The scarlet rose hips were in bloom and there were dark linden alleys. “The scarlet rose hips were blooming all around, there were dark linden alleys.” But my God, what would happen next? What if I didn't leave her? What nonsense! This same Hope, not

“The scarlet rose hips were blooming all around, there were dark linden alleys.” But my God, what would happen next? What if I didn't leave her? What nonsense! This same Nadezhda, not...”

“The scarlet rose hips were blooming all around,

there were dark linden alleys..."

nonsense! This same Nadezhda, not the innkeeper, but my wife,

mistress of my St. Petersburg house, mother of my children! And closing my eyes,

shook his head..."

Today's readers of Bunin, admiring this truly brilliant

work and nostalgic for “The Russia We Lost”, still not

We must forget that the prototype of the heroine, whom the master Nikolai Alekseevich seduced at the age of 13, and then, as was customary at that time and in that circle, abandoned, could well have been his great-grandmother. This, of course, does not mean that you need to be imbued with class hatred of the great writer, but to forget “where the legs grow from” is stupid and vile.

“If you have forgotten whose children you are, I will remind you,” one teacher said to her naughty students.

This is how life itself will quickly remind us of our roots. As has already reminded many sad lessons of history.

But what does the restoration of the monarchy mean for us psychologically? Even if it will be, as many claim, a pure symbol, decoration. (Although in this case it is even more absurd to take such risks!) First of all, this is fraught with increased social schizophrenia.

And it’s so difficult to fit in one head a banker dad, a party member grandfather, a great-grandfather - a staunch “soldier of the revolution” and a great-great-grandfather - just a soldier, whom - we quote from Kuprin - “non-commissioned officers brutally beat... for an insignificant mistake, for a lost leg during marching, they beat me to the blood, knocked out my teeth, broke my eardrums with blows to my ear, and knocked me to the ground with my fists.”

Or not a soldier, but a worker.

Or a tailor from a town in the Pale of Settlement... Combine all this with romantic images a tsar and gentlemen officers were possible only in a classless society, which, for better or worse, developed in our country after the war. Now this luxury will not be available to us.

For now, however, inertia is still in effect - apparently, the egalitarian Soviet inoculation was too strong. Even among people who like to speculate about the naturalness of inequality and how, in essence, it is good when a person, by the right of his origin, rises above others, even they do not have real, visible images behind these discussions.

But they will get up very quickly. As now for many people inhabiting the post-Soviet space, behind the words “civil war” are not only the images of their favorite actors, but also the faces of their murdered children.

It is especially useful to prepare for the perception of the word “revenge”. Otherwise, yesterday’s Komsomol members, who loved to sing in the construction brigade around the fire about Lieutenant Golitsyn and the cornet Obolensky, may be in for unpleasant surprises when they meet the heroes of the songs. More precisely, with their descendants, who, quite possibly, will want to return to Russia and take the place appropriate to their origin in the hierarchical structure. And given that among the nobility it is customary to honor ancestors and that many of these ancestors (although not all), working in exile as taxi drivers and waiters, did not consider such a fate to be fair retribution, the returning descendants, having settled down a little, will begin to restore their true, in their opinion , justice and will want to settle accounts with the descendants of the “well-fed boor” (expression by Z. Gippius).

And if our political actors, who seem to have gotten a little carried away in the all-Russian farce, self-confidently expect that the purchased count title will serve them as a reliable indulgence for all time, then we are forced to disappoint them. This calculation is naive. This will be only the first act of the performance.

The new saviors of Russia cannot sit in the same boat with the grandchildren of Gulag employees. They will not be allowed to do this by the same noble honor, which they received an idea of ​​not from Soviet songs.

Chapter XIX FROM THE ASHES A FLAME WILL BURN

The schizophrenic split of consciousness is a painful thing. A person is not able to reconcile the irreconcilable, and either the split develops into disintegration, or (if this, of course, is not a real illness), people cut off and throw overboard consciousness everything that prevents them from living.

So, in Soviet time many people repressed thoughts about the camps from their consciousness, and now they repress the memories of those who died during the October 1993 execution, during the “strange” Chechen war and what is so pacifyingly slyly called “local conflicts.” (Typical manipulation of consciousness: war is something extremely terrible and out of the ordinary, and conflicts are an everyday matter, ordinary, and the word “local” is very reassuring - therefore, the conflict is small, limited, will not affect you, sleep well.) And in general, the desire to dislodge from memory Soviet history quite understandable. There is too much that is tragic and therefore fundamentally irreconcilable. Well, what is the easiest way to remove the tragic insolubility in this case? - We need to declare everyone victims of the system.

Perhaps you cannot say this more expressively than the son of Beria:

“The ruling elite never had and could never have had any evidence of my father’s guilt, and it was extremely necessary to discredit him in the eyes of the people... My story about my father is just touches to the portrait of a man who honestly did his job, was a real citizen, good son and good father, loving husband and faithful friend. I, like people who knew him for many years, could never come to terms with the statements of official propaganda about my father, although I understood that it would be naive, to say the least, to expect anything different from a System that is based on lies.”

If there are excuses for such a legendary villain, then what can we say about others, truly “guilty without guilt”, about those who themselves did not kill anyone, about people far from the apparatus of power and from politics?! In a certain sense, their descendants are in better position: They can do without schizophrenic duality when looking at the past. They actually had a good grandfather - a good doctor, a good engineer, a good agronomist and generally good.

Therefore, the temptation to declare everyone victims and thus relieve everyone of responsibility is quite understandable. Some may even think that this is the ground for reconciliation and unification. Since everyone is a victim, no one should take revenge on anyone, and the pernicious communist idea is to blame. Just let us organize a trial of communism, sentence it to death forever and ever - and we will live!

But let's look at the situation through the eyes of today's children. How will they relate to adults who are presented to them as collective victims?

And the sacrifice is not at all heroic - this would, on the contrary, enhance the authority of the ancestors - but somehow terribly senseless.

When several generations laid down their lives for unknown reasons, this testifies, in any case, not in favor of their intelligence. “Country of fools”, and that’s all! Which, in fact, has been widely replicated for ten years.

But if for adults such maxims are part of a complex complex, which is implicated not only in self-abasement, but also in self-exaltation (for according to the canons of Russian mythology, Ivan the Fool is the smartest), then for a child who has not yet had time to master this archetypal Russian image in its entirety, “fool” sounds quite unambiguous: it’s shameful to be a fool. It is no coincidence that this is the very first curse word that our children learn.

Of course, there is no people in the world who do not value intelligence, but for our culture this is almost the most important priority. Basic value, as they say now.

By portraying an entire nation as a bunch of defrauded fools (how else can one qualify multimillion-dollar senseless victims?), children are placed in a position that is completely unusual and unbearable for their age: they must either despise their grandfathers and great-grandfathers, or, in best case scenario, feel sorry for them.

What kind of authority of elders can we talk about after this? And what kind of respect for the laws that these elders created? And if we remember that traditional Russian culture does not inspire us with sacred awe of the law, then how, one might ask, in a democracy, will you force the “unafraid” and willful generation to squeeze into the framework of the rule of law?

And no matter how many crime-fighting commissions are created, no matter how much money is invested in equipping our police with the latest technology, everything will go down the drain until we admit that the authority of adults has fallen - including from a historical perspective! - main reason growth of teenage crime. Just as the main reason for the rapid spread of syphilis among adolescents is not sexual ignorance, not the lack of condoms, but a decline in morals, an unenlightened soul. Which, by the way, is also directly related to the loss of the right of many adults to the role of mentors.

Indeed, can a famous writer seriously claim to be a mentor if, speaking to high school students, he exclaims hysterically:

We are so guilty before you! We lied to you terribly. They lied shamelessly!

Lied all my life!

Notice that "we". Even at the moment of repentance, he lies again.

He lacks the honesty to say, “I lied.” This lie, of course, is “to the salvation of the writer,” but to the detriment of the young listeners sitting in the hall. For to them his “we” means “everyone.” All adults.

And how much of this our children have heard over the past decade!

“I sat in the meeting all day.

(Olga Berggolts) “That’s why we have no conscience, because there is nothing to share. This is shared according to conscience.”

(Svyatoslav Fedorov) “Homo sovieticus.”

(Alexander Zinoviev) “The place of the Russians is at the bucket.”

(Valeria Novodvorskaya) “Sovki”, “Mankurts”, “Sharikovs and Shvonders”... Well, pray tell, who would want to be the children of such fathers?

Yes, but the fathers just broke with the totalitarian past, you object, and now they are walking a thorny road, of course, but to... Yes, yes, there is no need to continue. “An old honk,” as Vladimir Ilyich put it. Again through thorns to the stars. But that's not the point. After all, the model is quite traditional. Only the “stars” are very dim. Even rotten ones.

If our grandfathers and great-grandfathers died so that yesterday’s black marketeers and Tskov’s lackeys would grow increasingly fat on rabid theft and advocated for the voluntary sterilization of marginalized people who rummage through garbage cans, and so that all this together would be called freedom, then, of course, all the sacrifices were in vain . It wasn't worth laying your belly down for.

And the fathers who gave the go-ahead for this and to this day, when everything is clear even to the blind, are not ashamed to call the boundless evil “costs”; children have the right to call such fathers not only idiots, but also scoundrels.

New “yawning heights” and new principles (“peace to palaces, war to huts”) make sense not only Soviet period our history, but also all Russian culture.

It is difficult to suspect Archbishop John of San Francisco, born Prince Dmitry Shakhovsky, who spoke on the Voice of America for many years, of sympathizing with the revolution, but even he wrote: “In emigration, I later met with many people from both pre-revolutionary and February Russia. All of them were victims, but, as I noted with bitterness, not all accepted moral responsibility for everything that happened, and even less often came to the consciousness of their guilt before God and before their people.”

And in his “Poem about Russian Love” there is the following confession:

–  –  –

Despite the fact that at the end of the above stanza there is no exclamation point, it is perceived as a mournful and solemn exclamation. Moreover, the last line is essentially cathartic: realizing the guilt of his class, the author does not complain about the senseless popular revolt, but recognizes the higher meaning of what happened and even blesses fair retribution. Here is the traditional Russian approach to the topic of “humiliated and insulted.” And by putting an end to it, we put an end to the entire Russian culture.

However, the revolution very quickly moved into the stage of devouring its children, and this is precisely what we all still cannot cope with and come to terms with.

We rush from side to side, curse and praise, quarrel with each other and prove everything, prove it, prove it... what? That there is no justice in this world and there cannot be? That the world has always been and will be ruled by scum and that this is normal? And that unavenged victims should calmly look at the executioners who remain in power, who breed new victims?

