In 1991, psychologist Elizabeth Loftus conducted a survey on memory. It turned out that most people (including psychologists) believe that memory contains a literal record of events: access to it can become difficult, the brightness of impressions may fade, some parts may be missing, but in general the brain works like a video camera.

How, then, to explain the presence of false memories that feel so emotionally powerful, accurate and detailed? We are absolutely sure of their authenticity, but in vain.

Through the stencil of attention

Problems arise already at the stage of perception. We notice what our brain considers important at the moment (a plunging neckline, a gun pointed between your eyes, the dramatic twists and turns of a new book by a favorite author), while signals that are judged to be unimportant are suppressed. Magicians often use this to create their own illusions.

Internal narrative: the main thing is that the suit fits

All our memories are part of a coherent story that we are constantly creating from the chaos of data. If the brain notices a contradiction, it tries to eliminate or smooth it out. The incomprehensible and unexpected should receive at least some explanation or be discarded. The model of the world must be stable, and that's it, otherwise it will be impossible to make decisions and act normally.

This concerns not only your interpretation of what happened (Vasya fired a pistol because he is a terrorist), but also the details of what is happening (I don’t remember any police uniform Vasya was wearing, because this contradicts my opinion that Vasya is a terrorist).

By prior arrangement

Witnesses who discuss an event among themselves will unconsciously bring their memories of it to a common denominator. Not only your personal, but also the collective suit should fit well. This is called conformity.

Ideally, of course, we need other witnesses to be nice to us. If we do not like them, we will resist this process.

The main thing is the essence, and we will come up with the details

The general theme and emotional background of the memory are preserved quite accurately, and the details are thought out (well, you can’t keep them all, in fact - the physical memory carrier is not rubber). Moreover, they are selected in such a way as not only not to contradict, but also to reinforce and strengthen the central theme and emotion. So “I caught a crucian” turns into “I caught ten crucians and a pike”, obeying the central “fishing was great”.

What matters, where it doesn't matter

The source of information is erased from memory much faster than the information itself.

This could be an important resource saver initially (what difference does it make who exactly said that a tiger is chasing us), but in modern society this can become a problem (if the N news agency said that a tiger is chasing us, then I should probably run, and if TV channel M - think ten times).

Also, our brain does not attach too much importance to whether the information received is true or not: if you say something and then explain that it is not true, after 3 days 27% of young people and 40% of middle-aged people will remember the statement as true and will lead yourself accordingly.

However, if you first declare that it will now be false, and then give information, more people will remember that the statement is false. Keep that in mind if you ever get into the fight against myths.

True story that happened to me

We have a tendency to place ourselves at the center of stories (I knocked out Vasya's gun, not Petya at all) and appropriate the experience that we heard about, read about or watched the program. Of course, we cannot attribute absolutely incredible (from the point of view of us today) actions to ourselves, but on trifles we can lie pretty much to ourselves and others. It's easy to remember that we were at the zoo, which we only saw on TV.

Now that you've asked, I'm starting to remember

There are quite a few studies in which subjects recall something that was not there (for example, a non-existent scene of a movie that has just been shown). This can be done by showing your photoshopped photo and/or asking leading questions.

In this light, some psychotherapeutic methods seem rather dubious. Flashbacks of childhood abuse can easily turn out to be false. Especially when your therapist is armed with a presumption of parental guilt. Ellen Bass and Laura Davis had a serious hand in its formation.

Here is an excerpt from their book “The Courage to Heal”: “Assume that your feelings are absolutely correct. If you feel that you became a victim in childhood, and this affected your entire later life, then that is exactly how it was. You don't need accurate and coherent memories as you would to testify in court."

When a psychotherapist makes his patients sincerely believe that they were abducted by aliens (and this is what John Mack became famous for), the delusion of what is happening is obvious to most. But fabricated incest memories have ruined many lives and family relationships. Children have a particularly strong suggestibility. Of course, domestic violence exists, but this is not a reason to imprison and harass the innocent.

So, memories can be erased, not formed at all (if, for example, you are in a state of chronic lack of sleep), adapt to our expectations and the expectations of other people, merge with each other, and so on. We don't notice it because we usually have no reason to doubt it. There is nothing to compare the stories in our head, because no one videotapes our whole life from birth to death. What a pity: the shock of viewing the footage would have been enormous. “I remember everything differently, I don’t believe you,” many participants in the experiments say when they read accounts of bright events written by them in the past.

Welcome to the Matrix, Neo!

Although no, memory still has some relation to reality.

