Bestuzhev, Nikolai Alexandrovich. N

BESTUZHEV Nikolai Alexandrovich (13.4.1791, St. Petersburg - 15.5.1855, Selenginsk), Decembrist, lieutenant captain, historiographer, writer, critic, inventor, artist. He served in the Admiralty Department, organized lithography with it, and was awarded the Order of St. Vladimir, 4th class. Worked on Russian history. fleet. Director of the Admiralty Museum (1825). Member Free Island of Lovers grew up. Literature, Free Island educational institution, Free Economics. Islands, Islands for encouraging artists. Collaborated with the journal. “Polar Star”, “Son of the Fatherland”, etc. Ch. North island, one of the authors of the “Manifesto to the Russian. to the people." Participant in the uprising in St. Petersburg. In Chit. prison delivered 12/13/1827, transferred to Petrovsky Plant on September. 1830. During penal servitude and a settlement in Selenginsk (from 1839) he developed a new chronometer design, improved a gun lock, and was engaged in shoemaking, jewelry, turning and watchmaking. He taught his comrades and local residents how to sew boots and harden steel. Conducted regular meteorological, seismic and astronomical observations, studied the climate features of the Trans-Babush region, affecting the conditions for the growth of agricultural products. crops and hay grasses. I was interested in the rhythms of nature. processes. Supporter of the creation in Russia of a meteorological network operating according to a unified program. He was engaged in gardening, growing tobacco and watermelons. Tried to introduce fine-fleece sheep breeding. He noted the uncontrolled destruction of forests, causing shallowing of swamps and rivers and a decrease in agricultural yields. crops I paid attention to the traces of irrigation systems of the first farmers of the Zab., to the petroglyphs along the river. Selenga. He invented the so-called “Bestuzhev stove” and the crew. Based on the results of nature research in bass. Gusinoe Lake, households and various rituals of the Buryats published an essay “Goose Lake”. Author of a number of other articles on archeology, ethnography, economics and literature. works about the role of the people in history - “Russian in Paris in 1814”, “Notes on the War of 1812”. “Memories of Ryleev” - best work zab. period published by A. I. Herzen abroad in the 1860s. He worked in watercolors, and later in oils on canvas (portraits of the Decembrists, their wives and children, city residents, views of Chita and the Petrovsky Factory.

Lit.: Memoirs of the Bestuzhevs. - M.; L., 1951; Spector M. Memory for descendants // Zab. worker. - 1975. - November 20; Pasetsky V. M. Geogr. research of the Decembrists. - M., 1977; Decembrists: Biogr. reference book / Ed. M. V. Nechkina. - M., 1988; Zilberstein S. I. Decembrist artist Nikolai Bestuzhev. - M., 1988; Tivanenko A. Archaeol. hobbies N. A. Bestuzhev // Sib. and the Decembrists. - Irkutsk, 1988. - No. 5; Konstantinov M. V. Oracles of the ages. Sketches about explorers of Siberia. - Novosibirsk, 2002.

There are fewer and fewer memorable places left in Moscow. And that’s why the small wooden house on Rostov Embankment looks like a miracle.
It is clearly visible from the Kyiv river pier.
Everything is still buried in greenery.... How many times have I made my way through its thickets.
And how many turbulent events and turning points he awakens in me.

The owner of the mansion was Mikhail Alexandrovich Bestuzhev, staff captain of the Life Guards of the Moscow Regiment, Decembrist, writer.\1800-1871\
Father - Alexander Fedoseevich Bestuzhev \1761 - 1810\, artillery officer.
Since 1800, the ruler of the office of the Academy of Arts, writer.
Mother - Praskovya Mikhailovna\177-1846\.
Bestuzhev brothers: Alexander, Nikolai, Peter, Pavel.

In 1824, Mikhail was admitted to the Northern Society.
He led the 3rd company of the Moscow Regiment to Senate Square.
Arrested on December 14, 1825 on Senate Square.
On December 18, 1825, he was imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress.
On August 7, 1826, together with his brother Nikolai, he was taken to Shlisselburg.

Sent to Siberia on September 28, 1827.
It took two months to get to the Chita prison.
Three years later they were transferred to the Petrovsky plant, September 1830.

On November 8, 1832, the term of hard labor was reduced to 15 years, and on December 14, 1835 to 13 years.
Studied at the "convict academy" Spanish, Polish and Latin, Italian language, English.
He studied goldsmithing, watchmaking, bookbinding, turning, shoemaking, cardboard making and hat making.
M. Bestuzhev, author of the song “Like Fog,” popular among exiles (1835), dedicated to the 10th anniversary of the uprising of the Chernigov regiment.

In 1839, brothers Mikhail and Nikolai Bestuzhev settled in a free settlement in the city of Selenginsk, Irkutsk province.

In February 1844, the mother of the Bestuzhev brothers sold the estate.
And, after the death of Praskovya Mikhailovna (October 27, 1846), the Bestuzhev sisters were allowed to settle in Selenginsk with all the restrictions prescribed for the wives of state criminals.

Here M.A. Bestuzhev was happy, he was married to the sister of the Cossack captain Selivanov, Maria Nikolaevna.
He had four children: Elena, Nikolai, Maria, Alexandra.
But... all the children died in early adolescence.

I built a house and acclimatized the plants. Published in the first newspaper of Transbaikalia, “Kyakhtinsky Listok”.
He designed and produced a horse-drawn carriage, which in Transbaikalia was called “sideyka”, even now.
In Selenginsk, the brothers Mikhail and Nikolai Bestuzhev became close friends with the head of the Buddhists, the Hambo Lama of the Gusinoozersky datsan, Gomboev.
Michael wrote a treatise on Buddhism based on Buddhist Cosmology. It was transferred for storage to the Kyakhta merchant A. M. Lushnikov. The merchant placed the treatise in a chest with a will to open it in 1951. The chest is lost.

