Mikhail Kazinik: “Putin can do anything: kill everyone and destroy everyone”

Mikhail Kazinik is a musician, art critic, writer, poet and educator. Lives in Sweden. We talked to him about the war, how Putin and Trump are similar and different from each other, and whether culture can prevent the apocalypse .

Mikhail is convinced that he is already preventing it. In his opinion, humanity has long angered God so much that it deserves Armageddon. However, when the Lord hears Beethoven's music, he refrains from unleashing his wrath on people. Bach and Beethoven beg humanity and save it with their music.

📱 Mikhail’s Telegram channel

Watch Mikhail Kazinik’s stories on his YouTube channel .

Tell us about yourself.

- I am Mikhail Kazinik, male, not convicted, not divorced, married for fifty years to the same woman. So I’m glad, I partially attribute to myself the fact that she looks very young. I was born in St. Petersburg then. It was called Leningrad, but very early on I stubbornly began to call it Petersburg, and then I formulated my attitude towards it. Leningrad is all the suburbs, and St. Petersburg is the very center that the Italians, the French, and the Russians they trained, built. St. Petersburg is my home and favorite city. I always tried to come there when I didn’t live there. My mother made a mistake, but on the other hand, maybe not. My grandmother was dying in Vitebsk. And we lived in St. Petersburg on Stachek Avenue.

I was born at the Institute of Obstetrics and Gynecology because my mother fell and I turned over. She says, "You've always been stubborn." I rolled over. There was the so-called presenting position of the fetus. She was urgently admitted to this institute. I went there, I know where I was born, what kind of institute it is. And when they released her, we went to Stachek Avenue. I even remember, I quoted the verses to everyone: “The one who was born at the Narva Gate is not affected by hunger, cold, or death.” But then my mother decided that for some reason my grandmother would survive if she and her whole family came to Vitebsk. And we left our apartment, came to Vitebsk, settled in a barn next to the toilets, because Vitebsk was completely destroyed, and there were some pieces of wood. Here is a wooden shed, a wooden toilet, the smell from the toilet exchanged with this wooden shed. And we lived there, above me, they say, there was a trough and everything else.

On the other hand, Vitebsk was a unique city. Even then I didn’t understand what was going on, but I knew that all the time they were quietly talking about Chagall, about Malevich, about Vitebsk artists, about Tsatkin, that is, about everyone. In Vitebsk I met real intellectuals: Jewish, Russian, Belarusian, Lithuanian. It was a wonderful city in terms of communication. I spent my childhood there. And when I entered the Belarusian Conservatory, arriving in Minsk, I was disappointed, because I thought that everything was like Vitebsk. It turns out that not everything is like Vitebsk. These were completely different people, completely different relationships. And I graduated from the Belarusian State Conservatory. And then very early he began to travel to perform throughout Belarus, then throughout the Soviet Union.

And so I got my own audience, even nightly queues for tickets. I have already given more than one concert in some city of Kostroma, and for five evenings I was called Mikhail Kazinik. Five evenings. The first evening of five began in two streams. It started at five o'clock in the evening, the second one continued, starting at eight o'clock in the evening. And it was impossible to get there. Then I realized that many people began to write to me: “What you say is very important. Why do you... you will die, and we will die, and no one will be able to convey anything. Write books." I started writing books. I started writing books only in the year 2000. And during this time I wrote eight books.

And the books came out in a large number of editions. Only the AST publishing house published it in different versions, from gift editions to three-volume editions, that is, anything you want. And now the total circulation, as far as I understand, of my books, including Ukrainian publishing houses, because in Ukraine they published me in Kharkov, and in Odessa, and in Dnieper - in three cities far away. It was very beautifully published and was widely read. That is, Ukraine was so Russian-reading that we immediately sold it out and immediately read it and began writing to me. Therefore, I received a huge number of letters from Ukraine. Well, that's life, in a nutshell.

How did the war affect your life?

