Biography.

Amalrik Andrey Alekseevich (05/12/1938, Moscow - 11/12/1980, Guadalajara, Spain). The son of the famous historian and archaeologist A.S. Amalric. In 1962-1963 - a student of the Faculty of History of Moscow State University, was expelled for coursework in which he defended the "Norman version" of the emergence of Russian statehood, which was rejected by the official Soviet science. He gained fame as a collector of paintings by Soviet avant-garde artists, in this capacity he met a number of foreign diplomats and journalists. He composed plays in the spirit of the “theater of the absurd”; a collection of these plays was later published abroad, and one of them ("East-West") was shown on the stage of the Amsterdam Globe Theater.
Arrested on 05/14/1965, convicted by the Frunzensky District Court of Moscow (05/28/1965) for an "antisocial way of life" to two and a half years of exile, which he served in the Tomsk Region. 06/20/1966 the verdict was reviewed by the Supreme Court of the RSFSR, and A. was released from serving his sentence. After returning to Moscow, he described his life in exile in the book "An Unwanted Trip to Siberia". After his release, he worked as a freelance employee of the Novosti Press Agency.
He was the first among the dissidents to constantly communicate with foreign correspondents (in his memoirs he wrote that he played the role of a kind of “liaison officer” between dissident circles and foreign journalists). However, initially, these contacts were just a form of non-conformist behavior: “I wanted to visit foreigners and invite them to my place, to behave with them as if we are people like them, and they are people like us.<...>I was proposing essentially a whole revolution. " After the “trial of four,” he tried to organize a press conference for foreign correspondents with the participation of relatives of the convicts - apparently, the first attempt to hold such a press conference (it was thwarted by the efforts of the KGB). He was interested in the situation of foreign journalists in the USSR and the reasons that prevented them from fulfilling their direct duties; subsequently wrote an article about this "Foreign Correspondents in Moscow" (see in his collection of 1971 "Articles and Letters").
From June 1968 he assisted Pavel Litvinov in the preparation of the collection The Trial of Four; after the arrest of P. Litvinov, he completed work on the collection and in October 1968 handed it over to foreign correspondents. He was among those who participated in the transfer to the West of the manuscript of A. Sakharov's work "Reflections on progress, peaceful coexistence and intellectual freedom."
07/16/1968 organized a picket with his wife at the British Embassy in protest against Britain's aid to the central government of Nigeria in the civil war against the self-proclaimed republic of Biafra.
At the end of 1968, the Novosti Press Agency refused A.'s services, and he got a job as a postman.
He was a supporter of the transition to organized forms of independent civil and political activity. In the spring of 1969, he proposed creating a "Soviet Democratic Movement" and even composed a draft appeal.
In April-June 1969, at the suggestion of a friend of an American journalist, A. wrote an essay “Will the Soviet Union exist until 1984?”, Where he formulates his concept of the near future of the USSR. A. is skeptical about the stability of the Soviet regime, but he is also extremely pessimistic about the hypothetical post-Soviet future. He doubts the possibility of a democratic transformation of the country, citing the weakness of the existing liberal-democratic opposition as an argument. A. reinforces his considerations by analyzing the size, social composition and spectrum of ideological preferences of the participants in the 1968 protest campaign.
This work, published abroad at the end of 1969 and translated into many foreign languages, brought A. world fame. An unusually sharp statement of the problem, expressed in the title, combined with an analytical, emphasized academic style of presentation, reproducing (and, possibly, partially parodying) Western Sovietological treatises - all this set it apart from the usual samizdat journalism of those years. The work caused a lot of responses in the foreign press and a heated debate in samizdat.
A. is the author of several more samizdat articles, of which the aforementioned Foreign Correspondents in Moscow (spring 1970) and an open letter to Anatoly Kuznetsov (11/01/1969), a response to the public statements of the famous Soviet writer who became in 1969 A “defector” that freedom is completely absent in the USSR. A. objects to this: the guarantee of external freedom is “internal freedom<...>, in which the power can do a lot with a person, but is not able to deprive him of moral values ​​”.
In 1968-1970 A. was detained and searched several times. Arrested on 05/21/1970 and sent to Sverdlovsk, where an investigation and trial were carried out. The trial took place on 11-12.11.1970. A. was charged with the authorship and distribution of his works and interviews. The second defendant, the Sverdlovsk engineer Lev Ubozhko, was accused of distributing A. - only by the cowardice of the regime, which sees the danger in the dissemination of any thought, any idea alien to the bureaucratic top.<...>It is the fear of the thoughts I have expressed, of the facts that I cite in my books, that makes these people put me in the dock as a criminal offender. This fear reaches the point that they were even afraid to try me in Moscow and were brought here, hoping that here the trial over me would attract less attention.
<...>My books will not be made worse by the abusive epithets they were awarded here. The views I have expressed will not be less true if I am imprisoned for them for several years. On the contrary, it can only give my beliefs more strength.
<...>Neither the "witch hunt" conducted by the regime, nor its particular example - this trial - evoke in me the slightest respect, not even fear. I understand, however, that such courts are designed to intimidate many, and many will be intimidated - and yet I think that the process of ideological emancipation that has begun is irreversible. ”
The court sentenced A. under Art. 190-1 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR for three years in the camps. He served time in the Novosibirsk and Magadan regions.
On the day the term ended, 05/21/1973, the Magadan Prosecutor's Office opened a new case against A. under the same article. 07/18/1973 he was sentenced to 3 years in prison. After the verdict was announced, he began a hunger strike, which he held for 117 days. In November 1973, the Supreme Court of the RSFSR replaced the camp with three years of exile.
Served exile in Magadan. 12/04/1973 awarded the Freedom Prize, awarded by the New York House of Freedom. Returned from Magadan to Moscow in May 1975.
07/15/1976 A. emigrated from the USSR. In emigration he was actively involved in social and political activities, was published in the magazines "Continent", "Kovcheg", "Syntax" (Paris). He wrote the second book of memoirs "Notes of a Dissident" (published posthumously in 1982). Killed in a car accident. Buried in Paris at the Sainte-Genevieve des Bois cemetery.

