Patriotism
Strange disputes are about patriotism. Sometimes you stop understanding what people are arguing about. The so-called patriots and the so-called liberals argue about this:"We love Russia." "And we love and want good for her!" "But you do not respect Russian history! "" We respect, but we believe that if something was bad, then we must say: it was bad. Do you think that everything has always been good? "" No, we do not think so, but, for example, we will not allow the name of Stalin to be dirty ... "" And for us Stalin is a bloody tyrant, but we are proud of Alexander the Second. Do you think that a person who loves the Motherland has no right to such an opinion? "
The question is churned out very carefully.
Of course, patriotism is love for the motherland. Love manifested in deeds and in all life’s journey (I didn’t go abroad, I teach Russian mathematics for three kopecks, every year I go to the Victory Parade and give flowers to veterans, I fight on the Internet for the purity of the Russian language, I equip my yard, I read to children for the night Russian fairy tales, support our hockey players, etc., etc.). To love the Motherland secretly is somehow silly. If you love, you manifest.
The dispute between patriots "patriots" and patriots "liberals" is not that they show love in different ways. Each of us shows it in our own way. Someone, sitting abroad, drinks vodka for dumplings on holidays, sings military songs alone and writes patriotic posts in LiveJournal. Love too. And, probably, such love on all life abroad is imprinted.
Patriots- "liberals" believe that it is necessary to love the Motherland quietly, to dissolve this love in civil actions, not to put it forward, etc. And patriots- "patriots" consider it necessary to mean this love, to express, to express in symbols, to demonstrate. Essentially, we are talking about differences in the structure of identity.
I recognize that a person of liberal views carries love for the Motherland (that is, for Mr. Gozman it is difficult for me to recognize this, as well as, for example, for Mr. Prokhorov, but why not recognize such love, for example, for ordinary activists of Yabloko ?) But carries it in another way. For patriot patriotism, patriotism is in the “I am for others” area. This is the part of "I" that requires a demonstration, which should be perceived by others as the core of the image of me. In a “liberal” patriot, patriotism (when it is) is an intimate, intimate feeling, not quite suitable for loud demonstrations.
It seems to me that my thinking is fair. “Liberals” usually indicate that demonstrating patriotism with St. George ribbons on cars and repost of patriotic pictures on social networks is vulgar. Others go so far as to resent noisy military parades and other mass demonstrations of love for the motherland. I personally do not remember that the “patriots” demanded that everyone go with the ribbon of St. George and repost the portrait of Marshal Zhukov. Usually they require not to interfere in the expression of feelings, not to offend patriotic feelings. Yes, sometimes they are "offended" for no particular reason, but they still do not require the "liberal": "Express patriotism the way I do it." But the “liberals” are very often outraged by such an expression of feelings and propagandize the idea that patriotism should be a “hot silence” (this is still the same Mr. Gozman quoted Vasily Rozanov - one might even think that he read Rozanov!). It turns out that the "liberals" are fighting to change the structure of identity among the majority of Russian citizens. I don’t wear the St. George ribbons, I usually stay in "hot silence", I consider Karamzin to be the ideal of citizenship (who, by the way, wasn’t always recognized as Russian, he had a very European look), but I wasn’t annoyed by St. George ribbons on cars and portraits of Zhukov on personal pages on social networks. Yes, my feelings for the Motherland have not been put forward, the idea of the secrecy of civil feeling is very clear to me, but how can patriot symbols of Russia be angry with Russia? If there is this love in your identity, then you are my fellow citizen and my brother. And what kind of structure does your identity acquire, how does “I am for myself” and “I am for others” correlate - your business.
Thus, “liberal” patriots insist that the structure of identity among our fellow citizens is wrong. Well, okay, someone considers it indecent to express civil feelings in hypertrophied forms, that this supposedly emasculates the feeling itself, etc. At the same time, most liberals consider it quite decent, acceptable and a good thing to demonstrate sexual identity at a gay parade. I am almost indifferent to this problem, although I would prefer never to see such shows in Russia. To me, in principle, it seems indecent to manifest sexual otherness in collective processions. Let, you know, homosexuality remains a "hot silence." But no! Sexual predilections must be expressed loudly, and love for the Motherland, you see, must remain an intimate affair.
Now I’m talking about this averaged, schematized liberal, which gentlemen like Gozman represent to us (by the way, I don’t know how he treats the gay parade, but I’m sure that the ATP structure he heads is strictly positive). Demonstration of civil feelings is indecent and they are against such a demonstration, and demonstration of sexual preferences is decent and even attaches us to the civilized world ... You have to agree that such liberals, which I describe, have a deformed morality.
But, after all, they do not consider the expression of any civil feelings to be obscene - for example, they consider solidarity with convicts in various criminal / quasi-criminal cases as mandatory for demonstration. As well as a sense of protest.
In other words:
White ribbons are recommended.
Rainbow flags are welcome.
St. George ribbons are condemned.
It turns out that liberal "patriotism" is when it is a shame for the Motherland. Is not it so? If participation in the Motherland is the only thing that is indecent to advertise, otherwise it is difficult to interpret it. I emphasize: if you are not at all a supporter of expressing feelings openly and prefer quiet, intimate feelings, then this speaks of your temperament or ... I do not know ... about aesthetic preferences, say (I love Russia as in Tarkovsky’s “Mirror”, and not in the "Alexander Nevsky" Eisenstein). But if you welcome the expression of all the feelings (even quite intimate ones), except for the feeling towards the Motherland, then, most likely, you are ashamed of the Motherland. And such shame is imposed on others. Like, love the motherland to health, but be ashamed of her. In the language of LGBT research, this is called "stocked mentality". Interestingly, homosexuality is taken out of the closet, and patriotism is hidden there. Am I exaggerating?
