The last empire was the fall of the Soviet Union with the bad. "The Last Empire

It is unlikely that anyone would argue that the Solomon Islands is a paradise, although, on the other hand, there are worse places in the world. But to a beginner, unfamiliar with life far from civilization, the Solomon Islands may seem like a living hell.

True, tropical fever still rages there, and dysentery, and all sorts of skin diseases; the air is so thoroughly saturated with poison, which, seeping into every scratch and abrasion, turns them into festering ulcers, so that few people manage to get out of there alive, and even the strongest and most healthy people often return to their homeland in miserable ruins. It is also true that the native inhabitants of the Solomon Islands are still in a rather savage state; they are very eager to eat human flesh and are obsessed with collecting human heads. Sneaking up to your prey from behind and with one blow of a club to kill her vertebrae at the base of the skull is considered there the height of hunting art. Until now, on some islands, as, for example, in Malaita, the weight of a person in society depends on the number of people killed by him, as in our case - on a current bank account; human heads are the most traded item of exchange, and the heads of whites are especially valued. Very often, several villages come together and start a common cauldron, which is replenished from month to month, until some brave warrior presents a fresh head of a white man, with blood not yet dried on it, and demands in exchange all the accumulated good.

All this is true, and yet there are many white people who live in the Solomon Islands by the dozen and are sad when they have to leave them. A white man can live a long time in the Solomon Islands - for this he needs only caution and luck, and besides, he must be indomitable. The seal of indomitability must be marked by his thoughts and actions. He must be able to meet failure with magnificent indifference, he must have colossal conceit, confidence that whatever he does is right; must, finally, unshakably believe in his racial superiority and never doubt that one white man at any time can cope with a thousand blacks, and on Sundays with two thousand. This is what made the white indomitable. Yes, and one more circumstance: a white who wants to be indomitable, not only must deeply despise all other races and put himself above all others, but must also be deprived of all fantasies. Nor should he delve into the motives, thoughts, and customs of the blacks, yellows, and redskins, for this is by no means the white race that was guided in its triumphal procession around the globe.

Bertie Arkwright was not one of those whites. For this he was too nervous and sensitive, with an overdeveloped imagination. He perceived all impressions too painfully, he reacted too sharply to his surroundings. Therefore, the Solomon Islands were the most unsuitable place for him. True, he did not intend to stay there for a long time. Five weeks, until the next steamer arrived, was, in his opinion, quite enough to satisfy the craving for the primitive, which tickled his nerves so pleasantly. At least in this way, although in slightly different terms, he outlined his plans to his fellow travelers on the Makembo, and they looked at him as a hero, for they themselves, as befits traveling ladies, intended to get acquainted with the Solomon Islands without leaving the ship decks.

There was another passenger on board the ship, who, however, did not enjoy the attention of the fair sex. He was a small, shriveled man with a sun-kissed, sun-kissed face. His name - the one under which he was listed in the list of passengers - did not say anything to anyone. But the nickname - Captain Malu - was well known to all the natives from New Hanover to the New Hebrides; they even frightened naughty children with it. Using everything - the labor of savages, the most barbaric measures, fever and hunger, the bullets and whips of the overseers - he amassed a fortune of five million, expressed in vast reserves of trepang and sandalwood, mother-of-pearl and tortoiseshell, palm nuts and copra, in land plots, factories and plantations.

There was more indomitability in one crippled little finger of Captain Malu than in the whole being of Bertie Arkwright. But what can you do! Traveling ladies are judged mainly by appearance, and Bertie's appearance always won him the sympathy of the ladies.

Conversing once with Captain Malu in the smoking room, Bertie revealed to him his firm intention to experience "a stormy and dangerous life in the Solomon Islands," as he put it on this occasion. Captain Malu agreed that this was a very bold and masculine intention. But his real interest in Bertie only a few days later, when he decided to show him his .44 automatic pistol. After explaining the loading system, Bertie inserted a loaded magazine into the handle for clarity.

“See how simple it is,” he said, pulling the barrel back. Now the pistol is loaded and the hammer is cocked. It remains only to pull the trigger, up to eight times, at any desired speed. And look here, at the fuse latch. That's what I like most about this system. Complete security! The possibility of an accident is absolutely excluded! He pulled out the magazine and continued: “Here! See how secure this system is?

As Bertie manipulated, Captain Malu's faded eyes followed the pistol intently, especially towards the end, when the muzzle fell just in the direction of his stomach.

“Please point your gun at something else,” he said.

"It's not loaded," Bertie reassured him. - I pulled out the store. And unloaded pistols don't shoot, as you know.

- It happens that the stick shoots.

This system won't fire.

But you still turn it the other way.

Captain Malu spoke quietly and calmly, with a metallic edge to his voice, but his eyes never left the muzzle of the pistol until Bertie finally turned it aside.

“Would you like to bet five pounds that the gun is not loaded?” Bertie exclaimed with warmth.

His interlocutor shook his head.

Okay, I'll show you...

And Bertie put the gun to his head with the obvious intention of pulling the trigger.

“Wait a minute,” Captain Malu said calmly, holding out his hand.

Let me take another look at him.

He pointed the pistol at sea and pulled the trigger. A deafening shot rang out, the mechanism clicked and threw a smoking cartridge case onto the deck. Bertie froze with his mouth open.

“I think I pulled back the barrel, didn’t I?” he muttered. - So silly…

He smiled pitifully and sank heavily into his chair. There was not a trace of blood in his face, there were dark circles under his eyes, his hands were shaking so much that he could not bring a trembling cigarette to his mouth. He had too much imagination: he already saw himself sprawled on the deck with a bullet through his head.

- W-w-here's the story! he murmured.

“Nothing, good stuff,” said Captain Malu, returning the pistol.

