Dubov Nikolai Ivanovich (October 22 (November 4) 1910, Omsk - May 24, 1983, Kyiv) - writer. Winner of the second prize of the All-Union competition for best book for children (1950) - for the story “At the End of the Earth.” Laureate of the USSR State Prize (1970) - for the novel “Woe to One.”

Born into a working-class family. When he was 12 years old, the family moved to Ukraine.

Since 1930, he worked as a marker at a ship repair plant and was an employee of the factory's large circulation plant.
Since 1933, he changed several cities, tried himself in different professions (journalist, librarian, club manager, etc.), and studied for some time at the history department of Leningrad University. During the Great Patriotic War Due to health reasons, he did not go to the front; he worked at a defense plant.

Since 1944 he lived in Kyiv.
He worked in the newspaper "Stalin's Tribe" (1944-1949), the magazine "Soviet Ukraine" (1949-1950). During these same years, he made his debut in fiction as a playwright; his plays “At the Threshold” (1948) and “The Morning Comes” (1950) enjoyed short-lived and local success. Since the 1950s, the main direction of his work has been prose about youth and for youth.
Nikolai Dubov was one of the four leading Russian-speaking writers in Kyiv, who were close friends with each other (N. I. Dubov, V. P. Nekrasov, L. N. Volynsky, M. N. Parkhomov), which was written about as “the Kiev school of modern Russian prose."

Works:

Works by Viktor Nekrasov

Nikolai Ivanovich Dubov died

Obituary article for a radio broadcast

June 13, 1983

The typescript is stored in the State Archive-Museum of Literature and Art of Ukraine, fund No. 1185, inventory No. 1, file No. 9, pp. 21-23

Most recently, in November 1980, we celebrated Nikolai Ivanovich’s 70th birthday. And then I also noticed, and spoke about this on the radio, that although the newspaper published a Decree on awarding him the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, they did not publish articles about him, about his work. She appeared a month or even more after his anniversary (Many even said that it was after our radio broadcast).
Outstanding, but not very...

I knew Nikolai Ivanovich well. And how long. We met immediately after the war, in 1946 or 1947. He was not yet a writer then, he worked in the editorial office of the newspaper “Young Leninist”. I remember that I was a little offended by him then. He reacted very sourly to the war story I brought to the editorial office and began to criticize something. This was after the release of my “Trenches” and I was quite surprised - I decided that I was envious and a snob. But I was wrong. He was neither one nor the other - he was just a very straightforward and principled person. And it must be said that both of these qualities did not make his life easier.

He is very principled, this Dubov of yours, he is very smart... Smarter than everyone else, you see... We had such an opinion about him in Kyiv, in the Writers' Union.

And indeed, what can we say - he doesn’t go to meetings, he abstains from voting, and if he does show up somewhere, he will definitely criticize him. It’s both bad and bad, and if he praises some story, it’s definitely flawed, not to say slanderous. He supposedly stands up for the truth...

All this happened in the fifties and subsequent years. He entered literature in 1954. As a playwright and prose writer, he received a prize at the republican competition for the play “At the Threshold”, and in the same year, at the All-Union competition for the best book for children, for the book “At the End of the Earth”.

Viktor Nekrasov and Leonid Volynsky in an apartment in Passage, Kyiv, 1950s.
In the foreground in front of the lens, someone is holding a book for youth, “At the End of the Earth,” written by Nekrasov’s friend Nikolai Dubov. The ironic subtext is that Viktor Nekrasov’s manuscript “In the Trenches of Stalingrad” was transferred by him to the editors of “Znamya” under the original title also “At the End of the Earth”.

Some people think that Dubov is a children's writer. Indeed, he wrote a lot for children and about them, but adults read him with the least interest. No, he is not a children's writer, he is - if we choose some definitions - a moralist writer. Moral issues are his theme. Honesty, nobility, truthfulness, fidelity, mutual assistance, friendship - all these concepts are close to him not only as a writer, but also as a person.

