Why did Simonov indicate the year 6750 in the poem. I made up my own name

We need to remember our history and go our own way.

Currently, we use the dating of the years from the birth of Christ and the Gregorian calendar. The Julian calendar, the so-called "old style", is not forgotten either. Every year in January we remember him when we celebrate the "old" New Year. Also, the media carefully reminds of the change of years according to the Chinese, Japanese, Thai and other calendars. It certainly broadens our horizons.

Let's expand our horizons. But, in order to make our horizons even wider, let's touch on the ancient tradition of the chronology of the Slavic peoples - the Daaryan Krugolet of Chislobog, according to which our Ancestors lived not so long ago. Now this calendar is used only by the Old Believers - representatives of the most ancient Slavic-Aryan Faith - Ynglism. The widespread use of our ancient calendar ceased a little over 300 years ago, when Tsar Peter 1 introduced a foreign calendar on the territory of Rus' by his Decree and ordered on the night of January 1 to celebrate the coming of the year 1700 from the birth of Jesus Christ.

The calendar reform has stolen (at least) 5,500 years of our history. And in Rus' at that time it was Summer 7208 from the Creation of the World in the Star Temple. It is generally accepted that this innovation of Peter 1 was a progress for Russia, introducing it to the "European culture". But it does not say at all that the emperor did not just change the calendar, he actually “stole”, at least (!). five and a half thousand years of our true history. Indeed, under the event from which the counting of years was conducted - the Creation of the World in the Star Temple (5508, BC), it was not meant at all the creation of the universe by the biblical god, but literally; the signing of a peace treaty in the year of the Star Temple for Krugolet Chislobog after the victory of the Power of the Great Race (in the modern sense - Russia) over the empire of the Great Dragon (in the modern - China). By the way, the symbolic image of a rider on a white horse slaying a dragon, known in Christian tradition as George the Victorious, actually symbolizes just this victory. That is why this symbol has long been so widespread and revered in Rus' among the Slavic-Aryan peoples.

From what events was the reckoning?

A natural question arises: what event was the reckoning from before the Creation of the World in the Star Temple? The answer is obvious - from an earlier significant event. Moreover, counting of years from different events could be carried out in parallel. That is how, with the mention of several time periods, the ancient chronicles began. For example, let's give several dates of the current year 2004 from RX: - Summer 7512 from the Creation of the World in the Star Temple - Summer 13012 from the Great Cooling - Summer 44548 from the Creation of the Great Kolo Rasseniya - Summer 106782 from the Foundation of Asgard of Iria - Summer 111810 from the Great Migration from Daaria - Summer 142994 from the period of Three Moons - Summer 153370 from Assa Dei - Summer 185770 from the Time of Thule - Summer 604378 from the Time of Three Suns, etc. Obviously, in the context of the modern "official" chronology, these dates look simply fantastic. But for an independently thinking person who is interested in the ancient Cultural heritage of the peoples of the Earth, such "gaps of years" do not look so frightening. After all, not only in the Slavic-Aryan Vedas, but also in quite a few written monuments that have come down to us throughout the Earth, even much longer periods of historical time are mentioned. Unbiased archaeological and paleo-astronomical studies also point to these facts. It will also be very interesting to remember that in pre-Petrine times in Rus', not numbers were used to designate numerical values, as is now customary, but titled letters, i.e. Slavic letters with service symbols.

What did Cyril and Methodius “fix”?

And since the calendar is a written tradition (try to orally maintain and pass on such a complex and dynamic array of information from generation to generation), it is obvious that before the time of Peter I, writing in Rus' already existed, at least (!) Seven over a thousand years. However, it is believed that writing was “invented” especially for us, “illiterates”, by two Greek monks Cyril and Methodius, who only added a few Greek letters to our alphabet instead of diphthongs they did not understand. And, modestly speaking, the ever-increasing pomposity during the annual "Cyril and Methodius" and "birthdays" of "Slavic" writing is surprising. At the present time, since we use the modern calendar (from AD), it would be more correct to use it only for the events of the last three hundred years. And more ancient events, for a clear understanding of their essence, must be dated in the system of chronology that was used before 1700. Otherwise, a misinterpretation of our history, culture, traditions and customs is possible. The dating of the pre-Peter the Great events in modern textbooks is sincerely regrettable. For example, 1242 is called the year of the Battle on the Ice on Lake Peipsi, and at that time it was 6750 in Rus'. Or, for example, the year 988 from the birth of Jesus Christ is considered the year of the baptism of Kyiv. But in Kyiv then they celebrated Summer 6496 from the Creation of the World in the Star Temple.
Brothers and sisters, let's remember our past, look for it if evil minds hide it from us on purpose.

Many generations of historians are perplexed by a brief note in one of the most authoritative sources - the Ipatiev Chronicle: "In the summer of 6750, do not be nothing." That is, this year there was no noteworthy event worthy of entering the annals of history. But the summer of 6750 is the year 1242! This spring, on April 5, Alexander Nevsky defeated the army of the Teutonic Order on the ice of Lake Peipsi. This battle, known to every schoolchild as the Battle on the Ice, is considered one of the most significant events in the history of medieval Rus'. Why did the chronicler know nothing about her? Let's try to shed some light on this mystery.

Official version

Our compatriots mainly judge the Battle of the Ice by the famous film by Sergei Eisenstein "Alexander Nevsky" - a brilliant picture, but, unfortunately, very far from historical truth. However, when filming, the director relied on the classic version of the course of the battle on Lake Peipsi, adopted by the official Russian historiography. This version dominates to this day.

So, in August 1240, the Teutonic Order, which had established itself in the lands of the Baltic states, began a campaign against Rus'. This army was made up of the Teutonic knights with their servants, the militia of the Bishop of Derpt Herman, the squad of the Pskov prince Yaroslav Vladimirovich, who went over to the enemies, the army of the Estonians and the army of some king, mentioned in the Livonian rhymed chronicle (either Danish or Swedish). The crusaders took Izborsk and defeated the Pskov army that came out to meet them. In the battle, 800 Pskovians were killed, including the governor Gavrila Gorislavovich - the one who allegedly soon opened the gates of Pskov to the Germans after a seven-day siege. The Livonian invasion did not prevent the Novgorod freemen from expelling Prince Alexander Nevsky to Pereslavl-Zalessky. And only when the Germans captured the fortress of Koporye and were 30 miles from Novgorod, the Novgorodians changed their minds and called the prince back.

