Nikolai Georgievich Garin-Mikhailovsky, Russian writer.
Born into a military family. He graduated from the Institute of Railways in St. Petersburg in 1878. He proved himself to be a talented engineer, working on the construction of large railways, incl. The Great Siberian Road. Having become interested in populism, in the early 80s. settled on his estate in Samara province.
Trying to prove the vitality of “communal life”, he took up social reform, which, however, ended in failure. Disillusioned with populist ideas, he collaborated in Marxist publications and helped the Bolshevik Party financially.
Garin appeared in literature as a realist and democrat. In stories of the 90s. he reflected the process of stratification of the village, painted images of the technical intelligentsia and workers.
The most significant works - the tetralogy "Childhood of the Theme" (1892), "Gymnasium Students" (1893), "Students" (1895), "Engineers" (published 1907) - are dedicated to the fate of younger generation intelligentsia of the “turning point”.
The result of numerous travels were travel essays “Across Korea, Manchuria and the Liaodong Peninsula” (1899), etc. In 1898, while in Korea, he compiled the collection “Korean Tales” (ed. 1899).
In the early 1900s. collaborated with M. Gorky's publishing house "Knowledge".
“Being carried away by populism, in the early 80s he settled on his estate in the Samara province. Trying to prove the vitality of community life, he took up social reform, which, however, ended in failure.”
This is absolutely not true. Garin-Mikhailovsky was a conscious opponent of the community.
Having left for the village, he forcibly destroyed communal relations and tried to educate the peasants in agrarian, technical and economic terms, so to speak, to turn them into farmers
American style.
Some of this worked out, some didn’t.
The results of this work were presented by him in extremely interesting, relevant and even today (if you don’t believe me, read) books “Several Years in the Village” and “Essays on Provincial Life.”
"...collaborated in Marxist publications, helped the Bolshevik Party financially."
Perhaps, but I know of no evidence of this that does not come from “Soviet propaganda.” In addition, he died during the first revolution, so talking about “Bolsheviks” in today’s understanding of the word is incorrect.
And further. Garin-Mikhailovsky’s books have an amazing feature for Russian literature - sincere constructive optimism, which you are imbued with while reading them.
An important thought belonging to Garin-Mikhailovsky: “I was always amazed that people are able to fight over a sip of water, while with their combined efforts they could take possession of an entire source.” And in this sense, his books are truly constructive!
I personally believe that Garin-Mikhailovsky is an outstanding phenomenon in Russian literature, standing on a par with, for example, Chekhov. Alas, he is little known. Both as a writer and as a person. Although, for example, there is such a city - Novosibirsk. So this city, in fact, was founded by Mikhailovsky during the construction railway.
Sincerely,
K.M.Babadzhanyants
Chief designer of NPO Experimental Mechanical Engineering
P.S. By the way, his last name is “Mikhailovsky”. The prefix "Garin" is a literary pseudonym, in my opinion, after the name of his son
“All on the move, on the fly was this well-built man, of medium height, with thick white hair... Easy to use, able to talk to everyone - from a peasant to a society lady inclusive. An interesting storyteller, graceful in his engineering jacket, he made a charming impression on most of those who met him.” Thus, Samara theater and literary observer Alexander Smirnov (Treplev) wrote about Nikolai Georgievich Garin-Mikhailovsky (Fig. 1).
Travel engineer
He was born on February 8 (new style 20), 1852 in St. Petersburg in noble family middle income. His father was Uhlan officer Georgy Mikhailovsky, who distinguished himself during the Hungarian campaign in July 1849. During the battle near Hermannstadt, his squadron, with a bold flank attack, completely defeated an enemy twice its size, capturing two cannons. Following the results of the military campaign, Mikhailovsky by the highest decree was granted an estate in the Kherson province, in which he, however, almost did not live, but settled in the capital, where he soon married Glafira Tsvetinovich, a noblewoman Serbian origin. From this marriage they had a son, who was named Nikolai.
In 1871, after graduating from high school, the young man entered the law faculty of St. Petersburg University, but studied here for only one year. Having told his father that it was better to be a good craftsman than a bad lawyer, Nikolai dropped out of the university and entered the Institute of Transport. Here he first tried to write, but a story from student life, submitted to the editors of one of the capital's magazines, was rejected without any explanation. This failure discouraged the young author from pursuing literary creativity for many years.
Mikhailovsky's last year of study at the Institute of Railways coincided with the Russian-Turkish War. He received his diploma as a railway engineer in the summer of 1878, when the war was already ending. Having barely received the coveted qualifications, the young specialist was sent to Bulgaria, already liberated from the Turks, as a senior technician, where he participated in the restoration of the seaport and the construction of new highways. In 1879, “for the excellent execution of orders during the last war,” Mikhailovsky received the first of his orders.
The experience and professional recognition gained in the Balkans allowed the young engineer to get a job in the railway department (Fig. 2).
Travel engineer
Over the following years, he participated in the laying of new steel lines in Bessarabia, Odessa province and Transcaucasia, where he rose to the position of head of the Baku section of the railway. However, at the end of 1883, Mikhailovsky, unexpectedly for his colleagues, submitted his resignation from the railway service. As the engineer himself explained, he did this “due to his complete inability to sit between two chairs: on the one hand, to look after state interests, on the other, personal and economic interests.”
Samara landowner
From that time on, the Samara period in the life of the 30-year-old engineer began. As can be seen from his later notes, in the early 80s Mikhailovsky became interested in the ideas of Narodnaya Volya, which was active at that time. This organization included many Russian intellectuals, attracted here by the tasks of “educating common people"and "raising the role of the peasant community in the transformation of Russia." Now we understand that it was precisely this “revolutionary” passion that became the real reason for Mikhailovsky’s departure from engineering.
Being a practical person, the retiree decided to educate the peasants with concrete deeds. In 1883, he bought the Yumatovka estate in the Buguruslan district of the Samara province (now the village of Gundorovka, Sergievsky district) for 75 thousand rubles. Here Nikolai Georgievich settled with his wife and two small children in a landowner's estate.
The Mikhailovsky couple hoped to improve the well-being of local peasants by teaching them how to properly cultivate the land and raising the general level of their culture. In addition, under the influence of populist ideas, Mikhailovsky wanted to change the entire existing system of rural relations, namely, to introduce elections in community management and attract social sphere the capital of wealthy villagers, whom the classics of Marxism-Leninism later called kulaks. The populist engineer believed that he would be able to persuade the rich to give part of their money to build a school, hospital, roads, and so on. And for ordinary farmers, the new owner of the estate organized courses on the study of German experience in cultivating and fertilizing land, which, in his opinion, would allow peasants to soon obtain harvests unprecedented for our province, “thirty”, even though local farmers in At that time they received, at best, a “high five”.
Nadezhda Mikhailovskaya also participated in her husband’s endeavors; she, being a trained physician, treated local peasants for free and then set up a school for their children, where she taught all the boys and girls in the village.
But all the innovations of the “good landowner” ultimately ended in complete failure. Ordinary men greeted all his endeavors with distrust and murmur, categorically refusing to plow and sow “the German way.” Although some families still listened to the advice of the strange master and followed his instructions, on the whole Mikhailovsky, even after more than two years, failed to overcome the resistance of the inert peasant mass. As for the local kulaks, as soon as they heard about his intention to take away part of their capital “for the benefit of society,” they completely entered into open conflict with the new landowner, setting off a series of nightly arson attacks in Yumatovka. In just one summer, Mikhailovsky lost his mill and thresher, and in September, when all his granaries burst into flames, he also lost the entire harvest he had collected with such difficulty. Almost going bankrupt, the “good master” decided to leave the village that had rejected him and return to engineering work. Having hired a skilled manager for the estate, Mikhailovsky in May 1886 entered service on the Samara-Zlatoust Railway. Here he was entrusted with the construction of a site in the Ufa province, from where the great Trans-Siberian Railway subsequently began.
And in his free time from laying rail tracks, Mikhailovsky wrote the documentary story “Several Years in the Village,” where he outlined the story of his unsuccessful socio-economic experiment in the village of Yumatovka. In the fall of 1890, the engineer, while in Moscow, showed this manuscript to Konstantin Stanyukovich, the author of sea stories and novels, who at that time had great connections in literary circles. The venerable writer, after reading several chapters, was delighted and told Mikhailovsky that in his person he saw rising literary talent. However, the young author was distrustful of his words, since he considered his work still raw, requiring thorough refinement.
Mikhailovsky continued working on the manuscript in those months while the construction of the Ufa-Zlatoust railway section was underway (Fig. 3).
Travel engineer
At the same time, he wrote the autobiographical story “Tema’s Childhood,” which in many ways became his entry into great literature. Both of these books were published with a short break in 1892 and received high critical acclaim.
To avoid being reproached for inattention to his main work, the travel engineer put a pseudonym on the covers of his books - Nikolai Garin, which, according to the author, came from the name of his son Georgy, whose family name was simply Garya. Subsequently, he signed most of his other works in this way, and a few years later he officially took his double surname - Garin-Mikhailovsky.
