Shushenskoye (Shush) was founded in 1744 by Russian Cossacks. For the first time, permanent settlers in Shusha are noted on the border map of the Krasnoyarsk and Kuznetsk districts, compiled in 1745-1746, which shows a village of four households, the inhabitants of which “came here by themselves”, that is, they settled without permission. They were from serving Yenisei Cossack families - Ivan Kropivin, Vasily Plishkin, as well as Dmitry Konev and the peasant Savva Butakov.

In the second half of the 18th century, Shush had already grown into a large settlement with about 250-300 inhabitants.

After the reform of 1822, Shushenskoye became a volost village, where there was a transit prison, the residence of the superintendent of state-owned settlements, bread "shops" (storehouses), trading shops, and a drinking establishment.

Map of the Siberian Province of 1821

In Shushenskoye, the Decembrists, colonel-engineer Pyotr Ivanovich Falenberg and lieutenant Alexander Filippovich Frolov, were serving their exile. In 1860, M. V. Petrashevsky was serving his exile in Shushenskoye, and F. M. Dostoevsky was a member of the circle.

The village is famous for the fact that V. I. Lenin was exiled there in 1897 and spent 3 years in exile. After the death of V.I. Lenin in 1924, the united mourning meeting of the Shushensky peasants decided to buy out the house of P.O. Petrova, where V.I. Lenin, and open an exemplary house in it with a hut-reading room and a library.

In 1927 the first kindergarten was opened, in 1933 an agricultural technical school was established. In 1944, Shushenskoye became a district center, in the same year a district hospital was opened.

In connection with the activities to perpetuate the memory of V.I. Lenin, Shushenskoye became one of the most comfortable regional centers in the region. A developed infrastructure has been created here: a museum-reserve, camp sites, an extensive network of institutions and enterprises of communication, trade, and culture.

Shushenskaya land has nurtured many talented original people. These are musicians, excellent students and veterans of culture S. Shchukin - Honorary citizen of the village, Yu. Noskov, V. Ovcharov, composers - Yu. Naumov, A. Paramonov, S. Romanenko, poets - V. Kulesh, L. Kolesova, N. Nyudikova , F. Lipai, artists - A. Chekhlov, V Zuev, D. Pavlov and V. Sofrygin.

Shushenskoye has been the capital of the International Festival of Ethnic Music "Sayan Ring" for many times. And the prize - a branded bronze statuette "Golden Iria" - became a real "Oscar" for its participants.

In Shushenskoye, the shooting of the All-Russian TV program “Play, accordion!” took place twice.

The life of the village, its prosperity, well-being, comfortable microclimate, the prosperity of its inhabitants are made up of big and small deeds, the daily painstaking work of each of us.

Shushenskoye occupies a worthy place among the settlements of the Krasnoyarsk Territory.

Now the village of Shushenskoye, once turned into a Lenin museum, has become one of the central points for unforgettable travels in the Sayans, an ethnographic reserve unique for Russia and, at the same time, a still functioning memorial complex dedicated to the leader of the world proletariat. It is in the prosperous (by today's museum standards) Shushenskoye that you understand that the not so distant past of post-Soviet museums can become a reliable foothold for their breakthrough into the future.

However, despite its ideological bias, the Shushenskoye Museum is a special case. Only in the Krasnoyarsk Territory is the 100th anniversary of V.I. Lenin, which was celebrated in 1970, it was decided to celebrate not by laying the foundation of a new city and not by building a new blast furnace, but ... by reconstructing the village of pre-revolutionary times, which is a historical and ethnographic reserve. Metal fences, stone foundations, flowerbeds, asphalt and electricity, characteristic of Soviet times, were declared here as the main enemies. In contrast to this, the task of finishing the walls and ceilings of houses was to meet the standards of the end of the 19th century only before the shock brigade of plasterers-painters.

