Paul
Goble
Staunton, March 20 – The coronavirus
pandemic has undermined the idea increasingly dominant since the Renaissance
that human beings are “’masters of nature,’” Vladimir Pastukhov says. “And
suddenly has appeared something which shows that you are not the master.”
Something neither you nor the state controls.
This is leading to “serious changes
both in stereotypes of behavior and in the economy,” the London-based Russian
scholar says (echo.msk.ru/programs/personalnovash/2607414-echo/ as excerpted at newizv.ru/article/general/20-03-2020/vladimir-pastuhov-to-s-chem-my-stolknulis-eto-dazhe-ne-voyna).
Humanity faces a prolonged period of
the spread of the virus and an even more prolonged period of economic
recession; and even after these ease, there will need to emerge a different
attitude toward medical preparations for disaster and toward the functioning of
the economy, Pastukhov says.
In addition, there will be a
reevaluation of relations among countries and a revision of how people in
various countries view other countries individually and collectively. That will
not be easy but rather add to the sense of not being in control. But even these
challenges are not the most serious development in prospect.
That likely is the clash between
young people who are unlikely to die from the virus and older people who are
more likely to and the moral challenges that pattern entails, the Russian
scholar continues. Some older people will make excessive demands, and some
younger ones will be against meeting them.
But there is also the fact that a
large number of people may die as a result of the economic recession, perhaps approaching
the number who will die from the virus.
This means that governments must fight both the pandemic and the economic
consequences of the spread of the virus, including unemployment in particular.
According to Pastukhov, “people now
are at the very beginning stag and still do not recognize what in fact has
occurred. Consequently, they are conducting themselves quite traditionally and
cursing the government, while governments in their turn are trying to deal with
the situation with commonplaces and calls for all to distance themselves
socially.”
This situation will not last all
that long for either individuals or the government, he says; but it will leave
a deep imprint on both.
As far as Russia is concerned,
Russia does not appear to be in a much worse position than the Western countries. But while this is the case, Moscow is
fighting the coronavirus at the same time that it is rewriting its
constitution. And the pandemic is having
an impact on that process far more profound than many yet recognize.
“The powers that be think that we
await difficult times and that in them, power must be concentrated in one
person’s hands, completely, without appeal, and without qualification.” And no
one should be under any illusion that they are about to yield on this point any
time soon. Russia thus will continue to face a time of reaction.
In such times, it is important to
think deeply, not at the level of Facebook but rather at the deepest possible. “We must revise out thinking about many
things,” including undoubtedly some that we aren’t even thinking about at all
yet.”
Many Russian intellectuals instead simply
dislike Putin and blame him. But that won’t work. The problem “is hardly in the
ruler but in a definite ideology which appeared against after a 25 -year gap
which is “throwing us back to the ideas of empire, a special path, the opposition
of Russia with the rest of humanity, religious and ethnic superiority,
archaism, monopolism, and the philosophy of a corporate state.”
All this needs to be examined and
discussed, but at present in Russia, “there is neither deep thought, nor deep
discussion, nor a desire to a desire to launch one.”
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