Grandfather Korney's daughter: the non-fairytale life of Lydia Chukovskaya

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

Her father Korney Chukovsky was an all-Union favorite, treated kindly by the authorities, and her name was banned. She herself visited Stalin's dungeons in 1926, her husband was shot in 1938. But she did not give up - she was friends with Akhmatova and Brodsky, defended Pasternak and Sakharov, and in her books she told the truth about exiles, prisons and the dungeons of the NKVD. Her literary works only saw the light of day after the collapse of the USSR.

The eldest daughter of Korney Chukovsky, Lydia, had a literary talent from childhood, and there were no problems with the choice of a profession - she successfully entered the Institute of Arts at the literary department.

But soon life presented her with the first unpleasant surprise - her arrest and subsequent exile to Saratov. The reason for this was the thoughtless act of one of her friends, who printed an anti-Soviet leaflet on Korney Ivanovich's typewriter without his permission.

They accused Lydia of this, and although she was not guilty of anything, she did not expose her friend. And even then, the unyielding character of this fragile girl manifested itself. She categorically refused the offer of cooperation with the NKVD in exchange for early release. And yet, thanks to the efforts and petitions of his father, instead of the assigned 3 years, the exile lasted 11 months. After graduation, she worked for some time in the Detgiz department, which at that time was headed by S. Ya. Marshak, married Caesar Samoilovich Volpe, gave birth to a daughter, Elena, but this marriage soon fell apart.

However, fate prepared for her a new meeting with a wonderful young man, theoretical physicist, Matvey Bronstein. They agreed on the basis of literature, in which Matvey was well versed, he read many foreign works in the original language. It turned out that Lida and Matvey were very fond of poetry and knew a lot of poems by heart, this was especially true of Matvey, who had an extraordinary memory and erudition. Fate generously endowed him with talents. Although his main vocation was physics, Matvey also had excellent literary abilities.

Having married Lydia in 1934, at the request of Marshak, he wrote several excellent scientific and artistic books for children, one of which he dedicated to his wife Lida. These little masterpieces of his were highly appreciated even by the Nobel laureate in physics Lev Landau. Lidochka and Mitya spent a lot of time together, and still they missed it. They seemed to feel that they had very little time for a happy life together, only about two years.

In August 1937, Mitya was going to visit his parents while on vacation. Lydia remained - her daughter was ill. And then until the end of her life she could not forgive herself that she was late that day to see her Mitya off, she was late not only to help him with the preparations, but even to the train. And since then they have not had to see each other again. A few days later, trouble came - in Kiev, at the apartment of his parents, Mitya was arrested.

Many modern physicists agree that this arrest for several decades slowed down the development of an entire scientific direction in which Matvey worked - the quantum theory of gravity. Many tried to help him - and Lydia's father, Korney Chukovsky, and Marshak, stood up for the defense and such eminent scientists as I. E. Tamm, S. I. Vavilov, A. F. Ioffe. But all their attempts to help were in vain, in February 1938 Matvey Bronstein was shot. Lydia Korneevna did not yet know what the sentence "10 years without the right to correspond" meant. The fact that Matvey was shot, she only became aware of in 1939.

After her husband's arrest, life turned to Lydia Korneevna a completely different, hidden from many, side - meetings with investigators, petitions, endless queues, transfers to prison. And this was the impetus for her to write several literary works reflecting the ongoing tragedy. As Lydia Korneevna said, 1937 was torn out of her. In the winter of 1940, the story "Sofya Petrovna" was completed, written directly in those terrible years before the war, when all this was happening. In the 60s it was published in Paris, then in New York. And only in 1988 - at home. Another story on the theme of Stalinist repressions, "Descent under the Water", she will write in 1957. And this story will be published only in 1972, and also not at home.

In 1938, in huge and terrible queues at Kresty, a common misfortune brought together and befriended two women - Lidia Korneevna Chukovskaya and Anna Andreevna Akhmatova, whose son Lev Gumilyov was in prison at that time. Lydia, realizing what a priceless gift fate gave her, tried to extract as much as possible from it. She started a diary, in which, from 1938 to 1941 and from 1952 to 1962, she described how their meetings went, what they talked about, and she memorized poems, including the famous Requiem.

These invaluable recordings were prepared for publication after Akhmatova's death and published first in Paris, and then, in the 90s, in Russia. After the death of Stalin, the execution of Beria in 1953 and the subsequent XX Congress of the CPSU, held in 1956, a period of "thaw" began in the country.

In the early 60s, Lydia Korneevna brought to the editorial office her story "Sophia Petrovna", which had been secretly kept for many years. But she was denied publication. The "thaw" ended … And new reprisals and persecutions began - B. Pasternak, A. Solzhenitsyn, A. Sakharov, I. Brodsky, Sinyavsky and Daniel, Ginzburg and others. In those days, the majority was either silent, or supported and glorified, but Lydia Korneevna with her quivering heart boldly spoke up in their defense. She was the author of an open letter to Sholokhov, in which she angrily and indignantly condemned his position against the human rights writers Sinyavsky and Daniel, who received seven years of strict regime for their articles published in the West. Sholokhov, on the other hand, considered this sentence too "mild".

In 1973, open persecution of the human rights activist herself began. In January 1974, she was expelled from the Writers' Union, a strict ban was imposed on publications, and even the very mention of her name was prohibited. But having disappeared for 13 years from literature, from libraries, from memories, Lydia Korneevna somehow miraculously survived and was restored to the Writers' Union.

In 1996, at the age of 89, she died, she was buried next to her father at the cemetery in Peredelkino.

Remembering the work of the famous children's poet, father of Lydia Korneevna, for our readers 20 postcards with sparkling children's phrases from the book by Korney Chukovsky "From two to five".