Year: 1940 Genre: story

Main characters: teenagers Zhenya and Timur, Olga - Zhenya's sister

The main idea: The main meaning of the work is reflected in the concepts of "disinterestedness", "nobility", "childhood". Good deeds are not measured by money or something material, they are done disinterestedly - this is what little readers should understand. “You always thought about people, they will repay you the same,” the main character says to the boy Timur at the end of the work.

The children's and youth story "Timur and his team" was written by the Soviet writer Arkady Gaidar in 1940. There are still five years before the Great Patriotic War, the Soviet people do not yet know what trials will befall the country. However, the writer accurately anticipates the impending storm. What kind of war, and with whom the Red Army is fighting, the writer does not say, but the events in the book take place in wartime.

Sisters - eighteen-year-old Olga and thirteen-year-old Zhenya, at the request of their father-front-line soldier, go to the dacha to spend the remaining summer days there. On the very first day, circumstances bring the sisters together with a boy named Timur.

Zhenya meets the boy while examining an old barn. In an abandoned building, the girl discovers the headquarters of the Timurov detachment - a small detachment of guys led by Timur. The boys voluntarily and secretly help people living in the village, and especially those whose relatives are fighting at the front. In addition, the guys are waging their own little war here in the village, and are fighting a gang of hooligans who rob other people's gardens. Zhenya decides to join Timur and his team, but Olga, having accidentally seen the boy in the company of a local bully Mishka Kvakin, forbids her sister to be friends with Timur.

Olga became friends with Georgy Garaev, who is Timur's uncle. He is a tanker, educated, singing. At a party in the park, Olga learns about Timur and Georgy's kinship and accuses the boy of turning Zhenya against her. Children are forbidden to communicate.

At this time, the Timurovites are trying to defeat the hooligans. They set up an ambush and expose Mishka Kvakin's gang, locking them in a booth in the square.

Once Olga leaves for Moscow, and leaves Zhenya at the dacha as a warning. But in the capital, the girl receives a telegram from her father: he will come to see his daughters for only three hours. Zhenya cannot come, because she finds out about her father's arrival late in the evening, when the trains no longer run, and besides, the neighbor's little daughter remained in her care. Timur comes to the aid of his friend: he asks the guys to look after the baby, and Zhenya is being taken to Moscow on a motorcycle.

Picture or drawing Timur and his team

Other retellings and reviews for the reader's diary

• Summary of the tale Two brothers Schwartz

  In a large forest there lived and there was a head of forestry, who was nicknamed Black-bearded, and he had 2 sons. The eldest was 12 years old, the youngest - 9. But there was no peace between the brothers, all quarrels and conflicts. And now, shortly before the new year

• Summary Chekhov Boring story

  The work tells us about the life of Professor of Medicine Nikolai Stepanovich, whom everyone respected and considered him the most worthy person. After all, he did so much for science. Although in fact, this is a sick old man

• Summary of Pushkin Mermaid

  Acquainted with the work of A.S. Pushkin from the first lines you fall in love with his works. They are not similar to each other in the plot, but are so recognizable by the style. Mermaid Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin makes you think

• Summary of Lermontov Bela (chapter from the story A Hero of Our Time)

  Pechorin came to serve in the dangerous Caucasian mountains. Local residents are thugs, deceivers, and drunkards from birth. As Grigory later admits, he thought under the bullets to forget his longing. It’s always like this with him: he’s fond of something, and after that he’s sick of it

• Dostoevsky

  The writer Dostoevsky began his great and at the same time difficult literary path with translations. He translated the works of Balzac, and the novels of J. Sand. But these works never received publication.

The story "Timur and his team" is still regularly reprinted and is included in the list of one hundred books recommended to schoolchildren by the Ministry of Education for independent reading, although the historical situation in which it was created text is long gone. This is one of the most popular and in-demand books of the Soviet children's canon. The story was read both within the framework of the school program, and completely voluntarily; heroes were imitated, for many years boys were named after Timur, and girls after Zhenya. Timur pushed the protagonist of the 1930s, Pavli-ka Morozov, into the Soviet pantheon and won the sympathy of readers for a long time. According to the British anthropologist and historian of childhood culture Catriona Kelly, "even those adults who criticized other aspects of Soviet life retained a warm feeling for this hero."

Timur and Timurovtsy

Cover of the story "Timur and his team" by Arkady Gaidar. Gorky, 1942"Detgiz"; Russian State Children's Library

Not many people remember that the story "Timur and his team" was preceded by a script for the film of the same name. The film appeared before the book, and it was he who first drew the attention of Soviet children to the story of the boy Timur and his friends. Only six months after finishing work on the script, when the film had already been put into production, Gaidar began to process it into a story.

Its plot is this. An unusual team operates in a dacha village near Moscow - teenagers secretly help the families of soldiers and commanders of the Red Army: they carry water from a well, put firewood in a woodpile, look for missing pets, protect children from cruelty by adults. In parallel, the guys come into confrontation with local hooligans - the destroyers of orchards and orchards - and win a convincing moral victory over them.

