Triumph of mainstream

A number of methodic mistakes are made when it comes to the power’s current ambition to manage cultural processes. Let’s see into them.

First. It is typical of Russian intelligentsia, and it is not the only one, to interpret many actions of the government as stupidity and idiocy. Especially good are those who try to explain to the government that it spoils its own image, loses someone’s support, and that it is bellow to persecute artists and writers. Following this logic, namely this kind of reflections is in fact stupidity and idiocy. And the government is pretty aware of what it wants and what it is doing, acting consistently and according to the plan.

Second. It has become a tradition to blame the government for everything. It maliciously subdues the culture, knees and breaks its producers. Whom does it break? Nikita Mikhalkov? He can break anyone, like many other, already nomenklatura, Kultur machers/culture makers. Let alone the millions of cultural consumers, who are absolutely ready for changes and even demand them.

Third. Delusion connected with the frequent use of the word “ideology.” Both those who seek to make it a premise to culture, and those who are afraid of this subordination, are equally distorting the reality. The power does not have any ideology, to be more precise, it is situational. The thing is about creating a sociocultural mechanism, which deprives the culture of its topmost, axiological, mission and makes it impossible to search for values independently, define and defend them. They are dictated to culture from outside.

Now let’s give it a more detailed analysis. The first delusion, concerning the idiocy of government, does not need any special explanation. A Russian intellectual can acknowledge everything but the fact that the power can be cleverer than him. And it is cleverer, which is owing to other Russian intellectuals, who have been in its service in all times. The second – everything is clear with those who came to serve it and expect to get big and generous boons from the new turn. One example: censorship is forbidden by constitution in Russia, and the meaning of this notion is defined by Article 3 of the Law on the Mass Media:

“Censorship of mass information, i.e., demand to the editorship of a mass medium on the part of its functionaries, governmental bodies, organizations, institutions, or public associations to coordinate beforehand the reports and materials (except for the cases when the functionary is the author or an interviewee), as well as forbidding to distribute reports and materials, and their fragments, is not allowed.

“It is not allowed to create and fund organizations, institutions, bodies, or offices whose tasks or functions include censoring of mass information.”

And it is not allowed. There is no such body in Russia. But there is total self-censorship – governmental and corporate. And the social status and welfare of quite influential and active social stratum depends on its existence.

But everything in the society, cultural environment, and cultural mainstream, which is a key word for understanding and interpretation of the processes that are taking place in Russia, is ready for a consensus around the controlled culture. And it has become clear, when the words of one of the mass culture masterminds Dmitry Bykov became popular and won support: “A fool tends to seriously discuss evident things, i.e., doubt the axiomatics of the society in which s/he lives.” Nobody wants to gain the character of a fool! Another expression became a commonplace in discourse of culture and politics: “You cannot always assess everything objectively.” This wisdom has a collective author: culture mainstream. Come what may, don’t wait for resistance. Consensus.

Now let’s come up to the most important thing. What do the speeches about subordination of culture to ideology, aired by court public figures and minister of culture?

Russian neo-totalitarianism has entered a new, more mature phase of its development. Now we can speak about its principal, quality difference from the classical, logocentric totalitarianism.

The image of totalitarian society of the past years, created by researchers, scholars, and writers, includes an obligatory unification of language in combination with doppelgaenger effect, which leads to crimes of thought. The entire perestroika pluralism was merely an attempt to modernize the former newspeak, i.e., to unify the way of thinking again. It would have remained this way, if it limited itself to Russia and Russian language. Essential changes started only with the national revival in the former USSR. This is what Gorbachev failed to understand, as well as actually almost entire Russian progressive public, which still considers the collapse of the Soviet Union and development of national states as an embarrassing accident.

However, it turned out that one can do without newspeak, which cannot be implemented in a simple way, because at first you need to knock the memories about the former live language out of people’s minds. An opposite, considerably less costly method, to allow everyone to speak the language of their small and tiny communities and prevent them from creation of a nationwide political language, which would formulate, in particular, integrating values and generally recognized principles of state organization, proved to be more efficient.

