[gans]

- Do you remember how and why were engaged icons?
- Like any normal person, at nineteen, I wanted to earn. And kind of my earnings in the early seventies had a simple and clear title: fartsovka. Someone hunted rags - Well, I began collecting and trade plates and Western magazines. And it was not so much by way of profit, as a means of slaking thirst own cognitive: by selling three-plate (or five magazines), one (or one) could leave him. Icons, I started out of pure interest. I was in those years seemed to seek out and buy the icons in the Soviet Union - is like being a conquistador in South America. In the seventies the villages could still find a lot of antiques - centuries-old books, spinning wheels, icons. The village which has preserved a lot of stocks. And not quite aware of what she actually owns.
Here's an example case, which happened to me in a village near Moscow. He bought a pack of icons and had to leave, I heard from the last house shouting: "Catch, laddie!" With the high-loft at my feet flew a square black board, from hitting the ground, it cracked. So I got my first icon of the XVII century - "Nativity of the Virgin.
After Khrushchev's policy of consolidating his village in Russia there were many abandoned villages, many farmers simply left in the relocation of some really valuable things in old houses - or their children have grown up under Soviet rule, hurrying to get rid of these items at the new location. Communist power in some surprising way managed to deprive the Russian peasantry, the meaning of existence - thanks to the collective depreciated labor and property. I remember one grandmother in the Vladimir region in response to my proposal - one hundred rubles for an icon - replied: "None. Now if the house, then selling. Over two hundred. Old icons with a house in the village could buy six of the then pensions.

- That is, in the Soviet countryside people do not cling to their icons and willingly sold them?
- In general, yes. For the icons of their ancestors were kept only Old Believers - to lure them, it has been difficult. I explained to them that the icon should live, must be restored, not lying in the attic of a black board. Sometimes I succeeded - I took a solvent, and showed a scalpel. Until now, shall keep Our Lady of Vladimir, which bought the Old Believers-fedoseevtsev. Representatives of the sect renounced marriage and all that is associated with marriage. Among other things, they refused to serve in the army. To avoid being seen by police, they (at the time of Soviet power!) For decades to move within the Vladimir region. Russian nomads in the name of faith. Religious underground. Most adventure I had just connected with them. Could and with the club for me - true, I have to such armed conflicts are not an issue.

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- But in the eyes of society you were supposed to look, to say ...
- What is really there, criminals, just criminals. We had a big company ikonschikov. By the mid-seventies for all of us, this fish has become a serious profession. We occupy a niche between modern and antique dealers ... Well, robbers, probably. No one in fact never knew stolen thing you guys have brought the village or not. Of course, we asked. And, of course, each time receiving a negative answer - no, they say, is not stolen. But what could we do except what I ask? In my opinion, every other icon has been sold to local residents stole from villagers.

- In theory, you should have very quickly become interested in the militia.
- She was interested - as we, and our "contractors" in the villages. The policy was this: the icons they have confiscated some time check, not stolen it, and then just burned. Typically, once a year, regional police sent a request to the local museum. From there came and selected staff in the best case, one thing, all the rest written off and went for firewood.
In one town near Moscow my brother was detained with a bag of icons, right on the station. I bought a few bottles of vodka policemen, we were released, and then say: "We are here just yesterday wrote off the entire annual collection of icons. Look, the whole closet in the office they scored. " I ask - and in what condition are they in? They - yes here, we cut down them, but not yet burned. For two boxes of vodka we had bought them all that they have pokololi. During the year, my restorer to restore these images.

