Ease of thought is of extraordinary significance. Great encyclopedia of oil and gas

Extraordinary ease of thought
From the comedy “The Inspector General” (1836) by N.V. Gogol (1809-1852), where (act. 3, scene 6) Khlestakov, boasting of his literary abilities, says: “However, there are many of mine: “The Marriage of Figaro” ", "Robert the Devil", "Norma". I don’t even remember the names. And it all happened: I didn’t want to write, but the theater management said: “Please, brother, write something.” I think to myself, if you please, brother! And then in one evening, it seems, he wrote everything, astonishing everyone. I have an extraordinary lightness in my thoughts.”
Playfully and ironically: about a frivolous, eccentric person; about playful, frivolous behavior and mood.

encyclopedic Dictionary winged words and expressions. - M.: “Locked-Press”. Vadim Serov. 2003.

See what “Extraordinary lightness of thought” is in other dictionaries:

Adj., number of synonyms: 13 carefree (49) carefree (31) wind in the head (22) ... Synonym dictionary

LIGHTNESS and; and. 1. to Easy (1 6 digits). L. air. L. clothes. L. gait. Easily complete the assignment. L. character. 2. A feeling of elation, vigor, a surge of strength, and a desire for activity. Feel l. in body. 3. Feeling of freedom, absence... ... encyclopedic Dictionary

Schoolboyish, trifling, snickers and hags, frivolous, nonsense, undignified, petty, wasted, trifling, worthless, childish, third-rate, frivolous, third-rate, superficial, extraordinary lightness of thought, frivolous, ... ... Synonym dictionary

Carefree, carefree, cheerful, safe, careless, gaffe, oversight, reckless, carefree, unruly; frivolous, careless, indifferent; slob. But I also did not doze (in inaction). Even grief (grief) is not enough for him... Synonym dictionary

See frivolous... Synonym dictionary

Childish, flighty, undignified, frivolous, careless, blown by the wind, flighty head, flighty, unfounded, mischievous, lives for today, lives for the minute, empty, lives for one day, extraordinary ease of thought, with the breeze... ... Synonym dictionary

Frivolous, anemone (anemone), helipad, carminative. Wed. frivolous... Synonym dictionary

Extraordinary ease of thought, lives for one day, frivolous, empty, carefree, wind in the head, frivolous, blown by the wind, mischievous, careless, lives for today, unfounded, blown by the wind Dictionary of Russian synonyms.... ... Synonym dictionary

Flighty, carefree, careless, imprudent, careless, indiscriminate, injudicious, uncalculating, fickle, fickle, empty; unfounded, thoughtless, hasty; gullible. Anemone (anemone), carminative,... ... Synonym dictionary

Unfounded, baseless, unfounded, empty, shaky. This news has no basis, is devoid of foundation, a newspaper canard is not based on anything. A house built on sand. .. Wed. unsubstantiated, frivolous... Dictionary of Russian synonyms and... ... Synonym dictionary

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The extraordinary ease with which cis-trais transformations of polyenes occur under the influence of light has put chemists working with such compounds, for example, carotenoids, in a very difficult position.

Children with extraordinary lightness adapt to the world of global information networks; all conditions have been created for this purpose.

This hydrocarbon polymerizes with extraordinary ease. Polymerization produces a dimer and a polymer.

The diagnosis of glaucoma was made with extraordinary ease only on the basis that there were complaints of the likeness of rainbow circles and ophthalmotonometry data were at the upper limit of normal.

Isobutylene oxide has the very remarkable property of reacting with water with extraordinary ease.

Pericyclic reactions, which allow ring-forming reactions to be carried out with extraordinary ease and exceptional selectivity in one hit, replacing long, multi-step and unreliable pathways, have largely been responsible for the enormous successes of organic synthesis of the last twenty years in the creation of complex polycyclic systems. Secret achieved success lies precisely in a deep understanding of the reaction mechanism, which makes it possible to accurately predict its direction.

Lebedev and Filonenko2 showed that isobutylene polymerizes under the influence of certain weakly calcined silicates with extraordinary ease. At the same time, the formation of a number of polymer forms from di- to hexamer and the presence of higher polymer forms that cannot be separated by distillation were observed.

Lebedev and E.P. Filonenko - it was shown that isobutylene polymerizes under the influence of certain weakly calcined silicates with extraordinary ease. At the same time, the formation of a number of polymer forms from di- to hexamer and the presence of higher polymer forms that cannot be separated by distillation were observed.

