Elena Penskaya. The sun has set, gentlemen!

The sun has set, gentlemen!
Elena Penskaya

Publication date: August 24, 2000

VI ICCEES World Congress
Tampere, Finland
29 July - 3 August 2000

I vouch for the fidelity of the colors - and for everything else - sorry!

F. Bulgarin , "Victory from noon", 1841

1. Business custom

The masters of scientific and non-scientific prose have long worked out the Tampere plot and are taking a well-deserved rest or, despite the summer time, are diligently polishing new topics. RJ, as always, acts with delay, pays the tariff in installments, not yet knowing for sure which department in its economy to register the report on the conference - either in “Travel and “Intellectual Tourism” , or in “Twilight of Enlightenment” , then or in "Signs of the Times" . In fact, the event falls into all the "holes" at once. Most likely, in "Twilight", because the leitmotif of the grandiose international conference was "The Decline of Everything" - Europe, Russia, Slavic studies, culture, humanitarian thoughts - revision and inventory of what has “rolled down”...

The progress towards “Sunset”, that is, towards the VI Congress of Slavists, took a long time, almost mystically. A lot of things got in the way, and something extraneous was mixed in. 10 years ago the idea itself arose at the IV Congress in Harrogate, Great Britain. Almost at the same time, in 1989, the Association for Russian and Eastern European Studies (FAREES) was created in Finland. The decade turned out to be rare - fruitful for events that shook the world. At the same time, they managed to get ICEES President John Morison to Finland. “ August 1991 ,” the professor recalls, “ turned out to be terribly rainy. We chose a place, leaning towards Melbourne. And yet, Tampere, a cozy, typically Finnish city, easily accessible for many Europeans, won. Moreover, the congress is a seasonal event. And in Australia July-August is winter . " The final decision was made at the V Congress in Warsaw on August 5, 1995. This date can be considered final in the history of the event, which attracted more than one and a half thousand people.

2. Lucky numbers, or Business that business

10 years have passed...

And the seasonal activity of humanists was concentrated in one geographical point as follows:

Armenia - 1 person, Japan - 18, Australia - 7, Korea - 3, Austria - 22, Latvia - 7, Azerbaijan - 1, Lithuania - 15, Belarus - 7, Macedonia - 1, Bulgaria - 11, Mongolia - 1, Belgium - 9, Netherlands - 20, Canada - 37, New Zealand - 2, China - 5, Norway - 27, Czech Republic - 21, Pakistan - 1, Denmark - 7, Poland - 37, Egypt - 1, Romania - 7, Estonia - 26, Russia - 449, Finland - 410, Slovakia - 7, France - 33, Slovenia - 10, Georgia - 5, South Africa - 2, Germany - 91, Sweden - 43, Hungary - 19, Switzerland - 12, Ireland - 4 , Turkey - 1, Israel - 11, Ukraine - 35, Italy - 14, UK - 123, USA - 221, Uzbekistan - 3, Yugoslavia - 2, unidentified regions - 3.

Total: 1664 people actually participated in the Millennium Congress.

As a commentary, another illustration, more compact and local, is attached to the transparent picture, or rather isolated from it:

Russia √ 449 people,

Finland - 410,

USA - 221,

Great Britain - 123,

Germany - 91.

Actually, a three-digit number is an indicator of today’s concentration of humanities-Slavists. And then the proportions are obvious. They should be taken into account if you care about the impact of the market and the impact on the “market situation”.

For comparison, at the previous V Polish Congress there were almost half as many Russian participants. But here, of course, two indicators work for statistics - time, anniversary references (one global - the millennium, the other is also global, but in a different way - the 25th anniversary of the Helsinki Agreement, hence the inter-panel officialdom that pompously layered the usual sectional parties, but about that just below), and grants allocated to the majority of compatriots, with the exception of some frankly boorish oddities. Let's say, an American - the organizer of a panel - had to pay not only for the travel of his St. Petersburg colleague, without whom the work of the section was practically meaningless, but also for the program add-ons included in the “load”, which he did not know about - excursions and an expensive banquet. The invoice was offered without deciphering the details. Total, so to speak.

