Poets of the sixties and poets of the bards. Who are the "sixties"

The Sixties is a subculture of the Soviet intelligentsia, which mainly captured the generation born approximately between 1925 and 1945. historical context that formed the views of the “sixties” were the years of Stalinism, the Great Patriotic War and the era of the “thaw”. the term was first used in 1960 by literary critic Stanislav Rassadin in the article "The Sixties" (magazine "Youth"). He spoke about the writers of the new literary generation and their readers.

Most of the "sixties" came from the intelligentsia or the party milieu that had formed in the 1920s. Their parents, as a rule, were convinced Bolsheviks, often participants civil war. Belief in communist ideals was self-evident for the majority of the "sixties"; their parents dedicated their lives to the struggle for these ideals. However, even in childhood they had to go through a worldview crisis, since it was this environment that suffered the most from the so-called Stalinist “purges”. Some of the "sixties" parents were imprisoned or shot. Usually this did not cause a radical revision of views - however, it forced more reflection and led to hidden opposition to the regime

Who were we
sixties?
On the crest of the foam shaft
In the twentieth century,
like paratroopers
out of twenty one.
“Without timidity” and “giving resounding slaps in the face” this generation marched boldly forward, pushing the lagging behind, the doubters and the timid. Fervently, loudly and cheerfully sound the words that
We cut through
barred
window
to Europe
and to America.
Young and courageous, shocking the “respectable” public, the “sixties” fought for freedom not for themselves (in their hearts they were always free), but for everyone.
We were “fashionable” for someone,
we offended someone with glory,
but we made you free
today's offenders.
Frightened by our tastes
tendencies,
and what we forget too much
and we did not die of modesty
and we are not going to die.
These lines resonate with youthful enthusiasm, sincerity and gaiety, the intonation with which the poet entered literature in the “distant sixties”. And it pleases the thought that the past years have not cooled the soul and heart of this wonderful master.
Let them hiss: that we are mediocre,
corrupt and hypocritical,
but still we are legendary,
spat upon,
but immortal!
E. Evtushenko

Marietta Chudakova: “Frames and Signs of a Generation”

I would still like to give this phenomenon a stricter framework, at least quasi-scientific. Once I even deduced the age limits of the sixties. In terms of persons, this formation basically fits, according to my calculations, into the age of people from 1918 (G. Pomerants) to 1935 (S. Rassadin, who gave the name of the phenomenon in his 1960 article) years of birth. These are those who by the mid-50s were already someone who had a status (literary or scientific) and a public reputation (although the very problem of such a reputation in the absence of a public life is quite complicated), that is, there was a name.

In some cases, the name replaced the front-line or camp experience - this was a feature of the era. Those who did not yet have a significant status or name by that moment, but were already at the start and in the coming years received both, were also recruited into this formation. The formation also included people far from art, with an economic, “philosophical” (which, when it comes to the Soviet era in general, and Stalin’s, it is especially difficult to write without quotes) or historical education, party or Komsomol workers, including party journalists (Len Karpinsky, Yegor Yakovlev). It included directors, screenwriters, and writers, including such “pure” lyricists as B. Akhmadullina and N. Matveeva, the revival of lyrics was one of the results and will take a “thaw”. Two most important, it seems to us, personal properties paved the way for this person in the sixties: one is biological, the second is ideological.

The first is the activity of nature, which is given by biology, the desire to act. In a book about the literary era of the 30s, I wrote in ancient times, using the example of one literary biography, that active people have a bad time in a bad time - they do not manage to sit it out. People with a thirst for action were brought to the surface of the then so-called social life, and nothing good was expected there: it was impossible to become positive figures in this “bad” frame. And they, including talented people, became Soviet functionaries with all the ensuing consequences. Passive ones could somehow sit out the bad time and not get dirty. During the years of the “thaw”, the situation became different, but the psychological conflict itself must be kept in mind here as well.

The second, ideological quality is the attraction to that great - not low, but great temptation in the full sense of the word, the essence of which is expressed by Pasternak: “To want, unlike the dude / In his short existence, / To work together with everyone / And at the same time with the rule of law.”“Together with the rule of law” is not always part of the temptation. To want “to work together with everyone” is, in general, natural for a person. But some eras favor this, others do not leave such an opportunity. And it is worthy of regret that, in the Soviet era, tragedies were obtained from this at best. The 1960s were exactly the kind of work they wanted. Their actions, firstly, are aimed at the interests of the whole society, the country, and secondly, they must be carried out in a team, collectively, “together”.

They were not individualists by nature. Where could one find the conditions for such work? Only in the party - the one that was the only and ruling one. In the underground, as you know, there was no possibility of action "with everyone in common", only in a very narrow group. But “together with everyone”, as it soon became clear, did not work out in the party, which many sixties joined (those who did not join at the front) in order to correct it from the inside. It was not possible to correct, but then this membership became a brake on the liberation of one's own thought. I have seen this in the most striking examples, in the life paths of the remarkable scientists I am closely acquainted with, and, alas, it is impossible to convince me that this circumstance - membership or non-membership - was generally irrelevant. The explanation of the world involuntarily adapted to its position - after all, a person knew to himself that he was a decent person! More decent, more self-sacrificing, more disinterested than the multitude of non-Party people! In the second half of the 50s, the outlines of a certain layer began to become clearer - it began to form. We emphasize that these were not later parties, it was a layer united not only by a common style, aesthetics, speech, but also by common values and goals. They could be reflected aloud, but they could also be implied by themselves.

Disagreement with the generally accepted in this rapidly formed environment would sound like a sharp dissonance - and this was also a formative feature. 2. Features of the biography. "Thaw". Khrushchev's report. Faith, hope and struggle. Values. They had one more common biographical feature - for all of them, as has been said more than once by different people, the 20th Congress and Khrushchev's report were the boundary of their biography. In the biographies of many of them there was something else in common - the report touched on them personally, the names and fates of their loved ones; these were the children of those who had been shot or served time in the camps and were returning from there by the time of the report, but without much publicity, moreover, they were often people from the party nomenclature (parents of B. Okudzhava, V. Aksenov, L. Karpinsky).

And it was precisely this - martyrdom or long-term camp survival, recognized in the report as unfair and, as it were, atoning for the personal participation of these people in the destruction of the country (in the destruction of its peasantry, its educated stratum, etc.) - this was the most important ideologeme. It was she who kept their children near the values of their fathers - "commissars in dusty helmets." Looking ahead, we note that at the end of perestroika and especially in the post-Soviet period, this played against them with such force, knocking out the sixties from the layer of active actors by reducing their public authority. In addition to hooligan journalistic attacks, they themselves contributed to this to some extent, content with a chaotic, emotional, largely infantile perception of the events of perestroika, rather thoughtlessly picking up MS Gorbachev’s slogan: “More socialism!”.

