It’s your choice, but something is wrong with this mechanism if a month’s pension, poured into the car’s gas tank in the morning, completely disappears after one day of fidgeting around the city. You can't live like this anymore! It is necessary to resolutely look for the cause of this absurdity. Well, let's try...
To eat - to eat greedily
From the “Dictionary of the Russian Language” by S.I. Ozhegova
Underfilled at the gas station? But not by the same amount! Although who knows... I remember, back in the years of developed socialism, one of my acquaintances calculated how much gasoline he personally was underfilled at the same gas station over the course of a year. He calculated and envied other people’s incomes, and, being envious, made a slander to a higher organization, whose address was kindly decorated with the gas station. A month later, his (the slanderer’s) personal matter was considered at a party meeting, provoked by a response letter printed on the stamp paper of the Ministry of the Oil Refining Industry. That's it... One “trouble” is that underfilling is not in fashion these days (see numerous reports in the press).
So, what follows? Easily. For example, through the “left” fuel filter or loose injectors. Another option is that music aesthetes could screw the subwoofer to the floor of the luggage compartment without calculating the length of the screw, and they did it so cleverly that they even drilled through the gas tank. Would you say it's unrealistic? I saw it myself! Another option is that the car stood for many years in a damp garage awaiting customs or some other clearance, which is why the gas pipes, gas tank and injector seals rotted...
Okay, we’re going to the car service center, and there are all sorts of cars there, all with our diagnosis of “gluttony,” and from each one they’re yelling: “Give me the details!” In the sense that they should have it explained to them what the matter is. And this is what nonsense is most often hung on the ears of clients... The first shift foreman confidently says that an “increased duration of injector opening” has been detected, that is, this is a reason for the engine to “eat” beyond measure. So for now we’ll figure it out... The second contact person of the car service “loads” as follows: in his words, the “disease” of the engine is low compression! As a result, the spark plugs are thrown and the catalyst is clogged. We estimate the amount of expenses, call later... The next foreman also doesn’t have time to talk with his colleagues in the workshop. The car's EGR valve is stuck - that's it. Two high-voltage wires are faulty. And the MAP sensor readings are not normal. Let's find out, wait...
The fourth automobile doctor unexpectedly cheerfully declares that the car is ready! “How, why suddenly?” - you ask and hear in response non-literary things about gasoline, injectors clogged with slag, dead oxygen sensors, etc. In general, take it, don’t show off! Well, the above-cooked portion of “noodles” is quite edible (that is, plausible), but other reasons for increased fuel consumption cannot be ruled out:
– the engine is in good working order, and abnormal gas consumption is caused by a defective automatic transmission;
– fuel consumption only seems to be too high due to faulty instruments or wheels of abnormal diameter;
– consumption is too high due to braked wheels;
– the car’s odometer is digitized in miles, so the amount of gasoline consumed must be divided by the distance in km, which is already 1.6 times greater;
– if you remove the “brick” from the gas pedal, then fuel consumption will certainly drop.
And one more thing: trusting the consumption rates declared in the instructions should be a stretch...
P.S. About the title of this article. For those who do not speak French, let me explain: spring Paris in 1973 was surrounded by queues of people wanting to see the film “La grande bouffe”, which translated sounds like “The Big Grub”...
Memorial Days:
Prayers to Hieromartyr Alexander Vershinsky
Troparion, tone 4
Imitating the fiery ascension of Elijah the Divine,/ you served a good deal in his own temple,/ you yourself were worthy of this ascension,/ about the Hieromartyr Alexander,/ the scales of Novotorzhsky, Ivanteevsky and Moscow praised,/ you suffered with the patron Paul and your accomplice Nicholas,/ seeing the heavenly ends of your deanery ,/ do not leave us who trust in You,/ and teach us to stand up for Christ,/ in this adulterous age,/ having been filled with Your splendor.
Kontakion, tone 5
Raising the ecclesiastical rank to a height,/ fulfilling the virtues,/ offering the piety of Holy Rus' as a commission to God,/ you raised the relics of the Holy Princess Julia in defense of the faith,/ you endured persecution and torment for Christ,/ the representative of the flock of the city of Torzhok and the village of Ivanteev appeared in heaven thou,/ pray to Christ God to abide in the unity of tradition for us,/ together with the martyrs Paul and Nicholas,/ and to save our souls.
Life
Hieromartyr Alexander Vershinsky,
martyrs Pavel Kuzovkov, Nikolai Kopninsky
Hieromartyr Alexander born on March 6, 1873 in the village of Kunganovo, Staritsky district, Tver province, in the family of deacon Andrei Vershinsky. Deacon Andrei was a great admirer of Father John of Kronstadt. On February 22, 1906, Archpriest John served in the church of the Upirovichi churchyard, Novotorzhsky district, and Deacon Andrei specially came there to serve with the righteous man. In 1907, Deacon Andrei left the staff for health reasons.
