She is not afraid to change her life, moving easily and without visible regrets from science to business, from politics to literature and cinema. And in all these changes it retains its unique individuality. Meeting with Irina Khakamada – a woman who knows how to remain herself under any circumstances.
She enters the door of her small office in the center of Moscow, and life immediately boils around: phones begin to ring, doors slam, voices are heard, footsteps sound in the corridor … At the same time, in Irina Khakamada herself, the only woman politician in Russia who can compare in popularity with movie and TV stars, there is not a drop of fuss: her movements are concise and restrained, and it is difficult to read true feelings from her facial expression. Irina is wearing a dark sweater, simple straight trousers, a minimum of cosmetics. It would seem that the ideal camouflage is a mask that allows you to close yourself inside, save your inner world from those around you …
But then Khakamada begins to speak, and the picture changes dramatically: protective armor turns out to be nothing more than a case – a reliable container for that colossal emotional energy and inner fire that this fragile woman carries within herself. Involuntarily, a comparison with a samurai sword, securely hidden in a plain sheath, comes to mind.
Fate gave Irina Khakamada late youth: success, prosperity, fame, harmony in the family and the true joy of motherhood came to her closer to forty years. About what happened before, she recalls willingly, but as if it were about someone else – not about her. Indeed, looking at old photographs of a ruffled teenager or a thin girl with a nervous face, it is difficult to recognize in them today’s brilliant woman. Lonely childhood and adolescence, alienation in the family, early marriage, long years of worldly disorder, painful attempts to find their own voice and compensate for the warmth they lacked at an early age – it seems that there is no trace of all this in Irina Khakamada. Nevertheless, she carefully preserves the memory of what she has experienced and it is in her past that she draws strength in order to move forward, not resting on her laurels. Science, business, politics, literature, design, and now also cinema – it seems that for this woman there are no boundaries. Or, rather, only she herself knows where they lie and what their outlines are.
Psychologies: Your image is “different”: no matter what environment you find yourself in, you always stand out. What is it – an attempt at image provocation or just a form of behavior that is organic for you?
Irina Khakamada: An attempt to play on the counter, on dissimilarity is a natural thing, especially within show business. But believe me, I don’t do this: I really don’t like everything artificial, and it’s hard for me to force myself into something. If I really differ from others in some way, then it means that such is my inner world. For example, I don’t like glamorous clothes, I don’t wear gold – I prefer silver. I understand that among the people with whom I communicate from time to time, this may look shocking, but this is the only way I feel natural. There is no conscious non-conformism in this – I have not tried to prove anything to anyone for many years. Actually, after I managed to reconcile with my father, accept him and understand him, I no longer feel the need for self-affirmation.
How was your relationship with your father? It is known that in the life of a girl he always plays a special role: in particular, the formation of her femininity primarily depends on her father, on his look …
THEIR.: My father was a very difficult man. He spoke Russian poorly, was a XNUMX% introvert, and generally led a very isolated life from my mother and me. Close your eyes and imagine a stern, laconic Japanese samurai – that’s exactly what my dad was like. He never stroked my head, never kissed me, never spoke kind words – in fact, he never spoke to me at all. It was easier for him to sort things out through his mother – he could tell her at dinner: “I don’t like that Irina comes late” – and believed that the incident was settled by this. At best, he asked me how I was doing, and, without listening to the answer, said that I was very weak and that was bad.
But at the same time, did you feel that he loves you, that you are significant to him?
THEIR.: Well, maybe on an unconscious level. Somewhere in the depths of my soul, I understood that he was not indifferent to me, but the thought of this rarely visited me. For me, he was an omnipotent sovereign, whom I, an insignificant subject, had the opportunity to occasionally see. Perhaps that is why I grew up as a lonely introvert like my father.
How did you overcome this alienation?
THEIR.: Our relationship began to improve when I was already twenty-five years old. My father came to visit us on weekends, I gave him tea in the kitchen, and we talked about politics. He was a communist, I was a liberal, and we argued intelligently with him. However, the real reconciliation, oddly enough, took place after his death. My father always wanted to see in me a real warrior, a strong and inflexible personality – in the form of a girl, a girl, a young woman, I was simply not interesting to him. It so happened that I embarked on my “path of the samurai” – went into business, went into politics – only shortly before his death, and my father did not have time to recognize me in this new capacity. But today, on some intuitive level, I feel that he is satisfied with the fate that I have chosen: I know that now his soul is next to me – he is proud of me and approves of me. This feeling arose in me quite a long time ago and helped me overcome all my childhood grievances, forgive my father for his coldness and indifference. Today I am much closer to him than when we lived in the same house: visiting his grave in Japan, I feel an exceptional spiritual kinship with him and more than ever realize that I am his daughter.
But how did you make up for the lack of warmth in your life? Through a relationship with your mother?
THEIR.: My mother and I were never particularly close either. She worked as a school teacher and came home so tired that she simply had no energy left for anything. She was and remains a very kind, sincere person, but all she had the strength to do was listen to me, at best cover my rear: she always pandered to me in all my affairs, even if she did not fully approve of them. But to give me something more, to give me a feeling of real intimacy and trust, she could not. No, I went a much simpler way: I got married at the age of eighteen. I realized that otherwise I could not survive, that I needed a warm man who would give me everything that I lacked in the family of my parents. It was this person that my first husband became – he was five years older than me, he treated me very touchingly and nobly, admired me and became the embodiment of that male love that I did not receive from my father. But even he, unfortunately, could not fully understand what was so tormenting me from the inside.
