Results 2009: crisis and without crisis

On New Year's Eve it is customary to wish everyone success, happiness, and express hope for the best. A year ago, everything was different. They wanted to wish, but at the same time they meant that nothing good could be expected. God grant that everything just remains as it is - and that will be good. Everyone was waiting for the crisis like a wave approaching on the horizon - and it came in waves. We looked around and saw how rapidly our oil was falling in price, how our gold and foreign exchange reserves were being sucked out like a vacuum cleaner. We understood that the fat years were over, that everything was a bluff and a deception, that the bubble was about to burst. And we were told that this was not the worst thing yet, that the crisis had not really begun, that it would hit especially terribly towards the end of spring and beginning of summer - and then!..

And now it is over, this year, which promised to be so terrible. And we look around again... We seem to be alive. Relatively healthy. We are not starving. And we even exude a semblance of optimism. Because pessimists and alarmists did not take into account the colossal safety margin of our population. What kind of crisis can scare the inhabitants of a country that in the relatively recent past has experienced bloody wars, self-destruction, famine - whatever you want. No, you can’t beat us with a crisis, we are grated rolls, we shook ourselves off and moved on.

But in general, of course, the year did not turn out to be particularly fun. And its gloominess, as smart and balanced people assumed, depended not on the collapse of the American mortgage and the fall in oil prices, but on our own outrages. If you engage in deep analysis, then not only one article will not be enough, but a thick book. So let’s just remember the hottest spots of the year.

War on the police

The most sinister person of the year for me is Major Evsyukov. A man who has already gone down in history. A man who became a household name, who gave the name to a whole phenomenon - “Yevsyukovism.” After the shooting of people in a supermarket by a drunken major, it seems that not a day passed without us receiving reports of another policeman who had run over children or adults on the road, beaten a teenager to death, or shot at citizens in a clinic. The result was the equally historical phrase of Minister Nurgaliev, which is now popularly known as “Nurgaliev allowed to beat the cops.”

Dymovsky

He is also a policeman. And also a common noun. Some called Dymovsky a hero, others an enemy agent, but I suspect that he is neither one nor the other, or even the arithmetic mean. This strange comrade became the founder of the movement of chaotic truth-tellers in uniform, complaining about everything. Some on business, and others so that at least call the doctors.

Disasters

We are accustomed to disasters, and it is unlikely that there have actually been more of them this year, but some of them were filled with special bloody symbolism. The pride of Soviet energy, and at the same time one of the Soviet household names - the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric station. One could say about her in the words of Vladimir Vladimirovich: “She drowned.” By pure chance, we avoided the second Chernobyl, otherwise even the national leader might not have had enough juicy epithets. Anyone can watch the explosion at a hydroelectric power station on the Internet, realizing that in these very seconds, seven dozen people are dying before their eyes, a colossus is collapsing, that there will be no one to blame, there will be no conclusions, there will be no compensation. The fire at the Lame Horse was also recorded on video and introduced us to some interesting arithmetic. The Nevsky Express, which derailed a week before the fire, claimed the lives of 27 people, and this is not a reason for mourning, but 150 burned out is already a reason. The line, it turns out, lies at around one hundred people. More than a hundred is mourning, less than a hundred is not.

Hunger-forming enterprises

That’s what I called my article in “Hedgehog” about the city of Svetlogorye, where people switched to pasture and generally ate like blockade survivors, because the city-forming enterprise stopped working a long time ago. The expression of your humble servant, as I understand it, has gained some currency, which I am not at all happy about. It would be better if some life-forming word became widespread. But this was another trend of the year. Also called “Pikalev syndrome”. Citizens have picked up the trend of taking the supreme power by the throat by blocking roads with the immediate demand to “fall Putin here.” Putin went to Pikalyovo, but, realizing which way the wind was blowing, he wisely abandoned the idea of ​​personally saving each distressed settlement. Moreover, there are many such points, and it is usually impossible to save them even through personal presence. By the way, nothing really has worked in Pikalevo so far. A special bow must be given to AvtoVAZ, this “twice automobile plant” (decipher the abbreviation). He is like a two-headed eagle - a two-headed monument: to Soviet futile and Russian short-term economic policies. A huge suitcase without even the tiniest handle.

Murders

They said that the crisis would throw us back to the “wild 90s” in the economic sense. But we felt the spirit of the last decade more strongly not even in the economy, but in crime reports. They started killing people on the streets again. Killers are held in high esteem again. No, they never finally retired, but public contract killing as a way to solve problems has been something exceptional in recent years. And now this phenomenon has become regular again. Markelov and Baburova, Yaponchik, Kalmanovich and people much less “resonant” died from bullets in front of almost all the honest people. And just like in the 90s, solving such crimes is more a matter of chance. Well, or if finding the killers is more profitable than hiding them.

