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(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.
This is a specific and very large-scale action. This action will result in us gaining a much deeper understanding of the essence of the society that we live in. But our understanding is not only a means of charting a more precise course. It is also a means of influencing others. We can again convince decision-makers that certain decisions are absolutely wrong. Not only do they negatively influence the country (many of those decision-makers couldn’t care less about that), but they also have a terrible influence on the fates of the decision-makers, which as we know, is a much bigger deal for them.
So, we will gain an understanding of the country. We will chart the course for our own political ship more precisely. And we will exert influence on the people who make decisions, so that they would at least worry about their own political fate, which is not unimportant, because we must always have an impact on the decisions being made. At least to postpone the most dangerous events, which are all the while swiftly approaching Russia.
This is the purpose of the sociological study that we are conducting. We have already begun to conduct it. Thanks to all who agreed to participate. We can see that the number of people willing to participate in the study is by no means decreasing. The study will be much more complex, and therefore, interesting. This is regarding the specific action that we intend to execute.
Apart from this specific action, I can’t help but discuss this activity’s structure and goals in this section. In each new episode we will have to return to both structure and goals.
Discussion on this topic has started already. In the previous chapter, I discussed the role-based principle, on which the organization is built. Surprisingly, people grasped this in the most appropriate of manners, without any mutual misunderstanding. Nevertheless, I will further develop what I said in the previous chapter, first of all, because it is very important. And secondly, I need an initiative in response and thoughts from those with whom I am conversing through television. We need feedback and for people to think over and expand upon our proposals. We are not sending out directives, we are brainstorming, trying together to build a certain model, one that is new and appropriate for the times at hand. And no one but us is currently working to build it. Two principles appear equally bad… One is the principle of leader-centrism. Someone still has to manage the organization. As of today [June 2011 – translator’s note], there are about 10,000 people in organization, the Essence of Time virtual club. Someone has to manage them. This is hard work, and people have to understand that those who are managing them have some sort of prerogatives. Exactly what kind of prerogatives do they have? Either some absolute center, in the form of your humble servant and his associates, continuously gives directives to tens of thousands of people. Or the classical democratic principle is implemented: groups are created, groups choose their leaders, certain groups of leaders choose people to lead the leaders and so on, and a hierarchy comes into existence.A hierarchy can emerge form the bottom-up or from the top-down, and it would seem that there can be nothing else but a hierarchy like this. But it is categorically not so. Of course, a hierarchy that emerges top-down is worse than a hierarchy that emerges bottom-up. But a hierarchy that emerges from below, believe me, is also a hierarchy. And it carries the same ailments as a hierarchy that emerges from above. Any formal hierarchy within a new, young, and fresh undertaking is equally deadly. Elections of coordinators will start, first cells will emerge, then cells of cell coordinators and so on, then the undertaking will still die. Because bosses and subordinates will emerge. Those who command will say that the hardest work is to command, and they will stop working. We know how it goes! It has already been going on like this in our country for 20 years. And even before this, incidentally, many bad things were taking place, which had to do with exactly the same kind of things.
What has humanity invented, and what are we trying to use that no one has ever invented before? We do not want to reinvent the wheel; we are talking about role-based principles and about a network form for the organization. What does that mean? It means that people appoint themselves what they want to be. And then criteria emerge regarding how well they fit their role.
How does one select an area of activity? He looks and says, “I can only watch programs… I can be an activist… I can spread content… I can act as a consultant on certain matters… I can create projects large and small… I can try to organize certain actions.”
Someone wrote on Goblin’s site [Goblin is a nickname for the popular Russian blogger and movie translator Dmitry Puchkov – translator’s note]: “I was passing a small town, and I still see the posters that I put up. (He is talking about the results of the AKSIO survey.) Would you believe it, you still can see the number 89.7% from the bus!” The person was putting up posters. He didn’t even ask us about it. He just decided to take care of this himself.
All the hope lies in many people deciding to step in. That they would examine the list of relevant roles, which is flexible, since new roles may emerge, and people will say, “That’s what I’ll do.” The person has appointed himself the boss and the doer simultaneously. Or he shares the roles with a small group of people, who quickly distributed the roles among themselves and started to act.
That is not a hierarchy, like the district of city party committees. These are the nodes of role-based activity. One node has emerged now, tomorrow another one will form. People transfer activity between the different nodes. Everyone will probably agree that this is much more pure, reliable, and up-to-date, and that it has much more of a future, than creating some stuffy hierarchy from the very beginning, be it top-down or bottom-up. And when someone says that bottom-up is better than top-down, I agree that it’s better. But if this is all the same old garbage, then it does not become good just because it’s a little better, right? It is a better-quality horse-drawn carriage. But we need an airplane.
Next. Aside from role-based functions, there are also criteria. Does a person meet these criteria, and to what degree? These criteria have to be objective and forgiving. Everything depends on the person to the maximum extent. Sure, he has a resume: “I do this and that, I want to do this and that, and I see myself as this and that.” Then they tell him, “Well, prove that you can do it. Do you want to be one of the newspaper’s journalists? Write a text, or show us a ready one if you have it.” There are calm and delicate ways to assess the degree to which what a person wants matches what he can do. You surely understand that there can be nothing without it. Otherwise, a great multitude of people will want to be Hegels, but they can’t. All while they think they can…
There are people who want to engage in some rather serious and complicated work, but they aren’t ready yet. They say: “We want to…” That’s great that you want to, and we will help, teach, design courses, provide assistance, and two years from now, your claim will fit your capabilities But that’s in two years… What about now?
