Chapter 7 Chapter 4 Blue piping-2

I issued one undisputed order to my subordinates, convinced that there could be no better order.Even on the line of fire, where death seemed to make us all equal, my power convinced me that I was a superior being.I sat and listened to their reports standing "at attention".Interrupt them and give instructions.To those old enough to be my father or grandfather, I address you as "you" (of course they call me "you").They were sent under the hail of bullets to connect broken wires, just so that the senior officers would not scold me (that's how Andrei Yashin died).I ate my officer's butter and biscuits without thinking why I should have it and the soldiers didn't.Of course I had an orderly (communicator, to put it nicely) and I gave him countless troubles, made him take care of my life, and cook for me separately from the soldiers' meals (the Lubinka scouts did not have this. kind of correspondent, which has nothing to say to them).Every time I went to a new place, the soldiers were forced to bend over and dig a special underground shelter for me, with thicker logs on top to make me comfortable and safe.Ah, excuse me, in my artillery company, too, there was a brig, yes! --Is that the one in the woods? --It is also a pit, of course it is better than Gorokhovitz's trap, because it is covered and can eat soldiers' rations, Veyushkov squatted there because he lost his horse, and Pope Cove squatted there too for fiddling with carbines.Ah, I’m so sorry, but I remembered one more thing: the soldier sewed me a picture bag out of German leather (not human skin, wood, but leather from the driver’s seat cushion), but there was no belt.I am worrying.They accidentally saw a suitable belt on the body of a guerrilla political commissar (a person in the local district committee)-they took it off: We are a regular army, we are superior to others! (Remember that operative Senchenko?) Finally, I also snatched the bright red cigarette case, no wonder I remember the scene of being snatched away...

See what epaulettes can do to a person.Where have all the earnest admonitions of the grandmother before the icon!And where are the fantasies of the Young Pioneers about the divine equality of the future! So when the counterespionage ripped the accursed pair of epaulets from me in the brigade commander's command post, unhooked my belt, and shoved me out into their car, despite my whole fate It's over, I'm still troubled by one thing: how can I walk past the telephone operators' room in this dismissed state--I'm not supposed to be seen by the privates! The day after my arrest, I started my walking tour of Vladimir.A group of captured criminals were sent from the anti-espionage agency of the group army to the anti-espionage agency of the front army.From Osterode escorted us to walk to Brodnitz.

When I was taken out of the confinement room to line up, there were already seven prisoners standing there, in three pairs and a half with their backs to me.Six of them were dressed in dilapidated, weather-beaten Russian soldier Dahns, with the letters "SU" painted on their backs in indelible white paint.Means "Soviet Union" (Soviet Union), I already know this mark, more than once on the backs of our Russian prisoners of war who are trudging towards the team that liberated them with sad and apologetic looks seen.They were liberated, but there was no mutual joy in this emancipation, their fellow countrymen squinted at them with eyes that were more gloomy than the Germans, and what they would meet not far behind: imprisoned Go to jail.

The seventh prisoner was a German civilian wearing a black suit, black overcoat, and black fedora.He was over fifty, tall, well maintained, with a fair face that was cultivated from eating clean grain. I was in the fourth pair, and the captain of the escort, the Tatar sergeant, motioned with his head to pick up my sealed box which was lying aside.In this chest were my officer's stores, and all the papers against me which I had witnessed to convict me. How to say - take the box?He, a sergeant, wants me, an officer, to go with the box?That is, walking with bulky items prohibited by the new house rules?And there are six private soldiers walking empty-handed beside him?And - a representative of a defeated nation?

I didn't express all these thoughts to the sergeant in such a complicated way, but just said: "I'm an officer. Let the Germans take it." At my words, none of the prisoners turned around: turning around is forbidden.Only the one standing next to me, also SU, glanced at me in amazement (when they left our army, it wasn't like that). However, the counterintelligence sergeants were not surprised.Although, of course, I was no longer an officer in his eyes, he had the same training as me.He called the innocent German over to get the box, but luckily he couldn't even understand us.

