20 years ago Belovezhsk agreements were signed
20 years ago, in the Belovezhskaya Pushcha, in the well-known Viskuly, the heads of three Soviet republics - Russia, Belarus and Ukraine - an agreement was signed that stopped the Soviet history and gave rise to another history of Russia.
What is the Bialowieza Agreement? The decisive victory of those who wanted a clear action, carried out the political changes that were ripe and did not hesitate, frantically clutching at historical slurredness? Or the reckless and irresponsible collapse of a huge and powerful state?
The legitimacy of those events is still questionable. To think that all political changes are justified by the common love of Viktor Tsoi’s song “Changes! We are waiting for changes!” Is naive. All waited for them, but different.
It was not a disinterested don quixotic game. It had its dividends, a lot of personal and sovereign profits.
The Bialowieza Agreement removed its signatories to the first political roles - from the second and third.
Today, when the main characters of that story have died or have so descended from the scene that their political brands are almost unrecoverable, it seems to someone that the kingdom has been given for a horse.
The common and still extinct value is a large and integral, strong and fair state, requiring reforms, but not collapse, has disappeared because of ambitions, the thirst for personal leadership and autocracy. Russia has lost and with great difficulty restores influence on those peoples and states whose greatness arose by its effort and sacrifice.
And to someone, quite the contrary, it seems that strong and politically motivated politicians saved us from starvation, disgrace, disgusting military conflicts and from slipping into the humiliating misfortunes of North Korea’s scenario.
After all, only by becoming the first person of sovereign Russia, Yeltsin could use his trademark large-caliber political decisiveness and literally in a month from all the proposals to bring the economy out of the crisis, choose the cardinal one, Yegor Gaidar, and himself as deputy prime minister. Russia stepped into the market, let go of prices, the economy began to rapidly liberalize, we used to swear by this word so much that we forget that in translation into Russian, it actually means "to be free."
And so, 20 years later, we still have no common history. It is enough to listen to the post-election TV debates in the studio of Vladimir Solovyov to understand: the society did not agree on what happened to us.
Someone proves that even 20 years later we are insured against the global financial crisis by the smart and radical reforms of the 90s, and someone will never forget that those who were not sent military planes to Viskuli, two years later, without thinking directed against their political opponents Tanks and, having completely forgotten about the ideals under whose banner they came to power, they released pragmatics, profit, anti-humanity and trampling all kinds of culture from the genie’s bottle, from the state and political to the ethical and personal. The damage to those decisions, the unsuccessful transition to a new economic and political status and their consequences in their eyes is comparable to the damage from a heavy war.
Someone nostalgia for the Soviet, someone - for the stormy 90-m. Judging by the polls, the first is still more. But this nostalgia, like the love for Stalin, is also playful. Dictated by an imaginary ideal. And who knows if the people will slow down their fierce sympathies if it comes to a literal restoration. Reading the story of the witness, you understand that the main characters of those political events were bold, they believed that the history was subject to them, they reshaped and sewed it in a new way. With the confidence of good owners, busy with affairs and not doubting their competence. Their competence was called into question later, when freedom of protest was replaced by freedom of approval — a new economic policy, new living conditions, new ideas, a new power structure. The fact that the issue of the competence of the authorities remains relevant to this day can be seen even after the parliamentary elections. It is clear from them that none of the parties that went to the State Duma could not resist the desire to resort to the ideals, values, brands and attitudes of the disappeared 20 years ago.
This story is not cold. She continues. And we live in it.
story
Meetings in the Bialowieza Forest
The last day of the USSR through the eyes of the philosopher, typist and former director of the reserve
"The USSR as a subject of international political law and geopolitical reality ceased to exist." Exactly ten years ago, in Viskuly - the government residence in Belovezhskaya Pushcha, the leaders of the three Slavic republics - Boris Yeltsin, Leonid Kravchuk and Stanislav Shushkevich signed a treaty as a verdict of the Soviet empire and officially liquidated the country with the name "Soviet Union". After the world-famous choreographer Yuri Grigorovich is telling the truth: "I was born in a country that does not exist, in a city that does not exist, neither the USSR nor Leningrad." We, citizens, without leaving our place, suddenly turned out to be in different countries in 15.
Historical fact. However, to dispute it is as meaningless as the rising or setting of the sun, like any other law of nature and social development. What actually happened then in Viskuli? Presidents and politicians have already written their books about it. During a business trip to Belovezhskaya Pushcha, I met people who do not write memoirs, because they do not consider themselves the creators of eternity. But without them, as without each of us, the story would be incomplete.
