We are not done with the Nietzsche-Russia connection, in case anybody thought otherwise. The next useful comment on Russia is inspired by another remarkable passage in Nietzsche:
“…It is the same active force that is at work on a grander scale in those artists of violence and organizers who build states.” (From Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals; 2nd Essay [18])
America, facing Russia ever since the days of Tocqueville across the bridge of the centuries into the future, has to make her choice, finally, as to which face of Russia she is determined to see through the dense fog of mistaken impressions, false ideologies, and failed agendas. One is the terrible face of the Nietzschean Artist of Violence, the other is that of a con artist. Both faces are real, but one of them is authentic, while the other one is dissimulating, and the big question is which, and which alone, of these two faces America is prepared to acknowledge, as the two of them deliver irreconcilable messages.
It is now clear why I am quoting Nietzsche’s passage here. Ivan Grozny, Peter the Great, Comrade Stalin, to mention just these three… “those artists of violence and organizers who build states.” There is a fascination among great nations, who give birth to thinkers like Bakunin, for their “passion for destruction as a creative passion,” to repeat Bakunin’s golden saw. Such nations abominate the carriers of what they call “bourgeois morality,” who are rich, settled, and supremely arrogant in their self-contentment. Russia has a mixed bag of feelings toward America, both positive and negative, but chief among them is a sense of almost-Nietzschean “blond-beast” superiority of creative savages over the rich, ergo, decadent, and ergo decaying, civilizations. This is why, even when admiring America, the Russians will never settle for the role of followers and emulators of their rich and powerful antagonists.
Russia is, at heart, a Christian-communist nation, that despises money as “the root of all evil,” that despises the rich as the worshippers of the dark prince of the world. None of the rich will ever attain political power in Russia, because the nation sees them as an abomination, rather than as paragons of success and people’s role models.
The past and future of Russia belongs not to the businessman, but to the terrible artist of violence. One must not squirm on hearing the word violence: to squirm is a show of hypocrisy. Violence, alas, is the normal state of our world, and the most civilized nations indulge in it no less, and perhaps even more, scale-wise, than the most barbaric ones. It must therefore be more commendable to be an artist of violence than, say, a manager or a wage-earner of violence, or--God forbid!--a plain butcher.
The Russian artist of violence is dressed in a perfectly modern, albeit definitely conservative suit these days, perhaps, affecting certain refined manners required in our civilized society, but when you look deep into his soul (not just pretending to do it, but honestly, with an acute perception and comprehension) you will see an active force at work, the organizer who builds states, you will see the tyrant-servant of the State. For, such is the one and only possible leader of Russia. The tyrant-servant for whom money means nothing, for whom personal enrichment is a crime against the Russian nation. He is not to be feared as destroyer of civilizations for he is a conservator of the civilization. He is benignly disposed toward foreigners, as long as the foreigners show him respect and good will. As long as the foreigners understand that Russia is his business, not theirs. Inside Russia, however, he is a creator-destroyer, an artist of violence who builds his own state as he sees fit and in unison with what he sees as the common national will.
But then there is another “face” of Russia, the one instantly recognizable on the American television screen, whenever America talks about Russia. It seems that I must be completely off the wall, when you hear those experts talking about the prospects of a Berezovsky or a Khodorkovsky to take control in Russia. In their logic, money is power. A Russian billionaire must be a thousand times more powerful than a Russian millionaire, and a zillion times more powerful than a pauper like Mr. Putin, unless, of course, Mr. Putin is a closet multi-billionaire himself…
Before I go any further, let me draw your attention to a momentous and most revealing interview given by the former oligarch Berezovsky some time in 2003, by that time already out of favor and living in Britain, to the American television. The interviewer’s question was about the “privatization crimes” in Russia, and here is Mr. Berezovsky’s “I am not a crook” moment. I am quoting from memory, but accurately in essence:
“No,” he said, “there were no privatization crimes in Russia in the 1990’s. It is just that most Russians are completely ignorant and unintelligent about the workings of the capitalist system, while people like myself, Khodorkovsky, and others, who understand such things, took the initiative, and, in the process, have indeed accumulated some wealth. You had your own robber barons, you know, and nobody here seems to mind, in retrospect, what they did, and they became the pillars of your society, and founders of dynasties.”
In other words, capitalism in Russia is impossible, unless the political power goes to the entrepreneurs, like Berezovsky and his capitalistically-savvy crowd. Take it or leave it! Consequently, if you do not like Putin, then support him and people like him.
This is what you must expect to get when you listen to men, like Berezovsky. But America’s problem is that they are not the face of Russia, but the face of a con artist, impersonating Russia to the American audiences. The sooner America understands this con game, the better for her and for the millions of those Russian Jews who do not wish to have anything to do with the capitalist crowd which Washington is so eager to cultivate. It is a big mistake to presume that if one is Jewish, one has to be an Ayn Rand. (You cannot be more rabidly pro-capitalism than she was!) But this is a huge anti-historical deception. Among prominent Jewish personalities there have been far-far more pro-socialists than pro-capitalists. This is a cold historical fact, and people such as Berezovsky and his Western sponsors and admirers are badly hurting the Jewish image in the world by so grossly misrepresenting it, as if all the Jews were some pro-capitalistic monolith, a worldwide conspiracy of the rich against the poor… That’s what I would call the worst kind of anti-Semitism!
Ironically, today in Israel, in a terribly underreported still developing story, hundreds of thousands of Israeli Jews are passionately demonstrating against the excesses of capitalism, in favor of outright socialism, which some of them, in a sort of compromise with America, like to identify with Lyndon B. Johnson’s “Great Society.” (See my entry Great Society, where I applaud LBJ's effort, which, I believe, is based on socialist ethical foundations.)
…Sometimes I feel very angry, sometimes very sad. What I am writing now, what I’ve been saying all these years, is of paramount importance, but there is no one in the agenda-driven Washington inclined to heed my words. And it doesn’t make me feel any better that “at least I tried…”
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