To help you or not to interfere?

The Japanese learned how to make meat from sewage

Japanese scientists have taken care of the problem of food shortages in the face of global overpopulation. They have discovered a way to synthesize meat from sewage with human feces, informs Inhabitat.com.

Mitsuyuki Ikeda, a researcher from the Okayama laboratory, invented a progressive way to feed humanity with the products of its own vital activity. The opening was the result of a commercial order. Public utilities turned to the scientist with a request to look for an industrial application for the flows of fecal masses that have to be raked out of Tokyo sewer pipes.

After studying the working material, Ikeda's research team found a huge content of bacteria that convert excrement into proteins. Having isolated a valuable protein from this mass and adding a chemical catalyst to it, the scientists sent the resulting substance straight to the installation for creating artificial steaks.

The result was not long in coming. According to the analysis, the resulting product contains 63% proteins, 25% carbohydrates, 3% fats and 9% minerals. To improve the color and taste qualities, natural red dye and soy-based flavor enhancer are added to the source material. The first volunteers, having tasted fecal steaks, said that they tasted like beef.

As the newspaper notes, the discovery can solve not only food, but also environmental problem. Not only will the streams of excrement cease to be discharged into water bodies, but also greenhouse emissions will be reduced significantly: today, 18% of total number emissions that create a global Greenhouse effect accounted for by the meat industry. Yes, and animal advocates will certainly be pleased.

The only problem is to convince the backward population to switch from natural meat to artificial, especially since, taking into account production costs, it will cost no less. Judging by the results of a survey published on the site, only every tenth respondent agreed to try the miracle novelty.

Note what to do drinking water from human urine, people have learned for a long time. Apparatuses that convert sweat and urine into H2O are successfully used by astronauts on the International Space Station.

Also, speaking about the discovery of Japanese scientists, one cannot but recall the famous anecdote novel by Vladimir Voinovich "Moscow 2042". There " secondary product"became something like a convertible currency, by handing over which, the inhabitants of the communist state received some benefits. The collected feces were sent through pipelines to the countries of the West ... instead of running out of hydrocarbons.

"I stood in line at the counter and, moving along with everyone, I soon reached the menu posted on the wall, which I read with great curiosity. It consisted of four dishes, listed in that order.

1. Nutritious cabbage soup "Swan" on rice broth.
2. Vegetarian fortified pork "Progress" with a side dish of stewed cabbage.
3. Custard oatmeal kissel "Guards".
4. Natural water "Freshness".

Having tasted the soup, I immediately guessed that their proud name was derived not from a long-necked bird, but from a quinoa, which I had to eat before in the heyday of the collective farm system. In a state of severe hunger, I somehow mastered a couple of spoons, but the vegetarian pork "Progress", made from something like pressed swede, frankly, did not go. That is, at first she went a little, but then she immediately began to rush back, so I barely carried her to the cabebot, and there my capricious organism mercilessly expelled her from itself.
V. Voinovich "Moscow 2042"
And now it's 2011.
And already the difference between the primary product and the secondary is slowly erased.
Voinovich thought that this would happen much later.
Or maybe he didn't think anything.
Just kidding around.
Funny, they say, for the sake of fun!
But it turned out that this is not Hochma, but the real future!

Vitaly Kartsev, a Russian émigré writer living in Munich, in June 1982 had the opportunity to be in Moscow 2042.

Preparing for the trip, Kartsev met his classmate Leshka Bukashev. Bukashev made a career in the USSR through the KGB. It seemed that their meeting was not accidental and that Bukashev knew about unusual trip Kartseva.

In the midst of preparations, another old Moscow friend Leopold (or Leo) Zilberovich called Kartsev and ordered him to immediately go to Canada.

Zilberovich called on behalf of Sim Simych Karnavalov. At one time, it was Leo who discovered Karnavalov as a writer. Sim Simych, a former convict, then worked as a stoker in a kindergarten, led an ascetic life and wrote from morning to night. He conceived a fundamental essay " Large area”in sixty volumes, which the author himself called “lumps”. Soon after Karnavalov was "discovered" in Moscow, he began to publish abroad and instantly gained fame. All Soviet authority- the police, the KGB, the Union of Writers - entered into a fight with him. But they couldn’t arrest him, they couldn’t even send him away: remembering the story with Solzhenitsyn, Karnavalov turned to the whole world with a request not to accept him if the “swallowers” ​​(as he called the communists) pushed him out by force. Then the authorities had no choice but to simply push him out of the plane that was flying over Holland. In the end, Sim Simych settled in Canada on his own estate, called Otradnoye, where everything was arranged in a Russian way: they ate cabbage soup, porridge, women wore sundresses and scarves. The owner himself memorized Dahl's dictionary at night, and in the morning he rehearsed the solemn entry into Moscow on a white horse.

Karnavalov instructed Kartsev to take thirty-six ready-made "blocks" of the "Big Zone" and a letter to "The Future Rulers of Russia" to Moscow.

And Kartsev went to the Moscow of the future. On the pediment of the airport terminal, he first saw five portraits: Christ, Marx, Engels, Lenin ... The fifth one for some reason looked like Leshka Bukashev.

