Where are my roots?

What remains in memory of the country where you will visit for the first time? Its exotic, architectural masterpieces, quiet streets of big cities, people's habits. ..

I studied in Czechoslovakia. I fell in love with the country. But in memory of her remains not only this.

It so happened that every morning and every evening in Prague I had to walk past the cemetery. The Holy Mark is called this place by the Prague people - by the name of a frozen cathedral of unusual beauty over the cemetery-park. In the mornings, people rarely meet here on weekdays, and on the cool evenings the cemetery comes to life. Almost every hillock glowed with an uncertain, but alive flame of a small candle( from the rain they cover with glass caps so that they do not go out longer).It happened on weekdays.

And on Saturdays and Sundays the people went to the Market. We walked by two, three, four. .. We went by families. With flowers, but most importantly - and it was amazing - almost everything with children. The children were, perhaps, more than adults. And each of them also carried his flower and a small shoulder-blade.

. Is not it strange to talk about a cemetery: is part of our house here? But the Czechs do not think so. They come to the cemetery with their whole family to their grandmother, grandfather, old friend - they remember the past, talk about today, tell the children about what their grandfathers and great-grandfathers lived, how they should live. Leaving, lit a candle at the grave of a loved one - burn, light, gray, let the warmth of the soul of each of us remain here.

I tried to find out from the people of Prague what they thought about this tradition. Heard this: there is upbringing, but it also means life. I foresee the displeased: why.child, why traumatize the child's soul? And I remember the story I heard a long time ago. The story of an adult about his childhood.

He was twelve years old when his father died. At that bitter moment my son was not at home. And when he returned from school, his mother met him at the door and. .. sent to the cinema. Why should a child see all this( probably, she reasoned), is small yet. The boy learned of his father's death only the next day. And to this day - an adult, the same age as his father - he regrets most that his mother did not allow him to be with her in a difficult moment, did not give the chance to take her hand, say a word of sympathy, hug her. .. Mother stayedalone with his misfortune, hiding from his son. I did not allow him to feel like a Man, a Man capable of suffering and compassion.

How many forgotten graves, abandoned cemeteries in our vast Russian expanses! Yes, it's the distance and the roads are the fault. But also our, alas, short memory.

It is not for nothing that today there is a talk in the press about the need for a Memorial Day for relatives and friends. We just need it. This was declared one of the first Soviet Culture Fund. Thousands and thousands of people are convinced of this, whose letters continue to Pravda( published two years ago by the writer Alexander Kiknadze, "Bequeathed to His Descendants"), and to "Soviet Culture" and to the Literaturnaya Gazeta. And now and to us, in the "Family".By the way, for five years already there has been officially the Day of Remembrance of the relatives and friends in Georgia. There is no rhetoric, it is entered in the national calendar. So why not make it a nationwide Soviet treasure?

We all need such a day, which is not loud and noisy celebrated, but remembered the departed and came to them. With flowers and with children. It is necessary for our moral health.

Indeed, do we know our great-grandmothers and great-grandfathers, even by name, patronymic, those who were not found alive? When was the last time they visited their graves and were there in general? Somehow in one of the "New York Times" ten years ago I met interesting information. The newspaper reported: "Demonstrating yesterday a copy of his genealogical tree, President Carter told stories of his own kind:" We found several corruptive ancestors in the recent past. A couple of embezzlers, two or three killed Saturday nights. One of my relatives, to my deep regret, even worked for the newspaper. "

Yes, the president was ironic, far from admiring his imperfect ancestors. But he knew them, remembered them! It became his weapon, that's what could give a solid publicity. Propagandistic reception is calculated precisely - it is based on the sacred traditions of memory. And it is unbeatable.

There are also among us, but few of them so far, very few people whose families store each bend of the branch of their genealogical tree. But is it only his branches and roots that keep us on the ground stronger?"Inexpressible light" flows from the past, from the world of grandfathers and great-grandfathers, with a warm, juicy, colorful ray. Look - and you will surely find it - in your home. Surely somewhere there is a wooden grandfather's cane or a notebook of great-grandmother somewhere, maybe it's worth returning from the mezzanine a darkened dust box, a cast-iron ashtray with hunting dogs. ..

However, some of this already comes to our house, and not onlywhether because the "retro" is now in vogue? And the songs were "retro"?. .

. .. One of my grandmothers was singing in the church choir. From her and the first heard the unique beauty of the ancient dew and Russian songs, learned the melodic lines of Pushkin and Lermontov poems - thirty-forty pages by heart( and the grandmother's education had only three classes of the parish school).Often later she remembered with a smile how I, four years old, turned to her with her favorite lines, only in my own, childish way: "What are you, my old lady, and sad and dark?"

I remember today, many yearslater, grandmother's singing. Songs are also part of our national culture. They should sound today in our houses. Such as the songs of my grandmother. And what do I sing to my daughter?"Tired toys are sleeping..."?At best, "Sleep, my joy, fall asleep," not remembering the end.

But, maybe, we do not remember, we do not know the songs of our grandfathers and great-grandfathers, also because of other circumstances?

How much I remember myself, as a child, always envied boys and girls who vied with each other about grandfathers and grandmothers, heroes of the war. All adults who survived the war, in the children's eyes are heroes. And I only sometimes inserted my own: "My uncle was also a pilot in the war. It burned down - the Nazis shot down his plane. Grandmother calls him George. "Uncle I did not know the surname. The uncle was a cousin or even a second cousin. But the laughing eyes of a twenty-year-old boy( as I understand now) looked at me from a military, faded photo every summer, every vacation from my grandmother's dresser. There was another picture of the thirties on it;many, many relatives and among them one, tall, taller than all, a big-shouldered man of about thirty. This is Grandpa.

Why so little time to tell me about it those who are no longer, I think today. Why could not I, a girl, be proud of my grandfather, whom I loved so much? After all, I felt a great - until his death - the love of his grandmother, repeating incessantly: "Such as your grandfather Alyosha, there was and will not be," and saw her tears: Do not, do not ask about him. "

Now I'm just beginning to understand everything. Grandfather was a party worker at the Dnepropetrovsk Petrovsky Plant. And in my youth, as I learned very recently, I worked in Donbass newspapers. Here he is Alexei Alexandrovich Khimiku in a photo of 1925 in the book "Journalists", a member of the editorial board of the newspaper of the Lugansk railway professional school "Red Riding Path".In the same row as his grandfather, the beginning journalist, the author of this book, Yuri Zhukov.

So, there are still people who remember their grandfather? Hence, we must look for a trace of our roots further. ..

There is no grave for the uncle who died in the war. Every mass grave is his. There is no grave for the grandfather who died before the war.

To know the exact date when it did not become. They say in the 33rd.and maybe later?

Now this memory, the memory of the 30s, 40s, comes back to us again, after the 60s, cleared of smears and lies. We get deeply hidden photos of those who were in military captivity, we learn from the newspapers about those who were formerly called "enemies of the people."There are not enough facts from their lives, there is not enough reliability to call our recent past their history so that the truth is complete. Let's admit ourselves - after all, sometimes we are afraid of the bitter documents of the past because of inertia. L Without them, history is not history. And the truth is not true.

No, a real person can not grow up without such a path of hard memory. Without pride and pain for your past, near and far. For, having dried the roots, you will destroy the germ. He will not be able to become a tree.