Coincidence or pattern? The current president of the Heritage Foundation of Russian Abroad, Alexander Avdeev, when he was the Russian Ambassador in Paris, handed over a letter from Orenburg residents to the famous French writer Maurice Druon.
The writer’s visit to Moscow at the beginning of 2003, his meeting with Vladimir Putin and Druon’s phrase, carried by all Russian media, that “Russian roots can be found in the pedigree of every Frenchman, in particular, I have a lot in common with Orenburg,” were noticed and studied in Orenburg. And this led to the visit of the author of “Cursed Kings” in the fall of the same year to the Southern Urals, to the city of his ancestors. Druon’s father was born and lived in Orenburg. My uncle, also a member of the French Academy, world-famous writer Joseph Kessel, although born in Argentina, spent his childhood years on the banks of the Urals. That is why Maurice Druon’s first letter, sent in response to the Orenburg residents, began with the words “Orenburg – this name sounds like a song in my soul.”
Writer Maurice Druon with his wife Madeleine in Orenburg. 2003 Photo: Provided by the Eurasia Foundation
Born in Brussels, the French-speaking writer of Russian origin Viktor Lvovich Kibalchich, known under the pseudonym Victor Serge, a revolutionary, a leader of the Comintern, was brought to Orenburg in the 30s of the 20th century by his political position, or rather, the opposition. He was exiled to the steppe regions for belonging to the Trotskyists. He wrote novels here, sending them to a Parisian publisher.
These novels did not reach the publisher and were not published, but Serge, having already left the USSR, restored the cycle of poems from memory, they were published many times, and now all have been translated into Russian.
The son of Victor Serge, Volodya, as a teenager began to paint the old Orenburg Forstadt, and after World War II in Mexico, where the family fled from Nazism in 1942, Vladi became an outstanding artist.
Artist Vladi in the courtyard of his house with a bust of Trotsky. July 2002. Photo: Courtesy of the Eurasia Foundation.
The monumentalist, “the genius of color and light,” who was called the “Rembrandt of modern times” for his indescribable etching technique, found himself on a par with Orozco, Siqueiros, Rivera, but remained a Russian until the end of his days. At the beginning of the 21st century, shortly before his death, he donated more than 150 etchings to the city of his childhood.
The circus athlete, strongman and wrestler Alexander Ivanovich Zass, on whose isometric exercise system Yuri Vlasov and Valentin Dikul, Arnold Schwarzenegger and thousands of fans around the world grew up, came to Orenburg in 1908 at the insistence of his father from Saransk to study as an assistant driver.
Strongman and wrestler Alexander Ivanovich Zass
But here Zass entered the circus arena, which he did not leave until his death in 1962.
Having been drafted into the Russian army, going through the crucible of the First World War, repeatedly being captured and escaped, breaking chains and unbending the bars of dungeons (the circus routine of a strongman), Alexander ended up in the Balkans, then in France, and then, as Amazing or Russian Samson, in Great Britain.
There he gained worldwide fame, gained the title of the Strongest Man on Earth, and became a “dear Russian friend” for his circus people. There, near London, he found eternal peace, never accepting British citizenship. In 2008, a monument to Alexander Zass by sculptor Alexander Rukavishnikov was erected in front of the Orenburg circus building, and a whole collection of evidence of the glory of our compatriot came to the Orenburg History Museum from Great Britain.
Several street excursions that took place in Orenburg as part of the festival began at the bust of the hero of the German student Resistance and saint of Russian Orthodoxy, Alexander Schmorell. Born in 1917 in Orenburg into a family of doctors – Natalya Vvedenskaya and Hugo Schmorell, a native of German merchants, Alexander left Russia in 1921, but throughout his short life he was proud of his Russian origin.
In 1942, together with his Munich university friend Hans Scholem, he created the underground anti-fascist group “White Rose”, which composed and distributed anti-Hitler leaflets. After their arrest in February 1943, members of the White Rose were tried and executed by guillotine. The last words of the note sent by Alexander to freedom were the phrase “All for Russia!!!”, written in pre-revolutionary spelling.
Monument to Alexander Schmorell Photo: Courtesy of the Eurasia Foundation.
The festival “Russian Abroad: Cities and Faces” revealed several new names to the wider Orenburg public. Solo performance “Ice drift” by director and performer, artist of the Moscow Art Theater. A.P. Chekhov Sergei Volkov, accompanied by Tovuz Abbasova (piano) from the Bolshoi Theater, immersed the audience in the atmosphere of the stories of Sergei Gusev-Orenburgsky. One of the most famous authors of pre-revolutionary Russia, close to M. Gorky, who accepted the revolution, but emigrated to the USA, wrote about the provincial Russian wilderness while living in New York, published in Russia 12 volumes of collected works not completed due to the revolution, but considered writing “the most evil his enemy,” seemed to disappear forever. But the festival returned a piece of his work to the Orenburg residents, and the audience who stayed to discuss the performance unanimously asked “Where can I read it?” received an optimistic response. It can be considered a coincidence, but almost a quarter of a century of searching for the creative heritage of Gusev-Orenburgsky has now led to the fact that next year the publication of his collected works should begin in Orenburg.
Of course, in Orenburg they also knew about fellow countrymen artists Philip Malyavin (Nadezhda Musyankova, curator of exhibition projects at the State Tretyakov Gallery, gave an excellent lecture about him) and Serge Charshun, whose house miraculously survived in the center of Buguruslan, and may soon become part of the city museum . But the fates and creativity of artists Vsevolod Ulyanov, Lydia Mandel, Alexander Karamzin were presented in Orenburg for the first time. And this is a considerable merit of the Museum of Russian Culture in San Francisco, which responded to the request of the festival organizers and shared a part of its wealth from overseas in the current difficult time for international cultural contacts. Although it is foreign, it is still Russian!
Source: rg.ru
