Simon Kordonsky. "In reality" and "actually"

"In reality" and "actually"
Simon Kordonsky

Publication date: December 4, 2000

The new president of Russia, having come to power, found himself, in his own words, in a situation where “no matter what, Chechnya is everywhere,” that is, the number of seemingly insoluble problems is so great that it is even pointless to name them all. Nevertheless, reform began. The authorities began to act as if the country was just waiting to be changed. And in a sense, the authorities are right; the people, again, like 15 years ago, are waiting for changes, without knowing what.

Together with Yeltsin, 10 years of life and the accompanying state desire to “implement into life” the institutions and relationships that somewhere and once showed their effectiveness went into the past. As we know, the introduction of democracy, market and progress did not work out very well. When trying to transplant them into their native soil, these elements of an ideal social order were transformed into something indigestible. Instead of freedom we got "lawlessness", instead of a free press - NTV and newspaper and magazine "jeans", instead of elections - the shadow nomenklatura of the party in power, instead of the market - administrative trade, instead of a presidential republic - a form of autocracy, limited by the inertia of the still Soviet state system and the world " public opinion."

And again - for the umpteenth time - smart and subtle people, directly or indirectly involved in power, are conducting discussions about reform, which ultimately boil down to discussing how, in what way and from where to transplant institutions and relations in Russia that seem to them promising. They are also discussing how to return to the relations that, as it seems to the debaters, once existed in the Russian Empire or the USSR. In addition, reform-minded people discuss the reasons why these attempts have failed in the past, and condemn those who are personally to blame for this - in their opinion. The list of culprits is generally known and is constantly growing.

Reformers are likely to learn about what is happening in the country from the media. What happens most often does not suit them at all. Ultimately, reformers would probably like TV news and analysis programs to stop being so scandalous, which would indicate that peace and order, as well as economic prosperity, have arrived. Of course, they realize that the country is not at all like its television image, but they are not at all eager to find out more. Indeed, why study something that will inevitably change as a result of their reforms.

Social ontology in our country has a strange property: its main components seem to exist, but only if you don’t really think about the sense in which they exist. It is well known that “in reality everything is not as it really is.” In “reality,” for example, there are cities in Russia, but “in reality” there are no cities in Russia, but there are settlements that have grown to the size of megalopolises (1). But if there are no cities, then there should be no villages. And “in fact” there is no village in the canonical sense in Russia; it disappeared during collectivization and the construction of the collective and state farm form of ownership (2).

“In reality” there is a “society”, but “in reality” there is no society in Russia in the traditional sociological sense - as a system of relations that gives rise to the state and is organically connected with it. Rather, what is called society is generated by what is called the state, and is not the society that is described in the works of the classics of sociology.

“In reality” the state and citizens exist. But “in reality” in Russia there is no state in the traditional sense of this concept, there are no citizens, not to mention civil society. And only a completely drunken intellectual now does not talk about the “really” absence of civil society.

Liberal economists believe that “in reality” in our country there is no economy as an activity and a market as an institution, and illiberal economists believe that “in reality” there should be no market and that the “real” economy lies in the planning and management of material and financial flows.

“In reality” there is a private business in the country, but “in reality” this business is mainly connected with the state budget and other state assets, does not produce surplus value, lives on the state and is completely dependent on it.

“In reality,” the media, on behalf of the people, criticize the authorities. But “in reality” we don’t have what is called (abroad) the media, but we have something else, which several years ago I called the media of what is considered the government.

“In reality” there is power in the country, that is, what the media criticizes. But “in reality” power does not have the necessary attributes: it is not the power of authority, not the power of money, not the power of ideas, not the power of force, not the power of law or custom. “In fact” this is some kind of different power, not the kind that foreign political scientists describe in their works.

“In reality” there are people on whose behalf publicists speak. But “in reality” there are no people, but there are 150 million people speaking the same language and living in different regions of a large country. Apparently, television makes them the people, and if we consider “in reality” the opposition between people and power, it turns out that power belongs to TV and wired radio broadcasting. “In reality,” the television and radio are the source of power and its use at the same time. And power is only to the extent that it controls this segment of the information space. But “in reality” everything is far from so simple.