Several stories and memoirs were written on the history of the Decembrist movement.
In 1857, he led a flotilla on a large trade rafting along the Amur to Nikolaevsk (Amur expeditions of 1854 - 1858).
He left Selenginsk in June 1867 after the death of his wife.

Of course he was an outstanding man. He was 25 years old when the desire to change the World, to make it fair, was the main thing.
It is now clear that Revolutionary actions weaken the state. The people only lose.
In Russia, four generations lived in poverty and deprivation in the name of the “Coming Future”.
But there were no more Aristocrats of the Spirit comparable to the Decembrists in Russia.
There was the Soviet nomenklatura, officials who, by virtue of their positions, were supposed to show fairness. But personal enrichment and use of one’s position was above all.

M.A. Bestuzhev returned to Moscow at the age of 67 to his parents’ wooden mansion,
at number 17, on 7th Rostovsky Lane.
He was full of plans and plans.
But...in the spring of 1871, the Moscow River overflowed its banks, and the Rostov, Berezhkovskaya, and Dorogomilovskaya embankments were flooded. The townspeople traveled by boats.
The summer of 1871 was hot. A cholera epidemic was raging in Moscow.

M.A. Bestuzhev Died of cholera in Moscow on June 22, 1871. He was buried at the Vagankovskoye cemetery.

Portrait\oil, canvas\ - Decembrist Mikhail Alexandrovich Bestuzhev 1800-1871

Mikhail Bestuzhev was born on October 4, 1800 in the city of St. Petersburg. In 1817 he graduated naval corps and was sent sailing off the coast of France. Acquaintance with European life made a strong impression on him. Freedom-loving dreams began to ferment in his head.

The second time Bestuzhev went abroad was 4 years later, when, while traveling from Arkhangelsk to Kronstadt, he stopped in Copenhagen; here, as he testified at the trial, “the concepts borrowed from France became more entrenched.” The stories of comrades who had also been abroad intensified the impressions. News of revolutionary unrest in Italy, Spain and Germany acted in the same direction.

In 1824, Bestuzhev was introduced into a secret society. In 1825, Mikhail Alexandrovich joined the Moscow regiment with the rank of staff captain.

He took an active part in the events of the December uprising: he convinced the soldiers not to take the oath to Emperor Nicholas, he led the company to Senate Square, along with three other companies marching under the command of Prince Shchepin-Rostovsky and Alexander Bestuzhev. Arrested on the same day, Bestuzhev was first imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress, and in September 1826 he was transferred to the Shlisselburg Fortress. From here in September 1827, together with his brother Nikolai, he was sent to Siberia.

While sitting in the fortress, he came up with the “wall alphabet” for tapping between prisoners, and this “invention” was passed down from generation to generation. While he was serving hard labor in Chita, life was very difficult for him.

With the transfer in 1830 to the Petrovsky plant, the situation improved, and there was a lot of time left to work on his education. While still sitting in the fortress, Bestuzhev became interested in studying languages. In Siberia, he mastered well not only all the main European languages, but also such as Spanish and Polish. For a circle of comrades who systematically studied philosophy and history, he wrote a number of essays.

In 1839 he was released and settled in Selenginsk. Here he acquired an estate and, with his characteristic passion, devoted himself to agriculture.

Like all Bestuzhevs, he was a jack of all trades, knew many crafts and applied his abilities to various kinds of inventions. Business and marriage firmly tied him to Siberia, and for a long time he did not take advantage of the amnesty of 1856.

Only in 1867 did Bestuzhev go to Moscow, where he died on July 3, 1871. A man of versatile talents, Mikhail Bestuzhev did not concentrate his talents. He wrote a lot in prose and poetry, but did not publish anything. In his old age, he wrote interesting notes about the day of December 26 and the life of the Decembrists in Siberia, as well as memories of his brother Alexander.

N. A. Bestuzhev

N. A. Bestuzhev

(Ya. Levkovich)

The name of Nikolai Aleksandrovich Bestuzhev has long gone down in the history of the Russian revolutionary movement. He is one of the most active “actors” in preparing and carrying out the uprising on December 14th. But his name belongs with equal right to Russian culture and Russian literature. He was a man of bright personality. The versatility of his talents is amazing: an artist who created a unique gallery of the faces of his “prisoners” and their wives, a remarkable mechanic-inventor, historian, economist and political thinker, and finally, a writer whose talent was highly valued by his contemporaries. “Nikolai Bestuzhev was a man of genius,” writes N. I. Lorer, “and, my God, what did he not know, what was he not capable of?”

N. Bestuzhev began to write (but did not have time to complete due to the December events) the history of the Russian fleet, he wrote the treatise “On Freedom of Trade and Industry” (1831), which is the largest monument to the economic thought of the Decembrists, he seriously studied natural sciences, worked on improving chronometers, invented a simplified rifle bolt. In addition, he was a good agronomist and craftsman - a turner, a goldsmith. At a settlement in Selenginsk, he set up an observatory for meteorological observations and, as his sister Elena recalls, “he was even a shoemaker in an argument.”

An amazing fusion of talents manifests itself in various fields his activities, in everything he touches. In the artist Bestuzhev we see a historian who preserved for posterity the faces of the participants in the uprising, who captured in visual images their homes, everyday life, and the nature that surrounded them. In Bestuzhev the writer one can constantly feel the gaze of an observant scientist, in the historiographer of the Decembrist movement - a writer who knew how to combine the desire for maximum accuracy in depicting real events with the expression of his own assessment of them.

Alexander Bestuzhev, at the zenith of his Marlinsky fame, exclaimed with bitterness: “But you, Nikolai, why are you lost to our literature!” Siberian “prisoners” were forbidden to write, much less publish. But the literary life of the Decembrists, both in the dungeon and later in the settlement, was not interrupted. Nikolai Bestuzhev did not interrupt her either. However, he was no longer able to see his works in print. A collection of his essays and stories appeared only in 1860, after the death of the writer.

