Nowadays, Veniamin Smekhov is sure, everything is bought and sold, including awards. It was necessary to give “tchotchkes” even in youth, and immediately to the entire troupe of the Taganka Theater. But Soviet officials followed politics, not art. Therefore, those who share the point of view of the screen star were not surprised when, on his 70th birthday, he refused to accept the title of People's Artist of Russia.

Childhood and youth

Veniamin Borisovich was born in August 1940, and is Jewish by nationality. His father is a Doctor of Economics, his mother was the head of a department at a Moscow clinic.

In junior school, Smekhov began attending the drama club of the Palace of Pioneers, which he supervised. After graduating from school, he entered the Shchukin Theater School. A year later, the head of the course transferred the too timid Veniamin to a volunteer student with a probationary period, but soon enrolled him back with the highest grade for acting.

He played several roles in Sovremennik, and in 1987 he returned to Taganka.

Movies

The first item in Smekhov’s filmography appeared back in 1968 - the cult war drama “Two Comrades Served.” All-Union fame, crowds of fans and bags of letters to the actor were ensured by “The Three Musketeers” and the role of the sad philosopher.

Veniamin Borisovich returned to this image in 1992, starring in a sequel called “The Musketeers 20 Years Later.” This film was also shot with the same star cast - ,. In "Return of the Musketeers" they were joined by.

Veniamin’s embodiment of the heroes of the parable “Seven Screams in the Ocean”, the detective story “Trap for a Lonely Man”, the TV series “Montecristo” and “Furtseva”, and the comedy “The Toy Seller” is considered successful. The actor appeared in the melodrama “Balzac's age, or All men are theirs...”, in which his daughter shone.

In "Marriage in Russian" his on-screen daughter became. In the crime film Bones, a Russian adaptation of the American series of the same name starring David Boreanaz, Smekhov played the head of a research laboratory. Father and son Victor and Ivan Merezhko entrusted their friend to play a negative role in the film “Princess Lyagushkina”.

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Veniamin Smekhov and Igor Vernik

However, acting did not satisfy all of Veniamin’s ambitions, and in the 90s he began a directing and teaching career. His dramatic productions and operas are known not only in Russia, but also in Israel, the Czech Republic, Germany and France. Coming home, Smekhov appears on the stage of his native theater, but only in performances in the creation of which he himself had a hand.

Veniamin Borisovich writes books. The first, “The Servant of the Muses does not tolerate fuss,” was published in 1976. Several collections of poetry, prose, and memoirs followed. The artist fulfilled his parents’ dream of seeing him as a writer and journalist. Among the works there are memories of his friend Vladimir Vysotsky. A series of documentaries were made from the “Golden Age of Taganka”.

In 2015, Smekhov participated in online readings of the works “Chekhov Lives” and “War and Peace. Reading the novel”, in 2016 he became a participant in Google readings of the novel “The Master and Margarita. I was there".

Personal life

The actor first got married when he was just over 20. His wife Alla studied at the food institute, but did not work in her specialty and got a job as a radio editor. In this marriage, Benjamin had two children. Elena and Alika are creative personalities: the first is a writer, the second is an actress and singer.

Leonid, Lena's son and eldest grandson, is a candidate of philological sciences and teaches at the State Humanitarian University. Alika's sons, Artyom and Makar, bear their grandfather's surname. The youngest, according to his mother, does not have a middle name. The eldest, understanding how it can hurt his brother, does not utter the word “dad”, even when meeting with his own parent.

My father considers it a blessing to be on the same stage with Alika. The family duo has behind them many theatrical performances, including the musical and poetic program “Twelve Months of Tango” and the play “The Reluctant Doctor.”

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Veniamin Smekhov and wife Galina Aksenova

Smekhov's personal life changed in 1980. Then, after a painful divorce from Alla, film critic Galina Aksenova became his wife. She is a candidate of art history and associate professor at the Moscow Art Theater School.

A representative man (height 186 cm, weight 90 kg) does not intend to give in to the years. Although Veniamin Borisovich believes that as an actor he has already said everything, he would not refuse to work with outstanding directors of our time. Nikita Mikhalkov, Alexey Uchitel and

Four years ago, Veniamin Smekhov refused the title of People's Artist of the Russian Federation, offered to him for his 70th anniversary. He generally doesn’t like to talk about this, but once explained his action this way: “I like that Pushkin was not a member of the Writers’ Union, and Vysotsky was not awarded either, by the way. But this is a personal matter, we will not blame anyone. "They like tchotchkes, but some just like their own name."

