Good satire makes you laugh. Great satire also makes you think.
Great satirists are able to penetrate the essence of their targets, all the way down to human nature in general. They thereby approach universality, transcending their own time and place.
This is true of Aristophanes, Juvenal, Rabelais, Swift, one or two others. I’d also include a few Russians in that category, especially Gogol and his lesser-known near-contemporary Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin (d. 1889).
Few writers anywhere have ever possessed Gogol’s artistic genius, but as far as the universal appeal of their satire, I’d go so far as to say that Saltykov was superior. Gogol’s targets were too deeply embedded in the Russian soil, whereas the shock waves of Saltykov’s bombs reached the whole world.
Still, Russia was at the epicentre, and today’s Russian rulers, hellbent on all that Third Rome nonsense, are taking Saltykov’s books out of school curricula. They don’t want the pupils’ virginal souls to be sullied with any criticism of Holy Russia.
Now, I actually wrote about Saltykov back in 2016, translating some of his aphorisms and letting them speak for themselves. This time around I’ll add a few parenthetical comments, pointing out how widely Saltykov’s wit applies to today’s West in general or some specific countries in particular.
I think you’ll find they read like contemporary reportage:
“Credit,” he was explaining to Kolia Persianov, “is when you have no money… you follow? You have no money, but then – bang! – you’ve got it.” “But, mon cher, what if they demand repayment?” Kolia lisped. “Fool! You can’t even understand such simple things! If you’ve got to repay – more credit. Repay again – still more credit! All states live that way nowadays!”
They still do: there isn’t a state in the West that pays its way. France, Germany, all Anglophone countries, Japan are bending to breaking point under the intolerable burden of national debt. And, following Saltykov’s prescription, they somewhat illogically try to spend their way out of indebtedness.
“Mon cher,” Krutitsyn would say, “divide everything up equally today, and tomorrow inequality will still reign.”
This was a slap in the face of socialists, who already in the 19th century began to dominate the intellectual landscape. The idea of redistributive justice is just as popular today, and one would think that the abject failure of every attempt to practise it in earnest would warn people off.
When all you get for our rouble abroad is fifty kopeks, that’s fine. The trouble will start when all you get is a punch in the snout.
Replace ‘rouble’ with ‘dollar’, and I think American travellers to Europe will nod with sad understanding. The dollar has already lost 10 per cent of its exchange value as a result of Trump’s shenanigans, and it’ll continue its downward slide as long as they persevere.
They sat thinking how to turn their loss-making business into a profitable one without changing anything.
Does this remind you of how our government operates? British ministers, Tory and Labour alike, bemoan high public spending – and never lower it, quite the opposite. They know that our comprehensive schools churn out ignoramuses, and do nothing other than making the schools worse. They promise to make the NHS more efficient, and do nothing other than making it less efficient.
When has there ever been a bureaucrat who wasn’t sure that Russia is a pie he can freely approach, slice and sample?
Our public service has become rather self-serving. Look at any government department, and you’ll see untold riches disappearing into some dark hole, eventually, one suspects, finding their way into someone’s deep pockets. British officials aren’t as corrupt (this way, at any rate) as some of their continental colleagues, but this is only a difference of degree.
Idiots are generally very dangerous, and not because they are necessarily evil, but because they aren’t aware of any restraints and always charge ahead, as if the road they are on belongs to them only.
Do you recognise any Western leader in this sketch? I’ll give you a clue: although teetotal, he shares his initials with delirium tremens.
Russian powers-that-be must keep the people in a state of constant bewilderment.
Replace ‘Russian’ with any Western nation, and you’ll recognise the modus operandi with ease. Especially, but not necessarily, if you again cast your eye across the Atlantic.
Education must be leavened with moderation, avoiding bloodshed if at all possible.
Khmer Rouge leaders, from Pol Pot down, received the full benefit of liberal education at the Sorbonne and other French universities. They then reminded us that nowadays ‘liberal’ means despotic by annihilating a third of Cambodia’s population. This is an extreme example, but much of today’s education everywhere spans the range from blood-curdling to potentially blood-spilling.
God’s world apparently has corners where all periods are transitional.
‘Jam tomorrow’ used to be the stock in trade of communist tyrannies. Just tighten your belts for a while, comrades, and universal bliss will arrive in due course. But these days I struggle to think of a Western government that doesn’t make versions of such promises to the people. We are in transition, just bear with us for a year or two, and all your problems will be over – where have I heard that? Where have you? The same places: government statements.
The strictness of Russian laws is mitigated by optional compliance therewith.
Again, replace ‘Russian’ with your favourite geographical adjective, and you’ll find that police forces and courts take a lackadaisical approach to enforcing the law. Unless, of course, the transgression was committed against the state and the ethos it’s trying to inculcate.
It’s but one step from irony to subversion.
In my Soviet youth, one could go to prison for telling a joke deemed subversive. It’s refreshing to see how assiduously our woke governments are trying to emulate that model. It’s enough to crack a joke someone out there claims to be offensive for the wag to have his collar felt. Or perhaps, for the time being, only to receive a warning visit from the police – but the beauty of progress is that its momentum accelerates.
A citizen is always guilty of something.
When some laws are stupid, all laws tend to lose respect. While laws going back to the Decalogue are enforced with ever-increasing laxness, woke, which is to say stupid, laws turn practically every citizen into a law-breaker.
Nowadays, Mum, they live without a husband as if with a husband. Nowadays they mock religious prescriptions. They find a bush, get hitched under it – and Bob’s your uncle. They call it civil marriage.
There, Saltykov charted the road for modernity to follow, but even his fecund imagination fell short of foreseeing some destinations along the way. He was right about mocking religious prescriptions – this is commonplace these days. But his invoking civil marriage as the regrettable outcome is too tame. I wonder what Saltykov would write today, reading stories about a man who used to be a woman bearing a child by a woman who used to be a man, and then the happy couple getting married, possibly in church.
When spreading wise thoughts, one can’t avoid being called a bastard.
Or a fascist. Or a reactionary. Or a racist. Or something worse. Any attempt to spread wise thoughts runs the risk of rude opprobrium or, increasingly often, ‘cancellation’.
In 1849 the French journalist Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr came up with a spiffy epigram: the more things change, the more they remain the same (plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose).
I think you’ll agree that Saltykov-Shchedrin’s aphorisms go a long way towards vindicating the one by his French contemporary. Perhaps, with the benefit of hindsight, we can slightly embellish Karr’s adage: the more things change, they don’t just remain the same. They change for the worse.