More about conformism

My article “Neoconformism with a female face” was followed by a number of fundamental responses, in particular, “A Just Cause: New Stylistics” by Y. Bogomolov and “Lenin’s Course” by O. Yablonskaya , to the authors of which I am grateful, including for the opportunity to clarify and deepen important problems of civil responsibility of the Russian intelligentsia. It is clear that Marietta Chudakova’s support for the Kremlin party “Right Cause” by both me and my opponents was considered as an important, but special case of the behavior of the Russian intellectual in the present and past of Russian authoritarianism and totalitarianism. I, remembering Arkady Belinkov’s book “Surrender and Death of the Soviet Intellectual. Yuri Olesha” believed that this telling name fully characterizes today’s Russian society; my opponents believe that reasonable conformism (they, of course, do not like the name, they use another, but in fact they defend precisely its positions) is the only one capable today (as it was able yesterday, in the Soviet Union) to preserve the continuity of knowledge and culture.

Is this true? What culture and what knowledge are we talking about? But first, as a retrospective, a few numbers and considerations.

The results of one of the last public opinion polls conducted before the onset of the financial crisis, which changed the purity of the experiment, concerned support for the Russian government in its most demonstrative gesture - the war in South Ossetia and Georgia in August 2008. According to FOM, the behavior of the Russian state in Georgia was supported by 78% respondents. This figure (70 with a small or large tail) is very familiar and is typical for previous surveys of social support for the Russian government.

But I was much more impressed by another figure: 13% of respondents condemned the behavior of the Russian authorities in Georgia. It turns out that 13 million Russian citizens, in conditions of open manipulation of such feelings as patriotism, and a well-fed, stable life provided by oil rent, turn out to have their own opinion, which radically diverges from the opinion of the majority.

I will allow myself pathos and say: I am proud that in my country I have so many like-minded people. Give the social skeptic and pessimist an opportunity to be proud. 13% of our citizens are able to think soberly, no matter what. 13 million Russians are able to see black in smart white clothes. Believe me, this is a lot. This is a huge force, doubled, tripled, tenfold by the fact that this is not just a significant part of the population, but that part that cannot be fooled, which does not succumb to patriotic flattery and imperialist demagoguery. Without any doubt, they are the best and most thoughtful part of our people. Which, in fact, is quite enough to have considerable power in society, determine the positions of a number of significant media outlets, and significantly influence state policy.

Let's compare. In our neighboring country, Finland, the majority of the population, of course, speak Finnish, but 5.5% speak Swedish. And these Swedish-speaking Finnish citizens have their own newspapers, TV channels, radio stations, and their own party in parliament. They are not pariahs, like we are in our native country, not a fifth column of lousy intellectuals, not scum on the surface of a strong electoral broth, not a foreign disease that has incomprehensibly entered into the healthy body of the people. They are people who have exactly the same rights as others, and they fully enjoy these rights.

By the way, in Finland itself there are many more examples of how the rights of minorities are respected in a normal society. Let's say, among different confessions, 85% of Finns are Lutherans, and only 1% are Orthodox. And at the same time, Orthodoxy, along with Lutheranism, has the status of a state religion, with all the ensuing consequences: many churches and cathedrals given to the Orthodox, both in the capital and in the provinces, assistance, including financial, from the state, society and business .

1%, how much respect? There are 13 million of us, but where are these like-minded people, oh, where is the feeling of warmth of complicity, where is the powerful intellectual and social rebuff, why do we allow ourselves to be treated like dirty stains on the walls of an illusory vessel called public opinion? Why do we easily agree to the role of powerless witnesses assigned and imposed on us, who see everything and understand everything, but are unable to change anything: not yet another fooling of the people by arrogant temporary workers who use their cultural naivety and eternal loyalty to power and the majority. No despicable and joyful march into another mossy dead end of history. How much is possible? Why is this not considered a national disgrace, a crime against the same culture? Where does this weakness and lack of will come from in those who are smarter and more sober?

I am, of course, ashamed of my pathos. I feel embarrassed because I am aware of the triviality of my words. That is, in fact, I cannot say anything to those 13 million who know everything as well as I do. I have nothing to say to be convincing because they know all my arguments. But I still can’t agree and am trying to understand why we lost again? Why do we always lose? Why can’t we force those hypocritical scoundrels who traditionally rule our country to reckon with those who clearly see how exactly they are creating false history, how they are fooling people by presenting their own interests as the interests of the country? This is all banal, like a hackneyed quote, but still, it’s impossible to understand and agree.

