Alexander Ageev. Hunger 36

Hunger 36
Practical gastroenterology reading

Alexander Ageev

Publication date: June 5, 2001

Somehow , I classically overslept my workday Monday: this is what it means to not go to work like all normal people, but to live according to your biological clock - the whole day has been lost to God knows where, and now I have to catch up with it, apologizing to the readers and feeling yourself as a malicious truant with an eternal fable about a broken alarm clock.

But I really slept almost the whole day, because the night from Sunday to Monday I wrote (but never finished, which is the worst thing) one painful article - on the hopeless topic of “freedom of speech”. This article just doesn’t work out for me, just like this “freedom of speech” itself in post-Soviet Russia. Well, what can you do about it - her history is untidy, her contemporaries value her cheaply, and therefore it is inevitable that someday they will pay an extra price for both her and her childish pranks.

The point is that the problem of “freedom of speech” is located only on one side on the socio-political plane, and you begin to understand its real scope (metaphysical) when you drag it from a purely legal, constitutional field into your own little personal plot, turning it into into a personal problem. Here it suddenly turns out that regarding this problem that was solved long ago by decent people, you have a lot of non-standard thoughts, most of which sooner or later turn into a question mark. And this question, willy-nilly, turns to “authorities” that are alien and vague to you.

Well, oh well, some kind of compromise ending will come one way or another, and we will drive freedom of speech (until next time) into an intelligible framework.

Meanwhile, on Friday I was at a presentation where the central theme of all the speeches was also freedom: the publishing house “New Literary Review” presented the just published second volume of articles by Isaiah Berlin at the Herzen Museum. I already wrote about the first one in Russian Journal, and now the second one has come out, dedicated exclusively to Russia.

If the first was called "Philosophy of Freedom. Europe", then the second was called by the compilers with a characteristic shift - "History of Freedom. Russia" . This, gentlemen, is the difference between Europe and Russia - in Europe there is a philosophy of freedom, but Russia has had a dramatic (and in some places shameful) “history” with freedom, the outcome of which is still in the fog.

Actually, almost all the speakers asked two questions: firstly, why Berlin was not published in Russia for so long (in fact, who hasn’t been translated or published in these ten years, and Berlin has only just gotten around to it), and in -secondly, who needs all this now?

This second question was uttered especially heartfeltly, with a certain defenseless sadness, by Natalya Leonidovna Trauberg , who edited the book. In that sense, she said that only those who already profess liberal values ​​will read Berlin, and yet in the minds of Russians, even educated ones, there is an unthinkable ideological mess, which a clear, precise, easy-to-understand Berlin would greatly help clear up. What could be done - one could hear in the words of Natalya Leonidovna - so that the publication of Isaiah Berlin in Russian would become an event not for several hundred people still reading, but at least for several thousand?

Irina Prokhorova , the publisher, just threw up her hands - she’s done her job, the first volume is going well so far, and you yourself, they say, understand everything about the number of potential readers of such books.

Then Leonid Gozman came onto the stage (he is actually a psychologist and once, during the era of perestroika, was a co-author of Alexander Etkind) and informed the public that the Creative Council of the Union of Right Forces (I immediately remembered the famous remark about “creators” and “creators” from Pelevin’s novel ) has already bought a thousand copies of Berlin’s two-volume book from the publisher, and intends to distribute them free of charge among people who are in dire need of mastering the liberal heritage, and most importantly, capable of transmitting the liberal values ​​of young people. That is, every university teacher (if the Creative Council somehow miraculously finds out about his need) will inevitably have his own Isaiah Berlin. Gozman almost threw out a cry right there on the spot and compile exhaustive lists of those in need.

In this regard, this is what I propose - take the ATP at its word! They are here , write to them, maybe you’ll be lucky enough to get really, really good books for free. Otherwise, a party is a party, and they have their own bureaucracy and clerical chaos - God forbid, they send all a thousand priceless copies to some Tuvan regional cell, and there they are entirely Buddhists and cattle breeders, and without Isaiah Berlin, born free. In the last years of Soviet power there was such a story: suddenly, out of the blue, a decent “selection” of Chaadaev was published, but they immediately came to their senses and the lion’s share of the 20,000 circulation was sent almost to Yakutia. So hurry up.

