According to the common information, the real author of the Great Patriotic War in 1916, the provincial teacher Alexander Bode, who devoted his poem more relevant at that time, became a real author of the words of the legendary song. We checked if it was so.

According to many sources, the immortal creation of the poet Lebedev-Kumach and composer Alexandrov was the alteration of another work on the authorship of a modest teacher of literature from the city of Rybinsk. During the First World War, Alexander Bode wrote a poem that began with the lines:

"Get up, the country is huge
Get up for a mortal battle
With German force, dark
With the Teutonic Horde.
Let the rage are noble
Boils like a wave
There is a folk war,
Holy War. "

Many years later, in 1937, when the threat of fascist invasion hung over the country, Bode allegedly sent his little-known work to the eminent poet Vasily Lebedev-Kumachi-he would suddenly come in handy, but he did not wait for an answer and died two years later. And after the outbreak of war, Lebedev-Kumach, having made small changes, issued a poem for his, written “in one night”. And only in the 1980s, though it really began to emerge to the surface.

Similar information can be read in the textbook "History of Russia 1901-2001." for applicants to the RSU, magazine "New World" And the other journalism 1990s, in the book of Nikolai Nepomnya "Military riddles of the Third Reich", an article called "Stolen song"In the military-historical journal" Reitar "(No. 2, 2006). About the case, director Stanislav Govorukhin in his 1992 documentary briefly spoke about the case "Russia we lost". The main catalyst for the scandal is the article by Andrei Malgin "IN. I. Lebedev-Kumach. The most Soviet of the poets "published in June 1991 in the then Soviet magazine "Capital".

In his article, Malgin accused Lebedev-Kumach of plagiarism, referring to a conversation with his daughter Bode, Zinaida Kolesnikova, held in the mid-1980s. As it turned out, before that she wrote to Boris Alexandrov, the son of the composer of the “Holy War” (there was no answer), and led a rich correspondence With the Literary Gazeta in 1981. In particular, according to Kolesnikova, the melody of the song was also born in her family - was written by the mother of Zinaida, a musician by education.

When from the Literary Newspaper they asked the evidence of the authorship of Alexander Bode (the recordings of the text until 1941, a copy of the letter to Lebedev-Kumach), the elderly woman replied that she did not blame the famous poet of plagiarism-in fact, he fulfilled her father’s request, making an anthem of the future war, and even in the orchestration of Alexandrov, about which Bode dreamed. He burned all his papers before his death in 1939 in a painful seizure, but Kolesnikov in sufficient detail told Almost about every quatrains of the original, according to her, creation - how and why it was written. We can conclude that Zinaida Alexandrovna simply wanted to restore historical justice.

The years have passed since then, Zinaid Kolesnikova was no longer alive (she died in 1988), and the events around the “sacred war” did not subside. After all, there was the second side-the heirs of Vasily Lebedev-Kumach. In particular, Maria Deeva, the poet’s granddaughter, the struggle for the bright name of the grandfather began before the publication of Malgin. And in 1998, after the release of the next Articles In the "Independent Gazeta", Deeva filed a lawsuit in the Meshchansky inter -municipal court of the city of Moscow "A claim for the protection of the honor and dignity of Deeva M. G." To A.V. Malgin, V. A. Shevchenko (to the author of the article) and the “Independent Newspaper”. Deeva later removed all the legal claims against Malgin, who at that time was the chairman of the board of directors of the Center Plus Publishing House, who was under the patronage of Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov. However, she achieved her main goal: the court ruled that the authorship of the song “Holy War” belongs to Lebedev-Kumach. "Independent newspaper" was forced to publish refutation.

Fragment of the decision of the Meshchansky municipal court of the city of Moscow

In his verdict, the court relied on the absence of evidence on the one hand (witness, the great-grandson of Alexander Bode, announced the missing notebook with poetry in pre-revolutionary spelling and receipt that confirmed the receipt of letters by Lebedev) and the presence of those with the other (there were drafts of the Lebedevsky text with edits). Bode's great -grandson has no complaints on authorship before. It would seem that the question should be closed forever.

However, there are several but. This is, firstly, expert conclusion Doctors of Art History, professor of the history of Russian music Evgeny Levashev, compiled on request from the “Independent Gazeta” in 1999. Levashev not only defends the poetic authorship of Bode, expressing doubt about the impartiality and validity of the decision of the court, but also casts doubt on the authorship of music. With the help of detailed historical-stylistic analysis, as well as referring to the evidence of the Bode family, he justifies the authorship of the Bode of the original melody and assigns to Alexandrov the role of a professional arranger. In particular, he notes that the court refused the defendants to conduct an examination. In addition, Levashev, as an additional argument, leads other cases of borrowing by Lebedev-Kumach of the creations of Russian poets. In addition, there are other analysis The text and melodies of the “Holy War” in the Bode variant and in the version of Alexandrov, from which we can conclude: in this case, not everything is unambiguous, and the court decision was not based on all available sources.

And although in some reasoning Evgeny Levashev find Inaccuracy, the totality of the available information allows us to say: today an unambiguous verdict in favor or against authorship of Bode is possible only following new professional examinations.