Sources

1. Leonard Mlodinov, "Neoconscious", 2012
2. Steven Novella, video lecture course “Your Deceptive Mind: A Scientific Guide to Critical Thinking Skills”, 2012. Lecture 4 – “Flaws and fabrications of memory”.
3. http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/224766.php
4. http://wolf-kitses.livejournal.com/72264.html
5. http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A8%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B8%D1%84,_%D0%9C%D1%83%D0%B7%D0 %B0%D1%84%D0%B5%D1%80
6. http://www.stopbadtherapy.com/courage/index.shtml
7. http://www.chayka.org/node/3957
8. http://skepdic.com/repressedmemory.html

Perjury is, as you know, a criminal offense, an offense that is condemned by any established ethical system, morality, morality, and even one of the most heavy sins in Judaism (sin against the 9th commandment), Christianity, Islam.

However, perjury is not always intentional. A misleading perjurer does not always know for sure that he is lying. A person can distort and err with inspiration, and at the same time be confident in his rightness and crystal honesty!

I'm not even talking about the so-called "broken phone" when information is passed from mouth to mouth, gradually turning into disinformation. When retelling at each stage of the verbal "chain", the facts are distorted and transformed. Such are the properties of our brain - to conjecture, mixing reality with fantasy and unconditionally believing in the "apocrypha" created by oneself.

But here is the information "first-hand"... It is also far from always reliable. You yourself, most likely, have seen many, many times how people who were present at the same event are able to describe it so differently that they give incompatible versions of what happened, refuting each other. There is a well-established saying "lie like an eyewitness." Criminologists love her very much. It accurately characterizes the features of working with witnesses of incidents and crimes.

Here the blogger writes:

« There was an incident about two years ago. Saturday, I sleep, but I DO NOT sleep much anymore, because in a few hours I have to train (but for me it's a thrill, of course, I like to train). But I also like to take a nap, of course. Suddenly a squeal, they say, help, save. Squeal, of course, feminine, I would even say girlish.

I fly out to the balcony, waking up, and ask (and my voice is set by many years of yelling in the hall, yes, I even sing quite well, I guess) ... and so I ask, they say, what the hell is this???
And there some woodpecker wrings the girl, raised his fuck, wanted to tell me something, but then he looked better, bit his tongue, let the girl go and went on, pretending as if nothing had happened.

Well, the girl followed him, began to howl, in general, I understood there, this is a family idyll of degenerates.

So, the next day, rumors spread around the house that the maniac wanted to rape the girl, and some man jumped out of the balcony (jumped out of the balcony !!!), and naked, and dashed off this maniac.
I laughed a lot.
And there are a lot of such examples.

The proof that eyewitnesses lie not out of malice is a curious experiment once conducted at the International Congress of Psychologists. The event was held in the hall next to the restaurant, which hosted a fancy-dress masquerade ball. The speeches of scientists were disturbed by loud screams and music, but the organizers of the congress justified themselves that they could not do anything about it - the rent is expensive, and they managed to rent only half of the building.

And then something shocking happened. During the next report, a participant in the ball dressed as Pierrot burst into the hall. Harlequin was chasing him with a pistol in his hands. Shots rang out, Pierrot fell ... When order was finally restored in the hall, the chairman asked all the eyewitnesses to give evidence in order to demand a penalty from the owners of the building, who promised peace and order during the congress.

More than a hundred psychologists gave written testimonies. Some wrote that Harlequin shot Pierrot in the back, after which he fell, others claimed that Pierrot fell himself, and his pursuer just jumped on him and fired into the air. Still others specified: the victim fell immediately after the shot, and only then Harlequin put his foot on her and bang into the air. It seemed to the fourth that Harlequin fired at point-blank range at Pierrot both before and after his fall ... The testimony also differed in terms of the number of shots - some heard only one clap, others two, still others - three or even four.

It is clear that the interviewed psychologists were not at all interested in deliberately distorting the facts, and only tried, having experienced a slight shock, to describe subjectively what they saw. Everyone could swear that it was his version that was truly true.

The next day, the “second act” of the performance took place in the same hall. According to the scientist, whose report was interrupted yesterday, the entire scene with the ball in the restaurant, as well as the “showdown” between Harlequin and Pierrot, were prepared in advance for the sole purpose of refuting or confirming the main provisions of his scientific message. Psychologists laughed a lot, listening to their own contradictory testimonies, which confirmed the truth of the assertion that unconscious lies arising from the subjectivity of impressions are characteristic of almost any person.

The other day, washprofile posted a note about perjury. Psychologists from the University of Iowa \ Iowa State University and John Jay College \ John Jay College conducted an experiment that once again proved that witnesses to a crime should not be completely trusted.

