On the past holiday two ideas were clearly opposed to each other. Naturally, everyone recognized the importance of a great victory over Nazism, but some said: "Nevermore!", And others - "We can repeat!". Really, of course, they can not do anything. Their bravado is like a child's game in a war. All the boys passed through this, but most of them grew up, and some did not, the Russian economist Dmitri Travin wrote on the Observer.
It's another matter that in the festive debates there is reflected that big discussion, which in fact largely determines the future of Russia, but is not always clearly recognized even by the polemicists themselves. This is a dispute about the special path of the country. The dispute about the Russian idea. The controversy over whether we can repeat the main thing: the modernization of those Western countries, the success of which is so annoying to fans of war.
The Lord's Nationality Two months ago, Vladimir Putin told us about the appearance of the new Sarmat missile, but of course he missed the name. Sarmatians (or, more precisely, their distant descendants) considered themselves at the dawn of modern times, the Polish nobility, severely separating the nobility from the common people. The theory of "Sarmatism", developed in the gentry environment, was one of the first European versions of the "special path", or, perhaps more correctly in this case, to say of the "special vocation" of the people. Great Polish idea. "Sarmatians" stood guard over the eastern borders of the Christian world (naturally, Catholic, because the Orthodox world was not right for them), saving it from the eastern barbarians - the Tatars and the Turks. Yes, in general, and from the Russians, because, being under the heel of the Horde, we are not very different from the Tatars differed from the perspective of Western peoples.
The most interesting thing here is that the theory of heroic "Sarmatism" arose in an era when the Polish state was in deep crisis, suffered losses from the Swedes (the so-called "Flood"), lost Ukrainian lands, and in the wars with Muscovy surrendered its positions. The idea of ??a special heroic path was a kind of compensation for the Poles for the frustration experienced in connection with the many humiliations on the fronts.
Similarly, it was in Portugal. Recently, even the great empire, conquering the overseas lands and arranging a variety of colonies, suddenly fell into dependence on a strong neighbor - Spain. For some time, Portugal turned into one of the usual regions of the Pyrenean peninsula, which were under the Spanish crown. And immediately in response to humiliation there were ideas about a special way. The fact that the Lord specifically descended to earth to discuss the formation of the Portuguese state with the military leader Afonso Henriques. How then can you be under Spain? After all, this is God's plan violates.
The English in the XVII century had similar thoughts. Not only was the country in the chaos of the civil war, but also added humiliating defeats from the Scots. And suddenly the idea arises that the English are a special people chosen by God. He, like in ancient Israel, has a special contract with the Lord, which, as previously mentioned by one bishop, is an Englishman by birth. Only the outstanding religiosity of the English can save the world.
Democracy is not for the Germans There is no special way for individual peoples. There is no special vocation for the nation. There is no Polish, English or Portuguese idea. But there is a problem of frustration associated with difficult tests. And a way to overcome it is the desire to exalt myself. To explain to ourselves that we are no worse than other peoples, as it may seem due to defeat, chaos, poverty and loss of imperial ambitions. On the contrary, we are better.
Russia began to look for a special way after Germany. For Prussia, the hardest test was the defeat of Napoleon. The powerful state of Frederick II suddenly turned into a miserable ruin. And gradually the ideas that the great German Culture is fundamentally different from the dull Western Civilization established by the English and French. The Germans do not accept democracy, adore the monarch, rally around him, honestly work and do not entertain themselves with such French stupidities as revolutions. "Democracy in the Western sense and taste is alien to us". This is not Vladislav Surkov said. This was written during the First World War by Thomas Mann, whom you can not suspect of a predilection for sovereign democracy.
Russian ideas of a special path arose in the Slavophile milieu at the time of Nikolayev's stagnation. A special heyday was achieved after the defeat in the Crimean War, which showed that Russia is not only a "country of slaves, a country of masters," but also a colossus with clay feet. Since then, hundreds of thinkers have tried to find for our country the idea of ??a special path, paying tribute to Pan-Slavism, Eurasianism, and Byzantinism. And even Communism in our performance looked more like a theory of a special path than the realization of the ideas of Marxist internationalism. And to this day a lot of people are tormented by the thought that Russia has a call to save the world from the terrible American expansion by the "Sarmatians", "Bulavami", "Iskander".
