Titans of Soviet Civilization living today - who are they?

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Orientalist and political scientist Igor Dimitriev - about an amazing meeting on the slopes of Elbrus.

“When I arrived at the cable car in Terskol, all skiers and climbers were running down. The weather was getting worse before our eyes, forecasters promised a hurricane with snow and minus nineteen. Thirteen years ago I was on Elbrus, and it seemed that Shelter 11 was very close there. Well, I think, maybe I’ll have time to drink some tea upstairs. He took a backpack with a snack, a light sleeping bag, closed the car and went to the lift.

When I got up, it was already snowing so much that even the path was not visible. I walked from pole to pole for a couple of kilometers. Against the wind without glasses, in light knee-deep boots in the snow. Two counter groups advised me to go down, but in recent years I turned on the back one so many times that at least here I wanted to reach my goal.

It seems to have gotten to Shelter 11 using the navigator on my phone. I started looking for a path to the rocks in the snow, but I couldn't see a damn thing. I returned to the poles, and, fortunately, a rescuer drove up on a snowmobile. He said that there was no one at the Shelter, but one person remained in the trailer higher on the rocks.

The door was opened by a thin elderly man in trendy mountaineering gear. We spent two days with him in a dark, ventilated house at an altitude of 4200.

Boris Stepanovich Korshunov was preparing for the 86th ascent of Elbrus. “I'm ahead of schedule,” he says. - At 77 years old I went 77 times, and now I went too far. It suits me 82nd.

“Alone, he walked several 'eight-thousanders' and did the Snow Leopard many times, that is, he took all the seven-thousanders of the USSR. In short, he is a legendary athlete who even now is very difficult for young teams to cope with.

But this is not the most interesting thing. Once Stepanych climbed Elbrus in boots and swimming trunks. The ascent took place within the framework of the study of the ultimate human capabilities. The Soviet Institute of Space Biology and Medicine Gazenko was engaged in this. Korshunov could not apply for a pilot - only pilots were taken there, but he personally took part in the experiments.

Once I spent four hours undressed at minus 60, another one hundred minutes in zero temperature water. Then they stopped experimenting on people, even on volunteers. It was too reminiscent of German laboratories during the war. And Boris Korshunov began to experiment on his body in an individual mode, and also traveled around the Union from the Knowledge Society with lectures on the superpowers of the human body.

But Korshunov did not abandon space. The fact is that all these sports and medical experiments are a hobby, and Boris Stepanovich has been working until now in a design bureau that collects Russian satellites. And this is the most interesting thing.

Fifty years ago, Korshunov patented the design of satellite radars and cameras. Until now, they are photographing the earth's surface, and then you are vigorously discussing photos on the Internet.

Korshunov says that technologies, of course, are developing, new chips are being installed, but the design has not fundamentally changed for more than thirty years. He says he is surprised by the quality of the image. And yet - he assembles the devices himself! For 20 thousand rubles a month. He says that they brought young guys to study, but he is obsessed with space, like his colleagues, from the USSR, and for newcomers it is just work.

You are discussing the launch of a satellite, you are proud of the Russian space, but you owe someone like him. They should be proud of. It turns out that the global success of Russian cosmonautics rests on a few Soviet specialists who are still alive.

You know, then I lay in my sleeping bag, shivering from the cold, remembered my problems and realized how insignificant and embarrassing it was. In the next room is a superman, originally from the era of controversial, but great people. A dead era that brought a lot of evil and victories. Disappeared before our eyes to our applause.

Who are we all next to her? We are all fashionable political strategists and anthropologists, programmers and effective businessmen - mold and moss on the remains of the era. We have no right to condemn them. Together with the current networked Moscow intellectuals and tattooed extremals, together with village doldons and on the fragments of Soviet monuments in Ukraine - who are we all next to one old man in a trailer on a snowy slope?"