Zubarev D.I., Kuzovkin G.V.

UFO magazine materials used

Publications:

Plays. Amsterdam: Foundation. Herzen, 1970.287 p .; Same: Nose! Nose? No-se! and other plays. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973.228 p .; Will the Soviet Union last until 1984? Amsterdam: Foundation. Herzen, 1969.71 p .; The same // Ogonyok. 1990. No. 9. S. 18-22; Unwanted trip to Siberia. New York, 1970.294 p .; The same: Involuntary journey to Siberia. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970.297 p .; Articles and Letters: 1967-1970. Amsterdam: Foundation. Herzen, 1971.100 p. (Library of Samizdat; No. 2); USSR and the West in the same boat. London: OPI, 1978.241 p .; The dissident's notes. Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1982.361 p .; Also. M .: Slovo, 1991.431 p .; Same .: Notes of a revolutionary. New York: Dj, 1982.343 p.
Interview: Cole W. Three voices of dissent: Interviews with Andrey Amalrik, Vladimir Bukovsky and Piotr Yakir // Survey. 1970. No. 77. P. 128-145.

Literature:

Chalidze V.N. Andrey Amalrik: Obituary // Chronicle of the defense of rights in the USSR (New York). 1980. No. 39. S. 62-65; Besançon A. About Andrei Amalrik // Syntax. 1980. No. 8. S. 4-6; Rubenstein J. Soviet dissidents: Their struggle for human rights. Boston: Beacon press, 1985 (as indicated); Khrabrovitsky A.V. Amalric / Publ. V.A. Ratner // Sov. bibliography. 1990. No. 5. S. 131-133; Orlov Yu.F. Dangerous Thoughts: Memoirs from Rus. life. M .: Argumenty i fakty, 1992.S. 184-187, 196-197, 207; Cossack V. Lexicon of Russian literature of the twentieth century. M .: RIK "Culture", 1996. S. 14-15.