This model of self-organization and social activity immediately found a response and became a role model. The first Timurov teams appeared in the USSR as early as 1940, right after the film was released. After the German attack on the Soviet Union, Timur's teams began to actively spread: the number of participants in the first post-war years numbered in the hundreds of thousands. Even the expression “Timurov movement” appeared - in fact, this was the name of a form of social volunteering, firmly tied to the postulates of Soviet ideology. Today, the initial context of the appearance of Timur and the Timurites is little understood. Let's try to restore it.

"Soyuzdetfilm"

Any reader of the story, like the viewer of the film, cannot help but notice that descriptions of the movements of Soviet troops and various types of weapons occupy a huge place in these works. Even in the dacha village, Uncle Timur turns out to have a pistol loaded with blank cartridges, and Dr. Kolokolchikov has a hunting rifle, and the heroes shoot from both.. The word "front" appears already in the second sentence of the story, and the word "armored division" in the first. When Olga, the sister of the main character, goes to the dacha, sitting on a wicker chair in the back of a truck with a kitten and a bouquet of cornflowers on her knees, she is overtaken by an army motorcade. In this sense, "Timur and his team" is perhaps one of the most disturbing works of Soviet children's literature.

The signs of an impending war will become clearer if you look at the dates of the start of work on the script, and then on the story. It follows from Gaidar's diaries that he sat down for the script in early December 1939, that is, immediately after the start of the Soviet-Finnish War Soviet-Finnish War- the war between the USSR and Finland in the period from November 30, 1939 to March 12, 1940..

On June 14, 1940, Gaidar would write in his diary that he had begun writing "the story of Dunkan" (at first he was going to call Timur that), and by the end of August he was finishing it. The start date of work is very important: it was on June 14 that the Soviet Union delivered an ultimatum to the Republic of Lithuania before sending troops there. The next day, similar ultimatums were sent to Latvia and Estonia, followed by the occupation of all three Baltic countries.

Newspaper language

A shot from the film "Timur and his team", directed by Alexander Razumny. 1940"Soyuzdetfilm"

An important place in the plot of "Timur" is occupied by the episode with the ultimatum, which Timur decides to send to the gang of the hooligan Kvakin. He is in the story and in the film. In the script, these scenes could have appeared even before the corresponding events of the summer of 1940: the word "ultimatum" was in use in the international politics of the previous 1938-1939. In 1938, Hitler sent an ultimatum to the government of Czechoslovakia before the occupation of the Sudetenland, in March 1939 Germany put forward a verbal ultimatum to Lithuania, and on September 2, 1939, after the German attack on Poland, Great Britain -co-val your ultimatum to the aggressor country..

However, it was in the summer of 1940 that the Soviet government also began to speak the language of ultimatums, and their tone was very harsh. During these months, Gaidar includes details in the story that are not in the film: the boys ask Uncle Timur how an ultimatum is drawn up, and he replies that each country does it “in its own way”, but it is imperative to end the text with assurances “in accordance with highest respect to you.” Timur’s team refuses diplomatic protocol and decides to “send a simpler ultimatum, in the manner of that message of the Cossacks to the Turkish Sultan, which everyone saw in the picture when they read about how the brave Cossacks fought the Turks, Tatars and Poles.” The only boy from Kvakin's gang who knows what an ultima-tum is, gives this diplomatic genre an unambiguous interpretation: "They will beat."

The mention of the letter of the Cossacks here is not accidental, because, according to legend, it was created shortly after the annexation of Ukraine to Russia. It is believed that in 1676 the Cossacks of the Right-Bank Ukraine sent a letter to the Turkish Sultan, demanding to stop the raids on the Ottoman Port (Right-Bank Ukraine then belonged to the Commonwealth, which concluded a peace treaty with Turkey). The text was harsh and full of curses. The scene of the creation of this letter is captured in the famous painting by Repin and re-produced in all Soviet school history textbooks. Ukrainians in general and Zaporozhye Cossacks in particular were presented as carriers of a freedom-loving spirit, which inevitably turned them away from Turkey and Poland and encouraged them to ask for help from Russia. This is how the decision of the Pereyaslav Council of 1654 on the annexation of the Left-Bank Ukraine to Russia was presented to Soviet schoolchildren, followed by the war of Russia with the Commonwealth. The accession of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus in 1939 was part of the next partition of Poland, carried out by Germany and the USSR.. Thus, the language of ultimatums is presented here as the language of "liberation from the yoke of hostile peoples", but in fact acts as the language of imperial expansion.

Internal chronology of the story

A shot from the film "Timur and his team", directed by Alexander Razumny. 1940"Soyuzdetfilm"

The action of the film and the story takes place in the summer of 1939. The dating of individual episodes can be calculated literally from a calendar. telegram and invited his daughters Zhenya and Olya to move to da-chu.

