Original subtitles

PART THREE

- You've moved it? Oh, you're shooting?

I thought it was all over. Well, it's up to you...

Good... - Alexander Isaevich.

Show me your hands. - Hands?

Near us was Tolstoy Street, now it's been renamed.

I had my sledge.

Suddenly, whistles began blowing.

Blowing everywhere. What's up?

"Lenin's being buried".

If Lenin's being buried, then it's January 1924.

I was five.

Lenin's burial... - And the details...

of life at home, the objects? - Yes, of course.

Well, I... My mother was already working.

She went to work in Rostov, I stayed in Kislovodsk with

my grandparents.

I remember my grandparents well. We witnessed a lot...

...together. They taught me to pray to God.

- Were they kind? - They were very faithful.

My grandfather was...

a very remarkable man. Actually,

he replaced my father, because...

my father died before I was born. I never saw him.

My father...

after the 3rd year of university, went to war as a volunteer,

returned from the war

to his bride, his future wife,

lived three months and was killed during a hunt.

In an utterly foolish way.

And my grandfather was a very remarkable man.

He began as farm worker.

He had nothing. He came from Tauria to Kuban and got hired.

He worked for several years, but so well,

that his employer ended up giving him

a few sheep, a cow. I believe that was all.

He started his farm just from that,

and raised it to such a high...

Land was cheap there, so he started to buy.

He created an estate of 5400 acres,

and was an important producer of corn and wool.

He shipped big amounts of wool and corn.

Now there's a sovkhoz nearby,

but it cannot work as well as his farm.

You ask whether he was kind. It's very simple.

When the revolution came, naturally he was...

dispossesed of all,

had nothing to live on.

So, he... his former workers supported him.

For 10-11 years after the revolution, I witnessed it:

As long as he remained free,

they supported him.

Everyone would load a cartful of goods for him.

That was the kind of patron he was.

That's that. He finished at the GPU.

His fate is unknown.

- You still don't know?

- It's over. I will never know.

In Armavir. - And your grandmother?

- She died a little bit before that,

just an illness.

- Who then took care of you?

- No, I lived with them only until the age of 5,

5 or 6, afterwards I came to stay in summer,

when I lived with my mother in Rostov-na-Donu.

This is how I became a Rostovian.

You see, the city of Rostov...

in the matter of language is not what a Russian writer needs.

In later years, as an adult,

I recovered what I had lost

with the impurity of the Russian language in Rostov.

A very mixed language.

Incorrect pronunciation.

- Why does it happen so?

- Because of the multicultural population there.

The South developed separately

from Central Russia.

- The arrival of different cultures...

- The language got distorted while moving southwards.

There was the Ukrainian dialect which superimposed itself on it.

This is why, when I came to Central Russia

for the first time, it was just before the war,

I was struck by the language.

Ever since, I looked for authentic

...Russian. And found it.

There were the Cossacks, the Ukrainians, the Greeks, the Armenians,

the Jews, the Caucasians...

Mixed and remixed.

Thus there was no good Russian.

- How does it influence one's character?

- The character... Well...

My character was more influenced by...

...the severity of the Soviet epoch.

Hard times. I was brought up with the faith

of God,

and from school on, this faith was being smothered.

- But you did retain it? - I did for a long time,

but in the end I gave in to this treatment,

dialectic historical materialism

carried it away,

and I lost my faith.

It's very typical that

in our student years... This is how it was:

I held on until the end of school, then it finished.

But after, during the 5 years before the war,

I was completely unreligious.

Many years later,

when I began to sort out

some old letters,

some early attempts at writing,

I was struck by my spiritual emptiness at that time.

You see? It was striking, I myself...

We spoke about being able to think it out.

No, one can't think it out on one's own. I lived a full life,

an active life.

And many years have passed since then.

Already in exile,

when I was reading my old extant archives,

I was struck by spiritual emptiness.

The reason is clear to me: An unreligious period.

That's it.

- Sometimes one hears

that faith cannot exist without education and learning.

- Without learning? Wrong.

