Quote from Timothy Fitzpatrick on June 7, 2025, 22:08

I. Shamir. Letters from Moscow

May 05, 2003, 22:45

INTRODUCTION.

In 1990, articles signed by "Israeli journalist Robert David" began to appear in Russian newspapers and magazines. They surprised the reader a lot: the mysterious "Israeli journalist" opposed the "democrats" who were confidently going to power, did not believe that with the victory of capitalism the entire Soviet people would heal, as in Switzerland, did not believe that it was necessary to destroy or at least split the "empire of evil" - the Soviet Union, was against the independence of the Baltic States, for the continuation of friendship with Cuba and Iraq, and at the same time - for the renewal of the regime, for democracy and electability, for popular legitimacy. Articles appeared in different publications - in "Nash Sovremennik", "Litgazeta", "Dna", "Pravda", "Komsomolskaya Pravda" and in a number of emigrant weeklies.The authorities tried to find the author, the federal prosecutor's office opened a case against him. Several journalists managed to establish his identity, but they agreed to keep him secret. Only a few years later it became known that the Russian-Israeli journalist and writer Israel Shamir was hiding under the name "Robert David". He was born in Novosibirsk, studied at the physics school of NSU and SOAN, as a boy in the 60s he moved to Israel, where he became a famous author. He worked in many newspapers, magazines and on the radio, from the BBC in London to "Ha'aretz" in Tel Aviv, and in many countries of the world - in England, Japan, Scandinavia, Africa, Indo-China, and in 1989 Shamir came to Moscow as a correspondent of the influential Israeli newspaper "Haaretz".

A man familiar with the West and in love with Russia, he arrived full of optimism, but then became disappointed in Gorbachev's reforms, understood the intentions of the democrats, did not accept their rainbow predictions. This collection contains his articles - warnings written in those stormy years when the fate of Russia was decided.

1990.

I came to Russia, captivated by perestroika. We, the emigrants, understood it in our own way, not like the Soviet people. Emigration (and Western public opinion) was divided into two camps: one, "anti-Soviets", considered perestroika - a comedy, a staging of the KGB, a deception of the West. Maximov, Bukovsky, Solzhenitsyn and many others stood in this position. They hated the Soviet Union and communism, and considered any news about changes a deception. Bukovsky, in my opinion, has been believing in a Kagebash conspiracy aimed at undermining the power of the West for the longest time. Another camp, "pro-Soviet", which included Western socialists, communists, humanists, successors of Russell and Sartre (there were few of them among the emigrants - there were few of us), supported the Soviet Union as a whole, justified and defended its actions, but could not accept the stupidities of the Soviet regime: restrictions on freedom of creativity, persecution of artists and poets, lack of democracy. This camp took Gorbachev's words at face value and believed in the upcoming renewal of the Soviet system.

I believed that as a result of perestroika there would be a renewed Soviet Union, a model not only for developing but also for developed countries, and we, friends of the Soviet Union, will no longer have to be ashamed of the KGB and the Gulag. As it turned out, we all - friends and enemies of the Soviet Union - were wrong. Perestroika was not a deception, it did not become a way to renewal. It turned out to be the beginning of the dismantling of socialism, the beginning of the collapse of the system, the beginning of the end.

But it was not easy to foresee it. Unlike Nina Andreeva and conservatives, I was not thrilled with everything that was happening in Russia at that time. Perestroika brought with it a fresh wind of change. Once in the Stockholm library I discovered new Soviet magazines for 1987-88. They shocked me - instead of the usual drag, I saw real discussions, new wonderful works appeared - from "Plakha" by Aitmatov to "The Golden cloud was Supt" by Pristokin. I wanted to go to Russia, to my old homeland, which seemed to be reborn right before my eyes.

I came to Moscow, enchanted by my vision of the awakening giant. Before leaving, I was warned: George was sure that the Bolsheviks would not see me, the shot sparrow, on a chibb (he considered perestroika a deception designed to disarm the West), Misha believed that I would be terribly disappointed here and, cursing the Hyperboreans, I would escape under the shade of the tents of Israel, Dodik - that I would die in the approaching civil war, my mother - that I would starve of hunger, others - that I would become an anti-communist or commit suicide. I didn't really know and didn't really remember Russia, I referred myself to the second generation - people who grew up in exile, and came to Russia as the "old homeland" - that's what Americans call the homeland of their ancestors, where their parents or grandfathers came from. I came with great love to a country completely unknown to me.

My first problem was identity. I left Novosibirsk twenty years before returning, but I didn't feel "Twenty years later". I didn't recognize the places I had abandoned for a long time. Twenty years is half of my life, and I grew up in exile. This emigration called itself the Third Wave to separate itself from the First - post-revolutionary, noble, White Guard, and from the Second, post-war, prisoners and Vlasov. But to whom - the Third, and for me it was always the only one and seemed not a wave at all, but a beautiful archipelago in the waves of the Aegean Lukomorye, on which it is so free to rush from Calypso in London to Circe in Munich. Although I am related to the Middle East, where lotus is mixed with hummus, I found that the Russian language caught me and keeps me in its sphere of gravity, as it caught other foreigners from Olzhas to Bulat. I chose the islands of the Russian colonies of Paris, Tel Aviv and New York as my homeland, and I did not believe that somewhere there is another, non-emigrant Russia.

And suddenly, like a submarine from under the ice, a real metropolis broke out of the fog and gloom. Gorbachev opened the gate, and my long-forgotten dream - to return - suddenly became a reality. I took my wife and two of our boys and went to this unfamiliar country - my homeland.

Then I discovered - an unusual feeling! - that in Russia they speak the same Russian in which I spoke and wrote all these years. I considered Russian to be an intimate, personal language, the language of my friends and enemies on small islands of emigration, where everyone knows everyone. And suddenly it turns out that this is the language of a huge country, and everyone easily explains in Russian how to get there, like in the Israeli town of Holon or Brighton Beach near New York. I was so unaccustomed to the universality of Russian that upon arrival I loudly and amazedly remembered Kuzkin's mother, seeing the queue at the buffet in the intermission. My shout, however, confused only me. It wasn't the only case, and I still look back when I hear Russian speech.

Moscow in 1989 seemed to me at first an unattractive city, built up with modern residential buildings - "Cheremushki". The patterned cakes of Stalin's skyscrapers in the style of "Empire during the plague" and a few delicate green pre-revolutionary houses within the boulevard ring were comforted. The streets were infinitely wide, wider than the Parisian boulevards and Californian highways, and designed for the rapid entry of tanks. Several old houses lost among new buildings reminded of the historical past; the fabulous temple of the Intercession was connected with Kathmandu and the Golden Horde; two soldiers in front of the Carmine copy of the step pyramid of Djoser remained a memory of the socialist revolution. There were few red flags in Moscow, less than in Tel Aviv. Moscow is a "modern" city, in a somewhat outdated, like the word "modern", style. Old Moscow was apparently legendary, judging by the preserved houses. It's a pity that the authorities mercilessly rebuilt it, not caring about the old things. Leningrad was luckier: having lost the title of the capital, it retained its architectural ensemble.

The world I described changed quickly, before my eyes. The transition from calm socialism to violent capitalism has changed a lot. I'm describing the departing Soviet civilization on the burt. Under socialism, which I barely caught, ordinary Muscovites lived in small apartments, for which they paid almost nothing. There were many public squares: green parks and courtyards around concrete buildings, large canteens, cafes and restaurants, house kitchens, in the realization of the dream of equality and liberation from everyday life. Unfortunately, by the time we arrived in Moscow, it became difficult to go to Moscow, and I can only imagine how gloriously the Russians lived in the legendary time of "stagnation", when everything was functioning. Soviet socialism was distinguished by equality, doctors of science and watchmen lived door to door on the same landing, and the salaries were almost the same, from a small one of 150 to a very large one of 450 rubles. Doctors of science and intellectuals did not like equality - this was the difference between the Soviet intelligentsia and the Russian intelligentsia, known to us for the classics, which strove for equality.

People liked to grumble. The cleaner in the cafe grumbles that the visitors are watching, in the queue they grumble that someone is climbing forward. There is nothing in the stores, Muscovites said. Apparently, they compared it to the legendary stagnation when "everything was", or to Western stores, because in fact, their stores had a small but necessary set of products, as in a Portuguese or Lao shop, much more than in East Africa. There were bread, butter, milk, cottage cheese, sour cream, at a cheap price, at the bazaar - vegetables. Meat in stores is cheap, but only roughly chopped with an ax. Along the large roads, the peasants sold young potatoes and onions. When you come to visit, everyone's table is breaking, there's a ham, and fish, and shish kebabs on skewers, and everyone complains that, they say, "there's nothing".

The restaurants of socialist Moscow were fabulous. The luxurious dining rooms of the last century have been preserved here, and the menu has not changed since then, with its spreads with caviar and salmon and some unknown salted to me. When we arrived, lunch for three with champagne and caviar cost three dollars. It is clear that at such prices it was difficult to get into these fabulous palaces - from the very morning there were queues in front of them.

Socialism worked like this: everything was very cheap, but hard to get. Social status determined the ability to get something, and money was - yes, for decoration. Fortunately, I came with a high title of foreign correspondent, otherwise I would never have been able to eat this legendary lunch for a dollar, because there were a lot of people who wanted to. Lunch took three hours. They go to Soviet restaurants not to eat, but to spend time; waiters believe that the client has already received more than the measure, since he was able to get into the restaurant, and there is nothing to feed him, and they serve him very slowly and reluctantly.

Then foreign, semi-foreign, private restaurants began to appear. There was no big difference in quality, but it was also difficult to get into these much more expensive restaurants. I couldn't figure out how much Muscovites actually earn for a long time. Although they all complained about small salaries, their chickens didn't peck money. The salaries of Muscovites were indeed small, but they worked (I don't mean workers) even less, and they were listed at several rates at the same time. The most privileged people complained the most. A nice old lady from the Kirov Ballet met me with the words: "We are hungry," - she was on her way to America, escaping from hunger and pogroms. "I didn't notice," I answered.

"What did you eat today?" she asked. I listed: borscht with vodka, caviar with rastegay, fireman's cutlets. "Probably for currency?" - "No, for rubles." She laughed. - "You are a dangerous person, if you write this, we will not be accepted as refugees in America."

Russia at the beginning of perestroika was similar to the countries of the Third World. There are two Third Worlds: the Third World is semi-socialist, like Tanzania, Egypt, Burma. This is a quiet Third World, where prices are cheap, life is prosperous, food is abundant, local products are abundant, and foreign things are few, there are few bustles and business activity, personal cars are few and they are old. In these countries, educated people get a little more than ordinary workers, dream of the West, French cinema and American cigarettes, and easily become dissidents. The authorities are persecuting them, and the West sends parcels and mentions them on the radio. There is a semi-capitalist Third World - Kenya, Thailand - in which there is a lot of business activity, a lot of beggars, prostitution, few local products and a lot of imported products, a lot of latest Mercedes and a crush in buses. In these countries, educated people grieve about their lost identity, the gap between the poor and the rich are outraged, and go into opposition. The authorities torture and shoot them, and the West welcomes the elimination of communist terrorists.

Russia was similar to the socialist Third World. Familiar features from Cairo are old, half-disinting taxis (also "Lada"), potholes in the asphalt of roads, like on the shabby Serengeti highway, large half-empty shops with a queue at the cash desk and a queue at the counter. Looking into the recent past, you understand that the life of the Soviet people was quiet and calm, especially outside Moscow.

When we arrived, the main topic of conversation was the just-seated Congress of People's Deputies, which everyone was constantly watching on television. The CIS was the most democratically elected parliament of the planet at all time. In the West, democracy has long been learned to govern, and elections are used only to consolidate the power of the ruling class. There is no real choice in the West, because they have learned to create an imaginary choice. Huge funds are needed for election campaigns there, and they belong to corporations and capitalists.

In the Soviet Union, until 1989, they also knew how to manage the Soviets, although not so skillfully. But in recent years of perestroika, Gorbachev and his associates took the Western radio's rants about freedom and democracy at face value and decided to apply them in real life. (I leave the conversation outside the framework, but I do not exclude, assumptions about their conscious sabotage). Therefore, free, almost undirected elections were held, both in the CIS and in the Soviets. An uncontrollable structure has emerged. Western parliaments are governed because there are drive belts - parties and factions. They were not in the CIS and other Councils, each deputy was free to act by the will of conscience.

The SND was elected in two ways: partly - directly, and partially - by organizations such as the CPSU or the Academy of Sciences. It was according to the organizations that the most radical pro-Western deputies, Academician Sakharov and his like-minded people were elected. A prominent corps of pro-Western deputies has developed in the CIS, which over time became known as "democrats". Then they were called the "Interregional Bloc" (IWG). The IWG enjoyed the support of the West, and the West had leverage in the Soviet Union. Western radio stations, where I had a chance to work, created public opinion. The West tried to support close-minded deputies by throwing them money, office equipment, lecture tours, trips abroad. Being "for the West" has become very profitable. Thus, the CIS, a free parliament, began to be subjected to Western conducting. But at first there were not so many pro-Western deputies, and for a long time the CIS maintained an incredible level of freedom.

The spoctacle was fantastic. The idea of total democracy itself is good. The bad thing is that the Soviet people were naive and innocent, and did not know the facts of life in the West and in the world. Therefore, the parliament lost the reins of power and eventually died.

I didn't understand Soviet people. I really liked the experiment with the creation of the CIS. When I was asked: "Do you like perestroika?" I answered in the affirmative, and made everyone laugh. Soviet people didn't like perestroika, they liked Gorbachev even less. They associated the deterioration of life and the growth of the deficit with perestroika. I didn't know that Soviet people used to live quite safely, because those who came to us in the West always complained about their thin life. But apparently, life under Brezhnev was much better, and with the restructuring, people began to live worse. The word "perestroika" was treated by the Soviet people as the word "communism" twenty years ago, and there is a lot of irony in the constructions "foremen of perestroika" (Korotich) and "perestroika ribbon" (aka "chernukha", for example, "Little Faith"). The restructuring became a reality only in 1989 during the Congress of People's Deputies (SPD).

Until then, "perestroika" was largely another slogan, and this is how it was perceived in the province. In places further away, in my native Novosibirsk, for example, you could see old-fashioned slogans "We will implement the decisions of the XIX party conference" or "Perestroika - it sounds proud" and after August 1991. Before the elections in the CIS, it seemed to many that everything would pass like overtaking America. When the first secretaries of the regional committees flew, the partorgs stopped posting slogans in the glory of perestroika, and perestroika actually began. The trouble is that it quickly got out of control.

Soviet people were full of hatred and envy of the privileged "nomenclature" with its distributors and individual schools and hospitals. Emigrants accustomed to social inequality were surprised by this. The documentary and journalistic film "Special Zone" was broadcast on television in cinemas, exposing the "luxurious" life of the Soviet elite. I could not understand the reasons for their righteous anger: a dacha surrounded by green grass was no better than an ordinary house in Pasadena or Jerusalem; a privileged school, where - oh, horror! - there are no working children, did not surprise me, as well as a store and a canteen, where mere mortals are not allowed. In this, Soviet Russia was similar to the West. The claims of the fighters with privileges were all the more incomprehensible because, without catching their breath, they opposed the equalism. "They (the nomenclature) have sausage," was the battle cry of the populists at the beginning of perestroika. They may have had sausage, but, except for the very top, the life of the Russian ruling class was very modest. At that time, Yeltsin raised the banner of the fight against privileges, on which it was insted: "Let's take away the sausage from the nomenclature".

The Muscovites I met loved Yeltsin, precisely for the reason why I did not accept him - because he was an enemy of Gorbachev. Gorbachev was for me then the embodiment of transformations and reforms, for the people - a symbol of queues and lack of vodka and sugar. Everyone saw Yeltsin in their own way: for example, the ardent socialist Boris Kagarlitsky saw him as the key to the socialist path of development. (Of course, over time, he also took a bite of the subtute). But Yeltsin's main weapon was envy, a call for redistribute and elimination of privileges. Today, when the "new Russians" live in the luxury of oil sheikhs, it is difficult to even remember and believe what malice and envy people caused by talking about sausage in the regional committees and about the Gorkomov dachas, God sees, rather modest.

Russia had a monopoly on ideology, and it began to crack after the CIS congress. The authorities demanded to condemn privileges, to support the "cooperative movement", that is, the first privates, to condemn Ligachev, an old conservative. At the level of symbols, it looked like this - on the one hand, the technical and creative intelligentsia supporting the Secretary General on the left, and on the other hand, on the right - conservatives, backward types, retrogrades, party members with privileges. The people did not like Gorbachev and his perestroika, but the intelligentsia had to voice the will of the people. In contrast to Gorbachev, she put forward not an anti-perestroika figure - say, Ligachev or Polozkov - but a super-perestroika figure of Yeltsin.

The Soviet intelligentsia had its own class interests - it could and wanted to rule. She had newspapers, radio, class unity, and she was tired of playing equality. There was a surprisingly large equality in Soviet Russia, and talk about privileges only emphasized this basic equality.

At that time, wealthy people appeared in Russia. They were called "cooperators", although they had nothing to do with cooperation. It was more natural to envy them. "Cooperators" were merchants and businessmen with a strong mafia mixture, although the perestroika press created the appearance of a righteous man, eager to feed, drink and shoe Russia, and live modestly, but with dignity himself, as all Soviet people will soon heal. Here the ideological intelligentsia found its first material support and received a super task, as Stanislavsky would say: condemning the privileges of the nomenclature from the standpoint of equality, to approve the privileges of the rich and the intelligentsia under the banner of the fight against equalization.

Henrietta Yanovskaya, the director of the Moscow Youth Theatre, coped with this super-complex task at the level of symbols. She staged a play based on Mikhail Bulgakov's novel "Dog's Heart", which was just published in Russia, which became an important ideological milestone. In the systemic war that was taking place at that time in Russia, ideology played an exceptional role, and the feather could be equated not to a bayonet, but to a ballistic missile, and the performance could be equated to a nuclear warhead. The performance was wonderful, it was a pleasure to watch it, but the moral of the play "Dog's Heart" was cannibal. It is no coincidence that this story was not published under Soviet power. Bulgakov's story, written under the influence of life's advols, was talented, but morally defective, like some books by Selin or Marquis de Sade. The proletarian, the "people", Bulgakov's is a sloppy dog who "spoke", acquired a human form thanks to an intellectual, and then - oh, horror - bit the nine-room apartments of an intellectual demiurge. As a punishment, the intellectual returns him to his state. A good man is a servant, a doorman, a janitor. He serves and gratefully takes a ruble for vodka. A bad Jewish commissioner "mudds the people", encourages the dog to assert his rights. But the intellectual - the master of life negotiates with the boss of the commissioner, and remains the master of the situation. The then Moscow intellectual was delighted with the idea - he, they say, is the master of life, and the people are cattle, a dog, "Balls". This performance became the ideological banner of the "new class", and the champions of equality were enrolled in the Sharikovs.

A little later I saw a wonderful old Soviet film "Beware of the car", the hero of which, Detochkin, modern Robin Hood, steals cars from successful representatives of the "new class", sells them, and distributes money to orphanages. And then I realized that Sharikov is the same Detochkin, only seen through the eyes of the owner of the car he stolen. For the have-noted, the poor are cattle; if the cattle require division, it should be returned to a dog state, castrated (the operation carried out by Professor Preobrazhensky on the rebellious Sharikov clearly looks like castration), suppressed.

Even then, in 1989, I found myself in a spiritual vacuum: the intelligentsia quoted "Dog's Heart", defending the right to inequality. When I expressed my disagreement, I was automatically enrolled in the schwonders, as if the world was limited by this scheme. There were fewer socialist champions of equality in Russia in 1989 than icebergs in the tropics.

Now, in the post-perestroika years, when "fat magazines" were schirling, when the circulation of "Fire", "Arguments and Facts", "Banners" fell, when the intellectuals came out on the panel to sell cigarettes and rags, one could also rejoice: you wanted it, Georges Dunden, you hoped that in the world of the strong you would become even stronger, you were ready to crush the weak and turn them into neutered dogs if they demanded human rights. Share your current trouble with you.

Lenin was right when talking about the lackey essence of the intelligentsia: my Moscow acquaintances were ready to "ideologically serve" the winning "new class", although they had little chance of a place in the ranks of the winners. They sincerely sided with the strong, as a lackey sincerely protects his master from the encroachments of the common people. How they rejoiced at the collapse of the old order with its egalitarian ideas!

I remember when magazines became independent. The editorial office of "Znameni" rejoiced - finally millions will flow into their pockets, bypassing the Writers' Union! They wanted to become rich and happy by robbing other writers - vae victis! They passed a law that allowed newspaper editors, until then - as much as employees as watchmen, to become full owners of multimillion-dollar property and influence public opinion. This is how the first expropriation of the new bourgeois revolution took place. Yesterday's property of the Soviet people fell into the pocket of the new owners. But two years passed, paper rose in price, circulation fell, most of the employees were dismissed, the main income was the rental of office rooms. They failed to become professors Preobrazhensky, the world was built according to a completely different scheme.

And the cooperators, this funny audience, who went in trainings of the brightest colors and sneakers, fled, and did not stay with pies. They quickly realized that real money lies not on the thorny path of competition with state-owned enterprises, not in feeding and dressing people with their work, but in speculation with state goods. They teamed up with the heads of state-owned enterprises and began to sell state products bought at fixed prices at the market price.

Around this time, the master of the Soviet detective Eduard Topol wrote the novel "Tomorrow in Russia", published in 1992. This is a weak book, but in mediocre books the mythologems of the century are more clearly visible than in talented ones. In Topol's novel, three myths that existed during the perestroika are clearly visible.

PERESTROIKA IS THE WAY TO PROSPERITY

In Russian literature, something similar to Topol's novel appeared in the XIX century. "Tomorrow in Russia" - new dreams of Vera Pavlovna, democratic utopia. It was written in the last Gorbachev years, shortly before the victory of the Democrats in the great August capitalist revolution. Reading this book today is as strange as the socialist utopias of the beginning of the century - in the days of the Gulag.

The book "Tomorrow in Russia" could only be written by an emigrant - it is so full of insatiable faith in capitalism that brings universal prosperity. The action takes place at the end of Gorbachev's days, but - oh miracle! - cooperatives managed to feed and clothe the country, perestroika generates prosperity, the nomenclature is angry and rage, and the people eat crayfish with beer and gutarite, how good it has become to live:

"The new life (of the Russian village) was visible from the train window - herds of private livestock on the floodplain meadows of the Vyatka River, neat squares of tenants' fields, the construction of several new huts and even the bell tower of a new church on the hill. Yes, life is returning to the villages... Russian people have turned into Israeli moshavniks, they live as they want, they even build churches without asking anyone!"

Or - our utopian restaurant car: "a family of three or four people, having rented a restaurant car, immediately turned it from a standard tasteless "general food point" into a modern cafe like "Madonna" or an ancient inn a la "Russian Teremok". In Ukraine, rich Ukrainian borscht, dumplings, poach with horseradish, buckwheat porridge with shquarks, in the Caucasus - kebabs, chickens, tobacco, satsivi, etc."

All this, nothing to say, is so far from the reality of private and rented restaurants known to us firsthand, which managed to combine the inedibility of catering with the prices of the Parisian "Maxim", that only an emigrant could write such a thing.

People love Gorbachev: "Millions of people walk the streets, voluntarily carry his portraits and wrote with their own hands: "We are for you, Sergeich!" - I think only a Martian could write this.

JEWS ARE ENEMIES OF THE BOLSHEVIKS.

The central event of the book is the successful coup of the State Emergency Committee. In numerous interviews, Topol was proud of his prediction in August 1991. The winning GChPists in his book send all Jews to the Far East and create a buffer zone there on the border with China - a terrible enemy of the State Emergency Committee. (Althout in fact, the late academician Sakharov and his admirers - not the communists of Russia - were supporters of breaking relations with China.) The Jewish theme is coolly pedaled in the novel, apparently designed for Odessa Jews with Brighton Beach.

Jews are good, says the American dogma, which follows Poplar, which means bad guys, bad guys should be against Jews. And the communists expel Jews from Topol - as if the Jews did not occupy command heights under all the general secretaries of the Communist Party from Lenin to Gorbachev without exception. By the way, Lungin has the same logic in his "Luna Park" and in the obsessive statements of Vyacheslav Kostikov, who identifies the enemies of his president with the enemies of the Jewish people. Needless to say, this is also a fiction: among the victims of the May Day dispersal of the communist demonstration in Moscow were war veteran Boris Moiseevich Dakshitsky and old Bolshevik Isaac Lvovich Koganovsky, and 67-year-old Salmon Yakov Naumovich in intensive care.

(Only years later I understood the thought of Topol and Kostikov, but this is the topic of another book.)

Israel is the almighty state of Topol. An Israeli superman with an implausible name "Barol (???) Levi", who "at the age of 24 bombed an Iraqi nuclear reactor with perfect accuracy, and at thirty organized the kidnapping of Mordechai Vaanunu from England". The same superman at thirty-five puts the Soviet Union on its knees, having previously bought Japan. Worship of Israel is part of the Russian-Jewish-emigrant mythology.

Does a person have the right to cheat? When does dissent become a betrayal? Is it possible to hate the regime and fight against your country? What is happening in the neutral strip between Vlasov and Kurbsky, Henry Toro and Tokyo Rose? This is not an easy question. How does Topol, the expitor of the aspirations of a certain part of emigration, respond to him? "Give me a radio station, and I will disband the Soviet Army and overthrow the Soviet power," his hero doctor Efim Rabinovich offers the Americans - and he succeeds in this.

In real life, the patent of Efim Rabinovich was indeed used to destroy the Soviet Union: national discord encouraged by Radio Liberty, the Karabakh Committee and similar organizations. "A Jewish emigrant with an Israeli visa" advised to demand sovereignty from the republics and the ability to withdraw their soldiers from the Soviet Army - and now "at the first radio call, Muslim soldiers leave barracks, seize trains and rush home". It reminds me of the famous call: take as much sovereignty as you want...

"How many unthinkable, fantastic projects of the overthrow of the Soviet power (the American intelligence officer) had to listen to from Russian Jewish emigrants, what power of hatred for the system (they) had to carry in themselves," Topol writes.

I am not a fan of Article 74 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR, which killed the madman Ostashvili, but this article really cries about Topol: this passage is not only anti-Semitic, but also capable of causing anti-Jewish emotions in a normal Russian person. It's not enough, they say, for Jewish immigrants that they went where they wanted, they also run to the CIA to destroy Russia.

But Topol, hoping to flatter his American-Jewish reader (of course, the patriot of America), lies godlessly. Indeed, there was a category of emigrants who fled to the CIA, wrote projects and made proposals - from the atomic bombing of Russia to subversive work on the RS "Svoboda". Eduard Limonov was one of the first in exile to condemn the moral impure of emigrants who supported the enemies of Russia and took the money of the CIA for it. But among the enemies of Soviet Russia at that time, Jews were not in the lead. The most evil anti-Soviet speech was delivered at one time by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and Vladimir Maximov convinced that "it is better to be dead than red". It was not the Jews, but Bukovsky who called for the blockade of Russia, it was not the Jews who threw bridges to the Afghan "spirits", but the NTS. Solzhenitsyn admitted (in the "Vestnik RHD") that Jewish emigrants are very pro-Russian (and, in my opinion, mostly quite mundant, caring more about earnings than about the structure in Russia).

Yes, in exile there were different opinions about the admissibility and definition of treason. The now republished emigrant version of "Circle of the First" by A.I. Solzhenitsyna is an example of that. In the first "samizdat" version of the novel, the hero Innokenty Volodin disrupted the provocation of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and did not allow the Chekists to give out medical care - for espionage. This is undoubtedly acceptable and does not cause moral difficulties. In the "Tamizdat" version, it prevented Moscow from mastering nuclear weapons, that is, in my opinion, it made inevitable nuclear blackmail and/or nuclear bombing of Russia by the air force of the destroyers of Hiroshima, Baghdad and Dresden.

Staged in 1995 in Maly, the performance based on Solzhenitsyn's play "The Feast of Winners", written for amateur activity in the barracks of Ozerlag Vlasov in 1951, further pushes the boundaries of the permissible. I don't want to say that the opposition is unacceptable in the days of war. It is quite possible to be against the war in Chechnya or Vietnam. But when "Hannibal at the gate" - as it was during the Great Patriotic War - the opposition becomes a betrayal. In order to justify their betrayal of Russia, the Democrats talked about the equality of Hitler and Stalin, communism and fascism. The apogee of this concept was Suvorov's book "Icebreaker", which rehabilitated Hitler, but before that "Moskovsky Komsomolets" minted the expression "communo-fascism". In my opinion, this is a morally vicious position, equating executioners and warriors. As the hero of "Circle of the First" says, a simple man Spiridon: "A wolfhold is allowed, but a cannibal is not." The difference between communism and fascism is the difference between a wolfhound and a man-eater.

Even more morally controversial was the support of the Afghan "mujahideen", who turned out to be bloody monsters - they washed out and tortured not the abstract Soviet government, but the real Vovok and Kolek.

But emigration - from Maximov to Sinyavsky - found the strength to abandon the apologetics of treason and support for the West and pro-Western forces in Russia after August 1991, and even more so after the execution of the parliament in 1993 and - with the exception of paid agents of "Svoboda" took patriotic positions. So a strange and joyful metamorphosis took place: now I can join almost any invective of my former political opponent Vladimir Maximov.

Topol's book was written at another time, in another place, and a normal person in the place of Topol today would try to forget it, as Solzhenitsyn, Maximov, Bukovsky do not remember their speeches during the "Cold War", as the figures of the "second wave" of cooperation with the Nazis do not advertise: there was, they say, well done, no reproach, who remembers the old, his eye is out.

But Topol is far from it. The apotheosis of the book is the statement of the American president that "the combined forces of the army, aviation and navy of NATO countries are currently conducting a mass landing of troops in the USSR... We sent enough forces to Russia... They were tasked to arrest the Kremlin government."

These are the dreams of the occupation of Russia that the then democratic opposition, which was going to power, had. The topic of occupation was discussed a lot in those days, and found its support among the Democrats. I will remind you of the famous words of the wonderful Russian writer Viktor Astafiev, the author of "Tsar-fish" and "The Sad Detective", who for some reason found himself in the camp of democrats, about the advantages of occupation. "If Germany had defeated us, we would have lived as we live in Germany today" - this motive was often heard in the democratic press. The democrats of those times dreamed of an American occupation that would bring them to power.

However, this anticipated the best joke of the Brezhnev era, giving an accurate portrait of such people: "Rabinovich was expelled from the party, and he dreams that the Third World War had begun and ended with the victory of the Americans. Reagan on a white horse stands at the gates of the Kremlin and Brezhnev takes out the keys of Moscow on a pillow. I don't need Moscow, says Reagan, I don't need the Kremlin, just restore Rabinovich to the party."

"OGONEK" AND "OUR CONTEMPORARY".

Already in 1989, the Democrats won (or inherited) discourse. They carried out the idea of "entry into the world community", convergence, acquaintion with Western values. It was "Westernism", a belief in the superiority of the Western way of life and in its suitability for Russia. The last Soviet leadership shared this concept and imposed it on society with the help of totalitarian levers.

The most pro-Western newspapers and magazines have achieved incredible influence and circulation. A tiny sheet of "Arguments and Facts" reached an unheard-of 22 million circulation and sent a dozen correspondents to the parliament. "Ogonek" ruled over the minds. Their content was trivial: "Do you know how much an unemployed American gets? How much will it be in rubles at the black market exchange rate? How much goods can I use this money to buy in Moscow stores?" They liked to show pictures from TV series like "Dallas" and say: "This is how people live under capitalism, so will Soviet people live after the victory of capitalism."

Over time, when capitalism became a reality, these newspapers withered, the boom was replaced by a recession, and now it's hard to believe that recently people stood in the cold for hours and read the latest issue of "Moscow News".

Almost all publications belonged to the Democrats, the difference was only in the degree of pro-Western zeal. "Pravda" was more boring than "Arguments and Facts", but did not resist them.

"Soviet Russia" became the first newspaper to break through the united front of depress, and faced totalitarian pressure. After Nina Andreeva's letter, the Democrats used Gorbachev's authority to suppress Sovrossiya and remind others that the government is on their side.

In the united front of the depress there was a small ideological niche that has survived from Brezhnev's times - Russian nationalists. They owned the magazine "Our Contemporary".

Writers-"village workers" became the only counterweight to the new perestroika ideology of "Westernism". I liked them - because I like identity, not Americanized culture; because they were good writers; because I loved Russia very much.

I didn't keep childhood memories of Russia, but while traveling around the country I began to discover its beauty, its nature, its life. We came to Russia through Finland on a minibus equipped with a bed, refrigerator, stove, washbasin and other things. Thanks to this wonderful car "Joker III Westfalia-Caravelle" it was possible to freely drive around Russia without servile to hotel administrators and maître d'hôtels.

On the "Joker" we drove through the fabulous places of Russia, to Seliger, to Ostashkov, through my favorite city of Torzhok with its immortalized Pushkin's Pozharsky cutlets and the best shchami in Russia. What could be better than the Torzhka embankment, near the hotel and restaurant, when the domes of churches, a monastery and old noble estates and city houses open behind a narrow and idyllic river.

Roads are a special article. Even the highways marked on the Union map are often impassable for conventional transport, and our "Caravella" sailed there like a ship, between meadows and forests. We came to Yuryev-Polsky, where I was mistaken for a foreigner in the Kremlin monastery. "You don't speak our way," they told me (I'm not like the locals). Zagorsk, Rostov the Great, Pereslavl Zalessky, Zvenigorod, Suzdal, the small famous church of the Intercession of Nerli, Boris and Gleb in Kideksha, Aleksandrovskaya Sloboda, Vladimir, wonderful white-stone cathedrals of ancient Russia - all this could be seen while traveling on the "Joker". You could stop on the bank of the river and make up lunch while our dog-nuff named Dubi (a bear in Hebrew), waving at a healthy beast, was running around. We traveled a lot in Central Russia, and kayaking on the Ugra was the best. Ugra is a clean and quiet river, there are no cities on its banks, and there are not a thick villages. It was closest to happiness - to swim slowly among this wonderful nature. We were also brought to the Oka, to Tarusa. The Tarusa Embankment reminded me of old Soviet films, with lawns, benches, railings, and a little further - the green shore and the cemetery where Marina Tsvetaeva wanted to lie. We also sailed along the Volga. Uglich, a fairy tale with its small Kremlin on the island, the church of Demetrius-on-Blood, Divnaya and a lot of other churches; Kostroma, a white attractive city, and beyond the river - the Ipatievsky Monastery, the church on chicken legs, the Romanov chambers, - this is where the capital of Russia should be moved. The streets of Kostroma are spacious, people are friendly, the houses are beautiful. Yaroslavl, with its two-hundred-year-old Volkov Theater. Ples, written by many artists. Saratov and Samara, quiet and pleasant provincial capitals. Konstantinovo on the Oka, Yesenin places with their thick grass over the calm river. Kolomna is the most beautiful of all, a forgotten pearl.

These trips around Russia helped me to establish myself in the choice made in Japan. The American paradigm is fruitless. I turned to Japan in search of a precedent. In the middle of the 19th century, Japan was experiencing a crisis; the self-esteem of the Japanese fell to zero, foreign consuls ruled in Yokahama and Nagasaki as in Shanghai; British gunboats shelled Shimonoseki, as the Americans bomb Iraq today. The response of the Japanese was the Meiji Restoration. The "restorers" were headed by young samurai from Mito, from the School of War Arts, who studied jiu-jitsu, fencing and "bushido" - the code of Japanese chivalry. Outraged by Japan's infuration of the Anglo-American threat, they turned to the origins of Japan.

Young samurai Mito were reactionary revolutionaries, they were against Western influence, for the "spirit of Yamato", for genuine Japan. Japanese "contemporaries"? Probably. They understood the dialectic of fate - in order to restore the glory of Japan and repel European barbarians, you need to learn the technique of barbarians without giving up your soul.

The Japanese went to learn from the West, took off their swords, cut their hair in the Western way, went through a terrible spiritual crisis. Forty years later on Yala, eighty later in Pearl Harbor, and nowadays - with their advanced technology, the Japanese showed that they had gone through the crisis, learned from the West and became Japanese again.

Russia was in a similar situation under Gorbachev. There was a dispute between supporters of colonial development, intellectual and commercial compradors - and nationalists. The collapse of the communist leadership left no other choice. Part of the Russian intelligentsia was focused on America, and some turned to Russian roots. Both of them were right about something. But each of us makes a choice for ourselves. Ehrenburg in "Julio Hurenito" writes: "Of course, as my great-great-grandfather, the wise Solomon, said, "It's time to collect stones and throw them." But I'm a simple person, I have one face, not two." I made a choice.

The slogans of the "foremen of perestroika", future democrats, made me laugh and annoyed. "Ogonek" raised the banner of the fight against AIDS, although, God sees, it was almost not in Russia. Issues of the magazine were devoted to this topic, and letters to the editorial office demanding condoms and disposable syringes. Yeltsin gave half of the income from lectures in America to the fight against AIDS. It was a direct import of American discourse. In America, AIDS threatened the rich and influential homosexual community. In Russia, "the fight against AIDS was as funny as the pants-pipes of the 50s.

I was laughed by the adoration of the bourgeois intelligentsia for American supermarkets with their frozen dog food. They mixed the revelations from the free world that they splashed on the pages of their publications: in America, a policeman receives fifty thousand dollars a year! Tax over 20% is disastrious! In Israel at this time, 50,000 a year and three teachers together do not always receive, and the tax is paid twice as much as "destrous", and nothing!

I later met Soviet intellectuals who believed in the stories of "Ogonka" about the beautiful life in the West on unemployment benefits - already in the real West, unsuccessfully making ends meet this allowance, which seemed gigantic, multiplied by the dollar exchange rate, but turned out to be tiny - divided by the cost of a hamburger.

I had no doubt that the time of Westerners would pass - when Russia "breathes" the air of the outside world.

"Westerners" under Gorbachev were able to win so easily not only thanks to the support of the authorities, but also for a deeper reason. The process of destroying roots has gone far in Russia - even in the villages there were "shrubs", and in the cities millions lived in huge houses-buildings. Soviet people did not bake bread, even in the villages they waited for bread to be brought to them, which struck me. In the East and West, wherever they eat bread, people bake their own bread. Soviet people were introduced to mass culture. Although Soviet mass culture was humanistic, it suffocated the local national flavor. It was noticeable everywhere, from Bukhara to Arkhangelsk.

In Central Asia, there was not Russification, but Sovietization, the same as in the Russian hinterland: the liquidation of everything local in the name of synthetic mass culture.

The problem was also the excessive centralization of Russia. Wherever the center wins, local culture dies. So, Paris strangled Provence, where there was both its own language and its own literature, in Japan Tokyo crushed Kanazawa, a city with its own theatrical tradition. In Russia, Moscow cut off oxygen from the "province" - Tver and Nizhny Novgorod, Irkutsk and Orel. Therefore, when the "systemic enemy" captured Moscow, all of Russia fell into his hands like a ripe apple.

Russian nationalists, "contemporaries", supported the local culture, opposed to the general Soviet one. They were right - the general culture allowed the West to start assimilating Russia in one fell swoop, having captured Ostankino. I also agreed with their other attitudes: it was necessary to rebuild temples, return the ancient names of cities, help Russia find its face to protect itself from invasion. Land reform was also needed: not to create "farmers like in the Israeli moshav", as Topol wrote, but so that people could live in their own houses surrounded by their gardens. If I had to live in Yasenevo, I would have run away - abroad, to the village, to Mars, because you can't live in anthill houses. Soviet socialism was not softened by green, Maoist, individualism, unlike Western.

A compromise between the Soviet government and the reformers was possible. Stalin's regime was in some form a revival of feudalism - up to serfdom for peasants. As in France before 1789, in pre-perestroika Russia, the "aristocrat" - the secretary of the regional committee or the court tseikist had privileges and power, and the "bourgeoisie", the new class, the intelligentsia had no way to power and privileges. Lawyers, professors, merchants, programmers, scientists, athletes, "yuppis", who would be rich and strong in the West, wanted to live better. The company could agree with them - freeing up part of the land for the construction of cottages, giving room to small businesses and services under strict tax control. Such a "Chinese" way would allow Russia to pass a new NEP without crashing. In Russia, a more harmonious developed post-industrial society could have emerged, where "Dzonkava's sayings will be mixed with pure dew, tearing off the stems of the kupava, a Slav woman with a blond braid".

But the authorities dropped the reins, the horses carried it, there was no one to direct the energy of the "new Russians" to the constructive rails. The new bourgeois class of Russia turned out to be mostly comprador, anti-patriotic, hostile to its country, initially corrupt. He engaged in speculation and export, his capital was instantly transferred to Western banks. The Jewish component of the middle classes also played a role. Russian Jewish businessmen received the support of the American Jewish business community and reoriented themselves to the West. They were supported by Jews in the ideological sphere. Given the huge share of Jews in the Russian "middle class", their re-subordination to New York has become decisive. This is how the tragedy broke out: Russia did not follow the Japanese, but the Latin American path.

I was drawn to Russian nationalists, to the only force that resisted America's systemic imperialism. (Communists - Yeltsin's opponents - were neutralized by Secretary General Gorbachev at that time). I was somewhat afraid of meeting them - they were considered supporters of Stalinism, not tsarism, and certainly haters of Jews.

But other newspapers and magazines were for the Democrats and the "West", they did not publish my articles, and I wanted to share my thoughts and observations with the Soviet people, moreover, I wanted to influence. There was no choice - in the critical months of the collapse of perestroika, there were no publications left that stood for socialism, friendship of peoples, support for the Third World. Moscow News, Ogonek, Novoye Vremya, Literarnaya Gazeta, Komsomolskaya Pravda, Stolisa under pluralism meant one thing - propaganda of the views of democrats.

I was not sure that my articles would suit Russian nationalists: under the "old regime", when the entire press insincerely professed these three principles, nationalists defended Russian nationalism and longed for pre-revolutionary Russia, not accepting communism and socialism. Simply put, I was red, and they were white. And then the historical rocking took place, which three years later was expressed in the creation of the National Salvation Front. At the level of mythologems, it was expressed by Prokhanov, Zyuganov, Glushkov: the civil war was over, whites and reds had one common enemy. On a personal level, I started writing for nationalist magazines and newspapers, and they started printing me.

It was a miracle - the "white" publications had enough wisdom, depth, love for the homeland to accept and give the tribune to the "reds" in those difficult days, when the betrayal of former party bosses fell on the doors, hearts, minds of socialists. Their frain ship turned out to be Noah's Ark, saving the opposition from silence equal to death. Not immediately, only a few months later I began not to be ashamed, but proud that I found myself in the same camp with these people - with Kunyaev and Kazintsev, with Prokhanov and Sultanov, with Volodin and Bondarenko - in the hour of trials.

I was involved, as Camus would say. Russia - my homeland and the Soviet Union - the geopolitical stronghold of the Third World were the same country. Nationalists have made a huge turn - in a few months they went through a seventy-year path and "recognized" the Soviet Union and Soviet communism. My turn seemed easier, but it was not easy to make.

I still liked some features of perestroika, and first of all its kindness. After all, I grew up in the years when the righteous anger of the organs was still a living memory, when Blok's malice, "holy malice" became malice, but did not disappear. Under Gorbachev, there was no malice. Whatever happens - whether the Estonians cut the rights of Russians in the republic, whether Lithuania declares independence - parliamentarians and ministers are invariably benevolent, you can't hear a roar and scream. Not only in comparison with the old days: there is no such softness in the West. Today, after the massacre of Chechnya, I remember this time not without a slight nostalgia. At that time, neither national passions in the republics nor strikes - nothing forced the authorities to stomp their foot, not to shoot.