There must not be situations when chaos emerges. I would like to explain something to people who constantly talk about activity. One cannot simultaneously desire two mutually exclusive things: democracy without limits (when a person enters our information space and begins either to provoke, or to hysterically degrade everything we do, to organize conflicts between people, or just simply to interfere with the discussion), and comrade Stalin. That is no better than the situation I discussed in one newspaper article: when an anti-Soviet minded woman at her friend’s funeral suddenly starts quoting a line from the song: “If a death, then an immediate one…”, which tells the story of Komsomol members parting for the Civil War.
This is what I mean when I talk about a trauma of the consciousness. Do you see? The consciousness is incapable of understanding what it wants. This consciousness wants to have its cake and eat it too, but that is impossible. It is a ruined consciousness, overcome with caprices. It has to restore itself; it has to see how well it really fits its own demands.
And here I transition to the goals of our activity. The goals of our activity have the traits of recovering from a very serious illness. We have to heal ourselves and others from systemic ailments.
We are talking about restoring the worldview. We have to restore our own worldview, and we have to restore it in the people around us. I have already quoted this more than once: “Save yourself, and around you thousands will be saved.” We have to say today that the consciousness and the worldview have sustained serious damage. What is the essence of this damage, in my opinion? The essence of this damage lies in a severe historical inferiority complex imposed on our people. It was imposed on them. As a result of a catastrophe of meanings, a catastrophe of ideals, which representatives of our communist party elite organized in our country more than 20 years ago.
I don’t want to blame the entire party for this, nor even the whole of its leadership. We know exactly who did this. And we can say (unlike the dissidents, who are just singing another song): we will call out everyone who did this by their names. It was a catastrophe that was unprecedented in human history. It is fully comparable to a spiritual, an intellectual, and a mental Chernobyl, to the Fukushima catastrophe in Japan, or to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As a result, people ended up either injured by this explosion’s fragments, or exposed to various levels of its radiation.
We will not accomplish any political tasks if we do not restore norms and criteria. One of the most important criteria that we have to restore, for example, is honor. Very often (and I will focus on this later) people speak the language of dishonor. There are many other things that we have to restore.
I can give an example. Serious illnesses exist related to memory impairment or amnesia. One researcher dealing with these illnesses would meet with people suffering from such illnesses every day. He would “introduce himself” to them all over again; and when shaking hands, he would poke their hands with a needle. After a certain time, he would meet with them again. They didn’t remember him, so they would “introduce themselves to each other” again, but they didn’t offer him their hand. They were afraid to give him their hand.
It means they had a memory of the poke, but there was no recollection. They had forgotten by that time that he poked them. They didn’t remember him; they forgot that he poked them with a needle, but they retained some kind of fear. And they didn’t give him their hand.
The same thing is happening now to a significant part of our fellow citizens. Sometimes they partially recall something. It is as though they are walking in loops around their own historical past, and then they go off somewhere towards the consumer life. Then they come back. Then they wander off again. Then somehow they come back again, and wander off again… These loops periodically cross a critical point for us, the point of historical recollection, of historical responsibility, of historical appropriateness, the point where their values are found (fig. 40).
They cross it from time to time. They have yet to abandon it for some unknown direction, from where it would become impossible to bring them back. But they cross it every now and then. And we need to turn these endless loops at least into an orbit, preferably into a spiral that will return people closer and closer to the critical point. To give them back their own sense of dignity and historical perspective, to restore in them the sense of the ideal, of devotion, of honor. And of war. I remember Tsoi [Victor Tsoi was a rock icon in the late USSR, the leader and co-founder of the band Kino, whose songs were highly charged with nonconformism and the romanticism of spiritual war – translator’s note], who constantly sang about war as an absolute war. “The Earth. The Sky. There is a war between the Earth and the Sky!” And so on.
At one time 20-30 years ago, this sense of war still existed. I remember Vysotsky [Vladimir Vysotsky was a famous Soviet theater and film actor, and a singer and songwriter, whose songs were extremely popular among Soviet people of all ages and social strata – translator’s note], who always longed for war: “Kids from basements and from semibasements yearned to crawl with grenades under tanks.” The spirit of war has disappeared now. The readiness to fight for one’s ideals, for one’s honor, for all that one holds dear, has disappeared, because the very ideals, the concepts of honor and of all that one holds dear, have disappeared. If this will be restored, we will accomplish all political tasks. But if it is not restored, we will accomplish nothing.
Therefore, our goal is to combat regress in ourselves and in others, to restore the norms in relation to honor, the ideal, devotion, love, happiness, and to the sense of distinction between the madness of “to have” and the happiness of “to be”. If we solve these problems, which are not at all trivial, not even political, but much more complex, we will also solve all the political problems. Yes, we have to do this in parallel. Yes, this cannot be done outside of specific and relevant activity. So that is how we act. But we act within the flow of these goals and tasks. As of now no one has even set such goals before themselves. No one, do you understand?