It won't happen that way.

These shameful philistine cliches against the backdrop of increasing sacrifices only fuel the cleansing fire. The trial is already underway.

The criminalization of society is, by and large, history's revenge for the Gulag.

Delayed, of course, because history first provides an opportunity to take revenge on people.

And without waiting, she takes revenge herself. Including cowardice. Breaking the laws of nature, a flame ignites from the ashes. From the ashes of Klaas, who never reached deafened hearts.

Chapter XX RESULTS OF BETRAYAL. SOURCES OF HOPE

When you think about today's mass gentrification, what comes to mind is famous saying, only in a slightly modified form: “All this would be funny if it weren’t so vile.”

It’s disgusting, firstly, because the identification is based on the cheapest, unworthy of imitation signs:

palaces and mansions with their luxurious interiors are copied, the love of golf and horse riding, social vanity, craving for everything with the “elite” sticker, arrogant disdain for those who are not “in their circle”, and other rubbish, At the same time, the best that was in the nobility - the readiness to sacrifice oneself for the sake of the Fatherland - no one is going to imitate.

“Bolonka” is a pampered, indoor creature. You can't even call her a dog - just a dog. Remember the textbook example of General Raevsky, who rushed into the attack, dragging his two young sons with him. Who among today's elite is capable of this? Although no... One general was still found. His last name is Pulikovsky. His son not only fought in Chechnya (which in itself is phenomenal in the current environment of generals), but also died there. However, it never even occurred to anyone to bow to the sacrifice of the father, for whom, as you understand, it was not particularly difficult to protect his son from the war. Did anyone admire his dedication? Called on politicians and military officials to follow the general’s example?

Yes, we probably wouldn’t even have known about what happened if Pulikovsky Sr. had not needed to be discredited later! And then... then, of course, we were informed about the death of his son, but in what context? - They say that the father has lost his mind and wants revenge. Was it possible to entrust such a person with a serious operation in which the opponents were Chechens?

Well, and secondly, the mass “becoming a noble” is vile, because it is the most natural betrayal. Betrayal of our ancestors, of the suffering that people connected with us through kinship had to endure.

Our grandfathers and great-grandfathers probably thought about a lot, but even in their worst nightmares they could not have dreamed that their descendants would so easily disown them and join their oppressors as relatives. This is for whom, and not for the people in general, the conversation about the genes of slavery is relevant! It would have been nice if they had renounced under Stalin (although not everyone did it then), but now no one holds a gun to their head.

Yes, there is a fatal pattern in the fact that the theme of betrayal is gradually becoming the leading theme of our lives. It’s like a debt that is not repaid on time, which keeps accruing and accruing interest.

The exposure of the cult at the 20th Congress... was it retribution? Since we are talking about this, it is impossible not to quote the poem “Amnesty” by the second wave emigrant poet I. Elagin:

The man who shot my father in the summer in Kyiv, in '38, is still alive.

Probably retired. He lives in retirement and has given up his usual business. Well, if he died, the man who, just before the execution, tied my father’s hands behind his back with a thick wire, is probably still alive.

That’s right, he also retired. And if he died, then the man who tortured his father during interrogation is probably alive.

This one probably retired very well.

Maybe the guard is still alive, the one who took my father out to be shot.

If I wanted, I could return to my homeland.

I heard that all these people have forgiven me.

But it was then, in the era of the 20th Congress, that, as it seems to us, a unique opportunity was missed to break the chain of betrayals without breaking the connection of times: to punish the executioners, i.e. restore justice and gain freedom. And, by the way, there were not so many executioners. There are never many of them, but in order to avoid personal responsibility, they diligently convince people that half the country is like them. If you remember, this motif sounded annoyingly at the beginning of perestroika, and was then replaced, when the nomenklatura burned party cards, with the no less annoying motif of the trial of communism. Guilt was thus completely depersonalized: no one is supposedly to blame, but the idea is to blame.

But alas, no matter how much you repaint, disguise, or change signs, flags and coats of arms, the guilt does not go away. This is a metaphysical concept. It cannot be extinguished with the help of savage rituals. Our power is like Lady Macbeth, who obsessively washes her hands. But blood stains are not washed off, and new, fresh blood sticks to the old blood. And again, the executioners mercifully forgive their victims (a striking example of this is the amnesty of 1993, when they posthumously “forgave” unarmed people shot from tanks). And it will always be like this until the vicious circle opens!

Moreover, crimes will not only multiply, but also become more and more outrageous in their scope and senselessness. And, accordingly, betrayal will come closer and closer to that final line, beyond which there is nothing. In the literal sense of the word.

How quickly everything happened! First, they “surrendered” people living in the republics. Just three or four years after the Armenian earthquake, which shook the entire country and caused massive participation in the fate of the victims, citizens of independent Russia watched indifferently as their recent compatriots killed each other, not even sparing infants. And all this accompanied by shameless rituals about the “tear of a child”!

The internal alienation was lightning fast. As if we didn’t study with these people in institutes, didn’t make friends, didn’t correspond, didn’t declare our love—some to Armenia, some to Georgia, some to the Tien Shan and Pamir mountains... As if we had no relatives or acquaintances

Then it was the turn of the Russian Caucasus. Both indigenous Caucasians and those who are now commonly called “Russian-speaking”. At the height of the Chechen war, ORT broadcast a film about people who, after Dudayev came to power, were kicked out onto the streets for their non-Chechen origin. Some of these people had already been living in a garbage can for two years (!) at the time of filming. The film was seen by hundreds of thousands of spectators. There was zero reaction.

At best one could hear:

“Of course it’s terrible, but what can we do? Stalin expelled the Chechens, so they are taking revenge...” And the conversation hastily shifted to another topic.

Next in line was the province. You tell some quite decent person that in the villages they have already forgotten what money looks like, and he answers: “I don’t know... I personally haven’t left Moscow for a long time, but people in Moscow live well. It's a sin to complain. I’m used to believing what I see with my own eyes.” And the next bar starts a barrel organ about how under Stalin, collective farmers worked for workdays and still did not have passports.

(As if these historical references would make it any easier for a mother who is now forced to give her children formula feed!) The range of topics that touched a nerve quickly narrowed. And for every argument there were counterarguments. Are old people forced to sell cigarettes and vodka?

It's OK! Otherwise they would have been idle, sharpening their swords, sitting on benches.

Some old guys, by the way, are still very smart. They receive a pension and earn extra money. And they ride on public transport for free! Why on earth? It's not fair. We should be pitied, not them... Are scientific research institutes being closed? - And they do it right!

We don't need so many scientists. Among the real ones, the cat cried, and the rest were parasites.

Do writers sell newspapers on trains? - Otherwise it can not be. Even in normal countries Nobel laureates don't live on fees.

We will not bore you with a list of other professions, but will only note that at the present moment, it seems, there is no category of people left that the Moscow man in the street is not ready to give up, throwing off routine liberal phrases. And he rents out not only adults, but also children. And not only strangers (for example, among full-time human rights activists you can hear that the fight against child homelessness is a debatable issue, since the child has... the right to sleep on the street!), but also our own. Because when about 20 thousand children disappear every year in the country, this can affect everyone. And the abolition of free healthcare will affect everyone. And the arrival of old pedophiles in schools who will engage in “removal of shame” with children (with subsequent removal of panties), this will also affect everyone. Add to this the rejuvenated street crime, drug addiction, the fashion for terrorism, the frightening increase in diseases of tuberculosis, syphilis, and neuroses - and you will get such a fine sieve that it will be difficult to get through. Not one thing, then another, if not there, then here, not today, then tomorrow... Most, of course, try not to think this through to the end - it’s too scary! - but the danger does not go away just because people close their eyes.

But what is it that our liberal is not ready to give up? And is it even there, this treasured thing, for which he will not spare his belly? Maybe, as befits a true liberal, he values ​​freedom of speech more than anything else in the world? - Not really.

During the presidential election campaign, they successfully did away with it and did not at all hesitate to assert that political censorship at such a crucial moment was simply necessary. And even now they do not suffer at all when reading newspapers, which have long been known to be the mouthpiece of certain financial groups and there is no smell of any real freedom of speech there.

And journalists, without a hint of indignation, declare: “No, such a harsh article will not work with us. The main one will never miss it.” And what an old, sickeningly familiar intonation: they say, why lie, we are adults, we understand everything!..

So, relatively speaking, our liberal can do without Solzhenitsyn.

Of course, reluctantly, but as a last resort he will do it. Which, by the way, was shown by the removal of Solzhenitsyn from television, which did not cause any noticeable unrest in the liberal environment.

What remains is free travel abroad and the “world of food” (the name of a Moscow store)… Yes, perhaps this is it. Sausage freedom. The kind of freedom that is dangerous to abolish in Moscow. So the circle narrowed to a bright pink circle of Danish cervelat. It turns out to be some kind of zoology... Although why zoology? Animals protect their young, and if necessary, they die, protecting them from predators. Therefore, comparison with animals in this case is offensive to “our smaller brothers.” No, this is not just degradation, not just regression, but serious damage. After all, when for the sake of tactical interests (to eat a variety of food, buy new thing, relax in Cyprus) strategic ones are regularly sacrificed (state, culture, children’s future), one can suspect that the instinct of self-preservation is damaged.

Being a traitor is not only shameful, but also inappropriate. This quickly leads to the extinction of the race, the cessation of life. The feeling of shame for ancestors awakens destructive instincts in descendants; they unconsciously want to erase the memory of shame. And destroy the space in which this shame took place. And most importantly, the logic of life sooner or later forces traitors to lather their own rope.

This is the essence of what happened to the liberal intelligentsia. Having committed a series of betrayals, which could roughly be described as “denial of the little man,” she ended in October 1993 with a call for his execution. And it ended there. She ended as the ruler of thoughts, i.e. lost her role. Of course, out of habit, she still goes on stage, but she plays in an empty hall.

Yes, it cannot be otherwise if from the mouths of human rights activists we now hear the following speeches: “The further in time the October events are, the more meaningless and pretentious the mourning memories become.

Fewer and fewer people are gathering, and the reason for this is not the disgusting weather, but the obvious meaninglessness of the ritual actions. About the dead it is either good or nothing; As time passed, we learned that not only crazy men in black uniforms and deeply insanity old women, but also a young girl, a computer systems developer, who wrote poems and songs and was going to marry a speleologist, went to their death to defend the Constitution. So they were killed there together... Events included, meaning a funeral service! - approx. auto were sad and painful not only for observers, but also for most of the participants... even now they go to them not to remember the dead, but out of a painful habit.” (Ya. Amelina, human rights weekly Express Chronicle, October 11, 1997).

