“Speech is an amazingly powerful tool, but you need to have a lot of intelligence to use it” G. Hegel (Unified State Examination Social Studies). “Direct” speech or the basics of speech...

“Speech is an amazingly powerful tool, but you need to have a lot of intelligence to use it” G. Hegel

In this quote, the German philosopher George Hegel raises the problem of the rational use of speech by man.

The meaning of this statement is that before you say anything, you need to think carefully and scroll through this information in your head several times. For this, you need a lot of intelligence in order to competently use speech for your own benefit, correctly formulate your thought in your head, and express it clearly and clearly with the help of speech.

In order to most clearly reveal the problem raised in this quote, it is worth turning to such concepts as speech, thinking and analysis. Speech is a historically established form of communication between people through language. Thinking is a person’s ability to know. Analysis is the mental decomposition of an object, identifying the main properties and signs.

It is also worth noting that the problem is most relevant at the present time.

Let us turn to examples of situations to most clearly reveal the essence. History knows examples when major conflicts, wars, and clashes began because of an incorrectly expressed thought. And there are thousands of such examples. For example, you can take wars for colonies between Western European countries. These wars were very stupid, since the conflicts began due to a simple misunderstanding of the parties.

The second example is ordinary television political debates. Most often, the participants in these debates do not think at all about what they are saying, they just shout at each other, insult each other, talk all sorts of nonsense, instead of coming to a solution to this or that problem in a coalition group.

To summarize my work, I would like to note that only a truly smart person thinks through a thought before expressing it.

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Charles Maurice Talleyrand is a French politician and diplomat. The name “Talleyrand” has become almost a common noun to denote cunning, dexterity and unscrupulousness. Talleyrand was born into a wealthy aristocratic family. As a result, Charles Maurice perfectly understood and felt the power of money, its nature and properties. This is where his aphorism arose: “In order to have a lot of money, you don’t need to have a lot of intelligence, but you need to have no conscience.”
Money has always been one of the themes of good and evil. Someone was a supporter of the idea that money is everything in our lives, the key to success and recognition. “A man with money is a man everywhere!” says the famous phrase from “The Brothers Karamazov” by F.M. Dostoevsky. M. Mitchell in his work “Gone with the Wind” said: “In the world there is only one reliable remedy against any misfortune that fate can bring upon a person - this is money.”
Others, on the contrary, considered money to be the root of evil. “Money, with everything it can buy, does not bring happiness,” - J. Galsworthy. Bulgakov repeated: “The history of capital is a sad, terrible story about human heartlessness and selfishness.” Charles Maurice Talleyrand in his aphorism spoke about money as a source of human cruelty. After all, it is conscience that warns people from sin. Money in large quantities is only honest in exceptional cases. Millions of people receive higher education, but do not subsequently earn much money. But those who are not clean before the law and their own conscience sail safely on their own yachts across the expanses of the world's oceans. They resort to meanness, deception, betrayal and even murder in order to earn as much money as possible. By robbing their competitors, they are robbing themselves without noticing it. They plunder their soul, break it into small pieces, into pieces of a puzzle that can no longer be assembled.
But why are people so eager for money? Chernyshevsky said that wealth is a thing without which you can live happily; but prosperity is a thing necessary for happiness. With the development of society, commodity-money relations also developed. Almost all material goods and recreational resources have become paid. People have a number of needs. According to Maslow, they are divided into basic, spiritual, prestigious, etc. And people, due to their nature, must satisfy these needs. It turns out to be a closed chain: people - needs - money - needs - people. And the more we have, the more we want. This is why many of us forget about our conscience, but get everything we can buy. But no matter what we say, there are things in our lives that cannot be bought. Love, friendship, family, peace and much more. Money comes and goes, but friends remain. Just like the mind, education. You should always know when to stop.
If the thesis were incorrect, then the world would finally be captured by the Fall. Everyone would kill, steal, lie, forget about the people closest to them. There would be endless wars, endless chaos. Thank God that money has not captured the souls and minds of all people.
The aphorism “In order to have a lot of money, you don’t need to have a lot of intelligence, but you need to have no conscience” closely intersects with the popular expression: “Every cloud has a silver lining” or “everything is known by comparison.” By the way, money perfectly reveals a person to us. By how a person earns and how he spends money, one can judge how good a person is.
There are a huge number of examples from life on this topic. It is enough to turn on the news to hear about a murder or attempt based on money relations. Sad statistics.
The opinions of Charles Maurice Talleyrand are also shared by Plato and Huberman. Plato said that it is impossible to be both very good and very rich at the same time. And Huberman thought: “Alas, you can’t improve the budget without getting your cuffs dirty.”
I agree with the opinions of Charles Maurice Talleyrand, Plato and Huberman. Money has always been a source of evil and war, but I want to live in a world where goodness and love reign. Of course, I understand that I won’t change anything, but I will make at least a small contribution to the creation of such a world. You need to be able to stop in time, and if possible, then be sure to share. I hope I'm not the only one who thinks so.

