... He had sky-blue eyes, and the May sun bathed in them, as in a transparent spring, because his eyes were full of tears. He could not move, except that he could barely touch my hand and could not speak, but in his ingenuous look I read everything he wanted to tell me. We ran into him by chance, just met his eyes in the festive crowd. I suddenly wanted to tell him a lot - I even played a thank-you speech about the peaceful sky and a happy childhood in my head. However, all understanding eyes instantly plugged the fountain of my platitudes. I could only say “thank you”, and for some reason then I continued to whisper only this word. There was a feeling that we understood each other without further ado, just looking eyes in the eyes, which even filled us with tears at the same time ...
His retired son casually joked, saying that instead of a sign for the Immortal Regiment, he brought a live exhibit to the Victory Parade. I did not recognize his name, but that spring purity view was firmly imprinted on the memory with a flash of unexpected piercing. And I suddenly understood: May 9 is not only a calendar date and our heroic past. This is our lifeline for every day, unless, of course, not to remember about it only on the eve of the holiday ...
In this, not jubilee year of that Victory, I unexpectedly noted for myself: for our people, the need for truth inexorably turns into a demand. And it is formed somewhere inside, when suddenly there comes a phase of further rejection of any kind of speculation on a topic that has become intimate, i.e. his own, for different generations of the heirs of the Victory 45 th. Among the dazzling St. George ribbons and tricolors on bureaucratic jeeps, with the annual mantra "remember, love, proud" and other May protocol "care for veterans" - many of my fellow countrymen this time suddenly wanted to drop out of the annual "show." At the holiday rally, I noticed: many people turned their backs on the stage and chatted animatedly among themselves, as they say, inside the people - at the moment when those in power were engaged in self-promotion against the background of foreign awards and victories. The people did not fight with them, he seemed to reject them from himself, or rather, he himself left this theater of double standards. It is interesting: do modern “elites” give themselves a report that, shaking people with “claps”, they no longer own the audience and no longer hold the hall, as it was possible before. Now - no, albeit slowly, barely noticeable, but - no.
Of the many assessments of traditional events, this one cut through social networks: “I look forward to the approach of May XNUMX with horror ... The frenzy of militarism and the cult of war:“ Look, which guns, which Tanks, we’ll get to Berlin, and repeat if necessary! ” Millions of laundered rubles, tinsel, fanfare, fireworks, speculations on the memory of the dead, shocks by scrapes ... War films, an overturned conscience. Then the country is reluctant to sober up. Veterans will go home until next year. Now you can go to the country, to barbecue. ”
I do not know who owns these hard lines. However, many - including my peers - they were hooked on the living, judging by the number of reposts and approval in social networks. So, so many people already think so. Apparently, lies and double standards in relation to their own country and its people become so obvious that the demand for truth takes the form of an uncompromising condition. Who knows, maybe it is this “slap in the face” that is needed to bring people to their senses. There are pencils stiffness "9В" - from them remains the most powerful mark. Such a degree of severity probably needs a jolt to get people out of a knockdown, and to send a lie to the knockout.
You have noticed that in this, 71, the victorious May, several TV channels at once, incl. purely commercial, the prime-time theme of the war was played the same way: the Soviet film “And the Dawns Here are Quiet ...”. That is, the domestic media business clearly caught the mood of its consumer: the same request for piercing human actions and relationships, the truth without the scenery of wrapping patriotism, the desire to be free, finally, from many years of self-deception web by improper feats and impersonal self-sacrifice, as well as false concurrence to war the victories of those on Earth almost no more ... Perhaps the theme of the war gradually, from nationwide battles and mass heroism, is moving towards a private understanding of the war to the irresistible condition of choice: to betray or remain decent, not to hide behind others' backs, that is, to be ready for your own Calvary ...
