Natalya Ivanova. Are people tired?

Are people tired?
Natalia Ivanova

Publication date: March 26, 2004

It wasn’t me who said it, it was Vitaly Naishul , a liberal and president of the Institute of National Economic Model , who said it. “One of the brightest Moscow intellectuals,” he is characterized by the Izvestia newspaper, which published a conversation with V. Naishul under the very expressive heading “Russia - like an artist who has not sold a single painting.”

“ The people were tired of the previous battles. The first president complained that he was being disturbed <...> So the people (by their choice - N.I. ) said to the current president: take normal electricians and put things in order, in the end! ”

Key words: people - president - order. One people - one president.

" The only political figure in the country ."

In support of this thought, Naishul quotes Dahl :

" One God in Heaven, One King on Earth "

Our people with their history are not only not given anything else, they are not needed. The second proverb given by Naishul:

" Without the boyar's truth, the king will anger God ." This is the basis of Russian parliamentarism ."

Boyars are "influential people." The Boyar Duma works when the president is with influential people, i.e. boyars, meets.

Naishul is trying to “impose” not a Western, but a domestic political language on Russia, looking for it, of course, where? In the treasury. And therefore - the third proverb from Dahl:

" The king is strict and executes with disgrace."

Executes - pardons: as he wants. This is our political destiny.

“ We bought someone else’s political game and played it honestly from 1991 to 1993. ” She didn't justify herself. Now “ the greatness of Russia is not confirmed by anything .”

Does this mean that we need to return Russia to its historical political culture, i.e. boyars, boyar duma, etc.?

We need a “ high Russian state culture ”. Then we will have “ our own state ideas .”

From whom?

A recipe is proposed: the banking system is “Islamic” (as an example). Ideas - from the Pinochet government . Invite to work with us, if not the Minister of Finance Pinochet himself, Sergio de la Quattro, then at least Hernando de Soto.

For what?

" We need to borrow high foreign state culture ."

It's not so expensive "in terms of money": the salary is the same as in America, and so that the wife can go to the theater.

This must be a " very stressful borrowing ".

My head was just spinning from the somersault of thought of a bright intellectual: where is Dal, where are the boyars, where is order, where is the wife with the theater, where is the borrowing? Where-where: at the end of reflections on your political language , or rather, on its absence.

Actually, I’m glad that Vitaly Naishul turned out to be so illogical and in the end completely reversed his own provocative (?) thesis.

What exactly are we talking about?

About closedness/openness: society, culture (political), borders in different senses of the word. We protest if the possibility of obtaining a Schengen visa is tightened for us , for example. We want the door to be open. (Ideas, concepts, “high foreign state culture”, etc. In the same Izvestia, on the same front page, we read: “ Maison de la Franse - like the Bastille .” In the sense: we must take it like the Bastille! Otherwise, you won’t get in...) And rightly so, after sitting in a closed, stuffy room called the USSR. But at the same time - so that “one president - one people - one God (and as a result - order, order, the main word.)

Archetype of the collective unconscious: openness/closedness.

I myself: the project at the Liberal Mission I called Foundation: “ Open Book: Lively Discussion .” More than 40 writers, publishers, critics, editors, and sociologists are already participating in the project. There, by the way, on March 24, a round table was held under the heading “Liberal Thought, the Anti-Liberal Project and Literary Reality.” As a result of a three and a half hour discussion, we found out that everything liberal is open and includes - due to its openness - everything even very anti-liberal.

But I called my book (the last? the extreme? From the Soviet language: are you the last? no, I am the extreme) “ Hidden Plot. Russian literature at the transition through the century .” Because I wanted the hidden to make open ; the only necessary operation is to depressurize a closed, hidden, enclosed, sealed literary space.

The titles of even one’s own works can also be analyzed as an individual expression of the collective subconscious. The metaphor of openness/closedness exists in the names of various structures - “Open Society” , “Open Russia” , for example.

Well, for example, cringing and straining from circulation - success - translated art. literature, try to before “ selling your paintings write them ” (V. Naishul). And write quite competitive.

Understanding culture as something that includes both everyday life and high art, it should not be confused with civilization. Then things will be clearer, if not better, with the parliament (ugh, ugh, the Boyar Duma!), and the judicial system, and other institutions of the state. And with a language that still needs to adapt some pan-European political concepts, and not be left alone with itself. Otherwise, our language has a beauty in how killers with fakes bloom, but with parliament it will immediately become difficult and even sick.

For examples of what has already happened, born in the socio-political language of our time, I refer not to Dahl, like Naishul, but to the following publication: Hasan Huseynov . "D.S.P. Materials for the Russian Dictionary of Socio-Political Language of the End of the 20th Century" .

In this dictionary, rich in acquired vocabulary, I discovered a new word: “dumak”. Huseynov explains: “Duma deputy, an anagram of the word...” - you yourself understand which one.

So political language does not stop its own creative work.

People don't get tired.