Alexander Zinoviev

For Russian footballer, see Aleksandr Zinovyev (footballer).

Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Zinovyev[1] (October 29, 1922 – May 10, 2006) was a Russian logician and writer of social critique.

Born to a poor provincial family, he distinguished himself in World War II and later in the scholarship of logic. In the 1970s he criticized the Soviet political system, sacrificing his high academic station in Moscow. Eventually Zinoviev faced exile in 1978, after his novels Yawning Heights and The Radiant Future were published in Europe. He continued to develop his socio-philosophical ideas in subsequent publications, at times employing his original genre of the sociological novel.

After the Collapse of the Soviet Union, Zinovyev wrote a book A Russian Tragedy (Русская Трагедия) about the USSR's collapse, calling it a catastrophe. In his later life, he championed the Soviet system and regarded post-Soviet Russia with disdain. He considered Stalin as one of the greatest personalities in history.[2]

Youth

Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Zinovyev was born in the village of Pakhtino, Chukhlomsky District, Kostroma Oblast as the sixth child to Aleksandr Yakovlevich and Appolinariya Vasilyevna. A few years later they moved to Moscow, seeking better quality of life.

Zinovyev excelled at school, and in 1939 entered the Moscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature and History. He was soon expelled for a negative attitude toward forced collectivisation, and forbidden to enroll with any other institute. He alleged that he was involved in a plot to assassinate Joseph Stalin during a school parade, but that the plan was called off; also, that he got arrested, but evaded prosecution. He joined the Red Army in 1940 and fought in the Great Patriotic War, even as fighter pilot, receiving honours and awards for a distinguished service.

Scientific work in Moscow

In 1946 Alexander Zinoviev entered Moscow State University; he since told that his ban from higher education was overlooked for a bribe – a box of sweets. He graduated in 1951 summa cum laude with a thesis[3] on the logical structure of Marx’ Das Kapital. During the following decades he became one of the most important logicians of the USSR.

As professor and head of Logic department at MSU, Zinoviev accumulated a subtly dissident reputation, having refused to expel politically discriminated staff, and, in a gesture of protest against Brezhnev’s cult of personality, resigned from the editorial board of “Problems of Philosophy”, the leading Soviet journal on philosophy at that time.

The sociological novel

Zinoviev’s diverse satirical stories agglomerated into his first major non-academic work, Yawning Heights. After the release of the book in Switzerland in 1976, Zinovyev was demoted from his lecturer’s position, evicted from the Academy of Sciences, stripped of all awards including his war medals, and offered the liberty to leave the Soviet Union after his second novel of similar satirical style, The Radiant Future, was published in the West in 1978. With his family he settled in Munich where they lived until 1999.

Yawning Heights was a success, soon translated into most major European languages and read aloud in Russian via Western radio broadcasts.

Sociological work in exile

Among Zinovyev’s non-fictional works from that time are Without Illusions (1979), The Reality of Communism (1980), We and the West (1981), Communism as a Reality (1981), Gorbachevism (1987). The latter was first published in French, 1987 (Lausanne, L'Âge d'homme). Without Illusions is a collection of essays, lectures, and broadcasts by Zinovyev published in various sources, including Polish exile journal Kultura printed in Paris. He explained thereby his way of interpretation of the Communist society, while expressing loyalty to the scientific method. Zinovyev postulated that the Western powers had underestimated the threat of Communism, and especially the peaceful infiltration of Communist traits into Western society. He claimed that Communism did not destroy, and principally could not have destroyed the social differences among the people, changing only the outward manifestations of inequality. In 1989 in an interview with Kultura he said that it's completely unrealistic to expect that USSR satellite states (mentioning Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia) would ever leave the Soviet sphere of influence, arguing that his opinion is based on "solid sociological theory built on top of formal logic".[4]

Zinovyev emphasized his view that the Soviet regime’s main peculiarities were not irrational in essence, nor the result of some incidental circumstances. Rather, he asserted, they followed from the inherent “laws of society”, the systematic outcome of the combined actions of its participants. However, Zinovyev was one of the most outspoken critics of the Soviet regime until the era of Perestroyka.[5] Unlike Solzhenitsyn, who sought a kind of revival of pre-1917 Russia, Zinovyev denied all credit to the Russian Orthodox Church and to nationalist doctrines.