The continuation of "Theme's Childhood" were his stories "Gymnasium Students" (1893), "Students" (1895) and "Engineers" (1907), which were combined into an autobiographical tetralogy. Works from this cycle are still considered the most famous part of Garin-Mikhailovsky’s work, and many critics believe that “Theme’s Childhood” is the best part of the entire tetralogy.
A story from childhood
Contemporaries recalled that he was critical and even distrustful of himself as a writer. Konstantin Stanyukovich, already mentioned above, highly praised this story after the release of Theme’s Childhood. He noted that the author has a living sense of nature, there is a memory of the heart, with the help of which he reproduces child psychology not from the outside, like an adult observing a child, but with all the freshness and completeness of childhood impressions. “It’s nothing,” Garin-Mikhailovsky answered, sighing heavily. “Everyone writes well about children, it’s hard to write badly about them.”
Since the beginning of the 90s, Nikolai Georgievich, without interruption from the construction of railways, actively participated in the organization and work of various periodicals in Samara and the capital. In particular, he wrote articles and stories in the Samara Bulletin and the Samara Newspaper, in the Nachalo and Zhizn magazines, and in 1891 Garin bought the right to publish the Russian Wealth magazine, and until 1899 he was his editor.
Collaborating with Samara newspapers since 1895, he became closely acquainted with a number of local journalists, including Alexei Peshkov, who signed his articles and notes with the pseudonyms “Maxim Gorky” and “Yegudiel Chlamida.” This is how Gorky later recalled this restless railway engineer: “When Samara Gazeta asked him to write a story about the mathematician Lieberman, after much persuasion, he would write it in a carriage, on the way somewhere to the Urals. The beginning of the story, written on telegraph forms, was brought to the editorial office by a cab driver from the Samara station. At night a very long telegram was received with amendments to the beginning, and a day or two later another telegram: “What was sent - do not print, I will give you another option.” But he didn’t send another version, and the end of the story, it seems, arrived from Yekaterinburg... It’s amazing that he could, with his restlessness, write such things as “Theme’s Childhood”, “Gymnasium Students”, “Students”, “Clotilda”, “ Grandmother"…"
In addition to the Samara-Zlatoust Railway, in the 90s Garin-Mikhailovsky also led sections for laying steel lines in Siberia, the Far East and Crimea. In 1896, he returned to Samara again to head the construction of a railway line from Krotovka station to Sergievsky Mineral Waters, which at that time had already gained all-Russian popularity as a resort. Here Garin-Mikhailovsky decisively removed dishonest contractors from the business, who had already managed to make considerable profits by stealing government funds and underpaying workers. The Volzhsky Vestnik newspaper wrote about this: “N.G. Mikhailovsky was the first civil engineer to cast his vote against the hitherto practiced procedures, and the first to make an attempt to introduce new ones.”
At the same construction site, Nikolai Georgievich, who never gave up his populist attempts to “educate ordinary people", organized the first comrades' court in Russia with the participation of workers and employees. Under his supervision, “people’s judges” examined the case of one of the engineers, who accepted rotten sleepers from a dishonest supplier as a bribe. The court decided to fire the bribe-taker and recover from him the cost of the low-quality goods. Management construction company Having learned about this initiative of Garin-Mikhailovsky, they supported the “sentence”, but henceforth recommended that “people’s justice” should no longer be resorted to.
There is also a legend that at one of the sections of this construction, the designers spent a long time deciding which side to go around the high hill, since the cost of each meter of the railway was very high. Garin-Mikhailovsky walked around the hill all day, and then ordered a road to be laid along its right foot. When asked what caused this choice, the engineer replied that he had been watching the birds all day, from which side they flew around the hill. Of course, he said, birds fly a shorter route, saving their effort. Already in our time, accurate calculations based on space photography have shown that Garin-Mikhailovsky’s decision made on bird observation was the most correct.
Restless nature
In his journalistic essays, Garin-Mikhailovsky remained faithful to the populist ideas of his youth. He sincerely dreamed of a time when Russia would be covered with a network of railways, and saw no greater happiness than “to work for the glory of his country, to bring it not imaginary, but real benefit.” He viewed the construction of railways as necessary condition economic development, prosperity and power of your country. Given the lack of funds allocated by the treasury, he persistently advocated reducing the cost of road construction through the development of profitable options and the introduction of more advanced construction methods.
True, Mikhailovsky’s views on the peasant community underwent serious changes over time, and at the beginning of the twentieth century, he wrote about it this way: “We should recognize the same right for the peasants to choose any type of labor that the writer of these lines enjoys. This is the only key to success, the key to progress. Everything else is stagnation, where there is no place for a living soul, where there is mud and bitter, incessant drunkenness of the same slave, with the only difference being that the chain is no longer chained to the master, but to the ground. But she is chained by the same master in the name of beautiful sounds, beckoning to the idealistic master, who does not know at all and does not want to know, and therefore cannot comprehend the full extent of the evil arising from this.”
Acquaintance and communication with Gorky, who was fond of Marxism and was personally acquainted with the largest figures of the RSDLP, contributed to the radicalization of Mikhailovsky’s political views. During the revolution of 1905, he more than once hid underground workers on his estate and stored illegal literature here, in particular Lenin’s Iskra. In December 1905, while in Manchuria, Nikolai Georgievich brought here a batch of revolutionary propaganda publications for distribution, and then donated part of his funds to purchase weapons to participants in the battles at Krasnaya Presnya in Moscow.
The result of his trips to the Far East were the travel essays “Across Korea, Manchuria and the Liaodong Peninsula” and the collection “Korean Tales”. Gorky recalled this: “I saw drafts of his books about Manchuria... It was a bunch of various pieces of paper, railway forms, lined pages torn from an office book, a concert poster and even two Chinese business cards; all this is covered with half-words, hints of letters. “How do you read this?” “Bah! - he said. “It’s very simple, because it was written by me.” And he quickly began to read one of the cute fairy tales of Korea. But it seemed to me that he was reading not from the manuscript, but from memory.”
In general, literary creativity brought Garin-Mikhailovsky wide fame during his lifetime. The best of his works have survived the author. The first time the collected works of Garin-Mikhailovsky in eight volumes was published back in 1906-1910.
By all accounts, Nikolai Georgievich’s ebullient nature simply abhorred peace. He traveled all over Russia, and wrote his works “on the radio” - in a carriage compartment, in a steamboat cabin, in a hotel room, in the hustle and bustle of a station. And death overtook him, as Gorky put it, “on the fly.” Garin-Mikhailovsky died of cardiac paralysis during an editorial meeting of the St. Petersburg magazine “Bulletin of Life,” in whose affairs he took an active part. The writer made a heated speech, and here he felt bad. He went into the next room, lay down on the sofa - and died there. This happened on November 27 (December 10), 1906 in St. Petersburg. Nikolai Georgievich was only 55 years old.
The writer and engineer Garin-Mikhailovsky was buried on the Literatorskie Mostki of the Volkovsky Cemetery, and in 1912 a tombstone with a bronze high relief by the sculptor Lev Sherwood was installed on his grave (Fig. 4).
N.G. Garin-Mikhailovsky. Patriot and miracle workerMy article is about Nikolai Garin-Mikhailovsky - a unique person, writer, engineer and geographer.
It’s not often that people come into our world whose lives span an entire era. We call them differently - geniuses, seers, visionaries. In fact, none of these definitions can contain what they did and how they changed the world. The most offensive thing is that most people who perceive the achievements of civilization and culture as the norm do not even suspect who made all this possible.
Such a person was Nikolai Georgievich Garin-Mikhailovsky. His indomitable energy, inquisitive and sharp mind, and determination during his lifetime brought him recognition in many fields from literary creativity to geographical research.
Among the great Russian travelers of the 19th century. Garin-Mikhailovsky stands apart. Unfortunately, his contribution to the field of geographical research has not yet been fully appreciated. And domestic historical and geographical literature does not indulge him with its attention. And in vain! The significance of Nikolai Georgievich’s geographical and ethnographic research and his magnificent essays is invaluable for Russian science. Thanks to his literary talent, works written in the century before last are still read with interest today. However, what Garin wrote does not contain all of his extraordinary life, full of adventures and accomplishments.
N. Garin is the literary pseudonym of Nikolai Georgievich Mikhailovsky. He was born on February 8, 1852 in St. Petersburg in the family of a military officer. He inherited his stupid character and courage from his father, Georgy Antonovich Mikhailovsky, a nobleman of the Kherson province who served in the lancers. During the Hungarian military campaign on July 25, 1849, Ulan Mikhailovsky distinguished himself in action near Hermannstadt, attacking with a squadron a square of Hungarians, which had two cannons. Accurate shots with grapeshot stopped the attack of the Russian lancers, but the commander of the 2nd squadron, Captain Mikhailovsky, rushed into the attack and carried away his fellow soldiers. The lancers cut into a square and captured the enemy's guns. The hero of the day was slightly wounded and was subsequently awarded the Order of St. George. After the completion of the campaign, G. A. Mikhailovsky was awarded an audience with his lancers with Emperor Nicholas I, and the sovereign enrolled him in the Life Guards Uhlan Regiment, and later was the successor of his older children.