We think comments are unnecessary.

A similar fate awaits teachers if they do not come to their senses and continue to babble about their helplessness, or even about their principled non-interference in politics. They say, why should we mind our own business? As they decide at the top, that’s how we will teach. “Although if everything goes as they decide at the top, then very soon there will simply be no one to teach them.” And, accordingly, no one will need them.

And it’s time for the rest to wake up from their treacherous hibernation. Because when, against the backdrop of such a demographic decline, equipment is purchased in large quantities and indications for male and female sterilization are expanded, it really smells like the end. And quite real, and not masquerade-Barkashov fascism.

But, thank God, not everyone is ready to console themselves with the ironic formula that one of our friends likes to repeat: “Be grateful that they don’t torture you in the morning.”

And there are more and more people who have different “symbols of faith”. They don’t want to say thank you to the temporary executioners, and they don’t want to choose between “lapdogs” and “wolves.” And most importantly, they are already beginning to understand that it will not resolve on its own. They are very different, these people, and in yesterday’s life they could never have come into contact, belonging to different circles, sometimes simply distant, and sometimes even hostile. In those already almost legendary times, people much more often, as it seems to us, converged and alienated on rather secondary, non-essential characteristics: guild, taste, characterological.

Of course, political too, but it was, as life has shown, superficial and rested on a few passwords:

“Sovdepia”, “Tamzidat”, “GULAG Archipelago”... Now, when the deep layers of life have been exposed, the human essence. Passwords and shells have become dilapidated, but the basis for a new, genuine, more meaningful community has emerged. What is this basis? - Probably, it is most accurately defined by I. Ilyin’s expression “conscientious impressionability.” This does not mean that others have no conscience. Almost everyone has it, but not everyone has it as a dominant. In Brezhnev’s times, conscientious impressionability did not allow people to remain silent about the camps, and now it does not allow them to exploit the tragedy of the Gulag, using it as a gag with which to gag their interlocutor as soon as he even mentions the crimes of the current government.

And it is probably no coincidence that there are so many women in the emerging post-Soviet community. After all, they have a more sensitive, more responsive soul. This is, as geneticists put it, “a sex-linked trait.” Yes, and child protection is a woman’s business. Here even a coward can turn into a lioness. So the arrival of women in real politics promises many surprises for citizens from the canine family.

But perhaps the most unexpected and interesting thing in this context is the role of the church. Unexpected because the authorities, of course, did not plan anything like this. The "lapdogs" were sure that they had just changed the scenery.

“Great importance,” they reasoned, “instead of red banners there are banners!

What difference does it make where to stand: on the podium of the Mausoleum on November 7 or in the Elokhov Church on Easter?” Being cynics, they could not even imagine that religion would be taken seriously by anyone. And now they cannot forgive themselves for such a mistake, they blather about fundamentalism (an unsuccessful manipulation, by the way - the word “fundamentalism” is positively charged for us, because the foundation is the basis, and in Russia they love everything solid, solid, serious), but to enter into an open the conflict with the church is not resolved, seeing its growing authority.

In recent years, many priests from the intelligentsia have come to the church.

Both young and middle aged. They are completely different from that caricatured image of a fat-bellied priest, which has been intensely instilled into consciousness for decades. They, these new priests, are, first of all, very different (I would even like to use a literary cliche and say “a whole gallery of images”). But here’s what perhaps unites them: against the backdrop of mass disharmony, they embody the norm. Nowadays you will hardly see such a harmonious combination of tradition and modernity in anyone. But this is precisely what makes it possible these days to find mutual language with a lot of people!

We have already talked about paradoxes many times. Here is one of the most amazing:

Revolutionism is usually associated with avant-garde and even ultra-avant-garde innovations in culture. However, at the end of the second millennium after the birth of Christ, progress turned into its opposite and threatens us with monstrous degradation. And the paradox is that in these conditions, bearers of traditional culture begin to play a truly avant-garde, progressive and, therefore, life-giving role. And in this field a passionate intensity arises.

We wrote a lot about “wolves” and “lapdogs”. And, we hope, we have convincingly shown that the last times are coming for the lapdogs. The degraded, decayed elite must leave. Until this happens, life in our country will be poisoned by cadaveric poison. We are not so naive as to hope for the voluntary departure of power-hungry officials from historical scene. But under pressure from the growing “wolves” they will have to do this.

And then the question arises: what will we have to do? Is it really possible to “live with wolves and howl like a wolf”? But why then give birth and raise children, send them to lyceums, take them to music school and an art studio? Why raise them as humans if the beast is in demand?

To answer this, let's ask one more question: can anyone defeat wolves? And let's say: “Yes! Wolves can be controlled by a person whose strength of spirit overcomes the animal energy of predators.”

Indeed, “we did not teach dialectics according to Hegel”! Who could have imagined 15–20 years ago that the Russian clergy would become a passionate, and therefore essentially revolutionary class? Remember who attended church in Soviet times. It seemed that the pious semi-village old women would die out, and it would be empty forever. If in those countries where there was no persecution of religion, only one shell, one form remained, then what can we say about us!

But when a culture is alive, passionarity seems to wander, moving from one group to another. It dried up among the workers, dried up among the liberal intelligentsia, but it emerged among the priests of the “last call” and among people who were not necessarily churchgoers, but certainly felt themselves to be part of traditional Russian culture. Those who cannot imagine life without it and therefore are ready to defend it as life itself.

And even if there were a pitiful handful of passionaries (although this is no longer the case!), the outcome of their struggle with sub-passionaries would still be a foregone conclusion - that’s why they are passionaries, because they can move mountains almost single-handedly.

There shouldn’t be too many passionate people - otherwise overheating quickly occurs and a fire breaks out, in which everyone who happens to be nearby burns. And the movement of the passionary charge into the church environment also pleases us because it gives us hope for a more or less peaceful development of events. After all, in the passionarity of priests there is no aggression, but there is a restrained, calm force, when meeting with which “lapdogs” and even “wolves” - which, by the way, are not “darkness and darkness and darkness” at all, this is another myth created to intimidate the average person! - they tuck their tails between their legs.

We think that the spitting on the church will now increase, but will only lead to further consolidation of cultural people. In general, it’s time to stop reacting to stickers, signs, fake bait, and monotonous bogeymen.

It's time to grow up and focus on the essence, not the shell. An adult should not remain faithful to his idols out of teenage stubbornness.

Idolatry is a sign of immaturity. So you shouldn’t make an idol out of freedom. You feel real liberation when you call black black and white white. And you don’t try to justify other people’s meanness and your own cowardice.

However, Russian culture still will not allow us to confuse truth with falsehood.

“Always look at the hearts of your fellow citizens. If you find calm and peace in them, then you can truly say: behold, blessed.”

This Radishchev teaching overtook us 250 years later, when we, suspecting nothing, absentmindedly leafed through an old school anthology. Seemingly peaceful and lapidary, it suddenly struck sharply in the heart, like a dying cry, like a posthumous order.

And then we started writing the book.

"WHITE PAPER"

NEW RUSSIAN CHILDHOOD

PREFACE

Believe me, it will be more convincing! - said our supporters. - Sometimes one single concrete case makes more impression than ten pages of theory.

And where did you get all this from? - no longer fictional, but very real opponents frowned skeptically. - Data! Where are the facts? Where human destinies, about which you talk so much, but always somehow abstractly, speculatively?

Examples won’t matter, we answered, but examples stubbornly refused to be woven into the fabric of the narrative. Maybe because behind each of them is not just fate, but tragedy or - at best! - drama (which in childhood is often the same thing), and we subconsciously did not want to reduce it to meager lines, which are often even typed in petit in such “books with examples” in order to highlight their complementarity, and therefore their secondary importance.

And very soon it became clear that we would have to write a second part.

We conventionally called it the “White Book,” and the name has stuck so well that we don’t want to change it now. There have already been many “White Papers” in the world: after the Holocaust, Vietnam, Chechnya... This will be “ White paper"new Russian childhood.

Moreover, we deliberately leave aside a great many very egregious cases: we do not provide biographies of street children, we do not write about those whose childhood was irreparably distorted by the war, about children growing up in the so-called “zones of social disaster” and from an early age doomed to see agony, because they and their loved ones are “ballast that must go.”

This is how one prominent sociologist, who naturally supported “shock therapy,” put it about them on the eve of Gaidar’s reforms. Back then, however, few people understood what exactly stood behind these dashing words.

In our White Book you will not find any juvenile thieves, murderers, or professional prostitutes. We specifically selected children from quite prosperous families and non-marginal layers, to emphasize how bad things are, if even prosperity now looks like this for us.

To tell the truth, we didn't have to strain ourselves. One only had to look around - and there was more than enough material.

However, if someone thinks that this is not enough, he can continue this book himself. Life, as our last secretary general and first president liked to say, continuously “pumps up and throws up.”

1. NATASHA

Natasha was a quiet, easy-going girl. All like my mother. She also preferred to make concessions in order to avoid conflict. Therefore, life in their home proceeded peacefully and smoothly.

But when Natasha turned ten, a psychosis of mediation began in society. All and sundry resold wagons of sugar, tanks of alcohol, and wagons of compotes. It turned out, basically, as in the joke that arose at the same time, when after the conclusion of the transaction the seller runs in search of the goods, and the buyer is no less feverishly looking for money. But passion won - and people again and again chased the chimera of easy enrichment.

Rumors about other people's successes swarmed like bees, and it seemed that here she was, Lady Luck! Just extend your hand... What are those rumors? On TV every now and then they showed young millionaires who directly stated that now only the laziest or the most fool does not make money. From anything, even from thin air! I remember there was even a story about a guy who made a million in a day - a fortune at that time - and willingly shared his experience with the “respectable public.”

In short, in an atmosphere of such excitement, many, quite naturally, went crazy. She also “went” to the father of ten-year-old Natasha. But unlike brokers who “traded air” without investing a penny in this business and fooling their potential partners, Natasha’s father “invested”

thoroughly. Moreover, the money was borrowed, and not from friends - they simply could not have such an amount - but at interest from a moneylender. They, too, then multiplied like dirt, and they were not at all like the helpless old woman immortalized in the famous novel.

Natasha’s mother found out about what was happening when the time came to repay the debts and gloomy people loomed on the family horizon, from whom the smell of criminality was a mile away.

Having finally understood what was happening, this meek woman showed an iron will. Decisively taking the initiative into her own hands, she quickly sold a beautiful three-room apartment, paid off creditors, used the rest of the money to buy herself and her daughter a one-room “Khrushchev”, and kicked her husband out the door.

