Soldiers of the group "Center"

Everyone who writes about modern Russia and the propaganda support of its foreign policy undertakings drew attention to one, at first glance, mysterious, circumstance: a support group that managed to put together from among European politicians is a rather colorful and bizarre brethren, composed of equal shares of the old Bolsheviks who personally saw Lenin, and neo -Nazis from young and early.

In fact, there is nothing particularly mysterious in this-both of them cannot stand democracy for its excessive energy intensity and verbosity, but they respect the pagan power of autocracy, personified in a vertical state with which he wants to, then some kind of demigod with a black belt does. Against the backdrop of this unifying faith, disagreements like gratitude for the liberation of Auschwitz or, on the contrary, the denial of the Holocaust seem small as the details of the clock mechanism. The extremes, as you know, agree that it gives ultra -and ultra -right the opportunity to vote by a single block in all parliaments, and Moscow media - to argue that Putinism in Europe is supported almost throughout the political spectrum.

It is somewhat more difficult to understand why some state -owned men of Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia are willing to take the ungrateful role of the defenders of the interests of Moscow. As a result, on the eastern flank of NATO, in the very center of Europe, a certain ideological gap was formed. Poland with the Baltic states became almost the NATO initiative motor, Romania with Bulgaria retain principles, even the Balkan beginners - Albania and the surroundings - hold the general line of defense. And in the middle of the flank - a hole! Viktor Orban’s unusual statements in the frequency of citation by Russian journalists are comparable except with the statements of the restless Marin Le Pen from the French “National Front”, and sometimes they flash on the main Russian television channels of the outstanding Czechs of Vaclav Claus and Milos Zeman, who are sprinkling from their sleeves with home blanks.

And this despite the fact that it is these states of Central Europe that are completely and completely owed their safety to the West. It is difficult to understand their sand policy, but it is possible, if, entering it into a historical context, to consider each incident separately.

For example, the actions of the Hungarian Prime Minister Orban are not motivated at all like the views of the former Czech President Claus. Orban as a whole against the European Union has nothing, rather, the European Union has something against Orban's domestic policy. The Hungarian leader explains the slide to authoritarianism with the need to focus on the eve of great shocks. During the upcoming tectonic shifts, Hungary expects to restore historical justice and regain the territories lost according to the results of the two world wars. By analogy with Russia, we can talk about the idea of reconstructing the "Hungarian world." And since the West does not see much benefit in the revision of the post -war borders, and the Orban has no time or strength alone, he is hoping to brew a buch alone on Putin. "From an impending thunderstorm," ORBAN said this summer, turning to Hungarian youth in the Romanian Transylvania, - we can only get out. " Here we must clearly be aware that under the impending thunderstorm, of course, is nothing more than a big war with the subsequent landing. Her goat was supposed to become the section of Ukraine, with which Orban associated his own daring dreams: he had already seen Transcarpathia with a dusty outskirts of the "Hungarian world."

Against this background, the Pro-Putin position of neighboring Slovakia looks somewhat awkward-after all, half a million ethnic Hungarians live quite compactly on its territory, and the alienation of the cat, mosquito and other areas of Slovak south fits well into the plans for restoring historical justice in Venger. The strangeness is explained simply: during the war years, the nationalist Slovak state, like Hungary, was part of the Nazi coalition. Both there and here today, trends in the creeping rehabilitation of the nationalist leaders of those times, collaborators and fascist organizations such as the party "crossed arrows" and "Glinkovsky Guard" are visible. Prime Minister of Slovakia Robert Fitzo, an unreasonable communist, is a political pragmatist in the most cynical meaning of this word. He does not support anti -Putin sanctions, but defiantly does not violate and generally tries not to glow in vain. The extremes, as they say, converge, and the Levak fitz shares with the Paleoconservator Orban sympathy to the volitional owner of the Kremlin.

On the eastern flank of NATO, in the very center of Europe, a certain ideological gap was formed. Poland with the Baltic states became almost the NATO initiative motor, Romania with Bulgaria retain principles, even the Balkan beginners - Albania and the surroundings - hold the general line of defense. And in the middle of the flank - a hole!

Former Czech President Vaclav Klaus never made a secret from his almost erotic attitude to strong oriental leaders, real peasants. He loved even Turkmenbashi Niyazov. Klaus does not hide admiration for everything that he did - or what can be done in the future - Putin. Klaus understands that it is indecent to unconditionally praise such a regime, so from time to time he repeats that he would not want to live in Putin Russia, but, having paid tribute to conventions, warmly supports any specific steps of his idol in all theaters of military operations, even in Georgia, even in Ukraine. Hinging the back of the Moscow propaganda, he calls the European Union alternately either fascist or communist dictatorship, which will fall apart, repeating the fate of the USSR. It is actually not shameful to criticize the European Union, but it is shameful to do it in non-browning companies.

