Reflection of the fire

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Reflection of Fire ( Russian Отблеск костра , Otblesk kostra ) is a documentary tale by the Soviet writer Yuri Trifonov , which was published in the February 1965 issue of the Moscow literary magazine Snamja and in 1966 in book form by the Moscow publishing house Sowetski pissatel .

“… The main idea of ​​this book is,” the author explains, “to write the truth, however cruel and strange it may be. But the truth will be useful - at some point. "

Family history

overview

The fire in the title means three Russian revolutions - the 1905 and the February and October 1917 . The effects of the three events on the monarchy and its bitter opponents in Russia are addressed with the reflection in the title . Using archive material, Yuri Trifonov tells about his family history. The main characters are his father Valentin Trifonow and his three years older brother Evgeni Trifonow (1885-1937). Father and uncle Yevgeny fought on the side of the Bolsheviks against the Whites on the Don and in the Caucasus during the civil war . The railway fitter Valentin Trifonov, who joined the party in Rostov in 1904 , was not just anyone, but at the end of the civil war he was a “member of the Revolutionary War Council of the Caucasus Front”. Yuri Trifonov describes the time after the civil war, that is, after 1921, in a few sentences. His father became chairman of the Petroleum Syndicate and deputy head of the Central Fuel Industry Administration. From 1923 to 1924 Valentin Trifonov was chairman of the military college at the Supreme Court and then attaché in China and Finland . At the beginning of 1937 he gave the manuscript of his book “The Contours of a Future War” to his old comrades from the civil war, Stalin , Molotov , Voroshilov and Ordzhonikidze , for inspection before printing. Stalin did not fit the urgent warning of a surprise attack by the fascists on the Soviet Union expressed in the manuscript into the current political concept. So neither Stalin, Molotov, nor Voroshilov replied. After Valentin Trifonov learned of Ordzhonikidse's suicide in the second half of February 1937, he received Stalin's answer four months later. “Men in uniform” picked up the father on June 22, 1937 at the dacha in Serebrjani Bor. Valentin Trifonov was shot dead in March 1938. Yevgeny Trifonov fought against the Basmachs in Uzbekistan from 1925 to 1927 . He then studied at the military academy, wrote plays and prose, promoted aviation and died of a heart attack in 1937, excluded from the party .

Yuri Trifonov looked around the archives up to 1921 because his father and uncle Yevgeny had left little written information from that time. The author suspects that both of them held back cautiously and modestly before and during the civil war. Two sources from the family turned out to be all the more valuable. Tatiana Alexandrovna Slovatinskaya (1879–1957), the first wife of PA Lurje and her son Pawel Lurje, wrote. The grandmother Tatiana Slovatinskaya - the mother of Yuri Trifonov's mother Shenja - came from Vilnius , had met Kalinin in Reval in 1903 , had been a party member since 1905, had studied music at the Petersburg Conservatory, later worked as a publisher's proofreader and operated an illegal printing company as a professional revolutionary in Petersburg . Tatiana Slovatinskaya met Lenin after 1905 in her St. Petersburg conspiratorial apartment, then in 1907 in Kuokkala and after 1917 in the Tauride Palace , in Smolny and as a secretary in Moscow. Her son Pavel Lurje, born in 1903, had kept a diary since the February Revolution of 1917 and accompanied Yuri Trifonov's father as an adjutant to the Don and the Caucasus in May 1918. Pavel's diary entries from the beginning of 1917 on the civil war are quoted by Yuri Trifonov scattered over large stretches of his text. Pavel Lurje heard Lenin's speech on the April Theses in the Tauride Palace. There Lenin spoke out against joining forces with the Social Democrats because they had "betrayed the cause of socialism". The grandmother Tatiana Slovatinskaya remains a mystery to Yuri Trifonov. How could she keep her terrible pain a secret in her memories from 1957? The son-in-law Valentin Trifonov had been shot, the son Pavel had been exiled and the daughter Shenya had been exiled for eight years.

From 1906 to 1921, Yuri Trifonov wrote about his father and uncle Yevgeny:

Valentin Trifonov

On March 9, 1906, Valentin Trifonov was arrested for an armed attack and exiled to the Tobolsk Governorate . He fled back to Rostov , was caught and sent back to Tobolsk. He spent nine years in Siberia - in 1907 together with the thermal engineer Boris Evgenjewitsch Schalajew (1886-1970) in Tyumen , in the same year with Aron Solz in Turinsk and finally from spring 1910 in the Turuchansk region together with Josef Dubrowinski (1877 -1913). In 1914 Stalin and Sverdlov came . Both were housed in the village of Kurejka on the Yenisei south of Igarka . Stalin is said to have appropriated the entire library of the late Dubrowinsky.

