SIXTY POETS

Remember them, remember us, remember yourself...

From the compiler

Dear colleagues!

I bring to your attention the poems of the sixties - poets whose poems first became known (not necessarily through publications) in the first five-year period of the thaw, after 1956, although some of them, the elders, were published earlier (Levitansky, Slutsky, Galich as a prose writer).
I repeat what it was unprecedented phenomenon when poems, completely unusual for that time, including those belonging to famous writers, appeared to replace the almost quarter-century domination of official Soviet poetry, controlled by the Central Committee and the Cheka.

I dare say that the thaw fundamentally changed the spirit and character of art in general and poetry in particular. Young poets would either not have appeared, or their poems would not have been so outstanding. Even the work of experienced writers (for example, Levitansky) has undergone drastic changes, which cannot be attributed only to “age” factors ...

I have arranged the poets in alphabetical order, choosing them according to my taste. They are, of course, unequal in talent and destiny.
Some poems composed as songs play without music. I consider Voznesensky's "Goya" (where there is no inevitable political tragedy inherent in Aleshkovsky and Galich) to be programmatic and the strongest, which completely shocked us, readers who were brought up not only on standard Soviet, but also on classical Russian poetry...

Sandro Belotsky

Yuz ALESHKOVSKY(born 1929)

SONG ABOUT STALIN

Comrade Stalin, you are a great scientist,
You know a lot about linguistics
And I'm a simple Soviet prisoner,
And my friend is a gray Bryansk wolf.

What I'm sitting for, I really don't know
But prosecutors seem to be right.
I am currently sitting inTurukhansk region ,
Where were you in exile under the tsar.

In other people's sins, we immediately confessed,
Step by step they were moving towards an evil fate.
We believed you so, Comrade Stalin,
How, perhaps, they did not believe themselves.

And now I'm sitting in the Turukhansk region,
Where the guards, like dogs, are rude.
I understand all this, of course.
As an exacerbation of the class struggle.

That rain, then snow, then mosquitoes above us,
And we are in the taiga from morning to morning.
You made a flame out of a spark here,
Thank you, I'm warming myself by the fire.

It's harder for you, you are about everyone in the world
Take care in the dreary hour of the night,
Walking in the Kremlin office
Smoke the pipe without closing your eyes.

And we carry a difficult cross for free
Frost smoky and in the anguish of rain,
We, like trees, fall on the bunk,
Not knowing the insomnia of the leaders.

Yesterday we buried two Marxists,
We didn't cover them with kumach.
One of them was a right-wing deviator,
(Option: Brother of the evader)
The other, as it turned out, had nothing to do with it.

He, before dying forever,
I bequeathed the last words to you,
Ordered to sort out the evon case
And he quietly cried out: "Stalin is the head!"

(Option:

He, before parting with his life,

I wrote you a statement until the morning,

In the military case, he asked to understand

And even shouted "Hurrah for Stalin!")

You dream of us when in a party cap
And in a tunic you go to the parade.
We chop wood in a Stalinist way, and chips,
And the chips fly in all directions.

Live a thousand years, Comrade Stalin,
And let me have to die in the taiga,
I believe there will be iron and steel
Quite per capita.

1959

Bella AKHMADULINA(b. 1937)

Along my street which year

footsteps sound - my friends are leaving.

My friends slow departure

that darkness outside the windows is pleasing.

Running my friends deeds,

there is neither music nor singing in their houses,

and only, as before, Degas girls

pigeons straighten their feathers.

Well, well, well, let fear not wake

you, defenseless, in the middle of this night.

A mysterious passion for betrayal,

my friends, clouds your eyes.

Oh loneliness, how cool your character is!

Flashing with an iron compass,

how cold you close the circle,

not heeding the useless assurances.

So call me and reward me!

Your darling, caressed by you,

I will console myself, leaning against your chest,

I will wash with your blue cold.

Let me stand on tiptoe in your forest

at the other end of the slow gesture

find foliage, and bring it to your face,

and feel orphanhood as bliss.

Grant me the silence of your libraries,

your concerts are strict motives,

and - wise - I will forget those

who died or are still alive.

And I will know wisdom and sorrow

mine secret meaning trust me with items.

Nature leaning on my shoulders

announce his childhood secrets.

And then - from tears, from darkness,

from the poor ignorance of the past

my friends beautiful features

appear and dissolve again.

1959

Andrey Voznesensky (born 1933)

I am Goya!
The eye sockets of the funnels pecked out to me by the enemy,
flying into the naked field.
I am grief.

I am the throat
A hanged woman whose body is like a bell
beat over the square head ...
I am Goya!

About the bunch
Retribution! Tossed in one gulp to the West -
I am the ashes of the intruder!
And drove strong into the memorial sky
stars -
like nails.

I am Goya.

1959

***

Not a bullet, so gossip
put them in a coffin.
Not with a song, but with a loop
their throats were friendly.

And the bullets whistled
as in the holes of clarinets,
in broken heads
the best poets.

They are whistling with blizzards.
Their plenums are judged.
But there is Prometheus.
And there will be no prisoners.

Rushing into belief
Workbench near Moscow.
And I'm an apprentice
in his workshop.

I whistle at random
and so and so.
Down and Out trouble started.
Great workbench.

1957

Who are we - chips or great?
Genius is in the blood of the planet.
There are no "physicists", there are no "lyricists" -
Lilliputians or poets!

Regardless of work
We, like smallpox, took root century.
Stunning - "Who are you?"
We are carried like a cycle track.

Who are you? Who are you? And suddenly - not that?
How wool coat Venus!
Starlings tend to crow,
Architects are poets!

Well, what about you?..
What a month -
You aim at the stars, you knead the roads ...
She graduated from school, threw off her braids,
I stayed a saleswoman - I quit.

And again and again, as in a tag,
Between tabletop posters
silly,
Oleshka,
female,
Out of breath, you stand! ..

Who are you? Who? - You look longingly
In books, in windows - but where are you there? -
You fall like a telescope
To the fixed male pupils...

I wander with you, Verka, Vega...
I myself am in the middle of avalanches,
Like a snowman
Absolutely elusive.
1959

***

FIRE IN ARCHITECTURAL INSTITUTE

Fire in the Architectural!
Through the halls, drawings,
amnesty for prisons -
fire, fire!

On a sleepy facade
shameless, naughty,
red-assed gorilla
the window pops up!

And we are already graduates,
it's time for us to defend.
Cracking in the closet under the seals
my reprimands!

Whatman - as wounded,
red leaf fall.
My stretchers are on fire
cities are burning.

A bottle of kerosene
soared five years and winters ...
Karinochka Krasilnikova,
oh! we're on fire!

Goodbye architecture!
Blaze wide
cowsheds in cupids,
regional clubs in rococo!

O youth, phoenix, fool,
diploma in flames!
You wave your red skirt
and tease with your tongue.

Farewell, it's time for the outskirts!
Life is a change of ashes.
We all burn out.
You live - you burn.

