Utilization of Russia

Dmitry Altufiev

translated by Mihail Kulikov

Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?
Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit.
A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit.
Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. (Matthew 7:16-19)

All of the following is pure fiction and artistic visionary.

Many people understand utilization as disposal of waste, in this logic, to dispose of something means to destroy, discard. There are even hot heads or too enthusiastic individuals, who are truly ready to toss Russia into the dumpster (good riddance, they say), but we are not among them. Firstly, there is no such dumpster, i.e., to accomplish this, the whole of Russia needs to become a giant dumpster, and, although this process has been going on for a while and automatically… we don’t like it. Secondly, we see utilization as recycling of unsightly condition into something useful, as the extraction of maximum benefits from any, even terminal, state of deprecation and wear and tear. Sergei Pereslegin, for example, wrote about Japan’s excellent utilization of military defeat in WWII. The Japanese, by redirecting the resources of an occupied and morally suppressed country (that has “lost face”) from supporting militarism and imperial Pacific projects to most promising areas of production and applied research (i.e. generally inward), showed the world a master class. In order to fully experience the success of utilization, it took about 20 years.

Astonishingly, Germany did it in the same timeframe, while the situation there was much more difficult. Recall that Germany was destroyed by military operations on its territory and bombing, and in addition to military defeat, she had to experience the collapse of the philosophical paradigm. The violent eradication of this “German dream”, the embodiment of German romantic philosophy in the era of Modernity, a thought defeated by weapon, backfired to all mankind. A large ideological branch was cut off, burned and tabooed. A global philosophical imbalance has arisen, and neither it nor its consequences have yet been reflected upon and overcome.

But we digress. So, Germany experienced not only a military defeat, but the complete removal of the state with division, lustration, overthrow of fundamentals and loading the nation with guilt. Nevertheless, even if we keep in mind that she did it with the help from the outside, for the same 20 years she managed to utilize an absolute defeat, and after another 20 years she became the locomotive of Europe.

History shows that Russia is not capable of utilizing even a victory, let alone a looming defeat, which will most likely be of a combined political and economic nature. Military and ethnic components are also possible. Many have written that the USSR degenerated into a collapsing empire and the first stage of the collapse took place in 1991. A new catastroika will lead to a new collapse due to both the structure of the federation, consisting of subjects of the first and second grade, and a deep institutional degradation of the state.

There is an old analogy that a state is a vessel that protects and gives shape to its precious content - a nation. A living nation nourishes an encompassing state as tree juices feed a bark of the tree and its crown, and then the achievements of a nation-state in science, culture, and technology cover this tree like leaves, fruits and flowers. If a nation is resilient, even strong crippling effects are unable to destroy such a tree, and it will produce new shoots from pruned branches and even a stump. If there is no nation, and everything is rotted from the inside, a state as a shell dries and stagnates, a tree ceases to blossom and bear fruit, leaves fall down and a trunk is permeated by the tunnels drilled by thousands of grinders and bark beetles — ethnic and bureaucratic clan corporations parasitizing on such a state. It is impossible to save a dead old tree; it becomes dangerous, spreads rot and parasites around, and can collapse at any moment, breaking the trees in a neighborhood.

In this regard, we are no longer talking about utilization of Russia’s defeat — this is impossible. It is about utilization of Russia itself.

How is rotten tree utilized? If it is still standing, it should be gently tumbled down in such a way that the surroundings and tree’s valuable parts do not suffer much. Then the tree is cut within healthy tissues, i.e. branches with preserved wood suitable for processing are separated from the unfit trunk. Presumably, some federal republics of their own titular nation will become such branches. Do not think that they will succeed. Most of them, due to understandable inertia, will become failed states like ***-stans[1] of Central Asia. In some places, events will take on bloody forms that are dangerous to others. After cutting the branches, what will remain in front of us is the trunk — ethnically void and mute Russian regions, parts that are most affected by the rot. There's no point in looking for healthy tissue here; the log is subject to complete processing. An attempt to reassemble a vertical state-tree is tantamount to an attempt to revive a dead. Meanwhile, this is exactly what leaders of the non-system political opposition intend to do in case of their coming to power. But replacing one Chubais with another will not give our cadaver any vitality.

