HOLY MAN AND HOLY FOOL

Who is the Holy Man? What is his character? It seems that the answer is readily available. To Confucius, he is the superior man of the following passage: “The superior man thinks always of virtue; the common man thinks of comfort.” To Saint Augustine it is also the question of righteousness: “Unclean in the sight of God is everyone who is unrighteous; clean therefore is everyone who is righteous; if not in the sight of men, yet in the sight of God, who judges without error.” Both these characterizations also happen to fit the rather scary figure of Nietzsche’s Ascetic Priest, who  appears as a figure of major importance in my individualistic section The Genius And The Schoolman, where he belongs much more properly than in the Religion section, on account of his personality, whereas even the regularly churchgoing public will not necessarily honor the righteous, as Saint Augustine’s above quote strongly suggests. (Surely, his words “in the sight of men” include most respectable, churchgoing men in their number!)

The point of this entry, however, is not to analyze the character of the holy man from the inside, but to look at him from the outside, as a figure of religious veneration. These two angles of vision are understandably confused much of the time, when we try to take a mental measure of the holy man as we see him.
Here is a pertinent paragraph from Nietzsche’s Human, All-Too-Human (143), which I would like to focus my attention on, right now:

“Not what the holy man is, but what he signifies in the eyes of those who are not holy, gives him his world-historical value. It was because one was wrong about him that he gained such an extraordinary power, with which he dominated the imaginations of whole peoples and ages. He did not know himself. He was not an especially good person, even less an especially wise person, but he signified something which exceeded all human measure of goodness and wisdom. Faith in him supported Faith in the divine and miraculous, in a religious meaning of all existence. Even in our time, that no longer believes in God, there are still thinkers (like Schopenhauer) who believe in the holy man.”

This superb insight supports my point that the two angles of vision, from the inside and from the outside, do not coincide with any degree of substantiality. Paraphrasing Saint Augustine, the holy man in the sight of God and the holy man in the sight of man are seldom, if at all, the same.
And yet, there is no religion without at least some kind of cult of the holy man. People need the traditions, and also the superstitions of their culture so that they can comprehend the incomprehensible. They cannot understand the unlimited concept of the Absolute without some degree of limiting reference, and, therefore, they absolutely need their religion, in order to build that bridge. But even that would not be enough. Even their God of Religion is too high up there, to be adequately understood, and some sort of simple, down-to-earth connection is in order. That is why they so much need the presence of a comprehensible mystery and of a comprehensible “miraculous,” and they find that, not as a philosophical abstract of their mind, which only a few can do, but as a palpable reality readily open to their senses, which surrounds the holy man, so they can now, at last, understand the subject of their worship (the God of their Religion). Once again I am pointing to the necessity of an ordinary religious experience and of an ordinary tradition for transcending it extraordinarily, on the upward climb to the Absolute.

From the holy man, to the holy fool. There is a lot to be said here, some other time, perhaps. But, for now, the following will have to suffice. In this connection, I wish to particularly focus on the Russian historical fascination with, and virtually religious veneration of, the “holy fool,” such as was the legendary (although also a solidly historical figure) St. Basil (Vasili Blazhenny), the Holy Fool, of the Red Square fame.
The Russian fascination with mentally disturbed people is by no means unique to the Russian nation. That infamous son of Catholic Papal Italy turned a cantankerous atheist, Benito Mussolini, remarked in a 1904 speech that “the history of the saints is mainly the history of insane people.” A measure of insanity, as the stuff that most Christian saints are made of, has been observed by all critics of Christianity, and thus cannot be limited to the religious tradition of one nation. My choice of Russia, in this case, is a matter of example, rather than of a particular singling out principle.
Let me say right away now that there is no conceptual incongruity between Schopenhauer’s holy man and the Russian holy fool. Ivan-Durák (Ivan the Fool), who is a staple character of the Russian folklore, always turns out at the end as the wisest of them all. I may be contradicted that there is a chasm of difference which separates a wise man masquerading as a fool to fool the fools, and the mentally-ill basket case, whose real-life cult has more religious significance in Russia than the popular admiration for Ivan-Durák of the fairy tales. Yet, there is no discrepancy here, either. The fool on the inside, and the fool on the outside are two different angles of vision, in real terms, but not in the realm of popular perception, where the inside and the outside cannot be so readily separated. In popular perception there is a religiously motivated expectation, as well as a lingering suspicion that inside a fool there hides, indeed, a holy man, and it is this expectation that transforms a fool into a holy fool. After all, if we take into account Apostle Paul’s famous phrase “We are fools for Christ’s sake” (I Corinthians 4:10), the Russian veneration of the fool as a holy man makes even better sense, in terms of its Christian origin and doctrinal consistency.

This important theme is by no means exhausted, even by the limited standards of an entry, and it will, in all likelihood, be continued, later on…

BAHRAIN!

A government inviting foreign armies to suppress non-violent opposition, and sentencing physicians to long prison terms for tending to the wounds of the injured? Yes, this must be some cartoonish hyperbole about the forces of evil pushing the limits of evildoing into territories previously closed to imagination!

…And yet this is what has been going on… not in Libya or Syria, not in Iran or North Korea, but in the tiny kingdom of Bahrain, home of the United States Fifth Fleet, a very excellent friend of the West and therefore a bastion of Western freedom in a region teeming with freedom-haters…
I don’t have to keep going with the whole litany of crimes against humanity being committed in Bahrain as we speak. What do we expect from Washington and other freedom-loving nations of the West? To turn their backs on a loyal friend, and “let the terrorists win”? After all, “our son-of-a-bitch” is always immeasurably preferable to “them,” against whom we go to wars, impose sanctions, etc. Everybody understands the needs to keep “the Western end up” wherever it is possible, especially in these troubled days. Everybody understands why Washington and other Western governments are timid on Bahrain.

But I have a large request for the hypocrites of the Western world. Please, talk about the perfectly legitimate strategic interests of America and the West, and all that these entail, but do shut up about those human rights and freedoms! This talk makes me sick, and whenever I hear it now, I have just this one word in response---
BAHRAIN!

GREAT THINGS AND BLASPHEMIES

“And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?
And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies.” Revelation 13:4-5.

As I have suggested in several places already, a new dual-morality religion of Christian Capitalism seems to have emerged, most notably, in America, as an ethical solution of convenience for the rich, and even for the not-so-rich, who wish to legitimize their wealth on moral grounds, thus buying themselves a first-class ticket to afterlife.
What particularly strikes me in the Revelation passage above is how readily people’s object of worship can be transferred from God to a Scriptures-quoting Satan, speaking great things and blasphemies, especially if he speaks ex cathedra, that is, in a proper American-Evangelical setting, from the pulpit.
The root cause of the ‘dual-morality’ schizophrenia within the psyche of the American society is strangely enough the high social prominence of religion and religious self-identification in it. Religion, particularly, the dogmatic fundamentalism of the Evangelical Christians, is therefore taken far more seriously, and it is pushed to far greater lengths than, say, in Europe, so that in the end Scriptural Faith should inevitably collide with the Capitalist Practice and, in fact, so it does. But the ensuing conflict is all-too conveniently resolved through the emergence of a bizarre, grotesquely split personality, in which these two irreconcilable worlds are being meticulously partitioned along the moral lines, thus perpetuating a double-morality and a double-life, kind of reminding one of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’s medical condition, in the spiritual sense, of course.
The born-again religion of American Evangelicals, in particular, reduces Christian morality to the simple ability of uttering the sweet “Open, Sesame!” words ensuring the unconditional salvation to the sinner.
Perfunctory repentance thus acquires such huge importance in the salvation ritual that the very existence of a horrific record of most egregious sins appears to emerge as a prerequisite qualifying virtue, making a mockery of quiet righteousness, trivializing and effectively negating the Ten Commandments, and the whole Christian Code of moral obligations. The weird philosophical vacuum, resulting from the ease, with which "salvation" is attained, gives plenty of room in it for all sorts of pseudo-religious garbage…

Great things and blasphemies… Salvation is one of the greatest of all things that can easily be turned into a blasphemous word by its frivolous use and dispensation... “And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:
And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark…” Revelation 13:16-17.
Here is where I see an Oral Roberts or a Jimmy Swaggart, or virtually any one of those mega-church mini-devils come into the picture, dispensing salvation like the beast dispenses his mark, speaking great things and blasphemies.

"Christian Capitalism," as I describe it, may have sprung deep root in the soul of the richest nation on earth, whose citizens naturally want to have the best of both worlds, but it is equally natural that their all-too-easy impostor “religion” should be eventually confronted by the indignant rightful owner.

KARL MARX IS DEAD...OR IS HE?

The worst mistake of capitalism in the last two decades, or perhaps ever, was to presume that with the demise of the USSR, the alleged standard bearer of Marxism, Karl Marx would be dead too.


A very big mistake of logic and general comprehension! Karl Marx the person may be dead (actually he has been officially dead since 1883!), but so what? He was not the gravedigger of capitalism; he just wrote about the gravedigger of capitalism, whom he had called “the proletariat,” but whom we can easily identify by the more familiar and ageless name: “the poor.”

Karl Marx is dead, in body only, and the USSR is dead, in name only. Meanwhile, the poor of the world are a great many, and Karl Marx’s Gespenst is very much alive among them. The “greed-is-good” crowd has the same lot to worry about, and, perhaps, with a “fiercer urgency” than ever before.

THE YELTSIN PRIVATIZATION: A CRIME OR A SACRIFICE?

