Translated material
Vertical of fear
Fear of power is the main, most obvious result of the “March of Dissent.” “Dissenters” could not even dream of such PR support. The honor guard of His Majesty Fear - 8,000 riot police, soldiers, dogs, a helicopter... Mosfilm was not involved, interesting? Once upon a time, after Brodsky’s arrest, Akhmatova, as you know, dropped: “What a biography they are making for our redhead!” (Brodsky had red hair).
Hence the question - why did the authorities celebrate such a coward?
Just declare December 16th as “State Insurance Day” and put it on the calendar...
The late A.N. Yakovlev said that in 1990, when one of the first large rallies at Manezhnaya was being prepared, the Politburo was seized by real panic. Someone (either Ligachev or Kryuchkov) shouted that the demonstrators had prepared hooks (!), which they would throw over the Kremlin wall and thus storm the Kremlin. It was this “tapping with hooks” at the PB meeting that horrified Yakovlev...
But it’s not 1990 now, it seems?
There are no these 100 thousand crowds. There is no general feeling that the Empire is coming apart at the seams. There is no feeling of illegitimacy of power in an awakened society. There is no horror of the need to pay the debts of their predecessors - even since the 17th year. And most importantly, there are no empty store shelves, but there are full shelves.
Why do you again see in reality the ominous hooks that stretch from Triumfalnaya?
The psychology of the sovereign vertical includes a number of complexes that come to the fore the closer we get to 2008.
With all the open sources, with all the reports from informants, the authorities can hardly (and even want to?) filter real information from myths. But fear has big eyes, especially since state insurance is the main business of officials. In the market of fear, all of them - from political strategists in civilian clothes to hundreds of different “special services” - can earn money and prestige by fighting sedition. In the sovereign vertical: no one dares to say “haven’t we overdone it, gentlemen?” No! As the classic said, it is better to be overly safe 100 times than to be under-safe once. Everyone - according to the rules of the game - MUST demonstrate to each other and to the Chief their toughness, super-rigidity, vigilance, super-vigilance. Competition is mainly based on the criterion of loyalty, and loyalty is measured by one thing - “who is bigger, who is cooler, who is tougher.”
In the Tsarist-Soviet-today System, this is the only way to make a career. Everyone must step on the gas. Only One person has the right to hit the brakes. (So at the plenums of the Central Committee from the 20s to the 80s, only the General Secretary had the right to say: “Maybe we’ll give a comrade a chance? Maybe we won’t be too firm on such and such an issue?” Etc.)
But the most curious thing about the vertical structure is different.
Yes, the vertical is sovereign. Lives by HIS laws. These laws differ from written laws, i.e. CONTRADICTED to them.
And the higher the Vertical rises, the more terrible it (the vertical) is to fall. It’s scary for everyone who sits on it - accordingly, the higher you sit, the more scary it is.
These are not metaphors.
Everything is quite simple.
For example, everyone knows that according to the law (the Constitution) we must have a change of power. AND EVERYONE knows that the ONLY serious STATE CRIME IS TO ENFORCE THIS LAW. To imitate a “struggle for power” means to participate in the “systemic opposition” show. Trying to fight for power means being an extra-systemic opposition (= state criminals, traitors). The difference between “imitation” and “fight” is obvious. Those who imitate agree that the result of the “elections” is PRECEDIED. Those who are trying to fight this DO NOT agree, they are trying to make the elections UNPREDICTABLE!
By the way, such a gap between “de jure” and “de facto” was not always there. For example, under the tsar, an attempt to “change power” was OFFICIALLY recognized as a grave state crime - after all, it would have been regicide, rebellion, conspiracy, etc. Power was, by definition, SACRED AND IRREVOCABLE. This is the ESSENCE of the monarchy, that same autocracy based on Orthodoxy and supported by the people.
But after the official proclamation of “democracy,” doublethink—a complete break between de jure and de facto—became the norm. Democracy was introduced in words, but monarchy remained in practice - in the real functioning of the machine of power and in the psychology of the bearers of power. Hence the dissidents’ slogan “Let’s force the authorities to carry out their laws!” And the more the Soviet government proclaimed formal democratic rules, the further it verbally retreated from the “dictatorship of the proletariat” to “socialist democracy,” the deeper it got stuck in the swamp of doublethink and obvious lies.
This is especially true today.