Returning to Novgorod in 1241, Nevsky went to Koporye, took the fortress by storm, released some of the captured knights (presumably for a good ransom), and hung all the Chud from the Koporye garrison. In March 1242, Alexander, together with his brother Andrei, who came to the rescue at the head of the Vladimir army, took Pskov. After that, the war moved into the possession of the order.

On April 5, 1242, the opposing armies converged on the ice of Lake Peipus. The German-Chukhon army was built in a closed phalanx in the form of a wedge, such a system was also called the "iron pig". This wedge, at the top of which the best knights of the order fought, broke through the center of the Russian army, individual warriors fled. Having waited for the moment when the crusaders were bogged down deep enough in the Russian army, Prince Alexander struck with his best forces from the flanks and took the enemy in pincers. Unable to withstand the onslaught, the Germans began a retreat, which turned into a stampede. The Russians drove them across the lake for seven miles, but not all of them reached the opposite Sobolitsky shore. In a number of places, the ice broke under the crowded Germans, many of them ended up in the water and drowned.

There were no drowners

Many books have been written about the Battle of the Ice, which provide the most detailed details of the battle, maps, diagrams ... But an inquisitive researcher still has many questions. For example, it is not clear in what specific place this battle took place, how many soldiers participated in it, what were the losses of the opposing sides, etc.

According to the official version, there were 15-17 thousand people in the Russian army, 10-12 thousand in the order. But so many people at that time could not be recruited in any case. By the end of the 30s of the XIII century, the entire population of Novgorod, including women, children and the elderly, amounted to a little more than 14 thousand people. Therefore, the Novgorod militia could not have been more than two thousand people. And even if we add to them a certain number of militias from other parts of the Novgorod land, as well as Pskov, the princely squads of Alexander and Andrei, we still get an army with a maximum of 3-4 thousand warriors.

What about the enemy army? The rhyming chronicle says that there were 60 Russians for every order warrior in the battle. But this is a clear exaggeration. In fact, the German-Chukhonian forces amounted to 1200-1800 people. And given that the entire Teutonic Order, together with the Livonian that joined it, numbered less than three hundred brother-knights, most of whom at that time fought for the Holy Sepulcher in Palestine, no more than fifty of them could go to battle with the Russians; the bulk of the army was Chud - the ancestors of today's Estonians.

Our chronicles are shyly silent about Russian losses. But on the other hand, it is said about the Germans that 500 knights died on the ice of Lake Peipus, fifty were taken prisoner, and Chuds were beaten "without number". And the Livonian rhymed chronicle believes that only 20 knights were killed in the battle and six were taken prisoner. Of course, in all wars, one's own losses are underestimated, while those of the enemy are exaggerated, but here the discrepancy in numbers is too great.

Moreover, Russian sources claim that the main losses of the Teutons are due to the fact that the spring ice could not withstand the weight of the armor of the knights huddled together and many of them drowned. A legitimate question arises: why didn’t the Russian knights fail?

The modern historian Anatoly Bakhtin claims that all chronicle information about the battle was a falsification: “There was no mind-blowing pandemonium of the warring parties there, there was also no mass exodus of people under the ice. In those days, the armor of the Teutons was comparable in weight to the weapons of Russian warriors. The same chain mail, shield, sword. Only instead of the traditional Slavic shishak, the head of the knight brothers was protected by a bucket-shaped helmet. There were no plate horses in those days. In none of the existing chronicles is it possible to find a story about cracked ice on Lake Peipsi, about the participants in the battle who went under water.

The triumph of propaganda

Summing up the foregoing, we have to admit: there was simply no great battle comparable in scale to the Grunwald battle. There was a border skirmish between two detachments - at that time, however, quite significant. And to epic proportions, this victory was inflated by the Novgorod "image makers" on the direct instructions of Alexander Nevsky. Thus, his name was forever inscribed in the history of Russia. Is this not the greatest triumph of propaganda?

Isn’t that why the Ipatiev Chronicle says: “In the summer of 6750 you weren’t nothing”? Either the chronicler was not sufficiently informed, or he did not consider it necessary to translate the expensive parchment to such an insignificant event. Of course, historians still do not know exactly where this chronicle was kept. But certainly not in the Novgorod land. And the affairs of the neighbors at that time of civil strife were of little interest to anyone. Nevertheless, if the battle on Lake Peipsi had such an epoch-making significance as domestic historians attribute to it, it would have found a much broader reflection in the documents of that time.

And in the "Chronicle of the Land of Prussia" by Peter from Dusburg, the Battle on the Ice is also not mentioned. And even in the Laurentian Chronicle, which is based on the Grand Duke's set of 1281, compiled under the son of Alexander Nevsky, Prince Dmitry, it is said sparingly: “In the summer of 6750, Alexander Yaroslavich went from Novgorod to Nemtsi and fought with them on the Chudsky Ezero ou Voronia stone. And defeat Alexander and drive 7 miles across the ice and cut them.

The modern historian and writer Andrey Balabukha writes: “But gradually, through the efforts of associates (like Metropolitan Kirill - the same one who in 1263 after the death of Alexander said, addressing the inhabitants of the capital city of Vladimir:“ My dear children! Know that the sun of the Russian land has set! ") and princely descendants, the propaganda myth completely prevailed over historical facts. And this position - in public opinion, in fiction, in school and university textbooks, finally - remains to this day.

Let's leave ideology and propaganda aside and ask ourselves the only question: if the formidable sword of Alexander Nevsky really stopped the invasion of the order, why did his distant descendant Ivan IV the Terrible three centuries later have to wage the infamous Livonian War with this same order?

Valery NIKOLAEV

Life and work of K.M. Simonova

In our country there were and are many remarkable poets and writers who devoted their work to military subjects. True, they are becoming less and less. But our knowledge of those tragic and great days is still not complete and complete.

The work of Konstantin Mikhailovich Simonov (1915-1979) occupies a special place in Russian literature.

His birth name was Kirill, but in the 30s of the 20th century he chose the pseudonym Konstantin Simonov, because he did not pronounce either the “r” or “l” sound in his own name.

Konstantin (Kirill) Mikhailovich Simonov was born in 1915 in Petrograd. Mother, Alexandra Leonidovna, is the real Obolenskaya, from a famous princely family. In "Autobiography", written in 1978, Simonov does not mention his physical father, he was brought up by his stepfather, Alexander Ivanovich Ivanishchev, a participant in the Japanese and German wars, a teacher at a military school, whom he loved and respected very much.

