Paul
Goble
Staunton, November 9 – “Russian
remains in a pre-state situation,” a reflection of the preference among the
Russian people for “archaic forms” and the myths that justify them, according
to the late Aleksandr Akhizer. That tendency toward “archaization,” a term he
popularized, led to the destruction of the USSR and will lead to the breakup of
Russia.
In a new article on the Tolkovatel
portal, Pavel Pryanikov discusses Akhizer’s ideas, ideas which he says have had
a broad impact on Russian discussions now even though the author, who died in
2007, has been “undeservedly forgotten” by all but the narrowest circle of
experts (ttolk.ru/?p=22012).
During Soviet times, Akhizer was a
recognized specialist on urbanization and urban planning, but over the course
of three decades, he wrote “for the draw” his main work: “Russia: A Critique of
a Historical Case.” The KGB confiscated that in the 1980s, and he had to start
over, publishing his three-volume work first in 1991 and then in a new edition
in 1997-98.
According to Akhizer, “a society or
an individual can respond to a crisis or danger either by developing an innovative
idea which opens new creative possibilities or by returning to old ideas which
proved themselves during earlier crises.” Most Western societies and dominated
by the former, while Russia remains dominated by the latter.
That means, Akhizer argued, that as
problems become more complex, Russian society and its individual members do not
respond in ways that are either creative or adequate but rather assume that
they can use old methods, even though those are increasingly incapable of
addressing new situations.
That leads to what he called “archaization,”
the result of following cultural programs “which took shape under simpler conditions
and which do not today meet the complexities of the world or the character and
size of the dangers.” It represents “a
form of regression in which people behave in much the same way as they did in “a
pre-government society.”
That is, he suggested, they are
governed “by purely local myths, where relations are based on the emotions of
people whose field of view is limited to the members of the local community
with which they are personally acquainted and who do not see development as
something of cultural value.”
Archaization occurs in a large
society or state “as an effort to fully or partially return to pre-state forms
of culture and activity.” In Russia
today, that is what is happening, with the society being “infected by the
archaic” and moving in the direction of “re-feudalization” rather than
modernization.
If in the past, this tendency toward
the archaic reflected the peasant culture out of which most Russians sprang and
from which they were only recently separated, today, it is product not so much
of this history as of the day to day behavior of Russians in small family or
social groups, behavior that Russians project on the entire society and polity.
One consequence is a continuing
return to the past, and another related one is that many things which appear
modern on the outside in fact reflect older patterns and thus are in many cases
subverted by them. That is the case with
monopoly capitalism in Russia now which
has more in common with late imperial capitalism than it does with capitalism
in the West.
Another, Akhizer argued, is that
there is a recurring cycle in which first the ruling elite is greeted by
society almost in an ecstatic manner and then is viewed with hatred when it
cannot solve current problems or faces any defeat. And that is not something Russian elites have
figured out how to escape.
The widespread acceptance among
Russians of “the myth of the restoration and broadening of the empire and the
continuation of endless colonization,” justified in the name of giving assistance
to “brothers of the faith or blood or class” only “temporarily” stabilizes the
situation but does not solve the country’s problems.
This may be hidden for a time
because “society continues to live with comfortable myths despite catastrophic
experiences.” But as a result, Akhizer concluded, Russia has not found a way
out of the dilemma Nicholas Berdyaev described as the task of somehow forming a
relatively modern state in a land with “a low level of state consciousness.”
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