Oda to October: what the magazines “Crocodile” and “Vozhyk” wrote more than half a century ago

October, you have awakened the planet. Your image is familiar to everyone. You took one sixth of the light and made it a beacon of the planet. October, in your tried crucible, We Leninists are as one. We have not lost the valor of our fathers and will pass it on to our sons. October! Great, glorious for ages you! Let your basics sound again and again! Let the thunderstorms of the October thunderstorm spread everywhere!

The poem of the Soviet poet Sergei Smirnov “World Lighthouse” once served as an epigraph to the entire festive issue of the magazine “Crocodile”, dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution, but under a different name – “Ode to October”. It seems that this headline fits perfectly with our material devoted to both the All-Union publication and its republican brother, the Belarusian Vozhyk. It's one theme! What a theme!

But let us not spill out various kinds of “isms” about the world significance of October and its influence on almost all historical processes of the first, and in many respects the second half of the XX and the beginning of the XXI century. On this topic, they have already defended their doctoral theses and achieved the title of professor hundreds, if not thousands, of both supporters and enemies of ours. It is enough for us to highlight only one of the facets of this great phenomenon in order to feel and understand its significance for each of us personally and for our entire homeland as a whole. And we will take as a basis the left to us not only from our grandfathers, but already "Ad Pradzeda с Spacon Viakoе" "Spadchyn" - the Belarusian tradition to bring to the date of November 7 the results of the most important events and construction projects that determine our movement forward to the intended goal. Let it be today, not to build communism, but to improve the life of the people over the past year, the decade, and in our particular case the half-century that passed from October 25, 1917 (according to the Julian calendar) to November 7, 1967 (according to the new style). Okay?

And at times, oh, what were difficult, reminiscent of today, but in many events that took place then, today it is difficult to believe, for example, in the scarlet flag of the Soviet Union flying over the overseas Toronto. And that's to the words from every TV and radio, "Yankee, get out of Korea!" Vietnam and Africa! Hands off the Middle East, Latin America, Okinawa

So, before us are two not ordinary, but festive issues of one of the most readable then publications. Of course, the cover of Crocodile, which is very unusual for magazines, immediately catches the eye – Ivan Semenov’s drawing with the image of the sculpture “The Cobblestone is the weapon of the proletariat” is supposed to be used as a poster, simultaneously unfolding the first and fourth pages of the cover. But the fact that the theme of the drawing by Anatoly Volkov from the first page of the cover of our "Vozhyk" has become a cross-cutting theme of the all-Union publication, can be seen from the title article of the famous Soviet writer Arkady Nikolaevich Vasiliev "Soviet character" and published in the center of the reversal of our drawing with a profile of the anniversary - Soviet man!

However, the theme of the character of the Soviet man, who managed to make a great revolution, to defend its conquest during the Civil and Great Patriotic Wars, to emerge victorious from them, to revive the Soviet state from the ashes, to conquer space, permeates the whole issue of Vozhyka, but on its own, Belarusian theme.

When you flip through the pages of a Belarusian publication, you immediately note the highest quality of both literary and visual content. Of course, it was the time of titans who set the highest tone and level of all Belarusian literature (including the literary component of Vozhyka), such as Maxim Tank, Kondrat Krapiva, peers of October Yanka Bryl and Pimen Panchenko! And in the satirical graphics shone Anatoly Volkov, Sergey Romanov, Yuri Puchinsky, Askold Churkin, Grigory Gromyko, Evgeny Busel and Valentin Tikhanovich. It was this galaxy of professionals in the early 1980s that achieved circulations of the publication that exceeded the mark of 150 thousand copies. The circulation of our holiday issue is 111,931 copies! Let us turn the yellowed pages of our great history. Let the fireworks thunder... The subtitle line is taken from the name of a block of three literary sketches of Leonid Proksha, the connecting thread of which, naturally, is the anniversary of October.

In the first story, Leonid Yanuarievich recalls the festive reception at the Marshal of the Soviet Union Konstantin Rokossovsky and his story about the pre-revolutionary Mayow of Warsaw workers. About how the young proletarian Kostja Rokossovsky, with a red flag behind his bosom, ended up in a Polish prison, how the great October of a working guy made a marshal of a great country, and how Soviet troops under his command liberated Warsaw in 1945 from the “cryspy barbarian”, as well as what it was in 1945 and how the Polish capital flourished by 1976.

