For many years, a critical statement of Bard about his compatriots has been walking over the network. We checked whether such an attribution is correct.
It is alleged that the poet and composer Bulat Okudzhava in one of his interviews criticized the inhabitants of the USSR, saying: “We degraded, Dicheli for seventy years. You know, there is a wonderful example from the Bible. When Moses led Jews from Egyptian captivity, he led them for forty years instead of five days so that a generation that was slaves would die out, and that people appear free from a sense of slavery. And we are not just slaves that suffer from hardships, we are professional slaves that are proud of their slavery. ”
This quote is distributed on literary sites (for example, magazine magazines "Workshop") And in social networks. The statement was especially popular on Facebook, which is mentioned in publications with 6800, 3400, 261 And 195 reposts. In the days of the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Bard of Bard in May 2024, the quote again became viral among Internet users.
In the inexperienced public Okudzhav is associated with lyrical verses and songs that are far from politics and topical topics ("Your Blagority, Madam Luck","Hope is a small orchestric","Let's exclaim","Song of Arbat","Famous love"). The theme of the Great Patriotic War is also a noticeable place in the work of the Bard (songs "We need one victory","Take the overcoat, let's go home","Goodbye, boys","Song of Moscow militias"). At 18, Okudzhava He went Volunteer to the front, which laid out an imprint on his rest of his life. Therefore, another stereotypical association with the poet is a restrained patriotism transmitted through military lyrics. But in the quotation, a completely different mood is visible in the verified quote: the author describes the Soviet era as a period of degradation, and calls the generation of Soviet people slaves.
Many posts in social networks say that the interview from which the quote was taken took place in 1991 in Donetsk. Apparently, this refers to the performance of Okudzhava in the local Palace of Culture "Youth" on February 11, 1991, Organized The literary club "Return". The hourly record of this creative evening, which was shown on the local television channel, Saved in the archives, and today you can look at it at YouTube. However, there are no sought words in this speech - he did not say anything like Okudzhava at that event.
A chronological analysis of publications in social networks shows that they all go back to the same source - article 2014 "Who are we? Why do we need this? Bulat Okudzhava and today's Russia. ” Her author - Vladimir Frumkin, musicologist and specialist in the creativity of the Bard. This text, full of poetic and prosaic quotes, reveals to the readers of a completely different, late Okudzhav, who in the era of publicity came out of his image of the contemplator and began to speak out about the state and society with the ultimate frankness and skepticism: “God would not give Ivan on the tank,“ we still do not know how to respect the human person, cannot see the highest person in it The value of life, and until all this is in our blood, nothing will change, the psychology of Bolshevism will continue to destroy us and our children, "" We ourselves were no better than the Nazis. We had the same fascist regime. But then I did not understand this. ” The article also has a quote about professional slaves, which is accompanied by an indication of the same incorrect source - an interview with 1991 in Donetsk.
However, Okudzhava had other interviews. In 1987, in a conversation with the journalist of the Moscow News newspaper Ilya Honey (No. 22 (360) of May 31), the poet, then still optimistic in relation to society, declared:
Already in this answer an analogy of Moses and slavery appears. And four years later, in an interview with Ilya Milshtein for the magazine "Spark" (No. 19 (3329) for May 4–11, 1991), Okudzhava He said About professional slaves:
It is not known for reliably whether Okudzhava himself united two thoughts (about Moses and about professional slaves) or someone else compiled these excerpts (for example, Frumkin). However, there is no reason to doubt that both theses expressed in a viral quote were voiced by Okudzhava in fact.
Photo on the cover: Wikimedia Commons
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