The lingual atomization and opaqueness of various environments for each other is a global phenomenon, connected with the development of information technologies, which groundlessly considered merely as a means of uniting the world. New informational technologies with increasing frequency evoke the comparison with the Tower of Babel. Broadening of communication possibilities makes multilingualism only stronger. It has different consequences in different countries. Whereas in the free world it can be studied as a politically neutral (so far) sociocultural phenomenon, in Russia it acquires a framework meaning for the political organization of the country.

The degree of totalitarianism of a political regime is determined by the degree of its de-civilization, archaism, rather than the number of its victims. From this point of view, Russian neo-totalitarianism of today is more serious, dangerous, and deeper than the previous, logic-centered totalitarianism. It is closer to barbarianism than in the Stalin time.

Totalitarianism as such is irrational; therefore ideology stops being ideology and becomes a mythopoetic picture of the world, dissolving individual vision, personality, its judgments and beliefs. The experience of Russian mythopoetic creation shows that a transition from ideological directives to directly opposite ones (like from Comintern internationalism to struggle against cosmopolitism) does not require any special effort. The most important thing is prevention of individualization of perception and judgment.

This is namely the reason why speaking about myths is more precise than speaking about ideology. Former atomization is now too little for the power. It wants – with the consent of a considerable part of the society – to create a mechanism of collective myth creation, retaining control over the implementation of the myths into culture and social consciousness. A natural foe of this project is uncontrolled, ungoverned, and misunderstood by the power contemporary art, which I must admit has found itself in a bad situation in Russia, even without the government. Neither contemporary art market, nor intellectual-media environment, which serves it, have been created.

Rejection of contemporary art is declarative. And the campaign on discrediting Joseph Brodsky and a kind of rehabilitation of Yevgeny Yevtushenko, shown on TV and on the Internet, is an example of an active event.

Lifetime canonization of Yevtushenko and postmortem anathematization of Brodsky show that current regime is acting cleverly in the sphere of culture and relies on a considerable part of intelligentsia, substituting the stupid ideological propaganda by subtle regulation of socio-cultural mainstream.

Why does it need Stalin’s short courses and Brezhnev’s little lands? Why drive people to meetings? They will switch on TV sets in prime time, they will enter Facebook. They will get convinced that “if there is Russia, I will be there too” is the pinnacle of poetic patriotism, and that “may the parasite artist paint another landscape” is a lampoon. And that prophetic “Democracy!” is slander. Moreover, they will get convinced that “white snows are falling” is the top of poetic mastery.

And there is no need to convince anyone! Russian intelligentsia simply has not reached Brodsky’s level. Another thing is simply and clear Yevtushenko, who is, most importantly, dear and close because he has never said anything indiscreet, always knowing where to stop. And he was the first to enter the field cleared of mines. And his verse is unpretentious.

The ideology of present-day regime is not an ideology whatsoever. It needs domination of mass culture; its monopoly would be perfect. The triumph of mainstream. It is much serious and deeper than the struggle for purity of ideological spells. The society must itself say that it does not need Brodsky and Mandelstam. At the same time anything that can be adapted to mass culture will be adapted.

The rest will die. Like contemporary art, fundamental science, museology, and many other things which have been deprived of not only state support, but also public interest. The goal is obvious: with increasing frequency state officials utter the words “shaping new cultural elite.”

Francis Fukuyama naively rejoiced at the collapse of the Communist ideology and that the “Elites… emerged from Brezhnev and Mao eras looking far more like their Western counterpart at a comparable level of economic development than anyone had anticipated. Their most advanced elites were able to appreciate, if not exactly able to share, the common consumer culture of Western Europe, America, and Japan, and many of other political ideas as well.” They have shared. They have fallen back into old habits – more cleverly and efficiently.