Way from Varangians to oil

The Norwegian court sentenced to imprison the richest man Norway - Hiella inge Ryokke. Last week, his lawyers prepared appeals to higher courts. Ryokka did not escape from the country, but decided, if necessary, to rewind the entire period - 30 days. The billionaire’s fault is obvious: he bought a certificate for managing a cruising yacht from a corrupt Swedish inspector without any exams.

While the rod is suing, Norway celebrates 100 years of its independence. In early 1905, the Storting Parliament announced the termination of the union with Sweden. All summer 1905, two countries were at war. The most virtual in European history: not a single cartridge has been spent in a few months. So the poor kingdom received freedom from a rich neighbor - the Swedes recognized the independence of Norway in October 1905. In our area, meanwhile, the blood poured as a river. In the same October, Russia as a result of the revolution received its first parliament. After 12 years, socialism began to build even more bloodily. And after 100 years, Norway became an ideal for the new Russian leadership: everything seems to be like ours - a northern country, there is a lot of oil - but this is state -owned oil, and the local economy does not seem to do not depend on the price for it. And around is the best example of socialism. This is when everything - both smart, and not very, and talented, and mediocrity, and hardworking, and lazy - are almost equally prosperous. The ideal is ideal, but the Norwegians themselves chose the heroes of a billionaire with the habits of the new Russian.

Socialism

The Oslo has many bronze statues of workers, peasant women, fishermen and builders - their native brothers of our monumental drummers of the era of socialist realism. For 100 years, Norway has built one of the most just societies in the world, and did not become poorer from this. And in terms of welfare, even Sweden defeated. “Sweden has always been a little ahead, slightly richer, slightly developed technologically, rooms in houses - a little more spacious,” recalls the deputy with thirty years of experience from the working party, Kiell Engretsen. And, catching my gaze, embarrassedly squeezes his fingers with a dark border around the nails: “I was smiling a boat. I have an old boat, she is 65 years old. "

“If you knew Norwegian, you would understand how much in our cafes and Swede stores are behind the counter,” comments writer Peter Norman Vogue. Sweden is definitely better only in one respect - it is cheaper there, although it itself is a terribly road. Residents of towns and villages close to the border invisible to a simple eye regularly go to Sweden to buy food, cigarettes and alcohol. And the Swede is the protagonist of Norwegian jokes. On the other side of the border - exactly the opposite.

Norwegian socialism is called the "society of universal well -being." The average salary is 300,000 kroons per year, it is about $ 4000 per month. The minimum pension, say, has never worked as a housewife - about $ 1400 per month. They are treated for free, and a full salary for sick leave is paid for a year. Moreover, from the budget.

On the other hand, Norwegian socialism is an established machine for the seizure and redistribution of money. A ball of ice cream on the street is $ 4, the same number of stones in a stall, a glass of local beer - at least $ 6, a ticket in the subway is by no means London (in the city of half a million inhabitants) - $ 5. After a fluent acquaintance with the local market, an advertising poster on the window “3 CD for just 299 kroons!” (approximately $ 50) seems unthinkable for sale. But this is yesterday, like a local A-Ha.

A quarter of any price is VAT - in essence, consumption tax. These 25% are the highest in the world. The income tax is progressive, about 30%for the average salary, but there are those who give even 55%. Oil and gas companies give income tax at 70–80%. However, there are only two of them and both state.

“If we divide our salaries into our prices, it turns out not so much more than in the rest of Europe,” Labor Engretsen admits. The country is preparing for the parliamentary elections, and at the same time with Oslo, the election campaign started in the town of Torre-Viekho at the Spanish Costa del Sol: it has long turned into a colony of Norwegian pensioners. Now pensioners are leaving for thousands of living in Thailand - you can truly turn around for the Norwegian pension.

