The poem "Wait for me" has long been legendary. There are several versions of its creation, but we will talk about the one that the author himself adhered to. In July 1941 he arrived in Moscow after his first trip to the front. He saw with his own eyes all the horrors of the first defeat of the Soviet troops, complete confusion from the sudden offensive of the Nazis and our unpreparedness for the upcoming war. He was supposed to stay in Moscow for two days - waiting for him to be transferred from the Izvestia newspaper to the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper. Father's friend, writer Lev Kassil, offered to live with him at his dacha in Peredelkino. And there, on July 28, 1941, the poem "Wait for me" was written.

It is dedicated - and there is no doubt about it - to the actress Valentina Vasilievna Serova. Over time, the poem became more and more popular, and the fact that its addressee was a specific woman was no longer remembered. Moreover, when the love passed and the father broke up with Serova, he had no particular desire to remain faithful to this dedication. Therefore, in different editions, the text appears sometimes with Serova's dedication, sometimes without it.

By the way, the poem was not published immediately. David Ortenberg, editor-in-chief of the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper, turned out to be completely non-visionary. He was a very good editor, but it did not work out with the poetic sphere. Ortenberg said that "Wait for me" is a very intimate poem and he will not publish it. As a result, the father read the text twice on the radio, but it was published much later. Six months after it was written, on January 14, 1942, the poem appeared on the third page in the Pravda newspaper and immediately gained incredible popularity.

In 2015, we, the children of Konstantin Simonov, applied with a project to install a monument to our father in

Today Simonov would have turned a hundred years old. He died a few epochs ago, in August 1979. He did not become a long-liver: the overstrain of the war years, which he suffered in subsequent years, also affected. Undoubtedly, he was not only one of the most beloved Russian Soviet writers among the people, but perhaps the most prolific.

Simonov's literary heritage is enormous. Poems, fiction, drama, journalism, several volumes of diaries, without which it is impossible to get an idea of ​​the Great Patriotic War. But among the many volumes of Simonov, one poem will never be lost. The same. It has brought a special shade of meaning and feeling into our lives.

Simonov wrote it at the beginning of the war, when he was stunned by the first battles, the first defeats, tragic encirclements, retreats. The son and stepson of an officer, he did not separate himself from the army. Simonov was often asked: how did these lines appear to him? He once replied in a letter to a reader: “The poem Wait for Me has no special story. I just went to war, and the woman I loved was in the rear. And I wrote her a letter in verse…” The woman is Valentina Serova, a famous actress, widow of a pilot, Hero of the Soviet Union, future wife of Simonov. The poem really appeared as a cure for separation, but Simonov did not write it in the army.

In July 1941, having briefly returned from the front, the poet spent the night at the Peredelkino dacha of the writer Lev Kassil. He was burned by the first battles in Belarus. All his life he dreamed of these fights. The darkest days of the war were going on, it was difficult to tame despair. The poem was written in one sitting.

Simonov did not intend to publish "Wait for me": it seemed too intimate. Sometimes I read these poems to friends, the poem went around the fronts, rewritten, sometimes on tissue paper, with errors ... The poem sounded on the radio. It first became legendary, and then - printed. The publication did not take place anywhere, but in the main newspaper of the entire USSR - in Pravda, on January 14, 1942, and after Pravda it was reprinted by dozens of newspapers. He was known by heart by millions of people - an unprecedented case.

War is not only battles and campaigns, not only the music of hatred, not only the death of friends and the overcrowding of hospitals. It is also parting with your home, separation from your loved ones. Poems and songs about love were valued at the front above patriotic appeals. “Wait for me” is one of the most famous Russian poems of the 20th century. How many tears were shed over it... And how many did it save from despondency, from black thoughts? Simonov's poems convincingly inspired that love and loyalty are stronger than war:

Wait for me and I will come back.

Just wait a lot

Wait for sadness

yellow rain,

Wait for the snow to come

Wait when it's hot

Wait when others are not expected

Forgetting yesterday.

Wait when from distant places

Letters will not come

Wait until you get bored

To all who are waiting together.

The poem stirred up the country, became a hymn of expectation. It has the power of healing. The wounded whispered the lines of this poem like a prayer - and it helped! The actresses read "Wait for me" to the fighters. Wives and brides copied each other's prayer lines. Since then, wherever Simonov spoke - until the last days, he was invariably asked to read "Wait for me." Such a melody, such a cohesion of words and feelings - this is strength.

