Welcome, this is Caribbean Rhythms, episode 131. I have on show old friends, Russians with Attitude podcast, Pigdog and Kirill, RWA podcast on Twitter. Welcome back to show, welcome back to show, friends. How are you, what going on in Russia? Hey, hello, long time no talk. Yes. What's happening? Just overall or what? Yes, I need to tell audience, Audience may be familiar with you from previous shows, but Pigdog has been a long-time member of Frog Twitter. It's not just the frogs on Twitter, it's a small group chat of friends, me, Loki, Mena, and Pigdog was in this group. And I very proud to see that Russian with Attitude podcast, how many followers you have now, 300,000. This is the biggest Frog Twitter account has ever gotten. Yes, thank you.

What is the attention like? Is it crazy? Are you getting many attacks? Is Bellingcat? Are these NAFO and these American and NATO intel cutouts attacking you? Yes they are, but it's nothing one can deal with. If one moves in our circles, one is used to this kind of thing and it's nothing special. It's low quality people trying low quality attacks and it has no bearing on anything. Like they can't even get us banned on Twitter, it's very important, it's just important, Rich. Yes, it's the same with me, it's just non-stop. But it's from the type of people you mentioned, they're easily ignorable, they're nets. We have to ignore these fleas on our backs. But listen, yes, I want to know, this show for audience to understand,

We are tired talk about Ukraine, Ukraine all the time, Ukraine overload, we will talk this show more interesting topic, literature, history, many such thing that occur to us but the audience I think is curious just briefly at beginning if you don't mind saying what a mood in Russia now and in Europe but in Russia principally regarding this conflict Ukraine, latest happenings. I don't think it's much different from what it was even a year ago. But yeah, we talk about the Ukrainian war and its consequences all the time. And to not repeat ourselves too much. I would just say some thought that I had this morning. So I think that battles and tactical developments are secondary in any war. because the main outcome of this war, for example, is the acceleration of the political will

and re-industrialization that we are seeing. Because modern states are huge and are almost immobile in a way. And the decision-making gears are rusty and require quite a great force to start moving again. and being engaged in war is like pouring oil onto these gears. And that's why everyone secretly wants to be a part of it. Vintovka at the price, Nick, as they say. And you can see now that US started real, serious re-industrialization thanks to Ukraine. And like Bidon can score endless PR points just by visiting Kiev, of course there are gun manufacturers, the dealers can make tons of profits, and there are thousands of openings for various military grifters or experts. War is something that everybody wants, especially when it's far away, which is the case for most of the West.

But for the Russian part, I think it has some beautifying qualities, because generally there is no way in hell to hide from the global American influence. Of course, the government can block half of the Internet, but if you have a population like Russians, then they would just use VPN and overcome this firewall. But I think it only works if it's one-sided. So if American platforms, I mean it does not work if it's one-sided, but if American platforms themselves are shutting down your accounts, making it impossible to pay or receive payments from Russian bank cards, then we are finally free in a way. Because they show that they clearly don't want you being there. And they don't even try to brandwash us anymore, I think.

Because what happened a year ago, all US propaganda voices just left Russia. Western payment systems stopped dealing with Russian cards. And of course, only funds. Only funds banned Russian women from becoming the whores. So I think this is the purification that we are seeing from this war. And you wouldn't just, otherwise it would be the same and we would be victims of the global American influence. And now we can finally act because the gears are turning and, yeah, so. I'm more on Russia-politik now, unrelated to matter of Ukraine, but I was very disappointed to see Putin support Lula instead of Bolsonaro in recent conflict. And I was wondering if there is any way, is there any faction within Russian state, Russian

deep state, whatever you want to call it, that can maybe persuade these old KGB hands not to support the old left across Latin America, and I know that Russia supports the left even in part of West Europe. Is there a way to make them stop this? I guess it's just tradition. They decide they will support Brazilian reds and Argentinian reds, Argentina reds, instead of people like Bolsonaro. Is there any way to... Why should they support Bolsonaro, though? I mean, if I understand it correctly in Brazil, then Bolsonaro is basically, I mean, both Bolsonaro and Bula are not really like sovereign independent leaders. As I understand it, Bolsonaro is aligned with like the red part of the American empire, so Pentagon stuff, and with local resource extraction companies.

And Bula is aligned with the state department part of the American empire and was local like drug cartels and criminals and stuff like that. And it sure doesn't really make a big difference because they are both, they are both do what the US tell them to, but I think it's just easier to influence Lula because it's probably easier to bribe. I mean they are not, they are both not pro-Russian really and I mean it's, I don't know how I believe that Bolsonaro did come out against this. He was not on NATO side in war on Ukraine, as far as I know. But look, my big point is, over the last year, I have been a strong supporter of Russia as I could, and I almost lost many European right-wing friends. And the reason a lot of European right is anti-Russian is because Putin continues to

to support the social democrat and left anti-fascist faction in their countries. Is there any way someone could persuade the responsible people? I don't know what the equivalent is of Russian deep state that deals with these overseas influence things now. Is there any way to persuade them not to support the traditional so-called anti-fascist left anymore? I mean, I think that they dislike Russians because Russian deep state supports the old brats and I wouldn't overstate the Russian support for Lula and others. So I think European right wing would hate Russians either way, especially when there is a war, because it comes to nature for them. Yes, well, it's possible.

