To talk about the paradigm in which literature should be taught in a modern school, I was prompted by an article published on Newtonew by Evgeny Kulichsky. In it, the author complains that the school teaching of literature is aimed at educating morality, although Russian classical literature itself does not have the resources for this, cannot offer schoolchildren suitable role models that they could follow. In addition, according to the author, "the lifeless, leafy, refined image of God-saved Russian culture" causes nothing but yawns in children.

I agree with much of this article. For example, with the fact that it is definitely impossible to teach literature as described by the author. Longing is green. However, for some reason, the author believes that if he was unlucky with teachers of literature, then everyone was unlucky, everywhere is like that. No. Not everywhere. In my childhood, the above horrors were not. Apparently, this charge of interest in the classics, received at school, allowed me to develop a teaching system from a few simple rules, which I call "literature with a human face."

When I first went to teach at school, I knew exactly what I would not do: build lessons on solid praises like “great Russian writer”, “brilliant poet” and “the sun of Russian poetry”.

This immediately causes boredom. For some reason, I associated such descriptions, for example, not with Alexander Pushkin, but with a monument to him. And pieces of metal are of no interest to anyone. Live people are interesting.

The standard scheme born-married-wrote-died also did not arouse enthusiasm in me. The number one task that I set myself then was to wash off the layer of gilding from the writers so that real human faces appeared under it.

Therefore, while preparing for the biography lessons, I diligently looked for details that could create an image of this living person in a child. I needed the guys to be able to imagine a writer living, walking, laughing and eating oranges by dozens, to be able to get an idea of ​​his character, strengths and weaknesses, dreams and prejudices. Everything was used: the love of practical jokes and Pushkin's superstitions, a fur coat made from Gumilyov's own killed leopard, Gogol's love for Italian cuisine, Andrei Bely, who "girded himself with lightning", and Lermontov's terrible revenge on Sushkova in the form of a forged letter ...

In my lessons, I do not try to create a varnished image of the writer; I speak about all the “doubtful” moments of the biography as they are. For example, my children know about Yesenin's tendency to alcoholism, and about his bad experience of fatherhood, and about the fact that his wife Zinaida Reich lived with her children in a shelter for women in difficult situations, and about the fact that Yesenin is alone one of my favorite poets, and about the fact that I would not marry him. Yes, once there was such a conversation.

Why all this? I believe that a person then turns to literature, and especially to poetry, when he can hear in them something consonant with himself, when he understands that they were written by a living person with his problems and experiences, and not a moral ideal that will now teach me how to mind. Nobody cares about moralizing.

I would like to turn once more to Kulichevsky's note. He's writing:

“When teachers breathily say that “Yesenin is the golden voice of Russian poetry, the finest lyricist who ennobles the soul,” I want to address them to this video. The performers have much more in common with Yesenin's lyrics than the "correct" composition about it.

I don’t quite understand why I can’t breathe the above phrase after watching this video. Or does the almost textbook “Sing, sing on the damned guitar ..” prevent Yesenin from being the finest lyricist? What if it resonates with my emotional state? But what if, on the contrary, it enters into dissonance with him, and I understand that my current mood is nothing more than fatigue and boredom, but is Yesenin's hero really having a difficult period? And you can also compare the lines from the cycle "Moscow Tavern" and "The Black Man" with Yesenin's earlier lyrics and trace the evolution (is it evolution?) Of the lyrical hero. And think about why it happened.

About the search for role models. Kulichevsky rightly calls the idea that morality in literature is following the example of an ideal subject, with whom you need to compare your actions, naive. But then some kind of logical error occurs, because the author of the article begins to prove that there are no such models in Russian literature, and therefore it cannot teach morality.

Why, in fact, should literature create these same role models? Did the authors seek to describe characters that could, by their example, teach the younger generation to reason? For this, everyone needs to go to the lives of the saints, and not to Tolstoy and Turgenev.

Everything is somewhat more complicated. We learn some life lessons not at the level of “Vasya is good, he needs to be imitated, but Petya is not, he doesn’t need it,” but by drawing conclusions from the actions of imperfect people with their weaknesses. Just like in life.

Let's take a practical example. Eighth grade. "Poor Lisa". What didactics can be learned from the story? Obviously not about the fact that you should drown yourself if unhappy love has befallen you. In a condensed form, I quote a dialogue that took place in one of the eighth grades:

Teacher. Did Erast originally have the goal of "marching and quitting"?
Student 1. No, he treated Lisa sincerely.
Teacher. Why then did it end up the way it did?
Student 1. Erast did not have enough willpower to build his life not in the model that was adopted for the nobles then.
Student 2. If this loss at cards and a rich widow had not happened on his way, he still would not have married Lisa.
Teacher. Why?
Student 2. Public opinion is very important to him. In the scene where he leaves for the war, he explains to Lisa that he cannot help but go. Because then he will not shake hands, rejected from society.
Student 1. Yes. He explains his departure not by duty to his homeland, but precisely by these moments. He would not marry a peasant woman, knowing that he would be a black sheep in society.
Student 3. It's a matter of weakness. Sometimes you sincerely want something, but your fear of public opinion paralyzes you and prevents you from doing what you want. And you do what you do.
Teacher. How then was Erast supposed to act in this situation?
Student 1. No way. If you want something that is not accepted by society, for example, bright love with a peasant woman, you either go ahead of him, or, if you are not capable of it, you don’t even try. Well, or as with Erast. You try to sit on two chairs, you ruin the life of another person, and then you suffer all your life. The girl drowned because of him.

At this lesson, another conclusion was also made that one of the girls made for herself: “Even if you are 17 and you are deeply in love, you should not believe everything that a person says who is much higher on the social ladder than you. Even if he believes himself at this moment, you can’t trust him.” In my opinion, very life lessons. And is it not possible to call the conclusions that the students made, no matter how naive they sound, moral?

November 10 marks the 30th anniversary of the death of Leonid Brezhnev. Alexander Zinoviev called the period between Stalin's death and Brezhnev's death none other than communism. I remember my mother ironing clothes with an iron filled with charcoal. And I turned on the small radio "Moskvich" and the announcer said: Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin died. Mom screamed and dropped the iron, the iron opened and the coals rolled across the floor. We grabbed a shovel and a broom and began to gather coals. It was March 5, 1953.
One of the last I saw Brezhnev alive. I was then a full-time postgraduate student at the Faculty of Philosophy of Moscow State University. Anatoly Ivanovich Kostin, secretary of the party organization of the department of scientific communism, gave me a party assignment - to participate in the November demonstration. At the same time, he emphasized the importance of this assignment. Before that, I had never participated in such manifestations, so I readily agreed. Our team of Moscow State University walked in the column of the Leninsky district, which walked in the last row to the Mausoleum. My pregnant wife and I were pretty cold as we waited for the demonstration to begin. And in the neighboring columns, the people became more and more cheerful, warming themselves with prudently seized strong drinks. Many began to sing songs and even dance. When we reached Red Square, the fun continued, but the columns quickened their pace and we almost ran. We had a good view of the entire composition of the Politburo. Brezhnev held his hand in greeting. It was November 7, 1982. When we arrived at the skyscraper - our hostel, we were asked: did we see that Brezhnev left before the end of the demonstration? - What are you, he waved his hand at us! But on November 10, it was reported that L.I. Brezhnev had died. After him, the iconostasis of orders and medals remained, among the people - anecdotes, but most importantly, perhaps not quite the same as imagined by the philosopher Plato and Chancellor of England Thomas More, monk Tomaso Campanella, Ph.D. Karl Marx, lawyer Vladimir Lenin and many other thinkers - Socialism "with a human face"!

