Securities. Uncultured Capital with Igor Shulinsky (2006)

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The author's column "Uncultured capital of Dima Mishenin" was invented by me for the magazine "Sobaka" in 2005 and lasted exactly one year. The idea was to tell the inhabitants of the Cultural Capital, St. Petersburg, about the heroes of the Uncultural Capital - Moscow. The heroes of the column are SuperAlisa, Igor Grigoriev, Artemy Lebedev, Oleg Kostrov, Artemy Troitsky and many others. In 2005, this section was closed after a scandal with the owners publishing house"TIME-OUT" and moved to the Novosibirsk magazine "MANIA". Only one "Uncultured Capital" managed to come out there - with Leonid Parfyonov. The creator of the magazine "Mania" was fired from the post of editor-in-chief this year, along with his dismissal, my column was closed for the second time.

"Uncultured Capital" has become the most closed heading in my career. Therefore, for the third time, after it was closed and closed, I decided to close it myself and transfer it online - making it particles of my book " Securities”, consisting of published and unpublished articles, interviews and essays different years.

When there was no more space left offline for "Nek. Capital", two materials were already ready - with Igor Shulinsky and with Nastya Demich.

NON-CULTURAL CAPITAL OF DIMYMISHENIN

IGOR SHULINSKY

Just as in 1990 Vsevolod Gakkel invented the first TAM-TAM nightclub in Russia, so Igor Shulinsky in 1994 created the first glossy free and youth magazine PTYUCH. To say that I'm talking to the Icon of the 90s is to say nothing. Perhaps many of us would not exist if he had not created us the way we are in the pages of his publication. I speak on behalf of "Ptyuch - generations" with a legend that everyone tried to forget as soon as possible and was safely forgotten.

Dimamishenin: Igor, I interviewed Igor Grigoriev and asked about you. For me, you are two legends of the 90s in Russia. There is no one to compare with you in the past decade. You had more authority than any pop and movie artists. Because the 90s were the heyday of the magazine business, and your influence on the minds of a generation, prostitutes, gangsters, DJs and drug dealers was limitless. You were real rival superstars like Tupac Shakur and Notary Big. Compared to your influence and importance in the year 95... Shnur's fame of 2005 is just child's play. Tell me about your relationship to Om then and now and to its creator 10 years ago and today.

Igor Shulinsky: Thanks a lot for the kind words and for the attention you paid to my generally insignificant person.

Dimamishenin: Sounds nasty. The start is good. Continue.

Igor Shulinsky: It seems to me that you are exaggerating a little ... Legends, figends ... As for Igor Grigoriev, there was a time when I liked him, sometimes he annoyed me. It seemed to me that he puts on too many bright clothes (in a metaphorical sense) and boasts all the time. What was worth at least the inscription on each issue of Ohm - "The best magazine of the year according to the mass media blah blah blah." And now I evaluate it differently. Grigoriev is a PR genius, he easily did stupid things, stuck out himself. What exactly did Andy Warhol do? Is it something else? Recently, at a presentation, I met a former employee of the OM magazine, who drove Grigoriev hard. I listened, looked at him and thought: “Poor uncle. Nobody knows about you, nobody needs you. And Grigoriev wrote his name in the little story of our life, because he had audacity and courage, which you don’t have and won’t have.”

Dimamishenin: Fabulous. Was it not Bukharin's case? You know, they call me a scandalous PR-man and self-promoter, but, in my personal opinion, I don’t do anything on purpose. All the best scandals are made for me by my enemies and all sorts of suckers from culture. When such representatives of the mainstream as Kirill Nabutov told me in 1996 that Ptyuch would be closed down and arrested literally within a couple of weeks ... this suggests that not only the underground noticed you. When TV stars gossip about you, this is a victory and testifies to real popularity.

Igor Shulinsky: We also never did anything on purpose, and art critic Ekaterina Degot wrote a book where she devoted an entire chapter to Ptyuch to the magazine, noting with slight condemnation that Ptyuch's authors themselves are the characters and heroes of their articles. In this she saw admiration for life, which is clearly not enough for a Russian intellectual. So Tar thought (and, apparently, he still thinks). We were the first generation, stunned by life, tasting it to the attention of the cheekbones. Hence the scandals and all that. We really were not really removed from the subject of the story, which is why we became brilliant PR people. Advice to all PR people of the future - do not feel sorry for yourself, do not plan, otherwise you will turn into Kushanashvili otariks.