On December 14, the name of the Bestuzhevs as “the main instigators of the riot” spread throughout the capital before the names of Ryleev, Pestel, Kakhovsky became known. Someone’s sharp word spread throughout the city that the Bestuzhevs were always involved in all the riots in Russia. “There were five brothers and all five of us died in the whirlpool on December 14,” Mikhail Bestuzhev later wrote. The eldest of the five was Nikolai.

N. Bestuzhev was born in 1791, in the family of the famous educator Alexander Fedoseevich Bestuzhev, a “Radishchevite”, friend and ally of I.P. Pnin, with whom he published the St. Petersburg Journal, an organ of radical political thought. A. F. Bestuzhev owns the treatise “On Military Education,” where he opposes class privileges, putting forward the only measure of a person’s importance in society is his personal merits, his awareness of his responsibilities to society. An excellent teacher, he managed to instill his ideas in his own family - primarily in his eldest son Nikolai. And when in 1810 A. F. Bestuzhev died and the responsibility for raising the younger ones fell on the eldest son, Nikolai managed to become for them both a mentor and an ideal man and citizen. The memories of Elena and Mikhail, the letters of Alexander Bestuzhev testify to the boundless love for their elder brother and his moral influence on all family members.

Nikolai Bestuzhev was preparing to become a sailor. Graduated in 1809 cadet corps and after spending several years there as a teacher, he joined the navy, in 1815, 1817 and 1824 he sailed to Holland, France and Spain, and from 1819 he was assistant director of the Baltic lighthouses. In 1823, he became the head of the Maritime Museum and studied the history of the Russian fleet.

N. Bestuzhev was accepted into the Northern Society by Ryleev in 1824, and since 1825 he has already been a member of the Duma of the society. Belonging to the most revolutionary-minded group of “northerners” who, like Pestel, insisted on expanding the rights of popular representation and the liberation of peasants with land, he, together with his brother Alexander, was one of Ryleev’s main assistants on the eve of the uprising. On December 14, Bestuzhev led the Marine Guards crew to the square, although he had been with the Admiralty Department for several years and had been in practical maritime service had no relation. On was one of the few Decembrists who showed steadfastness during the investigation: he answered questions very restrainedly, admitting only what was known to the Investigative Committee, keeping silent about the affairs of the secret society and almost not naming names. Many memoirists recall the courage of his answers during interrogations. I. D. Yakushkin wrote: “In the eyes of the highest authorities, the main guilt of Nikolai Bestuzhev was that he spoke very boldly before the members of the commission and acted very boldly when he was brought to the palace.” During interrogations, he succinctly portrayed serious condition Russia. Already in his first testimony, he says: “Seeing the disorder of finances, the decline of trade and the trust of the merchants, the complete insignificance of our methods in agriculture, and most of all the lawlessness of the courts, made our hearts tremble.”

They report the words of Nicholas I after the first interrogation that Nikolai Bestuzhev is the smartest person among the conspirators. Title " the smartest person“In a year and a half, the tsar will reward Pushkin too, and it will cost both “the smartest” dearly - Pushkin will be under secret surveillance, and N. Bestuzhev will be judged especially harshly. It was his behavior during interrogations that apparently influenced the court's decision. In the “List of persons who, in the case of secret malicious societies, are brought before the Supreme Criminal Court by order of the highest order,” all convicts were divided into eleven categories and one extra-category group. Nikolai Bestuzhev was assigned to category II, although the investigation materials did not provide grounds for such a high “rank”. Obviously, the judges understood the actual role and significance of the elder Bestuzhev in Northern society. “Second-class people” were condemned by the Supreme Criminal Court to political death, that is, “put their heads on the chopping block, and then be sent forever to hard labor.”

Nicholas I introduced a number of “modifications and mitigations” to the sentence by moving “criminals” from one category to another. For those convicted of the second and third categories, eternal hard labor was replaced by twenty years with deprivation of ranks and nobility and subsequent exile to a settlement. On the occasion of the coronation of Nicholas I, the term of hard labor for the second category was reduced to 15 years. By the Manifesto of 1829, it was again reduced - to 10 years, but Nikolai and Mikhail Bestuzhev were not affected by this reduction, and they settled only in July 1839.

Before the uprising, Ryleev called Mikhail Bestuzhev a “man of action.” Nikolai Bestuzhev was also a “man of action”. The Bestuzhev brothers remain “men of action” even in exile. In the casemates of the Petrovsky plant, N. Bestuzhev writes memoirs and stories in which he tries to comprehend the lessons of the uprising. At the settlement, the works of the Bestuzhev brothers laid the foundation for historical, ethnographic and natural scientific knowledge and description of Siberia; they participate in educating the local population, teaching peasant children in Selenginsk, as if remembering the behest of Pestel, who wrote about the peoples of Siberia: “May they become our brothers and they will cease to be touched by their pitiful situation.”

Before the December uprising, N. Bestuzhev actively participated in literary life. He wrote romantic stories, travel essays (“travelling”), fables, poems, his translations appeared in magazines - from T. Moore, Byron, Walter Scott, Washington Irving, scientific articles were published - on history, physics, mathematics. Many of his manuscripts were destroyed after the defeat of the uprising, but what was printed is enough to judge his high skill and professionalism in all the issues he touched upon.

All of Nikolai Bestuzhev’s creativity is organically connected with Decembrist movement. Decembrist ideology spread throughout society through literature. “Opinion rules the world,” asserted the advanced educational philosophy of the 18th century. Disciples of this philosophy, the Decembrists believed in the power of reason and considered it necessary and possible to influence “general opinion.” The connection of political ideas with modern literature formulated by Alexander Bestuzhev: “The imagination, dissatisfied with the essence, hungers for fiction, and under the political seal literature swirls in society.”

