“In a dream, he remembered the last time he saw his mother, and a few seconds after waking up, the whole chain of minor events of that day was restored. Probably, for many years he repelled this memory. To what time it refers, he did not know for sure, but then he was at least ten years old, or even all twelve”.
J. Orwell. 1984
History and documents. Farther and farther away from us is the time of a truly great social experiment - attempts to create in a patriarchal country with a petty-bourgeois peasant consciousness a social system with a new level of social relations and high culture. Lenin's ally A. Bogdanov warned that this attempt, most likely, would end in failure, in his science fiction novel The Red Star (1908), but then everything he wrote was, of course, considered pure fantasy. But be that as it may, a lot has been done, and primarily in the development of spiritual culture. But spiritual culture is, in fact, a revolving medal of education and awareness of citizens. Moreover, awareness from a very young age, because, according to teachers and psychologists, a child under five learns more about life than in the rest of his life.
I thought about this question and again thought that readers of "VO" would probably be interested in learning not so much general information and figures about how this very "informing" took place in our country in the past, as to get acquainted with the "little story." »One person, and his subjective view of how in his childhood he received the information he was interested in. After all, those who remembered that era are gradually leaving, and soon about how everything was then, new generations, at best, will be able to learn only from books.
So, remembering the past, I can say that I remember myself well since I was five and a half years old, I remember a house with two rooms with a large stove, a porch and sheds, a huge garden and about the same houses with my boy friends on Proletarskaya Street in the city of Penza. And only from "our side" of the street. We never walked across the street. There were "strangers" there.
I already felt the need to receive information. And I got it from the stories of adults, my closest relatives: grandfather, grandmother and mother, as well as from the books that they read to me. And the books were taken from a large bookcase, the largest on our street. In other houses, small shelves were used. In my grandfather's shed, files of the Ogonyok magazine of the early 50s were kept, which I could not remember. I couldn't read them either, but looked at the pictures with pleasure. Especially those with guns, tanks and machine guns.
And then everything changed miraculously. In 1959, television appeared in Penza, and my mother was the first on the street to buy a television "Record", although she was warned that "television" attracts lightning. First, the programs started at 19.00. There was local news, a flawed program Television Wick, and Wick Mail, sorting out complaints. Concerts were often shown, and then a film was shown without fail. And no matter how interesting I was playing, in the evening they always called me home, and then all the other guys, since televisions appeared in their homes, and we began to enjoy domestic and foreign cinema every day and together. Films were shown very different, ranging from "Cherbourg Umbrellas" and "Waterloo Bridge" to "Deputy of the Baltic", "Baltic Sky" and such rarities as "Aelita", "Two friends, a model and a girlfriend" and "Big City Lights" with Charlie Chaplin. Some films made me panic-stricken. For example, "The Silent Star" based on the 1959 novel by Stanislav Lem and "Star Boy", filmed in 1957. However, there will be a separate article about the informational component of cinema. In the meantime, I'll just say that the cinema on us, the boys from Proletarskaya Street, had a huge impact.
There were many humorous programs with the unforgettable Arkady Raikin, as well as Mirov and Novitsky, and Plug and Tarapunka. For their sake, I even watched concerts, because they often took part in them as well. Many of their speeches had bright political overtones. For example, when the Americans launched copper needles into space, Mirov and Novitsky immediately responded with verses of the following content: “Coyote wolves threw needles into the sky. We can fly and thread the needles!"
Surprisingly, among us, the boys of that time, it was somehow not customary to ask adults … literally about anything. Those were on their own, ourselves. Of course, I loved listening to the conversations of adults, but it never even crossed my mind to ask what they were talking about. That's how it is!
And, of course, we were not led the way children are led now. "Do not run, do not jump - you will fall, do not get into a puddle - you will get dirty!" Today you only hear the shouts of adults walking between houses with children. It was different with us: they dressed you or you dressed yourself, let you out into the street - and there are other people's yards, sheds, a vacant lot behind the railway, a construction site, a river … run, jump, break your arms and legs, drown in the river - all of them were ours, children's problems. Although, for example, if I did not come home for six or eight hours in a row, then my grandmother went to look for me in the neighborhood.