The experiment was conducted with a group of students who were not informed about the real purpose of the experiment. They were asked to go to the university laboratory and wait a bit. After that, an outsider appeared in the room, who took the laptop from the table and quickly retreated. A few minutes later, her "employee" entered the laboratory, who discovered the loss of the computer and informed those present about the theft that had just occurred.

The "policeman" who arrived asked the students to help identify the thief.
After that, several people were shown to the students, one of whom was suspected of committing this theft (there was no real "thief" among them). The students were asked to point to the perpetrator and rate their level of confidence that the choice was made correctly.

The results of the experiment were shocking: during the identification, most of the witnesses indicated that among the personalities presented to them there was a real thief, and the students reported this with a high degree of certainty. After that, the identified person told the witnesses that in fact he was not a thief, but was simply invited to participate in the identification procedure. Realizing the mistake, 60% of the witnesses immediately pointed to another person from among those initially presented to them. They explained that they had previously been mistaken, but now they are absolutely sure that they are naming the real criminal. A detailed description of the study will be published in the journal Psychological Science.

In the United States, the phenomenon of perjury has long been studied. It is generally accepted that this problem is widespread - according to some estimates, up to a quarter of the testimony given in the country's courts is subsequently refuted (by the results of various examinations or otherwise). There is no exact data on the true scale of this phenomenon: firstly, because no organization maintains relevant statistics; secondly, because most of the witness statements made during interviews with investigators and judges are not recorded. In addition, quite often false testimonies are given by people who simply want to become famous and do not have real information about the crime.

But it's not even about lawsuits. Here is the writing of history. There is also a problem here. Here is an excerpt from Belinkov's book about Yuri Tynyanov:

« The famous English politician, conqueror, adventurer, poet and historian Sir Walter Raleigh saw the fight from the window of his cell in the Tower.

The fight broke out just as Sir Raleigh was finishing the last lines of the second volume of The History of the World.

He saw first two fighting, then four more joined them, then another, and another, and twelve more.

A ring of interested persons formed around the dump. It boiled and swelled like soup in a pewter bowl.
The dump rolled around the prison yard, then gradually began to fall apart, fallen human figures appeared on its edges.

Knocking, an elderly pirate entered the cell of the venerable historian from the neighboring cell.

Sir, said the venerable historian, what a fine fight. Isn't it, sir?

I can't find it, sir, - the pirate answered with a touch of barely noticeable disdain. - Great fights only happen in Mertyrtydfil Jail, Glomorgen County. I'm sorry.

But, sir,” retorted a somewhat stung Sir Raleigh, “twenty men were involved in the fight, which you refer to, as it seems to me, with a touch of barely perceptible disdain.

But, sir, you are prone to inappropriate exaggeration, - interrupted the venerable pirate. - Six people you're trying to sell for twenty.

But, sir," Her Majesty's former favorite, who once owned forty thousand acres in Ireland, retorted with vivacity, "I thank the creator, I still know how to add two and four, and one, and another, and another twelve.

Two yes three, yes one, and the whole score, - the venerable pirate interrupted the venerable adventurer. “But why fourteen more?” I thank the creator, I can count to six as well as any schoolboy from Eton.

But, sir, I fought under Coligny's banner! I know very well that if two are added to four and one is added to the resulting sum, and one and twelve are added, then it will turn out just ...

The elderly pirate, to whom the brave sailors of Her Majesty's fleet had cut off the upper half of the head in many days of bloody battle, burst out laughing.

Sir! cried Walter Raly, conqueror, adventurer, poet and historian. - If people who observed the same event at the same time can so decisively disagree in the story about it, then what is the historian's story about the events that happened a millennium before it worth?!

With these words, the venerable historian grabbed the manuscript of the second volume of World History, in which only an unfinished line remained, and with a groan threw it into the fireplace.

People tend to be deceived and fall into self-deception, become victims of misunderstandings and create self-justifying clusters of interconnected texts so that the final conclusions are not made from a neutral point of view, but from a huge number of small episodic stories, stories with a small letter, the big History they need grows, describing everything that happened, everything that happened between "them" and "us", the whole sequence of events, all the differences and absurdities of this world from the correct, that is, our point of view.

« The most dubious events are precisely those that were observed by the largest number of people. To say that a fact is simultaneously confirmed by thousands of witnesses is to say, in most cases, that the actual fact is completely different from the stories that exist about it.
From all of the above, it clearly follows that historical writings must be treated as works of pure fantasy, fantastic stories about facts that were poorly observed and accompanied by explanations made later."- wrote the psychologist Gustave Le Bon.

A recent example is the emergence of one LiveJournal community. It happened live, in front of hundreds of people. But this does not prevent the liars (who were not around at all) to shout that the community was stolen from them.

