Sergei Georgievich Lapin served as chairman of the USSR State Radio and Television for more than 15 years. Now everyone remembers that Lapin era in different ways. Some say that Sergei Georgievich was a versatile erudite person, appreciated poetry, and was well versed in art. The latter call him none other than "SS" or "Soviet Goebbels." And still others agree with both.
Lapin ended up in the chair of the USSR State Committee for Television and Radio Broadcasting in 1970. Before him, Nikolai Mesyatsev was in it, who was referred to the so-called "Shelepinites" - party members who played a certain role in the removal of Khrushchev. In those years, demotions and dismissals of "Shelepintsy" from their positions were commonplace. In addition, the then Secretary General Brezhnev had friendly relations with Lapin.
Sergei Georgievich immediately got down to business. Despite, or perhaps because of, the rigid order that was established during the period of Lapin's leadership on Soviet television and radio, the chairman held his post for a very long time - until Mikhail Gorbachev came to power.
First of all, Lapin was known as an ardent anti-Semite. He set himself the goal of reducing the number of Jews on television and radio to an absolute minimum. So gradually the voices and images of many singers, artists, presenters, who were of Jewish origin, disappeared from the loudspeakers and from the blue screens. These are Vadim Mulerman, Larisa Mondrus, Nina Brodskaya, Maya Kristalinskaya, Aida Vedischeva, Valery Obodzinsky and others. It got to the point that Lapin could prohibit the release of any program if a Jew became its face. This happened with the Kinopanorama, beloved by the audience, hosted by Alexei Kapler. Kinopanorama disappeared and did not appear until a new host was found. They became Eldar Ryazanov, whose mother, by the way, was Jewish. This is a good example of Lapin's strange selectivity. Indeed, for example, the same Obodzinsky did not have Jewish roots, but nevertheless he was expelled along with everyone else.
In 1972, at the behest of Lapin, the program “Club of the Cheerful and Resourceful” that had already become popular was closed. The writer and journalist Fyodor Razzakov cites in his materials the words of Svetlana Zhiltsova, who at one time was the partner of the host of KVN Maslyakov. According to Zhiltsova, the beards and mustaches of the members of the Odessa team became the reason for the ban on the program. In part, this was true. The Chairman of the State Radio and Television really forbade anyone to appear on the air with facial hair. In addition, he did not allow female employees to wear trousers, and all men were required to appear on the screen only in jackets and ties. However, as for KVN, Svetlana Zhiltsova was sure that the beards of the inhabitants of Odessa turned out to be just a pretext. In reality, the whole point again turned out to be the Jewish origin of the participants in the humorous game.
But be that as it may, it is impossible not to pay attention to Lapin's enormous contribution to the development of television and radio. For example, it was during the Lapin period that the volume of broadcasting increased by more than 2 times, and a new OTRK television center was also launched. It was on the initiative of Lapin that the programs "Song of the Year", "With all my heart" and many others appeared on Soviet TV.
In addition, Sergei Georgievich was really well versed in painting and literature, and in particular in poetry, and was known as an interesting conversationalist, since he was in fact a comprehensively erudite person.
Some are sure that Lapin loved his work very much, rooted for it and took it very seriously. Perhaps this is true, and the chairman of the State Radio and Television was simply one of the links in the political system of those years, a responsible executor, but by no means a ruler.
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Chairman of the State Committee for Radio and Television Broadcasting under the Council of Ministers of the USSR (from July 5, 1978 - USSR State Radio and Television) (April 17, 1970 - December 16, 1985). Hero of Socialist Labor (1982).
According to his official biography, he was born into a working-class family.
He spent the years from 1932 to 1940 on journalistic work in Leningrad and the Leningrad region.
In 1939 he joined the Bolshevik Party, and in 1942 he graduated from the Higher Party School under the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks.
In 1941, despite the draft age (29 years) and the difficult situation at the front, he did not join the army.
Since 1944, he worked in the State Committee for Radio and Broadcasting under the Council of Ministers of the USSR (“Radio Committee”), by the end of the 40s he became deputy chairman of this organization.
In 1953, he unexpectedly went to work at the USSR Foreign Ministry, which was a demotion for him. In 1956, Lapin was appointed Soviet Ambassador to Austria.
In 1960 he became Minister of Foreign Affairs of the RSFSR, and already in 1962 - Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR. From this position in 1965 he left as ambassador to the PRC. It was during the period of work in Beijing that Lapin became one of the favorites of the recently come to power Secretary General Leonid Brezhnev, whom he first met while working in Vienna, when Brezhnev was chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.
Upon his return to Moscow in 1967, Lapin was waiting for a new appointment - the general director of TASS.
On April 15, 1970, the chairman of the State Committee for Radio and Television Broadcasting (the new name of the former "Radio Committee") Nikolai Mesyatsev was dismissed. April 17, 1970 Sergey Lapin was appointed to his place.
The period of 1970-1980 is known as the time of global reorganization, political and technological restructuring of the USSR DH system. The average daily broadcast volume increased from 1673 hours in 1971 to 3700 hours in 1985. For the Moscow Olympics, a new television center OTRK (Olympic Television and Radio Complex) was put into operation, after which the television center in Ostankino became one of the largest in the world at that time. In the second half of the 1970s, the Raduga, Ekran and Horizon satellites were added to the Molniya satellite, which significantly increased the possibility of space television broadcasting. All these innovations are directly related to the activities of Lapin as chairman of the State Committee for Radio and Television Broadcasting.
Lapin gained notoriety for his political decisions. His name is associated with the introduction of more stringent censorship on radio and television than during the years of the "thaw". Many programs and films were subjected to serious editing, sometimes canceled entirely. Already in 1972, the live broadcast of the Club of the cheerful and resourceful was stopped. The most popular Kinopanorama program was taken off the air for a long time, when Alexei Kapler was its host.
Entertainment and variety programs were subjected to a thorough check for ideological "purity". A system of justified prohibitions was introduced. Lapin did not allow, for example, people with beards to appear on the TV screen. Male hosts were not allowed to go on the air without a tie and jacket. Women were not allowed to wear trousers. Lapin banned close-ups of the singer Pugacheva singing into a microphone on TV, as he considered it reminiscent of oral sex.
Lapin's reign also became known as a period of anti-Semitism on the USSR Central Television. On television, such popular performers as Vadim Mulerman, Valery Obodzinsky, Maya Kristalinskaya, Aida Vedischeva, Larisa Mondrus, Emil Gorovets, Nina Brodskaya gradually stopped filming.
Lapin was categorically against the candidacy of Vladimir Vysotsky for the main role in the TV series "The meeting place cannot be changed", which Stanislav Govorukhin was going to shoot in 1978. It was possible to bypass the ban only thanks to Govorukhin's perseverance and wit.
At the same time, exemplary erudition and deep knowledge of literature and art coexisted in the character of Sergei Lapin.
