Brigada lore you wanted to know but the tv series didnt let you
Hello! <- guy speaking to a nonexistent fandom
If you have ever wondered what is Fil's backstory or what happened to Kosmos's mother, wonder no less; I know the answers.
Basically, back in 2002, alongside with the TV series, Orma Press has released a series of 16 Brigada books.
I've been reading through them, and so far the first 4 are a recap of the series with some added lore/bits, then the next few go back in time and tell us more about the characters's backstories and what happened during the timeskips (i.e Pchelin had a whole era of living in the netherlands) or explain why some characters did what they did (Max, im looking at you).
And in the 6th book, there are a few chapters that go on about the brigada's backstories and let us learn that:
Fil never knew his dad and had an alcoholic mother whom he was taken away from at the age of 9. He was raised in an orphanage in Gorky/Nizhny Novogrod before being transferred to a sports boarding school in Moscow, where he met the rest of the gang after defending them at a party (but not before giving Pchelkin a blackeye).
Kosmos's biological mother met his father during their university years and they got married within a year. She was a scientist too, but not of such a caliber as Jurij; they disagreed on Jurij being away from home too much and divorced when Kosmos was six years old. Kosmos lived with his mom on the outskirts of the city and met Pchelkin and Sasha at school.
Years later, his mother was diagnosed with breast cancer and died within two years, leaving 15-year-old Kosmos under his father's care, and at first they didnt get along at all. Kosmos moved in with Jurij, but didnt want to change schools, and it is explicitly said that he traveled all the way to the other end of the city every day just to keep going to the same school as Sasha.
There was also a brief period where Kosmos ran away from home and stayed with Sasha and Sasha was the one to communicate with Jurij and make the father and son see eye to eye.
Pchelkin was already making nice pocket change before even finishing school by buying & selling things at the local market. During one of the exams, when faced with the topic ''who do you want to be when you grow up?'', he says he wants to be a spy.
There is so so much more but im blanking on it right now and dont want to make the post too long, but this lore is too important to just let simmer in my head & in the (very much forgotten-about) books OTL
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