AMALRIK, ANDREY ALEKSEEVICH (1938-1980), historian, publicist, playwright, public figure.

Born in Moscow on May 12 in the family of a famous historian and archaeologist. In 1962-1963 - student of the Faculty of History of Moscow State University, was expelled for coursework, in which he defended the so-called. "Norman theory", which was rejected by Soviet science. He gained fame as a collector of avant-garde artists, composed plays in the spirit of the "theater of the absurd", made acquaintances among foreigners (journalists and diplomats) who worked in Moscow.

For this he was arrested in May 1965 and sentenced to 2 and a half years in exile (formally as a "parasite"), served time in Siberia. In June 1966 Amalrik was released and returned to Moscow (he described his life in exile in the book of memoirs An Unwanted Trip to Siberia), worked as a freelance employee of the Novosti Press Agency.

Amalrik was the first among Moscow dissidents who began to constantly communicate with foreign correspondents, acting as a "liaison officer" between dissident circles and foreign journalists. Later he wrote an article Foreign Correspondents in Moscow (1970), where he investigated the legal status of representatives of foreign media in the USSR and the reasons that prevented them from doing journalism normally.

Together with Pavel Litvinov, he worked on the collection Trial of four about the trial of Alexander Ginzburg, Yuri Galanskov and others; after the arrest of P. Litvinov, he completed this collection and in October 1968 handed it over to foreign correspondents. He was among those who helped transfer to the West the manuscript of Andrei Sakharov Reflections on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom.

At the end of 1968, he was dismissed from his job and got a job as a postman.

In April-June 1969, he wrote an essay, Will the Soviet Union survive until 1984 ?, where he formulated the concept of the near future of the USSR. Amalrik was skeptical about the stability of the Soviet regime; but he was extremely pessimistic about the hypothetical post-Soviet future. In support of his considerations, he cited an analysis of the size, social composition and ideological spectrum of participants in the 1968 protest campaign, which unfolded around the Process of Four.

The essay, published abroad at the end of 1969 and translated into many foreign languages, brought Amalric worldwide fame. A sharp formulation of the problem, combined with an analytical, emphasized academic style of presentation, reproducing Western Sovietological treatises - singled it out from the samizdat journalism of those years. The work caused a lot of responses in the foreign press and a stormy controversy in Samizdat.

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And other works of Amalrik (for example, An Open Letter to Anatoly Kuznetsov) gained popularity in Samizdat and in the West.

In 1968-1970 he was detained and searched several times. On May 21, 1970, he was arrested and transferred to Sverdlovsk, where an investigation and trial took place. At the trial (November 11-12, 1970), he was charged with his works and interviews. The second defendant, the Sverdlovsk engineer Lev Ubozhko, was accused of distributing Amalrik's works.

Not pleading guilty and refusing to participate in the trial, in the last word Amalric said: “... Neither the witch hunt conducted by the regime, nor its particular example - this trial - evoke in me the slightest respect, not even fear. I understand, however, that such courts are designed to intimidate many, and many will be intimidated - and yet I think that the process of ideological emancipation that has begun is irreversible. "

The court sentenced him to 3 years in the camps for "disseminating ... false fabrications discrediting the Soviet ... system" (Article 190-1 of the RSFSR Criminal Code). He served his term in the Novosibirsk and Magadan regions. On the day of the end of the term (May 21, 1973), a new case was opened against Amalrik under the same article, and in July he received three more years in the camp. After a four-month hunger strike in protest, the sentence was reduced - three years in exile.

Returned from Magadan to Moscow in May 1975.

In 1976 Amalrik emigrated from the USSR. In emigration he was engaged in social and political activities, published a lot. He wrote the second book of memoirs, Notes of a Dissident (published posthumously in 1982). Died November 12, 1980 in a car accident near Guadalajara (Spain). Buried in Paris at the Sainte-Genevieve des Bois cemetery.

