Waiting for the execution
One of the gleefully grinning baboons pulled the bolt of the machine gun and stepped forward, aiming carefully.
Captain of the Soviet Army Vladimir D., standing on the edge of the cliff in front of the "firing squad", intellectually understood that the submachine gunner would now cut the finishing line of his life. But there was no fear and despair. The past did not pass before my eyes. Instead of fear, there was a feeling of the unreality of what was happening. And the head worked like a computer, looking for a way out.
And it was he who had to get into this ambush in South Ossetia, where the war was raging with might and main. The new leader of Georgia, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, tried with fire and sword to return to Georgia South Ossetia, which had run away from the happiness of living under its democratic rule.
However, for me personally, the fact that it was Volodka who got into this situation, like chickens in the snatch, was not surprising. He has such a villainous fate given by heaven.
We studied together at the Red Banner Military Institute, only at the special faculty, in the Arabic language. During his service in Baku, his favorite pastime was to get my Muslims under investigation with long quotes from the Koran, which he played by heart without stopping, as a result they considered him a hidden Wahhabite and a religious authority. For a couple of years, he lived in Baku in my apartment - then special propaganda was not favored with housing, unlike the justice system. And when I went home, he remained to fight in the Transcaucasus.
Internally, Volodka is an analyst and philosopher. And in life - a truth-teller and on this basis a quarrel. His painful adherence to principles on the verge of obstinacy always left him sideways. While still studying at the physics department in one of the regions of Russia, he was all the time in some kind of people's squads to restore order and climbed into history either with a massacre, or with stabbing. DND is a direct expanse for a principled person. He also successfully trained his license while at the institute's annual practice in Libya, so that the military adviser in the town where he served could not stand it and explained to him intelligibly:
“They don't like such lovers of truth here. We have only one conversation with such people - about stones and in the sea.
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Well, nothing, survived.
In Baku, for some time he worked as a teacher at the military department of the University and so exhausted the dunce-students who did not want to study in any way that they, the children of big people, promised to slaughter him with their blue eyes. And he survived again.
In the midst of the massacre in Baku, of course, it was he who ran into the crowd of thugs who, shouting "Karabakh", rushed to slaughter the Russian officer. Why, a two-meter tall bigot, is visible from everywhere, like a beacon in the night - beat him! And just in connection with the aggravation of the internal political situation, a defensive grenade F-1 was lying in his pocket.
“To die like that with a crash,” he announced, pulling out a grenade. - It will blow everyone away!
The bandits were not ready to die and left. Volodka survived again.
And now, it seems, this luck was coming to an end.
The blame for everything was again that same recklessness and a complete lack of a sense of danger on his part. By car with one driver, I went on a business trip to the hottest spot near Tskhinvali, where the Soviet military unit was located.
Came to this fucking village inhabited exclusively by Georgians. I asked the local boys how to get to the military. Those snakes, so nasty, showed exactly the opposite direction. And then they tapped out to their older comrades - they say, the game has appeared, but where are the hunters? And on the next street, an ambush awaited a lost military vehicle. The passage was blocked off, bandits with machine guns showered with victorious screams from all sides. And you can't do much with one pistol. I had to give up.
The captured Russian servicemen were dragged by the Georgian bandits to the so-called "black exchange". This house is such a raspberry, where part of the gang lived and, most importantly, things stolen from the Ossetians were kept - everything was littered with refrigerators, appliances, and rags. Such is the warehouse of looters to the delight of the surrounding residents, who now have a store with ridiculous prices.
They put the prisoners before the eyes of the band leader. And then the conversation went hard. The bandit clearly flaunted in front of others and himself - this is such a national trait. And dropped through his teeth (literally):
- You, Russian pigs, have no right to walk on the holy Georgian land.
There were lengthy explanations that these were not the first Russian servicemen who "float down our river with corpses." And the godfather puffed up from complacency, almost burst.
Then the conversations went quite rotten. The bandugan looks with a grin at the soldier:
- Well, it's clear with the officer. He was shot. And we can let you go. You are young.
Here the nineteen-year-old boy proudly straightens up and announces:
- No, you will kill, so together. To end.
Such a steel basis was visible in this boy - the Russian soul is real. Together in battle, together to perish. And do not leave your own. Not ostentatious, but true heroism in a hopeless situation, which no one will appreciate, which will remain with you until near death.
Well, then a short order - to shoot. And the chief bandit lost all interest in the Russians.
His slaves push the prisoners into the truck. While they were shaking on the road, Volodka saw how one executioner showed another on the tooth - they say, when uninvited guests are slapped so as not to forget to pull out the golden tooth, it costs money.
They brought the condemned ashore. They put their backs to the river. The executioners pulled the bolts.
And then, finally, Volodka started thinking. Special propagandists are able to talk professionally, and their knowledge of psychology is at their level - this is a profession. And Volodka also has a talent for verbiage. Fighting skills could not be saved here, which means that the great and mighty Russian language must save.
“Well, shoot if you don’t need Kalashnikovs,” he said calmly.
The senior executioner looked at the Russian officer with undisguised interest.
The situation was like this. In fact, the Ossetian-Georgian war was going on. Weapons, especially automatic ones, were worth their weight in gold. And they often replenished it from military warehouses - there was a large-scale plundering, unscrupulous warriors drove trunks and ammunition with boxes and cars. So everyone in the Caucasus is used to it - you can buy something from the military.
Anger and greed did not fight for long. The elder lowered the machine:
- What are the trunks? How many?
- AKSU. With shortened trunks. Two boxes.
- And not with shortened ones? - the bandugan grimaced.
They did not like AKSU in the troops; for combat at a distance, weapons are not very interesting. But all the same, it was of considerable value.
- No, there are none, - Volodka threw up his hands. - I AKSU stole two boxes. I was looking for someone to sell to.
- Give it back.
- Yeah, give it back. I can sell if we bargain.
The elder looked at him respectfully. Volodka knew that the main thing in such cases was to drown in the details, to create the illusion of reality.
And the bandits took a bite.
The prisoners were taken to a dilapidated house next to the river. And the fierce bargaining continued. Volodka was reluctant to lower the price. They promised to kill him right there, and for the sake of order they weighed out a couple of blows with rifle butts and hammered over his head from a machine gun, so that the bullets dug into the boards. And again bargaining began. He was offered to leave the soldier hostage to guarantee the deal. Volodka said that he could not return without a soldier - then he would not be released from the unit anywhere, and the valiant warriors of Gamsakhurdia would be left without machine guns.
Negotiations hung in the balance. But greed gradually won out. Finally, the elder announced:
- Okay. If you bring two boxes, you will receive your money.
They discussed the meeting place.
And the prisoners were released! On my word of honor! They just took the gun and the officer's ID.
Volodka did not come to the meeting the next day. He sent friends - a group of special forces of the GRU. They put the bandyukov under the trunks and promised to roll out the entire village. In general, they took away the license and the barrel, they advised me not to do it again.
Naturally, the war for Volodya did not end there. And then he walked the entire service on a thin rope. Either he was carried into Tajikistan, in the thick of the massacre, and there, through his efforts, many attacks of the so-called opposition were prevented, bandits were driven out of settlements - systemic thinking and knowledge of Muslim realities helped a lot. That was a business trip to the North Caucasus. True, he did not stay for a long time in one place - everything seemed to be going well until that time, until, with his adherence to principles, he got into another squabble with his superiors, after which he was removed to a new place. He lasted the longest in one very serious Moscow office, where he was highly respected for his analytical skills - they often welcomed all kinds of eccentrics, if only they knew the case. But he didn't sit there either - during the layoff, of course, he was kicked out on pension,without allowing to rise to the rank of colonel.
It turned out to be no easier to get settled in civilian life with hypertrophied principles. True, he had to give up his principles - he earned money by writing dissertations to the moneybags, moreover, in various disciplines - political science, economics. Even one in physics. And all passed without a hitch. I tried to do business - well, a clear stump, there were no options, funny easy money from such a bore always ran away. He wrote journalism in magazines. And today he somehow remained out of state affairs. What a shame. There must be some kind of structures in the state that find and adapt to the cause such fanatics - to madness honest, selflessly loyal to the Motherland and ready for anything, who do not put their lives on anything, as well as someone else's. But it did not fit, it happens.
Thank God, he is alive and well. And one of the vivid memories - those very days in South Ossetia, when he stood, waiting for his bullet, on the bank of some river with an incomprehensible name …
Parade of sovereignties
Zviad Gamsakhurdia was a true intellectual. From the very, very Georgian elite. Father is a classic of Georgian literature. Ancestors are Georgian princes. And Zviad from childhood was all in thought about the greatness of his people.
Even during the reign of Khrushchev, he drowned in some kind of dissident affairs - he created underground nationalist organizations, got caught, created others. For example, he launched the Georgian Helski group on human rights on a big voyage - well, the Snow Maiden Alekseeva is straight in her youth. In general, I played with toys. However, as it turned out, not even particularly dangerous.
I talked a lot with Georgians. And I dare say - worse than there, there was no elite in any Soviet republic. Especially their kids - not even golden, but some kind of brilliant youth. From childhood, brought up in an atmosphere of permissiveness, the consciousness of her own exclusivity and hatred of her big Moscow brother. Lived better than princes. Even then, houses near Tbilisi cost a million rubles each - they were palaces, and there was no end to those who wanted to buy. This is all the shadow economy mixed with corruption, which in all its ugliness was allowed to grow in the union republics.
