The art critic Ildar Galeev presented a two-volume book with the diaries of Ivan Yuvachev

KAZAN. An incredible life story of an amazing person.

Two volumes of diaries published by the Galeev Gallery are a small fraction of the heritage of the people’s volunteer, writer and essayist Ivan Yuvachev. Only half of notebooks and thick notebooks survived in our days, in which the father of Daniel Kharms recorded the events of his life for half a century. After decoding, which is carried out by the head of the department of art and children’s broadcasting “Radio of Russia-St. Petersburg”, journalist Nikolai Kavin, the publishing house “Galeev-Gallery” plans to publish another 8 volumes. The books that the collector and art critic Ildar Galeev presented on January 10 at the Kazan Center for Contemporary Culture "Change", familiarize the reader with the period of Sakhalin exile.

Naval officer Ivan Yuvachev escaped the death penalty after a failed assassination attempt on the tsar as part of a group of people’s volunteers. Serving the sentence in the "alone" of the Shlisselburg fortress and the reference to Sakhalin is a turning point in his life, a time of conversion to faith. Vera Figner called him “a Tolstoy-style peace lover,” meeting and correspondence with which were very important for a person who deeply repented and experienced a real spiritual transformation.

The sparing conditions of being in exile left enough time for doing science, teaching, and theological activities. He conducted research at a meteorological station, engaged in the arrangement of a botanical garden next to it, taught English and math classes to local children, and served as a church warden. On Sakhalin, Yuvachev met Chekhov. In 1889, Anton Pavlovich visited the island to learn firsthand about the life of convicts and bring truthful information to those living on the "Great Land". Being strongly impressed by his acquaintance with an intelligent, educated person with an unusual fate, Chekhov made him the prototype of his novel “The Story of an Unknown Person”.

Subsequently, Ivan Pavlovich was the captain of the first vessel of the Sakhalin flotilla “Prince Shakhovskaya” and the ship “Engineer” in Ussuriysk, took part in the Russian spiritual mission in Japan. He was a pilgrim in Palestine, traveled around the world, having been to America and many European countries. He worked as a foreman on the construction of the railway in Luban, participated with Maximilian Voloshin in an expedition to the Aral Sea and the Syr Darya, wrote articles for the journal "Historical Bulletin". The results of observations at a meteorological station earned him the rank of member of the physical observatory of the Academy of Sciences. Ivan Pavlovich died of sepsis two years before the arrest and death of his son in the psychiatric ward of Krestov.

In addition to the two-volume book with the diaries of Ivan Yuvachev, “Changes” included reprints of children’s books from the 1920s and 1930s. with illustrations by Vera Ermolaeva, Nikolai Lapshin, Eugenia Evenbach, as well as a catalog with the works of Petrov-Vodkin and his students.

Elena Tanakova © Gallerix.ru