General dictation in the Russian language. How to write a Total Dictation Online: instructions from the organizing committee. What is "Total dictation"

How to write a total dictation for the top five, "dangerous" words that will be in the text and advice from excellent students - read the guide from journalists Likes

For all lovers of the great and the mighty, missing school lessons or striving to maintain their literacy at the proper level, we hasten to inform you: on April 14 at 13:00 in Ufa, a Total Dictation will take place.

No, no, no need to get double sheets of paper, the action is voluntary, free and only promotes love of the language. All-Russian, (almost worldwide) literacy test annually gathers thousands of people who wish from different cities and countries who write the Total Dictation in the Russian language.

Traditionally, the action takes place at the same time, adjusted for time zones, and the original, previously unpublished text for the Total Dictation is written by a well-known writer specially invited for this purpose. This year, the choice fell on Guzel Yakhina, the author of the acclaimed book "Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes". According to the writer, the text will be dedicated to one day in the life of a village language teacher named Bach.

Who is involved

If you are reading this article and know how to write dictation - welcome to Total Dictation. No discrimination, restrictions or special division: anyone can write a dictation, regardless of age, gender, education, religion, profession or interests.

How to participate

You can write a Total Dictation in 2 ways:

In Ufa, the action will be held on 27 sites for Total Dictation and 2 sites for TruD, a special test for people learning Russian as a foreign language. Among the invited readers (also called dictators) are professors, teachers and media personalities.

If you have no one to leave your child with, and you really want to check literacy, come to the playgrounds where you can leave your child: while you are writing the dictation, animators and educators will occupy him.

If you do not have the opportunity to come to one of the sites, do not rush to be upset: you can write a dictation online on the website. The broadcasts will be available at 8:00, 11:00 and 14:00 Moscow time. Connect to any of the broadcasts, write a dictation in a special window and press the "check" button - the score will appear in your personal account after a while.

In both cases, registration on the official website is required, it is open from April 4. Go to the site, open the page with the city of Ufa, choose a site suitable for you, click the "register" button and follow simple instructions.

You can also find out your result on the site: enter your full name and code word (as on the form that will be given at the dictation itself). Each work is checked by philologists, and the analysis of the participants' mistakes helps in writing scientific papers in the field of modern Russian. The grading system is like in school, you can see in the picture.

How to prepare for a dictation

Those who have been familiar with the action for several years have long known: Courses precede the total dictation. Like the promotion itself, they are free, voluntary and held once a week for everyone who wants to brush up on the rules of the language. In 2018, the courses were held on Wednesdays from February 21, the last "lesson" - last Wednesday, April 4 at 18:30 in the scientific library of the Belarusian State Medical University.

Despite the fact that there are several days before the dictation, there is a way out.

Even in such a short time, you can improve your literacy.

All on the same official website of Total Dictation, anyone who wishes has access to materials of full-time courses plus an online school. In addition to a detailed analysis of the rules, there are also Total texts of past years, including TruD - for people studying Russian as a foreign language. Together with the repetition of the rules, you can familiarize yourself with the dictations, analyze difficult places and frequent mistakes.

And this item is for the very lazy and busy. What basic rules need to be repeated (or skimmed over)?

vowel spelling;
"Not" and "neither" with parts of speech;
one and two "n";
derivative prepositions;
punctuation marks: isolation and emphasis of turns;
registration of direct speech and quotes (the most common mistake!).

Bonuses for readers

If you've read this far, get a little gift: difficult words that will appear in the text this year.

Platband, front garden, recite, zenith, somnambulist, dial, mischief, pelvis, interspersed, interspersed.

Advice from experienced total players comes down to seemingly very simple rules - read more and love the Russian language.

You can also start writing yourself (if you have never) - on the table, in blogs, on a sticker on the refrigerator. But the universal recipe, as old as the world, is to read fiction as often as possible. There is only one recipe, but there are many advantages: expanding vocabulary, training mindfulness, memory, rich speech and, most importantly, literate language.

What's the point?

Check your literacy. Total dictation is not just another way to remember school years and hang out labels (excellent student, C grade student and loser). The resulting five, four, three is not a stigma, but an adequate way to assess your capabilities in order to become better and find out what to work on. For some, this is a way to awaken a dormant interest in the Russian language, for others - to pat yourself on the head and strengthen your own knowledge.

No gingerbread, no gold medals and applause for A's, just another way to make sure that this is not just normal, it is necessary, it is possible and important, to be literate is fashionable.

Tips for beginners

Lydia Germanova: Just go on an adventure! Don't think about the results, just remember your school years, fall into childhood. Read your favorite book for a week, then your brain will definitely remember exactly the words that you need!

Denis Yamgulov: My advice is not to repeat the rules of the Russian language, all the more chaotic, especially on the eve of a dictation. Relaxing and not whipping up importance is just an assessment. Have patience while waiting for the results and do not scold yourself if something happens. Read more in everyday life. All.

Aigul Davletova: Come early to take a closer seat. A lucky pen will not add knowledge, and you will not reread the rules. But if a person goes exactly to write on the result, then it makes sense to go to training courses, they begin to be taught in two months.

Total dictation: examples of texts.

War and Peace (Leo Tolstoy). 2004 text

On the next day, having said goodbye to only one count, without waiting for the ladies to leave, Prince Andrew went home.

It was already the beginning of June when Prince Andrei, returning home, drove again into that birch grove in which this old, gnarled oak so strangely and memorably struck him. The little bells were ringing even more muffled in the forest than a month and a half ago; everything was full, shady and thick; and the young spruces, scattered in the forest, did not violate the overall beauty and, imitating the general character, gently greened with fluffy young shoots.

The whole day was hot, a thunderstorm was gathering somewhere, but only a small cloud splashed on the dust of the road and on the juicy leaves. The left side of the forest was dark, in shadow; the right one, wet, glossy, shone in the sun, slightly swaying from the wind. Everything was in bloom; nightingales crackled and rolled now near, now far.

“Yes, here, in this forest, there was this oak tree with which we agreed,” thought Prince Andrey. "But where is he," thought again Prince Andrey, looking at the left side of the road and without knowing it, not recognizing him, admired the oak tree he was looking for. The old oak tree, all transformed, stretched out like a tent of luscious, dark greenery, melted, slightly swaying in the rays of the evening sun. No gnarled fingers, no sores, no old mistrust and grief - nothing was visible. Juicy, young leaves made their way through the tough, century-old bark without knots, so it was impossible to believe that this old man had produced them. “Yes, this is the same oak tree,” thought Prince Andrey, and suddenly an unreasonable, springtime feeling of joy and renewal came over him. All the best moments of his life were suddenly recalled to him at the same time. And Austerlitz with a high sky, and the dead reproachful face of his wife, and Pierre on the ferry, and a girl excited by the beauty of the night, and this night, and the moon - and all this suddenly came to him.

“No, life is not over at the age of 31, suddenly, finally, invariably, Prince Andrey decided. Not only do I know everything that is in me, it is necessary for everyone to know it: both Pierre and this girl who wanted to fly into the sky, it is necessary that everyone knows me, so that my life will not go on for me alone. so that they do not live so independently of my life that it is reflected on everyone and that they all live with me together! "

Volokolamskoe highway (Alexander Beck, text 2005)

In the evening we set out on a night march to the Ruza River, thirty kilometers from Volokolamsk. A resident of southern Kazakhstan, I'm used to late winter, but here, in the Moscow region, in early October it was already freezing in the morning. At dawn, along the road seized by frost, along the hardened mud turned up by the wheels, we approached the village of Novlyanskoye. Leaving the battalion near the village, in the forest, I went with the company commanders on reconnaissance. My battalion was measured seven kilometers along the bank of the winding Ruza. In battle, according to our regulations, such a section is large even for a regiment. This, however, was not alarming. I was sure that if the enemy really approached one day here, he would not be met by a battalion at our seven kilometers, but by five or ten battalions. With this in mind, I thought, it was necessary to prepare the fortifications.

Don't expect me to depict nature. I do not know whether the view spread before us was beautiful or not. On the dark mirror of the narrow, sluggish Ruza, large, as if carved leaves, were spread out, on which in summer, probably, white lilies bloomed. Maybe it's beautiful, but I noticed for myself: a crappy river, it is shallow and convenient for the enemy to cross. However, the coastal slopes from our side were inaccessible to the tanks: gleaming with freshly cut clay, keeping the traces of shovels, a steep ledge, called in the military language a scarp, fell to the water.

