Egor Kholmogorov. Lord of the Ring

Lord of the Ring
Egor Kholmogorov

Publication date: February 17, 2004

There is something fatal in the fact that the moments of Putin’s contact with military power suspiciously coincide with the next high-profile and depressogenic catastrophes. Several years ago - "Kursk" , now, in the midst of exercises during which Putin for the first time acts as the commander-in-chief of an army, conditionally waging a fictitious world war, sails on submarines, launches missiles and does other equally useful things, the whole country is not busy with these things. sonorous acts, but by counting the victims of the “metropolitan construction boom” . There is something bitter and fatal in this, but difficult to interpret symbolically.

It is possible to understand this way - the tragedy in Moscow hides, tightly wraps from prying eyes the essence of the political and psychological revolution taking place in Russia. Ultimately, the “cognitive shadow” has more than once been Russia’s refuge in difficult circumstances—Russia’s strengthening was invariably hidden under the guise of weakness, the emerging order was perceived from the outside as ongoing chaos, and progress forward as the childishness of “Potemkin villages.” Perhaps something similar is happening this time.

This, of course, is not about the formally technical side of the matter: sailing on a submarine, launching missiles, practicing flights, transporting troops - all this modern Russia can afford on an incomparably smaller scale than the Soviet Empire. “The largest exercise since 1982” is unlikely to impress anyone - from the side of malicious ill-wishers, voices will still be heard ridiculing the pathetic attempts to portray military power with the help of a rusty submarine, two rusty planes, soldiers dying of pneumonia, etc. The PR effect of the ongoing exercises will not be so strong - and therefore it is even good that it turned out to be even more blurred by the Moscow tragedy. All the more reason to focus on the main thing.

The main thing is not to demonstrate to the outside world and to ourselves the military power of Russia. The main thing is to recognize this power as something real , as something that is in the hands of those in power and creates power . The main thing is that Putin understands the limits, or more precisely, the practical infinity of this power. What is bold and interesting, first of all, is the very concept of the exercises, in which the scenario of a third world war with the combat use of strategic nuclear weapons is actually played out, albeit with all the appropriate reservations.

The right to order the use of such weapons is power, unlimited power over the destinies of the world, and the ring of omnipotence (one of two or three) is still in the hands of the supreme ruler of Russia. However, the power and effectiveness of this ring have not yet been realized. No one believed that the leaders of “democratic Russia” could actually use nuclear weapons against an enemy, especially if that enemy turned out to be the West . Moreover, there was confidence within the country that if it came to “this,” then “these will give up everything.” Any talk by Yeltsin on the topic of nuclear weapons was perceived as “ the drunken antics of a Russian bear ,” and the rare mentions of Putin or Sergei Ivanov were carried out on a diplomatic, not military, basis.

Meanwhile, nuclear weapons are political weapons. It is not a weapon in itself, but only together with political will, political determination to use it. Separated from this political determination, it either ceases to be a weapon at all, turning into a pile of radioactive metal, or it becomes a “politicians’ nightmare,” a “weapon of terror,” a “bomb in itself” that is beyond political control, usually in the backpack of virtual attackers. As a political weapon, nuclear weapons are a sign of a country's full national sovereignty, which has a global dimension. The possession of strategic nuclear forces and the readiness to use them mean that the value of the sovereignty of one country is equal to the value of the existence of humanity. Nuclear weapons verify the political equation: “Rome (that is, Moscow, Washington, Beijing...) is the World.”

“There are more important things than peace” - this Reagan phrase won the Cold War. It was won only because in the official ideology of the Soviet political leadership there were no more important things than peace. Back in the early 1960s, the Soviet Union declared a delayed surrender when, in a dispute with Mao Zedong, Khrushchev declared that the victory of the socialist countries in a nuclear war was not worth the lives of the Western proletariat. Then this was molded into the coined late Soviet formula “there can be no winners in a nuclear war” , and then transformed into Gorbachev’s new thinking, for which the comparative value of “Rome” and “Peace” became incommensurable - and the scales definitely outweighed the latter...