“Speech is an amazingly powerful tool,
but you need to have a lot of intelligence,
to use it"
G. Hegel

Mother tongue plays a unique role in the development of a person’s personality. Language and speech are traditionally considered in psychology, philosophy and pedagogy as a node in which all lines of mental development converge: thinking, imagination, memory, emotions. Language is the most amazing and perfect creation of man. The native language, its unhindered and comprehensive development should be placed at the basis of education, the child should become familiar with its folk spirit, its poetry from the first years of his life. To master as perfectly as possible all types and manifestations of speech means to master the most powerful instrument of human mental development, and therefore, human culture.

Preschool age is a period of active acquisition by a child of spoken language, the formation and development of all aspects of speech: phonetic, lexical, grammatical. The earlier you start learning your native language, the more freely you will be able to use it in the future. But only a few children spontaneously reach a sufficiently high level in speech development, so it is necessary to conduct special training aimed at mastering the language.

Main tasks of speech development:

• Education of sound culture of speech.
• Vocabulary work.
• Formation of the grammatical structure of speech.
• Development of coherent speech: dialogical and monologue.
• Preparing for literacy.
• Cultivating interest and love for the artistic word.

These tasks are solved at each age stage, however, from age to age there is a gradual complication of each task and the methods of teaching aids change. The specific weight of a particular task also changes when moving from group to group. It is necessary to imagine the main lines of continuity of speech development tasks that are solved in the previous and subsequent age groups, and the complex nature of each task.

Relevance.

The problem of developing children's coherent speech is well known to a wide range of pedagogical workers: educators, specialists, psychologists. By older preschool age, significant differences in the level of speech of children appear. This also shows my experience as a teacher.

Coherent speech is a speech that reflects all the essential aspects of its subject content. Speech can be incoherent for two reasons: either because these connections are not realized and not represented in the speaker's thoughts, or because these connections are not properly identified in his speech.

The main function of coherent speech is communicative. It is carried out in two main forms - dialogue and monologue. Each of these forms has its own characteristics, which determine the nature of the methodology for their formation. Dialogical speech is a particularly striking manifestation of the communicative function of language. Scientists call dialogue the primary natural form of linguistic communication, the classical form of verbal communication. The main feature of the dialogue is the alternation of speaking by one interlocutor with listening and subsequent speaking by the other. It is important that in a dialogue the interlocutors always know what is being said and do not need to develop thoughts and statements. Oral dialogic speech occurs in a specific situation and is accompanied by gestures, facial expressions, and intonation. Monologue speech is a coherent, logically consistent utterance that lasts a relatively long time and is not designed for an immediate reaction from listeners. It has an incomparably more complex structure and expresses the thought of one person, which is unknown to the listeners. Therefore, the statement contains a more complete formulation of information, it is more detailed. In the formation of coherent speech, the relationship between speech and aesthetic aspects also clearly appears. Thus, teaching the retelling of folklore and literary works in order to develop the ability to construct a coherent monologue statement naturally involves familiarizing children with the visual and expressive means of literary text (comparisons, epithets, metaphors, synonyms). A coherent statement indicates how much the child masters the richness of his native language, its grammatical structure, and at the same time it reflects the level of the child’s mental, aesthetic, and emotional development.

