Oleg Kireev on Sat, 19 Sep 1998 09:24:24 +0100 |
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Syndicate: mailradek no. 4 |
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. Everybody who doesn't receive it can send a "subscribe english mailradek" 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. 58 14.09.1998 Last week the Duma - or i'd better say, its Communist majority - convinced Yeltsin into rejecting Chernomyrdin as a prime minister candidature, abandoning the economic program of overcoming the crisis, and thus abolished the governance of unlimited presidential power, which we have had since 1991. This became a reason for the journalist (especially American) to joyfully grasp one of the most vulgar terms ever used by them again - that one about "the Communists are getting the power back". For them it means the end of all the reforms (nobody explains what these "reforms" are, otherwise they would have to agree that it's just a full list of all the governments' solutions since the beginning of the perestroika, that contradict each other and are tactical, not strategical) and nearly Stalin's repressions. We face the most naive and anti-historical view on the situation, for which to solve the historical problem is to call it by some well-known name. "And what if we find out that Yeltsin is not a democrate and Zyuganov is not a communist?"1. "The Communists" won't ever be like they were in 1910s and 1920s. The well-off sons of the Soviet elite who carry on cabinet intrigues, hoping to catch a golden fish, who know absolutely nothing about Marx and declaim nationalist speeches to lure the electorate, have nothing to do with those declassed radical terrorists of the beginning of the century, who had decades of desperate struggle and thousands of deaths past them. The cultural creations of the October revolution - the constructivism and particularly social realism - affect us by their absolute insanity from the point of view of the modern conscience. They represent a totally different discourse of thinking, their authors are like martians. That what they were doing is amazing and cannot be ever recreated. That's why the american journalists shouldn't be afraid themselves and shouldn't scare the people. (Although from the point of view of the economical stabilization a "communist" president would be even more prosperous than a "democratic" one, because he wouldn't waste that much time on the struggle with parliament, and he would even pay attention to the state affairs an hour or another a week.) It's obvious for us that these people in grey jackets won't suggest anything worthy except a new kind of the previous liberal ideology and soft pseudo-socialistic programs in economy. Something interesting can only happen after the intervention of non-parliamental forces. Our attitute to their "victory" is: this can be an interesting thing to observe, but we should stop this spectacle. 1 G.Chieza, "La Stampa" Moscow staff, "Farewell to Russia!", ц╜.1997, p.72 Oleg Kireev project: Anatoly Osmolovsky and Oleg Kireev translation: Alexey Kovalev realization: mailradek in english