3. Landscapes and “atrocity of the mind” ( according to A. Platonov )

Not yet counted by anyone except the organizing committee, the Russians moved en masse through Moscow, and in pre-dawn St. Petersburg on Saturday, July 29, one could unmistakably guess the participant, eagerly moving through the crowds of teenagers on the dug up and littered Nevsky. (For funny details about the meeting place at Isaac's , see Kuritsyn .) And then - an almost 14-hour journey by bus through two customs, comparable in time to a flight to Melbourne or Colorado (the venue for the next winter congress of Slavists, of a different scale and status ).

Little things, as we know, fragment the whole and distract from the main thing. The nuances are discrete and sometimes discredit the larger landscape.

According to cartographic techniques, the intellectual territory was structured in panels (in pieces) as follows:

History - 47,

Religion and philosophy - 17,

Language - 19,

Literature and literary criticism - 57,

Gender - 21,

Ethnocultural groups and their interaction - 36,

Civil society - 35,

Politics and international relations - 48,

Economy - 44,

Legislation and law - 16,

Culture and art - 28,

Mass media - 15,

Libraries and archives -14,

Ecology and environment - 5,

Education - 8,

St. Petersburg - 23.

Translated into real action, the index looked quite ugly. And the quantitatively confirmed leadership of the literary sections (only six in postmodernism!) exceeded the conceivable volume and density of messages per unit of area, time, and the number of chairmen, speakers, discussants, and listeners involved.

Each panel took place with its own decorations and accessories. Thus, in a packed auditorium, the media performed their performance for five days in the Russian-European English dialect, abundantly peppering the audience with handouts. And a discussant from Sweden, the lovely girl Madeleine Hurd, with an unusually lively and coldly sharp expression, broke up the boring academic alliance on topics whose relevance is measured only by the amount of grants received for research. “The media is contraindicated for real intellectuals. At least in Europe this is the case,” Madeleine said and received well-deserved applause. The media panel contains the most handsome people. What was the cost of the appearance of a gray-haired, blue-eyed dude from the Sorbonne, who, with a team of researchers, published a book on the topic “Telemedia and elections in Russia.” And having modestly advertised it, the speaker exactly fit into the regulations.

Among those who arrived, there were undisputed favorites of the public, noted for their merits and circumstances. In the already rich program, these chosen ones were involved in different spectacles several times, barely having time to change their roles.

Here are their names:

Autant-Mathieu, Marie-Christine (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France) - specialist in drama in general and on changes in Russian post-perestroika theater, Russian-Belarusian theatrical relations in the 1920s in particular;

Bridger Sue (University of Bradford, UK) - historian, is busy studying the image of the “Father-Mother Motherland” in Yeltsin’s Russia and Tony Blair’s England in the context of the problem of national self-identification and the reproduction of inequality and stratification in society;

Pine Frances - Bridger's colleague;

Segbers Klaus (Freie Universitat Berlin, Germany) is a specialist in sociological measurements of public opinion during the transition period.

And two more famous characters, popular among Russian philologists - lovers of poetry and culture of the Silver Age . These are Lars Kleberg, diplomat and scientist (former cultural attaché at the Swedish Embassy), and Pekka Pesonen (University of Helsinki), one of the chefs of Finnish Slavic cuisine.

4. Academic legends (from chronicles), or cursory examination

"Oh, debauchery! Oh, sodom!" -
And he looks around
He calls a familiar guard,

And a gray-haired disabled person,
What's at the door?
He answers his call in silence.

"Explain to me, guardian,
Where did I go?
This hall is not the same as it was...

May you be somewhat simple
May your height be high
Old age has reduced me to three deaths,

But - I see - the soul
You're good
Your honest tongue knows no lies..."