Timur's company is especially concerned about the family of the Red Army soldier Pavlov, who was recently (that is, apparently, in the early summer of 1939) killed "on the border". We know that Lieutenant Pavlov was a pilot: it was in June 1939 that the heaviest air battles at Khalkhin Gol took place Battles at Khalkhin Gol- an armed conflict in the spring - autumn of 1939 near the Khal-Khin-Gol River on the territory of Mongolia, where Soviet troops and the army of the Mongolian People's Republic fought on the one hand, and on the other - the army of the Japanese im- peria. The conflict ended with the victory of the Soviet-Mongolian group..

The last day of the action is determined even more precisely: the arrival of the colonel in Moscow and the rapid voyage of Zhenya and Timur on a motorcycle is preceded by a holiday "in honor of the anniversary of the victory of the Reds near Khasan." Fighting on Lake Khasan Hassan battles- an armed conflict between the Red Army and the army of the Japanese Empire, which happened in the summer of 1938 over the territory around Lake Khasan and the Tuman-naya River. The top was won by the Soviet military group. ended on August 11, 1938. This means that the last scenes of the film and the story take place on the night of August 11-12, 1939, a few days before the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and three weeks before the start of World War II.

This dating obviously contradicts what we see in the book and on the screen. Troops moving into combat positions; conscription of Timur's uncle, George, into the army; Colonel Alexandrov, clearly heading to the same place as Georgy, is not the reality of August, but of September 1939, when Germany invaded Poland, and the USSR began the occupation of its eastern part. The beginning of partial mobilization in the USSR was announced not in August, but in early September. At the same time, theoretically, the redeployment of military units under the command of Colonel Aleksandrov should have occurred: if in the spring and early summer he was “at the front”, then only one front can be meant - in Mongolia. The fighting at Khalkhin Gol, as you know, continued until the very end of August 1939, and the armistice was signed on September 15.

The shift of the historical chronology within the artistic chronology, most likely, was necessary for Gaidar in order to fit the entire action of the story into the summer season: in September, the characters had to sit at their desks.

military kids

A shot from the film "Timur and his team", directed by Alexander Razumny. 1940"Soyuzdetfilm"

The device of Timur's detachment is not just a game, but a military one. The communication system and call signs, reconnaissance and patrols, prisoners and parliamentarians - all this indicates a war that has already passed into the children's world from an adult. There is not a single peaceful song in the story and the film. Olga's favorite song, which she plays on the accordion, contains the refrain “Pilot pilots! Bombs-machine guns!". George represents an old partisan in the theater, who, even twenty years after his military exploits, is ready to rush into battle. At the end of the film, the entire detachment of Timur, with Olga at the head, sings a song based on Mayakovsky’s verses: “Take new rifles, / flags on the bayonet! / And with a song / let's go to shooting circles. The following stanzas of the song and poem call on Soviet schoolchildren to become orderlies and scouts.

In 1938-1941, Gaidar was very interested in the problems of military education for schoolchildren and educational military games. Traces of these interests were reflected in his diary and in stories about Timur. The first, "Timur and his team," is about a military-type children's organization that voluntarily and secretly helps the families of Red Army soldiers. In the second, "Commandant of the Snow Fortress" (written in the winter of 1940-1941), the children are already playing a real military game - with attacks, assaults, and even the use of children's weapons. The third, "Timur's Oath", created in a few days at the end of June 1941, talks about what a children's paramilitary organization will need in the conditions of the outbreak of war (duty during bombing and blackout, vigilant protection of the village from spies, weeding collective farms vegetable gardens and the same as before, assistance to the families of the Red Army).

The prospect of escaping to the front is discussed in the first and main story of the cycle: Timur unambiguously declares to his companions that this is impossible under any circumstances, the commanders received an order to “drive our brother out of there in the neck.” Thus, all that remains for brave and socially active children is to become a support for adults on the home front and prepare for military service by improving discipline, physical endurance and, finally, special military skills such as shooting, moving inconspicuously in reconnaissance or marching. . For Gaidar, there was no doubt: until they reached draft age, teenagers should remain in the rear, but the very organization of their rear work would be military.

Commissioners of the Civil War

A shot from the film "Timur and his team", directed by Alexander Razumny. 1940"Soyuzdetfilm"

The country was preparing for a battle with an external enemy: bourgeois Poland, militaristic Japan or fascist Germany. However, Gaidar's children get involved in an internal war, shown as an analogue and continuation of the Civil war. Antagonists --- Timur and Mishka Kvakin call each other commissar and ataman, and these nicknames refer to the conflicts of the late 1910s and early 1920s. Behind the commissars, the Red Army and the Soviet government are the ideas of social justice, protection of the offended and oppressed, chivalrous honor and nobility; behind chieftains (in other words, gangs of street hooligans) - complete disregard for any ethical norms, humiliation of human dignity (even among their own), indifference to the life of the country and society. Gaidar shows that many destructive forces of the Civil War are still strong and the new generation will have to enter into the same confrontations as their fathers.

