Victor Erofeev: what is more valuable - friend or truth

Friendship in Russia is a cult and the envy of foreigners

Victor Erofeev

In Russia, friendship is like a swing. Friendship can be rocked to the skies, or it can be dropped below the plinth. It all depends on how you swing on this swing. Real friendship is an exchange of secrets. False - a ban on secrets. The friendship of two schoolgirls who confide in each other their secrets about boys, no matter how small these secrets may seem from the outside, is the gateway to a great friendship for many years. The worst thing here is betrayal. How stronger friendship, the worse the betrayal. The size of the secret is not important - what is important is the strength of trust.

Pushkin is the founder of Russian friendship. No one sang it better than him. Pushkin's friendship, like the friendship of schoolgirl friends, is based on the exchange of secrets. But girlfriends have love secrets, and Pushkin’s whole life is a secret, and his friends are those who understand this. However, Russian friendship is valuable primarily not for its comprehension of life’s secrets, but for its dissidence. Only a friend can tell you everything you think about the state, bosses and conformists. Friendship breaks the loneliness of your own insights about social structure. Herzen and Ogarev were friends against the state. It was their form of survival. The now legendary friendship of our sixties was the same form of survival, most simply and successfully expressed by Okudzhava in the words “let’s join hands, friends, so as not to perish alone.” Bella Akhmadulina turned friendship into the main direction of her poetry: friendship was resistance to all meanness and lies. So friendship flew to heaven and turned out to be somehow stronger than love as a poetic theme.

No wonder Soviet propaganda so persistently glorified friendship: she stole our idea of ​​​​friendship from the depths of our consciousness and tried to use it in own purposes. This ended with the degradation of the concept. Friendship has become a dead word. Friendship of peoples has degenerated into its opposite.

Does this mean friendship is a privilege? worthy people? Not at all. Bandits, fascists, dictators and punitive forces are friends, even traitors are friends, trying not to betray their friendship. There is no moral law in friendship except the law of fidelity. But fidelity in friendship itself is a refusal to take an objective attitude towards the actions of a friend. I can condemn a friend for this or that action, but if I condemn him on many points, I will be violating my loyalty to our friendship. I should be on his side. So what is more valuable: friend or truth?

There are people who like to collect friends. The more friends, the more significant a person seems to himself, the greater, as he believes, his opportunities. The friendships of online communities are often based on these soap bubbles of friendship, in which attracting new friends is good fishing. You can, of course, be friends indiscriminately, you can be vain about your friendship, you can be proud of it. This use of friendship has always been and will always be; the Internet here is not a destroyer of the concept of friendship, but rather an indicator of the abundance of deviations from the meaning of friendship.

Friendship, like early love, can be a brake on human development. If I am friends with my classmates and am afraid of losing touch with them, I may be preventing myself from developing and finding new people who are close to me in spirit. So the idea of ​​betraying friendship can sometimes be painful and controversial. We love to make a cult out of friendship. Our Russian friendship causes envy among foreigners. But if you feel like you're outgrowing your friend, don't be afraid to tell yourself.

Every aging generation tends to believe that the world is deteriorating and becoming disgusting. Of course, if we take the requirements for friendship from Pushkin or Akhmadulina, we can say that current friendships are gray mice united by the goal of eating more cheese. But you can also be friends according to the principle of resistance to entropy. It all depends on the individual. And a person cannot live without friends. No, it can, of course. But it's easier to survive with friends.

There is an old Eastern proverb that states that every person must do two things during his life: plant a tree and kill a poisonous snake.

It seems that to this saying, where a tree and a snake are named as poetic symbols of the birth of a new life and the fight against evil, it is worth adding one more line: every person must sow a good seed in the soul of a child. I recently heard a story that happened to two little people. I want to tell it to you.

In a village on a summer day, a very little girl, whom her parents brought here from the city, looked into the well. There is an inexplicable charm for a child’s heart in the bottomless shine of a trunk going deep, in the smell of water and night, in the menacing and mysterious play of darkness; reflections, reflected sounds that lurk where the icy, motionless eye of water sparkles.

Leaning over, the little girl looked down, as if spellbound. She leaned further and further and suddenly, losing her balance, fell into the well with a short cry of astonishment.

