Sergey Chernyakhovsky: "The state must firmly take the side of the majority of the people"
In the autumn, the Russian Society will present the revised “Concept of the state policy in the field of culture”, which at the project stage caused considerable irritation among our liberals by the very attempt of state regulation in this sphere.
- Sergey Felixovich, in his last speech at Valdai, President Putin for the first time clearly outlined the need for cultural self-identification of modern Russia based on national spiritual and cultural codes. The presidential administration has developed a draft program "Fundamentals of State Cultural Policy". Parliamentary hearings on this topic were held in the Federation Council in early July. Then, the concept of "cultural sovereignty" was developed in expert circles. What are the similarities and differences between the presidential and expert concepts?
- The document entitled "The concept of state policy in the field of culture" was born in one of the research centers of the Ministry of Culture. 5 June he was presented at a roundtable at the University of Culture. This concept was also widely discussed in the Izbor club, in which I am a member.
The concept of cultural sovereignty developed by us contains three basic postulates. Firstly, every nation has the right to live in accordance with the attitudes and norms that have been developed over the centuries and are significant for it; no one has the right to impose certain “universal” norms on it. Strictly speaking, this provision is consistent with the UNESCO Convention on the Preservation of Original Cultures in its broader interpretation. Secondly, the state and the people have the right to defend themselves and prevent the spread of those cultural patterns that violate the norms they have adopted. And finally, thirdly, the state and the people have the right to stop attempts to use the sphere of culture in order to destroy the country's political sovereignty. The authors of the document advocate that such a concept or a similar concept should form the basis of a new state policy in the sphere of culture.
- What is the main contradiction of your approach and today's official projects?
- It is, I would say, methodological. The Kremlin has traditionally tried to develop compromise documents that will take into account and somehow combine the whole range of positions in society. We believe that in matters of fate, the position of the absolute majority of the people should be taken as a basis. I’ll specify which majority: the fact that with all ideological, political and if you like, aesthetic differences believes that the people’s destiny, within the country, should decide the fate of a people and the choice of its development goals. As for the minority, this is a small but very active and very specific part of society, which is convinced that some external "progressive" forces and structures should decide for the people. So, we do not set ourselves the task - to come to terms with this part of society, which will get 10%. More importantly, combine 90%. If we look at the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights”, to which our destructive minority likes to refer, we will see that there are provisions that limit the effect of several dozen rights listed in it. For example, it is said that relations between people should be based on the spirit of brotherhood; Every citizen can demand observance of his rights only if he has obligations to society; the exercise of rights may be limited if they diverge from the requirements of public morality.
“But today, in the“ enlightened ”West, the very requirements of morality are subject to significant deformation, and this is de jure ...
“We believe that if the majority of the society does not accept some ethical innovations, then they are not inalienable“ human rights ”. In the end, there is a classic “Voltaire” maxim of liberalism that my freedom ends where the freedom of another person begins. For example, insulting religious or national feelings is the same blow to the collective freedom of a people. What our "freedom-loving" prefer to forget.
In addition, compared with the traditional interpretation, defined, in particular, UNESCO documents, we are expanding the concept of "cultural heritage". In addition to its two recognized components: the tangible and intangible culture, we introduce another one - the normative-value, implying the usual priorities, values, moral attitudes. The main thing is that these installations are recognized today as valuable by the majority of the society. We argue that it is impossible to destroy the value world of another person, like another state. In essence, this is a deeply liberal approach in the classical sense of the word “liberalism”.
- When we talk about the external threat to the cultural and spiritual code of our people, should not the first place among the threats put the total monstrous decline of culture in wide sections of society: from workers to senior officials, from schoolchildren to their teachers?
- Today, there was a huge gulf between those who recognize that there is an unconditional concept of good and evil, the highest truth and those who see the purpose of a person only in satisfying any whims, who argue that truths are infinite, and good and evil are relative. So, being an atheist, by the way, I insisted on the most harsh court decision on the provocation Pussy Wright. Because, if the Orthodox can, by virtue of evangelical postulates, forgive such a disgrace, then atheists are simply obliged to protect the rights of believers, since it is a question of outrage upon the world of values.
“You are not a typical atheist, however ... But let's return to threats to cultural sovereignty.”
- These threats are divided into subjective and objective. Among the first - the threat of information aggression, aimed at the destruction of culture and political sovereignty. The objective threat is the statement of stereotypes of a consumer society, which turns a person into an object. Setting unlimited consumption destroys the world. The opposite to it is a society of creation, where the main advantage of a person becomes not the measure of his consumption, but what he was able to bring to the world. Such a setup has always been significant for Russian culture and found a concentrated embodiment in the Soviet era.
