A vaccine against slavery: how to instill a sense of freedom in Russians

Mikhail Gusakov, Doctor of Economics, Professor

The Russian code, like any other nation, is a form of a certain centuries-old culture. At the heart of the code are the cornerstones of culture - religion, language and identity.

The authorities have long declared the mission of Russia to be a special form of civilization, and therefore adopted an extremely harsh form of Christianity, orthodox, which separated it from the peoples of Western Europe. Then the Cyrillic alphabet was invented and adopted as a linguistic form of expressing thoughts, which further alienated the people from European culture, and then science. This is despite the fact that in the future, the Russian elite borrowed from a supposedly alien European culture was comprehensive: language and literature - French, science - German, engineering - Dutch, architecture - Italian, political system - from Greece and Rome to England, and finance and economics, film and TV programs are American.

So the cultural assimilation with the Catholic West, which ancient Russia allegedly wanted to avoid, has largely taken place. Religious assimilation was gone, the tsars ruled, fought with the church, but left Orthodoxy as a strengthening autocracy. So it was not about the identity of the people, but about the self-preservation of power, the ambitions of the autocracy.

And there is a common path of innovative development, and there is a lag behind Europe and the European path of enlightenment, etc. before postmodernism. The first university in Russia opened 700 years later. The same with respect to human rights laws - the Bill of Rights in Great Britain in 1689, the Bill of Rights in the USA in 1789, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen in France in 1789. As a result, it turned out in Russia "Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality", and in Europe and America - "Freedom, Equality, Brotherhood."

We are catching up, but slowly.

The Russian code was created a thousand years ago and was formed later to the present under the auspices of the autocracy. From the very beginning, the autocracy sought to separate the country and the people into a special civilizational entity, possessing its own inherent greatness. However, there is nothing new in this position, since it was characteristic of the history of the spiritual development of many peoples.

Finally, the authorities imposed the self-identification of the people in the form of autocracy under the form of great power. What kind of people will not accept their own greatness.

In fact, the habit of being great-power brought up by the authorities covers up the people's feeling of dissatisfaction with age-old enslavement. Formally, serfdom, although late, nevertheless ended in the 19th century. In fact, it has not completely gone anywhere - the form has changed: first, in the form of Soviet power - but in reality, the power of the Politburo of a single party, and today - the power of the country's president and his entourage by capitalists (in the literal sense) with power reinforcement. It should be emphasized that all the greatness of the Russian Empire, the USSR and modern Russia is achieved through all-round propaganda and strengthening of the military component of science and technology, disproportionate to the real economic potential, which leads to a slowdown in the growth of the quality of life of the population in all areas.

And the underpinnings of the greatness of the Russian code proclaimed its universality, which boils down mainly to the construction of the Russian world, including directly or so far in the statements of officials of the territories of other states - Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan and other CIS countries. Moreover, the consolidation of countries takes place on the basis of the joint defense of the autocrats of the states belonging to the commonwealth, and not on the basis of the mutual development of peoples.

By the way, many disagreements with other great states arise not from denial of Russia's great power, but from rejection of it and other states that Russia includes in the expanded Russian world, the world of autocracy.

There will be no autocracy in Russia and the Russian great power will become a good help for a world order balanced with other great and small powers, a competitive geopolitical space between countries, but not hostile to each other, not spoiling each other as it was in the past. To each other - this is the key phrase of the thesis about a just world order.

A certain danger is posed by the education of the Russian code by the great power in the form of imperialism. Moreover, empires as forms of statehood in the modern world are destructive and not promising. There are such "storytellers" who are pleased with the invented thesis that Russians are warriors in their essence. The Russians are good at fighting, but the British are not bad either. Russians do well and trade, let us recall the merchants, industrialists of the Urals, patrons of culture, etc. It is not worth narrowing down, primitizing the broad nature of the Russian people.