However, no special efforts were required for the reconstruction - the central part of Shushenskoye, reserved for the territory of the museum-reserve, has not changed much over the century. Not even all the streets were paved. Twenty authentic peasant houses of the 19th century have been preserved here, requiring only minor restoration (well, the resettlement of residents). Four more authentic houses from other parts of the village and one from neighboring Kaptyrev were added to them. Only three houses were rebuilt "antique", and one more - brick, upholstered with wood and artificially aged.

Speaking in the strict mathematical language of museum workers, the reserve is a genuine monument of the late XIX - early XX century by 86 percent (!). So it is understandable why, when in the very beginning of the 1990s the Leninist Museum, which found itself in a crisis, decided to change its orientation, the communist utopia was so easily replaced by ethnographic archaism. It was enough just to dismantle the odious expositions such as “Lenin and the Krasnoyarsk party organization” or “Gifts of workers to Lenin”, which were absurdly lodged in old huts, and restore their interiors with the corresponding attributes of peasant life ...

Moreover, exhibitions related to traditional folk culture began to gradually appear in the museum repertoire starting from the mid-1970s, and the so-called historical and everyday expositions were deployed in a dozen houses from the very beginning of the work of the reserve. Another thing is that on the main itinerary of the excursion, visiting the houses of kulaks and middle peasants or a public drinking establishment - a tavern was considered optional, and the museum’s methodological bureau itself repeatedly adopted resolutions such as the following, dated 1977: “Our museum is Leninist, has nothing to do with ethnography, there is no need to spend funds and distract employees. But in 1993, the "ethnographers" finally defeated the "Leninists", and the reserve "Siberian exile V.I. Lenin" became just a museum "Shushenskoye".

And visitors again reached out to the museum, but now not along the party and trade union lines, but in search of national identity. However, Shushensky is still very far from Soviet attendance records.

The cataclysm that could not be

When you get to Shushenskoye - either from the Asian-style lively Abakan, or from the very metropolitan populous Krasnoyarsk - this "urban-type settlement" (such is its official status) at first strikes with its lifelessness. Overgrown areas, forest thickets, giant wastelands - all this is in the very center of Shushenskoye. But gradually you begin to understand that this is not so much lifelessness as abandonment.

The village is quite inhabited, and on summer evenings the pier of the River Station is packed with local people relaxing with beer and barbecue. But the station itself, specially built a year before the opening of the reserve, has long been inactive - unprofitable. In the 6-storey hotel "Tourist" for three hundred places, the photographer and I were the only guests for some time. During the day in the village it is not so easy to find a place where you can have a bite - they eat their own at home, but strangers are not welcome here for a long time.

In short, the tourist mecca of the Soviet era has lost its former greatness, suddenly becoming unnecessary. After all, Shushenskoye owes only to Ilyich, whose place of exile was decided to be turned into a museum of national importance. As soon as Lenin "went out of fashion", the village rushed into the abyss of desolation. Life in it, of course, did not stop, but somehow wilted, having lost a serious energy supply. All Shushenskoye today is a museum-reserve of the wretched late Soviet life at the turn of the 1970s and 1980s, already forgotten in the capitals. This, of course, gives it some nostalgic charm, which, however, does not last long and is available only to visitors, and not to local residents.

A capacious symbol of today's Shushensky is the unfinished Celebration Square at the back of the museum, on which it was planned to install busts of Lenin's comrades-in-arms, light the Eternal Flame and arrange a museum exhibition hall equipped with the latest technology. In essence, now it is another wasteland, overgrown with grass, only it breaks through between the granite slabs that once paved the square. In the center of it is a monument to Lenin, opened in 1976, by the capital's sculptor Vladimir Tsigal: on a 9-meter granite column is the head of young Ulyanov, and next to the column is a giant granite book with Lenin's quote about "the theory of revolutionary Marxism." Tall trees have grown around the restless and constantly deserted square, and, if you look from the side of the Shushi River, it seems that Lenin's head looks out directly from the forest. “Head in the bushes,” we jokingly nicknamed this sad monument to the desolation of a once prosperous village.

