Country of the Soviets. My career as a political informant
Anyone who is interested in plunging at that time, I would advise you to watch the movie "Different Fates", filmed in 1956. How many years have passed, and he has not lost his relevance, like the beautiful melody and words from the composer’s romance Roshchin: “As my gray hair is afraid of your lock, you seem even younger when I’m around, but we don’t celebrate meetings, we have different fates ... "
“First of all, he didn’t know whether the year was 1984. There is no doubt about this: he was almost sure that he was 39 years old, and he was born in 1944 or 45; but now it’s impossible to set any date more accurately than with an error of a year or two. ... But it is curious that while he drove with a pen, a completely different incident remained in his memory, so much so that even now write it down. It became clear to him that because of this incident, he suddenly decided to go home and start the diary today. ”
J. Orwell. Xnumx
J. Orwell. Xnumx
History and documents. Our past material on the topic "Back to USSR" caused, one might say, a flurry of requests to continue the topic. Well, you can continue, especially since the topic is really interesting and, in my opinion, needs some sorting of the gray matter of the brain, at least of my own.
However, before writing further about how the children of the Land of Soviets received information, I would like to start by giving a fresh example of the magical qualities of this strange “substance” called information.
And it happened so that with our granddaughter for a long time we did not talk about the past, except perhaps about individual everyday moments. No one told her about the events of 1991, nor about the collapse of the CPSU and its consequences. News we didn’t watch on TV at all, so she received no information about that time. At school, we also chose her a teacher who taught precisely how to count and write, and did not talk about her rheumatism and how good (how bad) it was to live before. And so, when she was already in the second class, we somehow got into a conversation about the Communists, and I take it and say that it was also (a communist). My granddaughter looked at me so apprehensively, lowered her voice and asked: “Does grandmother know?” I almost fell out of my chair from laughter. My grandmother came here, and together we read to the granddaughter something like a lecture on political literacy. “Even so ...” she said thoughtfully, and we did not return to this topic for a long time. But I’m terribly interested so far: where did she get the thoughts that being a communist is fear and horror? They don’t read Solzhenitsyn in the second grade, the teacher couldn’t tell them that, I know for sure. And the question is: where does the information come from?
In the previous article, we were talking more and more about magazines, from which I then had occasion to draw information. But, perhaps, most of all we received it with the help of wired radio and cinema in all forms. For example, the scenes of Bloody Sunday and the barricade battles in Moscow in December 1905 in the movie "Prologue" in 1956 were impressively shot, although the film itself is as flat as a board. For the first time there, Tsar Nicholas II saw
Moreover, this question is directly related to my childhood memories. In the previous article I already wrote that it was not customary for us, children of that time, to ask adults about something. Rather, they were asked, but in the most, so to speak, critical cases, and so we ourselves all found out from somewhere. "Do not go in, do not interfere, go away, you are still small ..." - a typical set of excuses for our questions. It’s from excerpts of conversations, cues and grins of adults, from radio programs and television shows, posters on fences that we knew the world, plus school and textbooks, and also books. That is, there was a certain information space around us, and it formed us. Everything, by the way, is exactly the same as now, only the methods of obtaining information have changed, and its availability and volume have also increased.
But the movie "Chapaev", I remember, caused some strange feeling. I didn’t like the way Chapaivets said: “Intelligentsia” (I already knew what the intelligentsia was, but he, “ours,” an adult uncle, comes out, doesn’t know this ...) And in the end I liked it most of all in this film exactly “ psychic attack "Kornilovsky regiment
Negative, by the way, came from it. Somehow, about five or six years old, I picked up somewhere on the street a funny rhyme about a reddish gorilla who was doing some strange things with an unfortunate parrot who shot himself. The rhyme there was beautiful. But a lot of unfamiliar words. But my memory was beautiful. He learned, repeated, and then came to his mother with his grandmother and gave them ... "poetry." It must be said that from the pedagogical point of view they did absolutely right. That is, they did not begin to gasp and gasp, and scolded me, but explained, and it was very delicate that the words in this rhyme are bad, and good children do not say them. What are these swear words. And that was enough, because among us, street boys of Proletarskaya Street, it was the very last thing to say such words. It was impossible to complain to adults about a broken nose as a comrade, but it was possible to immediately snoop on them loudly: “But he said in a damn (or“ on mats ”)!” - and it was not considered shameful, and the culprit was immediately torn like a goat.
