June 12 is Russia Day in our country. However. There is another country in the world - Paraguay, which celebrates a holiday on this day. And the Russian contribution to this holiday is very significant. 80 years ago, on June 12, 1935, the war between Paraguay and Bolivia, the so-called Chaco war, ended victoriously. An invaluable contribution to this victory was made by Russian officers, for whom, after the civil war in Russia, Paraguay became their new homeland.
The war was named after the Chaco territory - semi-desert, hilly in the northwest and swampy in the southeast, with impenetrable selva, on the border of Bolivia and Paraguay. She considered this land to be her own, but no one seriously drew a border there, since these wastelands and impenetrable thorny bushes intertwined with vines really did not bother anyone. Everything changed dramatically when, in 1928, in the foothills of the Andes, in the western part of the Chaco region, geologists discovered signs of oil. This event radically changed the situation. Armed skirmishes began for possession of the territory, and in June 1932 a real war broke out.
Economics is inseparable from politics. And from this point of view, the Chaco War was caused solely by the rivalry between the American oil corporation "Standard Oil", led by the Rockefeller family, and the British-Dutch "Shell Oil", each of which sought to monopoly dispose of the "future" Chaco oil. Standard Oil, by putting pressure on President Roosevelt, provided American military aid to the friendly Bolivian regime, sending it through Peru and Chile. In turn, Shell Oil, using Argentina, which was then allied to London, heavily armed Paraguay.
The Bolivian army used the services of German and Czech military advisers. Since 1923, General Hans Kundt, a veteran of the First World War, has been the Minister of War of Bolivia. From 1928 to 1931, Ernst Röhm, then a well-known chief, served as an instructor in the Bolivian army. assault squads Nazi party. In total, the Bolivian army had 120 German officers. German military advisers created from Bolivian armed forces exact copy German army model of the First World War. Seeing his troops at the parade, marching in a typical Prussian style, where officers flaunted in shiny helmets with "shishaks" from the time of Kaiser Wilhelm II, the President of Bolivia proudly declared: "Yes, now we can quickly resolve our territorial differences with the Paraguayans"!
By that time, a large colony of Russian White Guard emigrant officers had settled in Paraguay. After wandering around the world, they were unpretentious, homeless and poor. The Paraguayan government offered them not only citizenship, but also officer positions. In August 1932, almost all the Russians who were at that time in the Paraguayan capital of Asuncion gathered in the house of Nikolai Korsakov. The time was very disturbing: the war began and they, the immigrants, had to decide what to do in this situation. Korsakov expressed his opinion: “Twelve years ago we lost our beloved Russia, which is now in the hands of the Bolsheviks. You all see how warmly we were received in Paraguay. Now, when this country is going through a difficult moment, we must help it. What can we expect? After all, Paraguay has become a second homeland for us, and we, the officers, are obliged to fulfill our duty to it.”
Russians began to arrive at recruiting stations and sign up as volunteers for the Paraguayan army. They all kept the ranks they graduated with civil war in Russia. There was only one feature: after mentioning the rank of each Russian volunteer, two letters"NS". This abbreviation meant "Honoris Causa" and distinguished them from regular Paraguayan officers. Eventually. in the Paraguayan army there were about 80 Russian officers: 8 colonels, 4 lieutenant colonels, 13 majors and 23 captains. And 2 generals - I.T. Belyaev and N.F. Ern = headed General base Army of Paraguay, commanded by General José Felix Estigarribia.
Russian officers at one time participated in the First World War and actively applied their experience in battles against the Bolivian army. Bolivia has used German experience. On the side of Bolivia there was a significant superiority in numbers and weapons. The Bolivian army at the first stage of the war began an active advance deep into the territory of Paraguay and captured several strategically important forts: Boqueron, Corrales, Toledo. However, in many respects, thanks to Russian officers, out of tens of thousands of mobilized illiterate peasants, it was possible to create a combat-ready, organized army. Also, Generals Ern and Belyaev managed to prepare defensive structures, and in order to confuse the Bolivian aviation, which had superiority in the air, they planned and skillfully made false artillery positions, so that the aircraft bombed the trunks of palm trees disguised as guns.
