Gumilev, Lev Nikolaevich

Lev Gumilev was the only child in the marriage of famous poets Nikolai Gumilev and Anna Akhmatova ^[4] . During her pregnancy, Akhmatova's spouses were in Italy, and there was almost no information about this trip ^[5] . Returning to Russia, the whole second half of July and the beginning of August 1912, Nikolai and Anna spent in Slepneva ^{[Comm. 1]} Bezhetsk District - the estate of the mother of the poet Anna Ivanovna Gumileva ^[6] . The birth of the heir was a long-awaited event, because the marriage of Gumilev’s older brother, Dmitriy, turned out to be childless, and at the village meeting the peasants were promised to forgive the debts if a boy was born ^[7] .

Lev Gumilev was born on September 18 (October 1), 1912 in the maternity shelter of Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna on the 18th line of Vasilievsky Island in St. Petersburg ^{[7] [Comm. 2]} . A few days later, the child was transported to the Gumilyovs' house in Tsarskoe Selo . October 7, according to the old style, he was baptized in the Catherine’s Cathedral ^[7] . Contemporaries in their memoirs pointed out that Akhmatova quickly freed herself from motherly concerns, and almost from the first day of her life Lev Gumilyov was in the care of her grandmother. The circumstances of the poetic life of the young Gumilyov family are conveyed by V. V. Gippius ' humorous poem “On Fridays in Hyperborea ”, given in the inset.

In the summer of 1917, due to the threat of pogrom, A.I. Gumilev left her family estate in Slepneva and left for Bezhetsk , with the peasants being allowed to take her library and part of the furniture ^[11] . Akhmatova and N. Gumilyov officially divorced in 1918 on the initiative of Anna Andreevna ^[12] . At the end of August 1918, A.I. Gumileva with her grandson moved to Petrograd to N.Gumilyova. Gumilev took his son with him, going to the city on literary matters, and took him to A. Akhmatova, who then lived with the orientalist V. K. Shileiko . By this time, Lev Nikolayevich himself carried the first fascination with history ^[13] .

In the summer of 1919, A.I. Gumilev, with the second wife of his son, Anna Nikolaevna Engelhardt, and children went to Bezhetsk, where Nikolai Stepanovich periodically traveled for a day or two. The last time father and son met in Bezhetsk in May 1921 ^[13] . The testimonies of how the news of the death of his father was perceived by Lev Gumilyov are extremely contradictory.

In the town of Gumilyov, together with their relatives — the Kuzminy-Karavaevs — they rented an apartment on Rozhdestvenskaya Street (now Chudova) in a wooden house occupying the entire second floor, with time because of the seal , the only room left. Anna Ivanovna Gumileva tried not to fit into the new Soviet reality as much as possible: among her acquaintances clergymen and in general people “from the former” prevailed, the correspondence with A. Akhmatova dated according to the church calendar. Nonetheless, she understood that her grandson would have to live under the Soviet regime, and in one of the letters she asked Akhmatov to “correct” his son’s metric, which did not have a testimony of his noble origin ^{[14] [Comm. 3]} . In addition to her grandmother, Alexandra Stepanovna Sverchkova (“Aunt Shura”, 1869-1952) played a major role in L. Gumilyov's upbringing, she even wanted to adopt him. It is due to the salary of A. S. Sverchkova (62 rubles) and monthly transfers from Akhmatova from her pension (25 rubles) ^{[Comm. 4]} there was a family; a significant assistance was provided by a vegetable garden located outside the city ^[16] . In this setting, Lev Gumilyov grew up and was raised from 6 to 17 years. A. Akhmatova visited her son twice during this period - on Christmas day 1921 and in the summer of 1925 (from July 21 to 26). In June 1926, Leo and Grandma visited Leningrad ^[17] .

Gumilev studied in three schools of Bezhetsk - the 2nd Soviet (formed by the merger of the women's gymnasium and the real school), the railway school (where A. Sverchkov taught there) and in the 1st Soviet (in 1926-1929). For a number of reasons, Lev’s relationship with his classmates did not add up, according to the recollections: “ Leva held out by himself. We were all pioneers of the Komsomol, he did not enter anywhere, at recess, when everyone was playing, he stood aside . ” At the same time, the school board of the 2nd Soviet school voted in favor of depriving Lev Gumilev - as “the son of a counterrevolutionary and a class alien element” —the textbooks relied on to each student ^[18] . In the railway school, the teacher of literature and social science AM Pereslegin (1891–1973) exerted an exceptional influence on Lev; they corresponded until the end of the life of Alexander Mikhailovich ^[19] . While studying at the 1st Soviet school, teachers and schoolmates appreciated Leo’s literary abilities, he began writing for the school newspaper Progress, and was awarded a school board money prize for the story “The Mystery of the Sea”. He was also a regular visitor to the Bezhetsk city library ^[20] . He recalled:

“Fortunately, at that time in the small town of Bezhetsk there was a library full of works of Main Reed, Cooper, Jules Verne, Wells, Jack London and many other fascinating authors. <...> There were chronicles of Shakespeare, historical novels of Dumas, Conan Doyle, Walter Scott, Stevenson. Reading accumulated primary factual material and awakened a thought ” ^[21] .

Lev Gumilev even spoke at the library with reports on modern Russian literature and led the literary section at the Friends of the Book Club. However, attempts to write poems resembling N. Gumilev's theme - “exotic” —had been harshly suppressed by their mother, and L. Gumilyov returned to the poetic activity already in the 1930s ^[22] .

Moving to Leningrad

In late August or early September 1929, L. Gumilev who graduated from school moved to his mother in Leningrad, to the Fountain House . Most likely, he did not find Akhmatova and her husband Nikolai Punin , who left for the Caucasus. Punin’s apartment was communal, except for his mother and stepfather, his first wife, A. Ye. Punina, lived with her daughter Irina (they all had separate rooms), and the family of workers lived in her room. Lev Gumilev found a place on a wooden chest in an unheated hallway ^{[23] [24]} .

Punin arranged Lev to the 67th single labor school (whose director was A.N. Punin - the stepfather's brother), in which he graduated from the 9th grade once more and prepared to enter a higher educational institution ^[25] . The first year of Gumilev's stay in Leningrad is worst documented. He lived on the content of the mother and N. Punin, relations with which were difficult. As far as he did, he performed homework: chopped firewood, carried them to the apartment, heated the stove, stood in line for groceries ^[26] .

Expeditions in the Baikal and Tajikistan

In the summer of 1930, after graduating from school, Lev Gumilyov decided to enter the German department of the Pedagogical Institute, for which he had been preparing for about six months, learning the language in courses. Because of the noble origin, the commission refused to even accept the documents, and he left for Bezhetsk. There is a version (based on the words of Gumilev himself) that Punin expelled him. After the return, a relative arranged for Lev as an unskilled laborer at the plant to them. Sverdlov , located on Vasilyevsky Island, from there he transferred to the Steel and Current Service (tram depot). In 1931 he transferred to the courses of collectors of geological expeditions. Geological expeditions were formed in a large number at the time of industrialization , there was always a shortage of staff, so little attention was paid to social origin. Gumilev later recalled that he didn’t feel like an outcast in any of his early (before the university) expeditions, he was treated no worse than the others ^[27] .

June 11, 1931 Gumilev went to the Baikal region - in Irkutsk . From the Moscow railway station he was escorted by A. Akhmatova ^[28] . The base of the expedition was Slyudyanka , the main area of ​​research - the mountains of Hamar-Daban . Judging by the memoirs of his colleague A. Dashkova, he did not show much interest in the expedition, but he proved to be a reliable comrade ^[29] . Due to the early winter, the expedition ended in early August. Since then, almost every summer, Lev Gumilev set out on various expeditions — first geological, then archaeological and ethnographic; In total, according to biographers, in 1931-1967 he participated in 21 expeditionary seasons ^{[Comm. 5]} . The work allowed to eat well and earn a little, making Leo independent of the mother and N. Punin. After returning from Baikal, Gumilev tried not to live in the Fountain House (he first stayed with L. Arens , the brother of Punin’s first wife, and then with his grandmother’s niece) ^[31] .

In 1932, Gumilyov participated in the longest expedition to Tajikistan , which lasted, according to some information, 11 months. In his own list of expeditions, it, like the previous one, does not appear (the scientist took into account only the profile - archaeological). He came to Tajikistan quite deliberately, apparently, on the recommendation of P. Luknitsky , a Bezhetsk teacher whom Lev Gumilyov respected until the end of his life. A 30-year-old mountaineer and graduate of the literary faculty was then a scientific secretary of the Tajik complex expedition. The expedition was organized by decision of the Council of People's Commissars and the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences. Led the preparation for the expedition scientific council chaired by Academician A. E. Fersman . The council included scientists of world renown, among them, for example, Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov . The parasitological group to which Gumilev fell was headed by Evgeny Nikanorovich Pavlovsky , the future academician and president of the Geographical Society of the USSR, the founder of the tropical institute in Tajikistan. The expedition was led by Nikolai Petrovich Gorbunov , Lenin’s personal secretary, former managing secretary of the Council of People's Commissars and the rector of the Bauman school . The expedition was attended by 97 scientists (about 700 people in total), divided into 72 groups ^[32] .

Stopping at Stalinabad , Gumilev went to the Gissar Valley , where, prior to the conflict with his boss, he worked as a helminthologist laboratory assistant, after which he was expelled for violating labor discipline ^[33] . After that, he moved to the Vakhsh valley and settled on a malarial station in the Dangara exemplary state farm . It paid well (by the standards of the 1930s) and there were no problems with food. About thirty years later, Lev Nikolayevich recalled his work as follows:

“The job was that I found a swamp, where mosquitoes were bred, put them on the plan and then poisoned the water with“ Parisian greenery . ” At the same time, the number of mosquitoes decreased somewhat, but the survivors were quite enough to infect not only me, but the entire population of the region with malaria ” ^[34] .

Here Gumilev learned Tajik language in live communication with dekhkans and of all the languages ​​he studied and knew him best ^[35] .

Moscow. First arrest

Returning from an expedition in 1933, Lev Gumilyov stopped in Moscow, where he closely communicated with O. Mandelstam , who saw in him the “continuation of his father” ^[36] . From the autumn of the same year, Gumilev found a literary work - translations of poems of poets of the national republics of the USSR from the subscripts. A. Dashkova he wrote:

“In truth, these poets have no idea about poetry and representation, and I glide between Scylla and Charybdis, now fearing to move away from the original, now horrified by the ignorance of the geniuses of Asia” ^[37] .

U Mandelshtamov he met with E. Gershtein , the daughter of a doctor, who then served in the Central Bureau of Scientific Workers at the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions; an idea arose to help Lev join the union, which would help to get rid of the status of " deprived ". Despite the fact that it failed, their acquaintance lasted about 60 years ^[38] .

On December 10, 1933, the first of the four arrests of Gumilev occurred. This happened at the apartment of V.A. Eberman, an orientalist, with whom Lev consulted about translations from Arabic. He spent 9 days in prison, after which he was released without charge, he was never even interrogated ^{[39] [40]} .

University

In June 1934, Gumilev was admitted to the entrance exam for the newly restored (May 16) history department of the Leningrad University. By that time, his financial situation was so deplorable that he literally starved and passed one of the three exams, but since there was no big competition, he entered the university ^{[41] [42]} .

Among the teachers of Gumilev were world-class scholars — Egyptologist V. V. Struve , anti-researcher S. Ya. Lurje , Sinologist N. V. Kuhner , the latter he called his mentor and teacher. Kuhner helped Gumilyov in prison, sent him books to the camp. His mentor Gumilev called and Alexander Y. Yakubovsky , who read the course of the history of the Caliphate. The course of the new history was read by Evgeny Viktorovich Tarle , from whom Gumilev received an “excellent” mark on the exam in the winter session of 1937 ^[43] .

The level of his training turned out to be high, his memory and self-developed mnemonic techniques helped him a lot. He said:

“... they usually learn history, like dried mushrooms are strung on a string, one date, another one is impossible to remember. History should be taught as if you had a carpet in front of you. At this time in England, this and that was happening, in Germany - this and that ... Then you will not be confused, because you will not remember, but understand ” ^[44] .

Nevertheless, he received a rating of "satisfactory" in three subjects: the new history of 1830-1870, the history of the USSR 1800-1914, the new history of colonial and dependent countries ^[45] . The situation with foreign languages ​​was even worse: he gave up French and Latin, he studied French from his mother, but it didn’t work because of Akhmatova’s “anti-pedagogical talent” ^[23] : “ She didn’t have enough patience. And for the most part of the lesson she was simply angry for the French words that her son had forgotten. Time flowed, it was settled. And again - not for long. Such mood swings annoyed both ” ^[45] . He studied German and English independently, and they were given more difficultly ^[45] .

Student Lev Gumilyov kept his own way, not participating in public life and even in student scientific circles, which in 1937 were merged into a student scientific community of historians, which even published its own journal, where students' reports and articles were published. On the whole, few sources remained of his student life, especially since his systematic education was limited to four courses due to his arrest (2.5 years) ^[45] .

All this time, Gumilev lived in poverty and was in great need. Judging by the memoirs of E. Gershtein, in 1934 he walked in the same clothes as in the expedition of 1931, and looked like a ragged one. In the summer, he wore a completely faded cap and canvas cloak, sometimes he wore a cowboy jacket, in winter he went in a padded jacket, which E. Gershtein called "stupid", L. Chukovskaya also wrote about him. Against this background, his defiant behavior was clearly manifested - Gumilev, who was a student of the history department, Valery Makhaev, in October 1935 (during the investigation), said: “Gumilyov is clearly anti-Soviet ”. University friend Arkady Borin, during interrogation in September 1935, revealed:

“Gumilev really idealized his noble background, and his mood was largely determined by this background ... Among the students, he was a“ black sheep ”and in a manner to keep and in taste in literature ^[46] . <...> In his opinion, the destiny of Russia should be decided not by the masses of working people, but by selected handfuls of nobility <...> he spoke of the “salvation” of Russia and saw him only in restoring the noble system <...> to my remark that the nobles had already degenerated or adapted Gumilev pointedly stated that “there are still nobles who dream of bombs” ” ^{[47] [Comm. 6]} .

Disliking the "common people" Gumilev demonstrated, judging by the recollections, even after returning from the camp:

“An intelligent person is a person who is poorly educated and compassionate to the people. I am well-educated and will not sympathize with the people ” ^{[49] [Comm. 7]} .

1935 arrest

After spending the summer of 1935 on a regular expedition, Lev Gumilev arrived in Moscow on September 30. According to the memoirs of E. Gershtein, he spoke to her about the impending arrest "for anti-Soviet conversations." The arrest did follow in Leningrad on October 23 ^{[51] [Comm. 8]} . Much was written about the reasons for the arrest, but all the authors agree that Gumilev and N. Punin came under a wave of repression against the Leningrad intelligentsia that followed the assassination of S. M. Kirov ^[41] . The Gumilev case was preserved in the Central Archive of the FSB of the Russian Federation, and its materials were published by A. N. Kozyrev in 2003. The author of the denunciation of Lev Gumilev was his classmate Arkady Borin, who visited the House on Fontanka (his first report is dated May 26). It is characteristic, however, that Borin was arrested on September 1 on charges of creating a youth terrorist group ^[52] .

After the arrest, both Gumilyov and Punin confessed, and Punin was given the first interrogation. Gumilev admitted in anti-Soviet conversations and "terrorist sentiments", as well as in the authorship of the anti-Soviet (dedicated to the murder of Kirov) poem "Ekbatana", although its text was not found. A.N. Kozyrev assumed that the ultimate goal was the arrest of Akhmatova, since the head of the NKVD Directorate for the Leningrad Region, L. M. Zakovsky, even gave a narcotic journalist G. G. Yoda a memorandum asking for an authorization to arrest Akhmatova ^[53] .

Anna Andreevna, a week after the arrest of her husband and son, went to Moscow, where she stayed with E. Gershtein, it was from her that Emma Grigorievna found out about Gumilev’s arrest. Then Akhmatova moved to the Bulgakovs' apartment. Further events are known in several versions. According to the memoirs of E. Gershtein, she brought Akhmatova to L. Seyfullina , but she was not present during their conversation. According to Akhmatova herself, Seifullin called Poskrebysheva with her, and the next day (October 31) she sent a letter to the Secretariat of the Central Committee addressed to Stalin . According to E. S. Bulgakova’s version, Akhmatova rewrote the draft letter in their apartment to Stalin. Elena Sergeyevna accompanied Anna Andreevna to the Kremlin, and then she went to Pilnyak ^[54] . The letter said:

“The arrest of two people who are the only ones close to me inflicts a blow on me that I can’t bear. I ask you, Joseph Vissarionovich, to give me back my husband and son, confident that no one will ever regret about it ” ^[55] .

On November 2, Akhmatova went to Pasternak, and for dinner Pilniak arrived, who persuaded Pasternak to write a letter to Stalin, which Boris Leonidovich brought the next day. By that time, Stalin had already read the letter of Akhmatova, imposing a resolution:

"T. Berry. Release both Punin and Gumilev from arrest and report on the execution. I. Stalin " ^[56] .

Already on November 3, a “Resolution on changing preventive measures” was signed, according to which Gumilev and Punin were to be “immediately” released, and on November 4, the investigation was terminated, and all the detainees were released right in the middle of the night, and Punin asked to leave them until morning ^{[57 ]} .

