Many are perplexed, they say, where are so many scoundrels around? And I am perplexed about such a misunderstanding. While serving in the Soviet army (this was at the end of the eighties of the last century), I happened to encounter a phenomenon that made me think about this question, and the answer, it seems to me, was found.
The city of Pervomaisk, Nikolaev region, 46th division of strategic missile forces. Military school for junior specialists. Abbreviated as GShMS, and in common parlance - sergeant training. I am a cadet of the first platoon of the second battery. The guys are all excellent, from different parts of the vast country, but in general, with the same mentality, as they say now. Soviet. Komsomol members, athletes, students who distinguished themselves in civilian life.
Let me explain: the selection criteria for the Strategic Missile Forces, and even more so for the sergeant training, are very high, almost the same as the KGB. To get here, it is not enough to be an athlete and to know physics perfectly well, you also need to have a crystal clear biography, so that there are not only relatives abroad and with a criminal record, but even being brought to the police.
But all of a sudden they bring replenishment to us. About twenty people, and all from the city of Brezhnev. They also become the second platoon in our battery. I believe that most of the eyewitnesses still remember that platoon. Everyone howled. From us, ordinary fellow soldiers, to the head of the school - a lieutenant colonel. It turned out that one half of Brezhnev's civilians were members of one coiler, and the other half were members of another competing coiler.
In order to understand what this means, you need to imagine what will happen if you close a Palestinian with a Jew or an Azeri with an Armenian in the same room. And you also need to know what a "winder" is. Now everyone has forgotten about this, but in Soviet times it was well known that youth street gangs were called coilers. Mainly in the Tatar SSR, in the Perm, Kuibyshev and Ulyanovsk regions.
They were usually dominated by criminals, respectively, and the order reigned there, as in a zone. Everything "according to concepts" and in accordance with the prison hierarchy. In the wars between the winders, it was teenagers who showed fierce cruelty. At times, the blood in the veins of seasoned thieves froze from what the jerks who were mad with hatred for each other did. And the concepts of honor and dignity in coilers were very specific.
Beating the recumbent was not considered shameful for them. And three on one - in the order of things. Of course, this was not the case in all winders, but in those from which the replenishment arrived in our battery, the jackal's customs apparently reigned. I was simply shocked by the immorality of the Brezhnevskys. You can endlessly remember their "exploits", but today I would like to tell you about one seemingly not so significant episode.
Once we were sitting in a smoking-room, during a break between classes, and one of the Brezhnev's men talks about how, while still in the ninth grade, he recorded the sounds of him making love with a girl from his school on a cassette tape recorder. Then he boasted to his friends that he was already a man, and presented the record. This recording was sold into dozens of copies, and the next day the whole school listened to "audio porn". It is clear that the girl was persecuted by hanging the label of a prostitute. She then almost laid hands on herself, and in the end she entered a vocational school in another city and went away.
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Everything about this story struck me. Including the reaction of the listeners, who giggled with pleasure, letting go of dirty comments. Here they are - scum. Little cowardly creatures that can only represent something if they huddle in a pack. This is an embittered pack. Knowing neither pity nor compassion. Knowing nothing about honor, dignity and morality.
If a similar story happened in our school, in Kadykchan, then most likely it would have ended at the moment when this freak turned on the recording in the company of friends. Normal guys would have smashed the bastard's face. It simply could not be otherwise. But in the Brezhnev school they acted completely differently. For some reason, there are places on Earth where seemingly obvious things need to be explained.
How did it happen that different concepts of good and evil took root in different places? Probably because some people themselves begin to put up with the existence of evil. First, evil brings them into a state of indignation, then they begin to justify its existence with various reasons, supposedly "independent" of them, and then it becomes commonplace, and at the final stage the person himself does not notice that the line separating good from evil has disappeared.
Then he not only silently observes, but himself begins to do evil. What? Everyone does it! Today it has become fashionable to talk about some "Overton windows". We, the children of the USSR, in the 80s did not hear anything about any windows, except for "Windows ROSTA" and those with "mother washed the frame", but at the same time were much more moral. We didn't need religions, psychologists and business coaches. We intuitively felt evil and sincerely resented everything that goes beyond good.
We fought evil as best we could. Each in its place. And therefore there was more good, and less villains. Now everything is different. Now, most believe that evil must be fought by posting pictures of holes in the roads and overflowing trash cans on social media pages. So garbage filled the heads of our citizens, including "tolerance" with "tolerance".
We did not notice how we lost the ability to independently crush evil at the root. They did not understand that they had become hostages of their own infantilism and cowardice. We missed the moment when the line between good and evil faded. Does the official take bribes? Oh, the state is to blame! Is your husband (wife) an official a bribe-taker? No-no, he's a victim of circumstance!
Do you hear, no?
But I'll finish about that bastard from Brezhnev. When I had already finished my service and was walking with a bag on my shoulder towards the checkpoint, I saw on one of the stands of the military unit in which I served, a portrait of that very scoundrel in the epaulettes of a foreman and a guard sign on a jacket. He became an excellent specialist and surely deserved his epaulettes honestly. But I doubt that he was still able to become a good person. Not. The scoundrel from a cadet turned into a commander and probably still breeds evil around him. I wouldn't be surprised if he is now in a position of responsibility or has become a successful entrepreneur.
And it will continue to breed evil. And his evil multiplies and gives rise to another evil. To infinity. And all because there was no kid next to him who would have given him in the face even then, in his youth.
Author: kadykchanskiy