The Myth of Our Paternalism

How many liberals are there in Russia

A common thread in Russian public discussion over the years has been the argument that our citizens are infantile and immature. Like, they don’t want to do anything, but only take away, divide and receive from the state. What is the problem with the people: idle, lazy, prone to all sorts of freebies, and only then somehow protesting when they try to take away the freebie.

Our people are not yet ready, they say, for democracy, and even more so for politics and elections. If the people were independent and self-sufficient, they worked even more, and asked for less, and democracy would be built, and the economy would take off. In the meantime, they all require a "ration".

Many paternalistic theories are based on this notion. They say that citizens have remained in the Soviet paradigm, where the state always owes them: they will lead by the hand from the kindergarten at the place of residence to the grave pit for distribution. Where the responsibility for your life can be completely shifted to the shoulders of the distributing nomenclature.

This idea is as far from reality as the very picture of Soviet irresponsible prosperity.

From a formal point of view, everything was exactly like this: the state nursed, taught, fed, treated, gave work, provided housing, a sanatorium, a pension and a cemetery. But in order to believe in it, one must not live a day in the described world.

The reality of the planned economy, which creates endless imbalances of supply and demand for everything (from satin shorts to square meters), forced each citizen to survive independently, becoming a little entrepreneur, building complex schemes to turn building materials from work into a sanatorium ticket or a place for a child in a good school.

The Soviet state did not come into a person's life with unemployment benefits, it came with a criminal article for parasitism.

It did not come with support and benefits for the home sewing artel, which corrects state imbalances, it came with one more article - for illegal entrepreneurial activity.

So, year after year, due to the failure of the state under the flag of developed socialism and general community, a society of individual survival was created - starting with simple food, which was easier to grow by the primitive method on the forcedly allowed "six acres" than to find in the vegetable department of the state grocery store .

No, the Soviet state, in which the Soviet people grew up and became accustomed to the type, which in many of its features outlived the system itself, is not a derivative of society. What we today take for paternalism, the social and political passivity of “our people” is, paradoxically, the opposite phenomenon.

People are just used to surviving individually. Without the help of the state. Not hoping for anything. Not feeling the connection between the taxation system and the responsibility of the authorities. The Russians have no illusions about the quality of public goods, so at the first opportunity they will go to a private hospital, to a good tutor, and put it off for a decent old age. It is completely irrespective of the fact that education, health care and the pension system are generously financed by tax deductions.

Not a single citizen of the Russian Federation is mistaken about the honesty of elections and the level of corruption. But as well as public goods - all this does not cause indignation, because it takes place in a parallel world, the world of the state, the intersection of which with the world of a person does not bode well for the latter: it will not provide a decent life with a leg cut off by a tram - it will come with a tariff, a tax , criminal article.

The basic request of the Russian society is not the usual authorities “give us”, but “leave us alone”.

We don't expect you to take care of us, we don't think you can live on a $200 pension. We have no illusions that your hospitals will cure you. You are not better or smarter. You don't know how we live. We see everything and understand everything, even if (so far) we are silent. We are outraged that you again came for our wallets, our fresh air, plans for life and old age.

The basic request of Russians is to reduce the share of state participation in their lives as much as possible, to treat the state not as a breadwinner, but as a publican and a gendarme, which is just waiting for an opportunity to take away, impoverish, ruin, seize and imprison. A world in which the national idea is formulated by the phrase “do not renounce prison” and in which nothing good is expected from the state (historically deserved).

Therefore, there is no "leftism" allegedly immanently inherent in the Russian people. There is no political "homo sovieticus". No populism.

And there is a right-liberal (according to Western ideas, even rather extreme right), reality close to unformulated libertarianism. Another reality, more obvious. The well-known hypothesis about 15–20% of the liberal electorate in Russia and about the canonical 86% is exactly the opposite: liberals in Russia are the whole country.