The current president of the Czech Republic Milos Zeman barely manages to find fresh arguments in favor of the capricious turns of the Kremlin Central Line. You can safely put on the fact that he will always find an understanding of any Putin tyranny. Moscow interviewers represent him to their viewers as a “famous Czech dissident and fighter for human rights”, and in this naive lies - the whole depth of the moral fall of Putinism. A mode is doomed that cannot find in his ranks to follow and is forced to look for supports in the borrowed moral authority of his opponents.

Zeman has never been a dissident, not to mention the protection of the persecuted in any form. The former communist, he worked all his pre -revolutionary life in a strange institution, called a forensic institution. The oddity of the establishment was that neither such science, nor such research institutions in the rest of the world were not there. Over the years of intense activity, his employees could not present a single forecast for the public, but after the “velvet revolution”, all the main parties of the political spectrum of the Czech Republic - from the Communists and Socialists to the left to civilian democrats and conservatives on the right. Of the former prognostics, all the governments that replaced each other were largely formed.

In the press, it was already expressed suspicious that this forge of party personnel was from the very beginning of a special project of Soviet gebuha. His first work, criticizing the country's economic leadership and setting it as an example, Gorbachev’s perestroika, Milos Zeman published in August 1989, three months before the revolution - not in Samizdat, of course, but in a specialized officialdom. The Czech president does not tolerate the Dissentes, neither old nor new ones. Viktor Fainberg, a protest participant in Red Square against the occupation of Czechoslovakia in August 1968, he called a crazy moralist, thereby repeating the old diagnosis of Soviet "punitive psychiatrists". About girls from the Pussy Riot group, the Czech president responded to the dirty whores of the last damage, while spewing out such a abuse, for which even in the super -liberal Czech Republic he was banned from putting on the live air of public radio and television.

It is not surprising that it was not a truth -seeker Fainberg, who was broken by psycholets for four years, and never broke, and often drunken Zeman is a “real dissident and human rights activist” for Moscow propagandists. Tactics have long been worked out, its meaning is to steal positive brands from the enemy and turn them inside out.

Other more mercantile motifs are not excluded, explaining why some leaders of the three post -communist states of Central Europe were the most noisy in the pro -Russian front inside the EU. Their large business is tied to the Russian market, it has largely developed around personal ties that arose between businessmen during the years of Komsomol youth. In Hungary, for example, the majority of national enterprises, starting with airline and ending with energy, passed into the hands of Russian oligarchs, obliged, as you know, Putin personally, as you know. The commission from large transactions usually disappear without a trace at party and non -partisan box office. In the Czech Republic, the principle of Qui Pro Quo (in the free translation "from our table-your table") works a little more cunningly: in exchange for following in the fairway of Putin’s politics, President Tarit the path to some large Czech businessman, and he, out of pure gratitude, is financed by the Presidential Charity Fund or the Institute of Advanced Thought "Me". Sometimes this is done directly, without intermediaries: Lukoil is included in the publishing business, ensuring the worldwide distribution of the works of Vaclav Klaus, and the head of the local chain of gas stations of the same Russian company heads Milos Zeman, and then the team of his advisers. It turns out cleanly, transparent - and no corruption heremoths.

For those whom the gloomy picture covered above drives into depression, I will add an encouraging detail: with all my vast desire to rule the mentioned politicians, not dictators. The system does not allow. The states of the European Center are firmly built into the structures of the EU and NATO. There, these figures are seen by wastelands and extravagant slopes, who do not pose a particular danger to society. Powerful forces are opposed to them at home. Orban was recently forced to cancel some ridiculous laws under the pressure of a protesting street. He generally looks discouraged now - Putin clearly did not live up to his expectations. Robert Fitzo seems to be ready to throw a towel into the ring - the Slovak seal writes about his upcoming resignation as a solved case. He himself promised to leave big politics if he loses the presidential election, and still lost them with a gigantic margin of a legal -fired newcomer and a convinced European named Andrei Pussy. The Czech President with his escapades caused a wave of protest, which had no analogies in the country. In the presence of fellow presidents of four central European states, including the German Joachim Gauk, Zeman was stained and thrown into eggs with a crowd of demonstrators. In November alone, his support fell by 20 percent, and now hesitates somewhere around 35 points.

In none of the countries of Central Europe, the elections are not canceled, and the servility of the Kremlin owners is not the quality that wins here. For internal use and to maintain propaganda pants, such figures, of course, can from time to time with time from Naftalin. But the money spent on them was thrown to the wind: the blocking minority, which Putin dreamed of, clearly fails of them.

Efim Fishtein - Prague Journalist, Observer Radio Liberty