Every student studied the biography of Arkady Gaidar in the Soviet Union in general terms. It is in general. They knew that he commanded a regiment in the Civil War at a very early age, wrote children's books after the war, and then died heroically at the very beginning of the Great Patriotic War. The details of his biography during the Soviet era were not reported, they became known only in the post-Soviet era. Which, however, did not at all change the attitude of the majority of readers towards his works. And this is quite fair.
From the entire biography of the writer, only the circumstances of his death are still unknown. There are several versions.
From what is known for certain: Arkady Gaidar was at the beginning of the war on the Southwestern Front as a correspondent for the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper. He wrote several essays that have been published. The last material is a long article about the head of the defense of Kiev, the commander of the 37th Army, Major General A. A. Vlasov. For some reason, the article was not published in 1941, and then, for obvious reasons, no one began to publish it.
According to the version that existed in Soviet times, after the encirclement of the troops of the South-Western Front, Arkady Gaidar fought in a partisan detachment as a machine gunner. And under his real name Golikov. On October 26, 1941, in the vicinity of the village of Leplyavo Gaidar with a group of partisans was ambushed and, saving his other comrades, died. This story was described with a lot of details that no one could know, but in Soviet times they did not pay attention to it. Then it was in the order of things.
Why Gaidar ended up in a partisan detachment, and did not leave the encirclement together with units of the Red Army, or did not fly away on an airplane with other journalists, is not known for sure. Journalists, with whom Gaidar worked in Kiev, and who were taken out by plane on September 18, argued that he did not want to fly, but preferred to leave the encirclement together with the troops in order to write about it later. Moreover, what is important, as everyone argued, Gaidar himself accompanied his colleagues to the Kiev airfield. And, by the way, he was not the only one of the journalists.
His wife received a letter from him that was sent with that very last plane. It read: “Yesterday I returned and tomorrow I am leaving for the front line, and communication with me will be interrupted. Look at Kiev, at the map, and you will understand everything yourself. You are in a good position in the central section … . When she received the letter, everyone already knew that Kiev had been taken by the Germans.
In 1942, Gaidar's wife received a letter from a certain lieutenant S. Abramov, in which she was informed that the writer had died while in a partisan detachment. The letter contained many details. It was indicated where Gaidar was buried.
After the war, in 1947, the grave was found, and Gaidar was reburied. However, some sources claim that the body was identified by the sister. The relatives themselves claimed that it was not Arkady Gaidar who was in the grave. The newspaper "Argumenty i Fakty" published an article by German Drozdov, which describes how the grave was dug up and how the relatives did not recognize the body. But, according to Stalin's personal order to find and bury, Sergei Mikhalkov, who was present at this event, was able to convince the writer's sister to identify Gaidar.
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I would like to draw your attention to the fact that the version with the partisan detachment has many inconsistencies. If, as all witnesses say, Arkady Gaidar was still in Kiev on September 18, then it is completely incomprehensible how he could later end up in a partisan detachment in the Kanev area. If he with the soldiers of the 37th Army left the encirclement, then Kanev is in a completely different direction. One of the articles indicates that Gaidar got into the partisan detachment, leaving the encirclement with a group of fighters under the command of the chief of staff of the air defense fighter air division. But the headquarters of the only 36th Air Defense Aviation Division, which was located on the Southwestern Front, was in Kiev, and could not leave the encirclement in the direction of Kanev either. Moreover, on September 18-19, it was almost impossible to get from Kiev to that area. Maybe a special flight on a combat aircraft.
Interesting information was published in the Top Secret magazine # 10/25. It said that in 1941-1942 it was assumed that Gaidar deliberately did not fly away from Kiev. And given the fact that before that he took up the study of the German language, it was assumed that he could go over to the side of the Germans. However, this version did not receive any official development.
There is another version, which can be found in the anthology "Swan" in No. 504 for 2006, and is offered by Vladimir Batshev. According to his version, Gaidar left the encirclement together with a group of fighters. On the way, he began to offer his fellow travelers to organize a partisan detachment and stay in the rear of the Germans. When they disagreed, arguing that there was an order to leave the encirclement, and not to partisan, Gaidar began to threaten them. Then he was killed, and after leaving the encirclement, the soldiers said that they ran into an ambush, in which the writer died. This version looks extremely unconvincing, first of all, because it is not clear where such details became known at all.
The same Batshev cites the story of the screenwriter Valentin Dyachenko, who was in the camp in 1942, and Gaidar was allegedly brought there, who behaved inappropriately, and as a result was shot by the guards. However, the author of the article himself does not really believe in this version. There is also a version in Rossiyskaya Gazeta (No. 5617) that Gaidar, with several soldiers who were surrounded, had just started to create a partisan detachment, but was ambushed and killed.
Thus, it can be seen that there are a lot of versions of death, but they all have drawbacks that do not allow at least one to be considered reliable one hundred percent. And, considering how much time has passed, there is no certainty that someday it will become known how and when the children's writer Arkady Gaidar died.
Kirill Shishkin