On board the Makembo was a government resident returning from Sydney, and with his permission the steamer called at Oogie to disembark a missionary. A small two-masted boat, the Arla, was stationed at Oogie, under the command of the skipper Hansen. The Arla, like many others, also belonged to Captain Mal: and at his invitation, Bertie switched to her to stay there for several days and take part in a recruiting voyage along the coast of Malaita. Four days later he was to be taken to the Reminj plantation (also the property of Captain Malu), where he could live for a week, and then go to Tulagi - the residence of the resident - and stay at his house. It remains to mention two proposals made by Captain Malu to the skipper Hansen and Mr. Garivel, the manager of the plantation, after which he disappears for a long time from our story. The essence of both proposals came down to the same thing - to show Mr. Bertram Arkwright "a stormy and full of dangers of life in the Solomon Islands." It is also said that Captain Malu hinted that whoever gave Mr. Arkwright the most vivid experience would receive a bonus in the form of a case of Scotch whisky.

“Between us, Swartz has always been a complete idiot. Once he took four of his rowers to Tulagi to be whipped there - of course, quite officially. And with them he went back on a whaleboat. The sea was a little stormy, and the whaleboat capsized. Everyone escaped, well, but Svarts - Svarts drowned. Of course, it was an accident.

– Is that how? Very interesting,” Bertie remarked absently, as all his attention was absorbed by the black giant at the helm.

Oogie remained astern, and the Arla glided lightly over the sparkling surface of the sea, heading towards the densely forested shores of Malaita. A large nail was smartly threaded through the tip of the helmsman’s nose, which so attracted Bertie’s attention, a necklace of trouser buttons flaunted around his neck, a can opener, a broken toothbrush, a clay pipe, a copper alarm wheel and several shells from Winchester cartridges hung in his ears; half a china plate dangled from his chest. About forty blacks, decorated in much the same way, sprawled around the deck in different places. Fifteen of them were the crew of the ship, the rest were recruited workers.

“Accident, of course,” said the Arla's mate Jacobs, a lean, dark-eyed man who looked more like a professor than a sailor. “Johnny Bedil almost had the same accident, too. He, too, was taking home a few carved ones, and they overturned his boat. But he swam no worse than them and escaped with the help of a hook and a revolver, and two blacks drowned. Also an accident.

“That happens a lot around here,” said the skipper. “Look at that guy at the helm, Mr. Arkwright!” After all, the real cannibal. Six months ago, he, along with the rest of the crew, drowned the then skipper of the Arla. Right on deck, sir, over there by the mizzen mast.

- And what kind of deck they brought - it was scary to look at, - said the assistant.

- Excuse me, you want to say ... - began Bertie.

“Here, here,” skipper Hansen interrupted him. - Accident. A man drowned.

“But what about on deck?”

- Yes, that's it. Just between us, they used an axe.

- And this is your current crew ?!

Skipper Hansen nodded.

“That skipper was very careless,” the mate explained. - Turned his back on them, well ... and suffered.

“We will have to avoid unnecessary noise,” the skipper complained. - The government always stands behind the Black Sea. We cannot shoot first, but must wait for the black to shoot. Otherwise the government will declare it a murder and you will be sent to Fiji. That's why there are so many accidents. Drowning, what can you do.

Dinner was served, and Bertie and the skipper went downstairs, leaving the mate on deck.

“Look out for that damn Auki,” the skipper warned in parting. - Something I do not like lately his mug.

"All right," the assistant replied.

The dinner was not over yet, and the skipper was just about halfway through his story about how the crew on the Chiefs of Scotland was carved out.

“Yes,” he said, “it was an excellent ship, one of the best on the coast. They did not have time to turn in time, well, they ran into a reef, and then a whole flotilla of canoes immediately attacked them. There were five whites and twenty crewmen from Samoa and Santa Cruz on board, and one second officer escaped. In addition, sixty recruits died. All their savages - kai-kai. What is kai-kai? I'm sorry, I meant to say they were all eaten. Then another "James Edwards", perfectly equipped ...

The mate's loud swearing interrupted the skipper. There were wild screams on the deck, then three shots rang out, and something heavy fell into the water. In one leap, skipper Hansen blasted up the gangplank leading to the deck, drawing his revolver as he went. Bertie climbed up too, though not so fast, and cautiously poked his head out of the hatch. But nothing happened. On the deck stood an assistant with a revolver in his hand, shaking as if in a fever. Suddenly he shuddered and jumped aside, as if he was in danger from behind.

“The native has fallen overboard,” he reported in a strange, ringing voice. - He couldn't swim.

- Who was that? the skipper asked sternly.

“Excuse me, I think I heard the shots,” intervened Bertie, feeling a pleasant thrill from the consciousness of danger - all the more pleasant that the danger had already passed.

The assistant turned sharply to him and growled:

- Lies! Nobody fired. Black hare just fell overboard.

Hansen looked at Bertie with unblinking, unseeing eyes.

“I thought—” Bertie began.

- Shots? the skipper said thoughtfully. “Did you hear the shots, Mr. Jacobs?”

“Not a single one,” answered the assistant.

The skipper turned triumphantly to his guest.

“Obviously an accident. Let's go downstairs, Mr. Arkwright, and finish dinner.

That night Bertie slept in a tiny cabin separated from the wardroom and importantly called the captain's cabin. A gun pyramid flaunted at the bow bulkhead. Three more guns hung over the head of the bunk. There was a large box under the bunk, in which Bertie found cartridges, dynamite, and several boxes of fuse-cord. Bertie preferred to move to the sofa against the opposite wall, and then his eyes fell on the ship's magazine "Arla", lying on the table. It never occurred to him that this magazine had been made especially for him by Captain Malu. From the journal, Bertie learned that on the twenty-first of September two sailors had fallen overboard and drowned. But now Bertie had already learned to read between the lines and knew how to understand it. Then he read about how, in the bushes on Suu, a whaleboat from the Arla was ambushed and lost three people killed; how, during the signaling, all the rowers in the boat were killed by an accidental explosion of dynamite. He also read about night attacks on a schooner, about her hasty escape from her anchorages under the cover of darkness, about attacks by forest dwellers on a crew in the mangroves, and about battles with savages in lagoons and bays. Every now and then Bertie came across cases of death from dysentery. With fear, he noticed that two whites, who, like him, were guests on the Arles, died in this way.

