Good evening, dear friends. We continue the project “One Hundred Years - One Hundred Books”. And we have 1931, the year the novel “The Golden Calf” appeared.

This turned out to be interesting with the novel. Ilf and Petrov published it in the magazine “30 Days”, it became a hit, it was bound. But in the States it came out earlier than in Russia. "Golgen calf" appeared there almost immediately, and was instantly translated, as soon as its printing was completed in Russia, it became a bestseller there. Already in 1932, this book was one of the best-selling books in America, but in Russia it was not published as a separate book.

In order to somehow justify the refusal to publish the novel at the Federation Publishing House, Alexander Fadeev, then one of the leaders of RAPP, and later the General Secretary of the Union of Soviet Writers, when this Union was created in 1934, wrote to Ilf and Petrov: “Dear friends ! Although your Ostap Bender is a very charming character, he is a son of a bitch. And a son of a bitch as a main character in Soviet literature is unacceptable. Your novel needs serious reworking; in any case, now is not the time to publish it.” And although the novel about the son of a bitch managed to be published in a magazine and win popular love, this did not stop Fadeev. He was already afraid; there was a significant difference between 1931 and 1932.

But then suddenly a miracle happened. As stated in the novel, salvation came from the pink ottoman. Unexpectedly, Bubnov, the then People's Commissariat for Education, and later the head of the Academy of Sciences, and generally one of the most serious Soviet Marxists, decided to publish the book. And so it happened, in any case, it was believed that Stalin’s personal decision was behind this permission. Stalin really liked the novel.

It was known that Bulgakov, wanting to write a novel that Stalin would like, well, “The Master and Margarita,” he used entirely the patterns of Ilf and Petrov. And it is no coincidence that his Woland, Satan, looks like Bender, and Azazello, the red-haired one, looks like Balaganov, and Koroviev in a boater looks like Panikovsky, and of course, Kozlevich looks like Behemoth, because a cat and a goat are the two main attributes of Satan. Bulgakov, in general, unequivocally copied the morals and techniques of Ilf and Petrov, about which there is a detailed book by Maya Kaganskaya “Master Gumbs and Margarita.”

But the most interesting thing here is that the novel was successfully published, was circulated, and became the favorite book of Soviet children, I’m not afraid of this word, the bible of the Soviet intelligentsia, who immediately took it for quotes. Only in 1948, an attempt to republish these books caused a special resolution of the Central Committee, because there was a lot of political error in them. But 1948 is the year when Stalin already had progressive paranoia. But in 1932, and in 1931, when the novel was published for the first time, this was still quite acceptable literature.

As for the very necessity, the very reasons for the appearance of the novel “The Golden Calf,” it is known that after the lot cast by the co-authors, Ostap Bender was killed at the end of the first book, “12 Chairs.” I have developed many times already, I will not retell it in detail now, the idea that a picaresque novel always travesties the Gospel a little, always parodies it a little. In a sense, the Gospel, itself in the genre of high parody, was the first picaresque novel in world history. Christ also shows wonderful tricks all the time: he turns water into wine, walks on water, heals the blind and even raises the dead. And this is because a miracle, trickery, a joke are serious ways of softening morals. In a disintegrating world, the stiff-necked father's picaresque novel becomes a novel about a miracle. And such picaresque novels as Lazarillo of Tormes or Ehrenburg's Julio Jurenito contain obvious references to the Gospel. By the way, Babel also has them in “The History of Benny Krik,” and they also exist in Bender.

Bender is doomed to die in the first novel and be resurrected in the second. Bender is resurrected, this is another miracle of his, he has a fragile razor scar on his throat. And his miraculous resurrection is necessary precisely because into this world, into the world of the emerging Soviet power, someone must bring kindness, irony, and the fight against unafraid idiots. Bender, by and large, is the only character who brings any kind of humanism into the world of socialism under construction. Because this world is a world of desert, a world of construction of the shaitan-arba of the Turkestan railway, a world of motor rally, a world where Zosya Sinitskaya, for example, is no longer capable of love, and can only love a simple, kind, primitive student, and can no longer understand Ostap Maybe. This is a world of simplified, flat feelings, a world of stupidity, a world of iron calculation, and Ostap somehow brings into all this, I would even say, some grain of intelligence.

Simonov wrote absolutely correctly in the first preface to the first re-edition of the dilogy after a very long break, in 1962, he writes: “Well, really, how we sympathize with Ostap when he deals with the Voronya Slobodka.” Here Simonov is a little understated by the fact that the entire Soviet world by this moment had turned into Voronya Slobodka, this is the world of a triumphant, jubilant Mitrich, you understand. This is what you need to understand. This is a world in which, of course, the funny intellectual Vasisualiy Lokhankin is flogged, but this is a world in which they occupy the apartment of a polar pilot, a world in which any human impulse is destroyed by vulgarity and stupidity. Ostap is literally burning this Voronya Settlement, this is also one of his cruel miracles. Of course, Ostap is a Christological figure, so he is doomed, so, in fact, he disappears from this world.