Before our eyes, fresh ideas for “reviving” the memory, like the same march of the “Immortal Regiment” in the country, are becoming an integral May tradition. And now the subjects of the Russian Federation are ready to compete with each other in the diversity and mass character of the “participants of the tunnels”. And all the more confident they are headed and directed by the same local official army, for which the veteran theme is the most successful, practically free, self-PR: stuck around the city on the eve of the Victory Day pictures of themselves named against the veteran "interior" with medals thicker - and order . In general, they can no longer be removed, from elections to elections. In my Central Russian district town, in any case, this is exactly so. Marketed, and then what? Tribunes to the warehouse, signs to the garage, and posters about "remember" - to the tube, and on the shelf - until next May?
At the same time, I increasingly hear the same murderous phrase from different people: thank God, not all veterans have survived to this day. In this regard, I always think about my great-uncle, who was only a year older than me, when I fled to the front after the ninth grade, throwing myself an extra godok in the military enlistment office. He completed accelerated flight courses and served as a fighter pilot throughout the war. And then he died, in June forty-five, under Lvov, from a Bandera bullet. What could I bring to him and his memory? What are national achievements? Perhaps the phased elimination of free health care, education, and indeed the victorious people themselves? If we are children and grandchildren of winners, that is, free and independent, then why are millions of us already not living, but surviving? Why are the chances for a personal start of life of each of us are no longer equal if an unheard-of-great stories humanity collective sacrifice? How did it happen that in the society of the heirs of a great victory, for which the most precious thing was deliberately given away - life - money was proclaimed as the present measure of freedom, and not conscience hidden deep inside, honor and justice? Why, for a share in the inheritance of a deceased relative, many of us are ready to fight to the last, but for the cumulative legacy in the literal sense of the immense Motherland, its depths and wealth, where each of us could have enough free life, everyone fights, but not we, the successors winners? And the more you look at our life through the prism of that historical triumph, the more you understand why it is so fierce of us who are trying to erase, first of all, the military fragments of genetic memory. Because it is the theme of the Victory of 45 that stirs the lulled by tireless mantras about “everything will be fine” national self-consciousness. And because from the ashes of that war and that nation-wide test, the indestructible Phoenix of Russia can really be reborn.
In this sense, the idea of the "Immortal Regiment" as an image of the morning horn, a way to shake things up, open your eyes and look around, finally, around yourself, surely guessed right. And for this reason I would not like a living idea to become a ritual symbol of the type “every year, December 31 (May 9) we go to friends with ...”. Memory in granite takes for a living, first of all, those who remember the bitterness of victories and losses, whether they are soldiers on the front line or young children of war who replaced adults in the rear, charred by the loss of their parents and loved ones. For these generations, the Motherland or the Eternal Flame is each time reviving memories, because they have something to remember. And this memory goes into eternity, after the winners gradually disappearing there ... And now the soul is pricking here and there, offended by the current teenagers, the memory of the Eternal Flame impersonal to them - as a barbecue fire. For they do not understand the symbol itself about the already unfamiliar events of the past. How to deal with this? Personally, I believe that the Memory of 45 should descend from granite pedestals into the current ambiguous world, dissolve into myriads of molecules in our daily life, become a special aftertaste of air breathed in Russia. This memory should become alive, like a completely tangible swaying of invisible oxygen at sunny noon. Our life, both private and public, must become imbued with this special, all-pervading scent of the military choice that led our relatives to the Victory: to remain decent or cease to be.
The most interesting thing is that if we make it a rule to evaluate both our actions and the behavior of the authorities from the standpoint of the Victory of 45, then much in the surrounding chaos will return to normal. We, the descendants and heirs of that single break of the USSR, perhaps more than anyone else, have no right to divide into poor and rich, “successful” and “outsiders”, “blacks” and “whites”. And today's receipt of super profits by a handful of unbridled geeks at the expense of increased exploitation and deception of their own people is not just an injustice. This is a shot in our past and in our Victory, because those who did not return from the war allowed themselves to frolic by one at the expense of others in this world. And the heroes of the bygone era did not give anyone the right to pound billions on the bones of their descendants humiliated by a beggarly pension or the mocking size of the minimum wage (minimum wage).