The merit of Belyaev, who knew well the straightforwardness of tactics German general and well studied the methods of the German army on the fields of the First World War, one should recognize the direction and timing of the offensive of the Bolivian troops. Kundt later stated that in Bolivia he wanted to try new method attacks used by him on the Eastern Front. However, this tactic failed against the defenses built by the Russians for the Paraguayans.
Heroically behaved in battles and Russian officers. Yesaul Vasily Orefiev-Serebryakov in the battle of Bokeron, led the chain into a bayonet attack, himself in front, with a naked saber. Struck, he managed to say become winged words: "I carried out the order. A fine day to die!" ("Lindo dia para morir"). The cavalry squadron of Captain Boris Kasyanov attacked the fortified point of Puesto Navidad. The attack was successful, but at the decisive moment two machine guns hit the Paraguayans. The attack began to "choke". Then Boris rushed to one of the machine guns and covered the embrasure of the machine gun nest with his body. Russian officers died heroically, but their courage is not forgotten, their names are immortalized in the names of streets, bridges and forts of Paraguay.
Applying the tactics developed by the Russian generals of fortified points and attacks by sabotage detachments, paraguayan army neutralized the superiority of the Bolivian troops. And in July 1933, the Paraguayans, together with the Russians, went on the offensive. In 1934 fighting took place in Bolivia. By the spring of 1935, both warring parties were extremely financially exhausted, but the morale of the Paraguayans was at its best. In April, after fierce fighting, the Bolivian defenses were broken through along the entire front. The Bolivian government asked the League of Nations to mediate a truce with Paraguay.
After the defeat of the Bolivian army near the city of Ingavi, on June 12, 1935, a truce was signed between Bolivia and Paraguay. Thus ended the Chak war. The war turned out to be very bloody. 89,000 Bolivians and almost 40,000 Paraguayans died, according to other sources - 60,000 and 31,500 people. 150,000 people were injured. Almost the entire Bolivian army was captured by the Paraguayans - 300,000 people
And here is what caused the whole “cheese forest” to flare up - oil was never found in the Chaco. However, the Russian diaspora after this war received a privileged position. Dead heroes they honor, and any Russian in Paraguay is treated with respect.
Why did the protest campaign launched in Runet not work from the word "absolutely"?
In the global community of irreconcilable Russian oppositionists, they comprehend the new reality.
In general, the Russian irreconcilable opposition is, perhaps, the most international of all oppositions. It includes not only residents of Russia and citizens Russian Federation living abroad, but also former citizens Russian Federation, which have long become citizens of other countries. In its ranks there are even citizens of one country that claims that it is at war with Russia (and try to expel them from the ranks of the opposition guards).
…So. The question that this world community now has to solve is severe: why did the protest campaign launched in Runet not work from the word "completely"?
The presence of implacable anti-Putinists in the Internet media and social networks was, if not overwhelming, then at least equal to the “pro-Putin” one. And the total output of the protest efforts of the "anti-systemic candidates" and the boycotting "politician whom Putin is afraid of" turned out to be somehow miserable.
No, their result is pitiful, not in the sense that the couple of millions of our fellow citizens who voted for K. A. Sobchak and G. A. Yavlinsky are pathetic, insignificant individuals. And not in the sense that tens or maybe even hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens who really consciously heeded the call to "boycott the farce" are miserable. No, they are all full citizens of the country.
Their problem is elsewhere. Despite the fact that these people are a minority, at the same time they are a minority, so to speak, informationally hyperactive. And that is why this minority usually considers itself not just full-fledged, but something more.
This is for a normal user and the Internet is normal. That is, for personal purposes - mainly for correspondence with loved ones, watching movies and storing music.
And an advanced anti-Putin user, even if he is an Israeli housewife in years, is a daily factory of likes, comments and reposts, producing and distributing kilotons of political content. Not to mention the army of Baltic, Ukrainian, Transcaucasian and Central Asian couch fighters against the empire. Not to mention the couch corps of anti-imperial resistance in Russia itself - Moscow, St. Petersburg, the Urals and Siberia.
But the main thing is that this minority is accustomed to consider itself not only active, but also informationally effective. By virtue of its near-intellectual diplomas and simply class traditions, it is used to thinking that it has much greater skill in presenting its political position. Much more convincing and brighter finds words. Where better able to "get through".
And so the conclusion was made: each representative of this intellectual minority, of course, is worth hundreds of ordinary passive users. information space. Simply by the level of informational noise it produces and the impact it has.