Dimamishenin: I write all the time only about myself and about what is happening to me. Gonzo style. And everyone scolds me for it. They say it's not modest. Oh, but I really love everything immodest. And you described the time correctly - my cheekbones were cramping, and I chewed gum incessantly along with my cheeks and drank mineral water in buckets. But somehow he didn’t even connect it with universal sincerity. And it turns out that's the point...
I've heard a lot of rumors about you - like you mortgaged your apartment to publish a magazine, that you're all so underground and uncompromising with your biggest magazine. I actually bought with the last money number 5 with Pierre and Gilles! And then all of a sudden - Lada Dance, Ivanushki on the cover ... Sprite, Coca Cola, the most obscene and deshman's mediocre Grymovshchina ... And in the end there are already rumors about the resale of the brand, almost the Union of Right Forces or the Liberal Democratic Party ... Tell me, how did it all start and how did it all end?

Igor Shulinsky: Yes, I am like this. Underground, uncompromising. Therefore, Ivanushki is on the cover, and Lada Dance (although you didn’t notice that in the photo she is pregnant and with almost naked boobs, and our honorary gynecologist Mustafa, the host of one of the most popular PTYUCH columns, interviewed her " Dr. Mustafa's advice") and Coca-Cola ...

Dimamishenin: Yes, I paid attention to ALMOST naked boobs. Lada Dens could not be with NOT ALMOST. From this the Fall of the House of Usher began. Now, if a pregnant Lada Dance played out the death of a pregnant Sharon Tate, and you would bend over her body with a bloody knife, that would be cool. And then - everything is so slick. Yes, and the Change of Format was just a compromise commercialization. It's so obvious. However, you stayed ahead of the planet for a couple of years before becoming one of many.

Igor Shulinsky: The time of the wild rave in the mid-90s has come to an end. It was necessary to be drawn into another life, while remaining extremely ironic and cynical. At the time of Ivanushki, we had, I think, the largest circulation among glossy magazines. All our experiments with Sprite and Coca-Cola have taught us to work with large Western corporations, to clearly understand the client, without surprising him with our creativity.

Dimamishenin: Do not surprise with creativity - this is really about you from the time of Ivanushki on the cover. I loved your magazine when it was big and first, and when it became one of a bunch of commercial reading, I lost interest in it ... OM has always been more honest in this regard. He was immediately hustler-like and corrupt as a fashion advertising agency. PTYUCH, on the other hand, posed as an independent and missionary leader. And he was before he sold himself with giblets and ate himself. It seemed to me that no one had read or seen you before closing. Existence was purely formal.

Igor Shulinsky: The last year of the magazine, I think, was the strongest.

Dimamishenin: Yes. And the best record of the Aquarium group has not yet been recorded. After 2000, it was degradation before our eyes ... 2001 - the last breath ... And 2002 - continuous agony. So was the resale of the brand that had lost its strength and popularity to mediocre politicians or not?

Igor Shulinsky: It was such a magazine "Vlast" for young people. Information catalog: where to eat, where to be treated, what is a loan, which politician can be trusted. On our pages were Khakamada, Nemtsov, businessmen... A bunch of electronic music, correctly structured information. It was an opposition style, primarily in relation to the Moscow city government, and to Putin as a whole as a worldview. We liked such a magazine, but, apparently, advertisers did not see in it a field for their placements. It means that we did something wrong, because success is the only evaluation of the project. We pitched this magazine to a group of political businessmen who were interested in purchasing a publication aimed at young people. Apparently, they have not coped with the task of the "correct" youth publication, which, in general, is good. PTYUCH remained in history.

Dimamishenin: Mmmmm ... So all the rumors, as always, are true. We sold a youth brand to political adventurers. Ha ha... Cynical. They killed their own bird. I think you don't hold a grudge against me for the fact that I was then in 2003 on the pages of OM magazine. I was told that you were terribly offended at that time with me. But I really think that last years Ptyuch was an unfortunate and useless zombie. A parody of what it was in the 90s. The 21st century is not his time. But then, in the 90s, when they didn’t let me and my friends go anywhere, you gave your pages to Doping-Pong, Knife for Frau Müller and Light Music, for which I remember Ptyuch and still love. If you had a magazine today, would you let us all into your pages again?

Igor Shulinsky: It depends on what you are doing today and what kind of magazine we would have. PTYUCH was a wild hungry animal that rushed at everything new, young, hot. Now is a different time, and it seems to me that, unfortunately, nothing particularly new or interesting is happening in our country. At the end of the 20th century, Moscow and St. Petersburg were places of pilgrimage for vagabonds from all countries, and now we are a third world country, like Uruguay, only cold.