Timur's desire to independently restore order, establish social justice and decide which of the neighbors needs help and protection establishes an important parallel with the legend of Robin Hood. The idea of ​​secretly doing good deeds, leaving behind all sorts of written messages (notes to Zhenya, a poster at the place of imprisonment of Kvakin's gang), refers to the same tradition. At the same time, Gaidar clearly did not want to emphasize such a similarity, because the main enemies of Robin Hood were representatives of the British state. Therefore, it was important to show that Timur's detachment was doing exactly what the party and the government considered important at the moment.

Children Adults

A shot from the film "Timur and his team", directed by Alexander Razumny. 1940"Soyuzdetfilm"

Whether Gaidar wanted to create an alternative to the pioneer organization with his Timurov stories, or only suggested new ways for its development in wartime, we don’t know exactly how and whether Timur’s team had a real prototype: according to one version, Gaidar described in the story the experience of scouting organizations during the First World War. One way or another, "Timur and his team" is a book about a "self-disciplining" children's team (the term of the philologist Yevgeny Dobrenko): children take on all their duties and decide everything themselves, without the help and control of adults. This means that they have fully assimilated the social norms and requirements of the adult world and are able to solve the problems facing them without special stimulation and prodding - simply because they know that it is necessary. If one of them makes a mistake or stumbles, neither a teacher nor a Pioneer leader will be needed: others will help and speed up.

Of course, in reality, such children's groups did not exist. However, Gaidar (like the writer Anton Makarenko before him) came up with a model that was very convenient to plant as an example to follow. If children cope with the tasks assigned to them without the help of adults or with their minimal mediation, then they not only show independence, but also save the personnel (and, therefore, material) resources that the state needs so much. And if we add to this the very possibility of using these teams as free labor, the benefit for the state, which had already actually entered the war, was enormous. It was these motives that caused, apparently, the active promotion of the story and the film by the Central Committee of the Komsomol.

About a group of boys who absolutely disinterestedly did good deeds for the relatives of the Red Army soldiers who went to war.

reference

Author: Arkady Petrovich Gaidar
Full title: "Timur and his team"
Original language: Russian
Genre: story
Year of publication: 1940
Number of pages (A4): 30

Summary of the story "Timur and his team" by Arkady Gaidar

The main characters of Gaidar's story "Timur and his team" are a group of boys and 2 daughters of the Soviet military leader, Zhenya and Olga. They move to a holiday village, where the younger Zhenya discovers that on their site in an abandoned barn there is a meeting place for the boys of the village, whose activities are well organized by the leader Timur Garaev. It turned out that they were not engaged in the usual entertainment for boys, hooliganism, but helping the relatives of those who had been drafted into the Red Army.

Zhenya is drawn into the activities of the "organization". Her older sister Olga believes that she got in touch with hooligans and in every way forbids Zhenya to communicate with Timur and his team. Olga, meanwhile, begins to make friends with the "engineer" Georgy, who in fact turned out to be a tanker and Timur's uncle.

Timurovites help the relatives of those who have gone into the army, protecting their gardens from thieves, carrying water, looking for missing pets. They decide to give a decisive battle to a gang of hooligans who rob the gardens of the inhabitants. Attempts to resolve the issue amicably were unsuccessful and the Timurovites defeated the hooligans in hand-to-hand combat. The hooligans were captured and locked in a booth in the central square of the village.

The story "Timur and his team" ends with Timur taking Zhenya towards his father on his uncle's motorcycle. Olga understands that Timur is not a bully at all, and Zhenya is also engaged in useful deeds.

Meaning

The guys from A. Gaidar's book "Timur and his team" do good deeds without counting on gratitude and often secretly. Their goal is to replace relatives who have gone into the army, to make life easier for those who remain in the village. Selfless service to society without counting on praise or reward is the main meaning of Arkady Gaidar's story.

Of course, children cannot cope with all "adult" problems. In addition, it is not clear what the story would be like if it described the events not of the late thirties of the last century, but of our time, when the robbery of gardens is not something unusual, and instead of looking for pets, people are preoccupied with finding work, on the streets you can meet an alcoholic, a homeless person, a drug addict, a criminal, a gang of aggressive youth, labor migrants, officials in cars with flashing lights, etc.

But in any case, selfless service to other people is a blessing and, in fact, the only thing that distinguishes society from a bunch of individuals/egoists. Maybe that's why the actions of Timur and his team would be very relevant now.

Output

It is unlikely that there are many people who have not heard anything about the story "Timur and his team" by Gaidar, for sure, many read it at school. Nevertheless. re-read this small work of Gaidar is worth it. This mini-summary will help you. I highly recommend!

Reviews of books by Arkady Gaidar:

1.
2.

I also recommend reading book reviews (and the books themselves, of course):

1. - most popular post
2. - once the most popular post ;
3. ";
4.