- In a fundamental way. At first I didn’t understand, but then I realized that my life was over. Why? Because for many years I communicated with my favorite listeners, who suddenly became “good Russians.” I talked to them. And it was communication that surpasses everything. We communicated like loved ones, you know? For me, the hall was my favorite woman. And so much happiness, so many gifts, so much love. Ukraine has generally surpassed everything. People came to me before the concert and brought dumplings in blankets. The aunties said: “You are so thin, eat. You can’t, you give us so much of your life.” All. You know, it's been like this all along. This happened in almost all cities of Ukraine when the war began.

Do you know what happened to me? I didn't know I could do this. I haven't slept for three months. I didn't believe it. I didn't sleep. I was afraid that something would happen, and something would happen, something I don’t understand. And I was in such a state, I can’t tell you. I didn't know it was possible to stay awake. I fell asleep somewhere for half an hour, then jumped up and thought: “It was a dream.” Why? Because all my faith in my listeners, in my people, it was destroyed. It’s as if the image of a kind Russian man, hospitable, bright, was created. Yes. Yes.

Watch films on television, programs from the fifties, sixties, seventies from Ostankino. Evening of humor, meetings with writers. There are big-eyed, smart people sitting there, reacting to the subtlest observation, the subtlest remark. Where did they go, what happened to them, where are they, what kind of monster is this? And then I understood, I understood everything. Well, to answer the question briefly, I perform in the West, I have not given concerts in Russia now, while the main concerts have always been in Russia, although I was received by both America and Germany, and was received by different countries. And Riga, Tallinn, Vilnius worked great for me. In Vilnius, I actually wanted to change the entire school. Here. And just like that.

You often say that music can change consciousness and even society. Can you give examples of how music has influenced society?

— You know, if I start giving examples now, then our entire program format will really be consumed by these examples. I'll give you one example. A letter that I still keep among about a hundred thousand letters. A girl, a woman writes: “Now it’s even hard to believe that once upon a time, passing by the Philharmonic, I would not have seen your poster with the very inviting title “Secret Signs of Love in Art.” And I came in with nothing to do. I was walking after another drinking session with men. I entered this room. If I hadn’t come in, my whole life and even further would have gone wrong. Everything in me turned upside down. I was shocked, everything changed in me. I came out a different person, because when you appeared on stage, your eyes lit up and my eyes lit up, I suddenly realized: “Lord, I almost missed the most important thing in life.” She is a Doctor of Philosophy. She left everything she had. Some men were drinking cognac from her shoe. She was undressed and her shoes remained on her. Then they drank from the shoes, and then kissed their feet. In general, she went through fire, water and copper pipes at the age of fifteen or sixteen.

And then a sixteen-year-old girl came to my concert, and I made such a joke there, such... well, that one of the main signs of culture and art in general is eternal femininity. This is Solovyov’s idea of ​​that very thing... Lord, now this Solovyov has spoiled all the Solovyovs. Now we must always say that it is not this Solovyov, no one, but that Solovyov, also Vladimir, unfortunately, yes, he spoke about eternal femininity, then Blok intercepted this idea, then Bely. That is, the entire Russian culture was based, this is an elite culture, on the worship of women, not only Madonna, yes, but women as such.

In one of my books, “Secrets of Geniuses,” I wrote that a woman needs to be educated first of all, and not a man, because a well-educated woman will begin to choose the one who suits her in spirit. Otherwise, this is complete discord, complete prostitution, complete death, because the woman is responsible for the future, and the man... the woman is an alien from outer space, and the man lies in a cloud of alcohol and jerks his legs, then his arms and tries to formulate something. Relatively speaking, I am, of course, exaggerating. The book is illustrated this way at my request. Wonderful. Goddesses walk on the clouds, descending towards men. And here these foul-mouthed people, these murderers, these drunkards are waiting. And the chapter is called “The Problem of Non-Partnership.”

And then I wrote that in any country like ours, the problem is non-partnership, that wonderful, naturally talented women who should be connected with civilization and continue the development of humanity lack men worthy of them. Therefore, many women, even the most talented, especially the most talented, remain alone, because they cannot stoop to the level of these men, you know? They are not there, these men. And this is where the problem begins. I saw a lot of problems then, but one of them was...