Two decades later, this entry talks about one of the ugliest grimaces of capitalism-gone-wild in post-Soviet Russia: the criminal affair of the privatization of national property, which ended up with a handful of thieving “oligarchs” taking possession of Russia’s wealth at a microscopic fraction of the actual value of the property in question.
It has long been an established fact that not only was the dissolution of the Soviet Union one of the greatest tragedies in Russian history (in terms of the amount of misery it had unleashed on the Russian people), but that it also ushered in an unprecedented orgy of uninhibited plunder of the national wealth, going both into the pockets of Russia’s unscrupulous entrepreneurs, and out of the country to foreign “rapists”), and that the incredible Bacchanalia thus unleashed was in fact unleashed as a direct result of the Yeltsin government’s economic policies.
It is also a well-known fact that Yeltsin’s privatization program had established the practice of assessing the value of national properties at less than one per cent of what they were worth, leading fast to the creation of a whole new class of super-rich scoundrels, called the oligarchs, who were outrageously empowered to take advantage of the system going mad, and thus to amass huge wealth, none of which would be created by their industrious genius, but shamelessly stolen from the Russian nation by the exercise of their thieving skills.
Having thus registered the fact of the catastrophic malfeasance which was the Yeltsin privatization program, the most important question to ask is why it was done--- so deliberately and so demonstrably maliciously?

There can be no explanation other than that there had to be a clear conspiracy at the highest echelons of the self-immolating Soviet power to unleash the evil spirit of uninhibited capitalism on Russian soil, just like an orgy of Godlessness had been unleashed on Russia in the wake of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. In both these cases, the intent was to purify the Russian national spirit in a baptism of fire. As a result of the tragic events of 1917, a rebirth of the Russian Orthodox Christian spirit had taken place. As a result of the Yeltsin privatization debauchery of the 1990’s, a resurgence of Russia’s anti-capitalist and anti-Western bias had to take place with a vengeance, and its holy fury fruits are only beginning to be felt throughout the “new world order.”

IS JUSTICE AMORAL?

(This entry is a continuation of the previously posted entry Freedom And The Law. Aside from the fact that these two entries are thus related, I will let the reader figure out the relevance of this last entry to the subject of capitalism as an amoral economic system. Nota bene: amoral is not a word of opprobrium here. On the contrary, it offers the capitalist a helping hand: As long as the apologists of capitalism do not proclaim it as a paragon of goodness, its critics cannot assault it with an invective to the contrary. See my other entries on this subject: For Whom The Closing Bell Tolls; Economics And Human Nature; To Owe Or Not To Own, all posted in January 2011.)


In the philosophy of justice, the following observation by Hobbes in the 30th Chapter of Leviathan deserves a special consideration:
“By a good law I mean not a just law: for no law can be unjust.” (In other words, does it mean that “unjust laws” are oxymoronic?)
Is it really true that there are only good laws and bad laws but no such thing as laws just or unjust? This odd wordplay is by no means a sophistic argument, but it goes to the heart of the question of law and justice. If it is true that “no law can be unjust,” then justice becomes amoral, totally devoid of the ethical content. See for yourself this chain of reasoning: law is justice, there can be good and bad laws, which means that law as such is amoral, then so is justice.
The implications of this wordplay are interesting. The ‘amorality’ of justice does not tell us that all justice is ‘amoral.’ Far from that, or at least let us call it a non sequitur. If there are good laws and bad laws, it means that there can be good justice and bad justice too. It is the same as to say that the existence of good men and bad men does not suggest that men are amoral!

And now let us examine the relevance of everything said here to the issue of capitalist ethics. It is easy to see the connection. Even though the term capitalism has got itself a bad name (not only among the socialists of the familiar kind, but among all Europeans in general), we should not be prepared to condemn capitalism as such just because bad capitalism is so conspicuous and obnoxious; let us consider all economic systems, just like the concept of justice, essentially amoral, and, rather, concentrate on how a particular system can go bad, or be made good.

MEDVEDEV AND PUTIN DÉJÀ VUS

I couldn’t possibly leave today’s news regarding the political future of the Putin-Medvedev tandem without a comment. Well, my reaction to today’s news was posted on this blog five days ago (September 20, 2011) in my entry Medvedev And Putin, to which I am presently referring my reader.

FREEDOM AND THE LAW

“Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself,” argued the well-known American economist Milton Friedman. Once again we have an example of sheer demagoguery that seeks cover under the highly attractive, yet totally meaningless word freedom. Unless, of course, we admit that the word freedom does have a meaning, but, perhaps, not a very attractive one, depending on how it is exercised in certain particular contexts.


“Behold, I proclaim a liberty for you, saith the Lord, to the sword, to the pestilence, and to the famine; and I will make you to be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth.” (Jeremiah 34:17.)

A general manifestation of dangerous freedom is in all such instances when it has the power to revert man to his natural state, which is war, according to Hobbes.
So, what was all that about “a lack of belief in freedom itself”? Here is my spontaneous aphorism: “In God we trust, in freedom we don’t!” How about that for a rejoinder?
Before I am accused of something deadly, as in “deadly sin,” mind you, that I am carrying out no vendetta against freedom and liberty here. However, in Genesis 2:16-17, the first time freedom is mentioned in the Bible, God uses this word conditionally: “Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But… (!!!)”
Let us try not to forget that it is the serpent who becomes the advocate of absolute freedom.
Thus, not surprisingly, it is my general conclusion that should we try to evaluate the concept of “freedom” in an ethical sense, there ought to be no rush to declare it either good or bad. Most prudently, we may call it amoral. This can be readily applied to the social sphere as well. So, here is the point where the line of sharp distinction needs to be drawn between the notions of freedom and the law.
While freedom as-such is, at least arguably, amoral, the law is designed to regulate public morality, and it cannot be allowed the dubious luxury of extramoral existence. It is, therefore, imperative that every law of the land, big and small, be evaluated as an ethical commandment, and, should it be found morally wanting, the law must be changed. Here is an area where the separation of church and state is the least desirable.
How does all this relate to the particular issue of capitalist freedom? Simple: all that’s freedom is not good, Mr. Friedman!

DOSTOYEVSKY: HAGIOGRAPHY OF CRIME

(In my posted entry Three Sources Of Stalin’s Power [February 5, 2011], I wrote about Stalin’s fascination with the criminal world, which translated into practical results, and well before the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 had set him apart from, and vastly superior to, all his Bolshevik Comrades. Indeed, it can be said that in the Lenin-Stalin relationship, it was Stalin calling the shots and using Lenin for his purposes, rather than the other way round. Russia’s criminal world had become perhaps the greatest source of Stalin’s power, and eventually assured him of political supremacy.
Was it intuition, or was Comrade Stalin, a well-educated man who had studied for priesthood in his younger years, sufficiently acquainted with the thinking of Bakunin and the works of Dostoyevsky to have their help in coming to his momentous conclusions? I am sure that it was a combination of both.
This short preamble gives an additional significance to the present entry on Dostoyevsky.)

The great Dostoyevsky is occasionally described as a detective story writer, and there is nothing demeaning in such a description. Most Dostoyevskyan novels are indeed centered around criminal acts, to which Crime and Punishment, Besy, and Brothers Karamazov bear immediate and explicit witness.
To be sure, however, the focus of Dostoyevsky’s attention in each such case is not so much the anatomy of the crime itself, as the psychology of the criminal. Having spent some part of his life among criminals, he is supremely capable of capitalizing on his observations, and the results are truly amazing. One may justly say that Dostoyevsky learns human psychology by studying the criminal, in which he is, of course, in tune with the great Bakunin. The big difference between the two of them, though, is that Bakunin is the revolutionist, the rebel, the anarchist, who extols the criminal as the lifeblood of the nation, whereas Dostoyevsky admits only that the criminal is the best type of personality to learn human psychology from, and he does. Although Dostoyevsky finds the criminal monstrous and revolting (such as, say, in the case of Peter Verkhovensky, in the novel Besy), he nevertheless recognizes that the non-criminal part of society is prone to corruption and degeneration, and prescribes war as a remedy. In fact, according to him, war brings out the best in people, when it is a good defensive war; it energizes society, as though effectively elevating it to the creative level of the criminal, thus finding in war an adequate substitute for crime.