But one can also understand the poet's mother, Alexandra Leonidovna Obolenskaya. She was offended by her son's main poem. In 1942, he was found by his mother’s letter: “Without waiting for an answer to my letters, I am sending an answer to the poem “Wait” placed on 19/1-42 in Pravda, in particular, on the line, especially hitting my heart with your stubborn silence:

Let the son and mother forget ...

Of course you can slander

For son and mother

Teach others how to wait

And how to save you.

So that I wait, you did not ask

And did not teach how to wait,

But I waited with all my strength,

As soon as a mother can

And in the depths of my soul

You must be aware:

They, my friend, are not good,

Your words about mother.

Of course, this is an unfair line - “Let the son and mother forget ...” This is what happens with poets: next to autobiographical motives, introduced ones that are not related to his personal family appear. Simonov had to exaggerate, emphasize the invisible connection between two lovers - and motherly love had to be sacrificed. To sharpen the image! And Alexandra Leonidovna forgave her son - soon they were already discussing Simonov's new poems and plays in letters in a friendly way.

Simonov reads poetry to soldiers and officers. Photo: godliteratury.ru

... Prayer for love and fidelity. Probably, there is no poem in the history of Russian poetry that was so often repeated in difficult times. It helped millions of people who knew by heart the lines that Simonov at first considered too personal, not suitable for publication ...

It is impossible to forget how he read "Wait for me" from the stage in the late seventies, shortly before his death. Aged, haggard "a knight of the Soviet image", he did not resort to theatrical intonations, did not raise his voice. And the huge hall listened to every word ... The war brought us so many losses, so many separations, so much expectation that such a poem could not fail to appear. Simonov managed to recreate in verse both the state dimension of the war, and the army, and - human, personal.

And the poems influenced the fate of the war, the fate of people. Simonov wrote many years later: “I remember the camp of our prisoners of war near Leipzig. What happened! Furious cries: ours, ours! Minutes, and we were surrounded by a crowd of thousands. It is impossible to forget these faces of suffering, exhausted people. I climbed up the steps of the porch. I had to say in this camp the first words that came from the Motherland ... I feel my throat is dry. I can't say a word. I slowly look around at the vast sea of ​​people standing around. And finally I say. What he said, I can't remember right now. Then I read "Wait for me." I burst into tears myself. And everyone around is also standing and crying ... So it was.

That's right - that's how it was. It is time to remember this on the day of the centenary of the poet.

The poem "Wait for me" has long been legendary. There are several versions of its creation, but we will talk about the one that the author himself adhered to. In July 1941 he arrived in Moscow after his first trip to the front. He saw with his own eyes all the horrors of the first defeat of the Soviet troops, complete confusion from the sudden offensive of the Nazis and our unpreparedness for the upcoming war. He was supposed to stay in Moscow for two days - waiting for him to be transferred from the Izvestia newspaper to the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper. Father's friend, writer Lev Kassil, offered to live with him at his dacha in Peredelkino. And there, on July 28, 1941, the poem "Wait for me" was written.

It is dedicated - and there is no doubt about it - to the actress Valentina Vasilievna Serova. Over time, the poem became more and more popular, and the fact that its addressee was a specific woman was no longer remembered. Moreover, when the love passed and the father broke up with Serova, he had no particular desire to remain faithful to this dedication. Therefore, in different editions, the text appears sometimes with Serova's dedication, sometimes without it.

By the way, the poem was not published immediately. David Ortenberg, editor-in-chief of the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper, turned out to be completely non-visionary. He was a very good editor, but it did not work out with the poetic sphere. Ortenberg said that "Wait for me" is a very intimate poem and he will not publish it. As a result, the father read the text twice on the radio, but it was published much later. Six months after it was written, on January 14, 1942, the poem appeared on the third page in the Pravda newspaper and immediately gained incredible popularity.

In 2015, we, the children of Konstantin Simonov, applied with a project to install a monument to our father in

The first day

Wait for me and I will come back,

Just wait a lot

Wait for sadness

yellow rain,

Wait for the snow to come

Wait when it's hot

Wait when others are not expected

Changed yesterday.

Wait when from distant places

Letters will not come

Wait until you get bored

To all who are waiting together...