Dimamishenin: I think you know why there is no PTYUCH? Because its Creator does not know or does not want to know how many new and interesting things are happening today, that after the collapse of “Knife Dlya Frau Muller”, Oleg Gitarkin recorded the disc “Juenna Safari”, Oleg Kostrov released vinyl “Maybe Yes!”, And Doping-Pong gave them both an occult-psychedelic look, that Billy Hellfire set up a new studio, Electricdaisypushers, and two full-length DVD releases of Charlie Manson this year. That "Fakesensation" when "Selfishgirls" sing, it seems that the Angels have descended from heaven, and each catalog of "Sisley" is considered as an exhibition in the Hermitage. You became uninteresting, probably, everything is forever young and permanently hot. And so the PTYUCH magazine was transformed into an advertising agency. I don't think the time has changed. And PTYUCH has matured, but we - his heroes - by a miraculous coincidence - no. Tell me what Eva Rukhina is doing now. I remember she was yours right hand or foot. What's wrong with her now?

Igor Shulinsky: I don’t know, Moscow is a big city, you can’t keep track of everyone.

Dimamishenin: What a pity! I remember when she was the editor of PTYUCH, she shouted at me on the phone that she would not tolerate such debauchery as Doping-Pong on its pages! I remember this time with ironic nostalgia. She always attracted me by the fact that she starred naked in Max Polishchuk's film "Silver is not gold, gold is not silver." In St. Petersburg, she was a poor party girl, and when she moved to you, she turned into an important lady in Moscow ... EDITOR OF A FASHION MAGAZINE! ... though very short period…
Probably raising kids. She feeds her middle-level businessman husband in the evenings. Then there was some kind of craze among the young ladies - to work in PTYUCHE or OME for another year, jump out profitably in marriage and go abroad to live. I recently came across, while cleaning my archive, a tape cassette "Hello Superman", which says thanks to you, me, Africa, Brian Eno ... Then I accidentally got into your company, having invented Ilya Bortnyuk's super-successful brand "Light Music", first appeared on this record. Do you consider yourself a part of history? It doesn’t fit in my head ... all this happened yesterday ... Really it was already 10 years ago.

Igor Shulinsky: The Moscow Goddess of Light Vickers once said: “Oh, I was on my birthday, there were Makarevich, Troitsky, in general, everyone with whom we walked. Such yesterdays. So we got this term - "yesterday". Your question, of course, is nostalgic, but it makes me feel like yesterday. For me, this is not history, but the past day. And I live today, a little tomorrow.

Dimamishenin: Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha… You made me laugh! But the really beautiful Sveta Vickers, who has never done anything in particular, except for a few Ptyuchev photo shoots, in which she shone in leading role, - compared to Artemy Troitsky or Boris Grebenshchikov, the day before yesterday is much bigger! Everyone who has done something Bright in the past is, of course, part of history. Whether they agree with it or not. You can be yesterday, or you can even be the day before yesterday or the day before yesterday, being a very young creature. And you can, like Leary or Burroughs, by the age of 40 just wake up and start doing something. Fedya Stukov played in Oblomov at the age of 5, and by the age of 10 he had TREASURE ISLAND and HACKELBERRY FINN behind him. And after that, he did nothing worthwhile. He lives a useless life, necessary because he alone is so far. Already a couple of years after the closure, the name of the PTYUCH magazine does not say anything to young people. You are forgotten and are of interest only to collectors and connoisseurs of antiquity, like me. But you can, like Bobby Busoleil, be in prison since 1969 and release a new record in 2005 and always be not even tomorrow, but the day after tomorrow! Emptiness is not afraid of age and time, but of genius and beauty. Something really went wrong at some point. Otherwise, you would be remembered. For some reason, the heroes of the 90s were forgotten sooner than the same rockers of the 80s. Kino and BG remember, ASSU and MR DESIGNER are watching, but from the fact that there were PTYUCH and MEDUZA 7, probably only I am a fan. But among the PTYUCH parties there were real heroes. Igor, tell me about your opinion on the two most famous crime cases of the 90s - enough time has passed to hear the truth. Who killed DJ Ivan Salmaksov? Alina Vitukhnovskaya was a drag dealer? What can you say about the two most high-profile bohemian tragedies in Moscow today?

Igor Shulinsky: Listen, boy, are you by any chance from the FSB?

Dimamishenin: Not yet, but I want to cooperate with this organization. Gathering information that may be of interest to her. The more I get fat, the more of the Elvis King in me. You know this story about how he began to cooperate with the FBI and collect dossiers on the Beatles. Here is my period.

Igor Shulinsky: But still I will answer. Alina Vitukhnovskaya is a poet, and this is the main thing for me.

Dimamishenin: So let's write it down. This is the main thing. And not the main thing - another.

Igor Shulinsky: Ivan Salmaksov was a great friend of mine, but I have absolutely no idea what happened to him, and I'm absolutely not sure that all this has something to do with chemicals, whose veil so envelops the 90s. It was just a wild time. Human life, as you know, was worth nothing. Because of revenge, because of money, because of anything, people were imprisoned, killed. Well, you yourself know all this very well.

