Part of our personal experience

From the editorial office. February 1, 2011 marks the 80th anniversary of the birth of the first President of Russia Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin. The anniversary is already celebrated. In blogs, in the journalistic texts of Yeltsin, they remember with special feelings - albeit different - but always very bright. In memory of this state figure, RSA opens a discussion about the role of the first president in the formation of new Russia. The publicist and blogger Alexander Morozov recalls his opinion about the First President of Russia and the time of his reign.

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Yeltsin? I remember how Seryozha Chapnin brought pictures from Yeltsin's performance at the Faculty of Journalism of Moscow State University. I then made a samizdat magazine paragraph. It was 1989. Yeltsin's expression itself was perceived as "no longer Soviet." He was alive. Unlike "party woodpeckers", which we are used to seeing in large numbers before that. Of course, Yeltsin was the first major "public politician" - he was much bolder than Gorbachev. He walked and spoke with people ...

Now Yeltsin’s perception in the context of the post -Soviet history of Russia is tied to the formation of "predatory capitalism". Yeltsin - curse. This can be heard often. But those who do it are not far -haired people. Because Yeltsin is the beginning of a new Russian statehood . This is a historical fact. I think that if the “gang of Yeltsin is under court”, “Putin’s gang under court” and in general “on trial”, then we must completely reset the results of the first post -Soviet twentieth anniversary. There will be no historical coherence, continuity, sequence. And ultimately there will be no this twenty -anniversary, as a historical reality. We'll have to "cancel it".

But it cannot be canceled. Neither cancel. Not replacing it. Everything has already taken place. You can look at Yeltsin through the eyes of Gorbachevites. And you can - the eyes of the Communists. But if you look without a strong ideological infection - then Yeltsin is just part of our personal experience. Well, for many of us. It was the personal experience of the transition from the Soviet - to the non -Soviet. He was traumatic, of course. It was filled with a lot of absurdities, costs and completely anecdotal things. Financial organizations proposed 750% per annum of deposits, and some - 1200%. Canned sausages in banks were perceived as wonderful Christmas gifts. It seemed that “business” was simple if you can find somewhere 100 wagons of aluminum stamped plates and sell them somewhere just at the price of aluminum ... the “world market” seemed dimensionless. Since before that there was no access to him. Frozen Russia in those years simply melted. She melted, melted, turning into spring jelly ...

No one remembers - in what real contexts the words were said: " Take as much sovereignty as you can ... ". No one remembers the context of the shooting of the White House. Now it is generally difficult to imagine the "that economy" in which the Gaidar government sailed, for example,. We are already separated not only by kilometers, but by astronomical parsecks - from that era. Since then we have passed zero . And today the voices of those who were born in 1980 and later sound loudly. They ceased to be teenagers and received the first salaries when Yeltsin had already left his post.

We are just starting to get used to understanding who Yeltsin was. What is his place in Russian history. Russian history is still in the "hot phase". Oddly enough, but for twenty years it turned out to be few for us. We have not yet "landed." Although in the middle of the zero it seemed "already." And now it turned out - no.

It is not clear: will we "reset" the results of each reign? Or will there be some kind of "coherent history" from post-Soviet history? A single "narrative", as they would say, philologists ... Putin smashed. This is already undoubted. In the first half of the 2000s, he seemed to “replied” to all the “historical challenges of the 1990s” and thereby seemed to laid the foundations of a coherent understanding of Russian post-Soviet history. And then he took it, and stabbed all this "symbolic capital." Now Medvedev is already dealing with these ruins.

Boris Yeltsin is a big and complex figure of Russian history. Recently, one of the participants in the dissident movement of the 1970s wrote: yes, maybe it would be better if in 1991 a person from the party nomenclature came to power, but as if Vaclav Gavel, i.e. Man "from the side" . Yes, maybe. But in Russia at that time there was no such person. And the Vaclav Gavel was Yeltsin. He tried to cope with this challenge as he could. Now it is difficult to imagine himself with which ocean of the post -Soviet consequences he dealt. It was a difficult mission.