1
(Links to previous Chapters are available here: Volume I and Chapters 11, 12, 13)
May 3, 2011.
PART ONE. ACTIVITY.
In this program, I will return to the activities of AKSIO, the Agency for Cultural and Social Research of the Society, because the survey that we have discussed in our previous programs has been completed. Not only has it been completed, but it has already been processed. And a group of sociologists led by Yulia Sergeevna Krizhanskaya has presented the survey’s results. The people who conducted it now all know that this work did not sink into oblivion, that it did not evaporate, but brought about a certain practical result. I will discuss this result discussed in the first part of our program: Activity. Because this is important, because it is not every day that we get results like these, and because these results are rather significant.
To begin with, on average, the surveys that not only the Russian Public Opinion Research Center, but also by Gallup and others conduct on our territory are have a sample size of approximately 3,000 to 3,500 respondents. We interviewed more than 34,000 people. More than 1,500 activists conducted the poll, who received instruction on exactly how polls ought to be conducted, and who fulfilled all the norms included in these instructions.
The survey was administered among all age groups, across all territories of Russia, and all segments of the population. It can be considered not only representative, but one of the most representative polls among those that have been conducted in our country.
The questionnaire contained two questions.
The first question was: “We ask you to evaluate the de-Stalinization program, the basic provisions of which you have just read, on an 11-point scale, with +5 being the most positive response, 0 being neutral and -5 being the most negative “.
Before the first question, we included the 9 core points in the questionnaire, and anyone who has carefully read the de-Stalinization program would see that we did not pull these items of thin air, but that we have a serious and fundamental justification for each of them. We are not discussing some phrases that Mr. Karaganov accidentally mentioned, only what has been included in the program, what has been articulated in it in one form or another.
For example, Mr. Karaganov’s phrase “all of Russia is a giant Katyn [referring to a mass killing of Polish officers by the SS, which Goebbels then blamed on the Soviet Union, an allegation which anti-communist propagandists both in the West and in Russia adopted as a fact ̶ translator’s note],” appeared in his speech that he delivered in the presence of President Medvedev, after which it was adopted into the program. The thesis that all civil servants must be forbidden to express positive views on what the authors of the program call “totalitarianism” (in other words, our entire Soviet history) was adopted into the program. The point that the all of Europe bears equal responsibility for the Second World War was adopted into the program. It also includes words like “genocide”, “orchestrated famine” and so on, which would lead to the most severe consequences for us.
I have no objections to the paragraph on the erecting monuments for the victims of repression. But who shall we call a victim of repression? Is Tukhachevsky a victim of repression, or is he an executioner? Who is Trotsky? A victim of repression or an executioner? Even if all of these ambiguities can be avoided, though we know they cannot, and that is why this wave of reverence for the victims of repression has stopped … Robert Rozhdestvensky wrote a poem about the “Iron Man” comrade Eikhe. It was about Robert Eikhe [a prominent Latvian Bolshevik, who was executed in 1940, after being convicted of creating a secret Latvian fascist organization ̶ translator’s note]. “In greeting Eikhe’s letters, The Party congress rises” … But Eikhe had done many things in his life, and many people consider him an executioner.
Besides, it is not entirely clear to us: if all the victims of the Reds are victims of repression, then who is Lazo, a man who was incinerated in a steam engine furnace? Was he simply a scoundrel who the Whites justly punished? But if that is so, then can be no talk of national reconciliation, and that is clear to everyone … So it’s not about national reconciliation. And the authors of the program immediately go on to say that this is de-Sovietization. Not even de-Stalinization, but de-Sovietization. De-totalitarianization (yet another word!), which is to be conducted following the example of denazification.
But, when the denazification took place, no one spoke of national reconciliation between Hitler and his victims. The victims denazified those who brought them to such a terrible state, who threw them into Auschwitz and the other camps, who trampled and humiliated them. After which these victims took revenge alongside the occupying forces on the ruins of Germany. There was no national reconciliation. So why can de-Sovetization, which they equate to denazification, be called a national reconciliation? Shall we mourn Lazo and the others? Will we take into account their dreams, their ideals, and their faith in a bright future? Or will we just unilaterally accept one side’s position and then talk about national reconciliation? It just cannot be done this way.
This is being done at the behest of the Vilnius Conference of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly. There is an OSCE resolution in which equates Nazism to Stalinism and Sovietism. This resolution’s authors demand legal consequences for Russia once it recognizes all of this. These are far-reaching consequences, because it will be necessary to recognize the occupation of the Baltic states, which is a very serious issue.
As I have already said, the rehabilitation of victims, which will include Ataman Krasnov [Pyotr Krasnov was a prominent former White army commander, who actively collaborated with Nazi Germany during the Great Patriotic War. In post-Soviet times, various “Cossack civic organizations” have attempted to achieve his rehabilitation as a “victim of Stalin’s regime”. – translator’s note] among others, will mean “Cossackia” will be made into a relevant topic, among others. The Basmachi and the Waffen SS will be the ones carrying out this de-Sovietization, that is, those who had once served in the Waffen SS, or those members of the new generations who continue to serve the same ideals. They will be de-Sovietizers! Bandera’s followers will de-Sovietizе Kharkov and Donetsk, Sevastopol and Nikolaev, as well as Odessa and other cities [Please note, that Sergey Kurginyan gave this lecture on May 3rd, 2011, three years before the fascist coup in Ukraine, the Odessa massacre, and the neo-Nazi genocide attempt in Donbass ̶ translator’s note].
We understand that this machine is being launched from abroad, and that it is being launched with very serious intent. It would have seemed that in 2009, President Medvedev, who is in charge of international politics, gave the corresponding instructions to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to condemn this program. After all, our president is in charge of foreign policy, so the Foreign Ministry cannot condemn the program on its own. The State Duma condemned this Vilnius venture. Everyone said “no” to it in 2009. In that same 2009, President Medvedev noted in his Address to the Federal Assembly that everything that we have, everything that we use, everything that is saving us from disaster, is part of the Soviet legacy. These are Soviet nuclear power plants, Soviet industry. He said that this is not good; we live at the expense of our ancestors; they are the ones who made everything; we have ought to make something ourselves.
