And the Com Com and the Lager

The first escape, the first fan and the first boycott. In the pioneer camp of our childhood, it was more profitable to hear bad things than a home girlfriend

In the morning, my mother said that she took me a ticket to the camp at sea, and before that we go to the Bolshoi Theater. In general, we have an interesting cultural program. I was dressed in a pink silk dress and led a wide staircase covered with a carpet. From solemnity, breathtaking. Mom chirped something about the splendor of the building, then about the sea, the staircase at some point buried in a small door, for which mothers were not allowed, my knees were bent, but it was late and nowhere to retreat: the door is ahead, behind my mother-and I obediently went in.

Cultural examination

At the table were men and women. The situation resembled an exam at a music school. Something like listening. For some reason, I decided that they would ask me to sing. But from the table a man came out with some sticky face and in a strict voice told me ... to undress to his underpants. I was numb. Still, we were all in the theater! And in Bolshoi! Mom always told me to behave in such places decently! Not only do not undress, but even a dress do not lift up in order to pull up the ever -falling tights! All other people in the room were dressed, and all this was like a terrible dream, and in this dream I dutifully undressed in front of them.

The cultural event, turning into an indecent dream, turned out to be an ordinary uncultural physical examination. I was twisted in different directions, looked into my mouth (as if it were impossible to look there while I was in the dress), then in my ears, asked to sneeze and something else is the same idiotic. But the height of humiliation was looking behind the elastic band of panties. You might think that all the lichen, acne and ulcers decided to accumulate on these five centimeters of my innocent body, hidden from their curious eyes.

Five minutes later, my mother and I walked back along a wide staircase covered with the same carpet. But it was no longer possible to imagine that somewhere here, behind velvet curtains, something elevated, opera voices or rustle of ballets could sound. Something except the humiliating sound of a pulled and released elastic band.

Anapa

The thieves camp was in Anapa and was called the satellite (although we all called him backwards - Kintds). On the train, I was driving for the first time in my life. I was wearing brand new red sandals and a denim suit - the most beloved and remembered clothes from childhood. I felt like a steep traveler, looked out the window: the landscape was getting dark at great speed. I saw this for the first time.

All detachments were driving mixed up - the youngest, along with the elders. The elders commanded us and took care of us. Therefore, when we were in place, one could not be afraid of boys from senior detachments. They were our older brothers, maybe unloved, but already familiar. And one was even pretty. Somehow reminiscent of the Salinger Cooper, he helped me look for my native home navel on the beach. You have to be a very small or a very brave fifteen -year -old guy, in order to sort sand with a seven -year -old girl in the eyes of peers in the eyes of peers in search of a hopelessly lost garbage.

Victoria Bugaeva Photo: From Personal Archive

In Kintsz, I got an interesting friend with a memorable name Nadia Vysotskaya, as if a cross of Krupskaya, loving children, and beloved Bard Vladimir.

It was during the second shift. Nadia came up to me very directly (she was a straightforward girl) and said, looking directly into my eyes that she respects me very much and wants to be friends with me. I looked around, agreed to be friends and was surprised that they respect me. Then it turned out that no one talked to me the whole first shift, because this very Nadia persuaded everyone to arrange a boycott. And I behaved heroically, did not hibernate anyone and did not cry. But my heroism was explained by the fact that I did not notice a boycott. The whole first shift I was a sailor, fell into a shipwreck, went to a uninhabited island and mastered it. And three hundred children from ten detachments did not prevent me from feeling a lone Robinson Crusoe.

In this camp, in the evenings they showed films in the fresh air. And before going to bed, I told the cellmates a terrible story, which was invented along the course, it was called a “black trace”-about a terrible maniac who kills children and which cannot be found because he does not leave white traces in a black-black night. For this, or maybe they didn’t beat me out of humanism and did not give me up, and for some reason the counselors did not put me in a punishment cell when my sinister whisper and someone's stifled moan came from the ward.

In the same Kintsza, having fanned off, I went around all the circles in search of interest on my own and stopped my choice on karate. The coach, looking at my hands, said that it would be better for me to learn music. I squeezed thanks and went in thought: I was already taught to music, but how to defend myself from music with karate, it was not fate to learn.

As a result, I fell to the “common” creativity and made a bunch of different treasures: the beads of shells, which my mother for an incomprehensible reason refused to put on work, a picture of straws, which has never been exhibited, and a cutting board with a scorched inscription “Well, wait for anything ever cutting anything. I think that everyone who has at least once shook this set in the coastal pioneer camps.

Evpatoria

If Anapa was a free settlement, then Evpatoria was a real camp of a maximum security camp. I thundered there because of the Olympics. Mom decided that it was very dangerous to be in a city flooded by foreigners, it was harmful due to the heat and carbon dioxide, and I was moved to the sea with flower beds and roses. For two months we walked past this sea and these roses: for charging, a ruler, for breakfast, lunch, afternoon snack and dinner. In the sea, we also sometimes came in ... We are building, ten people for ten minutes.

