1
(Links to previous Chapters are available here: Volume I, Volume II, and Chapters 21, 22, 23, 24)
July 19, 2011.
So, my interview “Why We Cannot Allow Russia to Collapse” was posted on the official website of the People’s Council All-Russian Social Movement, and it has already infuriated the people who call themselves national democrats. So why did it make them so mad? Were they enraged because some “monster” called “Kurginyan” is beginning to condemn nationalism again?
1
(Links to previous Chapters are available here: Volume I, Volume II, and Chapter 21, 22, 23)
July 12, 2011.
Major challenges exist. They are formidable, unambiguous, and obvious. The consciousness mobilizes quickly against them.
There are also challenges of a diffuse kind. Some diseases are like this… For example, multiple sclerosis. These challenges are like dots on a certain board: one square has one figure, and another square has a different one. The squares are ambiguous, and so are the pieces… and all you need is for a certain composition to take shape. The very moment when that composition finally takes shape, you die. But before the composition takes shape, nothing happens. That is the danger.
Continue reading
1
(Links to previous Chapters are available here: Volume I, Volume II, and Chapter 21, 22)
July 5, 2011.
The great twentieth-century German playwright Bertolt Brecht had a play titled “The Caucasian Chalk Circle” [Here and thereafter “Caucasian” refers exclusively to the inhabitants of the Caucasus mountains. The Russian language does not utilize the word “Caucasian” as a generic term for white people – translator’s note]. It depicts an ancient Chinese legend in a contemporary style. The essence of the legend is that there is a child. There is a woman who has become his mother, who raises him and loves him terribly – Grusha Vachnadze, if my memory serves me correctly (everything takes place in some Georgian village). And there is a princess, who once abandoned this child, and now wants to take possession of the child and screams that she is his true mother.
1
(Links to previous Chapters are available here: Volume I, Volume II, and Chapter 21)
June 28, 2011.
In the late 1980s, I came to Baku as a member of an anti-crisis group, which I myself created to provide something to counteract the version of events that the democrats were promoting at the time. And also the dumb official version, which had nothing living in it – it was clear that it was created only to emphasize all the “brilliance”, all the “subtlety” and “truthfulness” of the false democratic version, or pseudoliberal, as we now call it.
Continue reading
1
(Links to previous Chapters are available here: Volume I and Volume II)
June 21, 2011.
At this stage of our intellectual and political marathon, I would like to have a very confidential conversation. I do not even know if such a confidential conversation is possible right now. But I’ll still try to begin it, since it is necessary. With a deep hope that it will work out.
Some of those who watch the “The Essence of Time” program very carefully react to it in an understandable, but overly simplistic and one-dimensional way. They say: “You are talking about some kind of damage. You think that those with whom you are conversing are damaged. And this means that you are standing in a position of arrogance, that you look at us like at some damaged material, and you are preaching to us about how exactly this material should be mended. ”
1
This is the translation of the ten chapters from Volume II of the book Essence of Time. Each one of them contains Sergey Kurginyan’s thoughts about the essence of our time, about its metaphysics, its dialectics, and their reflection in the key aspects of relevant Russian and global politics. The central theme of the series is the search for paths and mechanisms to escape the systemic and global dead end for all humanity in all of its dimensions: from the metaphysical to the gnoseological, ethical, and anthropological. Thus, to escape the sociopolitical, technological, and economical dead end.
Continue reading
1
(Links to previous Chapters are available here: Volume I and Chapters 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19)
June 14, 2011.
PART ONE. ACTIVITY
In the beginning, I want to discuss our organization and its activity.
If we are only talking, if we are educating one another, and even if we have intelligent discussions on forums or at conferences, then there is no organization. An organization means activity. Activity, which needs to be planned. Activity, which needs organizational and intellectual support.
Continue reading
1
(Links to previous Chapters are available here: Volume I and Chapters 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18)
June 7, 2011.
PART ONE. ACTIVITIES
I begin each program in this cycle with the subject of our activity.
Let us begin with its specific aspects. We decided to conduct a second public opinion poll. A more detailed and deeper one, the results of which will help us answer a number of questions. This is a large project that will once again require great effort from us. Sociologists agreed to participate in this project. They have already finalized a questionnaire and created a group that will conduct a mathematical analysis of the survey results. More than one and a half thousand volunteers have also said they agree to conduct the survey.
Continue reading
1
(Links to previous Chapters are available here: Volume I and Chapters 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17)
May 31, 2011.
PART ONE. ACTIVITY.
We have already agreed to begin by discussing our activity. And because many questions are being posed about this activity and activity in general, we must try to give clear answers… This is very important.
Continue reading
1
(Links to previous Chapters are available here: Volume I and Chapters 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16)
May 24, 2011.
Today the residents of Donbass awarded me with the Miner’s Glory of the I degree badge. Meanwhile, I again peered intently into the very aged faces of those who had once managed separate branches of the Soviet economy and the Soviet economy as a whole.
These are amazingly pure faces; these are people on whose faces it is written that they didn’t steal, that they did not derive unparalleled joy from grand larceny. It is written so clearly on their faces; and especially now, with age taking its toll, it becomes even scarier, for it is very clear what has come to replace them.
Before the storm by Isaac Levitan, 1890.
The Game of Draughts by
Mattia Preti, 1635
Mother by Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, 1913.
Shepherd wolf by Gustave Dore.
Seeing the unit of workers to the front by Konstantin Yuon, 1928.
Portrait of Stakhanov by Leonid Kotliarov, 1938.