On May 5, 1922, in connection with the 10th anniversary of the newspaper Pravda and by decision of the XI Congress of the RCP(b), the Day of the Bolshevik Press was widely celebrated. The photo taken at that time has been preserved: employees and workers of Pravda in the courtyard of the house on Tverskaya Street, where the editorial offices of central newspapers were located in those days (an inscription is visible at the entrance).: "There are no doormen. Close the door"), against the background of a truck with a large billboard on which all the names of the pre-October Pravda are displayed in large letters. Some people climbed on the truck, many young faces, and among this young growth of Pravdists - the tall, burly figure of Sergei Vasilyevich Malyshev, the guest of honor of the holiday, secretary of the editorial board of Pravda in 19141 .

In the 1920s, his name was widely known. V. I. Lenin knew and appreciated Malyshev well. Here are two testimonies from the same year, 1922. On January 17, in a note to members of the Politburo, Lenin noted that he knew "only two Communists who showed skill in trade," and that one of them was Malyshev2 . In April, talking to Malyshev, Vladimir Ilyich recalled his participation in public construction works for the unemployed during the first Russian Revolution, believing that his long-standing experience would help him organize the restoration of the Nizhny Novgorod Fair .3 Worker, professional revolutionary, member of the Communist Party since 1902, writer-nugget, "red merchant"... We will add that he had to combine his "commercial" activities with military, political, educational and diplomatic work.

Despite all the novelty and scale of the tasks that the Russian working class faced after the seizure of power, the entire pre-October practical history of Bolshevism prepared such advanced workings4 as Malyshev for their solution. The spiritual development of these workers is inseparable from their initial participation in the struggle against tsarism and the bourgeoisie.

Even before the October Revolution, Malyshev dreamed of "telling all that he had experienced and remade during the 15 years of his proletarian social life to others, to his young comrades who were coming to replace us." 5 The memoirs he wrote during the Soviet era are the most valuable part of his literary legacy, an important source on the history of the revolutionary movement and the first steps of socialist construction in our country. Malyshev's correspondence with M. Gorky, which began in the 1910s and continued, is also of great interest for describing the spiritual world of the working intelligentsia.

1 " M. I. Ulyanova-Secretary of Pravda, Moscow, 1965, pp. 310-311.

2 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 44, p. 362.

3 P. Malyshev. Meetings with Lenin, Moscow, 1933, p. 56. He devoted a number of his works to this fair. See, for example: S. V. Malyshev. All-Union market place. Nizhny Novgorod, 1923; his own name. Nizhny Novgorod Fair of 1924 Nizhny Novgorod, 1924 (identical works: about fairs of 1925-1928); see also his. Nizhny - Lyon. Travel Notes, Moscow, 1924.

4 See V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 41, p. 8.

5 TSPA IML under the Central Committee of the CPSU, f. 448, op. 1, d. 69, l. 2.

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over 20 years old. Malyshev met him in July 1905. On behalf of the secretary of the PC of the RSDLP, E. D. Stasova, he then visited Gorky together with A. V. Shotman in order to get the money necessary for the restoration of the PC printing house, and had a long conversation with the writer .6 For Gorky, this meeting was one of the sources in his work on the images of proletarian revolutionaries-the heroes of the story "Mother". "I thank you and others like you for being here, for living," he wrote to Malyshev in Siberian exile 7 . In turn, Malyshev testified that in the "Mother" he and his comrades saw their" true " life 8 .

Sergei was in his 11th year when he was brought to St. Petersburg and assigned as a" boy " to a small shop. The life ideal of many of the same people from the countryside was to eventually start their own "business". But Malyshev soon began to dream of something else - to join the working environment. In 1896, under the impression of the strike of St. Petersburg textile workers, he decided, despite his father's ban, to go to the Obukhov factory first as a messenger, and then as an assistant turner in a gun workshop. Soon he joins an illegal circle, together with A.V. Shotman, N. N. Yunikov, I. P. Taraev and other young Obukhovites conducts revolutionary agitation, participates in disputes about "who correctly expresses the interests of the working class-Lenin or the economists, and how we, the workers, will be able to improve our situation"; a decisive role in the outcome of these disputes was played by Lenin's book " What to Do?". According to Malyshev, it was a "direct revelation" for him9 .

