Arkady. Photo: Kommersant
Preparing the third edition of my book about the brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky «Double Star», I remember the time when the two previous ones came out.
And I understand, that, as in the cult Monday Beginning Saturday, there is a countermotion effect:
political time, as opposed to physical time, clearly moves backward.
And not only for the hero of Monday «- Janus Poluektovich Nevstruev, — but for all of us and for the country.
The first edition of» Double Star «was prepared in the spring of 2003, for the 70th birthday of Boris Natanovich, and during the first presidential term of Vladimir Putin.
Yes, Kursk and Nord-Ost were already behind, the old NTV had already been destroyed and the TV-6 and TVS channels had been closed.
Still, Mikhail Kasyanov was the prime minister, and Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces, Grigory Yavlinsky and Boris Nemtsov, Vladimir Lukin and Sergei Kovalev, Igor Artemiev and Yuliy Rybakov, Alexey Arbatov and Yuri Schekochikhin, Alexander Shishlov and Nikolai Travkin were in the State Duma. And the question of a vote of no confidence in the government was submitted to parliament (which has long been considered unscientific fantasy). And Mikhail Khodorkovsky was also at large. And the governors were elected, and without any «filter», and the elections — as in St. Petersburg, when Valentina Matvienko won — were really competitive, and not in the presence of only sparring partners, as later …
Second edition came out ten years later — in 2013, a year after the departure of Boris Natanovich — and was timed to coincide with his 80th birthday.
This decade included Beslan and the cancellation of gubernatorial elections, the dispersal of the «marches of dissent» and the «swamp affair», the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, Natalia Estemirova and Alexander Litvinenko, the war with Georgia and the «reshuffle» of Putin and Medvedev, the «cleanup» of the State Duma from the opposition, the adoption of laws about NGOs — «foreign agents» and the prohibition of foreign adoption.
And yet it was still the world of the «Doomed City», in which objections to the authorities were not considered a feat, and not the world of «Ugly Swans» and «Inhabited Island «- which came after the spring of 2014, when the Crimea was» annexed «and the intervention was organized in the east of Ukraine.
In which we live to this day,
every day more and more returning to the past, which they perfectly remembered and in which the Strugatsky brothers lived almost all their lives.
That is why what they wrote again becomes incredibly relevant.
Because they are needed again not smart, but faithful.
And again they are punished for an indifferent way of thinking.
Dispersal of a protest on Bolotnaya Square in Moscow, May 6, 2012. Photo: Anna Artemyeva/Novaya Gazeta
And again the townspeople have become very serious and know exactly what is necessary for the good of the state.
And again, the truth is that , which is now for the good of the king, and everything else is a lie and a crime.
The times of a totalitarian state are returning, seeking to completely control a person who is nothing more than a cog and «dust underfoot» at the state machine.
The times of «authorities» who «are not mistaken», when anyone who dares to be indignant at what is happening can get under the roller of a repressive machine. Or support the persecuted.
When they declare as «terrorists» those whose testimonies have been knocked out by torture, and «extremists» — those who demand fair elections, political competition and a legal change of government.
When «enemies of the people» are persecuted (only under a different name — «foreign agents» or «undesirable organizations») and the number of political prisoners grows, and those who discontent with the government are threatened with deprivation of citizenship.
When constitutional rights are turned into meaningless a piece of paper that can be discarded at any time as unnecessary.
Times of Orwellian doublethink and «ministry of truth», shameless state lies and deafening state propaganda.
A scene from the film «Inhabited Island» (2008, directed by Fyodor Bondarchuk)
Which, as in «Inhabited Island», «with a giant vacuum cleaner pulls out of tens of millions of souls any doubt that shouted newspapers, brochures, radio, television, what teachers in schools and officers in barracks repeated, what flashed neon across the streets, what was proclaimed from the pulpits of churches. «
When the country is a» besieged fortress «surrounded by enemies outside and undermined by «national traitors» from within.
When the authorities, who consider themselves the Fatherland, have only two allies: the army and the police. True, he has only two enemies — science and education.
When every day we hear about new and new proposals of the maddened «legislative printer» — about prohibitions, punishments and defeats in rights.
< p> And when society is trying to intimidate: to show citizens that any disagreement with the authorities is considered a punishable act.
The year 2021 began with thousands of administrative and hundreds of criminal cases for participants in street protests and the adoption of laws on the defeat of protesters in voting rights (as a result of which politicians such as Yabloko's Lev Schlosberg were not allowed to participate in the elections). And it ended with examples of incredible imperious meanness: an even greater increase in the term of Yuri Dmitriev and the liquidation of Memorial, which preserves the memory of both past and current political repressions.
In turn, the year 2022 began with trying on Putin’s the power of the uniform of the «gendarme of Asia» — coming to the aid of another close class tyrant.