Here I return to the difference between the program “Essence of Time”, one of the broadcasts of which you are currently watching, and the program “Judgment of Time”, that ran on federal TV. In “Judgment of Time” we attempted to mend the damage related to separate molecules of the historical consciousness. Look here: they’re lying to you about the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact [“German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact”, which was signed on August 23, 1939 in Moscow, after many so-called European democracies signed similar pacts with Nazi Germany. However, anti-Soviet propaganda puts exclusive blame on the USSR for “making an immoral deal with Hitler” – translator’s note], and here they’re lying to you about Stakhanov [Alexey Stakhanov is a legendary Soviet coal miner, a Hero of Socialist Labor, who came to symbolize the dedicated worker for several generations of Soviet people – translator’s note], and here they’re lying to you about Stalin, and here they’re lying about the SCSE [the State Committee on the State of Emergency was established by the members of the Soviet government on Aug. 19, 1991 as a weak and inconsistent attempt to oppose Gorbachev’s destructive course – translator’s note]! Here, here, and here, in each separate brick, in each molecule of your historical consciousness.
Now, in “Essence of Time”, we are talking about something different. We are saying that all of these things are building blocks for the perception of the historical destiny and the historical path. Because when one set of molecules or bricks of this consciousness are first broken, then another set, and then another set after that, then one suddenly says, “Oh, my God, but if it was so bad here and here, with Stalin, and with Alexander Nevsky, then what kind of people are we as Russians? What kind of historical destiny is this? We are cursed! To hell with this destiny!” And then he effectively is no longer a human being.
It is precisely this historical inferiority complex that turns a person into a half-animal. If someone manages to place this historical inferiority complex, this revulsion to one’s own historical destiny inside him, then it is all over. He will never again live a full life, for there is no identity, no dignity, and no honor. He is a slave, a helot, as the Spartans used to say. He will either think continuously about suicide, or he will blast into orgies of consumption, alcoholism, or drug addiction, or he can fall into a stupor. This is why I say the word “volunteers” － rescue the people from this!
The program “Essence of Time” focuses on the historical destiny as a whole: Russia’s historical destiny, her mission, her historical path, her prospects in the 21st Century. Has all of this vanished? Was this all insanity, a mistake, a thousand-year-long nightmare, from which we need to awaken as soon as it possible? Or was it something else?
The key concept here is the “alternative model of development”. What is the Russian alternative model of global development? What can we compare it to? How can we understand its meaning and its purpose in the 21st Century? How can we understand the real nature of this phenomenon, while avoiding both self-abasement and idiotic paroxysms of apologetics? Why it is so tremendously important today? Why is on the right side of history? What does it all mean?
With this goal in mind, I will allow myself to switch to the language of metaphors. The Russians are the world’s only people who, due to many circumstances, each of which requires a separate analysis, have created a clumsy, crooked, and imperfect, “goat of development”. They got up onto this goat and somehow managed to ride it. Groaning, falling down and getting back up, it kept going. Alongside galloped the genius “western stallion”. “The genius stallion” which was groomed by the great Roman law, the great ideas of progress and humanism, and God knows what else. And don’t tell me that it was “the pale horse” of the Apocalypse. It was an excellent stallion.
And finally, the Russians were told: “Look, you are riding some clumsy, ugly goat; it bleats, it’s stubborn, sometimes it moves forward, sometimes it doesn’t, and sometimes it falls down. Look at this stallion here! Cast aside this goat, get onto the stallion, ride it, and you will ride on and on… Oh, what joy it is to ride the great stallion of real development, of Modernity!”
At exactly the moment when the Russians got off their goat, gave it a kick, and the goat ran off somewhere bleating… BAM!!! The stallion kicked the bucket and dropped to the ground. Then the Russians said, “And what are we supposed to do with it now? How are we supposed get on it?” It turned out that they can’t get on it. It turned out that the stallion had kicked the bucket for good. Forever. And that there is no other mechanism of development except for the goat that they kicked, and which ran off bleating somewhere into forest. And it’s the Russian goat. And the Russians are the ones who have to find it, understand it, harness it, and ride. And everyone else will ride too, because there will be no development if we don’t manage to move. That will no longer be life. It will be hell. That is not Man anymore. It is not humanism. It is something terrifying.
Therefore, there is no use in endlessly engaging in self-deprecation and bashing the goat for being clumsy and crooked, for bleating, and for not moving perfectly. The stallion is magnificent, but it is laying there, dead. This is the gist of the issue.
The worst thing about it is that we insulted the goat, kicked it, and drove it off into the forest exactly when the stallion kicked the bucket. And the Russians now are further from this goat than anyone else. The entire world is chasing after the goat. Everyone is running through the forest calling: “Little goat, little goat! Where are you, little goat? Come over to us!” Very prominent Western players are saying and writing that in 30 years, when the West will implement all that the Russians have rejected, the Russians will howl with horror, if they will even still be alive by then. But we did reject it! And how can we rebuild our relationship with our goat? On the one hand, it would seem to be ours! But on the other hand, we are the ones who kicked it away and spat in its face…
The purpose of the Essence of Time movement is to rebuild the relationship with the goat, to be first ones to find it in the forest, and to convince it to come back and keep going. It is upset and bitter. It is a sacred goat. I won’t say it is the Dionysian goat, or some other kind, but it is very important. And maybe it will later turn into a racehorse, or whatever else… No one knows. But now the task is to save this goat. Because someone wants to slaughter the goat before its necessity will become apparent to all of humanity. Because humanity, or to be more precise, part of humanity, keeps running somehow around this stallion. They don’t ride it anymore, but they run around it saying, “What a great stallion!” One part of them still believes that it will stand back up. That it is just tired and fell asleep, but it will wake up and will keep running. The other part of them is getting situated in a world with no development at all.
Do you understand the horror and the scale of the historical disaster that has been constructed?
Insults are still being hurled at this goat.
