Our mushroom

As a state course to preserve "traditional values" turned into the destruction of ethical and cultural norms

The political postmodern of the 90s was ridiculous and non-mere. Deputy Vyacheslav Marychev, Moscow, July 21, 1995. Photo: Nikolai Malyshev/ITAR-TASS

Some time ago, I was offered to prepare a course on the history of post -Soviet culture for a new educational project. My colleagues and I chose for a long time where to start, where is the sign of the moment, from which it is possible to count a new culture, which is not Soviet and not anti -Soviet, but completely different - and decided that it was a television performance by Sergey Kuryokhin, who told the whole country that Lenin was a mushroom. Kureokhin did not fight the normative Soviet aesthetics and did not follow it, but ironically beat it, placing it in a multidimensional space, where everything could be everything (and at the same time, it was important, used the media power, so that the intellectual kitchen fun turned into a powerful weapon that erodes the boundaries of the possible mass audience).

In the logic of that training course, the Kuryokhinsky performance became, among other things, a symbol of free self-expression of the 1990s-then everything was possible, at least a barking dog, even on his head, and now normative aesthetics with its moral and patriotic requirements are returning again. We had unprecedented freedom (which, in an understandable way, included the violation of the foundations), and now everyone rolled into asphalt, and the foundations are standing again on top. But the longer I look at the news feed, the more I understand that I misled the audience of the course.

What seems to us by the political culture of the Third Putin's term, in fact, is only a continuation of the postmodern fireworks of the 1990s

The game element of the beginning of the 1990s showed himself in politics: Zhirinovsky with a promise with a bottle of vodka (and every voter for a peasant), deputy Marychev, who meets in parliament with a patch of a female breast, posters with a phantom in the newspaper Limonka, the same Kuryokhin, which took to the performance of Pop-Merekhanika Limonov with Limonov. The song “We will face a deadly fire,” all this looked then the links of the same chain, along with the man-boner of the wader or changing the Mamyshev-Monro: the principles of this strategy-provocation, shocking, mixing unconnected, a conscious insult of feelings. The current experts commenting on the next wise step of the Russian leadership, or cultural officials who promise to support only highly moral-patriotic projects, or participants in the current show about immoral gayropos, do not resemble the heroes of those funny times, with the exception that these are often the same people. And the style of their speeches has not changed so much.

That's when Zhirinovsky goes under the television cameras to comment on the terrorist attack in Brussels and says - let them die, it’s better for us - how can this be determined? This is not a populism, not an attempt to score points or improve a reputation, there is hardly an electoral audience that would run to vote for the LDPR after such statements. No - this is shocking art, the meaning of which is to hit the generally accepted rules of behavior and shake another norm: in our case, sorrow and sympathy for the victims of violence, which is sewn into the code of European culture. If Medinsky says that there were no ten million fisted fists - this is not to initiate a serious scientific discussion; This is a postmodern race, as from the night television of the early 1990s: Lenin was a plant and a radio wave, the moon is actually square, twice two five. If at the Moscow Economic Forum, against the backdrop of a respectable blue ass, Igor Strelkov, Oleg Tsarovy and Pavel Gubarev, are sitting as experts-people who proved their ability to turn an economically wealthy region into an ice desert, which a dashing person wanders-someone seriously hopes to hear recipes for saving the economy? No, this is just a performance, the provocateurs in camouflage are dressed in economists and shock this trick by a professional community. What seems to us by the political culture of the Third Putin’s term, in fact, is only a continuation of the postmodern fireworks of the 1990s: political scientist Markov, deputy Fedorov, activist Enteo were in demand precisely as people who are inspired and committed, formally speaking for the “traditions of the ancestors” and “moral scrapers”, in fact, they destroy them Ethical and cultural norms that have already been established in society: simply because it became possible, moreover, this is precisely this today is the key to success.

All this would be ridiculous-as it was funny in the 1990s-if after each such performance a certain number of people would not begin to believe that Lenin was actually a mushroom.