V.V. Putin: Please, we can talk about any topic related to our topic today (Vladimir Putin’s meeting with members of the board of trustees of the Gift of Life charity foundation. - Ed.), or not.
Yu.Yu. Shevchuk: Vladimir Vladimirovich, it’s possible, right?
V.V. Putin: Yes.
Yu.Yu. Shevchuk: It’s just that I received a call the day before yesterday, and your assistant, probably some (I don’t remember his name), asked me not to ask you any pressing questions - political and so on...
V.V. Putin: What's your name, excuse me?
Yu.Yu. Shevchuk: Yura Shevchuk, musician.
V.V. Putin: Yura, this is a provocation.
Yu.Yu. Shevchuk: Provocation, oh well.
V.V. Putin: My assistant could not call you about this.
Yu.Yu. Shevchuk: Well, not your assistant, some kind of eccentric, yes.
Someone's response: It's not boring anymore!
Yu.Yu. Shevchuk: I have some questions. They have accumulated for a long time and, taking this opportunity, I want to say a big thank you to everyone who has gathered here, because you see before you, perhaps, the beginnings of a real civil society, which you are talking about, and we are dreaming of it. The first is freedom. The word is like this. Because what is happening in the country now is a class-based country, thousands of years old. There are princes and boyars with flashing lights, and there are tax-loving people. The abyss is huge. You all know this.
On the other hand, the only way out is for everyone to be equal before the law: both the boyars and the tax people. So that the miners do not go to the mines like penal battalions. So that this is all humane, so that individuals in the country are free and self-respecting. And then we will raise patriotism. Because you can’t create patriotism with a poster, but here I see a lot, and I’m not alone - the intelligentsia, the bespectacled people, let’s say - we see a lot.
In fact, the protest electorate in the country is growing, you know this too. Do you think it will happen, do you have any plans for truly serious, sincere, honest liberalization, democratization of a real country? So that we stop being afraid of the policeman on the street. Because the policeman now serves his superiors and his own pocket, and not the people. I ask this question sincerely. And I conclude with this question: on May 31 there will be a March of Dissent in St. Petersburg. Will he accelerate?
V.V. Putin: All?
Yu.Yu. Shevchuk: For now, yes.
V.V. Putin: Fine. Thank you. First of all, I want to say that without normal democratic development the country will have no future. This is an obvious fact. Because only in a free society can a person realize himself. And by realizing itself, it develops the country, develops science, and develops production - to the highest standard. If this is not the case, then the consequences come - stagnation. This is an obvious fact and is understood by everyone. So this is the first thesis.
Second. Everyone must act within the law, you are absolutely right. From this moment on, things come that require a professional approach. You mentioned miners. But a professional approach requires a balanced analysis of the legal and economic situation. But, Yura, I want to tell you that if you are in favor of a market economy, then in a market economy they (mines - Ed.) will simply close. And as I understand it, you are a supporter of a market economy, not a directive one!? They will close. This is only one component.
Now you say that the police serve only the bosses. There are enough people in the police. There is a cross-section of our society in general. Yes, this is part of the country, and people there did not come from Mars, yes. There are people there who faithfully serve their people. And they do not spare not only health. And they don’t spare their lives, and they walk under bullets. There are those same traffic cops who “remove bribes” and “give haircuts” on the road, but there are also those who cover children with their bodies, set up cars and die. There are others like that. Therefore, I consider it unfair to tar everyone with the same black tar.
Yu.Yu. Shevchuk: I don't smear!
V.V. Putin: You're not lying, but you said that the cops serve the authorities, not the people.
Yu.Yu. Shevchuk: Basically yes. I'm going to the March of Dissent. There are 500 of us and 2.5 thousand riot police. Did we kill or stabbed someone?
V.V. Putin: I listened to you carefully and did not interrupt. Otherwise we won’t be able to have a discussion, but it will be a bazaar!
I think it’s unfair to put everyone under the same brush. Although there are plenty of problems there. We have such a level of general culture: as soon as a person receives some kind of certificate, some kind of stick in his hands, he immediately begins to wave it and try to make money from it. But this is typical not only for the police, it is typical for any sphere where there are powers of power and the opportunity to receive this crazy administrative rent.
