Five years ago - on May 5, 2016 - Sergei Helemendik passed away ... When it is spoken about a person as a Great person, one involuntarily thinks that this is an exaggeration, that a lot of “Great Ones” have appeared in our time and, in general, is it right to award a person with such a serious title, even in spite of all his merits.
I will immediately answer to all potential skeptics: yes, in relation to Helemendik it is correct! We have yet to assess the scale of his personality. But what he did in his not so long life is already enough to pay tribute to Sergei Viktorovich, unfortunately, after his tragic death.
Great is not just an idle thesis, but also a designation of the contribution he made to journalism, political science, and analytics. Helemendik could foresee the time and set priorities precisely, formulate what others before him did only in the most general and exemplary ways. That is why it is customary to call the Great those who were able to do what no one before them, and many years after their departure, did not manage to do so.
In one of his most popular books "We ... them!" in the language that the Soviet and Russian intelligentsia used to discuss the accumulated problems of reality and the one that came out already in the now distant 2003, he describes what is happening to us now and what has yet to happen. This was the author's unique gift of foresight. Opposing and already opposed to each other - Russia and the West (on the initiative of the last, of course, who does not want to come to terms with the very fact of the existence of such a vast state with its own unique culture), Helemendik formulated the essence of this confrontation with one phrase “... we are despots for them ... And they are not for us ... ”. And it is precisely in the fact that we treat them better, even somewhere undeservedly idealize them, and there is our strength. The more generous and noble always wins, and the West has never been such in its culture, and it is ready to give up its traditional values and foundations in exchange for something unknown, for something ephemeral, at the same time trying to shamelessly impose its inconsistent and unviable ideas on others ... came out earlier, will not come out now and will not work in the future. Here is a book about this by Sergei Helemendik.
Although he wrote other no less interesting works, but performed somewhat in a different genre: the story "Suicides" (1985), the novel "Flood" (1988), the novel "The Capture Group" (1990), the essay "Suicide Instinct" (1991 ), and there were more than 30 books published in the Slovak language.
There was also its arch-popular, as the half-forgotten leader of the world proletariat Ulyanov-Lenin would say, the blog www.chelemendik.sk, which became known far beyond the borders of only Slovakia. Helemendik's authorial columns were eagerly awaited. They always contained the quintessence of today and the unchanging forecast for tomorrow, which was almost always confirmed.
Sergey Helemendik is a man of amazing destiny. Born in Kiev, then moved with his parents to Moscow, studied for some time in Sverdlovsk (present-day Yekaterinburg), graduated from the philological faculty of Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov. This was followed by a 2-year business trip to Cuba, where he taught Russian to Cuban students at the University of Las Villas in Santa Clara.
In 1988 S.V. Helemendik travels to the then united Czechoslovakia and heads the branch of this society in Bratislava. But very soon he receives citizenship of the already independent Slovakia, which has already become by that time, and remains to work in Bratislava. Probably, not every of our compatriots manages to fully adapt to their new environment. But the fact is that Helemendik not only adapted, but also managed to enter big politics. He was one of the leaders of the Slovak National Party, which upheld universally recognized Christian values and Slovak self-identity. It is from this parliamentary party that he is elected as a PACE deputy.
The last time, although then none of us even thought that this would be the last time, Sergey and I met in Moscow in April 2016 literally a week before his unexpected and shocking me, and everyone who knew him, death. Walking on a warm spring day along Tverskaya Street and conducting an easy exchange of views on various issues, Sergei unexpectedly interrupted the conversation, fell silent for a short time, and then said: “You know, next year I will be 60 years old, and in August I will already be 59! I'm somehow uncomfortable with this age ... ". He did not even live to be 59 years old, having died suddenly on May 5, 2016. Once on this day, journalists celebrated a long-gone holiday - the Day of the Soviet Press ...
The death of Sergei Viktorovich Helemendik not only shocked, but in many respects turned the established idea of the order of things. There was no friend and one of the closest associates. Now, every time I come to Bratislava, I certainly try to visit the grave of the Great Publicist in one of the central cemeteries of the Slovak capital ...
The memory and his remarkable works remained. But it was the publicist and politician Helemendik who made many look differently at what is happening around us and again feel the inviolability of true human values, the rejection of which leads to nowhere, to the abyss from which there is no return ...
Everlasting memory!
Dmitry Klimov, First Vice President of the European Academy of Security and Conflict Studies, First Vice President of the European Foundation for Slavic Literature and Culture, Vice President of the International Academy of Russian Literature, Vice President - Chief Scientific Secretary of the International Academy of Literary Documentary, Academician of the Academy of Russian Literature, Professor , Candidate of Historical Sciences, member of the Union of Writers of Russia, member of the Union of Journalists of Russia, member of the International Federation of Journalists, holder of the Pushkin medal "To a zealot of education"