This disgusting elite, crazy from the realization of their own greatness, from time to time and gave out this … Recall the capture of the plane in Tbilisi in 1983. The children of the cream of Georgian society, the most intelligent intelligentsia, filmmakers, academicians, big bosses, decided to enter the sweet Western life, which they did not know a shit about, on a white horse, like fighters against the regime. They hijacked a regular plane to Tbilisi, tortured the crew and passengers and were captured. By the way, on this fact, one sabotage director from the Mikhalkov clan recently shot a heroic blockbuster - they say, they were children who fought against the Mordor regime. This shitfilm was launched at the box office in Russia - chew dung, Russian cattle. Learn to hate the Soviet Motherland and love the terrorist, like your neighbor. Ugh, it's disgusting to speak.
Gamsakhurdia was from such an environment. The national elite, damn it, that's why they turned a blind eye to his adventures. They showed tremendous forgiveness to him. For anti-Soviet propaganda, he got off either with suspended sentences, or with small medication courses in madhouses - he rightfully earned the diagnosis, like his follower, the famous Khokhlogruzinsky activist Batono Saakashvili. However, all this did not prevent the writer's son from becoming a member of the Writers' Union himself - in those days it was almost impossible. But the elite, tree-sticks! Such an elite!
By the end of the seventies, everyone was so tired of him that the Chekists took him by the gills, shook him so heartily. After that, he appeared on Soviet television and sadly told how the vile enemies of the Soviet regime deceived him, naive, and made him fight against the USSR. But he is not like that, he is good, and for communism all over the world.
I remember this performance very well - a heartbreaking and shameful sight. He did not look like a fiery revolutionary. As a result, he was pardoned and quieted down as a senior researcher at the Institute of the Georgian Language up to the Gorbachev region.
In the mid-eighties, all the bugs and cockroaches came out of hibernation. The main punching and guiding political force in the republics was gradually becoming rabid animal nationalism. And then Zviad Gamsakhurdia appeared on a white horse. There is no more nationalistic nationalist.
It all ended absurdly - in 1990, this client of the psychiatric hospital was elected Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Council, and then the President of Georgia. In fact, he became the head of the republic, which by that time already wanted to spit on Moscow. Well, there is such a weakness among Georgians - to elect people with certificates from a mental hospital as Presidents. And he fully justified the diagnosis.
As a true liberal and humanist, the first thing he does in office is to restore the territorial integrity of Georgia - that is, he announces a crusade against Sukhumi and Tskhinvali. Georgia then announced the beginning of its withdrawal from the USSR. Naturally, the Ossetians, who have old scores with the Georgians, did not want to be slaves - and they were hinted at these bright prospects more than once. It was almost officially announced that now the Ossetians have nothing to rely on on their land - they will not be allowed into the state apparatus and to grain places. In general, at that time the idea of Ossetia without Ossetians was actively discussed in Georgia. Familiar rhetoric.
Ossetians already knew Gamsakhurdia quite well by 1989, when he, not yet in office, organized the blockade of Tskhinvali and the murder of civilians with the help of nationalist gangs. Well, right according to the precepts of the Helsinki group and in accordance with human rights (I should see this person). So the inhabitants of South Ossetia acted with Georgia as it did with the USSR - they announced that now the paths diverge, and the tobacco is apart.
In early 1991, Georgia began targeted punitive actions against South Ossetia. Now already by decision of the legitimate Government …
There are many of my friends among Georgians - golden people, loyal, honest, always ready to help. There was some charm in the provincial life and bustle of Tbilisi. And immigrants from Georgia made a great contribution to the strengthening of our statehood - here and Bagration, and Stalin himself, and many others. But separatist ideas have always circulated there, especially at the top and among the intelligentsia. How, we, so proud and self-sufficient, are forced to obey the Russian cattle, all the dignity of which is in its multitude. When we adopted Christianity, the Russians were still sitting in the trees. And in general - stop feeding Russia! After all, we now live so much better than cursed Russia (and the difference in the standard of living was several times, in Georgia very many had spacious houses and their own cars,when in the metropolis garden plots of five acres with rickety chicken coops five meters long were considered happiness). And how would we heal without her!
And it never dawned on them that without Russian energy resources and subsidies, they were nobody and could not call them. Economically, Georgia, in contrast to the same Azerbaijan, was insolvent and devoured much more resources than it produced. The high standard of living was only a consequence of the distortion in the distribution of the Union budget and the result of the shadow economy, which was throwing huge amounts of money into circulation. A wealthy Georgian who gives twenty-five rubles per paw to an administrator for a room in the Rossiya Hotel is such a common image of the 70s - 80s. “Dad, why did you buy me a Volga, I want to ride like all our students - on the bus … Well, son, take the money, buy a bus, and ride like everyone else” …
It should be noted that by the time perestroika began in Georgia, an anti-Soviet nationalist nucleus had long been ideologically and organizationally ripe, ready to actively contribute to the collapse of a large country when Moscow's power weakened and striving for power. And it consisted of representatives of the elite and party nomenclature circles. And the people, too, were ripe for the start of the rocking of the boat, which was shown by numerous rallies and demonstrations, and then terrorist attacks.
Even during the Soviet era, ultranationalists managed to take a majority in the elections to the Parliament of the Georgian SSR. Reasonable people understood that in front, without a large country, the Georgians did not expect anything, except for a big squabble and shooting. Abrek traditions, the number of firearms on hand (the custom was cute in families - holding a machine gun or a pistol at home), the authority of Georgian thieves-in-law, who at a certain stage actually took power in the republic, will soon become the reasons for an unprecedented rampant banditry. And so it happened.
I remember that a noble thief and member of the military council of Georgia Jaba Ioseliani nicknamed Duba (in Wikipedia he is literally characterized as a famous military, political and criminal figure!) Said to our general, who gave the pilot's word about some agreements:
- And I give the floor to the raider.
With the advancement of Georgia's leaps and bounds towards freedom and democracy, the process of degradation unfolded more and more. There was a war ahead, as announced by Parliament. However, fools were not enough to fight the Abkhaz and Ossetians - a significant part of the population had not yet accepted all these war games. The mobilization base is small. Which exit? Without thinking twice, the new rulers of the republic released criminals from prisons, undertaking the obligation to serve … No, not in the train. In the bodies of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. They dressed the scoundrels in police uniforms, armed them with whatever they could, and sent them to fight in Ossetia for a single and indivisible Republic of Georgia, still formally socialist.
Lord, what were the occupiers doing there? Hitler would have been jealous. They destroyed the civilian population on a large scale and with taste. They beat Tskhinvali with artillery. They cut off all of South Ossetia from electricity. They were afraid to compete with the Russian troops in the open, but did not miss the opportunity to secretly do dirty tricks - to capture individual servicemen and execute them.
I remember some of their know-how. There were then some pipes - either for oil pipelines, or even before that there. So these chicks of the new government in police uniforms brewed people in them, waiting for them to suffocate there. Our captive warrant officer was boiled alive in boiling water. People were buried alive. Our soldiers found corpses with flayed skin. With machine guns the Georgian abreks hammered the columns of peaceful refugees. Well, and massive robberies - they swept everything out of the houses of the Ossetians and took the goods to the "black stock exchanges", from where they sold them cheaply.
After those events, I sincerely believe that the unbelted criminal riffraff should be put up against the wall whenever possible, and as much as possible. These are such creatures that have passed through a cruel prison natural selection and retained an aggressive gangster courage, who, seeing that everything is allowed to them, invariably turn into cannibalistic beasts, happily gurgling from human blood, and then there is no restraint for them. They kill-rob-rape these scoundrels without any twinge of conscience and even a shadow of pity. This is for fans of thieves' romance and chanson notes.
Our people could not calmly look at this bloody conveyor. The Ossetians fought the invaders quite skillfully, but the forces were unequal. And while Humpbacked Judas was sending outraged letters to Georgians and Ossetians that it was not good to treat each other that way, peace, friendship, Pepsi-Cola, to which the Georgians were officially sent in three letters, it seems to me that our troops actually left obedience to Moscow. And they inflicted tangible blows on the Georgian bandits, which, in my opinion, turned the tide of the armed confrontation. By the way, the same story was repeated with the two hundred and first divisions in Tajikistan. Messengers from the liberal authorities of Moscow rode there to the rallies and greeted the local "democrats" with oriental specifics: "We are with you!" And these very bearded defenders of universal human values filled up the irrigation ditches with tens of thousands of corpses of their enemies, loyal to the legitimate government. Saved the situation and stopped killing then, too, our soldiers. And, most likely, also against the will of the Kremlin.
Yes, in Ossetia, our soldiers and Ossetians have thrashed many non-humans. Volodka, I remember, was telling. Such a body lies in a police uniform - one shoulder strap is lieutenant, the other sergeant. And next to it is pepper, which has a certificate of release from the colony in the certificate of an employee of the Georgian Interior Ministry.
As a result, one and a half percent of the population of South Ossetia died - several thousand people, which is a disaster for a small republic. Approximately so many Georgians were killed. Three times as many wounded.
