Ilya Lepikhov. Putin in January

Putin in January
Asymmetrical response to M.Yu. Sokolov

Ilya Lepikhov

Publication date: January 9, 2001

The public policy practiced by Vladimir Putin has recently made an ambivalent impression on observers. On the one hand, it was impossible not to recognize the highest professionalism of the team of the President of the Russian Federation. Her ward not only held his back well, but also very smoothly - which is difficult to surprise us after Mikhail Gorbachev - and at the same time spoke extremely meaningfully, tried, unless absolutely necessary, not to express his personal position on this or that issue of public importance. background, he acted in full accordance with the expectations that he had when he was acting. the prime minister was planted in the heart of the Russian voter - in a word, Putin kept the style.

But any perfection is a burden. Even a person who makes an honest living in political journalism cannot at some stage help but become suspicious of Mr. Perfect, the Man Who Makes No Mistakes, a political machine selling specially packaged perfection. At some point, it turns out to be impossible to understand: have you gone crazy, has your life turned upside down, or are the secret forces of the Russian behind the scenes implementing their evil plan with the complete inaction of the institutions of civil society... An honest person begins to examine himself to discover character traits, characteristic of a court lackey - to seek, and therefore to find.

Last December became a milestone month in the media’s perception of the president’s activities. columnist Izvestia Maxim Yuryevich Sokolov , who in a certain sense is worth all our other political journalism, considered it necessary to publish several texts with a distinctly different focus than before, in which the possible consequences of the latest steps of the Russian president were analyzed.

I believe that something similar should have happened somewhere in October-November last year, but the disaster of the Kursk nuclear submarine and the subsequent - let me call a spade a spade - information war temporarily took the president out of the attack: it was too undignified his opponents behaved.

Today is not the case. Of course, you can pretend that nothing happened: you never know what’s written in the newspaper, even if it’s central, even if it’s undisguisedly biased. However, the scale of Maxim Yuryevich’s personality and authority forces us to take his arguments with great seriousness and consider them not as the private opinion of a citizen, but as an alarming symptom of the mood prevailing in society. If we begin to talk about Mr. Sokolov’s political intuition, which, they say, always fails “the one who rises first,” then in this sense everything is even more serious. Many remember how in November 1995 (!) Maxim Sokolov publicly supported the candidacy of Boris Yeltsin in the upcoming presidential elections of the Russian Federation. At the time it looked like the dangerous and empty eccentricity of a late radical. We will not remind you who won the 1996 campaign. Russian society fully shared the opinion of Maxim Yuryevich, six months late. But Putin is not Yeltsin and 2001 is by no means 1996, and therefore I really didn’t want to find, after some time, a picture of public sentiment that was very close to what it once was.

In the end, it’s not about Putin’s personality, no matter how reproachful or impeccable it may seem to anyone. For the overwhelming majority of the population of the Russian Federation, the president is not a close relative, and, therefore, by and large, he does not care about the personal qualities of the head of state. For the majority of conscious voters, of whom, as we are inclined to believe, there are somewhat more than is usually imagined, the president is least of all a person and most of all a personified tendency , perhaps the only any productive tendency in modern Russian politics today. In this sense, the critical analysis of Putin’s activities, which began in December, goes beyond the boundaries of anyone’s personal relationship and becomes the subject of public debate. At least, if we strive for political adequacy, it should become so.

We will not go into detail about the essence of M.Yu. Sokolov’s critical reviews - anyone can find them here . The president's policy draws criticism from his respected opponent for its consistent caution, which, in his opinion, should be identified with indecision. Drawing a middle line, so seemingly dear to the hearts of Russians, comes into conflict with the urgent needs of the state, which requires a consistent , definite and unambiguous policy .

We do not take on the role of Putin’s lawyers - his defenders from anyone; just as they are not ready to fully share the pathos of the respected Maxim Yuryevich. We will allow ourselves to consider part of the arguments of the parties, if only in order to, being, as it were, on the sidelines of the controversy, be fully imbued with the arguments of the parties, and therefore, with the real content of the ongoing political process.

