kotovsky division, then in the 1st Cavalry Army under the command of Budyonny.

In one of the battles, Ostrovsky fell off his horse at full gallop, later he was wounded in the head and in the stomach. All this severely affected his health, and in 1922 the eighteen-year-old Ostrovsky was retired.

After demobilization, Ostrovsky found a use for himself on the labor front. After graduating from school in Shepetivka, he continued his studies at the Kiev Electrotechnical College without leaving work, and, together with the first Komsomol members of Ukraine, was mobilized to restore the national economy. Ostrovsky participated in the construction of a narrow-gauge railway, which was supposed to become the main highway for providing firewood to Kyiv, which was dying from cold and typhus. There he caught a cold, fell ill with typhus and was sent home unconscious. Through the efforts of his relatives, he managed to cope with the disease, but soon he caught a cold again, saving the forest in the icy water. Study after that had to be interrupted, and, as it turned out, forever.

He later wrote about all this in his novel "How the Steel Was Tempered": and how, saving the timber rafting, he threw himself into icy water, and a severe cold after this labor feat, and about rheumatism, and about typhus ...

At the age of 18, he learned that doctors had given him a terrible diagnosis - an incurable, progressive Bekhterev's disease, which leads the patient to complete disability. Ostrovsky had severe pain in his joints. And later he was given the final diagnosis - progressive ankylosing polyarthritis, gradual ossification of the joints.

Doctors suggested that the shocked young man go on disability and wait for the end. But Nicholas chose to fight. He strove to make life in this seemingly hopeless state useful for others. However, the consequences of exhausting work increasingly made themselves felt. He experienced the first bouts of an incurable disease in 1924 and in the same year became a member of the Communist Party.

With his characteristic full dedication and youthful maximalism, he devoted himself to working with young people. He became the Komsomol leader and organizer of the first Komsomol cells in the border regions of Ukraine: Berezdovo, Izyaslavl. Together with Komsomol activists, Ostrovsky participated in the struggle of the ChON detachments with armed gangs seeking to break into Soviet territory.

The disease progressed, and an endless series of stays in hospitals, clinics and sanatoriums began. Painful procedures, operations did not bring improvement, but Nikolai did not give up. He was engaged in self-education, studied at the Sverdlovsk Correspondence Communist University, and read a lot.

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At the end of the twenties in Novorossiysk, he met his future wife. By the autumn of 1927, Nikolai Alekseevich could no longer walk. In addition, he developed an eye disease, which eventually led him to blindness, and was the result of complications from typhus.

Nikolai Ostrovsky with his wife Raisa a year before his death.

In the autumn of 1927, Ostrovsky began writing an autobiographical novel, The Tale of the Kotovites. The manuscript of this book, created by a truly titanic work and sent by mail to Odessa to former comrades for discussion, unfortunately, was lost on the way back, and its fate remained unknown. But Nikolai Ostrovsky, accustomed to enduring even lesser blows of fate, did not lose courage and did not despair.

In a letter dated November 26, 1928, he wrote: “People, strong as oxen, walk around me, but with cold blood, like that of fish. Moldy smells from their speeches, and I hate them, I can’t understand how a healthy person can to be bored in such a stressful period. I have never lived such a life and will not live."

Since that time, he was forever bedridden, and in the autumn of 1929 Ostrovsky moved to Moscow for treatment.

"The brought stop of 20 - 30 books was barely enough for him for a week," his wife noted. Yes, in his library there were not two - two thousand books! And it began, according to the mother, with a magazine sheet in which they wanted to wrap a herring for him, but he brought the herring, holding it by the tail, and put the magazine sheet on the shelf ... "Have I changed a lot?" Ostrovsky later asked Martha Purigne, his old friend. "Yes," she replied, "you have become an educated man."

