The empire is very simple

As a non-people people transformed into a rocket carrier, built on the model of Chechnya Kadyrov

It is generally accepted that the futility of attempts to understand Russia is associated with the unique complexity of the object. The explanation is flattering, but hardly exhaustive. Perhaps the case is the device of the mind.

During the default, it is undertaken under European discourse and terminology. At the same time, Russia is conceived as a kind of organic unity. In fact, both postulates are erroneous and contradict each other. Russia, especially the Stalin and Putinskaya, demonstrates more signs of Asian political culture ( the editors of Novaya Gazeta. Europe may not share the use of this and such copyright terms that refer to the backwardness of all forms of political institutions characteristic of historical Asia - approx. Ed. ), What is seen from the Moscow window. (It is more correct to say-cultures of the Horde, Military-Kochava, because Japan and India are also Asia-but another, sedentary; however, this is a separate topic). The metropolitan islands of Europeanization not only emphasize the heterogeneity of the object, but also project their cognitive grid on it, far from always adequate. The Western Ruio tries to measure the virtual image, flooded with oriental irrational mythology with its “common arshin”. And as a result, the tool only discredits. It would be better, as he was spent, it was engaged in specific empirical studies.

Hence the tragic wringing of hands on the occasion of mass support of the Ukrainian war: how is it possible?! No, no, sociologists lie! They are paid by the Kremlin! This cannot be, because it can never be. We are a European country, after all ...

Treatment. Literaryist Yuri Karyakin became famous for the formula "Russia, you are fooling!" More than with its many works about Dostoevsky. It sounded in 1993, when the party of Zhirinovsky, an outright populist and jester, suddenly took first place in the elections to the State Duma.

In fact, Russia then, for a short time free from the vertical dictatorship, only joyfully demonstrated its Lumpen essence.

And at the same time she proved that the term “foulness” is more suitable for the capital's rulers of the Duma, who, instead of understanding the unpleasant fact with the mind, angerly expose the object of study. For he impolitely destroys their suffered theory of the courteous Fatherland and the God-bearing people.

Today, this approach (for some reason, the adherents growing the number are fundamental) is most clearly realized by Grigory Yavlinsky, from the elections to the elections stubbornly losing voice. In contrast, the cynical Putin brigade is deeply empirical and makes exactly what a given sociocultural environment needs to endlessly hold power. For they are politicians, and the Yavlinsky preacher: slightly different specialties. Politics who understand Russia with a practical mind (or powerful instinct) can also be called Yeltsin and Navalny. Putinsky understands this very well (smell). Therefore, Navalny, as a dangerous competitor, sits with them, and the unbending Yavlinsky is allowed to burn the hearts of people. It is experimentally balanced and found light.

No, we definitely can’t understand Russia with such a mind of the mind. Especially at the stage of the dialectical transformation of the God-bearing people into a rocket carrier.

The European axiom believes that the electoral support of the authorities is higher where socio-economic conditions are better. For a) people strive to live well and b) in the process of voting, they rationally decide whether life has become better or worse. Therefore, the authorities are forced to make efforts to improve: provide the population with services, observe a public contract, etc. Alas, an empirical comparison of voting results with the ratings of the quality of life shows that Russia is arranged in fundamentally different. The regions that are the most behind the socio-economic indicators from the cycle to the cycle provide the highest electoral support to Putin and United Russia.

Understanding this plot with the mind is easier for steamed turnips - if you abandon European dogma. The poorest “national outskirts” are simultaneously the most dependent on local authorities, paternalistic and malleable to state propaganda. (No matter what they themselves think or speak to themselves. Without insults). The thinking class in them is either bought in the bud, or destroyed and intimidated. It is physically impossible to ensure falsifications in court to ensure that falsification in the court is physically impossible to ensure that federal (i.e. written by metropolitan wise men) laws is impossible. The laws themselves can be worse or better (over the past 20 years they have worsened markedly), but the sociocultural environment and the law enforcement practice arising from it remain invariably archaic. The same applies to regional personnel elevators - more precisely, their absence.