Well, I don't think that the Russian state has any sort of obligation toward right-wing parties in obscure parts of the world, especially if they are not useful to Russia. have like for example Italy right you have now a right-wing government by this based woman there who promised to kick out all the immigrants but then she made a super hard pro-nato term and why should Russia support politicians like that who will just make a deal with the gay to be allowed to say based stuff on internal domestic politics while in exchange for aligning with NATO in foreign policy. And foreign policy is the only thing that matters to Russia when looking at other countries. Yes, yes, I understand. Well look, yes, we don't need to talk this, but mood in Russia holding up well, the people are in a…

Yeah, they are cheerful. Yes. Yeah, it's pretty good. As I've said, it's not much different from, well, it's become, the war has become normalized in a way. People don't react as strongly about it, they don't, there's less drama, I think, generally. Yes. Yes. Well, look, we are just have friendly chat here today, not big detail argument, and let's Let's not talk Ukraine one anymore, I know you're overloaded with it. I was having argument just today on Twitter about a matter of right wing and its relationship to so-called peasants and workers. And well, I think it somewhat relates to what we were just talking about, especially in South America, because you go South America, any right wing person in South America would

tend to be excused for, say, racist, I know your respectable account now, but will tend to be white people in South America who are property owners, and they are opposed by left-wing populist demagogues who rile up the so-called Pardos or the mixed-race, or in some cases it's black but it's mostly a mixed-race mass that is riled up by left-wing populists to take their things, and this repeat phenomenon in Latin America, I think, is keeping with what the left has always been. You look at 19th century French rightists, like my favorite is Count Gobineau, and he would have been very surprised to hear the idea that peasant, salt of the earth land workers are somehow right wing. He understood them as civilizational enemies, as the social base of the left that seeks

to destroy traditional French culture, which was the preserve of the aristocracy. And I think by some bizarre telephone game on the so-called alt-right, certain portions of the far right have decided that no, that we are the salt of the earth serfs and we We are being lorded over and vampirized by, in some cases, people like Alex Jones even go so far as to say it's actually European aristocrats that it's somehow stretched back to Babylon, but Babylon or not, he keeps saying that it's the European royal houses, the European noble houses, and this attitude for some, well I know why, but it keeps getting spread on Alt-Right to point where I don't understand how something so stupid and counter to every right wing in history has happened.

So I want to ask you, is this something also in Russia, in other words, what relationship of Russian reactionary right wing to the peasant, the worker, and so forth? before start talking about that, which is a surprising topic, but I'm not sure I agree with your take that peasants are always the backbone of leftist revolutionary forces. If you look at England, for example, even during the reformation, the dissolution of the monasteries, you had the pilgrimage of grace, which was absolutely a popular peasant revolt and would probably be seen as the first counter-revolutionary movement ever in Europe. And same in France. Of course, it depends a lot. I think this is kind of structurally dependent on how things work in any specific region. But in France, you had the Chanterie,

you had the Vendée Uprising in Brittany and Main, And the Vendée cousins were also the backbone of resistance to French Revolution. Yes, it is true that there's something like Vendée, but that really seemed to be the exception. You look at a red revolution in Spain in the 1930s. The backbone of that, why is Andalusia still a red stronghold? It's because it was so many day-to-day serfs, day laborers and so forth. Yes, the Spaniards. It's not just in Spain, it's Latin America. And again, despite the Vendée, 19th century French right-wing thinkers, and in general, look, the right never saw the working class and the peasantry as allies in this struggle against the Reds. They were much more easily mobilized by the Reds all over the world.

I think I do know how it came entrenched as a talking point on the alt-right. I think it's mostly, with few exceptions like you say, ahistorical, I don't know about the Russian case, this way I ask. So, I mean, in general, yes, I think that was an attitude that you saw in many right-wing European authors and in Russia as well, to see the peasantry as a kind of traditionalist, it's like you said, it's not necessarily true, but it's an idealized image of the peasantry as kind of the bastion of traditional values and so on, I would say that the peasantry is not really an actor. They are not a subject of history. They follow leaders who can rile them up and it depends on the leaders who rile them up. I also disagree with, I think it is a Marxist delusion

and the Marxist lie, in that the normal peasantry, like normal people who own and work the land, or workers even, are the backbone of revolution. Because at least in Russia, that was not the case, and neither was it the case in France during the revolution. The backbone of any revolution is, as you said, like day laborers, and basically what Marx would have called lumpenproletariat, and not the actual proletariat. And it's like, or in Russia, you had the parts of the rural population that in the very first wave became, joined the Bolsheviks. It was like village drunks, criminals, outcasts, and so on, not really the peasantry itself. The peasantry itself didn't give a shit about the war, about the civil war. The peasantry had to be mobilized by both sides. And the only thing that made

the peasants fight for the communists was war communism, where basically it was either you joined the Red Army or you starved to death. And that's how peasants joined the communists. So I would take a middle road here and I disagree with the peasantry being the bearer of revolutionary potential. And I also disagree with the idealized image of the peasantry as stronghold of traditional values. It's not that either. The peasantry is mostly a malleable material that can be formed into whatever. But yes, going back to your question about how Russian right wing, classical right wing thought looked at this, there is the Slavophile movement. they had an obsession with the Russian peasantry and the Russian peasant commune, the idea of the Mir. Yes.

