Fools village. Not in some kingdom, not in some state, but at the entrance to the village of Durakovo, Kaluga region, there is a real stone palace. Large and white, bizarrely blending into the rest of the rural landscape with its rickety houses and rotten fences
Stupid roads in this Durakovo, all the German tanks got bogged down in the war.
But at the village itself, civilization suddenly begins. A flat paved parking area with about a dozen cars lined up. Above the palace gates hang two icons. A Moscow guard dog peeps out from behind the gate, somewhere inside there is still a dog barking. Chinese bells are ringing in the wind. In front of the building's facade is something like a temporary tire shop. Two young guys of 17 years old change wheels on cars. To the right of the house rises a nest for storks. “We do not smoke here,” warn signs on the fence and tin drainpipe.
The Legend of Thiel
Landscape around the Durakovo castle
Almost everything in Durakovo is the property of Mikhail Morozov. The locals call him none other than "Mikhail Fedorovich". This palace is something like the "head office" of the Til monastery, the first letters of which stand for "patience, sincerity, love." In addition to the owner of the house, only alcoholics and drug addicts live in Morozov's fool's "estate". However, Morozov does not hide the fact that he also drank bitter before. Until it became completely unbearable. Everything else happened by chance: the palace, and the rehabilitation center, and piety. I accidentally liked an abandoned village in the Kaluga region, accidentally saw an unfinished bathhouse there, accidentally bought it, or rather, exchanged it for an old Zhiguli.
Gradually began to spend more and more time in the countryside. At first he opened a carpentry workshop, then he took up a serious business - icon painting. But the workers turned out to be the last bastards. Almost everyone in the village drank. It was then that the militant struggle for a healthy lifestyle began, and rumors spread throughout Russia about the eccentric, millionaire and alcoholic Mikhail Morozov. French-Georgian filmmaker Nino Kirtadze made a documentary about him a couple of years ago called "Fool's Village: The Village of Fools". In it, Morozov is a kind of king of all Durakovo, almost all of Rus', who does not love democracy, to whom even the deputy speaker of the then Duma, Sergei Baburin, almost went to bow. The monastery "Til" has existed since 1994, the locals themselves call it "the spring of a sober life."
“Hello, can I talk to Mikhail Fedorovich,” the correspondent of The New Times turned to the young guy.
- Did you warn? - he asked.
- No, that's how I came.
- I'll ask now.
After some time, the guy returned with the answer: "They said, wait." And, taking the jack, went to one of the cars.
— And how much?
I don't know, just wait. And you can't take pictures here without permission.
The guy, as it turned out, is called Vadim. Modest, quiet. Addict. Parents divorced, "my mother got a new man," and that's how it all happened. Vadim was brought to Durakovo by his own father.
sober weekdays
Mikhail Morozov. Evening of questions and answers. Shot from the film "Time is One Day"
An hour has passed. A small truck pulled up to the house.
- Valery Mikhailovich, will you take the linen? a young girl peered out of a window on the second floor.
“No, not now,” the driver shouted to her and began to pull bags of provisions from the back.
A guy in tarpaulin boots came out from behind the gate, holding a dog on a leash.
- Mikhalych, great! We need to pick up the wheels, - he threw on the go.
“I won’t go there,” Valery Mikhailovich answered and waved his hand in the direction of a washed-out, untouched by asphalt village road. “Aren’t you going to pick up junk today, too?”
- I'm not going at all.
- How to carry?
“Here you will be dragging.
Another hour passed. People went to the refectory to have lunch. Two old men walked slowly by, leaning on sticks. On the asphalt site there was one man of about fifty, also a resident of this house.
King in heaven, king on earth
A man with a long gray beard and shabby sweatpants began to wash the Mercedes. Finally, a girl ran out of the house and shouted to The New Times correspondent: “Come in! Mikhail Fedorovich will receive you.” She led me to a spacious room, the walls of which were completely hung with icons and oil paintings - the "productions" of the Morozov factory. Two people were sitting at a massive table made of rough wood - Mikhail Morozov himself and the head of the Zhukovsky District Department of Internal Affairs, Colonel Ruslan Saidov. We had lunch. Meals - mussels, buckwheat, carrot salad, various vegetables. Of the drinks, only mineral water and duchess.
