Love to win
In Georgia, Gennady Vasilyevich Nikitchenko is wanted as a war criminal. And in Abkhazia, it is honored by its highest award - the Order of Leon. She dragged him into battle hell itself a harsh fate towards him, but he was able to defeat fate itself.
He was born in the Donetsk region, after graduating from the army he graduated from the institute, became an engineer, got married, had two sons and a daughter. But misfortune struck - the eldest son died. My wife fell ill with grief so that it seemed best to leave her family, associated with the loss of places. And Nikitchenko found such a promised land, where life and climate helped her to overcome the disease - Abkhazia.
There he quickly went up the hill for agricultural construction, set up his own mech-team for installing poultry houses, warehouses, boiler houses. In the village of Merkula, Ochamchira region, he lived in a beautiful, like the whole pre-war Abkhazia, two-story mansion. The income had with interest; the son entered the Sukhumi University, the daughter at school was engaged in music, wrote inspirational poems.
Life for firmness in the test gave a hundredfold friendly family. But the black repartition of the post-Soviet government dared in one fell swoop everything Nikitchenko had built.
On the morning of August 14, 1992, he left home, and on the highway to which his village adjoined - Tanks. He is on the board of the collective farm, where Georgians worked mainly; everything is on TV, they are broadcasting from the Georgian side: ours have come to restore order in Abkhazia. This is Georgian land, we’ll select Abkhazians, only Georgians will have life here. But almost as many as Georgians, Russians, Armenians, and Greeks lived peacefully in Abkhazia. And not a word about them, like chips, when they cut a forest.
But the first victims of the Georgian invasion were the families of the Russian servicemen who were sunbathing on the Sukhumi beach and were shot by the Georgian helicopter Maysuradze. Which, by the way, no one in our country declared for this wanted - like the other murderers who, after the war, laid down more than a hundred of our peacekeepers.
Official Moscow shamefully kept silent on that first bloody slap. They also did not inflate the censer in the UN, where Georgia was accepted by the first of the former Soviet republics - when its leader Shevardnadze, who entered power on a gun carriage, was, strictly speaking, the head of the military junta. But the world progressive community was grateful to him for his weighty contribution to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Alliance. And even according to the Constitution of 1921 of the year to which Georgia returned, Abkhazia was not part of it, the West issued Georgia a carte blanche with military force to drive back the lost time.
In a few days, Georgian troops occupied the east coast of Abkhazia from the Inguri along Sukhumi. Amphibious assault force landed in the Gagra area and captured the western coast to the Russian border. Only the middle of Abkhazia remained unoccupied, where Ardzinba sat down with the militia, and the mountainous regions, the main one — Tkvarcheli, just above Ochamchira.
But the war, as Nikitchenko put it, “was not tied up”. Yesterday’s Soviet soldiers came under the flag of Georgia, for whom it was still wild to shoot and rob in a rebellious politically but peaceful edge. The Abkhaz have also not fired yet, but the authorities did not recognize the one who arrived at the same rolling carriage.
Then, seeing that bloodshed, encouraged by the West on the body of the former Soviet Union, in order not to grow together again, could not do, Shevardnadze began replacing the personnel of the troops. In Georgia, 17 pardoned thousands of criminals who for their patriotic duty on obstinate territory were promised oblivion of old sins and generous war booty.
At the same time, in September 1992, at the UN General Assembly session, Shevardnadze made a speech, before which all our nations, endowed with one plowshield, fade away - but not with a tank sword: “The pygmies raise people against humanity ... in flocks and attacking with the ruthlessness of the birds of Alfred Hitchcock ... "And this is all, backhand, the nation, which the commander of the Georgian forces, General Karkarashvili, simultaneously issued a warrant for slaughter:
“From now on, the Georgian side is forbidden to take prisoners of war ... I can assure the separatists that if 100 thousand Georgians are killed from the total number of Georgia, then all of your 97 thousand will die ...”
It seems that no racist in uniform in the world has ever set such a task - to exterminate the whole, up to the babies, the hated ethnos. And the world, holding his ears tightly, did not react to it in any way.
But the bloodthirsty cry heard, to their grief, the Abkhaz Georgians and the Georgian military. And, hopped by the low hope that a short victorious war would write off everything, they rushed to destroy, cut and plunder everything that was not Georgian in Abkhazia in some kind of mass psychosis. Peaceful people pulled out gold teeth with pliers, raped children, up to three years old, broke bones, burned bodies with red-hot twigs. For these atrocities, the Abkhaz prosecutor's office opened a host of criminal cases. But they still in the progressive world community, in fact, and blessed the genocide, there is no progress ...
Once Nikitchenko returns to his Merkul - and finds such a sight: eight tanks approached the village and beat the guns at him. He rushes to his Georgian friends: “Who is bombing? There are simple people - Armenians, Russians! ”He is also answered:“ Oh, we'll beat you up - the Abkhaz will overlap their pants. ”
He flies home; the outskirts of the village are all in ruins, horror, squeals, blood. His house is in the depths, there is a gap from a shell in the wall. But all the glory to God is whole, the daughter is slightly injured by a splinter. He puts his wife and children in the car and drives him to Tkvarchel. There he leaves them, and himself, having lost all of his former labor overnight — back to Merkula — to defend it along with the Abkhaz, the Armenians and the Russians. So "ensued" for him, as for the whole of Abkhazia, war.
The bombed out Mercula, where today, instead of seven hundred former mansions, seven hundred ruins, soon had to be left. With the surviving fighters, who had almost nothing more than a double-barreled hunting barrel, Nikitchenko rose again to the Tkvarchel Mining Center. 30-thousand population of it soon doubled by refugees who came from the seaside. Even higher in the mountains is the border with Georgia. Below - the Georgian troops. Electricity is cut off, blockade, hunger.
