After Israel turned nearly all of Southern Lebanon into ruins, Hezbollah leader sheik Hasan Nasrallah stated in one of his interviews that he “did not notice” the destruction in Lebanon… Evidently, his sight is not functioning properly. At approximately the same time the newspaper Zavtra was describing admiringly “the daring sally by Palestinian braves” who “put an end to Israeli outrages,” “not noticing” the catastrophic consequences of this “sally’s” results for Lebanon and for Hezbollah itself. Such evaluations, however, are natural for this newspaper. Several years ago its editor-in-chief was predicting, with the same kind of “scientific accuracy,” a “Stalingrad” if American armed forces enter Baghdad. He guessed wrong – no Nostradamus he. I don’t blame him – he is, after all, an author, a poet. He was longing very strongly for a defeat of the “imperialist” United States and engaging sincerely in wishful thinking, which is characteristic not only of the editor but of all authors working for that patriotic newspaper.
There is something that draws attention, however: it is not only mass media that are prone to such “inadequate” evaluations of events, processes, and phenomena but the Russian authorities as well. To become convinced of this, it suffices to listen to the talkative types in the Kremlin or the government. For example, despite the ongoing process of the country’s self-destruction, they keep trumpeting the economic and social successes of their policies and the rebirth of Russia as a great power. This latter claim supposedly found confirmation at the recent Group of Eight meeting in St. Petersburg. (These regular ritual get-togethers are now called in Russia by the foreign word “summit.”) Some mass media went so far as to proclaim a “triumph” of Russia.
It is common knowledge that in every country there is a certain number of people who are ordinarily committed to mental hospitals. Whenever there is a shortage of funds for these hospitals - like in Canada for example - the crazies are thrown out into the streets, since they don’t cause much harm. They mostly band together someplace - like for instance in Vancouver at the intersection of Main and Hastings - where they sort out between themselves who is Napoleon and who is Alexander of Macedon.
The problem usually arises when such napoleons or alexanders of macedon rise to power; Hitler is a classic example. It turns out, however, that such things happened in England, too. Thus, William Cobbett, an English politician of the early 19th century, lamented that “England during one of the most critical moments in its history was governed by lunatics.” (See: Cobbett's Weekly Register, v. 43, #8, 24 August 1822). Usually, when a society is more or less healthy, such lunatics are quickly isolated or killed, as for example in Ancient Rome. Whenever too many such “inadequate” types rose to power, the regime lost the ability to govern the country, resulting in revolutions that overthrew the regime; it happened like this in France in the late 18th century and in Russia in the early 20th century. However, this only happened when most of the population remained in its right mind. Whenever both the upper and the lower strata took leave of their senses, such societies came to an end, despite their outward appearance of civilization, as confirmed by the history of the Mayan, Incan and Aztec civilizations, as well as the fate of many empires in Europe and in the Orient.
Contemporary Russia is apparently set for the disappearance. The lower strata confirm this by dying out en masse; the country’s population decreases by more than a million people each year (the official statistics give the figure 700,000 people.) The people fail to understand the causes of this situation due to, firstly, their universal illiteracy; secondly, extremely widespread religiousness. They don’t understand why 70% of children (80-85%, actually) are born ill; they don’t understand that the absence of normal health care, education, housing, nutrition, etc. are not the whim of this or that boss, but rather a creation of the Russian-style capitalist system. They have no need even of understanding all this since they have all become servants of God. Any servant of God is at the same time a servant of authority (all authority is from God.) This is why the President’s approval rating is so high: he is not merely authority – he is a God-believing authority. Thus rational comprehension of life has become replaced with religious reflection which liberates one from thinking and urges one toward prayers and reliance on God’s mercy. Belief in the good Lord is a form of serfdom. The Russians, however, do not believe themselves to be serfs, and therein lies the tragedy. A serf who is aware of his servitude seeks to liberate himself; the unaware one stays a serf.
I was about to write at this point that this state of affairs is profitable to the upper strata, and caught myself: the thing is, the upper strata are no different from the lower ones. They are serfs just as well: some are slaves of money, others are servants of God, still others are servants of the West (the USA), i.e., all of them are “inadequate” to some degree. How does this manifest itself among the upper strata? In idiocy.