And tomorrow, striking a finger,
pierces like a bee
compass needle
from a handful of ash...

Everything burned clean.
The police are full.
Its end!
Everything is started!
Go to the cinema!

1957

(continuation of the selection - in a few days)

Who are the sixties? Are they people of the same generation or worldview? Maybe this is a direction in art, well, like the Wanderers, for example? What were they doing and where did they suddenly disappear to? There are many questions. The most important thing is that all these questions have been asked and continue to be asked not only by those who come across this term, but also by those who, in passing and en masse, were ranked in this, let's say, direction.

Undefinable

Someone once called a large group very different people, the beginning of the creative path of which or the creative peak fell on the 60s of the last century, a subculture. And the term went for a walk on the net. But this definition is careless, since it is correct only in one aspect that defines the term subculture: indeed, everyone who is commonly called the sixties differed from the dominant culture in their own system of values. Different from the ideological system of values ​​imposed by the state. And it's all. To classify very different, often radically different people as a kind of “subculture” is the same as calling all Christians of the world, regardless of confession, also a subculture. Why not? After all, they have almost the same value system. But it's not right.

Among those who are considered among the sixties, the most famous, of course, are those who were engaged in poetic and song creativity or writing. Speaking of the sixties, the names of bards and poets first come to mind: Bulat Okudzhava, Alexander Galich, Alexander Gorodnitsky, Yuri Vizbor, Gennady Shpalikov, Bella Akhmadulina, Evgeny Yevtushenko, Andrey Voznesensky, or prose writers - Vasily Aksenov, brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, Sergey Dovlatov , Vladimir Voinovich. I remember the directors: Oleg Efremov, Kira Muratova, Georgy Danelia, Marlen Khutsiev, Vasily Shukshin, Sergei Parajanov, Andron Konchalovsky, Andrei Tarkovsky, Mikhail Kozakov, Oleg Dal, Valentin Gaft. And, of course, Vladimir Vysotsky, who is not clear where to put it, he was so versatile. But we must not forget about those scientists and human rights activists without whom the sixties could not have arisen: Lev Landau, Andrei Sakharov, Nikolai Ashliman, Gleb Yakunin, Lyudmila Alekseeva and many others.

Unfortunately, there is no exact answer to the question - "sixties" - does not exist. Or you can say this: the sixties are an era. The people who created it are very different, and we are all lucky that, starting from the principles of freedom of creativity, they created this era that continues to influence the minds and moods of society.

Atlanteans hold the sky

First of all, those same mythological sixties are creative personalities. Whatever these irreconcilable lyricists and physicists do: scientists, writers, artists, architects, actors, directors, geologists, astrophysicists and neurophysiologists, sailors and mathematicians, sculptors, philosophers and even clergymen - they are Atlantes of the twentieth century. Atlantes, who gave birth to a civilization of people of valor and honor, for whom the measure of everything is freedom. The only possible cult: the cult of human dignity.

The totalitarian system drove over the best of them like a tank and someone became a dissident, because once faced with the choice to go to the square or stay at home, protest against the arbitrariness of the system or continue to whisper in the kitchen, they chose the action: going to the square, rally and supporting friends on illegal processes. Otherwise, they would not be able to live on, such as the poet Natalya Gorbanevskaya and the writer and neurophysiologist Vladimir Bukovsky.

Many of them tried to stay out of politics, in the space of freedom of spirit and creativity, until politics came to grips with them and they were forced to emigrate later - in the seventies: Vladimir Voinovich, Vasily Aksenov, Andrey Sinyavsky, Andrey Tarkovsky.

Those who remained in the USSR drank in full the suffocating terry stagnation of the 70s and the timelessness of the early 80s: someone integrated into the system and became an artisan from creativity, or a human rights activist, like Vladimir Lukin, someone burned out early, spurring the body with various substances, who could not stand it, died voluntarily.

They are not all of the same generation. Among them were born in the late twenties, most in the thirties, and someone in the mid-forties of the last century. The beginning of the activity of each of them also does not fall exactly on 1960. For example, one of the brightest creative teams and an exponent of the ideas of the sixties - the Sovremennik Theater - was born in 1956, almost after the death of Stalin, when in a short period of thaw the repressive-terrorist smog melted over one sixth part of the sushi. Yes, it was then that they began to appear - the sixties.

Is it possible to touch that era? Try to feel it? Why not. This can be helped by films in which the time is best reflected: “I am twenty years old” by Marlena Khutsiev, “My elder brother” by Alexander Zarkhi, “Journalist” by Sergei Gerasimov, “Short meetings” by Kira Muratova, “Such a guy lives” by Vasily Shukshin, “The story of Asya Klyachina, who loved but did not marry” by Andron Konchalovsky, “I walk around Moscow” by Georgy Danelia, “Aibolit-66” by Rolan Bykov.

Top secret. Burn before reading

The sixties of the last century breathed the spirit of freedom throughout the world. These were years of global changes in worldview.
USA, Western and Eastern Europe, Japan, Guatemala and Angola, Australia and Thailand, China and Argentina, Mexico and Brazil… Resistance to repressive systems gave rise to fires and barricades, Molotov cocktails and mass anti-war demonstrations, guerrilla wars and ethnic uprisings. Student intellectual-worker French revolution of 1968 and invasion of troops Soviet army to Czechoslovakia in the same year - these two facets of democratic thinking and totalitarianism for a long time determined the progressive and regressive paths of development, which affected exactly twenty years later.

Humanistic ideas, sexual and technological revolutions (the creation of the first computers) - all this also comes from the 60s. As well as the music of The Beatles, rock, masterpieces of cinematography and a surge of intellectual and philosophical thought, the cultivation of democratic and libertarian-democratic principles and values.

The 60s of the last century changed the world. Ideas that originate there continue to change it. Even despite the stagnation of the 70s and the stagnation of the 80s, the launched mechanism for the renewal of social thought continues to have a huge impact on progressive movements and trends in different countries of the world, encourages people to protest, solidarity and action.

Sixties from one sixth of the land have long become urban legends. Those of them who survived, as well as those who leave one after another, but who retained their ideals as true mythological Titans, by strength of mind, youthfulness of soul and thought, influence and aim younger generations at action. So there is hope for a revolutionary-evolutionary social breakthrough.

The term "sixties" was first used by Stanislav Rassadin in an article with the same title, which was published in December 1960 in the journal Yunost.

The Sixties are part of the intelligentsia that appeared during the period of the "thaw" that came after the 20th Congress of the CPSU, where Stalin's "personality cult" was debunked. At this time, the internal political course of the state was much more liberal and free compared to previous times, which could not but affect the cultural sphere of society.

Poetry of the sixties

Poetry played a key role in the culture of the society of that time. The hope for change caused a strong spiritual upsurge, which inspired the sixties to write their poems.

Poetry became not only popular, for the first time after the Silver Age, it became again one of the critical aspects social life of the country.

