1
(Links to previous Chapters are available here: Volume I, Volume II, and Chapters 21, 22, 23, 24)
July 19, 2011.
So, my interview “Why We Cannot Allow Russia to Collapse” was posted on the official website of the People’s Council All-Russian Social Movement, and it has already infuriated the people who call themselves national democrats. So why did it make them so mad? Were they enraged because some “monster” called “Kurginyan” is beginning to condemn nationalism again?
Not at all! If I were to start condemning nationalism, saying that nationalism is a crime, how it is close to fascism, and so on, not only would these people not be outraged, they would admire it. That is, they would express the mandatory outrage… They would say, “Look at what scoundrels are coming after us… How good we are… How they trample us… Wisen up, oh Russian people, and come stand in our ranks to repel these cursed forces!”
But that’s not what happened. This fury to the point of shrieking, came in response to the right words.
“We are not at war with the nationalists,” I said, and I’ll say it again and again. I may have some fairly significant differences with the People’s Council on some issues, but that is irrelevant right now. It is much more important that both the People’s Council and Essence of Time, on behalf of which I engage in dialogue with the People’s Council, are equally committed to the unity of the Russian historical destiny and, most importantly, the idea of the indivisibility of our territory and how it is categorically unacceptable to have yet another reduction of the stump that our historical Russia has been turned into. Members of the People’s Council and all those who are united in Essence of Time all understand that this cannot be allowed to happen. That this will be the historical end of Russia. That territorial integrity is now the axiom of any patriotic movement. That it can’t be sacrificed once again without bringing about the end of Russia. We understand this. We are united. And in this sense, we have extended our hand to the nationalists, and they have accepted this hand. We shall work together.
That’s what causes such fury.
First, because forces were found that are willing to at least work together in defense of territorial integrity (which is now seen as an extremely important task). Second, because the right words were spoken. As Confucius said, one must give things their proper names and say them in all the marketplaces. So, this is what I’m doing: I’m giving things their proper names.
And I call those who call themselves national democrats (in accordance with their own perceptions) shrinking nationalists, national-liberoids, or liquidationist nationalists, contrasting them with normal nationalists, who would never dream of Russia being destroyed again. About another allegedly liberating catastrophe, which will become the country’s historical end, which every reasonable person understands. The question for every nationalist is not whom they love and whom they do not love. This question (“I love vs. I don’t love”, “a scoundrel vs. not a scoundrel”) is mundane, while the time has come for politics. Politics involves evaluating slogans, appeals, stratagems, and so on.
So, I read into the stratagems and slogans that Mr. Belkovsky’s interview with APN Severo-Zapad, titled “No need to fawn over the Russian Federation’s territorial integrity,” is full of. [http://www.apn-spb.ru/publications/print8878.htm].
So, we are “fawning”; in other words, we are saying that we must protect the Russian Federation’s territorial integrity. We also say that it is necessary to change the country’s course and all of its strategic constants. And we say that only then territorial integrity can be saved. Furthermore, we say that Russia must transform into the country which it was before these shameful past 20 years. And that it will be a country in which the unity of historical periods will be ensured by the highest ideological synthesis. This is what we say.
What does Belkovsky say? We do not demand that everyone follow us in unison and say what we say. We simply ask: “Should we protect territorial integrity or not?” “Don’t fawn over it,” is another way of saying that he doesn’t care about territorial integrity, that territorial integrity should be violated. Belkovsky says that it should be violated.
Now we ask the other nationalists … No matter what they think of us and no matter what scolding words they call us, we treat these scolding words with warm irony and nothing more. We don’t care about praise or scolding. We are interested in political assessments and nothing else.
We ask: do they – the other nationalists – also believe, along with Belkovsky, that we should not defend the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation?
We understand that they, like us, are unhappy with the country’s current direction. This is understandable.
We understand that they think we should change course. We think so, too.
We both acknowledge the destructiveness of the existing course, the course that Russia has followed for the past twenty years. We may differ in our assessment of what this destructiveness is, but we equally recognize this course as harmful.
But what does territorial integrity have to do with the harmfulness of the course? Why should I, figuratively speaking, cut your legs and arms off to get you to walk in a different direction? If I cut your legs and arms off, you will crawl, and not necessarily in a different direction, maybe in the same one… Or someone will drag you with a rope… Why act ignorant in regards to this question? Is territorial integrity the highest imperative? Yes or no?
Do we defend it while understanding that it: a) can only be secured if we change courses and b) the course must be changed?
Or is our territorial integrity to be sacrificed to God knows what – some nebulous “good of the Russian people,” who had once already sacrificed territorial integrity, having been seduced by ideas of a certain “good”? We remember this…
In no way do we mean to say that only some “sinister Russian forces” constructed this Russian catastrophe. But, first of all, part of these forces still says that they participated in it, and they are proud of it. We cannot stop them from being proud. And secondly, we all remember that these words were spoken: the RSFSR must secede from the USSR. Not the liberals, but the national loyalists said this. Of course, the liberals and the ethnic outskirts played a major role in the collapse. The Russian people as a whole held on until the end. But did this happen or did it not? Was it said that the RSFSR should secede from the Soviet Union? This was said.
Was it not said (and much later) that under the Soviet Union the peasants may or may not have been better off but the soul was pining for something, and we broke everything down? [https://zavtra.ru/blogs/2011-03-0121] Yes, it was. This is called the “Russian cross” – over twenty years, 26.5 million died too early, or were never born. Tens of millions of people were left in terrible conditions on territories of the dismembered empire. There was a loss of technology, culture, and countless other things.
Now another catastrophe is needed, supposedly for the good of the Russian people. Do we need a catastrophe? Is it necessary to dismember the country again for the sake of God knows what? Yes or no?
A simple political question: are you in favor of severing the North Caucasus, are you with Belkovsky, or are you on the other side? Answer the question and go back to scolding us. But if you say that you are against Belkovsky, then on the issue of territorial integrity, we are allies. You say that for you, territorial integrity is a kind of stratagem, that you will defend it; you then join the ranks of those defending territorial integrity. These can be ranks made up of very different people with different views, who can utterly dislike each other and call each other all kinds of swear words. That’s fine!
But answer a simple political question: are you with Belkovsky or with those who are willing to oppose him? That’s all. The people whom we are talking with need to answer this question, because Belkovsky is very clear. He says everything straight.
“Tell me, Stanislav, do you want Russia to collapse, as your opponents often accuse you?”