And that is an absolutely ahistorical image that they had. In my opinion. They did imagine the peasant commune as this huge bastion of patriarchal clients who work the land and are in deep relationship with ethnic national culture and religion and so on, but the reality was very different because the Russian peasant was more like, he was always trying to escape this commune. It's like this threat that we see through all of history that found its zenith in the Stobian reforms when basically, as soon as the Russian peasant got the chance, he would go to Siberia to colonize empty lands and be like a frontiersman in the American West. Like, that is what every Russian peasant strives to become. And they did not strive to sit in the longhouse

with the babutkas, they always tried to escape the system. Yes. So it's not like it was, like it's an artificial image of the super traditionalist peasant. He was an uncapped colonial entrepreneur. Yes. What you make of Chekhov's story, peasants, in this, you know this story is one of my favorites. It's not very nice image of peasants, of peasant life. Yes, Chekhov didn't really like peasants. My favorite Chekhov story about peasants or like these people, type of people in general, is the malefactor, do you know it? I do not. It's a story about, so a matter of fact it's about a peasant from around somewhere near Moscow and basically you have a peasant who is damaging the railways. He is talking to a gendarme

who is an investigator who tries to explain to the peasant Kegovlev that he should not unscrew the nuts from the railway because that can lead to accidents and this peasant, he does not understand, he does not have the mental capacity to understand why it is wrong to do that it's just nuts, like how bad can it be and he needs them as a thinker for his fishing line to go fishing and they are nice for that and he wants to have them and he does not understand how that can possibly be bad to take a nut that's just lying there on the earth. And I like the story very much because it's a really, of course, hyperbolic but somewhat realistic image of the peasant who only sees what's in front of him and does not have really a...

I don't remember who it was, it was a voice in Hesiod, I don't remember who it was, that basically the difference is that between the peasant and the shepherd is that the shepherd looks at the sky and sees the stars and the peasant only looks at the ground in front of him and can't see the sky. And yes that is a very good example of that I believe. But of course Chekhov was a bit of a snob anyway so yeah. But later more on that. Yes we talk Chekhov in a moment. No, I did know this story matter of fact I like the story Peasants because it's, I think, a very good depiction of what I've called longhouse in action, it's a very bleak image. But look, I don't know if I can agree, whatever practical exceptions may exist, and yes there

is the one day there's also the oppression of kulaks and many such things, and peasants can often be mobilized by aristocrats for a counter-revolution too. But you look around the world and you find, I think, mortal opposition between aristocratic warrior mindset and the farming serf, whether it is in a place like Rwanda, where the Hutus were just again the local serfs and they were always seen in the same way agriculturalists are seen all around the world and you see the consequences of that in activities of 1990s is simply mortal opposition between the two. Now you say well that's an ethnic conflict, I would say a French revolution was an ethnic conflict and it was understood but it was understood, you laugh, it was understood this

way by Gobineau and Montandon and many other French rightists and by Nietzsche himself and many others like this. And I don't know relation to modern world we can debate, but I think even if you look at Europe right now and you see the so-called based working class actually votes for red parties, they support mass immigration, they support all the so-called degenerate policies of the West. I think the myth of based campesinos with family values is quite pernicious, especially in the United States where it's being used, of course the left uses it for its own purposes, but it's being used by parts of the right to support mass migration from Latinx America into the United States, saying that the based campesinos of Chiapas, for example, are salt

of the earth people who we can use as muscle against these urbanites who eat avocado toast and they're gay and this. I don't know. I think this whole image that's been spread is just so false and pernicious and being used to really support the cause of the reds. But this may be not discussion we should have now. I don't know what you think. You know Tolstoy, before he got too deep into his weird religious faith, I don't remember if it was the first or the second edition of War and Peace, he wrote in the foreword that as a reaction to critics that he only ever writes about aristocrats and he never writes about the common man. And Tolstoy said as a response to this criticism that he does not write about the peasant,

common man because it is boring because the life of the peasant is indistinguishable from the life of the farm animal and that's why he only writes about aristocrats who have interesting lives. No, this is very good. Look, we should take a break and come back, talk about Tolstoy and Chekhov because I think Chekhov has another interesting story called My Life in which he's shit on the head of the merchant class. So I think it's important to remember he does that too. They are both allies of the stomach against higher life, I think, both the manual labor classes and the merchant classes, and they were both rightly shit on the head by historical aristocracies. I don't know if you'd like to talk about this, but we can go in that direction when we come back. I will go to break then now. Yes.

We are back to show with the Russians with Attitude podcast. You should all subscribe their podcast. You find on Twitter at RWA podcast and we are talk now Chekhov and Dostoevsky and Russia literature. But listen, if you don't mind, I want to go on short rant what we were talking before because we are in middle of some type debates with these. They're not really conservative. They pose that way. I believe that they are liberation theologists. They are liberation Jesuits, is what I've called them, who have a Marxist program but reinterpreted in terms of Christianity. So really, their Christianity is a fake, ferris-sake cover for Marxist social programs. And it's not that I want to defend capitalism or such.