The passengers, who arrived with Kartsev, were quickly loaded into an armored personnel carrier by people with machine guns. The warriors did not touch Kartsev. He was met by another group of military men: three men and two women, who introduced themselves as members of the jubilee Pentagon. It turned out that the Pentagon was instructed to prepare and hold the centennial anniversary of the writer Kartsev, since he is a classic of preliminary literature, whose works are studied in pre-comobs (communist education enterprises). Kartsev understood absolutely nothing. Then the ladies who met Kartsev gave some further explanations. It turned out that as a result of the Great August Communist Revolution, carried out under the leadership of Genialissimo (abbreviated title, since their General Secretary It has military rank Generalissimo and differs from other people by all-round genius), it became possible to build communism in one single city. They became MOSCOREP (former Moscow). And now Soviet Union, being generally socialist, has a communist core.

To carry out the program of building communism, Moscow was surrounded by a six-meter fence with barbed wire on top and was guarded by automatic firing installations.

Going into the cabezot (an office of natural shipments, where he had to fill out a form on "delivery of the secondary product"), Kartsev got acquainted with the newspaper printed in the form of a roll. I read, in particular, the decree of Genialissimo on renaming the Klyazma River into the Karl Marx River, an article on the benefits of frugality, and much more in the same vein.

The next morning, the writer woke up in the Communist Hotel (the former Metropol) and went down the stairs (there was a sign on the elevator saying “Tripping needs are temporarily not met”) went down to the courtyard. It smelled like a toilet in there. A line to the kiosk wound in the courtyard, and people standing in it held cans, pots and chamber pots in their hands. "What do they give?" - asked Kartsev, “They don’t give, but they rent,” the short-legged aunt answered. - How is that? Shit is handed over, what else? A poster hung on the kiosk: "Whoever sells a secondary product is supplied perfectly."

The writer walked around Moscow and was constantly surprised. On Red Square there were no St. Basil's Cathedral, a monument to Minin with Pozharsky and the Mausoleum. The star on the Spasskaya Tower was not ruby, but tin, and, as it turned out, the Mausoleum, along with those who lay in it, had been sold to some oil tycoon. People in military uniforms walked along the sidewalks. The cars were mostly steam and gas generating, and more armored personnel carriers. In a word, a picture of poverty and decline. I had a bite to eat at the prekombinat (communist food enterprise), on the facade of which there was a poster:. "Whoever sells a secondary product, he eats excellently." The menu included cabbage soup "Swan" (quinoa), vegetarian pork, jelly and natural water. Kartsev could not eat pork: being a primary product, it smelled like a secondary one.

On the site of the restaurant "Aragvi" was placed the state experimental brothel. But there the writer was disappointed. It turned out that for customers with general needs, self-service is provided.

Gradually it became clear that the supreme Pentagon had set increased needs for Kartsev, and the places where he accidentally ended up were intended for the communes of common needs. The regime partly favored him because Genialissimo really turned out to be Leshka Bukashev.

Everywhere Kartsev went, he saw the word "SIM" written on the walls. These inscriptions were made by the so-called simites, that is, opponents of the regime, waiting for the return of Karnavalov as king.

Karnavalov did not die (although the time machine threw Kartsev sixty years ahead), he was frozen and stored in Switzerland. The communist rulers began to convince Kartsev that art does not reflect life, but transforms it, more precisely, life reflects art, and therefore he, Kartsev, should delete Karnavalov from his book. At the same time, they gave the author to read this book of his, written by him in the future and therefore not yet read (and even unwritten).

But the writer was persistent - he did not agree to cross out his hero. In the meantime, scientists unfrozen Karnavalov, he solemnly entered Moscow on a white horse (the population and troops, brutalized from poverty, freely crossed over to his side, simultaneously executing swallowers by lynching) and established a monarchy on the territory of the former Soviet Union, including Poland, Bulgaria and Romania in as governorates. Instead of mechanical means of transportation, the new monarch introduced living draft power, replaced sciences with the study of the Law of God, Dahl's dictionary and the "Great Zone". He introduced corporal punishment, ordered men to wear beards, and women - fear of God and modesty.

The writer, Kartsev, flew to Munich in 1982 and sat down there to compose this very book.

Vladimir Nikolaevich Voinovich

"Moscow 2042"

Vitaly Kartsev, a Russian émigré writer living in Munich, in June 1982 had the opportunity to be in Moscow 2042.

Preparing for the trip, Kartsev met his classmate Leshka Bukashev. Bukashev made a career in the USSR through the KGB. It seemed that their meeting was not accidental and that Bukashev knew about Kartsev's unusual trip.

In the midst of preparations, another old Moscow friend Leopold (or Leo) Zilberovich called Kartsev and ordered him to immediately go to Canada.

