Grigory Borisovich Yudin is a sociologist, philosopher, Candidate of Philosophical Sciences, Academic Supervisor of the Political Philosophy Program and Professor at the Moscow Higher School of Social and Economic Sciences (Shaninka), Senior Research Fellow at the Laboratory of Economic and Sociological Research at the National Research University Higher School of Economics.

Below is an excerpt from his interview with Novaya Gazeta. The entire conversation can be read on the publication's website.

Photo: Vlad Dokshin / Novaya Gazeta

Since the nineties, we have been building a liberal democratic society, but of these two components, we were thinking about only one. We imported the liberal-democratic system in a truncated form - liberalism without democracy. The main objectives were to build a market economy, ensure economic growth, create competition, force people to be entrepreneurial at the risk of survival and teach them that no one will take care of them if they do not take care of themselves. Today, the belief that there is nowhere to wait for help and that everyone must save themselves has become the basic principle of life for Russians. As a result, a radical alienation between people increased and there was no faith in collective action.

The democratic side of the matter was of little concern to anyone. But what we did not take, considering it unimportant, is the most important thing: institutions of local self-government, local communities, professional groups. In the 1990s, they practically did not engage in the development of local self-government, and then they began to deliberately strangle it in general. Grassroots initiative and professional associations were not involved: on the contrary, in all areas that were traditionally managed by professionals, we now see the endless power of managers and administrators. The classic example is medicine. Doctors across the country are groaning at the amount of reporting they are forced to produce by bureaucrats. A strange perverse motivation is created through the achievement of indicators and earning money, although neither of these is typical for professionals - professionals work for the respect of society, because their work is recognized and appreciated.

Our problem is that Russia is dominated by aggressive individualism, which is fueled by fear and turns into fierce competition, total mutual distrust and enmity. Note that in Russia, personal success is highly valued: turn on any television talk show, where stars who have successfully made a career or business are presented as models - and not at all those who do something for society.

We often mistake for collectivism envy, the inability to support the initiative and development of another person, to understand their value for ourselves. But this is precisely the problem of the lack of a common collective base - why should I rejoice at your success, if every man is for himself? In the same way, respect for the rights of other individuals appears only if there is a collective activity to protect common rights. Only in this case I know what their price is, and I understand that my own depend on your rights, that we are in the same boat.

A person is so arranged that he needs some kind of collective goals, some kind of identity. The mobilization of 1914 is just a way for the authorities to respond to this request - partly unintentional, but partly calculated. We saw how the same people who showed themselves in different movements two years earlier took up arms and went to Donbass. All because they, roughly speaking, needed the meaning of life.

This is the problem of today's Russia: people do not really understand what the meaning is, what are the socially recognized goals of life. The initiative from below is suppressed, and the only model that is offered is an increase in the standard of consumption. But consumption does not provide meanings for which it would be worth living. The mobilization of 1914 showed that we do not have any "conservative values" that, in theory, could fill this vacuum. Many families split immediately along the Russia/Ukraine line. And now we see how the Orthodox Church is splitting. This is atomization - when the institutions of common life are weak, it is very easy to set people against each other.<...>

Roughly speaking, the black marketeer is independent and courageous, but he cannot solve the problem of the request for collectivity. Today it is a flight alone, almost scattered. Anarchists are always interested in collective resistance, from Peter Kropotkin to James Scott to David Graeber, the question has always been how people organize their lives together outside and in spite of the state. And there is a big problem with this in Russia - as soon as you decide to change something not only for yourself, but also around you, together with others, you immediately encounter a state that carefully suppresses any initiative. Many individually successful and independent people in Russia know this from their own experience. Of course, the temptation is great to say "since I can't do anything with this state, I'll pretend that it doesn't exist." But it is there, and it will immediately make itself felt as soon as you enter its clearing.

After all, the escape from the state in itself is very convenient for the state. Statesmen like Simon Kordonsky are terribly happy that people are escaping in this way. This is a double profit for the state: firstly, these are independent people, they will take care of themselves, there is no need to share with them; secondly, they will not make any political demands and will not pose any threat to the order. Absolutely perfect people.<...>

A person does not want to live according to the living wage at all. A person strives for justice - the distribution of resources in society should be clear to people. This does not mean that everyone wants to be a billionaire or be the richest - in fact, people usually do not need this. The problem is that when there is such inequality in the country as in Russia, it cannot be justified by anything. The Russian elites have so much money that they do not know where to put it, and therefore their lifestyle becomes frankly defiant. Russians are both attracted and annoyed by the lifestyle of Russian oligarchs. Or, for example, highly paid football players who seriously believed that money makes them omnipotent.

People outside the capitals are irritated by the inequality between Moscow and the regions. The question arises: “Why am I worse? I work honestly, but for some reason I can't afford it. How am I worse than the same Muscovites, to whom I lose in wages two or three times? I would like to adopt such a consumer style - but for this, people drive themselves into loans. At the same time, almost all social elevators are closed in Russia. The vast majority of people are ready to work and earn money, but the upward movement is blocked. And there are no opportunities to change the system either: the Russian rich are the main Russian officials, and they are not ready to give power to anyone. Economic inequality turns into political.

- This will be the catalyst for popular irritation? After all, it is often said that serious protests never arise from purely economic reasons.

Yes, the trigger will be some case of demonstrative neglect, which will allow expressing dissatisfaction in the language of clear demands. Kokorin and Mamaev can be put in a pre-trial detention center, but when there is an irritant on which discontent converges and on which no one will have control, this will radically escalate the situation. Roughly speaking, the accident on Leninsky Prospekt in today's conditions will become a trigger. Discontent is brewing - it's just looking for a language in which to speak.