Helicopters began to ship children and women to the soon-to-be-released west coast. And Georgia was all scared when 14 of December 1992 was shot down on the way to Gudauta, one such helicopter full of children and women. Killed, along with the Russian crew, 63 man.
Nikitchenko quickly realized that the tanks, which were going to storm Tkvarchel, cannot be stopped by shotguns, and started the production of mines from gas cylinders filled with explosives from the surrounding mines. Then the radio interception was reported from the Georgian side: the Abkhazians used an unknown super-weapon - tore off the tank in half.
Then he was able to rivet one acting tank from several destroyed tanks. Then another. So tkvarcheltsev appeared their own armored vehicles. From the water pumps and electric motors, a cascade of mini-power stations gathered on a mountain river — light appeared in Tkvarchel.
In the meantime, the Abkhazian Eastern Front was already forming. The commander was elected Merab Kishmaria, an Afghan veteran, a former battalion commander. Nikitchenko became his deputy for equipment and weapons.
With Merabov's brother Khvichi, an ace tanker, worked out such a technique. A Georgian tank is driving - Khvicha is waiting in his bushes in an ambush, having turned on the first reduced speed in advance. And right in front of the enemy, walking in third gear, crawls out onto the road. He stops, not having time to shoot or throw speed. And Khvicha, having an overbalance of power on the tracks, presses him into a ditch ...
In such a furnace, a proud man Nikitchenko forged his current authority of the most revered Russian in Abkhazia:
- The Abkhaz were not ready for war. They need to first, as the Russian, well pripech. I put them in a difficult situation task, they: no, we will not go. And they have the worst curse word: I'm your mother! If he said to someone, or should kill him immediately, or he will kill you. And to them: all your mothers! Now either kill me or follow the order! Everyone got up - and they went ... People from all over Russia came to the militia from all over Russia. And the nurses, of whom many died, are true saints. And romantics, and just scumbags, former special forces, and the Cossacks - also righteous and dashing. But I had to accept everyone, because there were no others. And so we took the Merkula, fighting a day, two - to no avail. Intelligence sent - it covered. Abkhazians lay in a trench, can not stand up, fire, scary. Then I put the Danish Cossacks in the back and give the command: in five minutes to beat the grenade from the grenade launchers. I jump there myself: well, guys, I ordered us to be bombarded, if we don’t jump out now. How everyone jumped out - and we took the Merkula ...
But the worst thing is not even a fight, but after a fight. In the battle, Nikitchenko was wounded twice, once contused, his eardrums burst, completely deaf. At the same time, the eye also jumped out, and he himself set back, as the doctor showed with gestures. The speech was also lost then - but then everything returned, only a small lisp remained. But the most terrible was this:
- After the battle for Merkula, we agreed with the Georgians about the exchange of the living and the dead, all for all. We had two dozen prisoners, they said that our Georgian 6 corpses and 9 were alive, all of our intelligence. We brought the prisoners to the place of exchange on a truck, the Georgians also rolled out a truck. We look, and there all the corpses: 6 cold, 9 still warm. We had radio operator Anya, Sasha Zhuk, Russians, from St. Petersburg. Anya's breasts are cut off, Sasha got a stake in her ass. As we saw it, we were brutalized: then the dead are upon the dead! We pulled the trembling Georgians out of the car - and point-blank from the automats. It lasted a minute - for me as an eternity. The blood, the vapor above it is already somewhere beyond the limit of the psyche ...
When the war ended, fate dealt Nikitchenko, as if already in the back, the most terrible blow. 17-year-old daughter Lyuba, the love and soul of the family that survived the bombings and the blockade, was walking with her friends from school - to meet no longer an enemy, but an Abkhaz tank. The young tanker began to flirt with the girls: jerk forward, siege. Lyuba entered the war game - and the predatory war, as if already out of the ground, had scored her.
Nikitchenko and this sorrow made, not twisting his back. Abkhazia did not long exult from its victory: since 1994, the world community, instead of compensation for damage, has imposed a severe blockade on it. And she had to master a new feat, already peaceful - to survive, when they blocked all the arteries of existence: the resort, the export of fruit, tea. And the only fault of the ethnos that was punished by the polls was only that he did not allow himself to be cut out at the root, as outlined by General Karkarashvili, who was not condemned and not even redeemed by any The Hague.
Abkhazia was able to re-forge the bravery on the peace: yesterday's soldiers took up the plow, fishing tackle. It is passed willingly, for example, such a bike. Ardzinba arrived after the war in the village: well, how were they eliminated? Him: yes this is nonsense; what is heard in Sukhumi how is politics going? And he: this is just nonsense, and most importantly, how did you drop out!
Worst of all in the blockade was the Russians, the urban intelligentsia, who had no rural relatives and who could feed them. The Congress of the Russian Communities of Abkhazia, headed by Nikitchenko, helped them not mentally and physically. His predecessor was the historian Yuri Voronov, whose name is now a street in Sukhumi:
- A good guy, an intellectual, spoke incendiary, wrote articles in favor of the Abkhaz. But did not have some kind of fortress in the shower. Excavations led to prove that Abkhazians always lived here. And I found evidence that the Greeks lived, he himself was confused. Today I would temporarily suspend such scientists. They will find some kind of shard, someone's letters - and then people die by the thousands ... They shot him right after the war, on the threshold of the house, with a burst of gunfire, as they cut it. The murderers were found, and who ordered the murder to them is still in a fog ...