Formally the power is open, but in reality it is closed. Formally elected, in reality appointed. Formally, a republic is really an “autocracy”. And no matter how much you repeat “sovereign democracy”, the gap between the virtual world, written laws - and the real world, the laws by which the authorities act and THINK, does not become smaller. Just as the gap between “ours” and “yours”, between the two Russias – “this” and “the other”, between “the authorities” and the “people”, is not getting smaller.
Two Russias are the main tradition of Russia.
And the worst thing for “upper” Russia is to come face to face with “lower” Russia. In the language of poetry, this intersection of parallel worlds is called the “Russian revolt, senseless and merciless.” The eternal (often absurd) fear of this rebellion is the main content of the subconscious of the Russian authorities.
The problem is that the two Russias are not just divided - they have been living in a state of cold civil war for at least 100 years, the entire twentieth century (sometimes, as we know, turning into a hot one). The real interests of the two Russias are antagonistic. 100 years ago, “Upper Russia” exploited the labor of “Lower Russia”. Now “upper Russia”, frankly speaking, “lower Russia” does not need “lower Russia” at all - it is not its labor that is being exploited at all, but only Russia’s natural resources. But the trouble is that you can’t throw “lower Russia” anywhere, and she also wants to have her share of these riches - what an arrogant people!
The gap between “upper” and “lower” Russia is so great that the government is often called “occupier”, they look for “outsiders” in it, etc. Nonsense, of course - it is precisely this GAP, this YOKE OF POWER OVER RUSSIA that constitutes the most ORGANIC feature of Russian power and the Russian history of the noble peasants. The only truth is that the “tops” are completely alien to the “bottoms” (and vice versa).
The way to remove the barrier between the two Russias is, in general, well known - civil society (CS), compliance with laws, legitimate elections and other nonsense. Excuse the expression - democracy... Actually, it’s convenient: demonstrations against the president (100 times more numerous than on December 16!) do not require Rottweilers and helicopters, they don’t need to block the path - they go on and on, both the president is in place and the demonstrators legs have been stretched, elections from the End of the World are turning into a tedious procedure (in the USA - they spent a month manually recounting votes and no civil war for you!). There is no division into “ours” and “yours” - all citizens... Nah...
“An interesting initiative – but not for our climate.”
And it’s not just a matter of “specifically oil dollars,” when the Civil Defense demands that the government share with it – which for some reason the government (nomenklatura) does not want to do. It’s also about the instincts of power, about its unchanging traditions.
GO assumes that the government should share not only property, but also power, moreover, that power should belong to the GO, should be part of this very GO, hired managers of the GO.
For the authorities in Russia, this is psychologically... whatever - physiologically, anatomically - intolerable, impossible. "Hired managers" GO! Look how! Won't it be greasy?! Don't you want to?!!
The principles of power are completely different. Not “subordination” to civil society, not belonging to civil society, not even a compromise with civil society, but a fight against civil society, victory over civil society, but, frankly speaking, destruction, prevention of this very civil society. There are no “citizens” - there are either subjects or rulers.
Principles of power: separation from the “people”, closedness, “our honor lies in firmness.” There is no longer any faith in the Sacredness of power (“From God”), no class arrogance of the “nobles” in relation to the “peasants”, but... But still, everything remains!
NOMENCLATURE HANCE is a living religion of power in Russia. To refuse it means to lose the SMACK of power, the MEANING of power (and for some, the meaning of life).
AND NOMENCLATURE FEAR is the other side of the coin. Essentially irrational fear of... Before - who? In front of the chess king, or what? Before the National Bolsheviks? In front of the retired Michal Mikhalych with suddenly broken cheekbones? In front of 2-3-4 thousand people... Nah... Funny...
Fear has no name. The system is not afraid of anyone personally. It’s just that eternal fear is built into the Vertical, fear is its (vertical’s) immune system, its soul, if you like. Her paranoid soul. Fear of heights. The vertical always feels the Fragility of its existence.
Stand ABOVE the people. And FEAR the people. Intimidated, confused, indifferent, tired, SCARY people. Here it is - the fullness of nomenklatura existence, the fullness of the life of the vertical. To be afraid and frighten, to lie and hide, to despise and cajole.
That is why the slightest GHOST of a swaying swamp, into which a vertical is stuck, causes a reflexive shudder in the vertical itself. And this fear breaks through in such actions - 8,000 riot police with a helicopter... An attempt to frighten a frightened system... with their fear. And it is clear that the more the system scares the “enemies”, the more afraid it itself becomes. And the more it should scare “them” again.
The evil infinity of fear is our special spiral... at least until 2008.
PS Please note that I spoke only about power. Analyzing the actions and slogans of those “going the other way” themselves is a completely different topic.