In the so -called electoral sultanates, the real right to property, career and power are not the population, but the regional nomenclature. It is she who decides what figure to draw in the summary of the popular vote. The population is provided with an enviable opportunity to maintain power by stormy, prolonged applause in exchange for the distribution of symbolic gingerbread. Where are you going? The current model of Soviet management in miniature.

It is not surprising that approximately these territories serve as the main source of manpower for the war against Ukraine. In the incomplete list of dead military personnel, compiled by BBC journalists, the maximum number of victims was in Dagestan (176), Buryatia (136), North Ossetia (70). The minimum, as expected, in Moscow - only 6 people. In terms of the number of voters, i.e. citizens over 18 years old, the difference is about 1000 times. By the way, the indicators of electoral support of the authorities in advanced and Europeanized super-city are sustainably lower than the average in Russia. This is to the question of the unity of the power in theory and in practice.

Kremlin pragmatists are satisfied with this situation. Why tease geese? You can run into marsh troubles with Moscow, and the hinterland, especially the national one, allows you to create anything with you. The main thing is that the local elites remain loyal. Hence several immutable and unpleasant conclusions.

Firstly, the Kremlin is not at all interested in the regions and population to be free, rich and prosperous.

Regardless of what he speaks about this and, perhaps, even sincerely thinks. On the contrary, in practice it is more convenient for him that everyone except the ruling class be poor and obedient. Otherwise, who to fight and whom to inspire to build a bright future (or past)?

Secondly, the devotion of local elites must be paid. Why is a simple and reliable mechanism of corruption buying out loyalty. It is more effective than the Stalinist mechanism for the exchange of loyalty for fear, but still very far from European practices. But close to Asian or African. Attempts by civil struggle against corruption are perceived as undermining the foundations of vertical and territorial integrity - and for the Putin (as well as for the Soviet) model this is true. The system allows control only on top - when a certain imperious character begins to take it not according to the rank or, much worse, to demonstrate political ambitions.

Thirdly, under the conversations about the rise from the knees and the rallying in reality, the systemic stagnation and the split between the center and the regions are deepened. The situation painfully resembles the eve of the collapse of the USSR, when only there was a conversation that about the “single folk economic complex” and the indestructible friendship of the fraternal peoples, which are a “new historical community of people”.

Fourth, and here Europe and the socioculturally connected Empire Romanovs? Much more features of the similarity with a hyper-centralized, unitary, militarized and deeply stagnated Ottoman Empire of the times of decline. Which, by the way, tsarist Russia, relying on European borrowings, has repeatedly beat. The empirical fact lies in the fact that Putin Russia, hiding behind conversations about Peter the Great and Catherine the Second, is successfully isolated from European trends. Again in line with Soviet priorities. In the folklore of the Brezhnev era, in particular, it was reported:

Look, he will stand the ass

Drafts from European countries.

Quietly close the window to Europe

And drunk to Afghanistan.

In short, if you suddenly have come to understand the structure of Russia with the mind, please leave reasoning about the state as a system of providing services, a public contract, human rights, the separation of powers of the like, borrowed from the European dictionary. If they have some sense on the gradually -like 17 million square kilometers - then only in relation to a small number of metro areas. Which are safely immersed in the medication to whom with the help of horse doses of propaganda and repression. Someday they will wake up-but when? And most importantly, what will begin then?

Meanwhile, the political ideals of Russia Putin in practice are checked and embodied in Chechnya Kadyrov. And both of them-contrary to pathos propaganda-the roots are not drawn to the European Empire of Peter, Ekaterina, Pushkin, Lyceum and St. Petersburg, but to the Barbarian Lenin-Stalin Sultanate. Which, no accident, began the centenary history of Russia's degradation from terror and dragging the capital back to the east. And he laid the foundations of her upcoming value schism/decay.

Since the estate of the guardsmen managed to regain power, it means that the process is far from completion. The Ukrainian war is a good alarm clock. While it manages to keep it under the pillow, but every month is more and more difficult. Awakening will not bring anything good: from the stagnant Putin’s swamp, one part of the country will be chosen to the west, and the other - to the east.

The editors may not share the author’s opinion.