In 1932, he began work on How the Steel Was Tempered. After an eight-month stay in the hospital, Ostrovsky and his wife settled in the capital. Absolutely immobilized, blind and helpless, he remained completely alone for 12-16 hours a day. Trying to overcome despair and hopelessness, he was looking for a way out of his energy, and since his hands still retained some mobility, Nikolai Alekseevich decided to start writing. With the help of his wife and friends, who made him a special "transparency" (a folder with slots), he tried to write down the first pages of a future book. But this opportunity to write himself did not last long, and in the future he was forced to dictate the book to his relatives, friends, flatmate, and even his nine-year-old niece.

He fought the disease with the same courage and perseverance with which he once fought in the civil war. He was engaged in self-education, read one after another book, graduated from a communist university in absentia. Being paralyzed, he led a Komsomol circle at home, preparing himself for literary activity. He worked at night, using a stencil, and during the day, friends, neighbors, wife, mother together deciphered what was written.

Nikolai Ostrovsky strove to learn how to write well - traces of this are clearly visible to an experienced eye. He studied the art of writing under Gogol (scenes with Petliura's Colonel Golub; beginnings like "good evenings in the Ukraine in the summer in such small towns as Shepetovka...", etc.). He studied with his contemporaries ("chopped style" B. Pilnyak, I. Babel), those who helped him edit the book. He learned to paint portraits (it turned out not very skillfully, monotonously), to look for comparisons, to individualize the speech of characters, to build an image. Not everything was successful, it was difficult to get rid of clichés, to find successful expressions - all this had to be done, overcoming illness, immobility, the elementary impossibility of reading and writing ...

The manuscript sent to the journal "Young Guard" received a devastating review: "the derived types are unrealistic." Ostrovsky, however, secured a second review of the manuscript. After that, the manuscript was actively edited by Mark Kolosov, deputy editor-in-chief of the Young Guard, and Anna Karavaeva, a well-known writer of that time, by editor-in-chief. Ostrovsky acknowledged the great participation of Karavaeva in working with the text of the novel; he also noted the participation of Alexander Serafimovich.

The first part of the novel was a huge success. It was impossible to get the issues of the magazine where he was published, in the libraries there were queues for him. The editors of the magazine were flooded with a stream of reader letters.

The image of the protagonist of the novel - Korchagin was autobiographical. The writer rethought personal impressions and documents, and created new literary images. Revolutionary slogans and business speech, documentary and fiction, lyricism and chronicle - all this was combined by Ostrovsky into a work of art new to Soviet literature. For many generations of Soviet youth, the hero of the novel has become a moral model.

Once, dissatisfied with some of the family scenes in the novel, a critic wrote that they contributed to "liquefying the granite figure of Pavka Korchagin." Nikolai was outraged - granite is not a building material for a living person. He called the article "vulgar": "I am heartily ill, but I will answer with a blow of a saber." One of his voluntary secretaries, Maria Barts, left us evidence of what bothered him during dictation: "Did it turn out like a human? Isn't it popular? Isn't Pavel Korchagin too orthodox?

In 1933, Nikolai Ostrovsky in Sochi continued to work on the second part of the novel, and in 1934 the first complete edition of this book was published.

In March 1935, an essay by Mikhail Koltsov "Courage" was published in the Pravda newspaper. From it, millions of readers first learned that the hero of the novel "How the Steel Was Tempered" Pavel Korchagin is not a figment of the author's imagination. That the author of this novel is the hero. Ostrovsky began to admire. His novel has been translated into English, Japanese and Czech. In New York, he was published in a newspaper.

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On October 1, 1935, Ostrovsky was awarded the Order of Lenin by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. In December 1935, Nikolai Alekseevich was given an apartment in Moscow, on Gorky Street, and a dacha in Sochi was built especially for him. He was also awarded the military rank of brigadier commissar.

Ostrovsky continued to work, and in the summer of 1936 he finished the first part of Born by the Storm. At the insistence of the author, the new book was discussed at an off-site meeting of the Presidium of the Board of the Union of Soviet Writers at the author's Moscow apartment.

The last month of his life, Nikolai Alekseevich was busy making amendments to the novel. He works "in three shifts" and was preparing to rest. And on December 22, 1936, the heart of Nikolai Alekseevich Ostrovsky stopped.

