Alexey Leonov, having buried nine brothers and sisters, becoming the last in his family, is very homesick for his homeland and his departed relatives. Today, the cosmonaut who arrived in Kemerovo opened in regional museum Fine art exhibition of his paintings “Space and Earth Landscapes”.

Among the 70 paintings there is one, inconspicuous, but piercing and... explaining why an ordinary boy, more than half a century ago, decided to become and BECAME an astronaut. In this picture, 77-year-old Alexey Arkhipovich depicted his father’s house - in the village of Listvyanka in the north of Kuzbass.

In the picture, a simple Siberian parents' hut was literally covered with a canopy of the sky. This low, hugging sky is so close,” museum employees told KP. – As everyone who freezes in front of the picture says, it called Alexei Arkhipovich in his childhood to become a pilot and cosmonaut.

Indeed, little Lenya, a boy with the heart of an artist and dreams of travel, felt the call of heaven for the first time there, in Listvyanka. And he became an astronaut. In the large Leonov family, as Raisa Arkhipovna Ganicheva said several years ago, sister famous astronaut, the first person in the world to go into outer space, Alexei was called “son of heaven.”

On my last visit to Listvyanka two years ago

the astronaut ran to his father's house at a run

Two years ago, having arrived in Kemerovo on the anniversary of the death of his last and most beloved sister, Raya, Alexey Arkhipovich, having visited her grave, hurried to Listvyanka.

I lit candles in the church for my entire departed family - for my long-dead mother - Evdokia Minaevna, father - Arkhip Alekseevich, for my nine sisters and brothers.

The famous cosmonaut is still strong in appearance, still humorous, lively, but his eyes are sad, recalls Vladimir Toroschin from the Tisulsky Department of Culture. “But as soon as the fields of his native village of Listvyanka appeared, the village, his father’s house itself, to which we drove up, Alexey Arkhipovich seemed to native land received! TO parents' house he didn't walk, he ran!

After all, the old hut in which Leonov was born and grew up until the family moved to the city is still the same. The same two tiny rooms where the Leonovs lived so harmoniously when they were all happy and alive. Everybody is alive! The same mountain ash at the gate.

In this corner there was my cradle, and there, let’s go, I’ll show you my favorite stream,” he led his wife and companions from the regional center of Leonov. With difficulty, he was able to find his stream, which, like the astronaut, was then 75 years old.

Sister Raya was the first to notice the gift of an artist in the future cosmonaut.

The last time the cosmonaut saw his beloved sister Raya alive was six months before her death. He was only able to stop by for the evening. And he amazed her by remembering the bread with which she saved him when he was 3 years old.

Oh, we had a very difficult life then, in 1937,” Raisa Arkhipovna recalled that meeting with Alexei. “We haven’t seen bread for six months.” We ate only quinoa and potatoes.

I'm Lesha, 14 years older. He was 3, I was 17. All my life I was his most beloved sister and nanny. I remember the chairman of the collective farm brought a bag of flour, at that time of famine! And where did you get it?! They baked bread in secret. I worked in an office, recording workdays. In general, they gave me a loaf and told me to hide it, carry it home with my backside, through the gardens.

I’m running, the bread under my shirt is burning. Lenka met me in the garden. He runs up: “Lyadya (that’s how he said “Paradise”), but you’re not there? (“You don’t have any bread?”) Where did you remember the word “bread” from? I handed him the loaf. How happy he was!

My father then cut the loaf into tiny pieces and gave it to all the children, but not a piece for himself. And he gave the biggest piece to Lesha.

This saving loaf inspired the Leonovs and little Lesha with hope that the hunger would soon end and life would get better. Not right away, but that’s what happened. And little Lenya grew up and glorified the Leonov family throughout the world.

... On their last meeting with Raya, Alexey Arkhipovich gave her an album with photographs of his paintings.

If his love for the sky and space had not overcome his love for drawing, Lenya would have become a great artist. I remember he was little and he drew all the time, and it was very similar. It happened that one of our people would swear at him, which again - in dreams, and I defended: “Let him draw, Leni has a gift from God,” recalled Raisa Arkhipovna.

