Alex walked across a wide, endless field. The crimson sun rose behind him, and in front there was a gray predawn twilight, cut by the first rays of the rising luminary. Eerie black birds appeared far ahead. With each passing second, they were getting closer and bigger. And now the quiet noise of the motors was heard. Steel wings with black crosses rushed rapidly over the ground, flew over Alex's head, and a few minutes later, far behind him, a soul-tearing whistle was heard, and then explosions. Ahead Alex saw heavy gray tanks. The Tigers crawled slowly, plowing the ground with caterpillars. He stared in fascination at the pile of sinister steel that was moving right at him. A second later, a flash of bright light appeared on the tank's armor, and a machine-gun burst ripped through the silence. Alex fell into the field grass, covered his face with his hands and screamed. Bullets whistled right over his back, and the noise of the engine grew closer and growled more distinctly, like an approaching wild animal, ready to jump. The machine gun knocked, and the caterpillars plowed the ground right at the very head of Alex. Everything was confused - his own scream, the clatter of a machine gun and that ominous roar of the engine …
- Alex! Alex! - the television king Ivan Ivanovich shook Alex by the shoulder, - wake up at last. Once again, you've been sitting up late working on your new shooter! Now sleep right at the table at a meeting of respected people. You need to take care of yourself, you won't earn all the money!
- Ivan Ivanovich, I ask you, please, never say this in front of me … - Alex grinned and added: - Am I screaming again in my sleep?
- Yes! Are you dreaming about fighting again? - Asked the head of the sex industry Petr Petrovich.
- Well, yes, it was necessary to finish this damn game by June 22, in order to release it on the next anniversary of the beginning of the war. We registered there a campaign for the Germans, in which you can take part as a tanker, an infantryman, and a pilot, and go through the whole war. Naturally, we are promoting an alternative historical version there - they say, the Germans took Moscow and Stalingrad. We sat with the guys for several weeks, finishing the plot. At night. Now I still dream of all sorts of rubbish.
- And what is your ending? What happens to all countries after the German victory? - Ivan Ivanovich asked a question.
- Like what? The long-awaited world is coming, where everyone lives happily and happily. The bloody tyrant Stalin, who treacherously attacked Europe and unleashed a massacre, was destroyed. The plans of the Bolshevik elite to take over the world with the help of nuclear weapons are thwarted. NKVD officers and special officers are all on bunks. The simple Russian people drink Bavarian beer and celebrate the long-awaited liberation from the totalitarian yoke, civilization finally comes to the countries of the former Soviet camp: German order reigns everywhere, high salaries, good roads. Well, what am I telling you, you yourself know all these manuals,”Alex said wearily.
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- Knowledge of the documents does not negate a talented approach and creative implementation, - Ivan Ivanovich noted, - especially in such a delicate issue as the formation of young gamers' correct ideas about the reasons and goals of the Second World War. And your description makes me very happy.
- My father also fought with the Germans … - said the alcohol tycoon Vasily Vasilyevich thoughtfully, immersed in memories.
- Seriously? - Pyotr Petrovich turned to him with surprise.
- Well, yes, - Vasily Vasilyevich answered, - shoulder to shoulder. He served in the police of the Lokot Republic. He cleaned the machine gun for Tonka Machine-gunner.
- Is this the one who personally shot two thousand prisoners? Ivan Ivanovich asked in surprise.
- Yes, although there were much fewer episodes at the trial. But it is not important. And my father prepared a weapon for her every time before being shot. After all, it's not a woman's business to poke around in pieces of iron, - Vasily Vasilyevich laughed.
- Wait, Vasily Vasilyevich, how did you and such relatives get into the KGB service? Alex asked.
