Vedud sociology

Interview with a collective heap as an alternative probe of public opinion

The interview of Yuri Dudia with Oscar Kucheri caused a majorly misunderstanding and indignation in the liberal part of Russian society. And in vain. Dud did something extremely important for modern public discussion. He showed us a kind of stylized example of a conversation between the Russian liberal with the Russian layman, the average resident of the big city.

Stylized "layman"

Of course, the coachman is in no way the average Russian and the layman. He is a showman and businessman and perfectly feels the drama of the conversation and his place in him. Just like your place and niche in Russia. He earns well on what is harnessed to “for our guys” and “against the Pindos”. At the same time, as a showman leading an endless number of radio and television shows, the coachman is a professional stylizer of this most average Russian philistine discourse. Its relay and at the same time successful entrepreneur. Having entered this discourse, loyalty to its limiters and scrapers - this is its professional bread, the skill on which his career is built. And from the position of these professional intuitions, he leads his party in a conversation with Dudem. The coachman with his fitness clubs is not important to us, the discourse, its records, tricks and conceptual blocks are important to us.

So, what did this stylized Russian layman appear before us and what did we learn about him? He, of course, is not a frantic quilted jacket, a singer of war and a common death for the sake of Russian exclusivity and geopolitical super -assessment. His children study at the 57th school and at the tower. And this is not the fact of the biography of Kuchera, but that which adds weight in the eyes of his audience (“metropolitan little thing”, a correctly settled person). Although children are not in England and not in America, like that of the very rich, but somewhere there, in an advanced zone. And this is a marker of his life success.

He, this stylized Russian inhabitant, “collective coachman”, first of all, is organically contradictory, composed of many value and conjunctural considerations and calculations that do not join each other. He listens to the Yetube conspiracy about a global conspiracy (“Covid, it's all just like that”), a wife slipped to him, who simultaneously persuades him to leave and gives birth to a child in the States so that he has American citizenship.

But this does not mean that, showing him the illogicality and incoherence of these ideas and prejudices, we will make him abandon them. His view of the world is inconsistent, but the sequence of the views that the “liberal-soda” flaunts in front of him causes him, rather, rejection and rejection. She seems to him a trick and a catch, the only purpose of which is to put him in an uncomfortable and weak position from the height of his own advancedness. He understands this logic and sequence as an instrument of superiority and potential power over himself.

"Collective coachman" and war

Of course, he has no clear idea of ​​the goals of this war and conviction of its necessity. The way he explains her, following the official mantra, are some half-fits, and he himself knows the weaknesses of these arguments. This is thin ice, but this does not mean that you can easily break it. The problem is that this is the thin ice that he needs to go through so as not to drown. Therefore, do not think that, a bombing this ice, you provide him with a service.

At the same time, it periodically goes on to blocks of anti -war discourse, which are built into the stream of its reasoning easily and organically. For example, when he says that he does not imagine what the victory in this war should look. Or when he speaks of the imperative of sympathy of the Russian army: “Do you think, these guys who are there need this war? It is not a hundred percent of them that most of them are not needed. ”

The discrepancy between the “collective coachman” with the official doctrine, that is, “collective Putin”, in one rather fundamental issue, looks very important. This is a question of joining Russia occupied Ukrainian territories. The coachman returns to this topic several times with pain. From the point of view of the discourse that he is trying to reproduce, the war with Ukraine should be justified as a relatively fair, that is, a defensive war. “We were attacked” or “they were going to attack”, “we must protect the Russians in the Donbas” - that's all. The annexation of Ukrainian territories undermines this doctrine. "For what? - Broughty the coachman. “I don’t understand, I thought it was a cunning move to scare, to bargain.”

Behind this is an important layer of Russian philistine ideology. Aggression against Ukraine is very easy to explain to the “imperial ambitions” of Putin and most Russians, which has already become a common place. However, the real ideological fabric of Russian prejudices is more complicated. The thirst for “great power” reigning in Russia, an understanding of their own exclusivity and self -sufficiency is very far from classical “imperiality” in the sense that they are deprived of thirst for territorial acquisitions.

In all surveys of recent years and decades, Russians demonstrate not only the lack of desire for territorial acquisitions, but rather fear of them. Whether we are talking about the inclusion of Georgian separatist territories, East Ukrainian regions or even Belarus in Russia, 20–25% of respondents speak out, while about 70% are quite definitely against. In its philistine, mass production, Russian great power is normally mixed with a strong complex of isolationism. "Do you think we have few problems, we still need to feed someone else?" - the coachman is surprised. Territorial acquisitions (with the exception of Crimea) cause wariness and deaf discontent.

