Family secrets of Anton Makarenko: what the descendants of the legendary teacher were silent about

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

March 13 marks 129 years since birth Anton Makarenko … In the West, he has long been recognized as a classic of world pedagogy, and in his homeland, the attitude towards him has changed dramatically: from apologetics for his methods of education to attempts to expose secrets and accusations of cruel treatment of pupils. For many years, his family really kept one secret, which even the famous grandchildren of Makarenko did not know for a long time - director, VGIK teacher Anton Vasiliev and actress Ekaterina Vasilieva.

All Soviet biographical publications kept silent about one important fact from the life of Anton Makarenko: he had a brother, a White Guard officer Vitaly Makarenko, who, fleeing from death, was forced to emigrate abroad in 1920.

When he had a brother, Vitaly, Anton was 8 years old. After graduating from the Chuguev military school, Vitaly became an officer in the tsarist army. After winning three years, he was wounded and received several wounds. Together with his brother, he worked at school, taught physical education and military science. During the civil war, Vitaly served in Denikin's White Guard army. If he had stayed in his homeland, he would have faced inevitable death. Vitaly Makarenko fled first to Turkey, then to Bulgaria, and in 1923 he settled in France. There he first got a job as a laborer at a metallurgical plant and a ship repair shop, and later became a photographer and opened his own photo studio.

For correspondence with his brother, the pelagogu was threatened with arrest, and in 1928 he stopped responding to Vitaly's letters. In the USSR, he left his wife and daughter Olympiada, whose education was carried out by a childless brother. Vitaly Makarenko's wife died in 1953 without receiving any news from him. Their daughter Olympias had never seen her father - when he left, she had not yet been born.

Until the age of 9, the son of Olympiada, Anton Vasiliev, was sure that the famous teacher Makarenko was his own grandfather, after whom he was named. But then he found out that in fact he was his great-nephew. And only in 1962 did the relatives receive the news that Vitaly Makarenko was alive. For many years he tried to find them, but all his attempts were in vain. Anton Vasiliev managed to come to France only in 1988, 5 years after the death of his own grandfather.

Vitaly Makarenko never saw either his daughter or grandchildren. He spent his last days all alone in a nursing home. He died in France in 1983, having outlived his brother by 44 years. But with the death of the teacher Anton Makarenko, there are many mysteries and assumptions. He died suddenly of a heart attack on a train en route to Moscow in 1939. According to one version, he was supposed to be arrested there. At that time, he was considered a counter-revolutionary because of the incautious phrase: "And even if Comrade Stalin makes a thousand mistakes, we still have to follow Comrade Stalin." Perhaps he found out about the arrest - and his heart could not stand it. According to another version, he was poisoned. The official reason to this day is considered a heart attack. He was buried as a writer, and Anton Makarenko was proclaimed a classic of Soviet pedagogy after his death.

Since then, dozens of works have been written about the famous teacher. Trying to "expose the myth" about the outstanding Soviet educator, recently they often publish articles in which they accuse Makarenko of excessive cruelty. He was really strict, but only once, at the dawn of his career, he allowed himself to hit the pupil. He himself admitted this in his "Pedagogical Poem". Once in the Gorky colony, he invited the inmate to chop wood. He replied: "Cut it yourself, there are many of you here." Makarenko could not stand it and hit him in the face three times. This angered Nadezhda Krupskaya, who called his upbringing system "non-Soviet." The teacher was often criticized by the leadership for the fact that "the drama circle was preferred to the textbook of political literacy in the colony."

Nowadays, Makarenko's merits in pedagogy are also disputed. They say that his technique turned out to be inapplicable in the future. However, his achievements in the 1920s. can hardly be denied. The war left behind 7 million street children who often became offenders. They were sent to orphanages for "morally defective children." Makarenko turned them into labor colonies, where every teenager had a chance to start a new life. They produced power tools and FED cameras, and earned money by their labor. Today this system is called the model of a joint-stock company with participation on a share basis of all employees. But Makarenko's works are currently more popular not at home, but abroad - for example, in Germany and Japan, where the teacher's system is recommended to be studied by the heads of enterprises.

Vitaly Makarenko's granddaughter became a famous actress, and then decided to radically change her life: why did Ekaterina Vasilyeva leave theater and cinema