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Thanks radio - recalled the morning - today congratulated dyadu the anniversary of the lifting of the blockade. Caught myself thinking that fewer still people I know to whom this holiday is.

communicated through ICQ with a friend, he is a newcomer, said something about the blockade in trendy spirit - dead bodies and de cannibalism. I did not contradict, I know that this is not my interlocutor said, it is in electronic communication bulknul demon ran away from home or two.

(I think such judgments - Intuitive Psychotherapy turvy: maemsya in modern comfort, often cold and often hungry, go to the warm clothes, sleep in warm beds, eat high-calorie food, we go to beautiful cars, and joy-no, can not be happy here and assure ourselves that there is, otherwise, in another time there were only carrion eaters so it.)

... I remember even when I worked with the printed word, find words DSLikhachev of the blockade: "The famine people showed themselves exposed, freed from every kind of tinsel: some have been remarkable, unprecedented heroes, while others - the villains, scoundrels, murderers, cannibals. Mid was not. All were present. Heaven opened, and in the sky was visible God. Its clearly saw good. Performed miracles. "

And today I found an excellent article about the Likhachev .

News Petersburg

Dmitry Likhachev: "The last paradise guest"

21:32:17, November 27 2006

Academician Dmitry Likhachev, it seems, becomes the property of "the glossy culture." In the year of the century, he came back to us not just in St. Petersburg tightened and neat as he is remembered by many, but somehow unnatural right and buttoned. It's like no longer Likhachev, and some wax person rented from the museum. On behalf of this individual in all Russian schools offer lessons of patriotism, it is referenced from the high tribune. Meanwhile мы помним, что почет и уважение не всегда сопутствовали Дмитрию Лихачеву. И не только власть виновата в этом.

В среде ленинградской интеллигенции он даже некоторое time, they say, was the "nerukopozhatnym" - because it came from where few returned. Then Likhachev disliked because of camp dust he went to the Academy. But now you can love with all my heart: Now he's dead, and so convenient.

seems to know Dmitry Sergeevich Thus, it would be a first down from the pedestal. Because he taught quite differently. In particular, how to survive in this country, and not just survive, but with honor to live to 93 years.

Philosophy survival

Human life is fragile and, in fact, an accident - the twentieth century taught us that, more than any other age. Life can take anyone: State, revolution, war, terror, or just unlucky passer-by street. Life can be put on any altar, you can spend on drink, play cards, to lose for the company or even "return ticket" to the Creator, put his head in the noose or standing under the gun.

«You're alive! Prey fish and vultures did not! "- Once greeted each other Greeks returning from travels and military campaigns. In the twentieth century, an even greater miracle has come across a man released alive from the wanderings of this century.

Academician Dmitry Likhachev was one of the few Russian intellectuals, who did not catch any vultures or crows - But it was a lot of work in those years. Likhachev could be shot on Solovki, could die of starvation during the siege, killed by random bullets or bombs, to be arrested in the 50's in the midst of the struggle against "cosmopolitanism". In the end, Likhachev just might finish off a stomach ulcer - the illness that dogged him most part of life. But he survived and returned to his old Russian legends, to the silence of libraries and classrooms, to the perfect place for St. Petersburg apartment. What saved it: destiny, God? In his memoirs, Likhachev gives some, albeit a rather unusual response: it helped to survive philosophy.

philosophy that helps to survive, it is appropriate to classify a philosophy of life, with the amendment that, in contrast to European existentialism, it was formed not in the European intellectual salons, and in Russian labor camps and prisons. It was the Russian existentialism - not fashionable philosophy of life, and pressing the philosophy of survival. In the twentieth century Russian intellectuals, do not flee abroad, the most horrible experiences learned the basics of this wisdom: Those who do not learn the lessons, died. Those who survived were already quite different, than their soft, mannered, grassiruyuschie predecessors - university lecturers, poets, decadent, professors, doctors, engineers and officers. They were not better than the victims, but, unlike them, know about the life of some important secrets to manifest one's religion is the life (or rather all about Pasternak said: "... my sister - life) far, however, from careless epicurean.

