"Feelings of fatigue, I'm not afraid"

Interview of the writer Lyudmila Ulitskaya

Lyudmila Ulitskaya Prochrevsky activists consider the fifth column: she speaks out against the authorities, stoods behind Mikhail Khodorkovsky, condemns many processes in the country. All this does not prevent Ulitskaya from remaining a successful writer, whose books are sold in huge print runs. In a conversation with a special correspondent of Medusa Andrei Kozenko, Lyudmila Ulitskaya explained how she relates to the state; I remembered a close friend who recently died Ekaterina Genieva, a long -term director of the library of foreign literature; And also talked about her new novel.

- This week, sanctions products began to be destroyed in Russia. Are you as a person born in evacuation, who lived in post -war Moscow, who often returned in those days with the heroes of your books, how do you treat it?

- This is an abomination, madness. But also evidence of the perfect mediocrity of those who came up with this measure of the struggle and their own population.

- You spoke about the Dynasty Foundation, defended the Center for Children's Adaptation with the civil assistance recognized by a foreign agent; Last year, the intelligentsia organized by Khodorkovsky participated in the Kiev Congress. What do these performances and open letters mean to you? And is there a sense of fatigue from the fact that good people say, say, and everything gets worse?

- I'm not afraid of feelings of fatigue. I am in general over the years, I’m getting less and less afraid. But signing a letter is a tireless business, and this is the smallest that can be done. I am little interested in politics, many other things are interested in me much more. I know no worse than you that there is no reception against scrap. I understand well those people who leave the country, not wanting to take part in the ugliness. But I'm here, and I say what I think when they ask me. Do not ask - do not speak.

- How do you feel in the role of the Fifth Column?

- This does not concern me yet in practical life. You never know what they say about me? Once, about 15 years ago, when I was not enrolled in the Fifth Column, I collected quotes about myself in the press. What was not written there! However, enough, harmless things: that I have two daughters, one works with Chernomyrdin, and the second lives in Canada ... And I have two sons, both live in Russia. And the rest is this kind.

“Fifth Column” - call whatever you want, at least a pot, do not put in the oven. And more recently, one figure of the writers-lacaic direction called me "Matress." I am a decent old woman, married, by the way, hardly anyone dreams of taking me for content. So what should I call to the duel to call? Let them amuse if they want ...

- We have not a very good atmosphere in the whole country - it contributes to creativity or, conversely, kills the desire to deal with it?

- This atmosphere I cannot call “not very good”, it seems to me definitely very bad. But she has nothing to do with my work. Sometimes I leave to work abroad, but this is exclusively due to the fact that there are fewer phone calls and any current affairs that distract from work.

-Your feelings from today's days echoing from some of the times in which you or the heroes of your books lived?

- All the most interesting thing happens not outside, but inside a person. The historical background is changing. But there are unchanged things: decency, self -esteem. Time offers not new temptations, they are all the same: power, money. Everything has long been described. In addition, there is fear - for their own life, for the life of loved ones. And thus, not the temptations themselves change, but their dimension. Now it is called "The price of the issue." How much should you pay for a person to make meanness? Thirty silver or thirty million? Not very interesting. Are there many people who are firmly responsible for "no"? A little, but I know such.

- Do you imagine the heroes of your books in modern life? Would they be organic in 2015 or not? Relatively speaking, the same Dr. Kukotsky would go into a binge when he would persistently offer him to join United Russia? After all, in position for him, it would be an almost inevitable step.

- Today there can no longer be any doctor Kukotsky. This rare breed of people died out. In any case, such doctors no longer come across. Every time has its own heroes. This does not mean that there are no good doctors today, but this human type has left. Yes, and medicine itself has changed a lot, today the talent and intuition of the doctor is not so important - such a fantastic technique! The treatment has become protocol. Anyway, soon we will be treated by cars, we have already come very close to this.

