1983

We have become an empire of evil

At the beginning of the year, one of the best films about our aimless generation of hypocrites - “Flights in a dream and in reality” was released on the screens. The impasse was felt in it with clarity almost painful. There is still a sound of endless sheets crushed by Yankovsky ...

At the beginning of the year, one of the best films about our aimless generation of hypocrites - “Flights in a dream and in reality” was released on the screens. The impasse was felt in it with clarity almost painful. Until now, in the ears there is the sound of endless sheets of white paper crushed by Yankovsky, on which he seemed to try to write something, but somehow everything did not work out ...

The year turned out not the most cheerful: the Andropov caps of truants and violators of labor discipline began, the shops stood empty during the day, and people entered the daytime sessions in the movies. True, this did not apply to students. I graduated from the university and went to the “free swimming” that was not quite common for the then Soviet life, taking off her little by little for different publications.

... A little boy in checkered pants and his mother, frozen with skewers and a bitten lavash, is my trip to Georgia to Tbilisoba in October. Formally, Tbilisobu can be called a harvesting holiday, but my memory remained a universal cheerful booth with a variegated crowd, in which some spiritual workers, loafers-kinto, sellers of that and fifth-fifth in soft boots and wide trousers, thick matchmakers with pressed eyebrows and painted antennae, are flickered. Circassians with gazyrs and even medieval warriors in chain mail. They all had a different elegance and alien plastic with endless hands to the sky, the mysterious word "Weime!" And especially pronounced by the letter "K". Along the square stood village aunts with large worn suitcases of the color of dirt, in the suitcases lay the churchel and sluggish persimmons brought for sale, shifted by mint newspapers. Above the aunts on the bare autumn branches, apples, pears and grenades hung. Mangals were built around, and dexterous merchants of barbecue emerged from blue smoke. It was a delightful space, carnal and tender at the same time, falling in love with itself at once and without a trace ...

But Tbilisoba will be only in the fall, and on March 8, Ronald Reagan, who was not aware of the carnal and tenderness of some of our spaces, will call the USSR an empire of evil. I will give completely his phrase:

“In discussions on limiting nuclear weapons, I conquer you to succumb to the temptation of pride - temptation, when you blissfully declare yourself above what is happening - and consider both sides to be mistaken equally, ignore the facts of history and aggressive impulses of the Empire of Evil, simply call the arms race with a gigantic misunderstanding and thus exclude yourself from the struggle between truth and lodge, good and good and good and good and good and good and good and good. evil ".

For me, today, the same “Kuzkina Mother”, only with mother -of -pearl buttons. But the Politburovo old people were angry, eagerly angry, for a long time this “Empire of Evil” was chewed, they decided to continue to butt out more than the former, and America began to slowly prepare for star wars.

And then it happened on September 1, and a vile story with a Korean passenger aircraft, which was shot down by a Soviet military pilot. Two hundred and sixty nine people died.

My vile country was silent about this for several days, and then began to lie. And stubbornly lied for quite some time: the Korean “Boeing” train reached us through the entire perestroika, and only in 1992 Boris Nikolaevich handed over the deciphering of negotiations and materials from the Politburo with a wide gesture of the large Russian unzistan.

The plane collapsed near Sakhalin, more precisely, next to the island of Moneron. Exactly a year before, I was on Moneron and lived there with the loachers of Aunt Tanya and Uncle Kolya Ivanov. Aunt Tanya herself made mayonnaise and Olivier salad, in which instead of meat were rapans and trepangs. In memory of the small island, I still had Galiotis - a mother -of -wing pearl, a single -leaf shell in the shape of an ear.

In good weather, Japan was visible from Moneron. The aunt Tanya went ashore ashic, especially after a storm, to collect colored slaps and flip -flops brought from there with a current. As a rule, they were all unpaired, and Aunt Tanya accumulated a whole box, but she did not throw in the hope that the couple would someday.

And when it became clear that we shot down the plane with passengers, for some reason I immediately thought about the Ivanovs beachrs: how they go ashore to collect vietnamese, and on the shore full of all clothes, suitcases and a whole bunch of paired slaps ...

... We went from Tbilisi through some kind of pass, probably it was a road to Swanetia. Very heavy snow was walking, and the black forests around gradually disappeared and fell into snow cotton wool. The house in which we stopped was large and very poor, the old man and the old woman lived in it. They had turkeys, nuts, beans and corn. Corn lay in galvanized basins on a huge summer veranda. We stayed there for three days and froze terribly ...

This was my first physical meeting with Georgia.

In the summer of 2010, in the park of Batumi, I saw a monument-a bluish bust of a mustachioed person-and asked him an old professional.

- This is one of our artist, you do not know, Pirosmani Surname, Nico Name. Here is the song: “a million red roses”, Alla Pugacheva sings - this is about him and one beautiful lady, ”the passerby answered.

For the first time, the country heard the "million red roses" in 1983. Did we know then that Georgia, like a butterfly, waving its wings, will retire, fly away, almost disappear from our cultural space, only shagen skin of our love will remain ...

Meanwhile, on October 28, 1983, a joint solemn meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Georgia and the Supreme Council of the Georgian SSR was held, dedicated to the two hundredth anniversary of the St. George Treatise.