Garin-Mikhailovsky with engineers and track workers at the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway
Children's and adolescence Garin-Mikhailovsky passed in the south, in Odessa, where his father moved his family after retiring with the rank of general. On the outskirts of the city, the Mikhailovskys had their own house with a large garden and a picturesque view of the sea.
In 1871, after graduating from high school, Nikolai Georgievich moved to St. Petersburg, where he studied first at the law faculty of the university, and from 1872 at the Institute of Railway Engineers. Six years later, the young engineer was sent to the active army in Bulgaria, in Burgas, where he took an active part in the construction of the port and highway. In 1879, the young engineer’s hard work and talent were awarded by the command of the Order of Civil Service “for excellent execution of assignments.”
Twenty years later, the writer used his experience of serving in Burgas in the story “Clotilde” (published 1899).
Fortune favored young man. In the spring of 1879, Mikhailovsky, who had no prior practical experience in railway construction, somehow unexpectedly managed to get a prestigious job on the construction of the Bender-Galati railway. Its construction was carried out by the company of the famous concessionaire Samuil Polyakov. This work as a survey engineer captivated Mikhailovsky. Thanks to his talent and hard work, he quickly established himself as the best, thanks to which he began to advance in his career and earn good money for those times, despite his young age.
From this time on, Mikhailovsky began his work as a railway construction engineer. He devoted many years to this path, devoting himself to work with the enthusiasm and dedication characteristic of his character. Thanks to this, he was able to visit different parts of the country, observe the life and way of life of ordinary people, which he later reflected in his works of art.
In the summer of the same year, while visiting Odessa on official business, Mikhailovsky met his sister Nina’s friend, Nadezhda Valerievna Charykova, whom he soon married.
In 1880, Mikhailovsky built a road to Batum, which after the end of the Russian-Turkish war went to Russia. Then he was an assistant site manager at the construction of the Batum-Samtredia railway (Poti-Tiflis railway). Service in those places was dangerous: gangs of Turkish robbers were hiding in the surrounding forests, attacking builders. Mikhailovsky recalled how five foremen at his distance were “shot and slaughtered by local Turks.” I had to adapt to the situation, and the position itself was not for a timid person. The constant danger has developed a special method of movement in places convenient for an ambush - a stretched line. After completion of construction, he was transferred to head the distance of the Baku section of the Transcaucasian Railway.
A few years later, Mikhailovsky works in the Urals on the construction of the Ufa-Zlatoust railway, conducts road surveys in Tatarstan between Kazan and Malmyzh, and in Siberia on the construction of the Great Siberian Road. It was during his work in Siberia that he traveled along the Irtysh to its mouth.
During his service, engineer Mikhailovsky showed the most striking traits of his character, which distinguished him so much from those around him and which once captivated him future wife. He was distinguished by scrupulous honesty and was sensitive to the desire of many of his colleagues for personal enrichment (participation in contracts, bribes). At the end of 1882, he resigned - according to his own explanation, “due to his complete inability to sit between two chairs: on the one hand, state interests, on the other, the personal interests of the owner.”
In 1883, having bought the Gundorovka estate in the Buguruslan district of the Samara province for 75 thousand rubles, Nikolai Georgievich settled with his wife in the landowner’s estate. By that time, the Mikhailovsky family already had two small children. But Garin-Mikhailovsky’s character was not such as to rest peacefully as a landowner in his estate and spend his life like Chekhov’s summer residents.
Thanks to the reforms of 1861, peasant communities received part of the landowners' lands into collective ownership, but the nobles remained large landowners. Former serfs were often forced to work the landowners' lands as hired workers for a pittance in order to feed themselves. In many places, the economic situation of peasants worsened after the reform.
Having quite a significant working capital (about 40 thousand rubles), Garin-Mikhailovsky intended to create an exemplary farm in Gundorovka. The Mikhailovsky couple hoped to improve the well-being of local peasants: teach them how to properly cultivate the land and raise the general level of culture. At that time, Nikolai Georgievich was influenced by populist ideas and wanted to change the system of social relations that had developed in the countryside.
Nadezhda Valeryevna Mikhailovskaya was a match for her husband: she treated local peasants, set up a school, where she herself taught all the boys and girls of the village. After 2 years, her school had 50 students, the owner also had “two assistants from young guys who graduated rural school in the nearest large village."
From an economic point of view, things were going well on Mikhailovsky's estate. But only the men greeted all the innovations of the good landowner with distrust and murmur. He constantly had to overcome the resistance of the inert mass. They even had to enter into open confrontation with local kulaks, which led to a series of arson attacks. First, the landowner lost his mill and thresher, and then his entire harvest. Almost bankrupt, he decided to leave the village that had brought him so much disappointment and return to engineering. The estate was entrusted to a stern and tough manager.
Since 1886, Mikhailovsky has returned to service, and his outstanding talent as an engineer shines again. During the construction of the Ufa-Zlatoust railway (1888-1890), he carried out survey work. The result of this work was an option that provided enormous cost savings. In January 1888, he began implementing his version of the road as the head of the 9th construction site.
“They say about me,” Nikolai Georgievich wrote to his wife, “that I do miracles, and they look at me with huge eyes, but I find it funny. It takes so little to do all this. More conscientiousness, energy, enterprise, and these seemingly terrible mountains will part and reveal their secret, invisible passages and passages, using which you can reduce the cost and significantly shorten the line.” He sincerely dreamed of a time when Russia would be covered with a network of railways, and saw no greater happiness than to work for the glory of Russia, to bring “not imaginary, but real benefit.”
He considered the construction of railways as a necessary condition for the development of the economy, prosperity and power of Russia. He proved himself not only as a talented engineer, but also as an outstanding economist. Seeing the lack of funds provided by the state treasury, Mikhailovsky persistently advocated reducing the cost of road construction by developing profitable options and introducing more advanced construction methods. He has a lot of innovative projects under his belt, which, by the way, saved a lot of government money and made a profit. In the Urals, this was the construction of a tunnel on the Suleya Pass, which shortened the railway line by 10 km and saved 1 million rubles. His research from Vyazovaya station to Sadki station shortened the line by 7.5 versts and saved about 400 thousand rubles, and a new version of the line along the Yurizan River brought savings of 600 thousand rubles. Supervising the construction of the railway line from the station. Krotovka of the Samara-Zlatoust railway to Sergievsk, he removed the contractors who were making huge profits by plundering government funds and exploiting workers, and created an elected administration. In a special circular to employees, he categorically prohibited any abuse and established a procedure for paying workers under the supervision of public controllers. They talked about him, wrote in the newspapers, he made himself an army of enemies, which did not frighten him at all. “N.G. Mikhailovsky,” the Volzhsky Vestnik wrote on August 18, 1896, “was the first of the civil engineers to cast his voice as an engineer and writer against the hitherto practiced procedures and the first to make an attempt to introduce new ones.” At the same construction site, Nikolai Georgievich organized the first comradely trial in Russia with the participation of workers and employees, including women, against an engineer who accepted rotten sleepers as a bribe. He was called the conscience of Russian railways. Sometimes I think how we lack such talented and inflexible people today, not only in the field of railway management.
On September 8, 1890, Mikhailovsky spoke at the celebrations in Zlatoust on the occasion of the arrival of the first train here. In 1890, he was engaged in research on the construction of the Zlatoust-Chelyabinsk railway, and in April 1891 he was appointed head of the survey party of the West Siberian railway. Here they were offered the most optimal railway bridge crossing across the Ob. It was he who rejected the option of building a bridge in the Tomsk region, and with his “option near the village of Krivoshchekovo” he created the conditions for the emergence of Novosibirsk - one of the largest industrial centers in Russia. So N.G. Garin-Mikhailovsky can undoubtedly be called one of the founders and builders of Novosibirsk.
In articles about the Siberian Railway, he enthusiastically and passionately defended the idea of savings, taking into account which the initial cost railway track was reduced from 100 to 40 thousand rubles per mile. He proposed publishing reports on "rational" proposals from engineers, and put forward the idea of public discussion of technical and other projects "to avoid previous mistakes." Nikolai Geogrevich’s personality combined a romantic and a dreamer with a businesslike and pragmatic owner who knew how to calculate all losses and find a way to save money.
There is a legend that at one of the railway construction sites, engineers were faced with an insoluble problem: it was necessary to go around a large hill or cliff, choosing the shortest trajectory for this. The cost of each meter of railway was very high. Mikhailovsky pondered this problem all day. Then he gave instructions to build a road along one of the foot of the hill. When they asked him why he made this decision, they were discouraged by his answer. Nikolai Georgievich replied that he had been watching the birds all day, or rather the way they flew around the hill. He considered that the birds fly a shorter route, saving effort, and decided to use their route. Subsequently, accurate calculations based on space photography showed that Mikhailovsky’s decision made based on bird observation was absolutely correct!
Siberian epic N.G. Mikhailovsky was just an episode of his rich life. But objectively, this was the highest rise, the pinnacle of his engineering career - in terms of far-sightedness of calculations, in terms of his principled position, in terms of the tenacity of the struggle for the optimal option and in terms of historical results. In a letter to his wife, he admits: “I am in a frenzy of all sorts of things and do not waste a single moment. I lead my favorite way of life - wandering around villages and towns with research, traveling to cities... promoting my cheap road, keeping a diary. Up to my neck in work...”