He spent his childhood in Ryazan and Saratov. The family was military, lived in commander's dormitories. Habits taken out of military service - accuracy, exactingness to oneself and others, discipline, restraint - formed a special family atmosphere: “Discipline in the family was strict, purely military. There was a fixed daily routine, everything was done by the hour, at zero-zero, it was impossible to be late, it was not supposed to object, the word given to anyone had to be kept, any, even the smallest lie, was despised. The military will forever remain for Simonov people of a special fold and dressing - they will always want to imitate.

After graduating from a seven-year school in 1930, K. Simonov studied at the FZU as a turner. In 1931, the family moved to Moscow, and Simonov, after graduating from the faculty of precision mechanics here, goes to work at the factory. Simonov explained his choice in Autobiography for two reasons: “The first and main one is the five-year plan, a tractor factory just built not far from us, in Stalingrad, and the general atmosphere of the romance of construction, which captured me already in the sixth grade of school. The second reason is the desire to earn money on your own.” In the same years he began to write poetry. He began publishing in 1934.

Worked until 1935.

In 1936, K. Simonov's poems were published in the magazines Young Guard and October. The first poem - "Pavel Cherny" (1938), glorified the builders of the White Sea-Baltic Canal. In the Autobiography, the poem is mentioned as the first difficult experience that crowned with literary success: its publication in the collection Review of Forces.

From 1934 to 1938 he studied at the Literary Institute. Gorky, after graduation he entered the IFLI (Institute of History, Philosophy, Literature) graduate school, but in 1939 he was sent as a war correspondent to Khalkhin Gol in Mongolia and never returned to the institute.

During these years he published a book of poems "Real People" (1938), poems "Battle on the Ice" (1938), "Suvorov" (1939). Soon he acted as a playwright (plays "The Story of a Love" (1940), "A Guy from Our City" (1941)).

During the Finnish war, he completed two-month courses for war correspondents at the Frunze Military Academy, from the autumn of 1940 to July 1941, another course at the Military-Political Academy; receives the military rank of quartermaster of the second rank.

During the Great Patriotic War, he worked as a correspondent for the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper, constantly being in the army. In "Autobiography" Simonov admitted: "Almost all the material - for books written during the war, and for most of the post-war ones - was given to me by work as a correspondent at the front." In 1942 he joined the CPSU(b). In the same year he was awarded the rank of senior battalion commissar, in 1943 - the rank of lieutenant colonel, and after the war - colonel.

But nevertheless, nationwide fame was brought to the writer by the publication in January 1942 in the Pravda newspaper of the poem “Wait for me”.

K.M. Simonov was one of the first who began after the war a thorough study of the captured documents of the Nazi army. He had long and detailed conversations with marshals Zhukov, Konev and other people who fought a lot.

Konstantin Simonov, through his essays, poems and military prose, showed what he saw and experienced both by himself and by thousands of other participants in the war. He did a gigantic job of studying and deeply comprehending the experience of the war precisely from this point of view. He did not embellish the war, vividly and figuratively showed its stern face. Simonov's front-line notes "Different days of the war" are unique from the point of view of truthful reproduction of the war. Reading such deeply penetrating testimonies, even front-line soldiers enrich themselves with new observations and more deeply comprehend many seemingly well-known events.

During the war years, he also wrote the plays "Russian People", "So It Will Be", the story "Days and Nights", two books of poems "With You and Without You" and "War".

The study of Simonov's work and his social and political activities is relevant for history today, since the main thing in the work of Konstantin Simonov was the assertion both in literature and in life of the ideas of defending the Fatherland and a deep understanding of patriotic and military duty. The work of K. Simonov makes us think every time under what circumstances, in what way our army and people, who won the Great Patriotic War, were brought up. Our literature and art, including Konstantin Mikhailovich Simonov, also contributed to this work.

In 1942, N. Tikhonov called Simonov "the voice of his generation." L. Fink considers such a definition to be insufficiently broad; in his book on K. Simonov, he writes: “K. Simonov was a tribune and agitator, he expressed and inspired his generation. Then he became its chronicler.” So, history in the fate and work of K. Simonov was reflected with all its fullness and obviousness.

In his work, Simonov does not bypass many other complex problems that one has to face during the war, and which continue to excite our public in the post-war years, and especially in connection with the events in Afghanistan and Chechnya.

Books about K. Simonov were published by I. Vishnevskaya, S. Fradkina, L. Fink, D.A. Berman, B.M. Tolochinskaya, many articles and chapters devoted to him in books about the military theme in literature. Such well-known researchers as A. Abramov, G. Belaya, A. Bocharov, Z. Kedrina, G. Lomidze, V. Novikov, A. Makarov, V. Piskunov, P. Toper wrote deeply and seriously about K. Simonov.

A large number of articles about the life and work of K. Simonov were published and are still being published in the journals where K. Simonov worked - Znamya and Novy Mir.

Large monographic studies about K. Simonov are not numerous, however, for the researcher, great material is provided by the memories of contemporaries about Konstantin Simonov, about different stages of his personal and creative path.

The book is interesting primarily for its honest, truthful story about K. Simonov, his generation, his era. A. Simonov does not claim to be comprehensive in his testimonies. But just the particularity stated in the title of the book (“these are not them, the heroes of this book, I remember them like that or love them like that”) is much more attractive than the pressure of “ultimate truth”. It is well said about the "writer's puritanism" of Simonov, who (although he was listed among his peers as progressive and even pro-Western) was humanly, masculinely turned away by "unbridledness", self-digging on the verge of self-flagellation. Simonov the son turns out to be capable of realizing Simonov the father as a characteristic phenomenon, typical of his time.

In the postwar years, K. Simonov, a poet and warrior, journalist and public figure, wrote a book of poems “Friends and Enemies” (1948), the story “The Smoke of the Fatherland” based on the impressions of trips abroad, worked a lot in dramaturgy, created an epic narrative in prose about Patriotic War - the novels The Living and the Dead (1959) and Soldiers Are Not Born (1964).

