The big historian died

Actually, I have nothing to add to what has already been written .

Except perhaps one.

The outstanding Anglo-American historian Sir Robert Conquest, whose earthly life ended two days ago, lived with dignity. And not just worthy, but as much as possible. I ask this statement to perceive as an axiom, since I will neither give a biography or give a bibliography once again. Anyone can get acquainted with them himself if he has a need for that. The same for whom this name is the synonym for the words “slanderer” and “outline”, it is still pointless to tell anything about this person - they have already decided everything for themselves and not help them, because this is not treated.

A long time ago it is noted: the best and give the greatest factual base for further research historical works about what Russia is, for all centuries, foreigners who visited it wrote. And it doesn’t matter what foreigners they were - merchants who also were scouts, like Isac Massa, or diplomats, who were not part -time scouts, but by profession, like Antonio Posvino. Or, even such remarkable characters as the eternal “soldier of good luck”, adventurer Jacques Mareret - ready to serve anyone, if only they would only give out a salary and did not interfere with the work on the side. Not to mention the Marquis of Astolfe de Cuustine, the author of the epoch -famous essay “Russia in 1839”, who managed to get out of himself Russian emperor Nicholas I, which, having familiarized himself with this book, shouted to the whole Winter Palace in fury: “My God! And why did I only talk to this [*stupid person; The original expression is censored at the request of Roskomnadzor]! ”

Such a painful reaction of the emperor is understandable and easily explained. The main task of all the rulers of Russia since the time of Ivan IV Grozny was to create a distorted, intentionally camouflaged performance in a civilized world about themselves and his state. In order to first dilute this very world, like the station suckers, and then - if such a case is presented - to eat with all its giblets and bones. And, having buried, to crucify the greasy lips in a smug mocking grin: “Gee-s-s! And how it turned out, Herr Schroeder ... ”However, Herra Schreder for a similar turn for a long time, as they say, put him - that he was tahiti, he is already fed well. But not all in the free world, fortunately, are such as this Herr. And for those who are not the same as this, and are intended studies that do such as Robert Conquest. Where, using real, and not fictional dates, numbers and facts, the genuine essence of the most monstrous in the 20th century on planet Earth of totalitarian education - the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is analyzed. For seven decades of gigantic sizes, a meat grinder for grinding human bones and crush - by squeezing human blood tanks from the ground meat of human blood. The state, over the shameful fate of which someone still pours the crocodiles of tears, calling its obscene end "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe in history."

When in 1974 the first edition of “Great Terror” was published in Italy in Russian, an anonymous reviewer of the emigrant magazine “Continent”, fluently, at one and a half pages, a 1000-page book, came to the following conclusion: “The reading of the concave book cannot be called, of course, pleasant or entertaining. But not reading this book means not to wish to read almost the most terrible page of human history. ”

Since then, the book of Robert Conquest has been repeatedly reprinted, having come to date in the original language by four editions. Moreover, as the author became accessible to the author of all new documents from the previously completely unattainable Soviet archival burial grounds, Conquest finalized his monograph, complementing it with new information and eliminating the fact that the factual inaccuracies that were originally caused in it, of course, were not biased by the historian’s attitude towards the topic of his study, but only in the years that it was in the years, what is it in the years, what is it in years. It was written that Conquest had no opportunity to look into these same archives.

The local Russian edition of the Great Terror, which was published back in 1991 in Riga, remains not only the first, but also the only one. For years, the book is impossible to acquire otherwise, having resorted to the services of bukinistic shops, and even it is not a fact that the sufferer will be able to get it. Therefore, the only effective way to familiarize him with her is to campaign in one of the many pirate libraries, now incurs from the ideological and legal copyright holders of the criminal regime, whose bastard and cannibalnic essence, Sir Robert Conquest, laid most of his extremely long and productively living life.

This situation seems, to put it mildly, more than strange. However, the fact is a fact: the current Russian publishers, who, in addition to the tons of the stamping pseudo -historical waste paper, which is tirelessly scribble and supply their customers with all kinds of Prudnikovs and Mukhins, including pretty decent books, the idea of ​​reprinting “Big Terror”, “The Harvest of Sorrow” and other works of Robert Concvest, as you can see, simply does not come to it. head. And this regrettable circumstance personally causes me only one feeling - a feeling of boundless regret that the proverb attributed to the artist Vasnetsov “The people who do not love, does not appreciate and does not study his history” will remain more than relevant for a long time.

As for the withdrawal of the continents of the Continent reviewer cited above, it is pointless to polemize with this statement. We must read.