Base oxygen. General characteristics of oxygen and its combustion reaction

He was one of those who are called “ministers of power,” holding successively the positions of Minister of Internal Affairs and Chairman of the KGB. But the system did not tolerate him for long: Vadim Viktorovich Bakatin occupied both chairs for two and a half years. Then he ran for president of Russia, but, like the other candidates (of which we note the “crying Bolshevik” Ryzhkov), he lost to Yeltsin. Having flashed like a comet on the political horizon of Russia, Bakatin nevertheless left a good memory of himself: smart, intelligent, self-possessed and simply humanly sympathetic. It was this long-standing sympathy of mine for Vadim Viktorovich that served as the basis for calling and requesting a meeting.

- Vadim Viktorovich, please tell us a little about yourself, your family, and your career.

You can consider me a child of industrialization. Born in 1937 in Kuzbass, in the village of a mine under construction. Both the Siberian father, a mining surveyor, and the Kaluga mother, a surgeon, were sent to this construction. I myself, having graduated from Sibstrin in 1960, became a builder and worked in Kuzbass. In my opinion, this is the best of professions. The party work to which I was sent in 1973 was also related to construction.

- When Gorbachev invited you to Moscow (how, by the way, was that?), what feelings did you experience? What kind of person did he seem to you then?

The first time I was invited to Moscow was not Gorbachev, but Ligachev. This was in 1983 under Andropov. I worked as an inspector of the Central Committee and had to be ready at any time to go to any place where the party sent me. In March 1985, the party represented by M.S. Gorbachev (this was our first meeting) sent me to the Kirov region. It was good time, and all of us, inspectors of the Central Committee (and this is a lot now famous names), they assessed Gorbachev almost enthusiastically. He was not like the usual general secretary: he liberated the staff, made them think, allowed them to argue and disagree with him. Another thing is that, as it turned out later, while listening, he did not always hear. And all of us were not smart enough to understand the danger of an easy, “Bolshevik” approach to the absolutely necessary perestroika.

- Were you not embarrassed then by the fact that by becoming Minister of the Interior, you were plunging into the abyss? I mean the crimes, the punishment system, the tears of the victims?

I did not plunge into this abyss. The work of the police - necessary, useful to society - was very interesting to me. Unfortunately, we don’t understand it well, but it has a great humanistic component, or, let’s say, potential. Gorbachev did not say anything specific when making the appointment, he only noted that he did not need a policeman, but a politician, and promised support. He understood what not everyone understands today: the police (prosecutor's office, court, etc.) alone will never cope with crime. Both the state and society must fight it.

- Did you have to fire someone, demote someone, that is, show toughness? Are you generally a hard or soft person?

Yes, of course I had to. Whether I am hard or soft depends on the circumstances. When you have to be tough, tough.

- Well, now about the KGB. How did you feel when you first walked into that building? Whose office were you in?

I didn't feel anything. Remember that situation: yesterday the putsch failed, the personnel were completely demoralized. Crowds of far from democrats rushed into the building, shook the monuments, and “threw” information from all sides... The work immediately overwhelmed us. Whose office was he in? Of course, the chairman (Ezhov, Beria, Andropov? - V.N.).

- I think you said then: “I came to destroy this organization.” Looking back, do you think this statement was naive? After all, revenge did not take long to arrive, did it?

These are words from my book. They are often remembered today by the so-called “patriots”. But they, and not only them, probably didn’t read the book. Because the main task was to get rid of the KGB as the “shield and sword” of the party, as the party secret police of the party state, but to preserve and reform the intelligence services as such, adapting them to completely new, “post-coup” conditions of the new union (!) non-totalitarian states. The most great difficulty arose from Russian leadership. After all, the RSFSR never had its own KGB; it had to be created on the basis of the union one, but in such a way as to preserve the structures that perform the main functions. Formally, organizationally, this work was carried out in a very a short time. The system did not work only because Gorbachev interfered with someone, and for this they decided to end the Union. Looking back, I can say that the structure of the special services based on the old KGB for the new, democratic Union was created correctly. And the fact that all these years the yellow newspapers have been hounding me - what can you do? They get paid for this. Everything I did, I always did openly - I didn’t hide and I’m not going to run anywhere. If someone is guilty of something, there is a prosecutor. All the lies about the allegedly given secret of listening devices are not worth a penny. This “secret” has not been a secret since 1982, but was one of the hushed up failures of the KGB. I have nothing to do with this.