National pride, this vain feature, which was cultivated in the days of our youth in Russia, came to nought (unlike other union republics). There was less patriotism in Russia than in America: America applauded the invasion of Panama and the bombing of Tripoli, Russia applauded the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and Czechoslovakia and booed General Rodionov. Although in general I liked it, it seemed that the Russians had gone too far. The intelligentsia saw today in Russia in too gloomy light, and the past - like a black night. All newspapers (except for a few small-circulation nationalist ones) were dominated by the most dreary comparisons of Russia with the rest of the world. "We're shit," was their refrain, "and everyone else is good." A little self-destruction does not harm anyone, but at that time there was too much of it. At that time, the revaluation of values began in exile, and even yesterday's opponents of Soviet Russia realized that the ohaivators were going the wrong way. Zinoviev, who considered perestroika a deception, changed his position.

Under the leadership of Gorbachev and Shevardnadze, the course of Soviet foreign policy began to change dramatically. I wrote about it, and after a long search for a suitable publication, I gave the article to "Literary Russia". "You were on the side of the angels," I told the Soviet people, but they didn't believe it.

YOU WERE ON THE SIDE OF THE ANGELS.

Burning yesterday's idols and praying to the heads of yesterday's fires, apparently, is written on the family of Russia. This youthful radicalism is understandable. I, a former emigrant, know him infinitely. Often we - Russian colonists in Israel, France, America - meet our nourishment, fresh emigrants from the country of victorious socialism, and already accustomed to their radicalism. The fresher the emigrant, the more he loves Reagan and Thatcher, hates socialism, worships Pinochet; as the favorite of "Litgazeta" Naum Korzhavin, calls for evicting blacks from New York to Africa, and Arabs from Israel to Arabia, blames the "leftists" for everything, etc. Over the years, the emigrant rubs on, and slightly reduces the level of intolerance, that is, it comes from the support of the Ku Klux Klan to the Republican Center.

Now the "internal emigration" of the Soviet intelligentsia was cutting through - they did not emigrate, but their views did not differ from the emigrants. Twenty years ago it was described by Yesenin-Volpin, a writer and a regular at mental hospital. He was asked why all anti-Soviets are schizophrics, and he replied: "Anti-Soviets are all, and schizophs are those who admit it." Now you can admit to "anti-Soviet" views, and it turned out that in fact, everyone is "anti-Soviet". And not in a trivial kagebash sense - people, they say, are against the dictatorship of the party apparatus and nomenclature, but in a rather deep sense - we are talking about anti-socialism. I perceive references to Sweden and Western social democracy as hypocrisy - the Soviet reader is still "not ready" to directly praise America Reagan, Bush and Milton Friedman, so he is "let down on the brakes".

The total revision touched almost the only purely positive sphere of Soviet foreign policy - the relations between the USSR and the Third World countries. The Soviet press is increasingly voiced to reduce aid to these countries and national liberation movements. I anxiously think about the near future, when the last shadow of the Soviet counterweight will disappear and the Third World will be given to the harsh, tender paws of the World Sheriff. The invasion of Panama was the first swallow of a new era - a world without Russia. A few years ago, Eduard Limonov, an enfant terrible literary abroad, wrote a joke story recently published in Moscow: what would happen if Russia disappeared from the face of the earth. One of the first consequences, he writes, would be an American invasion of Mexico. He was wrong only in the name of the Latin American country.

Few people doubt that the Soviet Union was warned about the upcoming invasion and occupation of Panama, but it is not so important - foreign policy activism is not in fashion in today's Moscow. Undoubtedly, in the current state of affairs, the Cuban "missile crisis" would have ended with an invasion of Cuba, the Vietnam War - with the conquest of North Vietnam, Nicaragua would have been waiting for the fate of Panama, and Namibia would still remain a colony of South Africa.

Even in the darkest "stagnant" years, the Soviet Union at least a little, but held America's hand, limited its imperial claims. Let's put things in the proper perspective. The power of the Soviet Union was not enough to repel America and its allies. Russia could not prevent England from waging a war of destruction in post-war Greece, Malaya, Oman, could not protect Libya from the Americans, and Syria and Lebanon from Israeli bombing. Even during external activism, Russia could not prevent America from practically erasing North Korea: by the end of the Korean War, American pilots often returned to their bases without finding a single possible target for bombs. Russia failed to protect North Vietnam from raids. This list can be continued.

Relations between the two superpowers have never been "on an equal footing": Russia has not encroached on the global authority of the World Sheriff, and maybe for the better: otherwise the Third World War would not have remained "cold". Soviet Russia would have tried to bomb Chile Pinochet, as America bombed Vietnam, or block Turkey, as the Americans blocked Cuba. Russia has always had less money for bribery, much less faith in its own right to rule the world.

If a historical comparison is needed, Russia was the Parthian Empire, a weak but the only antagonist of the new Rome - America. My ancestors in ancient Judea relied on the Parthians (alas, in vain), rebelling against the almighty Rome; they fled to the Parthians when the badges of the Fretensis legion entered the breaches of the Jerusalem walls. The Parthians were the only alternative to the Ruler of Oikumena - Rome, but an alternative weak and distant.

Russia, despite the lack of symmetry, was a symbol of choice, the hope of the Third World countries to escape from the imperial power of the States. Let's remember the brilliant victory of Cuban-Soviet weapons over regular tank units of South Africa in Southern Angola. It was a truly fateful victory - after it, the South Africans agreed to withdraw from Namibia, after it the process of reforms in South Africa began, Leclerc came to power, Mandela was released. If it were not for the courage of Cuban soldiers (let today's economists who compare the price of Cuban sugar and Tyumen oil in American dollars remember this) and the selflessness of the Soviet people, the Peak of Botha would still rule in Pretoria, and even who is worse - only the defeat made the South Africans listen to the arguments of reason.

Another example. Remember the Doomsday War, or the War of 10 Ramadan, simply the Arab-Israeli War of 1973. If it weren't for the remarkable Soviet individual infantry anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons, means of forcing water barriers, Sadat's army would not have been able to break through the Bar Lev line and enter Sinai. But only a limited victory of the Egyptians was able to lead to peace negotiations between Israel and Egypt. Shortly before the war, the then Minister of Defense Moshe Dayan threw a winged word: "Better Sharm al-Sheikh without peace than a world without Sharm al-Sheikh." Israel rejected all of Egypt's proposals for a peaceful settlement - until a powerful blow of Soviet weapons in Arab hands brought the Israeli public psyche out of a state of self-repossion and brought to the negotiating table. The author of these lines in those days himself himself was more than once at the "receiving end" of the Soviet "katyusha", which helped him to understand that the world is better without Sharm al-Sheikh.

What are America's goals in the unfortunate (despite the complete victory of the market over the plan) Third World? The father of structural linguistics, Professor of MIT Noam Chomsky, a left-wing radical who opposed the invasions of Czechoslovakia and El Salvador, Afghanistan and Vietnam, described American foreign policy in the Third World as follows: "When Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed the Four Freedoms for which the United States and its allies will fight fascism (freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, freedom from want and freedom from fear) he forgot to mention the Fifth Freedom, which can be roughly but quite accurately defined as freedom (for the United States) to rob, exploit and dominate. When the Four Freedoms are not consistent with the Fifth, they are easily sacrificed in its name."

Latin America knew practically neither democracy nor prosperity. It was chosen to poverty by American companies, and the American army guaranteed the Fifth Freedom - through numerous interventions, or through its protégés - Batista, Trujillo, Somos, Pinochet. When Cuba, and later Nicaragua, tried to carry out social reforms, improve health care, break up latifunds, the United States declared an unlimited war on these countries. The purpose of the war, according to Noam Chomsky, is to bring to power governments that support the Fifth Freedom (the goal has already been achieved in Nicaragua), at worst - to disrupt the reform program, turn the "rebelling" country into ruins, into a scarecrow, into a clear example for those who intend to rebel against the power of the Yankees (this goal was achieved in Vietnam).

Although in its sphere of influence the Stalin-Brezhnevsk USSR behaved imperialistically (Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan), outside it, especially in the Third World, but also in Europe, the Soviet Union was the protection of the weak, a shield of the humiliated and insulted. The main technique of imperial propaganda at that time was as follows: referring to Soviet internal imperialism, to blacken the noble external role of the USSR. The western left is used to this twitching and knows how to respond to it. But now the Tsereush point of view is gaining popularity in the circles of the Soviet intelligentsia. An example of tsereush journalism is the reports of the correspondent of "Komsomolskaya Pravda" Teplyuk from Managua. For example, Teplyuk reports about the Sandinist strike: the government reasonably (a favorite Soviet word that survived the change of course) demands from the Sandinists: you could not cope with economic problems, now do not interfere with us. There's nothing a word here, it's disgusting. One might think that the Sandinists were not disturbed, that this small country was not declared an unlimited war by a superpower, that its ports were not mined, that the International Court of Justice in The Hague did not recognize the United States as an aggressor, that the devastation was not the result of blockade, aggression, attacks "contras". Such a phrase: "you were not disturbed, now you do not interfere" - in relation to Nicaragua, no decent American journalist would dare to write, except for the "new right" like Norman Podgorets.

Following this, Teplyuk falls on the very idea of a strike, like a district party boss from last year's Kemerovo. That is, it is not enough for him that the Sandinists gave up power as a result of the elections held under the muzzles of American guns - he wants them not to cast votes. Only pro-American forces fit into his idea of democracy.

The result of the elections in Nicaragua is clear: the people of this country had a choice between an eternal war with America (and therefore, devastation, poverty, injustice) and surrender, that is, a chance to eat and breathe. (I think that the blockaded Leningrad would have voted for surrender and life). It is impossible to blame them, and now, as the prosereush voices grow in Russia, their wisdom should be recognized: after all, the world's only protection against American aggression disappears before our eyes.

I think with sadness and without optimism about the future of the Palestinian people. Israel has been waging a total war against him for many years, first with the help of Stalin, and then with American weapons and money. America spends billions of dollars annually on the war with the Palestinians, spares no costs, and the Soviet Union has never, even in the best years, been able to resist this avalanche of money and weapons. Still, the USSR at least a little bit interceded for them. Now their situation seems hopeless - the flow of Soviet Jews going there will soon bring them to the position of American Indians or Tasmanian aborigines. In the USSR, there is not a single voice of moral condemnation of the migrant occupiers who steal someone else's homeland, there is no voice in support of the Palestinians. Instead, "Ogonek" continues to publish articles about "impending pogroms (in Russia)" and about the beauties of kibbutz.

So, whatever the domestic policy of the USSR in recent years - and it undoubtedly deserves criticism - in foreign policy you, Soviet people, were, as the Americans say, "on the side of angels". The West is not only George Bush, Oliver North and Margaret Thatcher, it is also the social democracy of Europe, the radicals of America, the liberation movements of the Third World. It is truly tragic that Soviet public opinion falls from one extreme to another, rushing from blind anti-Americanism to the most pro-American, neoconservative line.

Now it is customary to say that helping the Third World is beyond Russia's means. Maybe it is. But sympathy is affordable for it? I would like the hearts of the Soviet people to stay there in this only issue, where there is no need for change. And rubles - God be with them."

The Russia of reformers (unlike Russia of workers) was the Land of Fools: they claimed that from the modest but full-fledged gold Sibselmash, Magnitka and Baikonur would grow into a villa for every worker if the country was well watered with American help. In 1990, there was an epidemic of "humanitarian aid" when the inhabitants of the Land of Fools trumpeted about the approaching starvation and cold death. The image of thousands and millions of dying stirred up the world Western community and parcels fell into Russia, like in Somalia.

It was a sting (t-too, on an American hair dryer): help was not needed, help did not come, help was stolen. Help was not needed, because the Soviet people were not in distress. Descriptions of the hard life of old pensioners, of course, oppressed, but such material could be filmed in any country of the world, in England, in America, in Israel. In general, people had enough food, food was very cheap, electricity, gas, and heating were almost free, as were the apartments. The Soviet people lived better than the people of any country outside the Ten Developed Powers. Moreover, the social security of the Soviet people was incredibly high.

Soviet people did not need help in the normal sense of the word. They wanted to receive things of Western production as a gift, which were few in Russia - chewing gum, jeans, videos, tights. The people of the West, having heard cries for help and requests for salvation from starvation, collected and sent mostly such things and products that are sent to poor people dying of hunger and cold. The Soviet people who received such parcels were offended: "They send us junk like beggars!" They did not think that "the beggar was only asking for fate", they seriously believed that they would be shared with them as with close relatives.

It took some time before the West realized that it was a bluff. The Japanese were outraged by the luxurious fur hats of the Russians: poor people, in their understanding, do not wear such hats. Over time, both Europeans and Americans realized this. The aid that came was mostly stolen and sold out in the stalls of cooperators. The things that reached the pensioners were sold by them on the push. I read letters from Soviet people with requests:

"We live terribly badly, there is nothing to eat, at least die. Please send me a VCR, only Japanese, not Korean," or "Send jeans, but only "Rangler" or "You, white people, should help us, white people, not all blacks". Naive racism was not alien to Russians. It was subsequently played by the Democrats when they demanded to stop helping Cuba and Africa, and incited Muscovites and Cossacks against Caucasians and Chechens. In the West, these sayings were not understood: people who sacrifice for the needs of the poor are usually not racists. Western racists did not consider Orthodox Russians to be blood brothers in race. Still, Russia belongs to another civilization (according to Toynbee) or superethnos (according to Gumilev), different from Western European.

Simultaneously with the struggle for Western aid, reformers stopped helping developing countries, although the aid was mutually beneficial. As a result, Cuba almost died, and the Soviet Union survived several years of sugar disruptions. Then I met people who made capital on the sugar trade - it was a popular commodity. Soviet people ate much more sugar than Europeans or Americans.

Democratic reformers hated Cuba most of all. They liked to write about the human rights problem in Cuba, although the rights of Cubans are mostly infringed by the United States, not by the Castro government. They forgot that Cuba sacrificed itself for so many years, providing the Soviet Union with advanced bases 90 kilometers from Florida. Gorbachev-Shevardnadze's policy was only transitional to Yeltsin's line, to complete dependence on the United States.

To this day, I am fascinated and amazed by Cuba, which managed to resist and not collapse when all other socialist regimes were overthrown. (see my article "Cuba is my love").

It is profitable to provide assistance, but the Democrats kept silent about it. Assistance is usually provided by local goods and contributes to the development of the donor country. The post-war aid program, the Marshall Plan, led to the establishment of an American economic dictate in Europe for many years and returned to the pockets of Americans a hundredfold. Thus, 10% of all Marshall Plan funds went to the import of petroleum products. They rebuilt the European economy to work with oil (imported from abroad by American companies) and undermined the local coal industry. Most of the Marshall Plan's funds were spent on subsidies to American industry, which exported its goods to Europe. Nowadays, the Food For Peace program has made it possible to tie many countries to America, eliminated their freedom of political maneuver, subsidized American agriculture. Soviet aid to developing countries was mutually beneficial: while it was going on, Russia could enter the markets of these countries, crowd out England, France, America and earn money. She saved these countries from imperialist exploitation. But the democrats turned Russia from a donor into a recipient of aid.

On the other hand, they forced Russia to pump huge funds into the pockets of the Baltic republics: Soviet raw materials bought at domestic prices went to the West through their ports. Many tens of billions of dollars were lost by Russia on the "Baltic transit", and part of this money settled in the Swiss accounts of the "new Russians".

Around this time, in the last Soviet summer, the Democrats in Russia made a sharp turn to the right: from moderate social democratic to tough pro-American positions. Sweden was no longer mentioned, socialism was disgusting, George Bush and General Pinochet became favorite heroes. Love for Pinochet foreshadowed the shooting of parliament in October 1993.

My position as a foreign correspondent became very shaky: I was not conveying what was required. Stories about hungry and poor Russia, which can only be saved by humanitarian aid, and of course, articles about anti-Semitism and "Memory" were required. "Memory" has always been in demand, and the theme of Russian anti-Semitism appeared on the cover of Time and News.

"MEMORY".

Without a magnifying glass, "Memory" could not be seen. In my opinion, there were fewer supporters than members of the Flat Earth Society, fewer than subscribers of the Philharmonic in Little Rock, Arkansas (over culture, as Mannken assured). Nevertheless, they received worldwide advertising - and, of course, the most naked. As soon as one of the "monuments" said something against anti-Semitism or pogroms, the press forgot about it and switched to a more ardent one. At the request of the editorial office of "Haaretz", I interviewed Vasilyev - he willingly met with a representative of the Israeli newspaper. But a little time passed, he made several moderate statements - and was forgotten. There is a fashion for Sychev, the leader of another faction, who speaks more about Jews. Now no one will remember Sychev, but then he was seriously referred to to prove the proximity of pogroms.

We rented a dacha near Barvikha, not far from the dachas of Stalin, Brezhnev, Gorbachev, and found an apartment near the Nikitsky Gate, opposite the church where Pushkin was married. It was wonderful at the dacha: there was silence and peace around, in summer - nightingales near the Moscow River, in winter - white silence, beautiful pines grow along the road to Moscow, and between the pines there is countless police, every hundred meters on the post. At first, they stopped us three times a day, but over time we got down. Uspenskoye highway, the best in those days in the vicinity of the city, led to our dacha, and I reached the Kremlin in twenty minutes along the road without a single traffic light.

It was my first winter in many years. The body didn't remember, the eyes didn't remember, the head didn't remember the winter. White fluffy snow covered the ground and tree branches, stole their nakedness. In Moscow, the snow formed a dirty brown mess, dark snowdrifts - melted from time to time, frost did not hold. But here, in a village with a good name Razdory, the snow was white and clean, and the rolling of the car on the morning time resembled the crunch of snow under the sleds.

Our children, who went through a two-month "preparation" for the Russian winter in Sweden last year, were stunned - there is no such snow, ice, cold in Sweden. We bought two puppy brothers - Newfoundlands, and they played funny in the snow in the yard. Sometimes we took skis and went to the forest, and puppies ran after us. Russian winter is beautiful, especially in small Russian towns like Suzdal, where the snow remained white and blue and golden domes of churches stood out on it.

Familiar Russian Jews came to us in Razdory from time to time and talked about "Memory" and the pogroms promised on the fifth of May or some March, and asked to hide in our protected wilderness. Strangely - if they were promised the coming of communism or tights or the implementation of the plan for a certain date - they would not believe it, but they believe in pogroms. I calmed them down, assured them that there would be no pogroms, then the appointed day passed and the Jews were terribly disappointed.

There were no reasons for the pogroms - there were few Jews left in trade and in other places where the haves and the have-nots, the Jewish migration to Russia from the western provinces had long since ended, the outflow of Jews to Israel continued. Rumors, however, have reasons and spreaders. The rumors were in the hands of the Zionists and Israel. Thus, before the mass emigration from Morocco and Iraq forty years ago, such rumors were spread by Mossad agents, which has since been documented.

It was even more beneficial for the "competent American authorities" - the CIA and others, who aimed to destabilize and destroy the Soviet Union and it. Jews held important positions in Soviet society, and their mass flight undermined the Soviet Union, brought the spirit of disbelief in their own strength to the entire Russian society. When German farmers from Kazakhstan or Armenian merchants from Transcaucasia left the USSR, it was harmful, but not as noticeable as the sudden flight of Jews. The Zionist strike on the USSR was a long-planned hostile action, and its consequences were disastrous.

Famous American Jewish journalist Seymour Hersh, Pulitzer Prize winner, New York Times columnist, in his book on Israel's American foreign policy and nuclear weapons "Samson's Choice" writes that the CIA together with Mossad (Israeli intelligence) supervised Operation Rats Run to encourage Jewish emigration from the USSR.

"Jewish emigrants were the best source of information about the Soviet Union," Gersh writes. According to him, the cooperation between the CIA and Mossad in order to fight the Soviet Union had the code name "KK Mountain". Within this framework, Mossad received millions of cash dollars, and for this it provided its network of informants to America.

In the days of Gorbachev, the Mossad network was involved in a systematic strike against the USSR. The Soviet people trembled: "If the Jews are running away, then things are bad" - I heard this phrase many times in Russia of those years. But for the Jews to run, a push was needed - provocative rumors about pogroms and reports of anti-Semitism.

And then I did not cope with the task of the editorial board, saying that there is no pogroms, and there is no anti-Semitism in commodity quantities in Russia. I was not forgiven - everything can be taken away from a Jew, except for the holy faith in anti-Semitism. Even Shylock believed that he was being persecuted for anti-Semitism, not for usury. However, my words did not affect anything: when all the newspapers and radio stations from "Svoboda" to "Time" predict a pogrom, the voice of a loner is not heard.

A major provocation was the "scandal in the CDL", an insignificant incident, of which there are dozens of them in any city in the world every year. A half-crazy bully scolded Jews at a meeting of the Writers' Union. "Scandal in the CDL", due to the lack of a better, was inflated beyond any proportions. The hooligan ended up in prison and died under mysterious circumstances. As the authors of "Luka Mudishchev of the XX century" later joked: into anti-Semite portions// Jews divide by finding".

Many Russian Jews rushed to Israel, intimidated by provocative rumors about pogroms. In one year, two hundred thousand Soviet Jews moved to Israel, and in total, up to a million people over the years of perestroika. They succumbed to the propaganda of the Zionists, received the approval of the Democrats. Often in one family, some went to Israel, and some went to democratic politics. Of course, not all Jews followed the path indicated by the Mossad and the CIA, but we are talking about a significant percentage. They became part of the general wave of emigration - other Soviet people left for Germany, America, fearing a crisis.

This was due to a great shortcoming of the Soviet system - the Soviet people had a weak idea of the outside world. Perhaps Stalin was fond of Plato in his youth. From Platon's ideal state, you could only go to the Olympics. So, instead of reporting pogroms, I wrote the following article.

CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE.

It is difficult for a Soviet man who has even been abroad to understand life "beyond the hill". And it's hard to explain to him: it turns out as with the Ostap explanation to Shura Balaganov that, they say, abroad is a myth. In response, you only hear: "Well, I'll heal!" The Soviet man understands the economic reality of the West as a graduate of the monastery school - the reality of family life.

And I, an alien from the legendary Israel, have to hear such descriptions of Western miracles from tourists who turned around - for example, that "with them" (or with us) you live like a king on two hundred dollars a month, and the salary is as much as four thousand dollars a month. And it remains to answer, as if according to a joke: "Half a meter is lucky for you, and a bone one - it seemed to you."

Previously, these beliefs had as little to do as the ideas of the afterlife, but now, with the disappearance of the Iron Curtain, they were realized by mass emigration. The cursed iron curtain, like the Caucasus Mountains raised by Iskander Z'ul Karnain, kept the Gogs and Magogs from invading Oikumena. Cunning Europeans and Americans were able to block themselves outside their borders, but the flow of Soviet Jews flowing to Israel, although a little slowed down, flows like a powerful river, as if the project of turning Russian rivers into the deserts of the East had been implemented.

It began not so long ago: in October 1989, when America closed its gates to Jewish immigrants from Russia. The Americans played a bad trick with Russian Jews: they beckoned, let in until a real non-stop wave of emigration went, and then they blocked the pipe - and the stream attracted by America poured into Israel.

(This technique is described by Ilya Ehrenburg in "Julio Hurenito": when they want to pair a stallion with a donkey, they show him a mare, and then blindfold and bring a donkey).

This is not the first time for the Americans: in the difficult post-war years, when hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees languished in European camps for displaced persons, America accepted about four thousand Jews, less than was on board the legendary Exodus. Instead, America defended the right of Jews to go to Palestine.

Recently I flew home, under the blue skies of the Holy Land. I will not describe its beauty - still, the most beautiful and charming places in Palestine are disfigured by APCs, soldiers with machine guns, round-the-clock curfew. Even a walk around Jerusalem with its closed shops of the Old City is depressing, especially when old Palestinian friends talk about their sorrows. And the Israelis have two topics, two worries. One is the looming war in the Gulf, and the other is the decline in production and rising unemployment. In garages, mechanics sit on a bench and dream about a client. The newly arrived Soviet Jews are still insured with generous subsidies - but they are given only for one year, and then they will have to start living independently. (By the way, mass emigration from the USSR pulled Israel out of the crisis, and subsequent currency and raw material operations of the new Israelis strengthened the Israeli shekel, destroying the ruble. Israel made great money on immigration - it received billions of dollars from America for the settlement of refugees from Russia, and the people themselves turned out to be useful material. However, it was not possible to use them for physical work, and Israel began to import Romanian and Thai workers. But in 1990, Israel was experiencing an acute crisis, a decline in production.)

Decline? what can be the recession? The Soviet man knows for sure that the crises and unemployment were invented by the agitators of the district committees of the party. Anecdote of the era of perestroika: QUESTION: why does television no longer show crowds of unemployed people in the West? ANSWER: they don't have money for mass and extras. And why in fact? The social order has changed, now the owners demand to show our blackness and Western prosperity. Previously, Soviet journalists saw only the "sores of capitalism", now they like everything: they notice the rapid growth rates in South Korea, they talk about the vileness of Noriega and the all-Panamanian love for the American "Marins", about the crimes of Saddam and the valor of the Saudi sheikhs, they write about the progress in Indonesia, and everywhere they choke on descriptions of shelves, supermarkets, sausage shops.

There would have been perestroika in 1936 - I can imagine how these singers of abundance would sing the neighboring National Socialist Germany, where "everything is there", and beautiful roads, and cars from the people, and clothes, and sausage, and order. And talk about the cruel oppression of the communists, driven to Dachau back in 1934, would be counted as "stagnant", "capable of disrupting new relations between our countries", and therefore undesirable.

However: why the subjunction mood? In the April issue of "Literary Review" you can find the following text: "The rapporteur (at the NKVD school in 1937) moved on to the topic of the capitalist environment. Germany - fascists, Gestapo, unemployment, proletarians are thrown out into the street, the best sons of the people - communists - are destroyed... In the evening we were shown an anti-German (sic!) the film "Professor Mamlock", which served as an illustration to the Philippines of our speaker in Germany". That's how much irony, clearly implying that the damn enkavedashnik distorted the bright image of Germany in 1937, which had already celebrated the first anniversary of the Nuremberg laws.

"It's as if life swings to the right, swinging to the left," Brodsky wrote. The Soviet reader, this inexperienced consumer of newspaper goods, pounces on this yesterday's deficit and greedily absorbs it. Over time, the reader will become smarter, gain life experience and buy not only a pleasant, but also a useful product - one that allows him to form a more realistic idea of the outside world.

Then he will notice that South Korea, which broke with totalitarianism only yesterday, has reasons for popular discontent; learns that the current government of Indonesia has hundreds of thousands of killed and tortured communists plus genocide in East Timor and Western Irian; he will understand why even pro-American regimes in Latin America coldly accepted the American vice president after the intervention in Panama; why the Third World supports the hopeless struggle of Iraqi David with the American Goliath.

But there is a country about which the pendulum of Soviet public opinion flew to the right to the very wall - and this is Israel. After many years of talking about the worldwide Zionist conspiracy and the Middle East empire of evil, we turned into angels overnight. "Negative information" about Israel has the same chance of getting on the pages of liberal Soviet newspapers as criticism of the leader in the thirties.

In the magazine "Our Contemporary" Natalia Lebedeva writes:

"There is a conspiracy of silence among the Jews: only good things about their own." I'm afraid she's wrong: Jews say and write a lot of bitter words "about their own", but these words cannot be printed in the Soviet press. In other countries where there is no such rigid consensus, the voice of Jews opposing human rights violations in Israel is heard. I will mention at least A. Levi, press attaché of the Palestine Liberation Organization in Paris, Noam Chomsky, a Massachusetts professor, author of a number of books and a tireless fighter for human rights, even if they are Palestinians, courageous Vaanunu, kidnapped by Israeli intelligence and serving a long term in an Israeli solitary unity for his fight against the Israeli atomic monster, the old Beit Zvi from Ramat Gan, who discovered the true secrets of the Zionist establishment's collusion with the Nazis, Amnon Kapleuk, who worked in Moscow, who wrote the truth about the massacre in Sabra and Shatil, the wise Jerusalem professor Leibovich, who called Israel a Judeo-Nazi state. And these are not loners - there is a Communist Party of Israel, and other democratic parties and forces.

It's not about Jews, but about unanimity, which does not give the opportunity to speak out. Coverage of Israel correlates with the intra-Soviet position: only "Our Contemporary", "Young Guard", "Literary Russia" dare to print the bitter truth about the events in our country, and, of course, only their readers believe them. "Anti-Zionist propaganda" is feared these days more than anti-Soviet propaganda. After all, the seventieth article died for the unkind memory, and the danger of being in the camp of "evil forces" remained.

The Moscow "Vecherka" refused the article of the leading Soviet Jewish journalist who returned from the Madrid Conference: he scolded Palestinian deputies sharply enough (according to "Vecherka"). "Friends of Israel" sit in the editorial offices of almost all Russian publications, and these are not necessarily Jews - the most pro-Zionist magazine in Moscow - trustworthy, like, on the fifth point "New Time".

The forces of good exist in Israel, and perestroika for the first time gave the Soviet people the opportunity to meet with their representatives outside the framework of the Israeli Communist Party. But the support of the forces of good also requires a clear rejection of the forces of evil, and for this, first of all, information is needed - not five lines of petit in the TASS report about a dozen more wounded, but a close-up without silence, without fear of "playing into the hands of "Memory".

They know little about Israel in Russia. Judged by the book "Exodus" by Leon Juris (Israeli "How Steel Was Tempered"). But to judge Israel, a real Middle Eastern country, according to "Exodus" is as hasty and unreliable as to form an opinion about the Stalinist era based on the film "Kuban Cossacks". This book with the simplicity of a comic book painted the historical events in Palestine in the late forties in bright romantic colors: Arabs are cowardly and vile, while Jews are courageous, fair and generous. This myth is of little attraction to Europeans who rightly consider it racist and far from the truth, and in the eyes of Israelis it is hopelessly outdated. It is clear why Israel needs Russian Jews: Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir expressed hope that this wave will be able to displace Palestinians from their lands and thwart all attempts to revive the Palestinian state.

Sooner or later, emigrants from the USSR will find themselves in a terrible situation in the struggle between Israelis of European origin, people from Asia and Africa and Palestinians. The war with Iraq will not be the first or the last. Prematurely "bury" the Palestinian cause, believing that the pro-Iraqi position of the PLO has delegitimized them. The Arab people support Iraq in its unequal struggle with the superpower - except for the comprador bourgeoisie, oil sheikhs and national minorities from Kurds to Alawites who took advantage. The Arab people will support the Palestinians, and they will continue to fight. Emigrants will also have to spend a curfew, guard in concentration camps, torture in cells and shoot at children.

Soviet people don't believe it. Viewers around the world have seen on their screens in recent years the terrible pictures of human suffering, cruelty and arbitrariness broadcast from the lands occupied by Israel. It is known that the Israeli army pursues a policy of terror in the territories, that by order of the army Yitzhak Rabin, the Minister of Defense (and now the Prime Minister) ordered to break the arms and feet of detained children. The Swedish charity organization "Redda Barnen" ("Save the Children") published a report on the murders and beatings of Palestinian children - more than half of the dead at the hands of Israeli soldiers and armed settlers - children. The unborn children also die - from the beating of pregnant women in the cells of the Shabak (Israeli NKVD) and even more - from gas. The martyrology of the uprising has already passed thousands, and with them the idea of Israel, a small freedom-loving and peace-seeking power surrounded by bloodthirsty enemies who strive to throw the Jews into the sea, died with them. Instead, the Western reader and viewer has a new image, much less attractive.

The Western one, but not the Soviet one. This was stated in an interview with "Litgazeta" (shortly before her full transition to the pro-Zionist camp) by Meir Wilner, an old, recently retired leader of the Israeli communists. It was not easy to knock the cry of the soul out of such a flint-man. "Guests from the West understand better what is happening here than visitors from the Soviet Union," he said. "Tourists from Russia are surprised by our good roads, fast cars, rich shops and parliament, and no one is surprised that people are killed every day a few kilometers from the parliament."

Judging by the crowds at the Israeli consulate, by the tone of Jewish publications, by private conversations, we have to admit that the fascination with Israel, until recently a forbidden fruit, has spread widely in Soviet society. Some have illusions about Israeli power. Apparently, they didn't look at the map, at the size of Israel and at its budget with income from abroad and expenses for "defense".

It seems to others that Israel is the "island of Crimea" of Aksenov's novel of the same name, overseas Russia without communists, Russian Taiwan, where there is a huge demand for Russian culture and literature and in general "they understand us" and "everyone speaks Russian there". This is not so - Israel is dominated by Polish Jews, the Jews of the Maghreb dominate. In Russian, everyone knows only the word "kibenimat" that entered the colloquial language, both Palestinians and Israelis, at the beginning of the century.

Tribal loyalty overshed loyalty to the truth for the third. Sometimes it seems that the Palestinians are given to the Jews by the Lord for a severe test, to check: are we against pogroms, or only against Jewish pogroms? Against people being starved, poisoned by dogs, expelled from their native land, destroyed houses, killed on the fifth point, so that national culture was destroyed, shrines were desecrated - or only against the fact that this was done to us?

For others, it's a matter of deep disbelief in what they said during the time of stagnation. People remember the terry lies of those days when it seemed that the pompous lips of the bosses could not say a word of truth, and then they scolded Israel to the fullest. Now the aukanye responded, the pendulum went the other way.

I would like more attention and sensitivity from the liberal intelligentsia: why did the people who turned a hooligan prank into a CDL into an event of world importance not say a word about the adoption of new racist laws in Israel? Why don't you, protesting against the deportation of Armenians in Azerbaijan, raise your voice against the deportation of Palestinians? Why don't you, who demanded the independence of Lithuania, support the independence of Palestine? Why don't you, condemning the bloody dispersal of the demonstration in Tbilisi, talk about our country, where such crimes occur every month? Why are you flirting with the criminal government of Israel and demanding that anti-Sionism be identified with anti-Semitism? These questions will need to be answered.

And now a few words about the prophets. "After the fall of the Temple, prophecy is given only to the drunk and mentally retarded," our sages taught. And then this teaching was justified. How long did Jewish pogroms and civil war predict? But this blue dream of the Zionists, pogroms in Russia, never came true. The scandal in the CDL, which ended with the death of the unfortunate madman Ostashvili - as the prophets clung to him: here it is, predicted! But it turned out to be nothing. How these people clicked! They predicted a hungry winter and avalanches of dying refugees on the ice of the Gulf of Finland - that too passed. If that's how weather forecasters worked, they would have been fired long ago. Isn't it time to admit that people trying to raise the emigration wave are sick with the prophetic gift?

Prophecies were needed to accelerate the emigration wave to Israel. I, who is well aware of the power of the pro-Israel lobby in Soviet political life, it is easy to believe that this is the only purpose of them being done, and judging by the results, they achieved their goal. Maybe it's time for Soviet Jews to understand that they are being driven like lemmings to the Middle East cliff with the help of cheap tricks?..

And finally, about loyalty and betrayal. Whoever leaves now flees from a weak, disintegrating, crisis-stroped power to the kingdom of prosperity created by American dollars and Palestinian hands. They can't avoid comparison with rats running from a sinking ship. Israel has also faced a mass departure several times, in particular, during the severe crisis of 1966, when the proverb "The last departing from Lod airport! Extinguish the light behind you!", and later, after the war of 1973. But Israeli society treated the "yordim", emigrants, as deserters, with contempt. "Small nits" - that's what Yitzhak Rabin called them. This attitude towards the fugitives helped the people to rally and survive the crisis.

Soviet Jews leaving now are leaving one of the freest and most democratic countries in the world, where there is practically no discrimination. They have no argument except the arguments of engineer Talmudovsky. They fail the rest - it will be more difficult for a Jew to be hired if they see him as a potential deserter. It will be very difficult to get a responsible job. The image is also a pity: the Jews were famous for their loyalty and emigrated only under pressure, and even then with difficulty: even the Nuremberg laws of 1936 led to the emigration of only ten percent of German Jews.

Those who are leaving are now questioning the loyalty of past generations, the loyalty of our fathers who fought for Stalingrad. I have no doubt that they will still turn into a Trojan horse in Israel: they will run more than once when the next, alas, inevitable crisis breaks out."

A couple of years later, what I wrote began to come true: an acute rejection of Russian emigrants from Israeli society began, their financial situation was shaken. Tel Aviv brothels ("massage salons") fully advertise a new living product: "sensual Russian beauties". It became easier with the servants, now there is someone to wash the dishes in the eateries of Tel Aviv and Haifa. Subsidies are running out. Emigrants live in communal houses. Many people think about returning and most of them say clearly: we wouldn't have come if we knew...

They really didn't know. Israel's friends in the Soviet press did not let them know. They can now blame hysterics and hysterics from the Union of Writers and professional silencers from the Union of Journalists for their troubles. But what happened to Russia is even worse - if it were not for this mass flight, perhaps the Soviet people would not have broken down morally so easily. The high position of the Jewish minority in Russia affected - despite talks about anti-Semitism, Russian Jews occupied a privileged position in Soviet society. Among them there were almost no workers or peasants, but many middle managers, technical intelligentsia, people with access to the media. Their simultaneous desertion dealt a huge blow to the Soviet Union. Their arrival in Palestine gave a second breath to an aging Zionist vampire called the "state of Israel" on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. They talked about the "right to leave" - although can there be a right to desertion, can there be a right to illegal emigration to the territory of Arab Palestine?

Jews found themselves in Russia (unlike the Western union republics) mainly after the revolution of 1917. At the end of Gorbachev's rule, they showed that they had never amalgamated with Russian society. The usual dynamics of the Jewish community worked - always support its leadership, always stand for the Center. In Soviet times, while the Jews considered Moscow to be the center, this installation made them the most reliable guides of Moscow's policy in the union republics. But in 1990, in the eyes of the community, the Center moved to New York, and the Jews sided with America. Their betrayal broke the Soviet Union.

(Mur later, in 2000, I met the Moscow Jewish writer A.G. in Jerusalem, who most zealously promoted the "scandal in the CDL". She came to visit Israel at the invitation and at the expense of one of those for whom she worked. Chernoy, a former Tashkent accountant, and now a resident of a luxurious suburb of Tel Aviv, became the master of all Soviet aluminum. It was for him that Matera was flooded, the Bratskaya HPP was built for him, Gorbachev and Yeltsin destroyed the Soviet Union for him. He remembered a woman who helped him a lot and his kind and invited him to rest in Israel.

- You Israelis, - she said, - you have to put up a monument for me. I brought a million Russian Jews here.

I didn't have time to be surprised - the writer told me that she started a rumor about the upcoming pogroms. According to her, Chernichenko helped her spread the rumors. She was not embarrassed, not upset, did not know remorse - she was satisfied with the work done.)

In 1990, Yeltsin headed the radical camp and became the head of the parliament of the Russian Federation. During the elections, I was also attracted to "Democratic Russia". It was still impossible to understand where and at what point Gorbachev and the party would say "that's it, enough". I - and other observers - did not believe yet that the spontaneous process of disintegration had begun. The RSFSR was a fiction, as were trade unions. No one knew the leaders and main elected officials of the RSFSR, everything was decided at the union level. The idea of Russia belonged more to nationalists: Rasputin threatened that "Russia will leave the Union". And so it happened - the Yeltsin parliament proclaimed the primacy of its laws and decisions over the all-Union ones. Gorbachev did not dare to react harshly.

And Yeltsin's supporters fought seriously. Gorbachev was an enemy for them, they did not hope to remove him, they did not want to wait for re-elections. Therefore, they let a car of Soviet statehood into the ditch, hoping to take the steering wheel into their hands during the accident. Yeltsin's strongest weapon was the loans of the Russian state bank. Almost all large estates of new Russians arose at that time with the help of cheap loans. This simple and reliable tool turned out to be more reliable than dynamite: the deficit became total, any product was washed out at the root by the recipients of loans. They bought subsidized imports - American cigarettes and other consumer goods.

These days, rich people became visible in Russia - a few months after Yeltsin's victory in the elections to the Supreme Council of the RSFSR, parking became difficult in Moscow, and more and more foreign cars became. Previously unheard-of "trams" began to appear on the streets, currency restaurants were full of customers. Moscow, like a giant vacuum cleaner, sucked in the capital and goods of the whole country.

Autumn in Moscow was unusually cold and wet. Tobacco riots were whipped in Russia, under a couple of Catherine's "potato riots". Gorbachev was reproached for the lack of tobacco - allegedly he, a fighter with the green snake, wanted to cope with the smoke, and although he couldn't cope, he still blew it up. The president was extremely unpopular - for example, he introduced a 5% VAT tax. 5% is a little, five times less than in Sweden, three times less than in England, five times less than in today's Russia. But the people are sterning. Every old woman, unfastening five kopecks in addition to the ruble, shouted: let Gorbachev choke on this! It's funny that now, unfastening 28%, no Russian remembers his president with a thin word.

Autumn 1990 - autumn of dual power. Gorbachev and Yeltsin meet from time to time, which is what communiqués about, as a meeting between the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor. But Gorbachev's power is melting, Yeltsin's power is growing. He promises more and more to those who pass under his hand - tax benefits, export licenses. He promises not to raise prices, and when Pavlov makes the last effort to stop the money avalanche, (exchange of 50- and 100 rubles) without raising prices, Yeltsin is indignant: they take the latter away from pensioners. Price increase - again Yeltsin promises to lie down on the rails if he allows this, and personally suspends prices for a number of goods. The people love Yeltsin. (In a year, he will raise prices a hundredfold and take away all the savings of all ordinary people.)

But then the war in the Persian Gulf broke out. I opposed the American intervention in Komsomolskaya Pravda, and the article by "Israeli journalist Robert David" caused a considerable echo. And soon my article was published in Our Contemporary:

FROM STALINGRAD TO BAGHDAD.

The most terrible picture of the beginning of the Iraqi war has already appeared on the screens: no victims, no raids - no, the jubling crowds of American depositors on the New York Stock Exchange. It was the joy of ghouls who reached the living blood. Every drop of Arab blood turned into dollars for them. The Dow Jones index, which replaces the vitality of the undead, per up. Stocks and the dollar went uphill, and with them - the debts of the Third World and the Soviet Union. Arab and Soviet oil prices were falling. Prices for American weapons, which showed their power on the inhabitants of Baghdad, were growing. Falling - on Soviet weapons, which after the defeat of Iraq can only be sold to Landsbergis.

The Iraq war is a tragedy. A tragedy for the Iraqis, who, apparently, will have few left, for which George Bush has been booked a seat in hell next to other prominent murderers. This is a tragedy for the Middle East and the Third World, which are turned into an American-Israeli colony for another ten to twenty years. This is a tragedy for honest Americans who see their people turning into a nation of ghouls. But for the Soviet Union this is a tragedy three times: the Iraqi war put an end to the existence of the USSR as a great power, cut off the possibility of return, brought it to the kilve of American politics, and, as the events in Lithuania showed, made it more isolated, lonely, devoid of friends and allies than ever. His new "friends" will stay with him while he is following Washington's orders.

The Battle of Kuwait is the prologue of the Third World War. Bombs prepared by Moscow are now falling on Baghdad. Ronald Reagan dreamed of this day when he announced in the Washington studio as a "voice test": "in half an hour we will start bombing Moscow". Not half an hour passed - seven years, and instead of Moscow, his successor Bush had to bomb Baghdad.

The world is a stage, people are actors, which means that the laws of the scene are observed in the world. Everything is according to Chekhov: the gun hanging on the wall in the first act shoots in the last one. Tom Clancy, American Julian Semenov, Reagan's favorite author and the CIA, described the Third World War in one of his novels. Its course is surprisingly similar to what is happening in Iraq: the latest equipment, aviation decides everything, "Stealth" aircraft, B-52 raids, dissord in the enemy camp, and at the end - the conquest of the enemy.

The trouble is that now you can't stop America. After another Vilnius or Riga, there will be an ultimatum to the Soviet Union: to leave, not that... Soviet weapons have lost their potential for intimidation in the light of the Iraqi war, and the Soviet Union will inevitably become sooner or later an easily removable obstacle to America's world domination.

Remember that Hitler also had good reasons to attack Russia: he liberated not Kuwait, but the Baltics and Ukraine, from the evil Bolsheviks, he defended Europe and the free market. The USSR was already excluded from the League of Nations after the attack on Finland. There is no doubt that if the Führer had not attacked France and England, but had limited himself to Russia, he would have received the mandate of the then UN - the League of Nations. And yet, remembering Stalingrad, we know whose side our heart is on.