Putin made a name for himself by appearing in two or three guises at the same time. The image of a decisive practitioner pacifying the separatists complemented the image of a successful courtier, a man of dexterity and flexibility, ready to implement policies dictated by circumstances. It was this decisively indecisive appearance of a fencer, ready to hold a pose until the time for the decisive injection arrived, not least of all, which aroused the sympathy of the population for him. He seemed to be one of those Russians who harness slowly but drive quickly: “When I go, I don’t whistle, and when I get too far, I don’t let go.” A year and a half has changed absolutely nothing in this regard. But if then there was a firm belief that yes, we were standing, trampling, moving our feet, jingling the harness, but today it is absolutely impossible to understand whether we have set off on the road, or are still adjusting the lines.

There is no qualified answer to this question: only God and Alexander Stalyevich Voloshin know this. At the same time, something makes us believe that yes, we are flying and the milestones are blurring into a single white-striped curtain, hiding on both sides of the road these... what's their name... "trembling lights of sad villages" .

It is impossible to understand why the law on new state symbols was adopted, also because recently we have become accustomed to directly identifying a political decision with the amount of force that was expended on its adoption. In this sense, if we follow the general democratic point of view, the new anthem is an alarming symptom insofar as it is either a reflection of the heartfelt inclination of Mr. Putin himself to times not so distant, or (what is worse) reveals in him a lack of self-confidence, an illness , very common among military people (let us remember General Lebed ). Everything, it would seem, is concentrated behind Putin - and a lot of it! - the strength of the state, and he easily neglects it in exchange for a dubious nod to the left electorate, although it constitutes a very impressive figure, but due to the peculiarities of its political culture, it is organically incapable of perceiving a compromise.

But perhaps, in the place where we are ready to see some hidden political meanings, only flaws in our traditional logical-conceptual apparatus reveal themselves? Where a certain deficiency is assumed, it is quite likely that there is hidden an excess, a quality, an intention that has not yet fully revealed itself, but has already been taken into account. Where the fruit seems to vegetate, there the grain vegetates, where the whole is seen, a part is discovered - and then we are not rushing along the pillar at all, but, like Gogol’s Uncle Mityai and Uncle Minyai , we still cannot untangle the track from the roots, while bored Russia, as if The governor's lovely daughter watches with shy interest the seemingly meaningless gyrations.

At the beginning of 2000, it seemed that the Kremlin was giving in to the onslaught of the OVR and personally the St. Petersburg governor, Mr. Yakovlev. A candidate for a high seat, Ms. Matvienko, who was apparently supported from Moscow, unexpectedly withdrew from participating in the election campaign. Many wrote and said that the president decided not to get involved in the fight. From the moment the institution of presidential representatives was introduced in the federal districts, voices ceased to reveal themselves.

It is possible that the pirouette with state symbols has as its goal something similar , a basis that is still not entirely clear to us. One can only guess what exactly, since the initial premises for the analysis are quite definite. After the virtual abolition of right-wing politics, associated both with the partial insanity of the parliamentary right , and with the partial uncertainty of their social base, which votes for small diopter glasses and youthful bald patches rather than for a liberal economic model (which can be neglected).

There are only two players left on the political scene: Power and the Left Voter. Apparently, the authorities considered it necessary to establish a dialogue with him, since, given the obvious ideological weakness of the left movement, which turned out to be absolutely powerless in the face of the threat of complete discrediting of traditional slogans, skillfully intercepted by the new administration, there has been a tendency for the traditional electorate to spread towards more or less sane ideological trends . What was repeatedly talked about during the 90s - the creation of a correct left party and, consequently, a new left elite - today no longer seems an insurmountable task. The uncertainty of the reaction of the parliamentary left to the presidential initiatives, which have not yet decided whether they were invited to a wedding or funeral (and their own), indicates that, at least in a tactical sense, the operation to establish contact with the left voter was carried out flawlessly.

What looks from the outside like drawing a middle line, what seems like a search for a dubious compromise - is this not evidence of a new aggressive policy, with its ultimate goal of destroying the intermind quasi-party system nurtured by the electoral legislation of the last decade?

The facts at our disposal today do not allow us to dismiss such assumptions out of hand.