The thing is that in the Russian post-Soviet consciousness there are no convictions at all. Masses are not only non-ethnic, but also non-moral. Society in the generally accepted (Western) sense of the word does not exist in the Russian Federation. There is no people - "source of power." Russians form a state and bond Russia only in the imagination of the nationalists. In fact, Russians are only a tree dust that is easily permeated by alien vertical (regime) and horizontal (bureaucratic and ethnic organized criminal groups) interests. The main danger for them is to run into other rigid structures – be it clans or parts of the state, but the way out has been worked out: fusion and joint parasitism on the substrate. The experience of the Russian Federation and the D/LNR [2] showed that the amorphous mass can be given any form, but all social processes will have to be stimulated and simulated, no other way. The society, which was decomposed into dust, is unable to consolidate around a constructive idea; therefore, as early as in 2011, a call for the creation of synthetic national values was articulated by D.A. Medvedev. In response, a highly successful at the beginning, synthetic of the “Russian world” appeared, but with it was paved the road to hell — to a grandiose abstinent post-imperial withdrawal.

One of the best studies of Russia is "Internal colonization" by A. Etkind, whose idea is that Russia has been being colonized for centuries, i.e. colonizes itself. But every radial movement must have a center. Restricting the search within boundaries of the USSR and its successor the Russian Federation, we will see this center — Moscow. It is Moscow that is the metropolis of Russia; it is Moscow, where, according to various estimates, from 10 to 20% of the population lives; it colonizes all other territories, including the nearest ones. To all supporters of a broad interpretation of the Russian metropolis idea we recommend comparative hiking in Vladimir or Ryazan. Even foreigners know that Moscow is not Russia. In this regard, Russia once again demonstrates the world its archeomodernity, the ability to preserve and integrate absolute archaism into modern times. Since the days of the post-Horde[3] clashes between Moscow, Kazan and Astrakhan, the metropolis has always been a city-center, everything else was just applications, a territory colonized. The apogee of such a formula of the state was Philotheus's theory of Moscow as the Third Rome. Remarkably, the USSR was even more modernized than the present day feudal federation with its system of domains, fiefdoms, and vassal duchy.

But let's see what it all led to. The megalopolis-metropolis, glittering with wealth, and its colonies, where 75% of residents hate Moscow and simultaneously dream of moving there. We have a penniless, robbed and embittered country, and Moscow pouring with dollar pus, suffocating from an overabundance of people, cars, flash’n’cash, drugs, and everything else. Whether this system is good or bad is an idle question, it is important that there is no solution within the framework of the idea of Russian statehood. Even comprehensive lustration will not give the desired result, because the archaic understanding of a state, absorbed by generations, guarantees the preservation of this tradition as a complete reflection in every fragment of a broken mirror, no matter how many. Consciousness of the masses is extremely mythological and the archaic myth in Russia can prolong itself due to the lack of rational consciousness and the powerful historical and cultural inertia (Devol). Even fully conducted high-quality lustration in Russia will only cause the growth of new permeating mafia structures, because there is no civil society opposing them that has morality and ideals. Even in Ukraine, where such a society (and very toothy one) exists, the post-Soviet rotten system has completely preserved itself.

10 years ago, Mikhail Veller, in a book about Russia “The Great Last Chance”, marked in bold strokes all social strata which are interested in preserving or destroying the current state (by the way, even then there was no chance and the Russian Federation confidently went to its predestined tomorrow). According to his calculations, only one segment is really interested in maintaining the status quo - bureaucracy. But this is not the best foundation for the state, the writer notes, for they support it for the sake corruption. Now the situation has changed a bit, for officials are gradually losing an opportunity to spend the loot in the West, thanks to which the embezzlement has somewhat lost its meaning even for the “inner circle”. Cutting off the bureaucracy of the Russian Federation from consumption according to Western wealthy standards was supposed to halt corruption, but rather it would cause malicious resentment for those who tasted the forbidden fruits of the West. A good example here is the collapse of the USSR, caused, among other things, by desire of the Soyuz and Republican elites to increase their consumption levels.

