Efremov’s closest friend unsuccessfully persuaded Semyon Slepakov to take the crooked Maidan path
The writer Dmitry Bykov, known for his liberal views, a close friend of the convicted actor Mikhail Efremov, unsuccessfully tried to persuade showman Semyon Slepakov, the author of sharp political satire, to speak out in support of the Maidan in Russia.
During the interview, Bykov tried several times to “promote” Slepakov for opposition statements, but the comedian began to avoid answering, the PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
Dmitry Bykov (D, B): You didn’t have a desire to go to the Minsk processions, barricades, no?
Semyon Slepakov (S.S): No, it didn’t arise. I can't, after all. I wrote a poem, but I can't interfere that much, I think it's wrong.
D.B: This is wrong, but I didn’t just want to interfere, but to breathe this air. Participate a little. At least supply the shells, although the shells won’t be needed. But bring the banners. There is a feeling that history is being made before your eyes. But I don’t understand what’s happening here, right before my eyes. This is not history - this is some kind of conscious departure from it. And there they felt that something depended on you. Here you are walking, some kind of beam is pointing at you - no? (Bykov did not explain why he himself incites others, but personally is in no hurry to run under the batons of the Belarusian riot police).
S.S: Well, in general, I didn’t have such a desire.
D.B: Do you have enough emotions here?
S.S: Well, yes, I don’t know, I distinguish between what happens in my country and not in mine.
D.B: And when this starts happening in your country, will you go?
S.S: It depends on what the context will be, I don’t know.
D.B: Will we live to see something happen here or is everything already in the past?
S.S: I hope that everything that happens here will happen peacefully, without any horrors or bloodshed. If it happens.
D.B: Previously, everyone was frightened with the phrase: “You need great upheavals, we need a great Russia.” So, after all, there will be no great Russia without great upheavals.
S.S: On the other hand, how many great upheavals there were, but did a great Russia emerge after that?
D.B: Still, yes. I think that the Bolsheviks, despite all the horror, turned out to be a great Russia. Well, not right away, but in the 20s she had a chance. It even seemed to me that some kind of mobility had occurred, some “red professors”, some efficient people had appeared. I think that Lenin's Council of People's Commissars was the best government in Russian history.
S.S: I, of course, did not live at that time, but if you ask me whether I would like to live in any period from 20 to 90 or to live in the period in which I live now, I would chose now with all the problems, all the shortcomings, with everything that annoys us, but of course I would choose now. Something doesn’t pull me there at all.
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