Translated material
It's a shame for the country
The composition itself is interesting, although without any surprises - the public from a list of 500 names chose the most familiar ones, those that are well-known in one way or another... We will not now discuss the question of whether the organizers of the vote cheated (in which they were actively suspected all the time), the selection as a whole is understandable... Well, they could have named Tolstoy instead of Dostoevsky, Nakhimov instead of Suvorov, Lomonosov instead of Mendeleev... The choice of judges, that is, lawyers, is much less clear... Those who will defend the candidacies of their chosen one. ..Okay Nikita Mikhalkov (for Stolypin). He is everywhere, and he is the main guardian of the sovereign's good. From intellectuals - Sergei Kapitsa (for Mendeleev), from writers - for some reason Yuri Kublanovsky. From the Orthodox - Metropolitan Kirill (he is entrusted with calling for votes for Alexander Nevsky)... Governor of the Krasnodar Territory Alexander Tkachev is campaigning for Catherine the Great... From the Communists - Zyuganov (for Lenin)... But the hero of the State Emergency Committee, General Varennikov (for Stalin) why? Is it to discourage the “voters” who vote by text message (hence, mostly young people) from their sinister hero?.. But Ilya Glazunov - to be honest, I don’t even remember who he is going to defend? Viktor Chernomyrdin, Dmitry Rogozin...
The company is very strange...
In general, those sitting at the table, despite the bright studio and modern decorations, seemed to be a collection of shadows, rising from the eternal darkness and appearing to announce their verdict... Especially when Ilya Glazunov began to spew out some kind of incomprehensible words, where everything was mixed up in a heap - - the Russians managed to widely expand the borders of their state to half the world, while waging exclusively defensive wars, lit the torch of true piety from the sacred fire of Byzantium, for which the whole world hates them... He was indignant at the “dark” Kandolisa Rice, who dared to call our great a bandit country... He reported that the Russian people do not want to die for either Clara Zetkin or Engels... “The Russian people want to die for their Motherland!” - the famous artist called out in ecstasy.
Against this background, all discussions about the need for the people to symbolize national greatness - a bright image of either a warrior or a diplomat, but certainly a collector of Russian lands - acquired a special vector. There was a whiff of something forgotten and ominous, and the obvious preference for patriotic and pathetic rhetoric over reasonable arguments eventually became truly disturbing. What was happening was least reminiscent of a game, a quiz, a show; there were no witty ideas, elegant formulations, much less jokes... Animal seriousness and at the same time some kind of apprehension was felt in the statements of the discussion participants.
But you know what? By the end of the program, when most of the masters had already spoken, repeating the same thing three times and completely confusing the question of why the people should give their votes to the medieval prince canonized under Ivan the Terrible and revived before the war by Joseph Stalin, the presenter Alexander Lyubimov, the whole program, passively conveying the word from one sage to another, suddenly turned to two historians sitting in a special place. Well, they say, we have specialists. Let them say it too... That's what they said. The learned lady said that Alexander Nevsky was canonized not at all by the decision of the council during the time of Ivan the Terrible, as everyone believes, but this happened at the moment of his death, for then a miracle happened... What and how, the lady either did not dare to state, or presented, but was cut off - this happens with insignificant information when preparing a program for broadcast. The learned man, terribly apologizing, bowing and embarrassed, tried to somehow convey to the respectable public that since it just so happened and he is a historian, he cannot help but notice that Prince Alexander Nevsky, of course, existed, but we don’t really know Who exactly he was, very little information has been preserved, and what they tell about him is a golden legend, this is, they say, popular opinion, and it is of course, but here he is as a historian... (I am still retelling this very coherently. ) But what exactly he, as a historian, knew about Nevsky and his exploits, we, the TV viewers, never found out - either he could not formulate, or again, formulations that did not fully serve the greatness of Russia were removed from the air. ..
And this humiliation of scientists, who consider their own expert position to be flawed, inferior to the opinion of the mythical people and the big people gathered in the studio, turned out to be the most powerful impression from the program. What kind of contempt for knowledge, for science, for fact must one have in order to present them so formally, stupidly and servilely in this show, which must have some purpose other than the unreasonable and dangerous fueling of the country’s confidence in its own greatness, not entirely it is clear what is expressed. Apparently, the fact is that we are simply the best, meek, strong, mighty, the kindest and fairest, in the eternal ring of enemies we continuously rise from our knees in a low-start position and, with our heads down, look back between our legs in search of the abandoned horizon.. .
Why does a completely ordinary educational show with a historical slant, taken from foreign television practice, on our state channel inevitably produce something pompous, thunderous, meaningless and terrifying? Why do we always assemble a machine gun from any set of parts?