Oleg Kireev on Mon, 14 Sep 1998 08:00:59 +0100


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Syndicate: mailradek no. 3


Moscow-based magazine "Radek", dedicated to theory, art and politics
continues the project "mailradek in english". The information about the
magazine is available on the Website:
 	http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Coffeehouse/1457, 
and the issues in English will be also available soon. Everybody who doesn't
receive it can send a "subscribe" e-mail to radek@glasnet.ru, and we'll
include him into the mailing list.
	Our address is: Russia 117333 Moscow, Vavilova 48-237, for O.Kireev.
tel./fax:(095)137 71 31. 

                                                       										text no. 57
				9.09.1998				
	On August, 17, a terrible economic crisis exploded in Russia. The
"robot"-Kiriyenko was dismissed, dollar tripled in one month, the food
stores were abandoned, and the private bank system has been practically
destroyed. Finally, the State Duma (the Parliament) rejected Chernomyrdin
(the president's candidacy) for a Prime Minister's chair for the second
time, thus, leaving a State machine headless at least for another week.
	Once again the mass media tries to scare population with the dictatorship,
hunger, state destruction, hyperinflation etc. All this bullshit is
presented to us not only as a bankruptcy of the Russian governement and of
the President, but as a total breakdown of our existence in general; first
of all, as a total breakdown of the concrete life of the concrete person. 
        Certainly, everyone depends on the degree of his or her own
integration into the completely (as it seems at first) bancrupt system, on
the degree of psychological, economic and cultural connections he or she has
managed to establish with it and hence to become a part of it. One has lost
a bank account, another one failed to sign a profitable business
deal, and someone else become totally dissapointed  with "democracy" and
fell into a kind of social apathy.
	However, the main issue is that in reality there is no bancruptcy. All the
happening today is an ordinary life of an ordinary (albeit young) capitalist
system. In other words, previous five years that have been presented to us
as a "crisis" ready to explode every moment, were in reality a capitalist
"flourishing" and we face a real crisis only now. It's necessary to clarify
this to ourselves at least for the sake of getting liberated from the
hypnosis of capitalist rhetorics. However, we are not to expect anything
extraordinary:
there is hunger, there are disorders - a common reaction of
disoriented people. If Russia had a revolutionary subject - a small and
united group with a high degree of consciousness - the revolution could have
happened (which is the only positive chance given by the capitalist system
in its critical moments), but its absense means that no mechanism
of an adequate reaction is provided for the population.
	How should we react?
        1) Nothing has happened. Russian capitalism has completed its first
stage (which is not free yet of socialist humanism) and propelles itself
into the new round, much more cruel and cynical. Instead of a small sphere
with capitalist relationships and a small possibility of freedom within
them, we'll have a total capitalism with a high degree of freedom in
marginal spheres. That's why all our projects buried under the ruins of the
previous system are not worth to be remembered. On the contrary, those only
things that have survived this crisis deserve to be kept and developed.
That's the first. The second: this new period of capitalist expansion will
open new and more powerful possibilities for the resistance. Although it
might look as a paradox but it is right now or just a bit later that
contemporary culture can discover a real audience. Surely, this will happen
only to those social and cultural phenomena that will be ready to change.
	2) Don't be afraid of anything. Even while absolutely vulnarable
(without money, patronage, connections etc.) one always has a wide space
for personal freedom. If you're hungry - rob, frustrated - rebel.
Decisive action clears all problems. New relationships will demand a new
level of self-sacrifice. In the world all is breathing with death,
it's crucial to get used to this breathing.
	3) Stay attentive! Places free from spectacle, gossip and lies
are emerging in the capitalist society right now. As situationists wrote,
"Only the one who passes the way of denying the existing reality, gets to the
other side of nihilism... Everything that had been worked out and built
outside of this perspective, destroys itself and doesn't require the help of
S.I. But it's undoubtedly too that S.I. uses exactly these empty spaces
appearing as a result of sudden collapses which exist everywhere in the
consumption society to experiment with new values. We are able to build
something only on the ruins of the society of spectacle". In other words, by
destroying the exsisting system we create for ourselves a space free from
the social relationships of this old system. Any social experiment is
possible only
after the total destruction.
        Therefore we have to be attentive to identify the free zones and
mark the successfull initiatives in social self-organization without
ideology and
totalization. For every critically thinking contemporary person a valid
laboratory has appeared to check the practical use of his or her ideas.
 
------------------------
Situationist International, Questionnaire publ. in Russian in: Radek no. 01,
M. 1998, p.0040
						Anatoly Osmolovsky

project: Anatoly Osmolovsky, Oleg Kireev
translation: Irina Aristarkhova and Oleg Kireev
realization: mailradek