Gennady Shvet's marathon has ended. Shvets Yuri, former Soviet intelligence officer: biography of Gennady Shvets

“Well, are you yourself a superman?” - this question is sometimes asked to me, even in interviews, as the editor of the weekly magazine of the same name. I answer either with a joke or in an abstract way.

And to be honest, yes, I am superman. Or rather, he was like that 63 times. For I have completed so many marathons, or distances exceeding this distance, for example, the Odessa 100-kilometer race, a 75-kilometer race in France, 50 miles (80 km) in the Appalachian mountains in the USA.

He crossed deserts, ran in the mountains, and participated in numerous ultramarathons. Today, in the traditional space of The Talk for You, we offer his essay on running.

There are no easy marathons. Every time distance requires at least patience, and this is already some kind of courage. I usually run a marathon for a long time, more than three hours. Something starts to ache, old sports injuries wake up, as well as all sorts of new pains brought by age.

This is excellent training - the ability to endure pain without feeling sorry for yourself, without retreating, without demanding leniency from the judges. The support of the audience is enough. They shout: “Come on, come on!” In America it’s like this: “You lookin’ great!” - "You look great!". Where it’s great, they put it in a more beautiful coffin. But you are truly magnificent in your patience.

And at the finish line, a mysterious phenomenon of rapid rejuvenation and rebirth occurs. You are devastated and happy, as after intimacy with your beloved. The marathon, by the way, adds 8 ingredients to a man’s physiology necessary for full-fledged love.

One of our good writers, it seems, Andrei Platonov (if I’m wrong, don’t blame me), said something like this: in order to be a human being, it is not enough to be born once. We must be reborn every day.

Long run also provides the possibility of revival. You confirm in yourself the possibility of effort, daring. A seemingly simple action: get up a little earlier and go out into the street and run your seven, ten, fifteen kilometers. If there is bad weather, cold, dirt, frost, then the need for volitional effort increases, and this is even more valuable than running through a summer forest, through a picturesque meadow.

After a run, I return home, meet my neighbors in the elevator, at the entrance, and think: “Your day started normally, ordinarily. And I have already experienced something, I have already tasted this morning, the smell, the freshness of the wind, I have already tasted joy.”

It happens that I don’t run, sometimes for a week - you get entangled in a web of worries, you find an excuse... And everything goes downhill. Personally, the level of creative possibilities immediately drops for me; thought becomes slow, clumsy, and boring. And the best of what I wrote was invented, or thought out, on the run. After all, a long run produces the hormone endorphin in the mechanism of the soul, which is an elixir of inspiration.

But even this has its own meaning - when you don’t run for a while, you get lazy, retreat, and then return to your business, to running. You watch how the clumsy body and stagnant organism warm up and become obedient to your will. So if someone has stopped running, it’s not scary. It is important to start again, to return to this state. How they return to the city of their youth, how they return to their loved one...

Marathon runners, including amateurs, even the most ordinary ones, have another huge advantage and benefit. These are new opportunities for communication, opportunities for the rapid expansion of the world around us. During a marathon, slow runners have several acquaintances along the course. You ran part of the way with one stranger, you exchanged short remarks, encouraged each other, then parted, separated by the difference in pace. Someone next caught up with you and was imbued with your torment.

I know that many, many people have found friends at the marathon distance, including foreign ones. And despite the limited financial resources of domestic marathon runners, some of them were able to compete abroad. Thanks not so much to new material opportunities, but to the friendly ties that arose with foreign associates. Although it is difficult to recommend anything specific here,

MMMM was my second marathon. The first one I had previously run in Odessa. So, the 1982 Moscow Marathon became one of the main events of my life at that time. It formed the basis of my book “I Run a Marathon,” which was published in 200 thousand copies. Excerpts from it were reprinted in magazines and almanacs. That book brought me the first monetary success in my life: 7 thousand rubles in those years was simply a colossal amount. You could buy a car. So personally, I, an amateur marathon runner, received a very substantial prize for MMMM.

