Russian conversations

It’s funny, but the 90s ended somehow unnoticed, as if at high speed the turn slipped and only then looked around: a stranger landscape, and the animals roamed on it. Sosnovy Bor. Morning. Mishka swarming. No Andy Warhol.

Therefore, they forgot to take the results of the revolutionary (option - counter -revolutionary) decades; And as they came to their senses, it has become difficult to talk about the old from the New Age. The new language has not yet been mastered, and the old one was dilapidated and became unusable. If the Modest Korrov started collecting the analytical articles of all those whom he interviewed in this book about the departed nineties and future (as it is expressed) “zero”, it would turn out the next, not without beautifulness, brick in the building of the history of Russian journalism. No more. Where everyone would talk about his, from his department, the writer, an editorial chair. With quotes (by tendency) from Deleuz, Berdyaev, Ilyin and Zizhek, with allusions on the disgusting Sorokin with Pelevin. Thank God, none of this was done.

Interrupted by the tint of the past and the future “intellectuals”, “creators of meanings”, “specialists according to the words” (again, by tendency), for the most part, turned out to be simple -minded people and laid out the interviewer everything as in confession. It turns out that they are most worried about their power. More precisely, the eternal “power” (with a capital letter) and “power” is current and past (with small). The publisher and philosopher, journalist and historian - all of them are fascinated by power and willingly talk only about her. Other: economics, social situation, culture, their very profession (but more on that later) are, as it were, a function of power (in both senses). And, of course, any Russian conversation about power is closed on the state, for what is the highest value of Russian history? Of course, the state, without which several tens of millions of people living, for the most part, in the conditions impossible for life (geographical, first of all), would have long died out. The conversation about the state is inevitable in Russia, just like a conversation about vodka.

On the other hand, the issues of power strengthened its position in the collective consciousness (more precisely - in the collective unconscious) of the post -Soviet intellectual as a result of French philosophical influence. They - Bart, Foucault and others [1] - were obsessed with the problem of power. The power of the French thought of the last fifty years turned out to be so great that people who did not read the lines from the creators of poststructuralism and deconstructivism absorbed their ideas literally from the air. In some way, in Russia there was an immaculate conception of fashion for poststructuralist discourse.

I will let a completely Marxist hairpin. The problems of the authorities, the state are so relevant for the “creators of the creators of new Russian meanings” also because they-as exemplary French intellectuals-turned out to be thrown out of their main lesson in the 90s. This decade was really revolutionary; It turned the artistic curator into a publisher and a journal editor, one philologist into a journalist, another-in a historian and journalist, historian-again in a journalist. The first -class writer and the legendary literary editor produces and editing political texts; And his opinion is required precisely as a political commentator.

It turned out to be extremely funny: in the book there are simple-minded philosophers who respect the intellectual tradition, left-wing troubles, prose writers, interpreting (and smartly, meanwhile) about the things of metaphysical, etc. What is the 90s, their true meaning: everyone did not do their own thing; As if in the revolution and the 20th century: engineer Krasin at the head of foreign trade, temperamental litcritic in the rank of military.

By the way, it is not a fact that all these people (or almost all) will go their work in the current decade. Over the past time, “its own business” evaporated, one title of “intellectual” remains. France is recalled again. Every decent "intellectual" goes to work for power. Or work against the authorities. What is naive and reports in an interview. But we must take into account: the Russian authorities will always perceive these intellectuals as “bourgeois specialists” - to feed, keep, but on occasion (preparing them a shift from socially close personnel) will destroy. Or - at best - will expel.

From here a very important question arises, alas, only casually affected in the book. The question of the education system, first of all, is higher. For this is not only a question of “education in general”, this is a question about the training of new personnel for the authorities, first of all, “new specialists in words”. Talking about the future decade in Russia without talking about who replaces the current immigrants from the intellectual elite, who composed the “language of the nineties” is pointless. Who will compose a new language?

I have an answer to this. In contrast to the usual point of view on the current state of the system of higher education (ruined, destroyed, and so on), I would suggest that it has already developed , and the very people who were not expelled from there (and had to be expelled!) In the early 90s created it. Oh, there is its own tense life, its own economy, its own hierarchy and its own mainstream! It is possible to despise the technical schools that became “lyceums”, and vocational schools that turned into the “Academy”, but it was they who began to supply personnel to the lower and middle link of the bureaucracy; The ladies and gentlemen stretched with Pateusny-Academic diplomas of candidates of philosophy, political science, sociology in the office of the heads of district administrations and directors of regional departments! And in provincial newspapers there are fewer exlimators and ex-proprietors of ancient history, and more and more graduates of the Faculty of Journalism of the Ensky Pedagogical Institute, in which they are taught to write about the detrimental dominance of the West and the greedy American imperialism Slavik Kuritsyn ... The cultural revolution was accomplished; Perhaps the size of a smaller than in the 30s, but it happened.

These people will certainly compose a new language of power - without any time with the Lacan. About ten years later, I would talk to them. If they, of course, will be allowed to themselves.

In the meantime, we will follow the fate of the heroes of the “new regime” (not Putinsky, of course, but the book “New mode”). Let's see what will do with them (and with Russia) this is a strong complex feeling of a Russian person: "Love/hatred of power." Just as it was probably excitingly interesting to follow the fate of the authors of the “milestone”.

Andrei Zorin, Alexander Arkhangelsky, Maxim Sokolov [2] , Dmitry Shusharin, Boris Kuzminsky, Ekaterina Dygot, Andrey Levkin, Elena Petrovskaya, Viktor Misiano, Alexander Ivanov, Konstantin Krylov, Kirill Rogov, Kirill Rogov, answered the questions of Modest Kolerov.

[1] With all natural and fundamental differences.

[2] The only failure of the book is an interview with Sokolov, who acts as his own character. Boring. Grandfather Masai is some kind.