Veniamin Smekhov’s own name is associated with the honor and dignity also inherent in one of his main screen characters - Athos from the truly popular film “D’Artagnan and the Three Musketeers”. He calls himself an actor, director, writer and traveler. After parting with the Taganka Theater, where he played dozens of roles, including in the production of “The Master and Margarita,” thanks to which the audience called him “the first Woland of Russia,” he often tours with performances and creative evenings, hosts television programs, writes prose , poems, memoirs. And he looks at life through the prism of sad irony - as a person who understands everything in this imperfect world. That’s why he tries to “correct” it with his creativity.

Today I live between two phrases of the great Russian poets: “You need to understand that everything is lost, and then you’re not afraid” by Tsvetaeva and “You need to live long in Russia” by Akhmatova...

Veniamin Borisovich, the topic of relations between Russia and Ukraine today is so painful that many people avoid it - so as not to quarrel with friends or for security reasons. Do you mind if we talk about this today?

Firstly, I am not a politician, my profession is an actor. As my hero says in the play “The Master and Margarita,” “each department should mind its own business.” Secondly, recently I have stopped trusting the media. Often our media are confident and shameless in their questions: “Do you believe in God?”, “Are you a patriot, do you support what is happening in the Kremlin?”, “How are you and your wife?” In such cases, I would like to answer this way: as a private person, I am not obliged to confess, even to very respected journalists.

It's clear. So, we will talk about universal human values. True, relations between Russia and Ukraine lie in the plane of this topic too... You were friends with Vladimir Vysotsky. How would he react to today's events?

I think he would act according to honor, as always. But I can't speak for him. Vladimir Semenovich would probably be happy to read the lines of the wonderful poet Sergei Gandlevsky: “They tore at the throat for freedom of speech, as if there was something to say, but sonnet 66 cannot be shouted down.” I have now plunged into Shakespeare’s 66th sonnet, which is in tune with our today’s anxieties - for Russia, and for Israel, and especially for Ukraine. By the way, four years ago in Donetsk I performed in the same hall as Volodya once did. They told me that he was angry with me because I didn’t go with him to Donetsk, which he loved, but I couldn’t do it then, I had filming. So, once I was in Donetsk, I started my speech with this and asked: “Who remembers that concert of Vladimir Vysotsky?” I burst into tears when the hands of elderly people flew up. And from the stage I read poems by Vysotsky, which he once wrote for miners:

We sat and drank Madeira, Starka, St. John's wort,
And suddenly we are all called to the slaughter - every single one!
We have a Stakhanovite, a Gaganite, a Zagladovite, and it’s necessary,
So that it’s him that gets overwhelmed...

- “If we dig it up, he’ll start fulfilling the three norms again, he’ll start giving the country coal - and we’ll have a khan!” It's called "An Incident at the Mine". People in Donbass loved this song very much.

But in Gorbachev’s times, the first who began to demand justice were the miners. As far as I know, in recent years they had meager salaries, but they continued to work hard. Those who are lower are always the losers... However, this is politics again, and I hate it. I went through personal trials in the 1950s-80s, and a few days ago I told a friend, one of our most ardent human rights activists, recounting the then fears of threats and reprisals, that my generation today is protected by a previous era of hopelessness. This was the era of ideological arrests: Andrei Sinyavsky, Yuliy Daniel, Alexander Ginzburg... It was a time of bitter misfortune in the city of Gorky, where Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov languished in exile. And then, in 1984, Yuri Lyubimov was expelled from the country, several actors of the Taganka Theater were followed by a KGB car, one of the main dirty tricks - the leaders of Soviet culture, who controlled the fate of theaters and people, told me to my face what awaited me. Everything is over. Today I live between two phrases of the great Russian poets: “You need to understand that everything is lost, and then you’re not afraid” by Tsvetaeva and “You need to live long in Russia” by Akhmatova...

Stop talking about right and wrong! For God's sake, stop the bloody play!

- Do you want to say that there have been worse times than today?

Sorry, what I wanted, I already said. There is a war going on, and it doesn’t matter whether it is called war or not. It concerns two historically native countries. Countries are beautiful, but all states and authorities are fatally sinful before their people. The rift between our countries runs through human destinies, through families, through friendship. But, I am sure, the script of life is written much higher than us.

Are you talking about high officials who control people’s destinies under the Kremlin stars or about the heights of heaven?

