"Dissants with short experience"

From the OSP-Studio to the Constitutional Court of the Opposition-Mikhail Shats, a well-known showman and TV presenter (TEFI-2003 and 2006)-about why he was on the barricades, for which they and Tatyana Lazareva were deprived of work on the STS channel and what is prohibited on television

Tatyana Lazareva and Mikhail Shatz on the shooting of the New Year's program for the STS channel 11/14/2005

NT: *Mikhail, STS fired you from the channel, where you worked for ten years, “due to the expiration of the contract” at the very end of December 2012, Tatyana Lazareva left herself. A month and a half has passed - and? *

And we now have a very interesting period of life. Firstly, we spend a lot of time with children. Much more than before. And our youngest, Antonina, is very happy about this.

NT: *How many children do you have? *

Three. The eldest son is 17, Middle Daughter 14 and the Younger 6. We spend time in search of work, in determining what we are interested in and that we are not interested. I can’t say that all employers since December 30 are overcome, but some offers come, and we enjoy the fact that we can choose what we want to do.

NT: *Is the work proposals or outside the TV? *

There are proposals in the field of television, there are radio, there are offers on the Internet. In my opinion, we practically covered all the media.

NT: *That is, there is no prohibition on your faces on the screen? *

We really hope for it.

NT: *Dismissal with STS - Was it unexpected for you? *

How to say ... The first hint followed in mid -December, maybe two and a half weeks before what happened. No, no one told me: “We are firing you” - it was about transferring to another structure. And I believed that in early January (2013) this would happen. Therefore, when on December 28 (2012) I appeared at work and I was asked to go to the personnel department, where they handed my work book with the record “Dismissed due to the expiration of the contract”, for me it was, frankly, unexpectedly.

I have worked in this company since 2002. The first time we appeared with Tanya on STS in 2002 with an OSP studio and with a sin in half, but we did something for this channel. And of course, I expected a little different dismissal. Not that I was escorted with honors, but just some kind of human conversation. Perhaps even with some piece of truth: “Understand us, old man, you yourself know where we live, where we work, this is business, nothing personal, good luck and happiness in a new place.” I didn’t hear this exactly.

NT: *And if your spouse had not submitted an application for care, would she also be fired? *

For the past year and a half, Tatyana did not formally work on STS - she had a contract like the leading program “This is my child”. And by and large Tanya suited it. And the termination of her contract with the program “This is my child” coincided with my dismissal.

NT: *Both are without work and with three children - a strong, probably sensation? *

Well, adrenaline was and is, of course. In addition, we are dissidents with short experience. We both grew up in general in comfortable conditions. This applies to childhood, youth, and violent youth, and already some kind of professional maturity, and we had not encountered anything like that before. Therefore, in a certain sense, of course, the situation is exciting for us. Dot.

Extract from the work book of Mikhail Shats, 12/29/2012

Pay for disloyalty

NT: *You and Tatyana are both members of the coordination council of the opposition. Is this the main reason for your problems or something else? *

We can only guess. I spoke here with one comrade who told me: “Well, do you understand how they can allow a member of the CC-opposition to exist on some officially permitted media? Give you a mouthpiece? " It may be so, although this is stupid: the format of the entertainment channel in no way intersected with our political or civil activity with Tanya. What, she in the program “This is my child” would voiced the resolution of KS-a? It seems to me that the system works in such a way that the bosses are able to predict the desires of the main superiors: not to fulfill an order that is formally nowhere and there is no nobody signature, but to predict it. Rather, I am inclined to this version. By the way, I tried several times to go to a direct conversation with the leadership of the channel, told them: if there are difficulties, you just tell me, this will not go beyond the scope of this room in which we are sitting. I was told that if such a situation arises, we will warn you.

