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Life in Russia behind the poverty line - in the documentary of Andrei Loshak "Pentagon"

On the YouTube channel "Present. Doc ”was a documentary film project of journalist Andrei Loshak. This is a story about life behind the poverty line - about how terrible conditions of everyday life form character, habits and even political views. Especially for the New Voropa, Alla Firsanova watched the film and compiled an essay, a guide, fixing her personal, sometimes acute and painful perception of this trip to Dostoevsky hell.

The editors may not share criticism assessments, as well as the optics of the authors -builders of the film. But we consider the conversation itself important, and therefore we publish the text unchanged.

“34 % of Russians live on an area of ​​less than 6 square meters. m

23% do not have access to centralized water supply

25% do not have a sewer "

From these credits, the film of Andrei Loshak “Pentagon” begins.

“Pentagon” is a 4-episode network project about those who are now fashionable to refer to different mutually exclusive contexts: about the deep people. About Russia, which is around the corner, but which we do not see. About why these people live like that, who they are and what they think about.

On the very day when I watched the Pentagon, Putin shared with the people a consideration that immediately became a meme: that soon in every apartment it would be possible to put a table for a ping-pong.

The Pentagon in the district center of Novouzensk, the Saratov region, is called the former hostel, which has become municipal housing. There are poor people under the social agreement: they have the right to live in the apartment, but it does not belong to them, is not property.

The main character of the film, cleaning lady Aunt Natasha (salary 5000 rubles) is more intelligibly expressed:

“Who are we? We, if you say, are discharging society. ”

And repeats: discharge. We are discharge.

And this is much more expressive and more precisely than “scum”. Because “Retings of Society” is a problem. And “discharge” is generally some kind of nonsense, garbage. And there is no conversation.

These discharge at first does not let the journalists into their homes, to whom the proud name “apartment” is applicable in the same way as furniture - to the box. They are afraid. And this is the beginning of a nightmare of absurdity, which is happening in the so -called Pentagon. What should they be afraid of? What other bottom can they break through? There is nowhere to wash, nowhere to celebrate the need-much more good? No, they are afraid. Accustomed to absolute lawlessness, these people are afraid to be thrown out into the street.

Glory to God, the friendly aunt Natasha, who agreed to become the Virgil of the crew on the study of this hell.

*

Its first circle is called "We do not live here, but adapt." And, it seems, a person can adapt to everything. The terrible, shabby, fired (literally) corridors and stairs without lighting, the wind walks along the floors, the rooms without doors are pulled out with rags ... Taking the next “kulisa”, Natasha and the operator suddenly almost hang over the abyss: a narrow cornis sticks high above the street. This is the part of the balcony from which the railing fell and disappeared the same night. All rooms are littered with garbage, old torn furniture, some unidentified “discharge”. That is how I imagined the real Dostoevsky hell. Not a fiery fiery, but a dank cold, dirt, darkness.

This hell has its own Satan. He bears the name of the administration. She, the Great Administration, does not solve the issues of repairing or summing up the sewage system, but - fate.

There is still someone Putin. Well, this is generally an abstraction, the universal mind. The disabled guy at the end of the film says so: better I will live in a hut, but with Putin. You can also understand: as without God ... God, of course, will punish, but he will protect.

The main thing that almost all of these people are deprived of is not even the living space, not money, not at all something material. The main thing is the will.

The years of the bestial existence turned them into a sluggish, gradually losing human appearance of creatures,

Which in Tatyana Tolstoy in the book “Kys” are called “rebirths”. Their language is swearing, they do not work, but washachat, rest - drinking half a liter in front of the TV, they have a convincing caliber crosses on the thoroughbred breasts, but God has long turned away from them, like its governor on Earth - an all -powerful administration. They forgot how to make decisions and are not capable of jerking from a quagmire. One single Lena, a single mother, found the strength in four years to quit everything, rest and earn on an apartment, poorly-but cheap, without amenities-her own, where she made repairs, conducted heating and sewage, and now lives with her daughter, because "the child should not live in a cloak."