He answers “yes” – so this is not an accusation. He himself says: “Yes. I certainly want the North Caucasus, at least its Muslim regions, to leave Russia.”
They ask, “Which regions specifically?”
Belkovsky replies, “At least Chechnya, Ingushetia, and Dagestan. I’m ready to discuss the rest.
They ask him, “How do you see the mechanism for them leaving the Russian Federation?”
Belkovsky replies: “First, we have to cut off their federal funding. This will make their presence in Russia meaningless, since it is the principal and only motive for them staying in Russia. After that, an international task force should be set up under the chairmanship of some powerful ex-president of the United States (Barack Obama might well be that person by then), that will formulate a scenario for the separation, and we will carry it out in strict accordance with the Russian constitution.”
“I think that we shouldn’t fawn over the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation,” says Belkovsky. – <…> It’s no use crying over spilled milk.”
He means Ukraine and Belarus, the loss of which is naturally a terrible disaster for Russia. But now we have to make it worse: it’s no use crying over spilled milk.
“Don’t you think,” they ask Belkovsky, “that after Chechnya and Dagestan secede, the Volga republics – Tatarstan and Bashkortostan – will want independence?”
Belkovsky replies, “That depends on how interested they will be in being part of Russia.”
I don’t understand – is the question about foreign parts? Or is it about who is interested in something? You mean we need to cut off funding to them, too? What else do they be cut off from? He’s talking about a scenario to push territories away. Anyone can be cut off from something, and he will become “disinterested.”
“Suppose [they] would not be [interested in being part of Russia]. Should they be let go, too?” – asks the interviewer.
Belkovsky replies, “I believe that if there is a region with an established ethnocultural identity and it wants to leave the country (like Catalonia or the Basque Country in Spain), this will happen sooner or later.”
Everything is clear, everything is said. Do you support this? Well, then you’re in the same camp with him! And it’s not a question of whom you like or dislike, whose philosophies you like or find disturbing. What’s the difference? That’s not what we’re talking about. It’s not about the mundane. Belkovsky just said here that Tataria and Bashkiria should also be broken off.
Interviewer: “But so far there is only one such region in Russia: Chechnya, even Ingushetia did not express such a desire even in the 1990s…”.
Belkovsky: “We’ll see what happens in the future.
Well, that depends on what kind of future, doesn’t it?
Belkovsky goes on to say, “I think that Russia has an opportunity to retain Tatarstan and Bashkortostan, largely through a return to real federalism.” Could you elaborate here?
He then goes on much further…
Belkovsky: “I think that today Russia is not ready for a new war with Chechnya. We have to admit that we’ve lost the war – not one that started not in 1994, but in 1817. (In 1817!) As for the unitary state, today Russia is a unitary state. And the movement toward unitarianism, through building the power vertical, has led to making the institution of local informal network power stronger (he means clans. -SK). Because the reaction to building the power vertical was that the power has been leaving the hands of the formal heads of the regions, the governors, and going to all sorts of informal structures.”
Interviewer: “Don’t you think that separating the regions of the North Caucasus will not solve the numerous problems that exist with them? In the 21st century it is impossible to wall them off with concrete and run an electric current through it…”
Here Belkovsky references Israel’s experience in response: they have fenced themselves off with a wall – and so will we, etc. But Israel is now wailing from everything that is happening. It understands that this is the end.
Next, the interviewer tells Belkovsky that the Tibetans and Uyghurs are not leaving China, meaning that China won’t allow them to leave.
He replies, “China is a totalitarian state with a corresponding machine of coercion, and I would by no means consider it a model for Russia. <…> China is a superpower as long as the US allows it to be one, as long as the world factory is there and not in Vietnam, Indonesia or, say, Mexico, where labor costs are already comparable to those in China (and the US has a much shorter transport leg with Mexico).”
So, what – maybe Mexico will become China? We’re waiting. When? What are the signs? If it were only a question of the US letting someone do something, then Mexico would probably do it… it has a shorter transport leg…
Belkovsky: “We suffer from a territorial complex, which we need to get rid of.”
We need to get rid of it to what point? To zero, to what?
This is exactly what the extreme pseudoliberals are calling for. It’s all coming together now. We are at the conclusion of some kind of game composition.
Question: “Your words about getting rid of the territorial complex are essentially a subversion of the foundations of Russian thought. You are going against Danilevsky, Leontiev, Lev Gumilev…”
Belkovsky: “Yes, I generally oppose Eurasianism. I think it is a romantic doctrine. <…> A Russian person does not want to be an Asian. <…> We want to be Europeans, not Asians. And even the wars we fought against the European powers had as their main aim to prove to Europe how tough we are.”
And so on, and so forth.
This is where the devil is in the details, as I said in the last program. We are not Asians. And we don’t want to be. We are an alternative West. It is our position as an alternative West that is now messianically advantageous to us. We don’t want to enter into a door that is now closed to us, we want to lead the world. Yes, we are in a situation of extraordinary defeat and humiliation, but we are in it FOR SOME REASON. You have to explain to yourself WHY. And how to get out of it. And you can’t explain it to yourself by playing with approximations, which with respect to Russia, of course, are notions of Asia and Europe, East and West. “Which East do you want to be: The East of Xerxes or of Christ?”
Are you ready to ally with Belkovsky? We ask in simple, political terms: yes or no? Those who are ready to ally with Belkovsky will sooner or later have to formalize this alliance and the declarations on which it stands. Belkovsky labels it all with two values: nationalism and democracy. If the values here were really nationalism and really democracy, that would be great!
But only nationalism together with democracy is Robespierre, not Belkovsky. Hang a portrait of Robespierre next to a portrait of Belkovsky (which someone like Safronov or Shilov could paint). Look at these two portraits and you will see the difference.
Robespierre was disgusted by any thought of losing even an inch of French land. An inch! Because he had a project, he had a great dream. He was building a nation, a new world, a nation state. While Belkovsky, like all the democrats in our country, begins by climbing onto the American bandwagon and dreaming of occupation. He says bluntly: “…an international task force should be set up under the chairmanship of some powerful ex-president of the United States (maybe Obama).
Jean-François Hue, 1800.
Before that, Belkovsky talked about Michael of Kent. Belkovsky keeps looking for someone to sell out to, for some occupation troops to bring onto our territory. And this is not an accusation – this is a statement. In his articles, which I examined before, he explicitly says: Michael of Kent must come to Russia with the participation of, and under the pressure of, outside forces. This is the formula for occupation.