Beyond the river could be seen the distance - open fields and individual tracts, or, as they say, wedges, forests. In one place, somewhat obliquely from the village of Novlyanskoye, the forest on the opposite bank was almost closely adjacent to the water. In it, perhaps, there was everything that an artist painting a Russian autumn forest would have wanted, but this ledge seemed disgusting to me: here, most likely, the enemy could, hiding from our fire, concentrate for an attack. Fuck those pine trees and ate! Cut them out! Move the forest away from the river! Although none of us, as it was said, did not expect the speed of battles here, but we were given the task of equipping the defensive line, and we had to carry it out with complete conscientiousness, as it should be for officers and soldiers of the Red Army.

Taimyr Lake (Ivan Sokolov-Mikitov, text 2006)

Almost in the very center of the country's polar station lies the huge Taimyr Lake. It stretches from west to east in a long shining strip. In the north, boulders rise, with black ridges looming behind them. Until recently, a person did not look here at all. Only along the course of the rivers can you find traces of human presence. Spring waters sometimes bring torn nets, floats, broken oars and other simple fishing accessories from the upper reaches.

At the swampy shores of the lake, the tundra is bare, only spots of snow whiten and shine in the sun in some places. Driven by the force of inertia, a huge ice field pushes against the shores. The frozen ground is still holding its legs tightly. Ice at the mouths of rivers and streams will stand for a long time, and the lake will clear up in ten days. And then the sandy shore, flooded with light, will turn into the mysterious glow of sleepy water, and then into solemn silhouettes, the vague outlines of the opposite shore.

On a clear windy day, inhaling the smells of the awakened earth, we wander through the thawed patches of the tundra and observe a lot of curious phenomena. An extraordinary combination of the high sky with the cold wind. From under the feet now and then runs out, falling to the ground, a partridge; will break down and immediately, like a shot, a tiny little kulich will fall to the ground. Trying to take the uninvited visitor away from its nest, the little kulichka begins to somersault at the very feet. A voracious arctic fox, covered with shreds of faded wool, sneaks at the base of the stone placer. Having caught up with the fragments of stones, the arctic fox makes a well-calculated jump and presses down the jumped mouse with its paws. And further afield, the ermine, holding a silver fish in its teeth, rushes in jumps to the piled boulders.

The slowly melting glaciers will soon begin to revive and bloom plants. The first to bloom are the kandyk and the mountain woman, which develop and fight for life under the transparent cover of ice. In August, the first mushrooms will appear among the polar birch creeping on the hills.

The wretched tundra has its own wonderful scents. Summer will come, and the wind will flutter the corolla of flowers, buzzing will fly and land on the flower bumblebee.

The sky is frowning again, the wind begins to whistle madly. It's time to return to the boardwalk of the polar station, where it smells deliciously of baked bread and the comfort of human habitation. And tomorrow we will start exploration work.

Sotnikov (Vasil Bykov, text 2007)

All the last days Sotnikov was as if in prostration. He felt bad: he was exhausted without food and water. And he silently, half-forgotten, sat among the close crowd of people on the prickly, dry grass without any special thoughts in his head and, probably, that is why he did not immediately understand the meaning of the feverish whisper next to him: “At least one, but I will finish it off. Does not matter…". Sotnikov cautiously looked aside: that same lieutenant neighbor, unnoticed by others, was pulling out an ordinary penknife from under the dirty bandages on his leg, and there was such determination in his eyes that Sotnikov thought: you can't hold it back.

Two guards, having come together, lit a cigarette from a lighter, one on horseback was vigilantly examining the column.

They still sat in the sun, maybe fifteen minutes, until some command was heard from the hill and the Germans began to raise the column. Sotnikov already knew what the neighbor had decided on, who immediately began to take him from the column to the side, closer to the escort. This guard was a strong, stocky German, like everyone else, with a submachine gun on his chest, in a tight tunic sweaty under his arms; from under the cloth cap, which was wet from the edges, was not at all Aryan - a black, almost resinous forelock. The German hastily finished his cigarette, spat through his teeth, and, apparently intending to drive some prisoner, impatiently took two steps towards the column. At the same instant, the lieutenant, like a kite, rushed at him from behind and thrust a knife into his tanned neck up to the handle.

With a short grunt, the German sank to the ground, someone shouted at a distance: "Polundra!" - and several people, as if thrown from the column by a spring, rushed into the field. Sotnikov also rushed away.

The confusion of the Germans lasted for about five seconds, no more, immediately bursts hit in several places - the first bullets went over his head. But he ran. It seems that he had never in his life raced with such frantic agility, and in several wide jumps he ran up a hill with pine trees. The bullets were already densely and randomly penetrating the pine thicket, pine needles showered him from all sides, and he kept rushing as far as possible, not making out his way, every now and then with joyful amazement repeating to himself: “Alive! Alive! "

Naulaka: A Story of West and East (Rudyard Kipling, text 2008)

Ten minutes later Tarvin began to guess that all these tired, exhausted people represented the interests of half a dozen different firms in Calcutta and Bombay. Like every spring, they besieged the royal palace without any hope of success, trying to get at least something on the accounts from the debtor, who was the king himself. His Majesty ordered everything in a row, indiscriminately, and in huge quantities - he did not like to pay for purchases. He bought guns, travel bags, mirrors, expensive knickknacks for the mantel, embroidery, Christmas tree decorations sparkling in all the colors of the rainbow, saddles and horse harness, postal carriages, carriages with four horses, perfumes, surgical instruments, candlesticks, Chinese porcelain - individually or in bulk, cash or credit, as His Royal Majesty pleases. Losing interest in the acquired things, he immediately lost the desire to pay for them, since little occupied his jaded imagination for more than twenty minutes. Sometimes it so happened that the very purchase of a thing satisfied him in full, and the boxes with precious contents that arrived from Calcutta remained unopened. The peace that reigned in the Indian Empire prevented him from taking up arms and directing them against his fellow kings, and he was deprived of the only joy and amusement that had amused him and his ancestors for thousands of years. And yet he could play this game even now, albeit in a slightly modified form - fighting with the clerks, who were vainly trying to get the score from him.

So, on one side stood the political resident of the state himself, seated in this place in order to teach the king the art of government, and most importantly, economy and frugality, and on the other side - more precisely, at the palace gates, there was usually a traveling salesman, in whose soul fought contempt for the malicious defaulter and the reverence inherent in every Englishman for the king.

Nevsky Prospect (Nikolai Gogol, text 2009)

There is nothing better than Nevsky Prospect, at least in St. Petersburg; for him he is everything. Why this street does not shine - the beauty of our capital! I know that none of its pale and bureaucratic residents will exchange for all the good things of Nevsky Prospect. Not only someone who is twenty-five years old, a wonderful mustache and an amazingly tailored frock coat, but even someone with white hair popping out on his chin and a head smooth as a silver dish, is delighted with Nevsky Prospect. And ladies! Oh, ladies are even more pleased with Nevsky Prospect. And who doesn't like it? As soon as you climb onto Nevsky Prospekt, it already smells of one party. At least he had some necessary, necessary business, but, having climbed on it, surely, you will forget about any business. Here is the only place where people are shown unnecessarily, where their need and mercantile interest, which embraces the whole of Petersburg, has not driven them.

Nevsky Prospect is the universal communication of St. Petersburg. Here, a resident of the Petersburg or Vyborg part, who has not been with his friend on Peski or at the Moscow outpost for several years, can be sure that he will certainly meet with him. No calendar address and reference point will deliver such reliable news as Nevsky Prospect. Almighty Nevsky Prospect! The only entertainment of the poor for a walk in St. Petersburg! How cleanly its sidewalks are swept, and, God, how many feet have left their marks on it! And the clumsy, dirty boot of a retired soldier, under whose weight the granite itself seems to crack, and the miniature, light as smoke, the shoe of a young lady, turning her head towards the shining windows of the store, like a sunflower to the sun, and the thundering saber of a hopeful ensign who there is a sharp scratch on him - everything takes out on him the power of strength or the power of weakness. What a rapid phantasmagoria is accomplished on it in just one day!