- Listen, uh! said Bertie the next day to the skipper Hansen. - I looked in your ship's log ...

The skipper was, apparently, extremely annoyed that the ship's log caught the eye of an outsider.

“So this dysentery is as much nonsense as all your accidents,” continued Bertie. What is really meant by dysentery?

The skipper was amazed at the insight of his guest, made an attempt to deny everything, then confessed.

“You see, Mr. Arkwright, here's the thing. These islands already have a sad reputation. It's getting harder every day to recruit whites to work here. Suppose a white man is killed - the Company will have to pay crazy money to lure another here. And if he died of an illness, well, then nothing. The newcomers don't mind disease, they just don't agree to be killed. When I joined the Arla, I was sure that her former skipper had died of dysentery. Then I found out the truth, but it was too late: I signed the contract.

“Besides,” added Mr. Jacobs, “there are too many accidents. This can lead to unnecessary conversations. And it's all the government's fault. What else remains to do if White is not able to protect herself from the black -faced?

"That's right," said Skipper Hansen. “Take the case of the Princess and that Yankee who served as her mate aboard. In addition to him, there were five other whites on the ship, including a government agent. The skipper, agent and second mate moved ashore in two boats. They were all slaughtered to one. On the ship remained an assistant, a boatswain and fifteen crew members, natives of Samoa and Tonga. A crowd of savages came from the shore. The assistant did not even have time to look back, as the boatswain and the crew were killed. Then he grabbed three bandoliers and two hard drives, climbed onto the mast and began to shoot from there. He seemed to go berserk at the thought that all his comrades were dead. He fired from one gun until it was hot. Then he took on something else. The deck was black with savages—well, he killed them all. He beat them in flight when they jumped overboard, beat them in the boats before they had time to grab the oars. Then they began to throw themselves into the water, they thought to swim to the shore, but he was already so furious that he shot about half a dozen more in the water. And what did he get as a reward?

“Seven years of hard labor in Fiji,” the assistant said sullenly.

“Yes, the government said that he had no right to shoot savages in the water,” the skipper explained.

“That's why they're dying of dysentery now,” Jacobs finished.

“Just think,” said Bertie, feeling a burning desire that this trip be over soon.

On the same day he had a conversation with a native who, as he was told, was a cannibal. The name of the native was Sumazai. For three years he worked on a plantation in Queensland, visited Sydney, Samoa, and Fiji. As a sailor on a recruiting schooner, he traveled almost all the islands - New Britain and New Ireland, New Guinea and the Admiralty Islands. He was a great joker and in conversation with Bertie followed the example of the skipper. Did he eat human? It happened. How many times? Well, do you remember. I also ate whites. Very tasty, but not when they are sick. Once somehow it happened to him to try the patient.

- Ugh! Bad! he exclaimed in disgust, remembering this meal. - Then I myself was very sick, I almost climbed out of the gut.

Bertie winced, but he courageously continued his questions. Does Sumazai have the heads of the dead? Yes, he hid a few heads on the shore, they are all in good condition - dried and smoked. One with long whiskers is the head of a schooner skipper. He agrees to sell it for two pounds, black heads - a pound each. He also has several children's heads, but they are poorly preserved. For them he asks only ten shillings.

A little while later, sitting down on the gangplank in thought, Bertie suddenly found next to him a native with some terrible skin disease. He jumped up and hurried away. When he asked what this guy had, they answered him - leprosy. Like lightning, he flew into his cabin and washed himself thoroughly with antiseptic soap. During the day he had to wash several more times, as it turned out that all the natives on board were sick with one or another contagious disease.

When the Arla anchored among the mangrove swamps, a double row of barbed wire was stretched over the side. It looked very impressive, and when a number of canoes appeared nearby, in which sat natives armed with spears, bows and guns, Bertie once again thought that it would be nice if the trip ended sooner.

That evening, the natives were in no hurry to leave the ship, although they were not allowed to remain on board after sunset. They even became impudent when the assistant ordered them to get out.

“Nothing, now they will sing differently with me,” said skipper Hansen, diving into the hatch.

When he returned, he furtively showed Bertie a stick with a fishhook attached to it. A simple chlorodyne apothecary bottle, wrapped in paper, with a piece of Fickford cord tied to it, might well pass for a stick of dynamite. Both Bertie and the natives were misled. As soon as the skipper Hansen set fire to the cord and fastened the hook to the loincloth of the first savage he came across, he was immediately seized with a passionate desire to find himself as soon as possible on the shore. Forgetting everything in the world and not knowing to throw off the bandage, the unfortunate rushed to the side. Behind him, hissing and smoking, a cord was dragged, and the natives began to rush headlong through the barbed wire into the sea. Bertie was horrified. Skipper Hansen too. Still would! Twenty-five of the natives he had recruited—for each he paid thirty shillings in advance—jumped overboard with the natives. He was followed by the one with the smoking bottle.

What happened next with this bottle, Bertie did not see, but since at that very time the assistant blew up a real stick of dynamite in the stern, which, of course, did not cause any harm to anyone, but Bertie with a clear conscience would swear in court that he had a native on eyes were torn to shreds.

The flight of twenty-five recruits cost the captain of the Arla forty pounds, since there was, of course, no hope of finding the fugitives in dense thickets and returning them to the ship. The skipper and assistant decided to drown their grief in iced tea. And since this tea was bottled in whiskey bottles, it never occurred to Bertie that they were consuming such an innocent drink. He only saw that they very quickly got drunk to the position of robes and began to argue fiercely about how to report the blown up native - as a drowned man or died of dysentery. Then they both began to snore, and Bertie, seeing that there was not a single sober white on board besides him, kept vigilant watch until dawn, every minute expecting an attack from the shore or a riot of the crew.