The rest of us put our hands on our backs (the prisoners of war didn't even have a small knapsack, they left their country empty-handed and returned empty-handed), and our column of four couples set off.We don't talk to the escorts, but to each other, whether walking, resting or sleeping... It's completely forbidden.Those of us under investigation should walk as if we were carrying an invisible barrier, as if each of us was confined to our own cell. It was the fickle weather of early spring.After a while, the mist filled up, and even when walking on the hard road, there was an annoying puffing of mud under the boots.After a while the sky became brighter, the light yellow soft sunlight, as if not quite sure about its own gift, warmed the hills and hills that had almost melted the snow, making the world we should leave seem transparent .After a while, a bad wind suddenly blew up.Snowflakes that seemed to be no longer white fell from the black clouds, slapping coldly on our faces, backs, and feet, soaking our military coats and foot wraps.

There are six backs in front, six fixed backs.I have time to look at these twisted and ugly branded SUs and the shiny black cloth on the Germans' backs.There is also time to ruminate on past lives and recognize the present.And I can't.After being shot in the head - I don't recognize the present anymore. Six backs.There is neither approval nor blame in their shaking. The Germans get tired quickly.He kept turning the box over and pressing his chest with one hand, expressing to the escort that he could no longer carry it.At this time, the prisoner next to him, God knows what he had just tasted in the German prison camp (and maybe also felt kindness)-voluntarily picked up the box and carried it away.

Then the other prisoners of war took the boxes in turn without the order of the escort.And then the Germans again. Except for me. And no one said a word to me. On one occasion, we came across a long train of unladen horses.The drivers looked back curiously, and some stood up in the car, staring at it with wide eyes.It soon became clear to me that their expressions of animosity and hatred were aimed at me—that I was markedly different from the rest: my military overcoat was new, long, and tailored to my figure, with collar patches still in place. The unremoved and uncut buttons gleamed cheap gold in the sunlight peeking through the clouds.It was quite clear that I was an officer, fresh and fresh from arrest.Perhaps, to some extent, the downfall of the officers gave them a pleasant thrill (a vestige of justice), but more likely their political speech-filled heads could not contain one thought: their The company commander can also be arrested in one fell swoop.So it was unanimously concluded that I came from there. "Vlasov bastard, are you caught?! Shoot him, the viper!!" - shouted fanatically from the drivers with the fury of the rear (the strongest patriotism is always in the rear), while pinching A lot of scolding words were entered.

I was imagined by them to be some kind of international villain, and then I was caught--so now the offensive at the front will go faster, and the war will end sooner. What can I answer them?I was forbidden to say a word, but I was supposed to explain the whole of life to everyone.How can I make them understand that I'm not an infiltrating saboteur, that I'm their friend, that I'm here for them?And I smiled... I looked in their direction, I smiled at them from the line of prisoners!But my bared teeth were worse in their eyes than ridicule, and they shouted insults at me with greater intensity and fanaticism, and threatened with their fists.

I smile, proud that I was arrested not for stealing, not for treason or desertion, but for seeing through Stalin's vicious secrets with the power of conjecture.I smile because I want and maybe can correct our Russian life a little bit. However, this time my box was being held by someone else... I don't even feel guilty about it!If the person walking next to me, whose sunken face has been covered with soft down for two weeks and whose eyes are full of painful feelings, reprimanded me in clear Russian, saying that I have lowered myself by turning to the escort. the honor, that I put myself above others, that I am arrogant--then I will not take him for granted!Maybe I just don't understand what he's saying.You know I'm an officer!