In 1897, Alexander graduated from the Tver Theological Seminary and in the same year he entered the Boris and Gleb Cathedral in the city of Staritsa as a psalm-reader. He married the daughter of the priest of the Elias Church in the city of Torzhok, Mikhail Nikolsky, Elikonida. The priest Mikhail Fedorovich Nikolsky and his wife Evgenia Mikhailovna had thirteen children, six survived. The eldest daughter Elikonida was born in 1878, the youngest son Arkady - in 1900. The family was pious, Evgenia Mikhailovna was distinguished by kindness, honesty and justice. After the death of her husband, she became the elder of the Elias Church.
On January 30, 1900, the psalmist Alexander was ordained a deacon at the Boris and Gleb Cathedral in the city of Staritsa. On February 6 of the same year, he was ordained a priest at the Church of the Archangel Michael in the village of Mikhailovskoye, Tver district. From August 20 to December 1901, Father Alexander was a teacher of law at the Yakovlevsky zemstvo school in Tver district.
On December 3, 1901, Father Alexander’s father-in-law, priest Mikhail Nikolsky, died, and Father Alexander on December 10 of the same year was transferred to the Elias Church in the city of Torzhok, where he served until the day it was closed by militant atheists in 1927. From 1902 to 1917 he was a law teacher in Torzhok at the school of the Ministry of Education.
The father of Alexander and Elikonida Mikhailovna had three children - two daughters, in 1912 and 1914, and a son, Nikolai, in 1918. Nikolai helped his father at the altar during services; With the outbreak of World War II, he was called to the front as part of the 325th Infantry Regiment of the 14th Infantry Division and went missing during fierce battles on September 11, 1944.
After the death of his father-in-law, all the worries about his large family fell on the shoulders of the young priest, despite the fact that some of the children were still small. In 1920, Father Alexander was awarded the pectoral cross, and in 1922 he was elevated to the rank of archpriest.
When persecution began against the Russian Orthodox Church, Father Alexander did not at all doubt his chosen path of serving God and, having great authority among the clergy and believers, in 1923 he was elected by them as the first dean of the 1st district of Tver district and then confirmed in this position as diocesan bishop . In the same year he was appointed dean of the Boris and Gleb Monastery in Torzhok. In 1924, Archpriest Alexander was awarded a club, and in 1925, on the 25th anniversary of his service to the Holy Church, a gold pectoral cross with decorations.
After the authorities closed the Elias Church in 1927, Archbishop Thaddeus (Uspensky) of Tver blessed the community to move to the Transfiguration Cathedral in the city of Torzhok and appointed Father Alexander as rector. In the Transfiguration Cathedral for a long time, the holy relics of the Blessed Princess Martyr Juliania of Vyazemskaya of Novotorzhskaya (15th century) rested in secret. During the years of repression, when churches were closed and holy relics were confiscated, Fr. Alexander, “to strengthen faith and the number of believers,” received permission from church and civil authorities to transfer the relics of the holy martyr Juliana. Having raised the relics of the holy martyr Juliana, hidden in the basement, into the cathedral for public veneration, Fr. Alexander soon accepted the crown of martyrdom himself. He served in the Transfiguration Cathedral until its closure in 1931, and then was transferred to the St. Nicholas Church. In 1932, Archpriest Alexander was awarded a miter. In March 1937, with the active support of the authorities, the temple was captured by the renovationists and Archpriest Alexander was left without a place.
The flames of increasingly merciless persecution spread everywhere, Father Alexander saw this clearly, but he did not waver for a minute in his decision to continue serving the Church. Being well known to the clergy, he was invited in March 1937 to the Smolensk Church in the village of Ivanteevka, Pushkin District, Moscow Region [*], where he served until the day of his arrest.
PILGRIM
He brought us like a guide,
rain from the station square
to the white-walled monastery
Trinity Life-Giving.
Near the temple, beauty
rare, people huddle together.
Unsightly umbrellas.
Unsmiling faces.
Sees off the cry of rain
us all the way to the cathedral.
And subsides, passing
behind the doors in the singing of the choir.
The rain remained on the porch,
and cold streaks
I wiped it off my face in the warmth.
Why are your cheeks wet?
Passing the candle stand,
slow down slowly...
Wax drips on the palm.
Hurt! This means that I am alive, a sinner.
To know, Rus' is still alive
to cancer of St. Sergius of the people
silent river
everything flows without drying up.
September 2000
MOSCOW TERPSICHORA
And every evening, at the appointed hour...
Alexander Blok “Stranger”
When over the commuter station
the sunset will warm the clouds,
she dances with childlike grace
at the music stall.
Let its acoustics wheeze,
scaring rats and small birds, -
where there is neither a tree nor a bush,
the stall is the “grand piano in the bushes.”