In the post-war years, Simonov's social activities developed in the following way: in 1946-50 he was the editor-in-chief of the Novy Mir magazine. In 1946-54, deputy. General Secretary of the Union of Writers of the USSR. In 1946-54 he was a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. In 1952-56 he was a member of the Central Committee of the CPSU. In 1954-58 he again headed the "New World". At the same time in 1954-59 and 1967-79 Secretary of the Board of the Writers' Union of the USSR. In 1956-61 and since 1976 he was a member of the Central Audit Commission of the CPSU.

In 1974 he was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor. K. Simonov died in 1979 in Moscow.

1. Why did the poet not only describe the feat of Lieutenant Petrov, but also talk about Lenka's childhood, about his friendship with Major Deev?

The "Son of the Artilleryman" describes the feat of not just Lieutenant Petrov, but, above all, the feat of the son of an artilleryman. That is why the story of friendship with Major Deev is so important.

2. Why does the major send Lenka on such a responsible and dangerous mission?

With this decision, he shows both the degree of importance of the task, and at the same time his sense of military duty. The son of an artilleryman can and must perform a responsible task.

3. Re-read the place where Deev's condition is described after Lenka's departure (“The major remained in the dugout ...”). Try in your reading aloud to convey the experiences, anxiety of the major.

As you can see, the major’s anxiety can only be conveyed by intonation - he is a reserved person and did not want his feelings in words or actions to be felt by those around him, especially for Lenka to understand this.

4. Read an excerpt from the military correspondence of K. Simonov: “On the crest of snow-covered rocks, where we had to get almost crawling for a good two hours, commander Skrobov sits at his observation post day and night.

This place looks like an eagle's nest, and Skrobov's observers look like large white birds, motionlessly crouched in their wide white robes against the crest of the rock.

Constant, continuous, furious, cutting wind. Here, at the top, it blows a minute, an hour, a day, a week, a month, a year. It always blows. The observers have wind-chapped lips and red, burnt eyes. But from here, from this rock open to all four winds, all roads and paths are visible ...

The wires go forward to the second observation post - it is only five hundred meters from the Germans, however, once, when it was necessary, it was not five hundred meters from the Germans, but five hundred meters behind the Germans. Artilleryman Lieutenant Loskutov with a radio transmitter crawled to the rear of the Germans and corrected the fire from there for three days.

How do you imagine the process of creating a poem from such military correspondence?

Before us are two works of art - an essay and a poem. They have the same author, the same plot, and the same characters. But poetic lines increase the emotional impact on the reader and the images of the characters are given in more detail (we will learn much more about them). The very process of creating a work is difficult to imagine, but the difference between genres helps to understand some aspects of this process. material from the site

5. What other poems about the Great Patriotic War have you read?

Many works have been created about the Great Patriotic War: poems by K. M. Simonov “A boy on a gun carriage”, A. T. Tvardovsky “I was killed under Rzhev ...”, R. G. Gamzatov “Cranes”, A. A. Akhmatova "Courage" ... Many poems about the war have become songs. These are “My Moscow” by M. Lisyansky, and “In the fields beyond the Vistula sleepy ...” by E. Vinokurova ... Each generation adds new songs to this list.

In the minds of living people, the name of Konstantin Simonov is strongly associated with works about the Great Patriotic War, with the lines of the poem “The Artilleryman’s Son” familiar from the school bench (“Major Deev had Comrade Major Petrov ...”), and even with serial versions about his romance with famous actress Valentina Serova. During the years of Khrushchev's "thaw", the suddenly "thawed" anti-Stalinists did not want to forgive the Soviet "general" from literature for either his lightning success, or high positions in the Union of Writers of the USSR, or loyal plays, articles and poems written in the late 1940s - early 50s -s. Post-perestroika "scribes" of national history even ranked K. Simonov - the winner of the Lenin and six Stalin Prizes, one of the most famous and (I'm not afraid of this word) talented writers of the 20th century - among the "anti-heroes". His works were unequivocally put on a par with the "official" works of Fadeev, Gorbatov, Tvardovsky and other Soviet authors, completely lost to the current generation behind the big names of Bulgakov, Tsvetaeva, Pasternak, Akhmatova, Nabokov, etc. Such “uniqueness” in the assessment of historical events, as well as poets, writers and their literary works, has more than once played a cruel joke on those who today seek to preach it from the political platform, in the media or school textbooks.

Neither the Stalinist repressions nor the great victory in the Patriotic War can be deleted from the history of the country. It is impossible to delete or “remove” truly talented works from Russian literature, even if you call their authors unscrupulous “Soviet functionaries”, Stalinist sycophants, “custom-made” socialist realist writers. Looking from the heights of past years, it is much easier to demand manifestations of civic courage from others than to show it yourself in real life. Today's critics should not forget this.

And even if we ignore the above "stamps" formed by public opinion in recent decades, there is simply no one to read the works of K. M. Simonov today. The theme of the war has long exhausted itself, and for all the time that has passed in conditions of absolute literary freedom, not a single work really loved by the people has appeared in the Russian-language literature of the post-Soviet space. The Russian literary market, in the form in which it exists now, is focused solely on the needs of lovers of "light reading" - low-grade detective stories, various kinds of fantasy and women's novels.

K.M. Simonov got another, more severe era. His spell-poem "Wait for me" was read like a prayer. The plays "A Guy from Our City", "Russian People", "So It Will Be" became heroic examples for a whole generation of Soviet people. A far from unambiguous, too frank cycle of lyrical poems dedicated to V. Serova (“With You and Without You”, 1942), marked a short period of “lyrical thaw” in Soviet military literature and brought its author truly national fame. Reading these lines, it is impossible not to understand that Konstantin Simonov wrote about the Great Patriotic War not out of duty, but out of a deep inner need, which from a young age until the end of his days determined the main theme of his work. Throughout his life, the poet, playwright, thinker Simonov continued to think and write about human destinies associated with the war. He was a warrior and a poet, able to ignite in the hearts of millions of people not only hatred for the enemy, but also to raise the nation to defend their homeland, inspire hope and faith in the inevitable victory of good over evil, love over hate, life over death. Being a direct eyewitness and participant in many events, Simonov, as a journalist, writer, screenwriter, artist of the word, made a significant contribution to his work in shaping the attitude to the events of the Great Patriotic War among all subsequent generations. The novel "The Living and the Dead" - the largest work of the writer - is a deep understanding of the past war, as a huge, universal tragedy. More than one generation of readers read to them: both those who went through and remembered that war, and those who knew about it from the stories of their elders and Soviet films.

