New generations will revive Yiddish. Yiddish and the 20th century: forecasts and reality “so that everyone can see that I’m alive”

1. Disappointing demographics

When Mark Twain said: “Rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated,” he could well have been saying this in the name of the Yiddish language.
Detractors and pessimists have continued to call Yiddish a “dying” or even “dead” language for several decades, if not centuries.

“Since childhood, I knew three dead languages: Hebrew, Aramaic and Yiddish (the latter is not considered a language by some at all) ...” - this is how Isaac Bashevis-Singer’s (1904-1991) novel “Shosha” begins.
The only Nobel Prize winner in literature who wrote in Yiddish chose himself as the prototype for the hero of his novel, published in 1978.
In pre-war Warsaw, where Bashevis' Aron Greidinger began his career, Yiddish was almost more alive than the Polish language. In the 1920s and 30s, more than 600 periodicals were published in Yiddish in dozens of countries around the world (the circulation of the New York daily newspaper Forverts exceeded 200,000 copies), thousands of novels and scientific works were written, hundreds of theaters were sold out, and the Encyclopedia Britannica recognized Yiddish is one of the seven main languages ​​of the cultural world.

By the 1970s, when it became finally clear that the generation of Jews born after World War II (neither in Israel, nor in the USA, nor in the former USSR, nor anywhere else) practically did not know Yiddish, specific predictions of the date of natural death appeared language.
From the point of view of demographers, the impending death of Yiddish seemed certain. In Ukraine and Belarus (except for the western regions), the youngest writers, poets, and actors who managed to obtain secondary education in Yiddish plus secondary specialized education or at least incomplete higher education were born in 1920. This was precisely the year of birth of the youngest members of the editorial board of the Soviet Gameland magazine.
For the Baltic states, Poland, Bukovina and Bessarabia, where Yiddish was most common in Jewish use and where Soviet power did not exist before World War II, the age limit was not so severe. In these regions, brilliant, “professional” command of the Yiddish language was also characteristic of people born before about 1930: having received only primary or incomplete secondary education in mame loshn, they compensated for the lack of formal education in Yiddish by having strong family traditions.
In Argentina, Yiddish education survived at least until the 1960s. Therefore, among immigrants from Argentina there are people born in the 1930s (less often - in the 1940s) and who speak the language well.
In the USA and Israel, even school education in Yiddish did not exist after World War II (in the first case, due to assimilation, coupled with the negligence of the local Jewish establishment; in the second, due to the sharply anti-Yiddish position of the “elite” led by Ben-Gurion).
There was no need to talk about young reserves for Yiddish. Essentially, there were only tears and dreams of idealists living out their days.

The lines of the poem by the Jewish modernist poet Yaakov Glatstein “Speak to me in Yiddish...” are symbolic, reflecting the “Yiddishist” interpretation of Zionism (or the Zionist interpretation of Yiddishism?) Glatstein was born in 1896 in Lublin (Poland), at the age of eighteen he moved to the USA , repeatedly weighed the possibility of repatriation to Israel - but died in 1971 in New York.
Here is an interlinear translation of this work into Russian:

Speak to me in Yiddish, my Jewish country,
And I will speak to you in Hebrew, of course.
Abraham and Sarah come out to meet me
From the tomb of the Patriarchs
(in Hebrew - [mearAt ha-machpelA], located in Hebron. - Hereinafter - a note from the author of the article).
“Good afternoon, grandpa-grandmother.”
Abraham crosses the street in silence.
“Don’t take it to heart, Yashenka
(reinterpretation of names: the poet’s namesake, the third forefather of the Jewish people, Yaakov, like his grandfather Abraham, is buried in the tomb of the Patriarchs).
- says Sarah. “He understands every word.”
That's how it is done here.
A man must remain silent in Yiddish.
But the Jewish woman about the “Jewish-German language”
(one of the names of Yiddish, more often used in an ironic sense by the enemies of this language)
Also has something to say.
I say “Good afternoon” to you, my child,
May you have many good things.
Believe me, Yashenka: the time will come
In the country of Tu Bishvat holiday (celebrated by Jews in January-February, the New Year of the Trees, when dried fruits are traditionally eaten) - the country of raisins and figs -
When all the Hebrew children
They will stop being silent in Yiddish.
And when they start talking,
It will be such a pleasure to listen to them!
So it will happen, Yashenka, my child,
I can give you an oath.”
Grandfather Abraham from the opposite side of the street
He winks at me and waves his handkerchief.
Oh, speak to me in Yiddish, my Jewish country,
And I will speak to you in Hebrew, of course.

The situation in which 99% of Jewish writers and stage workers (we will talk about the only percentage of exceptions below) “valued” their native language and culture so much that they did not bother to pass on Yiddish to their sons and daughters, as if trying to take it away from them, cannot be called anything other than linguistic hara-kiri. to your grave!

The crimes Hitler and Stalin committed against the Jewish people in general and their languages ​​in particular cannot be minimized. But - in no way putting even the worst leaders of Zionism on the same level as the tyrants of the twentieth century - we will not be able to forgive the leaders of the assault troops, who, under the Mankurt slogan “Only Hebrew,” ruined Yiddish editorial offices, newspaper stalls, book publishing houses, theaters... Who ruined economically and physically - the patriarch of Israeli journalists writing in Yiddish, Mordechai Tsanin (born in 1906), told me about this.
“With a tenacity worthy of better use, some Israeli leaders destroyed the amazing Yiddish culture. There has never been such a case in human history,” says Tsanin, “that a people expelled from their homeland created such an amazing culture. And it is not clear how the same people could strive to assimilate in one's own country."
Tzaneen pays tribute to the brilliant victory of Zionism, which revived Jewish statehood. However, in order to recreate the State of Israel, was it necessary to destroy folk culture and sow hatred of the language through which the ideas of Zionism became the property of the majority of representatives of the Jewish people?
“Without the language of Eastern European Jews, the idea of ​​reviving their historical homeland would have remained a beautiful dream,” says the old journalist (hinting at the lack of another common language among the Zionists of Russia, Lithuania, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania) and reminds that “in Europe themselves Zionist leaders with pleasure read the poems of Chaim Nachman Bialik, written or translated for them into Yiddish, loved and sang songs in mame-loshn... At the same time, Jewish boys and girls, who absorbed Yiddish with their mother’s milk, uttered the first reverent words of love in Yiddish, with Arriving in Eretz Israel, they were allowed to use their native language for no more than one year, after which they could lose their jobs due to insufficient mastery of Hebrew... Israeli leaders sought to unite Ashkenazim and Sephardim through the language of Hebrew, and this was the only correct decision.But the price turned out to be too much high, and the result is very doubtful."

