Translated material
RA-WOULDN'T-WE
SOCIETY
I would like to say: what a capacious Russian language! It's a pity the word "reaction" is not Russian. However, this is not important. And not even the accuracy of the name. All four meanings: interaction of elements, confrontation, a political regime aimed at ...
I would like to say: what a capacious Russian language! It's a pity the word "reaction" is not Russian. However, this is not important. And not even the accuracy of the name. All four meanings: the interaction of elements, confrontation, political regime aimed at preserving obsolete orders, and the response to any action or event - the cumulative object of Vladimir Gerchikov. It is truly important that the story of Mikhail Khodorkovsky is finally told in the only true genre—the genre of a physiological essay, that is, objectively.
And this objectivity is even more frightening than the very horror of the medieval process and imprisonment in the zone of uranium mines.
It is frightening, because the stage of civil indignation and reflection on political causes and consequences, in general, has passed.
The documentary Reaction is not about Khodorkovsky. We know how this "alkali" came into conflict with the "acid" and was neutralized. That the political regime of our country is turning towards the dark past - we see, not the blind. That Khodorkovsky is a flint-man, too, does not particularly need to be proved. The film "Reaction" is about what we are.
And we are such that all sorts of talk about joining the Council of Europe, about the civilization of the 21st century, about some kind of unprecedented spirituality and about a great power - something like a message from one of my crazy acquaintances from having many children from the village of Kratovo, that they know about her in Buckingham Palace , where she soon departs, since she alone owns the secret of a special diet.
We are such, Gerchikov shows us through ordinary conversations with the first people we meet on the streets of different cities, that we must stay away from us, and there is no future for a country inhabited by such people.
The reaction of the people to the Khodorkovsky trial: to shoot such people. It's basically. Partly: Khodorkovsky? Who is this? Oligarch? And what, they planted him? Well, thank God, at least one. And it would be nice for everyone. It would be nice to hang all this bastard on poles, so as to be discourteous. What's inappropriate? And steal.
The people's ruthlessness towards theft in a country where everyone steals and plunders everything is, of course, charming in itself. More terrible is the joyful willingness of the population to see "this bastard", that is, the rich, on poles. Today rich, tomorrow smart, next week teetotalers and always Jews. Eternal Pugachev's passion to exterminate others, and most importantly - the rich. “On December 25th, daddy and his friends also went to the square, but they wanted there to be no poor ...”. And they sent daddy and his friends there, into the depths of the Siberian ores. There is nowhere further.
Three or four of the dozens of people who spoke into the camera tried to reason. “Well, he is rich and I am not. This is how our life has been. This is not a reason to exile a person to the mines. “Khodorkovsky is a rich man. But he could leave the country, as many did, to protect himself. He stayed here and opened a lyceum for orphans.” “Khodorkovsky had high ambitions. He wanted to be prime minister or even president. And he could be." "I got into politics, so they removed him." The village uncle, a combine operator, smoking after dragging his car out of the impassable and eternal mud together with the operator, grinned with the bitterness of a man who knows exactly what he is saying: “Very independent. I wanted to expand it in my own way. When did it happen that such people were free?
Independent. Free. Rich. It's not our way. They didn’t fight for that, shed blood and slurped, by the way, the same gruel.
After watching Roman Polanski's Oliver, I suddenly noticed for the first time that in the mentality of Victorian England, which was expressed by Dickens, the role of a good beginning - nobility, generosity, mercy - was given to wealth. In the broth of poverty, or rather, poverty, meanness and other rubbish ripened. “Vile estate” is already in Russian. Literature. Traditions. Figures of speech. But: all revolutions, everything cruel, bloody and lawless relied on the poor; all usurpers, from the Roman to the Russian Empire, were brought to power by the “vile estate”; the worldview of the "pit" is a metaphor for a future without faith, hope and love, with only one hungry triumph of the "mortal victory of the working class." And in the Russian literary tradition, poverty is not a vice, but a virtue in itself.
The hatred of Russians, in the vast majority of people on the verge of poverty, towards the rich is understandable and conditioned. Now, especially. Because the country has never experienced such total impoverishment, a failure to the very bottom. In the Forbes list among the richest people on the planet - 27 of ours. Actually there are more of them. The list, as you know, does not include government officials. Well, let it be officially - twenty-seven people who robbed the country to the skin. You don't need to know about everyone. One is enough. Hatred of other people's money and other people's freedom, which this money gives, should be channeled. Imprisoned in a granite channel, as it were, of the law, the bestial instincts of the builders of the "pit" can be controlled.
We are not slaves, we are not slaves. Om ma ni padma hum. They wrote the mantra on the board, hardened and believed. The authors of the concept of universal literacy looked at the root. "Communism is when there is no money." And there will be one continuous dream. What? Mani, bastard? Hum to you!
The reaction of the people to the drama of Khodorkovsky has nothing to do with Mikhail Borisovich Khodorkovsky, about whom very few people know, as it turned out. This reaction is the result of everything that happened in Russia in the 20th and also in the 19th centuries. And even much earlier - read The Captain's Daughter. This is not Dickens. This is about us. About the pitch horror of poverty and power. Nothing has changed among the people with their dream of poles on which world eaters will hang. Well, at least one. Nothing.
As for the painting by Vladimir Gerchikov "Reaction", it is unlikely that you will see it. All TV channels have already canceled the show. But on Sunday evening, NTV hit the public in the kidneys with a documentary about modern Russian cannibals. Also a turn of the problem.