January 15, 2002 marked the centenary of the birth of the world-famous Turkish poet, novelist and playwright Nazim Hikmet (1902-1963).

Of the sixty-one years of his life, he lived in Moscow during different periods - 1921-1924, 1925-1928, 1951-1963 - for eighteen years, just under half of his adult life. In Moscow, the poet died and is buried at the Novodevichy cemetery.

On the eve of the anniversary, the publishing house of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences published the book by A. K. Sverchevskaya "Known and Unknown Nazym Hikmet. Materials for the biography". The book, based on archival and documentary materials, opens up previously unknown pages of the Moscow biography of Nazym Hikmet, as well as introduces the fate of his dramatic work, raising a unique layer of Russian culture in the first post-revolutionary years on the examples of theaters by A. Tairov, E. Vakhtangov, V. Meyerhold, whose directing art forever conquered Nazym Hikmet.

The author of the book, Turkologist Antonina Sverchevskaya, who worked for many years at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences and personally knew Nazim Hikmet from the first days of his arrival in Moscow in 1951, shared her memories of the Turkish poet.

- Antonina Karlovna, what prompted you to write a book about Nazim Hikmet?

- The desire to share my memories about this wonderful, outstanding person matured in me gradually. I was lucky enough to know Nazim during the last years of his life after his arrival in Moscow in 1951. I was friends with him and his wife Vera Tulyakova until her death. Communication with Nazim once led me to the happy idea of compiling a bibliography of his works, the first edition of which I gave him for his birthday in 1962.

And in the last couple of years of his life, I was like his secretary, carried out his assignments and requests, typed on a typewriter, put in order his Russian archive, which Vera transferred along with Turkish materials after his death to the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (RGALI, formerly TsGALI).

I really wanted people to know more about him, because he was a bright person, in the literal sense of the word, he was a Person with a capital letter.

I have set out first of all to tell you about the eighteen years he spent in Moscow and the huge dramatic legacy left to us. The Moscow life of Nazym in the last period, from 1951 to 1963, is quite well known, and the evidence of his stay in our country in the 20s is much less collected. My search for materials about these years of his life led me to the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI), which was closed until the early 1990s, and the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (RGALI). There they found new, previously unknown materials related to Nazym's studies at the Communist University of Workers of the East, or KUTVe, and his work at the BROOM Theater, for which he wrote plays and staged performances in 1925-1928.

When Nazym talked about himself, he always liked to think of Moscow in the twenties. He then wore what he called "romantic clothes": he walked the streets in a budenovka, windings, wooden-soled boots, and an old greatcoat, and he would never part with it, even when KUTVa students were given new clothes. No matter how hard I try, it is simply impossible to imagine Nazim in the "romantic clothes" that he loved so much. In the period when I knew him, he was always dressed with great taste, liked to wear tweed jackets and neckerchiefs to match, but looked especially elegant in a black evening suit with a bow tie.

- How did you meet Nazim Hikmet?

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- Most likely, it happened in our institute (which was then located in Armyansky Lane), when Nazim first came to visit the Turkologists shortly after his arrival. He was always welcome. During our friendly gatherings, we discussed serious problems and joked, and sometimes just chatted about everything in the world. Nazym clearly enjoyed speaking to us in his native language. And somehow naturally it turned out that one day I was at his house. This was probably the beginning of our friendship. When Nazym and Vera got married, our communication almost became daily, together we went to his creative evenings, theater premieres, etc.

- Often in the memoirs of people who knew Nazim Hikmet, it is mentioned about his uncharacteristic appearance for a Turk.

- Everyone who met Nazim for the first time was surprised by his "non-Turkish" appearance: no black hair, no thick black eyebrows. He had blue eyes and light, even slightly reddish hair. The explanation for this Nazym appearance lies in his pedigree. Akper Babayev tells about it in detail in his book "Nazym Hikmet. Life and creativity".