The lesson was enough for the Georgian invaders right up to 2008. Well, and then the eternal story - America is with us, McCain is a brother, or maybe we'll kick it? Moreover, the president is almost the same as the last hero of Tskhinval - with a madam certificate. And they hit …
America is with us
Many Georgians strongly resemble Ukrainians - the same unwillingness to be friends with reality, the same myths, the same passion for Maidans and rose revolutions, the same nationalistic concern. And everything naturally ends with blood, aggression and genocide of unwanted peoples or social groups.
It's just that everyone has their own stages of a long journey, their own exploits and their subhumans. The Ukrainians have the House of Trade Unions, Donbass with children's bodies torn apart by bombs, "Untermensch miners" and damned Muscovites. The Georgian nationalists have Sukhumi, Tskhinval, the lower races of the Abkhaz and Ossetians.
It is somehow not customary to remember this now in a decent society, but in terms of bloodiness, the deeds of cheerful and hospitable Georgians may well compete with the feats of Bandera in their brightest and most savage manifestations.
And yet, for stubborn Georgians, as well as for stubborn Ukrainians, Russia is to blame for everything, including the rainy autumn and snowy winter. Only the invaders did not eat bacon, but ate a kebab. But the American is good. He is kind.
Many small or failed peoples in a hostile environment have this trait - to stick to Big Brother, seep into all structures of his society, live happily ever after. Georgians felt great in Persia. Then in Russia. After the October Revolution, for some time they also sincerely adored the Germans who came there. Then they glorified in relation to Moscow. And they always betrayed all the old owners and began to throw mud at them as soon as they ran under a new strong hand. Well, such a national mentality.
Now they are actively trying to suck up to the Pindos, but with those such tricks do not work. There is only business, nothing personal.
Looking in the long term, sooner or later Georgia will have to again pray to Russia for a new Georgievsky treatise. Very turbulent times are coming on Earth, it will be difficult for small nations to survive. And again we will become their older brother. And everything will follow the well-worn track for centuries …
It's windy in Baku
-Carabakh! Karabakh!
Until now, this noise is in my ears.
Lenin Square is one of the largest in the world. It was bounded by the embankment, the Government House, which looked like an old gray castle, and modern multi-storey twin hotels "Intourist" and "Apsheron". She was chosen by the protesters for their games.
An absolutely fantastic sight - a gigantic, buzzing like a beehive, excited crowd. They say that up to a million people gathered there. And a huge number of cars. Azerbaijani flags are fluttering, among which there are a couple of Turkish ones. Rallying bonfires burn twenty meters high and shout to the rhythm: "Karabakh, Karabakh" And at the same time they fall into a kind of trance. And so a week, another, without interruption, not for a second without stopping. A million sips, bonfires - some kind of paganism. Or zombie consciousness …
I arrived in Baku in 1986 on assignment to the Military Prosecutor's Office of the Baku garrison. It was a charming city. Completely international. Azerbaijanis were not even the majority there, and they did not know their language very well. All spoke in Russian, moreover, practically without an accent. They lived with dignity, calmly, their own eastern semi-feudal life with rare inclusions of socialism and the leading role of the CPSU. All in their places - Russian oil workers, Armenian shoemakers, Azerbaijani collective farmers and party nomenklatura. Each, as it should be in class and clan society, occupied strictly his own niche, from which he did not even think to leave. The attitude to power was as God-given - no one even thought to buzz. Corruption and embezzlement were systemic, inscribed in everyday life. Everyone had one desire - to beat up more baksheesh,therefore, the store did not give you change, and the management robbed the salespeople, preparing a little bit for their superiors. Guild workers, embezzlement - everything is as it should be in the Caucasus, but somehow outwardly quite harmless, they say, how could it be otherwise? Such a warm swamp, where, in general, if you do not go ahead, everyone was comfortable. To rebel against Moscow - no one even thought of that. Unlike Georgia, which has always kept a fig in its pocket.
It should be noted that in everyday life Azerbaijanis, in any case, Baku, are quite docile and good-natured people. And Baku had its own flavor, unique spirit, energy - old streets and courtyards, teahouses, gatherings of respected people. Eh, nostalgia.
And then before our eyes it all starts to fall apart. The whole way of life is bursting at the seams. And gradually people start to get angry.
They say that the Empire, like the pie, first gnaws at the edges. It was from these edges that the collapse of the Red Empire began.
There have always been ethnic contradictions there, as well as throughout Russia. At the household level. Someone bypassed someone in office, someone is overwritten, oppressed, somewhere only fellow countrymen are allowed to climb the career ladder. But it was all harmless enough. Until a certain hour.
And suddenly, like a cloud in The Master and Margarita, the shadow of Perestroika crawled over the proud Yershalaim in the Caucasus.
Perestroika is a dear mother, Self-financing is a native father.
Fuck such relatives
I'd rather be an orphan."
Confusion, aggression and poverty began to grow like leaps and bounds.
The republics were then supplied much better than Russia. Therefore, there was almost everything in grocery and manufactured goods stores in Baku. Then Humpback, with his damn laws on cooperation, enterprise and foreign trade, began to actively destroy the financial system, increase the money supply and wash out mass goods from the country. And everything started to disappear.
It reminded me somewhat of a performance by a circus magician - he waves his wand, says "peki-feki-meki-self-financing-restructuring", and another product disappears from the shelves.
Today I go to the store - cameras, which were full, have disappeared. The next week, color TVs disappeared somewhere - they cost a lot of money then, were very unimportant in quality, but they were swept away like bread in a hungry year. Gradually, the shelves acquired perfect cleanliness - they were probably vacuumed to heighten the effect. Once I went into a department store in the center of Baku and did not see anything there at all. Roll the ball. Fire people at least. At the same time, the black market grew.
One day the matches disappeared. In general - without explanations and prospects. There are no them anywhere, and light the gas whatever you want. It got to the point of being ridiculous. Our soldiers in the military unit found a magnifying glass, focused the light on the cotton wool, which lit up, and then they lit a cigarette.
At the same time, the dismantling of the power system began. Few remember, but the demonization of the same militia began under Gorbachev. There were articles that the cops had a lot of power. You give a rule of law so that no one is in prison, and the cop could be sent with relish on the mother's side. The same attacks were on the prosecutor's office and the courts. The law was weakening by leaps and bounds. And on the march there was humanism with an inhuman face.
Meetings, some idiotic meetings went. First official, then semi-official, and then prohibited. All this against the background of the debunking of Soviet ideology, which was carried out by Soviet newspapers. Suddenly a bunch of dissatisfied and offended people appeared.
And into the emerging ideological vacuum, like air into a pump, nationalism, comforting the pride of the layman, was blown in - we are better, we are smarter, we are the masters here, and all the other alien conquerors. All the nationalist ailments healed in the USSR worsened. From some relict nationalist depths of the public subconscious, already forgotten historical scores, mutual anger and claims of a thousand years ago arose.
And the people gradually got loose. And organized. The slender, stable Soviet system began to give systemic failures.
What was it? Man is a social being. From childhood, he grows up within the framework of "can-not". Education, then law, rules, traditions, regulations, a balance is achieved between these concepts, allowing both the individual and society to live in a balanced and full-fledged manner. And then the process of gradual, as yet cautious, expansion of the "can" borders began. Unhurriedly, step by step, so that the subjects have time to get used to and get used to the new quality.
Can a Soviet person go to an unauthorized meeting of protest? Of course not. As the Komsomol, the party, society will look … And then it turns out that it is possible only if you swear allegiance to the CPSU and raise your questions - the development of national culture. And you can call out the slogan - down with, okay? Can't?.. But now you can.
And so, step by step, the territory "can" expanded at the expense of "no".
And all this was accompanied by the mournful howls of Moscow about the active political creativity of the masses, to the frenzied anti-Soviet propaganda of Omsk, to the "Searchlight of Perestroika" and "Look". The stereotypical views were broken, the heroes of bygone times were denigrated. There was an ideological anti-Soviet treatment under the guise of a triumph of new thinking. Gradually people were led to the idea that they live in a shitty country. But beyond the hill is a real paradise with freedom and sausage. And it is high time to hand over the reins of government into the right hands.
Then the territory "can" reached the level of violence. It turns out that you can cut strangers! And the massacre began.
Fergana, Kazakhstan - hot spots flared up and went out - then there were still forces to suppress all this.
Then came the turn of the Caucasus. Karabakh is a fuse that blew the Transcaucasia to hell and is still burning.
The Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region is a part of Azerbaijan, where the majority of Armenians lived. The Armenian and Azerbaijani neighbors did not live in perfect harmony, but did not cut each other. And from the mid-eighties, the boiler began to warm up. Mutual grievances grew, turning into a hot stage. And awareness grew - and now you can!
The idea of transferring the NKAO to Armenia began to be discussed. Along the way, mutual irritation and anger grew, which soon turned into pogroms and murders.
In February 1988, an extraordinary session of People's Deputies of the NKAO appealed to the Supreme Soviets of the Armenian SSR, Azerbaijan SSR and the USSR with a request to consider and positively resolve the issue of transferring the region from Azerbaijan to Armenia. And then it began - you can't describe it in words. The go-ahead was given to the mutual destruction of neighboring peoples.
The authors of this project can give a master class on how to convert everyday discontent into rivers of blood.
