To those who came out of Egypt

On the price of hope in an age of despair

If in the mid-eighties, during the reign of Comrade Chernenko, the faithful son of the Communist Party and continuer of Lenin’s work, they told me that in our country it would be possible to openly call this same Lenin a murderer, read whatever you want, travel abroad, buy oranges all year round, I would , of course, did not believe. And now - please. But, right according to Chekhov, radio was invented, but there is no happiness.

Actually, what are we still missing? If you look at the situation with a cool head, then, especially given our history and traditions, everything is not so bad. You can speak and print almost everything, the sellers and waiters are polite, color TVs are freely available. And they do not kill - except occasionally and so, individual, especially annoying. Well, there are no elections, there have never been any, except, maybe, the Constituent Assembly in 1917, but a couple of times in the late eighties and nineties. The bosses, it is true, steal and are completely out of their minds - yes.

Well, before, what, was it not like that?

Of course, the current bosses and watchmen will be embarrassed to settle in those obkom dachas, but in comparison with how ordinary people lived then, the residences of that time are not at all inferior to today's palaces. So what about universal equality and at least some ideas from the Soviet authorities is not necessary - Zhdanov with his rum women in besieged Leningrad forgotten? On the current nobles, at least, there is less blood than on those. Yes, about the Pechenegs and the extra chromosome, of course, it's funny and embarrassing. Don't you want the "Decree on the Zvezda Magazine"? Or in the vegetarian version - the trial of Brodsky? I'm not talking about the fact that there are no queues - we spent half our lives in them.

So, why is it so disgusting, why "not that it makes you sick, but throws up", why is the government - by no means the worst, when compared with Stalin or Grozny, disgusting?

But because we - especially my generation, which lived in conditions of complete hopelessness, hopelessness of Soviet power - received from fate an amazing gift, undeserved by most of us. The shackles collapsed - completely unexpectedly. We breathed another life. Despite the mess - and what reforms without a mess? - despite the difficulties, stupidity, chaos, we had a sense of the future and there was hope. We believed in our country, in the possibility of its recovery, we were proud of how quickly it was emerging from a slave state. After seventy years of standing in a dead end, our locomotive began to move not to a mythical commune - damn it - it embarked on a main line. And we compare everything not with how we lived before, but with what we hoped for.

But fate deceived us - not without our readiness to be deceived, of course. She beckoned us with other horizons, and then she said, live, they say, as before. Even better than before, much better. But not in the way you hoped. And you will not be proud of your country, but, as you have been used to for generations, you will be ashamed of it, and you will send your children to the West, and you will meet the speeches of politicians with laughter or curses. You can steal a lot from your country if you want and show enough dexterity, but you will never be its masters.

The main injustice committed by the current leaders is not even wars and theft, not the usurpation of power, but this is the destruction of the future, the destruction of hope. This is what we - I - will never forgive them.

For many years now we have been watching how our country is sinking into a fetid abyss of greed, obscurantism, stupidity. And we can do nothing - neither those who look with disgust or irony as if from the outside, nor those who, risking their lives and freedom, are trying to stop the bulldozer that has gone mad.

Could it have gone wrong, could we have prevented it? Don't know. I understand that all sorts of “opposition associations” there would not have decided anything, although they would have been a boon. There is no doubt that the talk about "if everyone would come out" is nothing more than talk - the fact of the matter is that they always go out one at a time, each on his own. What we could definitely do was not to be deceived, “not to believe either in a clear sky, or in the smiles of radiant faces.” But this is not about what is happening, but about how we experience it.

The question now is not about the next elections and, of course, not about what is going on under the carpet there - but let them completely gnaw each other out. The question is what should we do? Leave, reconcile, fight?

Everyone decides for himself, the calls here are meaningless and tactless. You just need to understand that when, soon or not soon, there will be radical changes, which, by the way, will not necessarily be changes for the better, a lot, if not all, will depend on whether people with dignity remain in the country, yes also capable of some, not necessarily political, joint actions.

I look with great hope at such, for example, organizations as the Alliance of Doctors. So, we must try to maintain self-esteem, which in our conditions is not easy, but possible. By the way, not only Russia needs it, but, first of all, we ourselves need it. And the people of my generation still need to understand an extremely unpleasant thing for some - no matter how great your merits in the past, you should not pretend to "lead the masses." Nothing but embarrassment will come of this.

People of retirement age cannot be engaged in the construction of a new Russia or even the preparation of a construction site - there is no need to stand in the way. You can help, you can share experience, but you can’t manage - admit it.

But the main thing is not advice, but a request - do not give up. We have outlived the Soviet power - can't we survive this miserable reincarnation of it? It is only necessary to play long, not to consider life as electoral cycles or Putin's terms. Remember, then, under the CPSU, there seemed to be no hope at all - there was not a single crack in the concrete wall separating our kingdom of death from life.

People who passed through the USSR - who left Egypt - have no right to lose hope.