THE MYSTERY OF THE FLYING PETERSBURGER
OR
DETECTIVE CLASS "A"
"Tram line" in "Master and Margarita"
...........
1. Was there a tram?
Oh, dear reader, serious passions are blazing around the modest Moscow tram of route "A" - the famous "Annushka"! In fact, most historians and local historians of Moscow have long and firmly established themselves in the opinion that no tram either along Ermolaevsky Lane (according to the novel, it was from there that the car turned out under the wheels of which Berlioz died), let alone along Bronnaya - never went!
As for the old-timers, opinions here are very different. Some testify with complete confidence: there have never been any Patriarchal trams! Yuri Yefremov, who lived in Bolshoy Patriarchy in 1931, assures: “No trams near the fence of the park have ever run on the Patriarchs.” Natalya Konchalovskaya, who has lived with her parents since 1912 in the same house on Sadovaya Street, where Bulgakov also settled in the early twenties, categorically denies the movement of the tram near the Patriarch's Pond.
Bulgakov's first wife, Tatyana Lappa, in a conversation with Leonid Parshin, bluntly stated:
“... The tram did not go there. I walked along Sadovaya, but not at the Patriarch's. We lived there for several years ... There was no tram there. I’m telling you, by God, that there was no tram.”
But other "natives" do not agree with them. The writer V. A. Lyovshin recalls: “Sometimes, in the late afternoon, he [Bulgakov] calls me for a walk, most often to the Patriarch’s Ponds. Here we sit on a bench near the turnstile and watch the sunset break in the upper windows of the houses. Behind a low cast-iron fence, trams enveloping the square rattle nervously.
These meetings and gatherings between Bulgakov and Lyovshin date back to 1923-1924, when Bulgakov was 33 years old, and Levshin was 20. Lyovshin's memoirs were written almost 40 years after the events described. S. Pirkovsky in a thorough study “Virtual Reality, or a Tram on the Patriarchs” took this evidence skeptically and even ironically: “What attracts attention and what does this fragment recall? Of course, the plot of the novel. There is evening, and a bench, and the setting sun in the windows of houses, and a pond. Only the “low cast-iron fence” and “nervously rattling trams around the square” are new touches in the recognizable picture… magical effect of the first read chapters.
Tatyana Lappa-Kiselgof said about Levshin’s memoirs: “He lied everything there. They didn’t even know Bulgakov, because we moved into their apartment because he moved out and the room was vacated. And not in the winter of 1922, as he writes, but in the summer of 1924, after we divorced. And three months later, Bulgakov left this house altogether, and Levshin returned to this apartment only a year and a half later. And then Tatyana Nikolaevna gave examples of Lyovshin's inventions and absurdities. So - congratulations, citizen, lie-sir ...
Pirkovsky cites another testimony - the writer Sergei Yesin, who "remembered" the tram on the Patriarchal post-war years when he was a schoolboy: “A boy<...>I climbed all the nooks and crannies<…>and I remember not only these same Patriarch's Ponds<…>But I also remember the famous turnstile at these ponds, near which Woland first appeared to Muscovites. I remember evrything<… >and I realize that these are not overgrown and ripened literary reminiscences, but<…>meaningfully seen in childhood. I would even dare to say<…>the statement that I even remember the creak of this turnstile<…>I even undertake to declare: everything was. I saw, I saw, I saw! And the turnstile, and the turn of the tram, and a wooden box-box with the inscription “Beware of the tram!” ... For example, there was an inscription on the tram tracks on Sivtsevo Vrazhek, in the same box it sparkled like a star above the tram arch: “Beware of leaf fall” ” .
Isn't it visibly and convincingly? But, alas, all this is nothing more than a memoirist's fantasy. Or, to put it mildly, the result of forgetfulness. Here is how Pirkovsky comments on Esin's colorful description: “When, in what year, did a ten-year-old boy see a “tram turn” and a “box-box” at Patriarch's Ponds? If for a while we do not agree with the classic statement “everyone lies on calendars” and believe the reference book, it will turn out that in 1945! But there were no “sparkling” inscriptions on the “boxes” above the tram arcs. There were inscriptions, but on flat plates, fixed on the supports of the contact network, and read: “Beware of falling leaves”, simply “Leaf fall” or even simpler - “Yuz”. “Box boxes” with a red and white inscription “Beware of the tram!” were installed on special posts along the tracks along the Boulevard Ring. The columns stood in front of the side exits beyond the fence, where the tram line ran. The warning lamps were switched on only when a tram was approaching. “Above the arc” they did not “sparkle”. In this year, 1945, as in subsequent years, the boy Yesin could not see the trams on the Patriarch's Ponds. They were not there, and therefore could not be seen. And imagine what he saw, of course, you can. Only not near the square on Malaya Bronnaya, but closer to home on Tverskoy Boulevard.
