Alone with Myself
Alone with Myself or How to Reach You, Descendants! by Leonid Karakhanovich Hurunts. A posthumous publication of entries from 1975-1982. Translated from the original Russian to English by Learn for Artsakh.
Part Seven: Reports from a Hospital Bed
They cut down a tree that fed people and gave the earth shade. Spring has dried up, because the tree no longer breathes ... Then lines of refugees. Flight. Flight from anywhere you look. Overgrown paths through your deserted mountains. What have you not seen, my father’s home, the home of my ancestors, my Hiroshima!
They brought me “The Week” from the hospital library. The issue was old and well-read. I leafed through it and came across a most interesting note. It belongs to bygone times. A serf girl of the Bezhetsky district, the fiefdom of Mr. Shamshiev, the village of Skodelyu, Marfa Yevlapieva wrote a petition to the provincial chancellery complaining about her landlord, who hardly fed or clothed his household servants, exhausted them with hard work, and "every now and then put his kulaks into action."
Under the then bureaucracy, each case went through more than 50 instances before leaving the provincial office. Nevertheless, the petition of the serf girl from Skomoroshykha reached the highest authority. Shamshiev was severely punished for inhuman deeds and forbidden the temporary keeping of serfs. And during the investigation, he was removed from his estate, so as not to interfere with the clarification of the truth.
I am not a serf, nor are many of my friends who write with anger to all authorities about the outrages in Karabakh, in particular about the regional committee secretary Kevorkov, who did so much evil, but there was no reaction. Karabakh is at the mercy of an omnivorous boa constrictor, ready to devour it whole. Where are you, our great democracy? I am ready to give you to anyone, asking in return for the crumbs of justice that befell the serf girl Marfa Evlampieva from the village of Skomoroshikha in the godforsaken Bezhetsk district. I would trade equally without selling short.
Tell me, hand over heart, how much have you read, how much do you know about the mistakes that were made, say, in the process of collectivization, how the heads of men who were true poets of the land, who knew what they were doing, were shamelessly declared kulaks? Or how much did it cost us to kiss the forehead of an idler who, having received land under the new government, had not grown a single ear in ten years. The poor man is our backbone, we used to repeat these words written down somewhere before the Soviet regime and carried them over to our days. And what happened was irreparable. The poor man who grew weeds on his plot of land became an important figure, and the poor man who grew bread and fed himself and the country became only an ally, gravitating towards becoming a kulak. And with the so-called kulak the conversation is short. Pack your bags and go straight to Solovki. What's easier: to grow bread or weeds? For bread you can be sent to Solovki, but for weeds you get nothing but favors.
And when now, we, Russia, buy bread in America, we want to scream from pain, from resentment. After all, then, during the years of collectivization, with the light hand of Stalin, we marked the beginning of our troubles, our end.
Or our other misfortune: the 37th Year [Great Purge]. Arrests, rampant Stalinism, which lowered our prestige in world public opinion. Try to find some detailed conversation on this subject. You won't. We are silent.
Memories go on and on, and I silently write them down…..
What is the vow of silence that we take almost from the cradle of our new life? This is an unconscious misfortune, an irreversible process, in the depths of which our death is brewing. Cowardice placed on a pedestal. A death sentence passed on oneself. This is what our silence is. If you see evil, turn away from it. Try not to notice. Don't we have enough good things? Enjoy it. And for the bosses, such silence is just a godsend. One of the subordinates uttered a word in defiance, saw something that should not have been seen, and so the leader became ambitious:
“What is this? A whiner's sermon. At a time when the world is reacting! … And you with your remark. Watch your mouth!”
Any criticism for such a leader is not timely. There is always some kind of “reaction” that prevents us from talking about our shortcomings. A universal gag designed to close the mouth of anyone who dares to put in a word in defense of justice.
