News

News

The 120th Birthday Anniversary of N.N.Turoverov

March 30, 2019, is the 120th birthday anniversary of Nikolay Turoverov, a Russian poet, Cossack of Stanitsa Starocherkasskaya. Having left Russia in 1920, he was active in preserving Russian culture in emigration, was a curator of the Museum of the Life Guard Ataman Regiment, took part in the organization of the “Circle of Cossack Writers” and the Amateur Society of Russian Military History.

Nikolay Turoverov was one of the most, if not the most, talented poets of the Cossack community in foreign countries. He said about his vocation:

Мне сам Господь налил чернила
И приказал стихи писать.
Я славил всё, что сердцу мило,
Я не боялся умирать…

Undoubtedly, he had an impressive poetic gift of God, and after reading even two or three poems of his it was difficult not to agree with this. And if your interlocutor said: “Turoverov? No, I don’t know”, than it was enough to say; “We were leaving the Crimea…” and he would immediately add: “Amid smoke and fire…”

Nikolay Nikolayevich Turoverov was born in Stanitsa Starocherkasskaya of the Don Army Region, 120 years ago, on March 30. He left real school, then the Novocherkassk Cossack school, and aged very young he joined the military service in the Life Guard Ataman Regiment.

He managed to take part in the final battles of the First World War, received an officer rank in the detachment of Chernetsov, participated in the Steppe Military Campaign (“We gave you, the 1918, all that we had…”), was wounded four times, earned the rank of podyesaul. After the defeat of the army of Wrangel he emigrated together with other soldiers of the Ataman Regiment. First he got to the camp on the island of Lemnos, then he worked as lumberjack in Serbia and as loader in France.

During the years of the Second World War he fought against Germans in Africa, in the 1st cavalry regiment of the French Foreign Legion. Later he worked in one of the French banks and all the time he continued writing poetry, collected materials on the history of the Life Guard of the Ataman Regiment, sought for and found talented men of letters among the Russian communities abroad.

N.N.Turoverov died in 1972, on September 23, was buried at Saint-Genevieve-de-Bois Cemetery.

In the distant foreign country his poetic soul constantly returned to the woeful years of the Civil War and could find neither a solution, nor even a refuge.

Мороз крепчал. Стоял такой мороз,
Что бронепоезд наш застыл над яром,
Где ждал нас враг, и бедный паровоз
Стоял в дыму и задыхался паром.

-----------------

Был лёд и в пулемётных кожухах,
Но вот в душе как будто потеплело:
Сочельник был. И снег лежал в степях.
И не было ни красных и ни белых.

Turoverov has his own development of the thoughts about possible reconciliation in the fratricidal slaughter. In the lines of his poems one can feel the poet persistently thinking about it and suffering from hopelessness. In 1944, he wrote a poem “Comrade” addressing an imaginary opponent – Red Army soldier, but not at all to remember about “the scary days of senseless evil” of the Civil War:

Тогда с тобой мы что-то проглядели, Смотри, чтоб нам опять не проглядеть: Не для того ль мы оба уцелели, Чтоб вместе за отчизну умереть?

The poems by Nikolay Turoverov gradually return to his homeland. His first book of poetry “The Way” was published in Paris in 1928, the second – “Poems” – in 1937, in Paris. There were other, later books and a few works in prose.

Many publications about Turoverov are posted now on the Internet websites and everyone can learn more about the literary heritage of the major Don Cossack poet.

Alexey Kochetov