Mikhail Veller year of birth. Mikhail Iosifovich Weller

Birthday May 20, 1948

Russian writer, member of the Russian PEN Center, winner of a number of literary awards

Biography

Mikhail Iosifovich Weller was born into a Jewish family on May 20, 1948 in the city of Kamenetz-Podolsky in the family of an officer.

Studies

Until the age of sixteen, Mikhail constantly changes schools - moving around the garrisons of the Far East and Siberia.

In 1966 he graduated from school in Mogilev with a gold medal and entered the department of Russian philology of the philological faculty of Leningrad University. Becomes the Komsomol member of the course and secretary of the Komsomol bureau of the university. In the summer of 1969, on a bet, without money, he gets from Leningrad to Kamchatka in a month, using all types of transport and by deceit receives a pass to enter the "border zone". In 1970 he received an academic leave from the university. In the spring he leaves for Central Asia, where he wanders until autumn. In the autumn he moves to Kaliningrad and takes an external accelerated course for a sailor of the second class. Leaves on a voyage on a trawler of the fishing fleet. In 1971 he was restored at the university, worked as a senior pioneer leader at the school. His story is published for the first time in the university wall newspaper. In 1972 he defended his diploma on the topic "Types of composition of the modern Russian Soviet story."

Job

In 1972-1973, he worked as an educator of an extended day group in an elementary school and a teacher of Russian language and literature in a rural eight-year school by distribution in the Leningrad Region. Fired of his own accord.

Employed as a concrete worker in the ZhBK-4 prefabricated structures shop in Leningrad. In the summer of 1973, as a feller and a digger, he traveled with a brigade of "shabashniks" to the Kola Peninsula and the Tersky coast of the White Sea.

In 1974, he worked at the State Museum of the History of Religion and Atheism (Kazan Cathedral) as a junior researcher, tour guide, carpenter, supplier and deputy director for administrative and economic affairs.

In 1975 - correspondent of the factory newspaper of the Leningrad shoe association "Skorokhod" "Skorokhodovsky worker", and. O. head of the department of culture, and. O. head of information department. The first publications of stories in the "official press".

From May to October 1976, he was a driver of imported cattle from Mongolia to Biysk along the Altai Mountains. According to references in the texts, he recalled this time as the best in his life.

Since 2006, he has been conducting a weekly program on Radio Russia “Let's Talk” with Mikhail Veller.

Creation

Returning in the autumn of 1976 to Leningrad, he switched to literary work, the first stories were rejected by all editors.

In the autumn of 1977, he enters a seminar for young Leningrad science fiction writers under the direction of Boris Strugatsky.

In 1978, the first publications of short humorous stories appeared in Leningrad newspapers. He moonlights as a literary processing of military memoirs at the Lenizdat publishing house and writing reviews for the Neva magazine.

In the autumn of 1979 he moved to Tallinn (Estonian SSR), got a job in the republican newspaper Youth of Estonia. In 1980, he quits the newspaper and joins the "trade union group" under the Estonian Writers' Union. The first publications appear in the magazines Tallinn, Literary Armenia, Ural. From summer to autumn, he travels on a cargo ship from Leningrad to Baku, publishing reports from the journey in the newspaper Water Transport.

In 1981, he writes the story "Reference Line", where he first draws up the foundations of his philosophy.

Date of Birth: 20.05.1948

Soviet, then Russian writer, publicist, philosopher, playwright.

Mikhail Iosifovich Weller was born in the city of Kamenetz-Podolsky in Ukraine in the family of an officer. Until the age of sixteen, Mikhail changes schools, constantly moving around the garrisons of the Far East and Siberia. In 1965, the family moved to Belarus, where in 1966 Mikhail graduated from school with a gold medal and entered the department of Russian philology of the philological faculty of Leningrad University. He lives in the family of his grandfather, a professor of biology, head of the department of one of the Leningrad institutes. The student years of the future writer were not without adventures:

For a month without money, I "hare" got from Leningrad to Kamchatka, using all types of transport,

Feigned mental illness to get an academic leave,

Having received this leave, he led a wandering life in Central Asia for six months, and then worked as a sailor on a trawler of the fishing fleet in Kaliningrad.

In 1971, Mikhail Veller was restored at the university, and a year later he graduated from it. The future writer managed to defend his diploma on the topic “Types of composition of a modern Russian Soviet short story” only the second time (the first time the work was rejected for “formalist bias”). After graduating from the institute, for some time he worked in the Leningrad Region as an educator of an extended day group in an elementary school and a teacher of Russian language and literature in a rural eight-year school. In the future, he tried many professions: a concrete worker in a prefabricated structures shop, a lumberjack, a digger, a junior researcher at the State Museum of the History of Religion and Atheism (Kazan Cathedral), a tour guide, deputy director for administrative and economic affairs, a correspondent for the factory newspaper of the Skorokhod shoe association , a cattle driver from Mongolia to Biysk in the Altai Mountains.