On May 7, 1901, 23-year-old Malyshev was among the leaders of the heroic battle between workers and tsarist troops, the famous "Obukhov Defense". He was wounded that day, but managed to avoid arrest by going to Odessa for a while, and in early 1902 he returned to the factory to continue working for the Iskra organization in St. Petersburg .10 He was captured on the street on Christmas Eve. Many years later, reviewing his extensive experience of the tsarist dungeons, Malyshev said that he behaved "rather violently" there, did not obey the prison regime, protested against the rough treatment of prisoners-workers, openly showed his contempt for the prison administration, and so on .11
In the summer of 1903, Malyshev and other Iskra members were transferred from the "pre-trial prison" to the famous Kresty prison in St. Petersburg. Here, not content with individual self-education tolerated by the jailers, the workers decided to discuss the books they had read, addressing each other through the windows of the solitary cells. "The conversations were heated, everyone talked a lot"; this discussion, unprecedented in the history of Krestov, ended with the brutal beating of prisoners by a horde of drunken guards; "Sergey Malyshev suffered severely," recalled M. I. Kalinin12 . And one more characteristic episode. At the beginning of the Russo-Japanese war, Malyshev, who was under police surveillance (the case took place in Baku, where fate threw him), was called to the police chief, who offered him to "atone for his sin before the tsar and the motherland" by voluntarily joining the army. In response, Malyshev "spat either in the face or on the desk," after which, he recalled, "the police chief roared, jumped up and climbed on me." 13
In 1905, Malyshev carried out revolutionary work in St. Petersburg - behind the Neva outpost and on the Vyborg side, in Yaroslavl and in his native village of Voskresenskoye, Yaroslavl Province, where he was exiled after another arrest. It was then called "stormy-fiery". He enjoyed great authority among the workers of Kostroma (he was sent to this textile center at the end of October 1905 by the Central Committee of the RSDLP). Malyshev's vivid speeches were often heard at thousands of rallies held at factories. On November 20, at the first meeting of the Kostroma Soviet of Workers ' Deputies, "Comrade Malyshev - Pozharny"was elected its chairman .14 In the days when the royal administration-

6 A. Shotman. Notes of an Old Bolshevik, L. 1963, pp. 185-187; S. Malyshev. Battle pages of 1905, l. 1926, pp. 27-33.

7 Gorky metro station. Collected works, vol. 29, Moscow, 1955, p. 335.

8 " M. Gorky. Materials and research", L. 1934, p. 420.

9 P. Malyshev. Meetings with Lenin, p. 5,7; E. R. Olkhovsky. Lenin's Iskra in St. Petersburg, L. 1975, pp. 193, 307.

10 M. Rozanov. Obukhovtsy, L. 1965.

11 P. Malyshev. On the St. Petersburg Council of the Unemployed, Moscow, 1932, p. 55.

12 Central Administration of the IML under the Central Committee of the CPSU, f. 70, op. 3, d. 842, ll. 11-13.

13 Ibid., f. 124, op. 1, d. 1187, l. 5.

14 "New Life", 27. XI. 1905 ("Fireman" he was called even at the Obukhov plant See A. Shotman. Edict op., p.

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The administration effectively lost control of the city, which was caught up in a general strike, and it came to the point that delegates from the city guards came to Malyshev and swore an oath to "serve the Council faithfully"15 .