Differences in children's speech are resolved through various types of speech activity: retelling literary works, composing descriptive stories about objects, objects and natural phenomena, as well as composing stories based on a picture and a series of plot pictures. All of the above types of speech activity are relevant when working on the development of coherent speech in children. But the latter are of particular interest to me, because... their preparation and conduct have always been and remain one of the most difficult for both children and teachers. Diagnostics of the ability to compose stories based on a picture and a series of plot pictures showed that with a roster of 18 children, six of them have a low level of skills in this type of speech activity (children find it difficult to establish connections, therefore they make substantive and semantic errors in stories; when telling always require the help of an adult; repeat the stories of peers). Ten is an average level (children make logical errors in stories, but correct them themselves with the help of adults and peers; the vocabulary is quite wide). And only two people possess those skills that correspond to a high level (the child is independent in inventing stories, does not repeat the stories of other children; has a wide vocabulary). But at the same time, the effectiveness of pedagogical influence depends on the child’s activity in the conditions of speech activity. I believe that the more active a child is, the more involved he is in activities that interest him, the better the result. It is important for a teacher to encourage children to engage in speech activity, to stimulate speech activity not only in the process of daily communication, but also in the process of specially organized training. It is necessary to carry out targeted work on teaching storytelling using more effective, expedient, interesting, and entertaining methodological methods and techniques in the classroom. In this regard, I was faced with the task of promoting the development of the ability to compose stories based on a picture and a series of plot pictures in the process of specially organized training, as well as using techniques and methods that can create interest in the lesson from the first minutes and maintain this interest throughout it. Usually, a lesson in composing a story begins with the introduction of a picture or pictures, examining them, asking a riddle about what is depicted. I have long noticed that if a lesson begins in this way, then the children immediately become uninterested, and hence the low speech activity, insufficient cognitive interest not only in the events captured on paper, but also in speech activity in general. By creating activity motivation during classes, it is possible to achieve, secondly, the quality of completing tasks according to the set learning goals. I noticed that games and tasks selected in accordance with the topic of the lesson increase performance. Such games can be called “training” exercises. For example, when looking at pictures, children were asked to match the words denoting an object, its action or attribute with words that were similar in meaning. For example, for the word “big”, when looking at the mother bear in the painting “Bathing Bear Cubs,” the children were able to find the words: huge, hefty, powerful, enormous. When they looked at the river that the artist depicted, the children chose the words for the word “swift”: restless, fast. When composing a story based on the painting “Cat with Kittens,” children practiced selecting action words for the word “cat.” They remembered the following words denoting the cat's actions: meows, licks, plays, catches mice, climbs trees. In the final part of the lesson I include developmentalgames to develop attention , memory, perception, reaction speed, auditory attention. These are games such as “Which team will collect the same picture faster”, “memory training”, etc. The above-mentioned games and exercises are very popular with children, they give them a feeling of healthy rivalry, competition, and also help to increase interest in activities for the development of coherent speech . In the process of teaching children to compose stories based on pictures and plot pictures, it was possible to solve educational problems: almost all children learned to listen to the stories of their peers, help them in case of difficulties, notice speech and logical errors and correct them kindly. Children use the acquired skills in following established rules in everyday life - in communicating with each other, when interacting with each other in different types of children's activities. The skills and abilities in writing stories acquired in the process of specially organized training are consolidated in the joint activities of the teacher with the children, in individual work, as well as in the course of cooperation with the parents of the pupils. Parents are offered one of the most effective forms of work - counseling; in addition to general recommendations on the development of children’s speech, it includes a “Game Library” - a selection of practical games and exercises to enrich and develop vocabulary at home, as well as children’s stories based on paintings, series of plot pictures, creative stories children who allow parents to compare the successes of their own child with the successes of their peers, and discuss with the teacher ways to overcome difficulties. These games can be interesting and useful for all family members.

