Putin against Putin

“Direct Line” -2015: how and why the president’s supporters became a problem for the president

Vladimir Putin after the Direct Line in the Gostiny Dvor, Moscow, April 16, 2015

Since 2001, Vladimir Putin annually answers the questions of the Russians on the air of the country's main television channels, and now you will not immediately remember that the “direct lines” initially performed the presentation function in the literal sense of the word: they simply introduced the population with the new president. Today we are dealing with tradition - even during the presidency of Dmitry Medvedev, the national leader did not stop talking with the nation. In fact, a “direct line” is a formed political ritual with a clear script and obvious tasks.
The dramaturgy of the “straight lines” is surprisingly monotonous: the president bring down the numbers on the harsum questioning, designed to demonstrate the deepest understanding of any problems of the country; In between, he understands the specific cases of glaring injustice, endowing citizens with apartments, orders and even raising their hands with a playground in the yards. A pair of branded jokes is also an obligatory element of the ritual; These jokes and even a conversation with children clearly explain who the most humane person is here.
Citizens understand: the president holds his hand on the pulse, and even if there are separate flaws on the ground - he is aware, which means that soon we will overcome the shortcomings. Plus, “Direct Line” replaces fictitious democratic institutions, allowing the lucky ones to complain to the arbitrariness of local officials or road potholes, and the rest - with their own eyes to see who and how actually wins officials and potholes.
Life after Crimea
Scenario monotony should not surprise: in the era of economic growth, “straight lines” became a real series about stability with the president in the title role. Once a year - a new series, a beloved actor practices the laid gags, a sedative meaning is that there are no changes, except for those that are for the best, and a year later we will see the same movie.
But by April 16, 2015, the situation has changed too much. Putin’s interlocutors - both from the village of Stepanovo, and those from MGIMO - know, and maybe even believe that Russia is in a state of conflict with Western Europe and the USA. They know, and maybe even believe that this West provokes the conflict purposefully to destroy Russia. After all, they not only watch Putin once a year on TV, but also news every day, and in the news they have not told anything else for a long time. They know, and maybe even believe that in Ukraine, with the active participation of the United States, fascism risen. And certainly they cannot help but see how the price tags in stores have changed.
This all does not fit into the old script. A new series of the usual series “Real Boy in a wonderful country of stability” does not come out in any way. The situation forced the president to fill the established ritual with new meanings. To offer citizens answers to questions that propaganda drove into the heads throughout the past year.
Dog for Lena
But the actor too much got used to the role worked out for the little things and demonstrated complete unpreparedness to changes. Putin immediately explained, habitually falling a flow of numbers to the listeners, that if everything is not as brilliant as it happened before, then certainly good. And he explained to farmers how much they care about them and how little they value this concern. And entrepreneurs. And residents of the sacred Crimea. And those who are worried about the Mistrals stuck in France. In the civil service are real professionals. Everything is fine in the Central Bank. Pogorelians will receive compensation. And where for some reason the train still does not go, too, everything will be corrected soon. Veteran-an apartment, a disabled girl-a simulator.
But Putin really turned around in an episode with an unfortunate wife and a harsh husband, a retired military man who does not want to allow his wife to acquire a dog. Everything was demonstrated here: a fundamental law -abiding, and a love of detailed development of schemes, and traditional humor. “We can develop a general action plan with you. For example, we are together, I and you, I can ask Boris to meet my wife, Elena, and Elena could say: “No, I don’t need a dog, I will do as you want.” And then, I’m sure that after that he will not only give her a dog - he will give an elephant, especially if she says it at the right time and in the right place. Maybe he still promises the fur coat. I don’t know if he will buy a fur coat, but the dog can. So let's ask him simply, say: "Boris, please be kind, let his wife buy a dog." Moreover, this business is good and strengthens the family for sure. ”
Traditional values ​​are only above.

