Age is no barrier to friendship

Play is not a hindrance Somehow, Leonid Bykov again found himself on business in the family where the daughter was tormented by art: the head of the family held an important position in the economic authorities of Moscow, and some issues had to be resolved with him regarding the provision of a location for filming. Now a wife

Time is no obstacle to friendship

In the spring of 1958, Alexander wrote a note to the Lodz newspaper “Glos Rabotnichy” and, wanting to find his partisan friends, told Polish readers that he lived in the Urals, worked at the Sverdlovsk airport, raised two daughters, and often remembered his military comrades. The note ended with the words:

“Respond, comrades, write who you have become, how you work, how you build new life in a people's republic."

And soon letters from Polish cities and villages began to arrive at the airport one after another.

Helena Grinich was the first to announce herself, sending along with a letter two photographs - hers and her daughter's.

Helena Grinich wrote:

“Dear comrade Sashko!

I don't know if you remember me? During the war years I lived in Lodz on Litzmannstadt street number three, under the nickname “Auntie”. My daughter Maria was ten years old at the time.

Today my daughter runs in with a newspaper and shouts: “Mom, Uncle Sasha is alive!” She calls you that out of old habit, although she herself has been married for a long time and is raising a son.

It was so nice to know that you are alive and well. It’s nice because I, along with my comrades, fought to save your life. Remember how I bandaged your hand that was bitten by a dog that the police unleashed on you on May Day?

And how they protected you when you were hiding in our house! Later, many comrades hid with us.

For helping the partisans, someone handed me over to the Gestapo, and I was imprisoned in the concentration camp in Ravensbruck. Freed from captivity by troops Soviet army. I am very grateful to them."

And here is a letter from the Polish master, who did a lot for the escape of Alexander Kuznetsov and Arkady Vorozhtsov:

“In your note published in the Lodz newspaper, you wrote that the Polish master of the Lodz textile factory, Gaiera, helped you escape from captivity. It's me, Heinrich Gozhond. I am sending you a photo from that time.

Now I work not in Lodz, but in Zambrow, which is located in the Bialystok region.”

Kuznetsov carefully examined the card. Yes, it was that Pole underground worker from the Lodz textile factory who, during the difficult times of occupation, risked his neck to help his Russian brothers. Photographed at full height, Gozhond looked as he did on the day the pilots escaped: in the same long, wide-brimmed raglan raincoat, felt hat, with a patty on top, with a permanent mustache brush, with deep wrinkles around the mouth.

Having told about himself, Heinrich Gozhond asked where Arkady Vorozhtsov is now? Did Major Belousov live to see freedom?

But Kuznetsov knew nothing about any of them. I didn’t know about Marina’s fate either. Where are they all? Are you alive and well?

“No, if they had waited for victory, someone would have responded,” reasoned Kuznetsov, about whom a small note appeared in the Ogonyok magazine. - Maybe Marina forgot about me? But Arkady and Konstantin Emelyanovich would remember.”

Alexander took a bulging calico folder with partisan letters from his desk drawer and began to re-read them.

Vika ran into the room, now an adult dark-skinned girl - a tenth grade student. Holding her hands behind her back, swaying from side to side, she asked slyly:

Dad, do you know the Kuzmins?

I knew such people.

Then meet the guests.

Vika gave her father a telegram. He read:

“On our way through Moscow we’ll stop in Sverdlovsk. We’d like to see Marina and Ivan Kuzmin.”

“I don’t understand anything,” Kuznetsov was surprised.

“But in my opinion, everything is clear,” Vika intervened. - They want to come to visit us.

No, there's confusion here. I do not get it.

What's unclear here?

Leave me alone if you don’t understand anything,” the father seethed. - What does Ivan have to do with it? I myself was at his funeral... Do you remember how I told you at school about the intelligence officer Kuzmin?

Could this be another Kuzmin? - the daughter did not let up, wanting to help her father understand the ambiguity.

Do you think it turns out that I knew half a dozen Kuzmins?

Either in a hurry, or because of an oversight, Kuzmina did not report either the train number or the day of arrival in the telegram. And Kuznetsov couldn’t find a place for himself for two days. “Maybe some windy woman from the telegraph got everything mixed up,” he wondered to himself. - They can make a living person out of a dead person, and a dead person out of a living person. I won’t leave this telegram like that.”

Kuznetsov called the head of the telegraph, reported the number of the telegram, asked to check its text with Moscow and, in case of an error, threatened to send a complaint to the minister.

