intimate life Count Leo Tolstoy became the subject of theatrical research. Fortunately, not as a “mirror of the Russian revolution” (now it doesn’t matter which one), but a real family drama. It is indicative that foreigners - Lithuanians Mindaugas Karbauskis (director) and Marius Ivashkyavichyus (author of the play) spoke about the genius of Russian literature and social thought. Their "Russian novel", staged at the Theater. Mayakovsky, has every reason to claim best performance big season.
The action for three and a half hours is divided into small chapters - their titles run in a line along the harlequin of the scene at the very top: “XIX century. Pokrovskoe. Levin. Heat”, or “Moscow. Together. Shame", or "XIX century. Anna Karenina. Nonsense" - a total of 12 chapters from the life of Leo Tolstoy, his creations and a large family. Everywhere a specific time and place of action are indicated, and only in the prologue is the only convention - "everywhere and nowhere." Everywhere and nowhere - seven people in black coats and black bowlers with red noses, like clowns, and on suitcases. Where are they going? Maybe they're running? Only one among them without a foam nose - no longer young, with dried eyes - from tears or old age? However, this “everywhere/nowhere” image in sad tones falls rather sharply into realism - the interior of the estate, men, old servant, gentlemen. As permanent elements scenery - stove in white tiles and haystack in the background. The rest - a sofa and chairs upholstered in the English fashion, a bookcase - are assembled into the interior and disintegrated without the help of stage workers: the characters arrange their living space themselves. The structure of Ivaskevicius' play when real characters they turn into literary ones and are associated with them, gives the effect of an exciting game, intrigue, dizziness from a slight pitching, gradually turning into a storm. Even in the prologue, Sofya Andreevna Tolstaya addresses her husband, who killed himself in the person of Anna Karenina under the wheels of a train. Or Levin (Igor Dyakin) on his estate with the comical Agafya Mikhailovna (a marvelous work by Maya Polyanskaya) - without a doubt, Count Tolstoy himself. Beardless, without his impressive nose and without deep-set sharp eyes. On the contrary, he is naive, reflects on his sexual debauchery of youth, courteous to servants and peasants ... The audience finds him at the wrong time of his life as a “gilded youth”, a seeker of ladies' adventures and an opposition to generally accepted opinion in everything. He is completely absorbed in his unusually complex inner life, just like his Levin on the eve of his marriage to Kitty Shcherbatskaya from Anna Karenina, who in the second act will turn into Sofya Andreevna, the faithful and deeply unhappy friend of the life of a genius. What is it like to be? Pity or envy, and on whose side is the truth, in the name of which he lived, wrote and sought the death of Tolstoy?
Moreover, the count himself, having become a symbol, a light and a banner, will never appear on stage in any form. Especially neither in a beard, nor in a linen shirt. Not a single stamp from painting or literature. No discussion about important issues human existence, curses of the Old Testament prophet, the search for truth. The greedy search for truth in the "Russian novel" - only in human relations between the closest, which turned into a tragedy for them. But the tragedy of Karbauskis looks incredibly easy and in the same breath. The usual collective coughs, those treacherous signs of dramaturgical and directorial sagging or just boredom, are not here. Karbauskis and his team brought together two poles this time - "easy" and "terrible". The possibility of such an alliance only confirms the high class of professionalism of the artistic director of the Mayakovsky Theater and makes him a leader contemporary theater in the 40 year old generation. And quite everyday scenery by Sergei Barkhin imperceptibly acquires an antique sound, which is subtly indicated only by the outline of four columns, merging in their tone with the backdrop. Costumes (Maria Danilova), lighting (Igor Kapustin), music (Giedrius Puskunigis) - everything works for extraordinary lightness this family horror. And now about acting, which ultimately decides much, if not all. There were no discoveries here. The opening of the first act - Vera Panfilova in the role of Kitty and the young Sofya Andreevna in one person. Nervousness, trembling of her heroine are so natural and touching that they convince - a detachment of capital stars has arrived: a strong young actress in the role of the heroine, a serious competitor to the current ones. That's right if you don't see her previous work(the play "On the Grass of the Yard"), where she is sexy, juicy, naughty, so Panfilova's capabilities are much wider than one specific role. Next to her in the second and third roles are also excellent actresses - Yulia Silaeva (Shcherbatskaya-mother), Yulia Solomatina (Alexandra), Miriam Sekhon (Anna Karenina). Although the director has ladies in the foreground, everything men's work noticeable (Alexey Dyakin, Sergey Udovik, Alexey Sergeev, Pavel Parkhomenko). It's not a discovery for anyone that Evgenia Simonova - great actress. But in the role of Sofya Andreevna, mother of 7 children and grandmother of 25 grandchildren, the wife of a Russian genius, she became a discovery as a powerful tragic actress. Her work is exactly for a textbook on acting skills, to which students should be taken without fail. To learn concepts such as intonation, sending voice to the audience, the ability to work with sound design and the ability to hold a pause, from which goosebumps and tears. The entire second act of Simonova's role is like one big monologue addressed to an invisible spouse, who is somewhere out there, with someone, in the siege of the Tolstoyans, driving her to a frenzy. Pity her endlessly. Tatyana Orlova is also amazing in the role of Tolstoy's literary secretary Chertkov and at the same time Aksinya, a simple woman in Tolstoy's life. And this is another discovery of the "Russian Novel", in which the devil himself (what is Count Tolstoy) will break his leg - where is the darkness, where is the light, what is the truth? And if in wine - then in whose? Marina Raikina, Moskovsky Komsomolets
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In 1923, Osip Mandelstam published in the fifth book of Krasnaya Nov a sharply negative review of new novel Andrei Bely "Notes of an Eccentric". In this review, he wrote in particular: “Bely has extraordinary freedom and lightness of thought when he literally tries to tell what his spleen thinks.”
The above fragment contains a slightly altered, but 100% recognizable, textbook quote from Gogol’s Khlestakov’s monologue: “However, there are many of my works: The Marriage of Figaro, Robert the Devil, Norma. I don't even remember the names. And all by chance: I didn’t want to write, but the theater management says: please, brother, write something. I think to myself: perhaps, if you please, brother! And then in one evening, it seems, he wrote everything, he amazed everyone. I have lightness unusual in thoughts”.
As often happened with Osip Mandelstam, he entered into wrestling with Andrei Bely, armed with tricks ... Andrei Bely, back in 1909, in the feuilleton "Stamped Culture" portrayed his then sworn enemy, the poet Georgy Chulkov, in the guise of Khlestakov.
But he also likened the author of the Notes of an Eccentric, who was inclined to stun interlocutors and readers with dizzying verbal pirouettes, to a hero. Gogol comedy not only Mandelstam. In particular, D.P. Svyatopolk-Mirsky in 1922 caustically wrote about Bely: “Not Khlestakov, not Ezekiel. And it is not accidental, it is inseparable. “The extraordinary lightness of thoughts” is organically connected with the ingenious cosmic intuition - some kind of fiery cancan of whirling comets.
However, in the Mandelstam case, apparently, the matter was not limited to verbal pirouettes. After all, it was precisely in 1923 that Bely completed the publication of his grandiose Memoirs of Blok, with their running theme brotherhood two poets. So he could well understand Mandelstam's bad joke also as a caustic allusion to the classic Khlestakov: “With Pushkin on a friendly footing. I used to often say to him: “Well, brother, Pushkin?” “Yes, brother,” he answers, it happened, “because somehow everything ...”
It is unlikely that the offended Andrei Bely knew that in the quoted fragment of the review of Notes of an Eccentric, Mandelstam himself indirectly answered the attack of the ill-wisher. And this attack, in turn, was provoked by Mandelstam's earlier harshness. In "Something About Georgian art"(1922) Mandelstam described the work of the Blue Horns poetic group, headed by Titian Tabidze and Paolo Yashvili, as follows: "The Blue Horns are revered in Georgia by the supreme judges in the field of art, but God himself is the judge<...>The only Russian poet who has an indisputable influence on them is Andrei Bely, this mystical Verbitskaya for foreigners.
