Vladimir Malyavin. More about Putin and emptiness

More about Putin and emptiness
Vladimir Malyavin

Publication date: March 9, 2004

It seems that Russia has come close to the point at which, according to Chaadaev’s prediction , it will be able to teach the world its “great lesson . ” This requires at least two conditions: firstly, Russia must understand what exactly it will teach the rest of the world, and secondly, the world must be ready to accept the Russian lesson.

I'll start with the second condition. It lies in the fact that in the modern world the project of modernity with its principle of humanitarian knowledge has been completely exhausted. Now liberalization is increasingly identified with repression, ideological publicity is being replaced by unprincipled everyday life. This is the meaning of the transition to postmodernity, which J. Baudrillard said most clearly : “We have already experienced all the orgies of liberation and are now accelerating in the void . ” The West is unlikely to be very happy about this discovery: people live there who are accustomed to something more reliable and practical than “acceleration in the void.”

Russia, which has always accepted the challenges of the West as if it were family and tried to respond to them, has fully experienced its orgies of liberation. She got rid of her monarchism, then socialism, and in our days, liberalism. Now she is slightly ill with statism, but for her body, which has survived so many illnesses, this is nothing - a scrofulous rash. The Russian soul has accumulated a huge immunity against all sorts of “isms”. The main thing is that in Russia, all these passions for the next idea and its revelations (as, probably, they should) have a touch of phantasmagoric entertainment. In any case, gentlemen ideologues need not worry: in the coming years, and perhaps even forever, the demand for their ideas will be scanty. What will happen?

The figure, and moreover, the name of the current president, suggests the answer, for in this name one can clearly hear the key word for the modern era, “emptiness.” With the new millennium, the era began not so much of Aquarius, but of emptiness - the main and inalienable heritage of Russia, if only because Russia, as V. Bibikhin noted , demonstrates the futility of all human attempts ” to “establish himself independently on earth . Emptiness is the only miraculous reality of history, inaccessible to human possession.

Future scientists will analyze in detail the different types of cultural and historical emptiness.

There is a Western emptiness - the emptiness of an empty box, a scientific perspective and a theatrical stage, filled with objects and characters.

There is an eastern emptiness - the emptiness of the universal environment and the universal focus, in which everything that exists interacts, being in continuous transformation. This is the emptiness of pure functionality that permeates all planes of existence.

There is a modern postmodern emptiness - the emptiness of the virtual world, gutted and recreated by electronic technology.

The emptiness of Russia is different - dense, unyielding. This is the fire-breathing emptiness of a volcanic crater, the murderous emptiness of a thunderstorm charge.

In Russia, with its vast expanses, emptiness is an omnipresent and obvious reality, even oppressive. The desolation of Russia makes the life of Russians a pilgrimage, inspires them with daring and audacity, plunges them into melancholy, but also pushes a person against himself, and therefore gives him moral insight. It is very important that our national genius Pushkin sounds the motif of “languid vigil” in the emptiness of the night, and this motif is associated with repentance and moral purification. You still need to learn to see the emptiness in life and, most importantly, accept it. The biggest obstacle to this was the Russian intelligentsia, always preoccupied with the arrangement of the world and able to look at life only through the glasses of ideologies.

Emptiness by definition is not an “objective given”, not “this” and not “other”. Consequently, it is recognized only as the limit of knowledge and experience, the limit of communication and communication, which is pure communication. Being outside the understood and intelligible, emptiness marks the inexhaustible fullness of meaning. We stumble upon it when we think about the strange division of Russia, characteristic only of Russian life, into “Russia of appearances” and “Russia of essentialities” (Rozanov); when we begin to understand that the flowers of the Russian genius “grow in solitude and silence” and that under the amorphousness of the Russian face hides the “granite hardness” of the spirit ( Ern ). We are already experienced enough not to succumb to the eternal temptation of Russian ideologists to see here a metaphysical opposition, some kind of mental fulcrum that would allow us to turn the world upside down or put it on a solid theoretical basis. Emptiness cannot be thought. You can (and should) only live by it. The metaphysical logic of identity is opposed here to the metalogic of pure difference, the omnipresent metamorphosis in which infinite diversity becomes indistinguishable from the highest unity. Emptiness is in fact the universality of the incommensurable, the truly ethical focus of the universe, where everything is itself to the extent that it differs from itself. Truly human world! Let modern man, according to Baudrillard, be chained to the spectacle of the world. Russian emptiness can give him rest. She is still capable of imparting a saving quality of fantasticality to this forced-universal “picture” of existence.

“In the Light of Emptiness” radically changes its political meaning. It ceases to be an external influence and becomes an internal effectiveness. The gap created by the intelligentsia between the “authorities” and the “people” disappears. Its self-power returns to power, and its originality returns to the people. But to be autocratic means to obey a moral imperative: diminish yourself in order to surpass yourself and embrace the world. What is noteworthy is this consistent de-ideologization of power in the modern history of Russia, its attraction to its core “power structures”, which, when confronted with external reality, rather reveal their powerlessness. There is no contradiction here. Russia, where everything is different from itself, is strong in its weakness, and the Russian state stands thanks to its uncontrollability. The authorities and the people in Russia are united in the fact that they leave each other and, moreover, leave each other to be themselves, i.e. not-yourself . This is the essence of organic democracy, which is more vital than formal democracy. Russian unity, this mysterious “conciliarity,” is a hidden space for the mutual replacement of souls outside and apart from the formal public. It is justified by the fact itself revelations of the human personality, i.e. the appearance of a person in the world, which is at the same time a gesture of leaving the world. In it, moral truth and life's beauty merge together, as the popular proverb says: “Even death is beautiful in the world . ”

The transition to “life in emptiness” offers, in its own way, a radical combination of innovation (the essence of modern technology) and the relevance of existence. Emptiness is, among other things, the point of convergence of these extreme values, eliminating both revolutionary terror and retrograde inertia. A fateful event, the kairos of folk history, means only a return to the unconscious, but spiritual, at the same time passionate and reasonable element of “living life.” The main slogan of modernity is “You are walking the right path, gentlemen and comrades!” - these days it is simplified to an aphorism of worldly wisdom, as unassuming as it is undeniable: “All the way!”

Putin is like Pushkin: this is our everything. The choice, as in Pascal's bet , is predetermined: bet on everything - you won't lose. The omnipresent path cannot and should not be accessible to contemplation. Even the president's consistently stern and modest public appearances leave an impression of excess.

It's time to understand that Russia is alive not thanks to those who are concerned about it, but in spite of them. It’s time for the intelligentsia, proud of their title of “self-conscious part of society,” to stop awakening themselves and those abroad with idle questions: “Who are you, Mr. Putin?”, “Who are we for Putin?” and devote oneself to morally meaningful self-abandonment, which in Russia, as throughout the world, means ultimately living in emptiness .