In October 2023, many users of social networks published a poem attributed to Soviet fantasy writers. We checked whether there are reason to consider the Strugatsky by the authors of this text.

The poem is given in the following form:

The animals stood
Near the door,
They shot at them
They died.

But there were those who regretted them,
Those who opened these doors to animals.
The animals met songs and good laughter.
The animals entered and killed everyone.

The text was widely spread due to the exacerbation of the Arab-Israeli conflict after the attack of the Hamas group, recognized as terrorist in many countries, on Israel on October 7. Internet users draw an analogy between the plot of the poem and reality, while the text is used both for the expression of the priestly position, and clearly Anti -Israeli context, and just in Xenophobic publications Outside of direct communication With a news agenda. Most posts Facebook authors indicate the Strugatsky brothers, some add that science fiction writers composed only the first four lines, and the author of the final is the musician VIS Vitalis. Some users in general They saythat this is a translation (though they do not indicate from which language and who was the author). On the social network X (formerly Twitter) is one of the popular tweets with this poem Sicked 180,000 views, 480 retweets and 3700 likes. The text has spread in Telegram: blogger Igal Levin in his channel published it without indicating authorship twice - In Russian (132,000 views) and in Translation to Hebrew (116 000). In some channels, authorship, like Facebook, attributed Brothers Strugatsky, c others - The son of Boris Strugatsky Andrei, who allegedly composed the first four lines in childhood, and the rest already in adulthood.

On the left is one of the posts on Facebook, on the right is the post of anti -Israeli orientation on the social network X

Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, as well as Andrei Strugatsky, the authorship of this poem attributed already Not the first year. But this is incorrect. The history of the first four lines Described Boris Strugatsky in the biographical book “Comments on the Passed” (2003), published after the death of his brother and co -author:

“It all started with the fact that a long time ago, in very timeless times, the young son of BN (Boris Natanovich.-Approx. Ed.) Unexpectedly for himself and for others he suddenly composed a song-reader:
The animals stood
Near the door,
They shot at them
They died.
Crowing out in different ways these strange and wild, non-childish rhymes, he rushed around the apartment, and BN looked at him and thought: “Damn it, what wonderful words! It’s necessary to come up with a deft, a lousy. A great epigraph could turn out to something! ..” And some kind of vague pictures were painted ... some kind of terrible and unfortunate monsters ... tragically lonely and lonely lonely and lonely lonely and lonely lonely and lonely lonely and lonely lonely and lonely lonely and lonely lone No one needs ... ugly, suffering, looking for human affection and help, but instead of all this a bullet from frightened, who do not understand anything. ”
This quatrain inspired the writers and was supposed to become an epigraph for the story, whose working name Strugatsky chose "animals near the door." However, the editor was against both the title and the epigraph, as a result, the story came out under the name "Beetle in the anthill." In the first editions, the poem was preserved only in the text itself, as Boris Strugatsky notes - "in a mutilated form." After the collapse of the USSR in reprints and on the site dedicated to the work of writers, the epigraph was Returned In the text of the story.

There are no traces of the second quatrains in the work of the Strugatsky brothers. Yes, and the text itself raises questions - the two parts do not coincide, the line of the second fragment is twice as long, and the “door” turns into the “door”. Search by quote leads to Records From October 29, 2009 in the “Live Journal” of the musician Visa Vitalis, where he reports that this is a fan fiction (a work on the motives) for the work of Strugatsky.

Screenshot of publication in the "Live magazine"

The very meaning of the original text changes in the fan fiction of Vitalis: to replace the humanistic pathos and the danger emanating from a person, which Boris Strugatsky describes in his memoirs, a well -defined moral - “The Beast is the Beast”. Nevertheless, it is in this form, including openly Ksenofobsky context, the text became popular and began to spread in the mid-2010s from yourself different attribution - from Strugatsky and Vitalis to Bard Sergey Nikitin.

Andrei Strugatsky, the son of the youngest from the duo of Soviet science fiction writers, the authorship of all eight lines began to be attributed no later than 2017 year, and on December 30, 2018, it was posted on YouTube Record Reading this text - the description of the video indicates that this is a poem by the son of Boris Strugatsky. When it again began to spread in 2023, Andrey Strugatsky wrote On his Facebook page, which has nothing to do with the second part of it.

Thus, the viral text consists of two parts written by different authors. The first four lines that became an epigraph to the story “Beetle in an anthill” was composed by Andrei Strugatsky, the son of one of the writers' brothers. The most likely author of the second part of the poem, which significantly distorts the message of the original work, is the musician VIS Vitalis.

Photo on the cover: collage "Checked"