They never rose to the level of a public explication of their complex path - and by this they increased the distrust of the young in their stratum, in many ways strengthened its unjustified depreciation. Let's go back to the mid-50s. This generation could not live and function without the idea of an ideal. Yevtushenko at that time writes: “... But in our just cause / we have not lost faith” (“On the Road”, 1955). Faith was their foundation for a while - faith in something. Many people get along just fine without it - as B. Eichenbaum wrote in his diary that many people get along just fine without self-respect (remarkably said) - also many get along just fine without faith. For those who cannot do without it, it was harder for them, because they could not imagine any other faith, except for the faith of the fathers, in those years. Faith was naturally followed by hope. The time of the “thaw”, the time of the sixties, is the time of hope. Literature seemed to repeat the joyous, optimistic, youthful impulse that once swept in short waves through the poetry of the 1920s and early 1930s:

“Everything is good in the world,
What's the matter - you won't understand right away,
And just the summer rain has passed,
Normal summer rain.
(G. Shpalikov, early 60s, song for the film).

The Sixties were united by common values. These values of the emerging stratum, firstly, coincided with those proclaimed by the early communists. It was their values betrayed by Stalin that were supposed to be presented anew in their original form, freed from the false sound given to them in Stalin's time, giving them the former, temporarily lost incendiary: “What passion should we put, raising ourselves and others, into the words “communism”, “ Soviet power”, “revolution”, “First of May!”.<…>

Comrades, it is necessary to return to words their original sound! (E. Yevtushenko, “Celebrate the First of May!”, 1955).

They considered their task to raise from the earth, to return to use revolutionary, communist values, defiled - in particular, by the “struggle against cosmopolitans” - but imperishable: ...

Let the "International" thunder,
when forever buried
the last anti-Semite on earth."
(E. Yevtushenko, "Babi Yar", 1961).

The idea of the imperishability of revolutionary values was carried by some of the sixties through decades and even through the years of perestroika. At the end of February 1988, the head of APN Falin, in the absence of the editor of Moskovskiye Novosti, E. Yakovlev, threw out from the layout of the finished issue an article (already translated for foreign versions of the newspaper) about Doctor Zhivago (which began in January of the same year by printing in Novy world"). Appearing at the editorial office, Yegor Yakovlev studied the article, trying to keep it in the issue, and calling the editor of the department, asked her a question, deep in her work with E. Yakovlev for many years, which struck: “What is it, your author is against the October Revolution?”. Secondly, these values coincided with the theses of Khrushchev's report and the decisions of two congresses: the 20th - on the recognition of Stalin as having changed Lenin's ideas, and the 22nd - on the removal of Stalin's body from the mausoleum. Soon, in addition to faith and hope, the motive of struggle, necessary for the self-consciousness of this layer, appeared. It became clear that there would be a struggle for these decisions - with those who (still secretly) disagree with them:

“And the coffin was smoking a little.
The breath from the coffin flowed
When they took him out of the doors of the mausoleum.
... And I appeal to our government with a request:
double, triple the guard at this wall,
so that Stalin does not get up and with Stalin - the past.
(E. Yevtushenko, "Stalin's Heirs", 1962).

I just re-read these lines, which we actually laughed at for their tongue-tied tongue in those years, and I saw that now it’s time to reprint it - about the request to the government to “double-triple the guard at this wall so that Stalin does not get up and with Stalin - past". Mr. Petukhov, who has now replaced Yu.A. Levada at the All-Russian Public Opinion Opinion Center, tells us bravely from the newspaper pages that, according to the latest sociological surveys from the generation from 18 to 34 years old, 46% consider Stalin a positive figure. The most important thing is how he presents it wonderfully, in what form: “... Among the youth, calm, sober assessments of Stalin prevail, primarily as a historical figure. They are equally not close to both his demonization as the main villain of all times and peoples ... and the unbridled apologetics that was characteristic of Soviet times. Thank you, reassured. They don’t sing, which means that today’s young men “about Stalin, the wise, dear and beloved,” thanks for that. Apparently, Mr. Petukhov no longer realizes that it is precisely on a sober head that Stalin cannot be called anything other than a villain, and one can only see “demonization” in this only when he is drunk. But let us return to the era of the “thaw”. The so-called national awakening of the beginning and especially the middle of the 60s (the magazines Our Contemporary and partly The Young Guard) was undoubtedly connected precisely with it, with the fact that society thawed and thoughts awakened. But the people who have designated this particular ideological trend, in no way enter, contrary to the opinion expressed by I. Vinogradov, into the formation of the sixties. On the contrary, they soon became their opponents, and later, during the years of perestroika, and even more so in the post-Soviet era, direct enemies. Those and others could coincide in age and biographies, but their paths diverged ideologically - first in relation to the above-mentioned values (these people no longer accepted them), then - in relation to Stalin. Those concerned about national revival, on the contrary, accepted it and managed to pass the baton to today. That is why the phenomenon of the "Sixties" is senseless to expand in this direction. Loyalty to these clearly defined returnable values was the spirit of the time, imprinted in poetry. In August 1956, Novy Mir published a poem by Olga Berggolts (who became the widow of the executed, then went to prison and lost her newborn child from beatings) the poem “That Year” (with the date “1955”), in a collection under the general heading , emphasizing the boundary of time, the moment of the final exit of the texts from the handwritten state to the printed one - "Poems from diaries" (1938-1956):

“... In that year, when from the bottom of the seas, canals
suddenly friends began to return.
Why hide - they returned a little.
Seventeen years is always seventeen years.
But those that came back went first,
to get your old membership card."

However, already in the mid-1950s (even before Khrushchev's report!) - and also in verse - a certain distance appeared from those who were treated with unquestioned respect, but - still unconsciously - as some kind of completed past. Their values have not yet been replaced by anything. But already put under an invisible question mark:

“... We believed in the commune with all the flour,
Because it is impossible without it.
... They didn’t make lighters for the market,
they didn’t carry bags on the roofs ... "
(E. Yevtushenko, “Communists”, 1955, published at the beginning of 1956).

