Katerina Sokolova. Parallel Worlds

Reading national patriotic newspapers, I never cease to think about what kind of world the reader of this or that publication lives in. It is clear that this is purely a convention; hardly anyone reads only one newspaper and does not watch the news on TV at all.

But still, imagine the authentic world of the reader of Molniya : in this world there are terribly evil enemies, terribly good heroes, terribly honest and irreconcilable youth, there is a place in it for righteous anger and caustic jokes. Imagine the hopeless world of Pravda Russia : there are criminals all around who need to be judged and punished, but it is unknown how to catch them, and until these guys are caught, they only do what they do to good people. The world of the newspaper Tomorrow , similar to a mysterious forest, in which behind every tree lies a terrible danger, over which the Albright owl flies, but somewhere there, on the edge of the forest, stands the house of Baba Palasha, it is hot, and Although there is no gas in the house, Chubais cannot do anything bad to his grandmother. The world of the Limonka reader , who doubts everything, because in the mouthpiece of the NBP, next to sensible analytical articles, there are, for example, statements that Putin is a magician and his every action leads to disaster. “A shovel stuck into the ground in Nizhny Novgorod (ostensibly to commemorate the start of metro construction) caused an explosion in an underground passage in Moscow... The president’s descent into the depths of the sea on a submarine resulted in the sinking of the Kursk nuclear submarine. The flight on a fighter... initiated the real "hell in heaven" on the Ostankino tower" 1 .

However, the democratic press creates worlds no less strange. But they will be discussed below.

The number one topic for national patriotic publications, which is not at all surprising, was the events in Yugoslavia.

Russian observers note that the elections were held at a high organizational level with good voter turnout and were democratic 2 . Indeed, if we compare the descriptions of the work of local election commissions with my personal experience of working in the December elections to the State Duma, the comparison will not be in favor of my native Aspens. Take at least separate ballot boxes for each type of ballot. Or the fact that voters are only allowed into polling stations if there are free voting booths. And they don’t make scandals, but calmly stand in line in front of the station. The only alarming thing is that the election commissions include representatives of various parties. From experience, it seems to me that this makes it much easier to falsify the results.

But the citizens of Yugoslavia had to make a choice under the cannonade of the “electronic guns” of the West, who were campaigning for Kostunica, and under the gunfire of ten US warships conducting joint American-Croatian exercises off the coast of Montenegro 3 . The overwhelming majority of authors in the “undemocratic” press are confident that only the West is to blame for Milosevic’s loss. The United States constantly sponsored the opposition, betting on “NATOslav Kostunica” (an expression of Soviet Russia 4 ). About $77 million was allocated for these purposes 5 . The goals of the West in the Balkans were quite clearly described by Alexander Filippov in Pravda Rossii : “Serbia is the key to the Balkans. And whoever controls the Balkans controls both European and world politics. This is an axiom proven by the entire course of history.” 6 . But what about Türkiye, which controlled everything? Apparently, this is how the author’s geopolitical theory of Helford Mackinder about the “heartland” was transformed: whoever controls Eastern Europe controls the “heartland,” that is, the Eurasian space.

The fate of the Balkans and Eastern Europe, indeed, cannot but concern Russia; too much here depends on it. And the fact that the government’s position turned out to be so weak worries the authors of “undemocratic” newspapers. Their opinions can be divided into two, so to speak, sub-opinions . Some authors believe that control over Eastern Europe should give the West the key to power over all of Eurasia, the main part of which is our country. This means that Russia will soon suffer the fate of the Balkans. Other authors, on the contrary, believe that Russia was the first to fall under Western rule and therefore cannot help its Serb brothers.

Some authors are not inclined to blame only external actors for Milosevic's defeat. Valery Anokhin, who fought as a volunteer in Sarajevo and Kosovo, writes in Tomorrow that the Westernizing orientation of the Serbs is very strong. Many of them worked abroad for several years, and the money they earned in Germany, Italy and France became the basis of their well-being. NATO's intervention in ethnic conflicts on the territory of Yugoslavia greatly shook the position of official Belgrade 7 .

Alexander Prokhanov also believes that Milosevic did not have the will to resist NATO. He gave a piece of the great Yugoslavia to Tito. And now he has surrendered all of Serbia.

In September, problems of the media and information policy of the state in connection with the situation around the shares of ORT and the Media-MOST holding were vividly discussed on the pages of national patriotic publications.

