One of the heroes of Yuri Trifonov's novel "House on the Embankment" is a schoolboy named Anton Ovchinnikov. He, like some other characters, had a very real prototype. His name was Leva Fedotov. After his death, he will be called a prophet and clairvoyant, who allegedly managed to accurately predict the events of the Great Patriotic War in his diary.
Unusual boy
Lev Fedotov was born on January 10, 1923 in the family of a responsible party worker Fedor Kallistratovich Fedotov. Mother Agrippina Nikolaevna worked in the wardrobe of one of the Moscow theaters.
In 1932, the Fedotov family received an apartment in the famous Moscow House on the embankment. And three years later, Fyodor Kallistratovich died tragically in Altai.
After his death, life became difficult. To help his mother financially, including to pay for his studies in high school (in those years it was paid), Lyova collected waste paper and scrap metal, tried to earn money in every possible way.
The teenager grew up sickly. He read a lot. His housemate, future writer Yuri Trifonov, later recalled: “As a child, I was struck by one boy. He was so different from everyone. He was especially fond of mineralogy, paleontology, oceanography, painted beautifully, his watercolors were on display, he was in love with symphonic music, wrote novels in thick general notebooks with calico bindings. In addition, he was tempered physically: in winter he walked without a coat, in short pants, mastered the techniques of ju-jitsu and, despite his innate shortcomings - myopia, some deafness and flat feet - prepared himself for long journeys and geographical discoveries."
Leva was fond of science fiction. Among his other works is a story about a "green cave" where the dinosaur world has been preserved deep underground.
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Mysterious diary
Since 1940, Fedotov began to keep detailed diaries, in which he not only described the events of his own life, but also spoke in great detail about what was going to happen in the world.
With the outbreak of the war, despite poor health, including myopia and epilepsy, the young man persistently asked to volunteer for the front. Finally he was sent to a training unit near Tula. On June 25, 1943, a truck with conscripts was bombed on the Kursk Bulge.
Many years later, shortly before his death, Agrippina Nikolaevna Fedotova handed over fifteen notebooks, written in small handwriting by her son, to his childhood friend Mikhail Korshunov, who became a writer, like Trifonov. This is how the diaries of a Moscow schoolchild in the early 1940s became public. Their appearance caused a real sensation, because Leva, it turns out, had foreseen events in advance that he could not know about.
So, on June 5, 1941, he wrote in his diary: “I think that the war will begin either in the second half of this month, or at the beginning of July, but not later, for it is clear that the Germans will strive to end the war before frosts. I am personally convinced that this will be the last insolent step of the German despots."
Subsequently, the historians who read the diary were shocked: an ordinary Soviet schoolboy not only set out in his notes the details of Hitler's top-secret plan "Barbarossa", but also displayed all the details of his failure. He also predicted the entire course of the war, foresaw which countries would join the anti-Hitler coalition, predicted the storming of Berlin.
On June 21, 1941, the following entry appeared in Leva Fedotov's diary: “Now, with the beginning of the end of this month, I already expect trouble for our entire country - war. According to my calculations, only if I was really right in my reasoning, that is, if Germany is preparing to attack us, then the war should break out on these days of this month or in early July."
Meanwhile, when on the morning of June 22, Lyova learned from his aunt by phone about the beginning of the war, he reacted in surprise: “War? And why is it all of a sudden? As if it wasn't he who kept the prophetic diary entries.
Schoolboy-medium
Where did an ordinary high school student get information about the "international situation"? Information leaked to the press was scarce and heavily censored. Most of the newspapers printed rosy articles about the Soviet-German non-aggression pact. Fedotov had no access to the secret archives. Meanwhile, a teenager wrote a hundred pages in small handwriting a day.
Maybe the records were kept in some altered state of consciousness? In other words, Leva Fedotov was a medium who received information from an unknown source. However, this is just a hypothesis, which has no direct confirmation.