Roman Senchin. Quiet prose, strong life

How good it feels when you read real prose... Recently I have been closely following, so to speak, the political processes in the country, often responding with an article or a note to something outrageous, out of the ordinary and somehow digressed from fiction... More precisely, not like that - I read quite a lot, but mostly on duty: a newspaper, a jury, a readership. But these are very different things, something different inside is activated when you read because you need to and when, after a working day, tired and exhausted, you open a random (or almost random) book or magazine and stumble upon something ... something real.

I stumbled upon such a present when I recently opened the almanac "Countrymen" (issue thirteenth), which contains Anna Andronova's story "I'm not a bunny."

I have been familiar with Andronova's prose for several years. But this acquaintance, until recently, was episodic and also almost accidental. About seven or eight years ago, at the Forum of Young Writers in Lipki, I came across a story. A very good story, and most importantly, not for teenagers, not for students, like most of the manuscripts of the Forum participants. (In general, the event was created in order to help novice authors, suggest, support, cheer, show that they are not alone in their eccentric writing occupation, but it is not easy to find a work there ready for publication or for reading for your own pleasure. .)

Yes, the story was standout total weight Lipka's manuscripts, but he was the only one who immediately remembered me by his first name and surname - "Anna Andronova" - a writer ...

The next year I read another short story or short story by Andronova. It also stands out from the crowd. At home, I dug around on the Internet and found almost nothing from Andronova's prose (it was the year 2006). And I thought: “Here is a person who writes, and writes well, for real, but what are his prospects as a writer? Even if there are twenty such texts, then they are unlikely to be published. What publishing house needs unknown authors of stories about life? There was hope for a series of books “Young Prose of Russia”, which, with the participation of the Forum in Lipki, was published in Vagrius, but the series was replenished with new books slowly.

For a year in 2008, I collected a booklet called "Catalogue of the best works of young writers." We made this catalog, so to speak, to help publishing houses, magazines, theaters. Maybe someone will be interested in young prose writers, poets, playwrights, children's writers ... The catalog was built like this: a photo, a short biography, two or three statements by a famous writer about the young, and then either an excerpt from prose or a play, or several poems.

I also included Anna Andronova in the catalog with an excerpt from the story "Golden Fish", for parting words I turned to Leonid Yuzefovich, at whose seminar Andronova studied in Lipki, and to her fellow countryman Zakhar Prilepin from Nizhny Novgorod. Both wrote warm texts, and I remember the ending of Prilepinsky: “Many people (who, for example, read Viktoria Tokareva yesterday and the day before) are looking for (and not finding) such prose, they are waiting. We once talked with Leonid Yuzefovich about Anya and agreed that, let's face it, Andronova's obscurity in the reader's world is an obvious misunderstanding. Hope it gets fixed soon."

Yes, indeed, a misunderstanding. But, unfortunately, we have plenty of such misunderstandings: Andrei Ivanov (Yurich), Alexander Morev, Alexei Serov, Irina Bogatyreva, Ilya Kochergin (by the way, his new story "Landlord" was published in the same issue of "Countrymen" as Andronova's story ), Anton Tikholoz, Danil Guryanov, Ekaterina Tkacheva, Alexei Polubota, Elena Safronova, Zhanna Raigorodskaya and, by and large, Mikhail Tarkovsky, although they are published, are practically unknown to the reader's world. And I write well ... Good, but not noisy.

I really love the words of Belinsky: "Noise, of course, is not always the same thing with glory, but without noise there is no glory." That's for sure.

By the way, both Leonid Yuzefovich and Zakhar Prilepin did a lot to make Andronova's prose known to the general reader. With the participation of Yuzefovich, the AST publishing house published two of her small books “Stay here a little longer” and “Symptoms of happiness” (editor - Lev Pirogov), and Prilepin included Andronova's stories in the anthology of women's prose "14".

There are few critical reviews of Anna Andronova's stories and novels. In general, it is difficult to write about such prose - the plot is not twisted, not dynamic, there is no shocking, stylistic innovations. A rather traditional, simple outwardly language, a story about everyday life, about the life that the majority lives.

Andronova is a doctor. Not figurative, but real, works in a hospital. And in her things there is a lot about the hospital, about sick people. But she describes them, as it should be for a doctor, without savoring, almost coldly - sick, this is an indispensable component of the universe of many of her heroines, her eternal companions.

The story "I'm not a bunny" is also about the hospital. And about the family. The main character, Yulia, is a cardiologist, she has a husband and two sons. And more sick. One of them, "not yet an old man, a retired athlete" Komissarov, is dying. “Komissarov first ended up in another hospital, a surgical one. He was operated on, a blood clot was removed from a vein on his right leg. A month has passed after discharge, but the swelling has remained. Then it increased. In the clinic he was told that it was "from the heart" and in cardiology. To Yulia in the ward. No heart problems were found, but thrombosis of another vein was confirmed. And fluid in my stomach.<…>It was already clear to Yulia that somewhere in Komissarov's stomach a tumor was hiding, squeezing the outflow of blood and sowing deadly blood clots. But where?

In general, this is what the thoughts of the main character are occupied with. And the family, of course, the youngest son, still a kindergartener (but soon to school) Ilyusha, who ... adults call this - “naughty”. In general, he is a special child, internally special. Here is the older, ten-year-old Vladik, another. "Raised in a different concept -" what an adult son dad has. All by myself.<…>Yes, the elder is already completely poisoned by this conditional world, saturated. It’s impossible, it’s not so cool, only complete lochosaurs do it, what are you, at all? Boys, boys…”

The family line of the story rests on seemingly insignificant, ridiculous problems. Here comes the new year, and the boys in the group should be dressed as bunnies. All the boys do not mind, only Ilyusha resists.

“I won’t be a bunny.

- How will you not? With all the guys? Have you seen what everyone's costumes are? Ears, shorts. All songs are sung. Ilyush, you need to teach the bunny, Nadezhda Yuryevna ordered.

- I'm a boy.

- Of course, Ilyusha, but you will have a New Year's performance, a game, like in a theater, remember, we went. There, the uncle was also not an elephant, but only played.

- I will be an elephant, but not a bunny.

- There is no need for an elephant. There are no elephants, not one. Elephants in Africa live where there is no Santa Claus.”

In addition to the whims of the bunny costume, Ilyusha does not get it (he was sick for several days before the matinee), and Yulia sews it herself. It seems to be easy - ears and a tail - but the ears do not stand at all ... She sews late at night, after work ...

The son never became a bunny - he started crying while changing clothes. Yulia, who has taken time off from work, hears him from the stairs and runs into the group.

She is met by the teacher Nadezhda Yurievna:

“Well, finally, the mother appeared! Take away your son, please! Togo, look, the whole matinee will break!

“All the guys are already dressed up,” the music girl sang in an insincerely sweet voice, “but he doesn’t want to be a hare.

- How does he not want to? Ilyusha!

- Outright. We fight over it for half an hour. Roars only, nothing specific says. I won't, that's all. I say, how can you let the guys down like that? Yells, breaks out. Vaughn - your ears are broken! I don't know what we'll do now."

Yes, the order is violated, everyone is inconvenienced. The holiday is ruined.

“- So, that's it, there is no more time, let's line up, hares! Somov, your mother is already persuading you. Come on, stop mocking us here, get dressed and line up.<…>

- No! No! No! – he jumped to his feet, feeling Yulkino's saving presence behind him. - I'm not a bunny! I am Ilyusha Somov!

And then Vladik suddenly rushed at him, Yulia somehow lost sight of him, and he, it turns out, was already crying too.

- You're a bastard, a bastard! I left school because of you!<…>We dropped everything, ran to look at you! Mom sewed all night. And you! Get dressed now, you damn fool! Crybaby!"

Vladik is taken to the assembly hall by Slava, the heroine's husband, who came to the rescue, and she remains with the youngest. He slowly calms down, and she recalls how she met Slava, their first months together, how they “quietly signed”. In the spring, Slava went to his parents in a village fifty kilometers from Tolyatti, and Yulia was supposed to come to him a few days later. Get to know his mother and father.

“No one met her at the station.” After waiting for Slava, “God knows, having changed her mind” for an hour on the platform, she went to look for him. “If only there were cell phones back then!” I took a bus to the village, found out where the Somovs' house was. It turned out that Slava was in the village hospital - lobar pneumonia "with a crisis and heart failure" ...

The heroine remembers this in detail, but also dryly, like a doctor. She remembers how she nursed her husband, consulted on the phone with the “head of the department of therapy” ... She takes her actions for granted, but no matter how many other young wives, not finding a hubby on the platform, they would freak out and go back, and they would sooner divorce filed - "he's a scoundrel!" Julia accomplished her little feat in life, finding and leaving her husband, saving her family. And then many more times she performed her small feats, perceiving these as ordinary phenomena of life.

The fact that she defended her son, did not join the general chorus of persuasion and demands to put on a bunny costume and go to the assembly hall, is also a feat.

“Mom, do you at least believe that I'm not a bunny? What am I, Ilyusha Somov?<…>

- Ilyusha, you are so small!

- You know, Mom, I just don’t really want to watch how the wolf will eat someone there now!

- Yes, what are you? How to eat? He's not real, he's just in a suit!<…>

Do you know what Vladik said to me?<…>He said that ... if someone is being eaten, well, that is, eaten, an animal there, a bunny, or a person ...<…>Well, in general, even a boy, if eaten, he dies, you know? At all. And lies silently, like Dasha Pankratova's grandmother. So if now one as if the bunny has already been eaten, then it means that everything is not for fun!

- What are you, Ilyushenka!<…>I promise you, you will never be eaten. You won't die."

Yulia reassures her son and involuntarily thinks about the hopeless Komissarov: “I will tell him that he will recover ... I will say that we have finally figured it out. The disease is severe, but it is curable.

There seems to be no sociality in the story, but it is, in fact, a very social work. Acute social. And how could it be otherwise when you write about a person in society, a person who feels his responsibility, who tries to fulfill his duties at work well, his duty as a mother ...

A brief retelling, quotes, most likely, sharpen the content of the story, they cannot convey the fact that this sense of responsibility in the heroine is almost instinctive. She does not discuss how she could better settle in life, whether she got a good husband, where to find an easier job. She acts as something dictates to her inside. Human nature plus some kind of unconscious consciousness that it is a member of society, and without it, being in this place, society will be poorer, something will be broken.

About this, in fact, and many other quiet stories and stories by Andronova. And in the end, they lined up in a certain philosophy. A philosophy that shows us an internally strong person who will not be blown away even by a hurricane of problems and misfortunes. It won't make you run and hide. Such a person will instinctively resist.

... It seemed to me that in the previous three paragraphs I wrote some kind of pretentious nonsense. But by something other than a story, he was called. I got into the archive in my computer (a very good function - I typed a word, and everything I needed instantly jumped out), I easily found the old material, once copied from the Internet.

Dmitry Orekhov's report on the meeting of young writers with the then deputy head of the presidential administration Vladislav Surkov ("MK" in St. Petersburg, 2006, December 13).

Here is an excerpt:

“Anna Andronova, a prose writer from Nizhny Novgorod, spoke here:

- I'm a doctor. I get three thousand. I leave the house, I see an ad: we are recruiting drivers for garbage trucks. Salary - 15 thousand. So, go to the garbage truck?

- I would go - if I were you, - Surkov answered. – You know, mobility is the first condition for a flexible, free democratic society. If we do not want to change our place of residence, place of work for the sake of something better, our society is doomed. We still have cities around no longer existing businesses. The city-forming plant no longer exists, but people live there, and I don’t know for what. They don’t want to go anywhere in search of a better life.”

At that time, they were sitting, as usual, in a candeyka, swallowing thin, oversweetened coffee, staring at the monitors. The shift began as usual, and there were no hints of the unexpected. And what could happen? Some idiot will shove battle waters under his jacket? Or will the sucker put on a blouse and go to the exit in it? They will be 100% stocked by the guards in the halls, the alarm will go off. Degrees of protection in our center abound even without cameras.

No, there was somehow a moment when we all got alarmed. From a year ago.

Then the glass door jammed on photocells, and at the same moment a guy appeared on the monitors with an electric drill in his hand. He went up the escalator to the third floor, where there was a children's corner with vending machines, an entertainment room with a trampoline and tables for drawing ... The guy was clearly inadequate: in late autumn, in shorts and a camouflage T-shirt, by the way, shaggy, unshaven. And an electric drill in my hand.

They jumped out, I remember, from the candeyka, rushed to cut across, on the radio they called those closest to children's corner Guys. Well, intercepted, surrounded. They began to wonder where he was, why with a drill.

