Russia is Nothing: On an Existential Understanding of History

Today we have gathered to honor the late Daria Dugina and to reflect on her untimely passing. I would like to begin my talk with a short historiosophical discussion on the subject of very relevant events, the deaths, not only of Daria, but also of many others. The death last night of the first and last president of the Soviet Union was the subject of a lot of postings. Our mutual friend, the writer Vladimir Kovalenko, said that when Gorbachev died, the 20th century ended and the 21st century began. And I have had this feeling over the last six months that people who had no place in the future are really dying, people from the past are dying. The last convulsions of the modern age will be at an end. This can be seen in the example of public figures. I can see that those people who were broken by the 20th century, changed by the 20th century, stopped by the 20th century, could not continue their existence in the 21st century, in the time that we are entering. That's why we must be open to history. We must be open to being in history and feel that something new is happening. As with any theoretical argument, there is a hole in this theoretical sketch, a rather large one. This is Daria’s death. She was destined to become a symbol of the 21st century, a woman who combined the traditional with the progressive, the left with the right. Perhaps the parable about the Sower, which was recalled after the memorial service for Daria held here in St. Petersburg in the "Sun of the North", will help us realize it. There are grains that fall into the ground, die, and do not bear good fruit, but these are rather the people on whom the 20th century ended. And there are grains that die and bear good fruit. Daria's life was such a grain. Let's hope that fruits worthy of her life will grow from this grain.

Coming back to my topic - Russia is Nothing: On an Existential Understanding of History. It is also in many ways revolving around such shifts in history. Unexpected transformations, changes, often discouraging, taking us beyond the limits of our existence, beyond our daily inertia, and in my opinion, most often, at least in modern history, and apparently in modern history, similar events that disrupted the fluid, familiar, very dull, very sedate order of history, the order of everyday life, its smooth bourgeois, quiet sequence... The people who interrupted this flow - it was the Russian people, and I would like to take a closer look at why this happened.