Another direction of narrowing the Russian code is the proclamation of the thesis that the Russian person does not need freedom and is not ready for democracy. But how, then, other less developed peoples, for example, the people of South Africa and some other African people, vote in truly competitive elections for the presidents of their countries, demonstrating the dignity of a free person?

Of course, the greatness of a power, a strong state is sovereignty in ensuring national interests, if these are the interests of the security and well-being of the people with their all-round development !!! But this compatibility is not observed in the entire history of Russia. They always “forget” about the interests of the people, and national interests are the interests of the authorities and the oligarchy. And this means that the state will develop more slowly: people without real attention from the state will not want and will not be able to work better. In America, however, the problem is the same. But there is a difference: the American people themselves actively participate in determining what is in the national interests and can really correct the government!

In the course of the evolution of the Russian code, gene mutations took place, various viruses were incorporated, and in general, the further consolidation of the genome, its hardening, acquired strength, immutability, which is difficult to transform and develop (note that, of course, this also has a positive effect of preserving the best characteristics of the genome).

For 1000 years Russian civilization has been caring and instilling concern for the state, for the statehood. And for 1000 years now it has not formed the mentality of a free person who respects the Law, influencing the decision-making by the authorities both in the domestic and foreign policy of the Russian State in order to develop the most effective development strategy, national goal.

Many intellectuals of the entire political spectrum pay attention to this most important element of the Russian code, which determines its viability and development prospects, for example: “...nowhere in the world is there such a passive population” (Leonid Ivashov); “Russia is terribly not free” (Alexey Ivanov, writer).

The lag of the people in civilizational development can only be equalized by the presence of their sovereignty of freedom of choice of actions, which in turn stems from freedom of speech, which gives the people civil freedom and independence and true justice in the life of the people and the person - the citizen.

At the same time, it is always necessary to analyze the degree of acceptance of the Law by the people and the willingness to answer before the law. At the same time, taking responsibility by the people presupposes that they receive an effective instrument of influence on the execution of the Law by all, including the "autocrat".

The Russian people have adopted at the moment the genetic and further educated code !!!

And he accepted a certain enslavement!

Anchored thinking, like a virus, becomes part of the code of the Russian genome.

The great historian Alexander Samoilovich Akhiezer wrote that Russian society makes endless fluctuations between the types of civilizations and, back in 1979, noted that the likelihood of Russia turning to national ideology based on a return to archaic values that opposes pluralism, as well as the activation of imperial values, is expected. because society is incapable of creating fundamentally more effective management mechanisms. The power, out of fear for its existence, provokes the people to create the feeling that they do not like the country and want to destroy it as alien to Western culture. The people snarl and the Russian code is becoming more and more dangerous for the surrounding peoples and countries. Both the authorities and the elite support this feeling in every possible way, ensuring autocracy. The dynamics of civilization should proceed progressively, while in Russia it is swinging, since the dynamics of autocracy is unpredictable.

Akhiezer also stressed that this could lead to the collapse of Russia due to the historically weak cultural and economic integration of the country. But he also gave hope - he predicted the pendulum fluctuations of the Russian socio-political state. Now the archaic period has begun. It will be followed by a revival to modern European civilization, the era of modernism and postmodernism.

Let's wait?

But you can accelerate naturally, and not suffer.

Without changing the positive characteristics of the Russian code, I would like to develop its more tolerant features to other countries and peoples, especially European culture, with which Russian culture is very close.

At the same time, I would like people to rebuild their code themselves.

Is it possible? Maybe.

And there are such examples, moreover, similar to the history of Russia. This is Sweden, which during the 16th - 17th centuries was a real great European power. In Swedish, the period of the empire is called the "Epoch of Great Power". However, Sweden had a largely backward agrarian economy to maintain this status in the long term.

