Post-Soviet chameleons: how naivete differs from meanness

Alina Vitukhnovskaya, writer

The average person-reed, habitually focusing on the fluctuations of the information wind, is forced to match his reactions with society not only because of innate, that is, purely biological conformism, but also because of the unspoken requirements of the social environment, which inevitably emasculates any different and inconsistent opinions and judgments.

Previously, especially in socialist societies, all information flows, which were already few in number, were rigidly censored and imbued with ideology. That is, it was possible to be naive only within the framework of this simplified paradigm. Therefore, there were no naive ones. There were blatant fools and mimic pretenders.

Now such mimics are again in abundance. Especially in the writing environment. But these seem to have outsmarted themselves. As, for example, a significant part of the writing ex-human rights defenders, who hastened to change their positions to the systemic ones, proceeding from the principle “whatever happens”. And nothing came of it. No biographies, no social status, no fame. By the way, there would be no repression, which they were so afraid of due to the archaic (post) Soviet consciousness. What is typical, because now the old people are not particularly touched, completely focusing on the youth.

The Soviets continue to bow and bow, even when they are not forced to do so. Moreover - surprisingly - exactly the same people who told all their lives how they were persecuted. And not only them - but also their parents, fathers-grandfathers, further down the list, up to the dog Bug. And even though according to historical documents - this is probably more and more you begin to doubt. And it’s true - “they don’t shoot in dungeons,” they don’t come to arrest, they don’t deprive them of pensions and shelter, but no. So it pulls sovpis to curse America, then screw something politically obsequious, not even between the lines, but in plain text. Amazing people, tumblers of subjectlessness. Schizoid oysters.

The chief executive officer Fadeev was also a schizoid, with one hand he sent people to the camps, with the other he signed letters of the savior-benefactor for them. This is how he benefited and killed from morning to evening, prayed and repented, drank and cried. Until he got drunk and shot himself.

The current ones are less monumental, they won't shoot. Their schizoid movements, so miserable that at times it seems, rather - already painfully intuitive than thoughtful ones - scratch out a certain pseudo-biographical pattern, a pattern on unsteady sand that will disappear with the first wind, but to watch which is a special sweet rapture. How to watch every fall is in anthropological and literary interests. For when they talk about the infinity of the fall (and they often talk about this with the air of moralists), they talk about themselves. About myself. They are. They say.

There are many graphomaniacs among these. The graphomaniac is monstrously fussy, obscenely vain, and always frames himself with celebrities. His selfie style is Me and the Greats. He is especially drawn to the dead, who can no longer refute some of the biographical nuances of "relationships."

The graphomaniac is like a sucking tick, like a burdock trying to wrap around everything that is nearby. His passion for the dead, by the way, is not only and not so much of a biographical nature as even lies in the area of some kind of necrophilic disorder. He literally smells someone else's death in his stomach, he is saturated with it, savoring it. It will be appropriate here to recall the psychoanalytic idea, from which it follows that the tyrant is supposedly saturated with someone else's vitality. It is not true. The tyrant does not care about someone else's vitality. In any case - modern. His interest is a resource, but not a person.

A person is more interesting to a barbarian (in relation to civilization), a homegrown pagan (but also a bearer of an outdated religious consciousness), an autochthonous savage - the current graphomaniac-sovintel (especially from the Crimean people) - this savage is.

Therefore, in his fussiness, he is always stupid, always loses. Wherever it pokes - everything is wrong, everything is in vain. Deep down, he understands that he is a man of a failed biography. Maybe that's why he loves risky trips to Crimea. Risky for health in general, but also (and first of all) and because our Russian planes, so reminiscent of flying Soviet reserved seat trains (with the smell of that very urine), can crash at any moment. Apparently, the graphomaniac subconsciously dreams of such a death - after all, then "all the newspapers" will write about him. Although in reality, of course, he is an amazing coward, like an animal escaping death, or rather crawling away from it on cowardly half-bent paws.

What do I care? Yes, no, do not be such people (I repeat) conscious accomplices in war crimes. It is they, the cultural workers of the Crimean spill, who make us hostages and unwitting accomplices. Not to mention the publication of our texts in their shameful sheets - which, as you correctly noted, should be called an attempt to defile a biography.

TO THE POET-Butterbread

Like a scheming beggar

Mister Trickster walked along the road,

Where the booth continued

Where God was not with God.

He was once very drunk,

Now, little by little.

Among the graphomaniac philistines

He seemed to be like Blok.

He was once a Democrat.

And as a jack of honest rules...

With words that he himself composed

From the manuals at random.

He spoke pathetically,

He became local kitsch.

It didn't mean anything.

He has now become apolitical.

But again it was not until the end,

And staggering and staggering,

He became a clown without a face

Cursing, stammering.

At first, everything is neither yours nor ours,

Like Khlebnikov on the crumb of meaning,

He wound up. Became - "Ours Crimea".

And then, like in "Windows" - it hung -

Vanity. For the rotten awards.

For the thundering headstone

For a sandwich - he became a castrate

Sacredness. To the native womb,

The hole of a vanished country.

He prayed among other lackeys.

All these lackeys are equal.

But those below are smoother.

And now, almost

What's with tiles, carpet, parquet,

They want you to comprehend

They are like the fall of poets.

And like a house serves, vagrants, criminals,

He drags after you,

To revel in personal meanness,

Where oblivion is a trap.

I started this article with the topic of naivety. But to admit, looking at the post-Soviet chameleon, where naivety was just recently imagined, pure meanness yawns.