Agdas Burganov
RUSSIA – “MESSIAH”?
THE NON-COMMUNIST
MANIFESTO OF A CITIZEN OF THE WORLD
OR
A DREAM OF AN IDIOT
Mankind is not damned forever.
The World is not hopeless.
Mankind can save itself.
There IS a way out!
Second edition (English), revised and corrected
Edited by Dr. Vadim Krakovich, Russian State University for the
Humanities, Moscow
Translation from Russian: Mikhail Gorbachov
MOSCOW 2008
ВВК 66.3(2) 1
Б90
Agdas Husainovich Burganov
THE NON-COMMUNIST MANIFESTO OF A CITIZEN OF THE WORLD, OR A DREAM OF AN IDIOT
ИИКЦ «Эльф-З», 2008– 2с.
ISBN 5-88982-032-X
The book deals with the topic of world's disorder as seen in the light of Russian realities. The facts stated in it concern the particularly discordant position of Russia literally in all spheres of state and society. A theoretical analysis is made of the cause of the catastrophe of Soviet Communism. The author offers the way out of the deadlock, explaining its implementation on the inter-regional, inter-state, and even global level. He stands for cooperation of nations and states, for levelling in all parameters of the well-being of all the peoples of the world on the basis of co-ownership in the world’s wealth. The style of the book presents a mixture of genres; it is a synthesis of scientific research interwoven with description of events that actually took place in the life of the author and the people he knows.
2nd edition, sponsored by Dr. Konstatin Konstantinov, the son of the author
ВВК 66.3(2) 1
ISBN 5-88982-032- X Б90
© Agdas Husainovich Burganov
CONTENTS
The world of Professor Agdas Burganov.
Rethinking the philosophy of social justice…………………………………..
To the reader ……………………………………………………
PART I. BIG AND SMALL SORES OF THE PRESENT-DAY
WORLD ORDER (THE RUSSIAN DIMENSION) ……………………...
Chapter 1. Initial message. Russia – an evil or a Messiah?
A) The global powder keg……………………….
B) Is the State a demiurge of history?…………………….
C) The “lesser evil” concept……………..
D) A Messiah?………………………………………………...
Chapter 2. Why Communism? Why Russia?……….….……
A) Pseudo-science……………………………………………
B) The source of revolution in a state………………………
Chapter 3. On euphemisms and the pseudo-cheerful …………………
A) Overcoming the shame …………………………….………
B) The ones that make us laugh………………………………...
C) “Russo-phobia”, “Tatar-phobia”? . …………….
D) Let’s be semi-serious………………………………….……
Chapter 4. Intellect: philosophical and moral aspect …......
A) Intellect in science ………………………………………...
B) Intellect and victory …………………….………………..
C) Subjective-negative aspect of intellect ...... …….
D) Society’s main resource ……………………………
PART II . CURING THE WORLD’S SORES. A CIVIL
SOCIETY OF NATIONAL WEALTH CO-OWNERS …
Chapter 5. Russian experience of “popular (people's) capitalism”.….……
A) Stating the question …......
B) Heritage of Lenin ………………………...
C) Relevance of Lenin's heritage………………………………...
Chapter 6. Distribution of property among the people……………...
A) Preliminary notes ...... …
B) Stating the problem……………………………………....
C) Advantages of the concept ………………………..
Chapter 7. Formula of public production ………………….
PART III. GLOBAL CO-OWNERSHIP OF CITIZENS……
Chapter 8. The globe – our common home...... ……….
A) Inter-regional and inter-state co-ownership …………………..
B) To the question of the “unified theory” of society……… …………...
EPILOGUE …………………………………………………
BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………
INDEX…………………………………………………
The world of Professor Agdas Burganov.
Rethinking the philosophy of social justice
Lawyer by education, economist by thinking, philosopher by spirit, Dr. Agdas Burganov
has chosen political sociology as the object of his research. It is an interdisciplinary science, which in the not-so-distant past was forcibly deformed in Russia by the Communist sociology. The main conclusion of his thoughts can be formulated in the following way: as pure social justice is nowhere to be found in the modern world, the only tangible manifestations are the variants of this important category of philosophy, the fact that has been a theoretical stumbling stone ever since philosophy itself was created.
Philosophy as an integral science whose object is natural and human development, is currently experiencing a systemic crisis as it so far has not been able to summarize and draw general conclusions from the cardinal and dynamic changes that took place in the XX century: from nuclear physics to the discovery of “dark energy” and “dark matter” which constitute almost 94% of the Universe, leaving the atoms we know a mere 6%. It is not surprising that many seemingly unshakable centuries-old pillars of philosophy have died out as obsolete. All this requires of the leading minds of the scientific community to rethink the fundamentals of philosophy, keeping it on par with the modern science.
Professor Agdar Burganov has made an original attempt to do just this when researching the socio-economic disarray of the modern world in light of Russian realities. The concept that he has spent 20 years developing is unified socio-cooperation based on the creation of Association of Producers’ Cooperatives. This concept has all the features of a reasonable and attractive theoretical postulate.
Dr. Burganov is basing his concept on distribution of property among the people and equal property shares for everybody on all levels. He even created a mathematical “formula of people’s production”. All this would facilitate the creation of an economy of co-ownership on the state, regional and global level.
Practical implementation is, of course, quite another question. Too many times an idea has never seen the light of realization, discarded as yet another idyllic utopia. The most convincing example was the failure of the thoroughly “perfected” and “tested” Communist idea.
Dr. Burganov, an author of a dozen popular scientific books, has himself witnessed and participated in many large-scale events and cataclysms in the USSR and Russia. As a result, the inclusion of his personal observations of a memoir style in his book looks very natural. This “know thyself” thread, weaving its way through the labyrinth of intricate and sometimes contradictory elaborations, imparts a certain warmth, especially when the reader gets bogged down in long paragraphs written by a specialist.
Another important observation. In order to fully understand the essence of Dr. Burganov’s political and sociological works, one is expected to have a certain knowledge of history, including modern history, of Russia. The books deal with the reasons of failure of Communism seen from within as the author himself used to teach Marxism-Leninism at a university and was a member of the Communist Party of the regional level.
Very symbolic are the titles of his works: “Who is to blame?” “Whattodo?” “Whoshouldbedoingit?” It is questions like these that the minds of such geniuses as Chernyshevky and Lenin sought answers for when developing ideas of revolutionary transformation in Russia. In 2007 one of the leading minds of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Dr. Robert Nigmatullin, published a fundamental monography on the subject. Its main postulate is achieving balanced economy with solvent population.
Dr. Burganov is relentless in his criticism of the Bolshevik and Communist ideology, he even calls for it being officially banned via the system of the UN or the International Court. He opines that Marxism directly contradicts the scientific approach to history and has perpetuated the bureaucratic state. Moreover, he concludes that the current post-Communist regime in Russia is but a continuation of the same bureaucratic system under the rule of pseudo-capitalist oligarchs under the guise of controlled democracy.
It is very curious that the icons of the author are Lenin, Churchill, Pope John Paul II, which, while undoubtedly being prominent figures of the past century, are diametrically opposed as regards their world views, moral, ethical, political and sociological beliefs.
Dr. Burganov is positive that the creator of “people’s capitalism” in Russia was Lenin. As a result, he considers it extremely useful to turn to Lenin’s theoretical heritage, namely his articles on cooperation. Agdas Burganos says that “Lenin’s works of the last years of his life cannot be overestimated. Had we lived according to his legacy, Russia would be one of the most advanced countries in the world now”.
As regards the part that the activities of Churchill played during World War II and afterwards, the author admires his intellect when talking about Churchill’s defense strategy and his ability to make the US and the USSR British allies. Another great achievement of Churchill’s was manifested, according to Burganov, in his declaring the cold war to Russian Stalinism.
Here let me digress a little. The best monument that the West has of Churchill is, in my opinion, that unusual central London museum near the Exchequer building. I visited it upon the advice of my friend Gayaz Islamov and was amazed by the efficiency with which Churchill lived and commanded from his underground bunker. The museum has had it recreated with the help of 13 charity funds, most of them American. You can’t help admiring the way the British can immortalize their great people. An unusual monument to Sir Walter Scott in the center of Edinburgh is another example.
According to Dr. Burganov, social justice is a condition sine qua non for any country. Itisacomplexandmulti-dimensionalcategory. It bears upon all facets of existence: human and social, material and spiritual, legal and ethical. The author opines that in order to carry out the global socio-equal cooperation of productive forces, it is necessary to turn to the most harmonious scheme, which is the synergetic system of self-organization, where the co-ownership of citizens in the national wealth becomes a dominant structure.
Such political trend of democratic capitalism can be clearly seen in the most developed countries of the European Union, most notably in the North European region – Norway, Sweden and Finland. There you can see the triumph of the socially-oriented market economy, the class structure of society is balanced with a lot less contrasts than, say, in the US or Italy.
I’d like to conclude by saying a few words about the style and the manner of material presentation, which are further complicated by frequent digressions. The genre that he chose is a medley of the academic and the artistic, the book is filled with Russian proverbs, saying and jokes, which do not always render themselves to translation. To this you can add a plethora of names, mostly unfamiliar to a foreign reader. All this inevitably leads to the question: how it will all look to an English reader?
This is how I imagine the process of artistic creation. A gray-haired man is clicking away at the computer. He consults his books and books of other writers, he reworks and polishes. Suddenly his train of thought gets rerouted onto another track, some episodes from personal experience demand to be included, worked, or sometimes forced in. Then the author returns to his topic – the one of social justice, he writes away, and then his memories resurge again…
The result is a mix of a scientific monograph and a memoir. In Russian it reads well. After all, you can easily skip some parts and some are worth rereading. The charm of this book lies precisely in this, it’s too bad there are no elements of poetry that could have animated even further this intricate scientific-popular style, full of metaphors and hard-to-translate sayings.
Yulduz Khaliullin
corresponding member of
International Economic Academy of Eurasia,
Ambassador in retirement
TO THE READER
Dear reader! Please, make an effort to read what you are offered. If possible, drop me a line on how to improve it so as to make it understandable to everyone, to those who are concerned about the eternal question: to be or not to be for our Earth. The Earth is our home, in which some are masters (and they are the minority, both in people’s communities (national or ethnic) and on the inter-state or international level), and others (the overwhelming majority, of course) are “lodgers”, whose rent for the right to live is inadequate to their natural right to life.
After the publication of the first edition some new materials came into my view. They have supplemented the present edition, especially in connection with the activities of Sir Winston Churchill as the Prime Minister of Great Britain. His actions showed that we are not hopeless, that the Nature had endowed the man with an intellect capable of keeping him in extreme situations from any form of evil, which not infrequently camouflaged itself as a “lesser evil” so as to become great and almost ineradicable later on. In the history of mankind there have been, so far, only two ne plus ultra intellectuals – Churchill and Lenin. Their foresight and their activities raise hopes in us: not all is lost, mayhap, we shall survive in the present time of troubles, too…
Besides, I made some changes and additions. Also, two photographs have been attached. The first depicts the author on the borderline between the Greek and Turkish communities in Nicosia running through a house). At the beginning of 2008 a photo from the French mass media appeared all over the world with the outrageous title: “France: the War of the Aliens” (second picture in the book). That photo shows one of the episodes of the revolt of young immigrants in France, a country that had attracted their fathers and has not given their sons and daughters really equal rights, welfare and confidence of the future.
On the border of Russia and Ukraine there is a village called “Melovoye” with a population of 17 thousand, 3 thousand of them Russians. The borderline passes through houses and gardens. We cannot exclude the possibility that with time the borderline will be reinforced with barbed wire and sandbags. It will be done so as to make the shame more conspicuous, more “exhibitional”. Maybe, this shameful sight will make people sick some day.
This book is about how to do away with such phenomena, and how to arrange our Blue Planet in such a way that there are no borders between the children of Adam, neither in indirect, nor in physical, nor in figurative senses, so that everything belongs to everybody on the principles that do not separate people and countries dividing them into the rich and the poor, into the natives and the aliens, but on the contrary, uniting them.
The main reason of the world's troubles is the inadequacy of technical and technological to social progress. Closely connected with it is the moral progress, which fatally lags far behind the technology, which is full of glitches for that very reason, paving the road to a precipice with no chance of return. The question is: either social justice, or death of mankind! Such backwardness is typical of Russia; it was aggravated by the deviation from the development of world civilisation caused by an attempt to accomplish the Communist utopia. The tragic experience of Russia is considered in this book as an objective process of the realisation of Russian “messianism”. It is a negative that in modern conditions could be transformed into a positive.
There are numberless works devoted to the problem of how to better life in Russia and considering all kinds of measures on the improvement of technology, know-how, the perfection of economic management and other spheres of life in this country. As far as this book is concerned, I give priority to the problem of relations of ownership, without a proper organisation of which other measures, which are of secondary importance, are either unrealisable or their realisation does not lead society out of the deadlock.
The main problem is caused by our intellect. We are not burdened with morality, we act with equal intensity both for the good and for the evil. Therefore the question is: is it not time for mankind to cut off the possibilities of human intellect that serves the selfish interests of the few and direct its mighty powers to serve the interests of all people instead? Is it possible to underpin the subjective wish of progressive man-loving public figures of all times and nations with some objective source, which would streamline its practical application in real life? I think that such a means exists. The philosophy of social justice is to be reconsidered.
The philosophy of social justice is to be reconsidered. I think that if, according to Einstein, nature has “internal perfection”, human society, as another aspect of Nature must also become “socially perfect”. If Nature develops in accordance with the “unified field theory” of sorts, so does mankind progress according to its own “unified theory”, which may be the all-sociological theory of co-operation carried out it sequentially towards globalisation.
Dear colleague! Forgive my aggressiveness. It is not for my own sake. I feel vexed for all mankind, and I am sorry for the Blue Planet. Has it truly been given to hopeless fools?! Is life itself given to people, as Pushkin once said, “as a gift accidental, a gift in vain”?
The validity of the chosen method of presentation is justified by the fact that a mass reader does not read scientific literature because it lacks individual traits, examples, and indeed does not ever deviate from the subject investigated. Nevertheless, such deviations show the details of the subject matter’s existence, compelling the author, if only casually, to probe even deeper into theoretical and philosophic questions, into the natural and social characteristics of man. In a word, the story gets enriched with new colours. Only then does the reader begin to feel that the subject of investigation is woven into life, and not suspended in midair (I have sent the abridged version, without artistic distractions, to the UN Secretary General).