The federal educational marathon «Knowledge. The First» has concluded. There is something not even archaic here, but rather childish: we must always be the first in everything — like preschoolers always shout, competing with each other for any reason: «I'm first!»
«Orthodox Ichthyology»
Infantilism aside, during the marathon, everyone from Putin and Oliver Stone to Dmitry Medvedev in a French coat and 85-year-old CIA veteran Ray McGovern, a regular commentator for Russia Today, spoke. Well, there are few characters in the West who have radically changed their worldview with age, like Jeffrey Sachs, once considered the father of «shock therapy», who was a welcome guest at the «Open Dialogue» Forum at the «Russia» National Center in Moscow. Foreigners are now handpicked, as there aren't many names the Kremlin could use for propaganda.
Alexander Dugin also spoke at the «Knowledge» society platform, whose bust is now displayed in Moscow's «Zaryadye» park — there he resembles a mix of Dmitry Mendeleev and Friedrich Engels. It's a pity Zurab Tsereteli passed away, otherwise, it would be time for a giant Dugin, the size of Peter the Great. At the exhibition itself, as everywhere now, one thought is promoted, offensive to the private memory of many families who had fallen in World War II: the Special Military Operation is a continuation of the Great Patriotic War.
This ideological concept was born almost immediately after February 2022, because something had to be said for Victory Day that year, but initially existed more in a latent form. Then, as the authorities lost their shame and the masses retreated into learned indifference and conscious distancing from what was happening, it took an absolutely open form.
Of course, it would be sinful not to use Alexander Dugin, director of the educational and scientific center «Higher Political School named after Ivan Ilyin», professor of the Department of Applied Analysis of International Problems at MGIMO, Doctor of Political Sciences, Doctor of Sociological Sciences, and lecturer on «Western Studies» at the Faculty of Political Science at Moscow State University, who is described on the faculty's website as an «outstanding domestic thinker of modernity». He is also, from Pelevin, «philosopher Dupin», a major specialist in «Orthodox ichthyology». Well, just «the main one for the dishes», and also, as mentioned in the immortal Danelia film «Don't Grieve!», a cavalier of orders with and without ribbons.
Satan Rules the Ball There
Of course, the power itself, in the broad sense of the word and in the face of its political-manipulative subdivisions in the narrow sense, had to reach a «high degree of madness» as a result of these three years of the greatest anthropological catastrophe, to finally speak in search of the right words for its ideology in the confusing Lingua Tertii Imperii, the language of the Third Rome, that is, the mobile vocabulary of Alexander Dugin with frequent use of the word «satanic». In particular, within the framework of «Western Studies», Dugin proposes to consider Western civilization «toxic» (a non-Russian word) and «destructive» (again non-Russian), and most importantly, «satanic». Science, indeed... By the way, why not call «Western Studies» in Russian «Westernology» within the framework of «Orthodox ichthyology». Just as Marxism had a scientific basis in the form of Marx's «Capital», here Spengler's «The Decline of the West» could be taught. It would be of some use. But our hero is not like that — he is his own Spengler.
By the way, in the «Knowledge» society in Soviet times, having two candidate degrees, Dugin could receive an increased fee, marking a voucher in vegetable stores, or even in research institute collectives. (I, a 20-year-old law student at Moscow State University, was once in the Kazakh SSR in 1985, wanted to be sent to give a lecture on «Legal Foundations of the Fight Against Drunkenness» in a women's colony, but then they changed their minds and sent me to a remote state farm; and Dugin could have done even more!) But now — aim higher! — a countercultural figure, a singer of «unlimited and red fascism» (perhaps the most coherent, despite the Prokhanov style, article by Alexander Gelievich in all his verbose work with all the catechons), mentors the pro-Kremlin clean youth.
In principle, Dugin said nothing new at the Victory Museum, everything the same had already been repeatedly stated by Putin: in short, the state-civilization — within the framework of the geopolitical approach — throughout its history has taken blows from the West and continues to take them. According to this concept, at least according to the words of senior Kremlin officials, there is no difference between Napoleon, Hitler, and today's West, embodied due to the current situation not in the USA, but in Europe, or, as the Foreign Intelligence Service says, «Eurofascism». Dugin reasoned in roughly the same vein.