In the autumn of 1976, having returned to Leningrad, Mikhail Veller completely switched to literary work, but the first stories were rejected by all editors. Enters the seminar of young Leningrad science fiction writers under the guidance of Boris Strugatsky. For the story "Button" he receives the first prize at the science fiction competition of the North-West. Nevertheless, Weller is still not published, and the period of "complete begging" begins for the writer. Only in 1978 did the first publications appear in Leningrad city newspapers - short humorous stories. Lack of livelihood again encourages Mikhail to take up various ways of earning money, he even serves in the army for a short time as an officer of a ground artillery battery, moonlights as a lithographer of military memoirs, and writes reviews for the Neva magazine. Hoping to publish the first book, Mikhail Veller moved to Tallinn, the book was rejected, but some publications appeared in periodicals. In 1983, the first book was finally published - a collection of short stories "I want to be a janitor." Boris Strugatsky and Bulat Okudzhava recommend that Mikhail Veller be accepted into the Writers' Union, but he was accepted only after the publication of the second book in 1988. In 1986, the writer married Anna Agriomati, a graduate of the Faculty of Journalism of Moscow University, and a year later the couple had a daughter.

Since the beginning of the 90s, he has been engaged in literary and publishing activities - he worked as the head of the Russian literature department of the Tallinn Russian-language magazine "Rainbow", later he was the chief editor and founder of the first Jewish cultural magazine in the USSR "Jericho", lectured on Russian prose at various foreign universities .

In 1988, Mikhail Weller's eight-hundred-page philosophical book, All About Life, was published, which contains the foundations of his philosophical system and becomes the beginning of a cycle of philosophical works. In 2003, the writer calls his system of views on the Universe and man "energy evolutionism". According to this theory, “all subjective and objective human activity is completely consistent with and lies in line with the overall evolution of the Cosmos, which boils down to the complication of material and energy structures, an increase in the energy level of material systems, and from the beginning of the Universe develops with a positive balance, in an increasing progression.”

Currently, the writer lives in Moscow and Tallinn, continues to work on his journalistic and philosophical books, hosts the author's program "Special Opinion" on the radio station "Echo of Moscow" and the talk show "Let's Talk" on Radio Russia.

M. Weller has two work books, but they were not enough to record all the places of his work - in one insert, in the other two.

In September 2011, Mikhail Veller called for voting for the Communist Party, arguing that the change of power should give all parties the understanding that in the next elections "they will re-elect and throw out the party" if it does not meet the expectations of voters. He is also convinced that the Communist Party is the only independent party in 2011.

Writer's Awards

Order of the White Star 4th class (Estonia, 2008)

Bibliography

Major fiction
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Collections
(1983)
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Mikhail Veller was born in the Ukrainian city of Kamenetz-Podolsk in 1948. His father was a military man, so the family often moved from one city to another throughout the Soviet Union. He spent most of his childhood in Siberia in the garrisons. The future writer graduated from school in Belarus, and went to Leningrad to enter a higher educational institution. There, Mikhail mastered the philological sciences, wrote his first works and was periodically published in local newspapers.

All photos 1

Biography

After graduating from the university, Mikhail Iosifovich did not work in his specialty. He cunningly draws up documents for himself and goes to the north of the country, trying to discover something new and unknown for himself. He was interested in the work of a museum employee, was a hunter-fisherman in the Arctic, a teacher in children's summer camps, a feller in the Komi Republic, a builder on the island of Mangyshlak, a teacher of Russian language and literature, a silk-screen printer, a journalist, a land surveyor. He mastered many other specialties, which in the future helped him create living images in his works. An interesting fact from the life of the writer is a huge number of entries in his work book. Firstly, the writer has two books, and both are supplemented with inserts.

Seven years after graduating from the university, with a lot of experience and his own stories, Mikhail Veller goes to Tallinn.

Here Mikhail decided to devote all his time to writing books. He abandoned his usual rhythm of life, communication with friends and family. The writer was practically starving, since he did not have the means to buy food for himself. Mikhail told reporters that at that time he only drank tea and smoked. Mikhail Veller could not find a sponsor to publish his books, he had to earn his living on his own. His life was divided into two parts. For one half of the year he worked, again and again mastering new specialties. The other was writing books.

The writer's debut book was published in 1983. His collection of short stories entitled "I Want to Be a Janitor" was not well received by critics. Unexpectedly, success for the book came from abroad. The author's works have been translated into many languages ​​and published in Estonia, Armenia, Buryatia, France, Italy, Poland, Bulgaria and other countries.

In 1993, one of the best books of the writer, The Adventures of Major Zvyagin, was published. Literally a year after the publication, the book is in the top ten best works of Russian writers.

