Other nineties

I have been tirelessly haunted recently by one plot in the spirit of alternative history. I can hardly ever decide to arrange it in the form of a story, a novel or even a story, for this I have neither patience, no mood, nor, frankly, skills. But for some reason I am sure that this work that will never be written should become the most important thing I should have done in life.

Much has merged here: some dreams of the past, the series "Lost", and real events of the beginning of 1996, and even the software materials of the political criticism workshop. But the point was set by the newly seen "garden" of Kaidanovsky.

Then a hunch arose ... a hunch about the existence of alternative "nineties".

... Imagine that perestroika won, won only as she could win. There is nothing incredible in this assumption. Suppose that al-Qaeda struck New York not in 2001, but about ten years earlier, in March 1991. In fact, this was supposed to happen after the occupation by the American troops of the Holy Land of Muslims in Saudi Arabia. What would happen in this case?

The Americans would strike Afghanistan, Sudan and, possibly, Pakistan in the fall of 1991. Israel interrupted the trial process and would hit the Palestinian camps in Tunisia. The price of oil would take off up to 51 dollars. For barrel.

And this would withdraw the Soviet Union from a situation of complete financial bankruptcy. Gorbachev promised the Americans to comprehensively support and relying on this support in alliance with pragmatists from the KGB, led by Kryuchkov, immediately strangled Russian separatism. Yeltsin is recognized as insane and politically isolated, the democratic movement is beheaded. On the December night of 1991, by order of Kryuchkov, about 50 leaders of the democratic movement and "memory" were interned on charges of treason.

The intelligentsia was noisily expressed dissatisfaction, but was afraid to go against the authorities. In the place of Yeltsin comes the Gorbachev protein Bakatin. Gorbachev releases the Baltic and Caucasian republics, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan, which nevertheless still remain in the strategic orbit of the renewed USSR, which now constitute the Russian Federation, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

The USSR firmly occupies Atlantic positions on almost all foreign policy issues, unconditionally maintaining the US course to combat "world Islamic terrorism." At the end of 1992, with a huge margin of elections in the United States, a bunch of Bush bean wins. The USSR concludes a quarter alliance with the United States, the European community and Japan. The idea of ​​a unified euro-Atlantic from Vancouver to Vladivostok acquires a more or less tangible outline. In a situation of stressful struggle at the same time with Hussein and Al -Qaeda, and with the rebel Pakistan, she turns a blind eye to the fact that in the USSR that unfolded towards the Atlantic there is no, of course, no democracy - the sovereign president of the USSR still elects the Congress fully controlled, and the real control of the country is carried out by the KGB that preserved all its previous power of the KGB, headed by the nearest comrade Gorbacheva Vladimir Kryuchkov ...

The intelligentsia still fronts in the press, approximately as it is happening today, but the political majority at the congress of deputies is in the hands of the Reformed CPSU, which is now called SPSU - the socialist party of allied unity . Supporters have no hopes for interception of leadership.

So, after some perturbations in 1996, no one had doubts. Gorbachev and "Perestroika" won, the union left the cataclysm of the late 1980s weakened, but not destroyed, what we call a disaster today would simply not have happened. "Island Russia" did not surf. The "nineties" did not take place ... The intelligentsia continued to live about the same life as it lived for the second half of the eighties .... So we find the beginning of 1996 ...

... The economic system of the updated USSR by 1996 looked approximately like this.

There was no complete collapse of industry and a catastrophic decline in production, although the Gorbachevsky leadership had to conduct a series of demonstrative bankruptcy of incomprehensible enterprises. Since the Kryuchkovsky KGB possessed real power in the country, a person from the bodies was almost always present in the joint -stock companies of the main campaigns in leading positions. The remaining shares of the shares were spreading among the entrepreneurs especially close to the authorities, each of which was to undergo a strict verification for the loyalty of the party and the state. In the country, since the mid -1990s, almost unlimited access to foreign capital was opened - primarily to European, but also partly Israeli and American.

Partial liberalization of small retail trade was carried out - the so -called. Cooperators enjoyed significant tax benefits, but work in this area involved some serious financial risks - there were few banks, their lion's share was governed by the state, the loan was quite expensive, and there were not so many people who wanted to take risks and make a lot of profit.

Young people who rushed into retail trade and small business gradually returned back to the sphere of real production, to science and education. The political services market, of course, was small. The business was open for only a few. That is why the outflow of personnel from science and education did not occur, as well as a crushing fall in financing of this industry .

The intellectual class, disappointed in new politics and not very successful in the new economy, however, was able to find itself in the field of science and culture, the benefit in this area of ​​the former Soviet restrictions did not exist.

Therefore, as a cultural and scientific power of the USSR, from 1994 to 1996, a real Renaissance is experiencing. Libraries are breaking from visitors, competitions at universities reach unprecedented sizes, thick magazines overstate their circulations to the limit. Moscow and other cities are constantly visited by figures of world science, art and philosophy, and each such visit is an event of a national scale.