Without proper upbringing - it's true, yes,

because if you just let a boy, like Mowgli,

walk on the grass,

he may develop a sense of religion,

he may develop it, or he may not.

How to say... In those same student years,

with my friend, we went down the Volga in a small boat.

Bought it in Kazan, sold it in Samara. Not so far...

We just went in a boat, still boys.

100% dependent on the weather:

On wind, rain and everything. We had no shelter, nothing.

Each day we became more superstitious.

Not believers in God, just terribly superstitious.

Afraid of any sign, of doing things the wrong way.

So, of course, in nature man gets to feel the superior forces.

But it's clear religion is acquired through upbringing,

from one generation to another.

I managed to receive it from my parents,

from my mother and my aunt, dear to me.

They succeeded in sowing its seeds during the most savage Soviet time.

- So learning is not important in attaining faith.

- Not important at all. - But one has to know.

- No, for this knowing is not necessary.

- One must know.

- For this, one doesn't need much learning.

There are different levels of learning.

Another level is greater learning, deep and philosophical.

You may have it or not.

A proverb says: "Who knows less, sleeps more".

You know, learning...

And another one: "Learning adds no wit".

At first, I was appalled: How can it be so?

It adds so much!

It was at the front. We had a commissar,

he always repeated this: "Learning adds no wit".

I tried to argue: "How can that be, comrade major!"

Long after that, I thought: "That's true".

There are people of vast learning, who are basically foolish.

And people of little learning, but wise.

They know life, psychology, the right way of living.

No connection to learning.

In general, mankind became so enthusiastic about progress,

pushing forward with it

ever since the Age of Enlightenment.

But in reality, all mankind has won

its spiritual emptiness.

- Technological advances...

- Only technology, civilisation,

give-me-all, all the goods, now the Internet,

the stream of information leaves no more air to breathe, the soul

...goes empty.

The soul is empty, death is terrifying, nowhere to go.

- If there's progress in learning, in education,

there should be moral progress too. - There should be.

- Is it possible?

Did we not already attain all that was needed...

- Attain? - We know already, it's known...

- To know is nothing. One has to let it into one's heart.

One may know anything. Some people...

...know that God exists, even some scientists,

some great physicists admit it, others don't know.

One knows, another doesn't.

No, it must be in the heart. One must live with it.

Morality is not attained by knowledge.

It is attained first in a child's upbringing,

then by a self-teaching.

In this way. Through experience.

- Why...

in 1917-1918,

did we choose to make such radical changes?

Why didn't we just choose to repair the social system,

instead of starting from zero?

- First of all, the word...

'to choose' is...

a wrong one.

To choose... - But millions of people took part in it.

- Yes, but...

there was no choice, in the proper sense.

I'll explain.

'To choose' means...

explaining to the whole nation, to all the people:

"You've this way or that way to go.

"Keep in mind, this will come out of this, and that of that.

Here you have a 20-year, a 50-year forecast."

They think it over and vote.

This means 'to choose'. But our way of choosing was...

- Was such a method possible in 1917?

Not at all.

- Then, why discuss it? - That's what I...

Yes, but then you shouldn't call it a choice.

Or no, I'll call it a choice. A choice, right.

Gorbachev was saying: "My father chose to follow Socialism".

This is how he chose it, like all the others,

like this:

The Bolsheviks,

with financial support from Germany and, we know, also from

Wall Street,

published a huge number of tracts and newspapers.

These newspapers read: "Why do you need this war?

"Put down arms. Kill the officers

"and go home to till land

you will take from the landlord."

That was the choice.

The only choice. Right, it was a choice.

Our people took that...

that cheap bait.

- It was introduced so...

- A huge number of people accepted this.

- Why?

- Because it's one of the features...

of human nature. You are concerned only with its cruelty.

But there's also greed and unruliness,

and an absence of foresight too.

He could take his gun and go home right now,

why not to go? - We're speaking...

about the qualities of the nation,

not those of a single man?

- But not the whole nation.

Not the whole. - The bigger part, which...

was to endure all. - Not sure about the bigger.

It was the Whites who had their ideals:

To preserve healthy life in Russia.

