Mikula Selyanovich XX century

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

A hero from the village with an advantage in height - 2, 18 m.

Once, in the town of Slobodskoy, in the Vyatka province, the popular strongman Fyodor Besov arrived. He demonstrated amazing tricks: he tore the chains, juggled with blindfolded three-pound weights, tore a deck of cards, bent copper dimes with his fingers, bent a metal beam on his shoulders, smashed a cobblestone with his fist …

And in general, he plunged the local inhabitants into an indescribable ecstasy. At the end of the performance, Besov, as he constantly practiced, turned to the audience: "Maybe someone would like to wrestle with me on the belts?" The hall fell silent. There were no volunteers. Then the athlete called the assistant and taking ten rubles from him, raised his hand up, and again turned to the audience with a smile: "And this is the one who will hold out against me for ten minutes!" And once again the silence in the hall. And like the devil from a snuff-box, from somewhere in the gallery, someone's bass rumbled: "Let's try." To the delight of the audience, a bearded man in bast shoes and a canvas shirt entered the arena. He turned out to be fathoms tall - more than two meters, his shoulders could hardly crawl through the gate. It was a strong peasant from the village of Saltyki, Grigory Kosinsky, eminent throughout the province. There were legends about him. Grisha could, in particular, having tied twelve two-pound weights, load them on his shoulders and walk with this colossal load. It is said that once he put in a sled in which a contractor who was shortcuting workers was traveling, a woman of forty pounds for driving piles.

The battle began. Neither knowledge of techniques, nor tremendous skill could save Besov from defeat. The audience gasped with delight when the bearded giant pressed a visiting athlete to the carpet.

Besov realized that he had met a nugget. After the performance, he took Grisha backstage and for a long time urged him to go with him - "to show strength." Besov talked with enthusiasm about Grisha's future career, about what glory awaits him. He finally agreed. A new existence began, but, of course, not as sweet as Demons painted for him. The performances took place in the provinces, most often in the open air, with great physical exertion. There were also curious cases in these touring wanderings. Here is what Besov told about one of the cases, the one that happened to them. "We come with Grisha to a remote, remote town. There we have never seen people like us … Kashcheev (Kosinsky's pseudonym) is shaggy, like a beast, and my name is Demons … We don't have a human look. We decided that we were werewolves … Not saying a bad word, they lassoed us, took us out of the city and said: “If you don’t leave our city kindly, then blame yourself.” So Grisha and I - God give us legs …

Kashcheev's performances were a huge success, but more and more often he said: “No, I’m leaving the circus. I will return home, I will plow the land. In 1906, he faced world-class wrestlers for the first time.

He made friends with Ivan Zaikin, the one who helped him climb into the big arena. Soon Kashcheev put on the shoulder blades many eminent strongmen, and in 1908, together with Ivan Poddubny and Ivan Zaikin, went to the world championship in Paris. Our heroes returned to their homeland with victory. Kashcheev took the prize-winning position. It would seem that now Kashcheev's real wrestling career has begun, but he still threw everything and went to his village to plow the land.

The best characteristic of the Russian giant, Grigory Kashcheev, is the words of the famous organizer of the French wrestling championships, editor-in-chief of the Hercules sports magazine Ivan Vladimirovich Lebedev:

I had to fully mature the original people when I was the director of wrestling, but still the most interesting in character, I must think of the giant Grigory Kashcheev. In fact, it is hard to imagine that a gentleman, who made a European name for himself within 3-4 years, voluntarily left the arena back to his village, and again took up the plow and harrow. That gentleman was of immense strength. Almost a fathom in height, Kashcheev, if he were a foreigner, would have earned large capital, because by force he surpassed all foreign giants.

(Magazine "Hercules", No. 2, 1915).

Kashcheev died in 1914. There were many legends about his death, but this is what is reported in the obituary placed in the June issue of the magazine "Hercules" for 1914: “On May 25, in his fifties, the eminent giant wrestler Grigory Kashcheev, who abandoned the circus arena and was engaged in agriculture, died of heart failure. in his close village Saltyki. The name of Kashcheev has not thundered so long ago not only in Russia, but also abroad. If in his place there was another, more greedy for money and fame uncle, he could make himself a worldly career. But Grisha was a Russian farmer at heart, and he was irresistibly drawn from the most profitable engagements - home, to the land."

He was a great hero. But how many people at the moment know about him?

Mikula Selyanovich is a legendary plowman-hero from Russian epics. He personifies the peasant strength, the strength of the people, because only Mikula can lift those "saddlebags" in which the "pull of the earth" is found.

It would seem, where would he, a peasant-country bumpkin, go to the daring knight Volga (Volkh) Svyatoslavich, the nephew of Prince Vladimir, at whose birth “Mother of Cheese Earth was born, shaking gloriously the Indian kingdom, and the blue sea shaking”? But the knight was forced to give up the plowman Mikulushka primacy in labor. Volga Vseslavievich saw a plowman in the field, who plowed, but on such a scale that "Volkh rode to the warrior from morning to evening, but could not get to the warrior." Volkh could not resist, he called Mikula Selyaninovich to go with him in his brothers-in-arms, and Mikula agreed, but when the time came to take the plow out of the ground, neither Volkh himself nor his entire squad could cope with it, but only Mikula pulls the plow out of the ground with one hand and throws it over the bush.

In other epics, the hero Mikula shames not only Volga, but also the giant Svyatogor. Svyatogor is also one of the most ancient mythological characters of the Russian epic. He personifies the absolute universal power. There is no one stronger than him in the world, he is so huge and heavy that "the mother of the earth does not hold him," and he rides on his heroic horse through the mountains. In this epic the image of Mikula takes on a cosmic sound. Once Svyatogor saw the "good fellow on foot" walking in front of him. Svyatogor let his horse go "with all the horse's strength", but could not catch up with the pedestrian. According to another of the epics, Mikula asks the giant Svyatogor to pick up the bag that has fallen to the ground. He does not cope with the task. Then Mikula Selyaninovich lifts the bag with one hand, announcing that it contains “all earthly burdens”, which only a peaceful, hardworking plowman can do it.

In the image of Mikula, the heroic character of free peasant labor, the beauty of a simple peasant life, the dignity of a worker, a toiler, a creator, and his superiority in this sense over the prince and his servants are glorified. This hero became the most vivid expression of the character of the nation as a whole, a generalized expression of the people.