Remarkably, but not surprisingly, Nietzsche reveres Dostoyevsky as a psychologist and teacher, and thus explains the psychological phenomenon of the criminal, rationalizing Dostoyevsky’s preoccupation with the criminal mind. The extended quotation is from Nietzsche’s Götzer-Dämmerung: Skirmishes of an Untimely Man: #45:

“45. The criminal and what is related to him. The criminal type is the type of the strong human being under unfavorable circumstances: a strong human being made sick. He lacks the wilderness, a somehow freer and more dangerous environment and form of existence, where everything that is weapons and armor in the instinct of the strong human being has its rightful place. His virtues are ostracized by society; the most vivid drives with which he is endowed soon grow together with the depressing affects--- with suspicion, fear, and dishonor. Yet this is almost the recipe for physiological degeneration. Whoever must do secretly, with long suspense, caution and cunning what he can do best and would like most to do becomes anemic; and because he always harvests only danger, persecution, and calamity from his instincts, his attitude to these instincts is reversed too, and he comes to experience them fatalistically. It is society, our tame, mediocre, emasculated society, in which a natural human being, who comes from the mountains or from the adventures of the sea, necessarily degenerates into a criminal. Or almost necessarily; for there are cases in which such a man proves stronger than society: the Corsican, Napoleon, is the most famous case.
The testimony of Dostoevsky is relevant to this problem--- Dostoevsky, the only psychologist, incidentally, from whom I had something to learn; he ranks among the most beautiful strokes of fortune in my life, even more than my discovery of Stendhal; this profound human being who was ten times right in his low estimate of the superficial Germans, lived for a long time among the convicts in Siberia,--- hardened criminals, for whom there was no way back to society,--and found them very different from what he himself had expected: they were carved out of just about the best, hardest and most valuable wood growing anywhere on Russian soil.
Let us generalize the case of the criminal: let us think of men so constituted that, for one reason or another, they lack public approval and know that they are not felt to be beneficent or useful — that chandala feeling that one is not considered equal, but an outcast, unworthy, contaminating… All men so constituted have a subterranean hue to their thoughts and actions; everything about them becomes paler than in those whose existence is touched by daylight. Yet almost all forms of existence which we consider distinguished today once lived in this half-tomblike atmosphere: the scientific character, the artist, the genius, the free spirit, the actor, the merchant, the great discoverer. As long as the priest was being considered the supreme type, every valuable kind of human being was devaluated. The time will come, I promise, when the priest will be considered the lowest type, our chandala the most mendacious, the most indecent kind of human being. I call attention to the fact that even now, under the mildest regimen of morals which has ever ruled on earth, or at least in Europe, every deviation, every long, all-too-long sojourn below, every unusual or opaque form of existence, brings one closer to that type, which is perfected in the criminal. All innovators of the spirit must for a time bear the pallid and fatal mark of the chandala on their foreheads, not because they are that way considered by others, but because they themselves feel the terrible cleavage which separates them from everything that is customary or reputable. Almost every genius knows, as one stage of his development, the “Catilinarian existence” — a feeling of hatred, revenge, and rebellion against everything which already is, which no longer becomes. Catiline — the form of pre-existence of every Caesar.”

...One may agree or disagree with Nietzsche here, on this specific point,--it does not matter. What is important is that the closed triangle Russia--Dostoyevsky--Nietzsche--Russia connects Nietzsche’s discerning genius to Russia’s genius, and that they somehow found and appreciated each other. (See my pertinent entry Russia And Nietzsche.) Together, the two of them cannot go wrong on this incredibly subtle, even esoteric matter.
And finally, another amazing Nietzschean mention of Dostoyevsky, coming from Der Fall Wagner:

“…In the narrower sphere of so-called moral values, one cannot find a greater contrast than that between a master morality and the morality of Christian value concepts: the latter developed on soil that was morbid through and through (the Gospels present us with precisely the same physiological types that Dostoevsky’s novels describe), master morality (“Roman,” “pagan,” “classical,” “Renaissance”) is, conversely, the sign language of what has turned out well, of ascending life, of the will to power as the principle of life. Master morality affirms as instinctively as Christian morality negates (“God,” “beyond,” “self-denial”—all of them negations). The former gives to things out of its own abundance—it transfigures, it beautifies the world and makes it more rational—the latter impoverishes, pales and makes uglier the value of things, it negates the world. “World” is a Christian term of abuse.—”

Well, dear Nietzsche, in the Russian psyche, the Christians are right: the world is a place of abuse, and thus deserves abuse in return. Which in a way justifies the Dostoyevskyan criminal, and adds extra glamour to the hagiography of crime.

MEDVEDEV AND PUTIN

(The reader who is unfamiliar with my blog, particularly with my January 17, 2011 posting Totalitarianism Without Prejudice, may easily misinterpret my usage of the term totalitarian, imbuing it with the prejudiced substance of its most common uses. My treatment of totalitarianism is unprejudiced, that is, unaffected either by its erstwhile apologists such as Giovanni Gentile, or by its modern armies of detractors. I see this term, stripped of its heavy historical baggage, as a legitimate and extremely useful tool (regrettably unutilized by political science on account of its prejudice against it), describing not so much a specific social practice as a specific type of social mentality characterizing vigorous nationalistic societies, and constituting, in its extreme, the socialist antipode to laissez-faire capitalism, which is, of course, also an extreme. In this sense, it is my firm belief that the Russian society is historically “totalitarian” in its predisposition, and I am obviously not using this word as the usual form of opprobrium.)


The West has been preoccupied for some time now with the nature of the Putin-Medvedev relationship in the current Kremlin structure of “power-sharing.” The idea generated in the West of a power struggle going on in Moscow, as to who is number one, reflects the basic misunderstanding by Western analysts of the core difference between authoritarian and totalitarian power structures. While the former are characterized by the clash of competing egos, the latter are determined by the peculiarities of the overall system, and its nuts and bolts-- namely, the individuals engaged in the power structure--- are not so much competing against each other as striving to comply with the requirements of the system. A political coup within all totalitarian systems is only possible when the individual in ascendance promises to be in better compliance with the requirements of the system than the individual he is about to replace.
Within this context, there is no power struggle in the Kremlin, and there is no competition between Putin and Medvedev. The only sticky issue here is the constitutional outline of the political titles, namely President vs. Prime Minister. Had the system been left to itself, it would have disposed with such silly trivialities through the convenient leader-principle. But the system strives to present a respectable face to the world, where the technicalities of political distinctions offer the best comprehended clue as to the system’s democratic versus undemocratic nature and thus the totalitarian system feels compelled to oblige. Therefore, if according to the constitution the office of the head of state is limited to two specified terms, so be it, as long as the players in the system itself realize that the meaning of such “constitutional power changes” is merely perfunctory, and has no effect on the actual situation within the system.

Now, what if Medvedev, taking advantage of his constitutional preeminence, wanted to convert perfunctory advantages into actual ones? In conducting a coup of this nature, he would not be fighting just Mr. Putin and his loyalists. He would be posing a challenge to the whole totalitarian system. If the system likes what it sees in Mr. Medvedev better than what it sees in Mr. Putin, Mr. Medvedev will succeed. If not, he is bound to fail. But neither he nor his competitor would have a personal edge in this fight, as its result will be determined at a level above either of them.

As a matter of trivia, there used to be a trivial game of rearranging the chairs, played in the Kremlin since as early as the Lenin transitional era, when such phrases as, say, “President Sverdlov” or “Prime Minister Rykov” (I am operating with the familiar equivalent titles, rather than with the strange-sounding literal ones, which still amount to the same thing) had no real substance. In later times, Khrushchev preferred the post of Premier to that of President, while Brezhnev preferred the post of President to that of Premier, whereas the pinnacle of the power pyramid had always remained with the Leader, identified from Lenin to the end of the USSR with being Head of the Party.
The significance of the Leader never really subsided in post-Soviet times. Yeltsin (even if it makes me sick to say it) was the Leader, which position he, of course, abused and debased. Putin, as soon as he popped up to the surface, became the Leader and by all indications he still is. Looking at Medvedev today, I see a loyalist junior partner, a prospective Prime Minister, when Putin returns to the post of President. Somehow I cannot envisage Medvedev as the next Leader of Russia, because, in my opinion, he has played the role of follower for too long. Leaders like Putin burst onto the political scene out of relative obscurity, they are not groomed for the office, as the history of all past and present Leaders without exception has revealed to all those ready and willing to learn from it.

Having said that, I do not exclude the possibility, which I mentioned in an earlier entry, of Mr. Medvedev to become the future President of Russia (after Putin’s next twelve years), in which case his current status can be best described as “President-in Training.” I like Mr. Medvedev very much, and I am certain that he will make a good and competent President of Russia the second time around, but I do doubt his great-leader credentials for the reasons explained in the previous paragraph. Needless to say, this scenario will only be possible if, after the end of Vladimir Putin’s last term, no strong leader of his kind emerges to take over the helm of the Russian ship of state.

PUTIN'S GERMAN AND GERMANY

History is replete with “coincidences” appropriated by talented appropriators, from Egyptian priests and the augurs of Rome to modern miracle workers, to serve as portentous omens of things to come. However some of these coincidences may not have been coincidences at all, but omens, which those same miracle workers of modernity have pretended not to have noticed at all. One of such omens was the 2000 choice of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin as the next President of Russia, after the calamitous drunk Boris Yeltsin.

Over the last decade Vladimir Putin has proved himself as an enormously capable man, but this is mostly an ex post facto impression. Yes, by now he has indeed proved himself beyond all expectations, but in 1999 he was the consummate unknown. I am sure that at the start line there were a number of other capable men like him, besides him, who just as well might have been chosen. Putin’s particular luck, I believe, was his fluent knowledge of German, and his lengthy experience as a KGB agent stationed in East Germany.
Putin’s fluency in German was in itself, before the fact, a telltale omen of Russia’s choice of political course in the first century of the new millennium, a brilliant long-term projection of the new Russian-German anti-American alliance, based on their mutual resentment of America’s arrogant geopolitical posture, dismissive and condescending toward nations with ages-long great-power mentality. Thus, in the preconceived scheme of things, the next leader of a reemerging Russia had to be a fluent German speaker, rather than an English speaker, which would have been more common.
Had Putin learned English, or French or Spanish at school, he might have become a very capable soldier for Russia, but hardly, at least not right away, the anointed leader for the New Russian-German Century.

COMRADE PUTIN'S PARTY

(Russia’s dominant pro-government party Yedinaya Rossiya [usually translated as United Russia] came into existence in 2001, and in 2007 elected Vladimir Putin as its Leader, and since 2008 as its Chairman. Quasi-paradoxically, but actually unsurprisingly, Mr. Putin has never joined the party as a member. [Incidentally, neither has Mr. Medvedev.] This slight “abnormality” has been “normally” attributed by the commentators to Mr. Putin’s desire to stay above partisanship as a national leader, which could be partly true (Mr. Putin’s most recent assumption of leadership over the supra-partisan national movement All-Russia Popular Front, which he himself initiated, appears to testify in favor of this explanation). But, as is so often the case, this is only a part of the story, at least in my opinion. I am raising certain unexplored aspects of it in this entry.)

