Olga Kabanova. What was Timofeevsky talking about...

What was Timofeevsky talking about...
Part 2. Homeland

Olga Kabanova

Publication date: August 15, 2000

Olga Kabanova: Let's go home, where two ideas are fighting in the minds of our compatriots. On the one hand, we are convinced that a new dictatorship, terror is coming, on the other hand, that a new stagnation, sweet calm is coming. All this is connected with Putin. Since you betrayed culture with politics, tell me what you think about this?

Alexander Timofeevsky: What dictatorship, what terror - I don’t see a single real sign of terror. I see chimeras of intellectual consciousness, but there is no terror. When they say “terror,” they remember Babitsky and Gusinsky. Gusinsky and Babitsky. And nothing else. At the same time, it is striking that neither Babitsky nor Gusinsky are the individual whose rights liberals should defend. After all, both Gusinsky and Babitsky belong to their corporations. And this is why they are significant, and this is why they are famous. But there is no terror against corporations, there is intrigue against corporations. Terror is the destruction of the insignificant and unknown, this is when the forest is cut down, the chips fly, terror can only be against Maryivanna. The explosion on Pushkin Square looks like terror, unfortunately. Or the story of an Israeli boy who was kidnapped from his parents, demanded a gigantic ransom for him, and then his severed fingers were sent by mail to his father’s house. This is the story about Maryivanna, about that very individual person who is the main value for liberals. The trait of being bald is not. There was no outcry, either here or in the West. So, sluggishly, quietly, ashamedly, they cried. It was an inconvenient story. The wrong ones stole the boy. A German friend of mine recently came to see me with his fiancée. He is an aristocrat along all lines and in a hundred generations. She is the daughter of wealthy French Jews. The story of Romeo and Juliet. Both his and her parents equally hate their union. For several years now, young people have been loving and suffering, suffering and loving, and now they have finally decided to get married. Such a heroic act. This is a little funny at the end of the 20th century, but it is the sad truth. And these Western people, who should be especially open to the suffering of an individual, passionately told me about the attack on the Most group: what horror, what horror - about Babitsky, of course, too. They knew nothing about the Israeli boy.

O.K.: But here’s what I want to ask. Now, many believe, the period is coming when we will live like in Nikolaev Russia - a simple and understandable order plus monstrous conditions for a free creative person. Yeltsin himself was big, unpredictable, and that was his time. And Putin is a man without qualities.

A.T.: Nicholas Russia was quite terrible, we were taught correctly at school, and today’s affection for the country of Nicholas I or Nicholas II is sickening. We won’t discuss this with you, it’s not interesting. Let's talk about a person without properties. A person without properties is rather a positive phenomenon, there is nothing terrible in him, this is a common place. Why is common place necessarily bad? The best hero of Russian literature, the most beautiful, the purest, Petrusha Grinev is also a commonplace, a person without qualities, he has nothing except instinctive loyalty to the Tsar and the Fatherland and the inability to commit a bad act. He doesn’t read books, doesn’t reflect, but always does the right thing. There is nothing individual, nothing personal in it, it is the sum of many other people’s efforts. This is what is called a virtuous commonplace. Why do we, calling Putin a man without qualities, obviously deny him...

O.K.: ...virtues...

A.T.: And in vain. It clearly has its own canon of virtue, not the same, of course, as Petrusha’s, but also a canon, many other people’s efforts, several generations of moral people in their own way, some good common place that does not coincide with ours. With mine, in particular. But it will not allow, I am sure of this, cutting off the boys’ fingers. This is already a lot.

