Was in a whisper - it became alarm

About how the day of victory over Nazi Germany turned on the day of victory over all enemies in general

The coach of the hockey SKA Roman Rotenberg is asked why his team has a holey defense this year. “We defeated the Nazis in the Great Patriotic War. This is more important than the number of goals missed, ”Rotenberg replies.

For all the anecdotalness of this dialogue, Rotenberg translates - albeit in a somewhat concentrated form, but the more clearly - the spirit of time. The Great Patriotic War continues (more precisely, of course, as if continuing). And not only in the combat zone, but also in with and my seemingly peaceful everyday life - on the posters of sports, in the announcements of cultural events and student olympiads. And each local victory “joins” as part of this myth to that very victory.

Several years ago, the historian of philosophy Alexei Kamensky, when discussing the events of 2014 in the Donbass, proposed the term “replacing historical analogy” - that is, an analogy working in the mass consciousness instead of a real event. Such a replacement analogy for Russian propaganda became the Great Patriotic War.

Since then, this language has constantly captured new territories. As a result, now, through the prism of that war in public space, not only the Ukrainian campaign can be described, but literally anything.

Nazism and May 9 are now such a magical master lint, “a key suitable for many doors”, as a little differently was expressed by Brodsky.

“Once, in a conversation with his son, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR Gromyko said about negotiation positions:“ We will not change the results of the war. If we yield to them, we will be cursed by all tortured and killed. When I am negotiating with the Germans, it happens, I hear a whisper behind my back: “Do not yield to them, Andrey, do not give in, this is not yours, but ours.” “He who doesn’t hear this one now a whisper, but the alarm, he is hopelessly deaf. Who does not see what is happening is also blind, ”writes Maria Zakharova.

Andrei Gromyko was a man of the front -line generation, besides a native of Belarus. He lost two brothers on World War II, and his mother miraculously saved. The quoted words were said by him in the second half of the 1970s after the death of his younger brother, who fought in the partisan detachment, while Andrei made a diplomatic career in the United States. For him, everything related to that war, with his own non -participation in it, with the fate of the family was a life injury.

Maria Zakharova from the generation of grandchildren, if not great -grandson Gromyko. She was born 30 years after the end of the war. She has no living emotional experience related to war. So how did it happen that where Gromyko was distinguished by a quiet whisper, she hears the thunder of the nabat?

In recent years, the word “resentification” has become perhaps the most frequent in conversations about Russia. The feeling “we are underdinary, so we have the right to come and take” may well claim the status of a long -looking national idea.

However, any feeling needs design, in verbal cover - and here the cult of the Great Patriotic War was completely indispensable. Not only power, but also the nation as a whole saw in the war that ended 80 years ago a suitable answer to the question: “Why, in fact, should we all?” - The ideal source of his legitimacy and rightness.

As a result, the war and the victory were completely removed from the historical context and history as such.

The past and finished was turned into last and eternal, single - into constantly repeating. I must admit, it was a brilliant move in its own way.

The day of victory over Nazi Germany turned on the day of victory over enemies in general-of course, also not concrete-historical, but as eternal and metaphysical as the victory itself. And, therefore, any new victory is the continuation of that. More precisely, not even a continuation, but part of it (after all, the story is not over, it lasts and repeats). And any new enemy is just another incarnation of that former enemy, and therefore ... right, the Nazi. And every doubtful in this logic is also a Nazi.

That is, the Nazis-all those who doubt the right of Russia in 2022 or 2025 to make the fate of the world on the basis of what happened in 1945, all who are against the winning country (after all, the title of the victorious country is now our own) and its versions of history, all recalling the Molotov-Ribbentrop, the annexation of the Baltic countries, the division of Poland. Simply put, if victory is forever, then, then, everyone who is against us is the Nazis.

According to the exact remark of the researcher of totalitarian culture, Yevgeny Dobrenko, the main book about Putin Russia should be called Invention of the Nazi. Indeed, when the country orders to be a Nazi, we will become a Nazi. European politicians are direct descendants of the Nazis of the 1930-1940s or their ideological heirs. Internal enemies are Vlasovites and policemen.

The rapper Morgenstern is announced by the ino -agent. Ekaterina Mizulina writes: “The symbolism of this decision is great. After all, it was accepted on the eve of the Victory Day regarding the one who denigrated our great holiday and cast doubt on the victory of the Russian people over Nazism. ” That is, the victory over Morgenster is also part of the very victory.

In 2022, the then Liverpool coach Jurgen Klopp supports the decision to transfer the Champions League final from St. Petersburg to Paris. “And this is said by a descendant of Hitler Germany, who should be kneeling in front of us!” -

The former football player is indignant, and now the sports observer Evgeny Lovchev.

Everything is wonderful here, especially the sharp desire to see one of the best coaches of the world in front of them on their knees. The source of this desire is, of course, the same resentment (in the football of Russia, as you know, it is especially very short -lived), but it is still packed in exile to their eternal guilt and our eternal victory.

The course of thought, I must say, is not that new. Back in 1968, after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, the Solovyevoskabeevs then talked about the ungrateful Czechs, whom we saved from the Germans, and they decided to move back to the same Germans. That is, both the Germans and other saved, who were being built in front of us in non-payment duty, which we have the right to recover whenever we wish. And the doubt about whether interest on duty is correctly calculated is just the Nazism itself.

The difference is that for Soviet propaganda it was a relatively peripheral theme, and now it has become like a whole worldview or, if you like, national neurosis. It was in a whisper - it became an alarm. “Well, what to do, the Nazis in Ukraine”, “And Europe/USA/Israel support these Naziks!” - These are such universal explanatory constructions that suggest that further conversation is not needed and impossible.

Victory is our eternal indulgence, which gives the right to everything-all-all. Argumentum Ad Victōriam works in a dialog with almost any interlocutor. A displeased Jew can always say that if not for the Russian soldier, he would have long been soap or lampshade. The Americans sat down behind the ocean, let them be ashamed. Europeans still crawl under a German boot. The Germans - well, there’s nothing to talk about, just knees and return the final to St. Petersburg.

In this sense, it is logical that the statement of the “truth about the Great Patriotic War”, even with the help of tanks and aircraft, is perceived as our sacred duty. And the betrayal of the memory of the fallen is a peaceful coexistence with those who are not so (not enough, wrong, not in our opinion-to emphasize the necessary)) honors their feat.

The specificity of the Russian idea of ​​history becomes especially obvious if we compare the slogan “can repeat” with the European “never again”. And it's not even about ethical incompatibility. It’s just that in the first case, history is conceived as a circle, a ring, and the endless repeatability is as something natural and desirable, in the second - there is only a linear time of single events.

In the famous poem, Evgenia Berkovich (there is a version that it was the real reason for her arrest and condemnation) that the deceased grandfather-veteran is the grandson and conjures: “No victories by my name, no victories” and “Let me go to rest, Seryozha, I deserved peace.” The problem is that if you let go of my grandfather, you will have to be responsible for all missed goals. It is clear that neither the authorities nor Serezhenka will go to this. So, grandfather will be used for all new and new occasions.

This material was released in the seventh issue "New Gazeta. Magazine". You can buy it in the online store of our partners .