Shantsev can fly and carries us along with him — the integral creed of the "noughties" (1999 - 2011), offered on behalf of the avtoriti to the people of Nizhny Novgorod in the summer of 2011 (see Roman Skudnyakov), a local Nizhny Novgorod Meme. Author and performer — the journalist and head of the "Politicheskaya Kukhnya"" project Buzmakova Valentina Petrovna.
The essence of the phenomenon
A structural feature of how the Russian political model works "on the ground" lies in its inheritance of the Horde tradition of distributing and understanding power: whereas in the West municipal authority holds a subordinate place in the public mind and is subjected to mockery, obstruction and ubiquitous humiliation, in the East it is unassailable and, in keeping with the rank of its servitors in relation to the population, humiliates that population first (see Putin's Golden Formula). The most characteristic and recognisable patterns of this model are: the handing out of "yarlyks" for princely rule, a demonstration of loyalty to the centre in exchange for carte blanche on the ground, the virtual nature of private property, the conceptual apparatus of the passionary-conquistador in its attitude to nature and to social and economic processes (development, mobilisation of professionals, the battle for..., the front of works) and an extensive style of husbandry.
At the source of this practice lies the circumstance that in the East the spiritual prevails over the material. The leader is, as it were, chosen by the paradigm, and therefore possesses superhuman capacities, the traits of a realised guru. (Nicholas Roerich's series of paintings "Lord Maitreya"). Hence: a verbal, semantic encroachment upon and denial of the figure of the khan (as, for example, in the de-legending undertaken by the oligarch M. Khodorkovsky) is a first-cause political crime (one that needs no material elaboration for guilt to be established): a person who denies the logos of the "systemic" curator is guilty of unbelief in the state logos; one who considers himself an autonomous being (that is, "a tsar too") thereby corrupts the sense of rank in those around him. The tsar (the logos) must be one. Then his country will be one and indivisible. Then we shall all realise the special path of our country.
From this moderate soil-and-technocratic point of view, dominant in our country since the oprichnina of Ivan the Terrible, effective Russian politics comes down to the ability to believe totally — in a total (in practice: totalitarian) tsar-god-man. Like Quetzalcoatl, Odin and Thor in the Varangian cultural tradition, such a supreme leader (the Topmost, Himself, the Chief) possesses every social and physical skill all at once, and therefore can potentially head (by the hanging up of a portrait, for instance) any micro-society, confirmation of which the mass media demonstrate from time to time. This is the Adult, the father of the nation; his subordinates play the role of "children", cf. "the fledglings of Peter's nest": such a population always looks, as it were, slightly upward from below and must, within the rules of the game, simplify itself and write off its pranks and embezzlements as its own foolishness, inexperience, unreasonableness, excessive enthusiasm and so on.
The local representative of the vertical of power — the Adult's viceroy — by virtue of his lesser rank does not possess the full spectrum of superhuman qualities, but in exchange he is demonstratively not subject to the usual laws of the Oecumene in some one respect: for instance, he "can fly"; and further, the mechanism of social inheritance: the profit must be replicated, he "carries us along with him".
The terms "we" and "us" are understood here by Buzmakova in the broadest possible sense: they extend to every actor of the locality capable of being aware of public life. In effect it is an appeal to the national consciousness of the people in the Minin's Appeal; the process proves immanent to the chronicler's "ritual of composing a text" (after Yu. Lotman). The basis of the meme is a naive narrative. The narrator is a wise observer, retired yet keeping a lively soul, poetically inclined — here we see the archetype of the wise Grandmother, of the "akyn", "Nestor" subtype — "Arina Rodionovna". The message is preserved and circulated in good time by a specialised quasi-independent news agency descending from the original function of the monastic scriptorium not only in the organisation of production but also in its basic service — by default performing the office of archivist: a selection of materials of similar bent is appended to the requested text; a curious reader may learn, for example, of the governor's exactly 10-fold superiority over his predecessors; such a study was made by well-behaved Nizhny Novgorod Scholars. ("In doing so the compiler of the document sets himself the goal of idealising the depicted event to the utmost rather than describing it "accurately". Yuri Lotman.// Uchenye zapiski of Tartu State University. Issue 576. Works on sign systems. XV. Tartu, 1982, pp. 44-45."). Thus the archetype of the hero, projected into the sphere of society's self-organisation, constantly generates — by induction — the heroic myth in the most varied spheres of social life.
Agency of Political News - NN: "Let's fly!"
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Let's fly!
