APHORISMS OF LEONID SHEBARSHIN

May 20, 2012

General Shebarshin said: “My soul belongs to intelligence.” But few people know that Leonid Vladimirovich had another passion. He was a wonderful wit, the author of many aphorisms. They were included in the book “Chronicles of Timelessness. (Notes of a former intelligence chief)", published in 1998 and today becoming a bibliographic rarity.

The mission of television is to reduce the Russian person to the level of a Central American cretin.

The UN cannot approve of Russia’s geographic location, climate, or history...

Our reformers are people translated from English into broken Russian.

In the Soviet Union, business was considered a crime. In Russia, crime has become a business.

It turned out that “universal human values” completely coincide with the national interests of the United States.

The goal of a politician is to convince people to replace their delusions with his own.

If God didn't want people to watch television, he wouldn't have invented it. And the demon slipped the TV presenters...

Is it worth repeating other people's mistakes if you have the opportunity to make your own?

NATO will protect foreign investment in Russia. That's why it's expanding.

Our individual rights are reliably protected. The person himself is defenseless.

According to Goskomstat, Russians most often die from living in Russia.

Russia is great, but there is no one to retreat. There is no army.

Treatment is expensive, dying is cheap, but burying is more expensive than treatment. Need to live.

Dislike of Gorbachev united more people than any political platform.

Order of Merit for the Fatherland, III degree... Will we have a Fatherland of the First degree?

The USSR produced good personnel: Shevardnadze, Aliyev, Yeltsin, Niyazov, Karimov, Kuchma, Nazarbayev. All are communists without fear or reproach and internationalists. What else should the CPSU be accused of?

The authorities are becoming more patriotic - the country has become its private property.

Draft law on freedom from conscience.

In a democratic society, truth and lies have equal rights.

Our Pantheon is always spacious. Old heroes are thrown out faster than new ones are brought in.

The radicals think that they are building something like Sweden in Russia - they will build Kolyma again.

...a piece of land surrounded on all sides by civilization.

Our wheel of history is outdated, that’s the point.

Colossus with a clay head.

What Russian doesn't like driving fast? The one they ride on.

Democracy might have survived if not for the Democrats.

Russian miracle. The economy was destroyed, but the people still live.

Robbery environment.

Question everything except the wisdom of current leadership.

The mistakes of the past are the building material of the politics of the present.

We should not forgive the Czechs for forcing us to bring tanks into Prague in 1968.

In order to properly distort history, you need to know it.

The idea of a world revolution was not born from a good life. And she didn’t die from a good life.

Liberalissimo.

How many bubbles were inflated with the air of freedom!

We finally got to the truth.

A creature with limited liability.

In circles close to insanity.

Siamese twins - organized crime and disorganized government.

Like-minded people are people who have the same idea.

Darkness is approaching at the speed of light.

Ministers are not born. They become people who were not born to be ministers.

Gorbachev was ruined by a female character trait - to be loved at any cost.

Russia is the only country that lost its independence at the end of the twentieth century.

Ashamed of themselves, the Democrats renamed themselves reformers.

A face worthy not so much of an artist’s brush as of a sculptor’s hammer.

They take revenge on the past in order to deal with the future.

There are many surnames, but no first names.

US Position: Russia may be a great power, but only a very small one.

From future memoirs: we lived in miserable times when Gorbachev and Yeltsin seemed like major figures.

There is time, but there is no life.

Life would be interesting if you watched it from the outside.

Intellectually disabled people.

State Impunity Service.

Time is money. Time in power.

Newspapers are a field of lies.

In a quagmire of shocks.

We have had private property for a long time. There is no honest one.

A hopelessly bright future.

When you open the newspapers in the morning, you look at what’s new in Russian history in recent decades.

You can still live, but it’s very disgusting.

Those who remain silent are not all gold.

We are ready to die for a just cause, but someone must indicate the place where we must stand until the last.

Russia is a mighty mountain. But what kind of mice she gave birth to!

The concept is strictly democratic and mercilessly humane socialism.

Those politicians who do not change their views are thrown into the trash heap along with their views.

They have hindsight instead of common sense.

It is the sacred duty of every patriot in this difficult time not to mock the Secretary of Defense.

The authorities have lost their heads, but the opposition has not found them.

The fate of Solzhenitsyn is sad. He wrote and spoke so much that everyone got tired of it.

Russia is a country inhabited by Russians, ruled by Russians.

Winters used to be colder, food tastier, streets cleaner. Now everything is not the same, and only women seem younger and more attractive.

Rate this article

Rating: 4.6

Text of the book “Chronicles of Timelessness. Aphorisms of the head of Soviet intelligence"

Leonid Shebarshin Chronicles of timelessness. Aphorisms of the head of Soviet intelligence

* * *

The idea that there is no alternative to the current leaders is simply offensive to a great nation. Can't he produce another set of charlatans?

Preface

At the end of 1989, one of the architects of perestroika, the professional commander of the ideological front A. N. Yakovlev, thoughtfully noted that we live in interesting times.