And it’s not that they didn’t have any reason to count on success. At least limited.
Firstly, on the side of the global international of the Russian opposition there was a rather impressive package of media. Starting from the British and American, with desperate persistence repeating the mantra about "Putin's main competitor, who called for a boycott of the elections," and ending with the German, thoughtfully explaining Russian reader how best to express your protest against the Kremlin: "Stay at home, as Navalny calls, or spoil the ballot, as Khodorkovsky advises? How is a boycott different from a protest vote and how decision affect the electoral process?
(At this point, it was necessary to ask rhetorically: do these people accuse Russia of trying to interfere in their elections? But this question has long been answered. The right countries interfere in other people's elections correctly, for the sake of good. The wrong countries, like Russia, in the name of evil. )
Secondly, the informationally hyperactive minority is also mastering new media spaces at a faster pace. For example, among the popular political telegram channels, the clear majority is clearly oppositional in nature.
Thirdly, the audience of this minority is the Russian "media class" - including a fairly large stratum of official media workers who are accustomed to walking around with figs in their pockets and consider themselves victims of circumstances. And therefore, liking and reposting information, scourging modern Russia with redoubled enthusiasm.
…So.
As practice has shown, all this Internet self-esteem of the hyperactive anti-state minority turned out to be exaggerated. That is, it failed to convert into either a boycott or a protest vote. It read itself a lot, liked it and reposted it, but for some reason it remained in its three percent ghetto.
I have a version why.
The whole thing is that there is probably no society on the planet that would be more stable before information pressure than Russian society.
Even before the massive advent of the Internet (and the advent of the established "Putin era"), the Russian voter/reader/viewer lived for a decade and a half under a natural information dictatorship. From morning to night, every iron told the Russian citizen that his country was falling apart and that it was good, that his past was criminal, his pride was false and best prospects- dump in a normal country. And if it doesn’t work out, sit and not twitch.
And Russian citizen survived this informational occupation.
And then came the era of the mass Russian Internet. And although the “irreconcilables” certainly had a head start (the Internet first of all spread to megacities, where its founding fathers were individuals, later almost in in full force who went to Bolotnaya) - most already in the 2010s began to inexorably catch up and overtake them. Simply because even very hyperactive minorities, who assert themselves at the expense of the majority, will not read and listen to the latter if they have a choice.
And the majority had a choice. And in the form of "state" media, and in the form of self-made patriotic blogosphere.
And in the end, it turned out that all the campaigning and propaganda powers of the opposition telegram and YouTube channels, and Facebook groups, and VK publics, and powerful Prague and Riga Russian-language publications with advanced design and cool stray, and everything like that, are closed actually on yourself. To the international Russian-speaking opposition media class.
In particular, this happened also because this closed community has not been able to develop a normal, respectful language of communication with the majority. They did not come up with anything more creative than "pitiable" stories about how "I met an old woman in a store who was trying to buy two oranges at a promotion" about citizens. Basically, all their political lyrics were based on a mockery of the "obedient / gullible majority." On the tragic love to himself, smart and beautiful. And on listing the differences between smart and talented selves and a gray monochrome mass.
That is, these guys have mastered some new media, new formats and new networks.
But in the main they never learned anything. For example, a simple truth: "If you are addressing people who, for the most part, have voted for V.V. Putin for ten years, then why the hell are you mocking their choice? Are you sure that this is how hearts are won?"
... As a result, today the information troops, defeated during the next storming of the Kremlin, are discussing the future.
Some, as after every election in Russia, gloomily prophesy that now the stupid majority will cry, and we won’t feel sorry for him, it’s our own fault.
Others try to steer in a constructive way and offer, instead of fighting an irresistible force, to join it and change from within: “We all need to learn how to sacrifice. Our pride, our attachments, our love, our fate and our lives. We cannot defeat Putin. No processions, boycotts and notes. The regime can only be changed from within. If you want to change Russia, love Putin. Love him and be faithful to him. To ever give you power, he must be sure that you will not betray him. Go work in power "and etc.
The call is, of course, frightening (from the point of view of us, the majority). But hardly realizable - after all, in order to fulfill it, the militant irreconcilable minority will have to abandon their own nature. And this is hardly possible.
