I don't know why and who needs it,
Who sent them to death with an unshakable hand,
Only so mercilessly, so evil and unnecessary
Lowered them into Eternal Peace!

Cautious spectators silently wrapped themselves in fur coats,
And some woman with a distorted face
Kissed the dead man on blue lips
And threw a wedding ring at the priest.

Threw them with Christmas trees, kneaded them with mud
And went home - under the guise of interpreting,
That it's time to put an end to the disgrace,
That and so soon, they say, we will begin to starve.

And no one thought to just kneel
And tell these boys that in a mediocre country
Even bright feats are only steps
To the endless abyss - to the inaccessible Spring!

Romance "What I have to say" Alexander Vertinsky wrote shortly after October revolution. At the end of 1917, the text and musical versions of the song were published by the Moscow publishing house Progressive News. The lyrics said that the song was dedicated to "Their blessed memory".

At first, there was no consensus about who this romance was dedicated to. So, Konstantin Paustovsky, who attended Vertinsky’s concert in Kyiv in 1918, suggested in his memoirs: “He sang about the cadets who were killed not long ago in the village of Borshchagovka, about young men sent to certain death against a dangerous gang.”

In fact, the song was dedicated to the cadets who died in Moscow during the October armed uprising of 1917 and were buried at the Moscow Brotherhood Cemetery. Vertinsky himself wrote about this in his memoirs: “Shortly after the October events, I wrote the song“ What I have to say. It was written under the impression of the death of the Moscow junkers, at whose funeral I was present.

Junkers defending the entrances to the Kremlin. 1917 Photo: oldmos.ru

Regarding this song, full of sympathy for the enemies of the Bolsheviks, Alexander Vertinsky was summoned to the Cheka for an explanation. According to legend, Vertinsky then said: "It's just a song, and then, you can't forbid me to feel sorry for them!" To this he was answered: “It will be necessary, and we will forbid breathing!”.

Soon Vertinsky went on tour in the southern cities of Russia. In Odessa, the White Guard General Yakov Slashchev met with him. He told Vertinsky how popular his song had become: “But with your song ... my boys went to die! And it is still unknown whether it was necessary ... "

Despite the fact that the song was written at the beginning of the 20th century, it remains relevant until today. So, during the years of perestroika, the romance was performed by Boris Grebenshchikov. Then the song was associated with the Afghan war. In 2005, at a rock festival in Chechnya, the romance "What I have to say" was performed by Diana Arbenina. This song is also present in the repertoire of Valery Obodzinsky, Zhanna Bichevskaya, Tatiana Dolgopolova and Pavel Kashin, Nadezhda Gritskevich. On February 20, 2014, Boris Grebenshchikov performed a romance at the Spring Concert in Smolensk, dedicating it to those who died on the Euromaidan: “Today is a strange concert. All the time, the thought does not leave me that at this very moment, when we sing here, in Kyiv, not far from us, some people are killing others.

Song of Vertinsky "What I have to say (In memory of the junkers)" , was written under the impression of the death of three hundred Moscow junkers who opposed the Red Army.

Regarding this song, full of sympathy for the enemies of the Bolsheviks, Alexander Vertinsky was summoned to the Cheka for an explanation.

According to legend, Vertinsky then said: “It’s just a song, and besides, you can’t forbid me to feel sorry for them!”.

To this they replied: “It will be necessary, and we will forbid breathing!”

Soon Vertinsky went on tour in the southern cities of Russia. In Odessa, the White Guard General Yakov Slashchev met with him. He told Vertinsky how popular his song had become: “But with your song ... my boys went to die! And it is still unknown whether this was necessary...»

Junkers defending the entrances to the Kremlin. 1917

WHAT I HAVE TO SAY

Alexander Vertinsky

their blessed memory..

Lowered them into eternal rest.

Cautious spectators silently wrapped themselves in fur coats,
And some woman with a distorted face
Kissed the dead man on blue lips
And threw a wedding ring at the priest.

But no one thought to just kneel
And tell these boys that in a mediocre country
Even bright feats are only steps
To the endless abyss to the inaccessible spring!

I don't know why and who needs it,
Who sent them to death with an unshakable hand,
Only so mercilessly, so evil and unnecessary
Lowered them into eternal rest.