The structure of the Russian language does not seem to be able to reflect the relationship between “in reality” and “in reality”. And now I am painfully making my way through these ambiguities, uncertainties, inaccuracies, and I cannot say that I have achieved much. People live simultaneously both “in reality” and “in reality”, they talk about one thing, do another, think about a third, and these actions and thoughts are most often inexpressible in words. Well, perhaps in exceptional cases and through antonyms: if “in reality” a fight against crime is announced, then “in reality” innocent people will be imprisoned; if economic reform is announced, it means they are going to rob again; if elections mean they change one asshole for another; if the fight is for justice, then they will shoot; etc.

The ontological unity and logical incompatibility of “reality” and “in fact” gives rise to discomfort when words are not able to fully express either the position of the speaker in the structure of social existence, or his relationship to this existence. This is probably the reason for the painful intensity of political and philosophical discussions, when one debater talks about what is “in reality”, another objects to him - but “in reality” everything is not so.

Duality gives life a peculiar adventurousness, from which some foreigners fall into a stupor, and due to its absence, emigrants suffer from nostalgia. Russians who cannot understand or accept this ontological duality of Russian existence and act as if it does not exist (I will call them realists) are most often considered fools or scoundrels, or hidden foreigners, agents. The latest example of this from “reality”: the “young reformers” who “in fact” became for some symbols of mental or moral inadequacy, and for others - sophisticated enemy sabotage.

Realists are not inclined to pay attention to what is and is happening “in reality.” They are confident that Russia - with some specifics - is the same country as others. That it has a state, there is a society, there is an economy and a people who strive for democracy. And they act as if all these realities exist. Their “reality” does exist, but rather as a result of the activities and expectations of realists. But “in fact” this “reality” is only a form of adaptation of what “really” is to the activity of realists.

The imported conceptual grids that realists throw over our lives snatch out fragments in it that are somewhat similar to traditional and well-known socio-economic institutions - the state and society, the city and the village, business and the economy, but these grids in principle are unable to grasp what “really” is. What “really” exists cannot, in principle, be described in terms of theories created to describe “reality.” Therefore, “the real” seems to realists to be non-existent, insignificant, and without the right to exist, while “reality” is self-evident, well-known and self-sufficient, although unattainable in our conditions due to the circumstances involved.

Concepts borrowed from traditional social sciences form the “reality” of words and institutions in which only speaking is possible. “Parliament” and “cabinet of ministers”, “president” and “government”, “democracy”, “authoritarianism”, “regions” and “prosecutor’s office”, “constitution”, “politics” and “impeachment” - all these are borrowed words, denoting something that exists only “in reality”. The utterance of these words in the context of the resignations and appointments of federal officials constitutes the “real” content of public activity. But “in reality” everything is different, different, but there are no words to describe what is.

“Reality” in Russian life is something that can be spoken about officially, and spoken of as a potential opportunity and as a goal of activity: strengthening the state, developing civil society and the individual, establishing democracy - these are all possible realities.

“In fact” there is another language, Russian itself - an everyday language, only in which conversations about the essence of the matter are possible. The need to linguistically exist simultaneously in both normative “reality” and “in reality” is burdensome for unaccustomed people, and many people (for example, some former prime ministers) have not been able to fully master the art of transition from language “in reality” to language “in reality.” in fact," and vice versa.

Multi-layeredness creates a problem of the effectiveness of language as a social action, since the meaning of spoken words (social actions “in reality”) weakly correlates with the meaning of actions “in reality,” which is understandable without words. This intractability became one of the foundations for the revival of the philosophy of “Russian specificity”, “Russian national character”, “Russia’s special path”. The impossibility of unambiguously answering the question “what really exists?” in this philosophy it is interpreted outside of social empiricism, outside of the ontological unity of “reality” and “in fact” and their undoubted duality and ambiguity.