Less than a day had passed before the postman brought a second telegram with the same signatures and a note at the bottom:

“The text has been verified with the original of the sender of the telegram.”

All that was left to do was wait.

In the evening after work, Kuznetsov dressed in an old overall, went to the woodshed and started working on a motorcycle. Crawling on his knees along the log floor from part to part, he could not figure out why the ignition was not working.

Finally, the fault was found. Kuznetsov wiped his face with the sleeve of his overalls and saw his wife in front of him.

Finish it, Sasha. “We’ve arrived,” she said.

Have both arrived?

You'll see for yourself...

Heated up with work, having forgotten to wash, the owner did not enter, but ran into the apartment. Seeing Marina sitting on the couch, he grabbed her in his arms, kissed her on the cheek and asked:

Have you arrived?

“And not alone, but together,” she answered.

From the next room came a tall guy, gangly as a boy, with big ears, with round big face. Kuznetsov stared at the guy widely with open eyes and, greeting. him by the hand, turned to his mother:

What does this mean? Yes, this is one hundred percent Ivan Petrovich Kuzmin!

That’s right,” Marina agreed. - The Kuzmin family continues...

The owner and hostess bustled about, collecting food for the table. And Marina, now a respectable woman, said:

I was in Moscow at the exhibition. I also took my son. And I took it because I decided to visit you. Let, they say, Alexander Vasilyevich tell my Ivan Ivanovich how his father fought.

The hosts and guests sat down at a table covered with a pink starched tablecloth. As a sign of an unexpected but pleasant meeting, we drank a glass of Madeira. The conversation became lively.

Marina Kuzmina told Kuznetsov in detail how her fate turned out after the death of her husband on Polish soil.

Her wound turned out to be very serious. She spent a long time in the Smolensk hospital. Then she retired to the reserves and came to Chelyabinsk to visit her mother-in-law. On the eve of the end of the Great Patriotic War gave birth to a son and named him Ivan in memory of his deceased father. She lived as a widow for three years. And on the fourth, she married Ivan’s brother, Vasily Kuzmin, who was widowed after the war. Vasily Kuzmin adopted little Ivan Kuzmin.

It turned out that my boyfriend didn’t need to change his last name. - Marina said.

In the days when the development of virgin lands began, Vasily and Marina Kuzmin moved to Kazakhstan and have lived there ever since. The husband runs a tractor team, and the wife became a combine operator.

We also have a second son, seven years old. They named him Vasily,” Marina continued. - This is how I and my husband raise Ivan Ivanovich and Vasily Vasilyevich.

Now I wish I could find Arkady Vorozhtsov,” Kuznetsov noted sadly. - After all, we went through fire and water with him.

If he remained alive, you will find him,” Marina asserted. - You'll definitely find it.

On May 1, 1959, another passenger plane landing from Izhevsk landed at Sverdlovsk airport. A tall, well-built passenger in a new gray gabardine raglan and a felt hat came down the stairs and threw himself into the strong arms of a stocky, broad-shouldered man in a dark blue suit and cap. civilian pilot. It was Alexander Vasilyevich Kuznetsov and Arkady Nikolaevich Vorozhtsov who met.

It's good that you came. Let’s have a double holiday,” Kuznetsov began, walking with his guest along the asphalt road leading from the airfield to his apartment. - And for some reason I doubted that you would keep your promise.

“No sooner said than done,” Vorozhtsov answered. - That’s what you taught me in Lodz.

Well done! After all, they went through real hell, and survived, and met, little devil. “Someone in your family must have started talking to you,” Alexander rejoiced and in the middle of the road he tenaciously grabbed the guest by the shoulders, trying to bend him and looking into his youthful face. And Arkady, excited, laughing loudly, strong, stood as if rooted to the ground.

In my opinion, both of us were talking from all sorts of deaths.

Well, how did you find me? “I didn’t understand anything from the telegram,” Kuznetsov became interested.

“A person won’t get lost in our time,” answered the guest. - And especially the one who is known not only in our country, but also further afield.

No, really?

Actually it is. I sent a letter to my Polish friends and they told me that you are alive, well and working at the Sverdlovsk airport. From there I learned about the death of Konstantin Emelyanovich.

sitting behind festive table in the circle of the Kuznetsov family, Vorozhtsov said:

I wandered around the camp until our troops approached Linz. We disarmed the guards (there were up to two hundred of them). The leaders, who committed atrocities at every step, were immediately killed. We guarded the camp on our own for two days. One division learned about our fate. The colonel arrived at the camp. We were put in cars and taken to hospitals. Thus ended camp life. Here is my passport for those years.

