baidakBased on true events
Artem, you tell mom that I’ll come to see her…
in about two weeks.
It’s… I’m just tied up now.
OK.
I am to go to Leningrad anyway.
Will have to attend to some things before lectures begin.
You look drowsy, huh?
Some troubles in the university?
No. Nothing’s happening there.
The usual squabble.
Ah, whatever...
So, how are things at home?
All in good health?
Ah, thank God, thank God…
I see you believe in God now?
Oh look, there is your niece with her fiancй.
Hey listen, how’s your Slavka doing?
Haven’t seen him for long time.
Last time I came to see you,
he just left for some tourist camp.
Actually, it is Slavka who troubles me now.
You know, Misha, kids are different now,
I just don’t understand him.
We did it all ourselves, by the sweat of our brows,
while he is just having it handed on a plate.
Everything is for him.
Yet he doesn’t respect us.
Despises even.
I forced him in the university,
to save from ending up in Afghan.
And is he studying?
This is how he’s studying!
Parties all day long.
Do you know this word?
Some underground concerts.
This damned rock…
Every day I expect…
a call from militia.
Here, look.
The recent photo of him.
Look at him…
All my life I’ve been doing what’s right…
and it turns out nobody needs it now.
And nobody needs me.
Though, I’m not that old.
I feel something’s gone forever…
and what is coming I don’t understand.
After Andropov died…
everyone started to fidget.
In our department,
In the department of scientific communism.
In the department of history.
Students too, obviously.
Hello, uncle Artem.
Oh, hi Lisa.
Hello.
Haven’t seen you for ages.
The whole two months passed.
Yes.  Will you stay for long?
Oh no, I’ll go soon.
Want to visit your grandma.
How is my brother Slavik?
Partying around.
Cool!
This is Valery, my friend.
Valery Buadze.
Half Georgian,
but have never been to Georgia.
Kazakov Artem Nikolaevich, from Leningrad.
Okay then, we’ll have some tea
in the kitchen…
You know, I have to get up early,
and I still need to pack.
Is he really a fiancй?
Oh come on, I was kidding.
But I think she likes him.
You know, he is a nice chap.
Not some dummy, I think.
Every year he enlists to work somewhere in the North…
and returns with good money.
Look, I am a colonel, right?
The conscription officer. And he earns
three times as much as I do.
Just a punk, yet owns a car.
And not the kind you have.
So it’s not that simple, Artem.
He is not a student then?
Nope.
And why is he not in the army?
Well, he is not local, actually.
He is staying at some old woman’s house.
Says, that’s his grandmother…
So, I’m helping him here and there.
You know what’s happening in Afghan now, don’t you?
During this time to our shithole alone…
26 caskets arrived.
Artem, 26!
Cargo 200 they call them.
And look what’s going on throughout the country!
You be careful, Mikhail…
Who is he, this uncle of yours?
Head of Scientific Atheism Department
in the Leningrad University.
He helped me to get in last year.
So, will we go to disco then?
I told you I wanted to have a good sleep.
I need to pack too…
You said yourself, the earlier we leave,
the sooner we are there.
Look, we’ll just come round.
Valera, no!
Well, whatever.
You’d better have a good sleep too, you are to drive.
It is a long way, and you say the road is bad.
Don’t you worry for me.
I’ve seen worse roads.
Thank you for helping Lisa.
Oh, come on, Lisa is a smart girl,
she could enter all by herself.
Where is it she is going to bright and early?
To Yara, her friend, a classmate,
has a dacha there.
So, they thought they’d go
to swim, to mushroom.
It’s all right, they are nice kids.
They go just for a couple of days.
I can pick her up on my
way back to Leningrad.
Come on, she is not some mollycoddle.
She can take a bus.
All right then, I’ll call you
when I’m coming back from mom’s.
Thanks for the food,
it is such a problem here