Weller currently lives in Estonia, travels to other countries and releases his new works regularly.

Personal life

Very little is known about the writer's personal life. His wife is Anna Agriomati, they have a daughter, Valentina. Mikhail Veller does not consider it necessary to talk about his family, he is convinced that the personal life of one person should not concern others.

The biography of the writer would not be complete without highlighting his philosophical views. In 2007, he published his book The Meaning of Life, in which he detailed his own theory of "Energy Evolutionism". Mikhail nurtured such ideas in himself for a long time, studied the literature of his predecessors. Weller is aware that his conclusions are something new for readers, there will be many who disagree with the presentation of his thoughts. But still publishes a book. The writer believes that the main value for a person is the understanding of his objective integrity in the Universe. Man is able to use the energy of the Earth on any scale.

According to his theory, human energy can be compared with the energy of the Universe. Humanity is the highest creation on the entire planet, it represents the total number of sensations and aspirations to obtain the most powerful actions to change the environment and the world as a whole.

Readers liked the simple and interesting style of the writer. In his books, Mikhail Veller sets out things and concepts that are difficult for humanity at first glance in an accessible language. His books are permeated with male chauvinism, personal experiences in the form of a traveler, Don Juan, a devourer of films and fiction, and many others.

In 2010, Weller takes part in the international philosophical forum, where he lectures. At the end of the forum, his theory was awarded a medal. The next year, the writer was able to publish his new four books on the same philosophical topic. His works have been translated into many languages ​​and published in other countries. Some of his judgments remain controversial, and Weller's work is criticized by contemporary authors.

The political views of the writer also differ from the usual slogans that sound from TV screens. He openly gives interviews about the political situation in Russia, its relations with other countries.

But what about Russia without the Jews! Spit in the problem, you will end up in a Jew
MICHAEL VELLER

Russia is an Orthodox, Christian country .....

Stop, my dear brothers, shorten the victorious pace, glorious knights! Did you accidentally write down Jesus in Russian? It was in Israel. And the Jews lived there. And the Blessed Virgin Mary was Jewish. And Jesus, the Son of God, was a Jew by the mother who gave birth to him. Or did someone not know this?

John the Baptist, who performed the first holy baptism, was a Jew. And all four gospel writers were Jews. And all twelve apostles. There is no need to talk about King Solomon the Wise and his father David the Psalmist.

Jews crucified Christ? And they took him down from the cross, and mourned, and carried his teachings around the world, and gave their lives for it - eleven of the twelve apostles - who? Chinese? Jews too, you know.

The Romans had their own religion, but the Russians were not heard of then. Strictly speaking, a deeply believing Jew, Jesus, carried out a great reformation of Judaism, which had become rigid and divided by that time. He simplified the rite to the utmost and opened the reformed form of religion to all who wished and aspired in soul.

The primordial gods of the Eastern Slavs - Perun, Yarilo, Dazhdbog - were abolished and banned after the baptism of Rus' by the decision of the Kyiv throne prince. Like pagan. So the Holy Icons of the Mother of God depict you know who and what nationality. The laws of human psychology are such that if a fact cannot be repealed, then the one guilty of the very fact of "something undesirable" wants to be beaten hard.

3. Alphabet - from the ancient Greek Alpha, Beta, - the first two letters of the Greek alphabet. And they, in turn, are from the Hebrew Aleph, Beit - which means: House in Hebrew.

You see, when the Jews wrote the first books of the Bible, the Greeks were still illiterate. They became the creators of the entire Mediterranean culture a little later. And the alphabetic letter was taken from the Jews. Such a thing.

The first-grader receives the Alphabet - and this is a Zionist sabotage: Yes? And this infection was brought to Rus', as you know, by Cyril and Methodius. So, after reading the next truthful and passionate essay of the Grateful Russian Patriot about the world Jewish filth, send curses to those whose writing you use and which all the great Russian literature is written in.

4. Jewish culture is to keep the spirit and covenant of God, the One, the Most High and the Severe. The Jewish God is cool and intolerant, and He does not forgive the weakness and retreat of His chosen children. DO OR DIE. This formula was minted in the best of times by the rulers of the world - the British.

That's the whole essence of Jewish culture is invested in the same motto from the beginning. Who was in Israel - saw the desert scorched by the sun: the homeland of the people. For one and a half thousand years, Jews fought for it with everyone who was there and who came until the Romans, the first fighters of the world, kicked them out of there ... And decades passed, and uprisings broke out, and the besieged Masada refused to surrender, and in the last assault the defenders of the fortress they killed each other and themselves with swords to die free on the last piece of their free land.
You can learn, gentlemen patriots. But where are you!

5. If Mendelssohn's march sounded at your wedding - well, you got married to the music of a Jew. If on May 9 you listen to This Victory Day smell of gunpowder! .. - well, the author, David Tukhmanov, is not an Aryan. All this Jewish jazz with Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman and Leonid Utyosov we'll give a shit, and the Dark Night will do without Bernes.

