Paul Goble
Staunton, Oct. 1 – One of the striking features of the Russian scene today is that in thinking about the post-Putin future, the expert community is generally calm and predicts that the future will be like today while media commentators are increasingly apocalyptic, predicting radical change and even the disintegration of Russia, Vladimir Pastukhov says.
Over all, the London-based Russian analyst says, the expert community makes the more persuasive case; but, he adds, “there is one thing that makes [him] listen to the alarming prophecies” of the commentators – and “that something is the dark energy of the masses” (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=6519C99D5C3E4).
A century ago, Russian philosopher Nicholas Berdyaev referred to this energy as “’the dark wine of Russian history,’ something which periodically ‘spills over’ into the bloody sea of a Russian revolution.” Some dismiss his words; but Pastukhov argues that there are compelling reasons for taking him seriously.
“In Berdyaev’s time,” the analyst says, “we did not yet have such detailed ideas about the universe as we do today. We now know that 70 percent of the mass of the universe is ‘dark energy’ abut which we know nothing. That notion can easily be extrapolated to any society,” including the Russian.
“For many decades, we have been observing the accumulation of this ‘dark energy’ in Russia,” Pastukhov says. “If at first this was a gradual process, now at a time of war, it is working like ‘a hellish thermonuclear reactor’ producing the equivalent of megabytes of this ‘dark energy’ every second.”
At present, “we see how this energy is being produced; but we do not see how it is being spent. And that means it is accumulating in some giant historical capacitor ready at any moment to be discharged by the electric arc of chaos.” Those optimistic about Russia’s future should be taking this danger into account.
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