In modern times, this is still a “happy ending”. It could have been much worse.

Thank God, there were no corpses, no child taken hostage and other moments that suddenly migrated overnight from action-packed films into our reality.

Yes, mother and Natasha, one might say, got off happily. But the quiet woman’s life is shattered, and the girl... What lessons did she learn from what happened?

Try to put yourself in the place of a child: suddenly, for some unknown reason, you lose both your father and a spacious, familiar home, finding yourself in some kind of cell, where, on top of everything else, half-drunk guys show up with threats! (Before that, an alcoholic lived in the apartment, who then disappeared, and his drinking companions suspected that Natasha’s mother had harassed him in order to take over the apartment.) Wanting to protect her daughter from unnecessary injuries, the mother did not let Natasha in on the details of what was happening and did not scold her father. But this also backfired on her. However, in such situations, no matter where you throw it, there is a wedge everywhere. The irritation that had been accumulating in the girl’s soul eventually spilled over onto her already harassed mother.

Natasha, who by that time had entered a difficult age, began to blame everything... on her!

The mother’s nerves had lost her nerves, she had aged dramatically, lost weight, and was scary to look at. How long it will last is unknown, but it’s unlikely to last long. Natasha is fourteen. Prickly, angry, cynical. A year ago I got involved with bad company and often doesn’t spend the night at home. He smokes, drinks, swears, loves the “cool”.

Ready-made “bride of the mafia.”

I saw you all in the coffin! - reads in her narrowed eyes.

It was very instructive for our Westerners to talk with her about respect for property and laws, which we now need so much to build a rule of law state.

We have seen many children in our lifetime, but this is the first time we have met such a one. Smart, clear, kind eyes - and complete uncontrollability. He couldn’t sit quietly for a minute, he was always rushing somewhere, grabbing something, managing to break it and throw it in a second, then immediately reaching for a new object and throwing it again... Grandma didn’t even try to stop him. Not because she liked it. No, she was covered all over with crimson spots from shame, because in front of her there were strangers. And not just people, but specialists - they are usually more shy at first.

“Don’t think, he wasn’t always like this,” the grandmother said in a low voice, glancing sideways at Vadik, who had already thrown everything he could onto the floor and was clearly burdened by the lack of new ideas. “It’s just that two years ago his parents died, and since then he’s been like crazy... It’s hard to say what alarmed us then: either a barely noticeable hesitation when answering the question about the cause of the death of his son-in-law and daughter, or it’s unclear where the child’s symptoms came from.” raised by an intelligent grandmother, the tricks of punks, or something even more elusive, but no less real... In any case, we, without saying a word, assumed that the child’s father was a “new Russian.” And not from the children of party workers, but from a self-made man. A man who made his way in life on his own.) of the perestroika flood: if not a real bandit, then a man of the bandit breed.

Naturally, we didn’t ask about the bandit, but we asked about the “new Russian.” They just used a more neutral word - “businessman”. - How did you guess? - Grandma was surprised. - After all, you can’t say from Vadik and me now that we didn’t know how to count money until recently.

There was nothing left, all the companions took it. Allegedly for debts... At the wake they beat themselves in the chest, promised to help, but themselves... - she waved her hand and seemed to add out of place: - I told Vera, this life will not lead to good... She didn’t say anything special, but here for some reason there was no doubt that her son-in-law and daughter were killed... But we still could not assume that the murder was committed in front of a three-year-old child. It looked too melodramatic, just like in the movies.

God knows why the killers who shot up the car spared the child. Maybe they didn’t pay attention to him in a hurry, or maybe they didn’t want to take on an extra sin on their soul. Moreover, they, apparently, knew this family quite well.

After everything that happened, Vadik fell silent for six months, even his grandmother could not get a word out of him. Then speech was restored, but the boy’s behavior changed beyond recognition. And the further he went, the more he resembled his father, brave to the point of recklessness, desperately self-willed, unable to restrain himself in anything and having no doubt that very soon the whole world would be at his feet. How could this end well? Vadik had not even had time to go to school, and his grandmother was already imagining a colony.

Yes, but, with all these fears, she was not at all sure that Vadik needed to be cut short. After all, now is the time: if you hesitate a little, they will trample you.

In our time, we need to be more impudent, more impudent. You can’t make a fur coat out of modesty... - said this modest elderly woman.

And we understood that she was solving a complex problem: what is better - a child-animal or a child-human? On the one hand, she, of course, was worried about her grandson’s uncontrollability, and on the other, with such views, she actually gave him an attitude towards aggressive behavior.

We lived like in a fairy tale... If not for this misfortune... She clearly did not connect one with the other, it did not occur to her that such an outcome was a tragic, but natural end to a criminal lifestyle. Just bad luck... You say: “Well, weren’t there such cases in Soviet times?”

Of course there were, although their likelihood was negligible compared to today. Both before Vadik and after, we have repeatedly encountered children orphaned as a result of the mafia murder of their parents. And we’ve heard and read about it who knows how much!

But the point is still different. The fact is that terry crime used to be in a terry-criminal environment, i.e., in its rightful (random pun) place. Under all mitigating circumstances, theft in the minds of the vast majority of people was an evil punishable by both the court and fate. Even the thief’s mother or mother-in-law understood what her son (son-in-law) got for the deed.

And she tried her best to prevent her grandson from “going down the wrong path.” Of course, their efforts were not always crowned with success, but the goal was to protect, to keep from sin. They knew that stolen money would bring no good. or electronic publications (magazines), both using electronic communication channels (Internet), and by means of..." professional education in the direction of training specialty 080200 - management,..." its tags are names. So, Plato, Phoebus's chick, Latona by mother - and so is P-Laton. The name is Mozart of the king of muses, who has passed..." 103-FZ "On activities for accepting payments individuals carried out by payment agents"1. Is it possible to write off from a special bank account for... "mutually beneficial cooperation between Russian and foreign..."

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The role of N.P. Ogarev’s poem “An Ordinary Tale” in the fate of the heroes of I.A. Bunin’s story “Dark Alleys.”

Introduction.

In Ivan Bunin’s story “Dark Alleys” (1938), written by a 68-year-old writer, the hero-nobleman, quite mature at that time, reads N.P. Ogarev’s poems “An Ordinary Tale” (1842) to the young serf girl Nadezhda, his short-lived lover. ), in which "dark alleys" are mentioned. According to Bunin’s recollections, his story came to light as a result of his rereading this poem Nikolai Ogarev, who became the author of "An Ordinary Tale" at the age of 29. Indeed, in these two works, created by the young Ogarev and the already quite old, mature Bunin, analogies can be traced. And the title of Bunin’s short story is essentially a quote from Ogarev: “There were dark linden alleys...” How, it would seem, is a poem by a poet who is more familiar to us from history textbooks as a friend of the revolutionary A. Herzen, not so well known to a wide circle of readers, shared emigration with him, served as the birth of "Dark Alleys", an undeniable masterpiece of Russian classics? How did one literary event lead to another almost a hundred years later? What intersecting temporal paths exist in the vast field of Russian literature? Let's think about these questions, but first we will re-read, following Ivan Alekseevich Bunin, Nikolai Platonovich Ogarev's poem "An Ordinary Tale."

ORDINARY STORY
It was a wonderful spring!
They sat on the shore -
The river was quiet, clear,
The sun was rising, the birds were singing;
The valley stretched beyond the river,
Calm, lush green;
Nearby, a scarlet rosehip was blooming,
There was an alley of dark linden trees.

It was a wonderful spring!
They sat on the shore -
She was in her prime,
His mustache was barely black.
Oh, if only someone could see them

And I would look out for their faces
Or would I overhear their speeches -
How sweet his tongue would be,
The original language of love!
He would probably himself, for this moment,
Bloomed at the bottom of a sad soul!..
I met them later in the world:
She was the wife of another
He was married, and about the past
There was not a word in sight;
There was peace on their faces,
Their life flowed brightly and smoothly,
They, meeting each other,
We could laugh in cold blood...
And there, along the river bank,
Where did the scarlet rose hips bloom then?
Just simple fishermen
We went to a dilapidated boat
And they sang songs - and it was dark
What remains is closed to people,
What was said there
And how much has been forgotten.
<1842>

1.
Poems open with a picture have a wonderful spring. Nine quatrains, thirty-six lines. The author divided the story into two unequal parts. The first, of eight lines, is a description of Russian nature, early morning, a quiet, clear river. Dawn. Blooms scarlet rose hip- that means it's May. The nearby “dark linden alley” is an indication of the proximity of the manor’s estate.
The nobles, a young man and a young lady, meet the dawn together, most likely because one of them was visiting the estate and early in the morning they could take a walk together.
Repeating exactly the first two lines in the second part of the poem -
It was a wonderful spring!
They sat on the shore -
The author describes the young heroes in short but succinct strokes:
She was in her prime,
His mustache was barely black.
The names of the characters are not given - He, She, They - only personal pronouns that generalize the situation, spreading it widely to all Russians manorial estates Russia in the forties of the nineteenth century.
Let’s not think that the author used a special artistic technique of “spying” on the development of other people’s feelings: most likely, the third hero was chosen by these young people as the confidant of their relationship, because it was he who knew, when they came to the river, what they spoke to each other “in the language of original love.” ". Perhaps Ogarev sees himself in the face of a young man with a barely visible mustache, peering intently into the past.
The literary device of detachment, which gives the opportunity to look at oneself and the characters from the outside, allows the author to closely see the faces of young lovers and for a moment “bloom at the bottom of a sad soul.” Spring in nature, spring in life, spring in love...