Or here's another example: Bibi. His deceit has become the talk of the tongue.

Creatives from Kadima make a particularly disproportionate emphasis on Bibi's lies (naively believing that someone else's shortcoming is their dignity, and it is enough to convince the voter of Netanyahu's lies for him to run to vote for Tsypa).

And why do you think that he is deliberately lying when he says that he never voted for a unilateral disengagement? Or about the place of the Minister of Finance in the Italian government? Or about Gandhi being in his government? Or about the fact that he saw British soldiers walking around Jerusalem as a child?

But Bibi isn't stupid at all. He is smarter and more talented than most Israeli politicians. Why does he re-substitute himself every time and allow himself to be caught in a lie? Moreover, small. This is at your own expense. The only explanation that comes to my mind is the conjecture that maybe Bibi is not lying, maybe HE REMEMBERS THIS.

When I went to meet Bibi with a group of bloggers, he brought up the story of the Hasmonean Tunnel. Those who understand Hebrew can watch and listen.

Bibi told how he ended the intifada in thirty minutes by threatening Arafat. And I didn’t remember about the return of Hebron that followed this. He did not need it in the format of this meeting at all. By doing this, he only spoiled the impression ... Then why is he ?!

HE REMEMBERS SO.

It is clear that his former party members, now by the will of fate found themselves in political movement The Kadima remember this story somewhat differently.

But why exactly should we believe them, and not him. Following this does not mean at all as a result of this. Yes, and not the party that arose on the basis of itnatkut and for itkansut to reproach Bibi for giving up territories.

I also remember these events somewhat differently. But when I listened with Bibi and carefully watched his body movements (which did not betray a lie at all), I involuntarily remembered a joke:

« The husband comes home. Sees the wife lies under her lover.
Freezes in an awesome pose.

The wife, without stopping the process, tells him:

Well, who are you going to believe? Your shameless eyes or my word of honor?! ".

After all, a lie detector, at most, can indicate what the subject himself considers to be true. But is it really true?!

Because of this, overlaps very often occur in situations of “word against word” (“confrontation”). For example, a woman accuses her boss of sexual harassment. Passes a polygraph test. And the bark detector confirms.

Then, the boss, backed up against the wall, will use the same technical means, which, on the basis of instrumental psychophysiological studies, gives him the statement that he did not sexually harass her, and if he touched her ass, it was purely accidental.

About section

This section contains articles devoted to phenomena or versions that, one way or another, may be of interest or useful to researchers of the unexplained.
Articles are divided into categories:
Informational. They contain useful information for researchers from various fields of knowledge.
Analytical. They include an analysis of the accumulated information about versions or phenomena, as well as descriptions of the results of the experiments.
Technical. They accumulate information about technical solutions that can be used in the field of studying unexplained facts.
Methods. They contain descriptions of the methods used by the group members in the investigation of facts and the study of phenomena.
Media. They contain information about the reflection of phenomena in the entertainment industry: films, cartoons, games, etc.
Known misconceptions. Disclosures of known unexplained facts, collected including from third-party sources.

Article type:

Informational

Lying like a witness

In the article “Lie detection in the study of the NOF”, we have already dwelled on what options for distorting events by their eyewitnesses may occur in the study of the NOF. Here we will consider various psychological effects that affect the witness and his evidence.

One of the most famous effects is "blindness of inattention". Its essence is as follows: often a person may completely fail to notice even a very bright and significant detail that is literally “under his nose” if he is distracted by some other task (for example, trying to consider something, calculate, remember , explore). And the more important the object of distraction seems to a person, the more “blind” he is to other details. As an example, we can recall a children's riddle based on distraction: “At the final stop, fourteen men and two women got on the bus. At the first stop, two men got off and two women got on. At the next stop, almost all the men got off (only three remained), and at the next stop, five women got on. After driving half a kilometer, the bus stopped and another man got on. How many stops were there on the bus route? If you do not know in advance that you need to count the stops (and there are only three of them), then attention is focused on frequent variables - the number of men and women. In this case, it is often impossible to answer the final question.

The next effect "attention overload", somewhat similar to the previous one. It is based on the peculiarity of human memory, which is able to concentrate and analyze only a small number of elements at the same time. As an example, a simple task can be given: “Two workers unload two wagons in two days. How many wagons will 6 workers unload in 6 days? When solved on paper, it seems simple, but when solved mentally, it causes problems because the amount of data that needs to be kept in memory to solve it exceeds the capacity of working memory, making logical conclusions impossible. Thus, small volumes of seemingly simple information cause confusion and difficulties with its perception and analysis.