Once in Bonn, my wife and I had the opportunity to listen to a lecture by Karamzin of our time, the historian Nathan Eidelman. This was the time when the “Iron Curtain” had just fallen and the wind of great hope blew across the USSR. I received a visa to Germany, where I had concerts (I couldn’t even dream of this before). And so, surrounded by wonderful people - dissident and writer Lev Kopelev, his wife Raisa Orlova, artist Boris Birger - we listened to Nathan Eidelman's readings for historians from different countries. It was December 1988. They discussed the Jewish question, the Crimean Tatar, the war in Afghanistan, asked about Sakharov, who had recently been released - in a word, they talked about everything that was of keen interest to the world community. Eidelman answered these questions like a truly great historian. I remembered the Karamzin times, Radishchev, who was arrested for the book “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow,” Chaadaev, who was declared crazy for his works, and in general this entire axis between the state and the people. Eidelman managed to satisfy the curiosity of most scientists. But there were also those dissatisfied with the “caution” of the Soviet historian, someone wanted him to certainly “shoot” at the Kremlin and at Lenin’s mausoleum, but he was simply a Russian historian and Jewish sage and remembered the words of Ecclesiastes: “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity... Rod passes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever... The sun rises, and the sun sets, and hastens to its place where it rises...”

- Today's events will also go down in history - as an example of a cruel and, most importantly, senseless war...

- All our peoples need today is a ceasefire at any cost. Some leader must take the first step. I'm sure everything will end well. After all, we, like you, have centuries-old black soil of goodness and culture. Good, of course, will win... For detente: I figured out what was the mistake of the economic policy of the Soviet state. The fact that they took away the good from the kulaks. And “good must come with fists.”

A witty but historically sad joke. Karamzin, Radishchev, Chaadaev, Ginzburg, Sinyavsky and Daniel, Sakharov - You mention the names of those who led Russia to freedom. Ukraine is also trying with all its might to gain freedom. But why doesn’t Russia, which has such a strong heritage of free-thinking, strive for freedom today?

Don't generalize, please! I see and know a Russia in which, to use the words of the poet Dmitry Prigov, there are many “meaningful” citizens and good deeds. And the powers that be have those who put fear in people, but there are others who fear for our own troubles: for the poverty of millions, for dying cities and villages, for poor medicine, for the unreliability of the police, for homeless children and for much more. other.

The poetic performance based on the poems of Yevgeny Yevtushenko “No Years,” with whom you have traveled to more than one country, included the poem “Tanks are moving through Prague” about the events of 1968, when the USSR intervened in the affairs of another country. This shame still haunts many former Soviet people of conscience. Almost half a century later, Russia, as the true successor of the USSR, is trying to crush Ukrainian freedom with tank tracks, without sparing its soldiers, who are being taken home from Donbass “with a load of 200.” But many Russian poets are still silent about this...

Poets are not silent... I believe that this nightmare must be stopped at the human level. This is what I want, my wife, my children, the people with whom I am friends, because whoever kills a person kills me. I hear about facts of boundless cruelty on both sides, I am horrified by the outbursts of mutual hatred... I repeat, I don’t understand politics, but I understand culture. Culture is a parallel Russia.

But despite all the laws of geometry, it still intersects with politics. For a concert for displaced people in Donbass, Andrei Makarevich was accused of treason against his homeland...

I know that Andrei Makarevich, an honest man and a brilliant musician, came there not for a fee, but to support the unfortunate people who survived the war. I belong to the last generation of those who survived the war, I remember the evacuation, hunger, childhood without my father, because he fought. On behalf of all those who are forever wounded by the Second World War, I am ready to shout, not in interviews, but in life: stop talking about right and wrong! For God's sake, stop the bloody play! Peace at any cost, at any cost!

You told how, together with Vladimir Vysotsky and Ivan Dykhovichny, many years ago you opened the Mlyn restaurant near Kiev. You were probably treated to Ukrainian borscht with donuts there. But it is now difficult to find Ukrainian borscht in other Moscow restaurants. More precisely, borscht is served to visitors, but in the menu it is coded as “Russian soup”. Would you say that cooking is also outside of politics?

You are again generalizing, and I would even say, giving incorrect information. The popular restaurant “Pushkin” on Tverskoy Boulevard boldly serves fraternal borscht. And we, if you like, as a sign of protest on the eve of September 1, in Alika Smekhova’s house, seeing off my grandchildren, first-grader Makar and ninth-grader Artem, on the harsh school journey, our family celebrated this fact with Ukrainian borscht.

You are friends with the amazing clown Vyacheslav Polunin, thanks to whose art the world is becoming brighter and kinder. Could they ask him to send a personal invitation to a performance to one big man of short stature, so that he, too, would become kinder and stop the war in Ukraine?