Actually, retirement is retired at 67, men and women are the same. “But many come to doctors and say that they cannot work: constant stress, overwork, headache. And they are recognized as incapable of work, ”says the publicist and writer Peter Norman Vogue. As a result, 10% of the population of working age lives on benefits, replenishing the ranks of the Norwegian electorate in Spain and Thailand. The state spends $ 7 billion per year on them.

“We have the same per capita income with the United States - more than thirty thousand dollars, but the Americans are five times more poor,” Stayne Rigord, the chief economist of the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions - one of the pillars of local socialism. In Norway, the salary of a professor or a boss is only a third higher than that of an industrial worker. Norwegian poor - taxi drivers, sellers of supermarkets, cleaners - twice as richer than American poor. There is also the reverse side - the Norwegian rich is 20 times poorer than the American ones.

So in the slogan “Society of Universal Welfare”, the emphasis should not be made on the last word, but for the word “universal”: the Norwegians live well not because they consume more, but because the consumption process is continuous and insured from accidents.

School of equality

Another pillar of Norwegian equality is a school. Not because it is free - this is by itself, but because they do not make geniuses and do not punish the laggers. “You are handing them up, where in a word of three letters there are five errors, the teacher writes in the notebook“ Well, well done! ”, You can’t read at the age of 12 - again“ well done! ”, - Julia, a person with our pedagogical education. She has been living in Norway for more than ten years, and her daughter goes to a local school. - I achieve from them: “I need to know how my child is studying,” and they are all my “no worse than everything, everything is fine”. Children with development problems learn in the same classes as healthy ones, and there are no exams and assessments almost to high school.

Yulina's daughter comes from school in tears: again you have to go to the forest. All classes take turns on one of the academic days go to the same clearing and fried sausages at the stake. This develops a connection with nature - the second most important after equality of the Norwegian cult.

“The Norwegian man is a natural, not a cultural Homo,” says Professor Thomas Ericksen, a representative of the highest anthropological specialty here. - You know, one of the reasons why we did not join the European Union is because we are afraid of European elite culture. Here France, for example, is also a social state, but there are refined circles there, but we have nothing of the kind. ” In the sensation of the natural equality of people, Norway is closer to its economic antipode - the USA. “Bush can fry in front of journalists and talk with a rural accent, our politicians are also, and Shirak or Blair is unlikely. Can Putin fry hamburgers? " - asks Ericksen.

Nature is nature, but here the phrase from the local textbook of history: "In the 1830s, the activity of peasants in parliament intensified." In parliament. In the 1830s. Peasants. Until you feel this, Norwegian policy cannot be understood.

United oil

Norwegians usually do not like to admit that oil and gas support them on a special path. “We did not feel much difference before the opening of oil and after,” says Diis Byong, adviser to the General Confederation of Trade Unions. At first glance, it sounds believable. Huge money from the sale of fuel by both state -owned companies is removed from the economy and go to the oil fund. The money of the fund is invested in foreign securities, and the profit is returned to the fund again. But this was not always the case. “Until 1993, money from oil sales went to the budget,” recalls Labor Ensgebretsen. - But then questions appeared: what will happen when the oil will end? " Now the law allows you to spend only a small part of the fund, 4-5% - about $ 1 billion per year.

The oil fund is that the Russian stabund is the main topic of local policy. For example, the election campaign, which began last week. Respectable parties urge to leave money to future generations, and populists - left and right - start spending on a common good. Most of all they listen to the radical right, calling to spend money - the Party of Progress Karl Ivar Hagen. In the past elections, she took third place, and now it marks the second. Candidates from the Party of Progress ask why in the country, which is called Nord Kuwait, such expensive gasoline, gas and electricity. And such unimportant roads. “What says Hagen, it makes sense,” Engretsen admits. - We store money for future generations and do not repair school. The school is falling apart, and future generations will have to spend twice as much money to build a new one. ”

Socialism, even if he is Norwegian, his typical problems - for example, lines in the corridors of the clinic. Or for a complex operation - sometimes several months. On the banks of the fjords and between the towns in the outback - roads in one lane with pockets every 50 meters to settle with the oncoming car. All this is called "public poverty."