Of course, not all impressions were included in that book. I didn’t write about some funny things that didn’t seem funny at all at the time. Then, in 1982, I worked in the Central Committee of the Komsomol, in the secret department I gave a receipt that I would not communicate with foreigners without authorization - only after notifying the necessary organizations. And so, having caught up with the director of the New York Marathon, Fred Lebow, at the MMMM distance, for a long time I did not dare to talk to him, although this was very necessary for me according to the plan of my book.

Looking around, I still broke my word to Lenin’s Komsomol and talked while running with a representative of an alien ideology. In addition, my colleague, member of the MMMM organizing committee, Vladimir Otkolenko gave me a secret task to look after the marathon runners from the US Embassy at a distance. Because during the run they could have special contacts with informants. Now this is a joke. But then it was perceived quite sensibly. And remembering this moment recently, Volodya Otkolenko and I laughed, albeit embarrassed.

Will I run MMMM-93? Don't know. Hard. I need to train, but I don’t have time. But by the way, you can run without much training, you will sweat, grunt, puff, crawl, but that’s what you need, get punishment for being even a little unfaithful to our cause, the marathon. Yes, punishment with pain is normal.

Claims are often made against MMMM. This is not there, this was not enough, chaos, confusion... How could it be otherwise? We live in such a country, this is our flavor, our reality, our heritage. Let him be. Let MMMM-93 be successful. And even if it’s unsuccessful, let it be anyway, you won’t stop loving him, because true love can be long, sometimes eternal...

Intelligence was the elite of the Soviet intelligence services. Military intelligence officers were called “fighters of the invisible front”; they were trusted by the country’s leadership. But foreign intelligence also gave rise to such a concept as treason. Defectors have always created a lot of problems, because they revealed all their activities, methods and strategies to the enemy. This led to the need to do very painstaking work again. The defectors were not stopped even by the fact that people involved in such actions would definitely be extradited and would no longer be able to remain undetected.

Previously, such information was not disclosed, but with the beginning of perestroika and freedom of speech, a lot of secret facts were made public. The article will talk about who Yuri Shvets (KGB) is; the biography of the former secret agent will be discussed in this material.

What led to the emergence of defectors?

What preceded the appearance of defectors in the circles of the elite unit? At the same time when Shvets Yuri left the country, some other exes followed his example. Of course, everyone had different specific reasons for this, but there was also something in common in the decision of the former intelligence officers.

Many heads of special services wrote about the mood that reigned during that period. This is N.S. Leonov. Moreover, it covered not only the highest ranks, but also ordinary employees. Most employees were frightened by the futility of further work. There was no talk of a promotion or a decent pension. Some began to engage in commercial activities. But for only a few it consisted in trading the Motherland.

How did Yuri Shvets become an intelligence officer?

Shvets Yuri is a native of Ukraine. The scout was born in the fifty-second year of the last century.

After graduating from school, Shvets became a student. Studying was quite easy for him, as he was exemplary and diligent. He was noted in the study of foreign languages. Yuri knew English very well, which was a compulsory subject. He is also fluent in Spanish and French.

Before graduating from the university, he and two other fellow students were interviewed by the State Security Committee. They were selected from among a dozen invited students.

Shvets got a job in the First Main Directorate of the KGB of the USSR and entered the Red Banner Academy of Foreign Intelligence. His classmate was Russian President V.V. Putin.

How did your intelligence career begin?

Shvets Yuri was a completely ordinary intelligence officer. At first, it was assigned by the First Main Directorate to the Center of the First Department. This department dealt with the North American direction.

Soon Yuri Shvets (KGB) was sent on a business trip to the capital of the United States. In Washington, he worked under the guise of another person - a correspondent for the Central State Information Agency.

The Soviet agent surprised everyone by being able to recruit John Helmer. He was a very tasty morsel for the Soviet services, since he had previously been listed as an employee of President Carter’s administration. After numerous checks, the American received the call sign Socrates.

Why did the rapid decline occur?

