Joseph written. Sopin mikhail nikolaevich Tatyana Sopina talks about the poet

“We entered life without ideological blinders, with wide eyes from the 1941 bombs. My revelations were not given to me through slogans and decrees. Always through personal loss, through suffering. We looked for a supreme judge in the ruler, but we found an executioner in the slave. We longed for strong patronage, but found a sadist in the weak. We looked for a friend in a stranger, but found an enemy in the blood ... We asked the society for sympathetic tenderness with the eyes of a dog, and the society provided us with hatred of the highest category. Mother's affection, friend, beloved, freedom, rations and makhorka were replaced by hatred for years. That was until one day I saw that hatred was crying helpless tears ... Why? Because our hatred was a senseless, puppy form of self-defense, calculated for mercy, against naked social savagery. We entered a world without ideological blinders and we are leaving life without political illusions. This is what strengthens me in my conviction: sooner or later, with me or without me, if hatred is capable of crying repentant tears, the Motherland will inevitably acquire a human face. I think so. I'm working on it. "

M. Sopin, “Charred by the Century”.

In 1932, the Sopins family fled from hunger to Kharkov. Father - a tank tester at the Kharkov Tank Plant, was arrested during the years of repression, released before the war and almost immediately died from the transient disintegration of his lungs. Mother is a worker. The family had three children.

In 1941, Mikhail left Kharkov in a column of refugees. He survived the occupation in Lomnoye - battles were fought not only in the vicinity of the village, but also right in their courtyard. Together with his grandmother, he provided all possible assistance to the wounded, in 1942 he removed the Red Army soldiers from the encirclement. His younger brother died in his arms, his friends were dying. After the Battle of Kursk, he voluntarily left for the active army. Together with the army of General K.S. Moskalenko reached Potsdam, where he was received by the "son of the regiment" by tank units. The impressions of these years haunted Mikhail all his life - he expressed them most fully already in adulthood, in the 70s - 80s.

In the post-war period, he worked on a collective farm, graduated from a vocational school in Kharkov, and worked as a turner at a factory with his mother.

The first time he was arrested for possession of weapons, he was serving time on the construction of a pit for the Volgo-Don canal. Secondly - according to the Stalin Decree of 4.06.47. He served a term of 15 years in the Perm northern camps.

In the camp I finished a ten-year course in absentia, taught a little (in the evenings, without interrupting my main work activity, as a laborer). There, in the camps, he began to write poetry in earnest.

After serving his term, he moved to Perm. He worked as a plumber, had a family, two sons. But it was not published. In despair, he turned to the well-known critic V.V. Kozhinova, and he supported Mikhail, but it turned out that in order for the wishes to turn into action, you need to move to Vologda.

In Vologda he received the support of a local writers' organization. In 1985, the North-West Book Publishing House (Arkhangelsk) published his first collection "Foreshadowed Light", later - the collections "The Fate of My Field" (Moscow), "Displacement" (North-West Book Publishing House), "Charred by the Century" ( Vologda), "Ninety-third year" (Moscow), "Prayers of the time of a break" (Cherepovets), "Freedom is a burdensome burden" (Vologda). Since 1991 - a member of the Union of Writers of the USSR, which almost immediately turned into the Union of Writers of Russia.

M.N. Sopin was published in the collective collections Pride and Bitterness (Moscow, 1990), At the Northern Latitudes (Moscow, 1987), Anthology of the Russian Globe - Chicago, 2009), in the magazines Our Contemporary, Novy Mir , "Moscow", "Youth", "North", "Rise", "Lad" and others. Published in the almanac "Academy of Poetry" (2005), in the collection of poetry dedicated to the 65th anniversary of the Victory "Scars on the Heart" (publishing house "Krasnaya Zvezda", 2010), in the educational and popular scientific publication "Belgorodskaya Land during the Great Patriotic War wars 1941-1945 "(2011).

Only the list of book, magazine and newspaper publications of Mikhail Sopin takes 15 pages. However, most of his legacy remains unknown.

In 1990, the family suffered a misfortune: the eldest son Gleb, 19 years old, died in the army. His Russian comic book The Fourth Dimension, or the Adventures of the Red Gear, the “Brave” Leader of the Triuneses, was published by his parents and friends after his death. The youngest son Peter graduated from the Vologda Musical College, the Petrozavodsk Conservatory and now works in the Classics Symphony Orchestra of St. Petersburg.

After his death, the name of Mikhail Sopin began to acquire a significant sound in the country and abroad. Currently, his poems and publications about the author have appeared, not counting the Vologda region, in Moscow, Arkhangelsk, Belgorod, Kharkov, Zaporozhye, Yekaterinburg, Perm, Kazan, Voronezh, USA, Great Britain, Israel, on various Internet sites. In 2006, Mikhail and Tatiana Sopin's joint book "While you live, soul, love! .." was published in Chicago. On the occasion of the poet's 80th birthday in 2011, on the basis of this collection, the book "Ripe Rain" was published in Vologda, which most fully reflects the work of Mikhail Sopin.

Was born in Ukraine. Graduated from Moscow Aviation Institute, Doctor of Technical Sciences. Since 1995 - Senior Research Fellow at the Haifa Technion (Polytechnic University) in Israel. He was published in the magazines "Ring A", "Crocodile", "Knowledge is power", "Science and life", "Samarskaya Luka", in the almanac "Knowledge is power. Fantasy ", in collections of military humor" At sea, on land and above ... ". Author of the books "Thank you, grandma!", "Gauss's tent", "This is an abnormal time", "Second meeting".

From the Editor: The author of this essay, Iosif Pismenny, did not preface it with a "nice" title. The title was a precise, but rather dry phrase "On the Personality and Poetry of Mikhail Nikolaevich Sopin (1931-2004)". I took the liberty of adding the title to the text: "Boy from the Fire Arc", as well as a photograph of the poet taken from open sources. As the reader will be convinced, having read the essay, not only the place of birth of Mikhail Sopin, but his whole life and destiny are a "fiery arc". And the fact that such a biography was “shared” with Sopin by thousands of “children of war”, young front-line soldiers and prisoners of camps, makes it even more “fiery” - a hot painful point of our past. I personally thank Joseph Pismenny for revealing a wonderful poet to me.

Elena Safronova

ARCH BOY

On the personality and poetry of Mikhail Nikolaevich Sopin (1931-2004)

Unfortunately, the name of Mikhail Nikolaevich Sopin is not well known to Russian and foreign readers. And there are many reasons for this. One of them, perhaps the main one, is that Mikhail Nikolaevich is a completely independent person, and not a poet who belongs to any direction or group. He never was and never would have become one of the pack, or, even more so, of the herd, therefore, he was probably equally alien to any group, for any direction in literature. Perhaps without realizing it. But they, or rather their leaders, felt it well.

However, Sopin himself assessed his place in Russian poetry without false modesty:

That's why I live

I fight through the mockery of the thicket,

What without these lines

The story will be incomplete -

As without the "House of the Dead".

How strange without Gogol

Russia.

May my life

Dark and hard

Even though I am now obscene for many,

But I am convinced that I will live for centuries

One of the stars

In the sad Russian sky.

The purpose of this essay is the desire to draw attention to the personality and work of the remarkable Russian Soviet poet Mikhail Nikolaevich Sopin. I call him the Russian Soviet poet, which, in my opinion, he was and remained, despite his long stay in the camps, where he ended up almost as a teenager immediately after the war. And the boy Misha Sopin went through the war like a soldier - from the village of Lomnoye in the Graivoronsky district of the Kursk (now Belgorod) region, in which he was born, from the hut of his grandmother to Potsdam in Germany, where he went with the soldiers of General K.S. Moskalenko.

Arc of Fire Boy

The famous "Fire arc" of the Kursk battle passed through the village of Lomnoye.

I was in my eleventh year.

And it's not my fault

That he did not reach - that his

War overtook ...

