a lion (Leib) Moiseevich Kvitko(לייב קוויטקאָ) - Jewish (Yiddish) poet.

Biography

Born in the town of Goloskov, Podolsk province (now the village of Goloskov, Khmelnytsky region of Ukraine), according to documents - November 11, 1890, but did not know the exact date of his birth and presumably called 1893 or 1895. He was orphaned at an early age, was brought up by his grandmother, studied in a cheder for some time, and was forced to work from childhood. He began writing poetry at the age of 12 (or, perhaps, earlier - due to confusion with the date of his birth). The first publication was in May 1917 in the socialist newspaper Dos Frae Worth (Free Word). The first collection is "Lidelekh" ("Songs", Kyiv, 1917).

From the middle of 1921 he lived and published in Berlin, then in Hamburg, where he worked in the Soviet trade mission, published both in Soviet and Western periodicals. Here he joined the Communist Party, led communist agitation among the workers. In 1925, fearing arrest, he moved to the USSR. He published many books for children (17 books were published in 1928 alone).

For caustic satirical verses published in the magazine "Di roite welt" ("Red World"), he was accused of "right deviation" and expelled from the editorial office of the magazine. In 1931 he entered the Kharkov Tractor Plant as a worker. Then he continued his professional literary activity. Lev Kvitko considered the autobiographical novel in verse "Junge Jorn" ("Young Years"), on which he worked for thirteen years (1928-1941, first publication: Kaunas, 1941, in Russian, was published only in 1968) as the life's work.

Since 1936 he lived in Moscow on the street. Maroseyka, 13, apt. 9. In 1939 he joined the CPSU (b).

During the war years, he was a member of the Presidium of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAC) and the editorial board of the JAC newspaper Einikait (Unity), in 1947-1948 - the literary and artistic almanac Heimland (Motherland). In the spring of 1944, on the instructions of the JAC, he was sent to the Crimea.

Arrested among the leading figures of the JAC on January 23, 1949. On July 18, 1952, he was accused by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR of treason, sentenced to the highest measure of social protection, and on August 12, 1952 he was shot. Place of burial - Moscow, Donskoy cemetery. He was posthumously rehabilitated by the VKVS of the USSR on November 22, 1955.

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NOTES ABOUT L.M. KVITKO

Becoming a sage, he remained a child ...

Lev Ozerov

“I was born in the village of Goloskov, Podolsk province… My father was a bookbinder and a teacher. The family was in poverty, and all the children at an early age were forced to go to work. One brother became a dyer, another a loader, two sisters became dressmakers, the third a teacher.” So wrote the Jewish poet Lev Moiseevich Kvitko in his autobiography in October 1943.

Hunger, poverty, tuberculosis - this ruthless scourge of the inhabitants of the Pale of Settlement fell to the lot of the Kvitko family. “Father and mother, sisters and brothers died early from tuberculosis… From the age of ten he began to earn money for himself… he was a dyer, a house painter, a porter, a cutter, a purveyor… He never went to school… He learned to read and write self-taught.” But the difficult childhood not only did not anger him, but also made him wiser, kinder. “There are people who radiate light,” Russian writer L. Panteleev wrote about Kvitko. Everyone who knew Lev Moiseevich said that goodwill and love of life come from him. To everyone who met him, it seemed that he would live forever. “He will certainly live to be a hundred years old,” said K. Chukovsky. “It was even strange to imagine that he could ever get sick.”

On May 15, 1952, at the trial, exhausted by interrogations and torture, he will say about himself: “Before the revolution, I lived the life of a beaten stray dog, the price of this life was worthless. Starting from the Great October Revolution, I lived thirty years of a wonderful, inspired working life.” And then, shortly after this phrase: “The end of my life is here in front of you!”

Poems, by his own admission, Lev Kvitko began to compose at a time when he still could not write. What was invented in childhood remained in the memory and later “poured out” on paper, was included in the first collection of his poems for children, which appeared in 1917. “Lidelah” (“Songs”) was the name of this book. How old was the young author then? “I don’t know the exact date of my birth - 1890 or 1893″…

Like many other recent inhabitants of the Pale of Settlement, Lev Kvitko greeted the October Revolution with enthusiasm. Some anxiety is captured in his early poems, but true to the traditions of the revolutionary romantic poet Osher Shvartsman, he sings of the revolution. His poem "Reuter storm" ("Red Storm") was the first work in Yiddish about the revolution, called the Great. It so happened that the publication of his first book coincided with the revolution. “The revolution pulled me out of hopelessness, like many millions of people, and put me on my feet. They began to publish me in newspapers, collections, and my first poems dedicated to the revolution were published in the then Bolshevik newspaper Komfon in Kyiv.

He writes about this in his poems:

We did not see childhood in childhood,

We roamed the world, children of adversity.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

And now we hear the priceless word:

Come, whose childhood has been stolen by enemies,

Who was destitute, forgotten, robbed,

With a vengeance, life returns your debts.

One of Kvitko's best poems, written in the same period, contains eternal Jewish sadness:

You left early in the morning

And only in the chestnut leaves

A fast run trembles.

Rushed off, leaving a little:

Only dust and smoke at the threshold,

Abandoned forever.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

And the evening is rushing towards.

Where will you slow down?

On whose door the rider will knock,

And who will give him a lodging for the night?

Does he know how they yearn for him -

Me, my home!

Translation by T. Spendiarova

Recalling the first post-revolutionary years, Lev Moiseevich admitted that he perceived the revolution more intuitively than consciously, but it changed a lot in his life. In 1921, he, like some other Jewish writers (A. Bergelson, D. Gofshtein, P. Markish), was offered by the Kiev publishing house to go abroad, to Germany, to study and get an education. This was an old dream of Kvitko, and, of course, he agreed.

Many years later, the Jesuits from the Lubyanka knocked out a completely different confession from Kvitko on this occasion: they forced him to recognize his departure for Germany as a flight from the country, since “the national question regarding the Jews was resolved by the Soviet government incorrectly. The Jews were not recognized as a nation, which, in my opinion, led to the deprivation of any independence and infringed on legal rights in comparison with other nationalities.

Life abroad was far from easy. “In Berlin, I barely managed to survive” ... Nevertheless, there, in Berlin, two of his collections of poems were published - “Green Grass” and “1919”. The second was dedicated to the memory of those who died in the pogroms in Ukraine before and after the revolution.

“In early 1923 I moved to Hamburg and began working at the port, salting and sorting South American hides for the Soviet Union,” he wrote in his autobiography. “In the same place, in Hamburg, I was entrusted with responsible Soviet work, which I carried out until my return to my homeland in 1925.”

We are talking about the propaganda work that he conducted among the German workers as a member of the German Communist Party. He left there, most likely because of the threat of arrest.

L. Kvitko and I. Fisherman. Berlin, 1922

At the trial in 1952, Kvitko will tell how weapons were sent from the port of Hamburg under the guise of dishes to China for Chiang Kai-shek.

The second time the poet joined the Communist Party, the CPSU (b), in 1940. But this is a different party and a different, completely different story ...

Returning to his homeland, Lev Kvitko took up literary work. In the late 20s - early 30s, his best works were created, not only in poetry, but also in prose, in particular, the story "Lyam and Petrik".

By that time, he had already become a poet not only beloved, but also universally recognized. It was translated into Ukrainian by the poets Pavlo Tychyna, Maxim Rylsky, Volodymyr Sosiura. It was translated into Russian in different years by A. Akhmatova, S. Marshak, K. Chukovsky, Y. Helemsky, M. Svetlov, B. Slutsky, S. Mikhalkov, N. Naydenova, E. Blaginina, N. Ushakov. They translated it in such a way that his poems became a phenomenon of Russian poetry.