“I look at the list of your awards, literary prizes in Russia and other countries, and at the same time I read:“ The Investigative Committee of the Oryol Region checked the books of Ulitskaya for the propaganda of non -traditional sexual relations among minors. ” I am very interested in how you feel at the time of recognition of such news?

- At a good moment, I would like to immediately go there, talk, regret idiots, explain - what kind of phenomenon it is, why you need to know biology and so on ... And another time, let it ram, black.

- Ekaterina Genieva, with whom you were very friends, in an interview with Medusa, shortly before his death, said that even during the Caribbean crisis, the culture was a platform where it could always be agreed. Why does this formula not work now - and it is culture that is the subject of political contention?

- Throughout the world, the cultural level has greatly decreased, this applies to both the presidents and their guards. The elite is not in the understanding of the current bosses, lovers of all the best and the most expensive - wine, hotels, women and cars, and in the strict sense of the word - the best, selected, that in agriculture they are selected "to the tribe". Ekaterina Genieva was this elite. The state should take care of the elite, save, and it destroys.

It destroys the Academy of Sciences today, and those remains of the scientific elite that still existed in Russia will now go abroad. Culture is a science, art, today also new technologies. There is a process in which Joseph Kobzon and Zakhar Prilepin will remain in Russia. This will be called culture.

- Can I ask about Catherine Genieva separately? You were with her in her last days in the Israeli hospital. What was it for you and for everyone?

- We were familiar with more than a dozen years, but we got closer in recent years. Indeed, when it became very bad for her, I flew to Israel, where she was treated to say goodbye to her. Spent the last four days of her life there.

She was my friend, I can say that. She was cast out of the test that has nothing to do with me. She is a figure, a person with a state mind. I always thought that it was supposed to be the Minister of Culture of Russia. And now, when she died, I can say that she would be the best prime minister and the best president than those we have. With a state scale of personality - she saw a separate person.

When it was really bad, she left, she was on severe medicines, but, opening her eyes, thanked everyone who was nearby - an Arab cleaner, a ward doctor, a husband, a son -in -law, and employees who came to say goodbye. This is amazing - the intonation was the same: there was neither a special voice for the highest or special voice for the lower ones. Here I realized that she really left as a Christian ...

- I read different old news and found this: "Lyudmila Ulitskaya wrote her last novel." It was in 2003 after Shurik, as I understand it. Since then, “Daniel Stein has been released. Translator ”and“ Green Tent ”. Is it true that you wanted to stop yet, but every time you postponed it?

- This is an excessively hard work for me. So it turns out that it does not end. Every time a lot of work comes to an end, I am afraid to die without having time to finish. I think that I will already have nothing to say now and I will calmly deal with reading thick books, I will spend time with my grandchildren.

“Does one of the colleagues continue to inspire you?” Is there someone who you read with pleasure? Or do your new works arise autonomously?

- I have few friends among writers. The writing community does not cause me any delight. More artists. Professionals in other areas. I haven’t read it for a long time, but I have been a real pleasure recently almost exclusively from good popular science literature. Apparently, like my grandfather, a lover of all sorts of sciences.

- You have a “green tent” epigraph from Pasternak about the wrong time and the ability to be a person against his background. In my opinion, this is an epigraph to many of your things. You have very vague time, dictatorship or war - the background on which the main characters live. Why is this topic so important for you?

- This topic is important for everyone. If you look for a distant source and to some extent the answer, then the Apostle Paul gives it: "Do not considerate with the age of SIM, but transform up to the update of the mind." Translate in your own words into a modern language ... A lot of thoughts are born, and one of them - think with your own head, and do not listen to what the majority says, even if it is 86%. Unfortunately, the majority are very often mistaken, this is the enormous danger of democracy.

- You are writing a new novel now, can you tell a little about it? Is it true that he is about one of your grandfathers repressed in the 1930s?

- Yes, if it were not for my grandfather and his severe biography, I would not have taken up this work.

