Russian consciousness is extremely Americentric. Even if it is outwardly built on the denial of everything American. The teachers of life now for the Russian patriot are the fathers of Musk and Assange, not counting a few freaks from their Anglo-Saxon world or classic turncoats like Dimitri Simes. Whether it's a workshop or a session (not Russian words) «MAGA in Moscow» at the «Forum of the Future 2050» indicated by its very name a downright slavish dependence of the Russian national-imperial doctrine on American ultra-conservatism, which has turned from a marginal trend into a mainstream, turning the world upside down.
«Forum of the Future 2050». Photo: «Tsargrad»
The measure of success for Russian national-imperialists, who seem to have already buried the world liberal order, sacrificing many human lives, including their own citizens, on the altar of this «victory», is a flight to Mars. This is how the Russian dream is presented in the main report at the «Forum of the Future», which entered into competition with a similar report by Sergey Karaganov. The economy, which in the presenters' view is built almost exclusively on investments from the sacred state, also imitates the USA. One of the chapters of the report by the «Tsargrad Institute», headed by the Russian autocratic Orthodox oligarch-Stalinist Konstantin Malofeev, is shamelessly pro-American: «Success Story: American Experience of Mass Relocation of City Dwellers to Suburbs in the 1940s-1960s of the 20th Century». By the way, any programming of low-rise construction and other «spatial development» is a stage already passed. Planning has already been done, construction not quite. In a quarter of a century, the Putin regime has not coped with the problems of gasification and dilapidated housing. Probably, they will deal with these issues already on Mars, bringing there Gzhel, Khokhloma, and Russian central television with its assertive stars.
Gzhelka in every home
Women, according to the report, should turn into machines for childbirth, families will move like Americans into their own homes, and migrants will be replaced by robots. All others will be preemptively eliminated by the armed forces. And this entire fairy-tale country will be painted with Gzhel. Just like the children's ombudsman, wanted by the International Criminal Court, Maria Lvova-Belova at a reception with the President of Russia.
Vladimir Putin meets with the Commissioner for Children's Rights
Maria Lvova-Belova. Photo: kremlin.ru
All this resembles a mix of the Food Program of the Brezhnev era with various Putin's «May decrees» and state programs of unsuccessful attempts at authoritarian modernization. Or a technocratic utopia of the Bolshevik type, unrealizable without American technical models. Which was Stalin's industrialization, and it is precisely it that the authors of the «Tsargrad» utopias see as a model for development.
This is all the same inescapable matrix of catch-up development, this time not by milk, butter, and meat per capita, but by robotization replacing migrants. A robot is better than a migrant - this is something in terms of simplicity that stands next to «freedom is better than unfreedom». But as a result of careless handling of robots, you can get a machine uprising. And then there will be no difference between a robot and a migrant. And the vacant jobs left by migrants and robots will have no one to fill, because the economic reality is harsh: the indigenous population does not go for unprestigious positions.
Image generated by neural network
For families with a large number of children (about seven, according to Malofeev), minimal conditions are important: for example, vaccines against Rh-conflict, which disappeared due to the «special operation», as well as many other medical drugs. Carrying, giving birth, nurturing, and raising a person is still not an easy walk from the innovative cluster of Moscow State University to the «University» metro station and not sucking retro-techno-utopias out of one's thumb.
An important question is why is a person born? To become a participant in the «Time of Heroes» program and an engineer inventing superweapons? To sting the remnants (by 2050) of the Anglos without the Saxons (as expressed at this forum by Minister Sergey Lavrov), or does he still have more diverse and humane goals? Demographic waves and external, as well as internal circumstances, formed thanks to Putin's policies over the past 25 years, do not contribute to mass childbirth on the territory of the Russian state. Orthodox-Chekist dreamers will have to come to terms with this and continue to borrow human material from North Korea and by organizing recruitment in African countries.
Sergey Lavrov. «Forum of the Future 2050». Photo: «Tsargrad»
There are still a number of questions. At whose expense will the goals of the technocratic Orthodox utopia be achieved, especially considering that the oil and gas model is ceasing to work, and the multi-child 3D economy (houses for large families are supposed to be printed on 3D printers, probably manufactured at «Uralvagonzavod») will grow exclusively thanks to targeted state loans named after the resurrected economist Glazyev? How to fill the budget of the miracle state? Probably at the expense of «MAGA in Moscow». But for this, you must not miss the deal with Trump today. Otherwise, in America, there is still electoral democracy, suddenly some new Biden will come to power... After all, one experienced economist said that writing programs for 2050 is easier than for the next couple of years.
