Translated material
Fog around the "rain"
I was sure that the topic of this would pass me. Alexander Podrabinek on the “Hedes” closed it, it seemed so tight that, like, there were no clicks left. I mean, of course, that there was no alkali left for people normal, since it is evidence to act as the captain, polemicizing with the universal spring, as indecent as to explain the joke.
I was wrong. Climbed out of all the cracks. Moreover, from the people whom I, to one degree or another, included (and continue to include) in my reference group, check and check my internal watches and other devices and settings of public navigation on them. And now, on you.
Andrei Kozenko writes on the feed.ru: “The question was driven into a stupor. The question made me think that the person who invented him about the Great Patriotic War learned from computer games and reinforced his knowledge by viewing the film “Stalingrad” - be sure to 3d. ” The end of the quote.
Yuri Saprykin on Echo of Moscow: “There is a monstrous logical mistake in the notorious survey - it does not follow from the fact of the surrender of the city that its inhabitants would be saved.” And further: "The blockade is a tragedy of such a scale that it is better to bow your head and be silent." The end of the quote.
The leadership of the "rain" apologizes many times, sprinkles with ashes, recognizes the mistake and promises not to do this anymore. The question is, what and what not to do? What else can not be done to journalists and historians, sociologists and other suspicious citizens? Is it possible to somehow publish a complete list?
This whole plot has at least five dimensions, since it is at the junction of five spheres: sociology, history, journalism, politics and morality.
I will not analyze political and moral measurements, because for Yarova and her colleagues an insult to their moral, religious and political feelings is absolutely everything that is not pronounced by them. In general, the very fact of the existence on the planet of all of us - “rain”, “hedgehog”, “echo”, “new” and their audience - is unbearably offensive to this audience. These are people who suffer from an acute form of moral and political solipsism, for discussing which requires the still not developed language of political psychiatry.
But in the first three areas affected by the Rain survey, it is worthwhile to stop in detail. So, the first dimension is sociological, namely, the “monstrous logical error” seen by Yuri Saprykin.
Unbearable sociology
There is no dispute, this issue does not go through a validity test. As, in fact, not one of the hundreds of questions asked, for example, on the Echo of Moscow website will pass it. In relation to any media survey, any sociologist will tell you that the set of offered answers is not full, the scale is asymmetrical, and the question is raised so much that it is impossible to answer it.
Even in professional surveys among respondents there are many people who tear the questionnaire with a cry that questions are incorrectly formulated and drive him, respondent, into a trap. Do you want to ask about the measure of trust in politicians? Get in response a lecture on the complex structure of trust, which is not taken into account in the issue. Have you asked the attitude to the church? They will definitely explain that the question is incorrectly posed, because it is unclear whether it is about the church as an institute, or as a house of God, or about its leadership in the person of citizen Gundyaev.
Having asked the question in the questionnaire, for whom you are going to vote in the elections, you will run into Julia Latynin, who will immediately explain to you that universal suffrage is a harmful invention, so first you need to put a question-filter that rejects hungerrons that do not deserve the rights of voting.
Any question asked by a sociologist is violence over the fabric of society, the continuity of which this issue destroys, and over the consciousness of the respondent, because for most citizens any question of a sociologist sounds artificially, is on the periphery or even outside his everyday life. It was these reasons that allowed the brilliant sociologist Pierre Burdier to conclude that public opinion does not exist, and even write a work with such a name that, however, it did not prevent him from very successfully to study this most non -existent one.
Undoubtedly, the design of the question on the “rain”: “Was it necessary to pass Leningrad in order to save hundreds of thousands of lives?”, Was enough a curve, which predetermined the advantage of a positive answer to this question. However, the curvature of this question and the assignment of answers are no more than in most polls by Thomas or VTsome. But about the “monstrous logical mistake” and about the fact that the person who invented the survey “found out about the Second World War from computer games” is already issues of the historical aspect.
