For many years, a story about a chain of mysterious events that occurred in the last years of the life of one of the co-authors of “The Twelve Chairs” and “The Golden Calf” has been circulating on websites and magazines. We checked whether the events described in this story actually took place in life.

In most sources, the story is conveyed almost verbatim in this form: “Few people know that the writer Evgeny Petrov, the one who, together with Ilya Ilf, wrote “The Twelve Chairs” and “The Golden Calf,” had a very strange and rare hobby: throughout his life he collected envelopes from his own letters. And he did it this way - he wrote a letter to some country at a fictitious address, a fictitious addressee, and after a while he received a letter back with a bunch of different foreign stamps and the indication “Addressee not found” or something like that. But this interesting hobby one day turned out to be simply mystical..."

The story goes on to tell how, in April 1939, Petrov sent a similar letter to a fictitious address in New Zealand and was shocked when he received a warm response, and even with a photograph of him hugging the New Zealand sender. The date the photograph was taken coincided with the date he was admitted to hospital in a dying state a year earlier. And in 1942, on the day when the plane carrying Petrov, who worked as a front-line correspondent, was shot down by the Germans in the Rostov region, another letter allegedly arrived at his home from the same New Zealander, in which the author advised the writer to fly less often. As reported at the end of the viral text, a movie was made based on this story.Envelope"starring Kevin Spacey.

Among the resources that spread the story are social networks - in particular, Facebook (groups "Autograph of the soul"(2800 reposts at the time of writing this analysis), "I want to know everything!"(2000)"Stories. Fairy tales. Legends" (890), "Community of Anonymous Aliens" (560) and "World of knowledge" (350)) and "VKontakte" (publics "Brain nuts"(103,000 views), "History: Russia and the world"(47,000), "Pensioners Club"(43,000), "Self-development" (38,000)). He spoke about unusual cases from the biography of Evgeniy Petrov from the pages of “Newspapers.ru"famous writer Max Frei, as well as journalists"Channel One"

For literature lovers, Evgeny Petrov (real name Evgeny Petrovich Kataev) needs no introduction. He is known primarily as a co-author of Ilya Ilf (Fainzilberg), with whom he created two cult novels “The Twelve Chairs” (1927) and “The Golden Calf” (1931). Books sold by the dozens quotes and have been many times filmed. Of course, many biographical works are devoted to the short life of writers (Petrov actually died in a plane crash in 1942, Ilf died of tuberculosis five years earlier). books.

However, in none of the available research works we were able to find any mention of the strange correspondence between Yevgeny Petrov and a resident of New Zealand. Moreover, nowhere is it even said about his passion for envelopes. And the severe pneumonia, which allegedly put the writer on the brink of life and death, should have been mentioned in at least one more or less detailed biography. Separate questions are raised by the arrival of a letter from exotic New Zealand to the Soviet capital (it was where the Petrovs lived) at the height of the war - in the summer of 1942, the Germans, even after the defeat in battle for Moscow, were still not far from the capital. Moreover, a city called Hydebirdville (from where, according to the plot of the story, the response letter came) is not in New Zealand or anywhere else on the world map.

However, the short film “Envelope” starring Kevin Spacey is not only exists (it appeared in 2012), but definitely based on this story. All the basic facts are the same - the name of the envelope collector Evgeniy Petrov, and New Zealand, except that the time of action has been moved much later. Director and screenwriter Alexey Nuzhny told: “I wrote a couple of short films for the competition, but I didn’t like everything. I couldn't find my story. Suddenly my wife brings me a story that hooked me. It was a real story she read on the Internet, and I wrote a script based on it in one evening. Translated and sent to the competition. Passed to the second stage of selection, wrote the director's explication, made a video about myself - a lot of things. Afterwards there was a Skype conversation with the producers of the project. One of them, Dana Brunetti, produced “The Social Network,” “House of Cards,” and “Captain Phillips.” They were afraid to film my story because it took place in 1942. And in America it is impossible to film 1942 for little money. And all this time we were figuring out how to get around this. As a result, the film shows the year 1985 - still the Iron Curtain, but they have moved away from complex scenery. Speaking in gratitude to Dana, he submitted this film to the Oscars in 2013, and he even made it into 15 or 20 applicants, but at the last selection he did not make it to the top five.”

Thus, this story also came into the script from the World Wide Web. How did she end up there? The earliest description of the case that we found dates back to February 1999, when it was published in No. 5 of the magazine “Ogonyok"as part of a selection of unusual cases.

Story from the original article in Ogonyok

We will provide word to the author of that article, Valery Chumakov, and later to the correspondent of Komsomolskaya Pravda, in which his new note appeared in 2018: “When they retell to you the contents of your own article, written in the last century, it’s nice. But when they doubt your veracity, it starts to get stressful.<…>

It all started with my old article in Ogonyok. It was 1999, and we were frantically looking for a theme for a fun April Fool's issue. I wanted to come up with some material about aliens and UFOs. And I called a good friend, one of the main Russian ufologists, Vadim Chernobrov. In response to my proposal, he immediately stated that he would not lie about a UFO landing in the center of Moscow, but he had another proposal:

— I have been collecting stories about various coincidences and accidents for many years. I filled a whole notebook. Take what you like and use it.

No sooner said than done. The notebook was thick and there were a lot of accidents in it. I selected about fifteen of them, from which the material entitled “Random as a pattern unknown to us” was formed.

Later, I re-read several biographies of Petrov, an interview with Ilf’s daughter Alexandra - nowhere was information about a strange hobby confirmed. But then I didn’t know this yet and decided to artistically develop the theme. The end result was a story like this. <…> I repeat once again: I came up with all this! <…>

There was a lot of talk about the film back then, in 2012. Spacey himself came to Moscow for the premiere and even talked about Urgant’s new job. He didn’t call me... Although, I think, the artist had no idea about my existence, because in the credits our compatriot Alexey Nuzhny is listed as the only author of the script and director. It was his script entry that won the Jameson First Shot competition, the main prize of which was the opportunity to make a “film with a star.” I probably wouldn’t have said anything if somewhere in the small print it had been written “based on the plot of so-and-so” or “used the ideas of so-and-so.” But I didn't find anything like that. Recently I sent a letter to the producers with a request to indicate my humble person as a co-author. There is no answer yet..."

Thus, the story turned out to be fictitious, and the co-author of the hoax admitted it, but only many years later. At the same time, it remains a secret where the main outline of the plot came from to an acquaintance of Valery Chumakov, a ufologist Vadim Chernobrov (1965–2017). It is only known that in his esoteric books, published after the selection in Ogonyok, Chernobrov brought this story in full, with all the details and even thought, that the laurels for the authorship of the original script for the film by Alexei Nuzhny should go to him. Thus, he indirectly confirmed the fictionality of the plot. Let us also add that the publication in Ogonyok appeared in February and contained not only fictitious stories about various mystical coincidences, so it is difficult to call it “April Fools,” as Chumakov claimed.

It is interesting that at the time of his death, Evgeniy Petrov occupied post of editor-in-chief... of Ogonyok magazine. The same magazine, which many years later will to some extent return interest in the personality of the writer, as evidenced by articles and documentaries movies. However, the truth is more important than beautiful stories.

Cover photo: Wikipedia.