I admit, when we - with or without a glass - indulge in our favorite pastime - washing the bones of our loved ones - this careerist, that coward, that mediocrity - having reached Dubov, all in unison, in one word - this is an honest man, perhaps the most honest among us…

That’s why they didn’t like him in Kyiv. The authorities, of course, for all thirty years of our acquaintance with him, not a single work of Dubov was published in Ukraine, not a single one was translated into Ukrainian language. Maybe this is an example of Ukrainian nationalism? - they will ask me. No, this is a type of another disease - it is an allergy, an idiosyncrasy towards an honest, truly principled person.

If so, then why was it still published? Not in Kyiv, but in Moscow? Why was the state prize given? In the year of his anniversary, “Our Contemporary” published his “Family and Friends,” his swan song?

To this I will answer this way - to the Sofronovs and Gribachevs, to the Zbanatskys and Dmiterkos, the Vysheslavskys and Kondratenkos (the last two from the “small alemitic pen of Russian writers in Ukraine”) - you won’t go far with this proven clip. We can’t do without the Shukshins and Rasputins. Dubov is neither the same nor the other, but he is still Dubov, you don’t have to blush for him.

Nikolai Ivanovich Dubov lived, in general, long life- 72 years old. And to live, write and never lie - in our country this is a great merit. This is why they should be given a Hero of Socialist Labor. I think, I tense up - how many of us, writers, have lived to such an age without a single spot? Once or twice I got it wrong. Paustovsky, Sokolov-Mikitov, Kaverin. Of these, one Kaverin is still alive...

Nikolai Ivanovich belonged to their cohort. To the cohort of the truthful. He remained this way until his last days. No campaigns, exposure or exposure clean water he was not touched. There was no force in the world that could force him to sign any letter against anyone. For - yes, against - no!

A truly honest and principled person, and also a good writer, has passed away.
Russian literature is orphaned...

Excerpt from the memoirs of Grigory Kipnis

Nikolai Dubov, whom almost everyone respectfully called Nikolai Ivanovich, was a man of strict disposition, quite stern and demanding (to everyone and to himself), taciturn, and kind. He often walked with an unusually beautiful and intelligent, coal-black, huge Newfoundland named Baer (I respectfully called him Boris Nikolaevich). One after another, Dubov’s stories “The Orphan”, “The Hard Test”, “The Sky Like a Sheepskin”, “The Boy by the Sea”, “The Fugitive”, and finally the novel “Woe to One” appeared. And these works had a very original, I would say, paradoxical fate: first they were published by “ New world"for their discerning readers, and after that they were published as separate books by the publishing house "Children's Literature". Books for teenagers? Yes, but for adults too. And he also received the USSR State Prize in the section of children's literature. Lev Razgon wrote a lot about Dubov’s work (both articles and a separate book) - the same one who in our time is widely known for his stories about Stalin's repressions, in those years he had just returned from the camp to Moscow.
<...>

Nikolai Ivanovich Dubov with his wife Vera Mironovna and fellow writers:
Leonid Naumovich Volynsky (left) and Mikhail Noevich Parkhomov (right)

Koktebel, House of Writers' Creativity. 1961.
Vera Mironovna Dubova (wife of the writer N.I. Dubov), Grigory Isaakovich Polyanker, Viktor Platonovich Nekrasov.
On the left is Zinaida Nikolaevna, mother of Viktor Platonovich.
Photo from the ADVM archive (Ada Rybachuk and Vladimir Melnichenko).

Photos from the archive of Tatyana Voronova

Nikolai Ivanovich Dubov. Kyiv, 1960s.
Photo by Alexander Bormotov.

Nikolai Ivanovich Dubov. Kyiv, 1960s..

Nikolai Ivanovich Dubov. Kyiv, 1960s.
Photo by Alexander Bormotov.

Grigory Kipnis and Nikolai Dubov. Kyiv, mid-1960s.
Photo by Alexander Bormotov.

