Stagnation - who is coming?

The war in Mountain Badamshan forced observers to talk about the possible destabilization of the situation in all of Tajikistan and the inevitable collapse of the seemingly eternal regime. The inevitable collapse - these two words are usually used when it comes to the future of almost any of the regimes in the post -Soviet space. They only talk about time - in Russia it may need more, in Tajikistan it may be less, in Belarus it all depends on Russian money and so on. But why? Why are these so different regimes, are so unlike people so the same?

Nazarbayev and Karimov rule their states since Soviet times, when they even managed to visit the last Politburo. The deputy of the Belarusian Parliament Lukashenko and the leader of the parliamentary opposition in the Ukrainian Rada Yanukovych won the democratic elections. Aliyev, Putin and Sargsyan received power from the hands of their predecessors. The director of the state farm Rakhmon became president thanks to the victory of the Kulyabtsev and their allies in the civil war in Tajikistan. Different fate, various political experience - no one will say that Rahmon or Yanukovych presented power on a saucer, and no one will compare the Soviet universities of the first secretary of the Republican Central Committee of Nazarbayev with the experience of Lieutenant Colonel of the KGB Putin.

Why, then, is so similar to Kazakhstan, Ukraine - to Belarus, Tajikistan - to Uzbekistan? The leaders of the post -Soviet countries can quarrel and put up with each other, conclude alliances and even arrange wars, but only the population lives exactly the same - under their country without sensing the country. Throughout the post -Soviet space, there is a complete devaluation of any values, bureaucratic dominance, contempt for free initiative and respect for a bandit in a Mercedes. Throughout the post -Soviet space - the collapse of a culture that still holds the last islands of demand in the capitals with their unfinished intelligentsia, and the triumph of a chanson tearing from the windows of shabby minibuses from Brest to Chimkent.

Maybe the Bolsheviks were right? Maybe the daily destruction of the free spirit, which began on November 7, 1917 and since then has not stopped for a single day, really gave rise to this marginal community of people who did not want to answer for anything - the Soviet people?

In 1991, when the empire broke up, it might seem that its components would go each in its own way, that we will see a real parade of civilizations - the former Soviet republics were so different. Yes, where societies decided on economic reforms, to release the initiative - there they are different and their problems are different. Not only Georgia is unlike Latvia, but also Estonia for Lithuania. And the rest - and the rest it turned out that all unhappy families are unhappy the same.

In 1991, it seemed to me that the Armenians who remembered and dreamed of their statehood for centuries and decided to break with the union because of Karabakh would react to the future of their country other than the inhabitants of many other republics, who could hardly understand what the state was in general. Armenia could not help but differ - but does not differ! The people who survived the world who survived the world in a cafe in the center of the capital, broken roads, disoriented voter, an opposition, who repel his political prisoners, but even cannot come close to becoming power, squabbles among those who reached the authorities, the lack of faith and dreams - such lines can write a journalist in the editorial office in the center of Yerevan. But also in the center of Kyiv. And in the center of Moscow. And in the center of Minsk.

And is it really important what is happening on the top of this meaningless pyramid? Well, let's say Nazarbayev is a major politician. And Yanukovych is not very good. But does Yanukovych’s control level differ from the level of Nazarbayev’s control, is it possible to become a businessman without the consent of the “pope”, is it possible to make a sentence without the consent of the “pope”, can you achieve justice without the blessing of Pope? You can substitute any other two surnames into this rebus, but notice: Nazarbayev runs 22 years, and Yanukovych - only two years. And the result is the same. Dad, dad, dad, dad. All the same golden horde!

Two decades ago, I could still write a collective political portrait of very different leaders of the Commonwealth. Now it will be a boring book about very rich losers. Each has their own skeleton in the closet - their own Khodorkovsky or his own Tymoshenko, his own Andizhan or his own Johnoise. No one has an answer to the question - what after them. It seems that they are sincerely convinced that after them nothing really happens.

There is something to fall into despair: it turned out that it was very easy to kill the dragon, but it is completely impossible to get rid of his teeth, buried in Ukrainian Black Earth and Turkmen sands. Teeth grow, give out, every day new thousands of indifferent grow from them. The one who cannot live in this atmosphere of a meaningless harvest, a simple choice is to leave or lead.

True, there are also those who are trying to get these weeds, who go out in the square, who are not afraid to tell their naked kings that their time is leaving. But these - not so many so far - people are divided and do not imagine what will happen next.

None of us actually lived in a world where we do not need to ask and show off, where the insignificance with the milek is not a king and God, but a insignificance with a miletic. No one lived in a world where they despise flatters and liars, and honest people respect and lead to power. No one has yet left the Soviet Union, although it has been gone for so long. And breathing in clean air can be much harder for us than to simulate breathing.