In a cap with a green star,

In cotton, white-hot red-hot,

I crawled and cried, in love with life,

Through the grove, dusty ashes,

Where the mortal company lay ...

And this is from the memoirs of Mikhail Nikolaevich:

“In our yard, units of the Red Army dug profile trenches, then abandoned them. The trenches were mistakenly dug in front of the hut, and thus the house was in the line of fire. The hardest battles began. Once, two young soldiers jumped into the courtyard and began to install a machine gun right in front of the windows, but they could not refuel it. Grandmother jumped out with a log: "Where you put, now they will start to plump in the hut, and there are small children!" She ordered me to drag the gun to the corner of the yard and there she refueled the machine-gun belt herself. "

A hundred steps before the turn

Where Vorskla makes an arc,

In the distant autumn

Infantry

With the ground

Mixed on the run

And she became quiet and free

Having gone into the fields and fields

Raw earth

With a water barrier

Near the village of Poplar.

Tired ... the end of tiredness -

The call of the murdered brothers.

And drank at eleven raw

With a crimson tear.

Was in soldier boots,

Growth is not for me.

... I stayed small

Somewhere in the war.

My correspondence acquaintance with Mikhail Nikolaevich and Tatyana Petrovna Sopin

In the early 2000s, a good friend of mine taught me how to convey my works to the reader. It turns out that there are Proza.ru and Poetry.ru sites on the Internet, and there you can independently post your works. Immediately on my own skin, I felt that the Internet is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the author gains readers, friends on all continents, on the other, he becomes vulnerable, calling upon himself the fire of dashing robbers, most often hiding under nicknames and taking pleasure in insulting people with impunity.

Soon I received an e-mail from Vologda from the poet Mikhail Nikolaevich Sopin and his wife, journalist Tatyana Petrovna. It turns out that Tatyana Petrovna was interested in the cycle of my satirical stories "Talents and Colonels", and she wanted to publish one of them in her newspaper: the story reminded her of a typical Russian life.

Unfortunately, for a number of reasons, nothing came of this venture. Nevertheless, the benefit from this for me turned out to be considerable - I met interesting people and for the first time read the poems of Mikhail Sopin.

How did the poet Mikhail Sopin begin

Little Misha grew up in a Russian-Ukrainian family, where the older generation, back in civilian life, scattered across different armies:

... I'm on widow's handkerchiefs,

On mourning half-hangers

Seven grandfathers, I counted

Seven of my grandfathers lay in the ground.

I am their flesh and blood.

Desperate and hard and pitiful

They fired at each other.

Spent - the blades are bald.

They did not talk about this in front of the children, but they still knew, this Cossack spirit of militancy and independence was in the air.

The grandfather in a straight line was the red commander. His father was a tank tester at the Kharkov Tank Plant and died shortly before the start of the war during the years of repression. During the German occupation, Misha's younger brother died in his arms.

And yet Mishka was not a complete orphan. There remained a mother, grandmother, an older sister ...

After the liberation of Lomny in the summer of 1943, he went to the front without asking anyone. Then the children grew up quickly.

I was

Through no fault of my own

A living target

Dead arable land.

Four years -

At war,

Half a century -

Missing in action.

… I've seen and experienced so much that an adult will have enough “for the rest of his life”. And here is a teenager (14 years old!), Completely unaccustomed to peaceful work. Work on a collective farm, "craft", a factory ... Mikhail had all this. But the war did not let go.

Then the entire front line was stuffed with abandoned weapons: the boys collected them in the forests, in places of battles, and hid them. Almost every house had a whole arsenal that would be the envy of a good museum of the Patriotic War today. This created a criminogenic situation in the regions. An order came out: surrender the weapon. Someone obeyed, and someone hid better. Send arrests ...

And the state had to restore the country in the absence of funds. The older and middle male population was driven out, the camps were empty. And they took up the naughty youth. Sopin was sent to build the Volga-Don Canal for keeping weapons on a neighbor's denunciation.

He was sentenced for the second time by the Decree of 4.06.47 - to 17 years. He served in the Urals. During the years of Khrushchev's reforms, a new Criminal Code was adopted. The decree was canceled, but the cases of convicts like Sopin were not subject to revision, only the terms were reduced to 15 years ... However, young people were separated from hardened criminals, allowed to study, and taken out to settlements. There Mikhail completed a ten-year course in absentia and began to write poetry. And his fifteen departed "from call to call."

The reader will say: yes, the fate is terrible ... But hundreds, if not thousands of Russian writers went through prisons, camps, exile, executions. This makes them related to Sopin.

But! As a rule, they followed the path of suffering, already having an education, stable views, and even a literary name. Mikhail Nikolaevich became a poet among criminals, relying only on books and natural talent.

I think it makes sense to recall the names of some of Sopin's predecessors.

Alexander Nikolaevich Radishchev was exiled to Siberia in 1790 - 1797 for the book "Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow".

Pyotr Yakovlevich Chaadaev - Russian philosopher and publicist for his "Philosophical Letters" was declared a madman by the government.

The hanged poet K.F. Ryleev, the Decembrist poets exiled to Siberia and the Caucasus ...

A.S. Pushkin, M.Yu. Lermontov, F. M. Dostoevsky ...

And among them is a man who became a poet in the GULAG - the hero of our story, Mikhail Nikolaevich Sopin.

A brief history of the appearance of the first book of the poet Sopin abroad

Pasternak, Sinyavsky, Daniel, Solzhenitsyn, Aldanov, ...

There is such a sad tradition: in order for a Russian writer to be recognized at home, he must be published abroad.

In 2006, the book of poems by Mikhail Sopin "While you live, soul, love! .." was published in Chicago. “Charitable publication for the benefit of the victims of the Chernobyl disaster” - appeared on its first page. The history of the publication deserves to be told in more detail.

At the beginning of the 2000s, a young energetic woman Svetlana Ostrovskaya, who grew up in Ukraine and moved to the United States with her American husband, visited her homeland and was shocked by the fate of the liquidators of the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster. People suffered doubly: from physical pain and from indifference. Many of them had ended up in the United States by that time. Svetlana created the Chernobyl Aid Fund and helped with the purchase of medical equipment. But there was not much money in the Foundation. And the tenth anniversary of the tragedy was approaching. I wanted to pay attention to the victims ... And then Svetlana recalled the Russian proverb: "The best gift is a book!"

She decided to collect under one cover the authors of, as she put it, kind poems and stories from different countries, publish a book in the USA and donate it to the liquidators, and sell the remaining circulation and give money from the sale to Chernobyl victims. I don't know who advised Svetlana Ostrovskaya to invite me as one of the authors, but I received an invitation letter from her and gladly responded.

We started a correspondence. When Svetlana asked about my opinion, whom I would recommend to invite more, I immediately called the name of Mikhail Sopin. His poems did not fit the definition of "kind", but made a strong impression on Svetlana, and she thought about publishing two books: a collection of funny and kind stories - and poems.

Soon, Svetlana realized that the idea of publishing two books was practically overwhelming, and, after consulting with the authors of funny and kind stories, she decided to confine herself to a collection of poems by M.N. Sopina.

A special flavor to the book of poems is given by the prose framing of the verses by the texts written by the poet's widow Tatyana Petrovna. Poetry and prose live a common life here. Therefore, there are two authors on the cover: Mikhail and Tatiana Sopin.

And I am very pleased that on the first page of my copy it is written in the hand of Tatyana Petrovna:

““ Two candles in the night is already a roll call: “I am. Go. Look ”” Mikhail Sopin.

Dear Joseph from Tatiana and Peter, for your understanding and support. June 17, 2006 ".

(Peter is the son of the Sopins, cellist of the symphony orchestra).

Sopin's lyrics are always civic and imaginative

This is how the poet worries about the future of his native nature:

All doomed and deafening,

Like rain last ohbhammer,

I hear the quiet crying of frogs

Before the death of the swamps ...

