Mikhail Fishman. State of mutual lies

State of mutual lies
Mikhail Fishman

Publication date: December 4, 2003

Even despite the YUKOS case, which provoked a social demand for the redistribution of property, the federal election campaign is, first of all, an illusion. Not the quintessence or culmination of politics, as it would be logical to assume, but its conscious imitation. The nation is artificially - through television, advertising and, finally, the ballot box - drawn into a process in which, in principle, it has no interest and which does not directly concern it. This, one must assume, is the nature of elections in any modern democracy - a smooth and routine democracy. The current elections are both routine and specific. They do not solve, in essence, any political issues at all. But they cement the existing order, dynamic - for now - even to the point of impetuosity. It makes sense to understand what is the subject of the upcoming elections. Own? In principle, no. Change of elites? No. Current political agenda? Also no. Their subject is key national phobias: distrust of government and the schizophrenic desire for a one-party democratic state.

The Putin era is already commonly described as the strengthening of a kind of “new stagnation.” This expression is inaccurate and insufficient. If only because “stagnation” in the usual sense is an era of a canceled, and therefore pre-known future. Whereas today's life - the state of public policy, the way of life and habits of society, the rules of socio-cultural communication - firstly, is quite changeable, and secondly, as we well see, unpredictable. The present time has one thing in common with the Brezhnev stagnation: the harmony of mutual distrust - if you like, mutual pretense - in relations between society and the state. Citizens pretend to be loyal to the party and government; the party and government do not consider society to be sufficiently valuable and subjective, but pretend that it is so. This is an era of broken paternalistic consciousness and, in connection with this, a contradictory, split picture of the world, in which the state, perceived as power in general, is endowed with the functions of a “bad father”: it evokes both fear and related feelings. Finally, the atmosphere of mutual, or rather, comprehensive mistrust divides the world into two mythological categories, in which all political subjects equally think: “they” and “we”.

Today, it seems quite clear that the structural difficulties of state building - especially the institutions responsible for order (police, prosecutors, courts, bureaucracies) - are largely related to public distrust in these institutions. Adapting to what others think of you is a basic characteristic of human nature. Confidence in his own inferiority, imposed on a Russian policeman by public opinion about him, is more likely to push him towards corruption and injustice than a low salary. For example, a traffic cop takes a bribe and apologizes, smiling crookedly and humiliatingly: “Sorry, old man, you understand, this is the job.” The phenomenon of a bribe is a phenomenon of a currency of deception, mistrust, converted into cash.

The principles of imposed social behavior are two-sided and universal: what good is it for a governor (minister, deputy) not to steal if no one knows about it and no one believes it? “We” understand perfectly well that “they” are only pretending that they don’t steal and live by the rules. “We” cannot be fooled: “we” are aware that “we” are being deceived. The world of existing laws, honest salaries, correct words and intentions becomes a functional prop, forever hiding from “us” some eerie, but true reality. The world is obviously not the way “they” portrayed it, and the conspiracy theory, which portrays a state of total lies in the national consciousness, is an axiom of political everyday life and the core of electoral sentiment.

Today, conspiracy theory serves the main national complexes - first of all, the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe illegality of private property. An idea that, as it happens, constitutes the fundamental question of the young Russian democracy, but which, until now, did not signify a revolutionary demand for a large-scale anti-oligarchic campaign. (On the contrary, Putin’s popular regime is a regime of desired and already achieved stability.) This is precisely a sanction for everyday redistribution, and it was not even issued to a specific political subject, but is, so to speak, for general use. A disdainful attitude towards private property is formed on the same general principle of the prevailing trick and deception. The privatization of the 90s and its conductor Chubais, on whom public opinion is concentrated by inertia, is simply its most obvious and understandable metaphor for deception.

With the expansion of the base of national skepticism, on the one hand, mutual rejection of society and the political class grows, and on the other, opportunities for social manipulation. Distrust mutates into apathy: let them do what they want, “we” are by definition the losers here. Stimulating this skepticism, expanding the key concept of “we” to “you plus me” is becoming today a prerequisite for any political success and the most effective political technology. Defensive political technology of irremovability, which allows one to retain power and practically, as demonstrated by the recent elections in St. Petersburg, does not give a chance to take it away: tell the voter what he already thinks, uniting with him on the basis of distrust of the authorities and ensuring the support of a disciplined minority. And the non-voting majority will again be convinced that there is complete deception and conspiracy all around and that not going to the polls is the only sensible position. Like all political communication, national skepticism reduces the election procedure to its image, to a constructed showcase behind which long-damaged goods are hidden.

