Cinderella's delights

As I promised in the last "Trap for Cinderella", I am moving from criticism to praise. I do this quite sincerely; certainly no less sincerely than he criticized before. After all, the differences in the two waves of protest - the current one and the one twenty years ago - in style and methods of action are clearly visible. Of course, the romance of the deeds, thoughts and moods of that time is nostalgically sweet to me. But I can't help but give credit to the current wave.

The first thing that catches your eye is the high level of organization whenever organization is required, and indifference to it when it is not necessary. There were also examples of good organization in the past; very cleverly, for example, the Democrats (they weren’t embarrassed to call them that then, and they weren’t embarrassed to be called that) organized rallies. This experience is still in demand. But organization was often pursued as secondary sexual characteristics, evidence of adulthood. Apparently, Pioneer childhood, Komsomol youth and years in the CPSU or simply in Soviet labor collectives (there was such a funny term) had an effect. An excessive desire for organization created hierarchies and inflated leaders where there was no need for this, constrained the mass of people and created a split. Nowadays, organization arises only for specific tasks, and this is correct.

In addition, organizational professionalism is clearly visible. This is not surprising, because over twenty years a generation of people has grown up with experience in modern management, the skills of which are now being applied in the public sphere. A competent manager will not spend a long time looking for a better solution than a good one, but will prefer to gain in time, and then, because of this, in efficiency. Previously, they argued until they were hoarse in search of an ideal, did not find it, quarreled and wasted time. I still see this syndrome in my fellow contemporaries. And I grieve. A competent manager considers solving a problem more important than winning his own point of view and will not impose it if this risks losing momentum, and accepting someone else’s point of view does not harm the quality of solving the problem. Among my peers, the victory of their point of view is often considered the main result. I'm grieving again. I can list other differences, but I think that the reader, drawn into my comparisons, can continue on his own.

It must be said that this organizational and social professionalism was forged quite a long time ago. I saw its first glimpses in the mid-2000s, when massive scams began on the part of developers of business-class residential buildings. It was then that I saw the middle class in action, organizing to protect its interests. By the way, even then the INTERNET became a medium of self-organization. And all subsequent years, businessmen, PR-men and other men and women honed their professionalism of self-organization whenever the state created problems for them, hurting their interests.

In the last two or three years, the middle class began to transfer the skill of self-organization from solving their own problems to solving general problems, be it putting out fires or searching for missing people, which the state stopped doing as it degraded. There was half a step left before political self-organization, and the authorities carefully pushed him towards it.

Next praise. Citizens of the USSR, with rare exceptions, were civil servants and, thus, dependent on the state, which not only paid their salaries, but also determined almost all spheres of life, even intimate ones (the favorite thing of trade union or party meetings is to delve into adultery). There were individual representatives of the “liberal professions,” but they were also strictly controlled by the state through creative unions, to which everyone with a few exceptions had to belong (and tried to belong). This left an imprint on everything. It gave rise to fear, fear of breaking the umbilical cord; in collective actions it pushed to make demands on the state in solving problems that could be completely solved independently; contributed to the passivity generated by paternalistic expectations; threw people into an abyss of disappointment when the state and new leaders turned out to fail to live up to romantic expectations.

It's different now. The requirements for the state are different and formulated approximately like this: don’t lie, don’t steal, do what you’re supposed to do. Please note: the minimum set of moral demands that anyone could present to a work colleague, immediate superior or subordinate. This is a necessary set, without which social coexistence is impossible. There is no shadow of the old paternalism here. Previously, the requirements implied a vertical system of feudal relations. Now the requirements have become “horizontal”.

This is evidence of fundamental changes in the worldview of people united in protest, changes in the fundamental principles that determine the relations between people, between people and institutions of power. Let me express a seditious thought: these changes are more important than the fact of protest itself. They are irreversible; no amount of propaganda and no amount of intimidation will change this. Protest may decrease or increase, but the new cultural code and new social dominants are irresistible. They will be spread in the process of ordinary communication and transmitted to children, students, and subordinates. You can suppress the protest in Moscow, but the infection has already spread, and there is no cure for this sociocultural epidemic. It will ensure a general trend of increasing protest until people achieve the expected result.

The last praise (so as not to get too proud) is a mood of protest. First, about the general things. Both twenty years ago and now, the protest actions of the Democrats were surprisingly devoid of aggression towards the surrounding city and people (forgive the use of archaic terminology, but it is adequate). No broken windows or cars, no attacks on the police, etc. This sharply distinguished the democrats from the left or the nationalists, whose protest was heavily implicated in desperate ressentiment.

An important difference: irony towards oneself and laughter towards power. The protest of the early 90s was very serious and full of self-respect. There were, of course, rare exceptions. During the days of the August 1991 putsch, the following slogan, slightly distorting Lermontov, was popular among the defenders of the White House: “I’ll hammer a charge into Pugo’s carcass.” (We are talking about the Minister of Internal Affairs and a member of the State Emergency Committee). Quite bloodthirsty, especially since after the failure of the putsch the minister shot himself without waiting for arrest.

The current protest is permeated with humor, from the gentle, like a white balloon with the inscription “I was fooled!”, to the somewhat vindictive, realized, for example, through the topic of condoms. Laughter is a terrible weapon. Please note that the government is trying to steal and, repeating, devalue protest technologies: marches, car rallies, etc. But she can't borrow our laughter. This is impossible not only due to the lack of talents like Bykov and Efremov, who laugh with inspiration. Contagious laughter requires sincerity. And this is beyond their control. Our laughter turns into angry hysteria. Laughter attracts, evil hysteria disgusts people with a normal psyche, and they are the majority. And here’s what’s important: laughter helps to cleanse ourselves, displacing the cynicism that was imposed on us by the authorities for twelve years.

My fellow citizens, laughing, are making the history of the country. Thanks to them.