What is the reason for the decline of the Russian language and is there any? (Boris Strugatsky, text 2010)

There is no decline, and indeed there cannot be. They just softened the censorship, and partly, thank God, was completely abolished, and what we used to hear in pubs and doorways, today delights our ears, coming from the stage and from television screens. We are inclined to consider this the onset of lack of culture and the decline of the Language, but after all, lack of culture, like any devastation, is not in books and not on the stage, it is in the souls and in the heads. And with the latter, in my opinion, nothing significant has happened in recent years. Perhaps our bosses, again, thank God, were distracted from ideology and carried away more by cutting the budget. Here languages \u200b\u200bhave blossomed, and Language has been enriched with remarkable innovations in the widest range - from “hedging a GKO portfolio with the help of futures” to the appearance of Internet jargon.

Conversations about decline in general and Language in particular are, in fact, the result of a lack of clear instructions from above. Appropriate indications will appear - and the decline will stop, as it were, by itself, immediately replaced by some kind of "new flourishing" and a universal sovereign "goodness of air".

Literature thrives happily, finally remaining almost uncensored and in the shadow of liberal laws on publishing. The reader is spoiled to the limit. Every year, several dozen books of such a level of significance appear that, if any of them appeared on the shelves 25 years ago, it would immediately become a sensation of the year, and today it causes only condescending and approving criticism. The talk about the notorious "literary crisis" does not subside, the public demands the immediate appearance of new Bulgakovs, Chekhovs, Thick, as usual, forgetting that any classic is necessarily a "product of the time", like good wine and, in general, like all good things. There is no need to pull the tree up by the branches: it will not grow faster from this. However, there is nothing wrong with talking about the crisis: there is little benefit from them, but there is no harm either.

And Language, as before, lives its own life, slow and incomprehensible, constantly changing and at the same time always remaining itself. Anything can happen to the Russian language: perestroika, transformation, transformation - but not extinction. He is too big, powerful, flexible, dynamic and unpredictable to take and suddenly disappear. Is that - with us.

Spelling as a law of nature (Dmitry Bykov, text 2011)

The question of why literacy is needed is widely discussed and biased. It would seem that today, when even a computer program is able to correct not only spelling, but also meaning, the average Russian is not required to know the countless and sometimes meaningless subtleties of the native spelling. I'm not talking about commas, which are unlucky twice. At first, in the liberal nineties, they were placed anywhere or ignored altogether, claiming that this was the author's mark. Schoolchildren still widely use the unwritten rule: "If you don't know what to stage, put a dash." It is not for nothing that they call it that - “a sign of despair”. Then, in the stable 2000s, people began to fearfully reinsure themselves and put commas where they were not needed at all. True, all this confusion with signs does not affect the meaning of the message in any way. Why then write competently?

I think this is something like those necessary conventions that replace our specific canine instinct when sniffing. Any developed interlocutor, having received an e-mail, identifies the author by a thousand little things: of course, he does not see the handwriting, unless the message came in a bottle, but a letter from a philologist containing spelling errors can be erased without finishing reading.

It is known that at the end of the war the Germans, who used the Russian labor force, threatened to extort a special receipt from the Slavic slaves: "Such and such treated me wonderfully and deserves leniency." The liberating soldiers, having occupied one of the suburbs of Berlin, read a letter proudly presented by the owner, with a dozen gross mistakes, signed by a student at Moscow University. The degree of the author's sincerity became obvious to them at once, and the slave-owner in the street paid for his dastardly prudence.

Today we have almost no chance to quickly understand who is in front of us: the methods of disguise are cunning and numerous. You can imitate the mind, sociability, even, perhaps, intelligence. It is impossible to play only literacy - a refined form of politeness, the last identification mark of humble and memorable people who honor the laws of language as the highest form of the laws of nature.

Part 1. Do you care? (Zakhar Prilepin, text 2012)
Recently, we often hear categorical statements, for example: "I do not owe anything to anyone." They are repeated, considering it in good form, by a considerable number of people of all ages, primarily young. And those who are old and wise are even more cynical in their judgments: “You don’t have to do anything, because while the Russians, forgetting about the greatness that has fallen under the bench, quietly drink, everything goes on as usual.” Have we really become more inert and emotionally passive than ever? Now this is not easy to understand, eventually time will tell. If a country called Russia suddenly discovers that it has lost a significant part of its territory and a significant proportion of its population, it will be possible to say that at the beginning of the 2000s we really had nothing to do and that during these years we were engaged in more important matters than preserving statehood, national identity and territorial integrity. But if the country survives, then the complaints about the indifference of citizens to the fate of the Motherland were at least groundless.

Nevertheless, there are grounds for a disappointing forecast. Quite often there are young people who perceive themselves not as a link in a continuous chain of generations, but as the crown of creation. But there are obvious things: life itself and the existence of the earth on which we walk are possible only because our ancestors treated everything differently.

I remember my old men: how beautiful they were and, my God, how young they were in their military photographs! And how happy they were that we, their children and their grandchildren, were confused among them, thin-legged and tanned, blossomed and overcooked in the sun. For some reason, we decided that the previous generations owed us, and we, as a new subspecies of individuals, are not responsible for anything and do not want to be in debt to anyone.

There is only one way to preserve the land and freedom of the people given to us - to gradually and persistently get rid of the mass paroxysms of individualism, so that public statements about independence from the past and non-involvement in the future of their homeland become at least a sign of bad taste.

Part 2. I care

Recently, categorical statements such as: "I owe nothing to anyone" are often heard. They are repeated by many, especially young people who consider themselves the crown of creation. It is no accident that the position of extreme individualism is a sign of almost good form today. But first of all we are social beings and live according to the laws and traditions of society.

Most often, traditional Russian subjects are stupid: a pipe burst as usual there, something caught fire here - and three districts were left either without heat, or without light, or without that and without the other. No one is surprised for a long time, because something like this has seemed to happen before.

The fate of society is directly related to the state itself and the actions of those who govern it. The state can ask, strongly recommend, order, and finally force us to do an act.

A reasonable question arises: who and what needs to be done with people so that they are concerned not only with their own destiny, but also with something greater?

Now there is a lot of talk about the awakening of civic consciousness. It seems that society, regardless of someone else's will and orders from above, is recovering. And in this process, as we are convinced, the main thing is “to start with yourself”. I personally started: I screwed in a light bulb in the entrance, paid taxes, improved the demographic situation, provided jobs for several people. So what? And where is the result? It seems to me that while I am busy with small things, someone does their own, huge ones, and the vector of application of our forces is completely different.

Meanwhile, everything that we have: from the land on which we walk, to the ideals in which we believe, is not the result of "small deeds" and careful steps, but of global projects, huge achievements, selfless selfless devotion. People are transformed only when they burst into the world with all their might. A person becomes a person in search, in exploit, in labor, and not in petty self-examination, which turns the soul inside out.

It is much better to start changing the world around you, because at last you want a big country, big worries about it, big results, big earth and sky. Give a map with a real scale so that at least half of the globe can be seen!

Part 3. And we care!

There is a quiet, as itch, feeling that the state on this earth owes nothing to anyone. Maybe that's why lately we hear so often from people that I, they say, don't owe anyone anything. And now I don't understand: how can we all survive here and who will defend this country when it collapses?

If you seriously believe that Russia has exhausted its resources of resilience and we have no future, then, rightly speaking, maybe you shouldn't worry? We have good reasons: the people are broken, all empires sooner or later fall apart and therefore we have no chance.

Russian history, I do not argue, provoked such declarations. Nevertheless, our ancestors never believed in these nonsense, stricken with skepticism. Who decided that we no longer have a chance, and, for example, the Chinese have more than enough? They also have a multinational country that has gone through revolutions and wars.

In fact, we live in a funny state. Here, in order to exercise your basic rights - to have a roof over your head and your daily bread, you need to perform extraordinary beauty somersaults: change your home and work, get an education in order to work outside your specialty, go over your head, and preferably on your hands. You can't just be a peasant, a nurse, an engineer, just a military man is not recommended at all.

But with all the, so to speak, “unprofitable” population, tens of millions of adult men and women live in Russia - capable, enterprising, initiative, ready to plow and sow, build and rebuild, give birth and raise children. Therefore, a voluntary farewell to the national future is not at all a sign of common sense and balanced decisions, but a natural betrayal. You cannot give up positions, throw flags and run wherever you look, without even making an attempt to defend your home. This, of course, is a figure of speech, inspired by history and the smoke of the fatherland, in which the spiritual and cultural upsurge, the massive desire for reconstruction have always been associated with great upheavals and wars. But they were crowned with Victories, which no one can achieve. And we must earn the right to be the heirs of these Victories!

