Ivan Davydov. Interpol, issue thirty-two,

Interpol, issue thirty-two,
in which a deaf author talks about bad music

Ivan Davydov

Publication date: December 9, 2000

Prelude

Snow fell again. Relatively cold. In the window - XXX. Golden, so to speak, domes. The spectacle is sad. Here you can’t help but want to get up and sing some hymn to Alexandrov’s music. Which, in fact, is discussed below.

Sing, however, the akyn's song, as evidenced by the vague description of the view from the window. But since, unfortunately, I look at the monitor more often, I will sing about what’s in the monitor.

The end of Voronya Slobodka

The most important news, as always, remained out of sight. For the Internet, I mean. And for the trends in its development (if anyone remembers, this was a fashionable topic a couple of months ago).

We quote Lenta.Ru .

The chairman of the board of the Russian news agency Novosti, Vladimir Mikhailovich Kulistikov, made a sensational statement on Thursday. According to him, the opening of free access to the RIA Novosti feed from January 1, 2001 will be accompanied by the agency's abandonment of the existing practice of distributing its news feed through a paid subscription.

In other words, from January 1, every Internet user will have access to the full RIA feed.

With almost one hundred percent probability, this step will be repeated a little later by the main competitors of RIA. If they don’t repeat it, they will lose their audience: the feeds of leading agencies are not so different from each other.

It was strange to read this news on Lenta. This is a death sentence for the census takers, the humble workers of the garbage collectors. What will they have left to rewrite if the full agency feeds become free and accessible to the public? NTV and Echo, how is this practiced now? This is also a questionable matter, you know.

They should hide this sad news and agree, for corporate reasons, to shrug their shoulders in response to questions about the address of the RIA website. But no. They, too, like me, are akyns and sing what they see. And what they see is just the full RIA tape. That’s why it’s easier for them to sing - “copy”, “paste”, “publish”.

However, opening access to the full RIA feed, of course, will not lead to an immediate outflow of users from the production sites (although here the word “distributors” would seem to be more appropriate) of the so-called “secondary content”. The user is lazy and inert, and the full feed of a professional agency is large in size and poorly structured. Still, this is another step toward the end of second-hand news suppliers to the online market. That people who know the information about the price cannot but rejoice.

By the way, the same news could have been gleaned from the completely off-line “Time MN”. Moreover, the newspaper reported that this was the first step "towards the creation of a multimedia portal" (well, yes, yes - ah, that sweet smell of business plans from the time of the "investment boom"), which "will combine the resources of the RIA itself" News", RTR TV channel, radio stations "Radio Russia", "Mayak" and "Voice of Russia" .

It's a good thing, of course, no matter who argues, it's a multimedia portal. But much more interesting is the background that Vremya MN discovers in this initiative. Actually, the article, which seemingly talks about other things, sets the right direction for the readers’ thoughts with one title: “The state media did not like the virtual “Country” .

And this is what the inquisitive author of the publication, Mr. Dmitry Morochenko (an eloquent last name, by the way), tells us:

...the first months of work of "Strana.ru" are disappointing, although the site, pompously presented at the end of September and calling itself the "National Information Service", could become the highest achievement of FEP in the field of portal building. On the eve of the launch of the site, its editor-in-chief Marina Litvinovich, in an interview with the newspaper Vremya MN, called the project “Russian CNN.” But the site turned out to be frankly weak in all areas - from design to information content. It did not provide any significant competition to such powerful news and analytical resources as Lenta.ru, Vesti.ru, Gazeta.ru, SMI.ru, which, by the way, were also either created or owned by FEP.

<...>

One gets the impression that Strana.ru has relied on public relations for the authorities at the expense of information, and this, naturally, causes mistrust among readers and reduces the popularity of the resource. This situation is generally surprising, given the powerful personnel potential of Strana.ru, which has absorbed strong journalists from a number of offline media .

And also, sorry for the lengthy quotes, but this passage is important:

RIA Novosti responded very skeptically about cooperation with Strana.ru, saying that “this is a site, of which there are many.”

Let's think about the first quote first. What is the truth in it? Almost everything. There is only one “but”: it’s true, but it’s not the whole truth. Moreover, both with a plus sign and with a minus sign.

As for the minus sign, any reader will think twice before taking into account the powerful personnel potential of Strana.Ru , if he has ever come across material about Putin’s trip to students (I referred to it in one of the previous issues) or, for example, regardless to political battles, - to an article for the 120th anniversary of Alexander Blok .