In 1916 - after his exile in 1914 - Valentin Trifonov ran an illegal printing company with Yegor Pylajew for the Petrograd Committee of his party and was Secretary of the Bolsheviks in the Petrograd Soviet during the February Revolution . Lenin, who was planning the armed uprising against the Provisional Government , suggested the formation of the Red Guard after the 6th Bolshevik Party Congress . In August 1917, Valentin and Yevgeny Trifonov were among the five founders of the Guard, known as the "Initiative Quintet". In January Valentin Trifonov was appointed to the five-member All-Russian College for the Formation of the Red Army . In April 1918 he was sent to southern Russia to fight against the Germans as the “Special Representative of the People's Commissariat for Military Affairs”. On April 30th he arrived by train in Tsaritsyn , on May 2nd in Tichorezk and on May 4th in Rostov . On May 5th the railroad stopped in Bataisk . The Germans captured Rostov on May 8th. On May 9, Valentin Trifonov telegraphed to Trotsky and Podvosky to withdraw the Red Army to Moscow: “The 40,000 troops withdrawing from the Ukraine are completely disorganized and demoralized.” Yuri Trifonov's comment: “Military specialists and soldiers from the front were able to Dislike him [Trotsky]. It should be noted that my father also had a difficult character. He was even too independent… ”The father also quarreled with Yurenew and Antonov-Ovsejenko , whom he knew from the Petrograd Red Guard. Yuri Trifonov prudently withholds their arguments, because all three essentially served the Bolshevik cause and were killed by Stalin in 1938. Valentin Trifonov's lively travel activity took him to the Urals as early as the end of May, with a stop in Moscow . The Czechoslovak legions rebelled there . On 8 June in Yekaterinburg arrived, Valentin Trifonov fought for a year on the eastern front of the civil war - led the creation of Uralarmee and commanded the Kama flotilla . During these troubled times, at the end of August 1918, Valentin Trifonov had to hide the Moscow gold treasure in Lysva on instructions from Sverdlov . The tsar's murderer Beloborodov helped him. Kolchak took Lyswa in late 1918, but did not find the treasure. Krestinski was able to recover it in 1922.

The Permian , occupied by the whites, was retaken. On May 21, 1919 Valentin Trifonov left the 3rd Army in the Urals, drove south from Moscow on June 2 and fought Denikin near Tsaritsyn .

Yuri Trifonov gives an abridged version of a letter from his father dated June 10, 1919 from Kozlov to the Central Committee of his party about the Vyoshenkaya uprising . Trotsky, who instigated the repression against the Cossacks, is said to have appeared in Kozlov on June 11 and had an argument with Valentin Trifonov. Incidentally, Yuri Trifonov admires the courage of Scholokhov when he quietly published the description of the Cossack uprising in Don during the Stalinist presence in the 1930s. In a letter to Gorky from 1931, Scholokhov refers to the more than 400 Cossacks who were shot dead within a week without trial. Finally, Yuri Trifonov tells the story of his father's struggle with Vladimir Gittis on the Caucasus front from 1920 to spring 1921.

Yevgeny Trifonov

Together with his brother Valentin, the showman , miller and ship mechanic Yevgeny Trifonov took part in the armed uprising in Rostov in 1905. For this, the Cossack from the Stanitsa Novocherkassk received katorga for ten years . First sent to Tobolsk, Alexandrowskoje and Berjosowo , in 1916 he was allowed to move from Ust-Kut to Petrograd. Yevgeny Trifonov was active in the workers' militia - the legal Red Guard from September 1917 - of the Putilov factory . At the end of 1917 he fought with the Red Guard in southern Russia against Kaledin . Fighting on the Tsaritsyn front in the first half of May 1918 , Yevgeny Trifonov met his brother Valentin in Tsaritsyn.

Returning to Moscow from the southern front, Yevgeny Trifonov heard speeches of Lenin, Sverdlov and Kamenev in front of Soviet officials in the Bolshoi Theater on November 11, 1918 on the occasion of the proclamation of the republic in Germany . Yevgeny Trifonov was appointed to the General Staff Academy and met at the end of November with his brother, who was cured from the flu there in Moscow.

Some other consequences of the three revolutions

The reader learns Hair Raising from the history of Russian hard labor, the years after 1905 concerning, in Tobolsk, Orel, Aleksandrovskoe, Nertschinsk and Gorny Serentui (in Nerchinsk area). There is not only talk of the flogging of political prisoners, which often ended fatally, but above all of rebellions against the atrocities. For example, Bogojawlensky, the director of the Tobolsk Katorga, was shot dead in the street. The superintendent Grigoryev was beheaded by prisoner Filippov on January 8, 1909 in a cell in the same katorga. Mogilev, Bogoyawlenski's successor, was killed in the street in March 1909 by the Social Revolutionary ND Shishmarev, a sailor.