I will not say who is right and who is wrong - both are worse. Although I do not feel sympathy for the Armenian side, striving to redraw the borders of the republics. At the same time, the Armenians themselves did not really need Karabakh. In the same Yerevan, the Karabakh Armenians were considered second-class people, affectionately calling them “Karabakh donkeys”. But the blood debt demanded to take their side.
Mutual slaughter is for a long time, if not for centuries. Those who brought it to her, perfectly understood that from now on there was no turning back - there was blood between the parties.
And then off we go:
- You beasts! You killed us!
- No, you killed us.
And they killed each other. Neurasthenics, latent sadists and criminals rose like scum. And behind each side was its own people, its own republic. And now such mutual new accounts have already accumulated that can only be paid off with even more blood.
After the Karabakh events, these endless rallies and demonstrations began in Baku and Yerevan. They began with calls to punish the rioters and murderers. Then came environmental requirements - well, where can we go without Greenpeace? Azerbaijanis protested against the construction of an aluminum smelter in Shusha and the cutting down of ancient trees. True, later it turned out that it was not about the plant, but about one workshop, and the trees were not too damaged, but these are the details, who needs them?
Foolishly somehow got into a conversation on this square with the protesters, introduced himself as a business trip Muscovite, fortunately he was in civilian clothes.
- And what are you fighting for in Moscow? - the demonstrators ask me quite correctly.
- For different things, - I hesitate and translate the topic. - And what about that aluminum plant?
- They are building! And our Government does not listen to its own people. The Armenians bought it.
Moreover, every day the government of the AzSSR did not suit the nationalists more and more. Then Moscow began not to suit. And then the Soviet power as a whole is in loyal Azerbaijan with a completely loyal population until recently.
And it sounded louder:
- If Russia cannot restore order, then we will call on Turkey …
And Moscow? Well, what about Moscow. She took a contemplative position - everything flows, everything shimmers and will settle down by itself. Neither the special services really worked - in any case, they were not famous for their activity, nor the party organs. This spontaneous flow and the endless expansion of the borders "could" were quite in line with Gorbachev's toothless policy.
It is believed that this was his personal lack of will. But, it seems to me, most likely, there was a well-thought-out plan of the Western special services, for which this parsley was just a thoughtless puppet. Although I think that the same CIA did not hope to destroy the USSR, they just wanted to give us more headaches. But the situation went haywire.
As you might expect, it all ended in a lot of blood.
Sumgait
In January 1988, I was sent on a long business trip to Nakhichevan. And at that moment, in February, Sumgait burst out. And after that it became clear that the masks had been dropped. That they work seriously against the country and its territorial integrity. In my opinion, it was clear to everyone, like God's day, except for the leadership of the USSR.
Sumgait is such a dysfunctional town with a developed chemical industry, where full of all kinds of rabble worked in hazardous industries. There were many "chemists" - not in the sense of education, but serving sentences in colonies and settlements. There were many convictions. Of the two hundred and fifty thousand population, twenty thousand are Armenians. In general, this place is perfect for a large-scale provocation.
When they say that the Armenian-Azerbaijani people's hatred spontaneously flared up there - all this is nonsense. The militants drew up lists of Armenians who would be slaughtered ahead of time. The tools were prepared ahead of time. They took pipes from oil rigs, cut them into sharpened shells. When fights with troops and explosives began, such a thing, launched with a skillful hand, could cut a plexiglass helmet or shield. Gasoline bottles were prepared. And all this under the strict guidance of nationalist leaders.
Well, at hour X there was a blast with all the dope. The scum went to the addresses - they threw people out of their apartments, killed, burned them alive, the apartments were plundered clean - like the Huns. The girls were raped en masse.
How many Armenians died there is still unknown. Dozens, hundreds? According to official figures, there are thirty-two people, but it seems to me that the figure is greatly underestimated. But we worked out the addresses carefully.
Crowds roamed the streets, an average of two or four hundred people, and at the bus station there were up to four thousand, while clearly obeying the ringleaders and leaders. The thugs were in such a frenzy when you cease to be human and become a pitiful part of the crowd. In this state, you can do everything - even though there are people alive.
I read materials from my archive, and something turns over in me. Here is the testimony - the bandits stripped the Armenian girl naked, took her down the street, where everyone spat on her and beat her. Then they beat him to death.
But the testimony of the cadets of the Baku Combined Arms School, who, without weapons, with only sapper blades, were thrown to calm down the pogromists and, I must say, the guys acted boldly, energetically and saved more than one life:
“A man came out of the apartment on the right with an ax in one hand and a radio receiver in the other. He shouted: "We sentenced them all!", To which the crowd answered with a roar. We twisted his arms and tried to turn him over to the police, but the police wouldn't take him.”
“They detained a guy in the 4th microdistrict. He boasted that he had burned a pregnant Armenian woman alive in the car”.
"The hooligans shouted: all the cadets must be killed, they interfere with us."
“We were surrounded by a group of seventy people. They started shouting - do you have Armenians? One of our cadets said, "Well, I am Armenian." Then the thug with a knife said: "If you are an Armenian, I will cut off your ears and gouge out your eyes."
What does it look like? The Lvov pogroms, which were staged by the Bandera in 1941 - then it was simply larger, the Germans encouraged all this. And we did not allow the murderers to complete the bloody deeds - the internal troops and the police were thrown into suppression.
True, to their shame, the authorities brought in troops a day after the start of the pogroms. Local authorities and police in Sumgait did nothing at all. Either they were paralyzed by indecision. Either for some other reason. And maybe in soul, or even in body, they were with the pogromists.
Our office was also sent there - to record crime scenes and so on. He himself was not, but my friend Igor from the Prosecutor's Office of the Fourth Army, his blessed memory, took an active part there.
What did not tell. The city is raging, squeals, screams, chaos. He and the interrogator make his way to the gathering point, then a crowd with sticks and stones piled on them. They jump into the entrance, and there is still the same gang from above. They stand back-to-back on the stairs, their trunks at the ready. The savages chuckle in confusion and go looking for more accessible targets.
An explosives unit is being driven into the square - with shields, in helmets. Young, healthy handsome men - like Roman legionnaires, it seems, indestructible. Well, our calmness appears - these guys are now bent into a ram's horn.
Throwing explosives to disperse the crowd. After a while, the guys come back. Broken shields. In the blood, many can barely move their legs. And someone is being carried.
And before that, the "Vovchiks" and the infantry were actively pumped up by the commanders - God forbid anyone would shoot at peaceful protesters. And then they removed the bolts from the machine guns of all the warriors who participated - they were afraid that someone would shoot an accidentally lying round. Well, right - how can you shoot at the Soviet people? Yes, some moronic illusions were still present at that time, very beneficial for the collapse of the country - they say, before us are simple, delusional people, not outraged Nazis.
This "people", however, were not particularly shy. A boy of about ten approaches the major in cordon:
- Uncle, what do you have?
“Bulletproof vest, son,” the officer says sweetly.
So the little bastard removes the bulletproof vest and hollows under it from the sawn-off edge. And under the guise of being washed away - he's a small child, you won't shoot after, and there's nothing to do with it.
That was the atmosphere there. Under fires from cars and burning Armenians. And under the screams:
- Death to the Armenians! They are sentenced!
With some tremendous effort, they passed all this confusion. Moreover, without machine guns, although they were so lacking there - her God, none of this pack would have been sorry.
Two hundred and fifty servicemen were injured. From Moscow, a huge investigative group flew in - the Prosecutor General's Office, the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, there are a lot of security officers. They began to investigate - and it doesn't work. Someone who was caught with a police force was closed, and then a wall.
It got to the point that the opera came to me, asked permission to speak with our captured deserters. Who scampered in those places - maybe they saw something.
Someone was convicted there - I don't remember already. It is interesting to see what happened to these convicts and where they are now. I wouldn't be surprised if everything went well for them in life, and they went upstairs.
Neither the customers nor the organizers of the massacre were identified - in any case, I know nothing about it. The most powerful law enforcement machine in the world, all these GRU, counterintelligence, threat intelligence with agents, residencies, wiretaps, radio control could not advance a single step. The heavy tank of Soviet statehood stalled unprecedentedly. Or maybe there was simply something to close your eyes to? Oh, a lot of questions, who would give the answer. Now this is history, and there is often no definite truth, only interpretations and versions.
The atmosphere in Baku itself was gradually heating up. From month to month - not that quickly, but somehow inexorably. All these demonstrations in Lenin Square. Tents with hunger strikers who promised to starve until the Armenians in Karabakh are killed every last one. In these tents and hiding places cold weapons, pikes of some kind were brought in to fight the Ministry of Internal Affairs during the future dispersal of the demonstration. Some crazy speeches sounded.
The degree was growing. The Azerbaijani official press was full of anti-Armenian articles, and no one shortened the hack. Refugees from Armenia arrived and warmed up the situation - and they had something to tell about, because there was a massacre in Armenia too. Enterprises and public transport began to strike. The oil workers began sabotage actions - in one night, they somehow cut off several three hundred and fifty drive belts of rockers at oil rigs.
And now, in the dank autumn of 1988, the nationalists declared a general strike. And the punks gathering in large groups, breaks the windows of the buses that dare to go out on the line. Shouts "Gazavat" - a holy war. Green ribbons are tied on the heads of the thugs - they say, they are ready to die for Azerbaijan. And the "shahids" themselves are sixteen to eighteen years old. And there are many of them. Lots of. They flocked from all over Azerbaijan. The indigenous people of Baku were lost among them and for the most part wanted peace, not war. But today the village is on horseback!