Here he is grieving that the dear Motherland is dying, the souls of the huts and farms are dying:

Huts-huts,

Sweet Fatherland!

Bread steppe farms!

You soon

According to antiquity, they will be expelled,

Will smash

Bulldozer or crane.

…Soon soon

The wheezing of the swamps will be drained.

The concrete slab will bind everything.

But over the steppe

Your souls will be

Fly in a blizzard in February ...

Sopin went from thinking about his fate to understanding the fate of his country:

Teams, columns, stages -

Rootless nomads shack ...

And Russian women became

Live ridicule

And give birth in a hurry.

The country is destroyed by grievances -

Endless and arrogant cynicism:

Killed,

Otpety,

Impregnated,

Forgotten!

Such "humanism" is a crime.

His poems are aphoristic:

The people will betray, sell, retreat ...

Not for the first time already ...

Give me strength

Thought,

Give strength, intercessor,

Give strength on a difficult line.

I ask only one thing:

Let there be no late reckoning

For the word, for the dumbness,

For a secret thought, for a verse.

Deliver from victory

From envy, glory, from gold.

Send me insight -

Enlightenment before my actions.

Thank you Lord you saved

Me from the servility of the masses,

From gosterror - human atrocities,

From state angst

The prophesying bats

Parricide

From the camps

From bombs, from bullets,

From the blizzards that shook me in my heart -

Goslzhi,

Gospyanki,

Gospels.

Sopin constantly thinks about his country - he literally lives with thoughts about Russia:

Such an open space!

Where to go from thoughts?

I look around

With prayer and resentment:

Russia is a bird

Over abundant ground

Blinded

From finding a way.

I, Russia, touch you

Painful reversal of the soul ...

About everything and always

I spoke with Russia on equal terms,

Comprehending the ridge,

That for a mortal there are no trifles.

Support me, Motherland,

Do not only deprive the courage of thirst:

Suffer, finish,

I want to burn out without a trace.

Gradually recognition comes to the poet

In 2010, to the anniversary of the Great Victory, the publishing house "Krasnaya Zvezda" published a collective collection "Scars on the Heart" - poems by the best military poets from eight countries of the world, including Mikhail Sopin. The book travels the world, Mikhail is described as the son of the regiment.

In 2011, on the occasion of Mikhail Nikolaevich's 80th birthday, Svetlana Ostrovskaya presented the publishing rights to Tatyana Petrovna Sopina. With the support of the Government of the Vologda Region (where Mikhail Sopin lived, died and is buried since 1982.- Approx. ed.) the book "While you live, soul, love! ..", revised and supplemented, was published in Vologda under a new title - "Ripe rain".

In 2014, the Union of Russian Writers held the International Literary Competition in memory of the poet M.N. Sopina. In 2015, the Vologda Regional Universal Scientific Library on the site "Outstanding People of the Vologda Region" created a personal page of the poet, which published almost all of his works and materials about the author (books, articles, photos, music).

Poems and materials about the fate of the poet are included in the educational program (media library) for study in Russian schools. Songs and choral works are written on the poems of Mikhail Nikolaevich. Sopin is read in Perm, Voronezh, Belgorod, Kharkov, Moscow, Arkhangelsk, Cherepovets, St. Petersburg, Bulgaria, Israel, Portugal, USA, in South-Eastern Ukraine ...

Mikhail SOPIN

RIPE RAIN

Poetic biography

UDC 821.161.1R (470.12) (092)

BBK 83.3 (2 = Rus) 6-8Spin

Published with the support of

Department of Culture and Protection of Objects

cultural heritage of the Vologda region

Thank you for your help in publishing this book. Creative

and public organizations of the Vologda region,

as well as the First Deputy Governor of the Vologda Region

I.A. Pozdnyakova, Department of Culture and Protection of Objects

cultural heritage of the Vologda region,

journalists A.A. Kolosov and A.K. Salnikova, M.A. Braslavsky,

Honored Artist of Russia E.N. Crossroads.

Tatiana Sopina

Sopin, M.N.

С64 Ripe rain: poetic biography / Mikhail Sopin; comp.,

ed. comment. T.P.Sopina. - Vologda, 2011.– 272p .: ill.

ISBN 978-5-905437-10-6

Throughout his life, the poet Mikhail Sopin spoke on behalf of the children of the military

knees - those who were first crippled by the war, and then finished off by the state

naya system. Who “didn't crawl, fell, didn't breathe”, who shouldn't have survived ...

This publication is based on the book by Mikhail and Tatiana Sopin

"As long as you live, soul, love!" - Humanity for Chernobyl, 2006.

UDC 821.161.1R (470.12) (092)

BBK 83.3 (2 = Rus) 6-8Spin

ISBN 978-5-905437-10-6

CHALLENGE TO FATE

Tatiana Sopina talks about the poet

INTRODUCTION

In 1967, I attended

nyata junior literature

an ideological employee

geological department of the newspaper

"Young Guard" Perm

sky regional committee of the Komsomol. V

the same time i'm rewriting-

prisoners

one of the northern perm-

camps. Sometimes he

sent poems. Subject

common for prisoners,

but what expressiveness!

I got bogged down before the deadline

Clover in the rye.

Black ear in the field,

Hold me down ...

In the spring of 1968, our editor went on vacation;

whether an employee to whom I could turn with a request. I asked

give me a week without pay to get out to the North and see

Why without content? I'll sign a business trip for you.

But this is a camp. It is unlikely that there will be material for the newspaper.

And it is not necessary. This material will not work for you. Maybe something has

a journalist will not work!

So I went on a business trip to the settlement of Glubinnoye Cherdynsky

district, which had significant consequences.

The word "business trip" turned out to be fatal. The fact is that as soon as

the zone began, they did not take their eyes off me, they set up guards, telling,

what horrors can happen: rape, kill, etc. When I,

finally, she got to Glubinnoye, settled in the guest administrative

The guard followed us on our heels until the evening. But he was ordinary

conscript. Mikhail called him aside and talked quietly. Maybe

maybe the soldier even felt ashamed ... And he left us alone.

When we were alone, Misha said:

They were afraid to let you out of sight, not because it was dangerous. AND

The convoy is not allowed here - this is not a camp, but a settlement. They are not for you, but

They are afraid of YOU as a representative of the press. Suddenly you will see what is NOT NECESSARY

THEM ... Here we have a lot to see and learn. You need to come

just like "woman to man", and then no one cares.

Subsequently, I did so. When Mikhail's term expired, we

got married.

You can talk a lot about the customs of those places, but today we are talking about poetry.

YELLOW NOTEBOOKS

The first notebooks with verses have not been preserved.

fox: knowing that they will take it away before sending it to

sat was not forbidden, but notebooks could be

stolen, perish with a drunken barracks-

noah fight ...

When we met, Mikhail was

37 years. He wrote in general notebooks in the cell

ku, and the first thing I asked:

Take my notebooks out of here.

Subsequently, he sent them by mail.

I began to understand and realized how difficult it is. Beaded po

Scribble on each line, pencil text on yellowed pages

partially erased in places. Greatest Paper Saver - On One Page

two columns. Only in one place did I find several pages of the day-

nickname records in prose, but then everything was cut off. It was obvious that

The verses seemed similar in structure: a long "accelerating" beginning,

and suddenly (usually the ending) - striking. As if the author took a long time to

rushed through the jungle to understand for himself some very important

meaning ... Over time, I realized: in order to find out if it was worthwhile

creation, you must immediately look at the end. But sometimes I wanted to linger

on the lines and in the middle:

I would like to forget

From everything and from everyone

I would like to huddle

Into the birch forest, like snow ...

Before my eyes, he grew very quickly professionally. What is for me

undoubtedly - camp notebooks deserve a separate publication. And that-

kaya attempt was made in Perm. Mikhail was still in prison,

when I made extracts of successful poems and lines - it turned out to be

a solid collection with a unique face.

