Posted 24 мая 2020,, 17:35

Published 24 мая 2020,, 17:35

Modified 24 декабря 2022,, 22:37

Updated 24 декабря 2022,, 22:37

Lyudmila Petrushevskaya: “Everything around here is postponed for a time called “never”

Lyudmila Petrushevskaya: “Everything around here is postponed for a time called “never”

24 мая 2020, 17:35
On May 26, the writer, playwright, artist Lyudmila Petrushevskaya will turn 82 years old. Lyudmila Stefanovna works a lot, she only has 6 performances in Moscow now... NI talked with the Master on the eve of her birthday.

However, new performances due to coronavirus have been postponed; the presentation of L. Petrushevskaya's main theater prize “Golden Mask” - “For Outstanding Contribution to Drama” has also been postponed. But at the Norilsk festival the premiere of the film “Black Coat” based on the story of L. Petrushevskaya has recently taken place. It was there for the first time shown (in the new edition and with great success) banned in the Moscow Art Theater performance "He is in Argentina." In June, EKSMO publishes a new book of plays by L. Petrushevskaya under the title "Wedding Night, or May 37." Lyudmila Stefanovna writes a lot on Facebook - this is a diary, memoirs, and her new poetry. And even recipes. And there Petrushevskaya exhibits and sells his paintings, raising money for the only Rostock private orphanage for the disabled, owned by Alexei Mikhaylyuk. He is one trustee of this small house. the city of Porkhov, lost in the Pskov region.

- Lyudmila Stefanovna, in the story “New Robinsons”, written 43 years ago, you talk about flight city dwellers to the village. And in the story “Hygiene” of the same time - about an epidemic in the city and about the life of a family hiding in their apartment. Everything was predicted back then. Now these stories are again actively re-read. Everybody is surprised to these predictions. Yes, in connection with self-isolation in Moscow, this topic is very relevant. How could you have foreseen this back in 77?

- People of art have long been engaged in this genre, it is called "dystopia." Woeful predictions. I was thinking about the future of my children, Cyril and little Fedi. Now they are both locked up and actively working. Kirill Kharatyan, Deputy Editor-in-Chief, issues the Vedomosti online newspaper, and Fedor Pavlov-Andreevich runs a program on the Internet, "GUL" ("City of Amazing People") - a series of daily interviews on the most important topics - sometimes among ordinary people.

- The company of Mikhail Prokhorov “QUADRA” right now, during a pandemic, deducts money from disabled people and pensioners for heat. In all countries, people are exempted from utility bills, and we, on the contrary, have declared terror against pensioners. The law works for oligarchs ... What will it lead to in Russia? Toward a new revolution?

- In all European countries, the government helps people with money in such a harsh time. There is democracy. We have plutocracy. Everything for the Forbes list.

- Do not you think that during the coronavirus our country resembles the Country of Fools from the fairy tale “Golden Key” by Alexei Tolstoy? And in this country, Fools rob the most disadvantaged, the poor - pensioners, the disabled, orphans? What will happen to us?

- The Soviet citizen who has not changed in anything, as Nekrasov wrote, “Will endure everything. And he will pave a wide, clear chest path for himself. ” But how do these lines end? "It is only a pity that neither me nor you will have to live a wonderful life at this time." Everything with us is always delayed for a time called "never."

- As a rule, an apocalypse in nature (in May it snows in Moscow) is a signal of disaster. What do you think - what should we expect in the near future? What are the disasters in nature talking about?

-They have always been. In Pushkin's "Eugene Onegin" - "Winter waited, waited for nature, snow fell only in January." It's not about nature and not about the weather. Over in Iceland all the time it rains, and parallel to the ground, umbrellas do not help. And Finland is getting wet, and there is no fertile soil there - immediately rocks. But people live a bright, fruitful life, these are very neat countries. Forests are in order, asphalt in cities is clean. There is no our eternal highway dirt.

- You lived a great difficult life in Russia. What verdict would you give your country, taking into account the whole history after the October Revolution?

- I love Russia. I regret people. I do not like any government. A verdict is a verdict. No prosecutor from me. I am a defender. Including those old women who, having lost everything, live in love for the rulers. Former and current.

- How did you perceive the aviation parade on May 9 in Moscow?

- Suddenly - for no reason - millions of rubles buzzed in the sky, literally thrown into the wind. Our uniforms are unbearable it was to boast of “what kind of aircraft I have”, to play war games. As they say, "but we will not stand for the price."

- Actress Elena Safonova wrote an Open Letter to the President of Russia in February, in which she designated all the pain points that have now become huge wounds - indifference to children, the elderly, orphans, the division of the country into rich and poor, masters and slaves, cruelty to animals. Do such appeals, statements of efficiency? Have you tried writing letters to the President of Russia?

- Well done Safonov. Every honest person in Russia should write such a letter. Only to whom? The addressee may turn out to be in the eyes of posterity not at all the person to whom you can entrust your troubles. Take a post-revolutionary story - later it turned out that each of our rulers exercised his power criminally, by violence. During life, for the subjects - an ideal in the rank of the Lord God. After historians wrote that Lenin was half-sick, there was a fierce killer and persecutor, especially priests, Stalin was even more ambitious pre-war and post-war destroyer of its citizens, first, individual peasants, then scientists, squinted, shot all the intelligentsia, destroyed the working peasants, having come up with a name for them - "fists", introduced collective farm penal servitude - and there were no more crops. He was an anti-Semite, during which Jewish youth were not accepted into universities. He died on the eve of the planned mass expulsion of Jews. And recently it turned out that he had molested a girl in the village where he was serving a link, and she gave birth at the age of 13. And how were all those released from German concentration camps put on the echelons on his tip and now taken to Soviet concentration camps? For ten years? To death without a funeral? Can this be forgiven? Yes none of our rulers - who will remember them kindly?

Arrests, corrupt bosses, tightly closed borders, executions, imprisoned for nothing. Gorby alone loosened our chains opened the borders, even wanted to end alcoholism. With massive the birth of sick children. Hundreds of thousands such children are imprisoned for disabled people - in PNI. And this to him not forgiven: vodka is the country's main income, goldfields for guidance. And they removed him. The ability to make a fortune is a common talent of our superiors. How do we know about the capitals of rulers? Won in Switzerland my Moscow acquaintance works as a bank translator; Russians come with any money. Names were not disclosed. These are our regional and district leaders. I was told about the birthday of one minor the city chief. Having drunk, he ordered to lift from basement gold bars - and gave them out departing guests (in the morning the police went to them for these gifts, the authorities sobered up). Now this district boss has become the governor. We have criminal, corrupt the courts. A negligible percentage of acquittals. They put the innocent. We have a criminal police, where they beat for no reason, where they take bribes - After all, all policemen drive expensive cars. And always in Russia the egregious poverty of the population.

Interviewed by Angelica Dean

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