"Volga" for the elite, club jackets and speculators: how Ryazanov's films reflect the Soviet attitude to property

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

The Soviet director very accurately showed the dreams and desires of ordinary people, as well as the property stratification of society.

Leonid Klein, journalist and radio host, offers an unusual take on the classics of literature and cinema. It turns out that you can learn valuable lessons on management, business, communications, and finance from well-known works. This is exactly what Klein's new book “Useless Classics. Why fiction is better than textbooks on management”, which was recently published by the publishing house“Alpina Publisher”. Lifehacker publishes a snippet from chapter 7.

Eldar Ryazanov: decide for yourself - to have or not to have

I walked home along my quiet street -

Look, capitalism is brazenly rushing towards me, Hiding your animal face under the mask of "Zhiguli"!

Vladimir Vysotsky "The song of the car envious"

Eldar Ryazanov passed away not so long ago - in 2015, but I must admit that his era in cinema ended much earlier. First of all, he is a Soviet director, whose works reflect in detail the life of society during the days of developed socialism.

Almost all of Ryazanov's paintings became iconic. Only he was able to create a film that became the unofficial Christmas story of an entire nation. Not a single Russian film will be able to compete in popularity with "The Irony of Fate", the viewing of which is still an obligatory component of New Year's pastime for a huge number of residents of Russia and neighboring countries.

It is difficult for those born in the USSR to separate themselves from Ryazanov's films - they grew up on them. The films of this director fit so well into the cultural interior of the nation that we do not even notice how, in fact, we still live in them. By the way, this also applies to representatives of the younger generations, although they, most likely, do not even suspect about it.

The use of the word "interior" is no coincidence. Things and environment play a significant role in all Ryazanov's films. Private property is one of the essential motives driving many of the director's characters, and often the plot. According to Ryazanov's filmography, one can observe how the private owner, who is also a consumer, was gaining strength and gaining strength. The one whose disappearance and even destruction was described by Ilf and Petrov in their novels. And as tragic as his departure in the 1930s was, just as difficult and harsh in the end was his return, which began in the 1960s. Having appeared and gained strength, the consumer, in the same way as he was once, squeezed out, made superfluous a Soviet, public person, while being unceremonious and sometimes cruel.

Everything that is hidden for a long time, breaking free and proving its right to it, takes on ugly features and sometimes behaves aggressively. So the representatives of the proprietor stratum at Ryazanov are at first ridiculous, ridiculous, sometimes disgusting, and then become frankly cruel. The closer the Soviet era approached its end, the more “Neryazanovic” Ryazanov's films became. His characters cannot live in a different environment. And they eventually leave, unable to withstand the confrontation with the people of the new formation.

Vysotsky, in The Song of the Car Envy, a fragment of which is included in the epigraph, of course, was ironic, but, as it turned out, he acted as a visionary - capitalism, quietly rustling with tires, crept into Soviet society in order to finally take revenge - to oust and destroy the Soviet man.

Auto section

It is no coincidence that the car became the image of “prush” capitalism in Vysotsky's song. The consumer ideal of Soviet society was called the triad “car, apartment, dacha”. The car in this series was in the first place, since the car in the Soviet Union was almost the only significant thing that could be purchased as personal property. As a reminder, citizens were only given the right to live in apartments that legally belong to the state. It is not surprising that the car occupied a special place in the ideological system of the Soviet "middle class", represented by Ryazanov in the films.

The most obvious example is Beware of the Car, released in 1965. In the center of the plot is the Volga GAZ-21. It was at this time that the opportunity arose to acquire it as private property. True, despite the slogan “A car is not a luxury, but a means of transportation” declared back in the days of the Golden Calf, the car remained for the Soviet citizen precisely a luxury and an opportunity to demonstrate a high social status.

- Why did you do it? Since when did you start stealing cars from honest people? Where are your principles?

- Eh, no! This is Stelkin's car, and he is a bribe-taker.

- What kind of Stelkin ?! This is the car of a famous scientist! Doctors of Science!

In this quote from the film, you can see the formula of ownership of the Volga - either a thief, a bribe-taker, or an eminent person can possess it. And then - not everyone. For example, Larisa Golubkina, the wife of Andrei Mironov, who played Dima Semytsvetov, from whom Detochkin stole a Volga, had to pound the doorsteps of various authorities for a long time to get permission to buy a BMW.

In the "Office Romance" (1977) Samokhvalov is the happy owner of the "Volga" GAZ-24 ". When Novoseltsev gets into his car, he says: "This is a small apartment!" And he speaks not only about the size - the cost of "Volga" in those years was higher than the price of a one-room cooperative apartment.

Ryazanov's main film is "The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath" (1975). Unlucky and funny in his seriousness, Ippolit is the owner of the third model Zhiguli, which at that time was a symbol of prosperity.

Since the second half of the 1970s, the Soviet auto industry has produced about one million passenger cars. And already in 1979 the film "Garage" begins with credits against the background of the characters and their cars. Cars became more and more accessible, but for the sake of them, as well as for the sake of a place in a cooperative garage, people were ready for almost anything - to offend and humiliate each other, publicly search a woman, take bribes … small.

