Back to the Future

Who drives Russia into the ghetto and how to get out of it

Alexander Melikhov's article arrived just in time. Before he had time to write “it’s better not to visit each other at all if any attempt to be friends ends in a scandal,” Vladimir Putin at the Valdai Forum called Russia’s main mistake excessive trust in the West. We believed them so much, but they spat into our open souls.

This is how we are always, with everyone: we go to them with a "storm" of feelings and a "hail" of tears, and they give us the expansion of NATO to the east. True, I did not quite understand what kind of attempt to be friends was meant - the “Magnitsky case”, which gave rise to the well-known list, or the return of Crimea to its native harbor; but everyone has their own ideas about friendship, and it is not for us to correct them.

The comparison of modern Russia with the Jews in the Pale of Settlement is not new, I myself said that Novorossia sometimes seems like Russian Israel, an attempt by the passionate part of society (this is putting it mildly, but they are very touchy) to build a correct Russia outside of it. It is clear that it is impossible to build it in Russia, too many things interfere, from the damned liberals to their own government. So Russia really - at least in terms of self-perception - is in the ghetto; Another question is who drove her there. Of course, not the insidious West, which in the nineties had so many chances to strangle us in a deadly embrace, but its own power, deeply provincial by its very nature and capable of governing almost forever in the conditions of chronic geopolitical confrontation.

It is curious that in this view of things - we are their friendship, they are our besieged fortress - two peers, two candidates of science, two St. Petersburg wrestlers agreed: Vladimir Putin, master of sports in judo and sambo, and Alexander Melikhov, master of sports in wrestling. Life is a struggle, in St. Petersburg, especially in autumn, one somehow especially believes in this.

Alexander Melikhov not so much calls to the ghetto - thank you already - as states the return there, recognizing, however, that any ghetto is a source of fanaticism. However, according to Melikhov, the ghetto has its undoubted advantages: it is a chance to create its own national culture, which will eventually conquer the world, or at least a worthy place in it. It is impossible to argue with all this, since things are offered that are streamlined and, of course, reasonable; the problem is that today it is necessary to reconstruct the true worldview of a writer by his slips of the tongue, by his intonations, by the names on which he relies; and so we are all for good against evil.

Here the most eloquent reference is to Zhabotinsky, who acutely felt—his critical instincts were enough for this—his inability to take a worthy place in Russian culture and therefore was indignant against assimilation. For Jabotinsky, the idea of ​​a nation-state is beautiful precisely because, on the scale of this nation-state, he is a leader, a hero and a classic, like D'Annunzio on the scale of Fiume. (He, too, seems to have been well aware that his prose was nowhere near as good as to outshine the capture of Rijeka.)

All historical feats are accomplished from literary or artistic vanity. Chukovsky realized that he could take a worthy place in the literature of the Russian Empire - and Jewry was for him a third issue, although an exciting one; Zhabotinsky despised the Assimilationists for their cowardice and constantly repeated that "they" - representatives of indigenous nationalities, and above all Russians - would never love "us".

Exactly the same rhetoric is observed today in Russia in relation to the West. Melikhov speaks with a touch of contempt - I want to be wrong - about trying to become more Westerners than the Westerners themselves. In this formulation, it really sounds humiliating.

The only problem is that within the framework of Jewish culture, Zhabotinsky has remained what he was: a biting and convincing publicist, a good translator, and a bad-tasting prose writer of the second rank. You cannot say the same about Melikhov - he is just a first-class prose writer, but this is not enough for him. It seems to me from his recent publications that he sees himself as a kind of spiritual leader, the creator of a new aristocracy - and outside the ghetto such a status is unlikely, regardless of the real merits of the writer. Spiritual leaders are for the ghetto; in an open culture, the reader has his own conscience and his own head. Hence the recognition of the ghetto - if not as an ideal, but as a tolerable and even promising state. I think that in general the main trend of the moment is the recognition of the current state of affairs as tolerable and even stimulating; in the end, everything can be made into a fulcrum. We have one life, and it is difficult to think that this life fell on the period of Julian the Apostate, whom we will eventually remember with shame and black irony. Ordinary slavery can still be demolished, but slavery that has returned, insisting on itself as the only possible form of social organization, is no longer possible; they die from it. Nekrasov's "Last Child", autobiographical and prophetic, was written about this.

And if the Russian authorities have really driven us into the status of a besieged province, which, although besieged, is for some reason of no interest to anyone, shouldn’t we recognize this status as worthy and promising, find in it a reason for focusing, rely on the experience of Israel? The first attempt at such a comforting theory was made by Vadim Tsymbursky, whose "Island of Russia" was at one time no less popular than Aksenov's "Island of Crimea"; of course, today's students and heirs of Tsymbursky are not limited to concentration and want to threaten the Swede, the Turk, the Pindos, and then everywhere; but the idea of ​​a ghetto has occupied Russian conservative minds for more than a year, and the justification for this conscious provincialization is our chronic failure to communicate with the rest of the world, which will never, ever love us! No one likes Jews, and a typical anti-Semitic scandal erupted around Harvey Weinstein! (The catch is that with Einstein, for example, such excesses did not happen, and he normally integrated himself into an open American society, and if you behave like Weinstein, claims will arise sooner or later, and then no assimilation will save; in Israel , for example, a similar problem arose with Moshe Katsav, although the country quite observes the precepts of Jabotinsky.) But this is me, by the way.

The evolution of Alexander Melikhov, an excellent writer and thinker, towards the precepts of Zhabotinsky, a mediocre writer and a good publicist, is disturbing, but understandable. Melikhov has long been writing mainly about "enchanting phantoms," about how humanity tends to believe in dreams rather than facts, and to be inspired by myths rather than truth. This is a good foundation for a novel and even for a trilogy, but in a political and even everyday sense, the concept is dangerous and narrow. It seems to me that it is based on a belief in the exceptional ability of the writer to create these phantoms - and, accordingly, in a special status as a writer.

But this is an idea for the ghetto, on the scale of which we all look at the prophets. The future of Russia is connected not with geopolitical confrontation, but with participation in the global process of competition, cooperation and creation. In this sense, it is really time for us to “back to the future” — to the times of Soviet internationalism and enlightenment, away from national exclusiveness and, in general, from the triumph of immanences. The times of the rulers of thoughts and pathetic prophets will evoke the same slight nostalgia, as today many people evoke her "shtetls" - places in the Pale of Settlement. Composing and singing about them is a nice thing, but it's better to live in St. Petersburg. Moreover, it is not yet necessary to be baptized for this.