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Nikolai Ivanovich Dubov

Dubov Nikolai Ivanovich - prose writer.

You can’t get people’s respect and trust by inheritance; you have to earn it.

Dubov Nikolay Ivanovich

Born into a working-class family. While still at the steam locomotive repair plant, where he entered after graduating from school (1930), he began writing correspondence for a local newspaper, became its employee, and later its editor. During the Great Patriotic War, he worked at a defense company, then returned to journalism. The story “At a Separate Tree,” which he began back in 1945, dedicated to the fate of Soviet prisoners of war, due to the circumstances of the time, could not appear in print and, in a revised form, was published only in 1966.

Dubov made his debut in literature with the plays “At the Threshold” (1949) and “The Morning Is Coming” (1950), and soon began writing for children. His first book, “At the End of the Earth” (1951), is overloaded with events and edifying arguments of adult characters introduced into the story according to the “staffing” schedule imposed at that time by publishing houses and criticism, which Dubov complained about in a speech at the All-Union Conference on Children’s Literature (1952 ): “Teachers demand that the book contain a school and necessarily the image of an impeccable teacher... pioneer leaders - that there be a pioneer organization and the image of an absolutely impeccable pioneer leader; trade unionists - so that there is a trade union organization and a trade union worker...".

However, Dubov’s next story, “Lights on the River” (1952), is incomparably more independent. The very title of the book, which tells about the short-lived but extremely important stay for the boy Kostya in the family of his uncle-buyer, has a certain meaning. symbolic meaning: in the image of Efim Kondratyevich and workers like him are embodied moral guidelines, gradually becoming guiding principles for young hero. And in Dubov’s subsequent work, the “main” becomes more and more clearly, in his own words, “the process of crystallization moral criteria and foundations... the process of personality formation.” It is traced in most detail in the stories “Orphan” (1955) and “Hard Test” (1960), later combined in the novel “Woe to One” (USSR State Prize, 1970). Compared to Leshka Gorbachev, Dubov's former heroes look lucky. Orphanhood, vagrancy, harsh orphanage school, and finally, early working life pit Leshka against the most different people, make him experience bitter disappointments in friends and in those adults who at first were a role model for him. One of the few in children's literature of that time, Dubov depicted a protracted dramatic conflict his hero with demagogues, zealots of exaggerated success and ostentatious prosperity.

But the greatest artistic expression main topic Dubov achieved success in the stories “The Boy by the Sea” (1963) and “The Fugitive” (1966). The title of the first of them, again, like “Lights on the River,” can be interpreted symbolically: finding himself in a fishing crew, Sashuk vividly perceives both the beauty of nature and the “sea” of life itself. It is revealed to him not only in festive pictures of good work, but also in the first heavy and bitter “splashes” of complex relationships and troubles between people that reach him. In even more cruel circumstances, Jyrka grows up (“The Fugitive”). The fate of a teenager, one of those who is usually called “difficult”, living in a spiritually poor environment, unexpectedly intersects with the apparently prosperous existence of a visiting “vacationer”, architect Vitaly Sergeevich. Having become an object of enthusiastic adoration for the boy and really smart, soulful person, he, as it turns out, is the true fugitive - from life and the struggle for his beliefs and love. The “failure” of Yurka’s own escape from his disgusted family (he abandons his plan after learning that his father, who tormented everyone with lies and drunken antics, has become blind) reveals in the “underdeveloped,” rude teenager a sense of duty, compassion for his mother and younger brothers.

Less successful is Dubov’s novel “The Wheel of Fortune” (1978), which continues the “adventure” line of his work and is connected common heroes and the scene of the earlier story “The Sky is Like a Sheepskin” (1963). The detective plot, which begins with the appearance of an American tourist in a Ukrainian village (in fact, the local landowner Ganyka, who emigrated after the revolution), is rather artificially combined with the narration of events from the era of Catherine II. Dubov’s story “Relatives and Friends” (1979) tells about a family that experienced all the hardships of the war and subsequent years, and the differences that arose in later times between its members in their views on life and moral principles. Among Dubov’s critical and journalistic speeches, one of the first articles in the Soviet press stands out: environmental theme“How the Sea Perishes” (New World. 1956. No. 6). Dubov translated into Russian famous book Polish author J. Parandovsky “Mythology”.