Dimamishenin: I know. And I know why they were imprisoned and why exactly my friends were killed. In all the details and details, Igor, I know. Drugs and money. Only money and drugs have always been the cause of death in the 90s. That's why I asked about your friends. But received no answer. It is difficult to get away from the manner of answering specific questions in the abstract. For some reason, few people know how to overcome fear and speak clearly, calmly and clearly the truth. But if you don't know, then you don't know. OK. Tell me, what are you doing now? Are you a millionaire? Beggar? Drug addict? Alcoholic? Hermit? Ascetic? Maniac? The owner of a cafe-club and you are engaged in advertising campaigns, like every second?

Igor Shulinsky: Of course, a maniac and, perhaps, a millionaire. Although, hell, this may be of interest to the IRS. Maybe a beggar hermit alcoholic is better? Or an ascetic drug addict? We have a company that includes all the categories of people you listed. We are engaged in advertising, art production, serve large corporate clients. But that's all for the sign. In fact, we rob, kill and rape. We carry out dubious orders, for which no one undertakes, since we do not have any moral criteria. What else to expect from the former Ptyuchevites? Well, a little more selling metal, weapons and women. On the last one, we especially ate the dog. So if anything - call, just prepare the money. We are not a cheap organization and it is called Ptuch Sound System Entertainment.

Dimamishenin: Ah, I'll never know what it's like to be your client. Yes, and advertising agencies interest me much less than glossy magazines. Ptyuch, Om tried to make boutiques, publishing houses, advertising firms based on their brands, but it always looked like an amateur. Look, if you were in 1995, would you do anything differently?

Igor Shulinsky: This question reminds me of a quote from the end of an Indian movie, where a beautiful Indian woman bent over a dying hero who, in the name of truth, persuaded 100 people in such a way, but the bandit bullet still caught up with him. She cries and kisses him. His gaze weakens, and half-open lips barely audibly say: “I do not regret anything. If everything happened again, I would do everything the same.

Dimamishenin: Hmm. I always regret that I cannot answer for my interlocutors myself. They are often so dumb. But not this time - you brought a genuine smile of blissful idiocy to my unencumbered intellect face. Comparison with Bollywood heroes, what could be cooler. Continuing the action theme, I'll ask: what did you hate / love then and what do you love / hate now. It is advisable to get personal and still get away from abstract generalizations.

Igor Shulinsky: Highly good question. Once upon a time I hated homosexuals, but now ... Many of them are my friends, and I call them the affectionate word "gay". I won't give their names or they'll get upset, and I wouldn't want that.

Dimamishenin: Oooooh… Again, no names… Moscow political correctness of an ex-revolutionary in the flesh. Igor, will you forever remain only the creator of PTYUCH, or do you still feel the strength that someday you will surprise us with something else ... well, at least in 20 years ???

Igor Shulinsky: And why is it after 20? I want to surprise someone this year. (the conversation takes place in the summer of 2005, - Dimamishenin). I think that we will be able to talk about this topic in the fall.

Dimamishenin: Once upon a time, you, like Danko from the Old Woman Izergil, were able to light the way with your heart for all of us in the 90s. I don’t know, really, whether you ripped the heart out of your chest or someone else’s. This burnt heart was trampled into the dirt by ungrateful youngsters who walked through PTYUCH, forgetting him and you. But that Yesterday's light is worth your entire life as an owner of an Advertising Agency or a Trendy Restaurant catering to corporate clients large and small. And everything that we are talking about today is some kind of mossy reality and causes, even for such a nostalgic-loving character like me, a bored yawn.

Instead of a conclusion: Igor promised to surprise everyone in the fall. I was not in Moscow and called one of my acquaintances, a journalist who wished to remain anonymous: whether the promised autumn surprise had happened, I was interested. He rather dryly told me that on October 21, with the participation of Shulinsky, a Vodka bar was opened, while he does not know the details, and then he added cynically that, in his opinion, Igor is an absolutely outsided character. Engaged in rotten event management. That he opens a place that will be located at the Red Rose factory in the area of ​​the Park of Culture. Rumors about him have been circulating for a long time, they say they are taking Gonzales to the opening, Kostya ZigZag (ex-music editor of PTYUCHA) rubs his music policy there. It feels like nothing great can come out of the PTYUCHEV party, because there is an expiration date for any phenomenon, and PTYUCH has it. Shulinsky did not fit into the new conjuncture, unlike Goroby (the owner of the ZIMA, SUMMER, SKAZKA clubs), but the old one is rotten - so he will have a bohemian pensioner's house with artists and cocaine businessmen. This comment seemed to me extremely angry and premature. I believe that people like Igor Shulinsky will survive any criticism and sarcastic assessment from contemporaries, and will be able to be reborn in a new capacity more than once. I want to wish him to find something like my friend Georgy Guryanov found, turning from the star drummer of the Kino group into a great painter. Between these two roles fifteen years, but better late than never.

