Mikhail Kazinik: “Classical music shapes the brain. Mikhail Kazinik's master class, or how to turn the mind around And modern Belarus is somehow different from Russia

"Music is a great contract with the Creator"

“I am not a promoter of music or any other kind of art. I'm not telling any jokes or jokes, I'm not trying to simplify the perception of music. Those who do this destroy it. I have a completely different task - to spiritually tune a person to that wave, to that radiation that comes from works of art: poetry, music, literature ... Any great art is a transmitter, and a person who is not tuned to its frequency is a damaged receiver. I'm fixing it."

M. Kazinik

Mikhail Kazinik was born in 1951 in St. Petersburg (Leningrad). In 1953 the family moved to Vitebsk.

In 1958 he entered the Vitebsk Music School No. 1 in the violin class, continuing his studies at the music school in 1968, and then in 1970 he entered the Belarusian State Conservatory in Minsk, from which he graduated in 1975 in the class of Professor M.M. Goldstein. In parallel with his studies at the BGK, Mikhail Kazinik (hereinafter MK) took lessons from Professor M.I. Vayman at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, and also took part in regional and international competitions.

MK began his lecture activity at the age of 15. The first success was followed by a number of proposals from different cities and universities of Vitebsk, Minsk and St. Petersburg. Starting from this period, the geography of lecture activity of the MK has been constantly expanding, covering various regions of the Soviet Union, the Baltic States, Eastern and Western Europe and then the USA.

Along with the geography of his trips, the audience began to expand. From 1975 to 1990, MK performances began to be held in the form of regular lectures and subscription series of lecture-concerts in 17 cities of the Soviet Union, including Minsk, Kostroma, Sumy, Vitebsk, Grodno, Krasnodar, Sochi, Kirovograd, Kyiv, Kaunas, Moscow.

These concert lectures were met with great enthusiasm not only by the student audience of schools and universities, but also by various categories of listeners, including the entire spectrum from the academic and philharmonic public to performances on special projects in juvenile colonies.

During this period, MK successfully combined his work as a musicologist and lecturer with performing activities, performing at various philharmonic and concert stages in the country.

In his hometown of Minsk, MK created a ten-year subscription, thanks to which MK brought up two streams of children who attended the concert hall from 6-7 years old to 16-17 years old.

He also created a long-term subscription at the Agricultural Academy in the city of Gorki, where the largest orchestras and musicians came.

The effect and resonance of such activities was enormous. Halls at the performances of MK were always filled to the limit. Often, in view of the large number of applicants, in each of the cities it was necessary to give two concerts a day.

The secrets of MC's success in working with audiences are probably to be found in his method of engaging the audience in the course of the lecture. Music (as well as art in general) in the understanding of MK is a powerful “source of vibrating energy”. Man is the "receiver of this energy." MK sees its task not so much in an informative aspect, but in the ability, having felt it for yourself, “to tune the audience to the wave of the work being performed; (...) correlate, the waves of the receiver and transmitter. According to MK, as a result of such coordination, “the moment of perception of a musical work becomes unusually sharp and intense; (...) if there is brilliant creativity, then there must also be brilliant co-creation, that is, sharp and deep perception; (....) to form such a perception is the task of the speaker about art.” Thus, “…the listener moves from the rank of a music lover to the rank of a “genius of perception”.

Since 1991 MK has been a resident of Sweden. From this period begins his active musical and educational activities in the West. In Swedish newspapers, MK is often referred to as the "Apostle of Culture" (Vastmanlands Folkblad, 11 Jan 2001)

Since 1993, the long-term cooperation of MK with director Yuri Lederman begins. Between 1993 and 2004, they staged a large number of performances in Stockholm. Among them is one of the most explosive performances in the history of the Swedish theater "Mozart versus Salieri". And also - “Instead of the Seagull”, “The Space of Carmen”, “The Space of the Mask”, Notes of a Madman, “The Sovereign”, etc. Also during this period there are a large number of concerts of the most diverse content.