There is no such country in the world that would win all its wars, and the assertion that it was Russia that never lost them is not a declaration of love for the Motherland - it is a confession of its own ignorance.
Below are ten wars in which Russia, alas, was defeated.
Livonian War (1558-1583)
Jan Matejko "Stefan Batory near Pskov"
This picture depicts the embassy of Tsar Ivan the Terrible to Stefan Batory with a request for peace. It is with the election of this talented commander to the Polish kings that they connect the defeat of the Muscovite kingdom in this war, which began very successfully for Russia. Also with raids. Crimean Khanate, and the progressive paranoia of Ivan the Terrible " The tsar did the oprichnina...».
According to the Yam-Zapolsky truce with Poland, Russia abandoned Livonia and a number of Russian cities, although some border lands were returned to it. According to the Plyussky truce with Sweden, Russia lost Russian cities adjacent to the Baltic coast, retaining only a narrow exit to Baltic Sea at the mouth of the Neva. In addition, this war led to Porukha - the hardest economic crisis recent years reign of Ivan the Terrible.
Russian-Polish war (1609-1618)
Sergey Ivanov " Time of Troubles". Intervention camp.
One of the main events of the Time of Troubles, and one of its main causes. At the end of this war, according to the shameful Deulinsky truce, Russia ceded to Poland the Smolensk, Chernigov and Novgorod-Seversk lands, in which there were 29 cities, and renounced claims to Livonia. The Polish-Russian border approached Moscow so close that the distance from it to the border Vyazma was only 250 miles, and the Commonwealth for 50 years established the most big sizes in its history.
The jewels taken by the Poles from Moscow, they kept for themselves. At the same time, Poland refused to recognize Mikhail Romanov as Tsar ( polish king Vladislav until 1634 retained the title of Moscow Tsar, and during ceremonial receptions he put on the Moscow crown).
Russo-Swedish War (1610-1617)
King Gustav II Adolf. Prayer before the fight
In the Time of Troubles, the Novgorodians summoned their son to the Russian throne Swedish king and surrendered Novgorod to the Swedes, later the Swedes also captured Staraya Russa, Ladoga, Gdov, Oreshek, Ivangorod and a number of other Russian cities. But the interests of the Swedes in Russia were limited only to the transformation of the Baltic Sea into their own inland sea, moreover, Sweden, along with Russia, waged wars with Poland, Denmark and Germany.
Therefore, King Gustav II Adolf agreed to the Stolbovsky peace, under the terms of which Russia paid reparations to the Swedes in the amount of 20 thousand rubles and returned part of the Russian cities. But she ceded territory to Sweden with cities and fortresses from Ivangorod to Lake Ladoga and completely lost access to the Baltic Sea. Which only after 100 years was able to return Peter I.
.
Russo-Swedish war (1656-1658)
Nikolai Sverchkov "Departure of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich to review the troops"
However, after 50 years, Russia tried to regain its lost lands and access to the Baltic Sea, taking advantage of the fact that Sweden entered into northern war and she was not up to Russia. At first, the war developed successfully, part of Livonia and Karelia were recaptured, Riga was besieged, Tartu, Shlisselburg and several other cities were captured. However, in 1657-58. Swedish troops received reinforcements and inflicted a number of defeats on the Russian troops, forcing the conclusion of the Valiesar truce for a period of three years.
By that time, Bogdan Khmelnytsky had died, Ivan Vyhovsky, an opponent of the alliance with the Russians, was elected Ukrainian hetman, Ruin began, and Russia was drawn into the war in Ukraine. not wanting to lose Ukrainian lands, bogged down in the North, Russia, under the Cardis Peace Treaty, returned to Sweden everything it had won in that war, restoring the border established by the Stolbovsky peace without access to the Baltic Sea. And Sweden, I repeat, was not interested in anything else in Russia.
Russian-Turkish war (1710-1713)
Arseny Chernyshov fragment of the diorama "The capture of the Turkish fortress of Azov by the troops of Peter I"
This war Peter I began and ended with one disastrous Prut campaign, the purpose of which was rather petty - to captivate Charles XII. As a result, Peter I, together with Catherine I, were not captured only because they bribed the vizier and a number of Turkish military leaders.
