Red Hogwarts. Series 4. Founders (Part 2)

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The Revolution, as you know, has many unpleasant habits. She not only devours her children, but also loves to juggle people, throwing them into the high heights, then dropping them into the filth of the princes. But even those who are thrown to the top, are rarely happy. Revolution - windy lady.

When the autocracy fell, Fedorovsky confidently went up the hill, and no wonder - the Revolution was his element, breaking the old order really disturbed him, forcing him to sing his freedom-loving soul. The winds of change, blown in February, threatened to turn into hurricane squalls for the country, but Fedorovsky was not afraid - he was happy.

When a person is winged, he either flies up or breaks. Fedorovsky, as I said, gained height very confidently. An unknown senior laboratory technician (he will receive a teacher’s place only in 1918) makes a rapid career. In March 1917, he worked in the Nizhny Novgorod organization of the RSDLP (b), which came out of the underground, in May he was elected a member of the Provisional Regional Committee of the RSDLP with an advisory vote, all summer he publishes the newspaper Internationale, on the pages of which he once again burns the verb Stepan of Finland. Fedorovsky, who was hiding behind this pseudonym, was nevertheless a journalist by the grace of God - the surviving articles convincingly testify that there is a lot to learn from many of the current masters of journalism. Soon our hero gained such popularity both in the city and in the province that he headed first the Nizhny Novgorod Council of Workers 'and Soldiers' Deputies, and then the provincial party committee. After the October Revolution, Fedorovsky, a Bolshevik with pre-revolutionary experience and a member of the RSDLP since 1904, stands at the head of the entire Nizhny Novgorod province, one of the largest and most economically developed regions of the country.

His vigorous activity, it seemed, did not know what to do. What he just did not do! Suffice it to recall that Fedorovsky became the founder of the University of Nizhny Novgorod - the decision to create it was made in 1918 by the executive committee of the Nizhny Novgorod Council of Workers', Peasants' and Soldiers' Deputies and personally by the 30-year-old chairman of the Provincial Committee of the RSDLP (B).

Artemyev could not do that. Artemyev could not be dispersed and do a thousand things at the same time, he always beat at one point. Sometimes this led him to success, sometimes - as is the case with science - to failure. But while Fedorovsky was reaping the fruits of the revolution, Artemyev stubbornly pushed through the creation of the Moscow Mining Academy. Through Moscow merchants, he went with this idea to the Provisional Government - but to no avail. In April 1917, the Coal Industrialists ’Congress of Southern Russia was held, and a little later, the II Coal Industrialists’ Congress of Central Russia - he gave a performance there of one of his associates, mining engineer G.V. Klyuchansky with a report "On Mining and Technical Education." And everyone seemed to agree, both congresses recognized the establishment of a mining university in Moscow as necessary, but no one gave any money.

Most likely, Artemyev’s desire to acquire his own higher education institution would have remained an unlucky careerist's wish, but one day Fedorovsky suddenly appeared at his house, with whom they now didn’t meet often. The first friend first of all declared that he was transferred to Moscow, to work in his specialty - to head the Mining Council of the Supreme Economic Council, that is, to lead the entire mining industry in Russia. To go to the capital without your people is nonsense, so Artemyev goes with him. But, it is important - goes with him, but not to him. Artemyev is already waiting for another place - to Comrade Nikolai Gorbunov in the People's Commissariat of Education, who, in fact, dragged Fedorovsky into the capital, such a person as Professor Artemiev is very necessary. And then science in the country to lead no one. Everything, no time to explain, let's go.

In April 1918, Fedorovsky left Nizhny Novgorod, in late May, Artemyev followed his example.