"The mental bourgeoisie." By the way, this attack left a memory that the “psychic attack” in the movie “The Tale of the Cybalsch Boy” didn’t cause laughter for me or for most of my acquaintances. On the contrary. "They shoot at them, and they go!" - We discussed what we saw, sitting astride a fence in the garden. And then somehow on TV they showed “Chapaev”, “Alexander Parkhomenko” and “Malchish” for three consecutive days, and it blew our brains. We immediately made rifles with bolts from the latches, and arranged a fight in the meadow, and I, as the youngest, had to command other kids. There was one more reason - I had the flag of South Korea, stitched to participate in the May Day demonstration on the instructions of our teacher (decent fool!). Well, we walked and fell, and the adults stopped and looked, and then we got up again and walked again, blowing a march: “Tara-ra, there-ta-ta-ra, tara-tam-tam-tara, tara, tara there, there! ” They captured the “Reds,” and everything, like in the movie “We Are From Kronstadt,” was to tie bricks to their necks and throw them off a cliff. And we even stored the ropes in our hands to tie them. But our hopes of finding stones, alas, did not materialize. Well, I ordered them stabbed with bayonets and still proud of my resourcefulness! In response, there were shouts: “They don’t play like that! Not so in the cinema !!! ” That's how modern cinema acted on us then.
Due to the disordered reception of information, we learned about many events from the adult world by chance. For example, I learned exactly what happened in Novocherkassk in June 1962. He sat on a bench in front of the house and dangled his legs. Waited for the comrades to go play. And then a staggering, obviously drunk citizen walks by, sits down next to him and says: “Remember the kid! They shot people in Novocherkassk. Got it? " I answer - “I understand”, they generally warned me, to be afraid of the drunk and not to argue with them. Well, he got up and went on, and I went the other way. And he thought: “If an adult said, even if drunk, it means that it is so. And who could shoot at whom? ” By that time, I already knew for sure about 1905, from the feature film about the revolution, shown on television. There they sang a song: “Your eldest son on Palace Square / He went to ask for the tsar’s mercy, / He covered him like a severe canvas / Bloody snow in early January ...” I remember that I liked the film very much, although its name was forgotten. From it I learned about the “Macedon bomb”, after which I unscrewed the ball from my grandfather’s bed, filled it with “gray from matches”, adjusted the wick from the clothesline and threw it into the garden. It exploded cool, just like in a movie! But here it was clearly different ... And suddenly it dawned on me: like this uncle, they were going somewhere, apparently hooligans (“all drunkards are hooligans!”), And they were shot at for it. And rightly so, you cannot roam the streets like this.
The next day I asked my mother: "Is it true that they shot people in Novocherkassk?" But she put a finger to her lips and said that you can’t talk about it. Well, it’s impossible and impossible.
Then there was some bad bread. Sticky, and the loaf inside is empty. They said that corn. But I liked him. Why? And with pellets of such bread it was very cool to shoot girls in the head from a glass tube, and he also made great sculptures and then withered tightly. In this way I made a “real” Mauser out of him, and it was something!
And the film “Treasure Island” (1938) seemed to me quite surprising. They took it off in such a loose interpretation of Stevenson’s story that young Jim there turned into a Jenny girl, ordinary adventurers into Irish rebels fighting against the British, and even the commander they say at the beginning of the film: “Do you have teeth, and claws have you have a? If not weapons"We must take it from the enemy!" The latter, in general, is true. But do not bite them with their teeth ... But the fate of the three songs from this film is interesting. “Beat the drum!” - no matter how they tried to launch the song into the masses of vivacity for the sake of popularity, it could not be found. “Jenny's Song” during the war became the favorite song of the wounded in hospitals, and it was often broadcast on the radio. But the song of the pirates "Friends, unfold the sail together ..." in the USSR after the war for some reason became a song of drunkards. How to sing: "Yo-ho-ho! Have fun like hell! ”, So you could immediately drag the“ singers ”into the detox!
Well, erysipelas! Truly pirate !!! And who would have thought that Alexander Nevsky and the pirate Billy Bones are one and the same person!
Or here is another case. One evening, when my mother came from work from the institute and my grandmother fed her dinner, and I tried to sleep under their conversation, which was not easy, since the walls in the house were very thin, I hear that she is telling something interesting. It turns out that at the department of Marxism-Leninism they found a teacher who wrote a letter to the Central Committee of the CPSU complaining about Khrushchev, accusing him ... of many bad deeds. And that a letter came from the Central Committee to arrange a meeting of the party committee and expel him from the ranks of the CPSU. But here in Moscow the Plenum of the Central Committee took place, and on it Khrushchev “was finally removed and sent to retire,” and now the party committee is discussing what to do with this teacher. It seems necessary to praise for an active citizenship, but somehow inconvenient. But at least they left in the party.
