Memory of Arseny Roginsky,

or in what terms can a woman can describe

The outstanding human rights activist, chairman of the Memorial Society, historian, man of brilliant fearlessness of Senyu Roginsky, I remember the young man, almost a boy graduating from Tartu University. He finished him, I went there, not yet knowing that he, the university, could kill any normal person. Senya looked at me, shining, seventeen years old:

“Are you so confident in your literary fate?” Otherwise, you have nothing to do in this city ... Well, if you are sure, then suffer, while there is strength.

The city was then, in 1967, gloomy, Tuskl, Ser, like a typhoid hut. And Senya added:

- And if you want to be not a writer, but a successful woman, then remember the great rule: never try to be the main one!

Many years later, in 1985, Arseny of Roginsky, who had served four full years with fantastic prosecution of important documents (“for the enemy headquarters”?), His brother Misha Roginsky brought the “thrown back” to Tallinn. Before the arrest, the hay was offered to choose from Leningrad: to stop human rights activities, to refuse to collect documents regarding repressions, not to be printed abroad, not to release Samizdat’s collections “Memory”, to leave a peaceful Soviet Union or to be put to the camp.

He chose the latter completely consciously and calmly. If I am not mistaken, he was taken with red -handed - either overdue, or fictitiously extended ticket to the library reading room.

Four years of camps.

These camps, in fact, were well known to the Roginsky family, Misha told me how he, a child, taught arithmetic and grammar of academicians and professors who were sitting in a camp with his father Boris Roginsky and his whole family.

Senya arrived in Tallinn directly from the camp, and Misha (and he was all the time under the vigilant supervision of the KGB as a criminal’s brother) decided to arrange a luxurious dinner at home, invite all friends of the university, he set an unthinkable table. And here we are, those that dared (there were very few of us), alone began to gather in the apartment in the apartment and yards, winning from their own courage. Literally a few people.

Senya broke off pieces of bread, rolled on the table, ate springs, but we attacked the wrappers, as if we had been kept on a hungry ration for several years. Akhmadulina has such strange, wild lines: "I will warm up and sing for Mandelstam and Marina." Terribly, eagerly, uncontrollably, we ate Mandelstam and Marina, this is the only thing-the hunger that we understood to some extent.

And Senya told how he managed to survive, on an unforgettable mixture of two slang: the thieves' hairdryer and a hairdryer of academic philological terminology. He said:

- The most important point for the criminal when he is taken on a train to the camp. This is the last time he can see a woman. He must remember her, keep it in himself until a real meeting, maybe ten years later. And the convoys slowly lead the woman to the toilet along the aisle of the swinging car, slowly, slowly. And criminals describe it to each other. An elderly woman is described in the terms “mother”, “mother”, “my dear”, it is strictly prohibited by scasteness, surroundings, laughter and even a loud dialect, but a young woman is described in terms ...

I noticed that the canopy has a small cross -shaped scar on his cheek. Where? It turns out that he had a deadly tooth. But this is not a reason to lead a person to the doctor. Flose, abscess, abscess, finally calls the doctor. And nothing can already be done through the mouth, you have to cut the cheek and thus get a large tooth with an abscess ...

“And to survive,” said Senya, “quite simple: we must tell the novels.” Well, not just tell, but so that the swiftness of the plot is connected with the slowness of events. It would seem that this is an insoluble contradiction. No, the plot flies forward, and at the same time you manage to make out the eyes of the audience every detail, every detail so that they not only hear you, but also see those worlds that are stored inside you, as inside a priceless vessel that cannot be broken.

(It seems that it was Batyushkov who told Pushkin, who came to his house of sorrow: I carried a vessel on his head, he fell and crashed, who knows what was in him?!)

The Soviet government rolled to sunset, there was nothing for us, daredevils for this meeting. A few days ago, I wrote to my old friend Misha Roginsky, whom, calling Shablinsky, made an indispensable hero of Russian literature Sergey Dovlatov, a letter of convention. Misha replied: “I am sitting with Kira (older sister - E. S.) and cry. Thank you for remembering Senya. "

The peculiarity of an outstanding person just consists that he is remembered by everyone who even fleeed with him fleeting, and his words do not age.