No, no, no, I can't be pushed into any framework now, the genie is out of the bottle, I can't be stopped. And I will not calm down, I will not rest until I speak out, until I speak about what hurts my heart. And it hurts not only about Karabakh, but for all our desecrated lives…
If you want to kill a man and deprive him of a piece of bread, call him a dissenter. Dissenter! I'd like to see a world without a dissenter. A society where only smiling, satisfied little people live, shouting "hurrah!" indiscriminately, indifferent to good and evil. If someone manages to create such a society to the misfortune of mankind, it will be like a herd of obedient sheep, mindlessly, indiscriminately throwing themselves into the abyss after the leader.
Listen, how do you understand Gorky, who said: "And if we really need to talk about 'sacred', then only a person's dissatisfaction with himself and his desire to be better than himself is sacred"? Or Narekatsi... Let us remember his poetic line: "Who can compare with me in wrongdoing and iniquity?" What a line! The whole of Narekatsi is a man's dissatisfaction with himself, a cry that both life and man are imperfect.
In other words, every thinking person, including Narekatsi, Gorky, and many, many other discoverers of truths, are dissenters. And thank God!
Very often I think about silent people. How do they do it? It's not an easy task either! Meet the carrion and do not pinch your nose, do not turn your face away. Constantly smile at the boss, agreeing with him in everything, even if he is a complete fool. I wonder if at least once in my life such a silent person did not allow himself to speak freely, without looking back at anyone? Is it really true that in our little fair, changeable life, he never once allowed something unnecessary, never lost his temper, and never had the reins get under his tail?
If I stay alive and I'm lucky, I'm elected as a deputy and nominated for a high position, then maybe I'll understand why I need to be silent? How much is this silence worth? A high position and deputy is not only a gag, a vow of silence, but also money. In kind, round sum. Cunningly invented!
Stop, Hurunts. Do not stir up the past, do not look for only black in it. Admit that you were by no means bypassed by fate. Almost 30 published books and friendly reviews. Finally, a high order for labor activity. Yes, and you met a lot of respectable people along the way and wrote about them. Why now gather all the villains together lined up in order, as if for review? Look, they say, how miserable I am, what I went through.
I admit that this preponderance is due to the very topic of my entries. It's true, I met a lot of good people, and I had a lot of luck, but it's also true that it wasn't good people that drove me here, to this hospital bed, but bad ones. And collecting them under one roof, I want everyone to see what hardened bastards live among us. I want to warn you that evil is always active, while good is passive, and this has already been verified: one villain can do such perversity, denigrate so that a hundred righteous people will not be able to clean it afterwards.
It is not for nothing that folk wisdom says, "A hundred friends are few, one enemy is many."
Sofya Misakovna [the nurse] came with a pile of printed pages of poetry. Most of them are dedicated to the patients she cured. She lets me read.
I breathed a sigh of relief. So it passed. She is no longer afraid to overload me. Poor Sofya Misakovna! She doesn't know how I've been "lounging around" all these days, chained to my hospital bed. She does not know what journeys her patient made, how he clashed with Kevorkov, tormenting himself with doubts and anxieties. I haven't gone a single day without having a hard time.
Among the poems dedicated to the sick, there is also Bagrat Ulubabyan who, a few weeks before me, was here, in this ward, on the same bed. Bagrat rubbed Kevorkov's nose in. I don't know if it was Kevorkov's fault that he ended up in hospital, having had a heart attack, but Bagrat rubbed the secretary's nose in thoroughly. I am talking about Ulubabyan's new book, which puts all the dots on the "i.” In it he puts his opponents - pseudo-scientists - on both blades with arguments, operating only with historical facts, dispelling the myth about the natives of Karabakh from now on and forever. From now on and forever the Karabakh Armenians are registered on their land, our ancient Artsakh is given its honorable place in the history of native Armenia.
Just how did he, ah-ha-Kevorkov, carry that kick to the groin?
It happened at a football match. FC Ararat (Yerevan) and FC Spartak (Moscow) played. The teams are leading the table, going to the finish line - the game promised to be interesting.
In the midst of the game, after a beautiful goal against the Moscovians, there was a brawl on the field. Ararat goalkeeper Abrahamyan left the goal and ran to the scene. The referee did not stop the game, although both teams, huddled together, were discussing the unpleasant incident.