In response, Titian Tabidze burst into an angry philippic, playing on the theme of the “indisputable influence” of Russian poetry on Georgian: “Osip Mandelstam was the first among Russian poets to settle in Tbilisi. Thanks to the philanthropy of the Georgians, this hungry tramp, Ahasuerus, took advantage of the opportunity and begged. But when he was already tired of everyone, he involuntarily went his own way. This Khlestakov of Russian poetry in Tbilisi, he demanded such an attitude towards himself, as if all Russian poetry were represented in his face.
And now Mandelstam was returning the blow to Titian. “Khlestakov is not me at all, but your poetic idol with Yashvili,” he hinted.
Five more years will pass, and fate, in the person of literary critic and translator A.G. Gornfeld will pay Mandelstam in full for his old joke about Bely-Khlestakov. Accusing Osip Emilievich of stupid fuss and boastful exaggerations, Gornfeld mockingly quotes the famous Khlestakov’s “thirty-five thousand one couriers”, but he will mean the famous Khlestakov’s: “... but there is another “Yuri Miloslavsky”, so that one is mine.”
Why exactly - “... so that one is mine”? Because in mid-September 1928, the Land and Factory publishing house published Charles de Coster's book The Legend of Til Ulenspiegel, where Mandelstam was erroneously listed on the title page as a translator, although in reality he only processed, edited and brought together two made previously translated by Arkady Gornfeld and Vasily Karyakin. A difficult situation arose for Mandelstam moral situation: Gornfeld published in Krasnaya Gazeta a feuilleton under the biting title "Translation Cooking", accusing Osip Emilievich of appropriating the results of someone else's work. Mandelstam answered his offender open letter in “Evening Moscow”, in which he asked: “Does Gornfeld really not value the peace and moral strength of the writer, who came to him for 2000 miles for explanations?” In response to this, Gornfeld allowed himself an insulting parallel to Mandelstam - Khlestakov: “... Neither “lifted mountains”, nor twenty years, nor thirty volumes, nor 2000 miles, nor others will help 35 thousand couriers”.
Interestingly, the dismissive characterization previously given to Mandelstam by Gornfeld in a private letter to a friend (“petty swindler”), literally coincides with the caricature of the author of “Stone” and “Tristia”, which Andrei sketched in 1933, in a letter to Fyodor Gladkov, Andrei Bely: “... There is, excuse me, something “roguish” in him, which makes his mind, erudition, “culture” look especially unpleasant.”
What, besides purely personal reasons and everyday anti-Semitism common to many Symbolists, could turn Bely away from Mandelstam?
A possible answer: a distinct Mandelstam similarity with his, Andrei Bely, artistic appearance, which was probably perceived by the author of Petersburg as caricatured, “roguish”, “Khlestakov’s”. Like how Stavrogin judges Petrush Verkhovensky: "I'm laughing at my monkey." Or as Sergei Makovsky told Nikolai Gumilyov about Sergei Gorodetsky: “...It seems that a man (Gumilyov) enters, followed by a monkey (Gorodetsky), who senselessly mimics the gestures of a person.”
A similar attitude towards the acmeists was shared by almost all the writers of the circle of Bely and Blok. “In acmeism, there seems to be a “new worldview,” Gorodetsky mumbles into the phone,” Blok wrote irritably in his diary on April 20, 1913. - I say - why do you want to "be called", you are no different from us<...>most importantly, write your own.
Once upon a time, Vladimir Solovyov, having found himself in a similar situation, in retaliation for Bryusov and other novice modernist poets, wrote three "Parodies on Russian Symbolists" (1895). We would like to quote the second of these parodies here in full.
Above the green hill
Above the green hill
The two of us in love
The two of us in love
A star shines at noon
She shines at noon
Though no one ever
That star will not notice.
