Don't forget that blood is dripping from your smartphone

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

If, due to the fault of the pilots, the plane suffered a terrible crash, this does not mean that one should permanently give up traveling in the sky. If a patient tragically died through the fault of doctors, this does not mean that it is necessary to completely renounce medicine.

It is wiser not to repeat past mistakes and draw the right conclusions, because a discredited idea does not cease to be true from this.

But why have we been persistently forced for years to believe that we will no longer be able to return our country - the USSR? Albeit in a new guise, without the old mistakes and excesses, but with the ideals of justice, equality and brotherhood, intellectual, spiritual and technological progress.

Why do the usurers instill in us that there is no alternative to capitalism, that we must live as slaves on the interest of the overweight bourgeois class? We will discuss these and other pressing issues with the brilliant journalist, author and host of the Agitprop TV program, Konstantin Semin.

What, in your opinion, was the Soviet Union, did we fully comprehend this grandiose historical project?

- The Soviet Union was a unique attempt in the history of mankind to prove that another world - not built on robbery and exploitation - is possible. The Soviet Union is not a virus brought in a test tube to Orthodox Russia by the burly Bolsheviks, but the reaction of the rebellious mass of the people, who paid the highest price for the First World War, to a catastrophe, to a crisis, to blood and hunger.

The essence of Marxism, in short, is that capitalism is a system that produces imbalances and lives from one bloody slaughter to another; in the fact that at some point, humanity will be forced to move from capitalism to a different economic structure. The USSR has been destroyed, but this does not mean at all that the wheel of history will slow down and someone will be able to undo the factors that led to its creation.

The disappearance of the USSR is, of course, a tragedy. A tragedy for the fraternal peoples inhabiting the USSR, and for the whole world. We have not only lost a common cultural or economic space, we have robbed vast numbers of people around the world of hope. In various countries, from Latin America to the Middle East, I heard: “What have you done! How could you?"

Today the Soviet Union in a civilizational, metaphysical sense is more alive or dead, is it reviving or dying?

- In a metaphysical sense, the Soviet Union is certainly alive. Cultural, associative inertia is strong, memory is alive. But in the civilizational sense of the Soviet Union, of course, does not exist. Because the USSR is, first of all, an economic order, which implies public ownership of the means of production. If we proceed from this, then the USSR has practically no heirs.

Although it seemed to me symptomatic that in his speech at the big parade in Beijing, the Chinese leader spoke about the ideals of Marxism-Leninism, about justice and about building socialism with Chinese characteristics. Of course, these are mostly just words. But our officials and businessmen who come to China should listen carefully to them. It would be great if, out of solidarity with our Chinese partners, we at least stopped draping the Mausoleum and chasing Stalin's portraits on the eve of the next Victory Day.

Being an ardent anti-Stalinist in his youth, Alexander Zinoviev, at the end of his life, repeatedly said that the Stalinist period was the highest point in the development of Russia, which was irrevocably passed. I would like to know your opinion on this matter?

- I partly agree with this opinion. True, I am convinced that the Stalinist period is a natural and logical continuation of the Leninist period. But what began with the 20th Congress was pure revisionism, which by the 90s turned into total betrayal and reaction. Alas, both Zinoviev himself and many other dissidents had a hand in this. True, some have seen the light, and some, like Solzhenitsyn, continue their anti-Soviet work, even leaving our mortal world.

What is the greatest achievement of Joseph Stalin during the years of the rule of the Soviet ship, you can note?

- Here, probably, there can be no two points of view. This is the creation of such a national economic system and an army, such a state that could win a victory in the World War. Without this victory, you and I would not be discussing now either about socialism or about anything else.

Why is Stalin so hated by our and foreign liberal democrats, why exactly the figure of Stalin has been poured with false slops for so many years?

- Stalin is not an icon or a symbol, not Che Guevara on a T-shirt. Che Guevara is a knight, a romantic. There are many romantics, and they are relatively easy to neutralize. Stalin is a practitioner of Marxism. Stalin is a doctrine of action, an ideology of experience. Debunking Stalin in reality is necessary in order to exclude the possibility of Re-Sovietization, a return to the Soviet experience of state building. The controversy is not about Stalin's personality. Is it decided which way to go further? Should we continue the liberal-market experiment or, finally, turn to the idea of force modernization, relying on the people and on the principle of state ownership of the means of production.

