Great difference

Recently, some publicists, who did not differ in sympathy for the Western public model, have become a poorly hidden gloating to predict that the crisis of the global capitalist system will inevitably force the West to move away from the basic principles of liberal pluralistic democracy. The West will be forced to move in the direction of restricting the freedom of political activity and the expression of various views, in the direction of expanding the ideological and political control of the state over society.

It seems that the goal of confirm these forecasts was set up by the “non-finish countries”, which only recently embarked on the path of parliamentary democracy and integration into the Euro-Atlantic community. The ruling circles of a number of former satellites and the Union republics of the USSR (for example, Poland, Hungary, the Baltic States) are in a hurry to adopt laws prohibiting the activities of the communist sense of organizations, the propaganda of "communist ideology", and the demonstration of "communist symbolism". Laws introducing prison terms for "denial or justification of crimes of communist regimes." And they explain this by the need to resist the imperial policy of the Putin regime, perceived by many as the successor of the “case of Stalin”.

(I write this even before the entry into force of Russian law punishing for attempts to revise the decisions of the Nuremberg Tribunal. But I will repeat after.)

Supporters of such measures directly refer to the examples of some Western European countries, in which they are planted for the denial or justification of Nazi crimes, for Nazi propaganda and symbolism. Well, the principle of ideological pluralism implies the right to express any opinions, including identifying a communist ideology with a Nazi, and the Nazi regime with Stalin. Private. But attempts to make this point of view are generally binding and to reinforce it with state repressive sanctions - the same totalitarianism. Because there is (moreover - very common) and another point of view. The conclusion in the fact that with all external similarities these two ideologies are the opposite of their own. Nazi ideology considers violence, suppression, aggression, cruelty of the natural eternal basis of human nature. She also considers natural inequality, the division of society into those who are designed to command, and those who are intended only to obey. Communist ideology, contrary to the practice of the so -called communist regimes, promises to overcome oppression and enmity, the free development of each person in society without inequality and coercion. She expresses the eternal dream of people about a fair, humane, "good" society.

This does not justify crimes committed in the world with communist regimes. I believe that in its injustice, inhumanity and mass crimes of the Stalin regime, the crimes of the Nazi regime are comparable. I also believe that the Soviet regime all the years of its existence strove for forced unanimity, for the forcibly suppressing of disagreement, to the subordination of all manifestations of public life to the state, and therefore can be characterized as a totalitarian one. As well as the regimes of Eastern Europe established under its influence.

But it is extremely incorrect not to take into account that the way out of Germany’s totalitarianism and the way out of the totalitarianism of the USSR and its satellites occurred under completely incomparable historical circumstances. Germany was defeated, and the winners dictated the conditions for leaving totalitarianism. They dictated when the ruins of Belarusian villages burned by the Nazis were still smoking, when the mountains of the human ash in Auschwitz had not yet cooled.

The Soviet regime, although contributing to the unleashing by Hitler, the world massacre, but then assigned the main severity of the struggle against fascism to his people, won the right to extend his existence, and along with this right, the historical chance of "correction". And he at least partially took advantage of this chance. Yes, "Stalinism with the human face" Khrushchev and Brezhnev was not democracy. But repressions in the post-Stalin USSR and in Eastern European countries in scale and cruelty are not compared with the Stalinist repressions of the 30s.

Almost all "communist" regimes gave power relatively peacefully. In the entire civilized world, it has long been not customary to subject the political and ideological discrimination of supporters of dictatorships who have gone without bloodshed. This, of course, is not about the responsibility of specific persons for specific crimes. It is a pity that Pinochet escaped responsibility. It is a pity that the Stalin executioners left responsibility. But they have already left, and this cannot be replayed. In the end, everything has a statute of limitations. If not legally, then in life.

Let us return to communist ideology. Of course, its totalitarian interpretation is also possible. And among those who call themselves the Communists, there are supporters of the system in which the state (or the “leading and guiding” party) decides which citizens to live, and what to exterminate and what they should read, write, speak and think. True, I do not see, the more cannibalistic views than the views of those who believe that the oligarchs are “locomotives of history” and that the more they rob, the more they flourish the robbed. I do not see that these views are more closely of people who believe that there can be no real democracy at all, everyone always solves the elites, you just need to create an illusion in the “ink” that it affects something.

The democratic pluralistic society consists not only of fans of democracy and pluralism. An open society is open, including for its opponents. If it refuses their rights, it automatically ceases to be open. Supporters of the "non -parliamentary" state system, if they do not resort to violence, have the same right as everyone else, bring their "projects" to the court of the company, to the voters. And if the open pluralistic society is great, it is able to defeat them in an honest dispute. If it is seriously painful, no prohibitions will help him.

Some of our "democrats" (including the leaders of the Yabloko party) justify such prohibitive-consuming measures by the need to re-educate citizens, whose consciousness is mutilated for decades of totalitarianism. If they already want to chop the roots of totalitarian consciousness in this way, they would take deeper: they would offer to punish for the denial or justification of the crimes of Ivan the Terrible. Indeed, it was then, that is, before all Stalin, in Russia, human life and human dignity depreciated. And to use punishment from the arsenal of the 16th century. Well, not the most cruel - we are still not guardsmen - but, for example, imprisonment in the monastery. With a ban on meeting someone, talking, writing and thinking. And with the order “only in the silence of Sidet and repent of his madness and heretical,” which was sentenced to Vasily III “then inconsistent” Maxim Greek.

By the way, the heirs of the ruled Communist Parties already in the post -communist period were in power in the same Poland, Hungary, Lithuania, Moldova, in Bulgaria. You can argue to what extent their ideology can be considered communist, but only totalitarianism they did not restore and did not even try. Yes, this is impossible, as it was impossible in France of the 19th century to restore the feudal-absolutist monarchy of Louis XVI. Even the Bourbons who returned for 15 years retained the constitution and parliament.

So in fact, we see a frank attempt to unworthy of information of political accounts and restrictions on political competition in order to displace opponents on the side of public life. We see an attempt to limit the right of citizens to give their own assessments to the historical past and express their views, including in the form of symbols and names. And these attempts from forces that have their own well -defined ideological coloring come. Unlike the respectable Western European conservatism, which has long been worn out to grab the baton of ideological prohibitions, the right conservatism of "young East European democracies" wild, aggressive and non -fried. Like the Russian “guards” from the State Council, which gave the amazing conclusion to the decision of the government of Alexander II to remove cases of the press from the jury granted by him: “To provide people from the street to judge the crime or invariability of the exercises means leaving the state and society without any protection.”

In 2008, at the opening of the National Assembly of the Russian Federation, representatives of a number of liberal, nationalist and communist movements signed a charter, in which, in particular, it was said: "We do not consider it possible to use violence or threat of violence, restricting freedom of speech and meetings as instruments of combating opponents on politics, economics, culture or religion." Many "democratic" publicists then literally shouted: "Do not believe in red! They sign such obligations only to ride on useful liberal idiots!" Today, the liberals who participated in the signing of the Charter have a great opportunity to show that they signed it from their internal beliefs, and not in order to use and throw "useful communist idiots."