The Reds had that destructive trend of building Socialism.

But the multimillion Red Army was not created of volunteers.

They were at first in the Red Guard.

The Red Army was made up by force.

Only the Bolsheviks had the cruelty, your term,

to come...

to catch deserters and to shoot them before the villagers.

- Were there any such examples in Russia before? - Never.

- No such mass exterminations?

- No such examples of mobilisation, because before

everyone reported when called to service.

No one sought to evade it, on the contrary,

if you didn't pass the test,

if you were inapt for service, it was a shame. - Yes.

- I was speaking of something else...

- For one's self.

- I recall your publication,

"Communism in Evidence, But Misread".

- This is true and untrue.

I took this title,

when, in my fervour, I considered

Communism to indeed be misunderstood in a stupid way.

That the Western politicians didn't understand the full danger of it.

But now, when I know how Wall Street helped the Bolsheviks,

Wall Street, the biggest banks of America

helped them to secure their position,

I think: No, they understood it well.

They knew Communism was useful. When it was in Russia.

To make Russia... to turn it into...

a source of raw material,

to exploit it and to make profit from it.

Later, they failed.

The cold war started, the Bolshevik empire improved.

Now they've succeeded once more.

- Can you imagine...

a successful, or let's say, a happy...

outcome of an experiment called Socialism, anywhere?

Is it possible?

- Without the breath of God,

with no conscience,

both of those struggling regimes are hostile to man.

The one and the other.

No good will come out of the one or the other.

Everywhere...

the matter is conscience. Only it has to be...

developed in oneself and in others.

The statesmen aren't busy with this.

- But neither are the statesmen in the West.

- Yes, yes. Nowhere they are.

- Who, in the structure of modern life,

could undertake this function of... development?

Because it has become absolutely clear this process should be organised.

Who should be the organiser?

How are leaders being put forward? - In a way,

religions organise it.

But it couldn't be arranged from the outside.

People should themselves

...respond

and live accordingly. - People can't, people need help.

- It's wrong.

Among our people,

I can speak for them, because I've seen many simple people,

there are many sincere Christians,

who live among evil and chaos,

in an honest and open-hearted way,

and die in peace, with no burden of sin.

A lot of them. What matters, is how one responds to the sermon.

How one responds. Apart from sermons, religions offer nothing.

They only call.

People decide.

You were speaking of our revolution, of people choosing their fate.

Mankind too reached its current state by itself.

The fashion today

is to speak ceaselessly about the transition

from the 20th century to the 21st, from the 2nd millennium to the 3rd.

My God, how many publications, how many discussions.

All idle.

Because the border...

...is not drawn, there isn't any bright line to cross

where January 1, 2001 is to come. No. There isn't such a line.

The transition is already happening, in a threatening way,

and it doesn't promise us any good

neither in the West, nor in the East.

All is in us.

- That is, it's an inclined plane,

and we go down? - We go up in terms of civilisation,

and down, in terms of soul. A devastation of the soul.

A vacuum in the soul.

Very alarming, very alarming.

- Yes.

- Of course, in our country we have our own fears, still bigger,

our own atrocities and horrors, that suffocate us,

but it must be said that humankind doesn't live in a paradise.

The 21st century has yet to show itself.

My God, how did they greet the 20th century?

What a joy: At last, the century of reason.

And what did they get... Now, they have the same hope for the 21st.

It'll be

the same, if not worse. We're going to destroy nature.

It is dying inexorably.

Chekhov, in "The Huntsman",

already then... at the end of the 19th century,

found such heartfelt words about the death of nature.

The 19th century! I wished I'd be given that nature!

- What impression did his "Sakhalin Island" give you?

- "Sakhalin Island", I'll tell you, is somehow

smothered with too many statistics.

Too many statistics. There aren't...

...enough living examples.

It was hard to comprehend it in a visit.

It was very good that Chekhov went there. For him, it was...

...an act of courage. No railway. The Siberian way, many hardships.

- He had a fatal disease... - Yes, he had.

But "Sakhalin"

actually doesn't bear a great emotional charge.

