Читать книгу The Russian Totalitarianism. Freedom here and now - Dmitrii Shusharin - Страница 12

In a short period, we have witnessing the government betted first on the children of the urban periphery and almost at the same time on hipsters. Consumerism, utilitarianism and pragmatic patriotism (pursuit of success with the country) seemed to have won. This crowd has been guided by aficionados of Miro, French wines, cocaine, haute couture and haute cuisine, femmes fatales, tender boys and macho men. It would be wrong to see the superiority of the ones who loved Aivazovsky and Shishkin, prefer vodka, or at best, whisky, shish-kebab and dumb blondes. Of course there are plenty of this type in power, but in terms of domestic policy everything is not so simple and crude. The upper hand is taken by more pragmatic, modest and efficient managers, rather than the bohemians like Surkov, who, although still in the stable, by now has lost his former luster. The hipsters are out of favor. And in general the pedocracy is over. Young people have fallen out of the field of view of politicians, they are not necessary for them, or, to be precise, not needed on such a massive scale. The work with them lasted until 2016 with sufficient results. In the fall – to study the reaction on isolated cases – began the purification of universities from unpatriotic teachers.45 It’s an old technology, described by the turncoat writer Yuri Trifonov. Sympathetically in his “Students”, awarded the Stalin Prize, and with condemnation in the “House on the Embankment”, revered by the progressive public. At the time of loyal consumerism and pragmatic patriotism, the Ministry of Truth had almost no collaboration with the Ministry of Love. As it’s been already shown, the situation gradually changed: the punitive component, institutional and extra-institutional, began to play an increasingly important role.

The Shishkin and vodka party demanded the renewal of the elite. Its demands were formulated by nationalists, close to the siloviki and the military-industrial complex in the summer of 200746, towards the end of Putin’s second presidential term. At that time they were not paid due attention, but after seven or eight years, the then almost opposition figures began to voice an almost official position of the current government.

It all began with a sad date – the seventieth anniversary of what is commonly called the Great Terror or the “thirty-seventh”. That is, the same period in the Soviet state building, when repression reached the political elite. The first call was made in May. It was an anonymous publication, distributed on the Internet:

“You can, if you wish, admire these executions and assert that “all were shot correctly”, and now we need a” change of the elite and the new 37th”. The problem is different, so that such a “37th” could happen – and not in the form of massacres and shootings, but at least in dismissals of embezzling officials from their posts, getting read of incompetent bureaucrats and others – there should not be a climate of discontent and grumbling, but on the contrary, the atmosphere of national success. Only success gives the state the right to justice and even to a greater injustice.”47

Everything was formulated clearly, concisely, unequivocally in the issue of the newspaper Zavtra (Tomorrow) on August 14, 2007. The whole second page:

“The Elites – to the exit!”:

“With their stuff [personal effects] will they go or without, personally I have no doubts that by and large everyone is waiting for this command and ready for it.”

“The purge of the cadres”:

“If the change of ideology in the macroeconomics takes place, then the purge of the cadres at all levels of government will be inevitable. You can’t expect neither Russia’s well-being growth, nor the scientific and technical breakthrough, while the weather in the state will depend on officials of the Yeltsin breed.”

“Through the cloudy glass”:

“The new year 1937 can do without blood and violence, unless you call violence a massive dismisssal from the lucrative positions in TV, the press and the culture.”

“… And the legendary one”:

“Very soon Russia will lose the national army and turn into a loose defenseless territorial entity with no future. The one who refuses to see this is either a thoughtless fool, or a participant in this crime. This dead elite must be ruthlessly mopped up. Their positions must be taken over by the officers who have made their career not through trafficking in dollar bribes into the personnel hiring offices, but grown up on the battlefield, baptized with fire and blood.”

“The Lessons of Peter and Stalin”:

“Without the year 1937, 1945 would not have been possible. Each time, instead of the old, rotten and inadequate strata, the Russian rulers brought in the new people.”

