What happened to "Timur and his team" or thoughts about the Partnership of Militant Techies

By the round dates in our Belarusian Academy of Sciences, as a rule, beautifully decorated editions are published, describing all members of the scientific elite. Despite the rich design, the same books are not in great demand and are gathering dust somewhere on the shelves. The same fate befell the book “Scientists Glorifying Belarus” for the 90th anniversary of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus. The owner of this folio wanted to throw it away along with a pile of unnecessary waste paper, so I was even glad that it was needed by someone ... Well, and this caused me some thoughts. To learn more - look under the cat.

Opening the book, I suddenly came across Academician Fedorov. This is a physicist, the father of gyrotropy (the scientific discovery "Fedorov's shift" is his work), which, firstly, it turned out, was born not far from my little homeland (it is always pleasant for me to find fellow countrymen who have succeeded in scientific and engineering research), and the second was the son of the famous Belarusian writer J. Mavra.

Yanka Mavr (Belor. Yanka Mayr, real name - Ivan Mikhailovich Fedorov, Belor. Ivan Mihaylavich Fyodara; 1883-1971) - Belarusian Soviet writer, translator and playwright. [1]

A dry biographical note suggests that J. Mavr was the founder of adventure and scientific and educational genres in Belarusian literature, created the first Belarusian science fiction story. Winner of such and such awards, awards, was born then, then died then. As usual, the most interesting thing is reading between the lines and they will not write about it in official sources. We write informally.

So, first of all it is worth noting that Ivan Mikhailovich Fedorov was a man of broad erudition. Interested and ambiguous. Just give a few facts:

1) Future J. Mavra was expelled from the last year of the teacher's seminary in Panevezys (Lithuania) for free-thinking and “for doubts in religion”.

“Soon, the priest noticed that I did not justify my hopes, I even completely deteriorated,” and drove me away from the seminary “like a prodigal son” [1a]

2) J. Mavr was one of the most famous Esperantists of Belarus, and he began studying Esperanto in 1904 (at the same time teaching children in the tiny village of Bytcha near Borisov, where he was exiled for participating in an illegal pedagogical congress). In 1926, he conducted a program for Esperantists on the Belarusian radio. He tried to instill a love for Esperanto in his own household, for example, reading Eugene Onegin's son-in-law in Esperanto. Speaking in modern language, Esperanto at the beginning of the 20th century was the key to the world that the Internet is for us today. Actually, thanks to the knowledge of Esperanto and correspondence with Esperantists from around the world, J. Mavr was able to collect the necessary (for maximum reliability) information and publish the book “Amoc”. A volunteer assistant was a pen-friend — an Esperantist teacher from Java.
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3) The writer was fond of spiritualism (on the street, roughly speaking, 1937). Companies gathered in his house who practiced the challenge of spirits. Possessing a philosophical turn of mind, the writer in spiritualism saw not mysticism, but an insufficiently studied natural phenomenon, the mechanism of which he really wanted to understand. This is how the son-in-law speaks about this (who did not learn Esperanto):

They asked questions. The saucer began to run across the table, showing a dash in letters. Someone was sitting and writing. Once, Yanka Mavr, after a “conversation” with Igor Severyanin, brought a poem to the editor’s office, which the “spirit” dictated, and asked to determine who could write it. He was told that in style it looks like Igor Severyanin. But in any "spirits" Yanka Mavr did not believe. He figured out that if the "spirits" gave information, then it was something that someone from the session participants knew. Yanka Mavr asserted that the poet Yevhen Pfliaumbum, Maxim Luzhanin’s wife, was a strong medium. Only touched the saucer - it started spinning. And Yanka Mavr himself apparently possessed such abilities. Once in a hotel in Grodno, I talked with one party worker, gave him a mini-session of spiritualism ... I got a pencil to move. So let's get the party member to press a pencil with a fright so that it does not move ... [2]

True, this passion did not last long, or they found out everything they could and found all the answers, or the “black craters” did their job. But the point is that in 1938 the sessions ceased, and two thick notebooks and laboratory journals in which the results of experiments were recorded were burned.

4) I. Mavr would not be a writer if he did not like books. In the pre-war years, the writer gathered a huge home library, which was considered one of the best in Belarus.

