Nick Ivanov Biography

Born Sun. Ivanov in the city of Volkovysk, the Grodno province, where his father served at the county school at that time, but Ivanov in Kostroma, which he always considered his homeland, was childhood and considerable part of his youth. After the end of the Old Kostroma gymnasium at Muravyovka, he in - gg. In the 1st World War, Vsevolod Nikanorovich serves in the army.

The October resolution found him in Perm, and soon the tragedy of the civil war, tearing the country of the Civil War, brought Ivanov to the Kolchak army, and having received a number of books in the city of Ivanov, of which the most outstanding are: a study on the Russian artist and thinker N. Roerich. In recent years of his life, Vsevolod Nikanorovich wrote, perhaps, his most important work - memories.

The writer's true story about his life the 1st World War, the Revolution, Kolchakovschina, emigration for many years could not see the light. Perestroika made its publication possible. In the year, in the journal "Far East" in numbers 7 and 8, the magazine version of the 1st volume of memoirs was printed, dedicated mainly to the Kostroma period of the life of Vsevolod Nikanorovich.

Readers are offered a fragment of memoirs, called the editorial office of the magazine "Youth and Freedom". After all, the Kostromichi was then in the city for forty thousand! Is it a joke! Arriving in Kostroma, we strangers, first held on the sidelines, recognizing local news from the “Provincial calendar” or “Kostroma leaf” and “Provincial Vedomosti”, that is, by printed.

And Kostroma was completely printed. What is Kostroma? Why Kostroma? What does Kostroma mean? Do you know this from newspapers? And it turned out to be enlightened newspapers and calendars that Kostroma this very is just superstition. Kostroma is a city in forty thousand of the population, where there were forty churches, factories, shipping, railway, and suddenly - superstition!

After all, I heard that Kostroma existed and was even a deity of our city. Where she went, did not know the all -knowing historian of Kostroma Archpriest John Syrtsov, rector of the Assumption Cathedral and Chairman of the local archival commission. But the people knew. And when, after the New Year, the sun went in spring and snow became engraved in the evenings, grinned with a silver infusion, the roads darkened after the Shrovetide - wide, smiling, cheerful, appeared almost for the rest of the Kostroma, lickening with a hot flame from the depths of the folk soul when the spring -grossly spilled in the air, when the juices were backed up from the ground, reinforced by thawed water from the ground.

They rushed to wake the trees, bring them to their senses when ravines rang, and sparrows and boys blocked in puddles, all the kostromi seated at noon at the tables. They met spring! They ate rounded as the sun, pancakes, drank hop and from food, from drinking, from warmth, from the light departed, and everything that slept, dozed under their offodal, frozen in winter, angry state order, smart books, which, as you know, did not give a word to the frivolous one, all this was transformed into delight.

On this day, Kostromichi, in the eyes of the enlightened people, made things clearly unacceptable: our neighbor on Ivanovo Street, Kupchikha Systinskaya, for example, went with pancakes in her hands to the well, clicking her mother’s mother there, announced her and all his relatives that spring-red came, and threw treats into the water. The sun woke up ancient feelings, spring hops, and, of course, the vodka waters of Peter Smirnov at the cast-iron bridge in Moscow succumbed to the heat, and on the streets of Kostroma, as if from the ground, ancient morals resurrected.

Or maybe they did not die. Around the square with fire brigade, around the monument to the Susanin, the work of Demut-Malinovsky, triples, hidden in huge white with carpets of sleds, single trotted trips in a racket-egoist, or just firewood with a rug thrown out on top of the straw. The mane, mighty, lions similar to lions in bells, bells, ribbons were torn racing, and immediately unbatient Savorye cowed to the best of their strengths.

In the sleigh sat, lay, stood cheerful hoppy people, waving, circled with reins and whips above their heads; Women in scarlet, green, blue, blue plush rotunds with magnificent fur collars, covered with colored scarves, from which old “ducklings” peeked out-pearl grids, laughed, sang, screamed. The streets are blocked by the tipsy people - strong, imperious, beautiful, unusually talkative and whitish witty.

The sun drove this power, and the stormy carnival rode, rushed from the square along the Shirokoy Pavlovskaya street past the noble assembly, the old cozy Kostroma Theater, the houses of the rich merchants of the Solodovnikovs and then back and then back. In a violent reversal of this fun, officials, officers, and even the city, temporarily stopped their cultural, activity were lost. I ran away from the pancakes, and returned from the street to pancakes, everywhere I had to be in time.

The Russian ancient carnival gained its strength and then, as the queen to his people, came to us, all the Kostroma, our mother Kostroma herself. I saw her. On Friday and Saturday, before the last cheerful Sunday, adolescents of red, meat, fish, cake, chipyan, tobacco, flour, and the wad rows ran through the shops and courtyards, collecting, pulling the Volga under the milk mountain, everything that could burn.

How, why, why - during these training camps it was not said, only one thing was tortured: “Come on! In the shops of Volyloshnikov that they traded fruits, carried baskets from grapes and apples, merchants of sand and curls donated kerosene, or even barrels of fuel, olifa, paints. Sasha Repin, who was holding Portomoni on the Volga, where women rinsed linen, the people sometimes even pulled out paws, not to mention firewood.

Before entering the last sun, Maslenitsa on the Volga ice stood whole mountains from barrels, old Rogozh, hay, straw, flooded with kerosene. Immediately, pans, shutters, tin tanks, roasts, old buckets, basins, a black crowd, powerful, cheerful, lively workers of the Mikhinsky, Kashinsky and Zotovsky flaxstrocks with wives and children, in short dots, crankcases, high sails, are already a stilt, were ready.

There are craft people - shoemakers, joiners, carpenters, boots, bell masters; Here is merchants, clerks, serving all these living rooms. With them, gardeners from the surrounding villages, Malyars from the Tatar settlement, sailors, boaters and divers, and carriers, and bakers, and bakers, and sausages, and butcher - in a word everything who works with their own hands, abdicates and feeds themselves, and a family, and citizens.

On these recent carnivals, neither a student, nor a gymnasium student, nor a official, nor a large merchant, nor a master from the entire Kostroma intelligentsia were presented here by only the famous local Latinist Karandash, who recited Cicero’s speech, excerpts from Titus Libya, Satire Generation. But after all, the pencil was a proud traffic police, a “zimogor”, a drunkard, the inhabitant of the night house named after the merchant Gordia Chernov and the irreconcilable exposure of the philistine welfare.

His appearance on the walk did not surprise anyone. But in the very center of a wide circle, it rose, in the manner of shit among chickens, a huge stuffed animal from straw, from a rogue, from brushwood, terrible, like a lizard, rotating and dancing. The Volga is flooded with the crimson light of sunset, the Ipatievsky monastery blackes at the dawn, and the folk one is at all voice and dances.

The gun thunders, everything that can burn, black smoke can be buried, and, finally, the snakes of fire cover, devour the deity to Kostroma and fire from the earth gives the heavenly fire of their cunning, lively power. I saw this to Kostroma in distant times, almost seventy years ago, and my father held my hand tightly so that I would not run away from him on the ice. An amazing impression made this dance, roar, knock, lights, songs, burning Kostroma, everything that I watched from the site near the ancient fortress wall of the cathedral.

I saw what you will not see in museums, which you can’t read in books. All participants in the carnival undoubtedly had a single will, a certain single heart, beating in a way with the whole one -year circle of sunny holidays, and most importantly - their own special language, a genuine folk religion