- Did it have any special meaning for Russia at the time?

- Not even that, because a certain Doroshevich, who wrote some...

brilliant feuilletons, also about the condition of detainees,

had impressed society even more.

- And did you ever think about Chekhov as a man?

- I thought a lot about him. Right now,

in the 10th issue of Novy Mir,

in print in October, there will be...

...my study of Chekhov.

I write there about many of his stories,

a lot.

Year after year, I took my notes, then put them in order.

- And to imagine his earthly life, its atmosphere?

- I love him tenderly,

I have much tenderness for him.

- What, to your mind, is interesting in Chekhov's Russian?

What do you note there? - Alas, he too...

was influenced by the South. Taganrog, the South...

He didn't work out a spatial, profound, succulent language.

He allows himself

some inexact literary words, instead of the right ones.

This is southern education, unfortunately.

- Interesting.

- Does reading history improve language?

- Depends on the writer. With Karamzin, yes, remarkably.

I didn't study him, because he's still the 18th century.

I took the 19th - 20th.

History by Karamzin is poetry.

One would want to write down his phrases as aphorisms.

To repeat them. Just to learn them by heart. - Yes, yes.

- That's him.

Serguei Soloviev does not have this ability.

Serguei Soloviev is dry...

dry, strict and very state-oriented.

- That is, his ideology defines the features of his language...

- And precision.

And Kliuchevsky comes to a kind of poetic take-off.

Not the same as Karamzin, but he makes sharp analyses.

This is how he wrote his works: First, he gave lectures.

He is all rhetoric.

And while he is saying his bright words,

- He creates a form...

- Yes, and the picture is there.

Many vivid pictures.

A long way from Karamzin, but very fresh writing.

That's why he makes new words appear.

I see some new words appear. - New indeed? - Yes.

Yes. In any case... They aren't even new.

Words are like the cells of the periodic table of elements.

All the elements exist already.

People can ignore them. Still they exist.

One may use a word...

- That is, a word may exist without being pronounced?

- Right. - So, words can exist without people?

- They exist. Accidentally, this stem has never been used...

with such a prefix. Now they are put together.

We can discuss it. - Still, at some point

words must be created by man.

- They are... you know, language is like...

It is there, and it can have any shoots.

Don't say: "He's an innovator. He makes up new words."

They always call me an innovator, as if I invent things.

I invent nothing. I only take what already exists.

That's all. Language is a living tree. A living stem.

There's everything.

Go and look, to make sure, to see.

- Are you fond

of the sound of words?

I believe this must be important for you. - I'll tell you.

- You put words in writing, but I feel you always hear them.

- Right.

The phrase should easily be read aloud.

Without a stammer.

- So literature should be read aloud?

- Yes, aloud.

- Not silently, but aloud.

- The most significant, fundamental literature...

cannot live without an oral...

an oral context.

- I agree the sonority should be there.

But on the other hand, for example, take a poet.

The poet is mediocre. "Yes, but how he recites his verse!"

That's his business.

His contemporaries may be at the reading.

But the verse on the paper should be such

that I could read and like it without the author reciting.

The verse should ring by itself, on the paper. - I agree.

- And we have such a saying: "Don't mind if he's unreadable.

Come to his concert, he recites so well."

Perhaps he recites, howls or sings; that's possible.

But it isn't literature any more. I don't accept it.

- When you were writing Cancer Ward, did you also imagine...

the sound of the words, of the phrases? - I think that...

- Did it exist inside you in an oral version,

or did it become a human story from the beginning?

- You know... Of course, in the Cancer...

A perfect fusion with the language,

the highest fusion is there when I write my miniatures.

I have some principles for my language. We can discuss it.

Still, in Cancer Ward this wasn't my main concern.

My main concern was to describe the ill people.

It's a heavy impression,

when you come to stay in a ward, where everyone has cancer.

With different forms

and development. - We speak of a tragedy...

- A tragedy. - I understand it's a tragedy, not a medical matter.

A human tragedy.

- A tragedy. How a man overcomes his illness or surrenders to it.