Since 1990, Amalrik's books and articles have been republished in the USSR and post-Soviet Russia.

Andrey Amalrik

Amalrik, like Dovlatov, I consider one of the few decent people in exile. And he, too, was a man of tragic fate, although he was a strong and courageous fighter and never gave up. Because of what, in essence, he died!

Amalrik, like Dovlatov, was distinguished by intelligence, benevolence, lack of fuss and envy. It is interesting that some political emigrants were afraid of Amalrik, considering him impudent, if not even a boor. But over time, I realized that the point was that Amalrik simply did not show any obsequious piety to the emigrant authorities, to the "elite", and said to these people what he thought about them, calmly, without rudeness, but even more so it was perceived as insolence.

How does the poem sound like his biography, written, obviously, by himself for the book "Will the Soviet Union last until 1984?" She talks a lot about Amalric. I will cite it with small abbreviations.

Andrey Alekseevich Amalrik was born in 1938 in Moscow, in the family of a historian. (His surname is from a distant ancestor, probably a Frenchman. - VB) He studied at Moscow University at the Faculty of History. He studied for two years and was expelled for the work "Normans and Kievan Rus". (He magnified the role of the Normans in the creation of the Russian state! - VB) Two years later, he again entered Moscow State University. Before and after university he worked as a cartographer, a medical laboratory assistant, a construction worker, a newsreel illuminator, a translator of technical literature, a newspaper proofreader, a timekeeper at auto races, a model, and gave lessons in mathematics and Russian. In 1963-1964 he wrote five plays, none of which was staged or published. In 1965 he was imprisoned on charges that his plays were "clearly anti-Soviet and pornographic." However, the criminal case was dropped and the prison was replaced by exile to Siberia (as a parasite - VB) for 2 years. He described the history of his exile in the book "An Unwanted Trip to Siberia", which was published in Holland in 1970. After his exile, he worked in Moscow as a journalist for the APN, specializing in the field of theater and painting. In July 1968, together with his wife, he picketed the British embassy, ​​protesting against the supply of arms to the government of Nigeria and seeking to attract Soviet public opinion to the plight of the people of Biafra. (There, Nigerian troops committed genocide. - VB) At the end of the same year, by order of the KGB, he was removed from work in the APN and worked as a postman. Now, patiently awaiting a new conclusion, he is engaged in the cultivation of cucumbers and tomatoes. (Typical Amalric style! - V. B.)

And the conclusion followed. In 1970, Amalrik was sentenced to three years in camps for "anti-Soviet propaganda and agitation", namely for the publication in the West of the book "Will the Soviet Union Exist ...", which has received worldwide fame.

At the end of his term (in 1973), Amalrik was “welded” for three more years right in the camp for bad behavior, of which he served a year and a half. (In 1976 he was forced to emigrate.)

His works and their style speak even more about Amalric - calm, emotionless, clear, laconic and with amazing poetic rhythm. I will cite a few short excerpts from "Will the Soviet Union Exist ...".

From the introduction:

“I want to emphasize that my article (as Amalrik calls this book. - VB) is not based on any research, but only on observations and reflections. From this point of view, it may seem like idle chatter, but - at least for Western Sovietologists - it is already of the interest that a fish that suddenly began to speak would present to ichthyologists. "

Let's delve into the text of the book.

“So, what does this (Russian) people believe in and what are they guided by without religion and morality? He believes in his own national strength, which other peoples should be afraid of, and is guided by the consciousness of the strength of his regime, which he himself is afraid of ”(p. 36).

“The mass ideology of this country has always been the cult of its own strength and vastness, and the main theme of its cultural minority was the description of its weakness and alienation, a vivid example of which is Russian literature” (p. 56).

