Requiem Snail

I remember very well the day when the modernization program of the Soviet Union reached its peak.

This was on November 15, 1988. In the morning, the news reported that the Energia launch vehicle brought the Buran spacecraft into orbit - our response to the American “shuttle”. The answer was much cooler, because, unlike the “shuttles”, “Buran” flew without a crew, controlled by an on -board computer - including sat in automatic mode, which no ship in the world knew how to do.

We, third -year students of the Faculty of History of Moscow State University, hugged and congratulated each other. We were overwhelmed with pride in their country. It is very important to keep in mind here that, as historians, we did not have any illusions about the construction of socialism in one individual country and perfectly understood that the economic system that provides, in particular, breakthroughs in the space industry, is far from perfect. Of course, it was necessary to do something with her, somehow bring to mind (there were already the terms “acceleration” and “perestroika”), but no one particularly doubted that it was effective enough to conduct technical modernization.

On that day, November 15, 1988, we - the USSR, Russian, the “Soviet people” - were really ahead of the planet of the whole. Not a single country in the world, including our eternal rivals of the United States, could boast of such achievements in the field of space development.

But it was our last triumph.

In 1990, work on the Buran -Energy project was suspended, and three years later, after the shooting of the White House and the final turn of the country towards the “wild capitalism”, they were completely discontinued. In 2002, the only “Buran” flying into space was crushed by a collapsed roof of the mounting test complex on Baikonur, mystically repeating the fate of the deceased under the fragments of Argo Jason.

Other “Buranes”, who did not fly into space, were sold by our reserved businessmen to Australia, were transferred to someone to leasing, disappeared from the hangars in Russia and appeared in museums of Western Europe. One Buran still stands in the Central Bank of the CPPI. Gorky. As the song “Time Machine” is sung, “ But any here will enter the patch in order to push the bull into the gun, and visit the cafe and the wine room in the hold ”.

So the Soviet modernization ended.

The whole era - the era, when the idea of ​​conquering the cosmos, the idea of ​​continuous progress, the idea of ​​“new borders”, as a permanent call, determined the consciousness of a significant part of the country's population, ended with it. (In total, about 2.5 million people were employed in the Buran-Energy program. That is, every hundredth citizen of the country took part in the last modernization jerk). But the matter is not at all in numbers, but in the atmosphere. The atmosphere that made this jerk possible.

* * *

The atmosphere of Soviet modernization was created very, very gradually. An important component of this process was literature.

Soviet writers generally reacted very sensitively to modernization requests from the state. The “cement” of F. Gladkova and the “bars” by F. Panferov, are nothing more than an artistic (with a certain stretch) justification of industrialization and collectivization, are not read. But from literature it was required not only to portray the already walking processes, but also to prepare the reader for new achievements.

This explains the change in the attitude of the “party and government” to such a not quite class close in the direction of literature as science fiction. It was customary to scold representatives of this genre who composed dull “production novels” in the 50s about automatic seeders and combines on the atomic course, but they did a large and desired work-they created a very definite mood among the main readers of these books, that is, youth.

The well -known slogan nominated by the writer Alexander Om Kazantsev “ Science fiction should call youth in the hut !” He was repeatedly ridiculed by both opponents of “low genres” and supporters of “humanitarian fiction” - and meanwhile, it was the best reflected in the completely state approach with which in the USSR they belonged to literature in general, and NF in particular. The science fiction of a nearby sight, which did not achieve any noticeable artistic successes, still played a role-ensured the mass interest of young people in technical specialties and became a kind of ideological support for the NTR.

In the early 50s, young people who read the books of engineers Nemtsov and Okhotnikov, who were later condemned for the narrowness and insufficient courage of imagination, came to the Korolev and Keldysh VPK laboratory, and helped them launch the first artificial satellite of the Earth.

“ We (nuclear people) believed that we have large scale, but there (in the Korolev laboratory) we saw something, an order of magnitude more. The enormous work of hundreds of highly qualified people and their almost everyday, but very business attitude to those fantastic things with whom they dealt ... ”recalled Academician of Sakharov, who was a little over thirty years later, was struck by a huge, applied to the naked eye .

It was a time of reckless faith in progress, faith, based, of course, on the full power of the military-industrial complex, but completely honest and clean. Roman Ivan Efremov, which appeared simultaneously with the orbit of the satellite, “ Andromeda’s Nebuma ” was perceived as a logical continuation of the real events of our time - now we launched a satellite, and after several hundred years we will fly to other stars.

“Andromeda's nebula” - no precedent in Russian literature, the anthem of social and technical progress. Written by a heavy, dry language, the text distant from psychologism revealed the reader to the reader the shining prospects of a great future - the celebration of science and technology, the harmony of social relations, a kind of, but extremely attractive aesthetics. I think that in this capacity he will remain in the history of Russian literature forever - how the works that are very vulnerable from an artistic point of view will remain in it, how to “what to do” Chernyshevsky or “young guard” Fadeev.

Efremov himself could not - and did not try, it seems - to repeat such an attempt.