Zilberovich called on behalf of Sim Simych Karnavalov. At one time, it was Leo who discovered Karnavalov as a writer. Sim Simych, a former convict, then worked as a stoker in a kindergarten, led an ascetic life and wrote from morning to night. He conceived the fundamental work "The Great Zone" in sixty volumes, which the author himself called "clumps". Soon after Karnavalov was "discovered" in Moscow, he began to publish abroad and instantly gained fame. All Soviet authorities - the police, the KGB, the Union of Writers - entered into a fight with him. But they couldn’t arrest him, they couldn’t even send him away: remembering the story with Solzhenitsyn, Karnavalov turned to the whole world with a request not to accept him if the “swallowers” ​​(as he called the communists) pushed him out by force. Then the authorities had no choice but to simply push him out of the plane that was flying over Holland. In the end, Sim Simych settled in Canada on his own estate, called Otradnoye, where everything was arranged in a Russian way: they ate cabbage soup, porridge, women wore sundresses and scarves. The owner himself memorized Dahl's dictionary at night, and in the morning he rehearsed the solemn entry into Moscow on a white horse.

Karnavalov instructed Kartsev to take thirty-six ready-made "blocks" of the "Big Zone" and a letter to "The Future Rulers of Russia" to Moscow.

And Kartsev went to the Moscow of the future. On the pediment of the airport terminal, he first saw five portraits: Christ, Marx, Engels, Lenin ... The fifth one for some reason looked like Leshka Bukashev.

The passengers, who arrived with Kartsev, were quickly loaded into an armored personnel carrier by people with machine guns. The warriors did not touch Kartsev. He was met by another group of military men: three men and two women, who introduced themselves as members of the jubilee Pentagon. It turned out that the Pentagon was instructed to prepare and hold the centennial anniversary of the writer Kartsev, since he is a classic of preliminary literature, whose works are studied in pre-comobs (communist education enterprises). Kartsev understood absolutely nothing. Then the ladies who met Kartsev gave some further explanations. It turned out that as a result of the Great August Communist Revolution, carried out under the leadership of Genialissimo (abbreviated title, since their General Secretary has the military rank of Generalissimo and differs from other people in all-round genius), it became possible to build communism in one single city. They became MOSCOREP (former Moscow). And now the Soviet Union, being on the whole socialist, has a communist core.

To carry out the program of building communism, Moscow was surrounded by a six-meter fence with barbed wire on top and was guarded by automatic firing installations.

Going into the cabezot (an office of natural shipments, where he had to fill out a form on "delivery of the secondary product"), Kartsev got acquainted with the newspaper printed in the form of a roll. I read, in particular, the decree of Genialissimo on renaming the Klyazma River into the Karl Marx River, an article on the benefits of frugality, and much more in the same vein.

The next morning, the writer woke up in the Communist Hotel (the former Metropol) and went down the stairs (there was a sign on the elevator saying “Tripping needs are temporarily not met”) went down to the courtyard. It smelled like a closet in there. A line to the kiosk wound in the courtyard, and people standing in it held cans, pots and chamber pots in their hands. "What do they give?" Kartsev asked, “They don’t give, but they rent,” the short-legged aunt answered. - How is that? Shit is handed over, what else? A poster hung on the kiosk: "Whoever sells a secondary product is supplied perfectly."

The writer walked around Moscow and was constantly surprised. On Red Square there were no St. Basil's Cathedral, a monument to Minin with Pozharsky and the Mausoleum. The star on the Spasskaya Tower was not ruby, but tin, and, as it turned out, the Mausoleum, along with those who lay in it, had been sold to some oil tycoon. People in military uniforms walked along the sidewalks. The cars were mostly steam and gas generators, and more armored personnel carriers. In a word, a picture of poverty and decline. I had a bite to eat at the prekombinat (communist food enterprise), on the facade of which there was a poster:. "Whoever sells a secondary product, he eats excellently." The menu included cabbage soup "Swan" (quinoa), vegetarian pork, jelly and natural water. Kartsev could not eat pork: being a primary product, it smelled like a secondary one.

On the site of the restaurant "Aragvi" there was a state experimental brothel. But there the writer was disappointed. It turned out that for customers with general needs, self-service is provided.

Gradually it became clear that the supreme Pentagon had set increased needs for Kartsev, and the places where he accidentally ended up were intended for the communes of common needs. The regime partly favored him because Genialissimo really turned out to be Leshka Bukashev.

Everywhere Kartsev went, he saw the word "SIM" written on the walls. These inscriptions were made by the so-called simites, that is, opponents of the regime, waiting for the return of Karnavalov as king.

Karnavalov did not die (although the time machine threw Kartsev sixty years ahead), he was frozen and stored in Switzerland. The communist rulers began to convince Kartsev that art does not reflect life, but transforms it, more precisely, life reflects art, and therefore he, Kartsev, should delete Karnavalov from his book. At the same time, they gave the author to read this book of his, written by him in the future and therefore not yet read (and even unwritten).

But the writer was persistent - he did not agree to cross out his hero. In the meantime, scientists unfrozen Karnavalov, he solemnly entered Moscow on a white horse (the population and troops, brutalized from poverty, freely crossed over to his side, simultaneously executing swallowers by lynching) and established a monarchy in the territory of the former Soviet Union, including Poland, Bulgaria and Romania in as governorates. Instead of mechanical means of transportation, the new monarch introduced living draft power, replaced sciences with the study of the Law of God, Dahl's dictionary and the "Great Zone". Introduced corporal punishment, ordered men to wear beards, and women - fear of God and modesty.