There is no one to blame - the Soviet Union itself led to the loss of allies, loss of income, loss of reputation. If it were not for the hand of the Soviet representative, which rose to the UN on November 29 for an ill-fated military resolution, there would be no war: America would not have dared, the Arab world would continue to see Russia as its defender and savior, countless hundreds of thousands of Iraqis would have remained alive.

November 29 is an unhappy day for the Middle East. Twice that day, America and Moscow entered into an alliance against the vital interests of our region. (So the magic of numbers, the crossing of planets was confirmed by the linkage - the bundle of fates of the Palestinian and Kuwaiti conflicts, the bundle now being swept away by superpowers.) The first time was on November 29, 1947, when the creator of the Gulag and the destroyer of Hiroshima adopted a resolution on the partition of Palestine at the UN. Less than a year later, three quarters of a million Palestinian peasants lost their homes, homeland, a spice of the field during the implementation of this resolution. Four hundred villages were wiped off the face of the earth, whole generations of people were doomed to life in refugee camps. The consequences were also tragic for the Jews - the ancient Jewish communities of Iraq, Yemen, the Maghreb disappeared, and their members became, according to Ben-Gurion, "human dust", the building material of the Zionist construction.

On November 29, 1990, America and Moscow again agreed at the UN and authorized the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of people. It's not less - the bomb strike of the first days was equal to the TNT equivalent of two Hiroshima. Ancient Baghdad, the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate, is in the fate of Minsk and Dresden.

The Soviet Union changed its long-term policy, abandoned the fruits of countless labors of the Soviet people, positions in the Middle East - in the name of what? In the name of help, parcels? I don't want to believe it. In the name of solidarity with the West? But the West is not only George Bush, Oliver North and Margaret Thatcher, it is also the social democracy of Europe, the radicals of America, the liberation movements of the Third World. And it is no coincidence that the best forces of the West - English Tony Benn, Daniel Ortega from Nicaragua, Willie Brandt, Nyerere, Mandela, American Jesse Jackson are fighting for peace in the Gulf and for the withdrawal of American troops.

But in the Soviet Union, almost all newspapers compete in loyalty to American interests. They talk about heinous aggression, they fall comparisons of Saddam Hussein with Hitler, they write about a noble democratic Kuwait trampled by Soviet tanks of the aggressor.

Let's say right away that Kuwait was no more democratic than Iraq. Only one out of four residents of Kuwait was considered a full citizen, and three quarters of the population were deprived of basic rights, like the Moscow limit. Even worse, the Kuwaiti limit was deprived of the most elementary and basic: they were not allowed to bring their wives with them. Naypaul talks about this crazy society where Pakistanis and Yemenis can only dream - an inflatable rubber doll.

And again the connection with Palestine: most of the Kuwaiti limit is Palestinian refugees. And they themselves, living in Kuwait since 1948, and their children and grandchildren were not citizens of "democratic Kuwait", which may correspond to Estonian or Latvian ideas about democracy. Forty years without a passport and without prospects. Now, under Saddam, yesterday's limit has received equal rights with other Kuwaitis. The words of the UN Security Council resolutions on the "legitimate government of Kuwait" are a mockery - Kuwait did not have a legitimate, legitimate government, the majority of the population did not have civil rights.

Kuwait existed thanks to British and then American support as a protected oil well. Only democratic newspapers, friends of Israel, could admire him to balance their position - you can't scold the Arabs all the way. Thus, on the day of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, "Ogonek" placed a long report in color about the charms of Kuwait and concluded it with the words: "Of course, the Kuwaitis have their own difficulties, but, as they say, we would like their worries." (I think this is the best statement of the year). In its last pre-war issue, "Ogonek" places a drooling "letter of Kuwaiti children" in the best Stalinist tradition, where "children" complain that they were deprived of the portrait of their beloved leader of "Pope Sheikh Sabah" and given another portrait - Saddam's byaki.

America's support against Saddam became a litmus test that divides the world - and Soviet society. It is no coincidence that Estonian militants engaged in the installation of border posts in the Pskov region expressed their readiness to immediately go to the aid of America and suppress the riot of migrants in Kuwait. The more right (and I can't bring myself to use the invented Orwellian terminology, according to which anti-communists, supporters of "pure capitalism" and dollar worshipers are called "leftists"; I don't want to give this word) a newspaper or political force - the tougher it demands an equation with the American flank.

Let's forget about ideology and conscience for a minute - there was still no reason for the Soviet Union to take care of American interests in the Persian Gulf. America went to war in the Gulf for its own selfish reasons, and it's not just about oil. With the disappearance of the "Soviet threat", the American military-industrial complex was in a difficult situation - there was no need for it. So you can wait for the reduction of defense costs and go, as in Russia, to the rework of tanks for tractors. Therefore, the American military inflated a hysterical campaign to create a new image of the enemy. They have achieved a lot: financial assistance from Japan and Germany, agreements on the sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia and the Emirates.

In America, not everyone was eager for war: left-wing radicals and right-wing nationalists were against intervention, and not only them. Before the invasion, the American Foreign Ministry was not going to intervene. And here again the connection with Palestine. Israel, this powerful factor of American (and Soviet) domestic policy, decided that it was a convenient time to deal with Iraq with other people's hands.

It's no secret: a right-wing Republican, commentator Patrick Buchanan, who wrote earlier in President Reagan's speech, wrote in his "observer column" that only the Israeli lobby, Zionists in America want war in the Middle East. For these forces, the capture of Kuwait is a reason to get rid of a dangerous enemy with other people's, American hands. Famous Zionists Rosenthal, former editor of the New York Time, and Foxman, director of the League against Defamation of the Masonic Zionist Lodge Bnei Brit, advocate the war, dismitting Buchanan's words as "anti-Semitism" (Newswick, 1.10.90, p. 39). For Israel, the destruction of Iraq is an important goal, as it is the only strong and rich country in the Middle East that has not become a keel of American-Israeli policy. Therefore, in recent days, there has been more talk (including in the Soviet press) that the withdrawal of Iraqi troops from Kuwait is not enough - Iraq needs to be disarmed. In America, there are forces opposing the subordination of American policy to the Israeli dictates, including the famous writer Gore Vidal, but these voices are almost unheard in the USSR.

Israel and its lobby in America will do everything possible to disrupt any attempts at a truce. The joint Soviet-American statement - the fruit of the visit of the new Soviet Foreign Minister of the Immortals to Washington only mentioned the possibility of resolving the Palestinian problem, as followed by a cry from Jerusalem, and President Bush immediately distanced himself, "clarified his position" - no settlement in the Middle East, only the American-Israeli dictatorship.

After the first air raids of American aviation, the goals of the war became clear. The first goal is to destroy Iraq. The main goal ahead is world domination. This goal beckoned Americans before, but while there was a hole in Oikumen - the sphere of influence of the Soviet Union and the camp of socialism. Now the hole is tightening and the star flag is waving the world.

It was not time to talk about the inadmissibility of Iraqi aggression - the equally brutal American aggression in Panama just a few months ago did not lead to sanctions against Washington, or to the blockade of America, or to the flow of angry articles in Soviet newspapers. Another example is Indonesia's aggression against tiny Timor. Timor gained independence after the Portuguese revolution, and left-wing forces came to power. Timor was immediately captured by pro-American and anti-communist Indonesia. The Indonesians exterminated half of the population of Timor and drove the survivors to concentration camps, brought people from Java instead. The issue of Timor has been regularly raised in the UN for fifteen years, but no one is talking about the blockade of Indonesia.

Can we talk about the inadmissibility of occupation when Palestine, South Lebanon and Southern Syria have been occupied by Israel for many years? America rejected Iraq's proposal to link its withdrawal of troops from Kuwait with the liberation of Palestine, which is a pity. I remember how happy we were - doubly - when we learned about the exchange of Volodya Bukovsky for Luis Corvalan. Such exchanges of victims are just wonderful. The Soviet Union should support the idea of linking.

Democrats condemned the "hostage taking" - Saddam Hussein's detention of American specialists. In my opinion, the location of American and British citizens at Iraqi facilities was a reasonable measure: the Americans and the British have too light, racist attitude to the bombing of "churok", starting with Hiroshima and continuing with Hanoi and Tripoli. If it weren't for the hostages, the Americans would have already sent thousands of Iraqis to paradise to the Guri. "Every person is equal to the whole world," taught our sages, everyone - not only an American, everyone - and even "churka". And that's why I'm glad that the white bodies of American gentlemen protected (at least before Christmas) the Iraqis from carpet bombing. I would be glad if American war criminals - I can't call prisoners of war murderers who destroy civilians from a height of thirty thousand feet - protected at least a few Iraqis during this hopeless war.

Saddam Hussein is apparently an unpleasant person. But Allende or Mrs. Bhutto were nice people, which did not protect them from the anger of the CIA. Kennedy formulated the principle; "He's a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch." Russia has forgotten about this principle.

Why do I "stand up" for Iraq? In 1968, I wrote "Hands off Czechoslovakia" on the walls of my native Novosibirsk, and in 1973 I came under fire from an Iraqi battery thirty kilometers from Damascus. I have no personal reason to be for aggression in general or for Iraq in particular. But Iraq is the first independent force in the Middle East since Saladin. Our region has been poorly managed from the outside for too long, first by the Turks, then by England and France, and now by the neo-colonialist web of America and its vassals. Yes, Saddam Hussein may not be a good person. But, apparently, both Ivan Kalita and Stalin were not good people during the Second World War. The Middle East needs a "land collector" who will eventually be able to resist neocolonialism and Zionism. And the division of the Middle East lands, in which oil and income remained in the hands of a bunch of corrupt sheikhs, serves only the imperialists.

There is a second reason - this is the end of the socialist, alternative structure of the world. We are entering the time of a single monolithic American hegemony. Iraq will be followed by Cuba, and I'm afraid that in a few years even Moscow will not be able to avoid the fate of Baghdad.

There is also a third reason, intra-Israeli. The Middle East needs Iraq for balance to balance and contain Israel's power. Israeli observers (for example, Avineri in the frankly Zionist "New Time") say that Saddam's settlement attempts collapsed. Unfortunately, this is a lie. There were no attempts to settle, and there could not be - Israel is strong and is not going to give in. Yitzhak Shamir's government torpedoed all peace initiatives. Talks about them could act for some time, as a bundle of hay tied to the globle, out of reach of the teeth of a donkey pulling a cart. But such a stupid donkey has not yet been born to drag a cart forever only from one kind of hay."

Ahead of events, I will say that I was right - Saddam's missile attacks forced Israel to go to peace negotiations, which led to the signing of a treaty with Arafat in Oslo. When the first "Skads" flew to Tel Aviv, I wrote:

RUSSIAN JEWS AND THE GULF WAR.

One of the first victims of the Iraq war in Israel was an old Soviet Jew named Moldavansky. However, he died of a heart attack during a missile strike on Tel Aviv, not from a direct hit. We must think that he was not the only "former Soviet citizen" who died during the conflict, which began as the war for Kuwait, but quickly turned into the Fifth Arab-Israeli War. It is a pity, of course, for Moldavansky and other people who were under attack by the Iraqi "Skads", generally innocent people.

But who is to blame for their death? The Israeli government, which wanted war and lured the masses of Soviet citizens to Israel, is to blame. Shamir's government is the most reactionary, right-wing, terry government in the history of Israel, has done everything in its power to thwart any attempts at a peaceful settlement in the Middle East and cause the current terrible war. Apparently, it will remain the only winner in the conflict. Israel could not cope with Iraq on its own, and America is at war instead. George Bush has a place in hell for the mass murder he is now committing in the unfortunate Iraq, but those who pushed him - in Tel Aviv and Washington - are also due to a place in a row.

Missiles on Tel Aviv are a blow to the true initiator of the Gulf War. Israel is also to be culpty of the endless massacre in the occupied territories, in Lebanon, in Tunisia - everywhere where Palestinians live and die. Now for the first time bombs have fallen on the heads of Israelis - but Israeli bombs have been falling on the heads of Palestinians for many years. Wars in the Middle East occur once every ten years - when a new generation of soldiers grows up. The current war is not the first, not the last. Their common reason is Israel's unwillingness to allow Palestinians to live peacefully on their land. This reason will not disappear in the coming years, which means that the next war is inevitable.

All this was known to Soviet citizens who emigrated to Israel. Russia is also guilty, because the mass transfer of the Soviet population to Israel, which began a year ago, stamed the last nail in the coffin of peace initiatives. Neither Yitzhak Shamir nor Shimon Peres will make concessions to the Palestinians in the face of a massive pumping of human resources from Russia. The immigration wave caused the Arabs an acute feeling of uncertainty, disappointment, pain and led to the invasion of Kuwait.

The Soviet leadership defended mass emigration with references to human rights. But does a Soviet citizen from Moscow or Kiev really have more rights to the land of the village of Lift than a native of this village? People from the USSR land not in a vacuum, but on the ruins of Palestinian villages.

There is no law on departure, a Soviet man cannot go anywhere except to Israel. It is surprising that ten million more Soviet citizens did not come to us in such conditions.

Let's say without equivocs - the Jews who come to us are almost a minority. A healthy boy from Zaporozhye, a clean Ukrainian, approached me and shared his plans to leave for Israel, "because there is nowhere else to go". I was told for what bribe I can get documents confirming Jewishness. I saw huge Russian families, where there was one Jewish mother-in-law instead of a steam locomotive.

Democratic newspapers conduct unbridled propaganda of "foreign": "Well, of course, in the West the standard of living is immeasurably higher... Can we imagine, for example, daily free lunches, which serve fresh strawberries, salads of fresh vegetables and fruits all year round?" (LG from 28.11.90)". Only a big unpleasant man like Saddam Hussein could hold an even bigger avalanche of Soviet citizens - and held it: in the first three weeks of the year, emigration to Israel decreased to 25% of the pre-war period. Those who leave do not face moral condemnation, they are "understood". We are talking about the direct participation of Soviet citizens in the aggression, the protracted aggression against the people of Palestine. However, he is indifferent to society and emigration to South Africa, although it is clear that Pretoria is looking for support for the apartheid regime.

A few months before the warrior, I wrote: "I know many departing people and I sincerely feel sorry for them. They are good people, but they will play a terrible role, and I'm afraid they have a terrible fate. I would like to stop them, but how? After all, no (almost) large Soviet magazine is even ready to write about it objectively." It was impossible to publish these lines in the mass press: they were considered anti-Semitic.

I will add: there is nothing wrong if this or that Soviet person - Russian, Jew, Kazakh - falls in love with the stones of the Holy Land and moves to Israel-Palestine: people have come to us before. But the mass migration of peoples is from a completely different opera.

Those fleeing imaginary pogroms were hit by self-propried missiles. Of course, I feel sorry for them, but this is a price for moral indefinerability. They didn't understand that Baku and Fergana might seem like paradise compared to what they have to do. So far, the Israeli establishment offers them to join the camp of pogromists. For the last three years - or even forty years - Israel has been commiting a continuous pogrom of Palestinians. But the roles in this game can change, and today's executioners will not be able to imagine themselves as innocent victims.

It is important and necessary to talk about the immorality of occupation, and even more so of exile. I would advise everyone who is going to colonize someone else's homeland to watch the movie "The Golden cloud was at the Slee". Some Soviet guests who visited Israel realized this similarity of situations. Bulat Okudzhava had the courage and heart to wish the huge audience in Tel Aviv not to build his happiness on the misfortune of others. (Since then, Okudzhava has also been re-forged and glorified Israeli soldiers in verse).

Let's not forget that the most delusional ideas of "Memory" have already been implemented in Israel - in relation to the Palestinians, including the percentage rate, the restriction of positions, economic blockade. For example, recently a judge of the Supreme Court of Israel demanded to ban any party that advocates equality (exactly) between Jews and non-Jews, as it would undermine the foundations of Israel as a Jewish state.

Not with gloating ("We told you"), but with heartache the Israeli left opposition looks at what is happening. Innocent people are dying. But those who led the Jewish people into a bloody dead end are to blame for this.

1991.

The Gulf War was a turning point for the USSR: after it, the last remnants of willpower left the allied centers. For the Middle East, the war turned out to be less terrible than I thought then. Although almost no one in Israel suffered from Iraq's missile strikes (several houses were destroyed and several people died - as in an average traffic accident), the shock was considerable, and the far-right government of Yitzhak Shamir fell in the subsequent elections, the Workers' Party came to power, peace negotiations with the Palestinians began. Rabin, the leader of the Labour Party, came to the conclusion that sooner or later such a confrontation may happen again if he does not strive for peace. But in the war itself, Israel won the most, as I wrote at the end of the battles:

THE PRICE OF RESTRAINT.

The black smoke of burning oil has not yet dissipated over Iraq, but one of the winners in the war has already been determined - Israel. You can argue about the advantages and disadvantages of Israel, but in one thing it remains unsurpassed - in the art to present, or to sell oneself, in self-promotion, which is called PR (Public Relations) in the West. Every day thousands of tons of bombs are dropped on Iraq and the number of killed Arabs has probably exceeded the one hundred thousand mark by the will of Israel, and at the same time the entire Western world praises the Israeli "restraint".

Israel did not send its fighters and bombers against Iraq, but only for one reason - its allies are already doing its work. If you approach a hired killer to your enemy, and refrain from the simple pleasure of kicking the dying, relying on the fin of a hired professional, it is unlikely that the people's court will give you a medal for restraint and self-control. But it is this logic that the Western and Soviet pro-American press is guided by.

"Malehet tzadikim naaset beyadei aherim," says the Talmudic proverb, that is, "the work of the righteous is done by someone else's hands." According to this proverb, Israel is one hundred percent righteous: its work, the destruction of the most dangerous enemy, is done by the hands of obedient America and its vassals.

The Israeli leadership understands this - as soon as there is a danger of reconciliation in the Middle East, it disrupts it with the help of its agents in America - and now in the Soviet Union. This happened after the negotiations between the Immortals and Baker, where there was a timid note about the need to resolve the Palestinian problem: Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir immediately condemned this statement and President Bush was not lazy and disavowed the foreign ministers: nothing has changed in American policy on the Middle East, he said. The new Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR Immortals did not react to this slapping.

Therefore, the Soviet peace plan was doomed: America could not accept it without receiving "good" from Tel Aviv; Israel never makes concessions while it is in a position of power, and the only Arab power that could become a counterweight to it was destroyed by American bombs with the connivance of Eduard Shevardnadze. Shevardnadze's line, the line of complete submission to Washington and Tel Aviv, has not been overcome to this day: judging by Western radio broadcasts, presidential assistant Gorbachev Grigoriev said that for a lasting peace, it is necessary to achieve complete disarmament of Iraq.

George Bush's America had his own additional reasons to reject the Soviet plan. "The cat is beaten, the daughter-in-law is given hints," says the proverb. Destroyed Basra is a hint to Moscow, and to all other countries of the world, that for the first time since Charlemagne, the universe again has one master, and its strength will be enough not only for Grenada and Panama. I think that by the next American ultimatum (Cuba? To Yemen? Moscow because of Lithuania?) his subject will take it more seriously than Saddam.

In a world built according to American plans, there can be only one master. That's why Bush was not going to let Gorbachev win a small diplomatic victory: the place of the Soviet Union in Pax Americana is a place of pariah, thanking the owner for a box of canned food, and not a participant in world diplomatic negotiations.

The observer of "Komsomolskaya Pravda" (26.2.91) writes that "by carrying out missile and bomb attacks on the territory of Iraq, Washington also struck democratic forces in our country. After all, Shevardnadze's course of close cooperation with the Americans was unequivocally associated with the "Democrats". Now the "conservatives" have received an extra reason to criticize Shevardnadze's policy and democratic forces in general".

This conclusion is correct, but not fully thought out: bombs and missiles only showed what was clear to the "conservatives" before, and honest "democrats" could not see. That is, the position of "SovRossiya", conditionally speaking, turned out to be more adequate to reality than the position of "Koms. Truths."

Meanwhile, truly sinister changes have taken place in Israel: retired general Zeevi is included in the government, compared to whom Ostashvili is a soft-bodied liberal and democrat. He was helped to enter the government by Ezer Weizman, who recently visited Moscow as a guest of honor of the Academy of Sciences, who stayed here at the hotel of the Central Committee of the CPSU "Oktyabrskaya", and whose Soviet pro-Western press.

The future of the Middle East is difficult to predict, but some of the consequences of the Israeli victory are already visible. Persecution of Palestinians will intensify - they need to be driven out to clear the place for migrants from the Soviet Union. The influence of the USSR in our region will fall to zero. Iraq will be weakened and divided into spheres of influence, the Americans will occupy parts of the country. (To this day, the north of Iraq is occupied). American troops will remain in the Gulf area and will personally take part in the suppression of revolutions in oil-bearing countries. A civil war on Saudi money will break out again in Yemen. (And it happened in 1995). In ten years, a new Arab-Israeli war will break out.

One can imagine the consequences for other regions: within two years, the Americans will take Cuba (until this happens), and NATO troops will enter Poland, Czechoslovakia, and maybe the Baltic States (and this happened). In the domestic Soviet arena, American allies will manage to drive a strong wedge between the Muslim and European population of the Union. This is how another dream of Israeli ideologues will come true: to raise Russia to the fight against Islam in the interests of the Jewish state. This was written, among others, by Mikhail Agursky, known to the Soviet reader, in a program article in the Israeli newspaper "Jerusalem Post". (The war in Chechnya was a confirmation of this forecast.)

One more thing has been added to the number of more obvious and bloody crimes of Zionism in recent years: an ardent anti-Islamic, inherently racist campaign, first of all in America, and then all over the world. The anti-Islamic sentiment that died in the Western world after the Battle of Lepanto was revived by Zionist ideologues. Thus, Leon Juris, the author of the Zionist agitation "Exodus" ("Exodus"), where Arabs were portrayed as bloodthirsty cowards dreaming of raping white Jewish women, wrote "on the party's order" an even more vile "Hajj", comparable only to the writings of Hitler's "Sturmer", but aimed, of course, not against Jews, but against the Arabs. Almost any book, any film made these days with the participation of Zionists, contains a racist anti-Islamic and anti-Arab message. Now this propaganda reaches the Soviet Union.

It comes to the point of funny: one of the last "James Bonds" in Moscow "Never Say Never" depicts a crowd of wild, greedy, ugly Arabs selling a blonde heroine. If an Arab producer had portrayed Jews like that, this film would probably have been boycotted, and it wouldn't have gone on a wide screen. But the Zionist producer was not ashamed to create a vile image of an Arab, the obedient press "did not notice" racism and the film went all over the white world, strengthening the racist stereotype.

Now the years of Zionist anti-Arab propaganda are bearing fruit: thanks to them, it is easier for Bush to kill hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

With regard to the Soviet Union, the purpose of this propaganda is to sow enmity between Muslims and Orthodox and further undermine the power of the USSR. And here I would like to recall the wonderful words of L.N. Gumilev in "Friendship of Peoples" for 1990, said to him at some boring "round table", in the midst of chewed thoughts and hackneyed reasoning of ordinary authors of this magazine, they shone with their originality and dissimilarity. According to Gumilev, Asian nomads came with the Russian army to Paris and Berlin, their blood gave the Russians a spole, and an alliance with them - based on mutual respect and love, not assimilation and absorption - is still necessary."

At the beginning of 1991, I rushed from Moscow to Sukhumi in search of warmth. Sukhumi turned out to be a gloomy, creepy place. "Airplanes are now flying with great delays and my morning flight only in the afternoon landed in the evergreen regions of Abkhazia. The winter day was quickly inclined to sunset and passers-by advised me to quickly get a place to the night: "We don't go to our place at dusk." Unfortunately, the tourist hotel "Abkhazia", which I was counting on, burned down during the riots, and the second good one, "Ritsa", was closed for eternal repairs. I was shown the way to the surviving hotel - there I had to walk along the promenade, along the embankment, - but they warned: the road is deserted and dangerous. I still got to the hotel in the dark. There was no light in the city and in the hotel, and everything faded with the twilight. The streets were completely deserted and the population sat by candlelight, locking the doors well.

I was given a room and a candle, but hunger is not my aunt: there was no restaurant in the hotel and I decided to go in search of dinner. The doorman didn't want to let me out, finally he waved his hand and unlocked the door with the words "I won't let you go". I was walking through the dark desert city. Shadows were sliding near the fences, but no one approached me. There was a floating restaurant on the spin of the burned-out hotel. Candles were burning among the luxury, cognac was poured, the militants were burning, but there was no food. Half an hour later, the restaurant closed, and everyone ran away. After much persuasion, the doorman let me into the hotel.

The next day I went to Sochi, where there were still hotels, hot water and electricity. The coast froze in a lethargic sleep: resorts are closed, restaurants were breathing incense, people were raugh - troubles and adversities did not soften the vile temper of the residents of Primorye.

If I still had any illusions about the perestroika, they disappeared completely from the people on the ground. Everyone scolded Gorbachev in chorus and remembered how well they lived before, how peacefully and amicably they got along with neighbors of another nationality.

In Moscow, meanwhile, tension was growing between Gorbachev's timid retreating authorities and the growing forces of the Democrats. Muscovites unanimously supported Yeltsin, Popov, Afanasyev and other democratic leaders. It was difficult for me to understand people's feelings and thoughts: everyone seemed to be against perestroika and Gorbachev, but as an alternative they saw only Yeltsin, that is, the strengthening and radicalization of perestroika.

A short Vilnius interlude was played out, and I flew to Vilnius. The city was in turmid, barricades on the square in front of the parliament, but the mood was a little festive: field kitchens fed people, all sorts of things were sold, people slept in the corridors of the parliament, exotic types wandered. There were outdated armored vehicles at the TV tower: such splimy armored vehicles, I thought, have a place in the museum. Soldiers at the TV center kept on the slide, uncertainly, hiding. I saw the occupiers, and I was an occupier myself, but we didn't hide so timidly. The situation was unclear, who pushed people under the tracks, how much the army was to blame - it was not clear. One thing was clear: Lithuania is needed by the Soviet Union - and its enemies.

IS IT POSSIBLE TO LET LITHUANIA GO.

In the January issue of "Moscow News" an article by Konstantin Pleshakov appeared, which talks about the possibility of the emergence of a NATO-related and hostile Russia bloc in Eastern Europe. Pleshakov writes: "American troops may be directly at the very borders of the Soviet Union, because they can be called there by Valens and Havel." In my opinion, the forecast of the commentator of "MN" is true, which cannot be said about his conclusions. His conclusion is that Russia (aka "Center" or "USSR") should behave well, that is, so that it suits its western neighbors. Another conclusion is more natural - Shevardnadze's foreign policy on Eastern Europe (and Yakovlev on the Baltics) returned Russia to the position of ante bellum Germanicum, when on its western border there was a chain of hostile states. Poland's prolonged refusal to give transit even to aid cargoes from Germany to Russia is an indicator that Walesa's Poland is following in the footsteps of Poland by Pilsudski and recreates the cordon sanitaire in a new form.

Apparently, the decolonization of Eastern Europe was carried out too hastily and incompetly if the forces opposing Russia could come to power in these countries. We should not be seduced by their sympathies for Yeltsin and his alternative "Russia" - this is just a search for an ally in the fight against the real Russia, headed by President Gorbachev. If Yeltsin had become the head of the Russian state tomorrow, they would have become his opponents - unless he would have agreed to return Russia to ante bellum Livoniam (p.1570).

There are geopolitical realities, and this is a persistent fact. Thus, Tehran usually supports Jerusalem from the time of Cyrus the Great to the Iran-Iraq war. The confrontation between Damascus and Baghdad lasts thousands of years - from Haddad's wars with the Assyrians through the conflict between the Umayyads and the Abbasids to the current enmity between Assad and Saddam. Can Warsaw and Kaunas be independent and not hostile to Russia - this question needs to be answered - and keep the answer in Moscow.

Looking at things realistically, no major power - and the "cut" Russia remains a major power - will be able to be a boy so as not to anger neighbors prone to hostility. If not the conflict in the Baltics, there will be other reasons and reasons to let NATO troops, who have been baptized and acquainted with Soviet military equipment in Iraq, to the pre-war borders of Russia.

The issue of the independence of Lithuania and Poland cannot be resolved by Russia based only on the rights of peoples to self-determination. The legitimate interests of Russia should also be taken into account - not to be again, as it was in the thirties, in a hostile environment. Russia's economic weakness makes it an unattractive ally for former Western vassals if it does not supply cheap oil and raw materials.

In Soviet society, the dispute about the future of these regions is usually associated with the fate of immigrants from Russia. But it's not so important: there are no people from Russia in Poland, there are few of them in Lithuania, but the responsible government of Moscow should not allow these territories to turn into an enemy bridgehead. In other words, they could be given independence only according to the "Finnish model" of 1944 - with the deployment of Soviet military bases, with the right of unhindered military transit, with treaties of friendship and mutual defense, with mandatory political consultations - and then only on condition that Russia is strong, because such conditions will inevitably be violated in case of weakness of Russia.

Another liberal observer of MN compares the Baltics with Algeria, and Russians in Riga and Tallinn with French pied noir. His conclusion: Russia should follow the de Gaulle path. But the analogy is lame: Algeria is separated from France by sea and hostile African troops cannot come to France through it. So, the western provinces can be given freedom only on condition of their refusal of independent foreign policy.

While the Czechoslovak government behaves with restraint (and geopolitically does not fall within the sphere of Russian interests), the Polish and Lithuanian authorities have clearly taken a course to confront Moscow. If this Pandora's box has already opened, the Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement should be remembered again. Now, in the light of the Iraqi war, the diplomatic and political genius of Stalin's move becomes obvious: after all, the war of Germany, England, France was very likely not against each other, but against Russia, against the "bloody dictator" (no wonder liberal publicists love to compare Saddam Hussein with Stalin). It was this war that the pre-war rulers of Poland and the limitrophs counted on.

While NATO countries are involved in the massacre in Iraq, Russia can - and should - correct the mistakes of its too hasty decolonization of the former provinces of the empire. Decolonization cannot be carried out in one fell swoop, as the experience of Africa shows. First of all, the situation in Poland should be corrected, made to the Poles understand that Soviet troops will not leave Poland (and even more so from Lithuania) as long as there is an American threat. The experience of Guantanamo, an American military base sticking out in Cuba despite all the protests of Havana, can serve as a reassuring example for the pro-American circles of Eastern Europe.

The plebiscites organized by the rebel governments of the Baltics, of course, gave the expected result. I have no doubt about a similar result in the case of a plebiscite in the oil-bearing Tyumen or in the vicinity of the Diamond Fund of the USSR. But the right to self-determination up to separation exists only ideally. The world and jus gentum do not know such a right. For example, the population of the Åland Islands, undoubtedly of Swedish root, speaks Swedish and wanted to become part of Sweden immediately after Finland was deposited from Russia. The issue was raised in the international court and was decided in favor of Finland, the successor of the Russian sovereign, and not in favor of the people of the disputed territory.

The right of every people to live as they want - in the cultural, economic, religious aspect - is indisputable, although it is denied by Israel, the favorite of America and Soviet Democrats, in relation to the Palestinians. But the right to political self-determination almost does not exist at all. Lenin advocated this right because he hated imperialism and colonialism, but no one would call Moscow's policy in the Baltics imperialist. Lenin's concept is applicable only to peoples seeking to free themselves from the imperialist yoke.

The appeals of Landsbergis and some other leaders to help the United States or the UN should have long been qualified under Article 64 "Treason" of the criminal legislation that has not yet been abolished. Then it would be possible to avoid a bloody clash with naive supporters of these leaders and not create a false aura of legality around the rebellious rulers of the former Russian territories. After all, these rulers, calling the USSR a "neighboring state" or "Center", became rebels against the legitimate government.

The rigidity not shown in time will have to be redeemed now. It is not painless - but it is better (for Russia and the world) than the option that the author of "Moscow News" so convincingly outlined. This option - in which the next meeting at the top of the rebel leaders would have taken place in Vladimir prison - would have helped to avoid the bloody final of Soviet Russia.

Saving Russia is an urgent task for the whole world. I do not agree with Solzhenitsyn and Shafarevich, who call for self-isolation of Russia, for its departure for consideration and arrangement. World politics is not a chess game, it is impossible to postpone it. It continues, and even without Russia's active participation, Russia may lose. Igor Shafarevich in an article in "Litrossia" cites the Monroe doctrine "America for Americans" as an example of reasonable isolationism. But the Monroe doctrine was not isolationist, on the contrary - it was expansionist and meant: Latin America - for the United States. Its equivalent was the Brezhnev doctrine: the Yalta sphere of influence - to the Soviet Union.

Apparently, in today's cruel world it should be preserved at least, but only at least. And outside the borders of the Yalta Conference, the help and influence of the Soviet Union are necessary. Soviet Russia is necessary for the world, and it is necessary to protect it. And for this you need to clearly tell the peripheral republics: you have the right to live as you want, but your foreign policy, defense and federal taxes, as well as the full rights of all Russians are Moscow's business."

I perceived the Chechen crisis in a completely different way, which I write about later. And I perceived Yeltsin's Russian Federation in a completely different way - not like the Soviet Union. In those days, Nevzorov, a Leningrad TV journalist, took a courageous position. I didn't like his programs with admiring corpses, but the radical intelligentsia, Moscow Jews, Yeltsin's admirers adored him and did not allow a word against it to be said. But as soon as he supported the attempt of the allied authorities to hold Lithuania, the "democrats" hated him. Immediately they found words against his handwriting on TV, and in general, it turned out that they never liked him. It was interesting to see how quickly this layer, which is rushing to power, is able to abandon its yesterday's idol. However, I didn't like his style - neither before nor later. Ideologically, we parted already in 1995, when he supported Yeltsin's Chechen adventure and wrote a stupid and pompous letter to Prokhanov in "Day". (Prokhanov very wittily answered his words "This is my war" - "Nevzorov's war looks like Przewalski's horse").

Vilnius history was more a sign of disintegration than a real attempt by the allied authorities to change the situation - after all, Gorbachev could cope with any people in any republic if he had willpower. But he had no will. Having believed in his chatter about world civilization, intoxicated with the honorary titles of Western universities, he led the power under the knife. In Moscow, under the pretext of "defense of Lithuania", a wave of demonstrations rose, which were growing - up to March. It was possible to understand that the power would collapse if it failed to stop this wave. But the power only retreated. As soon as Gorbachev or Prime Minister Ryzhkov or Pavlov tried to intervene, their decisions were canceled - or Yeltsin, as the ruler of Russia, or Popov, as the mayor of Moscow, putschist moods matured in the Yeltsin camp, already in February-March they were talking about the "revolutionary seizure of power".

And there was that spring day when Gorbachev banned demonstrations in Moscow and introduced military equipment - and the Yeltsin people responded to this with a half-million demonstration, and the equipment was not used. The gun is not dangerous at all if there is no will to press the tiper, and President Gorbachev did not have such a will. On that day, the fate of the Soviet Union and Gorbachev was decided. A few days later, Bella Kurkova regretted that several victims were not organized - then it would be possible to throw half a million weight into the storming of the Kremlin. For me, this March day was a tragedy: right before my eyes, pro-American forces were winning, the Soviet power was dying, and the powerlessness of the authorities was incomprehensible.

By the spring of 1991, I finally began to understand what was happening in Russia and where the democrats were going.

COURSE TO BELINDIA.

So the sixth year of M.S.'s reign has ended. Gorbachev, and since the Japanese order of assigning proper names - to the eras of reigns (Stalin's reign - the "era of worship", Brezhnev's reign - "the era of stagnation") began in Russia, the Seventh year of perestroika begins. Year of masking. By our time, many masks have already flown away: if earlier the democrats talked about "improvement of socialism", "socialism with a human face", "power - Soviets", the fight against Stalinism and hard-firm orthodoxy, now the verbal tinsel has been blown away by the wind. It turned out that the "foremans" simply lied - by treatment and improvement they meant amputation.

I must admit that I am also among the scammy. And I believed when I read "Ogonek" and "Moscow News" in 1987, that their authors and editors were fighters for the renewal of socialism. It turned out that I was rudely, thieves deceived. I believed Dudintsev and Pristakin, Yevtushenko and Voznesensky, Shevardnadze and Yeltsin. Together with me, the new elite was able to deceive the entire Soviet people.

Perhaps, nowhere, as in the Soviet Union in recent years, has the purely blemation of fraers been practiced on such a scale. And although the fraers have already been carried out, it is worth making a short list of deceptions for the offspring.

In 1987, "they" began to fight privileges. There were films, articles in the press, speeches, where schools for children of the party elite were called and shown, luxurious mansions of party knowledge, side doors of distributors. Frayers like me thought that "they" strive for equality. But time has passed - and in the same newspapers they sympathize with sympathy write about closed paid schools for children of the new elite, and THEY themselves rest in Nice and build their dachas more than the mansions of party bonzes. The conversation about equality and privileges was like a squirming of the card deck, deception, to incite the people to the old nobility and lead to destabilization. Now, when they are pointed out to the good they have looted, they are against the "equal". The slogan "against privileges" has turned into a new one: "Enrich yourself!".

In 1987 and 1988, "they" hated the word "Russia", stood for internationalism and spread rumors about Jewish pogroms. Everything Russian and Russian was associated only with "Memory". When Polozkov came to power in the RCP, "they" cursed the RCP in the name of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. But it cost their taxe to the protesse B.N. Yeltsin to win in the Armed Forces of the RSFSR, as THEY began to curse the Union in the name of Russia. And now "Russia" is a swear cry of the most anti-Russian force existing in real Russia.

The roll call with the Troubled Time catches the eye: as then, there is an unpopular ruler on the throne, who at least "reigns quietly for the sixth year", but his people "rage, curse". Then "a crowd of madmen was attracted by the resurrected name of Dmitry", the legitimate prince from the house of John, and under his mask Grishka Otrepiev brought the Poles to Moscow. Now the people are seduced by the resurrected name of Russia, the old name of this power, and under this tuise the new impostor gives the Americans and international capital the keys to the Kremlin.

But Grishka is not the Uglich prince, and "Russia" is not Russia. Real Russia is called today the "Soviet Union", from the Pamirs to the New Earth and from the Chinese seas to the Baltics, that is, within the same borders (with minor changes) as under Nicholas II Alexandrovich. And since it is difficult to eat real Russia at once, they took a course to dismember it in order to capture it in pieces. If THEY could seize the allied power, THEY would forget the name "Russia" on the same day. But so far, the lured guil of IM is necessary and useful: it confuses inexperienced people.

Another deception was associated with the sphantom of famine raised in 1990, when fattened emissaries of perestroika circled all cities and cities and countries of Europe and America and told how terrible life in Russia is and that without outside help the people could not survive a hungry winter. There was a stormy campaign, used by THEM one hundred percent: THEY were able to steal the help received (I do not know a single Muscovite or Muscovite who received any help) and profitably sell the stolen goods, were able to undermine the creditworthiness of the Soviet Union and further increase the dollar exchange rate, destabilize the situation with the threat of hunger (if the Germans share crackers with us, then it's really a matter of tobacco, people thought), yesterday's (and today's) enemy is already thought of as a friend at the cost of small hands, and a worthy representative of THEIR, Mr. So Live You can, already calls for "immediately eliminate the army and the defense industry, because who should we defend ourselves from? From those who donate billions to our food?"

So, at three prices, you can eliminate the superpower by sending beads and mirrors to its inhabitants as a gift: it will respond to this by complete disarmament and transfer of resources into the hands of rich benefactors, according to this logic.

The fee for several parcels was high - loss of face, loss of dignity, discrediting, strengthening of visa protection against hordes of hungry Russians ready to invade... But, most importantly, all the speeches about hunger turned out to be pure and provocative lies. And here we will again pay attention to the fact that it was THEIR press, THEIR emissary people who moussed rumors about hunger and shed tears of affection that the kind Europeans fed the suffering. One must think that the organizers of this campaign received more than one million dollars of gratitude to their accounts in Swiss banks, because: why the right to leave without the right to a numbered account?

And next to the lie about hunger, we will put a wonderful deception with the purchase of consumer goods (note, not even factories capable of producing consumer goods, but FINISHED products!) The plan set out, in particular, by Yanov in the IH press, formed the basis of the "case of 140 billion", and it was persistently promoted by the whole of their flord. According to this plan, in order not to offend co-operators and the like, it is necessary to cover every paper ruble with imported consumer goods. And to buy consumer goods, you need to get into debt or sell out valuables. It is impossible to even believe that such a plan to rob Russia and sell it today and future - with the sole purpose of giving the julies with videos and tights - could have arisen outside the competent bodies of the Western powers waging a secret war with the Soviet Union.

It is clear to any sane person that this plan would help the economy of developed countries of the West experiencing a sharp recession, and would put Russia even more in the place of the raw material appendage of the West - without any hope for recovery. During conversations with Western businessmen, I noticed their amazement many times: why do Soviet factory directors spend hard-to-found currency - not on the purchase of equipment for their factories, but on the same unfortunate videos and tights? "Timers" is the only explanation.

In order to implement their plan, they conducted a mass campaign to encourage consumerism - the instinct of the consumer. Day and night THEIR television, radio and newspapers are talking and showing how to consume well - to come to the full store and choose the desired imported product. It's not for nothing that this campaign is conducted by the same people who used to bother Soviet people for years - corn, BAM, Brezhnev's Malaya Zemlya. They know their business.

It never occurred to anyone to argue with this stupid plan from an economic position - not patriotic, but from the position of simple calculation. Internal money is pieces of paper that the state printed in large quantities, and scammers like Tarasov scattered in their pockets. All large Soviet fortunes, as Alexander Ivanovich Koreyko knew, were acquired dishonestly, and for the majority it was the "Yanov-Tarasov way": to export goods purchased at an "internal (subsidized) price" that has nothing to do with world market prices, and to import consumer goods for free sale. There is nothing mystical in this path to enrichment - it is no different from the trade in subsidized pies bought in the factory canteen - in the market square at a bazaar price. It is tantamount to stealing a subsidy, and therefore we can safely call them thiefs.

In nature, there is no creation from non-existence - at least after six days of creation - so it is clear that the fantastic incomes of Tarasov and other co-commitants were based on one thing - on the theft of subsidies, on the theft of labor of Soviet people. The entire Soviet Union before perestroika was built as one big company, where everyone is employees and directors, all employees in USSR LTD, everyone receives a salary, and the company gets richer. Accordingly, "internal prices" were also established - the prices of the "inter-shoup" calculation or the prices for food in the "factory canteen". Earned on everything - the USSR LTD company, and as it happens with such huge companies, its employees felt detached from its results. Then, as it happens with companies, the management made several wrong decisions, made a mistake and brought the company to the verge of bankruptcy. It was decided to grant greater rights to the heads of individual enterprises. It is clear what they did first of all - they began to sell things received at domestic prices outside the company and in two years brought the matter to the handle, but at the same time they got rich themselves.

Any company in such a situation would severely stop attempts to steal a subsidy, but our company USSR LTD was weakened by hostile propaganda, according to which such theft is just healthy entrepreneurship. The "Russian Trading House", ANT and other monsters work on this principle.

But we are all still depositors and co-owners of this huge company, and although the feeling of astray from its activities and its results has not disappeared, there is still a better way out than to give your share in it for three times cheaper.

THEY are going to pocket this company. And since they themselves lack strength, they conspired with other companies - with the capitalists of the West. As Lenin rightly described, in such cases the Comprador bourgeoisie swims up. So we found an exact definition - THEY - the comprador bourgeoisie collaborating with imperialism, typical for the countries of the Third World, which are under colonial-imperialist pressure.

And now you can describe their purpose. In USSR LTD there was too much - for them - equality, and the locksmith lived no worse than an associate professor or an actor. THEY want to live themselves, as in the West, and for this we need to throw everyone else to a much lower level.

Brazil is sometimes called "Belindia" = Belgium + India. That is, this is a country where five percent live like in Belgium, and 95% - like in India. They want to make Russia like this Belindia. Don't believe it when they promise that everyone will live like in Belgium - it's just unreal. They themselves will not want to live like in India and will not. This is what the program of transition to the market boils down to, everything else is details: in five hundred days, in three years. Talking about the general welfare on this way is a deception, but we have already realized that THEY always lie.