Liquidation took place on a sober head
Sergey Sergeevich Balyuk worked all his life in the Belovezhskaya Pushcha, came there as a worker. "Gone director in 1994 year." During his life in Pushcha he took almost all the powerful of this world.
According to the most popular version, in 1957, at the insistence of Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev, in the Viskuly tract, which was considered the highest place in the Forest, where there was only a forester's house, a hunting pavilion was erected. Then they built a small hotel, a bathhouse and three small cottages. They say that this idea came to Khrushchev in Yugoslavia, where he was hunting with Broz Tito. For each Christmas, he later came to Pushcha to rest.
- Sergey Sergeevich, and after Khrushchev, have you not forgotten your path?
- In the Forest and Brezhnev was five times. And Gorbachev once, however, was still a simple secretary of the Central Committee. It was good for Belovezhskaya Pushcha: we built a lot of roads and housing, the people of the reserve were seriously engaged in the science of the reserve.
- And which of your guests shot the best?
- It was a woman. The wife of Raul Castro, who in the past was either a partisan or a scout.
- They say that the Bialowieza Agreement of 1991 of the year is a real impromptu. How did you know what kind of guests come to you?
- For a week Kebich called me, he then headed the government of Belarus, and said that Yeltsin would come to Pushcha. I also remember, he joked: "Yeltsin likes to drink a little, so if I am drunk, you sit at the table instead of me."
- Can I immediately ask you a question? There is a joke among the people: they drank hard "for three" and the country was destroyed. This is true?
- On the sober head all happened. After already soaked, drank a hundred grams, and not-e. The first came by air to a military base in the Pruzhany district of Kravchuk with Prime Minister of Ukraine Fokin. They even went hunting that day. Then Yeltsin with Shakhrai, Burbulis, Kozyrev and Gaidar flew. Our Minsk residents went to meet everyone. Yeltsin arrived from the airfield in his personal car, which had previously been delivered from Moscow. As they drove off, Yeltsin was given a drink, everything else was normal. To be in the Forest and not to get warm ... Maybe he was tired.
- Did Nazarbayev really wait in Viskuly?
- Yes. On the first day, they waited a long time, hours before 11 in the evening. Then from Moscow they called Viskuli that Nazarbayev would not come, they say, there is no fuel for his plane. There were eight 20 guards from Moscow and Ukrainians. Sat down to have dinner. Then who wanted - rested, some went to the bath. On the second day they began to engage in the collapse of the Union.
- Did you know what was going on?
- I guessed that the Soviet Union was falling apart, but it seemed to me, instead of it, something between Russia, Belarus and Ukraine is working out.
- Is it true that your high guests were anxious in the Forest?
- When they signed the protocol 8 of December, they disconnected all the telephones and communication from the whole world. They were afraid that someone would tell Gorbachev and that he was isolating them. Then I read that Shaposhnikov, the then Minister of Defense of the USSR, was the first to learn about the Belovezhskaya Agreement. Then Shushkevich began to call Gorbachev, and Yeltsin and Kozyrev called Bush. They got through to Washington faster than to Moscow, even though they say it happened by chance.
- How is Pusha today?
- Ask about the patient. After me, the seven directors changed. And I 16 years of management. Ruined Forest to the ground. Forests cut a lot, not only dead wood, but raw growers are sawing under its brand. Bison is good if two hundred left. Pushcha, like a great power, she also needs a good owner.
- And now someone is consulting you, as with the former director of the reserve?
“As the jokes say, the Chekists are only former in a coffin, and, probably, people who have given their whole lives to the forest can only be former in the next world.” And on this - I see everything, I understand, I worry about everything, we still live in the Forest, in the village of Kamenyuki, which is considered to be the central estate of the reserve.
- Could you, Sergey Sergeevich, get lost in the Forest?
- No, I did not fornicate even once, even though I had to go at night. Where the direction kept, there and left. Masherov liked to roar a deer to come not so much to hunt, as to listen. I was his main and only guard.
- What is the worst thing in the Forest? What beast should be most afraid of?
