13: My mother A shadow of annoyance crosses my mother's face when she looks at me. I know this look well. Sometimes her features become so motionless that her face almost freezes. We work together at the computer, trying to add new words to my growing vocabulary.

The authorities of the Stavropol village of Privolnoye refused the ex-leader of the pop group "Tender May" Andrey Razin at the opening of the museum of the last General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU Mikhail Gorbachev with whom they are fellow villagers. Razin himself does not leave attempts to tell about the little-known pages of the life of the former president of the USSR, which characterize him rather negatively.

The once popular singer and showman was going to open the Gorbachev Museum in the parental home of the last Soviet leader. There Razin intended to place the family archive of the former Secretary General. Through his grandmother, Razin, back in the Soviet years, became friends with Gorbachev's mother, Maria Panteleevna Gorbacheva (nee Gopkalo). Maria Gorbacheva handed Razin a suitcase with her son's personal belongings. The showman intended to make these things an exposition of the museum in honor of the former Secretary General.

“In Gorbachev's suitcase with papers, I found three photo albums dedicated to the 1936 Olympics, with the seal of the Reich Chancellery and Hitler's signature,” Andrey Razin told Express Gazeta. - Maria Panteleevna said that Misha brought them when he worked as a secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU and was engaged in its archives. Somehow, Gorbachev took the albums and hid them from his mother. There were also German left-handed watches with a swastika and SS paraphernalia - crosses, embroidered shoulder straps, buttons. According to his mother, all this was left over from wartime: Misha found a murdered German officer somewhere and peeled him off like sticky.

According to Razin, Gorbachev's parental home has been in his ownership since the 1990s. The grandmother of the former showman, Valentina Mikhailovna Razina, lives there now. The ex-leader of "Tender May" told under what circumstances he got the "native land" of a famous fellow countryman. “On September 15, 1992, Maria Panteleevna called to congratulate me on my birthday and during the conversation asked me to conclude a guardianship agreement with her. She cried, complained that "Misha does not want to take her to him", that "only she and Valya were left" ( Valentina Razina, who looked after Gorbachev's mother, - approx. EADaily). I left the set table, my friends and went to Privolnoye. At home, the head of the village and the secretary of the village council, who is also a notary, were waiting for me to conclude a guardianship agreement with Maria Panteleevna. She insisted that for the care that I would render to her, all the property was transferred to my name. Well, I didn't care, as long as she didn't worry."

“Gorbachev at that time flew to all countries and, as a Nobel Peace Prize winner, taught people about life,” Andrei Razin continues. A few days later, scandals began with him, courts began. But nothing came of Mikhail Sergeevich. We signed a settlement agreement only in 1995, after his ancestral home and the entire archive became my property.”

As Stavropol journalists once said, Valentina Razina, who now lives in Gorbachev's parental home, leads a rather secluded life and refuses to pay attention to the press to the place where the future last general secretary of the CPSU Central Committee was once born and grew up. According to the woman, there is "nothing to see in this house, except for a leaky roof." “My grandmother, Valentina Mikhailovna, was friends all her life with Mikhail Sergeyevich’s mother, her neighbor Maria Panteleevna,” says Andrey Razin. - When she grew old, she began to look after her. Just imagine: since 1985, having become Secretary General, Gorbachev never came to his mother! Even when he drove around the Caucasus Helmut Kohl and was a few kilometers from his father's house, still did not stop by. I was ashamed of my mother-collective farmer. He didn't send any money either. All her needs were provided by the collective farm. In 1985, six men from the KGB arrived in the village with their wives and children. People were evicted from the private houses closest to Maria Panteleevna's site, and there they settled in with everything ready. They blocked the street with a barrier. Nobody, except my grandmother, was allowed to pass freely. And when the USSR ceased to exist and Gorbachev resigned, all six KGB officers fled a few days later. They abandoned Maria Panteleevna, a patient with diabetes, to the mercy of fate. She, weighing 150 kilograms, was completely helpless. My grandmother could no longer cope with her alone, and I sent my bodyguard to help her.”

Mikhail Gorbachev. Life before the Kremlin. Zenkovich Nikolai Alexandrovich

Father

Future father M.S. Gorbachev Sergey Andreevich managed to get an education within four classes. Subsequently, with the assistance of his grandfather Panteley, when he was the chairman of the collective farm, he learned to be a machine operator and then became a noble tractor and combine operator in the region.

