How writers become villains

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

The last Soviet soldiers leave. Died Vladimir Sergeevich Bushin. Awesome person. Front-line writer. Poet. An excellent and ruthless publicist. He never tired of debunking his most authoritative contemporaries - Granin, Solzhenitsyn, Likhachev, Sakharov and others, who are almost worshiped these days.

Cover photo: wikimedia.org

Vladimir Bushin did not spare those who today are considered the "conscience of the nation" - Dmitry Likhachev, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Daniil Granin

This interview with Bushin was recorded in August 2012 at his dacha in Nemchinovka near Moscow. Vladimir Sergeevich was already 88 then. It is noteworthy that he initially refused to agree on the text. Like, if you distort my words, let it be on your conscience. But such a blessing, alas, was not needed - then they did not interview me for publication.

And, in principle, it is clear why. But now, on the ninth day after Bushin's death, it is nevertheless published in "Your Privy Counselor." Vladimir Sergeevich began our conversation with recollections of two important meetings in his life.

Vladimir Bushin

Do not grieve about Stalin

In 1967, in Gagra, in the House of Creativity, I met 90-year-old Vasily Vitalievich Shulgin, a monarchist, a well-known pre-revolutionary public figure who personally took part in the procedure for the abdication of Nicholas II. It was very interesting to talk to him.

There was so much in the life of this extraordinary man: wealth, fame, power, the collapse of ideals, emigration, prison. After all, they took him during the war, it seems, in Yugoslavia, when the Red Army entered there. Shulgin served 12 years in the Vladimir Central …

Shortly before our meeting, a documentary film "Before the Court of History" was shown in cinemas - there the main characters were Shulgin and his opponent, some faceless Soviet historian. And on the one hand, we saw on the screen a man who has a huge Life behind him.

With magnificent Russian, with elegant manners, and on the other - a kind of gray mouse. Of course, all the audience's sympathy was on the side of the monarchist. When they realized this, the film was quickly removed from the box office and was never shown again …

Shulgin had every reason to dislike Soviet power. But here's what's interesting: when I asked him how he relates to the current Soviet reality, he replied: “We, Russian nationalists, dreamed of a Great Russia. The Bolsheviks made it that way. And it reconciles me with them."

Vasily Shulgin

The second significant meeting happened with Kaganovich. It was already towards the end of the eighties. I remember reading some book in which his last name was mentioned. At the end of the book, in biographical notes, I was surprised to find that Lazar Moiseevich had a birthday the next day. And with two friends I went to congratulate the former people's commissar.

At first, his daughter did not want to let us in, especially since Kaganovich himself was ill and lay with a broken leg. And yet, in the end, we managed to communicate.

I remember that during our conversation we complained about the amount of perestroika slander that fell upon Stalin. And he answered us: "Why grieve about Stalin when Soviet power is crumbling!" Nothing can resist time. And of course, the brightest events and people in future generations fade away.

Lazar Kaganovich

Should you erect monuments to Okudzhava?

But in recent years, another tendency has emerged - to perpetuate people who have left relatively recently. In your opinion, what should be the criteria and terms for such a reverence for our contemporaries?

- Of course, we have a complete mess with these new monuments. Here, for example, a monument to Okudzhava was erected. Brodsky. Don't be Yeltsin by nightfall …

… Sobchak

- As Sobchak … Where is this? In Leningrad … Right on the street?

Well, yes

- Go crazy!.. It's all ridiculous … But, for example, there is still no monument to Tvardovsky in Moscow. Although he is really a folk poet! Imagine: Tvardovsky - no, but Okudzhava - is ?!

And he behaved very badly with the onset of the nineties. Including, he finally and irrevocably compromised himself with statements that he looked with pleasure at the shooting of the House of Soviets in 1993. Just think about it! Writer! Lord of Souls! People died! Our people! And he - "looked with pleasure" …

Determine "to whom to erect monuments and to whom not?" - this is, of course, a very difficult question. For example, when in the 19th century the famous monument "Millennium of Russia" was created in Novgorod, how much noise then rose around Ivan the Terrible. The liberal community made such a howl that, as a result, the figure of Grozny was not on the monument.

But he was a great statesman! Yes, many bad things happened in his era. But Grozny also made a huge amount of positive. Both for Moscow and for Russia. Yes, for one Basil the Blessed, he can and should erect a monument.

You mentioned Okudzhava. But he was not the only one. Suffice it to recall the infamous "letter of forty-two" published on October 5, 1993 immediately after the shooting of the White House and calling on the Yeltsin authorities to unleash a "witch hunt" in the country

There, among the signatories, people are all honored and respected. Daniil Granin, Dmitry Likhachev, Ales Adamovich, Bella Akhmadulina, Vasil Bykov … But where did this come from? Why was it so quick to swear allegiance to the new regime?

