When the pioneers killed the homeless, and "Andrei Rublev" looked like porn... - Pal Semenych? This is Shilov,” said the receiver. “Hello, Shilov,” I replied. There was a painful pause. And the longer it lasted, the more clearly I realized that I was not speaking with ...

When the pioneers killed the homeless, and "Andrei Rublev" looked like porn...

- P

al Semenych? This is Shilov,” said the receiver.

“Hello, Shilov,” I replied.

There was a painful pause. And the longer it lasted, the more clearly I realized that I was talking not at all with my friend Midhat, but with a completely different person. And the understanding inevitably crept that this was Lieutenant General Ivan (I don’t remember my patronymic), the new head of the Main Directorate of Criminal Investigation of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the entire USSR, a person deeply unfamiliar to me, but a letter to which my well-wishers put on the table lieutenant general. And he did call.

— M-mmm... uh, — I brightened up the pause. And the main detective of the country never found out about the reasons why a fairly ordinary employee of a youth newspaper treats quite serious comrades in such an over-familiar manner.

In a word, friendship with this Shilov did not work out.

On the other hand, I have been friends with another detective for almost thirty years, who at the same time described now worked in an outstanding position in the same Ministry of Internal Affairs of the same Union. Gena Filchenkov, about whom I will only say that he was from the team of the great Karpets, and Minister Pugo managed to sign the order for his resignation no less than August 19, 1991. I found what is called time.

But I'm not talking about that.

And that the time has come to dispel the misconceptions that arise among the readers of Novaya Gazeta. Some of them are attentive, made a completely wrong conclusion, as if the main thing in my memoirs, which I share with them due to an oversight of the editorial board, is propaganda of a social vice - drunkenness. I, in turn, am allegedly subject to it (the vice) all my conscious and unconscious life and I am completely inexplicably proud of it.

Today's story is about how I did not drink a glass.

It was 1983. The newspaper where I worked then received an anonymous message in the form of a huge TELEGRAM. From which it followed that in the city of Gorlovka, Donetsk region, the police had blossomed to an extraordinary degree, and as an example, the fact of the domestic murder of two homeless people in the bathhouse of the Kochegarka mine was cited, which juvenile schoolgirls kicked homeless people for fun (surnames followed), and the police even this horror did not register. Nonsense.

But I still called Filchenkov.

“No, it’s nonsense, of course,” he said. - With us, you understand, everything can be, but so as not to put two murders in the report ... no.

And by the way, we agreed on an informal meeting next Wednesday.

But Filchenkov called literally in forty minutes. “You will laugh,” he said, “but it turns out to be true. Those bitches really didn't record both murders." And he asked me what I want to do with this fact. I proudly replied that I would go on a business trip. “I will ask you,” Filchenkov said, “to wait four days. I’ll send a commission there today, but they’ll meet you normally there, right on the gangway, and they’ll show you everything. ” So they did.

IN

In Donetsk, I was met not even on the gangway, but directly in the cabin of the plane - by the general and his three deputies. We were taken to Gorlovka in three cars. On the very first day, they took me on an excursion to the mine - and I have never experienced greater horror in my whole life. Kochegarka, it turns out, is perhaps the most terrible mine in the country, the layers have long been worked out, and in the three hours that I spent there, I had to wade through half-meter cracks to God knows how deep. The black people I met on the way worked practically naked (exactly like in the picture in the school history textbook), with respirators shifted to one side, and if I chopped three kilograms of coal with a hammer trusted for a minute, then they have a shift ...

In short, much later, already during perestroika, I had to travel around the mining areas, but then I went down directly into the mine only once - at Vorgashorskaya, in Vorkuta, and this, I tell you, was, of course, a resort. And then he refused all offers, saying: yes, I have been. "Where?" they asked me condescendingly. “And at the Kochegarka,” I replied. “Yes, yes,” the miners said respectfully and no longer bothered with proposals.

Well

back in Gorlovka I was invited to watch a movie in the evening. “Yes, you,” I protested. Andrey Rublev! the local chiefs tempted me, and I trembled. But in the office of the head of the city cinema division, they first showed me a stupid American action movie, and I kept wondering when they were going to play Rublev. Everything turned out to be very simple: only one scene was launched from Rublev - naked girls at the Ivan Kupala festival, everything else was rejected as worthlessness.

Of course, I really surprised the owners with my claims on this matter, they didn’t have ALL the film at all. On the other hand, they showed me a repertory pamphlet listing ALL the films allowed by Moscow, and in the second column there was a note about permission by Ukraine, then by the region, then by the city committee of the party: these all harmful were consistently crossed out, and as a result Gorlovka got very little ...

And as for the actual business trips ... Quiet boys, from twelve to fifteen years old, went into the bathhouse of the mine for two days in a row, took out the homeless people who were warming themselves there in front of everyone and beat them in the yard with their feet. The investigator told me that she drew attention to the fact that one was beaten only on the upper part of the body. “But we knew Uncle Vitya,” the guys said. “He has a sick stomach, so here we are…”

To talk with me, the guys were removed from lessons, and they came to the director's office in ironed shirts and (which, I remember, especially struck me) in pioneer ties. They watched meekly. “He was wrong,” one of them assessed what he had done. The adults were more definite: “These bums!..” they said. “Because of these scumbags, the good guys are suffering now…”

In general, I returned to Moscow and wrote the material. I was very upset that I could not soar above the texture, let me down with understanding ... But now I think that I have not printed anything better in my life, the dreary and hopeless inhumanity was reproduced in full ... The straight old man General Makashov, typing open letters to me , specifically noted that I "under the communists" praised their great achievements, and spoiled "only occasionally and stealthily." This time I shat twelve million copies...

P

Late in the evening the censor summoned me. I then headed the department of science, contacts with these guys were constant and human relations. “I can’t miss this,” Valera told me. - I need a visa". "Whose?" "Ministry of Internal Affairs," Valera replied. And I did something that I still cannot explain to myself. I lied, knowing full well how it would end, not only for me, but also for the person who trusted me. I said: "I have verbal permission from Deputy Minister Mikhailov." “Write,” said Valera.

And on the print, I wrote the already voiced lie and signed it. The newspaper is out. And they would have removed the note, nothing would have happened, you never know they were removed from me, why did I get into this ...

Filchenkov called in the morning. He did not know anything and congratulated. I exhaled for the first time. It turned out that the new Andropov minister Fedorchuk, to whom the newspaper was brought, drew across the text: “All these (pam-pam) to (pum-pum-pam) mother!”

... But I'm not talking about that. It was during the Gorlovka business trip that I did not drink a glass. Even on the plane ladder, he told the general that he had just suffered from hepatitis. He was frankly upset, but I withstood the version before departure.