With the death of Brezhnev, Lapin's career did not end, however, with the coming to power of M.S. Gorbachev in his post, he stayed for a very short time - on December 16, 1985 he was sent into retirement. Lapin's permanent deputy, Enver Nazimovich Mammadov, was also dismissed. He died on October 7, 1990 in Moscow. He was buried at the Kuntsevo cemetery.
E. KISELEV: I greet everyone who is listening to the Ekho Moskvy radio station at this moment. This is really the program "Our Everything" and I, its host Evgeny Kiselev. We are writing the history of our fatherland for the last hundred years. Since 1905, we have been writing history in faces, going alphabetically from A to Z, for each letter, with some exceptions - so far with the exception of the letter K, where we had 9 heroes, and for all other letters we have three heroes. And here we are finishing the letter L. One hero was chosen on the Internet - Academician Landau. You have already heard about him. Live, during the voting, the famous aircraft designer Semyon Lavochkin was chosen. And we have already presented this program on the air. And today is the last program with the letter L. It is dedicated to the hero whom I chose myself - let me remind you that I have the right to choose one hero. And I chose a person who, when voting on the Internet, turned out, oddly enough to me, to be an outsider. This is, as someone said, "the media tycoon of the Soviet era", such a tycoon of the Soviet era in the field of mass media - Sergey Georgievich Lapin. And, as always at the beginning of our program, a portrait of our hero.
PORTRAIT IN THE INTERIOR OF THE EPOCH. SERGEY LAPIN
Sergey Georgievich Lapin, whose name is almost forgotten today, was in fact one of the very bright statesmen of the Soviet era in the sphere of media ideology and propaganda. Behind Lapin's plain appearance and short stature, there was a man who instilled superstitious horror in his subordinates. He ruled television and radio of the USSR with an iron fist for almost the entire period that remained in the history of our country under the name of "stagnation" - from 1970, when Brezhnev was still young, until 1985, when Mikhail Gorbachev came to power, putting an end to Lapin's career. Little is known about the youth of our hero. His official biography only stated that he was born in St. Petersburg in 1912 in a working-class family. As for the latter, we note that in that harsh time when young Seryozha Lapin had to fill out Soviet questionnaires for the first time, many of his peers were ready to write in the column “Social origin” - “from the workers”, and the then personnel officers often could not double-check this. In any case, for a former guy of proletarian origin, who did not graduate from anything other than the Higher Party School of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Lapin was suspiciously well educated and well-read, knew Russian literature perfectly, therefore quoted by heart the Silver Age, was well versed in painting. Although, what only happened then with young people. Among them were talented self-taught, and cynical traitors to their class. Unlike some media executives of the Soviet era, who were sometimes chosen from among people who were far from journalism, Lapin was not at all alien to this profession. Again, according to the official biography, he spent the years from 1932 to 1940 on journalistic work in Leningrad and the Leningrad region. Then, after graduating from the High School, he moved to the apparatus of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. At the front, mind you, he was not, which means that he was already on a special account and was considered a valuable shot. In the 44th he was appointed to the Radio Committee, and by the beginning of the 50s he became the deputy chairman of this organization. By that time, its full name was the State Committee for Radio and Broadcasting under the Council of Ministers of the USSR. Television was then still so small that it was not even reflected in the name of the Committee. Here the career of the future chairman of this Committee suddenly takes an unexpected turn - he moves to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to a lower position - head of one of the departments of the Soviet foreign policy department. Old-timers of the State Radio and Television told that this happened because Lapin left his first wife, and at that time for a leader of this rank it was considered a serious offense and was often punished by a reprimand from the party line, demotion and even dismissal. However, as the old people claimed, Lapin was sympathetic to the then Minister of Foreign Affairs Molotov, who helped him to continue his public career in a new field. Looking ahead, let's say that there is another legend - that in the early 80s, Molotov, already a deep old man, still in deep disgrace, turned to Lapin with a request to write his oral memoirs on television - if not for immediate display, then at least would be for future generations. Lapin allegedly did not answer the former benefactor in any way. It was believed that it was thanks to Molotov's patronage that in 1956 Lapin was appointed Soviet ambassador to Austria. The business trip was successful and in the early 60s, when Molotov, after an unsuccessful attempt to remove Khrushchev, was already removed from all posts, expelled from the party and sent to exile near Moscow to a dacha in Zhukovka, his former protégé Lapin, upon his return from Vienna, became the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the RSFSR . Then this position was decorative, but quite prestigious. For them, it was a sinecure before retirement; for others, it was a transfer platform for a new career breakthrough. The second thing happened to Lapin - he soon became deputy minister already in the large all-union Foreign Ministry, and from this position in 1965 he left as ambassador to Beijing. This was at the height of the cultural revolution, when relations between the Soviet Union and China became extremely complicated and the post of ambassador in Beijing became extremely important and responsible. Not only in the sense of monitoring the events unfolding on the territory of the great neighboring power and the plans of its leadership in relation to the USSR - numerous projects of Soviet-Chinese cooperation were curtailed, it was necessary to ensure the safety of property, equipment, real estate, to organize the actual urgent, as in war, the evacuation of hundreds of thousands Soviet specialists, advisers, members of their families, students from Beijing to Moscow. Apparently, Lapin coped with his mission. It was rumored that it was in the Beijing years that Lapin, who regularly reported personally to Brezhnev on the development of the situation in China, became one of the favorites of the Secretary General, who liked it in Vienna at the very beginning of the 60s, where Leonid Ilyich came on an official visit in his then capacity as Chairman of the Presidium Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Be that as it may, upon his return to Moscow in 1967, Lapin was appointed general director of TASS, which was then considered much more responsible and prestigious than today. And in the 70th, he finally returned to the USSR State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company as chairman. At that time, within the walls of the State Television and Radio Committee, the last warm breaths of the Khrushchev “thaw” that was fading into the past were still felt, sedition of the sixties was still alive, frivolous programs like KVN still appeared on the air. The Club of the Merry and Resourceful fell one of Lapin's first victims - he began to mercilessly uproot all dissent and the slightest liberties on radio and television, down to the then fashionable mini-skirts for young employees and long hairstyles a la Beatles for young employees. At the same time, Lapin, this tough, not to say cruel man with an authoritarian style of management, sometimes showed unexpected liberalism and with a grand gesture allowed the screening of programs or films that seemed destined to be shelved. The ideological keep-muzzle and devoted servant of the regime got along well in Lapin with a versatile educated cultured person who had an artistic taste, knew how to appreciate real art, to distinguish talent from mediocrity. In addition, it was believed that sometimes Lapin could afford a lot thanks to a close personal acquaintance with Brezhnev, whom he could contact directly if something happened, bypassing his other bosses from the Politburo and the Secretariat of the Central Committee with a lower rank. When Brezhnev died, many thought that Lapin's days were numbered. There were rumors that the new Secretary General Andropov really dislikes the chairman of the State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company. At the suggestion of his long-time liberal advisers and assistants, such as academicians Arbatov or Bogomolov or the Izvestia political observer Bovin, but Andropov was the flesh and blood of the system and, guided by the well-known wisdom “The old horse does not spoil the furrow”, did not touch Lapin, one of its pillars. Sergei Georgievich outlived both Andropov and Chernenko, was retired only under Gorbachev. And soon died. Perhaps he did not survive all that he had to hear in his address with the beginning of Gorbachev's perestroika and glasnost, fair and unfair.