THEY are ready to ruin Russia, destroy it, destroy its economy in order to surface to the top as prosecutors and protégés of the Empire, in which the dollar does not enter. Yanov's plan was indispensable for this - a mass injection of Soviet gold to improve the sick economy of the West, a massive infusion of Western consumer goods for the complete collapse of the uncompetitive Soviet light industry, the connection of a huge country to Western standards, the transformation of its population into consumers - you can't think of better. And this is at a time when the weakest and strongest countries, from America to Africa, are trying to hide from the flow of foreign consumer goods, reduce imports with the help of customs tariffs and duties, import only what is necessary for the development of industry.

THEY HAVE their own "economists" who play an important role in the cause of universal deceiving. For example, the radio station "Echo of Moscow" promotes Boris Pinsker, if I may say so, an economist. I myself heard (8.5.91) his speech, where it was said that unemployment does not happen and cannot be, because, they say, not everything on earth has been redone yet. Well, then there is no hunger until the earth gives birth to bread, and there is no thirst until oxygen and hydrogen are combined. In this case, there is no reason to pay Pinsker's salary if the world is so wonderful.

But how did THEY manage to master the press, radio, television? Also by lies and deception, with the help of a deceptive law on the seal. This law, drawn up by the IMI on its own order, allowed newspaper editors (who took their place in good stagnant times for diligent licking or on kinship), until then - as hired employees as watchmen, to become full owners of multimillion-dollar property and influence public opinion. This is how the first expropriation of the new bourgeois revolution took place. Thus, Burlatsky, hired by the Writers' Union, stibryled Litgazeta. In their beloved capitalist society, such a thought of stealing a newspaper from the owner would have driven Burlatsky and other editors-invaders into three necks. What the hell: last year a Canadian millionaire bought the Jerusalem newspaper "Jerusalem Post", the editorial staff did not agree with the new owner, he pointed them to the door, and all journalists and editors who disagreed with the owner's opinion went to the labor exchange.

Here's to talk about the sanctity of property! A few years ago, all Soviet people were the owners of MN, KP, LG, and other newspapers and magazines. And suddenly - dexterity and no fraud - Korotich and Burlatsky became millionaires, and the people lost their newspapers and magazines.

Here's a double lie: under the talk about freedom of speech and the press, under the speech about the sanctity of property - they seize common property and put freedom of speech in their pockets. The new class, which is rushing to power, has little scruculousness. They will sell and steal everything, and the story with the seizure of the seal is a warning to those who do not believe it yet.

Another lie is "seeking a compromise with the Communist Party", "round table". THEY mean one thing - the complete liquidation of the Communist Party and the inclusion of communists in the "blacklists" on the model of Poland. There is nothing to hope for a compromise: the experience of Eastern European countries shows that the scenario developed by the American special services leaves no room for reformed communist parties.

Let's say more: there is no such place on the political map. In many countries of the world there was a process of reform of the Communist Parties. Everywhere it ended the same - reformed communist parties died, and with them - ambitious reformers. Reason: there is no need for them. Social Democrats exist without communists and are not going to give up their place under the sun for reformists.

This was also the case in Israel, where at one time there was a split between the communists of the "hard line" (RAKAH) and reformers (MAKI). The reformers wanted to please the public, adopt a nationalist platform, become Eurocommunists, and abandon the "dictatorship of Moscow". Several years passed, and the MAKI disappeared - first it entered the broader front of the left forces, and then this entire left front (SHELI) died peacefully, without receiving a single seat in parliament in the elections. None of the reformers who collapsed the Communist Party in the name of popular popularity could stay in big politics. At the same time, the "tight" Communist Party, despite the pressure of the authorities, the boycott and threats, was able to maintain its power and has remained the only real opposition to this day.

In Hungary, the reformed Communist Party disappears step by step, and the people who brought it to the disaster came out of it, abandoned its reformed scrap - and found themselves with nothing to do with it. The reformed Communist Party in the GDR was "out of the game" in the blink of an eye, despite all the efforts of its leadership to fulfill the desires of the Federal Republic of Germany and local anti-communist forces.

Rutskoy and other more prominent figures of the CPSU are in vain entertaining themselves with illusions - if they manage to collapse the Communist Party, "the Moor has done his job - the Moors can leave". (This was written years before the storming of the White House). It is enough to recall the wave of attacks on M.S. Gorbachev in early April, when it seemed to his opponents that the revolutionary moment had ripened, that "yesterday it was early, and tomorrow it would be late".

This does not mean that the Communist Party should resort to anti-constitutional actions - on the contrary, it should obear the constitution. So far, according to the constitution, all power belongs to the Congress of People's Deputies, in which the majority belongs to the communists. Therefore, the Communist Party, as the ruling party, must pursue its own communist line, and, of course, fight with the toughest measures against those who oppose the constitution, for a coup d'état. The call for the dissolution of the CIS is a call for a violent coup in the interests of the comprador bourgeoisie, and the competent authorities must fight it.

The Communist Party refused the Sixth Article, but "still you don't really strive up", according to young Brodsky, that is, suicide is not yet necessary: let its opponents defeat it first in the next elections in the CIS. In the meantime, by exposing lies, you need to fight against demoralization, keep morale. After all, nowhere in the world do the ruling parties leave power three years before the elections just because they are not in the spirit of the opposition."

After Gorbachev's March debak, we left for Transcaucasia. I was going to fall in love with Armenia, which I had never been to before, but it didn't work out.

GOODBYE, ARMENIA.

The other day I visited Yerevan and Baku, two capitals of the warring Transcaucasian republics. The Armenian taxi driver who took me to the airport remembered Lenin with an unkind word for ceding part of the Armenian regions of Turkey, and part to Azerbaijan. My Russian companion Nikolai, who lives in Yerevan, was silent, and then, in the open air, away from the taxi driver's ears, replied: and Vladimir Ilyich really gave a mah - it was necessary to give up the remaining Armenian regions - to Turkey, Iran, America, anyone.

Although we should not rush to conclusions, I also have the impression that in a huge barrel of tar, the name of which is the collapse of the Soviet Union, there is still a spoonful of honey - the hope for Armenia's withdrawal.

Perhaps one of the subconscious reasons for my disappointment is the inconsistency of this land with the beautiful Mandelstam title of "the younger sister of the Jewish land". No, Armenia is nothing like the Holy Land - its cities and villages are ugly, like the working villages of the unsetified Russian province. All houses - from Stalin's Empire-in-time-plague to standard high-rise buildings of Yerevan suburbs and concrete cubes of rural houses - indicate the schizophrenic alienation of the people - the land. If in Palestine, and in neighboring Georgia, every house in the village is like a grown tree, a symbol of the connection between the people and their landscape, in Armenia the landscape is alien and hostile to people. In Yerevan restaurants, the orchestra plays "Esaula", and guests are served bad borscht. There are the same concrete complexes on the bank of the Sevan. Wonderful medieval Armenian churches and monasteries seem to be forgotten by aliens - they are so unrelated to the current buildings. In short, there is no color, but only a caustic, acid-like nationalism that remains after the death of the authentic national content.

And the people are the direct opposite of both the Palestinians and their neighbors in Transcaucasia, to put it mildly, are not very hospitable. The percentage of strangers here is the lowest - not in the Union, but in the world, somewhere by 98%: in recent years, Armenians have survived both Azerbaijanis and Kurds - only Yazidi-devil worshipers remained.

And apparently, it is no coincidence that it was the Armenians, one of the two peoples of the USSR with a huge sister community in the United States, who played the role of the Trojan horse in the Soviet camp from the very beginning of the catastroy (copyright of Zinoviev). After all, the first conflicts under the still serene perestroika sky were provoked by the Armenian side. Nagorno-Karabakh became the first ulcer of the nationalist plague, and from it the infection flew over and went for a walk on the southern and western outskirts of the Union.

In today's Armenia, nationalism and capitalism have finally won. This is the only republic, turned entirely into one giant Riga market, into one big flea market, where 12-year-old children stand on the streets and sell Marlborough cigarettes in bulk, where every second store is a commission store, and in them, at speculative prices, everything that is produced by all the republics of the Union and the states of Foreign Republic, everything, except for local goods, which simply do not exist: all the energy of the population has gone to trade and nationalism, there is no strength left for production. There are no more collective farms, but there are no agricultural products either. In Armenia, the dreams of our Thatcherists like Larisa Piyasheva and Selyunin have come true - prices are free, the land is distributed, the Communist Party is out of business, but for some reason the deficit here is sharper than in other republics of the South and South-West. But there is no shortage of money - money printed in distant Moscow and paid for work to Kuzbass miners, Norilsk miners or Ivanov textile workers comes and settles in sunny Transcaucasia. If these rubles had been canceled by Pavlov in response to their declarations of independence, the remaining Russian ruble would have stood shoulder to shoulder with the dollar.

Now, looking back, we can clearly say that the Armenians, fulfilling someone's will and igniting the fire of hostility in Karabakh, suffered themselves. The situation in Nagorno-Karabakh at the beginning of perestroika was no better and no worse than in other autonomous regions - money came from the republican center, with the national culture was weak, - but the same could be said by Abkhazians, Ossetians, and countless AOs of Russia. But then the Armenians adopted a double-edged doctrine: where Armenians live, there is Armenia. Demands for the rejection of Karabakh and its transfer to Armenia began. The consequences were Sumgait, Baku, mass expulsions of Armenians. And in these actions of the Azerbaijanis there was a terrible logic, the child of the same Armenian doctrine: if where Armenians live - Armenia, then it is impossible for Armenians to live in another country, otherwise Nagorno-Karabakh will be followed by Baku, and then Tbilisi, where even at the time of the "Journey to Erzrum" there was, according to Pushkin, the Armenian majority, and there may be Cyprus, where there was an Armenian majority in the days of Guy de Lusignan.

Whole nations - represented by their elites - make mistakes and then pay for them with the great blood of the guilty and innocent. This is how the Kurds of Iraq were wrong, having tried to change their suzerain twice over the past decade, the first time - by entering into an alliance with Iran, the second time - by sucumbing to American e-poss. This is how the Germans of Palestine suffered, who were deprived by the British of their stake and court and sent to Australia. Armenians have already suffered once - when during the First World War some of them succumbed to the calls of the Entente and opposed the Turkish government. Following this, the Kurds, then still proud of their loyalty to Istanbul, slaughtered one and a half million Armenians.

The national question is simple - any long-standing national group has the right to live in its own way on any land. She has no right to dispose of this land against the will of the sovereign. Armenians could live for another thousand years on the shores of Lake Van, and in Diyarbekir (where they lived until 1915), or in Getashen (until 1991) as loyal subjects of Istanbul or Baku, if their elites had not thought, in both cases - by squeezing from the West, to snatch a piece of Turkey or Azerbaijan. I think that when the nationalist chad passes, when the current successors of the Entente stop adding fuel to the fire, both Armenians and their persecutors will calm down, and the Armenian villages will again stand from Mount Carmel to the shore of the Caspian Sea, although not under the flag of the Armenian Republic.

I think that without outside, the Armenians would not have chopped the branch on which they were sitting four long years ago. Their leaders in America needed a conflict, it was necessary to brew porridge of national discord in the Soviet Union and this goal was achieved - at the expense of the blood of the same Armenians. And now, four years later, history repeats itself again, Armenian protests again flood the front pages of newspapers and television screens. Although, as far as I remember, Armenia proclaimed its withdrawal from the USSR and even its people's deputies left the federal authorities - now they demand the convening of a congress of people's deputies.

There can be only one reason for this - the external and internal enemies of the USSR are not satisfied with the fact that it has not yet been possible to drive a wedge between the Muslim and Orthodox halves of the Union, that Baku is not boiling and Sogdian is not thrown into the arms of Schwarzkopf or Landsbergis. The peace of Azerbaijan outrages American specialists and their Soviet allies from "DemRussia". They would like Azerbaijan to also proclaim its withdrawal from the Union, to threaten the communists with a loop there, so that hatred for the "Russian occupiers" matures there. It's not happening yet.

There is tension in Baku. The brave soldiers in front of the Absheron Hotel, where the investigators of the prosecutor's office live, are tight and tense. Three signatures on the business card are required here to go up to the room. But Azerbaijanis treat these blond guys in a ironed uniform much better than the Armenians they came to protect. There is no hostility towards foreigners in the republic yet, although there is no longer that wonderful Baku brotherhood that is remembered from pre-Karabakh times.

In Azerbaijan, as in other Muslim republics of the South, the idea of the Union with Russia has not outlived itself. This union is ancient, like the history of Russia - the union of Slavs and the Turkic steppe. "Russians did not impose their culture on the Turks, but established good relations with them. The same did not merge with the Slavs, but entered into a symbiosis with them, based on mutual sympathy." Therefore, the Tatars defended Novgorod in 1269 from the Crusaders, and in 1406 they defended Moscow from the Lithuanians, the Bashkirs and Kalmyks helped Peter defeat the Swedes, Asian nomads came with the Russian army to Paris in 1815 and to Berlin in 1945, "they were led there by the force of sincerity, not calculation". (Gumilev). An alliance with them - based on mutual respect and love, not assimilation and absorption - is necessary. Despite the tensions of recent years, this union can still be preserved. Therefore, all the efforts of Russia's enemies are directed against this alliance. For this purpose, a new outbreak of conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan was ignited.

And it is no coincidence that the recently established "Committee of the Russian intelligentsia "Karabakh" (CREE) united people whose hostility to the Soviet Union is known: among them the editor of the anti-communist magazine "Stolitsa" Malgin, anti-communists from "April" Oskotsky, Nuikin and Chernichenko. It is no coincidence that the enemy of socialism and the Starovoitov Union even went to the union parliament from the Armenian nationalists. She did not have enough honesty to refuse this title when the republic that chose her announced its withdrawal from the Soviet Union.

The newspaper "Voice of Armenia" (19.4.91) gives a detailed report on the meeting of this committee. Judging by this report, which occupies a whole strip, members of the CRIK perceive the struggle for the rights of Armenians as a struggle against the legitimate authorities of the Soviet Union. L. Gozman says: "The conflict in ICAO is an anti-imperial conflict, Armenian demands are not so much for Azerbaijanis as for the Empire." And the usual provocative lie:

"The Empire plays a destructive role, it benefits from conflicts on the outskirts" - that is, in other words, Gorbachev and his team pushes Armenians and Azerbaijanis to the conflict, according to Gozman's idea. Malgin: "When I told (journalists in Switzerland) that the constitutional authorities were dissolved in the NKAO, people did not want to believe." For some reason, Malgin did not say that in his beloved Georgia Gamsakhurdia, constitutional authorities were also dissolved and prefects were appointed instead.

The position of the enemies of the Soviet Union is seemingly inconsistent: they are for the autonomy of Armenians in the NKAO, even with an increase in the status to an allied one, but against the autonomy of the Ossetians in South Ossetia (see "Capital" No. 13, 1991). However, in fact, they know the logic - they are always against the Soviet Union, and therefore they are for Armenians (they are against the Union) and against Azerbaijanis (they are for), for Georgia (she is against) and against Ossetia (she is for).

The danger is that as a result of a bloodless coup under the banner of the Press Law, pro-American forces seized the lion's share of newspapers and magazines; behind them, as in their time behind False Dmitry, a mass of deceived Russian people goes; the President fears them for a reason. They want one thing - that Azerbaijan becomes anti-communist and anti-union, and then they will support it too. They understand this in Baku, and in case of victory of the camp of Starovoitova, Nuikin, Malgin and others, the wedge between Russia and the Muslim South will be hammered. And this is the long-standing dream of all the enemies of Russia, and in particular, the Zionists. The latter need it for their own considerations - in order to form a global anti-Islamic coalition against the Arabs, it is necessary to raise Russia to fight Islam in the interests of the Jewish state.

To thwart these plans, it would be better to satisfy the request of the Armenians and accelerate Armenia's withdrawal from the Union and immediately establish a customs and border barrier between it and Soviet Azerbaijan. Then the Soviet Army will know who and what to defend.

And in conclusion, it is worth answering those advisers of Russia's union with Armenia, who are attracted by its ancient Christianity. Eastern Christian sects are unreliable allies. These are the Maronites of Lebanon - France, America, Israel and Syria and neighboring Muslims tried to be friends with them unsuccessfully. The people of the former Soviet Armenia could not cope with the psychological trauma of the exile and massacre of the beginning of the century, with the isolation of a small community. It remained a typical isolated relic Asian group, such as Samaritans, Maronites, Zoroastrians, Nestorians, Assyrians and other remnants of Byzantium, of which there are many in hard-to-reach corners of Asia. Armenia has become Russian quite by accident, and its independence will be in the hands of both sides. For the Union, the relations between Orthodox and Muslims are quite complicated and without an additional aspect of the Eastern Christian enclaves of Transcaucasia. And the Armenians, apparently, will benefit from living with their own mind, their own strength and by their own means."

For this article, the Armenian prosecutor's office opened a criminal case against me and transferred it to the federal prosecutor's office. Any anti-Azerbaijani nonsense of the Armenian lobby in Moscow (Nuikin: Azerbaijani families ritually sacrifice Armenians) did not arouse the interest of the prosecutor's office. So Robert David, together with Ostashvili, was under the attack of the article of the Criminal Code against national hatred.

Baku surprised us with its beauty, Italian squares, luxurious houses of the last century in the colonial style. But it was a bit scary in the city. I came back here after the liquidation of the Union - the inscriptions in Russian disappeared at the airport, everything was written in Turkish. Apparently, Azerbaijan is lost to Russia forever.

Georgia was another surprise. Georgians in the mountains, in Tbilisi and Mtskheta, turned out to be wonderful people, cities and villages were beautiful, life was convenient, restaurants were cheap and comfortable. There was a wonderful red wine everywhere in Tbilisi, for which Moscow is already asking for fabulous money - more expensive than in France. And here - if you want, drink Teliani, like Mandelstam, and if you want - Kinzmarauli, like Stalin. Mtskheta captivated me: this town could fit into the landscape of Palestine, with its neat houses, ancient churches, a sweeping pavement, cheerful calves in the city park, respectful schoolchildren and an abundance of beer and khinkali. On the shore, in Sukhumi, the people are very rude, but in the mountains people are beautiful and elegant, not at all similar to export Georgians, merchants and hooligans known to us in other places of the Union. In Tbilisi, Georgians behave politely and in a warning way.

I regretted that I was not here in the early Soviet times, or, at least in 1989, before the collapse. It was not possible to return to Georgia - soon it was engulfed by a civil war. But when the war is over, I will come to this wonderful country - along the Georgian Military Road, past Kazbek, through Pasanauri and Mtskheta.

When we returned to Moscow, summer was already just around the corner, and with it there was a keen feeling that Atlantis was sinking, and we may never see something not seen this year.

In mid-July, we left for Sweden and returned to the Soviet Union a month later. We drove around, through Poland and Brest. "Poland is one big flea market, where speculators stand on all corners and resell imported consumer goods. Why do they resell? With their low salaries, it's not affordable to use this consumer goods, and it's not an honor to make your own products. Neither in stores nor on the streets you will find Polish products, and even beer - almost everywhere from Germany. However, they don't have real stores like in the West - only trays, the results of trips to the West. How this unfortunate country, completely devoid of any charm, managed to become the dream of the Soviet people ("democrats solemnly promise - we will live like in Poland") - I can't think. Food is weak, telephone communication is like in Upper Volta: you can get through to Warsaw for half a day from Bialystok. The architecture is Eastern European, the same from East Berlin to Khabarovsk. In short, it's an unsympathetic place.

And here you come to the Soviet Union. There is already more space in Brest, and in the current period of withering and sunset, it is felt that there was a very good country. In Belarus, the "perestroika forces" were the least successful - they did not want to leave the Union to the end, the Communist Party was banned by the latter, there are even several varieties of cheese in stores. Vandea, and only! And later, already in 1992, Minsk gave the impression of an oasis - clean shops, a large selection, divine prices and polite people.

From Brest we went to Vilnius and Liepaja. As soon as we left Liepaja, they shouted at the gas station: "There is a coup in Moscow! Gorbachev was arrested!" We stopped in Riga at "Intourist" to have lunch and think about what was happening. We sat in a half-empty restaurant, drank beer and listened to Moscow radio. The feeling of uncertainty was transmitted to us from his announcers. It was unclear what was going on. We decided - no matter what, we will go to Moscow. We felt terribly sorry for Gorbachev, a weak but kind ruler, and we hoped that he was alive.

I wrote an article about the coup a few days later and it appeared in the first post-putch issue of the newspaper "Day".

Under the IRON Heet.

I entered troubled Moscow on the second evening of the "putsch". The Riga road was empty, few people were in a hurry to the restless capital. The radio talked about tanks and barricades, but it was not difficult to get through. The waiter in the restaurant complained about the inevitability of the civil war and counted us twice. It was a bit scary in a dark rainy shabby city, which is not very attractive even without a civil war.

Muscovites acquaintances, all fans of Yeltsin without exception, were preparing to go to the barricades. According to them, the assault on the "White House on the Embankment", the Yeltsin bastion, was approaching from hour to hour, but more and more units, whole divisions, went over to Yeltsin's side.

Even then I was confused that Yeltsin was not arrested. I could not imagine a conspirator, and even a communist and a supporter of the Union, who would not consider Yeltsin a more dangerous enemy than Gorbachev, who had outlived his life. How could it happen that Gorbachev was isolated, and Yeltsin was in the wild? Any sergeant who decided to coup would have arrested him first.

The most amazing feature of this unique "putsch" was its bloodlessness, vegetarianism. (Several people died under rather random circumstances, inevitable when using heavy equipment in the city - they attacked the retreating tanks and got hit by a reverse-driven car). On the way, I heard Yeltsin's calls on the radio to arrest the "putschists", and with every hour, with every kilometer I traveled, his friends and girlfriends were more bolder. Those were happy days for the Democrats: they boldly called the legitimate vice president, prime minister and minister of defense "bloody fascist junta", and the bloody fascist junta was only wiped off. God willing, no one can see a hunt more bloodier than this one.

So, the junta was inactive. Not really: she gnashed her teeth and rolled her eyes, she surrounded the press center of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with tanks to make it easier for journalists to photograph her animal scream. "He barks, but doesn't bite," they say about such monsters. By three in the morning, the putsch became clear as God's day that he would not bite. "Putsch" turned out to be a lime.

History knows a lot of coups. There were also persistent rejections of the people defending the elected structures, but this was never a big problem for the army. Napoleon Bonaparte dispersed the parliament with Murat's famous command: "Throw me these talkers," and when on another time the people tried to resent against the authorities on the porch of St. Roch in defense of the exiled legitimate ruler (Louis XVI), Napoleon shot a huge crowd of guns. Nowadays, Korzhavin's idol Augusto Pinochet has been shot at the stadium. The army managed to take power in Greece, Turkey, and Brazil, and when there were unsuccessful coup attempts, there were many victims. There are no putsches like the Moscow August one, because they can't be: any army is able to cope with the population, any conspirator starts with the arrest of the enemy and the capture of his structures.

The worthy finale of this comedy was the return of the captured Gorbachev to Moscow. Over time, we will find out who owned the plan of this simulated coup, whether it was ineptly staged by Gorbachev (as Shevardnadze and other "defenders of the White House" reportedly believed), or in commonwealth with Yeltsin. ("Yeltsin is Gorbachev today"). We will find out how we managed to persuade Gorbachev's friends and appointees - Yanaev, Yazov, Lukyanov - to play a role in a comedy that is dangerous only for them. Which of them knew that the conspiracy was on a dememer, and who was lured and set up? How did it happen that Yeltsin outplayed the master of Gorbachev's intrigue? Only the future, apparently not close, will answer these questions.

But immediately after the comedy, the second, tragic phase of these events began, a real anti-constitutional anti-communist coup.

The soap bubble of legalism and loyalism immediately burst. If before Gorbachev's return, the democrats conducted propaganda under the banner of saving the legitimate president from the "hard-stone" putschists, and received the natural support of many structures and individuals, after August 21 this mask was discarded: Gorbachev appeared before the Yeltsin parliament as a pranky before the pedagogical council, as a prisoner before the court. Yeltsin handed him a list of members of the new government to emphasize: from now on, Gorbachev will only be an obedient cog in his hands - or nothing.

However, there is no need to feel sorry for Gorbachev. Six years ago, he became the leader of the party and state and the commander of the army. The state was considered a superpower, and there were 18 million people in the party, the army impressed with its power. In ex-six years, he led to the elimination of all three. It would be good to collapse the party, but strengthen the power. It would be good to ruin the power, but strengthen the party. "Losing both parents seems to be malicious distracted," as Oscar Wilde's character said. There is no need to talk about the army - even before the operetta coup, the influential magazine "Economist" wrote (17.8.91): "A dozen missiles will bring the Soviet Union to its knees," and after the coup it will seem too flattering an assessment. The state has been liquidated, there will be less left of the Soviet Union than the Holy Roman Empire of the German people, and less from the CPSU than the Guelphs. If Iacocca had led Chrysler to bankruptcy, would he also have received the Nobel Peace Prize?

Gorbachev lost my sympathy only at the hour of his surrender to Yeltsin. He didn't have the courage to go down with the sinking ship. His decision to liquidate the Communist Party from the inside, the dissolution of the Central Committee was the last black betrayal of this modern Azef. The only consolation is that he will have more than one Canossa, if not a cell and a hood, not to mention the afterlife torments of the seventh circle of Dante's hell, where a place is given to traitors. My personal assessment of Gorbachev changed by 180 degrees in these August days, when he "surrented" the party and socialism. Until that moment, I hoped for his salvation, relied on his wisdom and calculation. After that, I realized that I was wrong.

The image of Gorbachev was anticipated by the great Slavic poet Adam Mickiewicz in Konrad Wallenrod, the enemy of the Order of the Crusaders, who deceived to become his Grand Master and led the powerful order to defeat. My American friend, a big fan of the detective genre, almost seriously convinces me: "When the CIA archives are revealed in fifty years, our children may learn that the bestselling author Tom Clancy ("American Julian Semenov"), close to this organization, relied on the facts in his "Kremlin Cardinal" and since 1985 the Soviet Union was headed by a paid agent of American intelligence".

"For several years, Yeltsin tried to prove to the Americans that he would be an even more effective agent than Gorbachev, who had already played his cards. And after long delays in the minds of CIA strategists, a plan was formed to transfer power to Yeltsin and the total liquidation of the Soviet Union, based on the plot of another prominent intelligence officer and writer, Le Carré. In his classic "The Spy Who Came Back from the Cold", Western intelligence plays a difficult game in the GDR, betrays everyone and everything to strengthen its protégé, its agent - the head of the secret services of the GDR. According to this plan, Gorbachev put his fellow patriots into a stupid representation of a military coup, a coup that does not bite, shoot and does not detain opponents. And here the CIA uses all its communications, radio, television, press - the whole world apparatus of influence on minds unanimously demands the return of Gorbachev and supports Yeltsin. Yeltsin wins easily, and Gorbachev, like Le Carré's hero, turns out to be a "Moor who did his job". This is where the real coup begins: without any reference to the constitution, the winners liquidate legitimate power structures, dissolve the government, arrest opponents, close all opposition newspapers and ban the Communist Party." So says my friend, a fan of Le Carré, who is like a detective in real life. A similar version was also proposed by Pavel Shipilin in the "Moskovsky Komsomolets": according to it, Gorbachev from the very beginning wanted to blow up the Communist Party and the Soviet Union from the inside and acted, like Stirlitz, as a spy among enemies, with a quiet sap, provoking a "coup" to achieve this result. In general, a kind of Ivan Susanin.

The winners staged a magnificent performance. They needed victory over enemies, blood, sacrifices to justify the introduction of dictatorship. The unfortunate "conspirators" deceived by Yeltsin-Gorbachev did not arrest anyone, no one was shot, but the winners arranged a magnificent funeral for three poor people who died in a traffic accident. At the memorial sonide, demands for retribution sounded, the inflating of passion went on all day. "I would cut them ("putchists") into small pieces," the cashier tells her friend in the movie.

Hatred is skillfully inflated. A myth has been created about an assault that allegedly miraculously failed to arrest Yeltsin, although even the newspaper "Kommersant" admits that there were no assault attempts. A wave of vile denunciation swept the newspapers. All Yeltsin publications willingly cite the statements of opponents made in the days of the "putsch". Especially they pounced on the allied radio and television, as if announcers and editors were obliged to prefer the republican power to the union. With the victory, heads flew (so far figuratively) in the media independent of the Yeltsin people: the APN came under their direct control, and TV and TASS - through Yeltsin's proteges.

Pluralism and freedom did not exist in Russia for long - two years of force, from June 1989 to August 1991. Before that, there was almost no opposition, and after that the opposition lost its vote. During the "putsch" Yeltsin's publications were banned - obviously in order to close the opposition communist press later, during the real coup. But during the lime putsch and the ban was fake and Yeltsin's newspapers came out in the form of leaflets and were pasted on the streets of the city, and the soldiers and policemen of the "blood junta" did not interfere with this. During this putsch and the ban is present: the editorial office is closed, the property is confiscated.

Russia has returned to its usual unanimity and unanimity. It's just disgusting how much everyone now talks and thinks in unison. Even people who are clearly in opposition to Yeltsin's dictatorship do not dare to say it directly. With the victory of the right-wing putsch, both loyalty and loyalty to the constitution ended. Sobchak calls for dispersing the Supreme Soviet of the USSR if it does not meet the demands of the Yeltsin people. Gorbachev looks like a prisoner. On television, they call for the seizure of Belarus, "because there are a lot of nuclear weapons".

The big coup was followed by the small ones. Eleven people (out of seventy members of the secretariat) gathered in the Union of Writers of the USSR, declared themselves a new board, put Yevtushenko at the head and thus seized the multimillion-dollar property of the joint venture with its dachas and newspapers. Yevtushenko and his friends also demanded to close the opposition "fat magazines", which did not even have time to support the putschists.

The collapse of the Soviet Union, this dream of America, has finally come true. It is hard to believe that a "union treaty" will be more binding than a general non-aggression agreement.

Once upon a time, for an eternity - a whole year - ago I was at a press conference in a luxurious hotel of the CPSU Central Committee, where representatives of the Communist Parties of Eastern Europe and the CPSU met. It was after the fall of the Warsaw Pact. I was interested in one question: will these emissaries from the sunken Atlantis explain to their Soviet colleagues what led to their death, will they teach how to avoid it?

They didn't explain, and if they did, they didn't understand the explanation. Perestroika ended, and as many predicted, it ended with a dictatorship, but the dictatorship not of the army and the Bolsheviks, but of the new victorious bourgeois forces: it was they, the small masters from the cooperatives, who rushed to defend Yeltsin in the days of the putsch, they reaped the fruits of his victory.

It doesn't smell of pluralism: Yakovlev, editor of "Moscow News", and Yakovlev, architect of perestroika, and Zakharov, editor of "Nezavisimaya Gazeta" stand for the closure of opposition newspapers. For two long uncensored years, all "democratic" publications (from "Ogonka" to "Komsomolka", from "MN" to "Chimes") did not spare ink, praising Pinochet in Chile and Franco in Spain and dictators of South Korea and Taiwan and racists of South Africa and Israel. Not everyone understood that they were not idle with a desire for originality. Young wolf cubs of Yeltsin were looking for and found worthy teachers for themselves.

The leading anti-communist of the century is not forgotten. When Bella Kurkova made a film about Yeltsin's trip to the United States, she practically plagiarized Leni Riefenstahl's famous film "Wings over Nuremberg", up to the storyboard. In the film by Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler flies to Nuremberg, in the film Bella - Yeltsin to Washington, but the attitude of women directors to their idols is identical: the ladders of airplanes, courageous and inspired faces of the heroes, a top view and admirers below. Such plagiarism can hardly be obtained unconsciously. "Komsomolka" gave a short line about this film: "We went too far". (In gratitude, Kurkov was awarded by the Leningrad TV company.)

Yeltsin and his clovers practically eliminated the electoral system of local self-government and replaced it with their appointees, "prefects". So Russia returned to Stalin's times, when the supreme leader appoints the rulers of the regions at his own will on the principle of personal loyalty. But even Stalin tried to make it up with the fiction of "choice on the spot". It's no use for Yeltsin people.

Yes, a curious paradox - communists are now blamed for everything, but, as it turned out, anti-communists like Dr. Yakovlev or non-communists like Nobel Peace Prize winner President Gorbachev have long been at the head of the Soviet state. In light of this, for example, the words of Nikolai Shmelev (Izvestia 21.10.91) sound strange:

"A terrible mistake or a terrible crime was made by those who, out of stupidity and blatant ignorance, started an anti-alcohol campaign... For this alone, the Bolsheviks in tears and shame should have come down from the historical stage themselves." Allow me, Mr. Shmelev! Not the Bolsheviks, but your anti-communist friends, Gorbachev, Yakovlev, Yeltsin ruled Russia in those days. Maybe they should leave "in tears and shame", and the real Bolsheviks should return to power?

The Bulgarian socialist gave a remarkable definition of what happened in Eastern Europe: "liberation revolution - liberation of nomenclature from ideology". But that's the liberation of ideology from the nomenclature, isn't it? The dispersal of the official CPSU may still be a blessing in disguise: with the loss of party property, the ruling anti-communist reformers also lost interest in membership in the communist party. The nomenclature hated by the people has moved to new power structures. The same members of the old Gorbachev Politburo are sitting in the presidium again. Real communists were where they should have been in this difficult time - with the people.

WHY I'M UPSET.

More than twenty years ago, when I, a young dissident, received an irrevocable exit visa, at the last moment I longed and cheered. Leaving was a rare thing in those days, I was afraid to leave my homeland, where I felt free and could explain myself - I want with the waiters in the working canteen, I wanted with the academics. I, a native of Siberia, had to deal with both of them. And suddenly - a completely unexpected permission to leave. There was something to hesitate about. And then my Moscow friend Sanka put me in a taxi and asked the driver to circle around Dzerzhinsky Square, under the unblinking eyes of Iron Felix and lenses from the building "opposite the Children's World". By the third orbital turn, I was relieved of a persentive nostalgia and the trip to Sheremetyevo went without interference. And then the shadow of the KGB also cured me - with reminders of those put in prison and mental hospital.

But here is Moscow, August-91, and the monument to Dzerzhinsky is being shot down around the corner from me. I went, saw a black, raging crowd from afar - and turned back. My heart tightened. I felt like an ordinary liberal intellectual in the eighteenth year, not a monarchist who voted for cadets or Socialist-Revolutionars - who saw how the monuments of tsars were overthrown from the equestrian pedestals. There was something disgusting, offensive in it: live donkeys from a fable kicked a dead lion.

This is how Mandelstam felt: "I was only childishly connected with the world of the state, // I was afraid of the oyster and looked at the guardsmen from under his brow - // And I don't owe him a single grain of my soul, no matter how I tortured myself in someone else's likeness... // So why...

And really, why is the insolability of eternal Komsomol members so annoying, ready to roll out the saints' crayfish to the square and mock their ashes? You don't have to be a stardently believing Leninist to be outraged by blasphemy. The unfortunate Andre Chenier was so outraged by the discarded rake of Louis the Holy.

Today I approached the mutilated pedestal, where there was a monument to the first Jew - the president of Soviet Russia. How much unbridled anger, hatred fell on these noble red stones. They were torn, stabbed, pinched, smeared with mud and paint, and a wooden cross was installed on top to recover the trace of the Jewish spirit. And Yeltsin's democratic vanguard did it!.. They used the Jews for their own purposes - intimidated them with pogroms, the threat of "Memory", even performed a blasphemous TV show of the religious funeral of a Jew killed in August - on Saturday, and when the time came: the black forces turned out to be allies not of the communists with their "International", but of the "democrats" with their Russia, united and indivisible. The topic of the murder of Tsar Nicholas is being discussed and anathema to "godless Bolsheviks" sounds - in democratic publications, from the mouths of democrats. Tired of quoting this word, but it should be: how wonderful they fucked up the local elections and in general all the power on the ground and replaced them with appointees. And their cynical arguments surpass everything I've heard: "if there are elections, we will lose, and therefore - no elections". Well, from such positions, Stalin was right not to allow free elections.

But if these people, in general, bribes are smooth, Russian intellectuals like Mark Zakharov, director and director of the Lenin Komsomol Theater, who publicly burned his party ticket, have become especially disgusting to me. So the apostates in medieval Japan trampled the crucifix. Yesterday he swore by the name of Lenin, and today he signs a long-standing lie.

Zakharov writes (NG 23.10.91): "Lenin long before the assault detachments of the SS Gruppenführer" or "Hitler, Stalin tried to calculate the number of shootings based on sanitary norms, Lenin was not afraid of lawlessness". The faithful son of the Armenian people Andrei Nuikin calls the government of Lenin and Sverdlov in 1921 "a terrorist government and a criminal party clique".

The fierce struggle with Lenin affected many minds. The editor of the Moscow magazine quoted Lenin's well-known note about the shooting of the "reactionary clergy" (it is also quoted by Zakharov) and shouted: "How can you treat Lenin now!". God, unpleasant quotes can be caught from anyone - for example, from Jesus, who compared all non-Jews - with dogs (Jo., 15:26), and the deaths of the Gulag pale in comparison with murders on religious grounds from the Crusades to the Inquisition and to the recent days, but religion is now in perfect order. But maybe now the fighters with Lenin, like Mark Zakharov, who burned his party ticket, will reread the Gospel of Matthew and classize Jesus as "outstanding criminals" (as Zakharov called Lenin)? It's Doubtful. Live donkeys always know who to lie down, when to hit Pilat, and when to hit Leninism. And the other day I discovered Lenin for the first time in many years, and I - a man who was not in the Communist Party and did not take money from it - he delighted. Here, for example, is the beginning of the article "How to organize a competition":

"Bourgeois writers have written and are writing down mountains of paper, singing competition, private entrepreneurship and other valor and charms of the capitalist order. Socialists were blamed for their unwillingness to understand the meaning of these valors. But in fact, capitalism has long replaced small commodity independent production, in which competition could widely educate entreprentrialism, energy, courage of the beginning - with large and largest factory production, with the suppression of the enterprise and energy of the masses and financial fraud".

Like from today's newspaper! Lenin, unlike the current singers of the market, lived under capitalism, and quite developed and seventy years ago anticipated the arguments of Piyasheva, Selyunin, Shmelev and others. To me, who lived under capitalism, Lenin seems more adequate to reality than "new Kremlin dreamers". As King Solomon said, "there is something that is said: look, this is new, but it was already in the generations that lived before us" (Eccus, 1:10).

And Lenin understood foreign policy better than the creators of "new thinking": "Capitalism has now allocated a handful (less than one tenth of the world's population) of especially rich and powerful states that rob - collecting interest on loans - the whole world".

Zakharov, Yakovlev, Popov and other haircuts have no reason that Lenin is read all over the world - not under the pressure of the Kremlin, but because it accurately describes our world.

In order to appreciate Lenin, you don't have to be a communist. But anti-communist fuss brought me to such a point that these days - for the first time - I began to call myself a communist.

And how did the communists themselves react to this? Judging by the reaction, it's much easier than me. Perhaps the strangest thing in this story is the grave silence of the communists. It's as if the country was covered with a snow fluff plate and there was nothing left of its fifteen million party members. Gorbachev dissolves the Central Committee, Yeltsin bans the Communist Party, the unruly blunted mon overthrows the monuments of the founders (although so far only foreigners), democratic nouves search on banks and pockets, party leaders are arrested in the republics - and the communists are silent.

In 1968, when Soviet troops entered Czechoslovakia, there were seven daredevils who came to Red Square with a protest. They had their teeth knocked out, their kidneys knocked off, then fusted in the hospitals - they were ready for it. (Even the young author of these lines wrote a multi-meter "Hands off Czechoslovakia" on a white stone of Novosibirsk Akademgorodok). In April 1991, when the authorities banned the rally of Democrats and introduced APCs to Manezhnaya Square, supporters of Yeltsin and Popov brought half a million people to a protest demonstration. Even during the stupid August "putsch" there were first hundreds, and then thousands of people ready to risk their lives and freedom for their idea.

But among the Russian communists, there was not a single darededeve in the party of Sergei Lazo and Alexander Matrosov, although the risk was not so great - not a locomotive furnace and not an embrasure of the enemy dzot.

The top of the party was long reborn and depraved, became the modern equivalent of the corrupt Roman Senate of the Empire, which worshiped Caligula's horse and carried the "barbarians of the regalia of Ravenna". Young careerists ran to the Presidential Council in the Kremlin, old ambitious people went to the White House on the embankment. The fall of the Central Committee turned out to be akin to the fall of the Winter Palace - there was no resistance, only a mouse bunch that ran away when new owners appeared. The spirit of Brutus, the spirit of the Republic, left the Senate.

Amnon K. and I, an Israeli colleague, went to Pravda to one of the heads of departments. He, who enjoyed all the privileges of the old regime, the pillar of the propaganda apparatus, now willingly says that he has not believed in the cause of communism for decades, considered socialism a historical mistake, or even a crime. He still complains about the clamp - that he is not allowed to beat himself in the chest louder than anyone else and expose the Communist Party on the pages of the former party press. As in the old joke of Stalin's time, the nomenclature comes out under the slogan "We demand that we be cut first" on the decree on national flogging. Such people in the vain struggle for political survival do not realize how vile they are: from their confessions it follows that they are either liars, cowards, or both at the same time.

Apparently, the years of unhealthy party development, when nonconformists were carefully weeded out, made themselves felt - there were conformists and sicophants in power in the party.

While I mourned the people's silence, others acted. Viktor Anpilov, a former employee of the radio Moscow for Latin America, created "Labor Moscow" and "Labor Russia", and the first review of his success was a demonstration on November 7.

"The seventh of November is the red day of the calendar, as we taught at school, and it has remained so this year. It got warmer in Moscow after a few icy days, the snow that had fallen the day before was melting, the sun looked out, which had already been forgotten in the Hyperborean capital. I went to Red Square - for the first time in my life, I think, to the November demonstration. Herzen Street was overturned, as after the shelling, funnels and open sewer wells were yawning, rare cars hardly forced water obstacles. There was a huge queue in front of the bakery - a poster "No bread" was hanging on the door.

On the square in front of the Manege stood in two ranks policemen, supporters of the new government of Mr. President Yeltsin marched - with banners, icons, tricolor flags, slogans "Remove the red graveyard from Red Square". They were heading to the swimming pool "Moscow", built, as you know, on the site of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. Red Square was full: and not only old ladies and old ladies, who can be seen on Saturdays in front of the Lenin Museum (they protect the museum from attempts by Mayor Popov to drive it "for currency" or master it under another office of the mayor's office). Next to me stood a young pretty girl in a simple coat, to which a Komsomol badge and a red bow were pinned - unfortunately, she was with a gentleman. The people shouted "Mishka - to the north" and sang "International".

Here's another paradox of fate! In my first letters from Russia, I wrote that the threat of "Memory" is far-fetched and pro-memorable elements are in no way an alternative to the democratic line, they do not support the communists. No one believed me, everyone was waiting for pogroms, created a terrible "cimes mit compote" from Ostashvili's prank, raised a huge emigration wave (which I consider a misfortune for emigrants, for Palestinians and for Israel), mobilized Jews from all over the world - and Russia - to support Yeltsin and his "democrats". The local Jews were terribly angry with me for these letters to "Panorama" - such statements prevented them from asking for political asylum in the United States. But my opinion did not affect anything, did not keep the Jews either from emigrating or from supporting the Yeltsin team.

Those who left missed the real bonanza, purer than the one in Alaska. Any scumbag with an aplomb can get a loan from the bank for a couple of million rubles at one or two percent a YEAR - with inflation of five percent per WEEK. All you need for this is connections - if you have at least a tenth of this capital, the Russian bank will give you the rest! And then it's a matter of temperament. If you have a calm and honest temper, exchange your millions for dollars and wait until inflation eats up the debt. If you have a violent temper - do commerce, buy any product and sell for three prices. If you are too lazy to fuss - declare yourself bankrupt - that's what more than half of the debtors do - and calmly leave for the Riviera, spit truffles in a napkin and laugh at fools looking for difficult happiness in America."

