Without a clue

Handbook of time: "Dictionary of prison-camp thieves' jargon" (Publishing house "Edge of Moscow", 1992). And what you order to do - you need to master. Otherwise, how else to understand the current rules of the game without rules? And to understand what guides those who are at the top of the group hierarchy - "authorities", and those who are below - "muzhiks", "activists", "goats", reds?

In normal societies, relations - whether in the political field or in the field of commerce - are governed both by formal institutions (constitutions, codes of laws, bodies that put the latter into action - and control their execution - courts, parliament), and informal, based on the principle “You can’t do this, because otherwise you won’t give a hand.” We usually call such institutions “concepts”.

In the 1990s there were problems with formal institutions, especially with laws, but different strata had their own informal codes of conduct. In the 2000s, formal institutions acquired the character of informal ones - they functioned for the elite and were put into action (“taxes must be paid”) also for the elite.

After the parliamentary campaign of 2007, it became clear that not only had formal institutions been destroyed as a class (which Andrey Illarionov wrote about in The New Times No. 43), but informal rules — “concepts” — had also ceased to exist. “Everyone throws everyone,” explained a knowledgeable interlocutor. “In the last conversation, we parted ways x ... m. I told him: “Slava (V.Yu. Surkov, deputy head of the presidential administration. - E.A.), this is just a scam,” said another federal politician.

At the beginning of the year, the leader of Yabloko, Grigory Yavlinsky, allegedly promised his associates that the party would have 40 seats in the Duma of the fifth convocation, the leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, Gennady Zyuganov, that the Kremlin guaranteed no less than 90 seats for the Communists, and had their own agreements Nikita Belykh and the Union of Right Forces - "they will allow a normal campaign to be carried out, they will not wet it." "Yabloko" and the Union of Right Forces were still killed, the rightists were also deprived of their own money, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation did not get more than 30 mandates against the promised ones. Of course, the question is reasonable: was it necessary to negotiate with those against whom, as it were, they were even fighting, that is, with the Kremlin? The answer is obvious. But something else is curious: in 2003, the "concepts" still somehow worked, "Yabloko" did not get into the Duma, not because they were scammed - as they were scammed this year, but because the technology of stuffing votes exceeding the "norm" (6 percent) , was still poorly worked out: the president himself turned out to be a victim of the "flaw", congratulating, as we remember, then, in 2003, Yavlinsky on his passage to the Duma - by the morning there were no "Yabloko" in the list of winners.

In other words, the “authorities” in power, like once thieves in law in the zone, excluded even slightly dissenting people from their circle - they transferred them from the category of “muzhiks” (who were not in the zone for thieves, but with whom were considered) already in the category of "goats", that is, those who do not need to be reckoned with.

However, "concepts" ceased to operate not only in relation to opponents - in relation to their own too. Hence - the arrest of Bulbov, the deputy head of the State Drug Control Service, the imprisonment of the Deputy Minister of Finance Storchak in Lefortovo, the initiation of a new case against Storchak by the Investigative Committee under the Prosecutor General's Office and the protest by the Prosecutor General's Office itself of the decision of the Investigative Committee subordinate to it. The war of all against all - this is exactly how people existed in the pre-civilized world of T. Hobbes, the philosopher who described the rules of this world. Exactly there is rapidly sliding down and Russia.

And it's time for us to master the new Kremlin dictionary language. "Kidalo" - a swindler, a swindler; "throw" - to deceive, not to repay the debt; “throw bream” - to fawn; “throw rubbish” (option: “push rubbish”) - make a political speech at the ITU club, pretend to be a simpleton. Of course, not Ozhegov's dictionary, but somehow 11 thousand lexical units.

So we will work on a hair dryer (option: on sleepyheads)