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

Anti-Western Westernism

In 1924, the leaders of the Soviet state, including Stalin himself, were still fully convinced that the success of the USSR was only the first step of a pan-European revolutionary process. Already in May 1924, Stalin wrote in the pamphlet “The Foundations of Leninism”:

To overthrow the power of the bourgeoisie and establish the power of the proletariat in one country, does not mean to guarantee the complete victory of socialism. The chief task of socialism, the organization of socialist production – lies still ahead. Can this task be accomplished? Is it possible to attain the final victory of socialism in one country, without the combined efforts of the proletarians of several advanced countries? No, it is not. The efforts of one country are enough for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie – this is what the history of our revolution tells us. For the final victory of socialism, for the organization of socialist production, the efforts of one country, especially a peasant country like Russia, are not enough – for this we must have the efforts of the proletarians of several advanced countries. ⁴

A few months later, in December 1924, he changed this wording to the exact opposite. And since then, the idea of building socialism in one country, specifically in Russia, without its victory in the other, primarily industrialized capitalist countries of Europe in the near future, became official dogma, including philosophical dogma, of the Soviet system.

Leaving aside the reasons for how events so strange from a theoretical point of view (at least from the point of view of Marxism) could happen, let us pay attention to how this fits into the general picture of the Russian hermeneutic ellipse.

Here we are facing a discrepancy. Marxism as a philosophy belonged to the European hermeneutical circle, but represented its critical dimension. Being a part of European culture and history, it spoke in radical opposition to this culture and this history in their concrete expression. Being placed on Russian soil, on one hand, it found itself at the pole of the most extreme Westernizers, at pole B (see Figure 7). In this sense, Marxism continued the line of Russian Westernism from the Freemasons to the Decembrists and revolutionary democrats. Related to this is Lenin’s positive assessment of the capitalist transformations in Russia, that is, its Europeanization and industrial modernization. In this sense, his polemic with the Narodniks was conducted from the position of a representative of focus B against representatives of focus A (see Figure 7), who tended toward apologia for the identity of the Russian peasantry and abandoning the idea of the need to build capitalism in Russia (the idea of “Russian socialism” is already found in Herzen, and later more clearly in Mikhailovsky, Tkachev, etc.).⁵

But at the same time, Marxism (including Western) is a radical criticism of the West, capitalism, the bourgeois system, which means that it contains (albeit in special, paradoxical, dialectical form) a rejection of the political, social, cultural and economic content of focus B (actually Westernism). It turns out that from a philosophical point of view in the Russian context we are dealing with “anti-Western Westernism,” with an ideology that simultaneously claims the West as something universal and with the same gesture overcomes this Western universality, removes it, declaring that “tomorrow has already arrived,” that “the West in Russia is over” (not having had time to really begin).

In this context, Russian Marxism, at least after the October Revolution becomes a fait accompli, seems to be the definite revenge of pole A (the archaic popular [narodogo] principle) in the face of pole B (pure Westernism, embodied historically in the political elite of the Russian Empire and the bourgeois class that was growing until 1917). This paradox was hardly adequately comprehended by the masses, but it seems to be the key to understanding the true place of Marxism in the history of Russia.

This predetermined the duality in Russia of both Marxism and the entire Soviet period. As part of Western European philosophy, that is, the Western hermeneutic circle, Marxism was an instrument of the radical and unprecedented modernization of the country (focus B). This is precisely what Marxism was from many points of view:

• It ridiculed folk traditions as remnants of ancient times,
• destroyed religion and religious foundations,
• eradicated archaic forms of culture and introduced new, “progressive” ones,
• conducted consistent industrialization and urbanization, destroying rural infrastructure,
• developed atheistic and materialistic science ,
• instilled in the people the way of life and thinking inherent in the standards of European Enlightenment, and
• forcibly imposed a rationalistic and mechanistic worldview.

In this sense, it was Westernism to a great extent.

But, on the other hand, Marxism:

• unblocked the broad masses of the people, opening the way for them to the upper strata of society, and destroyed the Europeanized and Westernized Romanov political and economic elites;
• abolished bourgeois relations expressing the quintessence of the Western model of socio-political development;
• strengthened and preserved the political independence of Russia from European countries;
• expanded the influence of Russians in nearby regions;
• and became in fact the universal avant-garde in confronting Europe and its colonial-universalist aspirations.