Crowds of thousands came to listen to the performances of poets, their collections instantly sold out from the shelves, and the writers themselves became a kind of expression of creative freedom.

Representatives

by the most famous poets of that time were Robert Rozhdestvensky, Evgeny Yevtushenko, Andrey Voznesensky, Bella Akhmadulina.

Robert Ivanovich Rozhdestvensky (1932-1994) wrote thirty collections of poetry throughout his life. Many of his poems have been set to music. He also received recognition as a translator. Expressing ideas opposed to Soviet ideology, he was persecuted and forced to move to Kyrgyzstan, where he began to earn money by translating poems, the authors of which were from the southern republics.

Yevgeny Alexandrovich Yevtushenko (1932-2017) wrote more than sixty collections. The greatest success of this author was the poem "Bratskaya HPP", in the lines of which an expression appeared that received the status of a motto: "A poet in Russia is more than a poet." He also acted in films and on stage. After the collapse of the USSR, he moved with his whole family to the United States.

Andrei Andreevich Voznesensky (1933-2010) was an avant-garde poet who could write in all styles, from traditional to the most progressive. He wrote over forty lyric collections and poems. The text of the well-known song "A Million Scarlet Roses" belongs to him.

Bella Akhatovna Akhmadulina (1937-2010) - wrote more than thirty collections.

Songwriters, or as they were called "bards", became a special phenomenon in the "thaw", and the genre began to be called "author's song". These included those poets who performed their own works to music. The key personalities in this movement were Bulat Okudzhava, Vladimir Vysotsky, Alexander Galich, Yuri Vizbor.

Features of creativity

The poems of the sixties stood out for their spontaneity and responsiveness. Ideology had minimal influence on topics and their disclosure. The people instantly fell in love with their poems, as they were honest: something that at that time was very lacking.

Main theme

People were greatly hurt by the fact that the ideal image of the state and its leaders was violated due to the announcement by Nikita Khrushchev of the "crime of the cult of personality" at the 20th Congress of the CPSU and the publicity of Stalin's repressions. But at the same time, they rejoiced at the rehabilitation and release of many victims of unjust sentences. The poets expressed not only the disappointment and confusion experienced by every citizen of the USSR, but also the great joy of the people, who admitted their mistakes and returned to the true path to communism. As contemporaries of that period say, there was a taste of freedom and upcoming changes in the air that would bring the country to equality, freedom and brotherhood.

The younger generation of the intelligentsia was infected with this idea. The desire for freedom, delight, youthful maximalism, ideas about ideals, faith in a beautiful future found their place in their poems, which resonated with the desire of readers.

Sixties as a cultural phenomenon

The poems of the 1960s became a kind of fresh air in the country. Awareness of Stalin's repressions, moral feelings, the desire for freedom, the desire for change - all these are the reasons why poetry has become an outlet.

The Sixties did not abandon the ideas of communism, they kept a deep faith in the ideals of the October Revolution. Therefore, symbols of that time so often appeared in their poems: the red banner, speeches, Budyonovka, the cavalry army, lines of revolutionary songs.

The poets who became famous in those decades did not stop writing and published their works until their very death or are still releasing them.

There is no art of the sixties, and there is no certain sign that would unite it, - says director Marlen Khutsiev, the author of one of the main sixties films “Zastava Ilyich” (“I am twenty years old”). - If you take Voznesensky, does he look like Yevtushenko or Akhmadulina? They are all very different, they cannot be combined into one direction. Another thing is that then there were conditions favorable for the existence of different artists. The fact that they were different, and was common - such a paradox.

However, from the present day of the sixties, at first glance, it seems to be an era of integrity. It even has clear chronological boundaries: on February 25, 1956, at the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU, Nikita Khrushchev read out a report exposing Stalin's personality cult - for many this was a promise of freedom and the beginning of the era of "socialism with a human face", and on August 20-21, 1968 Soviet tanks entered Prague, crushing democratic reforms in Czechoslovakia.

In fact, the 60s were an era full of internal contradictions. And its uniqueness just consisted in this “unity of opposites”: communism and individualism, fine taste and frank philistinism, natural science and humanitarian pictures of the world, urbanization and striving for nature, democracy and technocracy - these oppositions, forming dialectical unities, consisted of the sixties Utopia.

Later, when this utopia collapsed, oppositions also crumbled, turning into conflict zones of the 70s, 80s, 90s and zero, becoming pain points and neuroses modern society. It was the sixties that gave us today's life - with all its difficulties, contradictions, wars and hopes.

Communism - individualism

The unity of public and personal, characteristic of the 60s, was replaced by confrontation and even conflict. Beginningsince the 70s, the personal has come into conflict with the state

For us, communism is a world of freedom and creativity,” said Boris Strugatsky in the second half of the 1990s. In 1961, when the CPSU adopted the Program for the Construction of Communism, most Soviet intellectuals saw no contradiction between communism and individualism. And even in 1972, after the defeat of the Prague Spring and the loss of the sixties illusions, Andrey Voznesensky wrote: “Even if - as an exception // you are trampled by the crowd, // in human // purpose // ninety percent of the good."

In fact, in its program, the party promised the Soviet people another utopia: "The current generation of Soviet people will live under communism."

The party program was discussed in the kitchens, - says Lev Ernst, vice-president of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences. - But no one around me believed that communism would exist in twenty years. And then I thought that it was impossible to set a time frame for the onset of communism.

The ideology of the 1960s stands in stark contrast to the ideology of self-sacrifice and state over-centralization characteristic of Stalinism. The idea of ​​peaceful communist construction appeals to self-interest: "everything in the name of man, for the good of man."

As a result of new approaches to economic policy in 1965-1970, there was the most powerful economic growth in 30 years: an average growth rate of 8.5% per year. The population formed colossal savings - more than $ 100 billion at the official rate. The then Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin in 1966 argued to Brezhnev at a meeting of the Politburo the need to build an automobile plant: “Someday this money supply will collapse in an avalanche and crush everyone ... First of all, us! In order to withdraw these billions from the capsules, it is necessary to throw into the domestic market not jewelry and imported consumer goods, as today, but something more significant. This “more weighty” will be our new domestic car, created on the basis of Western technologies!”

“Well, Alexey Nikolaevich, I convinced you! Brezhnev answered then. - Instruct your subordinates, the chairman of the KGB and the Minister of Foreign Trade, so that they find out in which country it is possible to buy a factory cheaper ... We give you six months.

Thus, it was precisely economic considerations, that is, the threat of inflation, that created the basis for the consumer boom, which inevitably led to the individualization of the life of a Soviet person.

The key thesis of the Program of the CPSU: "Communism is a highly organized society of free and conscious workers." This allowed advanced Marxists like Merab Mamardashvili to rethink orthodox Marxism-Leninism: “In philosophy, freedom is an internal necessity. The necessity of oneself.

The population began to move from communal apartments to separate apartments with kitchens and kitchen conversations: here you could safely call friends, forming a social circle with your own hands. And on March 14, 1967, a five-day work week with two days off is introduced, and the Soviet person finally has personal leisure.

