Our dispute is not over, Comandante!

The most famous revolutionary of the twentieth century Ernest Che Guevara is 90 years old

Ernesto Che Guevara has long been a brand. He must have been a happy man. He lived as he wanted, fought to his heart’s content, did not become a “philistine” and died the way not only he wanted, but also the way almost all real men want: still young, at 39, at the hands of enemies. He died standing and never lived on his knees. I love heroes very much, but a portrait of Che Guevara never hung on my wall. Salvador Allende hung for five years after his death, Dzhokhar Dudayev, Anatoly Marchenko, Sergei Yushenkov and Anna Politkovskaya are still hanging. I can still understand why Che Guevara is an idol in Cuba. In addition to Fidel's beard and Che Guevara's beret with an asterisk, there are no other achievements near the island of Nesvoboda. Except for the house-museum of Hemingway, which, after his death, there was no one to protect from the familiar claims of Fidel.

But Comandante has become a brand not only for the hungry and flammable Latin America, not only for the USSR warmed up on a slow fire by party propaganda, not only for partisans and left-wing radicals of all stripes. The great Sartre called him "the most perfect man of our era." Until recently, his portrait hung at the headquarters of a respectable youth left-liberal organization.

To understand the phenomenon of Che Guevara, one must know the history of the Cuban revolution. I remember it all well. And 1956, and the storming of the Moncada barracks, and the terrible fate of Abel Santamaria and his associates (Batista, of course, was a vile type: you can’t justify gouging eyes and cutting off genitals from prisoners of war). And the year 1959, fortunately in the USSR, this was trumpeted from all pulpits of the CPSU.

Here are two songs to choose from, one more eloquent than the other: “Do you hear the chased step? / These are the barbudos. / The sky above them is like a fiery banner. / Do you hear the beaten step? / Courage knows the goal, / Cuba has become a legend. / The inspired Fidel says again: / “Courage knows the goal!” And the “March of July 26”: “All Cuba is on fire, our people are wounded and exhausted, banners and trumpets are calling fighters from the fields and from huts, we will teach the enemy a lesson, we will answer blow for blow, let our proud step sound, and like a burning scarlet banner , the revolutionary fire is blazing!” October 17, July 26, the capture of the Kabanya fortress in 1959 ... One legend stands for another. Fire, blood, "storm nights of Spassk, Volochaev days" - we have already gone through this. And Cuba received the same as the USSR. Hungry squalor, meat and eggs on the cards, rafts and boats, on which hungry and tortured Cubans escape to the States and most often drown; political prisoners who were tortured in special hospitals with electric current; wives imprisoned for 15 years for collecting signatures under letters in defense of their husbands; "Women in white", human rights activists, dispersed with batons.

Always the same: first the flag, and then the Gulag. May all revolutions in the world be damned, except for "velvet", "orange" and "singing". It is impossible to cultivate death and self-sacrifice for no one knows what. And long live warm human life without pathos and cothurns, with food, freedom and without political prisoners! The same life in Europe and the USA, which the Comandante hated so much.

It seems to the leftist youth of the West that the bag with the face of Che Guevara makes them heroes. But alas! They remain philistines, and it would be better for them to force their governments not to sell someone else's happiness and freedom for an extra can of oil or gas, for cheap Chinese sneakers.

In everything that happened in Cuba and the Congo, Che Guevara is a full-fledged culprit and accomplice ... He is still alive, and his leftist cause is pushing people to destruction and death.

Our dispute is not over, Comandante! I would not take your life: it is not humane to shoot the wounded and prisoners. I want to take away the love of humanity from you. Yes, life!

First published in NT #23, June 9, 2008