It is reminiscent of the famous Zone from Andrei Tarkovsky's film Stalker, where abandoned industrial buildings, concrete hangars and the most unexpected objects scattered on the ground remind of the former luxury of a mysterious territory that has become wild due to some kind of catastrophe. However, in the case of Shushensky, one can do without mysticism - the nature of the cataclysm that happened here is quite obvious. Moreover, the village, unlike the fantastic Zone, has every chance to live a full, normal life again. And again, thanks to the same Leninist museum, which turned out to be extremely mobile and adapted to new social conditions.

Total installation

Today, the invisible protagonists of excursions around the Shushenskoye reserve are the natives - Siberian peasants of the end of the century before last, who earned money by beekeeping, fishing, cooperage or shoemaking, lowered the money they earned in a village shop or tavern, and sometimes for "drunken revelry" fell into prison during the volost government . And now the interiors of not only peasant huts and yard services attached to them, but also a prison, a store or a drinking establishment (the latter, very tiny, turned out to be a little like a cinema tavern - a shop counter, behind which they traded "drinking and takeaway", but one shop in the corner). Museum staff, dressed in blouses and sundresses, will demonstrate the work of a potter and a spinner. As a memento of Shushensky, the visitor will be able to buy an aspen spoon with a signature pattern made right in front of his eyes or a cedar bucket. In general, you can get to know rural life here by the method of "deep immersion" - there would be a desire and means.

Nevertheless, the former heroes, to whom the reserve owes its existence, are not forgotten here either, and sightseers are always taken to the two memorial apartments of the politically exiled Ulyanov, from which the museum in Shushenskoye began even before the war. The recreated small room in the house of the prosperous peasant Apollon Zyryanov, who always kept guests, and half of the house that Lenin rented from the peasant widow Petrova after arriving in Shushenskoye Krupskaya with his mother, are distinguished by a property that is generally characteristic of interior historical reconstructions in the reserve.

The surviving authentic items from Shushenskoye at the end of the 19th century are very organically supplemented here either by their “contemporaries” from other parts of Russia, or by recent copies indistinguishable from ancient originals. The main thing is to reproduce the general atmosphere of the dwelling, whether it is a very urban style, rich decoration in the house of the owner of the shop or the wretched life of a poor peasant who at the same time stitched his boots and rocked the unsteady baby. All the details of the environment, regardless of their age and historical value, interact with each other, creating a coherent impression of each museum space and forming an easy-to-read story about the life of its hypothetical inhabitant. "Shushenskoye" is not a sterile museum of folk life with individual exhibits in glassed-in windows, but a kind of artistic "installation" (to use the language of contemporary artists), an imitation of specific living spaces with the obligatory effect of the presence of their owners.

Of course, in the case of Lenin's apartments, this skill of the Shushensky "installers" is noticeable to a lesser extent. Firstly, the very genre of the memorial house-museum implies the re-creation of the original setting, the construction of some theatrical scenery, and very detailed and realistic. Secondly, the interiors of the exiled settler's cloister are themselves quite modest - a chair, a bed, a table or desk, shelves with books and an indispensable lamp with a green shade. But the painstaking work of museum workers can be judged by at least one detail. Here, for example, in Petrova’s house, in a tiny walk-through room that separates the dining room from the bedroom, skates hang on the wall: Krupskaya brought skates from St. So, the museum skates are a copy of the same, the German brand "Mercury", made on special order on the basis of research of genuine screws from fasteners found in Abakan from the heirs of the Pole Stanislav Naperkovsky, who was also serving a link in Shushenskoye. And what about the copy of the sheepskin coat in the same room, in which Ulyanov went to Minusinsk in winter? And a copy of the two travel baskets with which he came to Siberia?