Interestingly, this was not the case for Soviet military thinking: during the strategic exercises of the 1980s - the predecessors of the current ones - bold scenarios of victory at any cost were played out. According to the testimonies of the participants, in those battles on the maps of that time, Moscow and Washington were razed to the ground, California went under water, Africa plunged into the abyss of oblivion, over which the anti-missile systems of the two countries collided with each other, followed by India and China - only because that otherwise, after the war, they, with their hundreds of millions of people, remained the hegemons of the planet, Russian tanks rolled out Europe and the Middle East... Western Siberia remained Noah’s Ark, which retained sufficient population and industrial potential for Soviet hegemony in the “post-war” world. All this was relevant in the horizon of military planning, but not for political will - it had long ago given up.

We could conjure ourselves as much as we wanted in the 1990s with words about nuclear weapons as a guarantee of our sovereignty, but still everyone knew that within the framework of the “strategic choice” made for the country, we were doomed to capitulation. The value of Russia and Humanity was incommensurable. Hollywood, always calculating everything, has already depicted a “possible future.” In “ The Price of Fear ” with Ben Affleck, a film based on the novel by Tom Clancy, after the destruction of an American city by a nuclear explosion (carried out by terrorists), after the Soviet Air Force raid on the American fleet and a retaliatory raid on the Soviet Air Force base, already when the missile launch countdown began, The Russian and American presidents, on the initiative of a courageous and humane American, agree “in the name of the future of humanity” to stop this madness. And they stop. All that remains is to descend from the Hollywood heavens to the sinful earth and imagine a “real” situation - a nuclear missile breaks out of an American mine (whether by chance or not - who knows) and flies towards a Russian city, or a military base, or a nuclear power plant - which, in general Well, the difference... The noble American president calls the Russian president and says that nothing can be done, and asks not to strike back, not to destroy the lives of innocent people. The answer of the Russian president, no less humane and responsible to humanity, is predictable. And here the value of “Rome” and “Peace” will turn out to be incommensurable, and therefore destroy the idea of ​​nuclear weapons.

And now, in the North Sea, and in general during these exercises, Putin for the first time must seriously and in front of the whole world play out a situation in which the “Rome and Peace” equation is solved differently and there are things that are more important than peace. If this test, this belated public initiation of power, is successful, then Russia will de facto regain a significant part of its lost sovereignty in both internal and global issues. You can talk as much as you like about strategic partnership with America and integration into Europe, but one day the realized real power to destroy them will result in real psychological independence. You can talk as much as you like about the irrevocably made choice in favor of freedom, but these spells will have a completely different meaning if you add in your mind that the lives of Russians and the lives of the inhabitants of the islands of freedom are not valued in a ratio of 1000: 1.

A ruler who, even in his mind, has launched at least one nuclear missile at Washington, will feel the ring of omnipotence in his hand. And this ring of omnipotence, gradually, sometimes - against his completely liberal intentions, will begin to forge him into a sovereign, into the owner of real power. This ring made from universal Jacobin patriots the creators of the national army of France, which would give birth to Napoleon and become the imperial army. This ring made from supporters of the “abolition of the state” and world-revolutionary fanatics of the Bolsheviks the creators of “socialism in one country”, which solved in 40 years as many national imperial problems of Russia as the Empire solved in 200... Will it be able to forge from the power that inherits the regime of a liberal-chaotic revolution, a truly national and truly sovereign power? It actually depends on the feeling of the limitlessness of this power. The greater its scope, the more it “corrupts,” as it seems to the liberal consciousness. "Absolute power corrupts absolutely." Today, this power lacks precisely this “corruption”, lacks a sense of absoluteness, lacks attention to Konstantin Leontyev’s call to “rule shamelessly.”

Only a government that has felt in its hands the fullness of sovereignty and the sweetness of ruling (instead of the sweetness of theft ) will be able to turn to strengthening the foundations of this ruling, to strengthening the basis of its sovereignty, that is, the state and national foundation. And there is little that can contribute so much to this taste for power as the feeling of the right to “decide” the life and death of “The World” if it encroaches on “Rome”.