Molecules repel each other, and this is certain, since otherwise liquids and solids would shrink with extraordinary ease.

It should be borne in mind that not all cholesterol in blood plasma comes from food: the body is able to synthesize it itself, which it does with extraordinary ease. Therefore, if you are on a diet completely devoid of cholesterol, it will still be present in fairly large quantities in the lipoproteins of the blood. Hence, it is more reasonable to assume that the problem lies not simply in the presence of cholesterol in the blood, but in the tendency of individuals to deposit it in those vessels that are most important for the functioning of the body.

E. E. Wagner and his students worked a lot and fruitfully in the field of studying terpenes: Brickner, Godlevsky, Flavitsky, Tsenkovsky, etc. Only the depth of thought, exceptional diligence, subtlety and clarity of experiment allowed E. E. Wagner and his students to understand complex chemistry This class of compounds undergoes isomerization processes with extraordinary ease and complex and unexpected rearrangements that complicate hard way research on these substances.

This phenomenon is inherent mainly in unsaturated hydrocarbons, some of which polymerize with extraordinary ease, while others, on the contrary, extremely slowly, when heated or in the presence of a catalyst.

Thus, proteins (protein substances) form the basis of both the structure and functions of living organisms. Crick, proteins are important primarily because they can perform a wide variety of functions, and with extraordinary ease and grace. It is estimated that in nature there are approximately 1010 - 1012 different proteins that ensure the existence of about 106 species of living organisms of varying complexity of organization, from viruses to humans.

On the website of the radio station “Echo of Moscow” there is a “polls” section. The results of voting, which are carried out both on the Echo website itself and by telephone, are posted there. At the moment when I am writing this column, the website shows the results of three surveys: “Does Russia need Foreign tourists?”, “Are you able to save money with energy-saving lamps?” And between them there are the results of the Echo of Moscow audience’s answers to the question: “Meet a representative of what nationality in dark time are you afraid of the day? The first two questions each have three possible answers: “yes”, “no” and “difficult to answer”. The third one also has clues: “Ukrainian”, “Chechen” and “difficult to answer”. The latter, apparently, is just in case. If the listener of “Echo” has not yet decided for himself who is scarier: a Ukrainian or a Chechen.

These are the everyday questions that are relevant to Russians and are offered to them by the most popular and pluralistic Russian radio station. Based on the voting results, the Echo audience can look in the mirror and find out that the majority in this audience, 54%, believes that Russia does not need foreign tourists, and also that only 39% manage to save on light bulbs. And in the meantime, find out that 57% of those who took part in the survey - there were more than 9 thousand of them at the time of writing - are afraid of Ukrainians, 31% are afraid of Chechens, and 12% have not yet decided which of the representatives of these two peoples they fear more .

It is clear that media polls have about the same relationship to real public opinion as canned food has to the conservatory. It is clear that studying public opinion in a country creeping from an authoritarian regime to a totalitarian one, the task is very unusual, and in today’s Russia it is poorly implemented. It is clear that this survey about “terrible Ukrainians” and “terrible Chechens” was designed in such a way that among its participants there were only a minority of those who took this foulness seriously and actually made a choice in a situation where it is clear to a more or less sane person that and there is no such question. With the same success, you can invite the Echo audience to answer the question: “Who would you like to abuse this evening: your mother or your father?” Well, it’s cool, isn’t it “Echo people”?

From the comments in in social networks It became clear that the “leadership” of Ukrainians in this “survey” was ensured by the citizens of Ukraine, who, having learned about yet another disgrace on “Echo,” decided to have fun and vote for themselves, the “terrible ones.” Troll the organizers of a stupid survey, bringing it to the point of complete absurdity. However, a certain number of Echo fans took part in this event seriously…

The idea to conduct a stupid survey arose during the “Personally Yours” program with Vasily Oblomov, who, in fact, made this proposal. This is where “it” grew from. The conversation turned to Chechnya, about Kadyrov.

V. Oblomov: “You can conduct a survey among Echo of Moscow listeners: “Do you think that Russia... who actually won this Chechen war, in the first, and in the second - who really won? Moreover, if you conduct a survey among viewers of Channel One, who is more feared during an ordinary meeting on the street - an American, a Ukrainian from Western Ukraine, a Western Bandera member, a native Russian, a Chinese or a Chechen - and ask him the question: who is for you personally poses a great threat - it seems that all three of us sitting here can guess which answer will take the leading position. Conduct a survey, submit a question right now!”