State dead souls

In Russia, life was never considered independent value: it is readily sacrificed at various trifles - shoot for gambling debts, died for the glory of the Tsar and the Fatherland, or for the Revolution. Human bones paved not only the streets of St. Petersburg, they were originally laid in the foundation of Russian statehood. Therefore, to survive in a mad whirl of Russian history, unusually difficult. But it's not so bad - to survive is a matter of shame, disgrace and nepochetnym. The country is known to willingly honoring their dead with suspicious to the living.

Suspect everyone who survived the hard times - officials pleasant to contemplate them under granite slabs with eternal fire than in a queue for the facilities and pensions. Suspicious of all the lucky (so-called "lucky"), who manage to get away from the water - certainly they are opportunists, careerists and the villains (who else can survive in the infamous Russian reality - only a scoundrel, that is the one to whom this reality soprirodna). Anything that resists raises suspicion and irritation. All that is lurking, pretended to be asleep or dead - a sense of satisfaction and confidence in the future.

We testimony in the development of precisely such an attitude to life is guilty not only a "cynical and murderous state, but also the Russian intelligentsia. In her environment has always fostered a more reverent attitude to death than to life. How romantic is to die early, at the takeoff of his talent and misunderstood, unrecognized! The cult of early death passes through a string and a Golden Age of Russian culture, and through the silver, and even through the social realism and the counterculture Soviet thaw.

Family Likhachev fashion trends decadence is almost not affected, but they were in the air, they were also those from which to build and on the opposition which raises Russian existentialism. People who passionately wanted to die, sitting in cafes or night huddled on the safe house, read each other's bad poetry or whisper like conspirators - they lived in a night filled with the ghosts of the world, which until that time almost does not intersect with the daily world.

Day in the capital with a cheerful strum worn trams, walking gait, particularly in St. Petersburg ladies' era Art Nouveau ", played in the courtyards of organ-grinders, high-school students in an unbuttoned coats hurrying home - the city was comfortable, with well, although in the capital's hectic way of life. A world of memories Likhachev was a multi-colored, unlike the night, a gray-black, which very soon came to replace him.

Years 1917-th - 1950 remembered Likhachev its dark and dull colors. Gone are janitors and policemen, brass handles entrances collected for scrap metal, painted houses monotonous, "people went ragged and around the old, even had a new, but new to wear it was dangerous - as if being taken for the bourgeoisie. " The centuries-old thirst for death, which bore Russian intellectuals, was granted.

Self intellectuals began to change only to the 20-30-th years of the twentieth century. Aesthetics of death, the idea of life as a public the victim is almost completely assimilated Soviet state. Beyond this ideological field has remained a life as such, its quiet, indoor over, what with the high stands and angrily called by philistinism philistinism. That is, oddly enough, and it became a breeding ground Russian existentialism. In Paris and Berlin, Leningrad and Moscow briefly reigned after the wars and revolutions in silence a few people suddenly heard again, as it rains, the children play in the yard, as in restaurants in the evening sounds foxtrot or jazz.

revolt against revolt

desire to live and love in life - it is almost riot in the framework of the "culture of death" that has developed in Russia by the beginning of last century. It became possible only when another riot, which Russian intelligentsia bore more than one century, became a reality when the fears, wrote Boris Pasternak, was truly terrible. It was then replaced by the classical 'Rebellious person "was a completely new type of Russian - a man rebelling against the rebellion, - in the name of the normal and humanly comprehensible. This person and became the character of Russian existentialism.

What is taught the Russian intelligentsia of the twentieth century? Initially, the sublime and the Russian people despise danger thousands died in the revolutions and civil wars. Sobering came only after the first bloody revolutionary five-year period. Yesterday's fighters of the revolution and the Knights of the White case "suddenly settled down, left for emigration or hidden by families and private apartments. However, not all trite scared, some went to the "secret freedom", realizing the harsh outside world as illusory as maya. What then is left for them really? Were indeed beloved person, a child laughing, nature, poetry, science. In the years of the new war and destruction quite real and relatives was God and his heavenly host (Likhachev wrote about this chapter of the blockade: "heaven opened, and in the sky was visible God. Its clearly saw good "). State with its army, security services, punitive apparatus turned sleep long nightmare from which woke up, just by looking into the eyes of the woman.

It was not an animal fear for life, or rather, not alone. Those who clung to life at any cost - the price of conscience and betrayal - were killed. Those who called life "sister" who saw it as a gift from God as a miracle - miracle and survived.