But Katyusha! - which the country sang, and the Germans, and the allies, and the whole world! - the Jew Matvey Blanter came up with. There was another Katyusha. The same, legendary, remember all the newsreels, the guards jet mortar, it was made by: Schwartz, Slopimer, Gantmakher, Levin, Shor - such a design team did!

And the MiG fighters - guess twice, Mikoyan and Gurevich - who is Armenian and who is Jewish. We will not talk about rockets and atomic bombs.

6. Who was Treper? Great scout of World War II. Who was Manevich? Etienne, Earth, poste restante? Great scout of World War II. Who was Arnold Deutsch? Great Scout, the Cambridge Five is his recruitment. I can still understand that Jews are Nostradamus and Kirk Douglas. But how did the Hungarian Jew Dietmar Rosenthal be the main specialist in Russian spelling in the USSR for so many years?!

7. One day a Jewish child finds out that he is a Jew. This means that there is no fair escape from teasing and massacre. He is not Russian. Justice does not exist for him. And in order to somehow compensate for their irreparable misfortune, one must do something beyond what is expected of everyone.

From early childhood, a Jew has more reason for reflection. More obstacles. And the worldview is formed: If you want to achieve something, you must think how to get around the prohibitions, how to find a solution. You have to work as hard as you want until you get it. You have to do more than others to be allowed - maybe! - become level. And there is no one to complain to. This is how the world works. Are you wondering why there are more Jews by percentage in all good places?

IF LIFE DOES NOT TURN A JEW INTO A LACKEY, IT TURNS HIM INTO A GLADIATOR

There are many, many footmen. Slavery breeds slaves. But gladiators are in plain sight, striking. This is how the components of success are formed: stubbornness, perseverance, diligence, thoughtfulness, patience, ingenuity, cunning and intelligence. Plus the innate temperament of the southern people, the love of knowledge: after all, for thousands of years in a row, the Jews were without exception literate and reading people of the Book. Which of the peoples still in world history?

8. .... Life is a good officer-educator, and there are many downtrodden Jews. Wamon represents the tenth. When you envy his success, do not forget to envy humiliation, beatings and perseverance.

9. Cunning is the strength of the weak. When both direct force, and the law and the sympathy of others are not on your side, well, you already have to think how to achieve your goal on the sly. This is how the combinatorial mind, polyvariant thinking develops.

THE LESS FAVORABLE CONDITIONS YOU ARE INITIALLY SET IN - THE MORE YOU WILL ACHIEVE IN THE END, DEVELOPING YOUR MIND AND WILL BY OVERCOMING OBSTACLES...

These people must be beaten, persecuted, restricted, humiliated—that is, put in conditions of constant solution of the problem of survival and self-preservation. Thus, among other peoples, scattered Jewry finds itself in the position of a man among animals - oh no! I do not put Jews above others! and I do not put any people below the Jews! I say this only in the sense that ... DRIVING A JEW - YOU ONLY TRAIN HIM. The persecution made the Jews tenacious and intelligent.

10. Jews take over the media. Cinema, television, journalism, stage. This observation was made in the nineteenth century. Dear ones. Here is the humiliated child. He is beaten, and several on one, dishonest fights are not a skirmish, but simply beaten. He long experiences each such injustice and humiliation. And at the same time - alone - he pronounces internal monologues and dialogues!

He trains his verbal apparatus, his imagination - yes, how! with passion! on adrenaline! experiencing the recent! at the tender age of puberty when hormones begin to spurt! And calm consolation, lonely entertainment (of the old days) - to read a book, to forget about Captain Blood.

That's it - that's it! - people grow up who love and know how to speak, represent, hang information on the people like a vat of noodles on their ears. He is trained and directed to this occupation of his whole life - imprisoned for this. A dreamy boy, timid and weak, in his imagination commands the crowds and makes speeches.
Pronounces a month, pronounces five years! And from this school of internal self-taught, TV presenters and movie moguls hatch. If a person wants, but he is humiliated, he dreams. And if he dreams, then some people get it in life.

11. In those days when the burden of the whites was the civilization of the savage world, and Old England was ruled by the Old Widow Victoria, the son of a petty Colonial official and the first poet of the world, Rudyard Kipling wrote: And appreciate Others' pride, - Appreciate your own to the end!

12. BEATING YIDS IS EASIER THAN SAVING RUSSIA

The enemy is the only excuse for their failure. Assess the degree of schizophrenia: it's okay that Islamic terrorists kill Russians - but they also kill Jews, but that's good! Already houses in Moscow have been blown up, Arab volunteers have already been identified among the corpses of Chechen fighters - and our patriots are all sending greetings and support to Arab terrorists, who are kind to us, since they kill the Jews.