Part 1. Internet Gospel (Dina Rubina, text 2013)

Once, many years ago, I got into conversation with a familiar programmer and, among other remarks, I remember his phrase that a certain ingenious thing had been invented, thanks to which all the knowledge of mankind would become available to any subject - the World Information Network.

It's amazing, ”I said politely, always bored with the word“ humanity ”and hating the word“ individual ”.

Imagine, - he continued, - that for a thesis on the production of pottery among the Etruscans, for example, you no longer need to dig into the archives, but just type a certain code, and everything that is required for work will appear on your computer screen.

But this is wonderful! I exclaimed.

Meanwhile he continued:

Unprecedented opportunities are opening up before humanity - in science, in art, in politics. Everyone will be able to convey their word to the attention of millions. At the same time, he added, any person will become much more accessible to the special services and not protected from all kinds of intruders, especially when hundreds of thousands of Internet communities emerge.

But this is awful ... - I thought.

Many years have passed, and I remember this conversation very well. And today, having changed a dozen computers, texting - to the accompaniment of a keyboard - with hundreds of correspondents, sending another request from Google to Yandex and mentally blessing the great invention, I still cannot answer myself unequivocally: the Internet is "wonderful" or "terrible" ?

Thomas Mann wrote: “… Where you are, there is the world - a narrow circle in which you live, cognize and act; the rest is fog ... "

The Internet - for good or for evil - has dispelled the fog, cutting in its merciless searchlights, piercing with cutting light to the smallest grain of sand, countries and continents, and at the same time the fragile human soul. And what, by the way, has happened over the past twenty years with this notorious soul, before which dazzling opportunities for self-expression have opened up?

For me, the Internet is the third turning point in the history of human culture - after the appearance of language and the invention of the book. In ancient Greece, no more than twenty thousand people heard an orator speaking on a square in Athens. This was the sonic limit of communication: the geography of a language is a tribe. Then a book came, which expanded the circle of communication to the geography of the country. With the invention of the World Wide Web, a new stage of human existence in space emerged: the geography of the Internet is the globe!

Part 2. Dangers of Paradise Tabernacles

For me the Internet is the third turning point in the history of human culture - after the appearance of language and the invention of the book. In ancient Greece, no more than twenty thousand people heard an orator speaking on a square in Athens. This was the sonic limit of communication: the geography of a language is a tribe. Then a book came, which expanded the circle of communication to the geography of the country.

And now there was a dizzying, unprecedented opportunity to instantly convey the word to countless people. Another change of spaces: the geography of the Internet is the globe. And this is another revolution, and a revolution always breaks quickly, only it builds slowly.

Over time, a new hierarchy of humanity will arise, a new humane civilization. In the meantime ... while the Internet is dominated by the “flip side” of this grandiose breakthrough discovery - its destructive power. It is no coincidence that the World Wide Web is becoming an instrument in the hands of terrorists, hackers and fanatics of all stripes.

The most striking fact of our time: The Internet, which has incredibly expanded the ability of the common man to speak and act, lies at the heart of the current "uprising of the masses." This phenomenon, which arose in the first half of the twentieth century, caused by the vulgarization of culture - material and spiritual - gave birth to both communism and Nazism. Today it is addressed to the "mass" in any person, feeds on it and satisfies it in all respects - from linguistic to political and consumer, for it has incredibly brought the coveted "bread and circuses" closer to the people, including the lowest. This confidant, preacher and confessor of crowds turns into "noise" everything that he touches, that gives life; breeds vulgarity, ignorance and aggression, giving them an unheard-of, mesmerizing way out not just outside, but to the whole world. The most dangerous thing is that this playful and very intelligent "child" of the new civilization destroys the criteria - spiritual, moral and behavioral codes of the existence of human society. What to do, in the Internet space, everyone is equal in the most areal sense of the word. And I think: isn't it too high a price we pay for a great opportunity to talk with a distant friend, read a rare book, see a brilliant picture and hear a great opera? Was this grandiose discovery made too early? In other words, has humanity grown to itself?

Part 3. Evil for good or good for evil?

Questions related to the mighty Internet are quite existential, as is the question of what we are doing in this world.

There is no such device that could determine the obvious benefits and equally obvious evil that all great inventions bring us, just as there is no way to separate one from the other.

I would not be in a hurry to criticize the Internet too sharply for all the sins of mankind, - objected my friend, a famous physicist who has lived in Paris for a long time (by the way, we met him via the Internet). - From my point of view, this is a wonderful thing, if only because talented and intelligent people got the opportunity to communicate, uniting and thereby contributing to the great discoveries of modern times. Think, for example, of polar explorers in Antarctica: isn't internet communication a great blessing for them? And the plebs will remain a plebs, with or without the Internet. At one time, monsters of the style of Hitler or Mussolini, with only radio and press, contrived to kill the masses. And the book has always been a very powerful tool: you can print Shakespeare's poetry and Chekhov's prose on paper, or textbooks on terrorism and calls for pogroms - paper will endure everything, like the Internet. This invention in itself does not belong to the categories of good or evil, just like fire, dynamite, alcohol, nitrates, or nuclear energy. It all depends on who is using it. This is so obvious that it is even boring to discuss. Write better about how difficult it is to become an adult in our age, how entire generations are doomed to eternal and irreversible immaturity ...

That is, after all, about the World Wide Web? I asked stubbornly. - It was there that I read the other day: "The best thing that life has given me is childhood without the Internet."

So what? we, as a matter of fact, do in this world, I think, penetrating deeper and deeper into its secrets, trying to get to the most intimate spring, whose crystal power will quench our thirst for immortality? And does it exist, this spring, or does each next generation, which has removed the next veil from the great mystery, can only muddy the clear waters of being given to us by the unknowable genius of the Universe?

Train Chusovskaya - Tagil (Alexey Ivanov, text 2014)

Part 1. On the train through childhood

"Chusovskaya - Tagil" ... I traveled by this train only in the summer.

The train of wagons and the locomotive were angular and massive, smelled of hot metal and, for some reason, tar. Every day, this train departed from the old Chusovo railway station, which is no longer there, and the conductors stood in the open doors, putting out yellow flags.

The railway turned decisively from the Chusovaya River into a hollow between the mountains, and then for many hours in a row the train beat frantically along the dense openings. Above, the motionless summer sun was roasting, and around in the blue and haze the Urals swayed: either some taiga plant would put up a thick red brick pipe over the forest, then a gray rock above the valley would sparkle with mica, then a quiet lake would flash in an abandoned quarry, like a rolled coin ... The entire world outside the window could suddenly fall down - this was a car rushing along a short, like a sigh, bridge over a flat river, bulged with boulders. More than once the train was carried out onto tall embankments, and it flew with a howl at the level of the fir tops, almost in the sky, and around in a spiral, like circles in a whirlpool, a horizon unfolded with sloping ridges, on which something flashed strangely.

The semaphore switched the scale, and after the grandiose panoramas, the train slowed down on modest siding with dead ends, where the red-hot wheels of the forgotten teplushkas stuck to the red rails. Here the windows of wooden stations were decorated with platbands, signs "Don't walk along the tracks!" rusted, and under them the dogs slept in dandelions. Cows grazed in the weeds of drainage ditches, and stray raspberries waved out behind the crevice plank platforms. The hoarse whistle of the train floated over the station like a local hawk, which had long since lost its greatness as a predator and now stole chickens from the front gardens, grabbing sparrows from the gable slate roof of the sawmill.

Going through the details in my memory, I no longer know and do not even understand which magical land this train travels through - in the Urals or in my childhood.

Part 2. Train and people

"Chusovskaya - Tagil" ... Sunny train.

Then, in childhood, everything was different: the days are longer, and the land is larger, and the bread is not imported. I liked my fellow travelers, fascinated by the mystery of their life, revealed to me by chance, as if in passing. Here is a neat old woman unfolds a newspaper in which onion feathers, cabbage-filled pies and hard-boiled eggs are neatly stacked. Here is an unshaven father rocking a little daughter sitting on his lap, and there is so much tenderness in that careful movement with which this man, clumsy and awkward, covers the girl with the hem of his shabby jacket ... they cackle, fraternize, but suddenly, as if remembering something, they begin to fight, then they cry from the impossibility of expressing suffering they do not understand, they hug again and sing songs. And only after many years I realized how stale the soul becomes when you live away from home for a long time.

Once, at some station, I saw all the conductors go to the buffet and chatted, and the train suddenly sailed slowly along the platform. The aunts flew out onto the platform and, cursing the hohmach driver, who did not give the whistle, the crowd rushed after him, and from the door of the last car the head of the train whistled shamelessly with two fingers, like a fan in a stadium. Of course, the joke is rude, but no one was offended, and then they all laughed together.