The new historical community - the Soviet people - was an invention of the propaganda machine or a reality, your opinion?

- I think the Soviet people still exist. Although it is gradually being replaced by smaller and wilder tribes and peoples. The degradation of mass consciousness means tribalization - the splitting of society into clans and teips. This is happening in Ukraine, and in Russia, and in Tajikistan, and in Azerbaijan. Everywhere. But the Soviet people are still alive. And he definitely existed.

I saw his outstanding representatives, communicated with them. Having traveled all over my country, I held her cooling bones in my hands. I spoke with the builders of BAM, aged Komsomol members who found themselves in Transbaikalia at the call of my heart. At BAM, by the way, I saw examples of interethnic friendship unthinkable today. Can you imagine a family today where the husband is Azerbaijani and the wife is Armenian? I saw ekranoplanes rusting in the Caspian sun, saw the largest metallurgical plants, filmed reports in design bureaus and electrolysis shops.

The entire post-Soviet elite and bureaucracy, no matter what embroidered shirts they wear, are essentially Soviet. This is bad, since we very often deal with certified scoundrels and traitors, with renegades who took part in the destruction of the USSR and made money on it.

On the other hand, this is partly good, because in every petty bureaucrat deep inside there is still a Soviet schoolchild. They retain at least some behavioral reflexes, some ideas about good and evil. Not all of them, of course, as Ukraine has shown. But Soviet inertia, Soviet education - this is the system of emergency braking that for a long time did not allow this entire vast space to turn into Latin America. Today this inertia is practically exhausted. New generations are coming.

It is all the more surprising to observe an increasingly clear yearning for the USSR among those who have not really seen the USSR. By the way, the analogy with Latin America is really appropriate here. As you remember, after the collapse of the USSR, the Burning Continent was actually given up to be torn apart by the imperialists, who strangled the socialist movements there and established puppet neoliberal governments everywhere.

However, since about 2005, Latin America again began to powerfully move to the left, despite all the opposition from Washington. It's just that the people are so full of the delights of neoliberalism that life itself left no other choice. Hunger and unemployment turned out to be the main teachers of Marxism.

What turned out to be the positive qualities of the Soviet society, in your opinion?

- The meaning of socialism is the upbringing of a new personality, the creation of a new community of people. Building a world in which the word "man" can truly sound proud. Intellectual and moral development of a person, providing a person with opportunities for self-improvement. However, the "positive qualities" that were instilled in the citizens of the USSR from infancy, from "What is good and what is bad" or from "The Story of a Real Hero", lost all their "positivity" as soon as the USSR was gone.

Soviet people in the world of Russian capitalism became the easiest prey. Naivety, purity of thoughts, willingness to sacrifice for the sake of others - all this worked within the collectivist matrix, which, like an eggshell, shielded Soviet society from the aggressive influence of the external environment. As soon as the shell was pierced, it turned out scrambled eggs with blood, and somewhere - an omelet. The most honest were knocked out first. It must be understood that the main danger of capitalism is that it dehumanizes man.

Turns it into a thing. Don't laugh at stupid Americans. Their mechanical smiles are a projection of mechanical souls. I had time to see it very well. Remember how we rave about the fact that Americans are pushing their child into life without waiting for 18 years? It’s not a matter of special concern for his independence, but of ordinary egoism. Dehumanization makes family unnecessary, makes lawsuits between relatives commonplace.

An abnormal situation for a Russian when a company in a restaurant with calculators scatters the bill among themselves - this is dehumanization, only at the micro level. Dehumanization seems to be a moral category, but the reason for dehumanization is the economic order, economic relations. In our country, this process is in full swing now. This, by the way, is a reason for the Church to come closer to the accursed socialists. After all, the transformation of a person into an animal is a common threat for everyone.

At the end of the sixties of the last century, Soviet society, despite the fact that the official ideology categorically denied this, began to acquire more and more consumer character, increasing the demand for material benefits in social and economic policy … the state stopped responding to this public inquiry. Why did this happen?

- I have already used the term revisionism. In fact, there was a gentle, polite betrayal of the original idea. It was clothed in different formulations. The fight against the personality cult, socialism with a human face (before, it was with an animal, it turns out), the convergence of two systems.

