Svetlana Romanova

Story one

Conversations about emigration do not stop: some are actively discussing which country is best to move to for permanent residence; the latter compile lists of reasons for which they should have left long ago; still others, who have already finally decided to escape from Russia, are looking for the most simple ways escape. Sociological research Levada Center showed that about 22% of the country’s adult population would like to live somewhere other than Russia – however, only 1% of compatriots are not just talking, but collecting documents for departure.

Slon.ru found counterexamples: it found citizens who had already emigrated, but after living abroad for some time, changed their minds and still returned to their homeland.

Petr Favorov, journalist for the Afisha publishing house, lived in London from 2000 to 2002

The abstract to the first Russian guide to London in Russian, published in 2005, reads: “Everyone who could have migrated to London. Now here we have our own little Beirut, our own little Istanbul, Tangier, Saigon, Sydney, Paris.”

Pyotr Favorov, the author of this guide, also lived there for two years. He, like the heroes of his texts, could well have stayed in England forever, but he preferred his native Moscow to London. When Favorov was leaving, I thought for a long time whether to go at all. But I finally decided: I got to the Bartholomew School of Medicine to continue my career as a microbiologist, which I started at the Chemistry Department of Moscow State University. He began conducting seminars with Indian students and conducted genetic research on mice. Worked in the City, lived in the historical parts of the city. Laboratory work did not interfere with cultural life: he locked the door with a key strictly at 18:00 (in England they honor labor Code) and went to the premiere at the theater or cinema.

He settled in quite well and, at first glance, fit into English life quite well. And the circle of contacts with compatriots, as is often the case with emigrants, was not limited. Favorov was friends with the British: he went to visit them and was friends with journalists from the Economist and Financial Times. I thought I would stay in London forever.

“I have completely gone beyond the Russian diaspora. But I suddenly realized: English society is structured in such a way that I will never belong in it. The fact that I would forever remain a foreigner was terribly unpleasant. In England, in the environment in which I aspired and rightfully considered myself... I don’t even know what, I could only become a nice stranger,” recalls Favorov.

He recognized himself as a stranger even when he came, for example, to Cambridge. The son of intellectual scientists, he felt disappointed because he knew much more about the history and culture of the city than the locals. “On the one hand, it was all mine, but on the other, it wasn’t, despite my knowledge of history. This was unsatisfactory and annoying. There were also some other things. For example, in England I was depressed by thin walls and single-pane windows in houses. Likewise, life outside of Russia seems somehow lightweight and insubstantial. We are used to thinking that she is unusual, but in fact, she is not real. Like thin walls and single-pane windows,” he recalls.

During his time in England, he came up with a whole theory explaining why a person should return to his homeland: “If you live in one place for years, this is an incredible bonus. Memories are layered in your mind; in ten years you can go to old acquaintances who live right there. You need to leave from a place where there are difficulties and you cannot do some things. Get an education or find an interesting job, but for some reason you cannot live a normal life. But Moscow is clearly not one of those cities. It doesn’t limit anything,” Favorov is convinced.

It's been 8 years since Favorov settled in Moscow. Life in England did not pass without a trace, and he, in his words, became “a real Russophile.” Putin is his president, and he is tired of talking about the oil needle and corruption, since “money flows into his pocket, but there is no point in giving up his salary.” He is sure that if in 1990 Russians knew what life would be like today, they would not have believed it - everything was so good. Talk about emigration is also annoying. Crazy and unhappy people talk about it, thinking that somewhere out there they will be happy. In fact, they won't - at least until they learn to solve their own problems, which are not at all dependent on location. It's all in our heads.

After returning to Moscow, Favorov visited England several times. Still loves London and flies to this city often. But every time he arrives from Heathrow Airport into the city, and the characteristic London smell hits his nose, he says to himself: “What a blessing that I didn’t stay here.”

At our table there is a film and television director Petr Pomerantsev; author of the guidebook "Afisha. London" Petr Favorov; Chief Editor magazine "Foreign Literature" Alexander Livergant; translator Victor Golyshev; poet, translator, literary critic Grigory Dashevsky and critic Anna Narinskaya, special correspondent of the Kommersant Publishing House.