“I met them later in the world”... - so the second, long stanza of seven quatrains told us a seemingly “ordinary story”: the author sees his acquaintances, who did not have a good life together, in one of the noble meetings . She, like Pushkin's Tatiana, is married; he, unlike Onegin, is married. But this is where the slight similarity between the literary situations ends. What is striking - and the author emphasizes this with great emotional force - is the non-standard use of the Russian literary love tradition: former lovers do not suffer, do not love, do not want to remember their common past, they are self-satisfied, cold-blooded in communicating with each other in the world and seem to laugh at their former innocence. It is likely that each of them solved, first of all, an economic problem in marriage: she married favorably and is happy with her security; he married favorably.
IN time, according to the generally accepted opinion, (not without the persistent pressure of their parents) their youth, freshness, and beauty of youth were sold - their main quickly expendable capital.
IN detailed description new secular habits, cynical in relation to the bright, naive, inexperienced past of the heroes, in the description of a lonely dilapidated boat on the shore of that river of youth and young happiness, a boat to which lovers will no longer descend, lies all the pain of the narrator, his spiritual protest against such a mutual situation betrayal of the ideals of youth. He is the only one who feels sorry for the love that was desecrated in this way, the first bright feeling that He and She abandoned under the pressure of life’s circumstances.
But how much was said about this feeling - and how much was forgotten! - only the main thing knows about this to the lyrical hero, an author suffering from the disharmony of the world, pierced by its imperfections. Probably a lot of passionate and lofty things were said, melting away like smoke, if such sad poems were born.
In the penultimate quatrain, the author again (for the second time) mentions the blooming rosehip of past years. The use of odd repetition is most likely not accidental and is also intended to solve the stated artistic task - to reveal feelings of regret and sadness.
Memories of the past are accompanied by the singing of fishermen by the river, by that boat, in the present. The songs of ordinary peasants, people from the people, of course, sad and mournful, perhaps with an appeal to the Mother River, show the deep class division of Russia, the indifference of the Russian nobles to the problems of the serfs, to their people who nursed them. Remembers that Russian society consists not only of the metropolitan nobility and provincial landowners, and life is not only of high-society balls only the author, thereby very different from the representatives of his class.
The epithet “dark” is also used in the text of this poem twice: “there was an alley of dark linden trees” (at the beginning of the poem) and “... it remained dark, closed for people...” (at the end of the work) The adverb “dark” ends line, and the verb “remained” transfers the thought to a new line, starting it. Thus, the location of the word and its stress on the last syllable emphasizes the special meaning for the author of the concept “dark”, contrasting this color with the scarlet rosehip flowers. Many plants bloom in spring. Why does the author focus our attention on the rose hips? One can easily see the analogy between the thorns of a wild rose and the wounding thorns of life (and here is the romance of Russian poetic tradition is obvious), but the image of the riotous flowering of the scarlet rose hips also contrasts with the well-groomed flower beds of the lordly estates, like the “unkempt” element of Russian folk life.
And the linden alleys? After all, they are not only an indication of the nature of central Russia, of the preference of Russian landowners for this particular tree (dried linden blossom was widely used as a medicinal sedative, and what kind of tea party in the lordly estates would be complete without it!) Dark linden trees, most likely densely planted, forming cool fragrant vaults with their crowns, and the mystery of the spiritual life of young people for those around them (hence the epithet “dark”) under these linden trees becomes an artistic device designed to draw the reader’s attention to the depth and complexity of the life of a young soul, whose movements can only be caught, understood and revealed the refined nature of the poet-psychologist, which N. Ogarev is here.
So what still comes to the fore in Ogarev’s poem? Are his young heroes memorable? No, it’s boring with them, they are empty, vulgar, blurry images, you don’t want to think about them, with them there is nothing for the soul to dwell on. And it’s memorable, it touches you heartache and the ability to see the present and the past, the narrator, perhaps, unwittingly revealed to us and unwittingly brought to the fore Russian nature, dear to the heart of every Russian person, filling his ballad with tints of colors and tangible smells of a linden leaf, a blooming rose hip, a peacefully, wisely and calmly flowing river in the outback of the local province and voiced this picture that is dear to him and to us with ethnic songs of peasant fishermen, songs that can cleanse, revive and support a mournful soul.

2.
The heroes of Bunin's short story, a brilliant but already old officer of the tsarist army, Nikolai Alekseevich, and his former serf lover, Nadezhda, and now the owner of a private hotel on the Tula road, we catch their chance meeting in a hut-tavern, where a man returning to St. Petersburg from business trip sixty-year-old military man, waiting for a change of horses. The old acquaintances did not stay together for long in this clean room with wooden tables and benches, smelling of freshly cooked cabbage soup, but how much life and feelings this unexpected short meeting contained both for the heroes of the story and for its readers. N. Ogarev's poems "An Ordinary Tale" immediately become part of the fabric of Bunin's work in the dynamic dialogue of the characters. Nadezhda reminds her old lover that during their stormy love thirty years ago (and the heroine is now forty-eight years old), “I was deigned to read all the poems about all sorts of “dark alleys.” Most likely illiterate at eighteen years old, the former serf girl remembered Ogarev’s poems for many years lines performed by the young master and now, thirty years later, he quotes them “on one of the big Tula roads,” where her establishment was located, in Ogarev’s words,
Oh, if only someone could see them
Then, at their morning meeting,
And I would look out for their faces
Or I would overhear their speeches...
Shocked by the unexpected meeting, Nikolai Petrovich is extremely frank and honest; he twice (again the unlucky odd number “two”, used as an artistic device by Ogarev) calls his life “an ordinary story,” thus involuntarily using Ogarev’s title, adding to this the epithet “vulgar,” that is, hackneyed, famous, going after everyone one scenario. His wife, whom he “loved madly,” cheated on him and left him “even more insultingly than I did you” (Ogarev’s theme of betrayal). The adored son “turned out to be a scoundrel, a spendthrift, an insolent person, without a heart, without honor, without a conscience” (and again Ogarev’s motives in the characterization of high society youth).
This is how now, it turns out, we need to understand the generalizing meaning of the title of N.P.’s work. Ogarev - already in the title “An Ordinary Tale” there is a comprehensive description of the noble class, the main property of its nature and the author’s rejection of its immoral traits are emphasized.
It’s interesting to figure out why thirty-year-old Nikolenka (that’s what Nadya called him then) read exactly these poems to an eighteen-year-old peasant girl, whether his life began with such a betrayal of a young girl, who could then calmly meet him in the world, which is so poignant depicted Ogarev in his sad story. Was the passion for the beautiful Nadezhda a replacement for a violated feeling and at the same time a secret revenge on a flighty friend of her class? The genre of the short story, which presupposes understatement, incompleteness, opens up an artistic picture of several perspectives, provides the opportunity for a varied reading of the reader, and we have the right to put forward such assumptions, simultaneously following two texts, exploring their interconnected details.
But it is obvious, when comparing the two works we have chosen, that the still very weakly outlined theme of serfdom and its destructive impact on the souls, destinies, morality of people by N.P. Ogarev, the attitude of the Russian nobility to this shameful phenomenon - takes on paramount importance in I. .A.Bunin. Remembering the beauty of Nadezhda, admiring her eyes and figure, remembering that this girl from the people, who had no equal (and everyone recognized this), not only submitted to his lordly whim, but passionately, for the rest of her life, fell in love with him, that she was sensitive to poetry, even if thirty years later he remembers the lines from Ogarev by heart, the old tsarist polished officer blushes with shame, but cannot help but express his admiration for Nadezhda. Unlike Ogarev's heroes, Bunin's heroes have both conscience and memory. The meeting with the aged Nadezhda, who never consciously married, and the bright flash of memories of their former love further highlighted in the hero’s eyes the dirtiness of intra-family high-society relations and revealed the worthlessness of a life lived in a humiliating marriage. It would seem that the past, as if buried under the layers of life, should never have declared itself, but it flared up in the hero’s soul, just as smoldering coals suddenly flare up in an extinguished fire.
With ineradicable evidence, a former serf, and now a lonely, but independently living free entrepreneur, not only maintaining a private hotel, but also giving money in growth (having known the refined love of the master, giving him “her beauty, her fever,” she could no longer get married for a peasant), who received, as a reward for all her trials, about which “it’s a long time to talk about, sir,” freed from the second landowner (which means the estate along with the serfs was sold by Nikolai Alekseevich) pushed far aside with her spiritual essence, the honestly lived life of all secular the hero's beloved, wife and mistresses. Having received freedom, and with it the initial capital (and this fact worthily distinguishes the heroine from the general mass of serf martyrs), Nadezhda is now independent, independent, as long as she can support herself, run a business, she is respected in her community (the coachman told the master about this on his way back), she stands firmly on her feet, although she is no longer young.

Why did the author, who had been living abroad for a long time, push his heroes at the intersection of Russian roads? To convey to the reader how tangibly, interpenetratingly these two concepts are connected in the genotype of a Russian person - the nobility and the people? So that the endlessly blushing old military man can shake himself out of this shame and thus, with the help of the meeting given by fate, go through its cleansing influence? It is clear that the author, although he himself admires the fruit of his artistic imagination - His Excellency with a “beautiful elongated face with dark eyes”, the still slender figure of a military man, his tall and the way he “easily ran up to the porch of the hut” - and I am ashamed of my hero, and I feel sorry for him, and I really want to help him somehow morally. One thing is certain: Bunin there, in exile, cannot live without Russia, he constantly thinks about it, it lives indestructibly in him.
In what position could Nikolai Alekseevich abandon Nadezhda? Of course, pregnant. “But, really, you abandoned me very heartlessly - how many times I wanted to lay hands on myself out of resentment alone, not to mention everything else,” - this is how Nadezhda reminds the hero in what position he left her. "Everything else" - this could be the death of an illegitimate baby adopted from a landowner, that " ordinary story", which is found in many works of Russian literature. The blood of Nikolai Alekseevich dissolved in Nadezhda. So the lordship, trampling on its people, but feeding on its juices, dissolved in it. And the Russian serf woman, breastfeeding barchats, nursing them? From infancy the future government official or military man fell asleep to her lullaby songs, it was she, the milk mother, who sometimes became his spiritual mother, from whom he took over, sucking in with her milk and songs, native language. And it was she, at the moment of his advancing manhood, who came to him in the form of a young, but full of strength, physical health, a strong, tanned village woman, pouring into him pure young energy, coming as if from the earth itself.
The fate of Hope shows the indestructible people's power, endurance, the love of the Russian common man for creative work, the spiritual beauty and greatness of the Russian woman - to a large extent, this Nekrasov theme found a kind of refraction in the prose of I. A. Bunin.
To what court could a serf appeal? How could justice be achieved? There were no such state mechanisms for the forced Russian people, and they created their own deep philosophy of long-suffering, love and forgiveness to help them live. The characters' dialogue about forgiveness is filled with different shades of meaning. It is important for Nikolai Alekseevich to be forgiven by Nadezhda, because he does not renounce his guilt towards her, even after years have passed. “If only God would forgive me. And you, apparently, have forgiven me,” he says “patter,” “taking out a handkerchief and pressing it to his eyes.” To which Nadezhda replies like this: “No, Nikolai Alekseevich, I didn’t forgive. Since our conversation touched on our feelings, I’ll say frankly: I could never forgive you. Just as I had nothing more precious than you in the world at that time, so it will be later.” It wasn’t. That’s why I can’t forgive you. Well, why remember, they don’t carry the dead from the graveyard.” In Nikolai Alekseevich’s understanding, “forgive” means not holding a grudge, not getting angry, and letting go of a sin. In Nadezhda’s understanding, “forgive” means forgetting, not remembering, not remembering. How can we forget that it was so expensive? Thus, Ogarev’s theme of memory in “An Ordinary Tale” is polemically continued in its own way and refracted by Bunin in “Dark Alleys”.