When Stalin died, three days of mourning was declared in the country. Schoolchildren did not study, each attached a mourning rose. Everyone thought that a war would begin ... Was Stalin a tyrant and a monster for my generation? Of course not. Yes, my grandfather - my mother's father, partisan, chairman of the village council in 1937 was arrested and shot, and my father's parents were dispossessed. But my parents successfully graduated from the Blagoveshchensk Pedagogical Institute and went to work on Sakhalin, where my father was the director of the school, and then an officer participated in the war with Japan. After the Victory and demobilization until retirement, he worked as a director and teacher of a school, but already in the south of Kazakhstan. We - all three of his sons received higher education. The older generation remembers that after the war, for every day of the Constitution, food prices were reduced. On May 25, 1947, with the sanction of Stalin in the USSR, the death penalty was abolished for the third time. Having entered Moscow State University, I learned that Stalin paid personal attention to the construction of new buildings of Moscow State University: “It is necessary to create living conditions by building dormitories for teachers and students,” he emphasized. How long will students live? Six thousand? This means that the hostel should have six thousand rooms. Special care should be taken for family students.

In the Brezhnev 80s, when I was a graduate student in Moscow, there was, if not communism, then socialism for sure. I lived comfortably on a postgraduate student scholarship, again, on a monthly scholarship I could fly home to Shymkent and back by plane. Were there food shortages in the country? Were. In the Khrushchev 60s, when, at the behest of Khrushchev, household plots were actually liquidated, there were years when even bread was not enough. But we did not pay, neither for education, nor for medicine. As a young specialist, not yet married, he received a one-room apartment, and when the children were born, the turn came up for a three-room apartment. Of course, with cognac and hunting sausages it was a bit tight, but there were always Krakow and boiled sausages. But the main thing is different. It was not the sausage that determined people's consciousness.

During the years of socialism, the semi-literate population became the most reading in the world. The books were published in millions of copies. People stood in queues at night in the shops of subscription publications. In a short time, an atomic bomb was created, an artificial Earth satellite was launched, and soon the first cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin went into space. And all this in a country that survived a terrible war that lost more than 20 million people. It seemed that the Land of the Soviets had no barriers. But then the Prague Spring happened. On July 18, 1968, one of the Czech leaders Alexander Dubcek, during a speech on television, called for "a policy so that socialism does not lose its human face." Roger Garaudy, one of the leaders of the French Communist Party, called for the same. But the euphoria of the victorious march of socialism turned his head. And this was one of the first blows to the foundation of socialism...

Reviews

Socialism either exists or it doesn’t ... And all the prefixes ... are propaganda ... There was no spring in Prague ... there was an attempted coup ...
All these postscripts like "spring" ... this is nothing more than an attempt to give a crawling coup a marketable appearance, so to speak ...

It is wise to write - it's like pouring from empty to empty ... You say something that seems smart to you, but in the end you didn't say anything.

The political situation at the end of 1967 was, as always, difficult. A frantic campaign of slander and hatred for our country, dedicated to the fiftieth anniversary of the Great October Revolution, was launched by the Western media. The workers of the Krasny Profintern plant angrily condemned another criminal Israeli aggression against the Arab countries at a crowded protest rally. Negro ghettos USA exploded like powder kegs. The unrest in China did not stop. Vietnam fought bravely. The reactionary Greeks imprisoned their wonderful patriots like Manolis Glezos. An epidemic of violence has spread among the youth of the capitalist countries. Composer Philippe Gerard became a laureate of the Lenin Komsomol Prize. John Steinbeck took an extremely immoral position, and this caused bitterness and bewilderment among Soviet readers. Millionaire Giangiacomo Feltrinelli created an illegal Partisan Action Group. It was not long to wait for the student revolution in Paris, the riots in Berkeley, the introduction of Soviet tanks into Czechoslovakia with the support of the GDR, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland - which would be nice to remember for those citizens of these countries who suddenly completely forgot after perestroika about this "brotherly assistance” to the Czechs and now only “Russians” are blamed for everything.

And in general, it was the next year, 1968, that was, in my humble opinion, a milestone for all mankind. It was then that the current madness began to take shape, which is now prevails throughout the world and from which there is no peace nowhere - not in Nice, not in Istanbul, not in Munich, not in Donetsk. Isn't it crazy to blow up children at a wedding (Turkey), publicly discuss the composition of the urine of Olympic athletes (Rio de Janeiro), spend millions on transporting dogs in a private jet (Russia)?

WELL, I WAS TWENTY SO THAT THEN. I graduated from the Moscow Geological Prospecting Institute them. S. Ordzhonikidze and went closer to midnight on January 31, 1967 to a girl whose name I forgot, because even now I don’t remember - did I like her or didn’t like her, did I want to go to her then or didn’t I want to? Probably still wanted to. I don't look like myself when I was younger. I fought depression and pessimism much more resolutely then than now, and constantly inspired myself that what outwardly I didn’t really like, in its inner essence, could easily turn out to be very even nothing. Here, for example, are the Czechoslovak communists, who claimed on Voice of America that they had embarked on the path of building "socialism with a human face." “After all, they are, in fact, the same scum, like all other communists,” I thought then, “but I wonder why they are supported by non-party anti-Soviet people - intellectuals, students and other shaggy youth who love the Beatles? Maybe it’s too early for us to put an end to our own “redness”? Maybe the communists decided to reform at all? They will start with Czechoslovakia, and then the turn will reach the USSR ... "I was twenty-something, I could not even imagine in 1967 that I had a chance to live until the centenary of the" revolution "of 1917, when there would be no peace anywhere on earth and not from whom - not in Nice, not in Istanbul, not in Munich, not in Donetsk, not in all others cities and towns...

Boy in pocket
No money for lunch.
He bought for his beloved
A ticket to the gallery.

And I didn’t have anything then, fifty years ago, on December 31, 1967, from purchases, except for a bottle of vile wine poison called “Solntsedar”. Flowers were then in short supply in Moscow, because our country's ties with Holland and its tulips were then difficult, not like now, when Dutch flowers are blooming all around, and Dutch "Boeings" fly back and forth.

FORGOT TO SAY MY NAME IS EVGENY POPOV. I am currently seventy years and six months old. I was born in the city of K., standing on the great Siberian river E., which flows into the Arctic Ocean. It was also there that I was pulled by the collar for the first time in the KGB. Since the age of sixteen I have been composing works of art, which at first fell into the category of “ideologically flawed, close to slanderous”, but by now they have already been published in the amount of twenty books translated into various languages ​​​​of the peoples of the world. They gave me money, they rewarded me. Evgeny Popov is the secretary of the Writers' Union of Moscow, one of the founders and vice-president of the Russian PEN Center, an associate member of the Swedish PEN Center. He was awarded the prizes of the magazines Volga (1989), Sagittarius (1995), Znamya (1998), October (2002), the Prize of the Union of Writers of Moscow "Venets" (2003), a commemorative sign of the Hungarian Ministry of Culture Pro cultura Hungaria(2005), the award of the highest achievements of literature and art "Triumph" (2009), the national literary award "Big Book" (2012). Honored Worker of Culture of the Russian Federation. Pensioner. Disabled group III. Veteran of labour. I don't have a dacha. The car is Renault Sandero. He knew Kataev, Paustovsky, Mikhalkov, Alexei and Georgy Markov, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Umberto Eco, Peter Esterhazy, Shukshin, Vysotsky, Okudzhava. He was friends with Aksenov, Akhmadulina, Voznesensky, Iskander. I saw Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Gorbachev, Yeltsin, Putin, Giscard d'Estaing, Angela Merkel, Helmut Kohl. By chance I was present at a virtuoso attempt to perform the button accordion by the former Prime Minister of the Russian Federation V.S. Chernomyrdin's works by N.A. Rimsky-Korsakov "Flight of the Bumblebee". I am an average Soviet person. I don't do politics. Any policy is shit. Even if by chance shit step on and thoroughly clean the sole, it will still plow. Noticed?

