12 golden calf chairs to read. Literary and historical notes of a young technician. Heroes and prototypes

Usually, regarding our socialized literary economy, we are approached with questions that are quite legitimate, but very monotonous: “How do you two write together?”

At first, we answered in detail, went into details, even talked about a major quarrel that arose over the following issue: should we kill the hero of the novel "12 Chairs" Ostap Bender or leave him alive? They did not forget to mention that the fate of the hero was decided by lot. Two pieces of paper were placed in the sugar bowl, on one of which a skull and two chicken bones were depicted with a trembling hand. The skull came out and in half an hour the great strategist was gone. He was cut with a razor.

Then we began to answer in less detail. The quarrel was not talked about. Then they stopped going into details. And, finally, they answered completely without enthusiasm:

How do we write together? Yes, we write together. Like the Goncourt brothers. Edmond runs around the editorial offices, and Jules guards the manuscript so that friends do not steal it. And suddenly the uniformity of questions was broken.

Tell us, - asked us a certain strict citizen from among those who recognized Soviet power a little later than England and a little earlier than Greece, - tell me, why do you write funny? What kind of chuckles in the reconstructive period? Are you out of your mind?

After that, he long and angrily convinced us that laughter is now harmful.

Is it wrong to laugh? he said. Yes, you can't laugh! And you can't smile! When I see this new life, these shifts, I don't want to smile, I want to pray!

But we don't just laugh, we objected. - Our goal is a satire on those people who do not understand the reconstructive period.

Satire cannot be funny,” said the strict comrade, and, grabbing the arm of some handicraft Baptist, whom he mistook for a 100% proletarian, led him to his apartment.

All that is said is not fiction. It could have been even funnier.

Give free rein to such a hallelujah citizen, and he will even put on a burqa on men, and in the morning he will play hymns and psalms on the trumpet, believing that in this way it is necessary to help build socialism.

And all the time while we were composing The Golden Calf, the face of a strict citizen hovered over us.

What if this chapter comes out funny? What would a strict citizen say?

And in the end we decided:

a) write a novel as cheerful as possible,

b) if a strict citizen declares again that satire should not be funny, ask the prosecutor of the republic to bring the aforementioned citizen to criminal liability under an article punishing bungling with burglary.

I. Ilf, E. Petrov

PART ONE

"ANTELOPE CREW"

About how Panikovsky violated the convention

Pedestrians must be loved. Pedestrians make up the majority of humanity. Not only that, the best part of it. Pedestrians created the world. It was they who built cities, erected high-rise buildings, installed sewerage and plumbing, paved the streets and lit them with electric lamps. It was they who spread culture throughout the world, invented the printing press, invented gunpowder, threw bridges over rivers, deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs, introduced the safety razor, abolished the slave trade, and established that one hundred and fourteen tasty, nutritious dishes can be made from soybeans.

And when everything was ready, when the native planet took on a relatively comfortable look, motorists appeared.

It should be noted that the car was also invented by pedestrians. But motorists somehow immediately forgot about it. Meek and smart pedestrians began to crush. The streets created by pedestrians have passed into the power of motorists. Pavements have become twice as wide, sidewalks have narrowed to the size of a tobacco parcel. And the pedestrians began to huddle in fear against the walls of the houses.

In the big city, pedestrians lead a martyr's life. A kind of transport ghetto was introduced for them. They are allowed to cross the streets only at intersections, that is, precisely in those places where the traffic is heaviest and where the thread on which the life of a pedestrian usually hangs is easiest to cut.

In our vast country, an ordinary car, intended, according to pedestrians, for the peaceful transportation of people and goods, has taken on the formidable outlines of a fratricidal projectile. He disables entire ranks of union members and their families. If a pedestrian sometimes manages to flutter out from under the silver nose of the car, he is fined by the police for violating the rules of the street catechism.

In general, the authority of pedestrians has been greatly shaken. They, who gave the world such wonderful people as Horace, Boyle, Mariotte, Lobachevsky, Gutenberg and Anatole France, are now forced to make faces in the most vulgar way, just to remind them of their existence. God, God, which in essence does not exist, to which you, who in fact do not exist, have brought a pedestrian!

Here he is walking from Vladivostok to Moscow along the Siberian highway, holding in one hand a banner with the inscription: “Let's rebuild the life of textile workers,” and throwing a stick over his shoulder, at the end of which dangle reserve sandals “Uncle Vanya” and a tin kettle without a lid. This is a Soviet pedestrian-athlete who left Vladivostok as a young man and in his declining years at the very gates of Moscow will be crushed by a heavy autocar, the number of which will never be noticed.

