You can take grandpa out of the bunker...

The Kremlin is entangled in the three pine trees of quotes from the classics, which does not prevent Putin from confidently losing touch with reality, says NT columnist Andrei Kolesnikov

“It turns out that an open society has enemies!” - Putin read out indignantly and ironically a speechwriter's blank at the Valdai Forum. “Experts” gathered there, mostly from “friendly” countries, so Putin needed to look especially smart. That is why, in fact, a variety of quotes were found for him - and at the wrong time, not about that and suitable for a completely different occasion - from the great ones, which this time did not include the ideologist of Russian fascism Ivan Ilyin, not to mention Nikolai Berdyaev, in a shimmering regime that appeared in Putin's speeches. Moreover, Putin is about as versed in Berdyaev as Brezhnev is in Marx.

There were, for example, quotations from The Possessed, from Shigalev and Verkhovensky, which for some reason, by design, stung modern Western society. There was no connection between these quotes and what was happening in Russia and the world. At all.

So that's about an open society. It is liberal, but how liberal is it if it is looking for enemies? That was one of the messages of Putin's speech. Advice to speechwriters: sometimes, having found some title in the depths of memory, it would be good to find this book in the presidential library in the Kremlin and at least open it. And it's a pity the library is idle.

One of the main enemies of an open society, where no one kills anyone, where the center is a person, his rights and freedoms, and not the “traditional” values ​​​​of the oprichnina era - Putin

The Open Society and Its Enemies was written by Karl Popper between 1938 and 1943 in New Zealand. In a late 1992 preface addressed to Russian readers, he explained the idea: “I advocate in it a modest form of a democratic (“bourgeois”) society in which ordinary citizens can live peacefully, in which freedom is highly valued and in which one can think and act responsibly, joyfully accepting that responsibility.” In the years when the book whose title so outraged Putin was being written, the closed society that suppressed the open had turnouts, addresses, passwords, guns, planes, military factories, slave labor, secret police, controlled media, duped masses, torture and death camps. Popper wrote about the ideological genesis of totalitarian thinking. There are apologists for a closed society even now, they are enemies of an open society, where no one kills anyone, where the center is a person, his rights and freedoms, and not the “traditional” values ​​​​of the oprichnina times. And one of the main enemies of an open society is Putin.

Putin also had a quote from Solzhenitsyn, a recluse from Vermont and a well-known fighter against everything Western and against "pluralists", about "the continuing blindness (of the West. - A.K.) by superiority." Alexander Isaevich, of course, a fighter, but also a no less famous beneficiary of Western civilization: the Nobel Prize, the house in Vermont, the very opportunity to work without being persecuted, did not fall from the sky - from the West.

Previously, Putin toyed with the idea formulated by Solzhenitsyn as "saving the people." Hence the Russian autocrat's interest in increasing the birth rate. But, as the experience of the special operation and military mobilization showed, it was only about replenishing the ranks of cannon fodder, and not at all about the quality of human capital in a post-industrial society. In order to preserve their quality, their lives and the lives of innocent Ukrainians, this same human capital is fleeing Russia.

Yes, and the phrase Solzhenitsyn is symptomatic: he spoke about saving the people, a kind of single abstract substance suitable for preambles in constitutions or for populist appeals of dictators. It's worth talking about saving a person. Actually, this is exactly what Article 2 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation is about.

In the end, even such an abstraction as the people consists of people whose life value Putin lowered to zero. It turns out that Putin's traditional values, inflated with pathos, are incompatible with the value of human life, with observance of universal (Putin calls them Western) human rights.

Since the centenary of the philosopher Alexander Zinoviev is now being celebrated (and in accordance with special presidential decree No. 564), the Kremlin probably asked colleagues for a quote from him, something about the corrupting West. In the later books of the philosopher, alas, there is a lot of such goodness. But for the current moment, it would be worth adapting something from his not late, but early work, for example, poems about Stalin ("He lost his mustache. / No guilt / Did not darken his face. / The hall instantly overflowed with jubilation ... / And the tormented Russian people / Tenderness licked tears with delight, / Having forgiven all sins in advance.”) Or at least from mature creativity. For example, from the "Yawning Heights", where in the image of Zaiban one can find many common features that are characteristic of all dictators of all times and peoples. Why not please the “experts” from the countries of Asia and Africa, our new old friends, with such a fragment: “As soon as a person is born in our country, he first of all becomes our employee. Then he learns to walk, talk, write. And having learned this, he begins to compose denunciations. Denunciations flourished under late Putinism—isn't this a sign of the maturity of totalitarianism?

But why didn’t they find a quote from Dugin - you can find any quote from him, not only about the angelic armies of the Archangel Michael, fighting Satan from the West, but also about the “Black Order of the SS” (in a positive sense for Dugin), and about Hitler, attributable them to the number of "bearers of the abyss of Objectivity" (whatever that means).

Putin's entire home-grown ideology is a Russian idea that has been torn off a philosophical leash in its vulgar version. With it, he has already overfed the domestic audience, and now he is engaged in "expert" circles of predominantly non-Western countries. Who went through four covid tests in order to say hello to Putin, as if it were a transmission of the “Field of Miracles”, from their peoples and leaders. And give me some compliments. For example, one man from Kyrgyzstan said that Putin is the leader of the anti-colonial movement. But where is it? And where are these colonies? Maybe he confused 2022 with the 1960s?

Yes, the indifference and ignorance of the popular and "expert" masses are the best friends of dictators. (However, I would also not discount diamonds as friends, and the army, and the navy, and the FSB mixed with the Russian Orthodox Church. Accounts in the literal and figurative sense.)

Putin again mixed up everything, including causes with consequences, West with East

The “expert” community is left pretty. Especially, probably, A.A. Prokhanov, whose work Putin, by his own admission, is following. A veteran of the national-patriotic movement said that Russia is being reproached for its inability to produce something world-class. And he offered to do justice. Which only exacerbated the absurdity of the Valdai action itself and pseudo-highbrow reasoning with quotations from Dostoevsky against the backdrop of a huge number of senseless deaths on both sides, the destruction of cities and infrastructure. All these verbal exercises in the conditions of Armageddon in the real world looked not only inappropriate, but cynical. About the "tear of a child" in connection with Dostoevsky would be remembered, or something.

There was, however, another quote from the Old Testament: "The one who sows the wind will reap the whirlwind." Putin meant that the wind sowed the West. But the problem is that initially it was he who sowed not even the wind, but a vertical take-off storm. And now we in Russia are reaping a hurricane that is sweeping away our entire, as the autocrat says, “thousand-year history.” Putin has again confused everything, including causes and effects, West and East.

What to do… You can take grandfather out of the bunker, but never out of grandfather's bunker.