Lenin, who knew a thing or two about hardball politics, described a successful revolution as the necessary amalgamation of three key factors. One, that the have-nots do not want the status quo. Two, that the haves cannot have the status quo. (These two factors by themselves constitute the revolutionary situation as such, but by themselves they are not enough to guarantee the success of a revolution. Therefore---) Three, that there is a single tightly-organized and well-disciplined party, to lead the forces of progress to victory. Thus, the key to success in revolutionary politics is the Lenin-type one-party system.

The multi-party systems of European and other democracies, or the two-party system of modern America are all successfully anti-revolutionary, and their objectives are all alike, to maintain the political status quo, that is, reasonable stability, in their respective nations. In Russia, however, right before the collapse of the USSR, its outmoded single-party system was no longer consistent with the regime’s desire to maintain the status quo. In other words, Soviet political system had long ceased to be revolutionary and had become reactionary, for which purpose the one-party format was no longer suitable.
Then Mr. Yeltsin’s transitional pandemonium spawned a myriad of shapeless and useless soap boxes, also known as Russian political parties… The history of March-October 1917 was essentially repeating itself.
The ascendancy of Vladimir Putin changed everything and suddenly it looked like Russia was once again in a revolutionary flux, and consequently was once again in need of a one-party structure.

I confess that for some time I kept wondering when Mr. Putin, already in the process of restoring much of the Soviet legacy, would start taking his cue from Lenin and history, and make yet another step toward the “good old times,” by appropriating a party and becoming its Vozhd/Leader, thus raising himself and his post above the "nonsense" of the democratic process, and ensuring the victory of state power.
Yedinaya Rossiya seemed to be the perfect party to supplant all other parties and ideal for Mr. Putin to lead. This scenario was indeed followed almost to a tee, and then abruptly cut short. Yedinaya Rossiya has indeed become the powerhouse party of Russia, and it has indeed elected Mr. Putin as its leader, but Mr. Putin has never become its member, for which there must be a good reason.

Most Kremlin watchers say that he wanted to put himself above Russia’s “partisan” politics, and above the Party he is leading, too. I say that this explanation is inadequate. Yedinaya Rossiya has essentially put other Russian parties out of business, which makes the phrase “partisan politics” (implying an active multi-party system) totally meaningless. By the same token, “putting himself above his own party” would be an equally meaningless assertion. And, finally, I have a solid hypothesis of my own, to explain why Mr. Putin has not joined his loyal power base Yedinaya Rossiya. In a nutshell, this is analogous to marriage. You cannot marry anybody else if you are already hitched. Likewise, Comrade Putin cannot become a member of the Yedinaya Rossiya, because he is already a loyal member of another party, and for him joining any other party would have been an act of abominable disloyalty.

My hypothesis was born after reading, a few years ago, with a heavy heart, my father General Artem’s obituary. As he was lying on his deathbed, on January 15, 2008, surrounded by his old comrades and much younger new Russian officials, his last words were Sluzhu Sovetskomu Soyuzu, I Serve the Soviet Union! (For more on this, read my entry In Memoriam, posted on March 5, 2011.)
And then I was immediately struck by the thought: But of course! My father Artem had never ceased to be a member of the CPSU, and after the dissolution of the USSR and of the Soviet Communist Party, it would have been an act of disloyalty and treason for him to accept that his membership was now null and void…
Mind you, there must be no confusion here between the existing Communist Party of Russia, which looks to me like a rather sad joke, and the no longer functioning Communist Party of the USSR, which, by virtue of its non-existence, has assumed an All-Russian-Imperial supra-partisan symbolic status, a sort of rallying cry… In life, the butt of all sorts of anti-establishment jokes, in death, a heroic legend!… It takes all sorts to make a hero, but once a hero is made, who would be so foolish as to wrestle with a legend?!
And now, what other party could be better suited to perform the role of the third component of a successful revolution, per Lenin, than this out-of-this-world ghost, once already created by Lenin for precisely such a function… the CPSU!

So, here now is my hypothesis:
What if the CPSU continuing membership has become the mark of loyalty to Russia for her old patriots? I am basing this assumption on a presumptive reconstruction of my probable feelings and conduct under the same circumstances (after all, I am an ideal sounding board in these matters, at least in my own measure of the current events in Russia). In those cataclysmic days, in 1992, when the Communist Party of the Soviet Union had been disgraced and disbanded, and millions of its members were running like rats off the allegedly sinking ship, there were many others, too, for whom their continuing membership in the now ostensibly outmoded organization might have become a symbolic test of loyalty to the Russian nation, to her history, and to her future. These have never surrendered their old CPSU Party cards, keeping them as a kind of sacred pledge to endure and persevere through Russia’s latest Time of Troubles, and, perhaps, one day soon, to restore Russia’s natural greatness to the next rung of Hegel’s ascending spiral staircase of historical progress.

I believe that such continuing membership may have created a powerful secret society in Yeltsin’s Russia, with its probable oath being those last words of my father, Sluzhu Sovetskomu Soyuzu. What’s more, I can easily imagine Vladimir Putin as one of those secret members (in fact, not so terribly secret, I am convinced, as there must have been thousands of CPSU members at the time who had refused to turn themselves into such rats, and eventually all banded and bonded together, united by that universally recognized and time-honored principle of honor, which in French says: Noblesse Oblige!)

For this reason, I suspect, Comrade Putin has declined to join any other party, which should only earn him profound respect and admiration from the current members of the Yedinaya Rossiya, which has proudly proclaimed him as its Chairman and has even hastily changed the Party rules, to eliminate the mandatory membership requirement for its unanimously chosen leader.
Such symbolic party membership, I repeat, is totally consistent with the role of the national, and even supra-national, leader, which Comrade Putin may already be playing in the evolving Russian and world history…

To many, my hypothesis may read like a far-fetched theory. To me, it is a faithful mental reconstruction of what must really have happened, or at least what ought to have happened in Russia’s unfathomable mystical reality.

UNDERSTANDING POST-STALINISM

(This is the third part of a triptych. The first part Understanding Leninism and the second part Understanding Stalinism were both posted on January 26, 2011 in a cluster of entries under the umbrella title La Forza Del Destino.)


From the perspective of Stalinism as a totalitarian phenomenon, the post-Stalinist period of Russian history started shortly after Stalin’s death and in some way may be said to continue still, despite the huge upheavals of the past half-a-century.
My point might gain some clarity from the fact that I am drawing a close parallel between Stalin’s Stalinism and Peter’s “Petrism.” In fact, Stalinism is an organic continuation of Petrism, and, despite certain dramatic changes in the course of Russian history since Stalin’s death in 1953, I am claiming that the “baton” has not been passed yet, in the historical relay race of Russia’s defining giants.
Ironically, Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization campaign, although highly detrimental to Stalin’s symbolic image, did not topple Stalinism as such, but only promoted its inevitable degeneration, following the demise of the great totalitarian. By the same token, Brezhnev’s attempts to restore some of the positives of Stalin’s image could not reverse the degeneration process, as only a strong totalitarian leader in Stalin’s mold would have been capable of reversing the downward trend. Thus, in the wake of Stalin’s demise, the Soviet Union was sliding along the path of post-Stalin totalitarian inertia, throughout Khrushchev’s, Brezhnev’s, Andropov’s, and Chernenko’s tenure. That much is pretty obvious.
What is less obvious is that Gorbachev coming to power in 1985, with all his much acclaimed glasnost and perestroika, did not inaugurate a definitive historical period of his own. There was no revival, and there was no revolution, therefore, we may say that the process of degeneration continued under him as well.
It is still unclear to most, how history, say, in fifty years from now, will evaluate Boris Yeltsin’s cataclysmic stint in power. To me, his decade of the nineties will be viewed extremely negatively, as a catastrophic and aberrational event, although, as I have already said on numerous occasions, this calamity was by no means Yeltsin’s handiwork, but a logical, albeit chaotic, outcome of the transformational dream of the keepers of the Russian nation. In other words, the 1990’s were an ugly correction of Russia’s historical course, and to a certain degree they can be seen as a separate but otherwise integral segment of the general phenomenon that I am describing here as “post-Stalinism.”
Even more shocking, the arrival of Vladimir Putin in 2000 has not inaugurated a phenomenon yet, which might be called “Putinism,” and put on a par with Petrism and Stalinism, although some attempts to introduce the new term Putinism have been made in the past decade. Nor is the current limelight-sharing of the Putin-Medvedev duo in any way indicative of a definitive stamp of Russian history. This is not to say that Mr. Putin would not be capable of making a distinctive imprint which would allow us to be talking of Putinism as a legitimate member of the Petrism-Stalinism-Putinism institutional triad. But that time has not come yet.

And finally, the reader may have noticed that while talking all the time about Petrism and Stalinism, I have not once mentioned Leninism in this entry. Leninism was, of course, a transitional/revolutionary, rather than an institutional phenomenon, but unlike the Provisional Government episode of 1917, or the Yeltsin episode of the 1990’s, it represented a legitimate transition to Russia’s most natural form of government: totalitarian state. With Yeltsin’s case far too obvious, I must note that the first decade of the twenty-first century, that is the Putin-Medvedev decade, has certainly fallen short of becoming a defining revolutionary moment in the history of post-Stalin Russia, Time of Troubles and all. In fact, despite the by now nearly twelve-year stretch of Putin power, whatever has happened in Russia during this period can hardly qualify as a revolution at all, but perhaps only as a preparation for a revolution. How the real Putin revolution will shape up, if at all, will become more or less clear in the current decade of the 2010’s. What is quite clear though, is that the blessed event in question has been much impeded under the watchful and hostile eye of mass communications and occasionally unwelcome transparency. But I suspect that eventually it is going to arrive at its destination.

