Dear loss

For ten days, Russia lived without the president and practically did not notice its absence - at least the rating of the head of state continued to grow stably and set, according to VTsIOM, another record.

But for media and political elites, these were not easy ten days. Versions multiplied, from household to unthinkable, “signals” of European tabloids were caught, errors were calculated in pre -prepared meetings of meetings with subordinates. On the weekend, what was happening in network media and social networks clearly resembled a tantrum. Other topics simply ceased to exist.
The famous book by David King The Commissar Vanishes tells how in the thirties censorship was exhausted from the published photographs of people who fell into the enemies of the people. In the history of the absent president, the politically active part of society behaved exactly the opposite: as if people gave up Putin into reality, demonstrating a complete unwillingness to stay unattended at least for a short time

On Monday, March 16, Putin finally appeared in public, meeting with the President of Kyrgyzstan Atambayev. The New Times tried to find out what caused such a painful attention to its disappearance from the information field. What are those who spent a week on the search for the president in the dark room of the Russian political system?

We will start the versions with the hypotheses under discussion. Having discarded the most ridiculous, we will see: the remaining are easy to divide into two groups. Firstly, catastrophic, suggesting the score of the entire political system. Secondly, subcutal, representing an attempt to see a living person in the president and explain what is happening in everyday reasons.

But, of course, not only versions are important. The scenarios of the development of events that these versions suggest are important. The hysterical reaction is not due to the very fact of the disappearance of the head of state, but what the near future is seen. Without him and after him.

After Putin: the coup when the power is opaque, and the state of affairs at the tops has to be judged not even by rumors, but by fragments of rumors, the version of the palace coup occurs automatically if there is a feeling that something has gone wrong. In the discussions of the prospects for changing the regime, they often recall the “scarf and snuffbox”, hinting at the sad fate of Emperor Paul. And when the absence of Putin became noticeable, the assumptions immediately appeared that the president in one way or another was suspended from power. They even wrote that Putin was “blocked by liberal security forces”, although there is no way to explain who it is at all. We will not forget about the context - Putin disappeared against the backdrop of rumors about the conflict between the special services and Kadyrov, who arose allegedly after the murder of Boris Nemtsov. It is not difficult to reconstruct the further course of the thought: the president was confronted with a choice, could not make it (or decided not to give the head of Chechnya to be torn to be torn to be torn to be transferred to the Chekists), after which he was shifted.

Political scientist Stanislav Belkovsky is not completely surprised that the absence of the president has become an important topic for those who monitor the political situation. He once again repeated: “Putin is Russia, the embodiment and symbol of the Russian Federation. Therefore, the disappearance of Putin is, in fact, the disappearance of the country. ” However, the conspiracy of the security forces seems unthinkable to him. According to Belkovsky, Putin is a guarantor of the interests of the security forces, and they are not capable of aggression addressed to him. “Yes, they are unhappy with Kadyrovshchina, but they will not do this.” At the same time, the palace intrigue in order to remove Putin from the authorities in the performance of one of the representatives of the neighboring Circle of the President, Belkovsky admits the development of events, but I am sure that neither the course of such an intrigue, nor its consequences can simply be predicted.

The President of the Institute of Development and Modernization of Public Relations Fedor Krasheninnikov, on the contrary, believes that the script of Putin’s removal from the power of one of the Kremlin groups is understandable and unpleasant: “If we are talking about the revolution and forcibly renouncement from power, the legitimacy of the successors from the president’s entourage will be not even zero, but the negative-and in the eyes of the Putin’s electorate, and in the eyes opposition ". Even if someone from the close circle of the current president comes to power in the end, this will still radically change the political climate in the country, Krasheninnikov is sure, since "a feature of autocracy is that everything is kept on the authority of one specific person." There is very little chance of a calm change of power - there is no figure surrounded by Putin, which would be perceived even by a loyal electorate as equivalent. “All this implies the idea of ​​repeating the script of February 1917, of course, with a million amendments: several transitional governments against the background of increasing chaos-until some forces are able to take power and create a stable regime.”