WHY WOULD I NOT VERY WANT TO GO TO HER, to this girl? And since she, and even faster her mother, both would probably imagine that I beat wedges only in order to get married and get a Moscow residence permit. Do not explain to you, the new generation of Soviet people, that it was then allowed to live permanently in Moscow only if you have a so-called registration? It was not to explain to the girl (my girlfriend) and the woman (her mother) that I just simply want to honestly fuck in my youth, that I definitely don’t care who to fuck with, just to fuck. And I don’t need a Moscow residence permit, and in any case I will leave after the institute for K.’s hometown, which stands on the great Siberian river E., which flows into the Arctic Ocean, because my mother lives there, she is very sick, she is waiting for me to receive higher education, God forbid they die without me. By the way, this is for those fools who haven’t seen Soviet socialism in their eyes, but I’m sure that in a communal apartment everyone always and everywhere shared the last with each other, like Vysotsky in the movie “The meeting place cannot be changed”, and did not spit in the neighbor’s soup at all . That there, within the framework of Spirituality, they always read Pushkin to each other and argued until the morning who is better - Yevtushenko or Voznesensky, Lemeshev or Kozlovsky, Mandelstam, Akhmatova or Tsvetaeva. When I hear this, class anger arises in me, comrades! After all, my mother, having worked all her life in the field of public education, then received a disability pension in the amount of 34 rubles. 50 kop. I do not argue that utility bills in our one-room apartment with a total area of ​​​​18 square meters. m with a common barracks corridor, “steam heating”, cold water and a toilet in the yard cost three rubles, give two or three more ribs for electricity (a kilowatt is two kopecks), but all the same - you can’t create a civilized life for that kind of money: get dressed you need to buy medicines, who the hell will give medicines for free, despite socialism. Mom ate potatoes, carrots, beets and cabbage, fermented in a wooden tub in the fall. Cheese, maybe, I could buy with my income, but there was no cheese in the city of K., and nowhere in Russia there was it, as well as sausages, toilet paper, except for Moscow, Leningrad and secret cities in which enriched uranium, built rockets and launched satellites into the sky, where they sometimes burned up, “entering the dense layers of the atmosphere”, together with the rubles spent on them. It turned out that it wasn’t she for me, a student, but I gave her some money after summer geological practices, sticking out for many months somewhere in a field “near Magadan”, in Taimyr or in Yakutia ...

HOW ARE YOU, EVG. POPOV HAS BEEN IN THE GEOLOGICAL EXPLORATION, some ignorant person may have a question who believes that "the writer" is taught at the Literary Institute? And who will be terribly surprised when I tell him that writing cannot be taught to anyone at all. This is either God gave or did not give, even if you crack! And if God has given (or not given), then everything else - added to the main. Maybe I also wanted to go to the Literary Institute, but “he will eat something, but who will give it to him?”, as the simple anecdote of those years said. In 1963, in order to enter the Literary Institute, as well as any other humanitarian and ideological university, it was necessary to “cook in a working boiler”, “become closer to the people”, that is, without fail, after graduating from high school, two years of the so-called “ work experience".

Therefore, I, yesterday's schoolboy, from the Literary Institute was immediately kicked out of the door. As well as from other Moscow humanitarian and ideological universities - Moscow State University, Historical Archives, etc. I will not hide the fact that, moreover, I was not a member of the Communist Youth Union in principle, which, to put it mildly, was not at all welcomed then. I did not want to return home, to the city of K., with the shame of non-receipt, so I went to the Moscow Geological Prospecting Institute. S. Ordzhonikidze, where there was no competition at all for the specialty of the RMRE - "Exploration of deposits of rare and radioactive elements" (for example, uranium), and the absence of me in the ranks of the Komsomol ("school of communism") definitely did not interest anyone. However, I did not lose at all, as evidenced by my entire biography. I truly repeat: you cannot learn to be a "writer." You can be a writer. And you may not be.

THEN I LIVED in a student campus dormitory on Studencheskaya Street, 33. This campus, which consisted of eight five-story buildings, was built at the very end of the twenties and is still a monument to constructivism, although the organizers of Moscow happiness always threaten to demolish this monument from the face of the earth, to make the capital even more beautiful. I don't know, I really liked it there. Geologists lived in the first building. Khabarov and Gdov and I had a room for four beds, but we married a classmate Makarka to a Muscovite, and he left for his young wife, thus nobly giving us a little more communal freedom. Which consisted in the fact that we drank a lot and sang songs of the sixties with a guitar - Okudzhava, Gorodnitsky, Klyachkin, led an absent-minded lifestyle, listened to Voice of America and the City of London, BBC. It's amazing how at the same time I also managed to compose a fair amount of stories that were then mistaken for anti-Soviet. Still, the ideologists of that time had a narrow outlook. After all, in these stories, on the contrary, I declared that good, smart people live in Russia and we have one misfortune, that the authorities all the time come across to us some kind of stupid, do not understand how such people need to be led so as not to cover themselves with a copper basin . We have bad roads only because they are built by fools, and not vice versa. An intelligent person would have built a good road for the glory of the Fatherland, and at the same time would have stolen money into his pocket. Some slow-moving bosses are always like gorged domestic animals that have forgotten how to catch mice. It is not surprising that under Stalin they shot each other according to the diagnosis "enemy of the people", put by this head doctor of a madhouse called the USSR. It is not surprising that some of them are now in prisons where they were put by other bosses. We have a lot of amazing things in our country, but even more unsurprising.

METRO "LIBRARY IM. LENINA was a transfer hub on my way from the Studencheskaya station to the Prospekt Marksa metro station, where my glorious institute was located on the eponymous avenue, the former Manezhnaya Street, which was exiled to Belyaevo in the new times of “fragile democracy”. And important books in the library itself. Lenin was then given out to anyone, that is, even to me. There I, a geology student, read Remizov, Zamyatin, Platonov, Zoshchenko, Pilnyak, Artyom Vesely, Panteleimon Romanov, Andrei Bely, the first edition of Julio Hurenito by Ehrenburg with the chapter “The Grand Inquisitor” that disappeared during a further reprint, where it was described as Ilya and Julio came to Lenin to discuss freedom, and at the end of the conversation, “The Teacher kissed the Leader on the high, noble forehead.” I am quoting from a memory that has been badly damaged by the inexorable course of time. Almost all of what I have listed, after the milestone of 1968, went to the "special store".

I wasn't bad, I was an average student. Threes, fours ... Fives - rarely ... I received a scholarship always. "Chickens want to live too"... He would also be a bad geologist, but he left geology in time, tempted by the charming Russian literature, which was then in its very juice. Aksenov, Astafiev, Akhmadulina, Belov, Bitov, Brodsky, Voznesensky, Dombrovsky, Yevtushenko, Iskander, Kataev, Mozhaev, Moritz, Tvardovsky, Chukhonsev, Shukshin ...

But my comrades and drinking companions have become outstanding geologists. Makarka and Alik Sviridov worked in uranium mines, and when their homeland no longer needed it, they moved to Africa, tearing the chains of colonialism, from where they could barely get away. Lyokha Kolotov, Volodya Gerzhberg, nicknamed Jan, and two more Volodya - Zuev, who was expelled from the second year, and Katsenbogen, who now teaches students himself, settled in the Far East. Everything in minerals and geological maps was understood right off the bat, they drew beautifully, not like me. However, if here through life I was really drastically pinned down, then in about a week I would have returned all my geological skills. However, oddly enough, it hasn’t been pinned down in a lifetime. And it's too late for me to work in the field now. I would have died there overnight, when in a day with an unbearable backpack full of stones, you make ten or twelve kilometers, suffocating in a mosquito net, which you can’t take off because the midges will get it. Why, you don’t make your way along Tverskaya Street, ennobled by Sobyanin, but through taiga blockages, streams, mountains, hills, cliffs, rivers, rivers, cliffs, swamps - what else on earth is beautiful, but unpleasant?

SOVIET HOLIDAYS had a strict hierarchical value.

Number one, of course, there was a celebration of the VOSR (Great October Socialist Revolution), which took place on October 25, 1917, but for some reason its anniversary was celebrated on November 7 of each of the seventy-five Soviet years, in which there is no logic and mathematics, no matter what to me proved.

Number two It was May 1 - International Workers' Day. Also, if you think about it carefully, nonsense - what kind of workers? What is solidarity?

holiday number three- 9th May. But this really was a real folk holiday "with tears in the eyes." The war almost every family backfired. And how many people exactly were laid down during the Great Patriotic War in order to save the country, only the Lord God knows ...

There was also International Women's Day on March 8, which was proposed by Comrade. Clara Zetkin, in order to “arrange rallies and processions every year in the spring, attracting the public to women's problems.” As a memory of this holiday in Moscow, there are as many as four streets on March 8, one of which still houses a vast madhouse.

