Choosing a hump

General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Mikhail Gorbachev, October 1986

On March 2, the first and only President of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev marks 85 years

There are few people in the world who can boast that they changed the course of history, the fate of the whole generation - Gorbachev from these people.

To him, the Secretary of the Party, who modestly called herself “the mind, honor and conscience of the era” (having previously shot, having ruined, turning tens of millions of people into barbarians), and he was part of this apocryphus, there was a country in which the children in the Kurils never saw fresh milk and oranges, and women in the cities of the Balconies were frozen for the winter, for winter. Because there were no fresh meat in stores; The country in which women gave birth in maternity hospitals, where there was no soul (yes, in Moscow, and not just in Naryan-Mar), the word “bidet” was not known, there were no gaskets at all, but there were coupons in the Aista store, where pregnant women could climb on all that nine months (surprise, surprise! in the middle; A country where in children's hospitals (not to mention adults) there were no disposable syringes and children infected the HIV virus, where the saleswoman of grocery stores - the nomenclature of the lower classes - took the brow of works, because books, even permitted classics, were also in short supply; A country where there were no political sciences, sociology existed in the semi-underground (the first congress of sociologists was held in 1986, and the author made a report from it), sex was condemned to marriage, exiting from work, traveling abroad demanded not only a special passport, the meeting of the old Bolsheviks and the agreement with the Chekists, but also a special visiting visa, which the author was no I could not get the forces (up to perestroika, up to eighty -ninth year); The country of state anti-Semitism (quota for Jews in the Brezhnevsky USSR was 3 %, while in Tsarist Russia-12 %) and monstrous non-freedom, war in Afghanistan, a four-millionth army, the devouring everything and all-the brains, resources (100 % of the production of non-ferrous metals and 75 % of the production of all ferrous metallurgy), fate-the military-industrial complex and 60,000th party-economic The nomenclature that built a separate life for itself.

Life - with hospitals with disposable syringes, maternity hospitals, where there was a shower and anesthesia, “feeders”, where products were sold for funny money, which the rest of the country did not even know about, with special “white tass” - ballots with information from around the world, and not that fake, which was subsided with the rest of the country, book “lists”, and pins, pins, pins. allowed to dress in the decaying West, in line, spacious apartments (the norm for the rest - 9 m2 for one Soviet soul), dachas and - the same monstrous lack of freedom, where everyone was spying on everyone and everyone was ready to rush to the throat for everyone, if only not to be thrown out of the clip, from the "nurse" and from the hospital and from the Black "Zila" A driver - to where the rest of the country lived.

Gorbachev was part of this nomenclature, the most successful part of it: his parents were not shot under Stalin, he survived in cleaning at Khrushchev, fell to the court of Brezhnev (headed by the Khlekhny Stavropol Territory), became the favorite of the head of the KGB Andropov, he rose to the very top, became the Secretary General, the manager of the nomenclature souls ... he took a look and looked at, looked and looked at and looked at. He began to chop the bitches on which he was sitting. Stalin spent 30 years on Soviet Olympus, Khrushchev, who opened the gates of the Gulag - 11, Brezhnev - 18, Yeltsin - 9, Putin - already 16, Gorbachev - 6 years. And he could rule forever: from the office of the Secretary General - straight to the Kremlin wall.

He chose another - he liberated the country, which for the most part has not yet accepted this freedom, did not understand and did not thank him, and again, it seems, was ready to worship the idol. Yeltsin will remain in history by chosen Putin’s successors, Putin - that under him and at his gate, Nemtsov was killed, Gorbachev - by preferred freedom. And for yourself and for others.

Photo: Yuri Lizunov, Alexander Chumichev/Photokhronika TASS