In the literary field N.G. Mikhailovsky spoke in 1892, publishing the story “Tema’s Childhood” and the story “Several Years in the Village.” By the way, the history of his pseudonym is very interesting and indicative. He published under the pseudonym N. Garin: on behalf of his son - Georgy, or, as the family called him, Garya. The result of Garin-Mikhailovsky’s literary work was the autobiographical tetralogy: “Tema’s Childhood” (1892), “Gymnasium Students” (1893), “Students” (1895), “Engineers” (published 1907), dedicated to the fate of the younger generation of the intelligentsia of the “turning point” . At the same time, he became close to Gorky, who later wrote his famous novel “The Life of Klim Samgin,” which raised the same topic.
Constant travel associated with practical survey and construction work developed in Garin-Mikhailovsky an interest in geography and a deep feeling and understanding of nature, constant communication with workers and peasants strengthened his love for the working people. It is not surprising, therefore, that geographical and ethnographic elements, along with economic ones, occupy such a large place even in his artistic works. This is especially evident in his essays written during his travels through Western Ukraine and the north of the European part of Russia.
In 1898, after the completion of the construction of a narrow-gauge branch linking the Sergievsky sulfur waters in the Middle Volga region with the Samara-Zlatoust railway, Garin-Mikhailovsky went to trip around the world through Siberia, the Far East, the Pacific and Atlantic oceans and through Europe back to St. Petersburg.
Garin-Mikhailovsky is a pioneer by nature. Tired of engineering battles, he decides to “rest.” For this purpose, he decided to go on a trip around the world. IN last moment he received an offer from the St. Petersburg Geographical Society to join the North Korean expedition of A.I. Zvegintsev.
Korean peasants of the 19th century.
Korea in the 19th century geographically has been studied very poorly, and its northern part, bordering Manchuria, for a long time was generally inaccessible to European researchers. Korea was a closed country, following an isolationist policy, like its closest neighbor, Japan. Since the 17th century. the entire border strip was deserted and guarded by a system of fortresses and cordons in order to allow communication between foreigners and the Korean population and to protect the state from the penetration of foreigners. Almost until the very end of the 19th century. (more precisely, before the Russian expedition of Strelbitsky of 1895-1896), even about the Pektusan volcano, the highest mountain in this part of East Asia, there was only legendary information. There was no reliable information about the sources, direction of flow and regime of the three largest rivers in this territory - Tumanganga, Amnokganga and Sungari.
Zvegintsev's expedition had as its main task the study of land and water routes of communication along the northern border of Korea and further along the eastern coast of the Liaodong Peninsula, to Port Arthur. Mikhailovsky agreed to take part in Zvegintsev’s expedition, which became for him an integral part of his trip around the world. To work on the North Korean expedition, Mikhailovsky invited people known to him from his work as a survey engineer: young technician N. E. Borminsky and experienced foreman I. A. Pichnikov.
In Garin-Mikhailovsky’s journey around the world, three main stages can be distinguished, which are of different interest to us from the point of view of geographical science. The first of them is a journey through Siberia to the Far East, the second is a visit and geographical research in Korea and Manchuria, and the third is Garin-Mikhailovsky’s journey across the Pacific and Atlantic oceans to Europe.
The traveler's notes relating to the period of transition through Siberia to the Far East are of interest to us primarily for their descriptions of the means of communication in that period with the Far East, as well as its characteristics of the process of development of the eastern territories of Russia, especially Primorye. These are all the more interesting for modern reader, because the author was the builder of the Siberian Railway, which was of great importance in the economic development of Siberia and the Far East.
On July 9, 1898, Mikhailovsky and his companions arrived in Moscow with a St. Petersburg courier train and on the same day left Moscow with a direct Siberian train. Construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway was still ongoing. Sections from Moscow to Irkutsk and from Vladivostok to Khabarovsk were built and put into operation. However, the middle links between Irkutsk and Khabarovsk were not built: the Circum-Baikal line from Irkutsk to Mysovaya, on the eastern shore of Lake Baikal; Transbaikal line from Mysovaya to Sretensk; Amur line from Sretensk to Khabarovsk. On this part of the journey, Mikhailovsky and his companions had to experience the unreliability of communications on horseback and by water. The journey from Moscow to Irkutsk, stretching over 5 thousand km, took 12 days, while the section from Irkutsk to Khabarovsk, about 3.5 thousand km long, covered on horseback and by water, took exactly a month.
Travelers were constantly faced with a lack of government horses for transporting passengers and cargo; postal stations were unable to “satisfy even a third of the requirements placed on them.” The fee for hiring “free” horses reached a fabulous price: 10-15 rubles for a run of 20 miles, that is, more than 50 times more expensive than the cost of travel by rail. There was a steamship connection between Sretensk and Khabarovsk, but of the 16 days spent by travelers on the journey along the Shilka and Amur, about half were spent standing on the shallows and waiting for transfers. As a result, the entire journey from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok took 52 days (July 8 - August 29, 1898) and, despite all the hardships of the travelers, cost almost a thousand rubles per person, that is, it was longer, and even twice as expensive, than if you go to Vladivostok in a roundabout way by sea.
On September 3, 1898, the expedition members were transported by steamship from Vladivostok to Posyet Bay, then walked 12 miles on horseback to Novokievsk, which was the starting point of the North Korean expedition. Separate parties were formed here.
Garin-Mikhailovsky's trip to Korea and Manchuria had as its main task the study of land and water routes along the Manchurian-Korean border and along the eastern coast of the Liaodong Peninsula to Port Arthur. In addition, he set himself the task of a geographical survey of this entire route and in particular the Pektusan region and the sources of Amnokgang and Sungari, as not yet studied by previous researchers, as well as the collection of ethnographic and folklore material. To accomplish this task, his group of 20 people was divided into two parties. The first of them, which, in addition to him, included technician N. E. Borminsky, foreman Pichnikov, Chinese and Korean translators, three soldiers and two mafu drivers, was supposed to conduct research at the mouth and upper reaches of the Tumangang River, as well as the entire Amnokgang River .
The second party, led by Garin-Mikhailovsky’s assistant, communications engineer A.N. Safonov, was supposed to explore the middle reaches of the Tumangang and shortest paths between adjacent sections of river channels in the bends of Tumangang and Amnokgang. On September 13, 1898, Garin-Mikhailovsky’s party, having crossed the Tumangang at the Krasnoselskaya crossing, began exploring the mouth of this river. These studies showed extremely unfavorable navigation conditions for the latter due to its low water content, as well as a large number of wandering shoals, which changed after each flood. In his report on the work carried out, published in the "Proceedings of the Autumn Expedition of 1898", Garin-Mikhailovsky, having considered three possible ways to combat sand sediments: constant clearing of the fairway, diversion of the river through a special canal into Chosanman (Gashkevich) Bay or its diversion in the same direction towards Posyet Bay, comes to the conclusion that all these measures, at very high costs, would still not significantly improve the shipping conditions of Tumangang. Having completed work at the mouth of the river, he headed through the Korean cities of Gyeongheung, Hoiryong and Musan to its upper reaches, continuing his observations along the entire route. The traversed part of the territory from the mouth of the Tumangang to the village of Tyaipe, the last settlement in its upper reaches, is characterized by the traveler as a mountainous area with close valleys in which individual villages are nestled. Trade ties are maintained with Manchuria, which supplies vodka and birch bark, and Russia, which supplies a small amount of manufactured goods. Part of the population goes to Russia (Siberia) to earn money, maintaining connections with their relatives who moved from Korea to Russian borders.
Pektusan
On September 22, the party reached the town of Musan. From here the path went along the upper reaches of the Tumangang, which here had the character of a typical mountain river. On September 28, when night frosts had already begun, travelers saw the Pektusan volcano for the first time. On September 29, the source of the Tumangang was found, which “disappeared into a small ravine” near the small lake Ponga. This lake, together with the adjacent marshy area, was recognized as the source of the river by Garin-Mikhailovsky.
The Pektusan area is the watershed of three major rivers: Tumanganga, Amnokganga and Songhua. The Korean guides claimed that Tumangang and Amnokgang originate in a lake located in the Pektusan crater (although they admitted that none of them personally saw these sources). On September 30, the travelers reached the foot of Pektusan, divided into two groups and began research. Garin-Mikhailovsky himself, accompanied by two Koreans, translator Kim and a guide, had to climb to the top of Pektusan and walk around it to the supposed sources of Amnokgang and Sungari. Having climbed Pektusan, Nikolai Georgievich admired the lake located in its crater for some time and witnessed an episode of the release of volcanic gases. Walking around the perimeter of the crater, which was unsafe due to the rocky steeps, he found out that the guides’ story about the lake as the common source of three rivers was a legend. No water flowed directly from the lake located in the crater. But on the northeastern slope of Pektusan, Garin-Mikhailovsky discovered two sources of the river (later it turned out that these were the sources of one of the tributaries of the Sungari). Later, three more sources of the Sungari tributary were found.