One of the poet's maternal great-grandfathers, Konstantin Borzhensky, a Polish count, participated in the liberation movement of the Polish people, was persecuted by the authorities and fled to Turkey, where he converted to Islam, the name Ferit Mustafa Jalaleddin Pasha, married a Turkish woman, became a famous scholar of Turkology, the author of the first grammar of the Turkish language, published in 1869, a military engineer and surveyor.

Another great-grandfather, a Frenchman by birth, sailed to Istanbul as a boy on a training ship as a sea cadet, after quarreling with his superiors, jumped into the sea, and was saved by a Turkish sailor. Then he studied at the Turkish naval school, converted to the Muslim faith and took the name Mekh-med Ali, also married a Turkish woman. Soon he rose to the rank of general, received the rank of pasha, in 1878 participated in the Berlin Congress, spoke out for granting independence to the Serbs and Montenegrins, and for this, at the age of 44, was torn to pieces by a chauvinistic crowd. His daughter is Nazyma's grandmother.

Nazym seemed to repeat the fate of his ancestors. He rebelled against his superiors when he was a cadet at the naval school (the same one that his great-grandfather once graduated from), fled by sea from the persecution of the authorities, took Soviet citizenship, married a Russian woman, and just like his great-grandfathers, died in a foreign land.

Nazim was born in Thessaloniki, Greece, where his paternal grandfather Mekh-med Nazim Pasha was the last Turkish governor. In general, there were four pashas in the Nazym family. Do you know why his name is Nazim Hikmet? At birth, he was named after his grandfather. In Turkey, there was a custom when at the age of 15-16, the first part of the name disappeared, and the father's name was added to the remaining one. Nazim's father's name was Hikmet, hence he is Nazim Hikmet. And his last name is Ran: when surnames were introduced in Turkey in 1934, he invented the name Ran for himself; it is used only in his official documents. All over the world it is known as Nazym.

- What brought the young Nazym, the scion of an aristocratic family, though not rich, to the raging passions of Soviet Russia in 1921?

- He himself once told us why he came to Russia in 1921, speaking at an evening dedicated to V. E. Meyerhold in March 1961. "I came to Moscow," he said at the time, " hoping to meet Lenin. I had a question for him. I wanted to ask him: "Comrade Lenin, as soon as possible, tell me what and how you did in Soviet Russia? I want to do the same in Turkey." But I was told that this secret should be studied for a long time: "You just sit at the university and study."

Nazym did not have to meet Lenin alive. In January 1924, he stood for five minutes in the honor guard at the coffin in the Column Hall of the House of Unions, and then told about the death of the leader in his novel "Romance".

- The literary talent of Nazym Hikmet showed up early. On the drama stage of KUTVA, his first success came. How and under whose influence did the development of Nazym as a playwright take place?

- Before coming to Moscow in 1921, he was already published in Turkish magazines. At the age of eighteen, he wrote his first play in verse, called By the Fire. In 1924, when the Turkish drama club, which existed under Kutva, played the three-act play "January 28" written by him, a review of the play was published in Pravda.

Nazym got acquainted with the Meyerhold theater. He did not just go to his performances, but also tried to attend the "open" rehearsals that were popular in those years, which attracted directors and actors from all over Moscow. When he became "his own man" in the theater, he turned to Meyerhold with a request to send one of his directors to the International Club, who would help create a truly artistic propaganda theater in KUTVa. Meyerhold recommended a second-year student of his workshop, Nikolai Ekk, with whom Nazym was linked for many years by creative cooperation and friendship.

The development of Nazym as a playwright was greatly influenced by the productions of the then young theaters Tairov, Vakhtangov and

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especially Meyerhold, who became an idol for Nazim. When Nazym arrived in Moscow in the fifty-first year, when asked who he would like to meet, he was the first to mention the name of Meyerhold, about whose tragic fate he knew nothing, because for a long time (a total of seventeen years) he was imprisoned in his homeland.

