ANNOTATION TO UNPUBLISHED BOOK OF YURI MOROZOV
“IF I HAD NOT BEEN RUSSIAN”

(It is for everybody who appreciates a literal creative power of Yuri Morozov. It is for the future publishers who will be able to get acquainted with the content of the book. It is also for those who will be ready to be a sponsor for publishing of Yuri’s books and for releasing of all collec-tions of his musical albums).



The following parts will be included into the book “IF I HAD NOT BEEN RUSSIAN”:
“To the left from the eternity”
“If I had not been Russian”
“A zone of returning”
“The parachutists”


TO THE LEFT FROM THE ETERNITY

If follow modern tendencies and try to determine a genre of this literal work, it can be called a “grotesque thriller”.
Trying to determine the time of actions and being of hundred years, one of the character was 100 years old. It was Josef Jugashvili. So there were 80-90s of the XXth century. It was a period of “Perestroika”.
The “perestroika” took place in the “mini novel” itself. These were the years of the author’s liv-ing. He had got into rather strange period of that time.
We met Morozov’s understanding of “anti” in “To the left from the eternity”. They were “antihe-ro”, “anti-love”, but it was not “anti-worlds”. The antiheroes understood the main idea of their existence only in the last novel of Yuri. It was in his work “Following by the night”.
The world “To the left from the eternity” was partly broken with art and fantasy of the author. It was bright grotesque which might make Morozov to fall in love with it.
It is without any doubts the characters had their real names, but they became “antiheroes” when they began their living way.
Alexander Isaevich S was called to the Kremlin and got a promotion of NKVD general for hav-ing sent of careless letter to a friend from the front. It had some comments about Stalin as unim-portant strategist. He took part in “the great events of those days”. It was time when Donbas, Kasbahs, Dnepr gas, BAM and others. “Something over 2 meters” had been destroyed on a new historical stage. “The most hardworking people pulled down the 20 meters walls. The ex-miners filled up the mines with sole 1000 times quicker than they had been dug.” So the only untouched place is only the center of Moscow. The building of the Great Russian Wall is being built,” the dust was above the USSR for months.” Khrushchev is running the building of 1500 meters statue of people’s leader on Uralskaya area named in honor of the XXth century of CPSS. Stalin is 100 years old. He is getting the rejuvenation with “the brains of Jewish girls who are daily put into his cerebellum.” The conception of the leader- Monster, the leader –vampire and the leader of the world around him is driven by the author to an absurdity. The secondary product of the leader’s treatment and the entire top of the power is unusual erection which “is impossible to keep even with a strong character” Jugashvili and others.
At that time common hardworking people is eating the tins with seaweed and working for 14 hours a day. They have to sleep on the back holding the hands over the blankets. So being banned from primitive sexual emotions he transforms his reproductive power into the levitation at first and then he disappears in the sky. “The flyers” are knocked down with gun-machine set-bullets, antiaircraft and racket projectiles but there is a lack of them. That’s why a scientist- mu-tant has created “the catching nets” being linked with high-pitched generators overspreading over populated territories. The nets have been set by Alexander Isaevich. The levitations have stopped but people became getting into the underground surface. T Lysenko hasn’t missed his inventions too. He has invented the hybrid of a man and a plant. The horseman has appeared who is standing next to the working machine. When he dies he will be used for the production of the wooden boards.
The love of young couple puts us into the world of human beings associations. They are Gleb and Lorie. While pulling down the villa of one party’s boss he discovered a secret place and an underground passage. He flew there with his lover. They get into the nuts grove on the shore of clean but dead lake.
