Totalitarian consciousness and the mission of the intellectual

About the metaphors of the Soviet past and why they are reproduced in the present

Opening of the Olympic Games in Moscow, 1980

We approached the dramatic line. And the reason what is happening to us today is not in politicians, although in them too. Our main trouble is in a totalitarian heritage that lives in the minds of modern Russian society.

If we compare Nazi Germany and fascist Italy in the second quarter of the last century (as well as Franksist Spain, Portugal from Salazar, Maoist China, etc. In different periods of the 20th century) with a closer story that was under the flag of the communist doctrine, then we will see a mass of general. This is general - aesthetization and glorification of violence, justification and propaganda of violence, state, first of all. The state, in essence, puts itself above morality and law, the power ambitions of the ruling elite are declared the highest public good, for which you can kill half the country.

Strength against intelligence

Violence was elevated to the rank of virtue, he was given an extremely attractive appearance - it is enough to recall the Soviet and German films of that time, the same Olympia Leni Rifenshtal. Aesthetics of brutality, massive bodies, cyclopic buildings, incredible in the scale of the construction of communism; the cult of gross power and mockery of intellect, infringement of art, building the entire previous history of the country as an endless victorious entry of the state and its army, whether it was liberative or conquest; An attempt to solve complex social and cultural problems using a stick is all from a complex of totalitarian consciousness. It can be affirmed - and approved! - in the most rude forms, like the construction of a Gulag in the USSR or concentration camps in Germany, that is, through the physical destruction of people, and can use more sophisticated methods - for example, the form of philosophical discussions (I remind you that in Germany, Nazism at the dawn of its occurrence found fruitful ground in university audiences and professorships) or massive propaganda through the theater, Cinema, media. This verbalization of the aesthetics of violence, falling on well-groomed soil, creates something like a philosophical base for state violence. In the 30s of the twentieth century there were many countries where the elites flirted with fascizoid ideas, for example, in England part of the aristocracy sympathized with the ideology of Nazism, but due to the historical and cultural tradition, this did not receive serious development. In Russia, alas, the charm of violence lasted many decades, and its strain is still alive: violence permeates our society at the level of power structures and in the minds of most of us.

There is no panacea

Often we hear: the term “totalitarianism” cannot be applied to the era of the post -Talin Soviet Union, not to mention today's Russia. But the question is not in comparisons - it is necessary to be able to see general dominants, to understand that this virus has not disappeared anywhere, there was no vaccinations from it in our country, and therefore, albeit in a weakened form, can infect power and society again.

It seems to us that the market economy, private property create a more pluralistic field, that they are a panacea from totalitarian consciousness, which does not tolerate any competitiveness. However, in many authoritarian and totalitarian European countries of the twentieth century, where a private initiative was not canceled, a well -known slogan acted: “Friends - by love, enemies - by law.” Something very familiar, right?

Over the past 10 years, the business has been knelt down, small and medium and completely destroyed. According to recent surveys, only 2%of citizens in Russia want to create their own private business, while in the USA - 70%, in Europe an average of 25%. More and more areas of the economy are under the monopoly of state corporations, and formally private companies survive primarily due to close ties with state companies. Thus, the autonomy of business as an institution is violated - it is covered by the same comprehensive state. So, the field of independence from power is also bought. Add to this the attack on independent, non -governmental organizations that are declared by foreign agents - and here is the third sector, and so extremely small, begins to be replaced by the marginal corner. At the same time, an invasion of science, education, the sphere of private life, and now the state is almost everywhere. Instead of ten theaters - one, instead of a hundred universities - ten, so that it is easier to control.

However, the trouble is that it is impossible to manage complex, diversified social organisms from one center and through simple solutions. It doesn't work. In the best case, stagnation begins, in the worst - necrosis or chaos. So then the state has a need for violence, in other words, crossing through the knee becomes a form and control method.

Exits

The question that many are asking today: the future is predetermined or can you still compete for its alternatives? I am not a fan of determinism: yes, the situation is very dramatic, but it is worth asking the question: what do we, people of intellectual professions, have done to prevent such a development of events? And what are we doing now, and is it enough what we are doing? Are there any ways to convey to a large number of people of other ethical principles and ideas than those that sound from the television screen or from the State Duma? For example, that the function of the state is not the suppression of social activity and the violent redistribution of financial and natural resources, but the coordination of the actions of a self -organizing society - as it takes with certain deviations in democratic countries.

It seems to me that we must seriously reconsider our own role - I mean people of creative and intellectual professions. I have to ride a lot of conferences and meetings, and one thing is invariably amazing: the incredible snobbery of intellectuals, their commitment to stereotypes, their inability to speak with others in their language that they understand. The stereotypes, if you simplify it a little, are as follows: our society is mediocre, it is not capable of anything, we, intellectuals, no one hears, no one appreciates, and therefore the situation is completely hopeless. So, in Russia it has already happened more than once: the educated estate at different times created a system of fencing from unenlightened mass. Once it was French, once the elitism of life arrangement, from special caps to special panels and special clubs-writers, architects, cinema.

Meanwhile, the entire post -war Soviet history is an example of the struggle of society for expanding the private field, the struggle for the right to a private private life from the state. Pavlik Morozov then already ceased to be a pioneer-hero, although he hung on every schoolboard: the family-holy, friends and relatives should be protected from the arbitrariness of the state-this began to enter the ethics of society. This struggle for autonomy from the state acquired a variety of forms - from wild tourism to home scientific seminars - and pursued one goal: creating a field of freedom, albeit on the scale of the "kopecks" in a sleeping area or tent in the taiga.

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Building the history of the country as an endless victorious entry of the state - this is all from the complex of totalitarian consciousness

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Today we observe exactly the same thing: take, for example, the movement of motorists. What is it, if not a self -organized social movement? Many do not recognize him for a serious political community, but in vain. For it is the language of the post -Soviet society, in which its own car is not only a sign of status, but also a requirement of inviolability of private life, and the struggle for equal rules of the game. There are many such examples of social activity of society. But do journalists, sociologists, politicians often notice them? And do we know that what processes actually occur in Russian society, or we see and notice only what is limited by the framework of our modest experience?

But without studying this society, we cannot speak with him-but it craves a conversation. And if we say, then often people perceive us with hostility, but not because everything is for a firm arm: they do not understand the abstract language of theories. “Democracy”, “freedom of speech”, “liberal economy”, “private property” - an empty phrase, until these most important ideas are brought up an ethical foundation and until these terms are correlated with the life practice of people. This idea, on the one hand, is the defending of Russia's belonging to the whole world, the idea of ​​openness, and on the other hand, the understanding that there is a specific language of society that must be perceived and able to speak on it is exactly that it should be a priority for people of intellectual professions.

And how many we know textbooks or historical books about the experience of resisting the totalitarian regime both in our country and in other countries with similar regimes? Remember how the Academician Sakharov was kicking in the 90s? How did the sixties ridiculed? How many people know about Soviet human rights defenders, about post -war artistic non -conformism? Meanwhile, they are our, Russian experience in the emergence and development of civil society, an experience that is more important to us today as never before.

No, I do not urge to quit everything and go to the people with the staff. I propose to revise the mission of intellectuals in modern society, to realize my responsibility for the situation in which we found ourselves, and to understand: the main struggle is the struggle for people's minds. Totalitarian consciousness wins, including because we do not know how, we do not want, we are afraid, we retreat.

Photo: Raymond Depardon/Magnum Photos/Grinberg Agency