In a collapsed form, there were almost all the main motives of the following

the work of Sopin ("And around - the shadow of the fathom of the past, like a dog on a chain",

"For a thousand years my verse will not kneel before anyone, like a slave ...").

It also breaks through: “... On the soul of the whole country of Russia, my path is a reproach

bitter will fall. " But this is just a UPREAK, up to an accusatory position

still far. In these and the next few years, he will be closer to scars-

skoe: “Russia, Rus! Keep yourself, keep ... ", an oath of allegiance to the Motherland,

declaration of love to her.

In the surviving notebooks, the rise falls at the end of 1968. it

there was some kind of explosion of creative successes, poems flow in a single breath,

brightly, on a high moral and emotional wave. I know readers

who consider this cycle the best in sincerity and tension

the work of Mikhail Sopin. So to pose the question - which is better? - probably-

noe, it is impossible. The poet was in search all his life, and in every creative period

had their luck. And you can only understand it by living - mentally - together

his life is with him.

Of course, we never dreamed of publications, but a familiar physicist did

photocopies and they passed from hand to hand.

Let us dwell on only one poem - “Do not say, do not say-

wai ... "Striking sound writing, musicality (inner rhyme is almost

the whole line), a clear rhythmic pattern. Alliteration: st, ck, inside

poems as if something is constantly knocking - and only at the end do you understand

eat that this is "the house is banging shutters." Recall that the author has behind his shoulders

only ten classes of the correspondence camp school.

Don't say, don't say ...

The sadness of the SOUTH Gas Eyes is swaddled ...,

Simple [flock], simple [flock]

Is it your mess

When the tears [melted] ...

The whole world has cooled down and [HAS NOT BEEN cute] -

and after all this chant - the semantic ending, like a blow:

And the house bangs shutters, as if on the cheeks of the palms.

(Misha was very fond of the rare and beautiful word "yuga". When I asked him

What is it, he explained: something like a steppe haze. Then I to this word

Charity edition

in favor of the victims

Chernobyl disaster

Humanity for Chernobyl, 2006

www.humanityforchernobyl.com

Throughout his life, the poet Mikhail Sopin spoke on behalf of

the military generation of children - those who were first crippled by the war, and

then finished off by the state system. Who “did not crawl,

fell, did not breathe ", who should not have survived ... We hope

that the poems of Mikhail Sopin will be the best gift for

everyone who bought this charitable edition of the book for

assistance to the victims of the Chernobyl disaster.

CHALLENGE TO FATE

Tatiana Sopina talks about the poet

INTRODUCTION

In 1967 I was accepted

junior literary officer

ideological department of the newspaper

"Young Guard" of the Perm Regional Committee

Komsomol. At the same time, I was rewriting-

was with a prisoner of one of the

northern Permian camps. Sometimes he

sent poems. The topic is usual for

prisoners, but what

expressiveness!

I got bogged down before the deadline

Clover in the rye.

A black ear in the field,

Hold me down ...

In the spring of 1968, our editor went on vacation, an employee was appointed deputy,

to which I could ask. I asked to give me a week “without content

niya "to get out to the north and see the author of unusual poems, for which a temporary

the boss replied:

Why without content? I'll sign a business trip for you.

But this is a camp. It is unlikely that there will be material for the newspaper.

And it is not necessary. This material will not work for you. Maybe the journalist has something

turn out!

So I went on a business trip to the Glubinnoye settlement of the Cherdyn district, which

had significant consequences.

The word "business trip" turned out to be fatal. The fact is that as soon as the zo-

on, they did not take their eyes off me, they set up guards, telling what horrors they could

turn on: rape, kill and so on. When I finally got to the Deep One,

were settled in the guest administrative room, and the author of the poems, Mikhail Sopin, was brought

under escort.

The guard followed us on our heels until the evening. But he was an ordinary conscript

com. Mikhail called him aside and talked quietly. Maybe the soldier even became

ashamed ... And he left us alone.

When we were alone, Misha said:

They were afraid to let you out of sight, not because it was dangerous. And the convoy is here

not allowed - this is not a camp, but a settlement. They are not for you, but they are afraid of YOU as they imagine

press body. Suddenly you will see something that WE DO NOT NEED ... Here we have a lot of things you can see

put and find out. You just have to come as a woman to a man, and then everyone will

does not matter.

Subsequently, I did so. When Mikhail's term expired, we got married.

You can talk a lot about the customs of those places, but today we are talking about poetry.

YELLOW NOTEBOOKS

The first notebooks with verses are not

survived: knowing that they would take it away before

the settlement was not forbidden to write, but

notebooks could be stolen, perish

in a drunken barracks fight ...

When we met, Mikhail

was 37 years old. He wrote in general notebooks

in a box, and the first thing I asked for:

Take my notebooks out of here.

Subsequently, he sent them to

I began to understand and realized how difficult it is. Beaded handwriting in each

the line, the pencil text on the yellowed pages is half-erased in places. The greatest

saving paper - two columns on one page. Only in one place did I find non-

how many pages of diary entries in prose, but then everything broke off. It was obvious that this style of self-expression was not close to the author.

In structure, the verses seemed similar: a long "accelerating" beginning, and suddenly (ordinary

thread for myself some very important meaning ... Over time, I realized: to find out

to dream whether this poem is worthwhile, one must immediately look at the end. But sometimes I wanted

linger on the lines and in the middle:

I would like to forget

From everything and from everyone

I would like to huddle

Into the birch forest, like snow ...

Before my eyes, he grew very quickly professionally. What is certain for me -

camp notebooks deserve a separate publication. And such an attempt was made

still in Perm. Mikhail was still in prison when I made extracts of successful poems and

lines - an expressive collection with a unique face turned out.

In a collapsed form, there were almost all the main motives of subsequent creativity.

Sopina ("And around - the shadow of the past, like a dog on a chain", "

knees before anyone, like a slave ... "). It also breaks through: “...

the country of Russia my path will fall with bitter reproach. But this is just an UPREK, before the accusation

the actual position is still far away. In these and the next few years, he will be closer to Rub-

tsovskoe: “Russia, Rus! Keep yourself, keep ... ", an oath of allegiance to the Motherland, an explanation

her in love.

In the surviving notebooks, the rise occurs at the end of 1968. It was some

an explosion of creative successes, poems flow in a single breath, brightly, on a high moral and

emotional wave. I know readers who, by their sincerity and intense

are considered the best in the work of Mikhail Sopin. So to pose the question - which is better? - on-

true, it is impossible. The poet was in search all his life, and each creative period had its own

good luck. And he can only be understood by living - mentally - with him his life.

Of course, we never dreamed of publications, but a familiar physicist made photocopies, and

Biography

SOPIN Mikhail Nikolaevich.
http://stihi.ru/author.html?sopin

Born in 1931 in the Kursk region. Father is a test engineer at the Kharkov Tank Plant, mother is a worker.
He survived the occupation - partly in Kharkov, partly in the village, near which the front of the Battle of Kursk passed. He provided assistance to those who were leaving the encirclement in 1941-42. He took part in battles in the army of General Moskalenko. I got to Potsdam. He lost his father back in 1938, and during the war he lost his grandfather, younger brother, and some childhood comrades.
In the post-war period he worked on a collective farm, graduated from a vocational school, worked as a turner at a factory.
The first time he was arrested for possession of weapons in 1951, he was serving on the construction of the Volgo-Balt. Secondary - under Art. decree of 4.06.47. He served a term of 15 years in the Perm northern camps ("Krasny Bereg" and others). For the last five years - in the settlement of Glubinnoye, Cherdynsky district (enterprise "Spetsles").
In the camp I finished a ten-year school in absentia, taught a little (in the evenings, "without interrupting my main work activity"), but disagreed with the demands of the school administration, I refused. There, in the camps, he began to write poetry in earnest.
After serving his term, he moved to Perm. He worked as a plumber, had a family, two sons (the eldest son Gleb died in the army in 1990). But it was not published. Once, in despair, he turned to the famous critic V.V. Kozhinov, and he supported Mikhail, but it turned out that in order for these wishes to turn into action, you need to move to Vologda.
In Vologda he received the support of a local writers' organization. In 1985, his first collection, "The Forerunner Light", was published, later - the collections "Field of My Fate", "Displacement", "Charred by the Century", "Prayers of the Time of Breaking", "Freedom is a Painful Burden". Since 1991 - a member of the Writers' Union of Russia.
He died on May 11, 2004. Buried in Vologda.

