A spontaneous and somewhat frightening process is taking place in public discourse today – nationality in the traditional Uvarov sense is coming into vogue. For those who do not know, in the 19th century Count Uvarov published a document called “The Theory of Official Nationality”. According to the author’s assessments, Russian identity should be based on three pillars – Orthodoxy, autocracy, nationality.
I make a reservation right away: I am a fairly conservative person, revolutionary street marches make me smile at best. But I’m afraid I’ve become a reluctant participant in this process that will swallow us all and myself – just as Shvonder might swallow Sharikov.
A decade ago, I was one of the first public writers to start making a loud mockery of liberal intellectuals—the “subtlety” of taste, the snobbery, and whatever else is out there. As they say, it was not mainstream at the time. And now it’s scary – it happened!
Actually, it’s not scary. And the fact that, along with the liberal regional committee, they also began to mock intellectual elites of all kinds (and there is, however distasteful to many). Every complex thought, every otherness! The examples are simple: as soon as it became fashionable to ridicule the contingent Serebrennikov, it suddenly became clear that any non-classical theatrical production is a disgrace and “where money is spent.” A college girl seriously proved to me that the paintings of a famous avant-garde painter are bad, because she, a college girl, is incomprehensible. “Uncertain” became the subject of discussion! But the author of this column remembers when it was embarrassing.
Under the runway of public opinion, any intellectual enjoyment above a secondary school education began to wane. The mass user of social networks, frankly, divides the world into black and white, mocking “this residue” when it comes to anything non-massive. And such a position is explained by a certain “nationality”, a certain proximity to ties. I wondered where it came from because even Count Uvarov never thought to deny the value of education and culture, and I understood.
Olga Sedakova has a wonderful lesson, its depth is incredible – “Mediocrity as a social danger.” In it he introduces the term “simple man”. This isn’t about the snobbish attitude of some ‘chosen’ towards some ‘simple’, not at all. The author talks about the social structure that took shape under the Soviet regime and turned into a terrible monster. Probably everyone has heard: “This is incomprehensible to a simple person.” The films flew to the shelf where they lay for years because they were “incomprehensible to the common man.” The books were not published, the performances were not published. History I think everyone knows and remembers. And at the center of this rhetoric was an abstraction, the fiction of a “simple man” who should serve as a garden whore of culture. make sure you understand!
I will not give here tens and hundreds of examples where truly great directors, writers and artists remained in poverty and obscurity for decades and sometimes until their death. Lying on the surface – for Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita, a persistent schoolboy, today’s literary hit came out almost 20 years after the author’s death.
And now, to my amazement, I observe the resurrection of the process, so to speak. The only difference is that it was not the Central Committee of the CPSU that imposed this paradigm on society. And society itself gladly sang the “ordinary man” song, placing it at the center of cultural discourse. I will not name the people who carefully imposed this idea, they are known without me.
In short, the baby was thrown out with the water. Together with the liberals, they are ready to destroy culture and replace it with agitation. Or comics, whichever you prefer.
And right now, it seems to me, it’s time to say that culture is valuable because of its evolving complexity. Art owes nothing to anyone, to serve any ideology, even more so. A patriotic poet would not be gifted because he was understood by the “simple man” and supported the party’s line. A liberal is not mediocre just because he is a liberal! In culture, everything is arranged in a completely different way, it germinates, as a rule, not thanks to it, but despite this!
And finally, it is not at all a shame to know more than a “simple person” needs to rest their souls in a conditional “VKontakte”. Moreover, it is a shame not to know, and it is a shame not to want to know!
And Russian nationality is not simplicity in the sense of unicellularity, but complexity, Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov would not allow me to lie.
He didn’t follow the fish convoy with shoes on, I think his grateful descendants will reduce all public considerations to a black and white paradigm and a few short thoughts like Pinocchio’s.
The author expresses his personal opinion, which may not coincide with the editors’ position.