CAPTAIN

Yurka Shchekochikhin had a strong handshake.

He took us by the hand and pulled us into journalism. He never said, “Do as I do.”

He always said: “Make it interesting. Do so that you yourself are not ashamed of what you have done. Do as you see fit."

Soviet power was stagnating in the yard: the mid-seventies of the last century.

And before that I had only heard such words at home, from my parents. And nowhere else.

And here is Komsomolskaya Pravda, a famous journalist - and such a free person! Could it really be?

Maybe. Teenagers were walking towards him, the captain of the Scarlet Sail of Komsomolskaya Pravda. In crowds. I was among them. And for some reason he was interested in us.

He didn't teach us anything. He talked to us.

Once again for those who did not realize: Yuri Petrovich Shchekochikhin, a publicist whose articles everyone knew at that time, talked to us. He listened to us. And we could even argue with him.

No one spoke to us at school. I was lucky: they always talked to me at home, but, admittedly, there were few such lucky people among us. On the street they shied away from us. In the trolleybus, any statement we made evoked the same reaction: I’m still young, grow up.

It was then that “The Twelfth Floor” appeared on television and suddenly it turned out that teenagers also have their own point of view and it can even be interesting.

“Scarlet Sail” was the first all-Union cry of teenagers. The cry is not for help, but for understanding. The captain of the Parus, Yura Shchekochikhin, was responsible for this teenage cry. In front of everyone. In front of the stern bosses as well. He never betrayed us boys: he took any blame upon himself. Calmly. Without pathos. Which we, as a rule, did not know about.

He created the atmosphere - that's all. In the always smoky room of the Scarlet Sail, only one thing was forbidden: asking adult journalists for an assignment.

But something else was encouraged: to come up with your own ideas, the most incredible, the most unthinkable.

We were fifteen years old. My God, we have finally found a place on this earth where no one told us: “Don’t be smart!” We could have been smart! We could have been offered. They listened to us and did not laugh at us.

Later, I realized what Yuri Petrovich wanted to teach us most important: freedom. They don’t teach freedom, you say? They teach. And it’s very simple: showing how great it is to be a free person.

He was his own. But at the same time he was a teacher. Having your own teacher at the age of 15 was a miracle in those years.

Shchekochikhin gave us all the feeling that miracles are happening in this world.

Then we grew up and seemed to be equal in age. We used to quarrel with Yura, make peace, and long ago switched to being on first-name terms, but until his death I treated him with some timidity. This is probably how you should treat teachers.

When Shchekochikhin died, I suddenly thought: a person grows old when his teachers begin to die.

Unfortunately, memory does not last forever. Only life is eternal. Shchekochikhin continues in us, his students, and through us in our students.

We remember, Yurka! We haven't forgotten.

Live.

Andrey MAKSIMOV
"Novaya Gazeta" No. 48, Special issue, 07/07/2003