Василий Ласовский 19+ SE

And without the Chernobyl accident, I wouldn’t have had this special class in my life.

At Technical School, I did freestyle wrestling in my physical education class, and in after-school clubs, I did karate, kung fu, wushu, and qigong. It was incredibly popular back then. I also had a big Bruce Lee poster on my wall. It was a huge phenomenon back then; every boy took kung fu classes, and every house had a poster of Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, or… Sabrina.

I also had a red Diana Stereo audio player and about ten audio cassettes of rock and pop bands: Kino, Nautilus-Pompilius, Aria, Alisa, Metallica, Accept, A-ha, Depeche Mode and Modern Talking.

So, I was a very typical teenager of that era.

During my studies at the Technical School, I remember one event.

I was spending the night at a classmate's apartment one night, and I needed to go to the bathroom. It was dark, and I remember the walls in the apartment glowing strangely, and when I touched them, they even flexed a little.

That was a funny illusion. It's worth adding that this guy's mother was a very unusual person, and I'd say she was influenced by mystical forces.

Then the following events occurred: in the first and second years of Technical School, there were several national Olympiads, and I took second place in the Computer Science Olympiad two years in a row; and in my second year, I was lucky and also took first place in the Physics Olympiad.

It was quite easy to get 2nd place at these Olympiads, since it was given to several participants at the same time, but 1st place was given only to one person.

In my second year, they gave it to me, and it was a big surprise, because they awarded it not for the correct solution, but for originality. The teachers were surprised that, while solving an optics task, I developed my own theory of light reflection—incorrect but original—and solved the task based on it. So, it seemed like they gave me the prize for original thinking.

Then the Ministry of Education of the Byelorussian SSR and representatives of two educational institutions, the Minsk Radiotechnical School (MRT) and the Minsk Radiotechnical Institute (MRTI, now BSUIR), developed a certain Agreement according to which the winners of the Republican Olympiads were accepted without examinations (and, in fact, transferred after completing the second year of Technical School to the first year of the Institute) to a similar specialty.

This Program concerned the winners of the Republican Olympiads among Technical School students.

The Agreement was developed and approved the very year I won the Republican Physics Olympiad. According to the terms of this Agreement, I had to win the Olympiad in the year of my transfer and also complete my second or third year of Technical School.

I met these requirements, and the Technical School issued me a high school diploma. They weren't authorized to issue one, but without it, I wouldn't have been accepted into the Institute. They quickly and hastily filled out a form that looked very much like a diploma, with grades in subjects like astronomy and fine art, which I'd never taken, and sternly ordered me to bring it immediately to the Institute, where they immediately confiscated the fake diploma, and I never saw it again.

The Institute was a hundred meters from the Technical School, around the corner on Pietrusia Broŭki (Piatruś Broŭka) Street. I submitted my documents and played chess with the head of the admissions office. On August 4, 1990 I was enrolled as a student. That's how I got into the Institute. Of course, I never would have gotten in any other way, as I had no connections and was a rather weak and mediocre student. It all happened entirely by Chance.

Well, here's the ‘icing on the cake,’ or why this event seems suspicious to me, and one could even say that it's not just ears that are sticking out here, but perhaps horns and hooves as well.

The fact is that no one else has passed except me through this program (Agreement between educational institutions).

The following year, the Technical School was renamed to a College, and the names of all the specialties were changed. According to the Agreement, transfer to the Institute was only possible for a specialty with the same (identical) name. As a classmate of mine at the Technical School, who placed first in Computer Science Olympiad every year, noted, it seemed as if this program was adopted solely to promote a very specific person.

I didn’t want to write this because this fact has a very ambiguous interpretation, but it really happened, and I am forced to point this out, since this way the reader will have a more complete impression of how I was seen ‘from the outside’ by people who knew me for several years.

A slightly tipsy classmate of mine at University admitted that I was something of ‘an angel’ in my class. And I understand perfectly why.

Despite living in a dormitory, I never attended any social gatherings involving card games until the early hours, drinking, and socializing with women. I was completely deaf to any ‘tempting applications.’

But that doesn't mean my emotions were so pure and bright. Of course, even if I was an angel, I wasn’t such a light one.

I always had ‘a wall’ that separated me from other people, and I did not try to connect my emotions with other people's experiences.

And now about the event that changed my whole life.

Dormitory No. 1 at MRTI, where I lived (the building was built in November 1973), was located near 400 meters to the Oktyabr Cinema, one of the best in Minsk, and of course where film premieres were held. The cinema was also within walking distance from the Technical School dormitory, but the distance was about one km, so I usually passed by it on public transportation. When I entered the Institute (University), I would often stroll near the cinema in my free time.

At the beginning of my second year, sometime in October or November 1991, I attended the premiere of the film Mona Lisa by Belarusian director Nikolay Studnev. His wife and the singer in the film, Liliya Studneva, was also present.