And she, like a bird, is also afraid
spinning alone in plain sight
for passengers waiting for the train,
There's something wrong with the schedule.
But tomorrow again, at the promised hour,
at the tin stall walls
the dance of a fragile woman will last
in an unfashionable knee-length jacket.
And let him grimace or giggle
onlookers look at her,
but this station is faceless
with her she found her face.
May 2002
NORTHEAST
Nina
This joy is unaccountable
like believing in miracles...
If the rainbow is ethereal,
what divides the heavens?
Above is thunderous darkness,
below there is a clear semicircle.
What kind of hoop, cooling down,
suddenly rolled out into the sky?
Who is the smith of fragile hope
not for happiness - for peace? —
with a quiet loving smile,
with a good book at hand.
As a hint of a better lot,
whom we followed together,
shone high in the sky
seven-color halo of the earth.
January 2005
LESS TIME
Grandfather Chaldon died.
And I regretted it belatedly,
that I managed to find out so little
from what he remembered.
The Lord took Grandma away.
Turned white at the headboard
natives of the Dnieper region
marble is a gift from the Sayan rocks.
And again I was angry
on yourself, on the world, on God,
that I managed to find out a little
from her life.
I got a boring disposition.
But I don’t dare blame it
neither the Dnieper nor the Yenisei.
Biryuk himself: I don’t cling to my relatives.
There is a candle in every city
in painted Russian churches
I bet on the health of loved ones,
and when I arrive, I remain silent.
Now mom’s hour has struck.
On her damp grave
we talked to her
sincerely... for the first time.
So what do I need this run for?
Hurrying from everyday life to everyday life,
I'm late for people
idle man!
September 2005
GLITTER
At the rocks slicked by the sea
near the Solovetsky monastery
I took the pellet as a souvenir
according to an old childhood habit.
The sea pebble was inconspicuous,
small and gray, like a field mouse,
Well, I liked it... Look
how deftly it fits into the palm of your hand!
During the day we were shaggy in the wind
clouds of the gloomy White Sea.
But it cleared up in the evening.
(Or did I just rub my eyes?)
And a fragment of coastal rocks
in the golden rays of sunset
sparkled with a hundred stars!
The earth is rich in miracles.
No surprises,
Everyone who was there saw:
my soul was illuminated
for a moment with heavenly light.
November— December 2010
* * *
The Lord did not give death eyes,
and she's circling blindly
and sniffs out the flesh,
and it strikes - any.
And when a stray dog
running in half a step,
will whine from under the wheels -
bow to the mongrel.
April 2013
BURN
Semyonovka. A name dear to the heart.
The Siberian village where I grew up,
whose groves and ponds he considered his own,
like all of us in childhood, remember, friends?
A spacious valley for both Russians and Tatars,
and gave shelter to exiled Latvians.
But more often - to Ukrainians: it’s not for nothing that
one of the streets is called Kievskaya.
Our house became cramped for the holiday:
Mom’s relatives sat down at the table.
Words of Ukrainian drinking songs
They were clear to me and touched me.
And on weekdays the gramophone is still a spring,
who worked in it was whole,
insisted that “violently kvitne Cheremshina”
suffered that he was “pushed, pushed”...
The place where we lived is now bare.
The villagers were lured away by the cities.
When a school burned down in my native village,
I didn't even feel shame.
My “peaceful” age has lost its settlements
no less than in the World War!
Or the sin of post-war generations -
on anyone but me?
How am I not involved in that ruin?
In a cozy town near Moscow
looking at the world on the monitor
with people like myself, briefly.
In front of me, Semyonovka is different.
She was covered by a missile hurricane.
The fire still snakes, burning
through the LCD screen.
The fire of logs has not yet burned out,
which brother lit for his brother.
I'm definitely not guilty of this.
Why am I toiling as if I’m guilty?
A reminder for children about blood ties
I comforted my soul and did not remember evil.
Semyonovka, burn of Donetsk land,
lay a scar on my conscience.
June 9-12, 2014
UNDERSTANDING
If the demon complained of weakness,
I would disown the disease: “Disappear!” —
and the disease would instantly disappear...
No, the Lord sends diseases.
So that you feel in pain,
What is it like for the homeless and the poor?
To shut up from their dumbness
over the still smoldering ashes.
Pay for the growth of your soul
the small price of suffering flesh.
And then plow and write -
burn yourself out at handy work...
February 25, 2015
Dwarfs
Papa Carlo really plan his son,
it would be Carlson, not Buratino.
From Varangian folklore
“God’s servant” - how afraid they are
so called the henchmen of darkness!
They tell us with a clown's grin:
“You are slaves. We are free."
In the darkness, from which shamelessly
gnomes climb without spending money on makeup,
here, from the light, not everyone can see,
what kind of strings are drawn to them?
