Kozachinsky Alexander Vladimirovich lived only 39 years, but his life was full of adventures, events and adventures that would be enough for several people to write memoirs. Unfortunately, he did not leave behind such an exciting book, but became an example of how you can not be afraid to change your life, not just radically, but also from the state of a law-abiding person to the leader of a gang.
Alexander Kozachinsky lived in an era of change in the most fun and unpredictable city in the world - in Odessa.
Writer childhood
The writer was born in Moscow in a noble family on September 4, 1903. The boy was only 3 years old when his family moved to Odessa because of his father's tuberculosis.
Although the warm climate and the sea somewhat improved the condition of the patient, he still died in 1911. The illness of his father greatly undermined the financial situation of the family, but nevertheless Alexander Kozachinsky enters the best gymnasium of the city, where he is not only in the same class, but also at the same desk with Evgeny Kataev.
Over the short school years, boys became not just friends, but blood brothers, having performed the ritual of "exchange" of blood. Passion for the novels of Fenimore Cooper played an important role here. That is how the Apache Indians became brothers - a cut on the hand and an exchange of handshakes sealed the blood union forever.
Youth
Alexander Kozachinsky escaped the adolescent period with all its adult complexes, immediately entering adulthood. Having left school after 7th grade in 1917, the boy gets a guard to help his mother at least somehow.
Post-revolutionary Odessa daily presented surprises. The money earned in the morning could already cost nothing in the evening, and the power changed with the division of the city.
Evgeny Kataev and Alexander Kozachinsky (photos of those years see below) lost each other for a while and could not see each other. The part of the city where the Kataevs lived belonged to the Petliurites (the area of ​​Kanatnaya street), and Denikin settled on Sofievskaya (the area of ​​the Kozachinsky).
At age 16, the young man joined the county police as a clerk. Having an adventurous character warehouse, Alexander Kozachinsky did not last long on boring office work, and in 1920 tried himself as an employee of the Odessa criminal investigation department.
Before that, Alexander quite successfully played for the Odessa Black Sea football team as a goalkeeper, but the events that took place in the city and youthful romanticism brought him to the UGRO department.
Criminal Investigation Jobs
The seventeen-year-old “specialist” was given the most complex bandit plot. At that time in the Odessa criminal investigation department there were many random people who got there for food rations. Kozachinsky Alexander not only took the work seriously and tried to eliminate lawlessness on the streets of the city, but also opened the Bengalsky case.
Envious colleagues, as the people say, “concocted” a successful and honest young man, attributing him to official crimes. The court sentenced him to 3 years in prison, but Alexander insisted on a review of the case and proved his innocence.
After the acquittal, Alexander Kozachinsky became a criminal investigator in the 1st Baltic County. His duties included stopping bribery, abuse of power, violation of the law by colleagues, officials and local authorities.
There was nothing romantic about it, and it was impossible to stop bribes and lawlessness alone, so the young man, without thinking twice, steals a green van loaded specifically for the police chief. In the form of a bribe, millers from all around sent bags of grain, which in those hungry times was worth more than gold.
Gangster youth
The hijacking of the van was carried out together with the deserter Georgy Fech and ended up with the fact that all the grain was "requisitioned" and appropriated by the police in the Tiraspol region. Since there was no evidence, the accomplices were released, but a letter of their misconduct was sent to the Odessa threat search.
Alexander Kozachinsky, whose biography could have ended somewhere near Tiraspol if he had been shot, nevertheless did not stop and decided that he needed more people to carry out the attacks.
Georgy Fech brings a new friend to the German colony in Lustdorf and introduces Shmaltz and Burgardt, known criminals in Odessa. After a while, people join them, led by Colonel Orlov, who commanded the punitive forces in Kolchak’s army.
In total, the gang totaled more than 20 fighters. All operations were carefully prepared by young Kozachinsky, and they were successful. The gang robbed trains and banks, offices and wealthy people. In the German settlement, Alexander enjoyed great respect among men and great love among women. The nickname "Handsome", which he was given not only for his attractive appearance, but also for his good manners and his nobleness, became the name of the hero of his story "Green Van", for which he himself became a prototype.
Gangster youth could have ended in execution if fate had not brought Alexander and his childhood friend Yevgeny Kataev together. When the gang was ambushed at Starokonny Bazaar, it was Zhenya who arrested Sasha and offered to surrender in order to save his life.
The trial of the bandits was strange even for Odessa. Residents of Lustdorf defended Kozachinsky and instead of witnesses fell into the dock, which is why the meetings began to be held indoors.
Kozachinsky was sentenced to be shot, but Kataev did not let a friend down, stood up for him, so the investigation was conducted by other people, and the sentence was commuted to imprisonment. This happened in 1922, and in 1925 Alexander was released under an amnesty. His mother and best friend met him near the prison.
Journalism
Evgeny Kataev, having moved to Moscow in 1925 to visit his brother Valentin, a well-known writer at that time, offered Alexander the job of a reporter in a newspaper.
Evgeny Kataev is well known to readers under the pseudonym Evgeny Petrov. Working as a feuilleton player in the Moscow newspaper Gudok, he met Ilya Ilf, thanks to which the Twelve Chairs and the Golden Calf were born. It was he who insisted that Alexander write a story about a green van.
Writing career
Kozachinsky Alexander Vladimirovich, whose works are based only on real events, was not really going to become a writer. At first, he successfully worked as a correspondent for the Gudok newspaper, then for Economic Life, and if it had not been for the persistence of his childhood friend, the world would not have known an amazing and adventurous story about Krasavchik and Volodya Patrikeev.
In total, Kozachinsky wrote several stories and one story, but nevertheless he entered the category of not only readable authors, but also shot ones. At the heart of the "Green Van" are real events that took place in the 20s in Odessa. Alexander’s best friend, Zhenya Kataev, became the prototype of Volodya Patrikeev - a not discouraging young man who longs for the glory of Sherlock Holmes.
Images of the main characters
The images of the main characters in the story “The Green Van” turned out to be lively and believable, since Kozachinsky did not have to invent them.
His friendship with Zhenya Kataev simply went to the pages of the work, where a friend became himself - a young worker of the Odessa threat. Volodya Patrikeev - a former schoolboy, overflowing with romantic aspirations, dreams of making the world a better place, revealing crimes like Sherlock Holmes.
Where, if not in the young Soviet militia, can you show your “remarkable” analytical abilities? The image of Patrikeev was written out with such sympathy and a subtle sense of humor that you fall in love with the main character and forgive all his mistakes and mistakes.
The events described in the story
The work is based on a true story about the author’s gangster past and the theft of a green van from under the nose of a police chief.
Just as in Handsome’s work, everything ended well, so in the author’s life, gangster life became the basis of a literary work, and not the death penalty.
The sudden death of a writer
Publishing houses that printed books in Soviet times decided that Kozachinsky Alexander Vladimirovich wrote works for children, although they are more suitable for those readers who can understand the exclusive humor inherent in hungry and cold Odessa of the 20s.
According to the story, the film was shot in 1982 by director Alexander Pavlovsky. The film was very vividly and accurately conveyed by Odessa humor, and the color of that time, and the main characters who become favorite from the first lines of the story and frames of the film.
Alexander Kozachinsky died at the age of 39 (01/01/1943) from an illness, being evacuated from Moscow to Novosibirsk. There he found news of the death of his best friend Evgeny Kataev. He served as a war correspondent at the front when the plane on which he was flying was shot down by a German fighter.
In the readers' memory, Alexander Kozachinsky will forever remain the author of the ridiculous and sad story “The Green Van,” the events of which actually happened.