"PHILOSOPHY OF FREEDOM"

The title of this entry is the title of one of the great works of the Russian philosopher Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev (1874-1948), and this is a very apt title, as the theme of freedom is central to his philosophy. One of his famous and frequently quoted thoughts about freedom ought to take its proper preambular place here, before we talk about everything else.--
“Liberation of man from nature is his victory over slavery and death. Man is first of all a spiritual substance, which is not an object. Man has more value than society, state, or nation. And if society and state should encroach upon personal freedom, it is his right to shield his freedom from such advances.”
(I understand what he is saying here, and I am even sympathetic with it, but taken as a straightforward unqualified statement, I certainly disagree with it completely.) His name is cited virtually on an equal footing with that of Vladimir Solovyev, but to me, Berdyaev was a far lesser figure. Although as an obsessive writer he was incredibly prolific, as a thinker he is certainly derivative from Solovyev although he did manage to develop his own philosophy.
Berdyaev started his intellectual life as a Marxist, but fairly soon became disenchanted, and interested in the philosophy of Vladimir Solovyev. Because of his anti-authoritarian views he was twice arrested by the old tsarist regime, and then twice arrested by the Bolsheviks, whom he also saw as authoritarian, and eventually in 1922 exiled from Soviet Russia, living the rest of his life first in Berlin, then, since 1924, in Paris. In 1926 he founded the journal Path, and until 1939 served as its editor-in-chief.

Of his numerous works the most significant were Philosophy of Freedom (1911), The Meaning of Creativity (1916), and The Meaning of History (1923). [Note Vladimir Soloviev's influence in these titles, as compared to his famous title The Meaning of Love.] Ironically, the title of one of his last works, The Russian Idea (1946) is identical to one of Vladimir Solovyev’s titles, although Berdyaev uses the advantage of following the development of the Russian idea for half-a-century after Solovyev’s time, in one of the most turbulent periods of Russian history.
In his Philosophy of Freedom, Berdyaev points out that his book is not a philosophical analysis of the term freedom, but an argument contrasting the philosophy of the free from the philosophy of the slave. Nietzsche, with his description of dual morality (master and slave morality), may well have inspired Berdyaev’s own description, although Berdyaev makes no acknowledgment of him (except for a couple of glowing general remarks regarding Nietzsche’s great daring and martyr’s spirit). His detailed treatment of the philosophy of freedom proper departs from Nietzsche completely, as he discusses these two different paths: mystical and magical, maintaining that only the former brings man closer to God, whereas the other one creates an idol.

To me, the most interesting part of his philosophy is his postulation of the three types of freedom: primeval irrational (which preexists Creation, contained in the Divine Nothing, from which [ex nihilo] God made the world); rational (which obeys moral duty), and the highest type of freedom, filled with love of God. He says that man’s freedom of choice, which is capable of creating either good or evil, was already contained in the Divine Nothing, and was not created by God, therefore God is not responsible for evil in the world. I have a very different, although commensurate treatment of freedom of choice as a created good, which outweighs the evil, which is the result of the wrong choice. (See the relevant entries in my Philosophy section.)

Although deprived of the right to ever see Russia again, Berdyaev commendably remained a stanch Russian patriot and professed a great world-historical role of Russia as the reconciler of East and West in fulfillment of her God-designed destiny. He laments, however, that the Russian soul has not been liberated from fetters, and remains confused about her predestination. He argues for the necessity of the liberation of the Russian soul from such fetters, and her resulting reconciliation with God’s great Plan for her.
In my view, he does say a lot of right words, but in a sort of shuffle, inadequately explained and woefully incomplete. Which of course does not lessen his significance as a major philosopher, as he makes us think about some very serious subjects, and now makes us talk about him as well.

THE MEANING OF LOVE

When the question is being asked about Russia’s greatest philosopher in history, the answer is unanimous: Vladimir Solovyev. Among them all, he alone answers the popular description of genius: obsessed with an idea (or ideas) and unmistakably daffy, to the point of balancing on the verge of insanity. In fact, living in a time of tight censorship and harsh reprisals for crossing the line of allowed speech, he was able to get away with all too many outrageous statements--- not only because he was the son of the much respected historian Sergey Solovyev, but also because he was characterized as demented by the ultraconservative entourage of Tsar Alexander III, and basically left alone no matter what he said. Vladimir was raised by his father in an atmosphere propitious for his intellectual development, where strict discipline went hand in hand with an intrepidly liberal outlook, encouraging independent thinking. Having entered Moscow University to study science, he later transferred to philosophy, and now found his vocation. His seminal 1874 dissertation on The Crisis of Western Philosophy was written as a critical response to, and repudiation of, Western preoccupation with materialism and philosophical positivism, in defense of idealism and spirituality rooted in the Christian religion. Curiously, prior to his plunge into philosophical studies, he had toyed with nihilism and even atheism, which his powerful father had disapprovingly allowed, expecting his son to outgrow his temporary infantile eccentricity. And so he did, although his extreme obsession with Christian virtues would now take him on a course bringing him even more trouble and severe censure than he could have incurred upon himself had he remained a nihilist thinker.
To be done with his biography, having finished his studies at Moscow University, Solovyev began his short-lived career as a teacher, first at his alma mater, then at the University of St. Petersburg, but, disgusted with academic formalities, he quit his job anyway, after delivering a shocking lecture on March 28, 1881, where he asked for Christian clemency for the assassins of the Russian Emperor Alexander II, sentenced to death. Happily out of the job, he committed himself to fulltime writing and traveling, until, a terminally sick man, he died at his friend’s country estate near Moscow, at the age of forty-seven, homeless and broke. (It would be a mistake, however, to feel indignation about his destitute state at the end: it was a self-inflicted misery, resulting from a conscientious choice of lifestyle.)

Turning now to Solovyev’s philosophy, its underlying idea was that of Sophia, the Soul of the World, which had appeared to him on several occasions in mystical visions. She was a mystical cosmic being, uniting God with this earthly world and representing eternal femininity in God, and, at the same time, God’s Design with regard to His Creation. We shall have a lengthier discussion of this later on in the entry Sophia placed in the Wishful Thinking section. It will suffice to say here that Solovyev himself refused to see Sophia as merely a fantasy of his. He was earnestly convinced that Sophia can be effectively realized on earth through a three-prong approach. Theosophy (as defined by him, and having nothing to do with Madame Blavatsky’s baby!) will form the conception of her; Theurgy will bring us to her; and Theocracy will be the installation of her.
On the basis of his core idea of Sophia, Solovyev also developed the key legal principles of God’s kingdom on earth. These too will be discussed in detail in our Sophia entry.
Solovyev also developed a moral code of conduct which required that Christendom live and act consistently according to the Biblical principles of Christianity. Although he was never an all-out defender of the Jews, and called their rejection of Christ their greatest mistake and world-historical tragedy, he blamed his fellow Christians for treating the Jews in an appallingly un-Christian manner, and he was convinced that as soon as the Christians renounce and repent their shameful treatment of the Jews, the latter would be able to see the light and embrace Christianity, just as Jesus wanted them to. In spite of this last sticking point, Russian Jews honored Solovyev’s efforts on their behalf by proclaiming him a “righteous Gentile,” and giving prayers for him in the synagogues around Russia. On receiving the news of his death, all Jewish communities called for a day of mourning and prayer for his soul.

Aside from his philosophy and theology Solovyev was a remarkable poet, considered a precursor of Russian symbolism of the early twentieth century. His influence on Alexander Blok and Vyacheslav Ivanov has been acknowledged. Every Russian literary critic and every scholar of the history of Russian literature recognizes Vladimir Solovyev’s very special and very prominent place in it as a unique phenomenon.

Solovyev was a good friend of Dostoyevsky, and it is well known that Alyosha Karamazov’s character was inspired by him. It is less known that the idea of writing the famous story The Kreutzer Sonata came to Leo Tolstoy after reading Solovyev’s book The Meaning of Love, which had a powerful effect on him. It is time now to say a few words about that book.

In The Meaning of Love Solovyev ridicules the belief that the objective of sexual love is procreation. Had it been the case, he argues, the greater the sexual attraction between a man and a woman, the stronger and the more talented their children would have been. However, the opposite is mostly the case. In fact, sexual love and procreation are in a reverse relationship: the stronger one is, the weaker is the other.
He goes on to suggest that sexual love is the only force capable of defeating human egoism. (Maternal love, for instance, is a form of egoism.) Thus sexual love, if handled philosophically, can be seen as having a vital role to play in the betterment of mankind.