Schizophrenia, in fact, consists in the fact that total disbelief in the state, in its institutions and officials, is combined with deep paternalism. The organization of everyday life and all responsibility have been transferred to the unloved government. Putin’s main mission is “the revival of the State” (this is the word “revival”, which slips in every now and then in pretentious comments, and is, of course, an unconscious appeal to the era of Brezhnev’s stagnation). "Revival of the State", on which society could concentrate its conflicting emotions.

Another expression of schizophrenia is the nostalgic United Russia party, whose connection with the authorities is deliberately underformulated: on the one hand, a power structure subordinate to the president and made up of ministers, on the other, opposed to these same ministers, declaring war on bureaucracy and corruption. However, she immediately again betrays her imperious, uncontested nature by refusing pre-election debates. Indeed, where have you seen the authorities debating? And where did you see the elections that shape the government? There is either power or there is no power, and the only point of elections is to give a clear answer to this simple question. It is no coincidence that party bosses fight against flashing lights on the roads - an expressive symbol of power and privilege - while they themselves flaunt their own flashing lights. It is not in vain that the authorities expose the police, which they lead and, therefore, which they themselves are.

Mutually exclusive emotions - approval mixed with hatred, respect mixed with contempt - are naturally converted into a special status for internal security agencies, gradually forming them into an independent social institution. They are the first manifestation of a one-party, non-party state, power in which, from the point of view of society, should belong to officials magically subject to democratic control. Society’s refusal of power and control powers - we are nobody, and there is no way to call us - is articulated almost consciously, at a fairly high level of reflection: according to a survey by VTsIOM-A, for example, the most effective method of combating corruption in the Ministry of Internal Affairs - by a wide margin - is today considered establishing harsher penalties. That is, the sanction to combat police brutality is at the same time a license to expand the powers of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

- Is it bad that police officers (deputies, ministers, bosses) steal and take bribes? - Very. - Would you do the same in their place? - Of course. - How do you feel about the fact that the store director forced his subordinates to campaign for him in the elections (the general forced the soldiers to build a dacha)? - This mess. - What if you were the director? - I would do the same.

“What I consider vicious and outrageous from my stairwell, I would consider moral and natural if I moved upstairs” - this universal principle of social behavior determines the contours of the new social world. Based not on subordination, as, for example, in the usual class societies - there are some rules for the master, others for the peasant, and everyone agrees with this - but on the traditions of mistrust and protest. In essence, we are talking about caste, which society, since Soviet times, has pathetically rejected as a basic criterion of state structure, but at the same time willingly recognizes it as one of the few truly functioning mechanisms of everyday social regulation.

Putin's unyielding rating is the only apparently positive and seemingly immediate emotion that has grown up among the ruins of all-encompassing skepticism. To the same extent that Chubais embodies an accomplished deception, Putin’s rating is determined, so to speak, by the “popularity” of paternalistic sentiments: trust in power, which is the other side of total disbelief in it. The ideal State is personified in Putin. And the fact that Putin comes from the KGB, it turns out, plays a significant role here: Putin, in fact, is in its purest form the very internal organ that must put in order the endlessly corrupt, from the point of view of society, bureaucratic machine (made up of oligarchs , officials, mayors, governors, in short - “them”), to dispel the fog of deception. Thus, Putin’s mythological mission - “revival of the State” - categorically does not coincide with his, Putin’s, practical function as an uncompromising whistleblower. This, in fact, is the main internal contradiction of the current unhealthy regime, when creation, so to speak, and peaceful construction, following the logic of social schizophrenia, are transformed into a destructive struggle against entrenched vice. This is how the state eats itself.

However, the vulnerability of the regime paradoxically does not depend on the natural erosion of the image of a knight of state building attributed to Putin. Erosion may not occur at all. The “bad father,” which Putin is also by definition, is allowed everything or almost everything. External neglect aside: the establishment of Putin as the unshakable pinnacle of public sympathy would have been impossible without the filter of international recognition. It is no coincidence that, according to all polls, Russian citizens consider foreign policy to be Putin's main asset, compensating - as has been the custom since Soviet times - for their everyday hardships with international prestige. Changing the status quo in relations with the West will be a very difficult experience for today's Russia. Everything else has long been packaged into a gloomy, painful, unpromising, but psychologically comfortable picture of the world.