And Nikitchenko, the former deputy of Voronov, in order not to be discouraged when life after his daughter’s death became empty for him, took a blood-marked place. And using all his authority, the military ability to alternate the absurdity of restraint and cunning, he went, as in battle, against the blockade erected by the Russians against the Russians. And it turned out to be the hardest battle for him: to mollify, cajole our bureaucrats, so that they would write out a certificate, give a limit on the export of a car of tangerines or a car of coal. And the most cherished is to obtain Russian citizenship for the Russians, and not only for the residents of Abkhazia: the right to get out of the blockade reservation, in fact, life itself.
And for this viscous work, which requires devilish efforts, I would give him, the Hero of Abkhazia for the war, also a Hero's star by work. Under his rule, in all parts of Abkhazia, according to the rules of mutual assistance, Russian communities started to work. The fishing team has opened a free canteen for the poorest, others have rented a sanatorium complex, achieved a holiday permit. They began to cultivate the land, to establish connections with the Krasnodar Territory for the sale of local coal and electricity. Each Nikitchenko knocked out a bus with the right to export local products and import necessary from Russia. And for half a hundred thousand Russians from the Abkhaz zone, Nikitchenko became a symbol of their main hope.
- I can not be stopped, you can only kill. But I have long ceased to be afraid of death, I have no serious enemies here either. Then there were former fellow soldiers everywhere, and for the Abkhaz, the fighting brotherhood is holy. It would not exist, they would not stand. And now it is useless to conquer them. This is a different nation, life has forced us all here to be different ...
And he really is different. And it differs from the mass of our leaders in that it was made the tribune of its people not a tribune, but a real struggle, from which it emerged victorious. And therefore I would like to add an essay about him to an interview in which he lays out his own "other" thoughts - ultimately about Russia, which has now lost its science to win.
- When your house was hit from tanks, which still made you not run away, but join an unequal battle — and then lead the others?
- I could have escaped, in Ochamchire, the border guards for a pair of gold earrings took everyone to the ships to Sochi. There, the Russians were simply shoved overboard — and the Greeks, Armenians, and Jews were not only met, they also sent agents to dispose of their houses and property. The Georgians also suggested to me: “Sit somewhere, we will deal with the Abkhazians, then you will return.” But shame is to become a refugee in your own country. I have such a character - in case of danger, not to rush backwards, but forward.
- Was it scary?
- You tremble when uncertainty, when you wait. And he decided - something has to be done already, fear itself is forgotten. Then most people have the same psychology. Scary not for himself, but for children. When we broke out, my first thought was: the daughter finishes school, the son is a university, no matter how much it prevents them. This is now in Russia: everyone is bending in an arc, and they think: if only the child has finished the institute. And for what? Who will he become with a diploma? Whose slave? When you lose everything at once, you stop clinging to trifles.
- Did the Abkhazians rise all at once?
- Nearly. For small nations, the sense of homeland is sharper. The hardest thing was to raise peasants. They were ready to help, carry ammunition, dig trenches - but not to fight. The plowman is used to it: I have always plowed in my field, war is not my business. But what he plowed and sowed was because his homeland was his. When the Georgians came to take away this homeland, it became clear to all: today they killed a neighbor, tomorrow they will kill me. If there is no homeland, there will be no where to plow and sow, they will drive into the mountains, like Indians on the reservation.
- But to win, you need agreement in the leaders. Once I heard a drunken poet yelling at the canteen of the House of Writers: “I am Pushkin! But Pushkin is a shit! ”Now, too, Russian leaders, who want to be only Pushkin, do not agree with Lermontov. How did you become the commander of the Abkhaz? Was there a crush of elbows?
- All climb forward when you need to tongue chatter. When the danger is real, on the contrary, all for each other retreat. I didn’t go anywhere, I just started repairing a wrecked Georgian tank, my son came up and started to get on with electronics. And six Abkhazians, seeing this, had already taken a turn on him. So began our Eastern Front. When the shells flew, everyone fell to the ground. Who first stood up, he and the commander. I went into battle with a gun in front - you have the right to give orders from the rear. The main thing is that you are not suspected that you are using others for your own purposes. Why did the Georgians lose, even though they were stronger than us? Abkhazians fought for their own, and those sent somewhere Shevardnadze, promised profit. Only they began to kill them, they thought: he needs it, and why should we? Therefore, in Russia now less and less trust leaders. Well, the old people have nowhere to go, and the young people are more practical, immediately dare: he needs it, he climbs into Pushkin, but what about us?
- Before the war in Abkhazia, Abkhazians were somehow not visible. On the beaches of corn traded, sit in coffee shops, drink wine - that's all. And they became - all the fighters, in the eyes of fire, rested against the whole world. How is it so reforged overnight?
- They put the situation on the edge, and they removed from themselves all the generic, hidden, that was in them. What is the main difference between the Abkhaz and the highlanders in general from the Russians? They have more personal dignity. The man in the family is indisputable, the woman does not dare to roll on him, so brought up. And he won't have a hand on her. She even walks in black, she does not bazaar in vain, but she can stand up for herself. And Russian men were seized by their own women. I drink in Moscow with the general in orders — he is already fidgeting: he will fly home from his wife. What leader are you if a woman beats you at home? The mistake of the previous government was that she invaded the family. The man gulul, got drunk - he is dragged on the party committee, the trade union committee, shame, humiliated, he loses respect for himself. And the family is the foundation of society; it was broken — the state collapsed.
- Yes, the Russian likes to bend amazingly into a slave arc! Chekhov described this in "The Cherry Orchard": a lackey there said to someone: "It was still a disaster." - “Before what?” - “Before the will” - that is, until the abolition of the serf system ...