— Well hello! - says Mikhail Fedorovich. - Remember, Pushkin had about “an uninvited guest is worse than a Tatar”, then they changed it: “an uninvited guest is better than a Tatar”.
Morozov is portly, ruddy, bearded. At the table, he says that he recently lost a couple of pounds of weight.
- Hudeete?
Let's just say I'm stabilizing.
Then he starts about the spiritual.
- Here, remember, as with criminals: "Do not believe, do not be afraid, do not ask." And I say: and believe, and be afraid, and ask. Or they say: "Found - be silent, lost - be silent." I teach: "Found - tell me, lost - tell me." The norm of human life, you know what? Holiness! To get to this point, I myself had to go through a lot, almost lost everything and everyone. The most important thing is a right relationship with God. People should put Christ at the center of the universe and strive to fulfill the will of God. Once a week, on Saturdays, I gather people, we call it an evening of questions and answers. People should prepare their questions for this evening, and then ask me. And I answer everything.
- What are they asking about?
- Yes, about everything: about life, about God, about your illness. You have to understand that alcoholism and drug addiction are forever. Anya, bring our magazine, I'll tell you what we really do in the rehabilitation center.
- All right, Mikhail Fedorovich, and the guys are still asking permission to start the tractor. They say it makes no sense to harness a horse - they will not get into the depths of the village, - Anya reports.
Time - one day Administrator Anya, also a "patient" of Morozov, handed the journal to the owner. There is also an article called "A wise man from Durakov." Mikhail Morozov began to comment on each picture: “This is our governor, and this is Metropolitan Kliment, this is the chairman of the Legislative Assembly of the region, this is the prosecutor, here I am, this is a procession. You see, on this page there is a guy, young, handsome. Died. Was with us, then disappeared. And here's another guy, a criminal. I somehow left him in a bathhouse with another guy. Everyone said: fight. And I looked into the water - we became friends, now they protect each other. One even came to me and told me to give his friend more food, that he was undernourished.
"Mikhail Fedorovich," Saidov, head of the police department, spoke up. - I would like to talk to you. By the way, we heard that Nadezhda Babkina is coming to visit us. Although, maybe they won’t send Babkin at all. Just in case, we will put a couple of policemen on the square.
They bow and leave for the office. “Maybe you should show a film about us?” - Anna, a pupil of the rehabilitation center, asks the correspondent. - Mikhail Fedorovich sometimes reads meditations to us, he has a special book of thoughts for every day. And then we think. A normal person will not understand us - what is an alcoholic, what is a drug addict. And he understands us. In general, his abode is purely male, but for some women he sometimes makes an exception. But there are always no more than five people of our gender living here.
The film is called "Time - one day", filmed by one of the locals. He talks about the everyday life of the Thiel rehabilitation center, which adopted the American program "12 steps" of the society of anonymous alcoholics, tying it on Orthodoxy and daily prayer. So in the film, Mikhail Morozov drives a jeep in winter and says: “Some drink with joy, some with grief, and we are in the morning. Understandable, right? An alcoholic drinks for any reason and differs from a drunkard in that the drunkard drinks when he wants to and does not drink when he does not want to. And an alcoholic drinks when he can, and when he wants, and when it is absolutely impossible. In 1991, when I was introduced to Alcoholics Anonymous, I self-diagnosed that I was an alcoholic.”
People come here who of their own free will, who are forcibly brought by their parents. Some, unable to stand it, run away. Some come back.
Road of Fools
The owner of the house is back. He says that this three-year-old film is dear to him because some of its heroes have already died. “One of them died a natural death,” Anna remarks, as if relieved. “Every day is like the last,” Mikhail Morozov concludes, saying goodbye. - And I also have a talking raven living here. Eh, I love him. In general, now I want to write a book, an autobiography, probably.
The locals are already accustomed to the Fool's Palace. But they admit: he both attracts them and frightens them at the same time. Some call it a correctional house, some a castle-monastery. But in general, they try not to go into details. Offer to talk better about stupid Russian roads.
