April 13 in Russian history

1934: I already told the story of the steamship Chelyuskin (there's a typo in that article, I put the article under 1924 instead of 1934, sorry.) Just wanted to remind that this drama ended successfully on April 13, 1934, when last members of the expedition were evacuated.

1943: On this day in 1943, the German army issued an official press-release anouncing the results of the investigation of mass burials found in the Katyn forest, near Smolensk. In April-May 1940, 4,421 Polish prisoners of war were executed in Katyn by Soviet NKVD. Thousands more were killed in other places: Kharkiv, Kalinin, etc. The total amount of victims, according to the KGB archives, was 21,857 people. The Nazi propaganda used this case to accuse mythical "Jewish commanders of NKVD" in the executions. USSR denied all accusations but refused to accept an international team for the investigation. A Soviet "investigation" later in 1943-1944 concluded that the Polish officers were killed in 1941, when the territory was occupied by Nazis. There's no reason to reproduce here the full detailed history, just a couple of comments. When the Nazis attacked USSR in 1941, it suddenly turned out that Poland and USSR found themselves on one side of the war. Stalin established contacts with the Polish government in exile, released all surviving Poles from prisons and began to form Polish detachments. On December 3, 1941, Stalin met the leaders of the Polish government, Wladyslaw Sikorski and Wladyslaw Anders, who were trying to find all Polish POWs in Gulag. Sikorski said that not all Poles were released from the detention camps, but Stalin answered that this is impossible and all Polish officers were released. Then Sikorski gave a list of 4,000 people who were not released and stressed that these people were not found in Poland or in German camps for POWs. Stalin said: "It's impossible. They are hiding." "Where could they hide?" asked Sikorski perplexedly. "Well, in Manchuria", answered Stalin floutingly... In the late 1980s-early 1990s, having studied a lot of declassified documents of KGB-NKVD, a group of Soviet historians found strong evidences proving that the massacre was organized by NKVD. On April 13, 1990 (47 years after the German announcement mentioned in the beginning of this article), M. Gorbachev officially called NKVD responsible for the executions and expressed the "profound regret". A criminal case was started and in May 1991 the General Prosecutor of the USSR said that "it is possible to make a preliminary conclusion that the Polish POWs could be executed on the basis of the decision of the Special Council of NKVD of USSR in April-May 1940 by regional NKVD of Smolensk, Kharkiv and Kalinin oblasts, in Katyn forest near Smolensk, in Mednoe located in 32 kilometres from Tver and in the 6th quarter of the park zone of Kharkiv correspondingly." In 1992, Boris Yeltsin transferred a pack of documents related to the Katyn massacre to Lech Walesa. With the inauguration of V. Putin, the situation has changed. In 2004, Polish investigators were not allowed to visit Moscow. In 2005, the official investigation was over, but the General Military Prosecutor A. Savenkov concluded that it was neither a genocide, nor a crime against humanity, not even a war crime, but a military crime with the term of 50 years which had already expired. During the last years, some conspirologists attempt to refute the proofs found by the multiple investigators and proclaim that the murders were committed by the Nazis. Like many other conspirologists and pyramidiots, they are mostly dilettantes, like a metallurgy engineer who is by coincidence the author of the hypothesis of human immortality, the founder of the Army of the Will of the People (?!), who has "proved" that Boris Yeltsin died in 1996, that American astronauts never landed on the Moon, that Stalin was killed by Khruschev, etc. And no, he is not hospitalized yet, if you meant to ask.

1958: Van Cliburn, an American pianist, wins the First International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in Moscow. He hasn't become a super star of the classical music, but his performance of Tchaikovsky and Rakhmaninov piano concerts in Moscow was so romantic, emotional and deeply personal, that the judges unanimously gave him the first prize (having consulted with Khruschev first) and the audience was applauding for eight minutes. The recording became a bestseller in Russia, with over 1,000,000 copies sold. I think one of them is still standing somewhere deep in my bookshelf, where old LPs are stored. He was known and loved by millions of Soviet people. The Reporter magazine wrote: "Russians did not discover Van Cliburn. They have simply accepted with enthusiasm what we watch indifferently, what their people value and we ignore." I think that most Russians still remember his name, especially after his visit to Moscow in 2004. There's even a rock group named Van Cliburn, AFAIK. Now, he lives alone in Fort Worth, without family or children. If you happen to find that recording of 1958, listen. It is worth it. Listen and drink a glass of wine for Van Cliburn, he really deserved it.

February 13 in Russian history

1921: Duke Kropotkin, scientist and famous theorist of anarchy, buried in Moscow. All anarchists were released from the Moscow jails to participate in the funerals, after they promised to return to the jails after the ceremony. And they did.