But when I gave Cancer Ward to Tvardovski,

he said:

"You have put it so that

"I wouldn't object to being treated there.

People can live there, too."

One should look for a catharsis. For a purification.

In each text, each story you are writing.

- And if the soul aches so that you can't?

You have the right to write. - I have that right.

- Without necessarily knowing the issue. - I have the right.

Of course, I do,

but the greatest quality will be achieved

if the chaos is overcome within the book's limits.

The best quality.

You may also overcome nothing.

Post-modernism, on the contrary, creates chaos.

Nothing to overcome.

The more chaos, the better.

What's the use? Dead after 10 years.

Even less. Nobody needs them any more.

They can produce and produce nonsense.

But the struggle of humanity against chaos is a historical one.

On a world scale,

or within a part of one's life,

or within a life, or within a single work of art.

The entropy, makes all the potentialities equal.

An artist must fight against that.

An artist must combat entropy and create different potentialities.

- He must? - He must. Well, what does that mean?

There is no law to make him responsible, but morally he should.

He must find a solution

for chaos, for entropy.

Against confusion and despair.

- So, it's only in this case...

that a work of harmony can be created. - Yes.

- If there's struggle, there will be harmony. - Should be.

There should be victory. Even without full harmony,

catharsis purifies us for victory.

Victory may be far off,

but we should move towards it.

- An author may conceive this struggle

and grasp its necessity, but to attain harmony

won't he need, writing book after book,

more than one life?

Now he is ready... but his life is over.

- It can well happen.

And only if each work is better than

the previous, which is not always...

A conflux of your inner emotions,

of the material, of external circumstances. A conflux...

- I can understand this regarding cinematography.

But in literature, I can't see... You must be able to control...

While we were preparing the shoot, you were working.

One word, a comma,

next word,

a pause... a preposition, one more word.

You are building your world.

So why is a writer not always able

to create harmony?

He who is aware of it...

- One should have, Pushkin said, a happy disposition of the spirit.

Such an exceptional disposition, that everything goes right.

When a work goes right, it's like a chess game, when you're winning,

and it happens by itself,

no matter which move you make, you win.

There, you see a fork, there's an easy prey...

- Does your work direct you? - My work?

- Does it show you the way to go?

- And you, it seems to me, you are led by your work.

- Very often. - I see it. And I approve it, I approve it.

You know, in different cases it may be different.

- Pushkin used to say he didn't know how the story would end.

I like that. - That's good.

- It isn't always possible. - On the other hand,

for...

...such a huge work as "The Red Wheel",

everything was decided by History.

I can't change its course, I can't change a single fact.

My business is to find the right facts,

as many as I can,

and knit them so tightly

that no space is left unfilled, no room for argument.

All the facts are together.

No empty space. Facts everywhere.

- That is to say, "The Red Wheel" could become for you

a basis for a "War and Peace"? - Why, what for?

- I mean, we may call it so. - Not me.

I have refused any attempts...

...at all. - I didn't mean it.

- No, there's no comparison to be made, because...

I accepted to reduce the presence...

of fictional characters

in order

to describe historical figures as my own fictional characters.

I took several dozens of them

and described them like people I knew in my life.

I spent decades with them,

all those leaders of February,

of the Revolution.

I perceive "The Red Wheel" as a gigantic chronicle,

whose counterpart is not to be found anywhere.

Does it have to be followed

by a further step? A creative crystallisation...

...of something else.

- Oh, something else. Because about this...

...about the February revolution, I have said everything I wished.

That's all.

No, what do you want... I am too old for

big works.

I must choose, and finish what I have begun.

- At present, does your work demand a lot of you?

Was it always so or only now? - Now I work less...

...because I...

...take more time...

...to begin my life in the morning.

I tire earlier in the evening.

When I do work... before, I worked 14-16 hours a day,

and now perhaps 5-6 hours.

Yes, the creativity question is very interesting...

Of course, it's much the same as

with all the arts.

So, what I say of literature,

can often be applied to art.

Art, of course, includes literature.

But some questions are purely literary and,

cannot...

...else be raised.

