Sergey Zagraevsky. My XX century. Chapter 3. Sixties

Acquaintance of his father with the family of the future spouses, that is, with Lydia and Mikhail Naumovich, started with the specific history, both funny and sad.

It was summer, lived in a Villa at zagraevsky Abramtsevo, and there the first time his father arrived. On the way Wolfgang Volfgangovich saw lying in the cell - quote - “Wonderful, almost dry and fresh loaf of black bread, no mould”.

I don't think father was so hungry, just my generation perceived Soviet slogans like “bread for dinner in moderation take” with a condescending smile, and for the father, who grew up in Vorkuta, it was not a slogan but a norm of life. In short, the father picked up the bread, and came to visit the bride's parents, the loaf of bread in his hand.

Shock to the relatively wealthy combined Zagraevsky was full, and when he has been joined by more and anti-Soviet talks father - shock turned into a long, sustained hostility and even hatred. Only twenty years later, father's relationship with the father and her mother had “diplomatic” character.

That's because the horror! Had nowhere to go - mother still left much myagkoharakternogo and bred her first husband and married Wolfgang volfgangovicha.

In the end, there were constant fights, and because of the problems is not any kind of “household”, and political and macroeconomic. Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, West Berlin... and what “Apple of discord” could in Soviet times to arise from the Orthodox Communists and Frank and do not want to lie dissident!

A good indicator of purely “political” background of scandals was that Inna Mikhailovna-in-law, Elena Alexandrovna, relations were excellent, primarily because of “anti-Soviet” unanimity. My grandmother loved my mother, as my own daughter, and called only “darling”.

And that's my father with his parents wife relationship was, to put it mildly, nebezoblachnymi, but frankly, horrible. Moreover, the temperament, and his father, and Lydia Viktorovna was very hot, and any dispute results in subjects of Italian neorealist movies Alberto Sordi with waving hands, screaming and hysterical.

My father told me that Lydia V. during another scandal contrived to throw at him... typewriter, and not some plastic “Erica”, as a full-fledged iron “Optimal”. And this is lean and frail physique grandmother! A high ceiling in her grandmother's house for many years were dark stains - someone once someone splashed coffee...

Probably, not only in temperament was the case - had too many people to survive, too deeply rooted in the heart of their political beliefs, and the attack on them was perceived as a blood insult. Plus, of course, the absence of congenital aristocracy, the cooling of any dispute.

So it turned out that the first thing I think of in connection with childhood is a continuous scandals on political grounds. Well, of course, they were not continuous, but the trace in a child's psyche left stronger than idyllic walks with...

Again, remember: never with me at the same time not walking the representatives of different families! Either the mother and father, or Lydia V. Mikhail Naumovich, either Elena Moses Naumovich, or some of them in the singular.

I just started a story about the sixties with family scenes. The fact that I was the first and virtually only grandson and the parents of the father, and the parents of the mother, and, apparently, all their political differences got in my face practical use - how “spiritual” key to bring up the child.

I wonder what would be the relationship with the Capulets the Montagues, if Romeo and Juliet still married? Well, of course, without the medieval romance, in the standard Soviet life sixties and seventies...

“Balance of power” at the time of my birth August 20, 1964 was the following.

His father, replacing several architectural places of work and nowhere did not stay long, he entered the postgraduate course of the Institute of history of arts. That's what the General education - well, he wrote literary articles and theses on the Block. Despite the absence of special zeal, fully written, but “broken down” Marxist-Leninist mandatory membership and refused protection, which was quite in his character.

But it is the strongest way influenced Inna Mikhailovna in terms of writing poetry. He was able to develop a wife poetic gift and actually send it to the path of the professional class session. Lidia Viktorovna, of course, worried, but in vain - parallel Inna successfully defended a thesis and got the chemistry Department of the Moscow textile Institute.

Reasonably suspect that the huge employment mother wanted child I was not, but perhaps my grandmother “pressured” and has committed itself for the child to look after. I must say that they had faithfully served.

Talk about “territorial dislocation” at the time of my birth.

Mother and father lived in a one-room apartment of a University cooperative (how they got there, don't know) in a six-story brick house on Lomonosovsky Prospekt. Where I grew up from scratch.

“Communal” on Novinsky Boulevard in connection with the construction of the New Arbat in the early sixties, at last, seated, and Mikhail Naumovich with Lydia got two rooms on the Old Arbat. There, however, was also a “communal”, but only some of the neighbors.

Moses Naumovich with Elena Alexandrovna, as I said, settled on Gagarin square (Kaluga gates) in a separate two-room apartment, a typical Khrushchev the malogabaritkoy with adjacent rooms. But the house was still not standard “five story building, and on those days very well - brick, the eleven, with Elevator...

I wonder how life is even such a narrow circle of people reflects the processes taking place in the country!

Burno built Cheremushki and other similar areas. People are moving there from the nightmare of Stalin communal and gradually overgrown possessions. Few people survived the pre-war stuff, all bought again.

Funny - I have the apartment is “vanity” Lydia Victorovna, I remember him from Arbat, it is in the childhood was perceived by me as something almost pre-revolutionary, and recently when moving, I saw it in the back label in 1960. Indeed, where was his place in the 13-meter room on Novinsky Boulevard? On the piano?

And “Vorkuta” family? What belongings could be involved in life in the barracks with continuous anticipation of the next planting or change their place of exile?

III

It would be interesting to analyze everything that happened in the subconscious of people in these years. After forty years of continuous nightmare of life is gradually becoming a relatively normal.

