Translated material
Negosuslovism
What tools do the Kremlin use to destroy modern Russian culture
Peter Sarukhanov / "New Gazeta"
For almost two years, the “management in the field of culture”, implemented by the Russian authorities, has been following the conceptual-stylistic path, which previously post-Soviet Russia has not even turned off even the most crisis periods for its political system. Of course, this is by no means free from the “ideological muzzle” of the 1990s, when the contacts of the establishment with cultural figures were predominantly limited to the invitations of the latter to participate in the “vote or lose”, not at all “early” Putin with the good name of Vladimir Sorokin before the “walking together” by the Minister of Culture Switch Flying out with rockers and liberal directors and not even a postcrymist reactionary turn, within the framework of which the artist could still safely maintain a “pioneer distance” with an ultrapatriotic agenda - and not only from emigration.
In 2022, a fundamentally new era began for the Cultural Governance Institute, which is primarily distinguished by unprecedentedly, pathologically high attention of the state to the fields of culture, which previously “looked” quite rarely. Suddenly, writers from low-shooting snobs from Jean-Jacques reincarnated-no less-real engineers of human souls, worthy of persecution, recognition by terrorists and the seizure of books from stores; The cult, “bobmed” musicians began to become “foreign agents” and objects of diplomatic conspiracies, and serving the very “high-button” audience of the playwright-the defendants in the resonant criminal cases of the Soviet shit. What's happening?
In our context, it is important not to erode this issue before immersion in the causes and potential consequences of what is happening, but to dwell on its “mechanical” aspect.
There is nothing more than the destruction of independent Russian culture through marginalization, persecution, coercion to loyalty, prohibitions, punitive censorship, arrests, threats, stigmatization and other repressive measures directed against artists.
In fact, without any exaggerations and pathetics, we are talking about state terror, deployed against a particular social group-participants in the cultural process in modern Russia, who are not related to the conditional Bezruk-Gazman clan of “proxies” and are not ready to sign a signature under the “letter in support ...”, go to the Donbass or speak at the concert “in honor of joining ...”. This terror seriously threatens their safety and creates unbearable working conditions, turning the internal cultural space into a monopoly syndicate of the servile glorification of the conjuncture, whose voices are now due to unnatural state fraud-sound louder than ever before.
Cultural terror 2022–2024 is very effective - this is probably the largest campaign to “cancel” the whole galaxy of outstanding artists in modern world history, whose effectiveness is explained by three reasons:
The Kremlin “cultural policy” of the 2020s is a kind of radical quintessence of the most vicious practices of the Putin era in, say, communication with the intelligentsia, tested over 20 years of dictatorship. Actually, if you cross, for example, a story with the defeat of the Ultra. Culture publishing house in the middle of the two thousandths, a criminal case against the organizers of the Forbidden Art-2006 exhibition in the Sakharov Center*, the case Pussy Riot and a series of disruptions of youth performers in 2018, and then build this mosaic in the absolute, it will become obvious that the repressions of the 2020s are only The scaling of a long -accumulated, pretty shot arsenal.
The 2022–2024 campaign has a very solid theoretical base - and its architects may not even suspect this. In my opinion, the Kremlin cultural practices of the 2020s are ideologically related to two phenomena-McCartism and the views of Mikhail Suslov, during his membership in the Politburo defined the policy of the CPSU regarding cultural figures.
Of both phenomena, the Russian Presidential Administration extracted “the best”: McCartism borrowed a tendency to hysterical exaggeration, mediaatams and hanging labels. In particular, it is known that Senator McCarthy himself (this is mentioned in his own book “The Battle of America”) once accused the American authorities of aiding Chinese communists due to an incident with a dump of 120 tons of damaged ammunition, intended for the Gomintan, to the Indian Ocean-from the sanction of the Government of the Chinese Republic itself (the Senator in the speech increased the amount to 120 thousand tons and gave this story as a betrayal, having been silent about the sanctions I mentioned). The same approach in the era of McCartism was also used in cultural regulation: the writer Irwin Show was proclaimed a communist in the Red Channels brochure close to the FBI for supporting the petition with a request to revise the charges against Hollywood screenwriters sent to prison for “anti -American activity”, for which he was also included emigrate to Europe.