Testifies G. Gorlov:

I knew well the parents of Mikhail Sergeyevich, the father of Sergey Andreevich - the foreman of the tractor brigade, an intelligent person, a modest hard worker, an honest warrior, who went through the crucible of the Great Patriotic War, was awarded military and labor orders and medals. For a long time he was a member of the bureau of the district committee of the party. Often had to visit them at home.

People loved him. He was a calm and kind person. They came to him for advice. He spoke little, but weighed his every word. He didn't like speeches.

Word - M. Shuguev, who headed the department of philosophy at the institute, where Raisa Maksimovna taught for 16 years:

If Mikhail has a small stature and facial expressions from his mother, then the manner of thinking, expressing thoughts is from his father, a well-thought-out, slightly slow manner of assessing the situation.

G. Starshikov, comrade M. Gorbachev in Stavropol:

He spoke of his father with extraordinary pride.

Former Minister of Defense of the USSR, last Marshal of the Soviet Union, member of the State Emergency Committee in August 1991 D. Yazov:

Gorbachev's father, Sergei Andreevich, served in a sapper unit in a rifle brigade, then the brigade was reorganized into the 161st rifle division, and in the sapper battalion Sergeant S.A. Gorbachev went to the very end of the war. He was wounded twice, awarded two orders of the Red Star, several medals for the liberation of European capitals. Sergei Andreevich joined the party after the war, at the age of 36, he conscientiously worked as an ordinary machine operator.

Very important evidence. Let's remember him. For about the time when his father joined the party, Mikhail Sergeevich will say something completely different. But more on that in another chapter.

From memories M.S. Gorbachev(1995):

“When the war started, I was already ten years old. I remember that in a matter of weeks the village was empty - there were no men.

Father, like other machine operators, was given a temporary reprieve - grain was being harvested, but in August he was also drafted into the army. In the evening, the agenda, at night fees. In the morning we put our things on carts and set off for 20 kilometers to the regional center. Whole families walked, all the way - endless tears and parting words. They said goodbye in the district center. Women and children fought in sobs, old people, everything merged into a common, heart-rending groan. The last time my father bought me ice cream and a balalaika as a keepsake.

By autumn, mobilization was over, and women, children, old people and some of the men remained in our village - sick and disabled. And no longer agendas, but the first funerals began to come to Privolnoye.

At the end of the summer of 1944, some mysterious letter arrived from the front. They opened the envelope, and there were documents, family photographs that my father took with him when he went to the front, and a short message that foreman Sergei Gorbachev died a heroic death in the Carpathians on Mount Magura ...

Until that time, my father had already come a long way along the roads of war. When I became President of the USSR, Defense Minister D.T. Yazov gave me a unique gift - a book about the history of the military units in which my father served during the war years. With great excitement I read one of the military histories and understood even more clearly and deeply how difficult the path to victory was and what price our people paid for it.

I knew a lot about where my father fought from his stories - now I have a document in front of me. After mobilization, my father ended up in Krasnodar, where a separate brigade was formed at the infantry school under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Kolesnikov. She received her first baptism of fire already in November - December 1941 in the battles near Rostov as part of the 56th Army of the Transcaucasian Front. The losses of the brigade were enormous: 440 were killed, 120 were wounded, 651 people were missing. The father survived. Then, until March 1942, they held the defense along the Mias River. And again big losses. The brigade was sent to Michurinsk to be reorganized into the 161st Rifle Division, after which - to the Voronezh Front in the 60th Army.

And then he could have been killed dozens of times. The division participated in the Battle of Kursk, in the Ostrogozhsk-Rossosh and Kharkov operations, in crossing the Dnieper in the Pereyaslav-Khmelnitsky region and holding the famous Bukrinsky bridgehead.

Father later told how, under continuous bombardment and hurricane artillery fire, they crossed the Dnieper on fishing boats, "improvised means", makeshift rafts and ferries. My father commanded a squad of sappers, providing the crossing of mortars on one of these ferries. Among the explosions of bombs and shells, they floated to the light, flickering on the right bank. And although it was at night, it seemed to him that the water in the Dnieper was red with blood.

For crossing the Dnieper, my father received the medal "For Courage" and was very proud of it, although there were later other awards, including two Orders of the Red Star. In November - December 1943, their division participated in the Kyiv operation. In April 1944 - in Proskurovsko-Chernovitskaya. In July - August - in Lviv-Sandomierz, in the liberation of the city of Stanislav. The division lost 461 people in the Carpathians, more than 1,500 wounded. And one had to go through such a bloody meat grinder in order to find one's death on this accursed Mount Magura...

