More than one generation of children in our country and abroad has grown up on the verses of the great Soviet and Russian poet Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky. From childhood, well-known books "Moidodyr", "Fedorino grief", "Cockroach", "Fly-Tsokotukha" with beautiful illustrations certainly stand on the bookshelves in every home and in every children's library, because Chukovsky is the most published children's writer in our country …
The origin of the name and surname of Chukovsky
Chukovsky's real name is Nikolai Korneichukov: this is the surname of his mother, Ekaterina Osipovna Korneichukova, who worked as a servant in the house of the honorary citizen of Odessa Levenson Emmanuil Solomonovich; he became the father of little Nicholas. Being illegitimate, the boy did not have a middle name and did not bear his father's surname, which is why he was very worried in childhood. Growing up and starting a writing career, he came up with a pseudonym based on the name of the Korneichukov: Korney Chukovsky. Later, for documents, the patronymic Vasilievich (after the name of the godfather), Emmanuilovich or Manuilovich, were added to the first and last names, but later the fictitious patronymic Ivanovich was fixed.
Marriage and childbirth
On May 26, 1903, Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky married Maria Aron-Berovna Goldfeld, the daughter of an accountant and housewife from Odessa. The bride was two years older than the groom, for his sake she converted to Orthodoxy. After the wedding, she appeared in the documents as Chukovskaya Maria Borisovna. The couple lived together for 52 years, until the death of Maria Borisovna in 1955. Korney Ivanovich outlived his wife by 14 years.
The Chukovskys had four children, the difference between the first and the last was 16 years. All the children of the writer bore the surname-pseudonym Chukovsky (s) and patronymic Korneevich (Korneevna). And, no matter how bitter it was for his father, he had to bury three of his children - only his daughter Lydia died 27 years after Korney Ivanovich.
Chukovsky Nikolay Korneevich (1904-1965)
The first-born of the writer and his namesake by birth. He was born on May 20, 1904 in Odessa, and his childhood and adolescence were spent in St. Petersburg and in the Finnish city of Kuokkale. Nikolai took up literary work with the support of his father, in his entourage he met such famous writers as Alexander Blok, Maxim Gorky, Nikolai Zabolotsky, Osip Mandelstam, Veniamin Kaverin, Maximilian Voloshin, Andrei Bely, and others. He received his education at the Tenishevsky School, then in 1921 he entered the Petrograd University at the historical-philological (social-pedagogical) faculty, and in 1924 - at the Leningrad Institute of Art History, where until 1930 he studied at the Higher State Courses of Art History. He was a member of the “Sounding Shell” literary associations under the leadership of Nikolai Gumilyov and the “Serapion Brothers”, where he and several other young writers were nicknamed “younger brothers”.
A small touch to the portrait of Nikolai Chukovsky: once he told his friend Mikhail Zoshchenko a real story that happened to him about a visit to the theater with a certain young lady who was eating a cake in the buffet; Zoshchenko later published this story as his own story "Aristocrat".
Nikolai Chukovsky wrote poetry, in 1928 he published the collection Through the Wild Paradise, as well as novels (Captain James Cook, 1927; Alone Among Cannibals, 1930; Youth, 1930; Varya, 1933, etc.). Sometimes he signed himself as Nikolai Radishchev (a pseudonym). Later, he began to devote a lot of time to poetic translations of the works of R. L. Stevenson, E. Seton-Thompson, Mark Twain, Julian Tuwim and others. For example, one of the most famous translations of Stevenson's novel "Treasure Island" was made by N. Chukovsky.
In 1939, the military activities of the young Chukovsky began: at the call, he went to fight in the Soviet-Finnish war. During the Great Patriotic War, Chukovsky worked for the newspaper "Red Baltic Fleet" - was a full-time war correspondent, often risked his life. When the blockade of Leningrad began, Nikolai remained in the city and took part in the defense. Once he miraculously escaped death: he stayed in the evening at a friend's place and was late for the opening of bridges, and in the morning when he came home, he saw the ruins - the house was bombed.
In October 1943, Nikolai was promoted to senior lieutenant, became an instructor in the Main Political Directorate of the USSR Navy, as well as in the Office of the Naval Publishing House. For his services during the Great Patriotic War, he was awarded the medal "For Victory over Germany." In 1946 he was demobilized from the army.