Malyshev's fighting temperament was combined with sober practicality and special prudence in the revolutionary cause. His political outlook was broadened by his contacts with Lenin, as well as with M. I. Ulyanova, V. V. Vorovsky, E. D. Stasova, and E. M. Yaroslavsky .16 During the first Russian Revolution, he became a leader of the working masses. On March 26, 1906, a citywide Council of the Unemployed was formed in St. Petersburg. One of the initiators of its creation was Malyshev. The Bolshevik-led movement of the unemployed forced the City Duma to allocate funds for public works. Malyshev headed the Committee of Deputies of the Gagarinsky Buyan 17-district on the St. Petersburg side, where 1.5 thousand metalworkers who were dismissed by the owners - active participants of the revolution-were employed in the construction of bridges and other structures. It is no coincidence that among Malyshev's literary pseudonyms there was also such a one - "Sergey Buyansky". At the same time, he works as the secretary of the trade union of longshoremen. Under his leadership, a strike took place in the summer of 1906, which paralyzed the port of St. Petersburg for 70 days. The strikers were supported by the Council of the Unemployed, using part of the funds received from the "city fathers". Thanks to the unity of the St. Petersburg proletariat, an attempt by the City Duma and shipowners to find strikebreakers among the unemployed was thwarted .18
In 1906, Malyshev became a member of the PC of the RSDLP. At the same time, he began working in the Bolshevik press as editor-publisher of the weekly "Thorns of Labor", transferred by the Council of Unemployed to the Central Committee. All four issues of the magazine were confiscated. February 15, 1907 The St. Petersburg Judicial Chamber suspended this publication "in view of the special importance of the criminal acts committed in it" (meaning, first of all, Lenin's articles published in two issues).19 . Later, Malyshev, the first historiographer of the Council of the Unemployed, wrote how much this movement gave to its leaders, teaching them to "organize production" and, "even sitting at the same table with the bourgeoisie,.. achieve your class goals " 20 .

He had to endure another battle with the liberals at the All-Russian Cooperative Congress in April 1908. The Proletarian newspaper noted Malyshev's class-based, Marxist approach to the question of workers ' participation in cooperatives .21
A close-knit group of Bolshevik workers (I. S. Belyanchikov, S. V. Malyshev, I. G. Pravdin, A.V. Shotman, etc.) issued an "Open Letter to M. Gorky", in which they exposed the liberals ' "political pettiness and lackey cowardice", angrily condemned the mockery of the revolution, the apology of betrayal. The authors of the letter contrasted this shameful sermon with the heroic traditions of 1905, the moral highness and humanism of the socialist ideals that inspired the vanguard of the proletariat .22 In this regard, they highly appreciated Gorky's novel "Mother", the images of its heroes, "highly conscious workers". Bolshaya Pressa refused to print the workers ' letter. This setback strengthened the resolve of Malyshev and his wife-

36); M. I. Sinyazhnikov. Kostroma, 1905. Voprosy Istorii, 1977, No. 6, p. 208.

15 P. Malyshev. Battle pages, .. p. 54; P. N. Karavae V. In the pre-October years, Moscow, 1948, pp. 47-50.

16 P. Malyshev. Meetings with Lenin, p. 59; A. Voronsky. For the living and dead water, Moscow, 1970, pp. 76-78, 81.

17 "Brawlers" were called in St. Petersburg from the XVIII century.islands that arose in connection with the laying of channels, on which there were warehouses with goods.

18 "Bread and work", 1906, N 2, pp. 11-12; N. K. Krupskaya. Memoirs of Lenin, Moscow, 1972, p. 130; P. Dorovatovsky. Union of Transport Workers, l. 1927, pp. 33, 42.

19 P. Malyshev. From the history of the Bolshevik press. "Searchlight", 1935, N 5, p. 9; L. P. Streltsina, V. V. Shvedov. The Bolshevik Legal Press of St. Petersburg during the First Revolution in Russia, L. 1967, pp. 142-145.

20 "Proletarian Revolution", 1931, N 4-5, p. 145.

21 "Proletarian", 23. VII. 1908. In 1911, Malyshev was recommended as a "connoisseur of cooperative affairs" to the Odessa workers (TsGAOR USSR, f. DP, 00, 1911, 5, part 51, lit. B, l. 98). He was also engaged in this work in Siberia on the eve of the February Revolution.

22 I. S. Rosenthal. On the way to Pravda. "Questions of the History of the CPSU", 1972, N 5, pp. 88-89. Malyshev also devoted his short story "A Page of the Past" to exposing liberalism (first published in the Metalist magazine, 1913, NN 12 and 13).