Twitchers, pinocchio, parsley,
with a vocabulary of five thousand words,
they interpret to us, crowding around the feeding trough,
meanings of Russian roots and foundations.
They who are heated to sweat
just a brothel and ethereal soda,
our job is not in vain
seems like slave labor...
Whoever you are: military centurion
or a cattleman herding calves -
you are first the Lord's worker,
and then the shepherd and the soldier.
In a fairy tale, there are three roads -
show the lot two sides:
become a reliable worker for God
or a corrupt servant of Satan.
February 27-March 2, 2015
GOSPEL
...you believed because you saw Me;
Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.
In. 20:29
How petty human nature is,
if you are a bookworm, like this summer,
omissions and contradictions
searches in the books of the New Testament!
Such a luminary likes to know,
with Darwin's volume at the head,
something according to Luke and Matthew -
Spas has different pedigrees.
About infants - Herod's victims
Only Matthew writes, and the miracle at Cana
and the rise of Lazarus from the dead
only John included it in Scripture.
Mark is silent about Jesus' childhood
and the wonderful day of His birth...
The critic does not see the plus in the minuses:
a sign of authenticity is discrepancy!
And there is one simple truth:
in a world where fear and anger reigned,
He died, forgiving his enemies,
and on the third day he rose from the grave.
Death trampled by his own death,
He opened the way to eternal life
to everyone who is faithful to mercy
no matter how expensive it is.
This is all history, not myths;
and, having become confident in it and thereby strengthened,
Jews, Hellenes and Scythians -
let only a few have been baptized so far.
Among them were also literate:
former publican, doctor, interpreter, philosopher -
pioneers of the idea
which will displace the pagan colossi.
We stocked up on pens and ink,
They began to work after praying.
I wrote down what I saved
memory - not of machines, but of people made of flesh.
The Holy Spirit, having declared the earthly sphere,
He gave them insight in equal share.
Shall we accept the good news on faith?
We are given free will for this.
April 6-9, 2015
WINGED WORDS
...and the Slovenian and Russian languages are the same.
"The Tale of Bygone Years"
A volume on the table, another at the head...
A thousand names under a forty-watt lamp.
Only one of them has become a proverb forever:
“Pushkin is our everything” and “Pushkin is to blame.”
“Everything is ours”: soul, nature, our conscience -
the values that we are trying to preserve.
And “guilty” is that the bandolier is tighter
His manner and structure strengthened our speech.
Having replaced the Roman helmet with a US helmet,
The West will not understand what our earthly cross is.
We are “one language”. That dough, whose leaven
Pushkin updated. The poet is to blame for everything.
17
-April 24, 2015
A foreigner in the USSR is almost a criminal and anti-Soviet. The experience of possessing forbidden capitalist fruits under socialism.
Surprisingly positive release.
Alexander Nikolaevich Vershinsky, a man who, since the 70s, allowed himself not only to have a capitalist car more than once :), but also by restoring them alone to give them a second life.
And this is with:
- the fact that he received the cars as illiquid, in a condition close to scrap
- lack of ticket desks
- in case of multi-volume cases filed against him (for unearned income)
- a total shortage of everything (from spare parts to fuel and lubricants)
ASLANYAN: Good evening.
Today is the greatest day in the history of the Crew program. Because my guest is Alexander Nikolaevich Vershinsky.
Alexander Nikolaevich Vershinsky is a person whose personal acquaintance in his biography leaves a mark, well, approximately equal, probably, to “Hero of Socialist Labor.” A person who is personally acquainted with Vershinsky in life is already a person who, as after initiation into the greatest, can only allow himself worthy actions, cannot allow himself unworthy ones. In general, he lives with wings in a different way. This is because he knows Vershinsky personally. Good evening.
VERSHINSKY: Good.
ASLANYAN: Alexander Nikolaevich Vershinsky is the person who, under Soviet rule, allowed himself to behave in completely anti-Soviet ways, being, in general, a scientist, and not even the daughter of Brezhnev or the son of Kosygin, driving foreign cars. In Soviet reality, in general, no one drove foreign cars. One had to achieve this badge of valor, achieve it, survive, and be posthumously awarded. Well, or just succeed in career growth. But so that, for example, some Alexander Nikolaevich Vershinsky would allow himself a foreign car - well, you know!..
In retaliation for this, Alexander Nikolaevich had a multi-volume file filed with the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the reason why Alexander Nikolaevich was not imprisoned is not known to him even to this day. By the way, I don’t know either.
VERSHINSKY: Lucky.
ASLANYAN: Well, it happens. Moreover, Alexander Nikolaevich graduated from the Energy Institute, did not have thieves’ parents, and had absolutely no starting conditions that allow our Soviet man to find himself behind the wheel of a car, for example, a Datsun. “Datsun” at that time, you know, it was even more decent than it is now. Or Porsche. And this is all in the biography of one person. What about Chevrolet? In 1970 - in the USSR, in Moscow, a Chevrolet, on a street as long as an Ikarus? It doesn't happen that way.