A. Naryshkin: “We have two possible answers...”

V. Oblomov: “Let there be Ukrainians or Chechens.”

I cannot help but note the amazing ease with which Vasily Oblomov pronounces the ethnofolism “Khokhol”. Let me remind you that we are not talking about some kind of cave xenophobe. In the Echo studio sits a young, talented poet of quite clearly democratic convictions, the author wonderful texts no less remarkable project “Good Mister”, who spoke at the 2011 rally. He has many bright and precise words about the Putin regime. Here, for example: “the symbol of Russia may not become St. George Ribbon, but insulating.” Well said, isn't it? And such a wonderful young man sits on the air, when many thousands of people listen to him and see him, and he utters a word for which it’s time to hit him in the face. As in a normal company, people have long been punched in the face for ethno-pholism, which denotes a Jew. By the way, I don’t think a derogatory nickname for Jews could have come out of anyone’s mouth on Echo. Because there is a consensus on the “Holocaust” in the liberal community and 6 million victims are already automatically turning into a scoundrel everyone who utters the word with which Jews were sent to the gas chambers. Apparently, for the Russian liberal crowd, 10 thousand Ukrainian citizens are not enough for the same taboo to be used to humiliate Ukrainians. By the way, if the leaders of Roskomnadzor had brains, instead of four completely harmless swear words, with which the Russian language has long ago dealt with it, and Russian culture has long given them their place of honor in a dark but well-ventilated cultural basement, all words of “hate speech”, to which ethno-folisms relate in the first place, would be prohibited.

Let's return to the “survey”. If we ignore the trolling on the part of Ukrainian citizens who decided to laugh at the “echo” fools, then the remainder will be what is called a “formative survey.” This is often done by dirty political strategists before elections. They ask, for example, the question: “Will you vote for Ivanov, who wants to make pensions 5 thousand euros, or for Petrov, who wants to abolish them altogether?” Then the survey data is published and citizens inclined to conformism add their voice to the formed majority.

The results of the xenophobic survey are posted on the Echo website and, at the time of writing, they were viewed by tens of thousands of people. What's the result? The initiator of the xenophobic survey, poet Vasily Oblomov, undoubtedly acted stupidly and disgustingly. He is not a media executive. Not Chief Editor. He is a poet who easily and quickly writes sharp and biting poetry. This is a special head device. “The ease of thought is extraordinary.” This is, for example, Dmitry Bykov. Sometimes it seems that words don’t go through their heads. They just don’t have time to process it in the brain. The main thing is that they can write good poems on the topic of the day, and may God grant them both health and inspiration, both Bykov and Oblomov. But, have mercy, this does not mean that everything that comes out of their mouth should immediately be turned into metal. Bykov, for example, admires the Soviet project, so what do you order: revive the USSR?

There are no questions to Oblomov’s interlocutors, to the two Alexei, Solomin and Naryshkin, who “filmed down” a completely Nazi question on “Echo”. These are two chicks of Venediktov’s nest, from among those that AAV breeds with the help of special selection. Here appeals to reason and conscience are meaningless, since there are no addressees. It’s the same story with the editor-in-chief of the “echo” website, Vitaly Ruvinsky. This is the one who filmed an interview with Viktor Shenderovich about Putin and his criminal and sports circle from the Echo website. Ruvinsky then lied a lot online, endlessly repeating: “I removed it (Shenderovich’s interview) from the site, there were personal insults throughout the entire broadcast.” The text of this interview still hangs on the website of Radio Liberty, it is called: “Shenderovich stopped joking.” There you can see how Ruvinsky is lying and why this interview was actually removed.

You could, of course, ask Alexey Venediktov if he likes what he has on his website (just don’t pretend that the website is a separate media outlet!) There has been Nazi crap hanging for two days now. But for some reason I don’t want to ask. Let it hang and be identification mark for everyone who has not yet understood what “Echo of Moscow” is and who Alexey Venediktov is.

In 1923, Osip Mandelstam published a sharply negative review of new novel Andrey Bely "Notes of an Eccentric". In this review, he wrote in particular: “Bely has extraordinary freedom and ease of thought when he literally tries to tell what his spleen is thinking.”

