How do we reconfigure Russia

Economist Vladislav Inozemtsev - about attempts to change the country and the best recipe for its healing

Last weeks have been rich in various initiatives to “clarify” the image of a beautiful Russia of the future. Of course, for the most part, foreign agents, undesirable organizations and the most diverse other enemies of Russia of the present, were put forward, and proposals often turned out to be so exotic that they caused a violent reaction even in the opposition environment that had already fled from the country.

I do not consider myself a futurologist who can predict the future, and even more so a politician who is ready to create such a future. However, listening to the discussions that took place and reading some published texts, I felt something that could not clearly express in them, but what gave rise to a sense of a tremendous gap between the concepts built and the reality in which their authors live and act. Finally, when I read the new book of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and the article by Vasily Zharkov in the Novaya Gazeta Europe, with an interval of a few days, it seemed to me that I understood one of the main problems that constantly pursues “good Russians”.

I will give me fragments that shocked me. Mikhail Borisovich, arguing about the post-imperial crisis that Russia survived (and which, I would add, is still “shining” in the future), calls this crisis “non-native” and writes that it can “be left differently: either to spend all the resources on imitation, create the illusion of power, the visibility of the Renaissance, whose facade is hidden, and passing through the same old society, or to pass Through a deep spiritual, socio-economic and political transformation and become strong for real. The same Germans mastered both options: on the same road they went after the First World War, which led them to the national disaster, according to the other - after the Second World War , which led to the revival of the nation ( italics - V. I. ) . The first path is directed into the past, this is the path of revenge and militarism, forcible resuscitation of historical forms. The second is fixed to the future, this is the path of rethinking and searching for new solutions. Unfortunately, in Russia it was not constructive, but a reconstructive scenario ”(“ How to kill a dragon? ”, P. 122). Vasily Pavlovich states: “After a practically inevitable catastrophe, we have to reinvent Russia again ... Like Jews, after the destruction of the second temple in Jerusalem [we] we have to either recreate and preserve the written and oral tradition of the Russian European to generations, or dissolve among other peoples of the world”; The author calls to create Russian universities and Russian culture in exile, believing that “if it is possible to build a new education system, the grandchildren of today's generation of war criminals will be able to grow to a sense of collective responsibility,” and again recalls the same country as an example: “This is exactly how this happened in Germany, where the Nazi’s grandchildren forty years later could really realize the severity and monasticity of the crimes of their grandfathers” ("Grandfathers corrected", November 7, 2022). I swear, I re -read these lines many times.

What struck me in them? But what.

I was shocked by the fact that two are conscientious, and, even more importantly, talented and educated people perceive the history of German and Russian editions of fascism as phenomena, not at all inscribed in a general history.

Everything is simple: in the 1920s and 1930s, the Germans were a little confused and went the wrong way. But then they went the right way, and everything became good.

Apparently, they went themselves, after long thoughts about the proper; All together, a single unrequited nation. They took it and went. And they reached a wonderful life. Or even easier: the Germans simply increased the level of their education, thought about morality and realized what their grandfathers had made, and everyone immediately became good. Therefore, we just need nothing: to create universities abroad, in which the “bad Russians” will not interfere, defeating dozens of universities in Russia, and everything will improve, culture will be born, which transforms the country and force everyone to come to terms and repent. Or another carriage/ship/plane, bringing a team of intellectuals and managers squeezed out of it with a Chekist dictatorship to change the circular course of Russian history. Such a picture, forgive the Lord, is the image of a “spherical Russian in a vacuum”, which sits inevitably in every Russian, “bad” or “good”. Only the “bad Russian” believes that he himself can create imperial Russia, and “good” - that is democratic, but just as independently. The whole difference comes down to the fact that the Imperials prefer to bear their theories at home, and the liberals - abroad.

Dear friends! This is a misconception built on the solid basis of eternal Russian self -love.