Or another, European Mohican walking. He walks around the world, rolling a barrel in front of him. He would gladly go that way, without a barrel; but then no one will notice that he is really a long-distance pedestrian, and they will not write about him in the newspapers. All my life I have to push the damned container in front of me, on which, moreover, (shame, shame!) There is a large yellow inscription praising the unsurpassed qualities of Driver's Dreams automotive oil. So the pedestrian has degraded.

And only in small Russian towns are pedestrians still respected and loved. There he is still the master of the streets, carelessly wandering along the pavement and crossing it in the most intricate way in any direction.

The citizen in the cap with the white top, such as summer garden administrators and entertainers mostly wear, undoubtedly belonged to the greater and better part of mankind. He moved along the streets of the city of Arbatov on foot, looking around with condescending curiosity. In his hand he held a small obstetrical bag. The city, apparently, did not impress the pedestrian in the artistic cap.

He saw a dozen and a half blue, mignon and white-pink belfries; the shabby American gold of church domes caught his eye. The flag crackled over the official building.

At the white tower gates of the provincial Kremlin, two stern old women spoke French, complained about the Soviet regime and remembered their beloved daughters. From the church cellar it was cold, the sour smell of wine was beating from there. Apparently there were potatoes in there.

The Temple of the Savior on potatoes, - the pedestrian said quietly.

Passing under a plywood arch with a fresh limestone slogan, "Hail to the 5th District Conference of Women and Girls," he found himself at the head of a long alley called the Boulevard of Young Talents.

No, - he said with chagrin, - this is not Rio de Janeiro, it is much worse.

Almost on all the benches of the Boulevard of Young Talents sat lonely girls with open books in their hands. Leaky shadows fell on the pages of books, on bare elbows, on touching bangs. As the visitor stepped into the cool alley, there was a noticeable movement on the benches. The girls, hiding behind the books of Gladkov, Eliza Ozheshko and Seifullina, threw cowardly glances at the visitor. He walked past the excited readers with a parade step and went out to the building of the executive committee - the goal of his walk.

Ilya Arnoldovich Ilf and Evgeny Petrovich Petrov

"Golden calf"

Late spring or early summer 1930. A citizen posing as the son of Lieutenant Schmidt enters the office of the Arbatov executive committee and, for this reason, needs financial assistance.

This is Ostap Bender, saved by a surgeon from death after Kisa Vorobyaninov, the hero of the novel "The Twelve Chairs", slashed his throat with a razor.

After receiving some money and food stamps, Bender sees that another young man enters the office, also introducing himself as the son of Lieutenant Schmidt. The delicate situation is resolved by the fact that the “brothers” recognize each other. Going out onto the porch, they see that another “son of Lieutenant Schmidt” is approaching the building - Panikovsky, an elderly citizen in a straw hat, short trousers and with a gold tooth in his mouth. Panikovsky is thrown into the dust in disgrace. As it turns out, for the cause, because two years before that, all the "sons of Lieutenant Schmidt" divided the whole country into operational areas on Sukharevka, and Panikovsky simply invaded someone else's territory.

Ostap Bender tells his "milk brother" Shura Balaganov about a dream: to take five hundred thousand at once on a silver platter and go to Rio de Janeiro. “Since some banknotes are roaming around the country, then there must be people who have a lot of them.” Balaganov calls the name of the underground Soviet millionaire living in the city of Chernomorsk - Koreiko. Having met Adam Kozlevich, the owner of the only Loren-Dietrich car in Arbatov, renamed by Bender into Antelope-Gnu, the young people take him with them, and on the way they pick up Panikovsky, who stole a goose and escapes from his pursuers.

Travelers get on the rally route, where they are taken for participants and solemnly welcomed as the lead car. In the city of Udoev, a thousand kilometers away from Chernomorsk, they will have lunch and a rally. From two Americans stuck on a country road, Bender takes two hundred rubles for a recipe for moonshine, which they are looking for in the villages. Only in Luchansk the impostors are exposed by a telegram that has arrived there, demanding to detain the swindlers. Soon they are overtaken by a column of rally participants.

In a nearby town, a wanted green Wildebeest is repainted egg yellow. In the same place, Ostap Bender promises to heal the monarchist Khvorobiev, suffering from Soviet dreams, rescuing him, according to Freud, from the primary source of the disease - Soviet power.