Timur and his team

Unlike Pavlik, this hero did not have a real prototype. He was born in the imagination of the author of adventure books Arkady Gaidar, who wrote, in particular, "Military Secret". Coming out from the pen of one of the most popular children's writers of the Stalin era, the story "Timur and his team" was published in Pionerskaya Pravda for several months, and then went through many book editions. This is a lively, well-made and entertaining book. Its action takes place during the war, which one is not directly stated, but the first readers, of course, guessed that we were talking about the Soviet-Finnish war that began the previous winter. At the center of the story is a group of children living in a suburban area near Moscow; they organized a kind of patrol, taking on the responsibility of guarding the homes of officers fighting at the front. The leader of this patrol was Timur, whose name gave the title of the story. After a series of clashes with hooligans operating under the leadership of a certain Mishka Kvakin, the Timurovites manage to lock the members of the gang in an empty booth, on which they post an announcement: “Passers-by, do not be sorry! People are sitting here who cowardly rob the gardens of civilians at night. Everything ends with the restoration of order: “I stand ... I look. Everyone is good! Everyone is calm. So, I am calm too ”(271) .

The activities of Timur and his team are not similar to the feat of Pavlik Morozov or even Malchish, created by the same Gaidar. The activities of the Timurovites are more modest and do not threaten them with a tragic death, as in the cases of Pavlik and Malchish; it is aimed at fighting juvenile bullies, not adult criminals. In addition, Timur received approval from Red Army Colonel Alexandrov, the father of the two heroines of the story. At the end of the book, when Alexandrov finds out about what is happening, he warmly congratulates the heroic boy: “Father got up and, without hesitation, shook hands with Timur” (272) . One of Alexandrov's two daughters, Olga, imagines herself to be the main one in the children's public and political life and therefore does not approve of Timur's activity, but now she is forced to admit that his activity is beneficial to the team. In the decisive scene of reconciliation, the older male character no longer appears as "Colonel Alexandrov", but as a "father", thus symbolizing the wise parental protection that extended both to Timur, who grew up without a father, and to all young people in general.

Timur thus embodied the unifying force of social cohesion, while Pavlik was more like the hero of a Western scout novel or even the protagonist of Enid Blyton's most popular adventure stories about the "famous five".

Like other successful writers who not only managed to survive, but also thrived under the Stalinist regime (which children's writers apparently had a little easier to achieve than their counterparts in adult literature), Arkady Gaidar had a special political flair. The very name "Timur", which is not very common in Russia, was probably chosen not only in honor of Gaidar's own son, but also in honor of the adopted son of Kliment Voroshilov (after the death of M.V. Frunze, K.E. Voroshilov adopted his children - the son of Timur and daughter Tatyana). When Gaidar was working on this book, Voroshilov was one of Stalin's closest associates. The artist Alexander Gerasimov by this moment had just finished painting his “icon” - the painting “I.V. Stalin and K.E. Voroshilov in the Kremlin”, which depicts the marshal shoulder to shoulder, overcoat to overcoat next to the leader against the backdrop of the panorama of Zamoskvorechie, stretching beyond the Kremlin wall. Voroshilov was associated primarily with military prowess: in 1925 he was appointed People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs, from 1934 to 1940 he was People's Commissar of Defense, and in 1935 he received the title of Marshal restored in the Soviet military hierarchy. But at the same time, he was a favorite of the pioneer press and received hundreds of letters from children asking for an autograph or advice on how to live. The marshal did not like autographs and usually did not send them (until in 1968 his assistant acquired a pack of photographs of Voroshilov with a ready-made signature). But he generously gave verbose instructions: “And under communism, every person, all people without exception must become and will become hardworking, conscious, honest, comprehensively developed, in other words, as indicated in the Program, they will successfully combine spiritual wealth, moral purity and physical perfection" (273) . There was a huge distance between the star rank of Marshal Voroshilov and the modest rank of Colonel Aleksandrov. And yet Alexandrov, also a military man who took a strange boy under his wing, was a distant alter ego Voroshilov. Thus, Voroshilov was also perceived as a symbolic father of Timur, and under the “virtual” patronage of the highest Stalinist elite turned out to be a boy-hero of a new type, who cooperates with adults, performs safe and modest public work, and also observes subordination, conducting agitation and exposing activities in accordance with to your age.

The appearance of Timur clearly marked an obvious turn in the tasks of the pioneers. In the 1920s and 1930s, activists worried that the pioneer organization would veer towards the Scouts, a patriotic but politically conservative children's movement that emphasized leisure and bourgeois philanthropy rather than social activism. Timur, as an ideal pioneer-hero, marked a change in the attitude of the authorities towards the scouts: now the Sovietized forms of scout activism have become the official direction of the development of the pioneer movement.