- We tried to gain a foothold. Hurry, more firmly to assert your own. The same Chubais, when he was later asked: “What did you sell the enterprises

for three percent of the real cost? Where were you in a hurry? " And he: “We didn't care. We had to liquidate everything Soviet as soon as possible and build a new capitalist one. So we did not pursue economic benefits at this stage. " How does it feel, huh? Now we are reaping the benefits. Haste.

Truth and lies about the war

Now it has become fashionable on the main TV channels to release documentary-publicistic films for the anniversaries of great battles. Which, in most cases, are perceived ambiguously - both by historians and by the veterans themselves

- Personally, I try not to look, but I saw a few of them. For example, there is such a Victor Pravdyuk. He blinded something with an insane number of episodes. It is called "The Second World War - Russian View". I watched a couple of episodes. That seems to be the director's surname obliges, and the name of the film …

Yes, only there is nothing RUSSIAN there! And there were also films of this … from NTV … Pivovarov. He doesn't even know what is more, because sometimes it is difficult to distinguish ignorance from deliberate slander. For example, in the frame, he picks up the famous PPSh submachine gun and speaks in the spirit that, they say, it was a whole problem to load it in battle.

There was no problem there! Where? The disks were charged in advance, one was put in place, the other, already charged, was in stock. I changed the disk and - that's it! By the end of the war, I just went with the PPSh. Great weapon! Of course, if a person did not hold anything except a tablespoon or a microphone in his hands, it is difficult for him to deal with an automatic machine out of habit …

And how many Germans did you manage to crumble out of it? Didn't you count?

- I was a radio operator in the war, so I never killed the Germans. Here is Vladimir Soloukhin, who served in the protection of the Kremlin throughout the war, at one time he even wrote poems on this topic. Boasting that he did not kill a single person during the war.

In the sense: it seems like you gave your debt to the Motherland, but at the same time did not take the sin of murder on your soul?

- Exactly. So I think that to boast, to be proud of it is blasphemous! Because while he was guarding the Kremlin, others were killing. They killed a lot. Because there was no other way out.

And returning to your question about the Germans killed … You know, if every Soviet soldier killed at least one fascist, the war would have ended in two months!

But after all, the front had to be provided with communications, food, and quartermaster needs … One day Prokhanov called me here and for some reason he started: "That's when you were on the front line …" I told him: "Sasha! I was not on the front line! " Rather, I, of course, have been on the front line, but I was not a soldier and did not sit in the trenches. And he was sitting with his RSB (medium bomber radio station).

Or here, too, another time I hear from someone: they say, you took Konigsberg … Darling! I was sitting in some attic with a radio station "5-Oka", we received some information there and transmitted somewhere. That's all I saw when we took Konigsberg!

Werewolf writers

Nowadays very few people hear and listen to writers, but not long ago they really, as you put it, were "masters of souls." I remember that my father, having read Astafiev's "Tsar-Fish" in the seventies, "got hooked" on him. I admired. I believed. Moreover, he believed in the nineties, when he began to tell completely different things about the war

- Astafiev is a werewolf in its purest form! Clean! In Soviet times, he said one thing, then he began to say another. I had an open letter published to him.

Even then, during his lifetime. Astafyev had the opportunity to answer. But he didn't answer. For example, I presented him with the following: “Vitya! Earlier you described some military event and said that the ratio of casualties was ten to one in our favor. Now you write exactly the opposite: we did not know how to fight, we filled up with corpses … Well, how can you believe after that? Moreover, Astafyev - he was also a mysteriously illiterate man in military affairs.

It seems that in 1989 there was a joint meeting of historians and writers writing about the war. Astafyev performed there. And, in particular, he broadcast: so, they say, look at the maps in our books about the war - there are ten times more red arrows than blue ones. This means that our numerical advantage was tenfold.

Can you imagine? This is utter nonsense! Anyone who is in the least knowledgeable knows that the arrow is the direction of the blow. And with what forces the blow? It can be a regiment or a division. Maybe an army. And Astafyev, with a blue eye, believed that every arrow is necessarily an army … I also wrote to him about this.

He said nothing. Because there was nothing to object … And then he wrote his "Killed and Damned" … Well, what can you say? People change. And a person who used to say some good right things may well change and become a villain.

Victor Astafiev.

Isn't it harsh? Am I talking about the "villain"?

- Not. Just right.