The solution will once again be the collapse of the unbalanced "federation". In some aspects it will be similar to the previous one: for example, a hypothetical referendum on the preservation of a single state will collect about 90% of the votes, but this will not change anything. On the other hand this collapse will exclude the possibility of succession itself; it will not leave behind the encapsulated Pseudo-Soviet Pseudo-Soyuz (as A. Shiropaev puts it) and this means that adherents of Soviet identity will have to defend it with weapons in hands. Thus, deferred in the 1990s, the Civil Mutiny-War [4] as a clash of identities is inevitable. But the mass is inert and there are few passionaries; besides, to substantially reduce the level of the conflict, two actions will be enough: massive media campaign, anticipating the disintegration, which will stop the previous military-patriotic hysteria; and advance planning of extensive post-Soviet reservations, with Lenin idols and other simple folk entourage of the leprosarium of the 1970s. Such “Indian territories” are reasonable to plan in places of prevalence of the corresponding mentality. They are necessary for creation of the guaranteed destinations and ways of departure of groups of “combat vatniks” [5] and as a place for the concentration of the most hopeless post-Soviet population. At first, these reservations, excuse me, people's republics, will have to be supported economically, because the idea of ideologically fueled exchange of the population is much more productive than digesting the mass of wadding (vata) - and they are voters, you have to take into account the Ukrainian experience.

And here we come to the most important question – who will take on the ambitious task of utilizing Russia? Obviously, no internal forces will cope with this, most of the internal actors do not set such tasks, dreaming only of taking control over Moscow — and everything else, as usual, will follow. One thing remains — external forces. But why do they need it?

To answer, we, like Marty McFly, must return from 2015 to 1985. The beginning of Perestroyka. Unheard government rhetoric began to be affirmed by unprecedented actions. The USSR is permeated with hopes for real change. The cold war is over, borders are open, Russians are no longer perceived as a world threat, and the world has thrown off the burden of a thermonuclear confrontation from its shoulders. The surge of Soviet simbolics' popularity abroad. Then the 90s, the collapse, Parade of Sovereignties, the demoralized Russian army as a fragment of the Soviet one, empty shelves of foodstuffs ... The newborn RF in 1991-1993 swayed even from a weak wind — and what did the West, "predatorily aimed at weaning our resources"? It helped the young democratic Russia to overcome this crisis of birth, gave advice, specialists, IMF loans, baby food, supplies. We, the generation of 45 and older, remember very well how, with semi-annual non-payment of salaries, people were saved by the notorious “Bush drumsticks” — really the cheapest meat in the markets. In those favorable conditions none of actors in the West even tried to squeeze out oil and gas or other resources and territories from Russia, although at that time it was possible to buy for pennies all the executives, all the secrets in bulk, disable or take out of the country its nuclear potential. In essence, Russia was given a chance for development in the trend of a new post-Jalta world, a world of free economic development and rejection of global confrontation (D. Tsebrov).

But the Russian Federation, instead of the new state, chose to become an old stump with eternal phantom pains in lost limbs. The revisionist regime quietly began to sway the established system of international security in order to achieve its goals. Then there were open declarations, in particular, Putin’s Munich speech. At the same time, Russia for the first time used gas issues for political pressure on Ukraine. Many in Europe did not understand or did not want to understand the essence of what was happening until they got a hybrid war. And now no one in Europe wants to depend on Russian gas supplies any longer, knowing full well that they are a tool for military operations (K.N. Borovoy). It took the West several years to understand how dangerous Russia's strategy is, how dangerous the country, the elite of which remains in captivity of its own propaganda myths, is.

It is very naive to believe that the West will give this country one more chance, limiting itself to a change of regime or the first person. A chain of political, diplomatic, economic and military measures has been launched, with the ultimate goal of eliminating the Russian Federation as the geopolitical threat to the West. Moreover, if the goals of both cold wars of the 20th century (1946–1975 and 1980–1988) were to contain Soviet expansion and to return “communist” countries from ideological utopia to a market-technocratic reality, now, taking into account currently identified permanent imperial-despotic essence of Russia, there will be a general dismantling of the Russian state "matrix" — to a safe level (E.V. Ikhlov).

