The West thought about the mystery of the Russian soul of the heir to the throne The mystery of the Russian soul is the next domestic product after oil and gas, which sells well in the West. The market is provided for him, there are no competitors - according to his ability ...

The West thought about the mystery of the Russian soul of the heir to the throne

WITH

the mysteriousness of the Russian soul is the next domestic product after oil and gas, which sells well in the West. The market is provided for it, there are no competitors - in terms of the ability to make riddles to the rest of the world, besides, unlike the Fermi theorem, having no solution, no one can compare with us.

Since the end of the last century now, Western rationalism has been unsuccessfully trying to penetrate the meaning of two more charades of the Russian sphinx. The first, of course, is a new war in Chechnya. This time, the West is no longer even surprised that the Russian government is again sending an army to "finally solve" the Chechen problem. After the thirty-year war in the Caucasus, Stalin’s deportation, and Yeltsin’s first attempt to “establish constitutional order there,” the West has already become accustomed to the fact that Chechnya is for Russia, Bangladesh is for Vasily Ivanovich, which he endlessly rips off and combs.

The public reaction is amazing. During the first Chechen campaign of the Kremlin, it demonstrated the natural reflexes of a normal living organism - the ability to be indignant and compassionate, forcing Yeltsin to reverse, so as not to lose the elections after the lost war. Why, after four years in the same country, in order to win, the new president needs a new war, it is difficult for foreigners to understand. As well as why it is applauded by the lads who call themselves the political elite, who know perfectly well what methods the Russian army “cleanses” Chechnya and what price, measured in lives, new ruins, holes in the economy and the loss of remnants of international authority, the country pays for this.

Of course, it is not difficult to dismiss Western indignation; we were taught to repulse the class enemy back in the Soviet school. The most common answer: do not teach us how to live, let alone live in Russia. And although blacks in America are no longer lynched, your Vietnam and your Algeria are in our memory, and the bombing of Kosovo and Belgrade is still before our eyes. In addition, Chechnya, as you know, is our internal business, not your damn business.

The answer is convincing, the West has nothing to cover up for him, except to recall that he left his colonial troops in the last century, and sent ground troops (together with the Russian contingent) to Kosovo not to fight, but to monitor the implementation of the political agreement reached. And is there much consolation for us in the fact that we behave in our own house no better than those colonialists and NATO aggressors whom until recently they condemned with such ardent fervor?

How many victims and new, blown-up houses promised by the prime minister, will it take for a shell-shocked and deafened society to the suffering of others to realize that to drive it under the patriotic drumbeat straight along the military-Caucasian road either to the Yeltsin, or to the Stalinist past?

This is one of the Russian mysteries.

There is another - the future Russian president. Although, unlike the next American, his name is known in advance, for the West, as, indeed, for most of his fellow citizens, he remains a man in a mask. Like a special forces soldier. What can you do, the profession obliges. It is only known that this man, without a political past, has a dizzying political future, otherwise, would the provincial princes and the capital's boyars swear allegiance to him with such enthusiasm, and people from the creative workshop would not strive to press their cheeks to their bootlegs.

Feeling the emerging rise of popular love for the new supreme ruler of Russia, who should ensure his blessed coronation, Western envoys also hurried to Moscow. The prince has not yet become king, but he has acquired a nuclear button, and it makes sense not only to get to know him better, lift the edge of the mask, but also try to influence his political and professional education, bring to him the realities of that world and that century in which Russia will have to exist whether she wants it or not. And at the same time, taking into account the upcoming, if not already held, change of Russian power, to clarify for ourselves some damned “Russian questions”. For example, where will the double-headed Russian eagle squint more often — to the West in the direction of the IMF or to the East in the direction of China? It is clear that, going for loans, you will have to take off your uniform and change into a civilian European dress. At home, you can walk in clothing that does not restrict movement. Even now, from the point of view of political morals, Russia, hand in hand with Belarus, is increasingly moving towards Asia, borrowing both the experience of holding elections and the technology of power from the leaders of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and the Turkmenbashi.

Another question is what will happen to the Russian economy? To all appearances, the West does not intend to finance the continuation of the protracted Chechen war from the pocket of the IMF. As for the further course of Russian "reforms", then to understand which of his current political friends - Chubais, Berezovsky or Seleznev - will rely on the advice of the future president is a task clearly beyond the reach of Western analysts. How incomprehensible to them is the dialectic of Russian succession to the throne: in a country where the issue of private ownership of land has not yet been resolved, the president, by testamentary order, can transfer an entire country to his chosen one.

The main thing is that foreign observers, peering into the political fog of Russia, are trying to understand who really controls the Russian "troika" and where it is jumping: in which direction, in which century. Is this country moving along with the rest of the world from the 20th century into the 21st century, or does it prefer, according to an ingrained folk tradition and following its own calendar, to stubbornly celebrate a new old century along with the Old New Year?