Socialist realism - artistic direction in literature and art, which was generally leading in the USSR. As the name suggests, it depicts the concept of human life in a socialist society. The main principles of this genre were considered to be 3 concepts: nationality, ideology and concreteness.

Works in the genre socialist realism created such creative figures, like Mikhail Sholokhov, Nikolai Ostrovsky, Vladimir Mayakovsky and others. Among them is Nikolai Dubov. During his life he created about a dozen stories and novels.

Biography

Future writer, whose full name- Nikolai Ivanovich Dubov, born on November 4, 1910 in the city of Omsk. His parents were ordinary representatives of the working class.

When the boy was 12 years old, he and his family moved to Ukraine. After graduating from school there, Nikolai Dubov worked at the factory for some time. Before the start of the Great Patriotic War, Dubov was replaced by many various professions, including being a journalist. He also studied at the history department of Leningrad University, but did not graduate.

In 1941, not going to the front due to poor health, Nikolai Dubov returned to the plant and worked there until 1944.

At the end of the war he moved to Kyiv, where he spent the rest of his life. It was in Kyiv that Dubov began his literary activity. While working in newspapers and magazines, he simultaneously published his first works - the plays “At the Threshold” and “The Morning Is Coming”, which, however, were not used great success. In the early 1950s, Nikolai Dubov became known as the author of books for young readers aged 14-18.

Bibliography

Dubov’s first work written for youth was the story “At the End of the Earth,” published in 1951. The main characters are four friends living in a small village in Altai. The story is narrated from the perspective of one of them. Like all young people, these guys dream of adventure and great discoveries. This is exactly what Dubov's story is about.

The writer’s next publication, the story “Lights on the River,” was published in 1952. The main character is again a child, this time the boy Kostya, who came to his uncle on the Dnieper. New impressions, friends, and acquaintance with the natural world await him. This story became so famous that in March 1954, the premiere of the comedy film of the same name, directed by Victor Eisymont, based on Dubov’s work, took place.

One of the most popular novels by Nikolai Dubov is “Woe to One,” consisting of two stories “Orphan” and “Hard Test,” which were written as independent works and were previously published separately, and in 1967 were combined into a novel-dulogy. The plot is based on the life of the boy Lesha (and later the adult Alexei) Gorbachev, which cannot be called happy: because of the war, he was left an orphan and ended up in an orphanage.

Writer's Awards and Prizes

The hero of our article is the winner of two literary prizes. The first of them - the prize of the All-Union competition for the best book for children - he was awarded in 1950 for his debut story for younger generation"At the ends of the earth."

In 1970, Dubov received the USSR State Prize for his novel Woe Alone.

Nikolai Ivanovich Dubov

Dubov Nikolai Ivanovich - prose writer.

Born into a working-class family. While still at the steam locomotive repair plant, where he entered after graduating from school (1930), he began writing correspondence for a local newspaper, became its employee, and later its editor. During the Great Patriotic War, he worked at a defense company, then returned to journalism. The story “At a Separate Tree,” which he began back in 1945, dedicated to the fate of Soviet prisoners of war, due to the circumstances of the time, could not appear in print and, in a revised form, was published only in 1966.

Dubov made his debut in literature with the plays “At the Threshold” (1949) and “The Morning Is Coming” (1950), and soon began writing for children. His first book, “At the End of the Earth” (1951), is overloaded with events and edifying arguments of adult characters introduced into the story according to the “staffing” schedule imposed at that time by publishing houses and criticism, which Dubov complained about in a speech at the All-Union Conference on Children’s Literature (1952 ): “Teachers demand that the book contain a school and necessarily the image of an impeccable teacher... pioneer leaders - that there be a pioneer organization and the image of an absolutely impeccable pioneer leader; trade unionists - so that there is a trade union organization and a trade union worker...".