For three days there was crying in the family. And then ... a letter comes from his father, they say, he is alive and well.

Both letters are dated August 27, 1944. Maybe he wrote to us, and then went into battle and died? But four days later we received another letter from my father, already dated August 31. It means that the father is alive and continues to beat the Nazis! I wrote a letter to my father and expressed my indignation at those who sent a letter announcing his death. In a response letter, the father took the front-line soldiers under protection: “No, son, you are in vain scolding the soldiers - everything happens at the front.” I remember this for the rest of my life.

After the end of the war, he told us what happened in August 1944. On the eve of the next offensive, they received an order: to equip a command post on Mount Magura at night. The mountain is covered with forest, and only the top was bald with a good view of the western slope. Here and decided to put the KP. The scouts went ahead, and my father began to work with his squad of sappers. He put the bag with documents and photographs on the parapet of the dug trench. Suddenly, from behind the trees, there was a noise, a shot. The father decided that it was his own returning - scouts. He went to meet them and shouted: “What are you? Where are you shooting?" In response, heavy machine gun fire ... It's clear from the sound - the Germans. The sappers rushed in all directions. Saved by darkness. And not a single person was lost. Just some kind of miracle. My father joked: "The second birth." To celebrate, he wrote a letter home: they say, he is alive and well, without details.

And in the morning, when the offensive began, the infantrymen found their father's bag at a height. They decided that he died during the assault on Mount Magura, and sent part of the documents and photographs to the family.

And yet, the war left Sergeant Major Gorbachev his mark for life ... Somehow, after a difficult and dangerous raid behind enemy lines, demining and undermining communications, after several sleepless nights, the group was given a week's rest. We moved away from the front line for several kilometers and the first day we just slept off. Around the forest, silence, the situation is quite peaceful. The soldiers relaxed. But it had to happen that it was over this place that an air battle broke out. The father and his sappers began to observe how it would all end. But it ended badly: leaving the fighters, the German plane dropped its entire bomb supply.

Whistle, howl, breaks. Someone thought to shout: "Lie down!" Everyone threw themselves on the ground. One of the bombs fell not far from my father, and a huge fragment cut his leg. A few millimeters to the side - and would cut off the leg cleanly. But again, lucky, the bone was not hurt.

It happened in Czechoslovakia, near the city of Kosice. That was the end of my father's life. He was treated in a hospital in Krakow, and there, soon, May 9, 1945 arrived in time, Victory Day.

M.S. Gorbachev, taking into account the subsequent change in worldview, the denial of communist ideas, had to refer to the influence of his grandfather Andrei, who did not recognize Soviet power and Bolshevik politics. But no, even in 1995 (by inertia?) He knelt before his father and another grandfather - Pantelei, the bearers of the ideology he rejected:

“Now, looking back at the past, I am more and more convinced that my father, grandfather Pantelei, their understanding of duty, their very life, actions, attitude to work, to family, to the country had a huge impact on me and were a moral example. In my father, a simple man from the village, nature itself had so much intelligence, inquisitiveness, intelligence, humanity, and many other good qualities. And this markedly distinguished him among his fellow villagers, people treated him with respect and trust: "a reliable person." In my youth, I had not only filial feelings for my father, but I was also strongly attached to him. True, we never even spoke a word about mutual arrangement with each other - it just happened. As an adult, I admired my father more and more. I was struck by his undying interest in life. He was worried about the problems of his own country and distant states. He could listen to music, songs with pleasure at the TV. Read newspapers regularly.

Our meetings often turned into evenings of questions and answers. I am now the main responder. We sort of switched places. I have always admired his attitude towards his mother. No, it was not outwardly catchy, all the more refined, but on the contrary - restrained, simple and warm. Not ostentatious, but cordial. From any trip, he always brought her gifts. Father immediately accepted Paradise close and always rejoiced at meetings with her. And he was very interested in Raina's studies in philosophy. In my opinion, the very word "philosophy" had a magical effect on him. Father and mother were happy about the birth of their granddaughter Irina, and she spent more than one summer with them. Irina liked to ride a gig in the fields, mow hay, and spend the night in the steppe.