Gleb Napreenko: There is a popular notion in Russia today about some kind of conservative majority that supports Putin and his policies. This view refers to opinion polls - they are the ones that are said to show us this majority. But what do polls really show?

Grigory Yudin: Somehow we didn't notice how polls have become a key institution of political presentation in Russia. This is a specific Russian situation, although in principle polls around the world are becoming more and more important. But it is in Russia that the polling model has easily subjugated the imagination of the public, because it has a claim to democratic participation, to the direct voice of the people. And she hypnotizes the audience with her figures. If the audience were a little less mesmerized, if we separated the democratic process as the self-government of the people and the polls as an institution of total political representation, we would quickly discover a few things that everyone knows about in the field of polls. First of all, that Russia is a totally depoliticized country, in which it is considered shameful and not comme il faut to talk about politics, as something obscene. So it is not surprising that questions (and questions about politics even more so) are answered by a radical minority of people. Therefore, the claims of polls for the representation of the population do not find any confirmation in reality. There is such a technical indicator in surveys - the response rate: the proportion of those who, out of the total number of your sample, answer questions, who manage to be interviewed. Depending on the method, today this share in Russia is from 10 to 30 percent.

Russia is a totally depoliticized country.

Napreenko: It's very small, right?

Yudin: We just can't say anything about the other 70-90 percent, we don't know anything about them. Then there is a long discussion, in which survey companies are trying to drag us all the time, that we have no evidence that these 10-30 percent are somehow different from the other 70-90 percent. Of course, we don't have any proof. We could get this evidence only if we were able to interview those same 70-90 percent of whom we know that they do not want to participate in polls. But the idea that not wanting to participate in polls is a kind of passive protest is supported by all the reality we observe. People don't go to the polls. People do not participate in any political discussions. All this happens for the same reasons.

Napreenko: And when did such a situation arise?

Yudin: There was a burst of political enthusiasm in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and it was in 1987 that the first polling institute, VTsIOM, appeared. Polls were a new institution of representation that Soviet society did not know, and they fell into a wave of perestroika and post-Soviet democratic enthusiasm. It began to take place already in the 1990s, and in the 2000s there was a disappointment in politics. Because it was in the 2000s that we received a set of political technologies that deliberately worked to depoliticize, to present all politics as clowning, where senseless freaks compete, for whom, of course, it would not occur to a reasonable person to vote. Polls have suffered because of all this. Because polls are not only a scientific method of studying public opinion, as is often imagined, but also an institution of political representation. That's how they were conceived by George Gallup, and that's how they've always worked. So, of course, disappointment in political institutions was, among other things, disappointment in the polls.

And recently, we have also received a situation where polls have become strategically used as one of the technologies for suppressing political participation. The state has effectively appropriated the polling industry. Although de facto today there are three major players in the polls - FOM, VTsIOM and Levada Center, and we know that Levada Center occupies a position removed from the Kremlin and is under constant attack from it, but these three companies work with approximately one and the same discourse. And when the Kremlin managed to seize ideological control over this area, it simply began to generate the results that it needed.

Napreenko: What discourse are you talking about?

Yudin: How is the survey industry now? Poll organizers today are often accused of falsifying something, but this has nothing to do with reality. They don't draw or lie, they just take the evening news and ask people the next morning if they agree with some ideology launched there the day before. Since the entire news agenda is dictated by the Kremlin, people who are ready to talk to interviewers (I remind you that such a minority) quickly figure out what is required of them.

Reluctance to participate in polls is a kind of passive protest.

Napreenko: And why does the Levada Center, seemingly opposition-liberal, operate in the same logic?

Yudin: Because from the point of view of the general worldview, it is indistinguishable from all others. It is exactly in the same conservative framework, only with the difference that state propaganda tells us that Russia is a unique country with its own historical path, and this is wonderful, and the Levada Center says that Russia is a unique country with its own historical path, but it's terrible. At the level of the language in which they describe the world, they usually do not differ much from each other. Although sometimes the Levada Center issues some kind of polls, where the questions are not taken from yesterday's news. And in this case, by the way, the results are completely unexpected - precisely because people are spoken to differently.

Napreenko: Can you give an example?

Yudin: There was a great example when an operation was launched to support Bashar al-Assad in Syria. When the discussion that such an operation might take place was just beginning, the Levada Center asked people whether Russia should provide direct military support to Bashar al-Assad and send troops. And he received a predictable reaction: that, in fact, few people want Russia to interfere in this military confrontation. And literally two weeks later, when the intervention had already taken place, the administration developed a language for describing it in the news, and the Levada Center took this language as the language of its survey: “How do you feel about Russian attacks on the positions of the Islamic State (terrorist organization banned in the Russian Federation. Ed.) in Syria?” - Roughly speaking, without any quotes, the wording is taken from the evening news. And people immediately reacted differently to it. Polls do not reveal some kind of deep opinion of people, but rather work on the principle of association: what comes to people's mind when they hear these words is what they are ready to say.

It is also important that, of course, the real production of polls is not carried out by Moscow companies that come up with polls, but by specific interviewers and respondents throughout Russia. Interviewers are not professional sociologists, they are usually people who have not found other work and do this hard work of collecting data. We just did a series of interviews with these interviewers, and they usually say two things. First, people don't want to talk about politics, it's very difficult. When they get a poll about politics, they try to get rid of it if possible, because it is very difficult to persuade people to answer questions about politics: no one wants, everyone is tired, “get off with your politics” and so on. The second thing is related to the gap between the city and the countryside, the young and the old generations. Young people are especially reluctant to talk about politics; in cities - the larger the city, the less willing people are to answer questions about politics. And now we have a very specific group of the population that is more or less ready to play by these rules: yes, guys, you ask us questions from yesterday's news, we show you that we have learned yesterday's news.