However, Dubov’s next story, “Lights on the River” (1952), is incomparably more independent. The very title of the book, which tells about the short-lived but extremely important stay for the boy Kostya in the family of his uncle-buyer, has a certain symbolic meaning: in the image of Efim Kondratievich and similar workers, moral guidelines are embodied that gradually become guiding principles for the young hero. And in Dubov’s subsequent work, the “main” becomes more and more clearly, in his own words, “the process of crystallization of moral criteria and foundations... the process of personality formation.” It is traced in most detail in the stories “Orphan” (1955) and “Hard Test” (1960), later combined in the novel “Woe to One” (USSR State Prize, 1970). Compared to Leshka Gorbachev, Dubov's former heroes look lucky. Orphanhood, vagrancy, a harsh orphanage school, and finally, his early working life confront Leshka with a variety of people, forcing him to experience bitter disappointments in friends and in those adults who at first were a role model for him. One of the few in children's literature of that time, Dubov depicted the protracted dramatic conflict of his hero with demagogues, zealots of exaggerated success and ostentatious prosperity.

But Dubov’s main theme achieved the greatest artistic expressiveness in the stories “The Boy by the Sea” (1963) and “The Fugitive” (1966). The title of the first of them, again, like “Lights on the River,” can be interpreted symbolically: finding himself in a fishing crew, Sashuk vividly perceives both the beauty of nature and the “sea” of life itself. It is revealed to him not only in festive pictures of good work, but also in the first heavy and bitter “splashes” of complex relationships and troubles between people that reach him. In even more cruel circumstances, Jyrka grows up (“The Fugitive”). The fate of a teenager, one of those who is usually called “difficult”, living in a spiritually poor environment, unexpectedly intersects with the apparently prosperous existence of a visiting “vacationer”, architect Vitaly Sergeevich. Having become an object of enthusiastic adoration for the boy and indeed an intelligent, sincere person, he, as it turns out, is a true fugitive - from life and the struggle for his beliefs and love. The “failure” of Yurka’s own escape from his disgusted family (he abandons his plan after learning that his father, who tormented everyone with lies and drunken antics, has become blind) reveals in the “underdeveloped,” rude teenager a sense of duty, compassion for his mother and younger brothers.

Less successful is Dubov’s novel “The Wheel of Fortune” (1978), which continues the “adventure” line of his work and is connected by common characters and the setting with the earlier story “The Sky Like a Sheepskin” (1963). The detective plot, which begins with the appearance of an American tourist in a Ukrainian village (in fact, the local landowner Ganyka, who emigrated after the revolution), is rather artificially combined with the narration of events from the era of Catherine II. Dubov’s story “Relatives and Friends” (1979) tells about a family that experienced all the hardships of the war and subsequent years, and the differences that arose in later times between its members in their views on life and moral principles. Among Dubov’s critical and journalistic speeches, one of the first articles in the Soviet press on the environmental topic “How the Sea is Perishing” (New World. 1956. No. 6) stands out. Dubov translated into Russian the famous book “Mythology” by the Polish author J. Parandovsky.

A.M.Turkov

Materials used from the book: Russian literature of the 20th century. Prose writers, poets, playwrights. Biobibliographical dictionary. Volume 1. p. 663-664.

Read further:

Russian writers and poets(biographical reference book).

Essays:

Stories. M., 1960;

Woe alone: ​​a novel. M., 1970;

SS: in 3 vols. M., 1970-71.

Literature:

Acceleration L.E. A world in which children are not guests: An essay on the work of Nikolai Dubov. M., 1969; 2nd ed. M., 1972;

Ivich A. Dubov // Nature. Children (Prishvin. Paustovsky. Dubov. Panova): Essays. 2nd ed. M., 1980.