Further Stay at University

Gumilev briefly described the events after his arrest: “ Punin returned to work, and I was expelled from the university ” ^[56] . This happened on December 13, 1935, and on the initiative of the Komsomol organization ^[58] . Details Lev was told by E. Gershtein in a letter sent with an opportunity at the end of January 1936, but it was not preserved. In her memoirs, she reconstructed its content and recalled two particularly striking episodes:

“... one of them is only in the most general terms. He touched Peter the Great, whom Lev characterized not in the way that was inspired by students at lectures. The students complained that he considered them fools. Another episode of his stupidity and meanness sharply imprinted in my memory. “I have no sense of rhythm,” wrote Lev and continued: in military classes, he was off the mark. The teacher said that he was sabotaging, deliberately discrediting the Red Army. ” Loew finished the letter with the phrase: “The only way out is to move to Moscow. Only with your support can I live and work at least a little bit ” ^[59] .

The deduction was a disaster for Gumilev, since he was left without shelter and livelihood (the scholarship of the student of the history department was then quite large - 96 rubles, not counting the bread allowance of 23 rubles). Gumilev, by his own admission, was starving in the winter of 1935-1936, but Akhmatova insisted that he should live with her. On the other hand, the same winter, Lev Nikolayevich wrote his first scientific work. Already in January 1936, Punin and Akhmatova began to petition for his restoration ^[60] .

In the summer of 1936, under the patronage of M. I. Artamonov , Gumilyov settled down on an archaeological expedition to the Don, excavating the Khazar town of Sarkel . After his return to Moscow in September, the hope arose of arranging it at Moscow University, but not at the historical, but at the geographical faculty, which Lev was offended by. However, at the end of October, he was reinstated at the Leningrad State University, and the decision was made personally by the rector, Mikhail Semyonovich Lazurkin (in 1937, he was arrested and shot without trial). In the 1937 semester, Gumilev began working with N.V. Kuhner, who was then in charge of the ethnography department of East and Southeast Asia at the Institute of Ethnography of the USSR Academy of Sciences; Kuhner even attracted Gumilev to work in his department ^[61] .

In general, the life of Gumilev from the winter of 1936-1937 until the spring of 1938 is poorly reflected in the sources, there are only isolated evidence. Judging by the memoirs of contemporaries, he then experienced a love affair with a graduate student of the Academy of Sciences - a Mongolian Ochiirin Namsrayzh, their relationship continued until his arrest ^[62] . In the 1970s, they resumed correspondence, which was not interrupted until the very death of Gumilev ^[63] .

Arrest and effect

On the night of March 10-11, 1938, Gumilev was arrested ^[64] . He linked his arrest with a lecture by Lev Vasilyevich Pumpyansky on Russian poetry of the beginning of the century:

“The lecturer began to make fun of poems and the personality of my father. “The poet wrote about Abyssinia,” he exclaimed, “but he himself was not further than Algeria ... Here he is - an example of Russian Tartarine!“ Not holding it, I shouted to the professor from the spot: “No, he was not in Algeria, but in Abyssinia!” Pumpyansky condescendingly parried my remark: “Who better to know — you or me?” I replied: “Of course, to me.” In the audience about two hundred students laughed. Unlike Pumpyansky, many of them knew that I was the son of Gumilev. Everyone turned on me and realized that I really know better. Immediately after the call, Pumpyansky ran to complain to me at the dean's office. Apparently, he complained further. In any case, the very first interrogation in the inner prison of the NKVD at Shpalernaya investigator Barkhudaryan began by reading me a paper in which the incident that took place at Pumpyansky’s lecture was given in full detail ... ” ^[65]

S. Belyakov established that in this interview L.N. Gumilyov was inaccurate: the investigation was led by Filimonov, and not by Barkhudaryan, and the denunciation was most likely written by one of the students. The situation at the history department was unstable from the very beginning - his first dean G. S. Seidel was arrested in January 1935 on charges of having links with Zinoviev , and 12 teachers were arrested along with him. The second dean, C. M. Dubrovsky, was arrested in 1936; altogether, until 1940, seven deans changed ^[66] .

The case in which Lev Gumilev was passing began with the arrest on February 10 of students Nikolai Erehovich and Theodor Shumovsky , with the first of whom he was familiar ^[67] . According to the investigator, all three were part of the youth wing of the “Progressist Party”, which sought to turn “the Soviet country into a bourgeois parliamentary republic.” Students kept in the House of preliminary detention on the street. Voinov (now Shpalernaya ) in the next chambers on the second floor. Gumilev was accused under articles 58-10 (counter-revolutionary propaganda and agitation) and 58-11 (organizational counter-revolutionary activities) of the RSFSR Criminal Code . Initially, the case was led by investigator Filimonov, who was unable to get a confession. On April 2, 1938, the case was transferred to Sergeant Ayrat Karpovich Barkhudaryan, the security officer of the 8th Division of the 4th Division of the NKVD Office for the Leningrad Region ^[68] . Under torture ^[69] on June 21, 1938, Gumilyov signed a protocol recognizing “in the leadership of an anti-Soviet youth organization, in counter-revolutionary agitation” (reading Mandelstam’s poem about “the Kremlin highlander” ), “in preparation for the attempted assassination of Comrade. Zhdanova .

“I have always been brought up in the spirit of hatred for the VKP (b) and the Soviet government. <...> This bitter counter-revolutionary spirit was always supported by my mother, Anna Akhmatova, who, with her anti-Soviet behavior, even more brought me up and directed me to the path of counter-revolution. <...> Akhmatova repeatedly told me that if I want to be a son to the end, I must be the son of my father Gumilyov Nikolay. <...> By this, she wanted to say that I would direct all my actions to the struggle against the CPSU (b) and the Soviet government ” ^[69] .

At the end of August, the students were transferred to the Kresty prison, where they ended up in the same cell. At the military tribunal (relied on the case of terrorism) on September 27, all three refused to give up earlier confessions. Gumilev, in particular, stated:

“... I give up the interrogation protocol, it was prepared in advance, and I, under physical influence, was forced to sign it. <...> There was no conversation with my mother about the executed father. I did not recruit anyone and never was the organizer of the counter-revolutionary group. <...> I, as an educated person, understand that any weakening of Soviet power can lead to intervention by frantic fascism ... ” ^[70]

It did not make any impression on the tribunal. After a brief formal meeting, L.N. Gumilyov was sentenced to 10 years in prison with a stay in the ITL with a defeat in rights for 4 years with serving a term of March 10, 1938. Yerekhovich and Shumovsky, received, respectively, 8 and 3 years of imprisonment and defeat in rights ^[71] . All three took advantage of the cassation, as a result of November 17, 1938, the sentence “for softness” was completely canceled and the case was returned for further investigation ^[72] .

Pending a review of the case, on December 2, Gumilyov and Shumovsky set off on a stage from Leningrad and on December 4 were taken to the Bear Mountain Station. Since the main office of Belomorstroi was located there, a legend was born that Lev Nikolayevich worked on the construction of the White Sea Canal , which he supported in every possible way. Then they were transported to Lake Onega to a remote camp site for logging located at the mouth of the River Vodla . For three weeks, Gumilyov and Shumovsky worked at a sawmill. On New Year's Day, prisoners were searched for hours in the cold, and as a result Shumovsky caught a bad cold. Here, the paths of the students diverged: the sick person was put on the “gas stove” (fuel preparation for the gas generator ), and Lev Gumilev was sent to logging ^[73] . Here in three weeks he reached the point of extreme exhaustion:

“... I finally“ reached ”. Thin, overgrown with bristles, not washed for a long time, I barely dragged my feet from the hut to the forest. Felling the forest in the ice-covered snow-covered forest, in torn shoes, without warm clothes, reinforcing the strength with balanda and poor bread rations, even the village men accustomed to hard physical work melted like candles on this frosty January day, when I was cutting a spruce tree I already had, an ax fell from my weakened hands. Like a sin, the day before I sharpened it. The ax easily cut the kersey boot and cut the leg almost to the bone. The wound festered. ” ^[74]

Gumilev's life was then saved by the parcel that came from Akhmatova ^[75] . January 24, 1939 he was sent to Leningrad for further investigation. Getting around snow-covered Karelia was extremely difficult (on foot, by truck, etc.), so Gumilev and Shumovsky returned to Kresty only in mid-February. On March 15, Lev Nikolayevich sent a letter to the prosecutor of the NKVD for Supervision, in which he wrote that he had been imprisoned for almost two years now, not knowing for what. On April 6, Akhmatova sent a new letter to Stalin in which she tried to interest the leader with the benefits her son, a promising scientist, can bring. The letter ended with the words: “ Joseph Vissarionovich! Save the Soviet historian and give me the opportunity to live and work again ” ^[76] . However, now Anna Andreevna did not have the opportunity to directly transfer the letter to the addressee, as a result, at the end of August this letter was sent to the Military Prosecutor's Office of the Leningrad Military District, and he was filed to the Gumilev case. On July 26, a special meeting of the NKVD sentenced Gumilev, Yerekhovich and Shumovsky to five years in camps. Lev Nikolayevich was to go to Norillag ^[77] .

Norilsk camp

On August 10, Gumilev was allowed a meeting with his mother in a transfer prison, she was there with L. Chukovskaya, and on the 14th she gave him warm clothes ^[78] . After reaching the train to Krasnoyarsk , at the end of August, Lev Nikolayevich was sent to Dudinka , the details of all of this are unknown. In Norilsk there was an epidemic of dysentery , which did not stop with the onset of winter, in 1940, Lev Nikolayevich fell victim to it, after spending 3 days unconscious. None of this is in the later memories of Gumilev, who by nature was optimistic and tried not to memorize negative impressions. For example, he spoke about his work in the camp as follows:

“The adit seemed to us a blissful shelter, for it had a constant temperature of minus 4. Compared with outside frost degrees or frosts, or a restless blizzard knocking down, the working day was painless in the adit” ^{[79] [Comm. 9]} .

The conditions of stay in the camp were tolerable: according to Gumilev's stories, the bread ration reached 1 kilogram 200 grams per full production rate, 600 grams “for under-production”, 300 (carceral ration) - “for unsatisfactory work” ^[81] . Engineers from prisoners received herring and condensed milk, which approached the conditions of sharashka . On the geological expeditions of Norillag, the ration was even better: butter, chocolate, dried milk. The civilian employees had large northern allowances, six-month paid leave and trips to a sanatorium ^[82] . At the general work, the prisoner Gumilev did not stay long, since he wrote in a questionnaire about his work in the exploration party ^{[Comm. 10]} . Soon he was made a geotechnician and transferred to the barrack of geologists, where there were many intelligent prisoners who knew both Nikolai Gumilev and Akhmatov. At the end of the camp term, Lev Nikolayevich was transferred to a chemical laboratory, in which he had to systematize and submit, at the request of, samples of rocks produced by camp expeditions. Available leisure allowed to engage in poetic creativity ^[84] .

Several eyewitnesses report the life of Gumilev in Norillag, whose testimonies strongly contradict each other. A lot of negative information is contained in the memoirs of D. Bystroletov, which were used by D. V. Polushin and L. S. Klein . It is also mentioned there for the first time that Lev Nikolayevich allegedly was engaged in a dissertation in the camp. In fact, in 1945, Gumilev wrote N.V. Kühner about his camp attempts to engage in scientific work: in Norilsk, he read the writings of E. Taylor , L. Ya. Sternberg , and after his release, already near Turukhansk, “collected folklore demonological material among the Tungus and Kets ". However, it was absolutely impossible to engage in systematic work on a thesis in the absence of sources and literature ^[87] .

S. Snegov , who was friends with Gumilyov in prison, gave many details. He wrote that in the summer, he and Gumilyov loved to relax on the banks of the Coal stream, covering their faces with towels (from “satanic” mosquitoes), and argued on topical issues: “Is Kaspar Schmidt above ... Friedrich Nietzsche and is there a rational sense in James Lewis's pragmatism ... “Once the prisoners staged a poets' camp tournament, which, to Gumilev’s displeasure, won Snegov ^{[Comm. 11]} . The offended Leo even called a friend to a duel ^[84] . During 1940–1944, he composed fairy tales in verses “A Visit to Asmodeus” and “Magic Cigarettes”, a poetic historical tragedy in two paintings “The Death of Prince Jamuga, or Civil War”. Many poems of the Norilsk period have been lost. Sergey Snegov mentioned a poem about scurvy, Elena Cherubimova wrote that Gumilev dedicated one of his poems to her. Lev Nikolaevich also wrote prose: both his stories are dated 1941, “Hero of El-Cabrillo” and “Tadu-Vacca”, but their existence became known only after his death (home-made notebooks are preserved in the archive). From the memoirs of Snegov, a comic lecture in the jargon “The history of the Netherlands falling away from Spain” is also known ^[89] . According to S. Belyakov, “for Gumilev, The History of the Falling of the Netherlands ...” was primarily a literary game designed for an intelligent but already experienced in criminal slang and thieves' concepts of a prisoner ” ^[90] .

Gumilev's main circle of contacts were intellectuals - the poet Mikhail Doroshin (Misha), the chemist Nikanor Palitsyn, the engineer, “Renaissance connoisseur, wise thinking and a fan of poetry” Yevgeny Reikhman and astrophysicist Nikolai Kozyrev , who had been sitting in Pulkovo case since 1936. He entered the Norillag only in the summer of 1942, their communication spurred Gumilev's interest in the natural sciences ^[91] .

Civilian

On March 10, 1943, Gumilev’s five-year term expired, which at first did not change his life. By that time, he had been demobilized, that is, he enjoyed the right of free movement within the mining complex, but could not leave it ^[92] . After the start of the Great Patriotic War, the released prisoners remained in their workplaces. Gumilev recalled that immediately after his release he signed an obligation to work at the Norilsk Combine until the end of the war. He was immediately included in the geophysical expedition and sent to look for iron ore in the vicinity of Lake Khantai . Then the idea arose to build a metallurgical plant at the site of the mine, and it was also supposed to search for oil reserves. Moscow was not able to provide the enterprise with money and specialists, so the expedition was equipped in Norillag, from which geologists and geotechnics came, the necessary equipment was made on site. Gumilev joined the party after N. Kozyrev persuaded ^[93] .

On May 1, 1943, geologists were brought by plane to Taimyr. The expedition was headed by geophysicist Dmitry G. Uspensky , except for Gumilev and student trainee Elena Cherubimova, all of its members were prisoners. In mid-July 1943, the Khantai expedition unexpectedly collapsed, Gumilev and Kozyrev were seconded to a new expedition - the Lower-Tungusk exploration, this season they managed to find industrially significant accumulations of iron ores. However, the conditions were exceptionally heavy - floods reached a level of 18–20 meters, the clusters of midges were such that neither protective suits or mosquito nets saved them. In addition, the head of the expedition was unable to organize the supply, not even enough skis. Gumilev, who from childhood disliked the forest, by his own admission, hated the taiga - the “green prison” ^[92] . In September, the expedition was made year-round; In the summer of 1944, Gumilev, who proved to be well-known, was rewarded with a week-long vacation in Turukhansk , the nearest settlement. He also visited this village in the autumn, because it was from the Turukhansk District Military Commissariat that he was sent to the front. However, according to some information, Lev Nikolayevich together with Kozyrev was sent to Turukhansk also in the summer of 1943 ^[94] .

The specificity of Turukhansk in the GULAG system was that it was a place of female exile, where distinguished prisoners were awarded a trip. By his own admissions, 30-year-old Gumilev, he “married a“ morganatic marriage ”for all seven days of his vacation” ^[95] .

Lev Nikolayevich considered his call to the army a great success. The reasons why Gumilyov replaced geophysics for a soldier’s service are quite obvious. Judging by the letter of N. Ya. Mandelstam on April 18, 1944, Gumilev then returned to his previous goal - to become a certified historian and engage in scientific work. The same motifs are repeated in a letter to E. Gerstein, sent at the end of the summer of 1944. Apparently, he did not hope to leave Siberia even after the end of the war, and therefore conscription was the only chance to get a conviction and return to Leningrad. From the same letter it follows that he had already asked for the front several times, but the workers of the Norilsk Combine were invariably denied, including civilian employees. Many years later, Lev Nikolayevich said: “Compared with Eastern Siberia, the foremost is a resort. Northern taiga is a green desert, in comparison with which the Sahara is a populated, rich and cultural place ” ^[96] . This probably explains Gumilev's psychological state when he decided on an extravagant act, which E. Gershtein reported as follows:

“... came to the commandant, holding a razor on his wrist, and threatened:“ Now I’ll open my veins, I'll blow you on your face with your blood, and devils will fry you in a frying pan ”(he was afraid of the Last Judgment). That's how they let me go. ” ^[97]

Some biographers doubted the authenticity of this story; however, S. Belyakov suggested that the “commandant” was the head of the geological party, who was to give a visa for the military office ^[98] .

Information about Gumilev the soldier is even more scarce and unreliable than about the camp period in his life. Three military poems ^[99] , several letters and a military ID have been preserved. His personal file has also been preserved in the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.

On October 13, 1944, the Turukhansk District Military Commissariat called Gumilev to join the Red Army . After a brief stop in Krasnoyarsk, he got to the training unit, and from there to the war. In December, the train reached Moscow, from the Kiev railway station, it phoned up to V. Ardov and V. Shklovsky , and also met with N. Khardzhiev and I. Tomashevskaya . Then Private Gumilev was sent to Brest , where he was trained by an anti-aircraft gunner and sent to the front shortly before the start of the Vistula-Oder offensive operation . He served in the 1386th anti-aircraft artillery regiment of the 31st anti-aircraft artillery Warsaw Red Banner Order of Bogdan Khmelnitsky Division. The division was used as a front reserve ^[100] .