Meanwhile, a group led by technician Borminsky completed the most difficult and dangerous part of the work: they went down into the crater to the lake with tools and a collapsible boat, filmed the outline of the lake, lowered the boat onto the lake, and measured the depths, which turned out to be exceptionally large already near the shore. It was not easy to get out of the crater; the boat and heavy tools had to be abandoned. The travelers had to spend the next night near Pektusan under open air, with a real danger to health and even life due to cold weather and bad weather. But luck was with the travelers and everything turned out well.
Garin-Mikhailovsky's party continued research on Pektusan until October 3. The researchers spent the entire day in a fruitless search for the sources of Amnokgang. In the evening, one of the Korean guides reported that this river originates at the Small Pektusan mountain, which was located at a distance of five miles from the Bolshoi.
From Pektusan, Mikhailovsky’s party headed west through Chinese territory, through the area of the tributaries of the Sungari - unusually beautiful places, but also extremely dangerous due to the possibility of an attack by the Honghuz. Local Chinese who met the travelers said that a group of 40 Honghuz had been tracking Garin-Mikhailovsky’s party since it left Musan.
On October 4, the travelers reached the village of Chandanyon, inhabited mainly by Koreans. The residents had never seen Europeans before. They warmly welcomed the guests and gave them the best place for an overnight stay. On the night of October 5, at the beginning of five o'clock, Garin-Mikhailovsky and his comrades woke up to the sound of gunfire: the village was being fired upon by Honghuzes holed up in the forest. Having waited until dawn, the Russian researchers ran under gunfire into a nearby ravine and returned fire. Very quickly the shots from the forest stopped, and the Honghuzes retreated. None of the Russians were injured, but the Korean owner of the hut was mortally wounded, and one Korean guide disappeared. Two of the horses were killed and two were wounded. Since there were few horses left, almost all the luggage had to be abandoned.
On this day, in order to break away from possible persecution, the travelers made a record 19-hour trek, walked about 50 miles and by 3 a.m. on October 6, already staggering from fatigue, reached one of the tributaries of the Amnokgang. The way forward was already less dangerous. On October 7, travelers reached Amnokgang, 9 miles from the Chinese city of Maoershan (Linjiang).
Here Mikhailovsky made the final decision to abandon the continuation of the journey on horseback. A large flat-bottomed boat was hired. On October 9, the journey down the river began. Due to the onset of cold weather, rain and wind, we again had to endure hardships. Numerous rolls posed a great danger, but all of them, thanks to the skill of the Chinese helmsman, were successfully completed. On October 18, the travelers reached Uiju, a Korean city 60 km above the mouth of the Amnokgang, and here they said goodbye to Korea.
Despite the poverty of the population and the monstrous socio-economic backwardness of the country, Mikhailovsky liked it. In his notes, he highly appreciates the intellectual and moral qualities of the Korean people. During the entire trip there was not a single case where a Korean did not keep his word or lie. Everywhere the expedition met with the warmest and most hospitable attitude.
On the evening of October 18, the last part of the journey was completed down the Amnokgang, to the Chinese port of Sakhou (now Andong). Further, the path ran along the eastern coast of the Liaodong Peninsula and was covered in a Chinese gig. The character of the area was completely different. The mountains moved to the west, and the entire strip of coast, about 300 versts long and 10 to 30 versts wide, was a slightly hilly plain, densely populated by Chinese peasants. On the evening of October 25, travelers reached the first settlement on the Liaodong Peninsula occupied by the Russians - Biziwo. Two days later they arrived in Port Arthur.
In total, Mikhailovsky covered about 1,600 km in Korea and Manchuria, including about 900 km on horseback, up to 400 km in a boat along the Amnokgang, and up to 300 km in a Chinese gig along the Liaodong Peninsula. This journey took 45 days. On average, the expedition covered 35.5 km per day. Route surveying of the area, barometric leveling, astronomical observations and other work were carried out, which served as the basis for compiling detailed map route.
The last stage of the expedition passed through the USA to Europe. From Port Arthur, Garin-Mikhailovsky already continued his independent trip by steamship through Chinese ports, Japanese islands, across the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, visited the Hawaiian Islands, the United States and Western Europe. He was in China for a short time: two days in the port of Chifoo on the Shandong Peninsula and five days in Shanghai. A week later, the ship on which Garin set off from Shanghai entered Nagassaki Bay past places that became notorious in the history of the spread of Christianity in Japan. In the middle of the last century, during a period of strong persecution for prohibited in Japan Christian religion, here about 10 thousand Europeans and Japanese converts to Christianity were thrown into the sea. The next stop in Japan is the port of Yokohama on the east coast of Honshu. The Russian traveler stayed in Yokohama for three days. He travels along Japanese railways, taking a keen interest in peasant fields, landscaped plantations and gardens, and visits factories and railway workshops, where he draws attention to the significant technical achievements of the Japanese.
In early December, approaching the main city of the Hawaiian Islands, Honolulu, the traveler cannot stop admiring the view of this city, picturesquely spread out on the ocean shore, surrounded by the greenery of magnificent tropical vegetation. Walking through the streets of Honolulu, he carefully examines the city, gets acquainted with the city museum, and visits a bamboo forest and date palm groves in the surrounding area.
San Francisco. End of the 19th century
Last in the pool Pacific Ocean Garin-Mikhailovsky visits San Francisco, located on the west coast of the United States. There he changes to a train and travels across North America to New York, which is located on the east coast of the country. Along the way, Nikolai Georgievich makes a stop in Chicago. There he visits the famous slaughterhouses with their monstrous conveyor belts, which disgust him. “The impression from all this, from the terrible smell, is so disgusting that for a long time after that you look at everything from the point of view of these slaughterhouses, this indifference, this string of moving dead whites corpses, and in their center is a figure spreading death everywhere, all in white, calm and satisfied, with a sharp knife,” writes the Russian traveler.
All this time, Garin-Mikhailovsky keeps a travel diary, which ends with a description of his trip to Europe. On the English steamer Luisitania, at that time the largest in the world, he crosses the Atlantic Ocean and reaches the shores of Great Britain. The trip across the Atlantic coincided with the discussion of the Fashoda Incident. England and France were on the brink of war. Nikolai Georgievich witnessed conversations among passengers about the coming war and politics, the superiority of the Anglo-Saxons over other nations. Being deeply impressed by what he saw and heard on the ship, the Russian traveler decides not to stay in London and crosses the English Channel. In Paris, Garin-Mikhailovsky also does not stop completely and completes his trip around the world by returning to his homeland.
Returning to his homeland, Garin-Mikhailovsky published the scientific results of his observations and research in Korea and Manchuria, which provided valuable geographical information about little-explored territories, especially about the Pektusan region. Initially, his notes were published in special publications: “Reports of members of the autumn expedition of 1898 in North Korea” (1898) and in “Proceedings of the autumn expedition of 1898” (1901). A literary treatment of the diaries was carried out in nine issues of the popular science magazine “God’s World” for 1899 and it was then called “Pencil from Life.” Later, Garin-Mikhailovsky’s diaries were published under two different titles: “Across Korea, Manchuria and the Liaodong Peninsula” and “In the Country of the Yellow Devil.”
During the trip, Mikhailovsky wrote down up to 100 Korean fairy tales, but one notebook with notes was lost on the way, so the number of tales was reduced to 64. They were first published, along with the first separate edition of the book of notes about the trip, in 1903. Mikhailovsky's notes turned out to be the most significant contribution to Korean folklore: previously only 2 fairy tales were published in Russian and seven fairy tales in English.
Nikolai Georgievich Garin-Mikhailovsky - a brilliant survey engineer, builder of many railways across the vast expanses of Russia, who knew how to be a zealous and effective economist, a talented writer and publicist, a prominent public figure, a tireless traveler and discoverer - died of cardiac paralysis at an editorial meeting of a Marxist magazine “Messenger of Life”, in whose affairs he took part. Garin-Mikhailovsky gave an inspired speech, went into the next room, lay down on the sofa, and death cut short the life of this talented person. This happened on November 27 (December 10), 1906 in St. Petersburg.
Garin's grave in St. Petersburg
“The happiest country is Russia! How many interesting work there are so many magical possibilities in it, the most complex tasks! I have never envied anyone, but I envy the people of the future...” These words of Garin-Mikhailovsky characterize him in the best possible way. It was not for nothing that Maxim Gorky called him a cheerful righteous man. During his life (and he didn’t live that long - only 54 years), Garin-Mikhailovsky accomplished a lot. A square near the Novosibirsk railway station and a station of the Novosibirsk metro are named in honor of N.G. Garin-Mikhailovsky. His travel diaries still read like an adventure novel. And if we talk about patriotism, so hackneyed and devalued in Lately, then Nikolai Georgievich is an example of a true patriot of Russia, creating more than uttering lofty and beautiful words.
