Russia will defend traditional values

The decree of Russian President Vladimir Putin "On the Approval of the Foundations of the State Policy for the Preservation and Strengthening of Traditional Russian Spiritual and Moral Values" has made a lot of noise in the expert community and is perceived ambiguously by some of the public for obvious reasons.

Liberals, as usual, saw here an attack on liberal values and freedoms, moderate patriots noted a certain duality of the text, its conceptual eclecticism, and radicals are outraged by the proposed arrangement of values by their significance, the incomprehensibility of who the text of the Decree is addressed to and who will implement it.

Due to the half-century-old split of society, it is impossible to agree on a consensus on the Decree on the protection of values on the basis of values. But this is not required. That's not what we're talking about right now. The main thing is different: this is the first time that the question has been raised aloud in Russia after decades of the triumph of liberal chaos.

It's like putting a question about the treatment of a patient at a consultation of doctors where it was forbidden to talk about the disease for 30 years before. It was even written down in the hospital's charter and entered into the job description of each health worker. Compliance with this demand was a prerequisite for staying in the medical class. Everyone observed the conspiracy of silence, and suddenly the chief physician himself came out and said: "Colleagues, it is proposed to discuss the draft protocol for the treatment of this disease. Please share your thoughts."

The Presidential Decree "On the Approval of the Foundations of the State Policy for the Preservation and Strengthening of Traditional Russian Spiritual and Moral Values" is important not by what is written there and in what order, but by the fact that it was even born at all. This is a turn signal that was turned on in a lane where everyone was driving straight and wasn't going to turn anywhere.

The decree on values, the declaration of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping in Beijing, the crisis in relations with the West - and even the postponement of the ban on dual citizenship for officials until 2023 - all these are links in the same chain of events. The era of the Great Transition has begun. Paragraph 13 of the Constitution prohibiting state ideology is still in force, but a Presidential Decree appears, in fact, postulating this ideology and even prescribing to act within its framework.

Because the content of the Decree is an ideology, it is written from an ideological point of view, and it cannot be anything else. Are there any vulnerabilities in the text? Definitely. Are they essential for the implementation of the course? Not in the least.

One can and should agree with those critics who believe that the text is a traditionalist manifesto written in the political language of liberalism. It was made up of some officials who were brought up on a liberal paradigm that sticks out of the text like an awl out of a bag. They were raised as liberals, but were assigned to write a different text for a different policy. They drew it up. But the ideological edges of the old worldview came out and caused amazement among those who live and breathe in traditionalism like a fish in water. They pointed out the inconsistencies, small, rather funny, but significant.

You can suggest swapping the list of traditional values suggested in paragraph 2 of point 3. Now it looks like this:

"Traditional values include: life, dignity, human rights and freedoms, patriotism, citizenship, service to the Motherland and responsibility for its fate, high moral ideals, strong family, creative work, priority of the spiritual over the material, humanism, mercy, justice, collectivism, mutual assistance and respect, historical memory and continuity of generations, unity of the peoples of Russia."

Traditionalists point out that the list was compiled by a liberal who did not understand this. Only a liberal will put life, dignity, rights and freedoms first. And in the sixth place is service to the Motherland. The traditionalist will immediately stumble over this. He would have prioritised it differently:

"Traditional values include: service to the Motherland and responsibility for its fate, priority of the spiritual over the material, historical memory and continuity of generations, priority of the spiritual over the material, creative work, high moral ideals, collectivism, justice, strong family, patriotism, citizenship, charity, mutual assistance."

The theme of the unity of the peoples of Russia looks different for a traditionalist than for a tsarist official/velikoderzhavhik (a supporter of the ideology that proclaims the country's rebirth as a great power - Ed), a Soviet party worker/internationalist, or a Russian progressive/manager. For them, unity is the vertical of power. For the traditionalist, this is a problem of conditions for unity. Anyone who does not respect the worldview of a traditionalist is subject to either coercion, exile, or annihilation. For example, the topic of the slave trade and raids. Everyone has their own tradition, but there can be no unity here.