In "Station for Two" (1982), there are almost no cars in the frame, but Oleg Basilashvili's hero will have to go to jail, because he took the blame of his wife, who hit a man in a car. And the waitress Vera, played by Gurchenko, admits: “My own car, my friend flies to Algeria, my wife is shown on TV, for me it's all like life on the moon.”

In the very first frames of The Forgotten Melody for the Flute (1987) - Moskvich-2141, which was very fashionable at that time, with a five-speed gearbox. Perhaps the first time in Russian cinema - having sex in a car.

We can safely say that the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union was laid in 1970, when the first six VAZ-2101s rolled off the main assembly line of VAZ. The dream of your own car, of the mobility and freedom that you could get thanks to it, has become a reality for a huge number of people. But at the same time, no matter what propaganda said then, the stratification of Soviet society was evident.

Car ownership was the very threshold, overcoming which meant a transition to a completely different standard of living, not accessible to everyone. And this threshold was constantly rising. If previously a domestic car was enough to confirm the status, then in the 1970s – 1980s a foreign car was already needed for this.

In the movie Garage, the market director drives a Mercedes. In 1979, this is very cool, but no longer shocking. In a sense, the incredible property gap between different strata of Soviet society was legalized. So is the pursuit of a Western lifestyle.

Thank you, domestic will not work

Abroad became, though unattainable, but already resolved, in some way a home dream much earlier than the end of the 1970s. The imported one is cooler than the domestic one by default, it is not always easy to get it, and for this you need cronies, connections and … Dima Semitsvetov from "Beware of the car".

- I need a foreign tape recorder - American or German.

- There is a very good domestic one.

- Thank you, the domestic one will not work.

- You need to look for a foreign one

- I understand. How many?

- 50.

Then, after Dima's car was stolen, he confidently raises the price to 80, because "I don't insist - the thing will go away in a second."

In the 1980s, imported products were “thrown away” on the mass market. Not often of Eastern European production, but in any case better than domestic. “Go to the pharmacy kiosk, they brought in Yugoslavian shampoo, it smells like that…” - a friend advises the waitress Vera at the “Station for Two”.

200 pairs of boots that disappeared from the store in the movie "The Old Robbers" turn out to be Dutch, the Austrian boots for sale are brought to the main character of "Railway Station for Two" by the conductor Andrey.

"I will turn your stunted Muscovite into a Mercedes," says Burkov's hero to Liya Akhedzhakova in Garage.

In The Irony of Fate, Hippolyte gives Nadia a French perfume, not some New Dawn.

In Office Romance, all fashion items are labeled by Western brands or defined by English words.

Guess what I'm smoking now? Marlboro. The new deputy threw the whole block off the master's shoulder. Befriends a secretary.

Let me give you a souvenir from Switzerland. There are eight colors in this pen. It is very convenient for resolutions: black - "refuse", red - "pay" to the accounting department, green - the color of hope, blue - "comrade so-and-so, consider". Please.

If the tape recorder, then Sharp, they do not wear shoes, but shoes, blazers are preferred to jackets.

- Blazer - club jacket.

- For the "House of Culture" or what?

- You can go there too.

Many will remember that club blazers were extremely popular in the 1990s. Including because in the 1980s, the heroes of Ryazanov's films often wore blazers, and this was considered a demonstration of style and, again, emphasized status. And now, after 10 years, everyone began to wear club jackets, because they were the embodiment of a dream that finally became possible to achieve.

Vices alien to the Soviet people also beckon. In "Office Romance" at a party, Samokhvalov says that he worked in Switzerland. His interlocutor immediately asks:

- Yura, have you seen striptease in Switzerland?

- Not once!

- And to be honest?

- Why do I need it?!

- I would definitely go.

The woman immediately suspects that Samokhvalov is lying, because she cannot admit it, but it is also stupid to deny herself to visit a striptease, if there is such an opportunity. It is unlikely that the Soviet lady wanted to see how women undress to the music, because this awakened some of her secret sexual desires. It's just that for a Soviet person it was something unimaginable, possible only in some kind of parallel world. The West was just that - a mysterious magical country where everything is possible and the impossible. Imported things with quality and properties that are an order of magnitude superior to domestic counterparts, made it possible to at least indirectly touch the fairy tale.

National sport

The further, the more the contrast between the fairy tale and the Soviet reality became noticeable. Everyone wants magic shoes and wonderful blazers, but they are not given to everyone. Moreover, they can only be obtained by demonstrating a fair amount of elasticity of principles. At least this follows from Ryazanov's films. Perhaps, in all his paintings, one can observe the confrontation between the poor, but fine-minded heroes and owners, who, unlike their opponents, spend a significant amount of time and effort to live comfortably. We will not discuss the ways in which they achieved their goals - in any case, their aspirations were interpreted negatively by Soviet society.

The words "speculator" and "owner" sounded like an insult. So Platon Ryabinin in the "Station for Two" throws in the face of the conductor Andrey - "Speculator!"