Another objective threat is mass culture, when the vulgarized ersatz of great cultural achievements is presented to the masses. As a result, only skepticism remains from Voltaire, only the struggle for power and love passions from Shakespeare, and just scabrousness from Boccaccio. Is it possible to resist? Such, in my opinion, an outstanding Soviet writer-philosopher, like Boris Strugatsky (whom the current pseudoliberals are absolutely in vain recorded as “their own”) wrote that it is possible to resist the aggressive Western mass culture only by developing and strengthening one’s own national culture.
The third objective threat is the crisis of the so-called Modern society. In Europe, since the time of Descartes, the very notion of reason has become an inalienable tradition, just like faith. However, now, when the Western world erases all traditions, it also erases the concept of reason.
– Let me quote the famous publicist Sergei Kara-Murza, who spoke at the hearings on cultural policy in the Federation Council. “In the next 10-15 years, Russia will face threats that have only just emerged during the reforms and will be realized in their mature form when the generation of Soviet people with their knowledge, skills and values leaves the arena. People of what cultural-historical “So, what do you think they will have to overcome these threats?” How would you answer this question?
- I would say that this sought-after type is the "new Soviets". These are people - creators who feel a kinship with their history, but continue to go higher and further. Where will they come from? They are among us. Such people have always been born even in the darkest times. The state must simply help, support this spark of creativity in its people. It is possible to unite Russian people only through a common cause and movement into the future. Our entire history testifies to this.
- The well-known Pushkin scholar, Valentin Nepomnyashchiy, argued that the cultural space of Russia was always equal to the moral, spiritual. And there was always a vertical ladder in it - from chaos to harmony. But now this staircase, he says, lies flat. Today, the state makes belated manipulations with this ladder. But also some strange ones: with one hand she lifts her, and with the other she lets go, saying that we have the freedom to fall. What do you think caused such inconsistency?
- Unfortunately, our state cannot fully define its goals and objectives. Do not forget that 23 a year ago the collapse of the country occurred. Today, our statehood is just rising from the wreckage, which is quite comparable with the restoration of Russia after the Tatar invasion. But today it is time for our state to rely on the people, in the broadest sense of the word, on the rich cultural traditions of the past.
- Now deliberately provocative, blasphemous exhibitions of the so-called “contemporary art”, mockery of classics in theaters have become far from uncommon. But this is, so to speak, the militant "elite" of anti-culture. Its main army, whose name, unfortunately, is legion, is densely spread around: in TV and radio, glossy magazines, the visual space of cities ... How to deal with this mass vulgarity? This is more complicated than just banning mate to the movies, isn't it?
- First of all, it is necessary to support classical samples of culture and the moral and moral imperatives, aesthetic foundations that they generate. It has long been observed: culture does not flourish in conditions of permissiveness. Requirements and restrictions imposed from the outside, concentrate the thought of the creator of the work of culture, allowing you to express yourself deeper and more multifaceted. The absence of prohibitions relaxes not only the spirit, but also the mind. After all, culture itself is a system of prohibitions, it always has been. A savage who professes promiscuity and devours a defeated enemy is free from prohibitions.
The problem is that when people have nothing to say in a meaningful sense, they are trying to assert themselves by arbitrary change of form. At the end of 1980-x - the beginning of 1990-x a value pogrom occurred in our society. But internally, most people, even unconsciously, resisted this. That is why Soviet films are still widely popular: there are internal moral principles for most of them. By the way, in Soviet times, we were shown the best samples of foreign cinema, which passed through a careful selection, and we were fascinated by them. And only then, when their massive, second-rate cinema gushed to us, we saw that it was much lower than the domestic one. We should not forget that the West itself has degraded over the past decades.
- Today, we are all consistently turned into homo economicus, first derived in the works of the theoretician of modern capitalism Max Weber. The general conditions of the market “game” are such that any public activity, including in the cultural sphere, depends on debit-credit, banking usury capital is behind everything. And market mechanisms, as is known, in the end reproduce for mass consumption - playing on the basest feelings - sex, violence, vulgarity. How do we get out of this trap?
- Market relations is a system of short motivation. Therefore, it is quite natural that within the framework of this paradigm it is more profitable to trade porn magazines than to sell Hegel or Trubetskoy. But when we start to satisfy some needs, we start and stimulate them. Inevitably, the question of goal-setting arises. Therefore, the position “everything is permissible”, which the Ministry of Culture has long adhered to and the influential part of officials still adheres to - is sly. At a recent meeting of the Public Council of the Ministry of Culture and the HRC chaired by Mr. Fedorov, we commented on the lack of consistency of state regulation in the cultural sphere, and they, on the contrary, were dissatisfied with the very tendency of the regulation that had begun. Such is the fundamental contradiction in society.