Taking advantage of the turmoil, one of the Spartak players separated from the general pile of players and calmly drove the ball into the unprotected goal of Ararat. The referee scored the goal. The enraged stadium shouted in unison. The public, indignant at the injustice, stamped their feet, went on a rampage...
But why are we so deaf to injustice when it's not happening on the football field?
When we are alone with our conscience, someone else's misfortune?
Not a day without a line. These words became my commandment even in the hospital bed. I wrote them down furtively, in secret from the doctors, and now I bring them to your judgment, dear reader, no matter how far away from me you are, no matter how many decades have separated us.
How not to remember P.P. Vladimirov, who wrote down in his “Special Region in China,” published posthumously, golden, courageous words addressed to us. Remember: “I must have no mercy for myself. I must write the truth. I must not lie to myself or look for compromise.”
And we are infinitely grateful to him, a great patriot, Pyotr Parfenovich Vladimirov for this uncompromising truth. Vladimirov, alas, who shared the fate of Sorge [Richard Sorge was a German communist and Soviet military intelligence officer famously known for his espionage work in Japan. His intelligence gathering is considered instrumental in shaping the Soviet Union’s strategy against the Eastern front. He infiltrated high levels of politics and was able to warn the Soviet Union of Germany’s planned invasion, Operation Barbossa. Sorge was eventually betrayed and arrested by the Japanese. He was convicted and hanged in 1994.]
Morning sun. Woke up in a good mood. There are two of us patients in the ward. Downright lordly conditions. In a word, we are also in the position of the elite. The bad thing is that there is no one to have a word with. We really got tired of each other. We know everything about each other inside and out. And yet there is something to talk about, although my partner is not conducive to a peaceful, sincere conversation. And today I am angry, spoiling my good mood, because of the dispute about Berlin, about our victory.
Yes, we came to Berlin, conquered it, but did we win the right to write about our victory in full voice? No, we were not given such a right. They didn’t let us say everything about our soldier - from beginning to end. And there is something to say.
Actually, what happened in the last war? Two soldiers met. Both are armed to the teeth. But only one had a military machine behind him, calibrated to the last screw; there were generals and field marshals with extensive experience in modern warfare. And the other has a crushed general army, executed generals and marshals, the idiocy of the Stalinist regime, which took away the color of the people, and many other voids. And the soldier, behind whom there were these voids, overthrew his enemy, the fascist predator, and came to Berlin. When we talk about victory and try to ignore everything we had to overcome, we belittle it.
The colonel is indignant, he does not want to hear about the stolen victory, he sees only valor in the defunct Patriotic War.
I'm silent. It was not proper for a junior lieutenant to scold a colonel. But, fortunately, he does not recognize subordination. And although the colonel begins to listen to some of my arguments and think, I still fall silent. This conversation is not appropriate. And I smile tightly, trying in vain to regain a good mood.
Saturday and Sunday are our days, days without increased medical supervision. One doctor on duty who comes on call if you feel unwell. And if everything is in order with your health, all two days are yours, you can convince your intractable partner of something, at worst, go into the past, in which fragments of memories lie in layers, like photographs, where negatives and positives coexist peacefully. Where were they stored for so many years? I didn't even realize I remembered so much. What a pity that more bad things befell me. I'm just unlucky. All my life I was persecuted, either because of my father or because of my uncle. And then for my own “mistakes.”
It seems I was mistaken about my partner. Fate favored him more than me, but he also had a lot of sad things of his own, which he talks about very sparingly. Besides everything else, he has his own executioner, thanks to whom he ended up here in the hospital. He has his own scores to settle with various “post-war punks,” as the colonel once put it.
I’m reading the first issue of the magazine “Foreign Literature” for 1972. It published the novel “Football 1860” by the Japanese writer Kenzaburo Oe. In the note preceding the novel there is brief information about the author. From it we learn that Oe is thirty-six years old. In 1966, a six-volume collection of his works was published, and within three years it was reprinted seven times. And the novel itself, published in the magazine, went through eleven editions in its homeland within one year.
