Trickster becomes a clown

Historian Ilya Venyavkin explains what the contents of the mansion of Evgeny Prigozhin are talking about

Two weeks after Evgeny Prigozhin announced the “march of justice” and his end, an attempt to arrest the Wagner PMC armed rebellion continues to determine what is happening in Russian politics in many ways - and experts and political scientists are trying to explain what, in fact, happened on June 24. Historian Ilya Venyavkin, working on a book about the ideas and people who made a war in Ukraine possible, offers his version.

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On July 5, Izvestia published photographs taken during a search in the Evgeny Prigozhin mansion in the Kotted village of North Versailles in St. Petersburg. On the same day they were shown according to “Russia 1”: “Look at what luxurious palace this“ fighter for truth ”lived!” - the presenters said. These shots are unlikely to be able to seriously expose the hypocrisy of Prigozhin: even among the audience of Russian television there is not a single person who would think that the owner of the Concord holding lives in modesty and cramped. But these personnel can tell a lot about the owner of the mansion and the cultural mechanisms that made a possible war with Ukraine.

Prigozhin's ideas about welfare fit into the standard of the Putin elite: a private helicopter, a pool, a prayer room, gold bullion and a wooden crocodile in the hallway. But there are several unexpected finds in the mansion - a wardrobe with wigs and a black jacket, hung with orders, at the rack at the Wagner PMC Standard. These items organically complement the collection of fake passports found in the Prigozhin office on the day of the rebellion, and show the traverse nature of Prigozhinsky success.

Simultaneously with the footage from the mansion, Prigogine photographs were also leaked to the network, which, as stated in signatures, a businessman, combining overhead beards and military uniforms, plays the roles of the field commander Muhammad, a colonel from Tripoli, an employee of the Ministry of Defense of Sudan and other security forces of different countries. These images are made up to help Prigozhin attract less attention in Africa and in the Middle East - the main countries where Wagner's PMC worked before the start of the war in Ukraine. Another costume image of Prigozhin hangs on the wall of the mansion’s cabinet - an oil picture in which it is captured, apparently, with his son and in the image of the hero of the war of 1812: in a uniform with epaulettes, orders and a ribbon over the shoulder.

And wigs, and uniforms, and portraits with rare clarity for modern Russia show one of the important cultural mechanisms that made this war possible - the Trikster nature of the current government. (Researchers of folklore and literature traditionally call the tricsters of the heroes of adventurers, jesters and impostors.)

The cult of the attractive hero of the adventurer bloomed in a late Soviet time. Then one of his favorite movie heroes was the charming swindler of Ostap Bender - he managed to enjoy life in the Soviet stuffy and regulated society and showed all his actions: I am free, but you are not. In the 1990s, the type of freedom-loving adventurer was reborn into a bandit, and then an entrepreneur; Under Putin - in a hospitalist who combines patriotic rhetoric and villas on the Cote d'Azur, or a propagandist who can afford to violate the framework of decency and troll the opponents.

An important element of the freedom of the post -Soviet tricster is demonstrative cynicism, proud that discards any ideas about morality in order to achieve the goal. Putin said that the fighters who captured the Crimea could buy a military uniform in Voentorg; The head of Rosneft, Igor Sechin, substituting Minister Alexei Ulyukaev under a criminal case, asked him not to forget the basket with the sausage. Prigozhin keeps a huge sledgehammer at home with the inscription “In case of important negotiations” and a photograph of cut heads. It seems witty to him. And terrible.

In a wig and with a patch beard, Prigozhin acts as a double of early Putin. That many years - has not yet reached absolute power - was famous for the fact that he could charm the interlocutor, wearing any mask: a democrat, a humanist, a brutal macho, a decisive fighter with corruption. For example, at the famous press conference in Ljubljana, George Bush, the youngest said that he looked in the eyes of Putin and saw in him a “direct and worthy trust of a person”. Unlike Prigozhin, Putin did not stick a beard, but, as Masha Hessen wrote about this, he simply erased the features of his own individuality and turned out to be a “man without a face”.

