“...And ignorance is darkness!”

On November 17, 1st Deputy Minister of Education Natalia Tretyak announced: by March 1, 2015, new school history textbooks will be prepared, developed in accordance with a single historical and cultural standard

About five years ago I asked my fourth-year students of the Literary Institute: “Are any of you familiar with such a phrase, with a defiantly proud intonation: “We did not graduate from universities!”?

The forest of hands has risen, gentlemen, the forest of hands! EVERYONE - you know, everyone! - this phrase was known and with this particular intonation ... A phrase that entered Russian life seventy years before their birth. And already ten or fifteen years later she lost the soil on which she was born. That is, even my grandmothers hardly caught her in her childhood in a live "tram" performance. And the phrase was tenacious! And, therefore, today it can spread the petals ...

Let me remind you about the soil. According to the "Leninist" constitution, starting from 1918, "exploiters" were not allowed to govern the state, that is, they were deprived of voting rights, for which they received the name "deprived". The vast majority of Russian citizens with a university education were enrolled as "exploiters". Why? Yes, simply because neither they nor their wives stood at the stove - they had cooks (the exiled Lenin also had a cook in Shushenskoye). This means, according to Lenin, before October they were exploiters, and for this they now could not elect and be elected - unlike their former cooks, who “did not graduate from universities” and finally received the full right to be proud of it. Lenin's parents were lucky - they died before October. Otherwise, the State Councilor I.N. Ulyanov would inevitably fall into the "disenfranchised", like his wife - in a large family there was still servants ("hired labor"). In December 1936, the "Stalinist" constitution was adopted (its author was mainly Bukharin, who was shot a year later) - there were no more "disenfranchised", all adult citizens of the country received equal rights; immediately after that, terror acquired a massive character, an unprecedented scope.

Let's go back to today's Russia.

Intelligence, cultural outlook, education - everything has lost its price in the eyes of our "majority" in the last year. Look at the childish enthusiasm with which someone nameless on the Internet, a well-known, respected person (well, half of those who do it for free, from the heart) is dogging (well, half of those who do it for free, from the heart) - it is clearly only the spirit that gives him a huge difference in knowledge and intellect.

To put it bluntly, we are playing with fire. History teaches something.

Today, people often (and not in vain) remember the “Weimar syndrome”, which brought Nazism and Hitler to power in Germany. This “Weimar” (post-war, that is, bearing the consequences of defeat in the First World War) German society was distinguished, as its researchers write, by the lack of normal social relations. What is this "lack"? The absence of those elementary social cells that permeate European urban life (a club of lovers of short-haired dogs or black roses). In our country, today's Russian people almost do not trust anyone (as if 5% of our people feel trust in someone ...), they are closed in the circle of their family and within the radius of visibility of the television screen. He, as they say, has nowhere to go, no one to discuss today's problems with. He passively perceives the streams of information pouring on him - and nothing more. This is a dangerous situation for society. “Fascism grew out of the fragments of an extremely individualized society, united “completely unorganized” people. It is the lost individual, the man of the crowd who has not found his place in society, who is especially greedy for the unifying and simple in form ideology of a single nation, which gives him the long-awaited sense of belonging, unity with others and the meaning of existence. Hence his fanaticism and readiness, if necessary, even to die for the sake of an idea ”(Maria Snegovaya. Escape from freedom // Vedomosti. November 13, 2014). Fear of personal responsibility turns people against freedom and democracy.

I had to write, quoting Boris Dubin, that our current majority, mindlessly supporting what it is impossible to support, wishing the good of their country, are people who “never decided anything in life outside of their private existence.”

So what - we, Russians, by nature, perhaps, are so irresponsible? And forever?.

Yes, nothing like that! Considerable experience has already been accumulated (as it is now customary with us, unknown to anyone outside narrow groups of specialists) of jury work. This most “simple” irresponsible person of ours, sitting down at the table, where, together with other people, previously unfamiliar to him, he must decide the fate (!) of an eighteen-year-old guy, completely changes! He gives himself entirely to an unusual occupation for him - thinking. He ponders over the evidence - do they convince the defendant of the guilt or hastily slapped together? He sits for hours, thinks and discusses - because he knows for sure: it depends on him now: whether a guy sits down in our camp for years in order to get out of it, which often happens, is already an established criminal, or he goes home from the courtroom ...

And quite another matter - social surveys. They are not about the fate of a living person, but about Russia. And the fate of Russia - our man knows for sure - does not depend on him.

So what to do? After all, you can't put everyone on the jury.

What to do, by the way, is pretty clear. Now many thinking people are looking for a way out (how not to get the “Weimar syndrome” quite seriously, which is fraught with what is known) - and they find it. For example, I fully support Avdotya Smirnova's recent answers to Vladimir Pozner's questions: “We should have only one national project - education. We have a very unenlightened society…”

Today, the basis of education (and the prerequisite for responsible behavior) is knowledge of the history of Russia. What is happening today in this field is obvious to everyone, in my opinion. It's scary to go into the history departments of bookstores - it's really dangerous for your health.

What to do with adults - I don’t presume to judge, I leave it to others. I know for sure that every person with a university liberal education should do something to educate teenagers. Otherwise, in a few years we will see a real sky in diamonds. How to do? To come to the director of a neighboring school or the head of the district library, to offer a lecture or conversation for high school students (for free!) On some historical event, for example. Believe experience - many (and the farther from Moscow - the more likely: an unconscious longing for enlightenment is obvious there!) Will not refuse! Give two or three good books - either to the library, or in the form of prizes - for answering two or three questions of a blitz quiz on Russian history that ends the conversation. As Professor Serebryakov urged - "The thing must be done, gentlemen! .."

It is entirely within our power to prevent Russia from sinking into historical non-existence again.