What is it - the head rots, and not the fish? (mystery)

Carriage disputes are the last thing,

When there's nothing left to drink

But the train is moving, the bottle is empty,

And he wants to talk.

Meanwhile, the dispute began not in the carriage, but in an environment no less concomitant with verbal battles - in the bathhouse. There's also a lot of things to talk about. As usual, having left the steam room and quenched their bodily thirst, they began to satisfy their spiritual needs. After almost indifferently hearing fragmentary information about what was happening, we moved on to the most troubling question for steamy citizens of retirement age: “who is to blame.”

I don’t think that readers will be particularly interested in the specific statements of folk philosophers, since most of us have heard the differing opinions voiced in such debates. Moreover, these statements, when translated from non-printed language into printed language, lose their imagery and sharpness. But the fact is that this time the dispute was introduced into an interesting semantic direction by a certain cheerful old man with a very interesting past, judging by his hints.

He entered the battle in a very empty skirmish about who is worse - the current authorities or the Soviet ones that have faded into history. There is no fundamental difference,” said the gray-haired expert, “the only difference is the change in conditions in the process of what we call “progress.” The beginning of this “progress” was laid by our fathers and grandfathers, for whom they are already great-grandfathers and great-great-grandfathers, who screwed up the greatness and righteousness of Russia back in 1917.

Whatever one may say, the country’s path is determined by its elite. And only during a revolution are the driving forces of the revolution. Before the revolutionary turmoil, the law of the elite was the concepts of honor and nobility. But the elite was far from the people, and honor and nobility “in their own juice” were beautiful dishes for chic restaurants, but not for ordinary hungry mouths. These concepts turned out to be “uncreative” in the political struggle and subsequent bloody meat grinder. The Great Autocrat of All Rus', having fallen into Orthodox-mystical insanity, reveling in noble snot, deserted the throne. The nobility and enlightened society reflected between narcissism and self-flagellation, talking about the aspirations of the common people, but disdaining to condescend to the rabble and filth. As a result, “others are no longer there, and those are far away.”

The simple-minded men were taken aback by the reasoned, coherent speech unexpected in the bathhouse, and the cunning ones began to figure out what to object to, but could not keep up with the flow of arguments. And the old man continued to speak.

- What came to replace this elite carried a different, more energetic and militant spirit. At first it was really a spirit, there were ideal principles. Then the Stalinist regime went through this new elite. The most active and ideological were partly exterminated, partly balanced on a swinging perch between fear and cherished ideals of a “bright future.” Those who “knocked” were mainly those who, by definition, could not have ideal needs, but had either zombified brains or a vile soul. The remaining idealists were almost completely “picked up” by the war.

But this chaos was only another prerequisite for subsequent spiritual degradation. Starting from Khrushchev’s times, instead of spirit, “dush” began to appear. A new administrative party-economic caste quickly formed, all as one - changing their shoes like Khrushchev. This “nomenklatura” gradually became inaccessible to Soviet law; its main law was devotion to higher management and sensitive perception of “guiding signals.” If the presumptuous head of the enterprise could still be “punished with a harsh hand,” then the released secretaries of the district and regional level were already untouchable.

At this point I also remembered that once on vacation I met a former prosecutor who told me his story. As a district prosecutor in the Lipetsk region, he brought in, by law, one chairman of a state farm. He attracted me despite several calls from the regional committee and information that this chairman was organizing vacations for the regional committee “top officials.” After this, the city prosecutor was unexpectedly transferred to the position of deputy and was no longer appointed to independent prosecutorial positions.

Next, our bathhouse political scientist began to competently develop and summarize his arguments.

- It was this party-economic nomenklatura that became the gravedigger of both the CPSU and the entire Soviet socialist system with the socialist camp led by it. And everything that was created by the blood and sweat of the working people. It was impunity that spiritually corrupted the nomenklatura workers, starting from the lowest level. The appointees were carefully selected for Komsomol affairs, and were immediately checked by higher-ranking party comrades “in action”: what indicators he draws and how he organizes baths, fishing or hunting, what speeches he makes in a semi-sane state. Devotion to the party line was not enough; personal devotion to the party leadership was needed. If a functionary fell into the “clip”, then it was no longer possible to fly out of it, because the superior leader was responsible for the subordinate according to party concepts.

Under the slogans of building universal communist happiness, there was a spiritual and moral decay of proactive and active leaders, and through them, of all the working and creative layers of the Soviet state. Everything has become permeated with protectionism and cronyism. Children, relatives, and devoted “needs” were seated in warm and level places.

Duplicity, general theft and drunkenness, complete spiritual emptiness became the catalyst that set off the lightning-fast reaction of the collapse of the previously powerful, but now fetidly rotting superstructure.

When someone farts in a crowded room, he always wrinkles his nose and pretends that someone nearby farted. So the nomenklatura, so as not to smell its underworld smell, pointed its finger at the “decaying West.” At the same time, pointedly spitting and wrinkling her nose, picking on each other, she was eager to go on business trips abroad and find her children jobs as trade representatives and diplomats.

The United States and the West did not have to bother themselves with financing subversive actions, since for some time now this process was no longer led by them, but by the party nomenklatura of the CPSU.

So instead of the nobility and righteousness of the elite of Russia at the beginning of the last century, came the spiritual meanness and immorality of the elite of the times of perestroika, and even more so of the current elite. All these nomenklatura guys found themselves in the forefront of the new Russian government and commercial structures. Everything had already been seized, all that remained was to “throw out” the previously lowered working class and the collective farm peasantry and push aside the stupid and lazy old-timers. The Soviet elite has become good manure for the growth of the current elite.

Do you believe it when our new elite sings to the drum of old new songs about the threat from the West? Yes, they all have relatives there with real estate and companies registered to them, children at universities, bank accounts.

Do you listen to talk shows about the opposition? There are the same degenerates, only they fell out of a drunken train at the switch because they were holding on to the wrong handrail.

Of course, my retelling is a general plan in rough strokes, hastily and from memory. For every disputed argument, Cicero had a clear example. Those present, overwhelmed by the argumentation, fell into a vast, near-philosophical state; even using obscenities to stand apart became somehow uncomfortable. And they just wondered: who is the elder, maybe some kind of professor, or a former corresponding member? The old man never said what he was doing, but only laughed it off. He said that there used to be a song like this: “Who am I? A simple Soviet guy."

True, after he got ready and left, those remaining came to their senses, someone concluded that all this was drink and provocation, and someone who took a couple of sips of beer - and forgot. Why else should one bother oneself, there’s already crap and crap going on around here.