State propaganda says that Russia is a unique country with its own historical path, and this is wonderful, while the Levada Center says that Russia is a unique country with its own historical path, but this is terrible.

In addition, the interviewers themselves usually unequivocally believe that the survey is a way of state control over the population. That the authorities need it so that there are no uprisings or revolutions. And when one of the participants in the communication considers himself an agent of the state, we can expect that this will shape the entire communication in a certain way. And then, if the interviewee in the survey believes that his answers are a message to the top, then, of course, he is unlikely to directly send "black marks" to this top - if he does not like power at all and does not trust it at all, he is most likely just won't talk to her. And if he decides to speak, he will complain to the authorities about his current problems, because he believes that there is a conditional chance that she will somehow hear and help.

This is how polls work today.

Napreenko: That is, sharpening your thesis, we can say that we are dealing with mass skepticism in relation to politics, but at the same time you would not call it conservative public opinion, but rather, you would say that the polling centers themselves are conservative, in their approaches?

Yudin: The language with which they try to communicate with people is conservative. Public opinion is a thing produced by polls. Polls are performative. Pierre Bourdieu had a famous article "Public opinion does not exist", which, unfortunately, many misunderstood, although Bourdieu made every possible reservation there. But it was understood in the sense that there is no public opinion at all, that this is some kind of fiction that should not be paid attention to. Nothing like this! Bourdieu says bluntly that, as a product of polling companies, public opinion certainly exists, moreover, we see that it plays an ever greater role in political technologies. It does not exist only in the sense that it is not some kind of pre-established independent reality, which is only neutrally measured, represented by a survey.

About the difference between the conservatism of the Russian provinces and the conservatism of state propaganda and about the fear of the revolution, which does not interfere with the revolution

Napreenko: You have experience in carefully surveying the public consciousness in small towns - with methods other than surveys. What do these field studies of yours say about conservatism and attitudes towards politics and history in Russia?

Yudin: Our research had slightly different objectives, but I can say one thing. As a result, it became obvious that there are very different conservatisms and that the very word "conservatism" confuses more than it clarifies. For example, one of the agendas growing from below today is a localist, parochial agenda, and it's kind of conservative. As far as we can see, local historians most often try to implement it - people who are engaged in local history. Sometimes they are teachers, librarians. They act as the keepers of memory, its agents. As a rule, these local historians are older people or at least studied with local Soviet local historians. And in Soviet times, starting from Stalinism, from the 1930s, local history was quite strongly pressed, and therefore local historians are rather skeptical about the Soviet period in history. Khrushchev allowed local historians back with the idea of ​​creating local patriotism, which would be sewn into all-Soviet patriotism like a nesting doll, but, of course, they never became completely loyal. They had their own agenda, and they got the opportunity to implement it after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Each of them is a local patriot, for whom local history is valuable, a local community that is skeptical of globalist tendencies and everything imperial, because it feels that it is the first thing that will crush the empire.

This has a distinct communitarian conservative agenda associated with the restoration of local identity. Often, by the way, the local history on which this identity is based looks very strange: it is piecemeal, fake. But this conservatism must be sharply distinguished from the conservatism we are dealing with at the level of state propaganda today.

The local community is skeptical of anything imperial.

What, for example, does the attitude to history look like, which the state has been trying to educate since the mid-2000s and then on an increasing scale? Of course, I am talking about the agenda, which is announced on behalf of the state. History here is the history of the state, and it does not have and cannot have any other subject. This is a story of eternal triumph without defeat. Of course, there were no internal conflicts in the state - any internal conflicts were and remain a projection of external ones, internal enemies are agents of external ones, and victory over them is a victory over external enemies. All conflicting, turning, revolutionary events that teem with Russian history are smoothed out and ignored. We see the strange idea of ​​continuity between Ivan the Terrible, the Romanov dynasty, Soviet power in various forms, and Vladimir Putin at the climax of this story. They all patted each other on the shoulder and said: old man, don't let us down. This is history without history. Indeed, historicity and the historical method, since the German philosophy of history, are based on the idea that things actually change, that what we are used to has its beginning and its end.

The fact that on the territory of present-day Russia, disputes have periodically flared up, flare up and will flare up about how the country should be arranged in general, who we are, how the state should be arranged here, what kind of state this is, should it even be here - all it remains silent. On the occasion of the anniversary of the revolution, we are witnessing attempts to “reconcile” the Reds and Whites, who allegedly all wanted good for Russia, but in a slightly different way, so they argued, unleashed a small Civil War for three or four years, but, in principle, they were all good people and wanted to strengthen the state. At the same time, it is taken out of the brackets that a significant part of the people who participated in these events believed that there should not be any state here, while others believed that this state should have nothing to do with the Russian Empire ... That it was a real, serious dispute, during which the subject of history changed dramatically.

The state idea of ​​a subject marching through history betrays a conservative worldview, but it is completely different from that of local conservatives. State conservatism is terribly frightened conservatism. There is an element of fear in any conservatism, but in this case, the modern Russian elite simply has a panicky fear of revolution, which develops into fear of any change at all, any independent movement from below, any popular activity - and hence the need to invent a myth for themselves that in Russia nothing has ever changed. Interestingly, this state myth was easily bought by those who call themselves liberals in Russia. We hear exactly the same thing from them, only with the opposite sign: that supposedly there is some kind of special Russian mentality, a special Russian archetype, a rut that Russia follows and cannot get out of. When and why this track began - it is not clear, apparently, from Tsar Peas. But it is argued that it is she who prevents us from joining some mythical Western world.

Napreenko: And this agenda is different from the grassroots conservative agenda that you have encountered in small towns?