13. For decades, tiny Israel has been confronting an Islamic environment that is hundreds of times (!) larger in size and territory. Frankly declaring the goal of the destruction of Israel - to erase on the map, to cut people out, to wash everything into the sea with blood! - The Islamic environment lost all the unleashed wars. The first war began with the attack of all five Arab states surrounding Israel on the day of its declaration as a state in the UN. The last one to date is in 1982 in Lebanon, when the Jews shot down 96 Syrian (?) MiGs without losing a single Phantom.

And in 1973, after detailed Soviet air reconnaissance, Egypt and Syria simultaneously attacked Israel with vastly superior forces, and a few days later the UN categorically forbade Jews from entering Cairo, and the USSR stated that if they approached Damascus, we would land troops and open hostilities on side of Syria.

And for ten years we have not been able to deal with tiny Chechnya, where 120,000 civilians died, of which a lot of Russians in the first campaign. Maybe invite the Galani brigade from Israel to the Caucasus, which in the 73rd burned the Syrian armored forces in the amount of a thousand units and drove the Syrian army? ..

14. Tiny Israel, standing in a scorched desert, accepted 3,000,000 people in a matter of years - doubled its own population! With queues and difficulties - but all, former impoverished Soviet citizens, received money for the first six months and for furnishing (up to $ 10,000), some kind of housing, language courses, some kind of work. No one! - not left without a roof, without money - right away! - no things for the first time, no medical care, no schools for children.

They resisted, washed the stairs in the passages, helped each other, but everyone recovered and got to their feet. And we threw twenty-five million of our own beyond the borders of a collapsed state! Thrown like dogs! And we cry out that the Russian nation is dying out! Russia - huge, with its land, with its resources, with its lack of manpower, cannot accept Russians from abroad to their homeland?!

There are no feelings of your people! And that means there are no people. And mind you - no one wants to go to Russia. And the Russians are not coming. They know what's what. Mess, poverty, theft, banditry. they will eat, they will muzzle, they will torture. But go ahead! - smash the Jews, for the fact that the Russians don't give a shit about the Russians!

Hanging all the Jews, in fact, not for long. The question is: how will this contribute to solving the problems of improving life? They don't live like that anywhere.

15. Soviet Jews have long since ceased to be a people. Russian language, Russian Soviet mentality, Soviet atheism, Soviet ideology, assimilation. Anti-Semitism has turned Russian Jews - God, they all left, how many of them are left there? .. - into a kind of amorphous sect: we have the corresponding seal and the corresponding defeats in real rights and opportunities.

Well, it's kind of like a cast. And isn’t it funny how portraits of all these Uritskys and Trilissers hang in the corresponding rooms and corridors of the KGB-FSB, the founders, you understand, of the office where Jews are now ordered to keep the spirit out. You know how painfully the Fuhrer treats the Jewish question. Well, how did they catch a lot of mice, our purebred race? Yes, you have your own missiles from your own boats - and even then they don’t fly.

16. General with a big nose, like an overfed jack! Get up! Attention!

Do you know that Comrade Trotsky is the organizer and creator of the Red Army? Jew ice-cut? Jews have not been admitted to elite naval schools for a long time. That is, you can be a naval radio engineer or a mechanic - but you can’t be a combat commander.

On this occasion, the Jew Rosenbaum put on the uniform of a naval military doctor (as a graduate of a medical school with a military department) and epaulettes as much as a colonel (as a member of the Duma) and came to congratulate the race of pure lieutenants on graduation. Azohenway! Le Chaim, gentlemen officers!

One of the secrets of the Russian fleet is that Admiral Nakhimov was also a Jew. The son of a petty nobleman of the Smolensk province, indicated by encyclopedias, only means that his father from the cantonists was baptized and became a junior officer, which gave personal (not hereditary) nobility - with the right to enter also baptized children in military schools. However, the wife of Admiral Nakhimov categorically refused to be baptized, the sons were circumcised on the eighth day, and they lived all their lives in a civil marriage - without a wedding and without the Jewish rite. So what?

17. The opinion about the high intellectuality of the Jews is strongly and maliciously exaggerated. I personally met a lot of fantastic idiots among them. The opinion about general intelligence is also exaggerated. It may be that there were many intelligent people in Leningrad and Moscow. And as for our guys from Zhmerinka and Konotop, now we are in Izrailovka - it's a pleasure to look for such rednecks. And - in Brighton too, but these sleep peacefully. And there are a lot of people in disguise. He is three-quarters Jewish, and these three-quarters are worth another five - and according to the passport, as the proletarian writer Isaac Babel angrily wrote, he is Russian. - such a Russian, give the fuck to the rabbis. By the way, if we compare the general, and flight, and physical, and ideological training of Russian and Israeli pilots - guys, are you guys there, aviation is the elite of elites, the competition is one hundred in place, the screening is cruel, that is, the guys still keep in hands the fate and life of their country, literally.

