It is difficult to argue that the death of Valeria Novodvorskaya, which was announced on July 12, has significantly changed the balance of political forces in the Russian Federation. Novodvorskaya died in the Moscow City Hospital No. 13, surrounded by doctors. They could not save her, the inflammation had gone too far, and age and lifestyle did not contribute to the healing of a wound that, under other circumstances, might not have been dangerous. No one began to speculate about the malicious elimination of a dangerous political opponent. There were no grounds for such versions. The cause of death of Valeria Novodvorskaya was announced immediately. It was foot phlegmon.
Tender and brave
Yes, she did not pretend to be a guiding star, apparently, she was quite satisfied with her position, which guarantees the opportunity to freely declare her own views in the complete absence of any responsibility. However, the right to do so had to be earned, won or suffered. Friends, among whom were Khakamada, Borovoy, Nemtsov, Ryzhkov andother representatives of the political elite of the Yeltsin era, called her a romantic with a childish soul, unmercenary, an infinitely tender and very subtle person, not forgetting to dwell on courage, reaching recklessness. Other, less benevolent people, recalled her antics, full of shocking, often ridiculous and in a bad way funny. Novodvorskaya was a very controversial person. Cause of death, biography, political activities will be briefly described below. No judgments, just facts. And a few guesses.
USSR late 60s
Moscow in the second half of the sixties. Behind the half-century history of the Land of the Soviets. There is a relative abundance of goods in the capital, overshadowed by the raids of visitors who bought everything in a row, and sometimes they found out what thing they stood in a long line for only when they were at the counter. The Red Terror, the bloody war, the Stalinist mass repressions, and the voluntarism of Nikita Sergeevich have sunk into oblivion. The country is stable, it is divided into "categories of supply", and in each of them people are accustomed to the degree of satisfaction of needs, which is established from above. People live in peace, and the notorious “confidence in the future” is not empty words, but reality. There is no unemployment, but there is a certain choice between the very small salary of an engineer or teacher and the higher wage rates of builders or highly skilled workers. The daily program "Vremya" reports on the steady and progressive movement towards a brighter future. Many believe, but skeptics remain silent. And among all this idyll suddenly appeardissatisfied. What do they want? Who are they? How did they get to this life? What are they missing?
Dissidents
Vladimir Bukovsky, a Soviet dissident, spent a lot of time in specialized hospitals. No, he was not tormented by sarcoma or some other serious illness. Doctors tried to make him “normal” (that is, happy with everything), so they subjected him to compulsory treatment in psychiatric clinics. It was believed that if a person does not like socialism, then something is wrong with his head. To be fair, Bukovsky himself admitted that there were indeed many crazy people among the dissidents. At the turn of the seventies, the power of the CPSU seemed so strong and unshakable that a normal person, as a rule, did not dare to rebel against it. And why? It was impossible to call the life of Soviet people unbearable, most citizens of the USSR did not see other benefits, and if information about the “capitalist paradise” leaked under the “iron curtain”, then they most often did not particularly trust it, believing that in addition to many varieties of sausage, there are some costs. In this, by the way, as history has shown, they were right.
But there were still dissidents. And they risked a lot.
"Westerners" in the USSR
Russian people tend to be categorical. It appears in the recognition of the extreme points of any phenomenon and the almost complete disregard for intermediate states. If in our country something is not as we would like, then abroad it is certainly the opposite. In the conditions of incomplete and one-sided awareness of the population about the life of people in Western countries, at least two generations have grown upSoviet people, convinced that if capitalism is scolded in our country, then it means that it is the ideal social system. In it are concentrated care for a person, and fair wages, and an abundance of goods, and individual freedom. And this light force is headed by the locomotive represented by the United States. The presence of any other opinion in a certain part of Soviet society meant belonging to the party nomenclature, cooperation with the KGB, or simply stupidity. Dissatisfied with life in the USSR, everything American was considered good, and everything Soviet was bad. In essence, this phenomenon was a mirror image of Soviet agitprop, exactly the opposite. Most often, people with an unstable psyche became its victims. Everyone else tried to somehow adapt, understanding some inconsistencies in the official political line, but putting up with them as a necessary evil.
