Timur Gaidar, whose biography and life is inextricably linked with the name of his famous father Arkady Gaidar, was able to prove that children of famous parents can independently achieve great successes and take place in their profession.
Children and teenagers
Born December 8, 1926 in Arkhangelsk. His mother - Lia Lazarevna Solomyanskaya - was the first wife of the writer Arkady Gaidar. In his famous story “Timur and his team”, the writer creates prototypes of adolescents of that time. So the name of the son began to be associated with one of his best works.
Arkady Gaidar, by occupation, often went on very long and long business trips. His departures became the reason that the writer first saw his son, returning to Arkhangelsk, when Timur was already two years old.
Timur Gaidar: biography, nationality of mother
In the documents of the famous writer, the double surname Golikov-Gaidar was listed. However, he used the second part as a literary pseudonym. His son Timur in childhood bore the name of his mother and was Solomyansky. On receiving his passport, he took the sonorous pseudonym of his father, Gaidar. All subsequent generations of their family still bear this surname.
However, in recent years there have been many rumors that his mother, Lia Lazarevna Solomyanskaya, whose name was actually Rachel, was not only deceiving this. It was rumored that her son Timur was not at all the son of a famous writer. Allegedly, living in Perm with her family, father and mother, who were Jewish by nationality, she met Arkady Gaidar when she already had her three-year-old son Timur. But, according to their contemporaries, these were only rumors. Just Timur Gaidar, a biography whose nationality is certainly associated with the Jewish origin of his mother, was born when Arkady Gaidar was on a long business trip, from which he returned only two years after the birth of his son.
Professional activity
When Timur was 14 years old, his father died. The boy began to work at a military factory, but dreamed of fighting the Nazis at the front. But this dream was not destined to come true.
Timur Arkadevich studied at the Leningrad Higher Naval School, which he graduated in 1948. And 6 years later (in 1954), he became a certified journalist, having studied at the Lenin Military-Political Academy.
For a long time he combined activities in the military field with journalistic and literary work. Timur Gaidar, whose biography proves that he was a comprehensively developed person, served on a submarine as part of the Pacific and Baltic fleets. After that, he completely focused on working in the military press, leaving his service in the army. At first he worked in the "Soviet Navy" and "Red Star". Since 1957 he worked in the most popular publication at that time, the Pravda newspaper. There he proved himself both as an editor of the military department, and as his own correspondent in Cuba, in Yugoslavia, in Afghanistan. Also, his publications appeared in the newspapers Moscow News, Izvestia, and for some time he was one of the members of the editorial board of the Pioneer magazine.
The vicissitudes of fate: meeting Bazhov’s daughter
His wife was the daughter of a famous writer - storyteller Pavel Bazhov. They met on vacation in Gagra when Timur Arkadievich was 26 years old. Ariadna Pavlovna worked at the Ural University as a teacher of history. She had already managed to get married and get a divorce. She had a son, Nikita, who at the time of her meeting with Timur Arkadievich was 6 years old. This could not scare Gaidar, who truly fell in love with Ariadna Pavlovna. A year before they met, Ariadne's father, Pavel Bazhov, passed away. She really missed him. Longing for his father, like an open wound, always tormented Timur. Arkady Gaidar left the family when his son was very young, and after the divorce, he rarely talked with Timur. And when his father was gone, the fourteen-year-old Timur suffered very much that he did not have time to tell his beloved dad how he loved and waited for him. Perhaps it is precisely these facts from life that brought Timur and Ariadne so close together. He proposed to her three weeks after meeting. She said yes, but for some time the bride and groom lived in different cities: she was in Yekaterinburg, he was in Moscow. But still they got married, and after 4 years, March 19, 1956, their son Yegor was born, who later became a famous politician.
Timur Gaidar, a biography whose personal life proves his self-sufficiency, despite the drama in relations with his father, has always been proud of whose son he is. Despite being very busy, he was a very caring dad, and devoted a lot of time to his son.
Famous wife's family
Ariadna Pavlovna herself was one of the three surviving daughters of the writer Pavel Petrovich Bazhov and his wife Valentina. Her famous father, despite the gloomy atmosphere and the almost complete absence of mutual love in the works, was loved in life by his wife and he called his wife his soul mate, destined for him in heaven. There were plenty of trials for their love. He is a teacher, she is a student. They were discussed, whispered behind their backs. Later, Ariadna Pavlovna admitted that the love of their parents was an example for her. They could not live without each other, just as Ariadna herself and her husband Timur Arkadievich Gaidar could not live without each other. The biography of this family proves that you can be completely different in character, but at the same time live your whole life happily with each other: in love, in harmony, in tenderness.
Ariadna Pavlovna was the youngest child in the family. She had many brothers and sisters, but three brothers and one sister died for various reasons and in different years. The other two surviving sisters, along with Ariadne, always supported and felt sorry for their parents, knowing how much grief they had to endure.
Son - Yegor Gaidar
When Timur Arkadyevich Gaidar, whose biography connects the history of two famous families, was a war correspondent in other countries, his wife and son always traveled with him. As Yegor's son recalled, life in Cuba was especially memorable and vibrant. His father, according to him, knew Raul Castro and Ernesto Che Guevara quite well, and talked to them “on a short leg”. Several times, little Egor was with his father in military units and garrisons, where he was allowed to climb tanks and armored personnel carriers.
The brothers Nikita and Egor were always very friendly, despite the fact that the age difference was quite large - 10 years. Egor, having lived abroad a significant part of his childhood, read a lot. Books were available for him, which were not available in the Soviet Union. He studied well. Only, as his mother admitted, from childhood had a very poor handwriting. It is not surprising, because among all representatives of the Gaidar family he was terribly sloppy and illegible. Egor learned several foreign languages in his school years. Despite the fact that Yegor’s grandfather was the famous writer Arkady Gaidar, and his father was the famous war journalist Timur Gaidar, his biography (see family photo below) is not connected with literature. He got into politics. Mother ambiguously reacted to his desire to build a political career. In an interview, she expressed the view that it was politics that caused his early death. The ambiguity of the state system of the 90s, which hit the peak of Yegor Gaidar, caused a lot of controversy, which affected not only his professional life, but also his state of health.
He was first married to his childhood friend Irina Mishina, and the second marriage he made with the daughter of the famous science fiction writer Arkady Strugatsky Maria.
last years of life
Timur Gaidar, whose biography went down in the history of journalism, since he became the first representative of the profession to receive a rank higher than a colonel, resigned, being already a contradmiral. And I must say that not all of his colleagues were happy when he received this title. In those difficult times, Timur Arkadyevich had many envious people who believed that his successes and merits were undeserved and were mainly due to his famous surname.
In the last years of his life, Timur Gaidar, whose biography is full of dangerous events related to the professional activities of a military journalist, was an honored guest and actively helped the Moscow Palace of Pioneers and Schoolchildren named after A.P. Gaidar, which is located in the Moscow district Tekstilshchiki. At this time, he and his wife lived in the village of Krasnovidovo, over which his ashes were scattered after his death.
"Three Gaidars"
In his book “The Crown Princes as Squires. Notes by a speechwriter ”V. A. Alexandrov devotes one of the chapters to the Gaidar family. Arkady Gaidar, Egor Gaidar, Timur Gaidar: biography, family, professional activities of representatives of three generations of this family. This is what the author talks about in his book.