---
title: "Production of Hell or Where the 'Russian Question' Came From"
slug: proizvodstvo-ada-ili-otkuda-vzyalsya-russkij-vopros
tags:
- "About the State"
- "About the System"
weight: 253
---
Today we will again talk about how the political machine works and, in particular, about how the "interest of the system" is the main factor in this work. However, first a simple example of what the interest of the system is. As far as I know, journalists are not taught that only bad news sells well. No, of course, one can imagine a hard-boiled editor sitting in tobacco smoke, explaining this fact to a rather dull journalist who brought in a report about a children's matinee at a time when three wonderful bloody car accidents happened right next to the editorial office. That's fair. But as for conscious programming for "more hell," as far as I remember the media from the inside, there is none of it, and journalists are not explained in their first year that the search for and production of hell is the main thing in their profession. Meanwhile, this is exactly what they end up doing. Whether CNN, Euronews, or some "Kryzhopil News"---all of them, to a one---are continuous reports about famine, death, war, and catastrophe, hotbeds of fear and panic. This is a necessary condition for their survival, although, I repeat, they are not specially taught this. The instructive point of this matter is that there is an illusion that "this wasn't there before." Right now I'm reading a 19th-century philosopher who complains that newspapers have "gone to pot," and that there was a time when it was serious reading, etc., etc. Obviously, over time the boundaries of what is permissible simply change, during his lifetime they changed, and now it seems to him that everything is bad, although it was always bad. But this is already details. I think everyone understands that the interest of the system in selling news controls journalists and the content of these news stories, which increasingly represent hell, because the obvious pattern is that against a backdrop of hell, one can only sell even more hell.
A similar mechanism operates in the political machine. Those who consider it neutral are deeply mistaken. I will give two examples. The first is the role of the political machine and the electoral system in the current war. It is no secret that at its foundation lies the "Russian question," that is, a complex of real, and more often mythological, problems related to people's perceptions of Ukraine and Russia's place in their lives. The "Russian question" was manufactured by our political machine over all 20 years. And the point here is not about nationalists and "Russian world" advocates, but about the machine selecting from the porridge in Ukrainians' heads those myths on which it can profit. It is perfectly fair (and this is a rare case when sociological data has any significance at all) that the "Russian question" was never a primary question for Ukrainians. But it was always the most widespread myth. And it was precisely this that always made it the number one question in elections. And by the same logic of "more hell," we now have fully materialized hell.
The role of the machine in this process is easy to assess if you perform a simple thought experiment. Let's imagine that, by some magical circumstances, from the first days of independence a parliamentary model and list-based elections with a low threshold were established here. In that case, the "Russian question" would have disappeared from the agenda within two or three parliamentary terms and would have become the domain of marginals, Russia would have been perceived as an ordinary "foreign state" like Poland, and most likely there would be no war now. Why? Because in that case the logic of the political machine would have been different. Currently it is the logic of presidential elections---that is, the logic of mobilizing the most widespread myth for subsequent parasitizing on it. This happens because in presidential elections the one who can mobilize more than the opponent wins. The logic of multiparty elections is different; there, first of all, you need to mobilize some minority sufficient to pass the threshold. Of course, this is the same kind of deception and swindle as the majority system, but the content of this deception in this particular Ukraine would have been different. I should note in passing that presidential elections are the foundation of our machine; it is they that set the main direction in it, parliamentary elections only follow along the already laid path, which is why I compare presidential elections in one system with parliamentary elections in another, I am talking about those mechanisms that determine the logic of the political machine.
And once more. Of course, it is not direct presidential elections, but Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin who is the cause of the war; it's just that with a different political machine, Putin would have nothing to do here. One cannot wage a hybrid war where there is no soil, where the subject of agitation is not part of everyday (excuse me, discourse). Our political machine was manufacturing the "Russian question" all these years, convinced many people that it was vital to them. Putin also participated in this process somewhere since the late Kuchma era, when various "compatriot" organizations appeared and direct financing of needed politicians and parties began, but he did not invent and manufacture this discourse, he merely made use of it.
Now another, somewhat paradoxical example. I noticed in myself that when reading some news about the life of our state, about the laws and decrees it produces, I involuntarily put myself in the shoes of presidents, prime ministers, and other bosses, and imagine how sensibly and competently I would act in their situation and how I would save the galaxy. And this from me, an old anti-statism advocate. I can only imagine what goes on in the heads of progressive society, how its teeth grind and how its fists clench at the sight of the marasmus that our authorities produce in titanic volumes. "What are they doing, idiots! Don't they understand that..."---I think I won't be wrong if I say that this is the refrain of political texts and, especially, of comments on them. Let's set aside the content of the proposals that, in the opinion of society, are correct and not idiotic. Right now we're talking about something else, namely, that the cretinism of the state is a very marketable commodity in the marketplace.
The state was going insane before my very eyes, I remember how it all started, how "ideological" parties were created, smart programs were written, etc., etc. With each new election, the system became more populist, and politicians more and more resembled mentally retarded clowns. Why? Because, as with the media, the first and main thing for the state and politicians is attention to themselves. The media achieves this by producing and selling fear, politicians---by producing cretinism. And, as in the case of media, they are not specially taught this and they don't even realize what they are doing. Simply, those who can produce more hell win. And thus the system not only maintains itself in working order, but constantly expands, since your desire to "show those scoundrels" supports the production of politicians, elections, and all other machinery. The system is not afraid of the hypothetical victory of the "right" forces, because it is not the content of politicians' programs and activities that matters to it, but taxation in the broad sense. As long as it exists and expands---everything is fine. It doesn't matter who is in power.