Relatively. The so-called “Mikoyan-prosperity” of these years (welfare associated with the Minister of food industry Anastas Mikoyan) greatly exaggerated. The queues were everywhere, and ten kilometers from Moscow began poverty. Serisouly the film “Kuban Cossacks” was a liar as exposure VDNH, and so irritated the Soviet people, which he then showed in the cinema and on TV even less, than in our time.

Older Muscovites remember about the “huge” money, which then received by pensioners. Indeed, 120 rubles in the early sixties meant a decent standard of living. You can remember and a “huge” salaries of scientific workers - they have not changed before perestroika, but under Gorbachev standard doctoral students 320 rubles were nothing, and when Khrushchev - all.

Yes, the “capital” of 120 rubles a month - it was a lot, but in small towns and farms were very small wages, and pensions just squalid: twenty to forty rubles. The prices were the same everywhere, “state”.

To live by the “household economy”? In the last years of Stalin's life is, paradoxically, it was possible, but Khrushchev, wanting to encourage mechanization and centralization imposed terrible taxes on horses and cows in the private sector, and went “birthmarks” under the knife. And the parsley and apples not earn much.

The same Khrushchev gave passports to the farmers and some pension, but gave with one hand, while the other took. Large cities have lived relatively well, but by plundering the peasantry, that in the near future could not mean the disappearance of products from the shelves.

Remember the empty shops mid-eighties-early nineties? It should have happened back in the late sixties, only the agony of the Soviet economy extended Siberian “petrodollars” - was something to buy grain in Canada and footwear in Italy...

And confiscatory monetary reform of 1961? It seems to be just a ten-fold devaluation, but there was a limit (or three hundred rubles, or three thousand) for the exchange of cash. People rushed to buy anything, but from shops products prudently removed. So much so, that the money invested, even in domestic bonds, and some lucky ones managed over the next quarter century, even something to get him. Our Soviet state, if not destroyed the people, then humiliated.

Still, at least almost never planted and almost never fought.

But this too had to get used! And perhaps unprecedented sharpness of the political debate was caused by it emerged vacuum in the subconscious of people. When tens of years with something you are struggling with hunger, with the NKVD, the Nazis), then without it I can not, and no real enemies are quite suitable windmills.

In a sense, endless arguments made life more interesting, but it is, of course, was only a substitute activity. Those who make it, usually not to argue...

The house of Moses Naumovich and Elena Alexandrovna on the Kaluga Zastava was unique for many reasons.

First, it was not a house, and a library. Books and magazines were everywhere, and I still do not understand how two small adjacent rooms housed as many printed materials. However, even in a narrow corridor over the heads of passing hung bookshelves (thank God that none of them fell down and nobody was killed). In meticulous Moses Naumovich all books were copied by number of shelves, on which lay, and also conducted a separate notebook for accounting books, these friends to read.

Secondly, in the house reigned perfect purity and grandeur. Moses Naumovich the morning, regardless of future plans, always wore a suit, tie and shoes. Maximum freedom, which he allowed himself is to take your coat off, hang of it... no, not in the closet, and back in his chair, and stay in the waistcoat. He would have to be sitting at the manuscripts or something masters, but the “dress code” were the same, only in the heat of summer it could be a shirt with short sleeves.

Accordingly, Elena Alexandrovna in life I grandfather never seen in a Bathrobe and Slippers.

Third, Elena looked at Moses Naumovich with indescribable adoration. About their relationship says that my grandfather slept in the big bed in the bedroom, and my grandmother got out every night and put themselves... cot. Later, however, it bought a small couch. In short, feminism in the house and did not smell. Rather tyranny.

Fourth, the house shone delicious food - was near the supermarket “Sputnik”, which in Soviet times decently supplied. There were orders, which provided the former Director of the Central Department store Lev Matveevich, but it is probably in the fifth.

And fifth, was the company of former prisoners of Stalin's camps. Together, they meet once a year, on the fifth of March - the day of Stalin's death. Most of them were in their time saved Moses from slaughter Naumovich, but came and many others.

They gathered a few dozen people, small apartment Moses Naumovich accommodate them could not, and they met at the George L. green and his wife Elena Alekseevna.

George L. was the son of an American engineer who worked in Moscow in the twenties. Then last returned to the US, and the son in the USSR liked and he decided to spend more. Naturally, in 1937 he was offered “live” somewhat North of Moscow. He came to Vorkuta, was Moses Naumovich saved and there is married, also to prisoners.

Now, Green was a big apartment in metro Airport, where all the 5 March and collected. Very often there was singing Galich.

Green all the inmates each year gave “gifts” - a piece of barbed wire, a cardboard wheelbarrow, then saw a birch logs, soldier with a rifle, a lithographic illustration to “the Ballad Redingskoy jail... So I stand and two copies of all of this - Moses N. and Elena were on equal terms “camp” rights.

However, despite the small size of the apartment, my grandfather and grandmother also continuously used a considerable number of people - and on holidays and on weekdays.

Their company was a party member with the pre-revolutionary experience, Lev Matveevich Portnov. He sat down in 1937, but even under Stalin, was released, and the camps was Director of the Central Department store - by Soviet standards incredibly high post because of the possibility of distributing the “deficit”. Having stayed, he managed to return almost on a former place of work - apparently worked some “trade mafia” connection.

In my mind he was already retired, but in generalized deficit got to former prisoners and grocery orders, and tickets to good theater, and anything. It went sauce society of old Bolsheviks,” remember everyone giggles on this topic.

Sixth, the grandmother was a professional typist and printed historian Roy Medvedev, a Professor Ilicone Leikin (who wrote under the pseudonym Zimin), the famous author of “Kolyma tales” Shalamova, no less famous Vasily Grossman, and many others. Frankly, it would take for his work on several high rates, but still in great demand - few people could be trusted “illegal” works...

