Vima Vima

Muse

Марина Тимашева: «Идеология против искусства»

На фестивале «Кинотавр» было представлено очередное изделие режиссера, который сделал карьеру на боевиках «под Голливуд», только со специфическим душком. Теперь, разобравшись с чернокожими и кавказцами, он выясняет отношение с русской – то есть, советской, 80-х годов – провинцией. Методика та же: импорт третьей свежести (в данном случае т.н. «трэш-хоррор») + идеологическая подливка.

И чего только не наслушалась я в Сочи от его агитбригады. Мол, какой же Алексей Балабанов расист? Русские в «Грузе 200» ничем не лучше негров в «Брате-2».

Удивили. Будто бы я не знаю, что В. Сорокина и А. Проханова, скинхэдовский агитпроп и рекламу наркотиков тиражировали одни и те же издательства. Их хозяевам что русские, что чукчи, что аборигены Австралии – в равной мере безразличен весь род людской.

Ещё говорили так: кому не нравится «Груз 200», тот бежит от реальной жизни, грязной и жестокой. В ответ я вам открою страшную тайну. Все люди ходят в туалет. Такова реальность, грязная и жестокая. Давайте снимем соответствующий кинофильм. Радикальный (от слова «кал»). Взгляд на мир из унитаза. Это будет что – реализм? Правда жизни?

Нет, конечно. Это будет низведение хомо сапиенс до уровня навозного червяка.

Дальше: в новом фильме обнаружили некое антисоветское диссидентство. Не поздновато ли? Похоже на анекдот про жирафа, до которого дошло. А на самом-то деле к советским реалиям сюжет «Груза 200» не имеет отношения. Ну, не раздавали тогда по частным квартирам афганские цинковые гробы. Патологические фантазии Балабанова направлены не против советского, а против любого человеческого общества.

В чем и состоит его «оппозиционность», а также «новаторство». Если ничего не читать, кроме заказных рецензий, не мудрено и поверить. А если расширить кругозор? Из учебника можно узнать про целенаправленное разрушение нравственных норм в определенные периоды римской истории. Нерон выходил замуж за вольноотпущенника. Устраивал шоу из убийства собственной матери. И дело тут не в сумасшествии. Такой стиль поддерживала значительная часть элиты, как политической, так и культурной (тогдашней «творческой интеллигенции»). Приветствовала столичная толпа, презиравшая труд (удел рабов и провинциалов) и требовавшая всё более «экстремальных» увеселений. В политике деграданса просматривалась своя логика: ведь разложившимся обществом легче управлять.

До поры до времени. До первого серьёзного испытания.

В Сочи клака твердила, что если не дать призов «Грузу 200», то его никто и не увидит. Злая цензура не пропустит. Возвращаюсь в Москву: вижу по ЦТ такую рекламу Балабанова (прямо в вечерних новостях!), какой не имел Мавроди.

Цензура? Не смешите. Кабинеты, в которых решают за народ, какое искусство ему полезно, по-прежнему оккупированы идейными единомышленниками А. Балабанова и Ко.

Но даже они не всесильны. Жюри «Кинотавра» не подчинилось идеологическому давлению. Вадим Абдрашитов и его коллеги присудили призы не тому, кому положено, а тому, кто заслужил.

Что-то в жизни и впрямь меняется к лучшему…

(18/06/2007)