Three more days the Arla lay off the coast of Malaita, and Bertie spent three more tedious nights on watch, while the skipper and mate pumped themselves up with cold tea in the evening and slept peacefully until morning, completely relying on his vigilance. Bertie was determined that if he survived, he would definitely inform Captain Mal about their drunkenness.

Finally, the Arla anchored off the Reminge plantation in Guadalcanar. With a sigh of relief Bertie stepped ashore and shook hands with the steward. Mr. Garivel had everything ready to receive his guest.

“Just don’t worry, please, if you notice that my subordinates are not happy,” Mr. Garivel whispered in confidence, taking Bertie aside. “There are rumors that we are preparing a riot, and it is impossible not to admit that there are some reasons for this, but personally I am sure that all this is sheer nonsense.

- And-and ... many natives do you have on the plantation? Bertie asked in a low voice.

“There are four hundred people now,” Mr. Garivel said readily, “but there are three of us, and you, of course, and the skipper of the Arla with an assistant – we can easily handle them.

At that moment, a certain MacTavish, a storekeeper on the plantation, approached, and, after barely greeting Bertie, excitedly turned to Mr. Garivel with a request to immediately dismiss him.

“I have a family, children, Mr. Garivel!” I have no right to risk my life! The trouble is on the nose, even the blind can see it. The blacks are about to rebel, and here all the horrors of Hohono will be repeated!

“And what are these horrors of Hohono?” Bertie asked when the storekeeper, after much persuasion, agreed to stay until the end of the month.

"He's talking about the Hohono plantation on Isabelle Island," the steward replied. “There, the savages killed five whites on the shore, seized the schooner, slaughtered the captain and mate, and all fled in droves to Malaita. I have always said that the authorities there are too careless. They won't take us by surprise!... Come here on the veranda, Mr. Arkwright. Look what a view of the surroundings!

But Bertie was not in the mood for views. He thought about how he could get to Tulagi as soon as possible, under the wing of the resident. And while he was busy thinking about this topic, a shot suddenly rang out behind him. At the same moment Mr. Garivel dragged him swiftly into the house, nearly twisting his arm in the process.

Well, buddy, you're in luck. A drop to the left - and ... - said the manager, feeling Bertie and gradually making sure that he was safe and sound. - Forgive me, for God's sake, it's all my fault, but who would have thought

- In broad daylight...

Bertie turned pale.

“They also killed the former manager,” McTavish remarked condescendingly. - He was a good guy, sorry! The whole veranda then spattered with brains. Did you notice - there is a dark spot over there, in-he, between the porch and the door.

Bertie was so upset that the cocktail prepared and served to him by Mr. Garivel turned out to be most appropriate for him. But before he had time to raise the glass to his lips, a man in breeches and leggings entered.

– What else happened there? the manager asked, looking at the newcomer. Has the river flooded again?

“What the hell is a river—savages. Ten paces away, they crawled out of the reeds and fired at me. It's good that they had a Snyder rifle, not a Winchester, and they shot from the hip ... But I would like to know where they got this Snyder? .. Oh, sorry, Mr. Arkwright. I'm glad to welcome you.

“Mr. Brown, my assistant,” Mr. Garivel introduced him. "Now let's have a drink."

But where did they get the weapons? asked Mr. Brown. “I told you not to keep guns in the house.

“But they haven’t gone away,” Mr. Garivel said, already irritated.

Mr Brown smiled incredulously.

- Let's go see! the manager demanded.

Bertie also went to the office with the others. Entering there, Mr. Garivel triumphantly pointed to a large box standing in a dark, dusty corner.

- Fine, but then where did the villains get guns from? repeated Mr. Brown.

But then McTavish touched the box and, to everyone's amazement, lifted it without difficulty. The manager rushed to the box and tore off the lid - the box was empty. Silently and fearfully, they looked at each other. Garivel lowered his head wearily. McTavish cursed:

- Damn it! I've always said servants can't be trusted.

“Yes, the situation is serious,” Garivel admitted. - Well, nothing, we'll get out somehow. You need to give them a warning, that's all. Gentlemen, bring your rifles with you to dinner, and you, Mr. Brown, please prepare about forty or fifty sticks of dynamite. Make the cords shorter. We'll show them, rascals! And now, gentlemen, please come to the table.

Bertie couldn't stand Indian spiced rice, so he jumped ahead of the rest and jumped right into the tempting-looking omelet. He had already finished his portion when Garivel also reached for an omelette. But, taking a piece in his mouth, the manager immediately spat it out with curses.

“This is the second time,” MacTavish said ominously.

Garivel was still spitting and spitting.

"Poison," came the reply. - This cook will not escape the gallows!

“That’s how the bookkeeper from Cape Marsh went to the next world,” Brown said. He died in terrible agony. People from the Jessie said that they could hear him screaming for three miles.

“I will shackle the bastard,” Garivel hissed. It's good that we noticed in time.

Bertie sat white as a sheet, not moving or breathing. He tried to say something, but only a faint wheeze escaped his throat. Everyone looked at him with concern.

“Is it really you?” MacTavish exclaimed in fright.

Yes, yes, I ate it! A lot of! Whole plate! yelled Bertie, suddenly finding his breath like a swimmer coming to the surface.

There was a terrible silence. Bertie read his sentence in the eyes of his companions.

"Maybe it's not poison yet," Garivel said grimly.

"Let's ask the cook," Brown advised.

Smiling cheerfully, the cook entered the room, a young native with a nail in his nose and holes in his ears.

– Listen, you, Vi-Vi! What it is? Garivel snarled, poking a scrambled egg threateningly.

