Exit to the vertical

To polemic with Dmitry Bykov

Since we began to appeal to Jewish wisdom, I will remember the pluralistic rabbi: “You, Mohehe, are right. And you, Ruvim, are right. " Wife from the kitchen: “How can both be right? You are a fool! ” Rabbi: "And you are right."

Dmitry Bykov is probably right in his picture of the world, but he followed the speeches of the tops, and I have grown up the bottoms, and I have been convinced for a long time: the military is soon enough in the government. Therefore, my impressions diverge with the confidence of Bykov that in the ghetto Russia drove “its own power, deeply provincial in its very nature and capable of managing almost forever in the conditions of a chronic geopolitical confrontation,” in my impressions, in the ghetto Russia drove its own people. Not all, of course, but the most passionate part of it, in which the so -called will of the people is concentrated.

Who was this fault? “Wine” legal term, I prefer a more scientific word “reason”. The reason was the interaction of two huge social forces, one of which, weaker, felt humiliated in this interaction. Because of their excessive gullibility, her lawyers believe; Because of their stupidity and arrogance, prosecutors believe. Which of them is right, I am not going to discuss: in a collision of powerful interests, it is naive to raise the issue of truth - there is only another question of everyone there: whose side are you? The question, answering which, can only add a gasoline into the fire. Therefore, I do not answer him, but only try to understand how we would get out of this situation with the least losses. And the main obstacle here is the people, it is they who are non -frantic and romantic, that is, irresponsible. Recognizing himself incorrect for him means to disappear, for folk unity is resting in the illusion of one’s own beauty.

I do not quite agree with the statement of Bykov that “all historical feats are made of literary or artistic vanity,” is unlikely to have literary or artistic claims, and Zhabotinsky, from which our discussion, was carried away by Zionism, had completely scored on them completely. Chukovsky, whom Zhabotinsky at first supported, after many years remembered how he was a cheerful and charming person and how he was led by a one -dimensional political dream, and especially practice, requiring constant calculations, mergers and demarcation ...

But the people from which everyday political reality does not require calculation and discipline can maintain their dreams in complete romantic, that is, irresponsible immunity, and only such terrible lessons can return it to rationality that, in today's situation, there may already be no one to use. That is why I prefer not to think about beauty or justice, but exclusively about expediency: how to get out of a dangerous situation, realizing that it is more modest and self -criticizing that it is only more modest and self -critical. It seems to me that there is a chance to switch his attention from a power confrontation to the competition in other, more creative or at least less dangerous and costly spheres. Sport is, of course, something, but the simpletons, whose national pride would be satisfied exclusively with hockey and figure skating, in today's Russia, I think, there are not so many, more or less educated people need outstanding successes in science, in technology, and culture.

That is, in those areas where the mass is powerless, where the ball rules, relatively speaking, the aristocracy of the spirit, oriented to the service of eternity. It seems to Bykov that I see myself as a “some spiritual leader, the creator of the new aristocracy”, but no one knows better than me in which place my back scratches, and no one knows better than me who I feel. And I feel myself not at all a leader, but a moron who has been kickers in the desert for years, although he himself understands that everyone has tired and the dawn from his kakakakanya will not come in any way.

So my newly published book “Flapped Echo” opens with the same waders.

One of the many paradoxes of democracy is that it is not viable without aristocracy, ready to sacrifice the needs of today for the fact that only future generations will be needed (and maybe then only a little, and even then, as just a beautiful, just magnificent, not bringing tangible benefit).

It is the achievements of the aristocratic layer that give the food of national pride and weaken the desire of the people to seek compensation in the power sphere. But something with aristocratic achievements we have almost a complete seams. For a century, we have been eating the glory of Tolstoy, Tchaikovsky and Mendeleev, but we do almost nothing for the emergence of new Mendeleev and Tchaikovsky, for which in each region it is necessary to bet not on ordinary, but on especially gifted and especially romantic. That is why the national idea of ​​Russia can be the revival of the aristocracy, and the main national project is the production of geniuses. In this direction, it is necessary to put pressure on the government. But where are the rallies in defense of unrealized talents?

If we understand the importance of this goal, the case will not be for details (first of all, the widest network of schools for especially gifted ones is needed). And if the goal itself seems ridiculous and ridiculous, then talking about the means is more ridiculous and ridiculous.