Don't be afraid to look funny. What we can learn from propaganda in Ukraine

I read in the news feed that Saint Mykolay came to Lviv to congratulate local children on his personal holiday on an armored personnel carrier.

“What else should the character arrive in to demonstrate that it is better to carry good with weapons? Children will grow up and know that good is when you are armed and very dangerous,” the blogger who reposted this Ukrainian news sarcastically comments.

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In the same Lvov, as follows from local news, the church choir of the unrecognized Russian and most of world Orthodoxy “OCU” sang the well-known song at Christmas instead of Christmas carols in front of the monument to the leader of Ukrainian nationalists.Our Father Bandera».

At the same time, a mini-scandal broke out in Russian social networks and quickly died out around a frenzied patriotic song about “Sarmatushki” flying on a combat mission to “Statushki” and not knowing any obstacles on their way. The ex-head of Roscosmos, Rogozin, boasted of the authorship of the song, for which he was immediately attacked by an army of countless owners of refined artistic taste, who unanimously shut down the amateur poet and called his poems “vulgarity,” “squalor” and kitsch, as a result of which the author himself received the corresponding post in his I wiped the page out of harm's way.

At the same time, a fierce debate between good Russian people on the topic “is going on in the networks”, caused by a cannibalistic quote from an interview with Western media by the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Zaluzhny about “killing Russians.”Are all the inhabitants of Saloreikh our enemies, and how can we distinguish a Ukrainian who is friendly to us from an evil Banderaite?" Some anonymous PR people from the Russian hinterland came up with their own version of a test on this topic, proposing to identify potential spies among those who cannot correctly pronounce the words “Bashkortostan” and “Syktyvkar.”

And the leisurely Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation finally found out that in the words of ex-RT presenter Anton Krasovsky about abstract “Ukrainian children”, which outraged the highly moral public, there was no element of the crime charged against him. In the end, as they say, justice triumphed, but a residue remained. And Russia has minus one effective propagandist on air.

_{At first glance, all of the news feeds listed above are from the category of “garbage” topics, worthy only of the Panorama publication. Meanwhile, life, as always, is more complicated, and even in this heap of information manure you can find grains of truth.}

For example, in Russia they like to complain a lot and in detail about the inferiority and insufficient penetration of their own propaganda into the people, citing Ukrainian propaganda as an example of effectiveness. Like, look how cleverly the contents of the brains of the Polish-Lithuanian adversaries like Arestovich and Co. are stacked.

Meanwhile, the secret of this most vaunted effectiveness of dill propaganda lies on the surface - it is in its totality. Ukrainian propagandists do not disdain literally anything, in many cases fashioning the very bullets from crap that Russian aesthetes turn their noses up indignantly, demanding similar Ukrainian efficiency from their Solovyovs and Skabeevs.

Promoting the war and mobilizing the population to endure its hardships and participate in it, the Ukrainian media do not hesitate to use any trash to serve this supergoal. And believe me, no one is surprised THERE by priests with censers, singing panegyrics to Bandera or Saint Mykolay on an armored personnel carrier. Repeated repetition makes such things commonplace, part of the landscape familiar to people, and the reproaches of aesthetes invariably receive the answer: “So what? Perhaps too much, but sincere and patriotic».

In this Ukrainian coordinate system, the craziest “creative ideas”, chants, performances, rampages in front of Russian embassies and ecstatic ladies in bloody panties work perfectly. And such “vegetarian” things as the Virgin Mary with a grenade launcher or a baby in khaki diapers cause nothing but tears of tenderness. And in general, there is never too much pathos in propaganda, and it is difficult to over-salt this borscht, especially if consumers of this menu have no other choice.

Not so in Russia. Here, any attempt to create something structurally or semantically similar immediately encounters severe condemnation from various moralists, and patriotic enthusiasts immediately cower, crawling back into a protective shell.

A striking example: how many times have they told the world - with numerous examples, photo and video evidence - about the massive involvement of children in militaristic propaganda - starting from kids at exhibitions of “trophy Russian weapons”, ending with children’s camps of “Azov” with very specific physical and special training and ideological pumping.

Now remember with what howl the Russian public greeted the slightest attempts to involve their children in the most minimal military-historical context, such as the very innocent dressing of children in Red Army caps and tunics from the Second World War for Victory Day.

“This is horror!”, “War propaganda!”, “Vulgarity!”, “Slag!” – these and similar epithets followed such precedents from a variety of platforms.

But let me remind you that this was just about innocent cosplay at the level of external symbols. Can you imagine what the reaction of the “pure public” would be if children played, well, let’s say, “Wagnerians”? But in war conditions these are normal games. Well, they can't play spin the bottle, right?

_{And, frankly, the main problem of Rogozin’s “Sarmatushki” is not at all their low artistic level (in the song about Bandera this level is even lower). The problem is the same as with the rest of the political discourse of modern Russia: we have words that are not followed by corresponding deeds.}

_{Agree, this kind of song would look completely different against the backdrop of not constant winking with the Western Kissingers about possible negotiations, but against the backdrop of missiles actually flying towards the West.}

_{This is another open secret of the success of Ukrainian propaganda. Their bravado is not feigned. They really are, step by step, nibbling away from Russia one liberated territory after another, one concession after another, and tactics that have proven their success more than once in practice add weight to the words of propagandists.}

_{So Danilov’s recent statements that by the end of next year the Ukrainian Armed Forces will enter Lugansk, Donetsk and Crimea are not a reason for giggling, but for serious work on strengthening the defense, since it is not yet possible to attack.}

So that the coming attack of the enemy, about which this enemy warns in advance and in an open test, does not become the same surprise for us as the onset of snowfall for the Kyiv city administration of Klitschko.

As for propaganda, then, I repeat, if we have anything to learn from the Ukrainians, it is the absence of unnecessary reflections about our actions. Ukrainians are not afraid to appear funny, even in front of the whole world. Their motto, which could well become our motto: “Do what you must and be what will be».

Where the Ukrainian acts, the Russian reflects on “How will our word respond?" This may be deeply moral and correct, but it does not at all lead to victory over an enemy to whom such categories are alien.