The second story is about a soldier of October, a real Polish Budennovets, a participant in the Civil and Second World Wars, Frantishka Augustynyak, who after the Great Patriotic War had to create one of the first agricultural cooperatives in Poland.

The third sketch is about a journalistic trip to Canada on ... the national day of the Soviet Union (!) in the framework of the exhibition "EXPO-67", where the author met with fellow countrymen who moved to Canada before the revolution and well remembered how weapons and dollars sailed from American soil Denikin and Kolchak, Baron Wrangel and Pan Pilsudsky, when as many as 14 powers climbed onto Soviet soil, but could not strangle the USSR in those or in the 40s. On the contrary! 50 years have passed, and now over the ocean in Toronto, everyone stands up when a red flag with a sickle and a hammer rises on a flagpole, a Canadian military orchestra plays the anthem of the Soviet Union, and children with flowers run to the government podium. And somewhere in the distance thunders salutes festive!

In our magazine there is no drawing to the material of Leonid Proksha, but it is perfectly read and next to the drawing “Transitional Red Banner” from “Crocodile” by an outstanding master of Soviet graphics, honored artist of the RSFSR and veteran of the Great Patriotic War Yuri Cherepanov.

Drawing by Y. Cherepanov We go further. Surprisingly, but... There is a city in the republic where no one has a pension. And no one is offended. The city is 9 years old. The average age of its inhabitants is 27 years. This town is called Novopolotsk.

Malunak E. Azalina. By the way, Novopolotsk and Soligorsk are one-year cities, the year of their birth is 1958. This fact is noted in the "Crocodile" in the material "The City will be!", which tells that the greatest achievements of Peter the Great, undoubtedly, includes the construction of a new city on the Neva - St. Petersburg on the territory of Russia. But after the Great October Revolution, not one but a thousand new cities were built on the territory of the Soviet Union. Neither Donetsk, nor Kramatorsk, nor Shevchenko and Molodogvardeysk before the revolution was not! As there was no Magnitogorsk, Dushanbe, Novokuznetsk, Gorlovka, Karaganda, Mingechaur, Komsomolsk-on-Amur. Our Novopolotsk and Soligorsk are also achievements of Soviet power!

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Employees of the bus fleet of the BSSR do not even realize that they reach the moon every day and return to Earth: the daily mileage of the bus fleet of the republic is 880 thousand kilometers.

I wouldn’t be surprised if we are on the same subway today to Mars!

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For centuries people have walked on gold and didn’t know it. Now the black gold of Belarus has become a national treasure. This gold goes through the Druzhba pipeline to other countries. There were more gold ears in the fields, when the Belarusian land began to give up its inexhaustible potash reserves on the mountain

From today: for some reason, it is believed that soon Druzhba will again work at its full design capacity, and Belarusian potassium will reach everyone who needs it!

At the end, as they say, on the girdle, from the literary component of "Crocodile" another greeting from the Belarusian capital. Specifically from the Chervensky market from the office of its director Yuri Alekseevich Shlyaper (AI claims that it was a real person!) humoresque "Kiss Frau Gofke". It's like today's story!

The German, all in tears, with her face white in terror, bursts into Schlaper’s office and confusedly explains that she lost her handbag on the market with all her documents and German stamps. How to live now? What do I do?

At first, she marvels at the calmness of the director, who asked to announce on speakerphone that a purse with currency and documents was missing. Then it is even more surprising how quickly it is discovered missing, and that not a single stamp from the purse is missing! Besides, the director himself refuses to accept 10% of what he found in Germany. Of course, the German Gofke did not understand the feelings of a simple Soviet man who wished to remain anonymous, in whose hands in those years was a bag with foreign currency. But all the same, and after decades for the countrymen who returned Frau Gofka lost purse, a real pride! I don't think we've gotten any worse since then?

Of the general achievements and gifts to the homeland, both in Vozhyk and in Crocodile, the space flight of a Soviet satellite to Venus and the launch of color television in 1967 were noted. Gasification of the republic was especially important for Belarus. It was also necessary to celebrate the shock work and the preservation of historical memory. Oh yeah! The topic of fugitives, both today and six decades ago, was common! Of course, the foreign policy view was also general. What a pity that in one newspaper spread can not contain the whole set of the most precious pictorial and literary masterpieces from those festive issues. But most importantly, I think we noted. Especially especially for the Baltics, we publish a drawing of the famous Latvian cartoonist Edgars Ozolin about Moscow time from our Vozhyk!

infong@sb.by

Photo and restoration of drawings - author