Whenever I go around telling people that Locke is not the problem, that he's made out to be by parts of the right, you are immediately accused of being a Lockean and supporting Locke. I've criticized Locke myself from point of view of Nietzsche and others many times. But when you criticize capitalism and you do not replace the economic organization of society with something that's not economic, really in the end you are trading one part of the stomach for another. So I don't even think actually we at all live in a merchant Lockean society right now at all or a free market or private property society. But if we had these people, like the American conservatives I named, and there are parts in Europe and I assume in Russia also, but these parts don't want to replace it with

something like, let's say, aristocratic warrior spirit of which there were only perhaps a couple of movements in 20th century Europe that sought to revive that spirit. No, they want to replace it with simply another form of economic distribution that puts, again, the power of society in hands of, let's say, the spiritual descendant of the serf or of the manual laborer rather than the merchant. I think this is very bleak, and so when I try to present a different spirit, they chimp out. But let's not talk about me, let's talk about Russian literature. Because I believe Chekhov, I know maybe you dislike him, you had some words about how he is liberal, but I like that he take shit on head both of peasants and of merchant class.

And I don't think it was in my life, I think I may be confusing it with another story, but there's another story where he presents a merchant family and one of the brothers who is set to be inherited to become head of the merchant house is about to buy a noble title for an obscene amount of money and he shows all the comedic consequences of that and the opportunity to show the senility of the merchant classes, really spirit of modernity is to put the merchant or the labourer at head of society where they are complete unsuited and all the disasters of modernity I think follow from that. You don't need to agree with me on that, but what you make of Chekhov stories, I know you have some opinion on that.

I like Cheka very much. He is a great writer. He was extremely good at satire and caricature and painting very vivid pictures. One of the stories I also really like is – it surprises me that it's not as well known – it's The Darling. I don't know if you read it. It's about – it's basically him explaining the NPC meme, right? Yes, it's about a woman. She has three husbands The first to die the third one moves to Siberia They are a theater guy a timber merchant and the veterinarian and the story is about how this woman the darling she She is completely consumed by the in the professional fields where her husbands work in. And it's the lens through which she looks at the world. And after two of her husbands die, and the third one moves away,

it's a very vivid description of how she has no views or opinions on anything. Like she's incapable of an independent thought process. There is a very vivid scene, especially like, where it talks about how she can see like a bottle the rain but she can't explain or she can't form an opinion on whether rain is good or bad and that's a i think very great he's very good at showing the world for you and i like the story very much but overall Chekhov yes i like Chekhov i like Chekhov's work very much but his biography It's actually kind of a Chekhov story on its own It's very ironic because Chekhov got started in literature with the help of the conservative publisher, Suvorin Suvorin at the time was basically the most important figure in the Russian Empire in conservative media

in publishing, in the newspaper, Novo Evremia New Time So he was basically the right-wing media figure in Russia. And he was Chekhov's patron and personal friend. And one time, Chekhov got an anonymous postcard on Easter. The postcard said, basically, yeah, congratulations on Easter. And they expressed the hope that Chekhov would have more compassion towards the suffering of humanity and less subservience to the undertakers and gravediggers. Which is basically in Russia at the time getting such a postcard is like if you're in Sicily and you get a dead fish in the mail, an open threat basically from the left wing establishment. It worked, because Chekhov, after that, he was subjected to intense harassment by the literary establishment, which was to a large degree liberal on left wing.

And Suvorin was the only person who defended him during that time. And in the end, Chekhov betrayed Suvorin. He joined the liberal literary establishment to be able to have a literary career. And Chekhov himself, he described this process. So basically, Beecher is stabbing his friend in the back and his own patriot to get him started in literature. He described this process as squeezing slave blood out of himself. Well it sounds like typical modern American conservative who once spat on the head from leftist intelligentsia in the United States, some say. Yes, yes, absolutely, absolutely. So yes, Chekhov is kind of a controversial figure, I mean, extremely talented writer, I would never say otherwise. But yeah, it's his moral ambiguity because the irony here is that

he is always like above things. He's above social norms and so on in his stories. He ridiculous social norms, but in the end he bowed to social norms himself. So yeah, that is what he is. Do you know his style exercising misanthropy, a lot of his works and not just about the peasants or the merchants because he was mocking everyone and it's, for example, the aristocrats as well called them disgusting and so forth. So I think it's alright to mock different groups of people for their narrow tunnel vision or whatever. But, well, you have to have some ideal form of a human being and Chekhov clearly did not have it. Yes, so he, you would call him liberal, conservative type. I am interested in this, how you classify different Russian writers, whether they are left-wing or right-wing.

I think very famously Dostoevsky. Before we get Dostoevsky, I want to ask you a question. I don't know if you know this, but I have rather normie opinion. I consider Lady with Pet Dog to be one of all time great stories. I found first time I read it was incredibly moving. And was this story part of his late life or early? I don't know. Was this written in liberal period and does it matter? Story of adultery, you can say. But really, his love affair was very moving, I thought. Damas Zabachky was written pretty late, I believe. It was very late, a few times. Yes, I see. Well, that's unfortunate. He wrote it in his... Yes, it's a good story. It's a good story. I think some people consider it his best. Nabokov, I think, said that it was his best story.

