Monday Review of Russian weeklies (25.10

Monday - Monday
Review of Russian weeklies (25.10 - 1.11.99)
Andrei Madison

Publication date: November 1, 1999

The Last Great Epoch

The art of deception is to
first to deceive, and then not to deceive.
Seventh Chinese Stratagem

If war is a continuation of politics by other means, then a dirty war is a continuation of dirty politics by the same means.

In the history of the twentieth century, there were several events-phenomena that were given the epithet “great”: the Great October Revolution, the Great Depression, the Great Patriotic War, the Great Refusal (what gave birth to the turning point of the sixties). By analogy with them, and at the same time to somehow mark the “end of the century,” its last decade could be called the era of the Great Deception.

The “greatness” of this deception lies in the fact that democracy, freedom of speech, and freedom of the press, as it suddenly turned out, have an extremely indirect relationship both with the ability to deceive and with the ability to be deceived. That existence, no matter how much it tries to pretend to be ontology, still remains that way - and nothing else.

Just one example - in the “topic” (although there are plenty of them besides it). In the forty-second mid-October issue of Itogi, Galina Kovalskaya , a regular contributor to the weekly, published an article “Self-censorship,” where she complains that the current war in the North Caucasus, unlike the previous one, does not arouse the desire of either journalists or society be objective in relation to Chechnya and Chechens. That, they say, now the main newsmakers have become not real events, but generals who interpret them in their own way, to whom reporters “look into the mouth and eat obvious absurdities with pleasure.”

However, it turns out that there were other times - and here you will need some quotation space to understand exactly what they were and why they were: “In 1994 - 1996, perhaps only one TV channel sympathized with the military actions in Chechnya - ORT, whose owner was very close to the then presidential entourage. But NTV, with its vivid reports... showing the horrors and senselessness of that war, it was then that it gained the reputation of the most professional and truly independent television channel."

Let's discard the kicking "hoof" of this passage - about ORT and its owner (the game " Berezovsky must be destroyed by Gusinsky " - and vice versa - can only be of interest to the captains themselves and their teams). Let us turn to “glory,” which, by the way, has been in the Russian consciousness since ancient times and inextricably linked with honor.

Yes, the NTV channel “showed”, yes, “horrors and senselessness.” But that doesn't make sense at all . He began showing it a little later, when the “Vote or Lose” campaign started, where of Kowalska’s absolutely nothing remained declared “independence.” However, it naturally did not exist before. Because to show separately “meaning” and separately “meaninglessness” is precisely deception (always excluding “art”, which is selfish and dependent on “interest” at its core). They can earn “fame”, but they won’t gain honor.

In his book “Violence against the Crowd,” published in the late thirties, Russian emigrant Sergei Chakhotin wrote that Western-style propaganda was based on Freud’s psychoanalysis , and Soviet-style propaganda on Pavlov’s reflexology . Today we do not have a totalitarian Soviet Union, but a free Russia. Accordingly, free propaganda. And now the main thing, when dealing with it, is to approach the matter creatively, because without this, what kind of sublimation is there?

War to <...> the end

In its latest, 43rd issue, Itogi , still intriguing against the war in Chechnya, chose refugees (or, according to the official classification, “displaced persons”) as an object of compassion, this time. The number of which, according to the broadcast of Echo of Moscow , reached 190 thousand people by the weekend. And in relation to whom (as well as to all forced migrants and repatriates in general to Russia, except for individual, tactically advantageous ones - see about this at least “Russians are running” in Komsomolskaya Pravda of October 20, 1999) the authorities demonstrate obvious disdain.

In reports from the fields of the anti-terrorist operation, the electorate (since it and only it is the object of their application) is treated to messages about “suppressed points”, “cleared villages” and numerous killed either “militants” or, without equivocation, “bandits”. There is no one else in those parts. They, others, in a strange way and in tens of thousands are found only in Ingushetia, where, again, they turn out to be of interest only to the Ingush. Although, it would seem, it is they, the “deviators,” who are the contingent that the federal authorities should count on to rely on after.

"After" what? According to the official version, after Chechnya is cleared of terrorist gangs (by the way, Chechen officialdom responds to this with “Russian criminal terrorist formations”, see “Power” , # 42, an even more elaborate range of definitions at http://www. kavkaz.org ). It is argued that so far everything for this is being done competently, with a minimum of casualties among the federal troops, and with a maximum of those among the militants. Rosinformtsentr rejects any third-party reports about women and children killed by bombs as unreliable and provocative, including Saturday’s October 30 report that two of its employees were killed by a missile fired from a Russian plane at a car with International Red Cross markings. another dozen or two people.