During military service with Gumilyov, an incident occurred: in the houses abandoned by the Germans, stocks remained which the advancing Soviet soldiers readily used. Once Lev Nikolayevich was carried away by pickled cherries found in a house, and reached his own only three days later ^[101] . The reliability of this story is confirmed by the letter of E. Gerstein on April 12, 1945. According to indirect data, it can be determined that he began his service in another part, and by the 1386th anti-aircraft artillery regiment was seconded after this incident ^[102] .

In early March, ordinary Gumilev was thanked "for the excellent fighting in breaking the highly fortified German defenses east of the city of Stargard and mastering the important communications hubs and strong strongholds of the German defense in Pomerania." Gumilev was also present when Altdamm was captured on March 20, 1945, and dedicated poems to this, the literary merits of which, according to his biographer S. Belyakov, are small ^{[103] [Comm. 12]} .

E. Gershtein he described his military life as follows:

“I am still fighting successfully: attacking, taking cities, drinking alcohol, eating chickens and ducks, I especially liked the jam; The Germans, trying to detain me, shot at me from guns, but did not hit. I liked fighting, much duller in the rear. ”

In the Berlin operation, the 31st division of the Reserve of the High Command reinforced the air defense of the 3rd Combined Arms Army, Colonel-General Gorbatov. The 3rd Army, where Gumilev served, marched in the second echelon of the Soviet offensive, was to bypass Berlin from the south, helping to close the encirclement ring. Gumilev mentioned in the letters a German counterattack near the city of Teupitz and claimed that he had serious military achievements, but he turned out to be a bypassed boss.

“Unfortunately, I didn't hit the best of the batteries. The commander of this battery, Senior Lieutenant Filshtein disliked me and therefore deprived of all awards and incentives. And even when I raised a battery in alarm near the city of Teupitz to reflect the German counterattack, it was pretended that I had nothing to do with it and there was no counterattack, and for that I did not receive the slightest reward. ” ^[101]

During his service, Gumilyov won two medals - “For the capture of Berlin” and “For the victory over Germany”, as well as letters of appreciation for Stargard and Berlin. It is characteristic that from this period there are no photographs at all and evidence of his comrades in battle ^[105] .

After the victory, Gumilev became a military service. He complained that he had nothing to do in his spare time from military and political training. From September 1945, he began to lecture Soviet officers on history and literature; their content is unknown. Finally, Lev Nikolayevich, as the most cultured of the soldiers in the regiment, was assigned to write the history of the combat path of their unit, which he did, receiving as a reward new uniforms and exemption from the outfits until demobilization. The date of Gumilyov’s return to Leningrad is known from the Punin diary — November 14, 1945 ^[106] .

Higher education

Akhmatova greeted her son warmly ^[107] . He again settled in the Fountain House, but now for the first time in his life he had his own room - the family of workers who lived with the Punins and Akhmatova perished in the blockade . At that time, Anna Andreevna began to print again, she was returned a personal pension and was given admission to a closed distributor ^[108] . Judging by the memoirs of contemporaries, in the first post-war months L. Gumilev was in a state of euphoria. He managed to get a job at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR — a fireman — but this work gave a steady income, was not burdensome, and allowed him to study in the library of the institute. The dean of the university’s history department, V. V. Mavrodin , who sympathized with Gumilev before the war, offered Lev to recover in his fourth year, but he chose to take an external exam. For four months - from December 1945 to March 1946 - he passed ten exams in two courses, mainly in the fives and fours. Legend has it that in the exam on scientific communism, Gumilev answered two questions out of three in verse, but it is practically unverifiable, because it goes back to the only source - the memoirs of L. A. Voznesensky , who communicated with Leo in the camp ^{[Comm. 13]} . At the same time there was a cooling in relations with E. Gershtein: she expected that he would move to Moscow and study literature, and also sought closer relations, and was offended by the fact that he did not report that he had already settled in Leningrad ^[110] .

At the same time, 33-year-old Lev Nikolayevich was able to defend a thesis, which he collected materials for as early as 1937, when he was working under the guidance of Küner at the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography - he investigated the terracotta figurines of Central Asian soldiers and compared them with the data from Chinese texts translated by a mentor ^[111] . His main opponent was A.N. Bernshtam , who praised the work highly. The opportunity to enter graduate school opened, but he chose not the Faculty of Law of the Leningrad State University, but the Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences - IVAN. Academician Sergey Andreevich Kozin became the official supervisor of Gumilev. By the end of 1947, Lev Nikolaevich successfully passed the candidate exams and began to prepare the text of the thesis, enlisting the feedback of his friends and colleagues - prof. M.I. Artamonov and corresponding member A.Yu. Yakubovsky. Under the leadership of Artamonov in the summer of 1946 and 1947, he worked on an archaeological expedition in the Vinnitsa region . Against the background of all these successes in November 1947, graduation from postgraduate studies was followed because of the “inconsistency in the philological preparation of the chosen specialty” ^[112] .

The main reason Lev Nikolaevich called the reaction to the decision about the magazines "Star" and "Leningrad" , but between these events there was a difference of 1 year and 4 months. Another possible reason was the extremely tense relations in the IVAN team, whose employees wrote several denunciations against Lev Nikolayevich, accusing them of “apoliticality”, lack of understanding of the Marxist-Leninist methodology and public disagreement with the condemnation of Akhmatova. The theme of this kind of complaints, which was formed back in the 1930s, was repeated almost unchanged in the 1970s ^[112] .

According to S. Belyakov, the official reason for expelling Gumilev from graduate school was true. He had a rather poor command of two European languages ​​(German and English), spoke conversational Tajik, and could disassemble Orhon-Yenisei inscriptions , this was the end of his linguistic knowledge. However, it was the tip of the iceberg - a young and ambitious Gumilev ruined relations with the supervisor and senior colleagues who belonged to the classical school ^[113] . The application of M. I. Artamonov dated December 19, 1955 contains the following lines:

“When meeting a suspicious attitude towards himself, L.N. Gumilyov often reacted to him childishly, showing himself worse than he was. Distinguished by a sharp mind and an evil tongue, he pursued his enemies with ridicule, which aroused hatred towards him. With an excellent memory and extensive knowledge, L. N. Gumilev often criticized, and, moreover, very keenly, "venerable" scientists, which also did not contribute to the calmness of his existence. <...> The collisions of L. N. Gumilev with his official leader Acad. Kozin and with prof. Bernshtam, whom he repeatedly accused of gross factual errors " ^[114] .

PhD thesis defense

In January 1948, Gumilev got a job in the library of the psychiatric hospital named after I.M. Balinsky, but for some time, apparently, he lived at the expense of the disgraced mother. After his dismissal, he tried to recover at IVAN, but ultimately decided to defend his thesis at the university. Thanks to M. Panfilova, who studied with him (Secretary of the LSU Rector A. A. Voznesensky ), Gumilev met with the Rector. It took place in late April or early May 1948, he was denied a seat at the department, but permission was granted to defend himself in the university council. After submitting his dissertation for consideration, on May 15, 1948, Gumilev went to the Altai on the archaeological expedition of S. I. Rudenko mainly, in his own words, to work. That year excavations were carried out in the Pazyryk barrow No. 3 , he returned to Leningrad in early October ^[115] .

The expectation of defense lasted about 3 months, which Gumilev described as “the hardest in life”, probably because of doubts that the dissertation would be accepted for defense. The defense of the thesis on the topic “The Political History of the First Turkic Kaganate” was appointed on December 28, 1948. In addition to Gumilev himself, memories of M. Kozyrevoy are preserved about her progress, which are very inaccurate. The opponent was A.N. Bernshtam, who put forward 16 objections against the dissertation. Here Gumilev demonstrated the tricks of the polemicist and the speaker, for example, when his opponent declared that he did not know oriental languages, he spoke to him in Persian. As a result, of the 16 members of the dissertation council, 15 voted in favor ^[116] . Gumilev recalled with great pride at the end of his life:

"It was a perfect celebration for me, because with these academic figures I arranged the beating of babies, playing the role of King Herod" ^[117] .

At the same time, Lev Nikolayevich tried to settle his personal life, which even according to A. Akhmatova was distinguished by utter confusion ^[118] . Gumilev in a letter to V. N. Abrosov ^{[Comm. 14]} of January 18, 1955, he directly wrote that he had 32 women ^[120] .

The first after Gumilev's passion was the poetess Lyudmila Glebova ^{[Comm. 15]} . In 1945, he also renewed his acquaintance with N. Sokolova, an employee of the Hermitage, with whom he had been in contact since 1936, but in 1947 they parted ^[122] . The main reason was Gumilev’s stormy enthusiasm for Natalia Vasilyevna Varbane (1916–1987) ^{[Comm. 16]} , with which, with a break in arrest, the relationship lasted about 10 years. These relationships caused Lev Nikolayevich, with his hypertrophied self-love, a lot of trouble and unrest, since N. Varbanets had a long relationship with his supervisor and the head of the incunabulum department of the State Public Library - V. S. Lyublinsky (1903—1968) ^[124] . At the same time, Gumilev made the Varbanets an offer the very next day after they met him, handing in A. A. Akhmatova's old fan as a symbolic gift ^[125] . She categorically refused him, but maintained a love affair. She was present at his defense on December 28 (there was no money for a restaurant, they noted in the Fountain House), together they met a new one, in 1949 ^[126] .

In January 1949, Gumilev received the position of senior researcher at the Museum of Ethnography of the Peoples of the USSR , in the collection of scientific works of which the first article of the scientist was published - “Figurines of soldiers from Tuyuk-Mazar”. In the museum, the first task of Gumilev was the processing of the collection, brought back in 1941 from the just-closed Agin datsan . In the summer, he participated in the excavation of the Khazar fortress Sarkel . Shortly after his return, on November 6, 1949, Lev Nikolayevich was arrested for the fourth time (during dinner at his home) and immediately transferred to Lefortovo prison in Moscow ^[127] .

Stay in camps

After his release, Gumilyov told Lev Ardov that before the war he was sitting “for dad”, and after the war - “for mom”; in an interview with the 1980s, this version was met quite often. The Gumilev case in 1949-1950 was successively conducted by three investigators - Major Burdin, Lieutenant Colonel Stepanov, Captain Merkulov. Only the third investigator tried to collect material on A. Akhmatova, and in a special production, materials about Akhmatova from the Gumilev case were isolated only on March 31, 1950 ^[128] . According to S. Belyakov, after the start of the “ Leningrad Affair ”, Gumilev, as the son of a monarchist poet, who was shot for participating in a counter-revolutionary conspiracy, was doomed to a second term. The investigation was long, but not so severe in consequences as in 1938; Ultimately, the charges against Lev Nikolayevich were borrowed from the investigative case of 1935. On September 13, 1950, Gumilyov was sentenced at the Special Meeting at the IYB : "For belonging to an anti-Soviet group, terrorist intentions and anti-Soviet agitation" ten years in camps ^[129] . Gumilev said that the prosecutor who participated in the work of the Special Meeting explained to him the meaning of the sentence: “You are dangerous because you are literate” ^[130] . On October 11, 1950, he was transferred to the Chelyabinsk transit prison, from where he was sent to Kazakhstan, at Karaganda , at the next stage ^[131] .

The first camp year was hard for a scientist: according to the recollections of L. Voznesensky, who was serving a term in the same camp, Gumilyov became very old and grayish, which is also confirmed by camp photos. Never before complaining, in the letters of A. Akhmatova and E. Gershtein Lev Gumilev reported that he did not hope to live to the end of the term. For some time he worked as a stoker, but he could not hold out on this position, and in the winter of 1951 they set him up as an excavator. Emma Gershtein he wrote:

My health is deteriorating very slowly, and, apparently, summer I can survive, although it seems that there is no need. <...> I am reconciled with fate and I hope that I will not hold out for a long time, since I cannot fulfill the norm in earthworks and will not have the will to live ^[132] .

On the day of the fortieth anniversary - October 1, 1952, Gumilyov first went to the hospital due to cardiovascular insufficiency - the consequences of torture during the investigation also affected. In November, the medical commission recognized him as disabled, a duodenal ulcer was added to this illness in 1954, and he was tormented by severe pain. On March 24 of the same year, he even made a will. Fortunately, the camp hospital had good specialists from prisoners ^[133] . During his term in Norillag, Gumilyov never went to the hospital, during the years of his second term he was hospitalized at least 9 times, he performed two operations. After one of them, he wrote to E. Gershtein that “there is nothing to delay my agony with parcels” ^[134] . The torture of investigator Barkhudaryan began to respond: Gumilev increasingly suffered from spasm of the nerve frenicus — sometimes the hand refused and the right side of the body went numb ^[135] .

In the system of special camps, Gumilev visited the Meadow (not for long) and Sandy camps . Gumilev spent the winter and early spring of 1951 in the village of Churbay-Nur , the camp of Peschanlag , but by March 25 he was in Karabas - a Karlag shipment, which was delayed for half a year ^[136] . In the fall, he was transferred to the Kemerovo region , to the area of ​​today's Mezhdurechensk , where the Kamyshov camp was opened recently, in which he spent about two years. Basically, he worked as a construction worker, fed in Altai better than in Karaganda, so he asked Akhmatova (and later Gerstein) to send lard, butter, mustard, pepper, dates, sausage - “our food is abundant, but uniform, and its need to brighten. " Most often, he asked for tea and shag, which he could not do without ^[137] .

Only in the summer of 1952, the prisoner Gumilev changed the following professions: draftsman, fitter, construction foreman, sculptor, loader and actor in the production of “The Forest ” by A. N. Ostrovsky ^[138] . In the summer of 1953, Gumilev was transferred to Omsk for the construction of an oil refinery . Invalid Gumilev was no longer put to hard work, and he took the place of a camp librarian, lost his position during the move and returned to his post in August 1955. However, already in September of the same year, he was recognized fit for physical labor and delivered to carry sawdust. After hospitalization, he was returned to the library, where he worked before the operation to remove the appendix in January 1956. After Stalin's death, the regime began to change - since 1954, they allowed correspondence with friends, and not just the next of kin. Apart from A. Akhmatova, E. Gershtein, V. Abrosov, N. Kozyrev, and others, he became permanent correspondents; preserved and three letters from N. Varbanets ^[139] .

Scientific work in conclusion

Work in the camp library contributed to the intellectual development of Gumilev, and diseases were periodically freed from physical labor and made it possible to ponder scientific ideas. Kamyshlag subscribed not only national newspapers ( Pravda , Izvestia , and others), but also literary magazines, Ogonek and Novy Mir , and even the scientific — albeit extremely ideological — journal Bolshevik . Akhmatova and Gershtein sent him catalogs of the “ Akademknigi ”, and after permission to receive money transfers Lev Nikolayevich began to order the necessary books directly to the camp. During the second imprisonment, he stopped practicing poetry and lost interest in literature and “serious art”, which he was reproached by N. Varbanets ^[140] . In one of the letters he replied:

“I don’t want a tragedy, it’s nothing to me. I am tired, I want to rest and study the history of remote centuries ” ^[141] .

During the investigation, 481-page manuscript “The History of Central Asia in the Middle Ages” was confiscated from Gumilev, and the investigator for particularly important cases of the MGB of the USSR I.N. Merkulov, not wanting to send it to the archive, gave the order to burn useless papers. Judging by the title, it was a continuation of the dissertation on the ancient Turks. The destruction of the manuscript plunged Lev Nikolayevich into depression, with Akhmatova from the Chelyabinsk posting, he wrote: “It’s a pity only for unfinished works, but apparently they are not relevant” ^[142] . However, natural inclinations took over. According to S. Belyakov, by October - November 1952, Gumilev's story relates to how he received permission to do research ^[142] :

“In the camp, as you know, it was strictly forbidden to keep any records. I went to the authorities and, knowing its prevailing property - to warn and prohibit, I immediately asked to the maximum: “Can I write?” - “What does it mean to write?” - the officer frowned. "Translate poems, write a book about the Huns." “Why do you need this?” He asked. "In order not to engage in various gossip, to feel calm, to take their time and not to bring trouble to themselves or you." Looking at me suspiciously, he said: "I'll think about it." A few days later, calling me, he said: “Huns are possible, verses are not allowed” ” ^[143] .

The draft manuscript “History of the Huns” is mentioned in Gumilev's will on March 25, 1954 ^[144] . The history of the Hun classes was probably also explained by the scientific rivalry with A. N. Bernshtam , which was not once mentioned in correspondence with Akhmatova ^[145] . It is noteworthy that when news of Stalin's death came to the camp, Gumilev, who was engaged in the “Hunnu” in the camp library, dismissed: “... go, grieve, go, grieve ...” ^[146] Thanks to the interest in the history of Central Asia, new camp acquaintances appeared - Gumilev’s friends were future orientalist Mikhail Khvan, future economist and political commentator Lev Voznesensky ^[147] . In 1954, Chinese intellectual Chen Zhu occupied a prominent place in letters from the camp, who helped him interpret dark places from Russian translations of Chinese sources, and also explained the meaning of the hieroglyphs encountered in N. Bichurin's works, which Gumilev used. In the camp, he began to study the Persian language in depth, and even asked Akhmatova to send a Persian anthology ^[148] . His main mentor was obviously a Pamir scholar who was trained by the Ismaili feast - Alifbek Khiishalov. He belonged to the Shugni ethnos; by the time of his acquaintance with Gumilyov he was 44 years old, and in addition to traditional education he had a Stalinabad Pedagogical Institute behind his shoulders. According to A. Khiishalov, Gumilev later wrote two articles for the “Herald of Ancient History” - one of the most prestigious academic journals ^[149] . Scientific studies, however, could also lead to very serious misunderstandings: even in the interdistrictous dislocation of Kamyshlag, criminals obtained vodka from civilians and tried to arrange a Jewish pogrom in the construction office where Gumilev worked. Because of his appearance and burr, Gumilev became one of the first targets for the attackers, together with him came the Belarusian Slavic professor Matusevich and the former aesul of the Kuban Cossack army Fedorov. However, the political managed to fend off, and no one was hurt ^{[150] [151]} .