Idiocy № 1. Take the state of the Russian language. Even though this has been discussed to death, it won’t hurt to quote once again the modern “Russian” lexicon. Here are some article titles (translated except for the bold-type words): “Muscovites will be able to see the final match of the Mundial’ during the beer festival in Luzhniki” (NEWSru.com 7 July 2006); «Mundial’ kaput» (Mikhail Pukshansky – МК, 10.07.2006); «In the funeral procession familiar medial’nyie faces were recognizable…» (МК, 26.07.2006); «Everything starts with antivital’nyie experiences…»; «Saudi Arabia is preparing an apgreid of the Abrams tanks» (Lenta.ru 01.08.2006).
Hundreds of other such bastard words can be added to this list: “kreativny”, “pazzl”, “promouter”, “performans”, “kotleta-haus”, etc. Such idiocy reigns not only in journalists’ heads; it is characteristic to a no lesser degree of “scientists” who lack the brains to recollect, for example, the word “idealism” and use instead “immaterialism.” The more such “wordes” are used, the fewer science is present.
Such gibberish usually arises in three cases. The first case is when the lover of foreign words is a complete idiot: he introduces verbal garbage “just for fun.” The second case is when the inventor presents himself as a sort of pro-Western member of the intelligentsia who despises “the Rashn pipl” and sets himself apart from the simple folk through his superior education. The third case is when a backward society starts adopting the ways and the culture of another society which it deems to be more advanced. It was the case in the times of Peter I and Catherine II, when Russia was flooded with German-ness (everyone started “frühstücking”.) Then the period of French-ifying started under Alexander I. The current period sees the Americanization of the Russian language.
It should be noted that all these waves of foreign language influence always deepened the rift between the upper and lower strata, between the lords and the masses. On the other hand, when the October Revolution gave birth to a lot of new words - the so-called Soviet novoyaz, on the contrary, served to obliterate the borders between the lower and upper strata. It was a language for the entire people.
Apparently, all three channels as mentioned above for deformation of the Russian language are currently working at the same time, and the damage is being done not only to the language, but to all of Russian culture and to Russia as a whole.
Idiocy № 2. For starters let me quote a news item:
In the Chechen Republic, the boeviki killed six and wounded another eleven federal forces servicemen… The incident took place between the towns of Avtury and Serzhen’-Yurt in the Shali district of Chechnya. (Lenta.ru: News: http://lenta.ru/news/2006/07/04/avtury/).
The murder of six men in Russia is called an “incident.” The murder of hundreds and thousands of servicemen in Chechnya is called a “conflict.” Israel started a full-scale war against Hezbollah because of two hostages; Americans once occupied all of Haiti because of the hostages were taken there, but in Russia mass murder of its citizens is referred to as “incident.” How low can this degradation go?
Idiocy № 3. In July a meeting of the “Group of Eight” took place in St. Petersburg. The Russian press reported on this regular bureaucratic meeting as if it were an event of world importance. It was said that the mere fact of Russia’s chairmanship in this meeting amounted already to the recognition of Russia’s global significance. What was the use of such pronouncements? There is a reason, in fact. Some people do understand that the country’s real weight in the world arena is close to zero. The meeting was an occasion to claim that it is too early to bury us; we exist, we are an energy superpower, we even dictate the order of the day.
I purposefully observed the reaction of the Western press at the time. Except for several newspapers (England’s The Guardian in particular), most of them paid no more attention to the event than to previous similar meetings. There was no big excitement; the Russians miscalculated. The problem is this: how much did this miscalculation cost? The Russian newspapers published some figures: by the most conservative estimates, at least 10 times more money was spent than on the similar meeting in England (the official figure was 40 billion rubles, the actual one was 100 billion rubles or almost 2.5% of the federal budget.)
The feeding of the foreign lords alone cost about one million dollars. Why spend such money? Just to please the seven foreign leaders and bamboozle them, sending the message that we are entirely on the level? This is Russian groveling before foreigners in the purest form. In this case, the demonstration of “Russian hospitality” is a purely Russian form of an inferiority complex manifestation, a sort of mental illness which, apparently, afflicts also the current athlete of a President. Well, in Russia the lords have always been toadies to the West.