Game library

"Only cheerful words."

It's better to play in a circle. One of the players determines the theme. You need to say one by one, for example, only funny words. The first player says: “Clown”, the second “Joy”, the third “Laughter”, etc. The game moves in a circle until the words run out. You can change the topic and name only green words (Cucumber, Christmas tree).

"Magic chain"

The game is played in a circle. One of the adults calls a word, for example, “honey” and asks the player standing next to him what he imagines when he hears this word? Then someone from the family answers, for example, “bee.” The next one, for example, is “Pain.” What can happen: honey - bee - pain - hospital - doctor, etc.

"Words are balls."

A child and an adult play in pairs. An adult throws a ball to a child and at the same time says a word, for example, “wide.” The child must return the ball and say the word with the opposite meaning, “narrow.” Then the players change roles, the child says a word, and the adult chooses a word to match it.

"If suddenly."

The child is offered an unusual situation from which he must find a way out and express his point of view. For example, if suddenly all the books, all the birds, all the pens, etc. disappear on the earth, the child may answer: “if suddenly all the pens on the earth disappear, nothing terrible will happen, because they can be replaced: with pencils.”

"Funny rhymes."

The players must choose rhymes for the words: masha - porridge, candle - stove, racket - pipette.

Entertaining games with words encourage children to think, reason, search, create, and children develop an interest in cognitive activity.

“A child does not only learn conventional sounds when studying his native language, he drinks spiritual strength and strength from the birthplace of his native word. It explains nature to him, as more than one naturalist could not explain. It introduces him to the character of the people around him, to the society among whom he lives, to its history and its aspirations, as more than one historian could not. It introduces it into folk beliefs, into folk poetry, as no esthetician could introduce it. Finally, it gives such logical concepts and philosophical views that no philosopher could give.”

In these words of the great teacher K.D. Ushinsky indicates not only the expected result of mastering the native language, but also the method of studying it: trust in the language - a teacher who not only teaches a lot, but also teaches surprisingly easily.

teacher Shutova Tatyana Gennadievna

“Speech is amazingly powerful

remedy, but you need to have a lot

smart enough to use it"

G. Hegel.

Today we will talk to you about such a science as rhetoric and find out who a speaker is.

What do these words mean?

Let's turn to modern explanatory dictionaries of the Russian language. They say that rhetoric is the theory of eloquence, the science of oratory.

Who is this speaker?

In the “Dictionary of the Modern Russian Language” (in 17 volumes) we read the following definition of this word: 1) a person professionally engaged in the art of eloquence; 2) the person making the speech; 3) a herald of something; 4) a person with the gift of speech.

Guys, can you call yourselves speakers?

There is probably no need to convince you that every schoolchild who prepares messages for lessons or club activities, speaks at school and class meetings, at ceremonial acts dedicated to the beginning of the school year, its end, holidays, etc., has to speak publicly. d. You have probably more than once had to either worry about your unsuccessful performances or get bored listening to your speaking comrades.

Rhetoric summarizes certain techniques that will allow you to learn how to speak publicly in such a way as to convey your thoughts to the audience, convince them that you are right, influence the feelings of listeners, and perhaps encourage them to take some action. But by mastering rhetoric, you acquire the skills of not only a speaker, but also a listener.

What can the listener learn? (in each group there are sheets - write down your options. Appendix No. 1)

And if someone, due to the characteristics of his character, his interests, his behavior, is not going to speak publicly often, then in modern life every person has to listen to the speeches of others. You listen to teachers and students at school, lecturers, radio and television announcers, etc. You can learn from public speaking rich information, so you need to remember them. What is stated by the speaker is necessary be able to evaluate: whether the content of the speech is convincing or not, what can be contrasted with what you heard, etc. By listening carefully to the speaker, you develop your thinking. Public speaking often affects your feelings. Whether it is necessary to share his experiences with the speaker or to resist his emotional pressure - all this must be decided by the listener.

^ Where did rhetoric originate?

