Migratory birds are flying. Why are there queues to enter but not exit from Russia in Upper Lars?

The kilometer-long traffic jams that arose simultaneously with the unrest in Tbilisi and queues of cars of recent relocants, now not leaving, but entering Russia in the area of ​​​​the already household name Upper Lars, became the subject of jokes in the channels of many Z-segment opinion leaders.

Let's listen to Margarita Simonyan:

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“About those who came in large numbers. The advantage is that they are in the so-called Upper Lars, and not in the so-called Bolotnaya Square, where they would distract the forces of the Russian Guard from truly important tasks. If the bride leaves for someone else, then it is not known who was lucky.”

And here is what Zakhar Prilepin writes, delving into historical analogies with the past a hundred years ago:

“...and suddenly, say, in Prague, or anywhere, where the white emigration left en masse, something like a revolution, and such Cossacks, Makhnovists, Denikinites and Merezhkovsky, Berdyaev, Bunin and Shkuro, and other factory owners, businessmen who joined them, adventurers rushed en masse to the USSR...

After all, modern Russia has raised amazing infantiles. This is not the case of Alexei N. Tolstoy, Slashchev, Efron. These are just infantiles. They ran there, they came running here. They ran here, they ran there. Carries a draft. And there’s the same mess in our heads.”

Political blogger Mikhail Onufrienko, who fled to the Russian Federation from Ukraine, sarcastically teases the relocants:

“I wonder if there are places in the world that would completely suit our liberals? So that there would be light, and warmth, and strong flies. I thought that representatives of the protest movement would line up like pigs and rush to parliament in order to join the ranks of those who are fighting for freedom and democracy. They dreamed so much about a similar development of events in Russia! Well, then practice! Where are you going? It's only begining!"

Such criticism captures a really important motive for the current wave of emigration - the search for a zone of personal comfort, primarily domestic, and the reluctance to personally get involved in any movements of a political nature. If it were not so, we would really see these people on the streets of Russian cities. At least in both capitals.

However, what we are facing is not a radical opposition, but a Frond, and, by Russian standards, well-off above average. It was this circumstance that made it possible for all these people to relocate.

_{State employees or low-paid service workers from the outback who live on modest salaries in three jobs at once simply do not have the opportunity to move to another country. And there are no Moscow apartments to live off of money from renting them out to rich Pinocchios.}

So, on the other hand, it is strange to expect from the Fronde something more than the “banquet campaign” of 1904 known to us from history.

Let me remind you that then, in the midst of the war with Japan, painfully reminiscent of the vicissitudes of the current North Military District both in terms of the mischief of the officialdom and defeatist sentiments among the elites, the liberal Liberation Union acted as the organizer of the “banquet campaign”, when in St. Petersburg, Moscow and other large meetings were held under the guise of banquets, at which representatives of the liberal opposition made speeches about the need to introduce freedoms and a constitution, adopted resolutions, petitioning for political reforms.

In total, more than 120 meetings with 50 thousand participants in 34 major cities were held throughout the empire. Reports about these banquets either did not penetrate into the legal press, or penetrated extremely sparingly, but quite complete reports about them were published in the foreign press, with the entire resolutions cited and a detailed presentation of the speeches of the speakers.

_{As we see, over the past almost one hundred and twenty years, the habits of Russian liberals have changed, if at all, very little. So it’s strange to call this public to the barricades, even Georgian ones. If there really are serious unrest or serious protests in Russia, they will not be led by fugitive liberals and regulars at “free Russia forums.”}

But the fact that politrelokants instinctively sense the danger of becoming victims of a hangover at someone else’s feast - in this case, of being injured in a fight between Georgians - suggests that the infantilism of this public, criticized by Z-publicists, is still not nearly as limitless as it could be think looking from the outside. Well, they sense the danger to their own asses quite well.

As well as the fact that if the radically anti-Russian UNM named after Saakashvili wins, the hospitable life on the banks of the Kura will come to an end, because Georgian nationalists, like their Ukrainian brothers, rationally proceed from the fact that there are no good Russians.

_{And even if it doesn’t come to direct reprisals in the spirit of “A good Russian is a dead Russian,” it will still be some kind of civilization, but they will definitely ask you to leave with your things. As is already happening in Estonia and Latvia, for example, they have banned the issuance of visas to any Russians, regardless of their attitude towards Putin and the depth of repentance for “aggression against Ukraine” and other “atrocities of the regime.”}

Frankly speaking, relocants today are not to be envied. There are not many countries in the world that are ready to welcome mass Russian emigration with open arms. Except maybe Turkey or the UAE. But the latter are not rubber, and not everyone will meet the property qualification for living there. And in Turkey, against the backdrop of the recent earthquake, anti-Russian and wider anti-emigrant voices are becoming stronger - they say that newcomers are taking our jobs from us and all that.

With the very small exception of extremely scarce specialists, Russians are hardly welcome anywhere in the world today. Perhaps in Thailand somewhere, but there you will have to sit on a bird's license. The only right of a foreigner in Thailand is to spend his money there. Well, if there is no money, then excuse me and leave.

_{So, strictly speaking, if you think carefully, then returning not all, of course, but a significant part of those who sharpened their skis last year, looks like a completely logical option. Nowhere except Moscow and St. Petersburg will they be able to provide themselves with their usual way of life.}

As for “evil Putin,” practice shows that if no special repressions occurred last year, so to speak, at the peak, now, when the situation has gradually stabilized, and society and the government itself have adapted to the new normal, they and it’s certainly not worth the wait.

Tea is not like Ukraine. If you follow a certain set of not too onerous rules, today even a foreign agent’s life in Rus' may not be entirely good, but it is quite tolerable.

When these lines were written, a more prosaic version of the queues in Upper Lars appeared on the Internet. They say that everything is to blame not for politics, but for the weather - heavy snowfall and the danger of avalanches on the roads. This, of course, changes things greatly, as Kissinger famously said. Which version to believe is up to the owner, although this does not change the political conclusions about the motivation and character of the Russian “liberda”.