After the war, Nikolai Chukovsky wrote novels (Sea Hunter, 1945, for junior schoolchildren), novels (Baltic Sky, 1946-1954), short stories (Girl Life, 1965), memoirs (Literary Memories, 1989) … In the 1960s, he was a member of the boards of the Writers' Unions of the USSR, the RSFSR, the publishing house "Soviet Writer", headed the section of translators.
Nikolai Chukovsky died, having lived only 61 years old, very unexpectedly - he fell asleep and did not wake up. This happened on November 4, 1965, 4 years before the death of his famous father. The writer was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery in Moscow (plot number 6).
The personal life of Nikolai Chukovsky turned out well: he was married to Marina Nikolaevna Chukovskaya (maiden name Reinke, 1905-1993), who was a translator and helped her husband in his work. Three children were born in marriage: Natalya (Tata) Chukovskaya (born 1925), married to Kostyukova, a microbiologist, professor, doctor of medical sciences; Nikolay (born 1933), in childhood received the nickname Gulka, graduated from the Bauman Moscow State Technical University, communications engineer; Dmitry (born 1943) - TV director, in particular, made a film dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the birth of his famous grandfather "You are a fiery man!" based on the script by Elena Chukovskaya's cousin; Dmitry is the husband of tennis player and TV presenter Anna Dmitrieva.
Lydia Korneevna Chukovskaya (1907-1996)
At the birth of her daughter, the spouses recorded her as Lydia Nikolaevna Korneichukova, and only later did she become Lydia Korneevna Chukovskaya. She was born on March 11, 1907 in St. Petersburg, where the family moved. Like her older brother Nikolai, Lydia did not have a question when choosing a profession: she brilliantly studied at school, and then at the literary department of the Institute of Arts.
In July 1926, a tragedy struck: Lydia was arrested and then exiled to Saratov on charges of writing an anti-Soviet leaflet. However, she had a very distant relationship to this leaflet: the text was compiled by Lydia's friend and, without asking, printed the leaflet on the Chukovskys' typewriter. Through the efforts of her father, Lydia spent only 11 months in exile out of the three years she was sentenced. It was during this period that her dissident life position was formed - a rejection of illegal repression, a desire to defend the undeservedly accused and convicted.
Returning from exile, Lydia Chukovskaya resumed her studies at Leningrad University. After graduation in 1928, she came to work as an editor at the State Publishing House in the editorial office of children's literature, the head of which was Samuil Yakovlevich Marshak. Then she wrote her works for children "Leningrad - Odessa" (1928), "On the Volga" (1931), "The Tale of Taras Shevchenko" (1930), and published them under the male pseudonym Aleksey Uglov.
In 1929, the girl got married, her chosen one was Caesar Samoilovich Volpe, a literary historian; a daughter, Elena, was soon born (her name was Lyusha at home), but the marriage lasted only five years, until 1934; in 1941 Volpe was killed in battles on the Leningrad front. Chukovskaya married for the second time to Matvey Petrovich Bronstein, a theoretical physicist in the field of the quantum theory of gravity, an excellent connoisseur of literature and poetry, including foreign, in the original languages. The couple was very happy together, but everything ended in August 1937, when Bronstein was arrested, and Chukovskaya had to leave for Ukraine to escape arrest. For a long time, the family did not know anything about Bronstein's fate except for the standard "ten years without the right to correspond."Lydia's father Korney Ivanovich used all his connections to find out the fate of his son-in-law. And only at the end of 1939 it was possible to find out that Matvey Bronstein was shot in February 1938.
During the years of repression, Chukovskaya met and made friends with Anna Akhmatova, who had similar problems: worries and troubles in connection with the arrest of her son, Lev Gumilyov. Lydia Korneevna even kept diaries in which she described her meetings with the great poet.
The tragedy she experienced greatly influenced the further fate of Chukovskaya, her worldview and creative activity. Her main literary work is the story "Sofya Petrovna", written in 1940; the heroine of the narrative experiences the arrest of her son, tries to comprehend the terror of 1937-38 taking place in the country and slowly loses her mind. Naturally, no one would have published the story in the USSR, so it was published in 1965 in France and the USA under the title "Empty House", and only in 1988 - at home. Chukovskaya wrote her autobiographical story "Descent under the Water" in 1957, dedicating it to betrayal and opportunism in the ranks of Soviet writers; this story was also published abroad in 1972. Lydia Chukovskaya dedicated her autobiographical story "Dash" to the tragic fate of her husband Matvey Bronstein. From other works of the writer - "N. N. Miklukho-Maclay", 1948-1954; Boris Zhitkov, 1957; “In memory of childhood. Memories of Korney Chukovsky ", 1989 and others.