Then I was very surprised at the movie "Welcome, or No Trespassing." After all, there they speak of corn as the queen of the fields. But Khrushchev’s “voluntarism” has already been debunked, so it’s impossible to show it ?! And there it says: “Children are the owners of the camp,” but the “bad” comrade Dynin rules everything. It reminded me of something, but the child didn’t understand ...
“Give the Pitiful Book” is another wonderful 1965 Soviet movie. Everyone who is interested in the Soviet service should definitely see it. And as soon as he was missed on the screens? Personally, I would then strictly forbade him from showing
In general, it’s completely incomprehensible how, but by 1968 I had become a true Orthodox “homo sovieticus” and everything that happened around me was good!
In the class, they chose me as a political informant, and I regularly listened to the radio, and watched the news on TV, and, of course, approved the entry of our troops and tanks to Czechoslovakia, I watched in the newspapers how many American planes were shot down in Vietnam, and regularly donated money to the struggling Vietnam fund.
In the same year I visited Bulgaria in the summer (this was my first 13-day trip abroad), I really liked it there, and now I could also tell as an eyewitness what is good and what is not good there.
In a word, a young man I was tested and savvy, because the class teacher and the school organizer wrote a testimonial on me with permission to travel abroad.
And then I suddenly hear on the radio that the International Conference of Communist and Workers Parties (June 5-17, 1969) is taking place in Moscow, the Communist Parties of different countries are participating in it (75 communist and workers parties in total.), And, it turns out, many of they don’t support us! They say that the entry of troops into Czechoslovakia was a mistake! And well, one or two people said so, but no. And the Australian CPA, and New Zealand, and the French, and who just did not express their dissatisfaction there about this! But everyone knew, including me, that we all “help-help” ... And here you are so grateful! I confess that I was then at a great loss. "How so?! How dare they ?! ”
And this character also constantly raised perplexing questions from me: well, where do such people come from, and most importantly, how do they get into the bosses? Where are the party and government looking?
While watching “Carnival Night”, I kept thinking, why did Comrade Telegin, a deputy of the City Council and a member of the Central Committee of Trade Unions, not intervene and put Ogurtsov in his place?
Many of our films caused me sincere bewilderment. For example, Volga-Volga. Well, what a funny film, but where did this fool and bureaucrat come from, because of which it all started? Why wasn’t he removed from work? Or Carnival Night is a great movie. But even there, the bosses showed a round fool, and comrade Telegin, a deputy of the City Council and a member of the Central Committee of the trade unions, know yourself laughing at Ogurtsov, and pull away and replace ... for some reason he’s not in a hurry. Why?
“Main Afternoon” and the continuation of “House of Wanderers” are very interesting and unusual works for Soviet science fiction. In particular, the second book - a terribly gloomy technocratic utopia
But at that time I was particularly impressed by the novel by Alexander Mirer, “High Noon,” which I read in 1969. Not only are there aliens landing there not somewhere in America, but landing in our Soviet city, it also talked about “graters” between the Secretary General of the CPSU Central Committee and the Minister of Defense, which resulted in various “absurdities” ". I remember, then I felt even more perplexed than a year ago: “Well, can you write like that? This is clearly ... anti-Soviet. " However, I was not the only one who thought so, which is why Mirera was not printed after this novel until 1992. But the question arises: why, then, was the book printed at all? Who missed it? If they hadn’t let us through, then we wouldn’t have to ban ... The main thing is that before that I read his book “The Blue Whale Submarine”, completely innocent children's fiction, but here it’s suddenly ... But could it be like this in the CPSU Central Committee even in a science fiction novel?
A very original work, this “Submarine ...” Mirer invented talking fish there. At least I’ve never seen anything like this anywhere else.
So, gradually, the informational boundaries of knowledge about society gradually expanded us. And it was all, in general, the way I read at the same time in one very good cognitive book entitled “Expedition to the Ancestors”: “The Doctrine is Light. And information is an illumination! ”
And also in the USSR, as part of what could be written, wonderful children's books of knowledge were published. For example, a series of informative books written by Alexander Svirin in collaboration with Mikhail Lyashenko, published from 1962 to 1970 by the publishing house Malysh (until 1963 the publishing house was called Detsky Mir). The main feature of the books in this series was the flow of popular science information to children in a playful way: as a process of studying our world by alien children. It was a great idea, and I was really looking forward to the release of a book on the history of the Middle Ages, but for some reason this series ended in the ancient world. I learned more from the series of these books than from all school textbooks!
To be continued ...
- Vyacheslav Shpakovsky
- Back to USSR. Information for Soviet children
Archival affairs: NKVD on peasants and Stakhanovites
Archival affairs. From “class alien” to “loss of party intuition”
Back to USSR. Mosaic of memory
By the wave of our memory
Information