Jule, 09, 2005
Putin's Ideology – an Ideology of Catastrophism
It is surprising, how quickly the Russian authority has got used to the resource of accidents. Radio and TV air is filled with information on accidents: about falling of helicopters, about run cars, about fallen houses. Such was not at Brezhnev (and today's regime differs with it from the Brezhnev's one, which was constructed on keeping back of information).
The information on accidents has replaced publicity. If to consider, that freedom of speech is measured by presence of the information about blown up, crippled, killed, dismembered – it is such, blossoming of the freedom of speech!
As a matter of fact, we have taken it from democracy. In days of democracy Gleb Pavlovskiy was a director of the agency "Post factum" and, standing in jeans overalls, with a pencil behind his ear, constantly filled the society with the information on these accidents. Here there was a traffic accident of two cars, there someone was killed, and here someone was blown up. Democracy is an empire of accidents. People have been literally terrorized with these accidents. I ask: whether they generated modern terrorist Putin's regime. (Actually, it will not stop to be a terrorist one even having added the particle "counter". Add this particle "counter" to the word "criminal". It will be "counter-criminal". Add it to the word "villain" – it will be "counter-villain". But it should have been anti-villain, anti-criminal! So, in fact, the particle "counter" was chosen not casually!).
Now Gleb has become an adviser of Putin, and we already see the unceasing machine on manufacture of accidents and information on accidents.
It is impossible to turn on a radio set and not to hear the news about the next explosion, and if not in a street, in a mine. The information programs are begun with such a darling and already for a long time habitual phrase, "We shall start with urgent news".
Newspapers are overfilled with savoring of details of partitions of bodies, murders of old women, castration of the chiefs by secretaries and the devil only knows what else. In the same way - through the prism of accidents – they describe the world: in the USA the hurricane "Isabella" storms, in Austria there is a meter layer of snow, in Czechia there is a flood, in Italy a bus has turned over. It turns out, that the whole world is filled with accidents. There is nothing meaner, than such an "ideology catastrophism". First of all, it accustoms to indifference. They say, in went out to their balcony, has a laugh, then again entered their apartments and sat down at their TVs. That is, in other words, they apprehended it as TV news! Then, the truth, they regained consciousness and ran out to the street with shouts, "A house is blown up! A house is blown up!"
I am surprised to how quickly we have accustomed to the catastrophic perception of life. We do not react to anything any more. The sense of the ideology of catastrophism is that people perceive any bad news well, because "even worse happens". For example, I was said, how a conductor of a train together with a militiaman was throwing out from the tambour at full speed of the train a drunkard and when she was told, "What are you doing, he will be broken!", the answer was such, "In Chechnya young guys are lost". That is, it turns out, that because of the young guys lost in the Chechen Republic ; it is possible to throw a passenger out from the train!
I am afraid, very soon we shall stop to react to anything. To explosions of houses, and to murder of people at daylight. And the more such emergencies happen in Russia, the more often workers of special services with inscriptions the "Ministry of the Emergency Measures" will be seen in the screen of TVs, and the extreme situations will gradually be transformed into the state of emergency...
Andrei Novikov, an independent analyst, for Chechenpress 09.07.05
http://chechenpress.co.uk/english/news/2005/07/09/03.shtml