Your letters

Letter from email: “ Every day I see people running across the street when the light is red. I basically switch to green because I know that if at least some people behave in a civilized way, life will become a little better .” In the letter from this listener there is also the following passage: “ If you watched the film “Brother-2,” then you probably remember how Danila says to the Frenchman: “Soon all of your America will be kirdyk.” These are the aspirations of the people .”

I haven't seen this picture. If they make fun of anti-Americanism there, then that’s good, in my opinion. Medicine like laughter never runs out. By the way, I can’t imagine that a person crossing the street only when the light is green would wish for America to befall, or to run into America, or for “kirdyk” to happen to America.

Complex relations, Russia still has complex relations with the West, and I would say: not with the West, but with itself, regarding the West. For a considerable part of our listeners, talking about the West is like borscht; it never gets boring. As soon as Mr. Putin said: “Whoever offends us will not live for three days,” I immediately received a letter in which Blok’s poem “Scythians” was quoted almost in full: “Yes, we are Scythians, yes, we are Asians...” It seems that the most sophisticated and strange of Blok’s poems and, by the way, the last in his life... There, Soviet Russia of 1918 calls on the West to a fraternal union, and If the West evades, she will turn her “Asian face” towards him and there will be no wet spot left from him. Today I am closer to another of Blok’s works, an earlier one, from 1913, “New America.” He glorifies the industrial South of Russia, where “factory chimneys turn black”, where “factory whistles groan.” Just in this poem are the famous words: “You, wretched Finnish Rus', do not rest in a rich coffin.” Blok is glad that she is already in the grave, this Rus' with its backwardness, because before his eyes a new, completely European Rus' is rising in the “flammable, free fire”:

The coal groans and the salt turns white,
And the iron ore howls...
Then over the empty steppe it caught fire
America is a new star to me.

A rare letter: a communist writes, confident that the bombings of houses in Moscow were carried out by the Russian government, which it calls, moreover, the power of the democrats: “These crimes of the democrats were committed in order to have a reason to kill Chechens. What do I care about the Chechens? Yes, nothing, like all other people. But don’t bark at Stalin when you yourself are much worse villains.” Not quite an ordinary communist, even quite extraordinary: he considers Stalin a villain, as you heard, although not as big as the Chechens, and the current Russian security officers in power. I also read from his letter: “ How many crocodile tears were shed over the repressed peoples, in particular the Chechens! And how the democrats fought for the abolition of the death penalty and seemed to emerge victorious. And now, without hesitation, even with pride, they are killing the same Chechen people without trial or investigation, turning them into refugees, and this is the same forced resettlement. Our democrats only need to call the people bandits in order to consider yourself entitled to destroy him, to wash him in toilets. How to combine the abolition of the death penalty with such an extermination of people, especially since it has not been proven in court that they are bandits? It turns out that a cop, a riot policeman, a soldier of democratic Russia can do something that a Russian judge cannot? And why are Yeltsin-Putin-Abramovich-Berezovsky-Smolensky better than Stalin, if they not only resettle Chechens, but and kill them?"

Communists and those close to them are usually very strong in criticism. Ten years ago I thought that they would give no rest to the post-Soviet rulers, they would tirelessly bring them to light, expose theft, bribery, all kinds of abuses - and let it be good, it would be wonderful, we just need to keep them out of power. Zyuganov and his people turned out to be from a different cloth. For ten years, not a single thief or bribe-taker was exposed, not a single high-profile case was initiated, they limited themselves to general abusive words, abuse, which, as we know, does not hang on the collar. And, out of gratitude, they were allowed into power...

Letter from Sochi: “Why are you just busy denigrating the entire past? Where did you and all the democrat-plutocrats receive a free education? Of course, in the Union, under Soviet rule. The most important thing for the nation is education. I personally subscribed to three newspapers and three magazines. All this was available to people, and subscriptions were cheap. So you hush it up. You criticize collective farms, but in the last decades, different types of bread have been like this a lot and it was so cheap that the grain suppliers were fed to pigs and cows. Mr. Strelyany, we need to talk about this, but you prefer to keep silent about it. Shalneva, Sochi ."