The above fragment contains a slightly altered, but completely identifiable, textbook quote from Gogol’s Khlestakov’s monologue: “By the way, there are many of mine: “The Marriage of Figaro,” “Robert the Devil,” “Norma.” I don’t even remember the names. And it all happened by chance: I didn’t want to write, but the theater management said: please, brother, write something. I think to myself: if you please, brother! And then in one evening, it seems, he wrote everything, astonishing everyone. I have extraordinary lightness in thoughts”.

As often happened with Osip Mandelstam, he entered into a battle with Andrei Bely, armed with the techniques... Andrei Bely, back in 1909, in the feuilleton “Stamped Culture”, portrayed in the guise of Khlestakov his then sworn enemy, the poet Georgy Chulkov.

But he likened the author of “Notes of an Eccentric” himself, who was inclined to stun his interlocutors and readers with dizzying verbal pirouettes, to a hero Gogol's comedy not only Mandelstam. In particular, D.P. Svyatopolk-Mirsky wrote sarcastically about Bely in 1922: “It’s either Khlestakov or Ezekiel. And this is no coincidence, inseparable. “Extraordinary lightness of thoughts” is organically connected with brilliant cosmic intuition - some kind of fiery cancan of suspended comets.”

However, in Mandelstam’s case, the matter, apparently, was not limited to verbal pirouettes. After all, Bely just in 1923 completed the publication of his grandiose “Memoirs of Blok” with their cross-cutting theme fraternities two poets. So he could well understand Mandelstam’s unkind joke also as a malicious hint at Khlestakov’s classic: “On friendly terms with Pushkin. I used to often say to him: “Well, brother, Pushkin?” “Yes, brother,” he answered, it happened, “that’s how it all is...”

It is unlikely that the offended Andrei Bely knew that in the quoted fragment of the review of “Notes of an Eccentric” Mandelstam himself was indirectly responding to the attack of his ill-wisher. And this attack, in turn, was provoked by Mandelstam’s earlier harshness. In the note “Something about Georgian Art” (1922), Mandelstam described the work of the Blue Horns poetic group, headed by Titian Tabidze and Paolo Yashvili, as follows: “The Blue Horns are revered in Georgia as the supreme judges in the field of art, but God is their God.” judge<...>The only Russian poet who has an undeniable influence on them is Andrei Bely, this mystical Verbitskaya for foreigners.”

In response, Titian Tabidze burst out with an angry philippic, playing on the theme of the “indisputable influence” of Russian poetry on Georgian: “Osip Mandelstam was the first among Russian poets to settle in Tbilisi. Thanks to the philanthropy of the Georgians, this hungry tramp, Agasfer, took advantage of the opportunity and begged. But when everyone was already tired of him, he inevitably went his own way. This Khlestakov of Russian poetry in Tbilisi he demanded such an attitude towards himself, as if all Russian poetry was represented in his person.”

And now Mandelstam was returning the blow to Titian. “Khlestakov is not me at all, but your and Yashvili’s poetic idol,” he hinted.

Another five years will pass, and fate, in the person of the literary critic and translator A.G. Gornfeld will pay Mandelstam in full for his old joke about Bely-Khlestakov. Accusing Osip Emilievich of stupid vanity and boastful exaggerations, Gornfeld will mockingly quote Khlestakov’s famous “thirty-five thousand couriers alone,” but will mean the famous Khlestakov’s: “... and there is another “Yuri Miloslavsky,” so that one is mine.”

Why exactly - “...so he’s mine”? Because in mid-September 1928, the publishing house "Land and Factory" published Charles de Coster's book "The Legend of Till Eulenspiegel", where on the title page Mandelstam was mistakenly indicated as a translator, although in reality he only processed, edited and combined into one two works previously translated by Arkady Gornfeld and Vasily Karyakin. A difficult moral situation arose for Mandelstam: Gornfeld published a feuilleton in the Krasnaya Gazeta under the biting title “Translation Concoction,” which accused Osip Emilievich of appropriating the results of someone else’s work. Mandelstam responded to his offender open letter in “Evening Moscow”, in which he asked: “Does Gornfeld really not value the peace and moral strength of the writer, who came to him 2000 miles away for an explanation? It was in response to this that Gornfeld allowed himself an offensive parallel to Mandelstam and Khlestakov: “...Neither “raised mountains,” nor twenty years, nor thirty volumes, nor 2000 versts, nor the rest will help.” 35 thousand couriers”.