At the same time, Mr. Karaganov said in the presence of President Medvedev, that over the past 100 years, Russia has almost nothing to be proud of. Except for maybe the Great Patriotic War, he continued, and even that is a bit of a stretch.
What about Gagarin? What about the giant industrial complex that we had created? What about the new quality of life, which we had nevertheless ensured? What about our great science, industry, and culture? Can we not be proud of all of this?
President Medvedev said back in 2009 that we should be proud of all this. That we have nothing, except for what we inherited from the Soviet Union; and therefore, we, the new generation, while honoring all this, should make at least some kind of contribution ourselves. He said that we have created nothing in 20 years, while what our fathers and grandfathers created is being squandered.
Now, in 2011, the program by the Presidential Council for Human Rights says that we have nothing to be proud of. Do you understand the difference?
So, Russia indignantly rejected the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly’s invective, the Vilnius resolution, in 2009, through its leadership, President Medvedev.
But in 2011, we suddenly see this document, wherein the Vilnius talking points are densely interspersed. Exactly those same talking points used then, and according to which we must equate our historical past to that of the Nazis, and according to which we must consequently be subjected to denazification, exactly like it took place in Germany.
While carefully reading this program, identify its key points. After all, the essence, the axis of this program is not to build monuments for victims of repression after determining who they are (I have already mentioned Eiche or Tukhachevsky), and to carry out some sort of national reconciliation.
The axis of this program is not to open the archives … What is wrong with opening archives? A variety of historians, including our supporters, will study these archives, and we do not yet know who among them will draw the deeper and more reasonable conclusions. Therefore, this is not where the essence lies.
The essence lies in a few points that I want to read again, because our country’s citizens do not understand the topic being discussed. The topic of discussion is the following.
- It must be recognized that “the people and the elite have almost nothing to respect themselves for after the last 100 years” [Verbatim transcription from the meeting of the Council for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights. 01/02/2011. http://kremlin.ru/transcripts/10194.].
- It is necessary to recognize the Soviet period of our history as one great crime, and the recognize the Soviet Union as a criminal state.
- It is necessary to recognize that “all of Russia is ‘one giant Katyn’” [The national state-civic program “On commemorating of the victims of the totalitarian regime and on national reconciliation”. See http://www.president-sovet.ru/structure/group_5/materials/ the_program_of_historical_memory.php]. In saying this, they mean the point of view that the mass grave in Katyn is the work of the NKVD.
But if all of Russia is one great Katyn, and Katyn is the site of a mass war crime, then Russia is a criminal state; that is, the Soviet Union is a criminal state, and we, the Russian Federation, are its successors. We are members of the UN Security Council because we are successors. So what do have? Are we the successors of a criminal state? If we are the successors of a criminal state, then we must repent, leave the UN Security Council, and whatever else we are ordered to do, if even we have the right for life.
- It must be recognized that a “genocide” was carried out in the USSR; in other words, the Soviet leadership consciously exterminated the Soviet people [The nationwide state-public program “On commemorating the victims of the totalitarian regime and on national reconciliation”. See http://www.president-sovet.ru/structure/group_5/materials/ the_program_of_historical_memory.php].
But this is a legal statement with consequences! Genocide is genocide. Sometimes it seems that all of our people are brought up with a sense of negligence towards the law, which is not the case in Western culture … I don’t know for sure, I never went through divorce myself, but they say that during the Soviet period, divorces occurred such that property and everything else was divided “shooting from the hip”. But over there, every word is worth its weight in gold. “I’m sorry, Jack, there was a sin.” Jack then took his tape recorder and recorded his wife’s story about the sin. Then the common property gets divided taking that sin into account. But if there was no tape, it would have been necessary to divided the property in a way less favorable for Jack.
They hire private investigation services to determine who has sinned! And because of this, they do not just go around haphazardly repenting over there. They understand that every word is worth its weight in gold, and that every word has legal consequences. Moreover, for us all our repentances have always resulted in our country getting torn to pieces. We already repented once for that very Stalinization, etc. – hysterically, thoughtlessly and having accepted myths as the truth. Then the Soviet Union disintegrated. Why do we need another wave of the same repentance? For Russia to disintegrate.
- The Soviet Union must be recognized as a “totalitarian” state; and on this basis, it should be considered the same as Nazi Germany.
- It must be recognized that the USSR is responsible for starting the Second World War alongside Nazi Germany.
This is called “all of Europe bears equal responsibility”
- It is necessary to rewrite the history textbooks to have them reflect all that concerns Soviet era genocide and the USSR as a criminal state.
This is “brainwashing”, this is a kind of “political psychiatry”, “repression at the expense of the state.”
- It is necessary to forbid those, who doubt that the Soviet Union was a criminal state from becoming civil servants of any rank or position.
And how can this be accomplished? It is written right in the program. First of all, teachers are also a type of civil servant. They are state employees, after all. Even if we do not take them into account, then some government employee cannot publicly express this point of view. Do you understand where the cynicism lies? In the case of denazification, or in those countries which aggressively parted with their history’s Soviet period (I mean the Eastern European countries), lustrations took place, which forbade people who occupied certain positions under the Soviet government from being civil servants and the like. Denazification took place in the same manner. But the topic here is different! “Think what you want, but don’t you dare say anything anywhere.” This message is infused with cynicism. And this is also included in the program.
- It is necessary to revise all of the memorial dates and holidays in order to exclude or rename any dates associated with Soviet history.
They specifically mention Militia Day, but then comes Soviet Army Day… You never know what other days may be renamed…
If this program is adopted and implemented, it will have devastating consequences. Maybe not the consequences that the de-Stalinization and de-Sovietization authors are planning. But since they will be explosive and very dangerous, it is important to analyze our society’s reaction to such a program. Not the program in general, which also includes some statements about monuments to victims of repression and open archives. This is a bait. An extremely tempting bait, which hides the steel hook of these 9 points.