Only a few years have passed, and connoisseurs and connoisseurs of exciting spectacles can note with satisfaction that times are becoming more and more interesting.

Isn’t it interesting to watch the collapse of a great state, on the ruins of which bloody internecine wars break out? The locations of the action change - Karabakh, Transnistria, Tajikistan; TV screens are full of the bodies of the dead, destroyed buildings, the faces of people who lost their homes, and every day something new flashes, tickling the nerves. And the dying huge factories with half-empty workshops - endless lines of machines for which there are no component parts stand dejectedly, rare workers wander like autumn flies? What about regular disasters in coal mines and railroads? And grenade explosions and machine gun fire on the streets of the capital of our Motherland?

This is perhaps more interesting than any American film about the morals of the Prohibition era in the USA! There is a lot of interesting things in the everyday life of the Russian citizen, something that remains outside the television screen or newspaper page, but is constantly present in our lives - crowds of wretched, dirty beggars, people digging in garbage dumps, gangs of young men in leather jackets and with sheep's eyes. . It’s hard to even imagine how boring and monotonous our life was without all this.

But the main thing is entertainment, a kind of universal circus, at the very top. It may indeed seem that the authorities at all levels and all branches have firmly decided that their main task is to entertain both the Russian people and all of humanity.

What have we seen and heard enough in recent years! There were endless inarticulate monologues of a man with a spot on his forehead, with charming, honest eyes and rounded gestures, who came to the rescue when the great and mighty Russian language failed the speaker. The wife of a man with a spot on his forehead is a lady of simple political convictions and unshakably firm in property matters. There was a silent collapse of the guiding and guiding force of our society. Spectacle-goers were expecting a deafening explosion, but only something like a muffled groan was heard, and there was no guiding force.

Some unknown villains stuffed the father of the new democracy into a bag (it was apparently a huge bag) and threw him from a fifteen-meter height into the abyss of the Moscow River, but the father swam out and led the country. With bated breath, the entire nation watched the confrontation in Moscow in August 1991 between two groups of ambitious people, the triumphant faces of the winners, only occasionally overshadowed by the shadow of annoyance that victory was achieved without major bloodshed. There were trips by high-ranking American inspectors across the vast expanses of the former state and well-meaning instructions on how to further reform the country. There were humiliating searches for money abroad and insulting and mocking promises to give Russia untold billions when it deserves it.

There was a lot of things, it’s impossible to list them all, and a lot of things were said and written. To an inexperienced person in life it might seem that many thousands of publicists and political scientists, journalists and scientists, professional ideologues and politicians, interviewers and interviewees, statesmen and stateswomen, democrats and partycrats, healthy people and schizophrenics are deliberately attacking the discouraged, confused The Russian people are waterfalls of words - no rhyme, no reason, no logic, no conscience in this endless ocean of half-truths and half-lies, as if some satanic mind set out to forever bury in this ocean the real meaning of the events of which Russia became a victim. There remain only the spectacles so valued by lovers of an interesting life, spectacles that are not mutually connected, devoid of internal content, scenes of farce, but not tragedy.

This impression seems to me to be superficial. There is no omnipotent mind, there are many small minds, there is a neurasthenic reaction of society to the supernatural abundance of the unusual, alarming, exciting. This is how an organism poisoned by alcohol or drugs can behave, this is how a victim who is being cut alive can scream and struggle.

Human memory is short and selective. The historical memory of the people suffers from these same properties, distorted, moreover, by the efforts of conscientious and unscrupulous, voluntary and hired historians. The castration of Russian national memory was carried out after the October Revolution - the matter was cleverly presented in such a way that our history began in 1917. The operation was not successful, the collective memory of the existence of a thousand-year-old Russian state was restored against the will of rulers and ideologists, and sometimes in order to serve their immediate political needs, but it was restored.

Another operation to deprive the Russian people of the memory of the past and present is taking place before our eyes and with our involuntary participation. Russian history begins in August 1991, we are a foolish people who still have no place in the civilized world.

The mountains of today's lies, speculation, honest misconceptions, the fruits of political illiteracy will occupy the minds of future historians, and, undoubtedly, many witty and thoughtful concepts will appear about what happened to us, Russians, Tatars, Chechens, Yakuts. It would be naive to hope that the truth will eventually be found. Neither the authorities nor historians will allow this. Not a single historical event exists without its interpretation, and not a single event passes without a trace - it continues to play not an abstract, not didactic, but a practical role in the life of each subsequent generation. History, unfortunately, always remains an instrument of today's politics, and whoever controls the past controls both the present and the future.

Perhaps the opinion that we live in an exceptionally interesting era is unfounded. Interesting in a perverted sense, from the point of view of human tragedies, experiences, doubts. This opinion is generated either by a completely excusable ignorance of Russian history, or by a reluctance to remember it. On the contrary, we can say with confidence that each generation of Russian people lived an amazingly interesting life in this sense, and even a brief listing of all the exciting events would take many dozens of pages.