Reboot

Initially, this word was written on the symbolic button with an error - “Overload”. In the end, unfortunately, neither one nor, fortunately, the other happened: we didn’t reboot, but we and America didn’t overload either. However, the absence of news is already good news. America is an enemy and a bogeyman, it has almost always been so. And the fact that last season little was said about America and almost always neutrally was not bad at all. Obama proved himself to be a wise man in the sense that if you don’t touch what you don’t need, it won’t even smell. We blow the samovar with our boots and talk only about pleasant or not very unpleasant topics. We'll see how long we can avoid unpleasant topics.

Troubled neighbors

This is the case when unfulfilled forecasts are only a joy. War with Georgia in 2009 seemed almost obvious. But it didn’t happen. The war remained cold and grotesque. They want to extradite the Okudzhava Museum; we have a monument to the Georgians who died on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War. Now I am finally convinced that Putin and Saakashvili are each other’s secret idols. And their relationship is nothing more than a manifestation of hidden jealousy. These two wonderful gentlemen cannot live without each other and in their hearts they wish for the enemy to rule his country endlessly. Otherwise, part of the meaning of their existence will be lost forever. Relations with other neighbors have generally not changed over the year. We tried to command them, they tried to kick us away even when we did not pester them.

Nauru

Leonid Slutsky called the purchase of recognition of the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia from Nauru a “wave of common sense” rising in the world. The phrase is funny. But the story itself is not. And when we laugh at this situation, our laughter reveals great power and disdain. Yes, Nauru can be photographed in its entirety not even from space, but from a bird’s eye view. There is no capital there only because if you place a capital on an island, the suburbs will fall into the sea. But this is a member of the UN, just like us. And the rulers of Nauru are much better than our rulers. Because in the conditions of exhausted natural resources and the complete unattractiveness of the island, they managed to make Russia, China, and the European Union line up to Nauru and ask to accept hundreds of millions of dollars and euros in exchange for Nauru’s kind recognition of something (and in the case with China and in exchange for non-recognition - Taiwan). And so our government doesn’t just give you and me $3,500 for the snout, but it gives it to the residents of Nauru. So well done to Nauru. Well, everything is clear about ourselves even without Nauru.

Tandem

I was wrong, I admit honestly. I expected that Dmitry Anatolyevich would somehow try to push Vladimir Vladimirovich. Because I could not imagine that, having received control of the largest country in the world, and therefore enormous power on a global scale, someone would voluntarily agree to a second role, occupying the first chair. Didn’t push YES comrade BB. However, Medvedev did not remain a faceless pawn. At least in this game the roles have already been outlined. One is a pragmatist, the other a romantic. One leads, the other manages. Medvedev would have had more metal in his voice and vulgarity in his witticisms, like his older comrade, and our two-headed tandem would have been even less lopsided.

Modernization

Modernization is Perestroika today. No one really knows what the point is, where to go, what to do and what should happen in the end, but everyone is more or less aware that modernization is underway in the country. For now it’s written with a small letter, but in 2010, you’ll see, they’ll write it with a capital letter. Electronic government, energy-saving light bulbs, compression of the time continuum in the form of flattening time zones and the transition of the “zombie box” to “digital” - this is not a complete list of modernization projects. In general, at the end of the year, Medvedev seemed to me to be an ideal minister for communications (or whatever such a minister is called). As soon as the conversation turns to the Internet, computers, electronics, etc., his eyes light up and his speech becomes clear and fast. It is not a fact that he represents everything proposed correctly, but it is certain that it is truly interesting to him. And it was even somehow sad to watch the State Council before the New Year, when all the ministers and governors were sitting in a huge hall, Medvedev spoke passionately about Electronic Government, and those present listened with absolutely blank faces. But everyone took notes as one, which made the action take on an even more depressing character.

Magnitsky

And here you don’t even know what to say. Because are words needed here? Only one thing surprised me. After the death of Sergei Magnitsky, his complaints were considered in court. More precisely, they did not consider them because the complainant died. I was sure that complaints about poor content would be considered completely unfounded.

This is what the year has been like. The year when everything was on display. We saw the president's video blogs, the fire at the Lame Horse and the breakthrough at the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric power station. We saw the tattooed Dymovsky, the crazy Evsyukov and even the actor Galkin throwing chairs. We saw how a fragment of a monument in Kutaisi kills a child and how, according to a good New Year’s tradition, gas was released into Ukraine, and through it to Europe. They saw dead Turchinsky and Jackson. And we heard Trachtenberg’s last words on air. It was scary to watch and listen to. But on the other hand, hiding anything from people becomes almost impossible. And this is also the result of the year.