E.Kiselev: And now I would like to introduce my guest. Today Alexei Kirillovich Simonov, Chairman of the Glasnost Defense Foundation, is taking part in our program. Aleksey Kirillovich worked under Lapin at the State Radio and Television, if I'm not mistaken, all 15 years while Sergei Georgievich was in this post. To be honest, while working at the State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company, I found only the last year and a half of Sergei Georgievich. Of course, I have a lot of memories, and since my friends, relatives, and acquaintances worked at the State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company, and I heard a lot of stories from them, but still I would like to listen to a person who really, as they say, the Lapin time I passed through myself and experienced it on my own skin. What was it like?
Y. SIMONOV: This is, in fact, a story, you know how it happens - about time and about yourself. Because Lapin - it was rather our attitude towards Lapin. Lapin was such a television Stalin, whom no one saw or saw only in portraits, but who influenced everything that happened even on the sidelines of this very institution. It was very interesting. I met Sergey Georgievich personally several times, visited him, I had a quite definite and unambiguous family account with him. In 1949, heading Litdrambroadcasting, Sergei Georgievich fired my mother Yevgenia Samoilovna Laskina for being Jewish from this same Litdrambroadcasting, after which she remained unemployed for 7 years and could not get a job anywhere until she started working in the newly formed magazine Moskva. Therefore, Lapin seemed to me an absolute evil. Then, working on television - I worked at the creative association "Ekran", I came there in the 70th year, that is, almost simultaneously with Lapin - I often dealt with his deputies. It was a very interesting team, because until Kravchenko came, in the swing of people applying for the first position, he did not tolerate - just like Stalin did not tolerate them. They had to have some very noticeable shortcomings with very high merits.
E. KISELEV: Yes, there is such a legend that he fired his first deputy, Georgy Ivanov, who later worked in the Ministry of Culture and, in my opinion, headed the theater department - there are memoirs of Ion Druta, where he tells this story - he fired very tough and rough. Ivanov was late for the first meeting of the Collegium, got stuck, in my opinion, in the elevator, burst in out of breath when Lapin had already begun the meeting, and Lapin looked - “And who are you? so messy?" He replied - "I'm actually your first deputy." He says - "You are no longer my first deputy." Ivanov: "Sorry, this appointment is not yours, but the nomenklatura." “I, by my decision, remove you from your duties.”
Y. SIMONOV: Well, for example, there was - he is still alive, I still sometimes meet him, he somehow still continues to cooperate with the news agency - Enver Nazimovich Mammadov ...
E. KISELEV: The most colorful figure.
Y. SIMONOV: An extremely colorful figure, a man with a strange skull, allegedly a KGB general, and at the same time a man with a completely pronounced flaw, that is, a drinker and, as they said, injecting, and they used to say this in those days when it was not common phenomenon. In any case, I personally saw Enver Nazimovich walking from the entrance of this very building on Korolyov Street to the elevator - there, if you remember, there is a very wide foyer - he was literally carried from one end of the foyer to the other. This I saw.
E. KISELEV: Legends also told about this. But at the same time, legends were told about his amazing intellectual abilities.
Y. SIMONOV: Absolutely right. That's exactly what I meant. This was a man whose professional remarks on his picture - I shot a movie - I still remember. He looked at my first game picture - "Game Arctic" - looked at me with a languid look of an oriental person and said - "Well, where is the transparent romanticism of Gorbatov's prose?" It was absolutely right. It was a task that I set myself - to remove this romanticism and make a tough picture. But it was necessary to catch it, and for this it was necessary at least to read stories. He knew all this.
E. KISELEV: I myself have never met Enver Nazimovich Mamedov, Lapin's first deputy and actually the head of central television, but Oleg Dobrodeev, the current head of the All-Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company, told me that at the beginning of his television career, it was the first half of the 80s, he worked alone from the editors of the International Panorama, and suddenly he was called with an on-air folder, where the transmission was already folded, to Mamedov, and Mamedov received him in his office, as Oleg Borisovich said, almost lying in an armchair, in the pose "feet on the table" . Well, let's just say, in a very informal pose. He asked for this folder, leafed through it, gave it to Dobrodeev, thought about it, and then suddenly, with what shocked him, he named exactly the page number and the paragraph that should be cut out when editing the program, although there was a complete feeling that he just scrolled lazily, running obliquely through each page...
Y. SIMONOV: No, on the one hand, he was a seasoned professional, but on the other hand, he had that shortcoming that definitely did not allow him to take Lapin's place. That's what interests me. In this sense, it is a dictator, and in this sense they are all the same - they never keep equal people around them, this is dramatic for a dictator and impossible for a dictatorship. Lapin was an absolute dictator. At the same time, we must pay tribute to him that he had exquisite tastes ...
E.Kiselev: And there was a legend about it too.
Y. SIMONOV: This is not only a legend, it is without any legends. These are people who more or less communicated with him - I can’t include myself among these people - they talked about his ability to quote the classics of the Silver Age and Soviet literature of the initial period. Just fantastic. He had an amazing library, which he could replenish, including through his stay abroad, which not everyone succeeded, to put it mildly. And secondly, he really loved it.
E. KISELEV: They say that he even had something like such an informal literary salon at home, because there were figures of the humanitarian creative intelligentsia who were admitted to his house. I remember I met, I don’t remember whether I worked on the staff or worked freelance, but I met such a person in a luxurious fur coat, and then I looked closely and realized that it was Ilya Glazunov, who was going to Lapin and was terribly indignant - “how is it , a policeman stopped me, he won’t let me go to Sergei Georgievich, but Sergei Georgievich is waiting for me - we have a friendly meeting with him.
Y. SIMONOV: Well, to name Ilya... although this is the beginning of the 80s - he is already in force, but in general, in fact, he was, to put it mildly, not quite from the creative intelligentsia in his initial period, although as an artist he was in the initial period was interesting. Well, that's okay.
E. KISELEV: Well, in general, many artists have, you know, gone from dissent to conformism.
Y. SIMONOV: I understand. But the trick is this: I have a feeling that these are all legends. Few people gathered at Lapin's. He was, if I understand correctly, a very closed person and a closed house. But there was a key to Lapin, and a very curious one. He adored the people of the old culture. The first time I encountered Sergei Georgievich's editing was when I was shooting a picture about Leonid Utyosov. By the way, just a day ago, she was on the air. That is, she was not on the air - they took her and made something else out of her, but half of the material in this film about Utyosov is my material. So, the picture ends, and they begin to cut out my favorite pieces from it, and this was my first independent picture on television - it was the 71st year. And I come to Utesov and say - “Leonid Iosifovich, I beg you, call Lapin. He will definitely listen to you." I’ve been working on television for only a year, and everyone already knows that if Utesov, Plyatt or, God forbid, Ranevskaya calls him, he will break into a cake, give any number of films, any number of episodes, include in the plan. It was his exhalation in television. And now his cliffs, after long persuasion and refusals, and the like, finally came to the phone, dialed the number I had given and said, “This is the people's artist of the cliffs speaking. I would like Sergei Georgievich. Connected immediately. “Sergei Georgievich, hello, this is Utesov speaking. Do you know why they circumcise me a second time?” And I can see from his absolutely stone physiognomy that exactly the same reaction is happening there. "I have seen. I like. Yes, fine, thank you very much." He told me not to be circumcised without him. That's how I first encountered Lapin's editing. Lapin looked at the picture. All the stories that were discussed remained. A piece was cut from a song about Odessa. Just sharply, with scissors in the copy, it was cut impudently, which illustrated the song about Odessa. They just cut it out and that's it. I only saw this on air. Such was Lapin's editing.