I don’t know whether politicians are subject to the miracle that Slava Polunin creates, but when in “The Snow Show” he walks along the backs of chairs, people always stretch out their hands towards him. In England, which is considered the birthplace of clownery, he was called the best clown in the world. But, speaking at the Casino de Paris in Paris, he was worried about how the arrogant French would receive him... You see, we are generalizing again, but this cannot be done... It turned out that the French are no worse than us and the British. All over the world, at Slava Polunin’s performances, audiences become children, returning to this wonderful, benevolent state. And I will convey your request to him, I promise. Although the already mentioned favorite phrase of my favorite hero, Bulgakov’s Woland, remains in force: “Each department should mind its own business.”

The famous artist told which directors’ films he chooses, how good an actress his daughter Alika is, and why Slava Polunin will be able to raise the St. Petersburg circus from his knees

Photo: Tatiana PODYABLONSKAYA

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Veniamin Borisovich is a principled artist: he is not sensitive to yellowness, no matter where he acts. Komsomolskaya Pravda talked to the actor about the situation in the cinema.

- Veniamin Borisovich, why don’t you act much now? We rarely see you on TV.

What can you see there now? In general, there is little information about good performances and films. I don’t strive to be in every film: I can afford to refuse the bad - a bad role and a bad company, twice a TV series. I can star in a four-part film like “Suggested Circumstances,” where Marina Neyolova also played. Over the past seven years, I think I have starred in 10 films. Now four films with me will be released in a row. For example, "The Toy Salesman" is very funny.

- Which of the latest Russian films can you praise, they say, a wonderful film, it’s a pity I didn’t play there?

You should ask my wife, she is a film expert. They say that the film “Intimate Parts” is a breakthrough, there is a lot of interesting stuff there, but I haven’t seen it. For me, one of my favorite directors is Pavel Lungin. I watched his “Wedding” four times. Andrey Smirnov is a wonderful director. I'm talking about the classics. But there are also many young good directors. I love the film “Playing the Victim” by Kirill Serebrennikov. His last film, “Betrayal,” is not his best film. But I still found it interesting to watch. Everything good is not done for money. Well, and, of course, Yuri Grymov and Alexey Uchitel are just gift names of today's cinematography. Sometimes I end up filming with people who churn out nightmares and mutilate their language. But I am pleased that through my experience I have earned the exclusive right to change the text in the script. For example, the series “Monte Cristo” - I’m proud of it. It is a remake of the 2006 Mexican TV series and a loose adaptation of the novel by Alexandre Dumas. But I’m happy that Yuliy Kim, whom I adore, admitted that he was hooked on this series. He said that the charm of the company is good intellectual actors.

- Do you watch the films in which your daughter Alika stars? With an appraising, critical eye?

Well, yes. She's a good artist. I ordered my daughter not to become an actor. But if a person does something in defiance, then something good will come out of him. And talking about films... “All men are theirs”... I’m not very attentive. Besides, being ignorant about cinema, there is not enough time to watch many films. But you know, 20 years ago they also talked about good films - rubbish, nonsense.

- Alika doesn’t call: dad, watch this movie?

Necessarily. If I have time, I press the TV button and watch. She is great, she copes with a very difficult burden today - preserving humanity in art.

- You once refused the title of People's Artist. Have you changed your mind now?

No, I haven't changed my mind. It’s just that today everything can be bought. But it’s not valuable to me. When they were supposed to give it to us, then we were prohibited at Taganka for political reasons. Then trouble happened - Lyubimov was expelled. And no more talk about titles and so on. And then, on the contrary, the time came when I was forced to agree, because all the young people had long been honored and people’s people, but I was not. But Ulyanov and Lavrov said: let’s give up these Soviet tricks. And they even stopped calling themselves folk artists. I liked it so much. It was a long time ago. And now they wanted to give me a title for my anniversary. But my wife knows me well, she explained to an important person that I would be offended. I do not need. Ecclisiast famously said: a good name is more valuable than a ringing suit. Vysotsky was posthumously awarded the State Prize laureate. Pushkin was posthumously recognized.

- Which of your contemporaries can you point out as worth emulating?

Polunin. He ended up in Chicago when I was directing The Naked King there. I saw the daily life of this brilliant man, and then followed his movements. In London, the capital of clownery, he was named number one, but he continues to do something, invent something, he can’t sit still. Now he went to St. Petersburg to run the circus, which had not been there for a long time, which was in an ownerless state, everything there was decrepit and dying. But people protested, holding on to their meager salaries. Why? So you will have to work!

Almost all famous actors have a role for which they are recognized everywhere. Veniamin Smekhov’s signature role, undoubtedly, is the role of the sadly mysterious Athos in the legendary musical film “D’Artagnan and the Three Musketeers.”