An Azerbaijani driver gives me a lift on business and is indignant:
- These aul people are completely stupid! I have an Armenian friend. Why should he hide from them? Scoundrels.
- Do many think so?
- Yes, almost all Bakuvians. And these. Come in large numbers, suckers!
Taxi cars rush along the streets, from the windows of which, leaning out to their waist, juvenile morons waving flags and roaring excited baboons:
- Karabakh !!!
I drive to work in the morning. A crowd of demonstrators blocks the street, begins to beat the bus with their palms, yelling:
- Come out! Come with us!
And the Russian grandfather yells recklessly to the driver:
- Why did you get up? Crush these fools!
All this rage ended, as expected, with pogroms. In November 1988, Armenians began to be beaten en masse in Baku.
We were under siege then. We were ordered not to appear in the city in military uniform. Changed at work. Although I foolishly walked around in military uniform at night - I really had to, through the most bandit area to the station. And nothing happened. True, I still stumbled upon some shobla, heard after:
- Oh, lieutenant!
But they did not attack - then, in general, the troops and the Russians were relatively tolerant - it is clear that they were not Armenians. The main complaint against us was that we are protecting the Armenians.
Our prosecutors began to distribute weapons to carry. The sailors, the prosecutor's office of the fourth army were given. And we, the garrison, did not find any extra guns. It turned out that we were generally unarmed, they did not put us on some kind of allowance.
Then many colleagues from Afgan arrived at the office. They talked:
- A pistol in such cases is useless. There is more chance that he will provoke reprisals than save. Now that's another matter!
And they pulled out a RGD or an efka from the pocket. They were generally waddling about like penguins - all their pockets were full of grenades. And it really did help sometimes - if you look gloomy and promise to explode together with the bandos - like Volodka then …
Dzerzhinsky division
On that windy November day, I drove out of town - I had to get a certificate for a swindler in the hospital. I caught the doctor when he was handed a hefty wad of money for some services. The doctor was embarrassed and gave me a certificate with unrealistic speed. And then he went to receive the lost money.
And I on our PKLke (a mobile crime laboratory based on the GAZ-66) was already returning to the city after dark. Past the air defense airfield Pumping.
The scene is like in a fantasy film. A scattering of colored lights on a dark stripe. And the moving lights of the landing planes are endless.
One by one, IL-76 transports came into the landing, it felt like they were going tail to tail. They sat down, threw out from their womb the next portion of people in camouflage. We were taxiing to the parking lot. And after them the next one.
This was the Dzerzhinsky Special Purpose Division that was transferred from Moscow.
The fighters were seated in IKARUS, sent in the direction of Baku - to hot work. And at the entrance to the city there was already a tank in the company with an infantry fighting vehicle.
Everything sang in my chest - now we will live, the end of the freemen and the pogroms. These will be able to press everyone to the nail.
At the same time, new troops were drawn into the city - paratroopers, infantry. It looks like a grandiose gala concert was being prepared at the request of nationalists and their victims.
Some slightly tipsy Azerbaijani, I remember, on the same evening, when the troops were brought in, became attached to me on the street:
- Eh, brother. What is going on? You want to crush the people with your troops! Caterpillars!
And crying out loud. I even felt sorry for him. But his people are very dispersed and thirsty for blood.
- The people cannot be troops, as a person with a higher education, I tell you. And for Smugait you judge us in vain. This is the element of the people. Unstoppable force. Well, okay, brother, I'm sorry, - he says and wanders to Lenin Square.
It must be so, it was my mother who came to Baku on a business trip to this mess. She settled in the Absheron Hotel - just overlooking Lenin Square and the million-strong demonstration. So I admired it.
At night, from the window of her room I see such a scene. As a rule, tens of thousands of the most zealous and uncompromising fighters remained on the square at night. But Karabakh shouted without stopping. And all the fires were burning.
And suddenly a hum is heard. Something terrible and strong is approaching.
And the cries of Karabakh are becoming somehow more muffled and muffled.
And tanks, T-72s, I think, are crawling into the square on both sides. I counted forty. According to the state, this is a tank regiment.
Steel monsters occupy positions on both sides of the square. And they go deaf.
And at the same moment the cry of "Karabakh" stops, which sounded for several weeks, without a break, even for a second.
This continues for several minutes. Then the tanks are detonated with diesel engines and slowly depart into the empty Baku night. And again “Karabakh” sounds, but it's much more muffled.
By morning, the troops occupy key points in the city. And more and more parts are coming.
And now the long-awaited and overdue decision to declare a special situation, to appoint Colonel-General Tyagunov as commandant is voiced. The tanks are at the crossroads. Dzerzhinsk is cordoning Lenin Square, but has not yet dispersed the rally.
A special provision has been announced. And somehow the soul becomes warm and joyful. The feeling that soon all this mess will pass, and will be as before. A person clings to the habitual reality with his consciousness. And sometimes she doesn't understand that she has changed irreversibly. The old will not be. It will be somehow different, and worse or better - it depends on yourself …
“We need to disperse,” a major from the Dzerzhinsky division told me. - Disperse this area to hell. It won't settle down by itself. There will only be more and more extremist slogans. And the pogroms.
I believed him. The warriors from the Dzerzhinsky division received the nickname - frog travelers. Green, spotted and always flying. Fergana, Karabakh - wherever it burns, there they are. They had a job then - you will not envy. Always be on the path of the brutal masses, confident that they have the right to someone else's blood.
They overtook a lot of troops in Baku. I came from Tbilisi to be in the forefront and on a cow mare, the then district prosecutor - a man, to put it mildly, with a short mind, but a long tongue - a former political worker. Despite his general's dignity, he acted more as a clown, especially against the background of his wise prosecutorial experience, cunning and hardened deputies. I remember walking into our office once when they stabbed a soldier who was stealing weapons. And the soldier does not inject. So the prosecutor decided to participate, to show his significance.
“I'm the county attorney. General. You understand?
The thief loyally and hunted at him, like a mouse at a cat, looks, nods fearfully - they say, I understand, a big man, general.
- Do you understand that the truth must be told?
- Understand.
- Well, tell me.
- I say. The machine did not take.
The prosecutor looks at everyone sternly - work, they say, then report back.
Well, our guys did the work - after the star wheel, the machine gun appeared, and recognition, and the general's authority was not needed.
He also loved to hold parental meetings - to collect parents who came to their children, and rinse their brains that their child was investigating shitty crimes.
This was a strange type, completely unnecessary in military justice, but for some reason made a career. And this fanfare arrives in Baku, they say, to see how everything goes. Prosecutors of the Caspian Flotilla, the fourth army and the garrison greet him in the poses of the viziers awaiting mercy from the ruler with bows on the strip. He glares menacingly at the Bear - he was such an army prosecutor, an old, hardened, ironic and authoritative campaigner.
- How many special police regiments have arrived? The district attorney yells.
And the Bear is purple about this special police, she does not obey him. But something must be answered. He pulls himself out to line and reports:
- Two!
- Okay!
The prosecutor pushed around a day, lit up, created a stir and screwed up in Tbilisi. It was strange. And so useless.
Troops were active in Baku then. But the square has not been touched yet.
Don't go there - they shoot there
Lenin Square was cordoned off with armored vehicles, a helicopter flew over it, and from time to time they shouted from a megaphone:
- On persons caught with weapons, fire will open!
Then it was transformed among the people - the military was completely stupid, they promise whoever will notice the knife, they will shoot on the spot. In general, rumors were then a very effective weapon. I remember one Azerbaijani woman said to me:
- Our people's poet spoke at the rally. He spoke so well. And died at night. My heart could not stand it for the people. Or maybe the Armenians have poisoned. I am not myself all day. It's a shame. Oh, Armenians!
And the next day, a living and healthy poet appears on television.
In rumors, the number of victims of the pogroms in Armenia and Karabakh reached fantastic proportions - if this goes on, then there will soon be no Azerbaijanis either.
The protesters have not yet been touched, but their number has noticeably declined. The marches of millions were gone.
One day the order finally came, and one fine night Lenin Square was cleared by the forces of the explosives. Without shooting, although they piled well on everyone, they detained someone.
In the morning, crowds go to Lenin Square. They are not allowed there. And the city burst into flames. Mass pogroms and murders began.
We were then ordered to go to all the places of incidents - there was no longer any trust in the local people. After Sumgait and other events, the borders "can" expanded so much that the people began to beat the local police - it was impossible to imagine such a thing before. The policeman is the power. And who in the East is ready to raise a hand to power? Crush the same! And it’s not good. But then they began to beat the police. And the militiamen began to throw their IDs - also an unprecedented sight. To get a job in the police in Baku, it was necessary to pay several thousand rubles. And then you live happily ever after, collecting money from stalls and small speculators. And they began to flee from such work - from their fear, or also in a nationalistic rage.
- On the corpse! - I hear the order.
With the staff of the commandant's office we sit in the car. We rush to the center. And there is seething - the whole city is packed with protesters, rioters. Mostly youngsters - a kind of piled-up with a local accent and piercing-cutting objects. The eyes are insane. With banners. Everyone is shouting something. Many have sticks and stones. There were also firearms. And everyone is moving somewhere purposefully.