It is interesting that the disparaging description previously given to Mandelstam by Gornfeld in a private letter to a friend (“petty swindler”) coincides word for word with the caricature of the author of “Stone” and “Tristia”, which he sketched in 1933, in a letter to Fyodor Gladkov, Andrei Bely: “...There is, excuse me, something “roguish” in him, which makes his intelligence, erudition, and “culture” look especially unpleasant.”

What, besides purely personal reasons and the everyday anti-Semitism common to many symbolists, could turn Bely away from Mandelstam?

A possible answer: a clear Mandelstam-like resemblance to his, Andrei Bely’s, artistic appearance, which was probably perceived by the author of “Petersburg” as caricatured, “roguish,” “Khlestakovian.” Kind of like how Stavrogin judges Petrusha Verkhovensky: “I laugh at my monkey.” Or as Sergei Makovsky told Nikolai Gumilyov about Sergei Gorodetsky: “...It’s as if a man (Gumilyov) comes in, followed by a monkey (Gorodetsky), which senselessly imitates a person’s gestures.”

A similar attitude towards the Acmeists was shared by almost all the writers in the circle of Bely and Blok. “There seems to be a “new worldview” in Acmeism,” Gorodetsky babbles into the phone, Blok wrote irritably in his diary on April 20, 1913. - I say - why do you want to “be called”, you are no different from us<...>the main thing is to write your own.”

Once upon a time, Vladimir Solovyov, having found himself in a similar situation, wrote three “Parodies of Russian Symbolists” (1895) in revenge against Bryusov and other aspiring modernist poets. We would like to present the second of these parodies here in full.

Over the green hill
Over the green hill,
The two of us in love,
The two of us in love
A star shines at noon,
She shines at noon
At least no one ever
He won't notice that star.
But the wavy fog
But the fog is wavy,
He is from radiant countries,
From the land of radiance,
He glides between the clouds
Over the dry wave
Motionlessly flying
And with a double moon.

In the 1910s, Mandelstam wrote a short comic variation on the theme of this parody:

Embracing closely, the couple marveled at the huge star.

In the morning they realized: it was the moon shining.

And in 1920, in the program poem “I forgot the word, what I wanted to say...” Mandelstam used an image similar to the image of the “dry wave” from Solovyov’s parody, without a hint of irony.

I can't hear the birds. Immortelle does not bloom.
The manes of the night herd are transparent.
In a dry river An empty shuttle floats.
Among the grasshoppers the word is unconscious.

What to the symbolists and forerunners of symbolism seemed an absurd caricature of their own cherished poetics, the younger generation of modernists took up and developed quite seriously.

As for the influence of Andrei Bely on Mandelstam, it is easiest to identify it in prose. The thick glow of Bely’s novels falls on Mandelstam’s story “The Egyptian Brand.” In 1923, in the already cited review of “Notes of an Eccentric,” Mandelstam stated disapprovingly: “In a book you can hatch the plot by raking through a bunch of verbal garbage<...>But the plot in this book is just a bummer, it wouldn’t even be worth talking about.” “The Egyptian Stamp” (1927) this reproach can be addressed with much greater justification than “Notes of an Eccentric” or any other work of Bely. “I am not afraid of incoherence and discontinuities,” Mandelstam defiantly declares in his story.

Mandelstam the prose writer’s orientation towards the work of the creator Khlestakov cannot but attract attention - following and partly in imitation of Andrei Bely.

At the macro level, this was manifested primarily in the fact that the very plot of “The Egyptian Brand” goes back to Gogol’s “The Overcoat.”

At the micro level, in addition to direct quotes from Gogol, this manifested itself primarily in the abundance of conscious departures from the main storyline, which was extremely characteristic of both Gogol and Andrei Bely. Other Mandelstam techniques (for example, a detailed and frankly comical description of the “partition covered with pictures” in the house of the tailor Mervis) seem almost student-like, adopted from the late Gogol: “There was Pushkin with a crooked face, in a fur coat, whom some gentlemen, looking like torchbearers, they were carried out of a carriage as narrow as a guard's box and, not paying attention to the surprised coachman in a metropolitan's hat, were about to be thrown into the entrance. Nearby is an old-fashioned nineteenth-century pilot - Santos Dumont in double-breasted jacket with keychains - thrown out of the basket of a balloon by the play of the elements, he hung on a rope, looking back at the soaring condor. Next were the Dutch on stilts, marching through their small country like a crane.”