He paid special attention to the literature of the “Union of Welfare” (1818–1821). The literary center of the Union of Prosperity (and then the Northern Society) was the Free Society of Lovers of Russian Literature - a literary springboard for the Decembrists, which played a significant role in the training of Decembrist personnel. In 1821, the Free Society took over the functions of the dissolved “Union of Welfare” in the field of education. It was in 1821 that Nikolai Bestuzhev became one of the members of the society and soon occupied a prominent place in it: since 1822 he has been a member of the censorship committee ( editorial board, By modern ideas); in 1825 - prose censor, that is Chief Editor all prose works; at the same time he is elected as a candidate for assistant to the president (the president of the society was F.N. Glinka).

N. Bestuzhev’s literary activity is closely connected with the Free Society - he repeatedly speaks at meetings reading his literary and historical works, his works are published mainly in the magazine “Competitor of Education and Charity” - the official organ of the Free Society.

The society's literary program paid special attention to the "description of lands and customs." “Competitor of Enlightenment...” in 1818 (No. 10) announced his intention to have, among others, the following sections: “Description of lands and peoples. Historical passages and biographies of famous men. Scientists travel. Everything curious about the sciences and arts.”

N. Bestuzhev's first literary experiments include three sections of this program - travel, description of lands and peoples, history and “everything curious regarding the sciences and arts.” His “travels” in external form are typical “travel sketches”, “reports” of travelers usual for that time about what they saw in foreign countries, so widespread in the literature of sentimentalism.

Under the pen of the Decembrists, the traditional genre of “travel” was restructured. Sentimental travelers, according to A. Bestuzhev, “sighed until they fainted” and “dropped tears on the lily of the valley.” The Decembrists use travel to study the “great deeds” of peoples and national glory. Instead of an idle collector of impressions, a thinking, progressive person of his era appears in the Decembrist “travel” literature, combining a writer and a publicist in himself.

Traveler Bestuzhev is an attentive and thoughtful observer of social political life and life of Western European countries. Traveling abroad was an instructive lesson for him and played a significant role in the development of his socio-political consciousness. In his testimony to the Investigative Committee, he wrote: “My stay in Holland in 1815, for five months, when constitutional government was established there, gave me the first concept of the benefits of laws and civil rights. After that, a two-time visit to France and a voyage to England and Spain confirmed this way of thinking.”

Bestuzhev looks closely at the life of an unfamiliar country, he is interested in everything - lifestyle and way of life, architecture and clothing, trades and crafts, folk entertainment and museums. In educational treatises, Holland has traditionally served as an example of hard work. “In fact,” wrote Raynal, “shouldn’t we expect patriotic feelings from such a people who can say to themselves: I made this fruitful, by me inhabited earth. I decorated it, formed it! The waves of this formidable sea, which covered our fields, are crushing against the barriers that I have set...” The hard work of the Dutch with their “patriotic feelings” also brings N. Bestuzhev closer together. His attention is drawn to the “active” life of the Dutch, their efforts to “conquer nature.” In grandiose dams, in land reclaimed from the sea, he sees the material expression of the social activity of free people.

Having first encountered the republican way of government, he pays special attention to it. An excursion into the history of Holland, a look at its current economic and political state - everything is subordinated to one cross-cutting thought: only under a republican system can the country prosper. The Dutch, in his words, “showed the world what humanity is capable of and to what extent the spirit of free people can rise.” The epithets that accompany the word “republic” (“free”, “proud”) testify to a deep and interested sympathy for a representative form of government. The idea of ​​a constitutional system became alive and concrete for him. Behind the text of the story about a prosperous republic in the minds of Bestuzhev stood feudal Russia with its disenfranchised population, despotic commanders, and a brutal regime in the army. The preaching of the inviolability of laws and the right of the people to govern their country was objectively directed against the Russian autocracy.

Another travel essay, “Gibraltar,” was written at a time when a wave of revolutionary movements, and Bestuzhev himself, already a member of a secret society, was preparing to carry out a revolution in Russia. The author's position as a “traveler” is defined at the beginning of the essay. He warns the reader that this time he will not find in his essay detailed descriptions of the life and way of life of this fortified city: “I don’t want to go into details, that outside the city there is a garden where there are several busts that remind the English of great people and their deeds ; that there are two libraries in the city, one for the garrison, the other for the merchants; that there is a bad theater where good singers who came from Lisbon are angry along with the listeners at the bad music; I won’t say that on this bare stone, in places, in the gorges, there are gardens and trees; that the residents drink rain water, and bring fresh water there on donkeys from Spain, that beef is sold to them under a contract by a Moroccan owner - all this is an ordinary thing ... "

The central place in the essay is occupied by the struggle of the Spanish insurgents for independence, taking place beyond the steppes of the city. The essay is filled with signs of popular indignation: “confusion” in the city, “songs of liberty”, the execution of insurgents, and finally, the fate of the Spanish constitutional ministers who took refuge in Gibraltar - all this is depicted with ardent sympathy for the republicans. “Notes on Holland” was a demonstration of the opportunities that the republican system brings to the country. In “Gibraltar” Bestuzhev depicts images not of former freedom fighters, but of contemporary revolutionaries. The romantic figure of a freedom fighter is introduced into the consciousness of contemporaries and political betrayal is branded.

A special place in the work of N. Bestuzhev occupies Marine theme. It is no coincidence that the posthumous collection of his selected works is called “Stories and Tales of the Old Sailor.” Not only N. Bestuzhev himself was a sailor and historiographer of the Russian fleet, but the entire Bestuzhev family was primarily associated with the sea. Father A.F. Bestuzhev was a naval officer (before he retired after being wounded), his brother Peter served in the navy, and Mikhail was a sailor (before joining the guard). Involvement in the fleet undoubtedly contributed to the formation of revolutionary sentiments in the Bestuzhev family.

