Brad Reformations

There is such a formula in the psychiatric arsenal. At the time, it was very popular among citizens who were critical of the reality around them. But now reform, in the sense of improvement, has been ordered from the very top. No sooner had the “national projects” started than snide remarks about their costs began to pour in from all sides.

Mikhail Arsenin spoke about modern trends in medicine. Since district and “general practitioners” received more money, qualified specialists (for example, a specific anesthesiologist) went “to the ground.” They, the specialists, didn’t get a raise! And now clinical medicine, a complex system with a division of labor, will inevitably “fall apart.” What, such a result could not have been foreseen? And if such a result could not have been foreseen, then why?.. Doesn’t give an answer.

Alexander Auzan gave an example from another area, from high school. Here the “national project” was primarily expressed in the allocation of grants to “outstanding teachers.” And in a school where teachers receive two or three thousand, a single teacher receives a hundred thousand grant. The relationship of this “outstanding” person with the team and with the community inevitably deteriorates, and he is already thinking about how to go into business. And he views his grant not as a step in the teaching field, but as start-up capital for the entrepreneurial field. That is, the “project” does not reform the school, but completely destroys it. And it would also seem that everything was obvious in advance.

It has already been written that “affordable housing” in practice means a further increase in already exorbitant prices per square meter.

Probably something else equally interesting will come up.

Didn't you see it coming? Or... And here words are usually heard about malicious intent, someone’s conspiracy, “and all that.”

But it is not today that it is said where the road paved with good intentions leads.

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At the turn of the 60s, somewhere between the XX and XXII Congresses, when communism was “on the horizon” and the party decided to “fight for every person,” reform of correctional labor institutions took place in the USSR. Four camp regimes were introduced - general, reinforced, strict and special - and two prison regimes. Moreover, only “first-timers”—those convicted for the first time—were sent to the general camp regime. And “recidivists” who had previously been imprisoned were to be subject to more severe regimes. In the common areas, where primarily young people found themselves, there were no bearers of the “thieves’ law” - according to the reformers, this was supposed to prevent the transmission of criminal traditions. But it happened differently. Where there were no bearers of camp hostel experience, a tradition arose that was much more archaic, but now familiar to everyone (at least from literature and cinema) - with castes and “lowering.”

This is unlikely to have been the original intention. Only later did operatives begin to use the new prison ethnography: the threat of being “lowered” in the press chamber was very effective. But you need to have a very rich imagination to consider this precisely the reason and goal of the reform, and the reform itself as a “nepotistic conspiracy.”

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Are there explanations for this phenomenon that are not related to the “conspiracy theory”? Let's move from examples to analogies.

Cute aquarium fish, being released by a humane owner into a nearby pond, turn out to be piranhas, with all that that implies... I generally keep quiet about rabbits in Australia - this is already an example from textbooks.

Bacteria and viruses, harmless to the colonialists, decimated the South American Indians. However, syphilis was brought back to Europe, acquired by a person from a llama. Among the possible sources of the AIDS virus, by the way, are African green monkeys.

Of course, many generations later natural selection will leave mostly resistant to these new diseases, but at first most of the population may die out. In the same way, the disturbed balance in biocenoses will be restored, but this will take a long time. Before that, catastrophic changes will occur: mass extinction and a sharp simplification of a previously complex and diverse community.

So, the thoughtless transfer of social practices to new conditions is no less dangerous than the inclusion of a new species in the natural community or the interspecific migration of microorganisms.

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Such inherently complex areas as education and healthcare eke out a miserable existence, of course, but this stability, it turns out, can be very easily damaged. Inept attempts to help lead, as we see, not to strengthening, but to “brain drain.”

It was possible to foresee this. Those who saved domestic science found themselves in a similar situation in the early 90s: simply allocating money to individual capable and outstanding scientists could simply sweep them out of the country. They, too, could perceive grants as starting capital for emigration and naturalization in a new place. Grants were allocated on the condition that the work was carried out here in Russia. Of course, no one could set conditions for the scientist’s future. But after the financing period expired, as a rule, there was no money left, and there was no longer any temptation. Of course, those who wanted to leave eventually left. But at least no one was provoked to leave. This simple solution was proposed by the Moscow team of the Soros Foundation and the Open Society Institute. Nowadays it is customary to criticize Soros, but honestly: the fact that there are still remnants of science in Russia is his (their) considerable merit.

The same can be said about many other large projects, for example, about the Pushkin Library. In a situation where the library collection system was paralyzed, Russian classics were published and distributed among libraries. Of course, there could be room for corruption, abuse and “unexpected” consequences. Well, this is known in Russia: its own manufacturing company with a “kickback”, and the sale “to the left” through its own commercial structures of finished products intended for free charitable distribution. This could have happened if precautionary measures had not been thought through in advance - first of all, the openness of competitions and targeted assistance.

And after all, no one stopped the authors and implementers of “national projects” from thinking through the possible “bottlenecks” in the same way. So why?..

"Theft" again?

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Let us remember what our other “national project”, now in its twelfth year, led to – the Chechen war.

Corruption at checkpoints, looting and extortion during “cleansing operations”, “protection” of illegal oil production during the “counter-terrorist operation”, and now the transfer of this entire economy from the “federals” to the locals, who are all former separatists. The local population and "greyhound-writing" journalists have developed a formula: a "commercial", "sold" war. Like, they say, all this was started solely out of corrupt interests.

In reality, everything was much more complicated.

At the beginning of December 1994, when the supreme Russian government decided to send troops into Chechnya, several senior military commanders still refused to lead the ill-planned operation, and some resigned. As responsible professionals, they understood the disastrous nature of the plan adopted at the Security Council meeting. But there were enough applicants to take their places...

During the first assault on Grozny on December 31, out of four assault groups, only one completely completed its task - to enter the city. General Konstantin Pulikovsky (North-West grouping) led the 131st brigade and 81st regiment into the center of Grozny, where they were almost completely destroyed. Generals Petruk and Chindarov (groups “West” and “East”) stopped the offensive and withdrew their troops. General Rokhlin (group "North") advanced, but not as ordered: not passing through the city, but methodically occupying block by block. As a result, the city was taken by generals Lev Rokhlin and Ivan Babichev, to whom the remnants of other groups were reassigned. But only Pulikovsky was awaiting further career growth - his highest point was the post of presidential envoy in the Far East (Babichev’s successes were much more modest, and the obstinate Rokhlin left the army altogether and was killed under circumstances that are still mysterious to many, despite the court’s decision ).

In general, in such situations of general quiet fear, those who move up the career ladder are not at all successful, but obedient (according to the Strugatskys: “We don’t need smart people, we need faithful ones”). They select and reward those who, in a clash between the will of the boss and reality, choose the first. Incompetent management welcomes zealous performers.

And only then, on the substrate of the fragments of plans and reality, the corruption component flourishes.

So there is no need to throw stones at “national projects”. I mean, there is no need to do this hastily - first, it’s still worth understanding what is the reason for such a decisive and regular attack on the rake.

Brad Reformations

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