Lyrics: A. Vertinsky
Music: A. Vertinsky

I don't know why and who needs it,
Who sent them to death with an unshakable hand,
Only so mercilessly, so evil and unnecessary
Lowered them into Eternal Peace!

Cautious spectators silently wrapped themselves in fur coats,
And some woman with a distorted face
Kissed the dead man on blue lips
And threw a wedding ring at the priest.

Threw them with Christmas trees, kneaded them with mud
And went home - to interpret under the guise,
That it's time to put an end to the disgrace,
That and so soon, they say, we will begin to starve.

And no one thought to just kneel
And tell these boys that in a mediocre country
Even bright feats are only steps
To the endless abysses - to the inaccessible Spring!

October 1917
Moscow

There was a lot of obscurity in the events described by the song, and there were several versions of them. So, K. Paustovsky, who heard Alexander Nikolaevich’s concert in Kyiv in the winter of 1918, gives his own interpretation in his memoirs: “He sang about the junkers killed not long ago in the village of Borshchagovka, about young men sent to certain death against a dangerous gang.”
According to a more common rumor, the song was created in Moscow in 1917 during the October days of the Bolshevik coup, and it speaks of Muscovite Junkers who became victims of this event.

This version was followed by a very famous playwright and theater critic those years I. Schneider. He wrote: “In the large Church of the Ascension on Nikitskaya, where Pushkin married Natalya Goncharova, there were 300 coffins and the funeral of the junkers who opposed the people and were killed on the streets of Moscow was going on. They were buried in one of the Moscow cemeteries. Trams started, shops and theaters opened. In the Petrovsky Theater of Miniatures, Vertinsky sang his new song every evening about these three hundred cadets and coffins.

* * * * * * *

On the day of the beginning of the October Revolution on October 25, 1917, a
benefit performance of Vertinsky. His attitude to the ongoing revolutionary events,
expressed in the romance "What I have to say", written under the impression
death of three hundred Moscow junkers.
Romance aroused the interest of the Extraordinary Commission, where the author was summoned
for explanations. According to legend, when Vertinsky remarked to the representatives of the Cheka:
“It’s just a song, and then, you can’t forbid me to feel sorry for them!”,
he received the answer: “It will be necessary, and we will forbid breathing!”. . .

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My first encounter with this poem - or, if you like, a romance - took place on the ruins of the historical center of Tula, at the very beginning of the main street of this ancient Russian city, which at one time was called Kievskaya, then became Kommunarov Street, and at that time it was already called Lenin Avenue. No one really knew what the regional authorities were up to this time, but several quarters of old Tula were conscientious and very short term turned literally into ruins. The ruins produced an eerie, never-before-experienced feeling of some kind of collapse of the old world. Above them, open spaces and prospects opened up, which until then it was almost impossible to imagine and from which it was breathtaking. A gusty wind feverishly turned the pages of several antique-looking books scattered here and there among the broken bricks.

I picked up one of them that was lying at my very feet - it was some kind of ancient songbook, with eps and yats - and read on the open page the title of Alexander Vertinsky's romance: "What I have to say."

I do not know why and who needs it, Who sent them to death with an unshakable hand, Only so mercilessly, so evil and unnecessary Lowered them into eternal rest. Cautious spectators silently wrapped themselves in fur coats, And some woman with a distorted face Kissed the deceased on blue lips And threw a wedding ring at the priest. They threw trees at them, kneaded them with mud And went home under the guise of talking, That it's time to put an end to the disgrace, That already soon, they say, we will begin to starve. And no one thought of just kneeling down And telling these boys that in a mediocre country Even bright feats are only steps In endless abysses to an inaccessible spring! I do not know why and who needs it, Who sent them to death with an unshakable hand, Only so mercilessly, so evil and unnecessary Lowered them into eternal rest.

The event, under the influence of which Vertinsky wrote these lines, can be dated exactly - Moscow, November 13 (26) 1917. It was on that day in the Church of the Great Ascension at the Nikitsky Gates, where Pushkin and Natalie once got married, very close to the "student" Bolshaya and Malaya Bronny streets, that very funeral took place.

