In society

Battle for "Volga"

March 2, 2010 Vladimir Nadein

The Olympics is so tired of everyone that they will try to forget it quickly. It is all the easier that it will not only sink among fans who are subburied and underpluging. Vancouver's memory overshadows the political prospects of Putin himself. It also inspires the people vague doubts about direct contacts between the patriarch and the creator. Most likely, this topic will be quietly delayed until "after the elections." Well, there, closer to Sochi, the warm -up of our propaganda will break out again and, slightly cracking with happiness, again will blow the banners of imminent victories.

So it would be, but the sorrows of Vancouver gave rise to brutal longing for the past in the public. And not even just by the past, but by specifically red, victorious, sickle-young. In a word, according to the USSR.

As the pucks from the Canadian clubs flew, rolled up and crawled into the gates of the Nabokov-Ovochkin team, sweet visions of 1972 arose in the spatered souls of the fans. Ah, what we were once! The first game of the Super Series - don't you remember? Inhaled Canadians: Bukh-Buh, and they are already leading two-zero. So what? But that match ended with a score of 7: 3. Like in Vancouver. Only on the contrary. No, you don't roll your eyes. You go to the Internet, look how the past has become a fairy tale. We are in the minority, Eugene Zimin makes a fantastic interception, rushes with lightning and encourages such a plus that Ken Dradyden, their goalkeeper, turns his head for a long time.

Yes, it’s good that we have something to remember. And we remember. There was the USSR, there was patriotism, there was hockey. There was the USSR, there was Tarasov, there was a system. There was the USSR, there were sports grounds across the country, there were Maltsev and Kharlamov.

Meanwhile, it is quiet, while the thought is still gradually, but persistently and continuously suggested: the USSR is needed. Without him, we can’t pull out Sochi. Without Soviet experience, sports tsushima awaits us. Of course, something can not be returned. Say, large, green, smells of sausage. This is not necessary. And the tourist trips to Poland for the wretched shumi - also do not, we can bypass Turkey. And also these party committees with study, field characteristics and in general the appearance of morality ...

But in that manner that the USSR was never and could not be without party committees. If you want a medal, get a party. And not only. In the sense: not only in sports.

Shortly after that victorious super -series ... or after the next, where did we lose a little? Okay, it doesn't matter. And it is important that the lights went out and it was time to reward the heroes. The party and the government allocated thirty black “Volg” for folk idols. Exactly by the number of players and coaches.

Each team has people who are never seen by the audience, but the value of which is quite comparable to the most vivid stars of the Arena. There are no massage therapists on the ice, but without their art, the team will dump from seizures and injuries. No one applaudes doctors, cooks and administrators, but without them the coaches are sometimes helpless, like puppies. If you do not give the "Volga" the defender, then tomorrow there will be another. But if you offend the masseur, then no replacement will help. And there is a higher massage therapist. Though without skates, but the curator. Where is the curator without the Volga?

In short, CSKA party was to be divided into thirty “Volga” by forty people, so that without complaints to the Central Committee. In those years, I.D. Laptev, later the chief editor of Izvestia and the chairman of the Council of the Union of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, and then the country's desperately bold champion of cycling, was in the members of this very party committee.

Before I continue this heartbreaking, but completely true story, I must at least recreate the color of the era. Alas, the human memory is short, otherwise the universal longing for the USSR would not be so piercing.

The "Volga" of the mid-70s was not at all such a beauty as today. What are there hydrochlors and xenons! The paint on that Volga was dull, the bottom was fine, like straw, and they put the stove from the "Lada" - did not warp. But how desired at all latitudes of the USSR was to! In the “black market” she walked three times, and if with zero mileage - even five times more expensive than her official price. I note that hockey players, as well as other outstanding athletes, did not give the Volga at all. The reward was not a car, but the right to buy it. To the right to buy the right to resell it immediately - without arrests and confiscation. Other guys walked for the proceeds from six months. And whoever has bought a 3-room cooperative for mom-provided that the district executive committee will receive an instruction.

Another source of income accessible only to outstanding athletes and artists was an unsuccessfully granted right to buy household items abroad, to carry them through customs and sell them freely. The sports world knew outstanding market experts who received up to 1000 percent of profit per dollar.

Commodity hunger throughout the country is good, but not enough. You can’t take Canadians alone. KGB. Not only the Committee itself as the institution is severe and inexorable. KGB is needed as a universal system of relations between people. Check up to the seventh knee before leaving. Massector in civilian clothes. Passports can not be handed over to anyone. Any communication with the local population is prohibited. In the city - only triples, better with civilian clothes at the head. The violator becomes a disorderly without regard to the performance of the throw from the blue line. For a defector in the camp of the enemy (in the Red Wings or Devilz), guarantors and family are responsible for. Head - from the party, dad - from work, brothers with sisters - from institutes. Unless, of course, they do not publicly renounce and do not curse the traitor.

So, party committees, KGB, an iron curtain, visiting commissions, a social camp (there is no Poland, but there is South Ossetia), a sausage deficit, a Volga with a Zhigulevskaya stove as a symbol of life ... What else is needed to revive a sports superpower? To jam the BBC and “Echo of Moscow”, “Birch” stores, the execution of Fartsovka and, of course, “there is no sex in the USSR”. Perhaps this will be enough for Canadians with the Swedes in horror to run from Sochi.

However, one tempting memory will have to be abandoned. Sports grounds for children and adults in the USSR had a nose with Gulkin, and Gulka had nothing to compare with. Only against the background of the civilized world can we see how far we are from mass sports. Compare Yeysk and San Diego. Compare Sergiev Posad and Bend, Oregon, Voronezh and Munich. For every hundred cozy and publicly accessible football fields and tennis courts, for every thousand school and communal pools and rollers “there” is unlikely to have one similar institution “here”. At the same time, it is better not to remember the cleanliness and wellness, about showers with hot water and toilets with soft paper. There is never anywhere anywhere.

If there is something completely opposite to soft paper, then this is a tank. Solid, as, say, "T-72". From fifty of these monsters, abandoned to the mercy of fate, with long guns and heavy caterpillars, they found only in one of the villages in the territory of the Ural-Volga Military District.

The military district is that in the event of the beginning of hostilities, it turns into a front. Like the 4th Belarusian or 2nd Ukrainian. What Berlin they intend to take, pushing their foot from the Urals, is not comprehensible to the mind. But then it is firmly known that for one ownerless tank you can buy toilet paper for the entire Olympic program-and will still remain for an open ping-pong championship.

But the party committee still found a solution. Ivan Dmitrievich said that they worked individually with people. They found who softer character, and, no matter how they fought back, they handed them instead of the “Volga” of the Order and the medal. This once again proves that not everything is lost. If we try well, we will be the USSR! We have tanks for toilet paper. The "Volga" will be subsidically. And most importantly, we will set up educational work, so as not to confuse those who take only money, with those who agree to the medal.

And two more brief reminders.

First. Valery Kharlamov crashed on the Volga.

Second. Evgeny Ovechkin earns on the Volga in 40 seconds of stay on the ice of Washington Capitles. But Ovechkin is not needed for nothing.

Photo by RIA Novosti