The gymnasts are back in action

family contract

Nikita Mikhalkov, a patriot, director and entrepreneur, visited President Putin on Friday and left completely inspired. The director said that, in particular, he talked with the president about the anthem, which had previously been discussed at a meeting of the Presidium of the State Council, because what else can you order a body that is not designated in any laws or constitutions to do, if not issues of emergency and generally significant order. In addition, the interaction of federal bodies with the regions, the formation of a vertical chain of command and at the same time the fair distribution of duties and responsibilities between levels of government, as life has undeniably proven, is clearly stalled under the current anthem.

So, after a meeting with Putin, the patriotic director and (as it turned out) pluralist announced without equivocation that the anthem of Russia could be either “God Save the Tsar!” or the Soviet anthem. The director-entrepreneur spoke in the spirit that it doesn’t matter, but his dad can come up with the words. At the same meeting, the savvy patriot pointed out to Putin the need to support domestic cinema by forming a state order for high-quality patriotic film production. - You know, everything is somehow one to one: where there is an anthem, there is a state order. And the Mikhalkovs, it turns out, are ready to take on the family contract: dad writes lyrics for anthems, son is mastering state cinema.

That same evening, the idea of ​​returning to the old anthem began to be intensively promoted by the RTR channel. The fact is that the mention of the old imperial anthem to the music of Lvov by the patriotic director had an etiquette and, so to speak, costume character. The fact is that in previous years the director had repeatedly declared himself an enlightened conservative and monarchist, and therefore a direct call for the return of the Soviet anthem did not quite suit him as a monarchist.

conservatives and archaists

But it seems to suit him as a conservative. The conservative argument was actively exploited in the RTR material. Indeed: the old anthem is our history, and returning to it almost looks like a return to the roots. It has long been noted, however, that one of the reasons for the disastrous absence of genuine conservative traditions in Russia is the lack of distinction between “conservatism” and “archaism.” Unlike conservatives, who advocate continuity and the most careful, smooth modernization, archaists tend to view the previous experience of society as a false and harmful innovation, and therefore tend to decisively abolish the gains of the previous generation in favor of a more distant and utopian interpretation of the past. From this stems a stripe of stripes tending toward evil infinity: some radicals exchange yesterday for tomorrow, others who replace them exchange today for the day before yesterday.

As for the anthem, it is useful, of course, to keep in mind that the old anthem itself was also a completely artificial construct and, on a historical scale, lived a little longer than ours - less than 50 years, while ours is almost 10. This anthem replaced the "Internationale" ", revered as the anthem of the revolutionary republic for the previous 20 years. In turn, the International, of course, replaced the anthem with the music of Lvov, which existed for about 80 years.

Each of these anthems denoted an ideological rethinking of statehood, its new interpretation. Hymn to the words of Zhukovsky “God Save the Tsar!” expressed the conservative-romantic concept of empire (autocracy, Orthodoxy, nationality). The Internationale represented a cosmopolitan revolutionary republic of workers and peasants, a temporary stronghold for the future world revolution. Mikhalkov's anthem - El-Registan - the accomplished transformation of this state into the Stalinist Soviet empire, a communist power. The current anthem denoted a new post-communist statehood and a kind of neutrality in relation to the imperial statehood of the first and the communist imperialism of the third.

do this with us

Elderly, somewhat calloused people from the RTR propaganda report said that the old anthem is simply in their blood, but the new one is not instilled in any way, that the old anthem is our victories, scientific achievements, space exploration. Finally, that they got up with him in the morning.

You can’t argue at all: people who lived under the Soviet anthem for 30-40 years got used to it much more. But it's not just a matter of timing. The fact is that the Soviet state fed its citizens the Stalinist anthem on a completely industrial scale and drilled it into them the way the anthem of a totalitarian state should be drummed into them. The hero of the RTR report, getting up at six in the morning for the factory shift, could not hear anything else, because Soviet radio broadcasts began at 6.00 and ended at 12 at night with the singing of the anthem. And there was no radio "Hit-FM" at all. Like no other.

Stalin's anthem of the USSR is not at all a symbol of the achievements and victories of that era, but a symbol of the state, which reserved the unconditional right to dispose of the achievements, victories and abilities of people, as well as their leisure, tastes and interests. - “And the great Lenin illuminated our path, Stalin raised us to be loyal to the people, He inspired us to work and to heroism.”

Stalin's genius, or - wave to the beat in the march

The Soviet court fable writer Sergei Mikhalkov received the nickname of the hymnist for correcting the words of the old anthem dedicated to the great leader of all times and peoples. When “our father turned out to be not a father, but a bitch.” Before this, for a very long period after Stalin’s death, the anthem existed without words. But this doesn't change much. It is enough to look into the very instructive memoirs of Sergei Mikhalkov about how the anthem was created to understand that it was the poetic structure, directly supervised by Stalin and repeatedly corrected according to his instructions, that was the determining beginning. And feel the Stalinist genius in him. And by the way, the music of Alexander’s “Hymn of the Bolshevik Party” was chosen by him - the Master himself.

In the era of decaying Brezhnev socialism, which was officially called developed for the sake of euphony, the aggressively totalitarian Stalinist concept was muted by Mikhalkov, and the doctrine of the “fraternal family of peoples” living in an atmosphere of self-increasing mutual prosperity and happiness was brought to the fore. Less than two decades have passed since we know what happened to the “family.” But the tireless fable writer is again ready to remake the gutta-percha text, adapting it to modern times, as the honored hymnist put it on TV, or to the current authorities (which, of course, as a professional and expert in his field, he meant).

And indeed, the anthem in this sense is remarkable in its own way. The anthem invented by Stalin with the help of Mikhalkov-El-Registan-Alexandrov is not the anthem of a nation, whose interests lie primarily in a different plane, but the anthem of the state, and therefore any boss and any state lie looks like family in it. Well, it’s as if everything was written for her! And any thesis immediately turns into a state lie. Creative imagination itself suggests options:

"The indestructible union of subjects and the center
Great Rus' united forever
......
We have suffered for a long time under the yoke of freedom,
But Putin came and strengthened the vertical
......
Pavlovsky, Voloshin, Roman Abramovich,
Sergei Ivanov and the other Ivanov -
Putin's party is dear new
leads us to an efficient market."

These words, of course, will have to be changed again after some time. But this does not matter - on the other hand, there will always be a place for the creative intelligentsia in the unified system of builders of a fair market. What a joy for an enlightened conservative: every boss orders you a new anthem. This is our main tradition. The roots are the same. A touchstone of national identity. And other music is not remembered.