02.07.2025, Moscow.
Despite the search for “healthy ideological frameworks” that were declared by the top Russian leadership after the start of the special military operation in Ukraine (SMO), the participants of the St. Petersburg International Legal Forum (SPILF) did not show unity on key issues, including the USSR’s existence in a legal sense, philosopher, political scientist, the leader of the Essence of Time movement Sergey Kurginyan said on May 30 on the Conversation with a Sage program on the Zvezda radio channel.
The program’s discussion focused around the St. Petersburg International Legal Forum (SPILF) that took place on May 21, which was marked by a resonant thesis about the USSR’s existence in a legal sense made by Anton Kobyakov, an adviser to the Russian President and the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), which, as the program host Anna Shafran noted, is a “completely different activity”, it is a gathering of those who support the liberal agenda and integration into the West despite the SMO, and generally continue to “pursue that course,” which represents “an obvious duplicity in the state.”
Kurginyan stressed that there was no unity even at the “patriotic” St. Petersburg International Legal Forum.
“It is a very interesting topic, but I just want to stipulate that there was no unity at this very SPILF [among the patriotic participants], that is, there was no single consolidated point of view either. This means that Anton Kobyakov repeated over and over again that the USSR really exists in international law databases, and I personally know that this is true,” Kurginyan said, adding that this is “a very delicate” issue.
The political scientist noted that the former chairman of the Russian Accounts Chamber Sergey Stepashin supported Kobyakov’s statement. However, there was another “wing”:
“Another group, Klishas [Chairman of the Federation Council Committee on Constitutional Legislation and State Building Andrey Klishas — Rossa Primavera News Agency] and others, said: ‘What kind of nonsense are people saying [about the existence of the USSR]? There’s nothing of this kind!’ What do you mean there’s nothing of this kind, my dears? Whether it is good or bad, it does not matter; it is how it is? This means that there was an immediate split on this issue,” the political scientist noted.
He emphasized that the controversy that took place at the SPILF did not receive real development and in-depth analysis, since this would require an answer to the main question – why was the USSR deliberately and in violation of all laws destroyed, with simultaneous destruction of its advanced production forces? After all, the example of China clearly shows that a communist country can develop both the economy and communist ideology, Kurginyan notes.
“The roots of these issues lie in the fact that the policy of integration into the West and into Europe [among the Soviet intelligence services elites] was an axiom of Russia’s existence. After all, no one can explain what happened. Back to for SPILF and Anton Kobyakov: the State Committee on the State of Emergency (GKChP) rebelled against Gorbachev. So what? How many rebellions were there in the history of Russia? What, with each rebellion we change all the constants of the Russian state? <…>
There are results of the referendum that confirmed a desire to live in a renewed Soviet Union. Well, renew it then! But [the Soviet intelligence services elites and their supporters said]: communism is an ‘unreformable ideology.’ But it was very deeply rooted in the Soviet Union, so if one want to accomplish something in this regard, let’s dismantle everything first – ‘because it is impossible to develop under communism’…
Tell [this] to Xi Jinping, or the Korean leader, who is our greatest friends currently, that communism is an “unreformable ideology!”, said Sergey Kurginyan.
Communism turned out to be reformable, planned economy is applicable, the power of market economy is not almighty, and democracy is an imitation – these realizations turned into a tragedy (both for the residents of the post-Soviet states and for humanity as a whole), because the USSR was demolished under exactly these pretexts, the political scientist stated.
Source: Rossa Primavera News Agency