In scientific studies in the Gumilev camp, the most helpful were with the will of A. Akhmatov and V. Abrosov, who sent the necessary books, the mother even made a biographical note about An Lushan ^[152] . However, there has been a cooling in the relationship between mother and son, which has so far been expressed in E. Gershtein’s complaints about insufficient assistance. For example, for several years Gumilev asked him to get “Western Mongolia and the Uryanhai Territory” G. E. Grumm-Grzhimailo and even indicated that it can be found in the warehouse of the Geographical Society. Akhmatova never found this book, N. Varbanets did it, and she sent one of the volumes to Lev Nikolayevich. Already in 1997, S. Lavrov discovered unresolved copies of “Western Mongolia” in the same warehouse. S. Belyakov argued that Gumilev’s dissatisfaction did not arise from scratch: for Akhmatova, everything that went beyond the limits of literary creativity was an extremely painful task, and she willingly trusted E. Gershtein to send packages to the camp and correspondence ^[153] .

Release. Rehabilitation

Back in 1950, Akhmatova wrote a letter to Stalin, but, apparently, it did not even reach the addressee. In January-February of the same year, together with L. Chukovskaya, they compiled a letter to Voroshilov , who redirected him to the prosecutor's office, from which, on June 14, 1954, he received the answer: “refuse the petition”. After the death of Stalin, E. Gershtein began to bother about the release of Gumilev, in particular, thanks to her requests, V. V. Struve , M. I. Artamonov and A. P. Okladnikov sent an appeal to the prosecutor's office. By July 1955, the corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences NI Konrad , a well-known sinologist and Japanese scholar who had himself passed through the GULAG system, became interested in the fate of Lev Nikolayevich. He decided to attract Gumilev to work on a 10-volume academic “World History”. In October 1955, E. Gershtein received from the camp a parcel with read books, among which 30 notebooks of the manuscript “Ancient History of Central Asia”, hidden in a calligraphically copied from one of the companions, were hidden. It was supposed to submit the manuscript to Conrad and use it as one of the sections of the “World History” and, possibly, defend it as a doctoral dissertation ^[154] .

E. Gershtein reprinted the manuscript and brought it to Conrad. However, Gumilev's materials were never included in the “World History”. According to S. Belyakov, the reason was the conceptual disagreement of Conrad and Gumilev. In the third volume of World History, on which Konrad worked (he was the author of 7 chapters), the history of the nomads of Central Asia — the Huns , Xianbi , Toba , Jujans , Turks — was an annex to the history of China. Only a few pages were devoted to the nomadic peoples of Central Asia, in other words, the editors secretly adhered to the Hegelian division of peoples into “historical” and “non-historical” ^[155] .

After the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU for the Gulag, commissions for reviewing cases of political prisoners were earned, in late April such a commission reached Omsk. On May 11, 1956, L.N. Gumilev was found innocent on all counts and released, having spent about 14 years in prisons and camps. In the certificate of release in the column "place of destination" was listed - "Leningrad" ^[156] .

On June 2, 1956, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court canceled the ruling of the Special Meeting at the Ministry of State Security, which condemned Gumilev, and on July 30 the case was terminated "due to the absence of corpus delicti" ^[157] . In the 1938 case, Gumilev was rehabilitated only in 1975 ^[158] .

Gap

On May 15, 1956, Gumilyov arrived in Moscow, counting on the way to Leningrad to stop at the Ardovs - Lev Nikolayevich connected his life and scientific career only with the northern capital ^[159] . At the Ardovs' apartment on Ordynka, he unexpectedly met Anna Andreyevna, who had arrived in Moscow the day before. According to E. Gershtein, a normal meeting did not work out: Lev Nikolayevich arrived from the camp " so bristling up " against his mother, " that it was impossible to imagine how they would live together " ^[160] . Many years later, Gumilev himself in the Autobiography interpreted the events as follows: “ ... I found an old woman and almost unknown to me. She met me very coldly, without any participation and sympathy ” ^[161] . “It has changed both physiologically, and psychologically, and in relation to me ” ^[130] . He left Moscow alone, although he did not have any housing or work in Leningrad, and he could not get it without a residence permit ^[162] .

Lev Nikolayevich was registered with Tatyana Alexandrovna Kryukova, an employee of the State Ethnographic Museum , with whom he worked even before his arrest. The registration gave rise to a scandal: Akhmatova disliked Kryukova and soon prescribed Gumilev in her home on Krasnaya Konnitsa Street, Building 4, apt. 3, where she moved with her family Irina Punina back in 1952 ^[163] . In the summer of 1956, Gumilyov stood in a queue for housing and, despite Akhmatova’s troubles, received a room only in the spring of 1957. By that time, the relationship between the son and the mother was lined up on a business basis: Lev Nikolayevich helped the mother with poetic translations, which to a certain extent provided himself. In June 1957, he wrote to V. Abrosov that he was offered a fee of 20,000 rubles for the translation of the Persian poet Behar, and in 1959 he wrote to his stepbrother O. Vysotsky ^{[Comm. 17]} that it is profitable to engage in transfers with a fee of 5 rubles per line ^[165] .

Until the spring of 1957, Gumilyov led a common household with Akhmatova and the Punins (although Anna Andreevna preferred to live with her friends in Moscow or at a dacha in Komarovo). Having received a room in a communal apartment on Moskovsky Prospect (its area was only 12 square meters), he hurried to move there, but the joint work with Akhmatova continued until 1960 (on the translations of Ivan Franko and the two-volume edition of the Serbian epic about Prince Lazar , brothers Yugovici and other heroes) ^[166] .

September 30, 1961 there was a final altercation, after which Akhmatova and Gumilev never communicated. According to him:

“... Before defending a doctoral thesis, on the eve of my birthday in 1961, she ... expressed her categorical reluctance to become a doctor of historical sciences, and kicked me out of the house. It was a very strong blow for me, from which I fell ill and recovered with great difficulty ” ^[167] .

A quarrel occurred in Akhmatova’s new apartment on Lenin Street , 34. On the same day, Gumilev was seen by his opponent, M.I. Artamonov, who was frightened by the appearance of Lev Nikolaevich. The following relationship testifies to further relations: Akhmatova had a second heart attack in early October ^[168] , Gumilyov did not believe it and categorically refused to meet with her at the hospital. In the future, Gumilev was reluctant to deal with this topic in communication with outsiders; In general, all versions of the relationship between mother and son go back to two primary sources - the statements of Akhmatova and Gumilev ^[169] .

Requiem

In 1957, Akhmatova returned to the poem " Requiem ", the work on which she began in the 1930s. The idea of ​​“Requiem” is directly connected with the second arrest of Gumilev ^[170] . The poem, among other things, absorbed the experience of the political prisoner's mother: “A husband is in a grave, a son is in prison , // Pray for me .” “In the terrible years of Yezhovshchina, I spent seventeen months in prison lines in Leningrad,” she wrote in the preface to the poem. In the 1960s, the poem fell into samizdat , and then Gumilev read it. He did not like it ^{[170] [171]} . Resentment at the lack of maternal attention, at the lack of effort on her part for his release, - in his opinion, all this diminished the significance of the poem. Joseph Brodsky, according to Solomon Volkov, stated that Gumilev told his mother something like this: “It would be even better for you if I died in the camp”. The exact meaning of these words was that it would be better for the poet, and not for the mother. According to Brodsky, “with this phrase about“ you feel better, ”he showed that he let the camps disfigure themselves ...” ^[171]

In the outline of an unfinished poem, dated June 27, 1958, Akhmatova wrote in approximately the same vein ^[170] :

Why and to whom she said
Why don't I melt people?
That the servitude of the son of the rotted,
That Muse found my.
I am the one to blame on earth
Who was and who will be, who is,
And me in a crazy ward
Wallowing is a great honor.

Lev Nikolaevich contrasted the actions of the mother and the actions of the poet ^[170] . He called the “Requiem” a monument of narcissism: “Requiem is written in memory of the dead, but I remained alive”. The dilemma of a talented creator and insensitive mother in Gumilev caused bile attacks, manifested in correspondence ^[170] :

“What is the matter, I understand. Mom, as a poetic person, terribly lazy and selfish, despite the squandering. She is too lazy to think about unpleasant things and that it is necessary to make an effort. She takes care of herself and does not want to get upset. Therefore, it is so inert in everything that concerns me. But this is fatal, since not a single normal person is able to believe that mothers do not care about the death of her son. And for her, my death will be the reason for the tomb poem about how poor she is - her son lost, and only. But she wants to keep her conscience at ease, hence the parcels, like scraps from a table for a beloved pug, and empty letters, without answers to the questions asked. Why does she mislead herself and others: I perfectly understand that the parcels are from her earnings, or rather, from the money that the Government gives her. No need to be naive - her budget is <ra> read and I have been taken into account. Therefore, if we talk about justice, then she should send me ½ earnings. But now, really, I don’t want to eat leftovers from the man’s table. She should not feed me, but should get my rehabilitation before me and the Motherland - otherwise she indulges in sabotage, the victim of which I found myself. ”

- L.N. Gumilev. Letter from the camp to Emma Gershtein on March 25, 1955

In fact, the mother was not so inert. In 1949, a personal case was opened to her, for this reason she could not answer his requests to come to him in Omsk, so as not to complicate his own position. Arrival in 1955 prevented a heart attack. In addition to letters to Stalin and Voroshilov, she decided to take a desperate act to save her son's life: in 1950 her poems appeared in the magazine Ogonyok dedicated to the “leader of all times and peoples” ^[171] . But Lev Nikolayevich, according to the testimony of I.N. Punina, even refused to go to the mother’s funeral: “I will not go. She wrote “Requiem”, she buried me ... ” ^[170] In“ Auto-Necrology ”L. N. Gumilev wrote:“ Requiem in Russian means a requiem. A memorial service for a living person is considered, according to our ancient customs, to serve sinfully <...> why serve a memorial service for a person who can be called by telephone ” ^[172] .

Nevertheless, according to researchers, in the many years of dispute between mother and son, where both were somewhat guilty in front of each other, the poem “Requiem” drew a line, making both mother and son wiser ^[170] .

Hermitage

The first attempt to get a job as a research associate at the Hermitage failed - there were no free bets. Gumilev was ready to apply as a janitor at the Ethnographic Museum, but in October 1956, director M. I. Artamonov arranged it in the department of primitive art for a staff member who went on maternity leave (joking with this, “they say, let him take care of that they got pregnant regularly and went on maternity leave so that the rate would remain with him ”). His salary was 1000 rubles - very modest for a person with a degree ^[173] . The workplace was arranged in the library of the Hermitage, in fact, the positionThe Acting Senior Researcher was Sinecura , which allowed him to process the works created in the camp ^[174] . At this place, Gumilyov lasted for three years, but at the same time tried to improve his position and get settled in the Institute of Oriental Studies . Chance was presented in October 1958, when Gumilev met Yuri Roerich , who moved to the USSR and took the post of head of the sector of philosophy and religious history of India at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences (IVAN). In 1959, Gumilyov introduced Roerich to the text of his dissertation on the ancient Turks and received approval. In a letter of I. S. Katsnelson dated April 12, 1960, it is reported that Yu. N. Roerich applied to the Directorate of IVAN with a request to enroll Gumilev in the state. However, Yu. Roerich died soon after, and the plan did not materialize ^[175] .

Already at the end of 1956, in search of like-minded people, Gumilyov began a correspondence with Peter Nikolaevich Savitsky , one of the founders of Eurasianism ^[176] . Through Savitsky, Gumilyov began to correspond with Georgy Vladimirovich Vernadsky , - first time through Prague - because he was afraid to get involved with the United States. Directly they began to correspond after the death of Savitsky ^[177] .

The first three years of his life in Leningrad were almost without publications, V. Abrosov Gumilev wrote: "... I, like Martin Eden , sent out my works for the last time: the more I am no longer able to try" ^[178] . Apparently, he was impatient to engage in scientific life: he made the first report already on June 5, 1956 at the Museum of Ethnography - literally right after returning. It is noteworthy that Gumilev's character trait was extreme suspicion and prejudice against employees of academic institutions and publishing houses, who allegedly hampered his publications ^[179] . In 1959, Gumilyov published 6 articles - all in leading publications: “ Soviet Archeology ”, “ Soviet Ethnography ”, “ Herald of Ancient History ”. Since then, on average, Gumilyov published 5–7 articles per year, and in 1966 he set a kind of “record”: 11 articles, not counting the book “The Discovery of the Khazars” ^[180] .

"Hunnu"

In June 1957, Lev Nikolaevich received an offer from the Institute of Oriental Studies to publish a monograph. In December of the same year, he handed over to the editorial and publishing department of the institute the manuscript “Hunnu” - the revised “History of Central Asia in antiquity”. The manuscript was reviewed slowly and in February 1959 returned to the author for revision. He was unhappy, but followed the remarks, and at the end of April 1960, the Oriental Literature Publishing House published his first book, Hunnu: Central Asia in Ancient Times ^[180] .

According to V. Demin, the first scientific monograph by L. Gumilev contained three main ideas, which later determined all his work ^[181] :

1. Anti-Eurocentric beliefs and worldview, which consistently defended in all his writings.
2. Explanation of historical and social phenomena in terms of their natural conditionality. The main role here is played by the landscape , in particular, for the Huns - a combination of two landscape components: wooded mountain slopes and steppe.
3. An attempt to answer the question about the reasons for the great social and military activity of the Huns. It is in this context that Gumilyov introduces the concepts of “ passionarity ” and “ passionary push ”.

The monograph was immediately noticed by specialists - sinologists and turkologists. The first review was published by a professional China scientist Kim Vasilievich Vasilyev in the journal “Herald of Ancient History” ^[182] . The review was sharply negative, and Gumilev also reacted to it. The reviewer's main point was this: since the history of the Huns (Huns, Huns) is known mainly from Chinese sources, the researcher of this topic should be fluent in Chinese, and preferably Japanese, since it is the Japanese researchers who are engaged in this topic. L.N. Gumilyov does not speak these languages, he is also deprived of the opportunity to become familiar with foreign achievements in the field of historiography of the Hunnic problem, its main sources are translations of hieromonk Iakinf (Nikita Yakovlevich Bichurin) of the XIX century. These translations are already outdated. KV Vasiliev brought a lot of significant mistakes in Gumilev’s book, practically all connected with the philological preparation of the author. He also drew attention to one property of Lev Nikolaevich's character: Gumilev was often carried away by the hypothesis, hypothesis, guess, and carried away as a generally accepted axiom. For example, Gumilyov adhered to the hypothesis of his predecessor, G. E. Grumm-Grzhimailo, about the Europeans of the Dinlins, and wrote about their race as a matter of resolution and not in doubt, although this was not true. The reviewer's summary was severe: “Hunnu” - a systematized retelling of the translations of N. Ya. Bichurin and L. D. Pozdneeva , monographs of E. Chavannes ; Gumilev's book "does not bring anything fundamentally new to the modern historiography of ancient Central Asia" ^[183] .

On September 26, 1961, a discussion of Gumilev's book and Vasilyev's review took place in the library of the Hermitage. Present were specialists from the university, the Institute of the Peoples of Asia and the Hermitage - 52 people in total. The meeting lasted four hours ^[182] .

In his speech, Gumilev divided Vasiliev’s remarks into two groups: “efficient amendments” (one, and only a minor one) and “unfair reproaches” (which counted 24). The Hermitage staff took part in the discussion, and the level of argumentation was completely different - right up to the appeal to the authority of the classics of Marxism. There were also personal attacks. It was one thing that united opponents and supporters of Gumilev: everyone liked the style. "Beautiful language" "bright and fascinating books" praised unconditionally. Nevertheless, according to S. B. Lavrov , the discussion ended in a “draw”, and according to Gumilev - with his victory ^[184] .

On December 18, 1961, a meeting of the historical section of the Leningrad Branch of the Academy of Sciences of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR Academy of Sciences was held under the chairmanship of V. V. Struve , which Gumilev was not present due to illness. The transcript of the discussion was also published in the “Herald of Ancient History” and was painfully perceived by supporters of Lev Nikolayevich, Savitsky even called her a feast “of cannibals who, fortunately, did not manage to get to human flesh” ^[185] . However, the sinologists who were present at the discussion ( B.I. Pankratov , V.M. Shtein , L.N. Menshikov ) and nomadic scholars ( Yu. A. Zadneprovsky , A.N. Kononov ) found the arguments of K.V. Vasilyeva correct and reasoned. At the same time, Yury Alexandrovich Zadneprovsky, for the first time, ranked Gumilev not as a scholar, but as a prose writer, fiction writer, and historical novelist ^[186] . It is characteristic that similar epithets were used by G.V. Vernadsky in his review of the “Hun,” which was published in the United States in the same year ^[187] . He noted that Gumilev's book was written with talent, “he feels both nature and people” ^[188] .

Gumilev himself was very upset by the criticism and blamed the hostility of the Orientalists and the “ordered nature of the discussion”. According to S. S. Belyakov , this was not true. With all the harsh conclusions, the reviewers were right in one thing: “Gumilev lacked knowledge of oriental languages ​​and the ability to look critically at his own conclusions. Gumilev rarely refused his beloved idea, even if it conflicted with the facts ” ^[189] .