Under the Prut peace treaty, Russia returned Azov, captured in 1696, to Turkey, sold all its ships on the Sea of Azov to Turkey, tore down the fortifications of Taganrog and other fortresses in the south, the Zaporozhian Sich and the Cossacks from the western side of the Dnieper, on which Russia only Kyiv remained.
But the main result of this stupid war was the loss of Russia's access to Sea of Azov and the newly built Southern Fleet. Azov was again captured by the Russian army only 25 years later under the Empress Anna Ioannovna.
Russian-Prussian-French war (1806-1807)
Gioachino Serangeli "Napoleon's Farewell to Alexander I at Tilsit"
Russia participated in this war against Napoleonic France on the side of the Fourth Coalition of Powers (Russia, Prussia, England), while leading its own Russian-Turkish war(1806-1812). Russia could not wage two wars at the same time, and after a series of severe lesions from Napoleon, Alexander I was forced to agree to the conclusion of the Tilsit peace.
In Russia, Tilsit was treated as a national disgrace and an unheard-of dishonor - it meant the recognition of the defeated yesterday's enemy as an ally, and yesterday's ally as an enemy. In addition to a painful blow to ego, joining continental blockade England was hit hard by the Russian economy, and unleashed Anglo-Russian war 1807-1812.
Crimean War (1853-1856)
Robert Gibb "The Thin Red Line"
The war launched by Russia against Turkey for dominance in the Black Sea straits and the Balkans, which turned into a war against the coalition of England, France, Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Sardinia. In fact, Nicholas I dragged economically backward, feudal-feudal Russia into a military conflict with strong European powers, which could not end in victory.
The signed Paris Peace Treaty demanded that Russia return all the occupied territories to Turkey, it was forbidden to have a navy in the Black Sea, Russia lost its influence in the Balkans. But there were also positive consequences from the defeat in that war - it served as an impetus for the reforms of Alexander II and the abolition of serfdom.
Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905)
War between Russian and Japanese empires was conceived by Nicholas II as a "small victorious war" to distract populace from purely internal Russian problems, plus the establishment of control over Manchuria and Korea. And as a result, it became the standard of a lost war in the presence of an overwhelming superiority in human and material resources.
The Portsmouth Peace Treaty provided for Russia to cede half of Sakhalin to Japan, lease rights to the Liaodong Peninsula with Port Arthur and part of the South Manchurian railway. Russia also recognized Korea as a Japanese zone of influence, and Japan's right to fishing along the Russian coast.
World War I (1914-1918)
Pyotr Karyagin "The Horror of War. We've arrived!" Attack of the Russian infantry on the German trenches
Started with an unprecedented patriotic upsurge, supported by all layers Russian society, this absolutely useless war for Russia led to a revolution and the collapse Russian Empire. And to the losing side, unique in history, in the war.
By signing a separate Brest Peace Literally six months before the surrender of Germany, Russia abandoned the territory of 780 thousand square meters. km. with the loss of a significant part of the country's agricultural and industrial base, with a population of one third of the entire population of the Russian Empire. And with the recognition of the payment of billions in reparations and other humiliating conditions.
Brest Treaty was canceled by Soviet Russia immediately after the surrender of Germany, but she did not find a place among the winners - this world allowed the losing German Empire stretch out the agony, throwing their forces from Eastern Front to the Western.
Soviet-Polish war (1919-1921)
Jerzy Kossak "Miracle on the Vistula"
The USSR had not yet been created, but immediately after the surrender of Germany in the First World War Soviet Russia wanted to regain part of the territories of the former Russian Empire, and establish on them a "bridgehead for the world revolution." In the USSR, they did not like to remember that shamefully lost war.
Under the Treaty of Riga, Poland received Western Ukraine and Western Belarus. Russia also pledged to return to Poland all cultural values exported from its territory since 1772, and pay the Poles a reparation in the amount of 30 million gold rubles.
I did not recall later wars, because the USSR, excuse me, is not Russia. As he left aside the wars of distant antiquity - Kievan Rus and specific Russian principalities, this is also not Russia.
However, the modern Russian Federation has a rather distant relation to the Russian Empire - in its 25-year history, this moment so far only the lost First one is available Chechen War, won the Second Chechen and Russian-Georgian War of 2008.
Viktor Marakhovsky, for RIA Novosti
In the global community of irreconcilable Russian oppositionists, they comprehend the new reality.
