April 20 is Adolf Hitler's birthday. May 9 is the day of victory over fascism. Which of these dates is more important for Russia today? What is the most talked about lately, who is shown on TV? Who are the heroes of our most recent time?...

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April is the birthday of Adolf Hitler. May 9 is the day of victory over fascism. Which of these dates is more important for Russia today? What is the most talked about lately, who is shown on TV? Who are the heroes of our most recent time? Of course, the governor of the Krasnodar Territory, Alexander Tkachev, along with nameless skinhead racists - skinheads. Well, perhaps a little more, the communists, in the perspective of the outgoing nature, caused a surge of interest and curiosity ...

And what, how is it all connected? Who assigned the main roles to such performers? “Their silence is like a cry,” Cicero said of rulers. What is the government silent about, and what is happening to us today? I thought that it makes sense to talk about this with Alexander ASMOLOV: firstly, he is a professor, head of the Department of Personality Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov and the Department of Social Anthropology of the International University, and secondly, what is even more important now, is the author and scientific supervisor of the federal target program of tolerance, approved by the Russian government in August last year.

— Alexander Grigoryevich, many political scientists and observers are left with the feeling that everything we see today is the action of a single scenario. Suddenly and quickly, like an eraser, the communists were erased. Skinheads, on the contrary, rose by leaps and bounds. They started up in Russia a long time ago, but, you see, there has never been such a spring exacerbation. Their actions now are already like reports from the front, this is the front, someone clearly gave them the command “Face!”, As well as the Krasnodar governor. The statements of the latter act on the thinking part of the citizens no less shocking than the sight of underage fascists armed with armature. The governor, however, unlike the skins, endlessly repeats that everything will be done only within the framework of the law ...

- I want to remind you that the biggest lawyers were, of course, the officials of the Third Reich. They did not burn anyone in a cell until they brought a solid legislative basis for this act. Governor Tkachev's reasoning about the law is by and large akin to this. But in other assessments, I would be more careful, because the situation, as we psychologists say, is cognitively complex. Spontaneous, self-developing nationalistic attitudes, which are so characteristic of Russia and have historical prerequisites, I would by no means discard. Another thing is that such a situation can be hard-coded for a very short time. Or, on the contrary, it can go on and on - it all depends on the hand that somehow conducts the key of social explosions.

- The hand now for some reason clearly presses and presses this key. It got to the point that the embassies of the United States, Japan and a number of other states turned to their compatriots on the territory of Russia with a request to leave the country if possible, and if necessary, refrain from traveling by public transport. In other words, foreigners felt the state of emergency in Russia. On the other hand, with his sensational operation “Foreigner”, the “lawyer”-governor, who in no way resembles a charismatic leader, is rapidly becoming bolder. Well, he doesn’t look like a desperate kamikaze, he looks, sorry for the schoolboy slang, a “nerd”, but it is he who has already moved from words to deeds: a Kurdish family has been deported from the Krasnodar Territory, which should still say “thank you”, since it did not move for own account, - this is exactly what Tkachev said in one of the TV shows. Unleashed cynicism and peremptoryness, absolute confidence in impunity suggest an order from above...

- I want us to clearly understand one simple truth: the main task of power is the reproduction of this power, there is no other task. Power gives birth to power, retains power and seeks to ensure that this power exists. All the ideas that power is for the people or for some other task, they are, of course, wonderful and so on, but in any country, even in open societies, we are dealing with variants of competent or incompetent power. At the same time, always trying to survive and reproduce itself in an enhanced version. Today we have people in power who are quite competent, with pragmatic attitudes, for whom playing scenarios is a familiar job. We must understand that people who have been shaped for many years as national security professionals eventually become people who can calculate options and understand that in order to maintain power, this or that conflict is needed.

What is Tkachev? This is a win-win situation. When, pardon the criminal term, patriots “run over”, you can always say: here, we support the indigenous population, look how everything is going on in the Krasnodar Territory. We give Tkachev freedom of action. We don't touch it. When there is a question from the West, let's say: atu Tkachev. The main thing is that we will have someone to say “atu”. How "atu"? What is the length of the leash to let him go? This is every time a political solitaire, which will depend on specific circumstances ...

- In other words, Tkachev is a joker, and he is protected by the state?

- He is needed for political solitaire and political games, hence - not so much protection, but some contemplation, such an affectionate contemplation of the authorities in relation to him and his like: jump, frolic, run, but if at the same time you run in such a way that in another motive will appear in your rhetoric and you, like Zyuganov, will use the term "liberal fascism", know that this will be your last day. Because as soon as Zyuganov declared that Putin is liberal fascism, the communists were thrown out within two days. This is a clear response if you start taking aim at a certain elite group that has come in today and rules Russia.

- She came, she rules, but she also signed, that is, accepted, the tolerance program that you manage. How does it all fit together? Is this a completely different scenario?

— There are so many scenarios today that we simply cannot predict.

- Public consciousness in the end just splits.

“Today, the events are as follows: the Communists have lost most of their seats in parliament, and this almost did not cause a stir, as it could have been before. Nobody stuck to the TVs because of this. What does this indicate? About a new mental-psychological reference system, about the fact that we in Russia are approaching the times when, as in America, it does not matter who comes to power - Clinton or Bush, the country will not change from this. The style of foreign policy life will change, certain parameters of the economy will change, but the way of life in the United States under Clinton or under Bush remains the same. We did not notice how we approached such a time. Will Communists sit in the Duma, or will Unity representatives sit there as the nomenklatura elite and the party of the nomenklatura - will much change from this? No. We are clearly approaching a very interesting version of Russia's development. I would call it a variant of the liberal dictatorship.