Most of all, from the last collection of paintings by her cosmonaut brother, she liked the picture - a man in outer space, and although she couldn’t see his face, she knew: Alexey depicted himself.

Fellow countrymen asked the astronaut to paint an icon

In Tisula and Listvyanka, on every official visit of Leonov to Kuzbass, they welcome him with joy.

And he not only tells his homeland all the new details about “his” space, but also teaches the children from the “art” to draw.

In this painting, cosmonaut and artist Alexei Leonov, as his sister said, depicted himself, the first person in the world to go into outer space. Photo: Larisa MAKSIMENKO

His paintings feature terrestrial and cosmic landscapes. And recently, fellow countrymen at a meeting, remembering that in the temple Holy Mother of God The Three-Handed Church in Tisul laid a brick of the cosmonaut’s name in the wall, they asked Alexey Arkhipovich to paint an icon for the temple.

Alexey Arkhipovich, a believer, bought a personalized brick, giving a whole thousand rubles for it, recalls the rector of the church, Father Maxim. – My heart trembled when Alexey Arkhipovich signed “Leonov A.A.”, kissed the brick, which was in the dust, in the work, and handed it to the mason. The brick lay firmly in the masonry. And Alexey Arkhipovich stepped heavily to the side and put on sunglasses. He didn't want people to see the emotions that overwhelmed him.

And at the request of fellow countrymen - to paint an icon for their homeland. Alexey Arkhipovich replied that he dreams about it, but “I’m not worthy!”, for now. He does not yet dare to take up icon painting, because he explained to his fellow countrymen: “There was a period when everyone everywhere asked me after the flight: “Have you seen God in space?”, and I answered: “No.”

The Leonov family has heavenly protection

It is no coincidence that our fellow countryman Alexei Arkhipovich has so many talents. As Raisa Arkhipovna, the cosmonaut’s sister, told KP in her last interview:

Our parents met in church and fell in love at first sight, but they had to defend their feelings. Both relatives were against their choice. Relatives on her father’s side accused: “Evdokia, although smart, graduated from parochial school with straight A’s, is not a beauty. Besides, she’s poor.” Relatives on the maternal side convinced: “Arkhip is too handsome a guy, but the way he sings, the way he dances, everyone looks at him, unreliable. And he's rich." But Evdokia firmly stated:

Either I’ll marry Arkhipochka, or go to a monastery!

And so Arkhip and Evdokia got married. Moreover, the first to give up were Evdokia’s parents, including the young people who accepted them to live with them.

Our mother and father’s love for each other was so strong, and the marriage was so successful that my mother’s father, grandfather Minai, later told us, his grandchildren, more than once: “I adopted Arkhip, I have an excellent son, Arkhipushka.” And then mom and dad, one after another, gave birth to us, 12 children,” recalled Raisa Arkhipovna. – Two died in infancy. Ten grew up talented and reliable - Shura, Lyuba, Raya, Nina, Nadya, Tonya, Petya, Lesha, Vera and Borya. But the most talented was Lesha.

He was named Alexey Arkhipovich in honor of his father - Arkhip, grandfather - Alexey and St. Alexey. After all, when Lesha was born in 1934, it was the holiday of Alexei - God's man. Then church holidays They haven’t celebrated it for a long time, everyone was already atheists. A club and dance were held in the village church. But the mother of the future cosmonaut said:

Alexei, man of God, this name is most suitable for my son. I feel it in my heart.

And I was not mistaken.

Alexei Leonov was destined for both a fantastic space journey and fantastic luck when, for the first time in the world, he went into outer space, Leonov could not return - the airlock doors were not allowed in or when the automatic control failed during landing.

And Alexey Leonov and his brothers and sisters inherited amazing karma from Minai’s grandfather. Grandfather Minai in his youth, working at a factory in Central Russia, saved a huge demonstration of workers from execution. He learned that along the street, where strikers would flock from all sides, machine guns would be installed on the roofs. And the strikers will be shot point blank. Grandfather Minai, unable to warn the workers himself, sent his daughter to ensure that the demonstrators changed their route.