Konstantin Simonov (first stanza of the poem) 1941

When asked to tell about the history of this poem, he was laconic. From a letter from Konstantin Mikhailovich Simonov to the reader, 1969: “The poem“ Wait for me ”has no special story. I just went to war, and the woman I loved was in the rear. And I wrote her a letter in verse ... "

At meetings with readers, Simonov did not refuse to read "Wait for me", but somehow his face darkened. And there was pain in his eyes. He seemed to fall in the forty-first year.

In a conversation with Vasily Peskov, when asked about "Wait for me", he tiredly answered: "If I had not written, someone else would have written." He believed that it just coincided: love, war, separation, and a few hours of loneliness that miraculously fell out. Besides, poetry was his work. Here are the verses through the paper. This is how blood seeps through the bandages.

Let's try today to at least partially recreate the chronicle of those days when "Wait for me" was written. For another poem, this would not be so important, but here it is a special case. "Wait for me" was written on the crest of that spiritual wave that rose in the hearts of June 22, 1941.

While the army was trying to somehow detain the Germans, the boys, guys and men went to the military registration and enlistment offices. Farewell to loved ones. They didn't always say "Wait for me". It was already in the eyes, in the air.

Simonov came to the assembly point immediately after Molotov's speech. He has behind him the courses of military correspondents at the Frunze Academy. There they taught tactics and topography for four weeks, once they let me shoot from a light machine gun.

The poet is appointed to the newspaper "Battle Banner". He leaves for the front, and the front rolls towards him. He does not find his editor. What kind of edition of three people is there! Whole regiments went missing that summer.

Wanderings under the bombardments, among the rushing refugees, crush at the crossings, spending the night in the villages, where only old people remained. On July 12, near Mogilev, Simonov and two other military correspondents were taken to the location of the 388th regiment of the 172nd rifle division, commanded by Semyon Kutepov. His fighters skillfully, without panic, held back the German tanks in their direction. Simonov returns to Moscow with a report about these people who rose to their deaths. Only after the war did he find out that Kutepov and his regiment died in the same July of the 41st. The circumstances are still unknown. According to the documents of the Ministry of Defense, Colonel Kutepov is still missing today.

Simonov's report is printed by Izvestia. Simonov does not have his own housing in Moscow, and Lev Kassil invites him to his place. The author of "Konduit and Shvambrania" lived in Peredelkino at number seven on Serafimovich Street. Wooden cottage. On the first floor there is a kitchen, on the second floor there is a bedroom and an office. Simonov, having been assigned to the Red Star, is waiting at Kassil's dacha while an editorial pickup truck is being prepared for a business trip. Then, at the end of July, he writes "Wait for me", sends it to Valentina Serova. In the evening he reads new poems to Kassil. He takes off his glasses, rubs the bridge of his nose: "You know, Kostya, the verses are good, but they look like a spell ... Don't print it now ... now is not the time to print it yet ..."

Simonov understood what his older comrade meant: poetry is like a prayer, so it’s better not to show it to anyone. But he still decides to show the poems to the editor of the Red Star, David Ortenberg. He says: "These verses are not for a military newspaper. There is nothing to inflame the soul of a soldier ...".

Simonov hides the poems in his field bag. Kassil was right: now is not the time yet. But only a few months will pass and the Stalinist leadership will begin to frantically clutch at all the straws: for the Church, tormented by it, for the "royal" officer shoulder straps, for the "unprincipled" lyrics.

For the first time, Simonov reads "Wait for me" in October, on the Northern Front, to his comrade, photographer Grigory Zelma. For him, he rewrites a poem from a notebook, puts the date: October 13, 1941, Murmansk.

Then Simonov recalled: “I believed that these poems were my own business ... But then, a few months later, when I had to be in the far north and when snowstorms and bad weather sometimes forced me to sit for days somewhere in a dugout ... I had to different people to read poetry. And the most different people dozens of times by the light of a smoke lamp or a hand torch copied on a piece of paper the poem "Wait for me", which, as it seemed to me before, I wrote only for one person ... "

On November 5, Konstantin Simonov read "Wait for me" to artillerymen on the Rybachy Peninsula, cut off from the rest of the front. Then - to naval scouts, who take him on a raid on the rear of the Germans. Before that, Simonov, as expected, hands over documents and papers. Secretly leaves only a photograph of Valentina Serova.

