Family and civil war: why the film about 1993 was shown right now

Or they didn’t want to say anything, they just showed it when they found the place and time, and there’s no need to invent anything here or engage in conspiracy theories. Cinema and cinema, sit, watch, think, remember.

The movie is truly amazing. Directed by Alexander Veledinsky, script by Sergei Shargunov, writer and deputy. The novel of the same name is also his.

Let’s play with numbers. Remember, Voznesensky: “19-82, in theory, is a lucky number…” And what happened in 1982? Brezhnev died, that’s all. A minor political figure of the era of Alla Pugacheva. But then it seemed that the world stopped, collapsed and the end of the world came. Because dear Leonid Ilyich has always been in my life, since childhood. And suddenly he’s gone. I remember going to the Belorusskaya metro station – ring along the escalator down. My eyes are watering, and the people rising up think that I am crying, grieving, and look at me so pitifully!

…The next lucky year was 1991: ten on the left and ten on the right. If you came across a tram ticket with that number, you would have to eat it. The putsch of the State Emergency Committee, I ran to the White House, not yet knowing why. I sat down on a trolleybus placed on the barricades and immediately fell asleep. Because I was tired, I still worked hard at the printing house during the first shift. Yes, like that absent-minded man from Basseynaya Street who got into the uncoupled carriage. I woke up, considered my duty to defend democracy fulfilled, and went home. And confident people walked towards me at the barricades; unlike me, they understood what would happen. This is what happened: a cowardly, absurd assault at night, the death of three guys, a rollback, the departure of the army.

I came to the White House a day later, and it turned out to be the best, happiest day of my life. We were waiting for a new attack. On the White House podium, Yeltsin, Mikhalkov spoke with inspiration, Makarevich sang (recognized as a foreign agent in the Russian Federation). And there was a sea of ​​people around, and it was such brotherhood, such freedom, which I have never seen or felt anywhere else and never. Just happiness.

…Then Belovezhskaya Pushcha, the collapse of the Union, the CIS, darkness, horror. Lucky number?

Well, “1993” is clearly unlucky. Gaidar asked on TV, begged him to come out, to protect them, but I answered the box – no: “You now have an army, cops, and again you are hiding behind the people. Besides, my wife is pregnant, I’m not going anywhere, don’t get your hopes up.” Although that same night Innokenty Smoktunovsky was seen carrying a log, just like Lenin. He went out and listened to Gaidar. A few months later he was gone.

Then the crowd storming the city hall and Ostankino, invigorated by Rutskoi, Makashov and Khasbulatov, inciting people to death. Tanks roaming the White House. Yeltsin is in prostration, Chernomyrdin gives the orders. Deputies with their hands raised. Black White House. Tracer bullets live. At the Krasnaya Presnya stadium there is a stand with photographs of the victims. Scary.

Sergei Shargunov was 13 years old at the time. He was there, he remembers and knows everything. And here is the novel.

And here’s the movie. A family against the backdrop of civil war in Moscow. Blitz style. Starring Evgeny Tsyganov. Let’s meet, his name is Vitya.

Once in the USSR he was engaged in science and designed a lunar rover. Now in the new country he has “grown up” to become a utility repairman. Just like my friend: he graduated from the Moscow Aviation Institute with honors, Faculty of Cosmology. That is, he had to become either an astronaut or a rocket designer. But in ’88 everything was shut down, the industry was cancelled, and he became a photographer in the subway. Thank you, Mikhail Sergeevich, for our happy life!

…At first, “1993” shows peaceful life. Vitya quarrels with his wife, also a utility worker, and does not understand his “alien” daughter at all. But he understands that life is unfair. He seeks this justice, but does not become embittered. He knows that nothing depends on him. He is a grain of sand in a historical whirlpool. He survives, survives, and has no one to lean on.

In fact, apart from an advertisement for a fan factory and a tape recorder from those years, there is nothing specific here, just ordinary Russian life. It could have been exactly the same under Khrushchev, and under Andropov, and under Stalin. Nothing new, life seemed to have stopped. It’s an amazing thing: in the Soviet disaster film “Crew,” the first part consists entirely of everyday life, personal space, family squabbles, love and even sex (what a beautiful naked Alexandra Yakovleva in bed with Leonid Filatov!). This was done to show the contrast, to give air, range, amplitude between peace and “war”, an accident, a fire in the Universe – then a masterpiece from Alexander Mitta comes out of this potential difference.

And here – “both will and captivity are all the same.” You can safely skip this introduction.

But then, when the October war of 1993 unfolds… There is too much documentary footage. Handsome Yeltsin, who has not yet reduced himself to the state of groggy, announces the dissolution of the Supreme Council; frantic Rutskoi; people on top of trucks, with a dashing guffaw, going to storm Ostankino; intimidated soldiers from the explosives with Kalashnikovs at the ready; dashing Defense Minister Grachev; corpses during the play, scattered near the television center… We know, they saw it, but someone was there, became a witness, and miraculously survived. The story is recent, only 30 years have passed. It seems like nothing can get through us anymore.

But… Vitya was here, Evgeny Tsyganov. How difficult it was that brought him into the very whirlwind of events, twisted him, twisted him, he himself probably won’t tell. He is looking for justice, that says it all, so he ended up at the White House. Against Yeltsin, of course.

But here he is the soul – of the company, of the coup, of the revolution. So in the film “White Bim Black Ear” – whoever this dog with a spot came across, he immediately appeared as a person or a non-human. Likewise, Vitya (Tsyganov) is natural and simple, like the truth. Documentary footage without him is a chronicle, tragic, of course, but with him it immediately becomes a human dimension, be careful, people, people. With his unpretentious, pure attitude to life, he fills the space, spiritualizes it, and the cold documentary turns out to be an artistic revelation.

Tsyganov is included in it, in this October revolution, as if for granted, like two fingers on the asphalt. Again, he doesn’t play anything here (or so he plays!), so he gives the picture meaning and content. Unlike Bulgakov’s film adaptation, he does not try to be a Master, he lives like this, he is White Bim, from here we see his true life in the scorched and meaningless 1993. How many people died, for no reason at all. Vitya survived, and this is the only good news of a wonderful film.