But wavy fog
But the fog is wavy
He is from radiant countries,
From the radiant land
He slides between the clouds
Above the dry wave
Motionless flying
And with a double moon.
In the 1910s, Mandelstam wrote a short comic variation on the theme of this parody:
Closely embracing, the couple marveled at the huge star.
In the morning they comprehended: it was the moon that shone.
And in 1920, in the program poem "I forgot the word that I wanted to say ..." Mandelstam used an image similar to the image of the "dry wave" from Soloviev's parody, without a hint of irony.
No birds are heard. Immortelle does not bloom.
The manes of the herd of the night are transparent.
In a dry river an empty shuttle floats.
Among the grasshoppers, the word is forgetful.
What seemed to the symbolists and forerunners of symbolism to be an absurd caricature of their own cherished poetics, was adopted and developed quite seriously by the younger generation of modernists.
As for the influence of Andrei Bely on Mandelstam, it is easiest to identify it in prose. A thick reflection of Bely's novels falls on Mandelstam's novella The Egyptian Mark. In 1923, in the already cited review of Notes of an Eccentric Mandelstam disapprovingly stated:<...>But the plot in this book is just sloppy, and it would not be worth talking about it. ” To the "Egyptian Mark" (1927), this reproach can be addressed with much more justification than to "Notes of an Eccentric" or to any other work of Bely. “I am not afraid of incoherence and breaks,” Mandelstam declares defiantly in his story.
The orientation of Mandelstam the prose writer to the work of the creator Khlestakov cannot but attract attention - following and partly in imitation of Andrei Bely.
At the macro level, this manifested itself primarily in the fact that the very plot of the "Egyptian stamp" goes back to Gogol's "The Overcoat".
At the micro level, in addition to direct quotations from Gogol, this was manifested primarily in the abundance of conscious departures from the main storyline, which was extremely characteristic of both Gogol and Andrei Bely. Other Mandelstam's techniques (for example, a detailed and overtly comical description of the "partition covered with pictures" in the house of the tailor Mervis) seem almost student-like, adopted from late Gogol: “There was Pushkin with a crooked face, in a fur coat, whom some gentlemen, similar to torchbearers, were carrying out of a narrow carriage, like a guard booth, and, not paying attention to the surprised coachman in the Metropolitan's hat, were going to throw him into the entrance. Nearby, an old-fashioned nineteenth-century pilot - Santos Dumont in a double-breasted jacket with charms - thrown out of a balloon basket by a play of the elements, hung on a rope, looking around at a soaring condor. Next were the Dutch on stilts, marching through their little country like a crane.”
Compare with a similar description, for example, in Gogol's "Portrait": "Winter with white trees, a completely red evening, similar to the glow of a fire, a Flemish peasant with a pipe and a broken arm, more like an Indian rooster in cuffs<...>Several engraved images could be added to this: a portrait of Khozrev-Mirza in a ram's hat, portraits of some generals in triangular hats, with crooked noses.
Speaking of noses. In another Mandelstam prose work, The Noise of Time (1923), it is reported that about the minister “Witte, everyone said that he had a golden nose, and the children blindly believed this and only looked at the nose. However, the nose was ordinary and fleshy in appearance. This passage begs to be compared with the judgment of Gogol’s Poprishchin regarding the nose of the chamber junker Teplov: “After all, his nose is not made of gold, but just like mine, like everyone else; Because he loves them."
When in 1934 Osip Mandelstam wrote a cycle of poems dedicated to the memory of Andrei Bely, his wife Nadezhda Yakovlevna turned to him with a question that seemed strange at first glance: “Why are you burying yourself?”
These notes of ours are an attempt to comment on the question of Mandelstam's wife and a partial answer to her question.