December 9, 1941. From the morning summary of the Soviet Information Bureau: "Our troops fought the enemy on all fronts." Simonov in Moscow, he is asked to call on the radio and read poetry. On the way to the studio, he meets old friends and, as a result, is late for the start of the broadcast.

“The announcer was already reading the third of the four poems collected for this transmission,” he later recalled, “he only had to read“ Wait for me ”. only to announce that the poem will be read by the author.

So 70 years ago the country heard "Wait for me" for the first time. It was the 171st day of the war. 4th day of our counteroffensive near Moscow. Our troops liberated Venev and Yelets.

Second day

Wait for me and I will come back,

don't wish well

To everyone who knows by heart -

It's time to forget.

Let the son and mother believe

That there is no me

Let friends get tired of waiting

Sit by the fire

Drink bitter wine

For the soul...

Wait, and with them at the same time

Don't rush to drink...

"Wait for me and I'll be back..." We were born with these lines. They contain everything that preceded our birth: love, war, separation, distant places, yellow rains ...

Since the end of the summer of 1941, Simonov has been a war correspondent for Krasnaya Zvezda. His talent is valued at the very top. Rumors also reach there that the young poet is looking for death: crawling under bullets. Stalin gives instructions to have a conversation with Simonov. Secretary of the Central Committee A.S. Shcherbakov demands that the military commissar be more prudent, he promises and immediately leaves for the front line.

Simonov lives right in the editorial office, he was given a room with a bunk. In the corridor, he, overgrown with bristles, is stopped by the editor of Pravda, Pyotr Pospelov: "Are there any poems?"

Yes, but not for the newspaper. Certainly not for Pravda.

But Pospelov does not lag behind, and Simonov gives him "Wait for me."

On December 30, Simonov asks the editor of Krasnaya Zvezda for a two-day vacation - to fly to Sverdlovsk to see his parents. The editor approves. Simonov calls his mother Alexandra Leonidovna: "See you tomorrow! .."

At two o'clock in the morning a message arrives about the beginning of a landing operation in the Crimea. The editor cancels Simonov's vacation and sends him to the airfield.

The plane is already beginning to roll down the runway when a correspondent runs up to it. He is dragged into the navigation cabin and, without a warm flight helmet, he freezes his face in flight.

He celebrates the New Year with the soldiers of the 44th Army. The Kerch-Feodosia landing operation will end tragically. The marines will fight encircled on the icy Crimean rocks and, without receiving reinforcements, will perish. Part of the landing will go to the quarries.

In the meantime, Simonov reads poems to the guys in black pea jackets. They already know about "Wait for me", they ask to read exactly this. On January 9, 1942, Simonov returned from the liberated (alas, only for half a month) Feodosia. He was immediately sent to Mozhaisk, and in Pravda on the evening of January 13 they put him in the issue "Wait for me."

Simonov does not know about it. Only after returning from Mozhaisk does he see the headline in Pravda for January 14 on the third page: "Wait for me." Such a title is hard to miss: it is the largest on the page, although the verses take up the least space.

On January 21, Simonov sends a detailed letter to his parents. About "Wait for me", as well as about the most personal, does not mention and it is clear why: the letter was dictated to a stenographer. To reassure his mother, and at the same time distract the stenographer girl from sad thoughts, he describes his front-line trips in the style of Jerome K. Jerome: "The Germans bombed your son's woolen underpants and shirt and threw holes in them on telegraph wires. Your son remained intact ..."

In the summer of 1942, Simonov's collection "Lyrical Diary" was published in Tashkent. The little book is about the size of an inside tunic pocket. "Wait for me" has a different name here - "With you and without you." Perhaps the author wanted to return the secrecy to the poems that had already scattered throughout the country. So that the beloved read them again as a letter addressed only to her and to no one else: "Dedicated to V.S."

There are 14 more poems in the book. Six of them are about love. “You told me:“ I love you ”, but this is at night ...”, “Don’t be angry, for the better ...”, “Venus rose over the black nose of our submarine - a strange star ...”, “Having gone through the whole year, I don’t see that happy numbers…”, “If God sends us to paradise after death…”

Before the war, such poems could be sent to the Kolyma hell. And no one would have known about them, except for the investigators. And in 1942, everyone, from fighters to generals, sent Simonov's lines in letters to their wives and brides: "You saved me by your expectation ..." And everyone understood that "waiting" means prayer. And women's lines flew towards: "Honey, I can wait like no one else ..."