The relationship between “reality” and “actually” significantly limits the very possibility of reform. After all, reform is carried out “in reality”, but “in reality” there is no reform, but there is something else, not expressed, not spoken and inexpressible in the language of those theories that lie at the basis of the reforms. The state “in reality” will continue reforms, but “in reality” people will continue to consider the reforms to be another Moscow scam.

I am very little interested in what exists “in reality” and what is described in completely - seemingly - understandable terms, such as state and society, people and power, politics and public opinion. But I am very interested in what “really” is. I believe that “in fact” can and should be described no less clearly than “reality” is described, but this requires completely different concepts than those used to describe “reality”.

Distributed lifestyle as a substitute for society

I believe that “in reality” there is a distributed way of life and an administrative market, the relationship between which can be likened to the relationship between state and society “in reality”.

First, about the distributed lifestyle. In Russia there are now more than 50 million households and almost 40 million summer cottages and garden plots where people grow potatoes, vegetables, fatten cows, goats and pigs, and keep poultry. This means that almost the entire population maintains private farming, organizing their lives and providing themselves with food for the winter.

The life of most Russian families is divided between a city apartment, a dacha, a cellar, a barn and a garage. Vladimir Vagin, who first drew attention to this structure of everyday life, called it “aggregate housing.” In general, aggregate housing is a relatively closed structure of materialized connections, non-economic in nature, existing apart from the state, in “reality,” and interacting not with the state, but with the administrative market.

Most often, a family in an ordinary city has a city apartment, a dacha house with a plot of land in the suburbs or village, a bathhouse, a poultry house (pigpen, cowshed), a cellar (barn) in the city where food products produced at the dacha are stored, a car ( and a garage), the main function of which is to provide communication between the city apartment and the dacha. The garage can be combined with a cellar (shed). In the village, the functions of a house and a summer cottage are combined, and in addition to a personal plot, there is also mowing, land “for potatoes,” as well as forest and river lands used, it is not clear under what conditions.

Even if a Russian family is wealthy enough not to have a private farm, it still has a dacha with a bathhouse and outbuildings, in the arrangement of which a significant part of the family resources is invested and on which the older and younger generations spend almost all their free time.

The older generation of a multi-generational family works at the dacha throughout the warm season. The middle generation of such a family works in the city in production or in an institution, public or private, and runs its own business. Hired work (and partly entrepreneurship), regardless of how it is paid, is viewed by family members rather as an institution that provides resources for dacha and apartment farming. The undoubted variety of types of aggregate housing is described very poorly. In particular, the works of sociologists of the Novosibirsk Institute of Economics and Organization of Industrial Production describe the rural collective house and the corresponding way of life in Siberia, where the collective farm and state farm “reality” still exists only due to the fact that it remains the resource base of what “really” is ( 3). Urban aggregate housing in the north of Russia is described by V. Vagin.

Collective housing has its own lifestyle, which I call distributed. People live in two or more houses, and the unitary family in many ways exists only “in reality,” while “in reality” the multigenerational type of family, distributed among different dacha houses, but connected into a whole by a distributed way of life, dominates. Time budget studies conducted in the early 90s showed that a significant portion of time for all groups of the population is spent on maintaining total housing.

Russian cities empty out in the summer, and highways on Friday and Sunday evenings are filled with cars traveling to and from their dachas. Around the cities, dacha zones stretch for tens of kilometers, in which almost the entire local population is busy servicing summer residents who work on their plots without straightening their backs. The result of their labor is canned food, potatoes and other vegetables and fruits prepared for the winter (where they grow). These blanks are moved to city cellars and sheds in the fall, and in the spring the containers from the blanks are again transported to the dachas. Winter is preparation for the dacha season, for the garden.

The distinction between city and village with such a way of life loses its sociological meaning, existing “in reality”, cities and villages “really” are not distinguishable - naturally, with extreme restrictions: there are dying villages in which there are no summer residents, and there are cities, such as ZATO , in which the population, due to “real” restrictions, could not, until recently, conduct private farming.