By the way, Pirkovsky himself, who in 1945 was also a Moscow boy, recalls his walks: “Then, in 1945-1946, I discovered hometown, traveling around Moscow on foot and on trams ... Having risen from the basement, we walked along Ermolaevsky to a frozen pond and turned onto Malaya Bronnaya towards Sadovaya. There was no snow. I remember that there were no railroad tracks along our path. Neither in Ermolaevsky, nor at the intersection with Malaya Bronna.
The native Muscovite Yuri Fedosyuk confirms the same in his memoirs about Moscow in the 1920-1930s "Morning paints with a delicate color ...". The author, in general, regardless of Bulgakov's novel, recalls how in the summer of 1932, as a boy, he specially followed the tram route "A": "... although" Annushka ", which drove away from our stop, returned to the same place in 40 minutes, I wanted to check the annularity of her lines personally, and not with the help of a tram, God knows how it was laid there, for which it was best to go through its entire route on foot. According to the description, "Annushka" did not pass either along Ermolaevsky or Malaya Bronnaya.
Pirkovsky conducted a major investigation involving numerous reference books and archives. As a result, he came to the conclusion: there is no documentary evidence that the tram on Ermolaevsky and Bronnaya ever went! I will not give all the author's arguments (for those who are not familiar with the topography of Moscow, this argument says nothing). I will single out only one thing - laying a tram line along Bronnaya was a monstrous senselessness, which not a single municipality (neither tsarist times nor post-revolutionary) would ever go for: “... A tram line could not exist on the Patriarchs. The reason ... is the lack of a targeted need for its laying. Otherwise, we will be faced with an unsolvable riddle: how, for almost ten years of existence, and maybe more, this line did not fall into the transport guides published annually in Moscow until 1941?
THERE IS, TRUTH, ANOTHER EXPERT - Anatoly Zhukov, former chief engineer of the Moscow track facilities. He told one of the Bulgakov scholars (supposedly based on his home archives): “I walked along the Malaya Bronnaya tram! I went until the end of the twenties. However, Zhukov did not give a single document, fact or reference to the existence of a mysterious tram line. But the researcher of Bulgakov's work B. Myagkov in Glavmostrans answered very clearly: “Never in the area of Patriarch's Ponds<...>trams were not organized. And there is something all the necessary archives are available! There was no such tram line in any reference book or on any of the transport schemes of Moscow.
True, Myagkov immediately invented new version. Based on the "memoirs" of unknown "old-timers", he came to the conclusion: "There was a tram, but not a passenger one, but a freight one. The tram tracks in the Patriarch's Ponds area, in addition, were filled with empty trams at the end of the day, forming a kind of night depot in the warm season. In the novel<…>apparently, just such a tram was described, heading for rest in the evening: it was without passengers and clearly not a freight one.
Now it seems to be becoming clear why the mysterious line did not get into directories and transport schemes: it was a freight line and was not intended for passenger traffic. But this version does not explain anything at all. So it remains incomprehensible: why did a PASSENGER tram appear on the Patriarchs? Well, a freight train was moving - so what? Converting it into a passenger car and throwing Berlioz under its wheels is practically the same as inventing a passenger car “from scratch”! All the same, Bulgakov had to create a stop in his imagination and lead Misha Berlioz there (after all, he was not going to the freight tram stop)!
And here, in addition to everything else, it turns out that the invention of the “freight tram” is also nonsense. The skeptic Pirkovsky, already known to us, asks simple question: “what kind of strategic cargo was transported and to what objects along this line in the center of Moscow? Who built it if they didn’t know about it at Raushskaya, 22?” Raushskaya, 22 - the address of the Department of Tram and Trolleybus Transport under the Moscow City Executive Committee and the Moscow Tram Trust, which, under Bulgakov, were in charge of everything related to the tram traffic. And Pirkovsky finally finishes off Myagkov with the following argument: “It must be emphasized that in the pre-war years (and to this day) trams in Moscow were not left overnight on the streets of the city even “in the warm season”. All tramcars "spent the night" in their parks under the roof, where they were inspected, repaired (if necessary), washed and prepared for the next working day. There were no exceptions to this rule. Probably, “authoritative” old-timers-witnesses confused trams with trolleybuses, which now crowd in dozens, filling the streets and alleys around their parks day and night.