Seventh, grandfather Moses Naumovich continuously did anything, I never saw him rest. TV's home in principle was not, not to be distracted from work. For information quite enough Newspapers, strictly structured clippings which took several large folders.

And for the very useful information was huge radiogram on which to listen “enemy voices”.

If I were writing a work of art, the next Chapter would be the anthem of the radiogram. How many hours have been held about her...

Closing the door, sit in the night

With a single prayer:

Talk, poliesi,

Mother of mine, a transistor.

I, as a map schoolboy

Looking for a space journey.

Comrade Mr. Goldberg,

Say anything.

Poliesi, talk,

Pray - as much sweaty fingers.

But from dawn to dusk

Some jammers vile...

Sorry (or Vice versa, thank God), that future generations will have a lot to explain this poem Galich.

Goldberg, a leading radio station “BBC”, died when I was a teenager, but his voice I remember. For the sake of historical justice, we note that the poem, apparently, seventies, and Galic was receiver more modern - transistor. A tube monsters beginning of the sixties (like the famous “Estonia”) were the size of a large TV, only much heavier.

Though many years had passed, the panel radiograms still before my eyes - so much time I watched it... it is Curious that in the early childhood this panel with green light, completely non-functional names of cities around the world and keys voice “speech-solo-bass-jazz Symphony” (see, to remember for a lifetime!) was for me something mystically attractive.

...My cat, like radio,

Green eye catches the world.

This mysterious green eyes! He was, in theory, is needed to determine the quality of reception, but in fact, continuous and noninformative twitching. So our next generations and quoted the final verse ascension “Antiworld” 't understand no comments...

I remember that, seeing me for the first time in the first class”, Elena said: “no one in the school do not say that listening to “bi-Bi-si” and “German wave”, and if they ask, answer, that no”.

It means, “anti-Soviet indoctrination of the young generation” was conducted from early childhood, and with it was indoctrinated with reasonable care.

And I was shocked Communist Mikhail Naumovich and Lidiya Viktorovna! They had a similar record player, I used it for its intended purpose, and they liked me so much that could not deny listen “enemy voices” and make you look retarded Soviet TV. Remember, there were “KVN” with a tiny screen? To screen seemed more confronted with the huge lens, which poured water. However, more interesting TV shows this is not becoming.

As for the “vile of blocking, then they were surrounded by all the major cities. I think many have drawn attention to the strange crowd of small towers - is what they are. For what purpose I do not know now, jamming foreign radio broadcasts stopped under Gorbachev.

I wonder if Brezhnev, Andropov or Chernenko honored to live longer, as they have done with satellite TV and the Internet? The same would be stifled?..

The last time the old and have long pushed into a corner radiogram incorporated on 20 August 1991. “Soviet radio” for the tenth time chewed treatment “coup” to the Soviet people, the TV was showing a textbook ballet, but “jamming” to restore did not, and we are late in the evening the whole family, instead of celebrating my birthday, listened to “Bi-Bi-si” reports from the streets of Moscow. Dad, mom, me and two grandmothers. None of the grandparents were already dead, and even grandmothers left to live very long.

Radiola gone out of my life together with them. And together with the Soviet era. The latter, however, is not a pity.

But we digress from the story about the house of Moses Naumovich and Elena Alexandrovna. The activities of Ded in the sixties and early seventies, deserves a separate conversation.

First of all, he has to Vorkuta time to write endless autobiographical novel - the laurels of Leo Tolstoy gave him no rest, not only to Solzhenitsyn. But, of course, writing the gift of the latter was much better. The style and language of Moses Naumovich were quite good, calm and realistic, but it was let down by his inability to build the track and time to stop.

The novel covers the period of Stalinist terror and called “To the glory of the Lord” - that such wording in the middle ages, the Inquisition was sent to the fire dissidents, calling them heretics.

In the novel were nine hundred pages, and grandmother of all this repeatedly reprinted, which in itself was heroism. Completely read all of this huge amount was very hard, and all attempts to publish at least the first part of the novel during the Khrushchev “thaw” 1956-64 years ran across polite refusals editions. However, these failures political situation also played a role - and Grossman, and Solzhenitsyn published selectively, then “thaw” ended, and the novel Moses Naumovich was frankly camp and the anti-Stalinist.

In parallel with the novel, in the last years of his life in Vorkuta, grandfather wrote some very good stories. In the beginning of perestroika published in the local newspaper Pavel Ivanovich Negretov, another saved his grandfather from the bottom left after the camps to work in Vorkuta (he got an eighteen year old boy and used to the specific life beyond the Polar circle). Negretovu have to thank for the fact that he was still in Soviet times published in the West book “All roads lead to Vorkuta, in which a separate Chapter devoted to Moses Naumovich Averbakh.

However, attempts to Negretova post grandfather's novel in the times of Gorbachev's perestroika, too, ended in failure - too long...

Another grandfather translated from French. Basically, the article by Roger garaudy, author of the famous “Realism without shores”. The last essay he also translated and handed over the manuscript is deposited in the Institute, it seems, the world literature.

I remember with great interest to read my grandfather's translation of king Hussein of Jordan “My war with Israel.” Frank and truthful information about the defeat by Israel in 1967 the joint Syrian-Jordanian-Egyptian-Palestinian forces had no chance of publication in the USSR and went in samizdat. Any material interest of his grandfather in her translation, of course, was not just Moses Naumovich could not make a contribution to the information support for the Jewish people.