Or the topic of men carrying weapons in everyday life. For some, this is a tradition that expresses their status in society. To deprive of weapons is to deprive of dignity, to humiliate. A state that humiliates such a man ceases to be considered its own. But in another tradition, shooting in the air at weddings is considered a threat of violence. How can we find unity between a government that understands differences and peoples with different traditions? This is a complex art of wisdom and manoeuvring. And not all traditionalists here have the ability to do this.

Life is not the first and foremost treasure of a traditionalist. Life is something that is sacrificed for a higher value than life. This is love for the Motherland and for the neighbour. Love of God. Living first is a liberal's catechism. For a traditionalist, this is cowardice and shame. This is liberalism teaching about a damaged by sin and fallen person who does not want to think or talk about sin. For a liberal, this is sacred, but for a traditionalist, it is heresy.

The traditionalist understands humanism as a liberal justification of lust and pride. Tradition speaks not of humanism, but of charity. And then only in relation to the penitent. They forgive the penitent, not the triumphant boor. Sodom and Gomorrah are burned with the fire of heaven, and their right to life is not recognised. Traditionalism is ascetic. Humanism says that if you can't, but really want to, then you can. It may be politics, but politics is liberal.

The draft Decree says nothing about asceticism. It was written by those who are poorly versed in traditionalism. It is as if the text about Creed was written by a militant materialist who was given an editorial assignment to write a good article about religion from the point of view of a believer.

To put life and human rights first, and even to cover it up with humanism, say traditionalist critics of the text, is to create problems for young people who do not understand the ideological subtleties, but decide who was more right, General Karbyshev or General Vlasov.

Life, dignity, human rights – how does this relate to the duty to protect the Motherland when it is in danger? The traditionalist grew up on the idea that for the sake of the Motherland, for the sake of one's neighbour, one must sacrifice one's right, dignity, and even life. And this is a sacrifice to save the soul from eternal death. You can disagree with them, but then it's not about traditionalism.

But we, seeing these small inconsistencies, should not throw out the child with the water. This is not a philosophical text, but a political document. The goal of which is to consolidate as many unsophisticated people as possible on extremely simple and close concepts. These people have a fragmentary picture of the world and do not understand the grotesqueness of this fragmentary nature. They grew up on the arguments of liberals and conservatives, and they absorbed the arguments of both parties in equal measure.

And they see no contradiction between the right to life and patriotism. Not in war, this conflict of concepts is not visible. And most people aren't at war. They don't want strictness, but leniency for their weaknesses. And so it is not the document that is bad, but the people who are imperfect. For 30 years, they were distracted from the systemic worldview by skilled consumerism. It is no wonder that many of them "confuse the paramedic with the field marshal”. But does this mean that everyone should first comb their hair in the same way, and then give the "right" orders?

After years, no one will remember in what order the values were listed in the text. But everyone will remember that the Decree was issued, the task was issued. And one can ask for implementation, for the repertoire politics of theatres and cinematography, for imposing the celebration of Catholic and American holidays that are alien to our tradition and culture, for slinging mud at the past, for the attempt to remove from the blackening of the past the blackening of the present and future.

For all this, it will now be necessary to to take responsibility. All this was encouraged for 30 years, it became a profitable business, a pass to the world of its own, a means of protecting the power of the comprador part of the Russian elite. This was a political order, which was felt by the spinal cord of the "masters of culture", 80% of whom are banal opportunists who moonlight on the principle of “what thou wilt” and "any whim for your money". And many are perverts, greedy and cynical.

And now there is a political document that should say that everything is changing from now on. This document should be supported by as many people as possible - both those who understand traditionalism, and those who do not understand, but feel that turning the country into a Blue Oyster bar is not where they want to live themselves and where it will be good for their children. Not at all.

Having said "A", you will have to say everything else. It will be necessary to sew the broken link of time. Stop spitting on the past for the sake of celebrating the idea of varying degrees of radical liberalism. Society is not ready for this crosslinking. It is not ready to erect monuments simultaneously to Aleksandr III and Stalin, Nicholas II and Lenin, Stakhanov and Stolypin, Zubatov and Beria. Society is not ready to build a stable social system based on principles that do not divide generations and classes, but unite them.