About all sorts of "Paris Communes", Miner's Day and the Day of the Soviet Constitution, I am silent. These were not serious holidays. What else is there "Commune"? What "Constitution"?

Easter was for the then rulers of the country antiholiday . Komsomol members and communists were on duty at the temples; Now a miracle happened and they all became so pious, and before such miracles even science fiction writers could not foresee.

Therefore, the New Year was (by default) the main Soviet holiday that did not have a serial number. A holiday of a person, not a state. A holiday of hope that someday, perhaps, all the same, well, maybe people will still live as people ... A holiday of the secret shadow of the Nativity of Christ.

The subway was empty. New Year. Twelfth hour. On the transition from Arbatsko-Filyovskaya on the Sokolnicheskaya line, I suddenly sang to myself:

We'll see the king of kings soon
And you, brother, and me.
Soon the Jew will embrace the Arab,
And you, brother, and me.
Rejoice, brother, that Christ is born.
He brought happiness to people.
Bring, bring, bring...

“Your documents,” I suddenly heard a quiet, polite voice and turned my head.

“Your documents,” the voice repeated, and I found that behind me was a very gloomy, one might say, stone-faced serviceman from those who are now called “cops”, and they are not offended, but then they called “garbage”, and this they didn't like it very much.

- No passports ... no ... no ... - I jokingly sang to him a musical phrase from the same song "Roasted Chicken", always popular in the USSR and Russia. I was funny then.

“We’ll have to go through,” the guard told me, and I realized that my simple joke had failed.

- Long away?

“Where fogs roam,” he also quipped with a quote from a song popular in those years to the words of the now forgotten A. Churkin, performed on Soviet radio by the sweet-voiced V.A. Nechaev. We went. We squeezed into a dirty narrow cramped room with some sort of Soviet paper and stationery abominations such as posters and scarlet triangles hung on the walls, the black-and-white TV croaked and blinked.

– I don't have any documents! Why should I? I'm going to see a girl on New Year's Eve, - I tried to get out, but he did not accept my pathetic explanations.

“Get the bottle,” he said.

- What bottle?

- The one in your bosom.

I got it. He winced.

- Oh, you, the intelligentsia on bare feet! You sing about God, you read forbidden books, and you drink only one abomination.

- So I went? I asked.

- Where did he go? - the cop was surprised.

It was then that Brezhnev mumbled his greeting to the Soviet people over the TV box. The clock on the Spasskaya Tower began counting midnight.

“Pour it up,” the law enforcement officer said, pulling out two cut glass cups, obviously borrowed from an underground soda machine. With syrup - three kopecks, without syrup - one kopeck.

“Happy New Year, Soviet land,” he said.

“Long live socialism with a human face,” I said.

- You don’t think anything like that, that the police live for free, I have my own drink.

My new friend took out from the pedestal of a shabby official table exactly the same bottle of the same nasty "Solntsedar".

“No, I don’t think so,” I said.

Since 1989, the socio-economic situation in the USSR has increasingly been characterized as a "crisis", "emergency", "extraordinary circumstances". The financial condition of the USSR continued to deteriorate. Difficulties in monetary circulation were growing: the issue of money increased, due to serious deviations in the implementation of the state plan, unfavorable proportions were formed in the development of the economy, the gap between monetary income and expenditures of the population increased, the situation with meeting the demand of the population for goods and services became extremely aggravated, inflationary processes, the purchasing power of the ruble decreased270. The population was losing confidence in money and in the state as a guarantor of their provision. All this had negative social consequences.

Hidden lending to the budget, which took the form of a direct government debt to the banking system, reached 400 billion rubles by the end of 1989. In essence, it was a hidden debt to the population, since the funds of citizens placed in deposits prevailed in credit resources. The debt is compulsory and irrevocable.

At the first Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR M.S. Gorbachev made a report "On the main directions of the domestic and foreign policy of the USSR." The report stressed that the transformation of the economic and social spheres had not yet been achieved. Moreover, there are “screaming” socio-economic problems - the breakdown of the financial system, the imbalance of the market, which cause acute social tension.

The main tasks of the state plans (on the national income, the productivity of social labor, the volume of industrial and agricultural products, the production of consumer goods), despite the economic measures taken, were still not fulfilled271. Industrial productivity fell. If earlier it was possible to put up with this, now, in the conditions of the accelerated growth of unfavorable proportions in the development of the economy, these problems threatened to turn into a catastrophe for the entire national economy.

The result of the imbalance of the national economy and finances of the country was a significant excess of monetary incomes of the population in 1989 of planned indicators. Compared to the previous year, the increase amounted to 63.8 billion rubles, given

This value turned out to be higher than planned by 57.7 billion rubles.

The rate of income growth of citizens has increased significantly over the past few years. If we rely on official statistics, the picture will look like this: in 1987 the growth rate was 3.9% (compared to the previous year), in 1988 - 9.2%, in 1989 - 13%273. At the same time, the marked “speed” of growth in the monetary incomes of citizens “overtook” the growth rate of all the main indicators characterizing the development of the economy, and, in particular, consumer spending by the population by 1.4 times274.

The balance of household deposits, including certificates, as of January 1, 1989, was 296.7 billion rubles. The growth for this year of funds on deposits and other savings amounted to 44.9 billion rubles, reaching 341.6 billion rubles by January 1, 1990275.

The increase in wages both in 1988 and in 1989 outpaced the growth in labor productivity. In 1988, the productivity of social labor increased by 4.8% against the previous year, and the average monthly wages of workers and employees increased by 8.3%, wages of collective farmers - by 6.8%; in 1989, with a 2.4% increase in the productivity of social labor, the increase in the average monthly wage amounted to 9.5%, the wages of collective farmers increased by 8%.

The increase in wage funds was due to the introduction of new rates and salaries for employees of enterprises in industry, construction, transport, communications, trade, logistics, as well as the continued implementation of centralized measures to increase wages in healthcare, social security, education and a number of other industries. Councils of labor collectives also played their role, putting pressure on the administration of enterprises and organizing strikes demanding higher wages. At the same time, the current procedure for the formation of wage funds was practically not linked to the final results of work. Despite the failure to fulfill plans for the volume of industrial output, the commissioning of facilities under construction, for the dispatch of goods by rail, for the production of agricultural products, wages in these industries still increased significantly. In 1988, control over income growth was completely lost due to the abandonment of administrative methods of planning labor costs.

The situation was somewhat normalized by the Decree on the taxation of the wage fund of state enterprises, which entered into force on October 1, 1989, which introduced a progressive tax on the growth of the wage fund in excess of 3 percent. The new taxation procedure to a certain extent contributed to the limitation of spending.

The scarcity problem remained acute. At the beginning of 1990, unsatisfied demand due to a lack of goods and services was estimated by the State Bank at about 110 billion rubles against 60 billion rubles at the beginning of 1986, which indicated

serious disorganization of the consumer market.

In 1989, the retail trade turnover increased against 1988 by 37.3 billion rubles, or by 10.2%, and amounted to 403.5

billion rubles (by the way, slightly exceeding the target). However, about 62% of this increase was due to an increase in average retail prices (approximately 9 billion rubles), an increase in the sale of alcoholic beverages (10 billion rubles), an increase in the sale of goods to enterprises, organizations and institutions by bank transfer and for cash (more than 4 billion rubles).

Sales of foodstuffs and non-food products to the population in 1989 increased by only 4.6% (14.3 billion rubles) compared to 1988, which practically did not help to absorb the "extra" money in circulation. At the same time, for example, in light industry in 1989, mainly the production of relatively expensive products increased. If we evaluate the situation as a whole for the period 1986 - 1989, then the growth rate of production of consumer goods over this time period compared to the period 1981 - 1985 increased very slightly - 4.3% (in 1986 - 1989) and 3.7% % (1981 - 1985)281. In 1986, the physical mass of trade did not increase at all.

Along with foodstuffs, many products of light industry, cultural and household goods and household goods were lacking in sales. Out of 115 types of goods, which were monitored in 100 cities of the USSR, only 10 types of goods were sold without significant interruptions.