If seven of us are doomed to perish on the way, and the eighth can be rescued by the escort—what prevents me from shouting: "Sergeant! Help me. I'm an officer!" Please see, what is an officer, even if his epaulettes are not blue! What if the epaulettes were still blue?What if he had been taught that he was an emissary among the officers?If he has been instilled with the idea that he is more trusted than others, that he knows more than others, then he should put the subject's head between his legs and in this state tuck him in. Where does the pipeline go? Why not plug it? ... I thought of myself as a selfless self-sacrifice.However, he is a fully trained executioner.If I went to the NKVD school in Yejiv's time - wouldn't it be just right in Beria's time? ... If there is a reader who expects this book to be a political revelation, let him close it here. If only it were that easy!There are bad people somewhere, doing bad things insidiously, it is only necessary to distinguish them from the rest and eliminate them.However, the boundaries between good and evil are criss-crossed in everyone's heart. Who can destroy a piece of his own heart? ... In the course of a heart's life these two threads intermingle, sometimes crowding out with exuberant evil, and sometimes making room for awakened good.The same person, at different ages, in different situations of life--may be quite a different person, sometimes approaching the devil, sometimes approaching the saint.The name remains the same.So we put everything on his account. Socrates' last words to us are: Know yourself! We were ready to throw our bullies into the pit, but we stopped at the pit, and we panicked: it was only a matter of circumstance that they played the role of executioner, not us. If Maliuta Skuratov had asked us to order, we would probably follow suit! ... A folk proverb says that it takes one thought to go from good to evil. So it is with going from evil to good. As soon as the memory of those illegal acts and torture in the past was aroused in society, people from all directions explained to us and wrote against it. They said: There are also good people there (in the People's Commissariat of State Security - the Ministry of State Security)! We know their "good guys": those who whisper to the old Bolsheviks "Be careful!" kick.As for the one who is beyond partisanship - a good man with humanity - are there any? Generally speaking, there will be no such people there: there are no such people there, and they have been paid attention to when recruiting.Such people also try their best to avoid them.Anyone who wants to get there by mistake--either settles down with the situation, complies with the environment, or is squeezed out by it, driven out, or even commits suicide.But after all - isn't there one left? In Kishnev, a month before Shipovalnikov's arrest, a young lieutenant - state security personnel went to him and said: "Come on, let's go, they're going to arrest you!" (auto Come here? Or did the mother send him to rescue the priest?) After the arrest, it happened that he was also escorting Father Victor.He said regretfully: Why don't you leave? Or see this thing.I had a platoon leader, Lieutenant Ovsennikov.I have no one nearer to him on the front lines.I shared a small pot with him for half of the whole war. In order not to let the soup cool down, I ate it under the rain of bullets, and ate it in the gap between two explosions.This is a country youth, so pure of heart, so unbiased in his views, that neither officer school nor officer position has spoiled him at all.He also softened me in many ways.He was an officer for one thing only: to preserve the life and strength of his soldiers (many of whom were elderly) as best he could.From him I learned for the first time the state of the countryside and what a collective farm is (he said this without anger, without protest, but casually - like the branches and branches of trees reflected on the water in the forest ).When I was arrested and imprisoned, he was shocked and tried to write my combat appraisal as well as possible, and took it to the division commander for signature.After demobilization, he also approached me through relatives—trying to help me as much as possible (that was in 1947, very little different from 1937!).I was afraid that they would look through my "wartime diary" during the investigation, mainly for him: his story was recorded there. -- When I was rehabilitated in 1957, I wanted to find him.I remember his country address.Write to him once or twice - no reply.Later I found a clue that he had graduated from the Yaroslavl Pedagogical Institute, from which he received the answer: "Assigned to work in the State Security Service." Excellent!That's more interesting.Write to him at an address in town -- no answer.A few years later, "Ivan Denisovich" was published.Well, now it's time to hear back.No!Three years later, I asked one of my Yaroslavl correspondents to come to him and put the letter into his hands.This was done, and he wrote me a letter saying: "He doesn't seem to have even read "Ivan Denisovich"..." But also, why do they want to know the future of the condemned man? What about fate? ...This time Ovsennikov could no longer remain silent, and gave an echo: "After graduating from the academy, they asked me to work in an institution, and I thought I could make some achievements there (what achievements?  … ), and it didn’t go very well in the new line of work. Some things I don’t like very much, but I’m still active in my work, so I don’t think I’ll disappoint the old comrades. !) In the future, I don’t think much about it now.” That's all... He didn't seem to have received the previous letter.He doesn't want to meet me (if he did--I think I could have written this whole chapter better).In the last years of Stalin's time, he had become an investigator, and all those who were arrested were sentenced to twenty-five years in prison.How did this turn around in his mind?How was his mind blackened?But I still remember the self-sacrificing lad who was as clear as a spring, and can I believe that it will never be the same again?No germ of life left in him? When investigator Goldman got Vera Kohanyeva to sign under Article 206 of the Criminal Procedure Code, she understood her rights and proceeded to sue all seventeen members of their "religious group". The patient's case file was studied in detail.The investigator was furious, but he couldn't refuse.In order not to suffer together with her, he took her to a large office where six or seven various staff members were sitting.At first Korneyeva just read the material, then somehow, perhaps the staff members chatted to relieve boredom - and then Vera began a real sermon (she is not simple. This is a quick-witted , an eloquent and radiant figure, though outwardly she is only a fitter, a horseman, a housewife).Everyone listened intently to her and occasionally asked questions to deepen their understanding.All this was unheard of and unexpected to them.A room full of people gathered, and people from other rooms also came.Although they are not investigators, but just typists, stenographers, document binders-but they are people in their circle, this is the agency in 1946!We can't retell her monologue, she said all kinds of things.Speaking of traitors too - why were there no such traitors in the Great Patriotic War of 1812 in the era of serfdom?It was only natural for such a person to emerge at that time!But what she talked about most was about religious belief and believers. She said, in the past, all of you were based on unscrupulous greed-your slogan was "things robbed and robbed". At that time, believers certainly hindered you.But now you want to build and enjoy the happiness of this life—why do you persecute your own good citizens?This type of people is your most precious material: because believers do not need supervision, believers will not steal, and will not avoid labor.And you want to build a just society with selfish people and jealous people?So you can't do anything.Why do you want to desecrate the hearts of excellent people?Let the church have a real right to divide, don't touch it, you have nothing to lose by it!Are you materialists?Then rely on the development of education - it is said that it can eliminate religious beliefs.But why arrest people? --and then Goldman came in, trying to interrupt roughly.But everyone shouted at him: "Shut up! . . . Shut up! . . . Speak, Speak, woman!" (What should I call her? Citizen? Comrade? All this is forbidden, This is a conundrum of stereotypes. Woman! You can't be wrong to be called like Christ) and Vera went on preaching in the presence of her scouts! ! Just look at these audiences of Korkhaneva in the State Security Office - why did the words of an insignificant female prisoner reach their hearts? Terekhov, who was mentioned earlier, still remembers the first person sentenced to death by him: "I feel sorry for him." Being able to keep such a memory shows that he still has some hearts (and the people who were sentenced to death by him after that Many he could not remember, and did not count them). This is an episode of Terekhov.When he proved to me the justice of the judicial system under Khrushchev, he smashed the glass of the table with his hands -- and cut his wrist on the edge of the glass.After pressing the bell, a staff member came in and stood at attention, and the officer on duty brought him iodine and hydrogen peroxide.While continuing to talk, he pressed the cotton dipped in the medicine on the cut site helplessly for an hour or so: it turned out that his blood was not easy to coagulate.God clearly showed him the limitations of man through this! -But he is judging, imposing death sentences on others... No matter how cold the supervisors of the "building" are--but the core of the soul, the core of the core, should still be preserved in them, right? H? Pu Yiwa said that once she was taken for interrogation by an indifferent female carrier who seemed to have neither a mouth nor eyes--suddenly bombs exploded one after another near the "building", as if they were about to be thrown at the on their heads.The usher ran towards her prisoner and hugged her in terror, seeking human harmony and sympathy.But the bombing passed.So it was still the same: "Put your hands behind your back! Let's go!" Of course, there is nothing particularly commendable about being human in the fear of death.Just as the love of a calf does not necessarily prove its kindness (people often use "he is for the sake of the family" to relieve the wicked).People praised Golyakov, the President of the Supreme Court: he loves to grow flowers, he loves to read, he often goes to second-hand bookstores, he has a lot of research on Tolstoy, Korolenko, and Chekhov-but what did he learn from them?How many people have been killed?Or, say, the colonel, José's friend, who in