Masters of detectives. The Weiner Brothers

The Weiner brothers are known as popular Soviet writers of the detective genre, as well as the authors of famous screenplays. In 1990, their popularity reached a maximum: the circulation of the ten novels written by them exceeded 1 million copies. All-Union fame was brought to the writers by the film "The place of meeting can not be changed", based on their story "The era of mercy" (1976).

The passion for journalism of Gregory and the legal profession chosen by Arkady became the creative platform from where the Weiner brothers came to literature. (Their biography in this sense is reminiscent of the later master of the detective genre of Friedrich Neznansky.) The difference in the age of 7 years did not become an obstacle to the cooperation of Arkady and Gregory.

About childhood

They were very friendly and were even ready to make sacrifices for each other. And it was like this from childhood. Once in a famine, when he and his mother were evacuated to Samarkand, Arkasha found a loaf of bread. Mother, believing that she was poisoned and planted by saboteurs, was adamant: throw it away. But the guys were starving ... Arkasha, before sharing the bread, tried it on himself ... The Weiner Brothers through their whole life carried this brotherhood, which was born then.

Returning from the evacuation, the family settled on Sukharevka. They were different from childhood: Arkasha studied well, and Zhora was a two-man. Arkady forced his brother to study. He even wrote a receipt in 1956, that in 10 years he will become a great man ... This Arkady forced Zhora to learn to read. And when this happened, George began to read manic, around the clock ...

Biography

Extraordinarily amicable were the Weiner Brothers ... However, each of them at first did not even think about writing.

Indeed, could Arkady Aleksandrovich (born in 1931), who headed the investigation department of the capital's criminal investigation department, a strong man (a master of sports in freestyle wrestling), a graduate of the Moscow State University's faculty of law, know that his career would go a completely different way, and that his weapon would be a writer's pen?

By nature, the Weiner brothers were completely different. Perhaps, therefore, the fate of Grigory Alexandrovich (1938) was moving along a different channel. In his youth he did not strive to become a security official, nor to follow a firm life plan. Grigory began his work biography with working specialties: an electrician, a technician. Then he became an engineer. And suddenly (a man assumes and God disposes) he becomes a journalist, and then a TASS correspondent. Grigory also in 1960 in absentia (the example of his elder brother) still gets higher education. Is it worth mentioning that it is legal? Unlike Arkady, he worked in the media.

Attentive reader their further path to literature does not seem by chance. Perhaps the cornerstone of this was laid down in this way: the Weiner brothers gathered with their families, and then Grigory began to talk about his most-successful journalistic work. And the investigator Arkady listens and thinks to himself: "Is it really interesting, brother, last year we investigated the case, and so there ..."

In short, believe our speculations they do not, but the plot of the first joint novel of the brothers "The Watch for Mr. Kelly" (1967) had a real prototype in the investigative practice of the Moscow Criminal Investigation Department.

The creative way of the Weiner brothers

The first pancake did not come out as a lump! Roman did not stay under the cloth. The Russian literary magazine Our Contemporary, in 1967, published it in Nos. 10 and 12.

The Weiner brothers after that finally decided on their creative path, they worked as a creative tandem. And this is twice as many ideas, twice as much information to rethink. Publishers willingly printed their subsequent works: the story "Feeling at Noon" (1968) and the novel "I'm an Investigator". However, the writers themselves will later start talking ironically about these works. Why is that? On the one hand, we must admit that even these books show a subtle understanding of the nature of the detective by writers. Their plot is dynamic. They skillfully build an intrigue. However, there is one "but", which years later and caused irony in the authors. The fact is that their first works were written in the framework of classical socialist realism. The Soviet investigative bodies themselves are shown from the ideal side. Those. Such high moral knightly orders, devoid of shortcomings.

However, talent is a talent. Having begun to develop in the writers' brothers, he does not allow them to dwell on Soviet dogmatism (where 80% of their fellow writers have always remained). The Weiner brothers in their work "move deeper", i.e. Seek the causes of the moral and social order that generate crime, strengthen the psychology of their author's vision of the plot. As a result, the story "Two among people" (1969) and the novel "Racing in the vertical" (1971) are gaining popularity. In the eponymous movie "Vertical Race" is played by Soviet stars: Valentin Gaft, Andrei Myagkov, Galina Polsky ... It is obvious that the authors intuitively understood the crisis of the genre of the police detective and evolved to another genre - the police detective, where there is nothing ideal, where ideology By definition.

Since that time, millions of readers and viewers are eagerly awaiting their every new work of writers. In 1972, a new novel, The Visit to the Minotaur, was published. Here in the detective narrative of the brothers something new appears: a philosophical content. In their view, the process of investigation does not look like a quest, but more voluminously: it affects the souls of the people involved in it. They seem to plunge into the world of their human soul, where, of course, there is evil. (The principle operates: we are all human beings, and we are all sinners.) As a result, in order to prevent Evil and follow Justice, the investigator must fight the Minotaur living in the labyrinth of his soul. In the film adaptation of the Minotaur, the role of the investigator was played by Sergei Shakurov.

Having done the Master's way, having learned to create not so much the mind as the soul, at last, in 1976, create the masterpiece The Weiner Brothers. Photo of the authors of the script for the film "The meeting place can not be changed" (the novel "The era of mercy") becomes recognizable for the whole country. The brothers literally fall in love with the whole people and recognition. Monologues are torn to quote. The film becomes folk ...

The day before, in 1978, on the eve of filming ("The meeting place ..." was filmed in 1979) Vladimir Vysotsky literally flew into Vainov's house with a request to "stake out" the role of Zheglov behind him.

In the 1970s and 1980s, the novel "Do not lose a man" (1978), the story "The Kara Strait" (1981), "The Victims Have No Claims" (1986) come out from under their pen. Well-known writers are quite happy, but ....

The time of perestroika is approaching. And then the brothers-writers perform a real civil feat. They go "against the current". In the 1990s, they removed from under the cloth the novel about the Stalinist repressions "The Stone and the Loop in Green Grass" written in 1979 and wrote the novel "The Gospel of the Executioner".

The brothers began to resemble Don Quixote, trying to change Russia from the imperial to the democratic. 1999 is productive for them. The novels "Multiplying Grief" and "Paradise Garden of the Devil" are written.

Unfortunately they are no longer with us, Arkady left in 2005, George - four years later died in exile.

Conclusion

Creativity brothers Vainer really enriched the Russian literature of the 80's - 90's. XX century.

It is characteristic that the stories of the masters of detectives throughout their life constantly evolved. So in recent novels the reader is confronted with corruption of power, a war of compromising materials, a financial crisis.

In their last novels, the Weiner brothers, as a warning, show the "new race" of people deformed by a "scoop" in whose mind the imperial principles strangled human values. "We are all - the mutation of lifelong prisoners who have been thrown out into the world" - characterizes their Weiner character very much.