The disastrous picture of the gradual decline and disintegration of the Russian fleet in the “Alexander era,” which naval historians consider “the darkest era in its history,” offended patriotic feelings and led thinking officers to the need to change the order of things, that is, to the need to change the existing system. This is how Mikhail Bestuzhev talks about his entry into the secret society: “Seeing firsthand the destruction of our fleet under the control of the French minister (Marquis de Traversay), and then the German (Anton Vasilyevich Moller) and being personally offended by the blatant injustice in the project of K.P. Thorson about the transformation of the fleet, I involuntarily became imbued with a feeling of disgust for naval service and, having drowned out my passion for the sea, I looked for an opportunity to hide my head anywhere. Brother Alexander<..>invited me to join the guard, explaining to me that my presence in the guard regiments might be useful for our cause - I agreed.” There were many sailors in the secret society, including outstanding naval officers who, in the words of D.I. Zavalishin, constituted “the best hope of the Russian fleet.” These are the Bestuzhevs, and their friend Thorson, Zavalishin himself, Mikhail Kuchelbecker, the Belyaev brothers, etc.

In the essay “On Pleasures at Sea,” Bestuzhev immerses the reader in the atmosphere of unanimity and unanimity that reigns among the officers on the ship: “Raised in one place, as if children of the same mother, with ... the same way of thinking, the society of naval service officers is distinguished by that friendly connection, that sincere straightforwardness that other societies, made up of people who came from different directions, cannot imagine.”

Marine life, full of dangers, when the life of everyone can depend on the actions and deeds of one and all together, is presented as ideal conditions for developing the character and feelings of a person entering life. At sea, a person gets used to seeing danger “without fear and in cold blood,” and from the first steps he becomes involved in the “competition of service and camaraderie.” “The competition of service and camaraderie” subsequently brought the Marine Guards crew to Senate Square.

Man in the face of the elements is the main conflict of sea stories and essays by Bestuzhev. His narratives about events at sea, be it a romantic story (“Boat Trip”, 1831), a description of a true incident (“News of the crashed Russian brig Falke…”) or a lyrical monologue of a romantic in love with the sea (“Tolbukhinsky Lighthouse”) - are a must include a description of the storm. IN extreme conditions a person’s business and moral qualities are tested, his endurance, resourcefulness, and fearlessness are tested. The brig Falk is wrecked due to the professional unsuitability of one of the crew members. The hero of “Tolbukhinsky Lighthouse” emerges victorious from the battle with the sea elements because his “steady hand controls the helm” and “his art avoids blows and protects against drowning.” But even in the very death of the sailors on the brig “Falk”, Bestuzhev emphasizes the high moral qualities of the sailors. One of the two surviving crew members was saved by the sailors, who, freezing, covered him with their bodies.

Conviction in the trust of soldiers and sailors, in their dedication and ability to sacrifice, confirmed the future Decembrists in the possibility of achieving military revolution. A.I. Arbuzov testified at the investigation that he was confident in the possibility of raising the Sea Crew, because he knew the “love and trust” of the sailors for him.

After the fateful date of December 14, Decembrism did not cease to exist as a socio-literary movement. In penal servitude and in the settlements, Decembrist writers continued to develop ideas that, before the uprising, were pushed aside by current service and revolutionary activity. A new stage in the work of N. Bestuzhev began in Siberia.

Memories of December 14, as well as a number of artistic works, also brought to life by the tragic events of the uprising, were conceived and partially written here. Both memoir prose and psychological stories, in fact, reveal one theme - the paths that led the participants in the uprising to the square, and then into the “convict holes” - their worldview, their aspirations and hopes. We do not know the chronological sequence in which “Stories and Tales of the Old Sailor” (that part of them that was written in Siberia) came from the pen of Bestuzhev, but through all of his Siberian work we can draw a single plot-psychological line - ethical principles and the worldview of a leading man of his time, the path of moral and social development of the personality of the future Decembrist, his worldview during the period of preparation for the revolution and at the very moment of the uprising.

In his prose, N. Bestuzhev tried to comprehend and generalize the lessons of the uprising. First of all, this applies to memoirs. The memoirs of the Decembrists conveyed to us their revolutionary program, the freshness of the experiences and moods with which their authors prepared for revolutionary actions, they conveyed everyday details, words, lively dialogues, and remarks. The memoir prose of N. A. Bestuzhev, who had a keen and precise eye as a painter, is especially noteworthy. His widely known “Memoirs of Ryleev” and the short passage “December 14, 1825” were conceived by him as part of more extensive memories of the December events. The plan remained unfinished - we know about this from the memoirs of Mikhail Bestuzhev, Nikolai Bestuzhev himself spoke about this with sadness before his death.

The memories of Nikolai Bestuzhev equally belong to memoir and fiction prose; in it, as later in “The Past and Thoughts” by A. I. Herzen, the truly past is combined with artistic generalization. M.K. Azadovsky wrote that in “Memories of Ryleev” the image of the leader of the Northern Society is shown through the prism of a romantic story. Bestuzhev unfolds the narrative “in speeches and dialogues, sprinkled with literary quotes, portrait sketches, genre scenes, accompanied by an epigraph.” The image of the revolutionary tribune is presented in a romantic style - he is enthusiastic and sensitive, his eyes “sparkle”, “his face is burning” and he “cries”, etc., although we know that Ryleev was extremely restrained on the eve of the uprising.

“Memories of Ryleev” completes the “biographies of great men” laid down in the program of the Union of Welfare, bringing these biographies up to December 14, 1825.