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From the comedy The Inspector General (1836) by N.V. Gogol (1809-1852), where (act. 3, yavl. 6) Khlestakov, boasting of his literary abilities, says: “There are, however, many of my works: “The Marriage of Figaro ”, “Robert the Devil”, “Norma”. I don't even remember the names. And all by chance: I didn’t want to write, but the theater management says: “Please, brother, write something.” I think to myself, perhaps, if you please, brother! And then in one evening, it seems, he wrote everything, he amazed everyone. I have an extraordinary lightness in my thoughts.
Jokingly ironic:
Meanings in other dictionaries
Lightness in thoughts is extraordinary
Book. Iron. About a frivolous and talkative person, prone to complete irresponsibility in his decision difficult questions. /i> An expression from N.V. Gogol's comedy "The Government Inspector" (1836). BMS. 334; BTS, 490. ...
Is it easy to be young?
Name of the popular documentary film(1986) by the Soviet Latvian director Juris Borisovich Podnieks (1950-1992). The film was not only widely known in the USSR, but also purchased by television companies in more than 50 countries. The phrase is a symbol of the period of growing up of a person and the problems associated with this time. ...
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.
From the Bible. (Gospel of Matthew, chapter 19, article 24; Gospel of Luke, chapter 18, article 25). There are two versions of the origin of this expression. Some interpreters of the Bible believe that the reason for the appearance of such a phrase was a mistake in the translation of the original biblical text: instead of "camel" one should read "thick rope" or "ship's rope", which indeed cannot be passed through the eye of a needle...
storm100 in EASE IN THOUGHTS UNUSUALHow and why a xenophobic poll appeared on the Ekho Moskvy website and why it is still hanging there
On the website of the radio station "Echo of Moscow" there is a section "polls". The results of voting are posted there, which are held both on the Echo website itself and by phone. At the moment when I write this column, the results of three polls are visible on the site: “Does Russia need Foreign tourists?”, “Do you manage to save money with energy-saving lamps?”. And between them there are the results of the answers of the Echo of Moscow audience to the question: “To meet a representative of what nationality in dark time Are you afraid of the day?" For the first two questions, three response options are offered: “yes”, “no” and “difficult to answer”. There are also hints for the third one: “Ukrainian”, “Chechen” and “I find it difficult to answer”. The latter, apparently, in that case. If the listener of "Echo" has not yet decided for himself who is scarier: a Ukrainian or a Chechen.
Such are the everyday issues that are relevant for Russians are offered to them by the most popular and pluralistic Russian radio station. As a result of the voting, the audience of Echo can look in the mirror and find out that the majority in this audience, 54% believe that Russia does not need foreign tourists, and also that only 39% manage to save on light bulbs. And in between times to find out that 57% of those who took part in the survey - there were more than 9 thousand of them at the time of this writing - are afraid of Ukrainians, 31% are afraid of Chechens, and 12% have not yet decided which of the representatives of these two peoples they are more afraid of .
It is clear that polls in the media have about the same relation to real public opinion as canned food to the conservatory. It is clear that the study public opinion in a country crawling from an authoritarian regime to a totalitarian one, the task is very non-banal, and in today's Russia it is poorly implemented. It is clear that this poll about “terrible Ukrainians” and “terrible Chechens” was designed in such a way that among its participants there were only a minority of those who took this filth seriously and really made a choice in a situation where it is clear to a more or less sane person that and there is no such question. With the same success, you can invite the audience of "Echo" to answer the question: "Who would you like to abuse this evening: mother or father?" And what, it’s cool, isn’t it, “Echo”?
From comments to in social networks it became clear that the “leadership” of the Ukrainians in this “poll” was provided by the citizens of Ukraine, who, having learned about another foul language on the “Echo”, decided to have fun and vote for themselves, “terrible”. Troll the organizers of a stupid poll, bringing it to complete absurdity. However, a certain number of fans of "Echo" took part in this event seriously ...
The idea to conduct a stupid survey arose in the course of the “Personally Yours” program with Vasily Oblomov, who, in fact, made this proposal. That's where "it" grew from. The conversation turned to Chechnya and Kadyrov.