So, as soon as he brings up democracy, it turns into occupation and dismemberment. As soon as he brings up nationalism, it again turns into occupation and dismemberment. That means the end of the country.
That is the difference between Belkovsky and Robespierre. Robespierre dreamed of democracy and nationalism. And in our country over the last 20 years, there has not been a single Robespierre, not a single person who could dream of both, not a single person who truly loves Russia. They all love America, some love Germany, some love China, but no one loves Russia. There is no great love, which Robespierre had, no scale of personality. This is the brilliance and poverty of our democracy and of our pseudo-nationalism, our shrinking nationalism. And as soon as this democracy touches nationalism, it immediately turns into a pseudoliberal plague. Isn’t that so? What did I get wrong?
The same APN (Political News Agency) has a very interesting and touching article about your humble servant. It is called “Kurginyan the Roach” [https://www.apn.ru/publications/article24441.htm]. Kurginyan the Roach [A reference to Korney Chukovsky’s fairy tale poem “Cock the Roach”, which some believe was written as a satire on Stalin – translator’s note]… It even has an epigraph: “Sharp and loud his shout rings out, While his whiskers wave about. K. Chukovsky.” Because it was clear about whom these verses were written, it is a very touching article.
Its author quotes me: “Perestroika gave me, as an artistic person, everything. Defending perestroika is not a civic duty for me, but a vital necessity.” [Кургинян С. Актуальный архив. Работы 1988–1993 годов. М. МОФ ЭТЦ. 2010. С. 29. http://www.kurginyan.ru/books/actual_archive.pdf]
I wrote this in 1988. At that time the word “perestroika” had not yet acquired a negative connotation, there was nothing in it yet. There was only the need to give the Soviet system a proper acceleration, to give it a second breath and bring it out of a certain state of sleep and half-decay – that’s all. There is not much to play on here…
The author: “Kurginyan’s business of defending perestroika is a long-standing one. The USSR has already collapsed and perestroika is gone, but Kurginyan is still defending it. Well, this is not surprising. <…> Although perestroika is over, it still continues, for Kurginyan is its typical product, a communist occultist ready to sacrifice the Russian people for the “common cause.” What “cause”? This one (then he quotes me – SK) We declare metaphysical openness to all humanistic religions and new religious movements (from N.F. Fedorov’s doctrine of the Common Cause to the concepts of Teilhard de Chardin, Vernadsky, Leopoldo Zea Aguilar (liberation theology), philosophical anthropology, humanistic psychoanalysis, and other exploratory movements concerned with discovering Man and the world).” [Ibid. p. 230]
I stress what is said here about metaphysical openness. It does not say that we swear allegiance to all this together. We are elaborating upon the communist project, which is exactly what I want to devote the fourth and final series of lectures to. And we really want to advance it. And we are saying that this project must be open to everything that dreams of humanity’s ultimate goals – development. That very development that continues to persist. To Man who ascends the ladder of this development – higher and higher, to cosmic heights, to those heights at which this Man could accomplish any, even the most unheard-of deeds. And here, of course, there is a place for Fyodorov and his Common Cause, for Teilhard de Chardin, for Vernadsky, and for Leopold Zea Aguilar, and many others, because this is what has to be assimilated so that the Red Project would not just become a remake, or something retro.
Restorations are always doomed. If our enemies want to make Counter-Modernism into something viable, turning it into an actively aggressive neo-fascism, then we can only make the cause of the USSR and the whole Soviet cause viable by turning on a “motor.” They are firing up the gnostic, while we shall ignite the chiliastic. But if the “motor” is not turned on, then all these songs about the ordinary primitive restoration will lead to nothing, and we will not save the country, no matter who wants what.
So, everything is said: about metaphysical openness, about these noble names, about the ultimate goals of humanity. The author of the article takes this quote and goes on to say: “The perestroika-inspired Kurginyan wants to throw the Russian people into the furnace of communist occultism. Indeed, only Russians are not allowed to create their own nation state and nation. Their fate is to be fuel for this vile sectarian occultist ideology.”
Do you realize how badly their feelings were hurt because we started building a dialogue with the nationalists? We did not start just building it today. We have been building it for a long time. And we hurt Belkovsky’s feelings not now, but years earlier. Because even back then his whole rotten essence was clear to see.
In support of his statement that I want to throw the poor Russian people “into the furnace of Communist occultism“, the author quotes me like this: “The Russian people, defending themselves as a creator of world history, is a meta-nation. Could they become something else? What else? A people who fit into the first model, i.e., a nation led by nationalists? They probably could. One cannot reproach them for this. But the chance of surviving in this capacity, with the loss of their birthright and their status as creators of world history, is less than if they defend this status“. (This is a quote from my very old work “The Russian Question and the Institution of the Future”, published in a collection by Sergey Chernyshev). [Кургинян С. Русский вопрос и институт будущего // Cб. Иное. Хрестоматия нового российского самосознания. – М., Русский институт, 1995, http://old.russ.ru/antolog/inoe/kurgin.htm/kurgin.htm]
Is this what they call “throwing the people into the furnace of occultism?”
On behalf of what religion is all this being said? I’m already confused. Some nationalists are pagans, others are who knows what. We believe that the creator of world history is the people. It is a meta-nation. The Russians are a people who are capable of being the driving force of world history. They have done this in the past. And they can do it again. Perhaps without this, world history will not continue.
But it is not an issue of throwing them into some furnace. The issue is that this is the only way they can save themselves. Because, indeed, in the 21st century, only power centers with a population of more than 500 million will survive.
The intent to drag Russia into Europe for this purpose is understandable. But it is impossible to drag it there, because Russians find Europe to be frightfully boring. Moreover, Russia would need to be dragged into the project of Modernity, which is coming to an end. In other words, there’s nowhere to go. But at least this is somehow understandable.
But creating some isolated entity with a smaller population, isolating this entity with billions of Chinese on one side, a more than a billion-strong Islamic caliphate on the other side, and the entire hostile Western civilization on the third side… Only suicidal people can squeeze themselves like this and still talk about what sub-ethnic groups should be created here, and how the Russian ethnic group should be dismembered.
No small or even medium-sized people can survive in the 21st century – they will have to enter some power center. All these chimeras of absolute sovereignty just don’t work anymore. This era is over. Ahead is the age of empires. It is ahead, not behind. The Russians have abandoned their imperial status when everyone else is adopting it all over the world. The so-called nation states of China and India are also empires. The United States just dreams of being the Fourth Rome. The European Union is definitely an empire.