The most important thing is that society lost a sense of danger, society was demobilized, there was no clear understanding that with the capture of the Reichstag in 1945 the war did not end, that the war itself was fought not with an individual Hitler, but with the forces of world imperialism.

To put it simply, after the terrible sacrifices and destruction of the Great Patriotic War, Soviet people really wanted to just live. “Let the children live at least” - there was such an attitude. The poem "Do the Russians Want War" is a way to beg our "international partners" not to start a war. No, the Russians didn't want to. Dodged her as best they could. But she caught up with us. First, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, then Egypt, then Afghanistan, now Donbass and Syria.

That is, the aspiration for peace ("Peace-Peace"), absolutely legal and natural for any person, in an atmosphere of total confrontation turned out to be disastrous for the USSR. Remember the Cuban missile crisis. The American generals, as you know, were ready to go to the end, to mutual destruction.

Perhaps the reason is that the Americans have no idea what this very end might look like, because the United States practically did not suffer during the Second World War. Yet the Cold War was primarily a duel of nerves. The nerves of the Soviet elite broke down.

I remember the thought of the American historian Christopher Simpson, whom we met during the preparation of the film Biochemistry of Betrayal. Simpson considers the Cuban missile crisis (and any nuclear confrontation in general) to be an element not so much of a real one as of a psychological war. Someone has to give slack. We gave up the slack, what really.

Of course, this can be attributed to some kind of naivety. Still, not long ago the Americans and I hugged on the Elbe, and here on you are the enemies. But they themselves regrouped very quickly. Not a trace remained of the friendly image of the USSR, created by military propaganda in 1941. Psychological warfare means the ability to represent the enemy as the enemy. For the United States, the Russians became them immediately. Totally. Soviet internationalism constantly tried to discern human traits in the enemy.

This explains the frenzied popularity of Hemingway, the interest in American literature, the appearance of films like "The Man from Boulevard des Capuchins" or "TASS is authorized to declare." In the latter, by the way, although it happens in a conditional Nagonia, there is a full set of destructive images - and the rehabilitation of Vlasovism, and the condemnation of Stalin, and sympathy for individual American citizens, and sympathy for the Western way of life in general (a funny scene - in some series intelligence officer Slavin says to his counterpart: "Let's have dinner at McDonald's!") That is, the United States was treated without hatred. Not like Hitler. And that was a big mistake.

The "Containment Doctrine" developed by D. Kennan (when the enemy is tied hand and foot, without removing the finger from the nuclear trigger) has brought its results. Korea is far away, Vietnam is far away, Nicaragua is far away (remember the late Soviet jokes about Honduras?) But the consumer goods store is here, the imported tape recorder is here, the dealer with Beatles records is here. Empty store shelves are here.

But the origins of all this - of course, in the thaw. The thaw is that shameful time when the nomenklatura, having got rid of the Stalinist legacy, began to quietly dismantle the system. All sins, all vices, all philistine baseness, mercilessly ridiculed by Mayakovsky, Zoshchenko, Ilf and Petrov, were declared victims of the repressive regime and rehabilitated.

I can't imagine how, just 15 years after the war, dudes could start in Moscow? Where? How could the Soviet stage suddenly start timidly at first, and then completely imitate the western stage? Well, the continuation and denouement turned out to be a complete pattern. The films "Garage" or "Irony of Fate" are after all a verdict, this is a disaster, when what began with "Chapaev" and "The Elusive Avengers" suddenly turned out to be reduced to a furniture set. Any more or less brainy expert at the American Embassy in Moscow should have seen all this.

Why, over time, moral and ideological dogmatics diverged more and more from the realities of everyday life in the USSR?

- As I said, the elite itself has lost faith in the idea. Imbued with a desire to live better. Lost the sense of danger. This immediately affected the content and quality of the propaganda work. Our people are very well aware of the falsehood. And now the idea was discredited by false interpreters. But the trick is that she has not ceased to be faithful from this.

Let's now talk about the main reasons for the collapse / collapse of the USSR … Why did the country collapse?

- Because the elite has decayed. She lost faith in the idea and lost the psychological confrontation with the Western elite. The conversion of the power of the Soviet Union into personal backyard property began. By and large, the people were offered to play the survival lottery.