Regarding the March of Dissent. There are certain rules, they stipulate that such events are regulated by local authorities. In addition to those people who go to the March of those who agree or disagree, there are other people whose rights we should not forget about.
If you decide to hold a March of Dissent - I apologize for being too harsh, say, near a hospital where you will disturb sick children - which of the local authorities will allow you to hold this march there? And they will do the right thing by banning it!
Yu.Yu. Shevchuk: Can I answer?
V.V. Putin: No! And now you want to hold it where people want to go to the country on Friday, for example, simply. Or return from the dacha on Sunday evening. Yes, they will cover you with such swear words! And local authorities too.
But this does not mean at all that the authorities should hide behind the things I spoke about and create impossible conditions for the manifestation of freedom of speech. But this is an issue that must be resolved together with the authorities. I hope that in St. Petersburg it will be done just like this, wisely. In fact, I want you to understand. I’m sure this doesn’t bother me and other government officials; on the contrary, it helps. If I see that people came out not just to “show off” and promote themselves, but say something sensible, concrete, point out some pain points, which the authorities should pay attention to - what’s wrong with that?! Thank you I must say.
Yu.Yu. Shevchuk: But you see, local authorities immediately fill all the squares with all sorts of carousels on this day. There is a lot of hypocrisy here.
V.V. Putin: I agree with you here.
Yu.Yu. Shevchuk: I want to tell you that last year the whole city fought to save the architectural center of St. Petersburg. You can’t even imagine how they pressed, they pressed, it was a terrible thing! But we fought for the city - you were born in it - amazing, the pearl of the world. There was so much, no obstacles were put in place. And the people are just going wild over it. Why do this? You have a lot of weight, you need it there somehow...
V.V. Putin: 76 kilograms.
Yu.Yu. Shevchuk: Well, what is this?
“Well,” I told him mentally, “you yourself untied my hands.” In this case, language, of course.
In fact, this accurately characterizes Shevchuk. He does not like honors, pomp, pathos and greetings addressed to him. But he is pleased when he is praised for his songs and performances. And I can’t count how many wonderful songs have been written. Somehow we started talking about DDT’s foreign tours. “20 percent of our audience abroad,” he admitted to me, not without pride, “are local aborigines. To make the songs more understandable to them, my friends translate the lyrics into Finnish in Finland, into English in the USA, into Greek in Cyprus... Interesting... You sing in Russian (wheezes in a bass voice): “For you, I’ll fight for you.” let's go! “And some young lady reads the translation of these lines in flashes of light. It’s clear that we come there to show off, to show that we, too, “can do it.” Our main audience, of course, is here.” “In the USA, African-Americans guarded us everywhere and even bought our CDs: they liked the concert so much,” Shevchuk has the glint of a mischievous imp in his eyes. “We have an excellent drummer and bassist, and the black guys danced with wild pleasure to our songs. And after the concert they came up and thanked me. I even thought then: maybe give a concert in Russian in Harlem? (laughs) Make racism the other way around: “Only for black.” And don’t let white people in.”
I saw him in different states, even completely dismantled: tired after a grueling concert, drunk. And he never lost his human charm; he was positive, aphoristic, and witty. He's a great pleasure to drink with. But he began to do this less and less, as if apologizing: “The engine began to act up.”
I remember once finding myself near St. Petersburg at his dacha, which struck me with its bachelor simplicity and at the same time creative comfort. On the walls hung weapons and pierced helmets, which, according to Shevchuk, were found not far from the dacha plot. After we drank, Shevchuk suddenly suggested: “Do you want to shoot?” He took the rifle off the wall, loaded it, and fired into the sky first. It was so childish. But he smelled gunpowder, having visited the hot spots of Chechnya, Tajikistan, Yugoslavia. And he understands what a weapon is.