Changes in the air of the era (Lyudmila Mikhailovna Alekseeva quite rightly said about this) began before 1956. It can be said that in the very first days after Stalin's death, especially - after the April report about the falsification of the "doctors' case" - they sharply intensified after the announcement of Beria's arrest. When in the Communist auditorium in March 1956 they gathered (in several portions) the “party and Komsomol activists” of the philological faculty to listen to Khrushchev’s report, and the then secretary of the faculty’s party committee, the one-legged front-line soldier Volkov, announced that an important document of the Central Committee of the CPSU would now be read, adding with meaning - “discussion not subject to”, then throughout the huge, amphitheater-like auditorium (now again - Theological, but flat - the amphitheater is boorishly destroyed, without any right to do so) a distinct noise swept, a disgruntled student rumble - “oooo!” - which, before the death of Stalin, although I had not yet studied at the university, I can confidently say - of course, could not be. The youth audience was already offended by the words of the party secretary and expressed this offendedness - this is an objective sign of changes in the social atmosphere. As for how the report was perceived, the example of L.M. Alekseeva with her seemingly stupid and not promising fellow provincial is very true - it suddenly turned out that this was not an innovation for him. Yes, the provincials were ready for this. And once again I can give a biographical example. For me, a Muscovite, it was truly a turning point. I always tell my students that I entered this classroom in my 2nd year as one person, and after more than three hours I left with another. And for my classmate and future husband Alexander Pavlovich Chudakov, this was not a turning point, because he came from the Kokchetav region in Siberia, at school he was taught by associate professors of Leningrad universities exiled there (therefore, three classmates who were medalists, having arrived in Moscow from a Siberian town with a population, entered the university with its huge competition and other Moscow universities from the first call, without any blasphemy), the camps were not too far away, and collective farmers swollen with hunger asked the townspeople for alms. War

The Great Patriotic War had a huge impact on the worldview of the sixties. In 1941, the older part of the generation was 16 years old - and many volunteered for the front. Most of them, in particular, almost the entire Moscow militia, died in the same year. But for those who survived, the war became the main experience in life. A collision with life and death, with a mass of real people and the real life of the country, not camouflaged by propaganda, required the formation of one's own opinion. In addition, the atmosphere on the front line, in a situation of real danger, was incomparably freer than in civilian life. Finally, the existential front-line experience forced a generally different attitude to social conventions. Former tenth-graders and first-year students returned from the front as completely different, critical and self-confident people.

XX congress

Contrary to the mass expectations of the intelligentsia that liberalization and humanization of the system would come after the war, the Stalinist regime became even tougher and more uncompromising. A wave of obscurantism in the spirit of the Middle Ages swept across the country: the fight against "formalism", cybernetics, genetics, killer doctors, cosmopolitanism, etc. Anti-Western propaganda intensified. In the meantime, most of the sixties front-line soldiers returned to the student benches, strongly influencing their younger comrades. The decisive events in the life of a generation were Stalin's death and N. S. Khrushchev's report at the 20th Congress of the CPSU (1956), which exposed Stalin's crimes. For most of the “sixties” the 20th Congress was a catharsis that resolved a long-term ideological crisis that reconciled them with the life of the country. The liberalization of public life that followed the 20th Congress, known as the era of the "thaw", became the context for the vigorous activity of the "sixties". The Sixties actively supported the “return to Leninist norms”, hence the apology of V. Lenin (poems by A. Voznesensky and E. Yevtushenko, plays by M. Shatrov, prose by E. Yakovlev) as an opponent of Stalin and the romanticization of the Civil War (B. Okudzhava, Yu. Trifonov , A. Mitta). The Sixties are staunch internationalists and supporters of a world without borders. It is no coincidence that revolutionaries in politics and art were cult figures for the sixties - V. Mayakovsky, Vs. Meyerhold, B. Brecht, E. Che Guevara, F. Castro, as well as writers E. Hemingway and E. M. Remarque.

Prose

First of all, these were honest, "trench" works about the war, mostly by young authors - the so-called "lieutenant prose": "In the trenches of Stalingrad" by Viktor Nekrasov, "Span of the earth" by Grigory Baklanov, "Battalions ask for fire" by Yuri Bondarev, " The dead don't hurt" Vasily Bykov and others.

But, obviously, the main event was the publication in 1962 of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's story "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" - the first work about Stalin's camps. This publication was almost as critical and cathartic as the 20th Congress itself. The organizers of the readings "at Mayak" were future dissidents Vladimir Bukovsky, Yuri Galanskov and Eduard Kuznetsov.

But the tradition of oral poetry did not end there. It was continued by evenings at the Polytechnic Museum. Mostly young poets also performed there: Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Andrey Voznesensky, Bella Akhmadulina, Robert Rozhdestvensky, Bulat Okudzhava.

Author's song

Filming from the famous readings at the Polytech was included in one of the main "sixties" films - "Ilyich's Outpost" by Marlen Khutsiev, and the listed poets became incredibly popular for several years. Later, the love of the public passed to the poets of a new genre, generated by the culture of the "sixties": the author's song. His father was Bulat Okudzhava, who began to perform songs of his own composition with the guitar in the late 50s. Other authors soon appeared - Alexander Galich, Julius Kim, Novella Matveeva, Yuri Vizbor, who became classics of the genre. Audio-samizdat appeared, spreading the voices of bards throughout the country - radio, television and recording were then closed to them.

"Physicists" and "lyricists"

The "sixties" consisted of two interconnected, but different subcultures, jokingly called "physicists" and "lyricists" - representatives of the scientific, technical and humanitarian intelligentsia. In particular, A. Einstein and L. Landau were cult figures whose photos decorated the apartments of people far from physics. Naturally, the "physicists" showed themselves less in art, but the worldview system that arose among them was no less (or maybe more) important in Soviet culture of the 60s and 70s. The romanticization of scientific knowledge and scientific and technological progress inherent in the culture of "physicists" had a huge impact on the development of science and the entire Soviet life. In art, the views of "physicists" were not often manifested - the most striking example is the prose of the Strugatsky brothers. "Physicists" (although their personal views could be quite independent) were much more beloved by the state than "lyricists" - because the defense industry needed them. This is reflected in the well-known line of Slutsky: "Something of physics is held in high esteem, something of lyrics is in the pen." Apparently, this is partly due to the fact that by the 70s the aesthetics of the "physicists" was perceived by the Soviet officialdom - the "science fiction" style became the architectural and design norm of the late USSR.

hikers

In the late 60s, when public life in the country was strangled, a new subculture arose among the "physicists" - hikers. It was based on the romanticization of the taiga (northern, alpine) life of geologists and other field workers. The simplicity, rudeness and freedom of their life were the antithesis of the boring nonsense of the "correct" existence of the urban intellectual. The expression of these sentiments was the film by Kira Muratova "Short Meetings" (1967) with Vladimir Vysotsky in the title role. Millions of intellectuals began to spend their holidays on long hikes, windbreakers became common intellectual clothing, the central practice of this subculture was collective singing by the fire with a guitar - as a result, the author's song turned into a mass genre. The personification and favorite author of this subculture was the bard Yuri Vizbor. However, its heyday did not fall on the "sixties", but on the next generation.