It turned out that he bought the drill in the basement, where the World of Electronics is, immediately threw out the box and got up to eat a Big Mac or something at McDonald's; dressed like this, because by car, it is parked at the entrance ...

Well, we made a remark that you shouldn’t wander around the mall with a drill, it makes people nervous, we left one of ours to follow unobtrusively how this guy, a little crazy, of course, a little, will behave, and some returned to posts in the halls, who is in a chair in a kandeyka. They said the door was up and running.

This was the only alarm in the four years of my service here.

The people are clearly becoming more civilized, there are almost no brawlers, they are either afraid to steal, but most likely, somehow there are no thoughts about it. There are attempts, but rarely. Yes, and these problems are most often solved on the spot - most of those caught honestly admit this: “I’ve been wedged, sorry, there’s a lot of it, it seems like I’m lying without protection, so my hand reached out ... sorry.” We release with the consent of the authorities of the center. And the bosses usually agree: court squabbles are unprofitable for them, they spoil their images.

It is more difficult when something is accidentally broken, broken. They twist, for example, some kind of mixer, twist it and drop it. Or a bottle of expensive wine will be brushed off the shelf with an elbow. Yes, then you have to convince that you need to pay - you block the exit, scare the police, and this or that yells, rages, sometimes it almost comes to fights. “The aisles were made narrow on purpose so that they hurt! .. This is an accident! .. I haven’t bought the goods yet - which means that the store is responsible for it! ..” Such, in general, excuses.

But for the most part, the shifts go smoothly. Boring, to be honest. We, pumped up, trained guys, are sitting in a cramped and stuffy candeyka, staring at monitors where customers wander and wander, we drink sweet and liquid coffee, we yawn, we grow dumber, we grow fat. Or we toil on the floors, in the halls, and many, I know, secretly, almost against consciousness, call for some kind of non-standard situation. At least one, but real. Check yourself.

... That case cannot be called a non-standard situation, and it does not concern our shopping center. True, he settled in the brain with a prickly splinter and does not give rest. And, most importantly, the feeling that he will regurgitate Zhenya and me with serious strain.

They sat, in general, bored, yawning. I, Zhenya and the shift supervisor, retired major Andrey Sergeevich.

And then Sergey's pipe rang. It was the call that was set for him, of the same type as on those Soviet phones. This sound irritated me - as soon as I heard it, different offices and bosses were recalled, but often I even rejoiced at the irritation: for a few seconds I came to life, emerged from a heavy half-sleep.

ABOUT! - Andrey Sergeyevich was delighted, looking who it was calling, and then he pressed the answer button, put the receiver to his ear: - Hello, Vik Sanych, what fate did you remember?

Our Sergeyich retired from the authorities about fifteen years ago, got a job at the Voevoda security agency, long ago a senior shift. He gets good, the work is calm, but it is clear that he yearns for the past, he treats those who remain, somehow mockingly, although envy is visible behind this mockery. They supposedly have a real job, and he has an old man's seat here. And the uniform, the shocker, the handcuffs and the trauma that is stored in the safe do not save from this feeling that you are not clear who is a watchman, or a watchman ... Work for an able-bodied pensioner.

Of course, I didn’t listen on purpose, but it was impossible not to hear what and how the elder was saying: the candy was small, we were all nearby.

Uh-huh ... uh-huh ... - Sergeyich said at first usually mockingly, and then more seriously, attentively. - Uh-huh... What's your last name? .. Funny... I'll ask now. - Lowered the phone, said: - Guys, do you have passports with you?

I nodded, Zhenya mumbled in the affirmative.

Do you want to look at Anton Chekhov?

In terms of?

To be witnesses... There is such a thief, it turns out, Anton Chekhov... Did you hear that General Martynov was robbed in September? And the path leads to this Antosha. They issued a search warrant, now they are looking for attesting witnesses.

Of course, many have heard about the robbery of retired general Martynov, a well-known collector in our city. There were articles in the newspapers, a program on TV. Martynov was hit on the head when he entered the apartment, they took out old weapons and medals. For two months they were looking for robbers. And that's how it kind of blew up.

Well, how, - asked the elder, - are you driving?

You can, - Zhenya yawned. We're the only ones on duty.

I'll sit. Near here. An old friend asks.

Okay, I agreed.

We all respected Martynov, even those who did not know him personally. A normal man, a unit commander, they say, he was good; didn't give up mine. And besides, in recent years it has become more difficult to find witnesses than a criminal. You explain that this is the duty of a citizen, but the person doesn’t even want to listen: “I’m in a hurry ... I don’t have my passport with me ... my eyesight is bad, I don’t see anything ...” In general, serving in the authorities is a hemorrhoid business, which is why I ran away from there after a year and a half, good that Andrey Sergeyevich recommended to the agency, he took to his brigade.

Well, everything is in order, Vik Sanych, send the car, - the elder said into the phone and reassured us: - It's nearby, on Mineralnaya. Spend a couple of hours, some variety, and help people.

In order not to go in uniform - witnesses after all, and not employees - changed into civilian clothes. Actually, we usually come on duty in civilian clothes and change clothes here. In the form of this black with stripes "ChOP Voyevoda" it is somehow awkward to walk around the streets.

They smoked and finished their coffee, and just then Sergeyich's phone rang again.

Yeah, - he heard something, nodded to us: - Get down, Lada is at the door.

On the way, the middle-aged tired captain said that this Anton Chekhov - “Here, damn it, the parents of the freak were named!” - sat twice: once for a youngster for robbery, and then for burglaries. Rubs on the market, sells all sorts of junk.

There are no antiques, but close to that - glass holders, candlesticks, Red Army stars, door handles ... Of course, it’s not a fool to drag Martynov’s goods to the market, but he has connections in this world, and he’s waiting for sure, - the captain explained. - We have been working on it for a long time, and finally we gave the go-ahead for a search, we need to search the apartment and the garage in the yard ... Give me your passports, I will rewrite the data for now, so as not to waste time later. In any case, the protocol will need to be drawn up.

Zhenya and I pulled documents out of our pockets.

The four-story building is brick, which was built in our area in the thirties, when it was decided to attach the village to the city. Yard, poplars, two rows of concrete and block garages of different heights and degrees of poverty ...

At the second entrance is a police "UAZ", one of the last in our police department. Cars are mostly new, but where speed is not required, they send such junk (we even have one “rafik” still exists).

Wait a minute, do not climb out, - the captain stopped us, - we need to clarify something ... In general, you are random, not in business. We met you on the street and invited you.

Well, of course, - Zhenya nodded, and I also supported.

The captain grimaced tiredly.

I mean, to keep it like that ... perplexed somehow ... Otherwise, these conversations are boring, that there are violations, mutual responsibility. After all, in fact, it is not written in your passports that you are in the secret police. That's why…

Yes, I understand, I understand, - I interrupted, slightly offended by this "secret police", and corrected: - From the security agency.

Well, yes ... Okay, let's go.

Ahead are cops in uniform, behind them are experts with suitcases, and then Zhenya and I. We went up to the third floor by a chipped concrete staircase with dusty to thick gray windows on the landings. And the doors were almost all old - those flimsy Soviet ones with leatherette, but three or four steel ones looked so ridiculous that I wanted to laugh: why are they in such a slum where it seems that you can break through a wall with your shoulder.

They rang, knocked, the door opened. The captain said something softly through the slot and showed the paper. The door opened wider and the cops poured in. Zhenya and I shifted on the lower steps of the flight, not showing any great desire to rush into someone else's housing - understood as such, they should probably behave.

Witnesses, get up, - called the captain.

The search is being carried out as part of the criminal case on the robbery of Sergei Martynov, ”he spoke, looking at the paper when we entered the hallway, where cops, experts, and the owner of the apartment, a short, thin man of a bum-drunk look, were crowded. - The purpose of the search is ancient edged weapons, such as: knives, daggers, daggers, as well as awards of the nineteenth dash of the early twentieth centuries ... Citizen Chekhov, we ask you to sincerely indicate the location of these items.

Already a citizen, he chuckled. - Knives out in the kitchen...

The captain twitched in the direction of the kitchen, but realized that this was a mockery, and his voice became dry and menacing:

So, we will not wait for a sincere recognition ... Well, proceed.

It was not very interesting to watch digging in things. Even disgusting. Moreover, this Chekhov had all things, like himself, shabby, dirty, greasy ... In the closet in the hallway, they found a diplomat, which contained various little things: coins, intricate keys, badges, several signs "Guards", medals " The winner of the socialist competition... The captain seemed to perk up, but the expert just waved his hand: "Nonsense." There was also a bag with old junk such as rusty locks, candlesticks, bowls, spoons ... A swastika was squeezed out on the handle of one spoon.

What, Anton Palych, are you fond of fascism? the captain chuckled.

I found it outside the city, - the owner of the apartment muttered. - And not Palych, but Mikhalych.

Viktor Alexandrovich, - they called from the room, - but take a look at this.

The captain and the owner, overtaking each other, rushed there, the owner began to resent on the move:

I have to search! Throw it up again!

But the alarm was false - they found a scabbard from a souvenir dagger in the sideboard, which are in any store. Experts at a glance determined.

I was in the mood for a long stick around here and was surprised that it ended pretty quickly. Just an hour and a half.

Well, now let's go to the garage, - said the captain. - If I'm not mistaken, Anton ... Anton Mikhailovich, you own a garage ...

Well, yes, - the peasant took a bunch of keys from the nail, began to pull on his jacket. - Let's go if you need to.

The garage was empty, that is, without a car, but shelves hung on the walls. There are boxes on the shelves. There was no electricity, the cops had only two flashlights, and some of the boxes were taken out into the light, rummaging through some dirty, rusty parts, spare parts, completely incomprehensible pieces of iron ...

The captain sighed, grimaced, froze, several times offered Chekhov to point out where the stolen goods were, to remember where he was on September 18, when the robbery took place.

Well this is a search, - he grinned, - and not an interrogation.

Well, yes, well, yes, - Viktor Alexandrovich responded vaguely.

At the very end of the search, one of the cops with a flashlight called the owner deep into the garage to explain what kind of things were in the heavy box, and the captain led Zhenya and me through the gate.

It's okay that I'll torment you guys. - Deftly took out from the folder forms of protocols with our passport data. - Draw squiggles here. And here.

I took a pen, scribbled in one, another place. Somehow thoughtlessly scribbled. Zhenya, I remember, doubted:

And is it possible? On empty?

Everything is fine. Why would you waste another hour while we write all this useless garbage ... I'll give you a car now, they'll take it back.

Zhenya signed too.

A few minutes later we were already approaching the shopping center.

And a month later it began - it turned out that in the garage of this Chekhov they found "a knife in a black leather binding with a handle in the form of an animal, with a blade made of matte metal." This one was stolen from General Martynov. Chekhov began to assert that the knife was not found, there was nothing about the knife in the protocol, but it appeared later, after a few hours, when they came to him again and arrested him. During the interrogation, they presented this, they say, the second protocol ... Journalists seized on the information, printed it out in the media, and now an internal check is threatening.

Evidently, Zhenya and I will have to figure out how it is there and what, how it happened. The captain set us up completely.

Andrei Sergeevich told him everything, and he calmly replied that both Zhenya and I saw this knife found in a box in the garage, which is recorded in the protocol, which contains our signatures.

Now we are thinking about what to do. Or tell us when they ask us how it was, and drown ourselves (at least they will certainly be asked from the agency), and others, including Andrei Sergeyevich, or confirm the captain's version. They found, they say, a knife, and Chekhov, apparently, already managed to sell the rest of the items to unknown persons ...

Fucking state. I can hardly sleep, but as soon as I start to doze - I see how I put my squiggles in the protocol. I put only two in reality, and there, half asleep, I put and put. Hundred.

Roman Senchin

Data

Born in 1971 in the capital of Tuva, Kyzyl. Studied at the Gorky Literary Institute. In 2009, his novel "The Yeltyshevs" was shortlisted by almost all major Russian literary prizes(but did not receive an award).

Creation

Senchin is a modern Russian writer of everyday life, he is primarily interested in a simple (“small”) person living in a difficult era. "Yeltyshevs", main novel Senchin is a story about the family of a policeman who is forced to move from the city to the village and slowly dies there. In addition, Senchin is the author of local history notes "Tuva" (2012).

Beyond Literature

Publishes reviews of contemporary prose.

literary creed

Literary landmarks: Chekhov, Andreev, Shukshin, Rasputin, Limonov.

I try to write fiction, detective stories, sometimes I feel like experimenting. But in the end I bring to the editors, and through them to the readers, realism. Life is still terribly real.