You believe that conflicts can be prevented through culture, but why doesn’t this happen?

— Because culture is the lot of a very small number of people. I’ll tell you now, just don’t fall off the table, just in case, hold on to something. Do you know what percentage of people are truly connected to culture and consume culture? I think it's 0.1%. Not the seven that I dreamed of, not the three that, according to my calculations, are in approximately several countries, such as Germany, although even this did not save Germany, because they made terrible mistakes. More than a crime, it's a mistake. Here comes Israel. There were several other countries, oddly enough, Venezuela, which was on the way to, as Lenin said, turning the entire people into intelligentsia.

They believed Lenin; he said a lot of such populist things that it was hard not to believe when he said: “Amazing music. I always think about how humanity can create such masterpieces.” But then he somehow stopped thinking and started killing everyone who creates masterpieces. Because in fact it was the rarest, most terrible monster.

When I was about to marry my wife, I said: “Tanya, you should only know one thing. I won't hide this from you. The worst criminal on Earth was fifty-three years ago. Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich." I say: “So, remember this, please. You will live to see this, God willing, and you will find out that the greater criminal is... that Lenin is the father of Hitler, the father of Stalin, the father of Putin, that is, everyone’s father. And for Russia this was the most terrible thing, as well as for Germany. Look what's happening to Russia. Where does all this come from? What have these turned into... into monsters, these normal people with big eyes. Yes, it's very simple. Streltsov, remember the story? Streltsov. These were archers who killed everyone in a row, who was needed and who was not needed. They received unlimited power. Then there is Ivan the Terrible, the whole history of mankind.”

Now people don’t know, it’s not written in any textbook, that throughout the twentieth century everyone was serfs. They didn't have passports. They didn't have passports until the mid-twentieth century. There wasn't. They were not citizens, they could not go anywhere. And they didn’t just have values ​​under Soviet rule, they had everything blocked. They played violins within themselves and staged plays. My grandfather, when he was eighty-five years old, he read Hamlet’s monologues to me in Yiddish. He was one of the first, as they say, actors of that time. And this is pre-revolutionary, before the fascist coup, the putsch of the seventeenth year, grandfather and in general they had a theater. Where was the theater? In Chashniki. God-forsaken places are all around, and in Chashniki there is a theater. Grandfather learned to play the violin from a blacksmith and so on.

And, you see, the incredible happened. What happened to the people, to the country? One scary thing. These people have always been on the edge. And there was no Putin, no Stalin. And how lucky they all are. That's how they began to chop in a row. And as a result, look, this is not about Putin. It's not Putin's fault. Everything was ready before Putin. I lived in this, I can say, I lived in the country for fifty years out of seventy-four... no, forty. Fourty. I saw everything. I saw all the signs of fascism. I was just afraid to tell myself that these were fascists. I was afraid to say that at our conservatory the rector is a fascist, that the head of the violin department is a fascist.

I was afraid to say that the children with whom I studied are students, they are informants, that they go to the fascist Gestapo and betray teachers and students. I knew it. I was betrayed so many times, but I had only one salvation. For that matter, that's it. I had salvation in the fact that there were people in the KGB who loved my lectures. Can you imagine such wildness? This is what showed up in them. The KGB general, who had a whole safe filled with cases against me, should have burned me in acid. And his granddaughter went to my ten-year subscription, where children from six or seven years old to seventeen came every year in a row, ten years in a row, to my lectures.

A year ago your book “Eugene Onegin. A novel-illusion." Tell us about her.

— My book “Eugene Onegin” is about the fact that Pushkin censored his own statement about Russia, that this book is not about stupid Tanya, not about stupid Onegin, not about stupid Lensky, who at the age of seventeen studied Kant and came to Russia to marry stupid Olga. You understand that this is a barrier. This is a censorship barrier. We keep track of who killed whom, who loved whom, who slept with whom, and so on. But what we called lyrical digressions is a novel about Russia. About horror.