And what about the lower strata, the “working masses”? Nothing – the populace apparently showed understanding for its lords’ expenditures; they were receiving guests, after all. I recall that there was much ado in England two or three years ago when Jack Straw, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, brought his son to some official banquet. The society did not forgive the son for “freeloading,” and his father had to pay a fine for his faux pas. Russia, on the other hand, has retreated to the depths of feudalism and reinstated the customs of serfdom when “the masters” are allowed anything. Isn’t this idiocy?
Idiocy № 4. Before the summit as mentioned above meeting, another meeting took place – that of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization created back in 2001. Six states are its members: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, China, and Russia. It is said that India, Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan also want to join this organization. In the time since its creation, SCO failed to solve any of the problems it intended to address – the issue of terrorism, for example. However, some in the Russian press manage to call this organization a “center of power” with a supposedly anti-Western - primarily anti-USA - orientation. What level of intellect must one have to call this amorphous organization - consisting of the most under-developed (except for China) countries - a “center of power”? Consider also that all its current and potential members (except Iran) are economical, politically and militarily closely tied to this same USA, which the organization supposedly opposes. Isn’t that imbecility?
Idiocy № 5. The opposition. First of all, one should realize clearly that there is no real opposition to the regime in Russia. The formal opposition, including the leaders of the Communist Party, has blended into the current political structure. The leaders of the “opposition” are not different from the leaders “in power” in any way, be it standard of living, incomes or, much less, actions. They did not even use the summit meeting as an opportunity for actions of protest. What actions are you talking about when… it is summer, vacation time, fishing time?! It is well known that some anti-globalization activists were not allowed into Russia; some were bought off, some were made to “cool off” in jail for a while. There was practically no active reaction against the all-conquering “mundialism”. The authorities were content! The caricature parties of Limonov and AKM don’t count; they don’t really care where to engage in mob behavior - in the streets or in discos. The leaders of the opposition turned out to be scoundrels, and the masses are frighteningly dumb.
It is true that there was enough hysterical criticism in the mass media. But what about the manner of the criticism?! St. Belkovsky, the well-known critic of “Putin’s regime,” scares everyone with a coming revolution. At the conference titled “The Other Russia,” where both the extreme “right” and the extreme “left” somehow got together, he called for unity and for a single candidate for President from the opposition. Here is his appeal:
«The single candidate for President whom we must nominate will be a successor of all of historical Russia, of the princes of Kiev and Novgorod, Vladimir and Moscow, the Third Rome and imperial Petersburg, Pushkin and Dostoyevsky, our cosmic flights and our great military victories.
Our primary support, the moving force of the united Russian opposition is the intelligentsia.” (S. Belkovsky. “We gathered here to prevent a revolution in Russia.” – Yezhednevny Zhurnal [13 July 2006]).
This is verbal diarrhea from a classical schizophrenic. What intelligentsia is this anti-revolutionary talking about? What is this Third Rome? When did Russia ever enjoy such a status? How can an “analyst” pile together a non-existent third Rome, imperial Petersburg with its parasitic court, and our victories in space? What happened to these people’s brains? They are seemingly serious at playing the marbles’ game of politics. They are seemingly long out of kindergarten age. Apparently, they really don’t understand that fair elections are not possible in principle in today’s Russia. I can understand that the West does not understand this. By the way, the notorious democracy activist Lilia Shevtsova was compelled to make this reminder to Western Russia experts:
The demand for free and fair elections in 2007 and 2008 might turn out to be a trap. Western governments should consider that the rulers of Russia have mastered “elections management” beautifully and that Western observers have no influence on the outcome of our elections. In the meanwhile, truly fair elections (bold script mine. – O.A.) may bring nationalist-populist leaders to power, since the country doesn’t have a strong liberal-democratic opposition. The West must convince the Russian elite that it is necessary for its own survival to create a functioning rule of law. Russia may arrive at the brink of a precipice before it notices that it is impossible to carry on like that. The only question is, what price will Russia and the West have to pay for this realization. (Lilia Shevtsova. “Putin’s Impotence.” – Rheinischer Merkur, 8 Juli 2006.)