The second version of the catastrophic was too human . If you watch a TV in Russia a lot, it is easy to forget that the president is also a person, but nevertheless it is true. Rumors about a serious illness hidden from the population (for example, about ischemic stroke) or even about a sudden death immediately appeared. Political scientist Dmitry Oreshkin is sure that if these rumors were true, the country would have been waiting for the country: “It is clear that the Personer departs the prime minister under the constitution. It is clear that no one will steer Medvedev. It is clear that constitutional norms do not work. So, if Putin dies, then the one who is steeper comes to power. But we do not know who is cooler now. We do not know who has military resources and determination to use them. ” In the extreme case, Oreshkin calls Kadyrov’s accession, less radical-the seizure of power by one of the security forces. But any of the options gives rise to insurmountable problems for the country. “If the institutional basis of statehood is destroyed, then the rule of the wild field works. Putin's departure will be accompanied by a civil war. We will get an unpredictable situation where large bosses will mutate each other. For the authoritarian regime is not so bad, while it exists, as a division of power and mutual repressions after. ”

No panic! People do not really like to assume only disasters in the future. A whole fan of versions appeared, explaining the absence of Putin by the causes of mundane and domestic. There was a disease, but an unpaid, like influenza, and the need to visit a beloved woman who gave birth to an heir in a Swiss clinic, and a trip for advice - to the elders to the monastery or to the shaman to Altai, and even the time necessary to hide the consequences of the next cosmetic operation made before the celebrations for the accession of Crimea.

Lev Gudkov, the head of the Levada Center, so explains the appearance of complacency hypotheses: “This is a product of mass consciousness, which constantly interprets what is happening with its motives and to the best of its understanding. In the mass consciousness, Putin is far from an unbending person and not a charismatic leader. ” According to Gudkov, in Putin there has long been nothing “super-synculture or above-ground”. It is unconditionally accepted by a small number of people, and most are indifferent, if not skeptical. It is considered as a functionary that has broken up, quite corrupt or involved in corruption ties. But everyone is forced to endure him due to the fact that he controls the balance between groups. No more than 20 % of the population really sympathize with the president, the rest simply settled with him as with a non-alternative figure, Gudkov believes. There is a kind of specificity of the perception of the President: “Women and young people love Putin more. The first in it see a sort of alpha male. Here it is quite possible to trace the connection between such an interpretation of his figure and rumors about Kabaeva and childbirth, for example. ”

Diagnosis: Fear of darkness is a painful reaction to the disappearance of the president from the visibility zone simply requires a doctor’s commentary. The psychotherapist Anna Varga so interprets the reasons for the heightened interest in the topic of Putin’s absence in the public field: “A huge number of fantasies are due to the fact that everything is closed. People do not give a damn where the president is dragging, why he is or why he is not. Since the consciousness is feudal, people fantasize about it. But the reliability of all information is exactly the same. Anyone who believes that the president pays too much attention to his appearance - he thinks that he did suspension. Who dreams of changing the regime - he dreams that he is already cold. "

The elites, according to the Varga, are more complicated than the majority, which is not preoccupied with thoughts about the methods of transferring power and can fantasize about Kabaeva or about the diseases of the leader. The elites are completely dependent on Putin and are forced to look for stability in a situation that is impossible to adapt to. Here, myth -making begins: “As in ancient Greece - fortune -telling according to the flights of birds, an attempt to explain the world that you cannot explain. Everything is slurred, all lies, everyone hides something. This is myth -making from helplessness. ”

Sentence: The void of what did people actually be afraid of, who turned Putin's absence into the main political theme? The head of the Fund for Effective Policy, Gleb Pavlovsky, considers his own emptiness. “This is the fear of emptiness. Such a great case was not to talk about Putin for ten days, but he was used in order to speak only about Putin. It turned out that we have no political topics. It was argued that the murder of Nemtsov sharply changes the political agenda (and yes, of course, changes). But there are no summons, everyone with great pleasure indulged in a conversation about trifles. From the point of view of the political norm, it is monstrous-we are in some wasteland. From the point of view of the structure of autocracy, it is brilliant: just nothing needs to be done. You do not appear, but they say about you.

And this event showed that there is no future life. Future life for people is a discussion of the past. No one is ready for the future, and this is truly terrible. ”

There is no experience from unpleasant conclusions: the authorities consider its closeness the norm (the former press secretaries of the presidents of the Russian Federation, whom NT contacted, generally refused to comment on why the absence of the president is not officially explained in any way; only Vyacheslav Kostykov shared his thoughts), the society readily replaces the information with myth-making. There is a situation in which the scenarios of the change of power, different from catastrophic, simply cannot be formulated. For the Kremlin, this is a guarantee of the inviolability of the current system, where one concrete and vulnerable person is at the same time the only political institution, because even among oppositions few are eager for chaos and civil war. For a society reconciled with a paternalistic model, there is an occasion to multiply neurosis in anticipation of the inevitable. The hidden Putin reminded us: we are the country of children who are not ready to take responsibility for their own future.