Remember? “Now our roads are bad, forgotten bridges are rotting, at the stations bedbugs and fleas do not allow us to sleep peacefully; there are no taverns. In a cold hut, a pompous, but seemingly hungry price list hangs and vainly teases the appetite, while the rural cyclopes, in front of the slow Russian fire, treat with a hammer the delicate product of Europe, blessing the ruts and ditches of their father’s land.” Here at every step there is something like ten years or twenty years or without the right of correspondence with Pushkin. Pushkin is the biggest dissident. No country has ever had such a dissident poet. And after Pushkin there will be no more. Because when he wrote those poems that the patriots refer to in quotation marks, yes, these are poems to go abroad, to see his Spain, his Italy at least once. Places where Salieri is, where Mozart is, places where everything was described by him, where the knight and the stingy man are, and where all life went on.

He needed to leave, he, Pushkin, inquisitive, curious, and he was the only one... he was the one who let everyone out. Vyazemsky was leaving, Baratynsky was leaving, everyone was leaving. And Pushkin is banned. And so he decided to write this. And the times were the same. Anyone who wanted to become famous with Putin, he will write something, do something like that. Everything is the same. But it was more difficult for Pushkin. And it was worse because he was under constant secret surveillance. All these people who are sitting now, yes, they were caught, they openly showed their texts and reposted them there and that’s it. And then there was constant supervision from morning to evening, all letters were illustrated. Pushkin knew this. He wrote this a long time ago. And he decided to write a terrible poem, which is terribly mediocre, you know? And now they grabbed him. And he came with this poem to the king and said: “Here, your majesty.” The king looked and patted him on the shoulder. Yes, it's true. And he said: “Okay, well done, Pushkin, keep trying. Thank you for your service." Pushkin left completely spoiled. I wrote it, yes, and it wasn’t appreciated.

Using the poem “To the Slanderers of Russia” and other imperial quotes from the poet, some go so far as to say that Pushkin is to blame for the current war. What can you answer to this?

- Let's start over then. Why Pushkin? Haydn is an imperialist because there was Austria-Hungary, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven - three imperialists. They sang of an empire, such an empire that, God willing, in a thousand years we would have at least a semblance of it. It’s just that the word “empire” itself was given a negative connotation. An empire is... yes, there can be no empire in the future. Although America is a typical empire. Typical, because a person like Trump could only appear in the empire, in the imperial consciousness, when he says: “I prevented all wars,” and still points his finger. I was taught as a child, “Never point a finger.” He's always pointing his finger at the whole world, you know? And when I see him, my inner protest arises with such force, and suddenly the Trumpists appear. We didn’t have enough Putinists, now we have Trumpists.

This is a kind of Putinism. This is clear, because the Russian people strive for a strong hand, and Trump is jealous of Putin. This is the reason for his admiration for Putin. Putin can do everything: shoot everyone, kill everyone, demolish everything, destroy everything, but Trump cannot. He has a stupid parliament at his side, which will tell him: “That’s it, we’ll announce impeachment. Well, don’t rock the boat, don’t go there, don’t go here.” And Trump, on the one hand, he envies Putin. He is jealous because Putin owns all the money, all the women, all the territory, all the minerals. I’ll sell it to whoever I want, I’ll rent it to whoever I want. This is terrible. This has almost never happened in the history of mankind. This Timur, Genghis Khan, I don’t know who to compare him with, but why did he appear? Yes, because the country has been a slave, a serf, for all centuries. She was not free, free opinion did not develop.

And now this unfortunate Victoria Bonya. “Yes, dear Vladimir Vladimirovich, everything is fine, they’re just hiding it from you. I want to record an appeal to Russian President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. I do this on behalf of the people. They didn't ask me to do this, but inside I feel like I need to record this video. Why? Because, Vladimir Vladimirovich, they are afraid of you, people are afraid of you, bloggers are afraid of you, artists are afraid.” Well, nothing more stupid can be said. And then everyone was angry, although she was so stupid, such a combination, as they call it, of French and Nizhny Novgorod. Yes.

