The execution of parliament

The biographical book does not have to start the hero’s birthday.

You can start with a story about his parents or even ancestors. You can go even further, plunged into the depths of centuries and even millennia, as Gorky did, starting his own, and not written by them, Stalin's biography.

Gorky had their own reasons that prompted him to start so unusual, from such a distant far: he really did not want to write the leader’s biography, and he with all his might delayed the moment when he would inevitably have to proceed to the biography of the hero of the book. But in principle, such a distant entry is possible.

Another opposite path is also possible: to start the biography of the hero not from the beginning of his life path, but from the middle, from the most meaningful date for his whole life. In relation to Bulat Okudzhava, this date could be the year of the execution of his father and the arrest of his mother (1937) or June 22, 1941-the day that determined the fate of the entire generation to which Bulat belonged.

Dmitry Bykov his big (by the standards of the ZhZL series, for which it was written, even a huge) biography of Bulat begins a completely different date: the fourth of October 1993.

What happened on this day, which is why the author of the book needed such an unexpected plot somersault?

*On October 4, 1993, the government crisis in Russia was resolved by the execution of the White House - the buildings of the Russian Parliament, where the opposition settled. The result of a long confrontation between President Yeltsin and Vice President Rutsky (the side of the latter took the parliament, led by Speaker Ruslan Khasbulatov), ​​was the presidential decree of September 21 on the dissolution of the parliament. In response, parliamentarians began to arm their supporters, flowing to the White House no less actively than in August ninety -first ... The civil militia commander gathered at the White House was appointed General Albert Makashov, known for frank anti -Semitism ... Gradually, the Russian parliament became the Center for Resistance to Yeltsinism - in which the predatory reforms, and resounding were included in which concepts were included Democratic freedoms and corruption, all the features of the Russian revolution of the nineties.

On October 3, the opposition went on the offensive. A shootout began with the guards of the Moscow City Hall ... Army General Grachev (a year later he will become famous for the mediocre "New Year's assault of the Terrible) personally went to the troops. After several hours of persuasion, blackmail and a direct bribery, the Taman division moved to Moscow.

By this time, the rebels had already besieged Ostankino, raising the glass entrance with a truck. In the area of ​​the television center there was a shootout all night. The only television channel was functioning - Russian television created three years before the events. The opposition had already talked about a campaign in the Kremlin ... At the same time, the same Russian television channel was the “Perestroika Flights” - the creators and leading programs of the View Alexander Lyubimov and Alexander Politkovsky. They suggested that Muscovites calmly go to bed and not participate in street battles; From their point of view, such participation turned people into hostages of the political confrontation of two obviously illegitimate and immoral forces. This superpowial position in many caused bewilderment, but later it turned out to be the most visionary.

(Dmitry Bykov. "Bulat Okudzhava")*

Here is not a word, then evil is not true.

Even the external drawing of the course of events in this presentation is very distorted. And their meaning, their very essence - they are completely endless of reality.

In fact, the “government crisis, which was allowed by the execution of the White House,” was not the confrontation between President Yeletsyn and Vice President Rutskiy, but a much more serious and deep confrontation between the president and the Supreme Council. The role of Vice President of Rutsky in this confrontation was just as negligible as two years ago the role of another vice president-Yanaev-in the council of the State Emergency Committee.

The defenders of the White House, who had moved out (mainly from Transnistria), in order to take part in the second (after the Civil Code of the State Emergency Committee), an attempt by the communal fascist revenge, not only it is unlawful, but rightly called the "civilian militia."

General Albert Makashov, who headed this "militia", was indeed known for his frank anti -Semitism. But it was not an attempt by the Jewish pogrom that he headed that day, but an attempt by a coup d'etat, the main purpose of which was the restoration in all its glory through the rotten and just collapsing Soviet regime.

"We will have neither mayors, nor peers, nor dicks!" - He yelled when at the head of the gang to the teeth of the armed militants gathered in Ostankino to capture the television tower. I heard this with my ears and saw his eyes with my own eyes, his muzzle distorted by hatred, until my TV screen went out.

The thesis of Bykov about the "political confrontation between two obviously illegitimate and immoral forces" is not only false, but also lying. This I say (so far) not about interpretation, not about the assessment (the assessments can be different), but only about the actual side of the matter. The legitimacy of the president was incomparably higher than the legitimacy of the Supreme Council. Not so much even because he was “popularly chosen”, but for the much more important reason that the people with the results shortly before the referendum spoke out “for Yeltsin”, resolutely and categorically supporting all his reforms, including the economic (according to the terminology of Bykov’s “robberry”), to which even the most ardent supporters of these reforms were not too calculated.