Such a question naturally puzzled and frightened Wee-Wee.

“Good food, you can eat,” he muttered apologetically.

“Let him try it himself,” McTavish suggested. “This is the best way to find out the truth.

Garivel grabbed a spoonful of omelet and ran up to the cook. He rushed out of the room in fear.

“All right,” Brown announced solemnly. - He will not eat, even if you cut him.

“Mr. Brown, I beg you to put shackles on him!” Garivel ordered, and then turned to Bertie reassuringly: “Don't worry, buddy, the resident will look into this matter, and if you die, the scoundrel will be hanged.

"I don't think the government will do that," MacTavish protested.

“But, gentlemen, gentlemen,” Bertie cried almost in tears, “you forget about me!

Harivel spread his hands in dismay.

“Unfortunately, my dear, this is a native poison and the antidote is not yet known. Take heart and if...

Two sharp rifle shots interrupted him. Brown entered, reloaded his rifle, and sat down at the table.

“The cook is dead,” he said. - Sudden onset of fever.

“We said here that there is no antidote for local poisons.

“Except for the gin,” said Brown.

Calling himself a brainless idiot, Garivel rushed for the gin.

“Just don’t dilute,” he warned, and Bertie, grabbing almost a glass of undiluted alcohol at once, choked, choked, and coughed so hard that tears came to his eyes.

Garivel felt his pulse and measured his temperature, he courted Bertie in every possible way, saying that maybe the omelette was still not poisoned. Brown and McTavish also expressed doubts about this, but Bertie caught a hint of insincereness in their tone. He no longer wanted to eat, and, secretly from the others, he felt his pulse under the table. The pulse quickened, there was no doubt about it, Bertie just did not realize that it was from the gin he had drunk. McTavish took his rifle and went out onto the veranda to see what was going on around the house.

"They're gathering near the kitchen," he reported as he returned. – And all with snyders. I suggest sneaking up from the other side and hitting them in the flank. Attack is the best defense, right? Will you come with me, Brown?

Harivel continued to eat as if nothing had happened, and Bertie was trembling to find that his pulse quickened another five beats. Nevertheless, he involuntarily jumped up when the shooting began. Through the frequent chirping of the Snyders, the booming shots of Brown's and McTavish's Winchesters were heard. All this was accompanied by demonic cries and screams.

“Ours put them to flight,” Garivel remarked as the screams and gunshots faded away.

Brown and McTavish returned to the table, but the latter immediately went to investigate again.

“They got dynamite,” he said on his return.

“Well, we’ll use the dynamite, too,” Garivel suggested.

Sticking five or six sticks of dynamite into their pockets, with lit cigars in their mouths, they rushed to the exit. And suddenly! .. Later they accused McTavish of negligence, and he admitted that the charge, perhaps, really was too big. One way or another, a terrible explosion shook the walls, the house at one corner rose into the air, then sat down again on its foundation. Dishes flew from the table to the floor, the wall clock with an eight-day winding stopped. Crying for revenge, the whole trio rushed into the darkness, and the bombardment began.

For almost half a century, the USSR and the United States waged a cold war, often threatening to turn into a “hot” one. The division of the world along ideological boundaries seemed eternal. But suddenly one of the parties lowered the flag. The professor of history at Harvard University sets out a chronology of the last five months of 1991 that changed our country and the world, and offers a balanced assessment of the events that caused and accompanied the death of the USSR and the beginning of an independent life in Russia, Ukraine and other former Soviet republics. In 2015, the author received two prestigious awards: the Pushkin House Russian Book Prize (for the best English-language book about Russia) and the Lionel Gelber Prize (for the best non-fiction book on international relations and politics).

* * *

The following excerpt from the book The Last Empire. Fall of the Soviet Union (Sergey Plokhy, 2014) provided by our book partner - the company LitRes.

Dedicated to the children of empires who won freedom

The Final Days of the Soviet Union

Cover photos:

Par6450237 – PIKO / AFP / East News

Par1603148 – Alexander Nemenov / AFP / East News

Reproduced with permission from BASIC BOOKS, an imprint of PERSEUS BOOKS LLC. (USA) with the assistance of the Alexander Korzhenevsky Agency (Russia).

The World in the Cold War Era (1980).

Empire and national outskirts.

Foreword

Few expected to see this. Against the backdrop of the evening sky, over the heads of the tourists gathered on Red Square, over the barrels of rifles of the guard of honor, a red flag was lowered from the flagpole of the Senate building - the seat of the Soviet government and, until recently, the symbol of communism. Millions of TV viewers who watched this picture on Christmas Eve in 1991 could not believe their eyes. On the same day, the appeal of the resigning first and last president of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev was broadcast live. The Soviet Union was gone.

The first to answer the question of what happened was US President George HW Bush. He spoke to the Americans on the evening of December 25, hours after CNN and other TV channels had shown Gorbachev's speech and the lowering of the flag. The American leader tried to explain what kind of gift the fellow citizens received for Christmas. He linked the news from the USSR to the US victory in the Cold War.

A few weeks later, Bush delivered his annual state of the nation address. It called the collapse of the Soviet Union "a change of almost biblical proportions." According to Bush, "by the grace of God, America won the Cold War," a new world order was established. Speaking at a joint session of the Senate and the House of Representatives, the president said: "The world, once divided into two armed camps, now recognizes one superpower - the United States of America." The hall exploded with applause 1 .