E.Kiselev: Interesting. How about, say, Kapler? Also a man of the old culture, who was mercilessly removed. The first host of Kinopanorama, who was removed with an iron hand from Lapin.
Y. SIMONOV: First, let's put it this way - Kapler was taken, because this is also not the last thing - I do not mean that I know how he was taken, but he was taken precisely because he was a man of the old culture. And another conversation - that he began to bend in the wrong direction. It's a completely different story. Excuse me, this is access to the body, and not creative ... When the pictures were launched, so that Ilyinsky would read his favorite works, they could be produced for hours. He was ready to watch it himself and, accordingly, was ready to show it. But if Ilyinsky were to be asked to read Platonov at that time, I am not at all convinced that Lapin would have accepted it. You see, here's another thing. In fact, it was such a generosity of the soul at the expense of the state, but at the same time it was very severely ideologically limited. Because it was clear. After all, the horror lay in the fact that in the State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company the vast majority of the bosses did not think whether they saw a good or bad movie in front of them. They thought about how the eyes of the authorities would watch this movie, sometimes imagining themselves in the place of Mamedov, and sometimes imagining themselves in the place of Lapin. Depending on who was next to watch. And this removed their internal personal responsibility, making them just watchdogs. This is the main thing in this Lapinskaya atmosphere - this is the depersonalization of his own bosses, whom he put there.
E. KISELEV: But still, look - Lapin was very often mentioned in the late 80s, early 90s, we have already partly said about this, as about television Stalin, a monster, a man who literally burned out all life, starting from live broadcasts, he banned KVN - one of the clichés that always pop up in the head of any person who has some kind of history on television and remembers Soviet times - Lapin banned KVN. But after all, there were many bright works on television under Lapin.
Y. SIMONOV: For example?
E.Kiselev: Well, Ryazanov's films, for example, right? "Irony of Fate" appeared under Lapin.
Y. SIMONOV: Yes. But these are not Ryazanov's films, this is one Ryazanov's film. Quite what is called...
E.Kiselev: But there were other films as well. Well, for example, Lapin allowed to shoot the film “Say a Word About the Poor Hussar,” which, in my opinion, they didn’t want to shoot anywhere else. Under Lapin, in a difficult way, but still, the film "Pokrovsky Gates" was aired. Under Lapin, in the end, there were "17 moments of spring", no matter how you treat them.
Y. SIMONOV: Well, that's a different story. This is already an ideology. I am firmly convinced that he kept his artistic taste like a chained dog on a chain. But he had it. It certainly is. For me, this is a person who knew exactly who in the culture was Grant and who was Rastignac. He knew it very well. And therefore rarely very much in this sense was mistaken. The question is that ... by the way, he had an absolutely fantastic memory, which, in my opinion, sometimes even replaced his conscience. When I got into his office for the first time, he said - "Aaaaaaa, you are the son of Evgenia Samoilovna Laskina." And I, who would like to say - "And I curse you for 20 years for this," smiling politely, said, "Yes, of course."
E. KISELEV: At this point, we will break for the mid-hour news on Ekho Moskvy. And in a minute or two we will continue our conversation.
NEWS
E. KISELEV: We continue the next edition of the Our Everything program. Today it is dedicated to the head of the USSR State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company, the long-term head of Soviet television and radio, with whom an entire era in our radio and television journalism is associated - Sergey Georgievich Lapin. And Alexei Kirillovich Simonov, head of the Glasnost Defense Foundation, is sharing his memories of that time and of this man with me today. So we stopped at your meeting in Lapin's office, when he instantly remembered that you were the son of your mother, Evgenia Samoilovna Laskina, whom Lapin fired in 1949 because she was Jewish. It was an era of struggle against cosmopolitanism. Was he even an anti-Semite?
Y. SIMONOV: I don't know.
E. KISELEV: A lot has been said about this.
Y. SIMONOV: I don't know, I don't think so.
E. KISELEV: So, ideological, I mean an anti-Semite.
Y. SIMONOV: I suspect not. Because the ideological anti-Semite, of course, makes exceptions for outstanding cultural workers, but if you take, say, as I said, Utyosov, Ranevskaya, these are people who, when they called, answered the phone immediately, no matter what. Another person could not get through to him for hours, days, whatever. And these are people who penetrated instantly. And these were not just Jews, but outstanding Jews of the Soviet Union. So I think his anti-Semitism is greatly exaggerated. I think that his anti-Semitism was as much a tribute to the time as much else in his politics, in his appearance, in his way of communicating with people. It was all - how I clean myself under Lenin, they all cleaned themselves up under Stalin. And it was so strong that ... Stalin in everyday life was also not such a painful anti-Semite. It was more of a general idea, a theory...
E. KISELEV: Nevertheless, one of the authors of the film epic “Our biography – do you remember, was this documentary epic?
Y. SIMONOV: Of course, but how?
E. KISELEV: I only, to my shame, forgot when, for what anniversary it was made.
Y. SIMONOV: In my opinion, it was made for the 60th anniversary in 1977.
E. KISELEV: Yes, on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the October Revolution. So, when they did the year 1967, which, of course, should have included footage of the Six-Day War between Israel and the Arabs. There were shots of Israeli tanks going on the offensive, sweeping away everything in their path.
Y. SIMONOV: Sweeping away the Soviet tanks on which the Arabs fought.
E. KISELEV: There was stormy music, and when Lapin was watching this fragment, he suddenly looked angrily, as the memoirist claims, at the author of this series and said - “What? Are yours coming?" - the authors, frightened, threw it out themselves.
Y. SIMONOV: Oh, here it is! I'm talking about this. You see, what a thing - Lapin had the ability to create this aura that affected you. I can't say that Lapin forced me to be polite and unconstrained about the fact that he remembers my mother so well. I couldn't remember anything good about it. But I politely smiled, said "Yes, yes" and shut up. Why? So it was not in Lapin, but in me. And I think that very often he got pleasure when he saw that people themselves - he only has to frown, and they are already attentively reacting to this. Luckily, I didn't hand over a single painting to Lapin. My films have never been the vanguard of Soviet television cinema, and always somewhere in the last resort at the level of Khesin or at the level of Mamedov.