In Suslov, his successors peered completely oak -up dogmatism, instead of orthodox Marxism, placing an orthodox Putinism in his basis, which with the Suslovian principles “did not save on ideology” or “I didn’t read this book ... But the publication of this work will harm communism, Soviet people” - considering cultural figures as ideological screws, the publication of culture, and the publication of this work. subordinates to the goals of the ruling group - is spent very successfully. And why then, at least for convenience and by analogy with neomaccartism, not to call the phenomenon under discussion ?
- Neovuslovism, which has found the name only in the previous paragraph, unlike McCartism or even disparate “doctrines” Vladislav Surkov (see “Texts 97–07” , ed. “Europe”, 2008), is not codified and not described because of its novelty and rapid development in real time. And the second part of this essay I want to devote precisely the deconstruction of neutrianism, declaring the key reason for its effectiveness - its tools - its tools.
Shadow diplomacy and playing in front of cellmates
If we analyze the textbook examples of moral panic, for example, the “Satanic panic” of the 1980s or the popularization of the theory of the “Zionist occupation government” among supporters of ultra-right movements around the world, it can be noted that the spread of hysteria in these cases was not least due to the “universal” of theories on which it was based.
Suppose there is a worldwide conspiracy of the Satanists who commit ritual murders, both in the USA and even in South Africa, and hippies from New Age Commun, and social services are guilty of this-and in general any other actors of public life, because in the conditions of uncertainty and “infinity” the whole history with “Satanic panic” has increased social cauterization to such a level that American is American. Parents began to be afraid to let their children go to school .
The Satanic conspiracies of the Kremlin administration are somewhat far away, but the principle of almost conspiracy the global, expressed in the obvious exit beyond the declared "dictatorship of the law", she managed to test - moreover, recently.
The detention of the Bi 2 group in Thailand, according to The Guardian and a number of Russian opposition politicians, organized by the Russian Foreign Ministry through pressure on the Thai side ( the Russian Foreign Ministry officially refuted such assumptions. - Ed. ) With the aim of deporting musicians to Russia, extremely symptomatic, firstly, as a sign of the “level of danger” of artists in the role of state displacement objects, and Secondly, it is precisely as a factor in the globalization of moral panic due to the repression of wartime.
In 2022–2023, the announcement of cultural figures on the international wanted list, correspondence sentences and arrests for “fakes” were considered a novelty - as, for example, in the case of Dmitry Glukhovsky (in everything else, also a recognized “foreigner”). But in view of the limitations of the jurisdiction of the Russian Federation, in fact, such measures were neither in the symbolic or in the practical plane of its borders - since most public critics of the regime at the time of “arrests” have long been abroad.
But the case of “BI 2” has largely erased this distance, which provoked panic anddiscussion about the danger of the “friendly” of the Russian Federation for political emigration. Never earlier in post -Soviet Russia the musician, writer or actor became the subject of special operations on extradition or foreign policy manipulations in general, if not reckoning the author of the book “FSB explodes Russia”, an immigrant from the KGB Alexander Litvinenko.
Indeed, in the recent past, such “diplomatic” tactics, as a rule, were applied to the “traitors” of the regime in a slightly different interpretation of the word - to pearies or Feesbashniki who fled from the Russian Federation and began to cooperate with Western special services, such as Litvinenko or Skripal. But in 2024, the same persons whose names were mentioned in the media in connection with cases of eliminating the “traitors” of the special services, took up the musicians: “Bi 2 group during a special military operation, to my deep disappointment, can only be characterized as“ scum ”... They will soon play and sing on the spoons and on metal plates, dumbfounding. The tap is in the eyes of the cellmates. Personally, I would look at it with great pleasure, ” commented the detention of“ BI 2 ”State Duma deputy Andrei Lugova, whom the British court considers the murder of Litvinenko.
And this threat with playing spons in a prison cell a month ago would sound like an extraordinary “official fever”, but against the backdrop of the systemic activity of the Russian government in line with the deterioration of the life of disloyal artists abroad, outlined at the beginning of 2024, it probably should be perceived more seriously.
In particular, incidents with prohibitions on the entrance to the UAE “Inoagent” Morgensterna, and “Inoagent” Maxim Galkin - to Indonesia, the abolition of comedian Ruslan Bely in Thailand and Indonesia, coupled with a tangible risk of issuing “BI 2” to Russian authorities in the history of diplomats of Western countries and that it seems to me that it seems to me that it seems to me It is important - against the background of the scandal around the alleged connections of the deputy of the European Parliament Tatyana Zhdanok with the FSB - indicate the preservation of the Russian Federation of a significant impact on international processes.