Interestingly, the film's release year contains the numbers 19 and 91, which can be read as 19 backwards. I should also note that I don't remember the exact year I attended the film's premiere. I do remember the event itself and that it happened in mid- or late autumn. I learned from the Internet that it was 1991, as the year the film premiered. It's important to note that I make an effort to separate my subjective experiences from actual facts, and if I don't remember the exact date of an event, I must state that.

I couldn't find a single link to the film itself online, but here's a summary (link in Russian):

https://ru-kino-85-99.livejournal.com/12097.html

"I found several issues of the monthly magazine Novye Filmy (New Films) at work from the perestroika era. It was published by the USSR State Committee for Cinematography and the all-Union association Soyuzinformkino. It consists entirely of annotations for feature films and documentaries in the current repertoire. For example, in the October 1991 issue, alongside information on Mindadze's Armavir and Shakhnazarov's The Assassin of the Tsar, there's a story about a certain film called Mona Lisa (Belarusfilm, ‘Artel F’ video studio, 1991)—I suspect that, other than the reviewer, very few people have seen it.

Lately, many amateur films have appeared, made by groups of like-minded friends. In this case, it seems to have been like this: a group of friends got together, and one of them came up with a plot twist—summoning the souls of deceased, suffering poets by gathering them all at a feast (what if it weren't ‘Poem without a Hero’?). The idea was well-received, and actors Andrei Ankudinov, who played the roles of the hanged man and Pushkin, Evgeniy Tilicheev, who played several roles, Leonid Tikhomirov, who alternated between being a cameraman and a guard, and Irina Kaleda, who bears a striking resemblance to the Mona Lisa and portrays both her and the director's wife, began developing it, along with Nikolay Studnev (a young screenwriter and director).

So, this skit-like film tells the intricate story of some provincial (pardon me, maybe they only look that way) filmmakers attempting to make a convoluted film about the twists and turns of our long-suffering culture, where kitsch meets chamber ballet and vocals. First, the participants summon the souls of poetry martyrs (the film is dedicated to Marina Tsvetaeva—this August marks the 50th anniversary of her death, and next September, the 100th anniversary of her birth). To the sublime music of Bach, Haydn, Fischer, Vivaldi, Offenbach, Debussy, Saint-Saëns, Rossini, Kummer, Rocha, Corelli, Chopin, and Nicolaus Cracoviensis from 16th-century, a vision of a burning candle appears in a church; then, faces appear.

The ‘confusion’ begins, as Alice used to say: the faces and the characters who came down to earth have the same faces. The faces, appearing periodically and smiling sadly, slyly, or encouragingly, watch their doubles do what they please. And they do whatever they please, fortunately, they have a rich imagination. Before Madonna's soulful rendition of the ballad has even ended, before the beautiful Carmen and Don Juan have time to freeze, finishing their dance steps, a worker and a peasant are already beating the priest with all their might on the lawn beneath the gallows with a cheerful slogan. And then, having hanged the priest, the worker and the peasant, wearing red bows on their chests, suddenly stick their heads in the noose, and all three hang in a row. Meanwhile, Akhmatova, Pasternak, Blok, Voloshin, Tsvetaeva, and others, hands clasped behind their backs, stroll along the perimeter of the roped-off area, while the director of the film escorts them, mocking the prisoners, using their own poems, turning their pathos against the authors themselves (to Blok, for example, he will say: ‘You are right, a drunken monster!’), and discussing the pitiful fate of the Russian intelligentsia. Jokes pile up on jokes: someone is ‘shot’ with a water pistol, after being forced to dig his own grave; the director sneers in Gorky makeup; a saint plays Kaganovich; one of the hanged men grows Pushkin's sideburns and either sings Gumilev and French romances or concocts a joke between three. Blok, exasperated, declares he has no time for this idiotic film. Akhmatova gossips with Mona Lisa about the Madonna and the director, who finally declares that Russian culture is completely incomprehensible and decides to return to antiquity and the Renaissance. Nymphs and Bacchus appear on stage, and the film crew adopts a new slogan—‘Let's have some beautiful erotica!’—and stages ‘living pictures.’ A cooperative gallows for newlyweds, reflections on the tragic plight of the Belarusian people, a lambada to the lyrics of ‘The Sufferings of Saratov.’

In short, the authors are declaring the general end of the world and the end of the end of the world. Perhaps all this, roughly speaking, chaos is foreseen by the laws of the chosen author of the menippea genre, but cinema has its own laws, and it wouldn't hurt to remember this." — Natalia Miloserdova.

I remember the film's plot as somewhat different, but it wasn't the plot that interested me. I watched the film for the songs it contained, based on Marina Tsvetaeva's poetry.