E. KISELEV: Lapin, they say, did not like Ostankino, did not like Central Television in general. He was unpleasant in a sense, such a relaxed creative environment, which was on television. In any case, he liked to sit in the building at 25 Pyatnitskaya, his main office was there - firstly, it was within easy reach of the Kremlin, to Staraya Square. At that time, there were no traffic jams today, and it was possible to get to any of these addresses in just a matter of minutes. But I remember, since I started working on foreign broadcasting, Brezhnev had already died, Gorbachev was about to come, I came to foreign broadcasting to work in the state already in 1984, but still there was an atmosphere - despite the fact that creative people also worked there, but there was an atmosphere of a bureaucratic institution. And remember, for example, it was strictly forbidden for women to walk in trousers at one time?
Y. SIMONOV: Yes.
E. KISELEV: They didn’t let women in trousers, there was such a thing. Lapin did not like men who wore beards very much.
Y. SIMONOV: In general, the campaign against churches, against beards, the church in the frame…
E. KISELEV: The church could be shown without crosses.
Y. SIMONOV: Well, yes.
E. KISELEV: Well, if it gets into the frame - for God's sake, if there is nowhere to go, but so that the crosses are slaughtered.
Y. SIMONOV: Well, yes. And men, if a beard gets in, then so that it is also circumcised. There were some other restrictions, I'm afraid ...
E. KISELEV: Some kind of checks were arranged, as in a defense enterprise - anyone who was late for a minute, everything already, could get a reprimand, although a journalist sometimes, you know, goes on a mission. Correspondents also worked there, and they had to make excuses - “Yes, you know, I was on the report,” they wrote explanatory notes.
Y. SIMONOV: I had more decent and more personal relations already in a more liberal era with the advent of Kravchenko. There was a funny story here. Because when he first came as first deputy, they began to introduce him to the team. We, the creative association "Screen", once gathered - Kravchenko did not come, two gathered - Kravchenko did not come, the third time we have been sitting for half an hour - finally Kravchenko, Khesin appear. Kravchenko made a short speech from the throne, and then asked if there were any questions. I asked the first question: “So you didn’t come twice, having gathered us, and once you were late for half an hour and began your throne speech without apologizing. Is this our style or is it an accident and are you ready to apologize?
E. KISELEV: Did Kravchenko come under Lapin?
Y. SIMONOV: Yes.
E. KISELEV: But apparently, he was, as they say, brought down from above as a television reformer. Was it not Lapin who chose his first deputy?
Y. SIMONOV: No. And I think that in general, despite the fact that I fully believe in the legend about Ivanov, I still think that the first deputies ... how can I say? You know, Lapin was, of course, a big player on the stock exchange of the Soviet party apparatus. I think that he was not the last apparatchik in this sense, and his opinion mattered in the selection or appointment, not least. But sometimes, as they say, you win, sometimes you lose. It's such a game. It's called a hardware game.
E.Kiselev: You know, I remember one incident that I witnessed. In general, very often, as veterans of the State Television and Radio Broadcasting Service recall, rumors suddenly began to spread periodically that everyone, Lapin was in disgrace, Lapin was being removed, and someone had already seen how they twisted the sign and took out personal belongings from that same office on the 4th floor in building on Pyatnitskaya, 25. But, I remember very well, Andropov died, Chernenko came to replace Andropov, and for several months there was such an agonizing pause in connection with the arrival of Chernenko - will Lapin resist or not? Well, a new broom always sweeps in a new way, even if it is in the hands of a completely decrepit and almost dying general secretary. And just then I came to work at the State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company. It was the summer of 1984. And literally, almost a few days later, they finally suddenly announce - "Everyone who can go to the conference room - Lapin will speak." And again - along all the corridors, on all floors, "Shu-shu-shu, says goodbye to the team, leaves." The people crowded apparently-invisibly. Sergey Georgievich comes in, he was so short, completely unprepossessing ...
Y. SIMONOV: Do you know what we called him? He had a nickname - "Baybak" - a large gopher, but a small rodent.
E. KISELEV: Absolutely unremarkable appearance, only eyes, perhaps. There were legends about how heavy, steely, unblinking eyes he had. He rises to the podium and says - "I must tell you about my meeting with the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko, which took place the other day." The silence is such that a fly will fly by - you will hear. “Konstantin Ustinovich thanked me for the work that our entire team of the State Committee for Television and Radio Broadcasting is doing and set new tasks that we, comrades, must solve. And now I will tell you a little more about these tasks. And everyone understood that Lapin was staying.
Y. SIMONOV: It did not take place.
E.Kiselev: It did not take place, yes. However, everything ends. And the 15-year era of Lapin ended.
Y. SIMONOV: Well, among other things - in my opinion, it was a personal tragedy at the end of his era ...
E.Kiselev: Yes. This is truly a terrible tragedy.
Y. SIMONOV: It knocked him down a lot.
E. KISELEV: In my opinion, this happened in 1982.
Y. SIMONOV: I have a feeling that it was the beginning of the 80s.
E. KISELEV: When his daughter died in a completely terrible way - she fell into the elevator shaft, and fell along with the child, and since she entered the elevator with her back, the doors of which swung open automatically, she did not see that there was no elevator. There was some kind of automatic failure. And then she pulled the stroller after her, falling, and the child miraculously survived. But it's a terrible story, of course.
Y. SIMONOV: First of all, this is a terrible story in itself, which you would not even wish on your enemy. But she was very strong, of course, undermined. Well, how can I put it… You see, the balance depends on the environment, and suddenly, when under the left heel, it doesn’t seem to matter, but a spike appears under the left heel, you can no longer walk. And that's it.
E. KISELEV: Let me remind you - today we are remembering the outstanding television and radio person of the Soviet era - Sergey Georgievich Lapin, who for 15 years headed the Soviet ministry, in fact, in all matters related to television and radio broadcasting - the USSR State Radio and Television from 1970- to the end of 1985. Shortly before the New Year, Gorbachev dismissed Lapin. We are reminiscing about this today with Alexei Simonov, head of the Glasnost Defense Foundation. Alexei Kirillovich - for those who do not first listen to our program, I will remind you - all these 15 years he worked with the State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company under Lapin. Probably, the special role that belonged to Lapin, and his relative political longevity, after all, there were people who headed various ministries and departments for much longer - remember, Efim Slavsky, who, in my opinion, headed the Ministry of Middle Ages for almost 30 years engineering? Baibakov, others were ministers who had been in their posts for decades, but nevertheless, there was such a legend that Lapin was allowed what others were not allowed due to his special relationship with Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev.
Y. SIMONOV: I don’t know anything about this, because in fact, when you call Lapin “an outstanding figure in television and radio broadcasting,” I get a feeling of protest. He is an outstanding head of television and radio broadcasting, and as for the figure ...
E. KISELEV: The amendment is accepted.
Y. SIMONOV: Good. Just because in fact I am quite convinced that although Lapin understood the technology of radio and worked for many years before that on the radio and even before his diplomatic career he managed to do both a lot of good and a lot of bad, so I don’t think ... and he did not understand television very much at all, he rather understood the result and did not feel the process at all.