But let's leave state politics. In a family circle, it was possible to preserve the language if there was desire, courage and determination! Alas: in general, Ashkenazi Jews, born in the first quarter of the twentieth century, voluntarily renounced their language, their centuries-old tradition. In some areas, the ever-memorable Yevsektsiya (whose task was to spread communist ideology among Jews in their native language and control the subsequent withering away of the latter as unnecessary) placed Yiddish on the altar on which the Russian-speaking “Soviet man - the builder of communism” was forged. On other altars there were unsuccessful births of the “Israelite” (another “new historical community” designed to replace - no, cross out - Jewry). Still others frivolously threw the contents of their vessels into the American "melting pot." The fourth dissolved their spiritual baggage in the French/Spanish/Portuguese-speaking culture for free...

By all estimates, by the beginning of the 21st century, Yiddish should have been preserved only in the mouths of very old people and a few “relatively young” pensioners originally from Lithuania or Argentina. More than a thousand years of glorious history of mame-loshn seemed closer than ever to an inglorious end.

Did these predictions come true? Was the fourth stage of Yiddish history (which, according to traditional chronology, began in 1700) the last - or was it replaced by a new one? The author will try to give his answer to this question at the end of the article. Before that, let’s find out what place Yiddish occupies in the world linguistic classification, take an excursion into the history of the language and consider some of its features, the consideration of which is necessary to make an accurate “diagnosis.”

2. Germanic, but not German

Many modern languages ​​emerged as a result of wars and the conquest of some peoples by others by mixing their languages. For example, after the 6th century invasion of northern Italy, the Germanic tribes and their language disappeared into the Romance majority. The Celts, on the contrary, without leaving their Gaul, adopted the language of the Roman conquerors, which led to the emergence of a new Romance language - French. The Jewish path turned out to be different from others.

The language of Ashkenazi Jews evolved over more than a thousand years through the interaction and synthesis of four linguistic components: Semitic (Hebrew-Aramaic), Romance, Germanic and Slavic.
A certain similarity between Yiddish and German serves as a reason for some authors who do not speak both languages ​​to consider it a variant of the German language. In reality, Yiddish and modern German are completely different languages, connected only by certain common aspects of origin.

The originality of Yiddish appeared already at the early stage of its formation, before contact with Slavic languages).

A major role in the emergence of Yiddish was played by the Semitic (Hebrew-Aramaic) component preserved by Jews since ancient times, as well as French and Italian - the languages ​​of the countries from which Jews arrived in Germany at that time, forming separate quarters in the Rhine and Mosel cities.
Developing in its own way, Yiddish turned into an independent language, while the Middle High German dialect (which served as the basis for the development of the grammatical and - partially - lexical structure of mame-loshn) was transformed into modern German.
Thus, Yiddish (or, as it was called then, “Yiddish-taich”, “Ivre-taich”) began to differ from German dialects not only by the presence of Hebraisms, Romanisms (and later Slavicisms), but also by the peculiar integration of Germanic words, grammatical forms and phonetic features under the influence of ancient and modern factors. But the main part of Yiddish turned out to be specific linguistic formations, born of generations of European Jews, reflecting their way of thinking and mental makeup.

Significant differences between Yiddish and German exist not only at the graphic level (square alphabet - and Latin), but also at the phonetic, lexical and grammatical level.
In some aspects, Yiddish is even closer to other languages ​​of the Germanic group than to German. For example, indefinite articles in Yiddish are almost “copied” from English. The sound design of a number of words in Yiddish and English is identical: “full” in English full [ful], in Hebrew??? [ful], and in German voll [fol]. "Lip" in English lip [linden], in Hebrew??? [lip], and in German Lippe [lipe]. At the morphological level, the striking similarity of Yiddish with English and its dissimilarity with German is manifested in the presence of the possessive case instead of the genitive.

In terms of the position of the verb-predicate, the sentence structure in Yiddish is more reminiscent of the syntactic model of English than of German, where the predicate or part of it is moved far away from the subject. The greater variety of syntactic models of word order, compared to other Germanic languages, allows a Yiddish speaker to put a rich range of emotions into a sentence without even resorting to another “trump card” of mame-loshn - intonation play. At the same time, freedom of word order never leads to semantic chaos: in Yiddish an ambivalent phrase like “A mother loves her daughter” is fundamentally impossible.

The independence of Yiddish as a language is also evidenced by the fact that it did not mechanically borrow words from various sources, but “processed” them, subordinating them to its own phonetic patterns and word-formation models (for examples, see section 4.4).

There are many words in Yiddish that are composed of morphemes taken from three source languages ​​at once. For example: “mischievous, mischievous” - ???????-??????? [vAyser-khEvrenik] - the first part of the word is of German origin (literally “white”), and the second consists of the Hebrew root [khEvre] “company” and the Slavic suffix [nick]. The last suffix is ​​generally very productive in Yiddish.
One more example: ??????????? [tsulOhesnik] “obstinate, acting out of spite” - prefix [tsu] of German origin (infinitive particle related to the subsequent verb); root [lohes] - the Hebrew verb pronounced in the Ashkenazi manner “to make angry, to anger” (in modern Hebrew - [lehakhIs]); suffix - see above.

So, Yiddish is not a dialect of the German language, but an equal member of the Western subgroup of the Germanic subgroup of the Indo-European family. The same subgroup includes English, German, Dutch (also known as Dutch), Luxembourgish, Frisian and Afrikaans.

Another common misconception about Yiddish is the diversity of its dialects. A person who has a poor command of the Hebrew language will experience natural difficulties in communicating with a speaker of a distant dialect - and will think that there is no single Yiddish language, but only a collection of local jargons. However, with a deeper study of the language, especially the supra-dialectal literary norm, many difficulties will disappear.

Although over the centuries Yiddish has spread over vast territories and its regional varieties do differ from each other, unification has always been observed in written communication. Such normativity characterizes both the old literary language, which dominated until the beginning of the 19th century (based mainly on the Western dialect), and modern literary Yiddish, which developed as an interregional language from the middle of the 19th century.
The relative homogeneity of Yiddish is a stunning phenomenon in the history of linguistics because it developed without the help of those unifying factors that the nation-state usually provides (especially through a unified school system).
Due to their occupation, as well as due to continuous persecution, Jews had to move from place to place, forming new settlements. In the speech of the Jews, the differences in local German dialects were smoothed out much faster than in the speech of the Germans, the bulk of whom lived sedentarily in the villages of feudally fragmented Germany.
Printing, which was greatly developed among the Jews, played a significant role in the rapprochement of dialects. Authors and publishers interested in distributing their publications tried to avoid local expressions or accompanied them with translations into other dialects.