The writer, Kartsev, flew to Munich in 1982 and sat down there to compose this very book.

Russian émigré writer who lived in Munich, Vitaly Kartsev in June 1982 gets a chance to find himself in Moscow in 2042.

While preparing for the trip, Kartsev meets his classmate Leshka Bukashev. Bukashev made a career in the USSR through the KGB. It seemed that they met not just, but Bukashev knows about Kartsev's unusual trip. In the midst of preparations, another old acquaintance Leopold Zilberovich called Kartsev and ordered that Vitaly Kartsev urgently leave for Canada. Zilberovich called at the direction of Sim Simych Karnavalov. Sim Simych, a former convict, worked as a stoker in kindergarten, led a harsh lifestyle and wrote his books all the time.

He came up with the great work "The Great Zone" in sixty volumes, and he himself called them "clumps." Karnavalov, immediately after he gained fame in Moscow, began to be published abroad. All Soviet power began to fight him. But they couldn’t arrest him, and they couldn’t send him out either, and then, finding no other way out, they simply pushed him out of the plane that was flying over Holland. As a result, Karnavalov settled in his estate, which he named Otradnoye. Karnavalov entrusted Kartsev with taking thirty-six "blocks" of the "Big Zone" and a letter to "The Future Rulers of Russia." And Kartsev goes to the Moscow of the future.

Kartsev was met by a group of military men who introduced themselves as members of the anniversary Pentagon. The Pentagon was instructed to prepare and hold the centennial anniversary of the writer Kartsev, because he was a classic of preliminary literature, his works are studied in precomobs. It turned out that as a result of the Great August Revolution, which was carried out under the leadership of Genialissimo, it became possible to build communism in a separate city. This city was MOSCOREP - the former Moscow. Now the Soviet Union was socialist, but with a communist core.

To carry out this program of building communism, Moscow was surrounded by a fence with barbed wire and guarded by shooting installations. In the morning the writer woke up in the Communist Hotel and went out into the yard. It smelled terrible in there. In the yard stood people with cans, saucepans, chamber pots. There was a poster on the kiosk: "Whoever sells a secondary product is supplied perfectly."

Kartsev walked around Moscow and never ceased to be amazed. On Red Square there was no St. Basil's Cathedral, a monument to Minin with Pozharsky and the Mausoleum. The star on the Spasskaya Tower became tin, and the Mausoleum, along with those who lay in it, was sold to an oil magnate.

Genialissimo really was Leshka Bukashev.

Kartsev constantly met the word "SIM" written on the walls. These inscriptions were written by Simites - opponents of the regime, who were waiting for the return of Karnavalov as a ruler. Karnavalov did not die, he was frozen and stored in Switzerland. The communist rulers began to drum Kartsev into thinking that he should remove Karnavalov from his book. But Kartsev was steadfast - he would never agree to cross out his hero.

Scientists, meanwhile, unfrozen Karnavalov, and he solemnly rode into Moscow on a white horse and introduced the monarchy into the territory of the former Soviet Union, including Poland, Bulgaria and Romania as provinces. The writer Kartsev flew back to Munich in 1982 and began to compose this very book there.

Current page: 12 (total book has 27 pages) [accessible reading excerpt: 18 pages]

Awakening

When I woke up, I gnawed on this pillow for a long time, until I came to my senses. Recovering a bit, he looked around. All around me was dark and quiet, quiet and dark. It's dark, gouge out your eyes.

I rolled over on my back and began to think: Lord, what is it really like? Why, when I dream of my homeland, something bad, unpleasant always happens to me on it, from which I want to run away and wake up in a sweat?

I was so uneasy that I decided to wake my wife and ask what this dream could mean. My wife is a great interpreter of dreams and generally believes that there are no meaningless dreams, that they always carry some kind of message to us, which we just need to correctly unravel.

I reached out and groped around beside me, but there was no one there. I wanted to wonder what it was, why in the middle of the night she was not with me, where could she go?

But then I remembered something and I didn’t believe myself. “Nonsense,” I said to myself. - All this is pure nonsense, there was nothing like it and could not be. I am lying in Stockdorf on my own bed, there is a window, there is light coming through the curtains. Now I will throw back the curtain and see my yard, three crooked birches near the fence and a rooster that walks around the yard.

I went to the window, pulled back the curtain and saw in front of me the Revolution Square and the monument to Karl Marx. True, it was rather difficult to recognize Marx. During the sixty years of my absence, the pigeons had treated his head so that it seemed completely gray.

Directly across the road from Marx, in a little garden near the Bolshoi Theater, stood another bearded man in full height. military uniform and with gloves in hand, it was, of course, Genialissimo. The building of the Bolshoi Theater somehow surprised me. I did not even immediately understand what exactly, and then I realized: there were no horses on its pediment, as if they had never been there. The sun was already high.

Cars of various sizes rolled along Marx Avenue, shrouded in clouds of smoke and steam, and a crowd of people in cropped military clothes floated along the sidewalks. Few of them went empty-handed. Almost all of them carried in their hands or on their shoulders or dragged some objects along the ground.

I seem to have slept well and rested. Now I could go out, walk around and see what this city is like sixty years after my departure.

