How it happened that Mayakovsky became the same age as aviation, cinema and the Olympic Games

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

If you think about the man-era in Russian literature, you can name several different names at once. And one of them will undoubtedly be Mayakovsky, who has come a long way as a poet in his relatively short life. Before the eyes of this man, life changed radically all over the world. And we are talking, rather, about the technical and scientific revolution, and not about the Bolshevik revolution.

From horses to injuries

When Mayakovsky was still only a "project of man", as they sometimes say, trains were already in full swing across the Russian Empire. But the rail link existed only between cities. In the year of Vladimir's birth, the world's first intracity and suburban train line was opened in London. Much later, such trains were transformed into electric trains.

In our time, a world without electric trains is hard to imagine: this is one of the fastest and most capacious types of public transport within the city and its suburbs. By the way, the first electric train was launched in Russia in memory of Mayakovsky, in 1920. By that time, the word "train" had existed in the Russian language for seven years. This is exactly how the electric trains, which were going to be launched in a few years, were presented in a Russian newspaper. The first carriages for electric trains of domestic production were made under Soviet rule at the Mytishchensky plant.

As for other ways to replace a horse, the first Russian car in production was presented at the All-Russian Exhibition in Nizhny Novgorod in the year when Mayakovsky was three years old. But mass motorization did not happen in his memory. She belongs to the thirties, and he died in 1930.

When Mayakovsky was small, large cities, one after another, abandoned transport, drawn by live horse power, in favor of trams. In fact, there was very little difference between early trams and early commuter trains. In the same year, when the Russian car was presented, a tram was also launched in Nizhny Novgorod - the first in Russia and the second in the Russian Empire. Before that, the tram appeared in Kiev. In the capital of the empire, St. Petersburg, the tram appeared only in 1907 and for many, many years became the main mode of public transport.

Passion for sports

In 1894, when Vladimir Mayakovsky was too young to connect at least two words (after all, he was born in 1893), the Olympic Committee was created in France, which decided to hold the Olympic Games every four years. In a way, Mayakovsky is the same age as the Olympic Games.

The famous football clubs Barcelona and Milan were founded when the poet was just a kid. Just like the Davis Cup - the main event in the world of tennis today. The founder of the tennis tournament, by the way, was only twenty years old. However, the American Dowight Davis was already a champion in this sport.

In general, Mayakovsky's childhood and adolescence fell on an ever-growing passion for various sports. It was during his lifetime that figure skating was invented, swimmer Annette Kellerman ensured that women also wear swimwear on the beach (which dramatically increased the number of swimmers), and shorts became common sportswear. Before that, there was no particular reason to think about tracksuits: there were fewer kinds of sports, and not so many people were fond of them.

Cinema

The already mentioned Annette Kellerman is known for another fact: she became the first woman to star naked in a real, story-driven feature film. She generally starred a lot in the role of mermaids and sailors. A pioneer in her sport, she could not help but become interested in paving the way in a new art form, becoming one of the first film actresses.

The movie itself appeared just in the memory of Mayakovsky. When he was just a baby, short films were already being shot with might and main. Commercial cinema, thanks to the Lumiere brothers, appeared under the two-year-old Mayakovsky. At the same time, the first device for shooting and demonstrating color films appeared. It turned out to be so inconvenient that for many years very few people knew about its existence - everyone enjoyed "moving pictures" without any frills, in black and white.

Aviation

The boy Volodya had not yet been sent to school, when they began to test future passenger airships and the first plywood aircraft. Already in his adolescence, numerous air shows were in full swing, at which pilots demonstrated the capabilities of new devices from different manufacturers, writing intricate figures in the air. Former actress Lyubov Golanchikova became one of these pilots - participants in the air show. For the sake of aviation, she left the stage. Her first plane crash was straightforward - during an air show, someone threw a stick at her plane. Then the aircraft could be shot down just like that. Golanchikova not only survived, but also made an excellent career in aviation.

In the memory of Mayakovsky, aircraft began to be used for passenger traffic. Of course, there was no question of mass transfers of people. The chosen ones were transported: politicians, correspondents of large newspapers, businessmen.

During the same period, mass passenger transportation using airships was developed and tested. This direction looked even more promising: one airship lifted much more people than one plane. It remained to make the transportation comfortable, and the project could be taken out on commercial rails. Mayakovsky literally saw the airships take off, but did not live to see them fall - when, after a terrible fire on the Hindenburg, passenger airships were abandoned until our time. Now it is an exotic entertainment that is gaining popularity.

Women's rights

By the time Mayakovsky was born, work for women from bourgeois and noble families was already the norm, or, more precisely, a variant of the norm, in Russia. But in France, at the same time, no decent family allowed their daughter to earn bread (or pins) herself. The economic independence of women in Europe and the United States as a whole was quite low, except for special cases, such as entire villages of successful weavers in Germany or wealthy heiresses here and there.

For the right of women to earn money and not be condemned for this, they fought in all more or less developed countries. They helped women a lot (there would be no happiness, but misfortune helped!) The First World and Russian Revolutions. They shook up society and, more importantly, the economy. Women's labor has become very relevant. This means that women have a chance both for independence and for a career.

In Vladimir's memory, after the revolution, women were given the opportunity of easy divorce, birth control, education in any educational institution (before that, the opportunity to get higher education was severely limited). This was due to the fact that among those who organized the February Revolution and those who organized the October Revolution, there were many active women who constantly kept their rights on the topical agenda, as well as their like-minded people. Following Russia, the same rights for women began to be gradually recognized throughout Europe.

Radio and radiation

Radioactivity as such was discovered back in the 1890s, when Mayakovsky was a child, by the French physicist Becquerel. But a native of Poland, Maria Curie, undertook to study it closely. Later, her husband, Pierre Curie, joined her, finding her project more promising than his previous one. And after Curie's research became world famous, the world suddenly went crazy for radiation. It was declared a universal medicine and cosmetic product. No, the Curies had nothing to do with it - they were looking for a medical use of radiation, but they had not made any discoveries on this matter by that time. Just a fashionable theme is saddled by lovers of profit.

Radioactive water was widely sold in pharmacies. At best, it was ordinary drinking water, but some overly conscientious manufacturers really "charged" it. They also sold devices that made water radioactive at home. It was suggested to drink this water every day. They sold radioactive cosmetics: soaps, creams. And to heighten the effect, it was proposed to buy a special radioactive lining under the pillow. To recharge your health at night.

When Mayakovsky was a child, radio was also invented. The Russian physicist Popov first demonstrated his work during a lecture "On the relationship of metal powders to electrical vibrations." Sound recording was invented around the same time. It was used not only to release records with music. Voice messages were also recorded - they had to be sent in a parcel, and the chances that the recording would arrive unharmed were far from 100%, but this did not stop fans of new products.

And Mayakovsky also lived under Lilya Brik … In a sense. The muse of the Russian avant-garde Lilya Brik: Little-known facts and images on the canvases of artists