Researcher of the culture of Eastern European Jewry, Dr. Geschl Klepfisch (1910-2004), noted the special role that Yiddish played in the preservation of the Jewish people. If religion served as an internal fortress wall, then the Yiddish language played the role of an external wall, protecting Jews in Eastern Europe and on other continents where they emigrated from dissolution into the surrounding peoples.

3. One of the richest in the world

For many centuries, protecting Jews from assimilation, Yiddish itself assimilated hundreds of thousands of words from surrounding languages. Wolf Moskovich, a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the head of the project “Big Explanatory Dictionary of the Yiddish Language,” has a dossier of a million words in his file cabinet!

There are only 500,000 words in the Oxford English Dictionary, although this figure can be increased to a million through slang and technical terminology.
The Big Academic Dictionary of the Russian Language contains a little more than 200,000 words, and together with lexical units not included in the dictionaries, specialists number half a million. The German language has less than 200,000 words, and the French language does not have even a hundred thousand...

So, in terms of the number of actually existing words, Yiddish is one of the two richest languages ​​in the world. Moreover, if English owes its untold wealth to the Germanic, Romance (primarily French and Latin), Celtic and Greek languages, then Yiddish - to the Germanic (primarily German), Semitic (Hebrew/Hebrew and Aramaic), Slavic (Western and East Slavic subgroups) and Romance (originally French and Italian, later also Romanian and Spanish).

Since the end of the 19th century, when the mass emigration of Eastern European Jews to the United States began, Yiddish and English have come into direct contact and enriched each other with hundreds of expressive words and calques (literally translated) idioms, proverbs and sayings. "Chutzpeh", "kibbitzer", "shpilkes" and a target=new href=http://www.bergen.org/AAST/Projects/Yiddish/English/comwor.html>many other Hebrew words organically enter into colloquial then into literary English, forming a new linguistic phenomenon - “Ameridish”.

Due to well-known historical reasons, Yiddish, unlike English, did not become the international language of science and technology - and did not develop special terminological series that go far beyond the boundaries of educational, newspaper and other popular texts. Given the right conditions, Yiddish could enrich its lexicon with tens, if not hundreds of thousands of terms that are simply not present in today's mame-loshn, but are present in English. And then the total vocabulary of Yiddish would provide the language with a “pure” first place.
But the true treasury of the Hebrew language is not terms, but ordinary words, reflecting countless aspects and shades of objects and phenomena of everyday life, human sensations, feelings and emotions.
In terms of the number of synonyms (lexical units that have the same or similar meaning), Yiddish undoubtedly ranks first in the world. This testifies to the unprecedented conceptual and stylistic diversity of the language.
Take for example the concept of “book”. Yiddish borrowed the word from the Hebrew language??? [sEefer] (in modern Israeli Hebrew it sounds like [sEfer]) and from German - ??? [boom]. In mame-loshn [safer] acquired a new connotation of meaning - “a sacred book associated with Judaism,” while the word [bukh] Yiddish retained the meaning of “ordinary book.”

4. Four “canonical” periods of Yiddish history

In encyclopedias and other scientific works published in the twentieth century, the history of the Yiddish language is divided into four stages.

4.1. Earliest period (before 1250)

The first Jews who settled in Europe during the years of the existence of ancient Judea were, apparently, soldiers of the Roman legions. However, the appearance of the first Jewish settlements in the Cologne area was noted only in 321 AD, and the conditional beginning of the development of the national culture of European Jews and the Yiddish language is considered to be 801, to which the mention found in documents of a certain “Yitzkhok Abin from Ashknazi” belongs.
These and a number of other scientific evidence give reason to believe that Yiddish as a spoken language developed a little over a thousand years ago in a small area surrounding the confluence of the Main River and the Rhine, as a result of the mixing of different German dialects (the leading ones were Central German).

At first, the Jews who came to Germany from France and Northern Italy spoke a mixed Hebrew-Roman dialect (the so-called “lAaz”), and by the 11th-12th centuries they adopted dialect variants of the German language from the local population - and on the basis of the three components they gradually created a new language.

In the surviving written monuments of the early 12th century, individual words in Yiddish are recorded. As Max Weinreich (1894-1969), the greatest specialist in Jewish linguistics, noted, it was during that era that the formation of many other modern European languages ​​began.

It is important to note that the language of the Bible and the religious cult of the Jews in the Middle Ages had a strong influence on the language of the Jewish population of Germany. Hebrew was not yet the privilege of the educated clergy, but was studied by all boys from early childhood; it was used for business in Jewish communities, in craft workshops, and in charitable organizations. Hebrew also served as a means of business relations between Jews of different cities and countries. Because of this, in the speech of the Jews of Europe, a large number of Hebrew words and phrases were preserved to denote cult, judicial, moral, commercial, everyday and other concepts that either did not exist at all in the German language of that time, or they were expressed in cumbersome two-three-term phrases.
4.2. Ancient period (1250 - 1500)
Partly expelled from Germany and Austria, partly fleeing the plague, Yiddish speakers rushed east and came into contact with the Slavs and the few local Jews who spoke Slavic languages ​​- first in southeastern Germany and the Czech Republic, and then (in the third stage of history language) - in Poland, Belarus and Lithuania. The former autonomy of the Jewish quarters is replaced by forced isolation in the ghetto. The Semitic-Roman-Germanic linguistic fusion includes a fourth component - Slavic.
The oldest surviving written evidence of the Yiddish language of that time: one sentence in the Worms Prayer Book (1272) and the Manuscript Book (1382).