Everyone was confident that they would win and go to the capitalist tomorrow. But it turned out that in order to pay for the winnings of some, it is necessary to dispose of 15-20 million others. Actually, in mathematical terms, we simply exchanged 15-20 million people (plus civil wars, plus degradation and desolation) for the opportunity to have 3 smartphones, sit in traffic jams in personal cars and eat rubber sausage. It's nice to hold a Chinese smartphone in your hands. Just remember that blood is dripping from it.

Why are a number of banal and clichéd reasons constantly voiced in the public discussion about the collapse of the USSR?

- Because the main task of such a discussion, as well as the main task of de-Stalinization today, is to exclude the possibility of restoration, restarting the Soviet project, what I call Re-Sovietization. Everything is simple and logical here.

The possessing classes are most interested in de-Stalinization and de-Sovietization, those who pulled the USSR apart and enriched themselves. Who wants to spit out a piece that has not been chewed, break the accreted joints? However, according to all the well-known rules of dialectics, such violent de-Sovietization only strengthens the demand for re-Sovietization. And, in truth, the country is now in such circumstances that it simply has no other way to survive. The economic crisis and unemployment will teach new generations anew what their parents so thoughtlessly renounced.

And why is the idea constantly imposed on us that the restoration of the Union is absolutely impossible, in any form and under no circumstances, why are we being told that this is an absolute utopia? Germany means you can unite, but we can't ?

- Because this is pure sophistry. "He who does not grieve for the USSR, does not have a heart, who wishes to return, has no mind." Pure falsification. Of course, the restoration of the USSR is possible. Moreover, this is not such a long story if there is political will. I, of course, will immediately hear a hiss from the corner - they say, this is populism. But populism is just the fulfillment of the will of the people.

And this is the worst scenario for those who drink his blood. After all, the USSR is not a geographic concept. The USSR may also be located within the borders of Russia. The main thing is the essence. The essence begins with the restoration of state, or rather, social control over the means of production. With the restoration of the ideology of justice. Trust me as a person who made a somewhat prophetic film about Ukraine in 2009, if we had such an ideology then, many catastrophic scenarios could have been avoided.

For you, the collapse of the USSR and the revival of historical Russia represented by the Russian Federation, of which it is a part, are they synonymous concepts or not?

- I am a citizen of the Soviet Union. Like a huge number of people in our country, I still sing to myself the text of the previous anthem at the sound of the anthem. To be honest, he is an order of magnitude stronger from a literary point of view. And the music of the anthem in today's arrangement has become toothless, emasculated. There used to be iron, timpani, hard rhythm, not molasses smeared on a plate.

And from the point of view of the formation of a single self-consciousness, of course, the phrase "Great Russia united forever" today gives an exhaustive answer to the pathetic anti-Soviet babble of the nationalists. How can not only the Russian peoples now unite their Rus'? Bell ringing and muezzin's prayer? But this is the surest path to mutual intolerance and enmity. The brainy expert at the American Embassy won't let you lie.

What is modern Russia, in your opinion?

- This is, first of all, a weak, unstable capitalist economy, feeding on the inertia of the Soviet project. Pay attention - we have not only revived the Soviet anthem. All the most successful TV series today exploit nostalgia for the USSR to one degree or another. We still have Soviet firmware, which, in fact, causes the hatred of the West and the desire to destroy us.

So we must stop being ashamed of this and realize that this is our great dignity, not a curse. It will not be possible to stop the offensive of fascism (the most reactionary detachment of capitalism) with the help of the Russian version of capitalism, with the help of "Sun Strikes" and "Battalions". Only socialism can be opposed to fascism.

Under what conditions will Russia be able to revive, given that the "Western partners" have once again written a "black mark" to us and are preparing to carry out the sentence?

- Subject to a complete change in the economic structure. Without the economy, the confrontation with the West will end as sadly as it did in 1917.

Is it possible to achieve the declared change of the country's development course by evolutionary way, or is there only one way - revolution?

- A revolution from below in the presence of nuclear weapons in the world is fraught with the fact that nothing will be left of the country at all. Lenin managed to run a mouse over the abyss and snatch the country, which has already been divided into 16 protectorates … Today, no one will provide such a chance. I continue to hope for a revolution from above. This is what "Agitation and Propaganda" exists for.