Several years ago in an interview I was asked to name three main dates of my life, and I answered without hesitation: the birth of my daughter and August 19, 1991. The third - I sincerely believe in this - is yet to come. Today, however, let's talk about the second.

My political career began on August 19, 1991. As, however, many modern Russian political biographies.

That is, formally this is probably not the case, because the August morning of 1991, I, the leading youth program "Youth Channel" radio "Youth", already had Komsomol, and journalism.

But the internal sensations are exactly this: it all started on August 19, 1991.

Today people often ask me how I evaluate those events now.

And I answer honestly that I feel in this connection some split personality. That is purely personal, human evaluation is based on memory - joyful, euphoric, permeated with a sharp sensation of the future - grandiose and, of course, light.

It seemed as if the windows had been planted everywhere-it was they who landed, and not just opened, -went drafts in the houses and in the souls.

Cool. Chilly. But the fresh air invigorates, gives rise to a feeling of freshness - and, more likely, all the same joy, rather than anxiety.

Or rather, anxious joy.

And there was another absolutely delightful feeling. It, perhaps, has eclipsed all others.

Not even a feeling, but the realization that everything that is happening now in the country is not going on by someone's usual wave.

Not political bulldogs under the carpets on Staraya.

Not "God, not a genius, not a hero".

You yourself. Personally. With your own hands, like an incision of a cheap chintz, you are now reshaping the history of your own country.

I think that a lot of people felt like that at the time.

Those who gathered in the center of Moscow for thousands of meetings, pulling out a many-voiced cry "Po zor! Do-loy! "- First, but" El-chin! Russia! "- Then.

Who stood in the chain at the White House and built barricades on the Garden Ring ...

Who wrote fiery pamphlets, exposed and called on newspaper pages, which, if you remember, they hung out in glass cases at Pushkinskaya.

Who ... however, everyone, probably, in those days had his little Waterloo.

And Gerostratov's delight in his chest.

And the strange certainty that it was you who, with your own weak hands, just dumped the empire in front of the astonished mankind.

So it was.

But this is now in the purely emotional field.

Since that time, 27 years have passed.

For history - an instant. For human life - a whole generation.

Several figures from the survey:

- only 9% of Russians believe that in August 1991 democracy won;

- 42% of the citizens called the defense of the White House and everything that followed it, just an episode of the struggle for power in the country's top leadership;

- 33% consider the August days "a tragic event that had disastrous consequences for the country and the people";

- 16% were at a loss to answer, not being determined with the assessment of events.

And maybe it's time to ask: why?

Who needs all this? Who skillfully modeled this very euphoria that owned me and thousands of others in those August days?

Today, assessing what happened from the position of all that happened to observe and survive after, including two bloody wars on the territory of our own country, one can speak and write a lot.

And you can shortly meet the amazed-sad: "Oh, what have you done?"

Such a day.

And that's what was thought: and this was our "Maidan".

Here listen, all the same: and incomprehensible people with weapons, and "Molotov cocktails," and generals, ready to "crash everything", but did not do anything, and really great, unlike the current musicians who are ready to "lie down under tanks. "

And then everything turned out relatively bloodless.

The only question is who.

We have?

Do they?

I bow to the latter.


The author's point of view may not coincide with the editorial position.