«The Great Patriotic War was called sacred, and this is not an accidental metaphor», — here Dugin was leading to the key thesis, magically turning the Special Military Operation into the same sacred act. It was very important for Stalin to introduce a national-patriotic tone into propaganda — defending Marxism-Leninism in the Stalinist interpretation to the last drop of blood was difficult for the people, it was necessary to add the motive of defending the Motherland. Hence the term «patriotic», which until 1938 was contemptuously called «bourgeois-aristocratic». However, here it was necessary to draw a line to the first Patriotic War of 1812. And Napoleon as a predecessor of Hitler appeared in Molotov's speech on June 22, 1941: the Kremlin's propaganda thought then worked quickly and in the right direction. Already on June 23, in Emelyan Yaroslavsky's article in «Pravda», a new verbal convention was voiced: «The Great Patriotic War of the Soviet people». Hence the «people's war, sacred war» — Vladimir Lebedev-Kumach knew how to summarize the essence. Later, however, Vladimir Ivanovich at the Moscow platform before the chaotic evacuation from Moscow in October 1941 broke down — he began throwing his orders at Stalin's portrait. Fadeev reported unfavorably: Lebedev-Kumach «went mentally insane». However, this is a side branch of our narrative...
«But then Vladimir Putin came...»
The historically brief period of Russia's movement towards a relatively normal life — without wars, permanent violence, repressions, militarization, state economy of deficit, dominance of political investigation, disregard for human and citizen rights and freedoms, with all the benefits of the second demographic transition, when people start using hygiene products and other achievements of civilization, stop giving birth to recruits and invest in children's education, as well as use the results of free cross-border movement of ideas, goods, people, capital — is defined by Dugin in the lecture as a period when «the fate of our entire civilization was put into question».
Alexander Dugin. Photo: triptonkosti.ru
But not so fast, there will be no peaceful and calm life:
«...But then Vladimir Putin came and announced that the course is changing, that we again have to fulfill our mission — to be a civilization of light and goodness...»
Only for some reason, every time in history, the movement towards «light and goodness» is achieved by military and violent methods, without prisons and missiles it doesn't work. Although, of course, Dugin continued, within the framework of a multipolar world, no one can claim hegemony, not even «we». So why then February 2022?
Once, the «movement towards light and goodness» Dugin called a specific term. It was his dream in that very programmatic article of 1997, where he allowed himself to be frank, especially since the Yeltsin times in terms of ideological diversity and tolerance were vegetarian. The new people, whose arrival the future candidate of various sciences was eagerly awaiting, will carry out a «Russian national revolution»:
«...They are to build and destroy, rule and obey orders, carry out purges of the nation's enemies and tenderly care for Russian elders and children. With an angry and cheerful step, they will approach the citadel of the decrepit, rotten System. Yes, they thirst for Power. They know how to wield it. They will breathe Life into society, they will plunge the people into the sweet process of creating History. New people. Finally smart and brave. Just as needed...»
He called this coming era «fascism», boundless, «like our lands», and red, «like our blood». One should still be cautious with definitions and concepts. This is not to operate with «satanism» in «scientific» lectures and articles, «decolonizing Russian consciousness» and moving towards non-existent «sovereign science».
«...But, — as Dugin writes in a «scientific» article in the «Bulletin of the State University of Education» (there is such an institution, it turns out), — the grandeur of the task should not lead us to despair. We rely on many generations of our great ancestors — saints, ascetics, prayer warriors, hierarchs, monks, tsars, commanders, heroes, ordinary workers, writers, poets, composers, artists, actors, thinkers, who for centuries carried the Russian spirit and preserved the deep codes of Russian civilization. We only need to systematize their heritage, give it new forms and new life...»
Purges in Russian education and science are in full swing, the new oprichnina is finishing off internal enemies, so soon «ascetics», «actors», and «prayer warriors» will successfully occupy all possible departments and will not «carry Belinsky and Gogol from the bazaar», but «Foundations of Russian Statehood» and other «Western Studies». And they will be able to follow the plagiarist and drunkard of Soviet times Anatoly Surov to say from university pulpits: «I lay my hands with disgust on this pulpit, from which you were lectured by despicable cosmopolitans!»
* Andrey Kolesnikov is considered a «foreign agent» by the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation.