Police prose

In this silence of the street there is a lot of latent gloomy and heavy force, the direction of which is not given to anyone to predict, just as it is not given to anyone to predict how “our word” will respond, if, of course, it will somehow respond, which I doubt all over the years. more and more, writes NT columnist Lev Rubinshtein

The street, of course, writhing. But not out of stupidity. But rather - from the physical impossibility to speak out.

Pushkin's "Boris Godunov" ends, as you know, with the remark "the people are silent." It is also known that the authorship of this final remark does not belong to Pushkin, but directly to Emperor Nicholas. Oddly enough, Nikolai turned it out more eloquently and brighter than in the author's version, where the people simply repeat the words "long live Tsar Dimitri Ivanovich!"

It is extraordinarily difficult to embody this “silence of the people” on the stage. For it is not just silence. There is a lot of latent gloomy and heavy power in this silence, the direction of which is not given to anyone to predict, just as it is not given to anyone to predict how “our word” will respond, if, of course, it will somehow respond, which I doubt more and more over the years. and more.

The "silent" strategy of protest and resistance has a long history and a long tradition dating back centuries.

For a blank sheet of A-4 paper, you will be detained with exactly the same determination and inflexibility as for any text that begins, for example, with the word “No”

There are times when you don't need to say anything. For people who are historically, socially and aesthetically sane for a long time, everything is clear and without words. Kind of like that old joke about two old Jews riding a tram. As the tram passed the city jail, one of them sighed ruefully. To which the second remarked: “Oh! You will tell me!”

But in the days of the current revelry of the police, which has become a taste, even silence is reprehensible. For a blank sheet of A-4 paper, you will be detained with exactly the same determination and inflexibility as for any text that begins, for example, with the word "No."

Not only phrases or individual words were banned. All euphemisms, even the most "remote", in the words of Lomonosov, were banned.

Even silence itself is forbidden.

“If you want to be silent,” they say to citizens who for some reason found themselves on the square at the wrong time from the point of view of the police, “keep silent at the place of registration. And here - there is nothing. Let's go to draw up a protocol." And in the protocol we write:

“Expressed tacit support for illegal actions aimed at discrediting the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation”

The quieter the street becomes, the more sonorously, with some special inspiration, with some special sophistication, the cop-opera lyre sounds these days.

The brightest specimens of this police fiction must be carefully and lovingly collected for the aid of future happy explorers of the wondrous manners of our times.

Well, for example:

“A citizen used a package with a meat product (classic ham) as a means of visual agitation with an inscription with the following content: “PEACE!”.

And this, in general, I think, is a genuine masterpiece that would do honor to even Andrei Platonov, even Mikhail Zoshchenko:

“Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy, according to historical facts, is a historical figure representing the conditionally called “mirror of the revolution”, a well-known fact that in the works, journalistic articles of the author, the ruling regime was severely criticized, especially for justifying violence during a social explosion. Thus, the actions of Mr. Nikitin A.N., should be interpreted as a call for the overthrow of the current government, as well as following the ideology of Tolstoy L.N.”

Isn't it a masterpiece?

And on Pushkin Square, the famous translator Lyubov Summ was detained. This is what she was guilty of:

“I demonstrated a means of visual agitation, a poster with the inscription “These are the tears of poor mothers! They will not forget their children, Who died in the bloody field, How not to raise the weeping willow Their drooping branches ... Nekrasov, Listening to the horrors of war, thereby attracting the attention of an unlimited circle of people.

The above visual agitation contains lines from a poem by N.A. Nekrasov “Listening to the horrors of war”, written by the author in the last years of the Crimean War under the impression of L.N. Tolstoy. These works contain the ideology of the overthrow of power, criticism of the ruling regime for justifying violence...

Thus used by L.B. The amount of means of visual agitation is aimed at a negative attitude towards the ongoing military operation of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.

Again, mind you, "Tolstoy L.N.", troublemaker and Russophobe, writer and distributor of fakes that discredit the Armed Forces of the Russian Empire.

This text, as well as many other masterpieces of the latest police literature, is, of course, brilliant. But separately there, of course, this: “These works contain the ideology of overthrowing the government, criticism of the ruling regime for justifying violence ...” I was taught in the Soviet school that tsarism was bad, and whoever was against tsarism was just good, for example comrade Ulyanov V.I.

But, as they say, years passed, and our, God forgive me, ideologists came to the conclusion that any criticism of any ruling regime is at best reprehensible, and at worst - jurisdictional. After all, the meaning and essence of any ruling regime is not in its, so to speak, ideology, but only in the fact that it, the regime -

a) ruling

b) ours, local, and not some, God forbid, European or American.

For some time now, it has been customary to qualify a “not our” ruling regime as “Nazi” on the only indisputable circumstance that it is “not ours”, which circumstance seems to be quite sufficient to be favorably and even approvingly perceived by the so-called. "Shirnarmass" of the local population, not overloaded with unnecessary information from the difficult and unpleasant world and domestic history of the past century.

However, life shows that the "ruling" in some cases is more important than "ours". Unless, of course, certain "ruling regimes" - "ours" or "not ours" - reveal their internal ideological and external stylistic kinship.

So the wonderful poet Lev Losev, in one of his essays, recalled some friend of his, a front-line soldier who was captured by the Germans, escaped from there, then went through the Stalinist filtration camps, then, as often happened, got drunk and ended up in a criminal case in prison, where he also behaved quite arbitrarily.

“Once,” says Losev, “he, having again scandalized, was dragged by two guards to the ShIZO. He breaks out, shouting: “Bitches, fascists! The Germans in Buchenwald put me in a punishment cell, and you are doing it!” To this, the elderly warden reproachfully says to him: “So, he violated it there too.”

By tonality and intonation, these and many other masterpieces of protocol lyrics are terribly reminiscent of teacher's diary entries.

Once, during a warm, friendly feast, for some reason, everyone began to remember who had what interesting entries in their school diaries.

Well, and away we go:

"He banged his head against the wall." “Incited a neighbor on the desk to an antisocial act, that is, persuaded him to hide the magazine from the teacher.” “He made faces and imitated the voices of domestic animals. “I disrupted the drawing lesson by breaking the glasses of the teacher Sergei Vasilievich Potapov with chalk.” “I was late by 20 minutes, citing a fire in the apartment on the floor below. This is true?" “I laughed out loud while carrying out the banner of the squad at the solemn line dedicated to the 40th anniversary of the Great October Revolution.” "Clicking abacus loudly in arithmetic class." “Not only did he sleep, he also snored.” “I stuffed icicles into Tanya Chvileva’s briefcase.” "I threw May beetles at Panina Natalya." “I jumped around the desks during the break. At home, does he also jump on tables, chairs, refrigerators and TVs?

The most outstanding record was unanimously recognized as the record "Running in a physical education lesson."

There was nothing of the kind about “silent in class”. However, I'm lying - it was! Just about me. I remember there was such a record. As if joking, but still: “For two lessons in a row he was silent and did not interfere with the lesson. He is healthy?"