* * *
For all that I have suffered
Once upon a time
For everything that I could not understand
Two shadows -
Convict and soldier -
They follow me along the roads.
After the fights
Saints and the Right
I do a late prayer.
The traces of my bloody boots
Are visible -
Toes to the altar.
Is there in a belated conversation,
It makes sense:
For every century and year
Until she screams out in sorrow
Until it is paid in sorrow,
Loving, the soul will not sing.

Tatiana Sopina - about Mikhail Sopin

MOON'S EYE

Tatiana Sopina
Son

"And the moon's eye through the eyelids of the clouds looks thoughtfully at the ground ..."
Mikhail Sopin

IN THE YARD WITH BURDS
(Prehistory)
I was then 27 years old. I have not yet fully recovered from a rather severe mental trauma. She dreamed of changing her place of work (moving from evening school to the editorial office), tried herself in creativity. A friend of my youth, the poetess Nina Chernetz introduced me to the circle of her acquaintances, who could be defined as a bohemian of the provincial level. I liked their conversations, but the behavior was shocking. It was considered chic to ride a bus, drinking cheap wine "from the throat" (including for girls), yelling poetry in a public place ... chair backwards, began to assure the company that the first chairman of the Council of People's Commissars Yakov Sverdlov had eighty illegitimate children.
- But how, - I was naively surprised. - After all, he died very young (twenty-six, it seems, years old), and in general was busy with the revolution, all the time in exile.
“The fact of the matter is that it’s in the links,” Natalya said. - How will the place of the link change ...
Once we drank and talked in a very interesting place - at Louise's. It was a squalid apartment in two tiny rooms, known to the whole bohemian world of Perm, in an old house under the sheer tribune wall of the stadium. Because of this gray wall extending into the sky, the windows were always darkened, creating the feeling of a basement. Louise lived with her daughter about eight years old. Everyone knew that her husband hanged himself on March 8. ("Why exactly the eighth? - bitterly perplexed Louise. - Did you want to give me a present?"). Since then, she has been drinking "black". And she gathered her friends. She lived next door to the Perm book publishing house, and all the offended, rejected, not published went here. It is fair to say that criticism in this impromptu society was sometimes constructive, it was considered useful to listen to it. (Then Mikhail will be a welcome guest here, but I only know this from his words - I myself have never been there, because I was busy with children and basically did not make friends with the companies where my husband drank).
... When we entered the Louise "cellar", we breathed damp and sour. In the first, walk-through room, a folding bed was set up for the daughter to sleep. What is it, are we going to drink and smoke here, and the child is next to sleep? But, as they say, "do not go into someone else's monastery ..."
There is no point in describing that evening, I can only say that by the end of it, my once attractive artist fell asleep in my Nina's arms, and there were only two more or less thinking (sober) left: I and a tall young man with a shaven head. We exchanged glances and went out together.
The young man's name was Alexei. He was impeccably polite, not chatty, and generally made the best impression. It turned out that we were on the way - our houses were located in one block of an old building! Alyosha accompanied me to the gate, and then we parted.
Nina Chernetz recalled this episode six months later. We were sitting in the courtyard of a huge courtyard overgrown with burdocks with a rickety outhouse in the middle. Children jumped out of the doors of the entrances of the two-storey tumbledown houses growing into the ground, the women took out basins of linen and rinsed them right there, on stools ...
“I'm getting married,” Nina said, not very cheerfully. - For Alyoshka Povarnitsyn. You know him. Do you remember when you left Louise together then?
- So this is great! I really liked him. From the army?
- From prison. Well, never mind. I would not have gone, but "flew", I want to give birth ... I quit smoking, ”she angrily crumpled up the cigarette she had taken out of habit. - Stop running around. So Alyoshka is now my destiny.
For some time we sat on the bench in silence.
“I hurried with Alyoshka,” Nina explained her sadness. - There, in the camps, there is better ... His friend, his name is Mikhail. Only he still has to sit for a long time - three years. He writes poetry. Do you want me to give it to you?
"Thanks a lot," I sighed in my mind, and said aloud that I didn't need such gifts, of course, but if I was writing poetry, it would be interesting to read.
However, Nina was already up to something. It is then that I learn that all prisoners dream of corresponding with a girl who will become their hope, some kind of spark in front of them. Natural, good desire. Very soon I received a one-page letter from Mikhail Sopin that looked like an outstretched hand - it would be bad not to answer ...

CORRESPONDENCE
In general, it is considered that it is dangerous to get acquainted by correspondence. A person can introduce himself as anything, but the conscripts of such "correspondence students" can have at least a dozen. I myself once, at the request of a casual road friend, dashed off such a heartfelt letter to her boyfriend - I invested all my suffering soul ... I would never have dared to hand such a beloved person.
On the other hand, in writing, a creatively gifted person becomes free, beautiful, liberated. It is known that Marina Tsvetaeva preferred to love and admire (for example, Rilke) only by correspondence, and in life she did not even want to meet. This is the case when love becomes word creation, self-expression. But such self-expression involuntarily extends to the respondent, and here already complex human feelings are still intertwined ...
In maturity, Mikhail became aphristic, tough. And his early letters are long and vague. The stream of the seeking consciousness, moreover, with a mass of grammatical and syntactic errors: "you can, you want ..." And only in verse did it become definite, as if crystallized:
"I am thirty-seven. And the years are in a hurry.
I’m afraid I wouldn’t become a black sheep.
Again the soul will scream into silence,
How many years ago over the funeral ... "
At first, I even read the prose parts, as they say, "diagonally," and wrote out mistakes explaining the rules of the Russian language. Sometimes it took up more space than the letter itself. But Misha was not offended, and with each letter he made fewer mistakes. He learned surprisingly quickly for his age. And in general, he always quickly and well learned new things, although this habit - asking me to "check the poems for ERRORS, place commas" - remained with him for the rest of his life.
In the correspondence we "grope" to each other the path - to find out the views. Sometimes I provoked him: for example, once I deliberately expressed my admiration for the fiery revolutionary and fighter for order, Dzerzhinsky. Another time, angry with an endlessly negative attitude towards the world, she called him "a spider weaving a web in the corner for all of humanity." (Then, having met in person, we will repeatedly remember these moments and laugh, teasing each other).
We were very different from previous life experiences. He - past, as they say, "fire and water", with a biography, which is scary to dream ... And I am an intelligent, naive city girl, despite my three-year teaching in Yamal. Probably, it was exactly what he needed. Then he admits that at one time in his settlement there was a certain Tamara from the dining room, but this is not at all what the soul was looking for ...
Most of all, some images and aphorisms suddenly emerging from the chaos of words were striking - in verses:
"... Birch trees, like white palms
On the sad page of winter
And in memory of the previous view
Almost weightless, easy
The clouds of the pyramids are floating,
Like lumps of cooled centuries ... "
I wanted to meet him. I wanted to write material about him for the newspaper - what novice journalist does not dream of this way ... extraordinary. Perhaps, to facilitate the release - after all, it is clear that this is not such a dangerous criminal, but a talented person, and he still has to serve three whole years!
Relations with the editor of the newspaper "Molodaya Gvardiya", in which I worked since the fall of 1967, were somewhat strained. But in May 1968, he went on vacation, leaving my boss, head of the ideological department, Gennady Dering, as his deputies. With Dering, we had a complete understanding, so I asked him for a few days of leave without pay - to fly to the Cherdyn region to meet with the poet that interested me.
- Why without content? I'll sign you a business trip.
- But maybe you can't write there. These are the camps ...
- So what? You might not be able to get the material right?
Before leaving, I went to see Nina Chernetz. She has already given birth to a daughter, whom she named Tanya in honor of me. She was delighted and approved of my trip. She was, after all, a sincerely benevolent person!
- Only, - he instructs, - you do not surrender to him the first time.
(God! Who does she take me for? I didn't even think about it - and not only "from the first" ... Although in practice I did not fulfill this particular order).
And I went north, to the Glubinnoye settlement of the Cherdyn region, from where the thick envelopes came. The way was this: to Solikamsk - by train, from there - by plane to the transit point Chepets (about half an hour by the local rumbling "shaker", taking out his soul in every air hole), or ...

