Опубликовано в журнале Дружба Народов, номер 2, 2009
MIKHAIL ZEMSKOV. When “Merlot” Loses Its Taste. A novel.
“Changes! We want changes,” — used to sing Victor Tzoy and this song became the symbol of the whole epoch. It’s long since this epoch is over. Other songs… Other Messiahs… And one may easily not recognize the city of one’s childhood and may find out that the old friends have become quite different people and the favourite French wine has lost its taste. Who are we? Where are we moving to? What are our land marks? How to find or at least not to lose oneself under the swift thrust of the changes? These questions inevitably rise before the protagonist and the reader of the new thriller by Mikhail Zemskov.
The poetry section of this issue presents Uzbek poets ABDULLAH ARIPOV, ERKIN VAKHIDOV, SIROZIDDIN SAID, HOSIYAT RUSTAMOVA and RUSTAM MUSURMAN who may be called (after the line of one of them) “kinsfolk amidst mundane vanity”.
YURIY KAGRAMANOV. Mazepa and Others. Ukraine in Search of Its Founding Fathers.
The cult of Mazepa is being created in Kiev and supported by most of Ukrainian intellectuals. Those who proclaim the hetman national hero must be afraid that Ukrainian independence is not properly “funded” ideologically and are eager to give one more battle to “moskals”. The well-known publicist and culturologist Y. Kagramanov meets the challenge and is meditating on the true essence of historical figures and events as well as on the common cultural and spiritual heritage of the Russian and Ukrainian peoples.
“Russian Is the One Who Knows How to Live Here”.
Kazakhs, Ukrainians, Estonians, Uzbeks, Georgians, Armenians, Letts… These and other peoples have already passed before the looking-glass of our rubric “Peoples Before the Mirror”. The turn of Russians has come. On behalf of Russians into our “mirror” are looking: poet, prosaist and philologist EVGENIJ KLYUEV (the article “Russianism of Russians”) and translator, editor NATALYA VASSILKOVA with her friends — readers of her net-journal (“From Livejournal But Not Only”).
MARK NAUMOV. Concise Course in Practical Internationalism.
“Inter-national relations are a very important and sore subject; best intellects are struggling with it, and not the best too. Then why not me? My length of serving in this question is over sixty. And not somewhere but here and only here, in my native land. Moreover that I do not pretend too much. I have no enlightenments or — God forbid! — final decisions. Just some scanty observations from my own life”, — this is how the author forestalls his work himself. Extremely funny observations, we would add, and bitter sometimes, but always very witty.