Photo: www.globallookpress.com
This was back in the era before Katerina, his current wife. I’m sure she wouldn’t allow shooting from the balcony, even into the sky. He hid his relationship with the Kiev woman until the very end. But one day, in a fit of revelation, he even told me the terrible details of the accident they got into together. In that accident, as he sees it, she saved him. Katya became a real talisman wife, protecting him even from careless words, not to mention actions. After her appearance in his life, he became noticeably more careful. He will read these lines and will probably wince. Because he doesn’t like to talk about his personal life like the current one sound engineer "DDT" Igor Tikhomirov- about the Kino group, in which he was once a bass player.
I remember how Shevchuk laughed kindly at Boris Grebenshchikov, calling him an “honorary railroad worker” because the leader of Aquarium often changes the composition of his group. But one day, sitting in a hotel room in the city of Minsk, he admitted to me that he was tired of the old “DDT”. “I want to disband the group, but just don’t write about it,” he asked. He told me a lot of things off the record. And every time he asked me not to write about it.
Shevchuk is very scrupulous about everything that concerns his appearance in the public sphere (he doesn’t go anywhere and doesn’t participate in anything), and, of course, he is strict at work. When necessary, he turns from his boyfriend into a tough boss. And he can “break in” for mistakes at work so much that it doesn’t seem like much. I remember how, during a tour between cities, Shevchuk, seeing that the DDT musicians were gnawing sunflower seeds in the bus, sarcastically said: “Maybe it would be better for you to drink sunflower oil right away?!” The “Deadites” immediately hid the little bags with the image of a sunflower in their backpacks. “What are you protesting against?” — I asked him once, not about seeds, of course, but globally. “I’m not protesting against the sausage, naturally, but against the devastation in the minds about which Professor Preobrazhensky in "Heart of a Dog" says.
Photo: www.globallookpress.com
There were a number of other episodes that I remember with a smile. For example, how we had to lock ourselves in the toilet twice so that no one would interfere with our interview. The first time this happened was at a memorial evening Bulat Okudzhava at the “School of Modern Play”, the second - during the recording of “Kvartirnik at Margulis" in May last year. Everyone wanted something from him: a photo for memory, communication. By the way, he has his own ritual, which I have observed many times on tour. After a concert (sometimes in a restaurant, more often in a hotel lobby or hotel room), fans crowd his table. Sometimes these are old acquaintances, and sometimes they are seen for the first time. And he talks with them for hours. Tells stories, sings songs, treats. Long after midnight, I collapsed from fatigue after the flight, the DDT concert and a long sitting at the table, and Shevchuk kept talking and singing, as if he had changed the batteries along with the concert T-shirt.
I asked him during one of our get-togethers about my favorite song he wrote: “The Lord Respects Us.” “The Lord gives us a test,” he carefully touched on the topic of faith. - Because he respects us. If he didn’t respect him, he wouldn’t have sent these tests. And so - he observes all our movements. There was one case. We made a film about the bombed monasteries in Kosovo in 1999. And just imagine, high in the mountains there is a monastery in which there are only 6 people left. 30 or 40 people had already been killed by the Albanians. This monastery was guarded by two rusty Italian tanks with tank crews, who did not really protect anyone, but only pretended to. I asked one of the surviving monks: “They will kill all of you here.” You need to lock all the doors and leave, otherwise you will all die.” He looked at me, lit a cigarette (smoking is allowed in monasteries there) and answered: “Probably, yes.” Will kill. But I'm happy. If they kill us, it means that the Lord has turned his face to us. He is testing us once again.” Maybe the line “The Lord respects us” was born then.”
Every time Shevchuk congratulates on the holidays, he wishes peace and goodness. I couldn’t resist asking: “What do you understand as good?” “Compassion, empathy, the ability to treat a passerby not as a potential threat, but as a good Samaritan.” And, anticipating my next question, he laughed and said: “If I knew all the answers, I would go on stage in a toga, with a halo over my head, an olive branch in my hands and tell people: what to do, where to go, what to eat.” , drink, who to vote for.”
On your birthday, Yura the musician, I would also like to wish you peace, goodness and new songs!
- Yura, in my opinion, you are not afraid of anything, including because you were born in the village of Yagodnoye in the Magadan region. As popular wisdom says, they won’t send you further than Magadan anyway, but judging by your last name, you have something Ukrainian...