And, FINALLY, Myagkov, who has been quoted more than once, cites a “scientific” proof as an “iron” argument. It turns out that in the 1980s, using the "bilocation method", it was possible to establish the presence of "rail routes" that were in the Patriarch's Ponds area. The dowsing method is used in various fields of science and technology when it is necessary to detect an object hidden under a layer of earth rock, soil: water sources, mineral deposits, etc. As a result of such searches on the ground, the rails of that very mysterious tram were allegedly found under the asphalt line: "The rails turned to Malaya Bronnaya<…>and walked along it along the fence of the Patriarch's Ponds<…>and further to Tverskoy Boulevard<…>a gap was also found in the fence, where the turnstile used to be. At the same time, a section was clearly marked where the tram could “howl and howl”, and the place of death of the ill-fated Bulgakov hero was determined with an accuracy of up to a meter.
But the same insidious Pirkovsky dispels this “evidence” to smithereens: “In order for the biolocator to “feel” the tram rails, they had to be under a layer of asphalt. And this is impossible to believe. How for almost forty years these rails have not been stumbled upon utility services cities during the almost annual "excavation" of the carriageway of the streets? And why didn’t they bother to dismantle the line and hand over the rails to Vtorchermet? Incredible. And if so, then the tram line, which remained under a layer of asphalt, could not exist. This means that it is impossible to detect what was not even by dowsing. The same can be said about the discovery of a gap in the long non-existent fence (“where the sidewalk is now”), the place of the “accelerating” section of the line and the fatal turnstile. We have to admit that the conclusions from dowsing searches, unfortunately, should be attributed to that case, which is often encountered in such a situation, when the desired is taken for the real.
STOP STOP! And here I will allow myself to disagree with Pirkovsky. There really was a turnstile at the Patriarch's! Even two turnstiles. And it is in their place that the very "breaks" that Myagkov wrote about exist. Only the searcher for a non-existent tram line did not take into account one thing: there were similar turnstiles at the entrance to most boulevards and parks in Moscow - as well as at the exit from them! This was the way before the revolution. So, "The Complete Dictionary of Foreign Words" by M. Popov, published in 1907, reports: "THE TURNSTILE - a crosspiece that freely rotates on a low pole, which is installed in the middle of a narrow passage; that is, it prevents the passage of large animals to public gardens, boulevards and etc., hinders the passage of carriages, etc.".
The same was preserved before the war in Moscow (as well as in other Soviet cities). Georgy Andreevsky in the study " Everyday life Moscow in the Stalin era" writes about 1921:
"Unknown vandals recaptured the corner of the pedestal of the monument to Gogol, trampled the lawns of public gardens, distorted the revolving gates on the boulevards within the boundaries of Sadovaya, which protected pedestrians from accidents. "did you take your last step towards the tram?)".
Here is what Alexey Panteleev (Erofeev) writes in the story "Lenka Panteleev":
"He rushed to the right, noticed a cast-iron turnstile turntable in the fence of the boulevard, hit his stomach against it ... successfully slipped through the second turnstile."
The action of the story refers to the first years of Soviet power, and the story was published in 1939.
But the memoirs of Zoya Borisovna Afrosina are already about the 30s of the last century:
"I was born in Moscow. I spent my childhood and youth in the house number 8 on Tverskoy Boulevard. This is the center of Moscow, the former boulevard ring of the tram" A ". The house was separated from the boulevard by a wide sidewalk, cobblestone pavement and rails. Opposite our entrance was the entrance gate-turnstile . It was a metal pole with rotating ears made of 20mm rebar and was used by children as a carousel."
Turnstiles existed at the entrance to ANY Boulevard, regardless of whether trams were passing by or not. Moreover: special caretakers were on duty here - to regulate the occupancy of the boulevards and prevent crowds. But pandemonium did happen, and often! Here is what Moscow old-timer Yuri Fedosyuk recalls about Pokrovsky Boulevard of that time:
"In the daytime, one life went on on the boulevard, in the evening - another. The daily habitues of the boulevard were mothers with children and pensioners ... In the evening, the poorly lit boulevard turned into a shambles ... Ten people of both sexes sat down on one bench, acquaintances were quickly established, those sitting were divided into From treats of seeds, contacts turned into hugs, kisses and very frank touches.