TV has probably been a very important source of information for quite some time. But gradually others began to be added to it. For example, radio. However, I listened to the radio even before the TV set appeared in the house, but I don't remember very well what was broadcast there. But then, as I got older, I listened to him for hours, especially since children's programs were usually broadcast on Sunday mornings, when the TV was not yet working.
And I must say that the programs were just excellent - adults would listen to them now! "Club of famous captains" ("In the rustle of a mouse, in the creak of floorboards, we slowly and decorously leave the pages. The caftans rustle, someone's sword rings, we are all captains, everyone is famous!"). It was she who introduced me to captain Nemo, captain of the corvette "Kite", Dick Sand, Tartarin from Tarascon (when I found out that I had the book in my home library, I was downright jubilant, but I read it at the age of 14!). And there were also such programs about literature as "In the Country of Literary Heroes" and "Postal Stagecoach". And what about the funny program "KOAPP" - "Nature Copyright Committee"? Or "Baby Monitor", which taught you to write correctly and reduce fractions. “And I don’t remember, for the life of me, reduction of fractions!” Not very pedagogical, but etched into my memory forever! How much useful information she gave me, you can't even tell. By the way, I heard about Gagarin's flight on the radio, sitting at home because of the slushy spring and bad weather.
By the way, returning to educational programs on TV, I want to note that in the 60s of the last century they were broadcast almost constantly. On the Central channel - the program "One hundred ventures of two friends", and on the Leningrad (but it also went on in our Penza) - the program "Operation Sirius-2". Very unusual conceived, by the way. The main role in it was played by two robots - Trix (he starred in the movie "Planet of Storms") and Mecha, allegedly abandoned to us on Earth from an inhabited planet near the star Sirius. They got to know our Earth and acquainted those who watched this program with it. Naturally, it could not do without "bad Americans" either. Thus, Trix, flying over the Pacific Ocean, met in the sky with a US Air Force combat aircraft, which fired into it "many small pointed objects that could harm its mechanisms." Trix collected them with the help of his protective magnetic field and sent them back, after which "the aircraft pursuing him went down sharply." Naturally, the children, the participants in the program, shouted "hurray" at the same time.
We did not have such programs in Penza, but we watched Valentin Zorin and our local political scientist Granovsky, who, in a “talking head” format, talked about the international situation for twenty minutes a week. So what is happening in the world of adults, in general, it was possible not to ask them! The transfers of the civil defense headquarters were very frightening. But on the other hand, I knew exactly what to do in the event of an atomic bomb explosion and that hay, which had been exposed to toxic chemicals, was burned, and if radioactive, it was buried.
Needless to say, the TV programs "Film Travel Club", which has been aired since 1960, and "Children about Animals" were among my favorite programs? And since 1966, the theater of miniatures "Zucchini 13 chairs" was added to them, which came out exactly at 20.00.
They read books to me at home. They read interestingly, a lot, so that I did not want to learn to read myself. I was literally forcibly enrolled in the school library in May 1963, after my mother had read to me at home both "The Viking Campaign" by Jean Olivier, and "The Three Musketeers" by A. Dumas, and "The Head of Professor Dowell" by A. Belyaev. The reason for such a strange choice of books for reading to a first-grader child, apparently, was associated with the presence of all this on the shelves of our bookcase, where there were simply no children's books. But my mother was not up to going to the children's library for books, and she read what was interesting to her. As a child, I was very often sick, could not sleep and lay with a high temperature. Well, she read to me … "Island of Lost Ships", "Amphibian Man" and even the novels of HG Wells "The Invisible Man", "War of the Worlds" and "When the Sleeper Wakes up". These were not children's books at all, but … they gave a lot of food for the mind. I remember well how I lay with a fever, listened to the horrors of the Martians or the death of the unfortunate Griffin and chattered my teeth with fear, and everyone thought that I had a chill. As a result, I read Russian folk tales at the end of the fourth grade and was very surprised that, it turns out, there are such interesting books.