Cinema and theater

In the cinema, the "sixties" proved to be exceptionally bright, despite the fact that this art form was tightly controlled by the authorities. The most famous films that expressed the mood after the 20th Congress were The Cranes Are Flying by Mikhail Kalatozov, Zastava Ilyich by Marlen Khutsiev, I Walk Through Moscow by Georgy Danelia, Nine Days of One Year by Mikhail Romm, Welcome, or No Trespassing » Elema Klimov. At the same time, most of the actors of the "golden clip" of Soviet cinema - Evgeny Leonov, Innokenty Smoktunovsky, Oleg Tabakov, Evgeny Evstigneev, Yuri Nikulin, Leonid Bronevoy, Evgeny Lebedev, Mikhail Ulyanov, Zinovy Gerdt, Oleg Basilashvili, Alexei Smirnov, Valentin Gaft and many others , - were "sixties" both in age and in their way of thinking. But much more cinematographers of the "sixties" showed themselves in the 1970s - 1980s - mainly in the comedy genre, since only it was allowed to criticize the negative aspects of life, as a rule, at the everyday level. It was then that such typical "sixties" as Eldar Ryazanov, Georgy Daneliya, Mark Zakharov shot their best films. The most characteristic example of the "sixties" in the theater were Oleg Efremov's Sovremennik and Yury Lyubimov's Taganka.

Painting

In painting, the struggle against neoacademism intensified. The exhibition of young artists in the Manezh (1962) was subjected to devastating criticism from N. S. Khrushchev and other leaders of the country.

Stagnation

The removal of Khrushchev at first did not cause much concern, since the triumvirate that came to power - Podgorny, Kosygin and Brezhnev - looked respectable against the background of the not always balanced Khrushchev. However, liberalization was soon replaced by a tightening of the regime inside the country and an aggravation of the Cold War, which became a tragedy for the "sixties". The following events became symbolically gloomy for them. Firstly, the Sinyavsky-Daniel trial (1966) is a show trial of writers who were convicted not for anti-Soviet activities, but for their works. Secondly, the Six Day War and the subsequent rise of the Jewish national movement in the USSR, the struggle for exit; thirdly - the entry of Soviet troops into Czechoslovakia (1968) - the "sixties" were very sympathetic to the Prague Spring, seeing in it a logical continuation of the "thaw". And finally, the defeat of the "New World" (1970), which marked the establishment of a deaf "stagnation", the end of the possibility of legal self-expression. Many "sixties" took a direct part in the dissident movement - and the vast majority of them sympathized with him. At the same time, although the idol of the generation Alexander Solzhenitsyn gradually came to radically anti-Soviet views, most of the "sixties" still retained faith in socialism. As Okudzhava sang in the song "Sentimental March":

I will still fall on that one, on that one and only Civilian.
And the commissars in dusty helmets will bow silently over me.

Given that the intelligentsia of the next generation treated these ideals with indifference at best. This caused a palpable generational conflict - reinforced by philosophical and aesthetic differences. The “sixties” were not enthusiastic about the “avant-gardism” that the intelligentsia of the 70s lived in - jazz, conceptualism, postmodernism. In turn, the "avant-gardists" did not care much for the lyrics of Tvardovsky and the exposure of Stalinism - everything Soviet was obvious absurdity for them. In the 1970s, many leaders of the "sixties" were forced to emigrate (writers V. Aksyonov, V. Voinovich, A. Gladilin, A. Kuznetsov, A. Galich, G. Vladimov, A. Sinyavsky, N. Korzhavin; cinematographers E. Sevela, M.Kalik, A.Bogin, pop singers E.Gorovets, L.Mondrus, A.Vedishcheva and many others) etc. During the years of stagnation, Academician Andrei Sakharov became the main idol, almost an icon of the “sixties”, who refused the comfortable life of a scientist favored by the authorities for the sake of fighting for freedom of conscience. Sakharov, with his combination of purity, naivete, intellect and moral strength, really embodied all the ideals of the generation - and besides, he was both a "physicist" and a "lyricist."

Religion

By upbringing, the "sixties" for the most part were atheists or agnostics - and remained so for life. However, with the onset of "stagnation" in the absence of any social prospects, some of them turned to a religious search - mainly within the framework of Orthodoxy and Judaism. The most notable figures of the Orthodox revival in the “Sixties” environment were Archpriests Alexander Men and Gleb Yakunin, Metropolitan Anthony of Surozh, dissident Zoya Krakhmalnikova, and philologist Sergei Averintsev. As a rule, active figures of this movement were associated with the Catacomb Church.

perestroika

The "sixties" perceived perestroika with great enthusiasm - as a continuation of the "thaw", the resumption of their long-standing dialogue with Stalinism. They - after two decades of inactivity - suddenly again found themselves in great demand. One after another, their books about the Stalin era were published, producing the effect of an exploding bomb: “Children of the Arbat” by Anatoly Rybakov, “Black Stones” by Anatoly Zhigulin, “White Clothes” by Vladimir Dudintsev, “Bison” by Daniil Granin, etc. "(Egor Yakovlev, Yuri Karyakin, Yuri Chernichenko, Yuri Burtin, etc.) found themselves at the forefront of the struggle for the "renewal" and "democratization" of socialism (since this discourse fully corresponded to their views) - for which they were called "foremen of perestroika". True, it soon became clear that they were more ardent supporters of perestroika than its authors. It is debatable whether Mikhail Gorbachev and Alexander Yakovlev themselves can be called "sixties" (after all, more formed by the nomenklatura culture). One way or another, on the whole, perestroika was the finest hour of the generation. With the same enthusiasm, most of the "sixties" perceived the coming to power of Boris Yeltsin and the reforms of Yegor Gaidar. In 1993, many members of this generation signed the Letter of the 42, calling the legally elected parliament "fascists." With the collapse of communism, the public demand for the “sixties” also ended. The new social reality brought completely different concepts and questions, making the entire discourse on which the culture of the sixties was built irrelevant. And in the 90s, most of the famous "sixties" quietly died half-forgotten.

History of the term

The term "sixties" took root after the eponymous article of the critic Stanislav Rassadin was published in the journal Yunost in 1960. The author later criticized the spread of the word:

... the very concept of "sixties" is chatty, meaningless, and from the very beginning it had no generational meaning, being an approximate pseudonym of time. (I admit quite self-critically - as the author of the article "The Sixties", published just a few days before the onset of the 60s themselves, in December 1960.)

In other Soviet republics and countries of the socialist camp, the "sixties" call their generational subcultures, partly close to Russian (see, for example, the Ukrainian Wikipedia article). At the same time, a number of foreign representatives of the "generation of the 60s", the era of hippies, The Beatles, rock and roll, psychedelics, the sexual revolution, the "new left", the "civil rights movement" of the student unrest of 1968 are often called "sixties". year (see the English Wikipedia article). This, of course, is a completely different historical phenomenon: for example, the Soviet sixties felt much more related to the beatniks who preceded the hippie generation. However, it is interesting that in completely different contexts, emotionally resonant phenomena with a common name arose. Some representatives of the generation over time began to treat the term ironically. So, Andrey Bitov writes: “... I am a member of the sixties only because I am over sixty; my first children were born in the sixties, and Leningrad is on the sixtieth parallel.” And Vasily Aksyonov in the story "Three Overcoats and a Nose" generally calls himself a "Pentecostal". Over time, the term has acquired a negative connotation. For example, Dmitry Bykov, speaking about a new newspaper project on the pages of the New Look publication, noted:

It could be expected that in place of the boring Obshchaya Gazeta, which expressed the position of the completely confused (or even lying) Progressives of the sixties, a polished analytical publication would appear ... but who could have imagined that the publication would turn out to be even more boring?