Vorozhtsov took out a certificate from a notebook, printed in Russian and signed by Ignacy Loga-Sovinski, and showed it to Kuznetsov. He read:

“I hereby inform you that Arkady Nikolaevich Vorozhtsov was in a German prisoner of war camp in 1942, from where he escaped with the help of workers and the underground organization of the Polish Workers' Party of the city of Lodz.

After his escape, he hid in our city with party comrades. In April 1943, he was arrested by the Germans and sent to prison and camps, where he remained until liberation. We have a very positive opinion of A.N. Vorozhtsov, as a good comrade who deserves complete trust. First Secretary of the Lodz City Committee of the PPR I. Loga-Sowiński. February 11, 1947."

The post-war life of Arkady Vorozhtsov developed like this.

Having recovered his health, he came to Izhevsk to visit his mother. Here the previous specialty, acquired before the war at the Serdob Zootechnical College, came in handy. At first he worked at the Ministry of Agriculture of Udmurtia, and since 1956 - the chief livestock specialist of the Izhevsk breeding livestock station. During the celebration of the four hundredth anniversary of the annexation of Udmurtia to Russia, he was awarded the title of Honored Livestock Specialist of the Republic.

Did Burda wait for freedom? - Kuznetsov was interested.

I waited. He lives in his homeland - in the Baksan region of the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic. Works in the regional consumer union.

Alexander Kuznetsov and Arkady Vorozhtsov spent the holidays together. They more than once recalled their troubles and adversities, their military deeds, and more than once responded kind words about Polish underground communists who difficult days gave them a hand of brotherly help.

On May 10, 1959, a Soviet plane was approaching Warsaw.

Emerald green fields appeared, washed by the warm night rain, bathed in the generous May sun. Flying over the Polish lands, Kuznetsov kept looking out the window - from a three-kilometer height he wanted to recognize them.

No, I didn’t find out. After all, I haven’t been here for fifteen years! And what years! Times of creation, creativity, unprecedented flourishing, scope in everything.

The small forests rose and grew wildly, time erased the bomb and shell craters, new enterprises, residential buildings, and outbuildings grew in the villages.

Please get ready,” the dark-haired flight attendant told the passengers. - The end of our route is coming soon.

Alexander Vasilyevich straightened his dark blue jacket with silver braid and the orders “Golden Cross” and “Red Banner” and took out a quadruple-folded telegram from his pocket. I read it again:

“The Polish-Soviet Friendship Society invites you to visit.”

The plane taxied to the parking lot. As he walked down the stairs, Kuznetsov heard:

Sasha the summer boy!

Russian partisan!

Alexander quickly walked down the steps and immediately found himself in a tight embrace.

Tadeusz Spruch? - Kuznetsov noticed, peering at the blond, strong man.

Me, dear Sashko. He is...

Where is Ludwig?

Alive and well. Waiting for you in Lodz.

We didn’t stay in Warsaw. After lunch, when the sun sank to the west, the car escaped from the noisy streets big city and headed for Lodz.

The excitement did not leave Kuznetsov. His thoughts were carried away to where he had escaped from fascist hell, to his friends.

Sashko, look to the left,” said Tadeusz, “do you recognize it?”

On the left, far from the road, lies small town, buried in dense green trees.

Have you really forgotten? - Tadeusz was perplexed. - This is Vlokhy.

“I didn’t forget, but in this light I didn’t see them,” Alexander Vasilyevich was found.

“You dealt well with the German controller then,” Tadeusz noted.

This is not my job. This is Ivan Kuzmin with Vaclav Zabrodsky. There were eagles. Like an eagle, both died...

Lodz looked festive. The elegant crowd of people on the streets, the large movement of multi-colored cars, and the bright shop windows made a great impression on Kuznetsov. It seemed to him that he had never been here. He knew a different Lodz - forced, gloomy.

Everything that was experienced, that will never be erased from memory, emerged especially clearly when Alexander Vasilyevich met with his fighting peers at the Grandhotel Hotel.

Here they are - veterans of the struggle...

Ahead stood the gray-haired Leon Relishko...

It was to him, during the days of the difficult underground, that the party entrusted him with responsibility for the life of a Soviet officer. It was with him next to Kuznetsov that he had to carry out night raids on enemy military warehouses, disarm police officers, and fight in partisan forests.

Both Ludwig Spruch and Helena Grinich and her husband came to meet the Russian guest.