- Nobody knows. My father was a cunning beetle. He felt the smell of fried, and a few weeks before the Russians arrived, he fled, and then pretended to be a shell-shocked Red Army soldier with amnesia. Very convenient - I don't know, I don't remember, I can't explain. The war was then still in full swing, there was no time to sort it out. So he went straight from the police to the Red Army and ended up. Then, of course, the "special officers" dug under it, but they never found anything. Before escaping, he stole his personal file from the police department and burned it. Then they figured out all the policemen using this card index, but they never found my father, - explained Vasily Vasilyevich.
- Smart, smart. But we, gentlemen, are essentially doing the same thing: we manipulate facts and rewrite history,”Ivan Ivanovich replied. - For example, the war of 1812. Also, after all - "domestic". And what do they know about her? Who talks about some kind of exploits? But there were exploits. Well, maybe older people still remember something about Suvorov, about Borodino, and then only fragmentarily. And young people do not know at all. But only 200 years have passed. And now people can tell anything about this war. They will believe in everything.
- Why are there 200 years, we have already invented tales about the war with Hitler. Our favorite fairy tale about the front-line hundred grams, they say, only thanks to them Russian soldiers fought so well and selflessly. And you can't really tell whether it was there or not, it's not that important. The main thing is to advertise it and tell everyone that the main sponsor of the Victory is vodka,”Vasily Vasilyevich laughed.
- Vodka is so little things. More importantly, we have introduced into the mass consciousness the myth that World War II began with the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the subsequent partition of Poland. It follows from this logic that the main culprits of the whole action are Stalin and Hitler, on whose shoulders the same responsibility lies. And the fact that Great Britain, the United States and France actively pushed Germany to attack the Soviet Union, supplied technology, resources, armed, had the same non-aggression pacts and even fed Czechoslovakia to the Germans, most of today's youth do not even know about this, ” said the television king …
- You, of course, described everything correctly, Ivan Ivanovich, but only vodka and other dope is not a trifle, - Vasily Vasilyevich said with notes of resentment in his voice. “They provide that clouded state of consciousness in people, within which all our initiatives can be promoted, erasing real historical facts and prescribing new ones. Would a sober society believe in all these myths?
- Well, do not be offended, Vasily Vasilyevich! Of course, I didn't want to belittle the importance of your business, - Ivan Ivanovich justified himself. - The process of rewriting history is a delicate and multi-level matter that requires a comprehensive approach: in cinematography, television, documentary filmmaking, archives and textbooks. Thanks to Orwell, who detailed the entire technology in his 1984 novel. Remember this phrase: “Who controls the past,” says the party slogan, “controls the future; who controls the present controls the past."
- Orwell perfectly showed all the basic methods of manipulating society: you need to strive to make it as spiritless as possible, focus only on material values, divide it into castes, and most importantly - to deprive it of the past, and with it the future. Lies, lies and lies again - this is the main recipe for crowd control. And much of what Orwell wrote about, we have already brought to life. We gradually lower slaves to the level of instincts, intimidating them, or, conversely, seducing them; we are constantly rewriting history, convincing them that their ancestors were savages who knew nothing, could not do anything and generally lived like animals. And only we - our ideology, our technologies, our consumer model of life - can give them a decent level of existence, - answered Pyotr Petrovich.
- I have this novel the same reference book as Mein Kampf, - answered Alex, whom an interesting conversation finally brought out of his sleepy state.
“I'll tell you what, gentlemen,” Vasily Vasilyevich entered the conversation again, “Orwell gave another wonderful instruction. He described the so-called "newspeak" - a new language from which all harmful words are simply excluded, but the correct ones are added. For example, if we remove the word "conscience" from everyday life, then conscience itself will gradually disappear from life as a phenomenon. And let's go further - let's remove the words "friendship", "love", "mutual assistance", "altruism", "chastity", "decency", "morality". And if future generations won't even have such words, how can they even rely on these phenomena? As the novel wonderfully and aptly says: "The less choice of words, the less temptation to think." And our task is precisely this, so that the slaves do not think. Let's leave them only the words "money", "high", "drugs", "alcohol", "sex", and so on. We must not just eradicate human values - we must remove even the names of these values from everyday life.