But Smekhov is not offended by fate for this role, because thanks to Dumas’s hero he became beloved by the whole country. Although, of course, in his creative life, as he admits, there were more significant works. For example, the role of Woland, which he played for several decades in Yuri Lyubimov’s production of “The Master and Margarita” at the Taganka Theater. He also considers the musical play “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” to be his success, in which he became the author of the poems and script. In Krasnoyarsk, the famous actor performed in a new role for his fans: as a reader. In the program “I came to you with poems” performed by Smekhov, accompanied by the Krasnoyarsk Philharmonic Orchestra named after A. Bardin, the poetry of Pushkin, Nekrasov, Mayakovsky, Yesenin, Gumilyov, Mezhirov, Vizbor was heard. On the eve of the concert we met with Veniamin Borisovich.

- In your opinion, what happened to Taganka, why did the conflict arise between Yuri Lyubimov and the troupe?

I am not inclined to comment on this because the situation is similar to a family one. Of course, I can say something about the Taganka theater. This theater is my luck in life. Lyubimov is a great artist, and I consider him my teacher. The play “Anti-Worlds” based on Andrei Voznesensky - the discovery of Yuri Lyubimov - laid the foundation for poetic performance in Russia. Now there is a lot of this, and not only in our country. But Antiworlds were the first. And I'm glad that I was among the pioneers. This was the same Taganka, which can be described as a unique phenomenon. But such special stages in the life of the theater are short-lived. Nemirovich-Danchenko once said: “The life of the theater is fifteen years.” Taganka set a record here too. We lived for twenty years. In 1984, when Lyubimov’s forced emigration occurred, the wonderful stay of this theater in Russian culture actually ended. Now Taganka is just one of many theaters in the country. There are very worthy and interesting things there, but the uniqueness is gone. Although it’s not for me to judge this - I completed my story with Taganka in 1998. But even before that, for about ten years I served not only with Lyubimov, but also staged plays myself and was involved in television projects. Only occasionally did he return to the theater to play Woland in the play “The Master and Margarita”. So my Taganka, about which I can speak competently, no longer exists. I wrote about my theater in the book “The Golden Age of Taganka,” which was published recently.

- That is, nothing connects you with Taganka today?

No, it connects - a new project that we are preparing with Valery Zolotukhin, the current artistic director of the theater. I have always been interested in combining literature and acting. Today, with a break from a tour in Krasnoyarsk and Paris, I am rehearsing the play “No Years,” which I named after the lines of a wonderful poem by Yevtushenko. Zolotukhin, myself, and many young people are participating in it. The leader of the sixties, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, suggested that I take on the production. I read the script based on Yevtushenko for the Taganka Theater actors who wanted to take part in the play. Today, unfortunately, not everyone wants to work on stage. As they explained to me, when actors see their name on the notice board, crossed off from the list of those involved in the play, they exhale with relief.

- Why?

Because working in the theater distracts from TV series, earning money on the side, and so on.

- And for what reason did you leave the repertory theater?

I didn’t leave on purpose, it just happened that way. This is connected with different moments of my life: good and terrible. In my acting life there have been both victories and disappointments. The moment came when Borovsky, Filatov and Shapovalov and I left the theater. Apparently, the stage has been passed.
It seems to me that, most likely, I was born a writer, but along the way I turned into two theater institutes and got stuck in acting for the rest of my life. But I always loved the word, for me it is the beginning of all beginnings, I believe that it was not for nothing that God gave us the music of Russian speech. I left acting, I was disappointed in myself, but the word was always with me. I wrote books, did productions abroad and on television. In addition, I have my own small corporate event called “Me and My Wife.” And this corporation is connected not only by love and a long life together, we also help each other in our work. I am Galya Aksenova, she is me. We have many joint projects.
By the way, do you know why Krasnoyarsk has always attracted me? One of the heroes of the Krasnoyarsk hydroelectric power station was Gennady Mikhailovich Aksyonov, an outstanding power engineer who received the highest orders and titles. This is my father-in-law, the father of my wife Glasha. Another thread that connects me with your city, my friend is the bard, writer, actor, journalist, screenwriter Yuri Vizbor, who burned for the word Yenisei in the song. Remember: “We also make rockets and blocked the Yenisei...”? He was not allowed to perform this song. In general, he was banned as a performer, but allowed as a screenwriter. This could only happen in our country.

- “Ahead lies a rocky ridge, a river flows behind - Time. If I were getting ready to go on a long journey, I would call Venya Smekhov,” Vizbor dedicated these lines to you. What did this friendship mean to you?