But let's continue about Gusinsky - something that is not customary to talk about, but you and I, as journalists, know well. Gusinsky, as a truly modern businessman who understands well what the press is, did not describe reality, but created and, creating, sold. After all, we remember very well that in 1998 there were no miners’ strikes - NTV created them with its sobbing broadcasts. NTV cried, and the miners swelled. How could it be otherwise, what was it like for them to look at these sobs? I always feel sorry for myself. Tears continue to flow, and hatred for the oppressors grows and grows. Gusinsky then created a strike and blackmailed the government with it. And NTV worked according to this scheme all the time. Of course, such tactics are consistent with the modern understanding of the fact - the fact exists only when it falls into the television frame, only when it is reflected. This is a very serious problem that has already been described many times. But if we defend freedom of the press as a sacred value, then this is the concept of the 19th century, this is the press that is subordinate to reality, and not the one that subordinates reality to itself. And Gusinsky’s television, I repeat, created reality as the most modern, smart, advanced. But then it is completely unclear why we should defend Gusinsky. He was a player, he was building an information pyramid, very strongly connected with power, and this pyramid had to collapse. Like any pyramid. And the progressive intelligentsia now goes to Pushka with placards “Everyone to defend the democratic pyramid!” However, this is nothing new to her; she once defended Chara.

O.K.: Let's return to Putin?

A.T.: When you say “satrap, tyrant,” you drive him into a corner. Because it is better to be a sinner than to be known as a sinner - inevitably you will begin to conform. The press is truly omnipotent. And with our cries about a satrap and a tyrant, we create a satrap and a tyrant. And he is neither one nor the other. He is an average person, even if he is not. But nothing and the average can be and, as a rule, is virtuous. None and average - this is a national agreement, this is a popular choice. It takes a lot of effort to turn the middle one into black. And the press is trying. On the contrary, if we write that Putin is a liberal reformer, that he will complete what Gaidar did not complete, then we will at least clear our conscience. Believe me, I am not speaking out of servility. I personally have no connection with Putin’s people, although I have heard a lot of nonsense on this score. I worked quite briefly and not too hard in Putin’s presidential campaign and then once again helped his people in one verbal matter - all these are episodes that have nothing to do with my current earnings. I have no personal interest in glorifying Putin, but I do have personal horror that the intelligentsia is looking for the source of evil in him. Searches and finds.

O.K.: Where is the source of evil?

A.T.: Fear God, he is not personified.

O.K.: But it scares me that words about our national dignity are being repeated more and more often, that the West is not a decree for us, it scares me that we must again support domestic producers. But I don’t want to be shackled in Soviet shoes and live in isolation! But here’s a topic that’s close to me: periodicals are not at all interested in information about Western culture. We begin to live within ourselves again. Again it turns out that in our chicken coop we are self-valued and self-sufficient.

A.T.: Let me finish talking about Putin, and we will return to what you are talking about. Putin consists of several components - now I will repeat the backs of today's political science. One is the Family, the second is, relatively speaking, Chubais and Gref with Kudrin, and Kiriyenko, and, finally, the third is the St. Petersburg KGB men. So, our task is to exaggerate the second term. This is modern journalistic work. Let's imitate Gusinsky. In this let him be an example to us... Now regarding our fate. That's a different story. If we are partly the masters of Putin’s image, then we are certainly the masters of our own destiny. We have many opportunities to make it the way we want. I see no reason to be sad.

O.K.: Why don’t you see any reason when you can’t make your own publication?

A.T.: ...You and I are stubborn, Olga, we don’t want to compromise - that’s the problem....

O.K.: How can we not go? Here I am working in a newspaper that wants to be a people's newspaper. And I would like to end my career in our equivalent of The New Yorker. But he is not there.

A.T.: I was recently approached for advice by the editors of a well-known newspaper, quite respectable, but a bit boring, though. But it tends to become very serious, analytical and essayistic. They don’t want to be popular there at all; there is no such idea.

O.K.: So the opportunity is not closed?

A.T.: No, of course. Russia, no matter how isolated it may be, strives for Western standards. Mastering the Internet, and so on. The Western standard is the modern standard. And Putin is striving for it. One of the signs of the Western standard is a thick analytical newspaper. It can be completely serious and analytical, like German newspapers, which allow themselves to be published with a completely blind front page - without pictures. Such newspapers have a section filled with huge essays. And there should be such a newspaper in Russia. And the path that Izvestia and Kommersant have chosen today is not at all the only one. Moreover, it is not modern. This is a monstrously old-fashioned way. Chasing news is laughable when you have the Internet. It was ridiculous yesterday, when there was only television, but today it is completely stupid. When I turn on the computer, I find out the news in a minute, and the newspapers give it in a day. I don’t need news in the newspaper, I need a detailed analysis with diverse, and best of all, non-obvious versions of what happened.