(c) Igor Popov,
The article was written for a Russian geographical magazine
Kapitonova, Nadezhda Anatolyevna From the pages of radio programs: N. G. Garin-Mikhailovsky / N. A. Kapitonova // Historical readings. Vol. 10. 2007. P.383-407
BY RADIO PAGES
1. Garin-Mikhailovsky
The life of Nikolai Georgievich Garin-Mikhailovsky is so rich in events, work, and creativity that it is worth writing a novel about him. He can be called a unique person: he is both a writer (his famous tetralogy “Tema’s Childhood”, “Gymnasium Students”, “Students” and “Engineers” became a classic), and a talented travel engineer (it was not for nothing that he was called the “Knight of the Railways”) , journalist, fearless traveler, good family man and educator. Savva Mamontov said about him: “He was talented, talented in every way.” Garin-Mikhailovsky was not only a great worker, but also a great lover of life. Gorky called him “The Cheerful Righteous Man.”
He is also interesting to us because he built a railway in the Southern Urals. We can say that he connected Chelyabinsk with Europe and Asia, lived with us for several years in Ust-Katav, and lived for some time in Chelyabinsk. He dedicated several stories and a novella to the Urals: “Leshy swamp”, “Tramp”, “Grandma”.
In Chelyabinsk there is a street named after Garin-Mikhailovsky. Until recently, there was a memorial plaque with his name on the building of our station, which was unveiled in 1972. Now, unfortunately, she has disappeared. Chelyabinsk residents simply must return the memorial plaque with the bas-relief of Garin-Mikhailovsky to its place!
The beginning of the life of Garin-Mikhailovsky
Nikolai Georgievich was born on February 20, 1852 in St. Petersburg, in the family of the famous general and hereditary nobleman Georgy Mikhailovsky. The general was so respected by the tsar that Nicholas I himself became the godfather of the boy who was named after him. Soon the general resigned and moved with his family to Odessa, where he had an estate. Nikolai was the eldest of nine children.
The house had its own strict education system. The writer talked about it in his famous book “Childhood of the Theme”. When the boy grew up, he was sent to the famous Richelieu gymnasium in Odessa. Having graduated from it, he entered the Faculty of Law at St. Petersburg University in 1871, but his studies did not work out, and the next year Nikolai Mikhailovsky brilliantly passed the exams at the Institute of Railway Engineers and never regretted it, although his work was incredibly difficult. He realized this during his student practice. There was a moment when he almost died. In Bessarabia, he worked as a fireman on a steam locomotive, he was very tired out of habit, and the driver took pity on the guy, threw coal into the firebox for him, he was also tired, and both fell asleep on the road. The locomotive was running out of control. Only by a miracle did they escape.
Nikolai Mikhailovsky's work on the railway
After graduating from the institute, he took part in the construction of a road in Bulgaria, then was sent to work at the Ministry of Railways. At the age of 27, he married the daughter of the Minsk governor, Nadezhda Valeryevna Charykova, who became his wife, friend, and mother of his children for the rest of his life. She far outlived her husband and wrote a good book about him. Mikhailovsky did not work at the ministry for long, he asked to build the Batumi railway in Transcaucasia, and there he experienced a number of adventures (attacked by robbers and Turks). You can read about this in his story “Two Moments.” And there he could have died. In the Caucasus, he seriously encountered embezzlement and could not come to terms with it. I decided to radically change my life. The family already had two children. I bought an estate in the Samara province, 70 kilometers from the railway, next to the impoverished village of Gundurovka.
"Several years in the village"
Nikolai Georgievich turned out to be a talented business executive and reformer. He wanted to transform a backward village into a prosperous peasant community. He built a mill, bought agricultural machinery, planted crops that the local peasants had never known before: sunflowers, lentils, poppy. I tried to breed trout in the village pond. He selflessly helped peasants build new huts. His wife set up a school for the village children. On New Year's Day, they organized Christmas trees for peasant children and gave them gifts. In the first year we had excellent harvests. But the peasants mistook these good deeds of Mikhailovsky for the eccentricities of the master and deceived him. Neighboring landowners took the innovations with hostility and did everything to nullify Mikhailovsky’s work - they burned the mill, destroyed the harvest... He held on for three years, almost went bankrupt, became disillusioned with his business: “So this is how my business ended!” Leaving the house behind, the Mikhailovsky family left the village.
Later, already in Ust-Katav, Mikhailovsky wrote the essay “Several Years in the Village,” where he analyzed his work on the land and realized his mistakes: “I dragged them (the peasants) to some kind of paradise of my own... educated person, but acted like an ignorant... I wanted to turn the river of life in a different direction." This essay later found its way to the capital.
The Ural period of Mikhailovsky's life
Mikhailovsky returned to engineering. Was assigned to the construction of the Ufa Zlatoust road (1886). First there was survey work. For the first time in the history of railway construction in Russia there were such difficulties: mountains, mountain streams, swamps, impassability, heat and midges in summer, frost in winter. The Kropachevo Zlatoust section was especially difficult. Mikhailovsky later wrote: “8% of prospectors left the scene forever, mainly from nervous breakdown and suicide. This is the percentage of the war.” When construction work began, it was no easier: exhausting work, no equipment, everything was done by hand: a shovel, a pick, a wheelbarrow... It was necessary to blow up rocks, make supporting walls, build bridges. The road was built at state expense, and Nikolai Georgievich fought to reduce the cost of construction: “you can’t build it expensively, we don’t have the funds for such roads, but we need them like air, water...”.
He drew up a project for cheaper construction, but his superiors were not interested in it. Nikolai Georgievich fought desperately for his project and sent a 250-word telegram to the ministry! Unexpectedly, his project was approved and assigned to the heads of the site. Nikolai Georgievich described the history of this struggle in the story “Option”, where he is recognizable in the image of engineer Koltsov. “Option” he wrote in Ust-Katav. I read it to my wife, but immediately tore it up. The wife secretly collected the scraps and glued them together. They published it when Garin-Mikhailovsky was no longer alive. Chukovsky wrote about this story: “No fiction writer has ever been able to write so captivatingly about work in Russia.” This story was published in Chelyabinsk in 1982.
But let's go back to the time of construction of the railway. From a letter to his wife (1887): “... I’m in the field all day from 5 am to 9 pm. I’m tired, but cheerful, cheerful, thank God, healthy...”
He did not deceive his wife by talking about cheerfulness and cheerfulness. He really was a very energetic, fast, charming person. Gorky later wrote about him that Nikolai Georgievich “took life as a holiday. And unconsciously made sure that others accepted life that way.” Colleagues and friends called him "Divine Nika". The workers loved it very much, they said: “We’ll do everything, father, just order it!” From the memoirs of an employee: “... Nikolai Georgievich’s sense of the terrain was amazing. Ride through the taiga on horseback, drowning in swamps, as if from a bird’s eye view, he unmistakably chose the most advantageous directions. And he builds like a magician.” And, as if he were responding to this in a letter to his wife: “They say about me that I do miracles, and they look at me with big eyes, but it’s funny to me. So little is needed to do all this. More conscientiousness, energy, enterprise, and these seemingly terrible mountains will part and reveal their secret, invisible to anyone, not marked on any maps, passages and passages, using which you can reduce the cost and significantly shorten the line.”
And one can give many examples of “cheaper” road construction: a very difficult section on the pass near the Suleya station, a piece of the road from the Vyazovaya station to the Yakhino junction, where it was necessary to make deep excavations in the rocks, build a bridge across the Yuryuzan River, lead the river into a new channel, pour thousands of tons of soil along the river... Anyone who passes the Zlatoust station never ceases to be amazed at the railway loop invented by Nikolai Georgievich.
He was one person: a talented prospector, an equally talented designer and an outstanding railway builder.
In the winter of 1887, Nikolai Georgievich settled with his family in Ust-Katav. There is a small monument in the cemetery near the church. The daughter of Nikolai Georgievich Varenka is buried here. She lived only three months. But here the son of Gary (George) was born, who gave a new name to the writer. Unfortunately, the house where the Mikhailovskys lived has not survived in the city. On September 8, 1890, the first train arrived from Ufa to Zlatoust. There was a big celebration in the city, where Nikolai Georgievich gave a speech. Then the government commission noted: “Ufa Zlatoust road... can be recognized as one of the outstanding roads built by Russian engineers. The quality of work... can be considered exemplary.” For his work on the construction of the road, Nikolai Georgievich was awarded the Order of St. Anne. It would not be superfluous to say that the well-known “Europe Asia” sign, installed at the highest point of the South Ural Railway, was made according to the design of Garin-Mikhailovsky.
Mikhailovsky also visited Chelyabinsk in 1891-1892. At that time, the road construction management was in two-story house along Truda Street next to today's Geological Museum. The house was demolished in the 80s of the last century. Now there is a monument to Sergei Prokofiev in this place. It would be nice to move this monument to the Philharmonic (it was planned there!), and in this place to erect a monument to those who built the railway, including Garin-Mikhailovsky! The village in which Garin-Mikhailovsky then lived is no longer on the map of Chelyabinsk.
