"I could not write a book about Russia"

“Politicians do not line up on my air. So it will be, if only they are ordered. ”

Photo: Alexander Weinstein / Kommersant

I have no homeland. If we talk about me as a dog, I would be called a mongrel. I do not consider myself true, I am a cross, not a clean -up: Mom is French, dad Jew from Russia, I grew up in America, then I came to the Soviet Union.

I do not understand and do not support the American manner with a stranger to speak immediately by name. I really love middle name, this is a great form. Therefore, it is unpleasant for me when some unfamiliar journalist calls me and says: "Hello, Vladimir."

The house is a million small things. This is not politics, but how people sit, eat, go, smile. We understand where our house, only having left. My house is in France, but I am still not sure about it one hundred percent.

When adults begin to talk about young people, this is a sign of old age. Indeed, before everything was different, but this does not mean that it was better. Young people are always distinguished by an increased attitude to justice, more acutely reacts to some challenge. She is more emotional, honest and less adapts. Young apathy is explained by the fact that if you want to change something, they can’t do it. From here there is a desire to leave - that same apathy.

I am disturbed by incredible maintenance of the Internet: firstly, people learn to write-the epistolary genre dies. Secondly, the opportunity to speak freely is accepted by people for journalism, and writing a blog is not professional journalism. I am a very busy person, so I just don’t have time to take a blog. In my free time I want to stay with friends, I want to read and listen to music. I am not on Facebook, and I do not want any Facebook, although they constantly tell me that I am writing something there.

At the last meeting of the representatives of Channel One with Vladimir Putin, the prime minister agreed with me that the heads of government should act in the media and explain their activities to the people. And against the opposition on the air, he, it turns out, also has nothing. Soon we will check: I invited Nemtsov to transfer, and the fact that no one is opposed is not a fact.

Politicians do not line up on my air. So it will be, if only they are ordered. No matter how I tried to get the Minister of Agriculture, Minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Minister of Defense, they do not come. These people simply do not want to come, and I understand them well. When they have nothing to answer to the questions asked what to take from them. The last time I had the Governor of the Krasnodar Territory Alexander Tkachev on the program. Even to me as a presenter it was sorry: he looked so bad in the program and himself understood that he was terribly disgraced. And a stupid person. He himself came and knew that there would be questions about Kushchevskaya, about Sochi and the Olympic Games, but he simply was not ready to answer.

There is nothing more interesting to me for me. I already have 400 mugs with the names of the places where I visited. I especially love Europe and Japan. But I like not so much to look at the monuments as to speak with people. There is a country where I would not want to go. Although I was already there, as I like to joke, twice: the first and last. This is China. This is an absolutely totalitarian and fanatical country - such a worsened version of the USSR. I am oppressed by a place where there is no freedom and people feel the "iron hand". But I want to in North Korea: I want to see with my own eyes this madness!

There were no ideals in my life, but there were people who influenced me very much. One of these was my father, Joseph Davydovich Gordon, who received 25 years under a political article, of which he served 17. When my parents left for Germany in 1955, he stayed with me in Moscow and became my second father. Once we talked about professional compromises, and he told me: “God forbid that you would get up in the morning, go to the bathroom and, seeing your reflection in the mirror, we wanted to spit it in it.”

I think I could not write a book about Russia, because my eyes are “blurry”. My grandson, born in Germany, once during the trip, Zagorod asked me: "Why is the column a curve?" And I no longer notice such trifles. To write a book about the country, you need to come there with open eyes.

I would like my book “Farewell to Illusions” to become the result of life. It was very difficult to write: then, 20 years ago, I wanted to understand my difficult relations with my father and religion. After she became a bestseller in America, I decided to translate it into Russian. It has been 18 years old, but I have not finished translating it. In addition, much has changed, I began to think differently. But I decided that the Russian version of "farewell" would not be renewed and modernized, but with a comment on each chapter, written so long ago.

Recorded by Ivan Shalaginov