Hellas is considered the birthplace of eloquence, although oratory in ancient times was known in Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, and India. But it was in ancient Greece that it developed rapidly, and for the first time systematic works on its theory appeared here. (V century BC)

^ Rhetoric in Russia 17-19 centuries.

The earliest Russian rhetoric that has reached us dates back to the beginning of the 17th century. It is assumed that its author is Metropolitan Macarius of Novgorod and Velikolutsk.

The first rhetoric textbook in Russian was written by M.V. Lomonosov (1711-1765). Consists of three parts: “On invention”, “On decoration”, “On arrangement”.

^ Oratory: its types and types.

In Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, epideictic, or solemn, speeches were distinguished, deliberative and judicial.

In modern rhetoric there is the following classification. (see table No. 1)

Task 1:

Where do we hear welcoming speeches every year? (as of September 1). Come up with an interesting acceptance speech on this occasion.

^ What should a speaker be like?

The speaker must have a high level of speech culture. He needs knowledge of the norms of literary language and the ability to choose accurate, intelligible and most appropriate means for expressing thoughts.

Speech (stylistic) errors are made as a result of violation of the norm in stress and pronunciation, incorrect choice of word or word form, and erroneous construction of a syntactic structure.

The speaker is required not only to master the norms of correct speech, but also to be able to sense speech in sound.

1. Pace is the speed of pronunciation of sounds, syllables, words per unit of time (for example, per second).

If you speak quickly, your listeners will not understand what you are talking about. But they need to comprehend the incoming information, that is, understand it and remember the main content of the statement.

According to researchers, the optimal condition for easily understood speech is an average rate of pronunciation (approximately 100-120 words per minute).

Too slow a speech rate is perceived poorly. A speaker who speaks very slowly often causes boredom and irritation.

2. Very important for a speaker strength vote. If he speaks quietly, only nearby listeners can hear him. The essence of his speech does not reach the rest. At the same time, an excessively loud, and especially shouting voice causes irritation, rejection of what is said, and the effect of the speech is significantly reduced. Paying attention to the pace of speech, the strength and pitch of the voice, the speaker should avoid monotony.

3. When speaking in front of a large audience, there can be no understanding at a glance. Words must be pronounced clearly and clearly, i.e. the speaker must have good diction . Such diction can be acquired through hard work. Tongue twisters occupy a special place in working on diction.

The clarity of pronunciation often depends on the space in which the speaker speaks. The larger the room, the slower the speech should be so that everything can be heard.

Good diction requires the ability to “hold a pause.” Pauses (stops in speech) make breathing easier, allow you to think about a thought, emphasize and highlight it.

However, pauses in a speaker’s speech do not always carry a semantic load (intermittency of oral speech).

Task 2:

Let's work on the pace of speech. Each group has poems.

Task 3:

Working on diction, working with tongue twisters. (Appendix No. 2).

Advice:

1) Take care of good diction - clear and precise pronunciation of words, especially their endings. To do this, perform a series of exercises:

a) pronounce the words syllable by syllable;

b) pronounce sentences, separating all independent words with pauses;

c) read tongue twisters, speeding up their pace by 2, 4, 8 times.

^ 2) Try to avoid monotony! To do this, read the same text:

a) changing the pace of speech: fast, medium, slow;

^ 3) Learn to express feelings and experiences with your voice! To do this, say the same phrase, putting different feelings into it and expressing it with your voice.

Appendix No. 1.

Listening

Speaker

Appendix No. 2. Tongue twisters

The big guy Vavila merrily moved his pitchfork.

A weaver weaves fabric on Tanya's scarf.

It's worth a heap with a little underfoot.

The weather in our courtyard has turned wet.

Clara the King sneaked with the crocodile to Lara.

The snout pig was white-nosed, blunt-nosed; I dug up half the yard with my snout, dug, dug.

Tell us about your purchases. What about purchases? About shopping, about shopping, about your purchases.

We ate, ate ruffs from the spruce tree, we barely finished them off from the spruce tree.