Here confused parents drove their children to the train on motorcycles with sidecars, kissed and bitterly had fun, played accordions and sometimes danced. Here the conductors told the passengers to calculate how much the ticket costs and bring them "without change", and the passengers honestly rummaged in their wallets and purses, looking for change. Here everyone was involved in the general movement and experienced it in their own way. You could go out into the vestibule, open the door outside, sit on the iron steps and just look at the world, and no one will scold you.

"Chusovskaya - Tagil", the train of my childhood ...

Part 3. When the train returns

My mom and dad worked as engineers, they could not afford the Black Sea, so on summer vacations they teamed up with friends and on the Chusovskaya-Tagil train left in merry companies for family tours along the Ural rivers. In those years, the very order of life was as if specially adapted for friendship: all parents worked together, and all children studied together. This is probably what is called harmony.

Our dashing and mighty dads threw backpacks with wadded sleeping bags and canvas tents, heavy, as if made of sheet iron, onto the luggage racks, and our naive mothers, fearing that the children would not learn about the plans of adults, in a whisper asked: “But for the evening they took ? " My father, the strongest and the most cheerful, answered not at all embarrassed or even smiling: “Of course! A loaf of white and a loaf of red. "

And we, children, went towards wonderful adventures - to the place where the merciless sunshine, impregnable rocks and fiery dawns, and we had wonderful dreams while we slept on the hard carriage shelves, and these dreams are the most amazing! - have always come true. A hospitable and welcoming world was opening up before us, life was receding into the distance, into blinding infinity, the future seemed wonderful, and we rolled there in a creaky, shabby carriage. In the railway schedule, our train was listed as a suburban train, but we knew that it was very long-distance.

And now the future has become the present - not beautiful, but what, apparently, it should be. I live in it and get to know better and better the homeland through which my train travels, and it is getting closer to me, but, alas, I remember my childhood more and more, and it is farther and farther from me - this is very, very sad. However, my present will also soon become the past, and then the same train will take me not to the future, but to the past - the same way, but in the opposite direction of time.

"Chusovskaya - Tagil", the sunny train of my childhood.

Magic lantern. (Evgeny Vodolazkin, text 2015)

Part 1. Summer cottage

Professor's dacha on the shores of the Gulf of Finland. In the absence of the owner, my father's friend, our family was allowed to live there. Even decades later, I remember how, after a tiring journey from the city, the coolness of a wooden house enveloped me, as I collected a body that was shaken, disintegrated in a carriage. This coolness was not associated with freshness, but rather, oddly enough, with a delightful mustiness, in which the aromas of old books and numerous ocean trophies merged, it is not clear how the professor-lawyer got it. Dried starfish, mother-of-pearl shells, carved masks, a cork helmet, and even a needle fish-needle lay on the shelves, spreading a salty smell.

Gently pushing away the seafood, I took books from the shelves, sat down in a Turkish chair with boxwood armrests and read. I flipped through the pages with my right hand, and my left squeezed a piece of bread with butter and sugar. I bit off thoughtfully and read, and the sugar gritted my teeth. These were Jules Verne's novels or magazine descriptions of exotic countries intertwined in leather - an unknown world, inaccessible and infinitely far from jurisprudence. At his dacha, the professor obviously collected what he dreamed of since childhood, which was not provided for by his current position and was not regulated by the Code of Laws of the Russian Empire. In the countries dear to his heart, I suspect, there were no laws at all.

From time to time I looked up from the book and, watching the fading of the bay outside the window, tried to understand how one becomes a lawyer. Have you dreamed about it since childhood? Doubtful. As a child, I dreamed of being a conductor or, say, a firemaster, but never a lawyer. I also imagined that I stayed in this cool room forever, I live in it, like in a capsule, and outside the window there are changes, coups, earthquakes, and there is no more sugar, no oil, not even the Russian Empire - and only I am sitting and I read, I read ... Later life showed that I guessed right with sugar and butter, but to sit and read - this, alas, did not work.

Part 2. Park

We are in Polezhaevsky Park, mid-June. The Ligovka river flows there, it is small at all, but in the park it turns into a lake. On the water - boats, on the grass - checkered rugs, fringed tablecloths, samovars. I watch a group of people sitting nearby start the gramophone. I don't remember who exactly is sitting, but I can still see how the handle rotates. A moment later, music is heard - hoarse, stuttering, and yet music.

A box full of little ones with colds singing, albeit invisible from the outside - I didn't have that. And how I wanted to have it: to take care of it, to cherish it, to put it by the stove in winter, but the main thing is to start it up with regal negligence, as they do something familiar for a long time. Turning the knob seemed to me a simple and at the same time not obvious reason for the pouring sounds, a kind of universal master key to the beautiful. There was something Mozart in this, something from the wave of the conductor's baton, animating mute instruments and also not entirely explainable by earthly laws. I used to conduct alone with myself, humming the tunes I heard, and I was good at it. If not for the dream of becoming a firemaster, I would like to be, of course, a conductor.

On that June day we saw the conductor as well. With an orchestra obedient to his hand, he slowly moved away from the shore. It was not a park orchestra, not a wind orchestra - a symphonic one. He stood on the raft, it is not clear how he fit, and his music was spreading over the water, and the vacationers were listening to it half-heartedly. Boats and ducks swam around the raft, and one could hear the creak of oarlocks or quacking, but all this easily grew into the music and was generally accepted by the conductor favorably. Surrounded by musicians, the conductor was at the same time lonely: there is an incomprehensible tragedy in this profession. He, perhaps, is not as pronounced as that of the firemaster, since he is not connected either with fire or with external circumstances in general, but this internal, hidden nature of him burns hearts all the more.

Part 3. Nevsky

I saw how they drove along the Nevsky to extinguish the fire - in early autumn, at the end of the day. Ahead on a black horse - "jump" (as they called the advanced rider of the fire-fighting train), with a pipe at his mouth, like the angel of the Apocalypse. The jump trumpets, clearing the way, and everyone rushes in all directions. The cabbies whip the horses, push them to the side of the road and freeze, half-turned to the firemen. And now a chariot carrying fire-fighters rushes along the seething Nevsky in the resulting emptiness: they sit on a long bench, backs to each other, in copper helmets, and the banner of the fire department flies above them; at the banner - the firemaster, he rings the bell. In their dispassion, firefighters are tragic, the reflections of a flame that has already flared up somewhere, is already waiting for them somewhere, for the time being invisible, play on their faces.

Fiery yellow leaves from the Catherine Gardens, where there is a fire, sadly fly off on those traveling. My mother and I stand by the forged grate and watch how the weightlessness of the leaves is transmitted to the train: it slowly breaks away from the paving stones and flies over the Nevsky at a low altitude. A carriage with a steam pump (steam from the boiler, smoke from the chimney) floats behind the line with the firemen, followed by a medical van to rescue the burned. I cry, and my mother tells me not to be afraid, only because I am crying not from fear - from an excess of feelings, from admiration for the courage and great glory of these people, because they float so majestically past the frozen crowd to the ringing of bells.

I really wanted to become a fireman and every time I saw firefighters, I made a silent request to them to accept me into their ranks. She, of course, was not heard, but now, years later, I do not regret it. Then, driving along the Nevsky Prospect on the imperial, I invariably imagined that I was heading for a fire: I behaved solemnly and a little sadly, and did not know how things would still develop there during extinguishing, and caught enthusiastic glances, and at the greetings of the crowd, slightly tilting my head to one side , answered with one eyes.

