Patriotism, psta

I don’t understand what complaints there could be today regarding the performance of the Russian team at the current Olympics .

When in the first week our Olympians won three gold medals, and in a single sport, seriously lagging behind Kazakhstan and two Koreas in the overall standings, I understood and expressed them myself . But since then, if anyone has not noticed, the situation has changed quite significantly. Before the final day of the competition, the Russian team was fourth in the world in gold and third in the overall medal standings . Today she already has 6 more medals than she managed to accumulate in Beijing 4 years ago. On August 11 alone they won 6 gold, 3 silver and 5 bronze awards. And tomorrow another 22 sets of medals will be played out, and Russian fans there will have someone to keep their fingers crossed for.

One can, of course, say that all these successes have nothing to do with the pressing problems of Russian reality. I will not undertake to condemn people who consider any sport to be the opium of the people and a way to distract the television viewing masses from pressing everyday problems, such as corruption and the criminalization of all branches of government. Thank God, people who think this way in Russia have not yet thought of judging them under the article “blasphemy.” But when government officials, who seem to be concerned about the country’s sporting successes, allow themselves to rumble about an unsuccessful performance in London, this, it seems to me, is indecent.

I understand everything about PR, behind-the-scenes struggles and the inevitable nomenklatura fuss on the close approaches to the Sochi feeding trough. But to slander, because of these low mercantile needs, the achievements of our athletes, which today are applauded by millions of spectators around the world, is already some kind of very severe form of phimosis of the brain stump.

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