by Pyotr Trenin-Strausov
[REGNUM] One of the most common tricks is to scare each other with ghosts. In Russian history, ghosts appeared more than once, and each time the consequences of believing in their existence were deplorable.
A group of people who found themselves in power in the 90s, for legitimation and self-justification, frightened themselves and those around them with the fact that the USSR would come to life. They frightened - and built themselves new palaces with fireplaces, implemented dubious unprofitable projects for the state, allowed themselves to do everything without regard to the rules, decency and norms, to avenge real or imagined oppression and insults.
Yes, the collapse of the Soviet Union was not only the biggest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century, but also the biggest collapse of normality, decency and morality for tens of millions of people in ordinary everyday life.
Yes, this collapse was not forced, it was optional, illogical and did not bring anything comparable to losses in return.
The reasons for this collapse: unprofessionalism, hiding behind the "new conditions", irresponsibility, greed and insensitivity, turning into immorality, lack of respect for the people. And terrible, infernal hypocrisy.
That is why, because of the immorality of 1991-1992, constantly justified in the Bolshevik way, liberals still do not receive support in society.
But the non-support of the liberals does not mean at all that the idea of freedom is alien to the Russian people, that they are a pathological imperialist. This is wrong. It's just that the Russian people do not need freedom at the cost of losing honor, and the Russian people value the empire for justice and normality, and not blood and violence.
Frightening with the ghost of the USSR helped to normalize the rejection of ordinary everyday morality and morality. In the nineties, it was customary to make fun of a simple Soviet woman who said that there was no sex in the USSR. The taunts were so loud and so arrogant that they could crush, laugh and troll anyone who tried to defend morality. But what's the bottom line?
Thirty years have passed. Now sex is everywhere, even where it shouldn't be. Got better? Do we need this kind of sex?
For "sex" with the privatization of inefficient industries, we paid for the rejection of the concepts of valor and honor in the police and civil service. We paid for "sex" with political freedom and a multi-party system with one of the best education systems in the world. For "sex" with the lack of censorship, we got massive creative sterility and rampant vulgarity. The films that we still look at as works of art and want to revisit were shot incomparably more between 1959 and 1991 than from 1991 to the present time. And this is the same 32 years. We paid for "sex" with the Council of Europe in the "Big Eight" with domestic aircraft manufacturing, science and much more. And most importantly - everyday morality and ordinary morality.
But we still got something in return. We have become sophisticated. You won’t laugh at us now as much as at that naive and inexperienced woman who does not understand what awaits her in the future, a woman on Soviet TV.
When asked by an American participant if there is sex in Soviet television advertising, Soviet participant Lyudmila Ivanova answers: “We don’t have sex, and we are categorically against it.”
For this sophistication, the naive and uncorrupted people paid a high price. Yes, formally on their own, but in reality - as a result of the threat that a ghost will come. At first it worked great in the 1996 elections. Then - in 2011-2012. - They tried to scare us again. Communism was painted over on the ghost and imperial colors were added. It didn’t work, and foreign countries came to the rescue: immediately after Trump’s victory, the Democratic Party in the United States added foreign special effects to the ghost to make it look livelier and scarier. After February 2022, the whole world was spammed with images of a resurrecting ghost.
But we know that it is only a ghost. We remember that during his lifetime the deceased forbade freedom of enterprise, private property, introduced state atheism, settled the eyes of the sovereign in the beds of citizens, established the dictatorship of the absent proletariat, shot and exiled, introduced comrades' courts and mandatory membership in the pioneers, Komsomol and parties to achieve heights.
There is no more of this, it has died irretrievably. Revive a ghost - there are no bad ones and never were.
There is no need to be afraid of revenge, nationalism, aggressiveness and totalitarianism. The Russian people do not want this - they need normality, decency, honesty and trust around.
The time has come to collect the image of the country in which we want to live, without looking back at the specter of the USSR, but also without fear of the specter of liberalism of the 90s.
With good morals. With respect and dignity. With GOSTs for sausage. With an appeal to the elders by name and patronymic. With confidence in the state and its concern for citizens. With Uncle Styopa - now in a police uniform. With the best education and free healthcare. With safe cities. With enthusiasm. With our Sherlock Holmes and Winnie the Pooh. With respect for work, not money. With attention to abilities and talents, and not to the wallet.
With freedom and individual rights. With privacy. With private property and initiative. With government grants and investments. With a strong currency and large-scale construction projects. With new industrialization and innovative productions. With openness to the world and global business. With visa-free travel and international connections.
With processions and Christening at Easter. With prayers in churches. With prayers and prayers in mosques. With Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah in the synagogues. With meditations in datsans. With an accurate knowledge of the dates of the reigns of all emperors from Peter to Nicholas II, the Romanovs to Peter and the Rurikovich. With an understanding of the tragedy of the Time of Troubles. With the comfort of old houses with thick walls and hot tea. With elements of folk clothes in modern costumes. With obligatory school trips to historical sites and local history museums. With non-traditional folk cuisine and the habit of cooking and eating at home and inviting guests.
We need traditions and roots from the pre-revolutionary past - on which we have been standing for a thousand years so far and without which we would not exist.
We need social justice and normal human morality for the entire society from the Soviet era - which was not the case in the empire.
We need freedom and enterprise - the main thing that we have learned so well in thirty years, which was not there in Soviet times.
Various forces will periodically try to scare us with ghosts and offer to choose. Who do you love more - freedom or homeland? Individual or state? Mom or dad?
But they are easy to recognize: they are infuriated by the best image of the future of Russia - three grandiose flags in the waters of the Gulf of Finland in St. Petersburg: imperial - Soviet - Federation.
We don't have to choose. We need everything. Because we know that ghosts don't exist, and we move on with the best history has given us.