It would seem that only under Soviet rule could museum life be devoted to recreating the skates or baskets of the leader of the world proletariat. But, having gone through this tough but useful school, now the employees of the Shushensky museum, with their usual passion, recreate the details of the life of not ardent revolutionaries, but ordinary peasants. And now, not only "Lenin's rooms", but the insides of almost all the buildings of the reserve are skillfully composed, spectacular, carefully thought-out "installations". And this is one of the main advantages of Shushensky over other ethnographic reserves, in which the emphasis is either on unique architecture (genuine wooden buildings, inside are either simply empty or generally closed to the public), or on boring museum-type historical expositions - with shop windows and whitewashed walls. In Shushenskoye, both the interiors and the “exteriors” of houses are equally fascinating and unique, the inspection of which can take place in the most unusual, playful form.

Attraction

"Theatricalization", "demonstration", "treat" - the favorite terms of the employees of "Shushensky". Beloved, because if these words are used here, it means that “special” tourists have arrived at the museum. For them, the folklore ensemble "Pleten", in which almost all museum workers participate, from a security guard to a deputy director, will arrange a theatrical performance (you can choose whether you want a wedding, you want a Cossack send-off to the army, you just want a village holiday). Museum workshops will be specially opened for them, and other employees will demonstrate how to mold and burn a pot, how to carve a barrel, how to weave a home rug or towel. They will surely pour a cup in the tavern, and in a special guest kitchen they will be treated to a Siberian bird cherry pie. So if we have already begun to describe Shushenskoye in terms of contemporary art, then it should be clarified: this is not just an installation, but an interactive installation, that is, implying the indispensable involvement of the viewer.

These musical and gastronomic attractions have two reasons. The first is aesthetic. On the one hand, the entire museum exposition stands on a harsh ultra-modern alarm system, so you can’t touch the unique exhibits with your hands. On the other hand, how can you find yourself in a Russian village and feel like you are in Versailles? And the discipline of a visitor to the reserve, standing at attention equally in Lenin's apartment and in a village shop, will be rewarded with street festivities.

The second is economic. The described entertainments imply an additional payment, and this is a significant increase in the budget of the museum, which, like all Russian museums, lacks public money. In 1991, having overcome a certain psychological barrier, the museum staff decided to pay for all their services. And now, for more than 10 years, museum workers have been practicing collective economic activity, getting rid of their former selflessness. In this regard, Shushenskoye is also a leader among its other brethren with a solid past.

However, Shushensky was lucky here too - neither in Ulyanovsk, nor in St. Petersburg, nor in Moscow, neither the Pleten ensemble, nor the bird cherry pie would be appropriate, even if the employees of Lenin's museums learned to sing, dance and cook. It's just that Siberia is Siberia, and its tourist resources are unlimited, just like itself.

History of Shushensky

The village of Shusha was founded by Russian Cossacks in 1744 as a place to spend the night and rest on the way to Krasnoyarsk and back at the mouth of the Shush River (the Turkic antonym "shushi" - "kind, bone"), which flows into the Yenisei. The famous Russian naturalist Pyotr Simon Pallas, the author of the book "Journey through different provinces of the Russian state", visited the upper reaches of the Yenisei in 1772 and wrote: "The village of Shusha consists of 26 households of wealthy peasants and 5 Cossack huts." In 1791, the stone Peter and Paul Church was built here (it was demolished in 1938, despite the fact that Lenin and Krupskaya got married in it), after which the village of Shusha received the status of a village and was renamed Shushenskoye. In 1822, Shushenskoye became the center of the volost. At the end of the 19th century, there were 26 kulak and 139 middle peasant farms, 69 poor peasants, and 33 families of farm laborers.

