Dmitry Misyurov. Centrifuge

Centrifuge
Dmitry Misyurov

Publication date: December 26, 2000

America is sometimes compared to a melting pot . Russia can be compared to a centrifuge in which things that are incompatible elsewhere are mixed.

All Russian reality is a centrifuge . Its contents either scatter in different directions, or gather towards the Center - it all depends only on the speed of movement. Only the Center and the Periphery - where is the right, where is the left, where is the West, where is the East - a centrifuge... Although, perhaps not. There is only the Center - and the king, and the god, and the hero in one person - the periphery has been abolished. The center throws everything and everyone into the Russian centrifuge , cities and regions, a horse and a tremulous doe , the economic programs of “marketers” and “statists.” And all this spins, delaminates, sticks together and falls apart...

It is not surprising that a truncated, half-hearted, “mixed” decision was made on the issue of state symbols. From now on, the imperial double-headed eagle displays the roulades of the former Soviet anthem against the background of a three-color banner. This is a thing of the past, but world experience should still be taken into account. And he suggests that state symbols accepted by society appear either in relatively calm countries (thus, as a compromise between the wishes of English-speaking and French-speaking Canadians , the Canadian “maple leaf” was invented and chosen in the middle of the 20th century), or as a result of social upheavals (the same Soviet state symbols), but not in the “ centrifuge ” of modern Russia.

A review of the “patriotic press” in RJ states: “The general position of patriotic publications on this issue boils down to the following: they, as one would expect, unconditionally support the former Soviet anthem and the red flag.” It is enough to look at one editorial of the same newspaper Tomorrow (Alexander Prokhanov, “They write a hymn, but they will write a ditty,” #48 (365), November-December 2000) to understand how difficult this support was for them: “It is obscenity to customize the anthem of the Great Red Empire for the immediate needs of a gnawed and desecrated country... Who is discussing the theme of the anthem? Stroyev, the compromiser of all times and peoples, the left leg of the right forces? , Catholic castles, Iranian mosques, and in general - huge marble doghouses." Both extreme nationalists like Prokhanov and communists reviled the new symbols, but in the end they recognized them as “quite adequate to the situation in the country.”

In this sense, our “liberals” are not far behind their opponents. The same Nemtsov assured that the “legalized” new-old anthem will be listened to while standing, like a law-abiding citizen, and all this after talking about how “prisoners of the Gulag woke up” to the music of Alexandrov! But what are the deputies if the chief king of arms (!) of the country is G. Vilinbakhov , who, being himself against changing the symbols, publicly spoke out in the spirit that, they say, one should not mix symbols and ideology: “Do not confuse the anthem with the national idea.” Is it necessary to reveal the full vulnerability of such a position? “Man,” as E. Cassirer wrote, “is a symbolic animal,” and any culture is nothing more than a collection of symbols. Does the state benefit from the fact that its symbols are treated simply as signs of identification? The question seems to me to be rhetorical...

Symbolism is always surrounded by “taboo”; symbols connect the conscious and unconscious, rational and irrational, material and ideal. System of socio-political symbols: subject-object symbols, ritual-procedural, awards, banknotes, architectural-sculptural, “conceptual” symbols (the concepts of “communism”, “freedom”), political language, people - political symbols, etc. . - they all play a huge role in the life of any community.

Today in Russia they often remember Austria with its coat of arms in the form of an eagle with a hammer and sickle in its claws. Well, every nation is worthy of its own symbols, and I would like to remind you that Austria is the only EU country where extreme political forces are currently actually participating in the process of forming the cabinet of ministers.

It seems that the future in the Russian Federation will also be reminiscent of the restored coat of arms, flag and anthem - nothing new can be expected. Putin’s thesis about “Ivans who do not remember their kinship” does not justify itself in this sense. It turns out to be relevant under a conservative government that wants to “hold on to the past,” which was better than the present, and not for a government that confidently looks to the future and creates a new life. And it is quite logical that from the mouth of the new government a completely communist argument sounded in defense of the Soviet anthem - “the anthem will help many survive in our difficult times.”

The discussion of the “symbolic” issue had the direction set by the president in his televised address to the people. Putin compared the need for a quick solution to a “symbolic” problem with stopping renovations on a building. It really turned out that way. After the speech of the head of state, all the passions that were boiling in the Duma and the media were like the dull grumbling of builders, to whom the “foreman” had given a new task. “Perestroika,” started by Gorbachev, came to Putin’s logical “completion of repairs.” The “acceleration” of the centrifuge of the late USSR era, which splashed out a significant part of our once vast Fatherland beyond its edges, ends with what every spinning always ends with : calm, “conglomeration” of everyone and everything, a sluggish flow towards the Center.

The centrifuge is spinning...