There is public poverty, but the country feeds someone, they say extremely right. Hans Frost Helland Asmir - at the very top of their party list. He has a wide leather belt with metal buttons, and a bald head seems shaved, like a skinhead. But this is a coincidence: he is a lawyer, and the progressives are generally respectable than the extreme right from other European countries. It is necessary to limit the entrance, ruthlessly send those who violate the law, and new ones - before allowing to the social feeding - send Amir to annual courses and social science. Even the Imams in mosques, as his chief Hagen recently, should preach in a non-Twesie. Before, it happened that he compared Islam with Nazism, contrasted Muhammad Jesus and said that society without ethnic minorities is a society living in harmony. There are 7%strangers in Norway, most of the Pakistanis and Bosnians, but the Russian -speaking community is the fastest growing. Half of it goes to the mosque - these are refugees from Chechnya.

Peace

But the oil money lying dead load provides moral comfort. Even too much. “Mental laziness has appeared,” the anthropologist Ericksen laments. “Everyone knows - it doesn’t matter how you work, what you can,” there will always be food and housing. We are no longer competing society. ” Actually, in Norway you can not work, and it will be no worse than those of people.

Over the years of guaranteed equality, the Norwegians have become a few greenhouse society. Instead of mathematics and engineering specialties, students go to what Norway call “specialties of self -realization” - the science of proper nutrition, social and gender psychology, anthropology and other fashionable educational consumer goods.

The oil fund of future generations does not save from oil dependence: almost all the industry unrelated to the fuel gradually gies. Everyone perfectly understands that, in essence, nothing is being kept on it. “There was a deindustrialization of Norwegian society, it is no longer based on work,” the famous sociologist Ivar Freeses sighs sadly, and adds with envy: “But Sweden has remained an industrial country.” It is easy to meet a man of top -managerial appearance in a suit and with a tie, which rolled on a scooter with a clear look of a clear look or strong. A man with a reddish beard, collecting holes of the Norwegian crowns at the Cathedral Kirka with a sign “Not enough for a plane”.

Disagent

Norwegians love more and more those who do not fall into the socialist format. Along with the politician Hagen, this is a businessman Ryokke. They perfectly understand each other. “Ryokka is good for Norway,” the lobastic progressive of Asmir voices the party line. “We do not think that it is bad - to become rich, everyone dreams about it.”

Ryokka became rich. In a country where wealth is mostly hereditary. Old businessmen do not accept him in their circle in the same way as old politicians do not invite the Khagen party to the coalition. In labor Norway, where they put statues of workers, the rich were modestly held.

Ryok was born 45 years ago in a fishing hole called Mold and went to fishermen. A profitable profession - in Norway, already in the 1970s, the fisherman was a wealthy person. But Ryokka despised the Norwegian path and chose the Anglo-Saxon. He went to the American competition society, turned several scams there, got rich, returned to his homeland and took up fish, since it was impossible to oil.

Most of his companies are registered in England, the tax inspectorate is angry, but Ryokka says that he still pays taxes the most, and if he withdraws a business from the country, tens of thousands of people will remain without work. He is the largest private employer in the country.

The old Norwegian billionaires are resting in painted wooden summer houses of a little larger size than that of their workers. Ryokka buried himself a suburban castle in the style of the Hollywood Middle Ages and builds another - in Oslo on the shore of the Fjord. Ryoku owned the Wimbledon football club in London, but recently abandoned English football and bought a team in his native Mold. The fans of the Moscow CSKA still recall this name with a shudder: whether a joke is 0: 4.

King of Norway Harold Vas is carried out by racing on cruising yachts. Ryoku decided to be equal, bought a yacht, and then a certificate for managing it along with a Swedish instructor. Unlike our oligarchs, Ryokka is very popular among the people: most of my Norwegian interlocutors, although they do not want to part with social peace, carefully praise the rod. For energy and for patriotism - he saves the country from complete "deindustrialization."