The world's intelligence services are generally not particularly trustworthy. And in this situation, the Soviet intelligence commanders considered Shvets’s connection with the American Helmer to be quite reckless. According to the Center, the matter was not clean. The agent’s bad habit, namely addiction to alcohol, also had an indirect influence. In this regard, the captain was returned to his homeland in 1987.

Shvets Yuri, an intelligence officer who worked abroad, was demoted in rank. Instead of the prestigious First Department, he received a position in the Intelligence Directorate on the territory of the Soviet Union. Despite this humiliation, the KGB officer was not very outraged. He continued to perform his duties conscientiously. For his work, Shvets was even awarded a new military rank. However, he stopped seeing himself in this area, and due to the lack of further prospects, he decided to quit.

But Shvets’s radical actions did not end with his dismissal. In ninety-one, he left the Komsomol party. However, the former intelligence officer was not interested in other intelligence agencies of the world. He began writing a book about his former job.

The Foreign Intelligence Service found out about this very quickly. The agent was carefully asked to curtail this creative activity. His former boss, Colonel Bychkov, personally hinted to him about this. Yuri was warned about the possible consequences. He was prohibited from engaging in any publishing activities. He was not supposed to maintain contacts with either domestic or foreign printing houses without the knowledge of the Service. But, despite this, the former intelligence officer tried to cooperate with Soviet publishers, however, everywhere he was denied publication. Yuri realized that he could only implement his idea abroad. The former intelligence officer chose the United States to emigrate because, in his opinion, there would be an opportunity to publish his book.

How did a former intelligence officer go to America?

Shvets Yuri only in the ninety-third year began to draw up documents for traveling abroad. The State Migration Service, of course, requested additional data about such a specific person. Intelligence had to decide whether to release its former employee outside the state. However, the Office categorically objected to the issuance of a passport to Shvets. But since the visa application received a commercial basis, he took advantage of this opportunity and emigrated to the United States. To do this, he first needed to go to the Baltic states.

Foreign intelligence provided Shvets with an ally and friend during that difficult period. He became a former agent of the First Main Directorate of the KGB, Valentin Aksilenko. Their careers were very similar, as both once worked in America.

How did work on the book begin?

Thanks to the acquaintance of Shvets's colleague with the American Brenda Lipson, the friends were honored with a meeting with the literary agent John Brockman. Their acquaintance occurred in February of ninety-three. However, Brockman, as a highly qualified specialist, did not appreciate the creativity of the former intelligence officers. The first manuscript was titled “I Always Did My Own Way.” The agent stated that from a professional point of view, a book of such content cannot be of an artistic nature. His proposal was to remake the manuscript into a drier documentary version. Aksilenko and Shvets began to settle down in Virginia, and with renewed vigor they began working on the book.

The entire work has been redone. Shvets even changed the name. “The Washington Station: My Life as a KGB Spy in America” - it was with this title that the Simon and Schuster publishing house, located in New York, became familiar with it in April of 1994.

How was the book received in society?

Naturally, such creativity aroused the interest of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. American agents closely studied the contents of the manuscript. But their decision was quite unexpected - they sent Shvets and Aksilenko a notification that they would soon be deported from the United States.

The book received a lot of attention from the media. Newspaper headlines were full of big names. The articles often contained information that the authors of “The Washington Station” were recruited by the CIA, which almost dictated the entire text to them. There was even a statement that the authors contributed to the exposure of KGB officer O. Ames.

The Russian press hastened to condemn Yuri Shvets. But the former intelligence officer responded by sending a letter to the well-known newspaper Moskovskiye Novosti. His daring act in the form of such an address caused a lot of angry responses. And the whole point is that he expressed everything he thought about the Directorate in which he worked and about the current Foreign Intelligence Service.

What happened after the manuscript was published?

Despite the public's expectation of a sensation, nothing of the sort happened. The book did not reveal any military secrets. There was nothing scandalous or unusual on the pages, although some points are of interest.

Despite the wishes of Yuri Shvets, his work was not published in Russia. In his homeland, the former intelligence officer is considered a traitor, and no one wants to get involved with him.

What is the former intelligence officer doing today?