First of all, it must be said that Russian philosophy has always been associated with historiosophy. When philosophical and theological thought began to intersect with understanding history, then Russian philosophy was born. Different points of reference can be taken. It can start from the doctrine of Moscow as the Third Rome, or from the dispute between the Josephites and the Volga Elders. Most often the starting point is taken from Pyotr Chaadaev. For Chaadaev, the subject of historiosophy was by no means the last one in his speculative constructions. His thinking about though, such a tautology that can define philosophy, was, first of all, thinking about Russia. Chaadaev could not imagine his own philosophy outside of Russia. He was not able to philosophize in the abstract, just about some abstract history or some abstract reality. His philosophical thought was always about Russia, and he established the glorious historiosophical tradition, which somehow determined the whole further course of Russian philosophy. At the center of historiosophical problems outlined by Pyotr Chaadaev's is the problem of Russia's Nothingness. Liberals admire him for this fact very much, and conservatives and fundamentalists curse him for that. Chaadaev said with all certainty, firmness, audacity that Russian history was Nothing. We have brought Nothing to the world stage, we have no merit in science, culture, or politics. We are a nomadic people. We don't know what is our own. We can't belong anywhere. We didn't really leave anything to the new generations. We are literally zero in world history. We do not belong to historical nations.  One of Chaadaev's arguments in favor of such a description of Russia, its literally Nothingness, the formula he repeats many times, that our faces express this Nothingness, and our history expresses this Nothingness, politics, culture are all wrapped around the absence of oneself. One of the arguments that Chaadaev gives is as follows: the Western syllogism is not familiar to us. What does it mean? The fact that Russia is not subject to rationalization. We cannot consistently build our policy along a chain of cause and effect. We do everything in a hurry, in a rush, everything is unconnected, we move chaotically, and because we don't have a clear continuity, a clear line, we can't come to anything. Our story is a swan, a crayfish, and a pike. The Western syllogism is not familiar to us. What does it mean? The fact that Russia is not a country of Modernity. We have not come to understand ourselves as a rational agent, we have not come to understand ourselves as a subject. The same thing, referring to Chaadaev, is written by Alexander Dugin in his work on Archaeo-Modernity. Modernity did not come in Russia in the causal sense as the consecutive change from Pre-Modernity to Modernity and later to post-Modernity, as it happened in the rest of the world. Russia has skipped this rational, causal, and progressive scheme. We have both Pre-Modernity, Modernity and Post-Modernity at the same time, everything is molded into one. This results in such a complex situation, a complex state, which Alexander Dugin considers to be the worst of the states. He calls it Archaeo-Modernity. We fall out of this linear logic. But this linear logic is indeed the basis of existence, at least in the rational sense as it is described in the West. Take out this linear logic, take out this sequence, take out these causal relationships and the construction of being in most of its cases in Western thought collapses. Therefore, in fact, we are Nothing. And only out of Nothing can everything appear. Being is defined, being is closed, everything is already in being, this linear logic has already been drawn into being, the schedule of actions has been thought out and there is no way back. In Nothing, everything is possible. And in this sense, Nothing can constantly surpass any rational schemes of action. Accordingly, this is how we flip. We discover that Nothing is not a negative feature (negative not in the ontological sense, but in a purely evaluative sense). On the contrary, it is a positive feature. There are preconditions for freedom in Nothing. Only in Nothingness can there be true freedom, true action not limited by the subjectivism of Western rational thought, and true ontological action. What is even more interesting - the idea of the possibility of escaping beyond the cause-and-effect relationship, beyond the limits of modernist causality, was justified by Pavel Florensky. Florensky has such a wonderful concept that he borrowed from mathematics, or rather developed after his teacher – the concept of discontinuity. What is discontinuity? This is a struggle against cause-and-effect relationships. In modern analytic philosophy there is such a concept as causal exclusion. The world must be explained based on the world itself, on the basis of those cause-and-effect relationships that work only within the framework of this world. When we try to break out of this causal exclusion, operate with the transcendent, we commit an illegitimate action. We go beyond the limits of the knowable. It's impossible. For Florensky, such logic is laden with nihilism, positivism, and all the most uncomfortable words a classical philosopher can recall. Therefore, he introduces the concept of discontinuity. At some point, there is a rupture of natural cause-and-effect relationships, historical, political, economic, whatever. There is a rupture, and something new is introduced. What is this new thing? For Florensky, this is the action of God, i.e., a miracle. This is a manifestation of the transcendent in the immanent. Referring to history, we can say that in this sense the Russian people is really a God-bearing people, God acts through them, the causal isolation of the modernist process breaks through them. We can change the course of history; we can turn it in the direction in which it should be turned according to the providence of God. Outside of this breakthrough, outside of this discontinuity, history will develop as a Western syllogism, according to the schemes outlined by intellectuals. As soon as we introduce this discontinuity, as soon as we say that a miracle is possible, a break in causal logic is possible, then we cannot say anything for sure. Because it will always be interrupted by God. The relationship between the breakthrough and God, which occurs in Russia, is possible due to the Nothingness of Russia, the fact that Russia does not fit into the logic proposed by modernist philosophy, of which Chaadaev is still an adept to some degree. Russian thinkers seem to feel this characteristic of Russian history. Each of them, in his own way, transforms this intuition into equal concepts. Vissarion Belinsky, for example, speaks of the discontinuity of Russian history and its inconsistency, its inability to be verified by reason. In Belinsky's words, "We are suddenly experiencing all the moments of European life at once that have been consistently developed in the West." That is, the history that runs through the chain of cause-and-effect relationships suddenly closes in on itself. Cause and effect go simultaneously, which is impossible in classical rational logic. For example, Fyodor Dostoevsky writes about the same thing:

"I have a completely different idea of what reality and realism are than those of our realists and our critics. My idealism is more real than theirs. My God! To tell us intelligently what we all, Russians, have experienced in the last 10 years in our spiritual development - but won't the realists shout that this is a fantasy! And yet this is primordial, true realism! That's what realism is, only deeper, and theirs is superficial." And what kind of true realism is this? This is the kind of realism that considers discontinuity, the possibility of God's intervention in the course of history, which is denied in every way by positivist history, which insists on clear cause-and-effect relationships. There is nothing that happened without sufficient reasons. Another quote from the Soviet philosopher, culture studies scholar, Georgy Gachev, who coined the concept of accelerated development: "Tolstoy exposes the ugly fruits of Enlightenment as viewed by the patriarchal peasantry. Gorky at the First Congress of Soviet Writers shows that the folklore gave rise to such artistic ideas, images, and forms that the culture of class society could no longer rise to the heights of." I will note here that according to classical Marxist logic, patriarchal folk life is much inferior in its cultural content to bourgeois life, and bourgeois life is much inferior to communist life. Gachev shows that, on the contrary, folk-art ideas are higher, more sophisticated and smarter than ideas that are created in the culture of class society. "Let us also recall the renewal that the art and literature of the 20th century have experienced and are experiencing by turning to the images and forms of ancient cultures and bourgeois undeveloped peoples. The influence of their rhythms, their melodies and their way of painting on the modern art cannot be denied." Here Gachev obviously means Picasso and his fascination with African masks, but also many other modernist experiments. The same paradigm of accelerated development, sudden disruptions of cause-and-effect relationships that we find in history when rationally examined, can be attributed to Russia. Take Alexander Pushkin, an obvious example of how impossible it is to accommodate the movement and impetuosity of the spirit of Russian culture in this Procrustean bed of rational historiosophical logic. I emphasize that this idea belongs not only to Pyotr Chaadaev, not only to Alexander Dugin, or Pavel Florensky. This is quite common in Russian thought. Our history develops somewhat differently, not linearly, not rationally, not causally. God is at work in our history. He constantly interrupts this logic, He brings His thought through us, He transforms the very matter of history, He sets this history on a new course.