Teenage problems of Russia Many peoples have searched for a special way, and therefore in the aspiration of our "teenagers" there is nothing special. Do not be afraid of this.. The very desire to find a special way emphasizes the commonness of what is happening to us. The search for a special way by the people is roughly the same as the search for individuality by a person in a transitional age. The real problem arises further. Russia must inevitably grow up and go to an age when it is not accepted to suffer from transitional problems, do not engage in fights with other adolescents on every issue, but work hard, think about normal development, about children and their future, about the arrangement of their homes. The exit from the transitional age in history can occur in different ways: with greater or lesser problems for the "adolescent". And now Russia must choose whether we will go forward through self-destruction, or through careful integration into the "adult world" existing in the neighborhood.
Unfortunately, the major imperial countries of Europe demonstrated in the past the first variant of transition to the adult state. Germany provoked the Second World War. Italy joined her. Similarly, Japan behaved. For Germans with the Japanese, such adventurism ended in a terrible catastrophe. Germany was in fact completely destroyed by bombing, which left no whole major city, and Japan, although it suffered less, suffered two nuclear strikes - according to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The Italians were also defeated, but less resisted and retained, at least, their country. A similar fate befell France. Napoleonic aggression became a catastrophe for a whole generation of Frenchmen, wiped out by continuous wars. But the transition of adolescent society to adulthood occurred not even after the Battle of Waterloo, and much later in the 1870s. after the defeat of the Germans and the fall of the empire of Napoleon III, very similar in some respects to the current Putin power. Another variant of growing up was demonstrated by European countries emerging from adolescence after the Second World War. Such once powerful empires as Spain and Portugal, by the 1970s. already on any great villainies did not pretend. They slowly reformed, improved the market economy, introduced democratic institutions and joined the European Union.
Poland, with which we began the story, also stopped recalling those times when it stretched from the Black Sea to the Baltic Sea on the giant Eastern European spaces. Long before the "elder brother" weakened the reins, Polish society began to feel European, and in the end after 1989. could gently enter the European house. Approximately the same was done by all the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, except for Serbia, for which growing up too sad, although not so tragic as for the major imperial states.
Which path will Russia choose?.
At first glance, it seems as if we are moving with leaps and bounds towards a national catastrophe. First, Russia is a big country of the imperial type, always considering itself as good as Germany or France, and therefore it seems logical to think that we should step on the rake, like the Germans or the French. Secondly, if one looks at the rigid rhetoric of our "leaders" and the enthusiasm with which they are supported by the masses who say "We can repeat!", It seems that the rake is already "in work". But there are other facts. They are not so noticeable, but in fact it is more important than the demagogy that is shown to us from the television screen.
First, there are very good reasons to believe that Putin's regime only manipulates the masses, not at all trying to bring the conflict with the West to the stage of a hot war. Putin's elite is very well now living. These people are not in a state of frustration unlike most seekers of national ideas of the past. The Russian elite is rich and self-satisfied. We must be absolutely insane people to make the path from billions of states and luxury villas to the chamber of some international tribunal.
Secondly, the masses of the consumer society only scream in the stands, but do not fight personally. The number of truly combat-ready units in Russia is still small, and the number of fanatical people is absolutely insignificant. They are enough to defeat Georgia or Ukraine, but not for a big war with a well-armed opponent. And Putin's elite perfectly understand how weak the army is in comparison with Napoleonic or Hitler's.
Thirdly, to great tragic wars, the peoples pushed serious internal contradictions of the era of modernization, when the elite tried to unite the masses and direct their aggressiveness to an external enemy. But today, despite all the serious problems of Russia, there are no such acute contradictions: neither class, nor interethnic, nor inter-confessional.
In general, do not panic, taking the country's psychological teenage problems for signs of its fatal illness. After all, the greatest danger for Russia today is to succumb to the fear spread from high tribunes.