Meanwhile, the factories and the plants were in the past. Only mini factories from 3-5 men exist. They produce the clothes from rats’ skins. Other animals were extinct many years ago. And they produce the tins of seaweeds. “Why is it necessary to teach somebody to be a doctor, an engineer or others? NKVD will kidnap them. “The helicopters follow the couple and return them into the hands of the government. Alexander Isaevich is responsible to deal with the fugitives. Gleb opens for him the secret about the “flyers and the miners”. They disappear while the guards were following them. And A Isaevich himself begins to think without any limits, free. “There is somewhere reasonable, sensible and beautiful life. But being to the left of the truth, love and faith what he is doing exactly. He is able to realize all of this. Let’s go home, hurry up.” …
Gradually one of the author’s ideas is shown it is the slavery which is inside us. We are the only people who may make us free from it. And it doesn’t matter what its origin is. The state built Dnepr grasses than it destroyed them completely. What a mess is in a number of the events such as the building, the destruction, and new building…
The fantasy of the author opens a miracle picture. A rather real world appears from the absurdity opening bright thinking layers of human’s pschycology. The reader is made think about the rea-son of his own life and about the way of living.



“PERPENDECULAR TO THE EPOCH”…

A novel “If I had not been Russian” was written by Yuri Morozov in the second half of the 80s of the XXth century. Some corrections were made in 2005. The link to the epoch “Perestroika” and to “Brejnev’s period” is only to set the counting system. It is like an axis where something is happening. But in reality the thoughts, the ideas, the feelings of Yura are always out of time and epochs. A reader who doesn’t follow over the surface of the plot or zigzags at last understands this. He is next to the main character Seraphim Bredovskiy who has chained himself to the cliff of a mountainous country at the end of the novel. It may be the time for him to live as all of oth-ers. What is it necessary for him?
The narration is sometimes cruel and even detective with parody. It has a stylistic from. It is written with wonderful and artistically accurate language. The author names himself as a manip-ulator calling to thinking and persuading the situation to be in such way. It is impossible to deal with it.
Grotesque and sarcasm reach their highest pitch in Yuri Morozov’s works. The absurdity of men’s fortunes is shown in soviet-union perestroika’s system. The main character whose fortune is manipulated by the author leaves the society consequently and logically. It happens because “it is on the Earth of the end of the XXth century. Serafim isn’t at his place on 1/6 of it.”
The colors of a creating canvas are thick and dense, satire is rather cruel …But a lot of depicted are existing nowadays. Though, of course, we can see all of these in light tones. In the first op-tion of epilogue Yuri Morozov gives rather interesting, predicting future issues: “Literature is not an art any more. It has turned into complex instrument…If I hadn’t been Russian, Serafim doesn’t happen to be a natural slovanik. It is better for manipulators to be a little bit like Jewish. In this case the book happened to be with a sense. It might have been sold out better. So Sera-phim would leave my memory but he doesn’t do it. We got used to each other as a martyr and as a torturer.
Serafim is a martyr but he is surrounded only with the stuff. Except of common man passions’ torments his soul rejects his talent which has been accepted by “THAT” society. Sometimes the reader can’t understand Seraphim’s tortures. “When I drink again and again this awful drink as coffee which has been drunk by number of generations I realize some nonsense of my existence.” “I may survive but what for?” “Our life is a disease which is easy cured to our lucky.”There is a part of Schopenhauer pessimism. But it is only one part because most of the situations and images are comic.
What are the works of “Sarcasm» and a story “Vovka –deaf” (the works by Seraphim Bredov-skiy)? They are like Harms in stylistics. The difference is the skillfulness of sketches, wittiness, surprising and making look at common things in an irregular way. “I am catching the parts of the alien conversations of the passers-by. “ “…they follow me and the same things get into my ears: a flat, meat, rubles, divorce, abortion, and pension.”
The meeting with the women begins in a romantic way. He is inclined to their beauty at first. “A topless skier Adelaide- Julia sunbathes on a forest glade, an affectionate lover Lina” “Little by little they turn to a shame. Lina drinks alcohol, lives with unloved husband who has a number of awful traits of character.
Serafim got into the fight with her lover at Adelaide’s place. He fell down the staircase getting into the rubbish bin with his head.
“All of them or many of them want to be kind at any way, but as the result they do unkind things at the end. “ Serafim confesses in the feeling of his perfection over other people. He has never felt good because of it. He has always hated “his pockets’ napoleons”.
The head of “the Russian Unity “is an important person in the society in the future. At the begin-ning of the novel Lina’s husband, Jorka Averianov is very assured and moves actively in an alarm period of his time. Lina is Serafim Bredovskiy’s lover. Jorka is very sly and dishonorable.