Let’s compare with a similar description, for example, in Gogol’s “Portrait”: “Winter with white trees, a completely red evening, like the glow of a fire, a Flemish man with a pipe and a broken arm, looking more like an Indian rooster in cuffs<...>To this could be added several engraved images: a portrait of Khozrev-Mirza in a sheepskin hat, portraits of some generals in triangular hats with crooked noses.”

Speaking of noses. In another of Mandelstam’s prose works, “The Noise of Time” (1923), it is reported that about Minister “Witte, everyone said that he had a golden nose, and the children blindly believed this and only looked at his nose. However, the nose was ordinary and fleshy in appearance.” This passage begs for comparison with Gogol’s Poprishchin’s judgment regarding the nose of the chamber cadet Teplov: “After all, his nose is not made of gold, but just like mine, like everyone else’s; because he smells it.”

When in 1934 Osip Mandelstam wrote a series of poems dedicated to the memory of Andrei Bely, his wife Nadezhda Yakovlevna turned to him with a strange question at first glance: “Why are you burying yourself?”

These notes of ours represent an attempt to comment on the question of Mandelstam’s wife and a partial answer to her question.

M. Weller. Our prince and khan: Historical detective story. – M.: AST, 2015. – 288 p. – 20,000 copies.

Two preliminary remarks as a warning. Officially, Weller is called a Russian writer, but this is not entirely true. He is a Russian-speaking foreigner, a citizen of Estonia. It happens that a Russian writer lives and works abroad while remaining Russian, but this is not the case. Weller, to put it mildly, cannot stand Russia, or, more simply, he hates it; this feeling splashes from every page of his book. And further. They present Mikhail Iosifovich as a “non-commercial” writer, marveling at the huge circulation of his books. This doesn't fit into any corners. He is the most commercial of all, and in no case should one be surprised at his publishing successes.

The annotation calls the book “a novel from the time of the Battle of Kulikovo.” It says: “Russian history was falsified by the PR people of the Middle Ages. The battle with Mamai and the punitive raid of Tokhtamysh did not look at all like what we had been told for centuries. And we ourselves are not who we thought we were..."

According to Weller, all historians lied, they lied to please the authorities, and now he appeared to show us the truth. Moreover, he does not have a single reference, not a single name of any historian. Not a single quote. They lie - that's all. Along the way - arrogant statements that the people do not need the truth, and only a select few are interested in it, as follows from the context, including Mikhail Iosifovich. According to Weller, Dmitry Donskoy was a complete scoundrel and a mediocre commander; on the Kulikovo field he carried out orders Mongol Khan Tokhtamysh to punish the military leader Mamai, who rebelled against him, and nothing more. There was no struggle for the liberation of Rus' from the Horde yoke, no emergence of all-Russian national unity, and there was no battle itself. And Saint Sergius of Radonezh did not bless Dmitry for the battle - he hated the prince. And after the battle, almost all the Russian principalities allegedly intended to surrender to Lithuania, but Khan Tokhtamysh did not allow this. And a similar interpretation of literally all the events of that tragic era.

No, I wouldn't say that Weller understands historical facts like a pig in oranges. The pig just eats, she doesn’t call oranges apples or grapefruits, much less hates them. And Weller, speaking about any fact, declares it either non-existent, or having the opposite meaning, or incorrectly interpreted. For example: “The results of the Battle of Kulikovo were completely sad and meaningless for Muscovite Rus'. Human losses weakened the strength of the state... territorial losses reduced economic potential. The invasion of Tokhtamysh, who burned and slaughtered Moscow and the surrounding area (1382), aggravated Muscovy’s dependence on the Horde. When the Horde collapses in a hundred years, it will in no way depend on Moscow resistance.”

True, in some areas he seems to be really poorly informed - this especially applies to church issues. For example, he shed a tear over the fact that “the revered Sergius of Radonezh was left without metropolitanship,” that Dmitry Donskoy opposed Sergius receiving the highest church rank. This means that the “Russian writer” knows nothing at all about our great righteous man, about his life and his principles. Weller also mentioned the candidate for metropolitan Mityai - in order to kick him and call him a “helpful confessor.” Meanwhile, this Mityai (Mikhail) was a very educated and outstanding statesman. But Weller is not interested in such figures. He is looking in Rus' only for slaves and serfs, serfs and slaves.

