Syndicate: mailradek no. 11

[Oleg Kireev <radek@glasnet.ru>]

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                                                                	text no. 67
        			28.12.1998 - 14.01.1999
	Suddenly, at the beginning of Perestroika, Moscow intelligentsia started to
make the money. At first, it was possible to make the crazy amounts of them
illegally - with computer technologies, for example; then it became possible
to do via pretty legal channels. People from the capitals in their 40s were
the first who started making business careers, then the ones of my age
followed who are a little over 20. In a period of few years one could be a
friend not simple of "Pasha", "Masha" or "Sasha", but of a prestigious
journal contributor, a club founder and an advanced TV program hostess. The
public space opened and new relations have been constructed. It has
engendered a new kind of snobbism, not a sectarian one - of the
intelligentsia kitchen gatherings, but of a capitalist and liberal snobbism
of societal ranks. Many regarded it to be "like in the West", and some even
believed that to be positive fact.
        Nonetheless, during Perestroika our great liberals were astonishing
us firstly by their shyness; practically none of them did manage to express
her/his liberal ideas even in a moment of polemic discussions. Leiderman
with his "every honest man must vote for Gaidar" was the only one to be so
courageous. Still Novodvorskaya was spitted on for her radicalism most of
all by those who were not ready to speak out the same thing by themselves
openly. They understood their liberal freedoms as a chance to stop speaking
out and doing something.
	Even those like Gaidar who, with liberal phrases, were cynically covering
mercenary interests deserve at least some understanding.
        But now it's over! All that connected social space and familiar
relations, has disappeared. You don't look for familiar faces on the TV
anymore; one finds there only persons from the cynical "profi" caste (and
completely degraded nothingnesses like "quatchi" or Shenderovich). Similar
to the "old Soviet times" one won't shake a hand of anyone from the central
newspaper today. We shall ask them: how much did you earn at the end of
1998? What? More than 100 bucks? ("But where were you before the 1917?")
Have you been so idealistically naive or simply corrupted? All they've done
during these ten years of the meaningless freedom, will soon seem to be more
miserable and pathetic than the achievements of those whom they so much
despised (the activists / intellectuals of the 60s).
								Oleg Kireev
translation: Irina Aristarkhova