Marietta Chudakova: The Historical Fates of the Sixties

After Khrushchev, the “thaw” and the Sinyavsky-Daniel process.

In the new period, some of the sixties became signatories, some did not: they tried to preserve the possibility of real action. It is worth considering the biographical fact that at first it was not so easy to deal with them: either because they remained a nomenklatura - “by origin” (executed and posthumously rehabilitated parents - old party members) or according to their own track record - among them were city committee workers and district committees, staff correspondents of party publications; or, at worst, according to their personal front-line past that has not yet disappeared from public memory (B. Balter). Therefore, some of them were still transferred from one place to another for some time. (Later, in the 1970s, these trains were sharply cut off.) L. Karpinsky was, however, fired in 1967 - he spoke out against censorship. Y. Karyakin was expelled from the party in 1968 for speaking at the evening in memory of Andrey Platonov at the Central House of Writers and publicly mentioning Solzhenitsyn and Brodsky - and stayed in its ranks only by the personal decision of the Head of the Party Control Committee in Poland. During these years they were still trying to extend and develop the ideas of the “thaw”. But there was already a new self-awareness, new fears:

“... Of course, we are not in Paris,
But in the tundra we are valued more.”
……………………………………………….
But if the climate changes,
then suddenly our branches will not accept
other outlines - free?
After all, we are used to it - in freaks.
And it torments us and torments us,
and the cold hooks and hooks us"
(E. Evtushenko, “Dwarf birches”, 1966)

The appearance of samizdat and dissidence changed a lot. the sixties - already on a purely individual basis - joined the signatories, and then - the human rights activists.

Seventies, or after Prague

“Three qualities are not given in one set - intelligence, party spirit and decency” - this is an aphorism of the early 70s, this is already after Prague. At this time, there was no longer a single exception, not a single one who joined these ranks - and did not fit this rule. In the 1970s, not a single really thinking person joined the party at the behest of conscience, out of a desire to “work together with everyone”, with the hope of changing something in society - they joined only out of careerism or stupidity. Now you will not find these dates of entry in any of the current liberals in the announced biographies. But it was a completely different generation. The generation of the sixties at that time was expelled from the party - front-line soldier B. Okudzhava was expelled from the party in 1972, L. Karpinsky - in 1975. The “thaw” was long over, the line was drawn by the invasion of Prague, but cultural inertia was built up and continued to operate. And it was possible - up to the beginning of the 80s - to suddenly encounter a certain phenomenon of resistance on any specific issue, behind which the outlines of the generation of the sixties clearly stood up.

Perestroika and after August

The appearance of Gorbachev revived hopes. For many, a second “thaw” wafted through. This is where a historical trap lay in wait - seizing on a false analogy, completely content with it (“Strike the iron while Gorbachev!”), they did not feel the wind of a new historical period. And so - everything was in suit: both the slogan “More socialism!”, and Gorbachev’s confidential message that he reads Lenin every day and will never refuse the choice made by his grandfather in favor of collective farms, and - the long-awaited work in the team. “The foremen of perestroika” (the new name of the former sixties) said about themselves - “We are in Gorbachev's team”. It seemed that what Khrushchev had not completed would finally be completed, and socialism would acquire a human face. From the ideological boundaries they once set for themselves (no further than Lenin and October; they continued to think that the very idea of justice was important, etc.), they could not break out after Gorbachev and stood in opposition to Yeltsin, which, in my opinion, was so destructive for countries (I have spoken to Yuri Nikolayevich Afanasiev, for example, more than once). And some - because he went too far, others - because he does not want to go too far. Why such difference? But because it was based on the same motive, apparently hidden from them. But this is a different story. The line between Lenin and Stalin that Khrushchev had not crossed was not taken even later. At the same time, they all seemed to be born in the 85th year. I looked at the sites of the current sixties, only on the site of Lyudmila Mikhailovna it is clearly stated: she joined the party in 52. Yu.N. Afanasiev, whom I have a good relationship with and saw him ahead of all his institutional environment in liberalism back in 1984, quite ready for the new time, his biography also begins in the 80s. I wanted to find out before our Round Table where and when he was the secretary of the Komsomol, but this is not on any site. And the point, of course, is not that I did not satisfy my curiosity, but that by the end of the 80s - the beginning of the 90s, this suppression of the stages of my biography, including the spiritual one, played a very sad role, undermining the trust in a huge and important layer in our life. It is important, if only because this layer had and, I would like to believe, still have close and understandable ideas about honor, public reputation, love for the country as love for a free country. Yes - the idea of the need for a public reputation, that you must be an honest person, not take bribes, your reputation must be spotless - the very thing that now many can only cause laughter. Public reputation - what?! It's just funny, that's all. So what, in fact, crushed the sixties in the social sense in subsequent years? In particular, the washing out of the above concepts as universally significant values from public life. Then they began to push forward, you all remember this well, the concept of private life as prevailing over the public impulse. Yes, this impulse in Soviet times, among other things, sometimes forced us, as we also remember, to save an old tractor, risking our lives - and we especially remember how it was officially encouraged: “the public is higher than the personal.” But in the post-Soviet period, any asceticism was put under the sign of denial. Such a total change in ethical values, supported by quite liberal publicists, was, I am sure, a profound mistake. Of course, it was necessary to insist on the value of private life and, in general, “separately taken” human life, which in our country still has no price, to argue that it is not necessary to give it to the state for such a reason, not to rush to save the tractor at the cost of one’s own life, and other. But without asceticism, without thought about society, without the idea of patriotism, too little will come of it. And the second thing that depreciated this layer was the pressure of the biography. A biography in its entirety, including those who became “good”, “honest communists” after the 20th Congress of the dead parents, that gave their children the opportunity to act for some time, when they were expelled from somewhere - still remain in clip, the nomenklatura of the Central Committee - now spoke against them. Because it was seen as crookedness: "Wait - you yourself were in these party, nomenklatura posts!" And they never told clearly, did not explain that there was no shame in this, on the contrary, there was a height in the complex spiritual path they had traveled. They never told, as they say, how it really happened. But still, the best that they had remains. Today, we can continue to base ourselves on this - at least on what was not completed even with regard to explaining to society the role of Stalin. The “dry residue” of their values is best squeezed out in a poem by Bulat Okudzhava (dedicated to L. Karpinsky), with which I will end.