We eat in the center. And at the exit to Schmidt Street, our military green UAZ with a red star on the entire side almost sawed itself into such a crowd.
- Right! - I shout.
The driver turns on the gas and we rush in front of the crowd, almost knocking someone down. Very tightly. Monkey squeals rush after us.
In the center is a typical Baku courtyard. In front of him are two BMDs, a "tablet" - a military ambulance, paratroopers are standing. And across the street a crowd of bastards with sticks and stones will burrow at us somehow evil and greedy, but they are afraid to approach.
We go into the room. There is the gnarled corpse of a gray-haired man of about fifty. Around relatives - women screaming.
- We had a ticket for today. We had to go. They've come in! They say show your passport that you are not Armenian! And there it is written that he is Armenian! So they beat him to death!
The protocol is drawn up by a civil investigator. Let's see what he has worked out.
When the stretcher with the body is pushed into the car, the distraught adult daughter of the poor man rushes forward and grabs the stretcher. From her terrible scream, frost on the skin.
I did not have time to return to the office, as a new exit - the paratroopers crumbled the crowd.
The picture is like this. A crowd of three thousand people is knocking down the avenue - they intend to smash the oil refinery, which, like hard workers, bastards, did not join the strike. Youngsters squeal happily, idiots with stones and guns flaunt. A thin line of unarmed cadets is trying to block the crowd. And it is clear that there will be a mutual slaughter, the barrier will be crushed.
And then a convoy of BMD appears, paratroopers on armor. The landing units in Baku brought in those that were taken out of Afgan. And they somehow were not very concerned with thoughts about humanism, the value of the life and health of enemies, even if from the civilian population. This is not BB.
Gazavatchki shout:
- You won't get through!
The most active begin to lie down on the asphalt - like speed bumps, shouting:
- Press!
And the Afghans have a combat mission to arrive at the place of deployment. And they don't care about the lantern who lies on the asphalt. We didn't put it there.
The instinct for self-preservation won out. Young idiots jump out almost from under the tracks. And then they begin to throw sticks and stones at the soldiers on the armor. Moreover, they added two shots from a small car.
Well, the paratroopers and oholonil their slegonets - they gave a line to the crowd. Someone was wounded, one corpse.
I go to the prosecutor's office of Narimanov region and interrogate an Azerbaijani eyewitness. Such a sweetheart right-abiding in front of me. With a blue eye, he broadcasts how he just wanted to hold a rally on Lenin Square, but that was closed. Then he accidentally got into a crowd that was just going to smash the plant. Then the military came in large numbers and began to shoot. And such innocence is written on my face.
And the prosecutors, the cops with whom I interrogated him, nod in agreement - they say, the boy is good, he speaks the truth, that's how it was. And I realized that the locals, in uniform or not, are angry with us and believe that they are right, that the Armenians should be thrown out of Baku, even if their bodies are cold. And I also realized that the processes were irreversible.
Our senior investigator then took this case into production. Well, then to stop and create a sense of law and order. Arrives from the autopsy all pale. At the forensic morgue, the entire village gathered. They cling to his hands, yell heart-rendingly:
- You bastard! Pula came to take out! Pull!
I mean, I came to retrieve the bullet. It almost ended in riots …
And that damn day goes on. There are pogroms in the streets - they beat old people, women suspected of racial impurity. The stoned puppies seemed to be off the chain. Everything is permitted to them today. They, bitches, have a gazavat today. A holiday of disobedience. Hit the adults. Beat the Armenians. Hit at least someone!
- My God, how she screamed! How she screamed! - the next day, our secretary cries, who witnessed the beating of an Armenian girl by fifty completely frostbitten thugs with green bandages.
Local authorities then worked outrageously. Either they averted themselves, or generally looked towards the "people". Lieutenant Colonel Efremenko - our military forensic scientist - was at all the autopsies of the killed. According to the Armenian, whose corpse they went to, the local expert writes with no hesitation:
- Died of a heart attack …
Special situation in Baku
On that endless November day in 1988, it was like an abscess burst. Anger, fear splashed out. And then the army and the explosives started working for real. And the violence began to subside. Still, not Khukhry-Mukhry, but the OP area.
I still have a pass somewhere - it is allowed to move in the dark - at curfew, from twenty-two to five o'clock. If you have a pass, you walk calmly. There is no pass - they detain you, inspect you, and go to the cinema until morning - they were used as monkeys. Yes, it is understandable - the movie was banned.
Rallies, meetings, demonstrations, and cultural events were banned. The tried and tested ancient rule is not to pack more than three.
Transport did not go well; many buses and taxis were placed at the disposal of the military commandant's offices. And once the soldiers of the Internal Troops dispersed a stop with truncheons - people waited a long time for the bus and were mistaken for evil rebels.
Wine shops are closed. I then constantly wandered around in Tbilisi, and, as a standard, at the orders of my comrades, I dragged a box of wine and a box of lemon vodka from there. Otherwise you will not survive.
True, there was also the speculative Kubinka district in the center of Baku - old one-story houses, something like the Moscow Maryina Roshcha, where the people are simple, wait five minutes, and your pocket is empty. They said that you could buy a submarine there. You come there, give the top ten, they bring you a bottle. They took advantage of it out of despair, then used it quite well in their free time, some of my colleagues still have not come out of that alcoholic euphoria.
Oddly enough, people quickly got used to tanks at intersections and soldiers. Scene - there is a T-72, imposing soldiers are walking around. And local girls stick to them, young boys play. Flowers on the armor.
In general, it seemed to me that people reacted to armored vehicles on the streets with relief. People got scared of a lot of blood. And they wanted everything to come back. And the army was a guarantee of their further cloudless existence.
Although the army did not experience such pacification at all. And local friends were not widely considered. And they were not mistaken.
Many local authoritative babais quickly got used to the army, began to perceive it as some kind of interfering part of the interior.
Driving to work. The alley is blocked by two BMD Marine Corps. Soldiers are standing - uncertain, with machine guns. A brand new Volga with fog lights pulls up here. And behind the wheel is an important beaver with gold teeth and a mink hat. Imposingly beckons the soldier. He, not understanding anything, comes up and listens to him attentively, with some fear.
- Hey, soldier, open the tanks, I have to pass! - the owner of the car declares so from the high of his mountain peak.
- I can't, - the soldier says in confusion, embarrassed by the importance of the woman.
- Who can?
- To the elder.
- Call the elder.
The Marine Captain, huge and stern as a cliff in the far north, approaches. And he honestly tries to understand what this buy wants from him.
“Listen, your soldier doesn't understand anything at all. I tell him - move the tanks apart, I need to go to Neftyannikov Avenue. But he doesn't understand.
The captain is bleeding. And suddenly the whole street shouts in a thunderous voice:
- Fuck you …!
Bai immediately shrinks without a word, turns around and drives to the specified address. Order has been restored, mutual understanding with the population has been achieved.
True, sometimes I had to shoot. All the same curfew. And the cases of this shooting were dragged to the military prosecutor's office.
Special forces of the GRU were brought to Baku - directly from Afgan. There people generally were not on friendly terms with their heads, they radically solved all issues.
Curfew. A commando captain is at the post. Stops the luxurious beige Volga. Behind the wheel he sees a lieutenant colonel in a cap-airfield, shoulder straps with stars made of pure gold, in general - a baboon involved in the army. The captain requires, of course, a pass. In response, he receives swearing words - equal up, at attention, I am a military commissar, and fuck you, not a pass. The lieutenant colonel was furious, and does not want to calm down - they say, who I am and who you are.
The captain looks at him carefully and sternly, with the trademark squint of an NKVD executioner. And he utters something like:
- No-no, there are no such military commissars. You are an Azerbaijani spy.
And puts it in an economical short queue.
The material was in the prosecutor's office of the fourth army. The assistant prosecutor then told us what happened after. He is waiting for an interrogator from that special forces brigade with primary materials. There comes such a ruddy, athletic, and somehow bashfully downcast captain.
- Are you an interrogator?
- Yeah. Here is the material brought, assistant assistant prosecutor. We will investigate.
- And how was it?
- Well, that means I'm stopping this bastard …
- Wait a minute. So you shot him?
- Well, I.
- And you yourself will investigate the case?
- Well, I'm on the order as an interrogator of the unit. Who else will be?
There was an instruction then, to stop all such cases. Yes, and we had no thoughts to bring them to court. In fact, a civil war is underway. What is the FIG responsibility for abuse of power? What's wrong?
True, when in Yerevan the crowd tried to pull the warrant officer out of the car and tear him to pieces, he killed one bully with a pistol. So then the examination was carried out - whether he put it with the first bullet or the second. Then such a rule was idiotic for everyone - first a warning shot, otherwise you are a bandit and a killer.
I remember that they were doing the case against the soldier. He stood, bewildered, at the post at curfew. One car whizzed by. Second. Don't stop. It is necessary to shoot, but somehow it is scary.
Suddenly he sees a truck driving, a small tractor in the back. Does not respond to signals. Well, the boy fired after him, hoping that in the worst case, a bullet would hit the tractor. In that tractor, the only constructive hole was ten centimeters where the bullet could go and reach the cabin. It was into this hole that she fell. And the driver in the back of the head.