He has come from Zakavkazie where he was fond of boxing he got used to eat some raw meat with sugar because his trainer was sure it gave him extra power. He begins to hate “the immi-grants from eastern countries” and “the capitalists”. He is like a fascist kind of man. However, he is very smart and he has never allowed him to be beaten and to beat anybody himself.
Serafim’s lover, Lina prefers “to be deceived in a civil marriage than to be cheated in love.” She has stayed with Averianov.
There are miserable author’s stage directions for the events and his main character. The cos-mopolism, the pacifism, the thinking out of time and the Christian mood take part in “manipula-tion” of the characters and their movements in the novel.
The picture of the beginning of “perestroika” appears. Many of people have already completely forgotten it. The queues, the first payment toilets, “free of charge boorishness and eternal dirty, the destruction, instability. “
The first story of Serafim “The maze” we can see an enormous queue which is following through narrow, twisted corridor, “hypertrophied feeling of absurdity of a social system. “
The time is increasing the pace, the ideologies have changed, the writers whose numbers are enormous rush to write about “the fashion topics.” The editor of a magazine M who is a sponsor and she tries to “teach Serafim how to live in a right way”. She is a typical “trollop” of Literature. She is an editor of a magazine “Sex and national consciousness” in a new epoch.
Serafim is a nail who has been hammered in the “cover of this crazy house”. “The experiment has been tested with Russia. How much time is it possible to go toilet into your trousers and feel nice? Who has made this experiment with us? The Americans or other civilizations or we might have done it ourselves. It doesn’t matter.” In “The chapter for Ray Bradbury” is a Russian Ar-mageddon. We won’t put “an iron curtain” they will put a curtain from us. It will be “energeti-cally based curtain”. But our citizens still continue to go to the West using all of the ways. Ser-afim’s acquaintance, “a skier “seems to be a worker of a cafeteria on the board of the ship goes abroad. It has been rather difficult for her to get this position. We can’t be even “ahead” in a bal-let. As the talents so the girl- fans and the boy-fans go to America and others.
But the main Armageddon is in our souls. It is also in our “morality” according to the author. This word will be forgotten in the following epoch.
In chapter “The full moon” the author has touched almost all of the problems of 80s. There is somebody who has just escaped from the flat of host who is snoring. It is a flat where Serafim lives. He is wandering over the night cemetery.
Exactly here Yuri Morozov’s literal works have got something similar to “a ghost”. It is some-body without a face in a loose kind of clothes. It is a sign of “Another World”. What world is it? It will be a mystery while his novel “The following by the night” appears. While Serafim is ram-bling over the cemetery it is possible to see light spots, the moon shadows, the Angels with bro-ken wings… and the abyss is bursting out. It is rather real “virgin soil” which has been ploughed with bulldozers. Here will be highway. The cars will drive over the dead bones. The author no-tices, “We have already passed over our historical past, culture, science and others. Will we fol-low this or that way? It hasn’t changed anything. “It is impossible to find the truth in the ‘king-dom of liars”. So the attacks of rage seize me. It is not an intelligent frenzy. “
But “the draught of democracy” is blowing. The parties are growing as the mushrooms in the glade. “ The Russian Union” is among them. Jorka Averianov joins it. Others are still in “Stoke-hole”. The meaning “The second culture” was born exactly there. The cleaners, the workers of the stokeholes were real intelligent, poets, Buddhists, rock musicians later…Serafim became a worker of a stokehole too. Many people come to him to chat. There are Russophiles, Russo-phobes, Christians, and Krishnaids… An Afghan soldier comes too. He makes a deep impression on the entire stokehole with his open and terrible song about terrible things. Having sung it he smokes drug and goes away without any words. But everything was changing very quickly. The rockers haven’t bothered about buying or selling on the contrary of Serafim. The songs about “cool boys” have just finished but they are on TV studios, in close meetings and dignified hous-es. “ The rockers have left the basements. They are in demand. The ideals disappear when the payment is very high for the concert."
“Nobody of them has noticed to become a part of show program which is possible to hear any housewife. So “the hero of our days” appears: “The hero of our time is a monster. He has nothing common with positive character. He has not got any courage. He even doesn’t try to put his bright clothes.”
