Time is rapidly gaining momentum. Not only is the pace of our lives changing, but also the perception of our (recent) past. Writer Leonid Kostyukov reflects.
I think many agree that times are changing very quickly now. Under the times here are understood the most that neither is the real way of life. Well, let’s say the world with mobile communications is very different from the world «before». As a rule, all your loved ones, wherever they are physically, are in the access zone, which forms a strange system, not imagined before, like a giant molecule. Mobile communications are canceling a huge number of classic stories based on “non-meetings” or incomplete information, starting with Romeo and Juliet. At the same time, we note that, purely technically, the radiotelephone is involved in one of the French films of the 70s with de Funes; it is the general availability of innovation that turns the world upside down. Private transport flooded the streets of Russia much later than when Ford invented the automobile. But it is the introduction and cheapening of the new that is incredibly accelerated.
The older generation is slowly getting used to the Internet, and the younger generation cannot imagine life without social networks. Our arthritic fingers have just got used to the mouse and keyboard, and theirs are already crawling across the screen with might and main. Between the generation that has not yet found the pager, and no longer found it, ten years have passed — no more.
Amazing inversions occur. For example, in 1973 the situation in the USSR today was exactly the same as yesterday. And in 1988-1989, something changed every day — both in Europe and outside the window, and in the evenings we watched the life of the slave Izaura (approximately one small change per 10 episodes). Or a characteristic picture of the new time: children teach their parents new programs and gadgets, and not vice versa.
Watching in the late 80s a film shot in the late 50s in the center of Moscow, the viewer saw exactly the same streets, the same houses, even the same basic stores. Getting into the army (I personally — to shooting), yesterday’s schoolboy or student picked up approximately the same types of weapons that he saw on the movie screen in films about the war. Therefore, there was a huge difference between the perception, for example, of the film «Alexander Nevsky» (spears, arrows, chain mail) and «Battalions ask for fire.» In 1941–1945, not just our grandfathers fought, but, as it were, we, who fell into other conditions.
In a word, there was a certain horizon, 30-40 years, of a tangible past, visually and tactilely indistinguishable from the present. What followed was something like a fairy tale. It is not that at this close distance historical manipulations and falsifications were impossible. Very possible, but they were just perceived painfully. The clearest example is the legacy of Stalin. Agree, such a heated debate about Ivan the Terrible — is it a villain or is it still a collector of Russian lands? – possible only in parody. What is beyond the horizon no longer touches emotionally. And just like a liquid in weightlessness gathers into a ball, the past in this «weightlessness» self-organizes into a myth and an image, a form convenient for memory.
For today’s youth, the horizon of the past is no more than ten years. Even their own childhood (in their own mind) took place in the prehistoric era. The era of slot machines, the first food stalls, pagers. We are amazed that half of today’s high school students do not know who won the Second World War, but for them the Second World War is the same as for us the Centenary. As a result, a strange process takes place: the very recent past, 30-40 years ago, is mythologized, which is accompanied by amazing forgetfulness.
At the same time, the details are, as it were, restored from the logic of the whole, but with wild errors. For example, from the argument of a well-known architectural critic, «there were no small shops in the USSR.» There were only four near my house — «Milk», «Fish», «Vegetables-Fruits» and «Tools». Or from the argument of a well-known literary critic: «In the USSR, there were low fees.» On the contrary, even — unthinkably high. In the forties, it was possible to buy a car or an apartment for the Novomirovsky fee, and in the 80s it was 3-4 monthly salaries. The logic of the whole, meanwhile, is clear: the USSR was a country gravitating towards collectivization, megalomania; on the other hand — to leveling, life past money. So? Yes, not so. One side. On the other hand, vice versa. Perhaps its main aspect was precisely bilateralism, according to Orwell — doublethink.
In a famous anecdote, an old German Jew is asked when he was happy. He replies: «Under Hitler: I was young.» Well, people of my generation, of course, were happy under Brezhnev, and far from being so catastrophic. But, probably, one should not confuse sweet nostalgia for youth with the real content of the way of life — poor, stuffy and hypocritical. Moreover, this nostalgia is quite uncritically taken up by young people who are vigilantly observing the obvious shortcomings (who can argue?!) of today’s Russia. In short, they are not treated by the past.
I am sure that today, more than ever, memoirs of not yet old people are needed, detailed, voluminous evidence of the recent past, because the truth here is more important than a flat myth — one or the other.