Since August 22, Yeltsin ruled the entire Union arbitrarily and caused antagonism of the republics - except for the Baltic ones, which have already left Moscow. The collapse of the Union, kidnapped by Yeltsin's team, became a matter of time. The rot has also affected Moscow. In 1989, it still resembled the cute Third World: space, cheap prices, poor choice, relative order, all products - locally produced, intellectuals moaned that they live no better than workers. During this time, everything changed: together with Dzerzhinsky, all local goods were destroyed, the rich and beggars appeared, dismissals began in the editorial offices of independent magazines, crowds grew on the corners, pavements became like roads in Serengeti.

In early December 1991, residents of Moscow were invited to celebrate the first Hanukkah candle on the steps of the White House. Hanukkah is a winter Jewish holiday, "our answer to Christmas". My local journalist friend from "Jewish Newspaper" told me about the approaching celebration without much enthusiasm. In these hungry and cold days, he said, we Jews only needed to convince all the people that our government was sitting in the White House. Apparently, the voice of the people is through his mouth. I drove up in advance to the white stairs into the cold Moscow River, where a huge Hanukkah (eight-candle) stuck out at the top with a gnawed fish tail. Everything was there - diplomats, tourists, Mrs. Bonner, this symbol of eternal friendship between the Jewish and Armenian peoples and their devotion to democracy and the struggle for human rights, there was the press, spotlights, television, everything except the Jews. There were fewer Soviet Jews there than in the sovereign Birobidzhan.

By this time, the allied authorities, breathing incense, had exchanged ambassadors with Tel Aviv. This late recognition - or, for accuracy, the resumption of diplomatic relations between the USSR and Israel - is difficult to take seriously, bless it or curse it. This is rather a quiet final chord of the "new politics" symphony, which sounded after the roar of trumpets and the rumble of the lituras, when the hurrying listeners had already rushed to the wardrobe for galoshes. For Israelis, there is something in it that resembles the sad story of Finn, who for so many years pursued Naina's love and achieved... "Of course, I'm gray now, a little, maybe a hunchback," Gorbachev's envoy in Jerusalem could have said. Yes, not such recognition, not such a Soviet Union the Israelis dreamed of. The current Soviet, if I may say so, diplomacy - well, not to quote every word - is akin to stoleration: Pankin evokes the spirit of a powerful superpower and speaks with the name and voice of the spirit. Of course, this success of Israeli foreign policy should not be the last: Jerusalem should make peace and alliance with the Holy Roman Empire, or even with the Golden Horde of Genghisids, the right, not inferior to the Soviet Union in either the former power or the ghost of the present existence.

There is no light in the continuous darkness of December Moscow yet, and even Hanukkah candles cannot disperse this darkness. I went to the movies to "Russian House" based on the novel by Le Carré and cried a lot. Back in 1988, interest in Russia was huge, publishers printed every new book published in Moscow, intelligence officers offered not to believe in publicity and perestroika, the KGB (there was such an organization) caught traitors, and they secretly transferred their materials instead of printing them on the pages of "Izvestia". Back in 1988, a foreigner was molested with questions about God and fate, and not with a request for dollars. Back in 1988, there was hope... Do I really look with nostalgia from the future and at 1991?.."

I flew to Tajikistan in late autumn, on the eve of the presidential elections of an already independent republic. In 1991, the liquidation of the USSR did not yet seem an irrevocable fact. Moscow Democrats actively interfered in the affairs of the republics. I think that the elections at the union level in 1991 would have restored the power of the CPSU. The Democrats in Moscow also thought so, so the destruction of the Union was a necessity for them. Tajikistan wanted to stay in the Union, and I was interested in how these processes would go there. The people voted for their former leader Nabiev, who was once displaced by the perestroikhnik Gorbachev. His opponent was an exotic Ismailite-Pamir Khudonazarov, a film director and friend of Sakharov. Democratic Russia and all its power stood for him, democratic Moscow newspapers, radio and television unbridledly agitated for him, (in Russian, at least, propaganda for Khudonazarov surpassed any other many times), and yet - oh miracle - it did not help. Both Tajiks and Russians voted for Nabiev, whom Yeltsin Moscow did not call anything other than a partocrat. The people made a choice - for order, or maybe for the good old days. However, in Russia, I have no doubt that Brezhnev would have beaten Yeltsin in the elections. In memory of the old regime, the Tajiks have a lot of electricity left - a cascade of hydroelectric power plants on the mountain river, and they will be able to export it to neighboring countries. I was sitting in a teahouse under a squated plane tree, snowy mountains were visible in the distance, I drank green tea and good vintage wine and ate wonderful pilaf. From here you could not see Moscow with its sticky black mud and nour-nour, and you could see the most beautiful local women in Central Asia. "Way," I said to myself, "see what a wonderful country this Gorbachev has ruined."

The victory in the elections did not help Nabiev - the opposition, which enjoyed the support of both Moscow and Afghanistan, overthrew him and the war went in full swing. I heard scary stories in Tajikistan about backs and faces burned with a blowtorch, about skewer-pierced temples, about medieval torture - it was the result of destabilization caused by the Moscow Democrats. Tajikistan suffered the fate of the USSR: it was to pieces by a force that could not win the general elections. In Moscow, Democrats could not hope for a majority in the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, so they rebelled and liquidated the USSR. The same evil happened in Tajikistan, but on a republican scale. It didn't help them: in December 1992, the "communists" won in Tajikistan. The country lost one hundred thousand people - killed, wounded, refugees, to confirm the will of the majority against the will of Moscow compradors.

Now the Moscow Democrats have moderated their impulses, but at first, after August, they actively sought the fall of the "old regimes" in the republics. So they managed to destabilize Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Georgia. They did not recognize the legitimacy of the authorities in Moscow - neither Allied nor Russian - if they did not fulfill their will. Yeltsin's decrees began to fulfill the will of the victorious bourgeoisie better than any laws and constitution. I was convinced that the issue of legality is unambiguous for them: they are legal, and those who are against them are illegal.

LEGITIMACY.

"Like a horseshoe, a decree forges by decree" - Mandelstam foresaw the lawmaking of President Yeltsin, who in one fell swoop disarmed the parliament and banned the opposition under the banner of compliance with the constitution and legality. For an unbiased person, it was an illegal act: in many countries, in particular in Israel, the parliament is guarded by its own "guardsmen"; the ban on the opposition does not climb into any gate: the opposition must strive for power. What do Yeltsin and his advisers mean when they talk about the "illegality" of the opposition?

For "democrats", the issue of legality is simple: they are legal, and those who are against them are illegal. In the criminal world, they speak simply: they are "in law". Any threat to their interests in Gorbachev's time was proclaimed "illegal" by them, and they were supported by their Western patrons. And now: those who demand their displacement are illegal, it is quite legal for them to discuss the idea of dispersing the parliament every day.

Unhappy Tajikistan is an example of such "legality". Thus, the popularly elected President of Tajikistan Nabiev and his supporters have never been called "legitimate authorities" by Russian television. When Dushanbe was captured by Islamist democrats, they were immediately called "government", and their opponents were called rebels and thugs. The tragedy of Tajikistan is the achievement of the Moscow Democrats. Their names burn their eyes with a soldering iron or pierce their heads with a skewer in the Kurgan Tube; because they could not accept Nabiev's victory.

They and their overseas allies refused to recognize the legally elected President of Georgia Gamsakhurdia, but immediately recognized and accepted the government of the usurper Shevardnadze in the UN. They challenged the legality of the state of emergency imposed by the legitimate authorities of the USSR, but recognized the legality of the Belovezh putsch. And now they accuse the National Salvation Front of illegality and unconstitutionality, and at the same time preparing to disperse the Russian parliament. Speaking about the legitimacy, legitimacy of Yeltsin's presidency, they twitch - the election to the post of President of the RSFSR did not give him a mandate to liquidate the USSR and become a sovereign ruler of Russia. Having violated the constitution of the USSR and the RSFSR, Yeltsin cannot be considered a legitimate president.

But there is nothing new here either - the Moscow Democrats apply the main principle of American foreign policy, according to which only the government they support is legitimate. By definition, in the modern world - aka "civilized community" - the only source of legitimacy is the will of American corporations. Therefore, the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, which won the national elections in 1986, was illegal. But the anti-Sandinist government that won in 1991 has already become legitimate, to the extent that it fought against the Sandinistas. For them, the people's government of Cuba is illegal, but the rule of dictators from Somoza and Batista to the Kuwaiti sheikh is legal.

The actions of the Russian prosecutor's office, this tool of the class struggle of the victorious bourgeoisie with the rest of the people, are also a parody of legality. The sale of archives, the issuance of investigative secrets, a court of person - this exposes the fiction of the bourgeois law and order. If the legality was the same for everyone, Stepankov would have ended up in prison for trading the secrets of the investigation, because the publication of his book cannot be called anything else.

Democrats came to power under the banner of the fight against Lenin, but their own practice confirms: Lenin was right - there is no "legality at all", there can only be bourgeois, comprador legality, based on American domination, and popular, proletarian legality, expressing the will of the overwhelming majority of the people. The communists lost in 1991 precisely because they forgot about it, succumbed to the bait of "legality in general", which was thrown by their victorious opponents. And for those, talking about legality was a matter of tactics.

The events of recent days show that the ruling regime, apparently, will not go to the elections without eliminating or neutralizing the opposition. They will not want to give up power, and the law - as they understand - is always on their side. The Russian winners of 1991 are part of the world's dark power that was caressed in American laboratories and launched on the peoples of the world. After the victory, they made friends with other representatives of the dark forces - with the "irreconcilable" in Afghanistan, with the Cuban "Gusanos" in Florida and with "Unit" in Angola.

The leader of the "Unit" Savimbi, African Malyuta Skuratov, a master of shoulder affairs, once made a great impression on the inspirer of the Moscow Democrats and the executioner of Abkhazia Eduard Shevardnadze. "Smell girl, educated, charming man," wrote a former leader of the Georgian Chekists about him. Savimbi received countless millions of dollars from the United States and South Africa, flooded the South of Angola with blood, and if not for the courage of Cuban volunteers, he would have captured the whole country. Now in the elections under the control of the UN, the Angolan people rejected it - as they had rejected it for twenty years by force of arms. He did not accept the verdict and went to military operations again. Savimbi is a bremon of Moscow, Tajik, Afghan, Latin American "contras" - and they recognize the will of the people only if it is for them. Otherwise, they take on American weapons.

Afghanistan will not soon forget the agreement signed by Moscow with the Afghan "irreconcilable" about a year ago. This agreement led to the overthrow of the legitimate government of Najibulla and the current bloody round of the civil war.

The current Moscow rulers are not blind - they support their related forces everywhere and count on support from the outside. It is enough to trace what documents are pouling out of the Moscow archives: first the blow to Kekkonen, then to the English Labor Party. Therefore, they supported the executioner of Baghdad - George Bush and did not believe in the victory of Clinton, who in his youth opposed the American intervention in Vietnam and last year - against the war in the Gulf. They were looking for a compromise on Clinton, for which, apparently, the main puppeteer of Moscow puppets, the boss of the CIA Gates, personally came to Moscow. The end of Bush's political career is the first, but not the last unpleasant surprise for them: the "right-wing wave" that rose in the West in the late 1970s crashed into the reef of the most severe economic crisis of the 1990s. But they don't notice it in Moscow. From here, a full-flowing river goes to foreign communists. He is, however, of such low quality that it is not impressive: it turned out that the CPSU was cutting off the fraternal parties with pennies. One budget of Radio Liberty, which fed the Moscow Democrats, exceeded Moscow's costs several times for all European and Asian Communist Parties.

Dark forces are characterized by neglect of legality and unstolible desire for power. In March 1991, when Gorbachev saved his opponents before rallies, the leaders of the Democrats publicly regretted that blood had not been spilled. They received some living blood in August 1991 and turned it into a feast of memorial panycha, funerals and processions. The fear of bloodshed will not stop them either - only the united will of the people can stop them.

The victory of the Lithuanian communists tells us what the people want. Free elections were held in Lithuania, almost all citizens had the right to participate (unlike the racist regimes of Latvia and Estonia), external forces in America and their allies in Moscow slied, succumbing to their own propaganda - and the people voted according to their mind. Undoubtedly, throughout the Soviet Union, renewed communists in a bloc with patriots, cleansed of sticky, perverts and traitors, would have won today in the free elections."

I returned to Moscow from Tajikistan under the curtain, to be present at the lowering of the flag: in December, Yeltsin canceled the Soviet Union and expelled Gorbachev. Yeltsin's representative said that the red flag would be lowered on New Year's Eve, but the winners did not wait, and lowered it to take it into the night. Goodbye, great power! I'm glad that at least out of the corner of my eye, I caught your presence at least a little. In the Book of Job, the sufferer will not listen to all the explanations and reasons until the Lord himself appears. It seems that the Lord did not say anything special to Job; why did Job agree with him, our sages asked and answered: it is not to compare the one who saw it with the one who heard, that is, the presence alone convinces. And that's why I know that not the crisis, not internal contradictions, not "inevitability" destroyed the Union, just as the death of the Titanic and the bankruptcy of Maxwell were not inevitable.

In January, the authorities took close to the prices - they were increased twenty times a night. Ordinary people lost everything they had. The government had a choice - to fight speculation or devalue money. They did not want and could not fight speculation - speculators were their main social base.

On February 23, there was a big demonstration, but no one was allowed to the square: we approached the eternal fire, only a few officers were laying wreaths there. There was a crush on Pushkinskaya and several people were beaten by the police. Democrats were suspicious of memories of the Great Patriotic War. Especially in the first years of the bourgeois counterrevolution, they challenged its legitimacy and expediency. The action of the joke loved by the Democrats took place in a queue for beer, where the war veteran asks to be let in without waiting in line, and the young democrat answers him: "If it weren't for you, we would be drinking Bavarian beer now." The belief that the Nazi occupation would be charitable and humane was widespread among the Democrats.

My grandfather, in the last years of his life - a professor of mathematics in Novosibirsk, and previously held an important post in the State Planning of Belarus, told me that in June 1941 many of his relatives refused to evacuate from Minsk. They remembered the soft German occupation in the First World War, when the Jews with their constant pro-German sympathies were quite good, and they did not want to leave. "How can you believe the Bolshevik tales about Nazi atrocities?" they told my grandfather. Grandfather took a family, went to the East and escaped. The rest died.

That's why I was angry when the democrats - including Moscow Jews - said that "there is no difference between communism and fascism". It seemed to me a black betrayal of the Red Army, a betrayal that not only justified the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, but also questioned the justification of the war with Nazism. If the rescued do not see the difference between their executioners and saviors, they should not have been saved at the cost of many Russian lives.

Later, in 1995, the same regime of Yeltsin, which began with bullying and massacres of veterans, which equated communism with fascism, staged a magnificent celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Victory. Having destroyed the old world to the ground, they began to rebuild their world - and there was a place in it for the tradition of May 9 that unites the people. But in 1992, Democrats still hated and feared veterans.

It was planned to convene a "posthumous" congress of people's deputies of the USSR on March 17, and we also went to this historic event. On the morning of the seventeenth of March, Moscow was covered with clean white powder, there was a Christmas snowball, just like on the stage of the Kabuki theater, when the famous play "Chushingura" about forty-seven faithful samurai was staged: on the same snowy day they were going to take revenge on the murderer of their prince. For the Japanese, pure snow symbolizes loyalty, not loyalty of a man to a woman, because these bonds do not experience death and reincarnation, but the loyalty of a knight to his prince, because these bonds experience three deaths. As if nature itself confirmed the idea of the last knights of the Soviet Union, who were going to challenge the destroyer of their suzerain on this day.

But then the usual Moscow slush came into its own, and when I got to the Moscow Hotel by eight in the morning, the powder had already disappeared under the tires and soles and everyday life began. The lobby was packed with forty barrels of journalists, throwing themselves at each famous MP. The huge and good-natured Kogan spoke to the people for the longest time. "What will you do with the independence of Estonia?" he was asked. "They'll come by themselves," he replied. Then Golik told about the failure of all organizational efforts to find premises and transport. They never managed to rent a room - without the sovereign of good, you can't even rent a hall in Moscow. Deputies could say, like Jesus: foxes have burrows, birds of the sky have nests, and we have nowhere to bow our heads (Luke 9:58).

Finally, buses were found, and the deputies went to Podolsk, where they dispersed like a Spanish Armada. The traffic police took on the unchacterner role of elves, servants of Oberon, and began to knock the press off the true path and send them to all the surrounding villages in search of lost buses with deputies. That's why so few loyal samurai reached their goal in the village of Voronin, which from now on has come out of nothingness and can take a place in the future history next to Tushin, Aleksandrova Sloboda and other temporary capitals.

Countless blue "Volvo" with the outstanding letter K (correspondent) rushed around the neighborhood, like the heroes of "Sensation" Ivlina Vo in search of war. "Where is the congress here?" - we asked the men and women, but all to no avain. Snark hunters never found out if he was a Budzhum.

Meanwhile, the congress still took place - in the light of candles and TVs who reached the goal of television people. Did it make sense? Apparently, the same as in Tsvetaeva's poems about a Czech officer going to the Wehrmacht alone: it means that the country is not handed over like that, so there was still a war. The Soviet Union turned out to be more tenacious than it seemed to the "Belovezh foresters", and this was confirmed by hundreds of thousands of protesters in Moscow.

The harsh shake-up of these months showed who is made of what. Sazhi Umalatov, this Passionary of the Union undoubtedly turned out to be a real leader, clearly better than harsh men in uniforms and without. At first glance, their business is as hopeless as attempts to convene the Constituent Assembly after its dispersal by the Bolsheviks. The television announcer, apparently a recent Komsomol member, poisonously spoke about the "congress of the former", as about meetings of emigrants or under-beaten nobles about seven years ago - even the turns were the same, including the obligatory "It won't work, good gentlemen" and the emphasis on the illegality of the congress.

But it's not obvious. No matter how much the new authorities say that the old ones have been abolished - as the Soviets once abolished the "Foirment" - on the side of the old authorities the true legitimacy of the constitution and the first and only free elections in the country. The power does not yet follow from legitimacy, as the legitimate heirs of Russian monarchs and their untalened predecessors like John VI or Peter III can tell. Yes, today the people's deputies of the USSR could join the feast of exiled sovereigns described by Voltaire. But even the anrthroty does not diminish their legitimacy, which is shouted to us about the coats of arms of the Union that have not yet been knocked down. And the new government does not add legitimacy to its uncompromising mercifulness: monopoly on television and radio broadcasting, handouts to the obedient press, monopoly on the truth, confidence that they "know how to do it", the willingness to automatically enroll their opponents in the bacilli of the brown plague, with which, of course, there is no need to be shy, threats to disperse even your manual parliament of Russia. Only yesterday's hasty Komsomol members can pass off the election of the President of the RSFSR for the people's mandate for the liquidation of the USSR, for the capitalization of the national economy, for the subordination of America and for a fifty-fold increase in prices.

Only new general elections could solve this issue: provided freedom of information, demonopolization of television and the press and under the control of respected people who would keep the government from attempts of forceful pressure like those we witnessed on February 23 and March seventeenth. But they are unlikely to go to the elections without changing the constitution."

Here I was right - the dempowers went to the elections only after the shooting of the parliament and only on the basis of a new constitution, which practically turned the parliament into an empty talk, according to the apt expression of Vladimir Ilyich.

Meanwhile, the social base of Yeltsin's regime began to emerge clearly, at first - small merchants, and later the criminal mafia together with large businessmen. All over the world, small traders buy goods from wholesalers and sell them to the consumer. In Russia, the situation was different: the speculator bought goods at the state price and sold them at free. It was a temporary phenomenon: under capitalism there are no speculators. Yeltsin used speculators to destroy the remnants of socialism.

SOCIAL BASE.

The main base of Yeltsin's government is speculators. The only freedom granted by the demgovernment to the people: the freedom to speculate. Even the right to travel abroad was inherited by Gorbachev and the federal parliament.

Speculation has a lot of defenders in the press. Artemy Troitsky recently wrote that there are no hard workers in the ranks of "Trudovaya Moscow" - they say, they like to do young people in their spare time, and do not go to demonstrations. He was surpassed by another applicant for the Order of Speculative Glory, Anatoly Strelyany, a golden pen of radio "Liberty". He wrote that a speculator is much better than a worker, because a worker produces nuts that no one needs, and a speculator sells what people want to buy. Of course, he was anticipated by Kozma Prutkov, who definitely noticed that the moon is more important than the sun, because it shines at night, and it is already light during the day.

Let's discuss this common vice in more detail. Imagine that you live in a small friendly village where everyone knows everyone. In the morning you go to the selpo, buy all the milk brought to the village, stand in front of the store and sell it for two prices. If your fellow villagers have hot and southern blood, you will be crushed by a bulldozer in fifteen minutes. If they have northern cold blood, then you and your family will be treated as a leper, as a cursed loan shark. In a closely welded community, such a person will not be buried in the church and will not be buried in the cemetery. And they will be right! Even a loan shark has more excuses than a speculator, even a thief is better - by hiding from human eyes and not tempting others.

No, I don't have any smilation and pity for old women in front of the store, reselling milk, sugar, vodka: there is perhaps no worse sin - because of its nationality, openness, as if legality. The speculator is the virus of social AIDS, an indicator that society has lost healthy immunity, that society has died, and instead a crowd of strangers has emerged. Christian morality, as well as the moral code of the builder of communism based on it, affirmed brotherhood between people.

Society exists only to the extent that there are bonds of mutual brotherhood, and even the bloodiest revolutions - the Great French and the Great October Revolution - preserved the idea of brotherhood, because they sought to reorganize society, but not to destroy it.

The totality of the revolution taking place now in Russia has no equal, as it is carried out by a minority in its selfish interests, a minority that does not even hide behind a socially useful function, as aristocrats and bourgeoisie did in their time. But it, these Artems Tarasovs and others with them, would not have been able to turn around, so shamelessly stealing the people, if society was preserved. A member of society would not allow the theft of public property, because it is his too. To win, they need to destroy society and public spit.

They succeeded. Recently I talked to a young saleswoman in a record store: I saw how she and her colleagues gave "for navar" scarce records to a speculator, who immediately settled down for trade. She didn't even realize what was outraining me. But this money seized from the record manufacturer - from society - in a year or two will make her unemployed and bring her to the panel, they will curtail the production of records, they will strangle her own store, they will destroy society. She was blind, she supported the slogan "Every man for himself" to steal a penny - but others will steal her future under the same slogan.

I'm infinitely disgusted with all the resellers and speculators, all the pikes of flea floars and the sharks of the stock exchanges. I would consider their national boycott, their alienation from the people, so that they were not allowed to drink water and their children were not allowed to go to school, as the society with executioners and loan sharks did, a sign of society would improve society. If the Cossacks or the police forced every speculator they saw to immediately sell their goods stolen from society for the purchase price, society would recover.

Gaidar's 100-fold price increase and its terrible social consequences were inevitable if the speculator's right to speculate was respected. If you can speculate, then price increases are inevitable. There is no end to this, and every hundred overpaid today for gasoline brings us inevitably closer to an even more monstrous jump in all prices, to the extinction of the weak and to the riots of the disadvantaged.

The guilt of the ideologues of disintegration and cannibalism, Strelyany, Piyasheva, Pinsker is terrible: they gave a justification, they let down the base, they ideologically armed the sharks that tear society to pieces. Russian society, accustomed to blindly believing its intelligentsia, believed them that it was necessary, that this is the case in a "civilized society". Of course, it was a lie: let Strelyany try to buy all the milk in one of the Munich stores during another trip to Liberty and sell it more expensive in front of the entrance to the pfennig. If he is not beaten by good Bavarians, he will have to get acquainted with local prisons for violating tax legislation. And these are still flowers: in Japan, you can sit for many years for speculating with rice or even for creating rice stocks.

Soviet people who had not been abroad believed him and his colleagues, about whom it was said: "Whoever seduces one of these little ones, it would be better for him if they hung a millstone on his neck and drowned it in the depths of the sea" (Mt., 17:18).

I remember Piyasheva with a stunning article in "Litgazeta", where she dreamed of freeing prices (1989 was in the yard) and expressed iron confidence that prices will not rise, but will fall and within a year complete abundance will fall on Russia (we will live as in Switzerland, she wrote). And after the Gaidar reform, she didn't shoot herself, didn't go to the monastery, but she's even going to fight for the post of mayor. Her husband, if I may say so, also an economist Boris Pinsker, proclaimed in a radio program that there can be no unemployment, because there are so many unmade-unworked things in the world. He forgot to add that there can be no hunger, since there is so much food in the world, and thirst - since Baikal is full. Such grief-economists gave a justification for speculation.

Society is interconnected: throw a stone up and it will fall on your head; encourage speculation and you will reap unemployment, price increases and social enmity. This was understood by the teachers of the law of all faiths. Speculation (not to be confused with trade) is forbidden to Christians (Mt. 6:19, 24), it is forbidden to Jews (Lev., 25:36 Talmud, Baba Metsia, "Rebit") and Muslims (Quran). It is forbidden to the communists, it is prohibited by the Criminal Code and in simple Russian means "savery". How right Moses, Jesus and Mohammed were! Believe them, not Mr. Strelyany!"

But the authorities not only legalized speculation, they made it the basis of a new social system, which led to social stratification, and then to a fall in production. In order to suspend the fall and collapse, the Democrats decided to follow the instructions of the International Monetary Fund. I had to face the terrible consequences of the IMF's activities in many Third World countries. This organization protects the collective interests of imperialists. If everything depended on the IMF, the Third World would become a wonderful half-empty place where exotic fruits are bred for the first world, where inexpensive tourism goes, and labor-intensive low-class industries work aside. The inhabitants of the Third World would simply die out. I wrote about it:

IMF and stabilization fund.

How many times, passing along Novy Arbat, I saw this scene - the provincial looks at the game of "three leaves". He doesn't know that in this game the fraers, like him, are ordered to win, he sees how others win, does not understand that this is a bait, and puts his hard-earned money on the line. Muscovites easily pass by - they know that it is impossible to win in this game.

In the pose of such a provincial, ready to enter the game, Russia is now, led by the best intellectual forces of the Sverdlovsk regional committee. The name of the game is IMF loans and currency stabilization fund. Both parts are equally winless, and this is not a secret for "citizens" - for Western financiers. The largest financial newspaper in the West, the Wall Street Journal, devoted an advanced article to the idea of a "stabilization fund", in which the fund is described as follows: "The country of Mumbo-Jumbo decides to raise the exchange rate of its national currency - shells - against the dollar. She borrows dollars and buys shells at a high rate. After a while, she has shells and a big hole - a dollar debt. As a result, the dollar exchange rate of shells falls, but debts remain. This will also happen as a result of the "stabilization of the ruble". And since all the dollars from the fund will still be in the chests of Swiss banks - new Russian businessmen will bring them there - it would be fair if these banks financed it. Beware, gentlemen former comrades - writes the organ of "sharks of Wall Street" - this is a capitalist conspiracy.

This process is already in full swing. Since January, the real exchange rate of the ruble has risen several times - taking into account 500 or even 1000 percent inflation. The efforts of Gaidar's government to raise the ruble caused the expected consequences - over the past month, exports from Russia fell by 22%, and imports increased by 25%. We are not talking about useful imports - industrial production lines, but only about the import of consumer goods. The money that pours into the Russian treasury goes to finance the European and Asian light industry and destroys the already incense-breathing light industry of Russia. When the money runs out, Russia will have no industry, but there will be a huge multi-billion dollar debt.

There's nothing new about it. Look at the scheme number 2 from the English financial magazine "Economist", which generally occupies pro-Tatcher, monetarist and pro-gaidar positions. It describes what is happening to the countries receiving "assist". First they receive loans, and the money goes to them, but on the terms of creditors - to open markets for Western goods, Western ideology, comprador capital, to create opportunities for the export of capital. Then the money is wasted, the industry collapses, and the loans have to be returned. And then the curve becomes completely negative - the reverse transfer of money from the debtor to the creditor begins. So, over the last decade, rich countries and banks (not counting private companies!) 1300 billion dollars were taken out of poor debtor countries - much more than imported, writes Victoria Brittain in the English newspaper "Guardian". The 1992 report of the United Nations Development Program summarizes: the annual balance of money transfer from the poor to the rich is $21 billion.

But the money invested by the West does not remain in poor countries - it is smeazed by rich and powerful citizens of poor countries. Russia has already tasted the first taste of this apple: over the past five years, the Soviet Union has borrowed an unknown, but considerable amount of billions of dollars. The debt remained, and it was recognized by Yeltsin's government. But the money itself "sweed" - according to newspaper reports, during this time about 200 billion dollars were taken abroad by Soviet and Russian citizens to Western banks. Few people have become better in these years, but these few have managed to make a great cas. The people will have to pay - that's the point of debts.

Rich Russian citizens benefited from the relatively high ruble exchange rate: now their countless millions of rubles, received on the cashing of state non-cash money and on machinations from vodka trade to bribes, can be turned into "real money". They need the "convertibility of the ruble" - apparently, the biggest deception of the people since Stalin's grandiose plans. "Convertibility" is destructive for not very rich countries: France "converted" its currency only a few years ago, Finland has not done it to this this day. In Israel, convertibility was introduced in 1977 with the victory of the right-wing parties in the elections, and in three years inflation crossed the 1000 percent mark, and if it were not for the massive and unpaid aid of America, the country would never have recovered, although the "convertibility" was eliminated quite quickly.

The maintained high exchange rate of money is especially harmful for the country's economy. Nigeria, the largest and richest country in Black Africa, with huge oil reserves, once held a high rate of naira, the local currency. Lagos was fabulously expensive for foreigners. Several years passed, during which quick ministers and businessmen, using the high rate of naira, took currency out of the country in suitcases. This is not a figurative expression: London Heathrow Airport received complaints from Nigerians who lost suitcases with several million in cash. As a result, the naira fell to the ground, Nigeria went bankrupt and became very cheap for foreigners, its residents still pay back their debts, and former ministers and businessmen now live on the shores of Lake Geneva, closer to their money.

In the Philippines, the late dictator Marcos, one of the richest people on the planet, drove his country into a debt hole, and today the Philippines returns $6 million a day to its wealthy creditors. Half of the country's state budget goes to debt recovery. To pay such sums, the country cuts down forests, destroys agriculture, puts pressure on the poor. In the name of duty, a Filipino child dies every hour - the money that would go to food and medicine for him goes to the West, to the people with whom Yeltsin wants to play "three leaves".

Look at the picture from "The Economist": this is how world income is distributed. Of the almost five billion population of the world, the former owns 83% of the total product. In I960, their share was "only" 70%. Moreover, the main mechanism for this "redistribution" was loans, "humanitarian aid" and the policy of the International Monetary Fund. These schemes help us understand the current situation of Russia - today Russia is experiencing not a crisis, but a flourishing, it is following the ascending, positive curve of the cash transfer. This is evidenced by the avalanche-like increase in imports, despite the drop in production. The crisis will really start only in a few years, when the curve becomes negative.

But by that time, the people who lured the people to this path will already live on the shores of Lake Geneva."

NOVEMBER THESES.

Winter has come again, the second winter of Yeltsin's power, winter 1992. Despite the terrible decline in the standard of living, despite the mass demonstrations, the authorities are still holding on. (Gaidar has already said that "a person began to live better, more confident in the future". You have to think that he knows this person personally). The failure of the first onslaught of the opposition on the entire royal army of Yeltsin makes us seriously think about the tactics and strategy of struggle in Russia. To do this, let's abandon the idea of the uniqueness and uniqueness of the Russian destiny and turn to the experience of other countries.

A short historical excursion to understand where we should look for an example for ourselves. Five hundred years ago, several Western European countries were able to break out and become colonizing or developed. They became a "world city". The countries they managed to colonize became a "world village" and were doomed to eternal lag: in the name of strengthening their domination, developed countries strangled all the rudiments of independent development. Thus, the first colony of England, Ireland, remained forever backward, and Eastern Europe followed by it. Colonization is destructive, and it is extremely difficult to get out of its web, as we see in the Philippines. The countries that failed to be colonized still had a chance: Russia, Japan, Thailand, China, Ethiopia. In the last century, it was their turn.

Russia's independence was broken during the Crimean War, this "Storm in the Desert of the XIX century". There, near Sevastopol, Russia was shown that it should obey the orders of the "world city" at least in basic terms. And a few years after that, the "black ships" of Commodore Perry "discovered" Japan. China was "discovered" as a result of the Opium Wars: the backward Chinese authorities, being in captivity of the administrative and command system, did not allow Western countries to conduct free trade in opium on Chinese territory, and thereby violated the golden right to liberal free trade.

Russia was able to escape from the new colonization only after October, although the "city" did not recognize and does not recognize its right to development: the latest proof of this is the American boycott of Glavkosmos for a deal with India. But for her, the process of colonization resumed under Brezhnev and proceeded at an accelerated pace since August 1991. China was colonized until Mao's victory in 1949. Therefore, Chairman Mao had more revolutionary experience than contemporary Soviet leaders. Let's turn to the Chinese experience.

China, the second major and multinational Eurasian power that followed an independent course, has managed to survive and prosper (so far), and judging by the rigidity of Tiananmen, Beijing will not soon fall after Moscow. Western powers hypocritically condemned China for defeating the counter-revolutionaries, although they did not stood for the legitimate Russian parliament, shot by Yeltsin. But not only the determination of the Beijing leadership helped China - the Chinese have several positive achievements inherited from Mao. What can you learn from them?

PUT THE NOMENCLATURE.

China was helped by the "cultural revolution", that is, the national war declared by Mao against the reborn nomenclature, the very nomenclature that in China, just give them free will, would have followed the path of Gorbachev-Yakovlev-Yeltsin. Chinese Gorbachev and Yeltsin were torn from the regional chairs in time and returned to the collective farm field or to the machine at the plant. This did not happen in the Soviet Union, the nomenclature and its accomplices in the ranks of the intelligentsia strengthened their positions, the framework of ideology began to constrain them, and a counterrevolution took place. Unfortunately, it's too late to apply this lesson for Mao now, but it's not too late to take it into account for the future.

THE CAPITAL IS THE ENEMY.

Mao correctly understood - back in the thirties and forties - that the population of capitals in relatively poor countries is absolutely corrupt. Instead of seeking power in the capital, as the Russian Bolsheviks did (they were helped by the war and the powerlessness and dementia of the Provisional Government), Mao took power in a distant province, created a "liberated territory" there and from there moved troops to the capital. Subsequently, this experience was confirmed in Vietnam and Cambodia, where the capitals were the last to fall into the hands of the people. The capital is a meeting place of the world of the rich and the world of the poor, and there a lot of crumbs fall from the table of the rich and to the floor, for the poor. The poor of the capital compare their situation with the poor people all over the country and see how much better they live. Economically, they become a comprador lumpen bourgeoisie and support the large comprador bourgeoisie.

Those who hoped for the success of the rallies in Moscow were amused by the illusion. The confrontation of the capital is a natural thing for the country in all countries of the "world village", and in Moscow it began under False Dmitry. Any government - and even more so the power of the IMF - can afford to bribe the residents of the capital.

Mao believed in the spiritual health of China and in its ability to rebenerate comprador elements, make them national. The Khmer Rouge in Cambodia (Cambodia) did not see the opportunity to cope with the huge ghoul city, whose population was used to living on occupation troops and humanitarian aid, and sent residents of the capital to the province for re-education.

Between the lines, we will notice that the "hkhmer Rouge horrors" are mainly the "duck" of the CIA press. Most of the dead in Cambodia died from American air raids - the country was subjected to the most intense bombing since the Korean War and before the Kuwait War, which exceeded the bombing of Germany in density - and as a result of famine, epidemics and ruin caused by this bombing. The initiator of the rumor about "two million killed Paul Pot", Frenchman Jean Lacouture, distanced himself from these figures, saying (in the New York Review of Books) that "only thousands of people died", i.e. a thousand times less. The Khmer Rouge were the Asian version of Pugachev and Razin, they waged a peasant war in the corrupt capital, and they still belong to them in Cambodia to this day.

So, the rebellious people need a new capital - and time will tell whether it will become Nizhny Novgorod, Sverdlovsk or another city in Russia."

I overestimated the revolutionary potential of Russian society - the people were not going to rebel, many still hoped to win in the motted game of capitalism. In the fall of 1992, there was a shift in public consciousness. The authorities were slay. For the first time in all these years, my point of view coincided with the majority of the people - the people used to believe in Yeltsin and his democrats. I use this word, although unfortunately the "democrats" turned out to be anything but not democrats.

DEMOCRACY.

The sad aspect of the situation in Russia is that the "democrats" were not democratic enough. Upon coming to power, they forgot their attitude towards bourgeois-democratic freedoms. I scroll through the past year in my memory and I can't remember any new freedom, no new right granted by the government, except for the right to speculate. Thus, from the first of January, Soviet citizens will be able to travel abroad without an exit visa. But this is also the last gift of Gorbachev and the union parliament. The new "democratic" authorities did not bring this day closer for a minute - in particular because they and their friends in the relevant structures make great money on exit visas.

However, thank you for not taking this gift away. After all, the former mayor of Moscow Popov took another gift from the Union Parliament - the liquidation of the barbaric semi-fortress registration system. Selected to make great money on a residence permit: his mayor's office took half a million for a residence permit in Moscow.

With all my love for the good old days, I cannot but admit: with freedoms, rotten bourgeois-democratic freedoms in Russia it has always been weak. That's how it happened and it didn't come out at all. What Stalin introduced, what is left of Ivan the Terrible. And, of course, this humble shirt got in the way and wasn't needed.

I did not expect anything good from the victory of the Democrats either in the foreign policy, where they always played with America, or in the economic plan, where they enthusiastically sang Adam Smith. But I hoped that at least bourgeois-democratic transformations would be able to do. And God knows, there was a need for it. Democrats could: cancel internal passports, cancel registration, eliminate employment records, bring traffic police to a normal level, introduce a tax inspection for all, ensure election to all authorities, achieve independence and objectivity of television and radio, strengthen the position of parliament as the highest structure of power. If they had ruined the economy (as they actually did), but had given these freedoms to the people, their rule would not have been absolutely useless and harmful.

We will not ask in this article why they were not talented economists or why they led the country's foreign policy to a dead end, we will ask - why they were not democrats? Moreover, they did everything the other way around: with them, registration is bought and sold for five to six-digit sums, workers remain in slavery, extortionist detachments in uniforms operate on the roads, taxes are levied only from the manufacturer, but not from the reseller, appointees from Moscow rule on the ground, television has become totalitarian again, the parliament breathes on incense and is waiting for dispersion.

They instilled in the people a strong hatred for the very word "democracy". When this government falls, its successors will have no incentive to carry out the necessary democratic reforms. It's a pity, sooner or later (and better earlier) it should be done. It's funny that it's easier and cheaper for a Russian person to move to Tel Aviv than to Moscow or St. Petersburg, that the employer can record any comments in the work book of the worker, that residents of the regions cannot choose their entire leadership themselves, but must obey the representatives of the president.

Lenin was right: at a certain stage, the bourgeoisie changes the freedoms it proclaimed, and the workers and peasants have to bring the bourgeois revolution to an end. The opposition must clearly tell the people that it will bring with it not a restriction, but the development of democracy, that by taking away one freedom given by the "democrats" - the freedom to speculate, it will give all other freedoms promised but never given.

These freedoms include access to the media - television and newspapers, the right to movement and choice of residence, the right to choose work and strike, the right to equal taxation and a fair impartial trial. These freedoms also include the election of the authorities with the right to recall deputies.

Freedom of speech, practically achieved under Gorbachev, was dangerously bored under the power of the "democrats" - the authorities punish for inappropriate opinions, some - by criminal prosecution, and some - by deprivation of funds on paper. And what is freedom of speech worth, if one four-headed hydra broadcasts on all television channels and the difference between the heads is noticeable only to a specialist in hydras. Only now we are beginning to appreciate Gorbachev: in his case, you could still hear a live motard on television. Article 74 is interpreted too broadly and selectively.

The ban of parties is another departure from bourgeois-democratic principles. Yeltsin started with a paralyzed CPSU, but now he moved to the main opposition. Democrats supported both undertakings. The winning people will have to follow the path of Parisian students in 1968, who wrote instead of defence de fumer (forbidden to smoke) defence de defence (forbidden to ban).

The sovereignty of the people and the parliament is an important bourgeois-democratic principle. An attempt on the sovereign - parliament or the CIS - is the first step towards dictatorship. It's a shame that many people, both in the opposition and outside it, think that now in Russia there is a rampant of freedoms, and a "firm hand" is required, while in fact freedoms are very tight, and the "hand" is strong enough.

The seeds of the future Chechen conflict were sown back in 1992. Even then, the main mistake of those who would then support Yeltsin in his war in Chechnya was outlined. Then there was a dispute about the Black Sea Fleet, but it was about the attitude to the slogan "United and Indivisible Russia".

FEDERALIZATION.

The collapse that befell the Soviet Union now threatens the Russian Federation as well. Voices calling for a united and indivisible Russia are heard. Many opponents of the Yeltsin regime advocated keeping the Black Sea Fleet in the hands of Russia, against Chechnya, etc. But they do not take into account - while the central government expresses the interests of the comprador forces and American capital, a united and indivisible Russia is Yeltsin's pro-American Russia. This means that at this stage it is necessary to support the desire of territories, republics and regions to break out of the power of Moscow (read: Yeltsin).

The Black Sea Fleet in Yeltsin's hands are auxiliary vessels of the U.S. Sixth Fleet. (The shipment of two ships under the Russian flag to the Persian Gulf is a confirmation of this.) To fight for Russian control over the Fleet, there is absolutely no point. The struggle for Crimea is also inappropriate: the Soviet people do not care whether Mr. Yeltsin or Mr. Kravchuk rules Crimea. Moreover, at this stage, even the Baltic republics and the Caucasus can be left to their fate.

Each region of Russia striving for independent development reduces the power base of the Yeltsin regime. Purely tactically it is worth supporting them - from General Dudaev to Governor Fedorov. The Strengthening Union Center - or another alternative people's power - should proclaim the principle of deep federalization, according to which each region will have as many rights as the union republics.

Russia needs federalization: the unitarity of Russia and the Soviet Union has a negative impact on the culture and development of life in the country. The outflow of talents from Russian cities to the capital has already bleded many cities, which before the revolution, with less mobility of the population, played an important role, were local capitals. Instead of the unsuccessful idea of the current government: to raise the status of "national republics" within Russia, preserving the previous status of "Russian" regions, it is necessary to put forward the thesis of equal and significant rights of all entities, whoever lives in them - Komi, Mordovi, Russians, Siberians or Estonians.

The role of the USSR, prematurely buried in the Belovezhskaya Pushcha, is far from exhausted. The people will be able to strengthen the only real legitimate power in the country - the CIS of the USSR. The CIS should complete the protracted process of interregnum and elect the President of the USSR (Umalatova?) In the transformed Union, the dreams of not only the Abkhazians and Poles of Vilna, but also Siberians, Permians and Pomors will be able to come true.

In 1992, the power of the Democrats still did not become final and strong. As new Russian businessmen later told me, only after the shooting of the parliament did they believe in the irreversibility of reforms - the power was then tied to blood. The path to execution began in those days. On December 10, 1992, Yeltsin launched a test ball - he tried to carry out a coup d'état. The coup failed, but it did not cause much indignation in the country and abroad.

KING OF TRUCKS.

The trucks circling Red Square became a visible symbol of the coup attempt arranged by President Yeltsin. If these trucks were let on the cobblestones in front of the Mausoleum by Gorbachev or hecachepists, we would see them to this day and from now on in every news program from Moscow and London, as a reminder of the maliciousness of the communists. Yeltsin's trucks will not spin on blue screens - television is subject to him and his overseas cartridges. They should circle in our minds with a massive multi-ton thing - the coup attempt was . Fortunately, President Yeltsin was no more decisive than Vice President Yanaev, and had an even smaller arsenal - after the oath to the congress given by the Ministers of Defense, Security, Internal Affairs and Vice-President Rutsky, Yeltsin had only the women's battalion Denisenko-Kurkova-Yakunin at his disposal.

