Away from my native clubs...

In Davos, you involuntarily realize how phantasmagoric our internal political discourse is

Everyone knows about the annual World Economic Forum: this is the place where domestic oligarchs meet with domestic top officials in the neutral atmosphere of a Swiss resort in the midst of the world economic and political beau monde. Away from native clubs. The Belvedere Hotel is our home Russia. She is Europe from the English Channel to the Urals. As well as new thinking, globalization and everything else...

I won't go to Davos again. Been there once and that's enough. Calm down at home.

Everyone knows about the annual World Economic Forum: this is the place where domestic oligarchs meet with domestic top officials in the neutral atmosphere of a Swiss resort in the midst of the world economic and political beau monde. Away from native clubs. The Belvedere Hotel is our home Russia. She is Europe from the English Channel to the Urals, then everywhere. As well as new thinking, globalization and everything else.

It is also a supermarket of ideas, the largest in the world. On the panel (in dozens of discussion panels) the most recognizable faces are clusters of prime ministers, Nobel laureates, revived Forbes lists, the first persons of everything, press and TV stars. The right (or not too right) course is untwisted by those who have a foothold and appropriate levers, but the richest political economic discourse is here. What are you talking about this year?

The crisis of the European Union-2012 promises a depression... What was called the "first world" has stopped, the growth rate is near zero for a year. It's good that what was called the "third world" is growing at 5.5% per year. But where does this new movement of the continents lead?.. China is stepping on the heels of America. The visible hand of the state overcame the invisible hand of the market and the free market comes to an end?

Sberbank, Vnesheconombank, Skolkovo, Yekaterinburg, which claims to host Expo 2020, have marked their presence with eye-catching advertising in the most prominent points of Davos. However, the participation of Russian heads in the main action under the arches of the conference center was minimalist. The Russian theme is not a hit, unlike what happened not so long ago.

The leitmotif of the Russian panel: we can't wait for you with our investments. True, our climate (for investment) is sharply continental and the institutional environment is of little use... But it was here that the ingenuity of Igor Shuvalov came in handy, the first deputy prime minister, he was, as it were, senior in rank.

Putin, it was reported, is returning to Olympus (where he never left) to roll up his sleeves and start institutional reforms (which for some reason were in deep freeze for 12 years). It is important that he win in the first round - this will give him a broad mandate, and in no case should any demands be put forward on him, this will only tie his hands and hinder reforms!

Not a very convincing parabola.

And quite unsuccessfully Shuvalov countered the philippic of Mr. Browder, the head of Hermitage Capital Management, which everyone now recognizes by the name of the murdered lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. It is unlikely that this investment company, like Russia, by the way, needed such publicity. But now Mr. Browder, who is automatically banned from entering our country, like Nemesis, is terrorizing official Russian figures at public meetings abroad with the same question. Why does Russia need a crossbow? Why not punish the perpetrators and cleanse their vestments?

Well, why are you repeating yourself, Shuvalov wearily dismissed. How can? A year ago here you asked me word for word the same question... The remark planned as sarcasm sounded rather plaintive. Really, how much can you? Surely in a year (in fact, more than two years after the death in Matrosskaya Tishina) it was impossible to figure out what is already obvious to everyone? Or is it the perpetrators and the crime itself of that level and scale, when all the might of the Russian state is mobilized to protect them? And the reputation of the country, the investment climate and other abstract categories will have to wait.

With all the little oddities, however, the consolidated Russian-Davos discourse is heaven and earth compared to what the Russian public is treated to.

There was a lot of talk in Davos that making money is no longer enough, ethical values ​​are important. That the price of a product (and success) also includes a social price that needs to be carefully calculated.

New words were spoken: social guidelines for entrepreneurial activity, ethical consumption, ethical capitalism… A new rhetoric? Undoubtedly. The new language, however, reflects new realities. Capitalism is transforming. He doesn't die. He is reborn.

Faced with a crisis in different formats and manifestations, the world is looking for answers.

State or liberal capitalism? But firstly, the key word here is "capitalism". The global confrontation of the 20th century “socialism or capitalism” ended with Soviet-style socialism. References to China's success in this context work just the opposite. The fantastic breakthrough is explained by the fact that, having found itself in a black hole after the failure of great leaps and cultural revolutions, the communist leadership of China sharply turned the country towards the capitalist economy.

China catches up with America and becomes the first country in the world? Let's not get ahead of things. China will not catch up with America even when it catches up and overtakes it along the rampart. China will only catch up with America when American students flood into Chinese universities to study. And it's definitely far from that.

And by the way, what is state capitalism? In Brazil, state capitalism drives development. In Russia, it guarantees stagnation, raiding in all formats, and a massive flight of capital ($85 billion leaked last year).

In Norway, the state oil company Statoil ensures the level and quality of the welfare state. (On the accounts of the Independent Pension Fund of Norway - 560 billion dollars. Pensioners of the next generations can be calm about their old age.) Statoil is transparent and operates according to market laws. In Russia, the entire state is working hard for Gazprom, a closed allotment of corporate management and their political patrons. For the "national treasure" nothing is a pity, up to wars with neighboring states ...

Here are a few more questions translated from Davos into Russian.

Is it really necessary that all CEOs, as it is customary to call corporate executives in American practice - Chief Executive Officers, be officers, moreover, from the KGB?

Does the state help capitalism, that is, development? Or does capitalism help statesmen lead the lifestyle of sheikhs and nabobs?

Who does state capitalism serve? To the population of the state or to someone personally, having a proper name? And even when “state capitalism is me,” then who is this me: Lee Kuan Yew or Hugo Chavez? Completely different fruits.

Does politics help the economy? Or does the economy serve politics?

Does development require more state or less state?

Even the European crisis can be looked at from this angle. The deep reason for the Eurocrisis is that in the EU - United Europe, the greatest project of the second half of the 20th century - there are many states (sovereign laxity, unwillingness to adhere to generally accepted norms) and few states - a systemic order, unity of requirements and norms. Which, however, is surmountable.

This agenda was not invented by the authoritarian and resourceful Professor Schwab, the permanent curator of the World Economic Forum. This is the real agenda of today's world. And only we want to be independent of the global agenda.

In Davos, one involuntarily realizes how phantasmagoric our internal political discourse is. Twenty years ago, as a dead-end direction of civilization, communism collapsed and the USSR disappeared overnight. And our “mainstream” is burying capitalism with growing enthusiasm and voluptuously dreaming of the collapse of Europe. And he hallucinates. How glorious that we have a leader who saved the country from itself in the past, saved it from the global crisis in the present and bestows unprecedented fruits in the future.

The discord with reality is absolute. Not only from the world, but above all from our own.

In American political folklore, there is a good formula for expressing the retrograde credo: "Stop the planet, we want to get off!"

Have we already left this planet or are we just planning to leave?