Even a woman understands that “democracy” and other Western attributes of the regime in Russia can only be preserved through non-democratic elections, i.e., based on fraud. However, her appeal to the West to convince the Russian elite of the necessity of creating a law-based state resembles already a conversation in a nuthouse. Firstly, this chatter about “the rule of law” has been going on for twenty years already, and the talking is done by that same “elite” who supposedly must be convinced about it. Secondly, what is the point of appealing to the West which, on the one hand, is ears-deep in its own problems, secondly, understands nothing about Russian reality precisely? Thirdly, Russia is not “going to arrive at the brink of a precipice” – it is already there. And the price, madam scholar, has been paid already: over 10 million people in the past 10 years. Unless the current “democracy + market economy” are purged from the Russian soil, the price will be the disappearance of the Russian people and of Russia as a sovereign state. The matter is not even “Putin’s impotence” or that elite whom Mrs. Shevtsova addresses. The matter is the people itself whose values don’t gel with the values of the West. Neither Shevtsova the democrat, or Belkovsky the counter-revolutionary, or any of their ilk will ever understand this; they are all stricken with the disease of anti-communism, which is a paranoid form of schizophrenia.
Idiocy № 6. A guy named Sergei Minayev published a book this year titled “Dukh-less: a Tale of a Non-real Man.” (М.: АСЕ, 2006). It will most likely become this year’s bestseller. It is a book about young people born between 1970-1976 who “made a killing” during the capitalist transformation of Russia. This is precisely the stratum that formally benefited from capitalism. Their single biggest joy is dollargasm. The protagonist appears to be a copy of an acquaintance of mine through whom I have the opportunity to observe this stratum of “new Russians.” Minayev described in practically documentary fashion their life in which there is no place not only for heroic deeds but for nothing at all except for, to use their language, “bablo” (easy money), discos with “chicks” and “narkota” (dope). The majority of this breed of “successes” utterly fail to understand how fallen they are. Only a handful of individuals, like the author, suddenly start realizing that they are utterly devoid of “spirituality,” i.e., “dukh-less”, to use their half-American word. This book was no revelation to me since I observe and study this world of human-like viruses systematically. I would have forgotten about the book quickly had I not stumbled by accident on an article in the newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets (MK) which I only read to keep track of the measure of the stupidity of pro-Western bourgeois ideology.
I was incredibly amazed at this article whose author suddenly took offense at the book as mentioned earlier, evaluating it as “a book of insults; it hurls abuse at everyone.” That is, the newspaper wants to say that everything described in the book does not really exist in Russia. There are no discos with drugs, no girls for hire by the hour, no huntresses after “sugar daddies,” no 30-year-old blockheads traveling around the world with their parasitic companions. There are no youngsters who cannot say a five-word phrase without at least one foul word, yet have “faino” mastered the “mundialny” slang. The lady author takes sincere offense at the slander against contemporary Russia.
The idiocy here is this: Moskovsky Komsomolets often writes of the same things that Minayev does as if criticizing all this. It turns out that the newspaper does not see in reality the things it writes about. Well, I can rephrase a bit the ending of the aforementioned article and say: “Yo, babe, you got problems big-time, you and your newspaper.”
In actual fact, Moskovsky Komsomolets is one of the mouthpieces for the spiritual emptiness of today’s youth, one of the mouthpieces of dollargasm. It suffices to note the indescribable emotion with which MK journalists describe who ate what at this or that banquet, who wore what, who goes where on vacation. This newspaper is precisely one of those that promote non-spirituality. This is only natural, since MK sings capitalism – of a very Western variety, though. However, to Minayev, too, it is precisely Western capitalism that is the ideal. He dislikes his homegrown bandit capitalism; he dislikes Russian rock music, Russian films of the type “Spetznaz is on the air,” and so on. He prefers Walback, Ellis and someone else in the same vein. MK reasons along the same lines. It likewise has no use for Russian capitalism; it desires the Swiss, French or English variety. By the way, the language of Minayev’s characters is a little different from the language of MK. It is no accident that I often pull Americanized words from that newspaper.
