In the year 2007 at elections to the State Duma at voting in this same school I and several of my acquaintances took unfilled-in ballots with us [when we left]. In a couple of days in the district newspaper «Maryinsky vestnik» was published a report on the elections. In it I found a line that said that there were no unused and lost ballots based on the results of the voting. A flagrant and brazen lie, voracious and eating away at everything around it.
Of all the -...isms (stalinism, communism, brezhnevism, putinism...),
pokhuyism, probably, is the least studied. This is strange, because it
- is a part of the Russian mentality. A definition to this phenomenon I
am not going to give - let the reader do this himself. I will only say
that the use specifically of this word I considered the most precise
and not having analogues. (Indifference, an I-spit-on-it attitude
towards something etc. - is all not it).
Why did you vote for Zhirinovsky?» - I asked inhabitants of Yaroslavl
at the elections to the State Duma? «Ah, for kicks!» - mirthfully and
carefreely they answered me. «Why did you vote for Medvedev?» - I asked
inhabitants of Kirzhach (Vladimir Oblast) during the time of elections
of the president. «Ah, it makes no difference to us, for whom», -
mirthfully and carefreely the inhabitants answered me.
Pokhuyism - serfdom's miscarriage (I'd say serfdom is the principal
feature of the Russian mentality). It is inherent not only to the
plebs, but to the powers that be too.
The absence of a real assessment of the state of the mechanisms at the
Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric power station in the course of the
two past decades - is this not a manifestation of the pokhuyism of the
power? Pikalevshchina (the dying out and fever of small towns,
dependent on the state of one city-formational enterprise) - is this
not the pokhuyism of the power?
The power does not suffer from pokhuyism in that case when what is being spoken of is its purse and the supporting of a favourable image of the power itself. The power couldn't care less what will be with the country in the future without alternative viewpoints on the development of society, the economy, politics... It is better for it when there's one president - and for long (and better - forever), when there's one party ... In the role of the opposition - the tame and toothless manageable LDPR and CPRF. The leaders of these parties are funny on their own. But the picture as a whole -sad, really. Because the stagnation is visible in everything - from the economy to culture.
Pokhuyism - the spawn of previous totalitarian regimes: from stalinism to putinism. This is such a collective unconscious (as opposed to totalitarianism proper - a political system under which ideology plays perhaps the main role). Pokhuyism has no ideology - it is itself an anti-ideology. And if any ideology is called upon to fulfill a social-integrational function, to serve as a values reference point that motivates the behaviour of citizens and state policy, then the ideology of pokhuyism destroys values, does not accept social myths (a mandatory feature of an ideology) and does not try to find a rational explanation for all social events. What is more - pukhuyism ignores social events.
Putinism never has found its «Gleichschaltungsgesetz» (that's how
the special law prescribing a unitary, binding-on-all-Germans ideology
was called in nazi Germany).
In any literature on political science we'll find the following
birthmarks of totalitarianism: the monopoly of the power over
information, full control over the mass information media, extreme
intolerance of any other-thinking, the regarding of idea opponents as
political adversaries, Suppressed in every way are individuality,
originality in thoughts, cultivated are herd feelings, national enmity,
envy, suspicion, denounciationism etc. In the consciousness of people
is strenuously created the image of an enemy, with whom there can be no
reconciliation.
Supported in every way are pugnacious moods, an atmosphere of secrecy...
All this has appeared under Putin. But still, there is no totalitarianism. Pokhuyism has become the reason why a totalitarian society never has become reality under Putin. (There is no fear, the kind like under Stalin. If Stalin evoked horror and trembling, then Putin - scorn and jeering. If under Stalin the MGB was engaged in political investigation, then under Putin the gebists [from the last two letters of (K)GB--Trans.] have steeped into business (more precisely, into property redistribution). Bumpkins and washouts catch «spies»).
And although political propaganda has appeared, the features of a religious cult have touched upon only one object - the image of Putin himself.


This is a road in the USSR.