At the moment, the former KGB officer’s plans for the future include developing his own business outside the United States. Shvets sees prospects for promoting his business in post-socialist countries, Latin America, Asia or Africa.

The former agent currently works as a financial analyst. He is the head of a business risk intelligence and assessment company.

Gennady Vasilievich Shvets

I'm running a marathon

PERPETUAL MOTION

There was a time when marathon competitions seemed to many to be the privilege of exceptional sports personalities. Marathon runners were presented to the public as ascetics who subordinated their lives to the strictest regulations, denying themselves many of the joys of life. People with perfect health and amazing physical fitness decided to run a distance of 42 kilometers 195 meters without rest. Others were forbidden to dream of a marathon; doctors lowered the barrier in front of them at the start. There was something to be afraid of. Legend says that the Greek warrior Fedenix, who ran the distance from the town of Marathon to Athens in 490 BC and brought news of the victory over the Persians to his compatriots, fell dead. But Fedenix was the best runner, the most reliable messenger in the army of the commander Miltiades; the Greek warriors envied his endurance. Perhaps the emotional excitement affected the messenger’s state, or perhaps the battle undermined his strength, and that is why the distance ended so tragically for him. But it's still hard to believe that the first marathon runner in history was smitten by the long run. It is possible that the chroniclers over time dramatized the situation in order to emphasize the exorbitant stress of Fedenix and elevate his act to the rank of a feat. But let's not guess. Bowing before the legendary heroes, the tireless messengers of bygone times, let us pay tribute to our contemporaries.

Today, the forty-kilometer path that cost the best runner of the Greek army his life is overcome without much pain by thousands of recreational joggers - mature men, children, pensioners, women, including grandmothers. And today’s athletes are not at all afraid of the treachery of the finish line. On the contrary, every long run lengthens their life. One of the running clubs in our country is called “Ural-100”. The number “100” is woven into the club’s emblem for a reason: each of its members hopes to live a whole century, no less.

In August 1982, during the holiday dedicated to the All-Union Athlete's Day, the second Moscow International Peace Marathon was launched at the Lenin Stadium in Luzhniki. More than 600 runners took part in it - well-known stayers and ordinary lovers of recreational jogging. Among them was the author of this book, who conducts his report on the run, sometimes looking ahead or looking back to understand the attractive power and healing properties of the most ancient physical exercise. Does this mean that the author encourages everyone who has decided to improve their health through physical exercise to take up the marathon distance? Of course not. The marathon requires long and thorough preparation. And the benefits and joys of running are revealed already in the first months of regular exercise; for this it is enough to cover 2, 3 or 5 kilometers at a time. It is important that the chosen distance matches your capabilities. How to determine its optimal length? You will also learn about this from the book.

START. FIRST KILOMETER

I've known this stadium for a long time. Been there a thousand times. I was sitting in the South Stand on the day when Valery Brumel made a fantastic jump of 2 meters 28 centimeters. I admired the game of the legendary Pele on the green lawn of Luzhniki. Together with thousands of other people, Misha the Olympian dropped a tear when he soared above the stands and disappeared into the shimmering evening sky. As a child and youth, I myself dreamed of becoming a triumphant here, climbing onto the podium, throwing up my hands, welcoming the public to the best stadium in the world.

But only a few become sports heroes; I was not one of them. And gradually he came to terms with the episodic role of a fan. But today I realized that you should never give up on your dream - you must chase it, even when your strength is running out, and it seems there is no longer the slightest chance of success. Today my dream came true. I didn’t come to the stadium with a ticket - I simply showed the strict stadium attendants and judges the number sewn to my T-shirt. No. 601 - it was assigned to me as one of the participants in the Moscow Marathon.