- Yes, my father Shevchuk Yulian Sosfenovich is an absolute Ukrainian: one might say, squared, cubed... Or rather, even of the Cossack family: grandfather Sosfen served on the Russian-Polish border, right where Belarus, Ukraine and Poland meet, and my mother is Tatar, Faniya Akramovna Gareeva. This is such a Ukrainian-Tatar mixture...
- ...and in addition, as I understand it, Orthodox-Muslim?
— Exactly: my grandfather Akram Amudarisovich is a devout Muslim, and his great-grandfather Amudaris was actually a mullah. He did not accept Soviet power and was shot in 1937, and his son was exiled. The Shevchuks, by the way, were also expelled from Ukraine during collectivization and the Holodomor: they ended up in the city of Kansk (on the Yenisei), then they were scattered even further...
— It’s hard to imagine, but they say that as a child you repeated “Allahu Akbar!” after your Muslim grandfather...
— Previously, before perestroika, religion was not welcomed among us, and my grandfather, being the son of a mullah, graduated from a madrasah. I remember he had an old Koran (which, by the way, was inherited from me) and a prayer room where Muslims from all over the village gathered. He read the Koran to them in Arabic and did it wonderfully, and as a child I often lived with my grandfather, and everything happened before my eyes. Amazing music, semi-darkness, candles...
— Did you hesitate later on which religion to follow and what to accept: Islam, Christianity?
— I thought about it, and it was not easy to choose. In the end, Orthodoxy won, the culture in which I was brought up prevailed, but in this sense I am very tolerant and respect, perhaps due to my origin, any confession. All paths, I believe, lead to the temple and to God.
— Have you ever faced the problem of drunkenness in full force, as they say?
- Honestly? Of course, but not exactly drunkenness, because I’m still a man of ideas. When you have some kind of meaning of existence, you won’t get drunk, and as many creative people as I know, they somehow didn’t become complete alcoholics, although many people like to let off steam. In general, any artist, in my opinion, is an honorable border guard, because he loves borderline states. For him - especially if he is a rock and roller! — such a huge dynamic (both at concerts and in life) that you want to walk through, crawl over the horizon, just feel everything. Hence the grave deaths of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Morrison...
-...yes, many!..
- ...and our wonderful domestic friends. This spring, for example, we lost several good musicians in Moscow - they died, and they were 40-45 years old... A borderline state, this is adoration - that is, not adoration, but how to put it more precisely? - lack of new sensations, heights of experience, and the gravity of planet Earth gets to any such eagle in feathers and with an electric guitar. On the other hand, as you get older you understand (if you survive!) that, in principle, you only need to get a buzz from creativity and music, and you can’t create anything good if you’re drunk—nothing!
— Is it a beautiful legend that you composed the song “Autumn” in a cemetery?
- No, it was so. I had a communal apartment on the Sinopskaya embankment, and from there, literally 200-300 meters away, was the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, the Nikolsky chapel, where I liked to sit. This cemetery was then completely overgrown, unkempt, but romantic...
— I remember how in 1994 you appeared at the presentation of the next “Ovation”, and the Lord apparently punished you for this. When receiving the statuette, you stumbled on stage...
- God knows, I didn’t want to go there - Kostya Kinchev from the Alisa group persuaded me. His uncle, a Bulgarian subject, turned out to be the owner of this “Ovation,” and Kostya pestered: “Go, my relatives are asking me.” Well, I gritted my teeth and went and saw it all...
-...and almost fell...
- It’s almost like he fell! I couldn’t get my bearings, because there were circles in front of my eyes... I always have a hard time with such things, and in order not to be nervous, I drank, and it all added up - I broke on the glass and fell through. I remember lying under the stage, and the audience applauded: some were crying, some were laughing...
- ...who, I suppose, is rejoicing...
“Well, thank God,” I think, “not everything is lost yet, Yulianych - after all, the Lord punished you, damn it.” I was very happy about this...
— I’m very interested in your opinion about some of the most prominent representatives of Russian rock, about your colleagues. You once said about Grebenshchikov that he “enlightened himself to the point of blindness”...
