A hole in the curtain

I stumble on the Internet on such a message: “The Department of Family and Youth Policy of the city of Moscow in accordance with the order of the Moscow Government dated 02.15.07 No. 252-RP" On the holding of the Moscow festival of youth and students dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the VI World Youth and Students, the organization and coordination of the youth festival. " Well, how could I forget such a date? Fifty years, it turns out. And I remember all this.

I was ten years old - not so much to understand everything, but not so little as not to understand anything. That summer it was strongly recommended to take the children outside the capital. I don’t remember why, I stayed in Moscow. With my friend and neighbor Sasha Smirnov, also for some reason remaining in the city, we wandered in the center, stared at unthinkable miracles like living blacks and Indians. They wandered freely along the central streets, smiled, sang in unthinkable languages ​​and played on unknown tools. The eyes blinded with brightness and multicolor.

I remember an elderly exalted lady who, grabbing by the hand of some thin Indian, she spoke loudly and in syllables, as is often the case when they say with foreigners: "I am o-th-th Indian cinema! Do you understand? Oh, you understand me?" The Indian smiled and nodded his head, wrapped in something terribly unwell and inconceivably beautiful. Then he put some kind of motley badge in her hand. However, it is quite possible that it was not an Indian, but someone else.

Smirnov and I were also given badges and postcards. They were stored in home collections for many years. Then they went somewhere.

The festival was an event without exaggeration epoch -making. It suddenly became obvious that before him we lived in a black and white world. The spirit of the unthinkable, inappropriate freedom hung over the buried capital.

The air was so powerfully charged with erotic energy that a year after the festival in Moscow, babies of all the colors of the rainbow began to appear. Now these are quite adults.

But not only this trace left the festival. And not only toponymic relics in the form of countless festival streets and cinemas "Friendship".

Many older artists later admitted that the exhibition of modern painting brought in those days in Moscow turned their ideas about art in those days and gave the first impulse to everything that is now aggregate called modern Russian art. As a few years later, and later, the ideological guide tried to put in the place of the unbelted "abstract-pidaras", nothing could be done-it was done.

After the festival, dudes appeared - the first aesthetic dissidents. After the festival, an idea of ​​fashion appeared. After the festival, rock and roll appeared. After the festival, the youth subculture in our country found, although timid, albeit provincial, but distinct features. Farcers appeared - a kind of cultural heroes, albeit not quite disinterested, but brave and consistent intermediaries between the Soviet layman and the world material culture. And the spiritual - too. Who, if not they could get the record of Elvis Presley or Luis Armstrong? They were Hermes of those years. And even by Prometheians. Yes, and treated them almost as badly.

Stalin - not even iron - the reinforced concrete curtain did not open in those days. In those days, only a narrow gap was opened in him, but such a stream of air poured into this gap that it intoxicated the whole generation for many years. The lesson of the festival is another lesson that freedom is not an absolute concept. That freedom tangible only in the context of lack of freedom. That she, sort of like matter, is given to us only in our feelings. That freedom is just a feeling of freedom and nothing more. And it, this sensation, was then. We were not given freedom, we were only shown it through a hole in the curtain. Smirnov and I did not know how to formulate anything like that. We sensed this very freedom in childishness directly, and it appeared to us in a bright and sparkling form, in front of which even the New Year tree seemed almost as tedious as the presentation by the picture "arrived on vacation."

There was no freedom, but there was a feeling. Then it was ...

And what will be the festival dedicated to the festival and secured by the Department of Family and Youth Policy, it is better not to imagine. Apparently, in style and emotional intensity, it will not be significantly sparkling than the announcement quoted at the beginning. In short, we will not think about the festival that will be held in accordance with order No. 252-RP. Let the mentioned department think about it and all those who, spitting on the palms, were made to saw and cut. This is their holiday.

But we will probably remember about the fifty -year -old event. Recall with gratitude, with tenderness and, imagine, with hope.