A light in the end of a tunnel. The course of historical development of Russia
"The corridors end with a wall,
And the tunnels bring to light "
Vladimir Vysotsky. Ballad of childhood
And the tunnels bring to light "
Vladimir Vysotsky. Ballad of childhood
History through her subjective perception. About the reasons for the collapse of the USSR on the "VO" already who just did not write. For example, an engineer - and why not? From his bell tower he sees one. The artist would see something else. The poet is the third. The sociologist is the fourth. And there would always be a fifth one ... When, for example, the last time my students conducted a sociological survey of the residents of Penza about what they see as the reason that not everything is good with them and who is to blame, they got a real bunch of opinions . One thing was indicative: the opinion of a guy who was of a most marginal appearance from a sleeping area, who said this: “Americans, and this one, like him, Yeltsin!”
So this underground passage under the tracks of Penza-1 station, connecting the railway station with the bus station, looks now. But once a passenger car carrier traveled through it on rails and “Bread” vans traveled
That’s why I won’t bother VO readers with either numbers, facts, or links to various smart magazines - why? I’ll just try to show by the example of the development of our only Penza infrastructure the whole course of our historical development. Again, through the prism of my own memories, I have a good memory, and the Penza Encyclopedia is at hand. Well, I’ll make my Penzens happy. They will go to VO, and here about our city and the “native” railway tunnel. Just read everything, not a line, and try not to think up anything for the author, as some like it. Here is the text, but in the text everything you need, plus photos.
To the left of his entrance, on a high embankment, was the military commissariat of the Zheleznodorozhny district. Now almost nothing remains of the embankment. That's how much soil has been moved here over the past decades.
So, I was born in the 1954 year and somewhere at the age of five I realized that I was living on Proletarskaya Street, and in a rather strange place. The strange thing is that it was very difficult to get to the central streets of the city ... well, it’s very difficult, let’s say so. The fact is that the city is crossed at once by four railways, on which there are four stations: Penza -1,2,3,4. And all would be fine, but ... because of the railways it was difficult to get to the center. Here the crossing and the barrier and the bus cost 10 minutes until the train passes. There is a bridge from which it’s not something that is dripping, but streams of dirty water pouring, and besides, it is far from you. Although ... the most important station Penza-1 was just not far from my house. Three streets led to it - Lunacharsky, Pearl and Blacksmithing, and all three rested in an underground tunnel over which trains ran. In 1935 — 1937, the city had a narrow-gauge railway in Penza, for which this tunnel was built under the path of Penza I, converted after the narrow-gauge railway was closed into a road one and then a pedestrian one. These streets in Soviet times were green, shady and ... dirty. For example, on Proletarskaya Street until 1959 there was no asphalt. There were wooden sidewalks - planks on sleds that caved in when walking. They were especially funny in the spring. Water accumulated beneath them and when they stepped on them, they sprayed upwards in streams through the holes from the knots. And women fell under skirts! And they squealed and pulled up their skirts, and there were multi-colored leggings to the knees, which, of course, was very funny.
In the 60 years of the last century, this building of a music school was surrounded by private houses from all sides. Now it goes straight to Lunacharsky Street ...
Then they laid asphalt, but ... the enormous clearing where these three streets converged remained unprepared. There were ruts filled with green slurry, and it was impossible to go straight through it. Well, trucks drove through the tunnel itself, including Khleb vans, and for residents of the Strela district (the store was called in a five-story stone house built in 1965), this route was the most reliable to get to the city center. The area was still that. There are boys ... "Where are you from?" "What are you pulling, I live on Strela ... I understand ?!" My daughter already at what time walked freely around the city until late, because ... "I’m from Proletarskaya Street, well, fuck off!" or "I live on Arrow, what do you need ?!"
There was a wasteland on which a mobile zoo often unfold. To the wasteland - continuous private development. Now here is such a modern shopping center
But the tunnel itself was a very vile place. Firstly, he was not paved, and mud-filled ruts stretched through him, which did not dry out even in the hot summer. It dripped from above and it was best not to fall under these creosote-fuel oil drops. For pedestrians, the path again from the boards was laid only on one side and fenced with iron bars through which dirt flew from the wheels to passers-by. The wall that had to be pressed against was also dirty and slimy. So it was necessary to pass this tunnel quickly, not to fall under drops from above and splashes from the side. And it has been so long, very long. The leading personalities of the city had neither boards nor an iron sheet to block the passage for people from cars, and it was impossible to make a “roof” over it either. All funds went to the construction of the magnificent building of the CPSU regional committee.
This is all that remains of the old houses, which were visible and invisible here.
The old station was demolished in the 1969 year, and by the 1974 year a new one was built, and at the same time, this terrible tunnel was completely rebuilt. They drove thousands of tons of land to the place where the three streets named above and two meters met, no less, raised the relief of this place, covered everything with asphalt and built a modern bus station in the place of a dirty wasteland. The terrain around has changed beyond recognition. And most importantly - now the "vile tunnel" has turned into a normal underground passage. True ... very imperfect. In heavy rains he was flooded with water almost knee-deep. And the two stone stairs leading into it practically did not allow either mothers with wheelchairs or disabled people in wheelchairs to cross it.
