We have yet to have a big conversation about the holidays in Russia. Holidays, which were the real bonds of Putinism. The originally fake holiday of November 4, the so-called “day of national unity,” has just passed. It didn’t even pass, but flew by unnoticed. Well, Putin went to Minin and Pozharsky and spoke to the camera again with the same FSO officers playing “the people” (I wonder if Putin himself was not tired of seeing the same faces?) Well, Medvedev wrote another nonsense – about Lucifer and Iblis – jokers on twitter will have something to laugh at. But otherwise, nothing. Silence. As if for 17 years this “holiday” did not exist. But a few years ago it was a day of fierce debate. The nationalists held their "Russian marches", pro-Kremlin youth organizations mirrored them. The communists demanded to return November 7 as a red day of the calendar.
That's it. The wind of history has blown away the fake siding of the Putinist building. And no one was upset: it was part of a comprehensive lie. No one initially believed in the importance of the anniversaries of something with the Poles in 1612. Well, it's just that some moderately cunning political strategist from the 2000s entered the office on Staraya Square and said: I've figured out how we'll kill November 7th. Perhaps it was this cynical idea, excellently described by Pelevin in Generation P on the rise – that there is no good and evil, but only political technologies and other miner-macher – that led us to the moral catastrophe of the 22nd year.
But if the “siding” of Putinism flies off easily, then everything is completely different with the foundation. We all know perfectly well what holidays are at the heart of Putinism. These are the May holidays, namely the Cult of Victory as the main "string". It is clear why it is many times stronger than some kind of “day of national unity”. After all, it was built for a long time, decades. First, in Soviet times, approximately since the Brezhnev era, and then in post-Soviet, already modern Russia. It would not be an exaggeration to say that May 9th is the pivot on which the entire mental construction of a person in Putinism now rests. And this is done, of course, intentionally. In fact, a mythological picture of the world was built, where the zero-zero point was exactly May 9, 1945. It is as if the country itself in its current form and the people themselves were born out of an epic battle between good and evil in World War II. At the same time, the Second World War is also usually called the Great Patriotic War, and the allies are carefully shaded – as if they did not exist.
That is why any attempts to critically, or at least a little more difficult to look at what happened, cause such sincere irritation. From the history of the "bronze soldier" in Estonia to the modern discourse in Poland that the Red Army brought not liberation, but only new enslavement. The mythological picture of the creation of the world cannot but be black and white. And anyone who questions it is inevitably perceived as an enemy. Because he is trying to destroy the very idea of the Universe – it seems that if the idea of \u200b\u200bVictory is wrong, then in general everything in the world will turn out like a house of cards. Therefore, it is not at all surprising that in Putin's Russia, as a result, a series of laws were passed that literally forbade – under pain of criminal prosecution – to reflect on the topic of the Second World War. And it is even quite logical that it was in the semantic framework of May 9 that the war in Ukraine was described for the last eight years to the average Russian viewer. First there were “militias” (positive rhetoric of the Great Patriotic War), and now “denazification” (pronounced negative rhetoric).
In retrospect, one can see how society was inevitably drawn into this abyss. In the 1910s, it was more and more clearly seen how the previously sincere holiday “with tears in the eyes” was gradually turning into a triumph of aggression and militarism, where the main mantra for those who were fascinated by the procession of tanks and missiles was the maxim militaristic in spirit: “We can repeat". And now they did it again, but in a completely different way. There is an unjust war of aggression going on – going on for no good reason. Is it possible to continue to be proud of the victory over Nazism? We have yet to answer this question for ourselves. This year, in the hustle and bustle of the first months of battles, May 9 flew by, consider it unnoticed. But next year, this reflection will inevitably begin.
Is it possible now, after an aggressive and unjustified war, to continue to be proud of the victory over Nazism?
If proud, then certainly now forever – apart from any government. No government in Russia anymore – after Putin, of course – will be able to have direct propaganda access to the Victory Day. But what about a destroyed worldview, with the fact that everything supposedly will turn out like a house of cards? Well, here we are not the first and, perhaps, we are not the last.
The Germans reassembled their self-consciousness after 1945 without national superiority. Refused relatively easily (although, according to modern historians and sociologists, in total it took about 30 years – and finally it was done by the next generation) from the ideas of the "thousand-year Reich", the "Aryan race" and the German exclusivity, opposed, of course , the commercial spirit of the Anglo-Saxons.
Yes, and the Japanese somehow survived the collapse of their views. In 1945, immediately after the defeat of the country in the World War, the status of Shinto as the state religion was abolished, but it seemed to Japanese conservatives that society would fall apart without this bond. Didn't collapse. Moreover, the following year, 1946, Emperor Showa proclaimed a declaration of the human nature of himself. Prior to this, the Japanese believed in the divine nature of their emperors. Here is a typical quote from there:
“The connections between Us and Our people have always been built on mutual trust and affection and do not depend on any legends and myths. They are not defined by the false notion that the emperor is divine in nature and that the Japanese people are superior to other races and destined for world domination."
Yes, even – what to look far for examples – after the defeat in the Crimean War, our ancestors easily abandoned such "bonds" of Nikolaev Russia as serfdom, a recruit army and judicial arbitrariness. Yes, no one created such a bond from the victory over Napoleon in Nikolaev times. But serfdom was truly a cult of that time, a real "clamp". The entire repressive machine of the empire was busy suppressing those who said that it could and should be cancelled.
Moreover, by many – even among intellectuals – it was presented as a boon. They say that there are false freedoms and revolutions in your Europe, but we, thank God, have order. The peasants obey the landlords, and the landowners obey the tsar. Here is a characteristic quote from Tyutchev from 1848:
“And when over such a huge collapse of [Europe and Western values] we see an even more enormous Empire, floating up like the Holy Ark, who dares to doubt its vocation, and should we, its children, show unbelief and cowardice?”
The same Tyutchev, a few years later, after the defeats in the Crimean War, in a letter to his wife will say that this is a war of "scoundrels with scoundrels."
The crushing defeat somehow organically swept away all the jingoistic narratives – both about serfdom and about Russia as a shining holy ark (Tyutchev also wrote this).
In 1856, according to Leo Tolstoy, “the time came when all of Russia (!) Celebrated the destruction of the Black Sea Fleet and white-stone Moscow met and congratulated on this happy event the remnants of the crews of this fleet, brought them a good Russian glass of vodka, and, in good Russian custom, bread and salt and bowed at the feet.
Tolstoy continues: it was "a time of civilization, progress, questions, the rebirth of Russia."
In general, it turned out that new ideas easily take the place of one idea – for example, civilization and progress. Under their sign, the next 15 years of the Great Reforms passed. And Tyutchev no longer wrote about politics – only that "one can only believe in Russia."