E. KISELEV: He understood, probably, in political information, first of all, in propaganda.
Y. SIMONOV: He brought up - both literally and figuratively - a fairly significant number of people. And in the literal sense, these are people who have learned to do what, they imagined, the authorities want from them. And the second category of people - who have learned to do what the authorities definitely would not allow to do.
E. KISELEV: And under him, the Vremya program appeared, and the school of the Vremya program was, of course, formed under the great influence of Lapin. And this school is alive to this day and sits in the brains and subcortex of many television people who to this day lead this direction of television journalism.
Y. SIMONOV: Yes. To call this branch of television journalism, to put it mildly, pleasant or progressive, or seriously claiming to be an objective master of human minds, would be a great exaggeration.
E. KISELEV: But, nevertheless, we have in the main editorial office of information - I started my television career in the main editorial office of information, that is, in the Vremya program, it was written that way - the main editorial office of information of the central television - the Vremya program …
Y. SIMONOV: Is this at Letunov's? Or Fokine was?
E. KISELEV: No, Fokin is the News Relay Race, it was before the Vremya program, then there was Letunov, then there was Lyubovtsev, and I came at a time when it was already led by Grigory Shevelev. Under Shevelev, I went there. So, we had a late journalist there, he was the main publisher when I worked - Leonid Khataevich. So he had a wonderful metaphor, I like to quote it. He spoke it in such a circle ... when they drank vodka in the kitchen: “Our program reminds me of the tractor that we have in the “News from the Fields” screensaver ... - remember, there the operator runs into the caterpillars of the tractor, which crawls along the sour arable land, crushing under itself some last year's tops, the remnants of an unharvested crop? So, our program - in the same way - is such a huge clumsy tractor that crawls, crushing facts, destinies, the truth of life under itself. And so he crawled until 2008.
Y. SIMONOV: Well, in fact, only in the Vremya program could there be such eagles as, say, the nightingale of the General Staff Leshchinsky, who every time for some reason told that there was something here the day before yesterday or the third day. Such a strange quality was his reporting from Afghanistan, where he was always two days late. That is, such a style of the Vremya program was created - where events take place, we will talk about the consequences of these events.
E.Kiselev: It's true. But at the same time, I must say that a huge number of decent people and good journalists worked in the main editorial office of the information, and the paradox, for example, of the Vremya program is that Vladimir Molchanov’s wonderful program Before and After Midnight was also a product produced in program "Time". That is, what is called, in isolation ...
Y. SIMONOV: On the next table.
E. KISELEV: On the next table they made an absolutely wonderful program that lasted from 1985 to 1991, almost all the time of Gorbachev's perestroika, which printed many topics on television. It was not as popular as Vzglyad, but in terms of journalistic qualities and the courage to pose questions, it seems to me that it was in no way inferior to Vzglyad.
YURY SIMONOV: It is no coincidence that Volodya Molchanov was the founder and member of the first board of the Glasnost Defense Foundation.
E. KISELEV: I hope that he hears us. Vzglyad, of course, was more popular, because it came out every week, while Molchanov's program came out once a month. Although, on the other hand, it was licked and polished in a journalistic way - there in each report there was a frame for a frame, sound, editing, the requirements were at the highest level. Well, for example, we did the program "International Panorama", which, when it was hosted by Alexander Evgenievich Bovin or Nikolai Shishlin, when it was hosted by smart, knowledgeable, competent international people, it was simply interesting to watch at that time.
Y. SIMONOV: Well, in general, in fact, there is such a category of people - I think this is not a new reasoning of mine, I have been thinking about it for a long time - who grew up near the window. These are people who either know a foreign language, or criticize this foreign life, or expose these foreign intrigues, but these are people who lived near the window in the Iron Curtain.
E. KISELEV: These are people, sometimes really talented, who looked desperately mediocre when they had to serve a propaganda number. The journalist Georgy Zubkov was wonderful, who always went into the frame and said that spring had come to the Parisian boulevards. Once a year, he went out, did stand-up, as we say now, that is, in the frame he talked about the fact that spring had come to the Parisian boulevards, but far from the spring mood among the Parisian workers, among the French workers. And then suddenly - time! - a wonderful documentary film appears Zubkova. I don’t know, you remember - “Paris. Why Mayakovsky? - just dumbfounded. Turns out.
Y. SIMONOV: You see, this is precisely one of the main lessons of Lapin's life - that one must be able to save oneself. You can't give it your life. It is necessary, as they say, even in those situations when you do something that is unpleasant for you, keep in yourself ... do not obey this, even what you are doing. Unfortunately, today it is very relevant.
E.Kiselev: Yes. We live in a new Lapin era, what do you think?
Y. SIMONOV: Well, I think that we are already living in the old Lapin era.
E. KISELEV: Already in the old one?
Y. SIMONOV: Of course.
E. KISELEV: So you think that the current morals on state television, on radio ...
Y. SIMONOV: Almost all of our television is state-owned.
E.Kiselev: Almost everything. There are also islands.
Y. SIMONOV: There are also islands. We all know - it's like a special cage in a zoo - look, here we have Freedom of Speech. It's just that there it was possible to entrust this to one Lapin, and now a whole cohort of people is needed for this. There is no Lapin alone, but there is already a Lapin atmosphere.
E. KISELEV: The atmosphere of Lapinskaya ordered to live for a long time in a few years. I don’t know what to take as a starting point, but probably by the end of the 80s there was such freedom on television that only the Vremya program was the last bastion of the Lapin order. Now what do you think?
Y. SIMONOV: I think it's exactly the same now. As soon as a person goes into a retreat ... well, let's say, the profession of a reporter - so he left the frame and went into the profession of a reporter - and it turns out that he is a capable person who knows how to see, sees some things even through, knows how to tell it, knows how explain, able to understand it, which is even more important. And then he again enters another frame in the information program, and there is a feeling that he grew up with me at the same time and studied with Sergei Georgievich.
E.Kiselev: But the students of Sergei Georgievich will lead a new "thaw" on television, do you think, sooner or later?
Y. SIMONOV: Sooner or later it will be necessary. A country cannot live under Lapin's television if it is not the Soviet Union.
E. KISELEV: That is, those who were now tightening the screws will then begin to unwind them together and run ahead of the locomotive?
Y. SIMONOV: Well, we have seen it. After all, at the very least, Leonid Kravchenko, who was sent to change the face of television, was the person who launched the Swan Lake ballet on all channels. Therefore, in fact, I am afraid to predict the future of television. It's just that television still retains a huge number of talented people who today are very little in demand for the products they produce. And as long as this persists, there is hope.