Contemporary Russian literature is sorely lacking in life. There are quite a lot of masters, and there are almost no those who would write from the heart, but at the same time readable.

It is desirable that literature bring profit to the writer. But for the sake of profit, it's probably not worth writing. Although there were those who wrote for money and remained a great writer: Zola, Dostoevsky.

I don't like online piracy. I would like to pay for a book - paper, digital. But I console myself with the fact that the painters are much worse off.

Russian literature of the future should be different. All flowers must bloom.

Roman SENCHIN

The city makes people weaker

It is undeniable that the leitmotif of all your works is the image of the Russian province, of which you yourself are a representative. Why are you interested in this topic?

Probably because I'm from there. Until the age of eighteen he lived in Kyzyl. Although it is the capital of the republic, it is a very small provincial town. After the army, he spent three years in a remote village. Then he entered the Literary Institute - and stayed to live in Moscow. However, I often visit my homeland.

- And what, in your opinion, is the problem of the modern Russian province? What do you want to draw the reader's attention to?

I do not set myself the goal of convicting or saving. The main thing for me is to fix some signs of the times, certain problems. If we talk about the village, then it is absolutely obvious to me that it is destroyed, ownerless, inhabited by pensioners, disabled people, declassed elements.

- Is it the village? Or provincial cities too?

In cities, of course, life is easier, despite the fact that many enterprises are closed. And in the villages, alas, it is completely deaf, there is no light.

Do you think not? I saw in your works that the province has not yet been destroyed. In one of the stories in the Ijim collection, a man was shown fighting for the life of his village ...

This is my early story, it was written in the 90s. Then there was some fighting going on. And by the mid-2000s, I was convinced of the complete hopelessness of the situation in the village.

- That is, quite recently there was still a chance, and now the village has come to a complete decline?

Such a rise was at the beginning of 1993. At that time we moved to the village from Kyzyl. It was then that all these joint-stock companies. People were told: work, and everything will be fine with you. But it soon became clear that these farms owed a lot of money: for gasoline, transportation - after all, the cars were not their property ... The farms began to close. There was no food. My parents still go to the city of Minusinsk for crushed grain for chickens, because it is almost impossible to get it in the village.

- What do you think led to all this? What happened? After all, there was such an upsurge in Soviet times ...

Well, a special climb in Soviet time was not there either. But people had a job, albeit in many ways unprofitable. A lot of money was invested in agriculture, but it did not pay off. I think people were weaned from their economy even before the formation of the USSR. Therefore, large families, large households in each village will be typed two or three at most.

In other words, do you think that this is rather a problem of the authorities, and not of the people, who are not able to help themselves?

In my opinion, the state should somehow help people... Of course, they were deceived so many times, and they themselves were deceived... In the early 90s, there were many farmers, but almost all of them went bankrupt.

Tell me, what do you think about the negative attitude of the capital towards the provinces? Even the word has already come up with - "zamkadyshi".

I don't see much negative here. The ironic "castle" is not about the inhabitants of a distant Russian province, but rather about those living in the Moscow region.

- And how do they treat the capital in the province? For example, you have in Siberia.

In the nineties, Moscow really seemed like heaven on earth. Many dreamed of going there, getting settled somehow, while others, on the contrary, were angry with her. It seems to me that now there is almost no such acute attitude of the provinces towards Moscow.

- Where did you achieve literary success? In Moscow or at home?

Started printing at local press, and books began to come out when he was already studying at the Literary Institute.

- Is it possible to succeed by living in the provinces?

It is quite possible. For example, Zakhar Prilepin lives in Nizhny Novgorod, Denis Gutsko - in Rostov, Dmitry Novikov - in Petrozavodsk. There are all conditions for this now. But it often happens that a young writer, having gained fame, goes to Moscow, where he has to work as a journalist, screenwriter of serials, and there is no time left for literature.

- Do you divide people into provincial and metropolitan?

Even in Moscow, I mainly communicate with people who have come from somewhere or visit here. Yes, there is probably a difference. But it's hard for me to explain.

- Maybe it's all about a different attitude to life? Moscow has everything, but nothing in the provinces.

Muscovites are also different. My acquaintances - Ilya Kochergin, Mikhail Tarkovsky - are constantly rushing from Moscow: one to the Ryazan region, the other to Altai.

- And where is the inner potential of people stronger: in Moscow or in the provinces?

I think it's stronger in the provinces. Moving to Moscow, many eventually lose something very valuable... The city makes people weaker. How more city the weaker the people.

- That is, we can say that the fertile ground for the writer is the province?

Apparently yes. But, you know, in the provinces you are sometimes overcome by such melancholy that it is absolutely impossible to write, to create.

- How, in your opinion, is the situation with the theme of the province in modern literature?

The first that comes to mind is Boris Ekimov, a writer with whose work I feel a strong affinity. He is already in his seventies, but he still develops this topic quite sharply.

- And how does he portray the province?

He writes mainly about the places where he lives: the same farms, through characters. It turns out such a chronicle. In general, the picture from under his brush comes out gloomy.

There is Irina Mamaeva with a strong story "Land Guy". Denis Gutsko, who published several good stories in Friendship of Peoples and the novel House in Armageddon, dedicated to the South of Russia. From Siberians I will name Mikhail Tarkovsky.

- Tell me, how does the view of a modern writer on the province differ from previous generations?

Valentin Rasputin has already written about the gradual but inevitable death of the Russian countryside. Vasily Belov also dealt with this topic a lot. I cannot say that the theme of the Russian provinces is in great demand by young writers. Today, more and more works about Moscow appear, which are shown as something semi-fantastic, semi-mythical.

- And for whom do you write? Who is your reader?

When I write, first of all, I try to be clear to myself. But, judging by the responses, my readers are quite diverse - they are both young people and mature people.

What do you think the modern reader needs?

From conversations with readers, I conclude that there is a need for honest, reliable books.

What impact do you think your work has on the reader?

The responses are mostly emotional: someone actively likes my books, and someone is indignant.

Apparently, realism as a phenomenon is quite in demand by society today. This is evidenced by the appearance of various reality shows, social networks. Why do you think people today need just such an image of reality, and not utopian dreams, as it was until recently?

I guess everyone today lives in their own little closed world and wants to know what's going on outside. In Soviet times, of course, it was different: people were more interested in pure fiction, helping to distract from the harsh collective existence. So, in the 90s, realism was in the pen. But now interest is returning to him.

- That is, today we can talk about such a literary phenomenon as “new Russian realism”?

It is difficult to answer this question unambiguously. In the current literature, after all, there is quite a lot of grotesque, fantasy.

- And in this situation you consider yourself old-fashioned?

No, realism, one way or another, is always present in literature.

- Do you think modern Russian literature is stagnant now?

Much has changed in our literature in the last twenty or thirty years. Remember the mid-eighties - the end of socialist realism. Then the "returned literature" comes to us - Nabokov and others. Postmodernism, avant-garde, underground of the 90s. And in the 2000s, the revival of realism begins. In addition, non-fiction appeared, balancing on the verge of fiction and documentary. Even such a term has come into circulation - "human document". So, in my opinion, everything is developing normally, but it is too early to draw any conclusions.

- How do you see Russian literature in the future?

I don’t know, maybe it will be a kind of fusion of literature and philosophy. Something will be more successful, something less - it already depends on the writing talent. In general, it is difficult for literature today to compete with television, cinema, computer games, and the Internet. Therefore, I will refrain from making more specific predictions on this topic for the time being.

- Would you like to write a script for a film?

I tried, but quickly realized that it was not for me. I write plays, but I don’t write scripts, it’s boring ...

- Do you think modern literature is at odds with modern cinema?

They almost do not touch, do not interact with each other.

Which of the current writers would you suggest to include in the school curriculum? And is it necessary to acquaint children with the modern literary process?

I think it's necessary. But not from under pressure, but optionally, in high school. Who would you include in the program? The same Zakhar Prilepin, Dmitry Novikov ...

- What does the name "Eltyshev" mean? And where should the emphasis be placed?

On the first syllable. When I wrote the novel, I did not attach any special meaning to this surname. Later I was told that it meant "stump" or something like that. In general, the surname is quite common. Yoltyshev is more often pronounced.

- Are there analogies in your works with real cities, people, signs of the times?

Not everywhere. Although in the same "Yeltyshevs" Abakan is quite clearly guessed.

- Do you describe the province in general or do you mean only your native places?

Yes, mostly they are native places: Abakan, Minusinsk. But there are also works about the Russian north, for example, the story "We are going to visit."

- Do you think there are many similarities between your Siberian province and the rest of Russia?

Yes, there are many similarities.

- Roman, thanks for the interview. Parus magazine wishes you inspiration and good luck.

Fresh issue: No. 08. 03/06/2015

Since a month ago, after one literary evening, an elderly handsome man approached me and, taking me aside, began to show photocopies of newspaper publications and talk about the fact that many, many opponents of the existing regime and just active people are either dying mysteriously or being killed. He called names. Some I knew well, others I heard for the first time.
“Why are you telling me all this?” I asked.
“How! – the man was amazed at my misunderstanding. “You should write about it!”
I grinned, listened a little more, nodded, and parted with difficulty, promising to "think about it."
I confess that I did not keep my promise - I did not think about it. Other thoughts occupied my head. But two things happened that made me think.
At the beginning of last week, I was told that the actor Alexander Anokhin had been killed. I climbed on the Internet to find confirmation of this almost rumor, and found it with difficulty.
It turned out that he had not been called Alexander Anokhin for a long time, he was known under the name Svyatoslav (in other sources "Svetoslav") Svirel. He lived with his family in his house near Moscow, became a Rodnover. “He recorded songs of the Goryna Slavitsa family ensemble, held traditional Slavic holidays and rituals at his sanctuary, led Slavic weddings and married people, gave Slavic names, was engaged in folk healing, helped people get rid of heavy addictions. Svetoslav also conducted educational activities about the greatness of the Russian folk tradition. The last period of his life, he was engaged in recording and dubbing books by famous and great authors of the Slavic world. For example, Afanasiev "Poetic views of the Slavs on nature" and Orbini "Slavic kingdom".
Late in the evening of February 24, a car drove up to his house and began to honk. Alexander went out of the gate and received machine gun fire. Died on the spot. At 44.
I met him in 1997. Then it was a gutta-percha young man, smiling, witty. Plastic artist. He earned a living for himself and his family by dancing, including, so to speak, obscene ones. He told me about it himself. Complained. He said that he wanted to make art, but he had to "squirm in front of perverts." He spoke about the meaning of life, that he was looking for this meaning, some essence ...
Then he disappeared somewhere. Many disappeared somewhere in the late 90s. And now, a decade and a half later, this is the news. Died... No, not just killed, but shot from a machine gun.
Who shot him, for what - what, in fact, does it matter? I'm not going to speculate or speculate. The method of killing is more important than the killing itself.
And three days later - the murder of Boris Nemtsov. I was walking along the bridge, and either a pistol was fired several times from an approaching car, or a man who ran up the stairs opened fire. Nemtsov died on the spot.
I first saw Boris Nemtsov at the same time - in the late 90s. He came to a meeting of young writers in one of the rooms of the Central House of Writers and began to say that it is necessary to write about what opportunities the market economy gives, what needs to be shown in the literature of the people of the “new Russia”, the life of the middle class ...
By the way, at that time many state and near-state men tried to work with the young. I remember that they gathered us, the then twenty-year-old Georgy Boos, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, who were also encouraged to write about the “new Russia” and the possibilities of the free market. But they came across a sullen silence and, shrugging their shoulders, left.
Then Boris Nemtsov also left, obviously wondering why the creative youth did not support his initiatives.
Ten years later, I saw Nemtsov again. More precisely, I began to see very often. Squeezed out of cabinet politics and economics, he began to participate in street protest. Basically as a joiner, not an organizer. And, being a media figure, he became the face of the action.
This happened on December 10, 2011, when it was decided to transfer the announced rally on Revolution Square to a safe Bolotnaya area… I have already written about this event many times: in my opinion, this is a key moment modern history Russia, - this transfer, the withdrawal of people from the walls of the Kremlin "to the Swamp".
The participation of Boris Nemtsov and the same "irreconcilable oppositionists" in secret negotiations with the Moscow mayor's office is described in detail in a number of publications (for example, in The New Times magazine, No. 40, 2012). Moreover, it was these “irreconcilable oppositionists” who initiated the transfer, for a long time persuading the female applicants for the rally at the Revolution to agree to the transfer. Taken by starvation...
I remember how Nemtsov, in an unbuttoned jacket, without a hat in the cold, tall, handsome, spiritual, built democrats, anarchists, nationalists, communists in columns on Revolution Square and showed them the way to Bolotnaya ... At that moment I had no anger towards him but rather sympathy. Like a man in charge of his own funeral.
Then there was a long agony of protest, then - the revenge of the regime for this protest, and then the regime found something to distract the masses of Russians trying to think. And we have been following the events in Donbas for the second year. And the most active go there and die...
The last time I saw Boris Nemtsov was in court, where the indictment was read out to Udaltsov and Razvozzhaev. The hall was full, no one else was allowed into it, but the bailiffs made an exception for Nemtsov, who was late. The heavy wooden doors closed tightly behind him... And now, seven months later, on the TV screen, a body lying, a puddle of blood...
Those who know the biography of Boris Nemtsov find it difficult to mourn his death. But his murder cannot but outrage. Like any murder. And there are more and more of these murders, and they happen somehow easily. Bang, bang! .. Law enforcement agencies begin to look for killers, introduce the “Interception” plan, work out different versions ...
Authorities say that the murder of Nemtsov is clearly provocative, directed, in fact, against the government. Maybe so. But, on the other hand, the scheme is known: "No person - no problem." You can shout as much as you like about Yuri Shchekochikhin, Anna Politkovskaya, Paul Khlebnikov, Viktor Ilyukhin, build hypotheses, refute, try to find a replacement for them. But they are not. They've shut up, they won't do anything else, they're not investigating anything. The same with Nemtsov. He is no more. And it won't.
There are many who are happy about his death. "Sharply". They rejoice in vain. It's not about Nemtsov. There is a big mowing, which cuts and cuts off many, many more.
A year and a half ago, in one of the notes, I wrote: “Having heard two or three days after the showing of the film “Anatomy of Protest-2” that everyone who appears in it will be imprisoned in the next year, I remember not believing. But eight months have passed and we see that Konstantin Lebedev is already in prison, Razvozzhaev, Borovikov, Udaltsov have been arrested, Ilya Ponomarev and Gennady Gudkov are on the verge of criminal cases (or maybe they have already opened cases, what, in essence, is the difference); Kasparov, according to unconfirmed reports, emigrated, Navalny is being actively tried ... "The spit is not working as energetically as predicted ("in the next year"), but since then the spit has cut off several more. Someone was sent to jail, Nemtsov was deprived of his life.
We shake our heads, sigh and wait for the continuation. There is no one to stop the scythe.