Comrade Nikolai Gorbunov, who led all the country's science, despite his youth, was bald and full of glasses. But I’ll say right away that the stereotype that has just appeared in your head is absolutely wrong. The hunchbacks were not at all petty, dead and downtrodden. He did not belong to the second widespread category - people in big glasses, thick, clumsy and good-natured. He was from the third, rarest category - glasses for dangerous ones. Of those who, at the beginning of a fight, shove glasses into their pockets with a familiar gesture, of those who have been torturing their body with Japanese gymnastics since the gymnasium years, of those who, in response to ridicule over glasses and balding hair, look so badly that even the most zabubaskalis stagnate. Here, actually, he.

Or even

A chemical technologist, a graduate of the Petrograd Institute of Technology, a Civil Hero, one of the first to win the Second Horse, who deserved the Order of the Red Banner, one of the best mountaineers of the Russian Empire and the USSR, who lacked a couple of hundred meters to share with Abalakov the triumph of the first conqueror of the highest peak of the Land of Soviets ... In general, Comrade Nikolai Gorbunov was the clearest proof that the revolution is the fastest elevator.

Any revolution, as we remember in the 1990s, is a power vacuum, and any person who finds himself in the right place at the right time with the right skills can take off to a height unattainable in peacetime.

During the February Revolution, Gorbunov was nobody and his name was in any way. But already in May of the 17th young (25 years old), but the promising Bolshevik agitator notices and approaches Lunacharsky. Already in June, Gorbunov was appointed head of the Information Bureau of the Central Executive Committee. And on the fourth day after the October Revolution, on the recommendation of Bonch-Bruevich, Comrade Gorbunov, as having demonstrated outstanding organizational skills, was invited to the legendary room No. 67 of the Smolny Institute. In the office of the leader of the revolution, Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin). A dangerous bespectacled man leaves the office as secretary of the Council of People's Commissars and Lenin’s personal secretary.

This secretary Gorbunov led the first protocols and signed the first decrees of the Soviet power — his signature stands after the signature of V. I. Lenin on the decrees on the abolition of estates, on the formation of the Red Army, on granting independence to Finland, etc. In the first, craziest months, Gorbunov, like other members of the Bolshevik government, had to grab at everything — and deliver weapons to the scene of hostilities against Krasnov formations, and take the first money of the Soviet government from saboteurs from the State Bank, and participate in the development of the Emblem of the RSFSR ...

Evidence of that cheerful and tumultuous time, when a group of young and committed people, straining their veins, turned Russia into a bright future, when everyone was on a par, and only Ilyich was the first among equals - this humorous note remained. How this piece of paper managed to survive the entire twentieth century, and no one destroyed it from harm's way - I do not even guess. But the note remained, and today it is kept in the archives of the Gorbunov family.

But I digress. On the proposal of Gorbunov on August 16, 1918, the Council of People's Commissars created the Scientific and Technical Department of the High Council of the National Economy. It was such a special body created to become “at the head of all scientific and technological institutions, societies, organizations, laboratories, etc., located within the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, for the purpose of their unification and distribution between of all the tasks of the Soviet government . " It was for this project that he came from Nizhny Artemyev, it was he who basically prepared and promoted it - Gorbunov still had a lot of work in the secretariat.

At that time, the Bolsheviks did not care about the frames, and in this story the faces that are already familiar to us are flashing for the most part. As soon as the department was created, the Presidium of the Supreme Economic Council approved the members of the board of the Scientific and Technical Department of the Supreme Economic Council, tt. Gorbunova, Artemiev, Eichenwald, and temporarily, until the deputy, Comrade Fedorovsky, was sought. ” And the Presidium of the Scientific Commission established under the Scientific and Technical Association included almost exclusively colleagues of Artemyev and Fedorovsky, completely miners and geologists. Academician Pyotr Lazarev became chairman of the commission, Ivan Gubkin became a deputy chairman (deputy chairman), zoologist and beekeeper, future director of the Moscow Zoo Nikolai Kulagin as scientific secretary, commission members V. A. Henri and A. E. Fersman (and do not giggle, don’t funny already).