But it must be said that they had different endings, and in one case he managed to escape, in the other Zosya somehow fell in love with him, and he became a husband, and the book ended with the words: “Before him stood his wife.” But it all ended with a very precise phrase: “We’ll have to retrain as a building manager.” For Ostap Bender, the terrible turn of Soviet mimicry is coming.

The third book by Ilf and Petrov, “The Great Schemer,” was supposed to be about this mimicry, but it was not written. Then they were going to write the novel “Scoundrel” about a Soviet opportunist, bureaucrat and scumbag, but this book was not written either, except that the draft plans remained from it, because the time was not right.

The next book about Bender was “One-Storey America,” where Bender does not appear, but where a world is built according to his patterns - a good world of professional swindlers. Well, not professional swindlers, but rather professional businessmen, a world that replaces coercion and fear with the ideology of profit and cooperation and alliance.

As for “The Golden Calf” itself, compared to “Chairs”, this book is, of course, much more talented, much more vibrant. And what is most interesting, much more tragic. And the death of Panikovsky, and its repeated prediction, and the fate of Balaganov, and the love drama of Bender himself, all this is very serious. But the most important thing that is there is, of course, the image of the millionaire Koreiko. The fact is that Koreiko, who, by the way, was played best of all, in my opinion, by Andrei Smirnov in the brilliant film adaptation of Vasily Pichul’s “Dreams of an Idiot,” although Evstigneev is very good. Koreiko, in essence, is a typical Soviet person. Everything is fine with him, he has no inner content, he is actually a cannibal. In any era, he is a complete, brilliantly mimicking predator, he works perfectly in Chernomorsk, in Odessa, and no one will ever suspect him of the fact that in other, more cruel times, he simply ate hundreds of living people. He is an ideal opportunist, and this makes him a model Soviet citizen.

Everything is going much better for Koreiko than for Ostap. You see, the noble swindler and cheerful adventurer Ostap loses everything, although he knows 99 ways to scam people, bypassing the Criminal Code, or however many he knows, much more, in my opinion. But as for Koreiko, nothing threatens him; he always manages to escape, using either Soviet idiocy, Soviet gullibility, or Soviet predation, which, by the way, he is also infected with. And no matter who actually surrounds him, the idiot accountant Berlaga, or the equally stupid bosses, or poor Zosya, whom he seduces, no one can resist him. You see, everyone has a weapon against Ostap, because Ostap is a man. But Koreiko is not a person, he is a hero of a new formation. In general, this is a pork loin that speaks and is absolutely devoid of content. At the same time, he is terribly healthy, he takes care of his health a lot, he runs, he eats right, he is very strong physically, he almost killed Bender, although Bender turned out.

In general, this is an invincible character, that’s the worst thing. Koreiko has lived to this day; I will even say that Koreiko today still controls everything he can reach. Bender is no more, but Koreiko, such an exemplary Judas, who will never commit suicide, a total traitor, he exists safely, and nothing will happen to him. It is no coincidence, in fact, that the novel is called “The Golden Calf.” Because the main character of this novel, of course, is Koreiko, this golden calf of the new era, whom they are trying to touch by the udder. Bender is an obsolete character, the same as the noble swindler, in fact, Panikovsky with his unfortunate goose, the same as the poor idealist Balaganov, a man of a free profession, the same as the unfortunate driver Kozlevich, who wants everyone “eh , go for a ride!”, but no one needs it. These are all living people, so they are no longer needed. It's time for Koreans. And in this sense, The Golden Calf is a great tragic novel.

Let's not forget that this book is very densely written. Once upon a time, Ilf and Petrov developed their own literary style, which allowed them to write together. The phrase was spoken out loud; if one rejected it, the other agreed. If some idea came to their minds at the same time, it was rejected immediately, because Ilf said that two people can come up with it, then two hundred can come up with it, it’s not interesting. Then they learned to write alone, because they became, in fact, a single writer, Ilf-i-Petrov, who developed his own style. “One-Storey America” was written separately, but nevertheless, we do not see a stylistic boundary.

