Stagging is a non -linear process

Historical fermentation ends rapidly, but for this she needs a long and inconspicuous process. Writer Alexander Goryanin recalls the last Soviet years when the underlying hope for changes grew

Alexander Goryanin: Everyone knows a walking opinion about Muscovites: they are incense, selfish, arrogant. There is no sincerity in them. Moscow hits the sock. Moscow does not believe in tears.

I frequented to Moscow back in the late 60s, long before relocation here. My Moscow experience, which I can consider already half a century, does not confirm all this. Familiar friends, friends of acquaintances and even acquaintances of acquaintances plunged into your problems, gave you time and attention, busted for you, easily left for the night.

Speaking of an overnight stay. Today, people younger than forty with difficulty believe that in Soviet times it was just not possible to get to the hotel, a travel certificate was required plus some kind of application from the organization where you were sent. There were usually free places in the hotel - and, as a rule, exactly places, not rooms! - But if you did not know how to invest five or ten rubles in your passport, they told you: "It is said to you in Russian, there are no places!" Only once I was settled without such a bribe. As I remember now: the Ural Hotel on Chernyshevsky Street (now Pokrovka), a four -seater room. I had to sign under the obligation "to leave at the first request of the administration." I lived there for a week, and one of the neighbors on the number got up at half past five in the morning, lighting the upper light - the lamps at the beds were not provided. Everything was tough and harsh beyond any need. And against such a background - hospitality and participation of unfamiliar people! However, we usually did not remain unfamiliar for long. The coincidence of political views and aesthetic tastes quickly brought together.

The provincial tried to thank with what he could (the southerner, for example, was something south), but in that implied community, the member of which I was already in fact, this was not considered any important condition. But the exchange of samizdat and Tamizdat was established - in most cases more appetizing for the visitor.

She also helped - what to hide! - And mutual assistance with "deficit". Not a Muscovite to me, but by a Muscovite, an editor named Gleb (I will limit myself to the name), I taught the next one. If you need a solid sausage (the best of the solid was named after the other things: “pork”) from the Eliseevsky store, where there is no mention of it on open sale, you need to turn from Gorky Street to Kozitsky Street, go to the hatches, through which Eliseevsky’s basements are unloaded and shouted into the goods and shouting into Emphrack: "Ilyusha!" Soon Ilyusha arose from some gateway and listed that there was good today: "Russian, Moscow, delicacy, pork, Maykop, special." Rumor assured that a certain "Kremlin Sausage Workshop" supplied this beauty. Sticks could only be made entirely. I paid forward, Ilyusha returned with an oblong bag. It was possible to decorate the table at the arrival of guests, give a bribe in a driving school, transferred with a guide (albeit without any guarantee) to Tashkent. Ilyusha, I inherited from my friend Zhenya Kantor, a scribbler, and masters for the extraction of rare publications. What Ilyusha - blat or deficiency - I do not take me to say.

Kozitsky Lane

Happiness of this kind was not long. One fine day, Ilyusha shouted to me from his embrasure that if my friend is a bastard, then I myself am like that. Ilyusha clearly did not lack clients like us. I did not begin to ask Gleb about anything, because he supplied me with work. He was an employee of the Sovetskaya Encyclopedia publishing house and arranged orders for articles not only for his editorial office, but also for related ones.

If my friend is a bastard, then I myself am so

In this publisher, I settled the path three years before the final move to Moscow. The release of the third edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia in 30 volumes was nearing the end, the set of the letter "C" ended. I convinced the editors that since they missed to give in the third volume the article “Biographical Dictionaries”, nothing prevents them from giving them in the twenty -third volume the article “Biographical Dictionaries”. This article, by encyclopedic standards, hefty, 26 thousand signs, with the wonderful Lady Anastasia Nikolaevna Verevkina, we managed to prepare for the surrender of Tom in a seal.

The building of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia. Pokrovka, 8

After that, I scored a lot of orders (the encyclopedia paid well even for tiny materials), and only on the topics interesting to me. For the 9th, an additional volume of a brief literary encyclopedia, I wrote articles about 30 personalities, among them Henry Miller, Pi Jo Woodhaus, Jan Fleming, Alan Miln, Arthur Ketler, Gore Vidal, John Le Carre, I don’t remember everyone, but not a single trifling name “Literary multi-language”-about the use of more than one language. The "passage" of this article caused me multidirectional bewilders. For example, knowing that they were thrown away, I inserted three passages about Nabokov, I will give one: “After a long period of non -use of my native language, weaning from it may appear (which is recognized as Nabokov in the afterword to my own translation of the Lolita novel; in the translation itself, Anglicisms of the type“ I will take the bus ”) . This was written and edited in 1977. It would seem that Nabokov, what "Lolita", and in addition, also translated into Russian! But the phrase was not touched, but for some reason it was mentioned that Herzen also wrote in French.