Most importantly, neither Minayev or the newspaper has the intelligence to understand an elementary thing: capitalism - whether the Russian or Western kind - and spirituality are incompatible things. They are prevented from understanding this simple truth, on the one hand, by their blinkers of anti-communism, on the other hand – by the absence of elementary knowledge about contemporary capitalism in the West. Capitalism exhausted its spirituality from the moment it started the “Cold War.” Some “islets” of inspiration were left in the West, but even they are drowned with catastrophic speed by the ocean of mass stupidity which manifests itself in the degradation of both the masses and the elites and in their physical dying out, by the way, albeit not as intensive as that in Russia. This became particularly evident after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Such words as conscience, fraternity, mutual assistance, fairness have been out of use here for a long while. I get the general impression that the word for “spirituality” never even existed in Western languages. In English, for example, I did come across the word “spiritlessness”, but I never saw “spiritness”. The same is true of the German and French languages. I think this is no accident. I repeat: capitalism and spirituality are incompatible things.
Idiocy № 7. It is well known that science in all times raised the general-education-level plank - if not for the population as a whole, then at least for that part of it which governs the state. Strangely enough, since the end of the 20th-century science - except for several applied branches (cosmogony, bionics, some areas of medicine, nanotechnology) - retreated abruptly from its positions, especially in the area of social sciences. Western scientists, too, are compelled to arrive at this conclusion, in particular the Englishman Michael Allaby who said in one of his works in response to the claim that we live in an age of science: “In many parts of the western world, and especially in Britain and the United States, the ideas that dominate our culture are not merely unscientific, they are often anti-scientific.”
Here is not the place to analyze the causes of this phenomenon. What is important is that Russia has outdone the West by far in its anti-scientific attitude. I wrote of this on many occasions already, yet here is some “fresh” proof.
A friend from Moscow sent me his book recently, and I was amazed that he decodes some abbreviations. Here they are: “АН СССР” (USSR Academy of Science), “ВВС” (Air Force), “ВМС” (Navy), KPDR, CPR, NASA, UN, RF, USSR, USA. In this connection, I ask him: “Who is this book intended for? After all, even the Chukchi[1] know what NASA is. (A Chukchi man is asked: “Whose cosmonautics is the best in the world?” – “Nasa (ours),” – the Chukchi answers.) Especially since all these abbreviations are set in a context. Has the reading public in Russia come to such lows that it cannot decipher “USA”? I cannot rule out that possibility, yet…” Here is his reply:
You shouldn’t be so amazed at the abbreviations, and you shouldn’t wax ironic as you recall the joke about the Chukchi. Here is an anecdote for you - no joke but a real story. Recently one professor of international relations (not Chukchi by ethnicity, by the way) published a large article about international cooperation in space, where he kept writing consistently (it was no typo) NASO instead of NASA (before then he wrote of NATO all the time.) As for students, even those people who have higher education and are getting a second one (there are many such people now who have paid money and believe that they are simply owed a diploma on that account), their level is below “low.” So far everyone knows what the USA stands for, of course, but already many are not familiar with KPDR. Here are examples of answers to examination questions from students at one of the colleges where foreign relations specialists are trained: “in the Second World War Germany was allied with Austro-Hungary,” “Talleyrand was an ancient Egyptian diplomat”… This was hard to believe, yet it comes from my personal experience.
The education level hasn’t just dropped catastrophically; it is being lowered consciously through reforms. Thinking people aren’t only not needed – they are harmful and dangerous. In the provinces - where I often travel lately, as I told you - they create their own worlds, studying local heroic history and Divine Law. No one cares what goes on in Moscow.
I think this needs no comments. My wife came up once with the word “if-only-ism” which I proceeded to introduce actively to the language. It means: “If only we do this and that, we will finally show Kuz’ka’s mother to the West.” The time of if-only-ism has passed, apparently; nothing was achieved. To heck with it; let us proceed to the epoch of doing nothing, which we will designate with the non-Russian word “mundialism.” In any event, Russians will change it to “mundism”[2]. It isn’t just a word – it is a phenomenon that reflects the show-off global (“mundial”) majesty of Russia based on three whales: universal religious obscurantism, mass illiteracy and mass paranoia. In actual fact all these “whales” are tightly interconnected, forming rather a unified body of “mundialism” (or rather “mundism” after all) with three heads.
When will this “mundism” come to an end?
Where are you, Ilya of Murom, the great hero of ancient lore? We need you!
Oleg Arin
08.01.2006
[1] A small aboriginal people inhabiting the north-eastern tip of Asia who are the butt of many jokes in Russia making fun of their supposed simple-mindedness and ignorance.
[2] This word is very close in sound to a popular Russian foul word.
«Mundial» Russia, or, when will «mundism» come to an end?