Yuri Chernykh is a Soviet poet who wrote many wonderful children's poems. His name may not be known to connoisseurs of Russian children's literature, but the words "Far, far, grazing in the meadow …" will surely be remembered by many and will immediately smile like a child. This poem was written by Yuri Yegorovich Chernykh, and it was this poem that glorified his name. It is sad that the poet, who wrote such joyful, kind and sincere poems, ended his life very tragically.
Biography. Childhood and youth
Yuri Yegorovich Chernykh was born in the city of Ust-Kut, in the Irkutsk region on November 27, 1936 in a large peasant family. In total, the parents had six children, and they all received a good upbringing and education. Yegor Ivanovich, the head of the family, although he was a peasant, was considered a very educated person at that time, as he finished four classes of the parish school. He instilled in children a love of literature, often arranged reading evenings for the whole family. Mom was a good dressmaker, she catered for the whole family, friends and acquaintances, did the household.
Before the Great Patriotic War, the family moved to the taiga village of Nizhne-Ilimsky, where Yuri Chernykh spent his childhood and youth. Here, at the age of five, he composed his first poem, moreover "anti-fascist", on the topic of the day - about how a steam locomotive with the Nazis stumbled on a stump and fell, and the Germans fell out of there. This naive rhyme was written by the elder sister of the young poet.
Since then, the boy has been constantly composing something - lyrical, comic and satirical poems, epigrams, tongue twisters. He often wrote for the school, and then the institute wall newspaper, drew well. He had an excellent memory, and he knew by heart many poems by Russian and foreign poets. There was a case when 12-year-old Yuri amazed classmates and teachers by reading the poem "Anna Snegina" by S. Yesenin.
Engineer career
Despite his literary talent, the young man was not going to become a poet. After leaving school, he entered the Irkutsk Institute of Agriculture, from which he graduated in 1960 with a degree in mechanical engineering and left for assignment to the city of Zheleznogorsk-Ilimsky. Here Yuri Chernykh got married for the first time, and the couple had a daughter, Lyudmila.
Three years later, in 1963, the family moved to the city of Bratsk, where Yuri then lived most of his life. He worked as an engineer-economist at the Bratsk Department of Motor Transport, then at the Sibteplomash production association.
Creation. Poems for children
Yuri Chernykh began to compose children's poems for his little daughter Luda. Once - it was in 1965 - a father and daughter went for a walk outside the city, and suddenly they saw a herd of cows in the meadow. The father took the girl in his arms and asked the question: "Who grazes in the meadow?" It was this phrase that became the name of the poem, which brought all-Union and even international fame to its author.
Friends have long persuaded Yuri to publish a collection of children's poetry. At first he refused, but then he made up his mind, and in the same 1965, several poems were published in the local newspaper Ogni Angara. This newspaper fell into the hands of Alexandra Pakhmutova, who was then already a well-known songwriter in the country and was just in those parts on a creative business trip. She chose two rhymes - "Who grazes in the meadow?" and Once Upon a Time, and in 1969 she wrote music to them. Both songs were included in the repertoire of the younger group of the Big Children's Choir of the All-Union Radio and Central Television. The comic "Once upon a time" did not receive much popularity, but another song - "Far, far, grazing in the meadow …" - was destined to become a hit of all concerts and children's parties. An even greater triumph awaited the song: a large children's choir performed it at the International Children's Song Competition in the capital of Bulgaria, Sofia, and the song became a laureate! And in 1973 at the Soyuzmultfilm studio, director-animator Galina Barinova filmed the cartoon "Who grazes in the meadow?" with the subtitle "mystery song". It was the second of four short-length hand-drawn miniatures included in the Merry Carousel almanac # 5. The song was performed by the same Great Children's Choir of Central Television and VR, soloist Anya Yurtaeva.
As a result of the popularity of the song, fame came to its author. In turn, this spurred the poet to write and publish more and more children's poetry. They were gladly accepted for publication by the editorial staff of the Sibiryachok magazines, the more popular in the country Veselye Kartinki. In the publishing houses of Bratsk, Irkutsk, and then in Moscow, collections of poems by Yuri Chernykh were published. In total, he published 10 collections - "Merry Talk", "Yegorkin's tongue twisters", "Granddaughter-why", "Flying cat" and others.
Without leaving his main job as an engineer, Yuri Yegorovich Chernykh collaborated with the Sibiryachok magazine as a member of the editorial board. In 1990 he was admitted to the Union of Writers of the USSR, and his books began to be published by the All-Union Publishing House "Children's Literature". He was friends and communicated with prominent Soviet writers and poets of the 1960s and 70s, such as Alexander Vampilov, Valentin Rasputin, Yuri Samsonov, Vyacheslav Shugaev and others.
Personal life
The cheerful and bright children's literary work of Yuri Chernykh contrasts strikingly with his personal life. He was married twice. In the first marriage, a daughter, Lyuda, was born (married - Lyudmila Lobzova). The couple broke up when the girl was still small, and in her youth her communication with her father was very limited. However, as an adult, Lyudmila took part in the publication of her father's books, especially after his death.
Yuri Chernykh married a second time (the name of both the first and second wife is unknown). It was during the years of his second marriage that he wrote and published the bulk of his poems and collections. The wife helped her husband in everything, carefully collected newspaper clippings with publications about him. Many of the poet's books contain a dedication to his wife.
In this marriage, he had an adopted daughter, Victoria Razumovskaya. Yuri's relationship with his stepdaughter did not work out, and the reason was his alcoholism. Victoria was very offended for her mother: in her opinion, he left his wife when she was dying in the hospital from cancer, and did not even come to her funeral. In addition, both Victoria and her mother had to go through all the negative side of living in the same house with a chronic alcoholic. Victoria said that her mother tried with all her might to rid her husband of this addiction, and Chernykh himself said that without his wife he would have drunk himself long ago and died somewhere under the fence.
Yuri Chernykh was also very worried about the collapse of the Soviet Union, the breakdown of foundations, a change in values and, in general, all the processes that took place in Russia in the early 1990s. He tried to drown out his internal problems with alcohol, lost weight and, according to friends and acquaintances, literally blackened, as if reflecting the meaning of his last name. In 1994, he was only 57 years old, but he looked much older. Drunkenness, illness and death of his wife, social and socio-political upheavals - all this was the reason why Yuri Chernykh decided to commit suicide. On September 12, 1994, two years after the death of his wife, he committed suicide (hanged himself).
The media in publications about Yuri Chernykh try to bypass the tragic moments of the last years of his life and especially his death - after all, in the memory of people he remains a wonderful children's poet, who wrote kind and positive poems about nature, about animals, about funny events from the life of babies and adults. In G. Mikhasenko's preface to the book by Y. Chernykh “Kindness is a Wonderful Woman” there are the following words: “For children, kindness is a real vitamin D”. And people honor the poet's contribution to Russian children's literature. In the Irkutsk Region, Yuri Chernykh's works are studied in schools as part of a regional extracurricular reading program. And in the city of Zheleznogorsk-Ilimsky, Irkutsk region, his name was given to the Central Regional Library.