In spite of everything, Lydia Chukovskaya carried on dissident activities: she supported the disgraced Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Joseph Brodsky and others, wrote an open letter to M. Sholokhov after his speech at the 23rd Congress of the CPSU in 1966, other open letters of protest ("People's Wrath", " Not an execution, but a thought. But a word "). And she paid for her dissent: in January 1974, she was expelled from the Writers' Union, and any of her literary works were banned from publication. In response, Chukovskaya wrote and published in France in 1979 the book “The Process of Exclusion. An Outline of Literary Morals "; and here, in France, she received in 1980 the "Freedom Prize" from the French Academy.
It was only in the late 1980s that the activities of Lydia Chukovskaya were rethought and appreciated in Russia. In 1989 she was reinstated in the Writers' Union, in 1990 she became a laureate of the prize "For the civil courage of a writer" (the Andrei Sakharov prize). In 1994, Chukovskaya was awarded the State Prize of the Russian Federation.
Lydia Korneevna Chukovskaya lived for 88 years and died on February 7, 1996 in Moscow. She was buried in the literary necropolis - Peredelkino cemetery.
Her daughter, the granddaughter of Korney Chukovsky - Elena Tsezarevna Volpe, later took the surname Chukovskaya (1931-2015), was a chemist, literary critic, screenwriter. It was she who, in 1982, wrote the script for the film "You are a fiery man!" to the 100th anniversary of his grandfather K. I. Chukovsky, directed by her cousin, Dmitry Chukovsky. In addition, a 15-volume collection of works by "grandfather Korney" was published under her editorship, and for a long time she was in charge of the Chukovsky House-Museum in Peredelkino.
Boris Korneevich Chukovsky (1910-1941)
The youngest son of Korney Chukovsky, Boris Korneevich Chukovsky-Goldfeld, received the double surname of his father and mother. In the family, he was affectionately called Bob. He, unlike the older children, did not become a writer, although he knew and loved literature well, and even wrote amateur compositions. Boba had a technical mindset, as a child he constantly made something from pieces of wood and iron; becoming an adult, he chose the profession of a hydraulic engineer, worked on the construction of the Moscow Canal (then called "Moscow - Volga"). He was a very funny, sweet, but at the same time - serious and reliable person.
In the mid-1930s, Boris Chukovsky married a certain Nina Stanislavovna, who in 1937 gave birth to a son, Yevgeny Borisovich Chukovsky. However, the young wife and mother did not take root in the Chukovsky family, she did not want to raise her son, and Boris was forced to divorce, leaving his son with him. Shortly before the start of the war, Boris Chukovsky married a second time to Lydia Nikolaevna Rogozhina, and together with her and her son Zhenya, he settled in Moscow with his parents.
In the first days of the war, Boris volunteered for the front - in the militia; in the fall of 1941, he disappeared without a trace, and later the family learned that he had died near Vyazma when he was returning from reconnaissance. Son Evgeny Borisovich Chukovsky became a cameraman, died in 1997.
Maria Korneevna Chukovskaya (1920-1931)
On February 24, 1920, in Petrograd, the youngest daughter Maria - Murochka, as her relatives affectionately called her, was born into the Chukovsky family. Murochka was everyone's favorite and often became the heroine of many of her father's literary works. The girl was very smart and gifted, had an excellent memory and easily memorized not only poems, but entire books.
Unfortunately, the life of Maria Korneevna Chukovskaya was short-lived - only 11 years. At the age of 9, she began a serious illness - tuberculosis, and developed very rapidly, giving complications to her legs and eyes. The girl was in severe pain, and her parents struggled to fight the disease. Korney Ivanovich, realizing in his heart that his daughter was slowly dying, did not want to put up with it, studied lessons with her, came up with various tasks.
In the hope of recovery, the parents took Murochka to the Crimea, to a tuberculosis sanatorium for children. The treatment gave a temporary improvement, but the girl was not saved: on November 10, 1931, she was gone. The parents' grief was endless. Murochka was buried in the old cemetery in Alupka, her grave was lost for a long time, and only recently was discovered. On it is a simple metal cross and a handwritten inscription: "Murochka Chukovskaya."