The time of people living a distributed lifestyle is filled to the limit with work: in the city they work their jobs, after which they go to work in their dachas. Rest as an institution does not exist at all; instead of rest there is a change of activity or a country spree - with a bathhouse, vodka, a fight and other entertainment for very tired people. Trips to the resort, tourism and other forms of civilized recreation are allowed by the middle and younger generations of such families, entrusting to older relatives all the worries about the dacha farm during the vacation (4).

This way of life is characteristic of all social groups of post-socialist society. “New Russians,” for example, “having made money,” at first, almost in the same way as all former Soviet people, expanded aggregate housing (buying or building apartments, dachas and cars), turned aggregate housing into a self-sufficient reality, in which - as in fortresses - you can survive any reform efforts of the state. An apartment in the capital (of a country or a federal subject), a country house in its suburbs, a villa in Spain or the Czech Republic, numerous cellars - caches (which are played by offshore banks and companies) where money, jewelry and assets into which privatized raw materials were converted are stored , materials, equipment, results of business partners and everything that was within reach.

Foreign banks and businesses were considered by the “new Russians”, first of all, as places into which the state could not get involved, even if it really wanted to. Transportation of capital and organization of caches in the mid-90s were very pressing problems for many, many families. The distribution of lifestyle in this “category of citizens” was achieved in various exotic ways, such as multiple citizenships and countries where they own real estate.

The distributed way of life consists of many local communities: communities of dacha electric trains, garage-car communities, cellar communities, dacha communities themselves, with their own different and often peculiar norms. This is a social environment very rich in opportunities, in which the basis for social stratification has become such relations as the location of the dacha (Nice, Spain or the South-Western suburb of Moscow, for example), connection to main communications, type of car, type of city apartment, etc.

Those parameters that in “reality” are considered stratum-forming, in a distributed lifestyle “in reality” turn out to be of little significance. This applies to occupation, official income, social status and origin, as well as many other parameters that form the basis of government statistics and management(5).

In “reality” there is no society, political life, opposition, political elite, or media. The decisions of the authorities are of interest to people living a distributed lifestyle only if the decisions affect this lifestyle: prices for transport, energy, vodka and the dollar are heatedly discussed on trains and at country gatherings. At the same time, a significant part of the events occurring “in reality” and presented in what is called the media is interpreted in terms of “in reality” - as the commercial activity of politicians and other newsmakers aimed at expanding their “aggregate housing” and distribution of lifestyle.

Also, politics, reform and other games “in reality” are interesting to people (who “really” live by working in production and on their own plots, stealing little by little, giving and taking bribes and arranging dachas) as the content of a soap opera, one of dozens of shows shown on TV.

Despite their universality, aggregate housing and a distributed lifestyle do not exist “in the reality” of the Russian Federation. They are not in the statistics, not in the studies of political scientists, who record only the so-called “summer decline in political activity” (caused, in particular, by the massive outflow of the population to dachas and work on private farms) and its spring-autumn exacerbations. In sociological research they are present as side phenomena, without becoming the object of direct research.

Since aggregate housing and a distributed lifestyle do not exist in “reality,” the state can only influence individual elements of them: limit the running of personal farming, fight violations of labor discipline, theft in production, corruption, increase energy prices, introduce restrictions for trading in the products of personal subsidiary plots, etc. A person can be imprisoned, property can be confiscated, but no matter what the state does, some basic elements of collective housing still remain outside its jurisdiction, which is the ultimate goal of a distributed lifestyle.

Economic criteria do not apply to distributed lifestyles and aggregate housing simply because economics is from “reality”, and “in reality” people need guarantees of survival in their permanent desire to escape from the state, and they are willing to invest their time in providing these guarantees and money, practically regardless of costs. This way of life represents a trial-and-error strategy for the relationship of citizens with the state and the society derived from the state. The effectiveness of this way of life can be considered as social efficiency, as protection from the reform efforts of the state. We can say that at present this efficiency is very high.

