The scandal with the opera singer who, they say, offended someone over the “language question” is a beautiful illustration of how the state works—and in particular, the “divide and rule” principle.
When we hear about “divide and rule,” we usually imagine cunning Roman emperors or various Machiavellis, or at worst, itinerant Russian political technologists. That is, we attribute this principle to fully conscious, even rather complex and insidious schemes carried out by some group of people pursuing goals known to them in advance.
In reality, the mechanism that actually works functions completely differently. No, I don’t rule out the existence of Machiavellis and even itinerant Russian political technologists. I also don’t rule out that they tirelessly labor in the field of producing various nastiness for the population. The whole question is how much of the nastiness that occurs is actually the result of their work. And on this point, there are very, very great doubts.
Recently, I was greatly surprised by the reaction of certain comrades to Yanukovych’s Euro-integration efforts. In their opinion, there was something strange and incomprehensible about this, because Yanukovych “has always been for Russia.” Some kind of contradiction emerged, so to speak—a paradigm break. In their opinion, the state is neutral. It’s essentially something like an automobile. It goes where the one sitting in it wants. In reality, of course, the matter stands in exactly the opposite way—the automobile goes where it needs to. And Yanukovych or, say, Yushchenko at the wheel—these are minor details.
I recall how in 1994 I was calming friends from Rukh who were genuinely frightened by Kuchma’s victory, telling them that Kuchma would still drag them into NATO and the EU, just give it time. They didn’t believe. But here everything is quite simple—any office, and the state in particular, is interested, first of all, in its own survival. And if a state called “Ukraine” exists, then any boss will first and foremost care that it continue to exist, otherwise he won’t be a boss. His personal sympathies and priorities do not have great significance for the system. He may love Russia as much as he likes and listen to shanson radio, but he is doomed to “Euro-integration,” because in the foreseeable future, this is a way for the system as a whole to survive. A boss who would make efforts toward real integration with Russia—the system will destroy him1.
So, “the system” is not a conspiracy and even not a hierarchical structure at all; it is much more frightening—it is a coincidence of interests. It is the modest labor of millions of modest bureaucrats, many of whom are exemplary family men and fervent patriots, and who have absolutely no idea that they are part of some terrible “system.” It is their modest activity that makes me utter the phrase “the primary task of the state is self-preservation and expansion.” In this phrase, things look as if someone “set a task” for the state, but in reality, I repeat, it is an unintentional result of the daily work of these people at their jobs, and it creates the impression of some kind of concerted effort and purposefulness. In exactly the same way—spontaneously—the “invisible hand of the market” acts, and it is understanding how the market works that gives us both an adequate understanding of how the state works and the reasons for its constant expansion.
Like ordinary entrepreneurs, government officials are engaged in searching for what in economics is called a “discrepancy in society.” However, if the entrepreneur’s efforts are directed at eliminating the discrepancy—because those who benefit from such elimination pay him voluntarily—then the state is directly interested in cherishing and nurturing the problem it has found. And this problem should never be solved, otherwise the “work front” will disappear. The state is enabled to do this by the compulsory nature of its financing—the bureaucrat receives money from forcibly collected taxes—meaning, simply, there is no direct connection between those whom this problem concerns and the bureaucrat’s work.
The state’s activity of searching for discrepancies should not be identified with what we see on the surface, that is, with activity within some kind of hierarchical structure managed by certain procedures. It is more an activity determined by instincts and intuition, although in the case of the most intelligent and understanding officials of the real state of affairs, it is also determined by reason and sober calculation.
As in the market, the state constantly has projects that either survive or don’t. Again, as in the market, this depends on how important they are at a given time in a given place. Innovations and reforms are constantly multiplying in the depths of the bureaucratic behemoth; they appear and disappear; they are “suddenly” remembered several years after being forgotten, and so on. In the most general case, the success of this or that endeavor depends on how much “the people eat it up.” The state is completely indifferent to the content of its own activity; the main thing is the work front, and the content is a question of the given time and the given society.
So, returning to the topic with which we began: among the projects that the state develops for its benefit, there are, so to speak, system-forming ones—that is, those real or invented social problems that allow the system as a whole to exist. Alongside political independence, sovereignty, and other such shamanism, one of these “systemic” projects is “divide and rule.” Any state at any point in the world and at any historical time follows this principle. Well, if it doesn’t follow it, it gives way to more clever ones. A modern developed country is quite full of carefully cherished and encouraged conflicts: this is the war of the poor against the rich, women against men, children against adults, “natives” against “newcomers,” sexual minorities against the sexual majority, and so on. It is not at all difficult to trace how that country’s state incites citizens against each other, inventing ever new pretexts. In Ukraine, this role has so far been successfully played by “mova” and the “split” between West and East, so our state does not particularly emulate the experience of its senior comrades—it has enough of its own. Of course, it was not the current state that invented this problem; another state created it about a hundred years earlier, but, credit must be given—the “young independent state” from the first days of its existence has sunk its teeth into the “language issue” and has absolutely no intention of letting go. And the fact that over 20 years a question that is, in general, funny, with an obvious and simple solution, has not only not been resolved but creates more and more tension, speaks to the fact that it is being utilized effectively one hundred percent.
The case with the opera singer simply shows that things on this front are going splendidly and the state is winning, because there are enormous numbers of people ready to loudly call for the boss regarding certain statements in private conversation. The work front is ensured for a long time, the fools are divided, and ruling over them is easy and pleasant.
Yes, by the way. It is precisely in the question of “mova” that one can perfectly clearly and unambiguously trace who is actually the enemy of all Ukrainians, regardless of language. I have long noticed that Ukrainian-speaking people in everyday speech voice the statements of Russian officials in Russian. Russian-speaking people—vice versa. And this has been the case under all regimes. That is, each believes that power at the current moment belongs to their “enemies.” Since this cannot simultaneously be the case, this observation is a reason to think about whether the state is simply a neutral apparatus, or whether, after all, it implements its own interests.
Something like that is how it ultimately turned out. ↩︎