The secret millionaire Alexander Ivanovich Koreiko was the most insignificant employee of the financial and accounting department of a certain institution called Hercules. No one suspected that he, who receives forty-six rubles a month, had a suitcase with ten million rubles in foreign currency and Soviet banknotes in a storage room at the station.

For some time now, he feels someone's close attention behind him. That beggar with a gold tooth impudently pursues him, muttering: "Give me a million, give me a million!" Either crazy telegrams are sent, or a book about American millionaires. Dining at the old man Sinitsky's puzzle shop, Koreiko is unrequitedly in love with his granddaughter Zosya. One day, walking with her late in the evening, he is attacked by Panikovsky and Balaganov, who steals from him an iron box with ten thousand rubles.

A day later, putting on a police cap with the coat of arms of the city of Kyiv, Bender goes to Koreiko to give him a box of money, but he refuses to accept it, saying that no one robbed him and he had nowhere to get such money from.

According to a newspaper advertisement, Bender moves to one of the two rooms of Vasisualy Lokhankin, from whom his wife Varvara left for the engineer Ptiburdukov. Because of the squabbles and scandals of the residents of this communal apartment, she was called "Crow Sloboda". When Ostap Bender appears in it for the first time, Lokhankin is being flogged in the kitchen for not putting out the light behind him in the restroom.

The great strategist Bender opens an office for the preparation of horns and hooves for ten thousand stolen from Koreiko. Fuchs becomes the formal head of the institution, whose job is that under any regime he sits for other people's bankruptcies. Finding out the origin of Koreiko's wealth, Bender interrogates the accountant Berlaga and other leaders of Hercules. He travels to Koreiko's places of work and eventually writes up a detailed biography of Koreiko, which he wants to sell to him for a million.

Not trusting the commander, Panikovsky and Balaganov enter Koreiko's apartment and steal large black weights from him, thinking that they are made of gold. The driver of the Antelope-Gnu, Kozlevich, is being seduced by the priests, and Bender's intervention and a dispute with the priests are required for Kozlevich to return to the Horns and Hooves together with the car.

Bender ends the indictment in the "Koreiko case". He uncovered the kidnapping of a train with food, and the creation of fake artels, and the ruined power plant, and speculation in currency and furs, and the establishment of exaggerated joint-stock companies. The inconspicuous clerk Koreiko was also the actual head of Hercules, through which he pumped out huge sums.

All night Ostap Bender blames Koreiko. Morning comes, and they go together to the station, where there is a suitcase with millions, to give Bender one of them. At this time, a training anti-chemical alarm begins in the city. Koreiko, suddenly putting on a gas mask, becomes indistinguishable in a crowd of his kind. Bender, despite resistance, is carried on a stretcher to a gas shelter, where, by the way, he meets Zosya Sinitskaya, the beloved girl of an underground millionaire.

So, Koreiko disappeared in an unknown direction. A revision arrives at Horns and Hooves and takes Fuchs to prison. At night, Voronya Slobidka burns down, where the companions live: the tenants, except for Lokhankin and the old woman, who does not believe in electricity or insurance, insured their property and set fire to the dwelling themselves. Of the ten thousand stolen from Koreiko, there is practically nothing left. With the last money, Bender buys a large bouquet of roses and sends it to Zosia. Having received three hundred rubles for the script "The Neck" that had just been written and already lost at the film factory, Bender buys gifts for his comrades and looks after Zosya with style. Unexpectedly, she tells Ostap that she received a letter from Koreiko from the construction of the Eastern Highway, where he works in the Northern laying town.

The accomplices urgently leave for the new address of Alexander Ivanovich Koreiko in their Antelope-Gnu. The car breaks down on a country road. They go on foot. In the nearest village, Bender takes fifteen rubles for an evening performance, which they will give on their own, but Panikovsky kidnaps a goose here, and everyone has to flee. Panikovsky cannot bear the hardships of the journey and dies. At a small railway station, Balaganov and Kozlevich refuse to follow their commander.

A special letter train goes to the Eastern Highway to the place of the junction of two rail tracks for members of the government, shock workers, Soviet and foreign journalists. Ostap Bender turns out to be in it. Companions take him for a provincial correspondent who caught up with the train on an airplane, feed him homemade provisions. Bender tells a parable about the Eternal Gide, who walked around Rio de Janeiro in white trousers, and after crossing the Romanian border with smuggling, he was cut down by Petliurists. In the absence of money, he also sells one of the journalists a manual for writing articles, feuilletons and poems for significant occasions.

