Results of the year. Trivia of history

The year 2008 ends the eight-year period of Vladimir Putin's presidency. One of the gatekeepers at the door is the crisis that has befallen the world and us this year as unexpectedly as it is natural. Its scale, it is now becoming obvious, will exceed the scale of the 1998 crisis. Its expected duration will be abnormal. Expectations for outside help are untenable. In addition, during the eight years of the second Russian presidency, autonomous institutions of adaptability that could soften the blows of the crisis and help benefit from it have been destroyed. All this destroys the calculations that commentators suspect the authorities make based on the combinations associated with shuffling a microscopic deck of two cards - a six and a joker: how will the chip come out? who will be on top and who will be below? - and other important things from the arsenal of wise “political scientists”. More perspicacious ones confidently predict: the “era” is ending. And the crisis highlighted this fact in time, dispelling possible doubts. I deliberately took the floor

in quotation marks and written with a small letter. This is about the Yeltsin presidency; one could safely write about his time - the Yeltsin Era. And about the current ones, I can’t even raise my hand to write their last name with a capital letter.

When the last page of the next historical novel is turned, which we all, in a semi-conscious state, wrote with our lives, it is quite appropriate to ask the question: how will descendants evaluate this work? I have long had no doubt: in decades, our time will be perceived, at best, with bewilderment. How did they (this is about you and me) tolerate all this insanity? For what? What were you afraid of? What did you expect? What were you hoping for? Their questions are completely justified. After all, there have been more terrible periods in Russian history. But it’s rare that one of them can be said to be completely meaningless. Even Brezhnev's stagnation can boast of a policy of Détente. Under Khrushchev, Yuri Gagarin flew into space. Under Stalin, they hoped for a world revolution and conquered the North Pole. Hitler was defeated, Europe was liberated (I’m talking about the possibility of justifications, not the essence).

What happened during these eight years? What will we be proud of? No answer. I do not accept the sneering bravado: never in the history of mankind has corruption in a single country grown as quickly as in Putin’s Russia. It feels right. In fact, it is unprovable. The form is mockery. If you really strain yourself, you can remember the victories of Russian tennis players, but this, as they themselves believe, is the merit of Yeltsin. That's all?

The army is the stronghold of statehood. We started the eight-year period with the death of the Kursk submarine, and ended with the disgrace of the Bulava missile. And the army itself was turned into a gang, from which a normal young man can escape only at the cost of suicide. What else does the state rely on? Well, of course, with the special services! Now they go there to make money. Simply steal. Brazenly. Open. Large-scale. What the hell is the defense of statehood? Only sometimes they imitate it, launching small campaigns against the most harmless ones - scientists, veterinarians, human rights activists. Cold heart, short mind and dirty hands.

Yes, I remembered! The police protect us all! This is the same police about which the simple-minded Putin said: “When a Russian citizen sees a policeman, he hurries to cross to the other side of the street.” They have no time for us. They have a business. Torture is welcome. Killing and throwing away in the forest is easy.

Of course I'm wrong. The basis of any statehood is, of course, the court. The same one who in our country keeps Bakhmina in prison and releases the rapist and murderer Budanov. Eight years ago he was not like this. During this period he was bought, corrupted, intimidated. Previously, he could subpoena the Minister of War, the president's favorite. And if the favorite resisted, the president reminded him of his duties to justice. Now our government practically never loses lawsuits against the press. This is just an example.

In addition to government institutions, the state (that’s what they grandly call themselves) is responsible for providing various public goods such as medicine and education. As for medicine, according to the INDEM Foundation, the number of our citizens forced to refuse free medical care because they do not have enough money for bribes has exceeded fifteen million. And we need universities to save boys from serving in the army. And there are only a dozen universities left in the country where there is no shame in studying.

I could go on. But the diagnosis is already clear: not a single institution operates in the country for the functioning of which the authorities are responsible. But billionaires have proliferated, primarily illegal ones.

Enough! Enumerating the crimes, abominations and simply stupidities of the current government is a little valiant task due to the banality of the task. It is much more interesting to talk about ourselves, trying to ask ourselves the very questions that will torment our descendants who are trying to determine our species identity. After all, from their point of view, our life during these eight years will have no justification except the inertia of life itself. The sooner we begin to comprehend the historical shame we are experiencing, the easier the way out of this illness will be.

Try to unleash your imagination. Imagine our country in three or four years: the current ones, who lovingly call themselves “the state,” are either in prison or in exile; favorite topics, whether in Rossiyskaya Gazeta or on the ORT channel, are the leaden abominations of Putinism, who stole, how much and how, who ordered high-profile murders, etc. Former party members from “United Russia” beat themselves in the chest and swear that, hating the regime, they corrupted it from within with themselves, and “intellectuals” in the service of the regime confess to society and tell how difficult it was for them to collect materials for future revelations. The new government is conducting international negotiations to seize the assets of high-ranking dignitaries of Putin's court and underground billionaires. All new revelations and repentances complete the strange collective portrait of the departed government: scum and pettiness, and it is not clear what is more. And the questions arise more and more acutely: what were they afraid of? why did they endure? And there will be no answer. Because the most terrible and difficult judgment is the trial of oneself.

Let's go further along the path of time. Another twenty-odd years have passed, and in some thirty-third year, celebrating the fortieth anniversary of the adoption of the Constitution, historians will again be perplexed: how was it possible to adopt such amendments to the Constitution in this strange year of 2008? And the main report will be made by the still cheerful cosmonaut and assistant to the popularly revered first President of Russia Boris Yeltsin, Yuri Mikhailovich Baturin. And he will tell you how the First Amendment to the US Constitution was adopted. That before this, two amendments were rejected that expanded the benefits and powers of the legislators themselves. And then they adopted the Bill of Rights, the first article of which forms the First Amendment to the US Constitution. And all schoolchildren know this amendment. And the citizens of the country are proud of their First Amendment. And all because legislators in the United States began to improve their Constitution by expanding the rights of citizens. But ours, in 2008, with the enthusiasm of hungry cannibals, rushed to expand their powers. And therefore, for us, this is all a shameful page in the history of Russia.

And again this will not be the whole truth, because the circle of those responsible for the shame will be unjustifiably narrowed. And we were all guilty, who endured scum and were afraid of little things. And therefore other speakers will build theoretical constructions in attempts to explain all these incomprehensible oddities. They will want to justify us. And we don't deserve it. Not in 2008, not later.