Putin and Alexander

Mikhail Sokolov - about the war and glory

A magnificent ceremony on November 20, Vladimir Putin, opened a monument to Alexander I at the walls of the Kremlin. It seems, to the anniversary of the victory over Napoleon in the war of 1812-1814, but it turned out to be a completely symbolic act.

It seems to me that for the current ruler of Russia, this is a monument to himself. Alexander the Blessed and Putin has a lot in common: one has a covered edemature, the appearance in the arena by order: “Go to reign”, the other has a murderous for the throne of Yeltsin to a quick refusal of “Tsar Boris” for westernization and democracy.

How not to marvel at the external coincidence of the appearance of the rulers and what the role of the case is in history! Everything is cast in the current Pushkin line: “The ruler is weak and crafty, bald dandy, the enemy of labor, accidentally warmed by glory, reigned over us then ... ” For objectivity, it was necessary to depict not fateful battles on the bas -reliefs of the pedestal, but determined the opposite course of Russia in different eras of the tsar’s associates: Speransky and Chatorsky, Arakcheev and Arakcheev and Arakcheeva and Arakcheev Archimandrite Photius. He created the Lyceum and universities, and Pushkin was exiled. Poland and Finland granted the Constitution, and Russia is just a decree on free stoopers. Europe was presented by the reactionary sacred union of the emperors.

Why, Putin had his own, who promised reforms, a short -lived " days of the Aleksandrovs of the Beautiful Beginning ." You can see the parallels between the landing of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and the reference of Mikhail Speransky, the current expulsion of the first to Europe, and the "forgiveness" of the latter with the sending of governorship to distant Siberia. For comparison, quite the offensive wars of Alexander I, who quarreled Russia with Europe, or erroneous foreign policy, who brought the empire to the economic crisis during the continental blockade, ask for their own.

In the monumental propaganda of the late Putin era, like politics, a distinct tendency is visible: the authorities glorify those who advocate a solid personal dictatorship, not so important, red, white or monarchical

And yet, to the current “king” is much closer between the bright hopes of the enlightenment and the fear of the Pugachevsky rebellion, the Sovereign-European, and his heirs, which deliberately fettered Russia. The monument to the reformer Alexander II ("Liberator") thanks to the public initiative Boris Nemtsov and Alfred Koch has long been in Moscow. Although not in a historical place in the Kremlin, where Putin did not let him return, but from the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. So the current supreme ruler who has left the agenda of reforms does not need to touch. So far, the monarchists of the Putin era, the Orthodox Chekists and the Black-Holy Figures of the Russian Orthodox Church are content with the glorifying the Romanovs house and popular exhibitions in the Manege, jokes in their own unhurriedness.

The authorities regularly advise eating monuments to these conservatives on the throne in Moscow. Without monuments in the capital, there were still also left with the West and defeated in the Crimea of the retrograde Nicholas I ("Palkin"), and stopping the reforms of father Alexander III ("Peacemaker"). Nicholas II is not immortalized in Moscow, as not so much “bloody” as limited and short -sighted. The “Manifesto of October 17” was torn from him with a universal strike, and the credo of Vera was expressed by the emperor in the call to the Zemstvo to leave “meaningless dreams” about the constitution. The passionate of Nicholas II plunged the country into two murderous for the country and the throne of the war with the neighbors, for which he paid ... unlike the strengthening his support in the aggressive victories of Vladimir Putin.

In the garden where a monument to Alexander I was erected, there are many places of the Kremlin. You can perpetuate all emperors. But preferably without exemptions. Let then also put Peter I, who is suffocating his son, Tsarevich Alexei, near the Kremlin wall - overthrown in infancy and young men of John VI Antonovich, who was stolen in Shlisselburg, the failed converter Peter III, with the slaughter of the Oryol sucker and, finally, the Self -Dodur Paul I, and next Palena. Such a panopticum - according to Pushkin: "lesson to the kings" and those who believe in the invariability and infallibility of any power. The neighborhood of kings and tsareubitis is symbolic: on Red Square in the Mausoleum - the mummy of Lenin, nearby - the busts of Stalin and Sverdlov, is immediately the organizer of the murder of the Romanov family - Peter Voikov, and in the Alexander Garden - the monarchical obelisk, Patriarch Hermogen, and now also the statue of Tsar Alexander ...

In the monumental propaganda of the late Putin era, like politics, a distinct tendency is visible: the authorities glorify those who advocate a solid personal dictatorship, not so important, red, white or monarchical. Lenin and Stolypin are now standing on the squares, Andropov and Kolchak are immortalized. For those who saw the path of Russia to Europe, socialist Alexander Kerensky, Cadet Pavel Milyukov and even for the liberal monarchist, the author of the Manifesto on October 17, "Count Sergei Witte in Russia remains. So thanks to the authorities and for Alexander I. Even in the “Unified Textbook” it will be necessary to admit: the emperor in his youth fought with arbitrariness, allowed constitutional dreams, declared an amnesty political prisoners and even eliminated the secret office.

Mikhail Sokolov - Radio Observer Freedom. The author and host of the program "Face to the event"

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