Prilepin latest publications. Prilepin - Tolstoy: “The Motherland is more important than your freedom Zakhar Prilepin latest publications

The famous writer and publicist, who himself once went through the war in Chechnya and dedicated the acclaimed novel “Pathologies” to it, turned to the topic of the war in Donbass. Prilepin’s new journalistic book “Everything that must be resolved...” is about this.

Sergey Grachev, AiF: Zakhar, from the very title of the book a simple question follows: what should be resolved?

Zakhar Prilepin: The book has the answer. The situation in Donbass will inevitably be resolved, and, I believe, not in favor of the current Kyiv government. Moreover, the situation is not only in Donbass, but also in Ukraine itself. At least for most of it. But this story will last for a long time. This won't happen tomorrow, unfortunately. The situation in Donbass worries me most of all for over two years now. Most. That’s why I go there all the time, as soon as there’s a “window.” Actually, I’ve been officially working there recently. I will report on the results. Or you will see them yourself.

We are waiting for victory

—You have a lot of tender, in a good sense, stories. Why does the topic of war haunt you?

“I can’t write tender stories all my life, by God.” Then, does war deny kindness, tenderness, forgiveness and, most importantly, sacrifice? On the front line - look at the people's eyes. These are the most beautiful Russian people: no fuss, no lust, no weakness. Heavenly eyes. Isn't this about tenderness? Then, you say some strange things: “the topic lets go, it doesn’t let go.” There really is a war going on there, daily battles and bombings. Why do my “themes” matter? I am where I can help my people. “Topics” - we’ll discuss this after the victory.

— A few days ago, on a minibus, I listened to conversations: “How nice it is to watch the news! Everyone is afraid of us! We are the coolest! Finally!" What's this?! Is aggression in our genes?

- I haven’t heard such conversations. I think in any country you can find a fool who brags. But in general, aggression is a biologically inherent quality in humans. Genes have nothing to do with it. Peoples who, under the influence of certain externally imposed ideologies such as total political correctness and other nonsense, lose their specific masculine qualities, risk losing their identity and place of residence altogether.

— Have there been any changes in your views - regarding the Russian world, or regarding the events in Ukraine? We all make mistakes! It's just that not everyone is able to admit these mistakes...

“I’ve had the same views all my life—I repeat the same things over and over again, like a crazy person. Christian socialism, Holy Rus', leftist empire, “O Rus', flap your wings...”, “All countries border on each other, and Russia on God,” “Everything owes Russians, Russians owe no one,” and all that stuff. I'm not inventing anything new. And I can hardly think of it.

I can't say anything about my mistakes. I remember that people I trusted turned out to be beneath that trust. And the people to whom I had questions found answers to some of my questions. In the first case, I mean some of my acquaintances in the opposition. In the second - part of the people who are now at the helm.

Power is in the truth?

— As far as I understand, your close comrade, director Yuri Bykov, said in our interview with him: “Television channels have been given certain state goals, and they are trying to achieve these goals by all means possible. This is completely understandable, just as it is also clear that society has never received the whole truth from us, and it is not ready for it.” Do you share this position?

- Do you know what “the whole truth” is? Bykov is right: no one knows “the whole truth.” That is, if you are a believer, then you know that the Lord God knows her. As for earthly representatives, I will tell you quite sincerely that the level of awareness in Russia is many times higher than in Ukraine, Germany or France. And to control the masses is simply the task of the state. It can talk to itself as much as it wants that it is a “night watchman”; in fact, for example, the American administration controls not only the masses in its own country, but also billions of people beyond its borders. Manipulates them and gives them such a ridiculous part of the truth that no Stalinist propaganda can compare with it.

- Bykov explains this by saying that man is by nature weak, cowardly, inert and thinks first of all about survival and his own well-being. Is everything really so simple and primitive?

— Bykov said about one part of a person, he can also say about another. He is a Russian director. It’s as if Tolstoy described to you only, say, Karenin or Steve, and from this you drew all the conclusions about humanity. There is also Vronsky and Levin there. There are, in addition, “Cossacks” and “Sevastopol Stories”. There's even a Philippok.

There is rational and irrational in people. From Russia, forty thousand militiamen went to Donbass in two years. Even if you don’t like it or, on the contrary, like it, it doesn’t matter, but do you really find such a huge mass of men weak, inert and thinking only about survival?