Knowing firmly that they were thrown away, I inserted three passages about Nabokov

Not without grief. The largest of my articles, "Rossika Literary", about the Russian theme among foreign writers until 1917, was rejected. The scientific editor Volodya Kharitonov, already then a master of translation, suggested to write it to me. He was a picture man and smoked a pipe, for a short time we became a mentally made friends, he lived near the Timiryazev Academy. The topic looked quite obvious: Russia was the scene of a considerable number of Western European ones, and not only, novels, plays and even poems. We began to remember:
- The third part of the Robinson Crusoe, Julvern Michel Strogov, the “fencing teacher” Dumas, Dmitry Impostan at Lope de Vega and Schiller, the novels of Henri Troay and Hugh Walpol ...
In half an hour, a sheet of paper was written.

The work on the article took me more than a month, but the internal reviewer found her "too sightseeing" and "resting on the purges." Yes, I in vain retold Robert Browning’s poem “Ivan Ivanovich” (as in the era of Tsar Peter the peasant Lukerya, she threw the wolves to leave in the sleigh from their pursuit, two of her children; in her native village, the Stealnik neighbor, learning about this, cuts off her head, and her rural gathering justifies him). It was not necessary to mention what Donitnitti made from the story of Xavier de Mestr “Parasha-Sibiryachka” opera. And even more so, it was not worth stating the plot of the simple -minded early drama Oscar Wilde "Vera, or Nihilists." But in general, I remember, the material was quite good.

Donitnitti made from a story Xavier de Mestr "Parasha-Sibiryachka" opera

The search for earnings sometimes led to unexpected solutions. I already said that I received in the spring of the 80th friendly advice to leave the family from Moscow during the approaching Olympic Games. There were rumors that the cleansing of Moscow was coming, they assured: "They would bypass the apartments, check the correspondence between the registered and residents. The best remedy against this is the locked door. The counter is on your site? Excellent. The counter does not spin, people left for a long time, turned off the refrigerator, check for some."

The counter does not spin, people left for a long time, turned off the refrigerator, check for

And then, how deliberately a friend from Tallinn Oleg Kivva appeared with an amazing offer. In July-August in Yakutsk, painting a local television tower is planned, she was old and rusted there. He collects his person, he is the main one in this part there, and calls Oleg. And Oleg calls me. Four thousand rubles for a brother for incomplete two months, is it bad?

I have no sadness that I would miss the Olympics, I did not have, I am indifferent to sports. To begin with, we (I, Irina and Vanechka, just finished the first class) flew to Tashkent. From there I called up with Oleg more than once, everything was confirmed. I asked myself if he was terrible, and he answered: I was not afraid in the mountains, and it’s even stupid to be afraid in the construction cradle. There was no direct flight Tashkent - Yakutsk, I made a transfer in Krasnoyarsk, I spent a day there. The Krasnoyarsk Museum of Local Lore occupied the exquisite building in the ancient Egyptian taste. In this Soviet museum, I learned that only freedomed ones worked on the laying of the Great Siberian Way. They built it marked quickly, 8.5 thousand kilometers from the Southern Urals to Vladivostok, along with hidden through Manchuria, were ready in 25 years. At the then level of technology! For the USSR, such a pace turned out to be inaccessible that BAM showed.

In Yakutsk, Oleg and I settled for free in some kind of hostel, but our luck ended on this. Oleg's friend was not the main boss, but about the seventh. There was debate whether it was necessary to paint a wretched tower, which is almost 20 years old, a stone age. They said: "We have planned the largest television tower in the world on the eternal permafrost, and this one will already let it well." The local contracting organization refused why the idea arose to hire wild Varangians. The Varangians, besides Oleg and I, were, however, local. The main safety precautions stood up: "I will not allow any rabble!" Oleg's friend reassured: "You will go on a five -day briefing from Monday - and go! I have my own person in the regional committee. You have military tickets with you?" It turned out that even for the shorter hiring, the faces are younger than forty should, except for a passport and work book, provide a military ID. We did not have them. Our defeat has become too obvious. I asked Oleg: "You have enough money for a return ticket? So I don’t have enough."