Ivan Salmaksov DJ, promoter. Born in 1970 in Leningrad. Ivan not only influenced the lives of people around, but also became a standard of taste. DJ Ivan Salmaksov: change the record the mighty of the world this. On September 2, 1998, he disappeared without a trace from the entrance of his own house, leaving traces of blood on the battery. And although most of his friends have a lot of reason to believe that Ivan is no longer alive, there are regularly people who allegedly saw him either in Kathmandu or at the metro station "Skhodnenskaya" Arthur Rimbaud: poetry is the business of all
The king of the "damned poets" of the late 19th century, the source of inspiration for all literature of the 20th century. Having written brilliant poems that completely changed the ideas of contemporaries about poetry, driving literary Paris crazy and bringing his roommate poet Verlaine to prison, at the age of nineteen he suddenly stopped composing and went to trade weapons and live with a native in distant and dangerous Ethiopia. Catching bone cancer there, he died in obscurity in Marseille at the age of thirty-seven.
In the spring of 1891, after 10 years of living in Africa, Rimbaud developed a tumor in his right knee. He goes on a forced journey to Marseille, where his leg is amputated. The disease does not leave him. Sarcoma chains him to bed. Sister Isabella takes care of Rimbaud. The day before his death, Rimbaud dictates a note asking him to book a boat ticket, he whispers the Arabic words "Allah kerim" and is eager to sail to Ethiopia ... Jerome David Salinger: Further silence The creator of, perhaps, the main literary image of the 20th century - the boy Holden Caulfield in the novel The Catcher in the Rye - at the peak of his career casts a New York light and retires to a ranch in the New Hampshire town of Cornish. Since 1965, he has not published a single line, forbids not only Hollywood productions based on his books, but also any quotes expanded from books, practically does not give interviews and sues biographers who infringe on his privacy. Bobby Fischer: Checkmate
He was an idol even for those who could not arrange the pieces on the chessboard in the correct order. In 1975, offended by the fee offered to him, he refused to play with Anatoly Karpov and parted with the chess crown. He left the United States, believing that all the evil in this world is from the Jews and communists who rule America and the USSR On the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack in New York, he responded with the following words: "I am glad that it happened. It's time to end the United States once and for all."
The former world champion died on January 17, 2008 in a Reykjavik hospital from kidney disease. Doctors say that he could have been saved, but he again refused - this time from the services of "Western medicine". in which he did not believe ... Fisher's life can hardly be considered happy. Though he didn't care what they thought of him. He knew that he was a brilliant chess player, one of the best who ever lived in the world, and he didn’t give a damn about everything else - literally and figuratively. Che Guevara: kill the state in yourself Revolution, like poetry, is the art of subtraction. The most popular after Christ and Lenin, the revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara, put life on the scales to prove this thesis. After the victory in the Fidel guerrilla in Cuba, Guevara was awarded many posts, noble and popularly treated kindly, but the eternal revolutionary-poetic itch did not allow him to turn into a party functionary. Che Guevara refused all government posts and went to sail further into the revolution. In the finale, physical death and metaphysical immortality awaited him.

Dedicated to the memory of friends.