And the Russian authorities are obviously ready to use this “invisible hand” to persecute anti-war cultural figures around the world (so far at least in the “friendly” Asia) and maintaining the atmosphere of moral panic and in the emigrant environment, which, apparently, in 2024 artists should be taken into account when choosing countries for living and performances.
Lavender stigmatization
Andrei Lugovoi - a self -proclaimed specialist in “scum” and “traitors”, and he converts this profile not only into statements about spoons and taps, but also into hidden calls to lynching - in the spirit of “free radio and television of thousands of hills”, during the genocide in Rwanda, who voiced the address of Tutsa’s residence for a physical violence.
“For those who personally want to bring to Asi that the betrayal of his country is the worst sin,”-such a signature of Lugovoi accompanied the now remote publication in his Telegram channel, in which the writer Asi Kazantseva was laid out.
Such an invitation to the personal clarification of the sinfulness of the “betrayal” to a girl with a one -year -old child, just like the regular recognition of cultural figures “foreign agents”, the provocations of the pro -Kremlin pranks with “pulling” radical replicas of a political nature and, for example, a recent scandal with a “naked party” - in which, which, which, which was noteworthy, participated mainly “Conformers-artists” without any anti-war background can be described as a tool for the distance of the cultural sphere from what the authorities mean by the “ordinary people”.
In principle, it is permissible to consider non -consumption as a set of measures aimed at the marginalization of any unofficial, deviating from the “general line of the party” of manifestations of cultural life. For this purpose, the reputation of the pro -Kremlin artists is intensively guarded and “lacquered” by the authorities (as an example - the recent special statement of the representative of the Ministry of Internal Affairs that “the police have no questions” to the SHAMAN singer for the promotion of LGBT ** ), and members of the “opposite camp”, on the contrary,, on the contrary,
The Kremlin either forces to pronounce Casus Belli through court prauners to deploy personal repressions, or through propaganda it embedns the activities of anti -war personalities into conditional “socially condemned” canons. Which are usually also designed artificially.
For example, having erected the injury of the Quirrothes to the rank of almost the main pillar of the constitutional system of the Russian Federation, the Russian authorities received a tool for legitimization of punishment as Young-Dult novels like “Fleet in a pioneering tie” (recognized by “foreign agents” and deprived of the opportunity to publish books in Russia), and celebrities at a party with a specific dress code. This, in essence, is the same “lavender panic” of the times of McCartism, based on the thesis that the LGBT community poses a threat to US national security due to susceptibility to communism.
Negosuslovism is much wider than McCartism, because of which stigmatization within its framework does not occur according to the principle of point discrimination, but through the modernized filter “harm to communism, Soviet power, the Soviet people”. A very recent case with the abolition of Christina Orbakait’s concerts in Siberia on the denunciation of the Prochrevsky activists, who called the singer, called the “daughter of a foreign agent” (which is not true), “not determined with their position regarding her”.
That is, if at the beginning of 2022, in the first phase of the conflict, the problems of the cultural figure could arise due to direct criticism of the course of the Russian authorities, now it is enough to “not decide” to gain them.
The prankers often help to determine the positions of the artists, leading a public person to the monastery and clearing for the authorities the barriers that remained to start organized trampling. So, back in May 2022 from the Moscow Theater. Evgenia Vakhtangov was dismissed by director Rimas Tuminas for consent in a telephone conversation to put in Ukraine the play “My Friend Bandera”-similar stories have occurred with Boris Akunin* , Dmitry Bykov*, Lyudmila Ulitskaya and Mikhail Weller, often ending in the impossibility of continuing the creative activity within Russia in any form.
This is the purpose of the stigmatization of culture and is. Propaganda, on the other hand, prepares for its perception the necessary model of public opinion, in which humiliation and persecution of people who have defined the cultural landscape of modern Russia should be perceived as “natural self -cleaning of society” . If this tool performs its function not effective enough, the authorities always have a final argument.
Direct action and counteraction. Instead of conclusion
“I remember how Suslov and his officials from the propaganda department of the Central Committee began the“ Daniel and Sinyavsky case ”. This case was very similar to the shameful war of Khrushchev against Boris Pasternak. Then, too, from the pages of the newspapers there was no platform swearing to the poet, who dropped the prestige of our party and the state around the world, ” recalled Anastas Mikoyan in his memoirs“ so ”.