We have identified these 9 items, and we have asked people how they feel about them. In doing so, we instructed 1500 activists, who volunteered to conduct this survey on a pro bono basis, and they conducted it brilliantly. We asked these activists not to go to the Communist Party of the Russian Federation or to groups that support their worldview, because we need statistically representative samples. We told them to go to subways, bars, shops, train stations, buses, car parks, offices, enterprises, to obtain a representative sample.
Our activists conducted an unprecedented survey with almost 35,000 questionnaires. They sent us these questionnaires, both electronically and on paper. I will say it again, we had 1500 interviewers, i.e. almost as much as the typical number of interviewees. This is not a Russian Public Opinion Research Center poll. This was a much larger survey, in which the first question asked to rate these 9 points on an 11-point scale.
The second question was: If it was decided that Russia was to hold a nationwide referendum on the question: “Does Russia need to implement a program that recognizes the Soviet Union as a criminal state that carried out a genocide of its own people and was guilty of starting World War II?” how would you respond? (circle your answer) YES/NO
And our activists, I emphasize this point, asked the store cashiers, people who do not watch the program Judgement of Time, people who watch reality shows, our opponents, the entirety of the Russian people. They asked people of all ages, social, and ideological groups.
And what did we get?
I emphasize again, that I am presenting the sociometry obtained by a pro bono group of sociologists headed by Yuliya Sergeevna Krizhanskaya, who processed the data our activists collected mathematically, using the appropriate correction coefficients, and correcting for the degree of representation of the various groups. They implemented all of the modern sociological methods. These results are absolutely reliable and correct.
The first question is “Please evaluate the de-Sovietization program”.
These are the results. (Figure 21).
69% rate the program negatively. This means: they rated it less than or equal to “-3”
21% are neutral. This means that their rating fluctuates at around “0”.
(This is like the temperature on a thermometer: “+5” is an extremely positive rating, I repeat, and “-5” is extremely negative, in between is a moderate level of the negativity and positivity, and “0” is a neutral rating).
9.9% rate it positively.
But as soon as we ask the second question, “If it was decided that Russia was to hold a nationwide referendum on the question: ‘Does Russia need to implement a program that recognizes the Soviet Union as a criminal state that carried out a genocide of its own people and was guilty of starting World War II?’ how would you respond?”,
89.7% answered “no”, 9.6% answered “yes”, and just about 0% did not answer (Figure 22).
So, as soon as the question comes to the necessity to implement the de-Sovietization program at the state level, many of those who are neutral to the program, and even part of those who approve of the program, say: “No, no, thank you. We don’t need this.” That is, all these neutral individuals immediately move into a group of this undertaking’s active opponents.
Here is another very interesting table (Figure 23).
Among those who rated this program negatively, 98.2% do not want its implementation. (Let me remind you, the first question is, “Your attitude to the program”, and the second one is, “Do you want it implemented, and what would you say in a referendum?”). And 1.6%, oddly enough, are ready to accept it, although they do not like it.
Among those who rated the program neutrally, only 13.2% want it to be implemented, and 85.1% do not want it accepted as a guide to action.
But even among those who support this program (that is the most interesting thing!), “It’s a good and proper program, the commies behaved themselves horribly, they trampled us, they tortured us!” But 40.6% say, “Only please let us do without a de-Sovietization program! We do not need this. Thanks, but no thanks.”
Briefly regarding our other results.
Here is a table that shows the attitude towards the de-Sovietization program depending on the gender of the respondents (Figure 24).
Women: 90.1% oppose it and 9.1% support it.
Men: 89.2% oppose it and 10.2% support it.
The mean assessment of the program by men: -2.93, by women -2.79.
There are more women who deny the de-Sovietization program than men, but the degree of their assessment is softer. There are slightly less Men who deny the program, but the degree of their assessment is slightly higher. In principle, these are not too different.
The entire report with Yulia Sergeevna Krizhanskaya’s comments is posted on our website [http://axio.eot.su/query_detailed.html]. It will also be published, I hope, in the newspaper Zavtra [Kurginyan S, Krizhanskaya Y “Lovushka” (“The trap”) // Zavtra 04 May 2011]. So you have the opportunity to learn more about these materials.
We hope to discuss them more in the future. Now I will provide only some select data.
Here is the people’s attitude toward the de-Sovietization program, depending on whether the respondent resides in the city or a village (Figure 25).
In cities, 90.3% of people oppose the program, in villages it is 87.4%. That is, people in villages give this program a softer rating than those in cities. But they always said the opposite, “It is an archaic rural population, who does not want de-Stalinization and de-Sovietization, but the urban population is progressive, they want it.”
Now about the degree of rejection. It is -2.9 in the city, and -2.62 in the village. As we see, there is more rejection in the city.
This is not a very large difference, but it is significant, because we want to know our society, not to recite new myths under the guise of sociology.
Each of the respondents answered in detail about his faith, indicated gender, age, place of work and educational background, and so on, and so forth.
For example, there was a question: “Do you consider yourself to be religious; and if so, what religion do you belong to?” On this subject, we received the following distribution: 34.3% said they were religious, 40% said they were religious outside of any denomination, 20.4% said they were non-religious, and 5.3% did not respond at all (Figure 26).
So, there is this special category of “believers without a denomination”; people do not determine which denomination they belong to, indicating only: “In principle, I am a believer”. And these people account for 40%.
34.3% say: “I profess Islam,” “I profess Orthodoxy.”
20.4% say: “We are non-believers.”
This is the distribution we have in our society. It is interesting in itself, is it not?
Now about what happens when these groups rate the program. (Figure 27).
