Correspondence on a given topic

Letter to Andrey Madison about love, marriage and the Estonian press

Dear Andrey!

I had one friend, let's call him T., who was not very lucky in his life with marriages. Or rather, he was lucky with his marriages - he was married three times, but then got divorced each time.

Each time he divorced surprisingly peacefully, without scandals or scenes. But - a strange thing - immediately after the divorce, T. began to say terrible nasty things about his ex-wives. And it’s not even just nasty things, just some things that usually don’t fit into a conversation.

It was just some inexplicable character trait - in fact, T. was a completely peace-loving person, not prone to slander and chivalrous towards the female sex. And then it just burst through him. And sometimes the conversation was about something completely different, say, we were talking about the World Cup, discussing the reasons for the incomprehensible victory of the French. T. also discusses, and then suddenly inevitably inserts: “And my Irka considered everything that goes beyond the standard position to be French sex.” After this, the conversation somehow calms down by itself, because of the three present, one is hearing about Irka for the first time, the second has known her since childhood and continues to be friends at home, and at that moment she is expecting a child from the third. So we talked to you about Zidane.

But this is just me - as they say, for starters. The conversation, as you understand, will be about your notes in the margins of Estonian newspapers. I must admit right away that I don’t read Estonian newspapers - I don’t have enough language and I’m sorry for the time. But I have some right to this conversation, because, as you know, I live here.

Recently a young lady came to register us (by the way, all the information about the population that you provide in your article is very approximate, since the dynamics were high, but there were no reliable statistics on this matter until now). The young lady spoke Russian, at times I switched to Estonian for variety and practice, but she stopped these attempts. Probably, such cunning instructions were given to them. To find out the whole truth. So, it turned out that I have been living here for twenty years. More than half of my life, it turns out.

It is clear that everyone has their own world in their head, and that these worlds may not completely coincide. This is exactly how the image of Estonian life that you got from the newspapers does not coincide with the reality that surrounds me (or “exists in my head” - let Kant judge that). They do not coincide so much that I even fell into some prostration after reading your review. But then, on reflection, I conducted a mental experiment.

I imagined a certain character who, for example, left Moscow for various reasons. And then he came to his homeland for an inspection. What is it like here now? - this character asks himself. And he goes to the kiosk to buy newspapers.

Then this character meets with friends who have not forgotten him and finds out that they did not forget him, but somehow adapted to his absence. And our character thinks: the air here has become empty and does not store the sounds of my steps, the streets remain the same, but the soul has left the stones. And things like that in the same spirit.

And in Sheremetyevo-2, while waiting for a flight, he, the character, reads the purchased newspapers, and on the plane, flying over Greenland, compiles some extract from these newspapers, noting particularly characteristic facts in the margins. And writes in a notebook:

“The population of Russia is catastrophically declining. The current president’s favorite singer is Willy Tokarev, and the president himself wants to join NATO. The authorities in Russia are blowing up houses with living people using granulated sugar. Bandits, skinheads and Barkashovites are walking around all cities and towns. They are killing blacks , Azerbaijanis and each other. The police walk by and turn a blind eye to this. In between, the police take bribes and deliver granulated sugar to residential buildings. Chubais turns off the electricity."

This is, in fact, Andrey, what I wanted to say about your note. I really hope that you will not refuse me to publish these thoughts. And if we talk about discriminatory difficulties, that’s a separate topic.

---

Answer to Roman Leibov - not about love, not about marriage and a little about the Estonian press

Hello, Roman!

Thank you for responding to my notes. Although we seem to know each other, and I think it was not entirely necessary in the letter addressed to me to resort to techniques with “familiar T.” and some “characters” in general. Moreover, I did not feel any kinship with them. It was possible, as it seems, simply and clearly: Andrey, this is how it is, but if it’s not so, then I will still do it my way.

And therefore I will answer mainly to direct instructions, and not allegories.

Firstly, if we consider: I lived in Estonia exactly twice as long as you, and all this time I dealt with Estonians constantly. Including stays in various kinds of purely Estonian groups - from a kindergarten to the sociology sector of the Academy of Sciences of the ESSR and a team of loaders at the Tallinn Zoo. I had a lot of friends and acquaintances among Estonians - musicians, artists, writers, and even Buddhists and Steinerians. any “way of Estonian life” from the newspapers Therefore, of course, I did not take away . The one I carry with me is quite enough for me.

Accordingly, I saw all sorts of young ladies - both those who switched to Russian, and those who did not switch to it for no reason.

Now let's talk about reading newspapers. Everyone, in the end, does what he likes or what he needs to do. By saying that you are sorry to waste time reading Estonian newspapers, you, I believe, quite deliberately, put me in the position of a person who, compared to you, is busy with trifles. I will neither argue nor look for reasons to say a barb in response. Dostoevsky, for example, read newspapers and even advised others to do so, but he did not read Emily Dickinson. And for God's sake.

Another thing is that you make it seem as if I have no other idea about the reality of Estonian life except from reading newspapers - and then unceremoniously, on the fly. And that I build my attitude towards Estonia based on personal grievances of petty pride - they say, she left me as a wife for another, my friends adapted to my absence, and I was sick of it.

As an educated person, I hope you understand that these types of accusations have a dual purpose: to offend their addressee and to expose him to the public in the most unsightly form.

I have no doubt that I have ill-wishers who will rejoice at your likeness. Which is normal. But not to them, but, naturally, I will answer you - with an example from life.

The last person who came to see me in Tallinn today, literally an hour before my departure, was Valera Blinov, a cameraman. He once worked as the chief in this position on the set of “A War Romance” and in the films of Kaljo Kiisk, the best of Estonian film directors, with whom Jüri Järvet loved to act. Now he is nobody. And he has no other desires than to leave for Russia - from the hateful Estonian reality, in which he has no place.

I will not be ironic about the fact that he also read it from the newspapers. Like dozens of my other friends and acquaintances who do not accept the new Estonian order - for reasons extremely similar to mine. It’s just that some of them left him, while others were unable to do so. But this is already a question of differences in temperaments and, to a lesser extent, a question of some everyday circumstances. I can only be glad that there were no singers of civilized apartheid among them. Although there were among my acquaintances those who, at the borders of the 80s and 90s, went to their popular front under the slogans “For our and your freedom.” Many people still repent of this.

I'm wrapping up. This time - an incident from a completely alien life. This was, if I’m not mistaken, in the year 15. Some angry English colonel wrote a letter to Sigmund Freud in which he accused him and his teaching of corrupting minds. Freud answered the colonel essentially - with a description of neuroses and phobias, a register of which he compiled based on the text of the colonel's letter.

So here it is. Based on the tone and content of your letter, Roman, I conclude: we differ in that for you the fate of Russians in Estonia (and I think the Russian nation in general) is a problem of the text, already of the level of expression, but for me it is not. One highly enlightened lady introduced me to this attitude in a concentrated form, who said that Russian culture interests her, but she doesn’t care about the Russian people.

The consciousness of involvement in the fate of the people is either there or it is not. There is no subject for controversy here, that is, word games, which you suggest I do in the additional note to the letter.

Naturally, if you have significant comments regarding what I said, they will immediately be brought to the attention of the respectable public. But I myself, I confess, have no desire to prolong this conversation - precisely because of the complete absence of a subject for it.

With constant respect -
Andrei Madison