Our enemies are also suffering losses, sometimes quite severe ones. But here is the difference: our true enemies are fighting against us using someone else’s hands and are paying in mercenary lives or deceived cannon fodder - be it Ukrainian neo-Nazis or ISIS. Hence the inequality: our own lives are hurt while the initiators of this geopolitical attack on us are themselves safe. The Americans don’t pay with anything, the Europeans only have some inconveniences connected with the sanctions against Russia (which are in part hurting themselves) and the flow of migrants from the Middle East blown up by the US. 

In the situation in which we now find ourselves, there is only one logical path: the further escalation of the conflict. 

While we are not directly touching the US, for them it doesn’t cost anything to send more and more mad, insane, ready to kill, explosive, and rapacious puppets against us. Maybe the Russian government would like to be relieved of the stress, but this is not in the interests of the US. For this reason alone, everything will only continue. 

In connection with this, there is a question: does a level of awareness of the seriousness of these challenges exist? It’s clear that the people who flew to Egypt did not think so much about what is happening in the Middle East, Syria, and what happened in Cairo a few years ago. They died returning from vacation, but they were in fact on the front line. If our government doesn’t ban relaxing, then again and again, as if spellbound, we’ll be dragged there again until the next crash of a plane exploded by Islamists or another heartbreaking tragedy. 

This is a dissonance. Russia is at war, but we are soothed with vague, halfhearted illusions and unconvincing, diluted propaganda which don’t lead to mobilization. It might appear to someone that we have problems with the economy and standards of living, as well as social injustice. This is all true, but it's not the main problem. The main problem is that the public is unaware of the situation in which it is in. Maybe it is easier to manage thoughtlessness, not asking any existing questions, and being mesmerized by minor problems in the “lifeworld.” But this can’t be done with history. There might be still some time to stretch, but not very much. It seems to me that it is worth focusing our attention and efforts on at least properly describing the existing situation without rushing into making accusations or suggesting a salvational plan. In society, a concrete and balanced understanding of the main strategic questions is lacking:

• Who are the real friends and enemies of Russia?
• What kind of society are we building, and based on what ideas?
• What model of the past (and therefore the future) do we accept as normative?
• In what way should we raise an elite?
• Who are we in an ethno-sociological sense (people, nation, civil society, ethnos)?

We don’t see these questions being raised anywhere. Immediately, a scream is heard, and everyone is sure that only they know the right answer but that no one wants to listen. The most vapid and obsessed spit and scream the loudest of all. While there is still time (probably not very much) we should try to figure out the current map. Where are we? Who are we? What are the times we are living in? 

The sign of a fool is if he puts forth an answer before a question and “obviously” knows the answer to any question. All the familiar ideologies have collapsed. It’s simply no longer possible to listen to professional liberals any more than it is to listen to professional patriots. And the center is beginning to utter inarticulate sounds mimicking human speech. 

I’ll repeat, maybe this is more comfortable, but only in the short term. The children of the current elite are unable to rule at all. The last post-Soviet generations - with their death grip on and will to power - are starting to leave. Their descendants are failing just as rapidly as they rose. After all, it is necessary to raise an elite. 

But war is going on, and we are participating it in the most direct way. Nothing is decided in Donbass. Coping with Syria is far from simple, since on the other side not only ISIS, but Washington and its NATO allies are against our Assad. This means that it is possible to predict only an exacerbation of the situation. There is no chance that every thing will work itself out. There is simply not. It’s clear that in the West, everything is far from brilliant, but underestimating the power of a weakening giant is just as dangerous and wasteful as overestimating its strength. We’ve done something well (Crimea, beginning to recreate Novorossiya, casting in our support for Assad). But this is a process, and if we do not bring a number of strategic lines to their conclusion, then we will have to pay three times more. Moreover, we have much that is incomplete and that has been left in limbo.

 

Translated for Fort Russ by J. Arnoldski