In 1997, Professor of Drama Institute, writer Agnetha Pleyel invites MK as a guest professor to conduct a project during the two semesters of the 1997-98 academic year. The project was intended for the staff of teachers and students of the institute. Lectures-concerts covered the history of music. Along with lectures, seminars were held with screenwriters, writers, directors and students.

FORMAL EDUCATION

1958 -1968: Music school No. 1, violin class, Vitebsk, Belarus

1968 -1970: Music College, Vitebsk

1970 - 1975: Belarusian State Conservatory (BGK), class of prof. M. Goldstein.

1971 - 1975: Classes with Professor of the St. Petersburg Conservatory M. M. Vayman

AWARDS, HONORARY DEGREES

1970: First Prize at the international competition of the Ministry of Culture of Belarus dedicated to the 200th anniversary of the birth of Beethoven. The competition was held for students of conservatories in Eastern Europe, as part of an international conference dedicated to the work of Beethoven.

1986: The All-Union Musical Society chaired by Irina Arkhipova awards M. Kazinik the title of Musicologist of the Highest Category.

2012: Title of Honorary Member of the European Slavic Academy of Literature and Art in Bulgaria.

2010: Vice-President of the IAPM International Association of Writers and Publicists.

2012: Honorary Doctor of RISEBA.

(Riga International Higher School of Economics)

CONCERT0 - LECTURE ACTIVITIES

1973 - Soloist and Lecturer-Musicologist of the Belarusian State Philharmonic

1975 -1990: Lectures-concerts in the cities of the cities of the USSR and the Baltic states

1991: Beginning of concert and educational activities in Sweden.

1993 - 2004: Collaboration with ”Teater Studio Ledermann”

Staging a large number of performances. Among them:

"Mozart and Salieri", "Instead of the Seagull", "Space" Carmen ",

"The Space of the Mask", "Notes of a Madman", "The Sovereign", etc.

1997: Guest Professor at the Stockholm Drama Institute.

teaching staff and students of the institute. At the initiative and invitation

prof. Institute of Drama, writer Agnetha Pleyel.

1997 - 2003: 50 business conferences dedicated to the connection between culture, art and

business for representatives of the largest companies in Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark.

1999 - 2002: Three-year experimental project with Smalands Musik och teater. During the project period, meetings were held with more than 100,000 schoolchildren in the region; More than 1000 educational concerts have been held. The project also involved: the local theater, orchestra, soloists. The effect was manifested in thousands of reviews and letters, drawings and poems.

2005: Nobel Concert Musical Expert

2003: Annual medical conferences on the island of Gotland (Visby)

conference of school directors of the country (under the auspices of the government

2013: A series of Concert-lectures in Boston and Chicago.

ARTICLES, PUBLICATIONS, BOOK EDITIONS

1985: Soviet Music, No. 8 ("We need an active search"

No. 11 (“Specialists, respond.”)

1986: "Music in School" #1 ("The Child and the Music")

2005: Secrets of Geniuses, DiAr Publishing House, St. Petersburg

2007 Secrets of geniuses 2 or Wave paths to music

2010 Secrets of geniuses - two books in one volume.

2012: GENIERNAS HEMLIGHETER, Stockholm-Riga

2013: "Communion Word, Music, Life"

In the press. Publication - July, 2013

A series of articles for the newspaper "Evening Petersburg"

FILMOGRAPHY

1998 - 1999: " Kazinik, God and Devil”, director P. Meyer, Sweden

2nd prize at the Stockholm International Documentary Film Festival.

2004 - 2007: Russian documentary filmmaker Igor Shadkhan with

director Natalya Kugashova suggested that MK carry out

the largest cinematographic project - the creation of 60 films

covering significant phenomena of musical (and not only

On November 7, in Volgograd, Mikhail Kazinik, a “man of the Renaissance”, whose incarnations can be listed for a long time, will perform with a single concert. Violinist, culturologist, teacher, but above all - a philosopher and artist who has been passionately preaching art for 50 years. It reveals Bach as a forerunner of Einstein, reveals the secrets hidden in the paintings of Rembrandt and the codes encrypted in Pushkin's poems. The purpose of all these discoveries is to tune the "receiver" of human perception to the wave of the geniuses of the classics.