Family and early years

Kirill Mikhailovich Simonov was born in Petrograd, in a military family. His real father Mikhail Agafangelovich Simonov (1871-?) is a nobleman, a graduate of the Imperial Nikolaev Military Academy (1897), major general. In his official biographies, K.M. Simonov pointed out that "the father died or went missing" at the front. However, during the First World War, the generals did not go missing at the front. From 1914 to 1915 M.A. Simonov commanded the 12th Velikolutsky Infantry Regiment, from July 1915 to October 1917 he was chief of staff of the 43rd Army Corps. After the revolution, the general emigrated to Poland, from where Kirill's mother, Alexandra Leonidovna (nee Princess Obolenskaya), received letters from him in the early 1920s. The father called his wife and son to him, but Alexandra Leonidovna did not want to emigrate. By that time, another man had already appeared in her life - Alexander Grigoryevich Ivanishev, a former colonel in the tsarist army, a teacher at a military school. He adopted and raised Cyril. True, the mother kept the surname and patronymic of her son: after all, everyone considered M.A. Simonov dead. She herself took the name Ivanisheva.

Cyril's childhood years were spent in Ryazan and Saratov. He was brought up by his stepfather, to whom he retained sincere affection and good feelings for the rest of his life. The family did not live well, so in 1930, after finishing the seven-year plan in Saratov, Kirill Simonov went to study as a turner. In 1931, together with his parents, he moved to Moscow. After graduating from the faculty of precision mechanics, Simonov goes to work at an aircraft factory, where he worked until 1935. In Autobiography, Simonov explained his choice for two reasons: “The first and main one is the five-year plan, a tractor factory just built not far from us, in Stalingrad, and the general atmosphere of the romance of construction, which captured me already in the sixth grade of school. The second reason is the desire to earn money on your own.” For some time, Simonov also worked as a technician at Mezhrabpomfilm.

In the same years, the young man begins to write poetry. The first works of Simonov appeared in print in 1934 (some sources indicate that the first poems were published in 1936 in the magazines Young Guard and October). From 1934 to 1938 he studied at the Literary Institute. M. Gorky, then entered the graduate school of MIFLI (Moscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature and History named after N.G. Chernyshevsky).

In 1938 Simonov's first poem "Pavel Cherny" appeared, glorifying the builders of the White Sea-Baltic Canal. In the "Autobiography" of the writer, the poem is mentioned as the first difficult experience, crowned with literary success. It was published in the poetry collection Review of Forces. At the same time, the historical poem "Battle on the Ice" was written. Turning to historical topics was considered mandatory, even "programmatic" for a novice author in the 1930s. Simonov, as expected, introduces a military-patriotic content into the historical poem. At a meeting in the journal "Literary Studies", dedicated to the analysis of his work, K. Simonov said: "I had a desire to write this poem in connection with the feeling of an approaching war. I wanted those who read the poem to feel the proximity of the war ... that behind our shoulders, behind the shoulders of the Russian people, there is a centuries-old struggle for their independence ... "

war correspondent

In 1939, Simonov, as a promising author of military subjects, was sent as a war correspondent to Khalkin Gol. In a letter to S.Ya. Fradkina dated May 6, 1965, K. Simonov recalled how he first got to the front: “I went to Khalkhin Gol very simply. At first, no one was going to send me there, I was, as they say, too young and green, and I had to go not there, but to Kamchatka to join the troops, but then the editor of the Heroic Red Army newspaper, which was published there, in Mongolia, in our group of troops, - sent a telegram to the Political Directorate of the army: "Urgently send a poet." He needed a poet. Obviously, at that moment in Moscow there was no one more solid in terms of his poetic baggage than me, I was summoned to the PUR something like that at one or two in the afternoon, and at five o’clock I left in a Vladivostok ambulance for Chita, and from there it was already to Mongolia...

The poet never returned to the Institute. Shortly before leaving for Mongolia, he finally changed his name - instead of his native Cyril, he took the pseudonym Konstantin Simonov. Almost all biographers agree that the reason for this change lies in the peculiarities of Simonov's diction and articulation: he did not pronounce "r" and the hard sound "l". It was always difficult for him to pronounce his own name.

The war for Simonov began not in the forty-first, but in the thirty-ninth year at Khalkhin Gol, and it was from that time that many new accents of his work were determined. In addition to essays and reports, a correspondent brings a cycle of poems from the theater of military operations, which soon gains all-Union fame. The most poignant poem “The Doll” in its mood and theme involuntarily echoes Simonov’s subsequent military lyrics (“Do you remember, Alyosha, the roads of the Smolensk region”, “Nameless Field”, etc.), which raises the problem of the warrior’s duty to the Motherland and his people.

Immediately before the Patriotic War, Simonov twice studied at the courses of war correspondents at the Military Academy named after M.V. Frunze (1939-1940) and the Military-Political Academy (1940-1941). He received the military rank of quartermaster of the second rank.

From the first days of the war, Konstantin Simonov was in the army: he was his own correspondent for the newspapers Krasnoarmeyskaya Pravda, Krasnaya Zvezda, Pravda, Komsomolskaya Pravda, Battle Banner, and others.

As a correspondent, K. Simonov could move around in the frontline zone with freedom that was fantastic even for any general. Sometimes, in his car, he literally slipped away from the pincers of the encirclement, remaining almost the only surviving eyewitness to the death of an entire regiment or division.

It is well known, confirmed by eyewitnesses and documented that in July 1941, K. Simonov was near Mogilev, in parts of the 172nd Infantry Division, which fought heavy defensive battles and broke through from the encirclement. When Izvestia correspondents Pavel Troshkin and Konstantin Simonov arrived at the command post of the 172nd Infantry Division, they were detained, threatened to put them on the ground and kept until dawn, and taken to headquarters under escort. However, Simonov's correspondent was even pleased. He immediately felt discipline, order, confidence, he understood that the war was going far from what the enemy intended. K. Simonov finds in the courage and firm discipline of the regiments defending the city a certain “foothold”, which allows him to write to the newspaper “not a lie for salvation”, not a half-truth, forgivable in those dramatic days, but something that would serve others fulcrum, would inspire confidence.

Even before the war, correspondent Simonov was compared with a harvester for his fantastic "efficiency" and creative fertility: literary essays and front-line reports fell from his pen like from a cornucopia. Simonov's favorite genre is the essay. His articles (very few), in essence, are also a series of essay sketches connected by journalistic or lyrical digressions. During the war, the poet K. Simonov first appeared as a prose writer, but the writer's desire to expand the genres in which he worked, to find new, brighter and more intelligible forms of presenting material very soon allowed him to develop his own individual style.