Serafim notices in the talks about the rock it is “an etymological combination of “Russian rock” with an American balalaika…” He analyses this thesis in details. At any case, the arguments of the “stokehole society” lead to the deadlock as any other discussions. It is very interesting to read about the hero’s aphorism on different topics. For example, it is about the creative power, “He knows himself that the creative power is an intimate contradiction towards the world, God, the beauty. The intimacy isn’t the creation it is guessing about something in the surrounding space. It is necessary only to be able to hear this.” “ In some time Serafim notices the rockers begin to speak about their dull ideas and now they speak more about the shooting of the clips or TV, business trips, rewards, author’s rights and visits of VAAP.”
In general, all of the layers in the society moved towards the cult of money, celebrity, the search of pleasures. It has already reached this level. It has paid for this leaving only an empty soul, “the factory of stars” and other “movements” …
“Serafim rambled alone. It considers being dangerous activity.”
After leaving his work as a worker of stokehole Serafim wrote “Sarcasms” (the creative power of a Russian stokehole mediocrity”). This is the work in the work. It is useless to quote him because it is necessary to reproduce him completely. The title shows everything. This type of humor is black. It is exact and the root is in “Harmse”. The meetings with famous names are cruel but they are not against them. They are against of the thinking’s clichés. So, a rare reader of Yuri Morozov is rather intelligent to find an exit without anybody’s help. Other type of reader is difficult to explain it.
A book by Serafim has been published in “a democratic bustle”. “The book was on the shelf of a booking shop. It was rather simple and touching in its defenseless. Every person could take it and do violence too” …
Serafim got money for this book and in spite of meeting with Lina- Julia¬- Adelaide. He left the city trying to find a calmness of his soul. He could not find the truth and he left to the mountains with “the white brothers.” But it was the same. “What unlucky thing for Serafim! Whenever he goes he can see the same. They are the instincts, the complexes and naked Fradism …” the meet-ing with his friend artist and his friend’s friend in a red tie and a black jacket (distinguishing fea-tures of these members “The Russian Union” in a novel) in “Pogrebok”. He is so sorry when he goes to buy vodka and he remembers his “poor past time”. Everything has finished with the ar-guments and fights. He spends 15 days in a prison. But he is their alone without those boys who have been a reason of this event. The policemen understand them and let them go away.
So he has got so much in his soul having stolen a gun in his ex-school. He has trained to shoot by the candles Serafim decides to kill during their meeting the head of “The Russian union”.
But it has been possible to avoid a terror because Jorka Averianov is a main character. Lina has kissed Serafim while are standing in the crowed. Serafim runs away with the words “All of the power should be given to the Union”. He has lost his gun. It is spring. It is an embankment. It is Liteiniy Bridge. It is the flying from the bridge into the abyss. Serafim remembers he can swim rather well.
Serafim can’t find the quiet and piece place in the monastery. He is here to get reconciliation. He works in quietness among the nature for the sake of GOD. He has left the city without any doc-uments. He has to have done it.
So he has arrived to the village Udovo. It is a tiny village now. It has got 120 houses. Only some old ladies are living there. Volodka the deaf, and a boy Kostya Live there too. The weeds are on the fields, the roads are destroyed with the rain…The description of the life in Udovo and other habitants of the village is given by the author in Serafim’s story about his left house where he has lived for many years. “Deaf Volodka” is the name of the story. The author has sent this story to the editor M to her magazine “Sex and national consciousness”. The story has not been published but they have sent rather absurdity answer. It has been more absurd than the life in Udovo has been. The place where not only buildings: shelters and houses have been destroyed but the moral, traditions and the faith.

Deaf Volodka has a friend Kostya. At first Volodka cuts Kostya’s finger. Later he should have given all of his parts of the body. He does it not to lose this friendship. It is an only entertainment and value for him in this gloomy place.

“At the beginning of the spring the feeling of loneliness and God’s forgetting have been in-creased. A scientist explains it as a lack of vitamins and sunlight. But thinking people of our time and me always suspect something wrong in scientists’ issues. We find out all of their suggestions are like superstitions in the XXth century. Something you believe in but you can’t understand why it happens.