Due to its remoteness from major roads and railways, Shushenskoye became a place of political exile in the 19th century. The first Shushensky exiles were the Decembrists - Lieutenant Colonel Pyotr Falenberg (lived in Shushenskoye from 1833 to 1859) and Lieutenant Alexander Frolov (lived from 1836 to 1857). Further in Shushenskoye stayed: the author of "against the highest person of impudent verses" Pole Ippolit Korsak (1836-1841), a participant in the Hungarian revolution of 1848 Mazureytis Shlimon (1859-1860), the legendary revolutionary, utopian socialist, organizer of anti-government circles Mikhail Butashevich-Petrashevsky (1860), 22 Poles, participants in the Polish uprising of 1863 (mid-1860s), as well as members of the Polish revolutionary party "Proletariat" (1885-1888). Here, from 1886 to 1893, the populists Arkady Tyrkov (participant in the assassination of Alexander II), Pavel Argunov and Alexei Orochko served their exile.

On May 8, 1897, the exiled leader of the St. Petersburg Union of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, arrived in Shushenskoye, and on May 7, 1898, his fiancee Nadezhda Krupskaya joined him (they got married in July of the same year). Together with Lenin and Krupskaya in exile in Shushenskoye were the Polish Social Democrat Ivan Prominsky (1897-1900) and the Putilov worker, Finn Oscar Engberg (1898-1901). On January 29, 1900, at the end of the term of exile, Lenin, Krupskaya and her mother Elizaveta Vasilievna left Shushenskoye - forever.

On November 7, 1930, in the house of a peasant woman Petrova, in which Lenin and Krupskaya lived from 1898 to 1900, the Historical and Revolutionary Museum named after V.I. Lenin. In 1940, a memorial exposition was also opened in the house of Apollon Zyryanov, where Lenin lived in the first year of exile. In connection with the preparations for the 100th anniversary of the birth of V.I. On April 24, 1968, Lenin adopted a resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR on the creation of a museum-reserve in Shushenskoye on the territory of 6.6 hectares and the general improvement of the village. April 12, 1970 State Memorial Historical-Revolutionary and Architectural-Ethnographic Museum-Reserve “Siberian Exile of V.I. Lenin”, consisting of 29 peasant estates with all outbuildings, was solemnly opened. Since 1993, it has become officially known as the Shushenskoye State Historical and Ethnographic Museum-Reserve.

In 1995, on the basis of the forest part of the museum-reserve, the National Park "Shushensky Bor" was created, located on the territory of which Sandy Hill, Crane Hill and a hunting hut near Lake Perovo are also associated with the name of Lenin and are considered his favorite places for walking.

An employee of the Shushenskoye Museum-Reserve with 23 years of experience, one of the authors of the new concept of its development, Deputy Director for Research Alexander Vasilyevich Stepanov spoke about how and why the museum was changing:
- A decisive turning point in the activities of the museum occurred in the early 1990s. Previously, the reserve was on the budget of the Central Committee of the CPSU, but after the August events of 1991, the financial activities of all party structures were suspended, and the accounts of the museum-reserve were also frozen. Moreover, as an ideological product of the outgoing era, it was in general threatened with closure. And then we - however, under the guidance of the metropolitan expert from the Russian Institute of Cultural Studies Nikolai Nikishin - began to write a new concept for the development of Shushenskoye, which was adopted by the administration of the Krasnoyarsk Territory at the end of March 1993. At the same time, the museum changed its name, turning from the memorial historical and revolutionary museum-reserve “Siberian exile of V.I. Lenin" to the historical and ethnographic museum-reserve "Shushenskoye". However, we have not completely abandoned the topic of political exile. They simply decided to show that the history of the village (which, by the way, will celebrate its 260th anniversary this year!) is not limited to Lenin alone.