- It is known, Vadim Viktorovich, that your grandfather was shot by the “Chekists”. Have you tried to find out how this tragedy happened?

My grandfather, a teacher, worked at an elevator as an accountant in 1936. Early in the morning I went fishing. Grandma fried the fish and went to work at school. I arrived - the frying pan with the fish was barely started, my grandfather was not there. So they took it straight from the table. And he sank into oblivion. Nobody ever saw him again.

I leafed through his “case”: an ordinary binder, gray covers. And the accusation is usual: English and Japanese spy, participant in a monarchist conspiracy led by Prince Volkonsky. Each answer was an exact copy of the interrogation question:

Do you plead guilty to creating a terrorist organization?

Yes, I plead guilty to creating a terrorist organization.

Do you admit that you wanted to blow up the elevator?

Yes, I admit that I wanted to blow up the elevator, etc...

And under each interrogation sheet there is a signature. Moreover, my grandfather had calligraphic handwriting; The signatures I saw under the interrogation sheets did not resemble anything: they ran like a cockroach. On July 27, he was arrested, and on August 27, 1937, he was shot.

It is now recognized that he, like millions of others, was shot simply “for the count.”

- At the same time, you said that you were against the dissolution of the KGB...

The fate of millions of innocent people killed by the previous regime has nothing to do with the question of whether or not to maintain the special services in the country after August 1991. There could be only one answer: save. We are not Lithuania, not the Czech Republic, or even the GDR. The Union, even weakened by the coup, remained great nuclear power, with the most powerful military-industrial complex and many other things that should have been reliably protected from, let’s say, outside interest. But we did not and could not have any other special services except the KGB.

The task was to retain professionals and de-ideologize the KGB. But for this you need political will society and the state, and not the KGB itself, in which they worked very different people. needed differentiated approach, and not indiscriminate acceleration. De-ideologization was supposed to be a process over many years, and not a one-time act. And it cannot occur in isolation from the formation of a new social consciousness. No matter how the state flirts with the “siloviki”, the dominant sentiments among them will still be the sentiments of society.

- As far as I know, Elena Georgievna Bonner was in Lubyanka - she was looking for the case of her executed father and the case of Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov. Was this with you?

Yes, I remember it well. I must say that they simply lied to me: they say that the Sakharov case did not exist and does not exist. I had to fire a boss who lied. There was a Sakharov case, but he was burned - there is a corresponding act about this. Something, of course, was destroyed without any registration, so, unfortunately, there were no traces left. Then, however, they found some materials concerning Andrei Dmitrievich, it seems, the manuscript of his books, Solzhenitsyn’s letters were found. Why hide something that doesn't need to be hidden?

- Do you remember in “The Gulag Archipelago” Solzhenitsyn’s phrase about the stairs in the internal prison on Lubyanka, with chipped steps along which thousands passed, including Tukhachevsky and Bukharin? Were you in that prison?

No wasn `t. You can, with a little imagination, imagine what those walls saw and heard. There, in Lubyanka, we need to create a museum - and this is not just my opinion. In the very first days, I heard this idea from the officers who work there.

- Why did you end up out of work - first in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, then in the KGB?

The KGB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs absolutely different organizations. The Union was gone. There was no longer any need for the Inter-Republican Security Service, much less its chief. And Gorbachev removed me from the Ministry of Internal Affairs. As he invited, he exhibited. After all, not only today in Russia, but also earlier in the Union, intrigues, whispers, and media campaigns had great importance in "personnel work". For the sake of objectivity, it must be said that after Belovezhskaya Pushcha Yeltsin invited me and asked where I wanted to work. I answered him: “Just yesterday I worked in Gorbachev’s team and I cannot jump from orbit to orbit: give me time.” This conversation took place in December 1991. Since then, Boris Nikolaevich and I have not met.

- What have you been doing since then? After all, almost 6 years have passed!