I quickly got dressed and ran to the bathroom. A sign was attached to the hot faucet: “Needs for hot water temporarily unsatisfied. I rinsed cold water and looked out into the corridor. The elderly attendant slept with her head resting on the bedside table. The book she had dropped lay on the floor. I picked up the book and looked at the title. The book was called: "Questions of love and sex." The author of this work was Genialissimo himself. I carefully placed the book on the bedside table and, trying to walk as softly as possible, went to the elevator.

The elevator, however, was closed with a large padlock. Next to the lock, a cardboard sign was tied with twine to the elevator net: "Running needs are temporarily not met."

I found a ladder, and with its help satisfied my descending need. Obviously, the staircase was not the main one, because I ended up not on the street, but in the courtyard.

long pants

I was looking forward to a breath of fresh air, but a smell rushed into my nose, from which I almost fell off my feet. I will not describe in detail, but it smelled like in a long-uncleaned, but often used latrine.

In the courtyard, a long line snaked its way to a dark green kiosk, and the military of both sexes, mostly lower ranks, breathed into each other's necks, holding plastic cans, old pots and chamber pots in their hands.

Above the roof of the kiosk was a poster in a rough frame. The poster depicted a worker with a face of confident optimism. In a muscular hand, the worker held a huge pot. The text under the poster read:

WHO DOES THE SECONDARY PRODUCT,

THAT IS SUPPLIED PERFECTLY

- What do they give? I asked a short-legged aunt who had just left the kiosk with a can. She had large plastic rings in her ears.

“They don’t give, they rent,” she said, looking me up and down in too much detail.

- What do they sell? I asked.

- How is it that they rent? She was surprised at my misunderstanding. - Shit rent, what else!

I thought she was joking, but given the smell, which I was gradually getting used to, the worker on the poster and general form turn, inclined to the fact that she was talking seriously.

- What is it for? I asked imprudently.

- How is it - what are they renting for? she screamed in an evil voice. - What are you, uncle, set off, or what? Doesn't know what they're selling for! He also wore long pants. Well, what a debauchery! And they also say about young people that they are, they say, such and such. What kind of people should they be when their elders set such an example for them!

- Exactly! A round-shouldered man in his fifties approached. - I also look, he seems to be somehow dressed not in our way.

Here the liberated people came to the basement, and some from the tail of the line also approached. Everyone expressed dissatisfaction with my curiosity and long pants, and even tended to be beaten on the neck. But my aunt expressed the opinion that although it’s worth it to get pinned on the neck, it’s still better to just take me to BEZO.

- What are you, citizens! I shouted loudly. – What does it have to do with WITHOUT and why WITHOUT? Well, I don’t understand something in your life, so it’s not my fault. I've just arrived and I'm generally kind of a foreigner.

Someone shouted out from the crowd that if a foreigner, all the more so in BEZO, but the call was not supported by others, and the crowd around me began to disperse at the word "foreigner".

Only the aunt with the rings could not calm down and tried to bring the people back, assuring me that I was not a foreigner at all.

- I understand a foreign language! she said to the silent queue. “Foreigners say bitte-dritte, but he speaks exactly our language.

While the queue was pondering her words, I, without waiting for the worst, tore myself sideways and rolled out through the entrance courtyard onto the street that was once called Nikolskaya, and then October 25 Street. I was very proud that I immediately recognized this street. I looked up at the corner of the nearest house to make sure that I was right, and was simply dumbfounded. On a sign nailed to the wall, in white on blue was written: "Street named after the writer Kartsev"! Despite the heartfelt welcome that the communians had touched me the day before, I still could not believe that my merits were valued so highly by my descendants. I even thought that maybe it was just someone's inappropriate joke and a sign with my name hanging on a single house. But, having passed the street to the very Red Square, I saw the same signs on all other buildings. I was very proud and belligerent at the same time. I even had the idea to go back to the place of acceptance of the secondary product, find that vile aunt who understands foreign, drag her here and show her who she attacked with her idiotic suspicions. However, being lazy and unforgiving, I immediately abandoned this idea. Moreover, new impressions awaited me.

If I were to describe in detail my feelings when I saw what came my way on the first day of my stay in Moskorepe, I would have to say too often that I was surprised, amazed, amazed, shocked, stunned, and so on. And in fact, imagine that you go to Red Square and do not find on it either St. Basil's Cathedral, or Lenin's Mausoleum, or even a monument to Minin and Pozharsky. There is only GUM, Historical Museum, Place of execution, statue of Genialissimo and Spasskaya tower. Moreover, the star on the tower is not ruby, but tin or molded from plastic. And the clock shows half past eleven, although in fact it is still only a quarter to eight. Looking closer at the clock, I realized that they were standing.

I stopped some commissar who was carrying a bag of sawdust on a wheelbarrow and asked where everything that was here had gone. He was surprised at my question, looked me up and down and looked at my trousers for a particularly long time. And then he asked what ring I came from. Avoiding a direct answer, I said that I was a Latvian.

“It is visible,” said the commissar. - The accent is immediately felt.

To my satisfaction, he turned out to be (which, as I later noticed, rarely happens among the communes) quite knowledgeable and talkative. Looking around, he explained to me that all these things that I ask about, back in the days of the existence of money, were sold to Americans either by corruptists or by reformists.