Yudin: An adequate conservative never tries to stop history. He tries, knowing how to appreciate what is, to make sure that what will be at the next step absorbs what is. This is a productive conservative position. It, of course, involves reliance on existing social unities, does not accept the idea that there is nothing important in the world around, except for personal enrichment, personal success, or only one's own family, but tries to rely on some kind of collective force. Where is this collective power to be found? Here are our localists trying to find it in the local community. Such conservatism can sometimes be quite anti-liberal in the broad sense of the word, be ready to suppress some freedoms, even to impose collectivist institutions. But he is different in that he relies on the team and tries to mobilize it.

While the panic-stricken conservatism that we are dealing with at the national level has exactly the opposite intention: for everyone to sit still, everyone to do their own thing, in no case go anywhere, take the next loan and plan the next vacation.

There is an element of fear in any conservatism, but the modern Russian elite simply has a panicky fear of revolution.

Napreenko: And what is the attitude towards possible radical political changes in this local context?

Yudin: The state has successfully managed to sow fears about possible changes. But we must distinguish between anxiety and fear. Constructive conservatism treats everything new precisely with apprehension, because it considers it necessary to interrogate this new in terms of how it corresponds to what we already have, and even if something needs to be changed, how much it can be built into the existing order of things . Naturally, revolutions are treated with special suspicion, because they just cannot be interrogated in advance, they happen too quickly. But frightened conservatism is characterized by the transmission of fear. Fear is the key emotion through which centralized absolute power is possible. If you want to retain power, scare all the people around that enemies will come and destroy you all, and your job is done: after all, you will remain the only defender. Fear is associated with a lack of trust, with a lack of protection - with everything that is completely uncharacteristic of normal, moderate conservatism: on the contrary, it feels on solid ground, knows that behind it there is a tradition on which you can safely rely. Frightened conservatism, on the contrary, sees no support. But, gentlemen, if you are so afraid of the revolution, then you really think that there is nothing here that would prevent the revolution, except for one person at the head of the state? This is just a situation of complete lack of reliability. What, in fact, our fellow citizens usually experience: we have no support, we have no one to rely on except ourselves, we are in uncertainty and try to compensate for our fear with private life, individual success. We all live in the feeling that disaster could happen tomorrow.

At the same time, the fear of revolution is the last thing to be understood as what actually prevents the revolution. Rather, on the contrary: an excited, emotionally unstable state without any support, due to which it is very easy to emotionally turn people on, is exactly what is characteristic of mobilization, including revolutionary. This, of course, does not mean that there will be a revolution tomorrow, but when they say that there can be no revolution, because opinion polls show that people are afraid of it, this is absolutely erroneous logic.

On the kinship of post-Soviet liberalism and Putinism - and on the modern challenges of their common ideology

Napreenko: In art history, for example, Vladimir Paperny's idea of ​​the eternal Russian alternation of revolutionary "culture one" and conservative "culture two" is still terribly popular. But at what point did liberal opposition discourse become like this? At what moment did this lamentation about the eternal laws of Russia, which, say, the writer Dmitry Bykov likes to indulge in, arise?

Yudin: There is such a point of view, for example, in Ilya Budraitskis, that this is the result of the shocks experienced by the intelligentsia in the USSR, which, as a deliverance, found a sharply conservative, absolutely anti-populist discourse for itself - they saw a way out in completely ceasing to associate any hope. Therefore, the idols of this late Soviet intelligentsia were ultra-conservative and extremely pessimistic writers like Mikhail Bulgakov or Vladimir Nabokov. It seems to me that although there is some correct intuition in this explanation, this view does not take into account that in 1991 a significant part of this very intelligentsia, in fact, was the engine of the revolution, they went out to the barricades, thereby showing that they have historical stakes, she is ready to sacrifice something (sometimes even her life), ready to fight for power. This fact calls into question the theory of anti-democratism of the late Soviet intelligentsia. In the early 1990s, there was clearly a democratic element, among other things, and Yeltsin was certainly the democratic leader these people brought to the fore.

The idols of the late Soviet intelligentsia were ultra-conservative writers like Mikhail Bulgakov or Vladimir Nabokov.

At the same time, in the early 1990s, we received an ideology that included a fairly strong conservative element. This is the ideology of economic liberalism, which at first was associated with democratic political liberalism, but then slowly began to move away from it. And the closer to the year 2000, the more these two views diverge. And today, domestic liberals are generally divided into political and economic liberals. As for political liberalism, which has separated from economic liberalism, it simply has nowhere to stumble now, because no left-liberal project has simply taken place in Russia. And economic liberalism was originally based on the theory of modernization, on the idea that there is some correct state that needs to be achieved - a perfect market, supposedly existing in liberal democracies, of which the United States is the standard. When it turned out that this state could not be achieved, or that as we reached it, things did not improve, then the conservative side of this worldview was revealed, which allows people to begin to grieve over the myth of a perfect market and liberal democracy, which never took place. .

That is, if one part is sad about the former imperial greatness, which must be returned, then others are sad about what did not take place - ideal capitalism. But these are two sides of the same conservative worldview, and therefore these two ideologies, in fact, quite find a common language with each other. They are very easily translated into each other: where some say “black”, others answer “white”.

Napreenko: Politics in Russia today is thought of as a very simplified polarity - conservatives against liberal oppositionists, Putin against Navalny and Bolotnaya's leaders. This opposition, in fact, is reproduced by all the major media, both pro-government, state-owned, and relatively oppositional and more or less independent, such as Meduza or Kommersant. In fact, "opposition" and "liberals" are synonymous in the media language. And this, of course, is a very depressing reduction that the idea of ​​the complexity of the political spectrum has become so washed away - not only in Russia, but also in the world: Trump vs. Clinton ... What happened?

One part is sad about the former imperial greatness, the other about what did not take place - ideal capitalism. But these are two sides of the same worldview.