Sometimes people just sprung from nothing, like mice from rags - from somewhere the young astronomer Vartan Tigranovich Ter-Oganezov undertook, and soon this recent student, just before the revolution who graduated from St. Petersburg university, was already actively involved in the development of higher education reform in the country.

In general, of course, the time was exceptional. It is impossible without emotion to read the minutes of these meetings, which were usually conducted by the French physiologist and physicochemical Viktor Alekseevich Henri, a child of the two countries, a bastard from the famous Lyapunov family, who lived in Paris from 14 years old, but returned to his historic homeland and remained in Soviet Russia because of its grandeur happening. In these protocols, so much youth, so much dream, so much freshness, so much conviction and a thirst to create, that sometimes it's just enviable.

Professor Victor Henri

At night, Gorbunov wrote letters to Lenin: “Dear Comrade Lenin! I really needed to talk with you about my work, but I think it will turn out badly for me. I really need your moral support now, and therefore I decided to write this letter. In order to continue my work of swaying Russian science and adapting it to the needs of the Republic, in order to continue to devote myself entirely to this work, perhaps even imperceptible at first, it is imperative for me to know whether you consider my work important and necessary. It is very difficult to move our scientific forces from a dead, fixed point on which they have frozen for decades. It is very difficult to break the wall into which science has escaped from life. We have to build new forms, break, build again. How many mistakes we have already done! But the results are already evident. Old professors and scientists come to us and light up with creative energy ... "

And young scientists ... Young scientists were young and confident that the world belongs to them.

It was then, somehow between and around and around, Artemyev and Fedorovsky who fulfilled their long-standing dream - on September 4, 1918, the Decree of the Council of People's Commissars on the establishment of the Moscow Mining Academy was signed.

Artemyev became its rector. I think you will not be surprised to learn that soon Fedorovsky, Arshinov, Lazarev, Gubkin, and Ter-Oganezov began to work there ... In general, Winnie the Pooh and everything, everything, everything is just another series.

Career Artemyev was still going uphill - in mid-October 1918 he was already in charge of the department of the Higher School of the People's Commissariat of Education. And in January 1919, he reached the peak of his career - a recent provincial professor is confirmed as head of the Scientific Department of the People's Commissariat, from time to time he replaces Commissar of Education Lunacharsky.

A company of friends with large positions, moreover, having a direct access to Lenin through Gorbunov, was then almost omnipotent. In general, the dream of a man who had been a notebook careerist since his student days has come true - Artemyev became a big boss.

Becoming a big boss in the revolution is not difficult. It is difficult to remain a big boss when the period of romantic revolutionary euphoria ends and the inexorable laws of the apparatus of power come into their own. That same power, which in Russia is unchanged under all regimes - with bureaucracy, clans, “exits”, mutual obligations, informal agreements, hardware makli, power vertical and horizontal rotations, leather chairs, copper asses, steel grip and other cute attributes without which government structures do not function.

Soon Professor Artemyev had already observed how people who were rejected by time began to flush out of power with objective relentlessness — too weak, too greedy, too naive, too harsh, too stupid, too honest, lost banks, holed up on their laurels, who did not wake up or just poor fellows who lost their patron.

Artemiev, perhaps, had chances - his character fully corresponded to the Russian power structures. But first, Gorbunova is sent to the Revolutionary Military Council of the Southern Front and the dangerous bespectacled man disappears before the end of the Civil War. Then Fedorovsky is sent to work in Berlin. Soviet Russia needed to break off foreign isolation by favorite means, and who would break it, if not Germany, is another world pariah. Well, at the end of the banquet, while Fedorovsky behind the barrier negotiated procurement and met with Einstein, Artemyev in Moscow seriously messed up. In the conflict over the reform of the Academy of Sciences Artemyev with Ter-Oganezov, who had become his deputy for the Scientific Department by that time, took the wrong side. And they were not pulled up by anyone, but Vladimir Ilyich Lenin himself. “It’s not necessary to let some Communist fanatics eat the Academy!” Ilyich said then, and the shares of Artemyev and Ter-Oganezov collapsed with a swift jack. In general, after the reorganization of the People's Commissariat of Education in February 1921, Artemyev got only the position of one of the 16 members of the scientific and technical subsection of the State Academic Council.

