Waltz with Rashid

The already classical thought of Viktor Chernomyrdin that any post -Soviet construction is being into the world of the CPSU, is recalled whenever the next Russian official shares his thoughts regarding restoring order in the state entrusted to him. This week, the best thought of the Minister of the Interior Rashid Nurgaliev about the need to "conduct monitoring in the country, find out who is listening, reading and looking." At the same time, the Minister expressed regret that the Russians forgot the romances and waltzes, which, according to the general, have recently been a unifying beginning.

What can I say - the general has a good taste, albeit incompetent. The time has already been forgotten when law enforcement officers considered the waltz too easy a music that undermines the morality of the younger generation and tearing it away from the roots. No one already remembers that the romance was considered something not quite decent and in the Ministry of the Interior they were convinced that the one who listens to these scabbling songs with sighs and hints is a depraved and almost revolutionary. Needless to say, even about the time when Alla Pugacheva’s record with a song to Mandelstam's poems was a real challenge, everyone safely forgot.

But forever the desire to make everyone listen to what the generals like at the moment. Khrushchev, who threatens the artists with his fist and sagging writers. The process of Brodsky is a parasite. “Today he plays jazz, and tomorrow he will sell his homeland” - this slogan is generally specially composed for the Minister of the Interior in order to demonstrate how in the recent past they were seriously interested in who is listening, reading and looking. And if suddenly reads the "Gulag Archipelago"? This is today Solzhenitsyn’s reading is taking place at the Department of Education, and earlier it was for its readers who were interested in just in power departments.

I was always amazed at how for many decades all these people who want to find out what they read, look and listen to others cannot understand a simple thing: the problems in the country are not because its inhabitants read and listen not to it, but due to the fact that its rulers are not reading anything-or cannot draw the right conclusions from what they read. Due to the fact that they are panicky afraid of someone else's opinion, and a variety of points of view seems to them not a prerequisite for normal development, but by chaos and anarchy. Due to the fact that they do not believe in the ability of people to independently deal with books, films and songs. And not just do not believe - they are afraid of this ability. They are also afraid because they understand: one who can independently choose a book on a shelf will sooner or later want to choose not only between Putin and Medvedev. And a society capable of independent choice of its leaders is a real nightmare for Scalozubs of all time.

That is why the conversation about the monitoring of the preferences of Russian citizens is at a meeting of the commission to combat extremism. The current government is never admitted that by extremism it does not mean terror at all, not young people who requiring the "Caucasians" to get out aside, not at all bastards who kill the Tajiks on the streets of Moscow or St. Petersburg. Real extremists for her are those who think on their own. Those who themselves evaluate music and books. Even if these people are mostly apolitical and try to live in Russia on the principle of “we do not pay attention to politics, and it does not pay attention to us,” they still pose a threat - already because they do not want to build into the ranks, sing romances and tear on themselves brackets from patriotic motives.