The boldness of this vision of the country and its history suggests comparison with Chaadaev. And as in the case of Chaadaev, it is necessary to resolutely reject the accusation of Amalrik of Russophobia and lack of patriotism. Other assessments of Amalrik can be considered too gloomy (and I think so!), But there is no hatred for Russia and the Russian people behind them, and there are no deliberately false accusations. Amalrik does not ascribe to the Russians a conspiracy against the world, does not claim that they own world capital and the press, kill the best people of other nations, etc. Amalrik believes that the main enemies of the Russians are the Russians themselves, with their worship of power and leadership, with a great-power psychology and lack of respect for the individual, including self-respect.

At the same time, he does not have any popular phobia: he criticizes all strata of Russian society, and most of all - the intelligentsia. Behind his criticism - pain for the unfortunate country.

But I will give you one more quote.

“Although scientific and technological progress is changing the world literally before our eyes, it rests, in fact, on a very narrow social base, and the more significant scientific advances are, the sharper the contrast between those who achieve and use them, and the rest of the world. Soviet rockets have reached Venus - and the potatoes in the village where I live are picked by hand. This should not seem like a comical juxtaposition, this is a gap that can open into an abyss. The point is not so much how to harvest potatoes, but that the level of thinking of most people does not rise above this “manual” level ”(p. 65).

Behind this there is already a premonition of the tragedy of September 11, 2001! and a parallel with my hypothesis about the possibility of human suicide.

After Karl van het Reve published Amalrik's book in Holland, it received a huge response in the West and was published in many languages. Western sociologists greeted the book with deep attention and admiration for the courage of the author. There have been many articles published about this work. The old Russian émigré community with the new émigrés who had joined it raised their usual cry: a Russophobe, a KGB agent, etc. Amalrik and Marxist dogmatists in the West began to be accused of slandering the homeland of socialism, and a significant part of liberal dissidents in Russia and in emigration was outraged by criticism addressed to the intelligentsia, in the arrogant, in their understanding, tone of the book, and accused the author of adventurism and outrageousness, referring to his prediction of the collapse of the USSR after 1984 and the capture of Siberia by China. Others generally considered Amalric a lucky upstart. But after he was arrested and convicted for the publication of his book, ill-wishers bit their tongue, however, as it later became clear, Amalric's success was not forgiven. (Recall van het Reve: "In the Russian emigration, the slightest success of one person is perceived by everyone as a personal insult!"

Amalrik, as he himself said, named the date of the alleged collapse of the USSR by intuition, but the coincidence with reality turned out to be amazing. The difference in several years - on the scale of history - is negligible. But even more impressive is Amalrik's calm confidence in the inevitability of the collapse of the seemingly unshakable great power: “I have no doubt that this great East Slavic empire, created by the Germans, Byzantines and Mongols, has entered the last decades of its existence. Just as the adoption of Christianity delayed the downfall of the Roman Empire, but did not save it from its inevitable end, so the Marxist doctrine delayed the collapse of the Russian Empire - the third Rome - but was unable to turn it away ”(p. 64).

It is more difficult with the thesis about the inevitable seizure of the Trans-Urals by China. Amalrik deduced this perspective from demographic considerations: China is threatened with overpopulation, and Siberia is unusually deserted, and the population there is growing very slowly. Like many, I was skeptical about this prediction of Amalrik, but now, when, as a result of the establishment of a feudal-capitalist system (destructive, anti-human) in Russia, the population of Siberia began to decrease rapidly, I changed my mind.

And I am afraid that with these and many other predictions of Amalric, the same thing that often happened with thoughtful predictions may happen: they came true, but, as a rule, much later than the authors of the forecasts assumed. People tend to rush in such cases with the deadlines, they involuntarily measure their forecasts with the scale of their lives.

But I invite the reader to put himself in the shoes of Amalrik in 1969 (when the book was being written), and if he succeeds, the reader will understand what unparalleled courage of thought and faith in his logic he must have had in making his predictions.

Incidentally, Amalrik's thesis about the Chinese threat was later borrowed by Solzhenitsyn (see Letter to the Leaders, etc.), but, of course, without reference to the author and with an unthinkable ideological justification of the conflict - as a clash between Soviet and Chinese communism.