They are telling the Russians, “Since you’ve been riding that goat for centuries, and maybe even for millennia, then in order to ride the stallion, you have to spend about a hundred years being reeducated on a reservation. You need to be de-Stalinized, de-Sovietized, de-totalitarianized, and de-russified. So you can stop smelling like that goat. Then you can mount the stallion.” Meanwhile, the stallion lays there, dead. And everyone can see it.
Let us talk about how we are structuring our movement. I have already spoken about functional roles, so let’s work through them in greater detail and honestly answer for ourselves the questions: “What have I done?”, and “What do I intend to do?”, “What can I do?” We are not going to put together any special rituals on the matter. It is better if 10% of people lie, than if we organize everything in a way that 90% of people will become bored. Those who want to work will do so. As time goes on, people who want to work will keep joining us, and those who do not will fall away. We will figure things out amongst ourselves.
In most cities in our country, the number of people who have joined the Essence of Time virtual club does not exceed one hundred. This hundred is a regional cell. There are certain functional roles within it. But this is an entire regional cell. The situation is a bit different in Moscow and St. Petersburg, because more people are there. Perhaps later there will also be more of them in other places. In this case, they will have to split into smaller groups as a community. Until people begin working through the materials, until they learn to communicate with each other, until they become teams of like-minded people, until this all begins, we will not move forward. For places with very many people, with thousands or several thousand people, like Moscow and St. Petersburg, we need to think even more precisely about how to form these groups. How to create a circuit of these groups, how to coordinate these groups, and everything else. Democracy is essential in such cases. The most important thing is for it not to turn into mob rule or into careerist games. People have to quickly figure out who is coordinating whom, and they need to build functional relationships, because there is nothing to fight over!
And we will never let the viruses of today’s abomination inside of our movement. Because we consider life the way it is now to be an abomination. Otherwise, we would not be talking about regress or about catacombs. There will be no fighting over resources or positions here. We will have none of it, period. I don’t know for sure how to achieve it, but I know for sure that I will achieve it. I will do so because I see this movement as possibly Russia’s last chance. And I take this not just seriously, but seriously to the ultimate and utmost degree. And I ask for help in this. Things will develop nonlinearly, and we may face both new opportunities and new problems.
People are saying already that there will be new television programs… I have no desire to comment on all of this. Let Mr. Svanidze and others talk about it. Who knows what will happen? They may appear, or they may not. If the opportunities arise, we will use them; and if they do not, we will proceed down the path we have determined. Will hardships arise? “As a hammer shatters glass, it forges steel blades.” [referring to Pushkin’s poem “Poltava” – translator’s note] Someone will step away, but someone else will come; but most importantly, hardships, like any other challenges, bring people together when they have a greater purpose.
One more issue related to activity. We have decided to hold a summer school. Depending on the situation, we will hold it either at the end of July or in the beginning of August. It will be one week long. We promise to those who live far away and cannot come (from the Far East, Siberia and so on), that one year from now we will begin to hold regional schools. It will be much easier for them to gather there. We will certainly do this; we will gather people and teach them. Gather, unite and teach them. We do not want to use people, to milk them; instead, we want to give. There is no greater happiness in life than giving.
This is a giant machine. We will take the organizing work upon ourselves; but as I already said, and what I categorically insist on, there will be no dubiousness related to commercial issues in our movement. You will travel at your own expense, you will pay for everything related to boarding, and we will try to make everything extremely cheap. All that we assume responsibility for is organization and the intellectual output. We are not collecting money on an account like Mr. Navalny does, nor are we looking for sponsors, because we know that whoever pays the piper calls the tune. We take our share of the common labor upon ourselves. Some of us have already spent many hours looking for places and negotiating with local administrations. Other people are preparing the content, so real learning can occur. You will do the rest. This must all be extremely ascetic.
I will live in the same conditions as everyone and eat the same food as everyone. And all my staff will do what everyone else is doing. It will be a situation of extreme equality in all things and extreme asceticism. We all know where any other way leads to. It leads to Seliger [referring to the state-sponsored camp for pro-government youth movements on Lake Seliger, which has been criticized for commercialization and hedonism – translator’s note]. Does anyone want to go there? Go right on ahead! We’re going a different way.
Incidentally, who else is going a different way? I’m not talking about officials. Mr. Navalny is, who has promised that they will also prepare a school of their own. But they will prepare a school for demolishing the government, as Mr. Navalny says. Direct you attention towards this. It is a very serious issue. Pay attention to the fact that a new US ambassador, Mr. Michael McFaul, is set to arrive in Moscow. This is a very serious figure, who doesn’t just arrive to any country for no reason. Pay attention to all of this. For things are not just brewing. They are already boiling over.
We are gathering a summer school for the purposes that we have indicated. We will teach people to fight against regress, with the process of turning people into animals, with fragmentation into small groups. We will teach people ideological synthesis and all forms of struggle. We will arrive at the kind of struggle that Mr. Navalny talks about only in the event that a new state-organized national self-destruction will be attempted, like with the dismantlement of the Soviet Union. At the very moment when a scenario like that or like in Egypt or Libya will begin, we will interfere as extremely loyal citizens to prevent the country’s disintegration. That is all. We do not intend to interfere with anything in any other situation. I will strictly deter any attempt to jump the gun here. If anyone wants to do that, their place is with Navalny or Limonov. But not here, got it?
