In search of a lumen

Do not be afraid of the prison, do not be afraid of Sumy,
Do not be afraid of mora and smooth
And be afraid only that
Who will say: "I know how it should!"
Who will say: “Go people, follow me,
I will teach you how it should! "

These lines from the “Poem about Stalin” by Alexander Galich, read by Andrei Makarevich, began the ceremony of presenting the Polit -Lesvet Prize. The event held under the heaven and a sad humor, which had not promised any lumen, took place on May 28, 2014 at the Moscow Museum.

In anticipation of the beginning of the ceremony, I began to ask the scientists who came about what they were thinking about the results of the first grant of the Russian Scientific Fund. “No one will give you a public commentary,” my acquaintance warned me. “Because either he received this grant himself, or served, but did not receive.” Unofficial conversations came down to the fact that frankly bad projects of RNF grants were not received, but the final list of winners was very uneven and greatly depended on the field of science. In some areas, scientists saw a frank division of funds between groups, friendly members of the RNF expert council, and in others the victory of the most powerful groups.

The leading ceremonies Mikhail Kozyrev and Ksenia Turkova tried to cheer the audience, who were somehow not very fun. “A year ago, you could watch the Rain TV channel on TV, there was an agency of RIA Novosti,” said Kozyrev. “A year ago, there was“ Lenta.ru ”and it was possible to engage in“ propaganda of homosexuality, ”Turkova echoed him. “It seems that we have reached the bottom, but from there everyone knocks and knock ...”, Mikhail summed up the sad results of the year. “But in a couple of days it will not be possible to swear obscenities, so use the moment, friends!” He remarked under the laughter and applause of the audience.

But the 2012 Politzosvet Prize laureate for his publications on electoral statistics in the “Trinity version is science” and other publications, a member of the jury, Sergei Shpilkin, believes that there is a reason for joy. “A one and a half years ago, no one knew the word“ disserter ”. There was not a word or the subject that it denotes ... Today we reward the essence that arose almost from scratch as a result of an accidental combination of circumstances and actions of completely free people and no dependent people. ”

"" Dissernet ", perhaps the last crystal that arose in the oversaturated atmofer of 2011-2012. This atmosphere is intensively heated in order to stop this crystallization, but so far it doesn’t work out, and the crystal still lives and is now not going anywhere, ”he continued. - And now everyone knows that if the party, then I will not say who, if the dissertation [is not with the scientist], then, excuse me, stolen. The Dissernet was, perhaps, not a very conscious reaction of society to the emphasized anti -intellectuality of power. ” And with the intelligentsia of power it is impossible to behave like this.

Sergei Spilkin recalled that Dissernet is an absolutely collective project, many famous and unknown people stand behind the fronts receiving a bonus. Andrei Rostovtsev, Mikhail Gelfand, Sergey Parkhomenko and Kirill Mikhailov (Methodius Volikhamov) received the Politseosvet Award in the nomination “For Honor and Dignity” (Andrei Zazakin, could not come to the ceremony) [1] [1].

“In the title of this Politicosvet Prize, I like the word“ lumen ”most of all,” journalist Sergei Parkhomenko said a lot that did a lot to popularize and organize the project. - The words “for honor and dignity” are very correct in relation to “disserte”, not because they relate to us, but because they relate to the very subject of this activity in which a huge number of people are engaged. This is a story about the fact that honor and dignity exist and matter ... reputation matters. ”

Mikhail Gelfand added the following to this: “About Dissernet, they often say: well, they exposed - so what? They only told me today a wonderful story about one outstanding candidate and doctor of sciences with the letter “A”. He was an authorized person, and he remained, but he stopped being a lawyer. Because none of his colleagues perceives him in such a capacity. ”

The frontmen of the project also received a prize in the nomination “Popular Voting” [2]. Within two months, for a long list of the project, it was possible to vote on the site Slon.ru. Almost 11 thousand people took part in the vote. The surprise of the ceremony was that not only the leaders of Dissernet received the prize, but also journalist Ilya Azar, who is now in Ukraine. His award was received by Galina Timchenko, the former chief of the “Lenta.ru”, “Foreigned to Azar”.

The ceremony ended with the presentation of the Politzosvet Prize in the nomination of Personal one of the five finalists. The laureate was the famous Russian sociologist, a student of Yuri Levada and the director of the Levada Center Lev Gudkov. He noted that the results of polls of public opinion cause him depression, but in society he does not yet see any special movements for the better: “There is some movement, but very slow, contradictory and very often returnable. The young generation is no better than the previous one. Yes, it is more technically and communicative, it knows languages, but it has lost very important things that were in late Soviet times in the circle of thinking people. There is no existence in science as in the field of freedom today. There is a strong resistance to the complexity of life, and there is no resistance to the culture of violence that I spoke about. ”

“Of course, there is the logic of the country in which we live, and the logic of the space in which we are and which we are dictated,” said Grigory Revzin, the prize finalist, seeing that many gathered are in a dull mood. “But people are not always amenable to the space in which they are.”

The ceremony ended, and the photograph of the “political extension” raised up to the prize “Dissernet” remained - which means “horror will continue”.

* * *

Commentary on the decision of the jury physicist Andrei Rostovtsev [3]:

“In“ Dissernet ”we have long been engaged in evidence -based sociology, in particular the problem of lies, forgery, falsification (in the broad sense) as ways of existence. This is especially true in relation to Russian officials.

Lev Gudkov is expressed extremely accurately: “The design and features of the functioning of [Putin's Russia] - the result of the accumulated efforts and conscious policy, made by the selection of“ human material ”, systematic selection from the available many qualities of people - intellectual, moral, aesthetic, etc., very specific - contempt for knowledge, intelligence, culture, all that exalts the human spirit and that the person confronts the simplicity violence. It's not about Eugenic, but about the consistent - directed - the selection of people with certain abilities (or - unaccides, including, for example, moral dullness, indecision, conformism, lack of imagination) ”[4].

And then he himself explains what social relations the mechanism of negative selection is launched, which characterizes our society: “In the societies-states (where, due to the central role of violence, it is impossible to separate the structure of the state from the structures of society) we are dealing with the pushing of human baseness, pushing it up, in the structure of public administration or its composition of the authority in the form of state ideology of authoritarianism. Cultivated violence (rationalized and technological coercion) turns out to be a mirror similarity of culture (anti -culture), but with the opposite effect: its function is a decrease in social and anthropological complexity, weakening the difference in potentials between the elite and mass, the tension of spiritual (search) life. ”

Honestly, I think this explanation is controversial. It would be nice to find some sociological data testifying to the correlation of the state-owner with the general deafening of power. ”

1. Video recording of the award of the Dissernet team http://www.youtube.com/watch? v = rsrav9iqtyc
2. Video recording of the awarding of the prize in the nomination "Folk Voting" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=je1p1a4at-a
3. http://afrikanbo.livejournal.com/359629.html
4. The article by Lev Gudkov “Man in the non -humorous space: to the sociology of morality in a post -talitarian society” http://www.levada.ru/books/statya-lva-gudkova-chelovek-v-nemoralnom-crostranstwe-k-sotsiologi-morali-v-posttotalitarnom-