-...oh, you've read too much!..
- ...What did you mean?
- A slight attack of conformity that happened to him at the moment.
- Well, this disease, perhaps, has overcome everyone, except perhaps you...
— Due, perhaps, to the insufficiency of my mind and intellect, I cannot understand Borya. I always respect him as an author and poet - he is a genius, but his conformism depresses me a little. When last year we, bespectacled people, were running around St. Petersburg with flags and trying to save the architecture, BG very philosophically remarked: “Hmm, why bother - they’ll destroy it one way or another.” Somehow this is all he has: “Well, a gas scraper - and God bless him: you still can’t argue against it.”
- A wise man...
- Yes-ah (thoughtfully), but this wisdom - how can I tell you? - began to look like the latest model Jacuzzi on Rublyovka. She's a little bit unrock'n'roll...
— His friendship with Vladislav Surkov, the first deputy head of the Russian Presidential Administration, is also probably abnormal?
- Yes, and he is on good terms with those in power. I understand, of course, that BG is probably studying them all, like in a zoo, but... On the other hand, still, a lot of things in our country have now become simply indecent - for example, appearing in some stupid programs on central TV channels. (By the way, I’m glad that the scope of the word “indecent” is growing again, and many refuse to participate in everything that is going on now there, as they say in St. Petersburg, “up there”).
— Do you like Makarevich?
- Early work - yes, of course: I grew up on it. In general, the first albums of “Time Machine” are wonderful - hippy, ironic, wise in the best sense of the word, written in simple words and with good, simple music.
- Well, I don’t know... Just now I stood with Makarevich on the same stage in Kazan - he is the president of the “Creation of the World” festival there. I made it with my friends - music producer Sasha Cheparukhin and the mayor of Kazan Ilsur Metshin, by the way. About 150 thousand people gathered, it was a great festival dedicated to peace and goodness. The musicians flew in from Ukraine, from Georgia, even from England, and at the end of the Beatles’ “All you need is Love,” everyone hugged and howled. Of course, they could have sung better, but it was still fun and great. No, Makar did a very good job, but on the other hand, we are different people, we live differently. It’s clear that I will never play on Red Square...
- ...in the presence of Putin, right?
- Yes, and even more so I will not support any parties like United Russia - we have it now, like the CPSU before. A lot of people suffer from this, because if you are not a member of the party and at the same time the governor, that’s it, you’re screwed. Just like under Brezhnev - everything somehow returned very stealthily...
— According to rumors, when Tsoi’s widow Maryana was diagnosed with cancer, you allocated a significant amount for her operation...
“They usually don’t talk about this, but we try to help as many as possible. Take Igor Tikhomirov - this is our wonderful sound engineer, who played bass guitar in the Kino group. He has been working with us for many years, he rules the sound - he is a musician!
— I heard that you pay from your own pocket for the funerals of ordinary St. Petersburg rockers, not stars...
- (Embarrassed). They will also later call him some kind of funeral home owner. Yes, we help, we try, and not only us - the same Borya Grebenshchikov... We all chip in, because now is the time for someone to leave. There are a lot of funerals this year—a generation is just passing away.
— In Ukraine, and in Russia as well, Svyatoslav Vakarchuk and Oleg Skripka are very popular, but for some reason you don’t like the leader of Okean Elzy. Why?
— Because he says one thing here, and another in Ukraine.
- In terms of?
- Well, for example, when his dad, being the Minister of Education, signed an order: a unified exam for applicants should be in Ukrainian, that is, millions of young men and women who speak Russian cannot become students... This is nonsense - it’s impossible So! I am generally against such radical things.
- But it was dad who did it - not Svyatoslav...
“So he could have lathered dad’s neck, at least become indignant, and Vakarchuk Jr., I know, supported this decision in every possible way.”
In Russia he behaves differently, but this is wrong. Be yourself everywhere, shout in Moscow too: “Down with the Muscovites!” I don’t know... Somehow I can’t get my head around all this, and the wagging of the flippers is very incomprehensible to me.