All Nobel laureates listened to the classics in childhood

Mikhail Semenovich, the classics of painting or literature are much easier to perceive than the brilliant composers of the past. Their music in the understanding of most people is heavy and incomprehensible. But that's what you focus on in your speeches. How can you simplify the perception of classical music?

I'm not telling any jokes or jokes, I'm not trying to simplify the perception of music. My task is to spiritually tune a person to that wave, to that radiation that comes from works of art. Therefore, before Bach's music, I can talk, for example, about Einstein. Einstein could not live without Bach and Mozart. Their music is not just the result of inspiration, it is mathematically calculated, structured. No wonder Bach emphasizes with a pen the idea in the book (this book was the work of Leibniz) that music is a hidden arithmetic operation. Take any classical piece of music, and you will not find a single extra, unjustified note there.

For the same Bach (and I reveal to my listeners the main ciphers of his works) the secrets of the universe, the entire Old and New Testament, all the formulas of scientific knowledge and the secret codes of the discoveries of the future are hidden in music. This is such an abyss of knowledge!

You said that the Nobel laureates with whom you talked also spoke about the influence of the classics on their achievements ...

Yes, such an opportunity presented itself when I was appointed the musical expert of the Nobel Concerto. The day before the award ceremony, a concert is held for all nominees, in which I am the host. I'm talking about the music that will be played now. Along the way, I always ask those present about childhood, about art in their lives. And suddenly it turns out that all the Nobel nominees had great music in their childhood.

And this is not surprising! Classical music forms, structures the brains, it contains universal structures.

Another example is Beethoven, a composer stricken with deafness. Paradox: the worse Beethoven heard, the better music he wrote. This means that the point is not in the ears, not in physical hearing, but in hearing the music of the heavenly spheres.

The human body is a huge, the world's greatest resonator of cosmic harmony and beauty energy. It is important that the resonator is properly tuned.

Culture will get rid of drugs

Mikhail Semenovich, this summer you addressed the Federation Council with a call to pay attention to culture and not just increase subsidies in this area, but make it the first, the main one in matters of state financing. You explained that relying on culture will significantly reduce the economic costs of everything else, including medicine and the fight against crime. Did you sincerely believe that the senators would hear you and follow your call?

Not certainly in that way. I knew that this speech would be replicated, and I took advantage of this to convey my thoughts to a new audience.

The very opportunity to speak in the Federation Council turned up by accident. My friends and admirers Gref and Vardanyan invited me to an economic forum in St. Petersburg, where I talked about how the economy would be affected by the development of culture, if we really do it. After the forum there was a banquet at which I was next to Valentina Matvienko. I told her a story about dolphins, about trying to connect with them through music, about my participation in a unique scientific project. She really liked it, and she invited me to speak in the Federation Council with this story. I replied that I would not go just for the sake of the dolphins, they say, give me another 15 minutes. She called, talked to someone and agreed.

? Explain how increasing spending on culture will save spending on medicine?

People involved in great art are more harmonious and healthier than others. If we take all the great violinists for evaluation, it turns out that they all survived the 90-year milestone.

"I don't want to waste my life on nonsense"

? Classics - a phenomenon of bygone days? Is it no longer relevant for the new time?

A classic is something that has stood the test of time. There are amazing composers in the 20th-21st centuries: Giya Kancheli in Georgia, Valentin Silverstov in Kyiv, our Odessa Lera Auerbach in America, plus a number of Moscow composers. But only time and distance will show whether their ideas and emotions were needed by subsequent generations. It takes time to put them on a par with Bach, Mozart, Beethoven.

Are there groups or individual performers in the modern pop music world that are worthy of respect?