His second novel about the future, “ Hour of the Bull ”, is a brilliant anti -utopia, but not the apology of progress. However, in Soviet times, he was banned and came to the reader only in 1988, when public consciousness found completely different idols.

Not only science fiction writers took part in the creation of a specifically “technocratic” atmosphere of the 50s and 60s. The singer of the scientific search was the famous realist writer Daniil Granin , the first published story of which, the “ dispute through the ocean ”, was dedicated to the scientific and technical confrontation of the United States and the USSR (which is clear whose victory). Granin’s novels “ Seekers ” (1954) and “ I go to a thunderstorm ” (1962) were not only reprinted by millions of circulations, but were also filmed. Later, Granin became the author of the script of one of the most striking films about the development of the Soviet military -industrial complex “ The Choice of the goal ”.

You can recall the film “ Nine days of one year ”, after the phenomenal success of which the most popular in the country was the profession of physics-theoretical.

Soviet culture was largely a culture of a futuristic, culture of a scientific and technical breakthrough, oriented not so much on the present (this plot was bought by numerous socialists, laureates of all kinds of bonuses and functionaries of bureaucratic structures), and of course, not for the past (historical novelists who were popular, can be recalculated on the fingers of one hand - well, V. Ivanov, well, V. Pikul-who else?, And the writers-runs were pushed to the periphery of the social process), how much for the future.

This culture was incredible - the youth of the country in which it was a problem to get normal shaving blades, and the domestic appliances of the social camp countries seemed a real miracle, sincerely believed that the future belongs to it. And not just the future, but the future with cities on Mars and cabins for teleportation as a means of transportation.

* * *

In any case, before a certain watershed - believed.

To establish at what moment faith in progress lost to tired skepticism (which, ultimately, played a fatal role in the collapse of the Soviet modernization project) is quite problematic. Maybe because individual bastions of futuristic culture continued to stay to the last. It is clear, in any case, that the transition from the description of the blessed paintings “ Half a day, XXII century ” to the social satire of “ ugly swans ” and “ Snails on the slope ” by the Strugatsky brothers are directly related to this process.

The emergence of the so -called “fourth wave” in domestic fiction (marked by the arrival of notebooks of humanities, who were completely uninteresting in what principles a photon reflector worked or how to ensure artificial gravity at the orbital station) has become another symptom. True, at the same time, such enthusiasts of progress as Sergey Pavlov , the author of the excellent futuristic dilogy, “ Moon Rainbow ”, worked with the authors of the “fourth wave”. But here, instruments were already launched, not only extraovitative, but also town-political ones: Pavlov, like some other paladins of modernization, were recorded by liberal cultural players in the “Black Hundreds”, and squeezed out in the ghetto, similar to the fact that the “great literature” was occupied by the “villagers”.

It is important to note that this is not about circulations, but about ideological influence. The circulations of Pavlov and other authors published in the publishing house "Young Guard" could well exceed the circulations of the Strugatsky brothers, who were in some disgrace by the mid-70s. And Soviet youth read Pavlova with no less interest - she simply did not give a damn about showdowns between various groups and clans of writers. However, the Soviet “elite”, the one that later ruined the USSR, based on her ideas about good and evil, read and honored, of course, Strugatsky. With their concept of “vertical progress” (which provides for the division of society into two unequal parts and the rapid rise of a smaller, elite part, forever tearing away from the majority), with their idea of ​​progressive, when a well -trained intellectual receives the right to direct the development vector of “crowds”, capable of only killing their best representatives.

I already wrote that the economic reforms of the 90s were the implementation of some constructs contained in the works of ABS (and is hardly by chance that their main demiurge was the son of the eldest of the brothers). At the same time, the idea of ​​“vertical progress” was, in general, antagonistic to the idea of ​​modernization-if only because modernization is conceived as if for everyone, and vertical progress by definition-for the elect.

From this point of view? The disaster that happened to the country in 1991 and subsequent years meant the collapse of the Soviet modernization project, but at the same time the unconditional good luck of “vertical progress”. The tiny minority of the former “Soviet people” received gigantic technical capacities, inexhaustible reserves of raw materials and violent financial flows, and once turned from farmers, excitements and secretaries of Komsomol organizations into billionaires and politicians, the country's -born fate. What, one wonders, is not “people”?

The Soviet modernization project was sacrificed, and this sacrifice was conscious. In the future “Ludenov”, the heroes of “vertical progress”, there was no place for Martian expeditions and teleportation cabins. Mars was simply not interested in them, and the teleportation cabin against the background of the personal “Lirget” looks faded.

* * *

Surprisingly, this monstrous social breakdown remained practically not seen by "great Russian literature." Perhaps the fact is that the liberal state was in no hurry to give writers a social order (since the culture was generally outside the sphere of its interests), and those, having lost their way from creative freedom, ran into the open spaces of the postmodern freemen, then clogged into the cracks of psychological prose. As a result, the most vivid impression of the atmosphere of the 90s can be given perhaps detectives and criminal militants, and it is not so important whether they are well written (D. Koretsky) or designed for a passenger of a suburban train with five classes of education (some V. Kolychev). Victor Pelevin’s novels, a native of a fantastic ghetto, thanks to the skilled PR, washed from tar and feathers of the “low genre”, became extremely popular.