And now about the fate of Amalric in exile. Before leaving, Sakharov entrusted Amalrik to be one of his representatives abroad. First, Amalric ended up in the USA, then he moved to France, to Paris. And soon he made a one-man demonstration there: he picketed the president's palace with a demand, if my memory serves me right, to oppose the political repression of the Soviet authorities. And then Maksimov and his team furiously attacked him, published a statement for the press, in which he accused Amalrik that, without coordinating his actions with him, he harmed them, Maksimov and his team, many years of work to establish contacts with the French authorities.

I then joked that Maksimov, in contrast to the Bolsheviks with their principle "He who is not with us, is against us!", Professes the principle: "He who is not under me is against us!" (I then continued this folklore. For Solzhenitsyn: "Who is not with me, he is against the Russian people!"

Meanwhile, the conflict between Amalrik and Maximov began to unfold. Amalrik criticized Continent in the Western press, Maksimov gave him a "decent answer", stating that Amalrik's speech against Continent "in a strange way" coincided with an attack by the Soviet press against the magazine and its leading authors, which was a lie, since the Soviet attack actually went against Svoboda and its authors, among whom were a number of Continent authors.

Maksimov launched into battle against Amalrik and his satellites. Anatoly Gladilin, who was then part of the Maximov retinue, distinguished himself. He wrote in his article that he had an acquaintance from the KGB who liked to say: “I don’t believe in chances, because I’m organizing them!”. That is, criticism from Amalrik, allegedly coinciding "by accident" with the attack of the Soviet press, was initiated by the KGB!

And soon the time came for the annual Sakharov Hearings - the main event for emigrant human rights defenders, to which the Western mass media also drew attention. The hearings were held each time in different countries and cities. In this case, in 1980, they were supposed to take place in the fall in Madrid. The Organizing Committee of the Hearings was composed in a completely incomprehensible way from a number of people far from Sakharov in spirit - from right-wing Western politicians and old emigrants, such as, for example, the anti-Semitic Countess Shakhovskaya - and was naturally under the great influence of Maksimov (who, in fact, had nothing to do with human rights defenders in the USSR). And in 1980, at the behest of Maksimov, the organizing committee did not include Amalrik's name in the list of those invited to the Hearings. Despite the fact that Amalrik recently arrived in the West and he had something to tell about the situation in the USSR. It would seem that he also met all the criteria for joining the political émigré elite: he had a great dissident “party experience”, both imprisonment, and “name”, but he was too bright and, unlike most dissidents, was able to generate ideas. The members of the organizing committee, probably, were not only afraid to contradict Maksimov, but they themselves, probably, feared that Amalrik could cause some kind of "scandal" at the Hearings - speak sharply, inconsistently, without respect for them, and most importantly, he could divert the attention of the press to himself, since his fame in the West was then very great. The fact that Amalric did not belong to any of the émigré clans also played a role, he was an independent "cat that walks by itself."

Be that as it may, Amalric was "dragged from the rostrum" (remember the first press conference of human rights defenders-emigrants in Rome!), Or rather, they were not allowed to the rostrum.

However, he was not one of those who could be embarrassed and stopped. He made the decision to go to Spain without a visa. He did not have a visa, since he was not on the list of invitees, and he did not have time to obtain a tourist visa. (Then in many countries, including Spain, tourist visas had to wait for a very long time - for weeks.) Amalric decided to try to cross the border on some country road on which there is no border post, and in Madrid at the hearings to get the floor, and in case of failure - hold your own press conference. Amalrik wanted to disavow Maksimov in the eyes of the Western public as a representative of Soviet dissidents, whom he in every possible way disgraced with his speeches and behavior, he wanted to say that Maksimov is pushing Western democratic circles away from helping dissidents-human rights defenders in Russia. Amalrik was a man of duty, he considered it necessary to help the dissidents in Russia in every possible way. With his fame in the West, he was able to deal a serious blow to the image of Maksimov.