Farewell scene. Nadezhda kissed Nikolai Alekseevich’s hand (a common gesture for a Russian woman in serf Russia), and he kissed her hand (we agree that this is a completely unusual gesture). It contains the hero’s plea for forgiveness, reconciliation, recognition of previously unrecognized equality, no - humble recognition of her spiritual superiority over him, gratitude for best moments life (as it is now clear to him) precisely with her, for the height of the spirit.
This behavior of an old Russian nobleman, who, at the cost of terrible mistakes, losses and disappointments, came to a new life philosophy in relation not only to the woman who gave him her feelings and youth free of charge, but in relation, in her person, to her people, puts Bunin’s hero in one of the first places in the gallery of the best male portraits not only Russian literature abroad, but also Russian literature in general.

Although the main overwhelming feeling in Nikolai Alekseevich’s further journey to St. Petersburg remains a painful feeling of shame, it, according to its spiritual laws, turns into a cleansing feeling of gratitude, freeing from the dirty layers of life, for the best, “truly magical moments” for a woman with such a deep and capacious named Nadezhda. Therefore, on the way to the train, on the Tula road, “cut with many black ruts,” Ogarev’s favorite lines come to mind for the hero: “All around the scarlet rose hips were blooming, there were dark linden alleys...”
Thus, the poems of N.P. Ogarev, reread by I.A. Bunin, brought to life a wonderful short story, became part of the amazing story of the meeting of two Russian people, entwining their destinies with thorns of suffering, but also with scarlet flowers of true happiness, not bought with money, history , would have remained “closed to people” if it had not been told to us by the author with such artistic talent.
Note that the hero drives up to the post station “in the cold autumn weather” along a road “drenched in rain,” and leaves without drinking tea from the samovar, already in the low sun, “shine yellow on the empty fields,” although the horses continue "splash smoothly through puddles." The depiction of the autumn nature of the Tula region is deeply artistically combined with the “autumn age” of the heroes of the short story and the age of its author himself, in contrast to the “spring age” of the young people of “An Ordinary Tale,” which is probably why the philosophical outline of “Dark Alleys” is so undeniably wise. And the yellow light of the already setting sun, and the measured movement of the tarantass, setting us up for calm thoughts, and the image of an elderly, but still handsome military man with a white mustache and sideburns, “still black-browed,” who has just received a new, strong, unpredictable, but reviving lesson in life , and Nadezhda looking after him from the window of her upper room, and the driver Klim discussing the merits of the owner of the inn - in all these pictures Russia of the 50s-60s of the 19th century, a country of dark mysterious alleys and extraordinary human stories, is poignantly visible to us, in its slow but steady forward movement.

The story “Dark Alleys” opens perhaps Bunin’s most famous cycle of stories, which got its name from this first, “title” work. It is known what importance the writer attached to the initial sound, the first “note” of the narrative, the timbre of which was supposed to determine the entire sound palette of the work. A kind of “beginning” that creates a special lyrical atmosphere of the story were lines from N. Ogarev’s poem “An Ordinary Tale”:

It was a wonderful spring
They sat on the shore
She was in her prime,
His mustache was barely black.
The scarlet rose hips were blooming all around,
There was an alley of dark linden trees...

But, as always with Bunin, “sound” is inseparable from “image”. As he wrote in the notes “The Origin of My Stories,” when he began working on the story, he imagined “some kind of big road, a troika harnessed to a tarantass, and autumn bad weather.” We must add to this the literary impulse, which also played a role: Bunin called L.N.’s “Resurrection” as such. Tolstoy, the heroes of this novel - young Nekhlyudov and Katyusha Maslova. All this came together in the writer’s imagination, and a story was born about lost happiness, the irrevocability of time, lost illusions and the power of the past over man.

A meeting of heroes united once in their youth by a passionate loving feeling, takes place many years later in the most ordinary, perhaps even nondescript setting: in a muddy road, at an inn located on a large road. Bunin does not skimp on “prosaic” details: “a mud-covered tarantass,” “simple horses,” “tails tied up from the slush.” But the portrait of the arriving man is given in detail, clearly designed to arouse sympathy: “a slender old military man,” with black eyebrows, a white mustache, and a shaved chin. His appearance speaks of nobility, and his stern but tired look contrasts with the liveliness of his movements (the author notices how he “threw” his leg out of the tarantass and “ran up” onto the porch). Bunin clearly wants to emphasize the combination of cheerfulness and maturity, youthfulness and sedateness in the hero, which is very important for the overall plan of the story, which is implicated in the desire to collide the past and the present, to strike a spark of memories that will illuminate the past with a bright light and will incinerate and turn into ash what exists Today.

The writer deliberately drags out the exposition: of the three and a half pages devoted to the story, almost a page is occupied by the “introduction”. In addition to the description of the stormy day, the hero’s appearance (and at the same time a detailed description of the coachman’s appearance), which is supplemented with new details as the hero frees himself from outerwear, it also contains detailed characteristics the room where the visitor found himself. Moreover, the refrain of this description is an indication of cleanliness and neatness: a clean tablecloth on the table, cleanly washed benches, a recently whitewashed stove, new image in the corner... The author emphasizes this, since it is known that the owners of Russian inns and hotels were not very tidy and a constant feature of these places were cockroaches and dull windows covered with flies. Consequently, he wants to draw our attention to the almost unique way in which this establishment is maintained by its owners, or rather, as we will soon learn, by its mistress.

But the hero remains indifferent to the surrounding environment, although later he will note the cleanliness and neatness. From his behavior and gestures it is clear that he is irritated, tired (Bunin uses the epithet tired for the second time, now in relation to the entire appearance of the arriving officer), perhaps not very healthy (“pale, thin hand”), and is hostile to everything that is happening (“ “hostilely” called the owners), absent-minded (“inattentively” answers the questions of the hostess who appeared). And only this woman’s unexpected address to him: “Nikolai Alekseevich,” makes him seem to wake up. After all, before that, he asked her questions purely mechanically, without thinking, although he managed to glance at her figure, note her rounded shoulders, light legs in worn Tatar shoes.

The author himself, as if in addition to the “unseeing” gaze of the hero, gives a much more sharply expressive, unexpected, juicy portrait of the woman who entered: not very young, but still beautiful, similar to a gypsy, plump, but not overweight, a woman. Bunin deliberately resorts to naturalistic, almost anti-aesthetic details: large breasts, a triangular belly, like a goose’s. But the anti-aestheticism of the image is “removed”: the breasts are hidden under a red blouse (the diminutive suffix is ​​intended to convey a feeling of lightness), and the stomach is hidden by a black skirt. In general, the combination of black and red in clothes, the fluff above the lip (a sign of passion), and the zoomorphic comparison are aimed at emphasizing the carnal, earthly nature in the heroine.

However, it is she who will reveal - as we will see a little later - the spiritual principle as opposed to the mundane existence that, without realizing it, the hero drags out, without thinking or looking into his past. That's why she's the first! - recognizes him. No wonder she “looked inquisitively at him all the time, squinting slightly,” and he will look at her only after she addresses him by name and patronymic. She - and not he - will name the exact number when it comes to the years they have not seen each other: not thirty-five, but thirty. She will tell you how old he is now. This means that she meticulously calculated everything, which means that every year she left a notch in her memory! And this is at a time when he should never forget what connected them, for in the past he had - no less than - a dishonest act, however, completely ordinary at that time - having fun with a serf girl when visiting friends' estates, sudden departure...

In the terse dialogue between Nadezhda (that’s the name of the owner of the inn) and Nikolai Alekseevich, the details of this story are restored. And most importantly - different attitude heroes to the past. If for Nikolai Alekseevich everything that happened is “a vulgar, ordinary story” (however, he is ready to put everything in his life under this standard, as if removing from a person the burden of responsibility for his actions), then for Nadezhda her love became a great test, and a great event, the only one of significance in her life. “Just as I didn’t have anything more valuable than you in the world at that time, so I didn’t have anything later,” she will say.

For Nikolai Alekseevich, the love of a serf was only one of the episodes of his life (Nadezhda directly states this to him: “It’s as if nothing happened for you”). She “wanted to kill herself” several times, never with extraordinary beauty she never got married, unable to forget her first love. That’s why she refutes Nikolai Alekseevich’s statement that “everything passes over the years” (he, as if trying to convince himself of this, repeats the formula that “everything passes” several times: after all, he really wants to brush aside the past, to imagine everything is not enough significant event), with the words: “Everything passes, but not everything is forgotten.” And she will pronounce them with unshakable confidence. However, Bunin almost never comments on her words, limiting himself to monosyllabic “answered”, “approached”, “paused”. Only once does he slip an indication of the “unkind smile” with which Nadezhda utters the phrase addressed to her seducer: “I was deigned to read all the poems about all sorts of “dark alleys”.”

The writer is also stingy with “ historical details" Only from the words of the heroine of the work: “The gentlemen soon after you gave me my freedom,” and from the mention of the hero’s appearance, which had “a resemblance to Alexander II, which was so common among the military during his reign,” we can get the idea that The story apparently takes place in the 60s or 70s of the 19th century.

But Bunin is unusually generous in commenting on the condition of Nikolai Alekseevich, for whom a meeting with Nadezhda becomes a meeting with both his past and his conscience. The writer here reveals himself as a “secret psychologist” in all his splendor, making it clear through gestures, intonation of voice, and the behavior of the hero what is happening in his soul. If at first the only thing that interests a visitor at the inn is that “from behind the stove damper there was a sweet smell of cabbage soup” (Bunin even adds this detail: the smell of “boiled cabbage, beef and bay leaf”, - from which we can conclude that the guest is clearly hungry), then upon meeting Nadezhda, upon recognizing her, upon further conversation with her, fatigue and absent-mindedness instantly disappear from him, he begins to look fussy, worried, talking a lot and confusedly (“ mumbled,” “added quickly,” “said hastily”), which is a sharp contrast with the calm majesty of Nadezhda. Bunin points three times to Nikolai Alekseevich’s reaction of embarrassment: “he quickly straightened up, opened his eyes and blushed,” “he stopped and, blushing through his gray hair, began to speak,” “blushed to the point of tears”; emphasizes his dissatisfaction with himself with sudden changes in position: “he walked decisively around the room,” “frowning, he walked again,” “stopping, he grinned painfully.”

