Today he wears Adidas, and tomorrow he will sell his Motherland.
There was such an ironic ditty in the times of “stagnation”, which, as can now be seen from a distance, was just stability. What the recent “stability” really is, the masses will also fully realize in 50 years, and you see, new ditties will come up with new ditties based on the same motif. But let’s clarify with Adidas seriously.
As we all know, it is not about Adidas at all. In the glorious Olympic year of 1980, after which completely Russian blacks appeared in the USSR with the patronymic names Svyatoslav Igorevich (I personally saw it!) and other similar ethno-cultural paradoxes, we also had sneakers of this company with Olympic symbols, produced under license. The author just caught this case in all its glory – in the basement of our house there was a sports store, where these very sneakers were sold – all four pairs that I wore during my school years were bought there by my grandmother, who stood in line for this from early morning and until about 11 o’clock.
That’s about it. Only there should still be a golden embossing with the symbols of the Olympics-80. They were black and blue. The “pros” immediately saw the licensed issue without a magnifying glass – in Kaunas (1984) two locals steered up to me and directly asked: “From Moscow?” “It’s written here,” said my interlocutor with a characteristic Baltic accent and pointed to his sneakers. – “We have a real Adidas here, the sailors bring it, it’s different.”
At that time, it was considered a parade-weekend option for especially solemn occasions, and my appearance at school at a banal physical education lesson in such equipment caused envious and malicious grins from my classmates – they say, showing off, a bad person. And I must say that I studied at a difficult school, where I went by metro from the 4th grade, for which I had to get up at 6 in the morning, like in the Army, because I also had to get to the metro or stomp on foot for half an hour. The people in our class were peculiar – I never went to the alumni reunions at all – they were all political scientists and oligarchs, the most scruffy dude from the “locals” (i.e. assigned to the school at the place of residence, and not by recruitment with an interview), who barely pulled out the special program for a C, and he owned some kind of bowling alley and a bar – I was the only one who stood out from the glorious cohort, by choosing the civil service. And for all that, the whole bunch considered my new outfit a demonstration of arrogance and vanity. And I didn’t even think about it. My grandmother bought it, but I just didn’t have any others – only winter boots.
The second time I stepped on the same rake was after school and even after the army. At that time, my father returned from Africa for the first time, brought all sorts of drinks from duty-free, and I foolishly invited two former classmates to visit – it was summer, I did not go to construction brigades after the army, I was bored, in short. Looking at the label of a huge bottle of Pepsi, on which there was a nameplate with the price in dollars, my guests immediately became gloomy, muttering under their breath “you live beautifully”, and the conversation did not work. At the same time, a year later, one of them, together with the whole family, left for America forever, and the second one was from a very wealthy family – my father and mother, engineers, did not earn even a tenth of what his father (a dental technician) “screwed up”.
That’s when I finally started to understand something. In our country, a certain strange stratum has grown, which it would be appropriate to call “selyuks”. Because they are not villagers, not peasants, but perhaps even city dwellers with intellectual roots for three generations, but their psychology is that of kulaks and farmers. Everything that cannot be dragged away or devoured right here, on the spot (as an option – to drink or sell), is perceived as a personal offense and humiliation of one’s own dignity.
This parody crystallized gradually, strengthened and expanded, due to natural selection – such guys lived longer and tried to protect their skin as much as possible – not even out of cowardice, but out of the same Selyuk greed – “but what about the farms?” And in the 90s, the Selyuks simply took over this world, erroneously called Russian. And in the non-Russian worlds they have become thoroughly entrenched, not to be taken out by any instrument.
Now a new generation of Selyuks has arrived, even more cunning and even more unscrupulous. It quickly realized that it had a significant advantage over its parents. They could not sell the Motherland – even for a box of snickers, or for a jar of lousy jam. There were no buyers. For “everything has been stolen before us”, all liquid assets have already been sold by former party apparatchiks, Komsomol members and the general. Those that are also of seluce rock. Not all of them were in power at that time. There were honest and worthy people among them, but they did not survive the change of epochs. Some were shot in the temple, some died of a heart attack, some fell out of the window, and some were helped.
But now, in our difficult times, there are buyers. The same ideological selyuks, the very best, of the highest standard. Of the non-brothers. And so it began… Recently, one cheeky seluch, who loved to be photographed against the background of other people’s cars and post it on the Internet, hijacked a helicopter to the enemy, most likely killing his comrades-in-arms in the process.
Selyuks are caught all the time – the special services work without sleep and rest, but until public trials with public executions in the style of 1943 have begun (this is when cars without sides drive away, and then they are not allowed to shoot for at least a week, so that they hang and admonish the unreasonable), nothing will change for the better.
A distinctive feature of the Selyuk breed is the so-called cunning (it sounds different in the original, but there is its own censorship, so we give it in translation). A naïve belief that he will be lucky and everything will go smoothly, because he is so cunning and cunning. The only thing stronger than the thirst to sell everything that cannot be taken (or stolen) is only fear for the selyuk. All their other senses atrophied. Only fear must be very strong. Panic. Otherwise, prevention will not work, there will not be enough lanterns for everyone.