The support of the new line on the part of the leaders of the pioneer organization is evidenced by the fact that Gaidar's book was promoted much more diligently than Pavlik's canonical biographies. This can be seen from the print runs, which in the centralized Soviet system unmistakably reflected not only the true popularity of the book, but also the official opinion of its significance. The total circulation of canonical biographies of Pavlik Morozov in the 1930s - given the fame of the hero - is surprisingly small. Solomen's book, after the first edition with a circulation of 10,000 copies, was no longer published. The biography, written by Alexander Yakovlev, went through only two reprints: 1936 and 1938, so that the total circulation of all three editions was 105,000 copies. "Pavlik Morozov" by Smirnov was published only once (1938, 50,000), as was Valya Borovin's poem "Morozov Pavel" (1936, 10,000) (274). These figures, totaling 175,000, are very convincing when compared with the circulation of poets who wrote for an "elite" adult audience: for example, the circulation of Pasternak's books usually did not exceed 5,000 copies or so. But at the same time, they were significantly inferior to the circulation of Gaidar's Military Secrets (eight editions with a total circulation of 555,600 from 1935 to 1939) (275) . And the story “Timur and his team” significantly outstripped Pavlik’s biographies published in the 1930s and the post-war editions of Gubarev’s book (total circulation 90,000 from 1947 to 1948) in this indicator. Only during the Great Patriotic War "Timur" was reprinted four times, reaching a total circulation of 200,000, and then the number of copies was 200,000-300,000 per year.

In 1947, "Timur" appeared in a selection of outstanding children's books published on the cover of the official annual bibliography "Children's Literature", sharing glory with Krylov's fables, Pushkin's "The Captain's Daughter", Tolstoy's "Childhood", Jules Verne, Mayakovsky's children's poems, a collection of Russian folk tales and "Stories about Lenin" by Kononov. The list also included modern works, mainly on a military theme, and others written by the best children's writers of our time: Marshak, Abramov, Lev Kassil, Sergei Mikhalkov, Veniamin Kaverin and Valentin Kataev. None of the biographies of Pavlik Morozov was on the list (276) . The promotion of the two heroes in the Warsaw Pact countries also differed remarkably: Timur was printed seven times in East Germany and Romania during the 1940s, while not a single book about Pavlik Morozov found its way to these politically important “Soviet colonies” (277 ) .

The distribution of written texts was not Timur's only way of propaganda among the youth. In 1940, director Alexander Razumny made a children's blockbuster based on the story; the film was such a success that Gaidar immediately set to work on a sequel. Timur's Oath was published in 1942, a year after the death of the writer at the front. Cinema remained extremely popular among Soviet children, who had a virtually unlimited opportunity to go to the cinema - Soviet teachers from generation to generation expressed their fears about the harmful effects of cinema. From the mid-1930s, the solution to this problem was the promotion of children's family films. It is clear that a film about Pavlik Morozov could not fall into this category, and vice versa, a film about a socially active, but obedient and charming boy had every chance of success.

At the same time, it is interesting to note the following fact: when Gaidar's story was published for the first time, its assessment was not always complimentary. In 1941, for example, Pioneer magazine published several letters from children complaining that Timur, in their opinion, was "unsure of himself" and weakly expressed his disagreement (278) .

Such tolerance towards even benevolent criticism of an officially approved story is an exceptional phenomenon; it indicates a high degree of public confidence in the overall popularity of the book among children. Oral history fully confirms this impression: even those adults who criticized other aspects of Soviet life retained a warm feeling for this hero. For example, a man born in 1935 who was an active dissident in the 1970s and early 1980s recalls liking the film and compares Pavlik Morozov and Timur in favor of the latter: “He at least wanted to help people” (279 ) . The women of the same generation that I interviewed were simply thrilled at the mention of Timur. “We are at this time (those when the film came out. - K.K.) were already teenagers ... And we were just in love with him ... ”- recalls one of them (1931 pr.). “He was a beacon for us,” adds another (280) .

Another proof of the extraordinary popularity of this hero is the respectful references to him that regularly appeared in the children's press: "Timur would never have done this" (or "would have done it differently"). In 1944, an article appeared in Pionerskaya Pravda, “Timur managed without a nanny.” It criticized lazy children who resorted to deceitful tricks to evade work: for example, they told their mother that they could not help her with homework, as they had to do their homework, and the teacher at school that they had not done their homework, because they were busy with housework (281) .

The most effective method of encouraging children to be like their idol was organizing teams of "Timurovites": they collected scrap metal and other recyclable materials, delivered mail, raised money for combat aircraft, helped babysit children, and participated in checking blackouts and other air defense measures (282 ) . The creation of self-governing children's secret societies, like Timur's team in the 1930s, would have displeased any Soviet official in whose field of vision such an organization would have come - then such initiatives were severely pursued (283) . In the 1940s, the attitude towards them became a little less harsh, but they were still on the verge of being acceptable. In 1944, Lev Kassil published the adventure story My Dear Boys, in the center of which was a group of boys from a Volga town who, in secret from adults, played a romantic game and called themselves "Sinegorsk". Later, they actively participated in the anti-fascist resistance. The central conflict of the book lies in the confrontation between the "Sinegorsk" and the leader of the local House of Pioneers, who considered their activities illegal. Just as in "Timur", this captious teacher was corrected by a senior comrade - the secretary of the city committee of the Communist Party. He first scolded the boys for their secrecy, but then decided that their activities were harmless, and gave his paternal approval (284).