His exile has become just one of the topics in the work of the museum. But others appeared - "The main occupations of the Siberian peasants of the late XIX - early XX centuries", "Crafts and crafts of the peasants", "Siberian Cossacks" and so on. The museum relied on theatrical performances-shows. We created our own folklore ensemble "Pleten" (even I perform in it), an ethnographic theater, a puppet theater like a street booth. And they achieved that even the Shushenians themselves began to go to the seemingly familiar museum for these very performances and museum holidays. According to statistics, now every resident of the village goes to the museum more than 5 times a year, while previously he visited it only 2 times a year. In general, in recent years the number of visitors has increased dramatically. Now we receive a little more than 200 thousand visitors a year, including foreigners. Last year there were guests from 30 countries, from Germany to Taiwan. For comparison: in 1992, only 120,000 people came to us. But the museum is still far from Soviet indicators - in 1987 there were almost 300 thousand visitors. There are fewer tourists from the European part of Russia - it has become expensive to get to Siberia.

To be honest, our museum, which, in general, has adapted to the new social conditions, was simply lucky - the ethnographic component was initially incorporated into the activity of the reserve when it was created, although, of course, the Leninist theme was then considered the main one. So it was easier for us to “rebuild” than for other Lenin museums in the country. But still, many issues in the future fate of the museum have not been resolved so far. Shushenskoye continues to develop - in order to survive.

Oddly enough, the main problem is how to talk about Lenin. Today's elementary school students simply do not know him: now there are only two paragraphs about him in textbooks. Those who are now under 30 and who grew up and studied during perestroika treat Lenin with indifference at best and do not want to hear about him - it is not interesting. Foreign tourists go in most cases for the Siberian exotic, and not for Lenin. Only the Chinese or North Koreans line up at attention at the monument to Vladimir Ilyich and are not interested in ethnography. But after all, one cannot completely exclude the Lenin theme from excursions around the museum. If only because he is an extraordinary theorist, the creator of an original, albeit utopian, concept of a socially oriented state. His book “The Development of Capitalism in Russia”, which he completed in Shushensky, is a real doctoral dissertation of an economist, written, mind you, by a man who was not even 30. And economists all over the world still refer to this book ...

Well, and one more new problem associated with the new economic conditions. The heirs of the owners of those peasant houses that are located on the territory of the reserve began to declare themselves. Just like in the Baltics... But they have no legal grounds for claims. The houses have been restored and rebuilt at the expense of the museum. The money that we have invested in the preservation of these buildings covers all possible amounts of compensation required. But a precedent is a precedent. People felt like private owners. What would Lenin say?!

Alexander Panov | Photo by Alexander Sorin

Name

Story

Shushenskoye (Shush) was founded in 1744 by Russian Cossacks. For the first time, permanent settlers in Shusha are noted by the border map of the Krasnoyarsk and Kuznetsk districts, compiled in 1745-1746, which shows a village of four courtyards, the inhabitants of which “came here by themselves”, that is, they settled without permission. They were from serving Yenisei Cossack families - Ivan Kropivin, Vasily Plishkin, as well as Dmitry Konev and the peasant Savva Butakov.

The foundation of the village on the Shush River was due to the very favorable position of this place, where the road from Abakansky to Sayansky prison passed, which also connected the mines with the Lugazsky plant (now the area of ​​​​the village of Znamenka).

In the second half of the 18th century, Shush had already grown into a large settlement with about 250-300 inhabitants.

In 1791, with the help of the peasants of the surrounding villages, the Peter and Paul Church was built of stone and, accordingly, Shushenskoye acquired the status of a village.

After the reform of 1822, Shushenskoye became a volost village, where there was a transit prison, the residence of the superintendent of state-owned settlements, bread "shops" (storehouses), trading shops, and a drinking establishment.

The Decembrists, colonel-engineer Pyotr Ivanovich Falenberg and lieutenant Alexander Filippovich Frolov, were serving their exile in Shushenskoye. In 1860, M. V. Petrashevsky was serving his exile in Shushenskoye, and F. M. Dostoevsky was a member of the "circle".

The village is famous for the fact that V. I. Lenin was exiled there in 1897 and spent three years in exile.