As soon as she said: “Dear Vladimir Vladimirovich,” I was like this - oops, another beauty with pouty lips, right? What if you listened further? It seems that she says something about cows, says something else, yes, and so on, but the main propagandist was so angry with her. I also can’t help but say that all the time there are such anti-Semitic ideas circulating among the Russian people that Jews have always been to blame for everything and they can’t find those Jews who are to blame. And suddenly they deliberately took a Jew, gave him all the television, all the propaganda - to the Jew. And what is its purpose? To create a quarrel between the Russian and Ukrainian people, to cut off all ties, because everyone is related, everyone is married, married to each other, you understand? Here. Well, if you break this connection, a huge part of the connection between times and everything else will be broken. That's why he chops and chops all the time.

I came to Ukraine many times before this, I did not see a single fascist. I said this from the stage, we played this. No, it's okay. This was the best audience I had in Kyiv, in the Dnieper, in Kharkov, in Odessa. In Odessa, they completely removed it from the Philharmonic Hall because there weren’t enough thousand seats for the Odessa Philharmonic. And the platform in this famous park. And I performed in the park, they were sitting there, all the chairs were brought and they were standing. And it was somewhere around two thousand people in Odessa.

Can you explain what is the secret of Vladimir Solovyov’s success? Why do they watch him and why do they believe him?

- I can give you a funny example. When, after the latter’s concert in London, we went to a good restaurant, sat down there, they told me: “The cuisine here is wonderful, including Russian cuisine, and Central European cuisine, whatever.” And then the waiter comes up to me, when he takes the order, I say: “Please, I’d like a couple of pieces of fried squirrels.” He looks at me like, “What? What kind of squirrels? What?" I say: “Well, yours, you’re dying of hunger, so you catch squirrels all over the city. They are so trusting, they go to everyone and fry them to visitors.” Then he says, “Wait a second.” And he went and brought three more people with him. This was the main calculator. This was the head of this entire restaurant. They look, he says: “The gentleman demands fried squirrels.” They look at me: “What kind of fried squirrels?” I say: “Well, on Russian television there is such a super-chief propagandist who said several times a day that the British have reached the point where they eat fried squirrels. So I want fried squirrel. Maybe I won't eat it? I want to see her at least, what she looks like, a fried squirrel.”

And suddenly one of them turned out to have a Russian scent. He smiled and said: “Mr. is joking.” They say: “So, like on TV? For us, it’s Simonyan, Skabeeva, they started talking about our misfortunes, fried squirrels.” And then they quickly grabbed each other. And do you know what the restaurant director told me? He says: “Unfortunately, there are no fried squirrels, but the customer is always right. If you want, we have stewed fighting mosquitoes.” - “Well, bring it to me then.” In general, they understood everything, joked, laughed, because at first they decided that someone was stupid, and then they realized that I was joking.

So you say: “How did you believe?” Let's remember what they believed in over the past hundred years. They built communism. They knew that all around were enemies. Lenin declared that outside Russia all are enemies. And our task is the same as Hitler’s later, yes, Hitler called the thousand-year Reich, and Lenin says: “The future of humanity is communism,” you know? Or, for example, Lenin’s brilliant phrase: “Marx’s teaching is omnipotent because it is true.” Well, Chekhov would not have guessed this before. He nervously smoked on the sidelines, you know? He may have died from this, that he tried to understand this phrase - because it is omnipotent because it is true. That is, absurdity upon absurdity.

And now, as a result of Lenin’s stupidity... cunning and stupid, cunning and stupid, you cannot confuse them. There are stupid people, but very cunning ones. Men have always been like this. Gorky also described them, Gleb Uspensky described them. That's it, yes. So, we have reached the point where the Russian government - they are not even smart, they are not only stupid, they, you know... that is, everyone has clinical diagnoses, Lavrov, this is incredible. That is, you listen to Lavrov and don’t believe your eyes. He once wrote poetry, I knew him. We were published in one collection - “100 Russian poets”. There are Lavrov and Kazinik nearby. Well, to be honest, I didn’t like his poetry. They were kind of strange. And they showed a little pathology. But what poet does not have pathology? Lord, every poet - he thinks in a completely different way, yes.

