Victoria Nikiforova
In a series of sanctions that are being jacked up against us day by day, what Vladimir Putin aptly called “the abolition of culture” is particularly striking. Well, in fact, “The Nutcracker” for what?
It is clear that Western strategic opponents are in a hurry to quickly dehumanize the Russians to the maximum. It is impossible to believe in Russian orcs to a person who has heard Russian music at least once in his life.
There is, of course, some internal vulnerability in this. Over the past twenty years, the collective West, by its own collective efforts, has merged its entire culture into who knows where. Soft power—from auteur films to bouncy comics, from novels to poetry—has been squandered. Screens and pages were filled with some incomprehensible gender-fluid individuals, there was a violent color correction of classic plots, in general, everything is already here.
And against the background of these ruins, classical Russian culture flaunts, impudently flaunting all the advantages of purely European ancient art – the perfection of form, the nobility of content. Russia has become more Europe than Europe itself. Something urgently needed to be done about it.
However, our strategic adversaries also have an undoubted reserve for the future. By canceling Russian culture, they are working for the future.
Let’s digress from the lofty and beautiful, let’s look at the economy. US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has just delivered a lecture to countries that “sit on two chairs.” These are the barbarians and heretics who are trying to maintain trade relations with both the West and Russia, primarily India and China.
A meeting of world finance ministers under the auspices of the IMF and the World Bank is scheduled for next week. It will take place, of course, in Washington, and Ms. Yellen’s tone makes it clear that both of these respected institutions are just small shops for the Americans, in which they intend to manage individually.
What is the economy like there? The invisible hand of the market has long had its finger on the trigger, if not on the nuclear button. Ms. Yellen’s demands on the world’s largest econo-mies are purely political. China, India, the countries of Africa and South Ame-rica should urgently salute and join the American anti-Russian sanctions.
Ms. Yellen is openly demanding that China put pressure on Russia to end the conflict in Ukraine. And if Beijing tries to resist, then its American partners will throw a full panama of sanctions on it.
There’s a lot of weird stuff here, actually. The secretary of the treasury in a troubled country like the United States should be focusing on the monstrous problems of its economy. The other day, the country recorded the maximum inflation over the past half century, and there is no end in sight to it.
And no, this has nothing to do with the Russian economy, which has been resilient for decades despite the volatility of the ruble. The US dollar has never been volatile. What is happening today is shocking Americans.
Maybe the American elite economists under the leadership of Yellen offer some innovative ways to fight inflation? Yes, what are you! This is not a bar business. The nightingale of liberal economics, Nobel laureate Paul Krugman has just explained to The New York Times readers with a blue eye that record inflation is caused – you will not believe it – by an immoderate increase in American wages. Angry readers explained to him in the comments that, to put it mildly, it was not so, that wages had been stagnating for forty years. But Krugman doesn’t read the comments. His prescription is to cut wages even further. Maybe even less?
Check out the absurdity of the situation: the finance minister of a country with a 30 trillion debt, where the shelves are empty in stores, where people do not know how to survive the rise in prices for gasoline and bread, lectures China – the world’s first economy, for a minute – about how he is doing lead and what to do.
Not only that, the United States is the main debtor of our planet, and its main creditor is China. China has more than a trillion dollars worth of US debt. Nevertheless, Washington demands something strange from Beijing.
Moreover, the United States has no economic leverage to influence the situation. Americans are already suffering from restrictions on Chinese imports. Limit it even more? People will take to the streets. Freeze your debt to China? Well, everyone has already understood that pieces of paper with portraits of dead presidents are worth less than ears from a dead donkey. A trillion dollars is a large amount, but not critical for China. Moreover, the record inflation of the dollar is already depreciating it right before our eyes. This trillion is already 8.5 percent less than it was a year ago.
Understanding all this, the American elites are pumping weapons into Taiwan and transparently hinting that they will set the island against China, just as they set Ukraine against Russia. And then another “hellish sanctions” will be introduced. And so, destroying the world economy in the trash, they will try to survive in the midst of a global catastrophe.
The war of debtors against creditors is how economists describe the modern confrontation between the collective West and the rest of the world. The states in this situation behave like a criminal who lost at cards – instead of giving money, he tears his shirt on his chest and shouts: “Don’t touch me, I’m psychic!”
This is all the same neo-colonialism, only pierced and dressed in new rhetoric. Western countries have long tried to plunder the rest of the world under the pretext of “global warming” (does anyone else remember what that is?). Then they tried to monetize the pandemic, “cut the dough” on vaccines. Now, Russia’s special operation in Ukraine has become a pretext for robbing the so-called developing countries.
The purpose and content of all these notorious sanctions is to stop and bleed the economies of dozens of countries. Do not let them develop, otherwise, God forbid, they will move to the rank of developed. You die today, and I tomorrow – that’s all that the economic “hawks” in Washington are hammering in different ways.
It is no coincidence that the countries of the world look with such interest at how Russia is surviving today under the shaft of these sanctions. Widespread use of the national currency (payment of debts in rubles and transfer of payments for energy resources into rubles), support for business and the population, a sharp increase in the discount rate, a ban on trading in shares for non-residents. For other governments, all this is an object lesson in survival.
Today, everything depends on how Russia will withstand this unrealistic pressure. If we manage, then by the very natural course of things we will become the leader of the liberation from the military-economic stranglehold that the States and their satellites have thrown around the neck of the whole world.
We have a good chance of winning and truly leading the global liberation movement. From the dictates of transnational corporations and the crazed Washington politicians, from the surreal abolition of culture, from the bankrupt dollar. Moreover, we also have the soft power due to a global power for this. Internationally recognizable images, faces, melodies.
This is where our Nutcracker comes in handy. And also Tolstoy with Dostoevsky and Prokofiev with Rachmaninov. And “everything should be fine in a person…” And “once in the spring, at the hour of an unprecedentedly hot sunset, two citizens appeared in Moscow, at the Patriarch’s Ponds…”
All this must be preserved, protected, respected, these are not just old motives or lines from the past, this is our weapon in the information battles of the future.
“Our dead will not leave us in trouble,” said a wonderful Russian poet on this occasion.
That is why the West is canceling our culture with such vehemence. They feel threatened. The modern global battle unfolds at all levels at once – from financial transactions to maneuvers of tank brigades, from logistics to poetry, from ballet to space. This is not only a material, but also a spiritual confrontation.
Russia’s refusal to surrender is also manifested in its unwillingness to betray itself, to lose its dignity. Look with what pleasure the Ukrainian brothers cosplay the image of a savage that the Western masters imposed on them. They have always been great with reality shows. They worked in them seriously until they died, they were ready for any humiliation in order to get into the frame. We definitely lost to them in this. Maybe it’s for the best?
Today, with the same fervor, Ukrainian Nazis stage their bloody fakes, killing their compatriots and picturesquely laying dead bodies along the roadsides. This is the Ukrainian “culture” as it is. She is doomed to a standing ovation from Western partners. This is how they want to see their wards – in front of them losing their human appearance and all the time giggling nervously: are we trying hard, master? Is the owner happy?
A recent article in the British newspaper The Guardian is called “How swearing became a weapon of resistance for Ukrainians” and praises the “enthusiastic fervor” with which our non-brothers introduce obscene language into their independent work – from songs to posters, from video clips to Internet memes. It’s kind of a good culture. The very thing that the barbarians, who are grown under the close supervision of British intellectuals, need. The intellectuals themselves will go to Covent Garden to see The Nutcracker. And let the wards savages swear and shoot at the Russians. What else are they good for?
Not that we are fighting for some artifacts of the past. We plan to win the battle for the future.