1934: Soviet steamship Chelyuskin sunk in the Chukchi Sea. It was an epic story of the heroism of "real Soviet people", which became a significant part of the mythology of the Stalinist Soviet Union. Chelyuskin was built in 1933 in Denmark and named after Semion Chelyuskin, Russian polar explorer, a participant of the "Great Northern Expedition" of 1733-1743. On August 2, 1933, Chelyuskin left from Leningrad with 112 people. The expedition was led by the Soviet geographer Otto Schmidt and the captain was Vladimir Voronin. The task of the crew was to prove the possibility of navigating along the Northern Sea Route in one summer. It was done by Sibiryakov in 1932, but Sibiryakov was an icebreaker, not a cargo ship. They almost reached their goal, but in November, 1933, in the Chukchi Sea, near the Bering strait, they were stopped by heavy icepacks. After three months, the ship sunk, crashed by ice. The crew managed to save food, bricks and wood. One man died during the evacuation. Schmidt and Voronin were the last to leave the sinking ship. A government commission was formed to organize the rescue operation. Some Western newspapers wrote that it is impossible to save the people, because there were no icebreakers able to navigate the Arctic Ocean in winter and that it was cruel to incite hope in these doomed people. The rescue commission hoped to use aviation. The American government offered their assistance, but they could not help with the aviation, because flights in the Arctic were cancelled due to recent crashes. On March 5, the airplane piloted by Anatoly Lyapidevsky found the camp of the Chelyuskinites, landed on ice and rescued ten women and one baby, who was born in September on board of Chelyuskin. During the second attempt, Lyapidevsky's airplane was damaged. The government decided to send three groups of pilots. The first group departed to the USA, where two airplanes were bought from Pan Am. One of them was damaged soon and another, piloted by Mavrikiy Slepnyov, rescued 5 people and later evacuated O.Schmidt, who was seriously ill. Other people were saved by pilots Kamanin, Pivenshtein, Demirov, Bestanzhiev, Molokov, Vodopyanov and Doronin on Soviet R-5 planes. The engine of Galyshev's plane broke and he could not participate. On April 13, the last people were evacuated. The Chelyuskinites later spoke that the leadership of Otto Schmidt, who published a newspaper in the camp and read lectures on philosophy, was the key in their survival.

1940: Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov finished his best known masterpiece "Master and Margarita". Less than one month later, he died. Bulgakov started his work on this novel in 1928 or in 1929. In 1930, he burnt the first draft, when he learnt that his piece "Cabal of Sanctimonious Hypocrites, or Molière" was banned . The second version was being written since 1931 till 1936. The last, final version was in active work since 1936 till 1938, but Bulgakov kept adding and modifying the text till 1940. "Master and Margarita" is called by many critics one of the greatest Russian novels of the XX century. I would say, though, that the book is so heavily influenced and so tightly woven with the references to the general European culture, from Bible to Goethe, to Hoffmann, that it should be perceived as one of the greatest works in the European, not Russian, literature. On the other hand, Bulgakov, in his turn, influenced Salman Rushdie's "Satanic verses" and even Rolling Stones. After all, it's a small world, isn't it?

February 5 in Russian history

First of all, I beg your pardon if I miss some "days in history" from time to time, like now...

1494: The end of the first Muscovite-Lithuanian war. Ivan III, in the union with the Crimean khan Mengli Girai, managed to gain large territories, which passed from one hands to another for a long time: Vyazma, Kozelsk, Meshchera, Tarusa and a number of other cities. The most important part of the treaty, signed on February 5, 1494 in Moscow, was that the Lithuanians agreed to name Ivan III "sovereign of all Russia." The importance of this step comes from the fact that by this time Russians constituted more than a half of the population of Lithuania, which bore the official name of the Lithuanian-Russian state. Until 1494, Lithuania and Muscovy contested the right to be the nucleus of the forming Russia. Alexander, the duke of Lithuania, married Elena, daughter of Ivan III. The "eternal peace" survived for six years, when another war followed.

1851: Ivan Dmitrievich Sytin was born. He was born in a distant village near Kostroma and his parents were literate, but poor. He moved to Moscow and began working at a book publishing company. Some years later, his boss helped him to start his own publishing business. Soon he became one of the largest publishers and educators in Russia. He published books by Tolstoy and Chekhov, the so called "Popular Calendar" which could be found in almost every home in Russia, and newspapers and magazines for general public, for children, for teachers, etc. One of the largest Russian newspapers, "Russkoe Slovo", was founded by Sytin. One of his magazines, "Vokrug Sveta" (Around the world) is still one of my favourite monthlies. By 1914, around 25% of all book published in Russia were printed by Sytin. In 1911, he built "The teachers' house" in Moscow and sponsored gifted children. In 1917, his typographies were nationalized and he became unemployed. Then, he was invited to work in his own typography, sicne 1928 he received a special personal pension (a very small one, though) and died in 1934.