Writer Garin-Mikhailovsky
In the winter of 1890-1891, Nadezhda Valerievna became seriously ill. Mikhailovsky left his work on the road and took his family to Gundurovka, where it was easier to live. The wife has recovered. In his spare time, Nikolai Georgievich began writing memoirs about his childhood (“Tema’s Childhood”). In early spring, at the very time of the mud, an unexpected and rare guest came to them from St. Petersburg already famous writer Konstantin Mikhailovich Stanyukovich. It turns out that Nikolai Georgievich’s manuscript “Several Years in the Country” came to him, and he was fascinated by it. And he came to such a distance and wilderness to meet the author and offer to publish an article in the magazine “Russian Thought”. We talked, Stanyukovich asked if there was anything else written. Mikhailovsky began to read his manuscript about childhood. Stanyukovich warmly approved of her, offered to be her “godfather,” but asked her to come up with a pseudonym, because The editor-in-chief of "Russian Thought" at that time was Mikhailovsky's namesake. I didn’t have to think long, because one-year-old Garya came into the room, looking at the stranger very unfriendly and warily. Nikolai Georgievich took his son on his lap and began to calm him down: “Don’t be afraid, I’m Garin’s dad.” Stanyukovich immediately grabbed it: “that’s the pseudonym Garin!” And the first books were published under this name. Then she appeared double surname Garin-Mikhailovsky.
In the summer of 1891, Mikhailovsky was appointed head of the survey party to prepare the construction of the West Siberian Railway on the Chelyabinsk Ob section. Again, the search for the most successful and convenient options for laying the road. It was he who insisted that a bridge across the Ob be built near the village of Krivoshchekovo. Nikolai Georgievich wrote then: “For now, due to the lack of railways, everything here is asleep... but someday a new life will sparkle brightly and strongly here, on the ruins of the old...”. It was as if he knew that on the site of the small station the city of Novonikolaevsk would arise, which would later become huge city Novosibirsk A large square near the Novosibirsk station is named after Garin-Mikhailovsky. There is a monument to Garin-Mikhailovsky on the square. Over the course of 6 years, the road stretched from Samara to Chelyabinsk (over a thousand kilometers), and then further. The first train arrived in Chelyabinsk in 1892. And this is a considerable merit of Garin-Mikhailovsky.
While Nikolai Georgievich was busy building the railway, literary fame came to him. In 1892, the magazine "Russian Wealth" published "Childhood Topics", and a little later "Russian Thought" "Several Years in the Village". About the last work, Chekhov wrote: “Before, there was nothing like this in literature of this kind, both in tone and, perhaps, sincerity. The beginning is a little routine and the end is upbeat, but the middle is pure pleasure. It’s so true that there’s more than enough.” Korney Chukovsky joins him, saying that “Several Years in the Country” reads like a sensational novel, “for Garin, even conversations with the clerk about manure are exciting, like love scenes.”
Garin-Mikhailovsky moved to St. Petersburg and took up publishing a magazine (1892). He mortgaged his estate, bought “Russian Wealth”, and in the very first issue published stories by Stanyukovich, Korolenko, Mamin-Sibiryak, who became his friends.
Garin-Mikhailovsky works a lot, sleeps 4-5 hours a day, writes a continuation of “Childhood Theme”, articles about road construction, theft in construction, fights for state support for construction, signs under them as a “practice engineer” The Minister of Railways knows whoever writes articles he dislikes threatens to fire Mikhailovsky from the railway system. But Garin-Mikhailovsky is already known as an engineer. He is not left without work. Designs the road Kazan Sergiev Vody. Continues to fight embezzlement on the railway. Garin-Mikhailovsky was not a revolutionary, but he met Gorky and helped the revolutionaries with money.
Working on the railroad does not allow him to sit at a desk; he writes on the go, on the train, on scraps of paper, office book forms. Sometimes a story is written in one night. I was very excited when I sent my work and baptized it. Then he was tormented that he had written it wrong, and sent corrections by telegram from different stations. As far as I know, he was the only Russian writer who wrote his works by telegraph" (S. Elpatievsky). Garin-Mikhailovsky is the author of not only the famous tetralogy, but also novels, short stories, plays, and essays.
Garin-Mikhailovsky and children
It's time to talk about main love Nikolai Georgievich. These are kids. From a letter to his wife (1887): “I love you, my joy, and the children more life I remember you with joy and pleasure..." He had 11 of his own children and three adopted ones! Even in his youth, he and his bride took an oath. “We will never lay a finger on our children.” And indeed, children were never punished in his family , one of his dissatisfied looks was enough. He really wanted the children to be happy, in one of the stories he writes: “... after all, if there is no happiness during childhood, when will there be it?” Garin-Mikhailovsky's wonderful story "Confession of a Father" about the feelings of a father who punished his little son and then lost him. It would be good if this program was repeated.
Children surrounded him everywhere; other people's children called him Uncle Nika. He loved to give gifts to children and organize holidays, especially New Year trees. He made up fairy tales on the fly and told them well. His children's fairy tales were published before the revolution. He talked to the children seriously, as equals. When Chekhov died, Nikolai Georgievich wrote to his 13-year-old adopted son: “The most sensitive and sympathetic person and, probably, the most suffering person in Russia has died: we probably cannot even understand now the full magnitude and significance of the loss that this death brought... And what do you think about this? Write to me..." His letters to already adult children have been preserved. He saw little of the children and did not impose his beliefs on them, but his influence on the children was enormous. They all grew up to be worthy people: Sergei became a mining engineer, Georgiy (Garya) studied abroad before the revolution, ended up in forced emigration, knew 14 languages, was a specialist in international law, and translated his father’s works into foreign languages. He returned to the USSR in 1946, but died soon...
Garin-Mikhailovsky dedicated his first and most expensive book, “The Childhood of Theme” (1892), to his childhood. This book is not only memories of my own childhood, but also reflections on family, moral education person. He remembered his cruel father, the punishment cell in their house, the floggings. The mother protected the children and told the father: “You should train puppies, not raise children.” An excerpt from “Tema’s Childhood” became the book “Tema and the Bug,” one of the first and favorite books of children of many generations in our country.
Continuation of "Childhood Themes" "Gymnasium Students" (1893). And this book is largely autobiographical, “everything is taken directly from life.” The censorship protested against this book. Garin-Mikhailovsky writes that the gymnasium turns children into stupid people and distorts their souls. Someone called his story “An invaluable treatise on education... how not to educate.” The books then made a huge impression on readers, especially teachers. A flood of letters poured in. Garin-Mikhailovsky put the following words into the mouth of his hero from “Gymnasium Students” (teacher Leonid Nikolaevich): “They say it’s too late to start talking about education, they say it’s an old and boring issue, resolved long ago. I don’t agree with this. There are no resolved issues on earth, and the issue of education is the most pressing and painful for humanity. And this is not an old, meager issue - it is eternal. new question, because there are no old children."
The third book by Garin-Mikhailovsky “Students” (1895). And in this book his life experience, observations that even in his student days human dignity was suppressed, the task of the institution is not to make a person, but a slave, an opportunist. Only at the age of 25, when he began to build his first road, began to work, only then did he find himself, gain character. It turned out that the entire first 25 years of his life was a longing for work. Since childhood, the ebullient nature had been waiting for a living cause, but the family, the gymnasium, and the institute killed this thirst. The fourth book "Engineers". It was not completed. And it was published after the writer’s death (1907). Gorky called these books by Garin-Mikhailovsky “a whole epic of Russian life.”
Garin-Mikhailovsky traveler
Work on the railway, painful work on books. Nikolai Georgievich was very tired and decided to “rest” and travel around the world (1898) through the Far East, Japan, America, and Europe. This was his long-time dream. He had traveled all over Russia for a long time and now he wanted to see other countries. Garin-Mikhailovsky got ready to travel, and just before leaving he was offered to take part in a large scientific expedition to North Korea and Manchuria. He agreed. It was a very difficult, dangerous, but extremely interesting journey through unknown places. The writer traveled 1,600 kilometers with the expedition on foot and on horseback. I saw a lot, kept diaries, listened to Korean fairy tales through a translator. Later he published these tales for the first time in Russia and Europe. We published these fairy tales in 1956 and, unfortunately, have not republished them since.
Garin-Mikhailovsky visited Japan, America, and Europe. It’s interesting to read his lines about returning to Russia after such a trip: “I don’t know about anyone, but I was overcome by a heavy, downright painful feeling when I entered Russia from Europe... I’ll get used to it, I’ll get drawn into this life again, and maybe , it will not seem like a prison, horror, and even more depressing from this consciousness.”
Garin-Mikhailovsky wrote interesting reports about his expedition to North Korea. After returning from the trip, he was invited to the Tsar in the Anichkov Palace. Nikolai Georgievich was very seriously preparing to tell the story about what he had seen and experienced, but it turned out that his story was not of interest to anyone from the royal family, the queen was clearly bored, and the king was drawing women’s heads. The questions asked were completely irrelevant. Then Nikolai Georgievich wrote about them “These are provincials!” But the tsar still decided to award Garin-Mikhailovsky the Order of St. Vladimir. The writer never received it because he and Gorky signed a letter of protest against the beating of students at the Kazan Cathedral. Nikolai Georgievich was expelled from the capital for a year and a half.
The railroad again
In the spring of 1903, Garin-Mikhailovsky was appointed head of the survey party for the construction of a railway along the southern coast of Crimea. Nikolai Georgievich investigated the possibilities of laying a road. He understood that the road should pass through very picturesque places and resorts. Therefore, he developed 84 (!) versions of the electric road, where each station had to be designed not only by architects, but also by artists. Each station had to be very beautiful and non-standard. He then wrote: “I would like to finish two things: the electric road in Crimea and the story “Engineers.” But he did not succeed in either one or the other. Construction of the road was supposed to begin in the spring of 1904, and in January the Russian-Japanese War began ...