The Jew is a fruit with a pull. You will eat it if - and then you will suddenly die from nothing. That's for sure. Do you, Orthodox, if you have a Bible at home? Reread something at night. Though the Book of King Solomon. Soothes..

Mikhail Veller, a famous and passionate TV debater, is actually a fashion writer. His books are published in huge circulations, 40,000 are not the limit for him, sometimes it reaches 150,000 copies. At the same time, he writes not some ironic detective stories, but very serious things: about the fate of Russia, about great literature, about the war, about the meaning of what is happening in the world. And people read; you have to know how to write it!

Weller's biography from his words

Born in 1948 in Ukraine, he grew up mainly in Siberia and Transbaikalia in military garrisons, which is natural for officer children. He graduated from school in Belarus, and the Faculty of Philology - at Leningrad University in 1972. After that, I changed - I don’t remember exactly - about thirty specialties. I have a work book with two inserts. He was a museum employee and a hunter-fisherman in the Arctic, a pioneer leader and a feller in Komi, a teacher of Russian language and literature and a construction worker in Mangyshlak. As well as a roofer, a silk-screen printer, a digger, a journalist...

In 1979 he ended up in Tallinn. I moved from Leningrad for a simple reason: I only wanted to write and put everything into the publication of a book. I left my city, family, beloved woman, friends, gave up all kinds of career, work, lived in poverty, drank second-class tea, smoked cigarette butts and did nothing but write.

Literature is a physically passive occupation, relaxing and in some ways not even masculine. And until the age of forty, it did not bring me money for life. I earned from May to October - "in the pampas", as I called it for myself. In the fall, he returned home thin, wiry, without any complexes and insomnia, and even with some money to live on until next summer.

In 1983, the first book was published - "I want to be a janitor", and then there is nothing interesting in my private biography. Then comes the life of a person who sits at the table, writes and even manages to live on the money from his books.

False start

Tell me, please, Mikhail... And when you left everything in Soviet times and left St. Petersburg for Tallinn, did you know then that you would automatically become a citizen of the European Union?

Is this the beginning of a conversation?.. When I left St. Petersburg in 1979, I thought that I was going there, at best, for two or three years - to publish a book. In the worst case, if the stagnation continues to worsen - which it smelled of in 1979 - I thought that within the borders of the Soviet Union it would be a little freer and a little easier to live there.

- "Is it better to live in a remote province near the sea"?

I can't stand Brodsky, I confess honestly...

-What about these lines?

Here. And I can't stand these lines. Because in my opinion, there is nothing smart about them. And Brodsky himself was never a poet of the top tier. This is my purely personal opinion ... So, I thought that in a pinch it would be possible to live on some translations from Estonian ...

- Which you did not know then, and then you never learned.

Uh... If you interrupt me all the time, it will be difficult for me to speak.

- I'm just giving cues for animation.

What kind of revival? You see, if we were chatting about this and that, then, of course, everyone could do whatever they like ... And if you turned on the recorder, then with your remarks you don’t let me finish a single thought. You asked me if I thought when I moved... I didn't think a damn thing! If you won't let me answer, then you and I will just drink beer and wine, and then there's no point in trying to do something. In my opinion.

- No offense. I wanted the best.

Soviet Estonia in the European Union

Now ask, - Weller said, and time went on. On a new one.

-Well... Uh-uh...- I stumble. I haven't been asked that harshly in a long time. I'm on an exam. - Everything, everything. We spot - and forward! So, did you know that you would become a citizen of the European Union? What will you travel everywhere without a visa? Despite the fact that we all then thought that the scoop is eternal, we will continue to vegetate ... And today you are turning out to be so wise.

You know, from the outside, if someone is lucky, you begin to learn new things about yourself. Like, ha ha, how wise I am. Although I have been convinced many times in my life that I am a bad political prophet. I, along with the majority, believed that the Soviet Union was eternal, that it would be enough for my lifetime in abundance ... And that I should live within its borders. Because for me there was no option of emigration because of my parents, who categorically did not want to go anywhere. And for this reason: I couldn't leave before the first book came out. Because otherwise it meant leaving defeated, which I could not allow in any way. And I moved to Tallinn when I was convinced that my stories were not going to be published anywhere else. Even if I had the surname Romanov and was the nephew of Grigory Vasilyich, the first secretary of the Leningrad Regional Committee. I had the whole set of negative personal data. Non-partisan, divorced, unemployed, nationality, modernism in prose. Wherever you spit - everywhere minus. I thought that if I received a positive review from the Tallinn publishing house and a book might come out there - what the hell, they assured me of this - it should come out, and then we will look. Then I thought that I would either go abroad by any means - because in the process of publishing the book I was already so fed up with everything - or I would start translating myself from Russian into Estonian, creating such a subgenre in Estonian literature. A pseudo-translation, a pseudo-broken language, such a pseudo-incorrect one - that's how a foreigner, as if with an accent, beats some stories - and I will find my niche. Because, to be honest, I had a rather low opinion of Estonian literature. As for citizenship, it only started to smell like perestroika! And I did not believe that the Union would fall apart to the very end! And when it turned into this independence, then ... why did I take Estonian citizenship? I hesitated for a long time, I pulled right up to 1996. Then it was already necessary to decide - here or there. I was afraid that behind me again there would be a locked door, and the keys to the lock would be in the Central Committee and in the KGB.