Mrs. Shalneva did not give her first name or patronymic. They fed, Mrs. Shalneva, you write correctly, they fed both pigs and cows with government baked bread. My mother used to say that store-bought bread makes the milk sweet. When I saw, having come to visit her, how she was crumbling a loaf of bread over a bucket of swill, I was so indignant that I even wrote about it as the greatest disgrace for which, of course, the authorities were to blame, and, apparently, I wrote it well: it was read at the very top, personally by Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev, and a special decree was immediately issued on measures to restore order in the expenditure of bread. The fate of this resolution was the same as that of most others... Of course, collective farms were suppliers of grain, you wrote correctly, Mrs. Shalneva, but they were bad suppliers, unreliable. The last 25 years of the existence of the Soviet Union (a whole quarter of a century!) were the years when there was enough bread for everyone and even for pigs and cows only because every year several tens of millions of tons of wheat and corn were bought from the Americans, Canadians and other “imperialists”. It was an amazing time. In another year, they bought up to forty million tons of grain overseas and turned it into manure. I remember well this amazing calculation made in preparation for the Food Program: 60 million tons of grain (twenty of our own were added to the forty American ones) are turned into manure in collective farm and state farm cowsheds and pigsties: they feed it almost whole, in such a way that neither meat nor milk is obtained, only manure. This grain was eaten by 45 million Soviet cows, and they produced three times less milk than 15 million American ones, and there were not enough dairy products in the Soviet Union. Shortly before his death, Leonid Ilyich was amazed: “How can this be? Where does it go, our milk?”

" You are worried about Mutgaev Kerim Khasanovich from the city of Nalchik. I was born and raised in Kazakhstan, where my Balkar parents and their people were exiled in 1944. I have been listening to you for a long time and constantly, and before the story with Andrei Babitsky, I was even perplexed that Soviet methods were not used against Radio Liberty: where did the Soviet party system come from toleration of the truth? Now everything, apparently, is falling into place, but, as I understand, you have always been ready for this. However, forgive those who rejoice in the persecution of you and themselves take part in this persecution in the form of letters to “Svoboda.” Since Russia does not have its own deserts, then, in my opinion, we must rent the Karakum and drive this part of the population there in a circle until all the Soviet nonsense comes out of them. Or the second method: release for sale receivers tuned to. one and only radio station - "Svoboda". The most healthy force in our Russia is the Yabloko party. I want it to be closer to people, especially in the localities. We should not wait for people to see the light, but work with them, as Svoboda works, which educates and develops us, loves us and respects us, criticizes us and makes us think, wishes good and peace to all states, especially Russia ."

Thank you for the letter, Kerim Khasanovich, it lay with me for a long time without moving, such is the fate of almost all letters in which we are approved and not condemned. I have little faith that we are able to help someone see the light, although all the time I receive letters in which you read the words: “Thank you, at one time you helped me see the light.” I will say this: you can only help those who can be helped. The taste for persecution that you write about is inherited, although not necessarily from mother and father. And since this is innate, hereditary, at any given moment in every society there is a certain (and approximately equal) number of people who want to persecute their thoughts; only one society gives them ham, and the other gives them freedom.

