Oleg Belyakov. Reconciliation with Consent

Reconciliation with Consent
Shall we celebrate?

Oleg Belyakov

Publication date: November 4, 2000

...Come everyone and watch how Yermolai Lopakhin takes an ax to the cherry orchard and how the trees fall to the ground! We will set up dachas, and our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will see a new life here... Music, play!

Hereinafter: A.P. Chekhov, “The Cherry Orchard”

It is not the first year that the most politicized holiday of the recent Soviet past, with its calendar phenomenon alone, has provoked extremely contradictory responses in the minds and minds . An attempt to legitimize it in the form of a kind of Day of Reconciliation and Harmony, instead of the tasks indicated by this name, in fact seems to emphasize that in the remaining 364 (this year - 365) days there was no sign of reconciliation or harmony in society. But, if you think about it, this could serve as the main slogan of the moment. The people of Russia expressed their will and right to reconciliation and consent by voting for a new president and giving birth to a certain “Putin phenomenon.” The phenomenon is mysterious only for those who have not lived in Russia in recent years or have seen it only through the window of a company foreign car and through a TV box with one “independent” button.

I would even say - not Reconciliation and Consent, but the reconciliation of everyone, including right-left extremists, with consent , with the idea of ​​​​its urgent need in our society. About the inevitability of consent under the fear of the destruction of Russian statehood, the degeneration of the nation, which, in turn, will make it pointless to talk about the rights of each individual individually.

Someone needs to find the strength to accept on faith (if the “boiling indignant mind” does not allow one to comprehend with sober thinking) that wealth is not always a symbol and consequence of vice and crime, but often the result of more skilled and productive work. Just like others, it would probably be worth coming to terms with the fact that the struggle for human rights until the complete destruction of the foundations of the state and national identity can be more harmful than censorship of sex and swearing on the air; that the victims of the unbridledness of bandits and hooligans are no better off than the victims of totalitarianism.

Firs:

Before the misfortune, there was the same thing: the owl was screaming, and the samovar was humming uncontrollably.

Gaev: Before what misfortune?

Firs: Before the will.

Consent is very often contrasted with the thesis about the impossibility of fraternization between a political prisoner and an overseer and an informer. One can and should understand the feelings experienced by those who came to the Solovetsky Stone on Lubyanka, looking at the famous building next door and at the “old regime” people with red banners gathered nearby. Only they need - difficultly, through the pain of the past - to accept that tens of millions vote for communists not for the dream of entangling the country with barbed wire, but for a life in which a scientist, a policeman and a student do not envy a criminal. They remember not only the country of the camps (although that too!), but also the fact that the worker most often cared deeply about the local party secretary, about this very building on Lubyanka. Otherwise, this whole dispute - “and you imprisoned and shot so many!”, “and you ruined and killed so many!” - will be a creeping creature to keep us motionless in historical timelessness. And such a situation is beneficial only to eternal revolutionaries and those who suffer from dissident priapism, and professional fishermen in troubled waters.

As Gogol once wonderfully said , “... it happens ... in such a way that at the same time one acts completely in the European spirit, and the other tries to strive decisively in the ancient Russian spirit, strengthening all the previous orders, opposite to those that his brother is plotting... And since both opinions, despite all their harshness, have not finally decided on everything, then... all sorts of scoundrels take advantage of this. And the rogue now has the opportunity, under the guise of a Slavicist or a Europeanist, depending on what The boss wants to get a profitable position and perform tricks on it as both a champion of antiquity and a champion of novelty . "

Another question is whether a bright future must necessarily be communist, or rather, organized according to the Soviet model? The answer, again, was suggested by the elections: we have a chance to be reborn and preserve our identity without recreating the monument to the dictatorship of the proletariat on one separate part of the land. But without degenerating into a nation that is always catching up with the “golden billion”, without turning into politically correct “common people”, a society of consumption of everything and everyone, where the stigma of a “loser” can distort life worse than the loss of a party card in that very dictatorship.

Nowadays people often relish the seemingly witty idea that the Kremlin “threw” into society a discussion about the anthem and other state symbols in order to distract from discussion on the “correct” topics (Gusinsky, Berezovsky, Pope). And they are trying to present all these sovereign “little things” as something secondary compared to debugging the mechanism of interaction between economic entities, which alone is the guarantee of our future revival and prosperity (hello to Karl and Friedrich). Only in a country deprived of state attributes that unite along with the national idea itself, you can successfully steal, but not build. Ask the Americans - with their ubiquitous flag.