Of course, this is not discussed in the official media, the more important is the comprehension and discussion of this possible future in samizdat and non-system media. The utilization concept we propose consists of intelligent extraction of maximum of benefits from the upcoming dismantling. What is its "safe level"?

Let us briefly analyze the result of the collapse of the four empires after the First World War in this context:

1. The Russian empire was almost instantly replaced by the Soviet one, which once again shows that domestic actors cannot be trusted with the utilization;
2. The dismantling of the second Reich with the loss of the colonies and the preservation of the metropolis was utilized by Germans (again, domestic actors), becoming the military, political and ideological hegemon of Europe already in the 1930s when the Third Reich appeared;
3. The dismantling of the Ottoman Empire, also with the loss of colonies and the preservation of the core of the Turkic-speaking areas in Asia Minor, including Eastern Anatolia and a significant part of Transcaucasia, was effective for almost a century. But now the strengthened Turkish state is already a regional leader, actively promoting its interests even by armed means, and given the growing discourses of Pan-Turkism and neo-Ottomanism, fueled by Ankara, we can conclude that the “safe level” of dismantling was not achieved in 1918;
4. The dismantling (and in fact fragmentation) of the Austro-Hungarian Empire into a series of small national states with complex relations and territorial claims was crowned with absolute success. Neither Austria, nor Hungary, nor any other state of this series can pose any threat to the interests of the great powers at any level of its economic development.

The conclusion is obvious. A safe level of empire dismantling is achieved by dividing it into fairly small entities. In order for them not to be prone to mergers and acquisitions, they must be approximately equal in strength, consist in complex relationships with each other and conduct successful national building at least in the first approximation. Based on this, it is undesirable to allow substantial territorial and resource strengthening of stable national republics of the Russian Federation, as well as its neighbors such as Kazakhstan or Belarus. The role of Ukraine may be completely different, while maintaining current ties with the West, it may become a kind of example of development in the post-Russian space. But this is a future matters, because now the innovative potential of Kiev looks poorer than under the “junta”. The most important thing that Progressors [6] will have to cope with is the strongest archaic mythological cultural inertia of Russian society. Obviously, the masses will perceive the new collapse as another “geopolitical catastrophe”, which will lead to the idealization of Putin and Co. and will cause a desire for revenge.

For all external players, the rule will apply: each receives his own activity in the process, but by agreement, otherwise the neighbors of the Russian Federation may pass the permissible limits. Of course, there is no need to talk about the direct division of northern Eurasia, because the leading actors have little interest in the territories (except perhaps China), rather, it will be about spheres of influence and some kind of external care for the new formations. Such guardianship by various actors, firstly, will give new political subjects a “potential difference” essential for national development. Secondly, the practice of neocolonialism can be tried out here due to the possible loss of hope for a successful construction of a state by some nations. It is obvious that black Africa, for example, is a continent of failed states that have become a huge source of instability, genocide, famine, migration, and terrible diseases. There is only one way to stop it: recolonization, and not only European. Mild (or not) guardianship of the post-Russian expanse will be a good school for the future streamlining of the Ocumene.

It’s high time to mention nuclear weapons as the guarantor of the sovereignty of the Russian Federation. We are far from thinking that people in charge of Russia are crazy. There will be no open war, let alone nuclear war. Several malicious launches, which are possible during the turmoil, missile defense systems will be able to repel, and the West will not launch a massive nuclear strike that incinerates Russia. No one needs this and it will give a lot of negative effects. Although a demonstrative point answer is possible. It is also possible to eliminate such developments in advance by preparing a large-scale operation to capture and / or control the WMD of the RF Armed Forces at the early stages of the crisis.

From the dismantling of sovereignty let’s proceed to the utilization of society. Let us return to our analogy: a rotten tree abandoned in the forest. By cutting off the branches of living ethnic groups, in front of us will remain the central part — a log filled with tree dust. This is a de-ethnised Russian-speaking mass aka the Soviet people. It is wrong to leave it to rot among healthy trees, because putrefactive germs, fungal spores and harmful insects will spread around.