The degree of rejection for the program among religious and non-religious people is almost the same. Religious people have -3.01. Non-religious people have -3,06. Therefore, it is a mistake to expect that believers would succumb to agitation from their religious institutions, if these religious institutions would strongly push the de-Sovietization agenda. There are many reasons for that.
To begin with, we should not equate religious people’s position with the position of church officials, which in itself is very complex. Patriarch Kirill condemned the Vilnius resolution in 2009. But a number of people from his inner circle supported this document.
And aside from religious people, there is the parish priest, rural or urban. And he also has a very peculiar attitude towards everything related to this de-Stalinization and de-Sovietization.
In addition, there are religious people who can come to the church or mosque to pray, but they can make their civil, political and ideological choices as their heart commands them to.
Therefore, to the institutions, including denominational ones! Think about what you are doing! Once you start supporting certain things, you will not change the opinions of those who are integrated into your institutions. You will create a problem for yourselves within your own congregation.
Now the non-denominational believers, also rate the program negatively on average: -2.61. But we see a rather significant difference. Not the -3.01 that we find among religious people belonging to one denomination or another, but -2.61.
If we look at the same graph (see Figure 27), we see that among non-religious people 71.4% regard the de-Sovietization program negatively, 20.5% are neutral to it, and 8.1% support the program.
Among non-denominational believers, 66% regard it negatively, 22.5% are neutral to it, and 11.5% support the program.
And among the religious people who belong to one denomination or another, 71% regard the program negatively, 19.9% are neutral to it, and 9% support the program. This means that the number of religious people who would like to see the de-Sovietization program implemented is no greater than average number for our society. Make note of this.
There is a significant enough relationship between the age of the respondents and their relation to the de-Stalinization program (Figure 28).
Of those who are older than 35, approximately 8% regard the program positively. That means more than 90% view it negatively. But among the age groups of 25-29 and 30-34 years of age, positive feelings jump to 10%, and among ages 15-19 and 20-24, support for the de-Stalinization and de-Sovietization program jumps to 14-15%. This means that the percentage decreases or increases depending on age.
We have no intention of beating the drums and rejoicing, but even the age group of 15-19 years-old, with whom they have “worked” especially hard, still does not accept de-Stalinization as a whole (80% do not accept it). Do you hear? How many years are you going to wander in the desert?
Moreover, these attitudes also change with age. Everything here depends on who will work with them and how, because no such picture existed 20 years ago, but now it does.
Now let us talk about how attitudes towards the de-Stalinization program depend on the respondents’ education level (Figure 29).
Among the respondents with an incomplete secondary education, 84.7% reject the program, while among those with higher education, that number is 92.1%.
We have survey results for people with an incomplete higher education (85% of them who reject the program), vocational education (89%), and secondary education (86.5%).
But among those who have a higher education, the number of people who do not accept the program is greater than in all other categories. Therefore, the whole notion that “ignorant people cling to Stalin; they are uneducated, dark idiots, but highly educated people want de-Stalinization,” is complete nonsense. It is quite the opposite.
If we talk about the degree of rejection of this program, then people with a higher education do reject this program most actively: -3.17. People with an incomplete higher education: -2.07. People with vocational education: -2.74. Secondary education: -2.42. Incomplete secondary education: -2.45.
Now let us talk about people’s position on the de-Sovietization and de-Stalinization program, depending on ethnicity. Is it really that important? But it is interesting, nevertheless.
Among Udmurts, Central Asian peoples, and Bashkirs, 70-80% of people reject the program. 85.3% of Jews reject the de-Stalinization program, and only 14.7% of them accept it. “Russian citizens, not otherwise specified” (the questionnaire included such a category) 85.5% reject, 12.7% accept. Next come the Buryats, Mordvins, Germans, Tatars, Ukrainians, and Chuvash, of whom 89% reject the program. Russians – 90% and 9.5%. Peoples of the Caucasus: Avars, Lezgins, Ossetians and others – 90.2% and 9.0%. Armenians – 90.8% and 9.2%. Georgians – 92.3% and 4.5%. Belorussians – 94.1% and 5.9%. Northern peoples: Nenets, Yakuts, Khanty, Mansi, Shorians, Evens and so on – 95.8% and 4.2%. Kazakhs – 96.3% and 3.4%. Azerbaijanis – 96.7% and 3.3%. This table can be viewed on our website.
The average degree of rejection is as follows. Buryats: -1.85, Germans: -1.91, Jews: -2.0, Armenians: -2.23, Tatars: -2.38, Caucasians: -2.6, Chuvash: -2.72, Russians: -2.89, Kazakhs: -2.99, Belorussians: 3.37, northern peoples: -3.38, Mordvins: -3.42, Ukrainians: -3.53, Azerbaijanis: – 3.54, Georgians: -3.88.
How are these results distributed depending on whether a person is employed in a large company or a state enterprise, if he is in the public service, the army, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, or if he is a retiree, a student, or unemployed?
Among the unemployed, 10% support the de-Stalinization program, and 88.9% reject it.
Among business owners, 12.2% support the program, and 87.5% reject it.
Among students, 14.6% support the program, 85% reject it.
Among workers employed by private individuals, 15.1% support it, and 84% reject.
Pensioners: 8.4% support it, and 90.7% do not.
People working individually: 8.7% support it, 90.9% do not.
People employed in the public service, army, and Ministry of Internal Affairs: 8.3% support the program, and 91.1% reject it. Now go ahead order these people, who do not support the program, to block the reactions of those who are also dissatisfied with it. They themselves are dissatisfied, and even to a greater extent than average among all the other segments of the population.
Employees in large companies break all the records: 7.7% support the program, and 91.9% reject it. The management of those companies does not support this program either.
State enterprises: 7.6% support it, 90.7% do not.
Let us continue. We have a wide data set from Russia’s regions, from the Volgograd region, where 85.6% of respondents reject the program, to the Kaluga region, where 98.8% of respondents reject the program. I repeat again that all of these data can be found on our website and read in detail. We will publish booklets, and work in every way possible to make these data the subject of discussion, to inform the widest segments of the population about these data. Those who we interviewed, their relatives and acquaintances, as many people as possible. Millions and millions of people need to know all of this.