- What is it - the dictatorship of a great variety of scenarios?

- Not only that, the authorities need a lot of scenarios just to justify the dictatorship. Agree, it is hardly possible to assume that liberalism will cover our lives with you by itself in a country like Russia. For a dictatorship to emerge, the authorities need serious pockets of resistance. To say: we have opponents, we have enemies. Today we do not have hard nationalism or national patriotism at the level of a country called Russia. But there is regional national patriotism (the brother of national socialism) - it is in Kursk, Penza and, finally, in the cunning actions of Mr. Kondratenko-Tkachev. I now name one surname, because, having retreated to the senators, Kondratenko left Baby Tsakhes, a creature in his own image and likeness, only more energetic, young, ready for certain trials. You can't win on Zyuganov-style national patriotism today, that's not enough. We need a Stalinist version of deportation. According to the logic of liberalism, the individual is responsible for everything. Not nations or social groups.

- So, theoretically, jokers are enemies?

— Of course, because the peoples, ethnic groups become the culprits. It is extremely advantageous to play to gain charisma.

- Can you imagine advertising: lack of charisma? Play the national card.

- And they play, easily removing dividends for chauvinism, and become loved by a certain part of the population. True, Tkachev has very serious difficulties, because he has not grown up even to the image of Father Kondrat. There is already competition between their elites, so you don’t hear direct words about the Jewish Masonic conspiracy, by and large it was replaced by the Turko-Meskhetian, and then it will be replaced by the Armenian conspiracy or something else. The younger one is trying to be cooler, he really needs charisma.

- Once you told me that at one time, as Deputy Minister of Education of the Russian Federation, you tried to remove endless demagoguery about the class struggle - the engine of progress - from school history textbooks. Now, it seemed to me, the “engine of progress” was the national struggle, but in fact it turns out that the enemy of the authorities today is the one who starts this struggle? Only this is still a weak enemy, and should it be allowed to feed on the blood and humiliation of small ethnic groups, so that from a toy enemy it outwardly turns into a real enemy? Looks like bullshit.

— What is the dynamics of Russian power? This is the process of changing the ruling elites. No other process is taking place. We only see how the trees sway, but we do not know what is in the depths. It is important to understand that a process is underway when a powerful elite has come to power.

Look at the articulation of the first person - it is very calm. Putin's meeting with the government is pure politics, something that our rational economists do not understand and have never understood. The president is a politician, and he says: "Where are the ambitions?" I quote almost exactly: "Why," he says, "is our government not ambitious?" These are not economic things, but a clear understanding that there are no resources without ambition. In order for a country to solve certain tasks even in difficult critical situations, the goals must be ambitious. Without this, she is doomed to an inferiority complex, and this is defeat. All these things are connected by subtle dynamics and absolutely accurate from the point of view of psychology. But the moment has come when today we are only doing what we are pumping the muscles of ambitious prestige. And compared to this ambitious muscle growing in the Russian government, Schwarzenegger is a boy. The power of national security exists only as long as there is a national danger, it is this muscle that creates - this formula must be understood ...

- Well, what then is your tolerance program - a fur coat in Africa? Joke?

- I would say this: just as in atomic physics there is the concept of a cloud of probabilities, and not some rigid laws, the cloud of Putin exists in the same way. In this cloud, the cloud itself does not know what probability will be realized in the next two to three years. But the cloud moves in a certain direction, and since there is no other way in the open world, the main, Hamlet question arises: either fundamentalism or liberalism. One through the other is a deadly path.

Liberalism is possible only through tolerance. In fact, tolerance today, I insist, is an extremely necessary ideology for Russia. The culture of tolerance as a culture of support for diversity has a huge optimistic evolutionary reserve. A country that can afford diversity has many options for dealing with deadlocks and crises. Therefore, today, I think, more than ever, it is in the situation with skinheads, in the situation with the Meskhetian Turks that the culture of tolerance as a universal culture, in contrast to national ones, is a middle ground, it is a bridge for dialogue. Dialogue removes fundamentalism, in which everything is built on the principle of "one against the other", "reds against whites".

I can say that it is precisely today that the program of tolerance, no matter what happens to it, was born, lives on, and it is precisely this program that ultimately sets the ideology of Russia. And when the president of the country in a number of speeches speaks about the need for tolerance, no matter what he does, but when this word is spoken, when people think about this concept, the fat layer of tolerance in culture grows. The more it grows, the more migrants, wanderers, outcasts will have somewhere to go and the less nutrient solution will be for weavers and the like.

- You are optimistic.

I don't want to sound like an optimist. I will remind you of the conversation of Don Rumata Strugatsky in a situation where he suddenly saw how fanatical black monks captured the city. He saw gray stormtroopers hanging on the gallows, being killed by the monks. “That’s who these shopkeepers and merchants paved the way for,” he said with insight, and then a brilliant phrase that has already become the standard: “Where dullness reigns, power sooner or later comes to the blacks.” Grey, which is somehow a sign of browns, skinheads, stormtroopers of all times and peoples, is a force that will be swept away by some other force ...