From Victoria to Victoria

Halver a century ago, Winston Churchill passed away.

He was only four years younger than Lenin. The thick -striped, in the cylinder, with a bulldog expression on his face and a cigar in his teeth, Churchill is so similar to the caricature image of the bourgeois, which is incomprehensible: either the caricature was painted from him, or he himself was fumed under the caricature. He came from the ancient family of Malboro, but his father was only the third son of the duke, and therefore did not inherit either a state or a title. The mother was an American, and the great -grandmother, according to the family legend, was from the tribe of the Iroquois. With this exotic origin, Churchill was terribly proud and once said: "I myself am an union of English -speaking countries."

He did not succeed too much in his studies, had neither taste nor desire to engage in the economy and did not become an outstanding military leader. His calling was a public policy. When Churchill managed to master the attention of the audience, his nostrils swelled with excitement. But nature played a cruel joke with him: he was very whispering, and he, like Demosthenes, was worth a lot of works to correct diction. Churchill became an outstanding speaker. Due to the overcome defect in speech, he often fell into a melodeckamation, but the mighty charisma and literary gift were redeemed by the manner of a provincial tragic.

Churchill is probably a champion in the number of quotes attributed to him. One of them sounds like this: "If you are not liberal when you are 25, you have no heart. If you are not a conservative to 35, you have no mind." Churchill could not say this simply because he himself was a conservative in his youth, and at 35 he became a liberal. Party affiliation for him did not matter. He was not an ideological politician. He was a born leader.

In 1931, in New York, Churchill got under the car, because according to the English habit, crossing the street, he looked right first, and then to the left. American and British authors composed a lot of opuses about this in the genre of alternative history - it is considered obvious that without Churchill, history would have gone another way.

He would have made a brilliant career in peacetime. But the war turned him into the leader of the nation. On September 29, 1938, Neville Chamberlain and Eduard Daladier signed an agreement with Hitler and Mussolini in Munich, which became a death sentence of democratic Czechoslovakia. Chamberlain returned to London with a triumph. Turning to the jubilant crowd from the window of his residence to Dauning Street, the prime minister announced: "I believe that we will live in peace." In the House of Commons, there was a only person who said: "We suffered a complete and crushing defeat." This man was Churchill. After these words, he had to pause, because a storm of indignation rose in the hall.

Churchill spread his fingers with the letter V - and became the author of a common -use gesture. His whole life was added to this gesture: from Victoria-Korolev to Victoria-Pobeda

For Stalin, Churchill was probably the most difficult partner of all. After the Fulton speech, Churchill became the main embodiment of the enemy for Soviet propaganda for the "iron curtain". Today it remains a classic Western Russophobe, which, if you listen to the President of Russia, only dream of winning, dismembering and enslaving Russia.

But, despite all the efforts of the agitprop, it does not manage to make it scared. In folk perception, Churchill turned into a folklore character, the hero of endless jokes and shoes, in which his image is clearly warmed by the sympathy of the narrator. Here, for example, the story of Churchill's visit to Moscow in the summer of 1942:

The conversation was not glued. "Do not we drink?" - the father of the peoples asked. In response, Churchill suggested a bet: whoever drinks more, that is true. After the fourth faceted glass, the Prime Minister fell under the table. Joseph Vissarionovich turned to Molotov and said: "What, Vyacheslav, thought, Stalin’s homeland ** t?"

The funny thing is that, according to the testimony of the translator of Stalin Valentin Zhezhkov, so it was almost everything in fact, only Churchill did not fall under the table. But with the prime minister, the scene looks much more humane with the prime minister.

In another story, Churchill complains to Stalin that the taste of his beloved Armenian cognac has deteriorated, and thereby saving the already arrested cognac master from the camp. In fact, Churchill's beloved cognac was French Hine - but it was invented deftly, especially that Churchill did not find out about his good deed.

And here is a joke, also on an alcoholic theme. Once Churchill was at a dent of a reception next to the Anglican priest. A waitress with a tray of drinks came up. Churchill took a glass, and the priest said: "I will rather commit sin of adultery than I will take alcohol in my mouth." “Mademoiselle, come back!” The waitress Churchill called out. “I did not know that we have a choice!”

He continues to intrigue the audience after death. Birds never sit on the bronze bald head of his London monument. Some sources say that there are sharp spikes on the bald head, in others - that an electric current is missed in the statue, and the third refutes both. One thing is known for sure: during his lifetime, Sir Winston categorically stated that it was better to let the monument be no at all than such as the need to cope with the need.

In 1940, at the most desperate moment of the war for England, Churchill spread his fingers with the letter V - and became the author of a common -scale gesture. His whole life fit into this gesture: from Victoria-Korolev to Victoria-Pobeda.

Vladimir Abarinov - Washington Observer Radio Liberty

Opinions expressed under the heading "Law" may not reflect the point of view of the editorial office