You don’t have to look into the hoary epic times, but start at least with Ivan the Terrible, the oprichnina, the destruction of the Novgorodians, Pskovites and Tverians. You can remember the Time of Troubles, when the Poles, Tatars and Cossacks plundered Moscow, when people ate each other out of hunger and gangs of robbers roamed across deserted Rus'. A small episode of Razinism with its robberies and executions, and quite a bit later, in the memory of people still living in Razin’s times, Peter’s reforms are a breakthrough into modernity, which cost Russia millions of its civilian inhabitants, who lay down as bones in the Neva swamps, in endless wars, in mines, on the chopping block and in dungeons. Bironovschina, Pugachevschina, Napoleonic invasion, Decembrist revolt, conquest of the Caucasus, wars, abolition of serfdom, Narodnaya Volya terror, imperialist war, revolutions, Civil War, dictatorship of the proletariat, cults and cults, perestroika and reform.

Truly, there has not been a single decade when Russian people were bored with life. There was no such thing that he had to live satisfyingly and calmly.

Part one. To a fracture through dislocations. 1989–1992

Politics and life

Rus' began throwing out the old gods in 988 and can’t stop.

Today's beliefs turn out to be delusions tomorrow, science - superstition, heroism - crime, simplicity - theft, meanness - nobility. The day after tomorrow everything will change places again.

History is a secondary raw material of politics.

To a madman, a sane person appears to be an idiot or a criminal. Our politicians consider each other idiots or criminals. Democracy will flourish, each of them believes, when idiots and criminals are eliminated. This situation is not provided for by Marxism, but it is clearly pre-revolutionary.

The power wants to surrender itself, but there is no one to give it to.

It has long been explained to the people who is to blame for the country’s difficult situation. Now the investigation is underway to determine who is to blame for its deterioration.

Soviet politicians have little choice - either selflessly pray or sacrilegiously mock. The smartest ones create currency cooperatives.

Russian folk wisdom: “There is no consensus without a quorum.”

The rule of parliamentary democracy is until first blood.

Our deputies are still far from using truly unparliamentary expressions. It is felt that many of them were not brought up in communal apartments.

Everyone is concerned with only one question: “Who will be responsible?”

Perestroika released colossal energy, which there was nowhere to apply.

Proposed amendment to the anthem of the Soviet Union: “... united forever by great sadness.”

The wolf cubs of the times of stagnation grew into seasoned wolves. Now they gnaw at those who once led the pack and howl in foreign languages.

Candidates and doctors of science went into politics. The state of science can be used to judge what awaits politics.

“...And those who are against democracy should be imprisoned and shot!”

The essence of publicity is not in words, but in omissions.

New times require new mistakes.

There are no fewer scoundrels on the side of good, that is, democracy, than on the side of evil, that is, dictatorship.

By rebuilding the world, we bring it into line with the confusion of our thoughts.

The amazing world of ghosts. Before going into the grave forever, the dead go to the pages of the press, prove that they have always, even during their lifetime, been renegades and traitors, and disappear. Even a materialist becomes uncomfortable.

The country is on the rise again - a painful, long journey leading to a bare peak.

Troubled times are associated with rain, slush, and piercing wind. The weather in the summer and fall of 1989 was beautiful.

Gentlemen! Was there anything in the history of our state other than mistakes and crimes?

It is not individuals who are brilliant, but positions.

The proletariat has nothing to lose except other people's ideas!

A long time ago, the wooden gods were taken away from the Russians and Christ was given to them. Then they took Christ away and gave Marx. Now Marx is being taken away without any visible replacement.

Legislators are people's deputies.

Means of mass fooling.

In a democratic society, truth and lies have equal rights.

Our Pantheon is always spacious. Old heroes are thrown out faster than new ones are brought in.

It seems to the radicals that they are building something like Sweden in Russia - they will build Kolyma again.

...A piece of land surrounded on all sides by civilization.

Our wheel of history is outdated, that’s the thing.

Colossus with a clay head.

What Russian doesn't like driving fast? The one they ride on.

We hear the footsteps of history, but we don’t know where to run so as not to be crushed.

Question everything except the wisdom of current leadership.

The mistakes of the past are the building material of the politics of the present.

In order to properly distort history, you need to know it.

The idea of a world revolution was not born from a good life. And she didn’t die from a good life.

Liberalissimo.

We finally got to the truth.

Siamese twins – organized crime and disorganized government.

When you open the newspapers in the morning, you look at what’s new in Russian history in recent decades.

The people of the Cultural Fund have professionally cultured faces, while their colleagues from the Children's Fund have professionally whiny faces.

Not all those who remain silent are golden.

On the question of the quality of education in Soviet universities: Stalin studied at the seminary and left behind a great power; Gorbachev has two diplomas of higher education, but he destroyed the state.

Disgusting, like Trotsky before rehabilitation.

Power has a magical quality. With one critical word she turns swindlers and crooks into folk heroes.

Renaming is not a tribute to history, but a slap in the face.

Monuments should not be demolished, but renamed.