Among Solovyev’s other works of major interest are these:
History and the Future of Theocracy (1886) was Volume I of his planned 3-volume theological monograph on a future reunification of Christian Churches under the aegis of the Roman Catholic Church. Needless to say, this idea and everything associated with it was anathema to the Russian Orthodox Church, but reflected its low moral standing in the eyes of the Russian Intelligentsia.
The Russian Idea (1888) was Solovyev’s controversial essay, in which he argued that the Russian Absolute State was standing in the way of Russia’s self-realization as the consummate Christian nation.
Russia and the Universal Church (written in French and published in 1889 in Paris), where he promoted the idea of a transnational Christian unity hoping to reach a reconciliation of the Russian Orthodox Church with her Roman Catholic counterpart, under the primacy of the Pope. This was Volume II of his proposed three-volume theological monograph on a future reunification of Christian Churches under the aegis of the Roman Catholic Church. For obvious reasons, this book could not be published in Russia.
Beauty in Nature (1889) was an essay which gave an exposition of Solovyev’s aesthetic theory, arguing that beauty is an objective reality transforming matter through its transcendental essence.
Justification of the Good: Moral Philosophy (1894-1897), which called for the development of a new moral philosophy and presents a lengthy exposition of Solovyev’s Christian ethics.
Three Conversations: On War, Progress, and the End of World History, Also Including a Short Tale of the Antichrist (1900), Solovyev’s last work, where he gave vent to his philosophical disappointment, and made dire predictions about the future of the world.

As I already said before and in several places elsewhere, Solovyev’s low opinion of the Russian Church and his readiness to bow to the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome, was by no means an anomaly of a sick mind, but an earnest reflection of the low depths to which the Church had sunk by that time. It took a Revolution and a sea of Christian blood to restore the Church’s prestige and ensure its reemergence as the guiding light and conscience of the Russian national spirit. But Solovyev did not live long enough to welcome its arrival as the purifying fire of history, brought down upon his great nation, to bring her closer to the fulfillment of her predestination.

A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO RUSSIAN PHILOSOPHY

It can be claimed, with some genuine surprise on the part of my critics, that despite my double preoccupation with the Russian phenomenon' in general and in its particulars, on the one hand, and with general philosophy (primarily Western) on the other, I have not been paying enough attention to Russian philosophy as I should have, either in this Russian section or elsewhere, that is, in none of my specifically philosophical sections. It is worth mentioning that there must be a reason why Bertrand Russell does not mention Russian philosophy at all, in his monumental History of Western Philosophy, which used to be one of my most important guides to philosophy when I was growing up. In this entry I intend to make a brief round trip to Russian philosophy and hopefully clarify some puzzling sticking points.
I shall begin with a reminder that Russian literature, particularly starting with Pushkin, is second to none in its penchant for philosophical contemplation. Russian writers and poets have always been known for their intense philosophizing, although this feature of Russian literature is by no means unique, if we think of such great literary philosophers of the West as Goethe, Schiller, and Byron, to name just these three, among too many others to mention them all. It is true, of course, that great Russian literature as such is relatively young (beginning to flourish only in the nineteenth century), and the same, even to a far greater extent, goes for all Russian philosophy.
It is safe to say that until the end of the nineteenth century Russia had no tradition of professional philosophy at all. The earliest consistent efforts at political philosophy were made by the Russian Russophiles, resisting the efforts of the so-called Russian Westernizers to convince their compatriots that they were backward and ignorant slobs who needed Europe’s mentorship to pull them out of their semi-Asiatic ditch. Such contempt for their country deeply insulted their intellectual opponents, who saw Europe not as an enlightened teacher offering a benign solution to Russia’s congenital problems, but as a hostile force bent on taking her down at the slightest such opportunity.
Such was the thrust of Nikolai Danilevsky’s politico-philosophical work Russia and Europe, first appearing in 1869---in installments in a journal---and later published as a book. It fell on ready soil. Russia was quite apprehensive of the West already, and deeply resentful of its materialistic outlook and capitalist beginnings. Dostoyevsky was of course a major force of the anti-Western anxiety. Another major anti-Western political thinker of the time was Konstantin Leontiev, the author of The Orient, Russia, and Slavdom (1885-86), who advocated Russia’s Eastern orientation and a rejection of the decaying and slowly dying West. All this was in harmony with the cult of Russia’s great hero-saint Prince Alexander Nevsky, who famously allied himself with the Mongols in the thirteenth century, to defeat the threat from the West.
Although both Danilevsky’s and Leontiev’s works are clear-cut cases of politico-philosophical nonfiction, it is the 1874 work of Vladimir Solovyev Crisis of Western Philosophy, where he attacks Western positivism, which is considered the first properly philosophical work of a properly defined Russian philosopher. We are going to have a separate entry on Solovyev coming next, but here we shall simply note that the first formally recognized Russian philosopher (Solovyev) was born in 1853, which makes Russian philosophy a very-very late bloomer indeed.
Apart from Solovyev, we’ll have a separate entry on another Russian philosopher of note: Nikolai Berdyaev (1874-1948). For obvious reasons, we are not including in our consideration such pre-Solovyevian thinkers as Mikhail Bakunin (he is the subject of several of my social, rather than philosophical entries) and other anarchists, or any of the Marxists notably including Plekhanov and Lenin and none of the Soviet era Marxist-Leninist philosophers. On the other hand, the obvious choice of Lev Shestov takes us to the Tikkun Olam and other sections. Having omitted most others, I will however briefly touch on the following four names, making very brief comments on all of them.---

Vasili Vasilievich Rozanov (1856-1919) was a literary critic and publicist, aside from being a philosopher. He was the first to see Dostoyevsky as a philosopher, profoundly influencing all subsequent Dostoyevskyan scholarship. As a philosopher he stood apart from all mainstream literary philosophical currents in Russia of his time. He was obsessed with erotic imagery and symbolism in his writings and was severely criticized for this obsession. It was his peculiar (and, I must say, highly commendable) belief that in order to arrive at the closest approximation of understanding of any subject, one was required to look at it from “1000 different (and necessarily conflicting!) perspectives.” He was known, rather scandalously, for expressing one opinion about current political events under his own name, and totally opposite opinions of the same events, writing under different pennames in other publications. He was raising very serious ethical-religious problems, such as Christianity and metaphysics, eroticism and metaphysics, Christian Orthodoxy and nihilism, and saw the only solution of their contradictions not in one party overcoming the other one, but in discovering their deep connection as different reactions of the same human nature to different experiences, and the key to tackling their seemingly irreconcilable contradictions was to understand the sources of their antagonism and to learn the mechanics of their subliminal interaction.

Alexander Alexandrovich Bogdanov/Malinovsky (1873-1928) was a physician and an experimental scientist (obsessed with the idea of blood transfusion as a means of human rejuvenation). He was also an economist, a Bolshevik politician, one of the translators of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital into Russian, and a science fiction writer. In addition to all these, he made himself a name as a philosopher, or rather anti-philosopher, if I may put it this way. As a philosophe,r he rejected the traditional understanding of philosophy, introducing instead a philosophy of action, based on the understanding of truth as the organizing form of collective experience, turning dialectics into an “organizational process” of creative transformation of being. (Here we can sense a strong influence of Marx’s philosophy of mutual interaction of mind and matter.) Aside from this humble improvement on philosophy, Bogdanov ventured into the totally new field of tectology (the word coined by him), where he proposed a merger of all social, biological and physical sciences by treating them as systems of relationships and seeking out the organizational principles underlying all systems. His ideas anticipated the age of cybernetics, and Norbert Wiener, known as the father of cybernetics, had acknowledged his "cybernetic" inspiration from the 1928 German translation of Bogdanov’s book Tectology.

The last two notable philosophers, considered here together, are Sergei Nikolayevich Bulgakov (1871-1944) /not to be confused with the great writer Mikhail Bulgakov!/ and Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky (1882-1937). Both were theologians first, and philosophers second, and this explains the commonness of their general ethical principles, rooted in religious mysticism and Christian Orthodox ethics. There were slight differences between them as well. Bulgakov started his life as a Marxist, but, being an honest thinker, he soon found himself in an intellectual conflict with Marxism, and discovered Kantian idealism much more to his liking. His next step was to wholeheartedly accept religious philosophy of Vladimir Solovyev, and, in this sense, although highly acclaimed, he looks to me like a derivative thinker.
Florensky, aside from being a priest, theologian and religious philosopher, was a notable mathematician and physicist. His mystical religious ideas were strange, and stranger still, were fed by his knowledge of science. He earnestly questioned Copernican astronomy, declaring that the earth’s movement in the solar system was not a hard scientific fact; and having acquainted himself with Einstein’s magic formula, believed that there existed a real world of God hidden from us by the physical barrier of the speed of light: any body capable of breaking this barrier would be able to reach the world beyond. Needless to say, he was harshly criticized by his fellow Orthodox theologians, and perhaps the only reason why today he is treated kindly, rather than as an odious heretic, may be his martyrdom in 1937 at the hands of the Soviet power.

This concludes our brief journey into the “parallel universe” of Russian philosophy in general, and next we shall be taking a closer look at its two most famous representatives in particular, namely, Vladimir Solovyev and Nikolai Berdyaev.

RUSSIAN PHILOSOPHY AND THE WEST

(I envisage the reader's potential argument to the effect that Russian philosophy stands apart from Western philosophy and therefore cannot be considered a part of Western philosophy. This is a faulty view. Russia has historically appropriated Western culture and Western philosophy with it, and Russian philosophy is objectively integrated into the Western tradition, as opposed to the Eastern traditions, and the only reason for the West to ignore it, is an actual admission of its own ignorance of it, rather than a deliberate choice.)

Just as Russia used to be a triple mystery to Winston Churchill, the sorry state of appreciation for Russian philosophy in the West is a perplexing enigma to me.
Lord Bertrand Russell in his seminal History of Western Philosophy appears to ignore Russian philosophy altogether, and the West generally gives it a wide berth. There is no mention of Russian Philosophy in the Britannica’s mammoth cluster of Philosophy entries in its Macropoedia division. Come to think of it, had Britannica been our main source of authority on the subject, we would have had to conclude, with no small dose of bewilderment, that no such thing as Russian philosophy has ever been in existence.