Despite the presence of high-profile state awards, Ivan Mikhailovich remained a simple and immediate person to extreme old age. Favorite hobbies were cycling and playing the violin. He played, according to the listeners, just fine for an amateur.


After he was given a cottage near Minsk for merits in the field of children's literature, he built an improvised bungalow-study room from a vine on the bank of a river that flowed alongside, where he wrote his adventure novels - “so that you could write books about distant countries, dropping your feet in the water and imagining myself by the ocean. " Despite his venerable age, the writer was ready to come to the rescue at any moment, his relatives remember how once he, an old, blind, on vacation in the Crimea, rushed into the sea to a voice and saved a sinking girl. .. [3]

Any Belarusian child of the USSR-leaven ferment simply could not have known Y. Mavra. His “Polissky Robinsons” made a whole revolution in children's consciousness. I admit, I, too, after reading this story began to collect "equipment" to go somewhere in the woods and how the guys from the story "to fight with nature." No Bears Greaves, etc. there were no survivors at that time; there were ordinary, inventive, and courageous guys from Polissya, Miron and Victor, and the realization that in order to get a fair share of adventures, Jules Verne's oceans and seas are not needed. Everything can be done close to home ...

But what caused the reason that made me sit down and write this note is called “TVT” or “Fellowship of Militant Techies” (in the original “Tavarianism of the Scientists”). The story with the same name was published in 1934 and immediately stirred up the public with its artistic novelty. The novelty was that the topic of labor education that was relevant at that time (approximately at that time the legendary children's labor commune named after F.E. Dzerzhinsky was already functioning, under the strict guidance of the no less legendary Anton Makarenko), in the story according to the laws of which the secret and mysterious "Fellowship of Militant Techies" was created. Noticed the story and colleagues in the shop. In Belarus, she received the first prize at the All-Belarusian Children's Book Competition, after which Y. Mavr was to represent it at the First All-Union Congress of Writers of the USSR. There, the story made no less impression on the writers. What does the fact that after the announcement of the book Maxim Gorky [4] asked to translate the story into Russian and send it to him? Samuel Marshak, in his report “On Big Literature for Little Children”, first of all noted “a significant school story written in Belarus” [5].

In those years, “TVT” became an open challenge to official regulatory pedagogy. Their main principle was “If not me, then who?”. The writer believed that in a society all people should become a sort of “TVT” -ovtsami, the true owners of their equipment (and equipment). But as the writer repeatedly mentioned later, this idea turned out to be an illusion [6]. The reason for this could be official bans from the Republican Ministry of Education. There, they relate to the story about the tendency, since the organization "TVT" was not existing:

“Is there a need to create some kind of different partnerships and teams, if the activities of schoolchildren should be regulated by the“ Rules for the conduct of pupils ”[7].

These prohibitions and pressure from the officials of educational institutions on the vine crushed the TVT movement that was beginning to emerge (and it began to emerge actively not only in large Belarusian cities - Minsk, Brest, Pinsk, Kobrin, but also in Kaliningrad, Ivanovo, Stavropol, Petrozavodsk , and even in the city of Elekmonar of the Altai Territory there was its own cell). Under the pressure of external circumstances, the author switched to adventure prose and did not return to the subject of “TVT”.

And now - why I decided to write all this. Firstly, because the ideas embodied in the TVT story are clear to me and can be accepted without nuances. The “Timurovtsy” movement in the Soviet era was very popular and developed, despite the fact that the book by A.P. Gaidar was published much later (in 1940). Maybe the popularity of the film helped, maybe the lack of prohibitions from above (from the ministries and others like them). But as far as I can judge a quick search - in the world nothing like “technological pioneering” was invented. Yes, every pioneer, scout, timurovets, other things being equal, must still learn, master the technique, etc. But it is precisely the deliberate desire to be “the master of my iron” - I met this concept only with Ya. Mavr. “Know and Feel the Technique” by Y. Mavr vs. “Help All” by A.P. Gaidar. Something like this. I would be glad if in the comments I was supplemented and corrected.

On this all. You can read the story (or re-read) at the links below:

PS TVT in the original (in Belarusian, personal conversion :)) ( RTF / EPUB / FB2 )
TVT translated into Russian

Sergey Besarab ( Siarhei V. Besarab )