The sidebar contains text from a report at the congress of the Union of Democratic Literature of Japan, which states: “There are writers who see their task as sharply criticizing the reactionary phenomena of modern Japanese reality. An example is ‘Football 1860’ by Kenzaburo Oe.”
Comments, as they say, are unnecessary. We feel envious when we read such lines, lines that seem to us like the most ardent, daring fiction.
I just don’t understand why it was necessary, having driven us, the writers, into a certain framework, to tease like that. It is impossible, inhumanely, to eat when hungry, to gobble up both cheeks.
“I love Russia to the point of heartache, ardently and sincerely,” Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin exclaimed, “and I can’t even imagine myself anywhere but Russia.”
Love for the motherland did not prevent, however, the great satirist from being "the prosecutor of Russian public life," as the revolutionary democratic press called him.
Why am I denied love and judgement?
It is known that the victory of the Russians over Napoleon was crowned with a monument to Alexander I in St. Petersburg. Pushkin received an invitation to its opening, but did not accept it. He did not consider Alexander I worthy of such a monument. The poet expressed his attitude to the royal "heroism" as follows:
Brought up under a drum,
Our tsar was a dashing captain:
He fled at Austerlitz,
In the twelfth year he trembled ...
He did not succeed in “friendship” with Nicholas I either. In order to get closer to the rebellious poet, the tsar decided to “forgive” all his sins and “showed him mercy.” Pushkin, tired of exile, surveillance and persecution, promised the tsar to become different. But he couldn't be different. A little later, addressing the Decembrists in Siberia, he wrote:
“I sing the old hymns…”
What would have happened to Russia if the poet had become different, if he had been broken? Russia would not have Pushkin.
A life lived. There is something to think about, something to remember. There have been many different things for each of us - both good and bad. Life itself with its unexpected gifts of happiness as if smooths out the sharp edges. It's like we'll get along. But we will not stick to the old saying. Let's talk frankly about what prevents us from being happy. And I want to say it in plain text, without adjusting to the iron shell of censorship.
I read the speech from the throne of America's new president, Gerald Ford. There, among other things, are such words: "Pray for former President Nixon, who needs your prayers ..." Ford says so respectfully about his predecessor, who disgraced the whole world.
A.E. Kochinyan was expelled from the high position of the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Armenia. A day or two later, there was a session of the Supreme Soviet in Moscow.
Those who were at the Yerevan airfield that day could see the following picture: Kochinyan stands alone with his family, and all the other delegates stand apart. At a respectful distance. And none of the former colleagues approached him, did not exchange a word with him. It was like he wasn't there. As if not yesterday they called him "Anton Yervandovich." They left a person in trouble, in misfortune. And all this is in the order of things.
I remember a symposium of writers and critics in Tbilisi, in which I participated quite recently. The theme of the symposium is the image of a communist in literature. Here it is, a living illustration of this image. Admire!
How I would like to see Kochinyan instead of Ford, and Ford instead of Kochinyan, so that they swap places. That would be a portrait! A portrait not of a conformist coward, but of a man! If you want - a communist!
How strange: according to the logic of things, Ford is a communist, and we ... Who are we? What name corresponds to our essence, an essence devoid of the smallest fraction of decency? Here it is, our moral character! It's not the mirror's fault that the face is crooked. The most beautiful mirror will not correct your face. Here is my speech, not delivered at the symposium. In many ways, we are all conformists.
If, in addition to the Communist Party, there was also a Party of Cosmopolitans and I was asked to choose one of them, I would certainly choose the latter.
The twentieth century, our insidious age. What kind of monsters have you spawned?
I'm 65 now, I have nothing to lose. I am ready to repeat after Dostoevsky: "... I do not believe ... carts delivering bread to mankind ... without a moral foundation." It remains to be asked, who made us like this? I will answer this question without looking around: it was the notorious democratic centralism that made us so. We dare not think.
Time will tell what will come of it. And that time is not far off. I would like to say, ahead of tomorrow: on soil watered with blood, a tree of paradise will not grow. The fruits on it will be bitter. We have grown such a tree. But we swallow, pretending to eat the fruits of paradise.
