House of Right Citizens

It may seem to some that the Public Chamber is an organization with unclear powers, vague functions and a vague purpose. Perhaps this is so. It seems that the Chamber can request any documents for inspection and raid any state meeting, but it is denied access to any secrets, that is, in general, the authorities do not trust it too much. She can carry out an examination of bills, but no matter how she evaluates them, her judgments are nothing more than recommendations, that is, it is not necessary to take them into account. According to President Putin, the Public Chamber is needed in order to create “effective levers of public influence on the administrative system.” That is, by rendering more traditional “levers”—for example, parliament and an independent press—ineffective, the Kremlin created a body seemingly designed to check and balance the bureaucracy. But this goal conflicts with the Kremlin’s desire to keep the Chamber itself under control, for which purpose the selection of persons who are called upon to limit the bureaucracy is entrusted to it.

But the selection itself is the highest example of state-bureaucratic art. Try to cram into the insignificant number 42 (the presidential part of the list) our entire Russia - multinational, multi-confessional, multi-lingual, stretching across 11 time zones; try to get by with this tiny number of forty-two people and at the same time give way to the young, honor the old, and not forget scientists, artists, teachers, doctors, journalists, or athletes. Do not forget to ensure that the list includes those who have “special services to the state and society,” as required

, and that all of them be “as politically unbiased as possible,” as the President of the Russian Federation V.V. Putin promised, and you will understand what an incredible difficulty the task faced those who formed the presidential third of the Chamber.

IN

There are 28 men and 14 women, so in terms of gender composition the Public Chamber does not correspond to Russian society as a whole, but it is much less vulnerable to accusations of sexism than any other important body of the Russian state. By the way, there are at least five women’s organizations on the list. Here are the International Social and Economic Union (Women), and the Consortium of Women's Non-Governmental Associations, and the All-Russian Organization "Women's Dialogue", and the All-Russian Association of Rural Women, and the International Women's Center "Women's Future". At the same time, the compilers of the list did everything possible to ensure that the representatives of these organizations were different in all other respects - and thereby filled not just one, but a whole series of important social valences. So, among them there are simply members of organizations and their leaders, there is a business woman, a woman teacher, a woman philosopher and a woman doctor, there are natives of the village of Dubrovnoye, Lebyazhyevsky district, Kurgan region, the village of Perevles, Starozhilovsky district, Ryazan region, and the village of Russkoye, Kursk district, Stavropol Territory , finally, there are natives of Moscow and Dagestan.

Such balance is observed in absolutely everything: among scientists there are both men and women; Not only exact and social sciences are represented - the humanities are not forgotten either. Gender diversity is also observed among journalists, and the compilers of the list cannot be blamed for the age imbalance: a young journalist, not even 30 years old, is next to the middle-aged editor-in-chief of a thick magazine on the list. During the period of stagnation, the editor-in-chief was a prisoner of conscience, but anyone who suspects the creators of the Chamber of excessive predilection for dissidents would be cruelly mistaken. The list also includes representatives of high-level Soviet nomenklatura from the same stagnant period - for example, it included the executive secretary of the Soviet Peace Committee. In addition to the thick magazine, there is also a circulation daily newspaper, a weekly magazine, and an online publication.

As for the age scale, the age of the members of the Chamber varies from 22-year-old beauty Alina Kabaeva to a gray-haired war veteran.

Or take, for example, the ethnic principle. After all, we have many peoples, and almost everyone has their own association or union, and all of them certainly have merits to society, or at least to part of it. How to choose so that others are not offended? The solution seems truly flawless. The president of the Association of Chechen Public and Cultural Associations was elected. The Chechens really occupy a special place among the peoples of Russia today, and no one can (and is unlikely to want) to lay claim to their place. The association was created this year, which is why its services to the state and society may not be so numerous yet, but its short history is an additional guarantee of a clean reputation. At the same time, the head of the Association is in addition a representative of business, heading the board of directors of Alliance Group OJSC. And besides, by including it in the list, the compilers contributed to improving the image of the Chechen people - a task set by the president just the other day - that is, work on the list was carried out, apparently, until the very last minute.

Although ethnic organizations as such are no longer represented by anyone, the ethnic composition of the presidential third of the Chamber is distinguished by exceptional correctness: ethnic Russians, who make up more than 80 percent of the population in the Russian Federation, have proactively pushed aside in the Chamber to give more space to minorities, which are generously and diversely represented.

Religious denominations also received their quota on the presidential list: Muslims and Orthodox Christians, Buddhists and Jews, and even Protestants. All, however, are men, but even the Kremlin’s experts are unable to overcome this limitation. There are no Catholics on the list, but true balance does not mean omnivorousness.

Among the members of the Chamber there are natives of Moscow and Tashkent, Vilnius and Odessa, Samarkand and Saratov, people from Arkhangelsk, Lipetsk, Kirov, Voronezh, Oryol and Sverdlovsk regions - in a word, from them you can study the geography of our - and no longer our - vast homeland worse than according to the list of candidates for the Supreme Council from the indestructible bloc of communists and non-party people.

The art of building this ideal proportionality of representation, this calibrated harmony of quotas, this (anti-)utopian symmetry was honed in the Soviet state for decades. Culturologist Vladimir Paperny called this “a hierarchical, state-aesthetic vision of the world.” In his work “Culture-2” he described the project of the Palace of the Soviets with wide symmetrical rays and avenues diverging from it. The grandiose plan, which, fortunately, remained unfulfilled, is noteworthy in that no one could see this devilish symmetry, with the exception of “members of the government for whom... models and perspectives were made” - and also the figure of Lenin, which was supposed to crown gigantic structure.

In the same way, counting on an approving look from the nomenklatura elite, an official representation of society was created in the USSR: people's deputies in due proportion represented the correct citizens of the Land of the Soviets, and films and books depicted the life of these correct citizens themselves: the abundant life of cheerful villagers, not easy, but the joyful work of factory workers, a happy childhood, for which my native country thanks.

In the preface to the book, published in Russia 10 years ago, Paperny says that in the 70s, when he wrote his work, he clearly felt the return of the spirit of the 40s. The current incarnation of the “grand style” has already brought us the Stalinist anthem, sovereign rhetoric, the aesthetics of state greatness, new “high-rise buildings”, and now also the seemingly lost art of building a properly quotable, loyal people’s

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