Translated material
Army of shadows
110 years have come from the birth of Leo of Acceleration - a writer, human rights activist, one of the founders of the Memorial Society
Photo: BessMertnybarak.ru
April 1, not only funny events happen. This year ( 2008 -NT), the humorous date coincides with the centenary of the birth of Leo Emmanuilovich, who lived for a long time, noble and sensibly-91 years. Acceleration-writer, acceleration-prison, acceleration-a true Russian intellectual who was not able to cause evil even to the executioners. Acceleration firmly remembered the formula: do not believe, do not be afraid, do not ask. He lived on it since 1938, when, having got into the Lubyansk meat grinder, he learned that his wife Oksana, a patient with diabetes (for which he, believing the word “Chekist and the Communist”, that is, the NKVD investigator, signed the protocol), was still deprived of insulin and did not reach the “pedestrian” part of the stage. Leo acceleration spent 17 years. His second wife, the daughter of the right Socialist -Revolutionary Rick Berg, with whom he met in the camp in the leader, spent 15 years in camps and links. Rika left first - in 1991.
Leo Right, Juliu Edlis, human rights activist Alexander Tkachenko-this was one company, a pen center. The affairs of Mirzayanov and Nikitin, the Chechen war - they all understood this at a glance and rushed to the attack more desperate and earlier than the young. In the events of the post -Soviet era, they immediately recognized the familiar silhouettes of the camp towers and heard in the wind of restoration a quiet ringing of barbed wire. Still, Solzhenitsyn was right: the prisoner had much more soul than the Volnyashka, because ZEK knows the truth. While naive slaves sobbed and strangled each other at the funeral of the tyrant, the all -knowing prisoners celebrated his death in their huts.
We lose them. They, who managed to sit back in the late 40s or 30s and then taught us young dissidents. We lost such “personnel” dissidents as Vladimir Gershuni (glued anti-Soviet leaflets back in 1948), like Mikhail Molotnitov (sat down by a boy, and then defended Chechnya). They owned a precious gift of knowledge that did not allow them to eat from the Kremlin hands. Of course, part of the Soviet rabbits, as the same Alexander Isaevich writes, "on all the forges they came and have not turned back." But such as Leo Acceleration, Rick Berg, Evgeny Ginzburg, learned forever. It was they by their knowledge and their public indignation mystically condemned the Soviet system, the Soviet Union, and the Soviet faithfulness to the disappearance. They raised the sixties - a generation of people who lived for the sake of the public good "with a human face." Dubchek, Gavel, those Hungarians who raised the uprising in 1956, Yuri Levitansky, Alexander Twardowski, Lech Valens, Svetlana Aleksievich, the Brothers Strugatsky and Alesya Adamovich.
They all very poorly imagined socialism. But freedom and the “human face” are very good. It was an “army of shadows”, warriors in the thaw, soldiers of the “New World” and Taganka with a “contemporary”. They taught us to read on the “Archipelago” and their memoirs, as literally. They gave us in Orwell’s written, “Island of Crimea” and “Burn” (V. Aksenov is the son of E. Ginzburg and studied in grades 9-10 in Kolyma!), Jilas and Redlich. They carried a second thaw on their shoulders - perestroika. They were enough for Yeltsin time.
Now our turn. Khodorkovsky, Danilov, Sutyan, Lebedev, Bakhmin before the arrest and after the camps - this will be a very big difference. The authorities of the dissidents and heroes from peaceful scientists, merchants, lawyers and journalists. They will still remember Aleksanyan, who showed ancient courage. We must teach the country to hate Chekist evil. We ourselves must become an “army of shadows”. Only a pure flame of indignation will allow us to break away from our vile Soviet puddle and withstand the authorities and lies of the executioners.
Leo acceleration, from the book “Inappropriate” (“Rudgers”)
Listen! Do you remember this pause in the radio program on March third?! This incredibly, incredibly prolonged pause, after which not a single word was said - only music ... Only this wonderful, this amazing, this extraordinary music !!! Without a single word, replacing each other, Bach and Tchaikovsky, Mozart and Beethoven poured all the funeral sadness on us that they were capable of. For me, this mourning music sounded like an ode "to joy." One of them! Who? Really? Lord, is he really? !! And the longer this incredible musical pause was, this long overture to the unknown, the more I was strengthened in confidence: he! Surely he! And finally, a familiar, mournful and triumphant (finally there is an opportunity to launch this famous timbre, this low, velvet tone!) Levitan's voice: “Moscow says! All radio stations of the Soviet Union work ... "
The first government message was transmitted, the first ballot. I don’t remember whether after this is the ballot or after the second, in general, after that was said: “Breath of Chain-Koks”-we rushed to the medical unit. We are Kostya Schulga, the normer of Potapov, two more office people - demanded from our chief physician Boris Petrovich to gather a consultation and - on the basis of information transferred in the ballot - told us what we can hope for ...
In addition to the head physician, the second doctor, the former military surgeon Pavlovsky, and the paramedic, the red -haired village paramedic Vorozhbin took part in the consultation. They consulted in the office of the head physician unbearably long - forty minutes. We sat in the corridor of the hospital and were silent. I was trembling, and I could not calm this idiotic, which was not dependent on me. Then the door with which we did not take our eyes opened, Boris Petrovich came out of there. He was all shining, and everything became clear to us even before he said: “Guys! No hope !! "
And Potapov rushed to my neck - a restrained and silent Potapov, a personnel officer, a scout, a former captain, who had not yet forgotten his numerous orders ... And the whole next day (or days - I don’t remember ...) We sat at the reproduct and listened to music - wonderful, divine music, the best music in the world.
And on the fifth in the evening, soldiers from the guard for ten cans of stew and a hundred rubles brought Kostya Shulga a bottle of vodka. We went with bones for an unfinished bath, poured vodka on the cooked banks, and I said:
- Drink, Kostya! This is our freedom!
... I was freed only after more than two years. Kostya is even longer. But still - and these two years I lived with the incoming sense of freedom. Stalin - ended ...
First published in NT No. 13 dated March 31, 2008