Maxim Mironov. How Merkel learned how to talk to the gobber

 Maxim Mironov. How Merkel learned how to talk to the gobber

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I grew up in a fairly proletarian area of Novosibirsk and I have had to deal with gopniks since childhood. "Confronted" is not the right word, rather they were a kind of local elite and set the rules of conduct in the area.

If a group of thugs got into a dialogue with you, it was likely to end in a money grab. Dialogues could vary. A classic situation looks like this:

- Do you have the money?

What is the right answer to this question? If you say no, it follows immediately:

- What if we do?

This is a more difficult question. If you say 'well, search' and they find it, you have to give it back, because you lied to them out of the blue and have to pay for your lie. If you refuse to be searched voluntarily, it is even worse, because this clearly shows that you lied (otherwise why would you be afraid of being searched). But then, maybe it is better not to lie right away, and to the question about money answer honestly "yes, I do".

Then the question follows:

- Loan me X rubles till tomorrow, not enough for cigarettes.

You cannot refuse, you will offend the good man. And you realize that if you have borrowed it, no one is going to pay you back. In short, no matter how you answer the question, you part with the money.

Money was even taken away from people who did not have it at the time. For example:

- Did my mate tell me that you said some bad things about me there?

If you answer, 'No, I haven't,' a question follows immediately:

- Are you saying my mate is lying?

And here is a choice - to say that 'mate is lying' is to offend the mate who will charge you tomorrow, and if you say 'no, he isn't' is to agree with the original accusations. In short, no matter how you answer, you've either offended the thug or his mate, and must naturally pay them for the offence. If you don't pay them back in time, they put you on the meter. One boy in a nearby yard took all the money and gold out of the house to pay for the offence he was allegedly causing.

A lot of people I knew thought that you had to learn to talk on the basis of understanding, and then you could avoid the negative consequences if the thugs invited you in for a dialogue. In reality, these were false hopes: no amount of skill was going to save the day. After all, if the thugs have engaged you in a dialogue, it means they can explain to you why you should give them the money. They have no goal of getting to the bottom of it and finding out the truth. The ultimate goal of any dialogue they have is to explain why you should give them the money.

You lost already when you decided to start the dialogue. I realised this quite early on and tried to avoid these dialogues. As calm and neutral as possible, for example: "Guys, no time to chat, I'm late for class," and you walk away at a brisk pace while they figure out what to say. If you couldn't get away quickly, you had better get into a straightforward confrontation, like 'Why are you interested? Inevitably, a couple of times I was beaten up quite seriously. I was thin and weak, besides, as a child I was sent to music school at the conservatory instead of the boxing section. But they didn't try to take away my money either, although I had it all the time - from the age of 10 I was involved in petty peddling, and from the age of 14 I was writing bespoke programs. I have also learned since childhood that thugs are not interested in open conflicts. They might beat you up once to intimidate you. But if that doesn't work, they're more likely to leave you alone and go after people they don't have to deal with as much.

*** Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version) ***

Why don't gopniks like open conflict? There are two reasons. Firstly, they can make an unpleasant fuss afterwards. Once, when a window pane at my school was smashed with my head, the doctors and police were called in and the school elite and their parents were questioned for several days. Any use of force can get out of hand and attract unwanted attention from third parties. In the case of voluntary giving of money, such risks are close to zero. Secondly, and most importantly, every beating inappropriately ruins the image of the "noble dons". Their whole concept of taking money is that they are polite people, talking quietly and calmly to everyone. They do not use force. If they manage to explain to you intellectually that you owe them money, of course you do. If they don't, fine, go in peace. Every take of money by force puts them on the same board as the stupid robbers. And the gopniks took care of their image as backyard intellectuals.

After I left Novosibirsk, I never encountered them anywhere else. It wasn't that I wasn't mugged anymore. I was robbed. But it was very simple: a punch in the face and the taking of my wallet. Or, for example, they drugged me and I woke up in the emergency room without money or anything. After my childhood in Novosibirsk, no bandits had ever tried to have a pseudo-intellectual conversation with me, explaining what they wanted from me in plain and simple language.

