In the novel by Ilf and Petrov, this type was depicted - the Moscow intellectual of the NEP era Vasisualiy Lokhankin, all his life he searched for the homespun truth and suffered from the harsh reality surrounding him.
Hero, constantly reproduced in Russian literature and therefore in life: before the revolution it was Oblomov, under socialism - violist Danilov, and in the modern Russian NEP its prototype was a certain blogger under the name Vasily Utkin, a somewhat overripe character with a puffy face and a week's worth of stubble.
Vasily made a brief statement, apparently, constituting his moral creed, in which he seeks all truth, how the city of Kitezha, but the truth is not given to him. And that’s why Vasily suffers.
“There’s only one question now: state, Why do I need you at the moment??“- Vasily asks dramatically and lists many points, in which it shows, how much the state owes him, and how tired he is of enduring this debt.
"I, basically, I'd rather sit at home, probably” - Vasily is not sure, but allows in himself, under certain circumstances, such willpower:
“I would have sat out in other situations, but I end up for many years, For decades I’ve been throwing everything away to you and giving you a share of my earnings., you take some of the money from me yourself, and I will never see them again, I mean the so-called Pension Fund.
And no one will ever see them, it's completely obvious. So what is this all for?? For that, to rub your turnips, reminded me of some Kipchaks, and with that we parted ways, whether? I stay at home at my own expense, locked himself up, I pay for the apartment, all taxes and so on. It `s that, Why did I pay off all taxes every month?? Years 30? Somehow I'm disappointed with all these circumstances. I don’t need such a state.”.
In such a situation, Ostap Bender advised Mikhail Samuelevich Panikovsky: "Contact the World League for Sexual Reform, they will help you there".
So that we can understand, how to help and what to advise blogger Vasya, whose faith in humanity and its creation - the state - has cracked no less., need to understand, what does this Vasily want?. It is absolutely impossible to understand this from his confused speech..
Does he want freedom from quarantine in the midst of an epidemic?? Or does he demand a full pension?? Can, he needs freedom to emigrate? Or sexual reforms, to help pass the time of self-isolation? It is not clear why blogger Vasily was offended in his best feelings...
And this is a very indicative touch to the psychological portrait of that specific layer, which is the modern urban hipster, grew up from the raznochin, and after the provincial Soviet intelligentsia, who, under the Soviets, lived under the slogan “they don’t have money to eat”, but we don’t have enough for vodka”, and under the NEP I believed in that, that they are now taxpayers, and therefore the salt of the Russian land.
We are dealing with that damaged layer of semi-idealists, semi-professionals, which was described by the authors of the magazine "Vekhi", who studied the crisis of populism through the prism of the crisis of the liberal intelligentsia.
Vasily Utkin is a mirror of the modern Russian intelligentsia, outraged by the trauma of parting with myths. For one generation to survive the collapse of two basic myths in a row - the myth of communism and the myth of capitalism - is not something everyone can do.. You really won't understand here, What do you want, or democracy, or stellate sturgeon with horseradish.
For now we can only understand, that blogger Vasily does not like the state. Raised and raised him, at the very least, state. The food was not for the horse... It turned out, the state still owes him like... land to a collective farm. He's the only one, whether? Take every third person in Moscow in the diamond district and “pull it out”. Ramenki, Troparevo and Sviblovo, like the rest of the country, they will only applaud.
The bottom line is, that Vasily, judging by the look, surely in this life for 30 years of paying taxes went to doctors. AND, perhaps, not always to paid clinics. This means, the question of, why did he pay taxes, somehow incorrect.
Furthermore, if more than aspirations Vasily, clearly at risk, will get tired of the undemocratic quarantine and go outside, where will the coronavirus catch, then he will go into the free medical system, where are all the doctors, working for meager wages, from ambulance to intensive care, they will save him. And they will do this with taxpayers' money.. The whole country will save this... blogger... Vasily.
Do you need extraordinary mental abilities?, to understand this simple fact? Or is it clear to any fool? Judging by Vasily's performance, there are still bloggers in our villages, for whom some simple truths are incomprehensible. This means, without a psychoanalyst, working according to the old grandfather's tradition with Freud's theory, such manifestos cannot be deciphered.
Actually, Vasily wants the wrong thing, what is he complaining about. He wants a celebration of life, and they offer him penance. He wants compensation, and they tell him, that he should not now distract the state from real problems. And Vasily is offended, that his problems are not considered real, that boredom and midlife crisis are not a government problem, and Vasily’s problem. Vasily does not need such a state. Like in that joke: "You are evil, I'll leave you".
Can Vasily be condemned?, you can laugh at him, but in the best traditions of Russian humanistic literature, Vasily should sympathize. We are faced with the problem of the little man of our time, lost with his little sores in the whirlpool of epochal upheavals.
The tragedy of a little man in the era of the Great Turning Point is always a topic for great literature. AND, perhaps, they will still write books about Vasily, who will dissect our era, in which we are now fighting, surviving storms in a glass of water, like a tsunami. In the meantime, Vasily will simply be pointed out to his complete lack of understanding of what is happening and laughed at.
And this will be the homespun truth, which modern Russian intellectuals are seeking, always hostile towards the people, and to the state, and to real life, different from their illusory constructions, and therefore causing inescapable suffering, which crafty liberal propagandists are always ready to pick up, have long understood everything in this life.
“When I expressed it in words, what each of us would like to say to our native authorities” - such a comment was left on one liberal TG channel, where was Vasily’s video posted?. The guys got excited: “each of us” is a literary hyperbole, which little giants flatter themselves. “Some of us” - that would be more accurate. The classic also said about this: "There were too few of them, they were too far from the people".
Vasily is the lost generation of the era of triumph and collapse of the liberal utopia, and it is still waiting for its Hemingway and Remarque, Tolstoy and Gogol. For now they are being used in the dark, and their tears invisible to the world do not bother anyone.
Previously on the site IA REX: An epidemic is a war: About, without which there is no Victory
Alexander Chaldean