Today, going to parties and clubs has become commonplace. Dancing until the morning is quite an ordinary phenomenon, and for many it is a regular program for a weekend evening. And no one thinks about what could be different. And it seems that it has always been like this .But any phenomenon has its beginning and those who laid the foundation.
I want to tell you about those who are not remembered today. Someone does not even know about the existence of these people, and someone is cunning, deliberately ignoring the events of the past. image. The names of the people who began to develop club culture in Belarus are diligently erased and forgotten. For obvious reasons: to be the first means to have a certain status.
The history of the Minsk promo group F.U.Entertainment represents in fact a chain of accidents that began far beyond the borders of Belarus.
In the early nineties, there were not very many options for spending evening leisure time. There was no such variety of pubs, cafes and restaurants, and you could dance at discos at educational institutions and hotels, cinemas and cultural centers. As a rule, such events ended at 11 p.m. -tamada, who announced the compositions and conveyed greetings from the persons who ordered the song. Practically all events, especially student ones, ended in a mandatory fight.
After the “curtain” collapsed, more information became available to people living in Sovka about how people live in the rest of the world. The leisure sector was no exception. In the late 80s, such a phenomenon as house parties began to develop in America. People, tired of the established musical format that reigned in clubs, began to organize their own small underground parties, where friends and like-minded people gathered. From this the word came - party. They lasted all night until dawn. Over time, this phenomenon, like everything new, gained popularity and began to spread across all continents. In the early 90s, it also reached the territory of the "Empire of Evil". , got acquainted with dj Westbam from Germany. The drummer of the group, Georgy Guryanov, invited him to visit Leningrad. He lived in an empty apartment on the Fantanka embankment, in house number 145. quota young artists, the Nearonov brothers, better known as the "Haas brothers". The entire St. Petersburg beau monde liked to gather at them: artists, poets, musicians, actors. About one day, Guryanov and Westbam also came to visit them. Out of kindness, Westbam gave the owners a squat 10 This is how the first real disc jockey records appeared in Russia. Later, Technics 1200 players were added to the records. This also happened by chance. Guests from Finland were not a rare occurrence in Leningrad. Tourists from this country often came here. Often in the city there were also Finnish musicians, including guys from the Adrenaline society. It was a company of disc jockeys. And then one day, returning home, already approaching a checkpoint at the border, the guys remembered that they had not included Technics in the declaration, but in the then The USSR did not sell such players. For the transportation of undeclared equipment, they were threatened with confiscation and an article for smuggling. It was decided to leave the players. So they took their place of honor o in the squat on the Fontanka, which once acquired the name "Dance Floor" and became the first club in the USSR.
With the fall of the Iron Curtain, the withdrawal began Soviet troops from Eastern Europe. Soldiers and their families were returning home. Among these were two colonels - Salmaksov and Afanasyev. Oda served in Poland and both had sons - Ivan and Andrey. The guys attended the same school and were wonderful friends. Ivan, with his parents, left for Leningrad, and Andrei went to Minsk.
In Leningrad, Vanya Salmaksov quickly found new friends and became a regular at the Fontanka squat. Andrey, driven by his interest in everything advanced and missing his friend, became a frequent visitor in Leningrad, and sometimes disappeared there for whole months.
In 1991, Ivan Salmaksov and Zhenya Birman, realizing the financial potential of Moscow, decided to hold a party of unprecedented proportions there. Gagarin Party. It is worth noting that Artemy Troitsky himself, who at that time worked as the editor-in-chief of Russian television music programs (RTR), was in charge of agitation and propaganda. Andrey Afanasiev also took an active part in organizing and holding the Gagarin Party - he met guests and musicians, distributed flyers. to Moscow for a party at the invitation of Andrey. What they saw in the Cosmos pavilion had a stunning effect on the guys. New, progressive music, light, lasers, a huge number of people and, most importantly, the atmosphere itself - it was unforgettable. popular artists, astronauts were noticed. There was even an ambassador of France. Thousands of young beautiful people danced non-stop surrounded by exhibits of the pavilion. A friendly atmosphere reigned all around. Everything that happened was in sharp contrast to what was in Minsk. upon arrival home, organize a similar party at home. Airat tried most of all, he On occasion, he reminded everyone of that unforgettable night.
The opportunity to organize something similar in Minsk appeared only in the autumn of 1992. In the center of Minsk there is a building called the Palace of Trade Unions. A disco was arranged there on Saturdays. local disc jockey friends decided to play music that had not been heard in the village in Minsk. These were the freshest melodies from foreign dance floors. Music was brought from Moscow and St. Petersburg, and Sasha Lisits, being visiting his sister, brought a decent collection of CDs. Until then, flyers that had not been seen in Minsk before were an invitation to a party. Considering that the format of the event was completely new for the Belarusian capital, an explanatory text was printed on the flyer. an honorary duty was entrusted to Alexander Maneshin, who studied at the Architectural College. The party took place on November 10. Alexander Lisits stood behind the console.
The event was a success and everyone liked it. Modern music and a non-standard form of presentation, namely non-stop mixing of music and the absence of a speaking person, had a positive effect. But the guys were not satisfied with the size - they wanted to arrange a truly large-scale event. arena on Dauman street. It was huge and could accommodate many visitors. We also found sound equipment suitable for such an area. The only organization in the city that owns such a set at that time was the State Orchestra conducted by Mikhail Fingberg. rested on the financing of the planned project. And then everything was again decided by chance.
Walking on a November evening, Maneshin and Khuzin met their friend Alexander Terletsky, known in the party as Sasha Krolik and who played music at one of the fashionable discos at that time - the 8th building of the BPI. Sasha Krolik quickly understood the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe guys, as he had been to Leningrad and on the Fontanka, and clearly imagined what he was talking about. It turned out that he had a friend, a former prostitute who successfully married a Canadian businessman, and who was looking for profitable investment projects in Minsk. Her office was located in the VDNKh pavilion, chosen by the nascent Belarusian bourgeoisie. and our friendly company set off. But, the arguments were not so convincing. Canadian capital decided not to risk it. a decisive meeting took place. It turned out that the office of the institute's friend Sasha Rabbit, Igor Shupletsov, was located in the pavilion, who was met at the exit. Igor accepted with interest the proposal to hold a rave in the arena and agreed to finance this event.
To be continued.

