Independence is not sovereignty

In the early 1990s, Russia celebrated Independence Day on June 12. Naturally, we owed this holiday to Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin, with whose death joyful democratic holidays ended for us and severe authoritarian everyday life began.

No wonder Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote that when a good master dies of a Negro, this is the greatest misfortune, because who can guarantee that this defenseless orphan will not be bought by an evil one at an auction? Beecher Stowe did not know that there are blacks and whites, that across the ocean lies a whole country inhabited by them, and it is called Russia ... In 2000, we got the evil master, and Independence Day completely changed the format ...

At first it was a unique holiday that has no analogues in world history. Many small countries with awe and delight celebrate their Independence Day, a great holiday of disobedience, starting from the day of the Exodus (after all, the Jews fled from Egypt to gain independence in their promised country: “Pharaoh, let my people go!”). And they remember how bad it was for them when they were oppressed by the evil mother countries. And even very large states, the USA and India, commemorated Britain and its empire with an unkind word. India, led by Gandhi, resisted desperately, evaporating sea salt and mastering the loom, just not to buy enemy goods ... And on July 4, the United States joyfully recalls the "founding fathers", the Boston Tea Party and the first thirteen stars on the flag. But our Independence Day was not the independence of the former colony from the mother country, but the independence of the mother country from the former colonies! Russia rejoiced that she no longer needed to oppress anyone. This Independence Day emancipated Russia from the USSR and became a cheerful commemoration for it. The pie was enough for two times: both for the name day and for the feast. True, since 1995, after the introduction of troops into Chechnya for yet another "international assistance" to the "workers of the Caucasus", it became inconvenient to celebrate independence from the imperial burden ...

But we have a sovereign democracy, which makes it possible every day to celebrate independence from common sense, logic, public good and all world laws: physics, economics, law, morality. And Russia celebrates the day of self-love. And through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the FSB, the presidential administration, as well as the Duma, the Federation Council (there is no Federation, but the Council remains), the Constitutional Court and manual television resolutely declares: “I am sweeter than everyone in the world, all rouge and whiter.” Let's say physics. If a certain country surrounds itself with enemies, setting all its neighbors against itself, then this is bad both in terms of physical comfort and in terms of diplomacy. Scooping up the whole business and puppeting is bad in the sense of the economy. And law and morality are hardly compatible with the detention of Garry Kasparov at the airport with a dozen or two people for "fake tickets." The schizophrenic case of Khodorkovsky and our ephemeral, condo, deeply Slavic, black-earth and sovereign concept of “extremism”, when applied to Internet journalists, violates all laws at once. In addition to the law of thermodynamics. This was confirmed by President Putin in a conversation with Angela Merkel and journalists in Samara. Firstly, he cast a bait to prevent the request for the independence of Tatarstan. Like, rub a Russian - and you will find a Tatar. And since we are all Tatars, why independence? And secondly, the events before the conversation, after the conversation and the president's answers about his democratic convictions clearly showed that if our president is rubbed, then a dictator will be revealed. As one hero of A. Gaidar, old Yakov, would say, it was not for such independence that we rattled the shackles in hard labor and, if necessary, went to the scaffold.

First published in NT #18, June 15, 2007