Vologda’s writers for truth!

Writers don’t die. They are alive until their words are recited and their thoughts speak in us, new generations. Everyone could make sure of it at the meeting with Vologda’s writers that was held in the conference hall of the Kirillo-Belozersky Museum-Reserve on April 21.

Alexander Tsyganov and Valery Gostinshchikov, members of the Union of Russian Writers, and Alexander Romanov, docent of the Pedagogy Department, Candidate of Philosophical Sciences, told the audience about the fates of local writers – Vasily Belov, Sergey Vikulov, Sergey Orlov, and demonstrated very rare video fragments of their biographies. It turned out that the first meeting of the writers in the Kirillov land took place in 1964. Here they are – happy and laughing – they are travelling along the Sheksna River by ship and admire the expanses! The writers are going for a walk in the monasteries and are communicating. By the way, they haven’t changed the tradition this time either. Tatiana Goncharova conducted the tour of the Kirillo-Belozersky Museum-Reserve for the guests.

The title of the writers’ meeting in the Kirillo-Belozersky Museum-Reserve was “Vologda’s Writers about the War”. There were good reasons why they remembered the words of Alexander Yashin that he had written down in his diary on June 22, 1941, “I decided to be at war. To see everything. To participate in everything. The new history of the world will be made now. And to fear for one’s life is shameful here. You must be on the firing line. And then if I come out with my life, I won’t be ashamed of myself”. And Yashin came through and even the fallen people came through together with him. They did it in his verses.

At the meeting, they quoted some authors, read fragments of their works, estimated the events immortalized in the books. They say that love and songs helped them to gain the victory at the war. To confirm it, Valery Gostinshchikov recited the poem of Yashin written in 1943.

Vitaly Rumyantsev, singer-songwriter performing songs composed to the verses of Vologda’s authors, created warm atmosphere in the conference hall. “The song is titled ‘Two Steps Forward”. I learnt it especially for the meeting with you”, he said beginning to play the button accordion. The veteran of the Special Forces, the combat swimmer of the Northern Fleet sang about the Great Patriotic War, about that war the historical truth about which could be rewritten. The writers of the Vologda region declared in dead earnest, “We won’t let them do it!”

Valery Gostinshchikov, author of the book “Winged Warriors”, believes that we need real history of the victory. He wrote about it in his work noting, “It is the history of the airborne forces, specialists who participated in the large-scale operations of the Great Patriotic War, and there were our fellow-townsmen among them. A death notification was received for each of them, but they have come through!”

In their books, the writers of Vologda will tell about the harassing labour of adults and children during the war and in the postwar time, the hard feat for the victory, long memory and fidelity to the native home, honesty and conscience. They brought one of such works to Kirillov. It is the book titled “The Light of Victory” written by Alexander Romanov. The author’s son presented it to the audience and gave one exemplar to everybody who wanted.