Great respect deserves another aspect of his grandfather - bar. Sakaliskes in the struggle with the NKVD, the grandfather was well versed legally and it is used. He is, after twenty years in the camps no one was afraid of nothing and am down in some people's control Commission, actually moonlighting as a lawyer.

I still “live” silver sugar bowl. Grandpa gave her mother a young man who was sentenced to fifteen years for murder and whose grandfather saved, achieving reviewing the case and full justification.

Moses led the Naumovich and flat, and movable and property cases.

Many of the Stalinist prisoners freed in 1954-55 by the Amnesty, not waiting for the twentieth Congress, and then left with the stigma of conviction. Grandfather for them to pursue full recovery. The word “Amnesty” and “rehabilitation” I have learnt to pronounce in the early pre-school age, despite their obscure and hard-to.

The main task of a lawyer in the Soviet times it was able to write papers, and my grandfather did it brilliantly. It came, however, to the absurd - giving a debt to my parents some money for the purchase of the cooperative, he was a loan agreement by all the rules, a few pages. I stumbled on this masterpiece of jurisprudence, was somewhat shocked.

Among other things, grandfather, as most prisoners, had a “Golden hands”. At home he always worked, and in humble Soviet way of life he always brought some small electric improvements. And how much he did to me toys - not to count! And sawing and grind, and a toy lamp assembled from brass tubes... I still almost did not buy the tools - my grandfather, they were on all occasions.

This was the house of Moses Naumovich (“Uncle mony”), and I was very lucky that the age of six I lived nearby, on Lomonosovsky Prospekt. There went trolleybus number seven, and grandmother Elena (“Baba Lola”) picked me up, carried to his area of Gagarin, and brought home the evening before, when the father and mother came home from work.

Sometimes I used to sleep there - I was given another cot. At preschool age I was very active and energetic child, and, as expressed Moses Naumovich, after my apartment looked as if “passed Khan Mamay”.

VII

Then Lydia V. (“Baba Lida) communicated with me at least - it has not yet retired and she was once, and they lived on. On Arbat street I sometimes bring, I remember we were walking there with my grandfather, Mikhail Naumovich (I did not call him “Father”and “Wild”), but I've been in Arbat apartment is relatively small.

Lydia's house Victorovna and Mikhail Naumovich not differ anything particularly interesting. I understand that they are in Arbat “communal” for a long time to settle down not met, and there was sort of uncomfortable and dirty. A huge geyser, dilapidated bathroom with a chain from the ceiling, dark staircase, the well of the court...

Of books in their apartment was a bit on the album art was not at all, and I learned to read at three and a half years and since then she read constantly. They say that a small child in the street were surprised passers-by that loud reproduced in syllables seen some idiotic slogan like “Glory to labor!” The habit to read the inscriptions on the street I remained still, sometimes even at the poles with the ads stop.

But in the summer was Abramtsevo. But why “was” is she now has, and I write these lines there.

What is Abramtsevo, I think to explain not necessary. Our Villa is located two kilometers from the famous estate of Savva Mamontov, and another on her bike half an hour before Muranov - estate Baratynsky, to which dragged more and Tiutchev, although he's never been.

All in all these places - a miracle! The spurs of the Klin-Dmitrov ridge, hills, cut by deep wooded ravines, and even a huge holiday village with forested areas is not dissonant with the outside world...

The mother is in Abramtsevo began to write poetry, and I here liked native nature” (sovetskoobrazny stamp). With some exceptions in the appearance of a number of cottage villages, fields and woods of my childhood whole (PAH-PAH, touch wood). I very much walking with his mother, and idyllic pastoral picture memories of my childhood relate primarily to Abramtsevo.

Father there is very rare - not those he had relationships with the owners house. Lydia Victorovna and Mikhail Naumovich long gone, but their son-in Abramtsevo still causes a purely negative emotions. I, unfortunately, you know, although emotions about giving not share.

But he still occasionally came, and I remember how my mom and dad went to distant forest clearing, and I put on the head of my own pants, not to the sun baked...

And in my mother's parents was light green humpbacked “Zaporozhets”. He took his Mikhail Naumovich, it turned out he had a very bad, the engine roared, constantly deafened by the steep incline to the Abramtsevo estate, and make it again was extremely difficult. Besides handbrake never worked, and the car rolled back. For these cases with him were carrying bricks, grandfather kept the foot brake, grandma went and laid a brick under the wheel, the grandfather of the brake is released, with the nth attempt started the car, with more nth - trahalsya and grandmother carried him a brick until the end of the ascent.

A trip to the country by car was a living hell and lasted for several hours. The Yaroslavl highway, it was not as “autobahn”, as it is now. On the way there were two railroad crossing gate, and on weekends there stood many kilometers of traffic jams. While the grandfather in “Zaporozhets” standing in a traffic jam, my grandmother walked around the area.

Later, however, learned to drive mom and began to pass congestion on the wrong side, but it was a little later in the early seventies.

When I was a kid, I was all of these traffic problems did not worry, I loved to sit in the car in the rain and play as drops pounding on the roof.

VIII

I have already mentioned the fact that his mother started to write poems. This happened in the mid-sixties and identified her entire future life.

It all started, I apologize for so ugly detail, with a dead mouse lying on the forest path. At this time the mother was married to the father and, apparently, in the spiritual plane has grown to a certain “critical point”, because he came home, sat down and wrote a poem, the first and the last “black and surreal” in her work and therefore never published. I believe that in order to comply with historical accuracy it is necessary here to provide.

Look, -

sh-sh-sh! -

The field mouse!