Why do I remember this and tell you about it for such a long time? Because the events that happened to me 30 years ago are very similar to the way Putin is trying to divorce Merkel. Putin is trying to drag her into an endless dialogue, where no matter what the outcome, Putin will be the winner. What this dialogue looks like at the moment:

20 August. Peskov says Russia will be investigated if information about Navalny's poisoning is confirmed.

24 August. The German Charite hospital said that Navalny had been poisoned. It would seem that the condition posed by Peskov on August 20 has been met. An investigation must be launched. But the next day, the Kremlin sets a new condition:

August 25. According to Peskov, there is no reason for an investigation yet because it is not known what substance Navalny was exposed to.

What conclusion should a normal person draw? For some reason, the substance must be identified in order to launch an investigation. As soon as it becomes clear what poisoned Navalny, the investigation will begin.

2 September. German authorities have announced that Navalny was poisoned with Novichok, a statement made at the highest level, by the Chancellor of Germany. Is the Kremlin launching an investigation, as Peskov promised on August 25? No, it has not. A succession of new demands and excuses follow - the establishment of a joint consultation with Russian doctors, the failure to provide Russia with data from Germany, if Navalny was poisoned, it was not in Russia but in Germany, the Interior Ministry investigators need to be given access to Navalny.

*** Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version) ***

We see that the Kremlin's demands are growing like hydra heads. As soon as one condition is met, others appear. It is a game without end and Merkel cannot win it by following the rules imposed by Putin. Suppose Germany agrees to let in Russian experts to verify Novichok for themselves. If they simply show them the tests, the answer is likely to be: "We don't believe you, show us how you found it. If Germany does show (and thus our chemical weapons developers get valuable information about where they got it wrong), they can always say, "Yes, Novichok is there. But it could have been made not by us, because NATO countries have the recipe. How can one prove that Novichok came from Russia? Purely theoretically, German experts could come to Russia and inspect all the places where Navalny was that morning. And there are two scenarios here. If they don't find anything (after all, the KGB has had three weeks to clean up their tracks), the Kremlin officials will say, "Aha... you see, they found nothing, so you are the one who poisoned us. If the German experts manage to find something, they will say, "And where's the guarantee that you didn't bring it with you, because everyone knows that Novichok is produced in NATO countries? If the Germans refuse to go to Russia (e.g. for security reasons), the Kremlin will say: "Aha... you see, they do not want to go, even though we are calling them. Then they must have planted it". If Germany does not let our specialists go: "You see, they do not let our specialists in to check everything, so they must have something to hide. And if Germany does not respond to pointless requests: "You see, they themselves refuse to respond to our requests, how can we prosecute?"

Gopnik Putin is trying to drag Merkel into this endless dialogue, where he is guaranteed to come out the winner. The further he manages to advance in this dialogue, the more trumps he will have. For every German answer, there are a dozen questions (business and non-business), for every fact, there are a dozen alternative explanations. For every conclusion, put forward a dozen doubts. It is impossible to convince or prove anything to a thug. He is both prosecutor and judge. The degree of persuasiveness of your argument will be judged by the thug, not you, even if you yourself find your argument very convincing. And his aim is not to find the truth, he already knows it.

This is not the first time Putin has used this tactic - to drag his partners into endless dialogue in order to sow a lot of doubts. This was the case with the Malaysian Boeing, the Skripals poisoning, and the Litvinenko case. This is probably the first time that the West, particularly Merkel, has stopped falling for Putin's gopinist divorces. We see that after two rounds ("prove he was poisoned" and "tell us what substance") Germany simply decided to ignore Putin and sends all data to the OPCW (Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons) and the G7 partners. No one else seems to want to waste time on endless conversations that will end up being his own fault.

*** Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version) ***

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