November 5, 2009 a discussion on the work of a modern Russian prose writer took place in the literary club "Green Lamp" Roman Senchin.

I. Krokhova, head of the club: “Good evening! Many years ago, our club was conceived by Svetlana Vasilievna Voronchikhina as a place where the most notable phenomena in contemporary literature- Russian and foreign. And today, in my opinion, the same case. We have gathered to talk about an outstanding, in my opinion, phenomenon, at least in the literature of recent years, the work of the young Russian prose writer Roman Senchin, The Yoltyshevs. http://magazines.russ.ru/druzhba/2009/3/se14.html
http://magazines.russ.ru/druzhba/2009/4/se28.html
Six months ago, this novel was published in the Friendship of Peoples magazine (2009, No. 3,4), and after reading it, we almost immediately realized that this is our topic and this is the kind of literature worth talking about and arguing about.

The novel caused a strong reaction both among critics and among ordinary readers, the Yoltyshevs are especially emotionally discussed on the Internet. But no matter what Senchin is accused of, it is hard not to admit the obvious: a writer appeared in Russian literature who made a serious bid for the place of the future classic; a writer, according to whose works our descendants, perhaps, will judge what Russia was like at the beginning of the 21st century.

I will dwell on some facts of the writer's biography, perhaps not all of those present are well acquainted with this author. Roman Senchin is a representative of the realistic trend in modern literature, he is one of the leaders of the generation of 30-40-year-old writers, including Z. Prilepin, A. Ivanov, D. Gutsko, G. Sadulaev, M. Tarkovsky, a slightly younger S. Shargunov.

Roman Valeryevich Senchin was born in 1971 in Tuva in the city of Kyzyl. After school he went to St. Petersburg, where he studied at construction college, then served in Karelia in the border troops. After the army, he lived for some time in the Krasnoyarsk Territory in the city of Minusinsk, where his family moved from Kyzyl after the collapse of the USSR. He changed several professions: he worked as a assembler in the theater, as a janitor, a watchman, he studied at the Kyzyl pedagogical institute. In the mid-90s, he began to publish, first in local publications, and then in magazines - Znamya (the first publication in No. 5, 1997, the stories "A Day without a Number"), "October", "New World". And until now he actively cooperates with these publications, almost all of his texts initially appeared in thick magazines, and then came out as separate books: "Athenian Nights" (2000), "Minus" (2002), "Nubuk" (2003), "A Day Without a Number" (2006), "Forward and Up on Dead Batteries" (2008), "Scattered Mosaic" (2008), "Moscow Shadows" (2009), "Yoltyshevs" (2009).

In 2001, Senchin graduated from the Literary Institute, the head of his course was A. Rekemchuk. For more than ten years he has been living in Moscow, working as an editor of the criticism department in the Literaturnaya Rossiya newspaper. In addition to writing, one of Roman Senchin's hobbies, which have remained since his youth, is rock music. Today he is a member of the punk rock band " Bad sign”, where, in addition to vocals, he writes lyrics.

Roman Senchin is the winner of several literary awards, including: the Literary Russia newspaper (1997), the Znamya magazine fund (2001), Evrika (2002). In 2009, the novel "Yoltyshevy" entered the top three finalists of the Yasnaya Polyana Prize. L. Tolstoy and short list"Russian Booker" (announcement of the laureate latest award will take place on December 3rd).

Preparing this meeting, we originally planned to discuss only the novel "Yoltyshevs", but in the end we decided to take the writer's work as a whole, because. the novel is, to some extent, the result of all that Senchin has been doing and writing about in recent years, it is in many respects the final work. We called the title speech of tonight "Roman Senchin and the heroes of his books." But before I pass the floor to Vera Alexandrovna Kriushina, I will ask Tatyana Semyonovna Alexandrova to tell us about how we managed to contact writer Roman Senchin directly.”

T. Alexandrova, chemical engineer: “A few months ago, on the recommendation of our librarians, I took the Yoltyshevs to read. This novel made a strong and ambiguous impression on me. He did not let me go, and I realized that I would not be free from this book and I would not understand my feelings until I put my thoughts on paper. Then the text “Black Hand, or To whom is the letter?” appeared. - a review of the novel "Yoltyshevy", which I posted in my LiveJournal.
http://l-eriksson.livejournal.com/126715.html
http://l-eriksson.livejournal.com/126952.html#cutid1

This review was read by the wife of Roman Senchin - Elizaveta Emelyanova-Senchina, she is also a person creative profession, graduated from the Literary Institute, a poet, and besides, an avid blogger. Elizabeth keeps track of all the information about her writer husband that appears on the Internet. Apparently, she liked my review, she posted it in her LiveJournal and we even entered into correspondence.

While reading the Yoltyshevs, I caught myself thinking that something was preventing me from fully understanding the author, and in order to facilitate my understanding of both the text and the essence of the writer Roman Senchin, I decided to get to know this family better - I looked in and leafed through their LiveJournal. I wanted to understand - who is Roman Senchin, what worries and hurts him in this life ...

“What a terrible book,” I thought, reading the “Yoltyshevs” and I was wondering what the author is like in life: is he really the same gloomy pessimist and sees only the bad around? Judging by the posts in LiveJournal, this couple reacts sharply to any manifestation of injustice in life, they grope for pain points and are not silent, they talk about what and what to fight for. They do not live simply and quietly, and their reaction is not hysteria and not the search for "darkness".
And I have a lot of respect for them. But it's hard to live in a field of pain all the time, I want to be distracted. And this couple sees something else. I found a story by Roman Senchin called "The Real Guy". There it is. http://zavtra.ru/denlit/158/71.html
I really like the writer Roman Senchin, I will continue to read him, follow him, which I advise you to do as well.

When I contacted Elizaveta, she was very surprised that there are such clubs and asked for a link to our website. I promised to send her information about our discussion. By the way, she asked me if we would like to invite Roman Senchin to our club? We wouldn't want to! Elizabeth also suggested contacting Roman via Skype, but this option, alas, did not suit us either.

Y. Kruzhilin: “Is there really no Internet and a webcam in the library?”

E. Krokhina, head subscription department: “We don’t have a lot of things, and not only webcams.”

T. Alexandrova: "Having exhausted all possible options, we invited the writer Roman Senchin to answer the questions of the members of the Green Lamp club, which he did to our pleasure and even some surprise - he answered almost all the questions. Printouts of these answers are here on the table, you can read them. I will only give some of them that do not directly relate to the Yoltyshevs, because we will talk about the novel even today. (Reads the answers to questions No. 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 23, 25. See the full answer below) .

I. Krokhova:“Well, a very interesting seed for a conversation ... And now - the word to Vera Alexandrovna Kriushina.”

V. Kriushina, Associate Professor of national history of Vyatka State University: “Unlike Tatyana Semyonovna, I, unfortunately, did not have the opportunity to communicate directly with the writer Roman Senchin. I know him only through his texts: journalistic, literary-critical, artistic. I planned to start my speech from a completely different point of view, but literally now some thoughts came to my mind that I still want to voice.

This meeting, generally traditional in form, led me to an internal agreement with Roman Valeryevich in his definition of the essence of writing in modern Russia. I will not list the articles that I read from him, but, to be honest, when I got acquainted with his journalism, I liked it almost more than his fiction. Approximately the same high (not being particularly sophisticated in philology) I will respond to his literary criticism. So, Roman Senchin very interestingly defines the essence of writing in modern Russia - this, in his opinion, is not the pleasure of deriving letters, calculated to gain some kind of life comfort. It is a duty, side by side with which conscience lives. These two concepts that Senchin speaks about, two moral categories - duty and conscience - also worry me very much.

The second thing I would like to say as a replica. Here you, Tatyana Semyonovna, in personal communication recorded the openness of this family (in general, this is important when there is someone who shares your worldview). Many have probably already read the interview that Zakhar Prilepin took with Roman Senchin, so I will not quote him, although I planned to, but I will mention another text where these two people meet. Senchin's review of Prilepin's book "Terra Tartarara" was published in the eleventh issue of the Znamya magazine this year.

Senchin called his review - "A book created on the knee."
http://magazines.russ.ru/znamia/2009/11/se26.html
I will not retell the content, whoever wants to find this text, it is also on the Internet. I understood only one thing: Prilepin and Senchin look so good at each other! Both as authors and as people, without separating 100% political, civil, artistic position each other. I was shocked by Prilepin's phrase, which Senchin cites at the end of his article, and, as I understand it, it denotes the life position of both: "Open my eyelids, but first bring my eyes."

This is probably the phrase that marks the path to an open heart. Indeed, in order to have a more open heart, one must dare to lift the eyelids and open the eyes. When I was reading the Yoltyshevs, and it was in August, then I was not going to discuss this book with anyone and did not know anything about the writer Senchin, including where he was from. And now the following thought suddenly occurred to me: in recent years, our whole country has simply become obsessed with Eastern religions, with Eastern meditative practices, and they, as we know, imply a half-closed gaze turned inward; it is such a vicious circle of conversation between a person and himself. So Senchin, being born in the center of Asia, in Kyzyl, nevertheless, turned out to be not an Asian in his worldview, but a Russian in the true sense of the word.

And in continuation of the theme of open eyes and an open heart: when at the beginning of the twentieth century. Ivan Alexandrovich Ilyin wrote his “The Way of Spiritual Renewal”, he very vividly described the nature of the conscientious feeling that exists in a person. He called the heart the organ where conscience lives, and the heart is a vessel, and according to conscience, a person acts when this cup is filled to the limit. And it is filled with life impressions, often sad, feelings of the deep wrongness of life, which, according to Senchin, Chekhov was well able to convey. He is one of his favorite writers.

So, it seems to me that Senchin has this ability to open his heart and fill the cup to the limit when a person takes risks and speaks out in a format that is not very popular today, not serial, in a format that is not popular with today's thirty-year-olds at all. Prilepin, Ilyin, open eyes, open heart - such an unexpected parallel occurred to me right now.

Senchin has repeatedly admitted that he is a person who rarely stays for a long time and, nevertheless, he has been living in Moscow for more than 10 years, which he calls a difficult city. Why did he stop? Why doesn't he change the point in space? In his works, he quite accurately and definitely answers this question. And here it seems to me the way to understanding his work.