Home hurry,

Grass rustles,

Itself is small,

And the tail -

a kilometer,

In the hole left -

And no mouse!

Hurry,

On mouse Bay

heels!

To this mouse

Not seeing the light -

throw stones!

Among crops

Cold corpse

Under the skin gray

Mouse silly.

By the way, it is very likely that these verses were written for the edification of” the father, who by this time is not yet completely forgot your Vorkuta hunting experience and once even killed in Shakhmatov (same Blok) ermine.

My mother is very shocked - it is due to the “greenhouse” childhood was extremely sentimental, and his quivering attitude to our younger brothers” fully conveyed to me. As the trees - even break a branch was considered very shameful act, and the mother on the subject sometimes broke out loud conflicts with Lydia and Mikhail Naumovich, which periodically giving something quietly cut. Probably why I have never in my life had not even thought about any hunting or fisheries.

After some time his mother and father were visiting either Moses Naumovich, or from someone you know. The first is more likely, because it is built “chain”: the translator Alexander Davidovich Gurevich, Stalin's prisoner, saved Moses from slaughter Naumovich, was the daughter of Cyrus, which, in turn, was married to the poet Henry Sapgir. In short, one day all of the above ladies and gentlemen somewhere met, as someone had the word, and my mother read this verse.

It is not surprising that “andegraundovets” Sapgir, writing in such a “black” style, was wild with excitement, immediately saw in the poem “politically motivated” and advised the mother to write more. Moreover gave her a few “necessary” phones, including publishing “Children's literature”, where he had some acquaintances.

Time was, you might say, almost “thaw” (though “was freezing”), “Children's literature” dead mouse was not afraid, but quite reasonably said that we had to write a few poems, and then they will try to publish a collection. Summer's mother held in Odessa with me and grandmother, Lydia (I was two or three years, so it was 1966 or 1967), and during this time he wrote a whole book. Absolutely in a different style. Poor mouse was an accident.

Mature poetry ina Zagraevsky deserves a separate literary studies because it is absolutely unique.

What is naive art (I'm trying to introduce in the art trafficking, the term “naivizm) in painting, known to many. Artists Henri Rousseau, Niko Pirosmani...

In poetry to the naivizm sometimes referred Severyanin, sometimes Zabolotsky, now more often remembered captain lebyadkin - adult Dostoevsky.

Lyrics of my mother with them have nothing to do and are the most genuine naivizm.

Butterfly on the snow -

Ease of overweight,

Bright over dull,

Clear over sad.

Butterfly on the snow -

Yellow on blue

Early on a late,

Summer over the winter.

Sees a picture, right? Genuine, sincere, bright and unsophisticated.

And the following poem called “Steps of spring”:

In March, a willow

Hatch feathers,

And became silver,

Become fluffy!

And the forest is a goal and it

And fields, as in a dream,

And the stream runs

In the snow.

Snowdrops, snowdrops

In the forest,turn blue,

Making his way from under the snow

In the melting of April.

Struck, leaked

The first patches,

A willow of silver

Gold steel.

From the hot sun

In the forest smoky,

Glade go blind

Against blue stain,

And all the trees,

And Verba with them,

Silk wait

Foliage.

And the amazing “Indian summer”? When a well know person, and the more it's your own mother, you wonder: where do such a metaphor, a vision of peace, “from what rubbish grow verses without shame?”

Leaves faded

In the red and yellow,

Grass ducked,

Hurting, clung...

And the sun burns

The sun is burning,

Like September

Mixed with July.

Aspen - the stove

Oaks - damochki

Day and night

Edge of the warm,

And blue, blue,

As a bell,

The sky is blue.

Woke wasps

In this autumn -

Striped their jackets

Flashed over the meadow

Bevelled,

Like again

Returned summer.

Were she and beautiful poems - “Bees”, “Winter in the zoo”, “new year's fantasy”... Next to her was a professional literary critic - my father, and she also had intelligent friends. The mother knew that in literature it is and what is not, and almost did not make mistakes.

Her poetry is already in the sixties was a very smooth and accurate. No failure of poems, of course, not spared, but they were relatively few.

The failures were waiting on the way to the reader, and solid, but it was still in the future. However, recent. It all started very well, and the poem “a young child poet” ina Zagraevsky periodically flashed it in Newspapers, in magazines. Even Agnia Barto “see” and urged to write something about the pioneer organization. However, “in the coffin went down”, to bless not become - a poem about the pioneers did not wait...

Yes, the mother is considered a children's poet. “Order” publishing “Children's literature” was not accidental: in Soviet times it “carved” poems have only one chance for the publication and promotion of the Union of Writers - section of children's literature.

“Adult” so I just had to write high style about the gains of socialism, but at least about love (or elevated, or ending a marriage). Exceptions were made for the ascension, Yevtushenko, Akhmadulina and several more - they “spin” in the times of the “thaw”, and their “limits” were a little wider. And in verse my mother was not socialism, nor romantic love, and any of its attempt to write something like this was bound to a notorious failure.

In short, the mother was in the middle and has created his own unique style. For the poet is a great happiness, but for the “Soviet writer” - quite the contrary.

As a “child” poet, it ended up being quite natural and logical criticism that the children of her poems too complicated. However, this criticism so far had the character completely sympathetic advice and minor edits. For example, in one of her collections have been published poem “grachata:

Lived grachata -

Rooks children,

Slept grachata

The house on the branch.

These grachata -

Two little brothers

Darker than cast iron,

As soft as a kitten.

The last two lines Inna Mikhailovna the editorial Board were asked to “convert “black as iron, and soft as a kitten”, as a great-sounding string of three “b” - “darker than cast iron - supposedly too difficult to pronounce children.