Adriaan Gill, a well-known English journalist and traveler, noticed an interesting socio-political phenomenon - the radical transformation of the Swedish nation, the very nation whose army the Russians eventually defeated near Poltava, note - where is Poltava, and where is Sweden (Swedish troops invincibly crossed the entire territory of Russia from the north to Ukraine). They were imperials, an aggressive nation, intolerant religious fundamentalists (Calvinists), a country with one of the poorest peasant populations. And all of a sudden, all of a sudden, all the Swedes decided to radically change - they became tolerant, liberal, open, democratic and peaceful.

And so suddenly a revolutionary leap occurs (in the historical dimension), dialectics is a transition from quantity to quality. In the 16th century, religion changed, the Swedes became Protestants - Lutherans, in the 17th century secularization took place. In the middle of the 18th century, the world's first law was adopted to guarantee freedom of speech. And of course, one of the most important factors in the relatively quick "reforging" of the Swedes was the absence of a system of personal serfdom. Moreover, the Swedes defended their freedom, showing stubborn resistance to attempts at personal enslavement of the peasants. The unity of the Swedes' aspirations therefore allowed the entire nation to decide "at once" to transform.

Defeat in the war, a sensitive blow to the ambitions of the rulers and the autocrat, as well as to the Swedish code of arrogance and power greatness led to a concentration on internal problems. After the defeat in the war, the Swedes realized that the strategy of war is futile for an insufficiently numerous and economically not very powerful country and people, military superiority alone is not enough to dominate, in the end you will lose! There is a more winning strategy for the development of the people, and they accepted it - this is a strategy of self-development and freedom. But they also realized that the autocracy would lead them in the wrong direction. And the Swedish autocracy itself understood and retreated. The genome has been retargeted.

This example also proves once again that national characteristics do not completely determine the genome, but in many respects are the result of a long "education" of the people by the authorities - oppression, fear, corruption, aggressive policy.

With an unconditional definite identity of the Russian people, its genome can and should also change.

You don't have to go far: oh, how the Russian code has not changed for the better after the October Revolution of 1917, for just less than 100 years - read the real Russian classics: what noble Russian officers were, and what kind of workers - they would they didn’t start to lay the asphalt snow (and now they do it), but the peasants simply didn’t - there were collective farmers.

And, in the words of Viktor Astafiev, this is the lack of rights and the receipt of insignificant power by our beloved baptized people - "what she will do to the Russian people, how she will distort his temper, make him furious, glorified for his good nature."

Yes, and the folding of the Russian people, its code was also gradual - from the people of Kievan Rus, and Novgorodians, and local people, etc., etc. So the code has changed a lot over a thousand years, including the genes of different peoples, which is quite natural - the identity of the Russian people also changed.

In Russia, the absence of many of the above factors of the relatively rapid restructuring of the Swedes can transform the code, or rather, correct it, taking into account the greater historical objectivity of assessing the centuries-old development of the state, overcoming the authoritarian model of the political system, transferring social development into a full-fledged legal field with independent branches of government, aiming at observance civil rights - more complex and longer.

The main obstacle to this kind of change, the improvement of the genome of the Russian people is a significant weakening over a thousand-year history, and even the lack of immunity, primarily to the virus of autocracy and serfdom.

An authoritarian system of government with money and security forces does not need to govern institutions at all levels of government, since independent institutions become unnecessary. Such a system guides people, their upbringing in their own spirit, with lies and corruption, as a result of which the code of leaders of all levels of government degrades, and then the code of the people degrades.

Moreover, the virus was embedded in the original Russian code and became an organic part of it. The autocratic state, headed by crowned persons - tsars with unlimited power, was illegal for centuries and made the people illegal, professing legal nihilism, not believing in the justice of power structures and the law.

There were many popular uprisings in Russia, and there were nobility (Decembrists) and even there was a general revolution in 1917, but they could not break the virus of autocracy, they could only re-register the political structure in the new systems. The executive power has always been much stronger, dominating over other branches of government. The autocracy virus, deeply and strongly embedded in the Russian genome, could not be overcome.