On the other hand, anybody who has read Dostoyevsky with at least some measure of comprehension, may recall the contention of Dmitry Karamazov, one of the Karamazov Brothers, that “all real Russian people are philosophers.” Russian philosopher (yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus!) Nikolai Berdyaev reiterates the same opinion in his Russian Idea: “It is a quality of the Russian people to indulge in philosophy.” One could say of course that in most such cases all is equal to none. But not in this case. As far as the Russians are concerned, philosophy is the way of life of the whole class of people, counting in millions, and known as the Intelligentsia. It is only natural in a unique situation like this that among these countless millions a great many should be accomplished philosophers, but of a very special kind, reflective of the specific nature of Russian philosophy.
It is therefore not surprising at all that the uncontestable greatness of Russian literature owes its depth and refinement to the strong philosophical and psychological undercurrent running throughout it. Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, among the best known, are the writers who are also considered great philosophers. But I may go much farther than that, asserting that every great Russian writer and poet is at the same time a thinker of the very first magnitude. There is no particular novelty in this close connection between great literature and philosophy. Shakespeare and Goethe are both recognized as writers, but reveal greatness in both, whereas in Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, primarily known as philosophers, the level of literary excellence is also of the highest order.

Russian philosophy as a whole stands out in world philosophy for its particular national predisposition for certain specific interests, such as mysticism, and especially religious mysticism (although of a very different kind, a certain comparison can be made with the preoccupation of the Jewish mystics of the Luria era with the Kaballah), but also social philosophy, with a variety of active applications. A predisposition for utopian theories and social engineering has been noted, of course, but its translation into the Soviet philosophy of Scientific Communism with the ready conclusion that the Soviet political experiment was exactly that kind of application has been far too overstated, in my opinion. I hope that my in-depth analysis of Leninism and Stalinism, as well as other writings on Russia, will sufficiently establish my own position on this account, and offer the reader a radically different perspective on the Soviet period of Russian history.
Although mysticism and social philosophy, in that order, are the main obsessions of Russian philosophy, I would not limit the latter to just these two. Just as world culture has been appropriated by the Russians as their own, the same can be said of classic Western philosophy. The assimilation of Western philosophy by the Russian thinkers in their own philosophical thinking (Russian Platonism, Cartesianism, Hegelianism, Nietzscheanstvo, and such) is a well established pattern, and, of course, there is an unmistakable element of originality here, revealing familiar national traits.
One of the most remarkable features of Russian philosophy, having far-reaching ramifications for Western understanding of Russia’s political-philosophical undercurrents, is the titanic ideological struggle between collectivism and individualism. Both these predispositions are visibly present in Russian thought, and they are philosophically necessary as an inseparable duo with the one unable to live without the other. It is as if the national necessity for collectivism of all is immediately offset by the individualistic urge of each. Thus it can be now explained why one of the world’s most welcome turfs for national-totalitarianism, that is Russia, does not produce a human anthill, as a result of its propensity for collectivism, but, on the contrary, leads to an acutely individualistic culture, indeed, perhaps, the most individualistic culture in human history.

This paradoxical correlation between nationalistic totalitarianism and personal individualism is probably the most misapprehended feature of the Russian national psyche, in the understanding of the West. Yet, it is the only key to the Russian soul that makes such an understanding possible.
What makes this understanding so difficult to attain is, first and foremost, the great reluctance of the free nations of the West to recognize the legitimacy of the totalitarian propensity of any national mind, as if its propensity for nationalism as such were not the very first and most natural suggestion that totalitarianism is not some kind of fluke, but the most logical extension of all nationalism.
Another major difficulty arises from the inability to distinguish between nationalism and internationalism. We might visualize the collectivism of national totalitarianism as a clearly delineated area on a graph. To the left of this area lies the subnational individualism of the nation’s citizens, while to the right opens the vast supranational expanse of the world’s nations. We may surmise that such supranational movements as Pan-Slavism, Pan-Germanism, or Pan-Arabism, and such, have all been some hypertrophied extensions of nationalism proper, and indeed, history has taught us that supranationalism is bound to clash with its more moderate and more stable counterpart, nationalism proper, and to resist any efforts to substitute it with an ambitious, but far less viable alternative. (One cannot, however, dismiss such supranational movements as something totally inconsequential. As long as these are not pushed too far, like it was done in the creation of several “United Arab Republics,” for instance, forcefully pushed by the great Egyptian Pan-Arabist Gamal Abdel Nasser, these movements do represent forces to reckon with. It is only when they impose themselves on the constituent national identities that the trouble starts.)
Another peculiar example to extend collectivism beyond its natural national boundaries is the obsession of the Russian philosopher Vladimir Solovyev with the idea of religious ecumenicalism. His famous push for the reconciliation of the Eastern and Western Christian Churches was not some infantile desire for all of us just to get along but a deeply felt philosophical principle carried too far. His ultimate failure to bring his pet project as much as an inch further ought to be seen not as a fault of political action on anybody’s part, but as a fatal flaw in his philosophical underpinnings of such a move, which represented an illegitimate push of the collectivist principle beyond its natural borders.
Insofar as the push of the totalitarian principle in the other direction is concerned, that is, its rude intrusion in the domain of the private individual, the relentless efforts of the Soviet State to disseminate propaganda among the citizens were obvious, and certain to be expected. But any crackdown on dissent would happen only when individualistic non-conformity was perceived as itself intruding into the public national domain, where the State had established its totalitarian control, but otherwise, as long as the borderline between the collective and the personal was respected by the individual, the State was not eager to cross it in the other direction either, and the subtle equilibrium, which is so incomprehensible to the Western mind, would still obtain.

9/11/2011

(To maintain the continuity, please read my blog entry 9/11/2009, posted on this day exactly two years ago.)

They say that scars are the best decorations of a hero. As long as the hero himself does not dwell on them. A preoccupation with one’s scars defines a victim. A victim is never a hero, and a hero is never a victim.
America is a great heroic nation. As such, it is her duty to the past and to future generations, that after each tragedy she stand up, build up, and march on. This is exactly what she ought to have done after 9/11/2001. Today, ten years later, we should have been seeing a magnificent set of tall and proud buildings, rising over the site of that terrible tragedy, with a solemn memorial wall, down below, honoring the tragedy’s innocent victims. Those would have been symbols of defiance, remembrance, and national greatness.
Instead, we are seeing a pathetic eyesore, an insult to the nation herself, and certainly to the victims of 9/11. In Balzac’s words, America prefers to “montrer ses plaies,” in other words, to play the victim, rather than to be a hero. Today’s Ground Zero, like the two still ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, plus all other American military engagements, defy, rather than define, heroism. Solemn remembrance has become endless whining, military heroics have degenerated into bullying of the weak, and useless self-destructive recklessness, as if the only lesson of 9/11 had been to instill and perpetuate victim mentality in the American public, allowing the powerful to gain more power in the country through the sheer fear of “terror.” To which I say, slightly paraphrasing FDR, that by far the worst terror imaginable is exactly the fear of terror, rather than “terror” itself...

9/11/2011 is supposed to be a day of remembrance, but I shall add no more whining or empty pep talk to the chorus. The best way to remember the victims is to remind America of her heroic nature, currently under attack from within. As for the condition of the supposedly sacred shrine known as “Ground Zero,” all I want to do is to cry out-----
-----SHAME!!!

MUSIC, SPIES, AND OTHER "THINGS"

This entry is actually about the incredible life of sheer adventure of its creator of genius, the Russian/Soviet engineer-inventor Lev Sergeevich Theremin (1896-1993). Having the word "spies" in it means, of course, that very little, if anything, can be learned about the particular circumstances of his life and about the real scope of his adventures. What is known, though, is that he was, perhaps, the most prolific engineer-inventor of the twentieth century, whose creative genius seemed to know no bounds.

He was born to a noble and wealthy Russian Orthodox family, with French and German roots, revealing his insatiable curiosity and appetite for learning, generously encouraged by his parents, from early on. His first independent experiments in electrical engineering started in secondary school. At the age of twenty he was a graduate of the Saint Petersburg [Russified as Petrograd during World War I] Conservatory of Music (cello), and at the same time studied physics and astronomy at the University of Petrograd. Remarkably, he also managed to see combat action in World War I. His ebullient genius was noticed and appreciated by the new Bolshevik regime, and he was soon head of a special laboratory at the Petrograd Institute of Physics and Technology. In 1919-1920 he invented the first electro-musical instrument Thereminvox, which would gain him an international acclaim. In March 1922 he met at the Kremlin with one of his biggest fans: Lenin, who was so excited about the new musical instrument that he started playing it himself.
Being unable to slow down, Theremin kept inventing amazing gadgets, such as automatic doors and lighting systems, and in 1925-1926 he came up with perhaps the earliest ever television system, Dalnovidenie.
The Soviet government then decided to use his growing international fame, and he became a secret agent. In In 1928 he was sent on a secret mission to the United States (mind you, there were no diplomatic relations then between the two countries!), where he seemingly settled down as a world-renowned entrepreneur and inventor, obtaining numerous patents and licenses for his inventions, which included highly sophisticated security systems. His fame brought him many friends and acquaintances, including Albert Einstein, John Rockefeller, and even the future General and President Dwight Eisenhower. He displayed the miraculous qualities of his revolutionary new musical instrument in sold-out concerts with the best orchestras around the country. In the meantime, he leased, for ninety-nine years, a six-story building in New York City, where he organized his studio, many of whose employees were… undercover Soviet intelligence agents.
In 1938 he was called back to Moscow creating an impression that he was being “repressed,” which allowed the people he had left behind to continue their undercover activities. Most of his subsequent life is shrouded in secrecy, and the subsequent story about him being jailed was probably nothing but his continuing cover. His several areas of sub-rosa activity are however credible, and even documented. They included some very original designs of the first Soviet cruise missiles developed with the participation of Robert Bartini (see my entry Father Of Sputnik) and Sergei Korolev, and especially his mysterious electronic surveillance gadgets. One of his incredible bugging devices, codeworded “things,” found its way into the office of the American Ambassador in Moscow Averell Harriman, where it could not be detected for a long time, and even when it was, its operational principle could not be understood.
There is a story, which is true, of how in 1946 Theremin’s name was proposed for the Stalin Prize 2nd Degree, and how Stalin learning about it became furious and personally corrected 2nd to 1st Degree, which Theremin went on to receive in 1947.
In 1991, as the USSR was falling apart, Theremin, at the good ripe age of ninety-five, surprised everybody by joining the CPSU [Communist Party of the Soviet Union], which was then just about to be disbanded. When asked why he was doing so, Theremin replied that he was thus keeping his personal promise to Lenin. Apparently, considering the secret nature of his activities up until then, joining the Communist Party before 1991 would not have been such a good idea. Ironically, having seen his party going up in smoke soon thereafter, he lived long enough to see it reborn as the Communist Party of the Russian Federation in February 1993. Luckily for him, he would not live long enough after that, to find out that this reinvented Communist Party was not exactly the party Comrade Lenin had wanted him to join.

