We quietly crossed the line

What is completely absent from the feed this time are people who ostentatiously post cats five times a day, having not yet been noticed as having a great passion for such online behavior. Or they indulge in arguments like “why do I care so much about the event that all my friends and acquaintances are now rejoicing or, on the contrary, freaking out? They break spears, spoil strange relationships with each other, they get nervous, but for me, the beautiful one, it’s so awesome... And the sun is so beautiful.”

There were many such recordings during the darkest or, on the contrary, exciting moments of modern history: during the Kyiv Maidan, the protests of 2011–2012, the “Bolotnaya Affair”, even more during very terrible events: the annexation of Crimea, at the beginning of the war in Donbass . But also at smaller “turning” moments, when events occurred that obviously worried many.

Now it’s so cut off. I read the networks - people comprehend what happened, participants describe their impressions and show photographs; sympathizers send money for lawyers for arrested participants in demonstrations, share telephone numbers through which information is collected ( here, too, you can not only leave data, but also help the project); unsympathizers are swearing at the provocateur Navalny and calling on the authorities to demonstrate more cruelty, and to spend money on working with the “shkolota.” Analysts analyze, activists try to form a position. Someone is clearing the feed from Olga's trolls, someone is getting into fruitless squabbles with them. Someone fell silent, not knowing what to say.

Those who really don’t care, busy with their own things, write about their own, just like on any other day, no less, but no more. But this passive-aggressive escapism, this infantile desire to unsee what is happening for oneself, and to politely hint to others that it would be good to experience changes, worry about the victims and about one’s future, somehow, non-publicly, somewhere out there, outside field of view of the sun - for some reason such escapism these days has suddenly gone out of fashion.

It’s not about Navalny, it’s not about corruption, or even about the rallies themselves. The fact is that during this time we smoothly and imperceptibly crossed the line after which we do not notice that the current state of the state daily and inevitably threatens you personally, your loved ones and your specific small business, whatever it may be - work, hobby , vocation, not to mention business: it cuts off oxygen, overloads with demands and takes away opportunities, jeopardizes emotionally valuable, vital, and even just physical survival (underfunded and desperately overregulated medicine, for example, unable to help as a result for free, not for money) - is no longer possible for the audience not only of Facebook, but also of VKontakte. For adults and experienced people who would like to look away. For the young and apolitical, who don’t want to delve into it. For those who sincerely support “our Crimea” and for those who have given up on “this country” after annexation. That's it, quantity has turned into quality.

Everyone noticed that young people came to the rallies. Many participants say that in fact there were a fair number of schoolchildren and junior students among the participants in the rallies, but not much more than during the protests of 2011–2012. Most likely, this is true. But the police approach has changed. In 2011, I myself witnessed a situation where, due to organizational problems, an “adult” audience gathered in St. Petersburg in one square, where at the last moment a rally agreed with the authorities was moved, and almost only young people, who learned about the protest from social networks and did not which, presumably, monitored the whims of the city government in real time until the last minute, focused on another site, where the organizers initially called.

The police, without great professionalism (not even bothering to block the streets for a few minutes along the route for the convoy to pass), but also without rudeness, directed those gathered to the right address: it did not occur to anyone to organize a massacre of schoolchildren and students. Even during the “vintilov” on Bolotnaya, minors were invisible among the victims. Now in the report from each paddy wagon: for every ten detainees there are three schoolchildren. The “cosmonauts” in black helmets staged a massacre exactly where young people and teenagers predominated, and exactly when the elders for the most part dispersed.

This focus on the weak, the desire, whenever possible, to take it out on those who can minimally resist, did not just yesterday become a favorite tactic of the security forces in everything: from everyday criminal cases to the unspoken practice of not stopping expensive cars that violate traffic rules. But right now we have reached the point where this desire, natural in its own way, if you don’t put a limit on it, is opposed by nothing: neither fear of public opinion, nor the need to obey formal rules, nor the need to “make” a beautiful picture for the media - For what? You can simply not show it.

Experts write: the younger generation has been mobilizing throughout the last year. The amount of “government” in a child’s life has grown steadily since the 90s, and today’s young people seem to get their fill of interacting with it long before they receive a passport. Those who studied in a Soviet school, watched Soviet TV and received vaccinations regardless of the temperature, because the medical examination was scheduled for today and there is nothing to do with it, look, what a gentle person - they know what I’m talking about. And there are many more tools for politicization; If you’re dissatisfied, you go online, find like-minded people, and move forward.

You can unsee that your schoolchild is unbearably stuffy in a school that is many decades behind the times, regulated, along with everything else, to the point of a mummified skeleton, busy training for the Unified State Exam, poisoned by official “conservative values”, which in school reality turn into indulgence for adults to violate the personal boundaries of all children, pressure on everyone and bullying of especially inconvenient ones.

You can worry that, out of general dissatisfaction with life and understanding the lack of prospects - only the lazy one didn’t write about frozen social elevators - he will write some kind of radical mantra on the Internet and go out to protest. But not in the case when riot police, completely freed from the restrictions of humanity and the law, are waiting for him there, for whom he is the most desirable prey. Not if this, say, may not even be followed by an administrative sanction, but by the drawing up of a protocol with the aim of depriving the “ignorant” parents of parental rights and placing them in an institution. In this case, you already have to look at what is happening with your eyes wide open.

But this is true for all other people, for all other areas of life. You endure a growing barrage of paperwork, meaningless restrictions and requirements, working, say, as a doctor, and suddenly you discover that the volume of falsification of documents, on the one hand, and violations of medical ethics, on the other, necessary in order to simply continue everyday work has become so great that the problem is no longer that it is embarrassing to look in the mirror, but that it is scary for the prosecutor to come - on the complaint of an indignant patient or just like that, with an inspection.

You understand that you have taken on as much risk of criminal prosecution as a banker or a high-ranking official - for you understand what kind of salary and prospects. And the state is tightening the screws: regulatory - on the one hand, so as not to die, and criminal - on the other, so that it is scary. A journalist, a teacher in the same unfortunate school, a business employee, by the way, and a government official - all in the same position, in the same forks, between the uncontrollably growing volume of restrictions and requirements and the growing risks of falling under sanctions.

One should not overestimate the potential of active protest as of now: thousands have taken to the streets - this is a lot, if we keep in mind the political stagnation of previous years, but not enough to even talk about a major political movement. But during this time, it seems that many people have begun to open their eyes again and look at reality without turning away.