Or here is another thing on cities. In 1945, in April-May, after seizing Berlin they should have immediately made there the Empire’s capital city. And today everything would have been different. And there would have been enough work from 1945 until today to everybody. And the enthusiasm generated would have been gigantic. And Moscow should have been made a museum already in 1917. This is a horrible, ugly, depressing city without attractions, where old buildings are drawers and new buildings are mailboxes and parcels. (This is not Paris, I lived there on a simple little street, mentioned in a 1233 chronicle, on rue des Ecouffes!) Russian cities are as a rule an assemblage of frozen barracks and there will be nothing to feel sorry for them.
Kremlin was rebuilt by Pavel Pavlovich Borodin. Cushions, sofas, couchettes with chiseled legs on which the president sits. Like in the Elysee Palace, like at the Queen in London! A worker, vigorous, muscular president will not sit on a couchette with chiseled legs! This would be disgusting for him! Little couchettes are not traditions of statesmanship, they are traditions of the middle class, the only thing missing is a lace umbrella. In 1943, my mother going to the military plant plotted me, a baby, in a shell-box and moved under the bed, father enforced the table with planks. Just in case, the Germans flew so far as this area. That’s a tradition!
As for cities they are quickly overgrown with grass. I saw the demolished Vukovar, the smoking Sarajevo, Benders where on public places mines splashed like vomit, I saw the burned down Gagri where on a speedway, after ripping it open from inside, grass had grown to the waist of a man, I saw beaches of once elegant resorts, overgrown with grass to the very edge of the tide. Nature quickly conquers abandoned cities. I realize that I love destroyed cities more than living ones. And your generation will have to realize that destroyed cities are more beautiful than living ones.
Look into history, flip its pages. The very first act of the revolutions of the newest history is the construction of barricades. They destroy the pavement, tear off stones and block the streets with them. They stop the automobiles, autobuses, block the city with bricks. And also attack, rob, destroy and set fire to the city hall, administrative buildings, presidential palace, parliament, shops and warehouses. The crowd has a sure instinct. It wants to destroy the city – the citadel of the power, political and economical – the main cause of its misfortunes. The crowd is stopped by those who have plans for the city hall, the presidential palace. We will not stop the crowd.
Lecture 17
In 1991, 1992 and 1993 it happened to me to visit hot spots as new local wars were called then and certainly will still be called. On the war with the Croatians in Vukovar (Slavonia and western Srem), in Pridnestrovie, in Bosnia, in Abkasia and in spring 1993 in Kninska Krajina, where as a volunteer I defended the front near the town of Benkovats. I wrote about these wars in military reportages, but wrote little because those years and the following years of the second half of the nineties were tense years of struggle. I was catastrophically out of time: I founded the “Limonka” newspaper in 1994, loaded the party on myself, so I didn’t have time for anything. If God gives me the minimum quarter of a century that are genetically due to me by inheritance (my father is now 83 years old) – I will write. I wrote best about the soldier profession in the essay “Dogs of war”, I intended to develop the positions of that essay to the size of a book, but I didn’t. Meanwhile I met in 1994 the famous king of mercenaries Robert Denar in Paris and in 1997 under adventurous circumstances I crossed the entire Central Asia with an NBP group in Tajikistan and there I had the honor to meet Mahmud Khudoyberdiev. If these two outstanding military commanders are to be added to the Serbian general Arkan, to the colonel Kostenko, to the general Radko Mladich, to the captain Dragan – the hero of Kninska Krajina, to the rebelled presidents Miloshevich and Karadjich, to others less known, but no less worthy military commanders, then you get a whole crowd of only military commanders. And how many officers and soldiers did I know!
On the basis of this knowledge, after thousands of man-hours spent with war people, a firm conviction had developed in me, that war is not the sin of human kind, not a vestige of the past, not a shameful instinct, but a legitimate powerful instinct of aggression, the instinct of heroism. I developed this theme in the book “The Sentinel’s Murder”. Referring to the work of the Austrian biologist Konrad Lorenz, I explained in that book (and later in the article “Dogs of War”) that a part of the man population of any country takes delight in war. Moreover military instinct is discovered often by accident, in people very remote in normal life from war, if they suddenly end up in a war. Some old teacher or a fitter turns out to be a frisky and enterprising commando. But all over the place opposite discoveries also occur: immersing into war, how many highest officers turn out to be absolutely not soldiers, moreover, hostile to the very military spirit. A man with a gun is not necessarily a soldier. A man with a gun and in a military uniform is most frequently not a soldier.
In Kninska Krajina fought for the first time, I remember, officers of the Yugoslavian Army, who had just went on pension at 60 years old and returned to the ranks voluntarily, when Kninska Krajina rebelled. The colonels Shkorich, Knyazhevich, the colonel Tanga fought great. In Kninska Krajina fought an adventurer who loved war, the talented fighter captain Dragan: a legend, a man who came from nowhere, either from Australia or Israel; it was only clear that he speaks Serbian and knows how to fight. He founded a school of military training, there, in Kninska Krajina, I was in his school and later, I recall, promised to transfer on the school’s account all the honoraries from my books and articles, published in Yugoslavia. There, in the school, young men and women wandered on the streets of the funny city, that they were going to seize, there in a T-80 tank turned the driver, who forgot which handle exactly to press. There, beautiful Serbians with splendid hips learned explosive skills and around wandered the soldiers, licking their lips… Dragan himself wore a kerchief and a cask on top of it. On his face he had an expression of quarrelsome insolence.
In Abkasia in 1992 I drove several times trough the positions of the Chechen commandos: “The Shamil forces” in the Low Eshers. I recall, they had on me the impression of a whole bunch of boys: all short, in black overalls, with black bandages on their foreheads, self-assured, with weapons hanging all over them. Like the “wild boys” from William Burroughs’ novel, I recall I thought. They were kind of photogenic and fresh, like on a fashion show. Only in 1995 Basaev became famous, it is then that the world learned and I learned that it is his people who fought in Abkasia. In Abkasia they were on the same side with our forces, for the Abkasians. The Chechens in Abkasia, Shamil’s forces had the same quarrelsome insolence on their faces like captain Dragan. Already then I thought – if I had this kind of guys! Now I am certain that we have this kind of guys, with a quarrelsome joyful insolence. In 1997 I found myself in Buddenovsk, I stood there for the pre-elections in the State Duma. Myself, I was based in the Kazak city Georgievsk but my representatives Irina Tabatzkova and Sergey Gromov worked on Budennovsk. They managed to make me come third in that city. The city was stuck all over with my leaflets. And boys ran on the streets with the “Limonka” newspaper. I was shown then traces of bullets from Baaev’s attack. On the gates of his house Dzhigarhanov showed me traces of bullets, a great guy, a Russified Armenian. Fate is a strange thing. I stood for election in a city in which Basaev killed and now I sit in a prison where the majority of the prison population is composed of Chechens – “terrorists”. On the bunk, covering his head with a sweater sleeps Misha Kuskov, he was transferred to me on the 22 May straight from the cell of Salman Raduev. So there are a lot of people around me with a high fighting instinct.