E. KISELEV: I thank Alexei Kirillovich Simonov, my guest today, head of the Glasnost Defense Foundation. With him today we recalled the Lapin times and the person with whose name these times are primarily associated - Sergei Georgievich Lapin, who almost all the years of the Brezhnev stagnation, from 1970 to 1985, headed the USSR State Radio and Television. See you live.
biography
I was born in May 1945, since then I have been tormenting myself and tormenting others with my stubbornness. Grew up without a father. A flatmate (we - me, mother and grandmother in one room and a working family of 7 people in another) sometimes covered the window with a blanket and did some kind of witchcraft in the dark, he was an amateur photographer. True, in addition to this, he was also fond of hunting and fishing, copied pictures in the cells, and was also a big drinker.
Unfortunately, I got infected from him only by the first - photography. Since then and forever, photo paper that comes to life in a developer has been the greatest miracle for me. So I became a sorcerer and began to study to be a wizard.
The child was weak, he was sick a lot. My favorite subjects at school were physics and mathematics. Teachers were praised and asked to solve the problem. Entered the Physico-Technical Institute. However, the hobby for photography has acquired such menacing proportions that it has become the main thing in life. When I left the institute in 1969 and decided to take up photography, I didn’t actually have any photographs. None. And I didn't understand any of it.
But I was lucky: something happened somewhere and the cards went. It happened in 1979-80. Gradually, the works of the masters opened up for me: A. Cartier-Bresson, Y. Smith, A. Kertes, they became my teachers.
He worked as a photographer in various organizations: at a factory, in the Teacher's House, in commercial advertising, and so on. I went to photography from afar: I shot still lifes, walls, then nudes. My new photographer friends liked it, however, later, when I started photographing people on the street, they said that I was hopeless and nothing would come of it.
Here again my stubbornness helped me, I did not obey and continued to stand my ground. I stood and continue to stand on the fact that the difference between still life and reportage is not as great as it is commonly believed. True, people tend to move somewhere all the time, and objects pretend to be inanimate. But I don't see any other differences.
He took part in a dozen exhibitions on Malaya Gruzinskaya. I remember the first time they allowed nudes to be exhibited. In 1985, the first solo exhibition took place there. Several people said they liked it. There was nowhere to retreat.
From 1979 to 1983 he taught at the Correspondence People's University of Art (ZNUI). Then he worked in various Houses of Culture. The Art Photography Studio at the House of Culture of the Moscow State University (1985-87) had the greatest resonance. Students of those years work today in almost all Moscow publications, someone has become famous. Some remember those years as the happiest. Many masters of photography were first introduced to Moscow in the Studio: Actually, these were not exhibitions, the works were hung out for one evening. Exhibitions had to be "lit", that is, to take permission from the relevant organization (censorship). They flooded and held the First Moscow Youth Exhibition with posters and spectators, then the exhibition of Igor Mukhin. The Party Committee of Moscow State University could not bear this. Mukhin filmed hippies and punks, they came to look at themselves, sat on the floor and were not very shy in expressions. Disassembly began, and I had to leave.
The Finns were the first to discover us. Arriving in Moscow in 1986, they were surprised to find that in the Soviet Union there were and are photographers, not even photographers, but those on duty in the boiler room, night watchmen or just unemployed parasites who are seriously involved in photography, are not connected with the press and show in their pictures of people's real lives. They called this strange phenomenon "new wave". Soon the book “Seers of the Other” will be published in Finland. We went to exhibitions and trips abroad, since perestroika allowed this. Subsequently, the books were published in England, Switzerland, France, America. The author of the latest and most interesting Changing Reality is Leah Bendavid-Val, a fine man, National Geographic's book editor. I helped her in every way I could.
From 1992 to 1997 he sat in the Kremlin offices for two days a year. It was called the Commission on State Prizes under the President of the Russian Federation. I was like an expert in photography. There was little sense from this, of the two photographers nominated for the award: V. Gippenreiter and L. Bergoltsev, neither received it. It would be very unusual to award a prize in fine arts for some photographs! But it was impossible not to attend the meetings, sometimes my vote in the secret ballot became decisive. As a result, instead of some elderly academician, a talented artist from Yakutia received the award. And the prize, if I'm not mistaken, was 10 or 20 thousand dollars.
Since 1999, I have been teaching at the Moscow State University at the Faculty of Journalism, giving courses: “Photo Composition”, “Bild Editing”, “Photo Mastery”, “Fundamentals of Image Theory and Design”.
I haven't walked the streets with a camera for a long time. I managed to take a dozen real photographs. For the rest of my life, at best, I will shoot ten more of the same level. But what is already in the folder that says "exhibition" is quite enough for me.
Therefore, I decided that I would be of great benefit if I taught and wrote books about the most important thing in my life - photography. I hope I am not mistaken in this.
Since that ill-fated May, when I went through "purgatory" in connection with a terrible mistake, for the next three months in the editorial offices of newspapers, on television and radio, at party meetings, they discussed in detail the "historical puncture" in Trud.
Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev waited until the “dust settled,” as he put it in a conversation with me. But already on August 4, 1991, I was presented at the Collegium of the USSR State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company as the first deputy chairman.
Sergey Georgievich Lapin, chairman of the State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company, made a short comment on this: “Some of those sitting in the hall today, of course, remembered a mistake in Trud. But this does not change the essence of the matter. I am sincerely glad to return to television Leonid Petrovich. You know him well too. So good luck!"
Sergei Georgievich shook my hand warmly and patted my shoulder in a friendly way.
In fact, I was nervous and I knew perfectly well that he was not at all happy about my return. As he later admits, in my appointment he saw that big changes were coming in the USSR State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company, and he himself was already a political figure leaving the stage.
In order to draw such a conclusion, it was necessary to know Sergei Georgievich well. He was, of course, a man of strong will, strong political convictions, and great erudition. He had vast experience in international political activity, led TASS, was ambassador to China and Austria, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR, spoke foreign languages. In addition, for the last 15 years he headed the State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company, carried out several major reforms in television and radio, and managed to powerfully strengthen the material and technical base of television and radio. It was under him that space television, the creation of the harmonious Orbita system, and the development of radio relay lines received rapid development. Again, thanks to his international experience, he quickly managed to establish cooperation with the countries that are part of the Intervision and Eurovision system.
All this many years of experience (15 years is a whole era) he consistently realized through many creative undertakings. He had a high regard for music and literature on television. He was the initiator of the creation of many talented serial feature films and documentaries. He was an avid theatergoer, and dozens of famous theater and television films appeared on Soviet television.
And at the same time he had a heavy, capricious character. Rarely could anyone convince Sergei Georgievich if he had already made an unequivocal decision for himself.
In politics, Lapin consistently defended party positions and in this regard, as a rule, he occupied conservative positions.
Prior to joining the leadership of M.S. Gorbachev, Sergei Lapin had strong support in the top leadership of the country.
Here is what the famous Forbes magazine wrote about Lapin in early 1986, when Sergei Georgievich left his post:
“In political terms, Lapin is an absolutely reliable member of the party, who can be attributed to the “Stalinists”. In negotiations, he was firm, sometimes it was difficult to approach him. He has always been an excellent professional in his field, and, consequently, a major figure, commanding respect for his brilliant knowledge of the matter. He knew how to be caustic and capricious, even rude, and then, with his inherent charm, again win the sympathy of the interlocutor. Of course, this is a person with whom subordinates and partners in negotiations had a hard time.
