АлександрД
Contributor
One would like to start this article with the journalistic stamp “They were the first”. That is, she, Olga Khludova, was the first. But what if this is true? She was one of the first women in our country to go down with scuba diving (or rather, one of two, but more on that later), one of the first in the world to take brushes and paints under water. Finally, she was the first to tell Russian readers about the wonderful underwater world of the seas surrounding our country - and she spoke no worse than Jacques Cousteau about the tropics. A translator by training, already in her mature years she became a biologist and animal artist, whose works adorn the country's main natural science museums.
Olga Florentievna Khludova (1913-1975) came from a family of factory owners and philanthropists of the Khludovs known in pre-revolutionary Russia. Her grandfather, Vasily Alekseevich Khludov, was one of the founding fathers of the city of Sochi, it was he who created the famous Riviera Park; now the grateful Sochi people erected a monument to him. And then, when Olga was growing up, it was better to forget about such a relationship. However, her childhood was by no means spent on the Black Sea, but on the Moscow River near Kolomna, in the estate of her grandfather “Sands”. It was there that she learned to swim and fell in love with water. There are people for whom swimming is a more natural way of moving than running or walking, when meeting them it is easy to believe that our ancestors led a semi-aquatic lifestyle, and therefore stood on their hind limbs and lost their interfering hairline (there is such a hypothesis about the origin of man ) Obviously, Olga Khludova belonged to such amphibious sapiens.
At one time, she worked as a translator at the Metropol Hotel. Her fate changed dramatically when she met Nikolai Kondakov and soon became his wife. They led the typical life of field biologists: the summer season on the expedition, in the winter - disassembly and description of the samples. He is a researcher, she is a laboratory assistant, an auxiliary worker and a cook, when there was time. Not quite a typical life: Nicholas is not just a zoologist, but also an artist, she called herself an “art reserve”. The paths along which their routes passed were a little steeper than the Metropol corridors, and there were no basic amenities in tents and temporary huts, but this was quite suitable for her.
Nikolai Nikolaevich Kondakov (1908-1999) had two hobbies from his youth, which later became a profession: he loved to draw and was interested in zoology. His fate was determined in his early youth. He had never studied fine art in such a professional way, once it was, and he participated in scientific research at school. Having entered the biology faculty of Moscow State University, he simultaneously worked as an artist in the Darwin Museum. Having received a diploma, the young scientist participated in numerous expeditions, both as a zoologist and as an artist. He climbed the volcanoes of Kamchatka, studied the marine fauna and flora in the Far East, participated in the campaign to the New Earth icebreaker "Rusanov" under the leadership of O. Yu. Schmidt. Although he made many drawings of terrestrial animals, his main objects were aquatic organisms. He defended his thesis on cephalopods.
Kondakov understood early that in order to accurately convey the shape and color of fish and invertebrates, one must see them in a natural environment. In the “pre-aqualung era”, he sank to the bottom in a heavy diving suit - it was a “pre-aqualung” era - and he painted underwater inhabitants with oil paints. Subsequently, he introduced Olga to his technique.
Olga subsequently wrote about her husband that he was "a university that made her a biologist and an artist." But for Nikolai Kondakov, staying at sea was only part of the work, the main thing was to collect samples, sketch them and describe them, and his heart was given to butterflies, his favorite occupation was to chase them with a net, no matter where he was (on over the years, he handed over his wonderful collection, 12 thousand copies, to the Zoomuseum). Olga, on the other hand, enjoyed every moment spent in and under water, she loved to watch the life of underwater inhabitants, their behavior, and all her free time swam and dive, despite chronic hypothermia. “Having looked into the underwater world, a person will forever remain a soul there, as if he had visited the fairyland of fairies,” wrote Khludova. And she shared these wonderful feelings with us, writing two wonderful books about her underwater (as well as land) adventures, “Waves above us”, dedicated to the Black and Azov Seas, and “Beyond the Blue Threshold”, about the expedition to the Far East and Japan sea.
Olga Khludova turned out to be a very talented writer, brilliantly mastering the gift of words and able to give a few strokes to give a magnificent portrait of a man or animal, with a sense of humor, she is also all right. For example, what does the seemingly episodic figure of the half-adult dog Choka belonged to, belonging to the director of the Kedrovaya Pad reserve: “he looked guilty, but happy” - this is about how a puppy who ate a huge pot of porridge hid from the owner. Olga Florentievna loved all animals, but dogs in particular, and four-legged pets lived at her house. And how she described the way of life at the Karadag biostation! When I read, I always had a sense of recognition. Thirty years later we lived exactly the same way at the Utrish Marine Station - employees and students in tents or temporary huts, laboratories - in more solid rooms. And still there wasn’t enough water - a common problem of our south in those days (I don’t know how now), and we sent tourists to get water to the village, making an exception only for children and dogs who were allowed to get drunk.
In order to feel like a fish in water, it’s not enough just to swim perfectly, you also need to see, and a person’s eyes are adapted to vision only in air, but not in water. By the time Olga began to travel with her husband on an expedition, masks with tubes were already invented long ago, but it was impossible to get them in the Soviet Union. As, however, and flippers - they occasionally appeared in sports stores, but only in Moscow, not at sea.
So, the middle of the last century. The film “The Blue Continent” has already taken place at semi-secret screenings, diving enthusiasts have appeared in Russia, and craftsmen have set to work. The most stunning example that Khludova spoke of was a student who wound ordinary glasses to his head with several layers of adhesive tape, and pinched his nose with a clothespin; it turned out to be almost waterproof. “The mask was removed quite simply: the patch was torn off the skin along with the eyebrows and hair on the temples. The owner of the mask squealed a little, but, removing the mask, assured us that "it is very convenient."
At the Karadag Biostation, Olga met the same scuba diving follower as she herself - it was Vitaly Tanasiychuk, then a graduate student in entomology, nowadays a respected professor and writer in St. Petersburg. He had a makeshift mask from ... a rubber bedpan, and the pipe from a piece of hose. Our heroine was just rich: a real mask, snorkel and fins were brought to her from France. But all winter, on the eve of the next season, she cut and glued a rubber suit herself. Wearing warm underwear in it, it was really warm, only before diving, it was necessary to expel air bubbles from it, which gave the diver the appearance of a humpbacked sea monster.
Then, in the Crimea, Olga Khludova had the opportunity to dive for the first time. I begged from the visiting film group. This experience led her into complete delight: “I swam, still not ceasing to be amazed at the ease with which I could breathe ... Each breath seemed to me a miracle ... I popped up a bit, then sank to the bottom in great admiration from a new sense of freedom and ease of soaring. " True, this happiness did not last long - something there spoiled, and the air stopped flowing. No one was surprised - the technique at that time was like that. Olga did not panic; although she writes little about herself, from the pages of her books she appears as a brave, determined woman who does not stew before the elements and does not give up in dangerous situations. She quickly got up and swam to the shore, fighting the waves.
On Karadag, Olga Khludova met with Olga Zhukova, who is now considered the "patriarch of Russian diving" (it would be more correct to say - a matriarch). Zhukova called Khludova her “underwater friend”, they often swam together and dive synchronously. Unlike Olga Khludova, Olga Zhukova was more interested in the sports side of scuba diving, she was (and remained until her very old age) a passionate underwater hunter, in 1957 she organized an spearfishing section at DOSAAF and headed it for a long time. Thanks to her efforts, our industry began to produce diving equipment. Well, the box for the Zhukov camera was glued itself from plexiglass.
