Prototypes of the heroes of his books were world famous and illustrious people. He met with the legendary scout Sandor Rado. Ruth Werner, who worked in the pre-war period with Richard Sorge, received him in her Berlin apartment. Mikhail Vodopyanov, one of the first Heroes of the Soviet Union, was a consultant to one of the works. Pilots, security officers, intelligence officers and ordinary Soviet people compiled a gallery of portraits of characters in books that Igor Bondarenko wrote.
Bondarenko Igor: biography, literary and social activities
At the end of January 2014 Taganrog covered with snow. Transport stopped, schools closed, fuel trucks and food trucks got stuck on the road. The whole city was cleaning the snow. Only the path leading to a small house in the private sector remained uncleared. In the winter whirlwind, the neighbors did not immediately notice that for several days they had not seen the elderly man who lived in it. The door was hacked, but help came late. On a snowy day, January 30, 2014 in Taganrog, Igor Mikhailovich Bondarenko, a juvenile prisoner of a Nazi concentration camp, front-line soldier and writer, died.
The son of an enemy of the people
October 22, 1927 in the family of the secretary of the Komsomol district committee Mikhail Bondarenko, a son was born, who was given the name Harry. A young father, and at that time he was only 22 years old, devoted his life to the revolution and party work. In subsequent years, he led party organizations at various enterprises of Taganrog. In 1935 he became the second secretary of the city party committee - he oversaw the industry of the city. Unfortunately, the career of a young and energetic person ended naturally for that time. In December 1937 he was arrested and after a short investigation shot. In the summer of 1938, my mother, Ksenia Tikhonovna Bondarenko, was arrested. Igor (Harry) was left alone.
For the son of the enemy of the people, only one road was destined - to the orphanage. But here the boy was lucky - his cousin Anya took him to live. She was 18 years old, and she was not afraid to shelter a boy left without parents in her house. Mom was released three months later, at the end of 1938, but for several years she remained under the public supervision of the "competent" authorities.
Juvenile Prisoner No. 47704
Taganrog, along with the whole country, learned about the beginning of the war from the speech of V. M. Molotov. Men massively stormed the draft board and demanded sending to the front. Their jobs in enterprises that switched to wartime work were occupied by women. The boys helped adults and looked forward to an early victory over the Nazis. But the front was approaching, and in mid-October 1941 the forward units of the Wehrmacht marched through the streets of the city.
Warring Germany needed working hands. Whole families were taken away to work in German enterprises. Among them was the fourteen-year-old Bondarenko. Igor, whose family consisted of one mother, was taken to Germany with her in 1942. More than 600 people were in the echelon. The writer later recalled that families were constantly trying to separate. For several weeks, the beating of rebellious people continued. But later the guards reconciled - part of the barracks in the camp were given to the "family".
At the Heinkel factory
The concentration camp in which the teenager got was located in the ancient German city of Rostock. In fact, the camp itself has not yet been built. The prisoners were placed in the gym, where there were 2 thousand bunk beds. Stench, stuffiness and crowding reigned there. There were no windows in the room. Six months later, the prisoners were transferred to barracks.
At 4 o'clock in the morning - rise and roll call. At 6 o'clock, a convoy of prisoners went beyond the barbed wire. Two hours walked to Rostock - 7 kilometers. Large industrial enterprises were located here. Bondarenko worked at one of them, Marienne Aviation Plant, which was owned by Heinkel. Igor was in the crew of movers. And after exhausting work - again two hours drive to his hut. Around was armed guard, evil shepherds, hunger, disease. And the pipes of the crematorium were visible from the windows of the hut. Ahead were the long years of hard slave labor.
In the ranks of the Resistance
It’s impossible to come to terms with life behind barbed wire. But life goes on even in captivity. Igor Bondarenko worked in the same team with Czechs, Poles, and French. They taught the guy German. Thanks to this, in 1943 he was transferred from movers to work on an electric crane. Here he met two French prisoners of war who were already in the ranks of the Resistance movement. Rumors about the defeat of the Nazi group near Stalingrad seeped through the camp walls. The captives tried their best to bring victory over fascism closer. Igor’s two new comrades were just such people.
With the help of a Russian girl who worked in the factory design bureau, they managed to find out that the factory produces parts for FAA missiles. The French were able to pass this information on the outside. A series of Allied air raids completely destroyed the plants in Rostock. During one of them, the future writer almost died. He was waiting for the bombing in the station building. The explosion of an aircraft shell brought down ceilings - almost all those in the room were killed. Our hero survived, but was walled up under the ruins of brick walls. Another bomb brought salvation. Bursting next to the surviving wall, she made a large hole in it. Through this hole people got out.
From a prisoner of war to a Red Army soldier
After the aircraft factories were destroyed, the life of the captives changed. They began to be transferred to other camps. This affected Bondarenko. Igor, together with a small group of Russian prisoners, was placed in a new concentration camp. The Nazis turned the building of an empty warehouse into an old barren brick factory into a barrack. The guards did not diligently fulfill their duties - the defeat of Germany in the war was already obvious. In early 1945, Igor makes an escape. He made his way east at night, and hid in the woods or abandoned houses during the day. He ate whatever he got, warmed himself around the fire, but stubbornly walked towards his own. One of the nights he was awakened by artillery cannonade. And in the morning at the edge of the forest he saw Soviet tanks.