My friends and I recently visited Krasnoyarsk on invitation from State Duma member Vladislav Grigorievich Yurchik. We stayed there for several days, had many meetings, and spoke with newspapers and on television. We spoke a great deal about the substance of what is happening. I will discuss this in greater detail in the next part of this program. Now I will say only one thing. Only after my visits to Leningrad and Krasnoyarsk, and after meeting with members of the club in Moscow, did I realize to what extent the Essence of Time virtual club is a fantastically novel phenomenon. How novel the people are, who are gathering behind this program, behind the program of searching for “the goat”, of restoring contact with it, and of saddling it up. These people are new, intelligent, and self-disciplined! Now I can firmly state that the project had been established for real. And that we can all be proud of what is happening in Krasnoyarsk, Leningrad, and Moscow. As I hope it is happening in all the other cities and small towns, which I will certainly visit sooner or later.
I am going to Kazan next week. And we will constantly be moving around the country like this. This is a new kind of civic activity, which completely breaks my routine in terms of time and labor, but I will certainly accomplish it.
One more thing, since we are supposed to discuss the dissemination of ideas here. Television is the eighth element of the enormous map that I have drawn and which the second series of Essence of Time programs focuses on (Fig. 41).
Right here it says: “Books and Journals”.
The staff of our Experimental Creative Center and people very close to us have created and published the book Political Tsunami. Analysis of events in Northern Africa and the Middle East. This is a full-fledged book, created by the following team authors: Sergey Kurginyan as the team leader, Yury Byaly, Anna Kudinova, Irina Kurginyan, Vladimir Novikov, Vladimir Ovchinsky, Maria Podkopaeva, and Maria Ryjova. This book is unique, because no one has ever created a full-fledged book about ongoing events over the course of 3-4 months. Especially such complex events. We analyzed the material in April. After that we had to make sense of it and make it into a book. Then we had to edit and publish this book. And then to translate it into English and publish it in English.
We did all of this. All while producing Essence of Time, traveling across the country, figuring out where and what kind of camps and other places there are that can serve as the site for a summer school, and fulfilling our professional duties.
And so, we have published a book. This book is an intellectual weapon. Study it carefully; it is simple enough, yet serious. This is the first book, where we don’t want any special ideological bias. We want to prove to ourselves and to others what is really happening, with a mathematical dryness. We don’t want to play a rigged game to support some preconceived idea of ours. If there is really nothing special going on in the world, or if the United States is not behind of all these events, or if it does not support these events militarily and by other means, then we shall reject our idea. Please, let someone prove to us that this is not so. But we prove in this book quite undeniably, by using the statements of these very Americans and by examining the logic of these events, that it is so! And that there is no way out without “the goat”. The world has entered a dead end. “The stallion” has kicked the bucket. The new models for a world order are absolutely incompatible with life for Russia. Either we find “the goat” and save ourselves and the world, or we shall perish next to the dead “stallion”. A snake will slither out of this corpse, and bite us first. And then the rest of the world.
So here is the book Political Tsunami, and it is an intellectual weapon. We declare our intention to publish books and journals, and we are doing so. Just like have compiled a report on the AKSIO social survey, followed by distributing it among all of the country’s key organizations and all of its key individuals. Now distribute it throughout the masses. You came to work, and here is the work. We have done our part.
Now the time has come for this book. This is the very serious phase of our work. I am setting the following tasks.
First. Carefully familiarize yourselves with this book. This is several days of the work. Read it from cover to cover with a pencil. And then, with it fresh in your mind, think about it for at least half a day… no matter, on the sofa or in the woods… Think, is this the diagnosis or is it not? If the concept that we have presented is true, then what should I do personally, as a citizen of the country, and as part of humanity?
Second. Spread the knowledge you have attained through all means. Work with it, create content based on it. Supplement it, discuss it. This is a huge volume of work.
We will make sure that everyone will read this book. Its political purpose it elementary. All of the representatives of our political class, which has condemned “the goat” and is now standing next to the dead “stallion”, must understand that a reset is impossible. Because “the stallion” is dead, and for a number of other reasons, there is no possibility for compromise with those who are constantly talking about compromise. They are talking with only one purpose, to push us to our demise, just like during the first Perestroika.
There are no possibilities for compromise. Now there are none. We want them. Quite honestly, I was ready for many things, because I understood what the absence of compromise means. There are none. We prove this here mathematically to any literate person. And now I move to relevant politics.
PART TWO. RELEVANT POLITICS
Simon Shuster’s article “What Mediating in Libya Could Cost Medvedev” has been published in TIME Magazine [http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2075007,00.html].
Shuster writes that the United States has asked President Medvedev to convince Gaddafi to make a deal, and Medvedev agreed, sending Margelov to Libya.
“This is a surprise decision,” says Mr. Shuster, reminding that Margelov was appointed as special Russia’s envoy to Africa only two months ago. “’I am knocking on wood and crossing my fingers,’ Margelov told TIME while planning his departure on Tuesday. ‘But it‘s hard to guess what will happen…‘”
It would be better if he would knock on another thing, which separates homo sapiens from other species. It contains a certain device that our elite does not find terribly necessary, called the brain. Others say reason.
“I am knocking on wood…, but it’s hard to guess what will happen,” Margelov said in his interview to TIME on Tuesday.
Shuster: “In the best-case scenario, at least as the West envisions it, Gaddafi will finally cede power to the rebels…”
This is a replay of Chernomyrdin’s trips to Milosevic. When Clinton began to fail in Serbia, Chernomyrdin visited Milosevic. But Milosevic and Gaddafi are different people. I am positive that these are fundamentally different kinds of people. Luckily for humanity.