But at the same time, the normal desire to have something of their own, to enjoy material values, took possession of the masses. It should be understood that then, as the cultural researcher Mikhail German wrote, “the miserable“materialism”was provoked not only and not so much by the formation of social codes, the“prestige”of certain objects, ordinary snobbery, or simply an increase in income … We had one desire for things. from the few means of oblivion, a kind of national sport … Even going to the grocery store was a gamble, the buyer became a conquistador, hoping for success and ready for defeat, and returned - regardless of the result - exhausted and bloody."

Owning property in an honest way, living on a grand scale, was still quite difficult. State social policy at that time was in a sense schizophrenic. On the one hand, the party and the government blessed the growth of the well-being of the Soviet people, and, admittedly, it grew. The fact that those who wanted to buy a very expensive and not the best quality car formed huge queues - this is confirmed. On the other hand, propaganda did not tire of scourging the excessive desire for material values, since they did not correspond to the ideals of communism. Philistinism and materialism were denounced and ridiculed at all levels. In Ryazanov's films, there seems to be property, and this is not bad, but at the same time, not very good.

Mediator between land and people

Of course, Ryazanov, as a writer of everyday life of that time, simply could not ignore the manifestations of normal human desires. Yes, he makes the “money-grubbing” heroes lose and shows them not from their best side. But, firstly, then it was impossible otherwise, and secondly, Ryazanov is still on the side of those who are "capable of madness." At the same time, he obviously sympathizes with hedonistic sentiments, sees reasonable in private initiative. The director somehow managed to make the monologues of the representatives of the proprietor stratum sound, on the one hand, like self-incrimination and auto-satire, and on the other, like the cry of a normal person who wants to live a normal life, but does not have such an opportunity.

“Beware of the Car” is the film by Ryazanov, where, perhaps, this confrontation between the owner and the one who sees in him the “animal face of capitalism” is shown as clearly as possible. Let us recall some of the speeches of Semitsvetov, from whom Detochkin stole a car; from the point of view of a modern person, they sound very reasonable, you must agree.

Why should I live like this? Lord, why? Why should I, a person with higher education, hide, adapt, get out? Why can't I live freely, openly?

This guy swung at the most sacred thing that we have - the Constitution. It says: everyone has the right to personal property. It is protected by law. Everyone has the right to have a car, a summer residence, books … money. Comrades, no one has canceled the money yet. From each according to his ability, to each according to his work in his cash.

Dmitry Semitsvetov works in a thrift store and sells under the counter. For this, a criminal case was initiated against him. “They'll give you something, but don't steal,” his father-in-law tells him. But Semitsvetov did not steal! He only acted as an intermediary, for which a certain share was always relied on in a normal society. Speculation, which was considered a crime, actually underlies and serves as a driving force.

the power of any business, one way or another related to trade. Obviously, in our time, Semitsvetov would not have had to hide, he would have been able to find himself, because, from a modern point of view, he simply satisfied the demand, as far as possible in Soviet realities, which force him to hide and adapt, without being able to turn around. Like Ostap Bender, who was later played by the same Mironov, Semitsvetov is essentially condemned for enterprise and for love of money, and this, you see, is not a crime.

And yet Ryazanov's Semitsvetov is not the cutest character. But “Uncle Misha” - the heroine of Mordyukova in the film “Station for Two”, who resells vegetables and fruits on the collective farm market - if not positive, then at least not condemned. Ryazanov gives “Uncle Misha” the floor, where she explains with dignity to Platon Ryabinin all the advantages of private business over the Soviet trading system, although she is habitually offended when she is called a speculator.

- Have you ever seen fruit in a store? Or not? There vegetables and fruits are useless through and through. I feed people a good product, and these gastronomers? Either they have unripe watermelons, or stale tomatoes, or wooden pears. And I am over every berry, over every plum, as over a little child … The base cannot store anything. No fruits, no berries, no vegetables, nothing … Why? Because all this is nobody's.

- I will not speculate! I won't!

- Oh, who are you holding us for? I am not a speculator, I am an intermediary between the land and the people.

And then he gives a great lesson in customer focus, also demonstrating a completely Western approach:

- This is a simple matter. Remember our trade and do the opposite. There they are rude, and you smile, there they weigh it down, and you let go of the campaign. Well, if you add 50–100 grams, the buyer will be so pleased. Clear? Here they are selling wet vegetables, fruits …

- Why?

- Are you just born into the world? So that it was heavier, so that the weight was more. Understood? And you will have a dry, beautiful melon.

The public knows Leonid Klein as a person who deeply and comprehensively analyzes works of art and talks about them in a lively and exciting way. Among the most famous works of Klein - "Chekhov as a psychological thriller", "Can an Atlas straighten his shoulders? Or Why read a poorly written book?”,“Dostoevsky. Bad deeds of good people, or What to hope for the reader of Dostoevsky. "Useless Classics" offers the same deep analysis and fascinating reading - and will be interesting not only for managers and entrepreneurs, but in general for everyone who wants to discover the classics from a new angle.