All this indicates what a difficult, painful process is taking place in him. But at first, nothing comes to mind except the divine beauty of the young girl (“How beautiful you were!... What a figure, what eyes!... How everyone looked at you”) and the romantic atmosphere of their rapprochement, and he is inclined brush aside what he had heard, hoping to turn the conversation, if not into a joke, then into the direction of “whoever remembers the old will...” However, after he heard that Nadezhda could never forgive him, because one cannot forgive the one who took away the most dear - the soul, who killed it, he seems to see the light. He is especially shocked, apparently, by the fact that to explain her feeling she resorts to the proverb (obviously, especially loved by Bunin, already used by him once in the story “The Village”) “they don’t carry the dead from the graveyard.” This means that she feels dead, that she never came back to life after those happy spring days, and that for her, who knew the great power of love, it was not without reason that his question-exclamation: “You couldn’t love me all your life!” - she firmly answers: “So, she could. No matter how much time passed, I still lived alone,” - there is no return to life ordinary people. Her love was not easy stronger than death, but stronger than the life that came after what happened and which she, as a Christian, had to continue, no matter what.

And what kind of life this is, we learn from several remarks exchanged between Nikolai Alekseevich, who is leaving the short-term shelter, and the coachman Klim, who says that the owner of the inn is “smart”, that she is “getting rich” because she “gives money on interest”, that she is “cool”, but “fair”, which means she enjoys both respect and honor. But we understand how petty and insignificant for her, who has fallen in love once and for all, all this mercantile frivolity, how incompatible it is with what is going on in her soul. For Nadezhda, her love comes from God. No wonder she says: “What does God give to whom... Everyone’s youth passes, but love is another matter.” That is why her unpreparedness for forgiveness, while Nikolai Alekseevich really wants and hopes that God will forgive him, and even more so Nadezhda will forgive him, because, by all standards, he committed not such a great sin, is not condemned by the author. Although such a maximalist position runs counter to Christian doctrine. But, according to Bunin, a crime against love, against memory is much more serious than the sin of “grudge.” And it is precisely the memory of love, of the past, in his opinion, that justifies a lot.

And the fact that a true understanding of what happened gradually awakens in the hero’s mind speaks in his favor. After all, at first the words he said: “I think that in you I too have lost the most precious thing I had in life,” and his act - he kissed Nadezhda’s hand goodbye - do not cause him anything but shame, and even more - the shame of this shame, are perceived by him as false, ostentatious. But then he begins to understand that what came out accidentally, in a hurry, perhaps even for the sake of a catchphrase, is the most genuine “diagnosis” of the past. His internal dialogue, reflecting hesitation and doubt: “Isn’t it true that she gave me the best moments of my life?” - ends with an unshakable: “Yes, of course, the best moments. And not the best, but truly magical.” But right there - and here Bunin acts as a realist who does not believe in romantic transformations and repentance - another, sobering voice told him that all these thoughts were “nonsense”, that he could not do otherwise, that nothing could be corrected then , not now.

So Bunin, in the very first story of the cycle, gives an idea of ​​the unattainable height to which the most ordinary person is capable of rising if his life is illuminated, albeit tragic, by love. And short moments of this love can “outweigh” all the material benefits of future well-being, all the joys love interests, not rising above the level of ordinary affairs, in general throughout the rest of life with its ups and downs.

Bunin draws the subtlest modulations of the characters’ states, relying on the sound “echo”, the consonance of phrases that are born, often without meaning, in response to spoken words. Thus, the words of coachman Klim that if you don’t give Nadezhda the money on time, then “blame yourself,” echo like echolalia when Nikolai Alekseevich pronounces them out loud: “Yes, yes, blame yourself.” And then in his soul they will continue to sound like words “crucifixing” him. “Yes, blame yourself,” he thinks, realizing what kind of guilt lies with him. And the brilliant formula created by the author and put into the heroine’s mouth: “Everything passes, but not everything is forgotten,” was born in response to Nikolai Alekseevich’s phrase: “Everything passes. Everything is forgotten,” which was previously supposedly confirmed in a quotation from the book of Job: “as you will remember the flowing water.” And more than once throughout the story words will appear that refer us to the past, to memory: “Over the years, everything passes”; “everyone’s youth passes”; “I called you Nikolenka, and you remember me”; “Do you remember how everyone looked at you”, “How can you forget this”, “Well, why remember.” These echoing phrases seem to be weaving a carpet on which Bunin’s formula about the omnipotence of memory will be forever imprinted.

It is impossible not to notice the obvious similarity of this story with Turgenev’s “Asya”. As we remember, even there the hero at the end tries to convince himself that “fate was good in not uniting him with Asya.” He consoles himself with the thought that “he probably would not be happy with such a wife.” It would seem that the situations are similar: in both cases the idea of ​​misalliance, i.e. the possibility of marrying a woman of a lower class is initially rejected. But what is the result of this, it would seem, from the point of view of the attitudes of the right decision accepted in society? The hero of “Asia” found himself condemned to forever remain a “familyless loner”, dragging out “boring” years of complete loneliness. It's all in the past.

For Nikolai Alekseevich from “Dark Alleys” life turned out differently: he achieved a position in society, is surrounded by family, he has a wife and children. True, as he admits to Nadezhda, he was never happy: his wife, whom he loved “without memory,” cheated and abandoned him, his son, who was trusted big hopes, turned out to be “a scoundrel, a spendthrift, an insolent person without a heart, without honor, without a conscience...”. Of course, it can be assumed that Nikolai Alekseevich somewhat exaggerates his feeling of bitterness, his experiences, in order to somehow make amends for Nadezhda, so that it would not be so painful for her to realize the difference in their states, their different assessment of the past. Moreover, at the end of the story, when he tries to “learn a lesson” from the unexpected meeting, to sum up his life, he, reflecting, comes to the conclusion that it would still be impossible to imagine Nadezhda as the mistress of his St. Petersburg house, the mother of his children. Consequently, we understand that his wife, apparently, returned to him, and besides the scoundrel son, there are other children. But why, in this case, is he so initially irritated, bilious, gloomy, why does he have a stern and at the same time tired look? Why is this look “questioning”? Maybe this is a subconscious desire to still give oneself an account of how he lives? And why does he shake his head in bewilderment, as if driving away doubts... Yes, all because the meeting with Nadezhda brightly illuminated his past life. And it became clear to him that there had never been anything in his life better than those “truly magical” minutes when “the scarlet rose hips were in bloom, there was an alley of dark linden trees,” when he passionately loved passionate Nadezhda, and she recklessly gave herself to him with all recklessness youth.

And the hero of Turgenev’s “Asia” cannot remember anything more vividly than that “burning, tender, deep feeling” that was given to him by a childish and serious girl beyond his years...

Both of them have only “flowers of memories” left from the past - a dried geranium flower thrown from Asya’s window, a scarlet rose hip from Ogarev’s poem that accompanied the love story of Nikolai Alekseevich and Nadezhda. Only for the latter it is a flower that has caused unhealed wounds with its thorns.

So, following Turgenev, Bunin depicts the greatness of the female soul, capable of loving and remembering, in contrast to the male one, burdened with doubts, entangled in petty addictions, subordinate to social conventions. Thus, already the first story of the cycle reinforces the leading motifs of Bunin’s late work - memory, the omnipotence of the past, the significance of a single moment in comparison with the dull succession of everyday life.

Review of I. A. Bunin’s work “Dark Alleys”

Oh, these dark alleys...
Silent corners of the soul

***
“The scarlet rose hips were blooming all around,
There were dark linden alleys.
I walked in anticipation of sweets
To the beautiful, fiery Venus.

The taste of ripe lips, an alluring look
The daring dope warmed the heart
All the tenderness of dreams is a deadly poison.
Desires took over me.

I'm a prisoner of the spell, at your feet
I'm waiting for a verdict or... affection.
Minutes of happiness for two
We will share with you without publicity...”

***
How beautifully it all started.
Youth spun in a sonorous waltz.
Blind love was born
In a rich house: overweight, boring.

One day a young master
Fell in love with a simple girl.
He was handsome, good-looking.
And I found a couple like this:

Rosy cheeks, slim figure.
Resin eyes sparkle...
Who could find a flaw in it?
Only the blind will miss.

She was loved...
The maid was happy.
And it was alien to them then,
That he is a master, she is a peasant.

***
But time moves forward.
Vile treason is creeping in...
The scarlet rose hips are blooming again.
Only the linden alley was empty...

Cold look and proud look.
Arrogance is caustic in the eyes.
Proud "thief of hearts"
Her fate is in his hands.

***
This was the master - brave and ardent.
His whole life is a continuous jerk.
From the inevitable clutches of mistakes
Unfortunately, he couldn't escape.

Dear Nikolai has left,
Leaving behind the heaviness of parting.
The rose hip paradise has bloomed:
He said “goodbye”, not “goodbye”.

Their paths parted
Nadezhda was given freedom.
But love has no freedom!
Such a girl's fate.

The tavern has become a substitute for love.
I wanted to forget, but I couldn’t
I waited for him and suffered so much.
She lived only for him.

***
“...however, the best moments.
She gave me in my life...
And yet morals are cool these days!
Or maybe... she still loved?

***
Apparently something didn't work out
The simpleton has become not nice...
Why did this happen?
The truth here is not at all tricky.

What could be stronger than love?
More tender than an early forget-me-not?
What could be wiser than hearts?
Nobles have stingy prejudices.

Reviews

Alexander, thank you)
IN school years I was drawn to such retellings)
Emotions, impressions, experiences... - the world literary heroes seemed like a real world) A Buninskaya village- an echo of childhood memories. Centuries are different, but the essence is the same. And the smell, taste, color, timbre, mood, colors, landscapes, orders, characters, people... - time, worlds, although parallel, intersect)

The daily audience of the portal Stikhi.ru is about 200 thousand visitors, who in total view more than two million pages according to the traffic counter, which is located to the right of this text. Each column contains two numbers: the number of views and the number of visitors.

“The book has always been an adviser, a comforter, eloquent and calm for me, and I did not want to exhaust its benefits, saving them for the most important occasions.” George Sand

On the channel "Culture" in the program "The Glass Bead Game" the writer Igor Volgin at the end always turns to viewers with an edification: "Read and re-read the classics!"

To the extent possible, I do this. My pencil notes in books (only from my personal library!) help me return to what I read.

After a recent trip to the city of Efremov, Tula region, where the Bunin family museum is located, I finally returned to the work of my favorite writer in Once again. I re-read and analyze.