Senchin compares himself in the 1990s with himself in the 2000s. He calls our 2000s 00s (zero), a very symbolic definition, zero is emptiness. What has changed during this time? In the 1990s, says Senchin, we were ready to take risks, ready to start life anew, jump off the rails and look for the best. And he characterizes the current situation in Russia in a completely different way. He says that Russia is freezing today. This definition is very clear and close to me. “Russia is expecting a collapse in the near future” - he fully shares this feeling with Zakhar Prilepin in the already mentioned review of the book “Terra Tartarara”: “... the feeling of an imminent global collapse, the feeling is not panicky, but almost even, and therefore, sometimes, when you think, creepy, I have it too. This is such an apocalyptic feeling. This “freezing” he brings to his attitude to life and to the profession.

It’s unpleasant for me to realize that my diploma says “literary worker” and my specialty sounds like “literary creativity,” says Senchin. Today it is difficult to find a place in life with this specialty, but, one way or another, we all grabbed today and will hold on to what we have until someone pushes us away. I don’t know if Senchin wrote this about himself or he writes about all of us, but one way or another he fixes it. I applied this thought to myself: although there are many things that do not suit me in the current situation, I do not have the courage to take risks, to change something.

And I also realized that Senchin does not want to invent light in our lives, he wants to see this light in life. He makes an accurate psychological diagnosis of our current state. We are looking for protection, we are looking for it in people who are behind the "crenellated walls". Probably no need to explain who he means. We have closed a different horizon for ourselves, and it is very bitter to realize this.

Of course, Senchin has a desperately bold journalism, he admits that today we can criticize only up to a certain limit, to the level of ministers, it is impossible to go higher. The option - life without a choice or with a choice that others have made for us - this categorically does not suit him. He is not satisfied that we are looking for ways out, ways to solve problems not in ourselves, but are waiting for this protection and help from someone else. Not us, but someone - this, of course, is a bitter feeling.

And I also want to say about literary clubs ... I was just glad when I met this with Senchin in one of the articles. I want to quote him: “A week before the Forum in Lipki, I accidentally went to the Pirogi club on Nikolskaya street. I met a friend working there at the Literary Institute, the poet Danila Faizov. In the far empty hall, he arranged chairs. “What will happen? - asked him. "A Poetic Evening" I chuckled, watched the poor fellow dragging and dragging heavy Pirogov chairs from somewhere. “Enough,” he told him, “there will be twenty people, and that’s nishtyak by today’s standards.”
plucked up full hall. People stood along the walls, crowded in the doorway. The evening was called “Polyus”, Oleg Shatybenko, completely unknown to me, a man in his thirties, and Anna Logvinova, a rosy-cheeked girl in a white jacket with buttons, participated ...

... I do not presume to assert that Logvinova's poems are talented ... that they are literate from the point of view of poetic tradition, the laws of the genre. But they, as they say, cling. And I was happy, but also somehow anxious to observe how the hall responds to each of her poems. A trickle of transparent, weightless and at the same time so tangible, even painful, as if the veins of lines pulled out of a wound, and then - applause. Sincere, long, as in the chronicle of the Polytechnic ...

Under the sheet is not striped
and not in a cage, but in a flower,
pure cotton, one hundred percent,
sleeping man, real,
interesting, isn't it?
it's true, I'll sit next to you,
he opens his eyes
looks wild, smells like honey.

I do not know who this active audience was. Familiar poetesses or just like me, random. After the end of the evening, they disappeared, they didn’t even stay to drink. Maybe they don't drink yet - mostly, by sight, people were seventeen years old, no more ... New readers wandering through literary clubs in search of new, living words? I'm guessing."

I realized that Roman Senchin has a kind, open heart when I read this text and other texts where he writes about his colleagues, young writers.

And now I turn to what I originally wanted to talk about. That's it, I, of course, will not voice it, I have a lot of sheets written over, and I simply won’t have time to say everything.
I would like to show you the diagram that I drew and which helped me to prepare for this meeting. Today in the conversation I will touch on only a part of what is reflected here. I am a teacher of history by profession, and therefore I was most touched in the work of Roman Senchin by the way he conveyed a sense of the current historical situation in Russia in an artistic, journalistic language. Of course, the literary situation can also be reconstructed based on his texts, but I still wanted, first of all, to talk today about the Yoltyshevs in the context of Russian history.

The eternal dispute that historians are waging among themselves: what is worthy of objective and subjective reflection. Senchin, in his review of L. Mlechin's book about Hitler, quotes Dmitry Pisarev, a critic of the second half of the 19th century, whom almost no one remembers or reads today. So, Pisarev wrote that the meaning of studying history is to talk about titans, titans of vice and virtue. main conclusion What Senchin does about popular historical literature is this: delving into the personality, into its vices and virtues, even if they are for the needs of the crowd, will never replace reflections on historical experience and those historical circumstances that allowed the personality to become such.

Here, it seems to me, is a postulate that will help us talk about the Yoltyshevs today. What are the historical circumstances that allowed these people, who consider themselves, in general, decent people, to become so?

History does not exist outside the concept of time and space (recall Bakhtin and the definition of the chronotope introduced by him in relation to literary text). Reading Senchin, I tried to determine for myself: what are the space and time of Yoltyshev's text, and, accordingly, the space and time of modern Russia? I found the answer to this question in Senchin's story "Alien". http://magazines.russ.ru/znamia/2004/1/sen.html
By the way, this story is a wonderful metaphor for the image of Senchin as a man: he is a stranger both in the provinces and in Moscow, a man who has been torn off the ground and has not become his own anywhere. So, in the story "Alien" there is a simple, concrete, artistic, but at the same time historical definition of the space of modern Russia. It is shrinking, shrinking.

Those who are familiar with the biography of Roman Senchin know why he left Kyzyl, left his homeland, the Republic of Tyva, for which the problem of the non-indigenous population has become a global problem. He lists the territories that Russia has actually lost today. In the newspaper "Arguments of the Week" for October 29, 2009 - one of a whole series of articles devoted only to this topic: how our Siberia, our Amur Region, our Vladivostok, our Khabarovsk Territory become Chinese by legal, illegal, contractual and any other means.

You know, two weeks ago we had a talk show at our university, in which Bari Alibasov and the Na-Na group took part. They sang a song in Chinese, and Bari Karimovich joked in black, answering the question: why is the song in Chinese? He replied: everyone should learn our state language!”

A. Alexandrova, a student of the philological faculty of Vyatka State University: “I was not at this meeting, but they said that the students were in shock!”

V. Kriushina: “You understand me correctly, I have no nationalism and prejudice against the same Chinese. I want to say only one thing: the history of Russia developed as the history of the colonization by Russian, Slavic peoples of a vast territory called Eurasia. This is the same territory that Roman Senchin's family was forced to leave. The development of this geographical space is the essence of the historical mission of the Russian people, and today, when we talk about the shrinking space, about the fact that we are actually giving away those lands into which the labor of many generations of our ancestors was invested, this is by no means us decorates.

Senchin has another wonderful story from the point of view of our conversation today, it is called "In reverse side».
http://magazines.russ.ru/novyi_mi/2001/12/senchin-pr.html

I did not even immediately realize that he would become a symbol of our time for me. Reading this story, I understood why Senchin, talking about modern Russia, says that before growing up to the novel form, the writer must feel adequate in the genre of the story, where there is one narrative line, one hero, there is no branched composition. The heroine of the story “In the opposite direction”, in my opinion, is something in between Senchin’s parents, about whom he writes in his works (in their declining years they ended up in the village and were forced to grow in their garden and sell vegetables in order to survive ) and the heroes of the novel "Yoltyshevs". So, the heroine of this story returns from the city to her native village, but we understand that nothing good awaits her here: her son has died, her husband is disabled, bedridden, they have nothing but a beggarly pension as life support.

And here I understood why this name “In the opposite direction” is important to me. Russia, about which Roman Senchin writes, is the country in which linear, historical time has turned back, contrary to historical logic. As the space of modern Russia is shrinking, time has also turned in the opposite direction, at the beginning of the 21st century we are returning to Russia in the 17th century, when it became an Asian country.

Well, and, of course, there is no history without people, and here we come to the topic "Heroes of Roman Senchin's books." I will very briefly outline what I would like to say. The fate of Roman Senchin is closely connected with the Znamya magazine, and when in 2008 a round table was held on the pages of the magazine on the topic “Does the opposition have a future in Russia?” The editors invited their regular contributor to take part in this discussion. It must be said that the materials round table- absolutely amazing, O. Slavnikova, D. Gutsko, G. Sadulaev and others also took part in the discussion. So, within the framework of this discussion, the definition of the state of our people at this historical stage was given: we are an old, tired, lazy, sophisticated people . I think all epithets define each other here.

And then - directly Senchin - says that our people are absolutely indifferent to real politics, because the policy that they are offered - everything is calculated and decided for us in it: “... we are convinced that behind the battlements and in several more Moscow's well-guarded buildings have those people who know what to do and how to do it. The rest are asked not to worry. And if someone starts to worry, especially in in public places, - they are punished ... In general, the people agree with this state of affairs - the majority are given the opportunity to bite off pieces of the common pie in addition to certain portions, and some bite off tiny pieces, others - huge ones.
... In general, today's Russia personally reminds me very much of Germany in 1935-1938. Everyone is happy, the opposition has been crushed, if there are dissidents, they have bitten their tongue tightly, and there is essentially nothing to criticize for them; people are doing business, the economy, they say, is on the rise, the government is strong, there are products, houses are being built, beautiful cars on the streets, the self-consciousness of citizens has grown: “The country has risen from its knees!”. Territorial growth is planned... We know what this unity of people and power has led to in Germany. No one is immune from repetition. And the people in his sympathies should not be trusted ... ".

You know, after such words - goosebumps. And another parallel came to my mind right now: there is such a popular and promoted (especially among young people) novel by Ya. Vishnevsky “Loneliness in the Net”. I was touched by one remark of the main character in this novel. When asked if he remained a Slav, being a Pole, but living for the last 10 years in Munich, he replies: I don’t know if I have ceased to be a Slav, but I know for sure that I keep my word, I am punctual, I don’t let anyone down and I'm certainly not rebellious.

I transferred his answer to Senchin, who was born in Asia and lives today in the center of Russia, Roman Valeryevich himself once said that I am an akyn, a poet, therefore I sing what I see. In my opinion, a very accurate definition of what the writer Roman Senchin does.
I quoted the hero from Vishnevsky's novel because it seems to me that Senchin's heroes, for the most part, are also not inclined to rebellion. Why is this happening? Because, as we have already said, space is shrinking, time has turned in the opposite direction, and we have even lost our national nature.

I found a mention of the young Yaroslavl writer Marina Koshkina in Senchin the critic. He spoke very highly of her debut text, which he met at one of the Young Writers' Forums in Lipki. The story is called "Chimera".
http://magazines.russ.ru/continent/2005/125/ko5.html
I haven’t read it, but Senchin’s thought, which he caught in the text of a very young author, I would like to convey to you: the most courageous, the most talented, the most extraordinary, capable of heroic, grandiose, unexpected feats in our history perished from century to century, and others remained.

After that, I wrote for myself: the heroes of Senchin are, apparently, the very others who remained after the most talented and extraordinary died. It was interesting for me to read this thought also because it echoes what I heard more than once from my mother. She explains all the troubles of Russia by the fact that we have never had a reverent attitude towards human life, people died by the millions and the best died, and others remained.

Senchin defines the age of his heroes as 25-35 years old (it seems to me that there are many more options here), this is " worthless people", whose life is eventless; they are incapable of action and can only harbor hope.

I really liked the little story or even rather big story, which is called "Region of activity".
http://magazines.russ.ru/continent/2005/125/se15.html
Its heroine, Valentina Petrovna Ryndina, is a business woman who is the deputy chief director of the partnership of Obgaz LLC for public relations. This is an energetic, efficient person who knows how to solve problems that come her way. And the last line of this story is remarkable: “Tomorrow was another difficult day full of important things.” I highly recommend this story to those who haven't read it.

And now we have two options for life in modern Russia, two types of Senchin's heroes. The first are people whom, following Pushkin, Senchin calls insignificant, their life is eventless. And the second ones are those very effective, energetic managers, they have one function today - to guard the interests of that Russia, which has become one big oil and gas corporation. Senchin also spoke about this corporate structure of the country in an interview with Prilepin, it was after reading it that I decided to turn to the story “Region of Activity”, I was wondering how the author managed to convey this thought with the help of artistic means. Senchin writes about well-being, which today concerns not even a separate region, but individual settlements, and outside of this well-being there is another Russia.