It must be taken into account that another four million men could not leave simply due to family or financial reasons - some because of age, and some because of health. We live within an amazingly passionate and sacrificial people. And you are talking about weakness and laziness. We are talking about some different peoples.

Who's waiting for change?

— It’s been a long time since I heard the word “stability” in relation to the situation in the country. And the majority seems to think that it exists...

- Stability, but shaky, shaky. Food security must be ensured. And “children of Borisov’s nest” ( B. Yeltsin. - Ed.) from the government to send him to a well-deserved rest. There are many more of them there. Then it will be calmer. The problem is that they are not going on vacation at all.

“Perhaps it’s inappropriate, but I remembered that a few years ago, quite often and a lot was said about the need for change. They really expected and wanted changes in society... Now this feeling is gone.

— On the one hand, haven’t there been enough changes? On the other hand, no, changes are expected. Some frantically expect that everything will be like under “Grandfather Boris.” And others expect the country to move to the left. Even Nikita Sergeevich Mikhalkov, a great director who can hardly be accused of sympathizing with the Soviet period, and he announced that with the legacy Gorbachev and Yeltsin needs to critically examine and summarize all the mistakes. This is also a desire for change. And this desire, I assure you, is shared by the overwhelming majority of the country. But for our overwhelming majority, there is an even more overwhelming minority. And it categorically does not share these ideas.

Moreover, this overwhelming minority is technologically and financially still, alas, stronger than all of us. So there will still be changes. There is dissonance, and it will have to be overcome.

When communicating with adults who, by their own free will and reasonable choice, live without children, I always feel something unhealthy in them.

Even abnormal.

Even with just one child, families seem frankly incomplete to me, but here it is.

I only met a handsome and sane man over forty who lives with his mother once. In the film “The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath!”

It's the same story with women.

You even look with mixed feelings at those women whose photographs (usually ten years ago) appear on the pages of magazines, accompanied by the headlines “My children are my audience” or “I gave my life to art!”

I gave it to art, that’s how. And art - is it in the know?

A person who does not have children always wants to deceive someone, but, according to my subjective observations, in the end he only deceives himself.

I do not know why it is so.

Maybe because when you lose, no one and nothing will console you.

And you will definitely lose.

And children are the only thing that can save the soul, because the soul often ends during life. Or he doesn’t have time to grow.

Or maybe because God is really not a fraer?

Thousands of thousands of girls flee motherhood in order to preserve all the miracles they wear, and thousands of thousands disappear without a trace.

But in any European capital you can find photographic images, the size of a five-story building, of Natalia Vodianova advertising underwear.

She, Nizhny Novgorod, excuse me, Cinderella, who lived from hand to mouth and sold vegetables at the market, barely came into this business and began to earn her first million, she immediately began having children. And she has already given birth to three.

No normal girl would have done that in her place.

She would have done exactly the opposite: after all, the suit went well, what other children?

But we never recognized the famous names who did the opposite. So far we only know about Vodianova.

Does this mean having three is the best route to becoming a top model?

Of course not.

However, no matter what you do, human, especially female, beauty is piercing and captivating only when fate, tenderness, mercy, and the ability to act appear through the wonderful features.

Am I saying vulgarity? For God's sake. I like to say all sorts of vulgar things.

Are there not many girls who are as beautiful as Vodianova?

There are an awful lot of them!

But their faces do not reflect anything except the very firm and proud awareness that they have two virtually new breasts, two perfectly grown legs and a number of other well-groomed and pleasant-to-touch organs and body parts.

Meanwhile, sad experience suggests that the most interesting thing for men is to look either at complete whores, or at those in whose faces one can guess the reflection of the Virgin Mary.

The Mother of God is the same one who gave birth.

I don’t know who is more interesting for women to look at, but I still haven’t exactly met a representative of the fairer sex who declares that their male ideal is a macho man who is deeply indifferent to his offspring, most concerned with how he can preserve his eggs with the greatest comfort.

In a man over forty who lives alone, I always secretly suspect some kind of quiet maniac.

What is he doing there in his apartment in the evenings, let someone tell me. I came home from work, made myself scrambled eggs, and then what? Watching TV? He ate scrambled eggs and looked.

I say: maniac.