Moreover, this is simply a consequence of a person’s interest and skill to work not only with his head, but also with his hands. Don’t think that he was a pickpocket in the subway - no, he just knew how to fix things.
Alexander Nikolaevich, how did this happen? First of all, how did the Soviet government forgive you for this? And secondly, how did this all happen?
VERSHINSKY: Seryozha, I was forced to do this. By class origin, I am the shit of the nation - an intellectual, you understand. And we couldn’t buy a car as such. There was no queue for the car among us. It existed in factories, but not in institutes. The only thing I could do was, through great effort, I could get a queue for a written-off car. Decommissioned taxis, decommissioned disabled cars, be it a Zaporozhets or a taxi. That's all I could do.
ASLANYAN: Is this at the Institute of Oceanology of the Academy of Sciences?
VERSHINSKY: Yes. At any institute.
ASLANYAN: Well, actually, yes. He’s an academician, and he’s obviously a lousy person, so why would he suddenly drive a new car?
VERSHINSKY: No, no new ones. Therefore, after standing in line for several years, you suddenly, happily, received a postcard for a decommissioned Volga. And there was the South Port site. But it's junk. Can you imagine, cars that have served in taxis for seven to ten years are just a piece of...
ASLANYAN: These are documents.
VERSHINSKY: These are documents at best. So there was no body, interiors, and so on. Everyone dreamed of doing this, and, in general, it was a way to purchase a car. But next to this clearing in the swamp, sometimes... And you were given the same postcard for several days, you could choose within a few days. Suddenly something new will come, and so on. The postcard was valid for three to five days, and then that’s it, go away, your postcard is gone? Sometimes these most unpleasant handsome men stood there.
ASLANYAN: UPDC?
VERSHINSKY: Yes. No one had the right to buy them, only by special letters, by special papers, by a separate public. But there weren’t that many of them – crazy Russians who would like to buy such happiness on their own. They were there, and, of course, they selected the best cars. But this is a separate issue; it did not concern us, ordinary Soviet people.
But among them, as a rule, there were those that no one needed. "Datsun", rotten to the ears, without headlights and with a torn interior. Or Volvo - who needs it? This must be a man who has gone crazy, yes, and all this cost a lot of money. That’s how this foreign junk fell into my hands.
ASLANYAN: You turned out, nevertheless, to be the person who got into this line?
VERSHINSKY: Yes, yes, yes.
ASLANYAN: But still an academic institute.
VERSHINSKY: No, this is not an elite line. This is the queue...
ASLANYAN: But permission had to be obtained. Just to at least walk up to this Datsun and pick it with your fingernail...
VERSHINSKY: I received a postcard saying that it gave me the right to buy a decommissioned Volga.
ASLANYAN: And here, next to it, stood foreign junk, which everyone understood perfectly well that could not be recovered at any cost...
VERSHINSKY: Yes, yes.
ASLANYAN: ...There will be no prestige, but there will be ruin immediately.
VERSHINSKY: Yes.
ASLANYAN: And here Alexander Nikolaevich Vershinsky, like a man from oceanology, not so much walks on the earth as lives in a completely different environment...
VERSHINSKY: Yes. Right here…
ASLANYAN: Snuck up - and?
VERSHINSKY: Yes. And I had to choose and decide... Risking, of course, risking, it doesn’t get you started, nothing: “I’ll take this one,” I grabbed it on a rope and dragged it home.
ASLANYAN: Who was the first?
VERSHINSKY: What was the first car?
ASLANYAN: Yes.
VERSHINSKY: Here I am, of course, I already have a memory... My teeth are falling out, my memory is failing.
ASLANYAN: But do you remember Lenin alive?
VERSHINSKY: Yes. With difficulty, of course.
ASLANYAN: Because I... This is the same joke: “I saw Lenin alive.” “And I’m in a coffin.”
VERSHINSKY: Yes, yes, yes, yes. I'm already confused here. I think it was a Chevrolet Bel Air.
ASLANYAN: And it’s been a year...
VERSHINSKY: Will my listeners forgive me plus or minus a year? Around 1970.
ASLANYAN: It’s in the Ministry of Internal Affairs now, when they leaf through your file, they look at how accurate you are in your testimony.
VERSHINSKY: Yes.
ASLANYAN: But we can give ourselves a year’s play back and forth.
VERSHINSKY: There is such a backlash, yes.
ASLANYAN: And in 1970, Alexander Nikolaevich Vershinsky bought himself a Chevrolet Bel Air, what year? How old was that car?
VERSHINSKY: Now you’re asking me...
ASLANYAN: But she was no longer young?
VERSHINSKY: Of course.
ASLANYAN: She should have already run around the embassies...