This ancient, ancient, ancient world! (Alexander Usachev, text 2016)

Part 1. Briefly about the history of theater

It is said that the ancient Greeks were very fond of grapes and after their harvest they organized a holiday in honor of the god of grapes, Dionysus. Dionysus's retinue consisted of goat-legged creatures - satyrs. Depicting them, the Greeks put on goat skins, galloped furiously and sang - in a word, they selflessly indulged in fun. Such performances were called tragedies, which in ancient Greek meant "the singing of the goats." Subsequently, the Hellenes thought: what else could such games be devoted to?
Ordinary people have always been interested to know how the rich live. The playwright Sophocles began to write plays about kings, and it immediately became clear: the kings and they often cry and their personal life is unsafe and by no means easy. And in order to make the narrative entertaining, Sophocles decided to attract actors who could play his works - this is how the theater appeared.
At first, art fans were very unhappy: only those in the front row saw the action, and since tickets were not yet available, the best seats were occupied by the strongest and tallest. Then the Greeks decided to eliminate this inequality and built an amphitheater, where each next row was higher than the previous one, and everything that happened on the stage became visible to everyone who came to the performance.
The performance usually involved not only actors, but also the choir, broadcasting on behalf of the people. For example, a hero would enter the arena and say:
- I'll go do something bad now!
- To do bad is shameless! The chorus howled.
“Okay,” the hero agreed reluctantly, on reflection. “Then I'll go and do something nice.
“To do good things well,” the chorus approved of him, thereby, as if inadvertently pushing the hero to death: after all, as it should be in a tragedy, reckoning inevitably comes for good deeds.
True, sometimes the "god from the car" appeared (a special crane was called a machine, on which the "god" was lowered onto the stage) and unexpectedly and unexpectedly saved the hero. Whether it was really a real god or an actor is still unclear, but it is known for certain that both the word "machine" and theatrical cranes were invented in Ancient Greece.

Part 2. Briefly about the history of writing

In those immemorial times, when the Sumerians came between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, they spoke in an incomprehensible language: after all, the Sumerians were the discoverers of new lands and their language was like real scouts - secret, encrypted. No one had and does not have such a language, perhaps other scouts.
Meanwhile, the people in Mesopotamia were already using wedges with might and main: young men knocked wedges under the girls (this is how they looked after them); swords and knives, forged from Damascus steel, were wedge-shaped; even cranes in the sky - and they flew like a wedge. The Sumerians saw so many wedges around them that they invented writing - wedges. This is how cuneiform - the world's oldest writing system - appeared.
During lessons in a Sumerian school, students used wooden sticks to squeeze wedges on clay tablets, and therefore everything around was smeared with clay - from floor to ceiling. The cleaning ladies ended up getting furious because school like that was nothing but filthy and they needed to keep it clean. And in order to maintain cleanliness, it must be clean, otherwise there is nothing to maintain.
But in ancient Egypt, writing consisted of drawings. The Egyptians thought: why write the word "bull" if you can just draw this bull? The ancient Greeks (or the Hellenes, as they called themselves) later called such words-pictures hieroglyphs. Writing lessons in ancient Egyptian were more like drawing lessons, and drawing hieroglyphs was a real art.
“Well, no,” said the Phoenicians. - We are hardworking people, artisans and seafarers, and we do not need sophisticated calligraphy, let us have a simpler writing.
And they came up with letters - this is how the alphabet turned out. People began to write in letters, and the further, the faster. And the faster they wrote, the uglier they got. Doctors wrote the most: they wrote prescriptions. Therefore, some of them still have such a handwriting that they seem to write letters, but hieroglyphs come out.

Part 3. Briefly about the history of the Olympic Games

The ancient Greeks invented the Olympics while waging one of their never-ending wars. There were two main reasons: firstly, during the battles, soldiers and officers had no time to play sports, but the Greeks (as the ancient Greeks called themselves) tried to train all the time, not occupied with exercises in philosophy; secondly, the soldiers wanted to return home as soon as possible, and the war was not given leave. It was clear that the troops needed a truce and that the Olympic Games could be the only way to declare it: after all, an indispensable condition for the Olympics is the end of the war.
At first, the Hellenes wanted to hold the Olympic Games annually, but later realized that frequent interruptions in hostilities endlessly lengthen wars, so the Olympic Games were announced only once every four years. Of course, there were no winter games in those days, because in Hellas there were no ice arenas or ski slopes.
Any citizen could participate in the Olympics, but the rich could afford expensive sports equipment and the poor could not. To prevent the rich from defeating the poor just because their sports equipment is better, all athletes measured their strength and dexterity naked.
- Why were the games called Olympic? - you ask. - Did the gods from Olympus also take part in them?
No, the gods, apart from quarrels among themselves, did not engage in any other sport, but they loved to follow sports competitions from the skies with undisguised passion for mortals. And to make it easier for the gods to observe the vicissitudes of the competition, the first stadium was built in a sanctuary called Olympia - this is how the games got their name.
The gods and those during the games entered into a truce and vowed not to help their chosen ones. Moreover, they even allowed the Hellenes to consider the victors as gods - albeit temporary, only for one day. Olympic champions were honored with olive and laurel wreaths: medals had not yet been invented, and laurel in Ancient Greece was worth its weight in gold, so a laurel wreath then was like a gold medal today.

City on the River (Leonid Yuzefovich, text 2017)

Part 1. St. Petersburg. Neva
My grandfather was born in Kronstadt, my wife is from Leningrad, so in St. Petersburg I do not feel completely alien. However, in Russia it is difficult to find a person in whose life this city would not mean anything. We are all somehow connected with him, and through him with each other.

In St. Petersburg there is little greenery, but a lot of water and sky. The city is spread out on a plain, and the sky above it is immense. You can enjoy the performances that clouds and sunsets play on this stage for a long time. The actors are directed by the best director in the world - the wind. The rooftop, dome, and spire décor remains the same but never gets boring.
In 1941, Hitler decided to starve the Leningraders out and wipe the city off the face of the earth. "The Fuehrer did not understand that the order to blow up Leningrad was tantamount to an order to blow up the Alps," noted the writer Daniil Granin. Petersburg is a stone mass, unparalleled among European capitals in terms of its unity and power. It has preserved over eighteen thousand buildings built before 1917. This is more than London and Paris, not to mention Moscow.
Through the indestructible labyrinth carved out of stone, the Neva flows with its tributaries, ducts and canals. Unlike the sky, the water here is not free, it speaks of the power of the empire, which managed to chain it in granite. In summer, fishermen with fishing rods stand by the parapets on the embankments. Under their feet are plastic bags in which the caught fish flutter. The same catchers of roach and k? Ryushka stood here under Pushkin. The bastions of the Peter and Paul Fortress were also turning gray then and the Bronze Horseman was rearing his horse. Unless the Winter Palace was dark red, not green as it is now.
It seems that nothing around me reminds of the fact that in the twentieth century a crack in Russian history passed through Petersburg. His beauty allows us to forget about the unthinkable trials he endured.

Part 2. Perm. Kama
When, from the left bank of the Kama, on which my native Perm lies, you look at the right bank with its forests blue to the horizon, you feel the fragility of the border between civilization and the primeval forest element. They are separated only by a strip of water, and it also unites them. If as a child you lived in a city on a big river, you are lucky: you understand the essence of life better than those who were deprived of this happiness.
In my childhood, sterlet was still found in Kama. In the old days, she was sent to Petersburg to the tsar's table, and so that it would not deteriorate on the way, cotton wool dipped in cognac was placed under the gills. As a boy, I saw a small sturgeon on the sand with a jagged back stained with fuel oil: the whole Kama was then covered in fuel oil from tugs. These dirty laborers dragged rafts and barges with them. Children ran on decks and clothes were dried in the sun. Endless lines of slimy logs knocked down by brackets disappeared along with tugs and barges. The kama became cleaner, but the sterlet never returned to it.
They said that Perm, like Moscow and Rome, lies on seven hills. It was enough to feel the breath of history blowing over my wooden city, studded with factory chimneys. Its streets run either parallel to the Kama, or perpendicular to it. The first before the revolution were called by the churches that stood on them, such as Voznesenskaya or Pokrovskaya. The second ones bore the names of those places where the roads flowing from them led: Siberian, Solikamsk, Verkhotursk. Where they intersected, the heavenly met the earthly. Here I realized that sooner or later it would converge with the mountain, you just need to be patient and wait.
Permians argue that it is not the Kama that flows into the Volga, but, on the contrary, the Volga into the Kama. It doesn't matter to me which of these two great rivers is a tributary of the other. In any case, Kama is the river that flows through my heart.