Our relationship began with my love for his songs. We were introduced by Borya Khmelnitsky, who starred with Vizbor in “The Red Tent” and sang his songs at the piano... Yura and I became so close that at some point he helped me make a fateful decision: I started a new family. I have a wonderful and respectful attitude towards both sides of the globe of my life, but I am still grateful to Yura that he prompted me to take a step towards my current half, Gala Aksenova. This happiness has already lasted thirty-four years, and my wife and I sometimes do not forget to look into the heavens and say thank you to Yuri Iosifovich. Friendship, in my opinion, is an indissoluble concept, fundamental in the Russian mentality. It is a pity that today the word “friendship” has been damaged, but I am sure that it will not disappear from our lives.
When Vizbor died, I could not listen to his songs for a long time, because tears were constantly flowing from his eyes. When he sang, it seemed like he was telling something personally into your ear. A surprise for us, his friends, who considered his work very intimate, was that even after many years - he left in 1984 - Vizbor is remembered, loved and known. Undoubtedly, he is one of the kings, part of the holy army of Bulat Okudzhava. Like Vysotsky, who today has become the ruler of souls. Although Vladimir Semyonovich and I worked together in the theater for sixteen years, sat together at the table and even confessed our love and friendship to each other, I always felt a certain distance, a border between us. Therefore, unlike Vizbor, I would not call Vysotsky my friend.

- Is it true that you refused the title of People's Artist?

The Internet lies a lot. In 2010, when I turned 70, someone wrote on the Internet that I was forcibly awarded the title of People's Artist of Russia, but for some reason I refused. This is nonsense. Most likely, this is where the legs of this story grow from. During perestroika, the acting union was headed by Mikhail Ulyanov and Kirill Lavrov. These two figures in Russian art proposed to abandon all these Soviet trinkets - titles and awards. Because these were handouts from the regime, nothing more. I agreed with them. And just at this time I was nominated for the title of People's Artist. It was necessary to fill out forms and sign something. And I simply didn’t do it, deciding that I had already earned favor with myself through hard work and accidents of fate. Because Ecclesiastes says: “A good name is more important than a ringing suit.” By the way, when I was filming Monte Cristo, I was probably the only artist without a title, and around me there were young comrades who already had the prefix “honored” or “national”. But everyone has their own destiny. Zolotukhin, when today’s story with the production of Yevtushenko began, he was very surprised that I did not have a title.

If you came to our city with poems, I want to ask this question. Many actors have read and read poetry from the stage, but among them there are those who do it in a special way, so that it is remembered and remains with you forever. Who is your role model in this matter?

Among the ideals is undoubtedly Zinovy ​​Efimovich Gerdt. He and I worked with the great animator David Cherkassky in “Captain Vrungel” (I voiced the Admiral, and Gerdt voiced Vrungel). I took a volume of Pasternak with me to the filming. We were sitting in the room and Zyamochka said: “Well, Venechka, start something.” I flipped through a few pages and started reading. He turned to the wall and continued the poem from memory. This, of course, was a miracle. A small episode reveals everything big in my life. Here we are again back to literature, the Russian language. Reading poetry is a school not only in reading and familiarization with the culture of the language, but also in life. In my personal life, I consider Zinovy ​​Gerdt, Igor Kvasha, and Sergei Yursky as teachers.

- Lately you have been performing in tandem quite often with your daughter Alika.

She makes me very happy. Creatively, things are going very well for her now. We currently have two joint projects. The first is the musical and literary performance “Twelve Months of Tango”, where my texts after “Ali Baba” are the second success in life. The second performance is “An Old-Fashioned Confession”, which also features a lot of music and beautiful poetry.

Times don't choose

Veniamin SMEKHOV: “On behalf of everyone who is forever wounded by the Second World War, I am ready to shout, not in interviews, but in life: stop talking about right and wrong, for God’s sake, stop the bloody play! Peace at any cost, at any cost!

Russian actor, director and writer Veniamin Smekhov, in an interview with the online publication GORDON, spoke about what he thinks about Russia’s war with Ukraine, why he stopped trusting the media and why Vladimir Vysotsky was angry with him

Four years ago, Veniamin Smekhov refused the title of People's Artist of the Russian Federation, offered to him for his 70th anniversary. He actually doesn’t like to talk about this, but once explained his action this way: “I like that Pushkin was not a member of the Writers’ Union, and Vysotsky was not awarded either, by the way. But this is a personal matter, we will not blame anyone. Some people like tchotchkes, and some just like their own name.”