Children were not allowed to independently organize their societies - it was necessary to obtain the consent of adults, and even better (in life, not in literature) to act under the direct guidance of elders. However, children's social activity inside pioneer movement, expressed, in particular, in the game of "secret societies" under the strict control of adults, was allowed. Accordingly, the Timur movement did not stop its development after 1945, unlike other children's movements of that time, but continued to be promoted until the end of the Stalin era and after it for another four and a half decades (285) .

From the book Richard Sorge - Scout No. 1? author Prudnikova Elena Anatolievna

Richard and his team So, on January 10, 1930, a German journalist, Dr. Richard Sorge, arrived in Shanghai aboard a Japanese passenger ship. In no way did he intend to use journalism only as a "roof" for intelligence work. One of the reasons

From the book Putin, Bush and the war in Iraq author Mlechin Leonid Mikhailovich

THE PRESIDENTIAL TEAM The President of the United States knows almost nothing is denied. All other people on earth constantly have to overcome obstacles. At every step, we encounter those who do not love us and tell us “no!”. And everyone says to the president: “Yes,

From the book Tamerlane. universe shaker author Lamb Harold

TIMUR AND ISLAM It is quite obvious that this Tatar conqueror was not a zealous Muslim, but a man who followed his own convictions. We cannot judge his true attitude to religion. However, it has been said so many times that he was a Muslim inspired by

From the book The Inner Circle of "Tsar Boris" author Korzhakov Alexander Vasilievich

"Blue" team Vyacheslav Kostikov got into the press secretary on the recommendation of Poltoranin. There was a time when Mikhail Nikiforovich had influence on the boss, which was expressed in protectionist personnel appointments to the presidential team. At one time, in 1986, Yeltsin, then

From the book Commando [Formation, training, outstanding operations of special forces] author Miller Don

"Team" and SAS from Australia The American special forces units operating in Vietnam often felt isolated from the main forces of the American army. Another formation that conducted "their" war there and experienced the same feelings,

From the book Another History of the Middle Ages. From Antiquity to the Renaissance author

Team "Survive" Chronology should be refined by the sciences that study languages, their distribution and evolution, the history of the settlement of peoples. But, unfortunately, it is difficult to use the conclusions of these sciences to restore the true history of mankind, because comparative

From the book New Chronology of Earth Civilizations. Modern version of history author Kalyuzhny Dmitry Vitalievich

Team Survive! The sciences that study languages, their distribution and evolution, the history of the settlement of peoples should serve to clarify the chronology ... Yes, they should. But, unfortunately, it is very difficult to use the conclusions of these sciences to restore the true history of mankind,

author Chuev Sergey Gennadievich

Special Command 806 Sonderkommando 806 was created in early 1942 by the Foreign Armies Department and the Ordnance Department of the OKW. The organ was located on the premises of the Stalag-ZD in Berlin. The head of the body is Lieutenant Colonel Zinnemann, the commandant is Major Gempel. The team included

From the book of the Secret Service of the Third Reich: Book 1 author Chuev Sergey Gennadievich

Work Team-443 Work Team-443 (aka "Arbeitskomando 443" or "Sonderkommando-443") was organized in Wolgast (Northern Germany) in the middle of 1942 by the military-technical bureau of the Military Industry and Armament Directorate of the OKW. - engineer

From the book Great Tataria: the history of the Russian land author Penzev Konstantin Alexandrovich

Timur Sheref-ad-Din Yezidi in "Zafar-name" (http://www.vostlit.info) gives a list of "all the kings from the Genghis Khan family who ruled in Desht-i-Kipchak until now: 1) Jochi, to whom, by order of his father, belonged the regions of Khorezm, Desht-i-Khazar, Bulgar, Alans and those limits; between him, guess and

From the book From Russia to Russia. Essays on ethnic history author Gumilyov Lev Nikolaevich

Tokhtamysh and Timur The clash with Tokhtamysh greatly weakened the position of Grand Duke Dmitry. After all, the label for a great reign, as before, was given by the khan, since the Battle of Kulikovo did not change the political relationship between the Horde and Moscow: the great reign was associated with

From the book Russian America author Burlak Vadim Niklasovich

How the team was recruited In the "Chronological History of the Discovery of the Aleutian Islands ...", published in 1823, there is a mention of how fishing expeditions were organized in the 18th century to the shores of Alaska and the Aleutian Islands. Since such journeys required great

From the book Treasures of Lost Ships author Ragunstein Arseny Grigorievich

Command of the galleons Led by the fleet that crossed the ocean, the captain-general, appointed by the king himself. As a rule, it was a very noble person, close to the royal family. The second flagship with the rank of admiral and all the officers of the fleet obeyed him. The team of each

From the book 1937: Red Army Elite on Golgotha author Cherushev Nikolay Semyonovich

"The Old Man" and his team

From the book The Golden Age of Sea Robbery author Kopelev Dmitry Nikolaevich

Captains and Crew A peculiar focus of the special relationship that prevailed on a pirate ship was the role entrusted to the captain. The breadth of his power is not comparable with the powers of the captains of warships, merchant ships and privateers. He was elected by the whole team and became

From the book Modernization: from Elizabeth Tudor to Yegor Gaidar author Margania Otar

Timur and his team
A. P. Gaidar
Timur and his team

Colonel Aleksandrov has been at the front for three months now. He sends a telegram to his daughters in Moscow, inviting them to spend the rest of the summer in the country.