- How? I shouted. - Did these enemies of the people even sell the Lenin Mausoleum?

- Quiet! - He put his finger to his lips, but before running away, he said in a whisper that not only the Mausoleum, but also the one who lay in it, was also sold to some oil magnate who buys mummies all over the world and has already collected a collection, in which, in addition to Vladimir Ilyich, includes Mao Zedong, Georgy Dimitrov and four Egyptian pharaohs.

I wanted to ask what kind of magnate and what his last name was, but the man suddenly became frightened of something and, picking up a wheelbarrow, quickly rolled it towards the building where the Moskva Hotel used to be located. Shrugging my shoulders, I went in the same direction, intending to go out to Bolshoi Theater, in front of which, from the window of the hotel, I saw the monument to Genialissimo that interested me.

Despite the fact that the main crowd of workers and employees, apparently, had already subsided, there were still a lot of people on Marx Avenue (by the way, it was still called the same now). As in a dream, many of them seemed to me like some of my former acquaintances. Sometimes even so similar that I almost rushed to them with open arms, but then I immediately came to my senses and remembered that I can find my acquaintances (if I'm lucky) only in cemeteries.

As I noticed from the window, each of them was carrying something. Who is a pot, who is a string bag, who is a purse. One komsor rammed an old television without a screen in front of him, another bent under the weight of a bag of coal, and some lady moved around holding a striped mattress with yellow spots and straw sticking out of holes. Immediately, overtaking passers-by, children ran school age. They had knapsacks over their shoulders, and in their hands were panicles, which they waved in unison, raising such dust that there was nothing to breathe.

Unable to stand it, I grabbed one of the students by the scruff of the neck.

“What are you,” I said, “a scoundrel, are you running around with a broom and raising dust?”

– What should I do? - trying to escape, he yelled tearfully. “I’m in a hurry to get to the precombo, and there are ten minutes left before class.

“Well, go ahead and get busy,” I said. - And there is nothing to drive the dust. That's why there are wipers.

- Who? the boy was surprised. What other wipers?

I realized that, apparently, I was in trouble again.

“Ordinary janitors,” I muttered, but let the boy go and approached Sverdlov Square, which was now called the Square named after the Four Labors of Genialissimo. A plastic statue of the performer of four feats towered in the middle of the square. It was a monument about three and a half meters high, not counting the pedestal. Genialissimo stood in well-polished boots and an overcoat, open by the sculptor, probably in order to reveal to the viewer the numerous orders that decorated the monument's broad chest. As if patting his right bootleg with gloves, Genialissimo looked with a kind smile at the avenue, at the movement of steam engines and at Karl Marx frozen on the other side. I walked around the statue, tried to count the orders on its chest, counted up to a hundred and forty something, and then lost my way, waved my hand and walked along the street, which in my time was called Pushkinskaya, and now - the name of the Preliminary Ideas of Genialissimus.

Already during this first walk, I noticed that along with avenues, streets, lanes and passages that retained their former names, many names appeared that reflected latest achievements komunyan, and a lot of dedicated to one or another aspect of the activities of Genialissimo. Therefore, I was not even very surprised to find that the former Pushkinskaya Square is now called the area named after the Literary Talents of Genialissimus. And the monument on the square stood, of course, not to Pushkin, but to Genialissimo. Pushkin, however, was also there.

The plastic Genialissimus here was, I think, the same caliber as the one before Bolshoi Theater, but in a summer uniform and without gloves. In his left hand he held a plastic book on which one could read the word: "Favorites". The right hand of the author of the book rested on the curly head of the young man Pushkin, who was completely Lilliputian in stature, but the other Lilliputians who made up group portrait, were even smaller. Of the other representatives of preliminary literature, Gogol, Lermontov, Griboedov, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and all sorts of others from later times still stood out. I am pleased to report that I also found myself in this group. I stood behind Genialissimus, holding on to his left bootleg with one hand. Not finding Karnavalov among the midgets, I was once again convinced that in the twenty-first century no one even knows him. One bearded man no larger than field mouse I found in the group of preliminary writers of my time, but it was clearly not Karnavalov, but most likely Professor Sinyavsky.

Walking around the monument, I found myself again in front of the toes of Genialissimo and on the pedestal I read the words I had long known:

And for a long time I will be kind to the people,
That I aroused good feelings with lyre,
That in my cruel age I glorified freedom
And he called for mercy on the fallen.

At this time, a large red steam bus stopped on the square. A whole horde of boys and girls, led by a woman with the epaulettes of a lieutenant, fell out of it. The children immediately began to scream and push, but the woman (I realized that she was their teacher), moving a little to the side, pulled right hand and commanded:

- Stand in two lines!

The children lined up in a disciplined manner, trimmed, stretched out on the command “at attention” and relaxed on the command “at ease”.

“So, children,” the teacher said, “before you is a monument to our beloved leader, teacher, father of all children and friend of all progressive mankind, Genialissimo. The monument was made of high-quality plastic by the team of the Red Banner Detachment of People's Communist Sculptors and approved by the Editorial Commission and the Supreme Pentagon. Ivanov, how many monuments to Genialissimo are there in Moscow?

