"The chairman of the meeting said that Aesop is a counter-revolutionary and an agent of the Entente, and I am an agent of Aesop".
Nikolai Pogodin, "Kremlin Chimes"
A philosophical steamboat, as in 1922, was not needed—many philosophers had already left, and others, having the rank, for example, of a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, are simultaneously "foreign agents." However, a loud "philosophers' case" was needed, though not in the manner of how the State Academy of Artistic Sciences was dispersed, where, for example, the executed Gustav Shpet worked, or how the great Alexei Losev was imprisoned in Belbaltlag for "pro-monarchist" views, under the pretext of financial violations in the preparation of translations of Aristotle's works with so-called state money. Beyond any minimal logic, not even Aristotelian, the antiquarian Svetlana Mesyats was placed under house arrest, as if she stole millions from the state, without having time to translate something from the classic of ancient Greek philosophy into her native language. And it needs to be translated, because, admittedly, not all translations are of high quality, including "Politics." Probably, it was in this that the unsuccessful director of the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IFRAN) and prominent national-patriot Chernyaev saw the source of Western democracy alien to the Russian person. Powerful forces were thrown into the defense of the failure and the showdown with IFRAN as a "nest of traitors"—from Dugin himself to the widow of Alexander Zinoviev, Olga Zinovieva, and the accusations in their linguistic structure differed little from the vocabulary of the times of the Great Terror or the fight against cosmopolitans. But the Institute stood firm, and as director, a compromise and universally respected figure was returned—academician Abusalam Guseynov. The 87-year-old scientist was also interrogated, and possibly searched.
The "philosophers' case," also known as the "Aristotle case," does not so much indicate another phase of the regime's absurdity, which is already obvious. It is a signal of an attempt to disperse another institution where science is still present, and not exclusively propaganda, and where elements of what is generally called "liberalism" remain. It's time to take control of philosophy, and discredit scientists. To finally open the way for propagandists already preparing a unified textbook of philosophy (and also political economy), and for obscurantist nationalists, who, however, do not experience problems with funding and influence—one Dugin center named after Hitler admirer Ivan Ilyin is worth something.
They are doing well, but something was missing. And here Aristotle, also known as the Stagirite, came in handy, who after investigative actions should be renamed ArEristotle. The institute of the Academy cannot not take money from the state, and taking it means being under constant threat that civilian philosophers will file a denunciation, and investigative bodies will suddenly turn out to be major specialists not only in Grigory Oster's "Harmful Advice," but also in Aristotle. There would be a goal, and a reason to strike it will be found. Especially since it is not difficult to organize with such a significant number of IFRAN's ill-wishers.
In principle, of course, it has long been necessary for competent authorities to deal with Aristotle. Some of his conclusions look like comments on today's day, and quite unpleasant ones. Well, here's at least such a fragment, causing a shudder of recognition:
"...Facilitates the possible preservation of tyranny (precisely with two "n" in the fourth volume of Aristotle's collected works of 1984: the Lydian word tyrannos. — A. K.) and what was previously indicated by us; one way is, for example, to "prune" all outstanding people, remove from the road all those distinguished by free thinking..., generally beware of everything from which confidence in oneself and mutual trust arises, not allowing schools or any other gatherings for educational purposes... being constantly in the position of slaves, they will get used to being meek... It is also necessary to try to arrange things so that nothing remains secret about what each of the subjects says and does, to keep spies...."
Well, the 4th century BC, people are just people, only the housing issue spoiled them...
Or here are recognizable plots:
"...The tyrant strives for three goals: firstly, to instill cowardice in his subjects, since a cowardly person will not conspire against him; secondly, to instill mutual distrust—tyranny can fall only when some citizens trust each other, therefore tyrants are enemies of decent people as dangerous to their power...; thirdly, to deprive people of political energy: no one will dare the impossible, that is, to overthrow tyranny..."
Undoubtedly, the Stagirite is dangerous. Excessively relevant. One might say, a precursor of "Russophobes and extremists" (O. Zinovieva). And indeed, he is related to the description and establishment of the universal foundations of civilization. Not a "state-civilization" with cabbage in a tangled beard, but civilization as such, which cannot be denied to the Greco-Roman period of human history. Polis democracy, more precisely, politeia, which Aristotle placed above democracy itself, sometimes degenerating into either oligarchy or tyranny, implied a high degree of self-government (the Stagirite had a huge empirical base—in today's terms, he conducted many field studies in various polises). Ancient long-distance trade, Greek writing borrowed from the Phoenicians and in turn, according to the antiquarian Raphael Sealy, of Semitic origin (and here is the Jewish conspiracy!), polis democracy is the same fundamental Mediterranean triad as grain, wine, and olive oil. Greek and Roman words eleutheria and libertas—"freedom"—were not known to cumbersome, like later empires, Eastern despotisms. "In the Greek hall" were born equality before the law of free citizens and private property, polished after the Greeks by Roman law. In the fundamental work on economic history "Long Time" Yegor Gaidar wrote about the influence of antiquity on the formation of the phenomenon of the very West, with which today's "Scythians" and "Sarmatians" are now fighting: the development of the Greco-Roman "socio-economic genotype" (the term of Soviet economist Zinovy Maiminas) affected "the further evolution of Western European states, diverted it from the trajectory characteristic of stable but stagnant agrarian states, allowed humanity to escape from the institutional trap of agrarian civilization".
Sometimes this trajectory is called "the main road of human development", deviation from which—Aristotelian "tyrannies", Marx's "Asiatic mode of production", quite corresponding to the idea of "Russia's turn to the East," a fundamental disregard for the inviolability of private property and the rights and freedoms of citizens. Centuries have passed, and nothing changes: "take all the books and burn them"—or at least put the scribes under house arrest at a minimum;
"...I am a prince—to Grigory and you
I will give a sergeant major as Voltaire,
He will line you up in three ranks,
And if you squeak, he will calm you down in an instant..."
In Voltaire now we have similar representatives of power, who came for Aristotle. Another—in the spirit of Dostoevsky—nasty anecdote, into what the entire rule of the last 26 years has turned. Perhaps, to the polis democracy according to Aristotle, we still have to develop and develop—polity implies governance for the common good, and goal-setting, according to Aristotle, "participation in a beautiful life (dzen kalos)".
*Andrey Kolesnikov is considered a "foreign agent" by the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation.
Photo: rg.ru.