Moscow, Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 2001, 192 p., ill.

The publication of the book by A. K. Sverchevskaya (ed. by S. N. Uturgauri) is dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the birth of the world-famous Turkish poet, novelist and playwright.

The research is based on the materials of the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI), which stores documents of the Communist University of the Workers of the East (KUTV) ¹ and the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (RGALI). A. K. Sverchevskaya was the first to open the folders with the "Nazym" documents stored in them, and this is exactly what she did. it helped her to " tell a fascinating story about the eighteen years of Nazim Hikmet's Moscow life and the fate of his great creative heritage, to reveal previously unknown facts of the poet's vivid life and creative biography.

In every Turkological work that describes the biography of Nazim Hikmet, it is always mentioned that on his first visit to Moscow, he studied in Kutva, but no specific data related to his studies is given. In the chapter "For the first time in Moscow (1921-1924)", A. K. Sverchevskaya cites documents (various university questionnaires, including a questionnaire filled out by Hikmet himself in French, "Student ID No. 475", "Minutes of the meeting of the Mandate Commission"), which allow us to establish that Nazym Hikmet was sent to the KUTV by the Comintern; he was enrolled there in May 1922; he successfully studied and after a two-year stay at the University (this was the training program) was sent to work in the Eastern Department of the Comintern2 . The fact of his first marriage has also been confirmed. In one of the questionnaires, in the column "Marital status", he wrote: "Married. My wife is 20 years old." The story of this fact in the biography of the poet A. K. Sverchevskaya supplements it with the poem "The Giant with Blue Eyes" (translated by D. Samoilov), which, as it turned out, has a direct relation to this event.

The chapter also contains other interesting details of Hikmet's biography, showing that it wasn't just university classes that filled his life. He presided over the International Club created under Kutva; wrote a three-act play "January 28" for the Turkish drama club (the text of which has not been preserved, but the book contains a review of the play staged on the stage of the Kalyaevsky District Club); participated in public poetry performances with the reading of his poems (once together with Mayakovsky in the Large Audience of the Polytechnic Museum); attended performances of the Tairov and Vakhtangov theaters; was fond of directing the art of Vsevolod Meyerhold, who forever became his idol.

The documents stored in the RGALI, which are given in the chapter "Nazym Hikmet and the BROOM Theater (1925-1928)", together with the published memoirs of the poet's contemporaries of those years and his own stories about the 1920s, gave A. K. Sverchevskaya reason to call Hikmet's second three-year stay in Moscow" a unique page " of his biography.

Nazim Hikmet had his own theater, which was called "BROOM" ("Moscow United Theater Lenin Artel"), for which he wrote plays and, together with the famous director Nikolai Ekk, was engaged in productions. And although, as the author notes, the theater did not leave ka-

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Without leaving a trace in the history of Soviet theater in the 1920s, he left a trace in the creative biography of Nazim Hikmet. He wrote five plays for the theater, the texts of which were considered lost. Working at RGALI, A. K. Sverchevskaya discovered a description of the contents of eight of the twenty-five paintings of the play "Bricks" - the first production of the theater, made according to the review of the same name written by Nazim Hikmet and Nikolai Ekk. The archive also contains the full text (in handwritten and typewritten form) of Nazim Hikmet's one-act play " Who is to Blame?". The chapter also provides interesting details about the METLA theater itself: its manifesto, the names of its founders, the cast, the theater's repertoire, a description of the plays staged and the specifics of their productions.

The reader who knows the biography of Nazim Hikmet or, perhaps, remembers him himself, is unlikely to find any discoveries in the chapter " Moscow. The last years of his life (1951-1963)". In the years mentioned here, the name of Nazim Hikmet was well-known. Numerous meetings with a wide variety of audiences, creative evenings, the publication of poetry collections, theater premieres, trips around the country and abroad - everything that filled the poet's life found a response on the pages of the then press. It seems that it was not easy for the researcher to select from the sea of publications of those years the main thing that was in the poet's Moscow life.

It seems a good decision by the author of the book to start the chapter with the publication of the story recorded by Nazim Hikmet's wife Vera Tulyakova about how he left Turkey and ended up in Moscow. This is followed by memories of the meeting of the poet who secretly left Turkey on June 29, 1951, at Moscow's Vnukovo airport, of his meetings with Turkologists, of a poetry evening where he read his poems, and of his Moscow home. The chapter ends with the author's recollection of the bitter day on June 3, 1963, when Nazim Hikmet died.

The last chapter of the book - "To the "biography of" plays "introduces the reader to all sixteen Nazimov plays: from the first - "The Skull", published in 1950, to the last - "To be or not to be", which was published only in 1988. The "Biographical" information that the author provides about each play is at the same time, there is also information about their various stage lives. For the first time, the dramatic fate of the play "Was there Ivan Ivanovich?", which was staged at the Moscow Satire Theater in 1957 by Valentin Pluchek and after the fifth performance was filmed according to instructions from "above", is described in such detail.

Conclude the book "Reviews of plays and performances", "Notes", "Personal index", as well as 31 photos of Nazim Hikmet himself and scenes from performances of Moscow theaters. Original graphic drawings of the designer A. Altybaeva (she is also the author of the layout) are organically combined with the content of the book.

notes

¹ was opened in Moscow in 1921 to train young Communists from the countries of the foreign East.

² Nazim Hikmet did not work in the Eastern Department, as he returned to Turkey after Kutva.

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