"...OR"
Then I will go and fly there until the summer of 1970, when Mikhail was released and came - but not to his mother in Kharkov, but to me in Perm. The meetings took place twice a year - on New Year's and in summer. I will describe the road to Chepets at once, so that later I will not return to this.
With the "shaker" everything is clear - departures according to the weather, tickets are in short supply, the camp authorities, their wives and relatives are always out of turn. Each attack on the cashier is a "ride into the unknown". However, it managed: with a fight, with nerves, but I got tickets. The easiest thing was the first time, because on a business trip.
Once Chepets did not accept, but they sold a ticket to Cherdyn. Further, they say, buses run ... why sit in Solikamsk, especially since there is nowhere to spend the night and days in stock - there is a shortage? However, the plane did not even reach Cherdyn - it returned half way because of a blizzard. In general, I was healthy in health. That flight to Cherdyn is the only case when in the plane she slid from the seat to the floor with a sanitary bag in her hands, and after landing fell out onto the airfield, confusing heaven and earth ... And then it turned out that the Chepets were being "opened". She gathered strength and flew again.
But the most memorable was the 1969 winter road "back". It was a dull, non-flying weather. I decided to get from Chepts to Cherdyn by bus. For two hours he walked well, and then the road was completely shallow. The car got off the hard surface and stood. The driver told everyone to get out and push until the road was found. And so we "fell out" in a snowdrift ... Women (some in boots), teenagers, children. There is nothing to do - they piled up together, in a herd, and - on command! And along the solid road outlined to the side, hefty men walk: in high fur boots, brand new sheepskin coats. They smoke, laugh. Camp bosses! Then I did with Misha:
- How could they not be ashamed? After all, women, children ...
- They don't understand it. They will never take part in physical work, because everyone else is cattle for them. They are used to behaving this way with prisoners and they look at the rest of the world the same way ...

CAP
What is a cap? This is not a zone yet. But almost a zone. Entry-exit is free, but the audience is already "the same". Released, but delayed on departure, sent on business (including the Ministry of Internal Affairs), former convicts who decided to stay here, because in the big world no one is waiting for ... their families. There is a grocery store, a canteen with a typical set of dishes from the times of deep stagnation. (From the story of Vasily Aksenov: "I was always amazed, by some such technology in our public catering they manage to turn into completely inedible" soles "- cutlets?") The spacious cold and dark club shook the portrait of V.I. Lenin: a true Tatar with a shaved head from the time of Khan Baty, an image in a lacquer-naive style, like market swans. In Perm, for such a mockery of the leader, the artist would be immediately kicked out, if not worse.
From Chepets, the "camp" capital, to dead-end settlements for prisoners, one-track railways diverge. Settlement is a relaxed regime of non-freedom! Leaving a prisoner in a settlement is an event that must be earned. Security has not been removed, but prisoners are not chased by the system. You can have money, meet with relatives, even start a family, but you cannot leave the borders of the zone (it is regarded as an escape, and the guilty person returns to the regime camp.) There are also those who are released, they are registered for work as free people. into the big world, but money, as a rule, was spent on drink, and the dream turned into a lifelong mirage.
An old diesel locomotive with two passenger carriages goes from Chepets to Glubinnoye (not every day!). The trailers are not heated, although the ride is about two hours. And this micro-train is always late.
Subsequently, in the absence of a train, I happened to have to spend the night in Chepse, and then I found shelter in a very friendly family of Misha's acquaintances. The husband was sitting with Mikhail, freed, got married. Of course, I also believed that my stay here was temporary. How was their fate?
Arriving in Chepets in May 1968, I immediately went to the commandant's office with my regional committee editorial papers. And then the pressure began: they didn’t want to let me go any further.
- There are bandits, - they are stirring up passions, - they will kill, rape ...
Articles list and stuff. Then Misha will explain why they behaved this way:
- Not FOR YOU, - he says, - they were scared, but YOU. You presented them with documents from the authorities, and they know how afraid they are! You may notice things that they would not like to discover at all. Better not to let them in at all.
A very funny meeting took place on the street, when I was wandering around waiting for the train. They clung ... two, but I remembered only one, a Georgian, his name was Mikhail Poereli. He made a speech like this:
- I know Sopin. Good guy. But ... I'm just as good. He is Misha, and I am Misha. Stay!
- But Sopin writes poetry.
- I write them.
- ?!!
- ... That is, he writes, of course, but who prompts topics, topics? I AM!!
(Then I'll tell my Misha: "You can't get out of these places in any way. Who will prompt you without Eating themes for poetry?)
A micro-train approached, and as a special confidant, I was allowed to ride in the cab with two drivers. The cockpit was amazing, with a huge, not at all modern window, into which you could lean out almost to the waist! The window was thrown open, and the fresh wind blowing towards him was delightful. But the most remarkable impression was from the partridges, which sat under the bushes along the road and were not in the least afraid of the chariot rumbling on the rails. Nobody shoots them here.

A MEETING
In Glubinnoye, they settled me in a neat hotel house in one room for the superiors, and assigned a guard. At first I thought this was the way it should be. Mikhail was not summoned immediately. I got tired of being in the house, went out into the air and sat down to wait on a log. I was wearing an orange raincoat with white polka dots ... Bright, noticeable.
Suddenly I see - running, not very young, gray hair on the temples. Reaches out his hand:
- Bear.
And he behaves as if we have known each other for a hundred years.
("Is it possible, - I think, remembering Nin's words, - he hopes for something other than conversations on literary topics?")
But in general, it somehow immediately became very easy with him. And ... nice. We walk through the village, everyone greets him - both the population and the guards. As in the old days with a village teacher. Respect, then. And this respect involuntarily spreads to me. It seems that for the local population I am no longer an authority-intellectual, but he, and I - as an appendix to him. Companion pride appears! And here's what's interesting: I have never, with any of my former male acquaintances, felt so much a woman! All this Permian bohemia, in comparison with Mikhail Babami, seemed.
But the security guard played a decisive role in our rapid rapprochement. The humiliating supervision of such a respected person as Mikhail Sopin, to me, a free person, seemed so ugly that it simply "moved" to a very recent acquaintance. In Perm, we would most likely start looking at each other for months, if not years. And here the two of them confronted a hostile world. It was such a high moment, a bar taken without a run! And this impression remained for the whole long married life, forced to seek understanding even when it was very difficult.
They approached one yard - Misha spoke with the owner, and he leads a tame bear cub out of the shed, show me. The she-bear was shot in the forest, and the bear cub was taken away. Of course, the animal will have a pitiful fate ...
By evening, the guard (a young guy from the conscripts) felt ashamed to follow us on our heels. He himself began to lag behind and stew. Misha took him aside, talked, and he left us alone. And I asked permission to move from the commanding house to a private apartment.
Misha said:
- Never come officially. Only - to me personally, you know, how women go to men. And then no one from the bosses will care about you. Do not be afraid - no one will touch you here.
Then I always did that.