One hundred and eighty four! Ivanov shouted.

- Right! One hundred and eighty four. And one hundred and eighty-fifth is now being erected on the Lenin Hills named after Genialissimo. All available monuments to our beloved leader reflect one or another aspect of his genius. One monument was erected to him as a brilliant revolutionary, another - as a brilliant theoretician of scientific communism, a third - as a brilliant practitioner, and so on. This monument was erected in honor of his brilliant literary talent. Semenov, how many volumes does the collected works of Genialissimo consist of?

“Out of six hundred and sixteen,” Semyonova readily answered.

- Wrong. Two new volumes came out yesterday. Komkov, stop spinning. So, children, this monument represents sculptural group, central figure which is Genialissimo himself. Secondary figures are his literary predecessors, representatives of preliminary literature. Moreover, interestingly, each figure of the preliminary author is made in strict accordance with the ratio of the scale of talent this author to the scale of Genialissimo's talent.

Hearing this, I once again ran behind Genialissimus and again found my pathetic figure there. In general, I was disappointed. The ratio of my mass to the mass of Genialissimo was for me, to be honest, not very flattering.

Returning back (that is, forward), I began to listen to the teacher further and learned a lot of useful information. I learned that the total mass of all pre-writers add up to the mass of one Genialissimus. In addition, Genialissimus is like a mighty tree that has grown on its outdated shoots. Like a tree moisture, Genialissimus absorbed and processed all the best that was created by preliminary literature, after which the need for the latter completely disappeared.

“Indeed,” the teacher said, “take at least these words that are carved on the pedestal: “And for a long time I will be kind to the people that I awakened good feelings with my lyre ...” Which of the preliminary writers could say so simply, so modestly and brilliant?

“Pushkin could have said,” I blurted out unexpectedly to myself.

One of the children chuckled, but then fell silent. The teacher looked at me with an unkind look from head to toe and turned to the students:

“Children, get in the car!” Now we will go to inspect the monument named after Scientific Discoveries Genialissimus.

One by one the children flew into the bus like bees into a hive.

Before diving in after them, the teacher turned to me, looked me over from head to toe once more.

“And you, long-trousered one,” she said very clearly, “I would advise you to keep your mouth shut.

And, slightly wiggling her buttocks protruding from under a short skirt, she disappeared into the steam bus.

I looked at my trousers and again did not understand why people here do not like them. Pants are like trousers. Very decent ones too. If they want to walk around in short pants, I don't mind, but why are they pestering me?

Pork vegetarian

Then I felt that I was hungry, and began to look around me, where I could have a bite to eat.

On the other side of the street, I saw a place whose door kept slamming as people came and went. In this house, by the way, there was once a pub, and then a dairy cafe, and now it seems to have something like that.

High under the roof of the house, I saw the image of a worker already familiar to me, who held a spoon in one muscular hand and a fork in the other. There was even something stuck on the fork, but what exactly, I did not make out. The worker smiled affably, and the words under him were:

WHO DOES THE SECONDARY PRODUCT,

THAT EATS GREAT

The sign at the entrance was: PRECOMPIT "Gourmet". After thinking for a while, I remembered that the word "Precompit" means Communist Catering Enterprise.

Running across the road, I almost got hit by a huge steam truck with a trailer. Having pressed all the brakes, the driver stopped his fire-breathing car and covered me with such a selective obscenity, by which it was hard not to recognize my bathing acquaintance Kuzya. It seems that he was not going to confine himself to words and was already flying towards me with a crank raised above his head.

- Kuzya! I shouted at him in fright. - You don't know, do you?

“Oh, it’s you, papa. - Kuzya lowered the handle, but he seemed to be disappointed that such a swing was in vain. - Why are you walking along the road, the breadmaker is open. Here, father, just look, either they will crush, or they will break the head. It was there, under capitalism, that it was still simpler. There, I suppose, only donkeys and camels walk along the streets, but here, you see, there is technology.

He asked me how I was doing, if I needed any help, and once again reminded me that if I needed any things, like a steam boiler, cylinders or something like that, I could safely turn to him. After that, he drove away, and this time I safely crossed the avenue and approached the Precompit.

The queue was not long, about sixty people, no more.

An elderly sergeant in a leaky tunic and with a red bandage on his sleeve stood at the entrance and punched through the gray papers handed to him with a composter.

While standing in line, I read a notice posted on the wall, which said that general nutritional needs were met only upon presentation of a certificate of return of the secondary product.

The "Rules of Conduct in Communist Catering Enterprises" were also placed here. They said that thanks to the tireless care of the CPGB and personally Genialissimo about the regular and good nutrition The communians have achieved many significant successes in this matter. Food is getting better, better quality and more dietary. As a result scientific development rational nutrition komunyan achieved great success in the fight against obesity.

Below it was said that in the Precomp it is forbidden:

1. Eat food in outerwear.

2. Play musical instruments.

3. Stand with your feet on tables and chairs.

4. Throw uneaten food on tables, chairs and on the floor.

5. Pick your teeth with a fork.

6. Pouring liquid food on neighbors.

To be fair, the line moved pretty quickly. One by one, people thrust their papers to the sergeant with a bandage, he made a hole, people went inside.