The mystic terror of his soul and absence of real reasons in his actions are connected with Ser-afim’s leaving of the countryside. He runs outside “having damaged the door hook and opened a door. He is mooing with his grey long hair in a vertical position…” “A wide vista is full of silver moonlight as it is a theatrical stage with a scene of love.”
The artistic contrast to the absurdity of the situations, the grotesques is a deep author’s lyrics. His skill is in the depiction of Russian culture and opportunities of Russian language.
A fear “in the image of unformed type of man in clothes” has appeared and immediately disap-peared. Serafim is “like a man who has got into the Jupiter…” “He has flown over the earth with his rather heavy body. His legs have become cast-iron and he makes his first step into the future without happy”. A train with goods takes him away into nowhere. Here he is listening to the murder’s confess. The killer’s face is a sad one. It is not a face of a real killer.
He goes off at rather empty station and goes up to the mountains. Serafim chains himself to the tree. He has found the chains in the train. He can’t see the way back. The keys are thrown into the precipice. He is losing his consciousness. The crows are flying above him they are waiting for his last moment. But here he again feels hunger or passion.
So the main character has overcome his way – the way of Martyr.

The epilogues 1 and 2 are the author’s manipulations with the plot. He is showing as it can be…

“In general, a novel “If I hadn’t been Russian” is materialized in the contrast with the processes have taken place while destroying “the evil emporium” in the history of human beings. However, it is very difficult to find ant coincidence even if they are opposite. Of course they have some similarities but they are rather rare.
All other features are not together with epoch. They are in a perpendicular way of it. Especially “not together “it is a main character of the novel. Serafim Bredovskiy is far away from the time and the society, and its surrounding. It is like a nightmare with its loving duels, with the relatives and friends. It is his feeling towards everything. It is a surprise how many pages to the end he is ready to be patient towards all of this. It is something similar to the story about a man without skin. It is about people who can’t sunbather without special covering.” (Y Morozov)
The novel is out of time. It is an eternal thing like the words “Perestroika”, “Gorbachev”. These categories are ephemeral but an art and a real Literature are the eternal substance.




“A ZONE OF RETURNING” BY YURI MOROZOV

It may be a mistake to call “A zone of returning” and “The parachutists” written in 1992 the novels because of a number of pages. Nevertheless, the plots, the compositions, the number of characters and other literal peculiarities of an author let us opportunity to call them the novels. I begin from the analyzing of the first one “A zone of returning”.
A novel- travelling impresses a lot while you are reading it. First of all it is an attempt to run away from the fortune of the main character, Ivane, and he is trying to find it. It is running by the unknown, something has not been realized before. The last is in the image of a woman, his sister, or his lover whom he has lost in the youth period. The events and the mood of the character are changing. They react on the signs of Aphrodite’s lighthouse. He has been tempted with her bright green, slightly squint-eyes. Following her he is travelling over Russia. But it is more travelling over his life (by the way his love young wife Ilona).
It is not on the foreground yet. And it is not a separate character. The feeling of reality begins to exist. It follows by Y Morozov. In “A zone of returning” is the second idea. It is a loathsome dwarf pushing Ivana for doing rather bad actions, tricks. They are full of adventure and inclina-tion to “a sister-stranger”, “Her slim body is as a string which cuts ten storied building with a tune. So it is impossible to void of listening to it.”
So a hero turns into the sleepwalker. Their love with Ilona is the thing which allows him to go out of this state.
Ivan and Ilona are similar names. They are created with the couple. They are in front of us as beautiful and intelligent couple. But every of them have got his or her own story. Ilona has many ambitions towards the future. She is full of her husband’s love. If she turns round for answering his thinking, having philosophical discussions together, trying to persuade him. It is “fantastically easy and simple to live with her, “you are with her as with a falling angel.” The life has oppressed him before their meeting, it has been like a hard disease since early ages, it has presented as “a zoo-garden of oligophrenic and downs”. In the youth he decided “slowly, but steadily to realize his LEAVING”. He makes a plan of leaving in a jet. It is possible to fly high over the sea and fall down into its bottom, “One more fool is less and one more military toy too.” It was the reason of his desire to enter the flying college. The leaving has become the extra task of his life.