December 1992 Yeltsin is like March 1991 Gorbachev, when heavy equipment and trucks stood on Manezhnaya Square, but turned out to be not a sign of power, but a proof of the president's political impotence. As François Rabelais said about one of his heroes - "he was terrified of blows". Lack of determination and incorrect calculation failed Gorbachev in March and Yeltsin in December. With this puncture, the countdown to the imminent fall of the August regime imposed on Russia can begin. (Of course, I was wrong here - less than a year later Yeltsin, who faced a choice: surrender or shooting the parliament, decided to do the crime that Gorbachev was afraid of.)

But in order for the fall of the regime not to turn into chaos, patriotic forces must learn from the congress catavasia. Why, in fact, the adventure of "addressing the people" ended in a pathetic rally at the walls of the Kremlin? Exactly for one completely technical reason: Yeltsin failed to take a sufficient number of deputies from the congress so that there would be no quorum left there.

QUORUM. There are purely technical, constitutional defects that can derail the state like a train with a defective bearing. The Polish kingdom collapsed in the 18th century, because every nobleman - "people's deputy of the SND of Poland" - could shout "not to call" and veto the decision of the congress. A technical defect led to the weakness of the Third Republic in France, and there are many examples.

The inherited constitution of the RSFSR and the USSR includes a technical defect of a completely deadly nature, which is a priority for parliamentarians to eliminate. I mean the requirement of quorum, which is practically unknown to other parliaments of the world. According to Soviet and Russian laws, the legislative body is not authorized to make decisions, in fact, it is not a legislative body in the absence of a quorum, and even elections cannot be completed by the election of a deputy in the absence of a quorum. This rule allows an unscrupulous minority to delegitimize parliament.

What did President Yeltsin expect? On the departure of a significant part of the deputies from the congress, such a part that would deprive the remaining quorum and thus the remaining majority would no longer be a congress, but only a group of deputies, which does not necessarily have to be dispersed. Miraculously, he didn't succeed, but he'll probably succeed next time. You can say more: if the demand of the quorum was in the United States, the presidential dictatorship of Republicans would have been established there long ago. In America in recent years, there was a democratic majority in parliament under the Republican president, and this majority blocked some of the president's steps. Thus, due to the disagreement of the parliament (congress) with Reagan and Bush's war against Nicaragua, presidents had to trade drugs, and to buy weapons for "contras" in Israel for the rescue. If Russian laws were in force in the United States, Reagan (or Bush) could simply take his Republican supporters out of Congress and continue to make decisions alone.

At one time I had to work in the Israeli parliament (Knesset). Like other parliaments of the world, he does not know the quorum. If the minority is offended and leaves by slamming the door, the better for the majority. Even five (out of one hundred and twenty) members of parliament sitting in the hall at the time set for the meetings are quite competent to pass laws, and two or three is enough, even though there were no such few deputies under me.

Democracy is the rule of the majority with respect for the rights of the minority. But only - with respect. The requirement of the quorum gives the minority the opportunity to take power away from the majority, and this already contradicts the very idea of democracy.

The word "quorum" should be deleted from Russian laws with the same sequence with which the name of the USSR was crossed out. This also applies to election laws. In the recent elections in Kuban, a patriot, a communist and a worthy person received a huge majority of votes, but did not pass because there was no quorum. If such a condition were in America, George Washington would still be the president of the United States to this day, because since then there has been no quorum of voters by Russian-Soviet standards. There are people everywhere who don't want to go to vote. You can follow the path of some countries that consider refusal to participate in voting a crime and are shampering for it. Then there will be a quorum, but there will be a lot of random votes. And it's easier to give the opportunity to those who want to vote, and give them the opportunity to decide the result of the vote. Simply put, cancel the very concept of "quorum", return it to Latin and history textbooks, together with ius primae noctis.

HEARTS OF THREE.

The second lesson from Mr. Yeltsin's failed auto rally is related to why this puncture was so easy for him. Just think, a few days later he has already managed to deprive the patriots of almost all the fruits of victory and is already talking about the continuation of Gaidar's course, that is, the course on the colonial subordination of Russia and the total impoverishment of the people. The reason for the stolen victory is the Yeltsin-Khasbulatov-Zorkin agreement. This collusion of the triumvirs is outrageous precisely because they illegally disposed of the will of the sovereign - the parliament. No speaker of any parliament of the world will make a decision of this order without consulting with the leaders of the factions. After all, the speaker is only a manager, and not a father and not an expression of the will of the parliament. Some decisions can be made and worked out by the leaders of the factions, and only by them. And then - the speaker's job is to put the question to a vote and the "racers" is to ensure the vote of the members of their factions. Normally functioning factions would never allow the speaker to conclude agreements on their behalf: after all, the parliament is not united and cannot be united, it has different factions, and each pursues its own special policy. The post of the speaker is as important as the post of the doorman in the restaurant, but it is not the doorman who determines the menu, prepares dishes and takes orders.

This unprecedented role of the speaker of parliament is associated with another structural defect of Soviet and Russian democracy that arose in the 1989 elections. The elections to the first Union and Republican parliaments were purely personal and non-partisan and gave rise to extremely fragmented parliaments. I remember the first congress of the Union SND - there were as many opinions as deputies at it, which did not give it the opportunity to function. This disease was inherent in Russian legislative structures to almost the same extent. Against the background of this looseness and amorphousness, two phenomena have emerged. First, the exaggerated and unconstitutional role of the speaker. With all due respect to Mr. I will note to Lukyanov and Hasbulatov that they did not have a people's mandate for their daily manipulations. They knew and felt it, got entangled in their intrigues and in the end both gave up the positions of parliament in front of the pressure of the executive power. Secondly, the only cohesive force of an active and well-instructed minority - "interregionalists" and "Demrossia" was able to achieve victory in parliaments, breaking the will of the fragmented majority.

The victory of the "Democrats" was due, as it has been proven many times since then, by a huge foreign, primarily American aid. The help was expressed in two forms: first, money was spent on destabilizing the Soviet Union, and all destabilizers from the nationalists of Nagorno-Karabakh to freelance correspondents of Radio Liberty were encouraged, and secondly, future rulers received professional training and instruction. One of the first advices they received and implemented was the creation of their own faction in the union parliament ("interregional") and their own movement ("Demrossia").

This happened against the background of the crisis of the CPSU, which totally lost the will to power and even the will to live - because not a strong healthy party was mowed down in the prime by presidents Yeltsin and Gorbachev, but the political likeness of the Merovingian dynasty, a weak-willed and amorphous mass, which even the humiliation of August did not bring to the streets and did not throw on the barricades.

The victory of the pro-Western forces now seems to be particularly shaky - the people finally saw the bright future to which Starovoitova and Yeltsin, Zaslavsky and Kurkova, Popov and Yakunin were dragged to. But this feeling of the people should be translated into the language of numbers: a clear patriotic parliamentary majority. This requires two things. The first is the normalization of the role of the speaker and the return of power to the hands of the factions from the hands of the referee. As Evgeny Schwartz would say: "Shadow, know your place!" And it's not about whether Hasbulatov or Lukyanov is good or bad - they just take on the wrong business and inevitably "set up" Russian democracy. The second requirement of the time: the consolidation and consolidation of patriotic and anti-comprador factions of the parliament and the creation on their basis of first a permanent Committee of Leaders of Patriotic Factions, and then an all-Russian bloc of parties with a single factional discipline. Let's call it the conditional People's Union.

The struggle against the Sixth Article of the Constitution (on the leading role of the CPSU) would not be so destructive for the entire Union if the anti-communists had not managed to discredit the idea of factional discipline. (They themselves, of course, were not going to abandon it, and at the last December congress they carried out the strictest discipline, to the point that unstable deputies were required to hand over ballots and vote not directly, but through reliable members of the faction).

Factional discipline is the most necessary and accepted thing in all parliaments. In the English Parliament, each faction has a Whip - a "racer" who only maintains discipline. In the Israeli parliament, the "matzlif" of the factions play an important role. Allocation of time for speeches and any decisions should be made only by the will of the factions. A member of the faction is obliged to vote according to the will of the faction.

Patriotic publications had a lot of fun describing how Ms. Bonner or Mrs. Kurkova instructs the Demoross deputies how to vote. But to laugh full - discipline is also necessary in a patriotic camp.

PRIMARIES.

The sudden collapse of the CPSU caused a vacuum of party structures. The new communist parties and their socialist allies and patriots of different interpretations are scattered, unlike the enemy dragged by the Americans and mastered television and radio. But there is also a democratic way to the victory of patriots - holding primaries in constituencies. Candidates from patriotic factions should be put up for the primaries - preliminary elections. The losers will withdraw their candidacies during the current parliamentary elections and thus ensure the victory of one candidate from the People's Union.

A large number of potential leaders were out of business with the liquidation of the federal parliament. They would be able to find their way back into political life during the primaries. The condition for participation in the primaries would be to submit to the discipline of the faction in case of election.

The ultimate task would be to create a strong national socialist party that cares about Russia's national interests and includes strong communist and patriotic elements, a party with a wide ideological spectrum, but with strict internal discipline at the parliamentary level. We are talking about the reformed CPSU, the successor party of the old structure. At this stage, it is difficult to imagine a purely communist ruling party in Russia, but a broader party with an unconditionally anti-imperialist, anti-comprador attitude can win.

This party would be faithful to the principles of friendship of peoples, respect for work and working people, civil liberties, ideas of equality and help to others, respect for religious feelings, promotion of national cultures, etc. But at the first stage, it is immediately possible to start creating a bloc of factions and parties based on the principle of party discipline and agreement with the primaries. Only supporters of the patriotic bloc on the ground would have the right to vote in the primaries (as is customary in America).

The idea of primaries was applied in Israel by the Workers' Party in the outgoing year and brought remarkable results - the party revived the connection with the masses and won the elections for the first time since 1977. I think it could work in Russia as well. 1993

After an unsuccessful coup attempt in December 1992 in Russia, the issue of re-election of parliament became on the agenda. This was demanded by Yeltsin and his supporters. I supported the parliament and offered my services in organizing pro-parliamentary radio and television. But the leaders of the parliament were not on top. They believed that the parliamentary hour was quite sufficient, although it is very difficult to watch live broadcasts from the parliament in any country. They missed initiatives, failed to impeach the president, did not take advantage of the imparile support of the army and power ministers, did not form a government. Therefore, the whole of 1993 until the shooting of the White House was spent in rearguard battles. And the victory was so close!.. Because of this sloppiness, it was difficult to unequivocally support the parliament of the Russian Federation, in which the communists did not have a strong faction.

THE SCIENCE OF WINNING ELECTIONS.

Before our eyes, the power is floating away from the hands of the August diadokhs - the forces that bet on the collapse of the Soviet Union are today in retreat from Dushanbe and Baku to Kiev and Minsk. In Russia, the key and main part of the Union, President Yeltsin and his supporters are trying to strengthen their shaky positions and are ready to go to early elections. They rely on their excellent propaganda machine, on organizational assistance from the West, on money - state and "privatized". The opposition, which supports the highest legitimate sovereign body of the country - the Supreme Council - considers it necessary to oppose early elections. But in my opinion, this position is outdated and not suitable for the moment. The party refusing the elections loses the initiative, it is difficult to explain such a position to the people, and finally, the president can simply impose elections at a convenient time for him. The initiative can be intercepted, the elections can be taken and the elections can be won - provided that serious organizational work is done.

These will be the first elections in the new conditions, in many ways reminiscent of the Western ones. For the first time, a Russian voter will encounter a proven propaganda election machine of the Western model, which does not resemble the old Soviet scheme as much as "Kadillac" - "Zhiguli". These will be very expensive elections, when victory, as in a war, in addition to being right, it will also take a lot of equipment. Yeltsin hopes that the opposition will simply fail to master this equipment and will be defeated like partisans with old three-lines in a clash with the modern army. This hope has grounds. To win, the opposition needs to take into account and use the experience of Western countries.

The main thing in this experience: the creation of an electoral bloc and the holding of preliminary elections to determine candidates. It would be a tragedy if the candidates from the "democratic" bloc were opposed by scattered patriotic candidates. This would lead to the splitting of the voices of patriots, and demradicals - to victory.

To fight against Yeltsin's regime, the tactics of the People's Front of the 1930s are required - the creation of a broad coalition of parties and groups that do not accept the dictatorship of the criminal comprador bourgeoisie. Along with the communists, circles of the nationally minded bourgeoisie, and a truly democratic intelligentsia, and "red" and "white" will be able to enter it. In recent weeks, the right front of the patriotic front has also been determined - with the withdrawal of naked anti-communists Lysenko from the Federal Tax Service and with the transition of Vasilyev's "Memory" to Yeltsin's side. Of course, there are many contradictions between various patriotic elements - but the clarification of these disagreements can be postponed until the victory over the common enemy and the revival of a truly independent Russia. Therefore, a broad electoral bloc is needed - but such a bloc will be effective only during the preliminary elections.

In Russian conditions, the preliminary elections would be held as follows: all candidates of patriots in each constituency hold a round of elections among themselves, and they are chosen only by supporters of patriots in this district. The winning candidate becomes the only and official candidate of patriots in this district in parliamentary or presidential elections. So, if we are talking about presidential re-elections, at the primary elections, Russian citizens of patriotic orientation - and only they, what local patriotic organizations should monitor! - will choose their candidate. Whoever it is - Rutskaya or Zyuganov, Umalatov or Anpilov - he should get all the support of the entire patriotic bloc.

This system has long been adopted in America, where it is called "primaries". It has its drawbacks - television plays too much role, there is no place for "gray cardinals" and brilliant staff at the top. In Europe with its well-established party organizations, it was not vaccinated. If the Communist Party of Russia (or the Federal Tax Service) were perfectly organized and could figure out the nomination of candidates itself, it would be possible to do without preliminary elections. But this is not the case at all - the patriotic bloc, still consisting of very different groups and parties, has no organizational structure for the selection of candidates.

A year ago, two large blocs opposed each other in Israel. The right-wing Likud bloc was headed by Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, a typical "apparat". A former underground worker and intelligence officer, very short, inconspicuous appearance, completely devoid of a charismatic halo, he was, of course, against the preliminary elections. He preferred that decisions on candidates be made in rooms behind seven castles, and only then approved by an obedient congress. The Left Bloc has been in opposition since 1977 - fifteen years in a row. He found himself in opposition largely because of the struggle of the two party leaders - in those years, Shimon Peres, popular in the party, but unpopular with the people, defeated Yitzhak Rabin and led the party to defeat. This time the party appealed to the voters. All those who could vote for the left bloc took part in the preliminary elections - and Yitzhak Rabin won. Perez resigned himself to the will of the people, and the left-wing bloc came to power in the general elections. Apparently, on a subconscious level, the preliminary elections convinced many Israeli voters to vote for the party that held these elections, and Rabin received considerable additional legitimacy. The preliminary elections also became a machine for mobilizing potential supporters of the left bloc.

Purely tactically, the pre-elections allowed the left-wing bloc to master the precious television time. Of course, there can be no such disgrace in Western countries, which we faced during the last referendum in Russia - when all electronic media supported one side, abandoning even the appearance of objectivity. And yet the ruling party always has more opportunities to show off on the blue screen. Already by virtue of their official position, the prime minister, president or minister will be able to find a reason to speak in the news program or otherwise attract the attention of the voter.

The preliminary elections neutralized this advantage: television reported in detail on the course of the preliminary elections and voters had the opportunity to notice the candidates of the left bloc, which otherwise simply could not be. This moment will work in Russia as well - even corrupt Russian television will be forced to report on such an event.

The success of the left-wing bloc's preliminary elections made a great impression on Israeli politicians. Immediately after the defeat, the right-wing bloc held preliminary elections. And even the elections of mayors of cities were held with preliminary elections - and everywhere with great success. An interesting technique was used in the mayoral elections: candidates participating in the preliminary elections put up a large sum of money as a pledge that they would accept the result and would not stand their candidacies in the "real" elections if they lost the primary elections. And this experience may be worth using in Russia so that the losers could not split the voices of patriots.

The first step towards the preliminary elections would be the creation of local and all-Russian electoral patriotic committees for electoral districts. They would include representatives of communists and other patriotic parties and organizations. The committees would register patriotic voters and patriotic candidates for deputies in these districts. If it were possible to register at least ten percent of all voters, we could talk about great success and an important step towards victory, but both in America and Israel and six percent of registered voters is quite an acceptable number.

The Supreme Council should set a strict financial limit on the permissible costs in the election campaign so that the fat people simply do not buy up the votes of voters at the root.

Such a danger is quite real - the delusional result of the elections of the "president of Kalmykia" confirms this. Yesterday's Soviet citizens have no immunity and a critical attitude to the election promises of millionaires and it is too easy to carry them out. This was played a few years ago by a major international crook Flatto-Sharon: escaping from the persecution of the French police, he took advantage of the guaranteed right of every Jew and fled to Israel, put up his candidacy there for the parliamentary elections, appealed mainly to Russian Jews - new immigrants from Russia, promised them mountains of gold - and won the elections. That's how he escaped from the threat of extradition abroad. Of course, he didn't even think of fulfilling his promises. Israeli Themis still got to him and condemned him for bribing voters, but it took several years.

The Supreme Council must organize a very strict accounting audit of all electoral costs of all candidates. Perhaps it is necessary to take such an extraordinary step as the introduction of the institution of state auditors-accountants, who should have the right of second signature on all payment instruments of all election campaigns. It is necessary to exclude the possibility of spending public funds on party needs - which, undoubtedly, the pro-Eltsin candidates for deputies will undoubtedly try to do. In addition, it is good to use American experience - there it is forbidden for the candidate to accept more than five thousand dollars as a gift from one person - an average two-month salary. At the same level - say, one hundred thousand rubles - a "ceiling of donations" in Russia should be established.

Another good American experience: there, people receiving support from abroad must register as "agents of a foreign power". Their rights to participate in elections may be restricted. Borrowing American experience, Russia would include Starovoitov among the "Armenian agents", and if the accusations of the newspaper "Day" about pumping money to Anatoly Shabad and other prominent democrats through Zionist channels were true, then these people would have to register as "Israeli agents" and leave the Russian parliament. In America, this is treated quite strictly - as soon as Billy Carter, brother of President Jimmy Carter, accepted a gift from the Libyans, he was required to register as a "Libyan agent" with all the consequences.

Another good norm of American suffrage that could also be adopted by the Supreme Council: in America, candidates are obliged to disclose all their sources of income and all their property, wherever they are. Concealment of property and income is a sufficient reason to withdraw the candidacy and to initiate a criminal case. In other words, if the "new rich" try to get into parliament, they will have to put all their cards on the table and tell about all their accounts in Swiss banks.

During the pre-election period, strict control over electronic media is necessary. In Israel, for example, it is forbidden to show candidates for deputies on television in TV programs a month before the elections: they can only perform in special advertising-type programs, the time of which is determined. Thus, no candidate manages to get TV time "for free". During the pre-election period, television is especially closely monitored in Israel, and a special commission of party representatives controls TV programs to avoid abuse.

The Supreme Council has already taken this path, but what has clearly been done enough in the pre-election period: at this time there should be no programs like "The Results" of Kiselev, the remarks of Mitkova or Kurkova's Philip and other party programs. It must be said that in Israel, workers like these three would not have access to the air during the pre-election period - outside the television time released for agitation. This is quite reasonable: television in this critical period should provide objective information, and propaganda and agitation should be conducted at the time allotted for this.

The opposition should think about working with television. In Israel - as in America - election propaganda is conducted by demonstrating "clips" (videos) prepared by the parties. As the April referendum showed, Yeltsin's supporters actively use Western experience to create modern spectacular clips of acute political content. At the same time, the propaganda of the Supreme Council is carried out by outdated methods. A rare fan of Hasbulatov is able to watch "Parliamentary Hour" or live broadcast of debates from parliament. Such programs are unspectacular and not fascinating. Already today, on the basis of these structures close to the opposition, it is necessary to create a modern bureau of telepropaganda, which would be prepared to create clips for rapid response.

Unfortunately, nothing can be done in our world until control over television is achieved. The opposition may be a hundred times right, but if it cannot broadcast it on television in a bright spectacular form, it will lose the elections.

The technology of election propaganda - clips, jingles and other applications of commercial advertising techniques in the field of politics - is developed in detail in the West. In the next elections, Yeltsin's team uses all this arsenal of techniques. The opposition should prepare for this by immediately creating a team for teleagitation. But if the electoral bloc should be as broad as possible, then television propaganda should be conducted in a more targeted way: there is no point in making one film agitating both Communist Party supporters and White Party Romantics, although they can vote against the current regime at the same time.

It's time for the opposition to prepare leaflets and posters for pasting, outdoor billboards - we are talking about high costs and great efforts, but quite feasible. It is only necessary to understand that 1993 is not like 1989, when people could listen to the speeches of deputies for hours, and not like 1991, when new forms have not yet penetrated television and the consciousness of the masses. Now, after two years of advertising, people's minds will have to act with new methods, taking into account Western developments. Old-fashionedness is not suitable for advertising, including political propaganda.

Opposition teams should create TV, film and photo archives for use in their programs. Words that are not confirmed by the image are difficult for the viewer to perceive. Remember Govorukhin's film "You can't live like that": this is a rude, undisguised agitator who, it would seem, cannot influence a reasonable person. How can you show a drunk man sleeping by the fence in Russia, and then the shining Champs Elysees in Paris and say behind the scenes: you can't live like we do, but you have to live like theirs. Now everyone has become obvious lies behind this agitation: in today's Russia it is easier to fall asleep under the fence than to live like on the Champs-Elysées. But it affects people and at one time millions succumbed to this first sample of a political propaganda clip.

We must not forget what Americans call grassroots. It is necessary to revive voter associations, to arouse the activity of the masses at the level of districts and housing estates, to attract as many agitators as possible. Money will largely decide the fate of the campaign. To get them, opposition leaders need to meet with industry leaders, foreign investors, new rich people - many of them will willingly donate to the opposition election fund at least to insure their positions.

The opposition should propose to the Supreme Council to abolish the law on the protection of the dignity of the president. Such laws are adopted in democratic countries only to protect the name of non-partisan heads of state like the Queen of England. Yeltsin is not one of them and, accordingly, this law duplicates the 70th article of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR, abolished under Gorbachev, with bad memory. No active politician in Western countries enjoys such protection. During the April referendum, the demradicals had already demanded to initiate criminal cases against their opponents on the basis of this law.

So, there is a difficult campaign ahead in the new conditions. And yet you can win - just don't let things run their way and rely on "perhaps". The Communists of Russia, this great organizing force, will be able to play a decisive role in its implementation and in achieving victory."

I wrote this in the days after Yeltsin's failure in December, when there was a feeling that his power was weakening, and that free elections could take place. But the elections, as you know, took place much later, under the new constitution and after the shooting of the White House. Preliminary, I will say that the Yeltsin authorities were able to break all records of dishonest conduct of the election campaign. I have a report by James Hughes from the London School of Economics on Russian television in the 1993 elections on my desk. Hughes writes: "State television openly supported the pro-government block Emission. Thus, the government-supported party received a subsidy at the expense of the taxpayer. News, reports, interviews - everything included the political message of the Ejection. But before the video of the Volsky or Civil Union, the announcer emphasized that the TV time was "acquired", and that therefore the audience would not see the popular American film listed in the program. There was reason to suspect that the money of the American government went to the treasury of the Emission. And, finally, the most striking example of election meanness on the air was given by the broadcast of the December 11 film "Hawk", a rude attempt to destroy the politician, portraying him as a maniac and tyrant.

Hughes emphasizes the total venalism of Yeltsin television: "On the Russian channel from November 12 to 21, Gaidar had 62 minutes of airtime, and Zyuganov and Yavlinsky - zero. An independent group of Western observers found a "serious structural defect" in the coverage of the elections on Russian TV: most TV journalists, especially on the Ostankino channel, participated in rough propaganda in favor of the Release. His conclusion: the election campaign in Russia is "Americanized", as I predicted a year earlier.

But let's go back to the end of 1992, when Yeltsin again began to take the reins again.

AFTER THE PUTSCH.

Two weeks passed after the defeat of Yeltsin's December putsch, as it became clear that the main "Decembrist" had fully restored and strengthened his positions. Yeltsin eliminated even the last appearance of a compromise, restoring Poltoranin and preserving Gaidar's cabinet. The former first secretary of the Sverdlovsk regional committee apparently does not understand the word "compromise". "The master is coming back," he said about himself, trying on Stalin's cap, if not Monomakh's hat.

Something similar has already been described in the Bible (I/III Kings, 12). After the death of King Solomon, his son Rehoboam reigned, and the people came to him and said: Your father put too heavy a yoke on us, lighten our burden and we will be your obedient servants. The young king asked for three days and asked the elders for advice. The elders said, "Surrn to the people, and they will submit." The king also turned to his young friends for advice. The young people said: do not give in for anything, on the contrary, give them the first number. And three days later the king said to the people: My little finger is thicker than my father's thighs, he has put a heavy burden on you, and I will make it a hundred times heavier, my father beat you with rods, and I unfasten with scorpion scourges.

When he finished speaking, the representatives of the people stood up and said: from this king we have nothing to expect, and he is not our king. In your tents, O Israel! And they went to their tents. And only the capital and the adjacent metropolitan district remained with the king. This was the end of the existence of the federal Israeli state.

How history repeats itself! Post-congress Yeltsin, as a young tsar, did not listen to the cries of the people demanding to alleviate their fate, nor the admentations of the opposition, which sought compromise, nor the advice of experienced elders from America, Europe and from home - to reach a compromise, to reconcile with the people. He only listens to the advice of his young schemers: I had a pre-congress half-man, and for me he would become a dictator of the press and television after the congress, before the congress I refused some advisers, and after the congress I would bring them closer to me, before the congress I was president, and now I became the Master! My little finger is thicker than Stalin's thips!..

Alla Latynina brilliantly compared Yeltsin with Count of Monte Cristo, only Yeltsin from Gorbachev's revenge destroyed - not a bank, not a hotel - a great country. Travkin was right: Yeltsin can't resist destroying. This man with dictatorial swills of the secretary of the regional committee is not able to take into account other people's interests, not to act rudely and brazenly. There are people with whom an aspen stake is the only way to make compromises. Just remember how his rudeness forced even the shortest Central Asian union republics to leave the Union.

Intriguing and putschism are the main properties of his nature. The first coup was in August 1991, when he imposes his power on the captured president of the USSR. The second coup was in December 1991, when it dissolves the USSR and seizes supreme power. The third, failed coup was December 1992. The main conclusion is that it is impossible to compromise with a person who does not recognize compromises. The "intransigncutable opposition" turned out to be right in this.

But 1993 was marked by unsuccessful attempts by the opposition to get along with Yeltsin. Yeltsin himself took the path of continuous violation of the constitution, in which he was also supported by the democratic press.

In January 1993, President Clinton came to power in Washington, but President Bush managed to bomb the Iraqis again under the curtain. He also added Clinton so that he would not be mistaken for a compliant friend of the Arabs. This was the "new world order" in action, especially unfair in relation to the Middle East. At the same time, Israel expelled hundreds of Palestinians abroad - contrary to all human rights laws and declarations. The Security Council adopted resolution 799 demanding the return of deported Palestinians. Israel has neglected it, as well as all previous Security Council and UN resolutions. And the same Security Council, which ordered to bomb Iraq for some slightest violation of the terms of surrender, this time did not even say "fu".

I tried to imagine the course of events if the world treated Jews and Arabs equally:

REPORT FROM ANOTHER WORLD.

(From our own correspondent to the UN, from New York) Yesterday, the United States aircraft, with the support of the Anglo-French-Russian squadron, carried out a number of bombing strikes on military facilities in Israel. The American representative to the UN explained this step as follows: "Israel provokes the world community and refuses to implement the decisions of the Security Council and the General Assembly. Otherwise, it is impossible to understand the persistence of the Israeli government: Israel refused to accept back illegally expelled Palestinians - despite a special UN Security Council resolution. The occupation of Palestine, Southern Syria, South Lebanon continues - despite the resolutions adopted by the UN Security Council. Israel continues to build up its military power, and while the whole world is on the path of nuclear disarmament, it has created a large nuclear arsenal that has made it the fifth nuclear power in the world. Since all the efforts of the world community to convince Israel to comply with the will of the UN were in vain, our air force inflicted a series of surgically accurate strikes on the Israeli military machine. The atomic bomb production plant in Dimona and military airfields, enterprises related to the military industry were destroyed."

Hundreds of U.S. Air Force aircraft took part in the air raids, and at the same time, the heavy cruisers Missouri and Enterprise stood against the coast of Tel Aviv, ready to bring down all the power of their main caliber shells if the Israelis try to defend themselves. An accidentally fired shell hit the Sheraton Hotel, which was used by the Israelis for propaganda purposes.

In New York newspapers, and especially in the pro-Arab "New York Time" (half of its editorial office - ethnic Arabs or Muslims who inhabited Brooklyn at the beginning of the century), there were articles with headlines like "Yitzhak Rabin - the executioner from Tel Aviv", which described in detail the military and civilian career of this leader: his expulsion of Palestinians from Ramle and Lod in 1948 and the recent order to Israeli soldiers to break the arms and feet of Palestinian children and young men suspected of participating in the intifada.

"Our goal is to remove the bloody Rabin," the New York Times proclaimed. - His place should be taken by Charlie Beaton, or, at worst, Ishayu Leibovich. It is necessary to achieve complete disarmament of Israel. In order to stop the atrocious attacks of the Israelis on Palestinians and Lebanese, the whole of Israel is proclaimed a "non-fly zone" in which Israeli planes are prohibited from taking to the air".

The Israeli representative condemned the "violation of Israeli sovereignty". But the Russian ambassador to the UN noted that in accordance with the "Bush Doctrine", adopted in 1992 as the main document of the UN instead of the Charter and the Charter of this international organization, the sovereignty of the country is respected only to the extent that it corresponds to the interests of the United States.

"It was high time to smear Rabin and his gang to stop bullying public opinion and start doing what was ordered," less solid American newspapers reported on the events in this style.

At a meeting with the press, an Israeli representative tried to distribute photos of "innocent victims of the American bombing", according to him. But, knowing the willingness of Rabin and his gang to go for any deception, the press was skeptical about these materials. "Jews understand only the language of force," said the leading specialist of the State Department Abu Ali Pearl Mutter. Yes, I guess I'll stop doing this fictitious report from an alternative world. Israel is not yet threatened with such sanctions: after all, the administrations of Clinton and Yeltsin are full of Jews and there are no Arabs at all. And the readiness of the UN to accept Israeli disobedience once again shows to the world what everyone already knows: that the UN is a tool in the hands of America, and sanctions are a way to fight the unruly countries of the Third World. If Butrus-Rali doesn't understand this, they'll explain it to him.

This is what sanctions are bad about: they fall selectively, on strangers and disobedients, according to the principles of the underworld that have become the norms of international law in recent years.

An example of this is the American bombing of Iraq in January "for non-compliance with the decisions of the UN Security Council". "Non-flying zones" were established, though, not by the Security Council, but by America, but this is already a nuance - since Washington's protégés have been sitting in the Kremlin, the Security Council has still become a rubber stamp for approving the decisions of the American president.

The trouble is that not only Iraq and not only Israel can be punished, and there will be something for. Almost any state slightly violates divine and human norms: the French undermine the Greenpeace yacht in New Zealand, the Americans block Cuba, the British are waging a colonial war in Northern Ireland, etc. But since it is more difficult to punish the state than to whip Vasily Lohankin, sovereignty was invented: each state is sovereign within its own limits, and only the Lord God can punish it in a faternal way.

Before the October Revolution, it was believed that only Europeans could have sovereignty like white skin and blue eyes. The victorious Bolsheviks abandoned all unequal treaties that infringed on the rights of China, Turkey, Iran and proclaimed the revolutionary idea of equality of white, yellow and black peoples. This idea spread and after World War II became generally recognized, seemingly forever.

But, as it turned out, it did not last long and disappeared along with the elimination of the consequences of the October Revolution. The world returned to the beginning of the twentieth century, when white people ruled the world, and colored people knew their place, and if they forgot, European and American gunboats freely shelled coastal cities and ports of Asia, Africa and Latin America. At that time, Japan was among them - its southern port of Shimonoseki was bombed by ships of the British fleet for the murder of a British subject in Yokohama. The policy of gunboats has again become the norm of the new international order. The name of this order is terrorism.

The American raid on Iraq is an act of terrorism, that is, an unlawful attack on citizens to intimidate and achieve political goals. No matter how you define this word, it will still include actions like American bombings of Libya, Cambodia, Vietnam, Korea and Iraq. In all these countries, Americans bombed and killed innocent citizens even without war (not to mention that killing civilians in war is considered a war crime). The brilliant American Jewish scientist, linguist and political scientist Noam Chomsky (or Chomsky, as Americans say) refers such actions committed by states to the category of "wholesal terrorism", as opposed to petty "tretail terrorism", which is enjoyed by the weak.

Indeed, the luckiest terrorists of our time (apparently, the Italian right-wing extremists who blew up the station in Bologna or the unknown ones who blode a bomb in New York in January) cannot be compared with American state terrorists in terms of firepower, or number of victims, or cynicism. It was very disgusting to see satisfied American pilots on CNN, disassembling the technical details of their raid. Also, probably, the German aces discussed the raid on Minsk, in which half of our family died. These were people who finally crossed the ban "Don't kill".

The former president of the United States is behind these crimes. Saddam reminds George Bush of Hitler. Bush reminds me of a secondary character from Raymond Chandler's novel ("Playback"), an evil rich old man who tries with all his might and all means to annoy a young woman. But at the end of the novel, a two-meter-tall police chief appears in Chandler and stops the old man:

"You're a punk. Shpana are usually guys with a difficult childhood, from poor families, with drives, colonies. It's the first time I see such a rich and influential man with all the tricks of spana, anger, stupidity, slyness, vengeance. Get out of here before I put you in a wheelchair." This does not happen in life - and Bush took revenge on the Iraqis for the fun on the occasion of his failure in the elections. And in order not to think that it's all about Bush, Clinton also bombed Iraq on the first day of his presidency.

Once upon a time, dissidents from Maximov to Bukovsky liked to call the Kremlin rulers "pakhans", and there was some truth in that. The Kremlin's plowers were rude, cruel, with their own code of honor and a clear sense of their territory. But the current world lord is America, this sick country-country with hints is not even plowed - but shpans. And the shpan has no code of honor, no sense of territory, there is only intoxication with omnipotence and permissiveness and cruelty of a minor. Therefore, it seems to me that this scarecrow of our childhood - the third world war - is becoming a close reality. Spanism causes wars. Israel has always been distinguished by the sway - starting with the deportation of 1948, and then through 1967, Lebanese soldiers, the blockade of Beirut, the bombing of Tunisia and the recent deportation. And he inevitably received a war in return. But Israel is still a small country, and wars arose locally. The spanity of America, the world leader, will inevitably lead to a world war.

We cannot yet predict what form it will take - whether a giant nuclear confrontation with post-Yeltsin Russia and China, or a protracted war with Japan, Germany, Iran - with America's new-old enemies. But it is clear that the world has entered a strip of instability, and perhaps in our century the terrible predictions of astrologers will come true, promising a global catastrophe until the end of the century."

Yeltsin forces fully accepted this American concept of racist sovereignty, as we saw in 1995 during the intervention in Chechnya. But let's not anticipate events.

In 1993, the Democrats showed their bankruptcy: life for Russians was getting worse, more and more unreliable. But the viciousness of their path could also be understood by their initially set-set settings. I turned to the origin of democratic thought - to the books of Andrei Sakharov and to the works of his great contemporary and opponent - Lev Gumilev, who died at that time.

TWO THINKERS: SAKHAROV AND GUMILEV.

By the beginning of 1993, the complete bankruptcy of the Democrats became obvious: in a short time they collapsed the Soviet Union, caused a chain of civil and ethnic wars, subordinated Russia to the American foreign policy, destroyed industry, brought the population to a hungry existence, returned the state-party monopoly of television, squeezed the opposition press and eliminated even the rudiments of democracy that began to take shape under Gorbachev. While the practice of the Democrats has been time-tested and has not stood the test, the theory is not so easy.

There is always a temptation to say that the idea was good, but the execution is unsuccessful. But I want to challenge the theoretical prerequisites of the democratic revolution, developed by its forerunner, the holy and the father of the founder - A.D. Sakharov, comparing them with the thoughts of L.N. Gumilev and at the same time disagreeing with the position of the epigons of both thinkers.

Recently, the magazine "Znamya" completed a long publication of the memoirs of the late academician, which lasted for almost a year. It began in the troubled period of perestroika and ended after the victory of the bourgeois revolution. The importance and influence of Sakharov fell sharply after August 1991 - the winners who banned the Communist Party and canceled the elections no longer needed calls for human rights and civil liberties. It is useless to guess how Sakharov would react to the new government, and whether he would be able to get along with Mr. Yeltsin, Hasbulatov and Burbulis: in any case, the academician who brought them to power is responsible to history. I was interested in reading the memoirs of this unique man, whose good intentions steadily led to hell.

Once upon a time, an eternity ago, in 1968-99, I, a young dissident, organized a campaign to nominate A.D. to the Supreme Council. But a person is punished by fulfilling his desires - and I lived to Sakharov in the Supreme Council and his posthumous cult. Somewhere since the mid-seventies, he lost (of course, without noticing) my sympathy. He was too loved by America, the same America that supported Pinochet in Chile, Suharto in Indonesia, d'Abisson in El Salvador and other masters of torture. The inventor of weapons Dr. Sakharov himself became a weapon - in American hands.

His rebellion was a riot of the privileged and protected, and even his fame was based mainly on thermonuclear merits and titles. (However, in the "disside", this integral part of the hierarchical Soviet society, titles have always been highly valued - professor, academician, honored artist, or son of a minister or general). The whole Western world stood up for Sakharov and did not spare the costs to brighten up his days of exile. He looked like the leader of the Fronde - the Soviet Prince of Conde.

It can be said that in troubled times, history puts forward two types of leaders - False Dmitry and Minins, false leaders leading the people with a loud name and title - and real leaders, such as Deus ex machina, arising in people's life. Foreign powers invariably bet on the first, as on a familiar name - so in Moscow they drink Coca-Cola, not kvass. Americans are incorrigible in this regard - they always hold on to big names, whether in Burma (the widow of the national hero) or in Cambodia (the prince they themselves displaced at one time) or in Russia. A former member of the Politburo and the first communist of Moscow, as well as the creator of the Russian hydrogen bomb are typical pseudo-dmitri of the troubled age, who still did not give his Minin.

His memories printed in the "Banner" gave me the opportunity to check again and compare the "Sakharov phenomenon with reality". (I'll make a reservation right away that here and further we are talking about the magazine version given in the press of E. Bonner, and possibly processed according to her tastes). The most syllable cuts in them - poor, stingy, banal. They say that style is a person. Then Andrei Dmitrievich was a banal and flat man. I have never met worse than written memoirs. The late academician had no sense of word at all and almost any phrase of the memoirs is suitable as an example. At least in a row from the beginning: "In the fall, Lyusya let Tanya and Rema with Motya go for a few weeks to relax in the south... We had lunch at a restaurant on the pier, had a Pepsi-Cola... Mota really liked this effervescent drink, so did we, it has just begun to be produced in the southern cities as one of the results of the discharge" and so on, hundreds of pages of bourgeois description of bourgeois life.

AFGHANISTAN.

But not only the style failed the academician - he was essentially wrong in almost everything. I don't know, on purpose or unintentionally - but in the same issues of "Znameny" for 1991, where his memoirs are placed, a detailed "journalistic investigation" by D. Guy and V. Snegirev "Invasion" about Afghanistan was printed. Of course, an article could only appear in the magazine "Znamya" from the depositions, but that's what it's remarkable.

Let's compare the texts of two publications in the same journal. Sakharov writes: "In December 1979, the USSR introduced its troops into Afghanistan... Numerous Soviet statements say that Soviet troops entered Afghanistan at the request of his legitimate government, (but) the head of state Amin could not demand the introduction of Soviet troops, who killed him. In fact, Amin sought independence, and that is why he was dispeasing to Soviet leaders" (p.123).

GiS write these days, based on the analysis of documents and conversations with the participants of the events: "Afghan leaders asked for the introduction of (Soviet) troops into the territory of Afghanistan... There were twenty such appeals, and seven of them came from Amin (who ruled only a hundred days)". The GiS cite these requests and inquiries that leave no room for doubt: the introduction of troops took place at the request of the legitimate government of Afghanistan. Amin did not resist the Soviets who came to kill him, that he was sure that these were the troops he had called to protect him. This is an important discovery that leaves no stone unturned from the myth of "Soviet intervention in Afghanistan".

In other words, Sakharov's entire position on Afghanistan rested on a virtually incorrect tolerance. He was brave like Giordano Bruno and ready to go to the bonfire for his beliefs - that the earth rests on three whales. Hence the light comedy of the whole narrative, the life of the martyr for the wrong - not morally, but in fact - the case. However, the investigation of the GiS is a response not only to Sakharov, but also to many others - in Russia and in the West - who opposed the Afghan "intervention". Now it can be considered proven that the campaign against the Afghan war was a successful American propaganda trick, initiated by supporters of Reagan-Bush in order to overthrow the "perestroika" Jimmy Carter and strengthen the "image of the enemy" - the Moscow empire of evil. Accordingly, Sakharov was wrong - in fact - writing in his memoirs: "The real reason for the Soviet invasion is that it is part of the Soviet expansion... Afghanistan was conceived as a strategic springboard for establishing Soviet domination in a vast adjacent area." We see that Sakharov took American propaganda at face value: as you know now, the USSR and even under Brezhnev, and even more so after him, did not plan to go beyond the borders indicated by Yalta (Afghanistan along Yalta belonged to the "joint sphere"), while it was America that established its "dominance in a vast adjacent area".

The above does not mean that the Soviet side did not make tactical and strategic mistakes. The main tactical mistake: the elimination of the legitimate ruler of Afghanistan, bloody Amin, simultaneously with the introduction of troops. Although Amin, apparently, should have been killed - for the murder of Taraka and the torture and execution of many others - but it was necessary to wait with this in order not to give hostile propaganda the opportunity to talk about intervention. Some time after the entry of troops, it was possible to replace Amin with a softer Babrak Karmal.

The main strategic mistake of Afghan is apparently characteristic of the Soviet strategic school, because it was made by Sadat in 1973 and Saddam Hussein in 1991. Sometimes you see this strategy in street fights, when one brawler, more like-born, strikes another and waits for what he is about to do. No need to wait - this harsh lesson of street fights is especially important for those who connect with America and pro-American forces. And here are some examples:

During the 1973 war, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat forced the Suez Canal, occupied a bridgehead on the Asian coast in Sinai - and waited. He waited for 24 hours, or even more, without developing an offensive, fearing traps - and waited. The Israeli army mobilized, reached the Canal, broke through its defenses and surrounded the Third Army.

In 1990, Saddam Hussein seized Kuwait and waited. If he had struck at Dhahran, the American pre-bridge fortification in northern Saudi Arabia, the intervention of the "multinational forces" would not have taken place at all. Saddam could reach Qatar, Oman, connect with Yemen, leave America a springboard on the peninsula and force America to make concessions. He would have been bombed by the B-52 with Diego Garcia, but they bombed him anyway, and it was still technically impossible to suffer more than Iraq suffered.

But maybe our advice is immoral? On the contrary, A.D.'s favorite country is guided by such principles. Sakharov and all Russian "democrats", "the only example of democracy and morality in Asia" is Israel. Israel with its brilliant strategy never expected, but always developed its success: in 1967, after breaking the forces of Egypt and Jordan, it did not wait, but also got rid of Syria. In the fight against Palestinian partisans, Israel did not stop, stupidly looking at the state border of Lebanon, Jordan, Syria - but struck enemy bases on the enemy's territory.

So, the strategic mistake of the USSR in Afghanistan is the refusal to transfer the war to the territory of Pakistan. If Pakistan, by the will of America, decided to serve as a base for attacks on Afghanistan, it was necessary to create a very difficult life for Pakistan, including the opening of a second front on the Indian border. Then, within a few months, Pakistan would have stopped supporting the mujahideen and the war would have ended.