At a meeting of the “Democratic Maliciousness” bloc, the chairman addressed those gathered with the words “Imaginary comrades!”...

Lots, like flowers, smell especially sharp during the wilting period.

“...Concrete steps have been identified to strengthen political influence on improving the food supply of the population” (Pravda, August 9, 1990).

...And someone put a dollar in his outstretched hand...

The government must be formed from journalists. Only they know everything.

In politics, everything is forgiven except weakness.

There was a case where several healthy people were recognized as abnormal. Now many abnormal people have been recognized as healthy and elected to parliament.

The mandated layer of the population is people's deputies.

A.I. Solzhenitsyn did not recognize the presidential decree on the return of Soviet citizenship, since at one time he was forcibly taken out of the USSR. Doesn't he want to be brought back in the same way?

“... It became known that the Krasnopresnensky District Council of Moscow declared not only the land and subsoil, but even the air space extending over its territory as objects of its exclusive property” (Pravda, August 17, 1990).

“Do something useful for society - it will be useful for yourself,” said Dr. Guillotin, inventing the guillotine with which he would later be beheaded.

Today you can believe every word of leaders. But only today - tomorrow there will be a new word.

Parliament is a place where people gather to exchange insults.

When talking about universal human values, it would be worth bearing in mind not only hard currency.

The difference between politics and the circus is more serious than it seems at first glance. In the circus they scare to entertain; At rallies they entertain, but then it becomes scary.

We'll take it all out. Just give us something to eat and don’t make us think.

We are ready to die for a just cause, but someone must indicate the place where we must stand until the last.

Russia is a mighty mountain. But what kind of mice she gave birth to!

The concept of strictly democratic and mercilessly humane socialism.

Those politicians who do not change their views are thrown into the trash heap along with their views.

They have hindsight instead of common sense.

Hysterical optimism.

There are no minerals in politics - they are all harmful.

The local authorities are not shying away from the fight. She doesn't have the strength to run away.

An unprecedented influx of foreign guests to Moscow. Invited and uninvited go, as if to a funeral.

Soviet horror film "House with Privileges".

Revolutions are made loudly, but sold quietly.

Is it because everyone sits so much that they are afraid to go outside?

Mayakovsky could have said: “...and let our common monument be socialism trampled in the mud!”

There have always been people with clever tongues. Now there are many languages, to which little people are deftly suspended.

The world's first long-suffering state of workers and peasants.

The spectacles continue, there is no bread!

It is only due to myopia that we do not see a new socio-economic order in organized crime.

In the era of glasnost, the most lethal bullets are made from shit.

Shock democracy.

They interpret democracy as freedom from honest labor.

Through television, spiritual food is given to the people not only chewed, but also digested.

Finally, everyone began to say what they think. The world has never heard so much nonsense.

Topology is the art of trampling an opponent.

Everyone is ready to give their lives for a just cause, but they prefer to do it slowly.

The triumph of democracy is overshadowed by the disappearance of sausage.

The origins of the crisis are in two lines: the old mechanism in the economy has been destroyed, but a new one has not been created; The old crooks are still alive in politics, but new charlatans have already appeared.

Currency performances in theaters. Why not currency masses in church?

Historical optimists brought the country to a state that pessimists never dreamed of in their nightmares.

The past is taken away from the people in order to deprive them of the future.

A deafening lack of applause.

We wanted to expand our mind wider, but it wasn’t enough for everything.

“...Give your thoughts to the presidium in a condensed form.”

Communists change, anti-communists do not.

The laws of physics do not apply in politics. The stream carries away the gold and leaves behind debris.

We go to the market through the bazaar, master market vocabulary, market manners and techniques.

Ahead, as always, is the creative intelligentsia, which was confirmed by the plenum of the board of the Writers' Union in November 1990.

Something incomprehensible is being erected: either the scaffolding of a new house, or a scaffold. But we have a strategy: “We’ll wait and see.”

From the speech: “...the stock of noodles we have is only enough to hang on the ears of voters.”

The ability of the Russian government to function without a head was noted by V. O. Klyuchevsky.

We are entering a legal state. Instead of the word “theft,” Moskovskaya Pravda (December 5, 1990) uses “shameless manipulation of property rights.”

The ideology of the market accepts compromise just as little as the ideology of the dictatorship of the proletariat...

The Security Council is a consultative and contemplative body.

Apparently the climate has changed. Never before has the Russian land given birth to so many traitors.

The October Revolution was bloodless, Gorbachev's was brainless.

If the conversion goes in the same manner, we will soon be releasing stone axes.

An ideal democratic society - every citizen can tell every other citizen to go to hell without distinction of gender, nationality or religion.

Democracy takes away those trifles that the dictatorship gave the people - work, housing, stability - and gives freedom in return.

The reforms are so ahead of their time that they threaten to run behind them.

Social science has long been a victim of politics. Now she has become her executioner.

There is only one figure who bears all the responsibility, but who is not afraid of responsibility - Stalin.

Society needs renegades. Without them, honest people would not be valued.

