Memories and Reflections
Memoir-nostalgic lyrics and review of the current era
№6
My student life in the 90s
In this memoir essay, Victor Ledenev sincerely shares his impressions of the last decade of the twentieth century, during which great and dramatic changes took place in the life of the country. The author recalls the putsch, the State Emergency Committee, Yeltsin, the student group, the hostel, Moscow, the productions of Roman Viktyuk, speeches by scientists and poets, the cheerful atmosphere of the 90s, the anarchy that reigned then and the heady feeling of freedom.
The August putsch - the coup in the USSR in 1991 - I remember very strongly and, as they say, “sank deeply into my soul.” This is due, first of all, to the fact that this year I graduated from secondary (still Soviet comprehensive) school and entered the Moscow State Institute of Culture. He passed the entrance exams successfully and was notified somewhere on August 5 of his enrollment in the first year of the institution. Until the start of the school year, he remained in his native village of Serebryanye Prudy near Moscow.
And here I am sitting comfortably on August 19th in a chair, drinking tea, there were only two programs on TV then, and they always seemed boring (or so it seemed to me in due to their young age), especially in the daytime, and then there was no such passion for television as there is now, but they more liked to turn on the radio and listen to quite interesting radio programs, plays, or simply created a kind of background for doing some of their own things.
So, I’m sitting in a chair, drinking tea, listening to the radio, and also reading a book at the same time (as I remember now, “Hearts of Four”), and then suddenly the radio abruptly stops its transmission and, creaking several times, as if someone there was trying to stick forks into several sockets, but he couldn’t do it, and then, snorting with a dissatisfied squeal, he gave out in a choked, but invigorating voice of the announcer the phrase that it is necessary to inform you all, " “Dear comrades,” that a state of emergency was declared in the country and the State Emergency Committee was created to govern the country, since Gorbi (we all called him that in the Western manner even then) fell ill while on vacation in Foros and was unable to fulfill his duties as president of the largest country in the world.
She said something else, I don’t really remember now, and they immediately turned on music from Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake.” At the age of sixteen, I did not attach much importance to this event, since the main show took place in the capital, and I was 150 km from Moscow at that time, and everything somehow went on quietly and imperceptibly all these days until the dispersal of the State Emergency Committee and Yeltsin climbing onto a tank in front of the building of the House of Soviets of the RSFSR, which was later nicknamed the White House. I remember all this only because my mother kept repeating: “How will you study in this capital now, because, you see, such things are happening there,” but it was even very interesting to me, because I really craved adventure at that age and a long, boring stay in a remote urban village. And I received them until I graduated from this university in 1996. But first things first.
On September 1, 1991, I arrived at the university for the ceremony and was pleasantly surprised by the joy that reigned around, as well as by such a biting cheerful mood of most people, which created the impression that all these August events were absent altogether , putsch, change of power and the upcoming dissolution of the Indestructible Union. The performance at the institute's club was very colorful and conceptual, because... I later recalled this fact more than once, because literally after a few months all subsequent performances seemed faded and simply did not evoke any emotions.
I still don’t understand exactly what this was connected with, but, probably, they released the levers of pressure, dictatorship, gave freedom (or the appearance of it), and the people simply began to indifferently and hypocritically reluctantly give out something in the spirit of the times. The student group into which I was assigned seemed to me somewhat prickly and lethargic - it seemed like everyone was together, but in reality everyone wanted to quickly run off about their business. Student unity did not work out from the very beginning, and this had a bad effect on our attitude towards studying.
Immediately everyone “forgot” to study, which seemed somehow informal to me, given my reverent attitude towards learning from school. Apparently, the majority entered just to get somewhere or under pressure from their parents. I, too, fell under this pernicious influence - especially since the hostel had a great negative impact, where free-from-everything tendencies, supposedly connected with the new format of our country and the desire to join the Western capitalist world, immediately began to penetrate. But why was it necessary to pour in like that: constant alcohol abuse, smoking, drug addiction, promiscuous relationships, etc.
Even then I didn’t think that freedom and building a new society of independent people should be associated with the introduction of bad habits and doing what I want, even often to the detriment of to yourself. But this is a fact, and there is no escape from it. I didn’t want to be in the hostel because of this whole hellish situation for me, and I decided to devote more time to visiting various Moscow historical places, which I still like to do, because Moscow for me remains a mysterious city on seven hills, there is something in it... something attractive, but precisely in the old city, which was then still preserved and not built up with “Luzhkov’s” turrets with “Tseretelev” sculptures. In addition to walking, I visited a lot of theaters, concerts and other cultural institutions - fortunately, with a student card you could enter for free, having received a countermark from the administrator. It was then, somewhere in the middle of 1992, that I first attended a performance by Roman Viktyuk and fell in love with his theater.
I cannot describe all its aspects as a theater critic, but I can judge by the feelings that I experienced while watching these productions. But you can’t imagine these sensations, and they were associated with some kind of trembling excitement and purification of consciousness. No other performance brought me such emotions and feelings as Viktyuk’s productions. I don’t know what the secret of this director from Lvov is, but I am one hundred percent sure that later, after many decades, studies will be written about him and more than one dissertation will be defended. It’s a pity that he’s not showing himself in the same way now, although he could brighten up the already boring Moscow theater life.
Studying at the Moscow State Institute of Cinematography was uninteresting and boring, dusty, monotonous, as it is now, according to reviews on the Internet and personal statements of eyewitnesses of this process. Again, I focused more on self-education, read, attended speeches by scientists at the Polytechnic Museum, in the Tchaikovsky Great Concert Hall there were interesting performances by poets whom no one really knew yet, and now they are simply forgotten, but then, in the early 90s x, they surfaced and not only burned people’s hearts with their lyre, but also had wonderful conversations and discussions with the audience, as Zhvanetsky sometimes tries to repeat this now. I am grateful to this university precisely because it provided me with a lot of free time, and I used it at my own discretion, which bore fruit in the future. I learned and read a lot, I got to know people and what they are like. Even the hostel benefited my development: after all, it is there that everything that is base in a person emerges, and there were many aspects in this regard, which I will talk about in subsequent articles.
The years of study flew by very quickly, and before I had time to look back, I had already received my diploma, and a hundred roads opened up to my eyes. But assessing that time, as they say, “Yeltsin” or “the dashing 90s,” I can say that I remember it as cheerful, colorful, bright and carefree. Yes, there was shock therapy, and rising prices, and bare counters, and confusion coupled with anarchy, but the people were joyful from the feeling of freedom and recklessness of life.
These are indescribable feelings from the rule of the “real man” Borka Yeltsin, as the people lovingly called him, which will not be repeated, I think, because what happened after his departure and the beginning of the 2000s can be described as “but that’s a completely different story.”
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Thanks to the background image author Alina Kuptsova from Pixabay