In general, the Russian irreconcilable opposition is perhaps the most international of all oppositions. It includes not only residents of Russia and citizens of the Russian Federation living abroad, but also former citizens of the Russian Federation who have long become citizens of other countries. In its ranks there are even citizens of one country that claims that it is at war with Russia (and try to expel them from the ranks of the opposition guard).
…So. The question that this world community now has to solve is severe: why did the protest campaign launched in Runet not work from the word "completely"?
The presence of implacable anti-Putinists in the Internet media and social networks was, if not overwhelming, then at least equal to the “pro-Putin” one. And the total output of the protest efforts of the “anti-system candidates” and the boycotting “politician whom Putin is afraid of” turned out to be somehow miserable.
No, their result is pitiful, not in the sense that the couple of millions of our fellow citizens who voted for K. A. Sobchak and G. A. Yavlinsky are pathetic, insignificant individuals. And not in the sense that tens or maybe even hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens who really consciously heeded the call to "boycott the farce" are miserable. No, they are all full citizens of the country.
Their problem is elsewhere. Despite the fact that these people are a minority, at the same time they are a minority, so to speak, informationally hyperactive. And that is why this minority usually considers itself not just full-fledged, but something more.
This is for a normal user and the Internet is normal. That is, for personal purposes - mainly for correspondence with loved ones, watching movies and storing music.
And an advanced anti-Putin user, even if he is an Israeli housewife in years, is a daily factory of likes, comments and reposts, producing and distributing kilotons of political content. Not to mention the army of Baltic, Ukrainian, Transcaucasian and Central Asian couch fighters against the empire. Not to mention the sofa corps of anti-imperial resistance in Russia itself - Moscow, St. Petersburg, the Urals and Siberia.
But the main thing is that this minority is used to considering themselves not only active, but also informationally effective. By virtue of its near-intellectual diplomas and simply class traditions, it is used to thinking that it has much greater skill in presenting its political position. Much more convincing and brighter finds words. Where better able to "get through".
And so the conclusion was made: each representative of this intellectual minority, of course, is worth hundreds of ordinary passive users of the information space. Simply by the level of informational noise it produces and the impact it has.
And it’s not that they didn’t have any reason to count on success. At least limited.
Firstly, on the side of the global international of the Russian opposition there was a rather impressive package of media. Starting from the British and American, who with desperate persistence repeated the mantra about "Putin's main rival, who called for a boycott of the elections," and ending with the German ones, who thoughtfully explain to the Russian reader how best to express their protest against the Kremlin: "Stay at home, as Navalny calls, or spoil the ballot "How does Khodorkovsky advise? How is a boycott different from a protest vote, and how will the decision affect the election process?"
(At this point, it was necessary to ask rhetorically: do these people accuse Russia of trying to interfere in their elections? But this question has long been answered. The right countries interfere in other people's elections correctly, for the sake of good. The wrong countries, like Russia, in the name of evil. )
Secondly, the informationally hyperactive minority is also mastering new media spaces at a faster pace. For example, among the popular political telegram channels, the clear majority is clearly oppositional in nature.
Thirdly, the audience of this minority is the Russian "media class" - including a fairly large stratum of official media workers who are accustomed to walking around with figs in their pockets and consider themselves victims of circumstances. That is why they like and repost information that scourges modern Russia with redoubled enthusiasm.
…So.
As practice has shown, all this Internet self-esteem of the hyperactive anti-state minority turned out to be exaggerated. That is, it failed to convert into either a boycott or a protest vote. It read itself a lot, liked it and reposted it, but for some reason it remained in its three percent ghetto.
© Photo: press service of the administration Krasnodar Territory
© Photo: press service of the administration of the Krasnodar Territory
I have a version why.
The thing is that there is probably no society on the planet that would be more resistant to information pressure than Russian society.
Even before the massive advent of the Internet (and the advent of the established "Putin era"), the Russian voter/reader/viewer lived for a decade and a half under a natural information dictatorship. The Russian citizen was told from morning to night that his country was falling apart and that it was good, that his past was criminal, that his pride was false, and that the best prospects were to dump him in a normal country. And if it doesn’t work out, sit and not twitch.
And the Russian citizen withstood this informational occupation.