Despite the fact that in Russia periodically there are “spy” scandals around some strange stone and some journalistic and political horrors associated with London, London remains the favorite city of both oligarchs and ordinary citizens. There is a certain special love for England in Russia, and it goes back to history. But let's start with what you personally love about England and what you don't like about it.

Anna Narinskaya

Anna Narinskaya: Three points immediately came to my mind. And if we’re not talking about what I bow down and kneel for, namely, I love England, then it’s probably Dickens, “Alice in Wonderland” and “The Beatles”. And exactly these three points for which I love her are also why I don’t love her. Because they're in different time They took me so captive that I still listen to “The Beatles” like a fool, and my children look at me like I’m crazy, and no one can even understand me in this sense. And in the same way, Alice in Wonderland seems to me almost the best book. And with Dickens, it’s actually kind of crazy. When Grigory Dashevsky was looking for some quote from Dickens and typed “Bleak House” on the Internet, the first thing that came up was my article, where it was quoted as something the best. And it’s addictive, these English things are still some kind of addiction. Therefore, perhaps, in this sense, both love and dislike, they ended up here together.

Grigory Dashevsky: I have England and my love for it (or dislike for it) is somehow separate from individual, individual names. When I think that I love Blake's poetry, I have no idea that I also love England. England is some kind of separate phenomenon, which, rather, can be the background in books of the second series, in children's books, starting with “Treasure Island” and ending, for example, with “spy novels” by Le Carré. I feel about the same feeling as, in my opinion, at the beginning of Anna Karenina, she reads an English novel where the characters go to their English happiness. And this is the feeling that arises from these genre, say, books, some kind of closed world in which there are some rules that, perhaps, do not arise when you read anyone’s literature.

Grigory Dashevsky

Although all people live in some worlds and according to some rules, it seems that the British themselves have long ago learned to look at their world and their rules in it a little from the outside, and therefore you can connect to their view. This feeling that they themselves are a little bit aliens in relation to own life, they themselves see it as some kind of closed system of rules. And maybe that’s why, as a local person, as a Russian, you especially envy this, because life here cannot be examined from the outside: everyone here is busy and cannot see by what rules we actually live here - or rise above it at least a meter to see it as a closed whole. And in English literature or culture, this ability to step aside and look at their own world as closed seems to have the most contagious effect.

Victor Golyshev: Well, you love it, you don’t love it, I don’t know, you respect it... First, for respect for the individual, for “privacy,” which has no boundaries in England. There, corpses are found on someone else's property, which have been lying there for 10 years, but no one goes there. Secondly, for some conservatism, and this is connected with self-respect, they respect themselves, and we need to learn this for a long time. And thirdly, probably for the sense of humor that permeates everything. This is what Grisha was talking about, a certain detachment, which happens with the help of humor. Probably for these three properties.

Alexander Livergant: We very often love a person out of spite - for what this person has, but we don’t have. This is approximately the same love, the same feeling we experience for England. England is farther away from us in all respects - literary, ideological, cultural, whatever, and even more so politically - than Germany and France, which are close to us. England is a distant country for us and a country largely opposite to us. And those traits that my colleagues and friends named here are English traits, and at the same time not inherent to us. Restraint, self-respect, and conservatism are all things that we would like to have, but do not have.

Alexander Livergant

As for my feeling for England, I would say that it arose when... it’s not enough to say that I was not in England, but, like all of us, I never dreamed of being there. Therefore, love for an object in a strange, paradoxical way arose before the appearance of this object. At times, at least to me (and maybe to all of us), it seemed that neither England nor America existed at all, that it was a fiction. That is why, by the way, this love looks literary; it is directed towards literary objects in the absence of any other. I came to England for the first time in 1995 at the age of 48. And I must say that I experienced, perhaps (I’ll say a strange thing), rather disappointment than joy from meeting this country. Because the feeling for her was much stronger than the one you experience when you see the object of your love with your own eyes.

- Let's now listen to the young people who lived in England.

Petr Favorov: From the point of view of a person who lived in England and returned, I can answer as briefly as possible this way: I love England because it is the most reasonable, sensibly organized country in the world, but I can’t stand it because I have no chance become “your” person there.

Petr Pomerantsev

Peter Pomerantsev: For me, as in the context of this conversation between a representative of English culture and a product of English culture, to say that I love England - well, I can’t say that, because it’s just vulgar and not in English. Talking about why you love your country is simply impossible. Sorry.

