We are talking about a survey by the best local dating website, that suddenly has registered a drastic change of mood. Only two years ago the Russian ladies thought that the best husband or lifelong partner had to be an IT expert. That was an opinion of 72 per cent of those polled, which is next to everyone. And now, quite suddenly, the nerds went out of vogue, 42 per cent of the ladies now want to be betrothed to a doctor, preferably a dentist.
Columnists are, predictably, saying that these two professions make equally prospering husbands, while doctors are not sitting all the time at the keyboard, getting fat. But, still, why the change all of a sudden?
First, all changes come all of a sudden. Second, who told you that we have irrevocably entered the Information Age that is here to stay? Such predictions are always been made by those hoping to reign over the new age, that is, the nerds themselves in our case. But no age lasts forever.
Just like the mad scientists telling us, in maybe 1950-s, that the world has entered the era of atomic power or space travels that were to change absolutely everything, the folks of the 1980-s and 1980-s have been predictably overenthusiastic about the IT havoc they wanted to impose on our daily living. They were telling us, among so many other things, that Internet is bringing a new Age of Enlightenment to the world. What we see now is the reverse of that picture, and the clever Japanese have already developed a cure for the Internet and smartphone addiction, while the Russians and Americans are following suit, banning smartphones (or is it dumbphones) at schools.
Doctors, beware, the Russian girls may suddenly fall out of love with you, too. The medical lobby also was brimming with mad ideas of its power over the humankind, only thing it was a bit later, in 1990-s at best. The ugly ideas of obligatory health and a possibility of making people a kind of new biological creatures abounded. Now we’ll have to see if Donald Trump’s Health Man, Mr. Robert Kennedy, succeeds in bringing that unhealthy enthusiasm down a notch.
But, still, the question remains – why Russia? Why is it that the Russian public seems to be a rock, able to break the waves of many kind of ideas that were supposed to become an absolute international norm?
Look at that infamous glorification of LGBT and the rest of transgender madness. Try to remember how all these things became a cult in the West, with activists telling Washington that the US have to build its foreign policy on the issue of nation’s observance of the LGBT rights. That madness absolutely did not stick with the Russian society, and look at Europe now. It’s split on that issue, and the Trump people are coming in flocks to converse with likeminded fellows in Hungary or other nations.
Or how about the idea of “green transition” that has almost ruined Germany and several other Western economies. The Russian society has barely noticed it, and now the US is actively burying the green agenda. Or how about fighting smoking by splitting societies into two groups, smokers and non-smokers hating each other, or how about a weird idea of fighting a flu virus by an abrupt stop of almost all human activities. All these social technologies have been watered down on the Russian soil by quiet resistance of the Russian public.
All in all, the whole leftist agenda spread all over the world by the new globalists of Europe and America, with a mad idea of creating an entirely new human being with a different lifestyle, has got stuck in Russia without any serious efforts emanating from the government. It was very reassuring to read the recent publication in the Foreign Affairs, proclaiming the end of the age of NGOs, where Russia is to blame. Oh, India is also guilty of blocking the effort of many of these 20 thousand of these NGOs, imposing all kind of very progressive ideas on everyone alive.
But what is it that makes it so natural for a Russian to reject excessive ideological pressure of any kind? The most common answer is, Russia is the global bulwark of traditional values, whatever the tradition is. That may be true, but what makes a society so resistant to the new ideas that attack the traditional ones?
There may be many answers to that, and let me give you just one. Yet another recent survey shows that an average Russian is not inclined to trust “others”. While the national average is 24 per cent, that is, only a quarter of Russians are trusting anyone, it’s only 12 per cent among the ones from 18 to 24 years of age.
Professional psychologists are saying that this is a typical case for a society that has recently passed through a devastating natural or social disaster. And that’s right, the general idea of the so-called reforms of the 1990-s is exactly that, as of a disaster.
You may get unhappy, asking yourself, what kind of society is that, a kind of atomized spray of folks looking suspiciously at others. Right? Wrong. The Russian society has, on the contrary, demonstrated an amazing level of unity and cohesion around the basic causes.
Let’s have a look at the recent Popular Front’s Everything for Victory forum, that Vladimir Putin, the President, visited recently. The Front is, essentially, an umbrella organization for millions of folks around the country, working for free to help the current war with the West. And these are the facts we are learning from the President’s speech: due to money donations collected,
the frontline has received additional vital equipment, machinery, UAVs, first aid supplies, more than 14,000 vehicles and transport units, among other critical resources.
The Popular Front alone has also delivered 110,000 drones of various modifications to the troops, including strike systems on fibre optics, resistant to interference. These drones have already destroyed enemy equipment worth over 2 billion dollars. Finally, there are ladies scattered all over the land, the so-called sewing battalions, their production of camouflage nets alone has reached 20 million square metres.
So, it was only natural to hear from Vladimir Putin that “The Russian Popular Front has become a mass public movement thanks to the support of the overwhelming majority of Russian citizens and their ambition to defend the inherited life principles and values together, to fight and work hard for a common outcome, for national success, for peace, and for the safety of our children”.
An atomized society this is not. So how about the 24 or 12 per cent level of trust? The answer is simple. This is a society where people are not inclined to accept each and any idea at face value. You may be a Russian or a foreigner, still your ideas will be, first, deliberated and only then, maybe, accepted. Not a bad society, that.
Dmitry Kosyrev is a Russian writer, author of spy novels and short stories. He also did columns for the Pioneer and Firstpost.com