My answer is very subjective. Pop music is not music, it is such a filling of social leisure. My life is not so great, even if I live 90 years, to waste it on nonsense.

Music is harmony, these are great musical forms, these are ingenious divine structures.

And there was always pop music - songs, dances for illiterate peasants. Once upon a time, Tolstoy played the Moonlight Sonata to the peasants, he himself wept with delight. Asks the peasants: "Do you like it?" - "Not! You taught us to tell the truth - not at all like it. - "Why?" - "Because the melody is incomprehensible, it is inconvenient to sing and it is impossible to dance to it." Here is your answer for all times.

When does the problem of fathers and children arise? When a mother cries when she hears Alla Pugacheva, because this is the music of her youth, and her daughter does not understand this at all, because, in her opinion, the star of all time is Lady Gaga.

If they both bowed over Bach, then there would be no conflict: Bach is out of time. They will have the same values.

“I was lucky with teachers and parents”

In your lectures, during concerts, you demonstrate such versatility, operate with so many facts that it becomes incomprehensible: how could you physically contain such a volume of knowledge?

I was lucky with teachers and parents. I was born in the unique city of Vitebsk. It was the city of the Russian-Jewish-Polish-Lithuanian intelligentsia, the city of Chagall, Malevich, Sollertinsky (an outstanding music and theater critic of the 20th century), Lagin (who wrote "Old Man Hottabych"). In our school, teachers called us “you”, told us very interesting things and not so much checked whether we were smart, but whether we were interested. If it is interesting, then we will remember it for the rest of our lives, and this knowledge will be useful to us.

During my childhood, those who were personally acquainted with Sollertinsky, Chagall were alive, the very atmosphere was still alive.

My parents, having been brought up in the same way, passed on to me a love of theatre, music and poetry. Every year they took me to the classical music festival in the Baltics. These are some of the most vivid memories of my childhood. My grandfather used to read King Lear to me at the age of 86.

I met wonderful people very early on and they all influenced me. All of them brought into my life not only knowledge, but also an attitude towards it, the ability to apply it.

Biographical INFO:

Mikhail Kazinik was born in Leningrad in 1951, but spent all his childhood and youth, right up to graduation from school, in Vitebsk. Violinist and poet, at the age of 15 he began to lecture on art. In Soviet times, he became a famous musicologist.

After the events of August 1991, he received Swedish citizenship, while retaining Belarusian citizenship. Constantly tours across Russia, Europe and the USA with lectures, concerts and solo performances. In the 2000s, he wrote two books about the secrets of geniuses, made 60 films on art and recorded about one and a half thousand programs that were broadcast and continue to be broadcast on the radio "Orpheus", "Silver Rain", "Voice of Russia".

Since 2004 he has been the musical expert of the Nobel Concerto. Around the same years, he became a member of the International Commission on Art, created his own educational system and began to establish his own schools in Europe and Russia.

? Since 1991, you have acquired a second citizenship - Swedish. Why did you choose to live in Sweden?

In 1991, I was on the next tour in this country. And suddenly, during my speeches, they say: “And you have a putsch in your country.” I got terribly angry and agreed to sign a long-term contract, which I had been offered for a long time. Since then, 26 years have passed.

Russia is still my country, Russian is my mother tongue. But there are several things that keep me in Sweden. There, on a completely different level than in Russia, the attitude towards art is developed. In a city of 90,000, three concert halls are filled to capacity. While in Russia, in cities with millions of people, the hall for 500 seats is more than enough.

In Sweden, despite the fact that 98% of the population are non-believers, almost everyone is brought up from childhood on the music that sounds in temples. And there are works by Bach, Handel ...

In Sweden, my art films were shown in prime time on Saturday and have been shown more than once. In Russia, the same films were shown once, and at one in the morning from Sunday to Monday. And when people began to resent, the time was shifted to three in the morning.

Why do you think a country with such a strong cultural heritage has come up with such “pop” results? What comfort answer do you find?