Sometimes two maniacs of different sexes gather in one family.

There are very few people of genius, all kinds of physicists or lyricists, bomb inventors or pianists, who, due to their mental abilities, want to live without unnecessary frills, just with their wife or girlfriend.

Do you know any of these? I - almost not.

Basically, among childless couples there are those who, by all indicators, are classified as part of the community of “normal people”.

It’s just not clear what’s normal about them.

Gays all over the world are fighting for the right to raise children, which they cannot have in principle, and these ones we are talking about don’t need it for nothing.

I keep wondering what they do to each other all day long, for months and even years? These, for example, a boy and a girl, who are ninety years old between them? This amount of free time - it must be used somehow. Maybe they are coming up with a new model of the universe? A plan to save humanity? Or at least some type of insect? Some especially beautiful flies...

But no, they don’t invent anything like that.

When I imagine such a life, I start to feel dizzy and even a little nauseous. This happens when you think about something extremely incomprehensible and strange.

One day I accidentally walked into a childless family on business and found the couple sitting and eating eclairs. The amazing thing was that everyone had six eclairs on their plate.

So they sat, had a nice conversation and ate these eclairs. Because eclairs are very tasty and improve your mood.

I soon left, but this feeling does not leave me to this day: whenever I imagine the life of a childless family (meaningfully childless, and not for medical reasons - I’ll explain again, otherwise it will start now) - I imagine it exactly like that. They sit and eat eclairs.

If you've eaten eclairs, you can have some tubes with condensed milk. Cake "basket". Potato cake. Ice cream later.

Then you can watch Animal Planet. Then eat something tasty again.

These are not people, but some kind of dead end of civilization.

But of course they don't think so to themselves. That's what they think about me.

So we have reciprocity, and there are no hard feelings.

I even heard a home-grown philosophy on this matter, about the fact that humanity is a cancerous tumor, and there are malignant cells and there are benign ones.

Malignant ones are those that multiply.

Benign - which live on their own.

But if you are a benign tumor, I think, there is little point in tolerating you either. Go kill yourself against the wall, otherwise you never know. If you lose a sperm on your thorny path, you will also become malignant. So, come on, don’t delay, rid humanity of yourself.

What's the point of new people? - these benign ones like to ask.

Why are they needed? - they ask.

They also ask, meaning themselves and their freedom: who do I owe? Or: who do I owe?

There are too many questions floating around all the time. Everyone became so curious and almost immediately asked: what will happen to me for this?

We will answer the question with a question: what is the point in you? Who needs you? Who owes you?

However, men are much more prone to stupid metaphysics; for women, everything is simpler.

A girl, contemplating her life, asks who will need her - after giving birth, in such and such a form.

But no matter how closely I looked, I never noticed that women who had given birth and those who had not given birth at 35 or 45 were somehow very different.

A woman who has no children, and has long since matured, has some flickering madness in her. If you are going to make love with her, you have an ineradicable feeling that she can eat you.

Her hands are tenacious, her legs are dry and quick, her eyes are attentive, her chest is unforgiving.

Children ruin their figure, who cares?

Time still spoils the figure, let's cancel it.

Because, no matter what the figure is at 40 years old, it will always be outplayed by the figure standing next to it, who is 18. And at any moment there are plenty of such figures nearby.

Children also take up free time from beautiful women.

The question remains, where were they going to spend it? On Facebook? For art? To achieve something in life? What? What to achieve? Become Joan of Arc? Or a senior manager in a company? Isn't it funny?

I read here in one article how a girl describes her personal ideas about hell: hell is when you are alone with a baby in an apartment, and he will never grow up.

What a horror. And it’s true: children scream, smell and grow reluctantly.

But for me, hell is when the baby has grown up, is covered with hair on all parts of the body, combs it, sits in sweet silence, sniffs himself, rejoices in all this and is sure that he is in heaven.

I once wrote about Gorky. Good article.
Suddenly they sent me a link. Here, read it.
http://stnmedia.ru/?id=40119
""""
An endlessly bitter song
We will hear and cry. If you haven't gone completely deaf.
At first Gorky was very good. He was almost as good as Lenin. Gorky played chess with Lenin, and for a long time no one had the right to guess how that game ended. It could only end in friendship! Only with laughter! Vladimir Ilyich laughs boisterously, and a tear appears in his squinted eye. Alexey Maksimovich laughs out loud, and tears flow freely from his affectionate, slightly dog-like eyes. Sorrento fishermen trample nearby and also laugh.

