Either a birch tree or a club

How they force us to love our Motherland

Indiscriminate patriotism is instilled not only with the help of “carrots”, which is the subject of a note from colleagues in this issue, but also with the help of “sticks”. If we do not consider grant programs as simply cutting up budget funds, these programs themselves would not work if they were not backed up by coercion, which is so familiar to Russia that it is no longer perceived as violence. And yet this is what it is.

Not every mother likes the fact that her son or daughter marches in military uniform, but there is no longer a kindergarten or a school in the country where it would be possible to protect children from being indoctrinated by “patriotism.” The problem is the monopoly on the interpretation of this concept, which the state gradually seized with the coming to power of Vladimir Putin.

For “unpatriotic” behavior or statements, you will be given a “failure” on an exam at the institute; in the army you will be sent to clean a latrine. In some cases, such actions form administrative offenses and even criminal offenses. But even when using “non-core” articles, the courts will evaluate the defendant’s personality on the “patriotism” scale.

In the practice of courts and “law enforcement agencies” this term has acquired legal meaning. Meanwhile, “patriotism” is not defined in any way, not to mention its antonym - “anti-patriotism,” which is punishable in the range of calling parents to school and “up to life.”

“Patriotism” is a French word, from patrie (homeland). It appeared hardly earlier than the 18th century, when the process of forming national states began in Europe. Initially, “patriotism” had a revolutionary connotation—the word patrie appears in the first line of “La Marseillaise.”

The educated class in Russia turned to the issue of patriotism at the end of the same 18th century. Alexander Radishchev in 1789 published in the magazine “A Conversation about the Son of the Fatherland,” and in 1790 he was sentenced to death, but was pardoned by Catherine and exiled to Siberia for his main book, “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow.”

The classics, of whom Russia is proud, experienced the question of patriotism painfully and did not at all consider the answer to it to be unambiguous. “The devil guessed that I would be born in Russia with a soul and talent,” Pushkin wrote to his wife. “I love my fatherland, but with a strange love” (Lermontov).

The first wave of emigrants who were expelled or left Russia after the 1917 revolution hardly loved it less than the remaining “internationalists.” Should we erase all these names from Russian history and culture in favor of the primitive linear patriotism that is being implanted in Russia today?

The torment of patriotism was probably expressed more deeply than anyone else by Mikhail Oginsky in his soul-tearing polonaise “Farewell to the Motherland.” During the Tadeusz Kosciuszko uprising of 1794, the amateur composer and diplomat fought a guerrilla war against Russian troops, and subsequently served at the court of Alexander I, which did not prevent him from loving Poland.

Love for the Motherland entails (for those who have learned and want to think) the following question: what is the Motherland? In my generation, we began to think about this when our homeland changed dramatically in our memory for the third or fourth time.

Homeland is a unique intersection of place and time. I grew up in Moscow in a communal apartment, never moved anywhere, although I traveled a lot around the country. I had a lot of complaints about the USSR of the 70s, where and when I grew up, but I loved that Moscow and that Russia. For me, the Motherland is, first of all, nostalgia. But if I love Russia in the 70s, then how can I love the Russian Federation, which grew and mutated only on the same territory? They are divergent in the meaning of their values, and love for the modern Russian Federation would probably be a betrayal of my first love.

It remains, probably, in the best traditions to “love the fatherland with a strange love” and not count on reciprocity. After all, you cannot abandon your Motherland - even if you leave or go into internal emigration, you will constantly think about it.

Yes, we are adapting so as not to deliver a new portion of food to “law enforcement agencies.” And hundreds of thousands of Russians, including our close friends, have left Russia because of their children, whom they want to raise in their own patriotism, and not in the one imposed on them. In emigration, they experience patriotism as the loss of their homeland, and we, who remain, experience the loss of their and their children’s homeland. Both are tragedies. But without any snot, then, considering how much violent “patriotism” costs the country, we must include in this price the outflow of human capital.

As a lawyer, I in no way propose to give patriotism a legislative definition, and this is impossible. “Law enforcement agencies” in this regard are guided not by the law, but by the rhetoric of officials and TV presenters, which flows from every iron. If we are seriously concerned about the fate of the Motherland, this rhetoric needs to be changed. And we must argue: there is no monopoly on “patriotism.”

What is Motherland? Without answering this question, one cannot talk about patriotism and distribute grants to “strengthen” it.

This material was published in the nineteenth issue of Novaya Gazeta. Magazine". You can buy it in the online store of our partners.