Russian existentialism - a behavioral model of the winter man, hidden in its cocoon, in which all the audacious, hussar, aggressive and active asleep. A long history in the winter people are closed, go to, how goes a nature with the onset of November, to bring a prisoner in her gift of life until next spring.

The people of the twentieth century had every reason to regard Russia as "permafrost" - a country which is never the spring, but occur only short thaw. ("I heart never not lived until May, and a life lived only one hundredth April is" - wrote the "winter" the poet Mayakovsky.) Permafrost dense ice cap extends over the "one-sixth of the land." In essence, Russia - the same is not thawed the mainland, as Antarctica, only the eternal ice of her - inoprirodnogo, transphysical properties, it binds the spiritual forces of the people and dictates the Russian government's authoritarian and ruthless style of his rule.

Autumn sentiment became prevalent in Russian culture from the late XVIII - early XIX century. Derzhavin, sir, Karamzin - autumn people, they like sadness, loneliness, opavshuyu leaves in the alleys, heat tile stoves in the houses. However, the founder of the fashion in the fall, no doubt, be regarded as Pushkin: he was the first in our Memory linked with the golden age of golden autumn, and image generation - with a cozy evening in the noble estate. But by the end of the century Pushkin evening becoming more dark and cold, and now to the twentieth century throughout Russia rushing icy wind and snow storms, flash snow mask. Autumn turns to winter, the evening - at night, gold century - a silver. Snow at first appears in Blok's poems, then Pasternak ("Blizzards were blowing throughout the land"). Snowing in Bulgakov "Heart of a Dog" and "White Guard. " Russia falls asleep under the ice cap, above the falls impenetrable Iron Curtain.

«Day era gave way to night, people did not sleep at night, - Likhachev wrote in his memoirs. - People living in the expectation that in front of their windows is about to occur and zamolknet noise of the motor car and the door, the apartment will be "Iron" investigator, accompanied by pale from terror witnesses ... »

Formula fates Likhachev

Number camera (at the DPZ Shpalernaya), in which Dmitry Likhachev concluded in 1929, immediately after his arrest, was 273: "degree cold of space", as he himself notes in his memoirs. Impressed with the chill - the first and on arrival at Solovki. In the fragmentary records, which he led in the camp, survived these lines: "Cosmic cold - an outpost of humanity. Stars seem closer, and the curtains are opened a little aurora borealis on the mystery of Creation, to instill in people's souls deadly cold, the emptiness and horror of the enormity of the universe. "

From this cosmic draft, was not to hide under the "diagonal baby blankets, which the parents along with other items supplied to Likhachev stage. Vast cold space had to oppose something of equal magnitude. Likhachev picks for this philosophy.

«If time - absolute reality Then Raskolnikov rights - he argues. - Everything will be forgotten, withdraws from life, and there will be only "overjoyed" consigned to oblivion crimes of humanity. " But "time - this is just another form of reality perception. If "time is no longer" at the end of the world, it is not as some absolute beginning - and when it occurs, and all of its existence. ... All the past to the smallest details in a multimillion-dollar existence still exists, and the future the same scope to its apocalyptic end already exists. ... Plate with a record of all the accomplished and the fact that in the future be accomplished, exists in timeless eternity ... Time allows you to listen to the record. "

«... The true existence has neither time nor space. It's all compact - one. It's sort of the point. " Inverse image of true being - the smallest atoms in time: day, minute. "I get the following: every day - a gift from God. I need to live vital day, be happy that I live yet another day. And be thankful for every day. So do not be afraid of anything in the world. "

«... The concept of time ... played ... a big role ... "Soothing" conducive to mental toughness and poise in all of my experiences, especially those related to incarceration DPZ and Solovki "- recognized Dmitry Likhachev. Of course, in order to comfort the idea of relativity of time and to deduce from this formula fearlessness (why do not be afraid of anything in the world), had to be Likhachev. And yet he was not alone.

«So I walked past a heavenly visitor, under the vaults of heaven," - wrote Varlam Shalamov shortly before his death. These people, and Shalamov, and Likhachev, and many others of their generation, deserve the right to be "the last paradise guests." The more so because the ladder by which they went up, it seems, once again drifted snow.

Valery Beresnev

Full version of the text read in the newspaper "Your Privy Councillor on 27 November 2006.

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