- True, we got used to the yoke, removed the old party part - we climbed into the new one ourselves. Just do not hang everything on the Jewish oligarchs and others. A million microbes live in the air, hostile to humans. The protective layer has lost - and they ate you, but this is not them, but your fault! My former nurse, Nadia, works in my community, her husband died in the war, two children remained. He offended the elder on the street, she got out, she gave a queue on top of her head and the question was resolved forever. Respect yourself - and everyone will respect you. I got a knife from the Abkhaz - must hit, otherwise they will be despised. Therefore, no one in vain weapon not enough, but everyone has it, and everyone remembers about it. First there must be a human person. A lowered, flawed will always tear.
- We are now, unfortunately, not a personality rushing, as self-conceit. When you and I were at the banquet on the day of your victory, I was shocked by a toast of one guest from Moscow: “Yes, I did not fight in Abkhazia, but I waged a more terrible war — in Moscow corridors!" yourself a hero, more warriors!
- Well, that's all - bullshit. These are not leaders - lightning rods: to shout, to play opposition, but in fact to divert the energy of the masses to the ground. Not conductors, and grounding. I have not seen war, and keep quiet. Because war is not just like that. There it does not pass: something vyaknul something, and then he did not understand what he said. There the price of the word is life. When, on my orders, people were going to die, I had to foresee everything, to the last detail, so that not a single hair from my head would fall in vain. Otherwise, he would be left without fighters in two days. Yes, blood is terrible - but it also teaches a lot.
- Is it possible that Russia will have to study all this?
- Clever learn from other people's experiences, fools do not learn any. Why did Georgians turn out to be more Georgian than Abkhazians in Abkhazia before the war? They say, Stalin, Beria caught up with them - but that's not the point. Abkhaz lived on his land, a beggar mingrel came to him with a knapsack, with a tokh on his shoulder: “Let me sweat your field and feed me for it.” Abkhaz and glad: mingrel for him tohat, and he went to visit his relatives. He returned a month later, the land was shaggy, and in his house the children of the Mingrelian were already running, and this was how the settlement went. Therefore, do not let strangers on your land, do not take someone else's. Build yourself as you can, and do not call the Turks with the Germans. Eat your own, live on your own. So that it was in the main thing - and then on trifles anything. Shevardnadze foolishly unleashed the war, but would have been smarter, without a single shot would have cleaned Abkhazia, like the Jewish capital of Russia. Something would give, he promised, he held elections for himself - the Abkhaz would not twitch. But on the contrary, he struck the feeling of homeland in them - and therefore he lost.
- And how do you look at our miners' strikes, trips to Moscow, hunger strikes?
- I grew up in the Donbass - and I am ashamed of the miners from the very first strikes. There was always individualism in the mines. The miner buys money and records, and others do the hard work to crawl to the layer. They began to fight for their pockets - and steelworkers, teachers, peasants on the side. The miners were given, they exposed the rest. The whole economy has fallen, miners are following too. Now again: give me my salary, my mine — you are ready to give your homeland for salary. And why mine without a homeland? Who are you on her then? Tramp, flunky? The miner yells: they will wait, I will starve! Who did he scare? They look at him and laugh: and let him strike, they bring coal from Africa! You can dig a thousand mines and bury them back if your homeland is. We must not fight for salary, but for our homeland!
- But how?
- If there is a desire, there will always be someone who knows. No need for miners to go, no need for a Russian in Russia to starve, this is a shame. If the governor, the mayor is a traitor, he has deceived the hopes - let the strike take power in the city, he is yours, your land! His power to put in his place - and not beg in Moscow!
“But so the whole country will be scattered back to the land.”
- Then will unite immediately on interests. Abkhazia is being kicked from Russia now - and she is asking for Russia. Why do Abkhazians have a fire in their eyes, despite the blockade and everything else? Because they feel Russia for themselves. And Transnistria asks for it, and Belarus, and the rest. Where the authorities are against it, the people have long wanted it. Everyone knows, and the same Georgians, that without Russia and their homeland will not. They will not go to war either for Turkey or for America. And for Russia go. This is their former Union, their territory, it is in their genes, it was not for nothing that World War II shed their blood for it, and most of all the heroes were from the Caucasus.
- Where do you feel your homeland? You were born in Ukraine, live in Abkhazia, Russian itself ...
- My homeland is Abkhazia. And Ukraine. And Russia. The dog where he lives, marks his space with urine. My space in my heart is marked from Kaliningrad to Nakhodka. I fought in the war not only for Abkhazia, but also for our entire country. Without Russia, I would be nobody here. And I have the respect of the Abkhaz because I represent for them our common Russian home, in which they also want to live. I don’t climb onto a pedestal, it’s stupid at all. If you really do something, there is always enough space. I am Russian, I cherish this, I stand on it. Abkhazians stand their ground. Even though they pray according to the Orthodox, they celebrate all church holidays with pleasure, but it is theirs that is external. Inside is one: its own land, its own nation. They will not fight for any faith, but they will give the last drop of blood for their homeland. They are accustomed to hominy have a hand, I - a fork, but it does not divide us.
- In your opinion, does present-day Russia have any hope of victory in principle?
- The instinct of your field will still work. But first you have to beat yourself. Lev was tagged on the tail: "Donkey" - and he was dead with grief. One effort is needed: to take off this label. I was at the same convention, officers from the Crimea speak: they oppress us there, you book accommodation in Russia for us! I got up: “What kind of housing do you need? What are you officers? Run from Russian land to Russian! ”But this is the most difficult thing - to overcome yourself. I know from the war: a man is best in his trenches. The shells are beating on them, they have already been shot, they are killed, but they are their own. It is necessary to run across to the enemy trench, it is safer there, but to master these 20 meters is the hardest. 20 meters - like all life. I got it - saved myself, no - I died. Russia has the same choice now.
