Amerika

Having visited Petersburg in the riotous 90s, I went to breakfast in a cafe on Nevsky. After me, a young man burst at the door. The sun only got up, and he was already brutally drunk. Worse, a gun was sticking out behind the elastic band of his training. I do not understand calibers, but the barrel was so impressive that I left, not sleeping off.

A month later, I talked about the remembered meeting, who came to New York, Alexei German, with whom I was lucky to make friends even in perestroika. After listening to me without much surprise, he shrugged and answered out of place:

“You knew how our grandmothers pity your America.”

Having decided that the interlocutor did not deal with the circumstances of the place, I repeated the story, clicking on the address: Nevsky Prospekt.

- That's what. You have a scorch in each street in the middle of the day.

- Who?

- How who is? Terminator with Rambo.

- But this is a movie!

“It is believed that the screen will not lie,” Herman who knew the sense of a sense grinned at this, “in any case, they believe him in Russia.”

I remembered this dialogue during the events in Ferguson, when the Russian media, choking on poorly hidden delight, talked about the country burning from the ocean to the ocean. Hurrying from an apocalyptic picture, I looked out the window, but did not see anything: the snow with the rain hid Manhattan. Having moved through the Hudson, I saw a little more: terrible traffic jams, pre -holiday bustle, crowds of visitors, expecting to stare at the famous parade in honor of thanksgiving.

It cannot at the same time say that on the other side of the ocean, everything lied in everything. Lying is the art of a frame. Enough to enlarge the plan, and the peaceful column of demonstrators in New York becomes an angry crowd. Such an amerika - with a Russian typo - is also familiar to me, because I saw how it was made under Brezhnev.

Within the framework of a relict worldview, Russia will finally get up from the knees only when it reaches to America and will be able to get it at least on the blue screen

The recipe is known: the small becomes large, the private - general, one represents everyone, horror accumulates, the threat is growing, the panic is inevitable, and the audience is waiting for a sweet catharsis: “It is good that we are not with us.” They used to say differently: “If only there was no war.” Let the authorities lie and eat, but “the world is the world!”, As they wrote on every fence, even flowers in flower beds.

Then, however, the screen was less believed. Everyone knew that as they move from east to west, life was getting worse: from the harvest to hurricanes, from pioneers to ku-club-clan, from ballet to barricades. Accustomed to the device of the political compass, the Soviet man switched to hockey as soon as the TV got to America.

The post -Soviet viewer does not question the overseas picture. Why? This question torments me every day since with the beginning of the Ukrainian crisis, the sovereign lie reached the Soviet limits - and passed them. In search of an answer, you can turn to statistics.

“The number of Russians who relate to the United States,” says a survey conducted by the Public Opinion Foundation, “has reached a historical minimum: only 11% perceive this country positively.” Of course, it is quite strange to hate America, using its iPhones, flying on its Boeing, watching its series and stealing her films, including those about Rambo, Terminator and other supermens. But this phenomenon is partly explained by another figure. “Despite the hostility towards America,” says the same survey, “50% believes that the Russian leadership should strive to establish relations with the United States.”

I see this paradox - why be friends with the enemy? - Not geopolitical, but mental reality. A return to the Cold War promises the illusion of parity. Again, as in the good old days, only two superpower are divided by the planet: we and they. And this means that you can not pay attention to “different other Swedes”, obviously inferior to a pair of mighty fighters in the world ring. After all, Khrushchev promised to overtake America, considering the granted that the rest did not count.

Within the framework of a relict worldview, Russia will finally get up from the knees only when it reaches to America and will be able to get it at least on the blue screen. The usual confrontation of the two antagonists implies the equality of strength and capabilities. Having reached them on the additional mental floor that Victor Pelevin allocated to the Soviet consciousness, the status wounded by loss will be comforted, because the new situation will become old, the cold war - eternal, and on the fences with a light soul they will again begin to write “the world - the world!” So that now it means.

Alexander Genis-New York writer and publicist, author and host of the Radio Liberty program "American Hour-over barriers"

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