Радио Свобода

Вторник

Живешь дурак дураком, но иногда в голову лезут превосходные мысли...Пьянство — наш коренной национальный порок и больше — наша идея-фикс. Не с нужды и не с горя пьет русский народ, а по извечной потребности в чудесном и чрезвычайном, пьет, если угодно, мистически, стремясь вывести душу из земного равновесия и вернуть ее в блаженное бестелесное состояние. Водка — белая магия русского мужика; ее он решительно предпочитает черной магии — женскому полу. Дамский угодник, любовник перенимает черты иноземца, немца (чорт у Гоголя), француза, еврея. Мы же, русские, за бутылку очищенной отдадим любую красавицу (Стенька Разин).
В сочетании с вороватостью (отсутствие прочной веры в реально-предметные связи) пьянство нам сообщает босяцкую развязность и ставит среди других народов в подозрительное положение люмпена. Как только «вековые устои», сословная иерархия рухнули и сменились аморфным равенством, эта блатная природа русского человека выперла на поверхность. Мы теперь все — блатные (кто из нас не чувствует в своей душе и судьбе что-то мошенническое?). Это дает нам бесспорные преимущества по сравнению с Западом и в то же время накладывает на жизнь и устремления нации печать непостоянства, легкомысленной безответственности. Мы способны прикарманить Европу или запузырить в нее интересной ересью, но создать культуру мы просто не в состоянии. От нас, как от вора, как от пропойцы, можно ждать чего угодно. Нами легко помыкать, управлять административ-ными мерами (пьяный — инертен, не способен к самоуправлению, тащится, куда тянут). И одновременно — как трудно управиться с этим шатким народом, как тяжело с нами приходится нашим администраторам!..

***

Истинно христианские чувства противоположны нашей природе, анормальны, парадоксальны. Тебя бьют, а ты радуешься. Ты счастлив в результате сыплющихся на тебя несчастий. Ты не бежишь от смерти, а влечешься к ней и заранее уподобляешься мертвым. Всякому здоровому, нормальному человеку это кажется дикостью. Природа учит бояться смерти, избегать страданий, плакать от боли. А тут всё наоборот — противоестественно (говорят гуманисты), сверхъестественно (говорят христиане). И никаких дальновидных расчетов (пусть лучше здесь потерплю, чтобы там блаженствовать — расчет ростовщика). Обратные реакции возникают непреднамеренно, помимо воли. Но стоит «простить обидчику», и на душе становится весело, точно разрублен узел, который никакими борениями не развязать. И если эту легкость и веселость души взять не следствием, а причиной, то прощение и любая другая обратная реакция на причиненную скорбь проявится неудержимо, без усилий и специальных заданий. Не преодоление естества, а его замещение какой-то иной, нам не знакомой природой, которая учит болеть, страдать, умирать и избавляет от обязанности бояться и ненавидеть.

Андрей Синявский

Muse

Man in the news: Vladimir Putin

By Neil Buckley

Rarely have the many faces of Vladimir Putin been seen in such quick  succession. On Saturday, the Russian president flies into his home city of St Petersburg for a business forum aimed at showcasing Russia’s economic recovery. As he meets international chief executives tonight, they can expect to meet Charming Putin.

At this week’s Group of Eight summit, Statesman Putin surprised George W. Bush, his US counterpart, with a compromise aimed at solving the stand-off over US plans for a missile shield in eastern Europe.

Yet as the week began the west glimpsed Scary Putin, threatening to point Russian nuclear missiles at Europe if the US built its anti-missile system. The warning came in an interview that mixed self-confidence, defiance, bitterness and acerbic wit. “Am I a ‘pure democrat’? Of course I am, absolutely,” Mr Putin said. “The problem is that I’m all alone, the only one of my kind in the world ... There is no one to talk to since Mahatma Gandhi died.”

With nine months left before he is due to step down, the world is still groping to answer the question that has been posed throughout the former KGB colonel’s seven-year presidency: “Who is Mr Putin?” First he was the soft-authoritarian liberal, “Putinochet”, who would restore order after the chaotic post-Soviet 1990s while driving through liberal economic reforms.

After September 11, 2001, he was the west’s friend, telephoning Mr Bush with sympathies and backing US military bases in former Soviet central Asia to support the war in Afghanistan. Since his 2003 assault on Mikhail Khodorkovsky, boss of the Yukos oil company, in a campaign to crush the wealthy “oligarchs” who grabbed power under President Boris Yeltsin, Mr Putin has seemed a darker figure. This Putin has clamped down aggressively on opposition and the media, grabbed state control of energy assets and used cold war-style rhetoric against the west.