After Nazim's release from a Turkish prison in 1950, which was greatly facilitated by the worldwide campaign for his release, he was again threatened not only with arrest, but also with physical violence. In 1951, he was forced to secretly leave Turkey: he fled by sea, where he was picked up by a Romanian steamer, then through Romania he again gets to Russia. He will not have to return to his homeland. The Turkish authorities stripped Nazim of his citizenship, which, by the way, has not yet been restored. After coming to us, the first passport was issued to him by the Poles in the name of Borzenski, so that he could travel abroad more easily. With this passport, he lived for some time, until he received a Soviet passport.

- Of course, Nazim Hikmet is known in his homeland. What is the current attitude towards him and his work in Turkey?

- Ambiguous. On the one hand, he was deprived of his Turkish citizenship, and it has not yet been returned to him, Nazim's name is not listed in the school literature curriculum, but on the other hand, in Turkey in the mid-60s, a complete collection of his works was published, plays based on his works are being performed in theaters, and a significant number of studies of his works were published. There are forces, including in the government, that advocate the return of the poet's citizenship, but there are also those that strongly oppose this.

- Russia has become a second homeland for Nazym. In Moscow, he wrote works that became very famous. His plays were staged on the most famous stages of our country.

- The Russian reader is familiar with sixteen of Nazym's plays, including five that he wrote back in Turkey. The stage fate of each of them was different. Some plays, such as "The Skull", "Joseph the Beautiful", "Tartuffe-59", "The Cow", were never performed in theaters, while others were kept in the theater's repertoire for one or two seasons-"A Story about Turkey" or "The Station". There were plays that were very successful and did not leave the stage for a long time, for example, "Crank" with Vsevolod Yakut in the title role, which lasted for twenty seasons in the repertoire of the Yermolovsky Theater. Or the play "Blind Padishah", written together with Vera, which has endured more than eight hundred performances. The play" The Sword of Damocles", whose fate Nazym considered happy, was performed in thirty theaters across the country. But perhaps the greatest success went to his most poetic play, The Legend of Love, which is based on the legend of Ferhad and Shirin's tragic love, which is widely known in the East.

The ballet "Legend of Love" based on Nazym's libretto to the music of the then young Azerbaijani composer Arif Melikov was a stunning success; it was performed by choreographer Yuri Grigorovich on the stage of the Leningrad Kirov Opera and Ballet Theater, which premiered in March 1961 and was attended by Nazym. Grigorovich's production was moved to the Bolshoi Theater four years later. The title roles were danced by Maya Plisetskaya, Natalia Bessmertnova, and Maris Liepa. The performance was a tremendous success. Vera and I were at the premiere, but Nazim was no longer alive. This ballet was staged in Turkey a few years later.

Nazim had plays that were forbidden, as they say, even at the stage of writing. I am referring to the play "To Be or not to be?", which Nazym wrote under the impression of A. Fadeev's suicide. It was published for the first time only in 1988 with a preface by Vera Tulyakova, which she titled with a phrase she heard from Nazym: "I often think about Fadeev's death..."

Nazym's only play on a Soviet theme, "Was there Ivan Ivanovich?", stands quite apart. Despite all the vicissitudes of fate that fell to his lot, the poet deeply believed that a person with a socialist consciousness cannot have manifestations of remnants of the past, such as servility, narcissism, bureaucracy, callousness, etc. He simultaneously gave his play to K. Simonov, then editor-in-chief of the Novy Mir magazine, and the chief director of the Satire Theater V. Pluchek. K. Simonov published the play in Novy Mir in the April 1956 issue, for which, as I learned from V. Pluchek's memoirs, he was reprimanded. The play was very popular at the theater, and it premiered on May 11, 1957. As V. Pluchek recalled, there were so many people who wanted to get to the performance that the order was established with the help of mounted police. Our party authorities did not immediately understand what this play was about, and when they did, after the fifth performance, the play was officially banned by the then Minister of Culture E. Furtseva. In Czechoslovakia, the play was called " Was there a Filip Filipek?" and it has withstood more than three hundred performances.