In 1962, a turning point came over in the discussion about “Hunnu”: the magazine “Peoples of Asia and Africa” published two more reviews of “Hunnu” written by professional sinologists - M.V. Vorobiov and L.I. Duman , both very positive. According to S. S. Belyakov, the Duman review is the most balanced review of the “Hunnu” ^[189] . Without denying the presence of errors and inaccuracies, he found Gumilev's work valuable, if only because of the consistent presentation of scant information about the Huns scattered over various Chinese sources, with additions based on archaeological data ^[190] .

Doctoral thesis defense. "Ancient Turks"

Discussion of L. N. Gumilev's doctoral dissertation on the topic “Ancient Turks. The history of Central Asia on the verge of Antiquity and the Middle Ages (VI — VIII centuries) took place in the Hermitage on May 9, 1961. The Department of the East INA did not respond, but all the responses were benevolent, and the defense was appointed for the fall. In the memoirs dictated in 1987, Gumilev, however, dramatized events:

“This defense cost me very big injuries and losses, since at the Institute of Oriental Studies, from where, obviously, they wrote denunciations of me, I was exclusively treated badly. And when they sent this dissertation to the Moscow branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies, they first lost it, then, when I returned, they searched for it, but refused to give me a review on the grounds that they had an Ancient East - before the V century, and I - the 6th . But then I was still given a positive review, and I defended my thesis unanimously. ” ^[191]

According to S. Belyakov, despite the fatigue of another archaeological expedition and the shock of a quarrel with his mother, Gumilev's circumstances in the fall of 1961 were incomparable with his candidate's degree: he had his own housing, the post of senior researcher; it was not by chance that he wrote to V. Abrosov “The cause of life is done!” ^[192] The main opponent was M. I. Artamonov , a long-time friend and patron. Protection, according to the memories of all those present, was "triumphant" ^[193] .

In 1967, the dissertation revised for printing was published under the title "Ancient Turks". Gumilev was proud of her and in “Avtonecrologu” expressed in his inherent spirit:

“... the book The Ancient Turks ... was printed because it was necessary to object to the territorial claims of China, and as such my book played a decisive role. The Chinese have betrayed me anathema, but refused territorial claims on Mongolia, Central Asia and Siberia ” ^{[194] [Comm. 18]} .

The history of the Turks in the book is given in the context of the history of the whole Eurasian region - from Byzantium to Korea, from Baikal and Angara to Tibet and Sichuan. As usual, Lev Nikolayevich used historical reconstructions, for example, in the story about the life and customs of the court of the Uygur Khan at the end of the VIII - early IX centuries; the degeneration of the Uyghur nobility and the disastrous collapse of the institution of the family as a result of the adoption of Manichaeism - a religion that rejects the goodness of this world ^[196] . At the same time, S. Belyakov wrote that in this book “the researcher took over the natural turkophil. There is no book more destructive for the Eurasian idea ... " ^[197] :

“Gumilyov ... showed that the Turkic Eternal Ale was created by a“ long spear and sharp saber ”and was fastened almost exclusively by the military power of the Turks, forcing“ heads to bow and knees to bend ”.

Gumilev admires the military valor of the Turks. The chapter on the revolt of Kutlug , who revived the Eastern Kaganate , is one of the most exciting, dramatic. It is much more interesting than a historical novel. But Gumilyov does not hide the fact that for free steppe peoples - Uigurs, Karluks, Kyrgyz - the Turks remained enslavers, relations between nations, at least in the Eastern Khaganate, evolved as relations between robbers and victims of robbery. Therefore, Gumilev calls the Turkic kaganate "a predator state", "a certain semblance of Sparta, but many times stronger and more." The unification of the Great Steppe under the rule of the Turkic clan Ashina was a great misfortune for the majority of peoples ” ^[198] .

Archaeologist. Khazar problem

The problem of the Khazars and the localization of the Khazar state , as well as the belonging of the Khazar ethnic group, Gumilyov became interested in the mid-1930s, communicating with M. I. Artamonov and participating in the excavations of 1936 in the valley of the Manych river, while Lev Nikolayevich had not yet managed to recover at the university , and the dean did not pay him the way; he entered the staff of the expedition on the spot ^[199] . According to the memoirs of T. Shumovsky , during the investigation of 1938, Gumilev gave a lecture in the prison cell about the Khazars, and not about the Huns or Turks. During the excavations under the direction of Artamonov, Gumilev worked until his arrest in 1949 ^[200] .

Gumilev returned to Khazar problems again in 1959, participating in an expedition on the Volga and publishing the results of his Khazar studies in the central academic journals: Asia and Africa Today, Vestnik LSU, and Messages of the State Hermitage Museum. Work in the field of Khazar archeology led Gumilev to geographical issues and at the same time allowed him to find the optimal literary form for all his future books. This clearly manifested itself in the spring of 1965, when the Nauka publishing house ordered Gumilev to publish a popular science book about the expedition, which was published in June 1966 - Otkritie Khazaria ^{[201] [202]} .

In 1962, the capital “History of the Khazars” by M. I. Artamonov was released, which was prepared before the war — it was edited by Gumilyov. The Khazar question had become a political one by that time, because of this, Soviet historiography gave way to the championship: the first in world science generalizing work on Khazars was published in the West. Princeton University Professor published The History of the Jewish Khazars in 1954 ^{[203] [Comm. 19]} .

In the same year, 1962, V. Abrosov published an article entitled “Heterochronicity of periods of increased moisture in the humid and arid zones” (Gumilev attached it to the press). Abrosov developed the ideas of the famous geographer A.V. Shnitnikov and revealed a pattern in changing the level of the Caspian Sea , Aral and Balkhash : the desiccation of Aral and Balkhash often coincides with the increase in the level of the Caspian Sea. Incidentally, there was also an increase and decrease in the level of Central Asian lakes with solar activity. Abrosov dealt with these issues in the 1950s and shared his ideas with Gumilyov in their camp correspondence. Leaving free, Lev Nikolayevich applied Abrosov’s theory to study the historical cycle of Eurasian nomads ^[205] .

The Astrakhan archaeological expedition of the State Hermitage of 1959, led by Gumilyov, consisted of only three people, including Hungarian I. Erdei. The expedition was organized at the request of Gumilev to verify the localization of the Khazar capital, Itil , necessary to confirm the findings of Artamonov. The results of archaeological exploration were discouraging: there was no evidence of the presence of ramparts, burials, ceramics, only on the bank of the Akhtuba under a layer of sediment was a single shard of the Khazar time found ^[206] . Based on these scanty data, Gumilev immediately concluded: until the 10th century, Itil was located on the Akhtuba bank, near the Martyshkin Forest tract, but then was washed away when the level of the Caspian Sea rose. Gumilev said that the area he saw resembled descriptions of Arab travelers and Tsar Joseph. The categorical conclusion was first voiced in a letter to V. Abrosov dated October 8, 1959, already from Leningrad. On October 17, Gumilyov expounded his hypothesis on the periodicity of wetting of the Eurasian steppes to Artamonov, who liked the idea, and he supplemented it with his own observations ^[207] .

In August 1960, Gumilyov again went to the Volga with the intention of digging up the so-called. Baer bumps (elevations in the delta that were not covered by water when the Caspian Sea level rose, named after academician K. Baer ) ^[206] . Actually, the expedition was a geological expedition headed by A. Aleksin, who investigated the Baer hillocks; thanks to geologists, the expedition had a motorboat, a truck, and servants ^[208] . Excavations were carried out on Stepan Razin's Hill , where a burial ground was soon discovered, which could relate to the Khazar time ^[206] . Gumilyov reported the results to Abrosova in the following way: “Khazaria turned out to be a typically river country located south of Astrakhan in areas partially now flooded. They [there] ate fish and watermelons, but were no nomads. I will write about it now ” ^[209] .

In the summer of 1961, Gumilyov decided to test Abrosov’s hypothesis and decided to dig in Derbent ^[210] . The Derbent wall , rebuilt in the 6th-14th centuries, allowed accurate assessment of the Caspian level fluctuations, but underwater research was required, since Gumilev needed to know whether the wall was built on a rocky ground or an artificial embankment ^[211] . For this, we needed an aqualung and a young assistant, who was G. Prokhorov - then a freshman at the Faculty of History of Leningrad State University, a special course student Gumilev. In the spring of 1961, they even learned scuba diving together ^[212] .

The expedition began in July 1961 again on Stepan Razin's Hill, where a whole cemetery with various burials, which Gumilyov interpreted as international, was discovered. After that, Gumilyov and Prokhorov, leaving the workers to dig up the hill further, moved to Derbent ^[213] . The sea in August was stormy, it was possible to work even on quiet days only in the early morning, all this exhausted a 49-year-old archaeologist. There were also dangerous cases: on August 10, Prokhorov and Gumilyov almost died - the first one had a faulty gauge on an aqualung, the second one nearly got hurt by a boat ^[214] . The task was accomplished: in general, the hypothesis was confirmed, and the Arabian geographers of the Middle Ages were confirmed: at a depth of 3.5 m at a distance of 200 m from the coast stone slabs of the Sassanian epoch were found, and at a depth of 4 m - a shard of amphora similar to by finding along the wall on the shore ^[211] .

In 1962, Gumilyov decided to seek the second capital of the Khazars - Semender . Artamonov assumed that the city was in the lower reaches of the Terek, in the area of ​​present-day Kizlyar , but Gumilev decided that in the Middle Ages in the lower reaches of the Terek the city ​​could not exist, because the river often overflowed its banks, and the Khazars did not know how to build dams ^[215] . As a result, he announced that the village of Shelkovskaya (on the territory of Chechnya) has a fortress with walls similar to those of Sarkel , which is the desired capital of the Caucasian Khazaria. Already in the 1970s, Gumilev’s approach was criticized by V. B. Vinogradov for “haste and arrogance”. At the same time, the value of the find itself was not questioned, Vinogradov unconditionally recognized the settlement as Khazar, but refused to consider it Semender ^[216] . In 1966-1967, the Caucasian ethno-archaeological expedition of the Leningrad State University once again dug in the territory of Shelkovskaya, but the sensation did not happen, and many years later Professor A.V. Gadlo , who continued to investigate the Shelkovsky settlement, acknowledged that Gumilev had discovered the "seasonal rate of the Khazar commander" ^[216] . These excavations were the last field expedition of a 55-year-old explorer. Then he switched to the created passionary theory, but the theory of heterochronicity developed on archaeological material and the geographical approach to the history of the ancient ethnic groups of Eurasia Gumilyov applied until the end of life ^[217] .

Geographical determinism

For the first time, Gumilev consistently presented his theory, derived from the fact of a wetting heterochronicity of the Eurasian steppes, in a report on the anniversary of the outstanding geographer Lev Semenovich Berg . Gumilev showed how the landscape and climate affect the economy of the people, and through the economy - on society and the political system. The logic of his reasoning was as follows: on the slopes of the Western Tien Shan , Tarbagataya and Altai, the summer is dry and hot, the vegetation burns out, so the nomads overtake the cattle on mountain pastures in the summer - Jailau , and in the winter they harvest hay because there is a lot of snow on the mountain slopes and sheep cannot feed there without human help. Each clan had its own summering and wintering places, and therefore nomadic tribes communicated little with each other and for the last two thousand years they practically did not create strong states with a single authoritarian power, as was the case in neighboring Mongolia. Mostly not strong centralized khanates, like the state of the Hunnic Shanyu or Chinggis, appeared in this ethno-landscape region. On the contrary, tribal unions and confederations prevailed - Yueban , Karluk , Oirat ^[217] .

The significance of such conclusions was recognized even by critics and opponents of the theories of L. Gumilev. L. S. Klein - one of the most consistent critics - wrote:

“... in some of his works, he was a truly remarkable scientist who made great discoveries, these are works about cyclical changes in the paths of cyclones and the impact of these changes on the life and history of the population of Eurasia. If he had focused on these phenomena, perhaps he would have been much less noticeable in the mass consciousness, but much more authoritative in the scientific world ” ^[218] .

It was works about Khazaria and the influence of the natural environment on the history of nomadic peoples that first of all began to translate into English, French, Hungarian, German. Gumilev's articles published not only the New York journal “Soviet Geography”, but also the Parisian “ ” (500 francs of the fee helped the needy scientist at one time), as well as Berlin and Budapest scientific collections ^[219] . According to S. Belyakov, “it was not by chance that Gumilev’s historical-geographical articles were so willingly translated into Europe and the USA. Gumilev then, unwittingly, went in the same direction with the historians of the second generation of the school of Annals , the most authoritative historical school in Europe. True, Gumilev almost never came across the writings of the “annalists” ^[220] .

The results of Gumilev's research were recognized, first of all, by geographers: in 1962, Lev Nikolayevich was invited to the post of senior researcher at the Research Geographical and Economic Institute of Leningrad State University , where he worked until his retirement in 1987. He half-seriously called this post “his ecological niche” ^[221] . Since 1949 he was a member of the All-Union Geographical Society , and in 1961 he headed its ethnographic department. In 1964, he was introduced to the Academic Council of the Geographical Society ^[222] .

Death of A. Akhmatova. Punic Wars

Since the 1920s, N. Punin’s daughter Irina and her daughter A. Kaminskaya became the closest people to A. Akhmatova. According to the memoirs of L. Chukovskaya, for the sake of the Punins Akhmatova at the age of 76 took on unloved translations. Earning a lot in the last years of her life, Anna Andreevna spent fees for the needs of Punina and Kaminska. According to S. Belyakov, “mean and harsh towards Akhmatov’s son, it seems, did not spare anything for Ira and Anichka” ^[223] . Relations between Punina, Kaminska, and L. Gumilyov L. N. Ardov called the “ Punic Wars .” Almost all contemporaries and modern biographers extremely negatively assess the role of Punina and Kaminska in the fate of Akhmatova ^{[224] [225]} . One of the reasons for hostile relations was the testament of Akhmatova, certified in a notary's office on September 20, 1955, according to which all her property,

"... wherever it is and whatever it is, cash, valuables, government bonds and fees due to me from publishers, I will be in full ownership of PUNINA Irina Nikolaevna" ^[226] .

On March 5, 1966, Anna Andreevna Akhmatova died in Domodedovo , in a sanatorium, where she was sent after another heart attack. On the recommendation from above, the Moscow Writers' Organization decided not to arrange the official farewell, the body from the Domodedovo sanatorium was delivered on March 9 to the Institute of Emergency Care. Sklifosovsky . After the short ceremony, the coffin was sent by plane to Leningrad ^[227] .

On the day of Akhmatova’s death, M. Ardov visited her apartment on Lenin Street in Leningrad, and Lev Nikolayevich came there, took off his hat, and said: “It would be better on the contrary. I wish I had died before her ” ^[228] . Gumilev disposed of the funeral, he met the coffin at the airport. A civil memorial service was scheduled for March 10 at the Leningrad House of Writers, but in the morning a burial service took place in the Nikolsky Naval Cathedral , commissioned by L. Gumilyov. At the funeral of Akhmatova, held in Komarovo , he did not allow cameramen to film and, according to legend, broke two movie cameras (according to another version, the KGB was seized and screened) ^[229] . The unauthorized shooting was organized by the documentary director S. D. Aranovich along with the operators A. D. Shafran and V. A. Petrov . In 1989, S.D. Aranovich used the footage recorded in the documentary film “The Personal File of Anna Akhmatova ” ^[230] .

After the funeral, it was found that of the two copies of the will, the one that was kept in the notary's office, disappeared (in fact, he was sent to the archive, where he was discovered by A. Kaminska). The second copy, kept at home, according to N. Mandelstam (in a letter to Gumilyov on March 14, 1966), Akhmatova tore on the day of Gumilyov's return from the camp ^[231] . As a result, the following happened: Gumilyov inherited the money of his mother (who largely went to the funeral and installation of the monument ^{[Comm. 20]} ), and Punina and Kaminskaya sold the archive of Akhmatova for a significant amount of money at that time to 7818 rubles 45 kopecks in two parts: , The public library paid 3818 rubles. Gumilev intended to give all the papers to Akhmatova Pushkin's house for a symbolic sum of 100 rubles ^[233] . Already after the archive was sold, the Pushkin House instituted a lawsuit against I. Punina, and Gumilyov entered the process as a third party on the side of the plaintiff. In total, the process lasted more than three years and ended with the complete defeat of Gumilev ^[234] . However, the archive was rather a burden for him, and in his life completely different things were occupied; there was no competent and close assistant who could conduct business ^[235] .

University Work

With the defense of his doctoral dissertation, Gumilev's life entered the material well into the welfare zone. In 1962, he moved to the Faculty of Geography of Leningrad State University , and at first he was accepted as a junior research assistant with a doctoral degree at a salary of 160 rubles. Only on July 1, 1963, the academic council approved him as a senior researcher with a salary of 350 rubles. At the same time he headed the State Subject Commission on Geography and began to read irregular special courses, for which he relied on surcharges. He never received the position of professor, but not only students, but also colleagues and closest friends called him so respectfully. Shortly before retirement, he received the position of leading researcher, which became the pinnacle of his academic career ^[222] .

Getting a job at the Research Institute of Geography, Gumilev stipulated the right to give special courses at the Faculty of History. However, the courses he taught in the departments of archeology and history of the Middle Ages in 1962-1963 were not very popular, and V. Toporov even defined them as “sheer bore” ^[236] . In the 1971–1972 school year, Gumilev began to read two courses at the evening department of the Geography Department: “Ethnology” and “Geography of the Population”, which in essence were an exposition of world history from the point of view of the passionary theory. They quickly gained popularity. Geographer O. G. Bekshenev testified:

“It was a great artist! Impressive made extraordinary. Gumilev kept in his memory many dates and facts, although he did not use any records. Before Gumilev there was not even a leaflet with a plan, while the lectures were unusually well structured. But after the lectures, there was nothing left in their heads, because no one took notes, everyone just listened, they could not tear myself away ” ^[237] .