“You’re all getting younger, Ludwig,” Kuznetsov joked.

Where did you put your curls?

“I decided to join the “hairless society,” the guest laughed. - For respectability. “He looked carefully at the old, courageous face of the man whose revolutionary biography began at the dawn of the first Russian revolution, and remarked: “If we had met by chance, you would not have recognized me.”

“I would definitely find out,” Ludwig answered. - You, Sashko, although you have changed, and gray hair has appeared, and wrinkles have appeared on your face, but I would recognize you by your eyes alone. They are still the same round, lively, sharp.

But Jozef Dombrowski is a party member with thirty-five years of experience. Kuznetsov’s memory recalled a cloudy October day in one thousand nine hundred and forty-two, the first hours of freedom... A church and a lonely old man with a broom looming... A meeting with a foreman who worked at the Guyer factory... Chekhovich’s apartment... Back alleys, along which the Poles led the Soviet pilot to a safe shelter. The last to accompany him was Józef Dąbrowski. He introduced Kuznetsov to the Lodz underground fighters.

Where is Heinrich Gozhond? - asked Kuznetsov.

Our Henry has died.

A moment of silence reigned in the large hall.

Leon,” Kuznetsov turned to Relishko, “I want to visit the Guyer factory, the workshop where I met Heinrich.

Okay, Sashko.

The next day, Alexander Vasilyevich arrived at former factory Gaier. Now they don't call her that. Now it is a textile plant named after Felix Dzerzhinsky.

In the factory yard he stopped at a newspaper display. On the front page of the newspaper, in the place where we usually publish editorials, Kuznetsov saw his portrait, and above it was a large full house - “Lodz welcomes Colonel Kuznetsov.”

Tadeusz, there’s a typo here,” the guest became worried. - What typo?

I'm not a colonel, but a lieutenant...

Who were you in Poland? - Leon Relishko asked and immediately answered: - Commander of a partisan brigade. Who is the brigade commander for us? Colonel. And nothing less...

Alexander Vasilyevich did not recognize the workshop where he had worked seventeen years ago. Slender, as if in a parade, stretched out in two rows looms. The neon light spread softly above them.

The signal sounded and everything in the workshop froze. The director announced a ten-minute break.

Our dear Soviet guest Alexander Vasilievich Kuznetsov came to us. Together with our comrades, he fought for a long time against the Nazis, for a happy, free Poland. Let's listen to the guerrilla hero.

Kuznetsov took a step forward, greeted the Poles and said:

I brought you the biggest and most sincere Russian greetings from my fellow Uralians.

Applause swept through the workshop. The pause helped me collect my thoughts. And Kuznetsov continued in a calmer voice:

I am familiar with your workshop. During the fascist occupation, I, as a prisoner of war, worked here together with my senior comrade, Soviet pilot Konstantin Emelyanovich Belousov. We met a man here who hated the Nazis with all his heart. Then he did not give his last name, but gave us a firm word - to help us break free. And he helped... This man's name was Heinrich Gozhond. You can be proud of your fellow countryman. He was a brave underground fighter. Let's go to the cemetery after work and honor the memory of a faithful comrade.

In the evening, when hundreds of workers gathered at the grave of the Pole-patriot, Alexander Vasilyevich laid a wreath with the inscription:

“To the Polish friend Heinrich Gozhond - from the Russian partisan Alexander Kuznetsov.”

Alexander Vasilyevich also visited the dining room through the window of which on October 9, 1942, together with Arkady Vorozhtsov, he escaped from fascist captivity. I took a photo at the memorial window.

And then the Psar forests began to rustle welcomingly. Friends from all over the area came here: from Łowicz, Zyrardów, Skierniewice, Stryknów.

Standing in a circle at the place where an unequal battle took place between a small group of novice, inexperienced Lodz partisans and German punitive forces, those gathered honored the memory of their fellow countrymen who died from fascist bullets.

After the Psar forests, Kuznetsov visited Pruszkow, Łowicz, Lublin, Lubartów, and Michów.

Warmly, sincerely, in a fatherly way, Ignacy Loga-Sowiński, a member of the Politburo of the Polish United Workers' Party, met his former Russian pupil.

From Log-Sovinsky, Kuznetsov learned conspiracy and gained underground experience. Loga-Sovinski raised the young Soviet officer Kuznetsov to be an experienced commander of a partisan unit. And so they - a Polish partisan leader and a humble Soviet worker - met on the land where they fought their enemies hand in hand.

