This entire year marks half a century of historical dates.

June marks half a century since the Novocherkassk massacre. A symbol of how the government actually treats the people, whom it supposedly prays to and who it places at the center of its false ideology. It is ready to shoot at them without entering into a dialogue and without thinking about its own wrongness. Conversation is impossible, everyone remains with their own. Violence lends credibility to arguments. And illegitimate violence at that.

September marks the half-century anniversary of Yevsey Liberman's article "Plan. Profit. Bonus" in Pravda, from which it is customary to count the beginning of the discussion about economic reform, which ended exactly three years later with its launch, albeit unsuccessful. This is a story about how the political will to implement ideas for liberalization (they joked at the time - Libermanization) of the economy has almost always been lacking in Russian history. A story about how liberal economists, while remaining the rulers of thoughts, do not influence the final political decisions. How reform is replaced by freezes and counter-reform. And it invariably turns out to be not only economic, but also political.

October marks half a century since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Evidence of the crystal fragility of the world. An instructive story about the destructive role of show-offs and personal pride in world diplomacy and foreign policy. When you throw your fingers like a man or, as Khrushchev said, try to "throw a hedgehog" into Uncle Sam's pants, this turns into a global catastrophe. It can only be avoided under one condition: you have to "squeeze" your own show-offs. In that story, this was the most difficult thing for at least one negotiating party.

The end of November is the half-century anniversary of Manezh. Half a century of the lordly attitude towards culture, which the authorities presumptuously take upon themselves to manage. When they themselves decide what is depicted in a picture – an “a…” or a face. When they themselves announce what is moral in culture and what is immoral. What is party and what is anti-party. What is for children under sixteen and what is 12+. When culture suddenly begins to “serve the people”, and what films to watch – Philipp Yermash and Ivan Demidov decide, each in their own time.

Even the film adaptation of Vasily Grossman and his half-century of ordeals, which ended a short time later with his death, is a story about the inescapability of our commitment to Stalinism, the belief that there will always be a person who will restore order, and any mess can be eliminated with a magic spell: “Stalin is not on you...”

Half-century anniversaries – somehow it just happened – are a repository of the most indicative archetypes of our history and politics. Fantastically stable and almost unchanged for decades. A set of traps from which we cannot escape for years, and if we do, we fall into them again, running in place on rakes scattered across the Russian field.

The Russian archetype is tenacious, senseless and merciless. You have to live in Russia for a long time to see what will remain in another half century. Is it really the "2062" program, the Goskinovinoidomino, the threat of star wars with the western hemisphere of the Moon, control over the contents of tablets and... disputes about Stalin?

Andrey Kolesnikov: Russian Archetype