For more than forty years, the US and the USSR have been waging a global confrontation, which, only thanks to a happy accident, did not end in a nuclear catastrophe. The division of the world into two camps (the first represented the red banner over the Kremlin, the second the star-striped flag over the Capitol) seemed eternal. Those who went to school in the 50s still remember the training signals for nuclear alarms, during which you had to hide under the desks. Hundreds of thousands of Americans fought in the mountains of Korea and in the Vietnamese jungle, tens of thousands died to stop the advance of communism. Generations of intellectuals have debated whether Alger Hiss was a Soviet spy. For decades, Hollywood has felt the effects of McCarthyism. Even a few years before the collapse of the Soviet Union, demonstrators marched through the streets of major US cities calling for nuclear disarmament. Attitudes on this issue split families: for example, the young activist Ronald P. Reagan became an enemy of his own father, President Ronald W. Reagan. The Americans and their allies fought all over the world, and there seemed to be no end to this war. However, the enemy, armed to the teeth, who had not lost a single battle, suddenly lowered the flag.

There was indeed reason for joy. However, the president's willingness to declare victory in the Cold War on the day of Gorbachev's resignation (who, like Reagan and Bush, sought to complete it) seemed strange and even alarming. Gorbachev's resignation meant the end of the Soviet era (legally, the USSR ceased to exist four days earlier, on December 21). But the collapse of the Soviet

The Union was not the main goal of the Americans in the Cold War. George W. Bush's televised address on December 25 and his January State of the Union address contradicted previous administration statements. Earlier, the leadership of the United States claimed that the Cold War would end thanks to cooperation with Gorbachev. The first such statement was made during the USSR-US summit in Malta in December 1989, and the last White House issued just a few hours before Bush's Christmas speech (“Together with President Reagan, myself and the leaders of our allies, Gorbachev, having contributed to the creation of a united free Europe… brought closer the overcoming of the deep contradictions of the Cold War”) 2 .

Bush's Christmas speech marked the abandonment of the old policy. The US President and his administration have rethought their attitude towards the events in the former USSR. Although in 1991 George W. Bush and his national security adviser Brent Scowcroft publicly declared their influence limited, now they have taken responsibility for the most dramatic event in Soviet political life. This new assessment, which emerged during Bush's re-election campaign, influenced or even became the basis of American perceptions of the end of the Cold War. These notions, largely mythical, linked the end of the Cold War to the loss of power by the CPSU and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Moreover, people saw in these events the fruits of US policy, that is, the victory of America 3 .

This book calls into question the triumphalist interpretation of the collapse of the USSR. The reason for the revision was recently declassified documents from the George H. W. Bush Presidential Library, in particular, memos from his advisers and transcripts of Bush's telephone conversations with world leaders. These materials testify that both the president himself and his advisers tried to prolong the life of the Soviet Union. They were frightened by the growth of the influence of Boris Yeltsin and the desire of the Union republics for independence. After the USSR ceased to exist, the United States demanded that the entire Soviet nuclear arsenal be assigned to Russia and that Russia retain its influence in the post-Soviet space (primarily in the Central Asian republics).

Why did the leadership of the country, which supposedly fought against the USSR in the Cold War, pursue such a policy? The answers can be found in White House documents and other American sources. With their help, one can trace how the rhetoric came into conflict with the policy of the US administration (the latter tried to save Gorbachev, considering him as his main ally on the world stage). To achieve this goal, the White House was ready to put up with the continued existence of the CPSU and the Soviet system. The American leadership was afraid of turning the USSR into "Yugoslavia with nuclear bombs." The nuclear age changed the nature of the great power struggle and the meaning of the words "defeat" and "victory", but failed to change the vocabulary used by the masses. The Bush administration tried to do the impossible: to reconcile the language and thinking of the Cold War era with the geopolitical realities of the era that followed it. Her actions were more productive than inconsistent statements.

It is easy to understand the excitement of witnesses lowering the red flag from the Kremlin flagpole at the thought of the losses the United States suffered in the global confrontation with the USSR. However, now, twenty-five years later, it is important to impartially evaluate those events. Viewing the collapse of the Soviet Union as a symbol of US victory in the Cold War helped shape the perception of the exaggerated influence of the United States on world politics. This happened in the decade leading up to the events of September 11, 2001 and the nine-year war in Iraq (which was the most widely held view at the time). The overestimation of the American factor in the collapse of the USSR paved the way for the spread of conspiracy theories in modern Russia, which consider the collapse of the Soviet Union to be the result of the efforts of the CIA. This opinion is voiced not only on extremist websites, but also broadcast by Russian TV channels 4 .

I offer a much more complex and, probably, debatable panorama of events preceding the fall of the USSR. The “American peace” established after the Cold War, marked by the confrontation between two ideological camps, arose rather by accident. It is important to try to trace the process of formation of this world, the feelings, intentional and unintentional actions of its creators on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. This will help to understand what has gone wrong in the last decade and a half.

The concept of “empire” in the title is a necessary prerequisite for the interpretation of the 1991 trials proposed here. I agree with the opinion of political scientists and historians who believe that the lost arms race, the economic recession, the revival of democracy and the ideological bankruptcy of communism did not in themselves predetermine the death of the USSR. Its cause was the imperial heritage, the multi-ethnic composition of the population and the pseudo-federal state structure of the Soviet Union. Neither American politicians nor Gorbachev's advisers were fully aware of the significance of these factors.

Although the USSR was often referred to as "Russia", it was a conglomeration of peoples ruled from Moscow by either brute force or cultural concessions. For most of the Soviet era, the republics were led by a firm hand. De jure, the Russians owned the largest of the union republics, however, in addition to the RSFSR, fourteen more republics were part of the USSR. The number of Russians was about one hundred and fifty million - about 51 % population of the Union. The second largest ethnic group - Ukrainians - accounted for about 20% of the population of the USSR.

Having won the struggle that unfolded during the Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks were able to preserve the Russian Empire. They achieved this by reorganizing the state into a pseudo-federal one (at least according to the Constitution). This prolonged the existence of Russia as a multinational state, but it also repeated the fate of the empires of the past. In 1990, most of the union republics already had their own presidents, ministries of foreign affairs, and more or less democratically formed parliaments. However, until 1991, the world did not understand that Soviet Union not equivalent Russia 5 .