And so he saved almost the entire city from execution. This human gratitude and God's favor helped him for a long time and was inherited by his descendants in Siberia.

The astronaut's father was classified as an "enemy of the people" but he was quickly rehabilitated

Already in Siberia, in Kuzbass, there was a dark streak in the life of the large Leonov family (Arkhip Leonov, the father of the then future cosmonaut, was declared an “enemy of the people” and imprisoned). But the streak ended with an unexpected miracle.

The Leonovs hid this family page all their lives from the jubilant country, which rocked cosmonaut Leonov in its arms. And they were amazed how this black mark did not prevent their Lesha from becoming an astronaut.

Our father was very competent, a jack of all trades. I remember they trained him to be a livestock specialist. And they gave him a bunch of positions: he is the manager of a sheep farm, he is responsible for the cows on the collective farm, and he is responsible for the pigs. And then the harvesting began. In addition, he was appointed to be in charge of the drying room - drying grain. It rains and rains. “Dad disappears on the dryer for days,” recalled the cosmonaut’s sister, Raisa Arkhipovna. - And then they resort to him: the best cow on the collective farm - Krasotka - cannot calve, she is dying. Father, let’s rush about: you can’t throw away the grain, and you need to save the cow. They persuaded him: “We will watch for you, run to Pretty Woman.”

The father of the future cosmonaut saved the beauty and the calf. But his shift workers dried out some of the grain at the dryer.

The grain was accepted at the elevator, everything was accepted.

But the denunciation went “to the top.”

And the father of the future cosmonaut, an honest man, told the visiting collective farm chairman about his worries about grain. The commission went to the elevator and found several roasted grains. Maybe not even Leonov’s. But the father of the future cosmonaut was convicted of sabotage.

There is a God – as soon as Alexei Leonov’s father was brought to the camp, he was immediately noticed. After all, in the camp subsidiary plot The pig epidemic has begun. The camp authorities called prisoner Leonov, who was a livestock specialist in freedom, and not only asked, but begged him to save the pigs. Leonov defeated the epidemic. And three months later he was released to his family.

The Leonovs cried when Alexey flew into space

On March 18, 1965, when the whole country rejoiced - for the first time in the world, a man, a guy from Russia and Kuzbass - Alexei Leonov, went into outer space, the entire huge Leonov family cried.

“I, my parents, my sisters and brothers, we were all very afraid for Lesha,” recalled my sister, Raisa Arkhipovna. “They probably injected me as much as half a liter of glucose into a vein when they boarded the plane to fly to a meeting in the Kremlin. This is to bring me to my senses, to support my body... I thought of only one thing, if only Lesha would survive, if only he would be found sooner after landing. Although they reported that the cosmonauts were already relaxing at the government dacha, I couldn’t believe it.

My sister’s heart worried in vain. Raisa's companion on the plane from Kemerovo to Moscow was a pilot who took part in the search for cosmonauts Leonov and Belyaev.

He, and later Alexey himself, told Raisa Arkhipovna about the extreme landing.

After landing, when Lesha took off his spacesuit, he found himself waist-deep in water, so much flowed out of him. They sat down in the taiga, the frost was minus 21, he and Pavel Belyaev were both wet. They froze, poor things, right away. Lesha rammed the snow with his chest up to a dry birch tree nearby. There was a snowdrift the size of a man. “I chopped branches and lit a fire,” Raisa Arkhipovna was worried. “He also told Belyaev: “What kind of coffee do you like: hot or cold?” I put a tube of coffee near the fire, and it exploded. Left without coffee. They, wet, lasted almost three days. Until the lumberjacks came to them.

