In a brief introduction, the author says that this book was written with the aim of shedding light on a very peculiar sphere of life activity, in which everything is so dark and vague that every budding pompadour needs explications and interpretations. Well, for example, a boss arriving at a new place should know how he and other people’s meetings and farewell are organized, how they relate to subordinates, the law, the choice of a lipstick, etc. The author of the book chooses the form of lengthy stories instead of instructions to readers. It is they who are most likely to highlight the entire spectrum of pompadour's activity.
Bosses change quite often. It used to be that they stayed in one place because nothing was required of the boss, except to be called the administrator. Now it is required that he still some "essence understood, to be reliable and well-meaning from nature itself." An official, by definition, is certainly a loyal person, he looks at all the bosses the same way, because they are all bosses. So, you need to meet bosses with a maximum of cordiality, but seeing off is another matter, requiring a more subtle policy. The triumph of farewell should be of the nature of exceptional devotion. “We understood,” the person responsible for toasts and speeches says, “that the true art of management is not strictness, but that complacency, which, combined with straightforwardness, draws a tribute of gratitude from the darkest and most unyielding hearts.”
While the new boss liberalizes, creating a new era, and in agreement with him all the original people are tuned in, the old administrator listens from the former headphones on the new acts of the “replacing the irreplaceable” and sits down for memoirs, on the first pages of which it is already noted that “the first word , which an experienced administrator has to turn to a crowd of those who are dissatisfied is the word obscene. ” Task number two: to achieve administrative unanimity as opposed to the same polygon. The layman should always be kept strict, by all means acting on his evil will. "Young! If you think that science is easy, disbelieve it ... "
Together with the pompadour, the pompadurs also disappear from the horizon, although their fate is sometimes quite comforting. Nadezhda Petrovna Blamange managed to subjugate the new pompadour as well, and the period of her new reign was marked by useless cruelties: she expelled from the city, removed her from her post, and separated her close people.
Of course, Pompadour’s biographies are different. There are some that are very unexpected. No one ever thought that Dmitry Pavlovich Kozelkov, whom peers called who was Mitenka, who was Kozlik, who was Kozlenok, would one day begin to govern the province. His appearance immediately changes, in the face there is some kind of “glossy obstruction”. Trying to charm provincial officials, he utters a lot of nonsense, but over time, at first, his well-received chatter bothers everyone, and the seeds of doubt fall into his already pompadour soul. He becomes a “thinking administrator”, which means nothing more than a “mess of thoughts." Thoughts roam in his head, “like in the summertime flies on the table. Wander, wander and fly away. " From doubt, he goes on to determination, an ardent desire to do something, preferably relying on the law, for example to whipping a small official out of the way because he always goes tipsy ... It’s interesting for him to find out what simple people think about his rule people, and he, dressed in a simple dress, goes to the city square. Random passers-by and ordinary people answer him that there is no law for ordinary people, only a “plan”. “The law is for those above.” The first performers and violators of the law are just lipsticks that are easy to change if they no longer correspond to a certain state of things. And if anyone decides to be indignant or, moreover, begin to fight the law, then “from all the cracks creepers and scammers crawling over the mirror surface of the administrative sea”. In this case, pompadours are killed by dozens.
Perplexed by the good old pompadour, suddenly ending his administrative run. “How can I, sir?” After all, there is no example for a pompadour, once wilted, to suddenly bloom again. Therefore, as soon as the winds of change blow, the pompadour thinks that everything that he drinks and eats happens to him “for the last time”. For the last time, honors are given to him, services are provided, and music rings. And when the company of ex-pompadour speaks on this significant topic, it recalls the former free life, sterlet ear, prices for hazel grouse and turkeys, curious Senate decrees. None of the pompadours suggests that retribution awaits them in the future. In vain do they think that it is always possible to be bold in the public interest, the fashion for certain jokes ends, and only the lipsticks with an absolute political ear are removed by foams. Power is a harsh thing; if the wind changes to a “different operational basis of thoughts,” no merit made in the form of reports, prescriptions, decrees, or decrees will save. Other people will come for whom the new way of thinking will become something like an idea assimilated with mother’s milk. They will become the new pompadour.