NIKOLAI IVANOVICH DUBOV

Dates of life: November 4, 1910 – May 24, 1983
Place of Birth : Omsk city
Russian Soviet writer
Famous works : "Boy by the Sea", "Fugitive", "Woe to Alone"

A few years ago, when the Internet compiled a ranking of the most beloved and popular domestic writers, readers included in a hundred significant books that influenced their lives the works of a wonderful and, unfortunately, today rarely mentioned children’s author - Nikolai Ivanovich Dubov. Although his books do not lie on the shelves even today, adult uncles and aunts almost always remember both the name of the author and his books. At least “Lights on the River”, if we are talking about the oldest generation, or “Wheel of Fortune”, if you ask today’s moms and dads.
Nikolai Ivanovich Dubov was born on October 22, 1910 in Siberia, in Omsk, lived in Altai, Ukraine, Leningrad, Moscow, Tashkent. He comes from a working-class family and began his career at a ship repair yard, also as a worker.
While still a young man, Dubov began writing in a wall newspaper, in a factory circulation newspaper, and in a city newspaper. He not only wanted to write, he had something to write about. He managed to work and see people and live among them.
And in 1929 he became a journalist. Dubov studied at the history department of Leningrad University, worked as a teacher, and headed a library and club. During the war he worked at a defense plant, and then again became a journalist. By modern standards, he began writing books quite late. Already quite an adult and a man who had seen a lot, when he was deep in his thirties.
His plays enjoyed short-lived and local success in 1948 and 1950. Beginning in the 1950s, Dubov actually gave up writing plays and chose a path to which he remained faithful to the end - he wrote prose about youth and for youth.
This is how the stories “Orphan” and “Cruel Test” appeared, which created a lot of noise, which in 1967 Dubov combined into a novel called “Woe to One.” Three years later, the writer received the USSR State Prize for this book. But by this time, boys and girls were avidly reading “Lights on the River” and “Boy by the Sea,” “The Fugitive” and “By a Standing Tree.”
Last years He spent his life in Kyiv, in the famous house No. 68 on Bogdan Khmelnitsky Street, where a real writers' commune lived. There Dubov wrote another of his wonderful novels, “Wheel of Fortune” (1980), which combines two time planes: a contemporary Ukrainian collective farm, into which a mockingly portrayed tourist from the United States ends up, and the 18th century, where the image of Catherine the Great is depicted in sarcastic tones.
Both Moscow and Kyiv guys stayed up late reading this book. The latter were luckier; they could come to the writer themselves at house No. 68 to ask about what was left unfinished, or to tell about their problems.
And the house was truly amazing. Today there are 27 memorial plaques on its façade in memory of the writers who lived here. IN different time Almost all Ukrainian literary classics lived in this house Soviet era: Pavlo Tychyna, Maxim Rylsky, Victor Sosyura, Mykola Bazhan, Alexander Korneychuk, Andrey Malyshko, Oles Gonchar, Nikolay Dubov. The house received its name from the group that initiated the construction - the cooperative of literary workers - ROLIT.
Nikolai Dubov's books were published mainly in the Moscow publishing house "Children's Literature". He also translated from Polish - for example, the funny children's story by Edmund Nizyursky “The Adventures of Marek Pegus” and the books by Z. Kosidovsky “When the Sun Was White” and J. Parandovsky “Mythology (beliefs and legends of the ancient Greeks and Romans).” Two books by Nikolai Dubov - “Lights on the River” and “Boy by the Sea” - were made into films.
And in Kyiv, Nikolai Dubov was known not only by his books, but also by his dog. He had a huge black Newfoundland named Bare. Now in Kyiv this breed is not uncommon, although it has changed a lot. Somehow she crushed it or something. And today's Newfies look like semi-dwarfs. But Baer really looked like a real giant. In the 60s of the last century, he was almost the only Newfoundland in Kyiv. Therefore, everyone paid attention to the person who walked such a dog in the morning. And everyone knew it was the writer Dubov and Baer coming. By the way, Nikolai Ivanovich described in detail his Newfoundland Bare in the story “The Sky Is Like a Sheepskin.” Every morning Nikolai Ivanovich and Baer walked from Lenin Street (where the writer lived for some time) to the corner of Vladimirskaya and Shevchenko Boulevard. There was a kiosk here selling vodka on tap and pies with tripe. Nikolai Ivanovich bought one hundred grams and one pie for a snack. He drank the vodka himself and gave the pie to Baer. After that, they returned home, where Nikolai Ivanovich’s unsuspecting wife, Vera Mironovna, fed her husband breakfast and was glad that he had such a good appetite. Then Dubov sat down to work, and Behr fell asleep at the desk.