And why I hate it - I can name a lot of things. This is a country where people go to bed at 11. Apart from a couple of pubs in London, in most cities pubs and bars close at 11. Even in crazy Scotland everything closes at 2 o'clock. This is a completely sick country, a completely repressed country. The class system still exists. And unfortunately I have to bear the burden... it so happens that as an immigrant I have become a product of the "upper-middle class", snobbish English culture. And I have to carry this stupid burden of the high English classes all the time, and I have nothing to do with it at all. I am a Ukrainian Jew. But when I open my mouth, I immediately: “Oh, you beat us, you repressed us. Oh, you are evil snobs,” and so on.

- And because of what, Peter, because of your pronunciation, because of your in English?

Petr Pomerantsev: Yes Yes. England is a linguistic country. And they define you by your accent. I studied in Scotland, unfortunately, which is much worse than England...

- Why “unfortunately”?

Petr Pomerantsev: Because I was an Englishman in Scotland. I grew up in London and have always lived in the south of England. And I didn't know that there was a country right next to England that really disliked England. And when you open your mouth - that's it! Well, it’s like Muscovites came to Western Ukraine. A very understandable, very deep and very childish hatred in Scotland. And there are many countries where you open your mouth... You go to Jamaica, in so many parts of India, despite superficial love, deep hatred, of course. And you open your mouth, and you are a product of this imperial culture. I'm talking about life.

Anna Narinskaya: My English friends told me much the same things. Some people who studied, as they call it, in public schools, but in fact in private schools, come to a pub and order beer, and every person in this pub already knows the approximate biography of the person asking, and how annoying it is, and so on Further. But still, it seems to me that you are exaggerating. Outside England, all these concepts are confused. India, as a former colony, maybe.

But I would like to tell an anecdote about how my friend, an elderly lady, emigrated to America. And I started, without knowing English at all, to learn it a little. She lived in New Jersey. She got on the bus in New York to go home. And an elderly black man (or should I say African-American?) sat down next to her. And she, in order to practice her English, decided to start a conversation with him. And so she speaks, speaks... And he asks: “Tell me, where are you from?” And she flirtatiously says: “Guess what.” He thought for a long, long time, looked at her and said: “British?” Therefore, there is still an understanding that in other countries the accent is so immediate... But at the same time, it really turns out even here that the perception of an Englishman as something alien in the world, of course, exists. And how to treat this stranger - with delight, as we do in the majority here, or with distrust and so on - well, that’s the question.

We started with the fact that this is an open country and people who can look at themselves from the outside, at their shortcomings and joke about themselves, and now we have ended up with the fact that this is a closed country, with a class system. And Pyotr Favorov said that “I don’t like this country because I will never belong there,” and Pyotr Pomerantsev said that there is a class division. But it seems to me that the first thing is still more important - the ability to look at yourself from the outside and the ability to criticize yourself.

Petr Favorov

Petr Favorov: It seems to me that the strange development of the conversation is explained by the fact that we are talking a little about different England. When imagining if we lived in the Middle Ages, we always imagine ourselves as knights, not serfs. In the same way, all of us, people external to a greater or lesser extent in relation to England, when talking about England and English culture, we talk about this “upper-middle class”, we look somewhere there. And Peter has a more realistic view of England, as a country where 99% of the population may have nothing to do with this "upper-middle class", and do not really appreciate Dickens, Lewis Carroll and... well, "The The Beatles" are probably still appreciated...

Petr Pomerantsev: No.

Petr Favorov: Well, people over 40 appreciate. It was still a mass phenomenon. Therefore, we must also take this into account. When I talk about the impossibility of fitting into England, I am, of course, talking about the impossibility of fitting into the “upper-middle class”. Because I could fit into the orderly ranks of Polish waiters and Trinidadian garage drivers without any problems, it seems to me.

Alexander Livergant: I began to say that we love England out of disgust, but we, by the way, are ironic about England also out of disgust. And there are at least two such mentions in Russian literature. One of them has already been named - this is in Anna Karenina. But you quoted Tolstoy, forgetting about the possessive pronoun: it said “their English happiness.” This is the first. And second. Let's remember when Anna Karenina read this obviously primitive English novel about their English happiness? When she was driving to her misfortune. She was traveling to St. Petersburg and already understood that she was in trouble, in today's terms. English literature and English culture were perceived by Russians as something alien, distant, perhaps partly primitive, shallow.