The next day, on Sunday, at seven of the morning we were already on a dusty city flea market, each with our own goods. Oleg sold a couple of shoes, a drop of worn, he called it "pin", I am new jeans, American, they were wide in my belt and hips, I asked for 120 rubles or 200, I no longer remember. People asked how much and departed. Oleg was reducing his price three times, I stood on my own. I will not sell - I will repel Irina's telegram: "I went out of money." But someone bought the Olegovs, the bazaar watches ended, the people were almost exhausted. A fair -haired handsome man with two black sisters, Ossetians appeared. It was striking that the guy dreams of just such jeans, but as a man on a marvelous one, he is clearly not my buyer. The sisters pulled him somewhere to the side, but he unfolded his jeans again and again, studied the labels, asked if it was possible to try on the tent. I heard the sisters quite reasonably discourage him, but the jigit remained. Without asking to drop it, he counted the full price.

Without asking to drop it, Dzhigit counted the full price

Oleg decided to linger a little in Yakutsk (“there are options,” he said mysteriously), and something moved me to one of the most successful impromptu in my life: I decided to return not by plane, but to swim up the Lena (on the map) to Ust-Kut, the place of crossing Lena and Bam, and then follow Moscow by the train. I checked now in Yandex: there is no more regular river route-Ust-Kut, there is a long and expensive cruise (natural monuments, bison nurseries, ethnography, fishing). The former, without undertaking, passenger swimming (and this is 2 thousand km towards a powerful course), it seems, 5 days.

In leisurely times (moreover, in the summer only in the summer) it was still a good alternative: the river greatly brought you closer to the European part of the country, and then 4 days on rails, and you are in the capital. I bought an amazing single ticket of mixed river and railway communication Yakutsk - Moscow. The ship was full, when sailing, the "Farewell of the Slav" struck.

Unified ticket Yakutsk - Moscow, 1980

In a narrow three -seater cabin, one of the shelves was the upper one, I took it. The shelf under me was occupied by a teenager Nikolka, but theoretically, because all the time was absent. My full -fledged cabin neighbor was Yakut Innokenty, a man of remarkable charm and a completely delighted instance. He admitted to me that with secret instructions that cannot be discussed, he had already visited about forty “closed countries”, and not once. His descriptions, for example, Taiwan or Chile, to me, a geographer, was difficult to listen to without laughter, but I held on.

Zoya Oldenburg

I spent the main time on the deck in a folding canvas chair. I had a novel by the French writer Zoe Oldenburg "La Joie-Souffarant" with me with a printing paint. I have an unimportant French, but there was a strange feeling: even if not every sentence is clear to the end, especially when you constantly take your eyes off the page in order to not miss something on the shore, in general everything is clear to the subtlest sincere movements of the heroes. I directly saw this pre -war Parisian suburb of Medon, partially inhabited by Russian emigrants, their struggle for survival, nostalgia, political disputes, old scores and small intrigues, and against this background - passionate love of forty -year -old Vladimir, devoured by tuberculosis, and young Victoria. I saw the sick leave for 32 beds and operations to remove the rib after the rib. The novel ends with his death and its death. I don’t know how the French perceived the name "la Joie-souffarant" ("joy-majority"). I, too, did not immediately remember that it was from the poem of the Rose and the Cross Bloc:

Zoya Oldenburg. Joy-suffering. Novel. The cover of the first edition. Paris, 1980

Give through your dream impossible
It will come true what is destined.
The heart is immutable -
Joy is one thing!
Your future path is wandering
The noisy ocean sings.
Joy, oh joy-suffering-
The pain of unknown wounds.

Sometimes the forest on the banks of Lena began not to seem to be a classic taiga, but by some boron on the border of the forest-steppe, a ship grove from the picture of Shishkin. That suddenly a cheerful meadow spread out and wandered through it, looking at his feet, an indifferent bear. And there was a lot of real taiga deafomanias, cluttered by Boillem, as well as sections of crawled fine -colors in the places of past fires. Dozens of kilometers stretched completely cathedral "Lena Pillars", now gray, then chestnut, and at dawn pink. When a scroll of such energy is continuously and slowly uninterpreted before your gaze for a hundred hours, you yourself are not in charge of plunging into the implementation of a mysterious exercise from some oriental practices. Either self -knowledge, or purification. The Lena cheeks gorge, almost a triumphal arch at the end of the journey, became a powerful final vignette of this tape.