Another essay by Senchin absolutely shocked me, it is called "Valerka".
http://magazines.russ.ru/sib/2009/8/se12.html
Incredible text! He tells how an energetic, strong, strong, tenacious man who wants to change something in his life comes to a Siberian village near Minusinsk and tries to do his own business, choosing animal husbandry as his field of activity. As a result, he can not stand it, breaks down, turning into a drunkard. So in this story there is a completely terrible episode about why Valery finally lost interest in his business. I will quote because it sounds scary: “While my father went to negotiate, I stood at the entrance to one of the barns. It was long, dark, and pungently smelled of fresh manure, urine, something else that smells like when a pig is butchered (I have not seen how cows are butchered) - as if warm insides. And out of this odorous semi-darkness a hoarse, frightened-inviting roar rushed. It seemed that the cows were dying. One of the cattlemen appeared, dirty, tired, in boots caked with brown mud. I asked: “Why are they roaring so much?” Have a want? - Yes, calves, - the man frowned, wiped two fingers on the inside of the padded jacket and began to take a cigarette out of the pack. “Two weeks one after the other. My ears will burst... And two days later I learned from Valerka that almost all newborn calves are taken out into the street and frozen. I remember we met at the well, and I asked how the offspring was there. Valerka answered me. “They don’t want to mess around, drink water,” he explained woefully. - There is no benefit - the calf survived, no. So they freeze ... I would work alone, I would leave, and so ... - And he realized himself: - Only you don’t do anything to anyone, this ... Good? And then to me, you understand ... ".
It seems to me that this is you and me, with our cruelty towards everything that surrounds us.

And the last thing I would like to say. I really liked the definition given by L. Yuzefovich at one of the Forums of Young Writers in Lipki, it is given by Roman Senchin in one of his articles. This is the definition of a new genre that is being born in literature today - the "human document". It seems to me that Senchin also defines his work in this genre characteristic. Look, Karamzin, Klyuchevsky, Solovyov never brought the presentation of the course of history to their contemporary life, they stopped in the 17th-18th centuries. And Senchin, it seemed to me, sets himself the task of fixing the chronicle of our time through these very “human documents”. I would call him - by analogy with Karamzin, whom Pushkin defined as "the last chronicler" - the revived chronicler of modern Russia. Although reading this chronicle, of course, is very scary. The village that Senchin writes about is no longer the village that was in the 19th century with its communal way of life. IN modern village it’s not a shame to steal from someone as poor as you, in this village it’s not a shame to deceive someone as unfortunate as you (these are the stories “Alien”, “In the opposite direction” and the essay “Valerka”).

And yet, today, before our meeting, we talked with Irina Nikolaevna, and I caught myself thinking about this thought about hope. I was reminded of the ancient ancient myth of Pandora's box. A beautiful woman was created by the gods and sent to earth to man in revenge for the fact that he dared to stand on the earth himself, with his own feet and make his own choice. When the curious Pandora opened the casket, illnesses, misfortunes, misfortunes and death broke out of it and went for a walk in the land. If my memory serves me right, this myth has come down to us in two versions: in the retelling of Homer and Hesiod. These versions differ in one small nuance: reading the motive of hope - is it good or evil? If she came to the world of people along with illness and suffering, but did not go with them to walk around the world, but remained in a slammed box.

One philosopher of the 20th century G. Gadamer has an article devoted to the myth of Prometheus. And Gadamer in the context of this myth raises the question: what is hope in human life? The absolute logic of the myth tells us that hope is evil if it was in the box where there were diseases and death. For a man who works on the ground, hope is good, but for someone who wants to stand on the ground on his own feet, making his own choice, and dragging himself by the hair, as Baron Munchausen did, without waiting for help from anyone else, hope is evil. Such, somewhat chaotic, thoughts came to my mind when I read Roman Senchin.
(applause)

I. Krokhova: “Thank you Vera Alexandrovna, I would like to confirm what was said in your speech, to give a few quotes:

Sergei Belyakov, critic: “Yoltyshevs” is by far the most compelling argument in favor of realism. This is the greatest achievement of the New Realists. However, Senchin's realism is not new. Senchin is the son of Soviet (but not socialist) realism and the great-nephew of Russian realism of the 19th century. The life of the nineties and zero will someday be studied according to Senchin, as we study the 19th century according to Turgenev and Chekhov.

And one of the most recent reviews of the novel "Yoltyshevy".
Lev Pirogov, critic: “The Yoltyshev family is a metaphor for national decline… The reason for this decline is the lack of the will to live. There is no will to live, because it has been replaced by the desire for well-being, and for the sake of well-being you cannot do what you would do for the sake of life itself. As a result, the desire to "live well" is not enough even to simply live.
And who, according to the general intuitive conviction, is able to turn the tide? "Man of War", soldier. ... On the scale of a national metaphor, which is Senchin's book, this brings us to Dostoevsky's well-known thought that war is necessary for the moral health of the nation.
... To Shukshin's question "What is happening to us?", ... Roman Senchin gives an extremely clear answer: we have no reason to live. We shouldn't live, since we stood up not "against the devils", but for them.
Why is this answer so important to our literature today? Because a cozy, lulling intonation has spread over it too much: they say, let everything around be bad - you need “if it’s summer, peel the berries and make jam; if it’s winter, drink tea with this jam.” Jam does not help with gangrene. Everyone cooks, wherever you look - and still everything is bad around. Paradox.
It is evident that fairy tales were taught not in vain: no matter how much you water the corpse with living water, there will be no sense. First you need dead water. So, maybe it’s enough to be like the Yoltyshevs, who “until the last hope for something”? Often, in order to take action, you need to understand that there is no hope.”

V. Kriushina: “I want to add one more important thing that I did not say. The problem, of course, is in ourselves, first of all. Senchin has this idea. By nature, it is difficult for a person to admit that the way he lives is not perfect option. Confucius has a wonderful expression, it sounds something like this: “if a person makes a mistake in the morning, then he will never admit it in the evening.” Apparently, this is not only ours, it is a universal problem.”

A. Baiborodov, unemployed: "I don't understand why hope can be evil?"

Y. Kruzhilin, pensioner: "You can hope for the best, the Lord God, for example, and do nothing yourself, in this sense, hope is evil."

A. Vasilevsky, teacher of physics, professor of Vyatka State University: “You know, if you walk through our city, especially in its historical part, you will meet a huge number of elite houses. And in these houses live just these ryndins - people from the corporation. I wonder if they share your point of view on modern Russia?”

V. Kriushina: “The heroine of the “Region of Activity” Valentina Petrovna Ryndina once opened the dictionary and read what her last name means - she became ill, she drank corvalol. "Guard", one who, like (forgive me) a dog, guards the interests of his master. There is also a wonderful trifle, a detail: the director of the company has a portrait of the president on the wall in the office, and in the office of Valentina Petrovna, which one-to-one repeats the boss’s office, there is a portrait of the boss. I'm sorry, but this is called a "train" when everything is from top to bottom in the hierarchy!

Y. Reznik, librarian: "Vertical!"

V. Kriushina: “Of course, today our country is not a community (which has always been in our history and determined the nature of the majority of the people), but a collection of closed corporations. And those who live in these luxury homes cannot and should not share this point of view, because we, apparently, are in different corporations.

T. Alexandrova, chemical engineer: “Such a wave of angry, angry, very harsh reviews of Senchin's works on the Internet, including personal ones! It means that he hurt someone with his texts, someone is unpleasant about his thoughts about modern Russia.

Y. Reznik, Librarian of the Department of Literature at foreign languages Gerzenki: May I add a few remarks to our discussion? Of course, I do not represent Roman Senchin at a meeting with Putin, next to, say, the glamorous writer T. Ustinova.

And I also want to say that recently two things have made the strongest impression on me: Podrabinek's Letter to Soviet Veterans and Senchin's novel The Yoltyshevs. I would like to turn our conversation in this direction: why do we blame the Yoltyshevs for what is happening today? After all, the people cannot do everything, they are placed in such conditions. And who created these conditions? Look at what happened to the Russian countryside in the 20th century, the peasants were driven out of the villages, destroyed as a class of those who were able to live and work independently on the land. The Yoltyshevs are already the result, their aunt still retained some skills of village life, but they are simply not capable of such a life in principle. The Yoltyshevs did not take root in the city either, and in the countryside they became strangers. I read from D. Bykov, and he quotes N. Mandelstam: "You need to ask not from those who have broken, but from those who have broken." And F. Iskander has the same thought: “who didn’t break, they were badly broken.” I want to say that it is impossible to remove the blame from the state. After all, let's take, for example, the same Germany, after everything that they did in the 20th century, they repented both before their people and before the peoples of other countries. And we still have Vladimir Ilyich lying in the mausoleum. After all, it's all connected: the catastrophe that happened to our country in the 20th century and what we have now as a result.

There are peoples in which there is a strong paternalistic principle, and we are among them. Is it bad? This has always been the case in Russia, moreover, the authorities themselves cultivated this model of relations among their people. Now the people have been abandoned, the authorities think only of those who are members of the oil and gas corporation, and non-capital Russia is dying and, it seems, has already died completely. But even the well-being of the members of the corporation is often only visible, as it is with Senchin in the “Region of Operation”: everything is bad in the family of the main character, family ties are collapsing. External well-being means nothing.

V. Kriushina: “I used to think that there is no abstract concept of “state”, but there is a concept - a person. After all, the power that we have consists of people, a significant part of which only yesterday left that same province. Let us recall at least Yeltsin, he is from the same village, only not Siberian, but Ural. He grew up in this environment, in this country, and what did he do with this country as a result? Our people have never lived richly, and thanks to oil and gas, we have been tempted by wealth, and time shows that we cannot bear this temptation. It seems that Dostoevsky in "Poor People" has this idea: "poor people are capricious to the point of disgrace." So this phrase absolutely explains our dependence on oil and gas and the moral problems that arise in a person who, as in the Russian proverb, goes from rags to riches. Having nothing before, he immediately wants to get everything.

Y. Reznik: "But did everyone turn out to be involved in this wealth and were tempted by it?"

I. Krokhova: "Some kind of primitive well-being touched many."

V. Kriushina: “Many of the students today come to the university in foreign cars. It is clear that in their lives they have not yet earned anything, wealth was given to them for nothing. And wealth, acquired as a gift, corrupts the soul. Therefore, we, apparently, are looking for the cause of our troubles not in ourselves, but in an abstract state.

Y. Reznik: “Man is placed in such historical conditions! He can't do anything!"

V. Kriushina: "Everyone has a chance to resist."

Y. Reznik: We have no choice! We can't even vote freely today!”

V. Kriushina: “Grigory Gorin in the play “The Same Munchausen” has such a phrase: “And Galileo renounced”, to which the hero replies: “That's why I always liked Giordano Bruno.” So there is always a choice.

T. Alexandrova: “In the same Yoltyshevs, each family member has something to pay for. Everyone violated at least one of the commandments, everyone went against their conscience, among them there are no clean people who can be considered suffering in vain. For example, they hope to younger son like a clear sun that will return from prison and save them all, but a person who has broken the law cannot be light and hope and his money cannot save anyone, because I don’t even want to think where he got them. What about the head of the family? What did he do with the people who got into the sobering-up station? After all, we know perfectly well that in our country everyone could have been in the place of his victims! He was already endowed with power, albeit minimal, but he could not stand the temptation of this power.

Y. Kruzhilin, pensioner: “For a long time I have not been looking for gurus among writers who will give me answers to my questions. I read the Yoltyshevs with interest, and then I thought: what are we going to discuss here? In my opinion, this book is weak - a compilation of facts that can be collected in newspapers. This is a typical portrait of the Soviet intelligentsia - educated, by the definition of A. Solzhenitsyn. The protagonist's wife graduated from a cultural and educational school, works in a library, she is not particularly interested in anything in life. Typical Russian woman, chick, I would say; how everyone got married, and without love, gave birth to children and even really failed to raise them. Throughout the novel, she performs only two actions: she babbled everyone, raising them from their seats and forcing them to move to the village. And the second act - at the end of the book she comes to visit her grandson. And so I sit and think, what is there to discuss? Well, the author's pen is lively, well, he writes interestingly, colorfully, he certainly has talent. Well, that's all!

And then the librarians tell me: read something else from him. I took "Athenian Nights". I read it - love it! The heroes are young artists, and it would seem that what could interest me in these outcasts? But, you know, I read it with pleasure! Then he took up "Minus" and was also amazed: the action of the story takes place in a perfect hole - in the city of Minusinsk, the characters work in a provincial theater. And what is interesting: people are eager for art, the theater is full of people, around, it would seem, bestial life, and they need something else besides bread. I didn’t feel sorry for anyone in the Yoltyshevs, it’s their own fault, let them die, since they don’t want to change anything in their lives. But in "Minus" the young heroes are very nice to me, and although their life is also not going well, you think: no, they will still get out of this!