This, in turn, led to rush and panic buying. The sale of salt, matches, laundry soap, cereals, and flour increased. People seriously feared for "tomorrow". The instability of the situation was also evidenced by the intensive purchase of slow-moving and stale goods, the stocks of which, having changed little in the past, began to decline sharply in recent years. During 1988 - 1989 they decreased by more than 2 times282. In relation to certain groups of the population, increased buying of expensive goods was recorded. Thus, the sale of jewelry in 1989 increased by 2 billion rubles compared to the previous year, i.e. almost one and a half times. Queues appeared for carpets and rugs, crystal, televisions, expensive furniture sets. Often people bought things they did not need, and then the exchange and resale began.

In connection with the growing shortage of goods, in many regions some food products, such as meat, butter, sugar, tea, began to be sold on coupons, and the sale of non-food products was made only to local residents, and therefore, when buying, presentation of passports was required. Traveling trade was organized at enterprises. For example, in Moscow in the first half of 1989, 13% of knitwear, 26% of shoes, and 7% of laundry soap were sold on the road and through the ordering system. There were cases when department stores were closed for several days for "ordinary" customers, because they served the employees of enterprises that supplied products to these stores (ie their own suppliers). The Lenin Komsomol Automobile Plant sold new brands of the Moskvich car primarily to its employees. "Natural incentives" were also practiced in the construction industry - families of builders were settled in newly built houses.

Such injustice caused quite understandable discontent among the population, and, even worse, undermined the incentives to increase labor productivity (while the elimination of commodity hunger largely depended on the growth of labor productivity).

The general imbalance of the consumer market has led to a sharp increase in the shadow economy. It was during the years of the twelfth five-year plan that a significant expansion of the scale of speculative transactions, foreign exchange transactions, and illegal production of goods and services took place. Total scarcity provoked the growth of organized criminal economic structures, which became a serious factor in the destabilization of the socio-economic and political situation in society.

The consumer sector was characterized not only by an acute shortage, but also by the low competitiveness of manufactured products. As before, a significant part of the "civilian" products - televisions, washing machines, vacuum cleaners, etc. - were produced at the enterprises of the defense complex: in 1989, the volume of production of "peaceful" products within the military-industrial complex was 40% of the total volume of its production. However, military enterprises continued to disdain the production of consumer goods as something "secondary and non-prestigious." Such an attitude, coupled with high costs, could not but affect the quality of products.

The situation with the development of domestic technologies was not the best. According to NATO experts, in the late 1980s, in terms of the level of scientific and technological developments, the USSR did not lag behind the United States in only 5 out of 20 areas of military technology.

Since 1987, the government began to actively pursue a policy of switching military-industrial complex enterprises to the production of consumer goods, and in 1989, conversion in the military sector of the USSR economy became a real process. During the period 1989-1990, the military budget was reduced by more than 10 billion rubles. The conversion affected more than 420 enterprises, 200 research institutes and design bureaus of the defense industries. The task was set to reduce by 1995 the share of military spending in the state budget by 30 billion rubles283. In 1990, the State Planning Committee of the USSR prepared and submitted for consideration by the Council of Ministers of the USSR and the Presidential Council the Conversion Program for 1991-1995, which was approved in December 1990. The program provided for a sharp increase in the output of civilian products at defense enterprises of the ministries of general and medium machine building, shipbuilding, electronics, radio engineering and aviation industries. Twelve areas of conversion were identified: for the production of durable goods, agricultural machinery, electronics, computer technology, communications equipment, equipment for light and food industries, trade and public catering, etc., and each of the above ministries had to implement one of these directions.

At the same time, the conversion of enterprises, industries and areas of the defense complex to the production of civilian products became a rather expensive undertaking. Before starting to earn a profit, the converted enterprise had to go through several stages: conversion planning, selection of alternative civilian products, conversion in the field of R & D, direct activity on the re-profiling of production, retraining of workers and employees, choice of the form of management, etc. Enterprises at the initial stage had to look for ways to reduce the cost of their products and increase the profitability of production. All this required large financial investments, but the state budget suffered from chronic deficits. During the transition to a market economy, bank loans were relied upon, but the capitalization of the banking sector was extremely small, which soon gave rise to long-term problems of the stability and efficiency of the Russian banking system.

Already the first results of the conversion of enterprises revealed many difficulties: lack of raw materials, lack of appropriate technologies to maintain the required level of labor productivity, difficulties in finding business partners. By the end of 1989, instead of the planned 120 types of civilian products, military enterprises managed to launch only 23 types, of which only 15% met international quality standards. In 1988 - 1990, the production of consumer goods by defense enterprises increased by 9% per year, and in 1990 the share of civilian products in the total production of the defense industry was approximately 50%. These indicators, as well as the quality of products, were much lower than originally planned.

The cooperative movement also did not show impressive results. On the one hand, the number of cooperatives continued to increase. If at the end of 1988 there were 77,000 cooperatives in the country, by the beginning of 1990 their number was 193,100. Particularly intensive was the development of building cooperatives for the production of industrial and technical products.

On the other hand, the proportion of cooperatives for the production of consumer goods and consumer services for the population as a whole in the USSR in 1989 amounted to only 34% of the total number of operating cooperatives against 51% in 1988, and the proceeds from the sale of products amounted to 25.8%, respectively. and 48%285.

In the Uzbek and Turkmen Republics, where the level of production of consumer goods per capita was the lowest in the country and where there was an abundance of labor resources, the volume of goods produced and services provided by cooperatives amounted to only 28% and 29% of the total volume of products sold cooperatives.

The volume of consumer goods and services produced by cooperatives was not wholly complementary to that previously produced by state-owned enterprises. This was explained by the fact that, to a large extent, the cooperative sector grew as a result of the transformation of operating state enterprises and their subdivisions into cooperatives, i.e. there was a shift to a cooperative form of what was previously produced by state enterprises.

Moreover, cooperatives created in this way provided additional income, as a rule, not by reducing production costs, but by increasing the cost of their products.

According to the USSR State Statistics Committee, prices for goods sold by cooperatives were 1.7 times higher than state retail prices. The price coefficient of the cooperative market in relation to state trade in outerwear and transport services was 150%, footwear and car service services - 150-200%, knitwear - 150-170%, etc. For this reason, a significant part of consumers considered cooperative goods and services inaccessible to themselves, although they experienced a shortage of many of them.

In addition, the orientation of cooperatives to serve enterprises and organizations, rather than the population, increased. The share of products sold by cooperatives to the population decreased during 1989 and amounted to only 15% as of 1990. The USSR Law "On Cooperation in the USSR" gave the right to cooperatives to produce not only consumer goods and services, but also industrial and technical products. Using this right, many cooperatives began to fulfill the orders of enterprises to the detriment of the saturation of the consumer market. Thus, certain hopes for overcoming the growing disproportion between monetary income and commodity coverage, associated with the revival of the cooperative movement, did not come true.

A public opinion poll conducted by VTsIOM in 41 cities of the country in April 1989 showed that 91% of respondents consider the prices for cooperative goods and services too high. Almost half of the survey participants were not satisfied with the quality and range of cooperative products.

As a result of the fact that cooperatives were allowed to fulfill the orders of state enterprises, the payment for which was previously made by bank transfer, a significant part of non-cash turnover was redistributed into cash circulation. Thus, in 1989, banks issued cash in the amount of 20.6 billion rubles from the accounts of cooperatives, while 1.7 billion rubles were credited to their accounts in cash. In addition, enterprises and organizations, concluding contracts with cooperatives for the production of products, the performance of works and services, paid for them from the production development fund and did not always adjust the indicators used to determine the wage fund, which led to excessive issuance of cash.

There was a practice when enterprises, in order to purchase market fund goods, transferred non-cash funds to cooperatives and through them bought household appliances and equipment in retail trade.

