They say that language is given to man to hide his thoughts, but often it betrays them. Therefore, we must watch our speech - if we want to understand something important about ourselves in time.

Until recently, "modernization" was constantly on the lips of the fashionable bosses and a group of leading intellectuals. Rarely was there an issue of a decent newspaper without an article with this ringing word in the title or at least in the text. Now the tandem squeezes this word out of itself by force, only when there is a scandal without it. They have forgotten about the "oil needle" - the country is being hooked on the ideological needle. But the idea of "changing the vector" is being implemented - albeit in the opposite direction.

The turn from stalled modernization to progressive obscurantism is visible at the level of events, in resonant news with an ideological load. Skolkovo's "vanguard of modernization" announces that the core of the economy's personnel will be replenished not from universities. All that remains is to replenish the scientific personnel bypassing universities. Theology departments are being opened, as if there are no other problems in education. Eccentrics with whips are eager to regulate street trading and social life, exhibitions and theaters. Tomorrow, a joke by my friend from ARD (the first channel of German TV) will turn out to be a careless prophecy: a Cossack battalion of the State Traffic Safety Inspectorate checks for icons on dashboards, without which OSAGO is invalid. New ideas regarding prohibitions and sanctions are already completely beyond good and evil. Darkness is creeping out of every crack, gathering under the ceiling and thickening to blackness. And it is clear that it did not come by itself: there is something to be inspired by and to be drawn to. Tomorrow the leader of the nation will go to be photographed not with rockers, but with a Cossack patrol, to close a vernissage or a play based on Nabokov?

Triumph of the Idlers

Cossacks are a household name here. The authorities are egging on the wretched, who themselves can do nothing but pester others. The triumph of active slackers and aggressive impotents. From what real big and necessary work are these foreheads patrolling the capital tearing themselves away, on what money are they hanging around here and why are they suddenly handing over the functions of the state, to whose budget we pay taxes? And at this time, the forum "Cossack Circle" is already describing the situation in a sweeping manner: "The saddest thing is that the wave of scandals and outright idiocy that has recently arisen, connected with the Cossack name, but created most often by a disguised bastard, has hit all Cossacks hard... The population of the Russian Federation now reacts to the word "Cossack" with irritation, verging on hatred." Next, we take the Cossacks out of the equation – and we get, in general terms, the attitude of normal people to all this spirituality in cassocks and stripes, to this “cultural policy” and “ideological work”, to the bacchanalia of petty control and malicious interference. A dressed-up bastard – it is said “to the saddle”, but archetypal.

It is clear that in such an atmosphere it is difficult to pronounce the word "modernization" without choking. Our white man in a black BMW with an iPhone suddenly declared himself a conservative a year ago. That is probably why it is now so dark in Rus' in the mornings.

But another darkness is even more depressing. Not only the bosses have forgotten about modernization, but also the experts themselves, including the opposition. The intellectual community, looking down on the authorities and even with disgust, turns out to be led and secondary in terms of meanings. They said “modernization” from above – and the record started playing; they spat out this word like a lost tooth – and everyone immediately forgot about it, as if modernization is not needed by the country and in life, but only for the leadership to pose. Everyone immediately, without any particular conceptual pressure, gave up their positions and moved to the back of the defense – to fend off the approaching Black Hundreds.

It is believed that in a country where the government watches with gloomy satisfaction the exodus of people with brains and energy, it is absurd to talk about modernization. But by doing so, we are handing over to the government the initiative and the agenda in speaking about what is important – that main line of freedom that, it would seem, cannot be taken away and where victory will always be ours, because it is our business. When everyone forgets what was said from the main platforms yesterday, the speed of the fall and the path of degradation that has been passed in just a year are not so noticeable. The question is no longer about a breakdown into obscurantism, but about what it will be: total or with outlets, cannibalistic or not quite. When there is no vanguard, it is impossible to estimate the depth of the rear into which we are all being pushed.

The idea that talk of modernization in the new context is useless does not seem meaningful to me. I also do not understand why the courts are not inundated with thousands of civil lawsuits regarding flagrant violations by the authorities and government enforcers of all possible norms and codes, including the Criminal Code. The fact that these lawsuits are doomed is not an argument: an array of rejected appeals must be available. It is like the necessary words that remain in the text even when you cross them out. Perhaps the authorities would not be so comfortable fabricating cases against protest activists if each such case was answered by hundreds of counterclaims, supported by indestructible evidence and proof – the “Bolotnaya list”.

Stages of modernization

It is useful to remember now that the topic of modernization developed in stages. At first, the conversation turned to overcoming the technological lag. Then they realized that the task was unsolvable without modernizing the economy. The economy pulled institutions and the entire institutional environment along with it. Then they had to admit that this required modernizing politics, which in turn required a revision of ideology, changes in consciousness, a revision of goals and principles, criticism of mythology and archetypes. (This is in theory. In practice, not even a step up to the second step has been taken: they are still trying to generate something innovative, without thinking about what to do with all this wealth in the economy and institutional environment, which organically reject any innovation.)

But the movement backwards, on the contrary, began immediately from the top, from the heights of the spirit and the depths of consciousness, from culture and ideology. A hereditary advertiser was thrown into the Ministry of Culture, who, in his very sincere simplicity, does not hide the fact that history for the authorities is not a sphere of responsible knowledge, but an instrument for brainwashing with subsequent pollution by propaganda that spits on facts and conscience. Religion and the church were also taken into circulation. When the authorities cannot tell people anything intelligible and reasonable, they are left to pretend that there is a lot in their soul, although there is no greater heartlessness than mixing faith with politics. As a result, exactly the same moods are maturing in the mass of churchgoers and in the clerical environment itself as in the Cossack circle about their mummers.

Accordingly, the fight against reaction begins from these levels – from those layers of consciousness where ideas and principles, concepts of the “moral” and “spiritual”, norms and ideas about what is acceptable are stored. And including models of the future. In these spaces, everything is lost in advance by ideological reaction: there are no brains and pens, and even if there were, there is no content. Moreover, there is an ambush with the inertia of past slogans: to fight the idea of modernization is to flog ourselves, to support it is to saw down our own “new foundations”, entering into a caricatured contradiction with our own main trend. But almost no one in the opposition uses this opportunity – apparently, because they do not understand that words and ideas have their own power, even when they look utopian and not from this time at all (judging by history, they gain the highest power precisely in such situations).

Now the moment of truth is coming for the intellectual community. It is becoming clear whether it exists at all (precisely as a community) and whether it has a voice in principle – or whether it will be the silence of the lambs. This is a question of responsibility and courage. The moment is a turning point: if until now the blame fell primarily on the authorities, now that the reaction has become open, historical responsibility is increasingly shifting to society itself. It seems that the authorities have already given up on the problem of the “history textbook”: in any case, the description of this reign, especially its second half, will be damning. But people of culture and knowledge, including those who write about politics and history, could think about what their successors will write about them tomorrow. I am afraid that it will not only be about Putin.

Alexander Rubtsov: The authorities are inciting the wretched