I have long been concerned about the question: suppose a writer wants to write a very frank and honest book. How far can he go collecting material for this book? I mean the purely ethical side of the issue.
Here is an interesting example from my point of view:
A few years ago, an unpleasant story happened on the Aldebaran forum: Marina Shapovalova, who positioned herself there as a writer, was caught reading other people's personals. Shapovalova was publicly flogged and removed from the forum.
It was not for nothing that I began with a story about Shapovalova. The fact is that she was peeping through the keyholes of other people's accounts not out of simple female curiosity, but with a seemingly noble goal - to write a book about network relationships (her own "Loneliness on the Net").
She created an account on the Aldebaran forum, communicated with forum users, provoking them to actively display emotions, etc. Then she became friends with one of the site admins, using him to open other people's accounts and read the personal messages of the Aldo members. Was caught red-handed and banned from the site.
The story ended for her in double failure and disgrace.
The book written in the wake of this scandal was rejected by all the publishing houses that Shapovalova applied to. I think that the same thing happened to the book that happens to each of us: when we sleep and see a dream - painful, at the limit of emotions - it seems to us terribly interesting and, waking up, we begin to tell it, and our listeners are bored sleepy thrillers. Marina, being the heroine of many Aldovian scandals, was acutely worried about them and it seemed to her that everyone should be worried about the contents of the personal letters of the members of the forum, but judge for yourself: what does the editor of the publishing house (reader) care about what exactly a certain virtual Bifogmi wrote to Aristarchus and what he wrote to her in reply? For a person who is not personally involved in specific network intrigues, all this is sheer boring stuff.
The question for me is this: what if Shapovalova turned out to be a more talented person and she managed to write an interesting book? Would that justify her interest in the contents of other people's letters?

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I have long been concerned about the question: suppose a writer wants to write a very frank and honest book. How far can he go collecting material for this book? I mean the purely ethical side of the issue. Here's an interesting one from my point of view...

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“What did this folk mythology grow out of, in which some people have a complete nightmare, hunger and humiliation, and for some, Gaidar and Chubais killed more people than Stalin?

It is clear that partly it is fueled by propaganda suggestions about the charms of Putin's stability. In spirit - a reference to the calm Brezhnev times, when for many "the grass was greener", and on the 5th and 20th they gave out an advance and a salary for going to work.

As it is now seen, it is important that then one could not worry about the future. There was no need to think about it at all: what is there to think about when the track from school or college to retirement is known, including getting an apartment and buying refrigerators-TVs, in a premium version - a car. Whom the track did not appeal to, they somehow "spun" and found something to extract "unearned income" from. Most of them called them "dealers" and, envious, secretly wished them to run into OBKhSS.

At the same time, everyone would like to live "like in the West." What is now remembered with a bitter smile. They were deceived!

And in what? And who?

Who could deceive people who are still sure that they produced something like that under "developed socialism", for which someone should pay them?

80% of the urban population in the country could not provide themselves with consumer goods - what did they all do, and where did all this work go?

There was industry in the USSR, factories were working! - they say, referring to their salaries, which they lost in the 90s. Only their salaries - not the same products!

People sewed clothes and shoes that they themselves did not want to wear. They produced sausage, which could not always be eaten even with disgust. And our cars were only good enough to compare with foreign cars. And who needed so many bad harvesters? And how much iron and steel? ..

By the collapse of the USSR, 63,900 tanks were in service (hundreds of them and their remains are still rusting in some places in the former Soviet republics) - how many billions of rubles in salaries did the state pay workers and engineers for their production? Add here cruise missiles, submarines, infantry fighting vehicles, armored personnel carriers and other wonderful deadly things, the order for which the "rising from its knees" country today again pleases the domestic manufacturer.

And in the 90s - that's the trouble! - people were told that no one needs so many tanks. In general, they are not needed - they will not be useful. And cruise missiles are already enough. The state no longer wants to pay for their production, and there is nothing. This means that thousands of military-industrial complex engineers are not needed. No workers needed. You don't need that much iron and steel. And extra coal. And a lot of superfluous things that from other industries went only to the production of a threat.

People were told: you are free! Do something that your neighbors and countrymen will buy. Even better - if foreigners buy. But you do not know how to do this, of course, and there is nothing to do with it - there is not a single plant in the country suitable for the production of competitive products. Alas, this was the country: mainly worked on the creation of murder weapons, almost all your work, all the work of your parents went to this. We have nothing else, only unnecessary tanks and missiles. Trying to sell them for scrap...

But now it will be different! Now do what you want! What can you do. Bake pies. Bring any goods from other countries. Grow cucumbers, flowers or a pig for homemade sausage - everyone needs this all the time. You can try to make combines small, for household plots. Metal pots and pans. Sell ​​- you will have money to live ...

Such a terrible grief happened to the population of post-Soviet Russia in the 90s. Not for everyone - for those who only wanted a pension honestly earned at the plant. They were not shot and sent to camps to cut down forest for their homeland. They were asked to provide for themselves. Just terrible: you had to learn how to make things and products that are useful for life. Instead of serving time at a state-owned enterprise and not participating in the production of an excess number of murder weapons.

They suffered so much that now they are happy to return to their former occupations: the state is again ready to pay for potential death. Not on that scale, but at least something.

And be proud at the same time. This is not for you to sew some slippers at home. And don't cut stools."

But now the Russian Federation again has the best nuclear submarines in the world, yes, yes, yes ...

Although, judging by the space and everything else, there is a lot of fraud in all this. I was surprised that "Typhoons" still go to sea - they are visible in this video in the background. As a lover of submarines (one of the children's fetishes), I have always been struck by the diversity and power of the Soviet submarine fleet. How much people's money was wasted in vain in this business, in the games of adolescents who never matured ... It is interesting that at the age of 10 I dreamed of a reduced copy of the "Typhoon" - one to one, with just such a cabin design. Although I could not see this boat in a photo or on TV.