Shortly before the start of the Sakharov Hearings, a conference on the workers' movement in the USSR was held in Marseilles, organized by French Sovietologists of the left orientation. Amalric was invited to it, as I was. And there we met for the last time. Amalric arrived in Marseille with his wife Guzel in a recently purchased car with a newly obtained driver's license. And from Marseille, after the end of the conference, he planned to leave for Spain.

He bought the car for royalties, quite considerable, for the publication of the book "Will the Soviet Union Exist ...", published in many countries of the world. I will note here that Amalric in appearance and behavior did not have any traits characteristic of people who spent a lot of time in prisons and camps. Amalric looked like a young western university scholar, assistant professor, or graduate student.

The evening after the end of the conference we spent with Amalrik and Guzel, as they say, over a bottle of wine! We talked about many things, including the situation in the Russian emigration. Amalrik was very impressed by my story - for comparison - about the Czechoslovak emigration. He asked me to set him up with one of the Czechoslovakians, and I promised him to do this at the first opportunity. Amalrik also put forward an idea, which I dreamed of too, of creating a joint Russian-Czechoslovak democratic magazine - as opposed to Continent and the NTS periodicals. I invited Amalrik to visit Munich (at the same time to the RS) in order to meet there with emigrants from Czechoslovakia.

They discussed the views of Solzhenitsyn, Maksimov and the right-wing majority of the emigration on the situation in Spain and Portugal, where the fascist regimes of Franco and Salazar had recently been liquidated. Solzhenitsyn and his satellites regarded these regimes positively as the least evil (even then such an assessment appeared!), Their elimination was compared with the February revolution and they predicted the establishment of communist regimes in these countries!

Amalrik expressed the opinion that Solzhenitsyn and others like him are not afraid of communists here, but of strengthening the democratic and legal order in the new countries. They sleep and see the collapse of the democracy they hate ...

Our conversation with Amalrik had a character unusual for the Russian environment: we supplemented and pushed each other towards new thoughts. In the Russian intellectual environment, the interlocutors listen to each other, as a rule, only in order to find a clue and begin to express their disagreement, to start an argument "senseless and merciless."

So, speaking about our right-wing radicals, Amalrik and I came to the conclusion that they can be characterized as "proto-fascists" who arose in anticipation of the death of the Russian empire - to save it, to cement it with some kind of Russian substitute for Orthodox fascism instead of the weathered cement of Marxist ideas ... And we came to a consensus that they, the "proto-fascists", will not be able to fulfill their mission. Among the non-Russian peoples, including the Slavs, so much hostility to Russia has accumulated that with a serious weakening of totalitarianism, the Russian-Soviet empire will inevitably collapse, as it almost happened after the February Revolution with the tsarist empire. But the propaganda can still lead to sacrifices and upheavals for them, "proto-fascists", especially if the current authorities try to play the great power card and take their "ideas" into service.

The empire will surely collapse also for the reason - this was my addition - that behind the national liberation motives at the end of the twentieth century, there is also the desire of educated people, whose number is sharply increasing, for freedom in the manifestation of all kinds of initiative, for freedom of self-assertion, oppressed by the imperial center , the Russian bureaucracy.

Amalrik, by the way, asked me if the system of cooperative socialism would play a cementing role if it prevails in the USSR? I replied that this system, in my opinion, has chances only in the developed, that is, in the Slavic republics, and in this case they will be able to remain in the union only on confederal bases. Labor self-government is incompatible with a centralized and authoritarian structure at all levels and in any form.

So we talked until late and said goodbye, hoping to see you soon. Early in the morning Amalrik and Guzel left to fight their way to Spain, and I went to Munich to return to work. Viktor Fainberg and Vladimir Borisov, who also took part in the Marseilles conference and did not have an invitation to the Sakharov hearings, went with the Amalriks.

Back in Munich, I learned that Amalrik had died in a car accident on the day I returned to Munich.