Now let us discuss how people’s attitude toward the de-Stalinization program varies depending on the federal district they live in. Here, we have approximately (I emphasize – approximately!) the same picture as with the “red” belt and the “non-red” belt.
In the Far East, 11.3% of respondents support de-Stalinization. This percentage next falls to the Central Federal District, where only 9.3% support the de-Stalinization program. But even in the most, as I emphasize, non-communist, “non-red” regions, the degree of rejection toward this program is off the charts.
People who proposed this program and now keep forcing it down everyone’s throats, what are you doing? Come to your senses! If we wanted an explosion, we would tell you, “Keep going.” But we have a totally different goal, for we live in the same society. What are you doing? Now it is even clearer why Pushkov voted against it, Svetlana Sorokina abstained, why Payin and others were against it. Because there is simply sobriety of the mind and not the fanaticism that saturates these actions.
The degree of rejection for the program shows the same pattern: in the Far East, the de-Sovietization program has a mean rating of -2.48, but then the rejection increases, and it already reaches -3.12 in the Central Federal District.
These are the results of the program.
Now let us talk about what this means.
This means that our organization that we have created and named the Civil Alternative has shown to be a success. Those who have joined the initiative have not just limited themselves to watching my lectures, lying on the couch or posting on the Internet. A serious group of people (honor and praise be to them for this!), as they write about themselves, “went to the people”. And, incidentally, they obtained a great social experience, which they energetically talk about. As a result, we have received these data, which we managed to analyze over a short period of time.
And this means that we have created an intellectual weapon. Our intellectual arsenal has forged this weapon. And then we connected it to the media and struck. The weapon became a weapon not when we planned the survey, not when we completed it, not when we analyzed the data, but when a discussion took place with the supporters of de-Stalinization [http://www.5-tv.ru/programs/broadcast/506280/] on the program Open Studio (Channel Five, April 25, 2011). In this discussion, we could already use the preliminary results. We received the numbers at one o’clock in the afternoon, and the discussion took place at four o’clock in the afternoon. And de-Stalinizers turned pale. They realized that their situation had become dire. That everything is very serious.
We will, by no means, not stop here. All materials have posted on the site. We ask all of our supporters, those who sympathize with this undertaking, and those who did not find the strength and could not, for whatever reason (which we will always respect) to take part in the survey. Now, my friends, take part in the distributing these results. After all, you have to do something.
The question is not how many people are ready to sympathize with our undertaking. Thank you for the sympathy, thank you for reading our materials, and thank you for any other form of participation. But everyone wrote and said that they want to enter the core. And the core consists of those who create products and distribute them. Those who forge the sword and strike with it.
This is an intellectual war, there is no point in pretending that it is something else. You enrolled yourselves into this people’s militia. You have become volunteers. Go forward in the best way you can.
So, over the two hours that the Open Studio was on the air, we discussed the topic of de-Sovetization and presented the results that we have obtained. And today we are again discussing these results. Society will accept this information. Many people are watching us. We will publish it in the newspaper, publish booklets, hold press conferences, and we will also use methods of targeted familiarization with this information.
This is war. And war is war. Karaganov and company have declared war on our people. A war with far-reaching consequences.
We are the people. We are citizens who have accepted this challenge. And you simply will not pull off this trick. So, familiarize yourselves with what these materials look like in the year preceding the elections, and do not try to say that we constructed these materials without getting up from our seats. Don’t bother.
The de-Stalinizers looked pale, very sad and depressed, precisely because they knew perfectly well that I was not lying. I am not bluffing, I do not create myths, I am not engaging in manipulating consciousness – I want to know the state of affairs in our society. And not just myself alone, but all those who joined this poll. And we found out. This is the most objective data to be obtained over many, many years.
Do you not like the questionnaires, esteemed liberals? Do you want to suggest that we use some other research method? Go ahead. But make sure that it reflects the truth. You do understand that the very moment the political campaign begins, all of your attacks, this whole picture of 9 central points: “The people have nothing to respect themselves for after the last 100 years”, “all of Russia is one great Katyn” and so on, will all be brought to public attention. Public opinion will take shape in politicized conditions. Neither during the pre-election year, nor in general, with the Internet being widely available, will you be successful in selling your de-Sovietization program to your society, explaining that this is a program for commemorating the victims of repression and opening archives. Why do we even need a program to do this?
But this is not what you are talking about. You are aggressively proposing something different. You want to de-Sovietize your people. But the people do not want this. How are you even planning to go about it? With the help of repressions? What repressions? Do you plan to enlist the Army, Ministry of Internal Affairs and others, which oppose de-Sovietization by 90%? Do you want to abandon your facade of Democrats entirely? You are, however, fully aware of the huge cost this now entails… And most importantly, how can you pull this off in the pre-election year? Can you explain? According to the laws of reason this is called “checkmate”. Of course, nothing of the sort come to fruition. Of course, many will say that if you can’t, but you really want to, then you can. But at the very least, we are closing the page on claims that voting on television means nothing, for ourselves, for our supporters, and for broad civic groups.
These are the findings of the sociological study, which is very large and conducted professionally. Look at these data and on the data from television voting. They are practically the same. When I was leading the discussion in the “Open Studio”, these very same 87.5% said that they reject de-Stalinization. The same 87.5%.
Do not hope that apolitical groups within society will support this. Do not go looking for support in beer pubs, apartment complexes, shops, commuter trains, fitness clubs and other places. You will find no support there. Instead of support, you will find an abyss under your feet.
Come to your senses, if you are rational people. And if you are fanatics, then jump into the abyss that has opened before you. Jump, but do not drag the country behind yourselves. We will not let you do this. And we have enough quiet strength to accomplish this. We have calm, soft, reasonable strength, for we are on our own land. And we want to act so that our common home does not collapse. We shall act without excesses, gently, persistently, and reasonably.