Two puppies are nipping cheek to cheek at a brush in the corner.

Seven of us sat in the sleigh ourselves.

Appendix No. 3.

It doesn't take much intelligence to blame Putin. Much more effort is required to understand the logic of his actions: he accepted the historical challenge of the West, but gave the wrong answer to it. The liberal opposition was so carried away by the fight against Putin that it completely lost sight of the topic of national interests

As a rule, a political catastrophe is led to by an impeccable chain of logically verified and impartially calculated steps of impeccably competent people...

However, the dominant trends in the interpretation of the Kremlin’s new course have become psychologism and mysticism. In one form or another, the majority of critical citizens are inclined to the hypothesis of war as an “irrational choice” of the Russian authorities - a voluntaristic decision not determined by any objective reasons, the explanation of which is more likely in the field of psychoanalysis than economic or political analysis. Discrepancies arise only in the question of how many people have “gone mad” - one, an entire group or an entire country.

However, the war with the West has not only subjective reasons (which is much talked about), but also objective reasons. It arose from a tangle of economic and political contradictions in relations between Russia and the West, which accumulated for decades without finding their resolution, and which, pressed by Western pressure to the Kremlin wall, Putin decided to cut with the “Novorossiysk sword”, like a Gordian knot.

Should a cancer patient be killed?

Saving Russia is like treating Ebola in Central Africa: the virus is not as terrible as ignorance. Attitudes towards the Ukrainian war split society. Public debates are increasingly reminiscent of a Kafkaesque discussion at the bedside of a cancer patient: “progressive” doctors propose to kill the patient immediately to destroy the tumor, and village relatives do not allow them to visit the dying man’s bedside, saying that they are proud of “the best tumor in the world.” Russia, meanwhile, lies prostrate between liberals and nationalists, like a patient in a Goya painting.

The good news for Russian nationalists is that Russia has not gone crazy at all, as it seems to many decent people, but is trying to protect its national interests in such a very controversial and wild way. And in this, and not only and not so much in the effect of the activities of the government-controlled media, lies the solution to the mystery of the notorious “86 percent” who vote for war, for power and “for everything good against everything bad.” To attribute today's public sentiment solely to propaganda is to engage in sedative and useless liberal self-deception. The bad news for nationalists, however, is that a war in Ukraine for the sake of national interests is the most unsuccessful and almost suicidal way to protect them.

A negative attitude towards the existing political regime in Russia (of course, among those who have a negative attitude towards it) should not obscure the vision that Russia, like any other state in the world, has certain economic, geopolitical (including military) interests, which do not coincide with the interests of other states, and, accordingly, has the right to make active efforts to protect them.

Ideas about what Russia's national interests are at a given specific moment in time, about possible and acceptable methods of protecting them, as well as about their comparative effectiveness, can vary significantly. But this does not mean that Russia’s national interests themselves can be ignored within the framework of public discussion as something secondary and insignificant. And this is exactly what is happening today. For the discussion to be productive, the conversation must begin with the question of Russia’s national interests, and not end with it. Only in this case will the “doctors” and “relatives” have a chance to hear each other.

Solar plexus blow

While looking through books at the stand of London's largest store, Waterstone, I came across an interesting brochure on British history. The author listed the events that became the cornerstone of the formation of the national identity of modern Britons - by the way, there were not as many of these events as we might have imagined. Of course, it all started with the Bill of Rights. But there was also the creation of a national health care system after World War II (the Bolsheviks created it in Russia several decades earlier).

The last point was victory in the war with Argentina to keep the distant Falkland Islands under British control. This was somewhat unexpected for me.

Ukraine is an extremely sensitive, one might say, critically important area of ​​concentration of Russian economic, political and military interests, and the imperial syndrome, although present in the Kremlin’s behavior, is by no means the only or even the dominant motive for its behavior. Ukraine is as important for Russia as the Middle East is for the United States, and much more important than the Falkland Islands mentioned above for Britain. You can dislike Putin as much as you like, but it is difficult to dispute the fact that any, even the most liberal and democratic Russian government, if faced with the fact of Ukraine joining the economic system of the European Union, would find itself in a very difficult position.