And though love to a woman makes him to stop his “dreams” and he already lives as an adult. Because the production process of love affairs. It has made a trauma of his transcendental soul. The second tiresome idea of Ivana is his idea about his sister. She was a link with the world of women. She leads him towards this ugly dwarf into the precipice. Following an unknown girl to Kiev (Saint-Petersburg and Moscow have been before) Ivana makes an acquaintance with Olga. She is not a stranger. So he gets into rather “dirty” story. He tries to make an effort and goes away from the following situation. He can listen to only his voice, “This wine and this woman, you haven’t tasted” The dwarf becomes brave and Ivana woke up among “pornographic ugli-ness” though “Thanks God, he, Ivana is already innocent”.
Ivana and Ilona, the couple I-I, reach to the village on the bank of the Dnieper. They fix the tent among fairy nature and begin to live happily. Ivana thinks about Ilona. She saves him from his loneliness, from his lonely following by the illusions and the death.”
But somewhere in the farthest dusty corner, in the fifth dimension of loneliness a frightened powerful dwarf under bad and good things in Ivana. And when in the rush of sincerity he wants to get to Ilona’s legs and tell her everything, so …” No”, somebody tells inside him, “I don’t want. The loneliness is necessary for a man, and me, so you have the right for it.” “You lose your own “I”, your originality if you show off your inner world to Ilona for example. You are not as she is. “I” am the last thing I have got and nothing can take me out. It can’t be done either with time, death or even love. “I” am with you forever as in this, so in the last and in the future life. “
The ships are passing the couple I-I. They seem to see the states, the countries with people’s rela-tionships. They watch by them as if they are “rather wise” though their philosophical discussions finish in the bed. Once early in the morning having left Ilona’s shoulder Ivana goes to the bank of the river. He notices that girl who has made him change a card of their travelling immediately. And it is a rush again. Ilona keeps silence and follows her husband who is like a devil.
Ilona is thinking about “a zone of returning”. “There are enough such zones around them and even the spots. They may be without the Motherland and the old Friends. They are inside of some strange people, in the subjects, in the houses, in their own thoughts, in the primitive self-ishness, in sex.
Have you ever get to the Heavens with your ambitions and sometimes in real achievements? And when you get into this zone you immediately fall down exactly to the earth, to deep doo doo.” Ilona is for Ivana a kind soul, she is “his close, she isn’t a mystery for him.”She aims to get the deep point of the zone. She follows “skew-eyed Aphrodite” to the Crimea. The spouses get into a tiny village on the cliff seaside. It is ex-motherland of Ivana. He has not already been there more than 30 years ago. However, his ex-acquaintances can’t recognize him (his name was Ivan). He is a son of that warrior who lived with his wife in a blue wooden house with a veranda in the outskirt of the village. By the way the house has already been burnt.
An empty beach is behind the rock. Now Ivana knows her name. She is Veronica. She attracts him daily. He makes tricks to get close to her. Her legs are “marble columns of the credence of Aphrodite.” Her skirt is waving baring her legs. They torment him he has got a desire to kiss them. He has done it that’s why he can’t live without them. Suddenly Veronica’s husband with black moustache appears. But it is a Greek boy who was kneed on this seashore. They love the same girl Clara. Max threatens with the blades. But Ivan has got a gun which he has taken from his father. So the Greek can’t do anything. “ Thank God” , thought Ivana, “it seems everything comes back with the same characters. But except of the moon the world is brightened with new illusion so Clara has turned into Veronica and Greek is in his bright trousers.”
In her dreams Ilona can see as a beautiful woman wants to push Ivana down the rock. She talks into her husband to leave this place. She is jealous him to the sea. “There is God’s term between the dream and reality”…
The final is. The spouses I-I go to the pier with the rucksacks. The ship is waiting for them. It is going to save them, taking to the future. But suddenly he can see Veronica’s dress Ilona who is waiting for him to see this scene where Ivana is going to her. The last meeting with Greek is be-hind the corner in a narrow white lane. The fortune of Ivana is finished.