“Techniques of change”:

“The breakthrough of Russia from the current ‘humiliated and insulted ‘state to a new systemic existence cannot take place without a fundamental change of’ elites.’”

This is all about what has to be done. And the first page is about what is already achieved.

“Putin’s Quiet War”:

“the representatives of criminal communities have deeply infiltrated into the government and other subjects of the Federation.”

Exactly like the Trotskyites-Bukharinites in each party organization. And further on: a very informative selection of facts on criminal cases in the regions. Indeed, whatever happened, happened: since the beginning of the year seven governors have been displaced, that is, as much as in the previous two years. Talks about the forceful transformation of the regional elites have began.

Among the publications on the second page of “Zavtra” there was one more:

“The people and the party are separate”:

“The party model is useless in solving strategic problems. After all, partisanship is the dominance (sic!) of the part over the whole. The country that is in search of wholeness needs least of all the party fever”

This was the first warning of United Russia, the ruling party. Those who were familiar with the classic work of Hannah Arendt, got the message: the next step was the creation of a totalitarian movement.

At the same time, the conflict within the power elite became noticeable. An unprecedented thing happened: the head of one of the security departments, personally close to Putin, came out with criticism of the existing inner estates situation.

The article of Viktor Cherkesov, head of the Rosnarkokontrol (Drug Control Service), published in Kommersant,48 caused a lot of comments. The conflicts of various special services was discussed, which, in fact, was not news. The article was rightly called “a humble petition”. It became clear that the country is facing a transition to a permanent rule of a man whose name everyone knows. Just calling him the national leader doesn’t do the anointing in one easy step. The question arose how to verbalize the establishment of one-man rule. Enter Cherkesov with his article, outlining the ground rules of Chekism.

This is not a set of verbal clichés to be used by a national leader in his address to the nation. On the contrary, it is a memo stating that such addresses are superfluous. No national or state idea. Instead of it, a tribalistic narrative.

According to the author, the main historical mission of the future eternal ruler of Russia is the unity of the Chekist tribe. And it was not called, say, “the backbone of the nation.” Cherkesov’s writers offered him to articulate perfect torture chamber formula: a Chekist hook on which post-Soviet society is hanging. The society is generally perceived as something lifeless, some kind of carcass. And, of course, everything that happened in the early nineties, that is, at the emergence of a new Russian statehood, was presented as a “full-scale catastrophe”.

Thus, Chekism, in the interpretation of those who prepared this article, and in the presentation of the head of the Rosnarkontrol, is an anti-state ideology. This is not even a concept of a corporate state. This, I repeat once again, is a tribalistic way of thinking.

The worldview and the value system of these people developed back in the seventies, when Viktor Cherkesov was compelled to call himself a “soldier of the party”, sending Leningrad writers to the camps. The Chekist tribe was already sick and tired by the fact that it was forced to be in service of the party officials. And now it seems to have adapted the state for its needs. It remains to be totally incapacitated and then destroyed. But the main thing is how the carve-up will be carried out.

Cherkesov’s writers offered him the opposition of soldiers and merchants as the main thesis of the article. It’s risky, of course, to throw stones at your glass house cohabitants. The anti-drug service entrusted to Cherkesov the control of the chemical industry and ensured that the confiscated stuff was kept at his agency’s disposal. But this is just a side issue. The main thing is something the commentators never mentioned.

The article poses a fundamental question about how the emerging political regime will function. It’s not about how to deal with society – a shapeless carcass hanging on a hook at your unbridled disposal. Chekizm implies that members of the tribe must accept humiliation, forget about self-esteem, be able to set-up and double-cross their own. Therefore, no use to explain the appearance of the article as a response to the offending actions of a competing special service. Everything was much more serious.