De-Sovetization shall not pass. It shall not pass. Period.
Let me wish everyone a happy May 1st and an especially a happy May 9th, because May 9th is our great holiday, which the de-Sovietizers want to take away from us. And which, strangely enough, they themselves say should be considered as the main holiday.
If the Soviet Union and fascist Germany are two identical evils, then why should one rejoice at the fact that one evil crushed the other? After all, eventually (and this is quite clear) they will say that the Soviet Union was even the greater evil. They think so in Vilnius. Mr. Belkovsky thinks so. There are many others who think so. But we celebrate May 9th. Even if you do not celebrate, others will celebrate, throughout the woods, the fields, and the rivers – drinking, burning fires, and singing songs. And no one cannot change it now. It is an inescapable fact.
Our society is damaged. We have yet to reliably determine how badly it is damaged. It has been traumatized, but it is not dead. And no inversion has occurred. Our society is what it is.
Sergei Georgievich Kara-Murza said (and for a very long time, I stood beside him on this issue), that our people had been dismantled. It seems to me that the data we received from the survey is the first, albeit very approximate, answer to the question of whether the people had been dismantled. The people have not been dismantled. Damage and superficial changes are present. But what Mr. Rakitov called the core has not been dismantled. You failed to dismantle it over these 20 terrible years, and you will never dismantle it! Moreover, the processes will develop so quickly that there will be no time left for this dismantling. Very quickly, with the first stages of this de-Sovietization, such things will become apparent, that you will have cast this de-Sovietization aside, it will be necessary to focus on basic political stability. This is where everything is headed.
In addition to AKSIO, I would like to discuss Historical Dignity within the framework of this program. This movement’s aim is to ensure people’s’ right to an in-depth study of their historical heritage (Figure 30).
And the Anti-Defamation League. We call the attempts to equate communism with Nazism and equate the Soviet Union with Nazi Germany defamation. Moreover, we consider the myths about the number of victims of Stalinism, the horrors of Stalin and entire Soviet period to be defamation, horror stories about Soviet ideology and about how the Soviet Union and the Soviet people had fallen away world history, and so on. This is all defamation.
We propose the following.
How did the Americans (we have already talked about this) wage war against us? They created a voluminous text, a book, for each episode of our history. There were a great many of these books. Their counterparts here swallowed up these books and put them into restricted-access collections. Then the “closet dissidents” from the KGB or the party, the CPSU, read them in the restricted access reading rooms. They passed it all to the dissidents, who “memorized them by heart”. And then they poured it all out upon us … The ruling party opened the gates and made its media (which it had monopoly control over) into a channel for this dissident poison and into a special caliber intellectual weapon with which it shattered its own ideology, and inflicted a monstrous trauma upon our society … That is how our opponents did it.
We, among other things, did something similar, but with a completely different effect (the criticism of imperialism, etc.) … That is not what I am talking about now. Let us take a detailed inventory with the Anti-Defamation League all the attacks against us, all forms of defamation, and let us create a full body of texts in response, including the brilliant texts that already exist within it. We could have done nothing without help from historians: Alexander Dyukov and his center, Isaev and his center, other people to whom we are infinitely grateful, they are many. You all saw them in the program The Judgment of Time, Yuri Emelyanov and others. With the help of all these people, we managed to mount a response, we managed to bring the discussion into a rational key.
Let us then gather all the existing books, figure out what books we lack, help to create these books, and create them ourselves. We shall create a complete body of texts. One that will give answers not only to slander, although this is already a good approach, but also to our own questions regarding our history. I repeat, we need to calmly discuss everything for ourselves in a focused manner, as a doctor discusses the data about a clinical case. We want to fight; we do not want to create new myths. Those who lie need myths. We need the truth. Then let us create this truth; we shall identify all the sections of our history, which need materials to be created about them (Soviet history, first of all); we will analyze all this defamation, and we will respond calmly.
Since many of our remarkable historians have already been engaged in this for the past 20 years, or sometimes even longer, by no means do I suggest that we start with a clean slate. It is necessary to engage these historians in their work, to help them accomplish what they have not yet done, and to give it a certain systematic nature. And we must create from all of this a body of texts that will connect itself not to an enemy power, and not with the dissident movement, which plays the role of a “fifth column”, but with our new intellectual assets, who want to fight against future attacks, to wage an intellectual war, and to win the most important battle. The key is to win the most important battle.
It is bad when your territory is occupied. It is scary, terrible, and humiliating. God forbid that this would happen literally and in its final form. But this is still surmountable. The real horror is only when your mind and heart have been occupied. We can never allow this.
Liberation begins with the liberation of the mind and the heart.
The battle for minds is the main battle of the 21st century and, quite frankly, all others, as well. Moral destruction and the extinguished spirit: these are our enemies. What has been broken must be repaired, and the spirit must again be ignited. The identity that they have been trying to break all these 20 years (which, as you can see, they have failed to break) must be restored.
Then prerequisites arise for all other actions; otherwise, there we do not have them. Therefore, I propose to include the 46 Judgment of Time program broadcasts into Historical Dignity, to discuss these 46 broadcasts in greater detail, and to supplement them with additional materials. During these programs, many people called us and wrote us: “You forgot to mention this, that, and the other…” We must collect the necessary evidence, create a real historical knowledge base, and to lay the historical foundation in those areas, where it does not yet exist. We must offer this foundation where it exists, and where people do not fully understand that it is available. It is our duty to connect this new structure with activists, and to carry this truth to the masses.
Will we need for textbooks for this? Excellent. We will write them.
Will we need fundamental research for this? We will need to conduct it.
Will we need archival research for this? We must get it done.
We are in our own native land. We are many. And we are obliged to do this all, and to provide it all to our fellow citizens.
Have our activists made transcripts of the 46 multi-series Judgment of Time broadcasts. Yes, they have. Have our proofreaders checked them? Yes, they have. Did we post this to our site? Yes, we have [http://www.kurginyan.ru/publ.shtml?cmd=add&cat=3]. We want to collect Soviet data. Have we created a special portal for this? Yes, we have.
