Chechen in Moscow

"In Russia, a different era than in civilized countries." You will read this in the Western newspaper - and immediately a swarm of questions. If the "other era", then Russia, lagging behind at some steps and looping, goes the same way as the West. Then fascism is recalled and tried on. This is if "another era". And if not ...? The Spengler together decided that this was an outstanding amateur, but he wrote better than all the specialists of his time, thought no worse, and some of his guesses and considerations no, no, and they would remember today in connection with well-known events.

One of them is that Russia represents a kind of pseudomorphosis. The intake, barely moving towards his genuine fate, the civilization shoved into Western, completely alien, forms. This discouraged her, she became green and forever hated the source of indecency, hated that hatred, which was not worse: unaccountable. The pain and anger of the creature, which does not know, also that it imagines that it would come out of it if it had not been disfigured in the cradle. This is, according to Spengler, the state of Russia.

Nobody can redo Russians in the Western manner. Rus' will remain unnoticed until the end - it is unknown for itself and for the world. Is it really not a frail thought? Who should reject it with greater fury: Russian nationalist or Russian Westerner? From the second, she takes hope, and by the way, from the first, telling him that his people had no identity - so, something indefinite, muddy, who did not manage to be designated properly.

If everything is according to Spengler, if Russia is a separate organism with its fate, which cannot be changed, then drain the water. If it passes the same era, stages as the West, only with time delay, then it is worthwhile or at least calmly doing your business

To the Bolsheviks, the word "era" in Russia did not sound often. Lev Tolstoy, it seems, simply did not know. There were only two segments in the history of mankind for him: the Golden Age, when bad people have not yet invented money, and the age of madness, the source of which began to serve as a golden cart. With the Bolsheviks, the "era" became the first word. The era of socialism, the Soviet era. Thus emphasized the grandiose specialty of what was happening, but the limb of this segment was also implied, which would be replaced by a paradise called "Communism". Synonymically and the "stage" sounded often. The stages of the Great Way - it was invented during the first five -year years, when for every five years plans for economic and other development were drawn up - how much to melt, collect grains, make bricks, etc. Another “stage” sounded at least often: the one by which the enemies of the people walked for the thorny wire. It is strange that they did not guess to pay attention to this, obviously anti -Soviet, coincidence, and then find and approximately punish the guilty.

Spengler's theory was discussed in the twenties, and discussed well, then, in general, competently, because not the entire Plekhanovsky shoot was destroyed, and no longer remembered. It was inappropriate to understand the fate of individual peoples, especially Russian, with the belief that the fate is one on all: a free -class society. Another thing is our days.

The modern young man, of those who want to make life from someone and in their own way to arrange milestones for the country, reads old books not out of simple curiosity and not for the exam. If everything is according to Spengler, if Russia is a separate organism with its fate, which cannot be changed, then drain the water. If it passes the same eras, stages as the West, only with a delay in time, then it is worthwhile or at least calmly, as Cordonsky advises, doing their own affairs, leaving the surrounding reality to cook in their own juice.

Even more acute these questions for an inquisitive, all reading, say, Chechen student in Moscow. He had already opened, looking at things with western eyes that corruption, courage, community, localism, clan, etc. - evil, wildness, transient. He had already survived the despair that covered him with this discovery, and now he thinks, and not somehow, but “in a scientific” one is unperturically, which will happen to his people in the light of existing theories. Is it possible and necessary to expect it to include it in the Russian stream? Or in which? How much does it make sense to hold on to the past? How to relate to the languor of the Muslim world?

Russia puts a guy before a difficult choice. He hears from her what she represents Byzantium in the world, and Byzantium is good, this is generally the best of everything that was. He hears that he can improve herself and arm himself on further feats of piety, she can only contemplate the Orthodox icon, that the world must be tactfully immersed in this occupation. He hears that Russia is not going to surpass the West in science and technology, but will take spirituality. He hears that Russia rejects the Western political system, contemptuously calling it normative. He lives in a country that gives him his own language, which show that it is all mediocre literature, the fruits of fundamental, shameless unenlightened - and she, Russia, plunges it into this, whether it is wrong, discourse or like him! .. And once, having spent the night in thought about these things, he meets his next Moscow morning: “Why am I for them? Chechen ". So, perhaps, Edward Said is born for the seventh (or still sixth?) Part of the world.

Anatoly Striere - writer and publicist, host of the Radio Liberty program "Your Letters"

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