Then Alexander Livergant stood up (for those who don’t know, he’s a good translator from English, and most importantly, a big man in the Soros Foundation) and said guiltily that the Soros Foundation didn’t help publish Isaiah Berlin (it sounded something like this: a bunch of crap was translated and published with the foundation’s money , but Sir Isaiah - alas), but!.. But the fund, perhaps, will buy part of the circulation for libraries.

Irina Prokhorova, of course, was delighted, but as far as I know, the Soros Foundation now helps mainly rural libraries. Berlin, of course, is also in the village of Berlin, but I also know, however, some city libraries, where the luxurious books sent by the Soros Foundation are ordered not to be issued to anyone - they are too beautiful, which means they will be stolen...

Meanwhile, having told the world the good news, Livergant casually provoked a small, cozy scandal: he said that in Russia they wrote badly about Berlin, and the worst of all were the recent opuses of Igor Shaitanov and Anatoly Naiman . He said - and sat down, without really explaining anything.

After which a living Anatoly Genrikhovich Naiman materialized on the stage - youthful, handsome, hands in his pockets and a red scarf around his neck.

And Naiman said in an even, melancholy voice, as if answering no one and not addressing anyone, that it was pointless to publish Berlin in Russia (except only memoirs), and that no one here understood anything - neither in Berlin, nor in Russia.

They listened to Naiman with admiration, and only someone perky remembered that ten years ago at some conference Naiman said completely the opposite, but they didn’t even pay attention to this perky one: Anatoly Genrikhovich was too good! A sort of artist with his head held high among the boring bourgeoisie distributing copies...

Boris Dubin said it best about Berlin: it wasn’t published because it seemed too simple (in Russia they love “complicated things”), too prosperous (lived a decent life, without rushing, like other Western intellectuals, either to the fascists or to the communists), too far from any marginality (which is still highly valued in Russia). That is why he, a Jew from Riga who survived the revolution in Petrograd and became a real “European” European, is a symbolic figure for us, indicating the possibility of such a path. He knew that freedom is anything but happiness (Dubin repeated this thought, noticeably worried, several times).

And I remembered how exactly Boris Vladimirovich at the beginning of 1992 brought to Znamya his translation of the Berlin article “The Birth of the Russian Intelligentsia” (this article opens the current book), and this article “did not appear” at that time. - "Too easy". "We all know this already."

Reading Berlin, you really sometimes catch yourself feeling this way, and sometimes it even seems that Berlin in his articles simplifies and flattens Russian reality, transfers its explosiveness and drama into some too calm Central European register. And you need to make some effort to understand: Berlin is simply giving what was happening a more objective, more adequate assessment than we ourselves are capable of.

One of the important articles in this collection, “Silence in Russian Culture,” begins with very fair words: “ Heightened self-awareness is one of the most striking features of modern Russian culture. Never before has any cultural community been so completely absorbed in itself, in thoughts about its own nature.” and its special purpose ."

This “heightened self-awareness” seriously distorts and biases self-esteem. And Berlin is worth reading, if only to know how we and our spiritual history look from the outside: through the eyes of a European who is in love with Russia, but very sober and very “adult” (Dubin’s word).

I was somehow sad after this presentation: I read all three days of Berlin and found that the Russian intelligentsia changes little. And if it changes, it’s not for the better.

I immediately thought about this when on Saturday I bought “Nezavisimaya” with “Subbotnik” and there on the front page I found an interview with Khakamada about her experience of chairing the jury of the “National Bestseller”. The interview is short, but it wonderfully illustrates both the “quickness of mind” of the SPS leader and his flatness. Alexander Voznesensky asks her who she would give the prize to if the votes were divided, and she quickly counts the contenders for “first or second”:

- Well, look, Limonov is talented, but he is quite famous. Prokhanov also writes talentedly, but he is also famous. That leaves Bykov, Bolmat, Sorokin.

- And Yuzefovich?

- Well, it’s more or less clear with him. He works in the genre of historical detective fiction, and Akunin has already done a lot here ."

That’s all “literary technology” - even simpler than “polit-”... And then my son brought from somewhere an old Playboy, from March: I open it, and there is also Khakamada - talking about the men she likes:

" No, Depardieu is too much. I don’t like the French at all and am wary of them. They seem to me to be small - not physically, but from a philosophical point of view. Europeans, what can we take from them? Small countries, small thinking. I love “When a man has a certain Cosmos, gigantomania. In general, there should be a hint of something big .”

Yes, you think, Irina Khakamada would hardly like Isaiah Berlin: “ a European, what can you take from him ”...