I think that collective housing and a distributed lifestyle is a unique form of emigration, that is, an adaptation to the modernizing activity of the state and its desire to subjugate everyday life. The endless modernizing activity of the state, expressed in repression and administrative restrictions on life, forced people to diversify their habitat and “emigrate” to their relatively closed worlds of mansions, apartments, “dachas,” bathhouses, garages, cellars and sheds and activities for their maintenance. The price of such diversification is very high, because the money exported abroad, converted into real estate and other capital, alone is valued at billions of dollars. It is simply impossible to evaluate investments in tens of millions of dachas, along with their infrastructure and maintenance labor.

The content of 10 years of life in post-perestroika Russia can be described as freedom in building aggregate housing and freedom of citizens in distributing their lives into separate “points” - according to the principle of “not keeping your eggs in one basket.” Soviet restrictions on construction, on renting land and operations with it practically disappeared in the early 90s, and villages of cottages and dachas grew up around the cities in a few years. A significant portion of rural houses were purchased by city residents, who invested part of the resources “taken away” from the state during privatization and independent economic activities into the creation of distributed housing and its improvement.

Having distributed their lives between a city apartment and a dacha, people began to have a calmer attitude towards “reality”, that is, towards the state, its institutions and public service. They know that “in reality” the state is no longer dangerous to them, and they can always come to an agreement with those government people who have claims against them - by bargaining, of course. And the government people themselves, who have apartments in the city and dachas in the suburbs, live exactly the same as everyone else, and everything can always be explained to them - but only if the explanation occurs “in reality” and not “in reality” .

Administrative market as a substitute for the state

If the distributed way of life is “in fact” the other side of the society that exists “in reality”, then the state can be compared - “in fact” - with the administrative market (6). We can say that the administrative market gives rise to a distributed way of life - as an environment in which only the survival of people in administrative-market relations is possible, and the distributed way of life reproduces the administrative market as the framework of its own existence.

The administrative market is an unexplicit system of relations between the producing and distributing subjects of the formerly planned economy, which continues to exist after the death of the CPSU, the State Planning Committee and other institutions of Soviet power (7).

Soviet power was transformed “into the reality” of post-perestroika and Yeltsin Russia with its institutions of parliamentarism, presidency, democracy, freedom of speech, and the Soviet administrative market was transformed into the Russian market, where “in reality” there is bargaining between the regions of Russia and its center, between oligarchs and regional barons, between oligarchs and the federal government, between bandits and private entrepreneurs. The essence of the relationship between “reality” and “in fact” has not changed at all over the decade compared to the Soviet period of Russian history.

At the same time, the concepts with which the administrative-market power describes itself are defined only “in reality,” while administrative trade is carried out in a specific language, in which everyday and criminal dialects dominate. Therefore, what happens “really” cannot in principle be described in the language of “reality”. It is well known that even an attempt at description, such as glasnost in the late 80s of the twentieth century, greatly contributed to the transformation of Soviet power into today's Russian “reality.” The gap between the descriptions of what is “in reality” of the state and what is happening “in reality” is now no less than in the time of Brezhnev.

Over the past 10 years, a very rich space of administrative bargaining has been formed in the country, in which any problems of a distributed lifestyle can be solved in one way or another, ranging from social discredit or physical liquidation of an “incompetent” entity and a rollback in the form of a block of shares of an “interesting” enterprise to Institute for solving all problems in the bathhouse.

“In reality” in Russia there is a reform of the state structure and economy, information wars, elections, but “in reality” there is administrative trade between various subjects of political and economic processes. The rules of this trade are well known and form the content of an unexplicit social contract left to Russia as a legacy from the USSR: “We pretend that we work, you pretend that you pay us.”

“In reality,” people work to maintain their collective housing, and pay those on whom they really depend. Painful bargaining with the figures of the administrative market is, to some extent, the essence of social relations. Sometimes these relationships are purely commercial, as in the case with inspectors and other traffic police officers, when in each region well-known stereotypes have developed - so many rubles for speeding, so many rubles for driving without a license, etc. Much more often, this trade is not codified, and in each specific case it is necessary to stipulate the amount of the “tax” on the activity and the form of its payment.