The sixties should debunk the mustachioed
and they do not need special orders for this:
they themselves are like war horses
and beat with hooves while still alive.
Well, who else can expect success in that fight?
No wonder the bloody marks are visible on them all.
They sipped these troubles firsthand.
Everything loomed over them - from expulsion to the tower.
Fate orders the sixties to fulfill this duty,
and this is their purpose, special meaning and sense.
Well, the clerks, in love with the despot,
let them snap - that's their job.
The sixties do not think that life burned in vain:
they put in their homeland, in short.
She, of course, will forget about them in the bustle,
but she is alone. There won't be another one.

This is such, I would say, an epigraph to them.

Above: Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Andrei Voznesensky, Bella Akhmadulina. Below: Bulat Okudzhava, Robert Rozhdestvensky. Photo from the site my.mail.ru

We're few. There may be four of us.
We rush - and you are a deity!
And yet we are the majority.

A.A. Voznesensky, "B. Akhmadulina"
Broken branches and sky smoke
warned us, arrogant ignoramuses,
that complete optimism is ignorance,
that without high hopes - more reliable for hopes.
E.A. Yevtushenko

The term "sixties" belongs to a literary critic Stanislav Rassadin, who published an article of the same name in the journal "Youth" in December 1960. the sixties in a broad sense, they call the stratum of the Soviet intelligentsia, which was formed during the Khrushchev "thaw", after the XX Congress of the CPSU, which determined the new, more liberal compared to the Stalin period, the policy of the Soviet state, including in relation to cultural figures. At the same time, it should be noted that, despite cultural liberalism and broadmindedness, most of the sixties remained true to the ideas of communism: the excesses of the 30s seemed to them a distortion of communist ideals, the arbitrariness of the authorities.

In the formation of the ideology of the sixties played a huge role literary magazines. In particular, the magazine "Youth", which published the works of novice authors, discovered new names in literature. The most popular was magazine "New World", which was, without exaggeration, a cult publication of the Soviet intelligentsia, especially in those days when it was headed by A.T. Tvardovsky. The works of the authors of "lieutenant's prose" were published here: Viktor Nekrasov, Yuri Bondarev, Grigory Baklanov, Vasil Bykov. A special event was the publication of the story "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich". At the same time, there is a flourishing Soviet science fiction associated with the names of the Strugatsky brothers, Ivan Efremov, Evgeny Veltistov and others.

Yevgeny Yevtushenko at the Polytechnic Museum. Frame from the film "Zastava Ilyich" (directed by Marlen Khutsiev)

However, a special place in the culture of the sixties took poetry . For the first time after the Silver Age, an era of unprecedented popularity of poetry has come: in the literal sense, poetry has become a large-scale social phenomenon. The poets of the sixties gathered audiences of many thousands (poetry evenings at the Polytechnic Museum in Moscow and at the monument to Mayakovsky on the current Triumphal Square were especially remembered), their lyric collections were instantly sold out, and the authors themselves for many years became not only the rulers of souls and minds, but also a kind of symbol creative upsurge, free-thinking, social change. At the forefront of poetry in the 1960s were

Robert Ivanovich Rozhdestvensky(1932-1994), one of the most powerful, energetic Russian poets, author of more than 30 lyric collections, translator, TV presenter; many poems by R.I. Rozhdestvensky set to music ("Moments", "Song of a distant Motherland / Somewhere far away", "Nocturne", "Call me, call ...", "Echo of love", "Love has come", "My Motherland / I , you, he, she - together the whole country...", "Gravity of the Earth", etc.);
Evgeny Alexandrovich Evtushenko(1932-2017), poet, publicist, actor, public figure; author of more than 60 lyrical collections, poems "Bratskaya HPP", "Babi Yar", "Under the skin of the Statue of Liberty", "Dove in Santiago", "Thirteen", "Full growth", novels "Berry Places" and "Don't Die Before of death"; some of the poet's poems became songs ("Do the Russians want wars?", "But it's snowing ...", "That's what's happening to me ...", "We are chatting in crowded trams ...", etc.).
Andrei Andreevich Voznesensky(1933-2010), an avant-garde poet who wrote both syllabo-tonic verses, traditional for Russian poetry, and free verse, and verses in the spirit of futuristic "abstruse" poetry, and verses in prose; author of more than 40 lyrical collections and poems "Masters" (about the builders of St. Basil's Cathedral), "Longjumeau" (about Lenin), "Oz" (about love in the age of robotics), "Avos" (a poem about the Russian diplomat and traveler Nikolai Rezanov the basis of the famous rock opera "Juno and Avos") and others.
Bella Akhatovna Akhmadulina(1937-2010), poetess whose name is associated with the highest achievements of poetry in the 20th century; Joseph Brodsky called Akhmadulina "the undoubted heiress of the Lermontov-Pasternak line in Russian poetry", the author of more than 30 lyric collections.

In addition to these authors, other bright poets belong to the generation of the sixties, for example, Gennady Shpalikov, Boris Chichibabin, Yunna Moritz. In the era of the 60s, such a giant of Russian poetry as was formed.

A separate phenomenon in the 1960s is represented by songwriters, or "bards". This category of poets included authors who performed their own poems to their own music - among them Bulat Okudzhava, Alexander Galich, Vladimir Vysotsky, Yuri Vizbor. This unique phenomenon is called.

Monuments to poets and writers of the second half of the 20th century, and even living ones, are rarely erected today. In Tver, on July 16 this year. A significant and, perhaps, unprecedented event took place: near the House of Poetry of Andrey Dementyev, a monument to a whole literary movement, the sixties poets, was solemnly opened. Outwardly impressive action took place with a sufficient confluence of the public; he was honored by the presence of the first persons of the city and the region, as well as metropolitan celebrities - I. Kobzon, E. Yevtushenko, V. Tereshkova, Yu. Polyakov, L. Rubalskaya and a number of others. And, of course, Zurab Tsereteli, the creator of this unique art object, shone at the opening ceremony.

The poets of the sixties are immortalized in the form of books, on the spines of which the following names are inscribed: Bella Akhmadulina, Andrei Voznesensky, Vladimir Vysotsky, Robert Rozhdestvensky, Evgeny Yevtushenko, Bulat Okudzhava and ... Andrei Dementiev. The books are enclosed in a square bronze frame, reminiscent of a library shelf, with some space left along the two edges. For what? Probably, so that later you can add someone or, conversely, remove them from an impromptu shelf. Or something even simpler: paint over one last name and write another instead. Sculptural thought is economical and wise...