- How did he feel away from his homeland, especially in the conditions of the then ideological blindness, Soviet bureaucratic ties?

- Of course, Nazym longed for his homeland, was aware of the events taking place there, and used it for his own purposes.

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any opportunity to speak in their native language, this probably explained his visits to our Institute of Oriental Studies... But he didn't feel like a guest in our country. The play " Was there Ivan Ivanovich?" "the best proof of that.

The conditions of the then ideological blindness, as you say, did not bind Nazym. He was a man who was internally free and extremely sincere, and had an everyday sense of citizenship. I will explain with examples of his relationship to Meyerhold and Zoshchenko: for him, the taboo imposed on the name of one, and later on the other, did not matter at all.

At every opportunity - and I am a witness to this - speaking in any audience, in creative unions, or in a student or working audience, recalling and telling about his stay in Moscow in the 20s, he always spoke of Meyerhold as a person who left a huge mark on the history of Soviet and world theater he reminisced about his theater productions and his directing skills. I will add to this that Nazym made his contribution to the rehabilitation of Vsevolod Emilevich.

As for Mikhail Mikhailovich Zoshchenko, for Nazym the well-known resolution of the Central Committee, after which he was expelled from the Writers ' Union and ceased to be published, meant absolutely nothing.

Arriving in Leningrad for the premiere of the play based on his play "The First Day of the Holiday", Nazym had difficulty persuading Zoshchenko to go to the theater with him. For the Leningrad party authorities, their appearance together in the theater was a real shock. The Leningrad audience, seeing Zoshchenko in the hall, whom Nazym let pass in front of him, burst into applause...

All this shows both the inner freedom of Nazim and the fact that it was natural for him to do things that clearly contradict our way of life at that time. Once at our place, Nazym immediately and categorically refused any privileges, any free products or an official car. In his famous biography in 1962, he would honestly write: "I earn my bread, thank God, only with my hump." Nazym never refused to provide support and material assistance to those who applied to him. I think that many poets, writers, and artists who started their career in art at that time remembered and still remember Nazym with gratitude. He both morally and financially supported his friend, director Nikolai Ekk. The first place Eck came to after an eighteen-year Siberian exile was Nazym's house.

Nazim certainly knew his worth, but under no circumstances did he say a single word or hint about his fame - and he was known all over the world-or about the fame of the poet. "To say that I am a poet is like saying that I am a good person," he said.

- How was Nazim Hikmet's personal life?

- Nazim married for the first time when he was a student of KUTVa to a Turkish woman named Nyuzhet. But the marriage did not last long, and she returned to Turkey. A few years later, Nazym wrote the poem "The Giant with the Blue Eyes", which is very directly related to this page of his biography. When he left Turkey in 1951, he left a son who had just been born in Istanbul, but unfortunately he never saw him again and only knew about him from his mother's letters and photographs that she sent. Nazim has such a poem - " My son grows up in photos." At his dacha in Peredelkino, an enlarged photograph of Memed hung on the wall.

Nazym met Vera Vladimirovna Tulyakova, who unfortunately died last year, at the Soyuz-Cartoon studio, where she worked as an editor. I was a witness on Vera's side when registering their marriage.

On June 3, 1963, she called me first and told me that Nazym had died. Vera and I remained close friends even after Nazim's death, and I don't remember a time when we didn't think about him when we met.

Vera wrote a book about Nazim, which she called "Our Last Conversation with Nazim". It reflects a large part of the cultural life of the fifties, and it is a pity that it has not yet been published. The book was published twice in Turkey. We can only regret that in recent years the name of Nazym has been almost forgotten, his poems are not published or read on the radio, plays are not staged. I would very much like to hope that 2002, the year of its centenary, will be a turning point in this regard.

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