And another comic shade is, of course, Grigory Ivanovich Muromsky from “The Young Lady-Peasant Woman,” who, as Pushkin said, played a prank. When he took in Miss Jackson, who was 40 years old, who toiled and re-read Pamela twice a year, it was, of course, all very funny. And this Miss Jackson looks even more ridiculous against the backdrop of Berestovy and Russian fields.

Therefore, on the one hand, we love England, and on the other hand, as already partly said here, this country, far from us, evokes some kind of ironic feeling. And here again we are different from them, because they adore our Chekhov, consider him more theirs than a whole host of English writers. And our attitude towards England, at least the literary attitude, is perhaps this.

Anna Narinskaya: Despite the Englishwoman described by Chekhov, who fishes while he begs her to turn away. And they completely forgave him for it.

Grigory Dashevsky: Of course, the subject of the local “Anglomania” is a largely fictitious, fairy-tale country. Therefore, when we talk in the same conversation about the properties of real England and about the love of Russians for England number two, we are really talking about slightly different entities. It seems to me that our general attitude towards England, and especially the Soviet intelligentsia, over the last, say, 150 years, is close to the attitude of people towards the world invented by Tolkien, for example, where identification with some kind of hobbits is possible. And a person who, like Pyotr Pomerantsev or Pyotr Favorov, says “in fact, this is so”, really, it’s as if a living hobbit said: “We have a difficult life... Everything is not so sweet, it’s not so good to dress in our costumes ". I think this is important point.

And I would like to remember one of my friends. When I was at university, there were people around me who loved both French and German culture and so on, but they loved there what they loved here - they loved high literature. And the Francophile adored Valerie. And my friend, an Englishman, memorized the English teams of the second division. That is, the person completely imagined himself there, he ceased to be that lover of books, high art, and so on. He completely moved to this fabulous country.

It seems to me that we are in an establishment that is an example of what Grisha spoke about. It's a place made for football fans and it's called John Donne's. Only a person who knows well who John Donne is can appreciate the humor of the people who gave this institution its name. Here we recently watched a broadcast of a match between the Russian national team and the Welsh national team; perhaps these were characters similar to those whom Grigory described.

Victor Golyshev

Victor Golyshev: After Grisha, I want to say this. That we love fairy-tale England... The fact is that everything we treat in this country or in any other is through some kind of crooked prism; we treat any country as fairy-tale, including our own. We know something about her, we don’t know something. They say that there is some kind of special relationship with England in this sense, that we know it through literature or through pop music. Unfortunately, we know Russia the same way.

Petr Pomerantsev: The question of “Anglomania”, as a kind of manifestation of Russian culture, is very interesting to me. I’ve been in Russia for the last seven years, give or take, and it’s very interesting to see how over the last seven years London has become a fetish city: England has become a cult not only among the intelligentsia, through literature, but in general in the generation of MTV or REN TV, or TNT and so on. I deal with popular culture in Russia, and somehow am aware of all this. And it is very interesting that England is not only “Anglomania”, but there is also “Anglophobia”, and they go together. And the more love, the more hatred. I don't think these things can be considered separately. There was this case with Litvinenko and several other scandals. Russia was manically looking for some kind of hell and heaven and decided to find it in England. And it definitely is. England is also the most evil place... And there is an idea that England is somehow still struggling in Russia and in the historical process, that the evil English will destroy us (this is England, a helpless country with a tiny economy). At the same time, London is a city-paradise. And these things together: both hell and heaven. And the British, of course, look at this very strangely. And there is already such a word “Londongrad” in London. Russians in England do not meet the British; they live there in their own world, in an imaginary London. But it is very interesting why London was chosen as both the greatest evil and the greatest good. Why not Paris? Why not New York? Maybe you can answer me?

Petr Favorov: London, even more than in the last seven years, it seems to me, has become the capital of a foreign country for Russians. And in this sense, it became like the main city outside of Russia, it became an alternative to Russia. And accordingly, this is not heaven or hell, but this is just some kind of reflection, in which, naturally, there is everything very bad and everything very good, well, almost everything in general. There are 200 thousand Russian people in the city; we have few of them outside the CIS, none at all. That is, it became what Paris was in the 20s or New York in the 70s, something like that.