Cautious spectators silently wrapped themselves in fur coats, And some woman with a distorted face Kissed the deceased on blue lips And threw a wedding ring at the priest. They threw Christmas trees at them, kneaded them with mud ...

The funeral service was led by Metropolitan Evlogii (Georgievsky), who was asked to do so by the newly elected (a week earlier) Patriarch Tikhon. Here is how Metropolitan Evlogy recalls that day in his book The Path of My Life (Paris, 1947):

remember heavy picture this funeral. There are open coffins in rows... The whole temple is crammed with them, only in the middle is a passage. And they rest in coffins, like cut flowers, - young, beautiful, just blossoming lives: junkers, students ... At the expensive remains, mothers, sisters, brides crowd... In the funeral "sermon" I pointed out the evil irony of fate: the youth, who strove for political freedom, fought so fervently and sacrificially for it, she was even ready for acts of terror - the first victim of a dream come true fell…

The funeral was in terrible weather. Wind, wet snow, slush... All the streets adjacent to the church were packed with people. These were folk funeral. The coffins were carried by volunteers from the crowd ...

Junckers and student volunteers were buried far outside the city, at the Fraternal Memorial Cemetery of World War Victims. Actually, they became the very first "White Guards", that is, those who attached white ribbons to their clothes - young opponents of the October Bolshevik coup.

I don't know why and who needs it, Who sent them to death with an unshakable hand...

And I also do not know who Alexander Nikolayevich was hinting at here. The rebuff to the Bolshevik detachments was led in Moscow by the mayor Vadim Rudnev and the commander of the troops of the Moscow Military District, Colonel Konstantin Ryabtsev. Both of them are socialists, socialist-revolutionaries, associates of Kerensky. Indeed, one might get the impression that both of them were thinking in those days not so much about suppressing the rebellion, but about the quickest surrender of the city to the Bolsheviks - even at the cost of the death of the most passionate supporters of the Provisional Government ... I recall a very true thought of the culturologist and Muscovite Rustam Rakhmatullin, aphoristically expressed by him in a 2001 Novy Mir article:

... In Moscow in 1917, October fought with February. White was the Russia of February and the Restoration at the same time. White was therefore the Moscow of the Arbat, where two principles were reconciled - the intellectual and the elite-military, irreconcilable until February. Mayor Rudnev and Colonel Ryabtsev personified this alliance. Despite the fact that both were children of February, the Socialist-Revolutionaries of a different shade. The illegal force was opposed by the pseudo-legal one in the absence of the legal one, which they piled together. The military elite of the non-existent legitimate authority has bet on the lesser of evils.

In the absence of legal authority, the earth diverges along ancient cracks, and two incompletenesses, like new oprichnina and zemshchina, argue for the right to extend themselves to the whole.

Illegal force was opposed by pseudo-legal... Socialist Rudnev left Russia in the midst of civil war; he died in France shortly after it was occupied by Nazi Germany. The socialist Ryabtsev, after serving three weeks in prison, was set free by the Bolsheviks and after some time ended up in Kharkov, where he worked journalistic work in local publications. In June 1919, during a broad offensive against Moscow, Kharkov was occupied by units of the Volunteer Army under the command of Lieutenant General Vladimir Zenonovich Mai-Maevsky, the very “His Excellency” who had the “adjutant” known from the Soviet film. Konstantin Ryabtsev was arrested by counterintelligence and about a month later he was killed "while trying to escape" ...

This ad appeared in the Kharkov newspaper " New Russia»June 22 (July 5, New Style) - just when the former Colonel Ryabtsev was already in Denikin's counterintelligence:

On that summer day, anti-Bolshevik Kharkov enthusiastically greeted the commander-in-chief Armed Forces South of Russia Lieutenant General Anton Ivanovich Denikin. On the evening of that day, Alexander Vertinsky was to acquaint the Kharkovites with his “song for the death of the White Guards”, and in the morning a military parade took place in Kharkov on the occasion of the arrival of the commander in chief: the Drozdovites, Belozersk, Kuban people marched ... Here's how it was:

From the Appeal of General Denikin "To the population of Little Russia" (according to the text published in the Kharkov newspaper "New Russia" dated August 14 (27), 1919):

... Wanting to weaken the Russian state before declaring war on it, the Germans, long before 1914, sought to destroy the unity of the Russian tribe forged in a hard struggle.