Gumilev usually read twice a week, in the 1980s - one, he prepared very carefully for lectures, but at the same time did not like to be outlined. During the tests I tried to give students creative tasks, for example, to find at least two mistakes on the ethnographic map of the USSR ^[238] . In the 1980s, he willingly collaborated with the “Knowledge” society , in the central lecture hall of which all 750 places were filled and there were queues for tickets. He also willingly performed in Moscow and Novosibirsk. However, the listeners were not always delighted. Mikhail Ardov recalled:

“His speech itself (I did not listen to it before or after his public lectures) made a somewhat painful impression on me. Of course, he said brilliantly - he sprinkled with facts, names, dates, paradoxical judgments ... But all this is somehow light, undignified, a kind of scientific Arkady Raikin , a virtuoso at the professorial department ... " ^[239]

The life of the researcher was calm, she contributed to scientific productivity: to appear in the service could be several times a month. According to S. Lavrov, Gumilev came only “to meetings of the Academic Council on dissertations, and he did it with great pleasure and taste, because he met here with friends. <...> He could have a cigarette with them in the corridor and leisurely chat, and after the defense ... drink a glass or two ” ^[240] . In the mid-1970s, the Higher Attestation Commission appointed Gumilev "a member of the specialized Academic Council for awarding the degrees of Doctor of Geographical Sciences." According to the testimony of contemporaries, Lev Nikolayevich loved to perplex dissertators with unexpected questions. When one of the applicants called the population of polyethnic Ecuador a single ethnic group, “Ecuadorians”, Gumilev noted: “What was the ethnicity of Austria-Hungary , where the Slavs were the majority? Avstrovengry? ” ^{[241] [242]}

For a quarter of a century of work at the institute, Gumilev experienced only one major conflict - with the director of NIIGEI, A. I. Zubkov. According to S. Lavrov, it was caused by the envy of a subordinate who was prolific in scientific and publishing terms. The conflict took over the open form in 1968, during the next re-election to the post: the scientific seminar of the institute did not recommend re-electing Gumilev, since “the subjects of his research are far from the direction and the themes of the institute”. However, the University Academic Council unanimously voted for the re-election of Lev Nikolayevich ^[243] .

Formulation of the passionary theory of ethnogenesis

The legend that goes back to L. N. Gumilev’s own stories attributed the creation of the passionary theory of ethnogenesis to the winter of 1939, when he was awaiting a review of the case in the prison “ Kresty ” ^[244] . His discovery, which appeared in the form of insight , he allegedly equated with the theory of Marx and set forth I. N. Tomashevskaya during a meeting in Moscow with such fervor that she compared him with Gogol Popishchina . However, in 1991, in an interview with the Week newspaper, Gumilyov spoke very cautiously about the origins of his theory: in 1965 he read the book by V. I. Vernadsky “The chemical structure of the Earth’s biosphere and its environment ” and in 1967 published the first article on ethnogenesis . Who knew him from the geographical department of Leningrad State University S. Lavrov was inclined to the truth of this particular version. Thus, if there was insight, then it only set the direction of the search ^[245] .

In the years 1964-1967, Gumilev published in the "Bulletin of Leningrad State University" 14 articles combined in the cycle "Landscape and Ethnos", and 9 of them were devoted to ethnogenesis. According to S. Belyakov, the passionary theory of ethnogenesis had to answer three questions:

1. What is ethnos and what place does it occupy in the historical process?
2. What laws determine the emergence and development of the ethnic group?
3. How do ethnoses interact with each other?

The Greek word "ethnos" Gumilyov used instead of the more common Latin word "nation" as less politicized. The term "ethnos" was both universal, and neutral, and purely scientific. However, as far back as 1968 when communicating with N. V. Timofeev-Resovsky, Gumilev could not give a clear definition of an ethnic group, in fact repeating the definition of S. M. Shirokogorov , who introduced him into Russian science ^[246] . At the same time, the main part of his main work, “Ethnogenesis and the Biosphere of the Earth,” is devoted precisely to the properties of the ethnos, and not passionarity.

Drive cycle

Passionality he defined as follows: “activity, manifested in an individual’s striving for a goal (often illusory) and in the capacity for superstressing and sacrifice for that purpose.” Passionality was described by Gumilyov on a number of striking historical examples, in particular, Napoleon , Sulla , Joan of Arc , Alexander the Great , Hannibal , even Stalin . Their activity cannot be explained by rational, that is, self-serving motives ^[247] . Gumilev did not claim that the process of ethnogenesis depends solely on passionarity, including other factors: the ethnic environment, geographical environment, level of socio-economic development and technical equipment, etc. The greatest role, however, is played by the phenomenon called Gumilyov "passionate tension" : the number of passionaries in the ethnic group, the ratio of passionaries with the townsfolk and subpassionaries. The “starting moment” of ethnogenesis is the sudden appearance of a certain number of passionaries and subpassionaries. The recovery phase is accompanied by a rapid increase in the number of passionaries; the accumulative phase is characterized by the maximum number of passionaries; the fracture phase is a sharp decrease in their number and their replacement by subpasionarians; the inertial phase is a slow decrease in the number of drive units; the phase of obscuration is an almost complete replacement of the passionaries with subpassionaries, which, due to the nature of their warehouse, either destroy the entire ethnic group or do not have time to destroy it before the invasion of foreigners from outside ^[248] .

Gumilev developed special graphs - cycles of ethnogenesis for 40 different ethnic groups and began to locate them spatially - on the world map. “Looking at the globe,” said L.N., “I see how the cosmos cuts our planet with its whip ... Another thing is the content side of this“ execution ”in geographic coordinates. There are still many coming ... meditations and searches ” ^[249] . As a result, Lev Nikolaevich placed on the map of Eurasia and North Africa 9 axes of drive thrusts, dated by him in the 18th century. BC e. - XIII century. n e. From his point of view, these are lanes about 300 km wide, which can stretch in the latitudinal and meridional direction, sometimes by 0.5 times the circumference of the planet. He compared them with geodesic lines.

“The same push can create several hotbed of increased passionarity (and as a result - several superethnos ). So, push VI hit Arabia, the Indus Valley, Southern Tibet, Northern China and Middle Japan. And in all these countries peer ethnos arose, each of which had original stereotypes and cultures ”

- Gumilev L.N. The Millennium around the Caspian. Baku, 1991. pp. 14-17.

In search of the cause of passionate thrusts, Lev Nikolayevich turned to the biological component of human nature. Later, he frankly admitted that any combination of factors makes it impossible to build a hypothesis, that is, a consistent explanation of all factors of ethnogenesis known at a given time ^[250] . He began to establish contacts with biologists back in November 1965 and communicated with at least three biologists - head. Department of Genetics, Leningrad State University ME E. Lobashev , Deputy. director of the Institute of Biology of Inland Waters B. S. Kuzin and N. V. Timofeev-Resovskii - then the head. Department of Radiobiology and Experimental Genetics of the Institute of Medical Radiology in Obninsk ^[251] . Gumilev met Timofeev-Resovsky in 1967, and Nikolai Vladimirovich agreed to cooperate. For Gumilev, the opinion of a geneticist-biologist, a specialist in population and evolutionary biology, was important ^[250] . In the summer of Gumilyov, every weekend he left for Obninsk, Timofeev-Resovsky twice visited Gumilyov on Moskovsky Prospect. Personally, there was much in common between them - Timofeev-Resovskiy was proud of the nobility (a descendant of Vsevolozhskys ), during his life in Germany he was acquainted with all the Eurasians and was a friend of P. N. Savitsky - Gumilyov's regular correspondent ^[252] . Timofeev-Resovskiy, his pupil N. V. Glotov and Gumilev began to prepare in 1968 a large article for the journal Nature with an account of the theory of ethnogenesis, in which biologists were responsible for the population-genetic basis of the theory. But soon a conflict began between them, which was explained by Gumilev’s reluctance to abandon aesthetically perfect ideas, if they were not confirmed by the facts ^[253] . The result was that Timofeev-Resovsky, who did not tolerate scientifically unfounded concepts, all the more so contrary to scientific ideas, offended Gumilyov, calling him "a crazy paranoid, obsessed with an obsessive idea to prove the existence of passionarity" ^[254] . Gumilev never forgave him, although Timofeev-Resovsky apologized. In response, Lev Nikolayevich sent an extensive letter with two tables, which showed disagreements between him and biologists. N. V. Glotov, who responded to Gumilev’s letter, remarked: “At least half of the questions contained in it simply cannot even be put” ^[254] .

The reason for the sharpness was the substantial features of Gumilev's theory. Based on the writings of V.I. Vernadsky, he stated that the biogeochemical energy of the living matter of the biosphere is analogous to electromagnetic, thermal, gravitational and mechanical. For the most part, it is in homeostasis - unstable equilibrium, but fluctuations are sometimes observed - sharp ups and downs. "Then the locust flies towards death, the ants crawl, destroying everything in their path, and they also die, rats ... from the depths of Asia reach the shores of the Atlantic Ocean ..." Of the three hypotheses of the energy impulse, Gumilyov rejected two: solar and underground ( radio decay ) - and left cosmic irradiation ^[255] .

Publishing Theory

The first part of Gumilev's article “Ethnogenesis and the Ethnosphere” was published in the January 1970 issue of Nature. The article was equipped with maps of the ethnolandscape regions, where new ethnic groups appeared, and 24 illustrations made by N.V. Gumilev. Responses have already appeared in the number 8 of the magazine in the same year. The author of the first was the immediate superior of Gumilyov, Professor B. N. Semevsky , who considered it his duty to support him ^[256] . Laudatory reviews were left mostly by fellow geographers, but already in 1971 a selection of reviews was written by humanities scholars. B. Kuznetsov , checking the theory of Gumilev on the material of the history of Tibet, came to the conclusion that the laws governing the rise and decline of the Tibetan state are in agreement with the rise and fall of the level of passionate tension. Especially tough on this background was the review of M. I. Artamonov, a longtime friend and patron of Gumilev. He described passionarity in the categories of “the theory of the hero and the crowd”; he also did not accept the Gumilev concept of the ethnos. Artamonov considered the ethnos to be an “amorphous structure” that is not related to the landscape and does not have “clear outlines”, its significance in history is small ^[257] .

Historical works of Gumilev, 1960-1970s

In the 1960s, Gumilyov first addressed the topic of Ancient Russia , and in areas that he previously called “boring”: source study and ancient Russian philology ^[258] . In October 1964, at a meeting of the ethnography department of the All-Union Geographical Society, Gumilev presented a report on the new dating of the creation of the “ Word about the regiment of Igor ”. He dated the “Word” not by the end of the 12th century, but by the 40s-50s of the 13th century. The author of the Lay, in Gumilev’s opinion, urged the princes to unity not in the struggle against the Polovtsy, then weak and fragmented, but with the Mongols, ciphering the realities of their time under the previous century ^[259] . The dating was based on several guesses, including the interpretation of the word "Trojan" and the presence of Nestorianism in Russia. In the years 1965-1966, an amended report was published under the title “Mongols of the XIIIth century. and "Word about Igor's regiment" "and" Nestorianism and Ancient Russia ". Experts practically did not respond to these publications. For example, V. Likhachyova, the daughter of Academician D. S. Likhachyova , testified: “... dad did not consider it necessary to react to the article ... without considering her position worthy of serious discussion” ^[260] . G. Vernadsky, however, made an analysis of Gumilev's arguments and completely refuted them.

Lev Nikolayevich, proud of his research, included them in the new book - “The Search for a Fictional Kingdom”, published in the Nauka Publishing House with a ten thousandth edition. According to the genre, this work was called a “treatise,” and it differed in its artistic presentation, which brought the monograph beyond the boundaries of the academic community ^[261] . The journal “Peoples of Asia and Africa” responded to the book with a beneficent review by Sinologist N. Ts. Munkueva. The reviewer appreciated the scientific value of the book and noticed that "in composition and language, it approaches the work of fiction." However, the 13th chapter devoted to the “Word ...” caused severe criticism of Academician B. A. Rybakov and damaged Gumilyov’s reputation in the academic community ^[262] .

Gumilev set two tasks: first, to clarify how the empire of Genghis Khan suddenly appeared in the desert steppes of Mongolia; secondly, to compare the existence of the empire of Genghis Khan and the legendary kingdom of Prester John and the Three Indies. Here Gumilev outlined the basics of his own understanding of the subject of source study and his own historical concept. One of the chapters is called “Overcoming Philology” and, in the opinion of S. Lavrov, was the result of “dragging out”, which Orientalists-linguists staged “Hunnu” ^[263] . According to Gumilev, the philologist wants to answer the question: what does the author under study say - and the historian - what is the truth of this author. The historian, blindly following the source, merely reproduces the point of view of this author, and not the true state of things. “What is the use of studying someone else's lie, even an ancient one?” ^[264] In other words, “philologically correct translation is a raw material that requires processing” ^[265] . Thus, a historical study includes two steps: the first is an analysis conducted by means of a synchronistic selection of facts, in which the entire political “background” of any event is important. The second, synthesis, dominates when the book is addressed to the general reader; he does not need to know all the arguments, but "the language is admittedly figurative, sometimes emotional." The implementation of these principles were the “Quest for a fictional kingdom” ^[265] .

The book “The Huns in China”, published under the signature of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences in 1974, was called by S. Belyakov “the most terrible book of Gumilyov” ^[266] . It was a direct continuation of the “Hun”, chronologically ending where the “Ancient Turks” begin. Gumilev began to collect material for the book in the camp, in fact, this book was part of the “Hunnu”, but the material was left for the future when the manuscript was finalized in 1959-1960. According to Gumilev himself, he took up the “Huns in China” after the “Quest for a fictional kingdom,” but the work dragged on because the editor V. V. Kunin forced Lev Nikolayevich to somewhat reduce the manuscript and redo it ^[267] .

“The Huns in China” is the first book of Gumilev, dedicated to interethnic contacts and ethnic chimeras. The book was again built as a work of art (“ancient tragedy” by S. Belyakov), based on the composition - an extensive metaphor of fire: “Decay”, “Flare”, “Bonfire”, “Fire”, “Heat”, “Fire”, “Three colors of flame”, “Glow”, “Fires are extinguished”, “Embers cool down”, “Ash” ^[268] . We are talking about the war of the Steppe and China, fought for two centuries. Gumilev believed that the migration of steppe people was forced: in the III century Central Asia was struck by a drought, and the nomads began to move to the northern outskirts of China. Although the Chinese authorities accepted them coldly, the noble Huns received Chinese education and joined the greatest culture of East Asia, but they did not become Chinese, they did not consider their Chinese. The result was an uprising and the creation of a new government, and the descendants of migrants became occupiers ^[269] . The main conclusion of Gumilev from the history of the III — V centuries was the following: the life of two or more hostile ethnic groups on the same territory turns the state and society into a chimera — education that is unstable and dangerous for the people in it. The term Gumilyov borrowed from parasitology and believed that chimeras usually appear on the boundaries of superethnos ^[270] . Chimeras are not the only form of inter-ethnic contact. Assimilation is also possible - the absorption of one ethnos by another; as a rule, it occurs with a non-conflict ethnic contact, but it is possible even in an ethnic chimera. With passionate impulses integration is possible - the creation of a new ethnos at the merger of several old ones. Gumilev singled out two more forms of interethnic contacts, in which ethnic groups do not merge, but they do not quarrel either: xenia (that is, “guest”) and symbiosis . Ksenia is a neutral form: nations live side by side, not merging, but not interfering with each other. With a symbiosis, a positive form of inter-ethnic contacts, friendly relations emerge when ethnic groups do not compete, but complement each other. The nature of interethnic contact with chimera or xenia is determined by complementarity, but the symbiosis, in addition to positive complementarity, is also associated with the division of labor ^[271] . Gumilev explained the conflict between the Chinese and steppe inhabitants by the incompatibility of their behavioral stereotypes and their ethnic traditions ^[272] .

In 1976, the journal Priroda published two reviews of the “Huns in China”. One of them was written by a professional sinologist - L. S. Vasiliev . Recognizing the many shortcomings and inaccuracies that stem from Gumilev’s ignorance of the Chinese language and the inaccessibility of Chinese sources, he made the following conclusion: “This does not mean that everything in L. N. Gumilyov’s constructs is doubtful and unreliable. Just the opposite, a lot of things are captured quite accurately, set out quite convincingly and, in principle, correspond to the way it actually took place ” ^[273] .

Second Doctoral Thesis

Gumilev's second doctoral dissertation, then turned into a treatise on “Ethnogenesis and the Biosphere of the Earth”, was created in the early 1970s and became a logical continuation of the works of Lev Nikolaevich of the previous period and the design of the passionary theory of ethnogenesis in a holistic form. At the department and at the Faculty of Geography Gumilev was supported, because he did not apply for leadership positions. According to S. Belyakov, “there are many doctors of science, but“ twice a doctor of science ”is a rarity. And the doctors who defended doctoral dissertations not in related humanities (for example, in history and philology), but in humanitarian (history) and natural (geography), are generally difficult to find ” ^[274] . Doctors of geographical sciences E.M. Murzaeva (Moscow) and A.M. Arkhangelsky, as well as the doctor of biological sciences Yu.P. Altukhov, were invited to oppose the work. The defense took place on May 23, 1974 in the large hall of Smolny . Leaving on the podium, Lev Nikolayevich exclaimed: “Sword to me!” - and he was given a pointer. When voting against, only one vote was cast ^[275] . However, the VAK refused to approve a degree. According to the memoirs of S. Lavrov, the thesis was given for reading to the “black reviewer”, who returned it with a lot of comments; then Lev Nikolayevich had to go to Moscow. Colleagues in the department were worried that Gumilyov, with his explosive temper, would not argue with the VAK collegium; the fears were justified: Gumilyov, in response to the question: “But who are you anyway: a historian or a geographer?” - “he said a lot of superfluous and was failed. Confused and somewhat guilty, he returned to Leningrad; not so much because of the sad outcome, but because he did not fulfill his promise to keep “within the framework of” ... ” ^[276] However, Lavrov recalled that he“ was horrified ”from the negligence of the design and style of the abstract, as well as for the fact that the dissertation did not correspond to the stated specialty “history of science and technology” ^[277] .