Alexander Livergant: London was chosen precisely because it is the farthest from Moscow, and not only in terms of distance. London is some kind of opposition to Moscow, some kind of opposition to Russia. And when you go to London, you go much further from Russia than when you go to Berlin or Paris.

- Because England is on the island?

Alexander Livergant: Because England is on an island, because England, as I have already said, is diametrically different from us in many ways.

Grigory Dashevsky: Something like a note or consideration to the mention of the local “Anglophobia”. It didn't arise now after all. This is a tradition of the 19th century, and its background was the struggle of England to ensure that there was no predominant influence of any power on the continent. And when Russia threatened to become such a power, the British actually had a policy... not purposefully, as they feared, Russophobic, but the constant English policy of the 19th century against the predominance of any power. Plus the struggle of empires is already in the East, in Afghanistan and so on. But it seems to me that now people... I don’t know if it’s in the government, but in some kind of cultural environment, it seems to me, they have definitely chosen England as the source of evil, and are reproducing this 19th century formula “an Englishwoman shits” as an explanation for various troubles , simply because it is a cultural and harmless version of a “conspiracy theory.” There are two options: the wild, barbaric one, that the Jews are to blame, and some part of the people want a “conspiracy theory”, but they no longer want the wild and barbaric one. And therefore, instead of a “Jewish conspiracy,” they say “English,” as if shrouded in the noble prehistory of the 19th century. People feel included in this, as Kipling said, great game when they say this, and not in some terrible, dark tradition of anti-Semitism. Although, according to the structure of the brain, this is about the same thing: the search for the behind-the-scenes puppeteer.

Anna Narinskaya: It seems to me that, after all, dislike for England is not an official, not official thing, I don’t know what word to choose, not imposed from above. Here Mamontov tells us on television about some spy stones or something else, but to say that this inspires trust or makes people feel something about it... Still, dislike is a feeling, it’s not a consideration about stones. And that we know many people who really don’t like England experience this feeling - I think this is not true. We know many more anti-Semites than Anglophobes. And it seems to me that a completely different kind of interest and even admiration for England, from Dickens to the Gorillaz group, prevails. I’m now going to take the conversation in a different direction, it just seemed to me that the point that Alexander Yakovlevich noted was terribly interesting, namely, for fans of England about the inevitable disappointment that befalls you (or is overtaken) when you arrive there. An amazing and sad phenomenon that so many who came to England with this love in their hearts and an idea of ​​what it was like, they endured when everything was not as described. There is no weather or fog. Not at all.

Petr Pomerantsev: No, this England exists. But you just need to look for it and you need to get away from the guidebooks. It's there, but it's just well hidden. I was at a wedding in Scotland, a very, very old English family. It's all there. This is a strange country. There is tolerance there... You can come, but not enter the house. And because of this there are wild ones social problems. Because a lot of people came from the former colonies, they seemed to be accepted, but they weren’t accepted... And they are incredibly offended. And because of this, England has huge social problems.

And “Anglomania” is now universal - it is in Italy, in America... England has sold itself very well and presented itself. And now London has become... this will probably pass soon, but for some time it has become the capital of the world, just like New York was before, or Paris. This is a pretty thoughtful thing. But I'm interested in another thing. When we talk about England, we, of course, talk about an elusive nature; that England almost no longer exists, and certainly no longer exists as a dominant force.

What England gave to the world were games. This is a country where there is a cult of games. If you are ever on a weekend with English people, they will play different games all weekend. There is no talking to oneself there. Non-stop games. They come up with games all the time. This is the country that gave us rugby, cricket and football. England's greatest gift is games. Games and drama. Because, after all, their genius is Shakespeare. And everyone should take part in school plays from childhood. If you speak a little English, you will know that every conversation in England on the street is always a kind of drama and play. This is a huge, huge theater, and everyone plays in it, even those who came, foreigners. And England somehow leaves, leaving itself as a kind of platform where other countries can play these games.

They left a beautiful, beautiful theater, and they themselves are leaving. And the Italians and Russians come and continue this cult of the game, inventing for themselves “England Hell”, “England Heaven”. Well, basically, they play on this incredibly beautiful stage. And the British themselves are somehow leaving, leaving... And soon there will only be talk about “Anglomania”, and the British will modestly go somewhere in a corner and die. Of course, a great culture that has created a scene where people can play some games. But directors and actors don’t leave, you understand. After all, we are talking about an elusive nature; in fact, it does not exist.