Berezovsky's initiative caused only jokes, in which there is definitely some truth. The “patriot,” called Douche-Charcot, remembered the New Testament parable about a man who divided his property among his slaves 8 . Pravda Rossii wrote about Berezovsky's attempt to clone and the reluctance of potential clones to bear financial responsibility for decisions on ORT 9 . Perhaps the most serious analysis of the situation in his unique manner was offered by Zavtra editor Alexander Prokhanov. By the will of his imagination, Berezovsky “again turned into a little cricket and was transported to the village of Zhestylevo, Dmitrovsky district, to the house of Grandma Palasha, into her warm felt boots, from where he quietly cricketed. Baba Palasha will hear, take Berezovsky out of the felt boots, release him onto the table, where he crawls and eats bread crumbs. Having had enough, the good cricket will begin to tell the old woman the story of his life. How he rode in a six hundred Mercedes and entered the Kremlin without a pass. What beautiful women he had from Yudashkin’s models, and he raced on a snowmobile along Piterskaya, and at "At the turn onto Tverskaya-Yamskaya, Luzhkov himself, in cambric tights and a skullcap, mistook him for the Duke of Edinburgh and blew a kiss. Granny listens for a bit, twirls and with the words “our grave sins” sweeps the talkative cricket into his dark felt boots." 10 .

In this wonderful allusion to Aksenov’s “Moscow Saga,” Prokhanov, firstly, showed that it is not for crickets to play a role in the political life of Russia and that it is time to send the era of oligarchs to the dustbin of history. (So ​​Aksenov once threw the squirrel-Lenin, among others, from the ship of modernity.) And secondly, through this allusion Prokhanov formulated his attitude towards that part of the “creative intelligentsia” that Berezovsky decided to endow with his “talents”. , however, spoke most harshly about her Limonka . According to this publication, “the CIA lackey Aksenov” and the “moronic buffoon Yakubovich” can be classified as the intelligentsia only “in Lenin’s definition” 11 .

The public patriotic public was even more excited by NTV's publication of the so-called “Protocol #6.” Pravda Rossii drew attention to the fact that the head of Media-Gazprom A. Kokh, as Chubais’s man and the conductor of his policies, promised Gusinsky to sell the shares of Media-MOST to foreign businessmen. Viktor Maslinin, a staff political scientist at Pravda Rossii , comes to the conclusion that this is Putin’s position, covering up, as Yeltsin did in his time, the outflow of capital abroad 12 . Tomorrow , on the contrary, sees in “Protocol #6” one of the acts of a large-scale anti-Putin conspiracy. According to the security service The Day, a seminar of oligarchs took place in Basel, at which a plan was developed to overthrow the owner of the Kremlin. The operation should be completed next spring 13 . Berezovsky, Gusinsky, Chubais and others were afraid of the “ghost of the revival of the Great Power” looming on the horizon. The published secret protocol was supposed to discredit Putin, who was allegedly pursuing the policy of Hitler towards the economic elite, who before the war received a lot of money and control from his “oligarchs.” over property in exchange for security and unhindered travel abroad. If a conspiracy against Putin has already taken shape, then he should move on to tough measures to combat the “media tycoons.” “In the total struggle of two irreconcilable principles, national-statist interest and cosmopolitan oligarchy, there can be no compromise, and someone’s terrible end is inevitable,” 14 in the newspaper Zavtra writes Denis Tukmakov . He suggests that Putin begin “information pressure on the enemy,” next to which Dorenko’s campaign against Primakov and Luzhkov “would seem like a child’s prank.” A curious “patriotic” antinomy arises: on the one hand, Maslinin, speaking about the common interests of Putin and Gusinsky, on the other, Tukmakov, asserting their complete irreconcilability.

They are reconciled by the voice of common opinion: as soon as the media empires of Gusinsky and Berezovsky collapse, a television channel will immediately arise, “defending the interests of real Russian patriots.” Prokhanov claims that on this channel we will see another country - the country that we love and miss. This is exactly the kind of channel the government should create. The first step towards this, according to the editor of Tomorrow , was the Information Security Doctrine 15 . And Molniya , who has been collecting money for national, Soviet television for a long time, joked evilly about this: “Doctrine of information security,” point 1 - burn the TV tower (done)" 16 .

After the sinking of the Kursk nuclear submarine, materials about the state of the army and navy constantly appear on the pages of the national patriotic press. Interest in this topic was fueled by the statement of Defense Minister Sergeev about the upcoming reduction of the Armed Forces by 340 thousand people. It is expected that such a step will help support the army at the expense of the country's meager budget.

In the meantime, patriotic media are constantly reporting that in some units they are switching to two meals a day, officers wear only field uniforms because they only receive a dress uniform once in a lifetime after graduating from college, many officer families live in unheated tents, ships do not sail sea, they are sold for scrap metal... This list can be continued indefinitely. Resolving the army issue should be Putin's main task. This will be a kind of test of patriotism for him.

