Where does the distaste for measured political life and work come from? claims: there is no freedom of choice in Russia.
Photo: Natalia Gubernatorova
Yes, not even the Supreme neither the Soviets of the USSR nor the State Duma are equivalent to the parliaments of the West. The KSSS is not similar to their political parties. “United Russia” is not more like the British Conservative Party, the German CDU, but, admittedly, the CPSU. This is not the worst, and our people, objectively speaking, do not value the freedom of political decision-making as much as the West. But in their opinion it is this: not belonging to the free world.
In the 19th century, we laughed at our foolish “raznochintsy” (in the very sense of the word, ranks and stuffing), encouraged them to throw bombs at governors, tsars, the Poles came with the slogan “For our and your freedom!” Completely utilitarian application: lose (after 1612) battles, take revenge through demagoguery and terror.
How about thinking more? We also value freedom, but in addition to “freedom of choice,” ours also includes… “freedom of choice.” I am not inventing paradoxes: Russian freedom includes the freedom to choose oneself or sometimes entrust the freedom of choice to others (tsars, leaders).
Western political freedom requires constant efforts to ensure it, to maintain the mechanism: the political machine requires constant attention , work, lubricants. The self-extraction of society from current politics is connected with them. And we feel constant political work in the name of freedom as a difficult, unpleasant duty.
Here, different parties say completely different things about the same fact. Study the results of checks and checks of those who checked them, delve into the protocols of sometimes annual debates, check references… Before the Russian gets to the middle of the list of necessary problems, he begins to yawn, absent- look around carefully.
I remember in school being taught to read aloud with the expression, “Johann Wolfgang Goethe! Only he is worthy of life and freedom, who goes to fight for them every day!”
There was even such a list of “recommended phrases for epigraphs to compositions” (for fear that some clever person should avoid Schopenhauer or even Nietzsche). On the list: authentic Russian classics, Marx-Engels… and those lines of Goethe stood like a proud rock. And we took the resounding “Only he is worthy” as an epigraph to an essay like “How I spent the summer.”
Now, after so many years, general secretaries, presidents, I see our deep attitude to Goethe's dilemma. Well, “fight” but “every day”! .. And painfully rolls his eyes: “What, every day?”
Within the framework of the “struggle for freedom”, there is nothing to blame Russia for, it is a sin to compare oneself with anyone. True, if the battle is real, not the non-contact bombing of Serbia NATO NATO, but let's say: Napoleon or Hitler stands on the threshold. But every day?
Richard Pipes, Reagan's adviser on the USSR, Russia, conscientiously selecting the most accurate and profound assessment of Russian historians, settled on this, Vasily Klyuchevskii: “Velkorus is sure of one thing: one must respect the summer working day.” This forces him to hurry, to work hard, then to remain idle through autumn and winter… Not a single person in Europe is capable of such short-term work stress as he could develop in a Great-Korusian; but nowhere in Europe can we find someone so unaccustomed to steady, measured and constant work.”
Yes, in the provinces north of Ryazan, the agricultural season lasts four months. Such a simple clue for an unusual distaste for uniform political life/work. Just as rarely is another honest confession mentioned. Montesquieu (the father of liberalism, the author of the “division of power…”) illustrated the dependence of history on geography on the Russian example: “Today all these vast spaces are united only by despotic violence.” And the dilemma is simple: if you want to be like the Europeans, divide yourself according to their sizes…
Scout Somerset Maugham in 1917 carried out the most difficult mission in Russia – he met with Kerensky, Savinkov… The writer Maugham at the same time looked at the Russian people, the elite, left amazingly accurate notes: “The advantage of the Russians is that they are to a much lesser extent slaves to conventions than Europeans. A Russian wouldn't think of doing what he doesn't want just because it's supposed to be that way. A Russian has much more personal freedom than an Englishman.
Do not consider this essay a “crazy game”: I quote Montesquieu – Pipes, Maugham – “Bito!” However, the degree of controversy surrounding the “freedoms”, the death toll of the same Arab Spring (the latest powerful “campaign for freedom”) and above all the Russian discourse require attention.
Half a century before the term “existential freedom” took root, after separating “personal freedom” from politics, Maugham anticipated the modern philosophy of Sartre, who formulated: “Freedom is what we do with what they do to us.”
< p> Without the abolition of political freedoms may even enter the equation. We denote freedoms: L, components: ex (existential) and pol (political) … We get Lex + Lpol = const. These. their sum is approximately constant. We pay for the growth of one by the decline of the other.Dostoevsky, a true connoisseur of souls, saw: “It is terrible to what extent the Russian man is free in spirit!” Can you imagine? The man who heard the death sentence and waited for the command “Please!” was afraid of something else. In a real conversation about freedoms, one is reminded of Dostoevsky's passionate admirer Friedrich Nietzsche: “Don't say what you are free from! Tell me what you are free for!”
An important, if fleeting, explanation seemed to me to be one of the prayers of Thomas Aquinas (“his works are the basis for the construction of the Western political machine”). The father of Western political philosophy added to your prayer list “Thank you Holy Spirit for deliverance from the need to have a political opinion.”
Let's think about it. Not from political views (Foma is not an anarchist!) – to get rid of their necessity. One more word is important in Thomas Aquinas' “formula”: opinion. Appreciate the nuances. After all, when you have an opinion, you can act or not. Slap millions for his triumph, or shove him in…. Thomas, who understands the primacy of opinion, speaks not of the act, but of the very root: opinion in general. As if replying to those who were tugging at his sleeve (some on the dais of Parliament, some at the protest rally): “I have absolutely no opinion on this point.” Action: shrug. Tomáš gives thanks for the freedom to entrust one's choice to God (or to his anointed), and at the same time to preserve this freedom – an emergency valve, insurance against the absolutism of the political machine.
Absolute monarchs, it turns out, are easily overthrown, but the absolutism of the political machine is another matter: you don't even see those who sit behind its darkened windows! To think, the monarch only needed the obedience of the populace, and the political machine also needed stupidity: and now the masses are reaching out as if from a pipe to vote for those who have been broadcast on the television screen for more than hours. “On the contrary” on this topic – Oscar Wilde said one of his paradoxes: “Modern democracy has only one dangerous enemy – the good monarch.” But these truths do not lose their meaning when the sign changes. The famous Sartrian “I am my own freedom” was inadvertently altered by one of my risky (in the turning 90s) business friend: “Yes, whoever puts me in prison, I am my own prison!”
< p>So my speech is not against freedom, but against the naive absolutization of its interpretations (dictated by those who themselves treat freedom very utilitarian). I remember the proud teaching of the journalism of the Democrats in the 90s: “Remember, freedom is either there or it is not!” Here is “Schengen”, really, or it is – or it is not! But with such a philosophical burden to climb to real freedoms?