And that is why I allowed myself to make a claim to Marietta Chudakova, without a doubt the best representative of that part of our native Russian intelligentsia, which today, like yesterday, with amazing ease agrees to complicity. Because it makes no sense to turn to the worst, to those who are disappointed in themselves and their profession, but take revenge on their more successful colleagues by selling more; who, after several decades of well-fed happiness, gives up the opportunity to do something significant; for those who have nothing behind their souls, although they once had it. That is, you can, of course, turn to the vile and those who have sold out for a long time (the problem of how Russian society did not survive the test of money, and earlier the test of freedom, still awaits its research), but you will no longer get their reasons and arguments - thick yellow fat conformity has already absorbed everything that is possible.

But there are many smart and completely responsible people who, of course, will never be able to sell themselves out completely, will not become avid propagandists of the hypocritical and selfish government, but will retreat little by little, retreat in small steps, retreat in such a way that we will not be very noticeable to others. To retreat, if not in the topic, then in the interpretation, if not in the depth of the analysis, then in its relevance, if not in the letter, then in the spirit. In principle, those who will retreat and have been retreating for a long time know this better than me. Each specific episode, without exaggeration, is insignificant, it is as difficult to identify as a subtle hint, but all together it turns out to be the very wave that washes away the hopes that a decent, non-empty person has a place in this society.

Among those 13 million who already know everything, not everyone is endowed with the ability to formulate. That is, to create conventional connections of understanding. The very understanding that is the only one capable of uniting people who are not ready to agree with an empty life. And who know very well that this is precisely what is almost not sold, because it has no price for the uninitiated. It is the uninitiated who set the price. But no matter how much they play at the celebration of life, at the opportunity to finally live like a human being, and so on, there are always 13% who understand the value of comprehension and the influence of this comprehension on history, finally.

My opponents, defending the position of reasonable conformism, argue that if it were not for those who are called the liberal Soviet intelligentsia, we would now be living in the forest. They say that they were the best teachers and professors in humanities universities, they were the best translators and critics, the best writers, etc. They say that they ensured the transmission and reproduction of knowledge and cultural traditions, and modern society owes them all the best that it has. Perhaps so. But also the worst. Because, while broadcasting, they simplified, thematized, confused the focus, interpreted, and avoided the obvious. And, willingly or unwillingly, they helped replace reality with its illusory version.

The point is not that the right to professional humanitarian work is higher than social and political responsibility. The question is: what kind of professional activity are we talking about? It is incorrect to weigh honest everyday professional concerns and rigoristic claims on the scales: they say, not a poet, but a citizen. Of course, poet, critic, translator, researcher. After all, if we are not talking about activities to distract from thoughts about death and social failure (which is what mass culture does, which I respect in every possible way), but about creating valuable models for transforming the boundaries existing in culture, then it is history that allows us to see with a sufficient degree of correctness the results of functioning culture. And what do we see? We preserve, broadcast, reproduce a culture that, along with obvious advantages, has a fundamental flaw, damage, defect. A culture that is unable to prevent the bad repetition of history, a culture that is opposed to what is called freedom, a culture that is not capable of creating in society valuable examples of behavior that does not agree with the majority, a culture of conformity and, it turns out, incomplete professional conformity (comprehension).

This is precisely the source of my complaints both to the liberal Soviet intelligentsia and to today's Russian one. The point is not in political maximalism, not in demands for universal social activity, but in responsibility for the shameful immaturity of our culture, which has never learned to learn. Isn’t it obvious the connection between political and cultural conformism, the fact that the constant reproduction of the value of traditional culture to the detriment of innovative culture does not make it possible for society to understand the importance of opposing force and the majority?

Here my esteemed opponents may want to take me at my word. Like, the author is trying to increase the value of his own positions. Yes, naturally, but with one very important caveat. We all lost. Traditionalists and innovators, dissidents and conformists, rigorists and relativists, good professionals who sell themselves for high prices and can do nothing but grumble, unmercenary people. We have lost, we will all live together and live, repeating what has already happened in our life, and this sharply reduces its value - chewing what has been chewed, procrastinating over what has been chewed up. But I can’t help but notice that those who protested in the Soviet Union are protesting against this, and they are also silent. Society clearly hears the voices of my colleagues and friends in nonconformist culture Leva Rubinstein, Volodya Sorokin, Igor Irtenev, who twenty years ago through their practices defended the value of opposing the majority and force. Where are the voices of liberal Soviet culture? No, no one owes anything to anyone. You can, of course, go about your business without hearing, seeing or paying attention to the despicable profane reality. But this does not save us from history. It only reproduces a culture that is unable to withstand mass delusions.