Proper name

Writer Mikhail Uspensky died on December 13 at the age of 65.

On Facebook there is a recording of his last speech - in his native Krasnoyarsk, at the anti-war Peace March. If you're wondering why we are where we are today, you should watch this tape. It doesn't take long to watch - a couple of minutes, but to watch this couple of minutes you will have to muster up the courage...

The writer Uspensky, a heavyset middle-aged man in an old-fashioned hat, stands on a makeshift platform, leaning on a stick, and speaks, addressing his fellow countrymen. Very few fellow countrymen gathered in the million-plus city to listen to him, and a group of young people, apparently hired to disrupt this rally, was more active than others.

They hooted loudly and insulted Mikhail Glebovich Uspensky, who is old enough to be their father—who, however, is only old enough in age, because on the faces of these kids it is written in large letters that their human development did not include writers at all.

And so Uspensky speaks. He speaks, carefully selecting his words, says, overcoming the hooting:

- At every wedding there should be at least two or three sober people...

But they don't hear him. The wedding - our patriotic wedding, which began a long time ago and began to go wild with the Sochi Olympics - has long since become too drunk, and, in essence, there is no one left to hear Uspensky...

I watched this unbearable film and for the hundredth time in irritation I thought: why, for example, Mikhail Uspensky is only Mikhail Uspensky, but these hooting gopniks are exactly them! — certainly “the people”?

Why not the other way around, for example?

And suddenly I understood. And I’m ready to share my thoughts.

Just don't hit me right away, okay?

They are "the people" because they have no name, that's all.

If there was a name, there would be something to talk about. But he's not there. They are nobody, and there is no way to call them. And that is why - for lack of other definitions! — they are called “the people.”

If you think about it, this name is as solemn as it is humiliating. And very, very dangerous. For it is precisely with this great and empty name that people are trampled into the mud for centuries on end, “at all latitudes.”

Those who have - just a name.

Mikhail Uspensky, for example.

With the death of this man, the notorious Russian “people” became even worse, and its future became even more hopeless - all the more hopeless because he, in essence, did not notice the loss...


Photo TASS/Mikhail Fomichev