They belonged to the generation of the forties and went down in history as budding poets whose talent was ruined by a ruthless war: Mikhail Kulchitsky, Pavel Kogan, Vsevolod Bagritsky, Boris Bogatkov ... Nikolai Petrovich Mayorov, author of a famous poem on behalf of whole generation - "We."
The beginning of the biography
Their fathers are people born at the turn of two eras: those who forced tsarism and past the crucible of World War I, the revolution and the Civil War. They believed in a better future and passed this faith on to children. Nikolai Mayorov, whose biography is inseparable from the history of the country, was born in a working class family in May 1919. His homeland is the small village of Durovka in the Simbirsk province. There, the family turned out to be a driveway to the Vladimir province, the father’s homeland. But already at the age of ten, he moved with his parents and older brothers to Ivanovo, where Pyotr Maksimovich built a house on 1st Aviation Street.
Studying at school number 9 (now school number 26), Nikolai Petrovich attended a literary circle and was known as the best school poet. In one of his manuscript notebooks, illustrations by Nikolai Sheberstov, who later became a famous artist, were preserved. It was his friends who later bit by bit collected poetry poetry and restored the pages of his biography, for they believed in his undeniable talent.
School poems
According to the recollections of friends, in his school years Nikolai Mayorov was embarrassed when he was ranked among poets. And those, on the contrary, joked about this and, going all the way to the bookstore, in his presence asked the seller if a book of poems by the famous poet Nikolai Mayorov had been published. To understand his destiny, the young man sent his first poetic experience to Moscow, to a reputable publishing house. "Fiction" gave him a rebuke, examining the submitted material in a detailed manner. Today, no one does such analyzes, and then it was mandatory.
In response, he was reproached for the poverty of vocabulary and well-worn epithets. I wonder if the editor knew that he was responding to a thirteen-year-old boy, and not an adult? In 1960, the first three handwritten notebooks of Mayorov will be unveiled by Mikhail Kulchitsky’s sister, where the poet’s school work appears before the readers. This is a collection of “Oughts”, where a sad prophecy slips through itself, mini-poems and fairy tales, already talking about genre diversity, and lyrics related to the poet’s first love for a girl from “Moscow Street”.
Education
The third notebook dates back to the Moscow period, when Nikolai Mayorov became a student at Moscow State University. He entered the Faculty of History in 1937, and Boris Slutsky, Mikhail Lukonin, David Samoilov, who formed the first literary circle, studied at the other circles known in youth circles. The student of history at the Faculty of Writing was soon recognized as his own and more and more often invited to read poetry in front of the student audience, who immediately and unconditionally loved him.
Success inspired the author, and in 1939, he began to study at the Literary Institute, attending the poetry workshop of Pavel Antokolsky, a famous Soviet poet. Having studied with him, his peer Mikhail Kulchitsky will leave his memories, where he will call his friend “block”, the landmark that everyone wanted to reach for. His first poems will be printed by the Moscow State University’s large circulation, remaining the only publication that published Mayorov’s works during his lifetime.
Finnish war
The elder brother of Nikolai Mayorov Alexey served in aviation. And in 1938 he himself witnessed the death of pilots on the outskirts of Ivanov. They were buried with honors, putting on the grave instead of a tombstone the screw of a crashed plane. Nicholas called it “a memory of their heights taken”, writing wonderful poems in which, along with the pathos of citizenship and the poetry of war, a note of early soldier death appeared.
His friend in Ivanovo, Vladimir Zhukov, will fall on the Karelian Isthmus, becoming a participant in the Finnish war. World War II has already begun and has shown its true meaning, bringing death and suffering. Zhukov was seriously injured, and after the hospital, friends pondered for a long time what it was like to fire aimed at the enemy, to fear in battle and to survive the wound, always being disabled. Even then, Nikolai Mayorov, whose poems about the apprehension of early death saw the light of day, understood that he could not escape a machine gun company in the future.
Love
The poet’s muse was his classmate Irina Ptashnikova, whose passion for archeology did not allow lovers to connect their lives. After the first course, they dreamed of getting married, but Irina went on an archaeological expedition to Khorezm. It was difficult for creative nature to understand this, and Nikolai Mayorov will write touching poems to You, in which he will also put Irina in second place after poetry. Irina will not forgive the youthful maximalism of her lover, and they will begin to move away from each other.
Fellow students understand that it is difficult to build relationships for two strong personalities who are defending their independence. But they will remain friends until the last, and from the front Nikolai will write letters to her, and at the evening of his memory a woman will read a huge number of his poems by heart, many of which were dedicated to her.
The Great Patriotic War
From the first days of the war, the expectation of which was felt with the beginning of the forties, student Moscow was sent to dig anti-tank ditches near Yelnya. The entire literary circle aspires to the front, and already in September Nikolai Mayorov, whose biography will not differ much from the biography of friends in the future, will go to Ivanovo to arrive at the military enlistment office. After completing formalities in October, he will be drafted into the Red Army.
Appointed as an assistant to the political instructor, he will be part of the machine-gun company of the rifle division No. 331, participating in battles on Smolensk land.
The death of the poet
They tried not to mention the Rzhev-Vyazem operation in the winter of 1942 for a long time. The offensive tactics of the Red Army did not lead to success and drowned in the blood of thousands of soldiers and officers, nicknamed places under Rzhev "death valley". In the forty-degree frost, the rifle regiment, in which Nikolai Petrovich Mayorov served, kept the village of Barantsevo in the Smolensk region for months. Here, on February 8, the assistant to the political instructor fell, whose grave could not be found for a long time.
Irina Ptashnikova unsuccessfully searched for the remains of her friend, who was buried, as it turned out, in a mass grave along with seven military comrades. Later, the participants in the battles in the infamous Karmanovsky ledge were reburied in Karmanovo, where they created a memorial.
Heritage
Nikolai Mayorov is one of the poets whose poems were not known to the general public during his lifetime, but he became the herald of a whole generation. His friend Vladimir Zhukov published part of his poems in local newspapers, and in 1962 published a collection called "We", collecting bit by bit the memories of friends and colleagues. Nikolai Mayorov, whose work has not yet been fully studied, handed over the suitcases with manuscripts to one of his friends for storage. Unfortunately, they have not been found so far. Already in 2013, early works were discovered in the archive (RGALI), but this is only a small part of the work written by the author. His poems "Sculptor" and "Family" are preserved only in fragments.
Nikolai Mayorov’s poems about the war, or rather, about her apprehension on behalf of “we generation” are among the top best works along with the works of Konstantin Simonov and Alexander Twardovsky, Anna Akhmatova and Olga Berggolts. Posthumously, he became a member of the Writers' Union, which in itself is a unique fact. The street in Ivanovo was named after him, and on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the Victory, the Karmanovskaya school also achieved the right to bear the name of an outstanding poet. Nikolay Mayorov, as P. Antokolsky said, will forever remain young in human memory, like his lines:
“We were tall, brown hair. You will read in books, like a myth, About the people that left without chiselling, Without having finished the last cigarettes. ”