All this together is Historical Dignity. Of course, this is impossible without understanding the meaning of our history, without theoretical formulations and without formulations of a general character. But theoretical formulations will be carried out separately, to some extent, since this concerns our history and our historical dignity. We call such formulations comparative. We are told: “This certain villain killed oh so many people.” We ask: “And how many died because of wonderful people like Lincoln, or the great French leader Napoleon Bonaparte, or Cromwell, etc.?”. We also need this kind of research.
We need everything, which will help us continue and to expand the battle that we conducted in the Judgment of Time, to make it even more serious. It will help us eliminate hysteria and haphazardness from these battles. To act in a calm and interesting manner. To create television and film content about this. To provide not only reading material, but also films. Including the film chronicles of the Soviet era.
All this work is the work of the third block of the Civil Alternative we are creating. This is the work called Historical Dignity.
Having discussed this, I can move on to relevant politics. And I want to introduce you to a very interesting document that speaks for itself.
PART TWO. RELEVANT POLITICS.
This is a detailed statement not just by somebody, not by some conspiracy theorist, not some private individual, but by Paul Craig Roberts, former United States Assistant Secretary of the Treasury.
Paul Craig Roberts is a competent and respectable person by any stretch of the imagination. And his judgments cannot be dismissed. He gave this interview to the Iranian Press TV. But the question here is not to whom he gave his interview, but what he said in it. It seems to me that since we are engaged in relevant politics, we need to look closer and closer into the logic that the events taking place in front of us are following.
So, here’s what Paul Craig Roberts, the former US Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, is saying: “We want to overthrow Gaddafi and Assad in Syria because we want to clear China and Russia out of the Mediterranean. China has massive energy investments in eastern Libya and is relying on Libya along with Angola and Nigeria for energy needs. This is an American effort to deny resources to China just as Washington and London denied resources to the Japanese in the 1930s.”
Is it a frank statement? By a serious person? This is interesting, our thinking people with liberal views and the like, are they not going to respond to these statements at all? Are they going to consider them to be fantasies? Everything here is said in a very dry and concrete manner.
The interviewer’s question: “What interest do they have in the Syria protests?”
The answer: “The interest in the Syria protests, which Wikileaks shows the Americans are behind — we are interested in that because the Russians have a large naval base in Syria and it gives them a presence in the Mediterranean. So you see that Washington is all for invading against Libya and is putting more and more pressure to intervene in Syria because we want to get rid of the Russians and the Chinese.”
– Are you saying the ultimate goal in attacking Libya is because of the oil factor?
– It’s not just the oil, (it is the former US Assistant Secretary of the Treasury answering, I emphasize for the third time, a high-ranking American official, not our conspiracy theorist, but a person of this sort. – S.K.), it’s the fact of China’s penetration of Africa and China lining up oil supplies for its energy needs. You may be aware that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has released a report that says that the ‘Age of America’ is over and that the American economy will be bypassed by China in five years and then the US will become the second largest economy rather than first. So one of the things Washington is trying to do is to block; to use its superior military and strategic capabilities at this time to block China’s acquisition of resources in order to make the development of the Chinese economy slow down.
(What a dry, explicit, Anglo-Saxon way to say it. Do you feel the steel chill of these words? -SK)
– Do you think (asks the interviewer – S.K.) Libya’s diplomatic isolation was the main reason for this military intervention?
– I don’t think it was the main reason (Mr. Paul Craig Roberts, former United States Assistant Secretary of the Treasury answers – S.K. ). The main reason I think was to evict China from Libya, which is what is happening. The Chinese had 30,000 people there and they’ve had to evacuate 29,000 of them. It’s also payback to Gaddafi for refusing to join the US Africa Command (AFRICOM). It became operative in 2008 and was the American response to China’s penetration of Africa; we created a military response to that and Gaddafi refused to participate — he said it was an act of imperialism trying to purchase an entire continent.”
That is the second reason. To make Gaddafi pay for refusing to join the US Armed Forces African Command.
“And I think the third reason is that Gaddafi in Libya controls an important part of the Mediterranean coast; as does Syria. So I think those two countries are just in the way of American hegemony in the Mediterranean and certainly the Americans don’t want a powerful Russian fleet stationed there and they certainly don’t want China drawing energy resources.”
Washington was caught off guard by the outbreaks of protests in Tunisia and Egypt, but quickly learned that they could use and hide behind Arab protests to evict Russia and China without a direct confrontation, they wouldn’t want that, so they’ve engineered these protests.
We know for a fact that the CIA has been stirring discord in eastern Libya for some time, this is a known fact. And the release of Wikileaks cables show that the Americans are involved in stirring up unrest in Syria… Probably the biggest risk and the one that’s being ignored is China’s attitude. The Chinese companies are losing hundreds of millions (dollars) from this intervention. They have 50 massive investments there all going down the drain and this is clearly perceived by China as an act against them. They don’t have any illusions; they don’t read the New York Times or Washington Post and believe all of that crap (meaning the New York Times and Washington Post – SK). So what they see is a move of the Americans against China.
– Are you suggesting that the Americans want to take out China and replace these investments with American companies?
– Or anybody, that’s right. And I think the Russians are beginning to perceive that the whole Syrian thing is a move against them and their base there. So what we’re really doing is antagonizing two large countries: China, which has an economy that is probably better than the US because their people have jobs; and the Russians have unlimited nuclear arsenal…
…NATO was formed to guard against the potential of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe. The Soviet Union has been gone for twenty years. Steered by the US and the Pentagon it has been turned into an auxiliary force and we now have NATO involved in an aggressive war in Africa. This is a war of aggression, a war of attack. ” And it should be such, says the former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, a representative of the American elite, an extremely competent person.
So, this is what he is saying. And what do we think about this?
