«I bought an oxygen pillow — for myself and my friends. I think we will find fifty thousand people who want to breathe oxygen», — this is how Irena Stefanovna explained the relaunch of the magazine «Novoye Vremya» / The New Times. A television person, when free television ended, decided in 2007 to turn to print media, even if for a smaller audience. Could the masses be enlightened in a year when Putin would formulate his roadmap at the Munich Conference, and the parliament would finally become tame and monochrome? What to do? The intelligentsia of direct action has always worked in the genre of a kitchen dissident toast — «to the success of our hopeless cause». Wishing to prove, again in Lesnevskaya's words, that «for me, the country and the state are different things, the Motherland and the state are also different things for me, absolutely. I feel terribly sorry for my Motherland, and ashamed of the state».
Although enlightenment did not save the country, many people received oxygen — both from REN-TV of the old style and from The New Times. Once, David Remnick, editor of «The New Yorker», noted that he makes a magazine that is interesting to himself. But therefore also to many others. The magazine was interesting to Lesnevskaya and her friends, and therefore interesting to many others. And equally important was the supply of oxygen — that is, the feeling of freedom in an atmosphere that was gradually becoming poisoned and foul. And Irena Stefanovna behaved freely — both with everyone around her and with the magazine. Freedom and supplying oxygen to the population cost working to exhaustion — on the day of signing the issue, they would leave for home almost at dawn.
Irena Lesnevskaya
A complex character, an authoritarian management style? Maybe. But the scale was visible from a mile away. This is a breed of people who are organic in the role of a truly charismatic boss. Her leisurely manners, regal voice. Here she sits on a sofa in the corridor of the editorial office, reading something with interest on paper, next to an ashtray and a pack of cigarettes. A conversation with her on another floor of the editorial office, in her personal apartments — always an event. And partly an adventure. She was one of her own, but from her office, from her floor, she descended as if from Olympus. Great. Such were the great chief editors of Tvardovsky's level — complex, enduring, providing oxygen. All such editors were crushed, and the brands were profaned. «Novy Mir» of the 1970s — not «Novy Mir» of the 1960s. «Izvestia» of the old school after several reincarnations do not supply oxygen, they, on the contrary, reduce its amount.
All the gold that power touches magically turns into crap. Or is destroyed — sometimes to the ground, sometimes leaving a small oxygen bubble of catacomb resistance.
From an interview about the capture and profanation of the TEFI award: «You can't be half-pregnant, they will take everything. They need the entire population of the country, and they will do it». This is not only about the award, this is about everything in general: «And also the feeling that our country has become a huge psychiatric hospital» — a decade before the start of the SVO. Everything was clear even at the beginning of the 2000s, the channel REN, simply encrypting her name, Irena herself left back in 2005.
Why do they keep this name — the public doesn't care what they watch and on what channel. Small streams of madness flow into the big mainstream, and then into the maelstrom, absorbing everything that was done by generations and people like Lesnevskaya. Absorbing culture — the foundation of everything. It is the base, and everything else is the superstructure. First, they take away the culture of freedom and then — property. However, these processes are almost parallel.
A huge, complex geological, branching cultural layer is being washed away, within which Lesnevskaya is not an accidental grain of sand, but an impressive nugget. To build up this layer, one had to live the life that worthy people of her generation, the older and younger sixties, lived.
To be born in exile, to be married to a significant (and very controversial) figure of a fabled era — Vladimir Maksimov, to know what the KGB is, to struggle in low positions on television, to work with Eldar Ryazanov, to wind all this onto the wheels of life experience and to found an independent channel where everyone and everything would be represented, very different, again all such controversial, but very talented. Now this is already forgotten and seems strange, but on REN-TV worked, for example, Sergey Dorenko. Probably, Irena was attracted by talent in him... And on the channel, who or what was not there. It was interesting, not boring, free. The best people from the history of the country and Lesnevskaya's life — from Yuri Nikulin to Bulat Okudzhava.
Why did it bounce off and eventually bounce off the eyes, which turned into insensitive glass, and the souls of millions of people? They were interested. They used freedom. They bathed in oxygen, which then became less and less. Not only did the authorities cut off the oxygen, but all these millions, then hundreds of thousands, then tens of thousands of people stopped consuming oxygen and live on something else. Fake poisonous fodder, which today's media feed them
What were all these efforts for then? Everyone who remembers Irena Stefanovna asks this question.
Probably, she cultivated her garden. First, she accumulated knowledge for its cultivation, then it was immediately laid out as large and diverse, then it became smaller. Then, presumably, disappointment came. She really thought that all former colleagues, especially on television, around were infected with some disease, went crazy, instantly squandered — along with the public and at the same time with the authorities — everything that had been maturing and growing for decades, surrendered to the authorities and betrayed the country.
What is it like — to be born in exile, to survive illusions, to get at almost fifty the opportunity to manage your freedom, and to do it brilliantly, and then lose this freedom and find yourself again in a kind of intellectual and political exile. Blessed are those who were born in the stinking Stalinist times, but then survived the thaw, perestroika, reforms, but left a little earlier than Irena, not living to either the suppression of Bolotnaya, or Crimea, and even more so to February 2022. They did not know that everything was in vain. Lesnevskaya was robbed not only of the channel but also, like all of us, — the country.
But, it seems, she died with hope for another country, another state, another society, which she reported in a post on her 80th birthday. After her and our other departed comrades, all we can do is cultivate our small garden, persuade, prove, fight against the wall of misunderstanding, resentment, hatred, deaf ignorance, blind indifference. Try to give oxygen to those who still need it. As Irena tried to do. To be free people in an unfree country, as Irena Stefanovna was.
Hope — this is also oxygen. And Lesnevskaya's time? It's like Naum Korzhavin: «There are no easy times. And it cuts into human memory. Only those who carried this burden on their mortal shoulders».
PS A little personal. Her appearance, or rather, her phenomenon was royal. I have been invited to work in different ways in this life, but no one like her, perhaps. It was a call around midnight, even though we were very casually acquainted. A voice with charming smokiness: «Come, we need to talk». Back then, almost two decades ago, phone scammers did not exist, and it was not a prank. The voice and intonation turned out to be more playfully-conspiratorial than commanding, but I almost obeyed their guiding and directing tone. And I was even thinking how to explain to my family that I needed to urgently go somewhere right now, on this languid summer night — it seemed somewhat implausible. Nevertheless, after a pause, I received a reprieve until morning: «But you are probably already in your underwear...» (which was true). Here's her signature disarming final frankness!
It was Homerically funny. And inspiring. As was working under her leadership on a short but bright and energetic, team and cheerful supply of oxygen and hope to the population.
* Andrey Kolesnikov is considered a «foreign agent» by the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation.
Photo: TASS.