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Dasha Komissarova
Russia

We won't be, we are

I'm seventeen.

My generation is called the generation of mongrels. The generation of empty-eyed. That's not true, our eyes are not empty: in one there is sex, in another - bucks. Besides we have no conscience, as well as no honour. If one sums up some things from those hurled to us, we have in our arsenal the eclectic past, the present similar to bubble gum, and what concerns the future, there is no one, Apocalypses is coming.

I'm seventeen and I'm provincial. Just the moment I was born I was involved in struggle. In the war unleashed by my family . "For survival!" became the slogan of the war actions. Each diaper, bought on the black market, each liter of milk, bought for a coupon, each rattle from THERE signified the mini victory on the battleground. The parents, having disdained their recent well-organized Komsomol youth and forgotten the ideals of the society, where everyone is equal, carried out the protracted struggle for INequality and INfraternity. I was born in the epoch of change. Things that yesterday were priceless, today were bought for a song. But I didn't know that yesterday it was not sold.

Somewhere thousands of kilometers away from my small world, under the walls of the White House, unknown to me, the real tanks were shooting and people were dying really, but I was indifferent. The TV set was dispassionately informing me about it, demonstrating along with advertisement and animated cartoons. Grading the real life to virtual leisure. My parents didn't try to give me comments. They were anxious about other things. The Chinese customs office changed the rules of importing goods. Just China was near. Near were the tremendous deposits of running shoes, "adidas", rabbit coats, musical thermos bottles. The "COMMODITY" from the famous formula, learnt by my parents during the lectures of historical materialism, was becoming tangible, promising the unfamiliar goods. It seems, that it was possible to buy and sell everything. That was the thing that became the token of the new country, the social order of which not defined nor by scholars, nor by persons of practice. We leaved socialism, but not reached capitalism. And where are we? On the market.

But I didn't know about the fact, that there are still things that can't be subjected to commercial operations. My parents had no time to tell me about it. They went mad on business. There were more and more commodities . Many things befell on me, compensating the ascetic childhood. From the "kitaika", Chinese market. Somehow very imperceptibly and rapidly we were getting used to a new word, not Chinese, as if fanned by the West, mysterious for our eastern town - "boutique". The streets were changing visibly: the facades of the newly-erected buildings and ancient wood mansions were adorned by advertisement, shops were renamed in "markets" and were crammed with motley packages. I came to know that everything of that collectively is also called market. And the country which I was born in is called the post-Soviet area. In that area we'll have to lead this time our own struggle for inequality and infraternity. For those inalienable attributes of the new society.

The first problems with that society have occurred in the kindergarten already. Suddenly it became clear that I have no Barbie. Many had it . Though they had bad ones, from kitaika, which were falling to pieces, but they had them. I was not admitted to game, and there was something like neglect. I've been howling mercilessly... And they bought me a Barbie. The society admitted be as equal. There were no such bummers else. Because I made a right conclusion, the lesson learnt unconditionally did me good. In order not to fall out of the society one must respond to its requirements. The requirements, however, were easily fulfilled. All the social requirements were easily filled up on the market. I mean, on kitaika.

At school I was overtaken by the same. No, at primary school it was not bad. We've been reading the same books, writing the same texts, solving the same praxis. At the New Year parties we gammed in nice costumes of snowflakes and princesses. But the row of analogies was broken by the events hardly explainable. We, for example, didn't accept categorically the girl Tanya. Though she was more than OK, and all the necessary social attributes were present as well. Meanwhile, there was some boundary between us, equal, and Tanya. Tanya' s father was the State Duma deputy. Behind her there invisibly stood the other world, the other society where inequality and infraternity were a natural and that's why unperceivable habitat. I perceived the state administration by the example of Tanya's family where father was a people's elected representative, mother was a wife of people's elected representative and Tanya was his daughter. The people's choice had by a miraculous way fallen on them as well and gave them the right to consider themselves the selected among equal. Tanya soon left for Moscow, but the experience of plebs stayed with us.

In senior classes teachers were entangled by formulations and interpretation of events, both historical and current. They had no time to rewrite the textbooks adapting them to the new educational conceptions. The educational conceptions were not noted for integrity, as the state in no way was able define its goals and uniting idea. The humanity of the post-Soviet area was bidding farewell to its past, far from laughing, as the classics supposed. No, they did it shedding tears and being at a loss. For instance, postulate of the people and the party being unified totally came to grief. With which party has the people been unified now? Proletarians, formerly unified, were undergoing the process of total alcoholization and separation. Only a few could store money in savings banks, the majority suffered from financial pyramids and commercial banks gone bankrupt. Old ideas were leaving. The new ones were imposed to the society by market. Coca-Cola, Sneakers and Pampers easily penetrated the minds of my generation. At least, that was the only thing from the surrounding reality which was more or less distinctly explained to us. All the explanations came from the main mentor, pedagogue and friend of man - the TV set. The material was presented in an accessible way. Blood was flowing from the screen like water, knocking it into one's head softly-softly: there is nothing cheaper than human life. Lacy pants or their absence flashed in abundance - and it became clear what is the shortest way to life success. It was in those pants or their absence, of course. All the attempts of real pedagogues and parents to rouse themselves and explain something mysteriously other came to pathetic cries: "Where are we rolling?! How will you live?" Especially puzzling was that very "will"... Don't we are at the moment?