The autocrats managed to rally around themselves the powers of power, property, power structures, since this kind of "coronavirus" infected the entire so-called political elite, but what can I say - all layers of society, the entire people.

There is no cure for such a general infection. everyone is more or less good, there is enough for food and vodka, there is a dacha - sit, sunbathe, but they are accustomed to serfdom, dignity is not held in high esteem. Moreover, there is still enough gas to protect the autocracy and minimal benefits for the rest. And even to support the feeling of faith in greatness remains.

Such a virus can be defeated only through universal "vaccination", consciously supported by the people, and preferably with their massive complicity in the initiative and promotion of the federal legislatively formalized process of "vaccination" at the local and regional level.

However, the massive participation of the people in any process should be fundamentally prepared.

Such a foundation can only be the presence of an instrument of influence of the people on power in reality, in the legal framework and structures of the state, a mechanism for monitoring the implementation of the law and a mechanism for punishing the authorities for non-compliance with the law, incl. supreme power.

There remains only vaccination with freedom - everybody will get sick a little, only everyone - both the common people and the Chubais-type elite, but first of all - the autocrat with his entourage, everyone voluntarily.

If the government does not agree with such a vaccine, then they will have to rely on two options: either the government will finally come to another and come to its senses, or the same vaccination, but forcibly.

In Russia, the establishment of democratic order and liberation from autocracy took place twice.

In 1917, as a result of the people's communist revolution, Soviet power was established. However, she did not free the people from autocracy. Any form of authoritarianism violates the rights of the citizen and his dignity as a person. On the one hand, the people were strongly enslaved and did not have the potential for liberation, for freedom. On the other hand, the Soviet government acted not according to the law, but according to revolutionary expediency, trampling the law. Thus, the communist rulers came to usurp power.

In the late 1980s, M.S. Gorbachev proclaimed the restructuring of the political and economic system, as well as glasnost. Both that, and another have not been brought to the end. Again, the people were not ready, and the so-called political elite was ready to simply take everything for themselves - power and property. A revolution from above, without initiative and without direct support and without the direct participation of the people, does not save one from autocracy. That is how it ended for now.

In Russia, there is a fundamental law - a constitution prepared taking into account European experience, as is known on the basis of the French constitution. However, in reality, in our opinion, there is often a provision on the separation of powers, civil rights, etc. are not respected. The executive branch has incomparably more leverage over the legal process than any other structure, especially the public one. Federal and regional authorities have, so to speak, property, power and information superiority over any other authorities, and even more so over public structures and even more so over a lonely citizen, a person.

It should be emphasized that historically, a very primitive understanding of human rights and freedom of speech in Russia has developed, narrow, it simply does not exist in that broad all-encompassing primary need for interpretation as in the United States or Europe, and most importantly - not so much in interpretation as in application, in ensuring, in the existence of not just laws, but mechanisms for their implementation - also legislative, binding on all branches and authorities. And this is because the most important thing is their equal competition, without the domination of the executive branch.

In addition, constitutional rights are not supported by mechanisms of control and influence on the government, measures to ensure the rights of the government and the people, the citizen are not equal in practice - they have different weight in legal, power, material, judicial and other structures. Power always and everywhere has more weight, since it has a real much greater administrative ability to influence the dispute of any state structures and citizens.

Therefore, we must take the example of countries that came to democracy through a people's revolution and the people's taking power, or at least with the active participation of the people.

Taking an example from developed democracies is not something shameful. As you know, Russia borrowed a lot in the past in cultural, technological and political terms, when there was a lag. And the lag behind the adoption of documents proclaiming the rights of citizens in England, other European countries, even in the United States is more than one hundred years.

The example of the United States is more indicative for Russia, since the countries are close in scale, in terms of population diversity.

