The place is busy

On November 29, the media reported that the case of an administrative offense was initiated against Louis Vuitton and a protocol on the illegal use of the land was drawn up on Red Square, where a giant LV pavilion was established in the form of a suitcase of the famous brand. The story caused an incredible scandal. Why?

The chain pavilion stood for a short time on Red Square. Moscow, November 2013
Imagine this situation: you got to the dinner, and there you are met by men in shirts unbuttoned to the navel with gold chains on a hairy chest, and even loudly speaking on the hairdryer. You, as a man -mannered person, are trying to pretend that you do not see anything unusual in this, and behave like at any secular reception. Someone pours you wine to the edge of the glass, and you politely say thanks-and then a storm of curses falls upon you, from which you can hardly understand that “thank you” is an indecent word.

The question in this situation arises very simple: whose space it is and what are the rules of decency here? It is this issue that we are discussing when we are talking about the gigantic suitcase of Louis Witton, which appeared on Red Square last week and caused a discussion almost unheard of scale and intensity.

Individual officials and entrepreneurs, and even entire departments, began to frantically deny their involvement in the suitcase that it arose from the air by pike command or by someone's highest order. There was an assumption that “only one person” could bless the suitcase on the square bypassing all the guards, as if it were not a suitcase, but Polonium. All this unsightly fuss, of course, revealed the dysfunctionality of the Russian authorities, the real nature of “manual management”, but this fascinating and important sight distracted observers from the question of much more important, one of the main issues facing any society: who belongs to the public space and what rules are applicable to it?

The Putin era can be divided into three periods. The first five years, from the fall of 1999 to the fall of 2004, there was a systematic capture-and the destruction of public space. The state crushed for itself or simply destroyed institutions that ensure a public conversation: media and electoral institutions. The process began with the second war in Chechnya, intensified the day after the inauguration, when Putin introduced into the Duma a package of bills that began the destruction of the system of elected power-and on the same day “masks-shows” occurred in the company Most-Media.

Then stability came. The new boundaries of the public space were established, no one really objected against them-well, except for a handful of “disagreements”, which were blossomed, impressed and were darkened when they began to “take” already at the exit from the house. The period of stability ended in December 2011, when the protest movement suddenly filled the remaining public space-it turned out to be a little more than everyone thought, and from this discovery the protesters felt euphoria, and power-panic.

The third period began on March 4, 2012, when Putin was chosen for the third term and arrested Pussy Riot. The authorities simultaneously narrow the public space and even more rigidly punishes those who violate new boundaries. The Kremlin’s answer to the question of who belongs to the public space is simple: power, and all space - from the Protected by UNESCO Red Square to the international waters of the Pechora Sea. The Kremlin’s answer to the question of what the rules of decency are applicable here sounds something like this: “And what we say.” Dance in the temple, for example, is indecent, and the car wash in the temple is decent. It is indecent to protest in defense of the Arctic, and it is decent to extract oil and conduct geological exploration work by destroying the Arctic. It is indecent to talk about violence and theft from the authorities, and to practice violence and theft is decent. To deploy banners or arrange art protests on Red Square is indecent, and installing a suitcase there is decent.

That's why the conversation about the suitcase is a very important conversation.

Photo: Tatyana Makeeva/Reuters