Talented people are talented in everything. And what do Semyon Sharetsky's memoirs say about him?

A 473-page file with the memoirs of the notorious Semyon Sharetsky came into my hands. This agricultural enterprise manager, albeit for a short time, in 1995-1996, was at the top of power, in the thick of events, and it's at least interesting to know how the situation looked from his perspective then. What he and his colleagues in the Supreme Council thought then, how the impeachment situation developed, about the communication with Lukashenka at that time, and about that memorable meeting with Chernomyrdin, Stroyev, and Seleznyov on one of the disgraceful nights of Belarusian history... And how many glimpses behind the scenes of events 30 years ago one of the key figures of the Belarusian drama of that time can offer.

And so, with impatience, I open his memoirs, an almost 30-page chapter titled "At the Head of the Supreme Council of the Republic of Belarus" (Во главе Верховного Совета Республики Беларусь). I start reading from page 326, waiting for "that very thing" to begin. And so, up to page 354, where the chapter "Why the Collapse of the Soviet Union Happened" (Почему произошёл распад Советского Союза) already begins. The chapter ended, and "that very thing" never began. A major disappointment, to put it mildly.

And what is in this chapter instead? Almost half of it consists of reflections on the history of parliamentarism in general and in Belarus in particular, with excursions into attempts to create the Belarusian People's Republic, and then for some reason, into the history of the decline of the native language during Soviet times (as they say, it got carried away and went far afield). Moreover, at least half of the content of this part is not the author's narrative, but extensive quotes from various books, articles, and literary works.

Then, finally, on page 337, the author takes control of himself and still steers towards the topic of the Supreme Council of Belarus in the 1990s. But even here, he starts from afar — several pages lay out well-known encyclopedic facts about the activities of the 12th convocation of the Supreme Council, Stanislau Shushkevich, the 1994 presidential elections, the election of Lukashenka, and his praise of Hitler in an interview with the German newspaper "Handelsblatt." And only on page 341 does the discussion finally begin about the 13th convocation of the Supreme Council. Well, "discussion" — barrels of verbal water, extensive quotes from Vasil Bykau and Fyodor Chaliapin (!), reflections on Lukashenka, who "does not disdain either blatant lies or hypocrisy" (не пренебрегает как откровенной ложью, так и лицемерием), mentions of personal participation, without any details, in secondary foreign visits, one and a half pages of reflections on the Chernobyl disaster (again, it got carried away and went far afield), the lion's share of which is a self-made poem (I will refrain from evaluating its aesthetic value)...

On page 347, the author of the memoirs finally reaches the 1996 referendum. He generously quotes an issue of "Narodnaya Volya" where his own article and answers to questions from Valery Tsikhinya, the then-chairman of the Constitutional Court, were published. After that, he expresses confidence that "the impeachment initiated against the President would have been brought to an end if the Constitutional Court, despite the advocacy of its chairman, Valery Tsikhinya, who suddenly turned 180 degrees before the referendum, had issued an appropriate decision, and if support (I repeat - to this proponent of Hitler's order) had not been provided by the leadership of Russia" (начатый импичмент Президенту был бы доведён до конца, если бы Конституционный суд, несмотря на ратование перед референдумом его председателя, Валерии Тихини, вдруг перевернувшегося на 180 градусов, вынес соответствующее решение, а также не была оказана поддержка (я повторяю — этому поборнику гитлеровских порядков) руководством России).

And that's it! Not a word about the visit of high-ranking Russian bigwigs to Minsk at the height of the political crisis, zero about any behind-the-scenes moments of that crisis. Unless, of course, one counts these two "most valuable" facts:

“However, Boris Yeltsin, who at that time had an almost zero rating, feared the precedent of removing a president from power by legal means, so he called me, even though only 7 days had passed since his heart surgery, threatening: ‘Don't interfere with the president!’” (Не мешайте президенту!).

“Only a couple of days after what essentially was a state coup committed by Lukashenka and his accomplices, two US senators arrived and during a conversation with me said: ‘Yes, we overslept Belarus.’” (Да, мы проспали Беларусь).

The three and a half pages that remained until the end of the chapter after that were mainly dedicated to recounting encyclopedic biographical information about Henadz Karpenka, Andrei Sannikov, and Viktar Hanchar.

And what about the remaining 440 pages? It's all the same — the same barrels of verbal water, quotes in and out of place, constant digressions from the declared topic, and banalities, banalities, banalities instead of searching the labyrinths of one's own memory for something truly valuable and original. There is no talk of somehow understanding the times one had to live through and one's place in them. The result is a thick volume of the purest graphomania, mostly in prose, and sometimes in verse.

They say that talented people are talented in everything. Well, apparently, the same can be said about untalented people. That's the general impression from these "memoirs."

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