Moscow, as they would have said in better years, is in festive attire. The mood is so dark, in tune with the times, that the mayor's services have placed trees and glowing structures at every step. It is quite obvious that they too need more light. It's good that snow has fallen, otherwise, one could easily hang oneself from a permanently depressive state.
A friend, who arrived after several months of absence, claims that the Moscow crowd has also become less colorful and more gray. At the metro entrance, they keep scanning, especially those with backpacks. He brought two bottles of cognac from the country of pendulum relocation: «When there were two in the backpack, they stopped me, when there was one, for some reason, they didn't».
On the streets, there are billboards with some new texts. For example, «The word mom is sacred, speak without swearing». Apparently, after child-free and quadrobears, they have taken on the foul-mouthed.
And how to slide through the streets of Moscow without this business? About Kursk, its new «general-governor» Khinshtein said that while he was walking down the street, he almost fell four times. This comrade chief hasn't walked in Moscow, although he supposedly worked in a government body there, but apparently knows nothing except Georgievsky Lane, Okhotny Ryad, and his elite courtyard. Moscow in winter remains dangerous for life outside the central highways, although you can break your neck on bumpy ice or get hit by a food delivery courier even on some Myasnitskaya. The labor migrants who survived the anti-migration legislation are leaving their positions as janitors and becoming couriers — «it's work in the open air, it's work with people», but for some reason, the native population is not in a hurry to arm themselves with shovels. Due to changes in the foreign agent legislation, a janitor, as in the seventies, is an ideal position for a «foreign agent», but the «fifth column» will simply not be taken for such a responsible state position.
By the way, the few migrant masses find it difficult to move around the city for other reasons. The police are intensively checking documents. And with some kind of almost hunting excitement. Recently, in a half-empty alley, a police car suddenly braked next to a man of Mongoloid appearance peacefully walking on the sidewalk — just to establish the comrade's identity.
The stigmatization of certain population groups, from quadrobears to «foreign agents», has finally acquired a clear racial tint. The regime, transitioning from an authoritarian state to a totalitarian one, was bound to reach this point. It is claimed that this even worried the anthropologists in civilian clothes from the presidential administration — clearly, there have been excesses and excessive arousal of xenophobia in the obedient masses. But I, of course, apologize: «Is this what you wanted, George Dandin». And you got it. And you will get even more, especially when the male population begins to return en masse from the trenches. The «Time of Heroes» programs will not be enough for everyone for socialization. Nor will the revenue base of the state budget.
That will be a glorious hunt. Although, as we have noticed, there are no problems with different types of this sport. And with the use of high technologies, which are now needed either for military purposes or for surveillance of people in the logic of «Big-Brother-anthropologist-in-civilian-clothes-watches-over-you». By the way, there has never been such a feeling of total eavesdropping — in phone conversations and messenger correspondence, many become very restrained; it seems that all the time both you and your speech are under the observation of «comrade major».
Multiplied by the traditional mess, all this generates human dramas. The other day, a highly educated young man, who graduated from a prestigious faculty of Moscow State University and was successfully working with an army deferment in a large IT company in his native million-plus city in the Urals, was detained thanks to a facial recognition system in the Moscow metro. The problem is that the data of local military enlistment offices, where everything is more or less clearly organized, do not match the electronic register of conscripts, which includes those not subject to conscription. And summonses are sent and detentions are made not based on the military enlistment offices' data, but on the registers. The young man, who decided to visit friends in Moscow, spent three days in a government facility while the local military enlistment office and his unfortunate parents pulled him out of the clutches of the high-tech state machine. His fate was closely followed by former classmates, but mostly from abroad: at least until their thirties, these highly qualified personnel, who could have benefited their homeland in peaceful circumstances, do not intend to appear on the expanses of Putin's Russia. They will benefit Serbia, Armenia, Spain, and other countries.
So how can one do without obscene language here? They take away the last in the form of swearing. More precisely, the penultimate, because the last is alcohol. There is no direct sense for the regime to raise prices to the skies, adopt a plan to reduce alcohol consumption by the population until 2030, and restrict sales by hours (in Moscow, they do not restrict yet, it's not Vologda, and in Sobyanin's office, there are probably not six Stalins, like the Vologda boss). But this is a machine without a reverse gear: it can only go forward and ban everything. Moreover, the plan until 2030 will undoubtedly be fulfilled: the country's demographics do not favor the preservation of potentially drinking ages — both due to long demographic trends, including the aging of the working-age population, and due to some current trends contributing to premature deaths and long-term departures. Nevertheless, the working people drink, and actively — on Fridays, as in any capitalist capital, in cafes, pubs, bars, and restaurants, there is no room to swing a cat. Especially since the time of organized and spontaneous corporate parties has come, and people are celebrating in whole organizations, although not as unruly as in pre-war times.
