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Heroes and anti -heroes in Russia
Leading Lev Roitman

Lev Roitman:

I will not start with the subject of our conversation, but with the one who participates in it: by phone from Minsk, writer Svetlana Aleksievich; from Geneva Professor Slavist, director of the European Institute Georges Niva; And in Prague, a writer, literary critic, our employee Peter Vail. And now about not quite clear to me, excuse me, the topic of our conversation, or rather, the conversation that I will invite the program participants to conduct with each other. So, does today's Russian man have a certain hero close to the ideal, a role model? Perhaps there is an antihero that repels him? Of course, these questions are very abstract, especially when you consider that the sociologists of the Russian Public Opinion of the Russian Foundation at one time came to the discouraging conclusion: 70% of Russians have no ideals. Although, at the same time, in childhood, more than half of the respondents had an ideal, a role model.

Heroes and anti -heroes of today's Russians - who are they, are they at all? Svetlana Aleksandrovna Alekseevich, you are a Russian writer, you live in Minsk, your books, I would say, this is a personified, if you like, sociology.

Svetlana Alekseevich:

Well, this is a very interesting topic of the conversation that you suggested, and, I think, it just hangs in the air, and we somehow are afraid and avoiding everything, because we have no answers, too new questions. I would say that the multivariation of life overturned the entire former building, even if it was bloody, even if it was terrible, tragic, but it was inhabited, and there were already their own voluminous heroes. Now it all overturned so much that there is rather anti -heroes, because this sense of sacrifice is more likely where to direct its aggressiveness. And then there are incredible figures that focus, either Chubais, or Gaidar, or Berezovsky. But, as for the heroes, when I was thinking about it, working on a new book, I think: “I need a person’s point of support, he must hold on to something,” and I realized that today this is a little man, his religion left him, he was left by art, he left one on one with his problems. And the incredible thing happened: the hero who is interesting to me today is not a priest, this is not an intellectual or sixties, this is, oddly enough, this little person who survives, who somehow draws his children from this nightmare, carries bags from China, from Manchuria, Poland and stands in this sun, in the bazaar, deceives the state. People are deceiving each other, but it is he, this little man, who accumulates this new experience of life, and he first declares: there is my life, I am responsible for myself, for the first time for myself, for the idea, not to the state, for something. And this is the most interesting hero for me today.

Lev Roitman:

Thank you, Svetlana Alekseevich, Minsk. And now in Geneva, a professor of Niva, I will present you somewhat more, although, of course, every interest in literary criticism in Russia knows your name, you are one of the largest modern Slavists in the world.

Georges Niva:

You know, your question is very characteristic, I think that in the West we do not ask the following question: do we have a hero. If they are, this is for the better, sometimes the type of mother of Teresa, that is, a person who sacrifices himself for the sake of others. But you can’t imagine heroes, they themselves appear, or they are not, and you need to be able to live without them. I myself do not want to talk about anti -heroes, because too often they find a lot of them in Russia. Russia needs good state men, economists. Svetlana Alekseevich were mentioned such good state people as Gaidar and Chubais, these are already politics, these are people who know how to lead one line, smart politicians should find in Russia. But the heroes, these were dissidents, they were Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov, I will say directly, partly, this is also Svetlana Alekseevich, because I look at the appearance of her book, as a kind of kind of literary and human heroism. It is now necessary to live in Russia, alas, without heroes, but this does not mean that you do not need to try to find them, for example, in the church, so that there are not only hierarchs, but some heroes of faith, the heroes of social labor. Their absence, of course, sometimes affects me when I am in Russia in some hospitals. I would like to be found "small heroes", as Svetlana says.

Lev Roitman:

Thank you, Professor Niva from Geneva. As soon as you mentioned Svetlana, as one of the heroes, a hero writer, I will call, of course, some of her books that the reading Russians are known to the Russians, but perhaps not only the reading Russians listen to us, for example, her book “Chernobyl prayer”, which recently, last year, published in France, but is called in the back of Russian, to translate the prayer. "Chernobyl prayer" about the victims, about those who survived the Chernobyl disaster. Her earlier books “Zinc Boys” about the victims of Afghanistan, “The war is not a female face” - the heading of another book, “Charmed by Death” - her book about suicides, and so on.

