Letter to a Stranger

Nothing has changed in 100 years. The next guards from the insurance company “As if it weren’t worse” whined about the letter “Putin must go” posted on the Internet - that Putin should not be persecuted, that no one offered an alternative and it is not known which is worse. So once the "vekhists" offered to thank the government for the fact that with its bayonets and prisons it protects the intelligentsia from the fury of the people.

But the Cadets, the party of the intelligentsia, did not heed this call. Instead of glorifying prisons and bayonets, they demanded the urgent convocation of the Second Duma after the sudden dissolution of the First; they wrote the Vyborg Manifesto, calling for no taxes or recruits to be given to the authorities, they went to prison for this; they kept demanding a ministry responsible to the Duma...

Not everything was all right in the Russian Empire with its absolutism, its censorship, its colonies, its Pale of Settlement, pogroms and percentage norm for Jews. The intelligentsia is inconvenient, it seeks freedom, it asks questions, it thinks independently, it does not shout “hurrah”, its well-fed belly is not enough for it ... Russian sovereigns have always believed that the intelligentsia should die out, that it is not needed at all. However, the "Vekhi" were mistaken: prisons and bayonets of the tsarist government did not save the intelligentsia. They did not even save the government and the king. And who and how is Putin's government saving today? A club at rallies, yesterday tanks in Georgia, the day before yesterday bombs in Chechnya, gas blackmail in Europe, prisons where Igor Sutyagin and Mikhail Khodorkovsky are imprisoned? Intelligentsia or yourself, beloved? I know businessmen who rejoiced at the liquidation of NTV: they are, they say, socialists, preventing the building of capitalism. And today these businessmen have removed their businesses from the country so as not to lose them. Such are the results without Kiselev's Itogi.

The indictment against Putin, Medvedev and the entire KGB rati in a letter looks just great. It's a shame not to sign such a letter. I signed. It can at least serve as a password for honest Democrats. Dare you sign "at that appointed hour"? Or will you hold on to your pocket, your business, your gigs, your safety?

But if Stefan Zweig has a story “A Letter from a Stranger”, then here is a “Letter from a Stranger”, that is, to the people about whom, as they say, the opposition knows little and only comes into contact with them at rallies. And these people must be helped to make a Western choice, which includes both acceptance of Gaidar's reforms and readiness to give a mandate for their continuation. And it is not worth putting an imperial stamp about the threat to the "integrity of Russia" in the message to the people. America did not fall apart from the real self-government of the states, the confederation of Kievan Rus was the first in Europe both in freedom and in terms of GDP, and we have a cramped, stuffy unitary state, where everything is decided by a “strong Center”, and decides - nowhere worse.

The desire of the people for a good life and the desire of the intelligentsia for freedom is like a condition for an arithmetic problem. One train left town A, and another train left town B. The meeting of the people and the intelligentsia in paragraph C will be useful only if the intelligentsia succeeds in enlightening the people. If the concepts of "price liberalization", "privatization", "reforms", "capitalism" and "individualism", "Westernization" and "anti-Soviet" cease to cause idiosyncrasy among the people. “Putin on the way out” is not enough. Based on the text of the letter, co-president Medvedev, the KGB junta, and all bosses who want to return to the USSR should go out.

The intelligentsia must create a blueprint for a new building for democratic Russia, produce building materials, and train builders. She is an architect, a contractor, a foreman, and a foreman. There is no replacement and is not expected.