In this sense, Marxism in the USSR not only continued the main line of the Russian Empire, but could be perceived as the revenge of the Russian popular [nadornogo] spirit against the alienated political elites of the St. Petersburg monarchy, that is, as an expression of focus A (Figure 1).

Trotskyism and National Bolshevism

In Soviet society in the 1920s one could easily find extreme expressions of both poles under consideration. During this period, Lenin’s revolutionary brother-in-arms and one of the most passionate Bolsheviks, Leo Trotsky, clearly articulated the Westernizer pole of Soviet Bolshevism, insisting that socialism cannot be built in the USSR without the implementation of proletarian revolutions in developed European countries, and if it will be built, it will soon degenerate. This position, which expresses the classical pole B in our hermeneutic ellipse, is a logical and philosophically consistent construction: if the socialist revolution was able to win by some miracle in a peripheral European country (not without the super-efforts of Trotsky himself ), then it can integrate into a real post-capitalist world only together with other European societies. This circumstance could be argued both by references to practical and economic moments from the life of young Soviet Russia, and to the classical texts of orthodox Marxists. But the most important thing is that this was absolutely justified from the point of view of Pole B: in a “left-wing project,” Russia could get rid of the burden of archeomodernity only through integration with the West, becoming an organic part of it, even if in a difficult way, through the proletarian revolution. This revolution was the leap of Russian society into the Western hermeneutic circle and, therefore, had to share its fate with Europe (to build socialism and carry out a world revolution together).

At the opposite pole, during the same period, National Bolshevik ideas crystallized in the USSR.⁶ They come from different sources: from the nobles who joined the Red Army; tsarist “specialists”; white immigrants nostalgic for Russia and realizing that they lose it forever after losing in the civil war; from the creative intelligentsia, who recognized in the Bolsheviks the bearers of the “new Holy Russia” (Bryusov, Khlebnikov, Pilnyak, Platonov, Blok’s “Scythians,” Klyuyev, Yesenin, Remizov, Zamyatin, Forsh, Chapygin, Erberg, Bely, Lundberg, Ivanov-Razumnik, Mstislavsky, etc.); from the thousands of Social Revolutionaries who went over to the Bolsheviks; from pragmatic communists who understand the importance of patriotic feelings for the construction of a socialist state (Tan-Bogoraz, Lezhnev). The ideological foundations of National Bolshevism are most clearly formulated by the smenovekhovtsy Ustryalov,⁷ Kirdetsov, Lukyanov, and Klyuchnikov and the Eurasianianists Savitsky, Suvchinsky, Ilyin, and Vernadsky in exile.⁸ Their thesis boils down to the following: Marxists won the Revolution but after the victory under the pressure of the popular [narodnoy] element (focus A) they will certainly transform into something new and build a Russian and popular [narodnoe] society, beyond Europeanism, capitalism and the West (both external and internal, as embodied earlier in the Romanov elite).

But again, as in tsarist Russia, society developed a dualism of the modernist elite (this time in this role was played by the Communist Party, the bearer of the ruling discourse) and the archaic masses, who tried to interpret everything that happened in their own way. In the 1920s, this was reflected in the revealing sociological difference between the “Bolsheviks” and the “Communists.” In the novel Naked Year by Pilnyak, the Russian peasant grandfather-healer Yegorka says:

“There is no International, there is the popular [narodnaya] Russian revolution, a rebellion, and nothing more. In the image of Stepan Timofeevich." - "And Karl Marx?" (he is asked - AD) "A German, I say, and therefore, a fool." - "And Lenin?" - "Lenin, I say, is a muzhik, a Bolshevik, and you must be Communists... The Communists should get the hell out! The Bolsheviks, I say, will manage themselves.” ⁹