In addition, those interested will find certain details from the years of the civil war. For example, at the end of April / beginning of May 1918, there is talk of the Bolshevik Minin and the anarchist Marussia Nikiforova. Or: Yuri Trifonov unearthed the Ordzonikidses telegram to Lenin and Stalin of May 23, 1918 in Moscow from an archive in which Ordzonikidze overturned the Commander-in-Chief Avtomonov in Tsaritsyn. Avtomonov then continued to fight the whites in a subordinate position and died of typhus in early 1919.

Yuri Trifonov commemorates the Cossack Filipp Kuzmich Mironov, the commander of the 2nd Cavalry Army, who was murdered in prison in 1921. Valentin Trifonov had fought with Mironov against the Cadets and Krasnov near Buturlinowka in the Don region in the spring of 1919 . Yuri Trifonov, who has followed the life of such civil war heroes in archives, describes the fate of Mironov as “fantastic”. Mironov is said to have been arrested several times by his own people - that is, the Bolsheviks. Once he was arrested by Budjonny in September 1919 near Balashov with 5,000 riders and sentenced to death by shooting by a military court. All night before the morning execution he sang revolutionary songs and was finally pardoned at the last minute by Lenin's personal intervention.

reception

  • On April 13, 1979 in Die Zeit, Rolf Michaelis deals with the tragic end of the Cossack Mironov and two character traits of Stalin - as there is ruthlessness and vindictiveness.

literature

German-language editions

  • Jurij Trifonow: reflection of the fire. A report. From the Russian by Eckhard Thiele . Luchterhand, Neuwied 1979, ISBN 3-472-86484-2
  • Yuri Trifonov: Reflection of the Fire. German by Eckhard Thiele. P. 5–156 in Juri Trifonow: Selected works. Volume 2 Verlag Volk und Welt, Berlin 1983 (1st edition, edition used)

Secondary literature

  • Ralf Schröder (Ed.): Juri Trifonow: Selected works. Volume 4. Verlag Volk und Welt, Berlin 1983 (1st edition)

Web links

  • The text online at e-reading.club (Russian)
  • Entry at fantlab.ru (Russian)
  • Entry in slavistik-portal.de

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Russian Знамя, The banner
  2. ^ Schröder, Juri Trifonow: Selected works. Volume 4 , p. 401, fourth entry vu
  3. ↑ Russian Советский писатель, The Soviet writer
  4. ↑ Edition used, p. 504, first entry
  5. ↑ Edition used, p. 47, 2nd Zvu
  6. ↑ Russian Трифонов, Евгений Андреевич
  7. ↑ Edition used, p. 152, 2nd Zvu
  8. ↑ Edition used, p. 81, 7. Zvo
  9. ↑ Russian Серебряный Бор, for example: Silberwald , suburb in the west of Moscow
  10. ↑ see also edition used, p. 54, 10. Zvo
  11. ↑ Edition used, p. 43 below, Russian Татьяна Александровна Словатинская
  12. ↑ Russian Зяньковіч, Николай Зенькович: Самые секретные родственники, Moscow 2005, ISBN 5-94850-408-5 (see WorldCat), p. 157, Nikolai Senkstenowitsch Relatives: Dieankowitsch
  13. ↑ See for example the edition used, pp. 101, 17. Zvo
  14. ↑ Edition used, p. 45, 14. Zvo
  15. ↑ Edition used, p. 54, 17. Zvo
  16. ↑ Edition used, p. 83
  17. ↑ Edition used, p. 61, middle
  18. ↑ Edition used, p. 47, 21. Zvo
  19. ↑ Russian Boris Evgenjewitsch Schalajew
  20. ↑ Russian Туруханский край
  21. ↑ Russian Дубровинский, Иосиф Фёдорович
  22. ↑ Russian Курейка (село)
  23. ↑ Russian Подвойский, Николай Ильич (1880–1948)
  24. ↑ Edition used, p. 88, 2. Zvo
  25. ↑ Edition used, p. 93, 11. Zvu
  26. ↑ Edition used, p. 132, 1. Zvo
  27. ↑ Edition used, p. 134, below
  28. ↑ Edition used, pp. 135 to 136
  29. ↑ Russian Гиттис, Владимир Михайлович (1881–1938)
  30. ↑ Russian Александровское (Томский район), Tomsk region
  31. ↑ Russian Богоявленский
  32. ↑ Russian Григорьев
  33. ↑ Russian Филиппов
  34. ↑ Russian Могилёв
  35. ↑ Russian Н. Д. Шишмарёв
  36. ↑ Russian Никифорова, Мария Григорьевна (1885–1919)
  37. ↑ Edition used, p. 86 below
  38. ↑ Russian Автономов, Алексей Иванович (1890–1919)
  39. ↑ Edition used, p. 96
  40. ↑ Russian Миронов, Филипп Кузьмич (1872–1921)
  41. ↑ russ. 2-я Конная армия
  42. ↑ Rolf Michaelis: The Soviet narrator, which is also the most interesting for readers abroad, quotes Stalin before the history tribunal. From Russia's darkest time: ashes of the revolution