Afrosina also recalls:
"In the evening and on Sundays, there were no seats left on the boulevard benches. Mom sent me to take a seat in advance. I hated it, because I was very shy."
It is no coincidence that Bulgakov notes the “first oddity” of the “terrible May evening”: “... in the entire alley parallel to Malaya Bronnaya Street, there was not a single person ... no one came under the lindens, no one sat on the bench, the alley was empty ". And really weird.
By the way, the same Fedosyuk also writes about turnstiles: “Turnstiles at the exits, with an inscription on the scoreboard flashing when a tram approaches: “Beware of the tram.” Why the turnstiles were needed is still unclear to me. Father explained: so that carts and carriages with horses.
So, the turnstiles operated on all the boulevards, and their presence in no way can indicate the presence of a tram line nearby. And where this line actually passed, there was also a warning board.
Thus, this "evidence" of Myagkov does not work either.
Leonid Parshin also showed an extreme degree of meticulousness about the sinister tram:
“I spent many days in Leninka, studying transport schemes and route guides of those years. There was no tram. In the photo library of the Museum of Architecture of Moscow, we managed to find pre-war photographs of the Patriarch's Pond and Malaya Bronnaya. There was no tram... The last hope (after all, I myself would like to have a tram) is the archive of the transport department. On May 13, 1981, I received the following reply:
“The Department of Passenger Transportation has considered your letter with a request to report on the work of the tram in the twenties on the street. Zheltovsky, M. Bronnaya and st. Adam Mickiewicz.
We inform you that according to the available archival documents and schemes of city lines railways the movement of trams along the streets of interest to you was not organized.
Head of Department I.M. Komov".
K.M., who dealt with my request. Bartolome showed maximum conscientiousness. He checked both freight and auxiliary lines, and even found and questioned old employees of the Office. There was no tram. True, the tram line ran very close, along Sadovaya, past Bulgakov's house.
To sum up: all the facts indicate that no tram has ever run along Malaya Bronnaya Street (as well as along Ermolaevsky Lane).
In the photo: Moscow Boulevard, 1920s.
CONTINUED HERE -
“Having raised his tail like a sword, Behemoth pushes the speech of the throne,And she caved in against the wall under the heel of Satan Bronnaya ”(Vadim Egorov)
Once upon a time, this place was located Goat swamp (from which Bolshoi and Maly Kozikhinsky lanes got their name). According to one version, this swamp was called Kozim from the nearby Goat Yard, from which wool was sent to the royal and patriarchal courts. The Chertoriy stream flowed from the Goat's swamp.
AT early XVII century, Patriarch Hermogenes chose this place for his residence and Patriarchal Sloboda appeared on the site of the swamp. In 1683-1684, Patriarch Joachim ordered to dig three ponds to drain the swamps and breed fish for the patriarchal table. Such ponds - fish cages - were dug in different parts cities.
On Presnya, in the Presnensky Ponds, expensive varieties of fish were bred, on the Goat Bog - cheaper ones, for daily use. With the decline of the Patriarchal settlement, associated with the abolition of the patriarchate, the ponds were abandoned and the area became swampy again. And only in the first half of the 19th century they were buried, leaving a single decorative pond, and a square was laid out around it.
In 1976, a monument to Ivan Andreevich Krylov was erected on the Patriarch's Ponds by sculptors A. A. Drevin and D. Yu. Mitlyansky. The fabulist sits surrounded by the revived heroes of his works.
In 1945, a residential building for the highest military leaders of the USSR was built in Ermolaevsky Lane according to the project of architects M. M. Dzisko and N. I. Gaygarov (workshop of I. V. Zholtovsky), currently known as the “House with Lions”.
As we remember, on this very spot Berlioz was beheaded by a tram. However, tram lines have never been here. The nearest tram to the Patriarch's Ponds ran along Sadovaya Street.
In 2002, at the Patriarch's Ponds at the intersection of Malaya Bronnaya Street and Ermolaevsky Lane, an elite residential building "Patriarch" for 28 apartments was built according to the project of architect S. Tkachenko.