Population

Economy

There is a poultry farm in the village. Tourism infrastructure is developing.

culture

The Historical and Ethnographic Museum-Reserve "Shushenskoye" (formerly "Siberian Exile of V. I. Lenin") operates in Shushenskoye. There is a regional cultural center (RCC), equipped with modern lighting and sound equipment. Since 1970, the Shushenskaya Folk Art Gallery has been operating, created on the basis of the collection of I. V. Rekhlov. On December 24, 2010, next to the checkpoint of Shushenskaya Marka LLC, a monument to Emperor Nicholas II was unveiled, which is a bronze bust on a high granite pedestal (sculptor K. M. Zinich).

In the village you can visit Lenin's Shalash (one of the most popular places for tourists).

Since 2003 (with the exception of 2006), the annual international festival of ethnic music "Sayan Ring" has been held in Shushenskoye. Since 1995, the Shushensky Bor National Park has been organized, consisting of the Perovsky forestry (located in the vicinity of the village) and the Mountain forestry (the region of the Borus ridge, Western Sayan, next to the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric power station). On the territory of the reserve there is a site of primitive man.

Born in Shushenskoye

• In 1859, I. I. Kraft, the governor of the Yakutsk region and the Yenisei province, was born in Shushenskoye.
• Simon Ermolaev - peasant, deputy of the First State Duma of the Russian Empire from the Yenisei province.

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Notes

Links

• Alexander Panov.. // Around the world, No. 9 (2768), September 2004. Retrieved March 15, 2012. .

Literature

• Bukshpan P. Ya. Shushenskoye. Memorial Museum-Reserve "Siberian exile of V.I. Lenin". - M., 1976.
• Bykonya G.F. From the history of the settlement of the Minusinsk basin and the emergence of Shushenskoye // Essays on the socio-economic life of Siberia. - Novosibirsk, 1972. - Part 2.

An excerpt characterizing Shushenskoye

When they brought Nikolushka to Prince Andrei, who looked frightened at his father, but did not cry, because no one was crying, Prince Andrei kissed him and, obviously, did not know what to say to him.
When Nikolushka was taken away, Princess Marya went up to her brother again, kissed him, and, unable to restrain herself any longer, began to cry.
He looked at her intently.
Are you talking about Nikolushka? - he said.
Princess Mary, weeping, bowed her head affirmatively.
“Marie, you know Evan…” but he suddenly fell silent.
- What are you saying?
- Nothing. There is no need to cry here,” he said, looking at her with the same cold look.

When Princess Mary began to cry, he realized that she was crying that Nikolushka would be left without a father. With great effort on himself, he tried to go back to life and transferred himself to their point of view.
“Yes, they must feel sorry for it! he thought. “How easy it is!”
“The birds of the air neither sow nor reap, but your father feeds them,” he said to himself and wanted to say the same to the princess. “But no, they will understand it in their own way, they will not understand! They cannot understand this, that all these feelings that they value are all ours, all these thoughts that seem so important to us that they are not needed. We can't understand each other." And he was silent.

The little son of Prince Andrei was seven years old. He could hardly read, he knew nothing. He experienced a lot after that day, acquiring knowledge, observation, experience; but if he had then mastered all these later acquired abilities, he could not have better, deeper understood the full significance of the scene that he saw between his father, Princess Mary and Natasha than he understood it now. He understood everything and, without crying, left the room, silently went up to Natasha, who followed him, looked shyly at her with beautiful, thoughtful eyes; his upturned ruddy upper lip quivered, he leaned his head against it and wept.
From that day on, he avoided Dessalles, avoided the countess who caressed him, and either sat alone or timidly approached Princess Mary and Natasha, whom he seemed to love even more than his aunt, and softly and shyly caressed them.
Princess Mary, leaving Prince Andrei, fully understood everything that Natasha's face told her. She no longer spoke to Natasha about the hope of saving his life. She took turns with her at his sofa and wept no more, but prayed incessantly, turning her soul to that eternal, incomprehensible, whose presence was now so palpable over the dying man.