Effect "attention delays" is based on the fact that the human mind is able to keep attention on some event for only about 10 minutes, then it begins to be distracted by other events and details around. Thus, over time, it becomes more and more difficult to keep attention and remember information. Anyone who has listened to long lectures is probably familiar with this effect.

One of the important effects for NOF researchers is "change of memory", which lies in the fact that when you mentally or verbally reproduce events, the memory of it changes, since the neural pathways are activated differently each time. As a result, a person, under the influence of his own opinion and fantasies, as well as new knowledge gained after the incident, remembers not what he really saw and felt, but a completely new event construction. So, for example, leading questions can "force" the eyewitness to "remember" details that were not there at the time of observation.

The previous effect can also include the substitution of memories caused by strong emotions or intense anticipation of ongoing events.

A variant of the memory substitution effect is "false memory". When it manifests itself, a person, on his own or by imposing information from outside, can eventually “remember” an event that did not actually take place at all, and believe in this memory. University of Washington psychologist Elizabeth Loftus described the false memory experiment in a 1997 article for Scientific American: “When one of the participants was asked about this embarrassing incident at the wedding during the first conversation, he replied: “I don’t understand what you are talking about. . Never heard of it before." However, in the second conversation, he already answered differently: “The wedding was in the open air. We were fussing all the time, so maybe I could accidentally hit someone and spill a glass of punch or something. Yes, I made a big mistake. And then they yelled at me."

Conclusion

All people are subject to the above effects. The likelihood that they will manifest depends on the emotional and physical state of the witness, both during the event itself, and after it, and during the interview. Thus, due to differences in the perception of reality, people's statements about the same incident can vary significantly. And since so many factors influence the perception, memorization and reproduction of the details of an event, it is not worth unconditionally trusting the testimony of witnesses, they can only be used as additional information to material evidence (photographs, video recordings, etc.), which should form the basis of evidence the basis of any investigation.

Memory is a document of the past

Old men and old women enter in carriages.
1st old woman. As I remember now...
1st old man. No - I remember it now!
2nd old woman. You remember how it is now, but I remember how it was before.
2nd old man. And I still remember how I used to.
3rd old woman. And I remember how even earlier, very, very early.
3rd old man. And I remember how it is now and how it was before.

V. Mayakovsky "Bedbug"

The same stormy and equally fruitful disputes break out in our country after the release of the next prime-time film or television product on a historical theme - if there are still people who lived in the era depicted on the screen.

These disputes boil down mainly to assessing the props: did they wear such dresses and hairstyles, did they drive such cars, did they live in such apartments, did they eat such foods ... After all, formally speaking, everyone who lived then or supposedly remembers the story perfectly grandparents, etc., can claim and often claim to be a witness. But the trouble is that outside the historical context, which is absolutely necessary for the analysis and evaluation of the proposed biographical experience or the figure of the witness himself, these memories do not give us anything at best, at worst they completely distort the real picture. It is the importance of context that is illustrated by an episode from George Orwell's novel "1984", where the main character, trying to find out at least something about the past of his country, the traces of which he himself systematically destroys in the Ministry of Truth, asks a poor old man: what was life like before? But he does not understand the question and cannot give any intelligible answer, except that beer then cost four pence.

In this episode, both the question and the answer are important. Orwell's hero, referring to the past, is actually trying to comprehend the present: was it really so bad before that the current regime of Oceania is saving and necessary? And the old man cannot give him an intelligible answer, because the system (of which the main character himself is a part), together with historical memory, has taken away from him all the tools for understanding both the past and the present. Therefore, his memories are just fragments of a raw, undifferentiated awareness of the past, and for the hero they are completely useless.

We can safely say that for decades we have existed in the space of just such - undivided, undigested - experience. For many years, only very small segments were distinguishable on our "memory map", it was difficult to compare it with individual memory. An absurd situation has developed, the consequences of which have not been overcome by Russian society so far, when millions of people were the bearers of the hardest historical heritage, including terror, famine, war, but could not articulate it in any way. Under the conditions of prohibition, fear, censorship, and constant self-censorship, the "silent" memory underwent very significant deformations, which had the most detrimental effect on the mission of the witness.

"Thaw"

The birth of a witness

Today they write a lot about the post-Stalin decade, they see in this era some parallels with modern reality, they look for answers to topical questions in it, but they do not mention one very important phenomenon of this time - the birth of a witness.

By the beginning of the 1960s, and by no means only in our country, but primarily in countries that had survived dictatorship, mass terror, war, the Holocaust, there was a need to evaluate and work through the past. However, many intellectuals very quickly come to the realization that it is hardly possible to describe humanitarian catastrophes (of which Auschwitz and Kolyma become symbols) using traditional methods and sources. A mediator is needed between the present and the past, so difficult to describe. This is how the appearance of a witness, who is called to become this intermediary, occurs.