So, I say again, that the Russian people, defending themselves as the collective creator of world history, are a meta-nation. Can they become something else? They can. A nation that fits into the first model, i.e. a nation of Modernity. Sure, they could swear allegiance to Modernity and be led by nationalists. “One cannot reproach them for this. But the chance of surviving in this capacity, with the loss of their birthright, is much less,” – I said this 17 years ago. Doesn’t everyone see that now? That chance is not less now – it is zero.
So, after the above quote the author of the article in APN says: “So the Russians need to keep slaving away for their occult master. In the person of Kurginyan the recalcitrant ideology of perestroika has again stretched its tentacles to the throat of the Russian people. This occult false doctrine doesn’t want to get off our necks. Well, let us examine below, what they are calling for…”
Next, he discovers that for some reason we are calling for internationalism.
The author writes: “Kurginyan is the Interfront. It is an attempt to enlist Russians, especially members of the older generation, to defend anti-Russian interests. Russians are clearly just wood in the furnace of the imperial locomotive.”
I’ m sorry, but it wasn’t Kurginyan who built the imperial locomotive. The imperial locomotive was built… on the large scale, apparently by Ivan the Terrible, and certainly by Peter the Great. So, all of those who for centuries have been expanding Russia, leading it to incredible cultural, historical heights, etc., – all of them threw the people into the furnace of a locomotive?
But the author continues: “If another nation is found as a candidate for enslavement, the Kurginians will howl happily and leave the Russians to die in the garbage dump. <…> such a candidate has appeared. After Mao Zedong won the civil war, the Chinese were seriously considered as a new center <…>. The ‘internationalists’ did not manage to jump from the Russian to the Chinese neck.”
I could stage a play about this – it’s so interesting. It would be interesting if its being derived from Belkovksy didn’t make it so sad. Everyone can see that it’s Belkovsky. They are squealing because we called them pseudo-nationalists, shrinking nationalists. So, don’t bother talking about the imperial locomotive, you can babble about Kurginyan all you want.
“But we have digressed,” the author continues. – “In the 1990s, the bane of empire was imposed on the Russians. Never before, under Soviet power, was the USSR called an ’empire’. (What about before? – SK) More precisely, it was called an empire by its enemies. The term ‘evil empire’ belongs to US President Ronald Reagan. (Okay, and we are talking about a good empire – SK.) In the early 90s this American propaganda spew was happily fed to the pro-Soviet patriots. You have to hand it to the people, they not only devoured the CIA’s invention, but they demanded more.”
I don’t get it. We want to achieve synthesis through a unified understanding of the different stages of our history. We see empire as a special form of our people’s existence, linked to a historiosophic mission. We see how every time the people take this path, they perform miracles, they save themselves and the world, they advance history, and they reach fantastic heights of development. And every time they stray from this path, they fall into misery, unheard of misery. We again urge the people to return to the road that leads to this greatness in all its meanings: to the happiness of historical destiny, to development, to improving living standards, and to maintaining the geopolitical parameters that allow one to survive in the 21st century and not become a slave to other nations in the ruthless competition for resources, among other things.
Is this all called “jumping on someone’s neck?” It turns out that it is “the imposed bane of empire”: “There emerged a whole ideological trend that called itself ‘imperial.’ However, these ‘imperials’ were strange. They did not demand the restoration of the Russian Empire (as one might think from their inexperience). No, they praised the Soviet Union, the most important property of which they believed to be enslavement of the Russians.”
Give us a quote! Who and where said that the most important property of the Soviet Union was the enslavement of the Russians? Now the Russians have been liberated! They have been freed from the Soviet Union. Right? They were immediately taken captive by the dreaded Russian Federation, now they will be freed from the Russian Federation, and they will be taken captive by “The Rus'”. They will be freed from the captivity of “The Rus'”, and they will be captured by sub-ethnic states. They will be “freed” from this “captivity” by the Chinese and other nations, enslaving them completely and eliminating the Russian people in general. And this will be the “triumph” of Russianness! According to Belkovsky and his colleagues.
The author continues: “The theory of imperiality, to put it in simple terms, is this. All the peoples of the world have their own states in which they are the masters. Everyone is allowed to have a nation state. Armenians, Azerbaijanis, Ukrainians, Finns, Kazakhs, Germans, Frenchmen, Spaniards, Chinese, Brazilians, Italians, everyone. But there is one people in the world who are not allowed to have their own state. This people are the Russians, forever doomed to be slaves in some ’empire.’ But this empire is not Russian.”
I don’t get it… As we know, there were many empires. And peoples passionately wanted to have them. The French wanted Napoleon’s empire, the Poles wanted their empire, the Turks wanted the Ottoman Empire, the Chinese wanted their “Middle Empire”, Chung Kuo… I could list these empires endlessly… the Habsburgs, and so on. Everyone wanted to have an empire, just some succeeded in creating one and others didn’t. Others fell into the orbit of one empire or another. It was like this until a brief period, which is now rapidly ending. That is the tragedy. If you take away the superficial, that is the tragedy. And we keep saying to our brothers, who fell away from the Soviet Union: “Come to your senses, where are you going? What are you joining after breaking away?” That is the main political question.
So there is an empire. “This empire is governed by a conglomerate of happy peoples, whose historical destiny is to sit on the Russian neck,” the author claims.
Is all of Russian history like that? Well, then we’re finished… Well, then it is clear what one should say about a people, who have kept villains on their necks for thousands of years. There are no such people. And there is no anthem with the words “Unbreakable union of freeborn republics Great Russia has welded forever to stand.” And there is no toast by Stalin to the Russian people. And there are no early texts by Stalin in which he said that the Russian people who are the holders and guardians of the Soviet empire, calling it, of course, the Soviet Union, but meaning exactly that. “Sitting on our necks…”
Next: “The Russians themselves should not demand any rights, freedoms, or even material prosperity. Russians should practice a kind of ‘asceticism,’ toil unceasingly for their master, and if the master deigns to kill a few (or more than a few) Russians, they should bow down to him, saying: ‘Thank you, Master!'”
Russia has approached the abyss. It is a centimeter away from that abyss. Some clown around, saying that it must be freed from the burdens of Tataria, Bashkiria, and the North Caucasus. Others clown around even more wildly. Will the time finally come when all this clowning will be, as they say in science, eliminated, zeroed out? When will all these clowning turn into a big pile of worthless garbage, which one can look at, as garbage deserves to be looked at, without feeling, any special feelings? It’s time to sweep it up in a dustpan and throw it away before it’s too late, because this clowning thing wants something different. It wants to finish us off.