Finally, at the celebration of the railroad tie in the Thundering Key, Bender finds an underground millionaire. Koreiko is forced to give him a million and in exchange burns a dossier on himself in the stove. The return to Moscow is hampered by the lack of a ticket for a letter train and a special plane flight. You have to buy camels and ride them through the desert. The nearest Central Asian city in the oasis, where Bender and Koreiko end up, has already been rebuilt on socialist principles.

During the month of the road, Bender did not manage to get into any hotel, nor to the theater, nor to buy clothes, except in a thrift store. In the Soviet country, everything is decided not by money, but by armor and distribution. Bender, having a million, has to pass himself off as an engineer, conductor, and even again as the son of Lieutenant Schmidt. In Moscow, at the Ryazan railway station, he meets Balaganov and gives him fifty thousand "for complete happiness". But in a crowded tram on Kalachevka, Balaganov automatically steals a penny handbag, and in front of Bender he is dragged to the police.

Neither to buy a house, nor even to talk with an Indian philosopher about the meaning of life, an individual outside the Soviet collective has no opportunity. Remembering Zos, Bender takes the train to Chernomorsk. In the evening, his fellow travelers in the compartment talk about receiving millions of inheritances, in the morning - about millions of tons of pig iron. Bender shows the students he has made friends with his million, after which the friendship ends and the students scatter. Ostap Bender cannot even buy a new car for Kozlevich. He does not know what to do with the money - to lose? send to the people's commissar of finance? Zosia married a young man named Femidi. "Horns and hooves", invented by Bender, turned into a large state-owned enterprise. 33-year-old, who is at the age of Christ, Bender has no place on Soviet soil.

On a March night in 1931, he crossed the Romanian border. He wears a double fur coat, a lot of currency and jewelry, including a rare order of the Golden Fleece, which he calls the Golden Calf. But the Romanian border guards rob Bender to the bone. By chance, he only has an order left. We have to return to the Soviet coast. Monte Cristo from Ostap did not work. It remains to be retrained as a manager.

The warm summer of 1930 came. A citizen who introduces himself as the son of Lieutenant Schmidt and needs financial assistance unexpectedly enters the office of the Arbatov Executive Committee. Of course, it was Ostap Bender, saved from death by one surgeon.

Having received money and food stamps, he sees another citizen who introduced himself as the son of Lieutenant Schmidt. In this situation, they recognize each other, but they see citizen Panikovsky on the porch. Bender shares his dream with Balaganov about where to get 500 thousand and escape from the country. Suddenly Balaganov himself calls the name of an underground Soviet millionaire who lives in the city of Chernomorsk. This is Koreiko.

Young people, having met Adam Kozlevich, the owner of the Loren-Dietrich car, take him and Panikovsky, who stole a goose along the way. When they go to the race track, they are mistakenly greeted as the main participants, and in the city of Udoev they are waiting for a rally and, of course, a sumptuous dinner. Only in Luchansk impostors are detained. Further, the wanted car is repainted in egg-yellow color.

At the same time, the secret millionaire Koreiko was an insignificant servant of the financial and accounting department, called "Hercules". Receiving his modest salary of 46 rubles, he kept a suitcase with 10 ml in a storage room at the station. rubles in foreign currency and no one knew about it. In love with Zosya, the granddaughter of old Sinitsyn, with whom he dined, he walked with her late in the evening.

Panikovsky and Balaganov attacked Koreiko, taking from him an iron box containing ten thousand rubles. 10 days have passed. Bender, wearing a police cap with the coat of arms of Kyiv, goes to Koreiko to give money. With the stolen money, Bender opens an office for the preparation of hooves and horns, where Fuchs becomes the main one. Bender finds out the origin of Koreiko's wealth, having compiled a description of the entire life of the robot, and dreams of selling it to him for a million.

Bender revealed the kidnapping of a train with food and the creation of fake artels. The inconspicuous clerk Koreiko was the de facto head of Hercules, which allowed him to pump out huge sums.

At this time, an anti-chemical alarm began in the city. Koreiko, wearing a gas mask, disappears into the crowd. A revision arrives at the Horns and Hooves office and takes the Fuchs to prison, and at night the dwelling in which the companions live is burned down. The accomplices leave in their Wildebeest. On a country road, the car breaks down and they walk to the village. Unable to withstand all the hardships of the journey, Panikovsky suddenly dies. Then Kozlevich and Balaganov do not want to follow the commander.