These morning walks continued for many years, until doctors banned Nikolai Ivanovich from drinking alcohol, even in small doses. And his wife began to wonder in the morning where her husband’s good appetite had disappeared. But Baer suffered the most. After all, the veterinarians didn’t forbid him from eating tripe pies...
This is just one little tidbit from the life of Nikolai Dubov, who really did not like to talk about himself and almost never gave interviews to anyone.
But everything he wanted to say is in his books. And they love them for their frankness and honesty, for the lack of ideological background. They, of course, could not help but be tied to the era in which Dubov himself and his heroes lived. But even at that time, his stories and novels were very different from the books of other authors.
Here, for example, is how another wonderful writer who went through 18 years of Stalin’s camps and exile, Lev Razgon, with whom Dubov was quite friendly, describes the heroes of Dubov’s books.
“...His boys, teenagers and young men in books for the same boys and teenagers survived and remained normal, honest people not thanks to, but in spite of the surrounding reality. They drew strength not from abstract ideas, but from the human actions of ordinary adults who had not accomplished any feat, except perhaps one thing - not to become a scoundrel or a weak-willed rag...”
“...Dubov’s books contain a lot of funny and sad things, a lot of big and small events. But in them there is no, there is no insignificant, trivial thing written so that the reader simply laughs, simply sheds a tear of pity. Everything that happens to his characters is very important. And not only for them, but for everyone who reads Dubov’s books. In these books, as in life, good and evil cannot live side by side peacefully, without quarreling, without interfering with each other. You cannot become a good and real person only by observing the rules of good behavior: you can do this, but you can’t do that... You must hate the unkind, dishonest, ostentatious, untruthful. You must not bypass this abomination, but fight with it, fight without thinking whether it is beneficial for you, whether it will make you feel good...”
And here is another wonderful excerpt from the preface by Lev Razgon, which surprisingly suits our current events and the struggle around the Khimki forest. And not only around this forest, but also many other groves, parks, oak forests, mercilessly cut down throughout the country.
“...You can’t live the real thing, joyful life without learning to see beauty native nature without protecting this beauty. Dubov's books tell with such great love about the beauty of the spring steppe, about the seashore washed by the morning wave, about the mighty forest, about the small clean river winding between the meadows... Without all this, without this beauty native land very difficult to live. And it cannot be left to be torn to pieces by evil loafers and stupid people who are ready to pollute rivers, trample meadows, cut down forests for the sake of cheap pleasure, for the sake of a penny profit...”
Many years ago, one young reader wrote to Nikolai Dubov: Do you know why I fell in love with you? Because you respect children." Once again it is worth recalling that Dubov did not like publicity, therefore the data about him is very fragmentary, although he lived almost in our time. There is a book by Lev Razgon about Nikolai Ivanovich, but it is almost inaccessible to the modern reader.
And then there are the letters that Dubov loved to write to his friends and fellow writers. In his extensive letters, sometimes covering half a printed page, there are almost completely no everyday moments - literature constitutes their main content. And from them it is clear that he was also an excellent critic, subtly able to feel and analyze other people’s texts.