Why should “Russians not demand any rights, freedoms, or even material prosperity”…? In what sense? They should ” toil for their master” and say “thank you” to their master… What master? How can this great people, if they are great, keep some master on their necks and continue toiling and bowing to him? What contempt must one have for the Russian people inside, in one’s soul, to say that? For one’s lips and tongue to be able to pronounce it? Do you understand what one would need to have in his soul, mind, and heart?
“The Russians must work for the ‘Kurginyans’ forever for free. That is their nature. The Russians should work in the name of some magical ‘territorial integrity’. (There you go! – SK) Finally, the naive reader will exclaim. Yes, of course, territorial integrity! We must be one with our brothers, the Ukrainians and Belarusians! Nope! You are greatly mistaken about Ukraine and Belarus, dear naive reader. These peoples should be OUTSIDE of Russia.”
Where and when did anyone say that these peoples should be outside of Russia? Does anyone say that this is not one people: White Russia, Little Russia, and Great Russia? You can go prove it to the Galicians, or the like, but you do not need to prove it to us. We who believe in it sacredly. And we mourn the loss of these peoples as Russia’s greatest (precisely its greatest) defeat. But it happened when they shouted that the RSFSR should secede from the USSR! No one said that the fraternal Slavic peoples should leave together. The national loyalists at the time said something very different, in unison with the pseudoliberals and pseudodemocrats. They said, “for our freedom and yours,” didn’t they? Or am I misinterpreting something?
Then more of the same: “Chechnya is already practically outside the Russian legal sphere.”
It is. And that’s awful. And what? Since it is outside of this sphere, should we just throw it out? And then the rest of the North Caucasus, so that the Volga would quickly burst into flames, and then we should compare Tataria to the Basques, and Bashkiria to Catalonia? Is that what it takes to do everything? Wouldn’t it be easier to restore our legal boundaries?
“Russian laws are not obeyed, Russia pays enormous sums of money to ‘rebuild the republic.’ All while ‘natives of Chechnya’ enjoy unrestricted rights in the rest of Russia.”
And that’s awful, is anyone arguing? They say things that we completely agree with, and then they say, “And because it is like this, then…” Then what? – Then we must break up Russia! Why? This is a typical suggestion to cure one’s headache by cutting off his head. Why is suicide the only solution?
“Modern Russia is thus the colonial periphery of the Caucasus. The right to kill with impunity is a lordly right, dating back to the early Middle Ages. A nobleman could kill a peasant, and he would suffer nothing for it. Today the Caucasians have become masters for the whole of Russia. This problem can be solved through separating the Caucasus off as a region.”
That’s it! This is a classical method, you don’t even need Sharp. It’s primitive subversion. One names real trouble spots, evokes a reflex to what is happening, a reflex that the mind has not yet processed. And that reflex is rejection. They hope that the reflex would not be followed by analyzing the situation, and that everything would end with the rejection reflex. That it would be possible to take advantage of this reflex and destroy the country. Here we come to the main point.
“Kurginyan the Roach! Occultism!” Fine, whatever. Everyone is entitled to an opinion. After all, this is the 21st century. But then comes politics.
“Magic territorial integrity” is Belkovsky.
“Separating off the Caucasus as a region” is Belkovsky.
“Then the Russians could focus on themselves, on their real interests and goals. And also unite with the truly friendly peoples – Belarusians and Ukrainians.”
I don’t get it – why “then”? Can any sane person explain why they can engage in unification only “then”? Why can’t they do it now?
They haven’t been able to engage in it for 20 years – why? Because Ramzan Kadyrov sits in the Kremlin? They haven’t been able to because Mr. Belkovsky has friends in the Kremlin (i.e. pseudoliberals), who have given up on dragging Russia along their ruinous path using pseudo-liberal rhetoric alone, and now they want to add pseudo-nationalism. But they want to drag it in the same direction, along the same pseudo-Westernist path, to the same disintegration, to the same model, which they call democratic. That’s why we can’t unite with Lukashenko. Not because Ramzan Kadyrov sits in the Kremlin.
Lukashenko is not currently concerned about Ramzan Kadyrov, whose traits I do not want to discuss. I agree with these statements like “outside the legal sphere”, “unlimited rights”. But that’s not what worries Lukashenko. Lukashenko is worried about Chubais and the oligarchs, who want to devour Belarusian resources and create the same mess in Belarus as they did in Russia as a whole, and turn the fertile Belarusian fields into uncultivated ones. That’s what bothers him. Isn’t that true? Is it really Ramzan Kadyrov?
The issue with Ukraine is even more complicated. There is a split there. So, the point is not whether or not to separate the North Caucasus in order to unite with Ukraine and Belarus. What kind of language is this? Who is it meant for? The point is such a change of course, after which the Caucasus will not fall away, the South Caucasus will join, Ukraine and Belarus will join, and I hope the Baltics will join as well. I’m sure they will. And a new great state will be formed, which will be in continuity with all the former Russian empires, including the Red Empire, which was the apotheosis of the imperial in many structural and functional principles.
Next, back to the APN article in which they want to “talk seriously” about empire – that’s great. I value nothing more than serious conversations: “What is empire? It exists not only as a propaganda construct. Empires come in two varieties. (So, what is it? I still do not understand. – SK) The first one is a colonial empire. At the center of it is a nation state. It annexes and exploits its periphery. This is how the British and French colonial empires were built. The French and the English had all the rights as inhabitants of the metropole, standing immeasurably above the inhabitants of the provinces. (That’s right. – SK) No one could doubt that England was a state of the English (except the Irish. – SK), that France was a state of the French (except the Vandeans and many others. – SK). However, Russian ‘imperials’ do not want such an empire (what do you mean they don’t want it? – Let’s move to an island and create such an empire or start conquering colonies across the ocean. – SK), because it implies a dominant position for Russians, not an enslaved one.”
They attribute and imply one desire – to drive the Russians into slavery. We don’t want anything else, right? And frankly, are they not enslaved now? Isn’t that where they are thanks to the pseudoliberals, who will now be joined by the pseudo-nationalists? And if it all falls apart, won’t they be in more of an enslaved position than now?
