The country disappears

Leonid Gozman - about why the war in Russia does not lead to solidarity

“I will tell you about the country

Where Satan was allowed into the temple ... "

Andrey Makarevich

We have a state. It is weak, because it often cannot achieve the implementation of its own laws and orders, it is corrupt, it is cruel. He does not give a damn about people: it does not contribute to their safety and development, it sends them to death, it throws them to the mercy of fate when they fall in critical situations. Actually, such a state is quite traditional for us. Such were, for example, the state of Stalin or Ivan the Terrible - crazy ideas, paranoid fear of enemies and complete indifference to the fate of subjects. Now the same thing.

So, we have a very bad and even criminal state. But it is. Tanks are moving, the budget is performed at the very least, the railways operate.

Is there a country? Not a territory, not a single language for most, not a common currency and general school programs, but a country? The country, like any community, is not only legal concepts and material base. This is identification.

For example, a family is not so much a registered marriage and a joint economy. These are feelings in relation to each other - anxiety, empathy. This is mutual assistance, imperative for family members. You cannot help but engage in the health of loved ones, you cannot but feed a helpless father and so on. The feelings of family members in relation to each other can be different, including negative ones, but spouses, children and parents remain for each other. When and if they become strangers, there is no more family.

Any corporation seeks to identify workers with them. And successful firms achieve this sensation: people are proud of belonging, rejoice at success and are upset by failures.

The same is with the country. This is not a territory, not state symbols-this is a feeling of something that goes beyond you, but for you important. You are part of her, and she makes up an integral part of you.

It happens. For example, in Israel for the funeral of a “lonely soldier” (as they call the IDF soldier, who have no close relatives in Israel) recently hundreds of people came. He was a soldier of Israel, and Israel was their country. He was their soldier.

We have almost no this. Some have identification with the state. And therefore, for athletes, when they play under the flag of the Russian Federation, they are sick, and when, as now in Paris, under neutral, it is much less.

In response to a flood in Krymsk, there was a surge in the volunteer movement. In response to Orsk - silence.

If you hurt your finger, it hurts not to your finger. Because you are an integral organism. If there really is a country, then an attack on its territory, even far from your home, should somehow respond to you-pain, anxiety, empathy. You can explain the reasons for the attack, and this will help you come to terms with her, but then. And first pain and anxiety.

Attack in the Kursk region. Tens of thousands of refugees are a full -scale war. In addition to the on -duty tantrums on TV, do you see a lot of concern about this? And it is not the fact that people understand that this is our unleashed war with our own state - few people understand, unfortunately.

They are simply not their own - those who are near Kursk. And by the way, those who in Belgorod are also not their own. There are no their own.

You see a lot of ads, I will accept, they say, for free, a family from under Kursk? And the stream of those who want to sign up for volunteers - to protect their native land, where is he? The fact that he has increased is only from the words of Putin is a reliable source, of course.

Television cannot even show a single line at the military registration and enlistment office where a person said that he used to believe that they would cope without him, but now everything is going to the front. There is no country - there is no country.

In power, which does not declare a “sacred war” in connection with the Kursk, there may be its own reasons. It is important that people do not have any feelings.

By the way, the disputes in our environment about whether it is necessary to help the refugees of the Kursk region also go as if they were not their fellow citizens, brothers, but just some other people's people. So they are strangers. And we are discussing how guilty they are to support the war and have earned help. Or they themselves are to blame and let them now get what they deserve. I’m not to the one who is right in this dispute - to be honest, the position is equally not close to me and those who announce that each of us is obliged to help them, and if you do not help, then you are a “party of someone else's blood”, and those who say that it is impossible to help in any case, and who helps Putin. I am not the feeling that in trouble - even if they themselves brought her closer - they got their own. There is no country, and they are not their own.

This is not because we are some wrong. And because many generations of our fellow citizens lived in conditions when power does not depend on them, does what they want, and why - we are unknown. To climb into royal fun, the tsar’s report is more expensive for himself. You will not achieve anything, and troubles are guaranteed. Therefore, the position of “not our mind is a matter”, “my hut with the edge” becomes adaptive. And this is exactly what the parents of their children teach for a century: do not lean out. Identification here can arise only with loved ones, but not with the country. We can still share joy - the flight of Gagarin, victory. But grief is harder.

In the Great Patriotic War, by the way, the vast majority of the Red Army who had passed - and there were 34 million of them - they got there on a draft. That is, to fight for their homeland was not their voluntary choice: they found themselves in the war by the will of fate. Another thing is that many of them in these terrible circumstances behaved more than worthy - admiration for them and gratitude. But what was there more, experiences for the homeland or fulfilling the duty to oneself, we will never know.

There is the concept of Stateless PEOPLE - people without a state. These, for example, are those who were in forced emigration - in exile. Their (ours!) The former state not only does not care about them, but on the contrary, seeks to complicate their lives in every possible way. True, the majority of those living in Russia can also be attributed to this category - they also do not give a damn about them. But people are used to living like that, not hoping for anyone.

Without a country, perhaps harder. People want to feel their belonging to the country, be proud of it. Someone in accordance with television instructions reaches this on the way of hatred of the world around us-everything is against us precisely because we are so wonderful. But even the authorities understand that this is not enough.

The authorities called its “party” “United Russia”, emphasizing precisely this demanded but not satisfied sense of unity. True, they do nothing for unity, even cheap tickets to Moscow for residents of remote regions, which they talked about so much. As always, they are trying to get rid of simulacu: for example, they suggested introducing a unified sports form for children throughout Russia.

They cannot make a single country - they do the same! This is really easier.

People, of course, are trying to build their country themselves. Someone studies and finds in it what he needs: military power or, for example, the traditions of freedom and republicanism, and therefore his Russia is a great military power or a country of free people-only temporarily captured by despots. Or some other. Someone becomes a patriot of the native land, and Russia is only a small homeland for him. The current state does not welcome these searches: Russia should be as they say from above, but it never turns out to suppress everything.

People belonging to the elite are also looking for. If they are not quite idiots, but there are few of them there, then they understand that the idea that there was chaos at first, and then Putin appeared, does not exhaust Russia. It is also important for them to understand why "and" where. "

It seems that for many of them the emanation of Russia is Stalin - the desire not for justice, which by public consciousness was completely attributed to Lenin, but to order and greatness. Their searches and aspirations are important - they can see what fate they prepare the country and all of us.

The most informative here are not boring reports and not even extravagant statements by politicians or full -time crazy people from the TV, but the public actions of the second -row, trying to break through the first. The general delight just caused a video posted by the acting governor of the Vologda region Filimonov (for what such a beautiful city is such a punishment?), Which introduced humanity to the interior of his reception. There, in addition to the mini-garem of the three, as if unexpectedly for Filimonov himself, the secretary, portraits and busts-Stalin, Beria, Dzerzhinsky and even the picture, where Stalin himself shakes his hand to Filimonov, blessing him for great affairs.

Without dwelling on the obvious circumstance that the heroes chosen by the acting governor are the greatest villains, I want to draw your attention to the fact that these comrades were noted not only by large -scale bloodshed, but also by the fact that they did not unite the country, but, on the contrary, disconnected. They appointed enemies and killed them supposedly for the good of those who were to become enemies tomorrow. The desired future, according to Filimonov, - and if only on it! - This is not a single people of a single country, but a permanent civil war.

So we do not have countries. And while in power those who rule us now will not be. After them - perhaps.

I do not want to finish on a sad note: after all, we have something to rely on. Behind us is Pushkin, and Sakharov, and great reforms. But it will probably be even more difficult to find a country than to build on the ruins that will remain after this power, a normal state.