Victor Golyshev: I want to support Grisha Dashevsky. It seems to me that people talking about “Anglophobia” are mainly political affairs, and they happen quite constantly. And as for private individuals who come to England and know that they will never “belong” there. Where will you become “one of our own”? You will never become “one of our own” anywhere, neither in America nor in France. And if you go to another country, you just need to know that you will die and you will still be a stranger there, you will be a guest. And why did it suddenly become the capital... It seems to me that this somehow happens from time to time, but there is a living culture happening there, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s pop music, literature, theater. The English always play very well for some reason. These periods vary. Once upon a time France, Paris was the capital of the world, say, between the wars. And now there seems to be a more vibrant culture going on there. It doesn't matter whether it is first class or second class, but it is happening now. And this, I think, largely explains the current “Anglomania”.

Petr Favorov: I’ll speak a little from an Anglophobic position. Because it seems to me that Peter, as a true representative of the English “upper-middle class,” used a technique of understatement that is quite characteristic of English culture and ideology. And this incessant English that “we are leaving, we have already left, we are a small, powerless nation, very poor” and all that, in fact, it still doesn’t seem to be true. And the British are not going anywhere, but the ways in which they influence the world are simply changing. Of course, there is no longer a British Empire, but there is Anglo-Saxon culture, which still determines absolutely everything in this world. And don’t really think that the phrase “Churchill came up with everything in 1918,” which is still repeated by Anglophobes, is so irrelevant. Indeed, Churchill came up with quite a lot in 1918, to his credit. Well, you have to live with this.

Alexander Livergant: Everything that we extol about the British, it’s funny that in the United States of America, in a country that is often compared (and completely in vain) with ours in terms of some kind of breadth, emotionality, and so on, causes a reverse reaction. Conservatism, restraint - this evokes lively irony among Americans. They perfectly represent British speech. And they treat England with the condescending smile of a winner. Because from the end of the 18th century, the United States gained independence in great pain, during this time they became (let’s not hide this) the rulers of the world, and England turned into what was once the uninhabited States of America. And they still look down on the British. And this restraint, self-irony - everything that we put up on the shield seems to them somehow funny, petty, something like a museum.

Petr Pomerantsev: The first time I attended a discussion about what Russians really think about England, and it was incredibly interesting. But one thing about love and hate. Purely from the director’s point of view: there cannot be hatred from above. Love and hate are always together. And one example where Russian love and hatred for England are completely mixed. This is the Russian cult of adoration of the English aristocracy - Wodehouse, Jerome Klapka Jerome, who are not read in England at all, they are only loved in Russia. From the outside it looks like some kind of displaced Russian love for the aristocracy that Russia lost, and at the same time they cannot forgive England that England preserved this, and Russia killed its aristocrats. So love and hate, they are always together. Previously, politicians said: “We can only manipulate hatred that already exists in reality.” It's built in. Of course, we hate him for not keeping it all. We destroy everything all the time. It's together.

Anna Narinskaya: I would like to pass the ball to Viktor Petrovich, because we were just talking before the pass, and I expressed the idea that England and America are opposed. Viktor Petrovich, who brought us so many wonderful English and American books, said that “I loved England, and then it turned into a love for America.” And I said: “How can this be?! They won’t come together.” To which you said that this is not at all true for you. This would be very interesting to listen to.

Victor Golyshev: I observed several Englishmen in America, it is true that they were professors or poets, but I did not see any condescension on the part of the Americans, firstly. Secondly, it was said about Anglo-Saxon culture. There are more Germans living in America than Anglo-Saxons, and yet the culture is Anglo-Saxon. And probably more than half of them are “colored”, newcomers. Nevertheless, for some reason there is an incomprehensible power in this device, in law, and in literature, in everything, and it does not seem to me that the Americans have a lenient attitude towards the British. I think that, on the contrary, there is a certain respect that is also felt here. But how do the British react? It also seems to me that after the war the attitude towards America changed a lot. They began to consider her more of their own than, say, in the 40s or 50s.

