Photo: Donat Sorokin/TASS
Lenin's phrase about the need to wish defeat to his government in recent years was repeated constantly as an example of something completely unacceptable, beyond the bounds. You can’t wish defeat for your government (the government in the broad sense of the word — the authorities)!
Why not?
First of all, because Lenin said this — you don’t want to be together with Lenin? Of course, I don’t want to, but if Lenin or some Kim Jong-un say that two plus two equals four, should I say that it’s five, so as not to be at one with them? This is not all obvious.
But there are more serious justifications.
It is forbidden to wish defeat to one's own government, because it is one's own. That is, with all internal disagreements in the face of an external enemy, or even just in the face of the outside world, we must feel unity.
In a complex hierarchy of different WE and THEM, disagreements between us are possible only while we are inside — inside a family, an enterprise, a country. But anyone outside these communities should feel far more alien than anyone inside. This is what the epic is about — even the unjustly repressed enemies of the Soviet government allegedly rushed to the front. And the Soviet raspberry, as you know, said to the enemy: “No!” — merging in one impulse with native organs.
This narrative does not at all prohibit disputes, disagreements, and even a sharp internal struggle — the fact that all this, for example, is not allowed in our practice, is another matter. However, the enemy invasion should change the relationship between us. The invasion, by the way, is not necessarily realized in the form of foreign troops on their own land, it can also take the form of a retaliatory preemptive strike (in these terms, the beginning of the Soviet-Finnish war was explained to us at the military department) or the liberation of compatriots or co-religionists from unbearable oppression — that is the enemy can attack us without crossing our borders, without even knowing that he has attacked. In a situation of just — and there are no other — wars, in a situation of defending the Fatherland, the right person suddenly feels part of one huge WE, which includes all his compatriots, including those whom he just hated and from whose arbitrariness or cruelty suffered. We all instantly find ourselves in the same trench, forgetting everything that separated us. The pogromist and his victim, the executioner and the one he tortured, the robber and the robbed. And of course, virtually in this trench are the authorities of your country, who unleashed this war.
Demanding such feelings from the subordinate population is, of course, dirty demagogy. As, in fact, in general, the requirements are not of a certain behavior — paying taxes, switching the street to a green signal, observing the rules of the hostel — but feelings, emotions. The less effective and less democratic the state, the more it is concerned with controlling feelings, punishing wrong feelings or disrespecting the right ones.
People's feelings and their identification with someone are the zone of their inalienable freedom. Requirements to sincerely cheer for your national team — and if I am against big-time sports at all? — or overflowing with enthusiasm for a specific date — are meaningless and hypocritical. Feelings, including the feelings of unity with the authorities desired by the state, sometimes arise, but voluntarily, spontaneously, and not by order. For example, something like this was really felt — not by everyone, but by many — during the Great Patriotic War. If there is an understanding that the misfortunes that the enemy promises are many times greater than those that you endure because of some people or structures of your country, then a conditional trench that unites everyone may well arise in your mind. The invasion of the Martians, for whom earthlings are only living vessels with the blood necessary for nourishment, would be a very strong unifying factor for the entire planet.