View of the bus station from the shopping center "Mercury"
My wife and I were faced with this in the 1975 year, when we had a daughter. We both studied, my mother worked, and each time, when we were going to college, we had to take the child to his mother-in-law on Moskovskaya Street, that is, to the very center of the city, from where it was already close at hand to our university. So we crossed this passage twice a day and in any weather. You could get around it, but you had to make a very big hook. Nevertheless, we often preferred to go around (“real heroes always go around!”), So as not to “bother” on its steps. Well, for wheelchair users, it was just an insurmountable obstacle from the word "completely." Somehow, all this did not fit with the then-slogan "Everything for the good of man." Well ... they wouldn’t have put the extra five columns in the same regional committee, and would have made a convenient ramp for mothers of wheelchairs, but ... it didn’t even occur to the bosses there. Although it was affirmed - “The people and the party are united!” Probably, it was so (we didn’t seriously think about it then), but not in relation to that underground passage.
It looks like today this elevator for the disabled on the stairs facing the platform of the Penza-1 station
Durable iron rails - they now stand on its steps in both directions, appeared only when Penza with checkered bags massively rushed to China. Well, it was elementary to lift them up the stairs, so the rails appeared. "Being, so to speak, defines consciousness." You can roll and roll a stroller along them, although this is a laborious task and not for the faint of heart.
But a few years ago, Penza was seized by a boom in the construction of ramps for the disabled. How many years have passed since the 1917 year? Exactly 100, no less. And then it finally happened. The authorities remembered the most unprotected (purely physically) and the most disadvantaged category of our citizens, many of whom did not leave their apartments for years and decades. There is no elevator, there are no ramps, there are no strong relatives either. And how to move around the city? And everywhere, at the entrances to banks and shops, pharmacies and universities there were ramps for wheelchairs, sometimes so cleverly designed that they most resemble a maze. Well, they didn’t design it right away, so I had to do it later, “pervert”. Where it was absolutely impossible to attach a ramp to the porch, call buttons appeared. A disabled person drove up, pressed a button - an office worker immediately left and served him. Well, even so.
View of it from the tunnel. As you can see, the stairs up here are very long
But what about the famous “tunnel”? Oh, he went through another truly wonderful ... reconstruction. More than a year ago, horizontal elevators for wheelchairs appeared on both stairs. They work like this: a person drives up, presses a button, the platform leans back, he calls in on it, and starts moving. Arrived, pressed a button and move on.
That is, finally, the authorities, as they say, “scratched themselves”. It’s no longer a workers' and peasants’s, it’s true, but “anti-people” (as we sometimes like to call it), but with a black sheep there is at least a tuft of wool. For a while, these elevators stood, pleased the eyes of passers-by, but did not work.
“Amazing is nearby, but it is forbidden!”
A year passed and because of the weather they were wrapped in film, so now for poor disabled people, in order to use these two elevators, you need to call the operator, wait until he uncoils this “cocoon”, and only then he will be taken where necessary. The plate warns - it is forbidden to use lifts for disabled people on their own.
View of the elevator at the bottom of the stairs facing the bus station
It is good that the city also has a special taxi service for the disabled, and its cars carry them wherever needed. And so it all happened right after Aesop's fable: “He sees the eye, but the tooth is numb!” Because who needs such trouble?
The most interesting thing is that in the same neighboring Poland I saw exactly the same “lifting platforms” in the park in front of the Royal Castle in Warsaw. There was a beautiful green lawn covered with dense trimmed grass, and two such horizontal elevators led to this platform at once. That is, so that people with disabilities can simply ride on the green grass, rejoice at the beauty of the castle, relax in nature. And no formidable frightening inscriptions and polyethylene “roll up” ...
Almost the same lift in the center of Warsaw at the Royal Castle
And now, a few conclusions, so that no one would think, not guessed what the material was about. It is that the humanism of any society is directly related to the attitude towards the elderly, sick, disabled and children. There were enough disabled people in our country — after all, we survived the war — but we could not boast of our attitude towards them. Clearly, all such matters were mastered by space. However, attitudes toward people also matter. “How powerful is the Impostor? - Tsar Boris Boyar Pushkin asks in the drama “Boris Godunov” and receives the answer: “No, not with arms, not with Polish help, but with opinion, yes, popular opinion!”
This photo shows two elevators left and right, leading to this nice meadow!
Second: you can’t turn a good deed into campaigning, and start expensive devices for show. It would be simpler, say, how this is practiced in the West, to arrange a gentle ramp in the Penza tunnel on one side and an elevator on the other. Such elevators are everywhere in the cities there. And not only in cities, but even just on the highway near pedestrian bridges.
However, if we look at the dynamics, we will see that changes ... have been and are happening regardless of the political system, that’s how it is! There were boards - it became asphalt - then they made the transition - then they laid the rails, then they made the conveyor ... Yes, for 100 years, but the fact of changes for the better is evident, right? That is, social wealth is growing and life around is changing! Now it remains to wait until the authorities begin to take care of people not for themselves, but for themselves. But the "light at the end of the tunnel" we already see. The elevators are already standing. It remains to remove the “wrapper” from them and make sure that people use them. Could it "there", we will gradually take over and we!
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