But paradoxically, state concern for the autonomous life of a person leads to the growth of collectivism, in fact, to spontaneous communism.

The Sixties was remembered for the high intensity of friendly relations, - recalls human rights activist, member of the dissident movement Boris Zolotukhin. - It was the apotheosis of friendship. We had no other way to get information - only by communicating with each other, we could learn something.

After the Stalinist repressions, when only a few people could be considered close friends without danger to their lives and freedom, the friendly companies of the thaw times were truly huge - 40-50 people each. With all the internal disagreements and contradictions, the society was very consolidated: everyone communicated with everyone, and even Khrushchev argued with cultural figures, and they answered him.

The most powerful blow to this lifestyle and to the regime itself was the defeat of the Prague Spring. The Soviet intelligentsia was forced to somehow relate to this event, to take some position in relation to it. And then it turned out that she did not have a single position.

The entry of Soviet troops into Czechoslovakia, which then ranked first in the world in terms of the number of communists per thousand inhabitants, consolidated the ranks of Western dissidents like Andrei Amalrik, Natalya Gorbanevskaya or Larisa Bogoraz. Romantic Marxists like Alexander Zinoviev and Roy Medvedev argued that the leadership of the party had deviated from the "authentic" Marx and Lenin. Soil nationalists like Igor Shafarevich and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn opposed not only Marxism, but the whole Western modernization project in general.

Utopia decomposed into official collectivism and different forms illegal individualism, more or less radical. Already in the early 80s, in all universities of the country, in classes on the history of the CPSU, a special lecture was given, which explained why, for what “subjective and objective” reasons, communism was never built on schedule. sharp, almost allergic reaction this unfinished communism was replaced by the total individualism of the 1990s, which did not take on the utopian forms of freedom of creativity that the sixties dreamed of.

Taste - philistinism

The consumer boom in the 60s gave rise to a utopia of personal taste: the thing was supposed to serve the aesthetics and practice of communism, and not unbridled “thingism”. In the stagnant 70s, consumption was limited only by scarcity, not taste.

It was the beginning of the era of consumption, - recalls the writer Sergei Khrushchev, son of Nikita Khrushchev. - There was some confidence in the future. There was an increase in the birth rate: from three to five million people a year. But there was no global consumption - every new variety sausage was a revelation. The appearance of Czech meatballs in stores, the opportunity to buy meat and cook barbecue - that was the consumption of those years. When suddenly you discover that you can get to the Crimea by car, and before that there were only country roads.

The turn of the 50s and 60s was a unique era of cheerful consumption, a kind of consumer drive. In this short era, the thing was both utilitarian and symbolic. It was a sign of the communist utopia, and was hunted down as if it were a thing from Tommaso Campanella's own City of the Sun.

That is why the sixties combined the struggle against philistinism and "materialism" and the consumer boom of the early 60s, the desire for simplicity and functionality, and the rise of industrial design, unprecedented for the Soviet era.

At the turn of the 50s and 60s, the concept of Soviet “taste” appeared as a reflection of socialist culture and the concept of “beauty”, which was emphasized by man-made: one could not be born beautiful, but become thanks to clothes, hairstyle and makeup.

Taste is simplicity and proportion. It is characteristic that the first stars of the Soviet catwalk - Regina Zbarskaya, Mila Romanovskaya, Galina Milovskaya - were ordinary women over 30, and fashion models with a variety of figures, up to size 60, were accepted into model houses.

The 60s is the era of love for everything new. The consumer of that time, in a sense, felt the drive of a pioneer. New things were “mined” with the same enthusiasm as minerals: it was important to be the first. This drive, as it were, removed the petty-bourgeois, “thingish” touch from the object and endowed it with symbolic value.

Many say that the first jeans appeared in someone there ... It's all lies. I had the first jeans in Leningrad, at least white ones! - says the poet Anatoly Naiman. - In 1964. Real. American.

Things were measured as records.

Vysotsky then already had a blue Mercedes, the first in Moscow, - says director Alexander Mitta. - Then the same appeared at Nikita Mikhalkov, even more blue.

There was a split in the aesthetic system of the 60s, which later, with the collapse of the sixties utopia, became a conflict that neuroticized the society of the 90s and zero. The objects evoked ambivalent feelings: they were proud of them and at the same time they were ashamed of them.

I had a stunning sandy jacket of small velveteen from Nabokov's sister - they brought it to someone, it turned out to be small, - Anatoly Naiman recalls. And he also says: - Yevtushenko was a dandy. We are walking along a somehow terrible winter Moscow street, and he is coming from a restaurant, in some kind of fur coat that is not ours, chic, unbuttoned. To meet him dad in a wadded coat and a boy. Yevtushenko spread his hands and said loudly: "Here are my people!" And suddenly this dad in a padded jacket stopped him and asked: “What circus are you, guy?”

In many ways, the philistinism of the 60s was synonymous with comfort: faith in utopia fought with it as with what keeps it in the present, preventing it from rushing into a brighter future. But the paradox is that the clothes and furniture of the 60s, which were hunted for and which, as in Viktor Rozov’s play “In Search of Joy”, were chopped with a saber in a fit of proletarian anger, were just not comfortable. They were futuristic.

The 60s was a time of obsession with everything artificial, from fabrics to fur and hair: wigs and hairpieces came into fashion, hair was dyed in all colors of the spectrum, both with the help of special paints and improvised means like hydrogen peroxide or ink diluted in water.

At the same time, geometric silhouettes, silver suit-like dresses, short trapezoidal coats of cheerful colors and abstract patterns a la Picasso came into fashion - visual futurism copied by Soviet everyday culture of the 60s from Christian Dior and other Western designers.

At the same time, fashionable synthetic fabrics pricked, stuck to the body and made their owner sweat in any weather; fashionable pointed stilettos deformed a woman's foot, got stuck in the ribbed steps of escalators and punched holes in the asphalt; behind fashionable low coffee tables it was uncomfortable to sit. But all these things had not a utilitarian, but a symbolic value - as material signs of a utopia that is about to become a reality.

But already in the middle and especially at the end of the 60s, when this utopia began to crumble and ceased to provide the sphere of Soviet consumption with symbolic capital, the bourgeoisie gained unprecedented strength, because the futuristic things accumulated by Soviet citizens in an effort to bring the future closer became just things. In the early 1990s, when the West became a kind of geographical utopia for us for a short time, the "materialism" of the new Russian man again became symbolic and pioneering, but even faster - with the collapse of faith in another utopia - it turned into an ordinary shuttle.

I did not have a shock from the end of the 60s, - says Alexander Mitta. - The real shock came later, when it turned out that for many, the late stagnation of the 80s with its stupid consumerist philistinism - saving up for a car, buying a summer house, etc. - turned out to be more attractive than drive, inner freedom, creative searches and, yes, everyday disorder 60s.