On the day of his solemn funeral, December 26, the book was published - the workers of the printing house typed and printed it in record short lines.

Meyerhold staged a performance about Pavka Korchagin based on a dramatization of the novel by Yevgeny Gabrilovich. A few years before his death, Yevgeny Iosifovich Gabrilovich told what a grandiose spectacle it was: "At the screening, the hall exploded with applause! It was so burning, so amazing! It was a solemn tragedy." We can clearly see the tragedy of that era today. Then it was forbidden to see her. After all, "life has become better, life has become more fun" ... The performance was banned.

The novel "How the Steel Was Tempered" by Ostrovsky went through more than 200 editions in many languages ​​of the world. Until the late 1980s, it was central to the school curriculum.

Nikolai Ostrovsky was buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery.

The autobiographical novel by Nikolai Ostrovsky is divided into two parts, each of which contains nine chapters: childhood, adolescence and youth; then mature years and illness.

For an unworthy act (he poured makhra into the dough for the priest), the cook's son Pavka Korchagin is expelled from school, and he ends up "into the people." “The boy looked into the very depths of life, at its bottom, into the well, and musty mold, swamp dampness smelled of him, greedy for everything new, unknown.” When the stunning news “The Tsar was thrown off” burst into his small town like a whirlwind, Pavel had no time to think about his studies at all, he works hard and, like a boy, without hesitation, hides weapons despite the ban from the bosses of the suddenly surging Germans. When the province is flooded with an avalanche of Petliura gangs, he becomes a witness to many Jewish pogroms, ending in brutal murders.

Anger and indignation often seize the young daredevil, and he cannot but help the sailor Zhukhrai, a friend of his brother Artem, who worked in the depot. The sailor spoke kindly with Pavel more than once: “You, Pavlusha, have everything to be a good fighter for the working cause, only now you are very young and have a very weak concept of the class struggle. I'll tell you, brother, about the real road, because I know: you will be good. I don’t like quiet and smeared ones. Now the whole earth is on fire. The slaves have risen and the old life must be put to the bottom. But this requires brave lads, not sissies, but a people of strong breed, who before a fight does not climb into the cracks, like a cockroach, but beats without mercy. Knowing how to fight, strong and muscular Pavka Korchagin saves Zhukhrai from under the escort, for which Petliurists seize him on a denunciation. Pavka was not familiar with the fear of an inhabitant protecting his belongings (he had nothing), but ordinary human fear seized him with an icy hand, especially when he heard from his escort: “Why carry him, sir cornet? A bullet in the back and it's over." Pavka was scared. However, Pavka manages to escape, and he hides with a friend of hers, Tonya, with whom he is in love. Unfortunately, she is an intellectual from the "rich class": the daughter of a forester.

Having passed the first baptism of fire in the battles of the civil war, Pavel returns to the city where the Komsomol organization was created, and becomes its active member. An attempt to drag Tonya into this organization fails. The girl is ready to obey him, but not completely. Too dressed up, she comes to the first Komsomol meeting, and it is hard for him to see her among the faded gymnasts and blouses. Tony's cheap individualism becomes unbearable for Pavel. The need for a break was clear to both of them ... Pavel's intransigence leads him to the Cheka, especially in the province it is headed by Zhukhrai. However, the KGB work is very destructive on Pavel's nerves, his concussion pains become more frequent, he often loses consciousness, and after a short respite in his hometown, Pavel goes to Kyiv, where he also ends up in the Special Department under the leadership of Comrade Segal.

