SEPARATION

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Boris May told me how we are divided. How violently we resist this, but we cannot change, doing everything only worse. Even good impulses are not an excuse: "... for some reason, the soul is still nauseous. Wow, to speak, speak, turn to common sense, resent, advise, give up the battle. Well, howl from helplessness at last. Why are we? Why?"

Boris, I think over this for more than twenty years, and this question had a very great influence on me. In the 90th, when I realized that there was a destruction of my country, I stopped looking at the Communists, I realized that the discord was going on to the detriment of our people. In October 93rd, I realized that democrats are not only destroyers. Many of them died in the White House, turned out to be people of honor. And my editor Misha Borisov, the head of the St. Petersburg AiF, a man with liberal glances, posted in the newspaper all my texts in which I spoke about what had happened. Ten days then passed after the tragedy, and it was not known how everything would turn out.

The farther, the clearer I realized that people, in fact, are not political views, not religious, not nationality, belonging to power or opposition, work in the FSB or belonging to a human rights organization, and so on. Shares something invisible, almost ephemeral. I don’t know exactly how to formulate it. There may be an attitude towards people. They are for you, or you are for them. This is a difficult question that is easy to drown in thought. The question of what a person is, what is a core in a person.

Here is Misha Borisov - a newspaper editor with a 300,000th circulation. St. Petersburg intellectual, a Jew in nationality, a person, let's say not working and peasant hardening. Once, after a stormy celebration of the New Year, when one of the employees of our editorial office got drunk and gleamed the floor, Misha just rolled up his sleeves, took a rag and wiped everything. And not the slightest reproach, the slightest affectation, pose, they say, but nevertheless ... I was struck by the naturalness of what happened. And it was of course a lesson for life, what it means to be responsible for others, to be for others. And I met such communists, such priests. No difference in beliefs will make them enemies, because somewhere in the soul these people have the image of God, responsibility in front of Him. Even weakened, they fall their heads to him, and not in the opposite direction. This is what helps us not to be "like that." And there is an abyss of pride, rage, which makes us "so." Including me.

Today is the anniversary of the death of my friend - St. Petersburg poet and journalist Kostya Krikunov. He possessed an amazing gift, to unite people around him, just completely different, gently love them, he had only one criterion - this is a person of honor, he has a life (his favorite word), but this is not. And those who did not, he did not judge, did not spare, did not blame, did not indignant, just passed by, and they could not approach him, running into an invisible wall. In August of the 91st, he was the only person in Armavir, who openly opposed the State Emergency Committee. And I was for, without any options. We were ready very hard, if necessary, to defend our beliefs. And we sat under a wealthy tree in his garden and drank apricot moonshine. They were concentrated, silent, but sometimes they exchanged jokes and did not argue about anything. They were transparent and understandable for each other, respecting the choice of each other.

Love helps us stop being "like that." Her drawback makes us "so" and even worse. Including me.