The claw gets stuck - the whole bird is lost

Still, the public protest over the screening of Nikita Mikhalkov’s film “55” and his signature on the letter of the four did its job, the director wanted to justify himself. After an unsuccessful attempt made in Vladimir Solovyov’s “To the Barrier” program, where the overwhelming number of television viewers voted against Mikhalkov (and because we don’t like open flattery to our superiors), it was the turn of that same “News of the Week” program, where the notorious anniversary film was shown. This time Mr. Mikhalkov was invited to comment on a story filmed for the 90th anniversary of the October Revolution, and at the same time to talk about the continuity of power. It turned out bad. Firstly, it seems awkward to try to justify yourself in this way: “Have I made at least one picture glorifying power? Am I perhaps ashamed of some of my films or roles? How many of my colleagues who write this (in the question asked by the presenter, some responses to Mikhalkov’s film were quoted. - Ed. ) were dirty and took pleasure in beating dust on the carpets of their superiors, they all had it for it. I have never praised general secretaries, heads of state, or cities. Never in my life. What happened? What happened to people? Why do they live by the principle: “the worse, the better”? Why, having elected a president, do you deprive your colleague of the right to congratulate him on his birthday!”

Yes, actually, no one is against congratulating the president on his birthday - anyone who wants can congratulate him, and even give him a gift. But we are not talking about congratulations, but about a film made, I believe, with taxpayers’ money, and a film that is far from objective, deliberately concentrating the audience’s attention on a special aspect of the actions of the person being congratulated. Moreover, about the film shown on the main TV channel on the anniversary day. This is already an act, the meaning of which goes beyond personal congratulations, because personal congratulations are one thing, but a speech on a state channel is another. The difference, apparently, is not clear to the person who so organically utters in the film “State Councilor” something like the following words: “I do not separate myself from Russia. What is good for me is good for Russia, and vice versa.”

The biggest problem, and not only of Nikita Mikhalkov, but also of many victims of Soviet and post-Soviet education, is precisely that the price they value is emotions, not facts, which they are easily ready to ignore, or even revise or not to be noticed at all as not consistent with one’s beliefs.

For example, in the same program, in a story about the revolution, the director of the State Archives of the Russian Federation Sergei Mironenko says: “The fact that they made the revolution with German money is nonsense. And the fact that Lenin is a German spy is also nonsense. There was money ? They were given by the Swiss Social Democrats, they helped their comrades in the socialist movement. What were these amounts? 37 thousand dollars, 150 thousand rubles. Here are the documents that we are showing. When the Bolsheviks were already in power, the question was discussed: Should we return this money? Maybe we shouldn’t return it - it’s a thing of the past. Look, there are no other documents of the German General Staff."

And his opponent, Deputy Director for Research at the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences Vladimir Lavrov, is not based on documents, but is simply confident: “Where do so many newspapers come from? Did the workers and peasants give money? No, the Germans gave it so that anti-government agitation could be carried out in order to blow up Russia from the inside.” That is, one claims that there is no documentary evidence of the Bolsheviks receiving sums from the General Staff, and the other is a historian! - I’m sure that they are not needed, and so everything is clear...

And here is Mikhalkov’s comment: “There is a version that the German General Staff did not have money. There is a version where there is evidence that this money existed. Where is the truth? He winced just a little - there is no evidence, but there is confidence... But these subtleties are not taken into account where passion, feeling, emotion work. The revolution is an excellent example to convince fellow citizens of the need for continuity, although if you think a little, it somehow doesn’t add up: is it that Nicholas II did not prepare a successor for himself? But what about the three hundred years of the Romanovs? It was such a wonderful continuity...

But Mikhalkova is already saying: “In the United States, when the president changes, only the photograph of the wife on the table in the White House changes. It is impossible to wake up - and there are green flags in New York and Washington or scarlet banners. No, everything will continue, because there is continuity, there is a root system. For example, a cadet entered college, studied for four years, and received shoulder straps in the fifth year. He swore allegiance to the one he chose, and another comes and says: he must be shot. What should he do? What to do in a country like Russia, when a person doomed by power, especially armed, does not know where the truth is and where the untruth is? When there is no continuity and forward movement, there will be what we got in 1917...”

Yes, when Nikita Sergeevich says about himself: “I am an artist after all, I try to think in images,” you should believe him. Whether it be images or something else, but an artist, that is, a person who lives by imagination. Including the one who imagined himself as a tribune, orator, teacher, a person influencing presidents, the people, teaching the masses and rulers with his art... This is an illusion, not always harmless, but still much more harmful for the dreamer himself than for everyone the rest. However, even the writer Dumas, far from politics, who described the Great French Revolution in the novel “Ange Pitou”, noticed that the people, being in agitation, listen to their true leaders only when their speeches resonate with the general mood. Those who are lucky enough to get into this resonance are destined for lifetime fame, while those who don’t get fame are, at best, posthumous. Those who try to please the authorities by offering them their (real or imaginary) influence over the people suffer disgrace.

However, all this has nothing to do with our time, now everything is much simpler here, and it just so happened that it was Nikita Sergeevich who has the opportunity to constantly appear on the air and there to freely express his beliefs. And the fact that most of his colleagues do not have such an opportunity, well, it’s their own fault...

Alena Solntseva