The republic has scarce natural resources, but inexhaustible reserves of national pride. Residents believe that the republic has good export potential.

1990 was overall a good year - it cost little blood.

Whenever our leaders try to jump beyond their mental limits, disaster occurs.

We have everything ahead of us. This thought is disturbing.

The current peacetime differs from the former wartime only in the general decline of spirit and the cautious triumph of traitors.

Don't be afraid of the passing year. He won't be any worse than he was. Fear the coming year - 1991!

The dregs of democratic renewal.

Urgent measures have been taken to bring order to the chaos.

We watch horror films to take a break from reality.

They take their feet to the West, having first wiped them on Russia.

We owe everything we have to perestroika. We also owe it to her for what we don’t have, but used to have.

They began to talk about Christ as much as about Stalin. This will not end well for Christ.

The earth is full of impostors, but Minin and Pozharsky are still missing.

The cult of personality is impossible in modern Russia - in order to make hare stew, you need at least a cat.

They swore that they were building a new state. Somehow it turned out that only personal dachas were built.

Many repent, but not one hanged himself. Are they afraid to leave the people without leaders?

Many people still believe that fasting is just a healing method.

The stupider the bosses, the less they doubt their wisdom.

Ideologists.

We will never achieve a fracture, but there are already dislocations. We must go to the turning point through the kinks.

They are trying to put pants on Russia from someone else’s shoulder.

The Russians harness slowly, but drive quickly... in the wrong direction.

The entire history of Russia is divided into bloody and slobbering periods. However, even in bloody periods there were slobbering leaders.

No one noticed how they began to live in our monastery according to someone else’s rules.

The management follows a proven path - strictly at random.

Our Herostrati are fussing, fearing that there will not be enough temples for all.

“The Naked Truth” is an entertaining publication for the orthodox.

The successor of “samizdat” is “sramizdat”.

Smart people in the USSR remained in the shadows. While the simpleton scientists were chatting, they created an economy called the shadow economy after them. Now they are creating real power in the shadow of naive parliaments.

On January 23, 1991, the government officially declared: “Don’t have a hundred rubles!”

If things go in this manner, then the people will not even have the strength for a civil war.

They rolled away a huge block of dictatorship. Some vile creatures crawled into the light.

Many went into politics because it is a more profitable business than armed robbery.

The tongue is like a razor - sharp, but flat.

The creators of perestroika were let down by their poverty of imagination. They didn't think it could get any worse.

If everything is overthrown now, then what will remain for future generations? If Stalin doesn't last long, will the current leaders be able to fill the gap?

It would be possible to believe in the integrity of the contenders for power if we did not know their past.

The old cadres never learned to steal on a grand scale.

The tall structure was erected over decades. We've been falling off the roof for several years now...

Russia's past turned out to be incompatible with its future.

We have entered the era of prehistoric materialism.

Rallies - spring demonstrations of muzzles.

It is too early to announce a competition for designs of monuments to the authors and heroes of perestroika. It remains to be seen whether they will have graves.

Democrats are embarrassed to use the word “comrade.” They know each other too well.

The Soviet citizen received not only the right to criticize the head of state, but also real grounds for this.

The process of creating a rule-of-law state will apparently end with Judgment Day.

In elections, what needs to be counted now is not votes, but screams.

A society is being created in front of which our old socialism looks like an ideal of goodness, humanity and abundance.

Russia is always at the forefront. Even the paralysis of her power is progressive.

The dispute is over a single question: who harmed the Fatherland more – the democrats or the partycrats. There is no question of their usefulness.

By limiting glasnost at one time, the authorities were afraid not so much of the truth as of stupidity. As it turned out, quite fair.

There are countries of a thousand lakes, thousands of islands, but we will have a country of a thousand presidents, and we will amaze the world again.

In the front ranks of the fighters against Marxism-Leninism are not those who cut their teeth on Diamat and Historical Mathematics, but those who taught them.

Restructuring steps. From life to existence, from existence to survival, from survival to the struggle for life.

According to the classic “domino concept,” each falling tile knocks down the one next to it. Russian politicians have revolutionized the concept - in order for all the chips to fall at once, the table must be pulled out from under them.

The new will definitely make its way if it has time to grow old.

"Get out of the trenches!" - the party called out. Some people got out and ran away.

Talking microphone attachment.

Only that power is worth anything that is worth defending.

All means are good, except those that are not.

Power without law or law without power? While the third option is in effect – no power, no law.

History teaches that in Russia any change is not good. Of two evils, one must choose the known.

The concepts of good and evil in politics are relative. Absolute organization.

One-party system is being replaced by multi-party system.

Georgia has not yet approached the fundamental question: where to sell flowers and tangerines after the declaration of independence? Perhaps a flower pact will be concluded with Russia.

There is hardly any point in relying on religion. The last leader to study the Bible was Stalin.

Xerxes ordered the flogging of the sea that sank his fleet. Soviet leaders are talking nonsense.

The boomerang was invented in Russia. Everything we do comes back and hits us.

Meetings, deliberations, plenums, conferences, congresses are slippery pebbles on the path to the underworld.