The special importance of the role of a witness in these historical circumstances became apparent even during the Nuremberg Trials. No wonder it was in 1961 that Stanley Kramer returned to this topic in the famous film “The Nuremberg Trials”. Two years later, Germany begins its own trials of Nazi criminals (in particular, the executioners of Auschwitz), where for the first time more than two hundred prosecution witnesses speak publicly. In 1964, the trial of Eichmann, which attracted worldwide attention, also opens in Jerusalem. Hannah Arendt rushes there to get in touch with herself and experience the testimony of the executioner and his victims. It is thanks to what she has heard and seen that she comes to the conclusion about the "banality of evil." It is extremely important that all these court procedures and speeches are filmed for the first time, shown on TV, and these media circumstances stimulate the memory of other potential witnesses not involved in the processes.

As the importance of the figure of the witness is realized in public discourse, the term Zeitzeuge, which can be translated as "witness of time", arises in Germany. This difference between the “witness” and the Zeitzeuge was seen by Viktor Shklovsky back in the 1920s, when he wrote about “contemporaries and simultaneous interpreters” in his book The Hamburg Account. The meaning of this division in relation to the role of a witness lies in the fact that by no means everyone who lived at the same time can convey its main nerve, deep meaning, its "noise", if one resorts to Mandelstam's metaphor. By the way, Marlen Khutsiev did not find this “noise of time” in the television series “The Thaw”: “It seems to me that the name “Thaw” confuses everyone. What I see has nothing to do with the phenomenon called "thaw". It's just a story about how a movie is made... In our thaw there were problems - moral, social, public... and what problems the authors solve in the film, I still don't understand. Therefore, it should have been called differently.

The image of time can also be woven from Akhmatov's perfect "rubbish" if we place the evidence in a historical context. Here, for example, are quotes from family correspondence in 1961. Husband and wife are young scientists from the provinces, PhDs, often go on business trips:

“The other day I went to Essentuki for oil, bought 1 kg, there was a lot of it. I think to buy here a can of three liters for melted butter (I saw such butter in Essentuki). In Kislovodsk, they say, there is flour, but you have to go in the morning, and I have only one Sunday, I’ll see, I think that we have worse fats than flour.

“One Sunday I went to Nalchik, and there in the market there was pork, lamb and beef for 17-18 rubles, very fatty. The stores in Pyatigorsk have everything, but there is no sugar yet.”

“In Alma-Ata, I accidentally bought a Cheviot suit from a Leningrad factory in a store, size 48, height 3, dark blue, just right for me, and for only 399 rubles. If you don’t like it, then for 500 rubles they will tear it off with your hands. I also bought myself for 50 rubles. kapron white hat. See what a spender I am."

What does this typical example of Soviet correspondence from exactly the same year as the Thaw show say? About everyday earthiness, about the lack of spirituality of the authors? Not at all, they were chasing books that were impossible to get with the same zeal, the husband managed to serve several years in the Stalinist camp, just a boy. Here a very important background is created for the then still extremely difficult, gray and full of everyday humiliation of life, completely different from the one that, even with the best intentions, is portrayed on the screen today.

In the thaw decade, for the first time, voices are heard testifying to what constituted the essence of the Stalin era: about mass repressions, about the Gulag. However, very soon this topic becomes taboo again, for many years it settles in "samizdat" or "tamizdat", inaccessible to the general public. This entailed great informational, psychological, analytical losses, because many witnesses were silenced forever. Memory has remained largely segmental, socially homogeneous and poorly reflected. As for another huge layer - the memory of the war, it, although in a truncated form, is still present in the censored space, in particular on the television screen. One of the best examples is Konstantin Simonov's documentary A Soldier Walked (1975).

The hard truth about the war was constantly sought to be replaced by the official spoiler - the mythologized memory of "professional" veterans, which cut off everything that did not fit into the canon of the heroic deed of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War. At the same time, the form of "meetings with veterans" was unusually actively exploited by Soviet propaganda and contributed to the devaluation of the very idea - the transmission of genuine living memory by a witness. But the fact that in those years when millions of its bearers were alive was perceived by many as an official fake, a propaganda screen, a dummy, today it is passed off as the truest memory of front-line soldiers, which the unvarnished truth about the war and, most importantly, about the incredible cost of victory, allegedly mortally offends. .