He worked at the Reform Foundation of Academician Shatalin. It was wonderful person. He died. I couldn’t work at the foundation without him and left.

The Reform Foundation was one of the emerging institutions civil society. Now, in my opinion, the process of formation of civil society in Russia has slowed down. Democracy is impossible without a developed civil society. But even more so, it is impossible without a developed, dynamic market economy. In a poor country, democracy is a utopia. I still believe that our failures and misfortunes are due to the fact that we ruined the economy. They didn’t reform, they destroyed it. Until the government starts increasing production, nothing will happen! So he will look for someone to borrow from, someone to take away from, in order to feed pensioners, the army, etc...

Where can I find it if production is at a standstill?

- Let's go back a little. Did your defeat in the presidential election upset you a lot? Or did you understand that Yeltsin is stronger than everyone? Do you think Russia needs an intellectual president?

I have long forgotten about those elections. Of course, Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin was then the strongest of all. Russia does not need an intellectual leader, but an intelligent leader.

- You left the Shatalin Foundation and are now out of work. It seems to me that you could very well become a State Duma deputy.

- “Becoming” a State Duma deputy is not so easy and not so cheap.

- You specially came from out of town to Moscow to say goodbye to Bulat Okudzhava. What place do poetry, music, theater occupy in your life?

Okudzhava’s songs are my youth, and I was saying goodbye to my youth. But in me Okudzhava will never die. I loved his songs from the first moment I heard them. His songs, his philosophy have their place in my life, and nothing can replace them. And poetry and music, but, to my deep regret, not theater, occupy in my life great place. Big, but not the main thing. (In Vadim Viktorovich’s office, I saw a painting on an easel. He paints himself, and his grandfather with maternal side was a professional artist. - V.N.).

- Okudzhava has a paradoxical line: “Let the one striving for power dominate to his heart’s content.” How do you, a person who held great power in your hands, understand this line of the poet?

I understand the poet’s irony not at all as political advice. There are many who are striving for power and who should not be given it under any circumstances; God forbid that some Dzhugashvili grabs her again. Many do not stand the test of power, including the current one. Russian authorities. She often forgets why she exists: she serves herself; power for power's sake. But if the power is for the benefit of the people, it’s a different caliber. Recently the rector of the Kirov Medical Institute called me - I found him through the cosmonauts - and invited me to the 10th anniversary of the institute. Of course, they exaggerate my importance, but, on the other hand, I don’t want to be so falsely modest: I went about the medical institute, pushed for it, and achieved it. And now, thank God, the institute has become established and established: it was done for the sake of the people, they remember - and it’s nice, no matter what you say. And here you can’t talk about wasted power. And in 1985, purely “voluntarily” I opened the Vasnetsov house-museum in Kirov. I, who had just “received” the region - the first secretary of the regional committee, was asked: “What do you want?” And I answered: “House-museum.”

- So it was populism in favor of the intelligentsia?

You can call it that if you like. Here, in Moscow, I don’t feel the intelligentsia. They show on TV some parties, kisses, awards, 50th anniversaries and so on. In Kirov, the intelligentsia is truly a community of like-minded people: teachers, doctors, poets. And what artists there are! When I saw 15 thousand paintings hanging in storage rooms like sheep skins - one after another, I responded to the request of the intelligentsia to build a museum. And he went to the State Planning Committee and opened a title for construction. The Minister of Culture, who came to the opening of the museum, noted that this is the only museum built in the post-stagnation years.

- I asked you about your family, but for some reason you only talked about your parents and their parents.

I have two sons and three daughters-in-law - younger son divorced. The children have adapted to this life better than me. The younger one graduated from the Law Faculty of Moscow State University and works in a bank. And the older one was less fortunate, perhaps: he followed in my footsteps, becoming a builder, then worked in the KGB - even before I came there. And the first thing I did, taking advantage of my official position, was to fire him from the KGB, because he had filed a report long ago, but they didn’t want to fire him. Now it is more or less settled.

- Do you think politics is compatible with morality?

Of course it is compatible. If a person is honest, if he has a conscience, some moral brakes, then his morality does not depend on his place of work. One can also ask: is trade or journalism compatible with morality? How do you think?