VERSHINSKY: Of course.
ASLANYAN: ...In our country...
VERSHINSKY: And besides, her engine knocked when we started it. And here, actually... This every purchase was the second research institute. How can I remove this knock? How to revive her? We came up with some new technologies - we didn’t sell spare parts, as you understand, yes.
ASLANYAN: It didn’t exist.
VERSHINSKY: It didn’t exist, yes. And so you become surrounded by some craftsmen, acquaintances, people who could make a new camshaft out of a rusty piece of iron. And so on. The problems started from the first day.
ASLANYAN: Listen, the employees of academic institutes, having completely mastered the strength of materials, were very good at welding, painting, tinning, and soldering. Well, academics.
VERSHINSKY: In general, yes. There were many who did this, yes.
ASLANYAN: But even more so, many of them had training in the Gulag, when the academic perspective was combined with the ability, for example, to cut down wood. Therefore, people were very handy. And sometimes they even bequeathed it to their children.
Do you remember, for example, Vasily Aksenov, why he became a doctor (before becoming a dissident)? Because his mother told him that only a doctor has a chance to survive in the camp. Everyone else doesn't. Therefore, the combination of professions and the readiness to always respond to the challenges of the time, especially in academic circles, was combined with very good plumbing skills.
VERSHINSKY: Seryozha, this matter is even deeper for me, so to speak, but you have a superficial penetration into the topic. Because, remember, as Vysotsky said, he was finishing the war, for some reason he always wrote songs about the war, although he himself did not fight. And me even more so. But I also felled wood. I felled wood for many years.
It was like, you know how, I was a king and did a little sewing. I used to be an employee, in the summer I went to cut down wood, well, to earn money, and in the winter, on long winter evenings, after work I repaired cars. I felled the forest, I have it all in my hands, here.
ASLANYAN: Qualification. But in the meantime, you also built hang gliders, which, by and large, no one has built in our country.
VERSHINSKY: No, that was all already then. These were the first attempts to fly up. Already done.
ASLANYAN: Well, as you know, the first hang glider launched in our country in 1952 from the construction site of the university, when the prisoners simply staged an escape. They didn’t calculate it; they brought in the people who had previously built airplanes for general work. And on sheets of plywood - one was shot down, the rest flew away. Solzhenitsyn describes this story, where the hang glider came from in our country: as always, you, academicians, were not looked after.
VERSHINSKY: Here, I must say, I have a gap, and my hang glider is the first. Are we going to talk about hang gliders or not? This is interesting.
ASLANYAN: And we are definitely talking about hang gliders, but we are still talking about Chevrolet. Do you remember the price, how much did it cost then?
VERSHINSKY: Only approximately, of course. All the foreign cars that I got were all junk. And all of them were no less, and, in general, sometimes even more than the price of new Zhiguli cars.
ASLANYAN: Somewhere around 5000-6000 rubles?
VERSHINSKY: Yes. When I dragged another car into the yard, local people, who were nobly drinking port wine or playing dominoes, said: “What a fool, I drove it again, instead of taking a new Zhiguli.” And when after a year or a year and a half...
ASLANYAN: We’ll take a break now for the news, and then we’ll find out how it all ended in a year or a year and a half.
News
ASLANYAN: Alexander Nikolaevich Vershinsky, during the Soviet period of his life, under Soviet power, allowed himself to travel around this country in a Chevrolet Bel Air, bought in 1970 in a trash heap. So you dragged this thing into the yard, the alcoholics trembled for your health, mourned the junk...
VERSHINSKY: Wait a minute, I would ask you not to insult the best part, so to speak, of our humanity, these people are not alien to me.
In a word, after a year and a half, it usually took me a year and a half, to roll out this car in this form, when these noble people immediately sat down to write a denunciation against me: “Well, has he become insolent?! I bought this beauty again. And you will say that this is the one who stood... - this is the norm, it was just the norm for me. These same Vanya and Petya, who nobly drank port with me all year, when the car came out of the garage, well, it took about a year and a half, there was a large amount of work, they immediately wrote a denunciation: “Well, the bastard, I bought a luxury car again - for what money? And this was repeated regularly.
ASLANYAN: Actually, “Chevrolet Bel Air” cannot be forgiven in any way.
VERSHINSKY: Absolutely not, you can sleep on the hood there.
ASLANYAN: And when you drove out in this car after repairs, Moscow shuddered? After all, the passage of such a car means that the police are scattering, because it is clear that it is Brezhnev himself, or his daughter, who is driving.
VERSHINSKY: You can’t even imagine how many times this all happened. In general, this made me smile and never leave my face, because the policeman was either blocking all traffic on the street...
ASLANYAN: After all, deflection is protection.
VERSHINSKY: Otherwise.
ASLANYAN: They bought it in 1970, and in 1971 Alexander Vershinsky, an oceanologist at the Academy of Sciences, calmly leaves...