- I know that you read the letters of those times, a new novel is based on them. What was your feeling from those letters?

- They are amazing. They forced me to write this novel. I decided not to write any more novels. I do not like fat books, I have not read them for a long time. That is, I read all the thick books in my youth and I no longer want to. But the letters forced me to take up this incredibly difficult, just overwhelming work. But now for sure - the last time.

- The main character of the novel Yakov Samoilovich Ulitsky, right? I read that he wrote a music textbook, and also, in the 1940s, a memo on the prospects of the emergence of the state of Israel-for the Politburo. Yes, and was an expert in industrial cities. I will not remember any famous person now offhand, especially with access to the Politburo - the same versatile. What do you think is happening to our contemporaries? Are we flickering and not changing?

- No, the main character of the novel is Yakov Osetsky. And although I used the letters of my grandfather and some biographical parallels, it is still impossible to put an equal sign between them. My grandfather, like the hero of the novel, spent in exile from 1931 to 1937, and in 1948 he received ten years of camps, after which he was again in exile. In exile and died in 1956. Grandfather never had any proximity with the Politburo. He wrote his abstracts for the Jewish anti -fascist committee, and, apparently, Mikhoels handed them over to the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs just before voting to the UN regarding the creation of the Israel state. I’m not sure that these documents were of meaning - everything depended on the opinion of one person, and this person then believed that Israel would be another Republic of the USSR. But this did not happen, and Israel fell into disgrace.

My grandfather was not a member of the party, although in the early years of the revolution he was not long in some advice, he then served in the army. Then he was remembered by his "Menshevism." Grandfather was really cultural, he considered himself a cultural player. One of the many talents ruined by power.

And as a former geneticist, I can only say that in addition to the genome that we all carry from our ancestors, the conditions in which the genome can unfold are needed. There are historical conditions that contribute to the unfolding of different talents, as happened in the Austro-Hungarian Empire by the end of its existence. And there are such periods when these talents are not in demand. The Soviet government relied on performers. And the performer simply does not have the right to understand more in the case than his boss. And the acuteness of the mind, and talent, and independent thinking turned out to be dangerous qualities. The carriers of all kinds of talents were in the zone of the greatest danger. The strategy of "not to lean out" was a condition for survival.

Risk to be known as a Russophobe, but it seems to me that this label has already been glued to me, besides, I will not inform any news: within tens of years, the most talented farmers called “fists”, the most educated people belonged to hostile “specialists”, were knocked out of the generation. That is, they knocked out professionals who could not obey managers who did not understand anything in the profession, but they wore a party card in their pockets. The army, and science, and culture were sighed.

At the last year's Olympics, our achievements, a whole string of wonderful artists, writers showed the world. But at the same time, it was not mentioned that the entire Russian avant -garde was destroyed, that the outstanding biologist Vavilov was freezed in the prison that Mandelstam died in the camp that Pasternak had been produced. Even some completely “thimble” technique of Brodsky managed to declare a national treasure ... It's not so, gentlemen: the Soviet government from the first days to this hour was an enemy of culture. The one was discussed in the 19th and beginning of the XX century. What we have today is also a culture. Fallen, truncated, subordinate to bossies. It will be studied with great interest by scientists in a hundred years as an interesting phenomenon of “folding”. Yes, they are already studying today.

We are changing. Humanity continues its evolutionary development, and, judging by many signs, this process is accelerated. We have become different, and our grandchildren will be even more different, and it is very interesting to observe. Development is uneven. I really love Herbert Wells that humanity will be divided into two races - Eloev and Morlocks. I will not describe these races - take a book and read. A wonderful thought, then the Strugatsky picked her up.

Actually, my romance is about this - about life as reading a great text that is not written by us. Divine text, as one of the heroes of the novel believes. I'm not sure what happened. But the intention was like that.

On September 9, Riga will meet with Lyudmila Ulitskaya "A Free Man in the era of totalitarianism."

Andrey Kozenko

Moscow