If Rosinformtsentr is an openly propaganda organization (and what else?), all this should be understood to mean that the population of Chechnya is almost entirely registered as militants. And that the dark beginning of the war was nothing more than a prologue to its even darker continuation. And that the scorched earth tactics chosen by the feds is not intended to make the secret obvious, that is, to identify and approximately punish kidnappers and organizers of terrorist attacks, but, on the contrary, to hide the ends in the water.

Since there are at least two such ends, and not one (“victory”), the authorities are secretly nervous, and in reality they are dodging, periodically falling into aggression towards dissidents - which, with some success, can continue as long as the war is economically and physically (with corpses) will not detonate in indigenous Russia. And then you will have to go for broke - either extreme cruelty in Chechnya, or dictatorship in Russia, or both.

To be a man

"Adequate-a-t!"
P. Weil and A. Genis

They say that a brilliant author needs a congenial reader (and vice versa). Judging by the way Nezavisimaya Gazeta comments (dated October 30, 1999) on the results of its traditional survey among experts on the most influential politician, Russia has finally found such an author: “Putin’s personal qualities are completely adequate to the situation,” he is a champion. And since the first place among the experts in this case coincides with the first place among the people, such a conclusion, apparently, should seem especially justified to its authors.

Theoretically, if you don’t play around (in the spirit of “the people and the party are united”), this is a good sign. Consolidation. True, it is only thanks to the specter of a common danger (G. Zyuganov tirelessly talks about such consolidation as a generic feature of the Russian national character on the pages of “Soviet Russia” (dated October 28, 1999). It turns out that patriotism and socialism are one and the same thing, and dissected Lenin and dissected Orthodoxy are twin brothers. Complete ideological insanity). For without elementary agreement on elementary issues, elementary things cannot be done.

And everything would be fine if everything was clear about the danger. Like the Great Patriotic War, which, following Putin, some publicists liked to refer to (though in time immediately after other publicists, who, on the contrary, understood something completely different - that two “evil empires” clashed there: an old speculation dating back to to “Atlantis and Europe” by Merezhkovsky, which the publicists, of course, did not read - hence the liquid pathos of the neophytes).

Since Chechnya is in no way Greater Germany, the analogy is lame and is not suitable as a propaganda tool for long-term use (that is why they are trying to connect everything possible to it, for galvanization - from “white tights” to Bin Laden). Typologically, the situation is much closer to what Gaius Julius Caesar once did in Gaul, and to what subsequently came out of this (republic) (empire).

However, the “appointee” Putin also does not in any way resemble the “self-made man” Caesar. If different opinions regarding “victory” (not by skill, but by numbers) are still quite acceptable, then we will definitely never receive “Notes on the Chechen War” from this person. In my opinion, the maximum increase in his rating will accurately (with an acceptable error) fix the quantitative composition of ochlos in Russia. And the figurative equivalent of the focus of the constantly changing love of this contingent, again, in my opinion, will be none other than Hoffmann’s little Tsakhes - with all the ensuing connotations.

In the West, Putin has no claque - Russian exploits in Chechnya do not particularly admire anyone there (including because they prefer to admire their own exploits). But the attempt of the Americans and others to come out, like lambs, with a condemnation of the bad behavior of the Russians - after the conviviality during the first Chechen campaign and after Kosovo with Serbia - really deserves the schadenfreude that the editorial “It is useless to put pressure on Russia” in Nezavisimaya Gazeta breathes. (from 10.30.99). “I don’t believe it,” any sighted person, and even one who strongly sympathizes with the condemnation, will say in response to their statements and harassment.

However, a sighted person himself does not necessarily have to get involved in this quarrel worthy of its participants and the goals they pursue. It will be enough if he takes a close look at what is happening. And he will see that it is nothing more than a bad copy of “The Extermination of Tyrants” by Vladimir Nabokov.

There, a certain little man, long jealous of his unwitting relative-dictator and cherishing plans to kill him, comes to get rid of him by committing suicide himself. Here Russia, jealous of the United States and having been foolish in trying to compete with it in Yugoslavia, decided to “revenge” by starting a war at home - in Chechnya. “Don’t drink from the well - you’ll need to spit,” his uncle, a factory owner and steamship owner (a sort of symbol of a revived Russia), taught young Prishvin. This is what will happen our way. Other analogies - like Gogol's widow - seem inappropriate in connection with the above: she aimed for intrigue, not defeat.