Gorky loved people, thought a lot about them, helped them a lot, and only considered the penguin stupid. Gorky wrote fairy tales and adored children. To kiss someone small, he had to bend down. Because of this, he became stooped and somehow, perhaps, shy. Even from a distance of half a century one could feel that Gorky’s mustache was ticklish. When Gorky bent down to kiss the child, Korney Chukovsky froze with happiness and finally understood from whom he had based his Aibolit.

Gorky became a public figure, wandered around Rus', noticed and described Chelkash and Danko to us. Chelkash was Russian, Danko was international, but we liked both. Gorky was not an aristocrat and was the first to compete with the literary aristocracy, in which he beat blue blood and white bone. Gorky lived such a rich life that everyone, except Leo Tolstoy and Lenin, felt like children next to him. In literature, after the death of Tolstoy and Chekhov, Gorky became the eldest. Not only in Russian, but even in the world. Tolstoy gave him his staff. Gorky could have taken Tolstoy’s plow, but decided to leave it to the peasants in Yasnaya Polyana. Chekhov gave him his pince-nez. Tuberculosis could also have given, but Gorky had his own. Gorky could look Mayakovsky eye to eye - while everyone else looked up at Mayakovsky. Gorky could write about Blok and the prostitute whom Blok visited, but did not do anything with her, but just sat and was sad. Nobody asked why Gorky found that same prostitute. Yesenin read Gorky a song about a dog, so that Gorky would praise, and Gorky would praise. Everyone wanted Gorky's praise. Then Blok, Yesenin, Mayakovsky died, and Gorky praised them again: it was as if he had an innate right to do so.

All writers then wanted to be like Gorky. Leonid Andreev wanted to be like Gorky, but died early. Serafimovich wanted to be like Gorky, but he wrote one great book and got tired. Fyodor Sologub wanted to be like Gorky and pretended that his “Little Demon” was born from Gogol and Dostoevsky, but also from Gorky! Bunin pretended that he did not want to be like Gorky, but everyone knew that if he whispered “Gorky” in Bunin’s presence, Bunin would definitely break something: a pen, a secretary, a gramophone, an iPhone. Zaitsev and Shmelev wanted to be like Gorky, but they left for Paris and that’s it. Sergeev-Tsensky wanted to be like Gorky, but he didn’t go anywhere, but he should have. Alexei Nikolaevich Tolstoy was almost like Gorky, but everyone secretly knew that Tolstoy was a swindler and a count. Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov most of all in his life wanted to live like Gorky, but he died without waiting for a similar fate.

Gorky made everyone smarter: at first he didn’t leave, even though he could have, then he left and didn’t have to return, but he returned anyway, and everyone was glad to see him. Even those who were not very happy, diligently, until their cheekbones ached, feigned joy.