The main issue was the right to use force. Viktor Cherkesov did not like the fact that there is no monopoly on repression. Different groups within the tribe of the masters were allowed to conduct internecine wars. But this, according to the head of the Federal Drug Control Service, shouldn’t be that way. And he was right: the regime of one-man power can be sustainable if repressions are carried out only by one and only the political center. Viktor Cherkesov did not ask to bring to heel his rivals, and even less he cared to admonish them. His recommendations to the chief of the Chekist tribe included radical change of the situation: stop intra-tribal feuds and become the only source of fear and violence. Not directly, of course, but outlining a gloomy picture of the internal destruction of the corporation, which allowed that the squabbles between its leaders became the subject of public discussion.

And all this was proposed to be implemented by Putin. By the end of 2007, the main question was the third presidential term of the incumbent president. Then came the buzzword “Putin’s plan.” This plan, of course, had one goal – perpetual rule… But the question is whose? Let’s just say: so far Putin is the one. For that time being and for now, too.

Eight years of president’s staff policy have been a testimony of his dependence on the “narrow circle of limited persons”. Under Stalin or Brezhnev, the first secretary of the Chukotka Obkom would never live in London buying yachts and football clubs. The details of Putin’s plan – imaginary, genuine, explicit, secret – were the subject of constant discussion. But only details were discussed. Meanwhile, there was no answer to the main question: what is the reason for the success of a person who has held power for eight years and, in the end, failed on all reasonable criteria? Because the propaganda hysteria was a sure sign of the failure. Having built propaganda on opposing his own rule to the nineties, Vladimir Putin could not do what Boris Yeltsin did: the resignation of the first Russian president from power was not accompanied by a crisis. He created a viable state and left an effective successor. Nothing fell apart as a result of his exit.

The proponents of Putin’s indefinite rule (makes no difference – president or national leader) built their propaganda on the presumption that without him everything would collapse. But there is no worse justification for any leader, whether it’s the president of a country or the director of a club.

In Russia, however, the performance criteria for politicians and managers, adopted in the civilized world, have been useless long ago. This explains what happened eight years before, what Putin’s plan was aimed at and what is behind his success and popularity. The thing is that Putin was absolutely adequate not to social or political demand, but national. He’s been acting and operating in the paradigm that, from about the beginning of the nineteenth century, defines Russian national and state self-identification. Since that time, Russia has positioned itself as a state consolidating itself in opposing the formation of nations both within and outside the empire.

Power – in full harmony with the people – sought to form an anti-nation that defines itself and exists only in opposing the whole world. The inevitability of existence in this world complicated the movement towards the goal, and sometimes stopped it. A very long stop began with perestroika. Everything was fine before, Andropov shot down the South Korean Boeing, and Chernenko boycotted the 1984 Olympics.

That was the time point of destination to which Putin’s planned to bring Russia back. Not only the nineties were declared a historical nightmare. There was a very obvious tendency to abandon the main achievement of the eighties, from the beginning of a new historical era of new thinking in foreign policy, openness and disarmament.

In the preceding years attempts were still being made to present the developing regime as a specific form of a democratic system. So came the catchphrase “sovereign democracy.” But in practice it turned out to be a home-grown legitimacy disregarding the standards of legitimacy of the world around. It was already a challenge, the establishment of a new legitimacy, a new order, whose barbaric character became more and more obvious. The Russian state once again failed. The Russians did not become Russian: they remained anti-American, anti-Georgian, anti-Estonians, anti-British.

For eight years, the government has implemented a degrading model of the transformation of society, the state, and the economy. The national consciousness was deformed. Ahead was the creation of a new quasi-state entity. All these were, however, words, words, words. But Putin was not and is not the sole ruler who does not need any contracts and agreements with the elites. Therefore, Putin’s plan assumed a further consolidation of the elites, not a war with them. Proposals of the authors from Zavtra and Victor Cherkesov, who lost the status of a person close to the sovereign, did not pass at that time. There was no third term. instead a scheme was invented with tandemocracy and a gambit called Medvedev’s thaw.

Another thing was the outside world. In November 2007, I came up with a conclusion:

“Serious, heavy, large-scale conflict with the whole world is inevitable. The beginning of this conflict may be the aggression of Russia against one of the countries of the post-Soviet space.”49