A hail without a bastard

Pretty long ago, in the early 80s, when, as they say, "nothing portended," I wrote for some reason in my notebook: "The era of renaming is coming." What exactly I had in mind, I, frankly, did not understand then, do not really understand and now. But he wrote. And for some reason I remembered.

And in the early 90s, the truth went. And I remembered my then record. But such an era was no longer the first in my memory.

I was a sensitive teenager when, on the rapid wave of ambiguous and mostly cosmetic Khrushchev’s destroyinization, monuments were demolished by the former leader of the peoples, including in my school, where I remember how now - on the second floor, next to the director's office, on a plywood, a white bust with gypsum mustache inhabited by a red kumache drawer.

They removed from my school. They removed from the whole country. And then they removed the corpse of the same name, again leaving Ilyich in elegiac loneliness. And quietly buried him nearby, near the red brick wall.

Well, and everyone was renamed, of course. But, I must say, there was something to rename. Work, as they say, boiled. Tell me, which of the Muscovites remembers what was the name of the Semenovskaya metro station before? Well, yes, you guessed. Or there was, for example, the Institute of Steel and the Always named after Stalin. And he became - the name of Lenin. And the wits, of course, immediately came up with a joke that "the institute became renamed the Leni Institute." Well, and about Volgograd, of course, joked. Approximately in the spirit that "Stalin was renamed Volgin."

And in general it was fun.

And these days slowly but surely the whole thing went back. And a new era of renaming began. For some, she, this era, serves as a good sign of the return of lost great power, for someone-a gloomy sign of slipping into the "scoop". But in any case, this is a sign.

Any renaming, any construction or demolition of the monument, church, monastery, memorial plaques is an act of sacred, regardless of the goals and intentions of renaming. Especially in our country, where the role of a sign, symbol, monument, portrait, pennant, and anthem is traditionally so powerful.

Any renaming is, on the one hand, an attempt by any new broom to start a story from a clean sheet, which, along the way, is sometimes quite possible in a country where at least a tolerable possession of historical memory is a few.

On the other hand, any symbolic act of frightening -relief is a fact of history that a cultural person is not entitled to forget about.

Here was, for example, once the city of Petersburg, which was associated with Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Blok, Balls, Carriages, Decembrists and Silver Age with all its "wandering dogs". Then, in its place, the city of Petrograd arose, where there were two in a row of Russian revolutions.

Then, in the same place, the city of Leningrad arose, the name of which is associated not so much with the historical person who performed under the pseudonym Lenin, but with the tragic blockade. For my family, Leningrad is also the Leningrad Front, where from the first to the last day my father stored.

The geographical names, which have become historical names, are far from always associated directly with the names laid down in their basis. For example, the Lenin Library metro station to me does not even remind of any Lenin remotely. As, by the way, the library itself. Leninka and Leninka. Was and is. And what does it would seem to have this unfortunate namesake here?

In fact, I am the opponent of all kinds of renaming, demolitions and other anti-historical stains.

The Cathedral of Christ the Savior once stood in the center of Moscow. He stood and stood. The sophisticated metropolitan aesthetes did not cause much aesthetic enthusiasm - they called him "inkwell". In the early 30s, this inklit was blown up. And, of course, not for aesthetic considerations, but in order to build another temple, literally to heaven, in the place of the reactionary religious structure, the Palace of Soviets. And the Palace of Soviets did not ask as a result, but the pool was there, and several generations of Muscovites and guests of the capital went to this pool. Under Luzhkov, in the framework of the restoration of historical justice, a temple, very similar to the source, was again built, only even more ugly.

Is historical justice restored in this way? I think no. And even vice versa. Because the Stalinist extermination of temples was a historical event, no less historical than their construction. The restoration of the ruined temple is not related to historical justice, but to an attempt to correct the story. What is Stalin? What are these napkins-slots? How did you blow it up? Yes, here it is in its place as if nothing had happened. How did the Soviet government exiled and exterminated the spiritual estate? Yes, here it is, this estate lovingly grown in Lubyansk laboratories. Here, look, what well-fed handsome men in the cassoons here are sitting here and they dissect on the Mercedes? And Stalin is famous. And right that they are famous. Because there is no better friend of all believers than him. And with the blasphemers of all stripes, we will fight his bright name. And who is against Stalin, he is against God. It's clear? Of course, it is clear what is incomprehensible here.

Was it necessary to demolish the temple? No, of course. Was it necessary to restore it? Also - no. But the monument in this place would be very useful. A mournful monument reminiscent that history is not a holey fence that can be packed and tinted.

The same with Stalingrad Volgograd. It is possible that Volgograd should not have been made of him. Perhaps he should have remained Stalingrad. And this toponym could quite become as familiar and even neutral over time as the already mentioned "Leninka".

For the inhabitants of Europe, Stalingrad is not so much a city named by the name of Stalin, but a mighty symbol of courage and heroism, a reminder of one of the most important events of the Second World War.

Yes, perhaps, this city should not be renamed. But this was done. And the cities of Stalingrad are no longer there. And he will never be, even if he again becomes so called. Because this rebranding, even in its comic, endlessly absurd version - for six days a year - will no longer mean anything but attempts to glamorous crook restroittalization.

Stalinism in his new, busted-Orthodox production is not only a tribute to a peculiar glamorous-powerful fashion, according to which Stalin with his great five-year periods at the age of four quite impressively gets along with a renovation, Wi-Fay and a Schengen visa-apparently, visible achievements of the Stalinist era. This is also a tribute to the lower, so to speak, Stalinism, Stalinism of the post -Stalinsky, that is, a completely protest pathos of a certain part of the population, saturated with shelter consciousness, where a longing for justice, understood as a guaranteed plate of soup per person. This is an orphaned longing for the lost father, who will feed, punish, stroke, and protect from the boys from the neighboring street. With Brezhnev, for example, that Stalin, the noble symmetry of the mustache of which decorated the windshields of trucks, was actually a talisman designed to drive away and tame evil traffic police. We are talking about this Stalin too.

It is about him that we are talking about, and not about that city in ruins, in honor of which streets and squares are named in many cities of Europe.