Forever alive Arkady Strugatsky

Arkady Natanovich Strugatsky was born on August 28. For more than a dozen years of creativity in collaboration with his brother, he won the hearts of many readers. Yes, to such an extent that on September 11, 1977, a minor planet No. 3054, discovered at the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory, was named after the Strugatskys. Their best works were filmed, and some of them formed the basis of games. The screenwriter, writer, classic of modern science and social fiction would have turned 89 years old today. The brightest moments of life and quotes from the writer's works are in our collection.

(15 photos in total)

1. On August 28, 1925, Arkady Strugatsky was born in Batumi in the family of an art critic and a teacher of Russian language and literature. A little later, his brother Boris was born, with whom he would later win the hearts of readers all over the world.

2. A little later, his father gets a high position as head of the press sector of the Leningrad Regional Committee of the CPSU (b) and the family moves to Leningrad, where Arkady was accepted to the school where his mother worked. But the outbreak of the Second World War radically changed the extremely happy life of Strugatsky. He and his family had to overcome the hardest ordeal, namely the siege of Leningrad. Arkady goes to work on the construction of defensive structures of the city, later - at the factory where grenades were made. But that's not all: when the possibility of evacuation appeared, Boris fell ill, and Arkady and his father had to leave his brother and mother there. But on the way to the Urals, Strugatsky's father falls ill and dies. In the photo Arkady with his father Nathan Strugatsky.

3. Later Arkady worked at the point of purchasing products from peasants, where he rose to the head, and by the summer of the 43rd he, fortunately, manages to take out his mother and brother, after which he decides to join the ranks of the Red Army. Subsequently, he graduated from the Military Institute of Foreign Languages, where he received a specialty as a translator from Japanese and English.

4. For another 6 long years, Arkady's life takes place in the Far East, where he not only serves, but also teaches Japanese to students at the school. Only in 1955 he managed to move to Moscow, where he worked at the Institute of Scientific Information, as an editor at Goslitizdat and Detgiz. And in 1956, his first artistic publication, The Ashes of Bikini, was published (while co-authored with Lev Petrov), written during his years of service in the army. It was dedicated to the tragic events associated with the explosion of a hydrogen bomb on Bikini Atoll, however, according to Strugatsky himself, it is not of particular value.

5. Arkady began writing during the war years, but these works were lost. However, in 2001, the story "How Kang died" was published, written back in 46. In addition, under the pseudonym S. Yaroslavtsev Strugatsky wrote several more stories: "Expedition to the Underworld" (1974, parts 1-2; 1984, part 3), the story "Details of Nikita Vorontsov's Life" (1984) and the story "The Devil among Men" (1990-91).

6. Of course, Arkady had a special success while working with his brother. Once every six months or a year, the brothers met to discuss the plot of the future work and compile the main plot. The next time they met only when the work on "their" works was completed to form the final version.

7. Their joint works were included in the golden fund of world fiction and became classics of utopian and dystopian fiction. The most famous works were "It's hard to be a god", "A Beetle in an anthill", "Monday begins on Saturday", "Interns". Strugatsky's works have been translated into 42 languages in 33 countries (more than 500 editions).

8. The Strugatskys were laureates of many prestigious awards: "Aelita", "The Great Ring", the Zh Prize. Verna, British Prize "For the Independence of Thought", awarded the medal "Symbol of Science".

9. The minor planet No. 3054, discovered on September 11, 1977 at the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory, is named after the Strugatskys.

10. Arkady Natanovich was married twice, from his second marriage he had a daughter, Maria, who later became the wife of politician Egor Gaidar, a descendant of writer Arkady Gaidar.

11. We remember Arkady Strugatsky and his amazing translations. Thanks to him, the Soviet reader saw the stories of Ryunoske Akutagawa, novels by Kobo Abe, Natsume Soseki, etc. In the 70s, Strugatsky was an honorary member of the editorial boards of the magazine "World of Adventures", the anthology "Library of Modern Fiction", "Knowledge is Power", and in the 85th he became the editor of the Ural Pathfinder, turning this magazine into the main mouthpiece of Soviet and translated fiction.

12. And more recently, in honor of the Strugatskys in St. Petersburg, a decree was issued on the assignment of an unnamed square in the Moscow district named after the Strugatsky brothers. The square, which was named after famous writers, is located at the intersection of Moskovsky Prospekt, Frunze and Pobedy Streets. By the way, Boris Strugatsky himself lived nearby.

13. Arkady Natanovich Strugatsky died of liver cancer, with which he led a long struggle, in which, however, he lost. According to the will of the writer, his ashes are scattered over Moscow, and millions of readers around the world will remember him for his accurate and clear statements about life and for the fact that he together with his brother (and sometimes alone) gave answers to eternal questions in his works: how to make the right decision, find yourself, and not lose yourself in this huge world. And here, perhaps, are the best of them.

"It's very sinful, but when I'm with you, I don't need God."

"It's amazing how quickly the waves of delight pass. You can gnaw yourself, sting yourself, nag and itch for hours and days, but the delight comes and immediately goes away."

"Children cannot be beaten. They will be beaten up all their lives without you, and if you want to hit him, give him a better punch in the face to yourself, it will be more useful."

"You spend whole weeks wasting your soul on vulgar chatter with all sorts of trash, and when you meet a real person, there is no time to talk."

"That's right: a person needs money in order to never think about it."

"It is better to make a mistake in a person twenty times than to treat everyone with suspicion."

14. "Everyone is a genius at something. We just need to find this genius in him."

"Among them, no one knew exactly what happiness was and what exactly the meaning of life was. And they accepted the working hypothesis that happiness is in the continuous knowledge of the unknown and the meaning of life is the same."

"The trouble is that we don't notice how the years pass. I don't care about the years, we don't notice how things are changing. We know that everything is changing, we have been taught since childhood that everything is changing, we have seen with our own eyes many times how everything is changing, and at the same time we are completely unable to notice the moment when a change occurs, or we are looking for a change in the wrong place."

"Only the one who does not know the word "fear" will achieve the goal.

"There can't be half friends in our business. A half-friend is always half-enemy."

"Or maybe you don't understand what it is — needed? This is when you can't do without. It's when you think about all the time. It's when you spend your whole life striving for."

15. "It is known that there is only one way to do business and many ways to evade business."

"I thought, I thought, I didn't come up with anything useful and decided not to care!"

"Here we are improving, improving, becoming better, smarter, kinder, and how nice it is when someone makes a decision for you..."

"I didn't feel sorry for myself! And I got the sacred right not to feel sorry for others!.."

"It's like going to the grave: it's never too late and always too early."

"... the whole point is to learn how to wipe. They'll spit in your face, and you'll make a fool of yourself. At first you wiped yourself with shame, then with bewilderment, and then, you see, you will begin to wipe yourself with dignity and even enjoy this process..."