I had a friend who was a veterinarian. In 1937 he was taken. Eighteen years later he returned … A man far from politics, he loved his hoofed patients, and was known as a good veterinarian. I asked my friend why they took him after all.
“I have infected horses with meningitis!”
“Seriously?”
The vet smiled sadly, “If I could infect at least one horse with meningitis, then I would certainly have been awarded the Nobel Prize. Animals, as it appens, do not get sick with meningitis.”
“Is this known to science?”
“It is known.”
A girl I knew was expelled from the Komsomol, from the institute. This was not in 1937, but long before that. Everyone knew that Anya was dating a fellow student, Slava, was going to marry him, and suddenly she had a dream about her husband, either an officer or a NEPman.
“A stupid dream.” Anya was indignant, telling her friend about this. “One of these days, Slava and I are getting married, but I dreamed of another.”
The friend snitched. Thus began the personal affair of the Komsomol member Anya.
I told about this case in the novel Clouds of My Youth. Reviewers, reading this passage in the manuscript, without saying a word, attributed it as excessive hyperbole. They didn't believe it was real.
One day I met Anya on the street in Baku.
“You know, Anya,” I complained, “no one believes that you were expelled from the institute for sleeping. For an ideologically unsustainable dream,” I corrected myself.
“Don't believe it?” Anya was surprised. “Do you want me to write you a receipt? And Slava will sign it. After all, I married him later.”
I took such a certificate under two signatures from Anya and showed it to my reviewers. Still didn't believe it. Our memory is short.
The writer of these lines suffered for... Spinoza. I wrote an essay in which I highlighted the role of the medieval philosopher. What a miscalculation! It turns out that this Spinoza did not always follow “the high road of materialism”; sometimes he stumbled along it. What a materialist he is! And something else like that. I was declared a Spinozist.
But this was not new either. In those years, former students of the Philosophical Institute walked around Moscow in shoals, who were also expelled - some for Hegel, some for Kant, even for the teacher Marx Feuerbach. They were called that way: “Hegelian,” “Kantian,” “Feuerbachian.” What other philosophers are there when there are Marx and Engels!
Funny? No, it's bitter. More bitter than bitter!
When Anya ran into the reception room of a high institution with her grief, I was sitting among other expelled people and also waiting for the reception. To achieve this, it was necessary to report the complaint to someone by phone. Anya reported. I remember this conversation word for word. Anya screamed into the phone, for which she was expelled. That’s what she said: for an ideologically unrestrained dream. The students present during this conversation, who had also been expelled on equally ridiculous charges, burst into loud sobs.
But the voice on the phone said, and we all heard it:
“The boss can't see you. What kind of Komsomol member are you if you dream of NEPmen?”
I often think about this telephone conversation. Who was he, the one who said those words on the other end of the line? A fool? I don't think so. An enemy? Not really. Too small. Probably some lowlife. The terrible force that would later become the main driving force behind the 37th year, the arrests, the camps.
I am always indignant when, when speaking about violations of Soviet legality, only the year 37 is mentioned, and not in full voice. It is not true, our laws were violated all the years Stalin lived.
I was expelled from the institute in the 31st year. Anya too. Various “Hegelians” and “Kantians” also fell into those distant years.
Quite recently, with a great delay, I came across a book by former camp resident Boris Dyakov. I read it in Komarovo, in the House of Creativity. At my table sat one of the characters in this book, an excellent writer and great patriot Boris Chetverikov, who even wrote a poem about Lenin in the camp and miraculously saved it from frequent raids. After serving neither less nor more than eighteen years, he retained faith in the party, in Lenin, writing many talented books after exile. A year before, in Maleevka, I also happened to sit at the same table with another character in this book - Alexander Izbakh. I saw a former camp inmate, declared an enemy of the people, working at his desk. What kind of books did he then publish? Try to find the shadow of the enemy in them. Here I met Berestinsky, a famous film playwright.
“Excuse me... Are you not that Berestinsky?... From Dyakov's book.”
Berestinsky nods his head. He is sick, a serious illness will soon bring him to the grave. I firmly shake the ex-convict’s hand, thanking him for the new picture that I just watched. And, of course, I remember the camp executioner, the vulgar Petrov, who interrogated him.