There are two ways of utilization — fast and slow. Every summer resident knows those. The quick way, introduced by us above a little, is burning the log right on the spot, because it is too big for transportation. The fire has one pro and a lot of cons. A pro is that the flames of civil war quickly liberate territory and will have a huge impact on the consciousness of survivors, solving the problem. The cons are that this creates other problems. A tree dust burns much worse than a healthy wood, and in order for the log to burn to the ground, you will have to try hard, making and maintaining the fire, putting in a green paper, adding incendiary mixtures, and so on. Constant attention and control is needed, because a strong flame can scorch or ignite neighboring trees. A fire may start that cannot be controlled at all. Finally, on a burned-out bald spot, nothing good will grow for a long time, and even embers as foci of possible infection will remain. Such a disintegration of Soviet society is very dangerous.

Slow way is safer and more productive. This is composting: the digestion of all the vile organics that Russia is infested with — the tree dust itself and the worms, maggots and bark beetles grown in it — to the state of primary elements. Like father, like son, so the Horde-Soviet people can produce only the same offspring. In northern Eurasia, a “box” is created that does not block the access of air, but prevents the spreading of the substrate beyond its limits. Inside, a natural rationalization process starts, frozen in the Russian Federation in the 1990s. The goal is a complete disintegration in the minds of the masses of archaic myths, Soviet cultural and educational matrices, an ideological loosening, a disassembly of the Soviet society to a state of compost. The main acting agent will be a new reality, a collision with which no myth can withstand. It will take some time, but the crucial thing is to launch the process correctly, and you will rarely need to pay it much attention. The approximate algorithm is:

“If you feel the specific aromas from the compost storage, it may mean that the process of preparing compost failed and goes wrong. If it smells of ammonia, there are too many nitrogen components in the pit (you can correct the situation by adding a certain amount of torn paper). If you smell rotten eggs, then there is not enough oxygen in the pit or crate, and the contents should be well shaken, sprinkled with straw or sawdust.”

In our context, this means that with the distribution of unwanted gradients in the mass being processed, it will be necessary to make certain corrections. The resulting Muscovite humus will be an ideal substrate for constructivist national building, in which we, Alternates, will add new myths and grow new identities under the order arising from regional specifics. Thus, the post-Russian territories will turn into a giant testing ground, into Silicon Valley of practical constructivism.
Readers who closely followed the utilization of the large tree are ready to ask the question: what about the last remaining part of it – the stump? No, we have not forgotten that, it is very important. The fact is that the stump is the roots; this is what the tree has grown from, i.e. Moscow. Thoughts on the utilization of Moscow are still ahead of us.

Our short essay is not a program, a call or an appeal, but merely a suggestion of a possible concept, one of the hypothetical approaches to probable events. It is impossible to concretize the areas of this serious work on several pages, but we are sure that the utilization approach to future critical changes in the destinies of the country has no alternative. Perhaps, to someone it may seem callous and soulless, but we do not have time for tears and suffering. To be more precise, there is still some time, it’s rather that we have no desire to undergo this karmic cycle once again.

In general, the future is clear and there’s a whole lot of work ahead.

“Ostrog” №10, 2016

Footnotes:

1. Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, etc.
2. Donetsk People’s Republic/Lugansk People’s Republic.
3. The Golden Horde, originally a Mongol and later Turkicized khanate established in the 13th century and originating as the northwestern sector of the Mongol Empire.
4. Concept of Mutiny-War by Evgeny Messner, see his publication "Mutiny, or the name of the Third World War" (Buenos Aires, 1960).
5. This loose term is derived from the jargon word vata, which is popular in everyday and informal political discourse. Vata is in turn a derivative from vatnik which directly translates into quilted (or padded with wadding) jacket that symbolizes the most marginalized and uncultured segments of the population, lumpen so to speak. Nevertheless, it is a distinctive term used to label the most zealous patriots of “Russian world” and followers of its synthetic discourse.
6. Reference to science-fiction novels by Strugatsky brothers “Hard to be a God” and “Inhabited Island”, which are popular in post-Soviet countries. From the perspective of extra-terrestrials, Progressors are aliens (in fact, earthers from XXII century of future social utopia — the metaphor is obvious) that are aiming to rapidly evolve archaic societies of a given planet.