But at the same time, unlike human resources, one cannot fail to take into account one simple thing: the amount of information published daily on the site simply has nothing to compare with: “Strana” is ahead of any off-line competitor (including any TV channel), not to mention local garbage disposals. So “Country”, after all, is not even a site, of which there are few, but a site that has no analogues. And it is precisely this pace, unprecedented for Russian media, taken at the very start, that gives the project a chance of survival. In addition, a significant part of the published information (even if we assume that this information, according to Morochenko, is officialdom framed by simple slogans) is exclusive. Who else can boast of so much exclusivity? So “Strana”, theoretically, can survive even if cooperation with all state media ceases. Large ships, in general, with rare exceptions, if they do sink, then slowly.

And besides, there is one more question: was it worth Mr. Morochenko to fool readers by arguing that in the areas where the heads of state media live, quality plays a decisive role? When the matter is decided there by the presence or absence of an order, and sometimes by a nod of the head. The main thing is that the head is suitable.

Actually, below

The news that served as the reason for the above meditations, as noted above, was not particularly noticed by anyone. The Internet community, fully confirming the reputation that it had as a highly educated part of the population, was preoccupied with the anthem.

Signatures were collected on Polit.Ru against its adoption. And they continue to collect, although the anthem has already been adopted.

Gazeta.Ru took a much more original approach to the issue - it also opened a special page against the anthem , but the materials on it are more fun and varied.

Lev Bruni in Vesti , in addition to the generally obligatory indignation for any representative of the intelligentsia in the last two weeks about the bad (and really, so-so music) and associated with a lot of unpleasant associations of Aleksandrov’s work, also gives a completely original thought: since we have an anthem Now such as it is, it would be nice to legally prohibit communists from blaspheming by singing at their gatherings to the music of the legally approved Russian anthem “The Indestructible Union.” There are no such words in this song. Now.

Kirill Rogov, brilliant, as always, in RJ and Polit.Ru, talks about the humanitarian catastrophe, no less, that the return of the Stalinist anthem has become or will become in the future for the country.

And so on; a full bibliography, I'm afraid, will take up too much space.

Better - a couple of thoughts about it.

First, let's ask ourselves, what are they? We will not sing this anthem, we will not get up... Listen - they whistled for Glinka without stopping and did not sit down even once in the last ten years. The point, I think, is not a love of the classics. The point is the intelligentsia's awareness of the rapid loss of influence. Here an analogy with the communists suggests itself, and it is quite justified, because this intelligentsia is a phenomenon of the same order as these communists. They were born together in the post-Stalin Union and flourished together in Yeltsin's Russia. And how the communists felt themselves to be the main counterweight to the regime, which, generally speaking, miraculously survived due to two things: firstly, the strategic talent of its individual representatives, secondly, because power, real power, was no longer needed by anyone; So the intelligentsia felt (we will not discuss now whether this corresponded to reality) the only support of this regime. Yeltsin appealed to her, if only because the people’s main achievements of the Yeltsin era, including, by the way, the two-headed and the three-colored, were at best parallel. People still think that the main achievements of the Yeltsin era were rolling blackouts, non-payment of salaries and pensions, and so on.

With the advent of Putin, the situation has changed dramatically. Putin does not need to appeal to the intelligentsia. Because she is a minority, and he is the President who was chosen and still supported by the majority. Loss of influence is an unpleasant thing, and there is nothing strange in the way the domestic intelligentsia perked up, feeling that an issue had been put on the agenda that would allow them, at least for a short while, to be reminded of their former significance. Who among the writers and readers does not consider himself an expert in poetry and, even more so, music? There are no such. And here they are discussing music and poetry. As a matter of fact, in no other case would the most pressing issue on the agenda have received such resonance.

But the majority, together with their president, ignored the opinion of the minority, quite in democratic traditions. The result was moaning and crying in all media. Particularly indicative is the example of Valery Panyushkin , who, after the announcement of the verdict on Pope (and Pope, of course, is an elderly and sick man, but at the same time he is still a spy, and the materials of the case do not raise any particular doubts in anyone) called on his fellow citizens to dry crackers. Inspired by music, as they say.

So, don't rush. Because, at least, our new anthem did not appear contrary to democratic laws, but in full accordance with. And the opinion of the minority was ignored for the same reasons, but the minority is not deprived of the opportunity to speak out on this topic for the same reasons.

But the comparison of this musical opus with a certain architectural structure impudently looming in the window was not given above by chance. After all, the XXI century, as you know, caused anger and upset of everyone who understands architecture (and who among those who write and read does not understand it, as well as poetry, music, dancing - the list can be continued according to desire and personal feelings)? The people, however, are happy. I saw it myself. Now let's ask ourselves, for whom was this structure built?

Isn't that the anthem?

Main

But now, if our football players, who, as we know, played poorly only because they had nothing to sing when the flag was raised, lose the World Cup, that, excuse me, will be... That's... That's it then.. Because otherwise why was all this started?