Meanwhile, a train for drummers and members of the government is going to the Eastern Highway. It turns out to be Ostap Bender. All companions take him for a correspondent, feeding him homemade food. Finding himself in a cash-strapped position, Bender sells his allowance for essays, feuilletons, and poems to a journalist. The underground millionaire Koreiko gives Bender one million rubles, then burning his dossier. Due to the lack of tickets at the box office, Bender sets out on camels through the desert.

For all the time on the road, he could not get to the hotel or to the theater, and he bought clothes only in a commission shop. In Moscow, he pretends to be an engineer or a conductor and thinks about what to do with money on Soviet soil.

One March night in 1931, Bender, dressed in a chic fur coat, taking with him currency, jewelry and the rare Order of the Golden Fleece, is trying to cross the border. At the border, he is robbed by Romanian border guards. He returns to the Soviet coast, accidentally discovering a hidden order called the Golden Calf. Bender has to retrain as a house manager.

Compositions

“Laughter is often a great mediator in distinguishing truth from lies” (based on the novel “The Golden Calf” by Ilf and Petrov)

Humor and satire provide a good opportunity to express one's opinion without resorting to open and harsh criticism, although satirical remarks can also be very caustic. And if all this is part of a fascinating story, then the reader will definitely pay attention to it. The novel by Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov "The Golden Calf" is just such an unforgettable mixture of exciting adventures and humor. This is a picaresque novel in which the writers continue to talk about the adventures of Ostap Bender, which began in the book The Golden Calf. There is a lot of attention paid to the personality of this particular hero, and he is sympathetic, despite the fact that he is a crook.

This time, Ostap Bender is hunting for very real wealth. He pretends to be the son of Lieutenant Schmidt, runs into other adventurers, with whom he goes on a long journey to get a large sum. As conceived by the schemer, the millionaire himself will give the money, but the millionaire is not so simple, and the plan has to be adjusted. All this path is accompanied by interesting and amusing events through which the realities of Soviet life in the early 30s are shown.

With the help of images of heroes, curious cases and sharp remarks, writers show the shortcomings of people, the social foundations of that time. The work was perceived ambiguously, some critics were dissatisfied with the caricature of the intelligentsia, someone did not like the fact that the crook and schemer turned out to be too charming a hero. Now the controversy has subsided, and readers have the opportunity not only to see the life of Soviet people, but also to enjoy the exciting adventures of a talented swindler. Many phrases from the novel have become aphorisms that can now be heard literally at every turn.

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- "Golden calf"- came out in 1931. One of the main characters of The Twelve Chairs, the "great strategist" - the swindler and adventurer Ostap Bender - switched to the pages of a new novel "Golden calf", where, in the company of three other crooks of a smaller scale, he began to hunt for a million rubles, having obtained which, under all circumstances, he expects to become happy.

AT "Golden Calf", unlike "The Twelve Chairs", the plot was built almost from the very beginning in such a way that the vanity of Bender's hopes for future prosperity with a million in his pocket became clear to the reader much earlier than to himself.

According to the plot of the novel "Golden calf" Bender expects to become happy by extorting a million from another rogue, but this other - the owner of not one, but as many as ten unjustly acquired millions, the underground millionaire Alexander Ivanovich Koreiko - is himself unhappy in the conditions of socialism being built. The absurdity of his position is that he can save his money only by hiding his wealth and, therefore, without making any noticeable expenses, any of which can lead him to exposure. Koreiko lives in a vicious circle created by the conditions of socialism. He can store and continue to rapaciously earn his money only in the guise of a modest, barely living clerk, realizing that this situation cannot change for him as long as Soviet power exists.

In pursuit of the coveted million, Bender does not think about the fact that, having become the owner of a million, he will share the fate of Koreiko. Bender, with incredible persistence, strives to own a million, while the fate of Koreiko, a man with forty rubles in a salary and with ten million in a shabby suitcase, which he checks into the lockers of one or another station, has already completely passed before the reader.

Here the satirical beginning is embedded in the idea of ​​the novel, in its very construction. If in The Twelve Chairs one can only believe in the predominance of satirical pictures, then "Golden calf" conceived and built as a work entirely satirical, and where the authors deviate from their intention, this is perceived as a weakness.

Objects of satirical exposure in "Golden Calf" larger than in the "Twelve Chairs", and they are fired from heavier artillery. The first here should be called the underground millionaire Koreika - a man with a white-eyed, expressionless face and with the grip of a large capitalist predator, who began his bestial career with direct murder (he steals several echelons of bread heading to the starving Volga region). Ilf and Petrov it was not by chance that they chose this, and not another, beginning of this career. They exposed the whole merciless essence of the capitalist acquisitiveness of Koreiko, a villain not only in his biography, but also in his thoughts, because in order to get everything that the possession of ten millions of predatoryly acquired can give him, he needs nothing more and nothing less than the restoration of capitalism . This is his dream, and this is his only hope for happiness.

