Marietta Chudakova published the first of three books on Russian history

Anna Berseneva, writer

Recently, I was surprised to realize that I do not remember who such a sworn attorney is. Although in the childhood, when I first met this term, of course, I found out what kind of profession was involved.

I was only reassured by the fact that when, for the sake of experiment, I asked several of my friends, people of intellectual labor, about this, not one of them could answer without Wikipedia.

However, the main advantage of this book is not even its information content (in the end, everyone can look into Wikipedia as well), but in two most important things: ethical accuracy and passion. Without both of these components it is impossible to talk about what is dear to you. And the history of the country in which you live cannot be indifferent to anyone. And certainly she is not indifferent to Marietta Omarovna Chudakova, a man, without exaggeration, the legendary. It’s about who it is worth reading separately, taking up any of her many books - whether about Bulgakov, Olesha, Zoshchenko or the less well-known, but extremely important for our literature, writers of the 20-30s of the XX century; she knows everything about them. When, after all these serious books, she published fifteen years ago her children's trilogy “The Causes and Horrors of Zhenya Osinkina. Traveling in three volumes, as well as subsequent unusual, terrible and happy stories that happened to herself and her friends, ”many were surprised. When she wrote a biography of Yegor Gaidar (“a book for smart people from ten to sixteen years of age”), this did not cause surprise among the reading public. The passion with which Marietta Chudakova writes everything - literary monographs, and journalistic articles, and appeals to the powers that hold injustice - is perfectly suited for appealing to children.

It’s impossible for children to write abstractly - they simply don’t perceive stories with an unorganized ethical system, because even when faced with the fact that the world is not black and white, they still have not lost their main understanding: in a multicolored world, black still remains black, and white is white, and these colors cannot be confused. In this sense, Marietta Chudakova absolutely coincides with them. Her moral principles are marked by the clarity that everyone should keep in themselves from childhood to old age. Here, for example, she writes about what constituted Russian terror in the 19th century:

“Terror is the unbridled killing of people, and often often personally not guilty of anything and no one. Do not look there for the usual motives of criminal offenses - robbery, personal revenge, jealousy, harassment of sexual maniacs ... The purpose of terror is to intimidate, intimidate either the whole country or a separate layer of its population. Terror is mass or individual. Mass terror usually uses power in a totalitarian country - that is, where it decided not to obey any laws and became a tyrannical power. (This time in our country was not far off then)”.

Oh, what kind of abstraction is there - I remember not! But is it really necessary in assessing terror? But an understanding of its causes and the difficulty of getting out of it is absolutely necessary, and, talking about Stolypin, the author teaches this understanding:

“Thus, in 1905, through the efforts of terrorists, the Russian Empire became a country through which the ruling emperor could no longer move freely. Something had to be done with this. But what exactly to do, no one knew. In one year - from 1906 to 1907 - revolutionaries killed 4,126 and wounded more than four and a half thousand government officials... The post of governor, vice-governor, town governor became life-threatening. At this critical time for the Russian authorities, Nicholas II appoints Stolypin, known for his intelligence and determination, as prime minister. For more than seven months, 683 terrorists were hanged and shot (hanged by civilians, shot by the military) by 683 terrorists according to their (military courts. - TS). All this is extremely sad. But we must not forget two circumstances. First: no one knew decisively how to stop the terror of revolutionaries. But inaction was impossible - many innocent people died: after all, at the Stolypin's dacha, the revolutionaries aimed only at killing him, and how many people died, including the poor nanny of his young son... And the second: depending on what to compare!”

"Tales of Russia" begins in 1861 and ends in 1922. But those three books that continue them (they are ready for publication) are called by Marietta Chudakova “Tales of the Twentieth Century Russia for the Young.” The first volume is “How Russia became the Soviet Union”, the last - “How the Soviet Union became Russia”...

It will definitely be useful for the child to learn to think, learning the domestic history, and at the same time preserve the natural ability to not confuse good with evil. And how useful this is for an adult!