I forgot to say that before sailing I had two whole days for additional acquaintance with Yakutsk. Then the city had little to do with what I saw during the second visit 38 years later. In the distant 80th, in the capital of the republic there seems to be only half a dozen more or less ceremonial buildings: among them, of course, the regional committee (the same where Olegov's friend had his own) and the KGB. I remember many wooden houses that have grown into the ground on the windowsill - the house warms the eternal permafrost, and it sucks it.

Lena Pillars

I was pleasantly shocked by the Museum of Western European Art. In Yakutsk !!! It turned out that Professor Mikhail Gabyshev, Yakut, who worked in Moscow and Minsk, collected a strictly directed collection of 300 paintings, engravings and sculptures in the post -war years, from the very beginning, referring to the gift of their native Yakutia. In those years, a lot of things could be bought, especially in post -blocking Leningrad, right in commission stores, and, of course, at the widows of collectors. Based on the Gabyshevsky gift in Yakutsk in 1970, the aforementioned museum was opened. Let without Kranacha and Caravaggio, but very pretty.

When I got to Moscow, the Olympic Games for several days closed, the famous Mishka rushed into the sky, and the shop windows were again empty before our eyes. There were no apartment inspections, at least in our house for Ostrovityanov. Since then, an eternity has passed, but I do not cease to rejoice that everything turned out for me that way.

INION building before fire

The search for additional earnings has always expanded the circle of dating. Back in the mid-70s, running into Moscow, I protected the track not only to the encyclopedists, but also to the famous INION (the famous throughout the country, he became, however, only 6 years ago on a sad reason: because of a huge fire in it). INION is deciphered as the Institute for Scientific Information on Social Sciences of the Academy of Sciences. Here, among other things, “abstract magazines” were published, they briefly set out the content of new books, employees wrote these essays partly themselves, partly ordered on the side, this is a legal practice. They easily threw me such a job, and I even chose: I will write it, but this is not. I still find in my papers typewritten copies of abstracts of various books (“Field Police of Tsarist Russia during the period of imperialism”, “The population of Russia for 400 years” and the like). Сорок и более лет спустя выражаю вам свою благодарность, дорогие сотрудники Отдела отечественной истории Володя Багдасаров, Анатолий Твердохлеб, Витя Шевырин, Маша Чемерисская, Коля Боков, а кого забыл, те простят меня великодушно. Благодаря вам я имел возможность часто летать в Москву и вникать в подробности российской истории. Коля Боков был тайным автором озорной самиздатской повести "Смута новейшего времени", его авторство стало известно КГБ, и в 1975 году его выперли из СССР. В эмиграции он стал плодовитым писателем.

Николай Боков читает протокол обыска

Инионовцы были люди компанейские, в их посиделки часто вливались переводчики и поэты, это было органичное единство. В такого рода смешанном, но с преобладанием поэтов "квартирнике" я в последний раз оказался уже около 80-го года. Помню Машу Чемерисскую, Инну Клемент, Бахыта Кенжеева с его кроткой канадкой Лорой. Обсуждали новости из Франции от Бокова, обсуждали его друга, русско-чувашского поэта Геннадия Айги. Теперь это имя произносят с почтением как увенчанное премиями Петрарки, Пастернака и Андрея Белого, все помнят также, что Айги не раз выдвигали на Нобелевскую премию. Тогда же он воспринимался, выражаясь сегодняшним языком, как "собрат по тусовке". Маша прочла доставившее всем много радости неизвестно чьё стихотворение про Айги и Бокова, я его запомнил:

Шёл по бульвару раз поэт Айги,
описывая разные круги.
Навстречу Боков шёл с цветами,
к знакомой направляясь даме.
Айги, взволнованный растущими долгами,
к собрату обратил беззвучный зов,
на что собрат, не тратя лишних слов,
достал из-за подкладки миллион и был таков.
При виде этой суммы у Айги
пошли перед глазами сапоги,
припал он за поддержкой к тумбе,
а денежки крапивой заросли на клумбе.

Я приехал тогда как раз за пьесой Бокова "Наташа и Пивоваров", но пьеса не могла быть мне вручена, ибо её задержал предыдущий читатель, в итоге я её так никогда и не прочёл. Обмен запретной литературой был в те времена для множества людей мощным связующим фактором. Однажды я упомянул Бахыту Кенжееву, что у меня дома лежит ардисовский альманах "Глагол" с новой повестью Аксёнова "Стальная птица". "А почитать?" – спросил Бахыт. Сложность была в том, что владелец, хоть и дал мне книгу, не оговорив срок, мог заехать за ней утром по пути на работу (мы тогда жили без телефона) в любой день. Выход нашёлся. Около шести вечера нас с Ириной и Ванечкой ждали в гости к знакомому реставратору икон. Он праздновал именины, и в числе гостей предполагались дети ваниного возраста. Бахыт заехал к нам в пять и был оставлен с лакомым чтением. Уходя, ему оставалось лишь захлопнуть дверь. Мы вернулись около полуночи, альманах был прочитан, дверь захлопнута. Бахыт вскоре отбыл в Канаду, и хотя он, я знаю, наезжает в Россию, пересечься с ним мне больше не случилось: московские миры обширны и многослойны. В любом случае, большой ему привет!