In 1936, S. Marshak wrote to K. Chukovsky about L. Kvitko: “It would be good if you, Korney Ivanovich, translated something (for example, “Anna-Vanna ...”)”. S. Mikhalkov translated it some time later, and thanks to him this poem entered the anthology of world children's literature.

Here it is appropriate to recall that on July 2, 1952, a few days before the sentencing of him, Lev Moiseevich Kvitko turned to the military collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR with a request to invite to court as witnesses who could tell the true truth about him, K.I. .Chukovsky, K.F. Piskunov, P.G. Tychin, S.V. Mikhalkov. The court rejected the petition and, of course, did not bring it to the attention of Kvitko's friends, in whose support he believed until the last minute.

Recently, in a telephone conversation with me, Sergei Vladimirovich Mikhalkov said that he did not know anything about this. “But he could still live today,” he added. - He was a smart and good poet. With fantasy, fun, fiction, he involved not only children, but also adults in his poetry. I often remember him, think about him.”

... From Germany, Lev Kvitko returned to Ukraine, and later, in 1937, he moved to Moscow. They say that Ukrainian poets, especially Pavlo Grigoryevich Tychina, persuaded Kvitko not to leave. In the year of his arrival in Moscow, a poetic collection of the poet “Selected Works” was published, which was an example of socialist realism. In the collection, of course, there were also wonderful lyrical children's poems, but the “tribute to the times” (recall, the year was 1937) found a “worthy reflection” in it.

Around the same time, Kvitko wrote his famous poem "Pushkin and Heine". An excerpt from it translated by S. Mikhalkov is given below:

And I see a young tribe

And thoughts audacious flight.

Like never before, my verse lives on.

Blessed is this time

And you, my free people!

In the dungeons do not rot freedom,

Do not turn the people into a slave!

The fight is calling me home!

I'm leaving, the fate of the people -

Singer of the people's fate!

Shortly before the Patriotic War, Kvitko finished the novel in verse “Young Years”, at the beginning of the war he was evacuated to Alma-Ata. In his autobiography it is written: “I left Kukryniksy. We went to Alma-Ata with the aim of creating a new book there that would correspond to that time. Nothing worked out there… I went to the mobilization point, they examined me and left me to wait…”

L. Kvitko with his wife and daughter. Berlin, 1924

One of the interesting pages of memoirs about the stay of L. Kvitko in Chistopol during the war was left in her diaries by Lydia Korneevna Chukovskaya:

“Kvitko comes to me ... I know Kvitko better than the rest of the local Muscovites: he is a friend of my father. Korney Ivanovich was one of the first to notice and fall in love with Kvitko's poems for children, achieved their translation from Yiddish into Russian ... Now he has spent two or three days in Chistopol: his wife and daughter are here. He came to me on the eve of his departure, to ask in more detail what to tell my father from me if they meet somewhere ...

She spoke about Tsvetaeva, about the disgrace created by the literary fund. After all, she’s not an exile, but just as evacuated as the rest of us, why isn’t she allowed to live where she wants to…”

About the bullying, ordeals that Marina Ivanovna had to endure in Chistopol, about the humiliations that fell to her lot, about the shameful, unforgivable indifference to the fate of Tsvetaeva on the part of the "writer's leaders" - about everything that led Marina Ivanovna to suicide, we know today enough. None of the writers, except Lev Kvitko, dared, did not dare to stand up for Tsvetaeva. After Lidia Chukovskaya contacted him, he went to Nikolai Aseev. He promised to contact the rest of the "writer's functionaries" and assured with his characteristic optimism: "Everything will be fine. Now the most important thing is that each person should specifically remember: everything ends well.” This is what this kind, sympathetic man said in the most difficult times. He consoled and helped everyone who turned to him.

Another evidence of this is the memoirs of the poetess Elena Blaginina: “The war scattered everyone in different directions ... My husband, Yegor Nikolayevich, lived in Kuibyshev, suffering considerable disasters. They occasionally met, and, according to my husband, Lev Moiseevich helped him, sometimes giving work, or even just sharing a piece of bread ... "

And again to the topic “Tsvetaeva-Kvitko“.

According to Lydia Borisovna Libedinskaya, the only prominent writer who was then worried about the fate of Marina Tsvetaeva in Chistopol was Kvitko. And his troubles were not empty, although Aseev did not even come to the meeting of the commission that considered Tsvetaeva's request to hire her as a dishwasher in the writers' canteen. Aseev “got sick”, Trenev (the author of the notorious play “Love Yarovaya”) was categorically against it. I admit that Lev Moiseevich heard the name of Tsvetaeva from Lydia Chukovskaya for the first time, but the desire to help, protect a person was his organic quality.

... So, "the people's war is going on." Life has become completely different and poems - others, unlike those that he wrote Kvitko in peacetime, and yet - about children who became victims of fascism:

Here from the forests, from where in the bushes

They go with their hungry lips closed,

Children from Uman ...

Faces are a shade of yellowness.

Hands - bones and veins.

Six to seven year olds elders,

Runaways from the grave.

Translation by L. Ozerov

Kvitko, as was said, was not taken into the active army, he was called to Kuibyshev to work in the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. Apparently it was a tragic accident. Unlike Itzik Fefer, Peretz Markish, and even Mikhoels, Kvitko was far from politics. “I, thank God, do not write plays, and God himself protected me from communication with the theater and Mikhoels,” he will say at the trial. And during the interrogation, talking about the work of the JAC: “Mikhoels drank most of all. Practical work was carried out by Epstein and Fefer, although the latter was not a member of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee.” And then he will give a strikingly accurate definition of the essence of I. Fefer: “he is such a person that even if he is appointed as a courier, . . in fact, he will become the owner ... Fefer put for discussion by the presidium only those issues that were beneficial to him ... ”

Kvitko's speeches at the meetings of the JAC are known, one of them, at the III Plenum, contains the following words: "The day of the death of fascism will become a holiday for all freedom-loving mankind." But even in this speech, the main idea is about children: “The unheard-of torture and extermination of our children - these are the methods of education developed in the German headquarters. Infanticide as an everyday, everyday phenomenon - such is the savage plan that the Germans carried out on the Soviet territory they temporarily occupied ... The Germans exterminate Jewish children to the last ... "Kvitko is worried about the fate of Jewish, Russian, Ukrainian children:" Red Army."

L. Kvitko speaks at the III JAC Plenum

And yet, work in the JAC, engaging in politics is not the fate of the poet Lev Kvitko. He returned to writing. In 1946, Kvitko was elected chairman of the trade union committee of youth and children's writers. Everyone who came into contact with him at that time remembers with what desire and enthusiasm he helped writers who returned from the war, and the families of writers who died in this war. He dreamed of publishing children's books, and with the money received from their publication, to build a house for writers who found themselves homeless due to the war.

About Kvitko of that time, Korney Ivanovich writes: “In these post-war years, we often met. He had a talent for disinterested poetic friendship. He was always surrounded by a tightly knit cohort of friends, and I remember with pride that he included me in this cohort.

Already gray-haired, aged, but still bright-eyed and gracious, Kvitko returned to his favorite topics and in new poems began to glorify both spring showers and morning chirps of birds.

It should be emphasized that neither a bleak beggarly childhood, nor a youth full of worries and difficulties, nor the tragic years of the war could destroy the delightful attitude to life, optimism sent down by Heaven to Kvitko. But Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky was right when he said: “Sometimes Kvitko himself realized that his childhood love for the world around him takes him too far away from painful and cruel reality, and tried to curb his praises and odes with good-natured irony over them, to present them in in a humorous way."