There are also billboards with the rich word «Unity». It also flashes in the autocrat's speeches. Unity in a grim state and mutual hatred and distrust has certainly been achieved. As well as in the fact that one must adapt to circumstances, not buzz, and use another word that reveals some impatience and fatigue — «Victory». What «victory» means, no one knows, because NATO, whose spirit was not there, is now indeed «at the gates», and the achieved «safety» along with «sovereignty» manifests in the morning reports of burning enterprises. And also in the fact that in the evenings, due to expected arrivals of something drone-like, it is quite difficult to call a taxi — the service glitches, as does the similar device responsible for indicating the movement of public transport in the form of buses. For the first time in decades, including the long winter of the Cold War, there is no sense of security at all.
The nation is not united. It is divided, and catastrophically so, by different criteria, as never before. For example, families are divided. Still by the criterion of attitude to what is happening — someone is for Putin, someone is sharply against. By the criterion of geographical rifts: the older generation sits in the country waiting for a miracle, the younger — abroad. They meet at best in Istanbul or, if they save up money, somewhere further west. Of course, they can also meet in some Belgrade, especially since there is a direct flight and no visa regime, but one ticket there and back now costs more than 100 thousand rubles (almost a thousand dollars per person, I repeat, and how many in the family want to hug their son/grandson/brother!). Just like a ticket to «The Nutcracker» at the Bolshoi Theater in the stalls — a new obsession of Muscovites and guests of the capital, driven mad by the dark time.
The intelligentsia, which still violates the indicators of reducing alcohol consumption until 2030 (however, it just needs to be eradicated, which is almost achieved), begins to drink to Brezhnev Leonid Ilyich. Because under him, although it was not very free, there were at least some understandable rules of coexistence with the authorities, as well as peaceful coexistence with the hostile western world. By the way, planes from Frankfurt in those times did not fly through Istanbul, but directly, and diplomats (as well as leaders of powers!) talked to each other, and on quite substantive plots. This art is lost: a diplomat now is a master of the artistic word of hatred, and nothing more. There was a cold war, and it had clear boundaries and rules. It was less scary under it — that's the paradox!
Among the minimally non-aggressive part of the urban middle and non-middle class — inflated, though cautious, expectations from 2025. Well, this can't last another year. It must end — for some with «peace», for others with «victory», which also subconsciously means peace, but on «our» terms. However, these conditions are initially unfulfillable for the opposite side.
If you don't cultivate a Christmas mood in yourself with all your might (even a Hanukkah one, and this year, optimistically-symbolically, the universal Christmas coincides with Hanukkah!); if you don't indulge in the hope of deliverance from total enmity, listening to Handel's «Messiah» in the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary on Malaya Gruzinskaya; if you distract yourself for a minute from decorating the tree with parental toys from the sixties (shedding nostalgic tears, saying the already banal: «It's good they didn't live to see this horror»); if you don't enter shopping centers, where over the crowds of buyers hover the same «Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow...» and «Happy New Year» with the voices of the unforgettable Anni-Frid and Agnetha, then you have to admit: this can last.
Society is reconnected to hatred, the economy — to the production of «finished metal products», power — to the race of prohibitive initiatives and invasion of private life with ideology in the Dugin style. This «special operation» has two fronts. And if the hot phase of the external front subsides, then on the internal «cannons» will not fall silent — the authorities will catch «national traitors» like devils, already on themselves... And without any alcohol.
And yet, nevertheless... Everything, essentially, is as always. Here and «all the trees in the world, all the dreams of children». And «in the grocery store slush and crush, because of a can of coffee halva besieging the counter with a pile of bundles laden people...» Was it all in vain — the manger, the nativity scene, the ox's nostrils, and the donkeys in harness, and the wind from the steppe, and the magi, and the mother who would never send her son to death, and the star on the way to Bethlehem, and the «father's gaze» from heaven?..
«All the future of galleries and museums, all the pranks of fairies and the deeds of wizards» are certainly better than a drone falling on your head, peaceful evening reading with children «Journey to the Center of the Earth» is better than «The Nutcracker», breaking through this earth either four floors down or all nine.
What else do we lack to regain our human appearance?
* The Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation considers Andrey Kolesnikov a «foreign agent».
Photo: goodfon.ru