According to the architect and architectural historian V.Z. Paperny, the Patriarch House is one of the worst examples of Luzhkov's architecture in Moscow.
The master painters Vasily Surikov and Vasily Polenov filmed near the ponds. Not far from the Patriarchs lived: Vladimir Mayakovsky, Lyudmila Gurchenko.
Shekhtel's mansion in Ermolaevsky lane - the house of the architect Fyodor Osipovich Shekhtel in Moscow at Ermolaevsky lane house 28 building 1.
Object of cultural heritage federal significance. Currently, the mansion houses the Embassy of the Republic of Uruguay.
The mansion of Zinaida Morozova is a luxurious mansion of the wife of Savva Morozov, Zinaida Grigoryevna, built according to the design of Fyodor Shekhtel in Moscow on Spiridonovka, 17. Subsequently, it belonged to the Ryabushinskys.
The mansion was built in 1893-1898 by a wealthy industrialist and philanthropist Savva Morozov for his wife Zinaida on the site where in 1815 A. L. Vitberg built a house for the poet I. I. Dmitriev. Then the Aksakovs lived here, until Morozov bought it in 1893.
On the building you can see sculptures of gargoyles. According to legend, before a war or revolution, these gargoyles emit a loud hoarse howl at night.
Now here is the reception house of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Another building of F. Shekhtel on the Patriarchs is Vspolny per. house 9 - the mansion of I. I. Mindovskaya. In 1919, the Supreme Revolutionary Tribunal was located here, in the 1920s and 1930s the chairman of the tribunal, People's Commissar of Justice of the USSR N.V. Krylenko, the prosecutor at Stalin's trials, lived here. Now one of the offices of the Indian Embassy in Russia is located here.
Malaya Nikitskaya, 28/1 - the mansion of S. A. Tarasov (1884, architect V. N. Karneev), now - the embassy of Tunisia. L.P. Beria lived in the mansion, so among Muscovites this house is called “Beria’s House”. This house enjoys a very bad reputation, and at night the locals try to bypass it.
In 1999, at the initiative of Boris Khait, head of the insurance company Spasskiye Vorota, a competition was held to design a monument to Mikhail Bulgakov at Patriarch's Ponds.
Of the 28 options, the project of the sculptor Alexander Rukavishnikov was chosen. The sculptor proposed not only to erect a monument to the writer, but to make a whole sculptural ensemble around it, consisting of Bulgakov, sitting on the shore of the pond, Yeshua Ha-Notsri walking on the water, and a 12-meter bronze primus-fountain.
In addition, Rukavishnikov planned to place other heroes of the famous novel on the shore of the pond - the cat Behemoth, Azazello, Koroviev, Pontius Pilate, the Master and Margarita.
However, numerous protests from local residents and cultural figures forced the sculptor and the Moscow authorities to abandon the idea of \u200b\u200binstalling a monument.
But something Rukavishnikov managed. On Sadovoye, near the Kursk railway station, we can see a car with a rook driver, in which Margarita flew to the ball, and the Master and Margarita embracing, who, according to the author’s idea, are floating in the air.
Did the tram go along the Patriarch's Ponds? Il Bulgakov invented everything... Give the facts... and got the best answer
Answer from Dudyuk[guru]
No tram runs on Patriarch's Ponds. Whether he went there at all or not, it was not possible to reliably find out. As I understand it, historians argue about this. True, I managed to find interesting information
“Many Moscow historians deny the existence of a tram on the Patriarchs and Malaya Bronnaya. One of them, Yuri Efremov, who wrote a book about Moscow, assures: “No trams near the fence of the park on the Patriarchs have ever run.” He lived in 1931 in Bolshoi Patriarch. And Mikhail Afanasyevich first appeared in Moscow in 1921, maybe he knew better? There is no evidence of this anywhere. You can’t find old-timers, and if they exist, they don’t know, they don’t remember. In the Moscow “tram” organizations, no matter how much I asked, They also don’t know and are only surprised: who needs to know and why, did the tram ever run at the Patriarch’s Ponds? old people. I called Zhukov on the appointed day with excitement. Of course, it is not so important whether there was a tram, but I want the Master to remain right to the end and in everything. Zhukov delighted: "Walked along the Malaya Bronnaya tram! "Went until the end of the twenties."