Next to Koreiko in the novel are those who help him increase his wealth. These are the bureaucrat and degenerate head of "Hercules" Polykhaev, his henchmen Skumbrievich, Berlaga and many other crooks and sycophants of various stripes and ranks, clinging to the state apparatus and ready to hide even in a madhouse, if only the "purge" of Soviet soldiers so terrible for them would pass by. institutions.

The picture is complemented by the symbolic "Voronya Slobidka" - a communal apartment in which the authors moved the most bizarre personifications of the remnants of the old world, starting from the masculine ex-chamberlain Mitrich, who, according to him, "did not study at the gymnasiums" (which was pure truth, because he studied in the Corps of Pages), and ending with Vasisualy Lokhankin, who was expelled from the third grade of the gymnasium. In the image of this latter, all that supposedly intelligent rabble is mercilessly ridiculed, who tried to claim intellectual superiority, having an education in the volume of three classes of a gymnasium and a dozen thick volumes with gold spines on a bookshelf, and at the same time screaming heart-rendingly about the "death of the Russian intelligentsia" and about the encroachment Bolsheviks to the "shrines of culture".

Depicting the "Crow Sloboda", Ilf and Petrov show how exactly from there, from the depths of the old world, the miasma of misanthropy, philistinism, philistine stupidity and meanness creeps. The end of the Voronya Sloboda, set on fire from all sides at once by all its tenants, who had previously insured their property, is a deeply symbolic finale.

Pictures of the work of "Hercules" - an institution that has long been engaged not in its direct business, but in defending its rights to stay in illegally obtained premises - a classic satire on bureaucracy and bureaucracy. At the same time, the novel perfectly shows that this bureaucracy and bureaucracy naturally coexist with swindles and embezzlement; and not only get along, but, according to the law of mutual attraction, gravitate towards each other.

Pictures of the life and work of "Hercules" and pictures of the life of "Crow's Suburb", perhaps the most durable of all written Ilf and Petrov. It is difficult to name anything in literature more ridiculous and venomous, more aptly hitting these survivals of the old world that still exist today, than these brilliant pages of a novel.

Obsessed with his idea of ​​a million "on a silver platter." Bender restores the true biography of the clerk Koreiko, along the way reveals the secret of the Hercules activity and, having overcome a whole pile of obstacles, extorts the coveted million from Koreiko. From the moment Bender becomes the owner of this million, the last, final, part of the novel begins, in connection with which it is necessary to return to the whole figure of Bender as a whole, all the more so because this figure, not without reason, has aroused and arouses controversy in criticism.

Who is Ostap Bender at the time when he appears before us for the first time on the pages of "The Twelve Chairs"? This is a rogue who is used to securing his livelihood not with labor, but with all sorts of fraudulent combinations, mostly not directly falling under certain articles of the Criminal Code. This is a crook, whose main properties - dexterity and resourcefulness - are manifested in the exploitation of human gullibility and innocence, but even more often - greed, inertness and stupidity. Being a product of the old world, Bender with special skill and success carries out his machinations where he encounters people of the same formation.

However, acting in both novels for four years, Bender faces more and more difficulties caused by the strengthening of the social system, little adapted for the prosperity of figures of this kind. In an effort to less often expose his head to the punishing sword of justice, Bender is careful not to attack public property - private property is at his service, attempts to seize which seem to him not so dangerous. It is on her that he directs his main attention.

In the times described in The Twelve Chairs, Bender's possibilities in this sense are still very wide. Here is the former vowel of the City Duma, "co-worker" Charushnikov, from whom you can secretly and quite safely pluck several tens of rubles for the needs

imaginary emigrant center; here is the Nepman Kislyarsky, whom, once hooked on the same hook, it is not difficult to blackmail later; here, finally, are the diamonds of Madame Petukhova, for which the main hunt is going on.

AT "Golden Calf" the picture is starting to change. The remnants of the NEP are a thing of the past, Kislyarsky and Dyadyev have long tried to creep into the crowd of counter workers and supply agents and dissolve there. Now, instead of these real everyday figures, the sinister and in its own way symbolic figure of the secret millionaire Koreiko has come to the fore, according to the authors' plan, as if concentrating in himself the deepest underground of the old world.