DEEP
The railway from Glubinnoye is one way, the same is the opposite beginning. There are no other means of communication. On three sides, the village is surrounded by taiga, extending along the horizon to the foothills of the Northern Urals. The settlement was created for the sake of logging, on which both the driven contingent of convicts and civilians work (the latter for the most part serve the equipment). At the beginning of the bumpy track of a logging clearing - a poster, white on red paper: "Conscientious work is the way to freedom." Nearby, a freewheel tractor was stuck. In dirt. As a symbol of the "path to freedom".
The prisoners lived in plank barracks arranged in a large quadrangle. I have never been there, and I didn’t even come close: Misha didn’t want to. At the time of the arrival of relatives and "girlfriends" it was possible to rent a room with a separate entrance, but Misha did not use this either, and nothing at all - on the official line. Housing was negotiated as follows, according to an acquaintance.
You cannot go far into the forest, because there are windbreaks. Misha and I tried to walk - we stopped by a tree, where he drew my attention to scratches, claw marks of a huge bear. It was impossible to go further, but not because of the bear, it was simply impassable. There is a photograph of Misha standing at the roots of a twisted tree. The root base is almost one and a half times higher than his head.
The trunk timber from Glubinnoye was taken out by freight trains on the same single-track, and upturned roots, stumps and their stumps were scattered at random near the house in which we lived in the summer of 1969. It was a rather picturesque picture, and when Misha went to work (to the power plant), I gladly climbed these stumps with a camera. Filmed a whole collection of resemblances of outlandish animals, fairy tales, fantastic scenes. Then, slightly touching up with ink and whitewash, she gave them names and published them in the newspaper under the heading "Peeped in Nature".
For some reason, there were a lot of goats there. They had long hair, like those of the spawned, and a proud, graceful look. They walked freely wherever they pleased, laid down on the steps of our house warmed by the summer sun, and this gave the dwelling a special charm. I have a lot of pictures with goats.
This plank house was our shelter and love. Nobody but us went to it. In general, in the settlement, prisoners are not allowed to lock themselves up, and in whatever spicy situation, say, a man and a woman are. They can enter without knocking - check: what, they say, are you doing? And this is also very humiliating. One winter, during my arrival, we lived in a semi-detached house and heard the guards behind the wall visiting a couple like us. They drank together, laughed, the guards gave rather friendly ... scabrous advice. But they didn't even knock on us - not even once. And this was also a sign of respect for Mikhail VOKHRa, in which, no matter how you judge, the human remained. There was a notion - to whom to go with a bottle and greasy jokes, and who not to touch.
When we were "having fun" behind a thin wall, we completely froze or spoke quietly. Once Misha said: "You know, there is such a scientific theory - nothing ever disappears in nature, even sounds. Now we are talking to you, but layering on the walls. And someday they will invent devices that can decipher all this, and our descendants they will know about us ... "
After many years he will write:
"Do you remember I said
That immortality is
Voices sound!
In the universe for centuries
Our sounds are saved.
Our meeting has come to pass -
And eternity knows no parting. "
He also said that everything will be very serious with us, and we will definitely get married, but not now - I don’t want to have a camp stamp in such a document. And we will get married in a church, and we will have wedding rings ... All this did not work out due to life circumstances, but what is the significance of the ceremonies if we were married much more - "my prison freedom, your free prison."
"Live. Keep the warmth of the soul.
And know
That going on the road
I survived
Holy days
Thanks to
You
And to God. "

FOR WHAT?
After the first visit to the Deep One, a split occurred in me. On the one hand, I understood that I no longer have a moral right to objective journalistic material. On the other hand ... the interest remained unsatisfied, and above all - could this be the case in our country: a person for a not so terrible offense (participation in a group attack, took away a bicycle) to serve such terms? Maybe Mikhail and Alexei ... are lying?
In the editorial office, I began to take legal cases into work in order to find out what was of interest in informal conversations with lawyers. And after several attempts I received a frank answer.
After clarifying some details (without naming names), an elderly female lawyer said that in the fifties it could have been. Then they judged that way, and the terms were given long (Mikhail - 17 years). Under Khrushchev, legal reform began. But there were too many cases, there was simply no physical opportunity to consider them. There were no personnel, premises, nothing to pay with. Therefore, only political cases were taken for review, and for all criminal convicts, the term was automatically reduced to 15 years. Misha went "on a criminal basis" and served his term "from call to call."
I did try again, this time with real names and addresses, without getting into personal relationships. I wrote a big letter to "Komsomolskaya Pravda" - what if they are interested in it? No, I was not interested, I did not receive an answer.
... And Misha told me an instructive story from his life in the camp. He had to perform different work, after the hospital he even performed office duties. Once he was sent for a document to the chief's office. He was not there, Mikhail began to look for the necessary paper on the table. And ... quite unexpectedly, I discovered a positive answer from the General Prosecutor's Office about the release of prisoner N., dated a year ago. He was lying under glass, covered with another document. That is, this person has been at large for a year already. And he is still sitting and does not even know about the good news. Most likely, he will not know - how can the boss admit such a mistake? But at first it was, most likely, not even malicious intent ... Maybe I forgot because of drunkenness. There is no one to check the boss, to protect the convict. Atrophied human relations, dishonesty, official rudeness.
"We are not afraid of the crusader,
Not a khan.
Russia is afraid of the powerful boor,
The culture of rudeness ... "

NEW YEAR
In winter, I came to him on New Year's, and at that moment he was always put on night watch at the engine of the power plant! This was no coincidence. The village got drunk, regardless of faces and positions, and the only one you could rely on (he would not leave the village without light) was Mikhail Sopin. I'm bored alone, I go with him. At that time, the song "Ah, this wedding, wedding, wedding ..." was very fashionable. She chased me in the clatter of the carriage wheels, in the noise of the aircraft engine, and now it seemed to be right here, in the hum of the power plant. But this almost did not irritate, because Misha was nearby.
I went out to breathe fresh air ... Darkness. Somewhere shadows wander, almost in underpants. General drunkenness, and for a long time. And the two of us are sober! And again I am filled with pride for my life companion.
Of course, we had a drink - I brought him "Champagne". But only the two of us knew about it. Interesting: later, in the Perm and Vologda life, he, as they say ... did not let his mouth pass. But there, in the settlement, I did not allow myself anything of the kind. Why? - did not want to merge with the mass.

Goodbye
He could only accompany me to the train. As I already mentioned, the train was always late, and we could walk in anticipation for an hour or two. We walked along the railroad bed. On both sides, a black taiga wall approached closely. Creepy. I asked if there were wolves here, Misha said:
- Of course!
And suddenly, waving towards the sky, he exclaimed:
- There the wolf is flying!
Before appreciating the humor, I looked at where he was pointing - as if the wolf could really fly in the sky.
There, on a winter evening, we saw the Moon's Eye. The full moon looked through, as it were, "narrowed", illuminated by the same moon, heavy clouds.
Misha read:
"The wind is walking
Angry, prickly,
Sweeps away,
Embracing the whole earth.
And moon eyes
Through the eyelids of clouds
Looks thoughtfully at the ground ... "
Sometimes he had to rush to work, but the train did not show up. We were forced to part earlier. He said that he would go without looking back ("There is such a sign to meet again"), and he always did it. And I looked after - he really did not look back. He had a very slender figure, hereditary officer bearing, and his foot size was 39. He said that the "Drozdovites" had such a small foot, because they were recruited from aristocrats, and his relatives served in this branch of the army.
I followed him with my eyes until he finally disappeared into the darkness or a blizzard. And then she raised her eyes to the sky and looked for the "moon eye".

IN SEARCH OF FREEDOM (about the book by Mikhail Sopin)

I bring to your attention excerpts from articles and responses of critics, writers and journalists to the book "While you live, soul, love!", Published in Chicago, USA, in 2006 by Mikhail Sopin (1931-2004). Materials were kindly provided by the poet's widow Tatyana Petrovna Sopina.