O.K.: Doesn’t the Internet give you this?

A.T.: No. Such versions require time, you need to sit down and think, you need to put what you thought out in words. This - not only in writing, but also in the type of reading - is a newspaper privilege, something that you must consume from paragraph to paragraph in detail, because you have to follow the logic, and the Internet is an instant impression. And this makes him strong. Here is a very good site - smi.ru, I often go to it, there are not only news, but also comments. But these are the first comments. And rightly so, this is the format of the Internet, you have to be the first. But you read only the first meaning first. And I need more - the third, fifth, twenty-ninth. Moreover, the Internet will not provide me with a delightful essay by Tatyana Tolstoy. And I want to read it, I have to read it, because Tolstoy’s essay is also a part of today, without it the day is incomplete.

O.K.: But such consumers are not enough for circulation, editors think. Although in many cities of the country, far beyond the Garden Ring, there are people who want to read this. And whoever doesn’t want to, reads local newspapers or doesn’t read newspapers at all. Simplifying newspapers, in my opinion, is a deliberate narrowing of the newspaper audience.

A.T.: It is also commercially very inaccurate. Tolstoy's essay is a profitable, marketable product. But they have a wild idea of ​​the market. This is all because my childhood was hungry. They never had toys, and when Orbit chewing gum came out, they decided it was a thing. It's even touching in its own way. You and I know neophytes, Olga, we once saw them in church, they took communion every day and fasted on great holidays - time must pass for faith to become calm.

O.K.: But what about your project “Two Capitals”, with the newspaper “Rech”?

A.T.: Everything will work out, as Stiva Oblonsky said. Everything will work out - not for me, but for a competitor. Then a rumor spread that Gelman was starting to publish a large weekly newspaper, “Seven Capitals.” He remembered our name.

O.K.: Do you mean the seven European capitals of culture?

A.T.: Oh, if only. As far as I know, this refers to the seven currently created federal districts. An efficient man, Marat Gelman. This is the same as if the newspaper “Industrialization” or “Collectivization” began to be published in 1930. But it seems there were no such names. The two capitals are a venerable Russian cultural mythology: it is almost three hundred years old. Seven capitals are the latest party and government order. Feel the difference.

O.K.: But you, it seems, have long said that it is necessary to create a federal newspaper in the regions, and you yourself had plans for St. Petersburg?

A.T.: Yes, of course, he said, yes, of course, he had. But out of any connection with the initiatives of the presidential administration. Completely different reasons. I will not name Moscow newspapers that claim to be reputable - they are well known. And it is well known that their circulation is insignificant: an order of magnitude less than what is indicated. These are newspapers for the Garden Ring and for the Garden Ring. They write - for greater accuracy - one hundred and fifteen thousand five hundred and fifty-three copies, but they print at most thirty thousand. This is all very nice, but the advertiser is not a complete idiot either. There is no return from advertising: some have thirty, some have five thousand copies. The federal newspaper needs to be made federal - both edited and published in different cities. I thought about St. Petersburg to begin with, but today this geography should be expanded. Today, after Kiriyenko’s appointment as plenipotentiary, a combination of Moscow, St. Petersburg and the Volga region would be ideal. The Volga region is becoming a testing ground for liberal ideas in Russia. That's why it's especially interesting. The Volga region, Moscow and St. Petersburg - this is European Russia, Russian Europe. Here is a ready-made ideology for you, you just need to create three full-fledged editorial offices, and go ahead. I know St. Petersburg well, the St. Petersburg fanaticism and St. Petersburg ambition can be defeated only by publishing a St. Petersburg newspaper made about them and from them. It’s exactly the same story with the Volga region. And the Moscow reader, our reader, Olga, will always read you and me. But then, publishing not only in Moscow, we could count on thirty to fifty thousand of the most advanced St. Petersburg readers, thirty to fifty thousand readers in the Volga region and the same number in the capital. This newspaper could eventually have a stable 100-120 thousand subscribers, under whom real advertising would actually be collected.