My answer is to create my own school, which is an absolute alternative to the existing educational system. We need to raise a new generation, educate it in a completely different way.

I created this school 10 years ago. In Russia, such schools are organized in three cities - Tyumen, Chelyabinsk and Belgorod. There are many more of them in Europe, all of Lithuania, for example, now works only according to my system.

This is a school of associative thinking, where all concepts and knowledge are interconnected. It is impossible, for example, to study the history of France in one lesson, and the geography of Africa in another, or vice versa. If you are studying the history of France, then in geography you should also study France. And French music, French poetry, painting.

And how to study? Today, when, thanks to the Internet, every student has a treasure trove of world knowledge in their homes, the teacher no longer has the right to tell the subject narrowly, according to the textbook. The teacher must have developed an aesthetic sense, the ability to think paradoxically, to convey information. To listen to you, to believe in you.

As a result, children receive the same set of knowledge and subjects as in ordinary schools. But these are other children - kind, witty, having their own view of the world, aesthetically educated, qualitatively educated. With my schools, I want to create a small counterbalance to what is happening now in the world, in particular in Russia.

The sensational story of Mikhail Kazinik about dolphins

Two famous scientists Nicole and Alexander Gratovsky invited me to a very interesting project in which they planned to make contact with the civilization of dolphins. They have been studying them for a long time and came to the conclusion that dolphins are not a special mind, but a great civilization that has had the Internet for a long time. For example, one dolphin 500 km away can send a love message to a dolphin in a flock. And she will jump for joy, while others will not understand anything. But the same dolphin can tell all dolphins that he loves her. Then everyone else jumps too. That is, what people have invented now, dolphins have existed for a long time, from nature. Therefore, it is difficult for them to communicate with us, they consider us a younger civilization, we need to establish contact. And the Gratowskis are doing it.

On the day when the whole world was going to die, because the Mayan calendar ended, we went to the open sea. Ten thousand dolphins gathered around our schooner, they climbed out of the water and greeted us. It is hard to believe!

And suddenly - an unfortunate stupidity - a special drone was connected for shooting from the air, which, like a bird of war, crackled and began to rush over the dolphins, scaring everyone away. Whatever the Gratowskis did to bring back the dolphins: they went down under the water, made some sounds - it's useless. And then they told me: “Misha, dolphins are older than us. There is only one way to bring them back - play them the music of ancient civilizations.

I have never played such a concert! I cannot tell you what kind of energy I received: ten thousand dolphins listened to me, because of which the sea was not visible! Do you know how long it took to get the pack back? Only three minutes!

James Owen

When researchers first saw something strange on the face of a dolphin in Western Australia's Shark Bay, they thought it was a massive tumor. Now they say this is the first evidence of tool culture in marine mammals.

Incomprehensible "something" turned out to be a sea sponge, torn from the seabed. Later, other bottlenose dolphins with sponges in their beaks were observed in Shark Bay, as it turned out, they used them as a tool for catching fish.

Researchers report this unusual hunting technique, invented by a single female, now passed down from mother to daughter.

Based on their results on genetic analysis, the scientists propose that the so-called "spongy" behavior represents the first known example of tool-related culture in cetaceans. Cetaceans are a group of mostly marine animals, including whales and dolphins.

The question of whether animals, like humans, are capable of culture has been hotly debated in recent decades. A growing number of researchers suggest that some animal populations do invent behaviors that are passed on to other generations.

Apart from humans, the best evidence of a particular culture - consisting of complex individual behaviors formed in local populations and transmitted further through training - is the culture of chimpanzees.

An article published in the journal Nature in 1999 summarized the results of various long-term field studies, including the work of renowned primatologist Jane Goodall. The study found significant cultural variation in wild chimpanzee populations, with 39 behavioral patterns specific to individual groups. Fifteen patterns dealt with foraging with tools, such as exploring an anthill with a stick and cracking nuts with stones.