"Well, well … Berestovsky? From Moscow? Higher education? Writer. Isaakovich? Well, well ... They've sent someone! A living engineer of human souls! Interesting ... What are you, an engineer, composing everything from your mind?”
“From my mind.”
“Well, all right ... What kind of work can I give you so that you don't overload your clever head, Isaakovich? This is how it works: tomorrow morning you start cleaning toilets! I'll give you a golden position, eh?"
Colonel Gerasimov, from the same book by Dyakov, interrogating Larisa, a student at a Moscow Institute accused of "adoration of foreign fashions," put her in a punishment cell and demanded that she "confess." (Anya should be grateful to fate. If she had caught Colonel Gerasimov, it would not have been for a dream). Larisa stood before him in a torn dress, hungry, shivering as in the cold ... The colonel showered her with profanity, ate berries, spitting the pits in her face...
The heart bleeds when you read pages about Todorsky or Vareikis, Lenin’s associates, highly respected by him. And look at the dates of arrests. Many were taken in 1949. From the “Spinozists” and “Hegelians” to 1949, as they say, the distance is enormous, but the method is the same. A famous engineer was sentenced to fifteen years because someone saw in him “active remnants of capitalism.” Air Marshal Alexander Khudyakov (Khanferyants) died, falsely accused of espionage for Germany, against which he fought so famously. Also in 1949. The author of the book I mentioned, Boris Dyakov, was imprisoned for ten years after the war, accused of dramatizing the novel “Anna Karenina”... to promote the life of the landowners and nobility...
Re-reading Dyakov’s book, I again remember Anya, her conversation on the phone and who was on the other end of the line.
Marietta Shaginyan has such a story: a dog, in the darkness not recognizing the owner, pounced and bit him. When the dog comes to his senses, he dies of shame....
But how many of us, having made mistakes, sometimes grave crimes, are then ashamed?
In Dyakov's book there is such a piece: many years later, the former camp girl Larisa, who has already graduated from the Institute of Engineering, accidentally meets Gerasimov, her executioner, at the entrance to the restaurant, where she ran in with her friends to have a bite to eat.
“So it’s you who is our tormentor,” Larisa screamed and raised her hand to hit him in the face. The colonel backed away, buried his head in his shoulders, ran without looking back, like a thief, and disappeared.
Let's say in passing: it was easy for him to hide. They are not looking for him. Everything had forgiven him.
At the Azerbaijan State University - in 1937 it was - the day came when not a single teacher remained. The entire administration, the deans, the rector himself, all were arrested. Including professors Juzier, Baibakov, Gubaidulin, world-famous scientists. Professor Tumbel, who was not allowed into the building of the university, sat down on the little step of the stairs and immediately died ...
And nothing new or surprising. When were we not killed? Some at home, others in remote places of exile. While Stalin lived, there were no interruptions in this.
Many, many years later, all this will be streamlined, bashfully called the mistakes of the cult of personality, and right there, so that you do not have time to insert a word, they will list the virtues of the killer. The killer of entire nations wholesale and retail and - virtue.
In Tallinn we were shown the house of a man who worked as an executioner in bourgeois Estonia. He surrounded his house with a high fence so that people could not see him. The Estonian executioner was embarrassed by his profession, ashamed of it, but we have no shame, no conscience. Anachronism.
In 1912, a steamship caught fire in France, carrying the works of the young but already well-known Armenian artist Martiros Saryan. Several paintings were burned down in the fire.
In the two-storey Museum-Apartment of Martiros Saryan in Yerevan, along with the works of the artist, magazines and newspapers in French are exhibited, among which there are many fresh ones. In them, fans of Saryan's talent recall this incident with pain. In France, searches are still underway - maybe someone will find a miraculously surviving fragment of Saryan's masterpieces?
This moved me greatly, and I hastened to share my joy with the varpet.
“Nothing, and someday we will learn to respect art,” Martiros Sergeevich said sadly.
And he told how in 1937 some people in civilian clothes came to him, took away more than ten paintings, mostly portraits, piled them in the yard, like a log, on top of each other, doused them with kerosene and set them on fire ...
