“Crocus”-like “Nord-Ost” and Beslan. The Russians were weaned to live in an era of terrorist attacks. It turned out that early

Issue "Signal" on "Medusa"

Twenty years ago, terrorist attacks in Russia were a terrible routine. In 2004 alone: ​​a detonation of trains in the Moscow metro (42 victims), an explosion at the stadium in Grozny (seven victims, including Akhmat Kadyrov), explosions of Moscow -Volgograd and Moscow -Sochi aircraft (89 victims), the explosion in Moscow near the Riga Metro (11 victims), and the capture of the school in Beslan (333 victims). We have almost forgotten what it feels like to live in the era of terrorism. But this era did not end - and the memories of what was 20 years ago is largely determined how we relate to what is happening now.

This text was first published in the Imale Signal Snovka from the creators of Medusa on March 23, 2024.

Although the FSBannounced the detention of the performers, the organizers of the attack are still unknown. In his appeal, Putin spoke of “international terrorism” - this is a traditional euphemism for the jihadist movement, including the “Islamic state”.

Often they recall the warning that the US Embassy in Russia spread in early March - it said that a terrorist attack is planned in Moscow in the coming days. American citizens were advised to avoid large clusters of people, including concerts. Latvia, South Korea, Sweden, Canada, Germany and the Czech Republic then joined the warning.

American officialsbelieve that the attack is the work of the Islamic State. In favor of this version, the similarity of the attack with the attack on the Bataklan Theater in Paris in 2015 also speaks in favor of this version.

As far as one can judge on social networks, the version with the “Islamic state” does not cause much confidence in the public - two others are much more often discussed, which are closer to Russian realities.

Now the FSB and propagandists are increasingly talking about the "Ukrainian trace." The editor -in -chief of RT Margarita Simonyan directly calls the version about the “Islamic state” by Fake and allegorically accuses Ukraine of organizing the attack along with the “collective West”. Zet-patriots unanimously criticize the powerlessness of the Russian security forces, but did not decide on the organizers-either this is the work of the Western intelligence services, or Kiev. The possible fault of the “Kiev regime” was almost immediately stated by Dmitry Medvedev. In addition, Putin also spoke about involvement in the Ukrainian attack in his appeal - though with a reservation “according to preliminary data”.

Opponents of the Kremlin believe that the Russian authorities arranged a terrorist attack. On this occasion, they recall the Ryazan Sugar - the theory that the explosions of houses in Moscow in the late nineties were arranged by the FSB. This theory is gaining popularity - on the day of the attack, the attendance of the page about explosions in Moscow in Wikipedia has grown more than 200 times . According to the opposition, the terrorist attack will allow “twist the nuts” after Putin’s victory in the “election” and declare a second wave of mobilization.

It is too early to evaluate all these versions. But the sensation uniting Russians on March 22 is not related to versions. For most of them, the attacks for most of them are either something that happened somewhere far away and with someone else, or little meaning from the FSB messages about the next successful operation to prevent someone’s attempt to “destabilize the socio-political situation” in the country.

The memories of those times when terrorist attacks and the expectation of terrorist attacks were terrible everyday life, it would seem, were reliably buried - but overnight burst to the surface. And they already determine how we perceive what is happening right now.

Pandemia, war, drones, shelling of border cities - all this did not cause such a reaction. “Crocus”-like Beslan, like “Nord-Ost”-will become a name forever connected with the terrorist attack. And very many until the end of their lives will remember what exactly they did and where they were when they first heard about people with machine guns who burst into the concert hall.

What do we remember?

Almost any collective experience of traumatic events is united even by the most fragmented and atomized society. The joint experience of wars, large -scale political violence, economic crises, natural and technogenic disasters, as well as terrorist attacks often become part of civil identity.

In the collective perception of recent traumatic events (and terrorist attacks in particular), contradictions are often visible. But fierce disputes about whether it would be possible to prevent a terrorist attack, how adequately and proportionally the authorities were adequately and proportionally, who should be responsible for the death of people, as a rule, are carried out only in the first weeks after the event.

Over time, terrorist attacks turn into complete stories with their understandable logic. In each such story, the roles of the guilty and victims are clearly distributed - and the collective request of the society that arose after a traumatic event is spoke. Often such a request (say, to tighten the migration policy or anti -extremist legislation) is more important than the needs of the victims of the attack and their families.

And these stories determine how we will perceive subsequent events. The terrorist attack in Crocus is not only a massacre in the concert hall, but also the “new Nord-Ost”, that is, not only the current horror and grief, but also the memory of already experienced horror and grief.

The individual memory of events that to some extent injured or left a noticeable mark in society always depends on collective memory . We remember not only and, perhaps, not so much “Nord-Oste” or Beslan as a joint experience and the meaning that we post-factor jointly came up with this experience: “we are defenseless”, “the state does not spit on us” or something else.

This "we" and "us" is very important. The collective memory of terrorist attacks becomes part of the identity when there is a feeling that something terrible and extraordinary happened to “us”-not only with direct victims, but also with those who have no personal connection with the victims, but only general identity (civil, national or some other). “Nord-Ost”, Beslan, and now “Crocus” are attacks not only on specific people, but on all “us”.

States are trying to monopolize the interpretation of any collective grief, whether it is hunger, genocide, war or terrorist attack. After Beslan, Vladimir Putin did this out of a blatantly straightforward way: he announced that the attack with hundreds of victims occurred due to the weakening of the state, and under this pretext he canceled the governor’s elections and began to “tighten the nuts”.

What do we feel?

It largely depends on age.

Over thirty, people remember the long series of terrorist attacks of the late nineties and zero: explosions of houses in Moscow and Volgodonsk (1999), explosion in Moscow in Pushkinskaya (2000), explosion in Kaspiysk (2002), “Nord-Ost” (2002), explosions at the wings festival in Tushin (2003), undermining the “Kislovodsk-Minovods” train-Minovodes-Minovodovs-Minovodes-Minovodovs-Minovodes-Minovodes-Minovods-Minovods-Minovods-Minovods-Minovods-Minovods-Minovods-Minovods-Minovods-Minovodes (2003), an explosion in the Moscow metro on Avtozavodskaya (2003), Beslan (2004), explosions in the Moscow metro on Lubyanka and Culture Park (2010), an explosion in Domodedovo (2011) - and this is far from a complete list.

Who remembers this is probably the familiar feelings of those times returned: the realization that at any moment you or your loved one may suddenly die; fear of large clusters of people; The feverish bargaining with himself: the last time they blew up the second carriage of the metro train-Syaku-ka in the fourth.

The fact that these feelings have been aged and almost forgotten in the last ten years has become a great achievement of Russian society - with all the fact that the feelings that replaced them were far from always kind.

Now that experience will probably be valuable and will be transferred to those who have not experienced all this, for whom the explosions of houses in the middle of the night or at a rock festival are not a personal memory, but some kind of bike of older relatives or an article in Wikipedia.

We do not know whether Crocus will remain a separate monstrous excess - or, God forbid, will become the beginning of a new series of terrorist attacks. But the collective memory of everyday fear has already awakened - and fear has returned. Now he is with us again.

Editors "Signal"