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We will continue to fight for the creation of a mass Bolshevik press. "We need our own workers' newspaper, "Malyshev declared," like light and air, like bread and labor. " 23 That is why he made such high demands on the press: for the workers, a writer is not "a purveyor of beautiful verbal gizmos", but a teacher and a person; as for bourgeois journalists, "those," Malyshev wrote to Gorky, " who would look upon themselves as social workers and value the newspaper word that is used in their work." They throw into the mass, I've seen very little of it. " 24
He aspires to become a newspaper worker. As early as 1906, Malyshev, who was always ready to explain to his comrades in the struggle "what old Marx said," was often mistaken for a student, although he had only two classes of the school behind him. And when the news flashed in the newspaper chronicle that " the organizer of the artel, Alexey Malyshev, was sentenced to a year's imprisonment for editing the journal of the unemployed "Thorns of Labor"and would soon begin serving his sentence, "25 Sergey Vasilyevich knew exactly what he would use his forced"rest" for. In solitary confinement, he persevered in learning grammar, filling out one notebook after another. And in February 1911, in his article "On Self-taught Writers," Gorky approvingly quoted Malyshev's" lyrical work "on the Native Word, in which the author compared the Russian language to a mighty bell announcing to the people" the possibility of a better life, achieved by work and struggle." In Malyshev's work, Gorky saw a vivid manifestation of revolutionary optimism, evidence of the cultural growth of the workers ("to understand the meaning of language is a lot, it pleases") .26
Working as a reporter for Odessa and Vologda newspapers, Malyshev learned newspaper techniques in practice. He returned to the southern port city at the end of March 1911 at the request of the local Bolsheviks.

The Odessa authorities did not immediately understand why the Black Sea Port Bulletin, a "political, literary, maritime, commercial, non - party newspaper," is so briskly analyzed by the workers. Meanwhile, since May 21, it was led by the Bolsheviks, but it retained the same signboard and numbering. The deal with the owner of the newspaper was concluded by the "unemployed journalist" Malyshev, who acted on behalf of V. V. Vorovsky. Under the influence of Bolshevik agitation, a general strike of port workers and sailors broke out in Odessa in August, one of the leaders of which was Malyshev .27 In the autumn of 1911, he was sent to Vologda. Here, in 1912, he learned about the creation of Pravda and became its correspondent. After returning to St. Petersburg at the end of 1913, Sergey Vasilyevich immediately joined Pravda, where, "as in focus," he wrote, "I am not a lawyer ...the entire working life was concentrated. " 28 After the arrest of editorial secretary K. N. Samoilova on February 18, 1914, she was replaced by Malyshev. All editorial correspondence passes through his hands. The Okhrana considered him one of the Bolsheviks who played a "leading and particularly prominent role" in the editorial office: Malyshev, one of the police documents said, "is a prominent, active representative of the local Bolshevik underground... He is also a member of the group of party workers who are responsible for directing the direction of Pravda's revolutionary activities. 29 As can be seen from Malyshev's letters, he also helped the Bolshevik faction of the Fourth State Duma, in particular, in organizing the strike movement .30 His efforts contributed to the further consolidation of workers ' writers around Pravda and the publication of the first Collection of Proletarian Writers. In early July 1914, Pravda was closed by the tsarist authorities and its employees were arrested. Malyshev, along with other pravdists, was sent to the Angara region. "How far have you come, my good friend Sergey Vasiliev! "I wrote to him

23 "Metalist", 1912, N 15, p. 7. On Malyshev's authorship, see: Central Administration of the IML under the Central Committee of the CPSU, f. 448, op. 1, d. 69, l. 2 vol.

24 " M. Gorky. Materials and research", pp. 419-420; Archive of A. M. Gorky, KG-np / a, 16-36/3, l. 3. Probably, Malyshev used these personal observations when speaking in 1914 to his comrades in prison with an improvised report on the bourgeois press (A. Kiselyov. In July 1914, Proletarian Revolution, 1924, No. 7, p. 54).

25 " Gazeta-kopeyka "(Saint Petersburg), 21.VI. 1908.

26 M. Gorky. Collected works vol. 24, p. 115.

27 "Searchlight", 1935, N 5, p. 10-11; TsGAOR USSR, f. DP, 00, 1911, 5, part 51, lit. B, ll. 17-152; A. M. Gorky Archive, KG-np / a, 16-36/1.

28 A. M. Gorky Archive, KG-rl, 16-86/2, l. 1 vol.

29 "Proletarskaya revolyutsiya", 1923, No. 2, p. 467; "Istoriko-revolyutsionny sbornik", Vol. 1. Moscow-Ptgr. 1924, pp. 209, 229.

