Between strength and charibade

In October of the 93rd, observing Moscow events from the other shore, Joseph Brodsky sent Leo Losev a postcard with such a double-playing:

We survived. We are observing the bastards of an armored car and a television tower.

The metaphor is transparent.

Opponents of Boris Yeltsin, whom the poet sympathized, made the assault on the Ostankino television center. The troops faithful to the President adjusted if the vocabulary of the Civil War (the only one that was still preserved in memory), an armored car. The finger from the tank was a retribution for shots at the television center. The armored car stood up for the offended lady, but in general these shawls looked unnatural.

The unnaturalness of the October showdowns in Moscow was very striking.

Who was the sage of the faithful to Yeltsin for? The president’s team, of course, fought for freedom and democracy. For freedom against totalitarianism, the elite parts of GB advocated. OMON fighters fought for the triumph of democracy. The army fought for the fragile ideals of Western civilization.

And those citizens who supported Rutsky and Khasbulatov? The team of the Supreme Council defended the constitution trampled by the presidential decree. For the Basic Law stood the mountain attack aircraft of Barkashov. For the separation of the powers, the police officers Anpilov tore the police chains. For the strictest compliance with the democratic procedure, fighters of the Dniester battalion died ...

Both sides clearly did not do their own business.

The professionals pushed from the battlefield, the intelligentsia made a difficult choice between General Makashov and the alpha special forces.

Grigory Pomerantz, a very elderly person with capital prison and philosophical experience, said in those days that he feels in a situation of Voltaire candidate, who was offered a choice between spitzeten and gallows. The image is accurate, especially if we recall how willingly and mercilessly beaten then, in October, riot police and generally all who came to hand. “We”, our whole layer, obsessed with the legality and respect for rights, was confronted with the need to carve itself, that is, Yeltsin’s decree was recognized. For the question of his legitimacy seemed difficult, but the answer about the gallows was simple as a stool.

However, this situation did not immediately arise. Before the signing of the most famous decree in Russia, it was possible to engage in his profession with impunity, criticizing both Yeltsin and Khasbulatov, or to deflect in the distant future the triumph of the historical correctness of the reformers, or compose frenzied texts about the robbery of workers in pink pants.

After the decree, the time accelerated sharply, but the new era has not yet arrived. Until October 3, observing street clashes or participating in them, one could still painfully reflect on the topic "who is right?", Make a political choice, call for the world. After taking the city hall, the flight of the police, the absolute anarchy on the streets of Moscow and the shot from a grenade launcher along the tower of the shashni actually ended. Like me, they left no choice.

It was no longer about democracy or legality there, but about a simple survival in a country, immersed in chaos. Lev Losev, the addressee of that historical dioxide, which the poet sent him in a postcard sent from Italy, quotes in his book about Brodsky and his other lines. Prose, published in 1972. “Life as it is - not the struggle between bad and good, but between bad and terrible,” he wrote in one of his early essays. “And the human choice today does not lie between good and evil, but rather between evil and horror.”

Such a choice was set on the night of October 3 to 4, and I, remembering the August experience and muttering something like "B .... how tired of they to die for them", humbly trudged to the Moscow City Council on the call of Gaidar.

Then, of course, it is time to ask questions. About the police, who disappeared somewhere from the capital's streets. About Barkashov and his freaks, symbolizing the terrible threat of fascism - and also organized and on the term of the squares, as if it had never been, this threat. Then, pretty soon, it was hard to think about the fact that the October Hell was organized in the Kremlin, although no one has ever proved this. Rather, there was a combination of a total mess with a certain script, which was frantically invented and was carried out in recent days or hours.

At dawn on October 4, the alignment of forces, as well as the near future, seemed easier for steamed turnips. Or Rutskoy with Khasbulatov and Makashov, angry to insanity, that is, complete death seriously. Or Yeltsin, who has flown something there with his decree, but in general is right, since the enemy captured the city. And I also remember the feeling of endless joy when an armored car began to peel the white house on the live CNN. It was the joy of liberation from fear. And a feeling of shame, which literally overwhelmed me a few days later. It was a shame for this joy, and for a country in which the separation of the powers gained such unheard of scale.

Twenty years later, the civil war continues - fortunately, now only in blogs and articles written for the anniversary. Those who are still overwhelming fear are talking about "victory" and are eager to "finish the reptile." The losers everyone dreams of condemning Yeltsin during the trial, although the prison is crying with bitter tears, from which they were released, however. Another point of view, endless sadness about the fact that all this was done at all is rather marginal. Although the reality in the form of the president who no longer knows what to do with his powers, and the parliament, which no one will disperse, because he is not, everyone has before his eyes. And this is an obvious consequence of the October tragedy. Let not fatal, but the fork after that local civil war was already a little left, and we went along the most trodden from roads. From the flimsy of democracy to authoritarian insanity.

“We have survived,” the poet said, and these are perhaps keywords. That's what they survived. The tanks of the first democratically chosen president of Russia are scorched, as in a penny, in the White House, where the people's chosen ones are scared to death by candlelights. Still scary, but not yet ashamed.