Russia and Ukraine in many ways continue to remain part of a single economic system (although formally their economies are independent). The fact is that the separation of the Soviet economic “Siamese twins” never finally happened in practice. Therefore, everything that happens to the Ukrainian economy can have a very painful impact on the state of the Russian economy - and vice versa, by the way, too. Connecting Ukraine, even if only partially, to the EU economy does create a headache for Russia. This is a real problem, not an excuse.

It is not surprising that the Kremlin, under these conditions, shared “its pain” with others.

Of course, it is indignant that Moscow used this circumstance as a pretext for military aggression and annexed the Crimean Peninsula under this pretext. But this does not mean that this circumstance in itself should now be hushed up. Just as it should not be kept silent about the fact that the potential threat of the deployment of NATO military bases on the territory of Ukraine cannot be ignored by any political leadership of Russia (be it Putin or Khodorkovsky). NATO will cease to be a problem for Russia only in one case - if Russia joins NATO. But there is no talk about this yet.

Ukraine is not just an area of ​​increased attention from Russia. This is the solar plexus of Russian national interests. One way or another, in the current format, Russia cannot exist without Ukraine. It was a serious omission on the part of the United States and the European Union (and even more so of Ukraine itself) to assume that Russia would react to Ukraine's change in its political orientation in the same way as it responded to Western actions in the Balkans or the Middle East. In principle, Russia’s reaction could have been calculated, but this was not done, because the West had a very stereotypical image of Russia as an ordinary autocracy.

The weak start and lose

Throughout the twenty-five years of post-communism, the West slowly but consistently “squeezed” Russia out of participation in solving major international problems, including those where Russia had its own significant interest. Neither in the Balkans, nor in Iraq, nor in Libya, nor in Syria, the Russian point of view was taken into account. I do not address here the question of whether this point of view was correct or even merely adequate; I am merely stating the undeniable fact that it has been neglected.

It turned out that it is much easier to break the “Iron Curtain” than to learn to live without it. Russia turned out to be uncompetitive in relation to the West in a free market. There is a point of view, and it is not without reason, that Russia’s war with Ukraine is a reaction to the Ukrainian revolution. This is both true and not true at the same time. The revolution was only a pretext for war. The Ukrainian blitzkrieg of the West became the last straw that fell in the sea of ​​Russian grievances, after which it overflowed its banks. The real reason for the war is the chronic conflict between Russia and the West, the essence of which boils down to the fact that Russia, which economically and politically has long since moved from the front row of the stalls to the amphitheater of world politics, believes that it is out of place, and the West does not see good reasons for by which he must continue to hold in the stalls the state, unable to pay the full cost of the ticket.

The war began not so much from an excess of strength as from a lack of it. This is a desperate demarche of the weak against the strong. In an open economy format, Russia is simply unable to effectively protect its economic and political interests in Ukraine. If Ukraine truly becomes a free economic platform, Russia will most likely be forced out of Ukraine within a few years. Under certain conditions, Ukraine may even turn into a springboard for the EU’s economic expansion into the domestic Russian market, something that Russia’s political leadership never tires of repeating. In addition, it will become much more difficult for Russia to wage a traditional dispute with Ukraine over energy prices. Ukraine has previously tried to use its unique position as a transit country in order to receive gas at a discount. Together with the EU, it will certainly do this more effectively.

The Ukrainian revolution deprived Putin of the comfortable opportunity to do nothing further. He faced a dilemma: either make Russia truly strong, that is, competitive, by carrying out deep economic and political reforms, or, without changing anything within the country, push the West away from Russian borders with the help of military force and hide behind the “Chinese wall.” The Kremlin’s wars are an imitation of a response to a historical challenge, a way to avoid addressing pressing issues of domestic politics. The irony of history is that it turned out to be much easier for Putin to start a “hot” war than a war with the Ozero cooperative.

