Anton Krainy. We need to select authors more carefully

We need to select authors more carefully
Anton Krainy

Publication date: November 4, 2000

In the magazine business, even more than in any other, personnel decides everything. The shots, I explain, are in this case the author’s shots. It seems to me that such a respected online publication as Russian Journal should be more concerned about selecting authors. This especially applies to authors appearing in the “Politics” section and its “Metapolitics” column.

I was led to this conclusion by a parallel reading of two materials, one of which, extremely voluminous and academic, was published in Russian Journal, the other, unusually laconic and aphoristic, in NG. On the pages of RZh on October 31, 2000 , an article by Sergei Zemlyanoy “Lenin and the “third way” of Russia. Non-holiday reflections on the occasion of November 7” appeared. It, among other things, contains statements that attracted my earnest attention: “We must not forget for a second that the October Revolution emerged from the crucible of a severe imperialist war, which brought Russia to the brink of a national catastrophe with irreparable consequences and undermined the deepest the foundations of society and law and order: “The country is perishing because after the war there are no basic conditions for normal existence,” Lenin said. The terrible danger of complete disorganization of society could only be prevented by mobilizing all its forces and resources, and Russia was experiencing the erosion of state structures, dual power, became uncontrollable, rolled into the abyss of permissiveness, fist law. The alternative to revolution in 1917 was not a bourgeois democratic republic, but an anarchic rebellion and a bloody dictatorship of the military. Only full-fledged statehood, a strong government based on the trust and support of the majority of the population, could save the situation. In October 1917, such power was created under the leadership of Lenin."

Another thesis: “Already in the first years of Soviet power, the state began to acquire a rigidly centralist, cumbersome bureaucratic character: there were no structures of civil society that could take on the implementation of certain management tasks.”

In development of these thoughts, Zemlyanoy criticizes the “excessive bias of the Bolshevik Party towards the use of methods of violence, dictatorship, suppression, terror in the struggle for socialism,” calling this a “mistake” of the Bolsheviks, the price for which “was huge, exorbitant.” Finally, two more short quotes. The author talks about “Lenin’s theory,” which has degenerated into “vulgar Leninism, this ideological nightmare of the twentieth century.” He then denounces “vulgar Leninism, which has become the official ideology of the USSR and the world communist movement.” Why did I note these statements by Sergei Zemlyanoy?

Because three days later in NG, I read a short note by Marina Volkova, “The visit ended on a lyrical note,” which talks about the speech of Russian President Vladimir Putin at a meeting with the French public. In it, Putin briefly and clearly formulated what Zemlyanoy wrote long and darkly about. I quote: “He (Putin) called the revolution of 1917 the only opportunity to preserve the country in those conditions. Subsequently, the actions of the Bolsheviks turned out to be exactly what they turned out to be, due to excessive enthusiasm for the centralization of power and excessive ideologization.”

It is obvious to any unprejudiced reader that both authors essentially claim the same thing. But one is verbose and mediocre, the other is lapidary and talented. In view of this, I would like to point out to the editors of the Russian Journal and, in particular, to Andrei Madison, the imperative need to approach more carefully the delicate issue of selecting authors speaking in the “Politics” section. Instead of publishing texts by Sergei Zemlyanoy, which do not have the proper political emphasis (message), Madison should have more widely invited Vladimir Putin with his brilliant state-political aphorisms to collaborate in RJ. In today's Russia, state intelligence is a one-of-a-kind thing that cannot be bought or sold. And it is paid very poorly in Western currencies. Remember this, Mr. Political Instructor Madison!

Sincerely, your regular reader
Anton Krainy

Gus-Khrustalny, 04.11.2000