Veniamin Smekhov’s own name is associated with the honor and dignity also inherent in one of his main screen characters - Athos from the truly popular film “D’Artagnan and the Three Musketeers”. He calls himself an actor, director, writer and traveler. After parting with the Taganka Theater, where he played dozens of roles, including in the production of “The Master and Margarita,” thanks to which the audience called him “the first Woland of Russia,” he often tours with performances and creative evenings, hosts television programs, writes prose , poems, memoirs. And he looks at life through the prism of sad irony - as a person who understands everything in this imperfect world. That’s why he tries to “correct” it with his creativity.

— Veniamin Borisovich, the topic of relations between Russia and Ukraine today is so painful that many avoid it - so as not to quarrel with friends or for security reasons. Do you mind if we talk about exactly this today?

— Firstly, I am not a politician, my profession is an actor. As my hero says in the play “The Master and Margarita,” “each department should mind its own business.” Secondly, recently I have stopped trusting the media. Often our media are confident and shameless in their questions: “Do you believe in God?”, “Are you a patriot, do you support what is happening in the Kremlin?”, “What about you and your wife?” As a private person, I am not obliged to confess, even to very respected journalists.

- So, we will talk about universal human values. True, relations between Russia and Ukraine lie in the plane of this topic too... You were friends with Vladimir Vysotsky. How would he react to today's events?

“I think he would act honorably, as always.” But I can't speak for him. Vladimir Semenovich would probably be happy to read the lines of the wonderful poet Sergei Gandlevsky: “They tore at the throat for freedom of speech, as if there was something to say, but sonnet 66 cannot be shouted down.” I have now plunged into Shakespeare’s 66th sonnet, which is in tune with our today’s anxieties - for Russia, and for Israel, and especially for Ukraine.

By the way, four years ago in Donetsk I performed in the same hall as Volodya once did. They told me that he was angry with me because I didn’t go with him to Donetsk, which he loved, but I couldn’t do it then, I had filming. So, once I was in Donetsk, I started my speech with this and asked: “Who remembers that concert of Vladimir Vysotsky?” I burst into tears when the hands of elderly people flew up. And from the stage I read poems by Vysotsky, which he once wrote for miners:

We sat and drank Madeira,
starku, St. John's wort,
And suddenly we are all called to the slaughter -
up to one!
We have a Stakhanovite, a Gaganite,
Zagladovets,
And it’s necessary for it to fail
exactly him...

- “If we dig it up, he’ll start fulfilling the three norms again, he’ll start giving the country coal - and we’ll have a khan!” It's called "An Incident at the Mine". People in Donbass loved this song very much.

“But in Gorbachev’s times, the first who began to demand justice were the miners. As far as I know, in recent years they had meager salaries, but they continued to work hard. Those who are lower are always the losers... However, this is politics again, and I hate it.

I went through personal trials in the 1950s-1980s and a few days ago I told a friend, one of our most ardent human rights activists, recounting the then fears of threats and reprisals, that my generation today is protected by a previous era of hopelessness. This was the era of ideological arrests: Andrei Sinyavsky, Yuliy Daniel, Alexander Ginzburg... It was a time of bitter misfortune in the city of Gorky, where Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov was imprisoned in exile. And then, in 1984, Yuri Lyubimov was expelled from the country, several actors of the Taganka Theater were followed by a KGB car, one of the main dirty tricks - the leaders of Soviet culture, who controlled the fate of theaters and people, told me to my face what awaited me. Everything is over. Today I live between two phrases of the great Russian poets: “You need to understand that everything is lost, and then you’re not afraid” by Tsvetaeva and “You need to live long in Russia” by Akhmatova...

— Are you saying that there have been worse times than today?

“There is a war going on, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s called a war or not.” It concerns two historically native countries. Countries are beautiful, but all states and authorities are fatally sinful before their people. The rift between our countries runs through human destinies, through families, through friendship. But, I am sure, the script of life is written much higher than us.

— Are you talking about high officials who control people’s destinies under the Kremlin stars, or about the heights of heaven?

“Once in Bonn, my wife and I had the opportunity to listen to a lecture by Karamzin of our time, the historian Nathan Eidelman. This was the time when the Iron Curtain had just fallen and the wind of great hope blew across the USSR. I received a visa to Germany, where I had concerts (I could not even dream of this before), and surrounded by wonderful people - dissident and writer Lev Kopelev, his wife Raisa Orlova, artist Boris Berger - we listened to Nathan Eidelman's readings for historians from different countries.