Jews have lived in Eastern Europe before. A letter of recommendation dating from the 11th-12th centuries has been preserved, given by the community of the Greek city of Thessaloniki to a certain Jew from the “Russian community” who was heading to Eretz Israel. It is said of this Jew that he knows neither the sacred language, nor Greek, nor Arabic, for only the Canaanite language is spoken by the inhabitants of his native country.
("Canaanite language" is usually identified with Old Czech or with other dialects of Slavic languages ​​that existed on the eastern outskirts of the Germanic lands, which were inhabited by Slavic peoples.)
In a 13th century manuscript. a rabbi from Chernigov is mentioned, who during classes interpreted the material being studied in Russian.
These and other references to the “Canaanite” and Russian languages, as well as Slavic glosses (explanations of obscure passages in the text), preserved in Hebrew manuscripts of that time, show that the few Jews then living in Eastern Europe mastered some Slavic languages. Subsequently, these Jews either assimilated among the Slavs or were absorbed by a powerful flow of Jewish immigrants from the west.
4.3. Middle period (1500 - 1700)
Fleeing persecution, Jews moved from Germany and the Czech Republic even further east, deep into the Slavic lands.
If in the 13th century the migration of German Jews first reached Slavic territories, then from the 16th century. More and more of them settled in Poland, Lithuania, Galicia, Podolia, Volyn and Belarus. Jewish neighborhoods and separate towns were formed there. The influence of Slavic languages ​​increased, and over time, new Jewish territorial dialects emerged: Polish, Ukrainian and Lithuanian-Belarusian.

In parallel, pogroms of 1648-49 in the south of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth led to the partial re-emigration of Jews from Eastern Europe to Western Europe and the formation of new settlements in Western Alsace, Holland and Northern Germany.

If until the middle of the 13th century the Yiddish-speaking population was completely surrounded by the German-speaking population, then as the area spread east and west, the proportion of Jews living side by side with Germans continuously decreased.

Literature in Yiddish developed simultaneously with the language. Its first shoots appeared in the work of nomadic poets and small theater troupes. Then collections of songs appeared (the oldest discovered are dated 1372 and 1382). Already in the 16th century, glossaries appeared containing explanations of Hebrew words and phrases, translations of the Pentateuch, prayer books, historical literature, and novels.
Literature in Yiddish until the 18th century. was intended mainly for the common people, especially for women who did not know Hebrew, the main language of religious and artistic literature of that time. Yiddish literature included works on biblical themes, collections of individual prayers (?????? [thines], literally “supplications”), works on Jewish customs and rules of behavior, historiographical and memoir works describing the difficult trials that befell the Jewish people. people: expulsions, massacres, natural disasters.
The first secular works in Yiddish date back to the 16th century. They were created in Italy by German Jews who emigrated there. The central place in this belongs to the philologist Elyohu (Eliyahu) Bocher-Levit.

"What" and "how"
Several years ago, the On Productions organization, based on the results of an all-Israeli survey, included my old (from Moscow times) friend, now Dr. Mordechai Yushkovsky, in the list of the ten best lecturers in our country. I interviewed him about this.

“It would seem,” I asked Mordche, “in terms of popularity, your specialization is far from winning: the Yiddish language and Jewish literature. How do you manage to be so in demand that you are invited every month to speak by dozens of private and public organizations in Israel, and several times a year you go on lecture tours abroad?”

This is what Dr. Yushkovsky answered: “An inept lecturer can ruin the most interesting topic with a monotonous voice, poor vocabulary, illiterate construction of a speech, frequent glances at a piece of paper... But a skilled speaker will present even a boring (at first glance) topic in such a way that the audience will want listen to him again and again. The main thing is not “what” to say, but “how”.”

I think that in terms of oratory, one of the top officials of the “Institute of Eastern European and CIS Countries (Israel)” can be safely placed on a par with Mordechai Yushkovsky, if not ahead of him. If the erudite artist (in the best sense of the word) Yushkovsky knows how to make the academic fascinating, then the verbal tightrope walker Vershinin is able to pass off wrong as right, and right as... left.

But first things first.

Better this than never.
In the first 9 days since the publication of the article “Yanukovych’s Yevsection”, which opened a journalistic investigation into the activities of the Institute, and sending corresponding requests to the Vesti newspaper, where the lion’s share of the Israeli “employees” of the Institute, headed by editor-in-chief Lev Baltsan, and the press service of the Prime Minister, in which the “employee” of the “Institute” Yulia Braya works full-time, my addressees generously left my mailbox and fax machine alone.

What was it - a conspiracy of silence by the biased Russian-language press (which ignored the article by Lily Galili dated November 27, which I quoted - despite the fact that usually the materials of the Haaretz newspaper on Olim topics are translated and published by it in a matter of days) or the attitude towards Shlomo Groman as not " significant” (in the words of L. Vershinin) person?

Finally, at least someone deigned to react. The answer was not from “Vesti” as such (apparently, the journalist fired by them after 6 years of work is now “by definition” not a professional for them) and not from Bria (in this historical era she solves the difficult, but “honorable” task of promoting dictatorial acts to the Russian-speaking public and de-Judaization plans of his boss), and the freelance author of Vesti, also the “head of the analytical department” of the above-mentioned “Institute”, Lev Vershinin. For which special respect goes to him as a person,
The one who honestly earns his “three-time” (see below) fee.
L. Vershinin began his article “Flowers and Berries” like this (here and
I quote below with minor abbreviations).
“If you believe psychologists, then each person divides the rest of humanity into two categories: “significant” - those whose opinion is valuable to us, and “the rest” - those whose assessment of our person is not very important to us.
There are, as a rule, much more of the latter. Therefore, the persistently circulated “versions” about the mission
We laughed and turned a deaf ear to the observers of the Israeli Institute of Eastern European and CIS Countries (Israel) during the presidential elections in Ukraine. Until a small article appeared on the Internet entitled “Yanukovych’s Yevsection”, written by Shlomo Groman, a journalist with whom I personally, alas, do not know, but whom I sincerely respect both for his unconditional talent and for his pronounced expressed against all odds
civil position. This person falls into the “significant” category for me. And therefore,
putting everything aside, I sat down to write this material. First of all, I would like to express my gratitude to Mr. Groman, who took the trouble to carefully collect, bring together and systematize all statements on this topic. Thus giving me the opportunity to just as thoroughly, piece by piece, separate one fly after another from the cutlets.”
Well, when real gentlemen curtsy, they respond with a curtsey!

I have always considered Lev Vershinin a gifted person, but his new article revealed for me two more of his buried talents.

Firstly, before us is a born master of PR, who speaks the Russian word so masterfully that he is able, without refuting a single accusation and without citing a single concrete fact to justify himself, to create among a fair portion of readers the illusion of a total refutation of his opponent’s position! If now one of my relatives or friends wants to run for a certain position, then I know exactly who to send him to. An unsurpassed juggler of the pen, Vershinin will easily hide all the client’s shortcomings and emphasize all his advantages, and will leave no stone unturned from his competitor - even if he is an angel in the flesh!

Secondly, Israeli diplomacy should pay close attention to Lev Vershinin. Having improved his Hebrew and English, this man, who can say a lot of beautiful words without saying anything of substance, will become an invaluable treasure for our Foreign Ministry.