But “The Golden Calf,” the last thing they wrote together, and it’s scary to say, the last thing they did with pleasure, because after that a dark decade of absolutely official literature began in Russia. The last flash of fun is Ilf and Petrov. And it’s scary to say that this is the last outbreak of Christianity. When Ilf and Petrov wrote about the fact, or more precisely, Petrov alone, without Ilf, that there was no worldview, it was replaced by irony, this is the most accurate description of that era, which is given by the New Testament. Because the New Testament always begins with irony. And that is why the Soviet Gospel, the Soviet satirical book, became so tragic and, in a sense, so life-affirming.

The question was raised whether Ilf and Petrov themselves realized that they were writing serious works. They were aware, of course, they were aware. They wrote it seriously, with maximum dedication. And in general, I will tell you, you know, that they were not professional writers, but who was a professional writer? They were newspapermen, that's normal. Who was the professional writer at that time? This was a generation of people who had no past, who had no education, whose lives were destroyed. They only had a gymnasium behind them. They took literature very seriously; of course, they treated it as a ministry. And if the newspaper school is always ridiculed, then keep in mind that this is also a school of precise words, knowledge of details, wit, and the ability to understand from a half-hint where the era is heading. Ilf and Petrov were, I am not afraid of this word, the most serious writers of this time, and it is no coincidence that Nabokov said that the two main books of the Soviet era were the dilogy about Bender, because everything else does not stand up to criticism.

And you and I will continue our conversation in a week and talk about 1932, about Ivan Kataev’s story “Leningrad Highway”.

When crossing the street, look around.

(Traffic rule)

From the authors

Usually, regarding our socialized literary economy, people turn to us with questions that are quite legitimate, but very monotonous: “How do you two write this?”

At first we answered in detail, went into detail, even talked about a major quarrel that arose over the following issue: should we kill the hero of the novel “12 Chairs” Ostap Bender or leave him alive? They did not forget to mention that the hero’s fate was decided by lot. Two pieces of paper were placed in the sugar bowl, on one of which a skull and two chicken bones were depicted with a trembling hand. The skull came out and half an hour later the great schemer was gone. He was cut with a razor.

Then we began to answer in less detail. They no longer talked about the quarrel. Later they stopped going into details. And finally, they answered completely without enthusiasm:

How do we write together? Yes, that’s how we write together. Like the Goncourt brothers. Edmond runs around the editorial offices, and Jules guards the manuscript so that his acquaintances do not steal it. And suddenly the uniformity of questions was broken.

Tell us,” a certain strict citizen asked us from among those who recognized Soviet power a little later than England and a little earlier than Greece, “tell me, why do you write funny?” What kind of giggles are there during the reconstruction period? Are you crazy?

After that, he spent a long time and angrily convincing us that laughter is harmful now.

Is it sinful to laugh? - he said. - Yes, you can’t laugh! And you can't smile! When I see this new life, these changes, I don’t want to smile, I want to pray!

But we’re not just laughing, we objected. - Our goal is satire precisely on those people who do not understand the reconstruction period.

“Satire cannot be funny,” said the stern comrade and, grabbing the arm of some artisanal Baptist, whom he took for a 100% proletarian, he led him to his apartment.

Everything told is not fiction. It would be possible to come up with something funnier.

Give such a hallelujah citizen free rein, and he will even put a burqa on men, and in the morning he will play hymns and psalms on the trumpet, believing that this is how we should help build socialism.

And all the time while we were composing “The Golden Calf,” the face of a strict citizen hovered over us.

What if this chapter turns out funny? What will a strict citizen say?

And in the end we decided:

a) write a novel that is as funny as possible,

b) if a strict citizen again declares that satire should not be funny, ask the prosecutor of the republic to prosecute the said citizen under the article punishing bungling with burglary.

I. Ilf, E. Petrov

PART ONE
“THE ANTELOPE CREW”

Chapter I
About how Panikovsky violated the convention

Pedestrians must be loved. Pedestrians make up the majority of humanity. Moreover, the best part of it. Pedestrians created the world. It was they who built cities, erected multi-story buildings, installed sewerage and water supply, paved the streets and lit them with electric lamps. It was they who spread culture throughout the world, invented printing, invented gunpowder, built bridges across rivers, deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs, introduced the safety razor, abolished the slave trade, and discovered that one hundred and fourteen delicious nutritious dishes could be made from soybeans.

And when everything was ready, when the home planet took on a relatively comfortable appearance, motorists appeared.

It should be noted that the car was also invented by pedestrians. But motorists somehow immediately forgot about it. Meek and intelligent pedestrians began to be crushed. Streets created by pedestrians have passed into the hands of motorists. The pavements became twice as wide, the sidewalks narrowed to the size of a tobacco parcel. And pedestrians began to frightenedly huddle against the walls of houses.

In a big city, pedestrians lead a martyr's life. A kind of transport ghetto was introduced for them. They are allowed to cross streets only at intersections, that is, precisely in those places where traffic is heaviest and where the thread on which a pedestrian’s life usually hangs is most easily cut off.

