Recently, one of the readers of my political essays passionately asked me why I do it? What do I achieve and why do I write? What am I calling for? Who am I for and with whom? What actions do I push readers towards and what do I expect from them? He was also very interested in where my homeland really is: in Moscow or in Kyiv? The answer seemed to surprise and disappoint him.
Just recently, I read a new book by Eduard Limonov called “Alphabet” — a collection of thoughts on various topics, almost unrelated to each other — about politics, about Donbass, about Putin, about old age, about violence, and of course about women. The text is juicy and candid, and the ideas are radical and sound, for example:
Или вот это:
People do not change power. People are not able to change anything. They are scattered, attached to home, children, conservative and apolitical wife (most women are apolitical, and in an authoritarian regime, the weaker sex lives better and safer).
However, while I agree with the author almost everywhere, I was surprised by his naive bewilderment:
It is you, Eduard Veniaminovich, with prison and war behind you, who should know how the consciousness of the masses works. Our consciousness. You provoke reflection and reasoning, while we wait for conclusions. You question basic truths, which makes us uncomfortable. You offer analysis, while we wait for synthesis. For us, squareheads, it is very important to know: Do you support Putin or not?!
Give us conclusions, directives, precise algorithms. Synthesize clarity for us, and we will follow you. Divide the world in half and tell us whose banners to stand under. However, you refuse to do this, it disgusts you, quoting:
You refuse to be stupid with us, and we refuse to support you. However, it was not always like this.
Previous generations witnessed an open war of two ideologies. Pravda newspaper told the truth, while Time magazine lied. And vice versa, depending on who was reading. It doesn’t matter who was actually right. What matters is that objectively the bipolar agenda gathered around itself the intellectual elite. Where else could they gather, if the world is polarized and it is certainly interesting to talk and think about it?! Limonov’s first books were written from emigration, where he ended up after a conflict with the KGB — “we will either imprison you or you can leave” — as he put it.
The vector of social conflict (capitalism versus communism) coincided with the vector of the most progressive thought (freedom or slavery). The best people were either in academia or in exile. And in both places there were geniuses, heated debates, and the opportunity to find the truth.
However, Lenin and Stalin’s ideology lost. Limonov returned to Russia. He returned to a place where the war was already over. There were no longer two camps, no dissidents, and no KGB — the fire of the global revolution had died out. The intellectual elite returned from exile and celebrated victory, while the economy surrendered to the mercy of the victors — we were brought McDonalds and Casio calculators, in exchange for oil and a 150 million hungry and illiterate market. From the gloomy interim of the nineties, we emerged without a new political agenda. The Soviet Union, once the “evil empire,” turned into a handful of underdeveloped colonies no longer thinking about fighting the yoke of capital, and people became weaker and more cowardly. There was no longer a need to search for the truth — work for Uncle Sam and be happy.
Nevertheless, intellectuals with their eternal protests needed to be directed somewhere. We needed that same bipolarity we lost by dismantling Iron Felix. As a result, intentionally or accidentally, a liberal movement emerged, for everything good and against everything bad. The “indifferent intelligentsia” joined it, as there was nothing else to join (certainly not the bloody regime of Putin!).
However, despite the simplified formula of “down with Putin!”, the world is no longer as simple as in Limonov’s youth. It no longer divides into Uncle Sam and the proletariat, and therefore, just by removing Putin and co. from power, it is unlikely that all problems can be solved as before, by rejecting all the conquests of October. I am convinced that liberals, unlike their thousands of followers, understand this, but they can’t do anything about it. To have people follow them, they need to shout loudly and distinctly: “Down with …” and then a very specific name.
It turns out to be really loud, but there is little common sense in this cry. Therefore, only those who are not used to seeking meaning and … bored passers-by gather under these banners. As a result, three camps are formed instead of two: 1) the authorities, 2) the liberals, and 3) the thinking minority. The third camp has no banners and no one is arrested there, and its numbers are constantly decreasing. It is there that you can find people like Limonov — the dying veterans of the great war.
Once, in one of the restaurants in Moscow, I was asked to fill out a form to receive a frequent visitor card. The last question on the simple survey was a sarcastic question “Whose Crimea?” with a free field to fill in. It took me a few minutes to come up with a concise answer, different from the primitive “ours” or “not ours.”
Why am I writing this blog? To instill in you, my readers, a love for questionnaires with open fields. If we can fill in the open fields, then there will be true freedom.
Translated by ChatGPT gpt-3.5-turbo/42 on 2024-04-20 at 17:46