Part 3. Ulan-Ude. Selenga
River names are older than all other names on maps. We do not always understand their meaning, so Selenga keeps the secret of its name. It came either from the Buryat word “sel”, which means “spill”, or from the Evenk word “sele,” that is, “iron,” but I heard the name of the Greek goddess of the moon, Selena. Squeezed by hills overgrown with forests, often shrouded in fog, the Selenga was for me a mysterious "lunar river". In the noise of its flow, I, a young lieutenant, fancied a promise of love and happiness. It seemed that they awaited me ahead of them as immutably as Baikal awaits the Selenga.
Maybe she promised the same to the twenty-year-old lieutenant Anatoly Pepelyaev, the future white general and poet. Shortly before the First World War, he secretly married his chosen one in a poor rural church on the banks of the Selenga. The noble father did not give his son a blessing for an unequal marriage. The bride was the granddaughter of exiles and the daughter of a simple railroad worker from Verkhneudinsk, as Ulan-Ude was called before.
I found this city almost as Pepeliaev saw it. Buryats who came from the hinterland in traditional blue dressing gowns traded in lamb at the market, and women walked in museum sundresses. They sold ice cream milk circles strung on their hands like rolls. They were "Semeiskie", as in Transbaikalia they call Old Believers who used to live in large families. True, there appeared something that was not under Pepeliaev. I remember how the most original of all the monuments to Lenin that I have seen was erected on the main square: on a low pedestal a huge, neckless and torsoless, granite head of the leader was round, resembling the head of a giant hero from Ruslan and Lyudmila. It still stands in the capital of Buryatia and has become one of its symbols. Here history and modernity, Orthodoxy and Buddhism do not reject or suppress each other. Ulan-Ude gave me hope that it is possible in other places as well.

Literature teacher.
Part 1. Morning
Every morning, even in the light of the stars, Jacob Ivanovich Bach woke up and, lying under a thick quilted feather bed of duck down, listened to the world. The quiet discordant sounds of someone else's life flowing somewhere around him and over him soothed. The winds walked on the roofs - heavy in winter, densely mixed with snow and ice grains, elastic in spring, breathing moisture and heavenly electricity, in summer sluggish, dry, mixed with dust and light feather grass seed. The dogs barked, greeting the sleepy owners who had come out onto the porch, and the cattle roared in a deep bass on the way to the watering place. The world breathed, cracked, whistled, bellowed, pounded its hooves, rang and sang in different voices.

The sounds of his own life were so scanty and blatantly insignificant that Bach forgot how to hear them: he isolated them in the general sound stream and passed them deaf ears. The glass of the room's only window rattled under the gusts of wind, the chimney that had not been cleaned for a long time crackled, and occasionally a gray-haired mouse whistled from somewhere under the stove. That's probably all. It was much more interesting to listen to the big life. Sometimes, having heard, Bach even forgot that he himself was a part of this world, that he could, having gone out on the porch, join the polyphony: sing something provocative, or slam the door loudly, or, at worst, just sneeze. But Bach preferred to listen.

At six in the morning, carefully dressed and well-combed, he was already standing at the school bell tower with a pocket watch in his hands. After waiting for both hands to merge into a single line (hour at six, minute at twelve), he pulled the rope with strength, and the bronze bell echoed. Over the years of exercise, Bach achieved such skill in this matter that the sound of a blow was heard exactly at the moment when the minute hand touched the dial zenith, and not a second later. A moment later, everyone in the village turned to the sound and whispered a short prayer. A new day was dawning ...

Part 2. Day
... During the years of teaching, each of which resembled the previous one and did not stand out in anything special, Yakob Ivanovich was so accustomed to pronouncing the same words and reading the same problems that he learned to split mentally inside his body: his tongue muttered the text of the next grammatical rules, the hand clutched in it with a ruler listlessly slapped on the back of the head of the overly talkative student, the legs gravely carried the body through the classroom from the pulpit to the back wall, then back and forth. And the thought was dozing, lulled by his own voice and the measured shaking of his head in time with his unhurried steps.

German speech was the only subject during which Bach's thought regained its former freshness and vigor. The lesson began with oral exercises. Pupils were asked to tell something, Bach listened and translated: he transformed short dialectical turns into elegant phrases of literary German. They moved slowly, sentence by sentence, word by word, as if they were walking somewhere in deep snow - trail after trail. Yakob Ivanovich did not like digging with the alphabet and calligraphy and, having done away with conversations, hastily strived for the lesson to the poetic part: poems poured on young shaggy heads generously, like water from a pelvis on a bath day.

Love for Bach's poetry burned in his youth. Then it seemed: he ate not potato soup and sauerkraut, but only ballads and hymns. It seemed that he would be able to feed everyone around him, and that is why he became a teacher. Until now, reciting his favorite stanzas in class, Bach still felt a cool flutter of delight in his chest. The children did not share the teacher's passion: their faces, usually playful or focused, acquired a submissive somnambulistic expression with the very first sounds of poetic lines. German romanticism worked better on the class than sleeping pills. Perhaps, reading poetry could be used to calm the naughty audience instead of the usual shouts and blows with a ruler ...

Part 3. Evening
… Bach descended from the school porch and found himself on the square, at the foot of a majestic church with a spacious prayer hall in the lace of lancet windows and a huge bell tower resembling a sharply sharpened pencil. I walked past neat wooden houses with sky-blue, berry-red and corn-yellow frames; past planed fences; past the boats overturned in anticipation of the flood; past the front gardens with rowan bushes. He walked so swiftly, loudly crunching his boots on the snow or squishing his boots on the spring mud, that one might think that he had a dozen urgent matters that should certainly be settled today ...

Oncoming people, noticing the mincing figure of the teacher, sometimes called out to him and talked about the school successes of their offspring. However, the one, out of breath from fast walking, responded reluctantly, in short phrases: there was not enough time. In confirmation, he took a watch out of his pocket, cast a contrite look at it and, shaking his head, ran on. Where he fled, Bach himself could not explain.

I must say, there was another reason for his haste: when talking with people, Yakob Ivanovich stuttered. His trained language, which measuredly and flawlessly worked during lessons and without a single hesitation pronounced the multi-component words of literary German, easily betrayed such complex knees that another student would forget the beginning until he listens to the end. The same language suddenly began to refuse the owner when Bach switched to dialect in conversations with fellow villagers. To read by heart excerpts from "Faust", for example, the language wanted; tell the neighbor: "And your dunce was playing pranks again today!" did not want to in any way, stuck to the palate and mixed between the teeth, like an oversized and poorly cooked dumpling. It seemed to Bach that over the years the stuttering intensified, but it was difficult to verify this: he talked with people less and less ... So life went on, in which there was everything except life itself, calm, full of penny joys and scanty worries, in some way even happy ...

Part 1. St. Petersburg. Neva

My grandfather was born in Kronstadt, my wife is from Leningrad, so in St. Petersburg I do not feel completely alien. However, in Russia it is difficult to find a person in whose life this city would not mean anything. We are all somehow connected with him, and through him with each other.

In St. Petersburg there is little greenery, but a lot of water and sky. The city is spread out on a plain, and the sky above it is immense. You can enjoy the performances that clouds and sunsets play on this stage for a long time. The actors are directed by the best director in the world - the wind. The rooftop, dome, and spire décor remains the same but never gets boring.

In 1941, Hitler decided to starve the Leningraders out and wipe the city off the face of the earth. "The Fuehrer did not understand that the order to blow up Leningrad was tantamount to an order to blow up the Alps," noted the writer Daniil Granin. Petersburg is a stone mass, unparalleled among European capitals in terms of its unity and power. It has preserved over eighteen thousand buildings built before 1917. This is more than London and Paris, not to mention Moscow.

Through the indestructible labyrinth carved out of stone, the Neva flows with its tributaries, ducts and canals. Unlike the sky, the water is not free here, it speaks of the power of the empire, which managed to chain it in granite. In summer, fishermen with fishing rods stand by the parapets on the embankments. Under their feet are plastic bags in which the caught fish flutter. The same catchers of roach and roach were here under Pushkin. The bastions of the Peter and Paul Fortress were also turning gray then and the Bronze Horseman was rearing his horse. Unless the Winter Palace was dark red, not green as it is now.

It seems that nothing around me reminds of the fact that in the twentieth century a crack in Russian history passed through Petersburg. His beauty allows us to forget about the unthinkable trials he endured.

Part 2. Perm. Kama

When, from the left bank of the Kama, on which my native Perm lies, you look at the right bank with its forests blue to the horizon, you feel the fragility of the border between civilization and the primeval forest element. They are separated only by a strip of water, and it also unites them. If as a child you lived in a city on a big river, you are lucky: you understand the essence of life better than those who were deprived of this happiness.

In my childhood, sterlet was still found in Kama. In the old days, she was sent to St. Petersburg to the tsar's table, and so as not to deteriorate on the way, cotton wool soaked in brandy was placed under the gills. As a boy, I saw on the sand a small sturgeon with a toothed back stained with fuel oil: the whole Kama was then covered in fuel oil from tugs. These dirty laborers dragged rafts and barges with them. Children ran on decks and clothes were dried in the sun. Endless lines of slimy logs knocked down by brackets disappeared along with tugs and barges. The kama became cleaner, but the sterlet never returned to it.