Liberalism and national interests

It doesn’t take much intelligence to constantly blame Putin. Much more effort is required to understand the logic of his actions. He understood and accepted the historical challenge of the West, but gave the wrong answer to it. Instead of carrying out a deep modernization of Russia and increasing its real competitiveness, he decided to stop historical time and fence himself off from the West with “polite people.” Russia began to look like a devil fish - generally a rather small and not very dangerous predator - which lay down on the bottom and swelled up frighteningly. It desperately burns aviation kerosene, sending its bombers to distant shores to scare away the “vultures” from its borders. But no one is afraid. No one will fight with Russia anyway - they will wait until the kerosene runs out.

Putin is not Stalin. The wars that Stalin fought were part of his brutal program to modernize Russia, and the wars that Putin is fighting are their replacement. Putin does not yet have Stalin's ambition, Stalin's obsession, or Stalin's ideological and psychological base. Putin is not a great inquisitor, but a great imitator who creates the illusion of historical life in a blooming swamp. He conducts spiritualistic seances, calling on the spirits of dead eras (and all at once - Muscovy, the Empire and the USSR), in the hope of receiving help from the afterlife of the historical world. But the spirits of the past do not know how to make the microchips needed for modern weapons.

War could bring Russia to a plateau of stability for a short time. But in the long term, Russia has no chance of staying on this plateau without a technological breakthrough. And a technological breakthrough without effectively functioning state institutions is impossible. Of course, purely theoretically, Putin could become a “Grand Inquisitor,” but to do this, he must, following Lee Kwan Yu, put all his closest friends behind bars. Moreover, since Russia is not Singapore, there are unlikely to be only twenty-six of them. If this happens, it will be a completely different story. But for now this also looks unlikely.

Putin chose a response to the challenge that was beneficial not so much to Russia as to the ruling regime. At the same time, he managed to convince the majority of the population that the interests of Russia and the interests of the regime completely coincide, thus securing unprecedented public support for himself. As paradoxical as it may sound, it was not difficult for him to do this. And the reason is not at all Putin’s genius, but the short-sightedness, selfishness and dogmatism of the liberal opposition, which continues to discuss the attitude towards Russian nationalism, instead of standing at the head of the national movement.

The liberal opposition was so carried away by the fight against Putin that, in the heat of the struggle, it completely lost sight of the topic of Russia’s national interests, leaving their protection to the “hated regime.” She not only denies Putin’s choice of response to the challenge (in which one can agree with her), but behaves as if no challenge exists at all.

Chaste liberalism dominates in Russia, for which Russia exists in an economic and political vacuum, filled with fluids of love and mutual assistance (but this is impossible not only in the world of real politics, but also according to the laws of physics). And the real world, with its fierce competition and struggle for markets, resources and influence, has completely dropped out of the liberal discourse.

As a result, Putin found himself on the political field ceded to him without a fight, practically without competition (all illiberal opposition groups have currently joined him). While the Kremlin, under the pretext of war, carried out an emergency social mobilization of Russian society, the liberal opposition continues to insist on its immediate “demobilization.” It is not surprising that she remains misunderstood by her people. The population instinctively feels threatened and instinctively prefers someone who offers a flawed defense strategy to someone who offers nothing.

Abstract reasoning about freedom yields little. The ideologists of “Russian liberalism” behave today as if there were no “90s” with their barbaric privatization supported by the West, with the collapse of the economy and state legal institutions, the criminalization of public and state life, the destruction of the education and health care systems. But they were, and all of the above was done precisely under the slogan of building democracy and a free market. It is stupid and short-sighted to expect that society’s memory is as short as that of the “creative class.”

All “peacekeeping” efforts will flow into the sand until the objective reasons that led Russia to war with the West (at the moment - in the “Ukrainian format”) are analyzed impartially and honestly in all their complex ambiguity. When the world falls apart, whether in a family or on a planet, there is no one party to blame. Wedges are knocked out with wedges - the liberal opposition either must offer its own program of national mobilization, alternative to Putin’s, or will be forced to leave the historical stage forever.