As I visited a Concert of proKremlins

If I were not invited to meet the friend of mine from Kostroma there - I, certainly, would not turn my steps to the center in this unfestive for me and many of my compatriots day. I was since morning at work (in the center - the desert, everybody admitted that this "holiday" is unequivocal occasion to go on summer residences or just simply out of town) - from a principle showing to information space that it's not a holiday but an ordinary working day. Only closer to the evening they went to the Kremlin.

And here already traditional for similar "holidays" show began. Actually, it's the main difference of the postSoviet holidays from the Soviet ones - separatedness of celebrants, inaccessibility of celebrating. The class society everywhere has partitions, they can be seen more precisely during such days. Naturally, starting from Metropol and all internal line of Okhotny Ryad the pass to the Kremlin was tightly blocked by militia. But thus near to cops there were propagandists from "Nashi", "Local" and other pro-authority brood. Whom and for what purpose they agitated? They were not asking to visit their secret action, weren't they?  

I decided to forestall my meeting with the friend from Kostroma by the meeting with the colleague from journalist workshop Ilya Fedoseyev - it's pleasant to listen to his jokes this day. We went from Nikolskaya together along obstacles and soon understood that to get into the zone of "celebrating" will be possible only through kotelnicheskaya Quay and Ustinsky Bridge. In fact there were many of them - not admitted. Well, if this is a holiday from the point of view of organizers?

I do not give any political estimations yet - I tried to be just simple fair inhabitant this day, to walk in a neutral shirt in the center, so to say, to absorb an atmosphere. Well, I felt nothing but for frustration. "Don't let them go!". Further we walked down along the parkway to Solyanka, beholding on a way with Ilya corpulent and limpened bodies of "celebrants" that reclined on a lawn but did not become "green and flat". Typical landscape of the postSoviet holiday. It causes nothing except disgust. It is a fashion which has come from "Central-park" and in general from the USA. Sometimes the militia allows, on such "celebratory" days, this practice. But near the Kremlin in unfestive days - turns out ruthlessly. Once I with my French colleague became victims of dispersal of such laying-on-the-lawn (we just followed an example of the ones already sitting under the trees). Whether it was her military shirt and dark hair (who knows these Shakhids?) or my suspicious appearance that attracted attention of the cops, but it was difficult to get rid of them. It was her charm, certainly, that helped. But we are not talking about it now.

Meeting people, mostly drinking, though it is forbidden to drink on the streets now, we went to Zamoskvorechye where assimilated to them in one of the court yards - not having any celebratory occasion for that, simply to communicate on working questions. Then Ilya sailed away and I went to an epicentre of celebrating.

I saw an extremely sad picture near the bridge leading to Saint Basil the Blessed. Very young militiamen being sent, as well as mass meeting of kremlin-people, from provinces - the cadets who had just begun to study, provided "safety". Ticket - tricolor which I soon received from my friend from Kostroma served as an entrance ticket to the territory of vip-celebrating.  

Then it was necessary to pass several cardons, metal detectors to get on the treasured Red Square but from rearward. And all these for the sake of a picture for the state TV. I shall tell you at once: nashis, young guards and locals did not represent in general any show by way of organization, uniformity. Young boys and girls - nice, provincial, with opened to the world alive, unburnt by fires and show-windows of Moscow eyes - brought to serve as crowd and they were really treated as crowd. For example, they picked out bottles with water which young men brought with them from home. Meanwhile on the red Square one can see funny boys with water in shirts with the slogan "Day of Russia" - the same provincial young boys. Like business. So that people from provinces buy water from one seller.  

Buses in which the crowd was brought stood on Raushskaya and Bolotnaya Quays, all activity of young boys and girls took place on this interval - from Bolotnaya up to the Red.

A stage was for some reason put not on Vasilievsky Spusk (as it was done at much greater confluence of spectators, during the visit of Red Hot Chili Peppers), but directly opposite to the Lenin's Mausoleum near GUM. Well, so that "picture" for TV was more interesting, nicer, probably. And here the laws of "uniform customer" operated. Precisely same young growth, as well as in mass meeting - but in the green soldier's form - by their ranks lined the square and it became impossible to pass to a stage for those who had no time to make it long before the beginning of the action. I recollected the concert "Monsters of Rock" in Tushino - where the main spectators of performance of "Metallica" and others hardrockers were ranks in the same green form (Kirk Hammet, the guitarist of "Metallica", not having received any pleasure from performance before peak-caps which were naturally pelted by empty bear bottles from the behind from those who failed to break forth, then said: "This country has to cure from totalitarianism for quite a long time").