I do not know Nabokov enough to say if I like or not. I do not know Nabokov very well. I have friends who love Nabokov and I wanted to ask you if, well, we can get to Nabokov in a moment, but I wanted to ask you if Dostoevsky, he often seen in the West as a man of the right. Is this accurate? Is this how he's seen in Russia too? You think he is a good representation of what right-wing novelists, artists look like in Russia? I would say that yes, Dostoevsky was undoubtedly a right-wing author, but it's a bit complicated because Libs loved Dostoevsky as well. Because he was, first of all, before all of the political picks, he was an excellent psychologist. He was extremely, he's the most psychological Russian writer, I would say, who gets into the heads of people most of all.

and that is what makes him interesting and not his political views. But aside from that, yes, there is absolutely a right-wing author which becomes exceedingly clear if you read his writer's diary where he actually talks about his political opinions and day-to-day stuff and from that it becomes extremely clear that he was a far-right orthodox Yes. Nothing else. And Dostoevsky is interested in that he was a reformed leftist. He was a neo-con. He used to be, he moved in, I think it would be very healthy for a lot of neo-cons to go through the kind of transformation that Dostoevsky was through, namely almost execution and five years of military service. Yes. So yes, Kostoevsky used to be a radical leftist, hang around, oh I don't know how much he was

really committed to the ideology or if it was just a social thing in the social circles he moved in, but he was in deep with the leftist underground and which later became the foundation for his novel Demons, of course, and because he just described the kind of people he knew in real life. Did you see all the leftists just blow up on, well it was on Twitter, I think someone made thread about demons and how it would attack on the left and just the reds on Twitter just completely, their heads exploded in rage at this. No, I did not see that. But yeah, it's one of those things I struggle to understand which really why, of course I understand why like left-wingers or liberals would enjoy Dostoevsky's novels because they are just really well written and well constructed. But I don't understand

why they would try to claim him as an intellectual figure in their geology when it's exceedingly clear that he's hardcore. You have to understand the shallowness of so-called discourse among intelligentsia now, and I say United States, but I assume it's worldwide since my friends in Spain and France say that mostly they read American pundits too, but they must be as surprised as you to hear the left wants to claim Dostoevsky, I can tell you why they want to claim him. It's because of what you just said. The fact that he started his life as a socialist, they redact his later term, they want to forget about it, they just insist that because he had been a socialist in his youth, his entire literature is socialist, and because he attack,

say, West liberalism in his novels indirectly. And so you know, if you are attack of Western liberalism, meaning capitalism, therefore, you must be a leftist according to leftists. So I've had professors tell me that Nietzsche was surely a socialist because he attacked capitalism. And when I showed them his attacks on socialism, they said no, they're fake. They were inserted by his sister. Even the ones that were not in his notes, I mean in his published book, they say they are fake. And I think it's the same idiocy with Dostoevsky. They just assume he must be of the left because he criticizes liberal modernity of some idiocy like this. You have to understand complete idiocy of discourse and intelligentsia now. It's just two things for them. You're either them or you're red, you know?

You know, the Maga or them, you know? I think the main value that the Stevesky brought to Russian culture is exactly the psychological realm. Because, you know, we chatted about Gogol before we started recording, and Gogol was one of the first writers who made, who articulated the background evil that existed in Russia. Dictonic evil that is in the land and in the air and the Stayevsky he tried to personalize this evil and to explain the evil that is in not like you know not the I would it's not a very good comparison but I would maybe compare Gogol a bit to Poe or Lovecraft in the sense that they are are very good at discussing ambient evil that lurks in the shadows and Dostoevsky I think it is one of the great faults or mistakes of Russian culture

that we did not have this image of the personalized evil of the of the Dr. Faust and so on Mephistopheles that this image was completely lacking in Russian culture and it's what Basically led to evil being able to take root so much in society Because You know if we talk about some of the types described by Gogol and the Stajevki They are obvious years like mentally ill and and mental illness. I would say can be divided into two different types like the like one type where The person is basically just falls out of the spiritual world that is in the way beyond good and evil because he is lacking the capability to make that distinction. And the second type that is actively evil and basically to find this evil that is hiding

in society you need the concept of a spiritual crime and in the west you had things like the inquisition which did that and in Russia you had nothing like this and there is just no concept for finding this organic evil. And since Russia did not develop this concept of a spiritual crime, Dostoevsky made a lot of painful attempts to create this. And in the end, he still kind of failed at it because it was also one of the main themes in Russian literature that Russian writers are extremely bad at making predictions, regardless whether they're liberals or reactionaries. like Belinsky, he said that he greatly envies the people who will live in the year 1940. Or Milikov, he did some kind of calculations where he calculated that by 1931, the Russian peasant will be completely free

in material terms and reach an independent level of wealth and so on. And of course, you know what Russian peasant life was like in the authorities. And then you had Dostoevsky and Leontief, who perfectly described the coming of communism, but they projected it onto the West. For example, Leontief and Dostoevsky, who were of course very similar in their outlook in some ways, Leontief correctly predicted that there would be a powerful socialist tyranny in Europe, and that it would unite a number of states into a single federation. But he firmly believed that it would emerge in Western Europe. And Leonkiv even correctly predicted that there would be a huge world war that would be led by Germany on one side and France and Russia on the other side, and so on.