In our vast country, an ordinary car, intended, according to pedestrians, for the peaceful transportation of people and goods, has taken on the menacing shape of a fratricidal projectile. It puts entire ranks of union members and their families out of action. If a pedestrian sometimes manages to fly out from under the silver nose of the car, he is fined by the police for violating the rules of the street catechism.

In general, the authority of pedestrians has been greatly shaken. They, who gave the world such wonderful people as Horace, Boyle, Marriott, Lobachevsky, Gutenberg and Anatole France, are now forced to make faces in the most vulgar way, just to remind of their existence. God, God, who in essence does not exist, what did you, who in fact does not exist, bring to the pedestrian!

Here he is walking from Vladivostok to Moscow along the Siberian highway, holding in one hand a banner with the inscription: “We will reorganize the life of textile workers,” and throwing a stick over his shoulder, at the end of which dangles the reserve “Uncle Vanya” sandals and a tin teapot without a lid. This is a Soviet pedestrian-athlete who left Vladivostok as a young man and in his declining years, at the very gates of Moscow, will be crushed by a heavy car, the license plate of which will never be noticed.

Or another, European Mohican pedestrian. He walks around the world, rolling a barrel in front of him. He would willingly go like this, without the barrel; but then no one will notice that he is really a long-distance pedestrian, and they will not write about him in the newspapers. All your life you have to push the damned container in front of you, on which (shame, shame!) there is a large yellow inscription praising the unsurpassed qualities of the “Chauffeur's Dreams” automobile oil. This is how the pedestrian degenerated.

And just before the demarcation of the extracted sum, the stupid leader slashed me on the neck with a razor. Oh, how cheesy it was, Koreiko! It's gone and it hurts! The surgeons barely saved my young life, for which I am deeply grateful to them.

In the new novel, O. Bender plays the role of a blackmailer. Having learned from the “son of Lieutenant Schmidt” Shura Balaganov about the existence of the underground millionaire Alexander Ivanovich Koreiko, the great schemer decides to take part of the money from him - after all, he knows “400 relatively honest ways” to do this. But the chosen method does not work (A. Koreiko himself assesses it as a “pathetic attempt at third-rate blackmail”), after which O. Bender takes the matter seriously - a case is opened against A. Koreiko, in which, through hard work, information about the second, underground life is collected millionaire - in order to then sell this business to him for 1,000,000 rubles.

Despite the active assistance in the work of the Antelope crew (a car of the Loren-Dietrich brand, although there is a lot of debate about whether the car was of this particular brand, it is described in great detail in the book): Adam Kozlevich, the already mentioned Shura Balaganov and Mikhail Samuelevich Panikovsky, the path to a million will be thorny and long...

Characters

Central

• Ostap Bender (commander)
• Shura Balaganov (beloved son of Lieutenant Schmidt, flight mechanic, commissioner for hooves)
• Panikovsky, Mikhail Samuelevich (a man without a passport, a goose thief, a violator of the convention, a courier for the “Horns and Hooves” office)
• Kozlevich, Adam Kazimirovich (driver of the Wildebeest)

Bright personality

• Koreiko, Alexander Ivanovich (underground Soviet millionaire)

Episodic

• Inhabitants of “Voronya Slobodka” (apartment number three): pilot Sevryugov, Vasisualiy Lokhankin with his wife Varvara, Nikita Pryakhin (retired janitor), citizen Gigienishvili (former mountain prince, and now a worker of the East), Mitrich (Alexander Dmitrievich Sukhoveyko, former chamberlain of the imperial courtyard), Dunya (who rented a bed in Aunt Pasha’s room), Aunt Pasha (a merchant and bitter drunkard), grandmother, whose first and last name no one knew, and other apartment fry, led by the responsible tenant Lucia Frantsevna Pferd
• Employees of the Hercules institution: comrade. Polykhaev (chief), Egor Skumbrievich (responsible employee), Berlaga (accountant), Serna Mikhailovna (secretary), Bomze, Kukushkind, Lapidus Jr., Sakharkov, Dreyfus, Tezoimenitsky, Musician, Chevazhevskaya, Borisokhlebsky
• Zosya Sinitskaya

Novel structure

According to V. Kataev, who was essentially one of the co-authors of the novel (see “My Diamond Crown”), both novels are collections of feuilletons, very conventionally united by a common storyline. Any of the feuilletons could be removed and replaced with another, without much damage to the development of the plot. There is a second, author’s, version of the novel “The Twelve Chairs”, in which its feuilleton character is manifested especially clearly - the chapters of the novel that are not included in the classic version are practically not connected with its main plot.