O.K.: The problem of relations between the two capitals has always seemed far-fetched to me. But it seems that this is my mistake. St. Petersburg people always feel left out. Why? Can you explain please.

A.T.: You see, St. Petersburg residents feel like a minority in the same way as some women, Jews or homosexuals. And they must be treated exactly the same - according to all the rules of political correctness, despised in Russia. At least pretend that we don’t consider them outcasts. And it’s better not to actually count.

OK: But why do they consider themselves an oppressed minority?

A.T.: Because we, Muscovites, try very hard for this. Our capital chauvinism is all the more offensive because it is almost always involuntary. We come to St. Petersburg or Nizhny, anywhere, terribly happy and enthusiastic, and we are constantly touched by how cheap everything is here. But everything here is not cheap at all, their salaries are two, three times lower than in Moscow. They have a hard, hopeless life, they have boredom, cold and granite, and it seems to them - and, in general, it rightly seems - that life there in the capital is different, that the sun there is more beautiful, the grass is greener, and the sausage is heavier...

O.K.: ...there is more money there...

A.T.: ...there is more work and success, which falls to the lot of people who do not deserve it. They think: we tried here, we worked hard, we learned so many unnecessary things, we are smart, subtle...

O.K.: ...we preserve the European tradition...

A.T.: ...and so deprived. These are normal human complaints. What can be said against them, what are we dissatisfied with?

O.K.: But I see everything differently. Muscovites romanticize and idolize St. Petersburg - it is more beautiful than Moscow, real intellectuals, almost aristocrats, live there. We can talk just about St. Petersburg chauvinism.

A.T.: Probably. There is such protective chauvinism of feminists, Jews and homosexuals. There is also St. Petersburg chauvinism. But it cannot be compared with ours in any way. Ours is bolder because it is more material. This is chauvinism of obvious superiority. Indisputable. Man is not a machine; he defends himself against the intolerable indisputability. And he recognizes himself as a minority, and insists on his own exclusivity, high, of course. Boredom, cold and granite turn into value, and absolute value - it’s not for nothing that Pushkin sang them. It doesn’t matter in what context and what happened. And he pokes his cold boredom into the flat, well-fed, ruddy face of the Muscovite. And he stands and thinks: “Why? Why does he consider himself so green-pale and deep, and me so pink and superficial?” For many things, for different things, at least for money. You don’t have to think long here, you have to pay. You always have to pay for money.

O.K.: It’s true about money. They are the source of all the troubles - so many people come to Moscow for money, and then very willingly consume this city, giving nothing in return, destroying its traditions, aura, and maliciously rebuilding it... However, it seems that Moscow chauvinism has risen up in me. I could not live in St. Petersburg, in its frozen cultural scenery.

A.T.: And I certainly could. I love Peter so much and understand him so much...

O.K.: But the country lives under the rule of St. Petersburg residents. Doesn’t the political success of Putin, Chubais and others compensate for St. Petersburg’s inferiority complex? Is there any need for any special cultural satisfaction? Or better yet, at the end of the conversation, and it - which upsets me - cannot last indefinitely, say this. You once, at the beginning of perestroika, demonstrated a fundamental rejection of pathos. Two years ago, the Russian Telegraph announced the need to part with irony. Here is a fragment from the much publicly reviled article “The End of Irony”:

“Irony is generally not the most outstanding human property. Genius, as we know, is simple-minded. And the only justification for irony is the mind behind it. But it is precisely the lack of this property that the newest ironists constantly discover. “Blessed is he who visited this world // In its fatal moments, // He was called by the all-good, // As an interlocutor to a feast,” Tyutchev exclaimed about perhaps the most idyllic French revolution of 1830, sitting, moreover, in an even more idyllic Munich. But no one, it seems, chuckled at his pathos. Why the dramatic Moscow of the nineties, which in less than a decade experienced the change of several historical formations, invites a caustic smile, is not entirely clear. (...)