“The second type of empire is a territorial empire. It has a main people who act as a backbone, on whom all the burdens of maintaining the empire fall, there are annexed peoples, and there is an imperial elite. This elite consists, as a rule, of representatives of the subordinated peoples, the core people, and importantly, a ‘controlling people.’ This is a people who, being equally distant from the peoples inhabiting the empire, governs the empire. In the Russian Empire such a people were Germans, in the initial Soviet period – Jews.”
First of all, during the initial period. So later they weren’t? But then it was bad, too, because there were – who? Caucasians, right? And in the Russian Empire it was the Germans. And before that there were some other monsters. And that is it. There is no Russian history. There is essentially no difference between all of this and what Pivovarov says. None. They are twins. It is simply the second edition of the same thing, which they need in order to be able to sell the first edition, because people stopped buying the first one. Completely. And something anti-Caucasian needs to be thrown in to sell it. But this is the same product called “the disintegration of the country.”
“The Bolsheviks divided the united Russian people into Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians”…
Tell that to the Galicians, they will be very happy. And they will tell you many other things. The real system of how the country existed all this time, with its real, complicated, and tragic problems (all these twists and turns that Gogol described: Ostap, Andriy, the two Ukraines, this great struggle for and against the empire) – it’s all being reduced to a single comic book. This isn’t even Harry Potter, it’s not even a Mother Goose story. And they want to use this language to address what is still one of the most educated peoples in the world!
“Imperial-Soviet propaganda ascribes the role of voiceless and powerless slaves in the communist empire to the Russians. Be ascetics, says Kurginyan to the Russians, a millionaire with a good tan and an expensive suit, whose tastes in cars are rumored to favor Bentleys.”
“Imperial-Soviet propaganda ascribes the role of voiceless and powerless slaves in the communist empire to the Russians,” are Hitler’s words. This is Hitler’s phraseology. Only he went on to say, “And the Russians deserve it.” This is a certain assessment of the USSR, but the Russian Empire, in this logic, commands the Russians to be slaves in the hands of Germans.
“‘Kurginians’ love to squeal about the threat of the Russian people disintegrating into several nations. Into some kind of ‘Siberians’ or ‘Pomors’…”
I thought Shiropaev suggested this. The principle of subethnic states. Or did he not? Was I discussing someone else’s idea? “However, we need to be clear about where ‘Siberians’ or ‘Pomors’ come from. (They come from the Soviet Union being bad, right? – SK) <…> Russians look at the Russian name, tarnished and smeared by the ‘imperial’ ideology of slavery and tolerance. And… some of them want to use a different name, just to get rid of the chains of slavery that the ‘Kurginyans’ have imposed.”
In other words, they want to get rid of the Russianness that we imposed. My great-grandmother was a princess of the Meshchersky family. Apparently, she imposed the chains of slavery. Along with Karamzin and her other ancestors.
“Obviously, regional nations on the ethnic basis of the Russian people can arise only so as not to be slaves of the “Kurginians,” “the natives of the Caucasus”, and other imperial entities. (But to be slaves of the Chinese. – SK) To simply be masters of their own land (a sub-ethnic state arises next to China, it will be “master of its own land”, it will lose its nuclear status, lose everything – but it will be “the master of its own land”! – SK), to choose their own government and their own destiny. It is up to them to decide whether to be ascetics or to ‘eat chicken’ (Kurginyan, incidentally, prefers ‘chicken’ for himself). (I’m eating porridge. Calm down, dear friend, why are you so agitated? – SK) If a Russian nation state comes into being, all these regional identities will become irrelevant. (So Shiropaev will get rid of them? – SK) But today, as long as the Russians are powerless slaves in the ‘Russian Federation’, the relevance of these identities (and their desire (attention!!! – SK) to call on the help of the USA, the CIA, even the devil, just to get rid of these pig-faced commies) will only grow.”
That’s it! “What do the ‘Kurginians’ like to squeal about?” It doesn’t matter! Everything has been said: “…call on the help of the USA, the CIA, the devil, just to get rid of the pig-faced commies…”
So, what are we talking about now? Are we talking about some people being attacked? Not at all! We’re talking about a concept. Once again, we see a concept, and we’re wading to it through everything else. And we see that indeed something is being formed, more and more every day, just what we had warned about. An alliance is taking shape: the liberoid pseudo-nationalists are to prop up the pseudo-liberals, who have lost their strength, and work together to bring what is left of the country to ruin. After which, this country will come under the patronage or occupation (as Belkovsky wants) of various outside forces. And that is all.
So, behind all these passions and resentment towards others is a very serious attempt to ensure that the end of Russian history would takes place, so as to finish the country off.
And here I come back to what I was talking about. This is a complex chessboard, on one square of which you could have some Navalny (Belkovsky, incidentally, says that this is his friend), on another – Belkovsky, on the third and fourth – someone else (Fig. 2).
When the pieces are placed, the whole thing will fall apart. So the challenge is only one thing: to place the pieces ourselves, so that it doesn’t happen. And this is what is called “giving things their proper names and naming them in all marketplaces.” This is what the Essence of Time movement was created for.
Say the words “shrinking nationalist,” “liberoid nationalist,” “liquidational nationalist,” “pseudo-nationalist” – and the nationalist will die politically. Start fighting such nationalists – and they will get stronger, and they won’t talk about “patriarchy-kurginiyanarchy” or “Kurginyan the Roach.” They will forget everything. They will rejoice, because all they need is to gather the nationalist energy. They don’t need it for themselves, their masters need it.
What can we do to prevent this from happening? We need to say the right words, turn them into an ideology, and steer the social energy. In other words, create a nationalistic stream of energy that would not be contaminated by all the shit of reductionism. A different stream. Separate the shit from the stream. That’s the challenge. That’s what politics is. And the more we do it, the more howling we’ll hear.
They ask, “Why did you hurt their feelings?”
I don’t want to offend anyone. I love everyone. Especially those who express their passions about me so vividly. I’m wading through all these passions to the point, to the essence of the time, and it is that the moment is not a good one. And that they’re placing this piece into the necessary position. And then you have Belkovsky, and all the other things we’ve already enumerated… Let everyone in the nationalist movement say for himself: is he for territorial integrity, or against it? And we understand that we need to change the processes.
On July 2, 2011, Dr. Mikhail Gorshkov, the Director of the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, presented his report “Twenty Years of Reforms as Seen by Russians” on the RTR channel’s program “National Interest”.
I want you to look again and think with me about the data in this report. Choosing between morality and success: In 2011 43% of people said it was possible to step over moral principles and norms, while in 2003, seven years ago, it was 34% (Figure 3).