- But there were no such thoughts: here I am a Russian writer, and therefore birch trees, huts, thatched roofs, a homeland are needed ...

Listen. I answer absolutely honestly. The longer I live, the more I am convinced... that at some point I really differ from most writers. I never wanted to be a writer. Even now, when I am sixty years old, I do not feel like a kind of writer. For myself, internally, I always - from the age of eighteen - formulated the task differently: I want to write books. I would like, if nothing else works out, to write at least one book in my life, but a good one. However, I am a private individual. The same as everyone else. I live the same way, I work the same way. I have the same problems, I have no benefits. I just want to write books. All! To be honest, I have always treated people with writer's status with a kind of arrogant contempt. Instead of doing business, they blow a painted whistle. And when I didn’t want to go, some friends who, of course, left - either to the States, or to Germany, or to Israel, or got married to Italy, to France - asked what I was doing here. I answered: I would like to arrange things in such a way that I have a book published every year. Maybe even two. This is my form of existence, this is the main thing for me. And abroad, we, in fact, are not needed for hell. Because in France you have to be a Frenchman, in England - an Englishman, in Russia - a Russian. Well, who is a Russian writer in America, but in FIG who needs him, except for his émigré circle? That is, my approach was absolutely simple. "I am a Russian writer!" - I could never formulate in such terms a high calm. It seems to me that a normal person cannot say such things about himself.

Competition in literature

Well, writers in general are such a difficult topic ... you won't find endings there. (Writers and alcoholism are even worse.) Well, well ... As Louis Armstrong said, "I naively used to think that people need music, but they need a show, alas." People don’t just want texts that come out of nowhere, from the village, under a pseudonym, they need a writer in the form of a tangible character, this is a game ... People want a little - I return you to the previous question - that the writer had a biography. They are probably pleased that Arkady Gaidar commanded a regiment at the age of fourteen and shot white patriots in batches.

Well, the regiment is still at sixteen.

- Yes! And Hemingway, whom you don't love...

Why don't I love him? You cannot know this. I have always been very good to him.

By the way, I remember how in my youth I loved him wildly, and then something like this ... So, there is nothing wrong with that, it seems to me that people see not only Hemingway's texts, but all this PR line. The same Zoshchenko: before whom could he spread about his officer past, before the commissars and security officers? (Which miraculously did not immediately shoot him, but then strangled him). It's very good that you compared Hem with Remarque...

Let me put in two words. Zoshchenko was by nature a quiet, modest person. He was a hero at the front. When the situation required it. Like most heroes, outside the realm of action, he was not only an ordinary person, but also a quiet, modest, polite person. Today I know real supermen, they went through such hot spots of the planet that all these Rambos are resting puffed up. But in everyday life - normal people who do not brag, not only because they are subscribed, but because in their circle, in their view, this would be redneck. Plebeianism. Only the cheap ones will brag about it! And Zoshchenko was very expensive. But at the same time he was not a PR man.

Very good. This is one story, but when you said that there would not be enough space for everyone in literature - a very interesting thought - this once again indicated that we must fight for a place in literature! And the reader sees not only texts under a pseudonym, here, they say, text number fifteen and seventeen, and let them write for ten years, and then, when it turns out which of them is the greatest, we will publish the surname. This is one approach - not the most interesting, perhaps. Much more interesting to run around with a bearded romantic handsome American. Zoshchenko was silent because the Reds won, not the Whites, and Remarque was silent because the Germans lost. Remarque was on the losing side. What did not characterize him well as a hero is that it is hard to promote the defeated. Well, let's say Khem moved Remarque... I wonder who, in your opinion, did Brodsky move? Who - the first poet - did he throw off the pedestal with his competent PR?