He was born in the Donetsk region, after graduating from the army he graduated from the institute, became an engineer, got married, had two sons and a daughter. But misfortune struck - the eldest son died. My wife fell ill with grief so that it seemed best to leave her family, associated with the loss of places. And Nikitchenko found such a promised land, where life and climate helped her to overcome the disease - Abkhazia.
There he quickly went up the hill for agricultural construction, set up his own mech-team for installing poultry houses, warehouses, boiler houses. In the village of Merkula, Ochamchira region, he lived in a beautiful, like the whole pre-war Abkhazia, two-story mansion. The income had with interest; the son entered the Sukhumi University, the daughter at school was engaged in music, wrote inspirational poems.
Life for firmness in the test gave a hundredfold friendly family. But the black repartition of the post-Soviet government dared in one fell swoop everything Nikitchenko had built.
On the morning of August 14, 1992, he left home, and on the highway to which his village adjoined - Tanks. He is on the board of the collective farm, where Georgians worked mainly; everything is on TV, they are broadcasting from the Georgian side: ours have come to restore order in Abkhazia. This is Georgian land, we’ll select Abkhazians, only Georgians will have life here. But almost as many as Georgians, Russians, Armenians, and Greeks lived peacefully in Abkhazia. And not a word about them, like chips, when they cut a forest.
But the first victims of the Georgian invasion were the families of the Russian servicemen who were sunbathing on the Sukhumi beach and were shot by the Georgian helicopter Maysuradze. Which, by the way, no one in our country declared for this wanted - like the other murderers who, after the war, laid down more than a hundred of our peacekeepers.
Official Moscow shamefully kept silent on that first bloody slap. They also did not inflate the censer in the UN, where Georgia was accepted by the first of the former Soviet republics - when its leader Shevardnadze, who entered power on a gun carriage, was, strictly speaking, the head of the military junta. But the world progressive community was grateful to him for his weighty contribution to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Alliance. And even according to the Constitution of 1921 of the year to which Georgia returned, Abkhazia was not part of it, the West issued Georgia a carte blanche with military force to drive back the lost time.
In a few days, Georgian troops occupied the east coast of Abkhazia from the Inguri along Sukhumi. Amphibious assault force landed in the Gagra area and captured the western coast to the Russian border. Only the middle of Abkhazia remained unoccupied, where Ardzinba sat down with the militia, and the mountainous regions, the main one — Tkvarcheli, just above Ochamchira.
But the war, as Nikitchenko put it, “was not tied up”. Yesterday’s Soviet soldiers came under the flag of Georgia, for whom it was still wild to shoot and rob in a rebellious politically but peaceful edge. The Abkhaz have also not fired yet, but the authorities did not recognize the one who arrived at the same rolling carriage.
Then, seeing that bloodshed, encouraged by the West on the body of the former Soviet Union, in order not to grow together again, could not do, Shevardnadze began replacing the personnel of the troops. In Georgia, 17 pardoned thousands of criminals who for their patriotic duty on obstinate territory were promised oblivion of old sins and generous war booty.
At the same time, in September 1992, at the UN General Assembly session, Shevardnadze made a speech, before which all our nations, endowed with one plowshield, fade away - but not with a tank sword: “The pygmies raise people against humanity ... in flocks and attacking with the ruthlessness of the birds of Alfred Hitchcock ... "And this is all, backhand, the nation, which the commander of the Georgian forces, General Karkarashvili, simultaneously issued a warrant for slaughter:
“From now on, the Georgian side is forbidden to take prisoners of war ... I can assure the separatists that if 100 thousand Georgians are killed from the total number of Georgia, then all of your 97 thousand will die ...”
It seems that no racist in uniform in the world has ever set such a task - to exterminate the whole, up to the babies, the hated ethnos. And the world, holding his ears tightly, did not react to it in any way.
But the bloodthirsty cry heard, to their grief, the Abkhaz Georgians and the Georgian military. And, hopped by the low hope that a short victorious war would write off everything, they rushed to destroy, cut and plunder everything that was not Georgian in Abkhazia in some kind of mass psychosis. Peaceful people pulled out gold teeth with pliers, raped children, up to three years old, broke bones, burned bodies with red-hot twigs. For these atrocities, the Abkhaz prosecutor's office opened a host of criminal cases. But they still in the progressive world community, in fact, and blessed the genocide, there is no progress ...
Once Nikitchenko returns to his Merkul - and finds such a sight: eight tanks approached the village and beat the guns at him. He rushes to his Georgian friends: “Who is bombing? There are simple people - Armenians, Russians! ”He is also answered:“ Oh, we'll beat you up - the Abkhaz will overlap their pants. ”
He flies home; the outskirts of the village are all in ruins, horror, squeals, blood. His house is in the depths, there is a gap from a shell in the wall. But all the glory to God is whole, the daughter is slightly injured by a splinter. He puts his wife and children in the car and drives him to Tkvarchel. There he leaves them, and himself, having lost all of his former labor overnight — back to Merkula — to defend it along with the Abkhaz, the Armenians and the Russians. So "ensued" for him, as for the whole of Abkhazia, war.
The bombed out Mercula, where today, instead of seven hundred former mansions, seven hundred ruins, soon had to be left. With the surviving fighters, who had almost nothing more than a double-barreled hunting barrel, Nikitchenko rose again to the Tkvarchel Mining Center. 30-thousand population of it soon doubled by refugees who came from the seaside. Even higher in the mountains is the border with Georgia. Below - the Georgian troops. Electricity is cut off, blockade, hunger.