Social development is fast: from a penny bribe the townsfolk quickly move to a thousandth or ten thousandth. A bribe is sometimes cast into a form that you can’t even guess about, as it has an ennobled appearance. “Today, in a person, what matters is not heroism and the ability to endure hardships, but complaisance, coping and willingness.” And here for the pompadour the count begins again. "For the sake of the opportunity to capitalize the extra coin, he is ready to get along with any domestic policy, believe in any god." However, at the same time, we are able to express the absence of any fears, but if, if the new boss arrives, he will tremble every now and then. Then only you will go to the "ladies".
Well, what about an educated society at this moment? Apathy overcomes him: “There is nowhere to go, nothing to read, nothing to write about. The whole body is struck by fatigue and dull indifference to everything that happens. I’d like to sleep well, but I don’t even want to sleep. ” Literature and journalism confound the lack of their own political and public interests in Louis Philippe, Guizot, and the French bourgeoisie. But even here formless general phrases sound: “Boring time, boring literature, boring life. Before, though “slave speeches” were heard, passionate “slave speeches”, allegorical, but understandable, now and “slave speeches” can not be heard. I’m not saying that there is no movement - there is movement, but the movement is pesky, reminiscent of a jerking from side to side. "
However, even against the backdrop of general stagnation and dullness, worthy people sometimes appear, such as, for example, the progression leader Count Sergei Vasilyevich Bystritsyn, who established his own household in Chukhloma, and then tried to do this on a Russian scale. Surveying the country “from a bird's flight”, he sees in it “hundreds of thousands, millions, a whole sea of martyrs” and realizes that it is a sin to plague them, inventing a cruel and stagnant domestic policy. ” It is also clear to him that the Russian "hostel without vodka is unthinkable": "In our harsh climate, it is just as difficult to do without vodka as, for example, to a resident of fiery Italy to do without pasta and the life-giving rays of the sun, and to an inhabitant of a more moderate strip, a German - without a beer and sausage. " Bystritsyn begins a war with family divisions and community ownership. In the circle of friends, Bystritsyn goes even further, he dreams of a general revival, of chicken in Henry IV’s soup and can even whisper in his ear: “It would be nice if life was organized so that everyone could get according to his needs.”
However, such as Bystritsyn work among many others that impede any undertakings, since it is not the business of government officials to philosophize slyly, not to embarrass the minds, not to build up, but to monitor the integrity of what has been created, to protect what has already been done, such as vowels and zemstvos. There is no arena for administrative creativity now, but what about pompadours with live energy, you need to place it somewhere!
In the insertion novella-utopia “The Only”, the author presents another “cute” pompadour, “the most simple-minded in the world”. As a philosopher from the administration, he is convinced that the best administration is the lack thereof. Officials scribble papers, but he does not want to sign them: “Why, sir?” There should be only holidays in the city, then there can be no executions, revolutions, riots: the bosses are inactive.
The biggest difficulty for this pompadour becomes the choice of a pompadour, because on this occasion there are no charters or regulations. Behind the scenes, it is required that a woman be a high-ranking lady, but the boss has a taste for bourgeois. After a brief search, he finds a white widow at the door of the tavern. For a long time, he then had to explain to the quarterly that you can’t lie in wait for the lipstick at night.
During the ten years of rule, not a single rebellion, not a single theft took place in the city. The townsfolk ate too much, quarterly too, the leader was simply suffocating from fat, and the lady fan at all became wider across herself. Pompadour triumphed, the authorities did not remember him. And in their hometown, everyone had only one thing in mind: “to erect a monument to him alive.”
In the conclusion of the book, the author gives the opinions of noble foreigners about pompadours. The prevailing judgment is the existence of a special estate in Russia - pompadour, "violating public silence and sowing discord" (Austrian Serb Glupchich-Yadrilich). And “Yamutsky prince, whose words were written down by his tutor Khabibula, objects to him:“ Ay-ah, it's good here in Russia: there are no people, there is pure pompadour! Ayda home reform do! I went home, reform started. People drove, planted pompadour; the reform was ending. ”
With this phrase, notes on lipsticks end.