I remembered all this in connection with the TASS statement about Israel, which set fire to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, one of the oldest and most unique monuments of Arab architecture in the Middle East. TASS rightly reprimands Israel for this act of vandalism. But why were they silent when the fire of Saryan's paintings burned, when many, many books were removed from the shelves? Why don't we publish Averchenko, Pasternak, Mandelstam, Marina Tsvetaeva, Bulgakov, Pavel Vasiliev even today? By banning them, are we committing the same act of vandalism?
But the voice of TASS is silent. We are also silent, we also remain silent, taking water into our mouths - an evil sign of the times.
A prisoner has died.
The guards were called. Three camp inmates were called. It was necessary to bury the dead man.
It was an unusually fine day for these places. A blind man has just passed through the sun and rain. There was a huge rainbow in the sky. When they filled the hole with sodden clay that stuck to shovels, one of the guards asked:
“Who are we burying?”
“The commander,” they answered him.
Without agreeing, four guards, four thoughtful, stern soldiers, fired their rifles into the air. The camp was in alarm. Other guards with dogs were already running across the field to the scene of the incident.
“What's happened? Why were you shooting?”
“The wolves attacked. We shot back.”
The guards, who had come running from the camp, turned back. The dogs too. And the four guards, who had just saluted the missing army commander, walked sadly and sternly behind the prisoners. And above the camp, high in the sky, a rainbow shone absurdly like a seven-colored gate.
An acquaintance of mine worked for many years on his dissertation: “Society and Personality.” One day I asked him how things were going. He waved his hand, “I gave up. She led me into such a jungle! If you get in deeper, you won't be able to avoid jail time.”
“Is that so?”
“Definitely. Where there is such a substance as democratic centralism, there can be no talk of personality. I came to this disconsolate conclusion.” Hesitating a bit, he added, “I read somewhere that, according to a prominent biologist, all the mysteries of the world are hidden in a green leaf, the secret of two main biological mechanisms: heredity, which guards the species, and immunity, which guards individuality. If you try to change the personality, the view will disappear.”
“Do you remember,” the former dissertation student spoke again a minute later, “the Germans invited the famous French singer Edith Piaf to give a concert in Berlin? Piaf refused, saying: ‘While the Germans are in Paris, my foot will not be in Berlin.’ I would not now remember this ordinary instance, if it were not for the case. Similarly, our singer Gohar Gasparyan received an invitation to sing in Istanbul. To sing for the Turks would be sacrilege, a mockery of the memory of fathers and grandfathers, but an order followed from Moscow, and Gasparyan, like a pretty girl, obeyed, went to Istanbul, sang for the Turks, despising her grief, her pain. How can you write a dissertation after that without making a mockery of your history and your dignity?”
I listen to my old acquaintance and remember what he used to say many years ago, when he was a Komsomol leader in Karabakh: "The Party indicates ... There is a directive..."
"Buddy," I couldn't hide my joy, "Why are you lamenting, complaining about failure? Your dissertation is a treasure. It made a man out of you. I don't know," I continue to rejoice, "what kind of candidate you would have been, but you became a man. Definitely a man. And that's not a small thing these days."
We don't live in isolation. Life catches up with us everywhere, testing our will, our courage, exposing our strengths and weaknesses.
Flaubert dreamed of hiding in an ivory tower. Zola said that he worked like a “merchant behind a desk.” But, as you know, neither one nor the other was reclusive in life. And the “merchant behind the desk” became known throughout the world for his participation in the sensational Dreyfus Affair. My grandfather was neither a writer nor a philosopher. But he said, “It’s better to be a rooster for one day, flapping its wings and crowing loudly, than to be a chicken for a hundred days and hide in the barn at every rustle.”
With a bitter smile, I now remember these words of my grandfather. I remember how I tried “one day to be a rooster,” when one of my performances “did not seem.” Jupiter is angry. And when Jupiter is angry, even the clear sky is struck by lightning. I went to the hospital with my stomach bleeding and was brought there half dead.