At the request of my parents, I was determined in a detachment, where everyone was three older than a year. The difference in the interests was found as soon as we were settled in the wards. All the girls got bras of suitcases, and I - Pinocchio. But gradually I adopted their habits. When the girls changed clothes, and the counselor bought into the ward without knocking, a wild pioneer squeal rose.

I squealed with everyone, although I personally had nothing to hide from the Komsomol

In this detachment there was a girl Lena, who was instructed to look after me. She regularly fulfilled this pioneer order: everywhere she dragged behind her, calling the affectionate nickname "bastard." In the evening there was a short respite from discipline. “Come on, a bastard,” said the overseer Lena, and we went to her good aunt. Aunt was the guardian of food. Fairy of food supplies. Every day after the evening ruler, she gave me a handful of cherries, and Lena Smokes of smoked sausage. The sausage beckoned more than all the berries combined, but for some reason no one treated it to it.

By the end of the first shift, I lost control of myself and asked for a piece. The fairy said in confusion: "They did not pay for sausage." It turned out that my mother gave her money to be fed with vitamins. The sausage did not fit into expenses, it only smelled. It smelled of Moscow, a house, a native refrigerator, to which I so wanted to return. And suddenly the pioneer leader reported that I was on the second shift. I lay down on a bench by the dining room and lay a layer from lunch to dinner, until all the pioneer tears flowed out of me under the song “Brigantine Raises Sails”, which rushed from all the speakers.

Children in the Pioneer Camp on the Black Sea Photo: Ivanov Oleg, Kavashkin Boris/Photokhronika TASS

And the skull, by the way, was wonderful. Everyone left. Discipline was canceled. And we-a small bunch of children of different ages abandoned by parents-walked along with the counselor on the field of sunflowers, scraped seeds and even once dragged Pepsi-Cola, which appeared in the store on the occasion of the Olympics.

The memories of the second shift were washed off from memory. As if the sea licked. But I remember, on the train, for the first time in two months I saw myself in the mirror and did not recognize. It was the negative of my previous face: white burnt hair and black skin. I also remember when my mother and I were already walking from the car, Lena turned around and smiled at me. For the first and last time. And I, instead of shouting after: “Farewell, bastard,” smiled in response to a spineless, all -hearted smile.

Ruza

The last of my deadlines I had to reinforce in Ruza. There I gave up with a secret thought that it would be easy to make an escape from the Moscow Region. Our ward was privileged (not sixteen, but for six prisoners) and the most trumped (next to parash). I behaved quietly. And suddenly, before the end, the girls accumulated at my shk. That's the end, I managed to think, and all my life from that moment to the Bolshoi theater flashed before my eyes. The largest girl leaned toward my face, I closed my eyes, and she said: "You will be the leader of our gang." Such a normal turn. I flashed and asked: "For what merits?" “We looked at you. You come up. You have velvet pants, and in general. ”

I was flattered. And she tried to justify their trust, although it was unexpected to say that it was like saying nothing. Where I have never been torn, it was the leader.

With all the responsibility and diligence that my mother has cultivated in me, I organized all sorts of small dirty tricks, for example, night sorting out of the chamber in order to check whether it was unnoticed to move around enemy territory. How much toothpaste was squeezed out for boys and counselors, how many socks and tights are connected in strong nodes! Almost every day of hard labor ended with the rejuvenation of our ward, and it was much steeper than receiving letters.

If I knew that you can gain popularity only by becoming bad, I would have done it for a long time

I even had a fan! We played the game with a fan: we make a desire to each other, and if anyone cannot fulfill, then the winner says to the loser: “Delay”. And the loser freezes in that position and where he caught him. The stupid position and pose, the more pleasure to the audience. And finally he lost to me.

The time has come. All ten detachments, like our first, stood the “white top of the Black Boot” in anticipation of the camp authorities, and then my fan jumped up and hung on a branch. And I whispered with lust: "Delay" ...

Pioneer ruler during the opening of the camp in the Moscow region photo: Sobolev Valentin/Photo Chronicle TASS

Then the fan and I cleaned a hundred kilos of potatoes for dinner. And well, they would clean it: to cut the peel with a knife - it’s at least interesting, but the car was cut off the peel from potatoes, but the most humiliating was entrusted to us as punishment - to pick out the eyes. Slave pioneer work. For two hours we dutifully and gloomily picked them out, then we began to rush with skins, then pour each other out of the hose, then entered the rage and ... a burning hose was stabbed. Not realizing the scale of the crime. It turned out that this hose was the main thing in the kitchen, from it they washed this very damn potatoes, then to put in saucepan and brew on the side dish.

What ended, I don’t remember, maybe I was executed through hanging, but it is important that for the first time in my fifteen -year life I experienced how sweet to be a violator of the law! How delightful to be bad! How many ideas come to mind when you do what you cannot do. You can’t, but you can. It was an important experience and probably timely. Because well, how much can you be such an obedient sheep.

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Children Pioneer Camp of the 80s