Tsarist Russia was a prison of peoples, in which they fed decently.

A small republic, but how much it gave to Russia - Dzhugashvili-Stalin, Beria, Shevardnadze...

We live as if waiting for an appointment with the dentist. We know that it will hurt, and we are not sure that it will get better.

An honest official takes what they give, and a dishonest one extorts.

There can be no illegal actions in the absence of laws.

Such difficult times, and no one has been shot yet. It’s as if we don’t live in Russia.

The communists did not have to abolish God. Now there would be someone to share the blame with.

A person can afford some injustice in his assessment of reality. This mitigates the injustice of reality itself.

Life is measured by the amount consumed. So to speak, the path has been traveled.

The point is not that Russians are accustomed to everything. We are ready to get used to everything, which is why any government loves us.

“...Perestroika gave especially a lot to the Armenian and Azerbaijani peoples. Under the yoke of the tsarist monarchy and the Stalinist dictatorship, in the suffocating atmosphere of stagnation, they could not even dream of a war of liberation against each other...” Friendship sealed by blood.

Perestroika seems like chaos only temporarily. Some kind of power will come and firmly establish what this phenomenon was. The government will change, and the interpretation of perestroika will change.

Prayer of the “demoross”: “Save and preserve, Lord, the Communist Party, the inspirer of all our victories!”

In the pitch-black apocalyptic darkness, a lamp of optimism flickers: “We all won’t be able to kill each other and, God willing, we won’t die of hunger.”

There are many concepts. I don't have enough intelligence.

The only compelling argument in Russian discussions is a blow to the head.

The slogan at the May Day rally: “Every worker gets the salary of a Moscow Soviet deputy!” It would be easier to build communism.

We begin to brag about the fact that we have nothing to brag about.

We should first create a good life, and then call it socialism.

On June 12, 1991, Russian citizens paid their last respects to democracy by electing the president of the republic.

In the dark ages, the Lord punished the peoples with pestilence, famine, shaking of the earth, floods, locusts, and wars. All this turned out to be unnecessary. It is enough to give the people unreasonable rulers.

Constellation of black holes - a list of candidates for the presidency of Russia.

There is a lot of talk about brain drain. But if we had brains, then how did we get to this life?

The neophytes of democracy are predominantly renegades of the partyocracy in search of a new feeding trough.

Previously there was boring official lies. Now artistic, and at times simply lyrical.

From a speech at a rally: “Socialism had to be built along Marxism-Leninism, but for seventy years we built it across it...”

Some are ready to die for the ghosts of the past, others for the ghosts of the future. Still others don't care about either. They own the present.

Moscow is great, but there is nowhere to retreat. All around Russia!

Democracy is a system in which a leader can be blasphemed not posthumously, but during his lifetime.

The penultimate serious attempt to radically reform Russia began on June 22, 1941 and ended on May 9, 1945.

It is not the 1937 that was terrible, but the one that will be.

To no one else have universal human values come at such a cost as to Russia.

They are trying to illuminate the path to the future by placing a lantern under each eye.

They voted for those who promised more. The habitual belief in the omnipotence of power took its toll - he would become the boss and carry out everything.

Workdays of perestroika: some go on strike, others persuade them.

Expelled from the Democrats for slandering Soviet reality - he dared to assert that not everything was so bad with us.

The postulate of Russian politics is that you should not listen to the opinions of your opponents. Their faces are really disgusting.

The character of a boss is radically improved only by removal from office.

Political dead people can be surprisingly resilient.

On the issue of parliamentary immunity - how can you put a person in his place if he cannot be imprisoned?

The historical path is from the cult of personality to the cult of cash.

The publicity is deafening. She intended it so that no human voice could be heard.

The fence has been knocked down, walls and ceilings have collapsed, and dashing people are scouring the ruins. But the ever-watchful guard - the KGB - continues to guard the gates.

Are we rebuilding? No, we adjust and adapt!

They began to think before speaking, and tongue-tiedness was complicated by poverty of thought.

We couldn't rebuild the world, but we pretty much surprised him. Apparently, not the last time, given the intellectual potential of the leaders.

Once again, we are not so much participants as victims of a historical experiment.

The Fatherland is an altar. And fools are beaten at the altar.

There are two types of speakers - some say stupid things impromptu, others read them out from a piece of paper.

What will we do when the new thinking grows old? Shall we resort to new fabrications?

The arguments put forward by our opponents are half fiction and half conjecture.

Nature does not tolerate simplicity.

The favorite chicks of the CPSU nest turned out to be cuckoo children.

There is such a party! Pleasant in every way...

One cannot help but be surprised at how little impact thousands of smart books had on the state of society and how much influence one “Short Course” had on it. That is, you need to write briefly and clearly!

Question from a foreign observer: within the lifetime of one generation, Russians moved from the idea of world revolution to the concept of new thinking. Where is the guarantee that they will not just as quickly move on to some other idea, perhaps Armageddon, and will implement it with their usual reckless courage?