And, of course, bandits. “The methods used to unify Rus' were gang warfare. Each bandit accumulated strength, gained supporters and enlisted the support of a senior authority. Each bandit wanted to bend and oblige the other. Become a foreman, and then a helmsman,” writes Weller about the history of the country he hates. He insistently repeats that Rus' and the Horde were the same - both politically and ethnically (the Horde, however, in his opinion, is better). And this is not just a quirk of an ignoramus. This is a deliberate distancing of our country from Europe, from Christian civilization in general. Equating Rus' and the Horde, Mikhail Iosifovich brackets the irrefutable fact that the Russians acted on their own land, and the Mongols came from very distant lands, from the banks of Kerulen and Onon, that they were invaders. The “historical detective” stubbornly insists that Russia is, in essence, the same Mongol empire. And even the cover of the book is disgustingly hooligan: a Genghis Khan mask is superimposed on the portrait of Brezhnev (or some other Soviet leader).

Weller makes jokes in many places, ridiculing the fact that Russian historians supposedly embellish the actions (including military achievements) of their own and denigrate the “Tatars.” I put the word in quotation marks because Mongols and Tatars are far from the same thing. The ancestors of today's Tatars, residents of Volga Bulgaria (which suffered the first blow of the Mongols), lived and worked on their land, like all the surrounding peoples. And the Battle of Kulikovo, which is formally the theme of Weller’s opus, was not a battle between the Russians and the Tatars. As the famous and authoritative (not like Weller) writer-historian Yuri Loschits writes: “The battle of September 8, 1380 was not a battle of nations. This was a battle between the sons of the Russian people and that cosmopolitan forced or hired rabble who did not have the right to speak on behalf of any of the peoples – the neighbors of Rus'.” Weller, among his other, to put it mildly, frivolous statements, expresses doubt that the Genoese fought in the army of Mamai - who, they say, saw them? But Russian historians wrote them in for some unknown reason. The detective does not say that the Genoese and Venetians had good reasons for participating in the battle. They made huge profits from the slave trade. Usually they bought Russian (as well as Polish, Moldavian and Circassian) slaves from the Horde and resold them many times more expensive in Italy. Naturally, the cost of prisoners captured by themselves turned out to be much less. But Mikhail Iosifovich is silent about this.

And here it must be emphasized that the author repeatedly points out the similarity of both the USSR and the current Russian Federation to that medieval Rus'. His analogies are simple: they lie about the Battle of Kulikovo - they also lie about the Great Patriotic War. "In all Soviet literature about the war,” he writes, “there were more Germans in 1941, and they had machine guns. And there were a lot of tanks - but it turned out later that there were more of ours, and there was much more of our equipment, and they beat us with fewer numbers.” Weller lies shamelessly. A long time ago, everything was calculated and measured, and above all, what Hitler had was one and a half times more people and the industrial potential was more than ours - steel, for example, they produced three times more than the USSR. But why would Weller remind the reader of this? His NATO bosses may not like this. And the Russophobe tries – he showers the reader with the slop of his slander: from accusations of anti-Semitism to the Maidan interpretation of current events in Ukraine.

At the beginning of the review, the words from the annotation were already quoted: “And we ourselves are not who we thought we were.” Without any hesitation, the “historical writer” cuts: “Our state is from the Horde, and the people are increasingly from Lithuania.” In his opinion, we were first colonized by the Norman Varangians, giving us the beginnings of statehood, then the Mongols polished the structure. That's all. Explained just as simply national character Russians are slaves, groveling before their superiors.

Naturally, the listed shortcomings of the book “Our Prince and Khan” do not seem like shortcomings to everyone. The public like the Shenderovichs and Akhedzhakovs, the Latyns and Makareviches, fans of “Silver Rain” and Weller’s cooking will certainly like it. And why - he craps on Russia and Russians, he doesn’t bother the readers’ brains with various references to sources and scientific reasoning. Moreover, he sprinkles his speech with thieves and half-thieves words. Weller's pen, it must be admitted, is quick; as Gogol used to say, “extraordinary lightness of thought.” The allies of the above-mentioned gentlemen rule the modern Russian publishing business - why be surprised at the circulation of 20 thousand copies, inaccessible to good Russian writers. And the fact that the author is a foreigner is even more pleasant for these gentlemen; this makes him, as a “source of historical information,” even more authoritative.