There were only guys a little older than her nearby.
Rushing to the well, they saw that the girl was floating on the water like a water lily. While she was flying down the deep trunk, her wide dress inflated like a parachute and kept her on the surface. The fragility of this random miracle was obvious: at any moment the girl could go to the bottom.

One of the children - a boy of about eleven - decided to go down into the well.

He sat down in the bucket, and his comrades began to lower him on a rope. But the rope broke, and the boy fell into the well too.

He knew how to swim and was not confused. Having emerged, he found himself next to the girl. Her dress, gradually becoming heavier from the water, curled up like a petal, and she sank deeper and deeper.

Having picked it up, the boy swam along the walls of the well. The water was icy, he swam with all his might, trying to warm up by circling along the slippery black walls. Clinging to him, the girl was silent; he thought he could feel her heart pounding, as if he had it in his fist. So, without giving up, without weakening, without losing courage, small man circled in the ice well, holding the child tightly until the adults came to the rescue. They lowered a fire escape into the well, and the boy, putting the girl on his shoulders, climbed up.

When I thought about this story, it seemed to split into two parts for me.

The fact that the little man rushed to save the drowning woman showed his courage, determination, and noble impulse. But the formidable second, when he first saw mortal danger face to face and realized it, highlighted, like an instant bright flash of light, all the good that was inherent in his soul. The impulse melted into perseverance, courage, determination was replaced by dedication.

How did all this fit into a young, not yet strong soul, from which life suddenly demanded something other than childish strength?

Parents who raised such a son can rightfully be proud; All who sowed good seeds in his soul can rightfully be proud of him.

In a child’s actions you can always guess who served as an example for him. (451 words)

Original text:

What is friendship? How do you become friends? You will most often meet friends among people with a common destiny, the same profession, and common thoughts. And yet it cannot be said with confidence that such a community determines friendship, because people of different professions can become friends.

Can two opposite characters be friends? Certainly! Friendship is equality and similarity. But at the same time, friendship is inequality and dissimilarity. Friends always need each other, but friends do not always receive equal amounts from friendship. One is friends and gives his experience, the other is enriched by experience in friendship. One, helping a weak, inexperienced, young friend, learns his strength and maturity. Another, weak one, recognizes in a friend his ideal, strength, experience, maturity. So, one gives in friendship, the other rejoices in gifts. Friendship is based on similarities, but manifests itself in differences, contradictions, and dissimilarities.

A friend is someone who asserts that you are right, your talent, your merits. A friend is one who, lovingly, exposes you in your weaknesses, shortcomings and vices.

Microthemes for the text “What is friendship?”

1. How do you become friends? People of different professions can be friends.

2. Friendship is based on similarities, but manifests itself in differences, contradictions, and dissimilarities. In friendship, one gives, the other receives.

3. A friend is one who appreciates for the good and exposes for the bad.

Compression examples:

Option 1:

What is friendship? How do you become friends? Most often you meet friends among people who have something in common. But community does not determine friendship; for example, people of different professions can become friends. 26

Can people be friends with opposite characters? Yes! Friendship is both equality and similarity, inequality and dissimilarity. Friends always need each other, but they don't always get the same amount out of their friendship. In friendship, one gives, the other rejoices in gifts. It is based on similarity, but manifests itself in difference. 45

A friend is someone who affirms your strengths and exposes your shortcomings. 9 (80 words)

Option 2

What is friendship and who are friends? Friends are people of a common destiny, the same profession, common thoughts. But community does not always determine friendship. People of different professions can become friends. 27

Two opposite characters can also be friends. Friendship is not only equality and similarity, but inequality and dissimilarity. Friends need each other, but they don't always get the same amount out of their friendship. One is friends and gives his experience, the other rejoices in gifts. Friendship is based on similarities and manifests itself in dissimilarities. 45

A friend is one who asserts that you are right and, lovingly, exposes your vices. 11(83 words)

Option 3

What is friendship? How do you become friends? Friends are most often people of common thoughts and destiny, of the same profession. But people of different professions can also be friends.

People with opposite characters make friends. Friendship is not only equality and similarity, but also inequality and dissimilarity. Friends always need each other, but friendship is not always shared equally. One gives his experience, the other is enriched by it. Friendship is based on similarities and manifests itself in differences.

A friend affirms your rightness and talent, but at the same time exposes you to your weaknesses and shortcomings.