In the opposition

Navalny as a mirror of the Russian intelligentsia

July 24, 2013 Mikhail Berg

I must say that the incident of Navalny today is not as simple for me as it seemed until recently. I understand those who demanded the unconditional liberation of Navalny in a lawless Putin court, are ready to continue to defend his right to freedom, but cannot support Navalny as a politician with mayor and presidential ambitions, who had tarnished himself with nationalist statements and actions.

I understand those who sees only an intermediate and compromise figure in Navalny: they say, today there is no one who is better than Navalny is able to unite the anti -Putin forces. He is a kind of rude ram that can break the doors of authoritarianism, but on the next (after the defeat of the vile Putin regime) elections can be voted for another. In general, in Russia now it is not such a situation to look too far. Today, Navalny, despite all its shortcomings, has obvious advantages for which it can be supported. Not to the fat, its careful liberalism, anti -Totalitarian and anti -corruption rhetoric is quite enough, and the fact that there is an unacceptable nationalist component for many can be forgotten for a while.

Don't know. I’m afraid that neither Navalny nor its large nationalist voter will agree to forget about this component. Moreover, it is precisely negative for Europeanly configured observers that the features of Navalny-Politics are fully consistent with not only the common patriotic feeling, not alien xenophobia, but also the views of many modern intellectuals and intellectuals. At least in St. Petersburg, where I listened and read my former friends for several weeks, now surprising me with quite frank obscurantism.

So, among the former Soviet non -conformists, I found the whole range of possible right -wing conservatism: from the frank support of Putin to anti -Western and anti -American rhetoric and hatred of any manifestations of liberalism. At the same time, there is no constraint about their ultra-reactive, often law-Orthodox views; Perestroika and Putin nihilism burned doubts: today, it seems that everything is possible, all, right up to frank Nazism. It is not a shame to work as a columnist in the Nazi magazine Mikhail Leontyev “However”; It is not a shame to cooperate with the authorities and its adherents; It is not a shame to praise the scoop, the Russian Empire and today's Orthodox bias; It is not a shame to protect frank xenophobes.

I will give an eloquent example of a statement that collected on Facebook a lot of likes from my friends in Soviet unofficial culture. First, about the hated “Izvestia” liberalism, and then real positive values: “But such is Russian liberalism as a whole, all these brothers Dzyadko, who are so delighted with Mitya Olshansky, as well as Mikhail Berga, who do not delight him. Yes, they are clearly and purely expressed, each move has been worked out. They, like English archers near Azenkur, bite us with texts, "very accurate" and "beautiful, as always." But all this discourse is a dead plate, a template polished for decades. No place for development and nothing to do with today.

But what is opposed to them is the deputy of the spring, “Orthodox FAQ”, “Petersburg Cossacks”, “Russian jogging”, “Song of world-bearing wives”, all this mixture of naiva, officials and wildness-this is the living life, stupid and ridiculous. Here - the street is no longer flameless, but with hard difficulty trying to advance further than the Abyrval. Or, according to the just found quote from Pasternak: "Is it on the party-cleaning, whether it is a measure of art and everyday assessments, in the consciousness of children and the language of children, but there is already some kind of truth that constitutes the rightness and temporary invasive of its elusive novelty."

Could I imagine that Petersburg intellectuals, anti -Soviet and associates on the “second culture” would seriously consider the ardent and “St. Petersburg Cossacks” a positive alternative to “European values”? By the way, the author of the quote, Igor Karaulov, consistently and tirelessly supports Alexei Navalny on his Face -Bulk blog, and there is no doubt, not for liberalism, but for nationalism.

What is this talking about? Navalny really is a reflection of today - where hope, however, is mixed with, possibly, more possibly than under Putin, obscurantism, no matter how difficult it is to imagine this value. Over the past days, Navalny asked many questions about his nationalism, to some, but not all, he answered Aider Moviabaev, answered quite with dignity, but did not convince me.

Photo by EPA / ITAR-TASS / Anatoly Maltsev