And now let’s think: when 51% say that in order to succeed one must violate moral principles, what will happen? There will be no society. Society exists only when its moral regulators work. When after the law stops working, these moral regulators stop working too, everything comes to an end.
Now another thesis: “Even if I don’t succeed in life, I’ll never overstep moral norms and principles. In 2003 65% of respondents held this position; now it’s 57%. And when it becomes 49% – what will happen? That is the end of the country. That is not society anymore. It is a zoociety, with no holds barred.
This is Gorshkov’s data, the director of the Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Sciences, who is collaborating with the Ebert Foundation. Is it clear that this is the end? Or is it confusing? Is it necessary to draw the line between 51% and 49%?
The following graph (Fig. 4):
The number of those who want to “shoot everyone, who is to blame for life in the country being the way it is now,” continued to fall from 1995 to 2008, and then rose sharply from 2008 to 2011. By 2011, the percentage of people who have this desire has become higher than the percentage of people who do not. What is this? Is this a stable society? It’s a disaster!
These are issues not with the liberoid-nationalist groups and not with the pseudo-liberals per se, but with those responsible for the country.
This is a disaster! And these are materials from the Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Sciences and the Ebert Foundation. I can assure you that our materials are accurate as well. But you might suspect us of some partiality and bias. But these are materials made in collaboration with international organizations. Next, we talk about the types of government (Fig. 5).
“A state that will fully restore centralized regulation of the economy and price controls”: in 1994 16% were in favor, in 2001 – 18%, and in 2011 – 28%… Do you realize what kind of curve this is? It’s a parabola. But this is not a welfare state. This is not the Swedish model. This is the USSR.
“A state that minimizes its interference in the economy…” By 2011, only 9% were in favor of this type of state.
“A state that restores the public sector of the economy while expanding private initiatives” is the main thing everyone is hoping for, in the neighborhood of 40%. There are also people who believe that “the type of state does not matter.” In 2011, 22% think this way…
The third type of state – “a state that restores the public sector…” – is a sort of Chinese version. Although this type prevails in the public consciousness as ideal, the number of people who support it is essentially static.
While “a state that fully restores centralized regulation of the economy” is growing in popularity.
And now, how Russians perceive the goals of the Yeltsin-Gaidar economic reforms (Fig. 6).
Of those who “strongly support the reforms,” 45% believe that the reforms were aimed at “saving the country.” And 55% say that the real purpose of the reforms was theft and the seizure of power. Of those who “mostly support the reforms,” 41% believe that the reformers wanted to save the country, while 58% say they wanted to commit theft.
Of those who “mostly oppose” 23% say that the reformers wanted to save the country, and 77% say that they wanted to steal.
Of those who “strongly oppose the reforms,” 14% say that those who carried out the reforms wanted to save the country.
If we add it all up as a whole, it turns out that the overwhelming majority of the population says that these twenty years have passed under the flag of theft and hunger for power. These twenty years have passed under this flag. And there was no other flag.
Is this not a dead end for these 20 years? Do these 20 years without the USSR not show a dead end for the model that was proposed 20 years ago? What then would be a dead end?
And finally the most serious part (Fig. 7).
Now, in 2011, 25% of young people have no desire to live abroad.
21% of young people would like to leave for another country and settle there.
20 % would like to go for an internship or to study.
34% of young people would like to work abroad.
What does it all mean? I’m not saying that all these people who want to leave will do so. Some will probably leave. And then, living in emigration, they will spend the rest of their lives trying to convince themselves that they made the right choice, having experienced all the pleasures of real emigration, which has nothing to do with romantic illusions. But we are not talking about them.
Those would be a minority, while the majority will stay. They want to leave, but they won’t. And they will live in Russia with a feeling of defeat. Do you understand? Let’s set all the buffoonery and clowning aside. And let’s ponder together as serious people, that this overwhelming majority will live with a feeling of defeat.
What is this defeat? How does one live in a state of defeat, that is, a state of surrender? When he admits defeat and he stops fighting, he has surrendered.
What is life in a state of surrender? Is it life? Dostoyevsky’s hero said on this topic that “this is no longer life, gentlemen, but the beginning of death.” So, he is going to live in the underground, right? One way or another, he will go mad inside.
And how does one counter that? That’s the main issue, isn’t it?
Processes are underway that are completely incompatible with the life for our country. Totally incompatible. This is quite clear. Sentiments arise about changing these processes, but right now these are only sentiments. There is too much bohemian theatrics in these sentiments and not enough living passion and will.
We need to turn this shift in sentiments into a shift of will, into a real emotional shift. Something that can be turned into action.
Now let’s think for a minute about what we can do here.
Any geometric model describing sociopolitical processes is conditional. Let us examine this model (Fig. 8).
Here we were moving in a certain direction (the bold arrow).
Then at some point, something happened (let’s hold off on discussing what for now). Someone managed to convince us we should move in a different direction (the dotted arrow) – in the direction where a certain star shines, which I will call “the star of captivating consumption.”
Some may say, “Fine. Consumption… It was clear that this was utopia, that it never happens under capitalism that everyone gets a Mercedes 600, three VCRs, four fur coats, diamonds, and a helicopter. Some lose, and some win.”
But maybe it led to some kind of normal Western model, to normal Western capitalism?
First of all, why Western? Aren’t there other capitalisms, too? Colombian capitalism, for example… There is such a concept as “peripheral capitalism.”
And secondly, there are ways of life other than capitalism. There are other countries on the planet with no capitalism, but where people live. Isn’t that so?
So, what really happened? We were moving in one direction (the bold arrow), then something happened, and everyone headed toward the “star of the captivating consumption” (the dotted arrow). Then they were drawn somewhere else (the double arrow). Fig. 9.
And right here (on the dotted line in the diagram) is Western capitalism, which, incidentally, is also dying out. Here (below) is peripheral capitalism. Beneath that is some kind of feudalism. And we are here (at the very bottom).
What do we do now? I pose this question to serious, adult people who don’t want to live with the taste of defeat in their mouths and the worm of that defeat in their hearts and minds. People who want to live. What do we do now? What are we supposed to go back to?
What are we supposed to do with this picture? Indeed, that is exactly what it is. Should we return to the road of Western capitalism? Do you know how many obstacles are on this road? And that everything will be finished here by then. No one wants to give us any space there. And it’s much harder to get that space than to just be yourself. So what are to do? Where can we return to?
Do we have to go back to the place we came from? Nothing is there anymore.