Unbearable history
Andrei Kozenko sentenced the authors of the survey on the "rain" to the forced reading of the "Blockade Book" Daniil Granin. Yuri Saprykin was more condescending and limited himself to the recommendation to listen to the performance of the same deeply worthy person in the Bundestag. Both the verdict and the advice, of course, are fair. Thieves and flour. But I will still ask me for the sincerely revered Andrei and Yuri permission not to limit myself to Daniel Granin and his lieutenant prose, but to read something from Soldier's prose, for example, from Viktor Astafyev. The fact is that the survey at Rain grew out of the position of this Frontovik writer, who said that Leningrad had to be handed over, but "not to pay a million lives for the city, for boxes."
Nevertheless, unlike Andrei Kozenko, it seems that Astafyev learned about the war not from computer games, and the film “Stalingrad” certainly did not watch for a quite good reason. And the legitimacy of the formulation of the question rests directly on the question of the essence of history as a science and as a part of social consciousness. In the presentation of many, history is a set of dates, names and events, in the representation of Medinsky and Putin, who joined him - this is a building material for propaganda structures. In fact, the story is something else.
British historian Lord Akton, speaking in 1895 in Cambridge with an opening lecture, gave a recommendation: "Explore problems, not periods." The main act of historical thought is an attempt to understand what the people who lived before us have thought to reproduce, to reconstruct their mental atmosphere. And in this sense, Astafyev’s question posed by “rain” is quite legitimate.
Stalin and his environment really did not give a damn about people, and the issue of price for them did not stand in principle. In blocked Leningrad, 2 million 544 thousand Soviet citizens remained, and together with the suburbs in the blockade ring there were 2 million 887 thousand. And 125 grams of cake for the day. At the same time, in the canteen of Smolny there was an abundance of fruits, caviar and cakes. This is to the question of the reconstruction of that, Stalin, mentality.
Would save the lives of a million or one and a half people who died with a terrible starvation (the scatter of data on the victims is another stroke of that mentality), mass, and not a partial evacuation of Leningraders? Undoubtedly. How would the surrender of Leningrad affect the course of the war? Don't know. Military historians argue. But the fact that the main motive of the Stalinist environment was the fear of the leader, and not the desire to save people - this is a historical fact.
A Soviet man cannot live in the occupied territory and cannot be captured. Even those who fled with captivity went to the camps. I still found and personally filled out questionnaires in which there were questions about whether you or your relatives were in the occupied territories. If yes, then you are under suspicion. Having been captured or ended up in the occupied territory, the Soviet man was obliged to die.
The figure of speech that history does not know the subjunctive mood. The historian, if he is a historian, in each act of historical thought, reproducing the thoughts of people of the past, reconstructing the situation of the past, performs a mental experiment, trying to understand the corridor of the possibilities of that time, the degree of freedom that our predecessors on Earth had. Therefore, the question of Viktor Astafyev, voiced by the "rain", is quite natural and capable of being a catalyst for normal discussion. Which, in fact, were going to do journalists.
Unbearable journalism
Vladimir Pozner is convinced that what he did, is unprofessional and unacceptable precisely from the point of view of journalism. Question: What is permissible? Watch how the tragedy of the people is used by the authorities for PR? Is our president born 61 years ago act as the main speaker of the misfortune 70 years ago? Young people have a porridge in their heads, now many of them, having watched the TV, are sure that it was Putin who personally broke through the blockade and saved the Leningraders. "Rain" raised a sharp topic, began a discussion. Having asked the historical question, they fell into the nervous node of our time: which is more important - a state or man. This is the implementation of journalistic duty, unlike what Vladimir Pozner has been doing in recent years.
There is another aspect of this whole discussion and all this fog around the rain. It seems to me that I am sure that it is a conversation about the incorrectly asked question and violation of the canons of journalism, when the channel can be killed, it is somehow indecent, or something.
This is how, when the topic of murders begin with the reasoning that the murdered person led the wrong lifestyle and irregularly brushed his teeth. The journalistic community should first defend “rain”, and only then talk about its mistakes. It is in this order, and not in the opposite and not at the same time.