“A strange observer if he has come he could see as he jumps over the edge of the cliff. He is as a turned up hedgehog. But the first hit on the stone makes it to open. It is with a heap of crushed broken stone and dust. The rucksack is on his shoulders. He is rolling or flying as a shot bird with the opened wings”. He has got into that beach where he had to have been cut by Greek. He died for Clara at that time. At any way the author gives a reader the opportunity if it is in reality or not. Veronica gets up on the seaside and thinks about a marvelous dream and how many details he is able to get from his mother’s words about the existence of her brother, her father’s son. But it isn’t about her. These were the remembrances about that boy who had followed her at Moscovskiy railway station in Saint- Petersburg.
I may have managed to convey only one part of an idea. This idea has been put into the plot and the composition. At extreme measures, I am able to see it. In general, “A zone of returning” has an underwater kingdom of curious ideas. If we look through them we should look through an enormous article which has been written by the professional.



“THE PARASHUTISTS”

A rock-drama “The Parachutists” in a magazine “Continent” was printed in 1992 (number 72). It was called a story but it couldn’t be looked through as a literal story. The times were depicted in “The Parachutists”. It was time when rock-n-roll was much spoken about and thought about it. This time was truly described. It was bright, sharp because it created a human’s drama. The man was inside of this and these events. A youth subculture was described in details at the beginning of 90s. A reader should decide himself if the author was right in his philosophical understanding of this time or not. First of all, it was a question about the reason of existence of rock music as a part of Art. The topic is settled itself in the opposition of the fortunes of both musicians. They were Vasiliy Holodniy who was impossible to give a bribe or meet a compromise and his friend Volkov who was in a shadow and in modesty. He was a “half-celebrity” in “rock-party”. They died and the reader understood it later.
Everybody who knew the author, Yura Morosov, found out about him in V Holodniy. Volkov became a rock-musician of a new period. He was supported by Komsomol leaders who were busy with the concerts. They were in soul and heart confusion. He always wanted to cry out dur-ing the concerts, “ You are like the flies that have just flown on the rubbish.” In another “ Ust-Propaschinsk” half-drunken Volkov was put on the stage. Then a group of “over-drunken pio-neers” went out. Holodniy went there too because Volkov made him agree on it. He went on the stage after “the pioneers” with his religious and philosophical ballads. He began to sing them re-cently. It was possible to hear from the concert hall, “We don’t believe in God.” “Give us metal”
and other.” He was without rocker’s accessories, without supporters and friends in his worn out coat up to the heels with field-kind bag from kirsa over the shoulder.” So we are able to see Yuri Morosov of the end of 70s. He went across Dvortscovaya ploschad to the studio “Melody “in Capella.
“The first footers, ex-ones and the present- ones were in value of the audience. The enthusiasm was called by Mick. He had recently drunk beer together. Now he is from Hamburg in his Mer-cedes. It was really cool.”
Vasiliy Holodniy gave up his concerts and applied for work to the hospital as a nurse. “ In his soul Volkov was pity to Holodniy and he didn’t know him to be a Wolf. He is a Valenok. Vasya was a man. He felt something to be wrong with the fortune. The same was with people. But he refused to take it.” “ At first they were common boys with the guitars. They sang about the things to be kept. Later they became the actors…”
The author showed his position and point of view on the modern Soviet-Russian and western rock, “As a wolf he should do in his awful half- star life the same as Holodniy had done. To leave the crowd of slim boys, thin girls and rock-monsters they exaggerated their way of living with a joke. Later they did it for money because they couldn’t change anything. “
“They were rock-mephistotels. They were far from devil shows abroad.” According to the author the problem was all of them and V Holodniy they were “marked with the rock-n-roll curse.”There was the time they were the fighters under the ground. It was up to the period of them to get the doubtful tops.”
The housing of the concert life and celebrities was full of alcohol, accidental links. They appeared unexpectedly from the arguments and the fights. It happened because of aggression and unsatisfaction. Volkov couldn’t be friend or kept the faith. After the lonely death of Vasia Ho-lodniy in the hospital he went somewhere without thinking about the close friend. When the des-pair had filled him he remembered their common rock-n-roll pastime with a pain. He remembered their youth, signing in one microphone, playing the cheap guitars.