I learned about my father's sudden serious illness in Moscow, where I arrived at the 25th Congress of the CPSU. I immediately flew with Raisa Maksimovna to Stavropol, and from there we went by car to Privolnoye. My father lay unconscious in a rural hospital, and we were never able to say the last words to each other. His hand squeezed mine, but there was nothing more he could do.

My father, Sergei Andreevich Gorbachev, died of a massive cerebral hemorrhage. He was buried on the Day of the Soviet Army - February 23, 1976. The Privolnoye land, on which he was born, plowed, sowed, harvested crops from childhood, and which he defended without sparing his life, took him into her arms ...

All his life, the father did good to close people and passed away without bothering anyone with his ailments. Too bad he lived so short. Every time I'm in Privolnoye, I first of all go to my father's grave."

He died at the age of 66. The son and his wife, who arrived from Moscow, spent two days at the bedside of their father, who had lost consciousness.

G. Gorlov:

Sergei Andreevich Gorbachev died when my wife and I were at the 25th Congress of the CPSU. I was allowed to take my wife with me, it was a rare case, and there in the morning we saw Mikhail Sergeevich's younger brother, Alexander, who told us that his father had died. On February 23 he was buried. Vera Timofeevna and I sent condolences.

R.M. Gorbachev:

Internally, Mikhail Sergeyevich and his father were close. We were friends. Sergei Andreevich did not receive a systematic education - an educational program, a mechanization school. But he had some kind of innate intelligence, nobility. A certain breadth of interests, or something. He was always interested in the work of Mikhail Sergeevich, and what was happening in the country and abroad. When they met, he bombarded him with a mass of sensible, lively questions. And the son did not just answer, but, as it were, held an answer to his father - a machine operator, a peasant. Sergei Andreevich listened to him willingly and for a long time ...

I am very sorry that Mikhail Sergeevich's father did not live to see the time when his son became secretary of the Central Committee. Pride for my son - it seems to me that she added to him, a wounded front-line soldier, strength and will to live.

The next plot is again from the field of myth-making. The Soviet people could not believe that a great power had collapsed so easily. An explanation was sought in the intrigues of the enemy, in the undercover influence on the leaders of the country, and primarily on M.S. Gorbachev. In 1994, a colonel in the reserve of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service came to the editorial office of the Novosti razvedka i kontrrazvedki newspaper and brought a long article about agents of influence. The material was published, but with some cuts. An episode has been crossed out, which I, with the permission of the author, place in this book.

“In the biography of Gorbachev, in addition to helpfulness to the Nazi invaders who ruled in Stavropol from March 3, 1942 to January 21, 1943, there is a circumstance that has not been fully clarified. In April 1945 in Poland, our Siberian fighter Grigory Rybakov, during an accidental collision on a forest road with a small group of enemies, shot one of them. Looking through the contents of the tablet of the murdered man together with another fighter, he found documents in Russian and German in the name of Sergey Panteleymonovich Gorbachev and three photographs. One shows Sergei Gorbachev in the uniform of a tank lieutenant near a Soviet tank. In the second photograph, he was depicted in the form of a German tank officer near a German tank. It is important to note that the Nazis sent traitor defectors only to the Russian Liberation Army of General Vlasov or to other national formations, and never to the German army. It is possible that posing as Sergei Gorbachev was in fact an ordinary agent abandoned earlier for a long settling, who, having got to the front, immediately went over to his own. In the third picture, he is again together with an elderly and young woman, and next to her is a boy with a very conspicuous black, unusually shaped spot on his head. The fighters handed over documents and photographs to the command.

At the beginning of 1985, Rybakov saw in a newspaper a portrait of the new General Secretary M.S. Gorbachev and found a striking resemblance to the boy in the photograph found in the tablet of the murdered German. Rybakov wrote about this to the Chelyabinsk State Security Department and to "his" deputy B.N. Yeltsin. He received no answer from anywhere, but was soon sternly warned to keep quiet. There is a record of a detailed account of this story by G.S. Rybakov in the presence of the city prosecutor.

Well, even colonels of foreign intelligence could not put up with the fact that there were no dark spots in the biography of the last Secretary General-President!

In this regard, one cannot but agree with the opinion of V. Kaznacheev, who believes that, despite the attractiveness for readers of the “secret” versions of Gorbachev’s origin, it is still necessary to admit that none of them withstand serious criticism, and all of them are, most likely, a consequence of genuine interest in the figure of Gorbachev.