Collapse of Empires

The collapse of empires usually begins with national conflicts. The collapse of the USSR began with Baku and Sumgait. The collapse of Russia also begins with national conflicts: between Chechens and Avars (Moksob and Novoselskoye in Dagestan), between Chechens and Kalmyks (Yandyks), between Chechens and Kabardians (Nalchik).

The conflicts were not noticed until the Chechens fought with the Russians in Kondopoga. And then it started: for the second week, Kondopoga is the main topic for discussion.

I have several questions about Kondopoga. Governor Katanandov personally told us about Chechen bandits who were racing around the city in Mercs without license plates. Question: where is Katanandov’s traffic police chief? Why isn't he fired? Why isn't this Mercedes parked in the impound lot?

The authorities spoke about Chechen bandits who are preventing the development of Russian business. I have a question: is the head of the Internal Affairs Directorate still in place? If the head of the Internal Affairs Directorate had a share with the Chechen bandits, why hasn’t he been fired yet? If he had no share, but was simply a fool, why, again, was he not fired?

A very unpleasant circumstance emerged. It turns out that in the sixth year of building a vertical of power and resurrecting the power of the country, there is no vertical at all. And there is YUKOS, which was taken over by the president’s friends. The police who beat people with impunity in Blagoveshchensk and on the embankment in Gelendzhik. The Chechens, against whom this police force, beating and killing Russians, are powerless.

This is a very interesting point, don't you think? It turns out that our police do not abuse everyone. That is, of course, she can, and with great pleasure, score a lone Chechen in transition; organize mass robberies of Tajiks and Moldovans; wearing masks and in the group of some investigator Krivorotov, she takes pleasure in tearing out nails from Caucasians and putting them on a bottle. But when the same police are faced with the need to confront not a single person, but an entire clan, which is avenging one for one in dozens, then this brave police goes to hell - to impose tribute on the points under its jurisdiction.

The second unpleasant circumstance.

We are all told that Putin won the war in Chechnya.

But in Kondopoga this is not noticeable. Judging by the events in Kondopoga, it was Chechnya that won the war with Russia. And in fact, why shouldn’t the Chechens behave like winners in Kondopoga? Chechnya enjoys greater independence from Russia than in the time of Dudayev, receives money from Russia and with this money builds a “federal Sharia” there, while the Russian military is sitting on military reserve bases. Under Kadyrov's leadership, Chechnya defeated Russia, declared its territorial claims to Ingushetia and Dagestan, and began expansion into other Russian regions, including Pyatigorsk and the Krasnodar Territory. Even Imam Shamil did not climb that far.

And the third unpleasant circumstance.

If you remember, Russian nationalism started out great for the Kremlin. For example, people close to Putin’s confessor will sign the anti-Semitic “letter of the five hundred.” The president immediately goes to Auschwitz and gives a heated speech there, from which it is clear that President Putin is the only support for Jews in the stormy sea of ​​Russian anti-Semitism. For example, Putin will say about the insult inflicted on the embassy children in Poland, and immediately unknown but well-coordinated thugs begin to beat Polish diplomats. A wave of hatred against Poles rises on the Internet, which passes without a trace as soon as it is no longer needed. What about Kvachkov’s assassination attempt? This is a delight – a GRU colonel, who spends his life rubbing shoulders with paramilitary nationalist provocateurs, arranges an assassination attempt almost in front of the FSB’s eyes. They calmly let him blow everything up, and then immediately take it, without waiting a couple of hours for the sake of decency. And Anatoly Chubais finds himself in the interesting position of a man who very diligently proves to everyone that Putin is the only defense against nationalism.

So - all this was a long time ago, all this was covered with a copper basin. Kvachkovs, beaten Poles, anti-Semitic letters - all in the past. In the past, when a group of very narrow-minded people who had a huge country at their disposal and sincerely believed that strengthening the vertical of power meant increasing the number of bribes due to them, they decided to govern this country using the usual methods - the methods of special operations. Separate here, build there, set these against those.

As for business, the Duma, television - it was successful there. It was possible to achieve complete control over the tools for monitoring and describing reality. But reality itself was rapidly slipping out of control.

It turned out that the country's bureaucracy is so paralyzed by complete incompetence and mutual squabbles that even in conditions of abundance of petrodollars it cannot implement national projects that are widely advertised and, in principle, profitable for the bureaucracy. Security forces at all levels have turned into small gangs who, in the intervals between wholesale thefts of mobile phones from businessmen and wholesale beatings of citizens, simply do not have time to fight the bandits. And the operations planned by the security forces are characterized by rare mediocrity. It’s necessary, for example, to incite Emzar Kvitsiani to revolt against Georgia and not even be able to hold the Kodori Gorge, which two children with a sniper can hold.

Kremlin PR specialists prepared instructions on how to cover the “Koptsev case” and hoped that their audience would be the quiet intellectual who listens to Putin’s speech in Auschwitz and is imbued with the idea that only Vladimir Vladimirovich is able to save Russia from the impending wave of nationalism. And their audience was a two-meter redneck with a beer, who realized that there was nothing around: no work, no police, no law, but there were nine-year-old Tajik girls who were available! With a knife! Nine of us! And nothing will happen for it!

They thought they would build a small, cozy fire on which they could roast a suckling pig called Third Term. But it turned out that they were setting fire to their own house. And all because, due to their incompetence, they themselves believed that they controlled this huge country. Of course, they were told about this every day in the Vremya program.

So: the illusion of control over Russia is the same as the illusion of control over Chechnya. Russian nationalists and Chechens have something in common. They cannot be controlled, especially by colonels who sincerely believe that cutting down YUKOS means creating a superpower.