And then came the era of the mass Russian Internet. And although the “irreconcilables”, of course, had a head start (the Internet first of all spread to megacities, where its founding fathers were people who later went to Bolotnaya almost in full force) - the majority already in the 2010s began to inexorably catch up with them and overtake. Simply because even very hyperactive minorities, who assert themselves at the expense of the majority, will not read and listen to the latter if they have a choice.
And the majority had a choice. And in the form of "state" media, and in the form of self-made patriotic blogosphere.
And in the end it turned out that all the campaigning and propaganda powers of the opposition telegram and YouTube channels, and Facebook groups, and VK publics, and powerful Prague and Riga Russian-language publications with advanced design and cool stray, and everything like that, are closed actually on yourself. To the international Russian-speaking opposition media class.
In particular, this happened also because this closed community was never able to develop a normal, respectful language of communication with the majority. They did not come up with anything more creative than "pitiable" stories about how "I met an old woman in a store who was trying to buy two oranges at a promotion" about citizens. Basically, all their political lyrics were based on a mockery of the "obedient / gullible majority." On tragic self-love, smart and beautiful. And on listing the differences between smart and talented selves and a gray monochrome mass.
That is, these guys have mastered some new media, new formats and new networks.
But in the main they never learned anything. For example, a simple truth: "If you are addressing people who, for the most part, have voted for V.V. Putin for ten years, then why the hell are you mocking their choice? Are you sure that this is how hearts are won?"
... As a result, today the information troops, defeated during the next storming of the Kremlin, are discussing the future.
Some, as after every election in Russia, gloomily prophesy that now the stupid majority will cry, and we won’t feel sorry for him, it’s our own fault.
Others try to steer in a constructive way and offer, instead of fighting an irresistible force, to join it and change from within: “We all need to learn how to sacrifice. Our pride, our attachments, our love, our fate and our lives. We cannot defeat Putin. No processions, boycotts and notes. The regime can only be changed from within. If you want to change Russia, love Putin. Love him and be faithful to him. To ever give you power, he must be sure that you will not betray him. Go work in power "and etc.
The call is, of course, frightening (from the point of view of us, the majority). But hardly realizable - after all, in order to fulfill it, the militant irreconcilable minority will have to abandon their own nature. And this is hardly possible.
In the global community of irreconcilable Russian oppositionists, they are comprehending a new reality.
In general, the Russian irreconcilable opposition is perhaps the most international of all oppositions. It includes not only residents of Russia and citizens of the Russian Federation living abroad, but also former citizens of the Russian Federation who have long become citizens of other countries. In its ranks there are even citizens of one country that claims that it is at war with Russia (and try to expel them from the ranks of the opposition guard).
…So. The question that this world community now has to solve is severe: why did the protest campaign launched in Runet not work from the word "completely"?
The presence of implacable anti-Putinists in the Internet media and social networks was, if not overwhelming, then at least equal to the “pro-Putin” one. And the total output of the protest efforts of the “anti-system candidates” and the boycotting “politician whom Putin is afraid of” turned out to be somehow miserable.
No, their result is pitiful, not in the sense that the couple of millions of our fellow citizens who voted for K. A. Sobchak and G. A. Yavlinsky are pathetic, insignificant individuals. And not in the sense that tens or maybe even hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens who really consciously heeded the call to "boycott the farce" are miserable. No, they are all full citizens of the country.
Their problem is elsewhere. Despite the fact that these people are a minority, at the same time they are a minority, so to speak, informationally hyperactive. And that is why this minority usually considers itself not just full-fledged, but something more.
This is for a normal user and the Internet is normal. That is, for personal purposes - mainly for correspondence with loved ones, watching movies and storing music.
And an advanced anti-Putin user, even if he is an Israeli housewife in years, is a daily factory of likes, comments and reposts, producing and distributing kilotons of political content. Not to mention the army of Baltic, Ukrainian, Transcaucasian and Central Asian couch fighters against the empire. Not to mention the couch buildings of the anti-imperial resistance in the Russian Federation itself - Moscow, St. Petersburg, the Urals and Siberia.
But the main thing is that this minority is used to considering themselves not only active, but also informationally effective. By virtue of its near-intellectual diplomas and simply class traditions, it is used to thinking that it has much more skill in presenting its political position. Much more convincing and brighter finds words. Where better able to "get through".
And so the conclusion was made: each representative of this intellectual minority is certainly worth hundreds of ordinary passive users of the information space. Simply by the level of informational noise it produces and the impact it has.