To this end, they supported and inflated a movement in the south of Russia, which set itself the goal of separating its nine provinces from Russia, under the name of the “Ukrainian State”. The desire to tear away from Russia the Little Russian branch of the Russian people has not been abandoned to this day ...

However, from the treacherous movement directed towards the division of Russia, it is necessary to completely distinguish the activity inspired by love for native land, to its idiosyncrasies, to its local antiquity and its local vernacular.

In view of this the basis for organizing the regions of the South of Russia and the beginning of self-government and decentralization will be laid with indispensable respect for the vital features of local life.

announcing state language throughout Russia, the language is Russian, I consider it completely unacceptable and forbid the persecution of Little Russian vernacular. Everyone can speak in local institutions, zemstvo, government offices and courts - in Little Russian…

Likewise, there will be no restrictions on the Little Russian language in the press...

A constitutional democrat in his political views, Anton Ivanovich Denikin supported the February Revolution of 1917, but very soon became a determined opponent of the socialist Provisional Government and openly supported the rebellion of General Kornilov.

In national politics, Denikin was a staunch supporter of the idea of ​​a united and indivisible Russia. In terms of his personal qualities, he was a deeply decent person, until the end of his life he remained a Russian patriot and citizenship Russian Empire was not going to change. During the years of the Great Patriotic War Anton Ivanovich Denikin resolutely rejected all proposals of the Germans for cooperation. Separating Russia proper from the Bolsheviks, he called on the Russian emigration to unconditionally support the Red Army. There are indications that in 1943 Denikin, at his own expense, collected and sent a wagon with medicines to help the Red Army. After the victory over Germany, Stalin did not demand that the allies extradite his former enemy.

Anton Ivanovich Denikin died of a heart attack in August 1947; in October 2005, his ashes were solemnly reburied on the territory of the Donskoy Monastery ...

They threw trees at them, kneaded them with mud And went home under the guise of talking, That it's time to put an end to the disgrace, That already soon, they say, we will begin to starve.

At the end of 1917, when Alexander Vertinsky wrote these lines, everything that was happening around, indeed, could seem to “cautious viewers” ​​just an annoying “disgrace”. But how well, how joyfully everything worked out in February!

Everything happened not as expected, but quickly, as if on a cinematographic tape, in a fairy tale or in a dream.

Dad, a prominent official who occupied a good position, was waiting for appointment to the governor from day to day, one day he came home beaming, enthusiastic and told his wife and children that a “great, bloodless” revolution had taken place.

All of this has long been impatiently and passionately awaited. The Pope spoke eloquently and even with inspiration about the imminent close victory over the "primordial" formidable enemy, about a free army, about the freedom of the people, about the future great destinies of Russia, about the rise of people's welfare and education, about the committee of the State Duma that had taken power, about Rodzianko, etc. . P.

Thus begins the story of the writer Ivan Rodionov "Evening Sacrifices". Ivan Rodionov was not only a talented writer (at one time it was hypothesized that he was the real author of Sholokhov's " Quiet Don”), but also a monarchically minded Cossack officer. During the World War II, Ivan Rodionov, like Denikin, fought in the troops of General Brusilov - all together they then participated in the famous "Brusilov breakthrough".

Of these three, he was the only one who refused to swear allegiance to the Provisional Government. But none of them grieved about the collapse of this Provisional Government. Ivan Rodionov ended the Civil War as a colonel and lived out his life already in exile (the story "Evening Sacrifices" was published in 1922 in Berlin). General Brusilov retired in the summer of 1917, during the October battles of the Red Guards with the junkers, he was just in Moscow and even then received an accidental slight wound. At the very end of the Civil War, the former general began to actively cooperate with the high command of the Red Army ...

And in February, everything started very fun. Everyone unanimously and swiftly renounced the old world, and quickly shook off its ashes from their feet. Rejoicing reigned in the streets, big industrialists, military generals and even grand dukes put on red bows and sang the Marseillaise in unison. It seemed that now, when the completely rotten tsarist regime had been thrown out, now it would come, the real flowering of everything and everyone! ..