And the so-called social science found in current school textbooks. “The theory of stratification”, that is, the division into layers among us, according to income level (and it doesn't matter if you have “clean” hands) as a natural law of nature - is nothing but enemy mines in a multinational Russian field, therefore as the nature of the Russian people, Russian man is not consistent.
A young Russian girl, beaten on pedestrian Old Arbat by a Moscow ex-official - a citizen of two states - just for removing the phone, as his car pointedly pressed on pedestrians confused under the wheels, refused to accept thousands of dollars from the offender 10 good. " It is more important for her to achieve his apology and punishment according to the law. This is the ineradicable breed of winners, an example to follow, as a minimum, to fellow citizens in uniform and gowns. Or the family of a Russian pilot shot down by the Turks over Syria who refused to accept “financial compensation” from the aggressor, since they do not trade and don’t accept handouts, this is humiliating for the deceased’s family. Because today, as then: man does not live by bread alone ...
From our power - big and small - I think, we should also ask from the point of view of a living, daily memory of those forties, because in the post-perestroika clouding many eccentrics in full seriousness imagined themselves to be “national elite”, “class of officials”, masters “by right. " However, this bliss is based on a piece of public benefit stuck with the help of the authorities, in essence, the same betrayal of the survivors and those who died for a bright future for all. It’s just for some people it was possible to accomplish what was morally unacceptable for the rest: to take Nesvoe away. And nowhere to get away from this shame before the ancestors ...
An unfamiliar fact: a hundred years ago, under the guise of a shortage of workers, the liquidators of Russia massively imported Chinese into the country. It was clear to the authors of the revolution that it would be difficult to keep the situation without mercenaries. Therefore, they actively began to recruit the Chinese even before the October revolution — to serve in the Red Army, and in fact to effectively suppress the indigenous population of Russia. According to the official version, there were more than 50 of thousands among 300 of thousands of foreign mercenaries, Red Army soldiers, but according to information from white immigrant sources (Radio Liberty), the number of only Chinese reached 300 of thousands.
You do not find deja vu when looking at the situation with the current migrant workers? Obviously, for them, in fact, the same role is envisaged - according to the intentions of the very same “scriptwriters” on the next collapse of Russia. However, this time we have a chance for self-preservation - and this is again a living memory of the single Victory of 45. The general mass heroism of that era would allow us and Central Asian migrant workers to recognize in each other the grandchildren or great-grandchildren of the heroic ancestors, who worked together for us to gain a common Victory. And no other guest workers in the world will be able to present the “indigenous” more reliable “Auswais”. And this means that they will not quarrel with us and will not separate the country to the end, no matter how someone would want it.
But how to revive the military memory? In my opinion, it is, first of all, to declassify the military and pre-war archives, to enable all of us to get rid of many years of false stereotypes regarding our own leaders or entire nations built on ignorance of the truth. The special structures in our time have become some kind of "privatizers of memory", classifying archives "in the interests of the nation." True, no one asked about the nation. I would like to ask the President of my country: when will the declassification of archives cease to be a bargaining chip on the market of power? What is needed to ensure that the wealth of the nation ceases to be the subject of political bargaining? How can we jointly win today, if we still do not know the whole truth about the scale of not only military heroism, but also betrayal? After all, there is a real danger that at the decisive moment from the depths of the memory of different peoples of Russia, the old resentment of certain periods of the military Soviet past will be brought to light, and this is because people know what is called only one side of the coin? ..
... Remembering that grandfather, the impeccability of his gaze is worse than condemnation, people who have turned away from bureaucratic insincerity, I understand that this request for truth is nothing but the instinct of self-preservation, powered by the people in their desire to free themselves from falsehood. After all, what is freedom: it is above all self-liberation from lies. And in this sense, our people do not overdo it. No wonder it is sung in the Cossack song: “And I asked the Cossack truth for the people. There will be truth on Earth - there will be freedom ".