It is difficult to argue that the death of Valeria Novodvorskaya, which was announced on July 12, significantly changed the alignment of political forces in the Russian Federation. Novodvorskaya died in Moscow City Hospital No. 13, surrounded by doctors. They could not save her, the inflammation went too far, and her age and lifestyle did not contribute to the healing of the wound, which in other circumstances might not have been dangerous. No one began to speculate about the malicious elimination of a dangerous political adversary. There were no grounds for such versions. The cause of death of Valeria Novodvorskaya was announced immediately. It was a phlegmon of the foot.
Gentle and brave
Yes, she did not claim to be a guiding star, apparently, she was quite satisfied with her position, which guaranteed the ability to freely declare her own views in the complete absence of any responsibility. However, the right to do so had to be earned, conquered or suffered. Friends, among whom were Khakamada, Borova, Nemtsov, Ryzhkov and other representatives of the political elite of the Yeltsin era, called her a romantic with a child's soul, disinterestedness, an infinitely gentle and very subtle person, not forgetting to particularly dwell on courage that reaches recklessness. Other, less friendly people, remembered her antics, full of shocking, often ridiculous and badly funny. A very controversial personality was Novodvorskaya. The cause of death, biography, political activity will be briefly described below. No ratings, just facts. And a few assumptions.
USSR late 60s
Moscow of the second half of the sixties. Behind the half-century history of the Land of Soviets. In the capital, the relative abundance of goods is overshadowed by the raids of visitors who bought everything in a row, and sometimes they found out what things stood in a long line, only being at the counter. The Red Terror, the bloody war, the Stalinist mass repressions, and the voluntarism of Nikita Sergeevich have sunk into oblivion. The country is stable, it is divided into “supply categories”, and in each of them people are accustomed to the degree of satisfaction of needs that is established above. People live calmly, and the notorious “confidence in the future” is not empty words, but reality. There is no unemployment, but there is a definite choice between a very small salary of an engineer or teacher and higher tariff rates for builders or highly skilled workers. The daily program "Time" reports on a steady and progressive movement towards a brighter future. Many believe, and skeptics keep quiet. And among all this idyll, dissatisfied suddenly appear. What do they want? Who are they? How did they get to such a life? What do they miss?
Dissidents
Vladimir Bukovsky, a Soviet dissident, spent a lot of time in specialized hospitals. No, he was not tormented by a sarcoma or some other serious illness. Doctors tried to make it “normal” (that is, everyone was happy), so they were subjected to compulsory treatment in psychiatric clinics. It was believed that if a person does not like socialism, then his head is not all right. In fairness, Bukovsky himself admitted that there really were many crazy people among the dissidents. At the turn of the seventies, the power of the CPSU seemed so strong and unshakable that, as a rule, a normal person did not dare to rebel against it. Yes, and why? The life of the Soviet people could not be called unbearable, most of the citizens of the USSR did not see other benefits, and if information about the “capitalist paradise” leaked under the Iron Curtain, then it was most often not especially trusted, believing that besides many varieties of sausage, there were some costs. In this, by the way, they, as history has shown, were right.
But there were still dissidents. And they risked a lot.
"Westerners" in the USSR
Russian people are prone to categorization. It appears in the recognition of the extreme points of any phenomenon and the almost complete disregard for intermediate states. If in our country something is not as we would like, then abroad it is certainly the opposite. In conditions of incomplete and one-sided awareness of the population about the life of people in Western countries, at least two generations of Soviet people have grown up convinced that if capitalism is blamed here, it means that it is an ideal social system. It focuses on caring for a person, and fair wages, and commodity abundance, and personal freedom. And the locomotive in the face of the USA leads this bright power. The presence of any other opinion in a certain part of Soviet society meant belonging to the party nomenclature, cooperation with the KGB, or simply stupidity. Dissatisfied with life in the USSR, everything American was considered good, and everything Soviet was considered bad. In fact, this phenomenon was a mirror image of the Soviet agitprop, exactly the opposite. His victims most often became people with an unstable psyche. All the rest sought to adapt somehow, realizing some inconsistencies of the official political line, but reconciling with them as an inevitable evil.
Genealogical tree
Valeria Novodvorskaya died at the age of sixty-four. And she was born in the late Stalin era, in 1950, in the city of Baranovichi (Belarus). The family was not just ordinary, it can be called an exemplary. Both parents are communists. Dad worked as an engineer. After two or three decades, no one would have seen anything special about this, but in 1950, having a living father in itself was a happiness that so many Soviet children did not know. Five years ago, the bloody war itself in the history of the world ended. Valeria's mom was a doctor.
Revolutionary genes were simply to fill every cell of Valeria's body. Great-grandfather was a Smolensk social dedek, grandfather - an equestrian of the First Army of Budyonny. There were other outstanding personalities in the family - the governor under Andrei Kurbsky and even the Maltese knight, at least Novodvorskaya herself said so.
The family couple was visiting grandparents when the birth occurred. The story is silent about the reasons, but it so happened that the grandmother was mainly engaged in the upbringing of the girl. Parents, apparently, were very busy.