If one can argue, even argue about Kvitko's optimism, then the feeling of patriotism, that true, not feigned, not false, but high patriotism, was not only inherent in him, but to a large extent was the essence of the poet and man Kvitko. These words do not need confirmation, and yet it seems appropriate to give the full text of the poem “With my country” written by him in 1946, the wonderful translation of which was made by Anna Andreevna Akhmatova:

Who dares to separate my people from the country,

There is no blood in that - it was replaced with water.

Who separates my verse from the country,

He will be full and empty shell.

With you, the country, the people are great.

Everyone rejoices - both mother and children,

And without you - in the darkness of the people,

Everyone is crying - both mother and children.

The people working for the happiness of the country,

Gives a frame to my poems.

My verse is a weapon, my verse is a servant of the country,

And rightfully belongs to her.

Without a Motherland, my verse will die,

Alien to both mother and children.

With you, country, my verse is tenacious,

And his mother reads to his children.

The year 1947, just like 1946, did not seem to bode well for the Jews of the USSR. In GOSET there were new performances, and although the audience was getting smaller, the theater existed, a newspaper was published in Yiddish. Then, in 1947, few Jews believed (or were afraid to believe) in the possibility of the revival of the State of Israel. Others continued to fantasize that the future of the Jews was in the creation of Jewish autonomy in the Crimea, not realizing and not assuming what a tragedy was already hovering around this idea...

Lev Kvitko was a true poet, and it was no coincidence that his friend and translator Elena Blaginina said about him: “He lives in a magical world of magical transformations. Lev Kvitko is a child poet. Only such a naive person could write a few weeks before his arrest:

How not to work with these

When the palms itch, they burn.

Like a strong stream

takes away the stone

The wave of work will carry

trumpeting like a waterfall!

blessed with work

How nice to work for you!

Translation by B. Slutsky

On November 20, 1948, the Decree of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks was issued, approving the decision of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, according to which the USSR Ministry of State Security was instructed: “Do not hesitate to dissolve the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, since this Committee is the center of anti-Soviet propaganda and regularly supplies anti-Soviet information to foreign intelligence agencies” . There is an indication in this resolution: "For the time being, no one should be arrested." But by that time they had already been arrested. Among them is the poet David Gofshtein. In December of the same year, Itzik Fefer was arrested, and a few days later, a seriously ill Veniamin Zuskin was brought from the Botkin hospital to Lubyanka. Such was the situation on the eve of the new year, 1949.

Valentin Dmitrievich read Chukovsky's poems from memory, warning that he could not vouch for accuracy, but the essence was preserved:

How rich I would be

If the money was paid by Detizdat.

I would send to friends

A million telegrams

But now I'm ruined to the skin -

Children's publishing house only brings losses,

And it is necessary, dear Kvitki,

Send congratulations to you in a postcard.

Whatever the mood, in January 1949, as Elena Blaginina writes in her memoirs, the 60th anniversary of Kvitko was celebrated at the Central House of Writers. Why is the 60th anniversary in the 49th? Recall that Lev Moiseevich himself did not know exactly the year of his birth. “The guests gathered in the Oak Hall of the Writers' Club. A lot of people came, the hero of the day was greeted cordially, but he seemed (did not seem, but was) preoccupied and sad, ”writes Elena Blaginina. Valentin Kataev presided over the evening.

Few of those who were at the party are alive tonight. But I was lucky - I met Semyon Grigorievich Simkin. At that time he was a student at the theater college at GOSET. Here is what he said: “The Oak Hall of the Central House of Writers was overcrowded. The entire literary elite of that time - Fadeev, Marshak, Simonov, Kataev - not only honored the hero of the day with their greetings, but also spoke the warmest words about him. What I remember most of all was the performance of Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky. Not only did he say about Kvitko as one of the best poets of our time, he also read in the original, that is, in Yiddish, several poems by Kvitko, among them “Anna-Vanna”.

L. Kvitko. Moscow, 1944

On January 22, Kvitko was arrested. “They are coming. Really?.. /This is a mistake. / But, alas, it does not save from arrest / Confidence in innocence, / And purity of thoughts and actions / Not an argument in an era of lack of rights. / Simplicity along with wisdom / Unconvincing neither for the investigator, / nor for the executioner ”(Lev Ozerov). If this day, on the afternoon of January 22, it were possible to finish the biography of the poet Lev Kvitko, what happiness it would be both for him and for me, who is writing these lines. But from that day begins the most tragic part of the poet's life, and it lasted almost 1300 days.

In the dungeons of the Lubyanka

(Chapter almost documentary)

From the protocol of a closed court session of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR.

The secretary of the court, senior lieutenant M. Afanasiev, said that all the accused were brought to the court session under escort.

The presiding judge, Lieutenant General of Justice A. Cheptsov, ascertains the identity of the defendants, and each of them tells about himself.

From the testimony of Kvitko: “I, Kvitko Leib Moiseevich, born in 1890, a native of the village of Goloskovo, Odessa region, a Jew by nationality, have been in the party since 1941, before that I had not been in any parties before (as you know, Kvitko was a member before that in the Communist Party of Germany - M.G.). Profession - poet, marital status - married, have an adult daughter, home education. I have awards: the Order of the Red Banner of Labor and the medal “For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945.” Arrested on January 25, 1949 (in most sources on January 22.- M.G.). I received a copy of the indictment on May 3, 1952.”

After the announcement of the indictment presiding finds out whether each of the defendants understands his guilt. Everyone answered “Understood”. Some pleaded guilty (Fefer, Teumin), others completely denied the charge (Lozovsky, Markish, Shimeliovich. Doctor Shimeliovich will exclaim: “I have never recognized and do not recognize!”). There were those who admitted their guilt in part. Among them is Kvitko.

Presiding: Defendant Kvitko, what do you plead guilty to?

Kvitko: I recognize myself guilty before the party and before the Soviet people that I worked in the Committee, which brought much evil to the Motherland. I also plead guilty to the fact that, being for some time after the war the executive secretary or head of the Jewish section of the Union of Soviet Writers, I did not raise the question of closing this section, did not raise the question of helping to accelerate the process of assimilation of Jews.

Chairman: Do you deny the guilt that you carried out nationalist activities in the past?

Kvitko: Yes. I deny it. I don't feel this guilt. I feel that with all my heart and with all my thoughts I wished happiness for the land on which I was born, which I consider my homeland, despite all these case materials and testimonies about me ... My motives must be heard, as I will confirm them with facts .

Chairman: We have already heard here that your literary activity was devoted entirely to the party.

Kvitko: If only I were given the opportunity to calmly reflect all the facts that took place in my life and which justify me. I am sure that if there were a person here who could read thoughts and feelings well, he would tell the truth about me. All my life I considered myself a Soviet person, moreover, even though it sounds immodest, it is true - I have always been in love with the party.

Presiding: All this is at odds with your testimony during the investigation. You consider yourself in love with the party, but then why are you asserting a lie. You consider yourself an honest writer, but your mood was far from what you say.

Kvitko: I say that the party does not need my lies, and I show only what can be supported by facts. During the investigation, all my testimony was distorted, and everything was shown the other way around. This also applies to my trip abroad, as if it were for a harmful purpose, and this also applies to the fact that I got into the party. Take my poems 1920-1921. These verses are collected in a folder from the investigator. They are talking about something completely different. My works, published in 1919-1921, were published in a communist newspaper. When I told the investigator about this, he answered me: “We don’t need this.”

presiding: In short, you deny this testimony. Why did you lie?

Kvitko: It was very difficult for me to fight with the investigator ...

Chairperson: And why did you sign the protocol?