A similar distinction between the Russian Bolsheviks (focus A) and the communists (focus B) is made in the National Bolshevik (smenovekhovtsy) newspaper “Nakanune” by the former Chief Prosecutor of the Synod Lukyanov, ranking Lenin among the “Bolsheviks” and “Russian opportunists,” and Trotsky and Zinoviev with the Communists. Trotskyism in the Soviet situation occupied Focus B; National Bolshevism, Focus A (Figure 7). These ideological positions corresponded to the structure of archeomodernity in both its manifestations, and, therefore, expressed very deep philosophical laws. In the culture and philosophical discussions of that period (including the Russian émigrés), two distinct tendencies are distinguishable through which one could count on overcoming the hermeneutic ellipse and entering a model of the philosophical circle (Russian or Western). In the event of the victory of Trotskyism and, consequently, the integration of Russia into the United States of Europe (or because of the possible defeat of the USSR in an adventurous attempt to carry out the “world revolution” alone and logically following its occupation), this would mean final integration into the Western hermeneutic circle. If National Bolshevism prevailed, Marxism itself would soon transform into something else, into an independent socio-political discourse that resembles left Narodnichestvo, Eurasianism, or the alliance of Empire with socialism that Konstantin Leontiev dreamed of.

In the 1920s National Bolshevism and Eurasianism offered a new justification for the possibility of Russian philosophy, while touching on the sociological, external side of the problem, as Danilevsky and Leontiev did half a century before. In this sense, one should also consider the period of the philosopher and theologian Pavel Florensky’s cooperation with the Bolsheviks. That is how Bolshevism understood in the early stages by Nikolai Klyuyev and Alexander Blok. In the event of such a historical turn, Marxist dogma would be reinterpreted, and perhaps completely discarded, giving way to a new ideology. It would also mean a rupture of the hermeneutic ellipse and the collapse of the archeomodern, only with a different outcome. Without a doubt, the development of events in the second scenario would make the question of the possibility of Russian philosophy a priority.

Stalin: Soviet Archeomodernity

But, as we know, not the Trotskyists and the National Bolsheviks won in the USSR, but rather the Stalin line, and the supporters of all “deviations” (from both foci) were gradually subjected to repression and nullified. So, from the 20s to the end of the 80s of the 20th century, a new version of the archeomodern - the Marxist - was formed in the USSR. The hermeneutic ellipse was not divided into circles, but remained in its structure, acquiring a new - this time Marxist - design. Again, Russian philosophical thought was blocked and put into a deadlock, with a fatal stratification of meanings. This predetermined the general system of Soviet philosophy, which, of course, was not philosophy in the full sense of the word, but a lump of increasingly contradictory absurdities.

Stalin put paramount importance on maintaining the status quo that had developed by the 1930s. The Bolsheviks had managed to seize and retain power in the Russian Empire, break the resistance of the Whites, unite the dispersed national suburbs, strengthen the dictatorship of the Communist Party, build the economy on new socialist principles, turn Marxism into a ruling totalitarian ideology, destroy the bourgeoisie as a class, eradicate private property and, to top it all, preserve the country's independence and sovereignty in the face of the capitalist encirclement of powerful European powers.

All these indicators were so impressive, and the role of socialism and its socio-political transformations in building a new Soviet society was so great, that Stalin, standing on top of a gigantic communist empire, had all subjective reasons to sincerely believe that in the USSR Marxism had won in its orthodox version, passed through the prism of the Blanquist approach of Lenin and the first Bolsheviks.

Soviet archeomodernity, contradictory as a philosophical construction, looked so impressive in the 1930s from the position of political power and the energy of the masses in building a new type of society that it could well be seen as something stable, sufficient and organic, proving its worth by social, political and economic success. The “Right” was shown the achievements of the socialist economy (based on communist and Marxist ideals and values), the “Left” the consistency of the Soviet state, capable of developing independently, remaining independent and combat ready. Stalinist philosophy was a philosophy of concrete deeds, not abstract ideas. Socialism, industrialization and a growing state power served as the best argument in any dispute, and vice versa: any criticism (“from the right” or “from the left”, from Trotskyists or the National Bolsheviks) seemed inappropriate, “subjective” or even “subversive”.

y the 1930s, Soviet archeomodernity was fully developed, and in 1937, Stalin, without hesitation, dealt with all the former “fellow travellers” on all flanks: during this period anyone who tried to question Soviet archeomodernity (or was accused of the attempt) was repressed, regardless of the content of such questions.

Soviet philosophy as toxic waste

The Stalinist period forcedly suppressed any intention to try to decompose Soviet archeomodernity into components. The slightest movement in this direction, starting from 1937-1938, was unthinkable. Nevertheless, the most severe repressions could not do anything with the philosophical nature of the problem of archeomodernity. It was set aside, driven deep within, but not removed. It was impossible – not to speak about it out loud, but even to think about it. Nevertheless, the duality of the hermeneutic ellipse is fully apparent at all stages of the USSR.