Helicopters began to ship children and women to the soon-to-be-released west coast. And Georgia was all scared when 14 of December 1992 was shot down on the way to Gudauta, one such helicopter full of children and women. Killed, along with the Russian crew, 63 man.
Nikitchenko quickly realized that the tanks, which were going to storm Tkvarchel, cannot be stopped by shotguns, and started the production of mines from gas cylinders filled with explosives from the surrounding mines. Then the radio interception was reported from the Georgian side: the Abkhazians used an unknown super-weapon - tore off the tank in half.
Then he was able to rivet one acting tank from several destroyed tanks. Then another. So tkvarcheltsev appeared their own armored vehicles. From the water pumps and electric motors, a cascade of mini-power stations gathered on a mountain river — light appeared in Tkvarchel.
In the meantime, the Abkhazian Eastern Front was already forming. The commander was elected Merab Kishmaria, an Afghan veteran, a former battalion commander. Nikitchenko became his deputy for equipment and weapons.
With Merabov's brother Khvichi, an ace tanker, worked out such a technique. A Georgian tank is driving - Khvicha is waiting in his bushes in an ambush, having turned on the first reduced speed in advance. And right in front of the enemy, walking in third gear, crawls out onto the road. He stops, not having time to shoot or throw speed. And Khvicha, having an overbalance of power on the tracks, presses him into a ditch ...
In such a furnace, a proud man Nikitchenko forged his current authority of the most revered Russian in Abkhazia:
- The Abkhaz were not ready for war. They need to first, as the Russian, well pripech. I put them in a difficult situation task, they: no, we will not go. And they have the worst curse word: I'm your mother! If he said to someone, or should kill him immediately, or he will kill you. And to them: all your mothers! Now either kill me or follow the order! Everyone got up - and they went ... People from all over Russia came to the militia from all over Russia. And the nurses, of whom many died, are true saints. And romantics, and just scumbags, former special forces, and the Cossacks - also righteous and dashing. But I had to accept everyone, because there were no others. And so we took the Merkula, fighting a day, two - to no avail. Intelligence sent - it covered. Abkhazians lay in a trench, can not stand up, fire, scary. Then I put the Danish Cossacks in the back and give the command: in five minutes to beat the grenade from the grenade launchers. I jump there myself: well, guys, I ordered us to be bombarded, if we don’t jump out now. How everyone jumped out - and we took the Merkula ...
But the worst thing is not even a fight, but after a fight. In the battle, Nikitchenko was wounded twice, once contused, his eardrums burst, completely deaf. At the same time, the eye also jumped out, and he himself set back, as the doctor showed with gestures. The speech was also lost then - but then everything returned, only a small lisp remained. But the most terrible was this:
- After the battle for Merkula, we agreed with the Georgians about the exchange of the living and the dead, all for all. We had two dozen prisoners, they said that our Georgian 6 corpses and 9 were alive, all of our intelligence. We brought the prisoners to the place of exchange on a truck, the Georgians also rolled out a truck. We look, and there all the corpses: 6 cold, 9 still warm. We had radio operator Anya, Sasha Zhuk, Russians, from St. Petersburg. Anya's breasts are cut off, Sasha got a stake in her ass. As we saw it, we were brutalized: then the dead are upon the dead! We pulled the trembling Georgians out of the car - and point-blank from the automats. It lasted a minute - for me as an eternity. The blood, the vapor above it is already somewhere beyond the limit of the psyche ...
When the war ended, fate dealt Nikitchenko, as if already in the back, the most terrible blow. 17-year-old daughter Lyuba, the love and soul of the family that survived the bombings and the blockade, was walking with her friends from school - to meet no longer an enemy, but an Abkhaz tank. The young tanker began to flirt with the girls: jerk forward, siege. Lyuba entered the war game - and the predatory war, as if already out of the ground, had scored her.
Nikitchenko and this sorrow made, not twisting his back. Abkhazia did not long exult from its victory: since 1994, the world community, instead of compensation for damage, has imposed a severe blockade on it. And she had to master a new feat, already peaceful - to survive, when they blocked all the arteries of existence: the resort, the export of fruit, tea. And the only fault of the ethnos that was punished by the polls was only that he did not allow himself to be cut out at the root, as outlined by General Karkarashvili, who was not condemned and not even redeemed by any The Hague.
Abkhazia was able to re-forge the bravery on the peace: yesterday's soldiers took up the plow, fishing tackle. It is passed willingly, for example, such a bike. Ardzinba arrived after the war in the village: well, how were they eliminated? Him: yes this is nonsense; what is heard in Sukhumi how is politics going? And he: this is just nonsense, and most importantly, how did you drop out!
Worst of all in the blockade was the Russians, the urban intelligentsia, who had no rural relatives and who could feed them. The Congress of the Russian Communities of Abkhazia, headed by Nikitchenko, helped them not mentally and physically. His predecessor was the historian Yuri Voronov, whose name is now a street in Sukhumi:
- A good guy, an intellectual, spoke incendiary, wrote articles in favor of the Abkhaz. But did not have some kind of fortress in the shower. Excavations led to prove that Abkhazians always lived here. And I found evidence that the Greeks lived, he himself was confused. Today I would temporarily suspend such scientists. They will find some kind of shard, someone's letters - and then people die by the thousands ... They shot him right after the war, on the threshold of the house, with a burst of gunfire, as they cut it. The murderers were found, and who ordered the murder to them is still in a fog ...