Kvitko: Because it was difficult not to sign it.

defendant B.A. Shimeliovich, the former chief physician of the Botkin hospital, stated: “The protocol ... was signed by me ... with an unclear mind. This state of mine is the result of a methodical beating for a month, every day, day and night…”

Obviously, not only Shimeliovich was tortured at the Lubyanka.

But back to the interrogation Kvitko that day:

Presiding: So you deny your testimony?

Kvitko: I absolutely deny ...

How can one not recall the words of Anna Akhmatova here? “Whoever did not live in the era of terror will never understand this”…

The presiding judge returns to the reasons for Kvitko's "flight" abroad.

Presiding: Show the motives for the flight.

Kvitko: I don't know how to tell you to believe me. If a religious criminal stands before the court and considers himself wrongly convicted or wrongly guilty, he thinks: well, they do not believe me, I am condemned, but at least G-d knows the truth. I don't have a god, of course, and I never believed in a god. I have the only god - the power of the Bolsheviks, this is my god. And I say before this faith that in my childhood and youth I did the hardest work. What kind of job? I don't want to say what I did as a 12 year old. But the hardest job is to be in front of the court. I will tell you about the flight, about the reasons, but give me the opportunity to tell.

I have been sitting alone in a cell for two years, this is of my own free will, and for this I have a reason. I do not have a living soul to consult with anyone, there is no more experienced person in judicial matters. I am alone, I think and worry with myself ...

A little later, Kvitko will continue his testimony on the issue of “flight”:

I admit that you do not believe me, but the actual state of affairs refutes the above nationalist motive for leaving. At that time, many Jewish schools, orphanages, choirs, institutions, newspapers, publications and the whole institution were created in the Soviet Union. Culture League”was abundantly supplied materially by the Soviet authorities. New centers of culture were established. Why did I need to leave? And I did not go to Poland, where terry Jewish nationalism then flourished, and not to America, where many Jews live, but I went to Germany, where there were no Jewish schools, no newspapers, and nothing else. So this motive is meaningless ... If I fled from my native Soviet land, could I then write “In a Foreign Land” - poems that curse the turbulent stagnation of life, poems of deep longing for the motherland, for its stars and for its deeds? If I weren’t a Soviet person, would I have had the strength to fight sabotage at work in the port of Hamburg, to be mocked and abused by “honest uncles” who disguised themselves with complacency and morality, covering up predators? If I wasn't loyal to the party cause, could I volunteer to take on a secret workload of peril and persecution? No reward, after hard underpaid working day, I performed the tasks needed by the Soviet people. This is only part of the facts, part of the material evidence of my activities from the first years of the revolution until 1925, i.e. until I returned to the USSR.

The presiding judge repeatedly returned to the question anti-assimilatory activities of the EAC. (“Blood is Accused” - Alexander Mikhailovich Borshchagovsky will name his outstanding book about this process and, perhaps, will give the most accurate definition of everything that happened at this trial.) Regarding assimilation and anti-assimilation testifies Kvitko:

What do I blame myself for? What do I feel guilty about? The first is that I did not see and did not understand that the Committee, by its activities, brings great harm to the Soviet state, and that I also worked in this Committee. The second thing I consider myself guilty of is hanging over me, and I feel that this is my accusation. Considering Soviet Jewish literature to be ideologically sound, Soviet, we Jewish writers, including myself (perhaps I am more to blame for them), at the same time did not raise the question of facilitating the process of assimilation. I'm talking about the assimilation of the Jewish masses. By continuing to write in Jewish, we unwittingly became a brake on the process of assimilation of the Jewish population. In recent years, the Hebrew language has ceased to serve the masses, as they - the masses - have left this language, and it has become a hindrance. As head of the Jewish section of the Union of Soviet Writers, I did not raise the question of closing the section. It's my fault. To use the language that the masses have abandoned, which has outlived its time, which isolates us not only from all the great life of the Soviet Union, but also from the bulk of the Jews who have already assimilated, to use such a language, in my opinion, is a kind of manifestation of nationalism.

Other than that, I don't feel guilty.

Presiding: All?

Kvitko: Everything.

From the indictment:

Defendant Kvitko, returning to the USSR in 1925 after fleeing abroad, joined the mountains. Kharkov to the nationalist Jewish literary group “Boy”, headed by the Trotskyists.

Being at the beginning of the organization of the JAC the Deputy Executive Secretary of the Committee, he entered into a criminal conspiracy with the nationalists Mikhoels, Epstein and Fefer, assisted them in collecting materials on the economy of the USSR for sending them to the USA.

In 1944, following the criminal instructions of the leadership of the JAC, he traveled to the Crimea to collect information about the economic situation in the region and the situation of the Jewish population. He was one of the initiators of raising the issue before government bodies about the alleged discrimination of the Jewish population in Crimea.

Repeatedly spoke at meetings of the Presidium of the JAC with a demand to expand the nationalist activities of the Committee.

In 1946, he established a personal connection with the American intelligence officer Goldberg, whom he informed about the state of affairs in the Union of Soviet Writers, and gave him consent to publish the Soviet-American literary yearbook.

From Kvitko's last word:

Citizen chairman, citizen judges!

Before the most joyful audience, with pioneer ties, I spoke for decades and sang the happiness of being a Soviet person. I end my life with a speech before the Supreme Court of the Soviet people. Accused of the heaviest crimes.

This fabricated accusation has fallen upon me and is causing me terrible agony.

Why is every word I say here in court soaked in tears?

Because the terrible accusation of treason is unbearable for me - a Soviet person. I declare to the court that I am not guilty of anything - neither in espionage, nor in nationalism.

While my mind is not yet completely clouded, I believe that in order to be accused of treason, some act of treason must be committed.

I ask the court to take into account that there is no documentary evidence of my allegedly hostile activities against the CPSU(b) and the Soviet government in the prosecution, and there is no evidence of my criminal connection with Mikhoels and Fefer. I did not betray the Motherland and I do not recognize any of the 5 charges brought against me ...

It is easier for me to be in prison on Soviet soil than to be "free" in any capitalist country.

I am a citizen of the Soviet Union, my homeland is the homeland of the geniuses of the party and humanity, Lenin and Stalin, and I believe that I cannot be accused of grave crimes without evidence.

I hope that my arguments will be accepted by the court as they should.

I ask the court to return me to the honest work of the great Soviet people.

The verdict is known. Kvitko, like the rest of the defendants, except for Academician Lina Stern, was sentenced to VMN (the highest penalty). The court decides to deprive Kvitko of all government awards he received earlier. The sentence is carried out, but for some reason in violation of the traditions that exist in the Lubyanka: it was passed on July 18, and carried out on August 12. This is another of the unsolved mysteries of this monstrous farce.

I cannot and do not want to end my article about the poet Kvitko with these words. I will return the reader to the best days and years of his life.

L. Kvitko. Moscow, 1948

Chukovsky-Kvitko-Marshak

It is unlikely that anyone will dispute the idea that the Jewish poet Lev Kvitko would have received recognition not only in the Soviet Union (his poems have been translated into Russian and 34 other languages ​​of the peoples of the USSR), but throughout the world, if he had not had brilliant translators of his poems . Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky “discovered” Kvitko for Russian readers.