The girl-hedgehog (my brisk graceful girl friend) was running with the camera, I prompted her foreshortenings - but to get to the stage where there were her Kostroma fellow mates was already unreal. Malicious cops sent nashis, young guards and locals away. Whether it is called "their" action? Those ones fondly accumulated as young calves, asked to let them go closer to the stage - but alas.

I do not speak here about monstrous accommodation of the stage opposite to the Mausoleum, in fact the most powerful sound waves went in its direction as, possibly, they didn't go during the World War II. It turned out that the Mausoleum is such a box of a recordist oriented on the center. It obviously was not for good both for a burial place behind the Mausoleum and to the Mausoleum itself. But from whom here to ask? Such a mode. "Day of Russia" should be celebrated precisely with such challenge...

Though what is a challenge, where is pathos of action, where is propaganda? Well red-white crosses and banners... Nobody from mass meeting can be allocated as nashist or local, all of them were mixed up, they simply randomly sat down on a stone blocks, ordinarily squeezed each other playing plastic bottles as "soccers" on the Red Square - for they were not admitted to the stage and had to be satisfied with translation of a concert on the screen. And about the concert.

Shvidkoj was a conferencier that looked extremely funny, lisping characteristically he glorified the Russian culture in the educational purposes but was laconic - obviously time drew in. There was not only classical for similar shows phrase: "I do not see your hands!". Tuta Larsen in a getup of a ball lady smiled as if she was not on the stage on the Red Square but on "a red path" in Hollywood... There was no action. No propaganda, no attempts to explain what kind of a holiday it is - what is a festivity of a holiday. They simply "run a program". It liked as if it was some regional philarmonic society and not the Red Square. The greeting of Petersburg rockers: "Greetings, Moscow!" - sounded especially ridiculous - in fact there were no Muscovites on the square, only "the ones from regions".

Naturally, musicians didn't say a word about "holiday". "Semantic Hallucinations" wished an eternal youth to mass meeting, Butusov with dyed hair overtook melancholy... It still remains not clear what was celebrated. By the way, about Butusov - he is too often makes visits to such semi-official shows. Probably, he is well paid. It's difficult not to recollect historical letter of Kormiltsev to him written in summer before the last. And in fact this time he also sang Kormiltsev's songs - Butusov who didn't come to a parting, to a farewell concert of memory  dedicated to Ilya Kormiltsev having let such people as me, Vis Vitalis and others to stay on the stage.

Some rise was observed during execution by Butusov of a song "A Star Named the Sun", but happens on any tourist meeting. I walked among young boys and girls who were sitting and standing facing to the screen and read bewilderment in their eyes - "what for we went here for 3-4 hours"? To watch here such a big TV? It's really symbolically - conformist (not on rage, simply from boredom) youth receives as an entertainment typically narrow-minded "TV set". Something average between hippy Saygon and non-organized mass meeting inside of which can be seen commissars-nashis and young guards and outside were simply young citizens of Russia which holiday actually was celebrated.

To make long story short, the action left extremely vague impression. May be I missed the most interesting? So that not to see military-patriotic mugs of "Lube" and fat cats-"chajf" I ran away back to the bridge, I and my companion did not become witnesses of performance of "Alisa". They say, the gray-haired preacher of rock-Orthodoxy Kintchev was topless and in imperial boots...

Wondering faces of militiamen and cadets getting acquainted - they used action in such a way - met all mortal near the iron fences with standard "Your ticket". Three girls asked us for the tickets on which underside was seen new Michalkovsky's hymn - torn, they were not valid, we had to disappoint the girls... There was a sense, quite visible, of emptiness on all blocked space from Balchuk up to the Historical museum, notwithstanding the clustering before the stage.  

In half past twelve busses began to start return journey, to extort from themselves solar exhausts, militia began to fold already tipsy crowd in the buses using megaphone... Such was their "holiday". Police on periphery and anarchy as a stuffing. Confused action. Any of our "anticap" was more conceptually and more substantially.