But we don't care

The frankly sad speech with Dmitry Anatolyevich’s budget message - against the backdrop of several other equally upsetting news about the depth of our fall into the crisis (deeper than expected, and deeper than in developed countries) - miraculously coincided with a VTsIOM poll showing that Russians , in general, the crisis has been digested. 41%, for example, consider the situation “normal.” And the rest of the numbers represent a balance of optimism and pessimism - both in the present and when looking into the future. Citizens do not expect earthly heaven, but they are not in a hurry to go to hell either. A month ago the look was not so cheerful.

And you can’t say that life is somehow getting better - see the budget message. I wouldn’t even be surprised if the results of the Russian survey turn out to be more positive than any European one. Why? What kind of strangeness is this? Without pretending to be comprehensive, nevertheless, I will allow myself to share the obvious, at least for me, reasons for such a positive mood of the masses.

The first reason is informational. To appreciate the completeness of the picture, you need to have this completeness. The crisis has affected almost everyone in one way or another. But our opinion about what is happening depends to a huge extent on what they say on TV. Maybe it's just me who's unlucky? Maybe it just happened that we and our friends have problems? Maybe the situation has gradually stabilized and is starting to improve? Coverage of the crisis on the screen occurred and still occurs in the style of “somewhere here sometimes” or “high in the mountains, not in our area.” The word “crisis” itself, on the one hand, has become a commonplace, a common noun, but on the other hand, it seems to have ceased to be a bogeyman. “We live in a crisis” - it almost sounds like “we live in Moscow.” People live in Moscow. Noisy, dirty, uncomfortable, but overall you can live. So is the crisis. Anti-crisis parties are the most fashionable entertainment in the capital, even if, apart from the name, there is nothing particularly anti-crisis about them. One way or another, without all the information, it is easy to create illusions and become a victim of seduction.

The second is reference signals. Almost according to Shatalov. Citizens have firmly learned that in our time it is necessary to monitor three indicators: the weather, the dollar exchange rate and the price of oil. In not so long ago, economists said that it was not very good when the ruble kept getting stronger and stronger against the dollar. But the average person liked it, because the average person was warmed by this formulation: “the ruble is strengthening against the dollar.” No one here cared about economic wisdom, and those who tried to understand it even a little still did not understand anything. And now the ruble is growing again, and with it faith in the best is growing. And the increase in oil prices is recognized as a good thing by everyone. Thus, the support signals are positive, which means that even those who are not feeling well are abstractly ready to believe that this will not last long.

Thirdly, my favorite thesis is about hunger. I have said more than once that the basis of everything that has happened to us for centuries was malnutrition. Our ancestors from generation to generation, right up to our parents, dreamed that it would be like this: I came to the store, and there were sausages to the sky. And this has never happened. Eating from the belly was the privilege of a few. And in the last decade and a half, theoretically everyone can afford it. Previously, even if a person had money, he still did not buy, but “got it.” And now everything is on the shelves. Despite the fact that in Russia food prices, again according to the latest data, are growing ten times (!!!) faster than in Europe, the very fact of the presence of sausage on the counter is a guarantor of stability.

Our history has been full of such unprecedented sacrifices, such trials that even a global crisis is fun for us. However, people have already become accustomed to food “pluralism,” and the loss of the opportunity to eat normally would become the main and almost the only reason for real popular unrest.

However, even in the midst of crisis pessimism, the same sociologists characterized the mood of the population as follows: if previously they were afraid that food would disappear from stores, now they are afraid that they will not be able to buy it. But as they joked in a Soviet comedy program on the theme of fabulous abundance: “Can pineapples pass?” It was funny then. Nowadays, pineapples are commonplace. So the crisis is not a crisis, but we don’t care.