Peter Vile:

The twentieth century checked all conceivable ideologies, in this case, I mean not propaganda by ideology, but what a person lives, in addition to material interests. He checked and threw up in the first place positivist thinking, which, ultimately, turned into Hiroshima, Auschwitz, Chernobyl. And thus, any ideological word turned out to be compromised, and after it, in general, the words in question arose into question. This compromotion was felt most acutely, maybe in the Soviet Union, the most ideological country, and in the 70s came to the fore as a hero, a somewhat reflecting intellectual, reflecting, he, of course, went into the shadows. And then I must agree and disagree with Svetlana Alekseevich. Yes, indeed, the small person who is trying to survive now is extremely interesting, but this person does not exist on the surface of art, and not invented another way to observe the hero. He must break in the images, either in literature, or even brighter in the cinema, and now, of course, there is no such person. Nobody needs a reflective intellectual, his own wife does not respect him, because he cannot earn money. And it comes to the fore, if we say, a kind of Russian semblance of Schwarzenegger, a person who is able to give in the face, this, more or less, accepted hero. Such a hero exists, of course, in Western mass art, but there he occupies a certain niche. Nobody runs to Schwarzenegger to give an Oscar or somehow seriously talk about him with the words of serious people. This is exactly what happens in Russia. If we look at the last most interesting phenomena of such sensitive art as a movie, then we will see that these heroes come to the fore. Sometimes they are very frightened, as in the film "The Euts", which terribly scared the Moscow intelligentsia, where the peasants, who were fraudulently deprived of the land, take their guns and go to kill the regional and metropolitan superiors. Even the famous liberals-intellectuals made a call to ban this film, quite in Stalin and In Feature, they were scared. But other heroes are not yet visible.

Lev Roitman:

Thank you, Peter Weil. And I want to notice that you, Peter, said: in the West, never and in any weather, say, Kashpirovsky or a person from this clipboard, roasters, healing, meditation, and so on, could never get a national screen, this happened in Russia. Naturally, as Professor Niva says, in the West there is otherwise the question of a social ideal, about the hero, not like in Russia. You said, Peter, about intellectuals, objecting Svetlana Alekseevich, somewhat recall the words of Herzen about the intelligentsia: we are not doctors, we are pain. Today, obviously, this intelligentsia on the Russian donkey is rather pain, but some kind of pain is in itself and, a little, away from the Russian Bolshak, but they are not definitely doctors.

Svetlana Alekseevich:

Thank you very much for the warm words to Georges Niva, but I want to say that I'm not a hero at all, today, like everyone else, a lonely tormenting person, because there are too many questions that have no answers. And I would even say that today there was a certain gap. There was an old culture, we will call it so that we are people of the culture of the struggle and culture of the barricades, I call it so for ourselves, because we can do nothing more, as soon as we fight, and then we need heroes. Today, of course, it happened that the culture of power replaced this, Peter Vile said very correctly about this. But, since this is a culture of struggle, it all the time demanded prophets, we have almost the same thing - heroes and prophets. At one time, poets, writers occupied this place, there was such a great time that everyone is nostalgic today. But today, this place is occupied alternately by generals, then psychics and, I think that today we need not heroes, but ideals. I remember how I once struck me when I made a book about Afghanistan, that no one said - I was to blame, everyone found the guilty, starting from Gorbachev, from a particular general, the platoon commander, but no one said: "I am." Everyone called whom they want to be like, since this culture of war gave a lot of heroes, but did not give completely experience in personal responsibility, personal sin, personal right to an act, the lack of this right. And I would even say, this is where I started at the beginning, this pause happened, that is, the intellectuals that my colleagues are talking about again, they say something today, but even I, a man from this circle, recently listened to our beautiful writers, Voinovich, then I read Astafyev’s performance somewhere, even I, who always felt like that next to them, I heard how many words that were coming by. Yes, it’s worthy, yes, it’s interesting, yes, it’s familiar, yes, it’s nice to hear today, when the boundaries of good and evil are blurred, but this is something wrong, it passes past today's life, it does not remain in consciousness. Some other words are needed, maybe you need to start with the metaphys of the meaning of our life, to say that you are alone with this life, with this cosmos, and you must be responsible for all this. That's when you begin to talk about it, something flashes in the eyes of people, even driven by this life today, some kind of anxiety that, yes, probably this is so because a person cannot be completely lonely.