However, it was nasty, but the little things. Besides the Chairman, the children's section of the Union of Writers was Lev Kassil which verses ina Zagraevsky quite liked. In the late sixties Inna Mikhailovna one after another came a few small children's books, and it seemed that not far off joining the Union, gave official recognition, many benefits, large fees, paid sick leave and, most importantly, the social “literary” status.

Apartment father and mother at the Lomonosov prospect was one malogabaritkoy, but there have been frequent guests. From the “celebrities” I remember two - Lev Kassil and Pavel Antokolsky. The latter, as I later learned, was my mother's romantic love, despite his advanced age.

Weakly, of course, I remember them. So, some shade, and I'm not sure if my memory does not overlap their pictures - they were famous...

The mother, in addition, some time was friends with reckless company Akhmadulina-Vysotsk-Marina Vlady, but for the assistant at the Department of chemistry frequent night spree were too heavy. A chair is not my mother threw - it was the stable and considerable income.

What I had not seen his mother for several days, even while living with her in the same apartment, I remember it well - it went when I was still asleep, and came when I was already sleeping. Schedule it certainly was insane, but she, despite poor health, was truly an iron man.

The health of the mother, indeed, was very weak, she had some terrible gastritis, neuralgia, something purely feminine... it was amazingly resilient, cheerful, easy-going and active. I have it from early childhood taught: in the morning - no seats, only works! And in the evening - read as much as you...

This was and Granny Lidia Viktorovna. The latter even in old age with her mother sat in the car and just rolled with it in Moscow...

Father in terms of habits and temperament was the complete opposite of the mother. Heavy homebody who hated noisy and runs away from home when expected guests.

While he's in the mid-eighties not fully devoted himself “big science”, he was with his offishness and pugnaciousness very difficult. But in the sixties and even more so.

Under pressure from his family, he still has stopped working belokamenschikom and moved to “graduate” specialty - restorer. He had to change three places of work, and with one of them allegedly kicked him, because he -- he climbed into the office through the window, only to once again not to meet with colleagues.

Climbed it or not - I do not know about this I was told not overwhelmingly to him with love Lidia Viktorovna, but there is no doubt that the father was irritated the authorities sharp statements and defiant disregard all sorts of political information, Union meetings and other Soviet nonsense.

Only somewhere in the late sixties father, finally “caught” for the post of architect at the relatively liberal trust Mosoblstroyrestavratsiya“. The work was with objects (mostly cathedrals and monasteries) throughout the area, it was necessary to continuously drive, but it is found much more to my taste than wiping his pants in the office. Domogatskii habits Wolfgang volfgangovicha was expressed that, in what would be a far edge of the Moscow region he went, they always slept only at home, even if it is in the morning we had to go back into the same area...

The appearance father formed at the same time glasses, beard, huge dimensions, in particular “overweight”, fantastic physical strength, health and stamina - in conditions of the eternal lack of “rabsila” restorers themselves, and punched holes, and excavated foundations, and put a brick...

Father, incidentally, had worked with Peter Baranovsky, as to him “attached” to the internship.

Peter D., of course, the figure is ambiguous. Modern specialists (including my father) believe his approach to architecture monuments rough, unsystematic, almost barbaric. But no doubt that it was a man, fanatically devoted to his work. Father he was tied to a chair (!), so that he never left and traits.

And my father told me how very old and almost blind Peter D., to show young professionals such as climbing on forests, climbed on them... from the outside.

Indeed, the last story, I was not surprised. Father under seventy, but he calmly climbs in winter, on slippery roof of the Cathedral, only removes shoes - said it's easier to cling to. And ten years ago I saw the new Jerusalem Cathedral, the same age as his father, restorer Max B. Chernyshev (even then, unlike Wolfgang volfgangovicha, a little stoop-shouldered stereopony Mr.), without any apparent effort climbed the dizzying height and almost smooth column, in order to show the work of some curl...

Professionals, what can I say?

Dad always get up exactly at six in the morning - for some reason, he never had the alarm, and Wake on radio national anthem. Even on weekends. And the mother possible long luxuriated in bed, and my father brought her tea (for some reason tea, not coffee).

Anyway, my father loved my mother, and no scenes of jealousy I parties are not observed, although the reasons, I think there were many. Father and mother often kissed, and I saw that parents kiss, ran to him and climbed up to the father's hands to “get” me.

As such different people got on, is a mystery. Apparently, due to the complete opposites complement each other. Plus, of course, certain mutual tact, political Concord and love of art - their tastes almost always agreed, but disagreement over some poetic subtlety could result in a fight with loud cries. Temperament...

Interesting, but what the habits and traits “sixties” still different from today?

Many have often heard from parents words like: “well, we were your age is not such” (uneducated, lazy, depraved). Or: “But our generation”... Thank you father and mother, grandparents - such nonsense-I never heard of.

All the talk about the fact that one generation is better and another worse, occur in strictly defined cases when the representative of a generation than they do not like the behavior of a representative of another generation. For example, if the parents burghers daughter leaned in Bohemia, their dissatisfaction tends to grow to global assessments: “On the days of morals”.

But if this were true - mankind would already sunk, at least up to a total denial of any moral values, but for some reason this did not happen.

On my deep belief, any “conflict of generations” absolutely Laden and is usually a conflict of classes and social strata (well according to Marx). Children grow, independently choose their social circle and profession, and parents do not always like their choice. This is happening at all times, and “good” or “bad” generation does not happen.

How, then, in the human psyche is a desire to humiliate the present and the future for the sake of the past?