Shuster points that both NATO’s bombing and South African president Jacob Zuma had failed to convince Gaddafi… “It’s hard to see how Margelov’s chances would be any better, while the risks he alluded to in his April article have not gone away…”
“In the coming months, Medvedev will need to convince his political mentor, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, to let him stand as a presidential candidate in the 2012 elections,” assumes Shuster. I’m quoting TIME. Our pro-western lobby, our liberals love the foreign press very much. So, I’m just quoting, like a recorder. “In the coming months, Medvedev will need to convince his political mentor, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, to let him stand as a presidential candidate in the 2012 elections,” writes TIME Magazine. Not Mr. Kurginyan, but TIME Magazine!
“But Putin … has repeatedly stated that he wants nothing to do with the West’s adventure in Libya, which he likened to a ‘crusade.’ The majority of Russians seem to agree,” says Shuster. “So until last week, Medvedev kept Russia on the sidelines… But his position changed at the G-8 summit, … he signed the summit’s final declaration, which said Gaddafi … must give up power, and he agreed to U.S. President Barack Obama’s request to mediate in Libya.”
“This entails an incredible gamble,” writes TIME. TIME writes this! According to Margelov, Russian mediation will ultimately succeed. I quote, “We have not burned our bridges…” Margelov, our senator says this! Just listen for this… “We have not burned our bridges with either Gaddafi or the rebels, and this is the wonderful product we have to trade on the political market.”
Did you hear that or not? This language of abomination. Do you hear?
“This is the wonderful product we have to trade on the political market.” Are Gaddafi’s murdered grandchildren the product that Margelov will trade on the political market? He said this, but the Libyans haven’t read it? What does this envoy of ours think people are?!
Then TIME reflects the views of German expert Alexander Rahr, who points out that Russia “may be angling to grab a bigger piece of Libya’s oil wealth.”
He who acts as a concentrated abomination and who publicly speaks this not even in a criminal but just inhuman language in front of the rest of the world, thereby insulting our national dignity, will get a giant bag of nothing, not Libya’s wealth.
So, Alexander Rahr points out that Russia may be angling to grab a bigger piece of Libya’s oil wealth. “But,” I quote TIME, “Medvedev’s involvement in Libya still opens him up to accusations of acting like a Western stooge ahead of the elections — about the worst insult a Russian leader can face.”
According to Shuster, the odds for Russian mediation being successful look slim.
And now Rahr adds, “Gaddafi will understand that Russia has no role to play here except as a postman for the West.” A German writes this! Do you feel this German slap, fair in this case, in our national face? “That is not the image Medvedev wants while heading into these negotiations in Libya — or into next year’s elections at home,” says Shuster.
Then, I open Mikhail Margelov’s article “The Arab World is Changing”. [http://www.ej.ru/?a=note&id=10931]. And what do I see?
“A part of society believes that all of the events in North Africa and Middle East are surely the result of a Zionist-Masonic conspiracy, plotting by the CIA, and secret geopolitical reasons. Including Libya. And the goals of those who are actually rebelling are inevitably removed from consideration.”
The goals of Al Qaeda are not being removed from consideration, Mr. Margelov! You, unlike many others, understand everything. And it aggravates your liability for every word you say. “Judging by the confusion that took hold of western leaders after the events began in the region, it is unlikely that the West had arranged them.”
Western representatives themselves are telling in our book Political Tsunami about how the West prepared these events. And if Mr. Margelov as a specialist uses the word “unlikely” here, then he needs to back to MGIMO [Moscow State Institute of International Relations – translator’s note] and study there, resigning from his other duties.
“If the US was inciting the revolts, then the Americans and their allies would have be acting fastidiously, even before the demonstrations began. But so far, bombings of Libya resemble a spontaneous reaction to something unexpected…”
Something unexpected? What do you mean?
There is “no need to look for American oil interests in Libya… the scale of fossil fuel production is way too small.”
Are you saying is nothing else in the world besides fossil fuels? And did Margelov’s acquaintance Mr. Craig not describe his country’s interests there? Did he not say that the Americans are fighting a great war with China on this territory [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R64IEOBWFQc…488FD6E0E77CE2C]? Everyone who disagrees with the idiotic sentences of people who are engaged in selling their dignity with their tails between their legs must be supporters of Zionist-Masonic conspiracy theories or God knows what else. Mr. Margelov has chosen his destiny within the political class! No one forced him to do it!
Then he begins to talk about how exactly US geopolitics will be undermined if things go differently in Libya, Yemen, or elsewhere. Mr. Margelov, are you so concerned about US geopolitics? Then go become a US senator and a special envoy for Mr. Obama! And then preoccupy yourself with US interests! But if you are our country’s senator and you represent our country’s interests, then talk to us about our geopolitical interests.
As I have already said many times over, the essence of what is happening is objective circumstances exist, which the United States cannot change. They can’t force their people to work for ten times less; they can’t suddenly make them more intelligent; they can’t make their people agreeable to mobilization; they can’t do anything about their desire of comfort, and can’t change their demographic or economic structure. All of these objective circumstances demand from the US that it give up its hegemony. But an American, or more broadly, an Anglo-Saxon does not surrender hegemony at the in response to objective circumstances － he destroys these objective circumstances. This is the great characteristic of this civilization, of this world, to be more exact, for I dislike the word “civilization”.
