Amputation of conscience

The season of tolerance and humanism has opened in Russia: Yulia Samoilova, a singer in a wheelchair, will go to the Eurovision final. Only recently did Russia appear to be boycotting an event taking place in the capital of a state with which it is de facto at war; His constant admirer Philip Kirkorov even disowned the competition, saying that we were not welcome there. But suddenly everything miraculously changed - with one sweeping gesture, Russia returned to the bosom of the international festival, stood above the military conflict, declared its commitment to world standards of tolerance and equal opportunities, and smoothed over the recent scandal with Vladimir Pozner and Renata Litvinova, who insulted a disabled participant in the “Minute of Fame” show "on Channel One. Justice triumphs, checkmate, gentlemen, skeptics and Russophobes!

And everything would be fine in this Hollywood (okay, Channel One) story about how music and the will to live overcome hatred and division, but from under a good humanitarian plot the ears of Kremlin propaganda stick out. Ukraine is faced with a cynical choice: to allow a singer who performed concerts in the annexed Crimea to participate in the competition (even if only for the days of the competition and at its venue, as Iranian President Ahmadinejad was allowed into the United States for a session of the UN General Assembly), means to sacrifice its own principles and laws . Denying her entry is guaranteed to doom yourself to shelling by Russian propaganda, which has already stocked up on ammunition and is just waiting for the command, and to condemnation by the international community. Samoilova will most likely be allowed to participate in the competition, but blockades and provocations from nationalist activists can be expected. A real zugzwang for Ukraine and a grandmaster move from the point of view of Moscow, which is sending the singer deep behind enemy lines as a saboteur in a hybrid war with Ukraine and the West. Yulia Samoilova herself is not to blame for anything, she does what she knows how to do and what she was preparing for, what she was going for through Alla Pugacheva’s project “A-Factor” and the opening of the Paralympic Games in Sochi - but she, willingly or unwillingly, becomes a hostage in a big political game .

However, the main problem with the delegation of Yulia Samoilova is that a country that does not provide its disabled people with equal rights to treatment, movement and employment does not have the moral right to send a singer in a wheelchair to the competition. There are huge problems with medicines for the disabled, with ramps in residential buildings, which is why the vast majority become “confined” from their apartments. It is impossible to live on pittance benefits for disability or for caring for a disabled child even in the poorest Russian regions. The country still has a large shortage of high-quality prosthetics, wheelchairs and spare parts for them, despite the fact that Russia itself practically does not produce these items. At the same time, Julia herself, suffering from spinal amyotrophy (hereditary disease, aggravated as a result of unsuccessful vaccination against poliomyelitis in childhood), is being prepared for surgery in Finland, for which it collects money in social networks. How caustically joked on Twitter, "only in Russia can a disabled person get to Eurovision, but cannot get to a neighboring store."

The same, if not more, the Potemkin village is our Paralympic sport: first of all, this is a showcase of national pride and only secondly - a humanitarian project. With a deficiency of infrastructure and the very tradition of playing sports people with disabilities (blind runner or skier at the marathon, accompanied by a specially trained athlete in Russia - is very rare), there is a state system for selecting disabled people for high achievements. Gifted people with disabilities are identified - for example, former athletes who fell into automobile accidents - and they, in fact, are offered a professional career, which, by the standards of Russian restrictions for disabled people, is quite enviable: complete state support, fees abroad, in case of victory in the case of victory - generous prize money. Paralympic athletes are a kind of elite of the Russian sports machine, on whose success large financial and administrative resources are staked, and it is no coincidence that, judging by the unprecedented sanctions of the International Paralympic Committee, a massive pharmacological program was imposed on them, which they, as forced people, could not refuse. But when they were caught doping, the moralizing machine of state propaganda turned on at full capacity, trumpeting the “unheard-of cynicism” of international sports organizations that decided to “take revenge on Russia” and “take it out on the disabled.”

The situation with Samoilova is similar to the Paralympic in that the state involves vulnerable groups of the population in a propaganda special operation, hiding behind their weakness as a human shield. In its purest, distilled form, this policy manifested itself with the adoption of the “Dima Yakovlev Law” in December 2012: the authorities took hostage the most vulnerable and powerless group, orphans with disabilities, who were critically dependent on foreign adoptive parents (as is known, sick children in Russia is practically not accepted into families), and used it as a bargaining chip to “punish” the West for the “Magnitsky list”. In essence, we are talking here about the state's right over the bodies of citizens, in which their disability is alienated from them and becomes a state resource. This is a specific form of biopolitics - the nationalization and politicization of disability, the creation of a special medical-ethical space of exclusion, which does not imply any external criticism (“The weak are offended!”) and can be used to cover up any state actions, from the doping program to the “hybrid war” with Ukraine and the West.

Julia Samoilova is far from the first contestant with features on the Eurovision stage: there was already the Polish singer Monica Kushinsk, partially paralyzed after the car accident, was both the blind Diana Gurtskaya, a pregnant woman, a bearded conchita Vurst, and a choir of grandmothers. — this competition has long turned into a parade of diversity and tolerance. By and large, we shouldn’t pay any attention at all to whether the person in front of us is a man or a woman, with or without a beard, straight or gay, a cutesy actress or a youthful elderly person, with one leg or two, on legs or in a wheelchair - as long as he sings( a), danced or skied better than anyone. But our optics are designed in such a way that we celebrate, highlight, stigmatize and politicize these features, and Eurovision is a special magnifying glass and a distorting mirror, a preserve of archaic and wounded national dignity. Complex coalitions and mutual settlements rule the roost here, historical scores and childhood grievances are remembered, national pride is amused and defeats are experienced. No one could have imagined that out of forty-three countries, two would find themselves in a state of war. It would have been much more honest for Russia to boycott the Eurovision final in Kyiv, given the events in Crimea and Donbass, but Moscow unexpectedly made a move with a horse, or rather a wheelchair, which myopically considers its propaganda victory, but which, in fact, is its moral defeat.

Samoilova's problem exists on two levels - human and political. Humanly speaking, one cannot help but wish her victory in the competition that she has dreamed of for many years: perhaps her current fame and fees will help her pay for an operation in Finland so that she can continue to breathe, sing and perform normally in the future. Perhaps her performance will support everyone who fights their injuries and ailments, does not hide them, overcomes pain, isolation and anonymity, will help them more fully integrated into society. But at the political level, one cannot help but be surprised by the cynicism of the producers of this show with the sending of Samoilova to Kyiv: they solve their propaganda tasks with the help of vulnerable, dependent bodies. However, they have long had an amputation of conscience-like our ability to be surprised at anything.