The Soviet masses interpreted the official ideology more like “Bolsheviks,” the party elites more like “Communists,” although gradually, as the representatives of the masses penetrate the party elite, this distinction begins to fade, and the whole structure shifts towards archeomodernity with the predominance of popular [narodnykh], “patriotic” dispositions.

However, attempts to bring this rethinking to the level of consciousness and to interpret communist doctrines in the spirit of Russian pochvennichestvo were systematically and severely suppressed by the “internationalist” component until the very last moments of the existence of Soviet power. Right up to Gorbachev’s reforms, which led to the collapse of the entire Soviet system and its complete liquidation together with the Soviet state itself, neither the “Trotskyist” nor the “Marxist” attempts to unblock archeomodernity on behalf of the westernizing pole could prevail. In various proportions, at certain stages of Soviet history, the corresponding foci periodically popped up and dropped, but the structure of the hermeneutic ellipse remained unchanged.

Therefore, if the entire body of texts of the Soviet philosophers conveys anything, it is only this intellectual languishing. Whatever question of philosophy arises in this context - about activity, the person, language, matter, consciousness, history, thinking, body, subject, object, soul, origin - it necessarily slips into an obscure nonsense through which at best it was possible break through either to vague “Trotskyism” (that is, to a minimal correspondence to the Western European — albeit critical and revolutionary — intellectual methodology), or to an even more veiled Russian archaism (for example, in the form of “cosmism”). In the worst case, the mountains of written books did not carry any content whatsoever, being examples of undecipherable mental imitation.

Of course, on the periphery of Soviet society and in Russian emigration, separate individuals tried to think adequately, but they could get rid of archeomodernity only in one case, if they were fully integrated into the Western European hermeneutic circle. This was partly facilitated by emigration or, in rare cases, extreme forms of dissidentism in the USSR itself, although more often this also indicated an intellectual disease, different only from the institutionalized and totalitarian-dogmatic disease of pan-Soviet thinking, which in the general case was accepted as the norm. There was no social “place” at all for a correct and intelligible movement towards Russian philosophy proper; everything was occupied by the Soviet-style hermeneutic ellipse that severely blocked any attempt to take a step in any direction. Soviet philosophy could claim to be substantial only if it could be attributed to one or another hermeneutical circle. But it was precisely this gesture that the “status quo” that had developed by the 1930s and retained its significance did not allow it to make. Precisely because from the very beginning a dogmatic contradiction, an axiomatic lie, a normative disease of consciousness had been carried into it, Soviet philosophy could not formulate anything meaningful or subject to interpretation. Everything was wasted.

As in ancient China in the Qin era, an ambitious dynasty, aiming to change the parameters of ancient culture and religion, tried to impose the principles of the philosophy of legalism instead of the most ancient Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism, but after burning many books and brutal repressions, it turned out to be something ephemeral and fell, without leaving a trace, a few years after the death of its founder, so Soviet philosophy lost its relevance in an instant - at the time of the death of the USSR in 1991 - henceforth representing a “toxic waste” dump of captive and humiliated intelligence.

Notes:

4. Stalin I. V. Works. Vol. 8, p. 61.

5. Levin Sh.M. Obshchestvennoe dvizhenie v Rossii v 60-70-e gody XIX veka. Moscow: 1958. p. 334; Karataev. N. K. Populist economic literature. Moscow: 1958. 125-159; See also: Mikhailovsky N.K. Complete Collection of Essays. St. Petersburg, 1911. Vol. 1. pp. 170-172; Tkachev P.N. Selected Works. Moscow: 1935, vol. 5, p. 73.

6. Agursky M. Ideology of National Bolshevism. Moscow: Algorithm, 2003.

7. Ustryalov N.V. National Bolshevism. Moscow, 2004.

8. Foundations of Eurasianism. Moscow: Arktogea Center, 2002.

9. Pilnyak B.A. Collected works in 6 volumes. Vol. 1. Moscow: Terra, 2003.

Figure 1. The Russian Hermeneutic Ellipse (Archeomodern)

Figure 7. Leftism in Russia and the Archeomodern Poles. *Non-leftist ideational tendencies are shown in square brackets

How to Philosophize with a Hammer and Sickle. Part 1