When my turn approached, I rummaged in my pocket, but found nothing in it, except for a fragment of the Süddeutsche Zeitung, a sixty-year-old newspaper lying around. I folded the piece in half and handed it to the sergeant, who pierced it without looking.

Satisfied that my socialist-capitalist tricks were still working, I went inside.

It seemed to me that the primary product smells about the same as the secondary one.

On the wall opposite the entrance hung a large portrait of Genialissimo and his saying: "We do not live in order to eat, but we eat in order to live."

The precommit looked like a socialist self-service cafeteria: high tables with no chairs, and the floor was strewn with sawdust. Along the left wall, behind a light partition made of plastic tubes, stretched a long counter with dishes displayed on it, at the mere sight of which one wanted to immediately go out to the kitchen. Fresh air. But, firstly, I was very hungry, and secondly, I came here to study all the details of life, including the nutrition system.

I stood in line at the counter and, moving along with everyone, I soon reached the menu posted on the wall, which I read with great curiosity. It consisted of four dishes, listed in this order:

1. Nutritious cabbage soup "Swan" on rice broth.

2. Vegetarian fortified pork "Progress" with a side dish of stewed cabbage.

3. Custard oatmeal kissel "Guards".

4. Natural water "Freshness".

I ask the reader's forgiveness for citing in such detail all the rules, lists and menus I have read, but it seems to me that this is necessary for a more or less complete idea of ​​the society in which I found myself.

Two young komsorki in not very clean bathrobes served customers quickly, without delay. I, like others, was given a plastic tray with a set of all the listed dishes. Two plates, two cups and a spoon (all of which are also made of plastic) were chained to the tray with steel chains. Two more chains (maybe for forks and knives) were cut off. Having smelled the food given to me, I, frankly, grimaced a little and thought that in some cases one can satisfy one's hunger with smell alone.

However, I repeat, I was guided not only by hunger, but also by exploratory curiosity.

I found a table where only a lady was slowly eating oatmeal jelly. I asked permission to stand next to me, and when she muttered something indistinctly, I recognized in her the same aunt who understood foreign. Judging by the hostile look thrown at me, she seemed to recognize me too.

Having tasted the soup, I immediately guessed that their proud name was derived not from a long-necked bird, but from a quinoa, which I had to eat before in the heyday of the collective farm system. In a state of severe hunger, I somehow mastered a couple of spoons, but the Progress vegetarian pork, made from something like pressed swede, frankly, did not go. That is, at first she went a little, but then she immediately began to rush back, so I barely carried her to the cabebot, and there my capricious organism mercilessly expelled her from itself.

The main figure, naturally and deservedly, is Solzhenitsyn. But he gradually, and this began back in the USSR, turned from a respected personality into an inviolable one.<…>
These people perceive my novel almost as a physical attack on Solzhenitsyn, they believe that I decided to portray Solzhenitsyn in this form and I do it to settle personal scores or in order to earn someone's approval. But I have no personal accounts with Solzhenitsyn and cannot have any. I am not interested in him personally, but in the phenomenon that he represents: all people who become idols of the crowd are similar to each other.
But even if someone in my novel does not see a generalization, but sees only Solzhenitsyn, if it is just a parody or even a caricature of one person, then what is terrible about that? Nothing terrible would have happened if, again, it was not about a cult figure. And in itself, the absurd indignation of some readers of this novel just proves the existence of a cult. And it proves that my novel is written on a very painful and topical topic.<…>
[In 1987] the novel came out on English language, and its appearance has become a cultural fact American life. The Russian service of Voice of America cannot ignore this fact. In this case, they tried to ignore my novel.<…>And now I have already returned to my place in Germany, I live there, I don’t think about anything, suddenly a call from Washington. Chief Editor Russian service Natalya Clarkson asks if I would be satisfied if they broadcast an abridged version of the novel - fifteen programs of fifteen minutes each. For a big novel, 225 minutes is not that much, but I agreed. Several times I went to Munich to record the novel on a tape recorder, after which I received a fee from the Voice of America. Naturally, I thought that the novel had been transferred to the Soviet Union. Two years later, I arrived in Washington and from a casual conversation with one of the editors of the Voice of America, I learned that no one was going to broadcast the novel, it was only recorded in order to pay off me. And they didn’t hand it over because they are very afraid of the “Vermont regional committee”. There is the expression "Vermont regional committee" in use. From time to time, Sam's wife calls from Vermont and says that she liked such and such a program. And then the editor of the program walks up his nose. Or lowering your nose - if you didn’t like the program.
So. Upon learning that the novel had not been handed over, I called Natalia Clarkson and asked why, they say, you ordered me to read the novel, and then they didn’t hand it over? She has a purely Soviet explanation: “We decided not to transmit your novel, because now there is perestroika in the Soviet Union and we did not want to overshadow relations between the USSR and the USA.”<…>
My novel is equally about carnivalism, and about - how should I put it - Zilberovichism. Those who take offense at me for the image of Karnavalov should be offended just for the image of Zilberovich, because it is written off from them, the "apologists".