The draft Treaty on the Union of Sovereign States provides for the creation of a new non-aligned movement on the territory of the current USSR.

He was born a long time ago, but came into being thanks to perestroika.

Every Soviet person can now proudly say: “I was a citizen of a great power!”

Faith needs to be supported by miracles. The people have been waiting for a miracle from socialism for 70 years. Another 70 years of democracy will wait for him.

To deceive, but not to force people to believe, is true democracy.

They announced a minute of silence... But I would like a month, a year, a five-year period.

One on the throne, the other with his face on the table.

If you failed to intimidate the world with your power, then will you be able to pity it with your weakness?

Thoughtlessness as the engine of progress.

Destiny bearer. Crusade of idiots.

A return to the past is impossible, but a transition to the future is inevitable - that’s the entire strictly scientific basis of political concepts. Was it worth studying at evening schools of Marxism-Leninism for this?

In a crooked world, a straight line is not normal.

Previously, in spacious times, complete fools were in use. Now flat fools are needed - more of them are crowded into rallies.

The authority of a government is measured by the scale of harm it can cause to society.

The beginnings of democracy have been laid. What will its ending be like?

LiveInternetLiveInternet

Vladimir Rabner on his Facebook page recalled the aphorisms of Lieutenant General Leonid Shebarshin (1935-2012), who served as head of foreign intelligence of the USSR (from 02/06/1989 to 09/22/1991), acting. Chairman of the KGB of the USSR (from August 22 to 23, 1991): “The KGB, it turns out, knows how to joke…. Shebarshin shot himself in March 2012. He left a suicide note, which, of course, is classified. Most likely, it contained his last aphorism. Since it remains unknown, everyone has the opportunity to offer their own version. The best option will be presented to the leadership of the FSB and the SVR. ….. Leonid Shebarshin’s aphorisms are interesting because their author headed the foreign intelligence service of the KGB of the USSR for 2.5 years. A selection of them is presented in the wonderful book “The KGB is Joking...”

******************************* Everything is ahead of us. This thought is disturbing. There is no need to go back to the past. There's no one there anymore. You can't get enough of the memories of last year's banquet. If Russians are dying out, it means someone needs it. The stupider the bosses, the less they doubt their wisdom.

If things go in this manner, then the people will not even have the strength for a civil war. Many went into politics because it is a more profitable business than armed robbery. Democrats are embarrassed to use the word “comrade.” They know each other too well. Of two evils, one must choose the known. Such difficult times, and no one has been shot yet. It’s as if we don’t live in Russia. Moscow is great, but there is nowhere to retreat. All around Russia! On the issue of parliamentary immunity: how can you put a person in his place if he cannot be imprisoned? There are two types of speakers - some say stupid things impromptu, others read them out from a piece of paper. Don't sit in your own puddle. What is destroying Russia is literacy without culture, drinking without snacks and power without conscience. Things are still not bad enough to expect improvement. When the winning side was determined, it turned out that there was no one on the losing side. If the state was run by cooks, they would not leave the people hungry. The advantage of dictatorship over democracy is obvious to everyone - it is better to deal with one swindler than with many. An ideal democratic society - every citizen can tell every other citizen to go to hell without distinction of gender, nationality or religion. The instruments of power are the shadow of the stick and the ghost of the carrot. Epitaph is a deceased epigraph. By taking up a place in the sun, you are blocking someone's light. Democracy might have survived if not for the Democrats. The absurd is reality driven to despair. What do you value in a woman? What distinguishes her from a man! Amazing lady - democracy. She is raped, and she still flirts. We Russians are very talented. Especially the Jews. Life was not lived in vain, but in vain. A well-known disease is safer than an unfamiliar doctor. The views are so broad that they do not fit into any gates. There are women who can only hit you in the neck. Reflections of a young doctor: it is much more exciting to give life to a new person than to prolong it for an old one. People are spoiled not so much by money as by the lack of it. Neologism: “Finally, get your ass off the TV!” The country cannot bear another victory for democracy. Don't complain about the lack of thoughts. Perhaps these would be bad thoughts. Unlike male politicians, who are simply obnoxious, female politicians are disgusting. Youthful romanticism is invariably replaced by senile rheumatism. If a government agency is not affected by corruption, then no one needs it. The eternal question of the Russian intellectual is not “who is to blame?” and not “what to do?”, but “who will pay?”. Special Justice Society. No job seems dirty if it can be done by someone else's hands. One of the fundamental human rights is to spit in a well. Without Russia there can be no world war. The more expensive bread is, the cheaper human rights are. As an Armenian he is worthless, but as a person he is good. I gave up the bad habit of not drinking. Democracy is just a gap between dictatorships. Our time will come, but it will not find us. Russia needs not so much a firm hand as a sober head. It's hard to say something stupid enough to surprise Russia. If there are no thoughts, then they are not needed. This is how thoughts differ from money. Switching from potatoes to salmon changes your complexion wonderfully. Don't get ahead of yourself. The back is a convenient target. You can't eat the same chicken twice, but you can eat a person. Diagnosis: acute alcohol deficiency. Modesty adorns a person. Often this is the only decoration. Russia will not be left without foreign friends as long as it has something to plunder. The psychology of a “besieged fortress” has failed us. We were expecting an attack from outside. People are just approaching the market, but it has already been robbed. People are ready to drink any cup. There would be a snack. We are not against a woman selling her body, but against her speculating on it. They don't change horses at the crossing, but it would be worth changing the coachman. Not a single person has betrayed our ideals. It turns out that people’s ideals have changed! The postulate of Russian politics: you should not listen to the opinions of your opponents - their faces are too disgusting. We watch horror films to take a break from reality. The mistakes of the past are the building material of the politics of the present. We finally got to the truth. Russia is a mighty mountain. But what kind of mice did she give birth to!”