Since 1964, magazines have become another source of information for me. At school, again, they demanded that we subscribe to children's editions - "Funny Pictures", "Murzilka", but they seemed too childish to me, because at home my grandfather subscribed to the magazine "Around the World" and read a lot from it, well, there were pictures too very interesting. But if it is necessary, then it is necessary. And then my mother subscribed to a whole bunch of magazines: "Young Technician", "Young Naturalist", "Pioneer" and "Koster", so there was no question of any "Murzilka". Moreover, they gave me all the same magazines of my older cousin for the 50s, so I did not so much learn, or rather, taught somehow, how much I read these magazines voraciously, over the years and … compared with the fact that wrote in the 60s. So the craving for the analysis of the read and the systematization of the material manifested itself in me even then. Well, to the technique too, because as soon as in 1964 the book by A. S. Yakovleva "The Stories of an Aircraft Designer", they immediately bought it for me, and I made it read to me, although by that time I had been able to read it myself. But he loved to still read the "iconic" books to me aloud.
All of these publications were very informative. In the magazines "Koster" and "Pioneer" (I don't remember which ones) I read the wonderful stories by V. Krapivin "That side is where the wind is", "People from the frigate" Africa "and" Armsman Kashka ", the fantastic story" Guests with Mione ", fantasy Astrid Lindgren" Mio, my Mio "and Pamela Travers" Mary Poppins ". It was in the magazine "Koster" that there were descriptions (on the penultimate page of the cover) of the models of the cutter and the Polynesian catamaran - in a word, what was not in these magazines!
In 1966, the magazine "Modelist-Constructor" began to appear, and I went to buy it at a kiosk at the end of our street. However, there I also found another magazine that won my heart - the Polish magazine for Soviet children, Horizons of Technology for Children. Surprisingly, then they understood how important it is to make friends with the children of our countries, to deprive them of the prejudices of adults, and this was done very skillfully, at least on the part of the Polish publishers of this magazine. In a fictionalized form, it reported on the achievements of science and technology, not only in Poland, but also in other countries, including the USSR and pre-revolutionary Russia.
Very interesting fiction stories on the history of science and technology were published. From it one could learn about the simplest physical and chemical experiments, about how to make certain homemade products, and it also gave the addresses of Polish guys who wanted to correspond with their peers in the USSR. And, yes, we corresponded, although this correspondence of ours was cut off rather quickly. We just didn't know what we could write to each other about, and we didn't have much money for gifts.
In the same year, the whole class of us was admitted to the pioneers, after which it was necessary to write out "Pionerskaya Pravda", but I wrote it out a year earlier and did not regret it. Because it was in 1965 that the excellent fantastic story "The Night Eagle" by A. Lomma was published there, and then the adventure story "The Blue Lobster" (continuation of the story "The Island of Giants") by A. Neggo. By the way, both of the last works were filmed. First, they shot the four-part television film "Shadows of the Old Castle" based on "The Island of Giants", and then the color "Passenger from the Equator". That is, it was just a lot of pleasure - first reading, then watching! But the first three pages of all sorts of slogans and appeals like: "Pioneer is an example for all the guys" I usually never read.
I remember how in the printed edition of the book "The Club of Famous Captains" I found a drawing of a revolver - a Dragoon "Colt". I didn't know then that he was a dragoon. But it was a real holiday. I immediately began to do it and did it. With a rotating drum made from a piece of a shovel handle!
Since 1968, I said goodbye to Pionerskaya Pravda, as I did to the magazines Pioneer and Koster, as I became a member of the Komsomol, but instead I began to subscribe to Technique for Youth and read Abroad to do political information in the classroom. … The Young Naturalist also had to be abandoned. I realized that animals and plants are not mine.
Children, if they so desired, of course, and the desire and capabilities of their parents, could receive an almost unlimited amount of information that was allowed for dissemination in society at that time. On our street, however, so few were lucky. Many parents from working families were sorry for the subscription fees. However, whoever wanted to, could borrow the same magazines from libraries. So we generally had enough positive information, except perhaps images of pistols and revolvers, coupled with other cinema and television weapons. We also received "antisocial information", but what and how, I will tell you next time.