The collection of the Tretyakov Gallery has been replenished with two space paintings: test pilot, twice Hero of the Soviet Union, the first man to go into outer space, Alexei Leonov donated two of his works to the museum. It turned out that he had been interested in painting since childhood, and after school he even chose between flying and art school. The craving for the sky won, but he did not give up art, and painted even during that legendary flight

Leonov is not only a professional cosmonaut, but also a professional artist. In the same 1965, when Alexey Arkhipovich became the first person to cross the threshold of a ship into outer space, he was admitted to the Union of Artists. “I was accepted into the Union by Katenka Belashova (sculptor - website note), Plastov, Romadin - what great masters they were!.. I brought them my sketches,” says Leonov. “Before the flight, I thought a lot about what technique should be: paint in will not work in space, pastel will not work, watercolor will not work either. All that was left was a pencil. A "Tactics" pencil of medium hardness and good paper. I already knew from the stories of my comrades what I would see: a black sky, a blue Earth. And when I did the first works, they they began to say that my horizon does not bend like that. We argued for a long time - I measured it! I knew exactly how many degrees the arc should be! And only then Professor Lazarev judged us. He said: “Guys, what altitude did you fly at? ? - 300 kilometers, and he is at an altitude of 500 kilometers. Which means the sizes are all different!”

And around the Earth in the picture there is a blue belt of atmosphere. “The belt is exactly four degrees! Do you know how I measured it? I made a palette with the size of the Moon and calculated that the height of the belt was four times its size. I accurately determined the color using an anomaloscope, a device that determines a person’s color vision. According to science, I measured the time, which he made sketches. So the color of the Earth is not fictitious, but as it really is."

In the second painting, the astronaut artist depicted the aurora over the north pole. Flashes of green flame are visible above the horizon, but where the Moon is, red light suddenly appears. “We still don’t know where he’s from,” explained Alexey Arkhipovich.

"Back then it was forbidden to make sketches spaceship“Voskhod-2,” and I did it,” Leonov continued. “It was not much different from the Vostok - they only added a soft-structure airlock chamber and a second engine. But in fact, it was not a new ship - just as the Vostok was, it remained the Vostok. Everything is absolutely in the details."

The astronaut also spoke about the difficulties he had to face during the flight. He was on the verge of death and still doesn’t remember how he coped with the situation. “I was attached to the ship with a halyard and had to pull it out of the airlock to go into space, and then collect it to go back. right hand I had a movie camera, and the second one I had to wind it up and attach it to hooks, and I don’t know how I did it. This is impossible! I went back not with my feet, but with my head first, and I had to turn around in this airlock, but the suit was inflated. I released the pressure valve without asking permission from the land, that is, I broke the law, but it made me feel better. I lost six liters of water in one day! So if anyone wants to lose weight, please go there!” Leonov concluded his story, gesturing to the sky.

Leonov's works are in the collection of the Dresden Gallery in Houston. In Russia, Leonov’s paintings are kept in museums in two cities: 17 works in Gagarin and another 70 in Kemerovo, where the artist has been running a district school for 15 years children's creativity– the only school in Russia for children with musculoskeletal disorders.

After the ceremonial part, Leonov toured the exhibition and spoke on the occasion about his acquaintance with Pablo Picasso. Through the Russian-French artist Nadezhda-Khodasevich Leger, the cosmonaut agreed on dinner with the cubist. “He wasn’t a great artist. The Rose Period, the Blue Period, Guernica, and then he started doing all this nonsense,” Leonov said. “When we had dinner, he spent a long time gnawing on trout bones, and I thought, why is he so greedy? ? Then he brought clay, pressed this skeleton into it, and an hour later the fired form was ready. Picasso filled it with bronze and that’s it! The work is ready! And everyone around them admires: “Oh, how great! How brilliant!" - It's a shame!"

The ceremony took place at the “Thaw” exhibition, which operates in the museum building on Krymsky Val. The choice of location is symbolic: one of the sections, called “Space - Atom,” talks about the exploration of the sky, including Leonov’s contribution to it. Here you can see documentary footage of young Leonov drawing landscapes while preparing for the flight. IN Tretyakov Gallery noted that all legal formalities for the transfer of works to the collection were observed, and now the paintings will become valuable exhibits, since they reflect important point history of space exploration and the 20th century in general.

