Translated material
On my own
I initially did not want and now do not want to take part in the discussion of the details of why Roman Badanin resigned from the post of deputy editor-in-chief of Gazeta.ru.
Someone began to try to make him almost a hero, someone, naturally, immediately squealed as usual that it was the vile Americans who had bribed another traitor in order to again spoil our beloved homeland. However, on this topic I would like to reassure those who are too worried.
Yes, in the regions there are still many local journalists who do not have access to the large information field and live, well, I would not use the word “hand to mouth,” but more than modestly. But in large cities and, especially in the capital, the majority earn quite decently. I will not name specific figures now so as not to arouse unnecessary negative emotions among some faint-hearted citizens, I will only say that these amounts significantly exceed even the official average salary in Moscow.
And a place in the management of a publication owned by Kommersant, believe me, even just in purely financial terms, is not a joke at all. In addition, with all the seeming abundance of this kind of work, even for a serious professional it is not so easy to find something appropriate. In any case, it is immeasurably more difficult than for an ordinary school teacher, who now, for the most part, use the fear of losing their jobs to justify their forced pre-election and upcoming election dirty tricks.
But there is no need to worry particularly about the fate of journalist Badanin. It won't be lost. And in general I’m talking about something else. Not about work and position. In such situations, I am curious about something completely different. When a person cannot or does not want, or all together, to perform certain official duties and quits, even for the most principled and noble reasons, this is still only a particular part of, let’s say, the production process. The act reaches a slightly different level only when a person decides whether he can, in principle, live, not work, but rather live, exist in this world according to someone else’s rules, even regardless of the reasonableness and attractiveness of these same rules.
Therefore, for me, frankly speaking, no matter how strange it may sound in today’s situation, what happened with Roman Badanin lies completely outside the scope of the current elections and even the political situation in the country. And in this regard, I want to share with readers one old story about a person close to me. His name was Mark.
He grew up in a very traditional and very wealthy family. My father was a major engineer engaged in some very secret developments. In the very first days of the war, their family was transported from Kharkov to Sverdlovsk and settled there almost right on the territory of Uralmash, but they made them very comfortable, providing everything they needed, including two housekeepers. Although Mark’s mother did not work, and having acquired the habit of reading French novels from high school, she devoted most of her time to this activity. However, some duties of the housewife were observed extremely strictly. From the products brought by one maid and prepared for use by another, Sofya Borisovna always prepared food for her husband and son exclusively with her own hands. And she did it, I must admit, flawlessly.
The fate and occupation of the child were not even discussed. I received a honors diploma from the university and went to work in some office next door to my father’s and no less closed. He married the daughter of a prominent scientist from the third similar office, who was inventing something in the fourth similar one. I gave birth to a child, my career was extremely successful in all respects, well, there was no talk about material issues at all; in those days, everyone just rolled around together like cheese in butter. And so the man lived until he was thirty-three years old. Here his father died.
A few days after the funeral, Mark said that he was quitting his job and leaving for Moscow. That I always hated my engineering, didn’t love my wife, my son has grown up and will understand everything over time, in short, we’ll sort out all the issues later, but for now I just want freedom. It turns out that from his earliest youth he only dreamed of being a journalist, and specifically a journalist in the capital.
What kind of freedom he was going to find in the Soviet press of that time is not very clear, but in general there is a lot in this whole story that I don’t understand, which is why I am presenting it so fluently and superficially in order to say only what it seems to me that in the end I understood.
Mark arrived in Moscow in the early 60s, without connections, what are there connections, he had practically no acquaintances here. Without things or money, he rented a corner, not a room, but a corner with a bed separated from the hostess by a curtain, in a dilapidated outbuilding on Kharitonyevsky and began to earn extra money by writing tiny articles in city newspapers. Even at first in the regional one, there was one then, called “Lenin’s Banner”.
Six or seven years passed. Mark did not achieve much success. The man is far from stupid, very educated and extremely hardworking, he did not have any special talents or even abilities, and he started a little late, and perhaps he was simply not very lucky; in short, this is not a story about the brilliant career of a provincial. However, there were certain positive changes in life. The main thing, perhaps, should be considered to be marriage out of great passionate love to a very beautiful woman. The woman, however, lived in a tiny room in a huge communal apartment with a small son from her first marriage on the salary of a primary school teacher, but at that time this was not considered either a great disadvantage or a great rarity.
As for the work, it appeared, although only part-time in “Evening”, but, firstly, they soon promised to transfer it to full-time, and, secondly, Mark’s articles began to be published in some reputable magazines, such as “ Theater Life" and even "Ogonyok", which, in addition to satisfying a certain pride, also provided some additional extra income... And then they called Mark to the propaganda department of the city party committee. And they state approximately the following.
One large ministry has a departmental journal. A new and very influential minister has arrived and wants to make the publication exemplary. We need a person with a good technical education and serious experience in production. But at the same time a professional journalist. Preferably someone who has previously had clearance. But not too secret. Not a young specialist, but far from old either. Yes, and it’s also very important, without bad habits. And I forgot to mention that Mark was completely, well, absolutely not a drinker, which at that time and in this environment was not the most common quality. In short, they didn’t find a better candidate, they offer to immediately join the Party and go to the magazine as deputy chief with a subsequent promotion. And for this they promise to solve all practical and everyday issues.
And so Mark began to think. On the one hand, of course, there are some prospects for moving to the “big press”, and a certain reputation has already appeared, and professionalism, and just the surname has become recognizable, at least in narrow journalistic circles, and the topics with assignments have become more and more interesting... But this It’s still quite foggy and uncertain. And on the other hand, she’s already approaching forty, her mother is quite old, and she’s slowly starting to get a long queue for the toilet in the morning in the twelve-room communal apartment, where she’s managed to be dragged from Sverdlovsk over the years with difficulty, but here a solution to all problems is proposed at once. Although it is clear that we will have to forget about journalism as such; the work is purely administrative and dedicated to the reprinting of departmental instructions.
He convinced himself. And they treated him absolutely honestly, fully fulfilling all their promises. They gave him a large separate two-room apartment with a loggia in a new building a five-minute walk from Gorky Street, a huge office in a reputable ministerial building on Razin Street, and they even assigned him a car, though not personally, but she drove him to and from work. I’m not even talking about the salary, it was something simply incomparable with previous newspaper earnings.
In short, Mark began to live almost like a boss. And a year later the editor-in-chief was supposed to retire, and he automatically became almost a real boss. However, they also hinted at some more serious prospects; for some reason this man was very welcome there; Uralmash’s technical experience in this office aroused especially great respect.
Mark was sitting on a chair as a guest, drinking tea. He and his wife went to see a friend, the women went into the kitchen for a minute, and when they returned, he was already dead. I had never been sick before and never complained about anything. The heart stopped. The doctors couldn’t say anything intelligible afterwards.
Before the funeral, a courier arrived from the ministry to see Mark’s wife. He held out the envelope and added on his own behalf that usually, for people who have worked so little in even not the highest positions, this is not done, but the minister respected the deceased so much that he personally gave orders to make an exception. In the envelope, along with the money written out in a special column, there was a paper with several signatures and seals, according to which it was possible to order a tombstone without a queue in the granite workshop of the Vostryakovsky cemetery.
Most likely, Mark's death was, of course, an accident. It happens. And not even very rarely, I found out.
A. maybe not an accident. Everyone has their own threshold of consent and refusal. I also found out this. All my life.