I'm not a psychologist, so just give my guess: this characteristic above all people, “adrift” and saw every new day as the approach of the inevitable end. And such people, unfortunately, the majority. Some start this “swim with the flow” with retirement, some with the Institute's bench, and some even earlier.

And how would such a person was not years, he tries on “sadly, I look at our generation” to yourself as “on the days of morals” to the children. And the question: “Where is better?” he would answer something like: “we do.” That is, in his view, it was better when he was young... (well studied, commander of the platoon, led by the plant). And the grass, as it is known, earlier was greener and the trees above.

Actually, probably, can be followed by Hemingway said about the “lost” generation, but only because of wars, revolutions and dictatorships. But again: why is “lost”? Somebody has since remained alive, otherwise life on earth died out long ago. Battered psyche? And who is not broken, sorry? That's what life is, to take her and to smooth things over.

Can it be called “lost” truly unfortunate generation of my grandparents? Hardly. They were hard, but they survived and grown children. They were that children pass and tell, and not all the descendants humiliated phrases: “Here you are lazy and fat, and we was your age...”

And when I look at from this point of the sixties, a time of spiritual formation of the generation of my parents, I don't see any difference between “them” and “our” psychology. Just life around differed from the present as much as, for example, Khrushchev from Yeltsin. And so - and laughed, and cried, and worked, and walked, and loved, and threw...

Such a super-long entry needed to briefly say:

We will not try to identify some special, unique habits and traits that are common to all “sixties”. Such attempts or doomed to failure, or linked to the analysis of policy, economy, art, science, technology, fashion and hairstyles.

XII

Our generation sees the time since the death of Stalin until the early nineties, as many eras - “early” Khrushchev (1953-1956), “thaw” (1956-1964), “early” Brezhnev (1965-1970), the Brezhnev “stagnation” (1970-1982), Andropov attempts to make hard power (1983-1984), chernigovskogo “return to stagnation” (1984-1985), of Gorbachev's perestroika (1985-1991), the collapse of the Soviet state and the beginning of the Gaidar reforms (1991-1993).

I think that in the very near future historians will describe all of the above periods as one - the transition from the Stalinist dictatorship to a democratic state (if we still manage to him go).

Everything that we talked about political information about a global, research-based differences between the Soviet power from imperialism and socialist political economy of capitalism, is a complete lie. All was much simpler: Communist ideas covered the military dictatorship, targeted to conquer the world.

Hence, all the specific features of the socialist economy - distribution system, the global charging direction of almost all of the profits at the disposal of the state, state ownership of all businesses and others.

In fact, the whole country turned into one giant Corporation, to which the Western-type monsters “British Petroleum” or “General Motors” was very far away. And as you know, the bigger the Corporation, the more difficult it becomes to manage and the lower right hand knows what the left is doing.

Fair to say that excessive centralization is more or less able to work in wartime, and perhaps precisely because of this system, Stalin was able to win the war. But then the war ended for all but the USSR!

And seems to be relatively peaceful sixties actually were marked by a continuous “prelude” to the global war in which Korea and Vietnam were perceived only as a testing ground for new types of weapons. And in terms of actual war is absolutely no surprise vicious persecution Pasternak, Brodsky, Sinyavsky and Daniel, Solzhenitsyn, and the heroes of the civil rights movement. The instinct to suppress dissent is present in any military dictatorship. In war as in war, even if it is “cold”...

But if Stalin in the late thirties could split the Western world and incite Hitler in Western Europe after the war, neither he nor his successor, Khrushchev, nothing of the kind could not do that.

Against the Soviet Union proved to resources around the world. Khrushchev, he could oppose only feverishly mined virgin soil, and Brezhnev - Siberian oil and gas complex. And then, both on the cost of losing an “enemy” counterparts - canadian wheat and Arab oil.

Besides, everyone knows that the larger the Corporation, the less ordinary employee interest in the global results of its operations and, accordingly, lower productivity.

Ultimately, the Soviet Union destroyed the invention suicidal nuclear weapons: use it Stalin couldn (the Americans were much more), Khrushchev and Brezhnev, thank God, did not dare, and without it the global war against the United States did not succeed. And so it happened that launched by Stalin in the thirties of the war for world domination has become the “arms race”, adopted an economic nature.

But the economic war, the USSR had lost in the fifties. Force is to recognize only found Gorbachev, and before that all attempts of his predecessors something “twist” of the militia of the Soviet economy ended in failure. Yes, the political and economic dictatorship theoretically allow them to do anything, just are not getting is not enough resources. In the end, the last continuously filmed with the consumer sector” and went to prepare a hypothetical war.

Shops slowly but surely emptied. In parallel there was an unprecedented and totally unjustified accumulation of arms.

Hydrogen bomb (what a paradox is created under the guidance of academician Sakharov!) was for Khrushchev effective means of intimidation of the West. At one international conference Nikita Sergeevich boasted “Sakharov” a bomb of 100 megatons, that is 5,000 times stronger than the one that was dropped on Hiroshima.

But for my generation “nuclear bomb” has turned into a curse childhood. The Treaty banning nuclear weapon tests in water, air and on earth was signed in 1963, and before that (and probably some time after) blew up anywhere and anything. The result is widespread radioactive fallout, that is, the set of genetic faults and unprecedented acceleration of the sixties generation was born.

I rise 190 cm among my peers are not that high. So, a little above average... And those who are older or younger than me for ten years - much more low, that is normal. Don't know what this says official statistics, but in my experience, it is true.

I'm still relatively lucky - a congenital physical defects, I only had an inguinal hernia, which I happily right at the age of eight months, for some reason, while cutting the abdomen. Many of my peers are much less fortunate. In my generation, not a rare kidney, congenital heart defects and other unpleasant things.