And Nikitchenko, the former deputy of Voronov, in order not to be discouraged when life after his daughter’s death became empty for him, took a blood-marked place. And using all his authority, the military ability to alternate the absurdity of restraint and cunning, he went, as in battle, against the blockade erected by the Russians against the Russians. And it turned out to be the hardest battle for him: to mollify, cajole our bureaucrats, so that they would write out a certificate, give a limit on the export of a car of tangerines or a car of coal. And the most cherished is to obtain Russian citizenship for the Russians, and not only for the residents of Abkhazia: the right to get out of the blockade reservation, in fact, life itself.
And for this viscous work, which requires devilish efforts, I would give him, the Hero of Abkhazia for the war, also a Hero's star by work. Under his rule, in all parts of Abkhazia, according to the rules of mutual assistance, Russian communities started to work. The fishing team has opened a free canteen for the poorest, others have rented a sanatorium complex, achieved a holiday permit. They began to cultivate the land, to establish connections with the Krasnodar Territory for the sale of local coal and electricity. Each Nikitchenko knocked out a bus with the right to export local products and import necessary from Russia. And for half a hundred thousand Russians from the Abkhaz zone, Nikitchenko became a symbol of their main hope.
- I can not be stopped, you can only kill. But I have long ceased to be afraid of death, I have no serious enemies here either. Then there were former fellow soldiers everywhere, and for the Abkhaz, the fighting brotherhood is holy. It would not exist, they would not stand. And now it is useless to conquer them. This is a different nation, life has forced us all here to be different ...
And he really is different. And it differs from the mass of our leaders in that it was made the tribune of its people not a tribune, but a real struggle, from which it emerged victorious. And therefore I would like to add an essay about him to an interview in which he lays out his own "other" thoughts - ultimately about Russia, which has now lost its science to win.
- When your house was hit from tanks, which still made you not run away, but join an unequal battle — and then lead the others?
- I could have escaped, in Ochamchire, the border guards for a pair of gold earrings took everyone to the ships to Sochi. There, the Russians were simply shoved overboard — and the Greeks, Armenians, and Jews were not only met, they also sent agents to dispose of their houses and property. The Georgians also suggested to me: “Sit somewhere, we will deal with the Abkhazians, then you will return.” But shame is to become a refugee in your own country. I have such a character - in case of danger, not to rush backwards, but forward.
- Was it scary?
- You tremble when uncertainty, when you wait. And he decided - something has to be done already, fear itself is forgotten. Then most people have the same psychology. Scary not for himself, but for children. When we broke out, my first thought was: the daughter finishes school, the son is a university, no matter how much it prevents them. This is now in Russia: everyone is bending in an arc, and they think: if only the child has finished the institute. And for what? Who will he become with a diploma? Whose slave? When you lose everything at once, you stop clinging to trifles.
- Did the Abkhazians rise all at once?
- Nearly. For small nations, the sense of homeland is sharper. The hardest thing was to raise peasants. They were ready to help, carry ammunition, dig trenches - but not to fight. The plowman is used to it: I have always plowed in my field, war is not my business. But what he plowed and sowed was because his homeland was his. When the Georgians came to take away this homeland, it became clear to all: today they killed a neighbor, tomorrow they will kill me. If there is no homeland, there will be no where to plow and sow, they will drive into the mountains, like Indians on the reservation.
- But to win, you need agreement in the leaders. Once I heard a drunken poet yelling at the canteen of the House of Writers: “I am Pushkin! But Pushkin is a shit! ”Now, too, Russian leaders, who want to be only Pushkin, do not agree with Lermontov. How did you become the commander of the Abkhaz? Was there a crush of elbows?
- All climb forward when you need to tongue chatter. When the danger is real, on the contrary, all for each other retreat. I didn’t go anywhere, I just started repairing a wrecked Georgian tank, my son came up and started to get on with electronics. And six Abkhazians, seeing this, had already taken a turn on him. So began our Eastern Front. When the shells flew, everyone fell to the ground. Who first stood up, he and the commander. I went into battle with a gun in front - you have the right to give orders from the rear. The main thing is that you are not suspected that you are using others for your own purposes. Why did the Georgians lose, even though they were stronger than us? Abkhazians fought for their own, and those sent somewhere Shevardnadze, promised profit. Only they began to kill them, they thought: he needs it, and why should we? Therefore, in Russia now less and less trust leaders. Well, the old people have nowhere to go, and the young people are more practical, immediately dare: he needs it, he climbs into Pushkin, but what about us?
- Before the war in Abkhazia, Abkhazians were somehow not visible. On the beaches of corn traded, sit in coffee shops, drink wine - that's all. And they became - all the fighters, in the eyes of fire, rested against the whole world. How is it so reforged overnight?
- They put the situation on the edge, and they removed from themselves all the generic, hidden, that was in them. What is the main difference between the Abkhaz and the highlanders in general from the Russians? They have more personal dignity. The man in the family is indisputable, the woman does not dare to roll on him, so brought up. And he won't have a hand on her. She even walks in black, she does not bazaar in vain, but she can stand up for herself. And Russian men were seized by their own women. I drink in Moscow with the general in orders — he is already fidgeting: he will fly home from his wife. What leader are you if a woman beats you at home? The mistake of the previous government was that she invaded the family. The man gulul, got drunk - he is dragged on the party committee, the trade union committee, shame, humiliated, he loses respect for himself. And the family is the foundation of society; it was broken — the state collapsed.
- Yes, the Russian likes to bend amazingly into a slave arc! Chekhov described this in "The Cherry Orchard": a lackey there said to someone: "It was still a disaster." - “Before what?” - “Before the will” - that is, until the abolition of the serf system ...
