RUSSIAN WORLD Russian production as a response to the West

Russian economists insist on the priority of “localism”: a marketing strategy common to all sovereignties, but which in Russia works in a very limited way, considering that it is a country not exactly advantaged in terms of agricultural and industrial production capacity. And that – from gastronomy to many aspects of social reality – throughout its history has always acquired foreign elements.

The epochal turning point that began with the invasion of Ukraine has forced Russia to review various aspects of its own social organization, starting with the difficulties of the war economy and the rupture of commercial relations with the West, as well as the serious shortcomings demographic and manpower because it has had to sacrifice the younger generations on the front and suffer the flight of many people abroad to escape the tragedy of war. Beyond the budgetary and financial issues of the main economic areas, there is an even broader and difficult to define problem related to the Russian production of the items most typical of the population’s life.

For years, long before the “special military operation”, there has been talk of Runet, the Russian variant of the Internet that never manages to fully consolidate, and which, given the IT aspects of the conflict, is an increasingly specific and pressing need. . An attempt is made to impose patriotic services in the place of YouTube, a Ruwiki that replaces Wikipedia and based on which even the Great Russian Encyclopedia has been closed, which lacks funds to be published, and there are hundreds of other projects that should become the “Russian response to the West.” National identity certainly depends on many factors, starting with basic needs such as food and housing services (queues in front of elevators in buildings with twenty floors or more are becoming more frequent , for which there is a lack of spare parts), but in today’s society the platforms and applications of the virtual world seem to be even more important, such as video games that fill most of the time of young people, and also of adults.

It is no coincidence that one of the strongest commitments of Russian state organizations in recent weeks has been the support and dissemination through all media of the patriotic computer game Smuta“The Rebellion”, which all propagandists praise as “our answer to”The Witcher“, the Polish-American television series whose protagonists are civilized people who must live with monsters that threaten them, and that is why they create mutant warriors, the Witcher (the sorcerers), in a kind of fantastic transposition of the reality of war, in which the Russians represent the monsters that must be defeated. Comparisons with Tolkien’s stories are also widely used to describe the current war, with Putin-Sauron launching the orcs of Mordor against Middle-earth and the Shire-Ukraine of men, elves and dwarves, while the Smuta Russian evokes the popular Russian uprisings that expelled the Polish invaders at the beginning of the 17th century.

Much more than industry and technology, Russians look for effective symbolism with which to identify, as is now the case in all contemporary societies, which depend more on virtual projections than on real-life elements. Buying a car in Russia has increasingly become a luxury for a few, Russian-made cars are expensive and of poor quality, at most you can get Chinese cars, but the worlds that appear on TV screens are missing. homes and telephones to really feel in one’s own land. There was a time when Russia was proud of the superiority of its literature, of its dominant language in a universe of diverse peoples, of the architecture of Saint Petersburg that unites East and West and so many other things that today have gone into the background and run the risk of losing meaning in the face of a “Russian world” that is increasingly less real.

Even in everyday life Russians affirm their patriotic devotion by buying “our” products instead of foreign products that are increasingly difficult to find, and official surveys emphasize the importance of “patriotic consumption” reminiscent of the Soviet era, when the only Western drink allowed was Pepsi-Cola and the friendship between peoples was evident with the bananas of Cuba. This trend is not limited to items for sale, but extends above all to culture in its contemporary meaning, such as film productions, television series, music and, obviously, video games. It is no longer the time of Tolstoy and Tchaikovsky, but of Shaman’s patriotic hymns and digital fantasies.

It is the second “cultural revolution” in the last thirty years. Having renounced the “Soviet golden age”, Russians now have to do without all the Western production and culture that has “invaded” Russia since the 1990s, creating new habits and contradictory feelings. The more mature and older generations return to the nostalgia of the films of the Brezhnev years and the toasts with sovetskoe shampanskoefizzy champagne accompanied by patriotic vodka, and look askance at recent Russian “substitutions” of products and services, because “the art of other times has already been lost.”

Russian economists insist on the priority of “localism”: another very common theme to sovereignties around the world, which want to praise “local production”, a marketing strategy that in Russia works in a very limited way, considering that it is a country not exactly advantaged in agricultural and industrial production capacities. Russia’s problem dates back to more ancient times, when even the most widespread products of gastronomy and many other aspects of social life have always taken elements from outside. The “Russian salad” is its own version of a French recipe, which in fact in Russia is called Olivier; cabbage and meat soup, borschtcomes from the Polish-Ukrainian world, and the same vodka was introduced by Peter the Great from the Baltic region as a less heavy drink than the Russian distillates made by the peasants (the samogon); Indeed, vodka was called “water” de voda, a clear liquid of “only” 40 proof compared to the 60-80 of the usual Russian super alcoholic honey or lemon flavored ones. Even the sweet red wine of the Russian Eucharistic liturgy, the kagoris a derivation of the French Cahors.

Russia is used to living on foreign products: French wine, German cars, Japanese electronics; only the weapons should be predominantly Russian, but now even these are largely Iranian or North Korean. Today Georgian wine and Armenian cognac are imported again, although since Armenia is now very un”friendly” to Moscow, its shipments of Ararat brandy are often very ungenuine, which increases tensions with Yerevan. The fact is that one of the most significant factors of post-20th century globalism is precisely the international free market, while the new “multipolar” Russian world finds itself in the dilemma of an impossible autarky in the face of the interchangeability of living systems. and popular cultures.

In the economic, social and cultural world there are no longer “great powers” that impose their own models and their own production, and Russia’s ambitions are increasingly frustrated by a global reality that does not admit the exclusivity of local characteristics. . International free trade works if everyone is admitted on an equal footing and with the same rights, a dimension that today the Russians renounce on principle, placing themselves in a critical situation that neither presidential decrees nor hysterical legislative measures can remedy. of the Moscow Duma, which tries by all means to affirm “traditional Russian values” that have never existed in history, neither at a theoretical level nor in their practical realization, but have always been imported and re-proposed at all levels.

Since ancient Rus’ everything has come from outside, from the West and the East, like Byzantine Christianity itself revised by the Russians in very expressive modalities, as in the novelty of the “national” patriarchy (before Moscow there were no ethnic patriarchies). , or in the intensity of the monasticism of the startsywho proposed a spirituality that was both Eastern and Western. The state structure of an immense empire administered by a few autocrats is undoubtedly the main legacy of the Asian domination of the Tatar-Mongols. Today all this is recycled in the PlayStations manufactured in Russia, the last opportunity to achieve Russia’s long-awaited victory throughout the world.

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