Spy mania in action: Russian photographers complain about bans again

Not so long ago, Novye Izvestia has already drawn attention to the fact that the seemingly forgotten Soviet spy mania is returning to Russia. For example, a police officer in Crimea advised a local journalist to “shoot less and not shine with a camera”, so as not to be considered a spy. According to numerous testimonies of Russian photographers, this kind of "advice" is now not at all uncommon, but the most common thing, just as it was during the Soviet era. And it was so, as, for example, in the case, which the famous Moscow photographer Igor Gavrilov told about in his blog:

“I call this photograph“ The Photo with the Most Unlucky Fate”. I took it off in 1976 in Ivano-Frankovsk, where I ended up on the instructions of the Ogonyok magazine to cover some regular festival of Friendship between the USSR and someone else. With an early cool start to the day, I walked along the quiet streets of a western Ukrainian town, enjoying the morning sun and heading to the event headquarters to familiarize myself with the program of the day's celebrations. And on the opposite side of the street, at a bus stop, I saw an interesting scene. I stopped, focused on the focus, at that moment the girl yawned very to the point, I pressed once and continued on my way. I was in no hurry and was only rather and smugly glad that I had not missed the moment. And then this crazy colonel ran into me...

"What are you doing! I forbid you to shoot it! Where did you come from! I'll call the police now! Spy! Where are you going?", - he shouted and fussed around me, but did not use his hands.

So he jumped with me to the headquarters of the festival, there he immediately left me behind, and hurried along the corridor shouting: "Who is in charge here?"... I never saw him again. But my picture was scolded and banned while still in a hidden, undeveloped state.

When I first printed it and showed it very diligently, it was approved by all my colleagues, and even Baltermants himself said that the shot was excellent, but immediately added that it should not be published anywhere. And he turned out to be right - "this is not possible anywhere" lasted 12 years. All these years I persistently tried to push "my beloved" to various international competitions, but in vain - all selection commissions, consisting of the same vigilant members, plus an inquisitive KGB member, inevitably sent her to the screening. If I tried to send it across the border by mail, then "my unfortunate" with the inevitable constancy after a while showed up in my mailbox, in an opened envelope and pretty crumpled. To exhibitions of local importance, my road "with an unhappy fate" was also blocked. But I did not calm down and continued to tease the guardians and keepers of my "truth of life", all, of course, understanding and foreseeing the verdict in advance. And he overdid it!

Times have changed, power has changed, the life-giving rays of the sun of democratic change burned holes in the rotten curtain of communist ideology, the light of change splashed and illuminated the "First Uncensored Photography Contest" held in our beloved House of Journalists in autumn 1987. I presented my "long-suffering" to him and, in the opinion of the unanimously voted jury, I won, in which I was for some reason quite sure, forgive my self-confidence. When I was announced, the audience burst into friendly applause, I got up, bowed and went to the stage to receive a prize - a wooden service of six brightly decorated glasses, a jug and a tray.

And then a strange thing began, which I certainly did not expect from my colleagues - a bunch of Tass photographers suddenly began to shout out that the jury's decision was not correct, not patriotic, that the first prize should not be awarded for ... anti-Soviet photography! That you need to give her to the TASS photographer for a life-affirming portrait of an always happy Cuban worker with a flag. Well, at worst, at least divide the service. By the time I reached the stage, accepting congratulatory handshakes on the way, the Tass man was already standing on it and reaching for the award. I did not object to the jug given to him to calm him down. By the way, later we became very close friends and even drank the world from his, my, jug and my own glasses.

And in mid-January 1988, I received a call from the editorial office of the magazine "Soviet Photo" and was invited to participate in a meeting on the topic - "How to make" Soviet Photo "more interesting and in keeping with the spirit of change in times of the changes that have come?" It so happened that on a certain day for the meeting, an issue of the Smena magazine was published, in which, for the first time, my "most patient" card was published. Having bought as many as ten copies of my long-awaited publication and taking them with me, I rushed off to discuss issues of improving the country's photo-life. There were about thirty photographers in the office, and the editorial board of the magazine, headed by the editor-in-chief Olga Suslova, the daughter-in-law of the gray cardinal of the Kremlin, the ossified ideologue of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, M.A.Suslov, sat at a separate table.

"Here you are, Igor Gavrilov, what would you advise us to become more topical", - looking at me, sitting in the first row, right off the bat, she began.

"Yes, everything is simple, Olga Vasiliyevna - I calmly answered, took the "Change" out of the wardrobe trunk, opened it on the right page and showed it first to everyone, and then to her personally, my now recognized photograph - so print such cards instead of your buttercups- kitties and everything will be in order, you will step in step with perestroika", - I said confidently.

The reaction was so unexpected that I even forgot to breathe...

