Alexei Ivanov: “Russian people are not good at using freedom” | Person | Culture
The writer Alexey Ivanov today can be called one of the most filmed. To the films “Tsar”, “Geographer Drank the Globe”, “The Ridge of Russia”, “Tobol” and others, filmed according to his books, this fall added “Dormitory” and the series “Pishcheblok”, and at the beginning of next year the premiere of “Hearts “Parma” director Anton Megerdichev.
So why do we need the Urals?
Julia Shigareva, “AiF“: But I don’t want to ask you about films, Alexey, but about geography. The new airport of Tobolsk was named after Semyon Remezov, the hero of your novel Tobol. Has historical justice been done? And how many more heroes who made the history of the state were forgotten by the descendants?
Aleksey Ivanov: In the history of Russia, there are many titans like Semyon Remezova… It is wrong to say that they are forgotten. Before Tobol, three novels and a monograph were written about Remezov; there are monuments in Tobolsk and Tyumen. Therefore, it is correct to say that Moscow did not know about Remezov. And she doesn’t know now. For example, Remezov is the first geographic region of Russia, but the Russian Geographical Society is not aware of this. Titans like Remezov will return from “national obscurity” when Russia begins to take an interest in itself, and not in power.
– In one of your interviews, you, who wrote so many books about the Urals, about the unique mining civilization, said: “The nation does not understand what the Urals is and why it is needed.” And what is the Ural? And why didn’t we understand anything about him?
– Post-industrial society is primarily a consumer society, industrial society is a society of creation. The Urals have become the world’s best industrial society, that is, the standard of a society of creation. The main way of human self-realization in the Urals was labor, not power, not rebellion, not wealth, not faith and not glory. Therefore, the main cultural hero of the Urals is a Master, not a Hero, not a Robber, not a Merchant or a Saint. In the XIX century. such things have not yet been thought of. In the XX century. all of Russia was rolled up into a common ideology – into communism. And in the XXI century. creation became uninteresting to us, consumption became interesting. Therefore, the Urals did not find their own face.
– Have we understood everything about Siberia? Was she properly disposed of?
– The inhabitants of the country do not distinguish between huge regions, the Urals and Siberia, which occupy two-thirds of the territory of Russia. What can you understand if you don’t even see?
– The film “Heart of Parma” can provoke a discussion: how did our conquest of Siberia differ from the exploration of America by the Europeans? The peoples who lived there were crushed, crossed into a different faith – and not always voluntarily. So close to calls to repent before the Khanty and Mansi – this is now fashionable.
– Repentance is necessary where it is appropriate. And to argue about the difference between the conquest of Siberia and America is ridiculous, it is enough just to take an interest in history. The Americans did not need anything from the Indians, so they exterminated the Indians, expelled them from their native land. And the Russians needed furs from foreigners – it served as a sender of currency. Fur farming is very hard work. The Russians preferred to entrust it to foreigners, and to themselves more profitable and easier agriculture. Therefore, as far as possible, they tried not to oppress the aliens, although everything happened. There was robbery and forced baptism, but there was no genocide.
Instead of ideology – conspiracy theories
– In the 90s, you very accurately caught the image of the hero of our time in the novel “The Geographer Drank the Globe”. And now who is this hero? Pole Klikhovsky from your new novel “Shadows of the Teutons”, which is trying to break the loops of time so that history finally stops going in circles? Or the Soviet soldier Volodya, who, even seriously wounded, does not want to see in all Germans without exception means?
“A Hero of Our Time” is a person whose personal drama coincides with the main drama of the era. For example, Pechorin is smart, well-mannered, but indifferent, bringing only destruction. His inner drama coincides with the main drama of the era – the death of the aristia, which is also well-bred and educated, but hinders the development of society. The image of a soldier of the Great Patriotic War, who saw a person in a German, is not new for our literature. You can remember the “Shore” Yuri Bondarev.
But Klikhovsky – yes, he is from our time. The fact is that now there is no ideology, that is, no system of views. It is replaced by conspiracy theories, that is, a method of explanation. Conspiracy studies explain everything in the world by someone else’s malicious intent. I didn’t like the novel – so the writer is corrupt. We live badly – this is how the enemies interfere. Summers are cold – so global warming. Conspiracy explanations deprive us of free will. Humanity. They tell us that we are puppets in someone’s hands. And we are fighting ghosts. For example, we need to fight the coronavirus – and we are fighting America, because the CIA allegedly sent this infection to us. We need to get vaccinated – and we are fighting Bill Gates, who supposedly wants to chip us. And people die. My hero Klikhovsky in Shadows of the Teutons, trying to overcome the curse of Satan, uses a conspiracy explanation of life and destroys good people.
If we go back to The Geographer, then in the film the director Alexander Veledinsky slightly changed the accents. I wrote a novel in 1995. I think everyone remembers perfectly what the “dashing 90s” are. Then people of strength, strength, clear foundations of life. Of course, everyone had their own ideas about these fundamentals. Someone wanted to go back to the Soviet Union. Someone wanted to build a liberal economy. And the bandits just wanted to bend everyone. And my hero Viktor Sluzhkin in the novel is also looking for these foundations, looking for reconciliation and stability.
Veledinsky shot the film in the 2010s, when times changed, and the inner drama, and the hero. Then the main problem was no longer the search for stability, but the problem of freedom. Veledinsky made a film about a man who gives everyone freedom. And this is not his problem, that people around do not know how to use freedom correctly.
– Why can’t they? Didn’t you teach? Do they know how in the West?
– Alas, historically Russia is not a free country. The Russian person does not know how to use freedom well – not because he is a fool, but because he has little experience. Even Dostoevsky wrote in “The Brothers Karamazov” that the main Russian question is “to whom should I give my freedom?” Only by this is Russia’s lagging behind. How else to explain the success of the West? We have more natural resources, people have fantastic talents, and we did not need colonies – there are enough of our slaves. There is no need to look for an enemy conspiracy in our failures.
– One of the central lines in “Shadows of the Teutons” is the Poles, who never saw in the Russians and in the Red Army those who saved them from the terrible. And under the Germans, in their opinion, Poland would have flourished? Like the Baltics? Would everyone drink Bavarian? And how should those, whose loved ones laid down their lives, the liberation of those lands from the Nazis, react to such moods?
– The Poles know very well that Nazi Germany doomed them to destruction – both as a state and as a people. And they know very well that the Red Army, at the cost of terrible blood, saved them from death. The bitterness of the Poles is due to completely different things. They do not forgive us the occupation of 1939 and the deprivation of independence in the post-war period. But then the Soviet Union could not act otherwise. However, this is already in the past. And the past must be released. Not to forget, namely to let go. Yes, the Poles are angry with us for our former power over them. Yes, we are embittered by the ingratitude of the Poles for our sacrifices. However, let’s leave Poland to Poland. Is it a shame? Of course. But we will survive. This is the “burden of the winner”: to save from the enemy and not demand a reward. The soldiers of the Great Patriotic War did not demand awards from the Poles, because they became winners for all time. In a word, there is no need to go to the Poles with teachings. You can’t be cute. Let them live as they want – this is their right. We have enough worries at home.