Why are the "patriots" proud of their homeland, and the "liberals" of the motherland ashamed? Why do "liberals" impose "stocked patriotism"? I suggest a hypothesis. Maybe they have a common definition of patriotism (“active love for the Motherland”), but the concepts of “Motherland” are different. For a patriotic "liberal" Motherland is a country to which you are involved in the fact of citizenship (birth, education - choose the one you want). And for "patriot" it is a country that is dear to you, i.e. she is part of you, and you are part of her. And not even a country, but some kind of spiritual and material reality in which you are rooted. For example, a man was born and grew up in the USSR, and now he has the citizenship of the country of the Russian Federation. But the homeland is one, it is continuous. The feeling of kinship connects you with the earth, history, people, literature and music, with the language - the spiritual and material cosmos in which you took place, and you yourself - this is a complex system of spiritual and material connections. In the "liberal", the Motherland is what he dwells in, what he got. These people, this land, this literature - my habitat. I (i.e., the "liberal") should treat this environment prudently. If I did not go abroad, I accept this corridor of possibilities. And I begin to dwell in it - taking something (Pushkin, there, Ivan Alekseich Bunin, Academician Sakharov), but rejecting something, exposing uprooting (damn scoop, for example). And the pain of the "patriot" and "liberal" is different. Saltykov-Shchedrin, very critical of Russian history, said: "I love Russia to the heart’s pain." The “liberal” I described these words can repeat (like Rozanov, without reading the author’s books), but they cannot be understood as the bearer of “chulanned patriotism”. "Heart pain" - because the native is so imperfect, so sick, etc. The "liberal" hurts that life here does not correspond to his master's plans. I want, they say, that here was like in France. And here - Stalinism, the legacy of the Gulag, the Orthodox obscurantists with their prayers. It would be nice to root out all this! "Patriot" can not "uproot" what it is essentially connected with. If it is imperfect, then the heart hurts. The Motherland suffers - and you suffer. Do not worry and indignant, and - you suffer! Together with the motherland. The face, at first glance, is thin but significant. "I" is otherwise arranged. In some, through living nerve connections with the native land, in others through a hypertrophied self, an artificial rupture. Since it is impossible to completely break the link between "I" and "habitat", patriotism is driven into the closet. In liberal people. The posthumans have no homeland - they are arranged quite differently.
These are two anthropological concepts. They now randomly received the names “patriotism” and “liberalism” from us. "Patriotism" interprets man as a system of connections, living relationships. "Liberalism" interprets man as a free subject in the world of objects. Since Russia does not provide an appropriate lifestyle and historical experience for the second concept, we should be ashamed of the Motherland: "They say it is embarrassing, of course, but I live in such a Motherland." For a “patriot,” it is quite natural to demonstrate unity with the Homeland — after all, he really does not separate himself from the earth, ancestors, history.
When "liberals" say that the government privatizes patriotism, they talk about themselves. They believe that this can be somehow privatized. And - it is impossible. You can privatize some characters, say. But the government does not prohibit patriotic symbols from being used by all citizens. Well, Putin should not hold a parade? And in general - he should not talk about love for the motherland? Obama says, Xi Jinping says, Merkel says. And this is an absolutely noble practice common to all great states (and very characteristic of our tradition). A national politician will be an idiot if he does not use patriotic symbols. Here belolentochnye leaders are like idiots: they are removed from the patriotic symbols. They, so that the authorities would not privatize these same symbols, should shout, tearing the voice: we are embodying the Russian traditions (Radishchev, Belinsky and so on)! that we are raising the banner of the struggle for the ancestral Russian ideals! we embody Orthodox values! we will now quote Nekrasov and Yesenin! Since they do not use such symbols, and the authorities use them, they complain that Putin has privatized something there. I personally do not care that Putin speaks about the Motherland (that is, I do not care that the political leader is not alien to patriotic ideas, but no more) - I will wear or not wear St. George ribbons, I will love or dislike Stalin -Lenin-Nicholas II - in accordance with my sense of the Motherland, my pain, my ideals. I do not know what "privatize patriotism" is. I do not understand this. It is possible to manipulate patriotic feelings, but then it is necessary to say this: the people, they say, are very trusting among us, being led to patriotic rhetoric. But this does not remove the problem: if you want to be with the people, demonstrate patriotism, and the people will figure out which of you is more convincing.
And one more thing the liberals say: the state should not, they say, teach young people how to love their homeland; they should not broadcast patriotic symbols and impose. Here again I turn to the Russian experience and the experience of the great powers. Our state has always taken care of this. Always in the United States took care of it. And in China. And in Europe (at least until the middle of the XX century). And the countries of the beloved Baltic States are engaged in the upbringing of Baltic patriotism. And Georgia, when loved by some liberals, Saakashvili cared. And in modern Russia this should not be. Why should not? Because it forms a relationship of man with the national cosmos. And kinship is not necessary.
That's the difference. Liberal patriotism is "barbarous patriotism", allowed only as an active desire to grow roots in the environment, without burdensome symbols, without appropriate upbringing. This “liberalism” is not only a political ideology, it is a new anthropological breed and a new anthropological ideal.
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