“You are right, my dear friend. Working with concepts, names, meanings is always in the first place for us, since words are the reference points of thinking. For example, there used to be the city of Stalingrad, but now it is Volgograd, and once again a person will not think anything good about Stalin. There was a "police", but now we have a "police", much less associated with serving the people. And we constantly change the names of the streets for the same purposes, - Ivan Ivanovich noted.
- And what about the Orwellian term "thought crime"? Alex asked. - Is work being done in this direction?
- Sure! Now we are imposing "tolerance" in society - and under this pretext we prohibit people from criticizing any dirt and immorality. We have also introduced the term "extremism", which can be hung on any idea or group that we don't like. And in fact, we are already punishing for "thought crime", ridiculing those who promote concepts that are disadvantageous to us. With such a pace, it will reach the creation of the Ministry of Love, the Ministry of Peace, the Ministry of Abundance, the Ministry of Truth, each of which will be the opposite of what appears in the name. Like, for example, the modern Ministry of Culture, which sponsors such immoral films that it could be called the Ministry of Degradation.
- Friends, and I am still interested in such a question, - said Vasily Vasilyevich, - After all, Orwell's book is published in the public domain, and everyone can read it. Why, then, do people not resist and take advantage of this information? Do such dystopias simply program the future for the development of negative events?
- Books are different, Vasily Vasilyevich. And specifically in this information is presented in such a way that it encourages to a greater extent to come to terms with the inevitability of the scenario set out in it. After all, the author did not show effective methods of dealing with the system, and for the main characters it all ended sadly, which demotivates the reader. But there is another side to the issue. A strong person can read a novel and arm himself with the knowledge that it contains. However, in order to apply them, one must be not only a strong-willed person, but also in many respects an altruist, be ready to work not for the sake of money or profit, but just for the good of society. And this ultimately depends on the morality of the person, - Ivan Ivanovich explained.
- And it is possible in more detail … I thought that any knowledge can be converted into money. Is not it?
- I'll give you a simple example. Here you, Vasily Vasilievich, earn money by selling alcohol, tobacco and other drugs. And you earn very well, since this money is enough for you to keep a huge staff of marketers, psychologists, agitators, etc. And tell me, how much do the so-called conscious, agitating for sobriety earn?
- They don't earn anything. They don't sell anything! They go to schools, conduct sobriety lessons, or make their own videos and distribute them on the Internet for free. I don't even know what they eat - air, I guess, - the alcohol tycoon laughed.
“If I were you, I wouldn't laugh, Vasily Vasilievich,” Ivan Ivanovich said seriously. - Because if the percentage of such people increases at least a couple of times, then your business will end very quickly, and then my television empire, and Petr Petrovich's sex industry, and so on.
- That is, in the end everything is determined by morality? - Alex decided to clarify.
- Yes. Morality does not appear by itself, but is formed largely under the influence of external circumstances, the management of which is our main trump card, - said Ivan Ivanovich. - Do you know what was Hitler's main mistake?
- Didn't calculate the strength? - Alex tried to guess.
- The fact that he went to war against Russia with a naked sword, in the open. Although he attacked meanly, at night, in violation of the non-aggression pact, everyone still understood that there was a war. And we took this mistake into account. Our war is going on quietly and covertly, like hepatitis C, which is called the "gentle killer." Because he kills unnoticed. Here we are, gentle killers. We are waging a war that most people don't even know about. And this time the victory will be ours, - Ivan Ivanovich said admiringly and added a quote from Orwell's novel: “Hack it on your nose. We will crush you so that there will be no return to the past for you. Something will happen to you that you will not recover from even after a thousand years. Love, friendship, joy of life, laughter, curiosity, courage, valor and honor - all this will be beyond your reach. We will scrape everything out of you and then fill you with ourselves."
- Let's scrub everything clean and then fill it with ourselves, - Alex repeated thoughtfully, immersed in reflections on his new computer game.