Roman for power

Dmitry Bykov - about which work can become saving for the world

All texts - at least in Russian literature - are divided into three categories: written for power, against power and for the authorities. (Surely someone will say that there is a fourth-texts that ignore power, but within the framework of the Soviet canon it was impossible: either you built it and thus supported or functioned underground). The most interesting are, in my current opinion, just novels addressed directly to the chief reader. In the Soviet literature of the Stalin period, at least five such works that have achieved their goal are distinguished.

The most famous novel of this genre is “Master and Margarita” (a book, the author of which the author did not think about the lifetime publication, because he imagined its consequences). The message of this book - addressed, of course, not only Stalin - is quite obvious: we, artists, intellectuals, recognize you with the inevitable and useful evil and give you a moral sanction for reprisals with people, whom you yourself have partially brought; But take care of the artist. They will remember the artist - they will remember you, the son of a shoemaker. Apparently, shortly after the war, Elena Sergeevna managed to convey Roman Poskrebyshev (supposedly through a familiar dressmaker from the government atelier); True, judging by the words of Poskrebyshev quoted by her (“You will have a benevolent answer”), Stalin’s call mixed in her memory on April 19, 1930 and this conversation.

But the fact that in 1946 Akhmatov and Zoshchenko survived, it makes us assume that "they read the novel."

The second such text, unequivocally addressed to Stalin and he heard, is Leonov’s play “Invasion” , awarded the Stalin Prize, despite the acuteness of the author's content and disgrace. According to the plot, shortly before the surrender and occupation of the old Russian city, the recent “enemy of the people” is returned there (already a stretch, since by the end of the war the people who have served the enemies were kept at best in the settlement - exceptions are single). It is he who turns out to be the main character of the underground - unlike prosperous peers - and dies shortly before our return. The idea is simple: we, your victims, do not hold evil on you, and moreover - we are your most faithful detachment; Our love for the Motherland went through real trials, and we, hardened by your camps, will not tremble in front of a foreign invasion. It was a sentence, noble - during the Second World War, many disgraced artists, commanders, scientists legalized for a short time, like the same Leonov, Zilber or Rokossovsky, and the Stalin Prize testified that the addressee understood everything. Leonov also understood everything and handed over the prize to the Defense Fund: with this money a heavy tank was built.

The third text is the novel by Ehrenburg “The Storm” , which, I believe, saved the author of life or at least freedom during the days of mass reprisals against “cosmopolitans”. Here the message is even more frank: Europe could not withstand the temptation of fascism, and it was not for nothing that one of the main characters - the German anthropologist - was unverained almost before everyone else. And we, Soviet people, a new human breed, withstood and replaced by European culture; Now the flagships of world culture are us, and with the myth of Europe it is time to part. This thought in the “storm” dominates (Ehrenburg is quite sincere, because the Germans hated physiologically, and they were the personification of a mortal illness for him, before which his beloved French did not resist). And she was heard, and at the writer's meeting, which was going to Ehrenburg and his book to sentence, he read out the Stalin Telegram with gratitude for the pleasure - and thereby escaped.

The other two examples are not so obvious, but also marked by the Stalin Prize: this is the novel “In the trenches of Stalingrad” by Viktor Nekrasov (message: the days of retreats were not broken, and again we are not offended by you, because these days were poured out of us with iron fighters, war professionals) and the “harvest” of Galina Nikolaeva (if we are humanly, we can withstand any gravity ).

Other examples can be given, but these five are most visible, because they reached their goal: they said the truth that Stalin wanted (or was at least ready) to hear and understand. Literature has a wide arsenal of funds for life, and direct addressing to the leader, on whom everything depends, is not the last of them.

One of the last episodes, when literature seriously intervened in politics, was the publication of the story of Yuri Luzhkov about how two young hunters planned to fill up the mother moose; Nothing came out of this venture, but Luzhkov, too, from the venture. The hunters expressed a distrust, and his further adventures ceased to be interesting to the reader. But the episode is indicative - it became, perhaps, the most remembered by Luzhkov’s action before retired. If he really wrote himself, maybe from the very beginning he had to follow this part: the Russian writer's fate, although full of dangers, but still not like mayor.

I have repeatedly offered both Russian and American students a stylistic exercise - a “story for Putin”: try, I said, to assume what tools you can influence it,

What points of his emotional keyboard does it make sense to press. An interesting version was suggested by Tatyana Ustinova: a message, she believes, should be packed in a sentimental story about the dog. It seems to me that now is the time to write a novel that will contain a clear and saving message, but how to write it - I don’t know yet, but for now I will think, it may be too late.

The technique in which this novel should be written, in my opinion, is obvious: in such cases, you need to focus on the adolescence of the hero, and they are widely known. The hero of the novel should be either a scout or a savior of endangered animals, but in any case, a person acting in a hostile environment, among the near and greedy like -minded people who cannot be relying on.

This should be a psychological action, the stylistic dominant of which is precisely the feeling of loneliness, historical doom, the protection of dying and, in essence, degrading species or values. This hero is much smarter than all that he protects - whether it is a intoxicating population or shooting predators; But he has a mission that he cannot betray. In a sense, an analogue of this hero may be that unfortunate crazy person from the widely known history of the disease, who believed that in his fist there are threads from the heavenly bodies flying like balls. Only thanks to its eternally clenched fists did the universe restrain the final fragmentation. He almost did not sleep, refused to eat and did not talk to anyone, but those who took his condition for the catatonic stupor were mistaken: it was a completely conscious choice.

As for the sending of a novel that could save humanity, which actually approached the dangerous face, it is not so simple. It is necessary to explain to the reader - and, first of all, the head reader - that the protection of the values ​​of the past invariably loses to the future; That you can save an endangered appearance only with the help of modern, not archaic, purely prohibitive measures. An attempt to keep a dying or degrading nation in a fist, shaking it with the scrapers of the past, is obviously hopeless, because the past is always defenseless before the future. Preservation at all costs is a noble occupation in its own way, but it is just as pointless as putting rivets on a boiling, tightly sealed boiler. The conservation was beneficial and even, perhaps, was necessary in the first Putin years, but it cannot be a strategic task. Preservation of the status quo at all costs will inevitably lead to external expansion, streams of state lies, and the corruption of the population, which is already hardly distinguished by good from a thin one; In the end, the fear of the outside world will lead to the situation of Johnstown, where in 1978 a thousand people committed suicide in order not to succumb to the pressure of the outside world.

A country that does not want to change, having declared an ineffective and traumatic matrix the only condition for its existence, is doomed to self -destruction and may well take with itself numerous neighbors, if not all of humanity as a whole.

It is necessary to show the tragedy of the Lone Savior, who really imagines himself the only defender of tradition - but does not understand that the tradition should develop, live and bear fruit, but forever reproduce the situation of the oprichnina, setting one part of the people to another, means not to maintain a tradition, but to cut off the future. A mighty finale could be a person’s own extermination by the main character of the remnants of the population of dying tigers - so that they would not be released, where they probably threatened the darkness of dangers. Meanwhile, only at large they could multiply - in captivity, according to the starting conditions of the plot, they cannot do this.

It seems to me that such a novel should be written as quickly as possible, even with a collective effort of all Russian writers. The situation is rushed.

The main thing is to emphasize that the authors respect the motives of the hero and sincerely compass him. He is not a beast, after all. He simply sincerely believes that limitedness is a guarantor of survival, but this is not at all so. He can relax. He can unclench his fists and for the first time in many years to get enough sleep, and then go for a walk without guard. This is the best way to save the world - both Russian and everything else.