Matryoshka Putin

Putin spoke at the forum in St. Petersburg and said that we need a "national model of democracy and civil society." That is - we decided to go in the second circle. There was already “sovereign democracy” at its second term. This causes a dumb. How?! Just like that, brazenly, in the second circle? Moreover, in a new situation, when people already understand the price of this rhetoric well. In 2000-2005, it was still possible to somehow maintain hope (illusion?) That all this stretches, because it is necessary to somehow “rebuild” from the 90s, find a new form, etc. I remember how in 2000 the words of Pavlovsky were safely sounded that the era of “counter-revolution” had come. He then wrote that there is no need to be afraid of this. Like, there was a revolution (1991-1999), and it is necessary to finally get out of its stormy period. It is necessary to settle down, compact, routine and gain conservative fat. It sounded convincing. It seems like modern France with its republican traditions is not only a consequence of enlightenment and revolution, but also counter -revolution and counter -reformation. After two tacts, society comes to a balanced state. Well, okay, let's say. I well remember that already in about 2005 many began to look forward to the transition to the third beat. It seemed to me then that if the intentions are sincere, then for “precipitation” five years is quite enough. After all, man - as can be seen from numerous historical examples - is generally a very plastic creature. 5-7 years in Russian history is a sufficient time for society to take a new form. For example, the blessed NEP began in 1921, and in 1925 he was already folding. The so -called “years of reaction” after the 1905 uprising lasted from 1907 to 1914. Or, for example, the Kosygin reform - designed to modernize the posttalinsky economy of the USSR - lasted from 1965 to 1970 ...

Well, well, even if not 5, but 7-8 years old. And, indeed, in 2007, V. Putin refuses to go for a third term. Although many ask him. No, he says, they are not in the spirit and letter of the Constitution. There is a "tandem". "Vertical" is restored, terrorism is defeated, the economy is stable, the middle class has expanded, the income is growing, etc. Thus, we go to the third beat. And - in fact - evidence of the third tact began: and such that even Obama believed that some began - albeit slow - but a turn to the institutional strengthening of democracy, competition, etc. Putin quietly sat down in the government (as we were told: to damp, in order to get off the mountains too quickly), and the second head of the tandem began to go back and forth: to thank the “new newspaper”, to call for the already ripened “forward, Russia!”, To dismantle state corporations-monopolies, to encourage the reports of Iner and other “roadmaps”, to threaten corrupt officials, threatening Reform the police ...

And suddenly - bam! - Everything is back. Suddenly it turns out: “years of reaction” only begin. Putin - instead of maintaining his damping role in the inevitably coming battle between Siloviks and Creative Class, he took and spat on this new freedom -loving city class, which grew in zero years. And he directly decided to rely on the young security forces and the “civilian” who joined them, which also grew up in the zero years.

Midnight struck, the carriage turned into a pumpkin. Suddenly, young system lawyers who fight against the uncontrolled monopolies, fighters for municipal rights, moderate left -wing and even deeply loyal Sobchak have turned into “enemies of the state”. In an interview, Ilya Azarov directly said how they would put things in order in the media: there is no need for direct political commissarry, but it is necessary “through investors”. Kovalchuki buy up and buy up Russian media. The United Russian Media OJSC (in the manner of Russian Railways) is not far off. Elections? "Political competition"? No need!

Note that the “years of reaction” in Russian history has always been accompanied by an economic rise. Brilliant numbers in 1907-1913. Beautiful, inspiring data from Stalin (and Hitler) at the time of American great depression. And now we are waiting for a wonderful time: Russians, Saudis and Chinese are preparing to buy new Eurobonds. Smart people write that investments flowing from Russia over the past two years will soon flow back - they were briefly taken out to shoot in a safe zone before the threat of the second wave of the crisis. So it will probably be. Although it is precisely difficult to say who exactly the state packages will be sold in the framework of the new privatization program - evil languages say that they will sell to themselves - but Putin has $ 200 billion in the budget. Banker Kostin at the St. Petersburg forum confidently said that there would be no problems in bank lending to the real sector. In short, the Russian economy has been meeting a new decade quite confidently. Everyone has long been accustomed to her systemic vices. These systemic vices have long been included in the calculations and for “big guys” they are no longer risk factors.

A sad fact: a large group of systemic economists and political scientists during the Medvedev presidency was unable to convincingly show that “political transformations” in the direction of decentralization did not contain large new risks. The normative meaning of democracy, competition, diversity, subsidiarity, etc. The Russian economic elite at the level of rhetoric supports. But at the level of “kitchen”, she believes that the risks of “transformation” greatly exceed the benefits of preserving Putin's centralism. Chubais, Kostin, Vekselberg, Kiriyenko, Potanin, Gref and then the whole list-silently look at the pre-trial persecution of Pussy Piot, at the searches of Navalny and Yashin, at the Medinsky Zhiva, to the police, to the fact that the political top managers of the Putin regime switch to the language of the "network balabolism". Everyone calmly watches how the media build up.

History shows that when an autocrat is in power for a long time, the state and society take its “personal form”. This is the problem. Nominally in front of us is just a separate person, a certain Mussolini. And really before us a society, each time of which exudes this Mussolini. And the whole inner skeleton, all inner architecture is Mussolini. That is why autocrats always sit longer than necessary. The state took the form of Putin. So it was with Franco, and Stalin, and Gaddafi. All the jelly, all the porridge flowed into the form of “Putin” and froze in it. The distributed Putin is present in every public transaction, in each handshake. In such a system, institutional design does not matter. Since any design is secondary in relation to substance. And the substance is Putin-Franco, etc. Any new institution is a nesting doll in a nesting doll. It must be recalled that the death of Stalin meant not only the death of the head of state. She left a giant state and a large society in a state of complete ambiguity regarding its new, different structure. Attempts to find this other, post-Talin structure were painful-through a thaw, through stagnation, through a long struggle of hardware fractions, through attempts by economic reforms, through the convulsions of Prague-68 and Afghanistan-78, through the Andropovskoye “we do not know the society we live”, through perestroika-to decay.

What Putin did with the Russian state and society is terrible. He planted Russian policy as a result of a twenty -year transit at a dead point “Putin’s form”. Hence there is no way out, except for the further development of servilism. At each next stage of such a reign, first there is an exchange of citizenship for loyalty, and then loyalty - for servilism. In every social transaction Putin. And in each - servilism. We enter the great time when it is no longer necessary to justify the regime or fight for its legitimacy, do not need debate and discussions, adequate data on the state of society (real statistics) are not required, no experimental forms of culture, no humanitarian scientific groups with their own research programs are required. In general, nothing is required, except for the continuously lasting servalist "dance of the abdomen."