the Vladimir ghetto laughed and told how he put old Jewish men in the ice cellar--his debauched behavior, the only thing he feared was being caught by his The wife realizes that she believes in him and thinks he is a noble person, and he also cherishes this. But do we dare to take this feeling as the basis of goodness in his heart? They have been fixated on the color of the sky for more than a hundred years, what is the reason?In Lermontov's time - "Your sky-blue uniforms!", then blue hats, blue epaulettes, blue collar patches, and later told them not to be so conspicuous, large areas of blue gradually avoided the people's gratitude The line of sight gradually focused on their heads and shoulders—only thin piping and hat hoops remained—but they were still blue after all! This - is it just a masquerade! Or does it mean that anything dark occasionally goes to the heavenly sacrament? It was beautiful to think so.But, do you know what uniform Yagoda wears to visit the sacred? ...According to an eyewitness (who had a close relationship with Gorky and was also very close to Yagoda): On the territory of Yagoda in the suburbs of Moscow, in the dressing room of the bathhouse, some icons were deliberately placed --After taking off their clothes, Yagoda and his companions had to shoot them with a pistol a few times before going in to take a bath... How can this be understood, because he is a wicked person?What does wicked mean?Is there such a person in the world? I've gotten closer to the idea that there can't be such a person, there isn't such a person.It is permissible to describe villains in fairy tales -- tell them to children, for the sake of clarity of the plot.However, when the world's literary giants of all ages—whether Shakespeare, Schiller, or Dickens—have concocted some dark and villainous images for us one after another, we feel that this is already in the minds of modern people. It's kind of funny and clumsy.The main problem is the way these villains are portrayed.Their villains are well aware that they are villains, that their souls are black.They simply think like this: I cannot live without doing evil.Let me instigate father against brother!Let me enjoy the pain of the victim!Jacob clearly states that his purpose and motives are dark and born of hatred. No, there is no such thing!Before a person does evil, he must first regard it as good in his mind, or as a meaningful and conventional act.Fortunately, it is human nature to find justification for what we do. McBeth's reasoning is feeble--and so is a conscience-stricken one.Jacob was also just a little lamb.The imagination and daring of Shakespeare's villains are limited to a few dozen corpses.Because they have no ideology. Ideology! --it gives violence the justification it needs, and the villain the persevering strength of will he needs.It was a social theory which enabled him to whitewash his conduct before himself and others, so that instead of reproaches and curses he heard praise and applause.The spiritual backbone of the Inquisition was the Christian Conqueror - the eminence of the homeland, the Colonialist - civilization, the Nazis - the race, the Jacobins and the Bolsheviks (early and late) - the Equality, fraternity and happiness for future generations. Because of ideology, the twentieth century has seen atrocities that have killed millions.These atrocities cannot be denied, cannot be avoided, cannot be silenced - how dare we insist that there are no wicked people under these circumstances?Who wiped out these millions of people?The archipelago would not exist without villains. There was a rumor in 1918-920 that the Chekas of Petrograd and Odessa did not shoot all their condemned prisoners, but fed some of them ( live) beasts in the city zoo.I don't know if this is true or slander, if there have been such things, how many?But I'm not going to look for evidence either: as is the custom of the Blue Rollers, I'd like to suggest that they prove to us that it's impossible.But in those famine years, where to get food for the zoo?Snatch it from the mouths of the working class?These enemies are going to die anyway, so why don't they use their deaths to support the animal husbandry of the Republic, and in this way promote our progress into the future?Isn't that fitting? A line that Shakespeare's villain cannot cross, a thoughtful villain can cross--and his eyes are still clear. There is a threshold amount or threshold phenomenon in physics.There would be no such phenomenon at all when some threshold known to nature, implicitly fixed by nature, was not crossed.No matter how you irradiate lithium with yellow light - it does not release electrons, but a faint blue light flashes - and electrons come out (crossing the photoelectric threshold)!Cool the oxygen by 100 degrees, apply any pressure - it is still a gaseous state, and refuses to change!But more than one hundred and eighteen degrees -- it flows, becomes liquid. Atrocities, it seems, are also a threshold quantity.A man shakes, tosses and turns between good and evil, slips, falls, climbs, repents, goes astray—but as long as the threshold of violence is not crossed—he may turn back, and he himself is still with us. hope.When he has done too much evil, or reached a certain level, or suddenly crossed the threshold because of too much power-he is out of the human race.And maybe not for a while. Since ancient times, people's concept of justice has always included two aspects: virtue wins, and evil is punished. We have had the good fortune to live in an age when virtue, though not winning, is not always hunted and bitten by the dogs.Beaten and feeble Virtue is now allowed to enter the house in her rags, and sit down in a corner, only to be silent. Yet no one dared to speak of evil.Yes, virtue has been insulted, but vice has not.Yeah, there were millions of people killed and no one was responsible.Whoever has only to utter a word; "But those..."