It was December 1988. They discussed the Jewish question, the Crimean Tatar, the war in Afghanistan, asked about Sakharov, who had recently been released - in a word, they talked about everything that was of keen interest to world society. Eidelman answered these questions like a truly great historian. I remembered the Karamzin times, Radishchev, who was arrested for the book “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow,” Chaadaev, who was declared crazy for his works, and in general this entire axis between the state and the people. Eidelman managed to satisfy the curiosity of most scientists.

But there were also those dissatisfied with the “caution” of the Soviet historian, someone wanted him to certainly “shoot” at the Kremlin and at the Lenin Mausoleum, and he was simply a Russian historian and a Jewish sage, remembering the words of Ecclesiastes: “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity... A generation passes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever... The sun rises, and the sun sets, and hurries to its place where it rises...”

- Today's events will also go down in history - as an example of a cruel and, most importantly, senseless war...

“All our peoples need today is a ceasefire at any cost.” Some leader must take the first step. I'm sure everything will end well. After all, we, like you, have centuries-old black soil of goodness and culture. Good, of course, will win... For detente: I figured out what was the mistake of the economic policy of the Soviet state. The fact that they took away the good from the kulaks. And “good must come with fists.”

- Karamzin, Radishchev, Chaadaev, Ginzburg, Sinyavsky and Daniel, Sakharov - you mention the names of those who led Russia to freedom. Ukraine is also trying with all its might to gain freedom. But why doesn’t Russia, which has such a strong heritage of free-thinking, strive for freedom today?

- Don’t generalize, please! I see and know a Russia in which, to use the words of the poet Dmitry Prigov, there are many “meaningful” citizens and good deeds. And the powers that be have those who put fear in people, but there are others who fear for our own troubles: for the poverty of millions, for dying cities and villages, for poor medicine, for the unreliability of the police, for homeless children and for much more. other.

— The poetic performance based on the poems of Yevgeny Yevtushenko “No Years,” with whom you have traveled to more than one country, included the poem “Tanks are moving through Prague” about the events of 1968, when the USSR intervened in the affairs of another country. This shame still haunts many former Soviet people of conscience. Almost half a century later, Russia, as the true successor of the USSR, is trying to crush Ukrainian freedom with tank tracks, without sparing its soldiers, who are being taken home from Donbass “with a load of 200.” But many Russian poets are still silent about this...

— Poets are not silent... I think this nightmare must be stopped at the human level. This is what I want, my wife, my children, the people with whom I am friends, because whoever kills a person kills me. I hear about facts of boundless cruelty on both sides, I am horrified by the outbursts of mutual hatred... I repeat, I don’t understand politics, but I understand culture. Culture is a parallel Russia.

“But despite all the laws of geometry, it still intersects with politics. For a concert for displaced people in Donbass, Andrei Makarevich was accused of treason against his homeland...

“I know that Andrei Makarevich, an honest man and a brilliant musician, came there not for a fee, but in order to support the unfortunate people who survived the war. I belong to the last generation of those who survived the war, I remember the evacuation, hunger, childhood without my father, because he fought. On behalf of all those who are forever wounded by the Second World War, I am ready to shout not in an interview, but in life: stop talking about right and wrong! For God's sake, stop the bloody play! Peace at any cost, at any cost!

— You told how, together with Vladimir Vysotsky and Ivan Dykhovichny, many years ago you opened the Mlyn restaurant near Kiev. You were probably treated to Ukrainian borscht with donuts there. But it is now difficult to find Ukrainian borscht in other Moscow restaurants. More precisely, borscht is served to visitors, but on the menu it is coded as “Russian soup.” Would you say that cooking is also outside of politics?

- You are giving incorrect information. In the popular restaurant “Pushkin” on Tverskoy Boulevard they boldly serve fraternal borscht. And we, if you like, as a sign of protest on the eve of September 1, in Alika Smekhova’s house, seeing off my grandchildren, first-grader Makar and ninth-grader Artem, on the harsh school journey, our family celebrated this fact with Ukrainian borscht.

— You are friends with the amazing clown Vyacheslav Polunin, thanks to whose art the world is becoming brighter and kinder. Could they ask him to send a personal invitation to a performance to one big man of small stature, so that he, too, would become kinder and stop the war in Ukraine?

“I don’t know whether politicians are subject to the miracle that Slava Polunin creates, but when in the “Snow Show” he walks along the backs of chairs, people always stretch out their hands towards him. In England, which is considered the birthplace of clownery, he was called the best clown in the world. But, speaking at the Casino de Paris in Paris, he was worried about how the arrogant French would receive him... You see, we are generalizing again, but this cannot be done...

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