Army of citizens and army of slaves

After the start of recruitment, propaganda began to periodically turn to the topic of "civic duty." Say, citizens are evaders, you lived in the country, used its benefits, resources and protection, and now, when the time has come to repay the debt, you are going to run away, right? This line of reasoning is actually very ancient and goes back to Plato's Crito. The story there is as follows: Socrates, sentenced to death, comes to his top-donator Criton with an escape plan, but Socrates refuses - they say, I have lived in this city all my life according to its laws, which means that now, when these laws have turned against me, I can’t run away will. Further, Socrates, as it were, speaks on behalf of the state:

"... he is triple unfair: he disobeys us, his parents; does not obey us, his educators; he, having made an agreement with us that he will obey us, does not obey and does not instruct us if we do not do well in anything. Although we offer, and do not rudely order, to do what we order, but we give him the choice of one of two things - either to admonish us, or to carry out our orders, he does neither." [link]

The most important thing here in the last phrase - Socrates states that between man and the authorities there is an underlying contract. And this agreement implies the possibility of "reasoning" the authorities. Thus, he argues as a citizen of the polis (republic), who had every opportunity for political participation - the opportunity to criticize current laws, propose new ones, and so on. etc. And now he must come to terms with the fact that the law did not work to his advantage. That is, the underlying contract here can be reduced to the formula: "political participation in exchange for loyalty."

I remember on the course ["Paradoxes of War"] (recommended it earlier), the lecturer said that in ancient times there were two main types of army - the army of citizens and the army of slaves. Ancient policies relied on the army of citizens, while the Persian Empire on the army of slaves. In exchange for political participation, a citizen had the obligation to serve in the phalanx and equip himself at his own expense. In modern times, similar patterns can be traced: the nation-states of Western Europe are returning to the old republican agreement: people serve by conscription, and in return receive civil rights. Whereas the serf recruits, which the Russian Empire fought until the reforms of Alexander II, are essentially an army of slaves.

Let's return to the present: where is our political participation? In recent decades, we have only been deprived of political participation, i.e. turned into slaves. Attempts to gain civil rights were followed only by police batons and criminal cases. The agreement between the Russian government and society is not at all "rights in exchange for loyalty", but something like "you do not climb into power, in response we do not touch you and throw you crumbs from the master's table (in the form of pensions, benefits, etc. .)". But today, the state has discovered that without society, it cannot cope with the history into which it has fallen. And now, as if nothing had happened, he blinks his eyes: "well, guys, well, you are citizens, and here it is ... you have an honorable civic duty!" He also offers to equip himself at his own expense, as in ancient Athens.

No, my dears, as some foreign agents used to say a couple of centuries ago: no taxation without representation. And no service either. The flight of Russian refuseniks is not the flight of bad citizens from an honorable civic duty. This is the flight of serfs from recruiting. By the way, our old, respected Russian tradition. The real "Russian world".

Mihail Pojarsky 03/10/2022