Physicists - lyrics

In the 1960s, there were no conflicts between the natural-scientific and humanitarian pictures of the world: both of them were elements of a single utopia of the new man. Having gone into a profession or into dissidence, both physicists and lyricists lost their influence on society.

The image of a harmonious personality, which the sixties utopia demanded, was determined by two poems by Boris Slutsky: “Physics and Lyrics” and “Lyrics and Physics”. In them, a man-physicist with logarithms and formulas was opposed to a man-lyricist with rhyme and a line, but it was clear to everyone that there really was no opposition.

A resident of Utopia is smart, cheerful, positive, working for the benefit of civilization, for its future. A party worker (officialdom, Stalinism), a collective farmer (uneducated, earthly), a proletarian (the same as a collective farmer), an employee (a person from the present) could not become such a hero. Only the intelligentsia - engineering, scientific and creative - claimed the title of a new man.

There was no opposition, - recalls Mikhail Marov, an engineer and astronomer who launched the first devices to Venus in the early 60s. - If they were reasonable physicists, then they respected the lyricists. And they considered the introduction to the lyrics an integral part of their worldview. I absolutely associate myself with the sixties. And so I am very worried about the death of Andrei Voznesensky. I was close to his poetry, and Rozhdestvensky, and Yevtushenko. I ran to the Polytechnic University ... This was part of the concept of "intelligence".

And Voznesensky wrote in the 60s: “A woman stands at the cyclotron - // slender, // listens with magnetism, // light streams through her, // red, like a strawberry, // in the tip of her little finger ... "

Physicists were interested in humanitarian problems, and not only in poetry, but also in social ideas, lyricists were inspired by scientific and technical utopia. The philosophers and sociologists who appeared after 1953 largely adopted the scientific and engineering worldview: the world can and should be changed, moreover, according to science, according to the project.

The films “Nine Days of One Year” and the book by the Strugatskys “Monday begins on Saturday” became symbols of the time: “What do you do?” I asked. “Like all science,” said the hawk-nosed one. - Human happiness.

It must be said that the “free physicist” did so much in the 50s and 60s that it’s hard to believe even now. Of the 19 Russian Nobel laureates, ten received their prizes in 1956-1965: two of them are writers (Mikhail Sholokhov and Boris Pasternak), and the rest are physicists and chemists. In 1954, the world's first nuclear power plant was built in Obninsk. In 1957 - a synchrophasotron at the newly created international Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, which is still the largest scientific center today.

In 1957, the USSR launched a satellite into space, and already in 1961, Gagarin with his "Let's go!" In 1955, after the "letter of three hundred", the creation of genetic and biochemical laboratories began, and although Academician Lysenko returned in 1961, the work of our geneticists has already appeared in international journals.

Harmonious man of the future worked in the laboratory, played the guitar, debated about the habitability of the universe in the cafe "Integral" of the Novosibirsk Academgorodok, attended performances of the Taganka Theater and "Sovremennik" in Moscow, poetry evenings at the Polytechnic Museum. The latter, by the way, shows well how the myth was created. Here is what Marlen Khutsiev says:

As for the poetry evenings at the Polytechnic, it was I who accidentally revived the tradition. And such evenings acquired a mass character precisely after that scene in Ilyich's Outpost. Prior to this, the poets of the sixties performed separately at different venues. I just put them together. And after they began their performances at the stadiums.

The logical continuation of the symbiosis of physicists with lyricists was the social activity of prominent scientists, primarily Andrei Sakharov, who in 1966 signed a collective letter about the danger of the revival of the Stalin cult. Along with scientists - Kapitsa, Artsimovich, Tamm - among the "signatories" were writers: Kataev, Nekrasov, Paustovsky.

I had no intention to radically change something in the country, - says Mikhail Marov. - Many of the principles on which socialism was built satisfied me. And I thought that we need to move away from conservative concepts a little. And the champion of this direction was Andrey Dmitrievich Sakharov, who was very respected not only by me, but by many people, who was just talking about socialism with a human face.

“The scientific method of guiding politics, economics, art, education, and military affairs has not yet become a reality,” Andrei Sakharov wrote in his first socio-political article, Reflections on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom. It was in 1968, at the height of the Prague Spring, when Soviet tanks had not yet entered Czechoslovakia. In April, Sakharov still counted on discussing his ideas with the country's leadership and society, but by August the capital's intelligentsia no longer hoped for equal participation in the life of the country. Communism with a human face failed.

Here is what one of the main dissidents of the country Sergey Kovalev says:

I had to hear from my colleagues more than once: “You understand that you are an accomplished scientist, and you understand what professionalism is. Why are you getting into politics, where are you an amateur? You despise dilettantism." It seems to me that this is an insincere judgment. There was a desire to earn the right to self-respect. That's all. The most intelligent of us understood perfectly well that all our actions and statements are not at all political in nature. This is the nature of moral incompatibility... I was put in the midst of work. Ten years of camp and exile. Then I was evicted from Moscow. And what is a break of 13 years in science?

Having gone into dissidence or purely professionalism, the sixties actually lost the opportunity to defend their ideals in discussions with the authorities. The temporary surge in the activity of scientists and writers during perestroika was exclusively dissident, anti-Soviet. The sixties only helped the nomenclature to destroy the USSR, but there was no longer a positive progressive communist utopia. Physicists and lyricists - two hemispheres of a harmonious personality - went in different directions, and an ideological void of the 90s formed in the space between them.

City - virgin land

In the 60s, urbanization and unity with nature were part of the same social reality. Today, on the site of utopia, there are concrete jungles, spontaneous summer cottages, tourism and downshifting.

For centuries man has fled from wildlife to comfort. From the cave - to the hut, from the hut - to an apartment with gas, electricity, running water and a toilet bowl. The Sixties turned out to be the first generation in which the reverse movement also took place en masse.

40.3% of Soviet cities were built after 1945. At the same time, the peak of construction fell precisely on the 60s. The rapid growth of the urban environment created a new image of Soviet culture: its peasant-settlement appearance began to fade and acquire urban features. Even the village began to urbanize thanks to the economic fashion for large agro-industrial complexes.

In the spring of 1959, three hundred physics students from Moscow State University went to Northern Kazakhstan to build houses, calves and chicken coops. Thus began the movement of construction teams, which captured almost all the universities of the country. Virgin soil (unplowed land) has become another word - a symbol of the era.

On the wave of the patriotic movement for the development of virgin lands, Komsomol trains went eastward with songs and dances. The main slogan is "Everything to the virgin lands!" - recalls the actor Igor Kvasha. - And we thought: why not create your own Komsomol theater there?

The state task was being solved - to develop new lands, to increase productivity. Youth Drive was part of a government project. Many were put off by this. Then, among scientists, a fashion was born for another form of escape to nature - tourism and expeditions.

Everyone got under the backpacks: both those who had to do this on duty (for example, geologists), and those whose work did not require this at all. For example, the physicist, Nobel laureate Igor Tamm was an avid climber (they say he owns the aphorism: “Mountaineering is not the most The best way overwinter the summer”, which then became widely used with the cut out particle “not”).