The passage, provisionally titled “December 14, 1825,” combines autobiographical and fictional elements to the same extent as Ryleev’s biography (as does the story “Shlisselburg Station”). To verify this, it is enough to compare Bestuzhev’s story about his stay in the house of an unknown benefactor on December 14, 1825 with the version of the same episode in the memoirs of Mikhail Bestuzhev. According to Mikhail Bestuzhev, his brother is being sheltered by like-minded people - a father and two sons. Nikolai Bestuzhev introduces into his story conflict situation: the father sympathizes with the “cause” in the square, the son is a zealous servant of the new emperor. Real fact(shelter in an unfamiliar house) is complemented by a situation characteristic of the day of December 14, when every citizen was faced with the problem of choice, when society split into two camps: sympathizers and haters. The biographical fact thus acquires the force of artistic generalization.

In his memoir prose, N. Bestuzhev, while maintaining an autobiographical basis, obscures real persons and events with literary details and fiction. In an autobiographical story, the fictional narrative reflects his own experiences. But Bestuzhev’s work is not a passive registration of his life’s conflicts. He creates a generalized image of the Decembrist positive hero. “Shlisselburg Station,” like other stories by Bestuzhev, written in prisons and among the population, can be called an autobiographical Decembrist story.

“Shlisselburg Station” has the subtitle “true incident.” The connection with some personal moments is deliberately emphasized in the presentation (mention of his family, naval service, the essay “On the Pleasures of the Sea,” etc.). Therefore, at first glance, N. Bestuzhev concerns a particular case - he answers the question of the “ladies” (wives of the Decembrists) why he remained a bachelor (there is evidence from Mikhail Bestuzhev about the origin of the idea for the story). Shortly before the uprising, Bestuzhev wrote the story “Tavern Staircase” based on the same plot. Both “Tavern Staircase” and “Shlisselburg Station” are inspired by a relationship with a woman, whose love N. Bestuzhev carried throughout his life.

Both stories have the same autobiographical basis, both highlight the talent of Bestuzhev, a master of psychological storytelling, but the same collision is designed to reveal different social characters.

“The Inn Staircase” deeply and subtly conveys the experiences of a man who in his youth loved a woman who was someone else’s wife, and who because of this in old age was left without his own family. Bestuzhev delves into the psychology of a man devoted to his only love and sacrificing happiness for her.

In “Shlisselburg Station” his own fate merges with the fate of his political like-minded people. The plot of renunciation of personal happiness now serves to express the harsh self-denial of a person who has chosen the path of a professional revolutionary. This moral credo of the Decembrist is clearly expressed in the very epigraph to the story:

"One head is not poor,

And even if you’re poor, you’re alone.”

A man who has rebelled against autocracy sacrifices his freedom and therefore has no moral right to condemn his beloved woman to suffering, who is expected to be separated from her husband, the father of her children. The problem of the revolutionary’s personal happiness was not an expression of the opinion of Bestuzhev alone, and was not invented by him. Life itself confronted her with the captivity of the secret society; she was supported by real examples. It is known that some members of the early secret societies(M.F. Orlov, P.I. Koloshin, V.P. Zubkov, I.N. Gorstkin) linked their refusal to further revolutionary activities with marriage and family life. E. Obolensky testified at the investigation that “all these members are married, and therefore belong to society solely through previous connections.” The very example of the Decembrist wives who followed their husbands to Siberia, their heroic but full of hardships life confirmed Bestuzhev in the correctness of his answer to the question posed.

Russian revolutionaries of the next generation also thought about it. The researcher rightly notes that N. G. Chernyshevsky in the novel “What is to be done?”, written in Peter and Paul Fortress, “posed the same problem (“I need to give up all happiness”) in connection with the characterization of the socio-psychological appearance of the “special person” Rakhmetov.

Little story“Funeral” introduces the motif of the failed Decembrist into the series of Bestuzhev’s stories about his contemporaries. The story has a socially accusatory theme. The man whose funeral the narrator comes to was not alien to “noble impulses” in his youth. This expression, translated into prose, from Pushkin’s letter “To Chaadaev”, indicates that the deceased was not just a “childhood friend” of the narrator, but before known time and like-minded person. “But soon,” the narrator explains, “our different fate, which left me on the same level where I stood and called him into the circle of great light, disappointed me.”

The deceased “friend” is the antithesis of the hero of “Shlisselburg Station”. Autobiographical details made one guess in the hero of “Shlisselburg Station” Bestuzhev himself, with his future fate a man who went through an uprising, who was not broken by hard labor and exile, and who, having sacrificed personal happiness, remained a creative “activist” even in “hard labor.” The narrator’s “friend” was “surrounded by a lovely family, his wife and children, in the midst of a brilliant circle of acquaintances,” but, in fact, he was a living dead because he had ceased to be himself. “Noble impulses” disappeared, “entertainment and duties and everything that is called the life of the great world” changed him. Simple-hearted wit" gave way to "irony, whose appearance bore the stamp of the strictest decency," and instead of "a clear and impartial presentation" there appeared "an ambiguous opinion, from which he was ready to deny himself every minute."

In “Funeral,” Bestuzhev is an exposer of the spiritual emptiness and hypocrisy of “the big world, where decency should replace all sensations of the heart and where the outward sign of them puts the stamp of the funny on every unfortunate person who is so weak that he allows his inner movement to be noticed.”

The story “Funeral” was written in 1823, it can be recognized as “one of the first - in time - prose works in which the falsity and spiritual emptiness of aristocratic circles are exposed.” At this time, the anti-secular stories of V.F. Odoevsky and Alexander Bestuzhev had not yet been written. Pushkin’s “Roslavlev” was not written either, where the “secular mob” is shown with the same journalistic fervor as in Bestuzhev’s story.

The story “A Russian in Paris 1814” is also connected with reflections on the destinies and characters of the generation that entered life on the eve of the Patriotic War.

“We were children of 1812,” briefly and deeply defined the attitude of the Decembrists towards Patriotic War 1812 Matvey Muravyov. The year 1812 was a turning point in their political life. N. Bestuzhev himself was not in Paris - his military fate was different, and the story is based on the Parisian impressions of his comrades in hard labor, and first of all N. O. Lorer. The moment of Russian troops entering the capital of France, realities, faces, incidents, folk scenes remembered by Laurer - all this was conveyed by Bestuzhev with memoiristic precision. The historian and essayist showed himself here to the fullest. The hero of the story, Glinsky, also conveys some of Lorer’s character traits and biography.