Fate. A firearm is a weapon of fate much more than, for example, a sword. Because the bullet is a fool, and after pressing the trigger, it does not depend on us.
This case was dropped. But there were also cases in which they seized with all professional hatred.
Barrier. The infantrymen stop and inspect the car. There are clearly militants in the cabin. An Azerbaijani signalman was assigned to a group of soldiers. So he, such a bastard, picks up the machine gun, instructs his colleagues and yells:
- Let them go, I am a Muslim too!
That's how they lived - jokes, humor, fun.
And in December 1988, there was a terrible earthquake in Spitak. Thousands of people died, including many women, children, old people. It should be noted that, for the most part, Azerbaijanis are kind people. We began to collect things for the victims. But the fascist bastard got out here too - the Nazis let the mulch, that Allah punished the Armenians for their meanness, so everything is fine …
What is a skiff
Order was more or less restored in Baku. But that didn't change anything. Throughout the Transcaucasus, the situation continued to heat up. The massacre between Armenians and Azerbaijanis did not stop. Tbilisi was making noise about the sapper blades - the paratroopers cut her head off to some scumbag who was demonstrating karate techniques at the cordon.
Our high authorities behaved like professional confused. Professional provocateurs were sitting upstairs. In essence, no questions were resolved, but only chatted up. Under the wing of the CPSU, ideological abuse continued in the media. The KGB played its own game, the essence of which I cannot understand at all. Either the Chekists did not have operational awareness of the processes in the nationalist organizations, or the information was forbidden to be sold. Either they somehow came to an agreement with the fascists in the republics. But they did not show much activity.
In general, everything was incomprehensible with the Chekists in those days. It seems to me that some factions there fought - one for the collapse of the country, the other for preservation.
I have a friend and colleague, he lived in the near Moscow region. The beginning of the nineties, sausage dumps, no smoking, hunger in Moscow, the shops are empty. And his neighbor, a KGB operative, told how he stood at the entrance to Moscow every day and turned away trucks with food. That was the order not to let food into Moscow. What was it? The buildup before the Emergency Committee? Or a cunning plan to break up and reformat the country? Who will understand. Only versions are left to build.
Either it was calculated that way, or Humpbacked had such an aura - but all violent actions ultimately led to an even greater mess and turned into their opposite. At the same time, the leaders of the state quite calmly surrendered their own soldiers - they say, it was they themselves who shot someone there, and we, the Central Committee, over all this. Vilnius - no, not us, the military themselves there to seize the TV tower profits. Baku, Tbilisi? Also not us. We are for the national liberation movement.
Sometimes it seems to me that if Humpbacked had all the full power, he would have just modestly signed a surrender to the United States and ended there. But he had to portray concern for the preservation of the Union, which was given to him with difficulty. Until now, he cannot calm down - everything calls on our heads in numerous interviews a new Perestroika, which will be worse than a meteorite bombing and a nuclear war.
No problems were really solved then. Armenians and Azerbaijanis reasonably made claims to Moscow for inaction. At the same time, the Azerbaijanis reproached Gorbachev for taking the side of the Armenians thanks to his Raika. It is difficult to judge now - perhaps it was. But there is a nuance. Both sides agreed that the bone of contention, the NKAO, was transferred under the direct control of Moscow. It was the way out. But this was not done either. There was no sensible national policy. And there was more and more loosening of the nuts and the weakening of control from the Center.
At that time, in the republics, in fact, under the wing of the party organs, nationalist organizations grew by leaps and bounds, which gradually armed themselves and became radicalized. Popular fronts were everywhere then - there allegedly the intelligentsia was going to raise the culture of their peoples, but in reality they were ardent separatists and sadists. Instead of passing them on like bugs, in my opinion, a member of the Politburo of the lame demon of perestroika, Yakovlev, whom KGB chairman Kryuchkov intolerantly called a spy and accused of working for Canadian intelligence, declared that the NF is a school of democracy.
I saw enough of their democracy in Baku, when militants roamed the city and killed people. However, this was a truthful and perspicacious statement. It is this kind of democracy that we chewed all the nineties. And they are trying to foist it on us for a cheap price today …
The funny thing is that at this very time, in the same Baku, gigantic money was pumped in to create a military infrastructure. The headquarters of the southern direction was organized there, uniting several districts and Afghan. And under it were built whole residential areas, a unique exhibition center, underground spare command posts at a depth of one hundred meters. In a impoverished country, colossal resources were thrown away into nowhere, into a foreign country in the near future. That is, at the top they did not feel alarming winds at all, did not think that it would be necessary to suspend the dispersal of resources on the regions, the future of which is not clear. But this did not bother anyone. Forward, stray. “Troika, Mishka, Raika, Perestroika are racing across Russia” …
After a short lull, the situation in Baku intensified again. Pogroms with stones and sticks were a thing of the past. Now all parties to interethnic conflicts in the Caucasus were actively stocking up on weapons and intending to shoot for real. Everything went to a real war of all against all. The Caucasus was on the verge of total carnage.
I remember that there was a case in my production - about fifteen years ago they stole a small-caliber pistol, and every quarter I sent papers to the KGB and the police to the places of residence of suspects to work the defendants. Because the same pistol was stolen - not Khukhry Mukhry.
And then the thefts of weapons went in jambs. That box with machine guns the soldiers from the gunshot restrained. Then two zinc with cartridges. But these are berries. The flowers grew elsewhere. The audit climbed, in my opinion, into the Kutaisi long-term storage warehouses - by that time the Georgians had already gutted them for many thousands of units. And no one knew what to do with such a shortage.
Gradually, the plundering of military warehouses took on the character of systematic work. At the same time, some representatives of the military command were conducting strange negotiations with local extremists and businessmen. After that, foreign cars appeared at the generals, and instructions of the following sense were received at the places in the military units: the most important thing is the life of the soldiers, not the pieces of iron, so if they come to seize the warehouses, then do not resist.
Volodka talked about the service in the early nineties in Armenia. When it became clear where everything was heading, in their division the usual guard at the warehouse was replaced by special forces. And those guys have such notions so as not to resist an attack and to take care of themselves, as it was not. There is a combat mission - do it. So they met a crowd of baboons in trucks, who had come for weapons, honor by honor.
The Armenians jumped along the ditches under fire and started shouting offended:
- Eh, what are you doing? We agreed with your commanders!
The further, the more this process entered new stages of insanity. Before the legal collapse of the Union, the republics tried to grab as many weapons as possible - well, for good neighborly relations with other fraternal republics.
I still don’t understand if the surrender of weapons was a local initiative or an unspoken policy of Moscow aimed at making the regions choke on blood in civil strife? But the armament of the illegal armies was still active.
I remember that in Azerbaijan, local gangs seized a whole regiment of reconnaissance aircraft, which they did not manage to transfer to a new base. And then almost official instructions began to come - to transfer the equipment to the nationalities.
There were several "armored vehicles" behind Volodka. He was not going to give them to the "free republics", but everything went to this. He acted wiser - he told his local warrant officers that he would not pay much attention to dismantling. A few days later, cunning warrant officers gnawed these BMPs completely - like a carcass of a seal, leaving one skeleton.
It’s good that we didn’t abandon nuclear weapons in the Caucasus out of the kindness of our soul, otherwise today neither Baku nor Yerevan would exist.
Many of our warriors, abandoned and loyal, then, in the early nineties, went all out.
Nasosny airfield. MIG rises from it and flies to the nationalist-controlled civil airport in Bina. It turned out that the pilot had driven his car for two thousand dollars. What happened to him then? It was rumored that he flew in the service of the Azerbaijanis to bomb Armenian positions, was shot down and shot. But maybe these are rumors.
On the ground, our army men were more and more involved in interethnic strife. It seems that even in places of armed confrontation, our helicopter pilots flew for money and bombed the positions of the opponents of those who paid.
The flesh of the Soviet state was cracking. All foundations collapsed. And even state borders were no longer perceived as something indestructible. In Nakhichevan, crowds of local residents, seeing that the border guards did not dare to shoot, simply broke through the border and poured into Iran - to their brothers. The fact is that there is a huge number of Azerbaijanis in Iran, and from time to time the issue of Greater Azerbaijan was discussed. So they rushed - to take a closer look. They saw an incredible poverty by Soviet standards and returned back, deciding that with such hungry brothers it was not on the way.
It is clear that Baku, with such a surrounding total energy of nuclear decay, will not live in silence for a long time. That everything will explode. The future masters of the republic will come to take power.
At the end of 1989, I left Baku.
And in the early nineties a mutiny broke out …
Bloody carousel
Our prosecutor's office stood on a hill. Across the street from us was the Red Vostok military hotel, in which a military canteen was located - we nicknamed it “Cafe Beefsteak”. There they fed only steaks, from which all the meat was skillfully removed. And starting from the colonel, or higher persons, they fed pig chops, which infuriated us. And in the rear of the prosecutor's office were the Salyan barracks - a cropped motorized rifle division, where there were more equipment than soldiers.
And so the militants seized the hotel. They equipped a machine-gun point there. And they hammered through the Salyan barracks. For some reason, for a long time, no one dared to kick them out of there - everyone was paralyzed by inaction and waited for instructions from above.
While the point is, all the windows in our office, which stood just between the machine-gun nest and the division's fence, were smashed with a machine gun. Our people there, sprawled on the floor, dreamed of not getting hit by a stray bullet. We barricaded ourselves.