Such radicalism cannot be allowed, let everything go as it goes - why quarrel between peoples? You can say it differently: Belarus has good milk, the Ukrainian language is wonderful, Russian is wonderful, so why push us together? All this is politics, and our politicians are uneducated, they still have the “Cold War” in their minds - they just want to fight with someone, make war. No prudence...
— Another rock musician named Shnur lives in your glorious city...
- (Thoughtfully). There is one, yes...
- ... about whom you said: “I call him Verevkin. I could send a rope and let him hang himself out of anger. He is a brat, not a fighter at all, an outcast, very cunning, witty, talented. He makes an image for himself and makes money - he’s a waiter from the arts, but God bless him, I don’t give a damn about this little worm.”...
- (Laughs). Damn, I’m so worn out, my head will definitely be sawed off soon.
— I’m not even saying that in the song that you already quoted (“And on Tverskaya Street, oh, in reality there’s a worldly feast...”), what follows:
There's the Minister of All Cultures
surrounded by fashionable fools.
There's a singer, b...ham...
Verevkin
pulls a cord from his fly (laughs).
- It’s so funny, you see... Why are you doing this to him?
- Thank God, he has calmed down now - apparently, he accepted my criticism, and I am pleased with that. You know, at one time such a sad thing happened - the marginalization of dissent, the marginalization of protest rock. Everything social that was in Russian rock, all these desperate civil songs were covered, lubricated with oil, Cord...
- ... and transferred under the wing of the FSB ...
- Yes, and only the swear words were left. They say to me: “Well, Shnur...”. They began to mold him into a radical, that is, a person so independent who expanded the boundaries of what was permitted, supposedly he was a singer of freedom. “Mother-change” - what is this, freedom? Or put a steaming pile on the stage...
- ...or show the audience the causal place...
- This is licentiousness! Yegor Letov sang about freedom, many other guys who were really on fire, and Cord lubricated it all very cunningly, wisely and directed it in the right direction. Now, if you are a radical, you just swear, but don’t really say anything about the problems facing our society.
— Don’t you have the feeling that Shnur is untalented?
- No, I won’t say that. Shnur is capable, he has some talent, but he is completely a child of this commercial time. Firstly, he only has corporate parties - bankers, diamonds, and the moneybags really like this. They even egg him on: let’s swear! - and he’ll bend over three stories high... The women blush deeply, everyone bursts out laughing - and it’s so good, it’s cute: it goes great under the caviar. Well, nonsense! What kind of Morrison, John Lennon, Vysotsky or anyone else is here? Marginalization! Everything has been checked, worked out and is now spinning at full speed. Sadly...
- You know, I always respected you very much, but I was inspired even more when I saw a Beatles record with the autographs of all four in your frame here on the wall...
- (Smiles).
— The guys from DDT told me that you paid a fabulous amount for it...
- There should still be left...
— How much, if it’s not a secret, did it cost you?
- Well, I’m an old music lover, especially since there’s a rare autograph here - “Best wishes from the Beatles.” This is '65, one of their first discs in America. They weren’t so used to fame then and signed in great detail - then they just scribbled, yes.
- Well, I am grateful to you for this wonderful kitchen conversation - I felt very comfortable on your cushions here on the sofa...
— You see, we have a very simple and good atmosphere here—working.
From an interview with Dmitry Gordon, 2010
It is difficult to imagine another Russian musician who would be such a sincere statesman and patriot. Just like 25 years ago, the authorities themselves did everything to acquire their consistent critic in the person of Yuri Shevchuk
Andrey Arkhangelsky
In just two or three months, Yuri Shevchuk became the face of the Russian opposition - there is an amazing paradox in this. His songs are populated with images that are successfully exploited by state patriotism - domes and crosses, blurred paths and eccentrics at a crossroads, spirituality and soulfulness. Already in the 1990s, sellers confidently placed his discs on the shelf as “chanson” and not “rock”. There is, however, a fundamental difference between chanson and Shevchuk. Chanson always stoops to the level of the crowd, indulges and assents to it; Shevchuk, on the contrary, has the gift of raising and developing the listener’s self-awareness. However, Shevchuk never despised the “crowd”, “ordinary people”: in his songs he always speaks to a person - more precisely, to a child in a person. Shevchuk's poetry is attractive due to its heap of paradoxes, machine-gun bursts of metaphors and super-metaphors. Its lyrical hero is prone to naive philosophizing: “I washed my socks for tomorrow - I assume that I will be alive.”
