Interview with a vampire

The conversation of the journalist “Patriot” with Svetlana Aleksievich is an instructive reading in itself, and it doesn’t matter that the text of this conversation was distorted by the interviewer, and what was presented as the writer herself said. It is important in this conversation that is completely different - a living, thinking, doubting person talks with a fanatic. That is why in this conversation Aleksievich does not always look convincing: she is used to reflection. I’m used to thinking even that it seems immutable to her. He understands that the world is much more complicated than any set of elementary values ​​- and even holy correctness can have a whole set of various shades.

If Aleksievich spoke with some intellectual, even with left convictions, even if Putin considers Putin a “defender of values”, this conversation could look like a search for truth, a polemic of thinking people - although we could resolutely disagree with who asked the writer's questions. But Aleksievich spoke with a set of television slogans. With those who are not used to doubting. I could compare such a blind faith with religious fanaticism, but perhaps I will refrain.

Putinism is not religious fanaticism, it is fanaticism of adaptability. They do not go to the fire for him, his "postulates" do not defend themselves before themselves. This is the usual Russian "birthruck" - while Perun is more common, you can run with the bow to the wooden idol, and the prince will say that it is time to go into the water - and Peruna himself, so that he knew, damned that we are not afraid of him. Already over the past century, both Emperor Nicholas II and Stalin shared the difficult fate of Perun. The emperor and his family were destroyed in the Ipatievsky house with the complete indifference of the country, which had recently been thrown at the feet of the monarch. Stalin was taken out of the mausoleum and buried without unnecessary ceremonies with the complete indifference of the country, which had recently crushed in lines to bow to the corpse. Now the time has come for the last Bolshevik idol - if Lenin had taken out of the mausoleum tomorrow, no one in Russia would have even noticed this.

Putin will share the fate of Perun and Stalin. When the next monarch declares that in the activities of the displaced or deceased ruler "along with the positive side there was also a negative side" (and this statement was most likely to be made at the opening of the Russian consulate in the Ukrainian Sevastopol), no one in Russia will even remember his love for the former president and how he "defended values" and expanded the country's territory. The successor of Putin for this does not have to be some kind of outstanding demonic personality. Malenkov was incomparable, Khrushchev in appearance good -natured, but subjects were afraid of them no less than Stalin.

In Russia, it is customary to fear a state personified by the next emperor or dictator. It is this state that inspires horror, it is precisely to it that I want to adapt, it is precisely to him to believe. And that is why the attempt of Svetlana Aleksievich does not matter to convince her unlucky interlocutor. He does not need her thoughts. He needs state instructions - it is these instructions that were set out in the form of questions. And when the instructions change, interviewers will change.