I called to find out how they are there.
- Never mind! - the investigator friend says. - Alive, safe. Already good.
And something rumbles in the tube - this is the enemy's machine gun.
We talked. Then the tracker yells:
- That's it, let's go, someone is breaking into us!
But somehow everyone survived.
My friend Igor was still in Baku then. He was invited to a meeting in these barracks. So he, together with the prosecutor, crawled along the territory of the division and dashed about with the prosecutor on his bellies - the sniper was working on the territory.
But Igor still got it - not a bullet, but a blow on the head with a stool leg. I was walking down the street in uniform, a bastard ran up behind me and hit me once. He did not dare to do more - Igor was a two-meter fellow, a master of karate, he would have torn everyone in hand-to-hand combat. But then they often beat from around the corner and from the back.
In general, the end of the world began in Baku. Militants climbed from all corners. And someone, after all, supplied them, trained them, set combat missions. They began to hammer at the troops. The complacency towards the military and the Russians has ended - "you, the occupants, like the Armenians, have no place here." Crowds of fighters for independence, barely speaking Russian, came from the auls and seized the apartments en masse, from which Russians and Armenians departed. By the way, the natives also took over my apartment, although I did not give them such a right.
Then, on the remnants of determination, the leaders of the country decided to again send troops to the capital of the AzSSR. For this business, “partisans” were co-organized - that is, those who served, called up for military training. They took, as a rule, with Afghan experience. They set a clear task - by all possible means to stop bloodshed and shooting in Baku.
Well, they stopped all these outrages uncompromisingly and skillfully. Afghan reflexes kicked in.
The guys were without any special prejudices. The column is walking, hammering along it from the upper floors of the building from machine guns. In the column, the anti-aircraft gun is a zushka, a terrible force. And as a mutual gesture of goodwill, she shaves off the entire top floor from four trunks. Put out the lights, the clowns are gone. Let's go further.
In Baku then, the Soviet Army, at its end, worked responsibly so that the Popular Front of Azerbaijan announced the transition to the struggle for independence by constitutional non-violent methods. The desire to fight the Soviet Army was then repulsed well.
An Azerbaijani worked in our GUUR, we kept barking with him. He rubbed me in about how cruelly the army treated the civilian population then. And I could say a lot in return. And about how Armenians were killed en masse. And about the wife of our employee, who was lying with the child on the floor of the bus going to the airport, where transport boards were fitted for evacuation. And how the commandos then covered women and children with their breasts, fiercely firing back from the pressing thugs.
GKChP, then the CIS - nothing could save the country. But those conflicts that arose in its decline, when everything was allowed, and when people ran wild before our eyes, were not blown away.
And the Armenian-Azerbaijani massacre. And the Ossetian conflict. And a lot of other things. All this is alive and from time to time it reminds of itself again …
Mafia or special services?
Why then did everything happen so stupidly and despicably?
- It's all the mafia! - asserted the native Bakuvians. - And come in large numbers, descended from the mountains. A Baku resident will not go to cut a neighbor.
May be so. And those who came in large numbers were. And the mafia, of course, was. Both drugs and vodka were driven to the scene of the riots. And someone invented slogans, created battle groups. Filled with weapons - moreover, not only from military reserves.
And Turkish intelligence did a great job there. The ideas of pan-Turkism, Islamization, expansion of the space of the new Ottoman Empire, the return of territories and close peoples found a response in Azerbaijan. Turkish and Azerbaijani languages are almost the same, so Turkey has always had good opportunities there. And there were some muddy games of our special services - also a fact.
But what if you look at the root?
In those days, all our cherished national policy collapsed to hell. The Bolsheviks did a lot for Russia - the country reached outer space, created atomic weapons, and won the cruellest war. But with the national policy, it seems to me, although I don’t presume to argue, something is clearly wrong and wrong.
When the USSR was created, games in the right of nations to self-determination, up to the exit of the republics, were, in general, appropriate. Because then there was an ideological framework - the construction of a new bright communist future. After the revolution, these were not ordinary words, but the powerful energy of aspirations not only of the Russian, but of all peoples on the globe.
Well, it was not from under the stick that party and Komsomol cells were created in Russia and the republics. It was not just that the poor people, who grew up under the yoke of the feudal lords, went to fight with arms in hand, forgiving the Basmachi. They were promised a bright future. And his ghost was much more significant than the traditional national and religious order.
In the republics, Soviet ideology reigned supreme in those difficult times. Probably, it was a mistake that she was allowed to get along with the dense national, feudal and clan traditions. Everything was in such a complex symbiosis. No wonder - the Soviet government then used all the social bricks, zealously standing up the majestic building of socialism. Even the former beys were attracted as persons who know how to influence and govern subjects. It is not for nothing that in the East, some secretaries of district committees were descended from feudal lords.
What happened next? Stalin leaves, and with him the energy of creating a new world, which possessed the masses, is blown away. Khrushch, Brezhnev - the communist idea under them was no longer so attractive as universally binding. In society, there is no intense struggle for a bright future - it seems to have already come, but not quite as bright and as desired. Gradually, dogmatism wins, ideology grows stiff, does not respond to new challenges. And so ideology becomes a kind of religious attribute from the framework of society. And then there was Humpback with his ideological and economic experiments, which led to poverty and confusion of all Soviet people.
And what happens? In fact, there is no ideology framework. The power frame is rusted - the police, the KGB and the troops, of course, are still suitable for surgery. But operations are permissible when the surgeon has a diploma and the hand does not tremble. And, judging by the throwings of the then Politburo, the diplomas of our leaders were fake. And the hands were not just shaking - they were just numb.
And what remains? Without an ideological framework, with a weakening of control from the Center, the hitherto hidden Bai feudal clan system, riddled with corruption and rampant embezzlement of state property, blossoms like a flower.
And this clan-feudal force, consolidated by the beginning of the collapse of the USSR, begins to pursue its policy. Hence, you and the mafia in the pogroms, and vodka with drugs.
It is clear that the chaos that was happening is impossible without an elite blessing. And then it was organized by these same elites. The role of the same party or law enforcement agencies in those events still needs to be studied. Only who will study?
It so happened that the republican power elites surrendered very quickly, or even went over to the side of the enemy. And some took the lead in the movement, dreaming of getting rid of the pressure from Moscow and, finally, fixing them themselves, without fear for a party membership card.
By the way, the power of the party nomenklatura has remained unchanged in many republics - these are Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, and many others. And everywhere it acquired feudal authoritarian features. And for the better - otherwise there would be chaos and Islamization. But only the representatives of this elite cannot be considered Soviet people, although they held prominent posts in the CPSU, voted at congresses, and fought for communism. Probably, they never were - so, they adapted and made a career, along the way strengthening their clans and groupings.
And the republican leaders in the Caucasus have become such a long time ago - even under the USSR. Georgian frontiers and swindlers. The Armenians are cunning. The Azerbaijani authorities - by the way, in my opinion, were the most loyal and obedient. But all the same, this does not change the essence of the problem.
With the collapse of the USSR, a quantum transition occurred abruptly from a higher level of development - the Imperial one, to a lower one - feudal, clan, narrowly territorial. Naturally, if feudalism and nationalism breaks its way, then all the former feudal and national squabbles come out. Centuries-old feuds. Old grudges. There is no party agitator who will explain about internationalism. But territorial claims are well remembered. Nationalism has become a new ideological base everywhere. Well, what else to captivate the masses, if not by assurances of their exclusivity and a bright future in their native independent state, freed from the Russian invaders and other racially alien subjects?
Of course, in the end, all the peoples of the Soviet Union, this vile movement came out sideways. The collapse of the Soviet state led to a historical setback, sometimes in the Middle Ages. Well, or just into chaos, where many, such as Georgia, still remain …
With the collapse of the country, we all gained some experience. So, now it is already clear that if someday Russia will again begin to pull up new national republics for itself, it is necessary at the same time not to play with demonic games at the national elites. The power and administrative framework must be exclusively imperial. National schools, language, traditions - of course, develop, enjoy. Russia has always been a multinational country; it respected other people's traditions. But state administration - there is no place for nationalists. Moreover, the nationalists are not by nationality, but by spirit. The only ideology of the governing bodies should be imperialism. That is, a person must be an adherent of a strong centralized state, to which he is devoted without any reservations and without reference to his local relatives and friends. All to hell. Only the interests of the Big Country. And only through their observance - the prosperity and interests of the peoples and cultures included.
And yet - to strengthen, strengthen and strengthen the army, special services and law enforcement agencies, including ideologically. Because, by God, my colleagues are full of potential Vlasovites who, if NATO appears in Moscow, tomorrow they will spread rot on the Russian population in order to stay in their soft armchair and get gum, "Coca-Cola" and bucks for their pocket. Devotion to the state, the people, the memory of ancestors should be in the first place in the serviceman. So that if something like the Caucasus of the eighties-nineties arises, the hand would not flinch …
I apologize for the very large volume. They surged in a heavy wave and covered their heads with memories that cannot be put into two pages. But maybe someone will master them …
And I want to say that I do not pretend to be deep in analytics. These are only personal impressions and opinions, my personal and personal attempts to understand something. And I have no goal to humiliate any nationalities - all the negative is only about criminals and idiots, and nationality is not the most important thing here …