Is a young, intelligent woman on the porch of his modest dacha in Moscow and complains to the camera one of well-known channel to exist in isolation: “the Coronavirus has taken my greatest joy is to go where I want when I want. And here I sit locked up, not a step forward nor a step back. There is no space for normal life.” I listened to this woman and thought that she and I are living in completely different worlds. She lost a few months the opportunity to rest in Turkey or Thailand. But we, the millions of people born in USSR, lived most of his life behind the iron curtain, an invisible chain tied to its Soviet “freedom”. As there is sung: “I have no other country I know where people breathe so freely”. And, indeed, if there is no true freedom, which is already used to this young woman, it remains to rejoice that we have had, the Soviet people: the ability to breathe freely. In the days of Stalin and that this freedom could be lost every minute, it was forgotten all those who like Gennady Zyuganov, with tears in his eyes stood at the Lenin mausoleum and was sad from the fact that he created the Soviet state no longer exists.
it would Seem that a lot of Soviet man was: and constant work, and a guarantee of a modest and free for each career ladder. It was a lot of what is already there in contemporary Russia. But something always oppressed, especially the Soviet intelligentsia – namely, life locked up. Today it is seen that the main linking of the country created by Lenin, were the “iron curtain” that restricts our lives as an invisible leash. For cost to destroy the “iron curtain”, and certainly the most talented, thoughtful, free people would run away, and nothing would be left from a country founded by Lenin.
And there’s a young woman, the heroine of my story, those fears that we breathe, the remnants of the Soviet intelligentsia, and, moreover, the former documentary – like me. She believes that it takes a few months, well, maybe a year, and it still comes back then a large space of land, which gave her the opportunity to enjoy life as a free man. And in our souls coronavirus sowed the old Soviet fear: what if some emergency will trigger a transfer of all power to the security services, will bring us back in the USSR, and again we’re all the same “iron curtain”? The fact is that we, the representatives of the former Soviet intelligentsia, can not fail to realize that just as “Mr. case” in the face of Gorbachev freed us from the “iron curtain”, just “Mr. case” can divert us from the West, human civilization once again. And why not? In Russia the seemingly unthinkable is always possible. I repeat, all these freedoms that ��s received from the reorganization and who are not very appreciative of modern Russia, fell from heaven, came largely by accident. Do not come to power romantic, sixties Gorbachev went after Chernenko power such hard Marxists, like Grishin, and we would live decades old. Why North Korea along with his Stalinist Communist system lasted for 70 years and is likely to last for more than a decade, and the Soviet Union, militarily powerful power, could not survive at least until the end of the twentieth century?
because Russia plays a huge role, because of the fear of returning to the days of the “iron curtain”, many intellectuals after the “Crimean spring” 2014, began to leave Russia. The vast majority of guests “echo of Moscow”, who share with listeners his “dissenting opinion”, has managed to “reset” their residence in Russia. I am glad that my fellow political scientists, journalists, economists – has been the chance to live and work where they consider it necessary. But sad that we are witnessing a “reset” intellectual Russia. And this undoubted fact is of serious reflection about the future of our country. And here we are confronted with a deep contradiction to our eternal autocratic Russia. Probably really impossible to save our country stability, reviving the traditional “vertical of power”, and for this stability we are paying a terrible price – losing so many talented, gifted people who are living in Russia, many things could do for its prosperity.
There are many objective reasons for the revival of the “iron curtain” in Russia. Authoritarianism has managed to revive us in the last few years. And we need to see that it happened because of freedom, democracy, individual rights as have not had and have no value for the Russian people. Over the past 100 years we have in this respect nothing has changed. Preserved not only the traditional neglect of the Russian people to the values of freedom, but also traditional Russian indifference to the value of human life, survived all that, and brought Lenin’s Bolsheviks to power. And example of this is the madness of the current sacralization, not from fear, but from “the breadth of the Russian soul”, a sadistic murderer Stalin.
And then makes itself felt the deep contradiction of the Russian autocracy. For autocracy, inconsistent with policy, inconsistent with any controversy with the leader of the country, of course, better, when all of these “many imagine themselves intellectuals” are leaving the country. But we must realize that the weaker the intellectual base of a country, the less likely it is to develop and maintain itself. And the worst thing is that there are many objective reasons, whiche lead to the perception of a new “iron curtain” at the majority of the population as routine of life. In fact 70% of the population have no Deposit and live paycheck to paycheck. And 80% do not have passports and have never traveled abroad. The truth is that just as “deep Russian people”, that is at the core of Putin’s electorate, just does not have these passports, never went to rest, as the heroine of my story, to Thailand or to Turkey. And if someone wants to return us all to the Soviet “field commissions”, then no particular outcry from the majority of the population is not the cause.
Objective reason, which in Russia may prompt the government to revive the “iron curtain”, to the rebirth of life with invisible chains, is the fact that our national leader, the leader of the country, in fact, for all his omnipotence, indeed, as he says, is “a slave in the galleys”. The fact is that the Supreme power in Russia by tradition is impossible without constant isolation, without having to every step you were not without protection, without witnesses. And that’s the tragedy of the Russian autocracy, of Russian omnipotence by the way, I saw while working in the CPSU Central Committee. It just so happened that more than a month, in late 1986 and early 1987, I sat in the room next to the office of Gorbachev on the 5th floor of the 1st entrance of the CPSU Central Committee (I then wrote to Gorbachev Preface to the first edition of his three volumes). I, Mikhail Sergeyevich did not speak, but watched his life. And I will forever remain in the memory of all those endless, successive guards. Then I saw that, actually, all this omnipotence for a normal person tragic: on the one hand, he can, but on the other he is locked in his Golden cage. And the drama is Putin’s, in my opinion, is that because of the nature of our so-called vertical of power”, even if he resigns, you still will never like the same Mrs. Merkel, in the summer to go for a vacation in Spain. Self-isolation, which may not get used to the heroine of my story, intelligent lady trapped at his dacha near Moscow, is a verdict for Putin for the rest of his life.
what I mean? And the fact that a person deprived of life, freedom of movement, sentenced to be “a slave in the galleys”, a slave of the Russian autocracy may well be tempted to make their special life is the norm for the whole of Russia. And we need to see that “the Crimean spring”, which led to the isolation of Russia from the West has turned Russia into a besieged fortress, the objective is also pushing for the revival of the old life behind the “iron curtain”. So those intellectuals who did not reset their stay in Russia, more than enough reason to plan your Bud��present already abroad.
But I still believe that Putin will not go to the transformation of emergency, this life in isolation from Europe and from around the world, the norm of Russian life. This pushes a lot, but he will not do it. And not only because as an intelligent man he realizes that the transformation of Russia in the sister North Korea will lead us to ruin. The self-isolation characteristic of the USSR, is quite unnatural and harmful in the conditions of modern civilization. And my optimism is strengthened by the fact that after all Putin is actually a Westerner. He, of course, will never be able to go as a private person to his beloved Leipzig and somewhere alone to drink my beer. But he still, in my opinion, as close as the individual values of the West and of the benefits of his life. Don’t forget, as a rule, in the First Directorate of the KGB came, all those who actually wanted to leave the country and live in the West, with its benefits of freedom. Exactly the party nomenklatura sent their children to the University so that after graduation they could go to the diplomatic work abroad. And hence, from the fact that employees in the First Directorate of the KGB were convinced by the Westerners, all my hopes that actually Putin will never give power to those who want to completely bring us back to the days of the “iron curtain”. Still, I have faith that many of the freedoms granted by the restructuring, and, above all, the right to live freely on the Land, we will remain under the current regime, and after it.
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