They said that Perm, like Moscow and Rome, lies on seven hills. It was enough to feel the breath of history blowing over my wooden city, studded with factory chimneys. Its streets run either parallel to the Kama, or perpendicular to it. The first before the revolution were called by the churches that stood on them, such as Voznesenskaya or Pokrovskaya. The second ones bore the names of those places where the roads flowing from them led: Siberian, Solikamsk, Verkhotursk. Where they intersected, the heavenly met the earthly. Here I realized that sooner or later it would converge with the mountain, you just need to be patient and wait.

Permians argue that it is not the Kama that flows into the Volga, but, on the contrary, the Volga into the Kama. It doesn't matter to me which of these two great rivers is a tributary of the other. In any case, Kama is the river that flows through my heart.

Part 3. Ulan-Ude. Selenga

River names are older than all other names on maps. We do not always understand their meaning, so Selenga keeps the secret of its name. It came either from the Buryat word “sel”, which means “spill”, or from the Evenk word “sele,” that is, “iron,” but I heard the name of the Greek goddess of the moon, Selena. Squeezed by hills overgrown with forests, often shrouded in fog, the Selenga was for me a mysterious "lunar river". In the noise of its flow, I, a young lieutenant, fancied a promise of love and happiness. It seemed that they awaited me ahead of them as immutably as Baikal awaits the Selenga.

Maybe she promised the same to the twenty-year-old lieutenant Anatoly Pepelyaev, the future white general and poet. Shortly before the First World War, he secretly married his chosen one in a poor rural church on the banks of the Selenga. The noble father did not give his son a blessing for an unequal marriage. The bride was the granddaughter of exiles and the daughter of a simple railroad worker from Verkhneudinsk, as Ulan-Ude was called before.

I found this city almost as Pepeliaev saw it. Buryats who came from the hinterland in traditional blue dressing gowns traded in lamb at the market, and women walked in museum sundresses. They sold ice cream milk circles strung on their hands like rolls. They were "Semeiskie", as in Transbaikalia they call Old Believers who used to live in large families. True, there appeared something that was not under Pepeliaev. I remember how the most original of all the monuments to Lenin that I have seen was erected on the main square: on a low pedestal a huge, neckless and torsoless, granite head of the leader was round, resembling the head of a giant hero from Ruslan and Lyudmila. It still stands in the capital of Buryatia and has become one of its symbols. Here history and modernity, Orthodoxy and Buddhism do not reject or suppress each other. Ulan-Ude gave me hope that it is possible in other places as well.

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This year Guzel Yakhina became the author of the text of "Total Dictation". The Kazan writer became famous several years ago after the publication of her first novel "Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes" about the dispossession of kulaks in the 1930s.

For the Total Dictation, she prepared three passages called "Morning", "Day" and "Evening". They will be included in the next novel by Guzel Yakhina, "My Children", which will tell about the Volga Germans.

Having received a message with a proposal to become the author of "Total Dictation", Guzel Yakhina did not hesitate for a minute. “I agreed immediately,” she says. “Of course, at first the feeling of responsibility crushed it down a little: after all, two hundred thousand people who write your text under dictation are a lot.“ Total dictation ”was born as a small local action in Novosibirsk. During these 14 years, it has developed and turned into a powerful international movement.It is written on all continents, including even Antarctica.

Part 1. Morning

Every morning, even in the light of the stars, Jacob Ivanovich Bach woke up and, lying under a thick quilted feather bed of duck down, listened to the world. The quiet discordant sounds of someone else's life flowing somewhere around him and over him soothed. The winds walked on the roofs - heavy in winter, densely mixed with snow and ice grains, elastic in spring, breathing moisture and heavenly electricity, lethargic, dry in summer, mixed with dust and light feather grass seed. The dogs barked, greeting the sleepy owners who had come out onto the porch, and the cattle roared in a deep bass on the way to the watering place. The world breathed, cracked, whistled, bellowed, pounded its hooves, rang and sang in different voices.

The sounds of his own life were so scanty and blatantly insignificant that Bach forgot how to hear them: he isolated them in the general sound stream and passed them deaf ears. The glass of the room's only window rattled under the gusts of wind, the chimney that had not been cleaned for a long time crackled, and occasionally a gray-haired mouse whistled from somewhere under the stove. That's probably all. It was much more interesting to listen to the big life. Sometimes, having heard, Bach even forgot that he himself was a part of this world, that he could, having gone out on the porch, join the polyphony: sing something provocative, or slam the door loudly, or, at worst, just sneeze. But Bach preferred to listen.

At six in the morning, carefully dressed and well-combed, he was already standing at the school bell tower with a pocket watch in his hands. After waiting for both hands to merge into a single line (hour at six, minute at twelve), he pulled the rope with strength, and the bronze bell echoed. Over the years of exercise, Bach achieved such skill in this matter that the sound of a blow was heard exactly at the moment when the minute hand touched the dial zenith, and not a second later. A moment later, everyone in the village turned to the sound and whispered a short prayer. A new day was dawning ...

Part 2. Day

... Over the years of teaching, each of which resembled the previous one and did not stand out in anything special, Yakob Ivanovich was so accustomed to pronouncing the same words and reading the same problems that he learned to mentally split up inside his body: his tongue muttered the text of the next grammatical rules, the hand clasped in it with a ruler listlessly slapped on the back of the head of an overly talkative student, his legs gravely carried the body through the class - from the pulpit to the back wall, then back, back and forth. And the thought was dozing, lulled by his own voice and the measured shaking of his head in time with his unhurried steps.

German speech was the only subject during which Bach's thought regained its former freshness and vigor. The lesson began with oral exercises. Pupils were asked to tell something, Bach listened and translated: he transformed short dialectical turns into elegant phrases of literary German. They moved slowly, sentence by sentence, word by word, as if they were walking somewhere in deep snow - trail after trail. Yakob Ivanovich did not like digging with the alphabet and calligraphy and, having done away with conversations, hastily strived for the lesson to the poetic part: poems poured on young shaggy heads generously, like water from a pelvis on a bath day.

Love for Bach's poetry burned in his youth. Then it seemed: he ate not potato soup and sauerkraut, but only ballads and hymns. It seemed that he would be able to feed everyone around him, and that is why he became a teacher. Until now, reciting his favorite stanzas in class, Bach still felt a cool flutter of delight in his chest. The children did not share the teacher's passion: their faces, usually playful or focused, acquired a submissive somnambulistic expression with the very first sounds of poetic lines. German romanticism worked better on the class than sleeping pills. Perhaps, reading poetry could be used to calm the naughty audience instead of the usual shouts and blows with a ruler ...

Part 3. Evening

… Bach descended from the school porch and found himself on the square, at the foot of a majestic church with a spacious prayer hall in the lace of lancet windows and a huge bell tower resembling a sharply sharpened pencil. I walked past neat wooden houses with sky-blue, berry-red and corn-yellow frames; past planed fences; past the boats overturned in anticipation of the flood; past the front gardens with rowan bushes. He walked so swiftly, loudly crunching his boots on the snow or squishing his boots on the spring mud, that one might think that he had a dozen urgent matters that should certainly be settled today ...

Oncoming people, noticing the mincing figure of the teacher, sometimes called out to him and talked about the school successes of their offspring. However, the one, out of breath from fast walking, responded reluctantly, in short phrases: there was not enough time. In confirmation, he took a watch out of his pocket, cast a contrite look at it and, shaking his head, ran on. Where he fled, Bach himself could not explain.

I must say, there was another reason for his haste: when talking with people, Yakob Ivanovich stuttered. His trained language, which measuredly and flawlessly worked during lessons and without a single hesitation pronounced the multi-component words of literary German, easily betrayed such complex knees that another student would forget the beginning until he listens to the end. The same language suddenly began to refuse the owner when Bach switched to dialect in conversations with fellow villagers. To read by heart excerpts from "Faust", for example, the language wanted; tell the neighbor: "And your dunce was playing pranks again today!" - did not want to in any way, stuck to the palate and mixed between the teeth, like an oversized and poorly cooked dumpling. It seemed to Bach that over the years the stuttering intensified, but it was difficult to verify this: he talked with people less and less ... This was how life flowed, in which there was everything except life itself - calm, full of penny joys and scanty worries, in some way even happy.