“Abroad, Nureyev got what he wanted”

Here’s a story for you: a talented young man, already a star of the Mariinsky Theater (Kirov Theatre), left Russia at the age of 21, left, ran away. Yes, to Paris on business urgently. To freedom with a clear conscience. Although my conscience is restless: my mother, father, and sisters remained in the Union. Parents were immediately summoned to the KGB, interrogated, the older sister was demoted. Only because of him. Only because he wanted freedom. Creative first of all.

There, abroad, Nureyev got what he wanted. He had a theater, a ballet troupe. He staged, he danced endlessly, traveled the whole world. This is happiness, of course. And the motherland … She, of course, called him a traitor, a renegade, a bastard. Well, how else?

When his mother was already dying, in 1987, he began to ask for a visa to go home, to say goodbye. Not right away, but they did. Nureyev came to the perestroika country, which was still flooded with special services. An already awakened country, but not an awakened one. At the break. Nobody met him then, it was a visit of a private person. But they let me say goodbye, yet they acted like human beings.

And in 1991, when he came back, they greeted him like a hero. Applause, applause, the Bolshoi Theater, native Ufa – strangled in their arms … And a year later he died. From an incurable known disease.

…There were other fugitives. Baryshnikov achieved everything, possible and impossible, turned out to be very successful. Godunov could not stand it, he could not. To put it simply, he was tormented by nostalgia. In a foreign land, he did not take root.

“ROADSIDE PICNIC

At the “Kvartirnik” at Margulis (NTV) the “Picnic” group, Edmund Shklyarsky. So it sounded fresh, in a new way, the guys lit up not like a child. Although they sang exclusively old.

And you can’t even say that it’s well forgotten. We remember. Against the background of what is now our evergreen music, “Picnic” gave an incredible heat, although it looked like an oasis of the purest water and the purest ozone. “I like it here in the Kingdom of Crooks,” they sing.

What about the rest? The patriotic Rastorguev, the ever-young Dolina, someone’s best friend Shaman, the funny Kirkorov, the eternally sober Leps, the statesman in the seventh generation of Basques… All of the aforementioned ball with a very specific Margulis is also changing. Because jokes are bad with Margulis, you can’t lie with him. That is why the Valley, and Leps, and in general anyone on the “Kvartirnik” get out of themselves everything true, truthful. Here, no feathers will help, and even pretentious speeches, a bad game. All the husks are peeled off, unfastened, only you, your viewer, remain … And Margulis, in front of whom it is a shame to pretend.

MOSCOW – DYNAMO!

Spring, football, native, Russian. What could be better! We’ve been waiting for this for so long. Four months.

But about television. Football is still a picture, if someone does not understand. There are many components: what they show, how they show. Who comments is very important. Well, and all sorts of other nuances, of course.

The audience is very important here. When there are a lot of them and they really get sick, a unique background of a real Game is created. Football without spectators is dead. Do you remember what happened during covid? Yes, empty stands. And this is football?

Covid is over, or did it seem to me? The people returned to the stands, how good! Only here is another misfortune: instead of covid – Fan ID passes, a fan card. When not everyone is allowed in, but only those who have registered. You can throw a slogan: have you registered on the Internet?

I don’t, and I’m not even going to. It used to be like it used to be: I wanted to go to the stadium, to the match of my favorite team, I went in the evening, stood in line at the box office, bought a ticket, and hello – here’s Blanter’s march, here are your favorite players, here you are shouting: “Forward, guys!” … Well, as the doctor ordered. And now? I see that the stands are full of green boys with the same green girls, for whom logging in and out of the computer is no problem. Are we not human anymore? Here I am, for example, a fan with 50 years of experience. They forgot about me. Therefore, no more than three or four thousand fans come to Moscow. That is, attendance has decreased significantly. Do we need it?

The cup remains. Where Fan ID has not yet spent the night has not been applied yet. Hence the picture of the best match of recent years, no less – Zenit – Dynamo (Moscow). A wonderful stadium, 30 thousand fans, plus Georgy Cherdantsev at the microphone. The same Cherdantsev, who was glamorized for someone, lost his qualifications, became a big boss. But then a large group of commentators left Match TV, a wonderful group, I must say. And Cherdantsev took up the old, he had to.

I listened and admired: what a Russian language, how accurate it is, in style, character, everything corresponds to the game, a duel not for fear, for conscience. Yura (aka Zhora, aka Gosh) was as good as ever. And the local St. Petersburg man Pavel Bogdanov helped him, remember this name. He worked as the second number, at the edge, and absolutely corresponded to his role. He always gave the necessary information, very accurately described the situation, spirit, mood, emotions, but, moreover, he never pulled the blanket over himself, he always remained a supporting actor. The best actor, I must say. If it were my will, I would give him an Oscar in this nomination.

And the result was a spectacle that has not been seen in domestic football for a long time. Everything came together: the spectators, the fight, the most uncompromising, and the magnificent commentators, masters of the Russian word. And a penalty, and the defeat of the favorite in his field. This is football.