This world, when someone tells it that objective circumstances demand that it give up its hegemony, declares, “Since objective circumstances demand that I give up hegemony, then I will destroy these objective circumstances.” How? Through overwhelming military superiority. Through the printing press, which ensures this military superiority. While the military superiority forces the dollar down the throats of anyone who doesn’t agree, including African leaders, aircraft carriers force these empty paper scraps, which are simply printed, down the throats of anyone who says, “I don’t want it!” And suddenly all the faces turn happy.
And finally, there is such a thing as a soft power, the opportunity to facilitate all kinds of “democratic” revolutions.
Then all of these circumstances become triune, and the dots become a triangle. The mob declares that it has rebelled. They begin to support it as the only legitimate force, because they are the ones who cause it to rise up. Then aircraft carriers provide support for the mob, while the money provides support for the aircraft carriers. And the circle closes on itself.
There is no ground for compromise in this situation. There is no ground for compromise when errand boys from the OSCE demand that we be removed from the list of victors in the Second World War. Because when they remove us from the list of victors in the Second World War (and this is the essence of de-Stalinization and everything else; no one cares about Stalin. Every citizen of the country must understand this), the next step will be to finish us off. This is the situation we face.
In this situation, we pose the question bluntly. Everyone who is really loyal to our national interests, to Russia’s strategy, will not behave like Mr. Margelov. He will honestly say that such behavior is unacceptable. If someone insists on this, then he will resign. If they offer him de-Stalinization, then he will leave the Council that puts de-Stalinization on the agenda. And he will ultimately prevail.
Trust me. I wasn’t born yesterday. Such a person will prevail, and everyone else will cloak themselves in shame, seeking pragmatical profits but finding nothing but this shame. They will ultimately get nothing, just like Gorbachev and many others. Even if they temporarily gain something, there are such things as the people’s memory, and those who have passed who are looking down at us, and honor, and duty… Some people believe that there is another world, where every molecule of filth will find retribution. And let no one think that we lack the capacity to distinguish between filth and honor.
Yes, the world of regress, the world of abomination, is a world without honor. But only certain people lack it. When no one with honor is left, life here will end. And we will not allow these viruses to multiply. We will not allow the number of people losing their honor to increase. We will not allow you to teach dishonor to the people day and night! We will not let you do this. This is the meaning of our war, intellectual otherwise. In case you want to unleash another kind of war.
Now I will move to Political Theory with practical examples. With examples from our trip to Krasnoyarsk.
PART THREE. POLITICAL THEORY
We need to accomplish some assembly, some sort of synthesis, but we are undertaking it in a certain situation. The tragedy of current situation lies in the crisis of the entire global left-wing worldview, which has rejected Marxism, which has failed to evolve Marxism to the necessary extent, and which has failed to find any new alternative to take its place. The left-wing worldview exists in a state of misery; and until we lead it out of this state of misery, there will be no assembly.
Our task is enormous. But we do not have the option of not accomplishing it, because if we fail to accomplish it, we will not gather the necessary forces. If we fail to gather the necessary forces, we will not be able to reverse the situation. And if fail to reverse the situation, we will perish. Therefore, we will accomplish this task.
When we speak of the Fourth Project, of building the future, of Supramodernity and everything else, we are striving to exactly this end. But this task has both purely intellectual overtones and overtones of practical activity. It is very important for us now to consider not only what comes from the mind but also what comes from action.
What did I see when I came to Krasnoyarsk? I saw an excellent, very high quality, calm, confident, and functioning structure of Essence of Time. But if only this structure existed, then the political theorem would be too simple: just live, and keep developing yours structures, and so on. Let’s say there are up to a hundred people in a structure. Or seventy-eighty, it doesn’t matter. Well, let say there would be two hundred.
But apart from the structure of Essence of Time, which is going to search for “the goat”, to saddle it up, to ride, and to figure out why it indeed is good (and this structure is ready to act, and it consists of people with a certain level of political skills, maybe not yet sufficient, but still quite a high level), there are also the vast unsatisfied left-wing masses. People often rebuke me for saying something about Mr. Zyuganov [the leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) since 1993 – translator’s note]. Well, I have been saying things (a tiger can’t change his stripes) for the past 17 years, making predictions about what will happen, and I end up being right every time. But I will not make things too acute in the wake of the coming elections, unless really vile things start taking place in the left-wing movement, which is also possible.
But for now, I will be delicate like never before, so I will say one simple thing… That Leningrad City Committee, or the Leningrad party organization to be more precise, was destroyed not by Kurginyan, but by Mr. Zyuganov. And it was not Kurginyan who destroyed the Moscow party organization, but Mr. Zyuganov. And thousands of discontented people in Krasnoyarsk with communist and Soviet convictions are unhappy with Mr. Zyuganov not because Kurginyan is unhappy with him. They don’t care about Kurginyan. There is no way to blame Kurginyan for this. They are unhappy with Zyuganov for very different reasons, and that is the sad part. These are reasons having to do with Mr. Zyuganov’s behavior and with the behavior of his closest associates. It is up to them if they want to violate their party’s charter, but they are violating the logic of events.
When they lose hundreds of thousands of people who love them, who love their idea, they surely understand that they cannot incarcerate or execute hundreds of thousands of people. These hundreds of thousands of people are their compatriots, free people, and these people want to self-organize around Soviet values. Is there any way to forbid these people from doing so? God willing, these forms of self-organization will treat Mr. Zyuganov most delicately. But people want to self-organize according to their own judgment. And if they see something as negative, they will self-organize negatively towards it. What can you do about this? Can you keep them from self-organizing, and believe that this self-organization is the result of evil forces plotting against of the great CPRF?