The eldest, eighteen-year-old Olga, goes there with things, leaving thirteen-year-old Zhenya to clean up the apartment. Olga studies as an engineer, plays music, sings, she is a strict, serious girl. At the dacha, Olga meets a young engineer, Georgy Garaev. She waits until late for Zhenya, but her sister is still not there.

And Zhenya at this time, having arrived in a dacha village, in search of mail to send a telegram to his father, accidentally enters someone's empty dacha, and the dog does not let her go back. Zhenya falls asleep. Waking up the next morning, he sees that there is no dog, and next to him is an encouraging note from an unknown Timur. Having found a sham revolver, Zhenya plays with it. A blank shot that broke a mirror frightens her, she runs away, leaving the key to her Moscow apartment and the telegram in the house. Zhenya comes to her sister and already foresees her wrath, but suddenly some girl brings her a key and a receipt from a telegram sent with a note from the same Timur.

Zhenya climbs into an old barn, standing in the depths of the garden. There she finds a steering wheel and begins to turn it. And from the steering wheel there are rope wires. Zhenya, without knowing it herself, is giving signals to someone! The barn is filled with many boys. They want to beat Zhenya, who unceremoniously invaded their headquarters. But the commander stops them. This is the same Timur (he is the nephew of Georgy Garayev). He invites Zhenya to stay and listen to what the guys are doing. It turns out that they help people, especially the families of Red Army soldiers. But they do all this in secret from adults. The boys decide to "take special care" of Mishka Kvakin and his gang, which climbs other people's gardens and steals apples.

Olga thinks that Timur is a bully and forbids Zhenya to hang out with him. Zhenya cannot explain anything: it would mean divulging a secret.

In the early morning, the guys from Timur's team fill the barrel of the old milkmaid with water. Then they put firewood in a woodpile for another old woman - the grandmother of the lively girl Nyurka, they find her missing goat. And Zhenya plays with the little daughter of Lieutenant Pavlov, who was recently killed at the border.

The Timurites make up an ultimatum to Mishka Kvakin. They order him to come along with an assistant, the Figure, and bring a list of the members of the gang. Geika and Kolya Kolokolchikov carry the ultimatum. And when they come for an answer, the Kvakinans lock them up in the old chapel.

Georgy Garaev rides Olga on a motorcycle. He, like Olga, is engaged in singing: he plays an old partisan in the opera. His "severe and terrible" make-up will frighten anyone, and the joker Georgy often uses this (he owned the fake revolver).

The Timurites manage to free Geika and Kolya and lock Figure instead. They ambush the Kvakin gang, close everyone in a booth on the market square and hang a poster on the booth that the "captives" are apple thieves.

There is a noisy party in the park. George was asked to sing. Olga agreed to accompany him on the accordion. After the performance, Olga runs into Timur and Zhenya walking in the park. The angry older sister accuses Timur of setting Zhenya against her, she is also angry with George: why didn’t he admit earlier that Timur is his nephew? George, in turn, forbids Timur to communicate with Zhenya.

Olga, in order to teach Zhenya a lesson, leaves for Moscow. There she receives a telegram: her father will be in Moscow at night. He comes only for three hours to see his daughters.

And a friend comes to Zhenya's dacha - the widow of Lieutenant Pavlov. She urgently needs to go to Moscow to meet her mother, and she leaves her little daughter for the night with Zhenya. The girl falls asleep, and Zhenya leaves to play volleyball. Meanwhile, telegrams arrive from her father and from Olga. Zhenya notices the telegrams only late at night. But she has no one to leave the girl, and the last train has already left. Then Zhenya sends a signal to Timur and tells him about his trouble. Timur instructs Kolya Kolokolchikov to guard the sleeping girl - for this he has to tell Kolya's grandfather everything. He approves of the actions of the boys. Timur himself takes Zhenya on a motorcycle to the city (there is no one to ask permission from, his uncle is in Moscow).

The father is upset that he never managed to see Zhenya. And when the time is already approaching three, Zhenya and Timur suddenly appear. Minutes fly by quickly - Colonel Alexandrov has to go to the front.

George does not find either a nephew or a motorcycle in the country and decides to send Timur home to his mother, but then Timur arrives, and with him Zhenya and Olga. They explain everything.

George receives a summons. In the form of a captain of tank troops, he comes to Olga to say goodbye. Zhenya transmits a "general call sign", all the boys from the Timurov team come running. Everyone goes to see George off together. Olga plays the accordion. George leaves. Olga says to the saddened Timur: “You always thought about people, and they will repay you the same.”