Vladimir Buldakov (historian, professor, Institute of Russian History RAS):

Such congresses provide an opportunity for interdisciplinary communication. Historians sometimes come up with related problems that are difficult to come up with elsewhere. But sometimes these events are too cumbersome, and sometimes turn into hangouts of the same panels. We need to change ideology and politics. If 10 years ago in England they imagined the fall of communism, then in Warsaw there were other motives. Some authors wondered why there is no communism.

In Tampere, the action took place under the banner of the anti-Putin line. The figure of Putin does not inspire me, but this has nothing to do with science. I think that in the current conditions we could not have another person.

S. Kovalev spoke at the congress, trying to discredit Putin. But it looked so weak, inappropriate and helpless.

Politicians, historians, economists talk about their problems, and besides them, purely political statements are made. There is no organic connection between the one and the other.

There is a noticeable imbalance in the problems of financial and Ukrainian studies. It is clear that what was happening in Finland could not but leave its mark on the conference. But why bring it to such large congresses? It would be worth holding several regional conferences to raise this issue more broadly.

I opened the conference plan, and there they tell me how good the flag of Udmurtia is. But this is not a topic for discussion at the conference. Too small topics have little connection with big problems.

I often attended international conferences of historians. Usually the division can be traced quite clearly: large blocks, specialized panels. There was a certain hierarchy. It is not visible here.

It is no coincidence that people are talking about whether such conferences are needed in Eastern Europe. I think they are very necessary. But there must be a well-thought-out theme.

The next conference will take place in East Germany. It is clear that the Germans will want to demonstrate the benefits of liberation from communism. That is, everything will again take place under the political flag. To avoid turning a scientific meeting into a political fair, you need to think about more serious things. After the speeches at the conference in Tampere, a film about the Russian-Finnish war was shown. I have nothing against. I even liked him. But the screening of this film is quite strange. Anti-Russian sentiment is growing around the world due to the influx of immigrants from Russia. A negative image of Russia is emerging. Some of our politicians benefit from this. Russia is moving towards isolation. The result will not be an iron curtain, but something like that. Historians must ask themselves who needs it and why.

It seems to me that this congress provides too many opportunities for young charlatans. Any one of them can write a topic that will intrigue the convention organizers, but which has nothing behind it except chatter. Sometimes the performances resemble student seminars. I myself organized conferences and understand how difficult it is not to get involved in this.

As for proposals.

Recently there has been great interest in regional history. It is important to be able to bring together research in this area so that it does not become amateur local history.

Ivan Zasursky (journalist):

Finland is trying its best to get money from Eastern Europe, which relies on hosting such conferences.

About the section of historians. A very characteristic point: much attention was paid to various details, and not to general topics, and desperate debates were held.

The same can be said about philologists. I attended several meetings - these were completely different audiences, different languages, different issues.

A distinctive feature of this conference is its scale. There were more than 30 sections at the conference, with more than 30 meetings taking place every 30 minutes. This is a kind of new model focused on information overload. It is worth noting that the same model is typical for the Internet. Focus on the particular is what is most important now. You can skip the theory.

There were many interesting and unexpected topics. For example, about the role of the telephone in Soviet reality or about the caricatures that Politburo members drew of each other. The selection was based on the principle of uniqueness. Again - like on the Internet, when there is no general information.

Grigory Kaganov (Doctor of Art History, Leading Researcher at the Research Institute of Theory of Architecture and Urban Planning):

To get an idea of ​​the scale of the event, let's imagine approximately two thousand people working in two huge buildings at the same time, divided into 400 groups. Two things are striking. Firstly, keen interest in Eastern Europe in various parts of the world. And secondly - an extraordinary interest in Peter. I myself have been working on the topic of St. Petersburg for a long time. And it seemed to me that I could imagine the level of attention to it in other countries, since I had to communicate quite a lot with foreign colleagues and participate in the discussion of St. Petersburg problems in different countries. But I did not expect that approximately 20 groups at the congress would deal with the “St. Petersburg” issue.

The work of the congress was organized in such a way that several groups working on the same subject operated simultaneously. At every step I had to face a difficult choice - which group to join. Many participants found themselves in this situation, and I was among them. Unfortunately, for this reason I had to skip a lot. Therefore, I can only approximately assess the contribution of the congress to St. Petersburg issues. Mainly using published abstracts. Nevertheless, the working groups that I was able to visit left a generally good impression. Moreover, both specialists from Russia and specialists from other countries worked side by side in these groups. More specifically, my private impressions relate to individual authors and individual works presented at the congress. For example, Nadezhda Kazarinova and Elena Strogetskaya presented the results of their research, which related to the image of St. Petersburg that exists in the mass consciousness of citizens. In general, it turned out that there is such an exalted idea about St. Petersburg that I, as a researcher, consider it somewhat exaggerated. It seems to me that this lofty image does not quite correspond to the real situation that has developed in the “living” city. In other words, the image in our culture corresponds to some kind of ideal, and not a real object. Nevertheless, the results of sociologists' research are very interesting. Especially because the authors’ methodological approach is very serious and correct.

Apparently, it is possible to classify cities according to their ability to create images in the human imagination that have little correspondence with reality. One city can generate its own fantastic image that does not correspond to reality, but another cannot, and everyone perceives it as it is. I am sure that St. Petersburg would take one of the first places in such a classification. This is one of the most fascinating features of St. Petersburg as a subject of study.

Examples of St. Petersburg mythology were presented in abundance to the audience. Thus, there is an unprovable opinion that the architect Andrei Voronikhin was the illegitimate son of Count Alexander Stroganov. The count, occupying a high position in the St. Petersburg bureaucratic and Masonic hierarchies, strangely brought the serf closer to him, took him abroad, introduced him to the most selected Masonic lodges in France and obtained for him an extremely honorable order for the Kazan Cathedral. So we can really say that Voronikhin was, so to speak, a “cultured son” of Count Stroganov, and not necessarily a blood son.

Facts confirming something completely mystical also aroused interest. The initiators of the construction of many outstanding buildings in St. Petersburg died either immediately upon completion of construction or before that: Paul I was killed in the Mikhailovsky Castle he built; the aforementioned Count Stroganov died at the completion of the Kazan Cathedral; Count Kushelev-Bezborodko died when his famous mansion on present-day Furmanov Street was almost ready; Auguste Montferrand was allegedly “killed” by St. Isaac’s Cathedral.

Another amazing story concerns the decadent Madonna, Zinaida Gippius. Women's heads, which, according to the fashion of the turn of the century, served as decorum for the facade of one of the houses on Potemkinskaya Street, next to the Tauride Garden, are to this day considered the only known sculptural portraits of the poetess.

The ability to unusually quickly acquire various myths is a strange and inalienable property of St. Petersburg. One of the congress groups specifically worked with this issue. When talking about all sorts of miracles that allegedly happened in St. Petersburg, the word “supposedly” had to be put in quotation marks all the time, because anything can happen in this city. Accordingly, the form of reports could be very diverse. Thus, the speech of the poet Tatyana Volskaya sounded in unison with scientific works, since poetic language and the poetic type of perception of reality no less accurately reflect St. Petersburg reality than numbers, facts, scientific hypotheses or theories. Reading poetry at a scientific congress is somehow very St. Petersburg. I found the performance of another participant, Natalya Kazimirovskaya, who came from Sweden, equally nice. She retold some stories about St. Petersburg that have existed in Stockholm for the last 150 years.

5. August Persons, or Interpanel Guests

...Sergey Kovalev and Andrey Bitov, Finnish Ambassador Klaus Tornudd, Oleg Bogomolov (Economic Research Association), John Borawski (former director of the NATO Political Committee) and other officials honored the congress of Slavists with their presence...

“What a pleasant emptiness of soul and athletic strength of body one must have, what freshness of impressions, in order to rush about all sorts of things, in order to find zu himlisch (too heavenly - German) the setting of the sun, then the ascent of rockets; in order to find pleasure in all these techniques, performances, bowls, parades, regimental music, ceremonial dinners and dinners for easily forty people... Whose health can endure such corvée!”

Late summer 2000,
between the fifth and seventh congress