- The same Sergey Kara-Murza calls one of the obvious threats to the Russian society a deepening value split, out of which a “strong” minority is looking for in social and cultural apartheid. Sergey Georgievich proposes to consider “ensuring cultural autonomy of the divided parts of society and dialogue between them in order to slow down the spontaneous departure of the majority to the catacomb culture”. I put the question like this: are there any common cultural dominants of our split society?
- The society is split in many directions. But the central point of the split is the one I already mentioned: some consider that the people should decide their own fate, determine the form of statehood, the norms of culture and morality, others - with varying degrees of frankness - advocate the subordination of external forces in these matters.
The country's leader today has a very serious choice: to take a minority position, as it did in 90-s, to try to reconcile both parts of society in some kind of palliative or firmly stand on the position of the majority of the people. The first path is clearly catastrophic and fraught with a social explosion, the second is practically exhausted. There is no way to reconcile the irreconcilable: both will be dissatisfied, but in the end the tangle of contradictions will turn against the state anyway. For sincere statesmen and patriots, only the third path remains and we must step on it with both feet after so many years of balancing.
- It should be clarified that, unlike the beginning of 2000-x, when this policy of balance and “freezing” was relatively successful, today the contradictions themselves have reached a new level of depth and sharpness. Especially in connection with the events in Ukraine. Sometimes it seems that two different nations live in our state ...
- The way it is. The formation of modern Western nations took place as a market economy based on a cultural linguistic basis. A supranational market is emerging now, which is beginning to destroy these nations. Only a preserved linguistic cultural component can counter this. If it is weakened, the people turn into mindless natives, completely open to the most primitive external influences. Let's say a millionaire arrives on a luxury yacht, and the native thinks: if I have the same white pants, I will be the same as him. And then he either steals these pants, or sews them from banana leaves and paints it with white paint. But he does not become a millionaire.
–– Leading Western sociologists and cultural scientists, and after them some of our “progressists” assert that the time of national cultures has gone irretrievably, and instead of them came transculture. At the same time, they do not seem to deny national identity, if it is presented as a well-packaged market brand. That is, paraphrasing the famous Soviet postulate, "national in form, capitalist in content." Against this background, many of our compatriots are very emotionally demanding the return of the “iron curtain”. Others object: Russia has a chance to become a new center of spiritual and cultural "assembly" of the world. What do you think about that?
- You just have to go your own way. Of course, there are branches of an ascending civilization development. If we talk about the European upstream, then today it remains only in Russia. In Western Europe as a whole, classical European identity is lost, to which we often still out of habit appeal. What is called “development” and “progress” there has nothing to do with traditional culture.
It is difficult to preserve your identity alone - in the immense surrounding sea of decay. In order for us to preserve it, it is necessary today to support classical European culture, its root principles, its few remaining carriers. Today, Russia is partly, so far, however, more at the level of declarations, has already begun to do so. But more consistent and systemic efforts are required. I see them in the retransmission of the best (not only Russian) cultural samples to the whole world, the creation of cultural missions, a kind of Kultintern under the auspices of Moscow, which is opposed to cultural and moral degradation. After all, the peculiarity of Russian culture is also in the fact that, having entered the historical scene later than the cultures of Western nations, it rapidly rose, absorbing and rethinking the best achievements of the West and the East. As a result, Russian culture became integrative or “universal”, which Dostoevsky noticed. And today we can and must return to the West what it has practically lost.
- Many researchers state that the ideological, social, cultural superstructure of societies in most countries has turned into a struggle of simulacra, that is, objects that only imitate this struggle. There are, say, simulacra of the struggle for justice, simulacra of patriotism and spirituality. And it is very convenient for those who "taxis." Is it possible, in your opinion, to cope with this within one state today?
“When certain forces start to play with form, ignoring or distorting the content, they not only destroy it, but also involuntarily propagandize ... Russia is not just a separate country, but one seventh of the planet Earth. On such a territory and with such traditions, you can certainly make something of your own. We need to play on the natural deep protest against the manipulative Western simulacra, who wanders in the minds and hearts of a significant part of the same Europeans. We are today in a situation where, on the one hand, we do not have the forces ready for intense creative work in society. On the other hand, we don’t have 4-5 years to launch the process of crystallization of these forces, as in a centrifuge. Therefore, one has to act cautiously, not allowing for destruction, but at the same time, catching moments of a creative beginning, in order to consolidate them and unfold them to create a new state.
In the end, Russia faces a challenge: agree with the current “mess of things” and disappear, or try to change the world, returning its meaning.
- Who should do this: the state, the people, civil society?
- First of all, it can be done by that part of state people who understand the challenge itself, and that part of society that wants it. Moreover, in the union they constitute an absolute majority.
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