Fasters and scumbags

Fighters of the 72nd mechanized brigade of the Armed Forces. Photo: Twitter.com/defenseu

On August 12, “25 theses of Political Science Pastukhov” were published with his generalized assessments of the drama and its prospects unfolding in front of our eyes. According to the author himself, the text was waiting for the publication for more than a month. But since the situation since then has not undergone significant changes, it has not lost its relevance today. And in turn, it requires analysis.

I'll start with a brief abstract of the "theses" of Pastukhov. The fact that the war is obviously imperialist in nature from Russia and the national liberation on the part of Ukraine is only the outer side of unfolding events. In the background of this war lies a civil conflict common to the entire post -Soviet space.

The war goes between two extreme radical minorities: those who promote the European project ("big jump" in modern), and those who promote the Eurasian project ("big leap" in archaic). Like most modern civil wars, it is ideological. This war is not so much for resources (including territories) as for values.

In Ukraine, the majority of the population joined the progressive pro -European minority, in Russia - to the reactionary income. However, both societies remain split. In each of them, not a marginal opposition is preserved by the dominant direction, although it is now crushed by military mobilization and consolidation. In the case of adverse development of events for any of the warring parties at some point, this opposition can seriously destabilize the situation and compete for the majority.

Everything is not easy and in the West. Behind the facade of a wide anti -Putin consensus caused by a shock from a frank imperialist robbery and sympathy for the heroically resisting victim of aggression, a deep internal split is also hidden. Opponents of the support of Ukraine were temporarily silent, but did not go anywhere. In addition to ordinary conformists who do not want to carry the severity of the costs of a hard confrontation with Russia, among them there are also ideologically motivated people.

These are not only Putin’s usual right -wing friends, but also left -wing opponents of capitalism, who see in Putin's Russia a situational ally in the fight against Western establishment (about “useful left” you need to write a separate article, because it is just trouble). The ruling circles of leading Western countries carefully dose assistance to Ukraine, not only because they are afraid to provoke Putin to a nuclear blow, but also because they are forced to act with constant looked at this internal opposition.

Meanwhile, without an increase in Western assistance, Ukraine is many times no chance of a quick victory. The result is a protracted war on the highlight, the victory in which will depend on which of the camps participating in it will previously destabilize the domestic political situation - in Russia, in Ukraine or in the West. And this is far from obvious.

Vladimir Pastukhov is one of the few liberal analysts who openly write that the modern world is experiencing a serious global split, the line of which does not coincide with state borders and which is value -ideological ("religious") character. The dispute is about the world order.

Leonid Gozman in Novaya Gazeta. Europe defines the parameter by which the confrontation is in the modern world, when the West is on one side, and on the other - at first glance, the conglomerate of Islamic theocles, semi -socialist dictatorships and traditionalists of all stripes - from Erdogan to Orban, "as a choice or in the community - nation, state, conference, or in favor of man.

“This is the answer to the question of what is more important: the well -being of people or collectivist fantasies like greatness, mission or sovereignty, understood as the right to do anything, without looking back either at laws or common sense. And here are our leaders, Iranian ayatollah, Chinese comrades and European neonists - allies,” continues Leonid Gozman.

Indeed, civilization developed in the direction of expanding the human right to be not like others, the right to choose what it should be. The traditionalist archaic resisted this, trying to preserve (or return) the enforcement of the individual of community. But there is no coercion to subordinate by the abstract ("imaginary") community. It is always from specific people and their groups. This is always the violence and dominance of some people over other people.

The “European modernization project” is primarily a project to restrict the violence of some people against other people, restrictions on the destructive within a person, which gives rise to the desire to dominate other people and suppress them. But the essence of the traditionalist archaic is precisely the thirst for violence without restrictions.

The essence of the "Eurasian" (incomes) project "Big Hall" in the archaic does not come down to Dugin's erotic fantasies that all the caftans will be worn again. Archaic likes the adherents of this project not by the fact that they wore caftans then, but by what they then poured. They fought on the stable, poured in the square. A scourge, whistling with a whistle in living flesh, is the main erotic fantasy of the knights of the "Russian world".