In that referendum, I was an observer from "democratic Russia."

My wife and I came to the polling station neither light nor dawn. And then the first voter appeared - a very simple woman, very elderly, one might even say - an old woman.

• I am for Yeltsin, ”she announced on the way. - Tell me what and where I need to mark here.

I began to explain it to her, but they did not give me. The entire election commission rose on its hind legs. In one voice, they began to yell that it was impossible, that on the day of voting all agitation was prohibited. I tried to explain to them that my intentions to explain to the old woman, what she should do to express her will, are not any agitation: how - for whom - she wants to vote, she already announced herself. But the members of the commission stupidly stood on their own.

The old woman was not able to delve into the legal subtleties of our dispute, but he understood his general meaning well. Turning to the long table, at which, having drunk like the Sichs, the members of the commission sat, she shouted to them:

• Anyway, it will not work out!

And - turning to me:

• Let the man work, right?

This is about Yeltsin.

And when it was time to count the ballots and they began to lay them out on the table - those that for Yeltsin, to the right are those for the Supreme Council, and those that for Yeltsin the mountain towered above the thin stack of those for the Supreme Council, - one of the members of the commission sighed bitterly:

• The people of Soviet power do not want!

There were then moods then.

The Oktyabrsky coup of 1993 - this second after the August coup of the 91st (and also failed) attempt by the communist revenge - is depicted by Bykov as the uprising of the masses against the hated by most Russian citizens of "Yeltsinism", in which, as it is expressed, "robber's reforms, unbridled democratic freedoms and corruption, all features of the Russian Revolution of the nineties. "

No, Yeltsin’s charisma was still strong then.

*** The president received the mandate from the people to pursue his socio-economic policy-not being seen too much with the position (opposition) of the Supreme Council from the people.

But he did not use this mandate.

Strictly speaking, he could not use it. That is, could, of course. But - regardless of the main principle of the current constitution.

The whole catch here was that the country lived according to the old, still Soviet constitution, in which it was directly and unequivocally said that "all the fullness of power in the country belongs to the Congress of People's Deputies." Between the congresses - according to the same Constitution - this "all power" was vested with the Supreme Council.

In fact, as it has always happened in Russia - the notorious “all the fullness of power” concentrated in the hands of the then chairman of the Supreme Council Ruslan Khasbulatov.

He mowed, as he pleased, parliamentary commissions and committees, expelling all the objectionable from them and replacing them with obedient will. Driving around the country, he “threw crunches to the left and right,” by his own desire, distributing loans and subsidies between regions and industries. He arranged "selector meetings" with local leaders of all levels, establishing a certain power vertical. And gradually he got used to the role of little Stalin, even brought himself up a pipe, which - not without a hint of the role of the legitimate successor of the "Kremlin highlander" - coquettishly demonstrated to viewers. About Yeltsin, without hesitation, he said that his role should be reduced to the receipt of foreign ambassadors and the delivery of orders and medals.

After the results of the referendum became known, for some time he was in some confusion. But Yeltsin, as already mentioned, did not take advantage of the mandate received from the people: he hesitated, pulled, did nothing, did not encroach on the constitution (although it was Soviet). He was tied with his democratic image. And thereby gave Hasbulatov the opportunity to gather strength. Armed militants stretched to the teeth, whom Bykov delicately calls the rebels. And since Yeltsin did not respond, he began to provoke him. Once - I myself saw this on the TV screen, - talking about the president, snapped his fingers near his throat: is it worth it, they say, pay attention to the fact that this old drunkard is chatting there.

When Yeltsin’s patience burst and he finally decided to accelerate the Supreme Council, the moment for this was chosen the most unsuccessful moment for this. All his associates (including Gaidar) were then against the signing of this decree. But the decision was already made by him.

*** During the August coup of 1991 between the Supreme Council and the newly elected President of Russia (then also - the RSFSR) there were advice and love. Yeltsin unanimously and ardently supported not only the then his closest associates of Khasbulatov and Rutskaya, but also almost all deputies.

Intoxicated by this new role of the Supreme Council in the life of the country, we began to call it the "parliament", deputies - "parliamentarians", and the chairman - "speaker". And they are so accustomed to these items that when two years later, in the fall of the 93rd, these “parliamentarians” became the couples and Yeltsin to suppress the new putsch, he had to resort to force, the formula “The president noted the parliament” of far from then the hearing. She became common and flashed even on the pages of a democratic press. Few people felt that it was still lying and demagogical: firstly, because the Supreme Council was not parliament, and secondly, because after ten shots were made at the White House (two of them were incendiary, they called a fire in the upper floors of the building), not a single hair fell from the head of the deputy.