30 A. M. Gorky Archive, KG-rl, 16-86/2, ll. 1 vol. - 2.

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Bitter. "I looked at the map, and it even got cold, but when I read your letter again , I thawed out, and I see that you are not losing your spirits, and that is the main thing. "They are their own, and we are our own," is a good slogan for stubborn people... Now you must write, sir! Buy some paper, ink, and go ahead!"31 . Malyshev himself intended to "read more, properly, and generally learn thoroughly" 32 . In exile, he wrote, among other things, the novel "To the Light" - about the transformation of a rural teenager into a class-conscious worker (in Soviet times, it went through three editions).33 . While in exile, Sergey Vasilyevich took part in the work of the illegal "Corporation for Mutual Assistance of Political Exiles of the Angara Region", firmly supporting Lenin's position on the question of attitude to the imperialist war.

After the overthrow of tsarism, the Krasnoyarsk Soviet instructed Malyshev to organize the return of political exiles to European Russia. He himself returned to Petrograd in April 1917 and was soon elected chairman of the Soviet of Workers 'and Soldiers' Deputies in Borovichi, Novgorod Province. Local owners of ceramic factories systematically reduced production and laid off workers. After consulting with Lenin, Malyshev passed through the Soviet the decision to commandeer one of these factories. The decision infuriated supporters of the Interim Government. On 25 June, a mob incited by them attacked the Council. Malyshev was beaten and thrown into prison, and only the intervention of the revolutionary soldiers saved his life.

From the first days of Soviet power, Malyshev was actively involved in the construction of a new state apparatus and a socialist economy, working first in the People's Commissariat of Labor, and from the end of 1917 - in the People's Commissariat of Food. On the second anniversary of the October Revolution, Lenin proudly declared that "even in the food industry, in a field where there were almost exclusively representatives of the old bourgeois government, the old bourgeois state," workers now predominate .34 It was they who were charged by the party to carry out a food policy that would strengthen the alliance of the proletariat with the peasantry, and Lenin had no doubt that Malyshev, with his experience in party work and knowledge of the countryside, would be able to approach this problem "in a working-class and practical way."35 It was necessary, in particular, to make economical and rational use of the limited commodity resources that were then at the disposal of the Soviet State. Malyshev's name is also associated with the organization of several expeditions to agricultural areas in order to exchange industrial goods for food .36
Malyshev's organizational skills were especially widespread during the NEP years. Under his leadership, the Irbit and Nizhny Novgorod fairs are being recreated 37 . He stood for nine years at the head of the Nizhny Novgorod Fair Committee, consistently implementing Lenin's instructions: to learn to trade and use the initiative and experience of a private trader, while not allowing him to "inflate the state", and steadily expand the state's positions in commodity turnover. In the 1920s, Sergey Vasilyevich also headed the Moscow Commodity Exchange and the All-Union Chamber of Commerce, worked in the Central Union, in the Board of the People's Commissariat of Trade of the USSR and the Procurement Committee of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR. In 1923, in response to a visit to the Nizhny Novgorod Fair by the mayor of Lyon and the chairman of the Radical Party, E. Herriot, Malyshev was sent to Lyon .38 This trip was one of the steps towards the establishment of diplomatic relations between the USSR and France. After retiring due to illness in 1931, the faithful Leninist did not stop actively participating in the activities of the Society of Old Bolsheviks. S. V. Malyshev lived a long life, devoting it entirely to the struggle for the cause of the working class, for socialism.

31 M. Gorky. Collected works vol. 29, pp. 329, 331.

32 " M. Gorky. Materials and research", pp. 422-423.

33 A. Pryamkov. Writers from the people. Yaroslavl. 1958.

34 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 39, p. 296.

35 P. Malyshev. Meetings with Lenin, p. 38.

36 See E. M. Kanevsky and L. G. Margolin. U istokov sovetskoi torgovli [At the Origins of Soviet Trade], Moscow, 1975, pp. 61-73.

37 E. M. Kanevsky, L. G. Margolin. Op. ed., pp. 147-165.

38 The Kremlin Library of V. I. Lenin contains the first edition of S. V. Malyshev's book " Nizhny-Lyon. Travel Notes " ("Lenin's Library in the Kremlin". Catalog. Moscow, 1961, p. 335). For his trip to Lyon, see Yu. Yurov. I'll never forget you. Moscow, 1974, No. 11.

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