How many unforgettable episodes and military campaigns this meeting resurrected! How many people were remembered who courageously went through all the difficult trials! It seemed like you could talk all day and never get enough. This is what friendship, sealed by brotherly blood and military labor, means!

And now, Alexander Vasilyevich, tell me: what is your impression of new Poland? - asked Loga-Sovinski. - How do our comrades greet you?

You are a real Hero. All of Poland knows you.

What can I say? I am glad that in difficult times I was saved by kind and brave people- Polish communists. And they not only saved. They entrusted me with a responsible area of ​​​​fighting enemies.

They trusted us and were not mistaken,” concluded Loga-Sovinski.

Kuznetsov's last big meeting with Polish friends was in Lodz on May twenty-fourth. Thousands of people gathered in the city square. A monument to the partisans who died in the Psar forests was unveiled here.

Alexander Kuznetsov was asked to talk about the battles in the Psar forests.

“It was a difficult fight, unequal,” he began. - But no one flinched in that fight. The Lodz partisans fought to their last strength. They poured blood native land, but did not kneel before the enemy.

When the speeches ended, the white veil was removed from the monument. The names of the dead partisans were burnt in gold on the granite. The rally participants read:

Czeslaw Szymanski, Tadeusz DOMINIAK,

Marjan VITULSKY, Bogdan SANIGURSKY,

Anthony GRABOVSKI, Leonard MARCINIAK,

Waclaw Krzyzanyak.

Alexander Vasilyevich Kuznetsov spent fifteen days in Poland. And on the sixteenth, with a certificate of an honorary member of the Polish Union of War Veterans and the Polish-Soviet Friendship Society, he left Warsaw. Comrades in the joint struggle gathered again at the airfield.

Warm greetings to the people of the Urals! - rushed through the airfield.

Until the day comes, Dear friends! - Kuznetsov answered.

The plane headed for the homeland.

The score is not a hindrance to friendship

The English equivalent of the saying “Score is no hindrance to friendship” - Even reckoning makes long friends- calculations do not interfere with friendship

Synonyms of the proverb “score is not a hindrance to friendship”

• Friendship is friendship, but money is apart
• Friendship is friendship and service is service
• More often the score means stronger friendship
• Love the arguer, don't love the indulger
• Friendship is flattering and honest
• Where debts begin, friendships end
• Mistrust kills friendship
• Short account, long friendship

The use of sayings about friendship in literature

— “Brother, don’t be offended... Friendship is friendship, but tobacco is separate. You have to understand it yourself."(V.P. Belyaev “Old Fortress”)
— “Friendship is friendship, but tobacco is apart - here it’s “who will win,” said Pankratov”(N. A. Ostrovsky “How the steel was tempered”)
— “And he answered, all the words were remembered, every single one: “Masha, friendship is friendship, but tobacco is apart.”(Lazar Karelin “Memoirs”)
— “I’m not like others, for me friendship is friendship, but tobacco is apart”(M. A. Sholokhov “Virgin Soil Upturned”)
— “At most, old clothes. Friendship is friendship, but money is apart. Irina was happy that she was freed from the hated Lyudka.”(V. Tokareva “One’s own truth”)
— “I wrote something, but the Trans-Air censorship didn’t let me through. Friendship is friendship, and criticism is apart... In general, I had to defend Transaero from attacks from different sides» (Alexander Bovin “Five years among Jews and Foreign Ministry members”)
— “However, friendship is friendship, but service is service. Late in the evening, Valeria Methodyevna quietly and peacefully left the barracks, covering her torn lips with a shawl.”(Victor Astafiev “Cursed and Killed”)

Many people say that they have many friends, but in reality they have fewer than they think. True friends cannot be separated by time, distance, life situations. You can always rely on such people. And how nice it is to look at old photographs of you and your faithful comrades and remember funny incidents from your common life.

Now imagine that these people decided to recreate pictures from the past. Although why imagine, it’s better to just see what real friendship looks like.

Looks like the box needs to be replaced

The photos with my brother are one of the best.

Even though we have grown, we don’t want to change.

Friendship begins from the cradle.

Yes, the kids have clearly grown up a little.

They remain the same as they were.

It's always boring to swim alone.

And it doesn’t matter what others are watching, the main thing is that we are having fun.

Family photo for dad 20 years apart.

Brigade, start...

I wonder why the guy is so happy?

It’s good that at least they took a bigger box.

Who said that stupidity is canceled when you become an adult?

Looks like the game was a lot of fun.