Мы вернулись около полуночи, альманах был прочитан, дверь захлопнута. Бахыт вскоре отбыл в Канаду

Многим, думаю, знакома такая ситуация, и кем-то, кажется, даже описана. Говоришь себе: накопилось столько книг, которые были необходимы когда-то, но выполнили свою миссию и уже не понадобятся никогда. Вдобавок путём естественного отбора и отсева они и сами постепенно перекочевали на дальние и труднодоступные полки. Конечно, прежде чем расстаться с ними навек, надо их бегло просмотреть. Берёшь в руки первую и погружаешься в чтение примерно на час. По истечении часа всё распихиваешь обратно – зовут другие дела.

В данном случае книга была на английском: "Россия. Народ и власть", автор Роберт Джи Кайзер (Robert G.Kaiser), собкор газеты The Washigton Post в Москве в середине 70-х. Набредаю на такое место: "Русский интеллигент – бесспорно один из великих человеческих типов этого мира... Хватит одного тоскливого вечера в Лондоне или Вашингтоне, долгого обеда сплошь в разговорах о покупках, ресторанах, теннисе или лыжах, чтобы понять, чем так привлекает московская интеллигенция. Бытовой, пустяковый трёп у них не продлится долго. Беседы – вот чем наслаждаешься здесь… Я участвовал во многих таких беседах и начинаю сознавать, что именно об этой стороне русской жизни буду вздыхать дольше всего" .

Я давно отметил это место у Кайзера и даже как-то цитировал, а сейчас подумал, что ведь в каждом московском кругу, к которому я в тот или иной момент волею судеб принадлежал, нет-нет да и затевались беседы высокого накала. Например, на кухне у моего друга Володи Багдасарова, который когда-то и привёл меня в ИНИОН. Володя несколько лет проработал переводчиком в Египте, вернулся почти богачом и купил дом в подмосковном Дедовске. Друзья и коллеги часто приезжали к нему целыми компаниями.

Владимир Багдасаров

Хорошо помню кульминацию одного спора в начале лета ещё аж 74-го года, я был пока далёк от своей цели стать москвичом и по приезде остановился у Володи, он всегда приглашал. В тот вечер солировал Гриша Каплунов, переводчик, любимый ученик Райт-Ковалёвой. Хотя ему было только 37, все с шутливой почтительностью звали его Григорий Иванович. Испепеляя оппонентов тяжёлым голубым взглядом, он напористо повторял, что СССР – это такое место, где ничего не происходит и ничего не произойдёт, страна в тупике и в трясине сразу. Хозяин дома, окончивший истфак МГУ, напомнил, что в Тёмные века, когда варвары уничтожили в Европе всё римское и стали жить своим умом, тоже должно было казаться, что прошлое оставило лишь развалины и непонятные письмена, да и они скоро исчезнут. Но античность не исчезла, она стала закваской, на которой взошло Возрождение. Коля Боков (он уедет ещё почти через год) весь вечер молча слушал, листая Новый Завет, и вдруг громко процитировал оттуда (из Послания к Галатам): "Малая закваска заквашивает всё тесто". Смешливая дама из отдела социологии (имя забыл) сказала, что закваска исторической России, судя по скорости общественных процессов, проявит себя лет через 70. Но тут в спор вступил незнакомый гость, приехавший с кем-то, – помню, химик. Он объяснил, что заквашивание, сбраживание, ферментация – процессы на шкале времени нелинейные. Если для приготовления опары требуется, условно, час, то по прошествии 50 минут она на вид совершенно не готова. Процесс, бурно ускоряясь, завершается за оставшиеся десять минут. Но чтобы это произошло, абсолютно необходимы предшествующие пятьдесят. И не исключено, что они в нашей стране уже истекли.

До прихода Горбачёва оставалось неполных одиннадцать лет, но о мудром химике я вспомнил лишь сравнительно недавно, когда узнать его имя уже нет никакой возможности.