For ten years they convinced the people - “think about yourself and your family, and the main thing is that your neighbor doesn’t get into your 6 acres,” - and he responded with a KGB colonel for president. Because they went too far. For again they stepped on the same rake - “we are ours, we are new...”. What the hell is holy Rus', they say, when general mobilization... ugh! - globalization is coming! Why are we all clinging to all sorts of “mystical nonsense, such as the inviolability of the sacred borders of the Fatherland ,” and “mossy idols of sovereignty and patriotism” (S.A. Kovalev)!

Yasha:

Lyubov Andreevna! ... If you go to Paris again, then take me with you... What can I say, you see for yourself, the country is uneducated, the people are immoral, and, moreover, boredom, the food in the kitchen is ugly, and here this Firs is walking around, muttering various inappropriate things words.

Often, the reason for this is very banal: annoyed that the people will not give up their stupid prejudices, will not grow to the universal nirvana, our “progressors” simply consider the people to be unreasonable children, incapable of realizing what is really best for them.

Yasha:

The common people came to say goodbye. I am of this opinion, Ermolai Alekseich: the people are kind, but they understand little.

As they used to say during the first attempt to internationalize our country: “To the arrogant politicians of liberalism and tamed socialism, everything that happens among the masses usually seems to be an instinctive process, just as if it were an anthill or a beehive” ( L. Trotsky ). To consider the people as a kind of constructive force and bearer of traditions - an integral component of any nation - would mean for them to admit the anti-national nature of their ideas, which is still risky. For the people’s club will, perhaps, be more dangerous than the notorious state club that Putin boasted to the French (however, they have also been aware of the people’s club since 1812).

The unpopularity of liberal extremist ideas is not at all connected with the desire of our long-suffering population to reject the freedoms and rights they have won. If you simply show basic respect for the people and recognize their right to rank values ​​according to their degree of significance, then it will be obvious that this is exactly what they are doing now. When he desperately needed foreign travel and the truth about prostitution, he supported dissidents yearning for mass support. But having received what he was looking for, he reminded that this is not an end in itself, which greatly disappointed the fighters for global happiness.

In fact, over the past 10-15 years, our country has lived in concentrated form the same thing as over the previous 70. Including the initial euphoria from the freedoms that suddenly fell on our heads. Only, as often happens with great ideas and plans, they collapse as their carriers degrade. As G.A. Yavlinsky rightly noted , “although in certain circles it is customary to speak of this period as the era of “democratic romanticism,” the collapse of illusions among the majority of “romantics in power,” according to a strange pattern, was almost always accompanied by their acquisition of very real fortunes . You will agree that it is unreasonable to complain about the unpopularity of liberal romanticism.

Lopakhin: I teach you every day... Both the cherry orchard and the land must be rented out for dachas, this must be done now, as quickly as possible - the auction is just around the corner! Understand! Once you finally decide to have dachas, they will give you as much money as you want, and then you are saved.

Lyubov Andreevna: Dachas and summer residents - it’s so vulgar, forgive me.

They do not have the opportunity to complain about the lack of opportunity to realize their ideas. The argument that there was a lack of executive discipline and local organizers, in view of the current attacks on Putin for trying to establish the same thing, looks simply untenable. P.N. Wrangel wrote very similarly about the Provisional Government : “Those who yesterday accused the old government of weakness, arbitrariness and inability to cope with the devastation, today, having become in power, they themselves were unable to lead the country. The Manilovs or Khlestakovs, they are further They were unable to speak beautiful and sonorous words and, by the inevitable course of events, had to cede power to more effective forces ."

It seems that this process is happening before our eyes even now. The authorities have “more effective forces”, only now, in my opinion, it’s up to society. Having allocated one day a year for Reconciliation and Harmony, this same society spends the rest of the time in continuous squabbles, fraught with both the loss of statehood and the cultivation of a new dictator. There is an eternal debate about whose scenario of happiness is more realistic and realized faster. Maybe we really tend to stomp on the same rake until the teeth become bent? Or will everything work out, there will be reconciliation and agreement, without any effort on our part?

Gaev

(cheerfully): Actually, everything is fine now. Before the sale of the cherry orchard, we were all worried, suffering, and then, when the issue was resolved finally, irrevocably, everyone calmed down, even cheered up... Instead of an afterword

“Last year, funeral services were the only type of household services in Russia that demonstrated enviable growth. ... Funeral services are generally a stable market: everyone uses them, regardless of income level” (Vedomosti, “Companies and Markets” supplement, 10/27 .2000).