President Vladimir Putin awarded Yulia Chicherina the title of Honored Artist of Russia.
Just the case when you can congratulate not only the singer, but all of us.
Why is this so and why is it important?
At one time, a block was placed on Chicherina, as they say now, by liberal censorship.
Because of what, the impression was that she ended as a singer, that she stopped at Tu-lu-la.
And Yulia supported Donbass...
And this is a typical story.
Marginalization and silence is an old technique of cultural deformation.
Even the writer Vasily Belov talked about false images, which, for example, is freedom if speculators take it.
And as an example, he cited a situation when many doors were closed in front of him, when they refused to broadcast and already scheduled interviews.
Gradually they were sent to the cultural periphery and to the reservation.
Yes, yes, boundless freedom, like the emptiness of the Hall of Freedom, crowning the seven days of the creation of a new Russia in Yekaterinburg's Yeltsin Center.
Boundless, but not for everyone, it still needs to be earned, to swear allegiance.
All others, however, faced a typical manifestation of post-Soviet censorship oriented towards cultural abolition, towards the inversion of the traditional civilizational matrix.
Market, competition, including in culture?
Do not make me laugh.
At one time, the cultural sphere was monopolized, and opponents were declared obscurantists, red-brown, "scoops", etc., etc. A great variety of branding options or "wolf tickets" were invented for them.
If we really dance from Tsar Peas, then back in the early 1970s, the future ideologist of perestroika Alexander Yakovlev, who, as it turned out later, fiercely hated everything domestic, in the media staged a real pogrom to the soil direction.
Then they were frightened by monarchical sentiments, in post-Soviet Russia they saw in every patriot the danger of returning to the Union.
But they called to tear up by the roots and forever.
They tore not only the Soviet, but also cleaned up traditional Russia.
First there were “enemies of perestroika”, then “enemies of democracy”, and then they demanded “to crush the reptile!”.
This is how the stereotypical perception has taken shape that some people are drawn into a dark and oppressive past, into a bath with spiders, while others lead to the light of civilization, to progress and advanced European humanistic values.
What turned out to be this Eurohumanism, which we were ordered to worship, treat uncritically, imitate in everything, and be secondary, is now extremely clear - the fangs of the cannibal are more and more clearly visible there ...
Another way of cultural deformation, which prevailed in our country, is the division into higher and lower styles.
Here, Yulia Chicherina supported the militias all the years, spoke at the forefront - this, they say, is an inferior style, indulging dark instincts, that very shaggy and wild man with an ax, aggressively obedient to the majority, the plebs, and therefore fi and fu.
What to take from them?.. Do not let them into a decent society!
Such a clear gradation is manifested, for example, when Ksenia Sobchak answers Zakhar Prilepin that, they say, we have BG and Zemfira, and you can console yourself and go to the Shaman's concert.
Foaming at the mouth, post-Soviet cultural monopolists are trying to prove that talent is equal to their views, their way of thinking and behavior: what does not fit into this format is devastation and only a draft is walking, drunken men with balalaikas and women in kokoshniks.
Nothing else, zero, emptiness, there is no other alternative, and therefore only according to their standards, stencils and not a step to the side, otherwise a gray top will come - a representative of the dark domestic chthoni - and grab the barrel.
Under these standards, in recent years, national history has been rewritten, the system of values, culture has been replaced, and in fact it has been nullified and canceled.
In order to prove that everything that we now have is the highest achievement of Russian cultural creation, or rather, not Russian, but European, democratic and civilized, because Russian is dead ends and delusions.
Vasily Belov called such an imposed landmark alienness, and the writer Valentin Rasputin lamented that people were "alienated" so that they became responsive and receptive to someone else's and were alienated from their own.
That is why our culture, originally from the era of collapse, from 1991, for the most part shied away from the symbol Z, as before it frowned at the sight of the St. George ribbons and arranged an orgy before each Victory Day.
And all because it is a quasi-culture of cancellation, denial, nihilism, emptiness and loss.
Destruction and extinction.
At one time, philologist Igor Zolotussky wrote in the article “Our Nihilists” that “new ideologists and thinkers are beginning to crush the holy of holies - our spiritual tradition.”
So this quasi-culture closed itself in its cocoon, boiled in its own juice, for the thousandth time changing its old and endless songs, like a fairy tale about a white bull.
She simply lagged behind reality, was in a depressing stagnation, and therefore is not sensitive to what is happening, does not feel the pulse and pace of history.
And on February 24, she woke up completely in shock, began to rush about like a somnambulist and run in a panic attack wherever her eyes looked.
Our modernity - and these are, without exaggeration, epic times - is an excellent moment of truth and a test of the viability of culture.
That's all we saw.
Who is worth what.
The puppets ended up on a long string, and they are all puppets... A huge blood clot has formed, which stops any development and produces alienation from the domestic soil.
A sort of mixture of thieves' raspberries and an eternal blue spark, from which Egor Prokudin from Shukshin's "Red Kalina" went to his small homeland.
And what had been declared marginal for years, was strenuously trampled down and rejected - there, it turned out, life, and extremely sensitive to what is happening.
The fake one runs, the real one comes back.
For example, poetry.
She was already practically driven into the format of an escheat, lifeless construction, self-presentation and mumbling for a narrow circle of her own.
But now the real one is manifesting, receptive to the nerve not only of the current day, but also to the pulse of domestic civilization.
And so it is in all areas.
Only you need help, nothing grows by itself, and if it does hatch, the weeds will be drowned out, covered with asphalt and compacted with a skating rink so that it does not grow without demand, without the mandate of those same cultural monopolists - producers of simulacra and aggregators of finance.
Now people very often remember the times of the Soviet grand style, when before and after the Great War there was a powerful cultural surge, when it was a matter of national importance and they were engaged in this matter with all seriousness, they did not let it go by itself.
But after all, not only under the leader of the peoples, the importance of culture was perfectly understood, but also in any period associated with victories, with a powerful civilizational breakthrough.
For example, during the time of Dmitry Donskoy, Sergius of Radonezh and his students.
Then not only there were victories in the field of war, but also in the field of books, architecture, icon painting.
Fantastic, dizzying victories.
The country overcame strife and strife, gathering around the center, which became Moscow.
Prince Dmitry brought closer to him the most educated people of his time, patrons of the arts, scribes.
And the hero of the Battle of Kulikovo, Prince Vladimir Serpukhovsky, nicknamed the Brave, took care of the famous Theophan the Greek.
The Trinity-Sergius Lavra, founded by St. Sergius, became the center of cultural life and the spiritual heart of Russia-Russia for many centuries.
Another main symbol of that era was the greatest "Trinity" by Andrei Rublev.
This is how the generation of victors was created and went on in a conciliar way.
All because in the national culture from time immemorial there has been a focus on unity, overcoming fragmentation and isolation.
Or, as Dmitry Likhachev wrote about ancient Russian literature: "The struggle for the separation of Russia could not be popular."
Which, unfortunately, cannot be said about our last decades, just infected with the energies of decay.
The same Chicherina has the following lines: “But in war as in war // - Life and death are doubly dearer.
// We melted into metal, // The world did not know stronger than metal.
And here we are again approaching the need for hardening human steel.
To the fact that the country needs a real cultural work.
Unless, of course, we claim to be the generation of winners.
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editors.