"Chronicle of current events"*. Our Andropovschina

On April 30, 1968, the first issue of the Chronicle of current events was released in Moscow. The unquestioned typewritten ballot on political repressions in the USSR, conceived by Soviet dissidents as a human rights institution and eventually the main symbol of the entire dissident movement - when Andropov, having come to power, twisted the nuts, the termination of the publication of the Chronicle became a milestone - it became nobody to publish it, everyone was planted or frightened, the dissident movement was actually completed, the dissented movement was given. Two years before perestroika.

Once I interviewed the editor of the first issues of the Chronicle (and participants of the demonstration on Red Square after the entry of troops into Czechoslovakia) Natalia Gorbanevskaya and, referring to the features of our zero, when the anti-Putin media did not interfere with authoritarianism, I asked her what the Soviet Union would be if his leaders behaved like Putin, and did not interfere with the Chronicle. - She would lay in kiosks, there would be an illusion of freedom, the regime would be more stable. Gorbanevskaya replied: “Well, imagine that the“ chronicle ”is sold in kiosks - even if a thousand copies or even two hundred with a circulation. What does it mean? It means that they don’t plant anyone else for the“ chronicle ”. This means that“ chronicle ”has nothing to write about. If the“ chronicle ”was sold in kiosks, it would have been a completely different country.”

Fifteen years later, you can’t ask such a question anymore, and not only because Gorbanevskaya has long died - current Russia is no longer possible to compare with the USSR, in which the “Chronicle of current events” lies in kiosks. Destroyed by the Medusa authorities* turns for money to readers, and the news flow already looks literally as if it had reprinted the same Gorbanevskaya on his typewriter in some seventy year-the Kudryavtsev was accused of espionage, Afghane Bondarev veteran in the Tambov region was fined half a million for the repost of the rally report, Borovikov, an activist-navalnist leaves for 2.5 years in the colony for the video of the Rammstein group, and tomorrow there will be some more news, against which these will seem less wild. For some days, Russia,for no apparent reason, has overturned into the most fuel Andropovshchina, in which there is no longer a place for the previous, small and harmless (Medusa*, FBK*, social networks, rallies in the previous format) pieces of Russia without Putin.

And symbolic, of course, that the birthday of “Chronicle of current events” came precisely for these days. The fact that the disloyal part of society in modern Russia is not a political subject, but a dissident movement, they said for a long time, but still, only now self-explosive forecasts have come true in full. Even formally - there are no more political structures, there is no more legitimate opportunity to reach the square, and even a speech, oral or written, is now equipped with shackles of the obligatory leaks about “foreign agents” and “extremist organizations”. Navalny, who pronounces his sermons in the courts, according to all formal signs now more dissident than a politician. Political managers representing it are morally outdated overnight, and it is not only a matter of their forced political emigration - a party, for example, can also be led from exile, but where is that party now. Political forces (and we are talking not only about the FBK*, about all) the wave of a police club turned into a dissident movement. There are no possibilities of political struggle, but no one will ever take away from people the possibility of passive disagreement and ethical alternative. Political activist participates in the elections and goes to the rally. The dissident secretly prints the leaflet and stigmatizes the repressive system with shame. The hierarchy is probably changing-people who are able to organize the work of regional headquarters or some collection of signatures are not needed in the changed reality. Their place will be occupied by those who can collect programs to prison or money for payments of fines. The conditional Ilya Azar, whatever his relationship with Navalny, is made a more important figure than Leonid Volkov or Ivan Zhdanov, moreover, the advantage of Azar is that he does not need to be appointed or mandate, and any figure comparable to him will not be a hardware competitor; Dissentism does not imply vertical structures at all, this is an endless front in which everything is equally on the front line.

The history of the Soviet dissident movement has been studied well, all its weak places are known, including the infiltration of the environment of the KGB and, which is no less scary, universal suspicion, based on the fact that anyone can be an agent. And whoever is not recruited - he most likely does not know about himself what his threshold of pain or fear is, behind which a proud and principled person can break (during arrest, torture, threats) and betray.

And yet, the perpetrator of the dissident - that excursion from the regions that, having made a demonstration in Red Square, finds out from each other what the authors of the poster “Hands away from Czechoslovakia” had in mind - who attacked it, Americans, Germans? It would be nice to make a “chronicle” hem integrated in “M endeons”, so that it was clearly - that Jacobson hanged himself, but the Irony of Fate came out, so the Novodvorskaya was sent to the psychiatric hospital, but jeans come into fashion. The Soviet layman will never be a different dissident, and Comrade Major, explaining during interrogation that you contrasted yourself with the people, are not so wrong - unlike the revolutionary, the dissident does not fight for popular happiness. He offers the masses his conscience, but this means that, from his point of view, the masses themselves have no conscience - and even if it is true, is it worth it to wait for the masses to answer the dissident with love?

And - yes, the dissident movement was defeated two years before perestroika, and this is like a source of optimism, because we know that freedom always comes behind frosts. She comes, yes, and those who rotted in the camps or suffered in psychiatric hospitals will be patted on the shoulder in the Moscow News newspaper or the television program “View” children of the KGB generals and the communist-sixties. “As long as we suffered from party combinations, Ivan Ivanovich in the Mordovian camp sat for all of us. Come on, Ivan Ivanovich, spray ”, and the acute song from the major rock band on the air. It is disgusting, but, on the other hand, what else can freedom be after frost.

* Russian authorities demand that we call this organization a "foreign agent."