VERSHINSKY: Yes, it was all very comical. If I was driving along Rublyovka, and we have beautiful places there, but we had to go there for a walk, everything would also freeze.
ASLANYAN: Did they salute, including even just people walking past on the sidewalks, at the level of a reflex?
VERSHINSKY: Yes, yes, it was very funny.
ASLANYAN: Taxi drivers, and these were the fastest guys at that time, they also quietly crawled to the side of the road.
VERSHINSKY: No, well, it was a completely different ride, of course, a completely different ride. Either they pretended that you didn’t exist, that you didn’t exist, that you were transparent, or that all the conditions were for you - it was absolutely luxurious, it was just me becoming a king.
ASLANYAN: A man who calmly bought himself the Soviet Union and is moving around it... Now, in order to drive three yellow Kalinas, you still need to drag a division of internal troops with you on your tail. It was easier for you.
VERSHINSKY: It was easier for me, yes, and most importantly, times were calm.
ASLANYAN: But you had to go to a gas station and go to the store in this car. There's no gas at the gas station, and then you pull up - and...?
VERSHINSKY: This is a sore subject, and it affected any foreign car, not to mention our simple cars: there was no high-octane gasoline. These cars, using our gasoline, detonated, overheated and were painful, to put it mildly. It was a lot of hassle at first and it also required some engineering. We injected water into the motor through an adjustable needle...
ASLANYAN: At the steam level.
VERSHINSKY: Yes, you need to calculate, approximately no more than 10%. This is an old topic; it was used on aircraft engines. You introduced a separate tank, and then you could drive on gasoline. It was torture; in winter we still had to warm it up. And then, after all, our society did not stand still, a special office was formed for owners of foreign cars in Medvedkovo, which, upon presentation of documents, gave you a ton... It didn’t, but you had the right to buy a ton of luxury gasoline, which smelled like cologne and was sold on Kropotkinskaya .
ASLANYAN: Yes, on Kropotkinskaya - this is also a completely famous gas station, where there have never been queues and no cars. The government's Seagulls also refueled there.
VERSHINSKY: And me.
ASLANYAN: And you. And after that, the police finally understood: “God forbid, he just looks in my direction.”
VERSHINSKY: Can you imagine how he smelled? The gasoline smelled so good that it could have been used instead of perfume; there were no French ones, and you could have smothered yourself with it.
ASLANYAN: If you spilled it on your pants, then, in general, there’s nothing wrong with it.
VERSHINSKY: No, it just smelled better than before.
ASLANYAN: But this car didn’t change you, but the world around me, in general. Driving a Chevrolet Bel Air in Moscow in 1971 still meant that space was breaking down and the political system was shaking. Have any speculators approached you with an offer to sell you jeans or buy chewing gum from you?
VERSHINSKY: You know, then, I’ve been doing this for many years, and this kind of public appeared that seemed to think that this was where they belonged. But I never came into contact with anyone, I was not interested in it. And besides, probably, owning such a car should have generally made me, so to speak, turn up my nose a little. Somehow I managed without it.
ASLANYAN: When did the police realize that they still needed to work closely with you? How quickly did they show interest in which car, the first one? Or did they wait a little?
VERSHINSKY: No, I used it for a long time. Well, what are you talking about, we have the Olympics...
ASLANYAN: 1980.
VERSHINSKY: 80s. Even before 1980. In 1980, they looked at me for a long time and finally stopped me, thinking that I was a visitor to the games, I arrived in this car.
ASLANYAN: But it was when on the street, and in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, where your personal business accompanied all purchases and sales, when you finally had a conversation with the person who was supposed to meet personally with the anti-Soviet Vershinsky?
VERSHINSKY: Well, it was around 1982, something like that.
ASLANYAN: The system approached you systematically, from all sides: they stopped you on the street once, and then they still called you to the ministry for a conversation?
VERSHINSKY: Yes.
ASLANYAN: And what was the conversation at the ministry about?
VERSHINSKY: It was on Oktyabrskaya Square.
ASLANYAN: Main Directorate?
VERSHINSKY: Yes, yes, it was very interesting there. In general, frankly, completely frankly, it was said: “We know what you are doing, you fall under the article “Unearned income.” I choked a little and asked: “How? I work all day at the factory, spend all weekends in the garage, after work I run, sharpen something...” - and so on. But the article was called unambiguously - “Unearned income”.
ASLANYAN: And why was it not presented?
VERSHINSKY: I think because Perestroika is approaching.
ASLANYAN: Was it just time that saved you?
VERSHINSKY: Yes, I think so.
ASLANYAN: Because, basically, by 1982, when the conversation took place, what kind of foreign car did you have?
ASLANYAN: There were already so many that you weren’t even classified as dissidents, was it already necessary to simply shut you down with something economic?
