Jokingly

On March 27, our colleague Viktor Shutkevich passed away

I never thought that I would have to write these lines. After all, Vityusha Shutkevich was younger than me. Not even a year had passed since he celebrated his “first fifty” in his last June.
...We met at Komsomolskaya Pravda more than thirty years ago and immediately became friends. Victor graduated from the journalism department of Moscow State University, but already carried in his pocket the red crust of an intern of the legendary newspaper. Actually, everywhere and always his name was Jester. It sounds frivolous, but for all his enthusiastic, champagne-like love for those around him, he was a collected person. For example, in 1979 I was going to the SP station drifting in the icy ocean with some goodies. Ivashchenko’s friend says: “Be sure to take some vodka, people should like it.” I take five bottles. Good, friend praises. But it’s better, he says, five more - it’s cold there... And Jokingly asks: “What are you flying in? In a jacket? Let's go to me, I'll give you my sheepskin coat. The sheepskin is beautiful, rustic!”
And they went, as I remember now, far away to the Shutkevichs - they lived in the countryside of Lobnya. For registration in the capital at that time it was necessary to serve and serve...
I could remember a lot of similar things about Vita. A reliable, sincere, sincere guy - it was always easy to be with him: both when we were interns fetching beer for members of the respected editorial board of Komsomolskaya Pravda, and when he himself rose to the rank of deputy editor in our favorite tomboyish newspaper. Until his last days, already being deputy editor-in-chief of the serious government newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta, he continued to remain the same Jester - a passionate lover of life with a subtle, poetic soul of a romantic.
Already terminally ill with cancer, he invited my wife and me to his dacha to celebrate the New Year. The whole friendly Shutkevich family gathered: the eldest daughter Anastasia with her husband Sasha and three children-grandchildren - Alexandra, Fedor, Dmitry; the youngest Anyuta with her fiancé Andrei (their wedding is scheduled for April 28...) How much fun we had that night! It was Joking who got everyone going, of course. Although his blood pressure was “dancing” and he had a fever, he personally gave a meter-long piece of candy to his grandchildren and arranged various competitions for them. He got so angry that he blindfolded me and ordered me to look for coins she had hidden in the most incredible places on his beloved wife Tatyana. He laughed jokingly and heartily. And what songs we sang! This is actually Vitina’s crown: to sing. And on the occasion of March 8, he never forgot to sing romances to the women. This holiday was no exception - he sang to them on the phone from the hospital room...