The dizzying career of this writer could only be envied. Envious people were found, and the guy himself did not understand how to behave.
Each social group has its own set of unwritten rules. If a person is thrown up and down the hierarchy pyramid, then his ignorance of the rules of behavior in an environment alien to him can seriously harm him. Our hero paid with his life for his ridiculous and inappropriate joke.
How it all began
The Belykh peasant family lived in the village of Navesnoe, Oryol province. The couple had many children, in 1906 Grisha was born. His father Georgy earned a piece of bread with hard work. No one was starving in the house. Once a hardworking farmer fell seriously ill. His death cut short the family's modest happiness. Having lost her husband, the mother of many children tried her best to feed the babies, but the First World War, with its food crisis, did not allow the unfortunate woman to earn even a piece of bread.
Grigory felt like an extra mouth early. In 1917, in order to make life easier for his mother, brothers and sisters, he left his native land and began to independently earn his own food. The boy quickly realized that in a country torn apart by civil war, the easiest way for a child to survive is begging and theft. Soon the teenager turned into a real street child.
Fateful meeting
The Soviet government saw the salvation of children who were left without supervision among their primary tasks. Once Grishka was caught by a patrol, and they took him to the Dostoevsky school-commune in Petrograd. Difficult teenagers from the street got here. They were received by the teacher Viktor Soroka-Rosinsky. This unusual person studied psychology, admired the work of Generalissimo Alexander Suvorov and did not think that a bad past could put an end to the fate of a person.
Everything here was new to our hero. He discovered that he liked to study and quickly made up the school curriculum. Grisha found many comrades among his fellow misfortunes. The closest friend of the teenager was Lesha Eremeev, who earned the nickname Lyonka Panteleev for his criminal tricks. This guy managed to wander around and surprised his friend with daring and tempting ideas.
Romantics
The mentors tried to grow out of their wards real builders of communism, paying no less attention to education than to education. The teenagers were praised for their daring fantasies and the desire for everything new. Grigory and Alexey believed that they would make their contribution to the development of Russian cinema. In 1923, the young men left the school and began looking for a film studio that would need two desperate guys. Graduates were provided with living space in the city on the Neva, but they went on a journey across the Soviet Union.
In Kharkiv, the eccentrics were informed that the position of an apprentice projectionist was vacant in a local cinema. She went to Eremeev, and Belykh returned home. A year later, an old friend came to him. In the cinema, he did not make a career and now he is fired up with the idea to write a book. The guys decided to create a large-scale work, the plot of which will be based on the period of their stay in the colony. They divided the tasks honestly - the chapters in the future creation were divided equally between the two co-authors.
Glory
For help in creating the story, novice writers turned to the famous writers Samuil Marshak and Yevgeny Schwartz. They helped our heroes get a job as correspondents for the Smena newspaper, and gave a number of important advice. In 1926, the "Republic of SHKID" was presented to the public. They simply could not not take this work into circulation - the biography of its creators clearly demonstrated the successes of the Bolsheviks in the struggle for the younger generation, and the pages of the work described the process of turning street children into full-fledged members of society. Maxim Gorky also supported the young men with a positive review.
Inspired by his success, Grigory Belykh decided to continue writing. From under his pen came several stories about the life of children from the urban poor, his stories about the re-education of hooligans in a colony school were popular. There were no changes in his personal life - the writer did not acquire a wife and children, he spent royalties on the purchase of treats and gifts for old friends who often dropped in to visit him.
Black humor
In 1935, our hero decided to write a novel dedicated to the drummers of the first five-year plan. In his free time, he came up with poetry, which contained insulting attacks towards Joseph Stalin, and thought of introducing it to his friends. Naturally, this upstart had envious people, and they got a great chance to overthrow the favorite of fate from Olympus. The ill-wishers took the case to court and presented the silly joke as an element of anti-Soviet activity.
The authorities do not forgive those who are responsible for their good deeds with black ingratitude. The former favorite of the young proletarians was sentenced to three years in prison. Behind bars, a lover of political humor fell ill with tuberculosis. His pen brother Alexei Eremeev asked to pardon the convict, but in vain. Grigory Belykh died in August 1935 in the Leningrad transit prison. Officials rashly banned his "Republic of SHKID". It was only in the 1960s that this disastrous initiative came to an end.