It is not entirely clear how a person, who has almost a whole life behind him, can immediately change his ideals and beliefs to strictly opposite ones. There must be some serious reason, motivation?

- Well, what are you! Benefit! An ordinary benefit! Gorbachev made Astafiev a hero of Socialist Labor, Yeltsin gave funds for the publication of his collected works in fifteen volumes. An ordinary selfish benefit! Allegedly insult was mixed up to the heap … his grandfather, they say, was dispossessed. But in the Soviet years it seemed to have been forgotten, but now, by the way, it has come to mind.

If you want, you can always find a huge number of arguments. But for the most part, there is only one argument - selfishness! They pay profitably for this - that's all!.. Here I have just published three books this year. How much do you think I got for them? Fifteen thousand rubles for three books … But THERE pays really good fees. Real Soviet royalties.

The best varieties of lies

And the "real Soviet" is, excuse me, how much?

- Once, in Soviet times, I published a book in a very good circulation, for which I received about eight thousand. At that time, with this money, I was able to build an apartment - a good, two-room … So in the case of Astafiev, do not be surprised. An ordinary benefit. There are a lot of skins in all professions. Writers are no exception. They are people too. Remember, when all this perestroika and shake-up began in the country, our literary Heroes of Socialist Labor, Lenin's laureates - they practically all fell silent. And some immediately went over to the other side.

Any names?

- Yes please. For example, the hero of Socialist Labor, editor-in-chief of the magazine "October" Anatoly Ananiev. Or the editor-in-chief of Our Contemporary, Stanislav Kunyaev, who had been publishing Solzhenitsyn for a whole year. Do you know what he first did when he became the head of the magazine? Removed the portrait of Gorky from the cover! Although not long before that he was given the Gorky Prize. And he took it! I did not disdain … Much, very much around unscrupulousness, selfishness …

Not so long ago you mercilessly "sealed" a new work by the honorary citizen of St. Petersburg, Daniil Alexandrovich Granin

- Yes, because there is so much demagogy and implausibility in him! Through the page you read: “we were retreating from somewhere, we were getting out of the encirclement from somewhere …” But tell me where it was at least once, after all ?! Granin, he says monstrous things! I myself heard on television his words: "Leningraders went to the front with pitchforks and scythes" … Well, why are you lying? What nonsense!.. Granin - he was an instructor of the political department!

Some reference books write that he was the commander of a tank battalion, but for me this is very doubtful. I have a feeling that he simply has nothing to write about the war. So he was silent for so many years … Well, I also wrote about your other Leningrader, about Likhachev. I had such an article called "A Frog in Sugar".

Hard! To be honest, I was always amazed that in your publications you do not stand on ceremony with the objects of your criticism. About the young - for God's sake. But with regard to the veterans, maybe it is still necessary to somehow soften the assessments? You never know what

“I understand what you are implying. I had such an episodic episode in my life: I once wrote an article about Academician Sakharov and gave it to Our Contemporary. There it was read by Rasputin, Kozhinov, Vikulov and other people. And everyone was in favor of the publication. But at that time Sovremennik was already headed by Kunyaev and Shafarevich, whom he invited to the editorial board, who was Sakharov's friend. Naturally, they got scared to print it and hacked down the article.

I took it to Voenno-Istoricheskiy Zhurnal, where it was published in two issues. And suddenly, soon after this publication, Sakharov dies. And now he calls me, I do not remember who, and in all seriousness says: "It was you who killed him." Yes, Sakharov never saw this article, he had no idea of the existence of such a magazine!

That is, the overwhelming majority of your fellow writers turned out to be not ready for the changes that have come in the country?

- It turned out even earlier. Not ready. Even when the Gulag Archipelago was published, our propaganda, or rather counterpropaganda, was completely bankrupt. Because this Solzhenitsyn thing is absolutely defenseless. To smash it, to print it like that, it didn't cost anything … Have you read my book "Unknown Solzhenitsyn"?

Yes. Written quite convincingly

- How many lies Solzhenitsyn has there! Starting from his biography, where he wrote “I went through the whole war”, “I commanded a battery” (“forgetting” to add that the “battery” was a sound reconnaissance) and ending with the fact that the Bolsheviks allegedly exterminated 106 million of their citizens. What is it? Who then, in his mind, fought for the country? Was he restoring the country?.. Of course, Alexander Isaevich is a talented, capable, smart, dexterous person.

The last quality is perhaps the most important. Therefore, in his book, of course, he also cites some real facts, and names real names. But, as the wonderful writer Leonid Leonov once said, "the best kinds of lies are made from half-truths." And in this he is absolutely right.