Previously, the people of America took power from the power of Britain, whose colony America was. By the way, it is quite possible to call it the first color revolution in a modern way, only without outside interference. And then there was a civil war in the United States. This war was won by immigrants from Germany and Britain. They abolished slavery (at first, at least formally). But most importantly, they adopted a constitution and elected power - locally, in regions (states), in the country. Often this was all done with a Colt. But according to the law! In compliance with the law, the people respected and observed the law, since they themselves elected all the authorities by law. Therefore, in the United States, accepted by all political standards of behavior, standards of life.

By the way, what is happening in the modern United States about the election of the president of the country and, in fact, a popular uprising (half of the people, so to speak) will undoubtedly end with the strengthening of democracy, since it is the people who decide their own fate and the purpose of the uprising is to eliminate violations of democratic order in a number of state districts USA.

In the United States, just like in Russia, a legal foundation was built in the form of a constitution. However, the rulers of America considered this insufficient from the standpoint of ensuring human and civil rights. They adopted the so-called Bill of Rights - special ten amendments to the constitution, which enshrine the fundamental rights and freedoms of man and citizen and provide a mechanism for their implementation.

It's time at least to catch up with America and adopt, for a start, amendments to the Russian constitution, similar to early vaccination in the United States - the adopted Bill of Rights and Freedoms of Man and Citizen as an addition to the constitution, as well as a number of further amendments to it to counteract the virus of autocracy and arbitrary rule of law.

The legislators of our country should pay attention to the provision of a mechanism for the implementation of the provisions of the constitution and amendments to it in the form of prohibitions and restrictions imposed on the legislative and executive powers themselves.

And we need to start with the vaccination of the Russian genome to develop a sense of freedom among the political elite and the people as a sense of vital necessity, instilling respect by the authorities at all levels of the dignity of a citizen, his right to influence the domestic and foreign policy of the country.

To follow the example of the United States in this regard, you need to start with the introduction of only two amendments to the Russian Constitution (so many of them have been made about all everyday material problems, so two more can be added as the most essential thing for adjusting the genome of the Russian person, for the soul).

The first amendment concerns the prohibition to restrict freedom of speech and assembly in their broad interpretation, including restricting single pickets, marches of dissent of any kind, any peaceful demonstrations, etc. etc. Thus, this amendment outlines the area of prohibiting state bodies from any restriction of citizens' disagreement with the authorities.

This amendment educates the people in the spirit of strengthening the independence of the individual, the criticality of the people, freedom of thought, develops the creativity of the population and the activity of society.

It is known that the second amendment to the US Constitution guarantees US citizens the right to possess and carry weapons.

But it is not so widespread the provision that the same amendment allows the people to exercise the right of the people to armed uprising, mentioned in the text of the US Declaration of Independence , against the usurpation of power by a handful of top-level politicians.

In Russia, the "vaccination" will be more difficult and longer than in Sweden and the United States, where there was no serfdom. The people must recover from this disease and develop a collective immunity against the autocracy, for the cultural greatness of the people and the country.

Before being adopted in Russia, both of these amendments, of course, require a broad public discussion, which would prepare a turning point in the Russian code and the consciousness of the people, would help to feel, understand and accept them when introduced in all spheres of life and power structures.

All existing parties are capable and obliged to organize this whole complex of actions, which themselves still have to be brought up in the spirit of independence of thinking and functioning, because a vaccine is needed for everyone. Gradually, people will begin to change, respect their dignity more, learn to fight more actively for it, for all their civil rights, for an increase in the quality of life in all spheres, in all regions of the country.

Well, the parties and their leaders need to first learn the special 3rd amendment - it is Russian, it is also worldwide.

All Imperials of any country should remember Colonel Kurtz's lesson from Coppola's Apocalypse Now: to Captain Willord's assertion that he is a soldier and came to carry out the order to kill the colonel, Kurtz says: “You are not a soldier. You are the errand boy whom the moneylender sent to collect the favor".

So, party members and just Russian people - patriots and liberals fighting for interests and values, Muscovites, Londoners and residents of other cities - let's not be errand boys, and there you see, girls will catch up.