The key issue in the activities of cooperatives was their material and technical support. To perform their functions, cooperatives were supposed, first of all, to make the most of local and secondary resources, stale and unnecessary values, to purchase surplus agricultural products from the population, collective farms, state farms, collective farm markets, etc. Instead, cooperatives preferred to buy raw materials and materials needed for production from state-owned enterprises, as well as in retail trade at the expense of market funds. According to a survey conducted by the USSR State Statistics Committee at the end of 1989, 63% of raw materials and materials used for the production of sold products were purchased from state-owned enterprises by cooperatives, 13% from the retail network of state trade and consumer cooperation. At the same time, 60% of raw materials and materials were purchased by cooperatives from state-owned enterprises at negotiated prices.

The activities of cooperatives were focused mainly on obtaining high personal incomes. There was an increase in cash income from cooperatives: in 1988, the income amounted to 3 billion rubles, in 1989 - 16 billion rubles. However, the wage fund grew at a faster pace than the volume of output. In 1989 the cooperatives produced products and provided services worth 40 billion rubles, but only 7 billion rubles were sold to the population. Thus, the cost of wages in cooperatives was 2.3 times higher than the contribution of cooperatives to meeting the needs of the population in goods and services.

In practice, the majority of cooperatives used the received income primarily for wages (in other words, for cashing out) and did not seek to develop their material and technical base. This was possible thanks to the law on cooperation in the USSR, according to which the distribution of gross income for production and social development, as well as for wages, was the exclusive right of the general meeting of members of the cooperative. In this regard, cooperatives were able to direct most of their income to wages. According to the USSR State Statistics Committee, on average, about 70% of the income remaining at the disposal of cooperatives was directed by them to the payment fund.

labor, and in the production development fund - 15%.

According to the results of an audit by the financial authorities of cooperatives in the Ukrainian SSR, it was revealed that for the first half of 1989, in the whole republic, deductions to the development fund amounted to 13.2%, to the insurance fund - 4.2%, and wages - 73.5%. In the Zaporozhye region, 42 cooperatives did not produce at all

contributions to funds, and all income was directed to wages.

The “Service” cooperative for the provision of personal services (Uzbek SSR) spent 92% of its profits on wages. At the same time, services were sold at prices 120% higher than the state ones. The cooperative "Moda" in the city of Fergas sent 92% of the profit to the payroll fund, to the production development fund -

only 1%, and no funds were deducted to the insurance fund at all.

According to the USSR State Statistics Committee, for 9 months of 1989 the wage fund of cooperatives that produced consumer goods amounted to 47.6% of production costs, while in the relevant sectors of the public sector, wages, including contributions to social insurance, ranged from 12% to 21%.

In June 1989, the First Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR adopted a resolution "On the main directions of the domestic and foreign policy of the USSR", which set the task of switching to a new model of the economy, including a radical renewal of property relations, the formation of a socialist market, and ridding the state of the functions of direct intervention in the operational management of business units. At the same time, the State Commission for Economic Reform under the Council of Ministers of the USSR was formed, which was headed by the director of the Institute of Economics, Academician L.I. Abalkin, long known for his "market" beliefs. At the same time, Abalkin took the post of Deputy Prime Minister. In addition to serious theoretical work, prominent scientists who became part of the government were also engaged in practical solutions to current issues.

In October 1989, the Commission presented a program that provided for the gradual abandonment of the basic socialist principles in the economy and the recognition of the priority of the market over the plan - "Concept-90"290. At the same time, central planning and direct intervention in the economy were to be preserved. Among the proposed measures were the introduction of market prices and convertible currencies, the promotion of competition, the creation of stock exchanges, and so on. At the end of the same year, this program was adopted by the Second Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR.

The practical implementation of the Program involved two stages: in 1990-1992, it was envisaged to eliminate the budget deficit, balance the consumer market, and reform taxation and pricing. In 1993-1995, a market was to be formed in the conditions of maintaining the state plan and the ownership structure was to be changed291. Thus, a variant of a gradual, evolutionary transition to market relations, calculated for 6 - 8 years, was proposed. As N.I. explains Ryzhkov, a “new model was needed that would stimulate the development of the national economy without radical upheavals”292. Preference was given to administrative methods.

In addition to the plan for an evolutionary transition to socially oriented market relations, the Commission also prepared two more radical projects, including the simultaneous removal of all restrictions on market mechanisms, the complete abandonment of price and income control, and a massive transition to new forms of ownership. In fact, this was the same option that E.T. began to implement since the beginning of 1992. Gaidar and his associates under the slogan of "shock therapy"293.

In November 1989, the Second Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR supported the Ryzhkov-Abalkin program. During 1990, it was planned to carry out serious measures to saturate the consumer market. The implementation of these measures, in turn, required the establishment of more effective control over the movement of the mass of commodities and the monetary incomes of the population. However, the State Planning Commission placed its main bet on the growth of market resources for goods and services, and put the task of withdrawing unsecured money supply from circulation into the background. Dissatisfaction with M.S. Gorbachev was caused by the fact that the program proposed for the consideration of people's deputies did not analyze the results of its previous stage, did not mention the fundamental party and government decisions adopted in 1987: “Through whose fault did they remain, in fact, on paper? If they turned out to be insufficient and all the more erroneous, it was necessary to say what exactly, to learn lessons. If for some other reason - tell about them. And then they just pretended that everything starts with

The final resolution of the parliamentarians on the program submitted for consideration read: to support the program, but not to make a final decision, but to instruct the government to finalize it and inform the Supreme Council about the results.

Skepticism and wariness of people's deputies were not accidental. The impression was created that the concept of the reform was “stuck” at the level of the theoretical developments of 1987, and in some places there was even a retreat. For example, the state order was preserved, albeit with reservations. The reform of prices and pricing was replaced by the development and introduction of wholesale and purchase prices from the beginning of 1991, retail prices were kept silent. Instead of moving from centralized distribution to wholesale trade in resources, it was planned to increase the share of products sold by enterprises in excess of the state order at free or regulated prices. After lengthy coordination and study, the government sent this program to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in May 1990. At the same time, various organizations and groups of scientists were preparing numerous alternative projects for economic reforms. Among them, the 400 Days of Trust program, prepared by young economists Grigory Yavlinsky, Mikhail Zadornov and Alexei Mikhailov, stood out. Inspired by the “shock therapy” during the economic reform in Poland, the authors proposed to ensure the transition to a market economy within 400 days: the adoption of a package of fundamental laws necessary for the functioning of a market economy; tight monetary policy, reducing the budget deficit and halting the growth of the money supply; carrying out land reform, reducing military spending; gradual price liberalization; rapid mass privatization; introduction of a convertible ruble. As a result, “the genotype of a new economic system should have arisen, which will be able to develop itself in the future, without extraordinary efforts on the part of the state.”

In the summer of 1990 M.S. Gorbachev came to the conclusion that it was necessary to prepare a new program for the transition to a market economy, common for the entire Soviet Union. In July 1990, he held a meeting with the newly appointed Deputy Chairman of the Russian Council of Ministers G.A. Yavlinsky, as a result of which the idea was born to create an independent commission to develop an economic reform program, an alternative to the one that was being finalized by the union government headed by N.I. Ryzhkov. This idea led to a temporary political rapprochement between the leadership of the USSR and the RSFSR.

Soon, on July 27, an instruction was given to create a working group to prepare an allied program for the transition to a market economy. This order was signed by the President of the USSR M.S. Gorbachev, Chairman of the Supreme Council of the RSFSR B.I. Yeltsin, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR N.I. Ryzhkov and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR Silaev. The working group consisted mainly of economists: Shatalin (team leader), Petrakov, Vavilov, Yavlinsky, Zadornov, Mikhailov, Fedorov, Yasin and others. Members of the group could also be representatives of the governments of the Union republics. The developers were instructed to prepare the concept of the program before September 1, 1990.

G.A. Yavlinsky sought to base his work on the 400 Days program. However, in reality, as one of the members of the working group and the future Minister of Finance of the RSFSR B.G. Fedorov, who prepared sections of the program on finance, lending and foreign economic relations, “only the propaganda principle of “days” remained in the document, and everything else was written anew using various developments”295.

