Unexpected hit

The Russian “party in power” has been searching for a suitable ideology for the fifth year in a row. If at first this search was not too diligent - it was enough to speak out “for everything good and against everything bad” and support the current president - now it’s time to decide what exactly is considered good and what is bad. The President, at least according to the current Constitution, is serving out his last term. A successor has not yet been appointed - there is no one to follow. So you have to think, at least about what to call yourself. The task is not easy, especially considering that the main party ideological “brands” are already occupied and thoroughly battered.

However, as it turns out, there is still a banner that United Russia members are ready to carry with their heads held high. This is the banner of conservatism. This was stated by the leader of the party, and concurrently the speaker of the current Duma, Boris Gryzlov, at the Russian-German conference “Conservative Values ​​and Social Reforms” held on February 21. Experience of Russia and Germany".

At first glance, everything is quite logical and understandable: what, if not the preservation of the existing state of affairs, can a bureaucrat-official, the main contingent of EdRa, dream of? However, Boris Gryzlov is not so simple. To listen to him, that’s not what we’re talking about at all. And the party in power is not going to preserve the country, but to modernize it, albeit conservatively, and at the same time socially. This is what the leader of United Russia said: “The United Russia party has chosen exactly this for Russia – the most socially acceptable model of social-conservative modernization.” And for greater clarity he added: “All three words – “social”, “conservative” and “modernization” - are not of Russian or German origin. Therefore, this design can be translated as modernization based on careful transformations, well understood and accepted by the absolute majority of society.” “We cannot and do not want to carry out any more “unpopular” reforms, we want to present the positive results of the reforms to the Russian people,” the newly minted conservative further said in the tone of the heroine of the film “The Man from the Boulevard des Capuchins,” who demanded from her beloved child immediately after kissing.

How it will be possible to carry out reforms “carefully” and present the results immediately remains a mystery for German conservatives, since Boris Vyacheslavovich again moved on to deep historical analogies. “Of course, Russian conservatism and German conservatism are seriously different due to differences in historical experience. With a certain degree of convention, we can say that Russian conservatism is German reformism,” he added. That is, obviously, we must understand that we are far ahead of the Germans: what we consider conservation is considered among them as reforms.

But let’s leave the explanations to Boris Gryzlov. And let’s talk about “conservative modernization” itself. This term was introduced into use almost 10 years ago by Anatoly Vishnevsky as part of an independent seminar “Sociocultural methodology for analyzing Russian society,” where he gave a report “The Crisis of Russian Conciliarity and Conservative Modernization in the USSR.”

It was about the transformation of Russia from a traditional agrarian rural society into a commercial, industrial and urban one. This process continued throughout the twentieth century. At the same time, “conservative modernization” consisted of industrialization and urbanization, but while maintaining a collectivist, “conciliar” social consciousness. “In a conservative-revolutionary perspective,” writes Vishnevsky in his book “The Sickle and the Ruble,” published in 1998. Conservative modernization of the USSR,” - the place of the cathedral peasant of past centuries is taken not by the individualistic “bourgeois” of the Western type, but by the conciliar “common man,” who is very different from his predecessor, but only in external, instrumentally essential features. He is dressed in city clothes and has received a modern education. As for the deep principles of social existence, the inner world, the mechanisms of determination of behavior, he remains the same man-cog, a passive and unassuming “man for...”.”

The leader of United Russia, obviously without wanting it himself, hit the mark with his conservative modernization. Since all the efforts of the current government, under which its party is aligned, are aimed, on the one hand, at modernizing industry and the economy, and on the other, at strangling those sprouts of individualism and personal freedom that appeared in Russia in the 90s of the twentieth century and without which bourgeois society is impossible. It is the “ideology of the anthill,” where the life of each individual ant means nothing, that still distinguishes Russia from developed countries. Including from Germany, where since the middle of the last century the principle of “man for...” gave way to the ideology of “state for...”.