How Religious Consciousness Harms the Political Process

Alina Vitukhnovskaya, writer

Instead of what would be at least somehow adequate to the moment, namely, the domestic necrothriller “Dad is dead, ded moroz”, dear Russians are offered a remix of “The Irony of Fate” with the participation of Buzova and Kirkorov. The Irony of Fate is a film about idiots and for idiots. The impression that Soviet cinema is something like a guide to life for the mentally retarded, an eternal "school for fools", where progress is degradation and its manifestation. Without the concentrated vulgarity and mediocrity of mass Soviet culture, rashism would not have taken place. This is the triumph of stupid, drunken infantiles with vodka under Olivier.

What is Soviet culture? This is a conspiracy of mediocrity. Conspiracy of the worst against the best. Eliminate competitors. Therefore, after the powerful flourishing of culture (from music to literature, then everywhere) in the 1990s, now, when the homo-sovieticus has turned into a post-homo-soviet, and socialism-sovietism has turned into an open dictatorship, at the exit we see a narrow “cultural” field, consisting of absolutely uncompetitive and monstrously provincial figures. There are few of them and they fill everything. Moreover, all cultural requests are served. But these are the requests of atavistic, departing layers. In this sense, Buzova, "The Irony of Fate" and "Ivasi" are phenomena of the same order. Three rotten herrings of post-Sovietism.

An intellectual helpless kitchen PCB is not a sign of freedom, even internal. This is a sign of a mutated neurosis. You got freedom just like that and gave it away without much resistance to guitar overflows. Your talk about inner freedom is slyness and naive self-deception. Badly veiled desperation. This is my remark in continuation of a recent article in Novye Izvestia and a response to a certain Boris Pastukhov, a staunch defender of the Ivasi project, who attacked me with criticism in a telegram.

If people fought for power and political transformations with the same force with which they rushed to defend the secondary provincial culture, they would not be worth it. True, these people would not exist either, they are kept on the absence of alternatives and competition. Therefore, I repeat, Buzova, Ivasi and the Kremlin are one Khokhloma nesting doll. What is outside, so is inside. Painted red tablet.

It is interesting that even talented, alternative projects are drawn into the systemic construct, into an anti-aesthetic funnel. People are fascinated by authoritarianism, which was appropriate back in the 1960s of the last century, but now it is not conceptually interesting at all. Shortparis, of course, is a good group against the backdrop of domestic ones. But. Why are all the local intellectuals and aesthetes drawn to playing with totalitarian (German, Soviet, prison) themes? It's kind of a dead end. Which, in fact, has long been exhausted by the predictable Laibach. But if no one has yet managed to make a bad film about fascism, then about (post) Sovietism it always turns out badly. Not pulled even through the gay aesthetics. Truly, a damned social construct. Ugly.

Unfortunately, in an authoritarian society there is always a latent request for repression. It is something deeply repressed, hidden, almost obscene. And it exists not only in art, but also in current politics. Here and there, there are replicas of CSOs and political scientists about how politicians "grow up under the yoke of repression." Tenderness, admiration, delight. This is a clinical repressive saying, the costs of the Russian repressive mentality in principle. Which does not even think about the original political subjectivity, but considers it a derivative of external forces, brute pressure.

A politician who has “formed” under the yoke of circumstances is, first of all, a broken personality. A walking trauma, the declaration of which will be only reflection and revenge. That is why, starting with Lenin, who avenged his brother, Russia is in the endless bloody samsaric wheel. Of course, there are exceptions, but they only confirm the rule.

You want to see a new Christ in every politician. But this is a religious concept, and being inside it, you will not only not get out of old delusions, but will also be strengthened in new ones. Not only the “deep” people are degrading, the whole society is degrading as a whole. Therefore, reasoning about “sins” looks especially hypocritical. For example, they deliberately do not understand the irony when I write about envy as an engine of social progress. They do not understand a different view, in principle. At the same time, the very concept of “sin” among people is absolutely dogmatic, religious, and therefore wild. This is nothing but the sacralization of the simplest properties. Sacralization without analysis.

Personally, I would not talk about sins or vices, but only about negative properties. One of the worst things in human nature, I see the ability to forget how a child and teenager feels and thinks. In a recent article about actress B., I wrote - “how does the transformation into an aunt happen?” That's how. These people root out their true essence from themselves for the sake of socialization "in Russian", namely, hypocrisy and adaptation, the complete erasure of personal properties. Thus, a process of absolute depersonalization takes place. “He came back to life from a different side than he came from,” as Nabokov wrote. He wrote about insanity. But forced maturation is madness. These people don't really grow up. They grow up in public. Therefore, instead of civil society, we see a crowd of frustrated children. People who honestly preserve their adolescentness seem much more adequate to me.

On the one hand, people condemn envy. Which, in my immodest, is one of the engines of social progress. On the other hand, they shamelessly cheer themselves up in bad circumstances with the fact that "someone is worse off." Not even noticing the whole cynicism of this thought. Archaic people are embedded in the hierarchy of suffering much more than in the social one. The key to their conditional comfort is the very fact of the suffering of others. They endlessly compare, measure, project, but at the same time (what are you, never!) “Do not envy”. However, it is obvious that this comparison is a deeply repressed envy and hidden gloating. All these neuroses and reflections in politics, including the lack of a fundamental approach. People move like water striders on the surface of meanings, unaware of the depth. Moreover, they see depth in the "spiritual" and "mental", and not in the logical and rational. Thus, only aggravating the general Russian madness.