“Everyone has been impatiently and passionately waiting for this for a long time,” writes Rodionov. The most educated, the most democratic, the most reasonable sections of Russian society brought these February days as soon as they could. In intellectual circles, it was considered almost indecent to refrain from unbridled criticism of the government. It seemed to close your eyes, then open your eyes - and everything will remain the same, only this three-hundred-year-old dynasty will be gone. It seemed like nothing. Well, it won't and won't. It seemed that if you take out a brick, the wall will not collapse...

Didn't we feel the same way in 1991? Didn't the inhabitants of Ukraine feel the same way at the beginning of 2014?.. "An illegal force was opposed by a pseudo-legal one in the absence of a legitimate one, which they piled together".

And it suddenly turned out that the state is like a living organism, which, of course, has its own skeleton - the legal skeleton. It is relatively easy to break the bones of this skeleton - but then is it any wonder that these bones then grow together for a long time, and difficult, and crooked ...

February fun ended very quickly. The most educated, democratic and reasonable strata of Russian society, the most intelligent circles, as well as great philosophers, big industrialists, military generals and grand dukes, were the first to go under the knife.

And some kind of burning shame, and terrible disappointment, and resentment, and a desperate attempt to “make a beautiful face” of understanding in the face of complete misunderstanding of what is happening - all this was expressed in the final stanza of the poem by Alexander Vertinsky:

“Untalented country”, like “unwashed Russia”, are the favorite themes of the Russian liberal intelligentsia disappointed in its own people, this is its attribute, its birthmark and its curse. Historical experience, alas, shows that this disappointment comes to the Russian liberal with enviable regularity. Some kind of fatal "dissimilarity of characters", by golly. There is nothing like it anywhere else in the world. Dostoevsky in his novel The Idiot sensed a terrible danger at the very beginning:

... Russian liberalism is not an attack on the existing order of things, but an attack on the very essence of our things, on the very things, and not on the order alone, not on the Russian order, but on Russia itself. My liberal has reached the point where he denies Russia itself, that is, he hates and beats his mother. Every unfortunate and unfortunate Russian fact arouses laughter and almost delight in him.… This hatred of Russia, not so long ago, our other liberals almost took for true love for the fatherland and boasted that they see better than others what it should consist of; but now they have become more frank and even the words "love for the fatherland" have become ashamed, even the concept was expelled and eliminated as harmful and insignificant ... There can be no such liberal anywhere who would hate his own fatherland.

Historically, it so happened that from its very inception, the so-called. Russian liberalism stood "here" with one foot and "there" with the other foot. Utterly vulgar in his arrogance, all consisting of complexes and internally flawed, the domestic liberal - into relatively calm historical periods- never knew doubts and always knew "how to". The people always seemed to him to be something like plasticine, from which it is possible and should sculpt all sorts of beautiful figures. And when the next "sculpting" ended in another tragedy, our talented sculptor blamed not himself, but the "wrong plasticine".

Here, for example, with what words one of the heroes of Ivan Rodionov's story "Evening Sacrifices" conveyed his own spiritual discord:

I had some ideals, and they are all without a trace disgusting, cruel, boorish, you understand, sister, boorish, somehow shameful desecrated and broken by this very people. I hate and despise him. After all, in my eyes, what he became. Who is he? This is an innumerable herd of thieves, murderers, cowards, alcoholics, degenerates, idiots who have violated all divine and human laws, faith, God, the fatherland ... But only this is created and this is the only thing that keeps life. Such people have no future. He's finished. He is a fetid human rubbish, and as rubbish will be swept off the face of the earth in due time. the punishing right hand of the Almighty. But these people were my god. After all, it’s scary and insulting, insulting to tears to remember this. It's such a drama...

Writer Ivan Rodionov, a Cossack colonel, a nobleman and an active figure in the white emigration, died in 1940 in the capital of Nazi Germany.

One of his sons, Vladimir, was rector of the Church of the Resurrection of Christ in Zurich for almost half a century, becoming at the end of his life an archbishop of the Russian Orthodox Church.