As a literary critic and specialist in Russian literature of the 20th century, I am only interested in one circumstance: who determined the list of names imprinted on this “masterpiece”? I have nothing against the true sixties - Akhmadulina, Voznesensky, Rozhdestvensky, Yevtushenko, Okudzhava. They loudly declared themselves after the 20th Congress of the CPSU, which exposed the "cult of personality", and in their poems they embodied a special worldview, updated aesthetics, cultivated lyrical citizenship, and enhanced the effect of an accent word. Their values in many ways did not differ then from socialist ideals. For example, E. Yevtushenko clearly showed through the stereotypes of socialist realism, namely, the motive of sacrificial readiness to become “material” for a brighter future: “O those who are our generation! // We are just a step, not a threshold. // We are just an introduction to an introduction, // to a new prologue!” B. Okudzhava romanticized the death "on that one civilian" and "commissars in dusty helmets", and Voznesensky called: "Remove Lenin from the money! // he is for the heart and for the banners.

But how did Vladimir Vysotsky and Andrey Dementyev get into this cohort? This secret was revealed by the material of TIA (Tver News Agency) entitled “The monument to the poets of the sixties can attract lovers of literature and art to Tver”, published on the Internet on July 19 this year:

“A few years ago he [Dementyev] wrote a poem dedicated to his poet friends. There was this quatrain:

Their books are nearby -

Bella with Andrey and Robert,

Zhenya and sad Bulat...

The hour of their immortality has struck.

The poet read a poem to his friend, People's Artist of the USSR Zurab Tsereteli, and offered to create a monument. The eminent sculptor called back and set his own conditions: firstly, he decided to make it a gift, and secondly, he offered to add the names of Vladimir Vysotsky and Dementiev himself to the three-meter “bookshelf”, since he led the magazine “Youth”, where poets were published " .

Let's figure it out. Firstly, Vladimir Vysotsky is a very special page in the history of Russian poetry and art song. The problematics and style of his poems and songs are strikingly different from the poetry of the sixties, and his mature work generally falls on the 1970s ... This issue is very controversial; I am not familiar with any modern university textbook on Russian literature of this period, which would attribute Vysotsky to the sixties, and private amateurish opinions of a different kind will remain so.

Secondly, is the poetic movement of the sixties exhausted only by the above-named names? By no means, it is much wider: Y. Moritz, A. Galich, Y. Vizbor, Y. Kim, N. Matveeva, R. Kazakova, and maybe even I. Brodsky.

Thirdly, and most importantly, with all due respect to his work for the benefit of Russian poetry, Andrei Dementiev has no fundamental relation to the phenomenon of the sixties, except perhaps a purely chronological one. In 1955-1963 several of his subtle books were published in Tver (then Kalinin), and at that time he did not collect huge audiences in the Moscow Polytechnic Museum, and even more so at the capital's stadiums, and, alas, he was not the ruler of youth thoughts. Dementiev became the first deputy editor-in-chief of the Yunost magazine (in which Vysotsky, by the way, did not publish during his lifetime) in 1972, and the editor-in-chief in 1981. At the turn of the 1950s and 1960s, the former editors of Yunost, Valentin Kataev and Boris Polevoy, gave a magazine platform to the poets of the sixties. The very same sixties as a holistic artistic movement by the mid-1960s. ceased to exist, and its leaders took different creative paths.

And, nevertheless, what happened in Tver on July 16, 2016 with pomp worthy of better use and nightly fireworks at the expense of the city budget, will certainly go down in history as an example of tasteless bias and throwing PR dust into the eyes of the general public due to the unjustifiably overgrown the vanity of one man.

The term "sixties" was first used by Stanislav Rassadin in an article with the same title, which was published in December 1960 in the journal Yunost.

The Sixties are part of the intelligentsia that appeared during the period of the "thaw" that came after the 20th Congress of the CPSU, where Stalin's "personality cult" was debunked. At this time, the internal political course of the state was much more liberal and free compared to previous times, which could not but affect the cultural sphere of society.

Poetry of the sixties

Poetry played a key role in the culture of the society of that time. The hope for change caused a strong spiritual upsurge, which inspired the sixties to write their poems.

Poetry became not only popular, for the first time since the Silver Age, it became again one of the most important aspects of the social life of the country.

Crowds of thousands came to listen to the performances of poets, their collections instantly sold out from the shelves, and the writers themselves became a kind of expression of creative freedom.

Representatives

The most famous poets of that time were Robert Rozhdestvensky, Evgeny Yevtushenko, Andrey Voznesensky, Bella Akhmadulina.

Robert Ivanovich Rozhdestvensky (1932-1994) wrote thirty collections of poetry throughout his life. Many of his poems have been set to music. He also received recognition as a translator. Expressing ideas opposed to Soviet ideology, he was persecuted and forced to move to Kyrgyzstan, where he began to earn money by translating poems, the authors of which were from the southern republics.

Yevgeny Alexandrovich Yevtushenko (1932-2017) wrote more than sixty collections. The greatest success of this author was the poem "Bratskaya HPP", in the lines of which an expression appeared that received the status of a motto: "A poet in Russia is more than a poet." He also acted in films and on stage. After the collapse of the USSR, he moved with his whole family to the United States.

Andrei Andreevich Voznesensky (1933-2010) was an avant-garde poet who could write in all styles, from traditional to the most progressive. He wrote over forty lyric collections and poems. The text of the well-known song "A Million Scarlet Roses" belongs to him.

Bella Akhatovna Akhmadulina (1937-2010) - wrote more than thirty collections.

Songwriters, or as they were called "bards", became a special phenomenon in the "thaw", and the genre began to be called "author's song". These included those poets who performed their own works to music. The key personalities in this movement were Bulat Okudzhava, Vladimir Vysotsky, Alexander Galich, Yuri Vizbor.

Features of creativity

The poems of the sixties stood out for their spontaneity and responsiveness. Ideology had minimal influence on topics and their disclosure. The people instantly fell in love with their poems, as they were honest: something that at that time was very lacking.

Main theme

People were greatly hurt by the fact that the ideal image of the state and its leaders was violated due to the announcement by Nikita Khrushchev of the "crime of the cult of personality" at the 20th Congress of the CPSU and the publicity of Stalin's repressions. But at the same time, they rejoiced at the rehabilitation and release of many victims of unjust sentences. The poets expressed not only the disappointment and confusion experienced by every citizen of the USSR, but also the great joy of the people, who admitted their mistakes and returned to the true path to communism. As contemporaries of that period say, there was a taste of freedom and upcoming changes in the air that would bring the country to equality, freedom and brotherhood.

The younger generation of the intelligentsia was infected with this idea. The desire for freedom, delight, youthful maximalism, ideas about ideals, faith in a beautiful future found their place in their poems, which resonated with the desire of readers.

Sixties as a cultural phenomenon

The poems of the 1960s became a kind of fresh air in the country. Awareness of Stalin's repressions, moral feelings, the desire for freedom, the desire for change - all these are the reasons why poetry has become an outlet.

The Sixties did not abandon the ideas of communism, they kept a deep faith in the ideals of the October Revolution. Therefore, symbols of that time so often appeared in their poems: the red banner, speeches, Budyonovka, the cavalry army, lines of revolutionary songs.

