The cult novels by Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov "The Twelve Chairs" and "The Golden Calf" enjoy unchanged and well-deserved popularity. But few people know that their protagonist Ostap Bender had a very real prototype, the charming Odessa adventurer Osip (for friends and relatives - Ostap) Benjaminovich Shor, who worked as a criminal investigation officer in the early 1920s. It is his phrases and adventures, reproduced in novels, that make numerous readers smile.
Captain's cap
Osip Shor was born in 1899 in Nikopol (now the Dnieper region, Ukraine) in the family of a merchant of the second guild and the daughter of an Odessa banker. He was the second child of his parents - after his brother Nathan, who later, under the pseudonym Anatoly Fioletov, would become a rather famous futurist poet.
In 1901, his father died of a heart attack, and the brothers and their mother moved to Odessa. Later, the mother remarried and left for St. Petersburg, while the boys stayed with their grandfather.
He was not only a banker - but also, as they would say now, a crime boss. Major thieves and swindlers gathered in his house - and communication with them greatly influenced the life of young Osip.
In 1906, he was assigned to the Iliadi private gymnasium (Ostap Bender studied with Ilf and Petrov there), after which the young man entered the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of Novorossiysk University. But he did not want to study. Osip was fond of sports and dreamed of sailing on a ship to Brazil. The desire for distant shores was so strong that the young man loved to dress in all white, including a captain's cap and a long scarf - with a height of 190 centimeters and a powerful physique, he looked very impressive.
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Chicken without feathers
Osip earned his living by playing professional cards. In addition, he turned out several interesting combinations - with the help of friends from the underworld, whom he met at his grandfather's house.
The first idea to earn extra money came to a young adventurer when he found a dead chicken without feathers on the road. Shor posted advertisements in Odessa newspapers: breeders have brought out a new species of poultry that does not need to be plucked! Idealnaya Chicken was ready to sign contracts with the largest poultry farms in Russia. They did send their agents to Odessa - and disguised Osip, playing the role of a gray-haired professor of biology, told them about the tempting prospects in the field of poultry. Several signed contracts were paid - but the customers did not receive the chicken without feathers on time. It was not possible to find either the "professor" or the company.
The gang of the well-known raider Vaska Kosoy looked out for the robbery of a bank whose doors could not be blown up. Osip Shor visited this building and "for a small share" suggested to the raiders an idea: disguise as chimney sweeps and enter the checkout hall through chimneys.
The Odessa rabbi Bershtein, on the advice of Osip Shor, began to sell places in paradise, having hung on the wall of the synagogue a diagram of places of future eternal life and a price list for a particular site. As a result, the rabbi managed to repair the temple, and Osip regularly received his interest.
Grandmaster in the Volga town
In 1916, the young man moved to Petrograd to his mother and there he entered the Technological Institute. But this study did not last long: soon revolutionary events began in the city, and with them came hunger and disease. Osip hurried back to his native Odessa.
Because of the revolutionary and military actions, the path stretched out for almost a year - especially since Osip Shor traveled without money, and he constantly had to go on some kind of adventures. In Kozmodemyansk (a town on the banks of the Volga), he introduced himself as a chess grandmaster and held a simultaneous game. This story entered the novel "The Twelve Chairs" almost unchanged - Osip was exposed, and he fled from the angry crowd on a boat.
Also, during his trip from Petrograd to Odessa, many other events described in the novel happened to him: he introduced himself as a fire inspector and, not being able to draw, as an artist traveled on an agitation boat. In one of the cities, in order to raise funds, he pretended to be a representative of an anti-Soviet organization. In another, he married a very plump old lady in order to survive the winter in warmth and prosperity.
Forgiven the killers
At the beginning of 1920, Soviet power was finally established in Odessa - but at the same time a ten-thousand-strong "army" of bandits headed by Mikhail Vinnitsky, known under the nickname Mishka Yaponchik, was active. Odessans were forced to unite in the people's squads to fight criminals.
Osip Shor, realizing that the bandits were imposing bloody terror on the city, began to work in the Odessa Criminal Investigation Department. Former acquaintances in the criminal world helped again - but this time in the fight against former sidekicks. Osip planned successful ambushes and in a short time managed to personally catch or destroy many raiders from Yaponchik's entourage. He publicly promised to take revenge.