Today there will probably be a lot of talk about the six years we spent alongside Valery Shantsev in the Nizhny Novgorod Region, and today it is fair to ask: who, if not he? Of course. The Kremlin could have found a dozen or two people capable of heading the Nizhny Novgorod region, perhaps we would have accepted them, we would have agreed with them, but life would have been different. Now, six years on, it seems right that a bear was sent into restless Nizhny Novgorod, mired in parochial scandals, a bear to press everyone down. And press them down he did - especially at first. Today Shantsev is in a different period - he is gathering strength. And now what he used to be blamed for, what he was reproached with - all of it now looks different. Today he is surrounded by the young, the handsome, the clever - and he is not afraid of that. Because he is stronger. One need only recall the March campaign for the elections of deputies to the Regional Legislative Assembly, when Shantsev worked almost single-handedly for everyone, travelled around the region and drove the others hard, held a direct dialogue with the people, argued his case. True, it may be said that the percentages won by the United Russia" party were lower than hoped for - but here the following objection is in order. Not everything works out at once. It takes years and years for the people to come to believe, as they came to believe in Shantsev - and a governor depends in many ways on Moscow's policy, and if you are a governor, then you must answer for everything, including for superiors who are not always right. Shantsev has become one of our own in Nizhny Novgorod. Who could be governor now, if not he? Among local politicians nobody can match him in weight, in deeds, in flight, for which we always reproached him - let us Globe Town, Strelka City, the A soccer stadium with a capacity of 40,000 spectators on the Rowing Channel — those projects which we, earthbound people, found off-putting: where does he think he is going, what sort of city across the river... But that is exactly what sets Shantsev apart: he knows how to fly and carries us along with him. To fly, to look higher than we do - and probably that is right. |
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NTA-Privolzhye: "Shantsev knows how to fly and carries us along with him - Buzmakova"
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Nizhny Novgorod. 8 August 2011. NTA-Privolzhye – "Shantsev knows how to fly and carries us along with him", said political commentator Valentina Buzmakova, commenting on the sixth anniversary of Valery Shantsev's governorship.
"Six years on, it seems right that into restless Nizhny Novgorod, mired in parochial scandals, a bear was sent to press everyone down. That bear was Valery Shantsev. And press them all down he did — especially at first", - she said. "Today Shantsev is in a different period — he is gathering strength. And now what he used to be blamed for, what he was reproached with — all of it now looks different. Today he is surrounded by the young, the handsome, the clever — and he is not afraid of that. Because he is stronger", - the political commentator believes. "One need only recall the March campaign for the elections of deputies to the Legislative Assembly of the Nizhny Novgorod Region, when Shantsev worked almost single-handedly for everyone, travelled around the region and drove the others hard, held a direct dialogue with the people, argued his case. True, it may be said that the percentages won by the "United Russia" party were lower than hoped for — but here the following objection is in order. Not everything works out at once. It takes years and years for the people to come to believe, as they came to believe in Shantsev — and a governor depends in many ways on Moscow's policy, and if you are a governor, then you must answer for everything, including for superiors who are not always right", - V. Buzmakova said. "Shantsev has become one of our own in Nizhny Novgorod. Who could be governor now, if not he? Among local politicians nobody can match him in weight, in deeds, in flight, for which we always reproached him — let us recall Globe Town, Strelka City, the A soccer stadium with a capacity of 40,000 spectators on the Rowing Channel — those projects which we, earthbound people, found off-putting: where does he think he is going, what sort of city across the river... But that is exactly what sets Shantsev apart: he knows how to fly and carries us along with him. To fly, to look higher than we do — and probably that is right", - the political commentator noted in conclusion. As reported earlier, in 2010 Valery Shantsev was appointed governor of the Nizhny Novgorod Region for a second term. |
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A deeper reading
A system built on a Genghisid core is so weak at what we are used to calling "peaceful construction" that it can flood its frightening inefficiency only with an enormous quantity of natural resources dumped on the foreign market — notes P. A. Kuznetsov, a Nizhny Novgorod historian of Central Europe; the domestic market is shaped by sales of cheap stimulants, by the planting of primitive consumer myths and of the means of narcotisation. A similar policy, with allowances for support of the domestic producer of silk and spices, was pursued by Manchu China in the time of the Opium Wars. In the modern world this is all but a death sentence.[1]
Seen in this light, the mantra-assertion "Shantsev knows how to fly and carries us along with him" can be understood as the prophecy of a professional Cassandra: to fly out through the pipe (the hydrocarbon one, the oil-and-gas one), carrying the masses along, really is possible in today's international and domestic political conditions — if one gives up reflecting on public life; and flying downwards, if you think about it, is something everyone can do ("Even a bear flies when it falls off a hill" - a Vyatka saying). Probably, once a certain time has passed and the next floating leader appears, Valentina Buzmakova will turn to precisely the latter — the trickster, reading of her ideologeme.
Appendix 1. Buzmakova's earlier denial
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— Roman Skudnyakov: There was a programme about the fires recently.
— Sergey Kocherov: Yes, it would have been a sin not to take a swipe at the fires - after Shoigu declared that the situation with putting out fires in the Nizhny Novgorod Region was the most critical. And, by the way, Sergey Alexandrovich, I disagree with you - our region really is the worst affected, it is our region that has the largest number of people killed by the fires. This information war is a consequence of the struggle for power. And as for how it is waged, I was surprised that the programme "V gorode N" helped to raise Bulavinov's rating. I am in no position to comment on that, since it worked consistently from programme to programme… I do not know how it will be now. By the way, today I was asked to take part in the next programme. — Valentina Buzmakova: And you will go? — Evgeny Semenov: And you WILL GO?! (general animation). — Sergey Kocherov: I believe one must be on the front line. — Valentina Buzmakova: No, it is simply indecent to be there (general animation). — Sergey Kocherov: Valentina Petrovna, unlike you, who position yourself as a member of one team and an opponent of another, I do not position myself as a supporter of either. And nobody has traded away freedom of speech. — Valentina Buzmakova: Which team? — Sergey Kocherov: You are an opponent of Valery Shantsev. One can be not only someone's supporter, but also an opponent. — Valentina Buzmakova: Yes. Yes - I do not like him. — Sergey Kocherov: I am not judging whether that is good or bad, I am stating a fact. |
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See also
Sources
- ru.openlist.wiki — Open List (the Memorial database), entry from the Book of Memory of the Republic of Mordovia — Menshoykin Matvey Fedorovich (1897)