I really liked how Senchin describes nature, his landscapes are laconic, he can draw a picture in two or three sentences. You know, like in the theater: they set up the scenery, and your imagination has already started working.

And as a result of everything, I came to the conclusion, not a good conclusion: Senchin has the talent of Limonov's level, but the things that delighted me from him were all written almost 10 years ago. I thought: did the guy write himself? God forbid, of course. I hope it's still me wrong. Well, God forbid, if he goes into politics.

Yu Pak, Librarian of the Department of Literature in Foreign Languages ​​of Gerzenka: “As I see now, Senchin is accused by many of the fact that his novel is a complete “darkness”, which I don’t like in principle. But it so coincided in time that I almost simultaneously read two novels that can formally be considered "black", and I liked them.

I do not want to draw any obvious parallels, there are none. It's just that in my mind, by the strength of the impression made and by some other points, these two books have something in common.

In early August, I read the book "White Tiger" by Indian writer Aravind Adiga, winner of the Booker Prize in 2008. The action there, of course, is semi-fantastic, but it takes place against the backdrop of the life of modern Indian society ... To be honest, if it weren’t for the recommendation of a person whose opinion I respect, I wouldn’t read more than 30 pages - hopeless poverty, hopelessness, humiliation, and most importantly, I wouldn’t It is understandable why the author describes all this. Complains? Showing off? Wants to amaze the European reader with pictures of poverty and injustice? I thought it was only for our writers. Even the thought flashed: probably, for such rubbish written on local material, writers are given Booker. But as I read further, I realized that, like all good books, this book is not about the social system, but about a person, his internal problems about searching...

And then there were the Yoltyshevs, and also, at first glance, longing, dissatisfaction with life, hopelessness, our difficult Russian reality. But in essence, despite the obvious social orientation, the book is about the same thing - about a person, about emptiness inside, about loneliness even surrounded by loved ones, about searching, about the absence, let's say corny, of a "core". For me, at least, it is.

We read the Yoltyshevs by the whole department. I immediately liked in the novel that the author does not "stick out" with his opinion and attitude towards the characters, does not judge them. I liked the language - it is simple, does not draw attention to itself. Perhaps you will not exclaim - what an excellent style! But, from the very first lines, I want to exclaim something else - “I know, I know! How true!" This feeling is a rare thing, for which I am grateful to the author. Of course, this perception is partly connected with the events of my life. After reading, a spontaneous and very heated discussion of this book arose in the department. This, by the way, is also an indicator - she hooked everyone, because the topic of the family, the state, gender relations, generations is raised there ...

Roman Senchin was a revelation for me. He writes critically about the country and people, but it does not irritate me and does not cause rejection - as long as it is sincere, with love. There is no feeling that a person writes to order, with an eye on anyone else. I think it's very important to be honest with the reader and, first of all, with yourself; and hope for the best.

Roman Senchin - good writer, With good language, makings, I really want to read his journalism ... His books have a place on the reader's shelf. They have something to push off from. As I understand it, many accuse the writer of not having a positive, notorious "light at the end of the tunnel." Probably so. Something close to me (otherwise I would not like his books), but not completely. We can say that this is realism, but for some reason this realism describes only a part of our life, and not life in its entirety. Again, this is a feature of the perception of the world. So that's how he feels. It would be much worse if the writer wrote, not in the way that is characteristic of him. But... There are writers with a different attitude, outlook. Also sincere, also honest; what they write about is also true, but in this truth there is a place for hope, they believe in a person. And their books are closer to me, I draw strength from them. These are my personal feelings.

Here's another, interesting point. To the surprise of my colleagues, I hoped until the very end of the novel that everything would change for the better with the Yoltyshevs, that they would find support, somehow swim out. You can call me an idealist, but I think I'm a realist. I think that this happens ... And perhaps some author could convey this, well, I. Shmelev, for example, or I will boldly say - Makanin ... And the ending that was, makes the novel more like a sketch of life. It seems to me that this is largely life experience. Perhaps in the future we will see a slightly different prose coming out from under the pen of Roman Senchin.

A. Aristov, journalist: “The Yoltyshevy novel is a recipe for how not to live, what you should not become in any case. I don’t feel sorry for the heroes, I don’t understand such people, meeting them both in life and in literature: what do they lack? After all, they have the minimum conditions for living and changing their lives for the better. Why are they drinking vodka? We Russians seem to be programmed for self-destruction: we do everything to die and make room for those who want to live and work on this earth. I travel a lot around the region and see that there are different villages: there are villages like those near Senchin, but there are also those where people build their own lives, not relying on anyone. True, the latter - much less. I was recently in Chistopolye - a local entrepreneur took and returned life to the village, providing his fellow villagers with work for a start. These are the people who, perhaps, will save Russia.”

T. Mashkovtseva, librarian of Gertsenka's subscription department: “After reading the novel, I asked my 14-year-old son to read it. Surprisingly, I read it to the end. But the very first (emotional) comment puzzled me at first: “Why did you let me read about this maniac ?!”. Five minutes later it dawned on me: I was reading about a dying village, a degenerated province, about people's struggle for elementary survival. But my teenager, who reads mostly fantasy and some action movies, saw something completely different.

And for sure, empathizing with the heroes, somehow I was not even horrified that this hero was not only a victim, but, in fact, he himself was a serial killer. Yoltyshev solves all problems simply and quite technically, as they once taught: if he sees a reason that, in his opinion, prevents him from "performing the task", in this case - to live, or rather, to survive - therefore, this obstacle must be removed, without regard to "Animation" of the obstacle. And after all, as usual, everything! The hero of Senchin is not even aware that he commits crimes over and over again. And the further - the more terrible. He justified himself long ago, even in that former life, when he robbed drunkards in a sobering-up station.

In general, in the novel, if you look at it, there is not a single positive character, there are just people, they live as best they can, these people still, apparently by inertia, still have some ideas about intangible concepts (good, evil, honor, conscience), only in practice, all these concepts rather interfere, not to mention, to live according to the ten commandments. Therefore, the episode with the restoration of the church is very symbolic in the novel. Sometime, at Soviet power, the local temple was adapted for a club, and, perhaps, once the club was a "hotbed of culture", today it is just a hangout place for local youth. After another drunkenness, the building burned down badly, so it occurred to some grannies (naturally, former Komsomol activists) to restore the church instead of the club; but here, too, things did not go beyond the collection of signatures (democracy, first the consent of the majority must be asked). As a result, they rebuilt the club again, and everything went according to plan. It turns out, according to Senchin, that the process of falling has gone so far that it has become irreversible. It's painful. Thanks to the writer for this "mirror", for the opportunity to look at yourself from the outside.

Yu Pak, librarian: “When I read the novel, I tried to answer the question for myself: why is this happening to us? Still, it seems to me main reason not in circumstances, no matter how difficult, we remember much more difficult times. The main thing is that people lack a moral core, the boundaries between good and evil are blurred. The reason is not in the circumstances, but in each of us.

T. Laletina, doctor: “The Yoltyshevs have no sense of responsibility, they are absolutely infantile people and the novel is not at all about the villagers, it is, of course, a novel about each of us. Here they talked about paternalism, that we Russians feel like children who are not able to bear responsibility for their actions. Maybe in the past such a model of behavior was possible, but now times are different: you need to learn to live with your own mind, make decisions on your own, and not shift it to the state.

Remember the first sentence of the novel: “Like many of his peers, Nikolai Mikhailovich Yoltyshev most of his life believed that you need to behave like a human being, fulfill your duties, and you will gradually be rewarded for this.” But main character began to live differently, although he had a good job, apartment, family, he wanted more. He broke this commandment and was punished.

When I read the first part of the novel, I also thought: what to talk about? Here we have a man - absolutely infantile, unwilling to be responsible for his actions, unable to raise even his own sons, both of them - nothing. Then I read the second part and saw how the author, absolutely in the classical tradition, shows us the process of degradation human personality. The hero loses everything, he goes against the world of people, against conscience, against himself, against the future of his own children. The problem of the Yoltyshevs is that they are not able to look at themselves from the outside, to open their eyes, as we have already said today.

I also read Senchin’s story “Forward and Up on Dead Batteries” and began to better understand how a writer’s work is born, how it relates to his external life. And the story of Tatyana Semyonovna also helped me understand a lot about the writer Roman Senchin. First, probably, there is an external push, an idea is born in the head of the writer, and then everything comes from the heart. The end result is this, I would say, a very existential novel.”

M. Selezneva, teacher of chemistry at the All-Russian State Agricultural Academy: “For starters, I want to quote Pushkin:

We are cowardly, we are insidious,
Shameless, evil, ungrateful;
We are cold-hearted eunuchs,
Slanderers, slaves, fools...

Where did we come from? I asked myself a question after reading the Yoltyshevs. Senchin once again buries the sweet tale of Russian kindness and responsiveness. She has long been a myth. This novel is absolutely logical from the very beginning: here is the cause, and here is the effect. The Yoltyshevs are punished, as will be punished all those who commit unrighteous deeds today, who forget about their neighbor and think only about their own well-being. Time has not only turned back, it is shrinking, the distance between cause and effect, between sin and punishment is getting smaller and smaller. And for those who commit sin today, the time of reckoning will come much sooner than we think. Yes, unfortunately, the best in our country died in the Stalinist camps, in the war. The gene pool of the nation was undermined, and today not the best, but others remain.”

E. Kokoulin, human rights activist: “You tell me, you have been teaching for many years, are there really only scoundrels among your students, among your acquaintances? Why do you talk about our people like that and see only the bad?”

E. Krokhina: “Maya Alekseevna did not utter the word “scoundrels”! These are your words!”

M. Selezneva: “I will definitely answer you in personal communication. A year ago, we talked about Zakhar Prilepin, so as long as the avens are in power, they will not let us rise. For a long time the people will drag out a miserable existence. But there is a limit to everything."

A. Khalyavin, lawyer: “The novel“ Yoltysheva about the village, which we do not need today. You can also grow bread on a rotational basis, it is not necessary to live in countryside constantly. This way of life is no longer in demand in society, something needs to be changed, agriculture should be put on a production footing, and not raised and revived by dying and unpromising villages.

Y. Kruzhilin, pensioner: “We are talking here about the death of the Russian village, but after all, even a hundred years ago, not everything was in order. And there were the same useless people as the Yoltyshevs, Pushkin, Gorky, Chekhov. The task of the writer is to show such a hero, to reflect life, and not everything is so scary and hopeless. There is another life, other heroes who cope with life's difficulties and do not give up, but flounder to the end, like frogs in milk. It seems to me that apocalyptic moods are useless here.”

I. Krokhova: "Have you been to the modern village?"

Y. Kruzhilin: "And what's this about? Since the village cannot feed you - go to the city, join a corporation! Yes, pensioners have no choice, they will have to live in the countryside, they have lived their lives. What to say about them? We need to think about the youth - after all, they have a choice, they have a chance! If you really want to achieve something in your life - act, take risks, work hard. The case is a great thing, because everything happened with the Yoltyshevs largely by chance. If no one was hurt during the detention in the sobering-up station, the hero could continue to work safely there and even rise to some rank. No, I'm not interested in such characters.

A. Baiborodov:“Why does the writer Senchin approve of all this cruelty and filth, since he depicts it?”

T. Alexandrova:“Depicts and approves are two different things!”

Some of those present: “Since he depicts reality in this way, it means that it is close to him!”

Yu Pak: "He portrays what he sees and states the facts, and does not make judgments!"

I. Krokhova: “Senchin does not judge anyone, he describes our life, shows the truth of life, but, in no case, does not criticize. The reader must draw his own conclusions.

Y. Reznik: "He testifies!"

T. Mashkovtseva, librarian: “In general, the first impression is: is it possible that today someone writes “critically real”?! It seemed that none of the so-called contemporary writers. And suddenly - such a text! Now I am reading Tolstoy (Leo Nikolayevich), and with some fear I understand: 100 years have passed, but nothing has changed in Russia. Maybe only scenery, and even then not everywhere. All classic XIX century is super relevant today! And the feeling of deja vu never leaves. Analogies pop into my head. At first, hopelessness was described in literature, the same literature also described the path (Gorky's "Mother"). The abscess burst in 1917, and today we seem to be experiencing a similar situation. So I also ask myself the question: what next? With some fear.