The operator and journalist Alexander (the surname is not advertised), accompanied by Aunt Natasha, plunges into this cloaca, and the deaf wall gradually dissolves in front of him. We begin to see and hear people.

These people (and in the country, according to modest estimates, 20 million) consistently and purposefully selected the system, placing in conditions that can hardly be called human. The authorities had and have every opportunity to provide citizens with a decent existence. But suppressing their will with fear and uncertainty in the future, depriving them of the threat of losing his life itself, the system raised its slaves. They are easy to manipulate. This is the best material for cannon meat.

*

The second circle of hell is war. "I will return to everyone in spite" is called.

And they return. One, Pavel, the adoptive son of Natasha - to the dismissal, before being sent to Ukraine. The second, too, Pasha, who replaced the colony to the army, is “two hundredth”. "The quiet contract was signed, he did not affect anyone, even Kristinka." It remained for him to sit for four months ...

They are used to the funeral. In the courtyard is already deep autumn, in a month (shooting began in October) are also used to the operator Sasha, it is almost its own here.

The women, not embarrassed, under Putin on the TV, under the mother, complain: what the earth is for us, we have nowhere to put on our own. On ... Crimea surrendered to him, he was not ours, and ... with him. I must say, women are here (probably, as elsewhere) - wiser than men, more insightfully and in all respects soberly.

In the evening, the Pentagon public wandered to see the vacationer. And these gatherings in the kitchen were strangely like other kitchens: Moscow and Leningrad, with their anti-Soviet under vodka, when all his ... mat, perhaps, was smaller, and the conversations, in essence, are the same.

These aunts and uncles were, upon closer examination, not at all “deep people”, which drains in his hole to the devils, cherished by the telecom forever turned on.

Few men - unlike women of this hostel - understands who and why started the war in which their fellow countryman died. But the fact that this is not their war, all are one. Soldier Pasha, beloved stepson, believes that he protects his homeland. “What a ... homeland,” a exhausted man of about forty grins. “You are not for Russia, you are fighting for Putin, an asshole.” Yes, and Pasha himself, having a little pasting in the mother's warmth, admits: they will pay two hundred thousand two hundred, mother. At least living, at least dead. He already calculated everything. STO - mother, one hundred - wife. We will buy an apartment!

- What other wife?! - Natasha throws up.

- Yes, mother, I picked up yesterday ...

You are my God, what revelations suddenly begin to bear fruit of this meager table!

“And Natasha’s daughter, by the way, is a beauty, works in a beauty salon (there is a beauty salon!), A salary of 8000 rubles,” says a client, an employee of the registry office, who registered more marriages for a year and a half of the war than in his life. “You understand, the brother named, why did the girls suddenly rushed like undermined?” To whom the war, to whom the mother is relative ...

They understand everything, these unhappy people. How to bring the woman to bring, so that, hugging in parting of one son, she said about another: “It is better for me to make him disabled, so that she was only alive. Let in a stroller - but at home. "

Everyone understands ... although in the heads the features will break the leg. Here's a reasonable man: about the war (for the lands, and who needs them), and about Putin (he rewrote the constitution until he falls into the grave board, like the king, the authorities will not change), and about mobilization (call-I’ll go where you get to the prison) ... but immediately, literally without a comma, the same sensible father of six children Mal-mala:

“But how not to fight, they put the fascists there, do you know who Zelensky is? Yes, Jew. And who is Hitler? Do you think German? No, Jew. All Jews, and everyone wants us, Russians, destroy! "

Voro in the head and brew of monstrous destinies gurgles on all five floors of this terrible emergency pentagon ... A teenager abandoned by his mother, his father died, grew up at the grandmother, the grandmother also died, lives with a aunt. The old man with a son, a mental disabled person, feeds the pigeons, the “holy bird of the world”, with his wife divorced: crazy, fights with everyone. Natasha is this sleepy with a huge heart and a “spoiled credit history”, who knows that she can live here until the last sigh, because no one will help. Spouses Alcoholics will mutate each other out of love and jealousy. A man with an old father, a disabled person to whom another son knocked out his eyes. In almost every family - either an alcoholic, or a weak -minded. And suddenly - a imposing fat man, found an thrown bath, installed it in the kitchen (in the absence of a water supply); He collects water from the pipe on the floor, wears buckets and heats a large boiler for seven hours. And lies there, bells.