But over his two presidential terms, a clearer sense has emerged of Mr Putin’s character. Alexander Rahr of the German Council on Foreign Relations, a Putin biographer, says he is warm in private. “In personal contacts he is much more charming, more open,” Mr Rahr says. “He can win people over in one-to-one debates more than in front of the broad public.”

That may explain Mr Putin’s success in turning foreign leaders such as Germany’s Gerhard Schröder and Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi into friends. But in public, Mr Putin can appear cold indeed. After 336 people died in the Beslan tragedy, the Russian president in a televised speech dwelt little on their suffering. Instead, he vowed to prevent any repeat, using a phrase that perhaps sums up his mentality: “Russia has been too weak,” he said. “And the weak get beaten.”

Mr Putin has packed the Kremlin and state companies with cronies, suggesting he trusts only long-time friends and is intensely loyal. But he bears deep grudges against those, like Mr Khodorkovsky, who he thinks have crossed him. “For Putin, there are enemies, but you can reach agreements with enemies, and there are traitors. With traitors there can be no discussion,” says Alexei Venediktov, editor-in-chief of Echo of Moscow radio, one of Russia’s last independent media outlets.

The west may have tried too hard to pigeonhole Mr Putin, as a liberal, statist or KGB man. In fact, he is a combination of all three. He is an economic liberal, but believes the state must play a big role in sectors such as energy and defence. His political thinking is statist, too. The lesson Mr Putin drew from the Yeltsin era was that, for now, liberal freedoms in Russia equate to chaos and collapse. As he wrote in an open letter to Russians before becoming president: “The stronger the state, the freer the individual.” Mr Putin is also very much a KGB man. Mr Rahr says two camps vying to succeed Mr Yeltsin in 1999 proposed different paths for Russia. One, led by the “oligarch” Boris Berezovsky, advocated a more liberal path of partnership with the west, which would also have enabled the oligarchs to maintain influence.

Another, backed by the security services and some lower-profile businessmen, believed in recentralising power in the Kremlin and KGB, strengthening the state, and greater independence from the west while wooing powers such as China. Their initial candidate was Yevgeny Primakov, a former head of foreign intelligence and briefly prime minister under Mr Yeltsin. After Berezovsky-controlled media crushed Mr Primakov, the oligarch backed Mr Putin, apparently believing he would do his bidding. Instead, Mr Putin sought to tame the oligarchs, fell out with Mr Berezovsky, who fled to London, and delivered essentially the Primakov agenda.

In other ways, too, Mr Putin struggles to escape the instincts of a KGB man. Nato’s eastwards expansion is seen not as young democracies’ desire to join a protective alliance, but as “encirclement” of Russia. Western support for democracy in Ukraine and Georgia is viewed as imperialist meddling in Russia’s backyard. He remains cynical about western democracy and the press. “He sees the press not as an institution of civil society, but as an instrument for achieving a goal. He uses it that way, he thinks his opponents use it that way ... ” Mr Venediktov says.

Mr Putin has revealed little of his private life, shielding his two daughters from media attention, but joked in a press conference that he often turned for advice to his black Labrador, Koni. An interview with his wife, Ludmila, portrayed him as a somewhat ascetic figure who never talked about work at home, enjoyed a glass of kefir, a fermented milk drink, when he returned from the office, and had banned her from having a credit card to avoid “western temptations”.

History’s view of Mr Putin will be influenced by whether he stands down next year in accordance with Russia’s constitution. The longer-term judgment will depend on how Russia develops. If economic recovery continues and today’s curtailment of political freedoms proves transitory, Mr Putin could yet be hailed as Russia’s saviour. If it slips into a more authoritarian nationalism, he will be the man who snuffed out Russia’s attempt to escape its autocratic traditions.

But in today’s Russia, outside the political opposition or liberal intelligentsia, Mr Putin is enormously popular. Russians feel stability has returned, with national pride restored. Alexei, a property developer in Voronezh, central Russia, says he would happily vote for a third Putin term. “With Putin,” he says, “we no longer have to feel ashamed.”

Financial Times

(o8/06/2007)

Пятница

Ups, downs and my daily grind

By Lucy Kellaway

For the first four days of last week I kept a diary of my private thoughts and feelings while at work.