Theremin died in 1993 at the age of ninety-seven, taking most of his secrets to the grave with him. One thing however is a secret no longer. He was a true patriot of his country, in the best sense of the word.

LOBACHEVSKY: THE MINDWORK OF A GENIUS

This tribute to the great mathematician Lobachevsky reflects much more than a mere craving, on my part, to write a few kind words about an extraordinary Russian genius. Because of my mathematical background, he and I go back together at least half-a-century. Besides, I’ve always had reverence for revolutionary thinking as such, and in this sense I see Lobachevsky not just as a great man of science, but also as a kindred spirit.

Not too many people have ever heard the name of Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky, but to the readers of my blog his must have become a household name by now. “Mr. Non-Euclid” (or, more accurately, “Mr. Super-Euclid,” as we could call him for a good reason explained later) may sound a bit outlandish, but his greatest achievement was indeed proving that the great Euclid was not a General, but only a glorious particular.
The circumstances of his life are very interesting, and I encourage the reader to look up his biographies. His relatively minor accomplishments were the ones for which he was honored during his life by the position of rector (chief administrator) of his alma mater the University of Kazan, where he also taught mathematics, physics, and astronomy, and with several prestigious national decorations, which, however, did not prevent him from ending his life in relative poverty. As for his revolutionary achievement in creating non-Euclidian (or super-Euclidian, as I would again put it) “Lobachevsky” geometry, he was scathingly ridiculed for it, and its submission for publication in 1826 was rejected. Only in 1829 was the first publication of his new theory made possible, but still with no academic support or recognition from his Russian peers. Recognition was to come from abroad, when in 1837 his article Géométrie Imaginaire was published in French in a respectable Berlin scientific journal, followed in 1840 by the small booklet Geometrische Untersuchungen zur Theorie der Parallellinien. Prussia’s great mathematical genius Gauss, happily admitting that he had been working on the same subject for a number of years himself, but had been reluctant to publish anything perhaps out of fear of being ridiculed, commended Lobachevsky for his work quite generously, but without false modesty: “…In the development of the subject, he followed a different path from the one which I had followed; it is done masterfully by Lobachevsky, in the true spirit of geometry…” Gauss promptly recommended to elect Lobachevsky as a foreign correspondent member of the newly established Göttingen Royal Science Society of which he himself was a distinguished member. Lobachevsky’s election did take place in 1842, but, aside from bringing him some token of international recognition, it did not bring him any profit. As is often the case with geniuses, the real fame would come to him posthumously.

Of greatest interest to us in this entry is, just as the title says, the mindwork of a genius. The great Euclidian Bible of Geometry and Mathematics, known as Elements, contains (already in Book I, out of 13) a series of axioms, postulates, and theorems, all of which, with the exception of one are either rigidly provable or made demonstrably self-evident. The one and only exception is the so-called Fifth Postulate on Parallelism. This Postulate is set apart from the others, and it had always been understood as a theorem, needing to be proven. For two thousand years mathematicians had seen this as a magnificent challenge and were going out of their way attempting to prove it, to no avail. Some actually deluded themselves in the belief that they had found the proof, only to be disproved soon thereafter; others had given up on finding the proof, honestly admitting their failure; still others had been loath to confess defeat and insisted that the postulate was unprovable, but that it was true anyway and had to be accepted on faith, because it just had to be true.
Now here comes our Lobachevsky. From an early age he becomes fascinated with the Fifth Postulate, and, like so many others before him, tries to prove it. Having failed to do so, he, however, does not go the ways of those others. Instead, he declares it… wrong! On the basis of this revolutionary declaration, he goes on to develop his non-Euclidian geometry, which is destined to open the door to the geometry of the future (a.k.a. modern geometry).
Simple? Very. Yet for two thousand years before him no one had been able to “find” that simplicity. This is the way genius works!
Curiously, calling Lobachevsky’s geometry “non-Euclidian” is not quite accurate, for which reason I have called it “super-Euclidian.” Proper Euclidian geometry isn’t contrapositive to Lobachevsky’s, it is included in it as a particular instance: when the curvature of the curved surface approaches zero, approximating none other than Euclid’s flat plane.

Now, regarding the primogeniture of Lobachevsky’s discovery among the other sons of Mathematica. There are two more names associated with his discovery. One is the great Gauss who had indeed toyed with this idea in his written drafts, but had never opted to release it into the wild, which disqualifies him from the laurels, obviously without diminishing his genius even by one iota. In this context, as he was happy to admit in the letter that I quoted earlier, his own path to the discovery was different from Lobachevsky’s, and thus the latter’s work is unquestionably retaining its uniqueness as the first of its kind, quod erat demonstrandum.
The third name, representing a tragic case indeed, is that of the Hungarian mathematician Janos Bolyai, who developed a similar theory independently of either Gauss or Lobachevsky, but published his work several years after the latter. There is no doubt that Bolyai was a bona fide genius in his own right, but there is very little sense or profit to argue about winners and losers in this unintended and unaware race. None of the said three geniuses should become a lesser genius if a different adjudication of this case is made. And, for all that we know, it is the Russian genius Lobachevsky who is primarily identified with this grandiose discovery and on the strength of it called “Copernicus of geometry” by posterity. This appellation originates with William Kingdon Clifford (1845-1879), an English mathematical prodigy and an enthusiastic adept of Lobachevsky geometry. His motion was later seconded by the Scottish-American mathematician and author Eric Temple Bell (1883-1960), who wrote this in his renowned, albeit controversial, book Men of Mathematics:
“The boldness of his challenge and its successful outcome have inspired mathematicians and scientists in general to challenge other axioms or accepted truths, for example the law of causality which, for centuries, have seemed as necessary to straight thinking as Euclid’s postulate appeared till Lobachevsky discarded it.
The full impact of the Lobachevskian method of challenging axioms has probably yet to be felt. It is no exaggeration to call Lobachevsky the “Copernicus of Geometry,” for geometry is only a part of the vaster domain which he renovated; it might even be just to designate him as a Copernicus of all thought.”
These words of Clifford and Bell seem like a fitting conclusion to this entry.

THE SHADOW OF A DEFEATED EMPEROR

The Russian mind is nearly impossible to fathom for a non-Russian, even for one who has read Dostoyevsky in the original. But, even if doing it directly may be out of the question, there is still a reasonable possibility of getting a clue about its workings from divining its shadows, Platonically speaking, in the Caves of History, namely, the history of 1812...

Napoleon was allowed to move into Moscow, yet instead of receiving the city’s keys from the defeated and humbled nation, he lost his Grand Armée, and then lost the war, while the Russians used the temporary loss of their greatest city as the first stepping stone to the eventual victory.
Study and learn! History repeats itself. The seeming, yet so deceptive, Russian surrender on all fronts, in the 1990’s, is now turning into Russia’s global victory, which honestly was unthinkable, and probably impossible, at the height of the Cold War.

… Those who wish to understand this better, must read Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace in the original, which incidentally requires the knowledge of three languages, both literally and figuratively: Russian, Napoleon’s French, and Hitler’s German.

RUSSIA AND THE WTO

If I am permitted to keep quoting from myself again and again, here is yet another such quote. "The higher strategy in a game is not so much about winning, as about being able to use your opponent’s possible win to your advantage." It comes from the entry Playing The Game Of Lose To Win in the Lady section.

The current negotiations about Russia’s entry into the WTO are no less demonstrative of the Russian skill in playing the lose to win game than any other example from history, shown in the larger entry. On the basis of my lifetime professional experience, I can testify to the fact that it is by no means in Russia’s interest to join the WTO. It is much more profitable to stay outside that organization’s web of restraints, while concluding all sorts of highly advantageous separate agreements with other nations that cannot do without Russia and have to accept her terms “in the parking lot,” where Russia is the king. All she needs is just an excuse not to join the WTO. It is therefore rather pathetic how in the US-Russian WTO negotiations the United States is so desperately trying to win that same game, which the Russians have all along been bent on losing!