Parenting
It was very difficult to grow a personality in a country where total collectivism dominated. Even when talking about an outstanding person, almost every journalist was especially touched by the fact that "he was like everyone else." This was not always true, but expression became a common literary cliche. The whole leitmotif of life and even the cause of the death of Valeria Novodvorskaya suggests that she “did not want to be like everyone else” since childhood. This became her will in her conscious years, and at the age of five, her grandmother taught her to read. The silver medal, in addition to the school certificate, already testifies to our own efforts aimed at confirming the person through those achievements that were available. Fluency in French and German, the ability to read in several other languages - also the result of hard work. Not every graduate of foreign language is able to demonstrate such knowledge.
The beginning of the struggle
Looking at the photographs of Valeria Novodvorskaya taken in the nineties and the beginning of the third millennium, it is difficult to imagine that at nineteen she was a beautiful girl, but she is. There are few high-quality images, but by the fact that they were preserved, it can be judged that the lens is not just a pretty student, but a smart and courageous person. Personal charm, apparently, to a large extent became the reason that Valeria was able to attract young people to the underground circle she created, which aims at - and no less - an armed uprising to overthrow the power of the Communists. If the case had happened less than two decades earlier, Novodvorskaya’s death would have occurred immediately, after a brief trial. In 1969, Soviet power was more humane.
First crazy act
A nineteen-year-old beautiful girl hands out handwritten copies of her own poems. "How lovely!" - they would say today. And even then, in 1969, when the poets were idols, far from today's pop and rock stars, there was nothing surprising in this fact. If not for two circumstances. Firstly, the verses were anti-Soviet and stigmatized the party, mocking it for its hatred, shame, denunciations and other related phenomena. Secondly, the distribution took place in the Kremlin Palace of Congresses, moreover, on Constitution Day of the USSR. Under these circumstances, they simply could not arrest Novodvorskaya. Immediately, there were suggestions that the girl was not quite capable. After she told fellow KGB colonel Duntz, a senior expert at the Serbian Institute, that he actually works in the Gestapo, the diagnosis was considered confirmed.
Treatment in Kazan
For two years, the patient was treated in the Kazan Psychiatric Clinic for paranoia and schizophrenia (sluggish). The authorities had every opportunity to prevent her from being released, for example, to recognize the patient as incurable. And you could just bring it to complete exhaustion. Or treat so that the date of Novodvorskaya’s death is no later than, for example, 1972. This is if we accept the version of the dissident herself about the brutal nature of the communist regime. Facts, however, are stubborn things.
Fate did not want Novodvorskaya to die in a mental hospital. She survived. One can only guess how forced treatment affected her. It is only known for certain that the fighting spirit was not broken.
After leaving the psychiatric hospital (1972), the twenty-two-year-old Valeria Ilyinichna immediately took up the forbidden case again. She distributed printed samizdat materials, and simultaneously worked as a teacher in a sanatorium for children. It remains to be amazed at the carelessness of the “executioners from the KGB” who admitted pedagogical employment of a recent mentally ill person. However, Novodvorskaya did not work there for long, only two years.
In between
The next fifteen years, V.I. Novodvorskaya fought against communism, using the methods of the Bolshevik underground. She graduated from Moscow Pedagogical Institute. Krupskaya (1977), got a job as a translator in the Second Medical. And did not abandon attempts to overthrow the hated Soviet power by conspiracy. She was repeatedly detained, arrested and treated. Three trials did not lead to imprisonment, the demonstrations and rallies organized by her were dispersed. Perhaps the protesters were subjected to more serious repressions, and Novodvorskaya escaped with fines and medical procedures. During the Gorbachev thaw, almost everything became possible, even direct insults to the head of state and the flag of the USSR. After the formation of the autocephalous church in Ukraine, which aims to split with the Russian Orthodox Church, Novodvorskaya was baptized, becoming a parishioner of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kiev Patriarchate. She did this, obviously, in protest against the Russian Orthodox Church.
Bad without repression?
Lack of attention from the authorities offends the opposition. The political rating is not so important for him as the fact of his own danger to the ruling elite. This, on the one hand, brings a certain discomfort to life, but on the other hand gives a sense of self-worth. The fight makes sense. The cause of the death of Valeria Novodvorskaya as a politician was not in the small electorate, but in the frivolous attitude of the authorities. In recent years, she often lamented on the air of Ekho Moskvy radio station and other mass media about the widespread misunderstanding of the bright ideals of democracy. In her opinion, the Russian people did not reach the understanding of true freedom. She herself dreamed that everything in Russia was "like in the West." Novodvorskaya died, and did not live up to the fulfillment of her cherished desire.
Russophobia and other funny things
Anti-Sovietism gradually grew into Russophobia. In all conflicts arising during the post-Soviet period, Novodvorskaya took a defeatist position, repeating the experience of the Bolsheviks that she hated during the First World War.
Well-known and comic situations. The female politician sometimes stood with a banner that said: “You are all fools and can’t be treated, I’m smart, I’m pretty in a white coat, ” I put on a T-shirt with the slogan “Don’t give Russian.” By the way, the treatment is needed not by fools, but by patients. This certainly should have known Valeria Novodvorskaya.
