Putin: Hamlet or Don Quixote

The "family" metaphor is equally important for both Russian and Ukrainian mentality, but the place of the chapter (head) in it is different. In the Russian version, citizens, subjects - the children of the king, the boss, are in his power, he is their "father's father." In the Ukrainian version, the boss is only the son of the people, and to decide people in a family, to flog him, to expel or bless it. In this sense, the Gogol poem about the Zaporizhzhya Cossack Taras Bulba was written under the influence of the Russian cultural tradition, the main character of the story is the punishing father ("he gave rise to, I will kill himself).

The hierarchy in Russian confronts the Ukrainian "Kolo", a circle in the center of which is put on public display of the chosen one. The image of the "cola" with strong horizontal connections is closer to the fair or theatrical structure of connections and relations, and the hierarchy with the pronounced vertical of power is closer to military practice. The difference in the structure of the authorities and its distribution has to be taken into account in the solution of problems that seem to be similar to Russia and Ukraine. For example, hot corruption for both countries also has a family connotation. The corrupt official is rejection in one, because it does not share with the relatives (“not fraternally, not in love!”), But from others-because he does not take the rank (not in accordance with the place in the hierarchy): “What is allowed to lion (king, father) is not allowed to the bull (simple subject, son).” A well-known proverb to the Ukrainian style will sound: “Goose is not a comrade, but a kum, a matchmaker and brother” (horizontal ties), and in Russian it will be more correct: “Goose a pig is not a comrade, but a son or father” (vertical ties, hierarchy).

The Russian family scenario is also distinguished from European, described by psychoanalysis. If, according to Freud, the mythological son must kill his father ("Oedipus complex") in order to become a winner, then in Russian culture the figure of his father always turns out to be stronger and sinister. His authority and his word remain indisputable. Only physical death can cancel the authority of the father. Both Peter the Great and Ivan the Terrible killed their sons, and not vice versa. The son, as a sacrifice, is a symbol of the absolute paternal power, which in the Soviet and post -Soviet era was on the shoulder only to Stalin.

In the Russian cultural tradition, two non -Russian characters - Hamlet and Don Quixote worked out the drama of excommunication and spiritual orphanhood. Male authority, due to the vertical of movement, is very quickly removed from (and then from) the family circle, formally - its own, psychologically - alien. This was the first to notice by Ivan Turgenev, who was a sharp change in ambitions and the scale of actions from one generation to another, in his figurative system - from the passionate and reckless Hamlet to the weak and timid Don Quixote, from high tragedy to frank comicism. In 1860, Turgenev wrote an article in which he talked about the symbolic change of generations of "Hamlets" and "Don Kihotov". The writer drew attention to the extreme popularity of the productions of Shakespeare's play in the 1830s. The play arrived in Russia from French processing and was twice forbidden by censorship due to the motives of the regicide (the sad outcome of the reign of Peter and Paul I). The play went with great success, Hamlet was played by Pavel Mochalov himself, and one of the prime minister took place on a Duel Pushkin day ... Cervantes’s novel was in almost every noble (and then public) library, from 1769 to 1931 he withstood 32 publications!

Putin needed one blessing from Yeltsin - for the rest of his life

It is interesting that already in another century and in another era, the Soviet director Grigory Kozintsev, who was born in Kyiv in the family of a doctor, filmed Don Quixote (1957, in the main role of Nikolai Cherkasov) and Hamlet (1964, in the main role of Innocent Smoktunovsky). Kozintseva was interested in the plot of the sacrifice of his son in the name of his father’s authority; In this plot, the son is only an instrument of paternal will. The Kozintsev interpretation expresses the Orthodox version of the Christian myth, because the Western European tradition just prescribes the exaltation of the feat of the son by overcoming the authority of the father.

Fear of rejection by the symbolic father is one of the strongest fixations and fatal attachments in a man’s life, at any moment can cross his biography. Fear of loss of power over son is equal to the fear of losing the blessing of the most influential figure in the internal theater of a man - a symbolic father.

Vladimir Putin (perhaps, not wanting it) was included in the domestic archetype of power and was forced to submit to the will of the shadow, the ghost of his father. And the nearest father of the peoples we have alone - Stalin. Even in the recent Putin’s unexpected attack on Lenin, a mystical hint and irritation of Stalin addressed the leader of the World proletariat, an eternal symbolic rival. By the way, the people are aware of this connection, and if they believe the polls, then they welcome: Stalin and Putin are two of the most rated figures in Russia.

Of course, Yeltsin, "going into the coffin, blessed" Putin (almost like Derzhavin Pushkin), but not forever (a politician is not a poet, on the contrary!): Only for one presidential term! Yeltsin presented - in the edification of the heir, following Gorbachev - a lesson in voluntary rejection of power. But Putin needed a different blessing - for the rest of his life. His symbolic father could only be a statesman, and not a democrat in the service of the people. He himself from the first to the last minute serves the state, hierarchy.

Although over 80 percent of Russians delegate their paternal role to their president (sociologists consider this a manifestation of paternalism), Putin himself does not accept it to the end. We see this on the example of their native children hidden from the public and family life in general. Hierarchy (unlike democracy) - an organization from top to bottom male. Hence the rejection of women, irritation on Pussy Riot , Nadezhda Savchenko, a psychological distance from a wife and daughters as weak and unreliable people: you can’t rely on women de, they can only be used and kept in UP.

Hamlet is a tragic figure. The only way to affirm the cult of the father is to give his life for him. But not everyone can do it. You can’t be an eternal gamlet, but you can remain lifelong, divorced from family and life, Don Quixote. If Hamlet had not died in the Shakespearean tragedy, but would have begun to resist, in Russian, to bargain with fate, in the eyes of the audience, this would mean a rejection of the main mission and gradual weakening, and later the hero’s ridicule. The lonely figure of the president resembles the figure of Hamlet against the backdrop of a twilight castle. But if you extend the wall to the size of the Kremlin or Chinese, then this is no longer a walk, not an episode of solitude, but a lifestyle alone, with an inevitable wilderness, a separation from reality, whisper and mockery behind your back. This is the wandering of Don Quixote. If you remove the mystical figure of his father behind Hamlet, he turns in a weakening mind and the body of Don Quixote, who fights with windmills, raids on other people's lands.

Olga Makhovskaya is a psychologist, author of bestseller for parents