By mistake, the bandits shot and killed Osip's brother, the poet Nathan. He was asked: "Are you Shore?" He nodded in the affirmative - after which he received four bullets.
Osip found his brother's killers in a hut on Peresyp. He could shoot them, but he didn't. All night, he and the bandits drank and recited poetry together. In the morning Osip left, having forgiven the raiders. But he could no longer work in the criminal investigation department - he considered himself guilty of the death of his brother.
Osip Shor did not want to stay in Odessa either, and in 1922 he moved to Moscow, where through his Odessa friends, writers Yuri Olesha and Valentin Kataev, he met many writers, whom he told about his adventures.
Lady's cigarette case
Once Valentin Kataev found out that Alexander Dumas, the father, did not write his numerous novels - he hired novice writers for this, gave them a storyline and then he edited the text. Kataev wanted to repeat the actions of the classic. As "literary day laborers", he chose the journalists of the newspaper "Gudok": his younger brother Yevgeny, who worked under the pseudonym Petrov, and his friend Ilya Ilf (Feinsilberg). Valentin Petrovich told the story he had invented: a certain district leader of the nobility is hunting for jewels hidden in one of the 12 chairs. Ilf and Petrov must write a novel, Kataev will edit it, the fame and the fee will be divided equally.
The journalists liked the idea. They decided to copy literary heroes from their acquaintances. So a character named Ostap appeared in the novel. Ilf offered to give him the surname Bender - like his neighbor, the owner of a butcher's shop.
It was assumed that the role of Ostap will be purely episodic. But he somehow by himself turned into the main character. When Ilf and Petrov brought the finished novel to Kataev, he realized that almost nothing remained of his idea. Valentin Petrovich refused authorship and editing, assuring that the book was done very professionally. But instead he put forward two conditions. Firstly, at the beginning of the novel there should be a dedication to Valentin Kataev - after all, it was he who Ilf and Petrov made to create this work. Secondly, the authors will give him a gold cigarette case for part of the fee.
Ilf and Petrov agreed. True, they bought a lady's cigarette case for the mentor - very tiny and therefore not too expensive. But Kataev, who appreciated the joke, accepted the gift with joy.
Hugging the back of a chair
After the books "Twelve Chairs" and "The Golden Calf" were published, Osip Shor met with the authors and demanded substantial monetary compensation for the use of his ideas and phrases. They began to make excuses - but Osip burst out laughing, making it clear that he was just trying to play them. He really wanted the saga of his adventures to continue. He sat with the writers all night - and convinced them that they needed to create a third book about Ostap Bender. Ilya Ilf's notebook contains a sketch of the plot: Ostap travels around the country, arranging concerts of gramophone music (something like the current discos), he has a family, but one day a gramophone unexpectedly burns out at a performance.
Unfortunately, the plan was not realized: Ilf went to bed for a long time with tuberculosis, and in 1937 he died.
Osip Shor left for Chelyabinsk in the early 1930s, where he got a job as a supplier at a tractor plant. After some time he was arrested and sentenced to five years for economic fraud. After the outbreak of World War II, Osip Benjaminovich asked to go to the front - but on the way there he escaped from the train to get into besieged Leningrad and save his mother and sister.
It was not possible to penetrate the besieged city. Shor reached Moscow, where his old friend Yuri Olesha took him in. Somehow, the writer managed to achieve amnesty for his comrade - and he switched to a legal position. But from all the shocks he experienced, Osip developed eczema, which grew into skin cancer. In an incredible way, he managed not only to survive, but also to defeat the disease.
After the war, Osip Shor lived in Moscow (his mother died of starvation in besieged Leningrad) and worked as a long-distance train conductor.
The person from whom the image of the Great Combinator was written off, died in 1978, and is buried at the Vostryakovskoye cemetery in Moscow.
In 2011, in the homeland of Osip Shor, in Nikopol, a monument was erected by the sculptor Viktor Saraev. Stone Osip sits, hugging the back of a chair. The inscription on the bottom reads: “Resident of Nikopol Osip Shor. He is the son of the Turkish citizen Ostap-Suleiman Bert Maria Bender-bey, he is also Ostap Ibragimovich, he is the prototype of the Great Combiner Ostap Bender (I. Ilf and E. Petrov)."
Elina POGONINA