Material Culture

New research says the use of sea sponge by bottlenose dolphins in Western Australia is best explained as a form of culture.

"We believe they use [sea sponges] to scour [the seabed] for fish," said Michael Krutzen of the Anthropological Institute of the University of Zurich and Museum in Switzerland.

"The sponges are probably used as a protective glove to protect against rockfish stings," said Krützen (rockfish are bottom-dwelling and have very venomous dorsal fins). The sponge also scares away fish hiding on the seabed. And dolphins catch prey that has already discovered itself.

This hunting tactic was almost completely limited to a small group of females and their young living in Shark Bay, and only a single male showing the same behavior. The question arose before the group of scientists was whether such behavior was acquired through social learning, which would be indicative of culture, or passed on genetically.

The researchers analyzed the mitochondrial DNA (DNA passed on by women) of 13 trained females and 172 untrained ones. They found that this trait was mostly passed down within a single family line from mother to daughter, and the learning of new tactics most likely occurred in a very recent ancestor.

"This is the first study of cultural transmission that actually looks at different modes of inheritance at both the family and population levels," Krützen said. "If this skill were encoded on the 'Y' chromosome [existing only in males], then only males would hunt in this way. If the skill is encoded on one of the non-sex chromosomes, then one would expect that males, as well as females, would use this hunting technique. But it doesn't. We rule out the possibility of genetic transmission."

Therefore, the researchers conclude, the skill of hunting with sea sponges is passed on to daughters from their mothers.

Why male offspring rarely acquire the same skill remains unclear, although scientists put forward a possible explanation: male bottlenose tend to form groups with other males, and such alliances are not suitable for foraging on the seabed, as it is a laborious and individual activity.

Dolphins and Whales

Although it is difficult to study dolphins and whales closely enough in the wild, some biologists believe that cetaceans compete with chimpanzees when it comes to culture. Hal Whitehead, a cetacean expert at Dalhous University in Nova Scotia, Canada, cites bottlenose dolphins in Laguna, Brazil as an example. These marine mammals coordinate their fishing efforts with the locals. Dolphins drive fish schools to the shore, signaling the fishermen to cast their nets. All the fish that avoid the nets go straight into the mouths of the waiting bottlenose.

"This hunting technique has been culturally passed down in both populations [in humans and dolphins] since 1847," Whitehead said.

Another proposed example of whale culture concerns killer whales that prey on seals off the coast of Argentina. Females have been observed to swoop ashore with their offspring even when no seals were around - a very dangerous hunting tactic. The mother helps the young female to return back to the sea if she is on the shore. "It looks a lot like training," Whitehead said.

The hunting songs of male humpback whales are comparable to our music charts. Whales tune their melodies in unison across the ocean.

Michael Krutzen has referred to a "cultural revolution" in Australian humpback whales "when one particularly popular song was replaced by a new one".

Crutzen added, "We're still behind primatologists, but given the necessary time and a few long-term studies, I think we'll find a lot of new examples of socially learned behavior in cetaceans. It's not for nothing that they have such a big brain."

The original article is on the site National Geographic News Photo from the site Animal Planet News

to the magazine "Man Without Borders"

Musician, art historian, director, poet, in other words, maestro Mikhail Kazinik - about what reasons made him stay in Sweden, how to defeat Harry Potter, and why it was thanks to Nikolai Gogol that Franz Kafka appeared.





Mikhail Semenovich, is life in Sweden an immigration for you?

No, you cannot apply the word "immigrant" to me. I haven't left my apartment, I haven't left my friends, I'm in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine most of the time. If we talk about the reasons why I stayed in Sweden, it was connected with the 1991 coup. When I found out about him, I got very angry and signed a contract, which at that time was offered by the Swedish side. Then I realized that Sweden is my “hut”, a house for a snail, where I can always return, relax, change my suitcases, and move on, continue my work. My wife once said that here in the West, you are a delicious cake, dessert, and in Russia, bread, food that is needed every day.

What made you angry putsch?

