| Summing up the results of the literary year , I said nothing about the “borderline” areas - humanities research, essay writing, memoirs, heritage publications. This is unfair and natural for the same reason: the volume of such products (of very different quality) is truly enormous. Without daring to embrace the immensity, I want to draw attention to just one, but, in my opinion, a very important cross-cutting theme - the experiences of understanding the recent past (the last third of the twentieth century) of the Russian intelligentsia.
Let me remind you of some significant publications. This is a new portion of workbooks by Alexander Tvardovsky (“Banner” No. 8--10) and the diaries of Vladimir Lakshin for 1969--1970 (“The Last Act” - “Friendship of Peoples” No. 4--6), that is, a chronicle of the murder “ New World." This is the correspondence of Lydia Chukovskaya with her father, Korney Chukovsky (M., “UFO”; I mean the final episodes of the epistolary), and later fragments of Lydia Korneevna’s “Akhmatov” diary (“After the End” - “Banner” No. 1). This is the correspondence of the same Chukovskaya with David Samoilov (“Banner” No. 5--7; the book edition will appear next year), memories of Samoilov, the poet’s son, Alexander Davydov (“Forty-nine days with kindred spirits” - “Banner” No. 4 ), and Georgy Efremov (“Yellow Dust” - “Friendship of Peoples” No. 10--11); a tough article from the “Literary Collection” of Alexander Solzhenitsyn (“New World” No. 6), where the author not so much analyzes Samoilov’s poems, the essence and structure of which are inaccessible to him, but rather seeks to demythologize, if not to say discredit, personality, creative strategy and social the position of a poet who thought decidedly differently than Solzhenitsyn. These are the last (1987-1994) diaries of Igor Dedkov (“A new account has already been opened...” - “New World” No. 1--4). A simple listing of these precious materials for the future history of the Russian enlightened class allows us to see a kind of branching but unified plot - with common problems and characters. For me, this semantic unity became quite tangible after the appearance (at the end of the year) of three books and two journal publications.
The diaries of Nathan Eidelman (M., “Materik”) are doomed to become a bestseller. Eidelman was a man with charisma (“a living legend” who did not fade after his untimely death), and his avid interest in literally everything that ever happened in the world (including modern times!) provided incredible thematic diversity in the daily recordings he kept for himself. The diaries can be read as historical chronicles (social processes, the movement of historical and philological thought, the fight against publishing houses and censorship, literature, theater, cinema, etc.), but the main thing here is different - vulnerability, sadness, the internal tragedy of being a life-loving, charming and victorious Eidelman. The leitmotif of the diaries is grief from the departure of friends (seniors and peers), painful reflection (Eidelman always thinks that he lives, thinks, writes differently ); spiritual discomfort, which is literally drowned out by constant travel, conferences, feasts, public lectures, disputes (in a word - life in the world) and exhausting work (supposedly for money); and thoughts of death. Eidelman has said more than once that, like his favorite heroes - Karamzin, Lunin, Pushchin - he will not live to see sixty. And so it happened: Nathan Yakovlevich died almost overnight - on the threshold of new times (November 1990), which he had been waiting for and in which he (a historian with a capital H!) could not help but see new temptations and dangers. The point here is not only in “personal” circumstances (Eidelman’s life for a long time was marked by family drama), but also in the idea of \u200b\u200bthe finitude of all existence, which deeply captures not just patented pessimists, but brave fighters who know a lot about friendship and work and pleasures. And therefore, unable to accept the injustice hidden in the very nature of our existence.
One of the best living Russian writers, Leonid Borodin, lived a completely different life, which he described in a book with the symbolic title “Without a Choice” (M., “Young Guard”). Borodin, who laboriously searched for his “third truth”, challenged the Soviet monster, and paid for it with years in prison and camps, of course, made a choice. And more than once. As he does now, resolutely rejecting both the communist evil and the reality in which we find ourselves. But the point is that, according to Borodin, his life took shape “by itself” - it was impossible otherwise. Not then, not now. Therefore, while disagreeing with one or another of the writer’s judgments (I just can’t accept his judgments about October 1993), you feel: there is not an iota of politicking here. Only pain and anxiety, for which our reality provides a mountain of reasons. Only courage. Inseparable from happiness, reflections on which complete the book about Borodin’s years of study and wanderings. “About myself, I can say with honest confidence that I was lucky, fortunate enough - in the years of troubles and trials, personal and national - not to be defiled by the curse of the Motherland either in words or in thoughts.” Remain yourself.
I hear something similar in “Notes That Don’t Need a Plot” by the late Sergei Pavlovich Zalygin (“October” No. 9-11). During perestroika, Zalygin headed the “New World” - the history of his editorship forms the hidden (of course, with many digressions) plot of the notes. It was difficult to keep a magazine - both under the late Soviet regime, which sought to keep the truth within the framework of party “glasnost”, and in the 90s, when freedom was reflected in a fall in circulation, poverty in the writing and reading community, and rampant rudeness. There is a lot of bitterness and sadness in Zalygin’s notes, but - despite everything - there is much more wise faith in culture, Russia, people - and his business, a magazine that must continue . This motive is also organized by the wonderful memoir essay by Sergei Kostyrko (“New World” No. 12), entitled in the words of Zalygin “... Don’t be afraid of yourself.”
That's right, don't be afraid of yourself. We must do the work while we have enough strength. Recent history has either frightened us, has pretended to be an eternity, has promised an earthly paradise of 500 days, or has pushed us towards despair. And this fate is common, and not just those about whom books are written in ZhZL. The chronicle of the evolving consciousness of an “ordinary intellectual” can be called “The Diary of a Cultured Girl” (M., Russian State University for the Humanities) - an intelligent and highly professional television journalist who, hiding under the pseudonym Tatyana Yuryeva , dared to publish the records that she had kept since November 1982 (Brezhnev’s death ) to November 1997 (expulsion of the author - and not only - from Russian television). Reading “Yuryeva”, you re-experience what our intelligentsia (at least the capital’s) experienced and (for which it was to some extent to blame). There are countless colorful (creepy) details and episodes, but still the main value is not in them, but in the sincerity and courage with which the author writes about his hopes, breakthroughs, mistakes and defeats. This dizzying truthfulness allows us to feel the unity of history, to understand how our troubles today are rooted in yesterday and the day before yesterday, how vague “postponed” questions return in all their ominous glory. Actually, that’s what you’re thinking about after the completely dissimilar books of Eidelman, Borodin, Zalygin, after the publication of letters and diaries from the late Soviet past, which we will have to overcome - now it’s clear to everyone - for many, many years to come. Andrey NEMZER
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