Yudin: I repeat: I think that this opposition is completely far-fetched. If you scratch a domestic liberal, you will very often find an educated conservative. It is easy to recognize him by his melancholy, by the longing that Russia will never be able to come true, which, they say, “it would be good if we lived in some other country, but we, unfortunately, are forced to live in Russia ". But it just seems to me that right now, in fact, the situation has begun to become more complicated - and not for internal, but for external reasons. That Other, in relation to which both of these conservative worldviews have been building themselves all the time, that ideal West, from which the imperial-conservative ideology proposed to stay away and with which the liberal-conservative ideology dreamed of merging - something is clearly happening to him. It becomes clear that the existing image of the Other was somehow simplified, that this Other may not exist at all. We have not yet reached this idea, but after a while we will come closer to the realization that there is no generalized West, but there are specific Western countries between which we still do not see enough differences and tend to simplify what is happening in them. And then the whole Russian ideological construction will be shaken. Now we see defensive attempts to call all people who demand changes in the West populists, senseless talkers, but these are the remnants of the belief that after a while everything will return to normal and we will again be able to continue living in this conservative circle - alone in the affect "we were offended ", and others in the affect of "we were not lucky." But it seems that the direction in which the world is moving will require us to become more and more active in the problems that are common to us today, both in Western and Eastern countries. Problems in the world are accumulating, and Russia is drawn into them regardless of its desire.

Napreenko: The Trump situation is interpreted in the media in anti-populist liberal terms: the allegedly uneducated majority chose this terrible leader, this American Putin.

Yudin: Well, of course, this is an ideology, and it will not give up so easily. But it already has some obvious failures. For a long time we - I'm talking about us as Russian liberals - proceeded from the fact that normal people live in normal countries and choose normal presidents. Now it turned out that the countries are still normal, but some crazy people live in them and some crazy presidents are elected. The next stronghold of our faith is that there are some institutions that, after a certain time, like supermen, will come to the battlefield and put everything in order. But there is reason to believe that they will not come anywhere and everything will not return to any order. More and more new challenges will arise for this ideology, and with them - points for new polarizations.

Putin is most afraid of people.

Napreenko: The mythologeme of an enlightened minority and an unenlightened majority, one of the key ones for Russian liberals, is successfully inverted in conservative state propaganda: supposedly there is a people who are for a special Russian path, but there is a “fifth column” of renegades. How did this binarity come about?

Yudin: This is the old liberal-conservative fear of the masses, which we find, for example, in liberals like Mill or conservatives like Burke. Therefore, these worldviews are very close to each other. And the worldview of Vladimir Putin and his entourage is, in fact, very close to the worldview of his most rabid critics - to the point of indistinguishability. Because both are afraid of the masses. Both are afraid of independence. Both are reactionary and repressive, in fact. The problem is that for some reason we think that some people who are fundamentally different from the liberals are in power. No, there are people in power whose worldview basically coincides with the liberal one. They all have the same fears. Putin is most afraid of people. He tries to stay away from them, apparently, he is physically afraid for his safety, never enters into any public discussion, and if it is offered to him, he reacts with insults, which betrays in him uncertainty and unwillingness to perceive something popular. And these are the same fears experienced by those who call themselves the liberal opposition.

Napreenko: What happened to the left political spectrum?

Yudin: The worst thing that could happen to him happened to the left spectrum. The Soviet project happened to him. And the left idea took some time to come to its senses after him. A lot was ideologically invested in the Soviet project, but, by and large, it did not justify any aspirations of the left. There are, of course, different leftists, but for most of them this is exactly the case. And this is a tragedy for the whole world, because the alternative has disappeared, the understanding of what could be different has disappeared. Hence all these problematic concepts of the 1990s associated with the end of history. They are bad not because of their stiltedness, but because they paralyze the imagination, paralyze the search for political alternatives. For the whole world it is bad, but for Russia it is triple bad. There is absolutely nowhere to go from the conviction that there is only one possible path of development. And this is a dangerous belief.

Russia is a country with monstrous inequality, one of the most egregious in the world.

But time works for the left, and precisely because Russia is included in the global agenda, we see that the problems that the world is dealing with today are our problems too. And the first one is inequality. Russia is a country with monstrous inequality, one of the most egregious in the world. This is something that, by the way, neither power-type conservatives nor anti-power-type conservatives often want to admit. These are not just statistical indicators, this is something that can be seen practically at every moment along all those symbolic boundaries between the rich and the poor that are drawn between Moscow and the regions, within Moscow itself, within individual districts. The oppressive feeling of the resources unfairly received by the elite, the oppressive feeling of the impossibility of getting what they deserve, of course, greatly demoralizes and causes suppressed, but very obvious passive aggression in people.

Another problem is the lack of democracy. And again, here we are not at all somewhere away from world trends, but exactly in their center. The surge of popular discontent that we are now seeing in different countries of the world is a reaction to the fact that the elites in these countries have usurped power. It was usurped by technocrats who thought that all the problems of society can be solved with the help of good economic recipes, so they should be solved by people who are well versed in this. As a result, we have come to a neo-liberal situation, which the vast majority of people do not like, and they - so far in a poorly conscious form - begin to demand back their power. And "back" is an important word here, because we see conservative reflexes. "Make America great again".

Napreenko: Russia is rising from its knees...

Yudin: American voters say: come on, give it back! Perhaps not even fully thinking about the fact that one could still demand the return of power. And Russia, in this sense, is again exactly at the very center of the world agenda, because all the same processes of depoliticization, the transfer of power to technocrats, the replacement of politics with the economy - this is exactly what we are experiencing the consequences of here and now.

And now we have all the elements that make up the traditional agenda of the left.

The surge of popular discontent in different countries of the world is a reaction to the fact that the elites have usurped power.