V. Oblomov: “You can conduct a survey among the listeners of Ekho Moskvy: “Do you think that Russia ... who even won this Chechen war, in the first, and in the second - who actually won? Moreover, if you conduct a survey among the viewers of the First Channel, who is more feared during an ordinary meeting on the street - an American, a Ukrainian with Western Ukraine, such a Western Bandera, Russian native, Chinese or Chechen - and ask him a question: who poses a big threat to you personally - it seems that all three of us sitting here can guess what answer will take the leading position. Conduct a survey, file a question right now!
A. Naryshkin: “We have two answers…”
V. Oblomov: "Let there be Ukrainians or Chechens."
I cannot fail to note the amazing ease with which Vasily Oblomov pronounces the ethnopholism “khokhol”. Let me remind you that we are not talking about some cave xenophobe. In the Echo studio sits a young, talented poet of quite distinctly democratic convictions, the author of wonderful texts for the no less remarkable project Good Lord, who spoke at the 2011 rally. He has many bright and precise words about the Putin regime. Here, for example: "the symbol of Russia may not be St. George Ribbon, but insulating. Well said, isn't it? And here is such a wonderful young man sitting in live, when many thousands of people listen to him and see him, and he utters a word for which, in a good way, it's time to beat him in the face. As in a normal company, they have long been beaten in the face for ethnopholism, denoting a Jew. By the way, I don't think derogatory nickname Jews could fly out of the mouth of anyone on the Echo. Since there is a consensus on the Holocaust in the liberal community and 6 million victims are already automatically turned into a scoundrel by anyone who utters the word with which Jews were sent to the gas chambers. Apparently, for the Russian liberal party, 10,000 citizens of Ukraine are not enough for the same taboo to be for the humiliation of Ukrainians. By the way, if the leaders of Roskomnadzor had brains, instead of four completely harmless swear words, with which the Russian language has long been dealt with, and Russian culture has long given them their place of honor in a dark but well-ventilated cultural basement, would ban all the words of "hate speech", to which ethnopholisms relate in the first place.
Let's get back to the poll. If we ignore the trolling by the citizens of Ukraine, who decided to laugh at the "Ehov" fools, then in the remainder we get what is called a "formative survey." This is often done by dirty political strategists before elections. They ask, for example, the question: “Will you vote for Ivanov, who wants to make pensions of 5,000 euros, or for Petrov, who wants to cancel them altogether?” Then the poll data is published and the conformist citizens add their vote to the formed majority.
The results of the xenophobic poll are posted on the Echo website and, at the time of writing, they were viewed by tens of thousands of people. What is the result. The initiator of the xenophobic survey, the poet Vasily Oblomov, undoubtedly acted stupidly and disgustingly. He is not a media manager. Not Chief Editor. He is a poet who easily and quickly writes sharp and biting verses. This is a special device of the head. "Lightness in thoughts is unusual." Such, for example, is Dmitry Bykov. Sometimes, it seems that the words do not pass through their heads. They just don't have time to be processed by the brain. The main thing is that they can write good poetry on the topic of the day, and God grant them both health and inspiration, and Bykov and Oblomov. But, pardon me, this does not mean that it is necessary to immediately translate into metal everything that flies off their tongue. Here Bykov, for example, admires the Soviet project, so what do you order: to revive the USSR?
There are no questions to Oblomov's interlocutors, to two Alekseys, Solomin and Naryshkin, who “washed down” a completely Nazi question on Echo. These are two chicks from Venediktov's nest, from among those that AAB breeds with the help of special selection. Here, appeals to reason and conscience are meaningless, since there are no addressees. It's the same story with Vitaly Ruvinsky, editor-in-chief of the Eh's website. This is the one who filmed Viktor Shenderovich's interview about Putin and his criminal-sports environment from the Echo website. Ruvinsky then lied a lot on the network, endlessly repeating: "I removed him (Shenderovich's interview) from the site, there are personal insults throughout the broadcast." The text of this interview is still hanging on the website of Radio Liberty, it is called: "Shenderovich stopped joking." There you can see how Ruvinsky is lying and why this interview was actually removed.