The very first flyer.

For The Calvert Journal, the atmosphere of the hazy, chaotic years and highlighted several trends in the new Russian wave of the Boris Yeltsin era.

The collapse of the USSR

The 80s in Russia were divided into two five-year periods: one black, the other white. The first was the agony of Soviet power, played out to the accompaniment of an unprecedented underground carnival: from films in the genre of necrorealism, to the conceptual works of Ilya Kabakov and the hypnotic rock of Pyotr Mamonov.

This accompanied the era of perestroika and glasnost - the economic policy of "openness" - where everything was bought and sold. The 1980s were ultimately like a bleak lunar landscape: its heroes, such as musician Viktor Tsoi, rock singer Mike Naumenko, and avant-garde musician Sergei Kuryokhin, were dead or, if they were in demand on the international market, lived abroad. At the turn of the 80s and 90s there was a paradigm shift. In the USSR, where cultural life was conducted under conditions of all-encompassing censorship, isolation from the ideologically unclean " outside world”, the counterculture had a certain identity. You could become the idol of millions without appearing on TV and radio, writing a hit, working as a fireman or cleaning the streets. There was room for experimentation, and there was no need to think about how to make money from your work. Perestroika put an end to censorship, and a market came to Russia.

Money, which before had little meaning, suddenly began to mean everything. And the high priests of this cult were engineers of the 90s: gangsters and "new Russians". Russia suddenly moved from the position of "everything is forbidden" to "nothing is forbidden": one sixth of the earth's surface was in a state of anarchy. The government reacted daily with only a new political agenda, the society was left to fend for itself, the mantra became “take as much as you can carry”.

Lots of fun

In theory, it all sounds fantastic: freedom, a fresh start, "nothing is impossible." In practice, however, it all turned out a little differently. The first thing that the 80s generation of anti-Soviet youth did after they were given carte blanche in this new situation was to enjoy life.

Rave and club culture have emerged in the country. In Moscow and St. Petersburg in the winter of 1991 and in the spring of 1992, the first large-scale dance parties Gagarin Party and Technoir took place, the ideological inspiration of which was the cult DJ and promoter Ivan Salmaksov. They were a great success, and the next step was to support the rave movement from the Komsomol, the former youth wing of the Communist Party, as an alternative to rampant crime after the collapse of the USSR. But nothing good came of it. Salmaksov went missing, presumably dead, and these trendy neo-futuristic parties have been resurrected as drug-fuelled gang orgies.

Or take show business: the first attempts to make quality pop music with artists such as Natalia Vetlitskaya and Anzhelika Varum - packaged in stylish videos - fell victim to the cunning of "producers". The result was a terrible genre of music known as pop, which sounded from every iron. The only alternative was the annoying "shit" and "Russian chanson". The same story happened with cinema, design and media. Everything mixed together in a friendly company of glamor, cocaine and crime.

Apolitical culture

Decaying, "free" Russia at the end of the 20th century left very little artistic and intellectual heritage. An exception may be literature, for example, the works of Viktor Pelevin and Vladimir Sorokin, or - in part visual arts- artists Vinogradov-Dubosarsky and Oleg Kulik, master of social documentary photography Boris Mikhailov.

However, the overall picture was this: the new generation failed to create sustainable styles or movements. Here, according to the laws of gangster time, everyone was for himself, against the whole world. However, there were still some common features.

First, apolitical. Surprisingly, it is a fact: the extremely difficult social cataclysms of this period were the reforms and mass impoverishment of the population at the beginning of the decade; popular uprising in Moscow, during the storming of Ostankino and the bombing of the parliament building; war in Chechnya; the economic crisis and default of 1998 had practically no effect on popular culture.

Secondly, focus on the media. Unlike the underground of the 80s, which did not have access to the professional press and therefore created its own self-made, but at the same time effective, method of promotion (samizdat of the dissident movement, apartment houses, word of mouth), in the 90s everyone focused on work with media. If you weren't in a fashion magazine like PTYUCH or Oma, on TV and radio, you weren't there at all. Many talented musicians like Venya D'rkin, the Chimera group and others did not become famous simply because they did not fit into the formats of radio stations. Whereas glamor got all the glory.