In his brilliantly (without a hint of irony) written article, Lev Vershinin managed to draw the audience’s attention to his opponent’s least significant remarks concerning the conclusions of the Institute’s mission to monitor the presidential elections in Ukraine. In particular, for this the author chose Griboyedov’s epigraph “... one should not dare to have one’s own judgment.” Instead of opposing the essence of the matter, Vershinin presented the matter as if I
I condemn Yanukovych, condemn the neutral position and support Yushchenko, although in reality I am fundamentally opposed to any interference in the internal affairs of Ukraine.

At the end of the article, Vershinin manages to turn the arrows to the internal Israeli left-right topic, which is not relevant to this foreign policy topic.

But there were no answers to the main questions:
- Is this a virtual institute or a real one?
- Is the institute authorized to represent Israel?
- What are the sources of funding for the institute?
The task of a politician is to hide the truth, a journalist is to reveal it, and a PR specialist is to obscure it. And our venerable interlocutor, apparently, is trying to alternately act in all three guises. Ironically, Vesti in its (pre-Vershininsky) time fired me precisely because, in their opinion, I mixed my political views into my journalistic work - despite the fact that, God knows, there was no money behind it.

Hey, how do I get to the Oval Office?
Let's read Vershinin further.
““Judging by the facts at my disposal,” writes Groman, “under the guise of “objective observers” (calling themselves the “International Integrity Mission”), a group of persons with Israeli citizenship, recruited by one of the parties, is operating in Ukraine.” It is honestly said here, that the mentioned facts were collected mainly in the media, mainly online. First of all, the very fact of the existence of IVES as a real organization is called into question. On what grounds? For example, on the fact that it could not be found
information about the address, telephone numbers and official website of the Institute. Or “list 62 it
members, posted on the website of the Central Election Commission of Ukraine”, including
people “engaged in day-to-day activities in various organizations.”

The Institute of Eastern European and CIS Countries was officially registered two years ago. He has an address and telephone numbers known to everyone who might be interested or useful, and it would be easy to get accurate information about all this without collecting idle rumors, but by contacting his management, at least the director, Mr. Zinker, who is known to many in Israel and is not hiding from anyone, including Shlomo Groman. AND
Six dozen observers registered by the Central Election Commission of Ukraine, according to their status, were
“external experts”, whom the Institute, like most institutions of this kind, attracts to cooperation in each specific case.”
So, my first thesis has not been refuted: the Institute has no details - no postal address, no email, no telephone, no fax, no website. An Internet search using the keywords “Institute of Eastern European and CIS Countries” gives many links to the participation of the above-mentioned organization in the latest Ukrainian elections - and nothing more!

During an open discussion of his article on the Megaforum, L. Vershinin explained: “We did not consider it possible to acquire a website, since we do not need unnecessary advertising, and whoever needs it can always dial Mr. Tsinker’s phone number.”

To say that the institute was registered 2 years ago means to say nothing. You need to refute “idle rumors” with specific numbers: registration number of the institute, date of registration...
Not familiar with the Tsinkero-Vershininsky canons of journalistic ethics, during the preparation of the previous article I did not want to disturb the director of the Institute by calling his home phone. Unaware of modern definitions of privacy, so-and-so Groman went into “dubious sources” and with his tedious inquiries briefly (because they didn’t bother to answer) distracted the “employees” of the “Institute” from their main work.

For the future, I want to find out one thing from a more experienced colleague. Tell me, Lev, if I am writing an article about the presidential elections in the United States, or, for example, preparing a review of the situation with the study of the Yiddish language in that country, or analyzing the demographic situation in the 280 million-strong family of Uncle Sam, should I immediately ask to go to the Oval Office? ! Or should I first look for information in lower authorities?

Where do the firewood come from?
“And finally, the main, killer “fact”: someone Alex Kiselev, a US citizen, created this mythical structure specifically “for the elections” in September of this year. Inventors of such versions, as a rule, are ruined by excessive detail. What happened now. For the mysterious Mr. Kiselev was not on the list of experts of our mission and neither with me nor, as far as I know, with my colleagues, did not intersect in any way, and the above-mentioned “International Integrity Mission” (a group of retired American congressmen) and our mission,
As they say in my hometown, they are two very different things.”
I absolutely believe: neither you, Mr. Vershinin, nor, as far as you know, your colleagues physically crossed paths with Kiselyov. Well, it is not necessary! Did you personally need to meet your sponsor in order to travel to Ukraine?

For the sake of breadth of review, here too I will supplement the original text of L. Vershinin’s article with his commentary on it, published on MF:
“The initiator of the IVES Mission’s trip to Ukraine was the leadership of the international organization Consent International (Great Britain). This organization specializes in monitoring the situation in "hot spots" in order to try to help prevent the escalation of conflicts. She worked in the Balkans, Africa (Congo-Kinshasa). It does not deal specifically with electoral processes. Therefore, having a grant, I invited IVES to cooperate (since only IVES agreed to her material conditions - only tickets, accommodation and three meals a day, without fees to experts).”

Here opponents from the mentioned Forum ask reasonable questions, which usually hang in the air: “On whose grant does the international organization Consent International (Great Britain) function? How legitimate is it to mention Albion in parentheses if the organization is international (by the way, the Google search engine does not give out its address)? Who and when invited “Institute” and/or “Consent” to be election observers? Why only in Ukraine? How
Are retired congressmen on the Institute's list? Did they also work for food alone?

As I already noted, American citizen Kiselev confirms that he paid his fellow citizens a “per diem” in the amount of $500...

In his article “There are no cheap politicians,” published in the Kiev magazine “Zerkalo Nedeli” on November 13, journalist Vladimir Kravchenko quotes a retired congressman from Michigan, Robert Carr, who appears on the Institute’s list of employees.
“We came to the conclusion that in the regions where we worked, the elections were fair, transparent and fair. Everyone tried to obey the law. And I think you can be sure that the results are not falsified. Although there were problems, of course, they were not systematic.”
There we read:
“The trip of twelve Americans to Ukraine as part of the Union for Democracy and Transparency delegation fully fits into the strategy pursued by Yanukovych’s team to create a positive image of the Ukrainian prime minister in the United States.”

One of the central figures of this strategy is a certain Alex Kiselev, a former Odessa resident who emigrated to the United States in 1992. According to the American online publication Washington Jewish Week, Alex Kiselev, who calls himself an “investment manager,” works for a small brokerage firm, North Atlantic Securities. But he also calls himself “a strategic adviser to Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych in the United States.” .