Family tree
Valeria Novodvorskaya died at the age of sixty-four. And she was born in the late Stalin era, in 1950, in the city of Baranovichi (Belarus). The family was not just ordinary, it can be called exemplary. Both parents are communists. Dad worked as an engineer. Two or three decades later, no one would have seen anything special in this, but in 1950, the presence of a living father was in itself a happiness that very many Soviet children did not know. Five years ago, the most bloody war in the history of the world ended. Valeria's mom was a doctor.
Revolutionary genes should have simply filled every cell of Valeria's body. Great-grandfather was from Smolensksocial democrat, grandfather - equestrian of the First Army of Budyonny. There were other prominent personalities in the family - the governor under Andrei Kurbsky and even the knight of M alta, at least Novodvorskaya herself said so.
The couple was visiting their grandparents when the birth happened. History is silent about the reasons, but it so happened that the grandmother was mainly involved in raising the girl. The parents must have been very busy.
Education
It was very difficult to grow up as a person in a country dominated by total collectivism. Even talking about an outstanding person, almost every journalist was especially touched by the fact that "he was like everyone else." This was not always true, but the expression has become a common literary cliché. The whole leitmotif of life and even the cause of Valeria Novodvorskaya's death suggests that she "like everyone else" did not want to be from childhood. It became her will in her conscious years, and at the age of five her grandmother taught her to read. The silver medal in addition to the school certificate already testifies to their own efforts aimed at asserting the personality through the achievements that were available. Being fluent in French and German and being able to read several other languages is also the result of hard work. Not every foreign language graduate is able to demonstrate such knowledge.
Start of the fight
Looking at the photographs of Valeria Novodvorskaya taken in the nineties and the beginning of the third millennium, it is difficult to imagine that at nineteen she was beautifulgirl, but it is. There are few high-quality photographs, but the ones that have survived show that not just a pretty student is looking into the lens, but an intelligent and courageous person. Personal charm, apparently, to a large extent was the reason that Valeria was able to attract young people to the underground circle she created, which sets as its goal - no less than an armed uprising in order to overthrow the power of the communists. If the case had taken place less than two decades earlier, Novodvorskaya's death would have occurred immediately, after a brief trial. In 1969, Soviet power turned out to be more humane.
First crazy act
A beautiful 19-year-old girl handing out handwritten copies of her own poems. "How lovely!" would say today. And even then, in 1969, when poets were idols, which today's pop and rock stars are far from, there was nothing surprising in this fact. If not for two circumstances. Firstly, the poems were anti-Soviet and branded the party, mockingly thanking it for hatred, shame, denunciations and other accompanying phenomena. Secondly, the distribution took place in the Kremlin Palace of Congresses, and on the Constitution Day of the USSR. Under these circumstances, Novodvorskaya simply could not be arrested. Immediately, there were suggestions that the girl was not quite capable. After she told Comrade KGB Colonel Dunts, the chief expert of the Serbsky Institute, that he was actually working in the Gestapo, the diagnosis was considered confirmed.
Treatment in Kazan
For two years the patient was treated in the Kazan psychiatric clinic for paranoia and schizophrenia (sluggish). The authorities had every opportunity to prevent her release, for example, to recognize the patient as incurable. And you could just bring it to complete exhaustion. Or treat in such a way that the date of Novodvorskaya's death is no later than, for example, 1972. This is if we accept the version of the dissident herself about the cruel nature of the communist regime. Facts, however, are stubborn things.
Fate did not want Novodvorskaya to die in a mental hospital. She survived. One can only guess how the forced treatment affected her. What is known for sure is that the fighting spirit was not broken.
After leaving the psychiatric hospital (1972), twenty-two-year-old Valeria Ilyinichna immediately took up forbidden cases again. She distributed printed samizdat materials, and at the same time worked as a teacher in a sanatorium for children. It remains to be surprised at the carelessness of the “executioners from the KGB”, who allowed the recent mentally ill woman to be employed as a teacher. However, Novodvorskaya did not work there for long, only two years.