The poems of the talented Russian poet Mikhail Sopin, who was born in the Kursk region in 1931 and died in Vologda in 2004, came out ... in America, in the city of Chicago in Russian through the efforts of many people and, above all, thanks to two women - born in Ukraine and now living in the USA Svetlana Ostrovskaya and the poet's widow Tatyana Sopina, who lives in Vologda.
Joseph Pismenny

The 256-page collection entitled "While you live, soul, love! ..." Your holy face "," Rejoice, man "," Before the snow that has not yet fallen. "
The book is wonderfully illustrated with photographs of the world famous photographer Ernst Gaast, masters of Russian photography Lyubim Kholmogorov, Yuri Chernov, Alexei Kolosov and our fellow countrymen Mikhail Karachev, Andrey Kokov. Used photographs from the family archive.
Elena Bosonogova

The prose frames made by Tatyana Sopina, the poet's widow, give a special flavor to the poems of Mikhail Sopin. They form one whole, live a single life.
Joseph Pismenny

I know: if such a kind soul had not been around, who was able to take on the lion's share of his psychological burden, made him believe in himself, it would hardly have turned out that Mikhail Sopin, whom we admire and are proud of today. That is why I always consider Tatyana Petrovna a co-author of Mikhail Nikolaevich's poems.
Mikhail Berkovich

"On the head is a blizzard of gray hair ..." Deep wrinkles are on the sunken cheeks. A chilled, hoarse voice and fingers like drumsticks are sure signs of chronic camp bronchitis. Blue twigs of veins on overworked hands: what kind of black work did not have to be engaged in the long convicts ... Eyes tired, but attentive, alert, but kind, sometimes flashing in a knowing smile, then extinguished in a conversation about vain little things ... “With skepticism on my lips ... "The character is tough, but not embittered. This is how friends remember Mikhail Sopin.
Isaac Podolny

He got a heavy share. The post-war childhood of the regiment's son changed early to a prisoner's jacket. They tried to educate a voiceless slave from camp points and zones, meek, weak-willed, powerless ... It didn't work out! ..
Once Mahatma Gandhi wrote: "Freedom must be sought among the prison walls." Did Mikhail Sopin know these lines? I'm not sure ... But it was there that he managed not to break down and find his way to inner freedom.
Isaac Podolny

The fate of Mikhail Sopin is indeed typical, its zigzags are in many ways natural - they are somehow repeated in the biographies of thousands of fellow citizens who happened to live "under the leadership" of Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev ... It would seem that with so many witnesses it would be time to already know about those times absolutely everything - down to the last details. But no!
A. Moiseev

It seems that there is something in common in the fates of Mikhail Sopin and Nikolai Rubtsov: the loss of a family, a joyless orphan childhood, a rebellious character and immense talent, as they say, from God. These talents made their way to people for a long time and with difficulty. But these are not just coincidences. This is a sign of the disadvantaged post-war generation to which they belonged. The well-deserved fame comes to them only after their death.
Isaac Podolny

Behind the name of Mikhail Nikolaevich Sopin is a whole space, a space shaggy with raging, opposing forces, attracting with beauty and repulsive with chaos, delighting with the power of creative potential.
Galina Makarova

Mikhail Sopin, as Galina Makarova correctly notes, is chaos, space, in which the critics have not paved well-equipped paths. Take, for example, the same Rubtsov - it is like a park area, in which the benches for rest are placed, and the lighting is on. And Sopin is a taiga, a windbreak. You have to make your way yourself. Although, if you walk around once or twice, then it is possible that all this will be quite passable and not so frightening, and then you will find a kind of beauty.
Natalia Shatrova

And today it is not easy to read Sopin's poems - sometimes it hurts, and sometimes it is too deep to breathe freely. And at the same time, reading them is absolutely essential. Because what Mikhail Sopin told the world about, there is nowhere else to find out.
A. Moiseev

It would be wrong to say that Mikhail Sopin is "less popular" than Nikolai Rubtsov. As they say now, it is less "promoted". It so happened: I graduated from school in the zone, in institutes - I did not study. Began to publish late. Central publishing houses did not indulge in attention. They just tried not to notice him. We can only guess - why? ..
We often judge people on the basis of the usual scales established in our minds. But suddenly it turns out that a certain personality does not fit into the generally accepted scales at all. And some "friends" are afraid of such a discovery. Either because they did not discern talent right away, or because they were afraid to see their measure on a new line with a different division price ... On the usual scale, the level difference was not so striking, and on the scale of true talents, few will find their place.
Isaac Podolny

Unfortunately, the name of Mikhail Sopin, as well as his poems, is little known to a wide Russian and foreign reader. And there are many reasons for this. One of them, perhaps the main one, is that Mikhail Nikolaevich is a completely independent person, and not a poet who belongs to any literary circle or movement. He would never have become one of the pack, therefore, he was equally alien to both the soil and the April people.
Joseph Pismenny

The poet Mikhail Sopin was kept, as they say, in a dark body all his life, creating for him the reputation of "gloomily looking" at our overly "cheerful" and "joyful" reality. Only at the end of his life did Mikhail Sopin get the audience he had always dreamed of: to communicate with his readers, the Internet provided this opportunity for the poet ... courage: to look the Truth straight in the eyes and speak the Truth everywhere and always, no matter what it takes. Although Mikhail Nikolaevich clearly understood:
Free to think -
Means to be a target.

Vitaly Bakumenko

The theme of the Motherland for Mikhail Sopin is central, very large, not studied by anyone, and wonderful discoveries await those who seriously engage in this.
Natalia Shatrova

And if pain is clearly heard in the poet's verses, then, first of all, this pain is about today's Russia and its tomorrow's fate.
Isaac Podolny

You can love your homeland in different ways. For example, like Tyutchev: "You can't understand Russia with your mind ... You can only believe in Russia." Or like Lermontov: “I love my homeland, but with a strange love! My mind will not conquer her ”. Such reckless and carefree love is similar to the love of a child for his mother - the best, whatever it may be. This kind of love is blind. And, emotions aside, unproductive.
But there may be another love - one that does not neglect rationality, love that allowed Nekrasov to say loudly, at the top of his voice:
You and wretched
You are abundant
You and mighty
You and powerless
Mother Russia!
This is love, ascertaining the imperfection of the Motherland. It reveals the essence of imperfection, its origins and forms of manifestation. She makes a diagnosis, without which a cure is impossible. And the diagnosis is not at all simple ...
Mikhail Sopin did not sing the praises of the heavens and the seas. He awakened with his lyre reason and love for the Motherland through love for man. And through the denial of everything that is incompatible with human dignity. And this is the guarantee of the memory of him, the guarantee of the everlasting significance of his poems.
J. Lieberman

But the main thing in his poetry is the fate of his generation, the fate of adolescents, whom the brutal war made adults beyond their age, and then the authorities of their native country tried to hide in camps and prisons. The fate of Mikhail Sopin himself.
I didn't know the clothes
Worthy of a camp test
And did not know the light
Brighter than in the barrack cage.
At the coffin, Russia,
Let me take off my prison robe.
Give free in the shroud
To depart in your name.

Joseph Pismenny
Sopin's poetry is unique. She is a fusion of bright talent and cruel suffering, the result of tremendous inner work. This is indeed a word spoken on behalf of thousands and thousands:

For everything that once suffered,
For everything that I could not understand
Two shadows -
Convict and soldier -
They walk behind me
Along the roads.

A. Moiseev

“I crawled and cried, in love with life” - here it is, the Main Wisdom of Life - LOVE THROUGH TEARS !!! I think that it was she who allowed the Poet to survive, despite all the trials prepared for him by Fate.
Tatiana Polyakova (Egorovna)

It's great that this book has been published. It is a pity that it is practically inaccessible to the ordinary reader. It is wonderful that our poets are published in America. It is a pity that there is no money in Russia for this.

Elena Bosonogova