President, actor and march against adoption ban

The first working days of the new year brought with it heated debates about migration. A famous French actor suddenly migrated to our country. The President, who ordered the immediate issuance of a passport to him, simultaneously submitted to the Duma a bill stating that it is advisable to live at the place of registration - and, in fact, a whole package of proposals regarding migration regulation. An orphan from Chelyabinsk wrote to the president that he wants to go to America, where, despite the ban on adoption, his adoptive family is waiting for him. The orphan, however, was not confirmed, but the president and the actor, involved in each other’s vivid mise-en-scène, have not gone away.

In the rich filmography of Gerard Depardieu there is a film from 2005, known in Russian distribution as “Lucky Like a Drowned Man.” The story with his Russian passport corresponds to this name. No matter how eccentric Monsieur Depardieu was, he hardly counted on such a flurry of negativity in the French press and Russian social networks. For the lightning-fast execution of a Russian passport and an apartment in Saransk, he was instantly reminded of everything from his own hooligan antics and the scandalous unevenness of his personal life to the first Soviet concentration camps and the current correctional institutions of Mordovia, in one of which the girls from Pussy Riot are serving their sentences. What was probably planned as a small, pleasant and, most likely, financially meaningless episode - such as harmless trips of various foreign stars to Chechnya for Ramzan Kadyrov’s birthdays - grew into a foul-smelling story about values.

Monsieur Depardieu acted as if entirely within the framework of the values ​​​​accepted in his homeland. First, he publicly opposed a leftist government that was trying to plug its budget holes by taxing the rich. Then he exercised the right to freedom of movement and choice of place of residence. It is not his fault that at the moment when he had serious complaints against his own government and plans to emigrate, he was carefully taken under the elbow by people from a distant and obscure country, who specifically understand the concern for the image of this very country. However, having expressed great enthusiasm for Russian democracy and President Vladimir Putin personally, the actor, to put it mildly, “over-salted.”

The whistle from the stalls (at least from the French sector) came precisely in connection with this. Or you are a man of art and a kind of meaningless star, almost proud of your antics such as drunken rides on a scooter or outrages in the cabin of an airplane - and then, of course, you are allowed not to understand modern political geography. Or you are a person with convictions, a liberal and an opponent of leftists in power - but then it is assumed that you have some understanding of the world around you and the boundaries between acceptable and unacceptable behavior. About words that can be spoken publicly, and about those that it would be better to refrain from.

But the friendly whistling of the blogosphere towards the Russian authorities in this case is not very clear. Article 89 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation clearly states that the President of Russia decides issues of citizenship. What is strange or unacceptable about the president deciding to resolve the citizenship issue regarding a foreign actor who is in the midst of a difficult fiscal situation at home? Was your passport issued quickly? Well, we should be glad that the bureaucratic machine, at least in some cases, works quickly. Have you been given an apartment in a region where there are plenty of people on the waiting list who are not particularly well off? This is generally a question for the local governor, and the answer to it is approximately clear: if big Russia uses Monsieur Depardieu to demonstrate its attractiveness, then why not follow his example of little Mordovia.

However, the Russian authorities should have already gotten used to the whistling, murmurs and grumbling. The people here are like that - they don’t like anything. I don’t like the outright chaos in migration policy, leading, among other things, to constant conflicts on ethnic grounds in big cities. Measures aimed at restricting migration, such as the bill just introduced to tighten registration rules so that two thousand Tajiks can no longer register in one shack in the Moscow region that was demolished five years ago, are again not liked: they say that they will further take away passports from the rural population and prohibit city residents from quitting and will introduce a law on criminal liability for three stolen ears of corn. In fact, this, of course, suggests that Russians, despite expressions of loyalty in elections and in opinion polls, seriously do not like the authorities. But senior management continues to consider themselves the only Europeans in the country and are surprised that everyone is always dissatisfied, although they sincerely want the best.

They, the leaders, are so far reassured by the fact that a relative minority is grumbling and whistling. And the most vocal part of the dissatisfied public constantly demands from our state: please become, like in the West, a machine for serving the interests of taxpayers and voters. The absurdity of this requirement in the current frame of reference makes it half as safe for the bureaucracy. The coordinates are such that the political system that emerged in Russia 20 years after the USSR cannot, and does not want to be the West or anything else. It is convenient for her to be what she is - our sovereign feudal bureaucracy. And those who demand it, whether they want it or not, are perfectly integrated into it or into the infrastructure that serves it.

Our system is ready to order and use Western makeup products so as not to look like some kind of perfect Iran in the current increasingly transparent world, and even solve its internal problems - as much as the feudal-bureaucratic system can solve them. Some of the hinges and transmission shafts in it may have already rotted, but it is still believed that everything - right down to the operating hours of the last general store - depends on the first person. The first person can execute, or he can pardon. He might give a passport to Monsieur Depardieu, or he might sign a law banning the adoption of Russian orphans by Americans. This system has its own logic, its own rules, its own disadvantages, but also its own advantages.

But that doesn't mean we shouldn't push for change. The feudal-bureaucratic system also existed in the West; it also had its advantages and its conformist-loyal majority, and it also seemed eternal. By the way, there are several wonderful costume films about this, including those with the participation of Monsieur Depardieu. And then people came with other demands and other values ​​- and changed it (and there is a movie about this too). What changed was not the figure or group at the center of the system, but the very principles of organization of the system and the entire society. We are still far from this, but we, too, will have to take on this matter - unless, of course, we want to continue to fall into the past while the whole world is looking for options for the future. But the current mole of history digs quickly. And in this sense, the march on January 13, aimed against the swine law banning adoption, will actually be much more important and meaningful than all the recent protests. Because it will not be about Putin, but about values.