Under Moscow, several new humanitarian universities are created. By 1995, Europeans and Americans unequivocally recognize Moscow and its suburbs by the intellectual center of the world along with Paris, New York and Munich. Gradually tighten Kyiv, Alma-Ata, Leningrad and Novosibirsk. Understanding that intellectual personnel in Russia do not always find use in production foreign capital willingly finances the Soviet education system, whose immigrants immediately occupy leading positions in leading technical universities and laboratories in the world. It is recognized, however, that education in the USSR is somewhat archaic, it is little connected with business and modern management, but in the field of fundamental knowledge the Soviet school is not inferior to the best samples of the Western.

Some new take-off is experiencing Russian philosophy. The Marxist ideology has not been canceled, on November 7, as a previous state holiday, Lenin is still revered by the founder of the Soviet state. However, ideology has become much more liberal and tolerant primarily in relation to religion and idealistic philosophy. Gorbachev organizes under his chairmanship of the World Institute for the Study of the Marxist Heritage, where they are invited to teach for a large salary of Jacques Derrida (he becomes the co -chair of the institute along with Gorbachev), Jurgen Habermas and Frederic Jamison. At the same time, Russian religious philosophy is completely rehabilitated. Philosophical Society in the USSR is named after Nikolai Berdyaev, who, along with Marx, Lenin, Gramsha and Georgy Fedotov, becomes one of the spiritual ancestors of the ideology of the SPSU.

"Russian idea" Berdyaev is taught in high school. "The origins and meaning of Russian communism" - the board book of Gorbachev, Kryuchkov and other senior leaders of the state. At the same time, the progressive meaning of "Eurasianism" is deducted minus its anti -Western insinuations. It is constantly noted that the best Eurasians accepted communism, and that the natural eurization of communism was suppressed by the Stalinist regime. The main thing, however, is that the USSR was really able to synthesize the West and East and introduce the Eurasian space into the ring of the Democratic North ...

... 1992-1993 were the most difficult period in the history of the updated Soviet Union. The elimination of Yeltsin was more or less painless, however, to accelerate the rebellious Supreme Council of the Russian Federation in September 1992, I had to use force. For some time it seemed that the socialist government, headed by Gorbachev and Abalkin, could not stand - everything was united against him: orthodox communists, radical democrats, left -wing socialists, part of the Russian directorate and generals, dissatisfied with the too close convergence with the West and the too clear elevation of the KGB over other power corporations.

As the ill -wishers said, Gorbachev’s victory was possible exclusively due to the secret support of the West and personally George Bush. However, after 1994, the relations of Bush and Gorbachev began to deteriorate somewhat: the reason was that Gorbachev in all ideological disputes invariably became a European rather than American position. So, Gorbachev insisted that the protocol on the restriction of carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere be enclosed in Alma-Ata-after that it was called the Alma-Ata Protocol. (The Chinese lurked a clear resentment, but this only strengthened the position of Gorbachev, who emphasized its constant hostility of the Chinese path of development of socialism). Gorbachev insisted that the countries of the Quaternary Union be unanimously condemned by the "death penalty" - Bush tried to impose a veto, but was afraid to be completely solitude. Finally, Bush was annoying too obvious, albeit very declarative levity of the Soviet president.

Meanwhile, it was this cultural line of opposition to the Americans that made Gorbachev a truly idol of West Europeans and left-wing liberals around the world. When it came to the creation of the post of chairman of the Quaternary Union, Bush, in alliance with the Prime Minister of Japan, did not make such a decision - the head of the Union would almost certainly become the president of the USSR.

Bush gradually began to lose the support of the American voter - on the right he was cramped by the leader of the American isolationists Patrick Buchenin, who concluded a patriotic pact with the leader of the right -wing republicans Patrick Robertson. On the left, he was actively opposed by the governor of Vermont and the ardent fan of Gorbachev Bill Bradley, the most likely winner in the 1996 elections. According to rumors, Bill Bradley was actively supported by a great friend Gorbachev, author of the book "Reformer of capitalism", philanthropist and philanthropist George Soros.

Gradually, Gorbachev’s external successes were converted into internal support: the inhabitants of the USSR began to get used to new orders, especially since the inadquacy of the recent idol of Russians Boris Yeltsin was confirmed visually and evidence. Many were dissatisfied with the preserved cult of Lenin and Bolshevism, the Stalinists sighed around Stalin, but in general - the majority turned out to be ready to accept the regime, which, although peculiarly, unilaterally, but still opened the country of Europe and, moreover, made the USSR, if not an economic, undisputed cultural leader of progressive Europe.

In general, by mid -1995, the main difficulties seemed to be behind and the order was restored, but another danger was brewing - in the Russian Orthodox Church, it seemed, a split began to break up. State security began to record among church Orthodox signs of acute discontent with a new situation ...

The PC has long been quite wary of Gorbachev’s transformations. On the one hand, it was Gorbachev who actually returned the Church to the public status, allowing solemnly to celebrate the 1000th anniversary of the Baptism of Rus' in 1988, on the other hand, Gorbachev himself was neither the Orthodox, nor at all a believing Christian, and many people's figures, not to mention ordinary believers, clearly did not like the demonstrative and declared pluralism of his religious politics many times.

The Russian Orthodox Church was granted high status in the USSR, in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, it clearly rose over other faiths, all the creeps of Ukrainian identities were immediately suppressed to the split, but the Gorbachev leadership clearly did not show much effort to prevent Catholic missionary activity in the Orthodox territories. The appeal to Catholicism acquired a massive character; at least seven new churches arose on the territory of one Moscow. The fashion for contacting Catholicism seized the tops of the cultural and even partly the political elite. They suspected that the mayor of Moscow Leonid Zaikov and the Minister of Education Yuri Afanasyev were suspected of Catholicism. In the same way, the country's leadership did nothing in relation to Protestan denominations, which also received violent distribution in the USSR, although not as powerful as Catholics.

So, at first among the lower clergy, primarily black, and then among individual hierarchs, fermentation begins - the rejection of everything that the Gorbachev perestroika brought with him. The role of Archimandrite Fotia was played by Hieromonk Simeon, who acted with the sharp brochure " The latest pluralism as Christian heresy ." In this book, he traced the rudiments of pluralistic ideology - in the Freemasonry of the 17th century, which spread in Russia in the early years of the reign of Alexander Blessed and then determined the entire trajectory of the development of secular education - up to the errors of today.

Moreover, the book never mentioned the name of any of the leaders of the Soviet state - everyone appreciated the release of the book of Hieromonk Simeon as a lunge against the existing system. The Pskov -Pechersky Monastery becomes a kind of place of ideological pilgrimage of those believers of the Orthodox who sees in this cross of Marxism with the teachings of Russian religious philosophers the most dangerous heresy, or even - terribly say, the prototype of the future religion of the Antichrist.

It is no coincidence that one of the most popular works of the 1990s among the Orthodox fundamentalists is the Solovyovskaya " Brief Tale of Antichrist ", in the hero of which many believers open very familiar features. The main idea of ​​the fundamentalists is that the cultural revival that is experiencing the USSR, with all this heyday of arts and sciences under the auspices, although a plurasm, but that remained no less godless Marxism has no excuse from a religious point of view. Why truly believers even speaking even to know about other, obviously false religious teachings, all the more to devote themselves to their study. And science itself is needed only and exclusively to satisfy worldly needs, to the matter of salvation of the soul at best indifferent. The benefit of the blessing would maintain and strengthen the Orthodox kingdom, and here, instead of the Orthodox kingdom, we have some kind of heretical pluralistic state with Marx and Berdyaev as the main ideologists.

Interestingly, the opponents of Gorbachev from among the leaders of the KGB of the democratic movement support the more dangerous forms of the Orthodox rebellion. This strange alliance is justified by slogans: they say, Orthodox fundamentalism is true democracy, and genuine liberalism is inconceivable without a clear religious certainty. There is even a certain semi -legal movement " Democratic Assembly ", led by chess player Harry Kasparov, into which representatives of orthodox circles, former Orthodox dissidents such as Viktor Aksyuchitsa, and some leaders of the democrats enter. The Democratic Assembly issues an appeal to Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who still lives in Vermont, but at the end of 1995 expresses a desire to return to the USSR. Many oppositionists hope that Solzhenitsyn will, formally heads the “demassionate”, become a real unifier of the Orthodox fundamentalists and democrats. Under Solzhenitsyn, a place in the presidium of the Democratic Assembly is even reserved. The Nobel Laureate himself still keeps intense silence.

Meanwhile, the authorities, realizing that in the person of Orthodox fundamentalism, she encountered a serious opponent, tries to organize a kind of ideological counter -propaganda, mobilizing, including scientific environment. In particular, certain efforts are made in the field of the history of Russian philosophy. Historians of Russian philosophy should refute many harmful myths that are common among believers and confirm that the movement towards the progressive imperial Europeanism and religious tolerance is fully consistent with the Orthodox creed.

So, in December 1995, associate professor of the Department of History of Russian Philosophy and a specialist in the late work of Vl. Соловьева Вадим Станиславский , уже прославившийся своим неортодоксальным взглядом на происхождение и идейный смысл "Краткой повести об Антихристе", был вызван в партком Московского государственного университета для одного важного и строго секретного разговора...

Источник: http://magic-garlic.livejournal.com/