The bitter laughter of Vladimir Voinovich

Not only Lermontov wanted to throw into the eyes of the crowd "an iron verse, doused with bitterness and anger." Instead of iron verse, Vladimir Voinovich had something better: iron laughter, which broke the bones of communism, socialism, the Soviet system, all the artifacts of our past - from caps placed on top according to the order to the synthetic CPGB party, which was divided in two before our eyes in the early 90s , and now the communist part is trying in every possible way to recapture power from the Chekist part.
All the cults in the world got it from Voinovich, even the great Solzhenitsyn. Laughter is insurance and a guarantee against tyrannies, dictatorships, utopias and revolutionary excesses.
On September 26, we congratulate on the 80th anniversary of our long-standing, intelligent, malicious-speaking, cheerful and faithful friend Vladimir Nikolaevich, an eternal companion and inexorable critic of Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov, fundamentalist and Putin's Russia, who knew how to foresee everything, ridicule everything and cross everything out in the name of a very worthy goal: “If only life becomes easier” (“Moscow 2042”).
In the early sixties, he was in honor of the generals from literature. For a simple song about cosmonauts ("our traces will remain on the dusty paths of distant planets"), he was loved by Khrushchev. I could continue to write in the same spirit, I could ride Russian cheese in Vologda oil. And he began in 1963 to write "The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of a Soldier Ivan Chonkin." The novel went to samizdat; the first part was printed in Germany in 1969, the second in Paris in 1975. And Soviet readers were horrified to learn that there was no difference between the Gestapo and the NKVD. This was told to them by Captain Milyaga, who tried to impersonate SS Captain Milleg, "who shot many communists and Komsomol members."
Vladimir Voinovich in the late sixties also became a real dissident and human rights activist. It cost him dearly: in 1974 he was expelled from the Writers' Union of the USSR and they even tried to poison him during a conversation with the KGB officers in the 408th room of the Metropol Hotel. The satirist was expelled from the country in December 1980, and a year later he was completely deprived of Soviet citizenship. The writer did not repent and did not lose heart, he worked for Svoboda, wrote two more magnificent Shchedrin satires: Moscow 2042 (1986) and Hat (1987). „

You had to lay your soul to the devil for a mink hat - here's all the information you need about the USSR

Gorbachev returned citizenship to Voinovich in 1990, who immediately returned to Russia. He even sent his very mocking version of the new Russian anthem to the competition after the collapse of the USSR.
"Hat" turned into a play "A domestic cat of medium fluffiness" (together with Grigory Gorin) and a film (1990). It turns out that for a mink hat you had to pawn your soul to the devil - here you have all the information you need about the USSR.
Moscow 2042 is a logical continuation of Shchedrin's Foolov City, an evil and funny dystopia about building communism in a single city of Moscow. Who will forget the voynovik “cabesot” (a cabinet of natural departures, that is, a toilet) with a roll of “Pravda” or a brothel named after N.K. Krupskaya, where citizens self-service; First Ring of Animosity from the Soviet republics; five-unity, very modern, where "party spirit", "vigilance" and "state security" are combined with "people" and "religiosity"; prekompit (communist catering enterprise - canteen) with Lebedushka soup and vegetarian pork; about how they don’t get baptized, but “star” on the Kremlin stars.
Those who will never say “Slagen” (“Glory to the Genialissimo”), who are not able to kowtow even to Sim Simych Karnavalov, who are ready to openly call the authorities “swallowers”, who are a natural pluralist (“plush”), congratulate and thank you, our "klasha" (classic) Vladimir Nikolaevich.