Dubov wrote many letters to Lev Razgon, who has already been mentioned more than once. Some of them were published six years ago by the Ukrainian Institute of Jewish Studies in the magazine “Spirit and Litera”.
Kyiv 25.V. 76.
Dear Levushka!I, too, have heard a little about the “emergence and growth of national consciousness,” a truly global process. In it, you think, “there is nothing surprising or something that should cause resistance.” There is no surprise, but what should cause not only resistance, but also a decisive rebuff happens. And, unfortunately, more and more often. National self-consciousness, which finds reliable grounds for pride in the past and present of its people, etc., cannot cause condemnation. But if this self-consciousness, for the sake of self-affirmation, tries to humiliate other peoples, rivet them - this is no longer national self-consciousness, but nationalism. You consider “a writer to have the right to any flight of his imagination. Even if it is based on... national identity.” One must think that at the same time you consider yourself a desperate freedom-lover. You can consider me a retrograde and a reactionary, because... I don’t accept all sorts of “ups”. For example, there was a writer named Adolf Schicklgruber who took off under the name Mein Kampf. And another writer, who wished to remain anonymous, “took off” in “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” Both of them proceeded precisely from “the growth of national self-awareness, they sought to strengthen and accelerate it,” in which they were very successful. I hope there is no need to remind you about the consequences? Modern uprisings of this kind lead to murders in Munich and at Lod airport, to the deportation of foreigners in Uganda, to gangs like Baader-Meinhof, plastic bombs, etc. You read newspapers diligently...
Your nickname. D.
February 8, 1980
Dear Levushka! You called the story “cruel.” God! How ossified have you become in the damned childishness, which comes in a straight line from the “Soulful Word”. Transfers painted with blue and pink drool - that’s what “good” essays are. But what do they have to do with literature? From the first Sumerian epic on Earth about Gilgamesh, through the Iliad, Odyssey, Greek tragedies, through Dante's Inferno, Shakespeare's tragedies to the entire infinitely diverse stream of world literature - is this all “good” literature? Is “Eugene Onegin” or “Gypsies” really “kind” in your opinion? Were you really amused and pleased by the comedy “Woe from Wit”, which Meyerhold staged under the more correct title “Woe to Wit” and which, almost 150 years later, was first correctly read and staged as a tragedy by the Tovstonogs? Maybe “Masquerade”, “Hero of Our Time”, “The Overcoat”, “The Inspector General”, “are good” too. Dead Souls“, all Dostoevsky, all Tolstoy, all Anton Chekhov (not Antosha Chekhonte, when he was still frolicking)? And in Soviet literature the “kindest” Fadeev’s “Destruction”, Bulgakov’s “Days of the Turbins”, the works of Platonov, and now “Live and Remember”?
I hope you won’t suspect me of wanting to “get in touch” with the great in this way. Now I’m not talking about my story, but about the position of the writer. For an honest writer, only one is possible, which Radishchev defined with amazing power and brevity: “I looked around, and my soul shuddered”... It’s only when the writer’s soul shudders with compassion for people that he writes the truth about life. And it is cruel, this truth, just as life itself is cruel. Only an unembellished, unsoftened (“optimistic”...) truth can touch the reader’s heart, make him “wet tears over fiction” and, perhaps, somehow influence him. If a writer's soul loses the ability to shudder at the sight of his surroundings, he ceases to be a writer. Cruel literature does not exist at all, life is cruel. There are works in circulation that glorify cruelty (James Bond and the like), but this is not literature, but propaganda prostitution. There were and are writers who love to “invoke a golden dream.” They write so sensitively, they put merciless pressure on the reader’s tear glands in order to touch them, but then they let in something touching in order to console and reassure, in other words, to take the reader away from real life. You can awaken “good feelings” in the reader only by telling him the truth about life, no matter how bitter it may be, and not by lying and trying to pity him. Your nickname. D.

Fochkin, O. Adult world children's writer[Nikolai Ivanovich Dubov] /O. Fochkin // Reading together. – 2010. - No. 11. – P. 46-47.