A Chechen doctor writes: “ In March, I often visited Grozny, and in April I spent two weeks there. Everything is in ruins, but all hope is killed by something else - chaos. The predictions of our old people came true: the time will come when the living will envy the dead. Until May 12, Grozny was closed, but women, by hook or by crook, went there: to look at housing, to take some things, and more often - for the corpses of their loved ones. It was dangerous for the men to enter, and many did not return. The impression was that the residents were not allowed in for so long. Firstly, the city was given over to the plunder by the troops, and secondly, it was necessary to destroy the remaining housing so that people would have nowhere to return to. When asked: “What are you doing?” In March-April, when there was no more fighting in the city, and the residents had not yet returned, a lot of private houses were destroyed. Before this, everything was taken away, even building materials. “We came here to earn money,” one contract soldier told me. “Not to restore constitutional order, but to earn money.” This is how they make money. A pass for a man of any age is 200 rubles. A pass for a car is 200 rubles. To stick someone else’s photo on a pass is 200 rubles. To get a passport is 1,500 rubles. Certificate No. 9 is 200 rubles. Removing a corpse from Grozny is 5-6 thousand rubles. These are the prices for March-April. I discovered that the oil business was thriving. Not far from the checkpoint, at the intersection of the Rostov-Meskeyurt highway, I saw with my own eyes a “samovar” - that’s what we call a handicraft device for distilling oil. They explained to me that the military has the “roof” over it; the worst thing is that young Chechens are required to register with the commandant’s office, and it is officially impossible to obtain it, as in Moscow. And without registration, you are a militant, they will send you to Chernokozovo or pay off. The best way is to write that you are a militant and hand over your weapons. This is what 15 of my relatives did during the “cleansing” in their village. It was a great success. The guys were taken to the commandant’s office, and not shot on the road, you can try to ransom them. three kilometers from the house. They beat him, tortured him, then burned him. They found him a few days later by the remains of his clothes. He was standing over Chechnya. I tried to make a list of those killed in the center of Shali. It was in January. They gathered children to give them New Year's gifts, so that they could receive pensions. 218 people were killed. "Go away! If the feds find out that you are looking for last names, you and we will be finished!" I am giving my first and last name only to you. Now I am in Moscow, I don’t have a permanent address, I live in turns with relatives, I couldn’t get registration without a bribe, and on principle I don’t want a bribe, I’m trying to go somewhere."

I discussed this matter with both Chechens and Russian soldiers. It turns out that with their money and property, the Chechen population buys itself the opportunity to somehow exist, and often life itself. A question arises. What would have happened if the Russian army, the Russian police, and the Russian state security adhered to their regulations in Chechnya: no one was robbed or robbed, no one was maimed or killed except in battle, if, in short, they were all there not to earn money, as that contract soldier put it. Both Chechens and Russian soldiers believe that Russian losses would have been lower. After all, now they are not only fighting with the feds. They get revenge - for robberies and extortion, for torture and murder of the first people they meet, for trading in the living and the dead. Some take revenge with weapons in their hands, others - by sympathizing with the avengers, helping them or not interfering with them, which also means a lot. So I’ll say once again what was already said in the program “Your Letters”: the opportunity to behave in Chechnya outside the regulations is so important, so sweet for the feds that they are ready to pay for it and pay with their lives. This is one of the mysteries of both the first Chechen war and the second, current one, although... what a mystery it is! And only these wars...

A letter to Radio Liberty from Semyon Uzin: “On the afternoon of March 3, 1975, I opened the door to the apartment when the bell rang. Three men in civilian clothes and two girls stood on the landing. “Semyon Vulfovich? - one of them quickly asked and handed me his identification: “KGB for Leningrad and the Leningrad Region. Senior Lieutenant Aksakov Valery Ivanovich.” In the apartment, he presented a search warrant and said: “I propose to voluntarily hand over the anti-Soviet literature you have.” I put on the table “Only One Year” by Svetlana Aliluyeva and the typescript of Roy Medvedev’s anti-Stalinist work. The search in the presence of female witnesses lasted six hours. Everything that the zealous lieutenants confiscated from me (a camera, a typewriter, eight manuscripts and two books) was presented to me, described in detail, put in two bags and sealed. “You, I see, are a decent person,” said Senior Lieutenant Aksakov. “We will call you again.” They called me to the Big House on Liteiny. Aksakov and Dolya took turns asking questions for many hours, then the head of the operations department, A.N. Chekhonin, took charge of me. He told me: “Well, he’s breaking into prison!” And yet I affirm: the search in my apartment was carried out in full accordance with the Criminal Procedure Code of the RSFSR of 1966. This document survived the Soviet era and is still in effect today. It was in accordance with this code that the people who came to Gusinsky’s office had to conduct a search. This code prohibits searches while wearing masks, and they were wearing masks, so the search was illegal to begin with. But further gross violations were committed. The search warrant was presented four hours later; the detectives themselves turned out to be witnesses; the search was not carried out in the presence of office employees. Where are you now, Colonel Aksakov, former deputy of the Leningrad City Council? It is thanks to you that I know exactly how a search differs from an ordinary raid."

