29.08.2022, Moscow.
The synthesis of the uneducated proletariat and the peasants with the pre-Soviet civilization that the intelligentsia that was interested in the development of the people accomplished was what formed the Soviet art, said philosopher, political scientist and the leader of the Essence of Time movement Sergey Kurginyan in his article Regress Approached… Stealthily? Or What Russia’s Main Enemy Is published in issue 495 of The Essence of Time newspaper.
Kurginyan noted that a barbarian, as he invades an old civilization, can either destroy this civilization or come to love it. At first, he takes a closer look at the civilization, then he begins to sympathize with it and mimic it, and finally he proceeds with his own creation based on the experience of the old civilization.
“What is the Soviet art? It is a finest synthesis of the delicacy of the Silver Age, that had fallen into decadence by then, and the new wave. What gave rise to it? It was the coming of the barbarian into an exhausted, pre-Soviet civilization that was tired of it had lost its ideal,” the political scientist explained.
According to Kurginyan, the mission of combining the uneducated proletariat and the peasants with the culture of the pre-revolution Russia and the world is what the Russian intelligentsia, that dreamed about a better life for the people, adopted.
Kurginyan said that the Bolsheviks, who controlled “the new process of culturogenesis” were part of “the old, quite sophisticated intelligentsia that wasn’t exhausted.”
“Isn‘t this true? What were Lenin, Lunacharsky? As well as Trotsky, Krasin, Krzhizhanovsky? They were part of the old intelligentsia belonging to different social classes. At the same time they were strongly tied to the people, i.e. to the barbarian. They convinced the barbarian that he needed culture,” the philosopher indicated.
The Bolsheviks explained to the new ruling class that it would never become a new power and be able to rule unless it adopts the huge stratum of the old culture.
“They brought together this barbarian through themselves with the old intelligentsia. This is how something happened that was a progress, a breakthrough, and a culture genesis at the same time,” Kurginyan concluded.
Up to 1960s in Soviet Russia, those who were able and wanted to study got promotion. Those who could not cope with studies were offered to work for their Motherland at a plant or another industrial facility.
The degradation of the Soviet education in the Khrushchev period, according to the philosopher, took place because of the so-called race for academic performance indicators and the introduction of the principle that there are no bad students, but there are bad teachers.
The saving of the world from fascism as well as the industrial, scientific, and cultural ascend of the Soviet Union became possible, Kurginyan believes, only because “something barbarian” combined with the dream of the pre-revolution intelligentsia about the “God-bearing people.”
Source: Rossa Primavera News Agency
