We played volleyball during recess during school days, but of course we ran to classes after the bell. It was not always possible to appear in the first place – after all, you have to figure out who won, but in the middle of the lesson we were all in our places. Our author tried to give the gasping “volleyball players” a question to fill in right away. If the questioner gave up, he told us in a long and artistic way how little we understand in life. And he once asks me in such a situation: to what do you attribute the phrase “The monster oblo, naughty, huge, looking and barking”? (Translated from Russian to Russian, this means “The beast is round (fat), mean (or vulgar), huge, with a hundred mouths and barking.”)
“Of course, this is Russian bureaucracy! In the Government Inspector Khlestakov said: “And at that very moment couriers, couriers, couriers … you can only imagine thirty-five thousand couriers!” This means that there are many more people sending these couriers! And, of course, everyone is speechless in the face of what the bureaucracy is doing.
Recall how Chichikov explained to Manilov: “I am used to not deviating from the civil law in anything, although I suffer for it in the service, but excuse me: duty is a sacred thing to me, the law – I am a fool before the law ” Therefore, of course, referring to this phrase in the local bureaucracy i will be there.
The author did not praise me. It turned out that this is an epitaph from Alexander Radishchev’s book “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow”, published in 1790, and the beast is an allegory of the autocratic serf system.
But the system comes and goes, and our bureaucracy, it seems, is eternal. Also, the author was not interested in Radishchev’s thoughts, but in my opinion. That’s why I insist on my answer! My work over the past decades in various fields has convinced me that bureaucracy cannot be renewed, that “stozevna”. Then you must love it! More or less the same as Stanislavsky loved the theater: “Do you love bureaucracy as I do, that is, with all the strength of your soul, with all the enthusiasm, with all the madness, more than anything else in the world? good and true!”.
Managing a scourge you don’t understand is surprisingly difficult! But our bureaucracy succeeds by using a few simple tricks. The first is to combine or separate. Why this is not clear, and no one explains these reasons, even to us mortals.
For example, in Moscow, II Kalina combined schools (usually five in one) and kindergartens more than ten years ago. The head of the department explained it this way: “Whatever cucumber goes into a good marinade – small, large, fresh, slightly salted – is averaged, they all pickle equally well. Therefore, even combining ordinary schools with deviant ones is not scary: if young people with antisocial behavior are placed in a good social environment (primarily school), then they will also become worthy students. And we still live in this incredible reality! In these “new schools in Moscow” there are about 4,000 students and 300 teachers each! How can this be managed? The principal cannot even see and remember teachers, let alone students. It’s great that we have such outstanding people! A wonderful teacher – II Kalina, who managed to see pickles in our children, now heads the Department of Educational Technologies of the Faculty of Pedagogical Education of Moscow State University, possibly training new “vegetable growers”.
Bureaucracy is universal! The Ministry of Science and Education, which currently manages the scientific institutes formerly managed by the Russian Academy of Sciences (which has ceased to be a scientific institution since 2014), decided that it would be better to merge some of them and evacuate their campuses. full. Why? incomprehensible. Probably, according to the proverb: “A woman with a wheelbarrow is easier for a mare!”.
From the beginning of 2023, the Ministry of Defense is creating two new districts, Moscow and Leningrad, and uniting a number of brigades into divisions. While Minister of Defense, AE Serdyukov converted divisions into brigades, apparently because it was better that way. Big things can be scaled down. Now it was decided to do the opposite – divisions are better than brigades! It’s hard to do more with less… A wave of reassignment, restructuring and spending. I would like to hope that it will cost less than a trillion rubles, but it could be more. And is now the time for that? The country is conducting a special military operation and many other issues need to be addressed urgently. Is it now up to the army’s management games?
The distinguished Russian writer ME Saltykov-Shchedrin in his work “History of a City” cites the notes and instructions of the mayors of the city of Glupov. One commands in communication with subordinates: “Encourage to be tough and not look!”. These are the foundations of us and possibly our world bureaucracy! It seems that everything became clear after the disastrous experiment with schoolchildren with Moscow cucumbers. For example, at the initiative of the department, many schools have been transferred to a five-day period. Kids have 8-9 lessons! It’s hard to even imagine, but we live in it. The international rankings show that everything is getting worse, our children are in the top ten among children from other countries. We in universities try to give higher education to those who do not actually have secondary school … But everything remains as it is. But you can “Don’t Look”!
Now the tragedy of a Russian scientist is that he has fewer publications per year than the Ministry of Education would like.
Why do they need it?! The country needs solutions to scientific and engineering problems, not articles in foreign journals! But you can be determined and don’t look. This is easy, because among the employees of the ministry there are almost no people who have nothing to do with science or the leadership of scientific activities. In addition, we can recall the principle of Peter, who studied bureaucratic hierarchies: “In a hierarchical system, each individual tends to rise to his own level of incompetence.” Popular wisdom says that if there are more than 1000 people in the management structure, it no longer needs a management object.
The main feature of bureaucracy is secrecy. I remember the scientific communism teacher who taught us in year 6: “Before thinking about such questions, you should take notes on Marx for two years.” Or like this: “Your official location does not allow me to answer this question.” Or: “Your consent form does not allow you to respond. But don’t worry. We have everything, only very secretly.
We have two eternal questions: “Who is to blame? What shall we do?” I had to set up two centers in close cooperation, one in Moscow and the other where help was needed.And again Saltykov-Shchedrin: “When and what bureaucrat was not convinced that Russia is a pie you can come and eat?”
The bureaucracy’s algorithms are universal – when I asked why so much money was stolen for the local temple (local historians say about a dozen), the clergyman replied, “The devil is strong.” Frankly, only the Attorney General, not mere mortals, can settle matters of God and the world. For more than 30 years, money has been allocated for the development of electronics, government programs have been adopted. And where are the home electronics, computers, cell phones, servers, tablets, networks? This mystery is great.
However, it probably doesn’t matter who is to blame. The bureaucracy does not give up on itself! British writer Evelyn Waugh, in her early 20th-century novel Vile Flesh, explained that graduating from a prestigious British school is enough and you can do whatever you want or do nothing. Such problems worried even Karl Marx, who wrote that “the state is the private property of the bureaucracy.”
And again the words of the deputy governor of Tver and Ryazan Saltykov-Shchedrin: “They began to oppress the patriotism … It seems that they were stealing …”. key indicator
Love the bureaucracy! Appreciate and work! There is no other way to beat him. Otherwise, it will beat us.
The author expresses his personal opinion, which may not coincide with the editors’ position.