Petr Favorov: I have a comment to Pyotr Pomerantsev: you have a somewhat distorted perception of Russian society. I think that the percentage of people reading Wodehouse is approximately equal in Russia and England.

Petr Pomerantsev: The Wodehouse series "Jeeves and Wooster" is extremely popular here and is shown in prime time.

Petr Favorov: He has enormous popularity here in a rather limited social circle, I'm afraid, as in England, probably, too.

But it seems to me that it is very interesting to think about what Viktor Petrovich said - about the power of this device, the law, why it is so strong. I personally formulate this for myself: because England is the only place where all this came together in a natural, natural way, where nothing was really copied from anywhere. Even the wonderful French institutions, they were still a little ingenious, they were a little fictitious. And English institutions really grew out of this soil, and therefore they still retain, despite their sometimes monstrous illogicality and often senselessness, both a sense of reasonableness and a very great charm.

Alexander Livergant: Two short remarks. Firstly, as for the English aristocracy, they get the most from English literature. We are now publishing in the journal “Foreign Literature” a modern piece by Alan Bennett about a queen who loves to read more than anything else. I take this opportunity to advertise this event. And there is just the attitude towards the aristocracy... we remember Evelyn Waugh, we remember all these anti-aristocratic attacks of English literature, in which, yes, there really is bewilderment, there is irritation, but there is, probably, in essence, in the depths of some amazing heat. Probably the same thing applies to America. Yes, I would agree here that perhaps these ties are so close and deep that they cannot be explained by neglect and irony alone. However, the wonderful Oscar Wilde said, in my opinion, better than anyone else, that “we have everything in common except language.” And this is, in a sense, the decisive aphorism in the relations between these two countries.

Victor Golyshev: The transition from Anglomania to Americanomania occurred, probably, due to the fact that America has a more democratic structure of society. There is no this cruel stratification into the aristocracy, middle class, lower class. But the fact is that Leontyev believed that this is a guarantee of a strong country when initial mixing does not occur. Maybe that’s why they last so long, maybe Leontyev was right in this sense.

I want us to remember the history of Anglomania in Russia. When does the first Anglomania begin? If I understand correctly, this is the beginning of the 19th century.

Alexander Livergant: I gave an example with Grigory Ivanovich Muromsky. Yes, this is probably the beginning of the 19th century, because I don’t know anything about the Russian 18th century in the sense of Anglomania. But I want to emphasize once again that in this Anglomania there is a lot of irony, there is a lot of ironic attitude towards England as something still distant, different, something that we will never be like, and in general, probably shouldn’t . Hence the Russian, Pushkin word “to play pranks.” For a Russian person living in Russia, imitating the British is mischief.

Here I remember English clubs and Russian gentlemen who wanted to be like English gentlemen. Was this just a toy of the aristocracy?

Petr Favorov: No, of course, it was not a toy of the aristocracy. But this was often real monkeying. We talked about England as a distant country, but we must also take into account that somewhere in the 16th century England was not a distant country at all, but was the only foreign country accessible to us. Because access to the sea was in the White Sea, and there was a path from Archangel to London, but it was much more difficult to get to Germany and France. And Ivan the Terrible wanted to marry Elizabeth of England, and not someone else - also a kind of early example of Anglomania.

And one more thing: of course, only a Russian can perceive Evelyn Waugh as anti-aristocratic, because in England now Evelyn Waugh is perceived rather as a psychotic snob; no one would think of considering his novels anti-aristocratic. This again leads to what Peter spoke about different perceptions.

I perceive Evelyn Waugh as the most humanistic, most humane writer in the world. In this sense, he is my favorite writer.

Grigory Dashevsky: You asked about the history of Anglomania in Russia. It seems to me important to remember who is the bearer, the subject of this Anglomania. Because we are used to saying some vague “we”, behind which it is not very clear who stands in Russia. But still, it’s one thing - the Russian pre-revolutionary aristocracy, like Grigory Ivanovich Muromsky, who has an estate that he can arrange according to English model, and can write Mrs. Jackson, and can hunt, he can embody his Anglomania in real forms. And we can call this a caricature, a parody, but, generally speaking, our new rich are in the same position, who can express their Anglomania by not only, say, escaping to England or settling temporarily, but sending their children to Etons, Cambridges and so on. And this is one line, behind which there is one bearer of love for England.