The Crimean road has not yet been built! And Garin-Mikhailovsky went to the Far East as a war correspondent. He wrote essays, which later became the book “Diary during the War,” which contained the real truth about that war. After the revolution of 1905, he came to St. Petersburg for a short time. Gave a large amount money for revolutionary needs. He did not know that from 1896 until the end of his life he was under secret police surveillance.
Care of Garin-Mikhailovsky
After the war, he returned to the capital, threw himself into social work, writing, wrote articles, plays, tried to finish the book “Engineers”... He did not know how to rest, he slept 3-4 hours a day. His wife tried to persuade him to rest, and he answered her: “I’ll rest in the grave, I’ll sleep there.” He probably didn't realize how close he was to the truth in his prophecy. On November 26, 1906, Nikolai Georgievich gathered friends, talked and argued all night (he wanted to create new theater). They separated in the morning. And at 9 am it’s work again. In the evening, Garin-Mikhailovsky at a meeting of the editorial board of Vestnik Zhizn, again controversy, his bright, heated speech. Suddenly he felt bad, he went into the next room, lay down on the sofa and died. After the autopsy, the doctor said that the heart was healthy, but paralysis occurred due to extreme fatigue.
The family did not have enough money for the funeral, so they had to collect it by subscription. Garin-Mikhailovsky was buried at the Volkov cemetery in St. Petersburg.
Much has been written about Garin-Mikhailovsky, there are books, articles, memoirs. But, probably, the most accurate characteristics were given to him by Korney Chukovsky (essay “Garin”). I would like to present the entire essay here, but it is long 21 pages. Here are just a few lines from the essay:
“Garin was short, very agile, dapper, handsome: his hair was gray, his eyes were young and quick... All his life he worked as a railway engineer, but also in his hair, in his impetuous, uneven gait and in his unbridled, hasty , hot speeches always felt what is called a broad nature an artist, a poet, alien to stingy, selfish and petty thoughts...
It seems to me that the most important thing is that for all his emotional outbursts, for all his inconsiderate, unbridled generosity, he was a businesslike, businesslike man, a man of numbers and facts, accustomed from a young age to all economic practices.
This was the originality of it. creative personality: in combination of a high structure of the soul with practicality. A rare combination, especially in those days... He was the only contemporary fiction writer who was a consistent enemy of mismanagement, in which he saw the source of all our tragedies. In his books, he often insisted that Russia is completely in vain to live in such humiliating poverty, since it is the richest country in the world...
And he looked at the Russian village, and at Russian industry, and at the Russian railway business, and at the Russian family way of life just as busily and thoughtfully; he made, as it were, an audit of Russia in the eighties and nineties... Moreover, like any practitioner, he has goals always specific, clear, close, aimed at eliminating some specific evil: this needs to be changed, rebuilt, but this needs to be completely destroyed. And then (in this limited area) life will become smarter, richer and more joyful..."
It is a pity that during Garin-Mikhailovsky’s lifetime his views on the reconstruction of Russia were not appreciated in the country.
The Southern Urals can be proud that such a person is directly related to it.
Indomitable is apparently best definition character of an engineer and writer. Garin-Mikhailovsky always gave his all in what he did.
Childhood
He was born in 1852 into a wealthy noble family. Father - Georgy Antonovich Mikhailovsky during the war was wounded during an attack and awarded for bravery. After retiring, he settled in Odessa. His first-born Nika had a godfather. His mother Glafira Nikolaevna was a noblewoman of Serbian origin. The boy grew up handsome, cheerful, but very lively and nimble in his misfortune.
Every now and then he violated the instructions of his father, whom he loved very much, and therefore his father rashly took up the belt. The future writer Garin-Mikhailovsky studied at the Richelieu gymnasium. All this will later be described in two parts of the tetralogy: “Tema’s Childhood” and “Gymnasium Students.” In them, almost each of the heroes has a real prototype. Only at the age of forty did Garin-Mikhailovsky finish his first biographical story, “Tema’s Childhood.” He wrote his works in passing, one might say, “on his knees,” wherever necessary. But when reading, you don’t notice this.
Youth
After graduating from high school, Garin-Mikhailovsky decided to become a lawyer and entered the university. But a year later, the dictates of his soul lead him to the Institute of Railways. It was a colossal success both for himself and for society. Later, Garin-Mikhailovsky would become a talented practical engineer.
In the meantime, he works as a trainee fireman in Bessarabia. But when he finishes his studies, he is sent to Bulgaria, and then participates in the construction of the Bender-Galician road. The work of a survey engineer greatly fascinated Nikolai Georgievich. In addition, decent earnings appeared. In the same 1879, he very happily married Nadezhda Valerievna Charykova (they had eleven children and three adopted children). The wedding is taking place in Odessa, and the evening train is supposed to take the young couple to St. Petersburg. But the cheerful and noisy Mikhailovsky family changes the clocks in advance, and the young people are late for the train and leave only in the morning. And how many jokes and laughter there were about this! In St. Petersburg, Mikhailovsky did not like the paperwork in the ministry. Therefore, he is happy to return to practical work. Builds a section of the Batum-Samtredia railway. The work is very dangerous - gangs of robbers hide in the forests and attack workers. Then he is transferred and appointed head of the Baku section of the Transcaucasian Railway. At the end of 1882, seeing corruption and bribes, he resigned, although he really loved the work of a survey engineer.
Gundurovka (1883-1886)
N.G. Garin-Mikhailovsky buys an estate in the Samara province, where he plans to create a farm that will help raise harvests, and wants to destroy the kulaks.
The ideas of the populists had already penetrated his consciousness. But three times they allowed the “red rooster” into his estate. The mill, the thresher and, finally, the entire crop were destroyed. He was practically ruined and decided to return to being an engineer. He lived in Gundurovka for two and a half years.
Engineering work
In 1886 he returned to his favorite job. Conducted research on the Ural section "Ufa-Zlatoust". The family lives in Ufa at this time. This was the beginning. He worked as an economist, and the result was enormous savings - 60% of money for every mile. But this project had to be fought through. At the same time, he continues his literary work, writing an essay “Option” about this story. Mikhailovsky introduced Stanyukovich to the first chapters of the story “Tema’s Childhood,” which was published in its finished form in 1892. In addition, documentary essays about the village were published, which were also successful. In 1893, the essay “A Trip to the Moon” was published. But in his heart and in practice he remained a railway engineer.
Practical work
She was tearing off all the time. But it was a labor of love. Mikhailovsky traveled all over Siberia, the Samara province, and visited Korea and Manchuria to find out the possibility of construction there too. The impressions were included in the essay “Across Korea, Manchuria and the Liaodong Peninsula.” He visited China, Japan and finally arrived in San Francisco through Hawaii.
I traveled by train through all the states and returned to London, stopping at Paris on the way. In 1902, the essay “Around the World” was published.
A famous person
He became very famous person in the capital both as a traveler and as a writer. And as a result, he was invited to Nicholas II. He walked with timidity and returned with bewilderment. The questions that the emperor asked were simple and uncomplicated and spoke of the limited thinking of the questioner.
Literary life
He was very active with a number of magazines. “Tyoma’s Childhood”, “Gymnasium Students”, and “Students” have already been published. Work is underway on "Engineers". At the evening meeting of the "Bulletin of Life" he suddenly died. His heart could not withstand such a load. He was 54 years old.
On a gloomy November morning, St. Petersburg saw off Garin-Mikhailovsky on his last journey to the Volkovo cemetery. There was not enough money for the funeral. I had to collect it by subscription.
The book of life
The biography of the writer Garin began with “The Childhood of Tyoma.” He took this pseudonym after the name of his son Harry. But everyone is used to calling the author Garin-Mikhailovsky. Summary- this is a bright and pure spring of childhood memories. A huge manor house on the outskirts of a large southern city and the adjoining “rented yard”, which was rented out to the poor, where in the dirt and dust, in games and pranks shared with the poor yard children, Tyoma spent his childhood - nothing more than his father’s house , where Nikolai Mikhailovich spent his childhood.
Tyoma Kartashev’s childhood was happy, but by no means cloudless. The father, with his misunderstanding, severely wounds the tender child's soul. These sufferings of little Tyoma, the fear of his stern and strict father, resonate in the reader’s soul with pain. And Tyoma’s mother, sensitive and noble-hearted, loves her impetuous and impressionable son deeply and, as best she can, protects him from his father’s methods of education - merciless spanking. The reader witnesses the merciless brutal execution and the horror that fills the mother’s soul. The child turns into a pitiful little animal. His human dignity has been ripped away from him. Good luck and failure teaching experience are relevant in our time, as Garin-Mikhailovsky shows them (“Childhood of Tyoma”). Summary - the spirit of humanity, respect for the child’s personality - the basics of democratic pedagogy. The dramatic death of his father ends and will forever be remembered by him last words: “If you ever go against the king, I will curse you from the grave.”