And it turned out that I was very confused. I don't understand anything. How did people believe? They couldn't help but believe it because it was Goebbels-level propaganda. Moreover, Goebbels did not have even a thousandth of the opportunities that exist today. And today, ordinary people, having sold their cows, but now having not really sold the cows, and having cleaned their land, you can’t clean it completely either, they sit down in front of the TV screens, they have nothing else. What do they have except this screen where Solovyov, the Jew Solovyov, is always on - it seems that this is where the violence of world Zionism is.

Although I am explaining here how they could convince the whole, the whole planet, that Zionism, which was once compared to fascism, is exactly the opposite phenomenon, because fascism wanted to build a thousand-year Reich. Communism, the future of humanity is communism, wanted to build communism on the entire planet. That is, this Gulag, right? And Zionism says: “Come all here, Jews, all here, to our little land near Mount Sinai, here on the peninsula. Yes, we will gather here together, don’t touch anyone, don’t communicate with anyone. We will build a wonderful life, we will listen to great music, we will create great discoveries.” These discoveries will spread throughout the world, which is exactly what they do. But Zionism, on the contrary, says: “Come here.” And fascism says: “Thousand-year Reich.” And communism says that everything... the future of humanity - everything, if you don’t want it - we’ll force it, we’ll shove it into communism. That is, this stupidity that happened, it is absolutely incredible, you know? That's why people believed.

Well, there is one more detail. With the advent of the computer and the ability to type, these same ones... with one gyrus in the brain, and that one below the back, yes, not even in the brain. They are accustomed to believing the printed word. If the newspapers “Pravda” and “Izvestia” print that this is an enemy of the people, then it is true. Now they see printed text on the Internet. And since the text is printed, it means it’s true, because everything printed is true. If they write by hand, yes, with milk ink, then it’s not true, but it’s true. Here's another reason.

Well, thirdly, ninety-nine percent of the Russian population has never had an education. Never. Now, is it really not smart enough when this unfortunate Victoria Bonya is scolded because, you see, she lives in Monaco, and from Monaco she talks about killed cows. Excuse me, where did Herzen speak from? Herzen said so many things that without him nothing would have changed. Where did he live? Well, no one said a word that he didn’t live in Russia. How does he have the right, without living in Russia, to scold Russia and talk about Russian problems? Yes, they talked about Russian problems a thousand times. So it's not about where you live. They are uneducated, you know? And the uneducated have found a way to speak to the uneducated millions of idiots. And this... this cannot be interrupted. This is a flow, this is a process. Do you understand? Here's the story. Why do they believe?

How does war affect music?

— War destroys all side lines of the brain. It destroys the neurosystem. She leaves only a dull creature. You remember, this was the story “Day of Wrath” by Sever Gansovsky. This is a science fiction story from our childhood, when, as a result of irradiation carried out by some terrible fanatic scientist on people, they turned into otarks. Not orcs, but otarks. Who are the Otarks? These are creatures whose mathematical thinking has become inflamed. They master the highest formulas. They speak human language, but they are animals. A huge scary animal that is built on killing. They kill, like all animals kill people, and there is a whole siege, people die.

And here is the epigraph to this story, because otherwise I will tell the story, it will be long. And the epigraph is this: the state commission is meeting, they ask the otark: “Tell me, do you know higher mathematics? You speak many languages. Does this mean that you are human? Otark replies: “Do people know anything else?” How exactly. Knowledge of higher mathematics and a number of languages ​​does not give anything.

War kills all cultural urges, because these people are already few in number. They have a special sensitivity, because art and culture develop a special sensitivity. And when they start killing, when the absurdity begins, they, these people, can no longer stand it. They either leave, go crazy, or get sick and die. Because culture... well, remember, as Nietzsche said, culture is a thin peel, an apple peel over hot chaos. Now we live in hot chaos, and culture is those people who understand what culture is, and develop it, and who maintain it.