It was literature in the censored space that replaced history, which could not reliably describe events without access to sources that were sealed with seven seals. Realizing that there is actually an Orwellian disappearance of the memory of the Gulag, many survivors sit down to remember. Evgenia Ginzburg, the author of one of the best memoirs about the camps, writes directly about this: she survived to testify. This is manifested to the greatest extent in Shalamov's prose, where the author essentially speaks for those who will never be able to tell about their experiences. At the same time, Shalamov is one of the first to realize the limited possibilities of a witness broadcasting the memory of Kolyma.

"Thaw"

Birth of a Spectator

Since the mid-1960s, interest in the history of dictatorships has become so widespread that such a powerful new mediator as television cannot fail to respond to it.

It is interesting to turn to the experience of Germany, which most clearly reflects the process of the appearance of a witness on the screen and, most importantly, the connection that has arisen between him and the viewer. Gradually, the school format of an educational film about history is becoming a thing of the past, it is being replaced by non-fiction films made according to the canons of historical documentary films on the BBC. They are created according to a more or less universal recipe: a cut of chronicle film frames illustrates the comments of historians and is accompanied by an objective narrator's voice-over. It quickly becomes clear to the management of TV channels and TV producers that the tapes dedicated to various aspects of the history of National Socialism have a huge audience potential. The seizure of power, betrayal, conspiracies, bloody crimes, on the one hand, could not in themselves - as an action - not occupy the audience, and on the other hand - all this scary tale until quite recently was the reality in which they lived.

As educational and enlightening tasks fade into the background on domestic TV, the so-called histortainment (entertainment on historical topics) wins, the talking heads of experts become less and less attractive to the viewer, and also create inconvenience for the filmmakers. There is a gradual rejection of comments by historians who insist on facts and interpretations, which complicate these stories and reduce their rating effectiveness. Hence their replacement with the voices of witnesses of the era. It is their appearance on the screen that brings out such a format of documentaries in prime time. The Witness is called upon to fill the space between the viewer and the event, to bring drama and emotionality to the TV story about historical events.

This also coincides with the oral history boom that has begun, when new technical possibilities make it possible to record the memories of eyewitnesses on film very quickly and mobilely. In the 1980s, mega-projects arise when hundreds and even thousands of testimonies are recorded. It seems to many at that time that thanks to these "voices from the choir" an important key to understanding, and most importantly, to the reliable transmission of historical memory, was found. The biggest achievement in this film work with witnesses was Claude Lanzmann's Shoah (1985).

But by the end of the 1980s, many historians, far from dismissing the role of witnesses, realized that actually accessing memory is a very difficult task. The attempt, most clearly manifested in the format of a documentary historical television film, to replace history with memory raises serious questions. It's not about the primitive logic of the saying "He's lying like an eyewitness", but about the problems of interpretation, working with myths and repressions, and finally, with traumas experienced.

In the product put on the stream of the teleconveyor, all these doubts and difficulties are taken out of the brackets. The expansion and devaluation of the witness on the screen began to lead to the fact that the historical context disappeared, causal relationships were forced out. The question arose: what - for understanding the era or analysis historical events- can give broken quotes, interspersed with film frames, the origin of which is also very doubtful? Can, for example, be considered documentary footage from the films of Leni Riefenstahl? Or clips from the Nazi film news programs Die Deutsche Wochenschau?

That, as a result, we are given evidence taken out of context - when, for example, we learn from the lips of a loving grandson that his grandfather, who signed the Ribbentrop Pact, Molotov's grandfather loved his grandchildren very much. That, deprived of a company car, he went by public transport to his grandmother in the hospital, and his chief boss was essentially an unhappy man, with difficult children, whom he had to raise alone, because his wife died.

The format, in which witnesses replaced historians, proved to be very convenient for the television screen. In many cases, with their help, facts are replaced by feelings and emotions, and reliability is ensured by their witness status. A certain ideal type of TV witness has arisen, who, with his statements, only confirms stereotypes and clichés. This type of witness constantly appears in domestic documentary television production, creating a false image of the benevolent atmosphere of Brezhnev's stagnation, or mythological "documentary" portraits of the Soviet leaders of the Stalin era. Perhaps most often, with the help of the testimonies of nurses, cooks, personal drivers, frankly boulevard products are created: a “history” seen through a keyhole.

It is quite obvious to anyone who deals with the problems of historical memory that the most accurate example of the limited means available to the witness is still Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon. It is no coincidence that Sergei Loznitsa builds his documentaries and, most importantly, the film "Blockade" (2005) entirely on newsreels, refusing not only talking heads, but also off-screen commentary.