The juggling images and masks has become an unusually effective strategy in post -Soviet Russia, which was disappointed in ideals and values ​​and believed in the ubiquity and inevitability of cynicism. The society was ready to accept and love a violation of any boundaries if it is done charming and brazenly. It is no coincidence that both Putin and Prigozhin deny the idea of ​​the borders: the Wagner PMC was originally created to overcome state borders and fulfill the “special assault”, not afraid of publicity in case of failure; Putin denies international law and says that Russia " does not end anywhere ."

According to literary critic Mark Lipovetsky, this cynicism has a terrible property: cynicism claims the cult of power and becomes fertile soil for fascism. The cynic replaces, which imitates faith in common values ​​in order to replay opponents and get its own, can easily come a convinced totalitarian romantic, ready to go for values ​​to the end. This is the main weakness of the cynic: it can attract other violators of borders under his banners, but he is difficult to give the role of moral authority.

You can see the entire Prigozhinsky rebellion as a newly unsuccessful attempt to try on a new one - “moral” - a mask. The Wagner PMC standing in the mansion of the PMC and the jacket with orders show the temptation that the businessman succumbed to. At the beginning of its history, the Wagner PMC acted as the unification of adventurers' tricsters-it is no coincidence that they had a pirate skull on their flag. The company offered to join those who love adventures and unpunished violence. Gradually, along with military successes and an increase in significance, Prigozhin had another image of the company - as a cohort of real patriots, united by ideals for protecting his homeland and military honor. Hence the new flag with the motto “Blood. Honor. Homeland. Courage". Hence the countless orders, which Prigozhin put up for the display of his guests. He never had a military tunic, so he had to hang the medals of the Hero of Russia, the Hero of the LPR and the Hero of the DPR on the entrepreneur's jacket.

Prigozhin march to Moscow was not just furnished as Private Prigozhin’s protest against the transition of PMCs under the power of the Ministry of Defense, but as the implementation of a request for a large -scale restoration of justice in the country. “ Our sacred war has turned into a rat ”, “ We are going to figure out why lawlessness is going on in the country ,” Prigozhin said in videos and oligas. The popularity of Prigozhin and his rhetoric in the months before the rebellion grew rapidly . For persuasiveness, he, apparently, staged the blow of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation on the Wagner PMC camp in order to demonstrate specific victims of injustice.

In the image of a fighter for justice, Prigozhin easily achieved its initial success: he seized the headquarters of the Ministry of Defense in Rostov-on-Don, after which he began to advance to Moscow almost without resistance. The march stalled when the private goals of Prigozhin-entrepreneur were conflicting with the declared common purposes of the restoration of justice. The scale of Prigozhin described by “lawlessness in the country” was so large that to get rid of it, it was necessary to storm Moscow. At this moment, Prigozhin decided to make a curiosity about his future and recalled the mercenaries back. The telegram users had previously set the warriors and hearts to the warriors, but Emodi Clown reacted to the news about the cessation of the march. Trickster could not stand the values ​​he had declared.

Now this is the main power and weakness of the Putin regime. In all situations when the power of Trickster does not meet sufficient resistance, as it was, for example, in the event of an annexation of Crimea, he comes out of an unconditional winner. Feeling their impunity, Putin, Lavrov and Russian television and propagandists laugh when they are reminded of their previous agreements or talk about moral restrictions. Such universal cynicism also works as a convenient platform on which you can combine in support of the war of cynics, careerists, technocrats and convinced nationalists, imperials and militarists. Cynism begins to slip when a rebuff meets: anyone who chooses a side of moral resistance - whether Vladimir Zelensky or Alexei Navalny, turns out to be Putinism too tough.

This text will be included in the book “Temple of War”, which is now writes, Ilya Venyavkin. You can monitor his work and the creation of the book in the telegram channel .

The author’s opinion may not coincide with the opinion of the editorial office.