In Glinsky we see an apologetic depiction of the advanced Russian intelligentsia, from whose ranks the main backbone of secret society leaders was formed. He is smart, educated, captivating with his spiritual nobility and reserve of pure moral strength.

The plot centers on the love experiences of Glinsky and the young Frenchwoman Countess de Serval. With great knowledge human soul Bestuzhev takes his heroes through numerous obstacles: here is the psychological barrier separating the two nations - the winners and the vanquished, and the awkward circumstances that Glinsky finds himself in in an unfamiliar country, and the grafili’s recent widowhood, her desire to remain faithful to her husband who died in the war, and her involuntary rivalry with the cousin, and the lovers' mutual uncertainty about each other's feelings.

The desire to reveal the subtlest nuances of the characters’ love and moral fluctuations, their internal attractions and repulsions leads to some lengthiness in the narrative, and the image of Glinsky at first glance seems overly idealized. But weren’t the future Decembrists endowed with all the qualities that the hero of the story possesses? Were these qualities not inherent in Nikolai Bestuzhev himself? Herzen called the Decembrists “heroes, forged from pure steel from head to toe.”

Bestuzhev sympathizes with the hero’s experiences, justifies the heroine’s behavior and brings the lovers’ romance to a happy end, because they are connected by simple, sincere human feelings. Bestuzhev’s views on love and relationships between women and men were determined in his youth. Among his papers, a notebook entitled “Natural Law”, which he kept in 1814, has been preserved. One chapter is specifically devoted to the problem of marriage and the relationship between men and women. Bestuzhev demanded from husband and wife “mutual purity of one to the other” and rejected marriages “not out of love,” but “by agreement.” He called marriages “by agreement” or “of convenience” “privileged debauchery.”

The patriotic tendency of the story is emphasized by the title “Russian in Paris 1814.” It seems to remind us that the moment the Russian army entered Paris is the culmination of Russian patriotism. In addition, Glinsky, with all his behavior, is called upon to show the true face of the Russian person and thereby dispel “the prejudice that all the French generally had against the Russians.”

The main plot collision of the story - the spiritual closeness of the Russian officer, the hero of 1812, and the widow of the enemy of Russia, the French colonel - provides some grounds for recreating the circumstances that determined the emergence of the plan and the development of the plot. The story was written at the Petrovsky plant (that is, not earlier than 1831). In the same year, 1831, M. N. Zagoskin’s novel “Roslavlev” was published. Here we find a situation that mirrors the main one storyline Bestuzhev's stories. The bride of the Russian officer Roslavlev, Polina, loves the French officer Count Senecourt, whom she met in Paris before the war. When Senecour is captured, Pauline marries him and follows her husband after French troops free him from captivity. Senecur dies; Polina, abandoned by everyone, also dies in a foreign land.

The heroine of Zagoskina is a weak woman devoid of a sense of patriotism. Her love for Senecur is presented in the novel as treason, and death as a well-deserved punishment for treachery. She is surrounded by general contempt, the French reject her, she is even deprived of her husband’s love. “Yes, madam,” he tells her. - We died. The Russians are triumphant, but excuse me! I was stupid to forget for a minute that you are Russian.”

Zagoskin's novel was the stimulus for Pushkin's polemical story "Roslavlev". Zagoskin presents the rise of national self-awareness during the days of the Patriotic War in an official-patriotic light. This prompted Pushkin to give his own version of the plot. Pushkin did not finish the story, but already at the beginning of it he repeats the main plot of Zagoskin’s novel, bringing Polina closer to Senecourt. This rapprochement does not prevent the heroine from remaining a true patriot. What attracts her to Senecourt is “knowledge of the matter and impartiality” - that is, intelligence and human dignity. Each of them is a patriot of his fatherland, and Pushkin’s Polina values ​​the true patriotism of the Frenchman above the false, leavened patriotism of the Russians. Pushkin contrasted Zagoskin's reactionary patriotism with his own broad and truly democratic patriotism.

It is possible that Bestuzhev’s story, like Pushkin’s “Roslavlev,” was a kind of polemic with Zagoskin. The Decembrists received all the literary novelties from Russia, and the sensational novel about the Patriotic War could not bypass them.

Bestuzhev places next to Glinsky not just a Frenchwoman, not just a socialite, for whom the defeat of Napoleon and the restoration of the monarchy could be desirable events. Countess de Serval is the widow of Napoleon's adjutant, a Bonapartist, who fully shares her husband's beliefs. People of the “light” greet their allies with delight and show their devotion to Emperor Alexander in every possible way. The Countess, before the arrival of the Allied troops, leaves Paris and is indignant when the statue of Napoleon is pulled down from the Vendôme Column.

She does not utter patriotic tirades, like Pushkin's Polina, does not declare her opinions, but her memory of her husband, sympathy for the wounded soldier who served under his command, aloofness from small talk - everything shows an extraordinary nature, worthy of the wife of a brave colonel.

Her spiritual appearance, purity and moral beauty are also revealed through the image of Dubois, who is devoted to her. The moral duel between him and Glinsky is especially significant in the story. The love conflict undoubtedly made it difficult to solve the problem of patriotism, and it is this problem that is highlighted as the main one already in the title of the story. The image of Dubois is intended to reveal what Bestuzhev understands by true patriotism. And here we find common ground in the stories of Bestuzhev and Pushkin. Pushkin writes ironically about cosmopolitans and admirers of everything French who, at the beginning of the war, emptied French tobacco from their snuff boxes, burned a dozen French brochures, replaced Lafite with sour cabbage soup and “repented of speaking French.” Pushkin contrasts Polina with the “Big World” in Russia; Bestuzhev contrasts Dubois with the “big world” in Paris. The Parisian nobility joyfully greets the arrival of the allies in the hope of the return of the Bourbons - Dubois greets the allied troops not with bows, but with weapons in hand. He does not hide his reluctance to communicate with the victors, but he is characterized by chivalrous respect for a worthy opponent, and in Glinsky he is conquered not only by intelligence and charm, but also by the same ability to appreciate fearlessness and military valor in his enemies.