But the Decree announces the beginning of this preparation. The following risks are explicitly identified: "distortion of historical truth, destruction of historical memory;

- weakening of the state-forming Russian people, creating conditions for interethnic and interfaith conflicts, destroying the system of value and semantic coordinates of the Russian language;

- undermining the foundations of Russian statehood and identity, weakening the all-Russian civil identity and unity of the multinational people of the Russian Federation."

The destruction of historical memory is not about the latest events of the 20th century, but about the whole depth of our history. The foundation of our statehood is the affirmation of the idea that part of the common history was not yours. After that, people in the state are not connected by anything. To claim that the WWII factor is no longer relevant means committing forgery. The Second World War is the only thing that now connects people in the USSR.

When a young Tajik working in Russia says: "My grandfather also fought in the war, we had the same country back then”, this confirms that the Second World War is the only thing that continues to connect us now. To say the opposite is to cover up one’s unwillingness and inability to use this factor.

But we are connected not only by the Second World War. We are connected by the Battle of Kulikovo and the Battle of Borodino. Everything that is connected with giving our lives for the Motherland connects us. No matter when it was, dying in the prime of life is always equally scary. And what it was done for is always sacred. And our generation betrayed the memory of their ancestors, silently accepting the collapse of the Motherland and calling those times the "cursed past".

But in Ukraine, we managed to convince them that our history is not their history. And the country immediately fell apart. Nazarbayev also raised toasts "for liberation from Russian occupation", and called the Second World War a foreign war. Kazakhstan was being led into the New Ottoman Empire, and therefore the common history with Russia was getting in the way. And where is Nazarbayev today? He left in disgrace.

There was a period when Lukashenko did the same with Belarus. He said that Belarus participated in someone else's war. He's stopped doing that now. But those who believed him then are now against the Union State and in favour of Belarus joining the EU and NATO. They were frightened of themselves and all the others by the NKVD, Beria and repression. How to deal with it now? Especially in the light of the demand of the Decree's paragraph on the inadmissibility of "undermining confidence in state institutions, especially in law enforcement agencies"?

Another important point in the Decree: mention of the state-forming Russian people. Russia is an international network structure based on the principle of an ethnic core. The Russian language here is not just a communicative tool, but a field of meaning formation. The destruction of the criteria of self-identification of the ethnic core is the destruction of the supporting structure of the state.

Russia consists of several ethnic cores, the largest of which is Russian. It has the most powerful gravitational pull, similar to the solar system. If the largest Russian core collapses, all other cores will receive centrifugal directions. It is absolutely impossible to preserve a unified statehood in combination with the erasure of the subjectivity of the Russian ethnic subethnos.

The presidential decree "On the Approval of the Foundations of the State Policy for the Preservation and Strengthening of Traditional Russian Spiritual and Moral Values" is aimed precisely at creating conditions for ending the course that was laid down by the Bolsheviks and continued by the liberals. This is a course aimed at suppressing the Russian ethnic core as imperial, oppressive, unjust, and therefore in need of every possible weakening. Russian history was presented as a cursed past, an object of shame and demanded to be abandoned.

Russian ideology began to be formed not just by foreigners, but by foreigners obsessed with the idea of revenge on the Russian subethnos for its historical role. It is no wonder that the result of all this was the destruction of the Russian Empire, the USSR, and now a federal Russia, mildly liberal, and therefore tolerant of the fact that the meaning of life for it is formulated by those who treat its ethnic core with fear, hatred and contempt with its values and meanings, is under threat.

In view of these considerations, the Presidential Decree on the protection of traditional values should certainly be welcomed. Regardless of the traces of those childhood diseases of liberalism that are sewn up in some of its lines. The main thing is that the ship began to turn around from the course that it had followed for the last 30 years. Perhaps, from the date of signing this Decree, the period of the very revival of Russia, which is expected by 80% of its population, will begin.

The nationalisation of Russia's elite must begin with a declaration of the protection of traditional values. Renouncing dual citizenship and disposing of the offshore aristocracy is the next step. The liberal elite and the sovereignty of Russia are now incompatible concepts.