In addition to the “Thaw” exhibition, the ceremony of handing over the paintings was timed to coincide with the premiere of the film, which tells about the legendary flight of Leonov and Belyaev and the cosmonaut’s spacewalk. The main roles in the film were played by Evgeny Mironov and Konstantin Khabensky.

There are not many such people. There were them in the twentieth century. only three - who took the first cosmic step. And two of them are our compatriots: Gagarin, who first climbed the space orbit, and Leonov, the first to push off from the hatch into free flight, separated from hostile space only by the shell of his spacesuit...

There are no ordinary people among astronauts at all. But not everyone is able to convey to others not a dispassionate photo report, but the feelings, emotions, mood that accompany entering a new environment for a person. It is unlikely that the picky commission, which selected pilots from garrisons for “fundamentally new equipment,” first of all assessed the artistic talents of the young pilot - it was much more important to it that the day before Alexey Leonov brilliantly landed the emergency MIG-15bis with the engine turned off.

And for the first time, the cosmonaut significantly changed the operating mode of his apparatus, dropping the pressure below the required level - but he needed to know that this was already possible, because... for some time Leonov breathed oxygen, and decompression did not threaten death. Then he changed the established sequence of actions, flying into the airlock chamber not with his feet, as expected, but head first. After which the astronaut had to turn around in the narrow inflatable tunnel of the airlock chamber...

We only recently learned about this and many other aspects of the Voskhod 2 flight. But this was extremely important: for the first time in our cosmonautics, a person reacted flexibly to a changing situation, that is, he justified his – expensive and unsafe – presence in space! Before that, let’s face it, the cosmonauts of the Vostoks and the first Voskhod were more like guinea pigs.

Leonov began to prepare for the flight on the orbital station. It was he who was supposed to lead the first Salyut crew, but... a few days before the launch, doctors discovered abnormalities in the heart function of the flight engineer, V. Kubasov, and backups flew to the station - G. Dobrovolsky, V. Volkov, V. Patsaev. ..

Once again, the ingenuity of the astronauts literally saved the program. Since the event is political, it means the whole world should see it. This can only be done with the help of television, but it was the one that failed immediately after the Soyuz entered orbit. And although a second ship and three backup crews were ready at Baikonur, using them for such a reason is a shame and a scandal! The task was complicated by the fact that there were no... tools on board, and it was necessary to open the panel to get to the current distributor (which had a failure) using medical scissors and a hunting knife, bought by Leonov on the eve of the flight! By the way, the Americans considered the incident to be staged...

Alexey Arkhipovich never flew into space again, and until 1991 he headed the cosmonaut corps of the Cosmonaut Training Center named after. Yu. A. Gagarin.

The paintings of the artist A. A. Leonov are unique. It just so happens that our artists willingly paint native nature, no less willingly experiment with all sorts of unconventional styles, but extremely rarely (and often ineptly) depict the “second” nature - man-made. Maybe this happens because this very man-made nature - technology - needs to be known, and most artists (as well as “humanities” in general) treat such knowledge with disdain?

Meanwhile, artistic canvases on which the most complex, sometimes existing only in drawings, technology operates in near and far space - a powerful means of propaganda, including for the creation of this very technology! It is no coincidence that a group of artists is constantly working at the American NASA, creatively reflecting the steps of the American space program, including those that remained on paper. It seems that part of the problems of our cosmonautics stems from the fact that our response to the work of this group was the creativity of only two people: Alexei Leonov and Andrei Sokolov...

The astronaut-artist and almost the only youth popular science magazine were simply doomed to cooperate. Already in the October 1965 issue, on the color tab, readers of “Technology for Youth” saw a cosmic dawn drawn by Leonov, and next to it, on black and white pages, the landing of a Soviet spacecraft on the Moon, as seen by the artist (who, apparently, did not yet know , that it is he who will practice this maneuver on a simulator converted from a helicopter...).