The collection of the Literary and Memorial Museum named after Arkady Gaidar houses an original photograph of Arkady Golikov, who would later become the famous writer Arkady Gaidar.

The young man is dressed in a soldier’s overcoat, a sheepskin hat, and is cinched with a wide belt, with a mauser tucked into it. On the back of the photograph there is an inscription written with a chemical pencil:

The photograph was presented by Arkady Golikov to his childhood friends from Arzamas, Zinaida and Alexey Subbotin.

At that time, the Eastern Front was approaching Arzamas. On August 1, the headquarters of the Eastern Front arrived in the city, and a military regime was established.

In August 1918, Arkady Petrovich applied to join the party. He was recommended by Fyodor Alekseyevich Vavilov, a worker at the Sormovo plant, and Maria Valeryanovna Goppius, a teacher and revolutionary activist.

On December 15, 1918, he was unanimously accepted into the party.

Yefim Iosifovich Yefimov arrived in Arzamas together with the headquarters of the Eastern Front. He was appointed commandant of the Arzamas station, and later became the People’s Commissar for Defense of the Arzamas section of the Moscow-Kazan Railway.

On October 4, 1918, Yefim Yefimov took the position of head of protection and defense of all railways under martial law. At that time, he was 28 years old and had more than 47 thousand fighters under his command.

The headquarters of Yefimov, the commander of the military protection and defense of the railways of the RSFSR, was located in Arzamas.

The photograph from the museum’s collection was taken in the early days of Arkady Golikov’s service as an adjutant to the commander of the military protection of the republic’s railways.