The KGB is joking. Aphorisms from the head of Soviet intelligence

Leonid Shebarshin

History, unfortunately, always remains an instrument of today's politics, and whoever controls the past controls both the present and the future. But time is inexorable. The current Third Great Russian Troubles, with its confusion, devastation, temporary leaders and eternal problems, with its bloody wars, disasters, coups and conspiracies, will also disappear into the past. The Great Troubles will be a thing of the past, but according to the immutable law of history, it will be invisibly present in the lives of all future generations of Russian people, just as it is present now. And is a simple and literate Russian person with his hopes, fears, joys and sorrows doomed to disappear into nothingness, leaving no trace for inquisitive descendants? Will no one really be interested in what thoughts overwhelmed a resident of Russia at the end of the 20th century, whether he had a soul not for official presentation, but for his own use? It seems that our descendants may turn out to be more inquisitive and kinder than we could count on in our unsettled and cruel times. It is to their attention that the relevant and witty aphorisms of Leonid Shebarshin are brought to their attention, which are interesting simply because their author headed the foreign intelligence of the KGB of the USSR for many years.

CHRONICLES OF TIMELESS

(notes and aphorisms of the former intelligence chief)

PREFACE

At the end of 1989, one of the architects of “perestroika,” the professional commander of the ideological front, A.N. Yakovlev, thoughtfully noted that we live in interesting times.

Only a few years have passed, and connoisseurs and connoisseurs of exciting spectacles can note with satisfaction that times are becoming more and more interesting.

Isn’t it interesting to watch the collapse of a great state, on the ruins of which bloody internecine wars break out? The locations of the action change - Karabakh, Transnistria, Tajikistan; TV screens are full of the bodies of the dead, destroyed buildings, the faces of people who lost their homes, and every day something new flashes, tickling the nerves. And huge dying factories with half-empty workshops stand dejectedly, endless rows of machines for which there are no component parts, rare workers wander like autumn flies. What about regular disasters in coal mines and railroads? And grenade explosions and machine gun fire on the streets of the capital of our Motherland?

This is perhaps more interesting than any American film about the morals of the Prohibition era in the USA! There is a lot of interesting things in the everyday life of the Russian citizen, that which remains outside the television screen or the newspaper page, but is constantly present in our lives - crowds of wretched dirty beggars, PEOPLE digging in garbage dumps, gangs of young men in leather jackets and with lamb eyes... It's hard to even imagine how boring and monotonous our life was without all this.

We haven’t seen enough and heard enough in recent years. There were endless inarticulate monologues of a man with a spot on his forehead, with charming, honest eyes and rounded gestures, who came to the rescue when the great and mighty Russian language failed the speaker. The wife of a man with a spot on his forehead is a lady of simple political convictions and unshakably firm in property matters. There was a silent collapse of the guiding and guiding force of our society. Spectacle-goers were expecting a deafening explosion, but only something like a muffled groan was heard, and there was no guiding force.

Some unknown villains stuffed the father of the new democracy into a bag (it was apparently a huge bag) and threw him from a fifteen-meter height into the abyss of the Moscow River, but the father swam out and led the country. With bated breath, the entire nation watched the confrontation in Moscow in August 1991 between two groups of ambitious people, the triumphant faces of the winners, only occasionally overshadowed by the shadow of annoyance that victory was achieved without major bloodshed. There were trips by high-ranking American inspectors across the vast expanses of the former state and well-meaning instructions on how to further reform the country. There were humiliating searches for money abroad and insultingly mocking promises to give Russia untold billions when it deserves it.

There was a lot of things, it’s impossible to list them all, and a lot of things were said and written. To an inexperienced person in life it might seem that many thousands of publicists and political scientists, journalists and scientists, professional ideologues and politicians, interviewers and interviewees, statesmen and stateswomen, democrats and partycrats, healthy people and schizophrenics are deliberately attacking the discouraged, confused The Russian people are waterfalls of words - no rhyme, no reason, no logic, no conscience in this endless ocean of half-truths and lies, as if some satanic mind set out to forever bury in this ocean the real meaning of the events of which Russia became a victim. There remain only the spectacles so valued by lovers of an interesting life, spectacles that are not mutually connected, devoid of internal content, scenes of farce, but not tragedy.