In his book The West: phenomenon of Westernism (1995) Zinoviev presented a detailed analysis of the modern capitalist society which he called "Westernism". In the introduction to the book Zinoviev wrote that he came to the conclusion that can be summarized as follows. In economic terms Westernism strives to create jobs and revenue streams for those who do not produce products and services, and to strengthen private enterprise as the most effective means of forcing people to work. In social and political terms Westernism seeks to strengthen undemocratic aspect of the society, and transform democracy into a camouflage for the totalitarian state rule.

After the “Catastroika”

Zinovyev ceased to criticise Communism at the very dawn of Perestroika, years before the upsurge of crime and socio-economic problems that Russia faced in the 1990s. He spoke in defense of some aspects of the Soviet regime, and most radically condemned the reforms initiated by Boris Yeltsin. He argues that the West was the key influence in the Union's downfall: “Headed by the United States (a global supersociety based in the USA), the West has purposely implemented a program for destroying Russia”.[6] In 1996, he appealed to the public to support Gennady Zyuganov, a Communist candidate who eventually lost the presidential election to Yeltsin. According to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Zinovyev spoke of collectivisation in the USSR as of a “long-awaited gift to the Russian peasantry”.[7]

In a 1999 interview, Zinovyev said:

Once I was an unwitting accomplice of this action that I found shameful. The West wanted and programmed the Russian catastrophe. I read documents and participated in the research, which under the guise of ideological struggle worked towards the destruction of Russia. This became so unbearable for me that I could no longer stay in the camp of those who destroy my people and my country. The West is not a stranger to me, but I consider it an enemy empire.

Return to Russia

After 21 years of exile, Aleksandr Zinovyev returned to Russia in 1999, declaring that he could no longer live “in the camp of those who are destroying my country and my people”.[8] He visited and approved of Yugoslavia’s leader Slobodan Milošević, who was tried and acquitted for war crimes. Regarding Joseph Stalin, Zinovyev declared: “I consider him one of the greatest persons in the history of mankind. In the history of Russia he was, in my opinion, even greater than Lenin. Until Stalin’s death I was anti-Stalinist, but I always regarded him as an outstanding personality.”[9]

In his online interview, Zinovyev maintained that all the accusations brought against Milošević were mere slander; he also declared that he admired Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić, whom he regards as significant persons of the 20th century. Zinovyev was a co-chairman of the International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milošević.[10] He likened the process of globalisation to a Third World War, whose first, completed phase was the Cold War.[11]

On May 10, 2006, Aleksandr Zinovyev died in Moscow of brain cancer.[12]

Honours

(beside Soviet scientific degrees and War medals)

Bibliography

Scientific works

Fiction and sociological works

About Zinovyev

Notes and references

  1. ↑ Russian: Алекса́ндр Алекса́ндрович Зино́вьев; Russian pronunciation: [ɐlʲɪkˈsandr ɐlʲɪkˈsandrəvʲɪtɕ zʲɪˈnovʲjɪf]. Alternative transliterations: Alexandr, Alexandre, Alexander, Zinoviev, Zinov’yev, Zinov’ev
  2. ↑ http://gtmarket.ru/laboratory/publicdoc/2006/2658
  3. ↑ Voskhozhdenie ot abstraktnogo k konkretnomu : na materiale "Kapitala" K. Marksa Kafedra filosofii RAN, ISBN 5-201-02089-5
  4. ↑ "Rozmowa z Aleksandrem Zinowiewem" [Interview with Alexander Zinoview] (PDF) (in Polish). Kultura. September 1981. Retrieved 2014-09-18.
  5. ↑ Without Illusions – (Без иллюзий), 1979. The text in Russian: http://antisoviet.imwerden.de/zinoviev_a_bez_illuz.html.zip
  6. ↑ Johnson's Russia List # 4659
  7. ↑ Александр Солженицын, Россия в обвале, 1998 (гл. 25. Болезни русского национализма)
  8. ↑ Alexander Zinoviev – Telegraph
  9. ↑ Независимая Газета
  10. ↑
  11. ↑
  12. ↑ Soviet-era satirist Zinovyev dies
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