And then Dmitry Bykov many years later, as they say, repeats on a blue eye as something that is granted by this old, hidden, fake formula.

In essence, Bykov here only picked up the fact that, with the light hand of our current power, it is now customary to repeat about the "dashing nineties".

A lot of things could be said about this. But I will not develop this topic. Enough with me that I was diligently (and dusty) was engaged in it then, twenty years ago. And now he would not have spent on this plot and those few pages that I still had to devote to him if he had not been depicted by the author as committed for understanding the most important thing in life and fate - not only human, but also poetic - Bulat Okudzhava.

Let's see how he explains it.

*** He begins with the fact that he draws a direct parallel between the events of the fall of 1993 and what happened to Russia in the fall of 1917. And-in accordance with this-between the position that the block took in 1917, and the one on which Bulat Okudzhava turned out to be in 1993.

*In the Russian double play, re-played in 1991-1993 (the penultimate performance was given in February-October Seventeenth), in the role of the Bolsheviks who seized power and now suppressed any resistance, the main driving force of the new revolution acted.

In this play there is one of the most tragic roles - the role of a poet taking the side of the victorious side. In the seventeenth it was played by Alexander Blok, in the ninety -third - Bulat Okudzhava.

In the seventeenth, the block said Gippius that he sees not only strength behind the Bolsheviks, but also the truth; In the eighteenth, he printed "twelve", and on the questionnaire, whether the intelligentsia can work with the Bolsheviks, answered briefly: "maybe it should" ...

On October 4, 1993, Bulat Okudzhava signed a “forty -two letter” with the support and approval of the actions of the authorities ...

(Dmitry Bykov. "Bulat Okudzhava")*

It is difficult to refrain from recalling the famous remark of our former leader: "Historical parallels are always risky. This parallel is meaningless."

But in our time, links to this author are suitable only for a feuilleton. And I am not writing a feuilleton, and the author of the book in question refers to this concept so seriously and devoted so much time and place to the consideration that I will have to treat it with appropriate seriousness.

I will dwell on what Bykov sees the nature of their common (both Blok and Okudzhava) social and human drama, which led both to the same tragic ending:

*In 1993, Okudzhava, for the first and only time in his life, performed on the side of the state - he, who said: "Power is the administration, not the deity." In this civil war, he died four years later ... He was not so many years by current standards - seventy -three; He was sick a lot, but he was still strong ... But it was felt for a break from October ninety -third - it is difficult to make a mistake here. True, unlike Blok, Okudzhava continued to write poetry. But these verses, written from 1993 to 1996, did not like him himself. There were many reasons: age, illness, a feeling of impasse and compromise of all previous values.

(Ibid)*

This parallel "Blok-Okudzhava" is overgrown with Bykov with new and new details confirming not only the similarity, but just the identity of the fate of both poets:

*After the "twelve", many stopped serving the block hand. After the “letter of forty-two” and the interview, which Okudzhava gave the member of the Moscow PCF Andrei Krylov, understood by many as the approval of the use of force, a real obstruction was arranged on the Minsk tour, and the beautiful artist Vladimir Gostyukhin, a man of moderately patriotic beliefs, publicly broke and struck the record of his songs.

(Ibid)*

Bykov does not directly solidify with this act of the "beautiful artist and the temperate patriot", but he certainly sympathizes with him. In any case, he treats him with the understanding of how if it was a question of readers and admirers of Hamsun, who threw his former book of his book under his feet, after he declared his solidarity with the ideas of Nazism.

It turns out that the tragic fault of Bulat (like a block), for which he (like a block) paid first spiritual, and soon (like a block, four years later) and physical death, was that he (like a bloc) sided with the winners. ("In this play there is one of the most tragic roles - the role of the poet taking the side of the victorious side.")

I must say that with the block, it was also not so simple here. After the "twelve", the articles in which he called for listening to the "music of the revolution", and his unequivocal answer to the questionnaire question, whether the intelligentsia can work with the Bolsheviks ("maybe and should"), he wrote marvelous poems to the "Pushkin House" and made his ingenious Pushkin speech. But as for Bulat, he can not be accused of in the fact that in the events of 1993 he took the "side of the victorious side." Rather, it can be said here that the “victorious side” was then on his side and finally committed what he wanted, what he demanded from her.

What to say! Yeltsin fulfilled his role then extremely awkwardly. We have a lot to him and other, much more serious complaints. But at that moment with these clumsy actions, he saved the country from the already ready to burst into the civil war.

(From the book "Red glasses. Bulat Okudzhava and others", preparing for printing in the publishing house "Astrel", editors of Elena Shubina)