In America, Mr. Kiselev is perceived as an intermediary between Yanukovych’s team and American PR companies. Moreover, he is somewhat more than an intermediary, since he manages significant financial resources, paying American companies for PR services, and also makes a number of statements denigrating the political opponents of Viktor Yanukovych.

At the same time, he claims that Yushchenko has a tarnished record regarding minority rights. Kiselyov is also concerned that “Yanukovych does not have the opportunity to be heard in the United States and is implying that the Ukrainian diaspora groups who lobby and support Yushchenko in this country came after World War II and lived in those Ukrainian lands where there are many inhabitants collaborated with the Nazis."

According to Washington Jewish Week, it was Alex Kiselev who was not only the organizer of the group of international observers we mentioned, but also its... leader. In a conversation with a Kiev Post journalist, Kiselev said that he partially - up to 50% - financed the delegation’s trip. The remaining funds were received from some private American “donors.” In total, this trip, according to Mr. Kiselev, cost its organizers about $170,000.”

Shlomo, shalom!

Your article is quite adequate to the situation with the “suspicious” group from Israel. I really liked the article and did not see any exaggerations or inaccuracies in it. I had a long conversation on the phone with Lily Galili (in Hebrew) and I'm not sure that my Hebrew was sufficient to convey my anxiety and concern.

I can add from myself:

I have known for about a year that Lev Vershinin has been working for money for the Kuchma administration for a long time. Firstly, on his website you can read a series of articles that clearly indicate the customer of these articles (articles about Yushchenko, about the situation in Ukraine, about the Crimean Tatars).

Secondly, I know from Mikhail Pogrebinsky (political adviser to Kuchma and Viktor Medvedchuk) that Vershinin is “their man.” Former mayor of Odessa Eduard Gurvits (now a member of the Ukrainian parliament, knows Lev Vershinin well from his time in Odessa) told me that Vasiliev (a major media official in the Kuchma administration) “recruited” Vershinin about two years ago.

Tsinker and Vershinin “showed up” at a meeting of the so-called “Russian Club” - a completely odious structure created by Gleb Pavlovsky and Mikhail Pogrebinsky, political strategists of Yanukovych. The club does not hide its pro-Russian orientation and its interest in choosing a pro-Russian orientation for Ukraine. Some of the group's journalists
The Tsinkers used the services of camera operators for free, which were provided to them by the Alternative television company. This television company was previously headed by Vasiliev, who now heads the information department in the Kuchma administration (Vershinin’s “recruiter”).

I told Lev Baltsan many times about my doubts about Vershinin’s figure, but until recently he did not react. And only in November, when publications about Vershinin’s plagiarism appeared, he allegedly stopped publishing Vershinin’s articles. By the way, as Leonid Belotserkovsky told me, the newspaper “Vremya” also had at least one anti-Ukrainian article by Vershinin under a pseudonym.

I also spoke several times with Mikhail Nudelman and Roman Bronfman about my concerns. Fortunately, the Ukrainians have not yet reacted in any way to what you and I already know.

Yes, one more thing: I suspect that the flight to Kyiv and back to the group was paid for by Aron Mayberg, the main shareholder of Aerosvit airline, or rather provided a free flight. Mayberg accompanied Yanukovych on his trip to Israel, and also campaigned for Israelis from Ukraine who had the right to vote to support Yanukovych and promised them discounts of up to 50% on flights to Ukraine for this (if this is not bribery of voters, then what is it?).

I hope my information and my suspicions will be useful to you.

I was born in 1967 in Moscow. The family spoke Yiddish and Russian. All my adult life I dreamed of repatriating to Israel. In Russia he taught Jewish and foreign languages ​​clandestinely.
I was able to return to my historical homeland after graduating from college in 1990. I live in Tel Aviv and am at peace with myself (as far as possible). I have never betrayed my right-wing political worldview. I love to travel, practice languages ​​- and return home to Israel. Married, four children (eldest daughter in the army).
The Kiryat Arba-based publishing house AHAZ published my books: “How to Dramatically Expand Your English Vocabulary”; "Russian-Yiddish phrasebook"; "A short Yiddish-Russian dictionary"; "Words of Hebrew origin in the Russian language"; “Hebrew nouns that are useful to remember” (co-authored with M. Harach).
Currently, I teach Hebrew, Yiddish, English and German - in educational institutions in Tel Aviv and Kiryat Arba, as well as privately. I work both with groups (up to 10 people) and individually. I have experience teaching Russian to native Hebrew speakers.
I prepare for foreign trips, interviews, matriculation exams (bagrut), psychometric tests, international TOEFL and IELTS exams. I am happy to create individual study plans for my students, taking into account their profession, hobbies, desired length of study and plans for the future.
I love and know how to teach all those who consciously strive for knowledge. I achieve the best results with students aged 15 and older (although there are pleasant exceptions - serious, thoughtful children). I don’t want to offend anyone, but raising a child/teenager who stubbornly refuses to study, much less forcefully teach him, is not my role.
I translate from and into all of the above languages, as well as from French, Spanish, Czech and Dutch.
I'm done with journalism - I limit myself to what I write on the website and in LiveJournal.
I gladly share my delights in the field of linguistics, as well as the links I found on learning various languages.

"What" and "how"
Several years ago, the On Productions organization, based on the results of an all-Israeli survey, included my old (from Moscow times) friend, now Dr. Mordechai Yushkovsky, in the list of the ten best lecturers in our country. I interviewed him about this.

“It would seem,” I asked Mordche, “in terms of popularity, your specialization is far from winning: the Yiddish language and Jewish literature. How do you manage to be so in demand that you are invited every month to speak by dozens of private and public organizations in Israel, and several times a year you go on lecture tours abroad?”

This is what Dr. Yushkovsky answered: “An inept lecturer can ruin the most interesting topic with a monotonous voice, poor vocabulary, illiterate construction of a speech, frequent glances at a piece of paper... But a skilled speaker will present even a boring (at first glance) topic in such a way that the audience will want listen to him again and again. The main thing is not “what” to say, but “how”.”

I think that in terms of oratory, one of the top officials of the “Institute of Eastern European and CIS Countries (Israel)” can be safely placed on a par with Mordechai Yushkovsky, if not ahead of him. If the erudite artist (in the best sense of the word) Yushkovsky knows how to make the academic fascinating, then the verbal tightrope walker Vershinin is able to pass off wrong as right, and right as... left.

But first things first.