According to the data cited by S. Belyakov, the decision of the Higher Attestation Commission was based on a review by Yu. G. Saushkin , Head of the Department of Economic Geography, Moscow State University. In his review, he emphasized that Gumilev is a historian, not a geographer:

“... the thesis of L. N. Gumilev did not contribute anything to geographical science, did not enrich it with new scientifically proven provisions. At best, it showed directions and problems still awaiting its scientific solution. There is no doubt that the work is completely independent; it was written by a great-culture scientist with an exceptionally large scientific erudition that evokes every respect of the reviewer. In this respect (despite serious mistakes) she stands above many doctoral theses, and if the main criterion is scientific scholarship and general culture, then L. N. Gumilev is a doctor of science. (However, he is a doctor of historical sciences.) But, I repeat once again, he didn’t make a due contribution to geographical science, he even leads it away ^[278] .

The dissertation proceedings were already going on in 1976, when Gumilev again discredited himself in the eyes of the academic community ^[278] .

"Staroburyatskaya painting"

Gumilev first encountered the Tibetan problem in 1949, when N. V. Kuhner instructed him to describe the collection of the Aginsky datsan . According to S. Belyakov, Gumilev made a lot of mistakes, which he didn’t suspect. In 1974, the publishing house "Art" invited him to write a book about a collection of paintings from the Agin datsan. "Staroburyatskaya painting" includes 55 sheets of illustrations, a synchronistic table (the history of Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia with Tibet and China with Manchuria) and the introductory article "History discovered by art." Instead of the usual introductory historical-art article, Gumilev wrote an artistic essay on the history of Tibet, Buddhism, Bon, Mithraism (of which he announced Bon) and even Manichaeism, which were not related to the subject of the album. When writing it, Gumilyov consulted B.I. Pankratov ^[279] .

The scandal arose after the book came out of print in 1975. Pankratov, having discovered many mistakes, arranged their special analysis on June 10, 1976 in the conference hall of the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. In fifty illustrations he found 20 errors, for example, on one of the tanks the arhat was sitting on alcocks, special pillows, and Gumilev wrote that the arhat was sitting on books. The gilded image of Green Tara Gumilev called Golden Tara, and so on ^[280] . Reviewers noted that the annotations to the illustrations reflect the level of reference books of the 1930s, and the introductory article is valuable, in which the iconographic tradition is traced in its evolution from India to the shores of Baikal.

"Ethnogenesis and the Biosphere of the Earth"

Starting in 1974, Gumilev's theories began to be criticized in the Soviet press, and gradually it was ceased to be published in central journals (with the exception of " Nature "). In an article by V.I. Kozlov, published in the journal Voprosy istorii , Gumilev was criticized for geographical determinism (as non-Marxist ), and in the theory of the naturalness and irresistible inter-ethnic conflicts, the reviewer saw almost no justification for fascism. In general, Gumilev’s views were declared inconsistent with historical materialism ^[281] .

In 1975, the Academic Council of the Faculty of Geography recommended Gumilev’s thesis for publication, but did not accept the manuscript at the LSU publishing house. In 1977, Lev Nikolayevich tried to arrange a publication in the Nauka publishing house, having enlisted, besides the recommendation of the academic council, also 10 positive reviews. However, the publishing house sent the manuscript to one of the most consistent critics of Gumilev, academician Yu. V. Bromley , who did not give the stamp of the Institute of Ethnography. (Gumilev's attitude towards Bromley is evidenced by the alteration of his last name - “Barmaley” ^[282] ). The output was the deposit of the manuscript at VINITI , the Leningrad State University Academic Council presented it for deposit on October 30, 1978. In VINITI agreed to accept the manuscript divided into three editions; the deposit lasted until October 1979. This ended the formulation of Gumilev's theory in a holistic form ^[283] .

Thanks to the articles and previous books of Gumilev, his popularity among the intelligentsia increased rapidly in the 1970s; VINITI staff began to make copies of the manuscript; on the black market, the price of "Ethnogenesis and the Earth's Biosphere" reached 30 rubles. In 1982, the copying of Gumilev’s manuscript ceased, according to N.V. Gumilevoy, because the VINITI printing house was fully engaged in copying, and its management stated that it should be printed by the organization that approved it. In total, according to official data, Gumilev’s deposited manuscript was copied more than 2,000 times ^[284] .

In 1981, “Ethnogenesis and the Biosphere” was first reviewed in the journal “Nature”, the author of the review was Ph.D. Yu. M. Boroday ^[285] . Actually, the review went unnoticed, but Borodaya's article “Ethnic contacts and the environment” provoked a wave of anti-Gumilyan publications. Beard's article was discussed at the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences at a meeting on November 12, 1981, and it was decided to clarify the scientific inconsistency of Gumilev's ideas. This mission was entrusted to academician B. Kedrov ^[286] . As a result, the deputy editor-in-chief of the journal V. A. Goncharov was dismissed for “ideological blunder”, and the members of the editorial board AK Skvortsov , A. L. Vyzlov and A. V. Yablokov were reprimanded ^[287] .

In the period from 1982 to 1987, the publishing houses and editors of magazines practically ceased to publish Gumilev, he was limited to 1-2 publications in collections of conferences and scientific papers. In 1985, Gumilev's theories were sharply criticized in the article “The Past and We” by Y. Afanasyev ^[288] . In general, the criticism was reduced to “methodologically incorrect constructions”, which are “dangerous with serious ideological and political mistakes” ^[289] .

The Department of History of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR even published a special “Conclusion” signed by prominent historians, in particular, I. D. Kovalchenko , A. P. Novoseltsev , V. I. Kozlov, S. A. Pletneva, and P. I. Puchkov . In it, Gumilev's views were identified with social Darwinism , geographical determinism, etc. A typical formulation:

“In the works of L.N. Gumilev there are a lot of unsubstantiated, paradoxical conclusions based not on the analysis of sources, but on the“ non-traditional thinking ”, the desire to oppose their views to the“ official points of view ” ^[290] .

Eurasianism

For the first time, Gumilev's belonging to Eurasianism began to be spoken and written in the late 1970s, in numerous interviews of the 1980s Lev Nikolayevich himself also willingly called himself a Eurasian ^[291] . Nevertheless, in the opinion of many contemporary researchers, despite some commonality, the views of Gumilev and the Eurasians differed in matters of principle. According to S. Belyakov, the main points of discrepancy are:

1. Eurasians included in the “Eurasian nation” or “multi-national personality” all the peoples of the Soviet Union, and Gumilev counted in the USSR at least seven super-ethnic groups .
2. Gumilev practically did not touch the political views of Eurasians and their state-legal theory. The question of the state system and the form of government was of little interest to him.
3. Gumilev, who much and eagerly criticized the West (especially in the last years of his life), did not criticize either liberal democracy, nor the market economy, or even the rule of law. From his point of view, immoderate borrowing of the achievements of the West is bad only because Russia is simply not ready to accept them. He believed that the Russian superethnos is 500 years younger than the Romano-German one.
4. Gumilev did not join the Eurasian criticism of Catholicism, he completely ignored the theological questions that occupied Eurasians so much ^[292] .

Thus, Gumilev can be considered a Eurasian in the literal sense of the word - a supporter of the Russian-Turkic-Mongolian brotherhood. For Gumilev, Eurasianism was not a political ideology, but a way of thinking. He tried to prove that Russia is a continuation of the Horde, and many Russian people are descendants of baptized Tatars, for which he spent the last fifteen years of his life ^[293] .

These views were set forth in his later works - essays "The Echo of the Battle of Kulikovo", "Black Legend", the popular book "From Russia to Russia", the monograph "Ancient Russia and the Great Steppe." Briefly, their content boils down to the following: Alexander Nevsky helped Batu Khan to stay in power and, in return, "demanded and received help against the Germans and the Germanophiles." The Tatar-Mongol yoke , in fact, was not a yoke, but was an alliance with the Horde, that is, the Russian-Tatar "symbiosis" (in particular, Sartak was twinned with Alexander Nevsky). The Mongol-Tatars are the defenders of Russia from the German and Lithuanian threats, and the Battle of Kulikovo was won by the baptized Tatars who had switched to the service of the Moscow prince. The Grand Duke Dmitry Ivanovich on the Kulikovo Field fought against the "aggression of the West and the horde of Mamai, allied to it" ^[294] .

Back in 1978, Gumilyov received an order for an essay about the Khazars for the popular scientific anthology “Prometheus” and wrote “The Zigzag of History” - about the seizure of power by the Jews in the Khazar Khaganate and the liquidation of the Jewish yoke by Prince Svyatoslav ^[295] . Many postulates on the history of the conversion of the Khazars to Judaism Gumilev learned from Artamonov's research, but gave them a much more radical interpretation. So, for example, in the 1950s he wrote P. N. Savitsky about this:

“The Jews, after infiltrating from Byzantium to Itil, seized“ according to cronyism ”(I cannot find another term) all prominent positions and, relying on the hired Turkmen Guard, established a despotic regime in Khazaria, the victim of which was the innocent Khazars ...” ^[296]

- Letter from Gumilev to Savitsky on December 19, 1956

The last pages of the Zigzag of History are devoted to an excursion into the history of anti- systems. The Khazar Kaganate, Gumilyov, recognized not only an ethnic chimera, but also an “anti-system”, demonstrating a dislike for Judaism. In 1981, the essay was returned to the author. Gumilev through the court has made the payment of the fee, but the essay was published only in 1989, when it was included in the book “Ancient Russia and the Great Steppe” ^[297] .

Such views have outraged professional historians, but the most consistent critic of Gumilev was the writer V. Chivilikhin , who included the anti-Gumilyov chapters in his essay-novel Memory. They saw the light in the magazine "Our Contemporary" in the late 1980s ^[298] . Sharp criticism of Gumilev’s views also occupies a large part of A. Kuzmin’s review published in 1982 ^{[299] [300]} .

Restructuring

In 1986, the magazine Ogonek and Literary Gazette began to publish the poems of Nikolai Gumilev - by his centenary, the editorial boards were in touch with his son. In December 1986, Lev Gumilyov traveled to Moscow for the birthday of D. S. Likhachev and read the poems of his father in the Central House of Writers , making a strong impression. In the same year, the course of “Ethnology” was returned to LSU ^[301] .

In March 1987, Gumilyov sent a letter to the CPSU Central Committee addressed to A. I. Lukyanov with a complaint that scientific journals and publishing houses did not publish his books and articles. The result was that in the second half of 1987 and 1988, 2 books and 14 articles by Gumilev ^[302] were published - more than in 10 previous years. In 1989, the “Ethnogenesis and Biosphere of the Earth” and “Ancient Russia and the Great Steppe” were published with a difference of six months. “Ethnogenesis” was published with a review by D. S. Likhachev, the preface was written by R. F. Herts . Herts, who never agreed with the theories of Lev Nikolayevich, characterized the treatise as a literary work, but at the same time stipulated that “he doesn’t know a single ethnographer who accepts this original theory of ethnogenesis” ^[303] .

The peak of Gumilyov’s popularity came in 1990, when 15 lectures of Lev Nikolayevich were recorded on Leningrad television, his interviews were constantly published in leading literary journals. On May 15, 1990, at the meeting of the Synergetics Section of Geographical Systems of the Russian Geographical Society , devoted to the 25th anniversary of the passionary theory of ethnogenesis, L. G. Kolotilo proposed Gumilyov as a full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences , bypassing his election as a corresponding member. On the same day, this proposal was announced by the participants of the round table on the Leningrad television in the program “Mirror”, in which Lev Nikolaevich, A. M. Panchenko , KP Ivanov and L. G. Kolotilo participated. In the end, Gumilev was not elected Academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences ^[304] . On December 29, 1991, he was elected a full member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences ( RANS ), created in opposition to the official and "bureaucratic" Academy of Sciences of the USSR. In those days, the status and future of the Academy of Natural Sciences was still unclear, but he was proud of his title and signed the letters “Academician of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences L. N. Gumilyov” to the end of his life ^[305] .

Illness and death

After retiring in the summer of 1987 at the age of 75 (he remained a leading research associate and consultant at the Faculty of Geography), Gumilyov did not reduce his scientific and publishing activity. However, soon after moving to Kolomenskaya Street - a separate apartment for the first time in his life - Lev Nikolayevich suffered a stroke , was partially paralyzed. He later recovered, continued to write and receive guests, but could not fully recover ^[306] . The disease of the legs was added to the consequences of stroke and ulcers, due to which he was taken to his armor classes in the early 1980s. In the fall of 1990, he gave his last lecture. Since the fall of 1991, pain in the liver began to disturb him. On April 7, 1992, he was hospitalized with a diagnosis of cholelithiasis and chronic cholecystitis ^[307] . After discharge, the condition worsened again. It is characteristic that he began to say goodbye to old acquaintances with whom he could not communicate for decades. He sent messages to E. Gershtein and Ochirin Namsrayzh ^[308] .

On May 23, 1992, Gumilyov underwent an operation to remove the gallbladder ; almost all the relatives and friends of the scientist considered it unnecessary. Severe bleeding has opened. Thanks to A. Nevzorov, the news of this spread throughout the country, there were many donors and donators ^[309] . According to the memoirs of S. Lavrov, in St. Petersburg newspapers published reports about the state of health of Gumilev:

“When else did the press (albeit local) give such reports? Is that in 53rd ... But this was somehow unexpected for those who knew Lev Gumilev. Suddenly, if only because people at that time had a lot of very different concerns, purely domestic, because it was then that the word “survive” arose. Only listeners of his lectures on TV could not create such an attitude of the press. Yes, Gumilev was known, but it was thought that this was a “wide popularity in a narrow circle” ” ^[310] .

Judging by the descriptions of K. Ivanov, Gumilev spent the last two weeks of his life in a coma and from May 28 he was connected to life support equipment. On June 15, it was decided to disconnect the equipment and report its demise, which was done at about 11:00 pm ^[311] .

On June 20, a civil memorial service was held in the Great Memorial Hall of the Geographical Society, and they buried him in the Church of the Resurrection of Christ near the Warsaw Railway Station . After a series of bureaucratic delays, the body was buried in the Nikolsky cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Monastery ^{[312] [313]} .

Gumilev's lifestyle did not change almost until the mid-1960s. The area in which he received a room in a communal apartment (Moskovsky Prospect, 195, apt. 218 ^[314] ) on the sixth floor was located on the outskirts of that time, only the way to work took more than an hour. The wife of G. Prokhorov described the room as follows:

“His room, although it was completely smoked through and stirred by all the bugs living in it, was surprisingly cozy and even artistic, and this was achieved only with a pair of elegant miniatures ... and with a wonderful portrait of Nikolay Stepanovich , whose narrowed gaze illuminated the room and everything it happened ” ^[315] .

Judging by the memories, Gumilev got along with the inhabitants of the communal apartment, the neighbors helped him run the household and trusted to nurse with the children. In the same apartment, Gumilyov received friends, students and beloved women. In the mid-1950s, he had a close relationship with T. Kryukova, who read proofreads of articles and books of Lev Nikolayevich. At the same time, he came into contact with 18-year-old N. Kazakevich (her workplace in the Hermitage library was located opposite Gumilev's desk) and Inna Sergeevna Nemilova, recognized as the first beauty of the Hermitage, a married lady. Their relationship continued until Gumilev's marriage in 1967, and when they broke up, her husband came to him, asking him not to leave her ^[316] . By N. Kazakevich Gumilev even got married, but the parents were strongly opposed, and the marriage did not take place ^[174] .

With the future wife, artist Natalia Simonovskaya (born February 9, 1920 - died September 4, 2004, the urn with her ashes was buried next to Gumilev's grave ^[312] ), Gumilev met in Moscow with student friend Y. Kazmicheva. The acquaintance took place on June 15, 1966, but it continued only in August. Relations developed slowly, the next time they met in the spring of 1967, and then Lev Nikolayevich made her an offer ^{[317] [318]} . She moved to him in Leningrad on the anniversary of her acquaintance, but officially they signed only in 1968. Together they lived for 24 years - until the death of Lev Nikolayevich. The surrounding people called this marriage “ideal” - the wife devoted her whole life to him, leaving work and the old circle of acquaintances. The choice of Gumilev was also influenced by the fact that he did not want to have children; then he was 55 years old, his chosen one - 46 ^{[319] [Comm. 21]} .

Thanks to N.V. Gumilyova in 1974, the family moved to a communal flat on Bolshaya Moskovskaya Street , 4, although she herself associated the move with a visit by a Mongolian academician Rinchen Bimbaev (uncle of the old passion of Gumilyov - Ochirin Namsrayzhav) ^[321] . By 1988, the apartment was completely free, but due to the construction of the transition from the Dostoevskaya metro station to Vladimirskaya , the house began to sink. M. Dudin , an old acquaintance of Akhmatova, helped Gumilyov to move to a two-room apartment on Kolomenskaya Street 1. Now there is a memorial museum-apartment of Gumilyov ^[322] .