The program was seen as the basis of the economic part of the future union agreement. The program was based on the idea of ​​preserving the republics within the Union under new conditions, gradual liberalization of prices and markets, consistent and thoughtful privatization through corporatization, etc. At the same time, the developers proceeded from the belief that the republics would have to bear full responsibility for the economic development of their territories. The supremacy of republican legislation over union legislation was recognized. But at the same time, the authors believed that "an economic union should contribute to the creation and development of a single economic space." The Center was supposed to transfer the following powers: -

creation of economic conditions for maintaining defense capabilities, ensuring state security and combating organized crime; -

development and implementation of major national economic programs of all-Union significance; -

implementation of a coordinated monetary and foreign exchange policy aimed at strengthening the purchasing power of the ruble; -

regulation on an all-Union scale of prices for key types of energy carriers, raw materials, goods and services, as well as the development and introduction of uniform customs rules; -

development and coordination with the republics of the main directions of foreign economic policy; -

ensuring environmental safety; -

management of areas of activity and targeted programs that, by their nature, require unified leadership.

Within 500 days of implementing the program, the foundations of a market economy were to be formed in the country. According to the logic of the program, at the first stage, a tough monetary and financial policy was to be implemented, aimed at reducing the excess money supply in circulation. The starting point of the reform, according to the authors, was to be the balancing of the swollen money supply and commodity supply. All this indicated that the members of the working group clearly saw the main problems of the Russian economy. In addition, the program contained a secret appendix, which described the implementation of the confiscatory currency reform.

During the first hundred days, the program provided for a 15% reduction in funding for the Ministry of Defense and the State Security Committee, a 50% reduction in purchases of weapons and military construction, an inventory of all unfinished construction projects, and the termination of subsidies and subsidies to enterprises. Particular attention was paid to pricing: unlike Ryzhkov’s program, the 500 Days program provided for the state’s refusal to administratively raise prices for consumer goods, and by the end of 1991, the share of free prices was to be 75% of the volume of purchases of goods and services.

So, by September there were two economic programs. One is official government. The other is oppositional, but, paradoxically, developed under the auspices of the head of state and the popular Russian leader.

At the end of August 1990, the 500 Days program began to experience stiff resistance from the allied leaders and, first of all, Ryzhkov, Abalkin, Maslyukov, Lukyanov, Pavlov and Shcherbakov, who tried to convince Gorbachev that this program was completely inconsistent with the interests of the country, and indeed in general, in its impracticability: they say, you cannot reform a gigantic country in 500 days.

On September 1, Ryzhkov signed the government version of the program, but the Russian authorities, trying to be a few steps ahead, on September 3 handed out the 500 Days program to the deputies of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR. Literally seven days later, on September 11, the Russian parliament discussed the program and soon adopted it296. Gorbachev in his memoirs called this act of the Russian parliamentarians an attempt "to put pressure on the center, to oppose the development of a common program, to present us with a fait accompli." In any case, the intention to implement the "500 days" on a republican scale looked like a completely empty idea, since any financial stabilization should begin with the establishment of control over the issue of money, but the "printing press" was still under the jurisdiction of the union center.

On September 11, Ryzhkov made a report at a session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on the preparation of an all-Union program for the transition to a market economy. The main principles of the program boiled down to the following: “The first is the recognition, within reasonable, economically and politically justified limits, of the sovereignty of the republics. The second principle is the creation of a nationwide market while coordinating monetary, financial, and customs policies, implementing inter-republican programs, and managing those sectors that are of national importance. And the third is to ensure the most favorable conditions for the free operation of enterprises of all forms of ownership”298.

Speaking at the same meeting, M.S. Gorbachev made it clear to the deputies that he was more sympathetic to the 500 Days program. As a result, at the end of September, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR instructed the President to carry out work on preparing by October 15 a unified program for the transition to a market economy on the basis of "500 days". In this regard, a compromise, “conciliatory” commission was formed by A.B. Aganbegyan to prepare a combined project of economic reforms based on Russian and allied versions of programs.

Within the stipulated time, Gorbachev presented to the Supreme Council a document prepared on 60 pages, but this was not a program or even a concept, but only “Main Directions for Stabilizing the National Economy and Transitioning to a Market Economy.” Gorbachev himself explains it this way: “The republics should have been given the right to decide when and what specific measures to take. And the center was supposed to provide overall coordination in the implementation of reforms. Hence the name of the document...”299. Nevertheless, it was in this form that the Supreme Soviet almost unanimously adopted the program for the transition to a market economy.

Thus, Gorbachev, having penetrated into the essence of what the pros and cons of a radical reform, and being unable to overcome the fear of a social explosion that Abalkin so scared him, refused to support the 500 Days program and rapprochement with Yeltsin. The autumn confrontation (1990) between the government program and the 500 Days alternative project ended with the final approval of the line formed by the allied Council of Ministers under the leadership of N.I. Ryzhkov. On this occasion, E.T. Gaidar wrote that “from that moment, until the autumn of 1991, it was possible to forget about any economically meaningful policy. A fierce struggle for power began between the collapsing Union and Russia. Yavlinsky and his team resigned in October 1990, subsequently stating repeatedly that the implementation of the "500 days" would have saved the union state. The change of government had practically no effect on Yeltsin's popularity, but Gorbachev's personal rating fell to an extremely low level.

F.M. Burlatsky believes that the 500 Days program was originally intended by its creators to become a platform for uniting Gorbachev and Yeltsin. But the unification did not work out, and both leaders began to use this program to fight for power. “It was clear to each of them (Gorbachev and Yeltsin - R.K.), - Burlatsky develops his judgments, - that in the course of its implementation (the “500 Days” program - R.K.) they would have to make extremely unpopular decisions that infringe on the interests of voters . And they were afraid to take responsibility for it, trying to put the blame on the other side for abandoning it.”301

In addition, despite the fact that the 500 Days program was based on an analysis of the actual state of the economy, its authors set aside too short a time frame for building the foundations of market relations. Speaking on October 19, 1990 at a meeting of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, N.I. Ryzhkov stated that “the country needs not 500 days to get on the right road to the market, but years. At least 6-8 years”302. When Yavlinsky visited the United States in 1991 to discuss his 500 Days project, he was provided with an analysis of the economic situation in the USSR, which indicated that a market breakthrough could not occur until 1997303.

In fact, economic reform projects have become hostages of political games. The catastrophically growing economic difficulties of the USSR were used to conduct a political struggle between the central and Russian authorities.

It would not be superfluous to add that the leaders of this struggle themselves - Gorbachev and Yeltsin - were not specialists in economics. They, as Burlatsky writes, "had neither the knowledge nor the experience to start a grandiose restructuring of the state economy into a market economy." They began reforms in the usual command-administrative style of “invasion of party secretaries into economic problems”304.

Invaluable time to take saving steps to stabilize the economy was lost. The year 1990 was drowned in endless bickering, confrontation and competition for political power. More than ever, a lot was said about the economy, but impermissibly little was done.

For the period 1986-1989, the increase in the produced national income amounted to only 1.3%, while for 1981-1985 this figure was 3.2%, and for 1976-1980 - 4.3%305. The increase in industrial output for 1986-1990 was 2.5%, for comparison: for 1981-1985 - 3.6%, for 1976-1980 - 4.4% 06. At the same time, in the late 80s there was a steady decline in the growth rate of total output by industry.

In 1990, for the first time (compared to 1989), in absolute terms, the produced national income and, accordingly, the gross domestic product307 fell.

By October 1, 1990, credit investments of the banking system in the national economy amounted to about 360 billion rubles. Since the beginning of the year they have decreased by 31.5 billion rubles, and compared with the end of 1985 - by more than 160 billion rubles. Oddly enough, but working capital in the economy did not decrease - the decrease in credit investments in the national economy occurred mainly due to debt cancellation.

