On the Day of Unity and Friendship of the Slavs, talk about unity and friendship is not yet
The fact that today - 25 June - Slavs around the world celebrate the Day of friendship and unity among themselves, not every current Slav knows. The name of this solemn day sounds loud, its essence is lofty, but what about the content? Is this unity as a certain fact, or is it another “holiday-appeal”, meaning condescending to the scale of a good toast?
Do Bandera who consider themselves Slavs know about this holiday? Do those who shelled residential areas of Slavyansk celebrate it? I wonder what they feel on this day - or what they feel when they learn about today's holiday? ..
Or will the local propaganda kindly inform them that Kiev is not Russia, but they are not brothers of Slavyansk? Well, if you need to suppress the conscience and maintain morale in the name of "united Ukraine" - why not? In the end, is it possible to talk about brothers here when the civilization choice has already been made? At the heart of the Maidan and the train that followed him lay, as we recall, the unexpected refusal of the former Ukrainian leader Viktor Yanukovych to sign the Association Agreement with the European Union. "Slavs" (quotes are not superfluous here) were deprived of the right to Europe, dared to separate it from Anglo-Saxon society. For this, of course, it is not a pity then to burn a couple of tens of "brothers" ...
Is it Slavic unity? I would not like to rank this question as rhetorical. Let's call it open, and which generation in a row. Perhaps there should be an idea on the basis of which this unity will happen. Nobody has proposed it yet, but we are not in a hurry: it's not for nothing that patience is one of the distinguishing features of the Slavs.
Andrei Saveliev, a well-known social and political activist, Chairman of the Great Russia Party, spoke about the prospects for unity of the Slavs.:
- Even Dostoevsky said that "there are Slavs, but there are no Slavs," and for quite a long time we have been able to see this more than once. At the time of Dostoevsky, at the beginning of the 20th century, the Europeanization of the Slavs was in full swing, and now we can confidently state that Slavic unity as such has turned out to be in many ways mythologized.
In fact, it is the Russian people that is the root of all Slavism, and as close as the Slavic tribes are to the Russian people, they are as close to each other. Moving away from the Russians, they inevitably lose their roots. And today we see this perfectly with the example of Ukraine, where there is a desire for unity not with the Russian people, but with Europe.
As for the position of statesmen, both in Russia and in the Slavic states they are oriented mainly to the West, and throughout the entire XX century this orientation to the West was mainly dominant. That is why it is not unity, but the division of the Slavs. Today’s political elites of all Slavic states without exception are also oriented towards this separation process.
And of course, few people pay attention to such holidays today. They are more a demonstration of some kind wish, than some kind of political reality or an assigned task.
- That is, the idea of the unity of the Slavs - is essentially a utopia?
- Unfortunately, there is no power behind this idea - neither the power of state power, nor the power of public opinion. There are just some memories of historical community of the Slavs, about the origin from one source, about the proximity of cultures and languages. And this common folk memory holds some valuable cultural artifacts, memorable dates of history, but nothing more.
In reality, neither the Slavic peoples, nor those who lead the Slavic states, have any urge for unity. Well, except perhaps, between the Russians and the Serbs, there was some kind of additional mythologization of unity as a result of the destruction of Yugoslavia and the cruel suppression of the Serbian national identity by the western ruling elite. But we will not remember anything else. In fact, there is, for example, no commonality between Russians and Poles, although these ethnic groups are so close genetically that genetics themselves do not particularly distinguish them. Not to mention the Balkan peoples, who are now far enough away in the direction of the West.
But the worst thing is that the Russian world began to collapse as such: not only were Belarusians and Ukrainians separated from us and separated, but the disengagement is already between Great Russians. And I still do not see the desire of anyone to reverse this process - neither politicians, nor Russian society itself.
- It turns out that politics is stronger than blood?
- It is difficult to say whether it is worth talking about politics here or about the decay of national identity as such. Decomposition associated with the processes of not only conscious choice, but also with certain global trends that today crush all major nations altogether. In any case, all the major peoples of Europe are seriously fragmented from the point of view of not only the cultural environment, but also the national identity itself.
This is a complex process: on the one hand, we are talking about globalization, when the population of Europe ceases to differ among themselves in lifestyle, in interests, when everyday life is unified, but at the same time, the once monolithic peoples within this unification are divided into parts, preventing the formation of a single political nation. This process of disintegration can be stopped except by a serious willful effort with the presentation of a new political project.
But nothing like that, at least, the ruling groupings of the Slavic states of Europe simply do not exist. They can only talk a lot and beautifully about Slavic solidarity, about Slavic unity, but behind the rustle of these words there is nothing - neither real programs, nor specific tasks.