This letter arrived a month late. In general, not even a letter - a greeting card with the first year of the new millennium. "It's nothing, it's a matter of life," as Carlson said. If not for one circumstance. This postcard was from the president...

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The letter arrived a month late. In general, not even a letter - a greeting card with the first year of the new millennium. "It's nothing, it's a matter of life," as Carlson said. If not for one circumstance.

This postcard was from the president of a neighboring state. From Eduard Amvrosievich Shevardnadze (whom I personally never knew). This means that even letters from such persons are not in a hurry to be delivered to the addressees. But okay, that's not what we're talking about.

I showed the postcard to friends and acquaintances - I will not hide, I was proud. But then I thought: why, in fact, is the president of sovereign Georgia congratulating me? I am not a government official, not a deputy, not even an official poet like Mikhalkov or Reznik-Pugacheva. The presidents of Russia, like any other republics, have never congratulated me on anything. USSR... Has Shevardnadze already sworn off turning to the "official" ones in Russia? Or does the president of Georgia somehow know about my special attitude towards his country?

Yes, I loved and still love Georgia - however, like all the Moscow and St. Petersburg intelligentsia, but ... But what did I do, we did something so that this wonderful country would not hide from us behind the Caucasian ridge, so insurmountable for Russia ?

Exactly twelve years ago, on April 9, in the center of magical Tiflis, “the city of roses and mutton fat”, as Babel wrote, in the center of Tbilisi smelling of wine, and not blood, the center of Russian spiritual emancipation, our soldiers beat and killed Georgian women with sapper shovels, those who who "came out to the square." Well, what about us? We, who have come to terms with the cliché Big Brother in relations with Asia (and this despite Khorezm and Bukhara), but who have never considered Georgia even the East? We who willingly used Georgian hospitality - not only in everyday life, but also, for example, on the pages of Literary Georgia, which printed our best, and therefore "hard-to-reach"? In general, we ate it calmly, and the activities of the Sobchak commission "on Tbilisi" did not arouse our keen interest.

Well, now we eat what is happening ...

Dear Eduard Amvrosievich!

Lately congratulating you and your loved ones on the new century, I want to express to you as deep as respect, concern about the state of relations between our countries (it seems that I almost did not deviate from the diplomatic form?). We are losing each other. We introduce a visa regime. How will the Muses overcome it, sharing their love between our countries and never dividing their chosen ones on the basis of nationality or citizenship?

How will we divide the talents of Otar Ioseliani, Sergey Parajanov, Tengiz Abuladze, Fazil Iskander, Chabua Amirejibi, Rezo Gabriadze, Tamara Gverdtsiteli, Georgy Daneliya, Otar Chiladze, Nina Ananiashvili, Buba Kikabidze, Sotkilava, Kharabadze, Okudzhava by state borders?..

By the way, Bulat Shalvovich told me in the last months of his life that he was very worried about the behavior of the Georgian intelligentsia in the Abkhazian conflict. Isn't Georgia repeating Russia's fatal mistakes?

And now Georgia wants to leave the CIS - also because of the Russian position on Abkhazia? The CIS, unfortunately, is not a community to be proud of. And yet, commonality. Will we really be united only by mercenary-trade relations? We give you gas - you give us tangerines ...

Oh Georgia! Shelter of Russian poets,

blondes dull clean watering hole,

on narrow paths, sharp turns -

How are you going to be yourself this time?

Russia, oh! In your winter breath

warming up your early summers,

insolent, how I envied the Georgians,

that their homeland has not been taken away from them ...

And then it was that any native of Georgia had two homelands: their own Svaneti, Imereti, Adzharia and Russia. As it is now? Several people of different nationalities who were born in Georgia work in the editorial office of our newspaper. They cannot return, often even go to their homeland (expensive, and even now these visas), but they don’t feel completely at home here either, it’s a bit cold here ...

Elvira Goryukhina, a Novaya Gazeta columnist, told how in a Georgian mountain village, adult men spoke to each other in quotations from Mimino, while younger men did not understand them. And the men apologized for them: "They don't know anything already." Will we, having built checkpoints and customs, lose our main wealth: our common language, not Georgian, not Russian - common?

And what about Dynamo Tbilisi (I've been rooting for them since childhood)? And what about Georgian chess players? What about Georgian short films? All this was ours. And didn't they root for Russian hockey players or chess players in Georgia in the same way? Didn't they laugh at Gaidai's or Ryazanov's comedies just as much as they laughed at their own?

Everything that binds us cannot be listed. And only that inhuman officialdom that Georgians do not like so much separates ...

Eduard Amvrosievich! You knew how to resist the aggressively obedient semi-official dullness when you were the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR. We remember how you came to the square in front of the White House in August 1991. These days were a moment of truth and, perhaps, the only reminder of the dignity of my people in the entire last century. And then your gray hair focused the light of our hope. And then - albeit not for long - the hope came true!

You, too, were related to those secret services in which the current president of Russia worked. Maybe it makes sense to talk to him in your corporate language - maybe he will hear. Neither Russia nor Georgia needs bureaucratic obstacles in order to love each other. These contraceptives will not help anything and will not protect anything.

With sincere respect, PS I decided to publish this letter in the newspaper, because I am impudently sure that many of our readers who have not received congratulations from the President of Georgia will subscribe to it.