I am pleased to introduce to my readers a new (in this LiveJournal) author, writer and simply charming woman Marina Shapovalova.
Here is her website
http://mshapovalova.ru/
come, meet, read. She has novels, short stories, short stories and essays to her credit. There are also political articles that she posts on her FB blog and personal page. But it seems to me that you can start your acquaintance with it from the article that I posted on my site. IMHO, a good article, although not evil, as it is fashionable now, but bitter. Understanding the reasons for what is happening today between Russia and its neighbors, former allies, hardly adds optimism. "Whoever increases his knowledge, he increases sorrow."
By tradition, I invite Marina to comment, but whether she wants to talk with you or not is her choice. My business is simply to give her a platform.

Did your grandmother ever say to you: “Oh, no, I don’t need to change my phone, I won’t remember how to use it”? Or: "Take this thing, I'm better in the old fashioned way, as I used to"?

Or maybe you yourself said something like that, if you had already lived up to the age of your grandmother, when she seemed funny to you. Are you stressed when changing the design of the main page on a familiar resource? Do not want to explore the possibilities of a new device? You wonder how young people can listen to this terrible music? ..

It became terribly difficult to live, before everything was easier. Dishwasher is not needed - better by hand. The new washing machine is generally a horror: it blinks, it is not clear how to approach it; whether it was an old one, 75th year - everything is simple there ...

Whoever is unfamiliar with what I said, he probably will not understand me now.

Firs did not want any reform changes. How many years have passed, and he recalls the abolition of serfdom as a disaster. Lived, lived, and then suddenly - on you! The old order was canceled, I had to get used to the new. But as? - you have to understand it first. Himself. And then decide for yourself what to do. And before everything was so clear.

And Ranevskaya in Paris is better. And even her lackey. They left.

The people of Russia are such a mental old man. He rejects everything new as someone else's. And he wants the old way - "as before the disaster."

I do not know how and why ethnic groups age. But they grow old and die. Probably, it's not about age - not about its time dimension in millennia or centuries. Rather, ethnic groups that have not matured, that have not really developed, fall into dementia. Indeed, in the so-called Russian people, the educated stratum is always alien, "terribly distant" in terms of worldview. Moreover, for centuries in a row, starting with Peter, it has been westernized.

Since the 19th century, a Russian aristocrat has been a European. He gravitates towards the European way of life and often goes there to live, forever excluding his genes from the national gene pool. The raznochintsy who appeared could not rectify the situation. First, there were few of them - access to education was limited. And, secondly, they also often left, because they did not fit well into Russian reality, and most importantly, they had no hope of changing it.

A separate topic is the merchant class. Now it was the flesh of the flesh of the people - the most resourceful and savvy part of it. They were not westernized by education, except perhaps in the second or third generations, and even then with the preservation of the traditional way of life in the family. Aristocrats and educated people made fun of the merchants, but the common people, interestingly, considered these "world-eaters" to be quite their own. Barin is a stranger. With a gentleman - even a poor populist, who, anyway, a gentleman - a peasant could not talk: it's easier to pretend to be a fool. The peasant spoke the same language with the "millionaire" merchant.

Only the merchant class could develop into a national elite. But a hundred years ago, the process was forcibly interrupted: the rural "novice capitalists" were exterminated to the root, and the surviving urban ones had to be forced to westernize already outside the country.

The Soviet period could not produce a real national elite. Now it is customary to compare collectivization with serfdom, but in fact it was much worse. A serf in the Republic of Ingushetia could become an entrepreneur, move to another class and get rich. A collective farmer, having escaped from collective-farm slavery, could only become a worker in the city, that is, a marginal who had partially lost peasant culture and did not join any at all. At best, he could break into the "layer", having received an education. But the "stratum", far in its qualities even from the former diversity, not to mention from the aristocracy, nevertheless, inevitably westernized again. And, if possible, flowed out of the country. Because a person who is European in mentality strives to live in an environment that suits him. Even the descendants of party leaders were not an exception.

Throughout the 20th century, the former Russia enriched other countries and continents with the best part of its gene pool. If not buried it in the ground. Short periods of thaw-perestroika could not reverse the trend.

Today's self-styled gebesh "king" has strengthened it many times over. The borders are open. Anyone who feels like a European is allowed to leave. Conditions are being created in the country at an accelerated pace, forcing out everyone who not only wants some kind of change, but in general wants to do at least something. Who wants to study, be treated, improve the quality of life - there will be none of this here. No request. The "king" is acting in full accordance with the desire of the vast majority of the people who want to live "as before the catastrophe" of 1861.

A people without a national elite is an aged baby. This unnaturally aged people, who have slipped through their maturity, do not want anything. Except - to do what they say, for a paycheck. The result of the work does not interest him - let the authorities think about it. He hates "clever men", just like 150 years ago - they are strangers to him, they despise him, and this is unpleasant. Hates all foreigners - for the same thing.

From the foreigners themselves, he also does not need anything. No Internet and iPhones are needed, without them it’s good. Without them, even better - easier. Their cheese? - fu, disgusting! Bulk grub, potatoes with cucumbers - the best snack. Tulips? - this is generally oborzhatsya! Tulips for them! Come on, not a bar.

Everything that this people could produce from itself, it has already produced. And gave the world - to other peoples. He left nothing for himself but empty rock.

As long as there is oil, they will drink vodka and eat Chinese potatoes. Then they just die. For two or three generations. Of course, if they are not allowed to destroy this whole disgusting world.

Marina Shapovalova,
writer