In Shevchuk’s manner there is what most colleagues contemptuously call “pathos”: the pathos of freedom, love, kindness, warmth - all that, in the absence of taste and measure on the part of the performer, turns into ordinary vulgarity. A person singing in the first person is always more vulnerable in Russia: he is urgently required to be the same in “life” as in the songs. Shevchuk always expressed the idea of some kind of spontaneous, natural freedom. The morning of August 22, 1991, for the author of these lines, as for millions of people, began with Shevchuk’s song “Motherland” on Central TV - it was the first thing we heard in our sleep, and there was no longer any doubt about who won.
Too correct
The most principled anti-Sovietists are the “correct” Soviet children who took slogans about social justice, truth, honesty, etc. too seriously and to heart. Shevchuk was never a hypocrite or a “professional” hater of the Soviet regime: his first poems fit well into the framework of what was called an “active life position.” At first, Shevchuk sincerely tried to fit into the permitted formats - like the “struggle for world peace.” In 1982, with the song “Don’t Shoot,” he became a laureate of the First All-Union Golden Tuning Fork competition, organized by Komsomolskaya Pravda. And although the song clearly contained hints of the Afghan war, formally it fell under the category of “anti-war” and could just as easily have been sung by Victor Jara or Eduard Khil. St. Petersburg or Moscow rockers pointedly despised “social activity” - in contrast to provincial, Sverdlovsk or Ural rock schools. However, it was precisely this “activity and indifference” of rock music that seemed to the ideologists much more dangerous than antisociality: the Soviet government, as was typical for it, itself was rapidly turning rockers into anti-Sovietists. In 1984, after the release of the album “Periphery,” which gave a snapshot of the not particularly attractive provincial life, Shevchuk was summoned to the local KGB office and offered to leave Ufa in order to avoid trouble (the same thing was repeated in Sverdlovsk). Shevchuk’s song “Let’s fill the sky with kindness” is called “an agent of the Vatican,” and the DDT group is prohibited from performing and recording in studios. Semi-legal apartment concerts for Shevchuk, as for many musicians, became the norm. It was during this period, presumably, that Shevchuk became “. anti-Soviet,” experiencing a completely natural resentment of a creative person at the ban on “pasty and small people” - as Shevchuk, a Ukrainian on his father’s side, liked to repeat, ironically hinting at the fate of Taras Shevchenko. Shevchuk told the author of these lines how in 1988 at his concert at the Kiev Sports Palace he saw a police major who pulled out a pistol and wanted to shoot himself, looking at the countless crowd of informals: “I sincerely sympathized with him. For him, his whole world collapsed that day."
Meanwhile, Shevchuk has always been a sincere patriot of the country, proving this in practice: he was the first Russian musician to perform in front of our soldiers in Chechnya - when the attitude towards the Russian army was mostly negative. However, Shevchuk also sang for the Chechens: he felt like a mediator between the warring parties, like many cultural figures. In the fall of 1996, after the signing of the Khasavyurt agreements, Shevchuk performed at the Dynamo stadium in Grozny for residents of the Chechen Republic. Shevchuk later condemned the war in Chechnya, but did not condemn the officers and soldiers who were doing their duty. In the 1990s, among the security forces there was no more popular and “own” musician than Shevchuk: practically no one at that moment wrote songs about soldiers and officers, and in general this topic itself in the rock environment was considered “slippery”, “a failure” ". Shevchuk’s eldest son, Peter (whom the musician raised alone after the death of his wife Elmira in 1992), at the insistence of his father, entered the Kronstadt Naval Cadet Corps, then served his military service in the Marine Corps. “I confess, the commanders there are my old friends with whom I became friends back in Chechnya,” said Shevchuk. “Of course, I didn’t give my son anywhere so that he would run for vodka for the sergeant... But I know for sure that he is in military affairs is engaged." When Shevchuk talked about how his son would march with his battalion on May 9 in a parade along Red Square, genuine pride was heard in his voice.