In everyday life, Gumilyov always remained unassuming, although by Soviet standards he earned good money. N. Simonovskaya recalled the first meeting with Gumilyov in the following way: “He was dressed in a short jacket, from the sleeves of which the shirt cuffs looked out”. At home, Lev Nikolayevich wore a plaid shirt and wide satin trousers ^[323] . This, however, could be attributed to his eccentricity, which resembled Akhmatov. For example, Gumilev did not tolerate potatoes and believed that the latter had seriously complicated the life of the Russian peasant. Natalia Viktorovna instead cooked soup with turnips. From the principle, Gumilyov arrived at the station an hour before departure — what if he had been sent earlier? etc. ^[324] He didn’t like to rest: once in 1958 he treated the ulcer he had received at the Kislovodsk resort, visited the Riga seaside in 1959, and did not go anywhere else. Abroad, he visited only once in 1966, making a trip to the archaeological congress in Prague , where he met with P. N. Savitsky ^[325] . After marrying Gumilev for 10 months a year, they lived in Leningrad, and in July and August the couple moved to Moscow, where Natalia Viktorovna’s apartment was in Novogireevo . On weekends, the couple walked around the outskirts of Leningrad - Pavlovsk , Pushkin and others ^[326] .

All his life, Lev Gumilev adhered to the ritual side of Orthodoxy , as evidenced even during interrogations at the MGB in 1949. He did as much as he honored the Orthodox holidays, although he rarely went to church; inclined to the baptism of friends and students (including G. Prokhorov and M. Ardov ). However, according to M. Ardov, his views were closer to the Gnostic and philosophically taken beyond the bounds of Christianity, this is evidenced by a short essay in the form of a catechism entitled “Apocrypha” ^{[Comm. 22]} . For example, Gumilev believed God is not omniscient and not omnipotent. Being a consistent positivist in scientific terms, he did not consider his religious views to be contrary to the scientific picture of the world ^[327] .

Cooling down to literature in the camp, Lev Nikolayevich stopped reading contemporary authors. Judging from the memoirs of contemporaries and the composition of the personal library, poets who appeared after the 1930s, he did not know at all. Gumilev valued prose below poetry, and his tastes, by definition, S. Belyakov, “ froze somewhere in the pre-Choch era. However, neither Chekhov nor the late Leo Tolstoy Gumilev did not like. He will even manage to scold the “ Kreutzer Sonata ” in “Ethnogenesis and the Earth's Biosphere”. From European writers, he seemed to love the French more, but Emile Zola and Anatole France remained the most modern for him. French literature of the 20th century did not interest him ” ^[328] . At the end of his life, he fell in love with detectives and science fiction, especially preferring the works of Bradbury , S. Lem , Strugatsky and S. Snegov ^[328] , A. Christie , J. Simenon (he even kept the magazine clippings with his stories), D. Chase ^{[ 261]} .

Of the so-called bad habits, Gumilev tolerated drunkenness and smoking. He became addicted to vodka at the university, and then at the front, and, according to S. Belyakov, "learned the Soviet (not Russian ... but Soviet) custom of visiting with a bottle" ^[329] . Obviously, he easily tolerated alcohol, however, judging by the recollections, no one has ever seen him in a drunken state. He himself stated that “vodka is a psychological concept” ^[330] . Gumilev smoked until the end of his life, always the same “ White Sea Canal ” cigarettes, and continuously, setting fire to a new cigarette from a burned-out cigarette; he sincerely believed that smoking was no harm. From smoking over the window in his room formed a black stain ^[331] .

The original feature of Gumilev’s personality was turkophilia, which manifested itself in youth. For the first time it was declared in a small poem of 1938 - “Dispute about happiness”, which was the poetic transcription of the plot by Rashid ad-Din . Since the 1960s, he increasingly signed his letters Arslan-Bek (translation of the name Lev into the Turkic language), the nickname was invented by P.N. Savitsky ^[332] .

Heritage

After Gumilev's death, his widow, Natalya Viktorovna, returned to Moscow, transferring their apartment on Kolomenskaya Street to set up the museum. This was done for a number of reasons only in 2002 ^[312] . In 2004, the museum-apartment of L. N. Gumilev received the status of a branch of the State Museum of Anna Akhmatova in the Fountain House ^[333] .

Gumilev did not create a scientific school and did not aspire to this, although since the 1960s there was a circle of people who considered themselves his students, the first of them was G. Prokhorov . In July 1992, the Lev Gumilev Foundation was founded, the president of which elected academician A. Panchenko , the vice-president - Professor S. Lavrov ; V. Yermolaev became the chairman of the Foundation. In February 1993, Ermolaev’s place was taken by psychologist M. Kovalenko, who retired in the late 1990s; in the 2000s, the foundation ceased to exist. In 1992-1993, Yermolaev together with V. Michurin published the so-called “gray series” (according to the color of the cover) of Gumilyov's works in the Moscow publishing house “Ekopros”. In 1994, N. V. Gumileva transferred the rights to publication to Aider Kurkchi, who began a 15-volume collection of works by Lev Nikolayevich, creating a special fund “The World of L.N. Gumilev”; copyright returned to the widow and followers of Gumilev only in the 2000s. In 1998, the educational Internet portal Gumilevik appeared, which, by definition, S. Belyakov, “remains the most interesting and most informative site dedicated to Lev Gumilyov” ^[334] . His books, including poetic and artistic texts, continue to be reprinted regularly.

In Russian historiography

Among the numerous works devoted to L. Gumilev, the book of the geographer S. Lavrov “Lev Gumilev: Fate and Ideas”, published in 2000, stands out. Its author worked for about 30 years with L.N. Gumilyov, many of the information he cited is of primary source significance.

Criticism of the historian and literary critic S. S. Belyakova was subjected to the book of V. Demin , published in the series “ WBL ” in 2007: “Gumilyov created his own terminological apparatus, but Demin prefers the terminology of professional psychics, healers and astrologers to him. Gumilev's “passionarity” and “noosphere” of Vernadsky coexist here with “telluric energy”, “energetics of the sacral place”, “internal energetics of the Mother Earth” and “beneficial radiation of the Cosmos”. Dyomin identifies Lev Gumilev as a “Russian cosmist,” although “Russian cosmism ” was never a single philosophical direction, much less a science. This “cosmism” was invented by the authors of modern textbooks on the history of Russian philosophy. In “Russian cosmists” they recorded thinkers who had little in common with each other ” ^[335] . Gumilev and V.P. Neroznak ^[336] call the follower of the tradition of Russian cosmism.

In 2012, Belyakov's monograph “Gumilyov son of Gumilyov” was published, which was awarded the second “ Big Book ” second prize ^[337] .

Criticism of the passionary concept of ethnogenesis

The passionary concept of the ethnogenesis of Gumilev did not receive recognition among historians and ethnologists, many of whom severely criticized both her theoretical positions and the author’s rather free treatment of empirical historical material. Some authors attribute the theory of Gumilev to the pseudohistoriographic genre of folk-history ^[338] . As the researcher of ancient Russian literature, Jacob Lurie , wrote, checking the historiographic construction of Gumilev using sources from the history of ancient Russia, “discovers that this is not an attempt to summarize the real empirical material, but the fruit of preconceived ideas and author's fantasy” ^[339] . Historian- Byzantinist, Doctor of History Сергей Иванов в статье «Лев Гумилёв как феномен пассионарности», опубликованной в журнале « Неприкосновенный запас », отмечая, что работы Гумилёва «охватывают громадный географический и временной ареал, затрагивают десятки проблем, далеко выходящих за рамки истории средневековых кочевников». Тем не менее, автор оценивает научный вклад «как близкий к нулю», хотя и отмечает, что «это не вина, а беда Гумилёва: он не смог получить систематического образования и не знал языков», и ставит его в один ряд с создателем Новой хронологии математиком Анатолием Фоменко . «Гумилёв идеально подходил на роль кудесника: его сопровождал ореол узника лагерей и сына двух великих поэтов. Пусть на самом деле он почти не знал отца и ненавидел мать, в глазах публики он шагнул к нам как бы прямо из Серебряного века, „спасённый“ ГУЛАГом от советизации, и в этом — главное преимущество Гумилёва перед А. Фоменко, создателем другой гуманитарной сверхтеории. Будь у Фоменко подходящая биография, его теория тоже оказалась бы куда успешнее» ^[340] . Редакторы сайта левого российского научно-просветительского журнала « Скепсис » прямо именуют Гумилёва лжеучёным ^[341] .

Soviet and American researcher Alexander Yanov in his article “The Teachings of Lev Gumilev,” published in the Free Thought magazine in 1992, calling Gumilev “one of the most talented and, without doubt, the most erudite representative of the silent majority of the Soviet intelligentsia,” at the same time He expressed the opinion that the absence of an objective and verifiable criterion of an ethnos not only makes Gumilev's hypothesis incompatible with the requirements of natural science , but also generally brings it beyond the limits of science. According to him, this was caused by the image of the loyalty of the Soviet government occupied by Gumilyov’s position, which in the post-totalitarian society makes the preservation of human dignity highly doubtful. As a result, according to Yanov, Gumilev and his ilk "were so accustomed to the Aesopian language that it gradually became their mother tongue ." Also, in his opinion, the isolation of Soviet society from the “world culture” played a disastrous role, as a result of which, being “buried under the lumps of omnipresent censorship ”, Gumilyov had no opportunity to get acquainted with the achievements of Western historical thought on the mainstream of modern science, as well as the situation in which “ideas were born, grew old and died, and did not have time to be realized, ... the hypotheses were proclaimed, but they remained forever untested” ^[338] .

A well-known historian and archaeologist Lev Klein , who in the article “Bitter Thoughts of the“ Choosiest Reviewer ”about the teachings of L. N. Gumilev,” published in the Neva magazine, gave Gumilev's works the following opinion:

“The mountains of facts, facts are the most diverse, it is amazing and suppressing, but ... it does not convince (or convinces only the gullible). Because the facts are heaped up by mountains, in bulk, randomly. No, this is not a technique of natural science. L.N. Gumilev is not a naturalist. He is a myth maker. Moreover, the crafty myth-maker is dressed in a naturalist's robe ” ^[342] .

The historian Andrei Petrov characterizes the passionary theory of ethnogenesis as an extraordinary cultural phenomenon that occupies a special place both in the history of science and in the history of quasi-science. In his opinion, in his works, Gumilev used techniques characteristic of pseudoscientific works — free interpretation of sources, inventions, stretches, ignoring data contradicting his constructions ^[343] .

Theories of the “chimeras” and “anti-systems” of Gumilev ^{[344] [345] [346]} were also criticized by the scientific community. Some analysts believe that the author of the passionary theory is responsible for giving the doctrine of Russian nationalists an aura of science ^[347] , and Yanov and Viktor Shnirelman accused Gumilyov of anti-Semitism ^{[338] [348]} . In particular, Shnirelman wrote:

“Although examples of“ chimeric formations ”are scattered throughout the text ... he chose only one plot related to the so-called“ Khazar episode ”. However, due to the obvious anti-Semitic focus, his publication had to be postponed, and the author devoted a good half of his later special monograph on the history of Ancient Russia to this story ” ^[348] .

Yanov also believed that Gumilev's teaching “could become the ideal foundation of Russia's“ brown ”ideology,” and that anti-Semitic views are not alien to Gumilyov ^[338] . Henrietta Mondri expressed a similar opinion in the review of Vadim Rossman’s book “Russian intellectual antisemitism in the post-Communist era”. She writes that Gumilev's theory of "ethnogenesis", which contains an opinion about Slavic and Semitic ethnic incompatibility, forms a solid basis for modern Russian nationalism ^[349] .

In turn, the historian I. N. Danilevsky in an interview with the magazine " Profile " noted:

Large-scale generalizations suffer from the fact that the author is simply unable to master the entire array of information that science has accumulated even over the past decade. And since it cannot, inevitable lacunae or direct stretch. A striking example is the trilogy of the American historian Alexander Yanov “Russia and Europe”. Very interesting concept, but in the actual material there are clear breakdowns. And this is not his fault, this is an objective situation related to the colossal volumes of scientific information. The same can be said about the work of Lev Gumilev: he has a beautiful, original idea, but the actual material is a failure. ^[350] .

In the most consistent and systematic form, in a broad historical and methodological context, Gumilev's theory was considered in the monograph by Leonid Mosionzhnik , published in 2012. The researcher entirely attributed his work to the popular genre, "giving room for the game imagination of the reader." An important merit of L. Gumilev is that he “showed the nomads to the general public not just as savages, but as people in their own right, as creators of a culture, to which we owe much. Before him, such a view was the lot of a few nomadic specialists, while by inertia, schoolchildren were inspired with stereotypes from the times of the Russian colonial expansion, designed to justify the conquest of nomadic peoples. This merit of L. N. Gumilev should be recognized, and it is not by chance that a scientific center was named after him in the capital of Kazakhstan ” ^[351] . However, the harm from his anti-scientific constructions, which Mosionzhnik calls racist, exceeds the benefit of the heritage of Gumilev the popularizer ^[351] .

In Western Historiography

In the West, Gumilev's theory until the 2000s was known relatively little. According to V. Kozlov, the works of Lev Nikolayevich could not be published in Western university publishing houses for the above reasons. The abbreviated ^[352] English edition of “Ethnogenesis and the Biosphere of the Earth” was published in Moscow just a year after the book Russian edition ^[353] and passed completely unnoticed. The first comment of the Western scientist on Gumilev's theory was the chapter in the book of American specialist on the history of Russian and Soviet science, Professor Loren Graham , while the original texts were not used. As far back as 1990, Grigory Pomerantz was confronted with a situation when the editor of the French magazine Diogenes directly told him that “the theory of ethnic groups is not interesting for the Western reader” ^[354] .

The Western scientific community has shown somewhat greater interest in Gumilev's theories in the 2000s. According to the estimates of the British historian of Soviet social thought, , in his works, especially the later ones, Gumilev constantly “hesitated between the ideas of empire and nation” ^[355] . His main work, Ethnogenesis and the Biosphere of the Earth, was inspired by the theories of N. Ya. Danilevsky and the reworked ideas of Eurasian emigrants. According to Tikhanov, Gumilev "flirted" with the title of "the last Eurasian." It was brought closer to the Eurasians by the conviction that Russia can exist and develop only as a complex “super-ethnos”, directly correlated with the multinational empire of the pre-war Eurasianism. Conviction in the positive meaning of the Mongol conquest of Gumilev borrowed from G.V. Vernadsky , and the attacks on the West correspond to the criticism of E. Trubetskoy of the Germanic and Romance world ^[356] . The ethnic groups of Gumilev, according to Tihanov, directly correlate with cultural-historical types , although they are distanced from their definition. Replacing cultural types with ethnos signaled that Gumilev considered the exact sciences “above” humanitarian. Hard thinking was characteristic of his thinking, in which there was no place for free will, perfection, or evolution ^[357] . From the works of Danilevsky and Spengler, Gumilev inherited the conviction that an ethnos has a certain limited period of existence. Despite reverence for natural science methods, Gumilev’s explanations can neither be verified nor falsified ^[356] .

The heritage of Gumilyov-Eurasian was considered in the monograph by Marlene Laruel "Russian Eurasianism: the ideology of the empire" ( Johns Hopkins University , 2008). It was interpreted as a link between the emigrant and post-Soviet Eurasian movements. M. Laruel noted that Eurasia for Gumilev was not self-sufficient, but was only a frame for his theory of ethnogenesis. Gumilev's determinism is recognized as physical, not geographical, and the concept of Eurasianism contributes to the search for common bases of human history ^[358] .

The changing role of Russia in the global geopolitical space and the claims of its leadership to the revival of imperial ambitions have increased the interest of the Western academic community in the figure of L. N. Gumilev. In 2016, Cornell University Press published a monograph by the geographer ^[359] - the first in English detailed scientific and biographical study of the heritage of Lev Nikolayevich, the author of which was very positive about the personality and heritage of a scientist in the context of his life. In a review by Andreas Umland (Institute for Euro-Atlantic Cooperation, Kiev ), it is emphasized that the most important concept of Gumilyov used in the intellectual space of modern Russia is passionarity; at the same time, the theory of Lev Nikolaevich himself is characterized as “quixotic”. A. Umland reproached M. Bassin with a shallow analysis of the impact of Gumilev's theories on post-Soviet higher and secondary education, especially against the background of the enormous circulation of his works and the established reputation of almost the greatest Russian historian in the 20th century ^[360] .

Memory

On the initiative of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, in 1996 in the capital of Kazakhstan, Astana , one of the country's universities, the Eurasian National University named after L.N.Gumilyov, was named after Gumilyov ^[361] . In 2002 a museum-cabinet of L. N. Gumilev was created within its walls ^[362] .

The name of L.N. Gumilev bears secondary school No. 5 of Bezhetsk, Tver Region ^[363] .

In honor of the anniversary of Gumilev, a nameless peak with a height of 3520 m (50 ° 8 '24 "N and 87 ° 39' 50" E) is located in the Kosh-Agach region of the Altai Republic , near the borders of Russia, China, Mongolia and Kazakhstan, received the name "Peak of the 90th anniversary of L. N. Gumilev" ^[364] .

August 2, 2003 in Bezhetsk on the street. A large triple monument to N. Gumilev (in the form of a bust ), A. Akhmatova and L. Gumilev was installed. Funds for it were allocated by the Federation Council of the Russian Federation and the administration of the Tver region. Sculptor - A. Kovalchuk ^[365] .

In August 2005, in Kazan, “in connection with the days of St. Petersburg and the celebration of the millennium of the city of Kazan, ” Lev Gumilyov was given a bust on Peterburgskaya Street , on the pedestal of which the words “I, a Russian person, have defended the Tatars from my life ...” ^366]

A bust of the researcher was also installed in the Museum of IEI, UC RAS ^[367] .