Gentlemen from the CPRF leadership, snap back to reality! What do you want from people? They are searching for meaning and for ways to organize themselves according their mindset. Perhaps, they will vote for the CPRF at the polls, because they are people with Soviet, communist principles, or maybe they won’t. But they will never come back. But they will come somewhere!
Now, thanks to comrade Yurchik and other comrades, I am meeting with this audience. This is an audience that I know very well through the Zavtra Newspaper. This is the audience of Judgment of Time. This is not the audience of Essence of Time. People came all over from remote cities, from small towns, from villages deep in the forest, from 300-400 km away. They are burning, do you understand? They are burning with a certain passion. They have been humiliated, and they want to act. They want to stand fast for their values. They do not have internet. Sometimes, due to their personality, they are not very keen on using it. I don’t use a computer either, to my own shame. Yes, there are many people like this. But they are self-organizing!
There are two kinds of elite. The first kind is one we don’t need, which after seeing that there is some kind of success, wants to feed off of this success. And the second kind, which I have unexpectedly run into, is kind of like Vereshchagin from The White Sun of the Desert [The White Sun of the Desert is an iconic “Eastern” movie about the Civil War in Central Asia, where one of the main characters is a retired Tsarist customs officer named Vereshchagin, who makes an existential choice to help the Red Army soldier Sukhov in his ultimate fight with the former feudal lord of this region, Abdullah, who has turned into a gang boss, – translator’s note.]. Abdullah says to him from one side (I do not remember exactly, so maybe I will repeat it not quite precisely), “You have a good house, a pretty wife… What else does a man need to meet old age?” But Sukhov says from other side, “’Peacocks’, you say? Hah!”
And this Vereshchagin suddenly goes berserk. He does indeed have a good house, some peacocks, a wife, and so on. But he climbs aboard a ship, begins to steer the wheel, and lets out a phrase from the inside, which is magnificent in its lack of sense, “You know me, Abdullah. I don’t takes bribes. I’m offended for the sake of the state!” It’s unclear what state he is talking about. There is nothing, if you think about it. There is a Civil War going on. But he says it because he suddenly realizes that life has a meaning, that life contains in itself the ideal, that there is something in the life, for the sake of which it is worth looking differently at your house and at your comfort.
There are people like this, and we see them as welcome participants in the struggle against the regress. Those who are looking for profits must know that the door will be closed tightly for them. But the road is open to those who are searching for meaning here. And people like this also exist.
A certain political theorem emerges from all of this. Members of Essence of Time, think about this. Because you need both energy and caution here. Protect yourselves, because you are a social phenomenon that has not matured yet, but which is already established, and which is very important for Russia. Go to the others, without dissolving yourselves in them, and with the understanding that you already exist in the practical process, that you have already matured, no matter how young you are. But go, go to the people who are searching for Soviet meanings. And bring the truth to them. Organize them, now matter how much they love or don’t love certain communist party bosses. They are people who have the right to self-organize, to have values, and to have meaning.
Build a complex system around all of this; it’s an equation with multiple unknowns. And do not dissolve yourselves in it under any circumstance. Grow yourselves, and don’t dissolve. Did you hear me? For you are already a factor. Build a dialogue with others without limiting yourselves to the left-wing. Build a dialogue with everyone. And while you build a dialogue with everyone, evolve yourselves. This is both politics and political theory. Because there is no moving forward outside of these politics and this political theory. Such is our life. Stalin used to say, “I have no other writers for you.” [Stalin said this to communist functionary and head of the Writers’ Union Dmitry Polikarpov, in response to Polikarpov’s complaints about certain prominent authors’ questionable behavior. – translator’s note] I have no other era for you, no other country. We have what we have. Think. Think, think, and think again. You are already mature, and you really are not politically weak people. Think like adults.
You know, once upon a time, almost a hundred years ago, those who were taking action in this country were on average younger than you are. And there is no reason to think that they were rocket scientists. They were less educated than you are. They accomplished a great feat because it had to be done. You will do it, too. You will certainly accomplish it if you will not give in to the temptations of regress and abomination, the temptations of everything that is boiling around you. The temptations of everything that the enemy has planted. The temptations of everything that is incompatible with our national life. We need to banish all of these things and keep working, because one of those temptations is not to work, but to lie on your couch pouch and lament the horrible state of everything that is happening, and to cry about how weak you are. You already have plenty of strength! And you will have even more.
PART FOUR. POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
As for political philosophy, which comprises the Part Four, think about the “goat” and the “stallion”. About this very clumsy Russian “goat” of development, to which will yet return many times. About the greatness of the tragic Russian destiny, from which they want to turn you away. Think about it and about this “stallion”. Do not curse the “stallion”. There is no need to curse the “stallion”, which is so beautiful, so magnificent, so big… and so dead.
Think about this “goat” and connect your thoughts not only with the symbol and the metaphor. I’m talking about a big political theory, a theory of development, a theory of Russian development, which is exactly what was guiding Russians over thousands of years, what had brought them to an Empire, what shaped the specifics of the Empire’s development for several centuries, and what gave rise to the Soviet Union. Without which Russian meaning and Russian life are impossible.
Think about it, develop it, bring it to the people – and we will prevail.
Source (for copy): https://eu.eot.su/2019/12/19/essence-of-time-chapter-19/
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.