Do not lie to yourself. Germany itself did not change its development vector and did not itself learn the legal order. She was defeated in the most cruel in the history of the war. Divided into two states for forty years. Occupied and deprived of the army. It is included in the structures of NATO and the EEC, obeying the general directives. Knowledge of the people about the crimes of grandfathers was born not in the audiences of foreign colleges, but in the course of the Germans transferred the exhumed bodies of Jews from pits to the cemetery, and the lesson of legal consciousness was taught by the Nuremberg process. The same can be said about no less prosperous Japan. The processes, for example, in Spain and Portugal went a little easier-but these countries were almost immediately after the cessation of the reign of the fascist huntes were admitted to the EU, which, I note, became the most important institution, actually curing the post-imperial syndromes of all former metro, collecting them into a single legal empire. Democratic transits in the post -Soviet and post -communist countries also passed as they incorporate the EU and NATO; You can recall a little different, but no less instructive examples of South Korea and other post-artitarian countries, and much more.

In my opinion, it was time to admit that the application of our compatriots to correct the “Zagogulin” “individual country” with “support on its own forces” looks comical. The Russian catastrophe is really a disaster, which includes huge moral and intellectual degradation, the loss of the values ​​of freedom, insanity of imperial and Nazism, as well as almost the deification of strength and violence. A crisis of this scale is not overcome by either exhortations or education. You can “create Russian geniuses with a deep sense of empathy in a test tube, but they will not become converters of Russia, whatever they have achieved, since they will find the use of countries much more suitable for life (I remind you that even after Germany and Italy have suddenly“ went along the right path ”after 1945, neither Einstein, nor Fermi, nor Frish, nor Solder) returned. You can try to create a parliamentary republic in Russia, as Mikhail Khodorkovsky proposes, but one cannot be sure that one of her adherents will not repeat the choice of Mikhail Borisovich himself, who supported the most fraction in the Duma of Gennady Zyuganov in 1996, and in history as the “Russian Hindenburg” unparally at that time Boris Yeltsin. And you can write new constitutions as much as you like, but if the Supreme Court really remains the last court in Russia, sooner or later it will turn into a basmanny.

The only chance for Russia to become “normal” (although I really do not like this term) the country is to go through temporary or constant partial designization. It is incomprehensible to me why this moment is not present in any, even the most radical program for transforming the country. Russia does not need “European values ” or “humanistic morality ”. She needs created, developed and implemented norms . Russian courts should be included in the European judicial system, on the top of which there is European Court of Justice (not to be confused with the ECHR). Russian legislation in the economic sphere should be European. Relations with trading partners, protectionist and other norms should be determined by the same EU documents. The Russian army, in order to once again not turn into a crowd of rapists and killers, must obey the unified command of NATO. Russian society must survive the international tribunal for war crimes in Ukraine and adopt European norms in the field of human rights, denacing and compliance with minority rights. The new Russian Federation must guarantee its regions the same rights that are guaranteed by the individual regional formations of the EU countries. And this list can be continued indefinitely.

For your part,

The Western world should think about whether it is possible to protect themselves from Russia, even defeating it allegedly the second army in the world in Ukraine and overlapping the country with all possible sanctions.

Just such illusions against Germany in the 1920s subsequently led to the Second World War-and its main lesson for the West was the understanding that Germany could be reformed only by including it inside its own military-political (EEC) structure. Russia will not cease to be dangerous for Europe until it becomes part of it - and history shows that it is the defeat that make it more accommodating and more susceptible to openness. When (and if) the Russian catastrophe is realized by a significant part of society; when the current regime collapses, regardless of who is in power after the inevitable period of turbulence; When Russia understands that economic interaction with Europe is more profitable for the status of a Chinese vassal, the collective West should offer the country not humanitarian assistance à LA of the 1990s, but a clearly drawn plan for its integration into the Euro-Atlantic community on the rights of an equal participant. “Russian Europeans” have never transformed Russia for the better, they only occupied large areas on European graveyards - only Europeans made all the changes. Ayler and Catherine, Barclay and Witte - these people, together with tens of thousands of others, made Russia a European country, and not its geographical position at all. Today, in my opinion, the process of deviation of the country has gone so far that even the same large -scale “cultural injection” will not change the current state of affairs. Only the new Grand Projet to expand the normative European space can save the world and Russians from Russia. This, alas, for obvious reasons, none of the most sincere and convinced opponents of the Russian dictatorship is not ready to say ...