We stand on the elastic synthetic track and wait for the starting shot. We glance sideways at the stands, guessing both some envy of the spectators and their much more noticeable slight bewilderment. Our solid team of more than six hundred people really does not look quite familiar. Here, apparently, is the venerable father of the family, with a round belly visible under his yellow T-shirt. Next to him is a lanky, shy young man in glasses, who, even if he wanted to, couldn’t be called an athlete. In the last rows of those starting there is a picturesque group of ladies who do not lose their extravagance even in sports uniform. These are tourists from France, and in front of tens of thousands of spectators they behave with enviable confidence, like Parisian fashion models. A little ahead of me, a gray-haired old man is shifting from foot to foot, on his T-shirt there is an inscription in English: “The further the finish line, the better.” Well, if we digress somewhat from sports terminology and imagine life as an ultra-long distance race, then we can agree with the conviction of the venerable marathon runner from the United States.

Shot! Away, idle contemplation, hard work begins. Move a little towards the inner edge, away from the TV cameras. My running is not so graceful and easy as to arouse the admiration of television viewers, among whom there are probably acquaintances. The task is to give as little reason as possible to draw attention to yourself, and under no circumstances rush forward. Yes, there is not enough strength for that. But don’t trail behind either. After a few seconds, doubts fly away, general enthusiasm permeates me. The tramp of hundreds of feet creates a sound similar to the surf, the wave carries us in front of the Central Grandstand, and the spectators are already rewarding us with applause at the start. And on the left the cup of the Olympic flame rises above us. I remember the day when a fire broke out in it, brought here by runners from those places where Olympism was born, where Fedenix ran his distance, where the first sports marathon was launched. And all of us, participants in today’s running, feel involved in such legendary events, in Olympic history, in a delightful life of endless overcomings.

But now let’s moderate the initial enthusiasm a little and control the pace. It wouldn’t hurt to choose a rival, a leader, to follow. During the warm-up, I talked to many runners, wondering who was expecting what result. Yuri Hrebeik, a law lecturer at the University of Prague, told me that he intends to run the marathon in 3 hours and 30 minutes. I expect about the same result, and it would be nice to run side by side now, encouraging each other. But in the crowd I cannot find my acquaintance from Czechoslovakia. Running a little ahead of me is No. 491, this is a 55-year-old foreman of the Alexandrovsky timber industry enterprise from the Vladimir region, Viktor Ivanovich Tyulenev. But I can’t follow him, because Tyulenev has been involved in recreational running for 16 years, participated in twenty marathons, and not so long ago ran the distance in 2 hours 58 minutes.

//EVENING CHELYABINSK, 07-12-1999

Gennady SHVETS: "HOW TO MEASURE WILLPOWER? - BY STRENGTH OF LOVE!"

They say that the most difficult feat is an ordinary and everyday feat, and the most difficult struggle is, of course, the one waged with oneself. At first glance, this seems to be an abstract philosophy that concerns us only to a small extent, a common phrase when describing various heroic professions: police officers, for example, or doctors. However, the same doctors can point you to people for whom the above statement is not an empty phrase, but a task set cruelly and, sometimes, from birth. These are disabled people - a word that many avoid, but no other word has been invented yet, so we have to be content with what we have. But it happens that the use of this word in some cases is in no way possible: it is simply impossible to say the Latin invalidus (“powerless, weak”) about people who have overcome themselves, which is beyond the power of any other “seasoned human being.”

Here are two examples, both relate to the world of literature, but one is more related to the history of art, this is a classic and textbook example, familiar to all of us, the other is from everyday life, close to us, few people know about this person, of course, but also a considerable number of people. I mean the Soviet writer, author of the novel with the self-explanatory title “How the Steel Was Tempered” Nikolai Ostrovsky and the Chelyabinsk poet Gennady Lazarevich Shvets. Two people, a writer and a poet, for whom fate was equally unfair. The only difference is that Ostrovsky fell ill at a relatively mature age, and Shvets still suffers from residual effects from cerebral palsy suffered in childhood. Accustomed since childhood to overcoming himself and his illness, he could not help but become interested in the classic Soviet example of courage. It was a task almost like in chess, where the enemy’s secret goals and thoughts are unknown, they can only be guessed with varying degrees of probability. But why the enemy? And isn’t the connection to chess too strained here?
However, let's talk about everything in order.