- to listen to you so directly some of the world market under the noses of the CPSU Central Committee. Are you not interested in the KGB?
- The KGB was interested mainly smuggling of gold and currency. But people in the office knew: before someone else take and "close", you should be sure that the arrest would be that the present - for example, acquired by criminal means of accumulation. I've never not saved his money, earning - and immediately spent on the girls at the plate, a musical instrument. But the people of our "iconic" circle, who was engaged in hoarding - they are almost all behind bars.
However, there was a man - nicknamed Deynihovsky Anatoly Petrovich. He has worked in the GRU and the Committee, but was fired for illegal currency transactions. Together a serious band, which was engaged in looting the temples. Petrovitch never accumulated the money - after each case, he drank them all at once, walking with friends. Crime has become for him a kind of sport: it was interesting to outwit, outplay Petrovka and Lubyanka. But the KGB while watching the purity of morals in their organization - Deynihovsky was fifteen, then fifteen, and died in prison.
I was spared jail - many believe that the cause of this was luck that my stepfather Sukhodrev, Brezhnev's personal translator. But I think that it is just that I did not want to become a millionaire underground. However, all was not so rosy: our phones constantly tapped, not just once or twice I noticed ehavshuyu car for me. I have since remained instinct - and I am now able to intuitively feel the surveillance or define, monitor telephone calls or not.

- Departments of the Interior Ministry's crimes in the sphere of art - then they were friends with your company or, conversely, feuding?
- We were on different sides of the barricades. In the seventies, eighties, as we know, there has been a kind of hounding collectors. He collected people, for example, old weapons - he's been peddling rifled gun, and it is immediately time. Or sold to the collector of paintings stolen painting to confiscate the entire collection. And make friends with us on the art departments are just now - there came the young people with good education, which really serve the public. Who were these departments under Soviet rule, I do not know. All serious cases in this area take her to her KGB. But the law office had a habit of planting the whole chain of participants resale. And from the smugglers, planted and not planted, then grew an entire generation of Russian businessmen.

- A museum workers were with you on contact?
- No, the circles of collectors and museum staff began to join only after restructuring.

- And there was no fear of persecution, a sense that now take? Still, you have long engaged in the commission of unlawful deeds.
- Someone who is feeling it, aside from a distance. It's like a rock 'n' roll - can not play music, if you're afraid to go on stage. Generally, the rock 'n' roll with our task was a lot in common, as I could see.

- You are now returned to the iconic business »?
- I have not the dealer, and collector. In 1999, pining for the old lesson, I gladly accepted the part in the preparation of the collection of Victor Bondarenko - as expert and selector. During the past six years since we have gathered, probably the best in the country's private collection of icons.

- And again to work on this market as the dealer does not want?
- No, I am no longer interested. Now any oil tycoon could one left to collect a very, very decent collection. And we did that in extreme conditions and only from a desire to go against, to fight and take risks, the profit motive for us were not the first place. When Kosygin said that the average incomes above the national average wage, he replied: "People sat down in the cracks of the system." So, we, in general, lived happily and well spent time in these cracks.

- Who is your circle of people went out into the world of big business after the Soviet system collapsed?
- You know, no one - because we were originally players rather than businessmen. But one advantage we had: my colleagues and I were ready to attack the market, capitalism, because it began to live with him long before the reforms. But it always, even among Soviet profiteers and black marketeers, remained underground from commerce, so to speak. People in our circle were mostly unusual - in fact to sell the icons, they should understand. Read books, go to exhibitions, to learn myself and I, for example, traveled all the museums, collecting works of ancient art. And now we are with my then-colleagues remain (along with experts from the museums, of course) perhaps the best in the world connoisseurs of Russian icon painting.
A world of currency trading, major fraud, - its nature, of course, was not a bohemian, but the thieves. The real subjects of the market in the USSR were not adventurers like us, and serious activists of the shadow economy, media truly criminal mind - cool people who are afraid of everything, even power. My friend and colleague, Tolik nicknamed Vobla in the eighty-first could safely leave the group "Aquarium", who lived in my apartment, one hundred rubles for opohmel: money for him meant nothing. But the real "thief in law", the level of Krymov "Assa" Solovyov, this would not have done ever, because he has a totally different consciousness. Big money and a serious power comes only to those who are very fond of them and not miss her under any circumstances.