Vitaly Portnikov. What begins Motherland

Until a few months ago, the world watched with amazement Ukrainians defended the idea of ​​European integration of the country and singing the national anthem on Independence. Today, the focus - the other residents of Ukraine, disrupting his country's flag with administrative buildings and replacing them is Russian flags, then the standard of hastily proclaimed formations.

From a political point of view - the danger of a split. The Soviet - general catastrophe, loss of territory, in fact - the loss of the homeland. Yet it is important to know where to actually start this homeland. Since the times of the Russian Empire and then the Soviet Union, we have been taught to believe that the Motherland - the land, resources, fields, factories, and many souls. But this is not true. The territory may be the homeland only for those who really do not have any of the Motherland - that's why the song about "my address is not a house and not outside" could arise only in Russian, and only in the Soviet Union, and nowhere else, because the inhabitants of the USSR deliberately accustomed to the idea that they are everywhere - so, anywhere - at home.

Motherland - a civilizational commonality. It may be small, and may increase over time. Dante was an immigrant, an unhappy exile. But he just ran from Florence to Ravenna - modern Italians overcome this distance, not thinking about civilizational boundaries. But for contemporaries of Dante in Ravenna flight was a disaster, separation from their native land. Before the advent of Italian civilization still pass the century, and before that the Italians will yearn for the lost paradise, just moving to the near town of Lombard Milan to Bologna Emilian - and now ply between these cities trains ...

There are even more impressive example of the motherland taught by Jews. Since the time of the expulsion of "portable fatherland" of the Jews was the Torah, the religious tradition - it took a century of enlightenment, to close with this "portable fatherland" came the moment, to make its way on maps, but still rested upon the religious memory of the people. Today we - witnesses of this historical miracle birth of a new civilization, Ukrainian. It seemed that the formation of civilizations in Europe concluded that all ustakanilos within its existing borders.

But was much more difficult. The borders of the Union republics in the USSR are held in such a way that no new civilizations arose. To "not a house or a street" - and even after the collapse of the Soviet empire, this approach proved effective, permanently tied to the former republics of the Moscow chariot. Not accidentally Baltic countries even in times of Union considers "cut off a hunk," because they have already annexed after formatting the country and destroy the small but stubborn civilization failed. The Ukrainians were simply the first among Russian satellites, ripe, to own civilizational project. Not ethnic, not political, not cultural, namely civilization. That is why the Maidan united people of different nationalities, speaking different languages.

That is why the Crimean Tatars, for example, supported the Maidan, and the majority of Russian-speaking population of the Crimea - no. Because the birthplace of the Crimean Tatars - the civilization of the Crimea and they understand what are the Ukrainians. A majority of Crimeans birthplace - the same Soviet Union, in which they were allowed to return. Therefore, to understand what is actually happening in the Ukrainian capital, they could not - they can not understand it, and many Russians are accustomed to love what prompted superiors and TV.

It is now clear that Ukraine could eventually either place it in the Ukrainian borders of civilization, or disappear. Clearly something else: through the test of civilization construction will have to go through and the other former Soviet republics, and all will be harder to Russia. Because at a time when you had to make a choice in favor of making filling in civilization - not by chance that in Moscow talking about "Russian world" - Kremlin went on the usual way of territorial expansion and violence. It became clear that no "Russian world" as a civilized community will not have that Russian Herzen, Tolstoy, Tchaikovsky, Brodsky and Sakharov once again lost to the empire "little green men".

Now this loss is doubly dangerous because inside Russia have formed self-sustaining civilization project - Tatar or Caucasian, now able to rise above the narrow ethnicity and cultural integrity separate nation. The Russian state was obliged to offer its citizens universal attractive project that can compete with the civilizational project regions. Instead, the annexation of Crimea Vladimir Putin simply draw a scheme in which in the future will disintegrate Russia itself - a country that always wanted to be a world civilization, but to its people and not become.