Somehow imperceptibly we also got to know that now we live in Russia. Though nobody officially informed us about it, but the "post-Soviet area" has not already been articulated widely. And a regular dirty trick seemed in that. By the way, there became more and more dirty tricks. Or maybe it's because we became elder and the world no more was limited to the walls of the porch where we've been standing for hours, simply chatting about nothing, smoking from time to time, driving the neighbors mad. Sometimes we meddled into political discussions with them. The main our argument at the moment of banishment from the warm porch was as follows: we live in a free country and may stay where we want. In short, we have democracy, and we all have a right, and further according to the text of Dostoevsky. Usually it ended the same - our democratic outbursts were suppressed. They were suppressed by the command voice and complaints to our parents. The latter also behaved inadequately by the word of "democracy", explaining that actually we have no rights while we are a burden for them. And generally, the discourse on this topic is ridiculous and far from real life. And there is no need to think, but to study and work in order to win the place under the sun for oneself. True, but I'd like that under that sun there had been no repressions and dictate, that nobody had expelled no one only for the fact that she had had no doll like others have, that the elite had not despised the plebs, that the right to be where I want and to express my opinion had not depended on the sum of pocket money and the hardness of my parents' neck.

The more I thought about the contradictions of the surrounding life and its coverage in the media (it was right there that they told about Russia and democracy), the more I understood what was the matter. Maybe that's true, that there is democracy in our country as we are told, but somehow... in pretence... It resembles the Chinese Manchuria, where during the years of the Russian market the sky-scrapers has towered amidst the steppe, but the neon advertisement is blinding so that it's impossible see how carelessly it is. They ' ve thrown tinsel onto the withered New Year' s tree . That is to say, the external entourage is present, but the internal essence is not observed. And where is democracy here? The old body has been covered by new rigging.

But if we call our democracy the PR, then everything falls into its place. By the way , I 'm a future PR - specialist. And there's nothing figural. I'm actually studying as a freshman of the university "Public Relations" department. That very PR. I found dozens of definitions for it in the textbooks. And only one of them, given by our teacher, didn't provoke any doubts: PR is something that is very similar to truth, but is not truth... but is very similar. So, that is what democracy is.

I find the confirmation of this simple formula in everything. In endless historical examples (from the PR point of view many events are just irreproachable). I find that the best soil for "the world of shadows and illusions" prosperity has been created today in our country where they seem to build a democratic society but so far - in pretence. People are told, how much they mean for the state, but at the same time they are simply used for some state goals. And here is an example. A recent one.

Our small town and the whole region were for two months grabbed by a political fever. We had a REFERENDUM. It came time to join together two small regions which existed separately, with different budgets and way of life. Probably it would be more honest simply to explain that it is necessary to enforce the country's positions in the East and for the convenience of governing for the future governors. But instead they mixed everything in one pot: the common past of Russians and Buryats, mixed marriages, national cuisine, girls in Russian sarafans dancing yokhor on the meadow at the feast of Shrove-tide. The people swooned with the wish to get united! At any case, so reported the media, both local and, which was the most funny, federal ones, where the journalists hardly articulated the geographic names and proper nouns, mispronouncing them. But that's not all. Understanding that only by the PR-carrot it's impossible to drive the voters to the ballot-box, they stroke with the stick... Every (!) voter at the moment of voting at the polling place was given a "letter of gratitude" with a number. One was to come with this letter to the director of his enterprise or organization and report to him, receive a check in the cherished list and avoid many troubles in future.

Our university became famous all over Russia. All the central TV channels showed the mob in the narrow corridors of university building where thousands of students came simultaneously, being ordered to come to the Dean's office with the mentioned letter before 11 a.m. When there became little air inside they broke the glass of the windows as it was impossible to get out of the crowd.

Two girls who fainted were driven away by the ambulance.

The attendance at the university voting area was over 86%.

I wasn't there, in that crowd. I'm happy to be only seventeen at the moment. And I'm still not able to use the civil right to elect. But I learnt the lesson of the PR-democracy.

However, it would be unfair not to mention one more thing. At our university's voting area, which provided such an incredible attendance of voters, there was the highest rate of protest voting in the region. 24% said " no " to the unification .

Though I ' m not right . "No" was said not to the referendum. 24% in such a way wanted to make others to reckon with them, make them respect their choice. Let it even be the choice of the mongrels' generation, with whom they may not be ceremonious, of whom they can make fool with moronic Barbies, whom they can water with beer in porches, feed with TV bubble-gum and use as a material for their PR-democracy.

And one thing I want to understand: is it only 24% or already ?

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