Of course, it could not do without verification. Soon, a new recruit appeared in the regimental intelligence of one of the advancing units of the 2 Belorussian Front. In the battles on the Oder River, in the destroyed fascist dugout, scouts found a camera. Nobody knew how to photograph, but enthusiastically “clicked” each other. Remained such a photograph and Bondarenko. Igor kept the photo carefully - a frozen visible memory of the front. He ended the war on Elba as a mortar battery driver. Victory came, but military service continued. In the forests they caught the “werewolves” - members of the organization of Hitler partisans, created from old people and adolescents. Destroyed undefeated SS men. It was still a long 6 years before demobilization.
Back to school desk
In 1951, a student appeared in Taganrog High School No. 2, who stood out from the general mass of schoolchildren - Bondarenko. Igor studied books and textbooks almost around the clock. After all, before the war he managed to finish only 6 classes. And yesterday the Red Army soldier was not going to stay at school - he was already 24 years old. I handed over the school program externally. Immediately entered Rostov State University. He studied eagerly, binge, as if catching up on lost years.
After 5 years, the young teacher Bondarenko who graduated with honors from the Faculty of Philology leaves for distribution in Kyrgyzstan. For two years he was a teacher in the village of Balykchi. In 1958, a new literary employee crossed the threshold of the editorial office of the magazine Don in Rostov. The next 30 years of his life, Igor Mikhailovich devoted to this publication.
The feather is equated with a bayonet
How did Igor Bondarenko begin as a writer? For the first time, he felt the need to write down his thoughts at the front. Blank paper on the front lines was a rarity. But somewhere on the ruins of a ruined German house he found a children's book. On her pages he began to describe everything that happened to him. Somewhat awkward and naive - you need to remember that behind his shoulders were incomplete 6 classes of the school.
The first publications in the newspaper appeared in 1947. And while studying at the university a book of short stories was published (1964). The experience of the war was splashed onto clean sheets. The first big work of the story “Who Will Come to the Mariin” was published by the Rostov Book Publishing House (1967). The fiction of the work is closely intertwined with the actual material. Indeed, the action of the story took place at the very factory of the Heinkel company, where the young prisoner Igor worked. The story “The Yellow Circle” (1973) continued the story.
True, this book might not see the light. The manuscript, written in 1969, received a negative review of one of the departments of the state security organs. It was about the use of espionage technology by Western intelligence agencies. The "competent" employees saw in this the rise of foreign technology. The author did not agree with the comments and did not rewrite the story. The manuscript lay "on the table." After 3 years at a meeting in the Writers' Union, Bondarenko spoke about this incident and added that he would no longer write on a similar topic. One of the leaders of Soviet intelligence took part in the discussion. Having delved into the essence of the issue, he gave the go-ahead to the publication of the novel The Yellow Circle. Saying goodbye to the author, the general said: “The topic is very important, but there are fools everywhere. There will be questions - please contact! "
Two books about the main thing
The first part of the “Such a Long Life” dilogy appeared on the shelves of bookstores in 1978. Two years later, the second book of this novel was published. This is the story of the twentieth century, described through the events that accompanied the life of one family. In many ways, this is an autobiographical work. The Putivtsev family, whose life can be traced from the 1920s to the 1980s, lived in Taganrog. In the image of the head of the family, the features of the writer’s father, Mikhail Markovich Bondarenko, are clearly visible. His son, Vladimir Putivtsev, went through the Nazi camp, the underground, the front - these are the stages of the difficult life of the author himself. Perhaps it was due to its reliability that the dilogy withstood several reprints - the events that were described in it accompanied the lives of many Soviet families.
Another iconic work is the novel “Red Pianists”. According to intelligence historians, this is the most complete artistic understanding of the work of a group of illegal intelligence officers who were given the pseudonym Red Chapel in the Hitler counterintelligence service. In order to study the factual material, the author visited Berlin and Budapest, met with the surviving participants in those events. The first readers of the manuscript were the legendary Soviet intelligence officer Sandor Rado and intelligence agent Ruth Werner. They praised the new novel.
Not only numbers (conclusion)
The life of any creative person can be expressed in numbers and dry official phrases. Bondarenko is no exception to this rule. Igor Mikhailovich lived a long and vibrant life, the success and value of which can be summed up very briefly:
- wrote 34 books;
- the total circulation of his works published in the Soviet Union is more than 2 million copies;
- books were translated into European languages ​​and languages ​​of the peoples of the USSR.
He was also a member of the Union of Journalists (1963) and the Union of Writers (1970). He created a publishing cooperative (1989), then one of the first independent publishing houses Maprekon and the magazine Kontur (1991), one of the first in the history of new Russia. More than a million books were published by Bondarenko. As a result of default and financial turmoil in 1998, publishing has collapsed. In addition, Bondarenko created the regional branch of the Union of Russian Writers in Rostov (1991) and became its first leader. For a long time, the branch existed only at the expense of the publishing activity of Maprecon.
In 1996, he changed his place of residence - he moved from Rostov to Taganrog. He is an honorary citizen of his hometown since 2007. Edited the third edition of the Encyclopedia of Taganrog (2008). But can a writer be evaluated in print runs and for years?
On January 30, 2014, an author died in Taganrog who did not manage to finish his last work. The film whirlpool "Whirlpool" was to be a continuation of the dilogy "Such a long life." The life that ended during the winter blizzard ...
PS The last will of the writer was not fulfilled. Igor (Harry) Mikhailovich Bondarenko bequeathed to dispel his ashes over the waters of the Taganrog Bay. He was buried in the Nikolaev cemetery of Taganrog.