In 1943, in Alma-Ata, according to the script by K. Simonov and A. Stolper, the film "Wait for me" was shot. Starring Valentina Serova.

From the notes of Gennady Shpalikov (when the war began he was four years old): “There was a pub there. The guys from the hospital gathered there .., in flannelette, blue robes. And on crutches ... A boy appeared from behind the beer barrels ... He had a padded jacket , although it is spring, and soldiers' boots, and the sleeves of the quilted jacket were turned up. And he sang, danced: "Glorious sea, sacred Baikal ..." This was, of course, an introduction ...

Wait for me and I will come back,

Just wait a lot

Wait for sadness

Yellow rain...

And then he unexpectedly gave out a tap dance - instead of these gloomy verses ... "

Day Three

Wait for me and I will come back,

All deaths out of spite.

Who did not wait for me, let him

Saying lucky!

Do not understand those who did not wait, they

Like in the middle of a fire

Waiting for your

You saved me

How did I survive - we will know

Only you and I

You just knew how to wait

Like no one else!

Konstantin Simonov (third stanza of the poem) 1941

Fifteen years have passed since the departure of Konstantin Mikhailovich Simonov (he died when he was only sixty-three).

The date on the calendar was January 28, 1995. At that time I worked for Komsomolskaya Pravda. In the morning on my desktop I found a note from Yaroslav Kirillovich Golovanov. At the end - a postscript: "If you can, come: Peredelkino, Serafimovicha street-7."

Then this address did not tell me anything. It was only later that I found out that after the death of L.A. Kassil, in the early 1970s, the literary fund gave half of his house to a talented young writer, scientific observer of Komsomolskaya Pravda Yaroslav Golovanov.

Having settled in Peredelkino, Golovanov had no idea that it was in his house that the legendary "Wait for me" was written, although in the 1960s he communicated with both Kassil and Simonov. And Yaroslav Kirillovich found out about this story only in 1985, when the literary critic Evgenia Alexandrovna Taratuta called him. She, a former camper, had been friends with Kassil for many years. After her call, Yaroslav Kirillovich shockedly wrote in his diary: “Simonov’s poem“ Wait for me ”was written at Kassil’s dacha, or rather, in the room where I now sleep - upstairs in the center - in August 1941, when Simonov returned for a short time from front and lived in a dacha near Kassil. Serova and Kassil's wife and son left for evacuation, both of them were restless and this brought them closer ... "

... There was muddy snow, which happens at the end of winter, and I wandered for a long time in search of the seventh dacha. Suddenly, someone called out to me. Yaroslav Kirillovich was standing on the porch in one loose shirt. I was lucky that at the moment when I was walking by, he came out to check the mailbox.

After tea, we climbed up the narrow wooden stairs to the second floor. I stared at the amazing shelving above the sofa - all three or four shelves were densely packed with work notebooks. There were hundreds of them! Multi-colored and multi-format, they were placed in perfect, and even chronological order!

I looked enviously at this hidden economy. Here, it turns out, what a great work is behind the glory of "space journalist No. 1".

Yaroslav Kirillovich said: "Better look out the window."

I went to the window. Nothing special: a yard covered in snow, a rickety picket fence, a crow, perched, sitting on an old pine tree.

Here at this window in the forty-first year, Simonov wrote "Wait for me." True, it was summer then ...

Then I came to Yaroslav Kirillovich many more times, but we did not return to this topic again. Now someone else lives in this house. Does he know the story of "Wait for me"? Does he bring guests to the window? ..

It is strange that the memory of "Wait for me" has not yet been immortalized in any way. But there are only a few poems that would become an event in the life of the people in Russian poetry. By and large - one.

2012 marks the 70th anniversary of the publication of "Wait for me". It is not necessary to put up a plaque (it takes us many years to achieve this). Let there be a simple sign on Serafimovich Street. House number seven stands just on the way from the museum of K. Chukovsky to the museum of B. Okudzhava.

On the sign you can write: "In this house in July 1941, Konstantin Simonov wrote the poem "Wait for me."

It would also be nice to add: "In different years, two great romantics lived here: Lev Kassil and Yaroslav Golovanov."

For many years, the program "Wait for me" has been broadcast on Channel One. Konstantin Mikhailovich would not be ashamed of her. This program became a continuation of his personality - both as a military correspondent, and as a poet, and as a person who helped many, many people until the end of his life.