Lev Roitman:

Thank you, Svetlana Aleksandrovna. When you said, this is what came to my mind: the Russian classic, classical literature gave rise to a hero - an extra person, and today it seems that everyone is superfluous people. In this society, excess people can arise an ideal, a role model?

Georges Niva:

You know, I think that not all extra people, otherwise there would be no Russia, but it still exists, holds on. And, probably, there are not heroes behind the scenes, but, say, somewhere there are responsible people, people who are trying to live according to the principle of responsibility. But irresponsibility, it is often amazing, it is striking in the statements of intellectuals. Yes, they sweetly hate their homeland, and under the guise of love for the homeland, I often hear this note of hatred for the homeland, that is, self -destruction, self -destruction, a complete abandonment of any small positive step. But there are these people who, nevertheless, hold the country, and we only need to hope that, I would say that intellectual life becomes at the height of the deep life of that country.

Lev Roitman:

Peter Weil, you know, I remembered when Professor Niva said that Belinsky once said in connection with the release of the Lermontov “hero of our time” that this book has a tangible presence of thought. Georges Niva speaks of the Russian intelligentsia of today that you say about this?

Peter Vile:

Now the presence of thought is much less valued than the presence of action, and the ability to take the game comes over more and more to the forefront. And Professor Niva was very interesting about the tendency of self -abasement. I think that Russian post -Soviet art has passed the stage of self -abasement and is now just at the stage of gaining self -awareness, but gaining a special, namely negative. Now, let me have such a phrase, patriotism is in fashion, but patriotism is purely negative, not due to the approval of their heroes and ideals, but due to the denial of all outsider and alien. And this is just completely and we meet in all manifestations, that is, again, primarily in the cinema, which, I repeat, it seems to me the most indicative. Here it turns out, it is clear already, who does not like, do not like the very West that at the beginning of the perestroika called to help, but he somehow did not rush towards, did not fall into his arms, and now the pendulum went the other way. I remember how excited about America and Western Europe such that I, who lived in the same America for 18 years, was just marvelous, where such an ideal country came. They write the same thing now, only with the opposite sign, again about something non-existent. And often, not just a foreigner, but a former Russian citizen, is such an embodiment, which is quite natural, since he speaks his native language, he is such a representation of the negative West, so he is an antihero. And the time of the heroes without the prefix "Anti", I'm afraid, has not yet come, in any case, there is nothing to see anything on the horizon.

Lev Roitman:

Thank you, Peter Weil.

Svetlana Alekseevich:

You know, this is the only thing, it seems to me that we can do and we can do very well, entire rites exist this thing - it is to love and hate. And so I thought so, listening to my interlocutors, and remembered my feelings from the streets, from meetings in recent years, and I would like to say that, oddly enough, there are still enough people who will go to the war, who will climb to the roof of the reactor, knowing that they will, if you like, will conduct some incredible experiments in space, under the ground, where I wish, these are the heroes in that old concept, oddly enough, they still exist. But there are very few people who can build good houses, can make good cars, can even defend their dignity, serve themselves normally in a cafe or in a store, people of business - this is what we do not have. And to love or hate, to be a hero in this culture of the struggle, in my opinion, it is worth going outside, we have a lot of them. And this self -destruction, it also comes from this, from what to make a Russian person is boring, uninteresting, for a long time, but to destroy, tear a shirt - oh, this is a whole art.

Georges Niva:

We are talking about heroes, there is such a trinity - this is a holy, hero and sage, not only heroes, but also saints, and not only saints, but also sages are needed. There may be the third category, unfortunately, there is no. I read the announcements of Alexander Zinoviev, who returns to Russia, as he explains - this is a scream, this is a kind of hysteria against the West and in general, against. And subjectively this is understandable. But, where is wisdom, where is intellectual responsibility? And holiness, holiness, I think, is still in Russia, but as always it is not visible.