Results of the week. Fermentation of unsteady minds

At the end of the past week, the head of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, Igor Yurgens, made an almost sensational statement. He claims that Dmitry Medvedev is waging a “quiet war” with the Kremlin security forces. They say that a liberal-oriented president needs to create a coalition, and then he will have a chance in the difficult struggle for the future of Russia. Generally speaking, this topic—Medvedev’s latent liberalism (which he may not have yet discovered in himself)—has recently become dominant in political and near-political circles. And then the President of Tatarstan, Mintimer Shaimiev, threw fire into this fire - he advocated the return of gubernatorial elections. And now the prominent liberal United Russia member Vladimir Pligin “does not rule out” that the country will return to this democratic practice in 2012. Are these not signs of fresh trends, not the first sprouts of future liberal reforms and sure signs of the correct ideological and political orientation of the current owner?.. However, whose and what is the owner of Mr. Medvedev is also a very ambiguous and debatable question.

However, nowadays, wherever you go, they take you by the button, take you aside and begin to explain in a soulful half-whisper about Medvedev. About the fact that “new times are coming”, that “gradual liberalization is inevitable”, that the “long-awaited thaw” is about to come to the country. Just the other day, one former high-ranking government official, who rightfully occupies a place today almost at the very top of the waiting list, convinced me that a pendulum is just a pendulum to swing in different directions, and it cannot hang in one position. And that the time when Medvedev begins to loosen the screws is just around the corner. This means that the “smart, responsible opposition” must catch these vibes and begin to rebuild. In other words, stop trying to undermine the new president and, on the contrary, try to provide him with constructive support. But only very carefully. In order, on the one hand, not to harm, not to frighten away the bird of happiness, not to drive it back into the cage, and on the other hand, so as not to expose the boy before the time, not to expose him to the skating rink of the still powerful security forces, to give him time to gain political weight.

I have known this man for a very long time and I can firmly assert that he spoke completely sincerely, and good-naturedness is not his distinguishing feature. And, I repeat, this is a common position today. So to speak, a new political mainstream. And the enthusiastic gaze of numerous apologists of the new government, admirers of Dmitry Medvedev’s future, as yet undemonstrated talents and merits, fades only when you start asking them, of course, vulgar and completely inappropriate, but at the same time specific questions. For example, I asked my interlocutor when, in his opinion, Medvedev would gain sufficient political weight to release political prisoners, including Yukosites, from prison; carry out full-scale political reform; return elections to the country (not just elections of governors, but elections in general); begin to restore political space; stop regulating party building; dissolve the illegitimate Duma and set a new date for elections; carry out a change of leadership elites at all levels; abolish censorship in electronic and any other media; initiate investigations into cases related to the redistribution of property (including state property) and the withdrawal of assets during previous reigns.

Here my interlocutors usually begin to wince, grimace and look at me as a vulgar materialist and cynic. They say to me about subtle feelings, about human hopes, about the dawn of a new era, and I, like a broken record, prattle on to them about some vulgar and base matters. I plunge, so to speak, their sublime souls into the gray prose of Russian life. So my friend walked away from me when, at the end of our conversation, I asked: “Do you happen to know when Dmitry Medvedev will tell us the whole truth about who is really to blame for the deaths of children in the Beslan school, about the gassed spectators of “Nord” Osta", about the submarine "Kursk"? About who, in the end, killed Anna Politkovskaya and why, and who needed to get rid of Alexander Litvinenko in such a savage manner?”

“Where are you going? - I threw after my retreating friend. “I’m still terrified how interested I am about the actual beneficiaries of the Surgutneftegaz company and about the withdrawal of assets from Gazprom...” But my last questions hung in the air.