Then Feinberg and Borisov told me how it all happened. For a long time they could not find a country road without border control and drove for many hours in the mountains until they finally found a gap in the border line. Descending from the mountains to Spain, they dined at a roadside restaurant and drove on without rest to reach Madrid before nightfall. After eating, the fatigue increased even more. At some point, Amalric drove into the middle of the highway, and his car was tangentially touched by an oncoming truck. The car was thrown to the side of the road, the engine stalled. Guzel turned back and asked Borisov and Feinberg if they were safe? And only then she looked at her hushed husband and realized that he was dead.

A metal rail was attached for beauty to the cabin of the oncoming truck, and it split off from the cabin in a collision and pierced Amalrik's throat. I don't remember if Amalric's window was open or if the rail broke through the glass. By the time of the collision, Amalric had been driving for about twelve hours, being a novice driver.

Borisov was executed: “I decided that Andrei was already dead, and Guzel took care of it, but I should have tried to lower Andrei upside down so that blood would flow out of his throat, from which he might have suffocated.” Borisov once worked as an orderly and knew that this could happen.

The emigration met Amalric's death with a ringing silence. Nobody even raised their voices to demand an investigation, how could it happen that Amalrik did not receive an invitation to the Sakharov Hearings?

Then I realized for the first time that even the human rights, liberal, democratic Russian emigration is a community of people, the overwhelming majority of which are morally deranged. A cruel, lackey community.

At the time described, fearing to fall into an agent-mania, I thought that Maksimov fought with Amalrik solely out of his malice and vanity, but now I think differently.

Why didn't I demand an investigation? Because he knew from past experience that my vote would not affect the "Liberal Democrats". I have already turned to them unsuccessfully, if the reader remembers, with a call to do something to stop the slander of "Svoboda" by Maximov and Solzhenitsyn.

Why didn't Feinberg and Borisov receive invitations to the hearings? The elite of emigrant "democrats" considered them frivolous people, and in a sense they were such, but in August 1968 the same Feinberg "serious" dissidents for some reason did not exclude from the number of participants in the historic demonstration on Red Square (in protest against the occupation Czechoslovakia)!

I was never invited to the Hearings either. I was once at a hearing in Lisbon, but as a correspondent for Svoboda.

I was not even invited to the 1981 Hearings in Washington, dedicated to the workers' movement in the USSR! This is despite the fact that at that time I was the only one at Svoboda and in exile to professionally dealt with the work issue, interviewed working dissidents from socialist countries, owned a large archive of documents, and broadcast programs about the labor movement. Shortly before the Washington Hearings, he published the work "Labor unrest in the USSR in the early 60s", which was published for two years in the West: in the USA (1978), in Italy, England, France (1980), and already in its perestroika by I was taken by the magazine "Novoye Vremya".

I was told that Solzhenitsyn's representatives in the organizing committee demanded not to include me on the list of invitees. And their attitude to me was quite understandable, it was only incomprehensible what relation they had to the "Sakharov hearings" and the work question? Why were you a member of the organizing committee?

For comparison, let me return to the Czechoslovak emigration. There was no invitation practice there at all, whoever wanted to came. Travel and conference expenses were paid depending on financial resources - in whole or in part, for all or only speakers and those in need - students, new emigrants. A fraternal atmosphere reigned, not a clan one. Invitations were sent only to outsiders, from other emigres or Western leaders. In particular, I have been invited to almost all major Czechoslovak congresses. I remember that in 1983 the Czechoslovakians invited me to their conference in Bavaria in the town of Frankin. It was arranged by right-wing Czechs, even by church officials, and with money from right-wing Bavarian circles. And who did I see there among the participants?

Zdenek Mlinaraz, the former secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, and Milan Horacek, a deputy of the German Bundestag from the Green Party, which was hated in the Russian emigration as well as the Communists. (Let me remind you that Horacek was also the editor of the German version of the Pelican magazine "Sheets".) Such pluralism surprised even me, who knew Czechs and Slovaks well.

I just reread the text about Dovlatov and Amalrik, and it became so sad that they are no longer ... on this earth. Both left so young, in their prime of strength and age. I wanted to say: "No with us," but stopped: with whom - with us ?!