- It's strange. Speaking of modern literature,

what is the biggest...

...problem of its present condition: The absence...

...of big forms, or the absence...

...of new talents?

- I think it is...

the writer's lack of responsibility towards

a higher power.

This is the main reason of the decline of literature.

In the early 1900's there still were masters,

in Russia, even later

until the authorities stifled them,

who wrote not to "express themselves",

"here I want to show myself",

no, because I feel a kind of inner duty.

I've a kind of sacred relation to writing.

I'm fulfilling some kind...

...of obligation.

It is the decline of their responsibility,

before God. Even if...

...some do not refer to Him

but to some higher power, or duty,

something greater than one's self.

The decline of this responsibility is the main reason.

Today writers allow themselves

just to play the buffoon, to write utter nonsense.

He invents Beria as a relative of Nicolas II,

then he builds his novel around that.

Or Chapaev as a mystic.

- This we mustn't even discuss. It's clear.

- True. Chapaev is a mystic. What else?

What is this gibberish for? It can be weaved endlessly.

This decline comes from...

...the general spiritual decline of humanity.

Hence the decline. And then...

- Because of progress?

- Yes. - First of all? - Because of civilisation.

And also...

When the great musical works were being created,

at that time

they were created for a few connoisseurs.

Mozart plays music at the duke's court

and knows there will be 2-3 true judges.

What will they say?

- Yes. And he reached... - He reached for it.

- Yes, for them. For their praise.

And now you have to please millions.

But their tastes aren't developed.

They are different.

To please millions, quality decreases.

But in fact, my idea is that...

...that in fact

mass culture

must not necessarily be low-level.

Folklore is the proof.

Folklore is a high-level art.

And for the masses.

- But it's different. Folklore is not professional art.

- Why isn't it professional? - However it isn't,

whereas modern art is.

At the time it was professional.

One's only occupation was to sing songs,

another sang when free,

the others listened. No, it isn't...

- He sang, but during the day, he worked.

Even if he sang better than others. - So what?

- One played accordion, another something else.

- It doesn't exclude... - Each time, in an original way.

...it doesn't exclude professionalism.

- I believe the art of folklore is an art of improvisation,

a deep understanding of it.

- If it were true... - Aleksandr Isaevich,

what I believe important in folklore,

is that man is only creative for that moment,

when it's natural, when his heart can't help but sing.

- But this is also true for a writer. - Can't help but cry.

- Still, among professionals it's rare.

- Improvisation, yes,

but why have millions accepted it?

Improvisation? - They improvise too.

- No. - To a certain extent, they do.

- But they accepted it. - Yes, and they develop it.

- They develop it, and hence it becomes...

a mass art.

And its level...

One should only judge a work within its level.

I listen to a traditional Russian song and I find it perfect.

Why should I...

be worried about Beethoven being even more perfect?

I'm speaking not of Beethoven now,

but about this song.

- But it will be sung in Orel this way,

that way in Vologda, and still another in Nizhni.

- Already... - This is exactly...

Fortunately, nothing is rigid in folklore. All evolves.

In professional art, quality is set at a certain point,

and everything stops there.

- It wasn't for this aspect that I cited folklore.

I cited it for the purpose...

...of giving an example,

of how folklore can attain, on one hand,

a high level, and on the other, popularity.

But in the art of today... - Folklore is individual...

- Even if it isn't,

this is not what matters in today's art.

It can, even remaining individual and professional,

attain both a high level and mass accessibility.

That can be attained.

We mustn't think that we are condemned

to produce low-end rubbish.

We aren't condemned to that.

- Yes, I see. - The only thing I maintain is we aren't condemned.

- Folklore is something full of life, something alive...

This is how the traditional songs survived.

All these songs survived till today because

they evolved. - Yes, Aleksandr Nikolaevich...

...they survived, and now they are dead.

Now they are blocked. - They'll be back.

- Not sure. - Objectively. - Before, in my youth,

at each concert there were folk songs. Now, never.

I listen to the radio Orpheus, thank God,

it broadcasts folk songs.

- If they're there,

I'm sure, they won't disappear.