Don't poke light bulbs in your face

Of course, Dmitry Medvedev will now get a hard time from everyone for his Address to the Federal Assembly.

It's already enough.

The claims begin with politically important questions: for example, how is Medvedev going to fundamentally modernize the country without modernizing its political, essentially one-party system?

Next comes criticism from economists: where will Medvedev get the money for all this? Will he dispossess someone, take away someone? Will taxes increase? But he himself said that he was going to reduce them. So where does the money come from?

Let us not dwell on further levels of criticism and descend to the very bottom.

Let's go down to the light bulbs.

Of course, Medvedev will never be forgiven for these energy-saving light bulbs, because “it’s not a royal business to deal with some kind of light bulbs.” And it doesn’t matter that almost all over the world they are already switching to them, that they save a lot of money, that they are unreasonably expensive in Russia, that various states have special programs for switching to this type of lighting. That is, Medvedev offers an innovative idea, but an applied one that concerns every person.

But it won't be appreciated.

The Russians will not forgive Medvedev for his unroyal behavior and will poke him in the face with these light bulbs, just as they poked Khrushchev with corn. Dear Russians agree to sit on an ever-flowing Soviet-Russian-made toilet, but with an imperial expression on their faces. It’s also good that Medvedev did not mention this hygiene item, otherwise the people would have stormed the Kremlin today.

But, in the end, I don’t care what other “dear Russians” think about Medvedev’s report, what matters to me is what I think about it.

I pose the question exactly this way, because the “communal” Russia, covered in legends and dreams of Solzhenitsyn, died long ago.

There is no community. Each Russian has his own Russia: some have innovations, others have subsidies from Luzhkov. It doesn’t matter why this happened - let historians argue about it. The main thing is that the Novgorod Republic is only a pleasant memory of a lost human model of life. And then the usual serfdom, tearing out nostrils and flogging, veneration of the Rasputins, Bolshevik bleeding, Stalinist bleeding and Brezhnev muttering. Then there was a brief feeling under Yeltsin that you somehow related to the country, but then again the great Putin one-party swamp. Even more terrible, in fact, because this is a swamp without any idea, without thought and without a future.

So I ask myself a question: do I want to see the country as Medvedev described it in his report?

And I answer: yes, I want to. I really want to. I want it right now.

Will Medvedev make the country like this?

Don't know.

I don’t know what Medvedev wants from life, whether he is ambitious in the grand scheme of things, whether he can survive in the Kremlin corridors after 2012. I don’t know if he understands that he himself “cannot fight alone”, that such large-scale transformations are generated by the forces of the entire nation, its national optimism.

That is, at some point a citizen understands that he is deciding something in this life, and begins to arrange his own little destiny at his own discretion. Millions of citizens are beginning to arrange their destinies, and this is raising the whole country.

And of course, fair, not rigged elections are the first step towards trust in the authorities, towards consolidation around the authorities.

After all, in order for the people to help the leader, it is not necessary to falsify the elections: instead of 102 percent on paper, you will get your 25 percent, but it will be your 25 percent, which will help you transform your country.

Does Medvedev understand this? I'm sure so.

Will he be able to, given the existing duumvirate, despite the fact that by a strange coincidence, just on the eve of his speech, Forbes puts the do-nothing Putin in 3rd place in the ranking of global (!) influence after Obama and Hu Jintao, and Medvedev in 43rd place? e, and even Sechin is in front of him. So will he be able to do anything?

Again, I don't know.

I only know one thing.

“He won’t do anything because we are not in power,” opposition politicians will say, and they have the right to do so, because this is their business. And they will be right that even under Medvedev the attitude towards them has not changed.

“Let him do it, and we’ll see,” citizens will say, and they have the right to do so, because it is a Russian tradition to sit on the current toilet and dream of a bright future.

Medvedev himself will have to start the transformation, if he has already announced it. Whether he will be able to involve society in the transformation depends on his professional qualities. After all, we agree that the president is a profession.

In this situation, I personally can only do one thing - do not poke a light bulb in his face. Or, in other words, not to offend Medvedev with preliminary distrust, which is what I’m doing.

But these ambitious plans need to begin to be implemented right now, because one of the meanings of the Message is that the ideas set out in it immediately become laws.

Therefore, soon, very soon it will become clear how serious Dmitry Medvedev is as a president, whether he sees the whole of Russia behind the changing time zones and blogs.

He put himself before the biggest test of his life.

History is merciless, people even more so.

Now it depends only on Medvedev himself how he will be remembered later: with reforms and a constitution in his hands.

Or only with an energy-saving light bulb.