Food shortage is still not as sharp as in the late eighties, but still a deficit - also put their two cents in “a set of diseases” my generation.

For example, unbalanced diet and lack of vitamins, along with a hungry wartime childhood parents led to widespread childhood rickets, a softening of the bones and violation of many body functions. I remember in high school we all went to class on some check-up and looked at each other's medical card. Rickets varying degrees in early childhood was almost at all. And it is in Moscow, among the students of elite schools, that is relatively well-fed! What happened in the province?

From rickets and beriberi children tried to save the ugly “fish oil”. I hope the memory of the last to die with my generation...

No, not all was rosy in those whose childhood fell on the “successful” of the sixties. But at least we were the first (!) generation in Russia of the XX century, not experienced what real hunger.

PAH-PAH, touch wood.

XIII

When a brilliant, talented and untalented and other writers began in colorful detail to describe his early childhood, I feel envy, bordering on disbelief - as they remember that so well?

I, for example, from my preschool age I remember only a few episodes, and many of them - later retelling of the parents.

For example, years old that way three or four, in the country, I sat down at the OSU and it stung me mercilessly into the place that I sat down. My grandmother later claimed that my cry she heard, while in the store (which is very long). If I were writing something from the realm of fiction, I've pictured it would be. And since I'm a writer, I say honestly, nothing but some kind of intuitive memories of what happened on the terrace and it was very painful, I don't remember.

Same thing with the hospital, where I was for a couple of days came with suspected appendicitis, when I was four years old. Before the eyes of some murky picture of the chamber with several companions in misfortune, and all.

Riding on Lomonosovsky Prospekt slides, I together with a sledge somersault over his head. It remains subconscious feeling of a coup...

I vaguely remember Vasya Swan pond near the Chinese Embassy. I remember the broken Windows in the Embassy - then just Mao TSE-Tung had broken relations with the USSR and the Moskovsky Komsomolets betrayed ink (!), so they went to the demonstration of the PRC Embassy and beat their Windows. Again, more details about the ink and the Komsomol, I learned much later.

I remember walking with Moses Naumovich in Neskuchny garden. I remember in childhood by his former construction worker on the influence of playing in the subway - in microphone and announced the station said: “Mind the doors”. Since then can transfer all stations on almost any line...

I remember a shunting locomotive, which went far from our house on Lomonosovsky Prospekt. The funny thing is that the rail line among ordinary urban intact so far is the access road to some grim coating plant in front of the main building of the University. Pure Soviet contrasts.

Remember, as I licked the cold iron fence to check - but is it really will froze language? I said a lot about this... Language, of course, frozen, and who and how he was to take off - I don't remember.

I remember in the suburban rest house I drank out of thin glass and accidentally crunched, but a miracle did not cut and the fragments are not swallowed.

I remember in the same house vacation we grandfather Mikhail Naumovich walked along a narrow path in the snow to feed some local dog.

Once in the country, I was deathly, the ambulance from Zagorsk came only a few hours, but, fortunately, the neighbor pediatrician, and she told me in time did the washing stomach, and then for some reason put an enema. Say, I was five years old and was close to that of light (random rhyme), but in my mind there was only bed in the garden, where I lay, and the unpleasant sensation of the enema.

Health was already very not very good - I remember one day in the kindergarten and immediately became ill, than I am not allowed there, but I'm not particularly eager.

Clearly remember grandfather Mikhail N. taught me to ride a Bicycle, but as I was about whether it was pre-school age?

All of these memories - as if the old faded photos, and not taken by me, and from somewhere off to the side. I do not understand how these passages lay seamless video preschool years. Maybe someone else arranged the memory, but I did not get.

There are a few “lasting” memories - a chess game with dad, playing chess, checkers and cards with my grandfather, Mikhail Naumovich Zagraevsky (Moses Averbach fundamentally not played), walks villas, trips to the sea in Odessa... But it was in preschool and school age.

For me “watershed” between the sixtieth and seventieth years - moving to a new apartment in 1970 and “Hello, school” in 1971-m

Mikhail N. Zagraevsky, retires, he made himself and daughters of the big two-room apartment near to the underground River Station (one of six gray panel “towers” before leaving for the city of Leningrad highway).

The name of this building society unpalatable Soviet name of “industrial construction”, that is, had something to do even less pronounced organization “Glavpromstroy”. And this “civil” organization primarily engaged in military construction, it has worked closely with the “Centroamerica” (the same language will break), where my grandfather worked until retirement.

Grandfather was Chairman of the cooperative, so I chose (or chose Lidia Viktorovna?) the best apartments. And over each other, and the Windows are not on the highway, and the fifth and sixth floors, that was important. In those days, eighteen-storey house in Moscow were a rarity, and to the upper floors of almost did not reach the hot water.

We rode on the Leningrad highway on a “Zaporozhets”, and grandfather from a distance showed me high grey house, and said, “this is our”. With this absolutely distinct memories for me to early seventies. I was six years old.

CHAPTER 4: “STAGNATION”

Introduction

Chapter 1. “Soviet burgers”

Chapter 2. Vorkuta

Chapter 3. Sixties

Chapter 4: “Stagnation”

Chapter 5. Psychoanalysis

Chapter 6. Lenin, Party, Komsomol

Chapter 7. “Scientific career”

Chapter 8. Euphoria of epochs changing

Chapter 9. Arkady

Chapter 10. Commerce

Chapter 11. The loss of the bank

Chapter 12. Christianity

Illustrations

To the page “Memoirs”

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