On the role of the individual in history: who is to blame for state crises

Sergei Mitroshin

A remarkable text appeared on the network, which won likes and admiration for the person on whose behalf it was written. "Speech of Louis XVI before the Court of the Revolution, December 26, 1792" , in which this unfortunate king, who will soon be guillotined on the Revolution Square, appeared before us as a thinker of the level of Karl Popper, i.e. who understood everything about the nature of power and shared his insights about the fate of the revolution with the newly minted revolutionaries. Speaking almost as an even greater revolutionary than the revolutionaries who judged him.

"Wow! - exclaimed the reader, always suspecting that the king is the king, and the revolutionaries are crooks. The only thing that suspicion crept in, and where did the citizen Louis Capet (as the revolutionaries called him), the king - a locksmith (in his spare time he was fond of locks, repaired them professionally), who was not very much involved in public affairs and, in fact, thereby allowed the death of his political system, such erudition?

Rushed to check. But if you enter the phrase “Speech of Louis XVI before the court of the revolution on December 26, 1792” into the search engine, then it regularly leads us to this very speech, however, it is currently available exclusively on VKontakte. Well, someone drove her there, so for our convenience.

What struck us in the “performance” itself?

From the very first words, this is the place: “You want to judge me and, without a doubt, tomorrow you will deal me a mortal blow. I am not afraid of death and will not dispute my head with you. History has shown me that the death of kings appears to the nations as a solution to terrible crises.

That is, this it (the death of kings) appears to the peoples as a solution to terrible crises, but in fact, it does not resolve any crises. So said Citizen Capet. For it was not the kings who prepared terrible crises for you, but the entire society. And when it realized where social relations had led it, it began to look for the guilty, finding them in its kings. Having killed its kings, it did not get rid of problems, because it carries problems in itself.

This is a very bright idea, relevant even for our days. Although not entirely true. Below I will show why. However, when the citizens of Russia turn to the late Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev with the words: “Well, dear man, did you ruin the Soviet Union for us?”, He, too, could well answer: “I ruined it for you? And where were you at that time? Where were you when the military-industrial complex ate all the country's money? At least one person took to the streets "for the Soviet Union"? Everyone was happy about something, that's all! That is how the matter ended. You thought the crisis was in me, but I'm gone. For 30 years he has not been in power, and since this week he has not been on this planet either. Did it make you feel better, clearer how to live?”

The same dialogue could have happened with Yeltsin, who signed the Belovezhskaya agreement (he definitely destroyed the Soviet Union, at least from the formal side), fired at the parliament, bombed his own country, as if it were some kind of Syria, was not very competent in personnel questions. But he could also answer: “Where were you? I didn't close anyone's mouth. Everyone spoke directly to my eyes. Some asked me not to shoot at the parliament, others that they should shoot more. I acted in the middle: I shot a little, and then I forgave everyone. They all returned. Zorkin - to the court, Rutskoi - to the governors, Zyuganov - to the second most important party. What is the problem?"

The same dialogue suggests itself with the current president, since there are some doubts that everything is going well with us. However, Vladimir Vladimirovich can answer with good reason: “Sorry. Next to me is the Duma - more than four hundred people. If something goes wrong somewhere, can't they get together and somehow convey it to me, if they are such patriots as they claim? But what are they doing? They assure us that we simply have no other way, that I am doing everything right, that there is no Russia without me, and so on.

Or take the government. We have it "technical", by all assurances, competent. There is the great economist Belousov and the great financier Nabiulina. They even say about this government that it is liberal, the best of all that could be. I would look at the American government under such sanctions as we have. They couldn't do it, but we do. Why don't the ministers tell me or publicly that the situation is not as good as the propagandists think?

Of course, I can fire them all for such words. And it will hurt. Family incomes will fall. But if a country is on the scales or not, is it really necessary to hold on to a position, to income? Remember Karbyshev, frozen in the ice. In other words, I conclude that we are doing everything right. And if something goes wrong, then it is a collective decision and collective responsibility. There can be no claims against me. The crisis, if there is one, is in you.”

And now I will say that there was no bright speech of Capet on December 26, 1792. Capet was not really such a bright person as he was presented in this speech. His difference as a statesman was that, a mild-mannered person, he was not at all interested in state affairs. He was defended, but without any political science, traditionally: “As king, Capet behaved like a typical king. And he ceased to be a king, so why should he be judged now? Capet's speech, which was published in Vkontakte, was composed by the famous socialist Jean Jaurès a hundred years later in his work The Socialist History of the French Revolution.

You ask why "socialist" and why Jaurès "defended the king"?

Yes, because Jaures believed that the French Revolution was something more than a transfer of power from the "bad" to the "good", as is usually the case in coups. The Great French Revolution according to Jaurès was the first successful attempt to resolve the centuries-old issue of social justice on the path to socialism. At the same time, Jaurès did not defend the king, since he considered his fate only a marker of huge historical processes. In practice, he thought the same thing that Lenin thought about the role of the individual in history. In any case, that's what the last one said until he had a huge power.

And, of course, there is something in this. But we cannot also forget that citizen Capet personified the vertical, stuck in a vast pyramid of completely worthless aristocracy, devouring the welfare of the country and completely useless in government. In fact, he could work himself and force others.

We cannot forget that it would be better for Gorbachev to be more perspicacious before, during and after the 1991 coup. To begin with, to prevent - so that history does not rush at a gallop. It was well within his power. As for Yeltsin, he really should have been more selective in personnel matters and not drink at work, this would have nothing to do with the global mechanics of historical processes, but perhaps it would help weather the storms... And the fact that they don’t do this – this is not the influence of History or some Moloch, but a private decision. And for all private decisions, responsibility, as with Capet, is also private. Se la vie.