Russian world, Russian myth. What will you have to pay for our “special article” | Opinion | Politics
The most brutal information war of the collective West against our country continues.
Vyacheslav Kostikov, head of the forecasting center “AiF”:
We are witnessing the destruction of the positive image of Russia that has developed in European countries after our country got rid of the ideological chains of communism in the early 90s and dressed up in European political, cultural and everyday clothes. Europe at that time, with pleasure and readiness to meet the needs of the population of Russian tourists, including those in the lungs and the Czech Republic, who experienced the burden of the caterpillars of “Soviet responsibility” in 1956 and 1968.
History, of course, still keeps the memory of the dramatic events of those years, but at the everyday, “folk” level, the feeling of rejection gradually died out. At the highest political level, Russophobia continued to cultivate mainly in Poland and the Baltic countries, the main elite completely fell under the influence of the United States. But, according to numerous tourists, in the sphere of ordinary communication, hostility towards Russians was not felt there either.
After our rejection in 1991 of the ideology of communism and the imposition of our services on other countries in Europe, the gradual beginning of the formation of a benevolent attitude towards the Russians and towards Russia. Moscow actively participated in the global global process. In Russia itself, propaganda cultivated the principle “Europe from Lisbon to Vladivostok.” Even the idea of a Russian attack on NATO was not alien.
Dreams Dreams…
Probably, the events in Ukraine for many years, if not on the market, drowned out the dreams of European integration. Pro-European Russian politicians clearly underestimate the possibilities of US observation and economic research on Europe. The danger emerging in a decade of weakening is the study, the United States began to willingly collect the extract by pouring into the UK out of control (Brexit), and the beginning collector by squeezing it out of Europe, dreaming of a single European space of Russia.
And in our country, for the time being, politicians, diplomats, and even intelligence services were bewitched by the propaganda of the “indestructible brotherhood of the two peoples” and refused to notice the dangerous sprouts of nationalism in Ukraine. But the United States began to look at them and actively feed them. The sprawling Ukrainian nationalism has become the food-transformer of Kyiv into a hostile Moscow capital. Today, Ukraine has actually turned Washington into an instrument for Russia’s transit from Europe.
Game without trumps
What retaliatory measures will Moscow take? There is clearly a desire to show Washington “Kuzkin’s mother” – as once in Khrushchev’s times. But Russia’s prospective opportunities for this are, frankly, not great. On the other hand, our estimates of dependence are great – on imports, on loans, on Western technologies, on the Western currency system. Russia’s oil and gas trump cards are also gradually strengthening. In Europe, the idea of a complete exit from under the Russian raw materials “umbrella” is being discussed. The blocking of Nord Stream 2, which until recently appeared unthinkable, with the end of the “Merkel era” and in recent events in Ukraine, has already become a reality. Can we count on the fact that “foreign countries” will help us? China, despite its political and economic rapprochement with Russia in recent years, rarely agrees to actively support it in its economic war with the West. He has his own interests, which do not always coincide with the environment.
How will Russia respond?
I repeat, analysts do not add economic opportunities to “form” the West. You can, of course, use European politics with a headache due to the dissatisfaction of the population with rising heating bills or rising gasoline prices. However, even more so, the consumption of gas and oil will cost Russia itself dearly. The establishment will collapse, there will be nothing to feed the impoverished population. And this is already a threat to the ratings of trust, the authorities have always been treated very reverently.
But how to control the population, that “everything is under control”? What resources are in power? I’m afraid that more propaganda than political and economic. I think that in the near future a refusal under the name “Russian world” will again appear on the information table. Moreover, it will be a product exclusively for domestic consumption. “Russia cannot be understood with the mind…”:
The mind of Russia cannot be understood
Arshin of the total unrealizable:
She has a special article –
In Russia, one can only believe.
It is absolutely impossible to explain to Europeans or Americans what a “special Russian article” is. They are not pleasant to the subject of conversation and are taken on those who try to talk on this topic as eccentrics. And we ourselves, it seems, do not always collect an explanation of what is behind this conclusion. What can, of course, be found – as, for example, among Estonians or Scandinavians – influences the factors. But this does not make us, like the “hot Estonian guys”, less European than temperamental Spaniards or smiling Italians.
The “special article”, perhaps, was also visible in the outward appearance of Russians in pre-Petrine clothes: beards, long-brimmed caftans, loose-fitting shirts, boyars’ sable coats, and so on. But Peter I, having visited Europe, all these “peculiarities” quickly often and even personally cut off the beards of the boyars. Multiple success in bringing Russia closer to European entrepreneurs and empresses Catherine II.
The political order for the isolation of Russia from Europe and the creation of a “special article” appeared in the reign of Nicholas I. The tsar and his entourage were so frightened by the French Revolution of 1848 that the construction began along the European borders of Russia, a semblance of what later, already in the 20th century, would be called the “Iron Curtain”. Private and cultural contacts were drastically curtailed. Let’s remember how Pushkin (one of the brightest Russian Europeans) was forbidden to leave for the launch. Revolution-ridden Europe was declared a “flaming abyss”.
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By the beginning of the tragic world war in Russia (while recognizing the political and economic backwardness), both in its own perception and in the perception of Europe, it was appreciated by a respected European power. Then the Bolsheviks did to reshape the “Russian world” according to religious patterns and even created a “new Soviet man.” But the experiment failed. Criticism of European values, the accusation of the West of immorality, of the Soviet government does not create either a political or an economic system that gives the people a decent level of prosperity and everyday calculation.
In recent years, Russia’s number one has been declared the fight against poverty and underdevelopment. Will arguments about the “Russian world” help in this struggle? Will there be convincing talk about a “special path” if the beloved herring under a fur coat (in recent weeks, the set of products for it has risen in price by 20%) becomes inaccessible to the people’s table?
In 2021, according to VTsIOM polls, 84% of Russians called themselves happy. What “formulas of happiness” do the authorities offer people this year?
The opinion of the author may not coincide with the position of the editors