Gorky saw through people and understood the essence of things. Things were afraid of Gorky. He wrote a huge novel about the life of Klim Samgin, which few people read, but many watched as a movie. At the time when this movie came out, Gorky was sky-high. And suddenly something broke. Some boy shouted from the bushes that Gorky had deceived everyone and that he was generally bad. It seems the boy had a beard. His name was Sasha, like Pushkin and Lenin’s older brother. His patronymic was Isaevich, as if it were some prophet’s. The boy told how Gorky went to the Solovetsky camp. In the Solovetsky camp he was met by street children who conspired to hold the Pravda newspaper upside down so that Gorky would understand their hint: lies everywhere. He understood their bitter hint and took one street child to a secret room, where he learned the whole terrible truth about the camps. Gorky burst into tears, kissed the homeless child’s beard, promised to tell Stalin and Leo Tolstoy about everything, and left. The homeless children hid and began to wait for the commission to arrive, kill all the security officers, and dissolve the camps. Instead, it got even worse, and the homeless children were sent to a penal battalion. It turned out that Gorky didn’t love anyone: he didn’t love Russian men, he didn’t love Blok, he didn’t love Yesenin, he didn’t love Mayakovsky, he didn’t like priests, he didn’t like the Black Hundreds, he didn’t like his children either, he only loved his adopted son, but that was all there, too. as they say nowadays, it’s difficult. Next it turned out that Gorky’s novel “Mother” is a bad novel, and the mother in it is bad, because she is for the dirty Bolsheviks, and not for the democrats or the beautiful gendarmes, “The Song of the Petrel” is a bad song, because you need a storm , but we need a great Russia, and in the play “At the Bottom” there is nothing at all about fishing. Of all that Gorky wrote in modern times, only “Untimely Thoughts” was suitable - they were almost like Bunin’s “Cursed Days.” But due to the fact that Gorky later changed his mind and did not condemn Solovki, any of his untimely thoughts turned out to be annulled. We were also told that Lenin ordered “Mother” from Gorky as Bolshevik propaganda and paid him with party gold. The party's gold had previously been expropriated by a certain Koba, robbing a bank. Gorky kept the gold in Capri under his bed in a black suitcase. Sometimes Gorky looked at his gold, but if guests entered without knocking, he sharply pushed the suitcase under the bed with his heel. So two stripes remained on the floor, which memoirists often noted in their memoirs. Stalin lured Gorky to Moscow by promising him another suitcase of gold. But instead he asked for the old suitcase to be returned. Gorky had already spent all his gold on servants and life by the sea, so he began to read the tyrant a fairy tale about a girl and death in order to pity him. The tyrant heard poorly, and understood “girl” as “grandfather.” From his pipe, he poured poison into Gorky’s tea, because if grandfather wanted death, how could he refuse him? So Gorky died, although he could have lived another 100 years.

We could witness how Pelevin and Sorokin bark at Gorky, and he bends four over to look at them, takes each of them in his arms and, looking at them, laughs. And the tears flow. But we witnessed how Gorky was kicked out of all European theater venues, although he previously competed with Shakespeare, Ibsen and Chekhov in the number of productions and most often beat them. Gorky was then kicked out of the Russian school curriculum. And for some time we lived without Gorky and even got a little used to it. Gorky exists, but it’s as if he doesn’t exist - only some kind of monument stands on Gorky Square in the former city of Gorky. In fact, Gorky remained exactly what he was. Gorky is a titan. We should be happy that he still sits on the Volga Escarpment and looks at the water, watching how the Oka and Volga meet. We are involved in this water, in this sky, in the land on which Gorky walked, in his word. Gorky was good and bad, honest and deceitful, generous and impassive - he was a man, not a monument.

1. Ukrainian media is broken by cognitive dissonance. Some write that Putin sent me, while others write that Putin is purging field commanders, since he needs to give up Donbass, and therefore I will be purged tomorrow.

Guys, you will somehow decide.

2. My dear critic Kostya Milchin writes that I will soon get bored and come home. Kostya, I have been in Donbass for three years, since December 15th I have been working as an adviser to the head of the DPR, and since October 16th as a deputy battalion commander. What are you talking about? I'm still waiting for you to get tired of scratching your tongues at each other and being condescendingly ironic. But I definitely can’t wait for this.

Because: who are you and what are you without your irony?

3. All handshake political scientists in Russia and Europe united in the prediction that my private appearance there is a declaration and renewal of war. I’ll repeat it once again for the stupid: I’ve been stuck there almost nonstop for a year now, and I’ve been wearing shoulder straps for five months. The battalion began to be created in July.

What you have now learned about this is not geopolitics. It's just you slowing down.

4. I did not give an interview for reasons of principle all this time.

The decision to tell Sasha Kots the details was born spontaneously, on the eve of a planned ten-day vacation, due to the fact that I need to make large-scale purchases for the battalion and at the same time present a new book. I decided to tell this at the same time, before the Ukrainian Armed Forces photographers copied me in positions. Everything will be more fun.

But for some reason, even Channel One says that the battalion was created yesterday, and yesterday I received the shoulder straps of a major.

Damn, you're adults. Do you even understand what it means to assemble a battalion? Several hundred soldiers? Collect, arm, equip, make a coherent combat unit? Bring to position?

Do you think all this happened on the day of Kots’ interview? Some savages, by God.

5. In short, I would ask everyone to calm down. Everything is fine. We're working, brothers.

There is no need for revelations, funeral parables, or hearty toasts. I'm not doing anything new.

I do everything the same as before.”