Man against the image
But not the story of a man’s acquisition of a dog became the central moment of the “straight line”. It is no coincidence that Russian television channels have been devoting a lot of their airtime for the atrocities of the Ukrainian junta for a year now. Leading Maria Sittel (channel “Russia”) and Kirill Kleimenov (Channel One) voiced a series of not even questions, but the requirements to hardly deal with the Ukrainian authorities. “The SSMES from Vladimir Vladimirovich also:“ Petro Poroshenko is a real criminal, given how many people died due to his actions. Vladimir Vladimirovich, was there discomfort or inner desire not to communicate with him? ” Or an even more stringent message from Odessa: “At the time when we studied, worked and were happy in the Soviet Union, our current“ rulers ”in quotes sat in their caches and saved anger and hatred. And now this pack with a broken fierce hatred is trying to control us. My biggest dream is to survive until the day when you arrive in Odessa on May 9 and congratulate Odessa and all of Ukraine on Victory Day. If it doesn’t work out this year, nothing, we will wait. ”
People, warmed up by propaganda, want to continue the "Russian spring." Spring to the victorious end. But the president leaves the game imposed on him in the defender of the Russian world. For him, this project seems to be closed. The electorate of the President is about the atrocities of the Nazi pack, and the president of the electorate is about the tragic mistakes of our Ukrainian partners and the need to pay pensions to pensioners of Donbass.
Here is the gap between Putin Median, the winner of Ecumenical Evil, Putin from the TV, who is supported by over 80 % of viewers, and Putin real, who still wants to see himself the main character of the endless film about the good ruler of the country, which has no enemies or serious problems. And it's funny, of course, that this gap on the TV is going on, live.
The presenters, by the way, also felt a discrepancy between the picture with expectations, accumulating not without their active participation for a whole year. It seems so boldly, almost evil Sittel and Kleimenov with Putin never talked.
Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov before the beginning of the “direct line” informed the agencies that citizens in their appeals demand to recognize the “people's republics”, that is, the self-proclaimed DPR and the LPR. And it looked like an announcement of a difficult, perhaps an irreparable political decision. But - before the beginning. After the end of the “Direct Line”, this can rather be interpreted as a failed attempt to press on the confused decisiveness of the national leader.
Flowers on the bridge
Hardly anyone expected that the “direct line” of April 2015, like all the previous ones, would allow us to draw reasonable conclusions about the genuine plans of the president. Transparency is not in the morals of our power. But what is now obvious: the state has entered a dangerous game with the population, reanimating the imperial ideology. But at the same time, the president, who for many is a personified state, is not ready to offer his supporters new formats of interaction. The supporters have changed, more precisely, they were purposefully changed. And the president is talking to them as if we were continuing to stay in a calm Pozhkhmsk world. He even remembers that the Olympics in Sochi took place recently-also in 2014. He, perhaps, is the only one who still thinks about it so far.
And now the supporters of the all -conquering Putin from the TV may well be a problem for the real Putin, who clearly does not know what to do with the conflicts, which he himself started, and even - how and what to talk about with his supporters now.
But (thanks to Alexei Venediktov!) After Putin’s words about the national memorial of Memory of Nemtsov’s memory, Moscow authorities hardly decide to throw flowers from the Big Moskvoretsky bridge: “As for the flowers, signs of a different kind, I don’t understand what the restrictions are connected with, and I do not welcome them. On the contrary, I believe that there is nothing terrible here. What is it, if people come, they put the icon or flowers ... If this does not bother anyone, I do not see any problems here. And I will definitely talk with the mayor on this score, so that no obstacles are repaired, ”Putin said. True, to the question of the same Venediktov, why investigators cannot interrogate one of the suspects in the case of the murder of Boris Nemtsov (Major of the North regiment Ruslan Geremeyev, who until recently was in Chechnya. - NT ), Putin did not answer. But the fifteen -year -old girl Sophia from Togliatti suffering from cerebral palsy will appear. Probably, this is even more important than flowers on the bridge.

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The first “direct line” of Putin with the people took place in December 2001: it lasted 2 hours 20 minutes, the president answered 47 questions. The next 5 years (Putin missed the “direct line” of the elected 2004), the head of state kept within 3 hours and answered an average of 50-60 questions. Only in the year of the announcement of the successor, Dmitry Medvedev, Putin remained on the air for more than 3 hours and answered 69 questions.
Having become the prime minister and experiencing the severity of being the first, but still one of the Duumvirs, Putin significantly lengthened the time of his communication with the people: his “straight lines” crossed in 4 hours, and the number of questions that he answered increased to 80–90. The “direct line” of 2013 , on which Putin again appeared in the role of the president - 4 hours 47 minutes, during which he answered 85 questions again, was the record.
This year, the president returned to the format of his first two presidential terms: he solved on the air for 3 hours 57 minutes. And answered 74 questions.
Almost all Putin’s “direct lines” are built according to one pattern: questions mainly concern the economy, socialists, housing and communal services, they are asked by both invited in the hall and “ordinary citizens” from places - an average of 10 inclusions from different regions of the country. In the last two years, Alexei Kudrin, a former long -term Minister of Finance Putin, has been traditionally invited to a liberal view of solving economic problems (and Putin, answering, makes it clear that the liberals want to reduce salaries and otherwise complicated the life of ordinary Russians, but he, Putin, will not allow this); politician Irina Khakamada, torn apart by internal contradictions: she likes Putin’s politician, and his politics is not always and not very well; And the editor -in -chief of Echo of Moscow, Alexei Venediktov, whose questions reflect some concern of the urban class: Putin is almost always ready for these issues and answers so that the urban likes it, simultaneously missing other questions past the ears.

Photo: Mikhail Metzel/TASS