NT: *It is known that special people carefully monitor social networks, and a number of people, including television, suffered exactly for their twitches and posts on Facebook. Is it applied to you? *

In any case, there was no conversation with me about this. All my facebook records are stored, like everyone else. In my opinion, there was nothing special there. Ordinary records. Sometimes ironic, sometimes not. There was definitely no call to overthrow. But some position was clearly expressed there. In my opinion, the elections in the Constitutional Court, the debate in the "rain", the interest of people in these elections - this was the main trigger. By the way, I generally think that the process of elections in the Constitutional Court itself was more important than the current history of this council. And for me it was, by the way, such a kind of experiment. Misha Shats and Tanya Lazareva, leading entertainment programs, are not seen in subversive activities, do not communicate with agents of foreign intelligence agents, are seen in many corporate parties, which were present by the authorities and so on. It seems to be what to suspect them? An experiment was interesting to me: something would happen to me (after the election in the Constitutional Court) or not. It seems that there is nothing to complain about. Well, a person expresses his position, here she is. The experiment failed. Or was a success. More precisely, it was a success, but the result was negative.

NT: *The answer received? *

Yes: loyalty (power) is important in our country.

The first time we appeared with Tanya on STS in 2002 with an OSP studio, and with a sin in half, but we did something for this channel. And of course, I expected a little different dismissal

Disappointment

NT: *Why did you decide to be elected to the Coordinating Council? *

We actually did not participate in these elections until the last moment. We joined the so -called “group of citizens” already a few days before the submission of final applications. As a media person, I understand that any participation of any famous television face attracts more attention to the event. Therefore, the first: we wanted to draw attention to these elections. The second is reputation to raise these elections, the significance of these elections. Tanya and I knew that what we did before the COP, and we would do. Another question is that when we are faced with reality ... Sometimes we think that it was not necessary to go there, that it was a mistake. We went to the Constitutional Court with the idea that this is a kind of organ that would perform completely working functions. That is, different opposition from different parts of the country will turn to it, and the Constitutional Court will coordinate their activities, help with media and other resources. Four months took to solve all kinds of organizational problems and on endless disputes for any reason. Only now the working groups have been formed in which some work has begun. We are in the working group for election control. Recently met with representatives of organizations who are engaged in elections: they even know what and how to do without us.

NT: *You said your participation in the COP was a mistake. Do you mean the consequences? *

No no. All the suffering that we experience are associated with the fact that people voted for us. And not at all with the fact that we have problems with work or that we have lost time. We have responsibility to people who voted for us, which means that we were given the authority. For this, only I worry, just like Tatyana, for which I can definitely say this.

All the suffering that we experience are associated with the fact that people voted for us. But not at all with the fact that we have problems with work or that we have lost time

NT: *What would you change in the COP? *

* In the first elections in the Constitutional Court in October 2012, in addition to a general -degree list, there were three ideological lists, or curia - left -wing forces, liberal, nationalists

Firstly, in the next election I would remove Kuriy*-Let everyone be elected according to a general civil list. Secondly, the backbone should compile political and civilian activists who will work there and work constantly, not media persons. Thirdly, 45 people, as now, are too many: the KS should have a plus or minus ten people who will travel through the regions, meet people. Then this will be the working body of the opposition.

My life is to the Constitutional Court and the COP - it is no different. I went to rallies, and I go. As I called on to go to rallies, I urge. As I went to organizing committees on the organization of rallies, I go now. Or, for example, I participate in the campaign for elections to district and territorial-election commissions. I would participate in this campaign anyway.

NT: *In other words, you do not consider the COP as a proto -parliament, where people are sitting peacefully at one table - say, nationalists and anti -fascists who used to beat each other's muzzle on the streets? *

This is very important, I agree. When we just got into the Constitutional Court, I had a funny incident. We arrived at the Rain TV channel, there was a format for a meeting of the newly elected members of the Constitutional Court. After filming, Vladimir Thor came up to me and says: “Michael, let me get acquainted with you. The whole family loved to watch your series “33 square meters”. In principle, probably, there was also some deep meaning of the CS, because it is difficult to imagine that Thor came up to me with the same phrase on the “Russian march”. Or if I myself appeared on the "Russian march", which is also unlikely. So if you summarize the pros and cons, then the main plus is that representatives of different ideologies and political forces came together at the same table and they recognize each other's existence, and the main minus - that so far the joint work has not happened.

And in this sense, the experience of the first COP is, of course, useful for future generations of opposition.