I consider the collapse of the USSR a phenomenon analogous to the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, British, French and Portuguese empires that took place in the 20th century. The Soviet Union is called here the “last empire” not because there will be no empires in the future, but because it was the last state to preserve the legacy of the “classical” empires of modern times. In my opinion, the collapse of the USSR is connected with the incompatibility of the imperial system of government and electoral democracy. After Gorbachev introduced elements of electoral democracy in 1989, politicians from the RSFSR had to think about the answer to the question: are they ready to bear the burden of the empire? And politicians from other union republics, in turn, had to decide whether they wanted to remain in the empire. In the end, both the first and the second answered “no”.

The leaders of the Baltic republics and regions of Western Ukraine, the territories forcibly included in the USSR in accordance with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (1939), took the first opportunity to part with the empire. They were followed by politicians from Russia and the eastern Ukrainian regions that were part of the Soviet Union before World War II. The new democratic leaders of the Baltic states, Georgia and Armenia sought to achieve independence. In the rest of the republics, the old elites continued to hold power. However, after the end of support from Gorbachev, the political survival of his deputies became dependent on the election result. This forced them to negotiate with the growing democratic forces. The result of these events was the disintegration of the USSR into fifteen states along the old republican borders 6 .

I am focusing on the five months of 1991—the time from late July to late December—when the world literally changed. In late July, days before George W. Bush visited Moscow and signed the historic disarmament document, Soviet leader Gorbachev and RSFSR leader Yeltsin reached a fateful agreement to reform the Soviet Union. Their agreements served as a pretext for the August coup. At the end of December, Gorbachev's resignation from the presidency put an end to the history of the USSR. In describing the fall of the Soviet Union, many scholars and publicists have ignored the critical period between the GKChP coup and Gorbachev's resignation. Some of them directly or indirectly agree with the statement that the Soviet era ended with the ban on the CPSU after the putsch. In my book, I prove the fallacy of this opinion. At the time of the coup, the party did not lead anything. Even local party organizations got out of control of the party center. The putsch and subsequent events weakened the USSR, but it lasted another four months. The changes that sealed the fate of the wreckage of the Soviet Union and its nuclear arsenal took place in the autumn and early winter of 1991 7 .

Stephen Kotkin, in his writings on the collapse of the USSR and the collapse of communist regimes in Eastern Europe, focuses on the concept of "non-civil society". By this he means the party elites who led the Soviet empire until the end of the communist experiment. According to Kotkin, the Soviet Union, like the Romanov empire, began to crumble from above. He believes that the collapse of the USSR was initiated and carried out by elites in the center and on the periphery. Indeed, the streets of Soviet cities were not filled with crowds of protesters demanding the dissolution of the USSR. The former superpower collapsed surprisingly peacefully, especially in the four republics that hosted nuclear weapons: Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan. Ultimately, the fate of the USSR was decided in high offices. This happened in the course of a large-scale dialogue with the participation of the largest political figures of the West and East - a dialogue that has become a real struggle of nerves and diplomatic skills. The stakes were huge. The political and, in some cases, even the physical survival of the players was at stake.

The central role in the events of 1991 was played by several people who, in my opinion, bear the main responsibility for the dramatic and at the same time peaceful change in world politics. The proposed picture of events is neither unipolar, like the world after 1991, nor bipolar, like the world during the Cold War. Rather, it is multipolar: this is how the world has been for most of its history and will be in the future thanks to the expansion of China's influence and the manifestation of domestic political and economic problems in the United States. I pay special attention to the decisions that were made not only in Washington and Moscow, but also in Kyiv, Alma-Ata (since 1993 - Almaty) and the capitals of other union republics that soon gained independence. The main characters of the book are four political leaders who played the most significant role in the fate of the USSR and the whole world.

First, there is President George HW Bush, one of the most cautious and unassuming Western leaders of his day. It was his support for Gorbachev and concern for the safety of the nuclear arsenal that prolonged the days of the Soviet empire and predetermined the peaceful nature of its collapse. Secondly, this is Russian President Boris Yeltsin, a straightforward and decisive person. He resisted the putschists with a handful of like-minded people, and later refused to follow the example of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic in order to preserve a crumbling empire or redefine Russia's borders. Thirdly, this is the cunning head of Ukraine, Leonid Kravchuk, whose intransigence in the issue of obtaining independence for the republic condemned the Union. Last in order, but not least, is Mikhail Gorbachev: he risked the most and lost everything - prestige, power, the state. This man led the country away from totalitarianism, opened it to the world, introduced democratic procedures and began economic reforms. Gorbachev changed his state and the world so much that there was no place left for him either there or there.

My main argument is quite simple: the fate of the USSR was decided in the last four months of its existence - from the coup that began on August 19, 1991, to the meeting of the heads of the USSR republics in Alma-Ata on December 21.

I believe that the fate of the Soviet empire was predetermined not by US policy, not by the conflict between the union center and the RSFSR, not by Moscow's tense relations with the union republics. Relations between Russia and Ukraine played the main role. The last nail in the coffin was the unwillingness (or inability) of the leadership of the leadership of the two largest republics to find a way to coexist within a single state.

On December 8, in Belovezhskaya Pushcha, Yeltsin and Kravchuk failed to agree on the reorganization of the Union according to the model proposed by Gorbachev. Instead, they decided to dissolve the USSR and form the Commonwealth of Independent States instead. The Belarusian leadership that hosted the summit could not imagine a Union without Russia. The same can be said about the presidents of the Central Asian republics: they had no choice but to follow the example of the leaders of Russia and Ukraine. No one needed a Gorbachev-led Union without Russia or Ukraine.

