"They say: all roads lead to Rome, "Leo Cassil, author of the novel Conduit and Schwambrania (1930), repeats the popular saying, and suddenly continues: "In the gymnasium, all roads lead to the conduit."

What could compare in the gymnasium environment of the pre-revolutionary years, which are discussed in the story, with the great city that attracts thousands of pilgrims?

It's just a school magazine with notes on student behavior. It was called the conduit. This word has more than a century of history in the Russian language. At the beginning of the XIX century, the noun conduit came into use with the meaning: "behavior, lifestyle, in reasoning, states and actions" (A new word interpreter arranged alphabetically, containing various foreign utterances and technical terms found in the Russian language. St. Petersburg, 1804. Part 2). Its derivative-the adjective conduit in combination with the noun list was actively used in the military department: "Until 1862, this was the name of special lists compiled about the behavior and abilities of officers" (Brockhaus F. A., Efron N. A. Encyclopedia. St. Petersburg, 1895, vol. 30).

If the behavior of military personnel (after 1862) ceased to be noted in the conduit list, then the misdeeds of students, on the contrary, were reflected in it. This list (magazine or book) was called briefly in the school environment - conduit. The word was borrowed from the French language (conduit "behavior") and underwent metonymic transfer.

Getting into the conduit meant falling out of favor with the teacher and being punished. The Book of Sorrows, the black book, was dubbed the conduit by seminarians, emphasizing its bleak purpose. In an anonymous letter to the editor of Osnova magazine, the author, complaining about the conditions in which the student's life takes place, mentioned the black book: "In no case can our police correctly judge the behavior of students. If, for example, a student is not found once, twice, or three times in his apartment, and his behavior is soiled, they enter it in the so-called black book almost without any investigation - where the student was and on what occasion" (Osnova, 1862, No. 7).

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A similar use of this expression can be found in the story "Boguslavsky Theological School": "When I was at the school, two books were opened, "black" and" white", and every year at the conference when awarding awards to the best students (awards were only commendation sheets), both books were brought by the school superintendent. At first, the inspector read from the "white paper", which read:: who is promoted to the highest class, who is given a reward; then the inspector took the "black book"from the hands of the caretaker. It was hard for us to look at it: they read from the black book, "who was left for the second year, who was completely excluded, who was left to their discretion" "(Klebanovsky I. Boguslavsky theological School / / Kievan Antiquity. 1894. Vol. 46).

The black book also received information from fiscal officials, who secretly reported to their superiors everything that was being done among their comrades, and it received another name, the tablet of Judas, which conveys the contempt among students for informers and earphones: "Barsonaphius turned the pages of a thick book so well known to all of us, the famous conduit, which was also called the Black Book of Judas.: "the Book of the belly", "the Book of sorrows" and "the tablets of Judas" (Dobronravov L. Novaya Bursa / / Testaments. 1913. N7).

The church-colored expression book of the belly, where the old meaning of the word belly "life" is preserved, so it literally means "book of life". This was one of the most common expressions in the theological school, which is also confirmed by examples from literary works about Bursa: "What's your name? - asked the inspector, who had already prepared the "belly book", that is, his conduit, where he recorded all those caught" (Svidnitsky A. P. Lyuboratsky, Moscow, 1953); "Now my head is gone! Krasnopevtsev thought as he walked back to his seat. They will write it down in the "belly book"... tomorrow for this on the hungry table, and on the exam shame... "(Maleonsky M. [V. Burtsev]. Vladislavlev. A story from the everyday life of seminarians and clergy. St. Petersburg, 1884, vol. 2).

The fact that this book really influenced the life of students, overshadowing it, is also indicated by the synonym for seminary, reinterpreted gymnasium expression pigeon book: "The life of every dung (high school student) was written in a conduit magazine... It was a terrible book. The secret book. The Pigeon Book "(Kassil. Three countries that aren't shown on the map). It is no coincidence that high school students called the conduit the pigeon book. L. Cassil tells about hundreds of pigeons languishing in a snare, i.e., about hundreds of high school students languishing from the teacher's despotism, who were called dung (pigeons) because of the blue (blue) color of their clothes. The combination of pigeon book was magical, it evoked fear. Conduit was threatened, intimidated: "Nikolai Ilyich has come. When he found out what was going on, he said that if the noise continued, everyone would be recorded in the conduit." Edict. op.).

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Gradually, the word conduit becomes more and more popular in high schools, expanding its meaning, denoting not only a journal that records school offenses and is kept "under seven seals", but also a journal with notes - a diary available to the student - his owner.

In the Yelets Classical Gymnasium, for example, according to Mikhail Prishvin's memoirs, a conduit with marks was issued at the end of the week: "Now, Brother Alpatov," Achilles said after the lesson, " you don't have to learn the rules at all; if you don't learn them, you'll get a unit for the whole year... And it is true: the next day Kurymushka had the same thing again, on the third, on the fourth; on Saturday they issued a "conduit", and the units in it stood like guns " (Prishvin. Kashcheeva chain).

Despite its active use, the word conduit remains specific and retains its convention (this is also indicated by the quotation marks accompanying it). High school students welcomed the revolutionary coup in the country by burning conduits, in their opinion, diaries of the old regime: "Hurrah! Death to the conduits! Hurray! The last gymnasium diaries in history are on fire! Fire devours pages of shame and cramming... We will start learning in a new way. The conduit is over "(Cassil. Edict. op.).

In modern dictionaries of foreign words, conduit is recorded with the meaning "a journal in which students' misdeeds were recorded in educational institutions; it existed in a number of countries in the mid-19th-early 20th centuries. 20 vv." (Dictionary of foreign Words, Moscow, 1983). L. P. Krysin gives in his dictionary a litter of ist. (historical): "Journal with records of actions of students or military personnel" (Krysin L. P. Explanatory Dictionary of foreign words, Moscow, 2000).

The word conduit, once widely used in the school community, has undergone semantic changes and acquired figurative synonymous expressions in the Russian language, and has remained imprinted in fiction and memoir literature, but modern schoolchildren do not use it.

Kazakhstan, Kokshetau

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