There is ample evidence of how highly Chukovsky valued Kvitko's poetry. In his book “Contemporaries (portraits and sketches)”, Korney Ivanovich, along with portraits of such prominent writers as Gorky, Kuprin, Leonid Andreev, Mayakovsky, Blok, placed a portrait of Lev Kvitko: “In general, in those distant years when I met him, he really did not know how to be unhappy: the world around him was unusually comfortable and blissful ... This fascination with the world around him made him a children's writer: on behalf of a child, under the guise of a child, through the lips of five-year-old, six-year-old, seven-year-old children, it was easiest for him to pour out his his own overflowing love of life, his own simple-hearted faith that life was created for endless joy ... Another writer, when writing poetry for children, tries to restore his long-forgotten childhood feelings with a fading memory. Lev Kvitko did not need such a restoration: there was no time barrier between him and his childhood. On a whim, at any moment he could turn into a little boy, seized with boyish reckless excitement and happiness ... "

Chukovsky's ascent to the Hebrew language was curious. It took place thanks to Kvitko. Having received the poet's poems in Yiddish, Korney Ivanovich could not overcome the desire to read them in the original. Deductively, spelling out the name of the author and the captions under the pictures, he soon “set off to read the titles of individual verses in warehouses, and then the verses themselves” ... Chukovsky informed the author about this. “When I sent you my book,” Kvitko wrote to him in response, “I had a double feeling: a desire to be read and understood by you and annoyance that the book would remain closed and inaccessible to you. And now you unexpectedly in such a wonderful way overturned my expectations and turned my annoyance into joy.

Korey Ivanovich, of course, understood what to introduce Kvitko in great literature is possible only by organizing a good translation of his poems into Russian. S.Ya. was a recognized master among translators in that pre-war period. Marshak. Chukovsky turned with Kvitko's poems to Samuil Yakovlevich not only as a good translator, but also as a person who knew Yiddish. “I did everything I could so that, according to my translations, the reader, who does not know the original, would recognize and fall in love with Kvitko’s poems,” Marshak wrote to Chukovsky on August 28, 1936.

Lev Kvitko, of course, knew the "price" of Marshak's translations. “I hope to see you soon in Kyiv. You should definitely come. You will please us, help us a lot in the struggle for quality, for the flourishing of children's literature. We love you,” L. Kvitko wrote to Marshak on January 4, 1937.

Kvitko's poem "Letter to Voroshilov", translated by Marshak, became super popular.

For three years (1936-1939) the poem was already translated from Russian into more than 15 languages ​​of the peoples of the USSR, published in dozens of publications. “Dear Samuil Yakovlevich! With your light hand, “Letter to Voroshilov” in your masterful translation went around the whole country ... ”, Lev Kvitko wrote on June 30, 1937.

The history of this translation is as follows.

In his diary, Korney Ivanovich wrote on January 11, 1936, that on that day Kvitko and the poet-translator M.A. Froman. Chukovsky thought that no one would translate the “Letter to Voroshilov” better than Froman. But something else happened. On February 14, 1936, Marshak called Chukovsky. Korney Ivanovich reports this: “It turns out that it was not without reason that he stole two Kvitko books from me in Moscow - for half an hour. He took these books to the Crimea and translated them there - including “Comrade. Voroshilov”, although I asked him not to do this, because. Froman has been sitting on this work for a month already - and for Froman, translating this poem is life and death, and for Marshak - only a laurel out of a thousand. My hands are still trembling with excitement.

Then Lev Moiseevich and Samuil Yakovlevich were connected mainly by creative friendship. They, of course, met at meetings on children's literature, at children's book holidays. But the main thing that Marshak did was that with his translations he introduced the Russian reader to Kvitko's poetry.

Kvitko dreamed of cooperation with Marshak not only in the field of poetry. Even before the war, he turned to him with a proposal: “Dear Samuil Yakovlevich, I collect a collection of Jewish folk tales, I already have a lot. If you have not changed your mind, we can start work in the fall. Waiting for your reply". I did not find an answer to this letter in Marshak's archives. It is only known that Kvitko's plan remained unfulfilled.

Letters of Samuil Yakovlevich to L.M. Kvitko, full of respect and love for the Jewish poet, have been preserved.

Marshak translated only six of Kvitko's poems. Their real friendship, human and creative, began to take shape in the post-war period. Kvitko ended his congratulations on the 60th anniversary of Marshak with owls: “I wish you (Emphasis mine.- M.G.) many years of health, creative forces to the joy of all of us. On “you” Marshak allowed very few to address him.

And also about Marshak's attitude to the memory of Kvitko: “Of course, I will do everything in my power to ensure that the publishing house and the press pay tribute to such a wonderful poet as the unforgettable Lev Moiseevich ... Kvitko's poems will live for a long time and delight true connoisseurs of poetry ... I hope that I will be able to ... achieve that the books of Lev Kvitko take their rightful place ... ”This is from a letter from Samuil Yakovlevich to the poet's widow, Berta Solomonovna.

In October 1960, an evening in memory of L. Kvitko was held at the House of Writers. Marshak, for health reasons, was not present at the evening. Before that, he sent a letter to Kvitko's widow: “I really want to be at the evening dedicated to the memory of my dear friend and beloved poet ... And when I get better (now I am very weak), I will certainly write at least a few pages about a big man who was a poet and in poetry and in life. Marshak, alas, did not have time to do this ...

There is nothing accidental in the fact that Chukovsky “gave” Kvitko to Marshak. One can, of course, assume that sooner or later Marshak himself would have paid attention to Kvitko's poems and, probably, would have translated them. The success of the Marshak-Kvitko duet was also determined by the fact that both of them were in love with children; this is probably why the translations of Marshak from Kvitko turned out to be so successful. However, it is unfair to speak only of a “duet”: Chukovsky managed to create a trio of children's poets.

L. Kvitko and S. Marshak. Moscow, 1938

“Somehow in the thirties,” K. Chukovsky wrote in his memoirs about Kvitko, “while walking with him along the distant outskirts of Kyiv, we suddenly got caught in the rain and saw a wide puddle, to which the boys ran from everywhere, as if it were not a puddle, but a delicacy. They splashed so zealously in the puddle with their bare feet, as if they deliberately tried to smear themselves up to their ears.

Kvitko looked at them with envy.

Every child, he said, believes that the puddles are created especially for his pleasure.

And I thought that, in essence, he was talking about himself.”

Then, apparently, the verses were born:

How much spring mud

Puddles deep, good!

How nice to spank here

In shoes and galoshes!

Getting closer every morning

Spring is coming to us.

Getting stronger every day

The sun is shining in the puddles.

I threw the stick into a puddle -

In the water window;

Like golden glass

The sun suddenly broke!

The great Yiddish Jewish literature that originated in Russia, literature dating back to Mendel-Moyher Sforim, Sholom Aleichem and ending its existence with the names of David Bergelson, Peretz Markish, Lev Kvitko, perished on August 12, 1952.

Prophetic words were uttered by the Jewish poet Nachman Bialik: “Language is a crystallized spirit”… Yiddish literature perished, but did not sink into the abyss – its echo, its eternal echo will live as long as the Jews are alive on earth.

POETRY WITHOUT COMMENTS

In conclusion, let's give the floor to L. Kvitko's poetry itself, we will present the poet's work in its “pure form”, without comment.

In the translations of the best Russian poets, it has become an integral part of Russian poetry. The remarkable writer Reuben Fraerman accurately said about the Jewish poet: "Kvitko was one of our best poets, the pride and adornment of Soviet literature."

Obviously, Kvitko was extremely lucky with the translators. In the selection offered to the attention of readers - the poet's poems translated by S. Marshak, M. Svetlov, S. Mikhalkov and N. Naydenova. The first two poets knew Yiddish, but Sergei Mikhalkov and Nina Naydenova performed a miracle: not knowing the poet's native language, they managed to convey not only the content of his poems, but also the author's intonations.

So, poetry.

HORSE

Didn't hear at night

Behind the wheel door

Didn't know that dad

Brought the horse

black horse

under the red saddle.

Four horseshoes

Shine silver.