We must not forget that during his lifetime Pushkin was never number one, he was number three. The first was Krylov, the second - Zhukovsky, the third - Pushkin. But the places, they change... As for the fight, it's enough to look at how the actors fight among themselves. Already there, on the stage or in front of the TV camera, as if there was only enough space for one! Bolivar does not fit into the screen for two cameras! This means that an interesting situation has developed in Russian, even in Soviet literature. One center - these were Voznesensky and Yevtushenko, the largest figures competing with each other for the first place. Well, it was often said that Yevtushenko was more understandable and traditional, while Voznesensky was more innovative, more poetry, while others said the opposite. The second center was Brodsky, who was poetry absolutely uncensored, unofficial, oppositional, not maneuvering in any way to come to an agreement with the authorities - completely free. This was of great moral and psychological significance in Soviet times. And there was also a third center that addressed the people directly - Vysotsky. He did not have any books during his lifetime. And from the tape recorders it sounded from every window. And each of the centers sought to push the others away. It is quite clear that Brodsky hated Yevtushenko and Voznesensky; they, wildly jealous of each other, hated Brodsky, and as for Vysotsky, they got him everything: and you, boy, go away with your guitar, where are you poking around with your pig snout in our Kalash line. Time, it is very often - yes! - puts everything in its place. Vysotsky has already really taken the first place with us, because twenty-eight years have passed since he was gone, but he still remains alive and resonant. There were no such cases in the history of Russian poetry. Now even idiots began to realize that this is poetry. Vysotsky returned poetry to its original source! When a poet himself writes poetry and performs it in his own voice with his own expression to his own simple accompaniment - this is where poetry began! But for our guys to recognize Vysotsky would mean signing that they are in second place. The difficulty is that literary critics are, as a rule, losers, outsiders with a sharply reduced creativity. Interestingly, in our time in Russia, a story is already typical when a critic begins to write a book, most often a novel. That is, imagine a perverted sequence of events! First, he evaluates, teaches and criticizes others, then he begins to do something himself. And you come from the other end! You first do something that is worth something, and after that start criticizing.

political correctness

Yes-ah-ah ... But such a topic: political correctness. If it had been in 1944-1945, then they would have negotiated with Hitler, they would have held free elections in Germany under the supervision of international observers ...

Of course! Do you think otherwise?

-... they would say: well, the Jews were clicked a little there, well, what to do, it happens ...

But the most important thing is that a person has embarked on the path of peace, the path of negotiations, is ready to stop shedding blood, admits his mistakes, promises that there will be no more, and most importantly, that they have stopped killing. The rest doesn't matter. Yes of course! So it would be. But the fact is that every century had its own obscurantism. The obscurantism of our time, the beginning of the 21st century, is called "political correctness". Political correctness actually means that there are truths that cannot be spoken, that are immoral, immoral and criminal. This is no better than some of the views of the Holy Inquisition!

Yes-ah-ah ... I agree with you: political correctness is a terrible, disgusting thing. The Americans used it only for wiring and never for themselves.

You see, in our days, when Islamic terrorists defecated in the Church of the Nativity, taking monks hostage, and European countries declared that Israel should not harm them ... And then the Europeans sorted these terrorists into their countries, gave them shelter and the status of political refugees - the conclusion suggests itself unusually bitter for us. This civilization does not deserve the right to life. These are jackals, not people.

- White civilization?

white civilization.

- I mean, they are Europeans and Americans, not us Russians...

I do not separate myself from this civilization. If you want to wear American jeans, listen to American jazz, and so on and so forth, then don't claim that we are different.

-"Whoever loves jazz today will sell his homeland tomorrow." Well, jeans are nothing more than jeans. Cover shame.

Despite the fact that you cannot distance yourself from what you use, what you integrate into everyday life, due to which you live to a certain extent. This is an artificial distancing that is moral dependency.

- Our American jeans are obviously made in China, everything is made there now.

This is not happiness.

Just Chinese jeans. They only have an American label on them. Only on the ass it is written that they are American, otherwise ...

Are you saying that Russia does not belong to the Judeo-Christian culture? Do you think that our values ​​- purely human, purely mental - are different from the values ​​of a person in Italy and America?

In many ways different. What is the watershed here? Does human life have value as such, in and of itself? They immediately say yes, but here we must first prove that you are a good guy.

- "Yes" say the politicians. And "yes" says the left intelligentsia. Italian gangsters, Americans from the poor ghettos and so on do not say yes at all. They remain the same people they have always been. Here in the East, the attitude to this is different ... And they blow themselves up together with their enemies for a sweet soul. But neither in Europe, nor in America, nor in Russia, this business does not work. The idea of ​​this and that light is different, and so on...

- I'm giving you back...

I didn't hit you, I'm giving you an interview. I can't argue with you because it doesn't make sense. It probably doesn't make any sense for you to argue with me either. Because, as I understand it, my task is to express my opinion on various issues, and yours is to turn this case so that I express this opinion. I understand correctly?

- Yes, but...

Here, state it.

But I would like not only to hear an exposition of your views, but also to discover some paradox in this presentation. Because it's hard to imagine a good interview without paradox. In my opinion, there must be some inconsistency.

Fuck you from me wait for inconsistency.

- Ha ha ha! That's what you said well.

Read the full text of the interview in the magazine "Medved" (July-August)