And he even made, he even had a specific paragraph that really shocked me how it was very correct and they were wrong at the same time. Leontief said that Russia would sacrifice France, the Germans would occupy its territory, and the French would be forced to emigrate to their African colonies. That is very good. While in reality, in the early 20s, of course, you could fight a lot of thousands of Russians in Madagascar and Casablanca and so on, and not the French in real life. And yeah, and Dostoevsky was pretty much the same. He was afraid of Europe falling into communism and then attacking Russia to spread communism So there was some kind of tunnel vision in them But they were good at diagnostics That's probably because both Leonchev and Dostoevsky in their youth were socialists

And they believed that socialism succeeds capitalism and because they didn't see, well, because the European capitalist system was more developed, then it was natural for socialism to arise in Europe first. I think it comes from their Marxist beliefs in their youth. But about the early, the socialist period in Dostoevsky, You can see in his novels that he is very compassionate to the disadvantage to the bombs, to the prostitutes and that what Is exploited by the socialism is that it's only socialists that Try to help such people and that I think how he fell down this rabbit hole for a bit But of course, being Orthodox Christian, he recognized that it's not only about helping the disadvantaged,

but it's also about some weird mix of atheism, materialism, utilitarianism that Dostoevsky could not bring himself to agree with. Yes. Regarding him being right-wing, correct if I'm wrong, but in early Soviet Union they banned notes from underground, did they not? I think they did. I think it was banned in early Soviet Union and at the beginning in all East Bloc countries, at least in the initial Stalinist type phase in East Bloc countries, they banned notes from underground. As far as I know, in the early Soviet Union they didn't really want to promote or publish Dostoevsky. But, of course, they had to then be confronted with reality that you cannot just ignore Dostoevsky, even in the Soviet Union. And around, I think, 1950s they started doing it,

but of course with some edits and some, yeah, weird traditions and so on. Yes, I want to ask you this in particular, the psychological aspects of Dostoevsky that, you know, everyone who encountered him from outside Russia remarked on it also when Nietzsche discovered Dostoevsky, he said first-rate psychologist. I think it was about notes from underground, but it's not just nuts from underground. There's also the famous story, The Double. I love this story, and to some extent The Gambler, and I wanted to ask you for a guy who is the so-called traditionalist, orthodox Christian, monarchist, there is this surrealist, modernist element in his novels like you see in the double and these that you see also in Gogol who you mentioned, and that somehow

do you want to comment on that, the dark surrealist character that may be be surprising for audience to hear it come from traditionalist author and how this got, let's say, filtered through or adapted also in West. I think you see this pattern. You see men of the right who are, let's say, not normally right, but either traditionalist hardcore reactionaries like Dostoevsky or hardcore radical rightists like many of the Nietzsche and others, they are the ones who pioneer this kind of unusual surrealist psychologism. Do you have anything to say about that? Yes, I think you can see the principle of the only way out is through, that basically you don't get to just pretend that the filth of the real world doesn't exist, but you have

to wade into the mud to find some sort of redemption at the bottom of the pit. I think a good example of this of Western authors is Celine, for example, who is also very cynical, very spiteful, very venomous man, but if you read things like Journey to the end of night, you have this absolute image of filth and decay and how evil people are, but there is always some sort of redemption that you can find and it is hard to find this redemption if you just pretend that the filth doesn't exist. Do you know a writer, Maupassant, I don't know, I like his book Bellamy very much, I've I've heard it described as a fascist book, but again, it has very modernist quality. It's a comedy book about a soldier, a Norman soldier, who become journalist in 1880s, I think, Paris,

and it's just opportunity to show the filth of modern mass society, modern mass democracy, and how it gets ruled by, he advances in this society by going from one mistress to the next. And I'd like to compare this to some Mishima book where again you have a far-rightist supposed fascist Mishima but who pioneers exactly what you're talking about, delving into the filth of modern life. I think maybe some on the right wing forget that this way through is the way out and it's not to write lace curtain celebrations of bourgeois life, you know? I think there is no real contradiction between traditionalism or whatever and what you just described because I think in America, for a lot of people, traditionalism is associated

with Thomas Kinkade style of idyllic pastoralis, but it's really not that and it has never been that in Russia at all, and it still isn't. Yes, are there any Russian writers at moment on level of someone like Welobek, or maybe not at moment, maybe let's say after Dostoyevsky or recently? I never can answer it actually. There are some writers, but there are no greats on the Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov level. I am afraid. Maybe I'm not well read enough in modern Russian literature, but yeah. I know you guys had show on Bulgakov and maybe you don't want to talk to him again. Well I would say, as I said on the show, Bulgakov was I think the last great Russian writer who can really be described as a great writer and after that it's uh yeah not so much maybe

I mean it's uh you could put Nabokov in that category but I know a lot of literature nerds in America would shriek at seeing Nabokov described as a Russian not an American writer I would you say that he was a Russian writer in what way is he connected to the Russian literature Of course he is, but I mean his actual books. Well, it's not like he wrote only in English. He wrote a lot in Russian and some of it is not even translated into English. Yes, I don't remember which book it was, but I wanted to look up a paragraph that I wanted to share on Twitter. or maybe, I don't remember, it was one book and I wanted to share a paragraph on Twitter and I couldn't find it in English but then it turned out that the book hadn't even been translated into English.

