Читать книгу The Russian Totalitarianism. Freedom here and now - Dmitrii Shusharin - Страница 2

I am quoting the final words of this book to let people decide right off whether it’s worth their while to read it.

“A freedom fighter is not always a free man. Actually, never. Especially if this is a fight for the freedom of people who don’t want to be free. In our country, in our time, under our circumstances, the road to freedom is very simple. We need to understand and realize that it is useless to guess what is the next act of nastiness a totalitarian power and a totalitarian society are up to. Even less sense makes an attempt to evaluate them by the criteria completely alien to them. The power and the society at all levels treat anyone arbitrarily. Having no legal or moral constraints, they can’t be influenced. It is impossible to have a meaningful agreement with them. Their actions are not difficult to predict, but these projections do not warrant your survival.

The most vacuous and meaningless are indignant denunciations instead of a rational analysis of government and society actions. The power is smart, crafty and resourceful. It manipulates the accusers to make their actions play in its favor. In such a way a self-regulating society is forming. Even more stupid is trying to please the authorities and adapt to social conditions: it will only cause suspicion. It is equally disastrous whether you choose confrontation or collaboration, nonconformism or adaptation.

The realization of all this gives people freedom. No choice to be made between denunciation and conformity. A person can be destroyed at any moment, no matter how he or she behaves; they can be humiliated, deprived of family and property, and there is no way to avoid it. And this is exactly the genuine freedom: a minute before demise, physical or social, and this moment of truth can last for the rest of one’s life.

Actually, this reflection is about no one and nothing in particular. Absolute majority of people doesn’t pay attention to government and society, being harmonically in unison with them. The ones who act otherwise are nonexistent neither for the power, nor for the society. The victims and the resistance heroes are chosen and appointed by the power and society for their own needs and interests.

To be free in such a society is a hard and thankless labor that does not have any public mission. Still, this is the individual freedom of choice, which can’t be denied.