The poets who became famous in those decades did not stop writing and published their works until their very death or are still releasing them.

Plan
Introduction
1 1930s
2 War
3 XX congress
4 Prose
5 Poetry
6 Art song
7 "Physicists" and "lyricists"
8 Hikers
9 Film and theater
10 Painting
11 Stagnation
12 Religion
13 Perestroika
14 History of the term
15 Representatives
Bibliography

Introduction

The Sixties is a subculture of the Soviet intelligentsia, which mainly captured the generation born approximately between 1925 and 1945. The historical context that shaped the views of the "sixties" were the years of Stalinism, the Great Patriotic War and the era of the "thaw".

Most of the "sixties" came from the intelligentsia or the party milieu that had formed in the 1920s. Their parents, as a rule, were staunch Bolsheviks, often participants in the Civil War. Belief in communist ideals was self-evident for the majority of the "sixties"; their parents dedicated their lives to the struggle for these ideals.

However, even in childhood they had to go through a worldview crisis, since it was this environment that suffered the most from the so-called Stalinist “purges”. Some of the "sixties" parents were imprisoned or shot. Usually this did not cause a radical revision of views - however, it forced more reflection and led to hidden opposition to the regime.

3. XX Congress

However, they were disappointed. Contrary to the mass expectations of the intelligentsia that liberalization and humanization of the system would come after the war, the Stalinist regime became even tougher and more uncompromising. A wave of obscurantism in the spirit of the Middle Ages swept across the country: the fight against "formalism", cybernetics, genetics, killer doctors, cosmopolitanism, etc. Anti-Western propaganda intensified. In the meantime, most of the sixties front-line soldiers returned to the student benches, strongly influencing their younger comrades.

The decisive events in the life of a generation were the death of Stalin and the report of N. S. Khrushchev at the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU (1956), which exposed Stalin's crimes. For most of the “sixties” the 20th Congress was a catharsis that resolved a long-term ideological crisis that reconciled them with the life of the country. The liberalization of public life that followed the 20th Congress, known as the era of the "thaw", became the context for the vigorous activity of the "sixties".

The sixties actively supported the “return to Leninist norms”, hence the apology of V. Lenin (poems by A. Voznesensky and E. Yevtushenko, plays by M. Shatrov, prose by E. Yakovlev) as an opponent of Stalin and the romanticization of the Civil War (B. Okudzhava, Yu. Trifonov , A. Mitta).

The Sixties are staunch internationalists and supporters of a world without borders. It is no coincidence that revolutionaries in politics and art were cult figures for the sixties - V. Mayakovsky, Vs. Meyerhold, B. Brecht, E. Che Guevara, F. Castro, as well as writers E. Hemingway and E. M. Remarque.

The "sixties" expressed themselves most noticeably in literature. A huge role in this was played by the Novy Mir magazine, which was edited by Alexander Tvardovsky from 1958 to 1970. The magazine, staunchly professing liberal views, became the main mouthpiece of the "sixties" and was incredibly popular among them. It is difficult to name a printed publication that had a comparable influence on the minds of any generation. Tvardovsky, using his authority, consistently published literature and criticism, free from socialist realist attitudes. First of all, these were honest, "trench" works about the war, mostly by young authors - the so-called "lieutenant prose": "In the trenches of Stalingrad" by Viktor Nekrasov, "Span of the earth" by Grigory Baklanov, "Battalions ask for fire" by Yuri Bondarev, " The dead don't hurt” by Vasil Bykov and others. The publication of I. Ehrenburg's memoirs was of great educational value. But, obviously, the main event was the publication in 1962 of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's story "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" - the first work about Stalin's camps. This publication was almost as critical and cathartic as the 20th Congress itself.

Kataev's "Youth" was very popular among young people.

On the other hand, modernist poetry began to play an important role among the "sixties". For the first time in Russian history, poetry readings began to gather crowds of young people. As well-known human rights activist Lyudmila Alekseeva wrote:

Passion for poetry has become the banner of the times. People were ill with poetry then, neither before nor later in poetry and in general in literature were not particularly interested. All over Moscow, in institutions and offices, typewriters were loaded to the limit: everyone who could retype for himself and for friends - poems, poems, poems ... A youth environment was created, the password of which was knowledge of the poems of Pasternak, Mandelstam, Gumilyov. In 1958, a monument to Vladimir Mayakovsky was solemnly opened in Moscow. After the official opening ceremony, at which the planned poets performed, poetry began to be read by those who wished from the public, mostly young people. The participants of that memorable meeting began to gather at the monument, regularly, until readings were prohibited. The ban was in effect for a while, but then the readings resumed. Meetings at the monument to Mayakovsky during 1958-1961. increasingly political overtones. The last of these took place in the autumn of 1961, when several of the most active participants in the meetings were arrested on charges of anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda.

The organizers of the readings "at Mayak" were future dissidents Vladimir Bukovsky, Yuri Galanskov and Eduard Kuznetsov.

Later, the love of the public passed to the poets of a new genre, generated by the culture of the "sixties": the author's song. His father was Bulat Okudzhava, who began to perform his songs with a guitar in the late 50s - first at parties or just on the boulevard. His songs differed sharply from those broadcast on the radio - primarily in a personal, even private mood. In general, Okudzhava's songs are perhaps the most adequate expression of the attitude of the "sixties". Other authors soon appeared - Alexander Galich, Julius Kim, Novella Matveeva, Yuri Vizbor, who became classics of the genre. Audio samizdat appeared, spreading the voices of bards throughout the country - radio, television and recording were then closed to them.

7. "Physicists" and "lyricists"

"Physicists" (although their personal views could be quite independent) were much more beloved by the state than "lyricists" - because the defense industry needed them. This is reflected in the well-known line of Slutsky: "Something of physics is held in high esteem, something of lyrics is in the pen." Apparently, this is partly due to the fact that by the 70s the aesthetics of the "physicists" was perceived by the Soviet officialdom - the "science fiction" style became the architectural and design norm of the late USSR.

8. Hikers

In the late 60s, when public life in the country was strangled, a new subculture arose among the "physicists" - hikers. It was based on the romanticization of the taiga (northern, alpine) life of geologists and other field workers. The simplicity, rudeness and freedom of their life were the antithesis of the boring nonsense of the "correct" existence of the urban intellectual. In addition, the image of Siberia evoked associations with the culture of convicts, thieves' freedom, in general, the wrong side of official life. The expression of these sentiments was the film by Kira Muratova "Short Meetings" (1967) with Vladimir Vysotsky in the title role. Millions of intellectuals began to spend their holidays on long hikes, windbreakers became common intellectual clothing, the central practice of this subculture was collective singing by the fire with a guitar - as a result, the author's song turned into a mass genre. The personification and favorite author of this subculture was the bard Yuri Vizbor. However, its heyday did not fall on the "sixties", but on the next generation.