Some see the Russian holidays, the signs of severe illness, society, others — evidence of his death, and still others believe that Russia is being reborn. However, in its current incarnation it became the devil and zombies all in one.
The feeling of Slavic brotherhood, caution, and simple decency require that you first look for the beam in your own eye, and then proceed with the extraction of a bitch Russian. With national holidays in Poland, too, is different. This is due to the internal Polish-Polish war, and by a set of official celebrations. Have prone to reflexionan people some confusion can cause particularly may 3 — anniversary of the adoption of the Constitution, which turned the story of the state from a semi-democracy, even in absolutist and authoritarian. Some consolation is the fact that in the late eighteenth century, the term “absolutism” sound for the masses is as seductive as it is now, “democracy”, although defenders of democracy existed in those days. Their activities are not indifferent to the history books and the gallows the time of the Uprising Kosciuszko. The beam in your own eye we touched, so now you can safely take up the study of foreign sockets.
The final solution to the problems of the disabled
Rich material for reflection on the state of Russian society provide a celebration in honor of the anniversary of the end of the Second world war, in Russia this holiday is called Victory Day. His story looks pretty bleak.
8 or (due to time difference) may 9, 1945 has failed or not started anything that could serve soldiers who took part in this war, the cause for joy. After all, won’t Russian or Soviet people, the loss of which is at the front and in the rear reached 42 million people, and Stalin and his power apparatus. It soon made to feel by the soldiers. The most severe repression suffered by those who miraculously survived German captivity, or saw life in the “decaying capitalism” and could become an unhealthy element in society: they were exiled in camps or in the best case, away from the big cities. Inhuman cost with military with disabilities (the total number of people with severe injuries who have lost the war to the feet, hands, genitals, blind or completely paralyzed exceeded 10 million!): finally their problem was solved in 1950, the fifth anniversary of the Victory. When they started to stutter about raising miserable pensions, they were simply kicked out of Moscow, guided by how the reluctance to meet their financial needs, and purely aesthetic considerations. After all, how can you celebrate victory when around these “samovars” — so called people who lost all limbs (according to a secret report of Marshal Ivan Konev, soldiers with such terrible injuries was approximately 86 000!).
In Soviet times, the celebration of Victory Day unfolded in two planes. Official celebrations who have purchased a recurring character in the middle of 1960-ies, focused on the winners from the Kremlin, but somewhere on the periphery (after all, in the totalitarian conditions of private life was just the periphery) to families remembering those who were taken away by the war, and tried to improve the lot of veterans. Those interfere with the official celebrations and continue to disturb them until now. With this approach to the holiday in the end even put up democratic opposition, decided that 9 may is definitely not her day.
Today Crimea, tomorrow Rome
In the last decade lame crippled feast of victory fell into the millstone of a market mechanism that weaves all the elements of the celebrations, the plastic fabric of mass culture. This trend intensified after the annexation of the Crimea. In the Western world for the same reason, has been particularly affected by Christmas (as we know, was born on Christmas eve, Santa Claus on the label “Coca-Cola”, that should be noted since mid-November, making, following the example of the Magi, the pilgrimage to the shopping centers). From the collected opposition publicists of pictures from the celebration of Victory Day, the most impressive street dancing in striped camp uniforms. The rest of the images are of less frightened, but they look as funny as it is scary.
For example, working under the guise of saunas and night clubs public houses publish ads with the message that everyone who crossed their threshold 8 and may 9 St. George ribbon, to get the services of courtesans a 30% discount. The colors of these ribbons are decorated with rubber pigs in butcher shops. Popular rompers for babies protective colors, bras and men’s briefs push-up (whatever that means) with the image of the muzzle of the tank at suitable place. Still there are solemn toothbrushes (with a portrait of Stalin on the packaging) or “limited edition” vodka, beer, chips, ice cream, deodorants and toilet paper. In this year’s campaign attracted the attention of two things: use the symbols of victory is the sound more sexual motivation, and the symbolism began to change (this is increasingly the hammer and sickle, and not the St. George ribbon).
The topic of sex arises in that because they remembered one of a kind reward for the victory. And along with the militant slogan “Crimea Today and tomorrow Rome” on the machines began to appear the call “In Berlin, with the German women!” Thus a new generation expresses its appreciation for the mass rapes by red army soldiers, and expresses its readiness to continue the fight including on the front of international relations. It is difficult to rid himself of the picture that throws the imagination: “samovar” watching from afar for a prostitute and a hooligan, which he received in the form of a Victory Day a new reason to bacchanalian revels.
In any case, such a way of celebrating the anniversary of the end of the bloodiest hecatombs in history can cause the approval of any one human culture. Therefore, after may 9, the opposition raised a ruckus. In particular, the idea actually stop to celebrate the Victory Day, since it fails to do so adequately. Such appeals met in the society about the same reaction, what are the attempts to bring a drunken man from the wedding.