I don't dare to argue whether it was necessary to introduce troops into Afghanistan (maybe it was not necessary) - it's only about the fact that if they were introduced, it was impossible to stop. "Don't take out the dagger. But if you took it out, hit it! Beat so as to cut the horse together with the rider," the Caucasian poet said, and of course, he was right.

The unconditional withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan was also a mistake - such a step could be used to end the blockade of Cuba and Nicaragua, the termination of UNITA's support in Angola, and at worst, the termination of all support to the mujahideen. Such conditions were not set, and it was not for nothing that everyone was surprised at how long the government of Najibullah lasted. It fell only after the direct collusion of the Yeltsin regime with the Americans and the Afghan "irreconcilable".

Of course, it is possible to talk about the mistakes of the Soviet strategy only before 1991. After the Iraq war, and even more so after August, the foreign policy of the Russian authorities was limited to the execution of commands from Washington. Thus, Moscow's decision to accept all the conditions of a little-known bunch of Afghan partisans, up to the blockade of the "Kabul regime", in exchange for their agreement to visit Moscow, can no longer be considered a mistake - there are no such mistakes.

THE RIGHT TO DEPARTURE.

Sakharov was also wrong in his dispute with Solzhenitsyn. Now, taking into account the experience of the past years, it is clear that such great importance should not be attached to the right to emigrate. This right primarily worried people who were ready to easily violate other people's rights - those who emigrated to Israel. Its implementation did not help the people of Russia at all: for the majority, the right to emigrate belongs to the same category of rights as the right to a numbered account in a Swiss bank. Sakharov put him at the forefront, as befits the leader of the bourgeois revolution.

This right had a universal character only by appearance, but in fact it was about two rather connected categories of people - Jews ready to push Palestinians into the desert in the name of their material well-being, and the cosmopolitan intelligentsia, who sought to sell their knowledge gained in Soviet universities to America as soon as possible. Now it is clear that the whole topic of (Jewish) emigration was raised by Israel and America for their own purposes: the Zionists to attract emigrants, the Americans to destabilize Soviet society. As soon as the goal - free emigration - was achieved and the iron curtain was raised, the plastic curtain immediately fell in its place - from the other side. Now those leaving are not allowed into the same America that sought their free departure. They don't even let you in with invitations - they're afraid they'll stay. The question is, why was the Jackson-Vanik amendment needed? Only to beckoned America, to drive the Soviet Jews who moved from the place to Israel?

If we are talking about the right to tourist trips abroad, then it is akin to the right to a video recorder or a Japanese color TV - that is, it only cares about wealthy people. The propaganda campaign in the dempress with its rainbow descriptions of workers going on vacation not to Sochi, but to the Riviera, was designed only to help people with connections in the West - at the current dollar exchange rate, there is nothing to think that the workers will go to rest in Western resorts.

The Western press has created an idol from the right to leave, as Western countries are richer from the opportunity to receive guests or standing experts from Third World countries. At the same time, no one talks about the right to enter these countries - even the right to visit.

And here, as in other matters, A.D. Sakharov went straight along the path indicated by the Western press, Western "arranged" public opinion. Perhaps, as Solzhenitsyn hinted, he succumbed to the harmful influence of his wife. Sakharov quotes Solzhenitsyn in detail: "Sakharov's long-term, long-term efforts in support of emigration from the USSR, namely emigration, almost preferable to all other problems, were instied... by the will of his loved ones, inferior to other people's plans" (183,2,91).

MRS. BONNER.

The appearance of Elena Bonner is clearly outlined on the pages of memoirs, and this appearance is even less sympathetic than one might expect. Sakharov paints his "Lusya" as a hysterical, fentuish, stubborn woman like Novodvorskaya: they both suffer from asthenic syndrome, as Kira Muratova would say, easily give free rein to their hands and are prone to completely crazy statements. Both believe that until August we lived in the era of communist dictatorship, when communist bosses daily dragged innocent dissidents to executions and torture. In other words, their perception of reality is clearly inadequate.

Ms. Bonner, judging by the text, tried to test the patience of the then authorities to the limit. For example, she was not allowed into the courtroom: "At that moment, Lucy hit a civilian healthy verzil's face hard," and when she was detained, "she began to demand that the doctor examine the beatings inflicted on her (so in the text)". (118,3,91) Or "Lusya began to demand boarding the plane. She was not shy in expressions." (121, ibid). Or "Lusya pushed the policeman away: Let it go, fascist!" (155, 2,91). Her claims to copyright Sakharov after his death, judging by the text, are based on her complete domination over Sakharov during his lifetime. "Lusya immediately scolded me for agreeing to have a conversation without her." (131,4,91) Thus, "in May 1984 and starting from April 16, 1985, the great fighter "held hunger strikes demanding to allow Lucy a trip abroad to meet her mother, children and grandchildren and treatment" (4,9.91). There is something anecdotal about it, as well as in his hunger strikes for his sister-in-law's departure, which Alexander Zinoviev once wrote about so evilly. Another joke is her attempt to refuse the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of her late husband, when Gorbachev became the laureate.

But, although, of course, she is guilty, Sakharov himself is not innocent: because no husband allows his wife to rule himself if he is not satisfied with it (as one Parisian emigrant said in relation to Sinyavsky and his wife).

WALLENBERG.

Sakharov "pecked" at all the baits of Western propaganda. He was even searching for Raul Wallenberg, this anti-Soviet bowl of St. The Grail. Now, when it has been proven beyond all doubt that Wallenberg died back in 1947, as the NKVDists said, it is especially clear that this myth was supported mainly by Western and Israeli intelligence. There was something deeply immoral in this myth: two Swedes close to the Swedish royal family were saving Jews in occupied Europe, both died, but one was forgotten, and countless streets and parks were named after the other. Wallenberg collaborated with American intelligence and died in the basements of the KGB. Bernadotte, who saved many more Jews, tried to reconcile Palestinians and Israelis under the UN flag, and was killed by the terrorist group LEHI, led by the recent Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir. The difference in their posthumous fate shows that the creators of the myth were indifferent to the fate of the Jews in the days of Nazism, and the fate of Bernadotte and Wallenberg were indifferent - it was only about the fight against the Soviet Union and supporting Israel's plans. And here we are talking about the facts - Sakharov was actually wrong when he was running off-road in search of the long-dead Wallenberg, as it turned out these days.

ARMENIA.

Bloody mistake A.D. Sakharov had the support of the separatists of Nagorno-Karabakh, because it eventually led to the massacre in Sumgait and Baku and then to the war. Without outside support, Armenians would not have dared to start their own dangerous game. Nagorno-Karabakh became the first ulcer of the nationalist plague, and from it the infection flew over and went for a walk on the southern and western outskirts of the Union.

It is better for small nations to stay away from politics, which the Jews once understood: over the centuries there have been several cases of political orientation of the Jewish community (support for Pedro the Cruel in Spain or support for the revolution in Russia), and they ended badly. The Armenians did not take this into account and supported the camp of Starovoitova, Sakharov, Yeltsin.

Sakharov put all his authority on the Armenian map. Back in March 1988, he "supports the demands of the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh for the transition of the NKAO to the Armenian SSR" (37.9,91). Together with his half-Armenian wife, he is fully becoming Armenian positions, and even Gorbachev considers "frankly pro-Azerbaijani".

G.V. appears in his entourage. Starovoitov, in the future - a deputy from Armenia, and Zoriy Balayan, later associated with the group of murderers of a Soviet officer in Rostov. Ms. Bonner, as always, doesn't know how to hold it. She shouts at the Hero of the Soviet Union, Academician Buniyatov: "Shut up", she says to the head of the Republican Communist Party of Azerbaijan: "Eastern people are famous for their breadth, give the Armenians Nagorno-Karabakh". Support for Sakharov, the spiritual father of the then emerging new Russian government, inspired Armenians and ruined any possibility of a compromise solution to the problem. Nowadays, his line is continued by the half-Jew-half-Armenian Shabad, "Sakharov Today", hand-anointed by Elena Bonner.

ISRAEL.

Sakharov supported Israel, without which he, of course, would not have received American support, and even hundreds of killed Palestinians, women and children did not embarrass him. Israeli dissident Udi Adiv served his eighteen-year term in the Ramle detention center - none of Sakharov's defenders took care of him. Then, already in the prime of A.D. fame, he, the "father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb", was vainly asked for help from Moti Vanun, another Israeli dissident who revealed the secrets of the Israeli atomic bomb, kidnapped by Israeli military intelligence and sitting alone - he did not quarrel with his pro-Israeli supporters.

But the dispersal of the demonstration in Tbilisi, an event, by our Israeli standards, is quite ordinary (so many people are killed by the army every month, if not a week) outraged him. Now we know that his - and other Democrats - position on Tbilisi gave rise to the "Tbilisi syndrome", turned into blood in Osh and Fergana, and other places.

Sakharov's pro-Israeli position is an indicator of the influence of Zionist circles on the Soviet intelligentsia. It so happened that after the civil war and mass emigration of the Russian intelligentsia and nobility, literate Jews largely took its place and became the new Russian intelligentsia. As long as Israel did not exist, as long as the Zionist movement was low-power, there was no contradiction between the interests of Russia and this new class. But as soon as the Zionist movement became stronger, there was a weakness: the limited loyalty of the new educated class.

In the era of total Zionist domination in the Western and primarily American media, there was a spike between external Zionists and internal Russian democrats. Only a one hundred percent supporter of the Zionists received a positive feedback. For Russia, it threatened with death - its educated class, in which Jews accounted for a huge percentage, changed the interests of its people. In this sense, it is symbolic that the named Sakharov Alley in Jerusalem leads to the city cemetery with pomp.

Sakharov's cult in the democratic movement was inevitable: he was almost the only one in this movement that belonged to dissidence in the past, and not to the Central Committee or the Central Committee apparatus, like other influential democrats. Probably, he was personally a decent man, but he also suffered, like another, much more important politician of the perestroika period, from the "Sadat syndrome" (according to one Israeli journalist): he was intoxicated by the attention of the American press, he was raptified by the "radio voices" that sang his exploits. They praised him, surrounded him by departed - and these two foci of forces completely involved A.D. in their orbit.

Only in the last year of his life Sakharov encountered those who had been leading him invisibly for many years, with his puppeteers - Americans. Here he could understand that he was used in the political struggle, without being interested in his views at all. He tried to dissuade the Americans from the ISS, but they certainly did not listen to him. "Reagan gave me the impression of a charming person. I tried to talk to him about the problem of SOI, but he somehow disconnected from my arguments and repeated the same thing - that the SOI will make the world safer... The main thing that drives Teller is uncompromising distrust of the USSR". He failed to influence Bush: at the Saharov call to refuse to use nuclear weapons, Bush was the first to show him a family photo and said: I don't want them to die. The experience of the Iraq war, when America was preparing for a nuclear strike on Iraq, showed that such a demonstration of family photos is worth it. So, Sakharov could only influence his country, where he increasingly felt himself a representative of the West. What is at least such a scene (87,10,91): Gorbachev refuses to meet with Turkish refugees, as he is in a hurry to meet with Chancellor Kohl. Sakharov shouts on the phone: "Tell MS that he will not go anywhere, I will turn to Kol to cancel Gorbachev's visit."

Only one thing academician Sakharov did not have time to do - death prevented him from quarreling with the Soviet Union and China. After Tiananmen, he demanded to recall the ambassador from Beijing and condemn China. After his death, this important task for America remained unfulfilled. But only she. All other tasks were carried out: the Union disintegrated, the Communist Party left, the defense was destroyed, emigration flows freely to Israel.

Therefore, I think it is quite natural that Sakharov's name is immortalized in America and Israel - because the deceased academician mainly tried to benefit him.

ATOMIC BOMB.

Academician Sakharov tried a lot to drive the nuclear jinn back into the bottle. There was a time when I would have welcomed such a decision: after all, then the powerful Soviet Union stood on the side of the weak and oppressed of this world. At that time, the Soviet nuclear power was quite enough. But now, when the second nuclear button of the planet fell into the hands of Washington's accomplices, the situation has changed. The Iraq war showed that now nothing ties America's hands. Therefore, the proliferation of nuclear weapons has also become an important and positive goal.

And there is nothing immoral about this - after all, Israel, revered by the Democrats, owns hundreds of nuclear weapons, including those aimed at Odessa, Baku, Moscow. Academician Sakharov never demanded the nuclear disarmament of Israel, whose nuclear power already exceeds the forces of France and England, and is second (so far) only to America and Russia. Israel's nuclear forces may be used first on the planet since Hiroshima: Israel threatened Egypt with nuclear weapons in 1973, Iraq in 1991. Although Egypt and Iraq signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, no one protected them from Israel's nuclear blackmail. In these conditions, when there is no Soviet counterweight, in order to limit American-Israeli expansion, it is necessary to give the countries of the Third World their own independent (from America) nuclear shield. Other former and future friends of Russia - Iraq, Libya, Cuba - also need the bomb to hold the hand of the American aggressors.

Today Russia has split into a dozen states: among them Kievan Rus, Moscow Rus, White Russia and Central Asia. Russia's enemies would like to quarrel among these successor states. For this purpose, a dispute about the Black Sea Fleet was set up, although it is clear that none of the diadokhs can claim all the wealth of the state killed by him: "You killed, you will inherit it?" - as the prophet asked. Yeltsin's words are cynical: "The Black Sea Fleet was and will be Russian" - as if Kiev, Riga, Tiflis, Berlin and Warsaw were less Russian than the Black Sea Fleet. No, Russia in Brackets is not equal to Russia (as Yeltsin and Hasbulatov called their ulus). But the main goal of Russia's enemies is to quarrel with Russians and the peoples of the East.

Even before the August coup, I wrote: "In case of victory of the camp of Starovoitova, Nuikin, Malgin and others, the wedge between Russia and the Muslim South will be hammered. And this is a long-standing dream of all enemies of Russia, and in particular, the Zionists."

Now the Moscow diadokhs are trying to destabilize the Asian republics: television and press loyal to them caused a civil war in Tajikistan, and there is no doubt that they hate other rulers of Muslim republics. They refer to democracy, but democracy has nothing to do with it: when, as in Algeria, anti-comprador forces win in a Muslim country, the American-Israeli bloc seeks to overthrow them. One of the ideologists of the Israeli lobby in America, Professor Amos Perlmutter, wrote in a program article in the Washington Post (21.1.92): Protest movements (against American and Comprador domination) in Muslim countries should not be confused with democracy, even if the overwhelming majority vote for them: they should be crushed while they are small."

This principle will undoubtedly be applied to Russia if the patriotic anti-comprador forces win in the event of the next elections: they will never be allowed to come to power. And since it is not known where the anti-comprador front will be broken, the tactics of nuclear weapons proliferation to protect the future of Russia are becoming even more necessary.

China, although it borders Russia, does not interact with it. Apparently, that's why even the late academician Sakharov failed to create a conflict between them. We have to think, and from now on the Chinese border will remain the limit of our Eurasian oikumen.

ANTITHESIS.

The antithesis of Westerner Sakharov was the smartest man in Russia of our time - Lev Nikolaevich Gumilev. Unlike Sakharov, he has never spoken on topical topics. I (and others) tried to pull his tongue several times, but he always refused. The only exception is the idea of the Union of the East with Russia, the ancient union of Slavs and the Turkic steppe, which he clearly expressed in "Friendship of Peoples" №.6 (p. 190) for 1990, at some boring "round table", in the midst of chewed thoughts and hackneyed reasoning of ordinary authors of this magazine, where his words shone with their originality and dissimilarity. According to Gumilev, "the Mongol Tatars left their steppe valor and loyalty to Russia, which ensured Russia's victory over Napoleon and the coming flowering of Russian literature. Russians did not impose their culture on the Turks, but established good relations with them. The same did not merge with the Slavs, but entered into a symbiosis with them, based on mutual sympathy."

Gumilev gave examples when this friendship bore fruit: the Tatars defended Novgorod in 1269 from the Crusaders, and in 1406 they protected Moscow from the Lithuanians, the Bashkirs and Kalmyks helped Peter defeat the Swedes, the Asian nomads came with the Russian army to Paris in 1815 and to Berlin in 1945, "they were led there by the force of sincerity, not calculation". An alliance with them - based on mutual respect and love, and not assimilation and absorption - is necessary, Gumilev concluded.

I really liked this concept - after all, I grew up in the Holy Land, where Orthodox and Muslims are the two main groups of the indigenous population (except for emigrants-Jews), not only get along well with each other, but do not feel the difference between themselves. In the Holy Land, almost all the indigenous population was Orthodox before the victory of Islam, and although the majority converted to Islam, good kinship has survived to this day. When in May 1995 an Israeli soldier shot four clamps from his Galilean rifle at the icons and crosses of the Jaffa Church, Jaffa Muslims demonstrated to protest. Muslims and Christians have always spoken together in all Palestinian organizations.

Palestinian Jews of the early Middle Ages stood for Islam, against Christianity, but nowadays Zionist circles have made hatred of Islam their banner. To justify its strategic importance for Western imperialism, Israel, with the help of the pro-Zionist press, has created a jupel of militant Islam these days. After the destruction of Iraq, its new goal is the destruction of Iran. The Zionists also liked the destruction of Chechnya: after the bombing of Grozny, it will be difficult for Russia to hope for automatic support and sympathy of Muslim peoples.

PEOPLE AND LANDSCAPE.

Sukharov's concept of "freedom of emigration" Gumilev contrasted the idea of connecting the people and the landscape. According to Gumilev, man is part of the ethnos (people), and people are one with the landscape. In his opinion, the migration of peoples and groups causes catastrophic consequences when emigrants get into a foreign landscape. Gumilev was basically right - for example, emigrants from Europe destroyed the landscape of North America and destroyed its fauna. In the Holy Land, so affected by mass - according to Sakharov - emigration, Palestinians form one with the landscape, and the emigrants-Jewish landscape oppose and destroy it. (Examples of the connection of Palestinians with the landscape of the Holy Land, on the one hand, and the gap between the Israelis and the same landscape are given in large numbers in my book "Pine and Olive" (Jerusalem-Stockholm, 1987).

Smart alien specialists caused great damage to Russian nature and landscape, flooding floodplains of rivers. They also broke the connection between the people and the land, fighting with "unpromising" villages, enlarged collective farms, centralizing bread baking and building apartment buildings in the countryside. The domination of the foreign element in the Russian higher education led to the fact that purely local specialists were also taught to think Westernly: without this it was impossible to become a specialist.

Nowadays, foreign specialists from the International Monetary Fund destroy the landscape and culture of all Third World countries that are unable to resist their dictates: after all, they are absolutely alien to the local landscape and the local ethnic group, and their purpose is completely different: to subordinate the countries of the Third World to the West. This is not a new phenomenon: at one time, the peasants of Italy were displaced from the land, and latifundia were created. Then Rome died and colonists from Syria took their place. In Byzantium, Anatolian peasants were displaced to create profitable sheep farms. Then the Turks came to Anatolia and occupied the deserted lands. Nowadays, export crops have replaced traditional farming almost everywhere in the Third World: this has brought hunger and the growth of wild meat of cities and caused a wave of emigration from Third World countries to Europe.

Emigration from the West to the Third World is a form of imperialism. This is how America, Australia, Palestine, African countries were captured. Gumilev explains why imperialism is destructive on an environmental level, not only on an economic one. But emigration from Third World countries to Western countries is also harmful. The successes of fascist parties in Europe among the working class are not accidental - it was these parties that opposed emigration from Third World countries, and this emigration competes with local workers and lowers their standard of living. The emigration of the poor is beneficial for the bourgeoisie, as it allows to lower wages and increase competition in the labor market. The bourgeoisie does not bear the social burden associated with the cultural gap: only the proletariat lives in the same areas where the emigrants live. For the workers and the poor of the population of Western countries, the emigration of the poor turns into a disaster: so the internal proletariat turns into the outer proletariat.

Although racism is disgusting in itself, it performs protective functions for the living organism of the people. Racism is a painful reaction of rejection of an alien body. If it were not for racism, the peoples of Western Europe would have already died under the onslaught of emigration waves. Misunderstanding of this can be considered a historical mistake of the Communist Parties as the expression of the aspirations of the proletariat. However, racism in the Third World countries also expresses the anti-imperialist moods of the peoples of these countries. Gumilev's teaching allows us to understand this and correct mistakes.

OBJECTIONS.

Some ideas of L.N. Gumilev is unpleasant to me personally - regardless of whether they are true or not. He considered exogamy (mixed marriages) destructive for peoples and landscapes, and this is what he called the cause of the death of the Ottoman Empire. I think he also meant Russia, although he denied it in a conversation with me, saying that mixed marriages did not play such a role here and their children remained in the line of Russian culture. Of course, I, a Jew married to a Swedish woman, did not like his concept.

I wrote to Gumilev: "Is endogamy not much more destructive: the Greek and Turkish communities of Cyprus, the Jews of Israel (against the Palestinians), the Catholics of Ulster, the English colonies in Africa are doomed to eternal war, and exogamous Brazil lives in the racial world. Hungarian Jew Milos, who became the English humorist Miles, explained the wars there with the excessive virtue of the Cypriot maidens."

I think that people entering into mixed marriages differ from ordinary emigrants precisely by their willingness to accept the local culture and dissolve in it. It's not for nothing that Zionists hate mixed marriages so much that Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir once compared mixed marriages with Auschwitz - they also reduce the number of "pure" Jews.

The concept of passion ("drive") poses more questions than gives answers. According to this theory, passion is induced by exposure from space to certain regions of the earth for a short time. I asked Gumilev whether he meant the influence of God or extraterrestrial civilizations, but he denied it and called the reasons natural. At the same time, the question remains: how to link the obvious passionate rise of Eastern European Jewry in the last century, the concept of territoriality of influence and the fact of lack of passion in neighboring peoples with the lines of settlement (Ukrainians, Belarusians, Poles)? Gumilev explained this by artificially maintaining a high level of passion in the Jewish superethnic group for centuries. This is historically wrong - there was no high level of passion in Judaism until the end of the 18th century.

His choice of the date of the passionate push also seemed arbitrary to me: for example, he dates the birth of Russia to the kingdom of Moscow Prince Ivan, and refers Kievan Rus to the previous civilization, although, in my opinion, the collapse of the Soviet Union without war and without any apparent reason is proof that the history of Russian civilization begins in the eighth, and not in the first century and ends not with the fall of Kievan Rus, but before our eyes. In my opinion, the transition from Kiev to Moscow Rus was like the transition from Kyoto to Kamakura under Ioritomo in Japan of the 12th century, that is, a change of capitals, not a change of civilizations.

L.N. Gumilev's attitude towards Jews was, in my opinion, non-historical. In the book "Ancient Russia and the Great Steppe" a very large place and a lot of passion are devoted to anti-Jewish polemics: the vileness of the Khazar Khaganate and the machinations of the Jews of Provence. In the attached chronological table, Jews are given a disproportionate amount of space. I wrote L.N. Gumilev asked him: "to what extent is this the result of historical research and to what extent is it the result of personal experience, observation of modern processes, the allegory of the role of Jews in post-revolutionary Russia? You write (page 141) about the "unique war for the extermination" of the Turkic nobility in the Khazar Khaganate, but later in the same book you repeatedly write about the extermination campaigns, during which all the nobility of the defeated ethnic group died. Was it so different from the Sicilian Supper or the Bartholomew Night and other achievements of mankind? Or: you write about the cruel overexploitation of the Khazars by the Jews and immediately: about the absence of goods subject to alienation ("Khazars do not produce anything", p. 145). Isn't it obvious that trade duties could be the only source of income for the Khazar (and Judeo-Khazar) authorities, and not "cheap fish of Itil" or slave labor of the Khazars? Or: in DR page. 96 You write about the "extremely cruel conquest" of Canaan and the "resistance of the Philistines". Modern historiography believes that there was no conquest, and it has long been known that the Philistines did not exist in the Holy Land at that time (appeared later). Is there an attempt to "create an image of a villain" from the very beginning?" Gumilev denied it, but I still have a feeling of his non-historicity in this point.

However, if you adjust some of Gumilev's assessments in the light of modern historical ideas, many things will fall into place. Although there was no conquest of Canaan, there was a myth of the conquest of Canaan. This cruel and bloody myth influenced the history of mankind in the most terrible way. Using this myth as a guide to action, Europeans destroyed the indigenous population of North America and Australia, condemned Africans to slave labor. Moreover, the Protestant peoples who adopted the Old Testament (unlike Catholics and Orthodox, who knew mainly the New Testament) showed much more cruelty than other peoples of the West. In South America conquered by the Catholic-Spanianis, the Indians survived, and mixed with the conquerors, became the basis of the modern population of these countries. There was no genocide anywhere in the countries conquered by the Orthodox - until our days, when the war in Chechnya is conducted according to the "Western, American model". In North America, conquered by Protestants, Indians were destroyed under the banner of the myth of the conquest of Canaan.

Judaism not only did not artificially retain its passion potential, but also disappeared almost without a trace since the time of Khazaria. If it were not for the conversion of various Slavic and Turkic tribes to Judaism, the Jewish people would simply not exist today, modern historical science believes. In other words, the modern Jewish people are not an ancient carrier of a permanent evil principle, as it turns out according to Gumilev, but a fairly new ethnic entity that adopted the relict remains of the ancient Jews and created its own mythology of "ancient origin". Gumilev took this myth at face value.

We know too little about Khazaria to say for sure that a Uduo-Khazar chimera arose there. But the very design of the chimera was implemented nowadays in the United States. There the chimera became a reality: the Iudo-Sionist lobby practically rules America against the interests of other Americans. America pays about seven billion dollars and a year of direct payments at the will of this lobby (including more than two billion dollars to Egypt as a reward for a separate peace with Israel). America loses up to 50 billion dollars a year by the will of this lobby, boycotting countries that are not desirable to Zionists: Iraq, Iran, Libya. The poorest American pays a thousand dollars a year for the construction of concentration camps for Palestinians and villas for Jewish settlers.

America is involved entirely in the interests of the Judeo-Jionist lobby: the countries of Eastern Europe receive or lose loans depending on the speed of return of confiscated Jewish property, although in the Jewish state not only does not return, but also continue to confiscate the property and land of non-Jews. There is a lot of pressure on Russia so that nuclear weapons do not end up in Iran, where they can threaten Israel. For the same reason, America almost destroyed North Korea. If before the death of the Soviet Union America's support for Israel was explained by geopolitical considerations, nowadays it cannot be explained by any rational explanation. In other words, now the Judeo-American chimera in North America really exists.

Gumilev's non-historicality lies in the fact that he transfers this modern reality to the distant past, about which we know so little. There is no eternal Jewish evil, there is today's Zionist evil that can be dealt with.

Gumilev had other oddities: the anger with which he spoke about antinomism (he called it the antisystem) of the Middle Ages could be understood only if it was considered an encrypted polemic with modern currents. His students spoke and wrote about the "anti-system (stinomic) of communism", but in a conversation with me Gumilev did not confirm this interpretation.

She is deeply unfaithful - communism is absolutely humanistic and its values are quite positive. Gumilev's non-historic nature forced him to make an exception for one heresiarch-Markion, who hated the Old Testament and the Lord God of Israel, although he was anti-nomical.

HIS FOLLOWERS.

At one time it was fashionable to call Voznesensky "a badly read Pasternak". In the same vein (and not wanting to offend) I would call I.R. Shafarevich "badly read by Gumilev". Thus, the expression "small people" that made Shafarevich famous was not taken directly from Koshen, but, I think, from Gumilev (DRiVS).

Paradoxically, Shafarevich is a very Jewish thinker. His treatise against socialism is Pomeranian on the contrary, and what could be more Jewish than Pomeranian, this sum of hastily read books that bring the basis for a pre-planned thesis? The "Russophobia" is perhaps his most Jewish book, is a traditional Zionist essay about the eternity of anti-Semitism and insidious goys turned inside out and applied to the Russians, only Shafarevich replaced anti-Semitism with Russophobia.

The author of the well-known work "Gender and Character" at the beginning of the century Otto Weininger, a baptized Jew, in his own words, "infinitely far from Judophilia", (according to the usual Jewish ideas, just a sworn anti-Semite), noticed (ch. XIII): "In an aggressive anti-Semite, there are always known Jewish properties, reflected even on his physiognomy, even if he was alien by blood to the Semitic race... A person cannot hate something that has no resemble to him... Aryans who are aware of their Aryanism are not anti-Semites. The most ardent anti-Semites can be found among Jews."

I absolutely do not want to touch on the issue of anti-Semitism (or lack thereof) in Igor Shafarevich, but Judaism is not blood, but Platonic's idea of Judaism, as Weininger said - there is a lot in it. The Jewish surname ("Shafar" is the best, excellent, "shofar" is the horn that is blown in synagogues) in combination with the Russian-Slavic opera name and patronymic, as it were, aggravate it.

The main thesis of "Russophobia", in my opinion, is wrong in the part where the author, calcifying the arguments of the Zionists, affirms the eternity and non-historic hatred of Russians. In my opinion, the examples of this hatred given by him quite fit into a more modest plot: the "West" (a group of countries of Western Europe and North America, this "world city", as Mao said, or "imperialist countries") for domination over the rest of the world develops an ideology that justifies its domination. In particular, it dehumanizes the population of the "rest of the world" ("world village"). People like Yanov do not express the eternal feelings of Jews towards Russians, but simply serve the imperialists, giving them an ideological justification for the occupation of Russia.

A remarkable Palestinian scientist, professor at Columbia University and a native of Jerusalem, Eduard Said explains in his famous work "Orientalism" that the study of the East by the West is not a science, but primarily a sign, a symbol of the subordination of the East to the West. He describes how difficult it is for an Arab Palestinian scientist in America to fight prejudice and "the simple-minded dichotomy of freedom-loving democratic Israel and evil, totalitarian Arab terrorists": while a scientist in America is "allowed" to identify himself with Zionism, the one who identifies himself with Arabs ceases to be considered a scientist. He explains that for more than a hundred years (almost) everything written in the West about the East was intended to explain, in order to subjugate.

For the "West" there is no difference between the Arab and Orthodox East. Historically, Orthodoxy was perceived by Western Europeans as a variant of Islam, not as a fraternal church (the conquest of Constantinople by the Crusaders and the campaigns of the Teutons against the Slavs illustrate this). Moreover, even the Far West of Europe - Spain, Portugal, Ireland - does not belong to the "West", as Toynbee explains in his multi-volume work. Therefore, Latin America is a victim of the same attitude that Side described as "orientalism as a sign of domination", and Shafarevich called "Russophobia". Let's call it more simply - the service of imperialism.

If Yanov and other Sovietologists had not taken the position of imperialists, if they had not justified the occupation, their imperialist masters would not have paid their salaries. After all, that's the only reason for which we need. To tell the truth, it's as unpleasant for me, a native of the Soviet Union, as it is for me, a Jew, the editor of "Sturmer", as a mouse with a vivisector. Only a person who sincerely wants to put his people in the iron cage of imperialism can listen to the advice of a Sovietologist.

Shafarevich couldn't understand it. He made an unacceptable mistake for a mathematician - he did not do with a sufficient explanation (the West is trying to present Russians, as well as Arabs, Chinese, Mexicans, as inhumans to dominate them, and he was helped by people who broke away from their roots, intellectual Vlasovs-kapo), but struck with an over-explasal and mystical explanation. In my opinion, anti-historicism is also the rectification of Russia's troubles from the Khazar Khaganate through Trotsky and the children of Arbat to foremen of perestroika, like Kozhinov's. There are no such world constants. Trotsky, Dzerzhinsky, Stalin and other soldiers of the revolution may not have spared Russian blood, but they fought imperialism for the freedom of Russia. And in many ways, the happy and careless years of the recently fallen socialism became possible thanks to the anti-imperialist struggle of those years - just as the current devasion and invasion of the Yanovs occurred because of the ideological victory of imperialism.

Although I didn't want to say it, but you can't throw the words out of the song - there is a lot of guilt in this subordination to imperialism and anti-communist nationalists like Shafarevich or Govorukhin. They didn't like the fence - they broke it, and the enemies broke in. At the same time, wiser Russian nationalists from Glushkova to Kara Murza understood what Shafarevich did not understand and took an amazing step. Seven years ago, the very idea of the union of "whites" - Russian Orthodox nationalists and monarchists - and "reds" - communists and socialists - even in a nightmare could not have come to mind to either of either. Nevertheless, this epochal union arose - and not only for purely tactical reasons, but also for essential reasons: both of them are dear to Russia, and they do not want it to turn into an American colony. (By the way, the same alliance already arose during the Great Patriotic War, when the descendants of the "whites" fought and prayed for Soviet Russia.)

The immorality of Shafarevich's anti-communism can be seen in his support for American aggression against the people of Vietnam, as the anti-communism of Sovietologist Dora Sturman, published in the "New World", was reflected in the justification of the fascist dictatorship of Pinochet and the Zionist occupation of Palestine. The dispute about socialism or capitalism in our conditions is a dispute about the independence of Russia or its subordination to American corporations, and the people of Russia are beginning to understand it more and more. And here all the concepts of the conspiracy are not useful - at least because of their nonsense.

An example of this is the wonderful last novel by the Italian scientist, scholar, scholar, linguist, culturologist Umberto Eco (known to the Russian reader from the novel and film "The name of the Rose") "Foucault's Pendulum". This is a story about a man who invented out of mischiefulness "the eternal conspiracy of Templar temple workers", in which there was a place for Masons, Kabbalists, knights, Bogumils, Cathars, security guards, Zion sages, Satanists and others. To his horror, half-crazy and completely unsafe groups of conspirators who played the knowledge of Gnostic mysteries come out to him - they are sure that he really knows the secret of an eternal conspiracy that they could not reveal.

It turns out that it is impossible to argue with people who believe in a conspiracy: for them, the lack of evidence of conspiracy is in itself proof of conspiracy, and even well-conspired. No matter how much the hero swears that all this is his fiction, they don't believe him: the whole life of believers in the conspiracy is based on this faith.

Personally, I can well imagine a palace conspiracy (the murder of Paul I or Kennedy), or a conspiracy between the leaders of several organizations (say, the CIA and the Central Committee of the CPSU). But I can't imagine a world century-old conspiracy, and therefore, as a rule, I am not interested in conspiracy theories, leaving it to amateurs. For me, there is no difference between Andreev's witzraors ("Rose of Peace"), the Order of the Atlanteans of Dugin ("Aspects") or the lemurs of Blavatskaya. In general, I do not believe in the secrets of the Gnostics, and they require faith, because the only proof of their loyalty is the complete lack of evidence.

That's why I'm not interested in books about Masons, Gagtungras and Atlanteans. Witty Chesterton once said: when they don't believe in God, they start believing in anything. A believer does not need to believe in Gnostic secrets for the initiates. As the Talmud says (Hagig 2:1), it would be better for those who think about four things not to be born: what is above (about the divine sphere), about what is below (about demons), about what was before (the creation of the world) and about what will be later (about the end of the world).

But conspiracy theories have one thing in common - anti-historicism. Attempts to explain one and a half thousand years of European history with the mystery of the Holy Grail and the struggle of the direct descendants of Jesus for the Merovingian crown (like Lee and Lincoln) are anti-historicism. But the same anti-historianism is to imagine human thought from Plato to Brezhnev with the fight against (or for) socialism.

TAJIKISTAN AS A MODEL OF THE UNION.

In March 1993, I visited Tajikistan again. I flew to Dushanbe as a non-indifferent observer. I have long noticed that this small distant republic is like an accurate model of the entire huge Soviet Union, and the processes taking place in it are repeated throughout the country. There are such model regions in other countries - for example, in America they say that the winner of the elections in the tiny state of New Hampshire will win in the whole country. In Tajikistan, the same processes are taking place as everywhere in the USSR - but the acceleration and intensified. - Having overcome "democracy", Tajikistan returned to the rule of patriotic forces. It was here that the collapse of the August regimes began, and only then the power of Elchibey in Baku and Landsbergis in Lithuania collapsed, the regimes of the Pushkin triumvirs of Yeltsin, Shushkevich and Kravchuk hesitated.

This connection was also noticed by others. There are people who oppose our positions in everything, so that they can be used instead of a compass pointing to the south. One of these people is Mrs. Bonner. Whatever she says, you usually have to do the opposite. (Chechnya was the first exception to this rule). Tajikistan was awarded several lectures and valuable instructions of the "grandmother of Russian democracy". She, of course, demanded to stop providing any assistance to the "neo-communist regime of Dushanbe". She explained it with her inherent cynical falseness - concern for the blood of Russian border guards. But we know and remember that m-me Bonner would gladly shed all Russian blood in defense of Armenia or simply at the request of NATO and the United States, and therefore we are looking for a real reason. Ms. Bonner is irreplaceable, because her mouth is broadcast directly and without snay the enemies of Russia. If she is against helping Tajikistan, then Russia's enemies hope to break Tajikistan and continue their "drang nah Norden" to Moscow, in order to then send off Muslims and Orthodox for the benefit of Western imperialism.

Tajikistan is one of the most attractive places in Central Asia, and without offending its neighbors, there are the most beautiful people in the region and the most wonderful nature. I came this time after the victory of the people's forces. It was spring, the sky was blue and clear, on the main spring holiday - Navruz - a procession was arranged in national costumes, it was similar to the old-fashioned celebration of May Day: thousands of joyful people on the streets, crowded parks, pilaf is being cooked everywhere and barbecues are being fried at ridiculous prices, people are dressed festively in the old way. People were happy, as if a terrible nightmare had passed and life had turned back to its old course.

The Democrats left the memory of themselves the most terrible. "I lost 15 kilos during these three months (of the Democratic rule)," the maid at the hotel told me, "it was a terrible time. There was no police, no power - everyone did whatever they wanted. After work, you come home and walk like a mine field: have you seized the apartment or not? Go, the door is intact. So they didn't capture it! That's where you'll be happy!"

Teacher Valya told me how different the sides in the civil war looked: "the "democrats" won - these types all walk in the "firm", packed in white sneakers "Adidas" and in "Montana" (tracksuits considered chic in the province). They walk and drag everything - cars, furniture. And then they finally chased them away, I leave the house, and on the boulevard there are the winners-kulyabtsy: in sweatshirts, boots, the poor things. And it lay away from the heart."

Engineer Victor told me that the "democrats" dragged everything they could to Afghanistan. His hundred-year-old "Zaporozhets" survived only because it didn't start. Still, it was not for nothing that the supporters of the Moscow regime supported their fellows: both acted on the same principle - to steal everything and ferry it abroad.

I also met with the people's leader of the revolution - Saigak (it was a few days before his murder), who reminded me of Sancho Villa, the legendary peasant leader of the Mexican revolution. "Why don't you want to become president," I asked him. "I'm uneducated," he answered modestly. He "studied" in prisons, served a quarter of a century, married yesterday's schoolgirl and became the father of eight children. The younger one became an orphan at the age of one year.

The winners demolished the nasty cooperative stalls, brought the police back to the streets, put things in order. The desire for reconciliation was noticeable in everything. The head of the republican KGB told me: "they are not demons, we are not angels, we need to make peace." Amnesty has been announced. The new government does not want revenge. Nabiev never returned to power - he was weak, this "Gorbachev" surrendered his positions without a fight, and could rely on the Kulyab people and prevent a civilian warrior.

At that time, the radio reported a new attempt by Yeltsin to make a coup. Zorkin and Rutskoy threw this word in Yeltsin's face. But even here the parliament could not demobilize and outlaw the conspirators. Yeltsin's opponents were sick with Kerensky's disease: although the law and the constitution were on their side, they did not dare to act. So the parliament of the Russian Federation walked the road to its death, which was beaten by the Union parliament.

On May 1, blood was spilled in Moscow for the first time. Before that, there were only minor clashes on February 23. But on May 1, Yeltsin's guards trapped a peaceful demonstration and fell on its participants. Among the victims there were many old people who traditionally went to celebrate May Day. Contrary to popular belief, there were communist Jews among them. Anpilov was kidnapped, he barely managed to escape. Unlike February 23, 1992, this time "Trudovaya Moscow" took over the traditional weapon of the proletariat - cobbleston. Stones flew to the riot police, into shop windows, into police cars. It reminded me of the intifada, the Palestinian uprising in the territories occupied by Israel. There, too, the long-suffering of the people came to an end - and stones flew at the oppressors. And there the authorities responded with extreme cruelty. The demonstration gathered on Oktyabrskaya Square was sent to the widest Leninsky Avenue, and riot police were already waiting for it there. It is still unknown whether any of the demonstrators died, but many were seriously injured.

In the summer, Yeltsin began to implement his plan to liquidate the parliament. The so-called Constitutional meeting was convened. It was a trampling of democracy - under the living parliament, Yeltsin summoned his protégés, not-elected appointees, to approve his project of sole power. There were people there who did not represent anyone - like a thief and bribe taker Gabriel Popov, former mayor of Moscow. The meeting immediately showed on whose side it is - Khazbulatov was sneaked, Slobodkin was taken out of the hall. The gravedigger of the Union of Alekseev chaired. Here any real democrat would have to take the side of the parliament - this did not happen. People reacted in accordance with their class interests - Yeltsin's supporters quickly found legalistic shortcomings in parliament, the very parliament they allegedly defended in August 1991, which elected Yeltsin, who approved all acts of the Democrats.

I had no illusions about the Russian parliament. I remembered when he was chosen. The most remarkable people were elected to the Union Congress of People's Deputies, and only the second class - to the republican Supreme Council. Strictly speaking, the parliament was not only second-rate, but also criminal: it was he who raised the banner of rebellion against the legitimate authorities of the Union, proclaiming the sovereignty and primacy of republican laws. This parliament gave loans, wasted funds, destroyed the Union, helped Yeltsin in all his endeavors. Hasbulatov was a loyal associate of Yeltsin, Rutskoy undermined the CPSU. Their arguments among themselves seemed to me like a showdown between Stalin and his yesterday's friends Zinoviev, Kamenev and Trotsky.

Democratic media launched a campaign against the parliament and against Hasbulatov and Rutsky. Racist remarks and jokes about "young Hasbulat and his poor sakla", descriptions of his luxurious apartment poured out as if from a cornucopia. The "Moskovsky Komsomolets" was the lead, a vile newspaper that did not rise above the belt either in terms of vision or in shocks, and television, completely devoid of objectivity. Russian television began to resemble Jordanian television in its best moments: a description of the president's day, filming of meetings in the Kremlin. At worse moments, it became naked, as in the worst Soviet years.

Among the new heroes of the time appeared "General Dima", Dmitry Yakubovsky, a fabulously rich young lawyer who was engaged in the liquidation of the property of the Soviet Army in Germany. He brought the news about Rutsky's bribes, his allegedly concluded contracts and deposits in foreign banks. This story made me stinking of provocation. Yakubovsky, who has since been involved in robbery and other criminals, was a man from whom you can't buy a used car, let alone such a story.

Democrats began to constantly remind that Rutsky has Jewish roots. In general, Democrats, among whom there were many Jews, used this technique all the time. First they fell on Yakov Sverdlov, then on Rutsky, even later on Zhirinovsky. In their free time from these attacks, they reproached the opposition for anti-Semitism. From time to time I met old acquaintances who remained in democratic positions - Masha Slonim from BBC, Minkin from MosKomsomolets. They asked me a rhetorical question: how can a Jew support anti-Semites from "Day"? In fact, the real anti-Semites were their friends who turned the Jewish origin of their opponents into a stamp, the seal of Cain.

Later, this technique was used by Eduard Limonov, a man whom I treated in a friendly and with great sympathy. At one time, I spoke very well about his wonderful book "It's me - Edichka", although then the emigration poisoned him for it. I called him in August 1991 in search of support. I liked his articles in "SovRossiya". His romance with Zhirinovsky didn't bother me. Only much later, after the failure in the elections, he turned sharply "the wrong way", became close to the Nazis, published a book against Zhirinovsky, where Zhirinovsky's only claim is that he is a Jew. He learned this technique from the Democrats, from the Jewish journalists of the "Moskovsky Komsomolets".

And yet the parliament of the Russian Federation represented the people of Russia, deceived, misled, but less vicious than the direct power of Yeltsin and his henchmen. It was the rest of legitimate structures, along with local and regional councils, and therefore could serve as the basis for the restoration of popular legality. The deputies who participated in the meetings of the Constitutional Conference gave legitimacy to this gathering. Finally, the majority of deputies left the meeting and a direct confrontation between Yeltsin and the parliament began.