The country's finances were in complete disarray. The negative processes that took place in the economy, and above all the violation of contractual relations between enterprises, their irrational use of fixed and working capital, caused a sharp deterioration in payment discipline. A significant part of bank loans turned out to be irrevocable. Thus, more than 200 billion rubles (almost half of the credits to the national economy) were invested in the enterprises of the USSR State Agro-Industrial Complex, one of the most unprofitable national economic complexes. Despite huge subsidies, increased markups for products sold and rising contract prices, it had the highest percentage of delinquent loans and defaults. The total amount of overdue debts in the national economy increased by 1.9 times in 1990 and amounted to 43.2 billion rubles, including mutual debts of economic agencies - 34 billion rubles and bank loans - 9.2 billion rubles. The amount of non-payments in industry reached 24.8 billion rubles, in construction - 11.3 billion rubles308.

Under these conditions, the opportunities for early repayment of loans by enterprises and organizations that had a stable financial position and free funds in settlement accounts were not fully used. According to the data of special banks, the balances of enterprises' funds on settlement accounts have increased compared to 1989.

year by 1.5%. However, enterprises preferred to use these funds not to pay off debts on loans, but to pay for labor, construction, the formation of excess inventories, and even to provide loans to other enterprises.

Machine-building enterprises were in an extremely difficult financial condition, on the priority development of which the country's leadership staked in the mid-80s. That is, exactly what the critics of the idea of ​​developing the machine-building industry had feared happened. During the years of operation of these enterprises in conditions of self-financing and self-financing, out of the total debt on the above loans in the amount of 1,369.1 million rubles, by the end of 1990, about 407 million rubles were repaid. The balance of the debt amounted to 962.1 million rubles. In such a situation, local institutions of banks - creditors began to write off funds from the accounts of enterprises in repayment of loans, regardless of the standards approved by enterprises for 1990

year, obligations to the budget, suppliers and other bodies. This, in turn, led to even greater non-payments in the national economy, affected the failure to fulfill sales plans, profits, payments to the budget, under-allocation of economic incentive funds and created even worse conditions for the transition to market relations.

In 1990, the lack of credit resources began to be clearly felt. A significant part of the credit resources of the banking system went to cover the state budget deficit. As of January 1, 1991, the state domestic debt to banks amounted to 519.5 billion rubles with an increase of 169 billion rubles over the year, and its share in the placement of funds increased from 44.9% to 55%.

Along with direct lending to the state budget, part of the credit resources was used to cover the debts of the budgets of the USSR and the republics for differences in prices for agricultural products. As of January 1, 1991, this debt amounted to 61.6 billion rubles, with an increase over the year by 22 billion rubles, or 55.6%.

Specialized banks began to refuse loans to enterprises, but it was far from always possible to stop the involvement of loans in covering mismanagement. So, at the end of 1989, local institutions of the USSR Promstroybank did not accept a number of construction projects for financing. The enterprises for which construction was carried out pledged to "mobilize internal reserves" by reducing stocks of uninstalled equipment and materials and selling unnecessary property from discontinued construction projects. Promstroybank called such sources of financing “unrealistic” and proposed to analyze the on-farm financial resources available to enterprises and organizations, including stocks of uninstalled equipment, to determine the possibility of their maximum involvement in turnover and the attraction of these resources by economic authorities as sources of financing capital investments. In response, the USSR Ministry of Finance sent a complaint to the State Bank about "illegal actions of the institution of the USSR Promstroybank." The issue was settled in the following way: Promstroibank received additional budget financing from the Ministry of Finance, and in return agreed to lend to the above construction projects, including issuing long-term loans for construction projects of the Ministry of General

At the beginning of 1990, Promstroybank of the USSR refused to grant a long-term loan of 200 million rubles to the Ministry of Defense Industry of the USSR. Then the Ministry of Industry decided to act around and asked the State Bank of the USSR to allocate

Promstroybank target loan in the amount of 200 million rubles.

to the State Bank of the USSR - 0.4 billion rubles, or 0.1% of the total amount of short-term credit investments;

Promstroibank of the USSR - 83.6 billion rubles, or 29.2%;

Agroprombank of the USSR - 141.1 billion rubles, or 49.3%;

Zhilsotsbank of the USSR - 33.9 billion rubles, or 11.8%;

Vnesheconombank of the USSR - 19.1 billion rubles, or 6.7%;

Sberbank of the USSR - 0.3 billion rubles, or 0.1%;

commercial and cooperative banks - 8 billion rubles, or 2.8%311.

About half of short-term credit investments accounted for enterprises and organizations of the agro-industrial complex, 11.5% - for enterprises of the social complex, 10.1% - for enterprises of the machine-building complex, 7.1% - for enterprises of ministries and departments that are not included in the complexes.

As of April 1990, overdue debt on short-term loans amounted to 4.7 billion rubles, or 1.7% of the total amount of short-term credit investments, and increased compared to the beginning of 1989 by 0.7 billion rubles, or 14.9 %.

The debt on a number of enterprises of the fuel and energy complex increased significantly - 2.2 times, the chemical and forestry complex - 1.7 times, and the social - 3.1 times.

As for the cooperatives, their overdue debt, which in April 1990 amounted to 117.6 million rubles, increased 4.4 times as compared to the previous year.

Non-payments by specialized banks were distributed as follows (billion rubles): Table 2 In general, by the system of banks of the USSR, including: State Bank of the USSR Promstroybank of the USSR Agroprombank of the USSR Zhilsotsbank of the USSR Vnesheconombank of the USSR Commercial and cooperative banks Total non-payments as of April 1, 1990 26.2 0.1 13.1 9.6 2.5 0.8 0.1 For reference: April 1, 1989 20.1 0.6 8.4 8.6 2.2 0.2 - Data on non-payments to specialized banks



Socialism with a human face
The primary source is a television speech (July 18, 1968) by the leader of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, Alexander Dubcek (1921 - 1992), in which he called for "such a policy so that socialism does not lose its human face." Probably, A. Dubcek in this case used the image of the American political scientist A. Hadley, author of the book "Power with a human face" ("Power \" s Human Face, 1965).
Allegorically: about an attempt to combine the socialist doctrine (as expounded by K. Marx, F. Engels and V. I. Lenin) with the values ​​of a democratic, civilized society.

Encyclopedic Dictionary of winged words and expressions. - M.: "Lokid-Press". Vadim Serov. 2003 .

See what "Socialism with a human face" is in other dictionaries:

- "Socialism with a human face" (Czech. Socialismus s lidskou tváří) was an expression used to characterize an attempt to soften the totalitarian nature of the state in Czechoslovakia in 1968. In a broader sense, it can mean an attempt ... ... Wikipedia

DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM- a utopian concept and program that proclaims the possibility of building (under the dominance of state / collective ownership of the means of production) a non-totalitarian society through the comprehensive use of procedures ... ... Sociology: Encyclopedia

This term has other meanings, see Prague Spring (meanings). "Prague Spring" (Czech. "Pražské jaro", Slovak. "Pražská jar") a period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia from January 5 to August 20, 1968, ending with the introduction of ... Wikipedia

Check neutrality. The talk page should have details... Wikipedia

- "Prague Spring" (Czech. "Pražské jaro", Slovak. "Pražská jar") the period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia from January 5 to August 20, 1968, ending with the entry into the country of Soviet troops and troops of the Warsaw Pact countries (except ... ... Wikipedia

- (Czechoslovakia) * Československá socialistická republika (ČSSR) unitary (since 1969 federal) republic ← ... Wikipedia

Historical Bohemia (Bohemia) a region in Central Europe lying between Silesia, Saxony[ambiguous reference], Bavaria, Austria and Moravia, between the Oder and Danube rivers, northeast of the Alps. Contents 1 Prehistoric period ... Wikipedia

SIXTY-SEATERS, the generation of the Soviet intelligentsia, formed after the XX Congress of the CPSU (see TWENTIETH CONGRESS of the CPSU) mainly in the 1960s. (hence the name). The concept of "sixties" appeared back in the 19th century, but referred mainly to ... ... encyclopedic Dictionary

- ← July → Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun 1 2 3 4 5 ... Wikipedia

Czech Republic Czech. Česká republika ... Wikipedia

Books

• Logomachy. Timur Kibirov's poem "Message to L. S. Rubinstein" as a literary monument, M. N. Zolotonosov. The book publishes the text of Timur Kibirov's poem "Message to L. S. Rubinshtein" and a study dedicated to it, in which the poem is considered as a unique literary monument of the transition…