And there is something else, I would say, intellectual. And this, it seems to me, is rather a Soviet phenomenon. Because the pre-revolutionary intelligentsia was also looking for real models for action. It was the Germans for educational projects, for universities, it was the French for liberation projects, for revolutionary circles. And the late Soviet intelligentsia already fell in love with the British, it seems to me, and they fell in love in many ways as a country where there is no intelligentsia, in our understanding, as a separate class of restless intellectuals who criticize without any hope of participating in government. And it seems to me that the love of the intelligentsia here for England is largely a reflection of the desire to turn into an ordinary middle class, not to bear this burden of restlessness and so on. This is England, a country where, it seems to us, at least, there is no social outcast for educated people.

Victor Golyshev: I want to remember two things about the 19th century. Firstly, the beginning of the 19th century, the first half, was very much under the influence of Byron. And Pushkin was under his influence, and Lermontov, probably. And it seems to me that what is more important is a natural person with a nose for the people and for everything Leskov, he has a story “About the Quakers” and there is “Lefty”, and there is an excellent attitude towards the English. Quakers", in "Lefty", but remarkable. So, probably, this tradition is caused not only by the fact that an English sage invented a machine from a car, but also, in my opinion, in the humanistic sense there was great admiration already in the 19th century .

- It seems to me that English literature is the most humane literature in the world, and there is no better literature.

Petr Pomerantsev: Russian is also quite humane.

Victor Golyshev: I think they think so too.

- Do the British think about the Russians?

Victor Golyshev: Yes. About the classics of the 19th century - of course.

Anna Narinskaya: It seems to me that this conversation is turning out to be two-dimensional. We talk about two different things all the time. And in fact, we are not talking, as at first it seemed, about one England, which we see, and another England, which is felt by the British or people who habitually feel it as their country, but about Anglomania, roughly speaking, social, or about England as about a dream place where you can live, for example, or let your children live, and about the culture of Anglomania, which is still the main thing for us. And it seems to me an easy pretense to try to define oneself in relation to England, as a state, an empire, a structure, and so on.

All of us present here and many with whom we will talk about this, they define themselves precisely in relation to English culture, which turned out to be so good for us. She turned out to be a good fit for us with her writers and everything else. We're just talking about ourselves. Of course, you are absolutely right, England has turned out to be the root country in the whole world now both in relation to pop music and in relation to some other things, even contemporary art, which maybe we all don’t like here, like Hirst or someone else, but it’s such a fact. And we decide on this. Therefore, these are things that are more tasteful and spiritual than social, in my opinion. And this may be a secret. I don't have an answer as to why English worked so well for all of us. It's just a fact.

Alexander Livergant: All this time I think about what the discussion would look like if it were hosted not by Radio Liberty, but by the BBC, and the British were talking about Russia. I think that the main thesis would be this: the opposition of humane Russian literature and exotic or even wild Russian social life, society, and so on. It seems to me that our love, our feeling for England is to some extent connected with the fact that in England there is no such opposition.

Petr Pomerantsev: We were recently sent a script to the channel, which we are unlikely to ever be able to launch, but I really liked it, and it is very useful for our discussion. The story is about a Russian provincial teacher, she lives in some very distant town, she is a complete Anglomaniac, she has puzzles hanging everywhere, she collects them. She has a little son without a dad, and the son always thinks that he is Beckham, runs around the yard and says: “I am Beckham!” She has a Harrods bag that she irons all the time. A real Russian, a little crazy... This is a typical comedy. An Englishwoman who has never been to England. And this is some kind of oil city. She only has one room. And a real Englishman comes to her because he has to work for oil rigs. And he's some kind of northern Englishman, a "Geordie". It's part of England, but it's almost like... well, who in Russia is considered an "Untermensch" Russian? In England, a "Geordie" is always an "Untermensch": he drinks beer, he farts, he walks like Kadyrov in sportswear all the time. And he lives with her. She's terrified. And she is slowly trying to make him a real English gentleman. Well, a modern version of Pygmalion. And I really liked the script. But we said it was too complicated and people would be offended.

Anna Narinskaya: Will the British be offended?

Petr Pomerantsev: No. On the Russian channel. The British would have liked such self-irony. By the way, about Englishmania. There are very funny scenes where she forces him to put on an English tweed robe. All in all, a nice script.

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