The expeditionary movement swept the country. In every carriage of a train or electric train one could meet peppy guys with girlfriends in cowboy shirts and sneakers. It was a tarpaulin subculture: windbreakers, backpacks, tents. Unlike modern synthetics, all this shamelessly got wet even with an average rain. But all the same, the tarpaulin seemed more attractive than the reinforced concrete of the "petty-bourgeois" apartments.

Now they are leaving for Thailand or the south of India, but then you could take a tent and a guitar and rush like a savage to the sea, to the forest or somewhere else. For scientists, it was a natural way of life,” recalls Alexander Mitta.

In the 1960s, there were no obvious contradictions between the city and nature. The hero with a backpack stormed mountain passes, crossed rivers and opened a can of stew with a cleaver. Then he returned home, washed, shaved, put on a sweater and went to his laboratory to storm the atomic nucleus or living cell. "Leaving for the field" was devoid of pathos, since it implied a return.

But gradually this image ceased to be conflict-free. In the film by Kira Muratova "Short Encounters" the protagonist, played by Vysotsky, the same wanderer with a guitar, dangling back and forth, free, independent, despising career and material wealth, finds himself between two heroines: one is a simple village girl who goes to the city on foot for some unknown to herself " different life, the second is a city district committee official who controls the commissioning of new Khrushchevs and who is sick of all this. And it turns out that a truly spiritual, full-fledged person (Vysotsky's hero) can be himself only in uncultured places, far from society, not inscribed in society. Everything else breaks it.

By the beginning of the 70s, domestic tourism began to acquire the features of internal emigration. The author's song constantly teetered on the verge of underground and approval: bard gatherings were either supported or banned.

My friends and I went hiking, - says lawyer Boris Zolotukhin. - It was an opportunity to get away from propaganda. The illusion of complete freedom is to hide in an airtight circle of friends. And then, in Moscow, Western radio stations were jammed, and in the forest "Speedola" took everything perfectly ...

Now attempts to escape from a well-maintained, but also conflicting urban environment are called differently. And if in the 60s someone had told a construction team, a geologist or a water tourist that he was engaged in downshifting, then in response, most likely, he would have received in the face. But in vain.

Democracy - technocracy

Rule in the utopia of the 60s was based on the people, but culturally and scientifically equipped progressives should rule. With the death of the idea of ​​progress, a false choice arose between the power of the crowd and a strong hand.

“Under democratic management, according to the desires of the majority, progress would be stopped, since the progressive principle is concentrated in a small number of people ... Therefore, the democratic principle of governing people only works when it is associated with the deception of some by others.” This aphorism of the Nobel laureate Pyotr Kapitsa of the 1960s perfectly illustrates the democratic utopia of the 60s - its logical equipment, irony, as well as the need for a consistent combination of "the power of the people" and "the power of those who know."

In certain areas, progress, right according to Kapitsa, was stopped democratically - in perestroika. Why?

Nikita [Khrushchev], having drunk, began in a very sharp form to accuse the writers of not helping the Party in the building of communism. And when Margarita Aliger tried to disagree with him, he, having lost all control over himself, yelled like a cut: “You don’t understand at all what the state of the country is. We buy herring for gold, and you write here. What are you writing?" - Igor Kvasha recalls.

But in fact, 1963, when the intelligentsia began to fear a return to Stalinism, was a time when the state was still close to the people, and the country was not yet "this country."

It was such a pink period of relations with the authorities, - Alexander Mitta recalls. - We needed to show both the people and the authorities that we are doing vital things.

Until 1964, I lived in the family of the head of state, and we had constant conversations about politics, - says Sergei Khrushchev, the son of the then General Secretary. - The reforms implied the democratization of the economy and political life. Relative freedom of expression did not appear by itself, relative, but unthinkable even in Stalin's time ... People lived their own lives, but without the reformation this surge would never have happened.

Marlen Khutsiev does not agree with him:

In fact, the thaw began earlier, immediately after Stalin's death, even before the 20th Congress. And when this congress was held, I was already filming Spring on Zarechnaya Street. It was then that the thaw began to be attributed to Khrushchev.

By the beginning of the Khrushchev thaw, the USSR had great potential, accumulated by internal energy and freedom of small groups, seminars, circles, not only in physics, engineering, literature, but even in the social sciences (the Moscow Methodological Circle had been working at the Faculty of Philosophy of Moscow State University since 1952) . Poetry readings at the Polytechnic Museum, Landau's seminars, and discussions of advanced logic on the example of Marx's Capital were connected by a common style and a common utopia. It can be called "democratic", but the essence was not just freedom of opinion, but the freedom of justified creative expression. For stupidity and mediocrity it was possible to get, and very hard.

And can't political discussions and management decisions be organized as freely, scientifically and effectively as a mathematical or philosophical seminar? Nothing seemed to stop us from moving in that direction. But…

“We are run by goons and enemies of culture. They will never be with us. They will always be against us.<…>And if for us communism is a world of freedom and creativity, then for them communism is a society where the population immediately and with pleasure fulfills all the instructions of the party and government,” Boris Strugatsky described the context of the creation of “It's hard to be a god”. In 1963, when the Strugatskys' novels were published almost without censorship, almost key characters became progressors, agents of communism on a planet ruled by the wild Middle Ages. This can also be understood as a discussion of the role of the intelligentsia in the USSR: to what extent is it possible to interfere in the affairs of savages so as not to harm, but to help them gradually move towards progress?

When in the late 60s it became clear that the USSR was not an experimental state building communism, but simply an empire without any high goals, the intelligentsia went into internal emigration. “If it fell out to be born in the Empire, / It is better to live in a remote province by the sea,” wrote Joseph Brodsky.

However, the “aggressiveness” of the empire played, perhaps, no greater role in disappointment in the USSR than another factor: the party elite passed into the stage of solidification and no longer wanted to build communism itself, and certainly did not let anyone “upstairs”. The Stalinist norms of personnel rotation were abolished - in higher bodies parties by 1/4 and in regional and district by 1/3. Thus, conditions were created for the stagnation of the 70-80s and the formation of a class of party-Soviet bureaucracy - the nomenklatura. It became more and more difficult for technocrats to enter power, and rotation and movement stopped in science and culture. As in a joke about Shostakovich from a book by Mikhail Ardov: “During the war, Dmitry Dmitrievich was in Kuibyshev, where he saw and remembered such a wonderful announcement: “From October 1, the open dining room is closed here. There is a closed dining room here.” Since the 70s, the USSR began to become a "closed dining room".

