Worse than the poisoned gum: the myth of the mental war of the West is reminiscent of Soviet times

As Novye Izvestia has already reported, Advisor to the Russian Defense Minister Andrey Ilnitsky said that the Western countries led by the United States have unleashed a "mental war" against Russia, since they do not dare to incite a war directly because of the modern weapons that Russia has, including number of nuclear:

“...a new type of war is emerging. If earlier in classical wars the goal was to destroy the enemy's manpower, in cyber wars the main task is to destroy the enemy's infrastructure, and the goal of a new war is to change the mental, civilizational basis of the enemy's society. I would call this type of war mental", - he said in an interview with the magazine "Arsenal of the Fatherland".

According to Ilnitsky, the main threat of this war is that its consequences do not manifest themselves immediately, but after a generation, whereas it is already impossible to change anything, and he called the sovereignty of the Internet, training in information countermeasures in the military and civil spheres, as the main principles of countering it. a reset of youth policy; and a resumption of dialogue with the “conservative majority”.

This statement is in line with Putin's. At the end of February, Putin said that at the international level, Russia is being taken under external control, "provoking internal instability" and thus holding back its development. The Kremlin said that some countries are under "unprecedented pressure" for cooperation with Russia on the supply of the Sputnik V vaccine.

In addition, the head of the Central Election Commission (CEC), Ella Pamfilova, warned that the United States would make an attempt to "stomp on the ground" in the upcoming elections in Russia, and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov believes that Russia needs to gradually move away from the use of "Western-controlled" payment systems and settlements in dollars. Dmitry Medvedev also said that Russia is ready to be completely disconnected from the world Internet.

The leader of the communists, Gennady Zyuganov, did not stand aside either, who wrote in his blog:

“If we don’t defend the Victory, we don’t overcome the Anglo-Saxon invasion of our culture, language, traditions, we don’t return to the great idea of socialism, the unity of the country cannot be kept. Genuine consolidation is possible only on the basis of the Program of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, on the synthesis of the Russian idea and the socialist ideal! "

This whole anti-Western campaign has caused confusion among the opposition-minded part of society.

For example, journalist Gleb Stashkov recalled Soviet times in connection with them:

“When I was little, there were rumors that Americans came to the Soviet Union and distributed poisoned gum to Soviet children.

Nothing changes. And even people don't change. I think the ones who talked about gum forty years ago are now talking about mental warfare.

And the main thing is not to refute them.

Then it was impossible to refute, because we did not see a single living American. And no one offered us chewing gum.

And now it cannot be refuted, because the hell knows what a mental war is and what its consequences are, especially since they will manifest themselves in a generation.

And I also came across the article “The Law of Free Will. How to protect yourself from alien abduction? I don’t want to be careful! Let me be kidnapped. This is my free will..."

Political scientist Ilya Grashchenkov is sure that there is a serious struggle for ideological leadership in the power structures of the country:

“In general, only yesterday we were surprised at the idea of the Secretary of the Security Council Nikolay Patrushev, who promised to report to the president on measures to suppress attempts to introduce Western ideals that threaten public harmony and political stability in Russia, as the guys from the Ministry of Defense were ahead of him, immediately declaring mental war on all Western mankind.

But seriously speaking, the statements of Patrushev and Ilnitsky are already internal competition for the right to act as ideologists of the strategy “Russia is a besieged fortress”. Because for the outside world, as well as for domestic policy, this concept has an unambiguous scenario: the maximum tightening of the screws inside the country and the transition to the so-called. "The policy of McCarthyism", i.e. not only the identification of "agents of the West", but also their removal from public life.

But within the system itself, a struggle can unfold between three main forces: the special services (in one of the scenarios there was the idea of uniting all branches into a single ministry of state security - the MGB), military and civilian "siloviki" (security officials - editor's note). All of them understand that for ease of management of the population it is necessary to isolate the country from external and independent sources of information, but they do not really understand how to make money in such conditions, support the economy and survive on their own, in a situation of increased intraspecific competition.

Therefore, the neat stuffing of the "besiegers" about the contours of the new policy is not just a probing of the mail, but also an application for ideological primacy in this model. The question, of course, is also how this ideology can be applied. From a mild version of "theatrical isolationism" to a very tough real one, like the Soviet "iron curtain"..."