When perestroika began, I suddenly suddenly believed, a terrible idealist, nothing can be done, that finally there will be no obstacles and I will be able to fully engage in my business - educating free people through culture and art. I wrote a book: "A Short Course in Scientific Anti-Communism." In it, I tried in a humorous way to explain how we got to such a life. The book turned out to be strong, they decided to publish it, though not in Moscow, but at Krasnodar University, and this just coincided with the August events. I call there, I ask: “Did you print the circulation?”. And they answer me: “Have you ever seen half a million books burn?” They pulled out the circulation from the printing house and kindled a fire right in the yard, and they did it themselves, no officials intervened. Then I heard on the phone: “Mikhail Semyonovich, they, that is, the communists, have returned forever, and you will return from Sweden in two days, they won’t even bring you to a paddy wagon, they’ll tear you apart on the way.” And this story annoyed me, didn’t frighten me, no, it just annoyed me.

Western countries and Russia, is there a significant difference between them?

Any country that has achieved success in the economy, science, social policy differs from Russia in that its inhabitants know how to laugh at themselves. They have no taboo on humor, they can laugh at death, God, their past. And this is very important, because humanity must part with its past with humor, and if you part with it without a smile, then the past comes again and becomes the present, and then the future. I will say more, a sense of humor is an intellectual phenomenon, one of the functions of elite thinking. In addition, the ability to laugh at oneself is the first sign of the survival of any nation.

Is modern Belarus somehow different from Russia?

I have two citizenships, including Belarusian, which, by the way, allows me to travel to Russia and other neighboring states. If you do not touch on politics, then I feel comfortable in Belarus. Roads have been built there, it is clean and, figuratively speaking, it is closer to an “ideal anthill” than Russia.

Which of the former socialist republics left the Soviet Union furthest?

Of course, Estonia.

But not the whole Baltic?

Perhaps all, but to varying degrees. There are very smart people in Lithuania, very tenacious. If we talk about Latvia, then I go there most often: in Riga every year the so-called “Days of Kazinik” are held. In my opinion, they have a very good attitude towards culture, not the same as it was during the Soviet Union.

What goals did you pursue when speaking before our Federation Council?

In the course of only one nineteenth century, Russia took God by the beard and we created great music, painting, literature and poetry. Culture is exactly what makes us great, but we now have it completely in the pen and oblivion. We gave the world a great culture, but we ourselves did not use it. I wanted the Russian senators to understand that culture should come first. After all, it affects everything, even life expectancy. Because a person of culture lives in several dimensions, he can leave the ordinary and painful world, into a living and bright world, where he improves his health. If you deeply read Pushkin and Shakespeare, listen to the music of Mozart and Shostakovich, genetics is corrected, and your body and spirit feel in harmony.

Was there any effect, did the senators hear you?

No, there was no effect, moreover, in a few weeks the State Duma halved the funds that were planned in the country's budget for culture. To be honest, Valentina Matvienko invited me to the Federation Council because of the dolphin story, but I did not agree “only about dolphins”, and asked to increase the time of my speech. I also asked for deputies of the lower house of parliament to be present in the hall, but I was told that they had other plans. So the State Duma did not hear my speech, and indeed after a while it cut the budget for culture, which, by the way, affected me too, because my program on the Orpheus radio was closed. It sounded throughout the Russian-speaking world, and helped people not to lose touch with their cultural homeland. Alas, but the deputies do not understand this.

It's hard to realize that deputies and senators are dumber than dolphins, don't you agree?

Dolphin civilization is ancient and they very skillfully build their lives. In general, from the point of view of society, we are dumber than ants. Because there is no drunken ant, there is no ant that kills its comrade. And they do not have interruptions in most issues, which for us often constitute a whole problem. Just because they don't listen to Bach doesn't mean they're stupid, it just means they have different values. Then, we do not know what they are listening to, maybe they have a direct connection with the Cosmos and they do not need any Bach. In general, people are used to evaluating any living thing on earth, from the point of view, “do they do it like we do?”. This is wrong, this is not the way to treat the world around us.

