Finally, the announced train approached the platform quite energetically. It looked no better than the one standing to the side - the same reinforced windshields and selectively protected windows of the passenger cars.
Entering the car, Zavirdyaev noted a certain contrast - inside there was no expected dirt and scribbling on the walls. And, to play with words, there was no toilet scribbling in the vestibules either.
In general, Zavirdyaev, who had lived through the last years of the Soviet Union, was not surprised by the swinishness and broken windows. He even expected that the train would stink, if not of piss, then at least of bleach mixed with slop. Rather, such a thing would evoke some vague memories from childhood. You can't take words out of a song - all the most interesting places for games and forays, like abandoned industrial buildings, unfinished buildings or just garages, invariably stank of slop or a dump, especially in the spring, when the snow melted. As for the late Soviet depression and slovenliness of urban life, it was not a matter of some inherent, as the smart guys said, immanent component of the Soviet way of life. It was just the opposite - an unconscious feeling of the dying of the familiar world order, a quiet but all-encompassing dying, caused something like a mass, albeit vaguely expressed depression. It was wrong to personify the whole of society into a single individual with his or her experiences and behavior patterns, but certain parallels could still be traced. Although it would be rather rash to unequivocally stick a label with the inscription "depression" on all of life at that time. A significant volume of "video traces" of that period could, in fact, quite eloquently present a picture opposite to the concept of "depressive". Nevertheless, offline depressive manifestations pushed society and the state ever closer to the inevitable. And this approach intensified the depressive manifestations themselves. The process spurred itself on.
However, the Second Soviet Union died in a quiet, calm atmosphere. Yes, there were conflicts, hot spots, as they were called then, but with the Great War, even with what it became in the seventh year, it could not be compared.
And also the modern Western World had no reason to expect help from something external, as it was with the crumbling Union. Then, with all those bizarre combinations of talk about the insidious machinations of foreign intelligence services and the real support that poured in, it was much simpler. Now the whole world was out of order and there was no place to expect that help, even if it was calculating in the Western way.
Zavirdyaev, not devoid of an artistic perception of reality, sometimes described that country of the last Soviet years as being seized by an unknown non-biological, almost otherworldly disease. There were a number of Soviet films like "Stalker" and other science fiction, which depicted a corresponding unhealthy atmosphere, affected by a similar mysterious disease.
And so, at the end of the Second Union, such an infection seemed to have burst out from somewhere and engulfed the entire country.
A couple of times, Zavirdyaev said all this while drunk, after which he perceived himself as a generator and bearer of rather highly intellectual thoughts. However, the reactions of those around him reinforced this.
Now Zavirdyaev had a persistent feeling that he had once again found himself in such a plague-ridden place. Superfederant, oddly enough, had not seemed like that to him for a long time. Maybe it was a habit, maybe Superfederant really was not up to the task.
The carriage gradually filled with people and after a ten-minute stop smoothly ran forward. Unlike Russian electric trains, which, like a hundred years ago, carefully made their way between countless freight trains before accelerating, jerking and shaking on the switches one after another, this train, as befits a good old Western machine, went forward, guided by one task - to gain such and such a speed in such and such a period of time and go with it, at this speed, the entire designated section of the route. How little is needed to feel the difference between one and the other! Although the domestic ones had a bunch of completely fair excuses, at least the fact that the tracks and branches allocated specifically for electric trains were a rarity and if there was a road, then everything in a row had to travel on it. Here, despite the depressing atmosphere, there was still pleasing technology. The picture was somewhat spoiled by a large white spot with rays-cracks on the glass diverging in all directions. The assumption about the protective film was confirmed.