- True, we got used to the yoke, removed the old party part - we climbed into the new one ourselves. Just do not hang everything on the Jewish oligarchs and others. A million microbes live in the air, hostile to humans. The protective layer has lost - and they ate you, but this is not them, but your fault! My former nurse, Nadia, works in my community, her husband died in the war, two children remained. He offended the elder on the street, she got out, she gave a queue on top of her head and the question was resolved forever. Respect yourself - and everyone will respect you. I got a knife from the Abkhaz - must hit, otherwise they will be despised. Therefore, no one in vain weapon not enough, but everyone has it, and everyone remembers about it. First there must be a human person. A lowered, flawed will always tear.
- We are now, unfortunately, not a personality rushing, as self-conceit. When you and I were at the banquet on the day of your victory, I was shocked by a toast of one guest from Moscow: “Yes, I did not fight in Abkhazia, but I waged a more terrible war — in Moscow corridors!" yourself a hero, more warriors!
- Well, that's all - bullshit. These are not leaders - lightning rods: to shout, to play opposition, but in fact to divert the energy of the masses to the ground. Not conductors, and grounding. I have not seen war, and keep quiet. Because war is not just like that. There it does not pass: something vyaknul something, and then he did not understand what he said. There the price of the word is life. When, on my orders, people were going to die, I had to foresee everything, to the last detail, so that not a single hair from my head would fall in vain. Otherwise, he would be left without fighters in two days. Yes, blood is terrible - but it also teaches a lot.
- Is it possible that Russia will have to study all this?
- Clever learn from other people's experiences, fools do not learn any. Why did Georgians turn out to be more Georgian than Abkhazians in Abkhazia before the war? They say, Stalin, Beria caught up with them - but that's not the point. Abkhaz lived on his land, a beggar mingrel came to him with a knapsack, with a tokh on his shoulder: “Let me sweat your field and feed me for it.” Abkhaz and glad: mingrel for him tohat, and he went to visit his relatives. He returned a month later, the land was shaggy, and in his house the children of the Mingrelian were already running, and this was how the settlement went. Therefore, do not let strangers on your land, do not take someone else's. Build yourself as you can, and do not call the Turks with the Germans. Eat your own, live on your own. So that it was in the main thing - and then on trifles anything. Shevardnadze foolishly unleashed the war, but would have been smarter, without a single shot would have cleaned Abkhazia, like the Jewish capital of Russia. Something would give, he promised, he held elections for himself - the Abkhaz would not twitch. But on the contrary, he struck the feeling of homeland in them - and therefore he lost.
- And how do you look at our miners' strikes, trips to Moscow, hunger strikes?
- I grew up in the Donbass - and I am ashamed of the miners from the very first strikes. There was always individualism in the mines. The miner buys money and records, and others do the hard work to crawl to the layer. They began to fight for their pockets - and steelworkers, teachers, peasants on the side. The miners were given, they exposed the rest. The whole economy has fallen, miners are following too. Now again: give me my salary, my mine — you are ready to give your homeland for salary. And why mine without a homeland? Who are you on her then? Tramp, flunky? The miner yells: they will wait, I will starve! Who did he scare? They look at him and laugh: and let him strike, they bring coal from Africa! You can dig a thousand mines and bury them back if your homeland is. We must not fight for salary, but for our homeland!
- But how?
- If there is a desire, there will always be someone who knows. No need for miners to go, no need for a Russian in Russia to starve, this is a shame. If the governor, the mayor is a traitor, he has deceived the hopes - let the strike take power in the city, he is yours, your land! His power to put in his place - and not beg in Moscow!
“But so the whole country will be scattered back to the land.”
- Then will unite immediately on interests. Abkhazia is being kicked from Russia now - and she is asking for Russia. Why do Abkhazians have a fire in their eyes, despite the blockade and everything else? Because they feel Russia for themselves. And Transnistria asks for it, and Belarus, and the rest. Where the authorities are against it, the people have long wanted it. Everyone knows, and the same Georgians, that without Russia and their homeland will not. They will not go to war either for Turkey or for America. And for Russia go. This is their former Union, their territory, it is in their genes, it was not for nothing that World War II shed their blood for it, and most of all the heroes were from the Caucasus.
- Where do you feel your homeland? You were born in Ukraine, live in Abkhazia, Russian itself ...
- My homeland is Abkhazia. And Ukraine. And Russia. The dog where he lives, marks his space with urine. My space in my heart is marked from Kaliningrad to Nakhodka. I fought in the war not only for Abkhazia, but also for our entire country. Without Russia, I would be nobody here. And I have the respect of the Abkhaz because I represent for them our common Russian home, in which they also want to live. I don’t climb onto a pedestal, it’s stupid at all. If you really do something, there is always enough space. I am Russian, I cherish this, I stand on it. Abkhazians stand their ground. Even though they pray according to the Orthodox, they celebrate all church holidays with pleasure, but it is theirs that is external. Inside is one: its own land, its own nation. They will not fight for any faith, but they will give the last drop of blood for their homeland. They are accustomed to hominy have a hand, I - a fork, but it does not divide us.
- In your opinion, does present-day Russia have any hope of victory in principle?
- The instinct of your field will still work. But first you have to beat yourself. Lev was tagged on the tail: "Donkey" - and he was dead with grief. One effort is needed: to take off this label. I was at the same convention, officers from the Crimea speak: they oppress us there, you book accommodation in Russia for us! I got up: “What kind of housing do you need? What are you officers? Run from Russian land to Russian! ”But this is the most difficult thing - to overcome yourself. I know from the war: a man is best in his trenches. The shells are beating on them, they have already been shot, they are killed, but they are their own. It is necessary to run across to the enemy trench, it is safer there, but to master these 20 meters is the hardest. 20 meters - like all life. I got it - saved myself, no - I died. Russia has the same choice now.
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