Sin and repentance: what should Vice Speaker of the State Duma Pyotr Tolstoy apologize for

Many dreamed of hearing these words from the lips of a representative of our highest political spheres, and now these words finally sounded: “This is my terrible sin… This is some kind of global fault of mine… If this is a crime, this is terrible… Forgive me me please!” To clarify: the historic statement was made by Pyotr Tolstoy, a member of the supreme council of the United Russia party, secretary of the Moscow branch of the party, and vice speaker of the State Duma.

Of course, some evil, insensitive people will find such repentance not convincing enough. Like, it was necessary to repent not sitting in an easy chair in a cozy TV studio and not in a stylish suit from God knows what couturier, but in accordance with ancient customs, to which we are systematically returning. Like, it was necessary to put on rags, put on chains, go out to some crowded place, and best of all to Red Square, and there to fall on your knees in front of honest people.

However, having learned for what exactly Peter Tolstoy asked for forgiveness from fellow citizens, hard-hearted critics will certainly soften. A “sin”, or rather, two sins, is: a) a two-week internship for his daughter in the USA; b) Tolstoy himself studied in France – there the vice-speaker, who graduated from the journalism department of Moscow State University, received a second higher education.

The vice-speaker, however, for some reason did not mention his work in the French newspaper Le Monde and the Agence France-Presse, well-known mouthpieces of liberal propaganda. Either he forgot, or he did not consider it a sin. However, it is not a fact that he considers his studies in France to be such a great sin: some felt sarcasm in the words of his repentance. But the thing is, in today’s times, really serious.

It is no coincidence that one of the well-known Internet publications that reported Tolstoy’s apology recalled, at the end of the informational note, the statement of the Secretary of the Security Council of Russia, Nikolai Patrushev, warning against sending young people to study in the West: “They return as agitators, ready to carry out so-called democratic transformations and create ground for the implementation of color revolution scenarios.

But by and large (I wanted to say, “according to Hamburg”, but now, perhaps, it is better to refrain from such phraseological units) the sin of Pyotr Olegovich is indeed small. Who is without sin? Whoever you take from the characters of modern and recent Russian history, all of them – well, very many – have either studied in the West or a long period of stay in the “decaying” behind them.

In the same sin, for example, Dmitry Mendeleev, Mikhail Lomonosov … In general, the list is long. By the way, the same sin was committed by the distant ancestor of the vice-speaker – Count Pyotr Andreyevich Tolstoy, an associate of Peter the Great. “Two years spent in Italy brought Tolstoy closer to Western European culture,” according to Wikipedia.

True, both Pyotr Andreevich and other associates and followers of the reformer tsar, as you know, cut through windows and doors to Europe, while Tolstoy, a descendant, these openings are furiously boarded up and caulked.

However, this dissonance can only jar some idealists who are far from life. We are not children and not sky-high dreamers. We know that those who make the rules usually don’t live by them themselves.

Okay, the education of children and yourself, loved ones, but the mass of the ruling elite – and / or immediate family – today owns businesses and real estate in countries that are now commonly called unfriendly. And they feel great about it.

And some, like, for example, United Russia State Duma deputy Arkady Ponomarev, even underpin their unbroken ties with the West on an ideological basis. The people’s choice explained the fact of owning three apartments in Spain as follows: “Can’t you imagine that in about fifty or a hundred years it will be the Spanish Soviet Socialist Republic?”

Perhaps this phenomenon was best explained by the Strugatsky brothers in the novel “Inhabited Island”: the ruling elite of the alien Land of the Fathers, suppressing, uprooting with all their might the “enemies of the people”, “geeks”, itself, massaraksh, consists entirely of “geeks”.

In short, let’s not be too strict with Pyotr Olegovich with his sins: it’s a matter of life. To understand and to forgive. However, it is impossible to consider the topic of repentance closed on this. In fact, he and the Russian political elite as a whole have something to repent of.

I would very much like to hear, for example, words of apology for the number of people below the poverty line, and for this very line, officially held at the level of 13,545 rubles a month – the one who receives 13,546 rubles is officially no longer poor. For flagrant social inequality, a vivid illustration of which is parliamentary salaries, which are an order of magnitude higher than the average salary in the country.

For dilapidated, despite the 20-year petrodollar rain, hospitals. For the money collected by text messages for the treatment of children. For the insanely expensive “communal”, for the technologically backward economy…

In general, for a lot. And here, perhaps, one really cannot do without rags, chains and Red Square.