The text of the novel contains numerous parody inserts (see, for example, the fragment of the text of the story “The Death of Vazir-Mukhtar” by Y. Tynyanov below), in which the authors of the novel quite successfully play up the style features of other authors. Unfortunately, most modern readers are poorly familiar with the popular literary works of that time, which leads to some loss of the meaning of what was written.

Text by Tynyanov:

“It was night. Throughout Russia and the Caucasus there was a homeless, wild, webbed night. Nesselrod was asleep in his bed, his naked beak wrapped in a blanket like a bare-necked rooster. The lean MacDonald breathed evenly in his thin English underwear, hugging his wife, elastic as a string. Tired of jumping, without thoughts, Katya slept in St. Petersburg, stretched out. Pushkin jumped around the office with cheerful small steps, like a monkey in the desert, and looked closely at the books on the shelf. General Sipyagin was snoring in Tiflis, nearby, whistling through his nose like a child. The plague victims, their eyes rolling out of their heads, suffocated in the poisoned huts near Gumri. And everyone was homeless. There was no power on earth. The Duke of Wellington and the entire St. James's Cabinet were suffocating in their pillows. Nikolai was breathing from his white flat chest.”

Lyrics of "The Golden Calf":

“Night, night, night, as has already been said, lay over the entire country. The monarchist Khvorobyov moaned in his sleep. who dreamed of a huge trade union book. On the train, on the top bunk, the engineer Talmudovsky was snoring, rolling from Kharkov to Rostov, where the best salary beckoned him. American gentlemen swayed on the broad Atlantic wave, taking home a recipe for excellent wheat moonshine. Vasisualiy Lokhankin tossed and turned on his sofa, rubbing his hand over the affected areas. The old puzzle writer Sinitsky wasted electricity in vain, composing a mysterious picture for the magazine “Vodoprovodnoye Delo”. At the same time, he tried not to make any noise so as not to wake Zosya. Polykhaev was lying in bed with Serna Mikhailovna. Other Herculesites slept restlessly in different parts of the city. Alexander Ivanovich Koreiko could not sleep, tormented by the thought of his wealth.”

Filmography

Sergei Yursky as Ostap Bender (1968)

See what “The Golden Calf (novel)” is in other dictionaries:

The Golden Calf: “The Golden Calf” (German: Das goldene Kalb) is a novel by Rudolf von Gottschall. “The Golden Calf” is a novel by Ilf and Petrov. "The Golden Calf" is a 1968 Soviet feature film. “Golden Calf” Russian... ... Wikipedia

This term has other meanings, see Golden Calf (meanings). Golden calf ... Wikipedia

The Golden Calf (novel) The Golden Calf film (USSR, 1968) Dreams of an Idiot (film) 1993 film The Golden Calf television series (Russia, 2006) ... Wikipedia

- “The Golden Calf” novel by I. Ilf and E. Petrov. Written in 1931. Genre: picaresque novel, social satire. Continuation of the novel "The Twelve Chairs". The name plays on the biblical image of the golden calf. Contents 1 Plot 2 Characters 3... ... Wikipedia

Roman Radov Birth name: Roman Leonidovich Radov Date of birth: September 8, 1971 (1971 09 08) (41 years old) Profession: actor ... Wikipedia

The cover of one of the editions of the novel “The Twelve Chairs”, a novel by I. Ilf and E. Petrov. Written in 1928. The genre is a picaresque novel with elements of sharp satire. The novel has a sequel, “The Golden Calf.” Contents 1 Characters 1.1 ... Wikipedia

Years in the literature of the 20th century. 1931 in literature. 1896 1897 1898 1899

This term has other meanings, see Primus (meanings). Primus Primus is a wickless heating device that runs on liquid fuel (gasoline or kerosene). Invented in 1892 by Franz Wilhelm Lindquist, who later founded... ... Wikipedia

THE TWELVE CHAIRS- A novel by I. Ilf and E. Petrov, part of the duology “The Twelve Chairs” and “The Golden Calf.” The novels were written in 1927–1928 and 1930–1931, respectively. Publication of the novel “The Twelve Chairs” began in 1928 in the magazine “30 Days”. Three years… … Linguistic and regional dictionary

Ilf Ilya & Petrov Evgeniy

Golden calf

Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov

Usually, regarding our socialized literary economy, people turn to us with questions that are quite legitimate, but very monotonous: “How do you two write this?”

At first we answered in detail, went into detail, even talked about a major quarrel that arose over the following issue: should we kill the hero of the novel “12 Chairs” Ostap Bender or leave him alive? They did not forget to mention that the hero’s fate was decided by lot. Two pieces of paper were placed in the sugar bowl, on one of which a skull and two chicken bones were depicted with a trembling hand. The skull came out, and half an hour later the great strategist was gone. He was cut with a razor.

