Translated by Michael Millerman. Founder of http://MillermanSchool.com - online philosophy and politics courses on Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Dugin, Strauss, and more.

The hermeneutic ellipse in the post-Soviet period

A few words should be said about the socio-cultural situation in Russian society that developed in the 1990s, after the collapse of the USSR, and in our time at the beginning of the 20th century.

Soviet archeomodernity collapsed in 1991. And at that moment the two poles again made themselves felt. One of them was expressed in liberal reformers, the other in those whom liberal reformers called “red-brown.” The liberals decided to conduct the next round of “modernization” and “westernization,” which included actively acquainting the Soviet public with Western culture, society and, in part, philosophy. The liberals (at least in the first period) almost openly set themselves the task of unblocking the archeomodern, which they identified with the Soviet system. This project fit fully into the logic of the Russian Westernism of previous eras, both liberal and “Trotskyist” in Soviet times. From a philosophical point of view, this undertaking boiled down to a new attempt to lead Russian society into the context of Western philosophy, through translations of foreign authors, the introduction of new epistemes, and, ultimately, the inclusion of Russian intellectual discourse in the mainstream of Western discourse.

An alternative project formed at the opposite ideological pole, where communist-conservatives and the re-emerged (in many ways artificially and inorganically) “nationalists” and “traditionalists” united in opposition to liberal Westernizers. Since far from all communists joined this pole (a significant part of them “turned into liberals”), with a certain degree of approximation we can say that after the outflow of opportunists and random people, those who remained among the communists of the 1990s consciously (minority) or intuitively (majority) shared the NationalBolshevik platform, in the spirit of Ustryalov and Eurasians. Hence the inclusion in the policy documents of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union of such topics as “Orthodoxy,” “Empire,” “tradition,” “geopolitics,” etc., unthinkable in the orthodox Marxist context. Scattered groups of non-Marxist conservatives who appeared along with the collapse of the totalitarian system (“Neo-Eurasians”, “Neo-monarchists”, “non-Orthodox”, “Russian nationalists”, etc.,) gravitated to the same pole. In this phenomenon, we see a preliminary grouping of forces around focus B of our hermeneutic ellipse, which became possible after the collapse of the Soviet machine.

Politically, in the 1990s, this orientation represented opposition to the authorities, while liberal reformers managed to subordinate the authorities to themselves (President Yeltsin and his entourage) and gain control over the dominant public discourse. The “Patriotic Opposition” could become an environment where it was entirely appropriate to raise the question of the possibility of Russian philosophy at a new historical stage (in parallel with the initiatives of the new Westernizers). However, this did not happen, not in the sociological (generalized, descriptive, external) realm nor, all the more so, in the substantial philosophical dimension. This social pole did not make any efforts to think through and assert its own project to overcome archeomodernity in the spirit of movement towards the Russian hermeneutic circle and limited itself to passive resistance to Westernist reforms, not paying attention either to the ideational consolidation of its ranks or to the development of a sound ideological program, not to mention the formulation of serious philosophical problems. Everything was limited  to polemics and publicism.

In the 1990s, at a certain moment, it seemed that the hermeneutic ellipse was undone and Russia, collapsing, was partially integrating into the Western world, which by the end of the twentieth century claimed globality and no alternative on a world scale (in the spirit of the universal colonial claims of Western culture, but only with large scale and more impressive results of the widespread implementation of their codes and paradigms). Except for the short period between the February and October revolutions of 1917, in Russia for the first time political power and control over ideological attitudes fell into the hands of radical Westernizers, carriers of Westernist thinking and adherents of Western fate. This was accompanied by the weakening of Russia’s sovereignty and the partial introduction of the external governance of the country. In a philosophical sense, these processes were an attempt to exterminate focus A and its influence on society as a whole (See phenomenon that can be called “Yeltsinism” on Figure 8).

Figure 8. Post-Soviet Russia and the Archeomodern Poles. A dotted line indicates weak influence.

Vladimir Putin’s Archeomodernity

However, by the end of the 1990s, the influence of liberal reformers on the general intellectual climate in the country began to decline. If in the early 1990s this orientation had considerable support in those social spheres that had high hopes for the rapprochement between Russia and the West, then by the end of the 20th century, hopes were replaced by disappointment, and the negative balance of reforms (economic, social, psychological and cultural) became obvious to many. During this period, Yeltsin was replaced by Putin, which meant a serious worldview shift. Putin restored the parameters of the archeomodern in Russia by curbing the Westernizer pole and slightly reducing the pressure on the properly Russian pole (focus A) (see Figure 8). The model of society in the Putin era was a return to the hermeneutic ellipse, familiar to Russia of the last centuries, in which not only is the possibility of one of the two non-contradictory models prevailing closed off, but any intelligible intellectual activity is also deliberately blocked by the mass of archeomodernity, supported by the power potential of the state machine.

Putin gradually took away from the ruling elite of the liberals their influence, but at the same time did not support the Slavophile pole of the “patriotic opposition,” leaving it the possibility of sterile, marginal, autonomous vegetation. So again, routinely and in new ideological and socio-political conditions, a system was established in Russia that impeded the very formulation of the question of choosing a philosophical hermeneutical priority and deliberately excluded any serious discussion of the topic of the possibility of Russian philosophy.

The difference between the current era and the Stalinist era (in the context of interest to us) is, however, that Stalin gave to any philosophical question a severe response in the form of a demonstration of the achievements of socialism, the political strength of the Soviet state and the work of a powerful repressive apparatus. Therefore, his inertia lasted for several decades. Putin’s regime is incomparably milder and cannot boast of serious achievements. Therefore, its stability and durability are in question, and its intellectual impasse and pathological nature are obvious now. If it has a margin of safety, then that consists only in a potential appeal to the archaic pole (focus A), which Putin and his close circle are carefully avoiding.

From: Martin Heidegger: The Possibility of Russian Philosophy By Alexander Dugin.

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