A very remarkable article in this sense was published by the newspaper Zavtra . Its author, Kavad Rash, considering the historical path of Russia, comes to the conclusion that Russian officers have always led the country out of crisis situations. And it is the FSB that is the successor to the best traditions of Russian officers. The Cheka-GPU-NKVD-KGB has degenerated from a punitive department into “the guardian of the healthy principles of the state.” And in this respect, Putin is a “hereditary “Chekist”: his grandfather was a cook under Lenin in Gorki, and his father became a volunteer in the NKVD extermination squad during the war 17 .

However, not all authors believe in Putin’s patriotism. For example, the reduction in the number of army personnel was perceived far from unequivocally by people's patriotic journalists. Some of them believe that such a reduction will lead to the degradation of the army and Russia will not be able to protect itself from external enemies. Other authors are inclined towards postmodern concepts, according to which “wars are won not by guns, but by images” and the army, accordingly, should be based on more high-tech technologies.

But no matter which of these opinions the author adheres to, the army still needs funds that can be obtained from the oligarchs. And this is already a question of economic policy. What should it be like? The Chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the International Union of Soviet Officers, E. Kopyshev, for example, knows exactly the answer to this question. He identifies several sources of funds:

"- stopping the outflow of capital abroad; reducing costs for the swollen state apparatus;

- introduction of a complete state monopoly on the production and sale of wine, vodka and tobacco products;

- an end to unprecedented waste, particularly in construction throughout the country;

- restoration of a progressive tax scale and demand from the rich for evading their payment;

- a sharp increase in fees for the use of subsoil;

- establishing the tax base in oil companies at the level of market prices.

And most importantly, the return of the property looted by the elite thieves to its owners - the state and labor collectives" 18 .

And, of course, it doesn’t matter that if the “most important thing” is done, then there will be nowhere to install an effective tax system, it will be impossible to reduce the cost of equipment, and that the construction boom satisfies, albeit an insignificant, but still part of the demand for housing.

Nevertheless, the problems of the army must be solved, otherwise another joke by Molniya will be true : “The future of the army is judo without weapons” 19 .

I would like to dedicate the last story of the review to the editor of the political section of RZh, Andrei Madison.

Don’t be alarmed if you receive a note from Aron Shpitsman from the city of Nizhne-Khazarsk with approximately the following content:

“Having recently arrived in Moscow and heading to a business meeting at Metropol with representatives of the main New York branch of our company, I found myself near the building of the former Moscow City Duma, which the commies brazenly converted under totalitarianism into their so-called “Ilyich Museum.” Among the dubious view of the public, without wiping my glasses in the cold, I accidentally bought a solid-looking newspaper "Duel", seduced by the deceitful, as it later turned out, subtitle "for those who like to think", naively deciding that I would receive valuable instructions on how to conduct upcoming business negotiations" 20 ... and so on.

newspaper It is the Duel that wants to force the “demreds” in Moscow to be more careful about articles against the “red-browns” in their publications. I'd like to think that I'm more respectful of their ideas than they are of mine. After all, judging by the style of this “manual”, the “commies” do not know how and what the democrats write about them. But its readers will also buy the national patriotic press, unless they are seduced by the “false subtitle.”

We live as if in parallel worlds.

There are electronic versions of the newspapers used in the review.

www.duel.ru

http://zavtra.ru

www.api-press.ru

www.kprf.ru

Notes:

1 Aspid. President and magic // Limonka, #152. - S.1.

2 Tomorrow, #40(357). - P.3.

3 Ibid.

4 Trubitsyn A. Farewell of a Slav // Soviet Russia, # 64 (12011). - P.4.

5 Pravda Rossii, #39(270). - P.6.

6 Ibid. C.4.

7 Tomorrow, #40(357). - P.3.

8 Shower-Charcot V. Berezovsky’s talents // Patriot, #39. - P.2.

9 Maslinin V. Shadows in the fog // Pravda Rossii, #37(268). - P.4.

10 Prokhanov A. Khakamada turned Berezovsky into a cricket // Tomorrow, #37. -C.1.

11 Lemon, #152. - S.2.

12 Maslinin V. Shadows in the fog // Pravda Rossii, #37(268). - P.4.

13 Tomorrow, #37. -C.1.

14 Tukmakov D. Muzzle on a plate // Tomorrow, #39(356). - P.4.

15 Prokhanov A. Russian officers - in the announcer of ORT // Tomorrow, #38(355). - C.1.

16 TV debates // Molniya, #20(226). - P.8.

17 Rush K. Officer call // Tomorrow, #41(358). - P.3.

18 Kopyshev E. Army and opposition // Pravda Rossii, #38(269). - P.2.

19 TV debates // Molniya, #18(224). - P.8.

20 Fighters reflect // Duel, #37(180). - S.1.