People who live “in reality” are organically incapable of “sharing” with the state, with “reality”. They view the state as a substrate for their “real” life. But these same people quite naturally pay those who for them personify power “in reality” - racketeers or officials acting as racketeers. The state is paid only for what is somehow forced to be presented “in reality” - for a house, land, a car, for what cannot or is difficult to hide. And “taxes” for what “really” are are paid to racketeers - in uniform and without it.

That analogue of the territorial-sectoral organization of life, which replaced the Soviet administrative market “in reality,” turned out to be even less productive than the previous one. The relations between the oligarchs (Russian analogues of industries), the authorities of the constituent entities of the federation (analogues of the regional executive committees of the USSR) and the federal government did not provide the standard procedure for the USSR for the alienation of resources and their “fair” distribution. Over the course of 10 years, all, probably, logical options for consolidating the alienating-distributive mechanism were tried: transfer of powers and property to the regions, strengthening of the oligarchies, strengthening of federal power, up to an attempt to form an analogue of the Politburo from the oligarchs as the highest coordinating body of power after the 1996 presidential elections.

As a result of these struggles, a differentiation of regions was formed according to the degree of autonomy from the federal center (from warring Chechnya, independent Tatarstan and Bashkiria to former Soviet autonomies like the Altai Republic, completely dependent on benefits and subsidies provided by the federal center). In addition, various types of oligarchy have emerged: from Gazprom and RAO UES, trying to adapt the domestic and foreign policies of the state to their corporate goals, to the TV channels ORT and NTV, controlling the semantic-information space and through it the content of federal policy “in reality” ".

The relationship between new industries - oligarchs and regional authorities - is personified in the figures of officials of the presidential administration and government, who “in reality” embodied the presence of oligarchs and regional barons in the administrative market and served as conductors of their interests. Actually, the struggle for functional positions in the apparatus of federal power was the “real” content of federal policy, which in 1996-1999 turned into a sequence of information wars in which competing groups accused each other of theft, relations with organized criminal groups, independence and arbitrariness with criminal intentions.

Reforms and life: between “reality” and “actually”

It is very difficult to find people in Russia who would not live exactly like the majority of the population, who would not distribute their way of life in space. To simultaneously be “in the reality” of the state and live “in reality” is a specific domestic form of social stability. Loss of certainty in at least one aspect of this existence most often leads to social degradation. The fantastic number of homeless people in cities is an example of this.

I think that several more generations of Russians will have to live both in “reality” and “in reality”. This stratification has gone too deep, becoming organic and closed to reflection. Our “reality” cannot exist without “in reality,” and any attempts at reform without understanding the relationships between these sections of life will face the same fate as the liberal reforms of the early 90s.

Many people now live quite well, but complain that they do not live the way they would like, something is getting in the way. The conflict between “reality” and “in fact” is manifested in the fact that private business is hampered by state business, citizens of the state are hampered by state institutions, public figures are hampered by society, politicians are hampered by political parties and organizations. And so on - you can continue ad infinitum. People “really” run their own business and arrange their own living spaces, but “in reality” they struggle with their mirror images and cannot overcome them in any way.

The state's endless attempts to merge "reality" and "in fact" and create conditions for people to deal directly with the state, and not with functionaries of the administrative market, have never been successful. Moreover, they greatly contributed to the development and diversification of the administrative market. And the point is not in officials, but in the structure of life, divided into what is “in reality” of the state structure and what is “in reality”. This division comes at a cost - both to the state and its citizens. On the other hand, thanks to this division, the country still exists, despite the catastrophic state of the “real” economy and the virtual absence of a political system.

In “reality,” economic reforms were taking place, democracy was strengthening, independent media were being formed, there was inflation, financial stabilization, and a humiliating search for external sources of financing for what “really” exists. But “in reality,” people, regardless of rank and title, built collective housing and distributed their way of life in space and time in order to hide more reliably from “reality.”