It is obvious that the international prestige of the state for both Suslov and his ideological successors, who in 2023 initiated the “theatrical work” discouraged by their “Sovietness” against the playwright Svetlana Petriychuk and the director Yevgenia Berkovich, played a role third of the third.
As well as for the calling to “destroy” Boris Akunin deputy Gurulev, as for officials who organized searches in the Publishing House of Zakharov, who published the “subject to destruction” of the writer, as well as for the Moscow Cultural Department, who defeated the Gogol Center, Kirill Serebrennikov, as well as for the people responsible for replacing the character of Maxim Vutorgan in the character The series "Contact" on the dipteum. At this stage, “they don’t save on ideology”, apparently, even if for the sake of it it is necessary to raise the question of the murder of a writer.
In essence, until the second half of 2023, which for Russian culture was opened by the arrest of Berkovich and Petriychuk, the authorities tried not to resort to completely frank repressions regarding the “creative class” and still observed some accuracy. However, according to the sources of "Medusa" *** close to the Kremlin,
At the end of 2023, a coordinated campaign began to persecute objectionable cultural figures, especially writers-with a refusal to attempts to return “moderate” figures to the Russian Federation and adjust the course of criminal cases, pressure on the publishers and replenishment of the lists of terrorists and extremists.
Как мы увидели неделю назад, реестр этого инструментария пополнился еще и дипломатическими заговорами — и, исходя из анализа динамики эволюции неосусловизма, нет никаких оснований полагать, что кремлевский арсенал в ближайшее время не разрастется дополнительными рычагами культурных репрессий.
Предприняв в этом эссе попытку составить исчерпывающий «портрет» эпохи неосусловизма, которая, впрочем, пока и не думает прекращаться, в заключение текста мы оказались перед не самым простым нравственным вопросом: а как в этих условиях деятели культуры с антивоенной позицией (или же вовлеченные в кейсы с ЛГБТ-пропагандой) могут продолжать работу, не погружаясь в отчаяние и апатию?
Кажется, по состоянию на февраль 2024-го на него существуют два варианта ответа. Первый согласован администрацией президента России и сводится к тому, что для «отпущения грехов» необходимо принять кремлевскую «систему покаяний». Она, как можно судить из историй с Ромой Зверем, Димой Биланом или Филиппом Киркоровым, состоит или в поездке в Донбасс, или в пожертвовании гонорара на гуманитарную помощь с публичным осуждением действий ВСУ.
Вторую же опцию мне в недавнем интервью озвучил иммигрант, «иностранный агент» и лидер группы «Ногу свело!» Макс Покровский, в феврале 2022 года всецело переориентировавший свое творчество на лозунговые антивоенные композиции.
QUOTE
«Да, жилплощадь нашей семьи сократилась. Денег в кармане стало меньше, но с голоду никто не умер. Я являюсь лидером замечательного коллектива… Мы работаем нашей командой, работаем семьей… У меня есть прекрасная студия. Она скромная, но прекрасная. Она находится в центре вселенной под названием Нью-Йорк… Я есть. Мы есть… Наша команда, наша семья, наша группа. Так же и те артисты, которые принимают участие в этом Ромином проекте («После России» Ромы Либерова, альбоме-сборнике песен артистов-эмигрантов 2020-х на стихи эмигрантов 1920-х. — Ред. ). Мы не молчим, мы не сдохли с голоду, мы, в той или иной степени, ассимилировались. И, наверное, мы есть друг у друга, потому что все-таки, несмотря на то что мы, артисты, — народ странный и не всегда друг с другом ладим, все равно в рамках этого, вот уже второго проекта — мы есть».
Вероятно, пока что существует и третий вариант, заключающийся в отказе от каких-либо публичных комментариев и сохранении нейтралитета «до последнего». Но если браться за прогнозы культурных итогов года, начавшегося с отмены концертов предельно аполитичной певицы за «отсутствие позиции по СВО» и операции по депортации также объективно не самой протестной русскоязычной рок-группы, допустимо предположить, что к 2025 году эту опцию власти окончательно ликвидируют. Потому что речь идет все же о догматизме советского типа — с нулевой толерантностью даже к латентным намекам на инакомыслие.