I have this image in one of my books. Why doesn't God destroy us for everything we've done? So he should have every right to consider the experiment a failure. If he now looks at planet Earth, when the very people who are God’s Jewish people are being killed, they are being killed by the illiterate, the brutal, the believers in another god... God be with them. Let them believe in whoever they want, just don’t kill them, right? And it turns out to be some kind of nonsense, because we begin to think: how, and where is God looking? Either he doesn’t look, or he doesn’t care, or he carried out an experiment, put these people on Earth and went to other planets, other dimensions.

Here. But for one reason he doesn’t kill us. Do you know which one? Because we have lawyers: Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Shakespeare, Pushkin, Pasternak, Goethe. Because imagine, God - I call him the chief engineer, so as not to confuse other believers, because there are three thousand gods. The chief engineer - he is going to destroy his own art, because he looked - this is complete horror. The whole earth is in ruins, covered in blood, covered in corpses. Yes. He says: “That’s it, I can’t stand them anymore. Idiots, terrible criminals, the military, are now taking their swing.” And at this time we... if only there was a piano here, I would sit here, and there would be a very strong effect. I'd like to start playing Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, I say. And he stops his hammer and says: “It’s them too. This is them. If I destroy them, then I will destroy Beethoven with them. But this is impossible, because Beethoven is mine... for this I created them.”

Do you think people of culture should somehow indicate their political position?

“I will never identify with those who say they shouldn’t.” Beethoven was infinitely politicized, endlessly. Even Bach in those distant times argued with all the church authorities. And all the politics were carried out by the clergy. He argued with the city authorities. Why did he change church after church, city after city? Because he was intolerant in terms of his behavior. He was a sharp bully, you know, and he fought and demanded. That's all. We say: “Faith, faith, I wrote everything with God’s help.” Yes, for six whole years he did not write a single religious work.

Why? But because he ended up with a wonderful man in Köthen, and he was not a believer. They were friends. He took him on as a partner and paid him twice as much as in all the churches. Yes. And they went, traveled, the famous baths in Baden-Baden. They clinked glasses, sang, drank and played. Because Leopold, Prince Leopold was a wonderful musician. He and Bach... Bach accompanied on the harpsichord, and Leopold played the flute and so on. It was true. Bach did not write a single church work for six years. This is essentially a rebellion, right?

And then, when Leopold got married, and his wife did not like either music or Bach... but the wife is above all. And he died early, by the way, Leopold, and Bach was forced to look for a new place of work and came to Leipzig. As soon as he became cantor of St. Thomas's, he wrote cantata after cantata, and so on, and so on, and so on. Before that, in Weimar, he wrote an endless number of organ works and so on. But these six years - it was an island. He felt no need to go to church, play the organ, or talk about how God is above all. No, he wrote secular music, fortunately for a huge number of violinists, pianists, harpsichordists and so on. He wrote secular music: English suites, French suites, sarabands, minuets. Just like the future Chopin.

Which of your colleagues disappointed you because they did not speak out against the war?

- Ninety percent. You see, these were people who, as it turned out, were not very talented, because people who are talented and confident in their talent, they cannot support the devastation, because the devastation destroys culture, destroys their activities, destroys art. It's impossible to even imagine anything else. And I was disappointed by literally a huge number of conductors, and violinists, and pianists, and... Lord, it’s so painful that it’s hard for me to even talk about it, because I’ve lost faith in everyone.

I believe that my life is over as before, although I am performing - you see, in Prague, and now I will go to Berlin, then Canada, America. I... I have a YouTube channel “Mikhail Kazinik”, to which I invite everyone who still loves music and who does not depend on political systems. The YouTube channel is working. There are about three hundred films dedicated to the most profound things in the history of mankind. The film “The Rock and the Storm” alone is worth it. Pasternak's verse.

What are you afraid of?