The imperial -colonial violence of some peoples over other peoples - these are just another form of violence of some people over other people. When people believe that they can take by force that they do not give them like that, they can have neither sympathy nor respect for others. The traditionalist world is a very cruel, Social Darwinist world, based on the law of power and does not know solidarity.

But back to Vladimir Pastukhov. In one of his points, he writes that the exit from the war is most likely as a result of the evolution of the political situation within Russia due to the weakening of the action of revenge adrenaline (no injection has an eternal effect), and not as a result of the influence of external factors (military successes of Ukraine, sanctions pressure, etc.). Further, Pastukhov carefully adds that, in his opinion, a significant part of the sanctions (for example, steps on the cultural isolation of Russia) strategically prevents the evolution of the domestic political situation, contributing to the strengthening of the ruling regime.

Vladimir Pastukhov does not call to directly cancel or weaken the sanctions. He himself repeatedly said that the West cannot but meet the sanctions on the frank robbery of Russia, and sometimes not so much rationally as impulsive. The question is Pastukhov's fidelity. Will the possible softness of the West contribute to the erosion of "imperial consolidation" or, on the contrary, will once again convince the loyal majority of impunity? And vice versa, will the West’s rigidity push Russian society to rally around the authorities or will make him think that maybe something is wrong with Russia itself?

We cannot know the answers to these questions for sure. We do not even know whether it can generally affect the state of Russian society anything other than the national disaster of the scale that the Germans survived in 1945. The thing is that we do not know how deeply the process of dividing society under the rule of the postmodern "autocracy of the new generation has come deeply. While we are just trying to understand this.

Of course, we all would like to hope that massive "voluntary blindness" is superficial and is nothing more than an attempt to hide from an obviously uncomfortable reality, an attempt to self -justification. And deep down, the majority understands the shatteness of these self -truths. At some point, the internal discord will reaches a critical point and the bubble of great-power-chovinistic hassle will burst. And if it does not burst?

You can always hope for the best. But when there is no confidence in this better, the calculations still need to be built based on the worst. From the fact that no change in the domestic political situation in Russia will be able to lead to a way out of the war, because there will be no change in the domestic political situation in Russia before its compulsory withdrawal from the war by the efforts of the Ukrainian army and its Western allies. Humanity could not wait until the "evolution of the domestic political situation" in Hitler Germany will lead to a way out of the war. It cannot wait now. Putin's Russia is the tip of a spear thrown by the world of a traditionalist reaction to the world of a global modernization project. The contradictions between these worlds are fatal, existential, which is perfectly understood, felt and shows Vladimir Pastukhov. A compromise in this war is impossible. Only one will remain.

PS

I have already finished this text when Vladimir Pastukhov formulated his position as never before: “Any form of the end of the war (albeit at least temporary), in which an independent Ukrainian state with a European vector and orientation towards European values ​​is preserved, is an unconditional victory of Ukraine. The details of this intermediate finish do not have any importance for history, if only because it is an intermediate purpose of the war - the unconditional goal of the war is to destroy an independent Ukrainian statehood.

This is a direct council to go to “freeze the conflict” on the actual front line with a certain agreement on the ceasefire, a truce or even a “intermediate” peace treaty. Such "freezing" will be an unconditional (albeit "intermediate") victory of Russia and the defeat of Ukraine. Not only because for Ukrainian society this will be a new difficult psychological test. No less difficult than the war itself. The complete destruction of the Ukrainian state is neither the final nor the main goal of the Kremlin. Its main and final goal is to establish a "new world order", in which it will be de jure or at least de facto recognized the possibility of violent crossing of borders, territorial seizures, and imposing unequal agreements using military force. The "freezing of the conflict" with the retention of Russia's captured territories for an indefinite time is a huge step towards the assertion of such a "world order". The whole world will be proven that "so can."

As for the complete destruction of the Ukrainian state, just for military seizure and retention of the entire Ukrainian territory the Russian Federation simply does not have military-technical resources. The complete destruction of the Ukrainian state is possible only in one case: in the case of surrender of Ukraine itself.