As far as I remember, the next day I bought a movie ticket again and brought with me a huge bouquet of several dozen red roses. After that, I attended every showing of the film in several theaters (I saw it over 40 times) and followed N. Studnev himself, regularly ‘feeding’ bouquets of roses to his fair half, the singer and dancer in the film.

Here are two more links describing the film Mona Lisa (I found them in 2025, links in Russian):

https://gosfilmofond.ru/films/232387/

https://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/avtorskie-intentsii-i-postmodernistskie-tendentsii-v-filmah-nezavisimyh-belorusskih-studiy-nachala-90-h-godov-hh-veka

It was a precise blow from the Spirit, and at the film's premiere, I suddenly realized I was a Poet. What are the odds that a feature film about poetry will premiere near where you live, and that it will be accompanied by live performances by the actors playing the leading roles? It's important that the creators, charged with the film's message, were present; it was their direct contact with the audience, and the on-screen image reinforced that impact.

I believe the likelihood of this happening is very close to zero, as no one in the world makes films about poetry. These are the kind of major feature films that would attract thousands of ordinary spectators, young people seeking entertainment, and people unversed in poetry.

The film's origin story is unusual. Initially, the director received a small grant from a German foundation to produce an educational documentary for German television. However, with this meager budget, he managed to create a full-fledged feature film. As far as I remember, the film was completely unappreciated by audiences. But it couldn't have been otherwise—who needed a film about poetry when a vast country was falling apart around them?

Of course, the poems I wrote in the six months after that event were worthless. I wrote only a dozen poems, and fortunately, that's when I stopped dabbling in such nonsense. Here's the best of them (the first two lines are missing; I couldn't remember them, after all, more than 20 years had passed). I'll also note that ‘Word’ was capitalized:

"… I broke free,

I howl like the wind.

Again the thoughts fall into line—

Ah, to have time to finish this Word:

Never going back,

I will never sleep in peace!"

I suddenly realized that I was missing something in a world limited by computers and Donald Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming, and I rushed to make up for lost time.

Feeling like a Poet, I began writing poetry, never left the Minsk Central Library, went to every concert in a row at the church—the Chamber Hall of Philharmonia, and even began playing an extra in the folk theater, the best at that time in Minsk, fans know which one.

As a result, I started skipping classes and was expelled from the Institute at the end of the 3rd year.

Even though I stopped attending lectures, I continued to come regularly to collect my scholarship right up until my expulsion, and this shows that even in such an unusual situation I remained as pragmatic as possible.

Even after I was expelled, I continued to live in the dormitory for another six months, moving into one of the empty rooms, and brazenly lied to the guards at the entrance.

I haven't changed at all as a person, but all my hobbies have changed. My old interests are completely gone, as if programming, math, and physics were just a passing hobby, replaced by a new passion.

I had no emotional or psychological problems. There were essentially no unnecessary worries; I simply climbed the stairs to the next level of my life and began exploring it with interest.

A quote from the Internet on how important the collapse of the USSR in 1991 was for the entire world:

"Businessmen from Switzerland, Germany, Luxembourg, and other comfortably settled corners of our planet in 1992 are very fond of Russia, despite the utter chaos that reigns here. After all, it's here that you can party comfortably for a month on ten bucks. Here are cheap and high-quality prostitutes. This is Russia—a defeated country, abandoned to the stream and plunder, along with its entire population."

In late 1991, in addition to the collapse of the USSR, another very important event occurred. In December 1991, the Sofia Publishing House released its first books on esotericism. Until then, these were largely unknown samizdat publications. Only with the collapse of the USSR did such ‘trash’ books begin to be sold left and right.

To entertain the reader, I'll indulge in a little fantasy. Let's take the following sequence:

Chernobyl accident >> Collapse of the USSR >> Sofia Publishing House.

Of course, one can (and should) object here: how did a medium-sized event influence a major event that led to such a small event? But let's abstract away the size of the events and assume that for whoever or whatever is behind the chessboard, the size of the events doesn't matter; what matters is that the outcome is 100% achievable.

Based on this strange logic, one might surmise that the founding of the Sofia Publishing House, which began publishing esoteric literature, could well have been a link in this incomprehensible chain of events. Since this literature had never previously existed in the USSR (except through samizdat) and books were generally difficult to obtain, the people, hungry for any kind of literature, simply swept them off store shelves.

Of course, director Nikolay Studnev also bought all these books, and since I was his ’errand boy,’ an unofficial assistant director, I was the one buying them for him. And since I really liked the Studnev’s, I bought double copies of all the books and kept one copy for myself to read and thus become a little closer to them.

This is how I became acquainted with the work of Carlos Castaneda and read his 9 books.

What are the chances that I would have read and taken these books seriously without the fact that they symbolized for me a part of the world of the people I loved? I believe the likelihood of this happening is quite low, as I have never been (and still am not) interested in mysticism, esotericism, or any other systems of "human development." I considered and continue to consider everything related to them complete nonsense and a foolish waste of time.