As for science fiction in its classical manifestations, she practically abandoned the image of the future - and what future could she describe? The heyday of fantasy, alternative history, quails of the same type of stories about our contemporaries that fall into the past-these are the birthmarks of the 1990s. And it is hardly worth blaming the writers themselves.

This is in their eyes the pride of the country - the Buran spacecraft - was turned into an attraction in Gorky Park. In front of their eyes, two policemen at the Vykhino metro station were beaten by the commander of Buran, Hero of Russia Magomed Tolboev, who did not like something. It was before their eyes that the chief of the Moscow Central Internal Affairs Directorate Vladimir Pronin, who was dismissed a few years later, had a very well-known Major Evsyukov in their eyes. Do you know what Pronin said then about journalists who tried to protect Tolboev? "Such as they ruined the Great Country."

Everyone swore the memory of the great country - both those who destroyed it, and those who feasted on its fragments, and those who guarded the peace of the new owners of Russia for the fat Kush. The feeling of irrevocable loss intensified as Russia lost its positions one after another, and more and more turned from space superpower into a third world country. Science, defense, education, art - retreat went on all fronts. What future could you talk about in such conditions?

* * *

“ We are fed as ash of great victories ,” Konstantin Kinchev sang in the late 1980s. It is difficult to talk about modernization with a generation fed by the ash of great defeats.

But the dialogue is necessary, and the decisive role in it seems to be again belonging to culture. Literature, cinema, the Internet can most significantly affect the psychology of youth. And its fate directly depends on the degree of involvement of youth in the modernization process.

Of course, it would be nice if such processes were coordinated by the state. You can dream about special programs involving grants for creating art works about the future, about the popularization of technocratic utopias, about state support for computer technologies aimed at attracting young people in high -tech projects. But there is no need to expect special assistance from a liberal state, but meanwhile, something turns out as if by itself.

The first swallows announcing the spring were the books of Maxim Kalashnikov (pseudonym of Vladimir Kucherenko), written on the verge of “non-fiction” and futuristic literature. The first books of Kalashnikov (The Battle of the Empire, the Battle of Heaven) appeared back in the late 90s and were perceived as a requiem along the deceased "Space Empire" of the USSR. At the same time, subsequent books contained elements of a harmonious modernization program. Kalashnikov gained wide fame after the publication of an open letter to President Dmitry Medvedev with proposals for innovative development, written as an answer to the article “Russia, forward!”. It is characteristic that Dmitry Medvedev instructed the Government of the Russian Federation to consider the “ proposal of Russian citizen Maxim Kalashnikov ” regarding the technological modernization of the economy. It is known that after this assignment of Kalashnikov met with Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Sobyanin and deputy head of the presidential administration Vladislav Surkov. The commission for modernization and technological development of kalashniks was not included, but the recently published plans for creating a Russian Silicon Valley (“a territorially separate complex for the development of research and development and commercialization of their results”) clearly appeared not without the influence of Kalashnikov’s concepts on technological “Futuropolis”.

Timidly begins to respond to the challenges of time and domestic literature - first of all, of course, fantasy. If in 2003 the story of Vyacheslav Rybakov about the Russian inventor of anti -gravity, who managed to raise the same unfortunate “Buran” from the Gorky Park (“ next year in Moscow ”) looked caustic satire on the state of science in the post -Soviet society, then in 2007 the same Rybakov managed to surprise the reader with a completely plausible plot about how a private corporation financed, financed. A kind of “good millionaire” gathered “according to grain” specialists in the field of space technology, including old, Soviet still scientists and designers, and began to implement a large -scale project to restore the space industry. So that later, “ grabbing a link for this, and pull the whole economy to pull out ” (the novel “ Star of Wormwood ”).

And the now popular integration project “Ethnogenesis” () begins with the description of the Green City - a scientific camp under Nizhny Novgorod, where the most gifted children of Russia live, study and create.

Постепенно возвращает себе утраченные было позиции «твердая НФ», примером которой могут служить книги журналиста, специалиста по истории советской космонавтики Антона Первушина . Параллельно ослабевает интерес к фэнтези и эскапистской литературе вообще (это видно по динамике тиражей).

Этого, разумеется, не просто мало, а чудовищно мало. При повсеместном падении уровня образования, при драматически низком интересе к техническим специальностям, при повсеместном вытеснении книги домашними кинотеатрами и компьютерными играми. Но при всем этом возрождение футуристической культуры – единственная наша надежда.

При правильном подходе достаточно десяти тысяч идейных технократов, чтобы вытащить страну из той пропасти, в которую ее загнали несколько десятков поклонников поздних Стругацких.

«Тихо, тихо ползи

Улитка по склону Фудзи

Вверх, до самых высот!» (с) Исса