Inaudible in the rooms

Papa passed

black horse

I put it on the table.

Lit on the table

lonely fire,

And looks into the bed

Saddled horse.

But behind the windows

It became brighter

And the boy woke up

In his bed.

Woke up, got up

Leaning on the palm

And sees: worth

Wonderful horse.

Smart and new

under the red saddle.

Four horseshoes

Shine silver.

When and where

Did he come here?

And how did he manage

Climb up on the table?

tiptoe boy

Suitable for the table

And now the horse

It's on the floor.

He strokes her mane

Both back and chest

And sits on the floor -

Look at the legs.

Takes by the bridle -

And the horse is running.

Lays her on her side

The horse is lying.

Looking at the horse

And he thinks:

“I must have fallen asleep

And I dream.

Where is the horse from

Appeared to me?

Probably a horse

I see in my dream...

I will go with my mother

I'll wake mine up.

And if it wakes up

I'll show you the horse.

He fits

Pushing the bed

But mom is tired -

She wants to sleep.

“I will go to the neighbor

Peter Kuzmich,

I will go to my neighbor

And I'll knock on the door!

Open doors for me

Let me in!

I will show you

Raven horse!

Neighbor replies:

I saw him,

I've seen it for a long time

Your horse.

You must have seen

Another horse.

You weren't with us

Since yesterday!

Neighbor replies:

I saw him:

Four legs

At your horse.

But you didn't see

Neighbor, his legs,

But you didn't see

And I couldn't see!

Neighbor replies:

I saw him:

Two eyes and a tail

At your horse.

But you didn't see

No eyes, no tail -

He stands outside the door

And the door is locked!

Yawns lazily

Behind the door neighbor -

And no more words

Not a sound in response.

Bug

Rain over the city

All night long.

Rivers in the streets

Ponds are at the gate.

The trees are shaking

Under frequent rain.

Wet dogs

And they ask for the house.

But through the puddles

Spinning like a top

Crawling clumsy

Horned beetle.

Here it falls down

Tries to get up.

kicked up my feet

And he got up again.

To a dry place

In a hurry to crawl

But over and over

Water on the way.

He swims in a puddle

Not knowing where.

Carries him, circles

And the water runs.

heavy drops

They hit on the shell,

And whip, and knock down,

And they don't let you swim.

It's about to choke -

Ghoul ghoul! - and the end...

But boldly plays

With death swimmer!

Would be gone forever

horned beetle,

But then turned up

Oak knot.

From a distant grove

He sailed here

It was brought

Rainwater.

And by doing on the spot

sharp turn,

To the bug for help

He walks fast.

Hurry to grab

Swimmer for him

Now not afraid

Bug nothing.

He swims in oak

Your own shuttle

By stormy, deep,

Wide river.

But here they come

House and fence.

Bug through the crack

Went into the yard.

And lived in the house

Small family.

This family is dad

Both mom and me.

I caught a bug

planted in a box

And listened to the rub

About the walls of the bug.

But the rain is over

The clouds are gone.

And in the garden on the path

I took the beetle.

Kvitko translated by Mikhail Svetlov.

VIOLIN

I broke the box

Plywood chest.

very similar

to the violin

Barrel boxes.

I attached to a branch

Four hairs -

No one has yet seen

Such a bow.

glued, adjusted,

Worked all day...

Such a violin came out -

There is no such thing in the world!

In my hands obedient,

Playing and singing...

And the hen thought

And the grain does not bite.

Play it, play it

violin!

Tri-la, tri-la, tri-la!

Music sounds in the garden

Lost away.

And the sparrows chirp

They shout at each other:

What a pleasure

From such music!

Kitten lifted its head

The horses are galloping.

Where is he from? Where is he from,

Unseen violinist?

Tri-la! Silenced

violin ...

fourteen chickens,

Horses and sparrows

They thank me.

Didn't break, didn't stain

I carefully carry

little violin

I'll hide in the forest.

On a high tree,

Among the branches

Quietly slumbering music

In my violin.

WHEN I GROW UP

Those horses are crazy

With wet eyes

With necks like arches

With strong teeth

Those horses are light

What stand obediently

At your feeder

In a bright stable

Those horses are smart

How worrisome:

Only a fly sits -

Skin trembles.

Those horses are fast

With light feet

Just open the door

Jumping in herds

Jumping, running away

Unrestrained agility…

Those horses are light

I can't forget!

Quiet horses

They chewed their oats

But, seeing the groom,

They neighed happily.

grooms, grooms,

With a hard mustache

In quilted jackets,

With warm hands!

grooms, grooms

With a strict expression

Give out oats to friends

Four-legged.

horses trample,

Cheerful and full ...

Grooms at all

Hooves are not terrible.

They walk, they are not afraid

All of them are not dangerous ...

These same grooms

I love terribly!

And when I grow up -

In long trousers, important

I will come to the stables

And I will boldly say:

We have five children

Everyone wants to work

There is a poet-brother,

I have a pilot sister

There is one weaver

There is one student...

I am the youngest

I will be a racing rider!

Well, funny guy!

Where? From afar?

And what muscles!

And what shoulders!

Are you from the Komsomol?

Are you a Pioneer?

Choose your horse

Join the cavalry!

Here I am rushing like the wind ...

Past - pines, maples ...

Who is this towards?

Marshal Budyonny!

If I'm an excellent student

So I will tell him:

“Tell me, to the cavalry

Can I be enrolled?

Marshall smiles.

Speaks with confidence:

"Grow up a little -

Let's enlist in the cavalry!

“Ah, Comrade Marshal!

How long do I have to wait

time!..” -

“Are you shooting? you foot

Can you reach the stirrup?”

I'm jumping back home -

The wind won't pick up!

I'm learning, growing big

I want to be with Budyonny:

I will be a Budenovite!

Kvitko translated by Sergei Mikhalkov.

FUNNY BEET

He is cheerful and happy

From toe to top -

He succeeded

Run away from the frog.

She didn't have time

Grab by the sides

And eat under the bush

Golden beetle.

He runs through the thicket

Moves his mustache

He is running now

And meets friends

And little caterpillars

Does not notice.

green stems,

Like pines in the forest

On his wings

Showered with dew.

He would like a big

Catch for lunch!

From little caterpillars

There is no satiety.

He's little caterpillars

Do not touch with a paw,

He is honor and solidity

He won't drop his.

Him after all

Sorrows and troubles

More booty of all

Needed for lunch.

And finally

He meets such

And runs up to her

Rejoicing with happiness.

Fatter and better

He cannot be found.

But it's scary for such

Come up to one.

He's spinning

blocking her way,

beetles passing

Calling for help.

Fight for prey

It wasn't easy:

She was divided

Four beetles.

TALK

Dub said:

I am old, I am wise

I am strong, I am beautiful!

Oak from oaks -

I am full of fresh energy.

But still I envy

horse, which

It rushes along the highway

at a trot.

Horse said:

I'm fast, I'm young

smart and hot!

Horse of horses -

I love to run.

But still I envy

flying bird -

Eagle or even

little tit.

Eagle said:

My world is high

the winds are under my control

my nest

on a terrible slope.

But what compares

with the power of man

free and

wise from the age!

Kvitko translated by Nina Naydenova.

LEMELE HOSTS

Mom is leaving

Hurry to the store.

Lemele, you

You remain alone.

Mom said:

You serve me

my plates,

Put your sister down.

chop firewood

Don't forget my son

catch the rooster

And lock it up.

Sister, plates,

Rooster and firewood ...

Lemele has only

One head!

He grabbed his sister

And locked in a shed.

He said to his sister:

You play here!