Dubois does not hide his convictions from Glinsky, and this is what arouses the reciprocal sympathy of his interlocutor. From the text of the novel it is clear that Dubois will take part in Napoleon’s famous “Hundred Days”, and the Bonapartist Frenchman brings the Russian officer he loved closer to solving his mystery. “Over time, you will not need explanations,” he tells Glinsky when asked about “his secret.”

In the images of Dubois and Glinsky, Bestuzhev pits two true patriots of the homeland against each other, and between these patriots - enemies on the battlefield - there is more spiritual closeness than between each of them and the people of the “big society”, both in Russia and in France. So once again an anti-secular theme appears in Bestuzhev’s work.

Of course, Bestuzhev could not have known about Pushkin’s plan. The first excerpt from Pushkin’s story appeared only in No. 3 of the Sovremennik magazine for 1836, when work on “Russian in Paris” was basically completed, but the coincidence of the general trends of these stories is significant - it once again demonstrates how the same thoughts possessed the first poet of Russia and his “friends, brothers, comrades” in “convict holes”. It is also significant that both stories were written in 1831, when the Polish uprising had not yet subsided and when it seemed that Russia was facing the danger of a new military threat from the West.

“Russian in Paris 1814” is one of the last works of art by N. Bestuzhev that have reached us. In Siberia, he wrote a large local history article “Goose Lake” - the first natural science and ethnographic description of Buryatia, its economy and economy, fauna and flora, folk customs and rituals. This essay again reflected the multifaceted talent of Bestuzhev - a fiction writer, ethnographer and economist.

Bestuzhev could not and did not have time to implement many of his plans, some of his works of art were lost forever during the searches to which the exiled Decembrists were periodically subjected. But in his literary heritage that has come down to us, we see talented writer, who left in his essays, stories and stories the image of a leading man of his time, revealed with psychological depth and accuracy. N. Bestuzhev can be put among the founders psychological method in Russian literature. An analysis of complex moral conflicts in their connection with a person’s duty to society reveals a genetic connection between his stories and novellas with the works of A. I. Herzen, N. G. Chernyshevsky, L. N. Tolstoy.

Nikolai Aleksandrovich Bestuzhev died in 1855 during the difficult days of the Sevastopol defense for Russia.

Mikhail Bestuzhev recalled: “The successes and failures of the Sevastopol siege interested him to the highest degree. During the seventeen long nights of his dying suffering, I myself, exhausted by fatigue, barely understanding what he was telling me almost in delirium, had to use all my strength to reassure him about poor dying Russia. During the intervals of the terrible struggle of his iron, strong nature with death, he asked me:

Tell me, is there anything comforting?”

Thus, until the end of his days, Nikolai Bestuzhev remained a citizen and patriot. The high moral structure of the personality of the Decembrist writer runs through all of his work.

Yanina LEVKOVIC

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April 13, 1791 – May 15, 1855

lieutenant captain of the 8th naval crew, Decembrist, naval historiographer, writer, critic, inventor, artist

Family

Father - Alexander Fedoseevich Bestuzhev (October 24, 1761 - March 20, 1810), artillery officer, since 1800 the ruler of the chancellery of the Academy of Arts, writer. Mother - Praskovya Mikhailovna (1775 - 10/27/1846).

On June 15, 1820 he was appointed assistant keeper of the Baltic lighthouses in Kronstadt.

In 1821 -1822 he organized lithography at the Admiralty Department. In the spring of 1822, at the Admiralty Department, he began writing the history of the Russian fleet. On February 7, 1823, he was awarded the Order of St. Vladimir, IV degree, for organizing lithography.

In 1824, on the frigate "Provorny" as a historiographer, he made voyages to France and Gibraltar. On December 12, 1824 he was promoted to lieutenant commander. From July 1825 he was director of the Admiralty Museum, for which he received the nickname “Mummy” from friends.

Writer

Since 1818, he was a member of the Free Society for the establishment of schools using the method of mutual education. Member-employee of the Free Society of Lovers of Russian Literature since March 28, 1821, and since May 31, full member. Since 1822, member of the Censorship Committee. Editor. Since 1818, he collaborated with the almanac "Polar Star", the magazines "Son of the Fatherland", "Blagomarnenny", "Competitor of Education and Charity" and others.

Since 1825, member of the Society for the Encouragement of Artists. As a volunteer he attended classes at the Academy of Arts. He studied with A. N. Voronikhin and N. N. Fonlev. Since September 12, 1825, member of the Free Economic Society.

Since 1818, a member of the Masonic lodge “Elect Michael”.

Decembrist

In 1824 he was accepted into the Northern Society by K. F. Ryleev. K.F. Ryleev invited him to become a member of the Supreme Duma of the Northern Society. Author of the project “Manifesto to the Russian People”. The Guards crew led to Senate Square.

Hard labor

On August 7, 1826, together with his brother Mikhail, he was taken to Shlisselburg. Sent to Siberia on September 28, 1827. Arrived at the Chita prison on December 13, 1827. Transferred to the Petrovsky plant in September 1830.

He worked in watercolors and later in oils on canvas. He painted portraits of the Decembrists, their wives and children, city residents (115 portraits), views of Chita and the Petrovsky Factory.

Link

On July 10, 1839, brothers Mikhail and Nikolai Bestuzhev were sent to settle in the city of Selenginsk, Irkutsk province. Arrived in Selenginsk on September 1, 1839.