FRENCH LESSONS
When Gennady Shvets was diagnosed with a terrible disease at the age of seven months, his struggle began. At first, without his direct participation: at this stage, his parents, Lazar Mikhailovich and Sofia Semyonovna, fought for his health, and his grandmother Fira Samoilovna Livshits, his mother’s mother, did especially a lot. The year was tightly scheduled: Evpatoria, Moscow, the Berezka sanatorium (Bazhovo village), the Ogonyok sanatorium (Chelyabinsk), Gorkoye Lake (Kurgan region), I had to visit some sanatoriums several times a year. Intensive treatment continued until the age of seven.
“We can say that my “civic growing up” already began there,” admits Gennady Lazarevich. - I saw with my own eyes all the negativity that surrounded me - boys and girls suffering from their ailments. It was then that I realized that my salvation was in self-control and self-correction. There is no other option.
The first victory was the permission of the medical and pedagogical consultation at the USSR Academy of Sciences (Moscow) to study in an ordinary secondary school. The first two grades, however, had to be completed at home, but the 3rd grade had already begun at the regular Kopeis secondary school No. 48, where he studied until the 10th grade, surrounded by healthy children. The grades are almost all A's, only a few B's. By the way, he also got an A in French with its incredible Gallic pronunciation - a victory that was especially pleasant for Gena Shvets, who had overcome diction problems since childhood. Teacher Inna Vasilyevna Pecherova was even convinced that he would continue to specialize in a foreign language.

KNOWN MOVE
But in 1976, Gennady Lazarevich graduated with honors from the Kopeisk College of Light Industry, department of accounting. The fact is that, according to the legislation of that time, you had to work at an enterprise for up to 20 years in order for your disability benefits from childhood (16 rubles!) to be recalculated into a pension in accordance with the earnings you received.

There were only girls in my group,” recalls Gennady Lazarevich. - For me these were, as they say, “years of fire”!
After working in the central accounting department of the Kopeisk Machine-Building Plant named after Kirov, he received a lifelong disability group. I had to quit the factory - you can’t work with such a group. But two years later, Shvets returned to his previous work - however, it was necessary to turn to the Central Committee of the Komsomol. Afterwards, they were fired due to staff reduction; no Central Committee could help here.
“Chess has always helped me, don’t be surprised,” admits Gennady Lazarevich. - This hobby began in school. What captivated them was their analytical thinking as a form of knowing their “I.” Participated in competitions from 1975 to 96. Since 1981, I have been a repeated participant and winner of international tournaments held under the flag of the ICHF (International Correspondence Chess Organization). I was coached in absentia by the Honored Coach of the USSR Alexander Markovich Konstantinopolsky (Moscow): we exchanged letters with him with notes of moves. I was even part of the national team in the match with Yugoslavia, where I twice defeated the national Yugoslav master Ratomir Ognjanovic, and received the rank of candidate master of sports. Chess brought me a lot - the ability to more easily endure pain after defeats, to think outside the box in a limited period of time, the gift of foresight. All this was very useful to me in the future, when I sacrificed chess for the sake of creativity, when I entered the philological faculty of the pedagogical university... Alexander Markovich, by the way, predicted that my poems would be published.
The chess player, who accepted his student’s choice with dignity, was not mistaken. Two collections of poetry have already been published: “Escape from Captivity” and “Primrose”, Gennady Shvets is a diploma winner of the 1st regional festival of creativity for disabled people “Look at me as an equal”, he has appeared on television, his poems are repeatedly read on the radio, poetry, among of which, for example, there is this one entitled “Truth”:

I look in the reflection
Being aware of nature's given.
I love life - but I also endure.
I endure, escaping from captivity.

And look at me -
The mirror view is the most expensive...
The lion jumped, burning fieryly.
To convince you to jump too!