Russian Britpop

The third trend of the culture of this time was its narrowness. New Russia could not offer the world new Maleviches, Stravinskys or Eisensteins. Therefore, I had to borrow the trends of the Western mass culture, this is how Russian Britpop, "Russian Tarantino" and "Russian Generation X" appeared.

Undoubtedly, there were such bright cultural events of that time. Films by Maxim Pezhemsky and Yevgeny Yufit, performances by Vladik Monroe, art-rock group N.O.M and rap by Dolphin. But most of the artifacts of the era will be wiped out of our memory, like the line of cocaine in the Manhattan Express's club toilets - which themselves have already been washed away, along with the Rossiya Hotel where it once was.

All that's left are vague memories of shootings in nightclubs and Mumiy Troll's 1997 song "Flee"! And, of course, Boris Yeltsin, the drunken conductor of that era.

An unexpected statement by one of the closest associates of Mikhail Mirilashvili - CEO holding "Petramir" Vladimir Pratusevich - that the city's deputy prosecutor Boris Salmaksov, through his son, received a bribe to stop the scandalous MMM case, had a rather noisy effect. The statement, we recall, was made at a press conference on Wednesday in the presence of several dozen journalists. Moreover, Pratusevich said that there were video recordings of his meetings with Salmaksov Jr., and one of the films recorded the process of transferring this same bribe from hand to hand.

Boris Salmaksov reacted to the accusations calmly and, as it seemed to us, even with a bit of humor: “An absolute lie. Absurd. Did you expect the truth from these people? They can say whatever they want. Pratusevich's words are not only false - they lack elementary logic. Even if we admit that I am a bribe taker, it is absolutely inexplicable why I would involve my son in this case? And here he is? My son Andrei works in Moscow. It turns out that he specially came to St. Petersburg, met with Pratusevich - it's nonsense, after all.

As we found out, Andrei Salmaksov really works in the capital, in one of the Moscow structures that cleans premises on a commercial basis. His mobile phone was turned off throughout the day yesterday, and therefore it was not possible to hear his version of events.

We also managed to find out that prosecutor Salmaksov has a second, younger son Ivan, who is famous as a talented DJ and one of the founders of Russian rave. In 1995, he worked as a producer for Bogdan Titomir, in 1998 he became the winner of the prestigious Golden PTYUCH award in the world of show business, and at the end of the same year he was kidnapped by unknown intruders near the entrance of his own house. Since then, nothing is known about the fate of Ivan Salmaksov.

This tragic event is said to have played a pivotal role in the life of Salmaksov's father. A military prosecutor with many years of experience, who went to the lawyers in the mid-nineties (probably to earn money), after the kidnapping of his son, he decided to return to the authorities in order to personally supervise the progress of the search. In the city prosecutor's office, Boris Salmaksov received the position of head of the department for investigating corruption cases, and in October 2000 he was promoted, becoming the city's deputy prosecutor for investigation. And he immediately became famous by signing the famous request for foreign currency accounts of two vice-governors - Valery Malyshev and Viktor Krotov in Promstroibank.

Two other extremely scandalous episodes are also connected with the name of Salmaksov. On September 22, 2000, Boris Ivanovich signed a resolution on the removal of Georgy Antsev, the general director of the Radar MMS company, of the fraud charge against him. Investigator Marina Medichenko, who was in charge of Antsev's case, did not agree with this decision. An unprecedented conflict broke out, as a result of which Medichenko was forced to leave the prosecutor's office - she is still looking for the truth in Moscow. In a conversation with an Izvestia correspondent, Salmaksov explained Medichenko's behavior by some of her "personal grievances." Evil tongues claim that in the case of Antsev (who, roughly speaking, “threw” Inkom-Bank for more than 10 million rubles), a decent bribe could not be dispensed with, because for no reason the charge is usually removed in fairy tales.

And one more case. In early 2001, by order of Salmaksov, fourteen Azerbaijanis were released from custody, accused of involvement in the gang murder of a businessman from a rival clan, Adigozal Guliyev. Guliyev was brutally killed with iron sticks. In total, 24 people participated in the process of killing the merchant. According to the investigator of the district prosecutor's office, who worked on Guliyev's murder and arrested the criminals, she was offered $60,000 for their release. The investigator refused. Then the case was transferred to another person, and after a while the ill-fated Salmaks order appeared. The murder suspects have been released. And what a coincidence - the main witness for the prosecution was killed almost immediately.

I would not like to think that prosecutor Salmaksov really takes bribes, but the listed facts are alarming. However, this does not mean at all that Vladimir Pratusevich told the truth. After all, the main illogicality in his story about the bribe of 50 thousand dollars is that if it really took place and was transferred back in the spring, then why is Mirilashvili still not free?