The last time I did anything of this kind I was 13; the result then was banal and embarrassing and I hid it from everyone. The latest effort is also banal and embarrassing but this time I am reproducing it below.

My aim is to undermine the newly popular management theory that says happy workers are more creative and productive than miserable ones. This theory is supposedly proved by an article in the May edition of the Harvard Business Review in which 238 professionals were asked to keep daily diaries of their inner working lives. Two professors pored over 12,000 entries and compared them with the quality of the work that the people had done.

I have just conducted the same experiment on myself, and an analysis of my results points to a different conclusion. First, the raw data.

Monday: Feeling quite perky by recent standards. Started writing my agony aunt column with enjoyment. Felt smug. Had long gossipy lunch with colleague. Lost momentum in the afternoon. Finished column in a panic. Realised I’d forgotten to pick up my youngest son from school. Cycled home feeling less smug.

Tuesday: Slept badly. Slouched into work feeling tired, flat and thoroughly out of sorts. Had conversation with tiresome colleague and decided I loathed him. Hardly had any e-mails. Felt unpopular. Wrote some of the Martin Lukes column with distaste. Read the result and thought it laboured and unfunny. Decided I hated my job and contemplated retirement. Later at home did some maths with my daughter. Felt oddly cheered up by simultaneous equations.

Wednesday: Lovely ride to work in the sun feeling carefree. Looked over previous day’s work and thought it not too bad. Finished column with satisfaction. Chatted to people. Had lunch with another colleague. We sat in the sun and moaned, which was nice. E-mailed cheerfully. Frittered time. Day ends a little blank, but fine.

Thursday: Slightly hungover, almost no sleep. Headache, depressed. Had pointless and bad-tempered e-mail exchange with someone I like. Sat down to write this column. Too wretched to want to talk to anyone. Worked with dogged sense of purpose, though felt the result feeble beyond redemption.

Readers may be thinking two things. First, that my experience is less significant than that of 238 professionals. To this, I’d like to refer them to the pappy quality of their diary entries. Here is an example: “My boss’s boss came by, which was nice. He brought bottled water!” Mine reads like Virginia Woolf by comparison.

A more serious objection is that my entries seem to support the theory that I’m trying to disprove: on my miserable days – Tuesday and Thursday – my work was bad too. The truth is more complicated.

For years I have been monitoring my vacillating moods and the effect they have on my work. When I am glum I invariably judge my work to be bad. When I’m cheery I tend to think my work fine. However, I am a hopeless judge of what I do. Indeed, the columns that people have liked best have often been the ones written in a mood close to despair, while many of the ones I’ve liked have fallen entirely flat.

There are three reasons for this. When tired and unhappy I have no energy for chatting. I am grimly focused on what I’m doing. I’m much more prepared to take creative risks too – if life seems already bad, what is there to lose? And the fact that I judge myself so harshly when down makes me try much harder.

If I am right, there are surely interesting management implications. Managers should concentrate on making us as miserable as they can. Actually my diary doesn’t quite show that. There are many kinds of bad feelings and some are more productive than others. Mild depression may be good for work. Severe depression tends not to be good for anything at all. Bad moods generated not by existential angst but by cretinous managers and daft management initiatives are also unproductive. They simply make one think: why bother?

My diary seems to imply that managers should hire professionals who are by nature somewhat neurotic and depressive. But even this isn’t so, because of something academics call “emotional contagion”. A happy mood spills over to others, and a miserable one does too. Reading my entries on Tuesday and Thursday I can conclude that I wasn’t helping the inner working life of those around me at all.

There is only one incident in my diary that has any constructive message for managers. Look at what I did on Tuesday. Notice how the maths cheered me up. This strikes a chord with the HBR survey, which found that workers were happier when they knew precisely what they were supposed to be doing and were allowed to do it. Ambiguity is bad. Clarity is good. This explains why the equations were such bliss. I knew what I was meant to do. I had the tools to do it. And I got the answers entirely, objectively, indisputably right.

(published in The Financial Times on May 6, 2007)