On the dangers of using the word "intelligentsia" in today's Russia

Napreenko: You once mentioned that you don't like it when the term "intelligentsia" is used today. Can you comment on this? “Disagreements” exist under the auspices of the site, and there, in the “Society” section, Andrei Arkhangelsky’s text about the intelligentsia was recently published, which caused a very strong reaction from readers of the site as a liberal portal, which, apparently, identify themselves with this word.

Yudin: Arkhangelsky writes very well, but, in my opinion, he does work that is exactly the opposite of what he would like to do. That is, he shoots himself in the legs. He is engaged in the political demobilization of his own audience, although he himself worries about the fact that this audience is not politically mobilized and is in a state of despair. But Arkhangelsky consistently depoliticizes its agenda: what he promotes is moralism, which is always dangerous in politics. As if the real political action is to go to the square, tear your shirt on your chest and say: I am for everything clean and moral, against everything dirty. This excludes any possibility of political mobilization and political coalitions, any possibility of searching for identical interests. This is the position of someone who constantly monitors whether political discourse is ethical enough. People who join this, of course, are completely deprived of any political chances. The very idea that there is a single suprapolitical ethic is naive; as if appealing to your conscience immediately makes you clean. Therefore, I believe that what Arkhangelsky offers his audience is political suicide.

Any concept exists in relation to its antithesis. If we define something, we must distinguish it from something. What do we distinguish the intelligentsia from today?

Napreenko: Either from the people or from the authorities.

Yudin: Yes, and that's why, when you sign yourself up to the intelligentsia today, consider that you have abandoned all political ambitions, because you are not with the people and not with the authorities. That means you're on the sidelines.

Napreenko: That is, “intelligentsia” today is a conservative concept?

Yudin: Absolutely! Let's say you don't like the existing political system, but instead of directly saying what you don't like about it, you start doing what you get out of any political confrontation and tell people how they should behave. Naturally, you are sent far away.

When you come to, say, America, you can quite say the word "intelligentsia", and it will not have a depoliticizing meaning, it will not immediately oppose you to the people and the authorities. In Russia, before the beginning of the 20th century, everything was also different. What happened next is a separate issue that Budraitskis was interested in, although I do not agree with him on everything.

When you enroll yourself in the intelligentsia today, you renounce all political ambitions.

One way or another, in the late Soviet era, the concept of "intelligentsia" for many became a way to survive in conditions of monstrous mustiness. People needed some kind of existential solution, they needed to decide for themselves: how should I deal with this social situation if I remain in it. And the word "intelligentsia" became a form of internal exodus. Among the dissidents, of course, there were splits on this score. Politically active people like Gleb Pavlovsky now say that they were skeptical of Soviet dissidence precisely because it is sterile, does not try to solve its own internal problems by solving political problems, and does not believe that this is possible.

Napreenko: Can you imagine the repoliticization of the concept of "intelligentsia"?

Yudin: Theoretically, nothing is impossible. Following Ernesto Laclau, I believe that words in politics can take on a completely different meaning and be used in a new way. If my diagnosis is correct that we are beginning to be drawn into the global agenda, then little by little the word “intelligentsia” can also be rethought here. Because all over the world, knowledge workers are now united by common causes - they are already said to make up a large part of the new "army of the precariat". If you now tell someone who considers himself a Russian intellectual about the "army of intellectuals", he will most likely immediately answer that he is not a member of any army. In order for the situation to change, you need to be aware of your specific problems. For example, to say that if you are a school teacher, professor, doctor, engineer, then you should be paid for your work, that you produce work that is significant for society, for which you are not paid. Talk about the fact that the future of the country lies in knowledge, education, and new technologies. And it is indicative that people around who do not consider themselves to be any kind of intelligentsia can hear this.

Grigory Borisovich Yudin is a sociologist, philosopher, Candidate of Philosophical Sciences, Academic Supervisor of the Political Philosophy Program and Professor at the Moscow Higher School of Social and Economic Sciences (Shaninka), Senior Research Fellow at the Laboratory of Economic and Sociological Research at the National Research University Higher School of Economics.

Below, Grigory Yudin answers the question of The Question - "Is there a "last straw" in Russia at all - something after which the people will no longer be able to endure, or is everything completely neglected?"

No - it does not exist not only in Russia, but nowhere else. The expectation of the "last straw" is based on a misconception about the device of collective action. Many expect that sooner or later the authorities will do something so provocative as to provoke a counter wave of collective action. At the same time, it is assumed that “action depends on beliefs”: if people see something radically unacceptable from the point of view of their beliefs (falsification of elections, torture in colonies, pension reform), then they will go to protest. And if they do not protest, then everything suits them.

Because of this theory, many are upset that some absolutely crazy incidents do not cause popular anger or, worse, openly anti-popular decisions of the government are supported. From this, it is usually concluded that, therefore, the inhuman actions of the authorities correspond to the people's desire, that the people in Russia have such brutal beliefs or "values" (this means some very fundamental beliefs that cannot be changed). The problem, however, is that this theory is wrong - that's not how humans work. Since the beginning of the 20th century, after the advent of phenomenological and pragmatic philosophy, it has been clear to action researchers that in fact the opposite is true, to a large extent "beliefs depend on action." Our beliefs are shaped by what we can or cannot practically do. We all unconsciously want to feel confident that the world around us is consistent and predictable, we try to avoid gaps and dissonances in practical experience. Therefore, we do not want to feel contradictions between our own convictions and practical actions.

In Russia, for a long time and purposefully, confidence has been instilled that no protests can change anything, and collective actions are generally impossible, because every man is for himself. Any belief that "one has to do something" conflicts with this practical certainty of helplessness. This creates a lot of psychological pressure, and we quite naturally try to avoid it - just like we convince ourselves that we do not really want a thing that we think is impossible to get.