Shevchuk’s social and political views and beliefs are unique in their own way: they contain a lot of things mixed in proportions unusual for Russia. Neither in the 1990s nor in the 2000s was Shevchuk completely one of his own: from the right he always got it for his love of the patriarchal system, from the left - for his love of freedom. For example, Shevchuk actively advocates teaching the fundamentals of Orthodoxy in schools: “Even if it kills us, we must teach it. I am for teaching... If we do not, so to speak, show violence in matters of morality, the foundations of culture, children will be raped in the entrance.” . Another of Shevchuk’s “oddities” is his willingness to fight phantoms. For example, if Grebenshchikov could only jokingly declare a crusade against pop music, Shevchuk did it completely seriously. In the late 1990s, performing the song “Phonogram Man,” Shevchuk went on stage with a recording of Kirkorov’s voice and symbolically smashed the tape recorder with “plywood.” In 2003, Shevchuk posted the “real voice” of Kirkorov, who sings to a soundtrack, and after a brawl with a pop star in St. Petersburg, he challenged Kirkorov to a duel. For Shevchuk, pop music is not music, but a symbol of the fakeness of a person, the line beyond which the disintegration of personality begins. Tellingly, when Shevchuk took up arms against pop music and Kirkorov, he was confronted with the same reproaches of naivety and tilting at windmills as after the well-known recent conversation with Putin.
The singer’s opponents hint that by the early 2000s, “Shevchuk’s style was outdated” and he began to sharply lose popularity - this is what is usually explained by his rebellion. His songs really did not fit into the entertainment concept of TV and radio - along with the songs of other musicians. But in the case of Shevchuk, it became somehow especially noticeable that anti-intellectual censorship is inseparable from political censorship. And that the mere attempt to speak to a mass audience on non-trivial topics is already considered a manifestation of political unreliability. It soon became clear that not only did they not show Shevchuk’s concerts on TV, but they didn’t even broadcast his interviews. According to rumors, Shevchuk is on the secret list of opposition figures banned from being shown on central channels. In August 2007, Shevchuk said that all the radio stations he contacted refused to play songs from the latest album, “Beautiful Love,” except for radio “Chanson,” which agreed to play only one song and only from 3 to 5 a.m. In March 2008, Shevchuk first appeared at the “March of Dissent” in St. Petersburg: he stated that he did this because “there was no choice left.”
Shevchuk protested against “everything at once”: against the general dullness, indifference in society, against the fact that “innocent people are being beaten.” Shevchuk did not make any statements, but his presence alone fundamentally changed the emotional tone of the event. Shevchuk’s very manner - simple-minded and good-natured, even somehow archaic, “simply for freedom” - sharply contrasted with the style of the “professional revolutionaries.” The same thing was repeated at the now legendary meeting with Putin: those who know Shevchuk were pleasantly surprised that Shevchuk spoke to the prime minister exactly as he usually communicates with journalists or the public. He always starts, “accelerates” from abstract themes, general messages about freedom or justice. The exchange of pleasantries between Putin and Shevchuk (“Who are you, please introduce yourself.”— “Yura Shevchuk, musician”) is actually not so absurd: Putin’s remark could also be interpreted as a hint at Shevchuk’s absence from television, which from the point of view power is tantamount to physical absence and oblivion. However, as subsequent events showed, Shevchuk’s popularity did not suffer from this, on the contrary: just like 25 years ago, the government’s inept prohibitions only increase interest in the personality of Yuri Shevchuk. Sincerity, lack of hypocrisy, pursuit of some personal gain - all these advantages of Shevchuk are, apparently, human qualities so rare for media figures that in themselves they already inspire trust. Shevchuk, without meaning to, gave the critical trend in Russia a powerful charge of “nationality.” Boris Grebenshchikov, by the way, a long-time ideological opponent of Shevchuk, said it best: “Yura is doing very important and necessary work for Russia. He is on the side of the people. Trying to discredit him is the same as discrediting the Russian people.”