A large demonstration of the National Salvation Front gathered in support of the parliament on Dzerzhinsky Square. It rained in the morning, at press conferences Hasbulatov announced the illegality of the president, and Yeltsin - the illigitimacy of the parliament. Of course, both were right, but in this choice I preferred the parliament. The sun came out by lunchtime. Columns of people were walking along the Okhotny Ryad to Lubyanka. A black pedestal was sticking out on it, on which the monument to the "iron Felix" once stood. Some boy climbed on the pedestal and for the first time since August 1991 a red flag was raised on Dzerzhinsky Square. There was something deeply correct in this, the red banner is more suitable for rebellion, for an uprising than for a victorious state. I was pleased that on the walls of Moscow houses you could see the words written in black paint: "All power to the Soviets" and the most cramous of all: "LENIN". Anpilov's hoarse voice annouled the departure of deputies from the Constitutional Assembly. Anpilov fascinated me. It was created for squares. It's amazing - a simple correspondent of Moscow radio in Latin America was able to cope where prominent communist figures saved. He knew how to take people to the streets, charge them with his magnetic power. The people sang: "Get up, the country is huge." "Dzerzhinsky will return to the KGB," Anpilov roared. - We need him. To the wall, you bastard! Long live the Soviet Constitution, guaranteeing free housing, work, pensions, health care!"

The people listened to him as if fascinated. "Yeltsin says that his grandson washes car windows," Anpilov continued, "well, A said - tell B, let's go to the panel." Anpilov called on everyone to besiege the "Empire of Lies" - TV center "Ostankino". The people hated television, which, by falseness, had already reached the heights unseen in Brezhnev's times. But as we know, it was the march on Ostankino that served as a reason for the bloody events in October.

It was clear to me that Yeltsin is made of a completely different material than Gorbachev, he is not afraid to shed blood. This was also facilitated by the reaction of the West. After the bloodshed in Tbilisi in January 1989, public opinion spoke about this for a long time, the "Tbilisi injury" became an important factor that forced the army from participating in the war in Tajikistan and other hot spots, it stopped the army in August 1991, as the anonymous author of "Luka Mudishchev of the XX century" wrote: "From Kurkov's balcony, the Squirrel//squeals, falling into a fierce rage-//only a virgin can lead so// from under the bandit report:

They are suitable!!! I beg you, sisters!!! // Keeping the family, leave everyone!!! // Away!!! Soldiers have sharp shovels!!! ///(everyone remembers Squirrel in the "Wheel"...

May Day 1993 was the key to subsequent bloodshed. Neither the West nor the intelligentsia reacted in any way to the brutal dispersal of the demonstration. Yeltsin received the West's blessing for violence.

I started to visit Russia less often. I am deeply disappointed in people, in the Russian intelligentsia, in Moscow Jews, and in humanity. The Russian intelligentsia, the most remarkable in the world, succumbed to the most trivial tricks. Most Russian Jews supported the Yeltsin regime and contributed to the collapse of Russia's vital systems. I was pushed to leave and a keen sense of irrelevance: what I did and thought turned out to be irrelevant (unnecessary, unimportant), my warnings were heard only by acquaintances, my warnings were not heard by anyone, and the fate of Cassandra fell, whose bitter prophecies no one listened to. Even worse, Russia has become irrelevant: everything that was said and thought in Russia has become unimportant and insignificant. Even the post of ambassador in Russia has become something like a residence in India from the most important. Perhaps even less - India had its own foreign policy, Russia did not have it. Moscow's position was determined in Washington.

Foreigners did not understand Russia before. Once we flew by helicopter to Suzdal with the then Israeli ambassador in Moscow. When we drove from the runway to the suburbs of this fabulous town, the ambassador snorted, pointing to the usual cavardak of provincial Russia (broken fences, frail dogs, rusty barrels, antedilud trucks): and this country was still thinking of fighting with the United States! This country defeated Hitler, I reminded him. Just because he came here, otherwise - I would never have won, the ambassador insisted. (Our trip ended in a big scandal and we finally quarreled). For him and his like, Russia was the "Upper Volta with missiles", and as soon as the issue with missiles was resolved, it became important to the same extent as the Upper Volta.

There was also a wounded vanity in my despair: in emigration, even in dissid, we were overeemined by the importance of Russia for the world. We were fugitive princes, princes Alexei, sons of the formidable Peter, and that's why it's not even for Poles, Haitians and other emigrants. And suddenly - they turned out to be a nobod, a shame from a giant Eastern European dump, along with other Yugoslavs and Poles. Yes, I needed the greatness of Russia even out of my own, small, skin interests. But Russia was falling, and there was no end to its fall.

There were things worse than the fall of the prestige of the power. These days, for the first time, I understood white emigrants who said "It brought snow to Russia". I used to understand this as an expression of their disagreement with the Bolshevik ideology. Now I understood it easier - the Russia they knew had disappeared. Russia, a friend to me, has also disappeared, a nice and simple country. There was no trace of it: even pies and kvass, the joy of childhood, replaced hamburgers and Coca-Cola, even the best Moscow ice cream died, and Italian soft ice and Penguin appeared instead. "Belomor" cigarettes disappeared, Russian clothes, shoes, things disappeared - I went to GUM and found a full range of Chinese provincial department store there.

When I came to Russia after twenty years of absence, I found a country that grew up by 20 years: new neighborhoods and cities grew, new equipment appeared, vats, kirz boots and eight-clink caps of my youth disappeared, - but it was the same country, I could distinguish its features, how in your wife you recognize the features of a young girl who drove you crazy. Now, right before my eyes, this unique country has disappeared, and its place has been taken by another colony in Pax Americana.

And then I was drawn, for the first time in all these years, back to the Holy Land. The right-wing government finally fell there, and in Rabin's new government there were familiar faces, some in parliament, and some in the army. And it was not easier to go than two years ago - from any regional center, in my opinion, it is easier and no more expensive to fly to Israel than, say, to Simferopol. The circle closed - I flew to Russia as a correspondent of the newspaper "Haaretz", I flew to Israel as a correspondent of "Pravda".

The plane was full - fat young businessmen in leather jackets, who had only recently taken Israeli passports, flew there and back. They bought ore, oil, fertilizers in Russia and sold them to China and Latin America. In return, they brought Israeli instant coffee and Chinese consumer goods. They threw the names of ministers, writers, actors of Russia. Israel has firmly inscribed in the new Russian business world. As Lomonosov and Lavoisier said, if there is a decrease in substance and energy somewhere, it will increase elsewhere. Russia's decline turned into a profit in Israel. However, I mean not so much the outflow of talented specialists as the outflow of Russian raw materials through Israeli channels. The extent of this infusion for the Israeli economy can only be understood in comparison: during my recent trips to England, America and Sweden, I witnessed an acute crisis, growing unemployment, financial fever, major devaluations, uncertainty about the future.

Israel has passed the crisis so far. Inflation is low, the value of shares on the stock exchange doubled over the year, houses did not fall in price, consumption did not decrease, more and more new cars on the roads, salaries are fifty times higher than in Russia, and tomatoes are five times cheaper than on the Central Market in Moscow. There are reasons for this miracle: America continues to give Israel more money than the rest of the world combined, raw materials and money for services come from Russia through Israeli businessmen, and, finally, alongside its own small colony - the occupied Palestinian West Bank and Gaza Strip, where two million people live, deprived of all rights except the right to collect tomatoes for the Israelis and the obligation to buy Israeli products.

Russia caught up with me in Tel Aviv - hundreds of thousands of Russians poured into the country during the years of my absence. Local Russian newspapers and magazines looked at me at the kiosks - from their cover Oleg Yankovsky proclaimed: "Israel is a near abroad". I left a far Middle Eastern country that did not resemble Russia, and returned to the new union republic. Even on the buses, everyone spoke Russian, especially pedestrians, and even more so in the early hours, when only Arab workers from Gaza walk.

I liked the new immigrants - they were nice people who caught and remembered the Russia that I also got to know. They had no religious mania, they were not as right-wing nationalists as those who had arrived earlier, about whom Genis and Weil said: "There is only a wall to the right of us." I was brought to visit "Voronya Slobodka", a communal apartment in the center of Tel Aviv, where young actors and poets lived - there was so much romance, so much charming bohemian! Even physically non-Russian Russians were different - younger, healthier, there were fewer cripples among them. This time there was a non-Zyonist and non-wreave emigration from Russia.

I ran into a ghost in the editorial office of a Russian Israeli newspaper. A young journalist asked me how I feel about "the best people in Russia: Yevtushenko, Sakharov, Alexander Ivanov and Minkin". It was a living Moscow democrat of 1990, he survived like a mammoth in the permafrost of the Tel Aviv summer, he did not experience, unlike his remaining companions of free, rising prices, planetary humiliation, grief over the fallen power, the collapse of reforms, inflation, unemployment. I thought that such stupid democrats in Moscow today, perhaps, can no longer be found, only in the reserves of emigration.

I was not a supporter of the mass resettlement of Soviet people to Israel: I believed that it was bad for Palestinians, whose place is occupied by emigrants, bad for Russia, which loses people, bad for Soviet Jews, who are led to an unnecessary business. And yet, if mass emigration to Israel has become a fact, this should be taken into account in any calculations of Russian foreign policy.

I met with the famous Russian-Israeli artist Mikhail Grobman, who is doing a lot to expand cultural contacts between his two homelands. In his opinion, Israel has developed a Russian colony in the Hellenic sense, and Russia should maintain cultural ties with it, pursue the line of "cultural imperialism". This has nothing to do with politics: France very actively supports the centers of French culture in Israel, while pursuing a rather anti-Israeli line. Russia can follow the same path - supporting culture and condemning politics. And in general, as Yesenin wrote to Marienhof from America: no one here needs our literature, only Jewish girls.

But the allies of the future Russia will be the Palestinians - both Orthodox, of which there are many in the Holy Land, and Muslims. Israel was and remains an enemy of Russia, an enemy of the Third World, a special forces of imperialism. These days, Israel demands to strangle Iran, as it previously sought Iraqi blood. Hatred of the Soviet Union was an axiom of Israeli politics, and now it has been replaced by contempt for Russia by Yeltsin's. This hatred has racist and religious roots - from generation to generation, Jews taught their children to spit at the sight of the church, to consider the murder of a non-Jew to be permissible, and the property of a non-Jew to be their own. The hatred of Jews towards the Slavs is especially acute: at the end of the last - beginning of our century, Jews did not hesitate to express this feeling in writing. Thus, the famous Jewish historian Eppenstein ("Jews in Germany", 1919) wrote:

"Stubbornly preserving the German language and the intellectual level acquired in Germany, Polish-Lithuanian Jewry has become a reliable protective wall against Slavic barbarians to this day." This feeling of ethnic, religious, cultural superiority is so strong among Jews that it is difficult to count on their realism. Even the catastrophe, the death of Eastern European Jewry did not undermine the sense of superiority, but made the hatred of the "goy" even more evil, albeit disguised.

Although Russian troops saved Auschwitz prisoners, this fact is not even mentioned in the permanent exhibition of the Yad Vashem Museum of the Death of Judaism in Jerusalem. Although millions of Russian soldiers died in World War II defending the Jews, Israel put an equal sign between the USSR and Hitler's Germany, between Stalin and Hitler. Moreover, Israel has treated Germany much better than Russia all these years.

This very dangerous small country has learned to mobilize Jewish communities in different countries, and primarily in the United States. Traditionally, Jews occupied liberal positions in the countries of their settlement. Only now, because of the bloc with Israel, Jews of other countries have taken imperialist positions, hate Arabs, Muslims, Russians, Orthodox, are ready to fill the Middle East with blood, refuse the principles of equality. The elimination of a racist state on the territory of Palestine would also lead to the elimination of the Zionist supranational entity. Jews - both in Palestine and in other countries - would become humane liberals again, and would eventually forget their time of intoxication with the force and theory of racial superiority. But so far, Israel is a sworn evil enemy of all the progressive forces of the planet, and there is nothing to negotiate with it yet.

Nuclear weapons in the hands of Israel are also not a joke threat. Israel will not be afraid to use it - against the Russians and Arabs. When I came to this conclusion, I lost confidence in the concept of "friendship with Israel", which is called for by liberals in Russia and Israel. Friendship with the people of Palestine, including with the Jews living here, who have taken pan-Palestinian and anti-racist positions - yes, but friendship with Israel, with its establishment, is support for a racist state.

During 1993-1995, when I was mostly in Israel, I was convinced that there was little difference between "bad" (right-wing Likud") and "good" (social democrats) Israelis. The "good ones" are more willing to cheat, and therefore more dangerous than rude and cruel "bad Israelis". In "Julio Hurenito" Ehrenburg describes this difference: "Inquisitors burned Jews, and humanists, fearing fire and ashes, whispered: it would be better to just kill them." Such "humanists" are "good Israelis" oppressing Palestinians under the guise of words about peace. The "peace process" turned out to be a deception, and with its help the "good Israelis" continue the same policy of robbing Arab lands and threaten the whole world.

TANKS IN MOSCOW.

In my first report from Moscow in 1989, I wrote:

"The streets of Moscow are infinitely wide, wider than Parisian boulevards and Californian highways, and are designed to be able to quickly enter tanks." History, apparently, learned from Chekhov, and knows that the gun hanging on the wall in the first act must be shot in the fifth act. The fifth act took place in the fall of 1993.

Yeltsin, unable to accept any limitation of his sole power, decided to disperse the parliament. The parliamentarians, who endured all his antics until the summer, were outraged. The opposition showed a truly democratic spirit and came to the support of the parliament, the democrats sided with the autocracy. Finally, Yeltsin brought tanks into the city and shot the parliament. It was a crime, not the first and not the last crime of Yeltsin.

The tank attack on the White House could be seen on television and heard on the radio - it was broadcast as a football match. But immediately after the ceasefire, an active campaign of silence began. If after the shooting in Tiananmen Square or after the events in Tbilisi with their 17 victims, all Western media did not stop for months and demanded a blockade, conviction and punishment of the perpetrators, after the bloody events in Moscow, a grave silence quickly came. A year after Tiananmen, Chinese leaders could not go abroad without a wave of protests - but then Yeltsin flew to Japan almost on the second day and was accepted without problems.

Those who needed proof of the duplicity of bourgeois morality and the bourgeois press were given it. Commentators emphasized the anti-Semitic and fascist nature of Yeltsin's opponents, Israeli Ambassador to Russia Chaim Bar-Lev said that Russian Jews stand for Yeltsin. The reports emphasized the presence of Barkashov and other groups using Nazi symbols. The parliament was called only with the prefix "reactionary", as if it was not the same Supreme Council that elected Yeltsin and legalized the Belovezh putsch. After the recent events, no honest person's opposition was purely mocking. And suddenly the authentic data began to arrive from the field. What a confusion! It was a unique opportunity to see history in action. Almost all political figures of Russia were on the TV show and right before our eyes we saw how inflated bubbles burst and real people appear. The communists got a great result. If it weren't for a number of circumstances, they would be able to return to power. The hysterical campaign against the communists was hindered, the uncertainty of voters that after the shooting of the White House Yeltsin would even allow the communist Duma to gather. The split in the communist movement interfered. But Zhirinovsky's victory was also a good outcome.

The Israeli press began to regularly print the memories of people who once saw this politician. There is no dirt that would not be poured on Zhirinovsky, who is not to their ease. It's funny that everyone reports his Jewish origin, as if there's something bad about it. Indeed, Zionists and Democrats are the most desperate anti-Semites at heart, judging by the way they are concerned about Vladimir Wolfovich's patronymic. It is said that Zhirinovsky was an activist of the Jewish cultural society at the beginning of the perestroika and even received an invitation to come to Israel for permanent residence. So far, no one has managed to find his requests to emigrate to Israel, but it is known that an invitation was sent to him. However, invitations from Israel were sent to a variety of Russian people, and often without their knowledge and without any request from them.

In Israel, and in the West, they are afraid of Zhirinovsky. I think that Yeltsin's Western puppeteers have already regretted that they so mediocrely exchanged the quietest Mikhail Sergevich and the meek Ruslan Imranovich for the fiery Zhirinovsky, managed to regret that they overthrew the communists' power aimed at peaceful coexistence and subjected Russia to terrible humiliation. The words of Pilate in Bulgakov's "Master and Margarita" are remembered, his formidable warning: "Remember my word, you will see here, high priest, more than one cohort in Jerusalem, no, a full legion of the fulminate will come under the walls of the city, the Arab cavalry will come, then you will hear bitter crying and moaning! Then you will regret that you sent a philosopher to death with his peaceful sermon."

Yes, the West and its allies will still have to remember with longing the rulers of the Soviet Union - Gorbachev, who surrendered Poland and Lithuania, Brezhnev, who did not dare to cross the border of Pakistan, Khrushchev, who only defended himself in Vietnam, and even Stalin, who stopped on the Elbe and gave up West Berlin, for which two hundred thousand Russian soldiers fell to the Americans.

A lot of things in Zhirinovsky's speeches are repelled. And it attracts - his anti-imperialist position, his opposition to the protracted cunning Western aggression against Russia.

Of course, the difference between the communists with their desire for peace and friendship between peoples, for creation, for equality - and the supporters of Zhirinovsky with their cult of power is great as between Christ and the legion of Fulminat. But the Master was right - those who rejected the peaceful philosopher chose grief and moaning themselves.

A lot can be forgiven, but not treason and betrayal. And certain forces in Russia, Israel and the West committed a terrible Judaic betrayal when they spoke in one voice about "commun-fascism". Those who said this word desecrated the memory of millions of Russian soldiers (with and without a party ticket) who fell in the battle with Nazism. If there is "commun-fascism", then the communists had to negotiate with the fascists during the Great Patriotic War and not die "in the fields beyond the sleepy Vistula" for the liberation of people and nations cursing Russia and communism. Stalin, as it were, foresaw this betrayal when he concluded the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

The second betrayal was the blessing of the Zionist-imperialist forces of the West - the October massacre in Moscow. In an instant, to achieve their own selfish interests, those very people who have been telling us for many years about the sanctity of democracy and human life - consecrated mass murder and dispersal of the legitimate parliament. And here Zhirinovsky's victory seems to be a fair retribution.

But there is a big gap between allies and fellow travelers. Today, communists are on the way with Zhirinovsky, and it is possible to restrain humanism in the name of uniting a single anti-imperialist front. But - only on the way. These two forces did not become allies, just as the extreme right, on the verge of neo-Nazism and fascism, cannot be allies. You can't rely on them. They can be fellow travelers, and the State Duma should not refuse the principles of communists. I realized this in 1993, and finally this position was justified during the Chechen war, when Zhirinovsky supported Yeltsin.

1995.

After 1994, the "small stagnation", when Russia tried to take a breath after the severe confrontation of the October shooting. The new year 1995 brought the storming of Grozny.

CHECHNYA.

Upon arrival in Moscow, I got my hands on the Sunday issue of "Moskovsky Komsomolets", and on its front page - an amazing message. Speaking about the Chechen campaign, the newspaper called Egorov the "restiner" and "the executioner of Chechnya". The name of the real executioner of Chechnya, President Yeltsin - was not even mentioned. It amazed me. In our Palestinians, we see daily reports from Chechnya on television, we see a bombed city that got Berlin and Dresden, but Egorov's name does not go so far. Everyone in the West knows that the war in Chechnya is the war of Yeltsin, the same Yeltsin who was constantly supported by the MC and similar disinformation agencies. Their attempts to shift the blame from Yeltsin to a little-known politician from the province reminded me of their older and deeper guilt.

"Democrats" have always tried to quarrel Russia with the East. From Americans and Israelis, their mentors, they became infected with racism and for them the freedom of Lithuania was more precious than the freedom and life of Asians. "Faces of Caucasian nationality", "Chechen mafia", "Hasbulat of the smart", "eviction of Caucasians" - who does not remember these expressions in the press? "Moskovsky Komsomolets", with such zeal demanded the involvement of some other anti-semite under Article 74 of the Criminal Code, did not miss the opportunity to mention when describing the crimes, which of them was committed by a "person of Caucasian nationality". The harassment of Caucasians in Moscow was started by the famous demvoryug and bribe-taker Gabriel Popov and continued by his worthy successor Luzhkov. The black shadow of the "Chechen mafia" was commemorated by the depression every day, especially in the days of their struggle with Hasbulatov. Caucasians, in particular Chechens - and I don't mean the mafia, which is perfectly arranged everywhere - were poisoned and evicted in Moscow and other Russian cities. This harassment was shed by the blood of Russian soldiers during the storming of Grozny.

There are still people who do not understand the bilaterality of all contracts, all actions. Chechens were expelled from Russia by the dempowers and the dempress. Not because of Dudayev, and not even because of Hasbulatov: the demo authorities needed an enemy to incite the hungry and impoverating population of Russian cities against him. Russian citizens were elected as the enemy - Chechens and other Caucasians. After that, when every Chechen realized that he had nothing to do in Russia, that he was not expected in Russia and treated as a foreigner - after that the demvavrs recalled that that Chechnya belonged to Russia. This should have been remembered earlier, and not treated with Chechens in Moscow as foreign aliens.

As the harassment of Caucasians in Russia intensified, so did the desire for independence in Chechnya. I think that Russia violated the unwritten treaty that connected it with Chechnya.

Violated it under Stalin in the era of expulsions, violated it under the Democrats, unleaving a vile racist campaign against this people. The desire of the Chechens to leave and heal independently in these conditions was understandable and understandable. Their struggle with the army sent by those who expelled them from Moscow, Orel, Rostov-on-Don was also understandable and worthy. But we can go further - the Democrats fell on the Chechens because the Russian people did not consider the Chechens to be their own. This rejection has geopolitical roots.

Chechnya, as the stubborn resistance of the Chechens showed, did not become part of Russia. While the Transcaucasian Christian enclaves Georgia and Armenia belonged to Russia, Chechnya and its neighbors in the Caucasus had to become a Turkish-Muslim enclave. But as soon as Transcaucasia left, the Caucasus had to fall away. Russia needed it only as a connection with Transcaucasia. Its deposition is not dangerous for Russia at all. The natural roots of the Caucasus are in the Turkic world, with which it is connected through Azerbaijan through the Caspian Sea and through Abkhazia through the Black Sea. Chechens and other Caucasian peoples stubbornly fought Russia in the 19th century, were not its allies during the wars of the 20th century and willingly set back to our time. This shows that they were annexed to Russia "by mistake" - when the tsarist authorities were still having illusory plans to recreate Christian Byzantium.

Yeltsin's Chechen campaign resembles Stalin's "winter campaign", the war with Finland in 1940. (And the fact that both showed the weakness of the Russian army and accelerated the approach of a big war). In both cases, the ruler of Russia tried to return the departed part of the Russian Empire under his hand, not thinking that its departure was not a case. Finland, having been part of the empire for more than a hundred years, remained part of another superethnos, and its loss was natural. Stalin made a mistake by annexing Western Ukraine, Western Belarus and the Baltic States to the USSR - these lands turned out to be a Trojan horse in Gorbachev's days, and contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union. We can say that Ukraine without Western regions would not have thought of violating the three-hundred-year union with Great Russia.

Russia's rights to Chechnya are no more and no less than Russia's rights to Finland. The Yeltsin authorities emphasize that Chechnya was part of the RSFSR. That's true, but the difference between union republics and autonomous ones is far-fetched. Thus, Tuva, independent until 1944, was made part of the RSFSR, and not a separate republic. Chechnya is on the periphery of Russia, it has lived separately from Russia for three years, and undoubtedly could live independently and further.

Geopolitically and strategically, nothing threatens Russia from Transcaucasia, and therefore there is no reason to hold Chechnya and other republics of the Caucasus Mountains. This distinguishes the situation in the south from the west, where Russia's withdrawal from the Baltic republics is associated with a very real danger of the location of NATO troops on the threshold of Russia.

But apparently, the last proof that Chechnya is not Russia was provided by the army. They don't beat their own like that. They don't destroy their city like that. Since the time of John IV the Terrible, who ruined Novgorod, Russian history has not known anything like this. In the bloody history of the 20th century, the shooting of Grozny stands alone: Gernika, bombed by German pilots, was Beirut, shelled by the Israelis, but Grozny, slowly and methodically, destroyed by aviation in front of the whole world, added a new page to this list.

"If the defeat of Chechnya had occurred under the communists, all Sovietologists would have explained it by the satanic, devilish nature of Marxism, and would have talked about it all the time. Now, when there is no communism, Western governments are trying not to focus on the war in the Caucasus. Instead, they think about the Russian character, about Russian cruelty, not connected with Marxism in any way." This is what one of the leading Israeli ideologues, Professor Avineri, writes. It's very offensive, but it's true - Yeltsin managed to show the beastly sclee of the new Russia, which overshipsed all the pictures of Soviet times. Neither the entry of Soviet troops into Prague, nor the protracted campaign in Afghanistan gave such pictures on TVs in the living rooms of the West. (Russian television did not show anything like that).

Of course, what is happening in the Caucasus has nothing to do with the Russian character. The most Russian poet of the XX century Sergei Yesenin shows a truly Russian attitude to the problem of Chechnya. In his poem "Pugachev" the tsarist voivode comes to the Cossacks and sends them to return to the hand of the Russian tsar - the Kyrgyz, who "changed the Russian Empire" and fled, to return until they "with all their palms were handed over to China". But the Cossacks answer him: "for Russia, of course, it hurts us, because Russia is our mother", but "Kyrgyz is not a gray hare for us, at whom you can shoot like food" and "it's good that he managed to turn from our outskirts without pain". The Russian people - unlike the imperial authorities - did not want to hold anyone by force, and in "Russia - the prison of the people" they were not a jailer, but the first prisoner.

IMPERIAL TEMPTATION.

I am proud of my cooperation with the editorial staff of "Day" ("Tomorrow"), because they withstood the damn difficult imperial temptation, a temptation that broke yesterday's like-minded people and allies from Nevzorov to Limonov. When the empire, your country is fighting in the distance, there is a temptation to support your flag, your army. Many remarkable English poets and writers of the beginning of the century, when the British army fought in South Africa against the Boers, did not resist this temptation. It was a vile imperialist war, during which "strategic villages" were first created (then this patent was used by the Americans in Vietnam and Latin America) and concentration camps (ignorant anti-Soviets tried to give copyright to Lenin). Boer women and children were driven to concentration camps, and the good British poet Swinburne, author of lyrical gentle poems, wrote in 1901, proud of his country and army: "Female and offspring of our bloodthirsty enemies // no one but us would spare, would not be afraid to starve or interrupt."( Joyce's hero Stephen Daedalus called these poems an ode to the glory of concentration camps).

Eduard Limonov, a writer whom I have known for many years and whose work I have always treated with love and respect, became such a modern Russian Swinburne. In his newspaper, he calls on "Mr. President Yeltsin" to "lend a hand to him and rely on him". Limonov reaches out his hand through the corpses of his comrades in the siege of the White House in October 1993 - only because the "Mr. President" put thousands more corpses of Chechens and Russians next to them.

You can imagine a situation when you put up with the most vile government of your country, when "Hannibal is at the gate", as the Latins said. So people who hated Stalin fought for their homeland in the Great Patriotic War. But there is a completely different carpet: Russia is not in danger, and Dudayev's troops do not stand on Ugra. So far, we don't have to run to the flag and show solidarity with the Kremlin clife. Now Limonov has shown the rightness of the communists who did not support him in the elections - if he wants to be relied on by "Mr. President", then you can't rely on him.

Limonov urges not to be afraid of the reaction of the West, because the West behaved in this way: the French in Algeria and New Caledonia, the British in India and Ireland, Americans in Panama, Grenada and Vietnam. To this can be added Israelis in Lebanon and Palestine. The facts are true, only the conclusion is wrong, and once Limonov knew it. In his first and best novel "This is me - Edichka" he spoke out against imperialist aggression, against racist persecution. In the novel, Limonov meets an American white chauvinist, a kind of American Nevzorov of the Chechen campaign period, admires him, but concludes: I will be on the side of the blacks he hates at a decisive moment. Almost twenty years passed, and Limonov changed his promise. He was on the side of the racists.

And then his previous book "Against Zhirinovsky" became clear. All its two hundred pages can be reduced to one thought: "Brothers, and Zhirinovsky is a Jew!" And Eduard Limonov borrowed this idea from "Moskovsky Komsomolets". It was this newspaper, where there are many Jewish employees, that wrote about Zhirinovsky's Jewishness almost daily. MK, of course, was not satisfied with Zhirinovsky's origin - they never reminded us of the Jewish origin, say, Shabad or Mrs. Sakharova, or Gaidar. They are not satisfied with the anti-Zionist Jew, and Zhirinovsky, with all his shortcomings, is a consistent anti-Zionist.

In everything else, Limonov imitates Zhirinovsky, including the main "puncture" of Wolfovich, noticed by Limonov himself. In this book, he rightly writes about the influence of Zionism on Zhirinovsky, that his dream of the Indian Ocean, his doctin of imperialist wars is an attempt to transplant the Israeli concept of seizures and merciless colonization on Russian soil. Now Limonov has also adopted this Zionist ideology of the most chauvinistic nature. Thus, some Israeli Sionist writers supported the Lebanese war and the blockade of Beirut.

The Chechen campaign separated the lambs from the goats in the ranks of the opposition. Our yesterday's allies, Lysenko (whose Zionist roots I wrote about in "Day"), Nevzorov with his cult of force (not justice), Barkashov with his Nazi symbols. Limonov and Zhirinovsky, with their essentially Zionist ideology, became Yeltsin's right hand. If the Russian army kills the "beasts" - you have to be on the side of the Russian army, this is their position in short. To tell the truth, these allies, who were balancing on the half-permitted edge of fascism and Nazism, could be ashamed of before, but you can't choose allies.

The Communists took the right position in this war, which Lenin would also take. A Russian nobleman, Russian patriot and great statesman, Lenin in the preface to the Petrograd post-revolutionary (April 1917) edition of "Imperialism" writes about the shameful falseness of capitalists and their apologists, condemning annexations and enslavement overseas, but silencing their own crimes. "Suppose the Russian opposes the American annexation of the Philippines (the then equivalent of the American wars in Panama, Vietnam, Iraq). We will be able to recognize the Russian's struggle against American annexations as sincere and honest only if he fights for the right of Finland, Poland, Ukraine, Khiva, Bukhara, Estonia and other lands inhabited by non-Great Russians to set aside from Russia".

Limonov and others with him could not stand this "test of Lenin for sincerity". It turns out that when they opposed American and Zionist imperialism, they lied. They were satisfied with imperialism, if it was "their imperialism". As Prokhanov wittily said, the imperialism of Limonov and Nevzorov is like Przewalski's horse.

V.I. Lenin constantly advocated the right of peoples to self-determination, up to separation. That is why he eventually managed to rally the great Soviet Union. Sergei Kurginyan, one of the leaders of the opposition who could not withstand the Chechen test, told me that Lenin's position was not so unambiguous, and that after the revolution he supported military actions aimed at creating a single state against local nationalist forces. I heard this argument from other people as well. This is a pervergence: even if Lenin and the Leninists were against separatism, when the working people were in power in Moscow, at the moment Moscow is ruled by the comprador circles of the Russian bourgeoisie. So, separatism in these conditions is a defense against Russian imperialism, this small branch of international imperialism.

Lenin's greatness was also expressed in the fact that he denied the possibility of a patriotic attitude and blind love for the "imperialist homeland". While Russia was imperialist, he was against its wars. Now Russia has become imperialist again. So, today the Leninists should unequivocally oppose its wars, against its aggressions, for the right to self-determination of its lands, not only the national outskirts, but also the territorial ones - Siberia and the Urals, which are now being exploited by the comprador-imperial center. The identification of the current Russian Federation with Soviet Russia, on whose side we stood in all conflicts from Angola and Afghanistan to Lithuania - is simply wrong. Real communists and all decent people are against the war in Chechnya not because the West does not like it - the imperialist West itself is not sinless, and not because it is sorry for the dying Russian soldiers - although they are, of course, sorry, but this is a racist argument worthy of fans of the American strategy of bombing the civilian population (while their soldiers do not die). I feel sorry for a Chechen to the same extent as a Russian soldier. Both are people, both suffer from the imperialist policy of Yeltsin's Moscow. The Chechen people have the right to self-determination until independence, and they exercised this right three years ago. When the working people win again in Moscow, the Soviet Union will be restored, and there may be a place for a free Soviet Chechnya. But for this today, communists must be, like Lenin, on the side of free Chechnya.

In Stalin's years, Pasternak wrote: "The more than age is not yesterday, but the power is the same in temptation in the hope of glory and goodness to look at things without fear." The key word in these verses is "seduction". It is akin to the three temptations of Christ, an imperial temptation, a temptation to support "your" army, "your" homeland. Christ - and then Lenin - were taught to reject this temptation.

We, citizens of imperialist countries, all have to fight such temptations - both honest Americans, like Angela Davis, and honest French, like Sartre. Every time an Israeli newspaper reprints my articles condemning Israel's aggressive policy, there is a cheers-patriot accusing me of anti-patriotism and direct betrayal against the Jewish people. But it's better this way than to be on the side of the imperialists - in Vietnam, Algeria, Gaza, Chechnya.

Criminals have a custom - to bind a newcomer with bloodshed, let him participate in the murder so that there is no way back. The imperialists of the West have done something similar now: after the massacre of Chechnya, it will be difficult for Russia to imagine itself as a country attracting the hearts and minds of Third World countries.

The war in Chechnya is a colonial war, like the war in Congo in the sixties or in Kenya in the fifties. Russia has not been a colonial power for many years: it not only did not rob the union and fraternal republics, but also subsidized them. The whole world knew this, and that's why the USSR attracted the Third World so much. Now Yeltsin was able to put Russia among the colonial powers."

In 1995, I came to Moscow again. The story didn't end, no matter what Fukuyama said. The revived capitalism in Russia turned out to be strong, the future of Russia is still unknown, and the present is unsightly. It used to seem to me that the short aberration of the Yeltsin and Democrats would quickly die, and the Soviet Union would return. But this time I felt like Shulgin, who visited the Soviet Russia he hated in 1921: apparently, this nightmare for a long time.

I didn't want to finish this book on a pessimistic note - no matter what, I believe in the future of Russia. Therefore, let one of my theatrical reviews serve as the final note.

UNCLE VANYA AND AUNT ASSA.

The last sensational and sold-out premiere of the Maly Theater, "Uncle Vanya", is not an ordinary production, but all stars, "theater of stars". There is a kind of theatrical productions that resembles cinema, when wonderful and the most famous actors are recruited for production "from the outside" the staffing table, a special team is created, its own director and producer appears, the "Theater of one play" appears, strengthening the main troupe. This is a good invention that attracts the audience and allows you to refresh the theater. He is also loved in London, where Dustin Hoffman played the main role on stage, raising ticket prices tenfold, and in Moscow - it is enough to remember the "star" "Players XXI" or the play "Sorry" with Churikova recently staged by Gleb Panfilov in "Lenkom".

And then, in Maly, there were all stars, starting with the producer, the legendary Azerbaijani millionaire Tagi-zade, the king of the flower trade, who then bought all the cinemas and the Cannes floor during the festival. (The stage design and scenery are quite modest and do not distract from the actors, and should not require incredible efforts from Taghi-zade). But the main one, as in any production, is the director. Sergey Solovyov. This small, fat, ugly director continues the theme of love through the gap between generations - in other words, "Aunt Assa and Uncle Vanya".

The similarity of the performance with the famous film begins from the street: Solovyov likes to go beyond the premises allocated to him. At the premiere of "Assa" at one time a real happening unfolded on the street, and this time on Petrovka next to the Central Department Store and Bolshoi, pushing away speculators and attracting spectators (as in "Pinocchio"), a wonderful old-fashion orchestra in clothes of Chekhov's times plays before the performance. For those who have not been to the Maly Theater after its reconstruction, I will say just in case that this is one of the most elegant theaters in Moscow, really small, but full of gold, mirrors, stucco balconies - like a miniature copy of the Parisian Opera. Maly is a holiday theater, the birthplace of classical Russian drama, a theater corresponding to the ideas about the capital's theater, on a par with the Moscow Art Theater and the Vakhtangov Theater. You expect classicism from him - and you get it. But this classicism is unusual, postmodern classicism, or, say, classicism for rock-loving youth.

The central collision of "Uncle Vanya" is connected with the romance of young Ellen, Elena Andreevna, the wife of an elderly Professor and (relatively younger) Doctor. This is "10 years later" regarding the marriage of Ellen and Professor. ("She won't see him young, and he won't see her old," as Zhvanetsky or some Odessa resident like him joked). However, the elegant professor Alexander Serebryakov is not the hero of the play, neither positive nor negative.

The heroine is Ellen, Elena Andreevna (Svetlana Amanova), driving everyone crazy - both the Doctor, Ivan ("Uncle Vanya"), and her husband - with her total femininity. There is something special about these girls, leaving the usual circle of their peers, and jumping beyond the edge of time, to men much older than themselves. After all, this step is not made by calculation, as Ellen explains to Sona: "You're angry with me for marrying your father by calculation... I swear to you - I marryed him out of love." Young Sonya was wrong, as the young hero of "Assa" was wrong - after all, only over the years you begin to understand and appreciate simply - the beauty of youth. Peers will not be able to appreciate this, which means that Koelodoev had an advantage that the author of "Mochalkin Blues" did not understand, another hero of Solovyov: not money, not academic titles and not "luxury" rooms, but the subjure of youth.

The heroine is Sonya, she is played by Tatiana Drubich from "Assa" - and the remark of the previous paragraph fully applies to her. After all, the doctor Astrov is far from her peer. "Ten years ago you were young, handsome, and now you're old," the old nanny tells him. True, the "gap of years" began in the time of Chekhov not there - fifteen to twenty years of rupture, as between Sonya and the Doctor, were not considered strange. For Drubich, this is a theatrical debut, her acting is adequate, but nothing more.

Solomin's two brothers - Yuri (Ivan Petrovich) and Vitaly (doctor Astrov) play incomparably. The key to the tragedy of "Uncle Vanya" is given in one of the first monologues of the hero, when he irritably recalls: "Now I am forty-seven years old. I don't sleep at night with annoyance, from anger, that I was so stupid about time." Ivan Petrovich Voynitsky came to middle age crises, as the Americans say, to the "middle-age crisis", and events on stage only allow him to break out in shooting and scandals. Doctor Astrov is as a hussar or courtier, the audience loves him and always accuses him off. Because of his valence, he lacks passion, and his courtship of Ellen is like a country flirtation.

Solovyov has a special, very good attitude to his youth, and he can be forgiven for all this. After all, at the center of today's problems in Russia lies the moral bankruptcy of the older generation, deep bankruptcy, like the ruin of Chekhov's characters. In Galkovsky's dispute with the sixties, which passed through the pages of many Russian newspapers, there was a reproach to the elders - in spiritual vampirism, in the eating of the lives of the young. The older ones received the youth as a consumer, writes Galkovsky, a pretty girl - to take into their hands, and the boy - to drive for a bottle. The shame was not in this - these are the prerogatives of "grandparents" in the army, whose name is humanity, but in the rejection of responsibility, which must be paid for prerogatives. The older generation took advantage of the young ones and gave them to eat. Solovyov, apparently, agrees with Galkovsky (as well as the author of these lines).

Young people in Russia are much better than the middle and older generations. At the recent holiday of "Pravda" I came across the newspaper of the Russian Komsomol "Barabash", and in it - a wonderful article signed with a funny pseudonym Levatsky "Communism is cool". It described the paths of young people to communism: for intellectuals - it's midnight sittings with the names of Marcuse and Mao on the lips, for healthy "jachki" - it's class solidarity "for a poor Vietnamese, against a speculator in his "Mercedes" and with a whore in a mink coat" (I quote from memory). And this is in our time of complete bankruptcy of the elders, who for intellectuals have a sit with a conversation about bank loans and the advantages of the American way of life, and for strong men - complete unprincipledness or confusion. After all, both the catastrophe that befell the Soviet Union and the complete disarmament, robbery and degradation of the country are the fault of the older generation that ruled the country at all levels.

Not so long ago I witnessed this complete bankruptcy - at an evening in honor of Fazil Iskander at the Hermitage Theater on the occasion of their receipt of some German award. The theater was luxurious - a whole greenhouse of tropical plants, tastefully decorated the stage, on which Patriarch Oleg Volkov was half-lying in an armchair and Fazil Iskander was sitting on guard. In the foyer on tables covered with starched sheets, there were half-forgotten salts up to gray beluga caviar and bottle batteries. Fazil thanked Germany in his thank-yeed speech and scolded the "communism". Heinrich Heine, he said, wrote that the communists would wrap herring in his poem, and the poet did not take into account that under "communism" (the laureate was not given a solid "z") and there would be no herring. Fazil did not look like a man who did not give herring (or belugian caviar) until the victory of the Democrats, but apparently such applications are as necessary these days as references to backward tsarist Russia under Brezhnev. And the continuation of Fazil's speech was as swoll and flat as a herring: the same anti-Soviet jokes, outdated twenty years ago, the same brave kicking of the late rulers of the Soviet Empire along with benevolent obeaths towards the current rulers.

He's not the only one - everyone was like that. The elderly Oleg Volkov said that by giving him the second prize, Germany made atone for its sin. What sin? You'll never guess: what she gave birth to Marx and Lenin (??? because Grandpa Blank?? or a reservation?). Volkov did not specify how many stamps of the award Germany had to give to make up, for example, the blockade of Leningrad, but it's a pity. No less outdated were other guests of honor - Yulik Kim came out with a guitar and sang a song - about Jews who are offended by... Kunyaev (editor of "Our Contemporary"), which at the evening that glorified Germany, sounded somewhat anecdotal. With all my sympathy for Kim twenty-five years ago, it must be said that he felt like a sturgeon of the second freshness. Bella Akhmadulina came on stage straight from a shelter for the nervous patients, swaying, in an interrupted voice she expressed her love to the laureate and explained how good he was ("And he could have razor on the eyes!" - as in the joke). It was painful to look at her, and it was a shame for those who took her out of naphthalene. It was a holiday of the morally outdated and morally bankrupt generation, who made a career on a safe front, on cookies in their pocket, on vulgar political hints, flirting with American whars and Yakovlevs, contributing to the destruction of the country and now serving for handouts. Serve, Treasure! But - "that's not the trouble, Vidok Figlyarin", that you prefer the German brand and don't like "communism", the trouble is that your tirades are boring and monotonous. And despite the selected bite and pleasant company, I regretted that I did not go to a cool rock concert - or to "Uncle Vanya" by Chekhov-Solovyov, where there is a place for youth.

"We don't need old people, communism is a matter for young people," said ninety years ago Vladimir Lenin, in his thirties, to his forty-year-old opponents. He was right - communism and art require youth and energy, otherwise it turns out the political buro of Chernenko, Gorbachev and Yeltsin, and the art of Fazil and Yulik Kim.

Solovyov turned out to be a good theater, let's say - a post-perestroika theater, the antithesis of the perestroika theater of Mark Zakharov. In "Lenkom" the latter in "Sorry" - a photo of Yeltsin is pinned, "don't touch the democrats!" - says Churikova, and "Jews" - every third word. Solovyov has no Jews and no thick hints of the political situation in Russia, no desire to serve the authorities. It is no coincidence that in the program of the performance the director says about himself: "When everyone was fighting with the Soviet line and dissident, I filmed Chekhov, Pushkin, Gorky. And "Uncle Vanya" is a hyper-academic performance.

It's really not a conjunctural performance. Sergei Solovyov resembles Nikita Mikhalkov in this way - he gives the highest quality of Russian art without political flirtation and without outdated things.

And there was another surprise for me in this performance: it always seemed to me that "we will still see the sky in diamonds, Uncle Vanya" is an optimistic belief in a better, bright tomorrow. And now I learned to my amazement that the bright tomorrow is after death! "We will live... we will die obediently... and God will have pity on us and we will see a bright life... the whole sky is in diamonds" - that's how, it turns out, Sonya calmed the upset Uncle Vanya!

Source: https://kprf.ru/library/classics/reports/11217.html