The book is titled with captivating simplicity, through which, however, small but sensitive ears of irony break through: “About yesterday.” The book is small – just over 300 pages. They contained about 50 short stories. These are original flashbacks from the minister’s childhood, youth and early professional life. We have before us amusing and often instructive stories that happened to the author in the 1970s and 1980s, before he became the young Minister of Emergency Situations under Boris Yeltsin. However, several stories describe the experience of working in the government. But, of course, there are no reminiscences of work as the Minister of Defense of Russia in the book. This is a serious matter, and in the book the minister obviously did not want to be serious.
However, it is interesting to tell not so much about the book itself, but about how the author appears in it. Apparently, he was counting on it.
“About Yesterday” was written for about a year, which is quite a long time, given its relatively small size. This is explained by the fact that Shoigu preferred to work on the manuscript on his own, and not entrust it to journalists. The publishers of the book are talking about this, and there is no reason not to believe them: an experienced editorial eye can immediately see that the words of the minister himself are heard in “About Yesterday”. A professional journalist, perhaps, would have turned out more dexterous and smoother, but also less personal. The author’s own individual voice would inevitably be muffled. And in the book “About Yesterday” this author’s voice undoubtedly exists – and it really looks like the voice of an order-bearing general of the army.
Shoigu puts some curious character at the center of each story, turning his creation into a kind of portrait gallery of Russian types. Sometimes these are famous people – for example, Viktor Chernomyrdin, Eduard Shevardnadze, Gennady Onishchenko. But more often we have ordinary people in front of us – childhood friends, colleagues at construction sites, petty provincial bureaucrats, drivers, rescuers. Those who happened to somehow intersect with the author and somehow be remembered by him. Let’s say right away that Shoigu’s memory is democratic, there is no hierarchy in his memoirs. The story about the president of Georgia will be as benevolent and ironic as about the foreman of the fitters, nicknamed Antifreeze (spoiler: he received this nickname after the only one from the team survived after ingesting radiator fluid).
With great tenderness and nostalgia, Shoigu describes his Tuvan childhood. Post-war Tuva is a truly amazing place. The population was motley: exiled “politicals”, descendants of the Decembrists and native Tuvans, who remember both the independent life of the republic and the Chinese authorities. Shoigu’s parents were staunch communists. The father continued to pay party dues even after the collapse of the USSR from the money that his son sent him from Moscow.
In the late 1950s, little Seryozha actually lives in a boarding school: he is in kindergarten all week, he is taken home only on Saturday evening. Since the very morning he has been standing at the window and looking at the bus stop not far away, warming the frosty glass with his breath: putty.”
Let us pay attention to this feature of the narrator: he is extremely attentive to details and their emotional coloring. This amazing accuracy of fixation will accompany the reader throughout the book. Psychologists rightly say that some people are more characterized by abstract thinking, it is difficult for them to work with specific empirical material, while others are characterized by an interest in specific objects and details, which can then lead to generalizations. The stories of “About Yesterday” show a person who is extremely concrete, not prone to abstract judgments, but with a heightened, as art critics would say, propensity for everyday detailing. The world of the author is material, diverse, bright. The characters in the book are attractive and unique. Events are always sensually colored and therefore deeply cut into memory.
With masculine thoroughness, Shoigu talks about food and drinks. Almost every episode has a specific menu and wine list. There is a lot of eating and drinking in the book. This is not so much the author’s view as the legacy of the era itself. The feast is probably the main element of the Soviet team building. In the harsh conditions of Siberian life, in which the youth of the author of the book passed, tasty dishes and risky alcoholic drinks could not help but become the most important component of life and being.
The author is an active person. For him, the work done and the result are the main measure of self-esteem and the assessment of others. There are almost no doubts and reflections in the stories. The scheme is usually different: we had a problem, one funny eccentric tried to solve it, almost ruined everything, but then we fixed everything. The search for the optimal solution to the problem is the mental model through which Shoigu looks at life in general.
Despite such a practical approach to people and events, the author is keenly interested in art. The book is full of references to films and series, music records, meetings with cultural figures. Here are Zhanna Bichevskaya, and Mikhail Zhvanetsky, and the Urgant family, and Mstislav Rostropovich with Galina Vishnevskaya. The maestro drunk to unconsciousness is a separate hilarious episode. Shoigu loves and appreciates creativity – in any case, it is important for him to inform the reader about this. It is known that he is fond of painting, paints landscapes in the open air – one of his paintings is used in the design of the book cover. Love for the beauty of nature, especially the native Siberian one, is the leitmotif of the whole story, and the book begins with a confession of this love. Apparently, this passion is contagious, and it is no coincidence that the Russian president spends his birthday in the company of the Minister of Defense in the beautiful Siberian wilderness.
There are also unnamed characters. The story “The Irony of Fate” describes a New Year’s feast in Sayanogorsk, during which a couple of Shoigu’s construction colleagues make a stunning confession: “Seryozha, we can’t. We have a clap.” It sounds so intelligent and natural that it seems that even the Queen of England could not have expressed herself more simply and elegantly. And it also becomes clear that this is a very strong family. As they say, in sorrow and in joy.
The book “About Yesterday” is characterized by clarity and brevity of presentation. Phrases are short and clear. It is likely that many of the recorded stories are honed by frequent oral retelling. The narration is conducted in a light ironic and aphoristic style. “Any construction begins with a fence and a toilet” – this is the beginning of one of the stories, and in a sense this is a deeply philosophical maxim. By the way, the book should have been marked 18+ – it is impossible to talk about a construction site in a situation of emergency without a convincing Russian obscenity. If at that moment Shoigu and his colleagues spoke in the style of a Russian language textbook for the eighth grade, the confidence in the Ministry of Defense among the masses would definitely fall.
Usually, memoirs are written either by people who have retired or by those who want to use the book as a PR tool to create a certain political image. Usually politicians write books about themselves with some degree of confession or manipulativeness. The book “About Yesterday” is a completely different case. Shoigu does not write about himself, but rather about the people with whom he had a chance to communicate. This is a more literary than political gesture, although political scientists will probably think otherwise. Especially if suddenly in the near future the Minister of Defense decides to write the books “About Today” and “About Tomorrow”.