Better this than never.
In the first 9 days since the publication of the article “Yanukovych’s Yevsection”, which opened a journalistic investigation into the activities of the Institute, and sending corresponding requests to the Vesti newspaper, where the lion’s share of the Israeli “employees” of the Institute, headed by editor-in-chief Lev Baltsan, and the press service of the Prime Minister, in which the “employee” of the “Institute” Yulia Braya works full-time, my addressees generously left my mailbox and fax machine alone.

What was it - a conspiracy of silence by the biased Russian-language press (which ignored the article by Lily Galili dated November 27, which I quoted - despite the fact that usually the materials of the Haaretz newspaper on Olim topics are translated and published by it in a matter of days) or the attitude towards Shlomo Groman as not " significant” (in the words of L. Vershinin) person?

Finally, at least someone deigned to react. The answer was not from “Vesti” as such (apparently, the journalist fired by them after 6 years of work is now “by definition” not a professional for them) and not from Bria (in this historical era she solves the difficult, but “honorable” task of promoting dictatorial acts to the Russian-speaking public and de-Judaization plans of his boss), and the freelance author of Vesti, also the “head of the analytical department” of the above-mentioned “Institute”, Lev Vershinin. For which special respect goes to him as a person,
The one who honestly earns his “three-time” (see below) fee.
L. Vershinin began his article “Flowers and Berries” like this (here and
I quote below with minor abbreviations).
“If you believe psychologists, then each person divides the rest of humanity into two categories: “significant” - those whose opinion is valuable to us, and “the rest” - those whose assessment of our person is not very important to us.
There are, as a rule, much more of the latter. Therefore, the persistently circulated “versions” about the mission
We laughed and turned a deaf ear to the observers of the Israeli Institute of Eastern European and CIS Countries (Israel) during the presidential elections in Ukraine. Until a small article appeared on the Internet entitled “Yanukovych’s Yevsection”, written by Shlomo Groman, a journalist with whom I personally, alas, do not know, but whom I sincerely respect both for his unconditional talent and for his pronounced expressed against all odds
civil position. This person falls into the “significant” category for me. And therefore,
putting everything aside, I sat down to write this material. First of all, I would like to express my gratitude to Mr. Groman, who took the trouble to carefully collect, bring together and systematize all statements on this topic. Thus giving me the opportunity to just as thoroughly, piece by piece, separate one fly after another from the cutlets.”
Well, when real gentlemen curtsy, they respond with a curtsey!

I have always considered Lev Vershinin a gifted person, but his new article revealed for me two more of his buried talents.

Firstly, before us is a born master of PR, who speaks the Russian word so masterfully that he is able, without refuting a single accusation and without citing a single concrete fact to justify himself, to create among a fair portion of readers the illusion of a total refutation of his opponent’s position! If now one of my relatives or friends wants to run for a certain position, then I know exactly who to send him to. An unsurpassed juggler of the pen, Vershinin will easily hide all the client’s shortcomings and emphasize all his advantages, and will leave no stone unturned from his competitor - even if he is an angel in the flesh!

Secondly, Israeli diplomacy should pay close attention to Lev Vershinin. Having improved his Hebrew and English, this man, who can say a lot of beautiful words without saying anything of substance, will become an invaluable treasure for our Foreign Ministry.

In his brilliantly (without a hint of irony) written article, Lev Vershinin managed to draw the audience’s attention to his opponent’s least significant remarks concerning the conclusions of the Institute’s mission to monitor the presidential elections in Ukraine. In particular, for this the author chose Griboyedov’s epigraph “... one should not dare to have one’s own judgment.” Instead of opposing the essence of the matter, Vershinin presented the matter as if I
I condemn Yanukovych, condemn the neutral position and support Yushchenko, although in reality I am fundamentally opposed to any interference in the internal affairs of Ukraine.

At the end of the article, Vershinin manages to turn the arrows to the internal Israeli left-right topic, which is not relevant to this foreign policy topic.

But there were no answers to the main questions:
- Is this a virtual institute or a real one?
- Is the institute authorized to represent Israel?
- What are the sources of funding for the institute?
The task of a politician is to hide the truth, a journalist is to reveal it, and a PR specialist is to obscure it. And our venerable interlocutor, apparently, is trying to alternately act in all three guises. Ironically, Vesti in its (pre-Vershininsky) time fired me precisely because, in their opinion, I mixed my political views into my journalistic work - despite the fact that, God knows, there was no money behind it.

Hey, how do I get to the Oval Office?
Let's read Vershinin further.
““Judging by the facts at my disposal,” writes Groman, “under the guise of “objective observers” (calling themselves the “International Integrity Mission”), a group of persons with Israeli citizenship, recruited by one of the parties, is operating in Ukraine.” It is honestly said here, that the mentioned facts were collected mainly in the media, mainly online. First of all, the very fact of the existence of IVES as a real organization is called into question. On what grounds? For example, on the fact that it could not be found
information about the address, telephone numbers and official website of the Institute. Or “list 62 it
members, posted on the website of the Central Election Commission of Ukraine”, including
people “engaged in day-to-day activities in various organizations.”

The Institute of Eastern European and CIS Countries was officially registered two years ago. He has an address and telephone numbers known to everyone who might be interested or useful, and it would be easy to get accurate information about all this without collecting idle rumors, but by contacting his management, at least the director, Mr. Zinker, who is known to many in Israel and is not hiding from anyone, including Shlomo Groman. AND
Six dozen observers registered by the Central Election Commission of Ukraine, according to their status, were
“external experts”, whom the Institute, like most institutions of this kind, attracts to cooperation in each specific case.”
So, my first thesis has not been refuted: the Institute has no details - no postal address, no email, no telephone, no fax, no website. An Internet search using the keywords “Institute of Eastern European and CIS Countries” gives many links to the participation of the above-mentioned organization in the latest Ukrainian elections - and nothing more!

During an open discussion of his article on the Megaforum, L. Vershinin explained: “We did not consider it possible to acquire a website, since we do not need unnecessary advertising, and whoever needs it can always dial Mr. Tsinker’s phone number.”

To say that the institute was registered 2 years ago means to say nothing. You need to refute “idle rumors” with specific numbers: registration number of the institute, date of registration...
Not familiar with the Tsinkero-Vershininsky canons of journalistic ethics, during the preparation of the previous article I did not want to disturb the director of the Institute by calling his home phone. Unaware of modern definitions of privacy, so-and-so Groman went into “dubious sources” and with his tedious inquiries briefly (because they didn’t bother to answer) distracted the “employees” of the “Institute” from their main work.