VERSHINSKY: Yes, and I repaired each of them, approximately...
ASLANYAN: It doesn’t matter, in the personal file this didn’t bother anyone at all.
VERSHINSKY: Yes, no one cares, yes.
ASLANYAN: But this means that you bought a car, relatively speaking, for 5,000, revived it for a year and a half, and then were forced to sell it for the same 5,000, because otherwise it is unearned income if you received at least one ruble.
VERSHINSKY: No, fortunately, everything was not so sad. Having repaired the car and brought it to luxury condition, I polished every nut there. After my hands, she came out completely different from what came into the garage. I could officially hand it over to a consignment store and set any price.
ASLANYAN: And this, one way or another, after some time found the next buyer.
VERSHINSKY: Yes, yes, because there was demand, it didn’t last long. Because either mine was standing next to it, which you get in and drive, or it was rusty, rotten and broken...
ASLANYAN: The next one is yours.
VERSHINSKY: Yes, the next one is mine. Therefore, in general, everything was quite resourceful.
ASLANYAN: As I understand it, the material component in this process did not play a special role, it was engineering curiosity? Or what stopped you from restoring that Bel Air and driving it for the rest of your life?
VERSHINSKY: You are some kind of strange person, but what do I need to live on?
ASLANYAN: For an academic salary. Academy of Sciences of the USSR, there were 90 rubles, give or take.
VERSHINSKY: Yes, yes, it was, of course.
VERSHINSKY: This was not the case at the Academy of Sciences.
ASLANYAN: Only tea with an elephant?
VERSHINSKY: No, it was only like that in factories; there were no rations at the Academy of Sciences.
VERSHINSKY: Nothing.
ASLANYAN: Even coupons for a shirt?
VERSHINSKY: There was nothing.
ASLANYAN: Yes, then you really had to spin somehow. And after the Chevrolet Bel Air, what was the next car?
VERSHINSKY: Yes, if you had warned me that it was necessary to draw up such a register, I, of course, don’t remember...
ASLANYAN: But this is not the last time.
VERSHINSKY: Let's hope. Yes, Seryozha, let’s call it “Dodge”. "Dodge" is about the same class, "Dodge Dart", in my opinion, it was a "Dodge Dart". The same American with a huge hood on which you can dance.
ASLANYAN: V8?
VERSHINSKY: Of course.
ASLANYAN: It’s not clear what kind of gearbox it is, because it’s an automatic.
VERSHINSKY: Well, the main thing is that she goes.
ASLANYAN: Yes, but there was simply nothing to treat her, in principle, because the closest analogue was LiAZ.
VERSHINSKY: You know, we were lucky, although no, there was also a problem with the boxes, once we touched the box. But let's get back to this Dodge.
ASLANYAN: After the news, we’ll just continue.
“My car doesn’t drive. For some reason it twitches...” grumbled the inexperienced owner of a seemingly all-wheel drive SUV, completely in vain scolding his “horse.” The fact is that he completely shamelessly violated the operating rules of a 4WD car - he personally put 215/70/R15 tires on the front axle (on occasion) and at the same time left 225/70/R15 on the rear axle. We need to get educated! After all, the seemingly insignificant difference in wheel diameter not only infuriated the unlucky rider, but also infected the car with semiparesis...
Text: Alexander Nikolaevich VERSHINSKY
After the car has overturned, and the exterior of your SUV is decorated with battle scars (the depth of which depends on the degree of technical readiness of the car for such feats), it is time to deal with the “guts”, that is, the insides of the car...
Text: Alexander Nikolaevich VERSHINSKY
It’s your choice, but something is wrong with this mechanism if a month’s pension, poured into the car’s gas tank in the morning, completely disappears after one day of fidgeting around the city. You can't live like this anymore! It is necessary to resolutely look for the cause of this absurdity. Well, let's try...
To eat - to eat greedily
From the “Dictionary of the Russian Language” by S.I. Ozhegova
Text: Alexander Nikolaevich VERSHINSKY
It should be noted that choosing a car is such a peculiar and unique matter from case to case that separate sociological studies are necessary... Which one to choose? The closest one is chic, but not for the money, the other is cute, but a little small. There are so many of them, cars of different brands, it’s overwhelming! We involuntarily recall with a feeling of deep satisfaction the life when the party and the government reserved the right to choose for themselves (many people like this), delegating to us the not always realizable opportunity to decide on the color of the car...
Text: Alexander Nikolaevich VERSHINSKY
Do you know that today you can buy a Jeep Grand Cherokee for the price of a Zhiguli (whose “nationality” lies in the formula: do not eat or drink for a certain number of years)? And since we still reject credit as a “method of enslavement of the working masses,” there are comrades in our fatherland who want to compensate for the pain of abstinence. And this is done by purchasing a slightly tarnished, but still luxurious car...