Filming the program "Good jokes". December 2006

Happiness

NT: *You said to yourself with Tatyana that you are "dissidents with short experience." But by the beginning of perestroika, you were about 20, and by the end - 25 plus. Then there was a time of politics. *

You know, we were young, full of energy, we had to spit on everything, we did what we wanted, studied where we wanted and how much we wanted. Although when there was a putsch, I went to the Lensovet together with everyone. But, honestly, we almost did not get the “scoop”: it caused heartburn, but it could be survived. Despite the fact that I lived, as it turned out, in three houses from the house of Joseph Brodsky, I did not know the dissident side of life.

NT: *Are you also St. Petersburg? *

Certainly. And Tatyana from Novosibirsk. I graduated from the 1st Leningrad Medical Institute, to the pediatric, where I entered, I was not taken because of the “fifth point”. However, I did not particularly encounter anti -Semitism, but that I was a Jew - I learned from the class school magazine, where “Heb.” Stood against my surname, and all the rest were “Russian”. But my mother - she graduated from the Leningrad Pediatric Medical Institute - got much more serious. In the fifty-third, when the struggle against the "rootless cosmopolites" and the case of "pest doctors" unfolded, she, the resident of the department, went to Kazakhstan. As it turned out, and thank God, because there she met with dad: he was a military man, then, under Khrushchev, he was demobilized, and he taught until his death in the professional -tot collection system.

NT: *And how did it happen that, having received a medical education, did you engage in the stage? *

In my 1st honey there was a very strong tradition of cabbage. There, each course had its own “cabbage team”, in the spring there was a kaputnikov festival. It was such a time when everyone was generally “put” to study and mainly engaged in cabbages. I graduated from the institute as a therapist, went to residency and became an anesthetist-resuscitator. And he worked in the profession for six years.

NT: *Do you treat your children? *

No no. I turned this page as I left the Institute of Pulmonology. And since 1996 he worked on television.

NT: *And there you met Tatyana Lazareva? *

No - we both played in KVN. In my 1st honey there was a strong team, and we, having won the first championship of Leningrad in KVN, fell on the game in Moscow. Then the team broke up, they took me into the team of the Leningrad Financial and Economic Institute, where I met the rest of the guard, which has now flooded part of the television, these are the authors of the Pro-Petroischilton, that is, successful scriptwriters, and Ilya Beschev, and Dmitry Mishin. And we met Tanya in 1992. In my opinion, it was the Youth Palace, I was in the SS form and sang a song on the face of Stirlitz: "Two stars and the Order of Lenin, wife in Moscow, is again pregnant." And Tanya was just hanging out there, it was not her game. Then we intersected at the KVN in Sochi festival, then there was a cruise in 1992 in September. All the best teams went to a cruise on the Black Sea on the Taras Shevchenko boat, then he entered the Annals of Cavean History called “Cruise in black”, because it was a serious test for everyone, and for the team of the “Taras Shevchenko” ship in the first place. There Tatyana and I especially met. Then we crossed the projects that were the forerunner of the OSP Studio. In 1994-1995, we did the project “Once a week”, and in 1996 we made an OSP studio.

NT: *and came ... *

And they came to the registry office. And to the TV-6 Moscow channel, where in December 1996 the OSP studio was released.

NT: *And what did the Jewish mother tell you when I found out that you abandoned the profession of a doctor? *

You can imagine what she said. In general, these were difficult conversations ...

NT: *Do not regret? *

No, absolutely. All six years that I worked as a doctor, I worked with great enthusiasm, with wonderful teachers and colleagues, no one, thank God. It was the first love. But she went happily out of television.

NT: *But acting is also a profession. Where did you learn to sing, move on stage? *

In KVN. And then where they starred, they studied there. Tanya studied at the Novosibirsk Pedagogical Institute - at the faculty of foreign languages, played in the KVN team of the Novosibirsk State University, and also very successfully, further - TV.

Probably, when the children are growing, this responsibility for them, it is very seriously influenced. Because I do not want them to live in such a country. At all

Rules (TV) games

Leading award ceremony
"Silver Kalosha" Mikhail Shatz
and Ksenia Sobchak, June 2012.
Among the laureates was named
Patriarch Cyril. He won
In the nomination "Hands on the elbow in miracles"
for "immaculate disappearance of the clock"

NT: *When did censorship come to your television projects? * Censorship appeared, I think, in 2002-2003. We (in the OSP studio) had the song “My name is Vova”-Seryozha Belogolovtsev sang it. And at some point we were told that there is no need to sing this song. This was the first bell.

NT: *were there other "bells"? *

I think it's no secret that a man was sitting on every channel. Including a man on our channel.

NT: *curator from the FSB? *

Yes. Who said that this is not necessary. And then they stopped talking at all. In principle, at first they somehow spoke, they called on some conversations, explained why it was not necessary, let's do it differently. And then self -censorship turned on quite quickly. At the end, they didn’t explain anything at all. Tanya, in her completely harmless program “This is my child”, had an episode: a boy of six years old conducts a tour of the cities, he stands on the central square of the city and says: “Here we have the city hall, there is a dining room.” They ask him: "Why is there a dining room?" “Well, Putin will come, have lunch, for example.” That's how the boy said. And this piece was cut out. The question is, why?

NT: *That is, the name Putin could not be mentioned at all? *

At some point-in general.

NT: *And Medvedev? *

Medvedev was then a little - when he became president.

NT: *What else was impossible? Say, the word "Chekist"? *

Understand that we were engaged in entertaining television, but we did not engage in journalism in its purest form. We just joked about what we wanted. We really did not want to joke over the Chekists, especially in the program about children.

The colors of the night

NT: *How do you further see the opposition and yourself in the opposition? *

Well, of course, now everyone has some depression.

I’m afraid that there are nothing to change with only marches and rallies: 100 thousand people came to Sakharov, several tens of thousands on a march against scoundrels. And the result is one. I would emphasize at some powerful party construction. The same party of Lesha Navalny ("People's Alliance"), which was quite ripe in order to become a big politician. Without a party, without participating in the elections, in my opinion, nothing will happen.

NT: *eight people went to Red Square, protesting against the occupation by the Soviet troops of Czechoslovakia in 1968. And the regime collapsed only after 23 years. Why did you decide that here, when in power, in fact, the most repressive institution of Soviet power is the KGB, everything will happen quickly: they came out, Putin brought the keys to the city, and it only remained to decide who would accept these keys. And if it didn’t work right away, then you need to sprinkle your head as ash? *

Firstly, we learn, you do not scold us. We also went out with these tens of thousands on the streets, and there was a feeling that now, give me another month or two. Of course, some kind of disappointment from this is still present. And many, with the word that this is for a long time, unfold and leave, they say, well, you will call me when it will be necessary, I will come. It is clear that society was divided into those who are ready to work in long, and who are not ready. And by the way, I do not want to judge the latter. I am unsymeal calls: “Vanya, where are you? You are blind, Vanya, call. " When it will be necessary, I am sure he will see. It will ripen before that, or life will force him. I think that a person must make a choice himself. It is useless to force.

NT: *Will you enter some part? In the area - in the area, in the city - would you go as a candidate from the opposition? *

If I found the party that I really trust, then, of course, I would have entered it. At the moment, there is no such thing on the horizon yet. As for your second question - until I see myself as a politician. But I don’t know what history will lead us to. I will not renounce. But if you ask me, do I regret that I participated in the organization of rallies and so on, then no, I do not regret: I did exactly what I wanted to do. The fact is that in the past few years our circle of communication has changed, we met many journalists, Facebook appeared in our lives, new magazines such as The New Times. And all this gradually changed us ... You know, I just read Facebook recently: the American dude lives and works in Russia, and now he writes how everything changes before his eyes. His windows overlook Kutuzovsky Prospekt. He looks: traffic jam - the motorcade passes. Three years - traffic jams and silent expectation of hundreds of drivers while the motorcade passes. And suddenly they stopped silently demolishing it and began to buzz. Why did you start? Why only three years later? Why now? What was the last straw - who knows.

NT: *And what did you and Tatyana become the drop that made me go outside? *

Probably, when the children are growing and you understand that they will live in this country ... And this responsibility for them, it is very serious. Because I do not want them to live in such a country. At all.

NT: *about leaving - did not think? *

No. Although, probably, the majority from our circle now hold such an option in their heads. We will go to the airport, when, probably, the tanks will go along the street when they start shooting.

Photo: ITAR-TASS, from Facebook by Mikhail Shats