But in any case, I think the main point is not that Nabokov is because of the language he wrote in or whatever but because he is a product of Russian literary culture. Like Nabokov is the outgrowth of Dostoevsky, I would say, there is no Nabokov without a city. And he stands in a genealogical position. Regarding Bulgakov, you all may know that Master and Margarita is favorite novel of Russian emigres in Europe and United States. I don't know if that is true in Russia, also his popularity now. But ask any Russian immigrant to America, they will tell you Master Margarita's favorite book. But I think same thing, it gets called magic realism, but it's a kind of surrealism on part of a religious traditionalist, I think, in his case. I just find it interesting that it is men of the right

who pioneered the most modernist art and literary forms, starting in 1800s, I don't know if you could use that. Yes, I do agree with that, because left-wing literature is, I feel like most of it always devolves very quickly into, you know, a kind of, even before the term existed, into some kind of socialist realism that is just, does not really captivate the imagination. Very good. Yes, we come right back. And we are back to Caribbean Rhythms episode with Russians with Attitude, Kirill and Pink Dog. You must listen to their podcast, but welcome back, friends. I wanted to press my case with you about the nature of the left wing and of the human peasant. I mentioned the Hutus and Tutsis, but who can forget?

You mentioned how Marx ended up being adopted by Russia instead of Western Europe, but who Who can forget that he also adopted by different channels by China and Southeast Asia. And so you have phenomenon of Maoism, which I think illustrate what I talk when I say the peasant classes rising up to eat literally eat the hearts of those that they consider intelligentsia or urbanite. And of course, worst example of this is Pol Pot, where salt of the earth peasants rose up killed 25, but top 25% of population in intelligence, if you were, as is well known, if you were glasses, you are a class enemy to have to be butchered. And so I don't know, I don't know that conflating the human surf, the human peasant with the freeholder from

Middle Ages who probably had a way of life materially superior to a middle class person today or the Kulak or Thomas Jefferson human farmer. These I think are more like middle class today or even upper middle class or more rather than the peasant classes I'm talking about, but in relation to right-wing authors and so forth, we ended to talk about Dostoevsky. I don't know if you still want to talk about this. Yes, Dostoevsky's adoption in the West. I found this very interesting that it's the most reactionary author ends up being the most modernist in his aesthetic and his literary techniques. I don't know what you make of It's a common pattern, as you say, in the West as well, with writers like Selim. It's actually an interesting question how Dostoevsky got popularized in the West,

but probably because his takes were interesting and on point as a critique of many Western concepts. It is actually quite a really interesting question because I don't know I don't know when exactly and how Dostoevsky got popular in the English-speaking countries, because I know in Germany he was popularized by the right-wing also, I think even by the radical right-wing, because I think Goebbels was a huge Dostoevsky admirer, and I think some of the Dostoevsky books were translated by Artur Möder von Detrock. who was also a part of the radical right at that time. And so I'm not sure how or who translated Dostoevsky into English and what he got popular in the Anglosphere. Yes, no, I do not know this either, but I know you have some opinions on modernism in Russian literature in general.

Yes, so I said that Bulgakov was the last great Russian writer, right? Yes. It is a bit, I'm not completely truthful when I say that, but it's mostly because I personally tend to divide the Russian literary tradition and the Soviet literary tradition. And people like Bulgakov, who while writing either in the Soviet Union or in immigration, they were representative of the old literary tradition, while there were good Soviet authors, but I would put them in a different literary tradition. And, for example, my favorite Soviet author, also highly modernist style, is Andrei Platonov. I don't know if you have read him. No, I do not know. familiar. Yes, Platonov, he wrote three pieces, three books that are often characterized as

like a trilogy, but not because they're connected, but just because these are three novels that deal with philosophical themes. I like them very much because while Platonov managed to camouflage basically as a soviet writer he was in a sense apocalyptic anti-communist in some ways not really an anti-communist but uh... it's a bit complicated for example his first uh... big or his most important i would say novel uh... chevinggurh it's uh... basically about a village that is populated by communists, it's during the civil war, it's set during the civil war, and it's a town, a small town in the communist rear, and it is interesting in that it is this religious communist attitude, in that you have the residents of the city, they believe in the coming

of the communist paradise, they don't work, because basically they believe that the coming of communism will free them from the need to work and as such they already stopped working, they socialized, so to speak, their wives and they hunt down the bourgeois and so on and it's all in very religious themes and In the end, they all get killed by the whites, and it's a very interesting novel in that it's super modernist in its style, but it pretends to be socialist realism, but it's not. When was it written? Chevengouv is from 1928, I think. Oh, it's very early. And this is Platonov, like Plato? Yes, exactly. But I think it had a lot of publishing problems and so on. I think it was for the first time published in full in like 50 years later or so.

