Bumbarash (novel)

Only two initial chapters of the story were published.

Simon Bumbarash returns home from Austrian captivity ^{[K 1]} . In Russia, the revolution, in their homes there is a civil war, gangs are operating. Relatives, who considered him dead, sold an almost completed house, the bride married another. Friend Yashka Kurnakov calls Semyon into the Red Army, but Bumbarash does not want to go to war again. After a couple of days, Yashka Kurnakov throws a bomb at the village "self-defense", and Semyon becomes the enemy of bandits. He runs away from his village, meets a boy Vanya, who calls himself Irtysh and is trying hard to become a Red Army man. The Reds are in the next village. They find in Bumbarash a military package that came to him by mistake, and Bumbarash, not wanting to find out what this will turn out to be, runs away again.

Irtysh on the instructions of the commander of the Red Army sent with a report to the city of Rossoshansk. The city is besieged by a gang of Turgachev, making his way to the allies. The Irtysh goes to his brother, sees behind the bars the wife and son of the Turgachevs, who are held in prison as hostages, and goes to the commissar Greenwald. He doesn’t take him to the detachment, but he keeps the artist with him. Irtysh is visiting his mother.

Gaidar began work on the story in the second half of the 1930s, after the release of the Blue Cup . In March 1936, in response to readers' letters, he spoke of a future work, promising to appear in print in the autumn of that year. However, the story did not come out on time and remained unfinished after two chapters. The reason for this, as R.I. Fraerman recalled, was the publication in 1937 of the novel by Valentin Kataev, "There was a soldier from the front" ("I am the son of the working people"). The similarity of plots and ideas forced the writer to stop working ^[1] . According to another version, expressed by N. Eliseev in the preface to the collection “Bumbarash. Tales and Stories ”(2012), Gaidar refused to write“ Bumbarash ”for the story“ The Fate of a Drummer ”, because at that time his former wife, Leah Solomyanskaya , was arrested ^[2] .

Gaidar began to write a story called "The Talisman." It stood on the manuscript ^[3] , as Gaidar called the future story in letters. But gradually the sonorous name of the protagonist supplanted the original version. However, both names are mentioned to date ^[1] .

The first publication of the chapters of the story took place in 1951 in the collection “The Life and Creativity of A. P. Gaidar” ^{[1] [4]} .

In 1971, the two-part television film “ Bumbarash ” was released with Valery Zolotukhin in the title role. The story “Bumbarash”, the story “ In the days of defeats and victories ” (1925) and several early stories by Gaidar, which allowed to supplement the missing storyline, were used as the basis for the script of the film ^[3] .

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