Another way of expressing this is to say that this characteristic of Russian history is the advantage of being behind. The most famous expression: "Russians are slow to harness, but quick to ride." Again, we do not follow the rhythm and the patterns that enlightened Western modernist countries usually follow. Our history unfolds a little differently. And here it is worth mentioning the problem of acceleration. As you know, the problem of acceleration lies at the heart of classical philosophy. Everyone remembers Parmenides and his disciple Zeno, who formulated the mysterious aporia of Achilles and the tortoise. If we look at Achilles in a rational way, analyzing his course, it turns out that he is not moving at all, only the tortoise is moving. It is precisely because of the problem of acceleration that this aporia arises. How can acceleration be regarded? When we begin to look at the acceleration with the help of a rational apparatus, it disappears; on the contrary, it is transformed into a deceleration, and vice versa. There are such communicating vessels here. Accordingly, if we slow down, then this also allows us to accelerate. It was Konstantin Pobedonostsev, if I'm not mistaken, who came up with the famous thesis of freezing the development of the Russian society. All it says is that the Russian society does in fact need to be accelerated. And now we are acting as a Katechon. We are freezing European progress; in fact, we are accelerating it.

We are accelerating towards the Apocalypse. It is obvious that the agent of the Apocalypse are Western countries that are trying to dehumanize human, turn him into a machine, abandon the human, and therefore the divine in human being. It can be said that the progress of the West, also understood rationally, is in the strict sense of the Mangodhood. By slowing down the process of Mangodhood, we are speeding up the process of Godmanhood. But again, these are inverse terms with respect to each other. The more Mangodhood there is, the more Godmanhood there is, too. But as we approach the Apocalypse of Mangodhood, we are at the same time approaching Godmanhood, because true Godmanhood becomes possible only after the Apocalypse. In this sense, the Katechon both slows down and speeds up the Apocalypse. Through the creation of inner holiness, which, of course, is only possible if one is the opposite of non-holiness. Being is possible only in opposition to not-being. By creating inner holiness, we both save ourselves from the Apocalypse, and bring it closer for everyone else. Because the devil comes even fiercer, more aggressive, faster when he sees this inner creation, this inner concentration. In this sense, the deceleration and acceleration characteristic of Russian history, this pair, should be considered in a paradoxical, antinomian way.

There is such a wonderful American Protestant theologian who works in the field of the theology of the death of God or Christian atheism, Thomas Altitzer. He wrote in his book Death of God Theology that the Apocalypse has already happened and it happened in Russia in 1917. Because this is the extreme point of tension of nihilism, which has never been seen before in history. Nihilism reached its final stage in Russia in 1917. In fact, the radical socialist ideologies of the Russian intelligentsia all grew out of nihilism, out of the ideology of denial. In this sense, we have reached the last moment of denial, the last stage of non-existence within ourselves, and the Apocalypse happened. But having witnessed this Apocalypse, having carried its genetic code, we can now resist it. Having experienced the Apocalypse, we are going to resist it. Having experienced it, having felt it, having perceived it, we slow it down for the rest of the world. Here acceleration is actually deceleration, which is possible in the paradigm of Nothingness. I believe that Chaadaev's thesis needs a radical revision, and just as Marx turned Hegel upside down, so we should turn Chaadaev upside down and see in his criticism of Nothingness and criticism of Russia, in fact, his apology.

Translated by Sophia Polyankina