Then we began to answer in less detail. They no longer talked about the quarrel. Later they stopped going into details. And finally, they answered completely without enthusiasm:

How do we write together? Yes, that’s how we write together. Like the Goncourt brothers. Edmond runs around the editorial offices, and Jules guards the manuscript so that his acquaintances do not steal it. And suddenly the uniformity of questions was broken.

Tell me,” a certain strict citizen asked us from among those who recognized Soviet power a little later than England and a little earlier than Greece, “tell me, why do you write funny?” What kind of giggles are there during the reconstruction period? Are you crazy?

After that, he spent a long time and angrily convincing us that laughter is harmful now.

Is it sinful to laugh? - he said. - Yes, you can’t laugh! And you can't smile! When I see this new life, these changes, I don’t want to smile, I want to pray!

But we’re not just laughing, we objected. - Our goal is satire precisely on those people who do not understand the reconstruction period.

“Satire cannot be funny,” said the stern comrade and, grabbing the arm of some artisanal Baptist, whom he took for a 100% proletarian, he led him to his apartment.

Everything told is not fiction. It would be possible to come up with something funnier.

Give such a hallelujah citizen free rein, and he will even put a burqa on men, and in the morning he will play hymns and psalms on the trumpet, believing that this is how we should help build socialism.

And all the time, while we were composing “The Golden Calf,” the face of a strict citizen hovered over us.

What if this chapter turns out funny? What will a strict citizen say?

And in the end we decided:

a) write a novel that is as funny as possible,

b) if a strict citizen again declares that satire should not be funny, ask the prosecutor of the republic to prosecute the said citizen under the article punishing bungling with burglary.

I. ILF. E. PETROV

* PART ONE. ANTELOPE CREW*

Crossing the street

look around

(Traffic rule)

CHAPTER I. ABOUT HOW PANICOVSKY VIOLATED THE CONVENTION

Pedestrians must be loved. Pedestrians make up the majority of humanity. Moreover, the best part of it. Pedestrians created the world. It was they who built cities, erected multi-story buildings, installed sewerage and water supply, paved the streets and lit them with electric lamps. It was they who spread culture throughout the world, invented printing, invented gunpowder, built bridges across rivers, deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs, introduced the safety razor, abolished the slave trade, and discovered that one hundred and fourteen delicious nutritious dishes could be made from soybeans.

And when everything was ready, when the home planet took on a relatively comfortable appearance, motorists appeared.

It should be noted that the car was also invented by pedestrians. But motorists somehow immediately forgot about it. Meek and intelligent pedestrians began to be crushed. Streets created by pedestrians have passed into the hands of motorists. The pavements became twice as wide, the sidewalks narrowed to the size of a tobacco parcel. And pedestrians began to frightenedly huddle against the walls of houses.

In a big city, pedestrians lead a martyr's life. A kind of transport ghetto was introduced for them. They are allowed to cross streets only at intersections, that is, precisely in those places where traffic is heaviest and where the thread on which a pedestrian’s life usually hangs is most easily cut off.

In our vast country, an ordinary car, intended, according to pedestrians, for the peaceful transportation of people and goods, has taken on the menacing shape of a fratricidal projectile. It puts entire ranks of union members and their families out of action. If a pedestrian sometimes manages to fly out from under the silver nose of a car, he is fined by the police for violating the rules of the street catechism.

In general, the authority of pedestrians has been greatly shaken. They, who gave the world such wonderful people as Horace, Boyle, Marriott, Lobachevsky, Gutenberg and Anatole France, are now forced to make faces in the most vulgar way, just to remind of their existence. God, God, who in essence does not exist, what did you, who in fact does not exist, bring to the pedestrian!

Here he is walking from Vladivostok to Moscow along the Siberian highway, holding in one hand a banner with the inscription: “Let’s reorganize the life of textile workers,” and throwing a stick over his shoulder, at the end of which dangles reserve “Uncle Vanya” sandals and a tin teapot without a lid. This is a Soviet pedestrian-athlete who left Vladivostok as a young man and in his declining years, at the very gates of Moscow, will be crushed by a heavy car, the license plate of which will never be noticed.

Or another, European Mohican pedestrian. He walks around the world, rolling a barrel in front of him. He would willingly go like this, without the barrel; but then no one will notice that he is really a long-distance pedestrian, and they will not write about him in the newspapers. All your life you have to push the damned container in front of you, on which (shame, shame!) there is a large yellow inscription praising the unsurpassed qualities of the “Chauffeur's Dreams” automobile oil. This is how the pedestrian degenerated.