Therefore, the conviction that “it cannot be tolerated any longer” can only arise when there is practical certainty that something can be done. If there is no such certainty, then beliefs will adjust to helplessness so as not to put us in a painful position when we are simultaneously sure that we must do something and that nothing can be done. Thus, a person who was forced to go to the polls is unlikely to publicly admit it - most likely, he will try to convince himself that it was largely his own decision. And it is better not to try to convince him that he was a victim of violence - most likely, this will cause the opposite effect and a desire to insist on his own.

So in our current conditions, the answer to the question “what should happen for people to finally stop tolerating” is simple: nothing. Instead, you should think about what needs to be done to destroy the myth of helplessness. The truth is that when organized collective action takes place in Russia, they very often succeed, and this is confirmed by many examples. It's just that the authorities are trying to hide it and pretend that they haven't noticed the pressure. The peculiarity of Russia is not that we are somehow particularly inclined to approve of cannibalism, but that we have very low faith in collective action. This is typical of authoritarian political regimes. As soon as faith in ourselves appears, we stop forgiving what was forgiven yesterday, and we begin to react as it should.

  • He started working at the Higher School of Economics in 2007.
  • Scientific and pedagogical experience: 12 years.

Education, degrees

  • PhD: specialty 09.00.01 "Ontology and theory of knowledge"

    • Master's degree: State University-Higher School of Economics, specialty "Sociology"

    Master's degree: Higher School of Economics, faculty: Sociology, specialty "Sociology"

  • MA: specialty 22.00.00 "Sociology"

    • Bachelor's degree: Higher School of Economics, faculty: Sociology, specialty "Sociology"

Additional education / Advanced training / Internships

PhD in Politics, New School for Social Research, New York, 2015-

Powers / responsibilities

Senior Research Fellow, Laboratory of Economic and Sociological Research

Final qualification works of students

  • Undergraduate

    • Article Yudin G. B. // Monitoring of public opinion: Economic and social changes. 2018. V. 26. No. 3. S. 344-354. doi

    Article Yudin G. B. // Philosophy. Journal of the Higher School of Economics. 2017. V. 1. No. 1. S. 123-133.

    Chapter of the book Yudin G. B. // In the book: Workbooks on bioethics Issue. 20: Humanitarian analysis of biotechnological projects for human "enhancement". M. : Publishing House of the Moscow University for the Humanities, 2015. Ch. 7. S. 91-104.

    Preprint Larkin T. Yu., Yudin G. B. / PSTGU. Series 2221-7320 "Proceedings of the research seminar "Sociology of Religion"". 2015.

    Book , Sholokhova S. A., Sokuler Z. A., Benoit J., Rishir M., Marion J., Henri M., Levinas E., Burnet R., Merleau-Ponty M., Maldine A., Detistova A. A. S. Detistova, V. V. Zemskova, V. I. Strelkov, S. A. Sholokhova, G. B. Yudin , ; comp.: S. A. Sholokhova; under total Ed.: S. A. Sholokhova. M. : Academic project, 2014.

    Chapter of the book Yudin G. B. // In the book: Almanac of the Center for Economic Culture Research, Faculty of Liberal Arts, St. Petersburg State University. Moscow: Gaidar Institute, 2014, pp. 33-49.

  • Article Yudin G. B. // Laboratorium. Journal of Social Research. 2014. No. 3. S. 126-129.

    Article Yudin G. B., Koloshenko Yu. A. // Labyrinth. Journal of Social and Humanitarian Research. 2014. No. 5

    Article Yudin G. B. // Monitoring of public opinion: Economic and social changes. 2014. No. 2. S. 53-56.

Conferences

  • Wertediskurs mit Russland (Berlin). Lecture: Gefährliche Werte und die Falle des Wertediskurses (Dangerous Values ​​and the Trap of Value Discourse)
  • Civil Society in the XXI century (St. Petersburg). Report: Respect and despise: Hegel's theory of public opinion
  • Images of sovereignty (Leuven). Report: Taming the sovereign: plebiscite against popular democracy in Max Weber’s theory of sovereignty
  • Salzburg Workshop in Legal and Political Philosophy (Salzburg). Report: Plebiscitarianism is not populism: what Putin’s rule tells about the crisis of liberal democracy
  • 49th Annual ASEEES Convention (Chicago). Report: Two Memories and Multiple Pasts for Russian History
  • Russian Economic Challenge (Moscow). Report: The Resource Curse and Democracy: Who Needs Diversification?
  • First Braga Colloquium in the History of Moral and Political Philosophy (Braga). Report: Public opinion polls as a technology of dual representation
  • How to be Authoritarian? (New York). Report: Governing through polls: Putin’s support and political representation in Russia
  • Large PNiSii - Social sciences in an authoritarian state (St. Petersburg). Report: Opinion polls in Russia - a problem of representation
  • XI Congress of Anthropologists and Ethnologists of Russia (Yekaterinburg). Report: "Take a loan so as not to be in debt": Russian consumers' debt load from the point of view of the theory of gift exchange
  • XXII International Symposium Ways of Russia (Moscow). Report: Public Opinion Polls as a Technique of Political Representation
  • Back to the Future? Ideas and Strategies of Retrograde Modernization in Russia and the Post-Soviet Region (Berlin). Report: Assembling the people: Strategies of manufacturing popular sovereignty through opinion polls
  • HistoriCity: Urban Space and Changing Historical Culture (Moscow). Talk: Tale and tradition: Different Mechanics of Producing Touristic Experience in a Small Town
  • Annual Conference of the Association of Social Anthropologists: Anthropology and Enlightenment (Edinburgh). Report: To pay and not to pay: Moral regimes of debt economies in Russian towns
  • Intellectual History vis-a-vis the Sociology of Knowledge: between Models and Cases (Moscow). Lecture: Historicism and sociologism in the history of German sociology: The case of Helmut Schelsky
  • 12th Conference on Urban History Cities in Europe, Cities in the World (Lisbon). Presentation: Strategies of manufacturing tourist experience in a small town: Local community and symbolic construction in Myshkin
  • Economic culture: values ​​and interests (St. Petersburg). Presentation: Free Riders between Models and Bus Stops: For a Sociology of Disembedded Economy
  • Second international sociological scientific-practical conference "Continuing Grushin" (Moscow). Lecture: Limits of representativeness and failures of representation
  • Embeddedness and Beyond: Do Sociological Theories meet Economic Realities? (Moscow). Presentation: Free Riders between Models and Bus Stops: For a Sociology of Disembedded Economy