For the future, I want to find out one thing from a more experienced colleague. Tell me, Lev, if I am writing an article about the presidential elections in the United States, or, for example, preparing a review of the situation with the study of the Yiddish language in that country, or analyzing the demographic situation in the 280 million-strong family of Uncle Sam, should I immediately ask to go to the Oval Office? ! Or should I first look for information in lower authorities?

Where do the firewood come from?
“And finally, the main, killer “fact”: someone Alex Kiselev, a US citizen, created this mythical structure specifically “for the elections” in September of this year. Inventors of such versions, as a rule, are ruined by excessive detail. What happened now. For the mysterious Mr. Kiselev was not on the list of experts of our mission and neither with me nor, as far as I know, with my colleagues, did not intersect in any way, and the above-mentioned “International Integrity Mission” (a group of retired American congressmen) and our mission,
As they say in my hometown, they are two very different things.”
I absolutely believe: neither you, Mr. Vershinin, nor, as far as you know, your colleagues physically crossed paths with Kiselyov. Well, it is not necessary! Did you personally need to meet your sponsor in order to travel to Ukraine?

For the sake of breadth of review, here too I will supplement the original text of L. Vershinin’s article with his commentary on it, published on MF:
“The initiator of the IVES Mission’s trip to Ukraine was the leadership of the international organization Consent International (Great Britain). This organization specializes in monitoring the situation in "hot spots" in order to try to help prevent the escalation of conflicts. She worked in the Balkans, Africa (Congo-Kinshasa). It does not deal specifically with electoral processes. Therefore, having a grant, I invited IVES to cooperate (since only IVES agreed to her material conditions - only tickets, accommodation and three meals a day, without fees to experts).”

Here opponents from the mentioned Forum ask reasonable questions, which usually hang in the air: “On whose grant does the international organization Consent International (Great Britain) function? How legitimate is it to mention Albion in parentheses if the organization is international (by the way, the Google search engine does not give out its address)? Who and when invited “Institute” and/or “Consent” to be election observers? Why only in Ukraine? How
Are retired congressmen on the Institute's list? Did they also work for food alone?

As I already noted, American citizen Kiselev confirms that he paid his fellow citizens a “per diem” in the amount of $500...

In his article “There are no cheap politicians,” published in the Kiev magazine “Zerkalo Nedeli” on November 13, journalist Vladimir Kravchenko quotes a retired congressman from Michigan, Robert Carr, who appears on the Institute’s list of employees.
“We came to the conclusion that in the regions where we worked, the elections were fair, transparent and fair. Everyone tried to obey the law. And I think you can be sure that the results are not falsified. Although there were problems, of course, they were not systematic.”
There we read:
“The trip of twelve Americans to Ukraine as part of the Union for Democracy and Transparency delegation fully fits into the strategy pursued by Yanukovych’s team to create a positive image of the Ukrainian prime minister in the United States.”

One of the central figures of this strategy is a certain Alex Kiselev, a former Odessa resident who emigrated to the United States in 1992. According to the American online publication Washington Jewish Week, Alex Kiselev, who calls himself an “investment manager,” works for a small brokerage firm, North Atlantic Securities. But he also calls himself “a strategic adviser to Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych in the United States.” .

In America, Mr. Kiselev is perceived as an intermediary between Yanukovych’s team and American PR companies. Moreover, he is somewhat more than an intermediary, since he manages significant financial resources, paying American companies for PR services, and also makes a number of statements denigrating the political opponents of Viktor Yanukovych.

At the same time, he claims that Yushchenko has a tarnished record regarding minority rights. Kiselyov is also concerned that “Yanukovych does not have the opportunity to be heard in the United States and is implying that the Ukrainian diaspora groups who lobby and support Yushchenko in this country came after World War II and lived in those Ukrainian lands where there are many inhabitants collaborated with the Nazis."

According to Washington Jewish Week, it was Alex Kiselev who was not only the organizer of the group of international observers we mentioned, but also its... leader. In a conversation with a Kiev Post journalist, Kiselev said that he partially - up to 50% - financed the delegation’s trip. The remaining funds were received from some private American “donors.” In total, this trip, according to Mr. Kiselev, cost its organizers about $170,000.”

Shlomo, shalom!

Your article is quite adequate to the situation with the “suspicious” group from Israel. I really liked the article and did not see any exaggerations or inaccuracies in it. I had a long conversation on the phone with Lily Galili (in Hebrew) and I'm not sure that my Hebrew was sufficient to convey my anxiety and concern.

I can add from myself:

I have known for about a year that Lev Vershinin has been working for money for the Kuchma administration for a long time. Firstly, on his website you can read a series of articles that clearly indicate the customer of these articles (articles about Yushchenko, about the situation in Ukraine, about the Crimean Tatars).

Secondly, I know from Mikhail Pogrebinsky (political adviser to Kuchma and Viktor Medvedchuk) that Vershinin is “their man.” Former mayor of Odessa Eduard Gurvits (now a member of the Ukrainian parliament, knows Lev Vershinin well from his time in Odessa) told me that Vasiliev (a major media official in the Kuchma administration) “recruited” Vershinin about two years ago.

Tsinker and Vershinin “showed up” at a meeting of the so-called “Russian Club” - a completely odious structure created by Gleb Pavlovsky and Mikhail Pogrebinsky, political strategists of Yanukovych. The club does not hide its pro-Russian orientation and its interest in choosing a pro-Russian orientation for Ukraine. Some of the group's journalists
The Tsinkers used the services of camera operators for free, which were provided to them by the Alternative television company. This television company was previously headed by Vasiliev, who now heads the information department in the Kuchma administration (Vershinin’s “recruiter”).

I told Lev Baltsan many times about my doubts about Vershinin’s figure, but until recently he did not react. And only in November, when publications about Vershinin’s plagiarism appeared, he allegedly stopped publishing Vershinin’s articles. By the way, as Leonid Belotserkovsky told me, the newspaper “Vremya” also had at least one anti-Ukrainian article by Vershinin under a pseudonym.

I also spoke several times with Mikhail Nudelman and Roman Bronfman about my concerns. Fortunately, the Ukrainians have not yet reacted in any way to what you and I already know.

Yes, one more thing: I suspect that the flight to Kyiv and back to the group was paid for by Aron Mayberg, the main shareholder of Aerosvit airline, or rather provided a free flight. Mayberg accompanied Yanukovych on his trip to Israel, and also campaigned for Israelis from Ukraine who had the right to vote to support Yanukovych and promised them discounts of up to 50% on flights to Ukraine for this (if this is not bribery of voters, then what is it?).

I hope my information and my suspicions will be useful to you.