How should parents behave if they are trying to give something to their children, say, in the field of literature, and Harry Potter still wins?

Apparently, I can do something that Harry Potter does not win. When children come to my creative academies with their parents, the parents who take teenagers with them record tremendous changes in their behavior, up to the fact that avatars on social networks change. Children play musical instruments, immerse themselves in poetry, and show their creative abilities. If Harry Potter wins over the parents, then they are doing something wrong, they are missing something. Sometimes there just isn’t enough time, everyone’s busy, but I know for sure that most children, especially in adolescence, they are taken, they make contact, they suddenly start to like classical music and literature, and they don’t understand how, literally just now, they were reading Harry Potter and listening to the rapper Pharaoh. Why did I once say that give me ten minutes a day on the central channel in prime time, and I will change the country for you? Because ten minutes of goodness can overpower many hours of screaming, aggression and hatred. Unfortunately, I still don't have those ten minutes.

There is a herd instinct, the majority will soak up aggression and hatred through the TV, right?

Let's see how this happens in animals. There are a lot of examples when a tiger attacks a buffalo, and a buffalo rebuffs it, and a herd of its relatives suddenly suddenly realizes that together they can defeat a tiger and trample it so that nothing remains of the tiger. A lot of these ancient instincts have remained in man, so it is possible to translate an entire country, or countries, or even part of the planet into the light of culture, the light of art, poetry, music and literature.

I would like to dwell on literature in more detail: you claim that Franz Kafka appeared thanks to Nikolai Gogol, please connect these two writers in my head, what do they have in common?

Still, it’s simple, well, what are you, re-read Gogol’s “Nose” first, and then Kafka’s “Transformation”, everything will immediately connect in your head. Franz Kafka continues Gogol's experiment, only in a bolder form. But, thanks to Gogol, not only Kafka appeared, but the entire Latin American novel, from Gogol grew, as it is called, the literature of the stream of consciousness. Nikolai Gogol, and the undeservedly underestimated Nikolai Leskov, they are the only polystylists of Russian literature. Of course, I will not go against the current and will not argue that Tolstoy and Dostoevsky are bad writers, no, they are great writers, but they have major shortcomings: Lev Nikolayevich lacks eroticism or sensuality, he explains all the time, like this well, like this bad, but Fedor Mikhailovich sees no way out, he pushes the heroes together and as a result everyone loses. And, no less important, both have little sense of humor. Agree, this approach is not suitable for the twenty-first century. And of course, one cannot ignore Chekhov, because thanks to him the whole theater of the absurd appeared. In our schools they pass it in such a way that children will definitely never read it, but in fact, Anton Pavlovich is one of the most encrypted playwrights that exists.

Nikolai Gogol is now being translated into Ukrainian, does this mean that Russia has completely parted ways with Ukraine, or is there a chance that in fifty years we will reconcile?

Fifty years later, much heals. Who would have thought during the Second World War that the Jews, whose final question was going to be solved by Adolf Hitler, would move to Germany, escaping from the same Soviet Union? At the same time, some Jews did not understand how it was possible to move to Germany only forty years after the Holocaust, genocide and death furnaces, while others calmly traveled and were glad that they would now live in a civilized country. Such processes took place in the first and second half of the last century, but today it is the twenty-first century, and there has been an incredible acceleration. Therefore, it is quite possible that Russians and Ukrainians will come to their senses and remember that they are brothers, a little earlier than in fifty years.

Why do conflicts like this happen?

From a lack of education. The trouble with people is that if they know something, they know incorrectly, inaccurately. Do you know who the best believer is? This is Grandma Manya, who can't read at all. The second, in terms of faith, is a person who has not seen anything but the Bible, and the third one is someone who has not read Immanuel Kant. I hope everyone will understand the phrase correctly and I will not be attracted to Russia for insulting the feelings of believers.