The future is always someone's

From the editorial office. The Russian Journal publishes the texts of performances at a round table about the future - “Utopia and the authors of the future”, which was held on June 13 as part of the fourth Moscow International Open Book Festival. The round table was organized by the "Russian magazine", "Liberti.ru" and the magazine "Pushkin".

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With your permission, dear gentlemen and lovely ladies, I will not talk about the nation today or, at least, I will be moderately. Still, I have it, sorry, work, I sometimes want to relax. So, we’ll talk really a little about the utopia, about the future, and also that and who is the most future.

First of all, when we are talking about the future, we are talking about time. We draw a certain time model as such. Now I will not develop this topic, although any ideology, in general, is based on a certain idea of ​​time. And in the view in which I am, there is no future at all, it is always someone's. There are those who have a future, and there are many of it, there are those who do not have the future, there are those who exist in a strange future, and so on. The future is a derivative of the subject. The subject is, in fact, the one who has the future. Not a subject is one who has no future, or it is someone else's. Actually, this is the whole difference.

Today's Russia is not a subject at all. We can say that this is a ruin from the rest of the country, we can say that this is a country under the occupation management, that's all, excuse me, the lyrics. Rather, this: this is various kinds of ideologems, but there is a fact: this is the whole thing inside which we are is not a subject. There is no such thing as a country, and, accordingly, there is no all that is connected with it. This, excuse me, is the dead shell in which we live. She has no future.

Who has the future and what has the future? Dear Victor, by and large, listed all the available or at least the groups that claim to be some kind of subjectivity, starting with public activists and ending with fantasy writers. So, it turned out that personally, I apologize, I treat, in my opinion, I can immediately judge all these groups. So, yes, there is a certain truth in the words of Viktor Militarev. Yes, indeed, public activists engaged in politics, not because they are paid by the Kremlin, or small religious associations or science fiction writers, for example. All these are subjects. These are people who think about the future and are somehow involved in it. The problem is this: all these very models of the future, firstly, are quite different, and, secondly, in general, quite unattractive. Because I perfectly understand what the future these very groups give rise to, what they throw forward themselves. So, for now, there is no such future that could be invited to everyone else, to say: come here - none of them have.

Take, for example, our science fiction. Please note that almost the only genre now that radiates at least some positive is the genre of the so-called retroutopia. By the way, a unique thing, in my opinion, has received great recognition in Russia only. This is a genre on the topic: Ah, if in some 37th, 17th or 41st year everything would have gone differently. Absolutely all the utopias, which, for example, now our science fiction writes is retroutopia. For example, a utopia about how good it would be in a different way to conduct a second world war, that if there were no cursed revolution, they would have killed Lenin, how it would be good if ... about all the fantasies end in the 90th year.

For example, I did not read a single novel about what would happen if the State Emergency Committee won, except for gloomy liberal horror stories. I met such a couple. So, the fact of retroutopia as the only positive genre is talking about something. We put all the positive options for the future in the past, and the past that failed, obviously failed.

But still, it is now more or less crystallized, if not utopia, then at least the name of the subject, which the future can be theoretically in general. This is not a class, this is not a group, this is what is called the word "nation". The nation has a future. A nation is what the future has by definition. Another thing is that now, by and large, two projects are competing. One practically held is the destruction of the possibility for Russians to become a nation and the creation of the Russian people, and, on the other hand, the national liberation struggle of Russians and the national revival. Moreover, the second project is not just not ready, it is just starting to formulate, at best. But I think that if there is a future somewhere, then it is here. Otherwise, we will only have to dream of how we would win in 1610. Thank you for your attention.