And only in small Russian towns are pedestrians still respected and loved. There he is still the master of the streets, carefreely wandering along the pavement and crossing it in the most intricate way in any direction.

The citizen in the white-topped cap, such as is mostly worn by summer garden administrators and entertainers, undoubtedly belonged to the larger and better part of humanity. He moved along the streets of the city of Arbatov on foot, looking around with condescending curiosity. In his hand he held a small obstetric bag. The city, apparently, did not impress the pedestrian in the artistic cap.

He saw a dozen and a half blue, mignonette and white-pink belfries; What caught his eye was the shabby American gold of the church domes. The flag fluttered above the official building.

Late spring or early summer 1930. A citizen enters the office of the Arbatov Pre-Executive Committee, posing as the son of Lieutenant Schmidt and for this reason in need of financial assistance.

This is Ostap Bender, saved by a surgeon from death after Kisa Vorobyaninov, the hero of the novel “The Twelve Chairs,” slashed his throat with a razor.

Having received some money and food stamps, Bender sees another young man enter the office, also introducing himself as the son of Lieutenant Schmidt. The delicate situation is resolved by the fact that the “brothers” recognize each other. Going out onto the porch, they see that another “son of Lieutenant Schmidt” is approaching the building - Panikovsky, an elderly citizen in a straw hat, short trousers and with a gold tooth in his mouth. Panikovsky is thrown into the dust in disgrace. As it turns out, it’s down to business, because two years before, all the “sons of Lieutenant Schmidt” divided the whole country into exploitation areas on Sukharevka, and Panikovsky simply invaded someone else’s territory.

Ostap Bender tells his “foster brother” Shura Balaganov about his dream: to take five hundred thousand on a silver platter and leave for Rio de Janeiro. “If there are some banknotes wandering around the country, then there must be people who have a lot of them.” Balaganov names the name of an underground Soviet millionaire living in the city of Chernomorsk - Koreiko. Having met Adam Kozlevich, the owner of the only Loren-Dietrich car in Arbatov, renamed by Bender to the Wildebeest, the young people take him with them, and on the way they pick up Panikovsky, who has stolen a goose and is fleeing from his pursuers.

Travelers find themselves on the motor rally route, where they are mistaken for participants and solemnly greeted as the lead car. In the city of Udoev, a thousand kilometers away from Chernomorsk, they will have lunch and a rally. From two Americans stuck on a country road, Bender takes two hundred rubles for a recipe for moonshine, which they search for in the villages. Only in Luchansk are the impostors exposed by a telegram arriving there demanding that the swindlers be apprehended. Soon they are overtaken by a column of rally participants.

In a nearby town, a wanted green Wildebeest is repainted egg yellow. There, Ostap Bender promises to heal the monarchist Khvorobyov, who is suffering from Soviet dreams, by saving him, according to Freud, from the original source of the disease - Soviet power.

Secret millionaire Alexander Ivanovich Koreiko was an insignificant employee of the financial and accounting department of a certain institution called “Hercules”. No one suspected that he, who received forty-six rubles a month, had a suitcase in the storage room at the station with ten million rubles in foreign currency and Soviet banknotes.

For some time now he has felt someone's close attention behind him. Then a beggar with a gold tooth impudently pursues him, muttering: “Give me a million, give me a million!” Either they send crazy telegrams or a book about American millionaires. While dining with old man Sinitsky, Koreiko is unrequitedly in love with his granddaughter Zosya. One day, while walking with her late in the evening, he is attacked by Panikovsky and Balaganov, who steal an iron box containing ten thousand rubles from him.

A day later, putting on a police cap with the coat of arms of the city of Kiev, Bender goes to Koreiko to give him a box of money, but he refuses to accept it, saying that no one robbed him and he had nowhere to get that kind of money.

Bender moves, following a newspaper advertisement, into one of the two rooms of Vasisualiy Lokhankin, from whom his wife Varvara left for engineer Ptiburdukov. Because of the squabbles and scandals of the residents of this communal apartment, it was called “Voronya Slobodka.” When Ostap Bender first appears in it, Lokhankin is being flogged in the kitchen for not turning off the light in the restroom.

The great schemer Bender opens an office for the procurement of horns and hooves using ten thousand stolen from Koreiko. Fuchs becomes the formal head of the institution, whose job is that, under any regime, he sits for other people's bankruptcies. Finding out the origin of Koreiko's wealth, Bender interrogates accountant Berlagu and other Hercules managers. He travels to Koreiko’s places of activity and eventually compiles a detailed biography of him, which he wants to sell to him for a million.