The biography of Koreiko is the biography of the villain. Bender's biography is a biography of a versatile and cheerful swindler, not without good nature and even a kind of camaraderie in relations with his own kind. When Bender gets his hands on the evil stupid Vorobyaninov or cheats the petty speculator-widow Gritsatsueva, when he fools the "cannibal" Ellochka or sells a manual for writing newspaper articles to the hack Ukhudshansky, when he finally extorts money from Kislyarsky, that is, during the clashes of this clever rogue with even more vile than he, the last of the old world, the authors are inclined, if not to take the side of Bender, then, in any case, not without pleasure to watch his antics.

To an even greater extent, this applies to a collision occurring in "Golden Calf" between Bender and Koreiko. What will happen to Bender when he finally receives his million remains vague for the time being, while Koreiko's biography

From the very beginning, it is written with such open antipathy that the further the reader wants, the more Koreiko will be defeated as a result of a collision with Bender.

What is happening in the novel fits perfectly into the saying "A thief stole a baton from a thief." Bender, in the course of his search, completely restores the monstrous biography of the underground millionaire, but destroys it for a million rubles, leaving Koreiko the owner of nine million unpunished. Of course, to force Bender to do otherwise, that is, to give up a million in the name of disinterested exposure of Koreiko. would mean destroying the unity of this image. But at the same time, the story of Koreiko's ten million fortune is so black that we cannot but be upset by the good nature with which the authors treat Bender when, having released Koreiko in peace, he remains the happy owner of a million. The million that belonged to Koreiko is not Madame Petukhova's diamonds, it is truly terrible money. But, remembering this all the time while they were in the hands of Koreiko, we, by the author's will, immediately forget about everything as soon as they pass into the hands of Bender. In the hands of Koreiko, this is a terrible million; in the hands of Bender, this million turns out to be just a million, a happy find, money without a biography.

So in the last chapters "Golden Calf" Bender becomes a "rich man". But it turns out that in the conditions of Soviet society, in contrast to bourgeois society, the possession of a million in itself not only does not openunlimited possibilities, not only does not give the right to respect or worship, but, on the contrary, every now and then puts the "happy" owner of capital in a stupid and ridiculous position. It turns out that even in order to get a room in a crowded hotel, there is absolutely not enough money. To get a room, a newly-made millionaire has to pass himself off as an engineer, then as a doctor, then as a writer, then, according to old memory, even as the son of Lieutenant Schmidt.

"And this is the path of a millionaire ... - Bender reflects bitterly. Where is respect, where is honor, where is fame, where is power?" And when, finally, furious with failures and exhausted by the inability to satisfy his vanity, “pale with pride,” he suddenly, having made up his mind, answers his fellow students, students, to the question of whether he works in a bank: “No, I don’t serve, I am a millionaire !" - The result is completely unexpected. The young people who had made friends with him immediately leave him, hurrying to return the money for the tea he had just treated them to as soon as possible. "I was joking, I'm a worker ..." Bender mutters in confusion, trying to keep the students, and this remark contains a great power of sarcasm, a cruel mockery of the tragicomedy of a man who, in the conditions of the Soviet world, tried to force himself to be respected by reporting his wealth.

The chapters of the struggles and failures of Bender the Millionaire are excellent in their satirical design, and it would be wrong to search for petty everyday credibility in them. Satire Ilfa and Petrova here is hyperbolic; there is no petty plausibility in it, but there is a great social truth.

However, in these same chapters, next to the truth, there is also untruth - and this is the untruth of character development. The last of the old world, who took possession of the long-awaited million and suddenly became convinced that this million did not open up any opportunities for him in Soviet society. Bender should have become furious and hardened at everything around him, and this would be the truth of his character, in which good nature and gaiety are ultimately a shell, and greed is a creature. In the last chapters "Golden Calf" it turned out the opposite - the essence of Bender, as it were, dissolved, and the shell acquired an almost self-contained meaning. Confusion and softness, good nature and generosity defeated the wolf essence in him so much that he twice decides to part with his million, either leaving it in an empty alley, or handing it over to the post office as a parcel addressed to Narkomfin. Here, the untruth in the development of character comes into conflict with both the general satirical idea of ​​the novel and its merciless caustic finale, when Bender, hung with gold watches, orders and cigarette cases, with a golden dish on his chest, tries to get to his Rio de Janeiro, crossing Dniester, and falls into the hands of the Romanian Sigurans. This finale is magnificent in its own way! But the very flight of Bender to the promised capitalist land, with its naturalness, only emphasizes the unnaturalness of the previous attempt of the yearning swindler to hand over the million he had not easily got to the Narkomfin.