- Oh, what a true, powerful photograph! Igor, shame on you! Why didn't you show it to us! The same could have been on the cover - without hesitation, looking me in the eyes, the permanent chairman of the jury of all our competitions and the main evaluator of the content of all our exhibitions exclaimed pathetically ...

When I did breathe, I reminded our unconscious that it was she, with her own hands, repeatedly, and a couple of times in my presence, withdrew and, with words of disgust and condemnation, threw this photo away from herself.

“Probably I didn't see it, it happens...”, - she blinked, not at all embarrassed.

Of course, they did not publish my card in Sovfoto, the magazine retained its face and was soon closed ...

And "Indifference" has traveled half the world, has been exhibited and published many times. But for me, forever, her very first publication remained my beloved - in the youth "Smena" ... "

Film director Tofik Shakhverdiyev shared a similar, no less interesting story on his blog:

“A long time ago, in Soviet times, Sasha Abdulov and his little Ksyusha and I walked along Red Square. I asked the girl to step back and then run to us. I went down with a Canon camera on one knee. Sasha stood behind me. I asked him to stretch out his hands over me towards the child. The camera was equipped with a new, just bought 24 mm wide-angle lens and I was hoping that Sasha's hands would get into the frame. I managed to take only one picture, as we were tied. They demanded documents, which we did not have with us. Two comrades in civilian clothes took us behind the GUM building. There was an inconspicuous entrance to the basement.

At that time, Sasha was not yet recognized everywhere, and well-fed people with hungry eyes began to interrogate us: who are they and for what purpose? Their attention was aroused by the suspicious fact that one of us knelt down and took pictures, the other was stretching his hands over him, and the third was running. And on Red Square, as they explained to us, this is not supposed to be done!

Comrades called someone, called our names. We found out that the names correspond. Sasha's charm worked, they did not light up the film, and an hour later they let us go with the words, if they see me on Red Square with this camera again, they will take it away. The photo has been preserved.

That was the time, the time of prohibitions. It was forbidden to shoot on Red Square with a good camera without approval. And it was possible to shoot with a primitive “Change”.

I never had a photographer's ID as I am an amateur. I was detained more than once with a camera in other places. The result of the policy "all around the enemies"...

Now this time is returning. There are more bans.

However, photographing in Red Square is not prohibited.

Well, at least this!.."

Journalist Sergei Shakhidzhanyan explained the legal side of this problem:

“In the USSR in 1933, a decree was passed banning photography without written permission. It operated until 1987 - before that it was impossible to photograph and publish in newspapers Moscow above the third floor, the photo of any officer must be coordinated with the Literary Directorate. Later, after the impudent actions of the NBP (they climbed into Lenin's mausoleum and hung up a poster and others), under Medvedev, it was forbidden to shoot on Red Square and in the Kremlin with cameras whose length was more than 120 mm, and the diameter of the front lens was more than 52 mm. The watering can did not fall under these prohibitions) Yes, yes - in the 21st century people stood with rulers and measured))) Tofig Shahverdiyev, unfortunately, was right - they were not allowed to shoot freely .. Now the system of prohibitions is returning again - bank guards, government agencies are also prohibited .. . "

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In the comments, fellow photographers share similar stories:

- I remember that in the 1980s it was possible to shoot on Red Square, and no one dug, as well as on the streets. In the 1990s it became impossible with a tripod, but "licensed photographers" could, and they stood there and took pictures of tourists. Then, in the second half of the 1990s, they came up with this topic with the dimensions of the optics, and a serious uncle, a policeman, measured the size of the lens for me, and we both understood the idiocy of the situation.

However, all this did not prevent "people in civilian clothes" from showing their interest in what was happening if "something went wrong." But freedom itself was only a few years old, from 1987 to the mid-1990s...

- Already soon after Putin came to power, reports began to appear on photo forums that cops and traffic cops suddenly began to catch photographers on the streets about the fact that they were filming a strategic route without permission. Someone got on the Luzhnetsky Most, some on Novy Arbat, in different places. The cops were instructed that now it is impossible, the power has changed. At the same time, no written confirmation, on a call from the office. For half an hour, the FSOs took out my brain, when I photographed the motorcade near the Arbat, they shouted that they would issue me a long term for divulging state secrets. I stubbornly refused to erase the card, but just in case I put the flash drive in my sock. Someone told them on the walkie-talkie that if they weren't, they were behind. The times were still herbivorous..."

- I recently photographed a newsstand. Stripped off. Then a window opens and my aunt shouts to me - Introduce yourself !! .. Well, of course I ran away..

- Spy mania is everywhere.. Here you rent a village near a plywood mill. It would seem - not a rocket base. And then - every third comer asks - Are you not a spy? Why are you renting our houses? (old plywood barracks)...