For twenty years, many participants in those events (George Bush, Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin, Leonid Kravchuk, their advisers) published their memoirs. These books are interesting and contain much valuable material, but the picture they paint is incomplete. Newspaper reports are indispensable for understanding the spirit of the times, but these sources appeared at a time when secret documents were not yet available, and politicians preferred to keep quiet. I overcame the limitations that my predecessors had to face by using interviews of the main actors and archival documents declassified in recent years.

I used recently declassified material from the George H. W. Bush Presidential Library. We are talking about the papers of the National Security Council, the correspondence of the White House staff involved in organizing the president's foreign visits, transcripts of his meetings and telephone conversations (I got access to some of these documents through requests filed in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act). These materials, as well as primary sources held in the National Archives in Washington, the James Baker Collection at Princeton University, and the Gorbachev Foundation archive in Moscow, made it possible to recreate previously unknown details of the collapse of the USSR. In addition, I was fortunate enough to personally interview several central participants in the events described, in particular, with the former president of Ukraine Leonid Kravchuk and with the former leader of Belarus Stanislav Shushkevich.

The sources I used helped me answer many of the "hows" and some of the "whys". In my search for answers to the last set of questions, I usually began by trying to understand the ideological, cultural, and personal motivations that influenced the characters, and by examining the information on which they made their decisions. I hope that the proposed answers will not only shed light on the reasons for the collapse of the Soviet Union, but also help explain the chronic problems of the coexistence of Russia and Ukraine after its collapse. In addition, I hope the book will help readers understand the true role of the United States in the fall of the USSR, since the influence of the United States in the world is still largely determined by the decisions of 1991. Failure to understand the causes leads not only to imperial arrogance, but also to the decline of one's own empire. And it doesn't matter if this word is used for self-determination or not.

Sergey Plokhy

The Last Empire. Fall of the Soviet Union

Dedicated to the children of empires who won freedom

The Final Days of the Soviet Union

Cover photos:

Par6450237 – PIKO / AFP / East News

Par1603148 – Alexander Nemenov / AFP / East News

Reproduced with permission from BASIC BOOKS, an imprint of PERSEUS BOOKS LLC. (USA) with the assistance of the Alexander Korzhenevsky Agency (Russia).

The World in the Cold War Era (1980).

Empire and national outskirts.

Foreword

Sergey Plokhy

The Last Empire. Fall of the Soviet Union

Dedicated to the children of empires who won freedom

The Final Days of the Soviet Union

Cover photos:

Par6450237 – PIKO / AFP / East News

Par1603148 – Alexander Nemenov / AFP / East News

Reproduced with permission from BASIC BOOKS, an imprint of PERSEUS BOOKS LLC. (USA) with the assistance of the Alexander Korzhenevsky Agency (Russia).

The World in the Cold War Era (1980).

Empire and national outskirts.

Foreword

The Last Empire. Fall of the Soviet Union Sergey Plokhy

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Title: The Last Empire. Fall of the Soviet Union
Author: Sergey Plokhy
Year: 2014
Genre: Foreign educational literature, Foreign psychology, Foreign publicism, Publicism: other, Social psychology

Sergei Plokhy, a professor of Ukrainian history at Harvard University, is also a specialist in the history of Eastern Europe. He is rightfully considered an expert on Soviet-Canadian-American history. Sergei Plokhy has Ukrainian roots, although he was born in Russia, but was educated in Ukraine and moved to Canada in the 90s, where he continued his scientific work and the work of a professor of history at the university.

Sergei Plokhy devoted one of the most interesting works to the history of the collapse of the USSR. This book is called The Last Empire. Fall of the Soviet Union".

It is always interesting to read the opinion and views on the reason for the collapse of the USSR by a non-Russian author. Although Sergei Plokhy was born in the USSR, his version of the collapse of the Soviet Union is considered the version of a foreign specialist historian. In our time, they write a lot about the power of the former USSR, about that “happy life” that has gone forever almost a quarter of a century ago, and a new generation of people has grown up who do not know what the USSR is and why it collapsed. Who or what caused the fall of the Soviet Union? Disputes on this topic continue to this day. Politicians of various stripes blame each other for the collapse of the USSR and its disintegration, and therefore reading the book by a Canadian-American professor of history will be interesting for everyone interested in this topic.

Sergei Plokhy in his book describes in great detail the events of the last five months of the existence of the Soviet Union, until its collapse in 1991.

For more than half a century, the USSR and the USA have been the main ideological opponents on Earth, waging a so-called "cold war" between them. Each of the opponents claimed to the whole world that their system was better. For almost 50 years, the world has been on the brink of a nuclear catastrophe more than once. And here the USSR is falling apart into separate states.

Perhaps the US politicians themselves did not expect this. After the fall of the USSR, the world changed, Russia changed, the former Soviet republics changed, they began an independent life. Sergei Plokhy in his book offers the reader his balanced picture of the collapse of the USSR. He also talks about the views on these events - from Moscow and from Kyiv, from other capitals of the former Soviet republics.

The Last Empire book. The Fall of the Soviet Union” is an interesting story about the last months of the life of the USSR, based on documents, speeches and transcripts of politicians. The author does not impose his opinion on the reader, does not express his views on those events. All this should be done by every reader who wants to understand what is happening now in the post-Soviet space and what it will lead to.

The book will come as a surprise to some readers and will dispel some of the legends and myths about those times. Is Gorbachev to blame for the collapse of the country of the Soviets? Or maybe some other, more global reasons are to blame for the collapse of the USSR? There was an insane arms race, there was an economic recession, there was an ideological defeat of the communist ideology - wasn't this what led to the collapse of the USSR?

On our site about books lifeinbooks.net you can download for free without registration or read online the book “The Last Empire. Fall of the Soviet Union" by Sergey Plokhy in epub, fb2, txt, rtf, pdf formats for iPad, iPhone, Android and Kindle. The book will give you a lot of pleasant moments and a real pleasure to read. You can buy the full version from our partner. Also, here you will find the latest news from the literary world, learn the biography of your favorite authors.

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