Not so long ago, Putin called participants of the so-called “special military operation” the “golden pool”, “the true elite of Russia”, “to whom the country’s future can be entrusted. The heroes of the special operation should take lead positions in the country". However, in reality, these people are not readily allowed to rule, since the real attitude to the “SMO heroes” not only in Russian society in general but also among the Russian political elite is completely different from Putin’s speeches.
Two years ago, an audio recording of a member of the Russian State Duma, the head of the “Union of Donbas Volunteers” and the former head of the government of the self-proclaimed “DPR” Alexander Borodai was shared on the Internet (the authenticity of this recording was confirmed by Borodai himself). In this conversation, he produced a social portrait of the bulk of Russian servicemen fighting in Ukraine.
It should be noted that Borodai can make such judgements not as an amateur, but as a sufficiently qualified expert — after all, he completed the Faculty of Philosophy and postgraduate studies at the Moscow University (where he specialized in social philosophy). By and large, he may be called a “hereditary philosopher” — his father Yury Borodai is a doctor of philosophy, a student and friend of the known Russian philosophers Zinoviev, Losev and Gumilyov (and also known as one of the leading anti-Semitic ideologists and a promoter of the so-called “third way” — a form of fascism based on “racial socialism").
Alexander Borodai considers the bulk of “SMO” participants as “manpower that goes to waste":
"Their task, in fact — while preparations for a decisive strike are underway somewhere in the rear — is to divert as much attention as possible onto themselves and utmost deplete the enemy’s manpower. … No one expects these forces to achieve some earth-shattering victory, or even a small one. They are just human resources being expended… And who are these people signing up as volunteers right now? Well, essentially, they are landsknechts … mercenaries. … The fact is that in civilian life, they have no money whatsoever; they might earn — say — 20, maybe 30, perhaps 40 thousand [roubles] at most. But here, they get 220, 250, 260 [thousand roubles], and so on. That is to say — money they would never see in their lives… For this price, they are bought like fodder. In other words, they are people who — from a social perspective, at least as it appears to the ‘suits’ — hold no great value. … Furthermore, their demographic age is quite high; simply put, they are old. They represent the non-productive segment of the population. And their social standing offers no prospect of any of them ever becoming an academician. … But from a sociological standpoint — regarding who actually signs up… they are people who have failed to find their place in civilian life… There is a concept — coined by Maxim Gorky back in the day, and widely used across various philosophical schools — known as the ‘superfluous men’."
Here, we see a clear “gap” in Borodai’s education. “Superfluous men” in Russian literature are actually “gifted persons who fail to find self-fulfilment, people of significant abilities who cannot realize their talents in Russia”, while in Borodai’s interpretation they are “the dregs of society”. And this concept appeared much earlier than Maxim Gorky was born.
"We have gathered these superfluous men ... from all over Russia. We’ve gathered them, herded them together, and they’re supposed to wear down the enemy as much as possible. ... We’re even giving them, these superfluous men, old weapons, old guns, and, even though we’re short on supplies, at least some shells — well, in short, we’re giving them an opportunity to prove themselves, to fight.”
In other words, “manpower that’s being expended” is not fit to rule the country. That said, they are not wanted on their territory on a long-standing basis even by the leadership of the self-proclaimed “DPR.”
Recently, one of its veterans, Alexander Khodakovsky, wrote in a social network:
"What kind of a contingent goes to the SMO, for example, from Krasnoyarsk Krai? Typically, these are people of difficult fates and uncertain prospects, who lived in such conditions or places that it was easy to end up either in the SMO or in the grave. ... And these people, numbering well over a million, came from all corners of the vast country to a relatively narrow strip of land, not very extensive compared to the size of their homeland, to end up in hell. Some will meet their death on this strip — some will survive. Of the survivors, not everyone will want to return to their places of origin — and there will be many of them. According to preliminary estimates, after the war, tens of thousands of people will want to remain in a more favourable zone. Even before they went to war, these people weren’t always socially adept — up to fifty percent had either committed crimes or were prone to them — and after this meat grinder, God only knows what goes on in their minds. Are we ready for the challenges we will face? We can talk a lot about the state of these hard men in very hard circumstances, but you can imagine that few people come enlightened from war. How will we work with this huge, concentrated mass to avoid dire consequences? If we don’t find an answer to this question, they will answer it themselves. They know how to kill, and they will always have grievances against those who sat in the rear — to the point of deep hatred. The post-war period of the 1940s and 1950s, even in that country, was marked by a sharp rise in crime, and nowadays, when the law enforcement system experiences hard times, we could be in for a major fight.”
So, if Borodai hopes that most of the “superfluous men” will not return from war, Khodakovsky fears that too many of them will survive, and some may stay in Donbas. Borodai and Khodakovsky both want as few such people as possible to be left, which reveals their true attitude to the “Russian host”.
There is only one conclusion from this — Russia’s presence there will bring nothing but a social catastrophe for Donbas. And even Khodakovsky understands this.