His other son, Yaroslav, a poet and journalist, wrote the text of the famous pre-war "Song of the Moscow cabman": “But the metro came with oak railings, // He immediately bewitched all the riders ...”- surely everyone heard this song performed by Leonid Utyosov. Yaroslav Rodionov died under German bombs in 1943...

... And tell these boys that in a mediocre country ...

The final stanza of the poem is completely false and consists entirely of common clichés at that time. One of them is just the notorious "boys". The essence of the matter was perfectly stated by General Turkul in his memoirs “Drozdovites on Fire”:

Volunteer boys, about whom I am trying to tell, may be the most tender, beautiful and sad that is in the image of the White Army. I have always looked at such volunteers with a feeling of pity and dumb shame. No one was as sorry as they were, and it was a shame for all the adults that such little boys were doomed with us to bloodshed and suffering. Kromeshnaya Russia threw children into the fire. It was like a sacrifice…

... Hundreds of thousands of adults, healthy, big people did not respond, did not move, did not go. They crawled along the rear, fearing only for their own, at that time, still well-fed human skin.

And the Russian boy went into the fire for everyone. He sensed that we had truth and honor, that the Russian shrine was with us. All future Russia came to us, because it was they, the volunteers - these schoolchildren, high school students, cadets, realists - who were supposed to become a creative Russia, following us. All future Russia defended itself under our banners...

For whom youth follows - for that and the truth. Anton Turkul, the last commander of the Drozdov division, was by no means a liberal. And he already knew very well who exactly - and on both sides - "with an unshakable hand" sent the "boys" to death.

The last commander of the Drozdov division was not a liberal - rather, in his hatred of the Bolsheviks, he sympathized with Nazism. The division of people along ethnic lines is, of course, disgusting. But just as disgusting is any other division based on hatred and arrogance - national or social. After all, they come to the same thing: someone will turn out to be a useless "cattle", and someone - a valuable and bright "non-cattle" ...

And no one thought of just kneeling down And telling these boys that in a mediocre country Even bright feats are only steps In endless abysses to an inaccessible spring!

And no one thought to just kneel... Alexander Nikolaevich is being cunning here. Our enlightened elite always and at all times adored - of course, if there were any cautious spectators nearby - adored to thump on their knees and repent, repent, repent. For that, for that, for the fifth, for the tenth. And for the death of "boys" with their bright exploits, and for a mediocre country. For the people, which is a fetid human rubbish, - entirely consisting of degenerates and idiots. Over steps and abysses, over spring and over summer.

And no one thought of just getting on their knees ...

What is especially striking is that those who love to repent most of all are those who feel their personal guilt least of all. For millions of ruined destinies, for incalculable suffering, for hunger and death of the most ordinary and not at all "elite" people: just old people, just women and just children.

Cattle after all ... but what does he need in life? He has life, there is no life - everything is one ...

... The Fraternal Memorial Cemetery, where "these boys" were once buried, was opened in February 1915. It was created on the initiative of the Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna, the founder of the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent (in July 1918, Elizabeth Feodorovna, along with several of her relatives and friends, were subjected to a painful death - they were thrown alive into a mine, where they died of starvation and wounds) .

By the beginning of 1917, about 18 thousand soldiers and officers of the Russian army, as well as several dozen sisters of mercy and doctors, had already been buried at the Fraternal Cemetery. In 1925 the cemetery was closed, and in the 1930s it was liquidated. Later, a park was laid out on the territory of the cemetery, then - during the period of mass construction near the Sokol metro station - residential buildings, a cafe, a cinema, and attractions for children appeared there. Some irresponsible residents, despite the installed signs, continue to walk their dogs on the territory of the former cemetery ...

And to finish... On the site of the old quarters demolished in the center of Tula, a few years later, a spacious and deserted Lenin Square was built (from which, in a quite natural way, the now somewhat shortened Lenin Avenue proceeds - it is also the former Kommunarov Street, it is also the former Kyiv Street). Instead of many small houses on this new square built one monumental House of Soviets with a large bronze monument to Lenin in front of it. Then, however, when the next new times came, the House of Soviets turned into the Tula "White House". As for the monument to Lenin, then, as its recent examination showed, “there is no question of deviations of the monument from the vertical axis.”

Alexander Vertinsky, "What I have to say." Recorded in Berlin, 1930.