—reproveable, at first friendly voices will come to him from all directions: "What's the matter with you, comrade! Why are you touching old wounds?!" (even to "Iran Van Denisovich, and the retired blue caps objected on this ground: why touch the wounds of those who have been in labor camps? Love them!) Then the stick Then came up: "Hey, it's not enough! Restoring your reputation is too much!" In West Germany, as of 1966, 86,000 Nazi criminals had been sentenced—we were outraged, we spared newspaper space and airtime, we stayed after get off work for meetings and a show of hands: "Too Less! Eighty-six thousand—too little, and twenty years—too little! Go on!" And here we sentenced (according to the court-martial of the Supreme Court) - almost thirty people. What happened on the other side of the Oder and the Rhine - we are very anxious.And what happened behind the green fence in the suburbs of Moscow and near Sochi, the people who killed our husbands and fathers were passing in our streets in cars, and we gave way to them, we are not in a hurry , It's not hot, we are indifferent, don't "turn over the old score". However, if the 86,000 West Germans are converted into the number of our country in proportion, it should be 250,000! However, in a quarter of a century, we have not found any of them, and we have not brought any of them to court, for fear of touching their wounds.As their symbol, at No. 3 Granovsky Prospekt lives the self-satisfied, dead-headed, clueless Molotov, drenched in our blood, who walks down the pavement with dignity, Get in a long, wide car. A riddle that is beyond our contemporaries' ability to guess: why was Germany given the opportunity to punish its own villains, while Russia was denied it?If we never get rid of the filth that rots within us, what kind of path are we facing?What will Russia do to the world? From time to time, a strange phenomenon occurs in German courts: the defendant puts his head in his hands, gives up his defense, and no longer makes any demands to the court.He said that the reenactment of his crimes before him filled him with disgust, and he did not want to live any longer. This is the crowning achievement of the Judgment: Evil is so condemned that even criminals shy away from it. A nation that has condemned evil 86,000 times from the bench (and condemned it relentlessly in writings and among the young)--can be rid of it year by year, step by step. So what do we do? ... In the future, our descendants will call our generations the wimpy generations: first we obediently let millions of people beat us, and then we cared for the murderer to live a peaceful old age. What if they don't understand the great Russian tradition of confession and find it ridiculous?What if their animal fear of bearing a hundredth of the pain they inflict on others overwhelms any inclination to justice in them?What if they clung to the fruits of interests cultivated with the blood of the dead? It goes without saying that even those people who shook the handle of the meat grinder in 1937 are not young anymore, they are all people in their fifties to eighty years old, and they have enough food and clothing to live comfortably. The best time of their lives - so any reciprocal repayment is too late to be done to them. Let's be merciful, we don't shoot them, we don't fill them with salt water, we don't sprinkle them with bedbugs, we don't do "swallows" with a mouth, we don't stand for a week without sleeping, we don't kick them with boots , don't beat them with rubber clubs, don't use iron bands around their heads, don't put them in cells and leave them like luggage--don't do anything they have done!However, in front of our country and our children, we must find them all and judge them all!They are not so much on trial as their crimes.Try to get each of them to say out loud at least: "Yes, I was an executioner and a murderer." If this sentence is spoken only a quarter of a million times in our country (proportionally so as not to fall behind West Germany) - maybe one is enough? In the twentieth century, it is impossible to fail to distinguish between what is an atrocity that should be judged and what is an "old account that should not be overturned" for decades! We should denounce the very idea that some people can punish others!To keep silent about evil, to drive it into the body, as long as it is not exposed--in doing so we are sowing evil, which one day will come forth a thousandfold.By not punishing or even condemning the wicked, we are not merely protecting their humble old age, but are tearing from the feet of future generations the basis of any notion of justice.The reason why they have grown into a generation of "indifference" is precisely because of this reason, not because of any "weak education work".Today's young people pretend that doing bad things will never be punished in this world, but will definitely bring benefits. Living in such a country is uncomfortable enough, scary enough!