Fragments of bas -relief

This time they will almost coincide: on October 30, the day of the Soviet political prisoner, and the 27th, 100th anniversary of the birth of Andrei Aldan-Semenov, the stubborn and persistent Kolyma prisoner, who gave the world a powerful anti-Stalinsky chord “Cherry on the Rock”.

We did not notice how and on what stage the day of the Soviet political prisoner, celebrated by a hunger strike in the posttalin camps, established in the 70s prisoner of conscience Kronid Lubarsky, became the day of memory of the victims of political repressions of exclusively Stalinist times.

This goes this way: in the morning, very elderly people who survived the “children of the enemies of the people” and a couple of very old “enemies, members of the“ memorial ”, and the Mosgordumi, and peaceful status democrats come to the Solovyanka in the morning on the Lubyanka. Wreaths are assigned to the stone, strictly thematic performances (not a word about today's political prisoners) sound. The city hall then invites the victims of the Stalinist repressions for lunch and gives them gifts. Yeltsin always sent his wreath. Putin has never sent!

Radical democrats and political prisoners of the 50-80s never give a word. As one of the organizers told me: “What are the political prisoners of the 70s are doing here? They have no place here! " I stopped going to these events after, by order of the organizers from the rally participants, the police began to take away the slogans in defense of Khodorkovsky. (This year, probably, posters will be selected in defense by Svetlana Bakhmina and Vasily Aleksanyan.) And why this is so, it becomes clear from the “bas -relief on the rock”. Andrei Aldan-Semenov was one of those adamant communists who fought with Stalin and Brezhnev for the “restoration of Lenin norms”. (This is when, on Solovki and in the dungeons of the Cheka, only “alien elements”, “contravation”, “kaer”, ¹ and honest Trotskyists and Bukhariners with the Zinovievs were the owners of life. “Caets” killed much earlier when the Communists went to the camps without slopes and doubts. - I will call the shadows of the poets from the darkness of the commanders and the shadow of the Communists from Kolyma. ”

At the end of the novel, after the XX Congress, a monstrous Stalin Face carved on a giant rock, hoping over the river, explodes with the participation of former prisoners. The rock was blown up, and the face remained - in minds and hearts. Maybe, just because the honest communist Petrakov, walking in a convoy of the convicts in the provincial town, stood up, taking off his hat, kneeling in front of Lenin’s statue, and the whole column followed him.

Fedya Zarnitsyn, an artist who carved a bas -relief, instead of liberation, receives death from frostbite and gangrene. Transactions with the devil do not end. And it is clear why the day of the political prisoners of the USSR, active and inconsistent anti -Soviets, was taken from them and was given to the visually and molesty victims of the Stalinist repressions. And the day of anger and struggle became the day of sorrow and tears. The authorities are ready to regret and treat those who did nothing, but simply suffered. But they will never forgive those who went against the current with their heads raised. The refusal to convey, to cooperate with the "organs" is a seditious for them, and therefore Svetlana Bakhmina and Vasily Aleksanyan are sitting.

Fragments of bas -relief scattered around the country. They moved to the film about Putin, to songs about Putin, cakes and chocolate figures with his face and in portraits of Dmitry Medvedev (not Tolstoy!) At the book fair near the Russian stand.

Big brothers continue to think about us. The people had a strong Soviet family with them.

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¹ Convicts for counter -revolutionary activities.