In the circle of strangers

The interlocutor, a young journalist from a successful glossy publication, is surprised to speak of the absence of solidarity among the seemingly closest colleagues, about indifference to each other. “Isn't it somewhere like that? - I'm trying to tax on a more common topic. “Look around, at least at people in transport” (I have an essay just written in my head

). “Well, in transport - strangers,” the interlocutor reacts. Stop. Why certainly "strangers"?

After all, you can imagine at least three completely different options. Suppose: this

, any and any, generalized Eurimen. There was such a character in European medieval allegories, later he migrated to the literary utopia of the New Age and the pedagogical fantasies of the Enlightenment - I want to say that collective thought worked on this way for centuries. But, it seems, such a generalized figure of a universal person is a positive idea of ​​individuality as such - in the collective ideas of my compatriots today is absent today. But without it, the idea of ​​free, objective knowledge is impossible without it, science and technique are impossible, and then the idea of ​​education and universal access to it. Only on it, I will add, can be based on universally significant moral conditions and legal norms, including, of course, human rights and the work of supranational, supranational, supra -political institutions like a European court. It means generally accepted laws that work in modern society trust, cooperation, calculation, etc.

Option Second. These are people like

, They -

. But it doesn’t work out anyway. The alienation from the neighbor is precisely today and today for the Russian self -awareness of “all of us” - partly about this has already been mentioned

. Own "individuality" (if this word is generally appropriate here) is recognized by each as exclusivity and exception. Incomprehensibility. Cutting off from others. Such in our circumstances the meaning of the respondents' widespread response about their own possible behavior in difficult circumstances: “I hope only for themselves” (now two -thirds of the Russians surveyed are given, almost the same - three out of five - they can, according to their assessment, count on relatives and close friends). The point is not that we are so independent, but that no one will help: only a few percent of respondents, almost within the boundaries of statistical error, for charity and to support the church, are relied on to the aid of state bodies and public organizations - and even less percent.

The boundary of rejection laid between all

, transferred outside, to others. The people themselves are “strangers”, of course, do not happen. This

- such as it - we denote them in a similar way, we create such "strangers", drawing a line between

And

. Everywhere where there is such an “exceptional we”, there is such a feature. And vice versa: by crossing out from ourselves others as strangers, we behave, we are aware of ourselves as

.

People in Russia are united today by not business interest and not universal solidarity, but the well -being of a kind of offended minority, around which is a large and unknown, but probably a hostile world. From here, say, the collective stereotype "Over the decades of Soviet life, people in our country have become different than in the West, and this can no longer be changed." Up to 60% of Russian residents agree with this thesis today (even 68% supported it in 2000).

The third version of possible ideas about

: yes,

- Others than

But this is interesting to us, important, we need. It does not come out again. The image of another, but not alien, it seems, does not fit in the head of the current Russian man. “Another” for him means “alien”, and therefore, there is an object of negative feelings again, from inconvenience and irritation to envy and hostility, if not worse.

More than three quarters of the respondents - 77%, according to 2003 - the world is seen hostile to Russia, to the Russians; Only 9% do not agree with this vision (in February 1994, this ratio looked like 41 to 22 at 35% of those who had difficulty with the answer). The personification of such an imaginary enemy can be “international terrorists”, “Chechen militants”, and finally the United States, can easily imagine how America’s recent critical statements will be stacked with the Putin regime and comments on them in the generally media.

But the closest neighbors can be an example here: the Russians have reckoned the Baltic countries, Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine, most hostile to Russia of the states. The list of “enemies” is growing, the number of “friends” (including “President’s personal friends”) is decreasing, and Belarus is increasingly the only partner for the masses of Russians. But the majority of the Russian population decisively refuses to recognize the “other country” Ukraine, any independent step of Ukrainian politicians is evaluated sharply negatively, since they see exclusively a call of Russia (“Isn’t our expense you bite the nail?” - I remember, the servants in Romeo and Juliet were shaken).

Most Russians - 45% - reacts negatively to the hypothetical entry of Ukraine to the EU (12% - positively, 18% - indifferent); Today, 60% of Russians (positively - 20%), etc. would have reacted to the rapprochement of the Western countries today. Is this why the cannibalist discourse of geopolitical interests, for obvious reasons, impossible, say, for leading politicians in Germany or France, was so in demand by government men and their speakers in Russia?

However, as already mentioned, hostility to those who

- only a projection of conflicts

. Within the country, inside the city, inside man. For example, determining their attitude to successful and wealthy people in Russia, the country's population is divided into two almost equal groups: today, Russian businessmen included in the list of richest people in the world, 41% of Russians surveyed relate without special feelings, 48% are negative (positively 8%). Meanwhile, it is as rich and wealthy people in Russia that they envy the most - in any case, 70% of Russian citizens suspect their compatriots in this particular (2003 survey). At the same time, half or more Russians are sure: in Russia today there are no equal opportunities to achieve success, but it is impossible to achieve something without violating all the rules and laws. Popures of the Bulgakov professor, we can say that the boundaries and conflicts are not between countries, but still in the head.

Against this background, Russian data on xenophobia on religious grounds look relatively moderately moderate, although the numbers here are considerable. Negatively relate to Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, Jews, adherents of oriental religions from a quarter to a third of adults of Russia (2003). Approximately the same - up to 30% - the proportion of adult Russians who do not accept people of other sexual orientation (3% - in order to “physically destroy them”). 37% of respondents believe that voluntary homosexual relations between adults, however, should be persecuted by law in Russia. Three fifths of respondents-in order to limit the influence of gays, for example, in show business.

On the contrary, ethnic negativity is expressed today in the mass of Russians extremely sharply, and the corresponding indicators in recent years are only growing. Starting from 2001, the share of respondents, which one way or another host the slogan “Russia for Russians”, steadily exceeds half, today it is 52%. It is important to understand and remember that such grades are not the result

, and expression

: The greatest indignation of the “influx of visitors” is expressed by precisely those groups that do not encounter and do not compete - pensioners, housewives, residents of deaf towns and villages.

Less than 12% of adult Russians were hostile to people from other nationalities, while they would welcome the ban on the entry and stay of visitors from Central Asia, the Caucasus, China over 50% surveyed in 2005. The same would be negative to the immediate neighborhood with the visitors of the same regions. Two of every three Russian respondents, up to three quarters of Russians, would negatively react to the marriage of their children with immigrants from China, Central Asia from the Caucasus from the Caucasus, negatively and dramatically.

It seems that all this is not much like the “friendship of the peoples”, which the same elderly population of the periphery seems to remember in Soviet times. Was she? Maybe the fact is that in the state of forced labor, registration and deficiency, everyone, you want - you don’t want, you know your place, everything - wherever you go! - They sat with a sidem, and the unity of the whole was proclaimed from above and accepted by everyone was provided with a repressive press and forced monotony? But what to do with this nostalgic longing for the fence in the mixing and globalizing today?