And it’s not that they didn’t have any reason to count on success. At least limited.
Firstly, on the side of the global international of the Russian opposition there was a rather impressive package of media. Starting from the British and American, who with desperate persistence repeated the mantra about "Putin's main rival, who called for a boycott of the elections," and ending with the German ones, who thoughtfully explain to the Russian reader how best to express their protest against the Kremlin: "Stay at home, as Navalny calls, or spoil the ballot "How does Khodorkovsky advise? How is a boycott different from a protest vote, and how will the decision affect the election process?"
(At this point it was necessary to ask rhetorically: And these people accuse Russia of trying to interfere in their elections? But this question has long been answered. The right countries interfere in other people's elections correctly, for the sake of good. The wrong countries, like Russia, - in the name of evil).
Secondly, the informationally hyperactive minority is also mastering new media spaces at a faster pace. For example, among the popular political telegram channels, the clear majority is clearly oppositional in nature.
Thirdly, the audience of this minority is the Russian "media class" - including a fairly large stratum of semi-official media workers who are accustomed to walking around with figs in their pockets and consider themselves victims of circumstances. That is why they like and repost information that scourges modern Russia with redoubled enthusiasm.
…So.
As practice has shown, all this Internet self-esteem of the hyperactive anti-state minority turned out to be exaggerated. That is, it failed to convert into either a boycott or a protest vote. It read itself a lot, liked it and reposted it, but for some reason it remained in its three percent ghetto.
I have a version why.
The thing is that there is probably no society on the planet that would be more resistant to information pressure than Russian society.
Even before the massive advent of the Internet (and the advent of the established "Putin era"), the Russian voter/reader/viewer lived for a decade and a half under a natural information dictatorship. The Russian citizen was told from morning to night that his country was falling apart and that it was good, that his past was criminal, that his pride was false, and that the best prospects were to dump him in a normal country. And if it doesn’t work out, sit and not twitch.
And the Russian citizen withstood this informational occupation.
And then came the era of the mass Russian Internet. And although the “irreconcilables” certainly had a head start (the Internet first of all spread to megacities, where its founding fathers were people who later went to Bolotnaya almost in full force) - the majority already in the 2010s began to inexorably catch up and overtake them . Simply because even very hyperactive minorities, who assert themselves at the expense of the majority, will not read and listen to the latter if they have a choice.
And the majority had a choice. And in the form of "state" media, and in the form of self-made patriotic blogosphere.
And in the end, it turned out that all the campaigning and propaganda powers of the opposition telegram and YouTube channels, and Facebook groups, and VK publics, and powerful Prague and Riga Russian-language publications with advanced design and cool stray, and everything like that, are closed actually on yourself. To the international Russian-speaking opposition media class.
In particular, this happened also because this closed community was never able to develop a normal, respectful language of communication with the majority. They did not come up with anything more creative than "pitiable" stories about how "I met an old woman in a store who was trying to buy two oranges at a promotion" about citizens. Basically, all their political lyrics were based on a mockery of the "obedient / gullible majority." On tragic self-love, smart and beautiful. And on listing the differences between smart and talented selves and a gray monochrome mass.
That is, these guys have mastered some new media, new formats and new networks.
But in the main they never learned anything. For example, a simple truth: "If you are addressing people who, for the most part, have voted for V.V. Putin for ten years, then why the hell are you mocking his choice? Are you sure that this is how hearts are won?"
... As a result, today the information troops, defeated during the next storming of the Kremlin, are discussing the future.
Some, as after every election in Russia, gloomily prophesy that now the stupid majority will cry, and we won’t feel sorry for him, it’s our own fault.
Others try to steer in a constructive way and offer, instead of fighting an irresistible force, to join it and change from within: “We all need to learn how to sacrifice. Our pride, our affections, our love, our fate and our lives. We cannot defeat Putin. No processions, boycotts and notes. The regime can only be changed from within. If you want to change Russia, love Putin. Love him and be faithful to him. To ever give you power, he must be sure that you will not betray him. Go work in power "and etc.
The call is, of course, frightening (from the point of view of us, the majority). But hardly realizable - after all, in order to fulfill it, the militant irreconcilable minority will have to abandon their own nature. And this is hardly possible.
