After the leader

I

Stalin’s birthday is perceived by Stalinists today, apparently, as the birthday of Russia, for an anti -Stalinist this is the day of the death of Russia. Stalin’s own - his reputation - is closely linked with the fate of Russia and in nomenclature heads, so the government goes around Stalin's rehabilitation as a cat around a bowl with sour cream. And I want, and pricks, and mom does not tell.

Russia is too real to enjoy confidence among the nomenclature, this lord of fictions. The louder the Kremlin demagogues sculpt about "Great Russia", "Russia - forward!", The more obvious that they do not understand Russia and they are afraid of Russia. In the same way for the court dancers depicting Russian folk dances or songs, the main enemy is not Austrian or Australian folklore, but real folk dances and songs. However, after the elimination of the "kulaks" and the transformation of the surviving population into non -rational "agricultural workers", preoccupied with exclusively survival, the people can no longer be afraid.

Stalin's cramped link with Russia is a problem not only for the nomenclature, but also for anti -Stalinists. Theoretically, it would be possible to carefully separate Stalin from the country that he ruled, as the Germans separated - though not suddenly and not quite of his own free will - Hitler from Germany. Almost anti -Stalinism has a huge fear of Russia - not mythical "Russophobia", but a real fear of a country that can and should be free.

In anti -Stalinism, vulgarity is noticeable, when the whole complexity of totalitarianism comes down to the evil will of one person - and as a result a whole country disappears, one evil genius remains. This is not even vulgarity, it is vulgarization, but vulgarity, in principle, is a process, constant sliding down. There is no vulgarity, there is vulgarization. This is a manifestation of the cooling of the creative product that Berdyaev was lamented about. You can’t create anything vulgar, this would violate the principle of freedom. Plaster is flattening, and the item becomes more flat not only when it dries (and not everything drys out), but when a person rises up and begins to look from a height at what he used to look from below.

Anti -Stalinism as a transfer of all sin to Stalin is psychologically inevitable, morally vicious, and anti -Stalinism must be left. Otherwise, we have anti -Stalinists who demonstrate the same conformism and lashing in relation to the current Russian system that the Stalinists under Stalin showed. Stalin's denunciations play the role of a lightning rod, soothe an unclean conscience - they kick a dead jackal, they serve live jackals. Of course, not all - but the thing is that a normal person, no matter how hot he exposes Stalin, cannot be reduced to "anti -Stalinism" and will not be offended by such invectives.

II

Most of all, anti -Stalinism is likened to Stalinism when he denies that life was under Stalin when he brings Russian reality to the caricature. This causes today for many smart and decent people a skeptical attitude not only to anti -Stalinism, but to the ideas of freedom and democracy as a whole. Didn't they live without them? And do not say that under Stalin some lived, while others survived or died. This is true, but are everyone guilty?

Is the anti -Stalinism of Stalinism is not likening when it professes the principle of collective guilt? So even Stalin was smarter with his (absolutely hypocritical) "the son does not answer for his father." Anti -historical - that is, it is not true - to say that "all the people" supported Stalin, how to say anti -historical to say that "all Germans are responsible for Hitler." Hitler and Stalin were very carefully killed by millions of his opponents, so that they showed the “support” not “everything”, but only “all survivors”. Totalitarianism, although Nazi, although communist, was affirmed not so much thanks to the support of the majority, but due to the activity of the minority and the favorable passivity of the majority.

In Russia, there is also the sad shade that here the Stalinist repressions are most horrified and horrified by people who are associated with executioners or not mind to getting to the same. This is a direct result of the Stalinist totalitarianism: the opportunity to write memoirs was given primarily to the victims from the nomenclature, and the peasants, the Tolstoyeans, the witnesses of Jehovah were thoroughly blocked. None of the current anti -Stalinists have never stood up against Jehovah's witnesses, the persecution of which the Kremlin is actively, in a particularly cynical and mocking form, has been led for three years. What is there - even for the "respectable" Catholics did not stand when they were oppressed at the beginning of the Putin rule.

It is clear why anti -Stalinists - probably it is worth repeating again: "vulgar anti -Stalinists" are passive. The cornerstone of their anti -Stalinism is disbelief due to freedom, due to the creative spirit of the personality and, on the contrary, the belief that any small stationery rat is also Stalin - this is a great rat, which is able to irrevocably leading millions of people. Such anti -Stalinism must be opposed to the fact that people are not rats, that when people still go behind the rat, then it is for the rat, and not for the rat, at their own choice, and not at the call of the magic pipe. Man is not a rat; That is why the fact that for a rat is natural, for a person - the sin of rat -based, cowardice, greed, betrayal.

III

It was not and not - even under Ivan the Terrible, even under Stalin, even today - no city of Kitezh, no holy ascetics who, in the forests, according to Voloshin, are smoked by a certain sword of prayers, there were no such holy -like matrynx and matrynes, at best, the matrynes were courtiers, like the same Solzhenitsyn. This is the bad news for those who are inclined to project their hopes, their strength. The good news is that forces are, that hopes are not heir. There were forces near Stalin, there was not only life as a physical existence - such a life is usually a rather vile phenomenon, when around Auschwitz, and the survivant has work in Auschwitz accounting. There was both the boy Alexander Men near Stalin, and the same Tolstovites, Jehovahs, Old Believers - who did not participate, although not resisting force. To call them "anti -Stalinists" is like calling the fountain "anti -desert". The fountain is both in the middle of the desert fountain, and in the middle of the sea a fountain. There is no this fountain in anti-Stalinism, but there is desertedness. Stalin, of course, disappeared not due to the fact that someone did not become his accomplice. Stalin disappeared due to the fact that death is death for a tyrant. Stalinism disappeared ... but did he disappear? There is far from, only the antennae has been peeled off, and there is still bad anti-Stalinism that he is not able to find out the Stalinism that has rejected his mustache.

Stalinism did not disappear, but the belief that Stalinism - like any non -freedom did not disappear, is still defeated not by military force, not by violence, but by the power of peaceful and creative. The same Germans defeated the Nazism to the fullest, not due to the defeat and propaganda of the allies, but much later, when the generation opposed Nazism, under Hitler was not born.

People who are looking for the middle between Stalinism and anti -Stalinism - today these are mainly people who went to school after 1991 - are looking not for rest, but by the release of their creative energy and a thirst for freedom. And they say to them: "Well, Russia is doomed, here such a people, they always blind the next Stalin."

Perhaps the most painful last Stalinism is the inability to generally pronounce the words “freedom”, a fixation on “Russia”, “people”. No need to wait until Russia is crushed or plundered, while we reach the bottom and, perhaps, start the rise. The rise is always not because they are repelled from the bottom, but because they reach for the height. It’s not necessary to start not from Stalin - all the more so for this great courage is not necessary for this - but to freedom to reach for democracy - to Western democracy, to Europeanism and other ideals that many Stalinists and anti -Stalinists are now on the same suspicion as they were under Stalin, and which are as faithful and necessary for Russia and Russians, as they were under Stalin and how they will be in any era.