For example, I finally received an answer to the question: why is the collection of short stories, the hymn of love “Dark Alleys”, named after the first story in it, called exactly that. It turns out that Ivan Alekseevich read Nikolai Ogarev’s poem “An Ordinary Story”, which contains the lines:

It was a wonderful spring!

They sat on the shore -

The river was quiet, clear,

The sun was rising, the birds were singing;

The valley stretched beyond the river,

Calm, lush green;

Nearby, a scarlet rosehip was blooming,

There was an alley of dark linden trees...

The text of “Dark Alleys” says that in his youth the hero of the story, Nikolai Alekseevich, read poems about “dark alleys” to his beloved Nadezhda. The story ends with exactly the lines from Ogarev’s poem, only slightly edited: “The scarlet rose hips were blooming all around, there were dark linden alleys…”

Before its release on television in 2014 feature film Nikita Mikhalkov with the title story of the same name Bunin" Sunstroke"(1925) I re-read the original source. I was very surprised that from such a short story it was possible to create big movie. The “Observer” program of October 17, 2014 helped me figure this out, where the curtain was lifted in a conversation between Andrei Maksimov and Nikita Mikhalkov and Boris Lyubimov. It turns out that Vladimir Moiseenko (1963-2011) and Alexander Adabashyan wrote their original script, based on the story itself and the diaries of I.A. Bunin 1918-1920 "Cursed Days".

Reading " Damned days", which I printed out from the Internet, I put everything off until later, preparing myself for the next experience. Now, after the film "Sunstroke" and Mikhalkov's documentary film "The Easy Breath of Ivan Bunin" found on the Internet, I said to myself: it's time.

I knew the writer’s attitude towards revolutions in general from his stories. But the view on the events of 1917-1919 in Russia is clearly expressed in diary entries.

Historically, the goal of any revolution is FREEDOM. As a rule, in this event, at the helm is a LEADER or COLLECTIVE COLLUSION under the baton of “leaders” from the outside. What motivates the LEADER? I.A. Bunin quotes Napoleon’s statement on this matter: “What made the revolution? Ambition. What put an end to it? Also ambition. And what a wonderful excuse freedom was for all of us to fool the crowd!”

Freedom at any cost. Even with such calls as in Odessa in 1919: “Forward, dear ones, don’t count corpses!".

Losses in this case are the costs of the revolutionary moment. After all, there is a bright future ahead: “Factories for the workers, land for the peasants!”, which is what the newspaper “Odessa Communist” (1919) wrote about:

Communist worker

Knows what strength lies in:

He has a love for work

A diary entry dated April 15, 1919, with an unflattering description of a man named Shchepkin, alerted me: “Ten months ago, some Shpan, an extremely lousy and ragged little man, something like the worst traveling salesman, came to me and offered me to be my impresario, to go with him to Nikolaev, to Kharkov, to Kherson, where I will publicly read my works “every evening for a thousand Duma money.” Today I met him on the street: he is now one of the comrades of this crazy scoundrel Professor Shchepkin, the commissioner for theater affairs, he is shaven, well-fed—it’s clear from everything that he’s well-fed—and dressed in a wonderful English coat, thick and soft, with a wide tab at the back.”

I knew only about one Shchepkin, Mikhail Semyonovich (1788-1883), a Russian actor, the founder of the Russian acting school. The Higher Theater School bears his name.

Further, in the diary entry dated April 16, I read: “Prof. Evgeny Shchepkin, “commissar of public education” (Odessa), handed over the management of the university to “seven representatives of the revolutionary student body,” such scoundrels, they say, that even today one would be hard pressed to look for them during the day.”

The name Evgeniy gave me a hint to determine from the reference book that this was none other than Evgeniy Nikolaevich Shchepkin (1860-1920), a Russian historian and teacher, the son of Nikolai Mikhailovich Shchepkin and the grandson of the same Russian actor mentioned earlier.

Bunin’s entry from April 25 about the “commissar of public education” (for some reason Ivan Alekseevich quotes the name of this position) is generally a caricature, there is no trace of it here.

Probably, the then 49-year-old writer, already well-known in Russia, had reasons for such a categorical and disdainful attitude towards the revolutionary figure Shchepkin during the short period of Soviet power in Odessa (April - August 1919), God be his judge. But it’s still surprising, what kind of person, the descendant of the famous actor, really was? Dry information reference books gives little idea about him. And his early death on December 12, 1920 makes us think.

My acquaintance with Maximilian Voloshin began unexpectedly with his poem about Russia “The Burning Bush,” written on May 28, 1919 in Koktebel:

Who are you, Russia? Mirage? Obsession?

Have you been? There is? or not?

Whirlpool... rapids... dizziness...

Abyss... madness... delirium...

Everything is unreasonable, unusual:

Waves of victory and destruction...

The thought freezes before the thing's mystery

And the spirit is terrified...

We are infected with conscience: in every Stenka there is Saint Seraphim, Given over to the same hangovers and thirsts, We are tormented by the same will. We perish without dying, We strip the Spirit to the bottom. It’s a wondrous miracle - the Burning Bush burns without being consumed!

Before this acquaintance, I associated the phrase Burning Bush with the Icon of the Mother of God “Burning Bush”, which I wrote about in the commentary to Svetlana Tishkina’s article “The Road to the Diocese” http://site/content/view/doroga-v-eparhiyu-/

And here, in the poem, it emphasizes the inviolability of our sacred Russian state.

I met the poet’s beloved woman, not knowing who she was. I read to my son a fairy tale in verse by a certain Cherubina de Gabriac, “A Mule Without a Bridle.” It turned out that this was the poetess Elizaveta Dmitrieva, and her pseudonym was invented by Voloshin. While reading about Anna Akhmatova, I learned about the Voloshin-Dmitrieva-Gumilev love triangle and the duel between the poets. I also read Marina Tsvetaeva’s prose about her friend Max. I also discovered that the poet’s house in Koktebel was a haven for the Russian cultural elite until the owner’s death in 1932. Director Andrei Osipov made a documentary about this, “Koktebel Pebbles” (2014). This is, in fact, a portrait of the “Silver Age”.

During the troubled times of the civil war, Maximilian Voloshin, according to the recollections of his contemporaries, in his house in Koktebel saved one by one, and sometimes simultaneously, whites from reds and reds from whites.

An assessment of the personality of this person, who does not hold any revolutionary positions, I.A. Bunin in “Cursed Days” is clearly identified as a traitor to the monarchical foundations of the Russian state.

I will dwell on two excerpts of diary entries out of five:

Yesterday the poet Voloshin sat with us for a long time. He ran into a terrible situation with the offer of his services (“to decorate the city for the first of May”). I warned him: don’t run to them, it’s not only low, but also stupid, because they know very well who you were just yesterday. He responded with nonsense: “Art is timeless, outside politics, I will participate in decoration only as a poet and as an artist.” Decorating what? The gallows, and your own too? Still, he ran. And the next day in Izvestia: “Voloshin came to us, every bastard is now in a hurry to cling to us...” Now Voloshin wants to write a “letter to the editor”, full of noble indignation. Even stupider.

Here is Voloshin. The day before yesterday he called upon Russia the “Angel of Vengeance,” who was supposed to “put the delight of murder into a girl’s heart and bloody dreams into a child’s soul.” Yesterday he was a White Guard, and now he is ready to sing the Bolsheviks...

My opinion is that this God-fearing man LOVED PEOPLE, no matter what color of clothing they were dressed in. His restless soul sought justification for the events taking place in Russia at that time. It’s enough to read his poems, love for the Motherland is everywhere.

It's over with Russia... Lastly

We talked about it, chatted,

They slurped, drank, spat,

Got dirty in dirty squares,

Sold on the streets: shouldn't it?

Who wants lands, republics, and freedoms,

Civil rights? And the people's homeland

He was dragged out to rot like carrion.

Oh, Lord, open up, waste away,

Send fire, plagues and scourges upon us,

Germans from the west, Mongol from the east,

Give us into slavery again and forever,

To atone humbly and deeply

Judas' sin until the Last Judgment!

"Peace", 1917

All Rus' is a fire. Unquenchable Flame

From edge to edge, from century to century

It hums, roars... And the stone cracks.

And every torch is a person.

Are we not, like our ancestors,

Did they let him in? A hurricane

Inflated it, and drowned in acrid smoke

Forests and villages are lit...

"Kitezh", 1919

From the blood shed in battles,
From dust turned to dust,
From the torment of executed generations,
From souls baptized in blood,
Out of hateful love
From crimes, frenzy -
A righteous Rus' will arise.

I pray for her all the time
And I believe in the eternal plans:
She is forged with a sword blow,
She builds on bones
She is holy in fierce battles,
It is built on burning relics,
It melts in mad prayers.

"Spell", 1920

For a long time I could not get an answer to the question why Maximilian Voloshin did not leave Russia in 1920, when Bunin sailed from Odessa abroad? Accepted Soviet power? Resigned? The opinion of my mother’s friend, a school literature teacher with extensive experience, is authoritative for me. She believes: no, this broad-hearted man of Soviet power did not accept and did not resign himself. He simply outlined his field of activity with his slogan “Art is timeless, outside politics.” The pain is about home country hidden in my heart for the time being.

The poem “Our Lady of Vladimir” from 1929 is another outburst of emotions:

And Our Lady of Vladimir

Rus' led through abomination, blood and shame

On the rapids of Kyiv boats

Pointing to the correct fairway.

But a blind people in a time of wrath

He himself gave away the keys of his shrines,

And the Representative-Virgo left

From their desecrated strongholds...

Faithful guardian and zealous guardian

Mother Vladimirskaya, - to you -

Two keys: golden to Her abode,

Rusty - to our sad fate.

The bell rang for Maximilian Voloshin at the age of 55. His heart is tired.

Ivan Alekseevich Bunin lived to be 83 years old.

God works in mysterious ways!

In Kyiv, "the destruction of the monument to Alexander II has begun." A familiar activity. After all, back in March 17, eagles and coats of arms began to be torn off...

How does this resonate with modern times? The Lenin attack began in Ukraine. Alexander II is the Russian Emperor. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin is the founder of Ukraine as a state and Ukrainians as a nation. This is the attitude towards history!

Now I will return to the beginning of the note with gratitude to my faithful friends, books. And I’ll end with the famous words of A.S. Pushkin:

Oh how many wonderful discoveries we have

Prepare the spirit of enlightenment

And experience, the son of difficult mistakes,

And genius, friend of paradoxes,

And chance, God the inventor.