However, the main thing in the work of Gennady Shvets is not the lyrics, as it might seem, but civil themes. Later this will play a role when turning to the life of Nikolai Ostrovsky. And this happened already at the pedagogical university. To become just an applicant, I even had to turn to the President of Russia, and then act through the Minister of Education and the Vice-Rector for Correspondence Education at ChSPU.
“When I successfully passed the entrance exams, my father and I brought a bouquet of flowers to my mother,” says Gennady Lazarevich. - And a month and a half later she was gone. So I can rightfully say that the university is my “alma mater” - “mother-breadwinner”! It took me a long time to get used to the workload of three or four classes, but I didn’t miss a single lecture, I walked around the university under my father’s hand.

THE SECRET OF NIKOLAI OSTROVSKY
When the time came to write my thesis, there was no doubt - Nikolai Ostrovsky! It was decided to analyze Ostrovsky’s letters, first published in full only in 1990. Gennady Lazarevich intended to find in them the answer to who the writer really was, what his true story was. A total of 634 letters (!) and telegrams from Ostrovsky were analyzed. And the thesis itself consisted of 90 printed pages. Shvets insisted on a full-time defense, considering it a matter of honor and duty. Moreover, the conclusions he came to might well not be liked by someone.
“Alas, I am convinced that the image of the famous Soviet writer and fighter is very far from the textbook one,” said Gennady Lazarevich. - Nikolai Ostrovsky was a typical product of his era, and when party ideologists decided to make a legend out of him, he believed that this was necessary and justified from a moral point of view. Moreover, he himself strived for this. The key point here, I think, will be his letter to Lyudmila Berenfus, the daughter of the head physician of the sanatorium in Berdyansk, with whom he was very friendly, dated October 3, 1922:
"...Lucy, I was once the same as all my comrades, and if I were the same now, I would fall in love every week, I would live to the fullest and would not understand those who are dear to me now. I do not regret what was lost, and I write to you, Lucy, without crying at fate and knowing the law, the law of nature, where the weak give way to the strong, I do not give in, but try to LEAVE SOME OTHERWISE" (emphasis mine - G.Sh.).
It is appropriate to compare this “somehow to leave” with the saying of M. Saltykov-Shchedrin: “Literature has been removed from the laws of decay. It alone does not recognize death.” This comparison helps us understand Ostrovsky, who wants to live forever in the memory of shocked humanity. It is all the better that his dreams are consistent with the goals of the party. Ostrovsky compromised with his conscience and agreed to rewrite his initially weak and clumsy novel. It was reworked by the executive editor of the Young Guard magazine, Anna Karavaeva, and her deputy, Mark Kolosov. By the way, the novel “How the Steel Was Tempered” was first published in their magazine. Of course, I support my conclusions in my thesis with linguistic analysis. Subsequently, the terrible betrayal of himself affected Ostrovsky, only aggravating his illness. Do you know that he was subject to bouts of mental instability? There is a doctor's report. By the end of my thesis work, I was finally convinced that he and I, of course, are antipodes. I respect his internal personal struggle with the disease, but as a creative person he failed!
The defense of the diploma was excellent; Gennady Lazarevich finished his speech to the applause of teachers and fellow students. Shvets's scientific supervisor, Professor Lidiya Andreevna Glinkina, admitted that "... the work clearly demonstrates not just the mastery of the university program; in essence, this is a serious and in-depth monographic research."

LETTER OF RECOMMENDATION
After graduating from the university, Gennady Lazarevich even received a letter of recommendation from the dean of the Faculty of Philology: “... G.L. Shvets is an extremely friendly, decent and responsible person, which is so important for a teacher... He could provide special assistance in studying at home for disabled people... to advise in the field of theory and practice of poetry and chess."
Now Gennady Lazarevich Shvets runs the “Literary Lounge” in the newspaper “Mercy and Health” - reviews poetry, gives lessons in versification, organizes evenings, meets with authors, and also a telephone dating club for disabled people. But this is not enough for him. He is waiting for students, wants to teach at home, and has placed an advert to that effect. He asks everyone who is ready to support his poetic slogan to respond:

How to measure willpower?
Inflexibility of the lobe.
The higher the share,
The more assertive the will.

He believes it is possible.

Eldar GIZATULLIN.
Photo by Sergei ARSENIEV.