Attempts to change the content of the social contract, which are now being undertaken by the elected president, have already led to increased social tension. Attempts to separate “reality” from “actually” affect the interests of all social groups and, in principle, the material foundations of a distributed way of life. Narrowing the scope of administrative trade will lead to the fact that it will become impossible to “agree” with officials, and it will be necessary to “resolve issues” “in reality,” which is not in the interests of either officials or ordinary citizens

On the other hand, it is impossible to separate the “reality” of the state structure and life “in reality” by any actions - both from the side of “reality” and from the side “in reality”. These attempts are reminiscent of the desire to find the “other” side of the Mobius surface. Our “really” exists only in our “reality”, and vice versa. Strengthening the state and the formation of a power vertical “in reality” means further diversification of the administrative market “in reality”. The separation of business and power “in reality” means the potential disappearance of both and the emergence in “reality” of what can be called anarchy, etc.

Attempts at reform currently being undertaken by the state “in reality” have not yet been analyzed by its citizens from the point of view of how much these reforms will affect the aggregate housing and distributed lifestyle, what is “in reality”. It can be assumed that the implementation of the reform program - in combination with the release of energy prices and utility reform - will make it economically impossible to maintain aggregate housing and a distributed lifestyle, that is, “reality” will absorb what “really” is. Since this cannot happen by definition, reform in this direction is simply pointless.

The political consequences of the reform - if it continues in a confrontational (relatively "in reality") style - cannot be foreseen, since it will not only affect the material basis for the survival of the overwhelming majority of the country's population, but also what people have been investing in for decades with resources "stolen" from the state and own work, but also a way of understanding reality, what makes Russia Russia. As soon as it becomes clear to the population of the country what stands behind neutral words such as “social tax,” a basically uncontrolled, non-political opposition to the federal government will arise with a very high mobilization potential.

The Russian distributed way of life functions in such a way as to limit state intervention in the lives of its citizens; it performs the functions of a civil society without being one. It is this way of life, from my point of view, that has been neutralizing reform efforts for many years. At the same time, it was only thanks to reforms that this way of life became what it is.

People, sitting in front of televisions in their apartments and country houses, most often consider what is shown in the news and analytical programs as a circus, a performance, a theater in which they are involved to the extent that what is happening in the demonstrated circus can influence them existence. At the same time, all the actions of the characters on the political stage are considered as organized according to the same logic in which the spectators live, they are also participants: politicians and statesmen have apartments and dachas, into which they drag what they managed to grab thanks to their proximity to the state trough. I don’t know how and in what way you can prove to people that everything is far from being so simple.

Notes:

(1) V. Glazychev. Slobodization of the country Gardariki Other, volume 1. - M., 1996.

(2) Zaslavskaya T.I., Ryvkina R.V. Methodology and techniques for the systematic study of the Soviet village. - NSB.: "Science", 1980.

(3) Kalugina Z.I., Martynova I.N. Agrarian reform in Siberia: social aspect // Society and Economics, 1993, #4.

(4) Artemov V.A. Labor and leisure of agricultural workers // Agricultural Economics of Russia, 1996, #2. - P.29.

(5) Perhaps the form of organization of collective housing and distribution of life inherits the ancient model - the way of life of the upper classes of the Russian Empire, when the city house was a natural continuation of the rural estate and life was distributed between urban service to the emperor and rural closure in its intimate, actually constituent content of life.

(6) Kordonsky S.G. Markets of power. - M., 2000.

(7) Administrative markets always exist in all social and political systems, but usually they are localized in the very structures of power, in those places where decisions on the distribution of benefits are made based on the status characteristics of the subjects of power themselves. Administrative markets usually exist as the shadow side of government activity, as a form of coordination of interests in cases where for some reason this cannot be done by political or purely administrative methods.

With the construction of a comprehensive and all-pervasive Soviet power, that is, with the division of life into “reality” and “in fact,” the administrative market as a form of distribution and redistribution of goods became self-sufficient and self-sufficient. “In reality,” all other forms of social self-organization and organization, except for the Soviet ones, were eliminated during the construction of socialism, along with the people - their carriers and their social statuses. The shadow (which is “in reality”) side of the coordination of interests became the main one, while the political and administrative sides (“in reality”) became fictitious, covering up those methods of decision-making that were dictated by the administrative market