Antigone

I have trestlers in the attic. I thought - why did I need another meaningless sofa - and specially asked for a neat Uzbek, which she knew the attic to us, to put together a large thorough towel in the corner. The thing turned out to be a test one: if you want to put the mattress wider and sleep, you don’t want to - don’t sleep, just raise the top mining lid along with the mattress and sit in front of it on the knees until morning. Because the tops with a lid is already a chest, and in it there are toys of grown sons, those that are better and sorry to throw away, children's books with pictures, which are now not there, and most importantly - albums with photographs and an old leather portfolio with documents: a whole history of the country, a sea in a drop of water.

Once, my youngest son and I spent two hours on this leather portfolio, taking out the military ID and diploma of my father, then the diploma and order of my grandfather, then all sorts of DOSAAF books, Komsomol tickets, savings bank, passports, death certificates, and every piece of paper and a book we turned, examined the coats of arms, seals and water signs, photographs, and all that was all that was For a child - like shards from the bottom of the sea, the fragments of a sunken ship. With each paper taken out, the outlines of this ship became clearer, it seemed to come up-it was about to download again on the water and swim. I wanted to show the testimony of another of my grandfather about the end of the Kyiv Theological Seminary - here, here it lay, in this pocket, huge and elegant, like an old map, with curly strokes and monograms, rubbed on the bends - and there is no, disappeared. I regret terribly, the emptiness clearly rustles in my fingers.

How does it rustle for those who do not have such a leather portfolio? Whose grandfathers and grandmothers have all their portfolios, diplomas, dissertations, articles, city apartments, village houses, gardens, fields, dreams, plans, sky above their heads - they took and crossed out humanoids with blue pegs, burning them in the camps, putting a bullet into the back of the head or on the edge of the moat in the deaf forest? Whose fathers and mothers lived with the stigma of the children of the enemies of the people, and it is good if with one of the relatives who remained in the wild, or even in prison, a special orphanage for enemy cubs, as a wonderful theater artist and writer Eduard Kochergin, whose father was shot, and his mother, the Pole, sent to the camp for 10 years. The rest, as the poet Vadim Zhuk said , was just lucky:

We are the children of those who are not shot

We are the grandchildren of those who are not planted.

We are miraculously surviving great -grandchildren,

Dismissed and stunned.

Ask the historian Anatoly Razumov, the creator of the “Leningrad Martyrologist” and the “Returned Names” site, how many people are knocking on him in search of their perishable relatives, how important it is for people to come to the shot training ground in Levashovo, at least attach a photograph of a grandfather to the pine tree, even though there is no grave, since there is no grave, which you can stand up, to think, to think of a person, to think of a person, to think of a person. Put a flower. A person will find a photograph, tie a ribbon, and even if he knows that it wasn’t a grandfather buried here, but it is still easier for him - as if he touched an invisible grandfather's soul.

It seems to me that the Russian authorities perfectly play the role of Creon, who executed Antigon for the implementation of the highest law, commanding everyone to mourn and bury their dead

Ask those who work in the “Memorial” - from how many streams a folk path of eager to find their roots flows to them. Listen to people who have achieved the opportunity to look at the archival affairs of their relatives, “dismissed and stunned”, dusty and executed - in order to ensure that humanoids with blue skirts fulfill the devilish plans for executions, receive non -fingered allowance and grow in the service: what is it, to see the pages of blood spots and a trembling signature under the recognition of Bredov “crimes” is the last thing left from grandfather or grandmother. But they could swing their grandchildren on their knees, read books, drive them to museums, but they remained where they were buried in a common pit, like dogs - and where, this is still a state secret. The “memorial”, born from the group “for perpetuating the memory of the victims of repression”, which arose in 1987, is a symbol of the country's awakening, the closure of the “memorial” is a symbol of its failure back to the same abyss from where it rose.

You know that I think-firstly, the crime that was committed by the Chekists is the Holocaust that they arranged for their own people is completely unprecedented in world history-no one exterminated itself so meaningless and merciless. And there is no need for four million denunciations - not without this, of course, but there would be no denunciations, if they were not so in demand and directly organized by the authors and performers of terror. When the plan for 3 thousand, 5 thousand, 30 thousand executions descends “from above”, as much denunciations are attracted “from below” as necessary.

Secondly, I believe that the concealment of places of executions and burials of executed and tortured people is no less crime than executions themselves. Hiding the names of those humanoids in blue pegs and their participation in torture and executions, hiding the cemeteries of their victims, today's humanoids in blue pegs not only hold out their hands to their predecessors, they put an equal sign between themselves and them.

Thirdly, if someone was tired of the mournful calls for repentance, if it seems to them that you need to look forward and build a new country, stepping over the dead and thinking about the living, then let them present at least for a minute that they live at dawn and took it to torture and to shoot, but in fact this person does not go anywhere, he sits at their company, when they are looking at them in their mouth, when they are in their company. Dunch. As Osip, who built the house in which I now live, looked at my mouth, and so did not work it. We agreed with the Osip, but this is another story. They, not buried and not soldered, are sitting at our table, looking into our eyes and will not let us build anything until we, ruthless, will regret them and will not bury them properly.

And finally, fourthly. Remember, Harms has a fairy tale about how Vanya and Lenochka wrote a fairy tale together: there Vanya begins a fairy tale all the time, and Helen interrupts it - “There is already such a fairy tale!” So, a fairy tale about the “memorial”, which the organisms want to close, tormenting and killing those whom the “memorial” does not allow to forget, already. It was written in 441 before the Nativity of Christ the ancient Greek Sophocles, the great playwright. His “fairy tale” - the tragedy of “Antigon” - tells the story of the children of King Edip - Polinik, Etheocla and their sisters of Antigone.

Polnik and Etheokl kill each other in the struggle for Thebes, but Etheokl dies as a king and a defender of the city, and a policeman as a traitor. Creon becomes the king of Thebes and, under fear of death, forbids to bury Polinik - let wild animals eat the body of the traitor. Antigon does not obey and secretly burys his brother. It is caught and brought to Creon. Creon asks how she could disobey his order. And she replies that this order is not to bury the dead-just a person’s fabric, and it cannot overthrow the “unwritten, unshakable law // Immortal gods”: “I was afraid to answer for it // Someday before God, // The mortal is not terrible for me an order.” She says that living without fulfilling the highest law, leaving her brother “without honor of burial”, for her worse than to die.

Creon, of course, executes Antigon - not to show weakness, in fact, well, and then everything is pouring: the gods are indignant, the people rebel, their wife and son end with themselves, in the end the choir sings: “Wisdom is the highest good ... awesome - propes to the execution.”

It seems to me that the Russian authorities perfectly play the role of Creon, who executed Antigon for the implementation of the highest law, commanding everyone to mourn and bury their dead, and those who do not, excluding people from the breed. The next meeting of the court to liquidate the “Memorial” is scheduled, by the way, on December 28 - it is known that our authorities love to appoint their most disgusting “liquidation” shortly before the fight of New Year's chimes, on the days when everyone’s thoughts are directed exclusively to Olivier - to probably drown out the cries of indignation and despair. Already for this one can assume what the court decision will be.

But whatever it may be, no one can change the main thing: “memorial” is our antigon, who does not agree to violate the heavenly law for the sake of the royal whim. And she, who buried her brother at the cost of her life, was glorified for centuries, and the miserable Creon, who was ranting that he had a little weakness and retreat in front of the woman, is cursed.

Sofya Rogacheva - journalist

The "Opinion" expressed in the heading of the point of view may not coincide with the position of the editorial office