Literature cannot give us answers to these questions, it only shows what is, and we draw conclusions ourselves. Look, in the "Yoltyshevs" there is an episode with a column, when, in connection with the law prohibiting the use of columns for irrigation, washing cars, etc., the villagers, for whom this column is almost the only source of water, now cannot use it use in "industrial needs". And what does this mean for many certain death (in Russia, the climate
far from like in India, bananas do not fall from the branches; in an unwatered garden, from which almost everyone feeds there, nothing really will grow, and how then to survive the winter ?!) - it doesn’t matter, the main thing is to observe the law, after all, we are building a “lawful state”! And in general, the problem is not global, they say, there is local authority, self-manage! So it remains, in order not to somehow simply die of hunger, - to steal, to engage in fraud, to rob, and if necessary, to kill, in general, to spin somehow.

Of course, the laws adopted in white houses and behind the red Kremlin walls are very true, correct and useful, but when these laws have to be applied outside the white houses and red walls with battlements, then for some reason genocide results. That is, Roman Senchin clearly shows how today there are two different Russias, and how one essentially kills the other.

And the saddest thing: all (!) heroes of the book perceive such a life as the norm, everyone is floundering alone, counting on help only for themselves or members of their family. But because the jungle (in our case, the taiga). Remember "The Sad Detective" by V. Astafiev? Then there was a forecast, a warning: look, people, what will happen if you continue to live like this. And now, after some (very short!) time, we have the result - a country in which the Yoltyshevs are not an exception, but rather the rule. The only way out, it seems, is a club. But this people is no longer capable of a club, this population is only capable of self-destruction. And this is really hard to accept. “Yoltyshevs” is not even a diagnosis, it is a Sentence. SENTENCE to the country and its former people.

I. Krokhova: “Vera Aleksandrovna, do you have a desire to say something else?”

V. Kriushina: “I deliberately tried to almost not interfere in the discussion, but everyone wants to answer in a couple of words, literally. Andrey Aristov spoke about different villages. In the essay "Valerka" there is a scene with a well: in order to get water from it in winter, you must first break the ice - which was not easy to do. And in the village there was such a custom - to wait, who will not stand it first and go to chisel the ice. But Valerka did not know this: "... not noticing or not wanting to notice these neighborly tricks, ... he appeared at the well at eight in the morning, took a crowbar." Senchin writes that, looking at him, he could not stand it, he was ashamed to leave Valery alone in his work, and "...either father, then I went to help him, although sometimes we had enough water at that moment." This is about us and about different villages: some sit and wait for someone to “break the ice” for them, while others take a crowbar and go to help.

Yuri Sergeevich talked about only two actions of the protagonist's wife and about the woman's responsibility for her family, about her role in preserving this family. Remember the story of Adam's fall? God asks, "Adam, where are you?" This does not mean that God is looking for him, this question addressed to Adam means - "Who are you with?". And Adam said, "The wife that You gave me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate." He accused God and humiliated his wife! This is the choice. The sin is not that they have tasted the forbidden fruit, but that the first betrayal is being committed, the first step has been taken on the path to the death of the family, the small church. If we return to the Yoltyshevs, then where the family perishes, nevertheless the last word remains with the woman, she can still save everyone. But in this case it didn't happen.
Andrey Khalyavin spoke about the shift work method, which has nothing special about it. This is the pragmatics of the time... I once told my students what was built in our city by 1974, when we celebrated the 600th anniversary of the founding of Vyatka. They were amazed and couldn't believe it! And what have we got new recently? Never mind! Our city has become a solid Entertainment Center, we lost almost the entire production complex that we had. But a person takes strength not from casinos and money, a person draws strength from the land on which he works. The most terrible alienation that Marx wrote about in the 19th century is taking place. And from the earth, and from the person who shares this work with you.

And more about people. Valentina Petrovna from the "Region of Activity" reflects on what different people live in the capital and in the provinces. In the capital there are programmed machines with which there are no problems, it is easy to work with them, and in the provinces there are living people, but they take so much mental strength and energy! What do we want? So that we all turn into soulless, programmed, well-oiled automata, or do we still want to remain human, despite the emotional costs generated by this? It's not a village problem, it's more of a global problem."

A. Pavlov, lawyer: “It seems to me that people fled the village not only because living conditions are difficult there. It's normal human feeling- desire to change places. Valentina Viktorovna from the "Yoltyshevs" at one time left the village, because she, a young girl, was drawn to where other people, a different life. Another thing is that she could not fit into this new life. The entire Yoltyshev family is a family of outcasts.
And yet, it seemed to me that Roman Senchin's prose is close to what Zakhar Prilepin does, only Senchin lacks a military theme. The light is not visible in either one or the other. And why? The writers themselves do not know the answer to the question “What to do?”. Yes, in the 1990s people were ready for change, but today it is too late to take risks. Today, everyone is looking for something ready-made, trying to get something for free, even if by unrighteous means. The rules of the game are set and not set by us.

I really liked what Vera Aleksandrova said about Pandora's box; never thought that hope could be evil. Yes, perhaps it is evil, but it is an inert evil, and if you strain, you can defeat it.

N. Bogatyreva, teacher of the philological faculty of Vyatka State University: “I just read the collection literary criticism Roman Senchin's Scattered Mosaic. The author takes a deep approach to the analysis of the current literary situation, I agree with him in the choice of names that he takes for analysis. The future of literature, says Senchin, is in novel form. Confession, documentary realism is good, but one "human document" is not enough. And it seems to me that The Yoltyshevs is his own attempt to respond to the need for such a novelistic canvas. Senchin is most concerned with how a person appears today. This is a person who has lost the core of life, he surrenders entirely to an internal offensive, jealous feeling; it seems to him that everyone is to blame for him, everyone didn’t give him something.
Senchin has short story, where the main character is preparing to celebrate his 40th birthday. This story has an amazing ending: the hero, at the cost of incredible efforts, organized the evening, gathered all his friends to talk, and as a result, he begins to accuse them of how bad they are, how they use it, etc. Senchin draws gloomy picture: trouble modern man that he is incapable of open communication. This is a person with hurt pride, a person who does not know how to be more than his selfish self-admiration.
And, of course, Roman Senchin is faithful to the traditions of Russian classics. For example, I was surprised to learn that he loves and rereads Leonid Andreev! I absolutely agree with him on this. For the first time I hear from a young man that Andreev can not only be read, but also re-read! Bravo! It seems to me that Andreev is not accidentally so close to Senchin; this is a writer who also yearned for the human in a person, he was horrified that a person, in an attempt to survive, sometimes turns into a biological selfish creature.
Senchin, in my opinion, gravitates toward modern tragedy, to designate it, to find artistic means for its expression. Maybe, indeed, an author is being born who will become a witness of our time.”

G. Makarova, librarian of the subscription department: “I did not read the Yoltyshevs in full, looked at the beginning and end of the novel, leafed through, and then put it aside. For some reason I didn't feel like spending my mental strength to this rather heavy text. I doubted whether to come to this discussion or not. And I'm just happy to be here today. I am grateful to those who organized this evening, who spoke out so interestingly and sincerely today, and, of course, special thanks to Vera Alexandrovna for her speech. The novel became the occasion for a very interesting and important conversation about what concerns each of us.”

M. Selezneva, VGSHA teacher: “You know what I want to say in the end: what we talked about today, what we thought about, argued about, will not disappear without a trace. All this will be preserved in the information field of the earth, and I am sure that sooner or later our thoughts and feelings will echo in our real life. Maybe it will happen much faster than we think. For example, in 2012."

I. Krokhova: “Many thanks to everyone for today's discussion, we got so carried away today that we lingered more than usual. On the tables we have Roman Senchin's answers to our questions. Those who have not had time to get acquainted with them - you can take it home with you.
And finally, I want to remind you that in December we have a meeting with director Alexei Pogrebny. This is one of the masters of not only Vyatka, but also Russian documentary filmmaking. Not everyone has probably seen his films, so in the very near future we will try to arrange a screening of them in the library. Watch for posters and announcements on the library website.

AFTER THE DISCUSSION:

N. Bogatyreva, teacher of the philological faculty of the Vyatka State University: “I read the novel “Yoltyshevy” quite quickly, almost without stopping. Why? Rather, not because I was so carried away, but under the influence of the discussion at the Lamp: a certain curiosity arose ... And you can’t say that diagonally. Maybe not every page so carefully. The impression is bleak: viscous, dreary ... I agree that this is a mercilessly realistic, critical look. An attempt to create a modern epic on the theme of the fate of the modern family and the state. Whether it will remain one of the notable artistic testimonies of our time is difficult to judge. Time will show...

I immediately have associations with Russian classics. Specifically, with Saltykov-Shchedrin. The “Yoltyshevs” are the modern “Lord Golovlevs”, who did not notice and did not realize the process of their own inevitable degradation and death ... There is, of course, a significant difference in the author's manner: Senchin is not close to satirical - ironic, sarcastic or comic - pathos. He also does not have extensive author's comments, journalistic or lyrical. He is rather a merciless, impassive chronicler, a recorder of external and internal events. At the same time, his position as an observer is not aside or "above", "above", but a very close examination of what is inside the character - his intentions, plans, thoughts, hopes. This is where the novel begins - with a story about that life position elder Yoltyshev, according to which he must honestly, modestly, patiently work, live like a human being (is it bad to think like that?) - and all this will be gradually and inevitably rewarded. (How exactly? - this is the most important thing, from the author's point of view, as I see it, - to be rewarded with an increase in well-being, all kinds of benefits - and namely material ones: a TV, a car, an apartment, a summer house, money, etc. etc. Not the slightest hint of the fact that in this family they are able to live with some other interests and concerns, not only of a material nature... The heroine's profession, a librarian, does not help the cause either ...)

Another thing is that the main emotion with which all this internal is fixed by the narrator, most often, is bewilderment (the emotion of the character, not the author), misunderstanding - why it doesn’t turn out the way it should, as expected. It seems to them that it should be so, but it turns out quite differently. (Here Senchin is absolutely merciless. And with this position he reminds me very much of Chekhov). And this is typical for all the characters in the novel. Misunderstanding is becoming more and more "dense" from the older generation to the younger .... It cannot be said that the elder Yoltyshev "planned" all the crimes he committed, everything turned out as if by itself, it is not clear how, from the same bewilderment and irritation, or something ...

But the objective result is terrible, as if anticipating the behavior of the future real Yevsyukov, which, of course, seemed to be guessed, predicted by Senchin, although psychological type Yevsyukov's personality is completely different. But both are policemen... This is what suggests the pattern, the typicality of what is noticed by the novelist and what is happening in reality. classic trait realistic art, realistic writing. And most importantly, about author's position in general, about the sound of the finale of the novel. The impression that the author in the novel is passionless and gloomy, that he "savores" horror and hopelessness, is still not entirely true. Of course, he is far from the Christian mercy of Saltykov in "Lords of the Golovlevs" (who also leaves the opportunity for Judas the "blood-tasting" to repent, to dream of forgiveness at his mother's grave). But still, the scene of the death of Valentina Viktorovna, when she tries to talk with her little grandson and hopes that he will hear her, somehow understand in his own way (and therefore regret it), leaves the impression of the author's intention to show mercy .... But also this attempt remains futile (as, indeed, with Saltykov). The last phrase of the novel "There was no one to help her" is hopeless.

Y. Reznik, librarian: “Recently I read Maxim Kantor (they and Roman Senchin even have the titles of the works rhyming: “To the other side” - by Kantor, “In the opposite direction” - by Senchin). Kantor writes about the same thing: about human degradation, only in his case we are talking about the so-called elite of modern Russia. Its heroes are representatives of business, the press, deputies, and scientists. They have adapted to the “vertical of power”, they play according to the rules proposed by the Kremlin. In fact, they are just as morally degraded as the Yoltyshev family. These are such pseudo-servants of the people, pseudo-opposition press, pseudo-scientists, pseudo-democrats. Maybe in 1991 they all had some illusions, but the years of Putin's "stability" buried these illusions. The author also inherited the old European democrats, who look down on the backward, wild peoples- Russians, Afghans. In fact, their essence is hypocrisy, stiffness, contempt for people. Kantor shows this on the example of an Englishman living in the family of the protagonist Tatarnikov.

It is paradoxical, but the representatives of the outcast countries, according to the author, turn out to be more humane, more honoring family values ​​than these highly educated representatives of the modern elite: scientific, political, etc. Both novels, Yoltyshevs and To the Other Side, are about the same thing: the whole world, not only Russia, is in some kind of civilizational impasse. Need a reboot. But “from above” it will be started or “from below” - this is the question ... Maybe try from both sides?