What about love? Here he was a parachutist flying into the empty space without any idea about landing. Rock-singer Inna wanted to meet with him. She was singing his songs and Holodniy’s songs. He could hear her songs, a strict judge over the women. He could hear it from the tape in one of the town and in one of the smoked and over drunken company. Inna was singing well.
But Volkov couldn’t find time to meet her. He might have killed her cousin “afgnetsc” acci-dentally. Volkov had nothing sharper except of key from the flat. He had got only officer’s knife “Viktor inks”. It had been presented by his foreign friend …
Inna’s fortune was destroying in life instability.
“Later he compared their life with the staircase in troubled time where every step is like a new song or new concert. Where do you go down the stairs? – Holodniy asked to Volkov. He didn’t know where to go. While he was going downstairs he had got money, the fame, the entertain-ment. The edge of the staircase might be over the abyss.”
Peaceful, philosophical, lyrical Wolf got into the depression and aggression and cruelty during the concerts. He had hardly tried to choke “The Rat”, a lover of rock star who could have touched his man and professional’s ambition in comparison “with his boyfriend.”After such moral falling he remembered his last talk with Holodniy about “his rock-n-roll fortune. Holodniy was sure that Devil ran the world it wasn’t God. He was provoked with their way of life “not far from navel. Their music was like a penetration into the outer space.” It should have been accord-ing to the author’s opinion. “
“The penetration into an outer space was with Wolf whom they met very rarely. The game turned to be a routine on the variegated messes.” They swore “don’t obey the regime”, but “the regime cut the notes from the rockers.”
“The rockers don’t bother about the concerts, do they? The money is very important for them, the fame, the girls are too.”
The analysis of the modern hits was given by the author. The march, the full of life, and the fighting, the texts written with the mottos and clichés from the cultural and patriotic custom, the prison kind jargon, and the pub’s lyrics were there.”
Alas, the stars “since the period of birth were impressed with the system. He couldn’t think in any other way.” “The complex chemical cast was produced by the western technology. It was cast in to the frame of different sizes. It gave us the number of wonderful masters of “the Rus-sian rock”.
Wolf asked to Vasya why he was singing and why he hadn’t gone abroad. But Holodniy an-swered, “I know where I live. But I don’t know why I should sing for them. If I want it or I may not. It may be God’s will…”Volkov could see only “Russian Armageddon” and even the faces…
“The boutiques grew up like after the nuclear rain. They filled in the streets of robbed cities …”
The old ladies were trying to find something in the rubbish bin and others.
Volkov didn’t have any humility, any ideas where he could see an opportunity for his spiritual revival. Love to Inna provoked desire to give up everything and go away. He may be ready to do it with her. He was ready to go to a clean world of the Earth with the forests and the birds. The guitar and the books would be there too. He might write something. He didn’t manage to do it and he had missed Inna. His friend called him to speak with in “Saigon”. Suddenly he told them a story which had recently happened with his friend in one of an old communal flat behind the Kazan cathedral. They got there hiring “two girls’ along Nevskiy prospect. One of them was so sad that she committed suicide in the toilet. She was taken to the medical institute where she was cut into the parts for students’ studying.
Wolf understood that was exactly that “girl” from this story.
Wolf was lonely himself. He went home to his hole as a wounded beast. There “Viktorinoks” had been put on the top of the shelf over the sink. It had been cleaned after an awful event in the metro. Suddenly it fell down and cut his vein on the elbow. Out rocked didn’t object the fortune while he was washing his hand. Only his man’s pride was afraid his wife to think “she was the reason of it.” He was made to run to ambulance. He came into the lift where he couldn’t go out. Suddenly the door opened and Volkov went off the carriage of the metro at the same station where he wanted to go off at the beginning.
“The parachutists” is easy for reading. That’s why a writer Vladimir Maksimov agreed the story to be published. In 1991 he was an editor of “Continent” and he lived in Paris. He had read this story and called to Yuri with the words, “This thing is worth to be published.”