From myself I will add that he was a man with a high artistic taste. He, like a magnet, attracted gifted, talented people and did not tolerate vulgarity, primitivism, bad taste. I confess that if he were alive and directed modern television, then 3/4 of the current serial films and entertainment programs would never have appeared on the television screen. But here's the paradox, he would never have supported most of those new television cycles of programs that I happened to create together with my colleagues during the years of Gorbachev's perestroika.
Many of these words proved to be prophetic.
... But let's go back to August 4, 1985. After the introduction, Sergei Georgievich called me to his office and organized small gatherings for men. It turns out that he went on vacation the next day and decided to use two reasons: to “wash” my position, and at the same time his vacation.
We sat together for an hour, and Sergey Georgievich gave a lot of practical advice. I listened attentively to him, and to myself, in a sinful deed, I thought: “Well, you are cunning, Sergey Georgievich, in fact, you are throwing me into a huge television and radio furnace, where a total of 96 thousand people worked across the country, 130 television and radio centers, 2 large enterprises, one of which, the Ostankino television center, was the largest in Europe. It employed more than 9,000 people. And in the system of the State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company there were 4 large scientific centers. In addition to television and intra-union radio, a powerful structure worked - foreign broadcasting. This is an army of 2,000 creative and technical staff, providing round-the-clock broadcasting in 83 languages.
That's what a colossus immediately fell on my shoulders, well, what can you do: a vacation is a vacation! At that moment I was sure that it was no accident that Lapin immediately threw me into “single voyage”. Various thoughts came, including the following: if he survives, well done, and if not, a mistake will be made by the top leadership preparing Kravchenko to replace Lapin.
I'm almost sure that's exactly what Sergey Lapin thought. But I did not disappoint him or myself.
Every day, according to a schedule drawn up in advance, I had meetings with large creative teams - editorial boards. These were "brainstorms" that resulted in three-hour open debates about the present and future of television. And most importantly, that it needs to be changed immediately, which new cycles of programs to open in order to change the "television" repertoire. In accordance with the spirit of the times and conceived by M.S. Gorbachev's political reform of glasnost and democratization.
At these creative meetings, I proposed to imagine modern television as if from a clean slate.
Few people believed my promises of a total update of programs then.
Nevertheless, in the course of brainstorming, it was possible to propose about 70 new cycles of programs. The most fundamental decision was to switch to open live broadcasting of most social and political programs. This meant that political broadcasting was becoming uncensored. Such before and in a bad dream could not dream.
We started with radical changes in the main political program Vremya. It was notable for its doxology, full of quotes from all sorts of welcoming telegrams and speeches by party leaders. In the economic block, crackling reports of production successes constantly sounded, equipment was shown more often than people. There was simply no real critical analysis of the state of affairs in the economy.
I had to break a lot and quickly. At the same time, we proceeded from the premise that the Vremya program, like all social and political broadcasting, should be guided by a deep objective analysis of all aspects of our life. A journalistic study of the facts and phenomena of reality must certainly be carried out with interest, unconventional, if necessary - sharply critical and uncompromising, but under any circumstances optimistic, constructive in spirit and adequate to the essence of what is happening.
In general, I went to television with the prevailing idea that we need a bold, sharp, tough statement of questions that would ensure the social protection of people. What did you find on TV?
People saw it as a means of entertainment, and no one considered TV as an emergency social assistance, as a means of protection. From what? Yes, because at that time there were no serious programs on television with an analysis of economic and social problems that would be designed to protect the interests of various social groups. Therefore, when plots of this nature appeared in the Vremya program, it caused an immediate response from viewers. Many people began to send their letters with requests to help, protect, go to the place, send them on a business trip, film some kind of story. It was nice, it was expected.
Perestroika demanded a passionate civic position from television journalists, otherwise the topicality and depth of the topic could be deceptive. What is hidden behind the surface of a fact, an everyday event, an industrial situation, what moral and social springs determine people's actions? How to overcome the inertia of thinking? So far, unfortunately, the superficial formulation of these problems has been felt on the television screen. It was necessary to reach a new level of television journalism, developing a modern theme. But here's the problem: over the years, stable stereotypes have developed in the minds of journalists, the fear of overcoming the internally built "fence" made it difficult to determine what is possible and what is not, strict self-censorship fettered the work of a TV journalist.
And when, unexpectedly for the country, sharp social stories from the provinces about human sorrows appeared in the Vremya program from the very first minutes: housing disorder, low wages, poor medical care, bureaucratic red tape, unfair dismissal of people, administrative abuses of presumptuous bosses - even came some kind of shock. Thanks to Gorbachev, at that moment he saved both the program and the television management from rough pressure from above. It was with the direct participation of Gorbachev that serious experiments took place in the Vremya program in these first months. One of his first speeches, outlining his own vision of perestroika and democratization in the country, took place in Leningrad. Moreover, all attempts to negotiate with Gorbachev on the live broadcast of his speech were unsuccessful. And then we went on a dangerous risky option. Only one camera managed to record the Secretary General's speech, while the sound of the speech was recorded directly from the camera. Therefore, it turned out, as it were, an underground unauthorized recording of Gorbachev's speech on television. It was, without any exaggeration, bright emotional, sharply critical. In the course of the speech, the economic, political, and international policies of the former leadership of the country were subjected to critical analysis.
With great difficulty, we managed to persuade Mikhail Sergeevich to agree to an evening showing of this performance in its entirety. The show was technically imperfect, but in terms of content, this broadcast made a tremendous impression with the depth and frankness of the assessments, the absence of any prepared texts. There was a certain political explosion in society. And when, a week later, Gorbachev made another such impromptu speech in Minsk, and we again almost illegally managed to show it on tape as part of the Vremya program, it was a huge success for the already updated TV.
A little later, Sergey Georgievich Lapin, who returned from vacation, assessed our unusual experiment, looked at me slyly and joked: “Leonid Petrovich, are you in a hurry, you never know what personnel changes can still happen ... No matter how you regret it later, you can lose your party card ... ".
I reassured him by admitting that I myself was very upset. But when Gorbachev approved, passions subsided. But here I have other problems - much more complicated. And he told Sergei Georgievich about his "brainstorming" in the main editions. Here, I say, in my notebook there are already about 50 interesting proposals from TV journalists. They offer very interesting bold projects. “Maybe we’ll consider it at the Collegium of the State Committee?” I suggested to Lapin, leafing through my plump notebook.
Without looking at me, he put a blank sheet of paper in front of him and began to draw devils on it. Everyone knew about this habit of his. We knew that he always does this when he is very nervous. Then he looked up at me and, in turn, asked: “Maybe we can push at least one of these 50 projects through the Collegium?”
There was a heavy pause, after which, once again carefully looking at me, he said: “Okay, go ahead! It looks like your time has come. I don't think I'll be allowed to work here for more than three months. Act, but without adventure, and consult more often!
