All of these are not exercises in literature science, I am doing humans science. I confidently affirm: man in a significant part is what he reads. Because books present defined sets of ideas that are living or already dead. Unheroic, tearful, hysterical books gave birth to weak, unheroic men and women. I recall in 1981 I met in California a rich person who with a smile presented himself to me as a writer of trash books. This honest American truly realized what he was creating. Practically all of Russian literature after the end of the 20s until 2001 including the books of dissidents – are nothing more than drifts of trash books.
And what happened in the rest of the world, while the hermetically sealed Russia marinated like in a conserve can, rotted and moldered in the sauce of the XIX century? Freud appeared – the great Conquistador of the subconscious and the first discoverer of libido, the Surhuman was chanted, Wagner adored in Germany, fascism came to Italy, D’Annuncio appeared, Andre Gide with his “Immoralist”, Joyce, books of Chamberlain, Guenon, Evola. Knut Hamsun, Celine, Miller. From the above enumerated only Hamsun reached Russia. After the victory over the nationalists in Europe came the existentialists, Sartre, Jean Genet, the Theater of absurd, the hippie movement, the cultural revolution of 1966-2976 in China, the student revolts of 1968-69 in Europe, Che Guevara, the youth terrorism of the “Red Brigades” and the RAF: Curcio, Cagol, Baader, Mainhof.
In Russia appeared: the old, depressing Brezhnev, the enigmatic persistently -unintelligent KGB, on television KVN, in official literature the veneer Egor Isaev, Yuri Bondarev, the untalented Okudzhava (by the way he created an entire series of historical novels about the XIX century) and Evtushenko, anti-soviet but depressing anyway, veneer writers-dissidents headed by Solzhenitsyn (who had mixed up centuries, his novels are written from a XIX century ideology and worldview).
All the above enumerated is so wretched and contemptible that it lies lower… lower than see level, lower everything. Actually there was an even lower level – the mass soviet culture. It suffices to say about the tastes of the soviet person in the 70s – 80s. First of all, the genre that impressed the most the “sovki” was parody: “Dog Heart” (a hideous anti-proletarian book), “Kotlovan” (a hideous book), “The twelve Chairs” (a philistine’s chamber-pot, mucus and vomit). In cinematography the morons’ threesome was sneaking all over the screen: Nikulin, Vitsin, Morgunov – themselves a parody on movie characters. Their masterpieces: “The Diamond Arm”, “Watch out the Automobile” and other scum. It should be said that the commoner’s masterpiece as well, Bulgakov’s volume “The Master and Margarita” by its genre is also a parody on a historical novel. The crystal dream of the philistine to elevate his sunflower oil, his primus-stove, chamber-pot, JEK [house-exploitation] to the level of Jesus Christ and the procurator of Judah came true in this commoner’s Moscow bestseller. By the way “The Master and Margarita” and “The 12 Chairs” are strikingly related: the mounted brigade of Voland makes one think about Ostap Bender’s brigade. All these types could be nicely interpreted by Nikulin, Vitsin, Morgunov. They would have nicely played in “The Master and Marguarita” but they are dead. Comedy and parody are genres of fading States and nations. This was already noticeable in ancient literature. Tragedy is the genre of a healthy powerful Sate. Authors of tragedies – Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripedes created in a healthy Greece. When Greece lost its strength -the parodists appeared.
Here in the USSR robust events took place. Living waves of Chinese soldiers pressed on to the Damanski Island and they were roasted from flame-throwers. But the authorities dissimulated the heroes. But those who should have chanted the heroes did not know how to do this even if they were allowed. They did not know and they did not have the talent. From their spirituality only a chamber pot could be blown and not a Greek vase for nectar and ambrosia. Pettiness, lack of presence – this is how Russia’s culture after the 20s can be characterized.
By the beginning of the 80s in Europe “democracy” has won totally, that is totalitarian capitalism. And simultaneously art disappeared. The last of the Mohicans swiftly died out, the most closing one from the Great ones in 1986 Jean Genet died in an Arab hotel in Paris. He was so disgusted of Paris that he adjured to be buried in North Africa in an Arab cemetery. It is symbolical that it was me who wrote Jean Genet’s necrology on the demand of the editors of “La revolution” – France’s Comparty newspaper…
Conclusion: Soviet power artificially detained the information about the word outside of USSR limits and in this way artificially froze Russia, leaving her live in an authentic XIX century, well, hardly in the very beginning of the XX. So why should anyone be surprised that even our anti-Semitism is not modern, by its attributes it lives in the times of “The Beilis affair” (matza, blood of Christian newborns and other Middle Ageisms, when an anti-Semite in the West refutes the existence of gas chambers and the extermination of six million Jews), that our “fascism” copies the Hitlerism of the 20s, that our “democrats” finally are as insolent as the American liberals before the crisis of 1929 and our rich are insolent and arrogant as the American rich before the world shock therapy of 1917.
What we have now: disgusting types of zombie-people insecure about themselves, apathetic, undeveloped, country-people – is the consequence of the last sixty from the seventy years of Soviet power. The example to follow were false propaganda, books for eunuchs, parodies and comedies. This is why people-parodies, grotesque characters dominate in Russian society. They did not read the right books because they did not watch the right movies.
In the 80s appear, thanks God, in Russia popular culture, audiotapes at first because music was considered the least dangerous, this is why the authorities stopped to pay attention to it first. In the perestroika period books of the 20s, 30s, 40s, years after the war are finally published with a huge delay- all that was lost once goes in flow. Noisily falls on the heads. But it is too late: even our underground culture had the time to contact the ptomaine poison of the XIX century. Our punks are suicidal like Nadson, our hippies are like holy fools. Only the generation born in the 80s is not entirely poisoned.
Well, obviously electricity, radio, industrialization, television, refrigerators – all that in due date appeared in the USSR as well but I’m talking about the worldview, the social consciousness, the understanding of one’s time, the understanding of man. All of this in the USSR and in Russia stayed on the XIX century level. One does not have to be a Freud adept, but without the knowledge of his discoveries (the world of sub-consciousness, libido, etc.), guesses and even errors man is blind. And without the knowledge of the true stories of Mussolini, Hitler, the entire national-socialist great rebellion of Europe from the 20s to the 40s – man is blind in the social sense, he is hopeless. It is interesting that by protesting against extremist publications the liberal-democrats imitate the soviet power – they demand to close the publishing companies down, to suppress the information. But suppression has a negative impact on nations’ fate. Ideas have to win in a just civil and military competition. Then a new nation is formed.
Lecture 8
The KPRF, the RKRP, the pretty much thinned-out Anpilov supporters and the smaller orthodox “communist” organizations and even the “terrorist” Gubkin and the RKSM (Bilevsky’s) still consider the “proletariat”, “the working people”, as they say, as a revolutionary class. They are looking on “Marxism-Leninism” as Jews on the Covenant tables brought to them by Moses. The “communists” are wrong. For some reason they suppose that the poor are necessarily violent. In Marx’s times the proletariat was in fact in terrible conditions, they were indeed working 12 hours a day. Yes, they were living in moist and frozen lodgings. So emotionally they were on the most extreme, at any moment ready to hysterical protest and burst, society brink. Their life was so bad that even a torture chamber was not too terrible for them compared to a factory. In a sense, they really had nothing to lose besides shackles. They were the most inveterate, after the convicts maybe. It is in this sense that they were revolutionary. That is, in case of disorders organized by others it was possible to hope on the participation of these inveterate factory workers. Because of their hard life they could be easily excited and easily fell for panic and rebellion emotions.