With Stalin in the head

Photo: Reuters

Russia is sick again. The country is again “with Stalin in its head.” Newspapers, magazines, radio, television - almost everywhere today are celebrating the 60th anniversary of the death of "Usatiy", one of the most ferocious tyrants in Russian history - for some, the best friend of athletes, workers and peasants - for others.

Amazing? Tragic? No, perhaps it’s natural.

Political scientists have already found a definition for what is happening in the country - reactionary modernization. There is no way to do this without Stalin.

Can you imagine that exactly 20 years ago, on March 5, 1993, on the day when it was 40 years since the despot at the “nearby dacha” in Kuntsevo finally died, not a single serious Russian newspaper mentioned a word (!) about this.

And not because it’s either good or not good about the dead. But because it seemed that the country then buried the “leader of the peoples” forever, calling his crimes a crime. But, unfortunately, the official did not pronounce a verdict; the court did not name him a criminal and murderer.

I look through the newspapers for that day - Izvestia, Nezavisimaya, Moskovskie Novosti, Rossiyskaya Gazeta - this opportunity is now given by the Yeltsin Presidential Foundation, which consistently digitizes newspapers twenty years ago, and nowhere do I find a single mention of the date that From my school years I remember from Soviet tear-off calendars: “Day of Remembrance of I.V. Stalin.”

I tore off the piece of paper and... didn’t forget.

And in 1993, you can imagine, FORGOT!

And no one then could even imagine that the millennium would pass, the 21st century would begin, and Stalin, at the instigation of the Russian authorities themselves, would be talked about as an “effective manager”, they would propose returning Stalingrad to the map of their homeland, and “Stalin buses” would appear on the streets of Russian cities.

In 1993, newspapers wrote about China, which had already broken into the top ten world leaders, about the search for a compromise between Yeltsin’s Kremlin and Khasbulatov’s Supreme Council, about the publication of a beer encyclopedia in Russia, about the presentation of “The History of Dissent in Russia,” written by Lyudmila Alekseeva...

And about the death of "Usatiy" - not a line.

When are we sick and when are we healthy—today or then?

Before you answer, read a couple of quotes:

“There are not enough children of their own in the States, Sweden, Canada, Italy, France. But it is not only because of the shortage that the same Americans turned their eyes to Russia. And the presence of many Asian children in American families - both with children and without children - is by no means explained not by the ease of “acquiring” them. Well, why, pray tell, should we take away from Russia the legless and armless, the morons and the blue-hearted, the blind and the deaf? Another psychology: A child is adopted not because I feel bad without him, I need to save my family, support me. her prestige. And because he feels bad, I have the opportunity to make him happy. Then he becomes desirable in any form - the more unhappy he is, the more desirable.

...The path to the West was discovered two years ago by Lenochka G. from Mordovia, without both arms. They talked about her on the radio and television. None of the fellow citizens responded; strangers responded. So, instead of a boarding school for disabled people, Lena ended up in America, by the way, in a family with their own children. She is the darling and pride of the school and is brilliant with a computer. Quite equal among her peers. In short, saved."

Do you think this was written recently when the “anti-orphan” law was adopted in the Duma?

You are wrong. This is from an article in Izvestia dated March 4, 1993:

" Diana, who cannot travel abroad. Crippled children: what is more humane - leaving them unhappy at home or sending them abroad ."

The author of the article is Ella Maksimova, a brilliant journalist from the old “Izvestia” galaxy. It turns out that 20 years ago the domestic “public” was concerned about the “export” of Russian children to the West. And then the Supreme Council came to their defense, adopting a resolution “on urgent measures to streamline the adoption of children...”

Parliamentary “children’s defenders” in our country were categorical even then. Izvestia retells the draft document: “Foreigners adopt children in “exceptional cases,” if the child “is not possible” to transfer to Russian citizens. The following mechanism is proposed: all children are registered with the Ministry of Education “for the purpose of transferring for adoption to other districts and regions of the Russian Federation "Departure is permitted when opportunities have been exhausted throughout Russia. Information about children goes to the all-Russian data bank, from there to the republics, regions, districts. And then...

I proposed a hypothetical situation in the Committee on Women’s Affairs, Ella Maksimova wrote: Arkhangelsk and Chita became interested in a baby from Ryazan, who was not accepted by Ryazan residents (how many refusals would be considered sufficient?). How much time will it take, given our methods of communication and the financial capabilities of the family, for people to gather for the “bride”? It was not in vain that the people of Ryazan retreated: I told you about the one who was not taken. And Chita residents are unlikely to be flattered by morons, not to mention the legless ones. The answer to my assumption was: “Don’t think so badly about our people.”

It will never be known whose words Ella Maksimova quotes; she died in 2010, before she could see the new hysteria of the “orphan defenders.” Who knows, maybe it was Ekaterina Lakhova, who by that time had long headed the parliamentary Committee on Women’s Affairs, Family Protection, Motherhood and Childhood... But certainly not Olga Batalina, by that time a school graduate, and not Pavel Astakhov, also a graduate, but from the KGB Higher School. They still had everything ahead of them.

Twenty years ago we weren't very healthy. Today they are seriously ill.