The beginning of the war, its motives and goals are all an area of ​​unpleasant fog, doubts and inconsistencies. And the "collective coachman" adopted the doctrine of "Putin's rationality inaccessible to him." Because-should there be any meaning? "Do you think that he is crazy?" - asks the coachman. As a result, an inexplicable, obscure war is such a natural disaster. It is already there, and we are participating in it. And then we are us, that is, those who on this side of the war. And the connectedness of this “we” is more important than doubts about the rationality of war and Putin.

"Collective coachman" and "collective West"

There is, however, of course, a substantial bridge that connects the “collective coachman” with “Putinism” and wire discourses. This is an anti -shipstry. It is the most important code, a dividing line with the “Dudy world”, although it is very far from the Putin ecstasy of geopolitical enmity. It is much more mundane, but acts as one of the most important markers of identity: “We” is such an extraordinary.

This attitude to the West is built on a sense of jealousy and infringement. But even awareness of this will not help this feeling of overcome. The West is hostile as a competitive environment and as a doctrine. The “collective coachman” is far from faith in “Putin's scrapers” - they are a thing imposed for him. But in the alternative to him the "Western Doctrine" and its expansion, he feels no less dangerous.

The discussion of a “collective heap of homosexual relations” looks very remarkable. They are generally accepted as part of a general desire for tolerance as a certain norm of non -violence. “Gays, lesbians - at all without question,” the coachman signes with incredible ease. But the conflict is transferred to another place - to the question of transgender people. While gays for the “collective coachman” are the reality with which he is ready to reconcile, slightly flaunting his advancedness (“we have one boy”). The “collective coachman” personally never encountered the problem of transgender people, and this allows us to exclude empathy and turn on the mythology of enmity. Transgender is a doctrinal, totalitarian West. West establishing the rules. And he scares the "collective coachman".

At the same time, the recognition of the same -sex relationship as a certain new norm is an important marker. In principle, the Putin campaign of the total struggle with LGBT, as often happened, will very likely turn into the next round with the final recognition of the normativeness of this reality. For the simple reason that the forces organizing this campaign threaten the layman himself in his desire to establish the norms of relaxation. They now prescribe which books to read and not read, which films to show and not show. They make his world flawed, too narrow. They create as a result of where the most threat to his world than dandelions of the homosexuals.

Driver and Stalinist discourse

The “collective coachman” does not understand Putin, does not understand the logic of his actions and words, and ascribes to him, as was said, “inaccessible rationality”. At the same time, he definitely declares that he supports him. To the question "What?" (because this is definitely not a war and its goal, they are an object of doubt and misunderstandings) The answer follows that defeated the branded equanimity of the interviewer. "I support in his domestic policy, here in these sweeps." The coachman has in mind the policy of repression against those “who is not with us” - the expulsion of functionaries, writers, directors, activists who do not support the war. The coachman supports this, although he will fuele a little on a chair at that moment.

And this is an important point that contradicts what was said about the “collective coachman” above. Stalinist discourse is spreading around Russia. Okay, professional killers and psychos, but so the singer Chicherin writes a monologue in which with some delight he promises not very understandable enemies to “freeze them in our Gulag”. It doesn’t matter who are “enemies”, this masochistic dream of a Gulag is significant. Wly, fashionable, with naked knees of the coachman also welcomes “stripping”.

Of course, what is known to the liberal public as the era of “mass repressions” was the era of tremendous career opportunities and fantastic social elevators. The director of the technical school Leonid Brezhnev, arranged by acquaintance, has turned into the second secretary of the Dnipropetrovsk regional committee in five years, simply because all the other applicants on this career ladder were shot. And this is a typical biography of that time. Therefore, “stripping” is a powerful social mechanism, in the support of which are at first one who will meet the dinosaur and those who will become. But for us it is not the fate of a particular Kuchera, but the fact that he considered that to support the “stripping” - this will be norms for the “collective coachman”. That this is one of the important notes of the “spirit of time”.

However, explaining the need for “laid” immediately, the coachman resorts to the metaphor of the car rushing and liberals, trying to pull the steering wheel at that moment at this moment. Understanding the situation as a car rushing under the slope is another facet of the ideas of the “collective coachman” about the current moment. As well as the fact that he identifies himself with the driver and therefore tries to justify his intention to give the restless passenger hands. Because if he identified himself with a passenger who found a crazy driver in the car, pressing the gas on the way to the cliff, then the desire to wrest the steering wheel would seem natural to him. And the metaphor would have rolled over. But while the “collective coachman” does not see a cliff and successfully convinces himself that the driver is not crazy.