"New Time" sums up the discussion on liberalism

After a long break, the journal Novoe Vremya began to appear again. Issues 9-24 (this numbering is given in the imprint, including all unpublished issues) contains materials related to the main events in public life during the period of the magazine's forced absence from the public stage. Naturally, one of these events was the discussion about the crisis of liberalism, initiated by the letters of Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

One of the selection materials is an article by Vyacheslav Glazychev "Misunderstanding" . V. Glazychev agrees with the position of Yegor Gaidar, expressed in the article "To the Grave Diggers of the Liberals" , about the authorship of the "group of comrades". Berezovsky's reciprocal speech, the author writes, "in the same Vedomosti, in general, sounded much stronger in a purely literary, stylistic sense, because it turned out to be uncommonly more integral in thought" .

Then, as a typical example, Glazychev makes a critical review of Mikhail Delyagin's speech in the magazine "Business People". Glazychev expresses Delyagin's opinion that in Russia the understanding of liberalism is incorrect: this is such an understanding that has become established in the United States ( "ideology of entrepreneurship" ), while the correct, from Delyagin's point of view, understanding of liberalism is a Western European understanding, that is, liberalism is equal rights and opportunities for all. But V. Glazychev does not dispute this position, but calls it "verbal manipulation" , which allows ""justifying" any theses you like - even if, for example, that St. Francis of Assisi was actually a cannibal monster " .

V. Glazychev quotes Delyagin: “Liberalism is not sufficient for the functioning of a poorly developed society. It is based on the assumption that each person is self-sufficient, which has nothing to do with Russia, where most people are rigidly tied to life support systems. Liberalism proceeds from the fact that each member of society can be responsible for oneself. Horrible as it may seem, for various reasons (from improper education to domestic alcoholism) this does not apply to a significant part of our society. Liberalism does not take into account the scale of Russia's degradation ... this is a problem of the whole society, and a state is needed to solve it. A weak economy without the support of the state is unable to withstand equal competition with stronger ones and dies .

Glazychev does not dispute this thesis either, he argues that Delyagin’s description of both the Russian state, and the Russian population, and Russian liberals and entrepreneurs is completely inadequate, and expresses the opinion that Delyagin’s anti-liberal position (still recently a liberal) is due to the fact that he " six years ago, during the attempts of the then government to hold back the collapsing pyramids of GKOs, "quarreled with other liberal economists .

Then Glazychev puts forward the thesis about the danger of curtailing democracy and the need to resist the authorities, and concludes: “... critics of the Russian liberal reforms of the 1990s are also wrong when they reproach the liberals for being too lazy in explaining to citizens the purpose and meaning of their actions, and the liberals themselves - when from time to time they start embarrassingly making excuses in hindsight. Some cynically cunning, others "succumb to the weak". To convince or dissuade people who are capable of believing only in what they are pleased to hear is, in principle, an impossible task. Today, these people ... are returning with painful sighs of relief to a more natural position for them .

Sources

• Vyacheslav Glazychev. misunderstanding // New time. 2004. No. 9-24.