What Can Dostoevsky Teach the Russian Leadership about New Russia (Novorossiya)?

What follows was inspired by Alexander Prokhanov, a Russian writer, who, on a Rossiya 1 TV panel, made a very insightful comment. The so-called March of Peace (Orwellian Peace, in fact) organized by friends of NATO and the Kiev junta in Moscow on September 21 was, as he put it, really a march of the Besy, which Dostoevsky described so well in his novel under the very same title. Besy is usually rendered as demons or the possessed. But none of these terms quite fit. I would perhaps define these besy, as Dostoevsky sees them, as nihilistic forces or as Poison Ivy implants that would like to take over Russian civilization in order to destroy it.

See Prokhanov's statements here at 9:00

Following Prokhanov's revealing clue, the path then brought me to this Fyodor Dostoevsky's aphorism: "To love someone means to see him as God intended him." One thing thus led to another.

In his statement quoted above, Dostoevsky defined the meaning of love, but also the essence of great art, such as the art of the Greeks or the Egyptians. The other art, often proudly calling itself "realism," does not know much either about this love or this source, thus killing and depleting what is meant to live and unfold. Without this understanding, the best that we get are our desires, the power of Eros, which mingles and mangles death and life, apathy and love, demons and gods. Then there is also a morbid desire, which wants and desires the annihilation of God and love itself. If, in the former case, to consummate a relationship ultimately means to see and realize God's intention, the latter case sees the consummate as all-consuming horror, degradation, and (self)destruction. What does what one is. And similarly with politics.

And today Ukraine is degrading, consuming and destroying itself with the fascism, which it is practicing--on behest of the US and its Empire, which sees precisely in this its only way for its own salvation and hope. When the mind of de Sade becomes a political system and, when, unlike in liberalism, it emerges from behind the scenes and from dark corners into the open and into the streets, it becomes Nazism. Self-destruction and self-degradation that wants to last and see everything else in one's own likeness--as oneself.

Interestingly, Russian Orthodox believers know and sense this very well. Their sense of their own depth and thus also of deeper meanings has not been erased or lost on them. Interestingly, Aleksandr Dugin knows and senses this very well too, even though he is mightily drawn to the dark by the abyss. But Lavrov, the good pro-Western liberal he is, or Medvedev, who defined the game as converting trust in the Government (with a capital G as in God) into making more money, and possibly even Putin, holding on to the promise of "partnership" with the old men's club or party of de Sade, seem to safely insulated, immunized, and protected from such a sense. While, in Machiavelli, Francis Bacon, Hobbes and even Locke, modern liberalism was founded upon the Odysseus-like descent into the dark and the abyss, later liberalism and nearly all the left has become a matter of self-indulgent consuming and living on the surface (or things). As Aristophanes teaches us in his would-be anti-Socratic comedy Frogs, every Hell has its frogs who partaking as if of the best of both the worlds don't' dare or cannot go too deep.

Russian liberals are evoking great Dostoevsky in vain. He was never on their side. He looked into the face of the abyss. But, unlike Nietzsche, who looking there became a voice and prophet of the dark, Dostoevsky looked and, instead of being punished with madness as Nietzsche was, Dostoevsky's soul--much like the Russian soul--was reborn and continued to live.

Yet the fact remains that, after 1953, all or nearly all Soviet and Russian leaders remained and remain safely dead and soulless.

Both literally and symbolically, Novorossiya means New Russia. And New Russia would be Russia Reborn. Russian Renaissance. And this is what the deeper and hence more fundamental meaning of the struggle for Novorossiya is really about. In other words, after its political and spiritual near death, Russia is now fighting for her own re-birth, while the Empire tries to slice her and kill her for good--with great help in this from Nazified Slavs in Ukraine. Since the Empire's morbid, fascist desire is Russia's political and spiritual death, it also desires and demands abortion of Novorossiya.

As an amateur who is sitting at a remote desk in the school of Socrates, this expert in midwifery of the mind and the soul, it would seem to me that, during these difficult and dangerous times of posible delivery, Russia might need help of some midwives too. But, while Russia has been incredibly blessed with natural resources, true Socratic politicians might not only sound like an oxymoron, but it might also be an extinct race. In cases like this, we all do what we can do under the given circumstances--as ordained by Fate and God.