Fixing the losses of the world

Do "people in sweatpants" want to continue the war

There are irritated urban strata, and there are "people in sweatpants" sitting in front of the TV and remotely approving the war. There is a protest by Bolotnaya, and there is a protest by Biryulyov. Today's government, attributing to the "trainers" and Biryulev the virtues of honest burghers who have become the "Crimean majority", relies precisely on these social groups. Within these layers there is an enclave of radicals who not only talk about the “power of war and victory” (Benito Mussolini), but who are fighting for real, including in the southeast of Ukraine. The “forces of war and victory” have their own Agitprop, which felt that the near-fascist outcasts in the conditions of “consolidation” in connection with the Ukrainian crisis are turning into the mainstream. And, accordingly, there is an opportunity to become one of those boats that are raised by a large national-patriotic wave. And on this wave to enter, finally, into power. Everyone is dancing (-eating) - from Limonov and Prokhanov to birds of a smaller flight, with which even Francis of Assisi would not speak - like Krylov and Kholmogorov.

We forgot that we live in the Byzantine Empire of the times of decline. And the masters of the country, rushing about between the fur coat store and the chapel, will never share power even with spiritually close national patriots. They also forgot that Putin, as one smart person said, is a scale. The weights on these scales, however, are always outweighed in the direction of "Orthodoxy-autocracy-nationality", and even too often emotio began to replace ratio. And yet: the first person knowingly found it necessary to appear in Normandy, albeit sandwiched in a crowd between one queen and one duke. And then followed the negotiations in Vienna on the "South Stream" and an instruction to the Federation Council to abandon the war. This means that debit and credit have ceased to converge in the internal Kremlin accounting. This means that we are thinking about new foreign policy costs that have a specific economic dimension.

It is clear that in the first person many of the "forces of war and victory" and from the group of "trainer wearers" were offended. Having opened the floodgates, releasing all the steam that he was, letting his people go to the "fair" ethnic slaughter to shoot, making people feel like the last soldiers of the empire, the president suddenly backed down. Having thus complicated the ideological support of the war, it will not be easy to convert propaganda pipes in favor of peace.

It remains to fix the losses.

First, the gap - mental, political, geopolitical, economic - with the West is obvious. Russia will have to move away from this injury for more than one year.

Secondly, the electorate, having received a bone in the form of Crimea and dreaming about the east of Ukraine, will turn away from Putin, who replaced war with peace. As well as the Nazis, and fascists, and moderate, but rabid "patriots" and nationalists. Part of the consolidated electorate, and a significant part, will remain with the Supreme Commander-in-Chief: in the hope, perhaps not empty, that the declared peace is just a tactical zigzag, and then everything will return to normal.

Third, the economy. The authorities boast that the middle class has grown a lot lately. This same class behaves conformist and also continues to be a resource for supporting the regime. Now imagine that not even the SWIFT system will be turned off the Russian banking system, but simply Visa and MasterCard, tired of the maneuvers of the Russian authorities with the national payment system, will still leave our country. And the middle class will sharply lose the opportunity to be what it used to be: that is, to live almost like Abramovich under a management system almost like under Stalin. Not only that, as Finance Minister Anton Siluanov honestly admitted, the pension savings stolen by the state were used to plug the dimensionless Crimean holes, but the middle class will be deprived of the opportunity to make purchases where and how they want. For example, a Russian middle stands at an ATM in London, which has become his home, and tries to withdraw money or pay for some coat in a store, and suddenly it turns out that his Visa card is just a piece of plastic, and not a means of payment at all. Well, if not in London, let him try to pay for whiskey in Hurghada ...

Where will he end up, this middle-class electorate, which partially includes the highly profitable part of the “people in sweatpants”? Who will the Russian middle be with? He is not a master of culture, he does not give concerts due to connections with the top leadership, he wants to buy a coat, withdraw money, relax not in the Crimea, but abroad. But they don't give him. An attempt on a habitual way of life is, after all, political sabotage. So this electorate can be lost.

Perhaps the country's leadership hopes that here too it will pass between the jets without a stroke, just as one statesman went from Ilyich to Ilyich without a heart attack or paralysis. But this is quite sophisticated maneuvering - especially when you consider that not only thugs were overexcited by the war, but also ordinary people who believed that hostilities are good, they refresh the nation and consolidate it. What now the authorities should do with this electorate, nuclear in every sense, is a big question. And a serious challenge. It is possible that it is more serious than the one that took place in December 2011 and to which Vladimir Putin responded by tightening the screws and mad printer.