In between times
For the next fifteen years, V. I. Novodvorskaya fought against communism, using the methods of the Bolshevik underground. She graduated from the Moscow Pedagogical Institute. Krupskaya (1977), got a job as a translator in the Second Medical. And she did not leave attempts to overthrow the hated Soviet power through a conspiracy. She was repeatedly detained, arrested and treated. Three trials did not lead to imprisonment, organized by herdemonstrations and rallies dispersed. It is possible that the protesters were subjected to more serious repressions, and Novodvorskaya got off with fines and medical procedures. During the Gorbachev thaw, almost everything became possible, even direct insults to the head of state and the flag of the USSR. After the formation of an autocephalous church in Ukraine, which set the goal of a split with the Russian Orthodox Church, Novodvorskaya was baptized, becoming a parishioner of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate. She did this, apparently in protest against the Russian Orthodox Church.
Bad without repression?
The lack of attention from the authorities offends the oppositionist. The political rating is not as important to him as the fact of his own danger to the ruling elite. On the one hand, this brings a certain discomfort to life, but on the other hand, it gives a sense of self-worth. The fight makes sense. The reason for the death of Valeria Novodvorskaya as a politician was not a small electorate, but the frivolous attitude of the authorities. In recent years, she often complained on the radio station "Echo of Moscow" and other media about the lack of understanding by the broad masses of the bright ideals of democracy. In her opinion, the Russian people have not matured to understand real freedom. She herself dreamed that everything in Russia would be "like in the West." Novodvorskaya died without having lived to see the fulfillment of her cherished desire.
Russophobia and other funny things
Anti-Sovietism gradually developed into Russophobia. In all conflicts that arise duringpost-Soviet period, Novodvorskaya took a defeatist position, repeating the experience of the Bolsheviks she hated during the First World War.
Comic situations are also widely known. A woman politician either stood with a poster on which it was written: “You are all fools and are not being treated, I’m the only smart one in a white coat standing beautiful,” or putting on a T-shirt with the slogan “Don’t let the Russian.” By the way, it is not the fools who need treatment, but the sick. Valeria Novodvorskaya should have known this for sure.
Cause of death - loneliness
Dissidents in the USSR could not complain about the state's lack of attention to their he alth. They were sent to mental hospitals even when they didn't want to.
Ironically, Novodvorskaya died due to inadequate treatment. No, this is not about mental illness. And the doctors have nothing to do with it, they did not turn to them for help until the very last moment. Why Novodvorskaya died is much more prosaic. Valeria Ilyinichna injured her leg about six months before her death. She tried to heal herself, did not go to the doctor, inflammation developed, which developed into sepsis, also called (earlier, before the era of istmatism) blood poisoning. In this inattention to itself, the whole of Novodvorskaya. The cause of death is absurd in a modern metropolis. There are many medical institutions in Moscow that could provide qualified assistance. And in a simple district clinic, the surgeon would treat the wound with all the attention, if only Novodvorskaya turned there. The cause of death lies, however, not only in phlegmon, but also in simple human loneliness. There was no person who would insist on going to the doctor, would force an eccentric woman to spend several hours on herself, even to the detriment of another rally in defense of Ukraine "offended" by Russia.
The “successful entrepreneur” and “famous politician” Konstantin Borovoy considered himself a friend. He told reporters about the death of Novodvorskaya and the events of the last days of her life, not forgetting to clarify that he prescribed a diet for his girlfriend, which she could not withstand. According to him, she is guilty of her own death in much the same way as the Odessans who burned down in the House of Trade Unions, about which friends merrily talked on the air together shortly after the tragedy.
Perhaps the cause of Valeria Novodvorskaya's death is not a disregard for her he alth, it in this case is a consequence. Most likely, the dissident was oppressed by the realization of her own uselessness and lack of demand. And sometimes it seemed that with her antics she did not promote the liberal idea, but rather repelled potential adherents from it.
Peace be upon her.