Not trusting the commander, Panikovsky and Balaganov enter Koreiko’s apartment and steal large black weights from him, thinking that they are made of gold. The driver of the “Antelope-Gnu” Kozlevich is seduced by the priests, and Bender’s intervention and a dispute with the priests are required for Kozlevich to return to “Horns and Hooves” with the car.

Bender completes the indictment in the “Koreiko case.” He revealed his theft of a train with food, and the creation of fake artels, and a destroyed power plant, and speculation in currency and furs, and the establishment of fake joint-stock companies. The inconspicuous clerk Koreiko was also the de facto head of Hercules, through which he pumped out huge sums.

All night Ostap Bender accuses Koreiko. Morning comes, and the two of them go to the station, where there is a suitcase with millions, to give Bender one of them. At this time, a chemical drill began in the city. Koreiko, suddenly putting on a gas mask, becomes indistinguishable in a crowd of his kind. Bender, despite resistance, is carried on a stretcher to a gas shelter, where, by the way, he meets Zosya Sinitskaya, the beloved girl of an underground millionaire.

So, Koreiko disappeared in an unknown direction. An inspector arrives at Horns and Hooves and takes Fuchs to prison. At night, the “Voronya Slobodka”, where the companions live, burns down: the residents, except for Lokhankin and the old woman who does not believe in electricity or insurance, insured their property and set fire to the house themselves. There is practically nothing left of the ten thousand stolen from Koreiko. With his last money, Bender buys a large bouquet of roses and sends it to Zosia. Having received three hundred rubles for the “Neck” script he had just written and was already lost at the film factory, Bender buys gifts for his comrades and courtes Zosya in style. Unexpectedly, she tells Ostap that she received a letter from Koreiko from the construction of the Eastern Highway, where he works in the Northern laying town.

The accomplices urgently leave for the new address of Alexander Ivanovich Koreiko in their Wildebeest Antelope. On a country road the car falls apart. They are walking. In the nearest village, Bender takes fifteen rubles for an evening performance, which they will give on their own, but Panikovsky kidnaps a goose here, and everyone has to flee. Panikovsky cannot withstand the hardships of the journey and dies. At a small railway station, Balaganov and Kozlevich refuse to follow their commander.

A special letter train for members of the government, shock workers, Soviet and foreign journalists goes to the Eastern Mainline, to the place where the two rail tracks meet. Ostap Bender also appears in it. His companions mistake him for a provincial correspondent who caught up with the train in an airplane and feed him homemade provisions. Bender tells a parable about the Eternal Jew, who walked around Rio de Janeiro in white pants, and after crossing the Romanian border with smuggling, he was cut down by the Petliurists. In the absence of money, he also sells one of the journalists a manual for writing articles, feuilletons and poems for significant occasions.

Finally, at the celebration of the connection of the railway in Gremyashchiy Klyuch, Bender finds an underground millionaire. Koreiko is forced to give him a million and in exchange burns a dossier on himself in the oven. Returning to Moscow is difficult due to the lack of a ticket for a regular train and a special plane flight. Having bought camels, you have to ride them through the desert. The nearest Central Asian city in the oasis, where Bender and Koreiko end up, has already been rebuilt on socialist principles.

During the month of travel, Bender did not manage to get into a single hotel, or theater, or buy clothes, except in a thrift store. In the Soviet country, everything is decided not by money, but by armor and distribution. Bender, having a million, has to impersonate an engineer, a conductor, and even again the son of Lieutenant Schmidt. In Moscow, at the Ryazan station, he meets Balaganov and gives him fifty thousand “for complete happiness.” But in a crowded tram on Kalachevka, Balaganov mechanically steals a penny handbag, and in front of Bender’s eyes he is dragged to the police.

An individual outside the Soviet collective has no opportunity to buy a house or even talk to an Indian philosopher about the meaning of life. Remembering Zos, Bender travels by train to Chernomorsk. In the evening, his fellow travelers in the compartment talk about receiving million-dollar inheritances, in the morning - about millions of tons of cast iron. Bender shows the students he has become friends with his million, after which the friendship ends and the students run away. Ostap Bender cannot even buy a new car for Kozlevich. He doesn't know what to do with the money - lose it? send to the People's Commissar of Finance? Zosya married a young man named Femidi. “Horns and hooves”, invented by Bender, turned into a large state-owned enterprise. 33-year-old Bender, who is the age of Christ, has no place on Soviet soil.

On a March night in 1931, he crosses the Romanian border. He wears a double fur coat, a lot of currency and jewelry, including a rare Order of the Golden Fleece, which he calls the Golden Calf. But the Romanian border guards rob Bender completely. By chance, he only has the order left. We have to return to the Soviet shore. Monte Cristo from Ostap did not work out. All that remains is to retrain as building managers.

Retold