The Zero Option. A Protocol for Survival Beyond the Fila

Why do the “small people” still consider the very first secretary — the one who nurtured and then crushed his own nomenklatura — to be the strongest? Because there was no fear. Only before an abyss or a predator at the mouth of the cave do the “small” choose a strong leader. Without a threat to their lives, they group together and choose a weak or, at best, average leader — someone who can only manage to exit the cave.

All subsequent communist secretaries were products of an even more sophisticated “small” compromise. As if there were no country, no state, no empire — only a cave with peculiar monkeys. No responsibility for the future — only the personal interests of the Kremlin’s “gods.” Take any secretary; each one is more ridiculous than the last. And no one can explain why.

Small peasant vanity could not replace feudal honor. The feudal lords had not honor, but responsibility. A nobleman could not be ridiculous. A caricature of himself or a casual insult would result in a challenge to a duel. That is the code of a military corporation (where risk once existed).

And what do the “small” think when fate throws them to the very top?

They think exactly as they did when they were at the bottom. Power burdens them, yet it is pleasant because they are looked upon as icons. Who would want to leave? They never prepare for departure. They always resist the intrigues of their “small” surroundings. They never prepared themselves to be self-sufficient like the first revolutionaries who launched this “small” conveyor belt.

Playing with the lower classes is not just a revolutionary practice. In the West, a “small” market elite was created after a series of revolutions. Never forget money as the fastest way to rise above one’s peers.

In the conservative world, this path is much more complex. There are many conventions. Money is not always in first place. Because the majority is not prepared for “monetary honor” (where everything is honest, as in a brand-name firm), almost all these “small” people are ready to jump into power. Because the Russian revolutionaries taught them how to stir up the bottom to create a new “small” wave. If there were no officials before the revolution, but only parrots, the parrots will continue to mimic old habits by inertia, simultaneously mimicking the most fashionable things from the Western monetary world.