Those alliances that sometimes formed between the sixties with the nomenklatura in subsequent years turned out to be tragic. Participants of the V Congress of the Union of Cinematographers, which took place on May 13, 1986, subsequently apologized for the revolutionary overthrow of the "retrogrades" and classics of Soviet cinema Lev Kulidzhanov and Sergei Bondarchuk. And the authors of the letter in support of Yeltsin in October 1993 could hardly be proud of the style and content of this message, which justified the shooting of the White House: “Thank God, the army and law enforcement agencies were with the people.” With the beginning of the first Chechen war the meaning of dissidence again became Soviet: the sixties broke with power forever.

They were the elite of a huge country in the era of its historical chance. But it was their "technocracy" and "elitism" that first came into conflict with the authoritarianism of the party nomenklatura (and lost), and then, in 1993, with the real desires of the masses (and also lost). The dream once again did not withstand the collision with reality.

Photo: Marc Garanger/CORBIS/FOTOSA.RU; RUSSIAN LOOK; GAMMA/EYEDEA/EAT NEWS; Time & Life Pictures/GETTY IMAGES/FOTOBANK; Dean Conger/CORBIS/FOTOSA.RU; Dean Conger/CORBIS; RIA NEWS

Birth, heyday and collapse of the sixties utopia: facts and poems by Andrei Voznesensky

25/02/1956

The beginning of the thaw: at the 20th Congress of the CPSU, a report by Nikita Khrushchev "On the cult of personality and its consequences" was heard.

... Everything burned out clean.
The police are full.
Its end!
Everything is started!
Go to the cinema!

12/04/1961

A triumph for the Soviet space program: Yuri Gagarin became the first man to fly into space.

Our neighbor Bukashkin lives with us,
in blotter-colored underpants.
But like balloons
burning above him
Antiworlds!

09/1965-02/1966

The trial of the writers Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel: they were accused of publishing works abroad that “discredited the Soviet state and social system” and of anti-Soviet propaganda.

And Taras has a dark dream.
A piece of howling meat
through the crowds, the streets,
grimaces,
through life, to the drumming,
They lead him through the ranks, through the ranks!
Lead under a collective howl:
"Whoever hits badly - themselves through the ranks."

20-21/08/1968

The defeat of the Prague Spring: the troops of the Warsaw Pact countries entered the capital of Czechoslovakia; the largest contingent was allocated by the USSR. Czech "socialism with a human face" crushed by Soviet tanks.

While eyewitnesses thought:
Take it or what? —
My age, in essence, has come true
And it stands like a brick for centuries.

25/12/1979

Soviet troops entered Afghanistan.

Hunt to die, looking at the era ...
In which only a drunkard is honest,
When the earth is torn apart,
Want to die before everyone else dies.

22/01/1980

Andrei Sakharov was arrested, together with his wife Elena Bonner exiled to Gorky without trial and stripped of most of his ranks.

We are troubadours from the word "fools".
You were right to trample us.
You have populated all cubic capacity.
The space is yours. But the time is ours.

19/07-3/08/1980.

Moscow hosted the XXII Summer Olympic Games.

Everything is sharper and redder
Squirrels of my friends.
And ripens, hiding the deadlines,
National explosion.

26/04/1986

A major accident occurred at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which resulted in a large-scale environmental disaster.

Nuclear winter, nuclear winter...
Science this phenomenon only a year as she found out herself.
Will turn into an icicle
winning side.

26/03/1989

The first parliamentary elections in history are held in the USSR, in which voters chose from several candidates for deputies.

Our Marias are pregnant by Beria.
The whole nation became like the collective Christ.
We, the unbaptized children of the Empire,
We grope for faith from the contrary.

19/08/1991

August putsch: in order to prevent the collapse of the USSR, a group of conspirators from the leadership of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the government formed the State Committee for the State of Emergency, removed Mikhail Gorbachev from power and sent troops to Moscow.

Punka spotted, bunnies heels.
Where are you spinning? Did you get a visa?
What countries do you put in order,
OMONA Lisa?

11/12/1994

The beginning of the first Chechen war: in order to "ensure law, order and public safety" units of the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Internal Affairs were introduced into the territory of the Chechen Republic.

sun black and red
nega nega negative
river brown-eyed river
snow snow inextinguishable

02/2001

The birth of the Russian blogosphere: the first Russian-speaking users of the LiveJournal.com blog service appeared on the Internet.

You weren't saved.
I will collect in my soul
seventh of the earth
With a short name - ru ...

25/10/2003

Businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky was arrested at Novosibirsk airport on charges of tax evasion and embezzlement.

Money smells like the future
What we spend them on
For kindergarten bun
Or a terrorist attack.
…
They smell of will, Lord,
Sometimes a prisoner.
The more you accumulate -
You lose more.

09/2008

The world financial crisis came to Russia.

Will turn into a hole bagel,
I can't stand everything else.
And then I won't be.
Without me. And without you.

Speaking about the historical period under the spring name "thaw", it is impossible to remain silent about the unusually romantic atmosphere of that time. It is not so much historians or new-fangled serials that help to recreate it after fifty years and feel it, but the literature of the 60s, as if absorbing the humid air of the thaw into light lines. Spiritual upsurge, inspired by hopes for imminent changes, was embodied in the poetry of the sixties: Andrei Voznesensky, Robert Rozhdestvensky, Yevgeny Yevtushenko and others.

Sixties- these are young representatives of the creative intelligentsia of the USSR of the 60s. A galaxy of poets, formed during the "thaw". Voznesensky, Rozhdestvensky and Yevtushenko, the leaders of that poetic circle, developed a vigorous creative activity, gathering entire halls and stadiums (since such an opportunity arose due to the softening of the political regime). They were united by a sincere and strong emotional impulse aimed at cleansing the vices of the past, gaining the present and approaching a brighter future.