Well, we, for one, believe that this is only one of the goals. The real goal, the most strategic one, is to reformat the world and turn it into a giant zone of non-development, around which there will be a small area of a very peculiar existence. What is called the “Golden Billion”. But in any case, our state, our authorities, and our society will face:
– First of all, extremely unfavorable new trends. New trends in world politics.
– Secondly, trends and processes inside the country, which very quickly, by 2017 as we believe, even if the current, calmest of trends continues, will lead to a situation incompatible with the state continuing to exist, as long as these processes continue.
– And thirdly, a different kind of domestic political problems. Because no one will calmly watch the existing system enjoy all the material and other opportunities resulting from its position of power. Many, both inside the country and abroad, intend to interfere with this.
And these three processes combined, these new world processes, will put special pressure on our country; after all, our country is not on the moon. It is subject to influence from all of this.
These internal processes: rising gasoline prices, the growing inflation, huge masses of people becoming impoverished, the predatory behavior of our capital, the growth of insight across a broad section of the population, and so on, discontent (this is a sort of inversion of attitudes regarding the post-Soviet period, which once attracted admiration, and triggers disgust), all of these processes, and simply political struggle, a struggle of forces, which will shape and channel this dissatisfaction along a catastrophic direction, separatist trends and many others; all of this together will lead to the following …
The entire existing framework will collapse one way or another under the pressure of these causes. It is like a rotting house. When it rots, and progressively pressure is applied on it, it does not matter which hand pressing on this house will crush it. Maybe someone pulls the shutter and the house collapses. Or someone sneezes; the house will collapse. The important thing is that the house is in this condition.
When it collapses, if by that time there does not arise what I call an attractor, a “mattress” upon which this falling stone will land, then there will not be a state, nor a people, there will be nothing.
Of course, we want to change the processes’ direction earlier, and we can also try to accomplish this. But we must either change the processes before the collapse, or we must lay down this “mattress” at when the collapse occurs. And these are strategic goals. All the other goals are purely tactical.
One cannot engage in politics without separating one from the other. That is the meaning of strategic issues and strategic challenges.
We must clarify them, and we must analyze them. We must accumulate material, and we must bring this material to our society. We must test ourselves; we must develop both theory and our capacity to act. That is what the situation is. All the rest is an attempt to create excitement in space that is nearly empty. I am not saying that we must not participate in this excitement. We must participate, for politics also lies in this.
I simply urge you to understand the difference between truly strategic tasks and all that is purely secondary, and in some sense superficial. Because we must use all our strength and all our possibilities to solve these problems. If we fail to do this, then we are no different from all the other political chatterboxes.
When I talk about war, and when I say that an intellectual, informational war is an opportunity to give people the data that we have obtained, to connect these data with the media, with a broad array of activists, who are ready to distribute these data, I want to remind you of the following …
When the SCSE [State Committee on the State of Emergency – translator’s note] made an attempt to prevent the country’s collapse in 1991, what did the SCSE members do about the media, first an foremost Central Television? They showed the ballet “Swan Lake”.
Can you imagine that Lenin, Trotsky, or someone else, having gained control over the television stations, would have shown a ballet? They would have spoken from morning till night, trying to convince people.
So, the people who can talk and persuade are the warriors, the knights of the information war. If these knights were there in 1991, and the State Emergency Committee would not not have been afraid of them talking, the war might perhaps not have been lost.
I remember before that the Vilnius tower, the Vilnius television center, which the army attacked and heroically took. Then they set GRU [Main intelligence directorate of the General Staff – translator’s note] Colonel, who started reading reports off a piece of paper. Well, to the credit of the GRU, I can say that they later evacuated the colonel. But it was beyond comprehension why it was necessary to take the tower so that someone could read reports with a dull voice off a piece of paper .
Informational war, intellectual war, and other kinds of war can decide the fate of the Fatherland to a significant degree over the course of the next few years. Try to correctly arrange the picture that the Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury suggested, in your head. Try to combine it all with other factors, and you will see that I am right. And if I am right, then the way we act is the only possible way. This is real action. All the rest is chatter, demagogy and cheap PR stunts. I used all of today’s program to tell you in detail about the massive action that we have carried out and what this action is has to do with relevant politics.
In the next program, I will devote most of the time to issues of political theory and issues of philosophy and ideology.
On this note, I conclude today’s program.
Source (for copy): https://eu.eot.su/2018/08/16/essence-of-time-chapter-14/
Essence of Time: The philosophical justification of Russia’s Messianic Claims in the 21st century
Sergey Kurginyan
Experimental Creative Centre International Public Foundation
Essence of Time is a video lecture series by Sergey Kurginyan: a political and social leader, theater director, philosopher, political scientist, and head of the Experimental Creative Centre International Public Foundation. These lectures were broadcast from February to November 2011 on the websites, www.kurginyan.ru and www.eot.su .
With its intellectual depth and acuity, with its emotional charge, and with the powerful mark of the author’s personality, this unusual lecture series aroused great interest in its audience. It served at the same time as both the “starting push” and the conceptual basis around which the virtual club of Dr. Kurginyan’s supporters, Essence of Time, was formed.
The book Essence of Time contains the transcriptions of all 41 lectures in the series. 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 get out of the systemic and global dead end of all humanity in all of its dimensions: from the metaphysical to the gnoseological, ethical, and anthropological. And as a result, out of the sociopolitical, technological, and economical dead end.
In outlining the contours of this dead end and in stressing the necessity of understanding the entire depth, complexity, and tragedy of the accumulating problems, the author proves that it is indeed Russia, thanks to the unusual aspects of its historical fate, which still has a chance to find a way out of this dead end, and to present it to the world. But, realizing this chance is possible only if this becomes the supreme meaning of life and action for a “critical mass” of active people who have in common a deep understanding of the problems at hand.
Dr. Kurginyan’s ideas found a response, and the Essence of Time virtual club is growing into a wide Essence of Time social movement. In front of our very eyes, it is becoming a real political force.