One could, of course, ask Alexei Venediktov if he likes what he has on his site (just don't play the fool that the site is a separate media!) For the second day now, Nazi muck has been hanging. But for some reason I don't want to ask. Let it hang and be an identification mark for everyone who has not yet understood what Echo of Moscow is and who Alexei Venediktov is.
M. Weller. Our Prince and Khan: Historical detective story. – M.: AST, 2015. – 288 p. - 20,000 copies.
Two preliminary remarks as a warning. Officially, Weller is called a Russian writer, but this is not entirely true. He is a Russian-speaking foreigner, a citizen of Estonia. It happens that a Russian writer lives and works abroad, remaining Russian, but this is not the case. Weller, to put it mildly, cannot stand Russia, or, to put it simply, he hates it, this feeling splashes from every page of his book. And further. Mikhail Iosifovich is presented as a "non-commercial" writer, marveling at the huge circulation of his books. It doesn't go through any gates. He is the most commercial, and in no case should one be surprised at his publishing success.
In the annotation, the book is called "a novel from the time of the Battle of Kulikovo." It says: “Russian history was falsified by the PR people of the Middle Ages. The battle with Mamai and the punitive raid of Tokhtamysh did not look at all like we were told for centuries. And we ourselves are not who we thought we were…”
According to Weller, all historians lied, lied to please the authorities, and now he appeared in order to reveal the truth to us. Moreover, he does not have a single reference, not a single name of any historian. Not a single quote. Lies - and that's it. Along the way - arrogant statements that the people do not need the truth, and only a select few are interested in it, as follows from the context, including Mikhail Iosifovich. According to Weller, Dmitry Donskoy was a complete scoundrel and mediocre commander, on the Kulikovo field he carried out an order Mongol Khan Tokhtamysh to punish the commander Mamai who rebelled against him, and nothing more. There was no struggle for the deliverance of Rus' from the Horde yoke, there was no emergence of all-Russian national unity, and there was no battle itself. And St. Sergius of Radonezh did not bless Dmitry for the battle - he hated the prince. And after the battle, almost all Russian principalities allegedly set out to surrender to Lithuania, but only Khan Tokhtamysh did not allow this. And a similar interpretation of literally all the events of that tragic era.
No, I would not say that Weller understands historical facts like a pig in oranges. The pig just eats, she does not call oranges apples or grapefruits, much less hate them. And Weller, speaking about any fact, declares it either non-existent, or having the opposite meaning, or misinterpreted. For example: “The results of the Battle of Kulikovo were quite sad and meaningless for Moscow Rus'. Human losses have weakened the power of the state ... territorial have reduced the economic potential. The invasion of Tokhtamysh, who burned and slaughtered Moscow and its environs (1382), aggravated Muscovy's dependence on the Horde. When the Horde collapses in a hundred years, it will in no way depend on Moscow resistance.
True, in some areas he seems to be really poorly informed - this especially applies to church issues. For example, he shed a tear over the fact that “Sergius of Radonezh, revered by all, was left without a metropolitanate,” that Dmitry Donskoy opposed Sergius receiving the highest church rank. This means that the “Russian writer” knows nothing at all about our great righteous man, about his life and his principles. Weller also mentioned the candidate for metropolitan Mityai - in order to kick him and call him a "helpful confessor." Meanwhile, this Mityai (Mikhail) was a very educated, outstanding statesman. But Weller is not interested in such figures. He is looking for in Rus' only slaves and serfs, serfs and slaves.