K. Simonov's essays, as a rule, reflect what he saw with his own eyes, what he himself experienced, or the fate of another specific person with whom the war brought the author. In his essays there is always a narrative plot, and often his essays resemble a short story. In them you can find a psychological portrait of the Hero - an ordinary soldier or officer of the front line; life circumstances that shaped the character of this person are necessarily reflected; the battle and, in fact, the feat are described in detail. When K. Simonov's essays were based on the material of a conversation with participants in the battle, they actually turned into a dialogue between the author and the hero, which is sometimes interrupted by the author's narration ("Soldier's Glory", "Commander's Honor", etc.).

In the first period of the Great Patriotic War - from June 1941 to November 1942 - Simonov sought to cover as many events as possible, visit various sectors of the front, depict representatives of various military professions in his essays and works of art, and emphasize the difficulties of the usual front-line situation.

In 1942, Konstantin Simonov was awarded the rank of senior battalion commissar, in 1943 - the rank of lieutenant colonel, and after the war - colonel. As a war correspondent, he traveled to all fronts. During the fighting in the Crimea, Konstantin Simonov was directly in the chains of counterattacking infantrymen, went with a reconnaissance group behind the front line, and participated in the military campaign of a submarine that mined the Romanian port. He also had to be among the defenders of Odessa, Stalingrad, the Yugoslav partisans, in the advanced units: during the Battle of Kursk, the Belarusian operation, in the final operations to liberate Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia. Simonov was present at the first trial of war criminals in Kharkov, was also in the newly liberated, unimaginably terrible Auschwitz and in many other places where decisive events took place. In 1945, Simonov witnessed the last battles for Berlin. He was present at the signing of Hitler's surrender in Karlshorst. Awarded four military orders.

The difficult, sometimes heroic work of front-line correspondents, who not only collected material for essays and articles, but also took part in battles, saved others and died themselves, was subsequently reflected in the works of the writer K. Simonov. After the war, his collections of essays appeared: Letters from Czechoslovakia, Slavic Friendship, Yugoslav Notebook, From the Black Sea to the Barents Sea. Notes of a war correspondent. Simonov is the author of the popularly beloved "Song of War Correspondents", which for many years became the anthem of journalists working in the "hot spots" of the planet:

"Wait for me": a novel of an actress and a poet

On July 27, 1941, K. Simonov returned to Moscow, having spent at least a week on the Western Front - in Vyazma, near Yelnya, near the burning Dorogobuzh. He was preparing for a new trip to the front - from the editors of the Red Star, but it took a week to prepare the car for this trip.

“During these seven days,” Simonov recalled, “in addition to front-line ballads for the newspaper, I suddenly wrote “Wait for me”, “The major brought the boy on a gun carriage” and “Don't be angry, for the best” in one sitting. I spent the night at Lev Kassil's dacha in Peredelkino and stayed there in the morning, I didn't go anywhere. He sat alone in the country and wrote poetry. All around were tall pines, lots of wild strawberries, green grass. It was a hot summer day. And silence.<...>For a few hours I even wanted to forget that there is a war in the world.<...>Probably, on that day more than on others, I thought not so much about the war, but about my own fate in it ... "

Subsequently, highly authoritative critics and literary scholars assured that “Wait for me” was Simonov’s most general poem, that in one lyric poem the poet was able to convey the features of the time, managed to guess the most important thing, the most necessary for people, and thereby help millions of his compatriots in a difficult time of war . But he succeeded not at all because he tried to "guess" what is most needed now. Simonov did not conceive anything of the kind! On that hot summer day at the dacha of L. Kassil, he wrote what was vitally necessary for him. Turning in his thoughts to the only addressee of his love lyrics - actress Valentina Serova, the poet expressed what was most important and desirable for him at that moment. And only for this reason, precisely for this reason, poems written by one person and addressed to one single woman in the world have become universal, necessary for millions of people in the most difficult time for them.

With a rising star of Russian cinema, prima of the Moscow Theater. Lenin Komsomol V. V. Serova (nee Polovikova) Konstantin Mikhailovich met in 1940. His first play, “The Story of a Love,” was staged on the stage of the theater. Valentina, by that time already the widow of the famous pilot, hero of the Soviet Union Anatoly Serov, played one of the main roles in it. Prior to that, in the 1939-40 season, she shone in the play "Zykovs", and the young, then still aspiring poet and playwright, did not miss a single performance. According to Serova, Simonov, who was in love, prevented her from playing: he always sat with a bouquet of flowers in the front row and followed her every movement with a searching gaze.

However, Simonov's love for Vaska (the poet did not pronounce the letters "l" and "r" and that is how he called his muse) was not mutual. Valentina accepted his courtship, was close to him, but she could not forget Serov. She preferred to remain the widow of a hero-pilot, rather than become the wife of a still little-known young writer. Moreover, Simonov was already married to E.S. Laskina (cousin of B. Laskin), in 1939 their son Alexei was born.

From the first literary steps, the poet Simonov wrote "for the press", accurately guessing the path that would lead his work to the printed pages. This was one of the main secrets of his early and enduring success. His ability to translate the current semi-official point of view and offer it to the reader already in an emotionally lyrical package was forged from the first literary experiments. But “Wait for me” and other lyrical poems dedicated to relations with Serova were the only works of the poet that were not originally intended for publication. And who in those pre-war, jingoistic, ideologically sustained years would begin to print love lyrics full of erotic drama and suffering about unrequited love?

The war changed everything. Completely personal, necessary only for him, the poem "Wait for me" Simonov read more than once in a circle of literary friends; read to artillerymen on the Rybachy Peninsula, cut off from the rest of the front; read to scouts before a heavy raid behind enemy lines; read to sailors on a submarine. He was listened to with equal attention both in the soldiers' dugouts and in the staff dugouts. The features of the Russian Soviet reader, already fully formed, were such that he sought in literature - especially in the painful situation of the war - consolation, direct support. In providing such support, critics saw "one of the tasks of poetry." Simonov's poem went beyond this function, having received from the first moment of creation another, special function: "spell", "prayer", "cure for melancholy", "faith" and even, if you like, "superstition"...

