In the 40-50s of the last century, some rootless cosmopolitans suddenly became fashionable on the territory of the Soviet Union. Linguists - people engaged in the science of language - were puzzled by this phrase. But, since many of them could easily be included in this phrase, they did not publicly express their concern.
According to the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, cosmopolitans are Drosophila flies, cockroaches, from plants - some cereals, dioecious nettle, duckweed, from mammals - gray rats, which can be found in most of the inhabited areas of the earth. Therefore, most likely, people called cosmopolitans are also something not very pleasant … In any case, Soviet propaganda introduced this concept into the consciousness of the Soviet people for many decades.
Rootless cosmopolitans
Ilya Ehrenburg and Eduard Bagritsky, Alexander Green and Leon Feuchtwanger - many modern intellectuals would consider it an honor to be in such a decent company. Few were lucky. But there was a time when it turned out that all these people are cosmopolitan. Moreover, they are rootless, that is, it is not clear where their homeland is, who fed them, gave them drink, brought up, educated them. But it is clear that they are ungrateful, suspicious people who do not like the country and, most likely, traitors. Maybe even agents of foreign intelligence or even enemies of the conventional Uralvagonzavod. Therefore, God forbid to be with them in the same company.
And it's not that all these people travel the world especially. Although, Leon Feuchtwanger is generally a foreigner, and Ehrenburg did not just travel, but lived abroad for a long time, and made friends with many suspicious personalities of the humanitarian direction. Maybe even spies.
In any case, the programmatic editorial of the Izvestia newspaper dated 1949-10-02 about theater critics - rootless cosmopolitans - most likely hinted at this, since it read the following: “Anti-popular in its essence, this group of theater critics became the bearer of an alien cosmopolitanism that is hostile to Soviet people. Speaking especially casually on the pages of art history press, anti-patriotic, cosmopolitan criticism took up arms against the Soviet theatrical art, treated the art of our homeland, theater and drama."
Since the message of the entire article was addressed directly to Comrade J. V. Stalin, and since Comrade Stalin had shown throughout his life that he was against bullying, the entire group of theater critics and numerous other figures of science, art and literature who had joined them, had to wait for many years. fix on the vast expanses of the Gulag.
All the theatrical critics mentioned in the article and other cosmopolitans brought to light, in addition to their professions, had one more commonality - an insignificant detail: in the fifth column of their Soviet questionnaires, in the column nationality they had it written - Jew. Since after Molotov signed the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, it became indecent to pronounce the word “Jew”, they found an equivalent-replacement for him - a cosmopolitan. What does "man of the world", "man of the universe" mean, since in this word two Greek words are combined: space and citizen. And who if not the Jews as a nation traveled the most around the world? Everything is logical. Therefore, the concept of Soviet logic fully fits that a citizen harming the country is a rootless cosmopolitan.
Cosmopolitan is a man of peace
Countries embarking on the path of isolationism usually fight mercilessly against those who consider themselves "a man of peace." Whoever believes that borders should not exist, the world is open and beautiful, and it does not matter where to live and work, be useful or just enjoy life: the main thing is freedom. Freedom of movement, freedom of speech, freedom of expression. For a cosmopolitan, the whole world, the entire universe, is the homeland.
Therefore, these people do not recognize restrictions on citizenship. They calmly do without the original culture in which they were born, and, as a rule, speak several languages, and the concept of patriotism is considered vulgar.
The adherents of cosmopolitanism were the philosophers Socrates and Diogenes, Immanuel Kant, Steve Harwitz and Ulrich Beck. One of the collections of stories by Somerset Maugham is called "Cosmopolitans", and the writer Alexander Genis has a collection of the best travel prose - "Cosmopolitan. Geographical fantasies”. One of the most popular international women's magazines, Cosmopolitan, is translated into Russian as "Cosmopolitan".