Ask any self-respecting resident of Bendery what the Swedish king Charles XII and the Ukrainian hetman Mazepa, the favorite of the Russian Empress Potemkin and the Russian rebel Yemelyan Pugachev have to do with our fortress, and you will receive an exhaustive answer. Many will proudly tell that the well-known Baron Munchausen made his flight on the core right here. And lovers of mysticism will add that on a full moon a ghost passes through the citadel wife of John-Vode the Fierce with a baby in her arms, disappearing on top of the fortress wall. And this is not surprising. An ancient castle should have its own history, its own legends and mysteries. And what is a castle without ghosts?!
Surprisingly different. When asked what the Bendery fortress has to do with the fate of Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky, the vast majority of us will answer: “Nothing.” And they will be wrong. The fate of the Aivazovsky family, His Majesty Chance decided it here. He miraculously saved the Turkish baby, who became the father of the great Russian artist. Thus, Turkish blood flowed in the veins of Aivazovsky, although for some reason it was customary to consider him a blood Armenian. Most biographers in modern publications do not reflect this fact. The biography of the famous Russian marine painter Aivazovsky usually begins with his birth in an Armenian family. Why? Probably due to sympathy for this nation, which has been subjected to cruel violence more than once. However, this does not stop the fact from being a fact.
We open the magnificent edition of O. I. Bulgakov “I. K. Aivazovsky and his works”, published in St. Petersburg in 1901. The annotation states that "the text was compiled by N. N. Kuzmin based on the autobiography of I. K. Aivazovsky, his letters and publications." The book was published the following year after the death of the artist, and he was probably familiar with the contents of its manuscript. Therefore, there is no doubt about the reliability of the facts presented in it.
In the first chapter, "Childhood and Youth," we read: "Aivazovsky's ancestors were Turkish subjects, followers of the Koran." Further, the author quotes Countess Antonina Dmitrievna Bludova, who, speaking of the Turkish origin of Aivazovsky, noted that "the Mohammedan East, with all its hatred of Russia, gave her two poets: Zhukovsky and Pushkin, and one artist - Aivazovsky."
N.N. Kuzmin writes that I.K. Aivazovsky himself once recalled about his origin, in the circle of his family, the following interesting details: “I was born in Feodosia in 1817, but the real homeland of my close ancestors, my father, was far away , not in Russia. Who would have thought that the war, this all-destroying scourge, served to ensure that my life was preserved, and that I saw the light and was born precisely in Russia and on the shores of my beloved Black Sea. And yet it was so.
In 1770, the Russian army, led by Rumyantsev (actually: Count Panin. The author of the quote made a historical inaccuracy), laid siege to Bendery. The fortress was taken, and the Russian soldiers, irritated by the stubborn resistance and death of their comrades, scattered around the city and, listening only to a sense of revenge, spared neither sex nor age. Among their victims was the secretary of the Bendery Pasha. Mortally struck by one Russian grenadier, he was bleeding, clutching a baby in his arms, who was preparing the same fate. The Russian bayonet was already raised over the young Turk, when one Armenian held his punishing hand with an exclamation: “Stop, this is my son! He is a Christian!" The noble lie worked to the rescue, and the child was spared. This child was my father."
In a footnote, the author indicates that the story cited here was recorded from the words of I.K. Aivazovsky and is stored in the artist's family archive.
As you know, the blessings of the Armenian who remained unknown did not end there. He became the second father for a Muslim orphan, christened him after Konstantin, and gave him the surname Gaivazovsky. Thus, the Aivazovsky clan received its surname from the secretary of the pasha who died in the Bendery fortress (the word "gaiz" in Turkish means "secretary"). Then the Gaivazovskys moved from Turkey to Galicia, where to this day, near the city of Lvov, the family of landowners Aivazovskys, whose great-grandfather was elevated to noble dignity by the Austrian emperor, has been preserved. According to their charter for the nobility, the Gaivazovsky brothers, Ivan and Gavriil, since 1840 changed the spelling "Gaivazovsky" to the more correct, from their point of view, "Aivazovsky", which they have adhered to since that time.
Having lived for a long time with his benefactor in Galicia, Aivazovsky the father, due to family disagreements, moved and lived in Wallachia and Moldavia, where he was engaged in trade. He perfectly knew many languages: Turkish, Armenian, Hungarian, German, Jewish, Gypsy and almost all dialects of the current Danubian peoples. Then Konstantin Aivazovsky settled in Feodosia, where he married a young beautiful Armenian woman and engaged in trading operations, at first successfully. However, happiness, which until then favored in business, betrayed him. In 1812, due to the then raging plague, Aivazovsky went bankrupt and, having lost most of his fortune, soon fell into absolute poverty. Therefore, the childhood of his sons passed in a very modest environment. It is from this moment that his biographers usually begin the story about Ivan Aivazovsky.
Biographers of the famous marine painter write that Ivan Konstantinovich not only had the ability to passionately love people who helped him on his life path, but in general became attached to people and places. He had a passion for them no less than for art. And despite the fact that he spent his whole life wandering, he invariably returned to his native Feodosia, which became forever. He was compared with a migratory bird, "seeking freedom in one direction or the other, but invariably returning to its homeland."
He always warmly remembered the places where he or his ancestors had a chance to visit. He probably remembered Bender too. A city mentioned in a family tradition. The unknown Armenian who saved his father's life. The Bendery fortress is a crossroads of history, tragic and happy for the fate of the Aivazovsky family.