Firewood he diligently

Washed with boiling water

four plates

Smashed with a hammer.

But it took a long time

Fight with a rooster -

He did not want

Get into bed.

CAPABLE BOY

Lemele once

Ran home.

Oh, - said my mother, - What is the matter with you?

You've got blood

Scratched forehead!

You with your fights

Drive your mother into the coffin!

Answered by Lemele,

Pulling on a hat:

This is me by accident

He bit himself.

Here is a capable boy!

The mother was surprised. -

How are you teeth

Did you manage to get the forehead?

Well, I got it, as you can see, - Lemele in response. -

For such a case

Get on the stool!

Lev Kvitko!
How could I forget about him!
I remember from childhood: "Anna-Vanna, our squad wants to see piglets!"

Good, lovely poetry!

DANDELION

On the leg stands on the track
Fluffy silver ball.
He doesn't need sandals
Boots, colored clothes,
It's a bit of a pity though.
It shines with radiant light,
And I know for sure
That he is round and fluffy
Any tame animal.
Week after week goes by
And the rain will thunder into the drum.
Where and why did you fly
Dashing squadrons of seeds?
What routes attracted you?
After all, in a clearly measured time
You were left without parachutes -
The wind carried them further.
And summer returns again -
From the sun we hide in the shade.
And - woven from moonlight -
Dandelion sings: "Trip-trip!"

I didn’t know anything about the fate of the poet - I just now read on the Internet:

Lev Kvitko is the author of a number of Yiddish translations from Ukrainian, Belarusian and other languages. The poems of Kvitko himself were translated into Russian by A. Akhmatova, S. Marshak, S. Mikhalkov, E. Blaginina, M. Svetlov and others. The second part of the Sixth Symphony by Moses Weinberg was written to the text of L. Kvitko's poem "Violin" (translated by M. Svetlov).

I broke the box
Plywood chest -
Looks exactly like a violin
Barrel boxes.
I attached to a branch
Four hairs -
No one has yet seen
Such a bow.
glued, adjusted,
Worked all day...
Such a violin came out -
There is no such thing in the world!
In my hands obedient,
Playing and singing...
And the hen thought
And the grain does not bite.
Play, play, violin!
Tri-la, tri-la, tri-li!
Music sounds in the garden
Lost away.
And the sparrows chirp
They shout at each other:
"What a pleasure
From such music! "
Kitten lifted its head
The horses are galloping
Where is he from? Where is he from -
Unseen violinist?
Tri-la! The violin fell silent...
fourteen chickens,
Horses and sparrows
They thank me.
Didn't break, didn't stain
I carefully carry
little violin
I'll hide in the forest.
On a high tree,
Among the branches
Quietly slumbering music
In my violin.
1928
Translation by M. Svetlov

Here you can listen:

By the way, Weinberg wrote the music for the films "The Cranes Are Flying", "The Tiger Tamer", "Afonya" and - for the cartoon "Winnie the Pooh", so "Where Piglet and I are going is a big, big secret!" Winnie the Pooh sings to Weinberg's music!

Kvitko Lev (Leib) Moiseevich

(11.11.1890–1952)

Poet of a great soul...

Fascination with the outside world made him a children's writer; on behalf of a child, under the guise of a child, through the mouths of five-year-olds, six-year-olds, seven-year-olds, it was easier for him to express his love for life, his simple belief that life was created for boundless joy.

He was so friendly, ruddy and white-toothed that the children rejoiced even before he began to read poetry. And Lev Kvitko's poems are very similar to himself - they are just as bright. And what only they don’t have: horses and kitties, pipes, violins, beetles, butterflies, birds, animals and many, many different people - small and adults. And above all this shines the sun of love for everything that lives, breathes, moves, blooms.

The Jewish poet Lev, or Leib (in Yiddish - it is "lion"), Kvitko was born in the village of Goloskovo, in Ukraine, in a clay, whitewashed house on the very bank of the Southern Bug River. The exact date of birth is unknown - 1890 or 1893 (October 15 or November 11). wrote in his autobiography: "I was born in 1895."

The family was large, but unhappy: she was in poverty. Yes, my father was a jack of all trades: a carpenter, bookbinder, wood carver, but he was rarely at home, wandered around the villages - taught. All the brothers and sisters of little Leib died of tuberculosis, and the parents also died of the same disease. At the age of ten, the boy was left an orphan. Like another famous writer, Maxim Gorky, his contemporary, he went to the “people” - he worked at an oil mill, at a tanner, at a house painter; he wandered around different cities, walked across Ukraine on foot, reached Kherson, Nikolaev, and Odessa on carts. The owners did not keep him for a long time: he was distracted.

And at home Leib was waiting for his grandmother - the main person of his childhood and youth (again, a resemblance to Gorky!). “My grandmother was an extraordinary woman in strength of spirit, in purity and honesty,” the poet recalled. “And her influence on me gave me stamina and perseverance in the fight against the difficult years of my childhood and youth.”

Leib never went to school. I saw it “only from the outside”, I mastered the letter - Jewish, and then Russian - on my own, however, at first I tried to read the Russian alphabet from right to left, as is customary in Jewish writing.

Leo had many friends, he was loved. According to numerous recollections, he was surprisingly endowed with himself: calm, friendly, smiling, never in a hurry, never complained that someone came to him or called at the wrong time - everything was done just right and by the way for him. Perhaps he was ingenuous.

From the age of 12, Leo "spoke poetry", but since he was still not very literate, he could not really write them down. Then, of course, he began to write them down.

Poems were most often obtained for young children. Kvitko showed them in the town of Uman, which is 60 miles from Goloskov, to local writers. The poems were successful, so he entered the circle of Jewish poets. There he met his future wife. A girl from a wealthy family, a pianist, she shocked those around her with her choice: a poor village boy with a notebook of poems. He dedicated poems to her, where he compared his beloved with a wonderful garden, tightly closed. He told her: “A wonderful flower is blooming in my heart, I beg you, do not tear it.” And she quietly brought him bottles of sunflower oil and bags of sugar. In 1917, the young people got married.

At the same time, Lev Kvitko published his first collection of poems. It was called "Lideleh" ("Songs"). This and all other books by Lev Kvitko were written in Yiddish.

The beginning of the 1920s in Ukraine was a hungry, difficult, anxious time. Kvitko has a wife and a little daughter, unpublished poems, a dream to get an education. They live now in Kyiv, now in Uman, and in 1921, at the suggestion of the publishing house, they move to Berlin. Kvitko does not buy into bourgeois temptations: he, "liberated by the revolution", true to himself and his country, joins the German Communist Party, conducts propaganda among the workers in the port of Hamburg. All this leads to the fact that in 1925, fleeing from arrest, he returns to the Soviet Union.

Living in Kharkov, Kvitko sent a book of his children's poems to Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky. Here is how the “children's classic” writes about this: “I did not know a single Hebrew letter. But, realizing that on the title page, at the top, the name of the author should be put and that, therefore, this patterned letter is TO, and these two sticks - IN, but this comma - AND, I began to bravely leaf through the entire book. The captions above the pictures gave me about a dozen more letters. This inspired me so much that I immediately set off to read the headings of individual verses in warehouses, and then the verses themselves!

Elegance, melodiousness, mastery of verse and the sunny, joyful world captured in them captivated Chukovsky. And, having discovered a new poet for himself, he announced his discovery to everyone involved in children's poetry, and convinced them that all the children of the Soviet Union should know Lev Kvitko's poems.

It sounded in 1933 at a conference in Kharkov. Since then, the books of Lev Kvitko began to appear in huge editions in Russian translations. It was translated with great love by the best Russian poets - M. Svetlov, S. Marshak, S. Mikhalkov, N. Naidenova, and most of all - E. Blaginina. They have preserved the sound and imagery, lyricism and humor of the wonderful poems of the poet of a great soul.