- Man is the most terrible and unpredictable beast. The bison is afraid, the boar runs away, the wolf, the lynx runs away. Only a wounded boar or deer is protected. No animals have ever offended me. Only people. We drove up to the oak, which, they say, is 600 years old. It is famous in Belovezhskaya Pushcha as well as the Eiffel Tower in Paris. In the reserve itself (the core of 12 thousand hectares) all human activities are prohibited. This is just a stunner - age-old living and dead trees, to which no one can touch.
The woman who ruined the country
That is how Kamenyuki jokes about Yevgeny Andreyevna Pateychuk. In Viskuly on the very first day it became clear that the meeting of the "three Slav bison" would not end with an ordinary hunt. Kravchuk, after the referendum in Ukraine, where 90 percent had just voted for leaving the USSR, was against any pauses and compromises. Later in one of the interviews, Gennady Burbulis said that neither the Kravchuk, nor Yeltsin, nor the members of their teams broke up the Soviet Union.
"We were the ones who had the mind and the courage to call things by their own names and legally and politically state what, unfortunately, from a human and moral point of view, has already happened. The Soviet Union has de facto ceased to exist. After completing the accomplished post-factum, we allowed, in my opinion, to prevent an even more dangerous scenario. Maybe even a Balkan one. With such a terrible prospect. " In short, urgently needed a typist. They began to ask Balyuk where to find one, and even to speak less. What Sergey Sergeyevich immediately found: “I have my own. I’m silent, it seems. My whole life I worked as a secretary.” At the same time, a car was equipped in Kamenyuki behind Evgenia Andreyevna Pateychuk. -
- Have you seen how they showed me on TV? Together with my grandchildren? Putin is in that film, - with these words, a pensioner who is very famous in the Belovezhskaya Pushcha meets us right from the doorway. Almost all Moscow TV channels, not to mention Belarusian, were noted in this house.
“Then they came after me: in five minutes so that she was ready.” I did not know where to take. Cap on, coat and go. They say, take the paper, carbon paper, typewriter and go to Viskuli. I took the best carbon copy, the “Optima” typewriter that we had in the office. They put me in a room and wore them all the time and carried away pieces of paper, all the time they corrected something. Everyone's handwriting was equally difficult. I was excited. Could not get the wrong letter. Most Kozyrev dictated. Stood beside me.
- Did you understand what you typed?
- Yes. With the first phrase. Around the KGB. One of them bent down to me: "Yeah, now all the Kameniuks will know that you typed here." "I would not be here if all the Kameniuks knew. Trust me." I apologized a thousand times, and never again approached me.
- They say you were most happy that Nazarbayev did not arrive.
- True. My husband just had an anniversary, the guests gathered, and where I am - no one knows. In Viskuly, all the phones are turned off. If Nazarbayev had flown in, I would have taken away all the documents for a day to reprint.
- And where is the historical machine on which you destroyed the Soviet Union? - this question is asked by my Brest escort Georgy Mikhailovich Gribov.
- A couple of months ago, the Muscovite took that typewriter, Ivanov, said that he was writing a book. He came especially to me. He says, is it possible to take? It was written off in our library, it was old, nobody worked on it. He set himself that goal, came the second time from Moscow, the accounting department wrote him an account, all according to the law. Mushrooms here only spread their hands in annoyance: "This could be the main exhibit in the Museum of Belovezhskaya Pushcha!" I gave my word of honor that I would find in Moscow Ivanov, one of the tens of thousands of Ivanovs living in the capital. It turned out to be much easier than I thought. The literary Russia newspaper from 16 in November published Nikolai Ivanov’s great material “I understand your age-old sadness,” there’s the head of Опти Optima N70220 ’with the lines ны now as the last relic of the Soviet Union is kept by the author of these lines’. Nikolai Fedorovich even came to the editorial office of Rossiyskaya Gazeta.
I expressed sincere delight of his journalistic acumen and asked him, as a representative of the Belarusian diaspora in Moscow, to name the conditions under which he could return the machine to the Belovezhskaya Pushcha. Nikolai Fedorovich promised to think ...
- Yevgeniya Andreyevna, how is it better to live - with or without the Union?
- Probably, the Union was to remain. I have relatives in Ivanovo, Ukraine has a cousin. Come to each other there is nothing to visit. And since our life is good, the pension is paid on time.
- Is it true that the heads of drunkard signed the Bialowieza Agreement?
“What I saw is not true.” Maybe I was relaxed later, but in public there was nothing. I do not like lies. I was taken home in the evening. I saw Yeltsin walking along the path. There was snow, there was frost, it was so beautiful in the forest on the day when the USSR ended.
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