    • Debt: Interdisciplinary considerations of an enduring human passion (Cambridge). Presentation: To pay and not to pay: Symbolic meaning and structure of debt relationships in a Russian town

  • 13th Annual Philosophy of social science roundtable (Paris). Presentation: Reflexivity at the crossroads: from reflexive objectification to reflexive subjectification
  • 30th Annual Conference of the European Society for the History of the Human Sciences (Belgrade). Lecture: Between reality and reflexivity: Helmut Schelsky and transformations of German sociology
  • On Error (London). Report: Community of errors: The paradox of logical socialism

Scientific supervisor of dissertation research

for the degree of Candidate of Sciences

  • Shablinsky A. I. The Concept of Freedom in the Political Philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (postgraduate study: 3rd year of study)
  • Khumaryan D. G. Ways of social regulation of labor in enterprises of flexible specialization: a sociological analysis of management practices (postgraduate study: 3rd year of study)
  • Konovalov I. A. Working conditions and the meaning of free time for workers in the industrial and "new" economy (postgraduate study: 3rd year of study)

experience

2012- Senior Research Fellow, Laboratory for Economic Sociology Research, National Research University Higher School of Economics

2018- Associate Professor, Faculty of Social Sciences, National Research University Higher School of Economics

2013- Professor, scientific supervisor of the program "Political Philosophy", Moscow Higher School of Social and Economic Sciences

2007-2018 Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Social Sciences, National Research University Higher School of Economics

2007-2011 Trainee researcher Economic Sociology Research Laboratory NRU HSE

Is it true that the authorities conduct opinion polls with the help of special services?

The work of Russian sociological services traditionally raises many questions: how much they are controlled by the authorities, whether the results of polls can be trusted, why “secret polls of the Federal Security Service” are needed. After the recent recognition as a "foreign agent" of one of the three largest sociological services in the country - the Levada Center - there are even more questions. Meduza asked Professor Grigory Yudin of the Moscow Higher School of Social and Economic Sciences (Shaninka) to answer the most common questions about Russian sociology.

MEDUZA

Russians are dragging out life on loan

The credit burden of the population of small towns in Russia is almost one and a half times higher than that of million-plus cities - the results of a study by Grigory Yudin and Ivan Pavlyutkin, researchers of the Laboratory of Economic and Sociological Research of the Higher School of Economics, Debt and Community: Two Debt Economies of Small Towns.

Nezavisimaya Gazeta.ru

Lectures by HSE teachers continue at the Museum and Exhibition Center "Worker and Kolkhoz Woman" at VDNKh. In August, the “Economy for Life” cycle will be held there, where listeners will be able to find out what Muscovites spend money on, what is happening with cryptocurrencies now, and how not to fall into a debt trap.

On Sociologist's Day, November 14, as part of a series of seminars of the HSE Laboratory for Economic and Sociological Research with a report "What researchers don't want to know about standardization?" and the presentation of his own book “In the Shadow of Polls, or the Everyday Life of a Field Interviewer” was made by Dmitry Rogozin, Ph.D.

On September 12, 2017, the next season of seminars of the Laboratory for Economic and Sociological Research (LESI) started, and according to tradition, Vadim Valeryevich Radaev, Head of the Department of Economic Sociology and LESI, First Vice-Rector of the National Research University Higher School of Economics, spoke at the first of them.

On February 22, 2017, a round table "History of exact methods as a problem of human sciences" was held at IGITI. The discussion is devoted to the history and development in Russia, Europe and the world of quantitative approaches, methods and statistics (with an emphasis on the first half of the twentieth century) in various humanities and social sciences, including in the light of the current demand for Digital Humanities. Today, we, the humanities, clearly lack productive scientific communication with economists and social scientists precisely when it comes to similar and general methodological or historiographical problems. We hope that this roundtable has been a step towards identifying and possibly pairing our research perspectives. We bring to your attention a video report.

On January 17, a seminar of the series "Sociology of Markets" was held at the Laboratory of Economic and Sociological Research. Irina Chetverikova, junior researcher at the Institute for Law Enforcement Problems (European University at St. Petersburg), Ph.D.

On December 22, 2016, a round table "After the spirit / Instead of Geist: the transformation of the sciences of man and society in the first decades of the twentieth century" was held. The event completed the work of the scientific and educational group "Human Sciences as Socio-Political Projects". There was a discussion of a key change in one of the basic concepts of this field of knowledge.

On November 29, Vladimir Karacharovsky, Candidate of Economic Sciences, Associate Professor of the Department of Applied Economics and Deputy Head of the Laboratory for Comparative Analysis of the Development of Post-Socialist Societies.

Sociologists Ivan Pavlyutkin and Grigory Yudin talk in the NAUFOR Bulletin about why a person is not always rational, even when it comes to money; about how modern Russia is organized in the anthropological sense; and also consider the hypothesis that financial crises are not necessary.