It happens that, when analyzing satirical works, in our criticism a lot of attention is paid to a comparative calculation of the number of negative and positive characters, and on this basis they sometimes draw conclusions, the further they go, the more remote from the essence of the matter. For the variety of satirical techniques is inexhaustible, and the essence of the matter - the sharpness, direction and strength of satire - does not depend on the amount of black and white paint that went into its creation, but primarily on the author's attitude to things and people described in the book.

Ilf and Petrov- authors of "The Twelve Chairs" and "Golden Calf" stand in their novels in a clear and unambiguous position. They do not declare on every page their love for the Soviet system and the Soviet way of life, but every page of their books is imbued with a feeling of this love. In a businesslike way they make fun of what is funny, at the weaknesses, inconsistencies, the costs of our growth, but with all the satirical fury they fall upon the birthmarks of the old society and here, as a rule, they are uncompromising and merciless.

Cloths of dazzling light rippled along the road. The cars creaked softly as they ran past the defeated Antelopians. Ashes flew from under the wheels. The horns howled long and loud. The wind blew in all directions. In a minute everything disappeared, and only the ruby ​​lantern of the last car hesitated and jumped in the darkness for a long time.

Real life flew by, trumpeting joyfully and sparkling with lacquered wings.

Is it possible to express the position of the authors and the meaning of their satire more clearly than in these symbolic lines, is it possible to speak more clearly about the goal for which each line of their funny and talented books is written.

The novel consists of three parts.

The action of the first, entitled "The Crew of the Antelope", begins in the office of the chairman of the executive committee of the city of Arbatov, where Ostap Bender comes under the guise of Lieutenant Schmidt's son. An attempt to derive financial benefit from an imaginary relationship with a revolutionary figure almost ends in failure: at the moment of receiving the money, the second “son of a lieutenant” appears - Shura Balaganov. Soon, the adventurers, called by the authors "milk brothers", get acquainted with the driver of their own car, Adam Kozlevich. The heroes decide to go to Chernomorsk, where, according to Balaganov, a real Soviet millionaire lives. This wealthy citizen must, according to the plan of the great strategist, voluntarily give him money. At the exit from Arbatov, the number of passengers increases: the third "son of Schmidt" - Panikovsky, joins the fellow travelers. The route followed by travelers partially coincides with the line of the Moscow-Kharkov-Moscow rally. Once in front of the lead vehicle, the heroes provide themselves with gasoline and provisions for a while. After a series of adventures, they enter the city where the "underground Rockefeller" lives.

The second part, called "Two Combinators", tells about the confrontation between Ostap Bender and Alexander Ivanovich Koreiko, a modest employee who keeps ten million rubles obtained through numerous financial frauds in a special suitcase. Bender uses various methods to confuse his opponent. When all attempts to hurt Koreiko fail, Ostap establishes the Horns and Hooves office to cover up his deeds and proceeds to a detailed study of the biography of the millionaire. The folder opened by Bender with the inscription “The Case of A. I. Koreiko” is gradually filled with compromising material, and after a long bargain, Alexander Ivanovich agrees to buy all the documents in it for a million rubles. But the transfer of money fails: during the exercises taking place in the city to counter the gas attack, Koreiko mixes with a crowd of people in gas masks and disappears.

About where Koreiko is hiding, Bender learns from Zosya Sinitskaya: during a walk, the girl who was once courted by a millionaire mentions a letter received from him. Alexander Ivanovich reports that he works as a timekeeper on a train laying rails. This information forces Ostap to resume his pursuit of wealth. On the way, Kozlevich's car crashes. Moving on foot takes a lot of strength from the heroes. Having discovered that Panikovsky has disappeared, his comrades-in-arms go in search of him and find Mikhail Samuelevich dead. After his funeral, the companions part.

In the third part of the novel, entitled "Private Person", the great strategist goes to the place of Koreiko's new job - on the Eastern Highway. The meeting of opponents takes place in the Northern laying town. Realizing that it will not be possible to escape from Bender through the desert, Alexander Ivanovich gives him the money. Ostap accompanies their receipt with the phrase: “The dreams of an idiot came true!” After a series of unsuccessful attempts to spend a million, the hero decides to start a "working bourgeois life" abroad. However, all the preparatory work, which included the purchase of currency, gold and diamonds, turns out to be in vain: Bender's money and jewelry are taken away by Romanian border guards. Deprived of wealth, the great strategist returns to the Soviet coast.