“What I fear most is that humanity has collapsed forever, because this story is happening at the most difficult genetic level. Because if there was only Putin, and then Trump was added to him, they are two friends, and it is clear to everyone that they are friends. But zombies don’t allow it, you understand? Now they are confused. America has always been the enemy. And suddenly it is no longer possible to say that America is the enemy. How? They're friends. And the whole story with oil - the first time and the second time on purpose. He also intensified the bombing of Ukraine. Trump hates Ukraine, hates Zelensky, you know? And with him, a huge number of zombified people hate Zelensky. Они любят Путина, который каждую минуту недостоин любви, и ненавидят Зеленского, который героически сражается за свою страну. Маленький еврей из провинциального украинского города. Ему так хорошо было быть комедиантом и всё прочее.

И потом вот эта вот знаменитая ненависть к любым проявлениям искусства — в чём упрекают Зеленского? В том, что он клоун. Чарли Чаплин тоже клоун. А потому что страшно, что это могут быть необратимые процессы, которые происходят с мозгом. Это как раковая опухоль. Вот опухоль началась, да, её можно обратить на первой стадии, а на второй — сложнее. На третьей — очень сложно, на четвертой — всё, пропало, ничего нельзя сделать. Вся медицина мира ничего не сделает. The same. Оно пошло так далеко, они даже не различают лица. Они видят красивые лица умных людей, диссидентов, да, и не видят, что это красивые лица, что это люди. Они начали… всё перевернулось у них, понимаете?

Кроме… не то что перевернулось, я с этого начал сегодня, с того, что это было заложено в девятнадцатом веке, потом в двадцатом, когда Ленин объявил всех врагами. У них всё перевернулось с тех пор. Враги народа. Твой сосед Иван Петрович, умнейший русский интеллигент, он оказался врагом народа. Кто бы мог подумать: «Ай-ай-ай-ай-ай!» and so on. То есть это в результате случилась такая необратимая ситуация, что я боюсь, что не выпутается из этого не только Россия, и Америка не выпутается. Я хочу верить, но я не могу верить. Вся моя логика восстает против веры в то, что всё будет хорошо. Хорошо уже не будет, потому что люди уже другие. В одну и ту же реку нельзя войти дважды.

What are your dreams?

— О том, чтобы всё-таки, несмотря на все мои мысли, это произошло, потому что… ну, ну не может цивилизация, такая великая цивилизация, погибнуть не может. Не имеет права. Мы столько на планете создали. Если я сейчас начну говорить о Сократе или о Платоне, или о Николае Кузанском, о разных великих философах, если я начну говорить о глубине Мольера, где в «Тартюфе» главный герой не Тартюф, а главный герой — этот человек, который поддался на его пропаганду, и главный герой — та, которая его спасает, его жена, она идёт на прямой открытый бой с Тартюфом и побеждает его, потому что все погибнут, если она не победит. Here. Это трагикомедия. Я просто понимаю, насколько это важно было бы учить в школе, насколько важно было бы детям открывать правду. Do you understand?

Но никто этого не хочет, не понимает. Школа осталась на уровне клипового сознания прошлого века. Мечта — что если нам удалось бы изменить школу, то мы бы следующее поколение запустили бы другое. Я мечтаю о том, чтобы была школа комплексно-волнового урока, который я создал, школа волнового мышления, когда каждая идея переходит в другую соседнюю, связанную с ней, с первой и так далее.

Я мечтаю о том, что мир будет охвачен вот этой школой, где музыка будет играть одну из важнейших ролей, где изобразительное искусство во всей его глубине и красоте появится не как картинки, а как подлинное раскрытие тайных знаков. Потому что художник не столько изображал, как и все виды искусства, он выражал, чтобы искусство стало выражением, а не изображением. Вся идея школы формирует новое сознание, новых людей. Все… долой все тоталитарные системы, долой все примитивные системы, зомбирующие системы. Открывается ренессансное мышление в человеке. Вот это главное, что школа… что она должна взять от прошлого — ренессансное мышление. Но это всё другая передача.