Alina Vitukhnovskaya: the incident with Yefremov should be considered as a marker event

Alina Vitukhnovskaya, writer

Alas, the post-Soviet man is different from the Soviet, and even for the worse. Already on the third day after the quarantine was lifted, I became convinced that the instinct of self-preservation in people seemed to be dulled. Fewer and fewer masked citizens, but no gloves at all.

From the second salon, which I needed to visit, I had to quickly retire. Customers took off their protective equipment, barely sitting in chairs. And they began to smartly talk about how they had been ill and how someone managed to escape from quarantine to the cottage. Infantilism and carelessness, turning into a dangerous madness. After a while, the room looked like a public bath.

In this salon, the political mood was completely different than in yesterday. Nobody is going to go to vote here and is not even interested in him. Masters, like visitors, think about how to leave the city faster after earning money.

Given the obvious fact that the pandemic did not end, such desperate grassroots hedonism begins to resemble the behavior of sacrificial animals before the slaughter. And indeed, the consecration of the Patriarchal Cathedral in honor of the Resurrection of Christ, the main church of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in the Patriot Military and Patriotic Park of Culture and Rest in the Kubinka near Moscow on June 14, 2020, looks like an ominous ritual.

In fact, this action resembles an ancient Aztec ritual in the name of the sun god, when mass casualties were made on the tops of specially built pyramids. The only difference is that the current “lambs” will be betrayed to the God of Covid in the name of the eternal rule of his earthly avatar.

All Russian life turns into a monstrous safari, a ritual dance of death. As if inside a huge infernal matrix nesting doll, another rises in one ritual. So the other day, “careless ride” actor Mikhail Yefremov, rushing drunk in the oncoming lane, knocked a man to death.

Efremov is the flesh of the flesh of the Soviet system and the Soviet stage, and Soviet humor a la Zhvanetsky, with a strange halo of “opposition” to me, which makes him even more repulsive. Of course, this is permissible “criticism”, satisfying the needs of a certain environment, its purpose is to lull, not enlighten. And in this sense, he is an absolutely systemic character. And the same representatives of the system, Simonyan and Prilepin, rushed to defend it as ontologically their own. “My condolences to the family of the deceased. To die is a simple matter. But when the soul to shreds - then how?", - Prilepin exclaims pathetically.

About "soul to shreds" - the next cheap Khokhloma meanness (and vulgarity). Judging by the tape, many people firmly believe that the very fact of killing a person inevitably leads the “Russian intellectual” (Efremov) to Dante’s hell and therefore is itself a punishment. As a writer, first of all, I wonder where the confidence comes from that every person should (will) experience moral torment? This does not follow from my life experience, on the contrary, I regularly observe the opposite. This is some kind of abstract-Dostoevsky conclusion. And the second question - what do these torments solve, if they happen? De facto and de jure.

People's artists of the Russian Federation - carriers and guides of the mass unconscious. Therefore, the incident with Yefremov should be considered as a marker event, symbolizing a complete loss of control. Now we are witnessing an open demonstration of the insane bravado of the overgrown cultural service and the power that covers it. Open consumption of banned substances, which was common in the 90s, later turned into an absolute taboo for any normal person. In today's Russia, drug frankness can be either openly insane, or a privileged person covered by power. That was exactly what Mikhail Yefremov was. That is why all the iconic figures of the state cultural and political field rushed to defend it.

A vulgar video with an actor apologizing to the public showed a monstrous degree of manageability of citizens. Literally in a day their opinion changed to exactly the opposite. The figure of the repentant sinner is extremely popular in the Russian mass unconscious. The mental swing so widespread here - “sinned, repented,” “repented, forgiven”, among other things, absolutely identical to the consciousness of the alcoholic or drug addict, is what eliminates any experience, including public experience (one of the reasons why Russian history walking in a circle, stepping on a rake), eliminates the meaning of the legal system as such.

From Dostoevsky to the Soviet (!) Detective story, everything here is permeated with the idea of guilt and repentance, schizoid, neurotic and managerial at the same time. Like a frantic pendulum, a person’s consciousness sways, degrading, shrinking where darkness has long been formed, a void traditionally and mistakenly taken for the soul — a metaphysical managerial construct that is essentially the same.

Floyd was killed in America - the whole country came out to protest. In Russia, a man was killed, allegedly "for the theft of wallpaper" - zero reaction, right up to the excuses of the police. The honored clown Yefremov killed a man in an accident - a "brilliant actor" and "how sorry he is." You ask, when will the revolution be here? With such an attitude to human life - never.