Semyon Uzin, the author of this letter, of course, knows that senior lieutenant Aksakov could have carried out a raid on his apartment - the choice was not his, but his leadership, which, as you know, did not look back at the law. They could conduct a search not only without attesting witnesses, but also in the absence of the owner, I know this first-hand - not taking anything, but leaving the most unambiguous traces of their presence, so that you would be afraid, expect every minute that they would appear openly, with a warrant and female attesting witnesses.

Writes Alexander Evgenievich Migun, born in 1952: I’ve been listening to Radio Liberty for as long as I can remember. We had a Baltika radio, and my late father listened to Svoboda at night. I remember the jammers were buzzing loudly, he listened and said: “Look, Alexander, don’t tell anyone!” My paternal grandfather was repressed and sent to Magadan, where he died. Only one message came from him. My grandmother showed me his letter from the Gulag. The letter said that everything was fine with him, but in the very corner of the envelope the number “25” was written. My maternal grandfather was also repressed as a “kulak”. Grandma Arina told how a “black raven” arrived at night, took my grandfather, and that was it. I myself am a former communist, because I graduated from flight school, and in those days a non-party member could not be an airplane commander. One day in 1972, we, young pilots, were lying in a dormitory at a rural airfield, talking about the future. It was night, there was snow outside the window. I remember I told the guys that Grandma Arina told me that the Soviet Union would collapse because it was based on cruelty and nonsense, and God didn’t like that. The guys thought it was funny and they asked me: “When?” I myself didn’t know for sure, but go ahead and blurt out: “In twenty years!” And that’s how it happened. And then there were with me: Vovka Okunev and Sergey Rezchikov, both from Volgograd, and Rajan Abdrashidov from Samarkand. Apparently, God didn’t like it after all!”

Writes Igor Grigoriev, a former scientist and mathematician; in the last Soviet years, having left pure science, he managed to work in the military industry, saw, writes, it from the inside, and now understands that “this monster could not help but fall apart.” For the last two years, Mr. Grigoriev has been involved in the agricultural business. “I had to travel around the European part of Russia. I’ll take the Saratov region as an example. There, in Soviet times, huge amounts of money were pumped into the irrigation system. Now many fields have been taken out of crop rotation, harvests have fallen. Collective farmers stole all the non-ferrous metal from the irrigation system, no more than 10% of the irrigation system is operational. But what’s gratifying is that the Russian population still has initiative, and with what the further south, the more it is. This is understandable: the return from the land is greater, you can feed yourself. All farms (where they are not burned) are, one might say, prospering, but there are negligible numbers of them. Remembering the distant times, one would like to start a song about “sabotage” - that at the top, in the government, there are “pests” who are not allowing this initiative to develop. That’s why the people in the outback supported Putin, they thought. will figure out what's what..."

A letter from an entrepreneur from the outback of Moscow: “I am a super-cautious person. My business is clearly calculated for all kinds of risks. All assets - goods, equipment, transport - are liquid, with a recovery of at least 90 percent. The stores are registered to different legal entities and individuals, the volume of goods that are in any store at a time does not exceed two thousand dollars (you have to deliver it daily, but in case of fire, theft, etc., the loss will be limited to this amount. In general, I have never taken more than I can repay. About 6 years ago I saw what they do to a person who does not repay a debt - I don’t want to repeat his adventures, and the position of an insolvent debtor will be unbearable for my psyche. Despite this over-caution, I could achieve more, but playing big in Russian business is impossible without good administrative cover (for example, family connections), and I don’t have it in any other way. In this case, a strong “sticking out” is dangerous. It was the same yesterday, and so it is today.”

After reading such letters, the real reformers that have ever existed anywhere in history simply grow in my eyes, the real reformers - giants who managed to make changes that were immediately felt by millions of ordinary people, things that instantly reached the worst possible angles. Soon it will be a year since all the talk about restoring order, about the fact that a person cannot take a step in Russia freely, without bureaucratic and bandit permission, is associated with the name of Yeltsin’s successor. But it is still dangerous for an honest entrepreneur to “stick his head out.” This is in the outback of Moscow, and in the capitals, as they write, even more so.