Paul
Goble
Staunton, August 23 – Twenty years
before the Great French Revolution broke out in 1789, Lord Chesterston wrote to
his son that he had found during his visit to France “all the signs which [he]
had sometime encountered in history and which usually precede a overthrow of
the state and a revolution.”
Vladimir Pastukhov, a Russian
historian at St. Antony’s College, cites this when he says that “all the signs
which [he] ever encountered in culture and which usually precede the overthrow of
the state and a revolution exist now in Russia and are increasing with each
passing day” (bbc.com/russian/blog-pastoukhov-41001499).
He draws that conclusion on the
basis of the reaction of Russian commentators and politicians to a rap battle
which took place last week between two Russians whose vocabulary and attitudes
reflect the following four trends among young people and their elders who are
chasing after them:
·
“The
universal denial of any rules and conditions, the lifting of every and all
taboos, the rejection not only of past culture but of the challenges of culture
as such, the cult of wildness and force;”
·
“The
poetization of cruelty, the voluptuous relishing of evil, the mockery of victims,
the passionate denigration of weakness’;”
·
“The
aggressive decades, the pursuit of form at the expense of content, and the
exaltation of the symbolic;” and
·
“Moral
relativism where there is neither good nor bad but rather cynicism raised to an
absolute.”
“All this,” the historian continues, “very
much recalls the times of Russian futurism and constructivism with only this
difference that futurism and constructivism were all the same to a remarkable
degree original Russian formats while rap and other similar trends are deeply
derivative.”
“The so-called ‘battle’” between two young
rappers, Fedorov and Mashnov, was far less interesting than the reaction of
Russian observers. Their reaction showed
that the television is declining in importance to YouTube for Russian young people
and that those born in the last 20 years have become the focus of elite
attention.
According to Pastukhov, “the combination
of subject and format is generating a chain reaction,” one that clearly
suggests that “the fuel of all future revolutions and regime overthrows” can
rely on “a renewable source of protest energy” and that this will lead to the
outbreak of “a real war.”
Today, “the slogan for Russia is what is
good for the young is good for politicians,” all of whom have suddenly begun to
display a hitherto hidden love for rap music. “Everyone from Putin to Navalny
is ready to sing ‘pioneer songs,’” but the words of the new songs are very
different than those of Soviet times.
The message of this new rap is that “your
culture is hateful to us, your laws are hateful to us … and we in general hate
all of you. Somewhere we have already heard all of this,” in the years leading
up not to 1991 but to 1917, Pastukhov says.
“A revolution matures over the course of
decades … but creative people have a surprising nose for revolution. They feel
the shifting of the social foundations much earlier than the institutions begin
to fall.” And that is clearly what is happening in Moscow now.
“If one judges by the tendencies of the development
of Russian culture and the tempos of its evolution into ‘an anti-culture,’ then
the end of Putin’s ‘beautiful era’ will occur more according to the scenario of
the beginning of the 20th century than according to the scenario of
its end, however much one might prefer otherwise.”
And “if ‘the battle’ of Fedorov and
Mashnov is really mainstream,” Pastukhov continues, “then I know how the future
Russia will be called – ‘a Greater Donbass.’”
A revolution is inevitable, he says, but it will not be a “velvet” one
but rather a bloody one carried out by “the real Russian political hardcore.”
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