Soon the lines of the beloved poem began to diverge in handwritten copies, memorized. Soldiers sent them in letters to their loved ones, conjuring separation and imminent death, glorifying the great power of love:

December 9, 1941 "Wait for me" was first heard on the radio. Simonov accidentally ended up in Moscow and read the poem himself, having managed to broadcast literally at the last minute. In January 1942 "Wait for me" was published in Pravda.

According to eyewitnesses, at post-war meetings with readers, Simonov never refused to read "Wait for me", but somehow his face darkened. And there was pain in his eyes. He seemed to fall again in his forty-first year.

In a conversation with Vasily Peskov, when asked about “Wait for me,” Simonov wearily replied: “If I hadn’t written, someone else would have written.” He believed that it just coincided: love, war, separation, and a few hours of loneliness that miraculously fell out. Besides, poetry was his work. Here are the verses through the paper. This is how blood bleeds through the bandages...

In April 1942, Simonov handed over to the publishing house "Young Guard" the manuscript of the lyric collection "With you and without you." All 14 poems of the collection were addressed and dedicated to V. Serova.

In the very first major article about this cycle, the critic V. Aleksandrov (V. B. Keller), known since the pre-war years, wrote:

The collection "With you and without you" actually marked a temporary rehabilitation of lyrics in Soviet literature. The best of his poems express the conflict between the two strongest driving forces of the poet's soul: love for Valentine and military duty to Russia.

In the days of the heaviest battles of 1942, the Soviet party leadership found it necessary to bring such verses to the mass reader, opposing the horrors of war with something eternal and unshakable, for which it is worth fighting and worth living:

However, Simonov's muse still did not dream that her longtime admirer would call her his wife. She also did not promise to wait faithfully and selflessly for her admirer from front-line business trips.

There is a version that in the spring of 1942, Valentina Serova was seriously carried away by Marshal K. Rokossovsky. This version was presented in Yu. Kara's sensational series "Star of the Epoch" and firmly rooted in the minds of not only ordinary viewers, but also TV journalists, authors of various publications about Serova in the press and on Internet resources. All living relatives, both Serova and Simonov, and Rokossovsky, unanimously deny the military romance of the marshal and the actress. The personal life of Rokossovsky, who was, perhaps, an even more public person than Serov and Simonov, is quite well known. Serova with her love simply had no place in her.

Perhaps Valentina Vasilievna, for some reason during this period, really wanted to break off relations with Simonov. Being a direct and open person, she did not consider it necessary to pretend and lie in real life - she had enough playing on stage. Rumors spread around Moscow. The novel of the poet and actress was under threat.

It is possible that at that moment jealousy, resentment, a purely masculine desire to get his beloved at all costs spoke in the rejected Simonov. By publishing love lyrics dedicated to Serova, the poet actually went for broke: he agreed to use his personal feelings for ideological purposes in order to gain real, nationwide fame and thereby “put the squeeze on” the intractable Valentina.

Written in 1942, the script for the propaganda film “Wait for me” made the personal relationship between Simonov and Serova the property of the whole country. The actress simply had no choice.

It is possible that it was during this period that their novel, largely invented by Simonov himself and “approved” by the authorities, gave the first serious crack. In 1943, Simonov and Serova entered into an official marriage, but, despite all the favorable circumstances and apparent external well-being, the crack in their relationship only grew:

Over time, the crack of misunderstanding and dislike turned into a “thousand-mile thick glass”, behind which “one cannot hear the beating of the heart”, then into a bottomless abyss. Simonov managed to get out of it and find new ground under his feet. Valentina Serova surrendered and died. The poet refused to extend a helping hand to his former, already unloved muse:

As their daughter Maria Simonova later wrote: “She died [V. Serova - E.Sh.] alone, in an empty apartment robbed by rogues who soldered her, from which they took out everything that could be carried by hand.

Simonov did not come to the funeral, sending only a bouquet of 58 blood-red carnations (in some memories there is information about a bouquet of pink roses). Shortly before his death, he confessed to his daughter: "... what I had with your mother was the greatest happiness in my life ... and the greatest grief ..."

After the war

At the end of the war for three years, K.M. Simonov was on numerous business trips abroad: in Japan (1945-1946), the USA, and China. In 1946-1950 he was the editor of one of the leading literary magazines, Novy Mir. In 1950-1954 he was the editor of the Literaturnaya Gazeta. From 1946 to 1959, and then from 1967 to 1979 - Secretary of the Writers' Union of the USSR. For the period from 1942 to 1950, K. Simonov received six Stalin Prizes - for the plays "A Guy from Our City", "Russian People", "The Russian Question", "An Alien Shadow", the novel "Days and Nights" and the collection of poems "Friends and enemies."

Simonov - the son of a tsarist general and a princess from an old Russian family - regularly served not just the Soviet government. During the war, he gave all his talent to the fighting people, his Motherland, that great and invincible country, which he wanted to see Russia. But once he got into the party “clip” (Simonov joined the party only in 1942), he immediately acquired the status of a “necessary” poet favored by the authorities. Most likely, he himself believed that he was doing everything right: victory in the war and the position that Russia had taken in the world after 1945 only convinced Simonov that the chosen path was right.

His ascent up the party ladder was even more rapid than his entry into literature and gaining all-Russian fame. In 1946-1954, K. Simonov was a deputy of the USSR Supreme Council of the 2nd and 3rd convocations, from 1954 to 1956 he was a candidate member of the CPSU Central Committee. In 1946-1954 - Deputy Secretary General of the Board of the Writers' Union of the USSR. In 1954-1959 and in 1967-1979 - Secretary of the Board of the Writers' Union of the USSR. Since 1949 - Member of the Presidium of the Soviet Peace Committee.

Yes, obeying the “general line of the party”, he participated in the campaign of persecution of Zoshchenko and Akhmatova, wrote “custom-made” plays about cosmopolitans (“Alien Shadow”) and ballad poems, tried to persuade I. Bunin, Teffi and other prominent white émigré writers to return to Soviet Russia. As editor-in-chief in 1956, Simonov signed a letter from the editorial board of the Novy Mir magazine refusing to publish Boris Pasternak's novel Doctor Zhivago, and in 1973, a letter from a group of Soviet writers to the editors of the Pravda newspaper about Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov.

