Useful aristocrats

A few days ago, one of my friends wrote to me on Facebook: "The head is around. And these, or what, the" Time "program have seen enough? Or are useful idiots? Or what?"

It was about the appeal "Solidarity with Russia at the hour of Ukrainian tragedy", compiled by the prince and Princess Shakhovsky and signed by more than a hundred descendants of the Russian aristocracy, living mainly in France.

In Internet dissections regarding the authors and signatories of this document, as well as in a letter of my acquaintance, emphasis is on their personal (possible and obvious) interest in such a political position, to pay it with numerous invitations to caviar and beams at receptions to Russian embassies, tours of "compatriots" (as you can spoil a good word) in the holy places of the earth) Russian.

This cannot be denied - as well as the fact that some of the descendants of aristocratic families have long been trading titles, playing the role of intermediaries between Russian nouveau riches and officials and a western business elite. Some of them went further - having paved the way for Europe to the frank adventurer Konstantin Malofeev , who brilliantly played on their conservatism and rejection of the spirit of time. Now the distance between them and the Donetsk bandits is measured by one handshake.

However, it seems to me that the point here is not only and not so much in assessing these people of the Putin regime. It is much more significant that the letter enables opponents of the current Russian government to look at themselves, at what actually divides in the political plan of their and “guardians”.

The modern Russian opposition (including its left and extreme right fractions) sees its origins in the very diverse in the ideological attitude of the dissident movement of the 1960-1980s. Many of its participants find their political ideal in earlier historical characters and political movements of the twentieth century - from cadets to anarchists and from the Cossacks of Krasnov to the fighters of the ROA General Vlasov. Russian emigration, especially the first wave, in the modern opposition (with the exception, perhaps the extreme left characters) enjoys universal respect. Therefore, the "missiles" emigrants are regarded as traitors of the ideals of the desired (primarily democratic) development of Russia.

However, in reality, the more or less general system of images and ideals of the past existed in the opposition only when it was a common strong enemy-a communist nomenclature (or the prospect of its return, stretching due to the electoral successes of the Communist Party until the early 2000s.) Even the red-brown council of 1993, in which many right-wing radicals from the number of once hard anti -communists did not particularly affect the ideological situation. The right -wing radicals who accepted the participation in it were “inscribed” into the Communists, because, being opponents of a market economy and democratic freedoms, they really were not very different from them.

The 2000s went under the sign of the Putin concept of national reconciliation based on a combination of Soviet, pre-Soviet and even anti-Soviet understanding of history. Putin’s ideologists, first of all, Vladislav Surkov and Nikita Mikhalkov, constructed (primarily with the help of television) the history of the USSR, which had good White Guards, white emigrants and fists, a little bad Bolsheviks, many bad Chekists and even more good Soviet military and police. All of them were connected by complex relations with the contradictory, but significant Stalin and bad Beria. In the post-war years, in this version of the story, Gagarin, Korolev, Vysotsky, dudes and retro cars favorably shaken the shortcomings of Soviet bureaucracy, kagebashniks and criminal elements.

The proculinary accents of such a construct caused protests by the opposition, but the exaltation of many characters from the "white" of the past of Russia was rather welcomed. Meanwhile, the list of those whom the Russian government decided to include in the national canon was quite specific. These were those who somehow managed to squeeze into the framework of the “Russian idea”: Denikin, Ilyin, Berdyaev, Bunin and, in a lot-other inhabitants of the Saint-Genevieve-de-Bois cemetery.

And only the Ukrainian crisis, which mobilized a lot of representatives of the anti -Putin opposition to the struggle for the bright future of the "people of Donbass" as part of the Russian Federation, highlighted the problem. Why are fans of commandant Che, Generals Vlasov and Krasnov, Marshal Zhukov and Adolf Aloisovich ended up in the same trenches? Why didn’t they have those who could say a few words about Stravinsky, Nizhinsky, Malevich and Averchenko? Why did the peers who listened the last quarter of the century group DDT and the communists who hated (and hating) together, shot each other from grenade launchers, swearing in Russian? Why did the Russian neo -Nazis in a small, but still noticeable number voluntarily ended up as part of the Ukrainian army, and Zaporizhzhya neoonatsi - among the Donbass "militias"? Why do the Cossacks of the Donskoy troops fight with the Cossacks-Dnieper for the suburbs of Lugansk?

There can be only one answer here: the difference in relation to the empire and the prospects of its restoration. In other words, to the past in which the historical and moral justification of ideas about the future draws.

The attitude of the anti -Putin opposition to the past of Russia in the twentieth century (and even earlier) is on the verge of revision. It will inevitably be similar to the processes of "processing" of the past, which are characteristic of post-industrial countries since the 1960s (Germany) or the 1970-1980s (Great Britain, USA, Canada, Australia, Holland). All that the “grandfathers” were cheerful - military victories, colonial captures - and even more so what they were ashamed of - discrimination of minorities, violation by the state of their own laws - needed to rethink from the point of view of the interests and tasks of modern society. As part of this process, from museum expositions, the natives of the natives stood there for decades are removed there for decades, dear paintings are returned to the descendants of the owners, and clarifying signs appear on the majestic monuments-how many people were hilarious for the good purpose of organizing coffee plantations somewhere in the sumar.

Due to the communist dictatorship and its consequences, the process of "processing" in Russia has not yet begun. The opportunity to admire the radiance of the General Epolos and enjoy the restoration of the brilliant story of Russia, which we have lost ”(see, for example, the Sokurovsky“ Russian Ark ”) interferes with the awareness of the contradictions of the pre -revolutionary society, which allowed the Bolsheviks with their terrorist (if not manic) methods of public administration to take power. The question is also awaiting the question, what was more important for the development of tsarist Russia: colonial expansion, noble balls, battleships, the luxurious architecture of the Center for St. Petersburg - or acute problems associated with migrations, international trade, the position of the growing urban population, the specifics of education and healthcare.

The Russian emigration, represented not only and not so much by aristocracy as immigrants from the environment of the intelligentsia, the middle class, the Cossacks, understood this problem well. Most of those who were abroad had no illusions regarding the past, present and even future of Russia. That is why the two millionth emigration of the first wave as a whole quickly and successfully assimilated. Dear to the heart of the Russian imperial patriot, the foci of "Russianness" abroad were and remain a marginal phenomenon against the background of the flowering activity of many other ethnic groups.

In addition, those emigrants who retained the “Russianness” quickly divided into those who continued to associate it with fidelity to the owners (or the future potentially acceptable owners) of the former empire, and those who chose to maintain fidelity to Russian culture and political principles, which were in more and more contradiction with those ideas and practitioners that reigned in the USSR. The post -municipal period has little changed this situation.

And I was glad that I did not see among the signing the appeal any of the dozens of the descendants of the emigrants of the first and second wave personally known to me personally. Those people with whom I had to communicate are really engaged in the development of Russian culture and Russian Orthodoxy. The imperial pathos is not at all close to them and all of it arising: Putin’s apologetics, the refusal of Ukraine in the right to independent, the idea of ​​confronts Russia to the whole world, encouraging the appetites of Russian officials for all Russian abroad.

So far, for compatriots in Russia, the princely or count title will be more important than real merits in maintaining the Russian cultural heritage abroad, the voice of these people will not be heard loudly. But ultimately, the case is always more important than statements. And it is precisely with this, the most significant part of the emigration that can give the homeland of his ancestors something new, and not the illusion of the greatness of "the times of Ochakovsky and the submissions of Crimea," the Russian opposition has and will be dealing.