"Thaw"

Television film as a historical source

Since the beginning of the 1980s, after the incredible success of the television series The Holocaust (1979), fiction television films and television series, in which private history is depicted against the backdrop of seemingly real historical events, have gained more and more popularity among documentaries. Speaking about domestic experience, here we should mention the huge success of two television series of the 1970s - "Seventeen Moments of Spring" (1973) and "The meeting place cannot be changed" (1979).
At the same time, both films - and here the talent of their creators was manifested - did not insist on their historical truthfulness.

As television and cinema become the main mediators of historical events, they begin to lay claim to the main role in the formation of historical memory. Of course, this is not articulated so straightforwardly by their authors and producers, but we see how historical films and television series tend to turn the viewer into a witness to the events taking place on the screen. This effect occurs when a film presents itself as authentic.

1950. "Rashomon", Akira Kurosawa

People who want to read the original source of the Rashomon movie usually start by reading Akutagawa's short story "The Rashomon Gate". But from him in the film only the castle gate Rasho - the main entrance to the imperial residence. Moreover, the rain and the atmosphere of desolation. You need to read another story by Akutagawa - "In the thicket". He is quite short. Three minutes.

The film was very lucky - it was directed by the great Japanese director Akira Kurosawa. This at least slightly reduces the number of experts who know that in the 11th century in Japan they dressed differently, that a robber had no chance in a duel against a samurai, that tachi is not fenced, and that the sageo cord was threaded through the kurigata brace otherwise. But it has nothing to do with the movie.

All talk about the film, as a rule, comes down to the answer to one question - who killed the samurai? And most agree that the most truthful version is that of a lumberjack. There is absolutely no reason for him to lie, he is an uninterested person and he saw everything from beginning to end. His only sin was to take an expensive dagger for himself. But he has six children and he takes on a seventh baby, just found in the ruins. Faith in humanity is restored, the rain stops and the sun comes out from behind the clouds. If you only knew how much I hate such flat symbolism.

Archetypal (and therefore also one-dimensional) are the three characters discussing history under the Rashomon gate. These are the Cynic (peasant), Romantic (monk) and Realist (woodcutter). The baby is taken by the Realist, which means the future is his. And the film turns into a fable with an obligatory moral at the end.

Search for the answer to the question "Who killed?" blocks the pleasure of playing the great Toshiro Mifune. The director advised him to take a closer look at the plasticity of some wild animal. And Mifune chose a lion for himself. His hero was still waiting for death, but the most important thing for him was to look decent until the last second. “And on the black bench, on the dock, there sits his daughter and some Zhigan.”

Kurosawa not only showed the view of the murder from different angles, he also shot the same scene with different cameras at the same time, which allowed him to freely edit the film and join together pieces shot by different cameras, but creating together the effect of smooth movement from one subject to another. There are 407 cuts in the film, twice as many as in a regular film of the time, but half of the cuts do not attract attention.

Carried away by the detective story, we pass by the tragedy of Masako. She was a respected woman - the wife of a samurai and immediately lost everything. And not at all through their own fault.

To emphasize the masculinity of the robber Tazomaru Kurosawa caricatured the image of the guard who captured him. Akutagawa's is hōmen (放免), a released prisoner. A real bounty hunter working with the police under contract. King Schultz and Django Unchained all rolled into one.

I would suggest a different interpretation of the main idea of ​​the film. This is not an attempt to answer the question - who is the killer? Akutagawa specifically does not give an answer to it. Because it's not that important. You are not a judge. During filming, Kurosawa was approached by a large delegation of filming participants. The actors opened the script in front of him and asked “what does it all mean anyway?” Kurosawa's answer went down in history: he said that this film is a reflection of life, and life does not always have a simple and understandable meaning. The title of the story has become an idiom in Japan, used to refer to a situation where a conclusion cannot be drawn because the evidence is insufficient or contradictory.

But it is interesting that the word cryptomeria occurs in the text of a short story as many as eight times. Cryptomeria is the national symbol of Japan. It's like a birch for Russia. There are many fairy tales about cryptomeria - princes turn into it. And in the very name of Cryptoméria japónica there is the word "crypto" (from other Greek κρυπτός "hidden"). History does not need to be decided, it can simply be admired. And Akutagawa turns a small cryptomeria to us from different sides - of course, the view from each side will be different. And the version of the soothsayer who talks to the spirit of the slain is a view of the tree from above.

I will also add that for me the key phrase of the film is the words of the robber: "nothing would have happened if a light breeze had not blown." It seems to me that the wonderful story of Ray Bradbury "And Thunder Came" grew out of this phrase.

p.s.
I advise you to watch a beautiful film by Rustam Khamdamov "A bag without a bottom."
It is also based on the story of Ryunosuke Akutagawa "In the thicket".