If Anatoly Kuzmich remembers everything correctly, then somewhere after the end of the 20s on the Patriarch's Ponds, the tram could not cut off Berlioz's head. There was no tram
a note was found placed in the newspaper "Vechernyaya Moskva" dated August 28, 1929, from which it follows that in November of the same year it was planned to complete the laying of tram lines just on Malaya Bronnaya and Spiridonovka (Alexey Tolstoy), that is, at the very pond
Source:
Answer from User deleted[guru]
Comrades! It's useless to argue!
Answer from Boris Fatyanov[expert]
There are trams!
Answer from Marisha[guru]
when I was little, we lived on Mayakovka, eh. we went for a walk to the ponds - before beautiful white swans swam there, but there were no trams there (I don’t remember something)
Answer from Dinka[guru]
There is no such tram line on any of the transport schemes of Moscow. And the old-timers of this district of Moscow do not confirm this fact. In particular, N. Konchalovskaya, who lived with her parents since 1912 in the same house on Sadovaya, where Bulgakov also lived in the early twenties, categorically denies the movement of the tram near the Patriarch's Pond. But Moscow local historians seem to have discovered not only the remains of a rail track under the road surface, but also a trace of the ill-fated turnstile, the exit through which turned out to be fatal for Berlioz. It seemed that V. Levshin, who lived with him in the same house, brought final clarity to this issue with his memories of Bulgakov: “Sometimes, in the late afternoon, he [Bulgakov] calls me for a walk, most often to Patriarch’s Ponds. Here we sit on a bench near the turnstile and watch how the sunset breaks in the upper windows of the houses. Behind the low cast-iron fence, the trams around the square rattle nervously. There is a version that trams ran, but not in the 30s, but much earlier and not passenger, but ... freight, so, of course, they are not on the passenger route diagrams. In general, Bulgakov has a lot of paradoxical things - the numbering of houses, for example http://menippea.narod.ru/master09.htm
The famous tram route near the Patriarch's Ponds (for the uninitiated, we are talking about M.A. Bulgakov's novel "The Master and Margarita" and the tram that cut off M.A. Berlioz's head in Chapter 3 "The Seventh Proof") was deliberately invented by M.A. Bulgakov, which quite obviously follows from the arguments about him of authoritative specialists from philology. And this fits perfectly into the system of relations between the writer and his readership. The entire sunset novel is stuffed by the author with false logical dead ends in order to confuse the thoughts of specially trained encyclopedic censors.
So in the episode with a hypothetical tram route (in the physical place of which, especially gifted readers did not archaeological excavations) M.A. Bulgakov, inserting a certain dubious (mystical) tram into the text of the novel, forces his readers to argue to the point of insanity, delving into the archives of Moscow transport, not noticing the sedition of the content ...
I would not even be surprised if the fact that he personally destroyed real documents available to him about the tram route that existed in Moscow near the Patriarch's Ponds for a short period of time suddenly surfaced in the biography of M.A. Bulgakov.
Perhaps the Patriarch's Ponds were chosen by Bulgakov as an object for his work because of the presence of such a little-known route in reality? ..
However, this is just my guess.
In reality, of course, M.A. Bulgakov invented this whole story with a tram to hide the murder prepared and organized by Woland-Stalin, which will be later established in the novel as a result of the investigation. Only now this official statement from the Epilogue of the novel "Master and Margarita" most readers do not like or do not want to notice.
Meanwhile, Bulgakov himself emphasizes that during those events there were also those who were killed, including "Two can be said for sure: about Berlioz and about this ill-fated employee in the Bureau for Familiarizing Foreigners with Moscow Sights, the former Baron Meigel ...". This means that Woland-Stalin administers his "fair trial" in a criminal way, and not in a way more suitable to Satan, drawing on the forces of a mystical inevitable fatal accident for this ...
More.
For some reason, readers do not see a contradiction in the phrase "Cautious Berlioz, although he stood safely, decided to return to the slingshot, shifted his hand on the turntable, took a step back ...", after which the writer falls under the tram.
If Berlioz was standing safely, then who pushed him under the wheels, because he is stepping back, not forward? ..
The inertia of the movement should save him, not kill him!
So there is no accident in his death, but obviously there is a specific culprit! And the author with the word "backhand" points out to his readers, because with the characteristic expression of the Russian language they beat him backhand, and do not take off his headdress!
In general, the whole episode with the tram accident is characterized by a mass of special contradictory events and expressions, which I spoke about in great detail in my extensive study on the sunset romance.