In the hospital I received a letter from Grigory Medynsky, with whom I am in correspondence.
“How are you alive?” he wrote. “Are you fighting? Don't get carried away. Remember that in addition to courage, a fighter also needs wisdom and cunning. And you need to win not a battle, but a war.”
Somewhere Ehrenburg said that our century is the century of the triumph of nationalism. For this they were angry with him. In my opinion, in vain. Nationalism is on the rise. In some places, it enters into a duel with internationalism, successfully fights with it and even wins. It is unwise not to reckon with such a danger.
Montesquieu said, “If I knew something that could benefit France and ruin other countries, I would never have revealed this to the sovereign, for I am first of all a man, and then a Frenchman.” Or, "I am a man - by virtue of inevitability, and a Frenchman - by chance."
France lost nothing because Montesquieu was a cosmopolitan. But we lose a lot by abandoning cosmopolitanism. The campaign against cosmopolitanism has given rise to nationalism in our country. The whole world is now howling from nationalism.
The Armenian Genocide is unparalleled in its scope of cruelty and brutality. This must be remembered. Remembered so that it won't happen again. I am not calling for revenge. I do not want a well-deserved retribution, a reciprocal flow of blood. But I am offended when my government, without asking for my consent, declares to the Turk that we have no claims against him.
It is not true. We have claims. A moral verdict has not yet been passed on the ancestors of the Turks who committed the massacre.
The Armenian Genocide is a tragedy for all mankind. By its example, the world learned what a person is capable of. The descendants of the killers are responsible for the deeds of their fathers, the mad beasts. The beast will give birth to the beast. Nobody has canceled genetics yet. In 1942, the beast woke up again. He was waiting for the fall of Stalingrad in order to put his crooked scimitar knife into action again. The killer is always a coward. He has the habits of a wolf that attacks the victim when she is weak and bleeding. When the enemy is defenseless.
Being a thinking being is an extremely unprofitable occupation; it immediately puts you in opposition to the whole world. The world around me does not tolerate dissent; the concept of “I” for it is sedition. Robots are honored there.
I happily went around all the pitfalls and reefs, and did not become a robot. "I" lives in me. Surprisingly to everyone, I do not recognize any power over myself. Of course, there were hardships and losses.
But I don't regret it. It was worth the gamble.
Every day we are told not to think, not to bother ourselves with unnecessary worries - there is someone to think for us. But behind the imaginary concern for my well-being, I hear the verdict: someone needs me to stop being a thinking being, so that I become an incubator chicken or a “product of the vegetable kingdom,” that so frightened the great Lobachevsky.
I think Gorky said that if you tell a person every day that he is a pig, then in the end he will grunt. I'm afraid that from too much worry we will soon begin to actually grunt.
We talk with anxiety about the extermination of cedars in Siberia, and the cedars are reduced and reduced, just like mulberries in my native Karabakh. We are talking with concern about factories that threaten Baikal with their waste, and factories, despite the protests of the public, continue to be built, and waste is delivered to Baikal.
I do not know the name or surname of the person whose pointing finger sent poisonous waste to Baikal, but it seems to me that he looks like the one who raised his hand against our Sevan. I don’t know by whose decree the cedars are being rapaciously exterminated, but I almost feel his closeness with that official to whom the sweetest berry in the world, our mulberry, seemed bitter.
Maybe in some ways they are different, these bureaucrats and indifferent people. By the color of hair and eyes, by height, even by character. But in the main they are surprisingly similar, stereotypically the same. They are brought together, they have one thing in common: hiding behind high words, they bring evil to people ...
Yes, we were the first in the world to send an artificial satellite into space. Yes, we have a lot of things that are breathtaking. But does this mean that a satellite launched into lunar orbit, or other achievements, will grant amnesty to the tyrant boss who killed a man because of his empty whims?
How not to remember the words of Bruno Jasensky, spoken by him in 1937? “Do not be afraid of enemies - in the worst case, they can betray you. Fear the indifferent - they do not kill and do not betray, but only with their tacit consent does betrayal and murder exist on earth ... "
What a pity that these words have not lost their relevance today.