And perhaps the most important question: how memories of the tragedy have managed to turn into a carnival? What is its essence? What is the scale of the lies, which contributes to the deterioration of society?
Ask the Bolshevik painted in the colors of a teenager on the streets of Moscow, who defeated Russia in the great Patriotic war? “As who? America!” Someone more ambitious will say that the West, and in the soul will feel that the rest of the world.
The day of unity. With whom?
In Poland it is considered that the policy of the Kremlin became a dictatorship, and extensive Imperial since, as Vladimir Putin came to power, and was worded in such a way immediately after the arrival of honored KGB Colonel in the Kremlin. Meanwhile, in the first years of Putin’s presidency integrative tendencies prevailed over Imperial. The policy of the Russian President during his first term was focused on the modernization of the country and its rapprochement with Euro-Atlantic structures.
The fracture is believed to have occurred at the turn of 2004 and 2005. Hard to say what it was: a change of course or just dropping the masks. As suggested by the intransigence of the opposition, an important factor in the reorientation of Putin was the realization that Western structures do not steal as in Russia and make it not very convenient way. More true it appears, however, the idea that Putin is to some extent became a hostage of the oligarchs, who do not hurry to Europe and post-Soviet society, which failed overnight (even a decade) to turn the civil society. Causes of the aggressive policy of the Kremlin, if you try to enter a position by her head, should look in the inevitability of historical events, not in the initial desire to revive the Soviet Union. Russia, the reins of which he received at the turn of the XXI century, resembled (however, during the oil boom nothing in this regard has not changed) collapsed the farm, only he stretched from Smolensk to Vladivostok. But to turn the farm in Switzerland — for a human.
The last step of the modernization predispersal Putin’s policies (as paradoxical as it may seem from the Russian perspective) was the replacement of the feast in honor of the anniversary of the October revolution (7 November) on the national unity Day (4 November). For poles and Russians with nationalist views is the anniversary of the expulsion of the poles from the Kremlin. The idea, however, was more profound.
It was not about the celebration of the victory over the poles, and the desire to immortalize the moment after the tragic turmoil and civil war, the Russians were able to transcend personal or class selfishness, and solidarity set in Moscow, the authorities, the moment of victory over fragmentation and independence. This holiday was intended to be not so much a replacement, as the antithesis of the anniversary of the revolution. November 4, 1612 people have been able to establish legitimate government, because the bar was ready to dialogue and make concessions. In turn, November 7, 1917, torn by internal contradictions and claims covered by hatred and greed of the people made collective suicide, having given the power in the country the gang of bloody criminals.
So the essence of the holiday was presented in the presidential historical commissions, which, characteristically, consisted then mostly of former dissidents and anti-Communists. Its propaganda purpose was to remind all Russians (those living in poverty to the masses, and luxuriate elites) that they constitute a single people, and to restore public life, they will need unity and solidarity.
However, nothing came of it. All these 12 years, its meaning remains understandable only to a handful of former advisers to Putin, have now become the most implacable opposition, and the people believes November 4th just a day off, which got him in exchange for the abolished holiday of the Great October revolution.
If you continue the line (somewhat naive) faith in the initially good intentions of Putin, it can be assumed that the refusal of Russian unity and celebration of Unity was one of the factors that resulted in a sharp reversal of the Kremlin’s policy, or at least signal that this society is solidaristic state it is impossible to build. Did Putin actually build such a state, it’s a mystery the President and his Confessor Tikhon Shevkunov, who is shooting movies with multimillion-dollar budgets in the spirit of the current ideology of the Kremlin. In them, he portrays Russia as the Third Rome, and his ward — the new Emperor of Byzantium.
Now in the Day of national unity of the people drinking vodka and eating salads with mayonnaise, nothing more.
Pan, let’s watch!
Festive menu in Russian homes looks at every holiday are nearly identical. The Russians put on the table on the occasion of Victory Day, unity Day, women’s Day, may 1 and New year’s one and the same. Secular post-Soviet occasions for gluttony and drunkenness were stronger than the Orthodox holiday customs. The return of the individual attributes of a holiday before the revolution is no more than a temporary decoration, which does not change the content. In family and social terms, these celebrations similar to each other like two drops of water.
About the sad state of Russian society testifies to the splendor of the celebration of Victory Day, which was on par with the New year the most important date of the secular “liturgical calendar”. Accompanying the occasion, the aesthetics of aggression against the rest of the world, spiced with pornography is, according to the pessimists of the circles historian Andrei Zubov and leader of the people’s freedom Party Mikhail Kasyanov, proof that uperevshis TV Russian zombies finally gave himself into the power of the devil. I should add that in the last election to the Duma of the Teeth and Kasyanov received less than 2% of the votes, that is, their Christian democratic program has not received wide support.
Those who remember how the Red army liberated Poland, bitterly said: “nihil novi sub sole”. After all, the hallmark of victors-liberators was already, to put it mildly, sex and aggression. You can still remember about the topic of wrist watches, it is the aspect of the difficult Polish-Russian relations.