*

You say the deep people. And they still say - cattle.

No. This is hell. Bosch. Goya. And also-“pre-Da-ka-de” or “under the knock of tram wheels”, the beautiful and terrible cinema of Kurosava about marginals living in a landfill. Ryazanov tried to do something similar on Russian material (“Heaven of the Promised”). But he did not have enough courage of the artist. It turned out that which is worse than lies: a half -truth decorated with a metaphor.

The Pentagon people, like a good quarter of Russia, are not very afraid of war, as they live in hell, which is worse than war.

Worse, because forever. One endless spiral tunnel in the depths, without the notorious light at the end. The protest was invented by a good Eldar Alexandrovich. So he had to cut out of this wonderful notion on a steam locomotive flying into heaven.

And our motto suffered: “You still won’t jump above the authorities”; So the third series is called. To the proposal of the film crew to invite a Saratov lawyer, a specialist in protecting the rights of the poor, the people reacted wary, even active Natasha. Why, it will be even worse. We live and live, thank God, they do not touch us.

The lawyer then came, but to hell.

“Pentagon” - of course, is the reason and the consequence of that painful apathy of Russian society, which do not get tired of indignant from the beautiful far away. What protest, what performances can people go to who do not have the necessary? But how to change your life, if you do not demand anything? A vicious circle, and the area of ​​this circle is the whole country.

It is on the Histress or Diamat (“Carlo-Marxism”, as Lena Milashina), they taught us about “the tops cannot, but the lower classes do not want”. Yes nonsense. And the tops, although they can’t do anything, but they intimidated their whole world. And the bottoms want one thing - so that they are left alone.

And it is unlikely that the “bottoms” are aware that the idea “war is going on, and you want to arrange life here” The same government slowly and correctly summed up, above which not to jump.

By the fourth series, the operator Sasha, having met in the Pentagon New 2023 (during this time he was threatened to beat and kill him once), finally “burned out” (according to Andrei Loshak). So the project appeared in the project, who is actually not at all Jan, and the brave Irina Filippova, a journalist and producer, his wife Loshak. The only one who dared to name his last name.

And in the fourth episode, the most indicative conversation of the “girls” took place - with a lover of water procedures.

- Thanks to Batenka for at least allowing us to live.

- And how could he not allow you?

- He could have everything. Maybe everything he wants.

- Why?

- Because he stands at the helm. Whoever stands at the helm is steering. No?

“But you chose him so that he defended your interests.”

- Ha! Yes, who chose it on ... I have not voted how many years. And who will listen to us? You decide everything there, in Saratov, in Moscow ... And here we are generally called in any way.

“But you have a voice!”

- Voice? Yes? ( grins ) Do you have a voice? They’ll put them up tomorrow, and you have no voice.

- There is nothing to plant us!

- There would be a man ... And they will find it for what, do not worry. How many times have I heard this from the bosses and from the cops.

- You were just intimidated.

- No one scares us. We just get used to it.

- Why?

- To life ...

*

By the end of the filming in front of Andrei Losk, there were 150 hours of material. He himself (as a foreign agent) - not a ride to Russia, led the process online. And, admits in an interview, these many hours of communication resembled psychotherapeutic. Even watching this film is hard. How three months Alexander had, with his observation camera, and then Yana and Irina on their monthly watch, one can only guess.

The grandiose work of all four plus the editor is a certain “Black Lukich”. Explaining, as in the slogan, a lot.

The trouble, of course, is that a huge part of Russia will not see this reality. The channel “Present Time”, for which it is made, although it can be opened on YouTube - with the Internet in the country that “Putin lifted from his knees” without any toilets there, things are worse. None of the characters in the film have a computer. But everyone has TVs, and federal channels are included almost around the clock.

Those who want to help residents of the Pentagon can follow the link .