The second part of the novel opens with a description of a trip to a gubernatorial conference with Rita Ustinovich, Korchagin is assigned to her as assistants and bodyguards. Borrowing a "leather jacket" from Rita, he squeezes into the carriage, and then drags a young woman through the window. “For him, Rita was untouchable. It was his friend and comrade in purpose, his political instructor, and yet she was a woman. He felt it for the first time at the bridge, and that's why he cares so much about her embrace. Pavel felt a deep, even breathing, somewhere very close to her lips. From proximity was born an irresistible desire to find those lips. By straining his will, he suppressed this desire. Unable to control his feelings, Pavel Korchagin refuses to meet with Rita Ustinovich, who teaches him political literacy. Thoughts about the personal are pushed aside in the mind of a young man even further when he takes part in the construction of a narrow gauge railway. The season is difficult - winter, Komsomol members work in four shifts, not having time to rest. Work is delayed by bandit raids. There is nothing to feed the Komsomol members, there are no clothes and shoes either. Work to the full strain of strength ends with a serious illness. Pavel falls, stricken with typhus. His closest friends, Zhukhrai and Ustinovich, having no information about him, think that he is dead.

However, after his illness, Pavel is back in the ranks. As a worker, he returns to the workshops, where he not only works hard, but also puts things in order, forcing the Komsomol members to wash and clean the workshop, to the great bewilderment of his superiors. In the town and throughout Ukraine, the class struggle continues, security officers catch the enemies of the revolution, suppress bandit raids. The young Komsomol member Korchagin does many good deeds, defending his comrades at meetings of the cell, and his party friends on the dark streets.

“The most precious thing for a person is life. It is given to him once, and it is necessary to live it in such a way that it would not be excruciatingly painful for the aimlessly lived years, so that the shame for the mean and petty past would not burn, and so that, dying, he could say: all life, all forces were given to the most beautiful in the world. - struggle for the liberation of mankind. And we must hurry to live. After all, an absurd illness or some tragic accident can interrupt it.

Having witnessed many deaths and killing himself, Pavka valued every passing day, accepting party orders and statutory orders as responsible directives of his being. As a propagandist, he also takes part in the defeat of the "workers' opposition", calling the behavior of his own brother "petty-bourgeois", and even more so in verbal attacks on the Trotskyists who dared to oppose the party. They do not want to listen to him, and after all, Comrade Lenin pointed out that we must bet on the youth.

When it became known in Shepetovka that Lenin had died, thousands of workers became Bolsheviks. The respect of the party members pushed Pavel far ahead, and one day he found himself at the Bolshoi Theater next to Rita Ustinovich, a member of the Central Committee, who was surprised to learn that Pavel was alive. Pavel says that he loved her like a Gadfly, a man of courage and infinite endurance. But Rita already has a friend and a three-year-old daughter, and Pavel is sick, and he is sent to the sanatorium of the Central Committee, carefully examined. However, a serious illness that led to complete immobility is progressing. No new best sanatoriums and hospitals are able to save him. With the thought that "it is necessary to stay in the ranks," Korchagin begins to write. Next to him are good kind women: first Dora Rodkina, then Taya Kyutsam. “Is it good, did he live his twenty-four years badly? Going through his memory year after year, Pavel checked his life like an impartial judge and decided with deep satisfaction that his life had not been so badly lived ... Most importantly, he did not sleep through the hot days, found his place in the iron struggle for power, and on the crimson banner of the revolution also has a few drops of his blood.

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Life must be lived in such a way that it is not excruciatingly painful for the aimlessly lived years.

Life must be lived in such a way that it is not excruciatingly painful for the aimlessly lived years.

From the novel (part 2, ch. 3) "How the Steel Was Tempered" (1932-1934) by a Soviet writer Nikolai Alekseevich Ostrovsky(1904-1936): “The most precious thing for a person is life. It is given to him once, and he must live it in such a way that he is not painfully ashamed of the aimlessly lived years, so that he does not burn shame for a vile and petty past, and so that, dying, he can say: all life and all strength are given to the most important thing in the world: struggle for the liberation of mankind. And we must hurry to live. After all, an absurd illness or some tragic accident can interrupt it.

Overwhelmed by these thoughts, Korchagin left the fraternal cemetery.

Quoted as a call to a decent, active life.

Chapter 16 Most often it is used as a dining room, and sometimes a living room. Well, the kitchen will always be the kitchen. It should be comfortable, and then success in the field of cooking is guaranteed to you.