Lev Kvitko was a man with the soul of a child: the world of his poetry is surprisingly cozy and bright. In the poems “Kisonka”, “Pipes”, “Violin”, everyone has fun and loves each other: the cat dances with mice, the horse, kitten and chicken listen to music and thank the little musician. Some verses ("Swing", "Brook") are written as games. They can be rhymes, they are easy to shout out, dancing and jumping:

Brook - murmur,

Wand twirled -

Stop, stop!

(Blaginina)

For a child, everything in life is new and significant, hence his close attention to simple, everyday things and their bright, visible perception.

“Look - look,” the poet addresses the children and teaches them to see the richness of details and shades in everything:

Dandelion silver,

How wonderfully created it is:

Round-round and fluffy

Filled with warm sunshine.

(Blaginina)

Here is another observation in the garden (the poem "Pilot"): a heavy, horned beetle, "growling" like a motor, falls to the ground. Waking up, he tries to crawl onto a blade of grass - and falls again. Again and again he climbs a thin blade of grass, and the hero watches him with sympathetic excitement: “How is this fat man holding up? In the end, the beetle gets to the green tip and ... takes off.

So that's where the key to excitement,

So that's what the pilot was craving -

High place to start

To spread your wings in flight!

A child was watching the beetle, but the final lines belong, of course, to an adult Poet.

In poetry, Kvitko does not imitate children, does not entertain them, he is a lyricist, he feels like they are, and writes about this. So he learns that little badgers live in a hole, and he is surprised: “How can they grow underground and lead a boring life underground?” He sees small flies on a leaf - and again he is surprised: what are they doing - learning to walk? “Maybe they are looking for food?” So he opened the watch - and froze, delighted with the teeth and springs, admires them without breathing and, knowing that his mother does not order to touch them, he hurries to assure us: “I didn’t touch the watch - no, no! Didn't take them apart, didn't wipe them." I saw neighboring twin babies: well, wow, “such good kids! And how similar they are to each other! ”, And directly groans with delight:“ I adore these guys!

Like any child, he lives in a fairy tale. In this tale, the strawberry dreams of being eaten - otherwise, in three days it will dry up without any use; trees plead: "Children, tear ripe fruits!"; corn and sunflowers will not wait: “If only nimble hands would pick them off soon!” Everything rejoices at the sight of a person, it is good and joyful for everyone to serve him. And a man - a child - also joyfully enters this world, where they are still beautiful: a beetle and a kitty, a boy and the sun, a puddle and a rainbow.

In this world, the wonder of life is constantly being marveled at. “Where are you from, white as snow, unexpected, like a miracle?” - the poet addresses the flower. “Oh miracle! The frog is sitting on his arm…” he greets the swamp beauty, and she answers him with dignity: “Do you want to see how I sit quietly? Well, look. I'm looking too." The hero planted a seed, and from it grew ... a carrot! (The poem is called "Miracle"). Or chicory ("... I don't know whether to believe it or not...")! Or a watermelon (“What is it: a fairy tale, a song or a wonderful dream?”)! After all, this is really a miracle, it’s just that adults have already taken a closer look at these miracles, and Kvitko, like a child, continues to exclaim: “Oh, a blade of grass!”

The war against fascism was a severe test for the poet's sunny world - in 1945 L. Kvitko writes: "I will never be the same now!" How can one be the same after learning about concentration camps, about the murder of children, raised to the law? .. And yet, referring to little Mirela, who lost her family, childhood, and faith in people in the war, the poet says to her: “How the world was blackened in your eyes, poor thing!” Blackened because, in spite of everything, the world is not what it seems in the long days of war. The poet - a child - an adult, he knows that the world is beautiful, he feels it every minute.

she recalled how she and Kvitko walked in the Crimea, in the Koktebel mountains: “Kvitko suddenly stops and, prayerfully folding his palms and looking at us somehow enthusiastically and amazed, almost whispers: “Could there be anything more beautiful! - And after a pause: - No, I must certainly return to these places ... "

But on January 22, 1949, Lev Kvitko, like other members of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, was arrested on charges of "underground Zionist activity and collaboration with foreign intelligence services." At the trial, after three years of extracting evidence, none of the accused pleaded guilty either to treason, or to espionage, or to bourgeois nationalism. In the last word, Kvitko said: “It seems to me that we have switched roles with the investigators, because they are obliged to accuse with facts, and I, a poet, create creative works, but it turned out the other way around.”

In August 1952, "spies" and "traitors" were shot. (Lev Kvitko was rehabilitated posthumously.) In the book “The Life and Work of Lev Kvitko”, published in 1976, nothing is said about his death, and only by the tragic tone of the memories of friends one can guess that something terrible happened.

In the memoirs of Agnia Barto, one can read how Kvitko showed her small Christmas trees growing near the fence, and repeated with tenderness: “Look at them ... They survived!” Later, apparently after Kvitko's death, Barto visited Ilyich's Testament, where the poet's dacha was located, “passed by the familiar fence. These Christmas trees did not survive."

Christmas trees have survived in poetry, as music lives forever in a violin from a poem by Lev Kvitko, as a boy and the sun always meet in them every day. This is the only possible victory for the poet over the enemy.

Quiz "The poetic world of Lev Kvitko from" A "to" Z "

According to these passages, try to determine what is at stake and remember the names of Lev Kvitko's poems.

Crossword "Legends of flowers"

In the highlighted cells: the poet, whose verses are similar to himself, are just as bright, and his nickname is “the lion-flower”.

Lev (Leib) Moiseevich Kvitko - Jewish (Yiddish) poet. Born in the town of Goloskov, Podolsk province (now the village of Goloskov, Khmelnitsky region of Ukraine), according to documents - November 11, 1890. He was orphaned at an early age, was brought up by his grandmother, studied in a cheder for some time, and was forced to work from childhood. He began writing poetry in 1902. The first publication was in May 1917 in the socialist newspaper Dos Frae Worth (Free Word). The first collection is "Lidelekh" ("Songs", Kyiv, 1917).
From the middle of 1921 he lived and published in Berlin, then in Hamburg, where he worked in the Soviet trade mission, published both in Soviet and Western periodicals. Here he joined the Communist Party, led communist agitation among the workers. In 1925, fearing arrest, he moved to the USSR. He published many books for children (17 books were published in 1928 alone). It is thanks to children's works that he gained fame.
For caustic satirical verses published in the magazine "Di roite welt" ("Red World"), he was accused of "right deviation" and expelled from the editorial office of the magazine. In 1931 he entered the Kharkov Tractor Plant as a worker. Then he continued his professional literary activity. Lev Kvitko considered the autobiographical novel in verse "Junge Yorn" ("Young Years"), on which he worked for thirteen years (1928-1941), to be his life's work. The first publication of the novel took place in Kaunas in 1941; the novel was published in Russian only in 1968.
Since 1936 he lived in Moscow. In 1939 he joined the CPSU (b).
During the war years, he was a member of the Presidium of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAC) and the editorial board of the JAC newspaper "Einikait" ("Unity"), in 1947-1948 - the literary and artistic almanac "Motherland". In the spring of 1944, on the instructions of the JAC, he was sent to the Crimea.
Among the leading figures of the JAC, Lev Kvitko was arrested on January 23, 1949. On July 18, 1952, he was accused by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR of treason and sentenced to the highest measure of social protection. On August 12, 1952, he was shot. He was buried at the Donskoy cemetery in Moscow. He was posthumously rehabilitated by the VKVS of the USSR on November 22, 1955.