Land and grain are dreamed of, according to another speaker at the forum - Alexander Dugin, by Russian people. If this is not what they dream of, then probably the people are not Russian. And all good things are born from the decay of the seed. Here, to understand the «outstanding thinker of modernity» (as the faculty of political science at Moscow State University calls the obscurantist following the path of the grain), another variety of Gzhel will be needed. Without half a liter of vodka «Gzhelka», you can't figure out Dugin's thoughts.
The utopia diverges greatly from reality. But it doesn't matter. The marginal becomes mainstream. The insane becomes the new normal. The Russian national AI will be filled with Dugin, Dostoevsky, and Stalin, so it won't seem like much. And it won't seem like much to the federal budget, which will have to service all this Gzhel flying to Mars. According to the head of the Security Council Shoigu, 12.5 billion rubles were spent on supporting traditional values in 2023-2024 only in the form of «public projects». And if you add everything else, including state media... Ideology becomes an expensive pleasure. But they don't skimp on it.
Engineering of human souls
On Russia Day, Putin awarded state prizes, which just set the accents in state ideology - from folk art to nuclear weapons and the engineering of human souls. For the latter sector, Alexander Prokhanov, who became Putin's favorite character - he refers to him more often than to Ivan Ilyin, and Yuri Polyakov were primarily responsible.
Prokhanov dreamed of a «divine immortal Russian state». The idea of immortality, whether of the state or its living embodiment - the president, excited Putin to such an extent that he separately received the writer after the award ceremony. And then he shared with the participants of the «Time of Heroes» program the discoveries of the author of «Mr. Hexogen»:
«...<Prokhanov> is a thinking person, he has a philosophical mindset, he said very interesting things that I would like to share with you. He says: «Do you know what the main idea of today is for Russia?» I say: «Curious». — «In immortality». And, maybe, this is related not only to today but to Russia in general - the immortality of the Russian people and Russia, the multinational people of Russia and our common millennial statehood...»
«The people are immortal» - this was not said by Prokhanov, but by Vasily Grossman, in a heavily censored piece about the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, published in 1945. The pompous title was justified by the time. Now the inflated pathos of reasoning about the immortality of the «millennial statehood» is also justified by the «Time of Heroes». But how flat this messianism looks, once again in history taking its «special path». As if there were no other peoples and no other paths in this life.
Another round on the vicious circle of Russian-Soviet history. A failure into the past, which this pompous language betrays. Or such jargon of Soviet press, heard in the speech of the awarded physicist from a closed institute Yuri Dikov: «... this whole pack will break its teeth on our nuclear shield».
This whole pack was not going to break its teeth on any shields. It was immersed in the hated liberal peaceful prosperity. But Russian messianism and the desire for «movement» did not allow a normal life to continue - the authorities spoke in the murky language of heroic death, territories, and living spaces. And then, as Yuri Polyakov put it, a «spiritual mobilization» happened. There is no place now for ordinary literature, needed - if Jean-Paul Sartre were appropriate, but he is from an «unfriendly» country - «engaged literature». Polyakov:
«...It's enough to read the works written by representatives of the new frontline generation, hardened in battles for the Russian world. It's just strange that these scorching books are not included in the school curriculum, still giving preference to literary emigrants...»
This literature, if it burns with anything, then with its lack of talent. Literature of hatred is not always untalented, but this one is doomed to talentlessness. Since school literature is usually ignored by students (the same fate awaits the history textbooks of Medinsky-Torkunov-Chubaryan), the best way to cultivate an aversion to artificial, vulgar, and blasphemous attempts at military prose would be to include it in the school canon.
Alexander Dugin. «Forum of the Future 2050». Photo: «Tsargrad»
A quarter of a century, Putin's ideology, grown from the rotten seed of «Orthodoxy-autocracy-nationality», is maturing and entering the «cast-in-granite» phase. Is it worth living long in Russia if at a certain historical stage, having gained freedom and the priority of life over death, rights over lawlessness, you again find yourself in the same cage, plastered with portraits of Ivan the Terrible, Alexander III, Stalin, and Putin. And your teachers of life are Dugin with Prokhanov, Polyakov with Prilepin, and other engineers of human souls with engineers armed with robots in Gzhel.
However, this too shall pass. The people, whatever that means, are indeed immortal. And political regimes, even the longest-lasting and most hopeless, like a tombstone, fade away. Without ever landing on Mars or building miracle cities. Usually, after such political systems, sinister monuments remain abandoned railways leading from nowhere to nowhere with human bones along them. The future of such regimes is only the past in its worst form, no matter what Gzhel pictures they paint for wild money.
* Andrey Kolesnikov is considered a «foreign agent» by the Russian Ministry of Justice.