But at the same time, it is impossible not to admit that Simonov's activity in all his high literary positions was not so unequivocal. The return to the reader of the novels of Ilf and Petrov, the publication of Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita (1966, in an abbreviated magazine version) and Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, defense of L.O. Brik, which high-ranking "historians of literature" decided to delete from Mayakovsky's biography, the first complete translation of the plays by A. Miller and Eugene O'Neill, the publication of the first story by V. Kondratiev "Sashka" - this is not a complete list of K. Simonov's merits to the Soviet literature. There was also participation in the “breakthrough” of performances at Sovremennik and the Taganka Theater, the first posthumous exhibition of Tatlin, the restoration of the exhibition “XX Years of Work” by Mayakovsky, participation in the cinematic fate of Alexei German and dozens of other filmmakers, artists, writers. Dozens of volumes of Simonov's day-to-day efforts stored today in the RGALI, called by him "Everything done", contain thousands of his letters, notes, statements, petitions, requests, recommendations, reviews, analyzes and advice, prefaces, paving the way for "impenetrable" books and publications. There is not a single unanswered letter in the archives of the writer and the editorial offices of the journals he leads. Hundreds of people began to write military memoirs after Simonov read and sympathetically evaluated "pen trials".

In "disgrace"

Simonov belonged to that rare breed of people whom the authorities did not spoil. Neither the forced bowing in front of superiors, nor the ideological dogmas within which the path of Soviet literature of the late 1940s and early 1950s lay, killed the genuine, living principle in it, characteristic only of a truly talented artist. Unlike many of his colleagues in the literary workshop, over the years of his "symphony" with the authorities, K. Simonov has not forgotten how to perform actions aimed at defending his views and principles.

Immediately after Stalin's death, he published an article in Literaturnaya Gazeta proclaiming that the main task of writers was to reflect the great historical role of Stalin. Khrushchev was extremely annoyed by this article. According to one version, he called the Writers' Union and demanded the immediate dismissal of Simonov from the post of editor-in-chief of Literaturnaya Gazeta.

By and large, the editor Simonov did what he considered necessary to do at that moment. His honest nature as a soldier and poet resisted such forms of treatment of the values ​​of the past and present as "spitting and licking." With his article, Simonov was not afraid to express the opinion of that part of society that really considered Stalin the great leader of the nation and the winner of fascism. They, yesterday's veterans, who went through all the hardships of the past war, were disgusted by the hasty renunciations of the "thaw" shifters from their recent past. It is not surprising that shortly after the XX Party Congress, the poet was severely reprimanded and was relieved of his high post in the Union of Writers of the USSR. In 1958, Simonov left to live and work in Tashkent as Pravda's own correspondent for the republics of Central Asia.

However, this forced "business trip"-exile Simonov did not break. On the contrary, the release from social and administrative work and the share of publicity that accompanied him almost all his life gave a new impetus to the writer's work. “When there is Tashkent,” Simonov joked gloomily, but with courageous dignity, “there is no need to leave for seven years in Croisset to write Madame Bovary.

"Alive and Dead"

Simonov's first novel "Comrades in Arms", dedicated to the events at Khalkin Gol, was published in 1952. According to the original intention of the author, it was supposed to be the first part of the trilogy he conceived about the war. However, it turned out differently. In order to fully reveal the initial stage of the war, other heroes were needed, a different scale of the events depicted. "Comrades in Arms" was destined to remain only a prologue to a monumental work about the war.

In 1955, while still in Moscow, Konstantin Mikhailovich Simonov began work on the novel The Living and the Dead, but political intrigues after the 20th Party Congress, as well as attacks from the new party and literary leadership, prevented the writer from completely surrendering to creativity. In 1961, Simonov brought the completed novel to Moscow from Tashkent. It became the first part of a large truthful work about the Great Patriotic War. The author found heroes with whom the reader will go from the first days of the retreat to the defeat of the German army near Moscow. In 1965, Simonov completed his new book, Soldiers Are Not Born, which is a new meeting with the heroes of the novel The Living and the Dead. Stalingrad, the unadorned truth of life and war at a new stage - the overcoming of science to win. In the future, the writer intended to bring his heroes to 1945, to the end of the war, but in the process of work it became obvious that the action of the trilogy would end in the places where it began. Belarus in 1944, the offensive operation "Bagration" - these events formed the basis of the third book, which Simonov called "Last Summer". All three works are united by the author into a trilogy under the general title "The Living and the Dead".

In 1974, for the trilogy "The Living and the Dead" Simonov was awarded the Lenin Prize and the title of Hero of Socialist Labor.

According to the scripts of K. Simonov, the films "A guy from our city" (1942), "Wait for me" (1943), "Days and Nights" (1943-1944), "The Immortal Garrison" (1956), "Normandie-Niemen" were staged (1960, together with S. Spaak and E. Triolet), The Living and the Dead (1964), Twenty Days Without War (1976).

In 1970, K.M.Simonov visited Vietnam, after which he published the book "Vietnam, the winter of the seventieth ..." (1970-71). In dramatic poems about the Vietnam War, "Bombing the Squares", "Over Laos", "Duty Office" and others, comparisons with the Great Patriotic War constantly arise:

"I'm not ashamed..."

Of great documentary value are Simonov's memoirs "Diaries of the War Years" and his last book - "Through the Eyes of a Man of My Generation. Reflections on Stalin” (1979, published in 1988). These are memories and reflections about the time of the 30s - early 50s, about meetings with Stalin, A.M. Vasilevsky, I.S. Konev, Admiral I.S. Isakov.

In the book “Through the Eyes of a Man of My Generation” K.M. Simonov partly reconsiders his former views, but does not renounce them at all. Unlike some fairly well-known publicists and memoirists of the "perestroika" period, Simonov is far from "sprinkling ashes on his head." Carrying out painstaking work on the inevitable mistakes and delusions of his generation, the writer does not stoop to unsubstantiated defamation of the historical past of his country. On the contrary, he invites posterity to listen to the facts, so as not to repeat previous mistakes:

Konstantin Mikhailovich Simonov died on August 28, 1979 in Moscow. According to the will, the ashes of K.M. Simonov was scattered over the Buinichsky field near Mogilev, where in 1941 he managed to get out of the encirclement.

In conclusion, I would like to cite an excerpt from the book of memoirs of the philologist, writer and journalist Grigory Okun "Meetings on a distant meridian." The author knew Konstantin Mikhailovich during the years of his stay in Tashkent and, in our opinion, most accurately described Simonov as one of the most controversial and ambiguous, but bright and interesting people of his time: