What is Dostoyevsky's fault?
Diego Martin Velazquez Caballero
Literature is a dangerous minefield. Talking about a member of the Literary Olympus from a political perspective; it is a sacrilege. However, the character deserves the challenge and the situation demands it.
In recent days, Jean Meyer referred to the unfortunate situation prevailing in Ukraine, attributing a large part of Vladimir Putin's geopolitical strategy to the literary thought of Fyodor Dostoyevsky - he even offers a reference to The Brothers Karamazov -. In other academic and also artistic texts, the influence of the Russian thinker stands out in the work of the Mexican historian of French origin. Therefore, it seems impossible that Jean Meyer, a great connoisseur of Russia, takes the miserable and mean Russophobia of our days to concentrate the actions of President Putin and the totalitarian thought of Alexander Duguin as inspired by a man of letters. The excellent historian Jean Meyer knows that time is the right dimension of things and -if someone is left alive- he will already have better arguments to explain and understand the terrible Russian-Ukrainian war.
Considering that Russia's actions in Ukraine correspond to Dostoyevsky's feelings is as fallacious as believing that Nazism can be reduced to Goethe or Nietzsche. It is not so, and there is a long thread in the historians' debate to criticize these simple conjectures. Hence the importance of history and the dispute over metanarratives. How much work do historians have to do?
Unlike Russia, in the case of Nazism, Jewish historiography has found evidence of voluntary and popular contributions to the totalitarian ideas of Adolf Hitler. Today's Russia is not the Germany that elevated the author of My Struggle and decided to follow him to hell. It has never been that, nor will it be. Mein Kampf is not the same as The Brothers Karamazov.
Undoubtedly, exacerbated nationalisms are responsible for various social conflicts. But totalitarianism also extends to modern liberal capitalist democracy -the theoreticians of the Frankfurt School tell us- and perhaps the critical thought of History, Social Sciences, Philosophy and even Common Sense have failed. The golden calf always ends up driving us crazy.
Among several studies that exist on the subject of Dostoyevski and that have been read little, I remember the one by Lazlo Foldenyi suggested in a course by Dr. Julio Quesada Martín, at the Universidad Veracruzana. Ideas more, ideas less, the work recounts the experience of the Russian writer imprisoned in Siberia for joining the modernizing movements. The title pretty much says it all: Dostoyevsky reads Hegel in Siberia and bursts into tears. Modernity is a Holocaust, it involves skinning, removing the flesh, getting to the marrow and trying to stay alive. It is impossible, how not to cry? How not to start praying? How not to want to revive God? From there, Dostoyevsky's literature changed and he tried to find the Russian ethos in an anthropological way, which is manifested in the most diverse tropes of his literature.
Anti-Russian thought is a mistake. The great culture of Russia has nothing to do with Vladimir Putin or Alexander Dugin. There are inertias, continuities and ruptures that historians of the stature of Jean Meyer, and other anonymous ones, help to understand.
Dostoyevsky is not Putin, just as the Enlightenment Project is not coca-colonization. We need the sharpness and criticism of the Frankfurt School to move forward when the world is disenchanted. Edgar Morin urges not to lose sanity amid so much complexity, uncertainty and relativism. And we need Dostoyevsky to learn to pray and to live, On top of a brick, but live! And the environmental and health crisis caused by neoliberal and neo-extractivist capitalism seems that it will only let us live there while they go to the Moon or Mars.
The historians' debate makes us understand how polysemic and hazardous the course of things implies. The fault does not lie with Dostoyevsky, nor with the Russians or Ukrainians, there are specific characters and certain interests that must be valued in their proper dimension. The liberal pragmatism of NATO and the United States is more responsible for the Russo-Ukrainian war than Dostoyevsky. And this must be said to avoid other nonsense. For example: that AMLO is a communist or that because of him there is no political science. This is the level of the collaborators of Latinus, financed by the Wilson Center, and it is the ignorance distributed by the pro-Yankee Think Tanks that is based on the Nazi communication strategy, it has been like this since the end of World War II. The Wilson Center is more willing to use nuclear weapons than Vladimir Putin.
Can critical thinking make us honest and less stupid? Who knows. The power of the dollar is greater than that of books, work, morals and ethics; and that is why in Mexico and the world, we are as we are.
Reading Dostoyevski, Goethe, Nietzsche, Aristotle, helps Political Science more than those of the Wilson Center, IMCO branch. Even at the time of the PRI there was Political Science in Mexico -very bad, according to Daniel Cosío Villegas- like today, but there was. The literature of the Loret de Mola is more entertaining than its political science.
Understanding the magnitude of Baltic Slavic culture and other civilizations could help inhibit the utter evil that seems to have hijacked the Modernity Project. Each civilization has its route to Modernity and liberalism cannot become a Darwinian totalitarianism. Mexico is inseparable from North American destiny, but the rest of the world is not; and even Mexico maintains its profound differences with the United States. Liberalism is a school of civilization, however it has lost itself in a darkness from which it will be difficult to get out without a great effort and recognition of moral, ethical and religious values, social or communitarian liberalism has to defeat neoliberalism.
The political science of the Wilson Center is the Nazi schizophrenic Trojan horse that promotes a voracious and inhumane capitalism and has brought living beings to the brink of extinction. Now Dostoyevsky is more necessary than ever, even for the United States. As the French personalists used to say, if the future does not redeem God, the future is lost.
Jean Meyer's trajectory is more than fundamental for Mexican historiography and other topics, as is the case of Russia, perhaps space is needed to understand the hypothesis regarding Fyodor Dostoyevski. I'm sure he'll explain it later.
But that little North American political science is not even useful to get a coyote out of a cornfield, well, every day it becomes clearer to us in the anti-communists and anti-lopez whom even Ken Salazar recommends supporting, imitating AMLO or going over to MORENA. I hope that the gringos give the money to the people and forget about those briefcase Think Tanks.
You have to read more Dostoyevski and less Fukuyama; and begin to cry and pray, at least so that the specter of the Russian player turned literary appears to console us. Dostoyevsky cries and prays to see if in this way the good Lord is encouraged to turn around, revive and redeem humanity; for Fukuyama the God can only be the market. Dostoyevsky's God is that of Kazantzakis, Tolstoy, Soloviev, Jean Meyer, Gandhi; the God of Fukuyama and the Wilson Center is PRI and pro-Yankee.