1. Evgeny Yevtushenko(years of life: 1933-2017) - one of the most famous authors. He was nominated for a Nobel Prize for his contribution to literature, but did not receive it. His most famous work is the Bratskaya HPP, where he first mentioned the phrase that became the slogan of Soviet poetry: “A poet in Russia is more than a poet.” At home, he was active in public activities, supported perestroika, but in 1991 he emigrated to the United States with his family.
2. Andrei Voznesensky(years of life: 1933-2010) is not only a poet, but also an artist, architect and publicist. Known for writing the text of the legendary song "A Million Scarlet Roses" and the libretto of the country's first rock opera "Juno and Avos". The composition "I will never forget you" belongs to his pen. Voznesensky's unique ability is to create works of high artistic value, and at the same time popular among the people and understandable to him. He traveled abroad many times, but he lived, created and died in his homeland.
3. Robert Rozhdestvensky(years of life: 1932-1994) - a poet who also became famous as a translator. In Soviet times, he was persecuted for independence of judgment, so he was forced to flee to Kyrgyzstan and earn his living by translating texts of poets from other republics. He wrote many pop songs, for example, the soundtracks for the film "New Adventures of the Elusive". Of the poetic works, the most famous are “A Letter from a Woman”, “Everything Begins with Love”, “Please, be weaker”, etc.
4. Bulat Okudzhava(years of life: 1924-1997) - a popular bard, singer, composer and screenwriter. He was especially famous for his author's songs, for example, "On Tverskoy Boulevard", "Song about Lyonka Korolyov", "Song about the blue ball", etc. Often wrote musical compositions for films. Traveled abroad and won honor abroad. Actively engaged social activities advocating democratic values.
5. Yuri Vizbor(years of life: 1934-1984) - the famous performer of the author's song and the creator of a new genre - "Songs-reportage". He also became famous as an actor, journalist, prose writer and artist. He wrote over 300 poems set to music. Especially famous are “Let's fill our hearts with music”, “If I get sick”, “Lady”, etc. Many of his creations have been used in films.
6. Bella Akhmadulina(years of life: 1937-2010) - a poetess who became famous in the genre of a lyric poem. Her skill is very targeted in the cinema. For example, her work “On My Street Which Year” was featured in the “Irony of Fate”. Her work is characterized by a classical sound and an appeal to the origins. Her style of painting is often compared to impressionism.
7. Yunna Moritz(years of life: 1937 - present time) - in Soviet times, the author was practically unknown, since Moritz's poems were banned due to opposition. She was also expelled from the literary institute. But her work found a reader in samizdat. She described it as "pure lyrics of resistance". Many of her poems have been set to music.
8. Alexander Galich(years of life: 1918-1977) - screenwriter, playwright, author and performer of his own songs. His creative views also did not coincide with those officially approved, so many of his works were distributed underground, but they gained genuine popular love. He was expelled from the country, died abroad from an accident. He always spoke negatively about the Soviet regime.
9. Novella Matveeva(years of life: 1934-2016) - poetess, translator, playwright and literary critic. She often performed at concerts and festivals, but most of her works were published after her death. She performed not only her works, but also songs based on her husband's poems.
10. Julius Kim- (years of life: 1936 - present) - dissident poet, bard, screenwriter and composer. Known for the oppositional and bold for its time songs “Gentlemen and Ladies”, “Lawyer Waltz”, etc. The play-composition "Moscow Kitchens" is of particular importance. Kim sarcastically criticized society and power in the USSR. After perestroika, he wrote many librettos for musicals, including Count Orlov, Notre Dame de Paris, Monte Cristo, Anna Karenina and others.

Short poems of poets of the sixties

Many poets of the thaw period have works that are not voluminous at all. For example, a lyrical poem about love by Andrei Voznesensky:

In the human body
Ninety percent water
As, probably, in Paganini,
Ninety percent love.
Even if - as an exception -
The crowd tramples you
In the human
Appointment -
Ninety percent good.
Ninety percent music
Even if she's in trouble
So in me
Despite the trash
Ninety percent of you.

Also brevity, as the sister of talent, can boast of Evgeny Yevtushenko:

Treat temporality humanely.
There is no need to cast a shadow on everything that is not eternal.
There is a temporality of the weekly deception
Potemkin hasty villages.
But they also put up makeshift dormitories,
until houses are built by others ...
You tell them after a quiet death
thanks to their honest temporality.

If you want to get to know one of the small poems of that period in more detail and feel its mood and message, then you should pay attention to.

Features of creativity

The emotional intensity of the civil lyrics of the sixties - main feature this cultural phenomenon. Direct, responsive and lively poems sounded like drops. The poets reacted sincerely and regardless of ideological expediency to the difficult fate of the country and the troubles of the whole world. They transformed the traditional stagnant Soviet pathos into the progressive and honest voice of a generation. If they sympathized, then hysterically and desperately, if they rejoiced, then simply and easily. Probably, Voznesensky said everything about the poets of the sixties in his poem "Goya":

I am the throat
A hanged woman whose body is like a bell
beat over the bare square ...

Creativity of the sixties is rightfully considered one of the brightest pages of Russian literary history.

Sixties as a cultural phenomenon

The poetry of the thaw period is a breath of fresh air in a country that is hard going through the moral consequences of the Stalinist terror. However, their creative path is not limited to one era, many of them still write. The poets of the 60s did not lag behind the times, although they retained the proud name "sixties" or "60s foremen" - an abbreviation of the usual phrase that has become fashionable.

Of course, what creative movement can do without confrontation? The Sixties struggled with the "powers of the night" - dark and abstract centers of evil and injustice. They stood guard over the primordial ideals of the October Revolution and communism, although they lost direct contact with them due to time. However, characteristic symbols have been resurrected in poetry: Budyonovka, the red flag, the line of a revolutionary song, and so on. It was they who denoted freedom, moral purity and selflessness, as pectoral cross in Orthodoxy, for example. Utopian ideology really replaced religion and permeated the poetry of the thaw period.

Main theme

People painfully accepted the "crime of the cult of personality", which was made public in 1956, when Nikita Khrushchev came to power and condemned the Stalinist repressions, rehabilitating and freeing many victims of an unjust sentence. The poets expressed not only the general confusion and indignation at the "distortion" of a wonderful idea, but also the socialist pathos of the people who had returned to the true path. Many believed that the thaw was a fundamentally new stage in the development of the USSR, and the promised freedom, equality and fraternity would soon come. These sentiments coincided with the worldview of the emerging creative intelligentsia, still very young people. Youthful enthusiasm, maximalism, romantic ideals and unshakable faith in them - these are the incentives for their honest and somewhere even naive creativity. Therefore, the poems of the poets of the sixties are still loved by readers.

The 1960s gave their idyllic pictures an openly rhetorical form, decorating them with transparent allegories. Thoughts and feelings, so close to the society of that time, were often expressed in direct recitation, but the most secret dreams and beliefs only subconsciously appeared between the lines. The thirst for fresh inspiration, novelty, change was felt in the poetics of the tropes.

What contributed to the extinction of the movement?

The work of the poets of the sixties falls on the 60s of the 20th century, and this is the era of internal contradictions. Communism was somehow combined with individualism, artistic taste was intertwined with kitsch philistinism, physicists were friends with lyricists, the city - with the countryside, democracy - with technocracy, etc. Even the sixties themselves and their fates were different, and this, paradoxically, united them. Such harmony of the Garden of Eden on earth could not last long, so by the 1970s the thaw utopia began to collapse. The unity of the public and the personal naturally turned into confrontation, the personal came into conflict with the state, and romantic freethinkers lost their podium for speeches: the favor of the authorities was replaced by anger. The influence of poets on the mood in society was no longer considered beneficial, or at least permissible, if only because the creators sensitively perceived the "cooling" that replaced the thaw, and could not hide it in their poetry.

The poems of the poets of the sixties were aimed at a youth audience, and when their generation matured and realized how naive this revolutionary pathos was in the country of the victorious bureaucracy, it ceased both to create and perceive enthusiastic hopes for the final victory of heat.

It was possible to talk about the poems of the sixties with enthusiasm during the thaw period, but after, when it was clearly "colder", people needed other poetry, reflecting the decline, not the rise. The “name” of the poets also points to the dependence on the era. A cultural phenomenon, as a reflection of historical changes, could not distort and retouch these same changes.

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