What are we supposed to do with the country?
Since the geometric picture gives almost nothing, I can show you what we actually have to do. Here, on the plane, there is a point (draw a point on a piece of paper folded in half). And since this is a non-linear model, you have to pierce this point and come out here (pierce the paper with a pencil). That’s what we have to do.
Now, when we unfold it (unfold the sheet of paper and see two holes on it: the entry and exit points), we’ll find ourselves right here – on our path and ahead.
That is why we need to think about the metaphysical significance of the Red Project, about the true meaning of the Soviet inheritance, about the unity of the entire imperial tradition, about the Russian destiny, about the Russian mystery, and about everything else that we need to return to ourselves. Not in a linear way (because there is no such way), but in that one way that no one expects us to. It can happen like that in topology. Not in linear geometry, but it can happen in topology. You’ll say the odds are slim. Sure they are. Where are the odds good? For what? For the ultimate defeat of everyone, except a select few, who will stuff their faces and ride in Bentleys?
But what does all the gluttony and Bentleys have to do with anything?
Weber and other authors who discuss Protestantism have a concept of “Godforsakenness.” I propose we introduce a different concept, of “Meaning-forsakenness.”
Certain meanings exist. A territory of meaning-forsakenness emerges, a territory in which there are no meanings (Fig. 10). “Christ stopped at Eboli”… The meaning stopped… I don’t even know where… on the Danube and on the Amur. And it doesn’t come to the territory in between them. There is no meaning here. None at all. But the Russians can’t live without a great higher meaning. Some of them just drop and lie there.
Others flail around with their Bentleys and gluttony, stifling the great pain of their soul. One can experience existential defeat with millions or billions of dollars. You don’t have to be poor to feel it.
And others put on a theater instead of meanings (Stanislavsky once said: “Love the art in yourself, not yourself in the art”), making a mockery of one set of meanings or another. But the only way to avoid defeat is to connect oneself to the lost meanings through this channel (Fig. 11). But since simply connecting is not enough, one must also break through this ceiling and reach new levels.
And so, when this energy moves here (Fig. 12), then the first thing that happens is that those who are lying down will awaken.
Perhaps, some of those who are desperate for their Bentleys and gluttony may come to their senses, or they may go looking for Bentleys and gluttony elsewhere. That is up to them.
And those who put on different kinds of theater and stay with their pseudo-meanings, taking egoistic poses on their background, perhaps when they see serious, real meanings, they will come to their senses. And this theatrical ecstasy, which they need in order to drown out the pain of real loss of meaning, will be transformed into something else.
In this sense, I pity everyone: those who slander you, those who dream of different nonsense, those who lie motionless, and those who run madly after their Bentleys and gluttony. I pity everyone, except the ruthless, cold enemies, who first created all this, and now doing everything to build it up even more. I have no sympathy for them.
They really created all of this.
The dissidents used to say: “We will recall by name all those who raised their hand.” This was said in reference to the vote to expel Pasternak from the Writers’ Union. Our roll call list of those who committed murder should be cold, objective, and absolutely dignified.
What happened on this section, when we were going along a certain trajectory (the bold line), but suddenly we broke off to the side (the dashed line)? (Fig. 13)
They broke the people’s spine here. They tempted the people here with lentil porrige. They murdered the Ideal as such here.
So, one of the people who broke the historical spine in this way was the 74-year-old philosopher and cultural scientist Boris Mikhailovich Paramonov, a graduate of the Leningrad University’s history department and a PhD in philosophy. Until 1978, he taught the History of Philosophy at Leningrad University. He has been living in New York since 1978. In 1988, he began working for Radio Liberty. He won the 2005 Pushkin Prize of the Toepfer Foundation and the Liberty Prize for Strengthening Cultural Ties between Russia and the United States.
I will cite a few quotes from his program “Russian Idea”, aired during perestroika on Radio Liberty. March 1989. Paramonov declares in his program that a “mutation of the Russian spirit” is necessary from Orthodoxy to “a new type of morality on the solid ground of enlightened self-interest.”
“…Enlightened self-interest”… A “mutation of the Russian spirit” is necessary… – says the philosopher, speaking on Radio Liberty. And they listen to him.
December 1989. “We need to knock the Russian people out of tradition.”
He is only talking about one thing: a “mutation of the Russian spirit” is needed in order to start this movement. And for this movement to lead us where we find ourselves now.
Do you, overall, like the expression “mutation of the Russian spirit”?
I don’t agree with Solzhenitsyn in many respects, he has never been an authority for me, but here he writes: “…the radio station Liberty in those years became a legal, as it were, internal Soviet radio. It ran a series of ‘Russian Idea’ programs where it mockingly denigrated both Russian history and Russian thought, directly demanded the ‘mutation of the Russian spirit,’ crushed Russian brains into hopelessness, and built up an aversion to Russians in other listeners. ‘Aren’t Russians a people of the past that no longer exists?’ (this is Solzhenitsyn quoting Paramonov. – SK). A humiliated and desperate Russia could hear: ‘the cause of totalitarianism is the Russian tribal temptation’ (11.12.89); ‘the Russians always have built everything on bones and on blood, but the Russian people can’t build anything through good’ (27.10.89); ‘to speak of Russian patriotism in such a country is simply shameless and immoral’ (12.1.88)” [Solzhenitsyn A. Russia in Collapse. M, 1998. P.144].
This is what Solzhenitsyn quotes. I quoted two things, the most important of which is that a “mutation of the Russian spirit” is necessary from Orthodoxy to “a new type of morality on the solid ground of enlightened self-interest.” With a mutated spirit, not only can you not reach Western capitalism, you can’t reach any point on the map of life, only death. And that is where we have ended up.
Fortunately, the mutation has turned out to be tentative and incomplete. Damage and a mutation are different things. We can see that a certain spirit is awakening, that a blow was dealt to all the layers of the periphery, but it did not hit the core and failed to plant there what Paramonov calls a mutation, and what Rakitov calls changing the cultural core. It’s all the same. They all dreamed of the same thing – to dismantle Russia, completely and irreversibly. Of a dismantlement that the country is now approaching. And the only alternative is to create this vertical channel. This is not a job for one person. It is a job for a community of people who have understood that this is the only thing that can save their people. Who do not want to live with the taste of existential defeat in their mouths, in their hearts and minds. And who are ready to break this channel through – a channel into meanings.
Source (for copy): https://eu.eot.su/2021/11/13/essence-of-time-chapter-25/
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.