Have you thought about what exactly it was?
THEIR.: Feeling of total, inescapable loneliness in the face of the surrounding world. The outside world stubbornly rejected me, and I could not understand why. Today I see that the real reason lay in the atmosphere in which I grew up, and in my hereditary tendency to withdraw and introvert. And in order to get out of this state, to become an adult, adequate person, it took me many years of directed efforts. Perhaps, I fully became myself only by the age of forty.
They say that Eastern people generally mature later…
THEIR.: Yes, and over the years you begin to understand that there are a lot of advantages in this – life is extended. Many of my friends today are surprised how, at my age, I can be so childishly happy about some trifles, enjoy a trip, a new vase, a good book … But in my 20-25 years, this was completely unusual for me: I had a deeply tragic perception of the world. So today I’m just experiencing that cheerful and carefree youth, which I did not have in my time.
You have not had a chance to know what a happy childhood is, what is the love and care of parents. How do you manage to give all this to your own children?
THEIR.: Early marriages are usually early children. My first son Danila was born when it was very difficult for me. I separated from my good first husband and married a man who also had a son from his first marriage. All four of us lived on the beggarly money of scientists – the opportunity to buy normal products for children from speculators or once every six months to afford a taxi ride seemed to me something unattainable. So my son, unfortunately, could not get much from me: I was spinning, trying to earn an extra penny, and I simply had no time for more. But I remembered my childhood and tried very hard not to repeat the mistakes of my parents: my father didn’t do anything with me, didn’t teach me anything, and therefore I tried my best to give my son everything to the maximum. I was fanatically engaged in his development: I took him to all sorts of circles and sections, I wanted him to be able to do everything. With my daughter, everything is different: I’m just glad that she is, I enjoy communicating with her.
There is a big age gap between your children. Have your views on their upbringing changed during this time?
THEIR.: Certainly! When Danila was growing up, it seemed to me that the child should have a separate life: I believed that it was impossible to drag the baby to the parent company, even if he was interested there, that the child needed children’s matinees, sledding and a hard regime, and from his adult life should be protected as much as possible. Today I believe that by isolating children from ourselves, we thereby unjustifiably humiliate and offend them. That is why, if my daughter Masha wants to hang out with us, if she wants to go somewhere with us or go, most often we let her. Thus, we not only spend more time together purely physically, we also live a common, united life.
And the relationship with your husband – do you adhere to the same principles in them?
THEIR.: Volodya and I have established a certain balance in relations. Neither of us is a support for the other in everyday life – neither I nor my husband need it, we are quite mature, independent people. We don’t harass each other with whining and asking for help. And at the same time, each of us becomes a XNUMX% support for the other in the event of some difficult, tragic situation – for example, it happened when our daughter became seriously ill. Volodya is the first man in my life who does not try to compete with me, who knows me thoroughly and at the same time never seeks to assert himself at my expense, to play on my weaknesses. I am a muse for him, a source of energy and joy. And, I confess, I really like this role.
Do you think you know yourself well?
THEIR.: I think it’s good. But I still never cease to be surprised at my own irresistible stupidity. All my work experience has shown that you can’t be so vulnerable, you can’t react so sharply when you are once again insulted or grossly humiliated. If you are a wise person and understand what an unfriendly environment you are in, put a barrier inside – a mirror – and reflect external aggression, do not let it into your soul. But I can’t do this: with every conflict, I give all my best and react as if for the first time. Moreover, formally I restrain myself, but in fact I still remember all the insults! I’m trying to learn how to throw this dirt out of my memory, but so far it’s not working.
Where do you draw strength to deal with such situations?
THEIR.: Once, after a particularly tense television debate, I left the studio literally on shaky legs – I felt completely exhausted. One woman came up to me – a psychologist – and said: “Irina, this is not right. I see that you are really worried about every word. If this continues, you will simply burn out. You need to find some kind of outlet for yourself – a remedy that will help you relax and rejuvenate. To my surprise, I took her words seriously. This is how calligraphy and photography came into my life. Drawing hieroglyphs on paper or photographing animals in the African savanna, I not only accumulate energy for the future, which allows me to cope with stress, but also get the opportunity to learn something new about my own inner nature.
What else would you like to know about yourself?
THEIR.: First of all, what am I capable of creatively. Sometimes I do risky experiments on my own personality. For example, I tried myself in the role of a person who writes a novel. Now I want to make a movie according to my own script: it will be the story of a woman, in some ways autobiographical, in some ways not … I’m interested in checking what exactly I can do: will my novel turn out to be graphomania, and the movie – boring and gray? ..
Does this mean that your life goals and priorities have changed?
THEIR.: The fact that I left politics does not mean at all that I calmed down and folded my hands – I just realized that many roads lead to my goal – to make our country and the people living in it a little freer and happier. And in today’s world, fortunately or unfortunately, much more can be achieved through creative self-expression than by making speeches in parliament or sitting on Duma committees. At least I believe in it.