Irony, irresistible in the struggle with particulars or, conversely, with something great, forever frozen, gives in to a living, changing scale. Today she is just confusing. It has not only lost its support in common sense, it has become ahistorical. And also anti-cultural. (...)

Irony, like everything that is obviously secondary, was good and fruitful as long as something primary existed - the notorious basic values, albeit ugly ones. Their end - for evil or for good, it doesn’t matter now - marked the end of irony. It’s tricky to stagger from side to side when the ground is knocked out from under your feet. It’s time not to scatter stones recklessly, but to humbly collect stones: learn basic literacy and utter clumsy truisms.

Hierarchy exists and always will exist. Writing did not begin with D.A. Prigov and, therefore, will not end with him. Apollo is more expensive than a stove pot. Quarenghi alone surpasses the entire Stalinist grand style a hundredfold. Tragedy is more significant than comedy, not to mention farce. Affirmation is more valuable than denial because it is more meaningful. Sensitivity is better than insensibility because it is more vulnerable. Pathos is higher than irony because it is meaningful and vulnerable at once. There is no need to be afraid to be funny and write retrograde, reactionary essays."

Having answered what to do twice, you have the right to wait for the third question. I understand that by asking, I am provoking you to write an article. But I keep repeating: “Write, Shura, write.” If you don’t write, then say at least a few words. Let's finish with them.

A.T.: I’m not a prophet, Olga, and I can’t speak in a nutshell. I always wrote at length about ideology and stylistics, and you even have to quote at length. Once upon a time, about ten to fifteen years ago, I took up arms against pathos, then, recently, against irony, because I still wanted to find an intonation that was the most modern and effective, and to the best of my ability contribute to civil society in Russia. So that it can finally be built. And now it is built - yes, yes, it is built, this goal has been achieved. But it turned out that it is impossible to imagine anything more disgusting: after all, today’s longing for statehood stems from this. Civil society in Russia is an oligarchy. Berezovsky and Gusinsky constitute the entire civil society. And when they say: civil liberties are in danger, it means that G. is in danger. And when they say: society is higher than the state, it means that B. is higher than the state. (B. and G., it seems, were invented by Maxim Sokolov, and now you can’t say otherwise.) Total B. and G. are not a metaphor, not an exaggeration, it’s literally true. We have the Gusin intelligentsia and the Berezov elite, and almost everything that is said and acted in public is exhausted by these two concepts.

The Gusin intelligentsia, these beautiful trembling hearts, so loving to those far away - the small but proud people of Chechnya - and so indifferent to their neighbors - those who died on Pushka. Everything is clear to them. Russia is incorrigible, all the evil comes from this state, a bloody security officer came to power, we always knew this, we felt it for a long time, we had to leave before, but now the border will be closed, it has already been closed. Don't you know? Why don't Italians give visas? Huh?.. What is the connection? How naive you are - in this country everyone is tied up, they have their own people at the embassy, ​​everywhere, and in general this is not a telephone conversation... This is Putin, Putin blew up - they say at the meeting. - Why Putin?! - So that they think about Luzhkov. - But why?!! - Well, don’t you understand: Luzhkov is holding on to his registration, which means he needs this explosion, which means they’ll think about him, which means it’s Putin...

The Berezovsky elites, who have no ideology at all, are perhaps even nastier: everything is excrement except urine, their own inexhaustible “Triumph”. Elites in law: governors and Logovazov cultural figures hand in hand, artists Oleg Menshikov and Sergei Bodrov Jr. in constructive opposition to Putin. This is the degree of absurdity that one is ashamed to even discuss.

I love most of all the ending of “Notes of a Madman,” when the distraught Poprishchin raves: “On one side is the sea, on the other is Italy, and you can see Russian huts . ” So today, the sea, and Italy, with which we began our conversation, and old culture, and Russian huts, and Russian literature of the 19th century, and the current timid Russian statehood, and provincial, that is, human, dignity - all this is on the one hand . All of this is weak, scattered, barely breathing. These are all minorities. Because on the other hand, there is a triumphant majority: civil society. "God! What are they doing to me! They are pouring cold water on my head..."