And, of course, bandits. “The unification of Rus' by methods was a gang war. Each bandit accumulated strength, recruited supporters and enlisted the support of a senior authority. Each bandit wanted to bend over and oblige the other. Become a foreman, and then a steerer,” Weller writes about the history of the country he hates. He insistently repeats that Rus' and the Horde were the same - both politically and ethnically (the Horde, however, in his opinion, is better). And this is not just a trick of the ignorant. This is a deliberate separation of our country from Europe, from Christian civilization in general. Equalizing Rus' and the Horde, Mikhail Iosifovich brackets out the irrefutable fact that the Russians acted on their own land, and the Mongols came from very distant lands, from the banks of Kerulen and Onon, that they were invaders. The "historical detective" stubbornly talks about the fact that Russia is, in essence, the same Mongol empire. And even the cover of the book is foul and hooligan: the mask of Genghis Khan is superimposed on the portrait of Brezhnev (or some other Soviet leader).
Weller in many places scoffs, ridiculing the fact that supposedly Russian historians embellish the actions (including military achievements) of their own and denigrating the "Tatars". I put the word in quotation marks, because the Mongols and Tatars are far from the same thing. Ancestors current Tatars, the inhabitants of the Volga Bulgaria (which had the first blow of the Mongols), lived and worked on their land, like all the surrounding peoples. And the Battle of Kulikovo, formally the subject of Weller's opus, was not a battle between Russians and Tatars. As the well-known and authoritative (not like Weller) writer-historian Yuri Loshchits writes: “The battle of September 8, 1380 was not a battle of peoples. It was a battle of the sons of the Russian people with that cosmopolitan forced or hired rabble who had no right to speak on behalf of any of the peoples - the neighbors of Rus'. Weller, among his other, to put it mildly, lightweight statements, expresses doubt that the Genoese fought in the army of Mamai - who, they say, saw them? And Russian historians entered them for no reason. The detective is silent that the Genoese and Venetians had good reasons for participating in the battle. They grabbed wild profits from the slave trade. Usually they bought Russian (as well as Polish, Moldavian and Circassian) slaves from the Horde and resold them many times more expensive in Italy. Naturally, the cost of captives captured by themselves turned out to be much less. But Mikhail Iosifovich is silent about this.
And here it must be emphasized that the author repeatedly points to the similarity of both the USSR and the current Russian Federation to that medieval Rus'. His analogies are simple: they lie about the Battle of Kulikovo - they also lie about the Great Patriotic war. "In all Soviet literature about the war,” he writes, “there were more Germans in 1941, and they had machine guns. And there are a lot of tanks - but it turned out later that there were more of ours, and much more equipment was ours, and we were beaten by a smaller number. Weller is lying shamelessly. A long time ago, everything has been calculated and measured, and above all, the fact that Hitler had one and a half times more people and the industrial potential was more than ours - steel, for example, they produced three times more than the USSR. But why should Weller remind the reader of this? His NATO bosses may not like it. And the Russophobe is trying - he pours the slop of his slander on the reader: from accusations of anti-Semitism to the Maidan interpretation of current events in Ukraine.
At the beginning of the review, the words from the annotation were already cited: “And we ourselves are not who we thought we were.” Without hesitation, the "historical writer" cuts: "Our state is from the Horde, and the people are more and more from Lithuania." In his opinion, the Varangians-Normans first colonized us, giving us the beginnings of statehood, then the Mongols polished the structure. That's all. Just as ingenuously explained national character Russians are slaves, groveling before their superiors.
The listed shortcomings of the book "Our Prince and Khan", of course, do not seem to everyone to be shortcomings. The public like the Shenderovichs and Akhedzhakovs, Latynins and Makarevichs, fans of Silver Rain will surely enjoy Weller's cooking. And why - he shits on Russia and Russians, does not bother the brains of readers with various references to sources and scientific reasoning. Yes, he sprinkles his speech with thieves and semi-thieves words. Weller's pen, it must be admitted, is lively; as Gogol used to say, "an extraordinary lightness in thoughts." The allies of the aforementioned gentlemen rule the modern Russian publishing business - why be surprised at the circulation of 20 thousand copies, which is inaccessible to good Russian writers. And the fact that the author is a foreigner is even more pleasant for these gentlemen, this makes him as a “source historical information even more authoritative.