What cannot be taken away from the professor is a unique scent for change, the notorious “chuika”. Artemyev understood everything, made conclusions and made a decision. At the end of November 1921 on behalf of the People's Commissariat of Education and the People's Commissar of Foreign Trade D.N. Artemyev went on a business trip to Sweden and Germany. Back to Soviet Russia, Professor D.N. Artemyev did not return.

Ran away.

And not just ran away, but ran wrong. Dastardly escaped, if you call a spade a spade. His departure for the cordon was not a spontaneous decision - he was well prepared for escape, did not forget even to take with himself the voluminous manuscript of his main work, the four-volume monograph “Crystallography”. Academician Vernadsky later assumed that Artemyev tried to flee abroad in March 1921, during a business trip to Smolensk. K.V. Flint, the wife of the Crystal Flint crystallographer who worked at the Moscow Mining Academy: “As a mineralogist, he (Artemyev - VN) during the Soviet times was admitted to the commission for the sale of jewels ... Using his position in this commission, he scored a box of jewels and tried to run abroad with her , but was detained at the border and returned to Moscow. For the old revolutionary achievements, apparently, was forgiven, as he continued to work after the escape ” . Academician Obruchev, the pro-rector of the MGA and the author of Sannikov’s Land, says about the same thing: “D.N. Artemyev soon went abroad and, as evil tongues said, took a suitcase with precious stones, which he bought cheaply during the civil war. He did not come back and became an emigrant. ”

However, God is with them, with diamonds - after all, no evidence of this “diamond suitcase” exists. The professor can be forgiven even for the fact that with his flight he very seriously substituted both Gorbunov and Fedorovsky. But what is really difficult to understand is that Artemyev left to the mercy of fate an old mother who lived with him in a residential block of the Moscow Mining Academy. The researchers found a statement by citizen Yekaterina Vladimirovna Artemyeva on March 7, 1922: “I ask you to file a petition for resuming the issuance of an academic ration taken from me because of the departure of my son, prof. D.N. Artemyeva abroad on a business trip. I am fully dependent on my son, I am 68 years old, and without support from him, I cannot survive ... ”.

Judging by the surviving documents, she was still given rations, and until July 1922, after which the traces of the elderly woman were lost, and nothing was known about her future fate. At least she was no longer in the academy when, in the former apartment of the rector D.N. In March 1923, Artemyev became the vice-rector V.A. Hoop.

Abroad, the quick rector returns to the profession of crystallographer. And although his business was not going well, the white emigration was not going to forgive him for joining the party. service to the Bolsheviks and other sins - in 1923-1924. Artemyev nevertheless begins to actively cooperate with the Berlin Russian-language publishing houses. In particular, in the publishing house of I.P. Ladyzhnikov in the “Library of Knowledge” series in 1923, his main work “Crystallography” was published.

And in 1924 another sharp turn took place in the fate of Dmitry Artemyev. He adopted Catholicism, for five years he studied theology in Innsbruck and Vienna, in 1929 he was ordained priest of the Uniate Church. In 1929–1934, he served in Vienna, in the summer of 1934, he was appointed rector of the Russian Catholic mission in Brussels.

Why did he turn to religion? This, of course, only my assumptions, but, in my opinion, the point is this. Artemyev, as you probably already understood, was a very rational person, practical to cynicism. From the experience of communicating with such people, I noticed that they, strangely enough, suffer greatly from their rationality, correctness and logic. Do you know why?

Because they see what is deprived.

Artemyev, I think, suffered all his life from the absence of this sacred fire inside. , , . – , . , .

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