And this is a common theme for his other important work, novel, is The Foundation Pit. It was, I think, published in 1973, despite having been written also in like 1930, I think. It's about collectivization. Joseph Brodsky, you're probably familiar with the poet Brodsky, he described this novel as the first serious surrealist novel. Yes. More so even than Kafka. What is the name again? The Foundation Pit. The Foundation Pit. It's basically about, the setting is a bit hard to explain explain because it's it's about a group of workers who are digging a foundation pit for a house where proletarians will live and basically they dig and dig and dig and they forget why they are digging and it's at one point you have there's So I like a dialogue between one of the workers who stops digging,

and then he's attacked for why isn't he working. And he says that he's trying to find the meaning of life, because if he finds the meaning of life, then he will be better at digging. And in the end, they keep working, working, and working. And they forget what they are digging. They forget why they are digging. And yeah, it's a very interesting thing. The book was widely viewed as a criticism of Stalin's collectivization, and as such it wasn't published until 1987, so 57 years after it was written. But it was published in Samizdat, and so on, it's a very interesting book, it's a setty comparison with Kafka and it's basically socialist realism Kafka. It's a very great book, I highly recommend it. Regarding Soviet literature that are anti-Soviet, do you like the Normy, he's not Normy book,

but all the Normies in the United States read this, the Zamyatin book, We? Do you like this or no? I don't, because Zamyatim wasn't really an anti-communist, it was like a lip-left who supported, who participated really in the Bolshevik revolution, but then it turned out that it was too harsh for his liberal sensibilities, and I'm not a huge fan of Zamyatim because he was part of the I don't like the book, we and I don't like, maybe I don't do the book Justice, firstly because it was one of the early types of this book that later became a very dead cliche and as such it's hard to take it seriously, but I just really don't like Zamyatin as a person and this probably paints my picture of his writing too much.

Kirill, I think, I think big dog has some problem. I think that CIA, CIA cut his connection. Why don't we just take quick one minute music break and we come back to discuss this problem of modernist Soviet literature. We will be right where I see his back. Big dog, can you hear me? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, good. Yes. No, Bellinghat cut your connection. They didn't want to talk about. But yes, Kirill was just attacking novel V by Zamyatin and this is the typical Soviet novel that all the normies in the United States are reading as supposedly anti-Soviet, you know. But it sounds like he's just a Kerensky-type useful idiot for the Bolsheviks, Zamyatin. Yes, that's what I would characterize him as. There was an interesting note on which Platonov ended his foundational pit, a novel, quote,

Will our Soviet Socialist Republic perish like Nastya, a crippled girl? Or will it grow into a whole person, into a new historical society? Galkovsky fans might recognize this term. No, this is good. I want to ask you since we're talking about dystopian Soviet literature, is Arthur Koestler's book Darkness at Noon at already in Russia and how is Koestler's view, if at all? I haven't read it myself. I'm vaguely familiar, but I haven't read it, so I can't really comment on it. Yes, maybe he's not read Russia, but he used to be very popular in Europe at least. But look, yes, of what you make of plot device from Bulgakov, Master Margarita, suppose most of audience has heard of the book but maybe not read it and this just to summarize for audience is book about Satan come to Moscow during

Stalinist purges in 1930s and he take opportunity in showing this to show to make fun of left communist intelligentsia and show them just being wasted by Stalin, but this part of book, very surrealist, you could say, magic realist with Satan and his giant cat and such prancing around Moscow. And then in alternating chapters, he tells a story of Pontius Pilate and Jesus without any explanation and the two plots never meet, but obviously they are very related spiritually. Do you like this plot device? Are there other Russia books with this double plot? And do you mind if I steal this for my next novel? I am still this to use, not the subject matter, but the plot device of two plots in two different times. Do you like this?

Yes, I do like this plot device. It's somewhat common nowadays, I think, but yes I like it. What will your novel be about? Well I don't want to say too much, I don't want to say too much, I will tell you in private, I don't want to say too much to big audience because, no, it's not a matter of secret, but then you become self-conscious because of people's expectations and such, but I will not like to say that, and I'm not ashamed to say that I will be stealing this double plot device and the modern plot, it will be about a kind of man with Asperger who look for a missing woman, you see, so a kind of mystery tale, but this will give me opportunity to show many modern so-called cliques and social groups and to exhibit their crippled

mind and spirits to audience. I hope it should be amusing, but we'll see. Yes, that sounds good. As to the blood device, it reminds me, my mother told me that when she read Master and Magaita for the first time, she only read the modern blood and she skipped over all of the Jesus and Portio's Pilatus blood because she found it boring. and then when she read it for a second time... yeah they ignore the war part in Born in Peace sorry yeah i was the exact opposite uh like what i read war in peace as a teenager i i just skipped all over the the balls the french the the relationship drama and all that boring stuff i only read the the battle part women did the opposite so it's a very genius idea to attract

everyone, but I'm not sure who actually read Master and Margarita for Pontius Pilate parts, although they are good, they are very good, especially when you read them in Russian, I'm not sure about the translation, but the prose is very beautiful in those, and actually I would argue that the modern setting about Satan being in Moscow, in parts it is boring. Because what is Satan trying to do here? He is murdering some people to get an apartment, basically. It's a quest for apartments in Moscow, and that's quite a low goal. And there is a lot of bureaucracy or something involved in that, so yeah. Yes. No. Okay. So maybe you don't like this book, but it made me think, in Russia today, what are especially liked philosophers from West or thinkers from West, if any?

Because I keep seeing news stories that in Kazan a man killed another man because they had argument about Kant or something like this. And I only see stories like this coming out of Russia. Is it the case that thinkers like Kant and Hegel are still taken so seriously it leads to mortal fights there or are any other thinkers liked from the West? I think that Russia is, it's really, like I always say, Russia is a very literature-centric society and culture. And I think it's one of those things that just everyone in Russia feels qualified to talk about literature and philosophy and get involved in it. But yes, it is one of those bizarre things that you only get like this type of news from Russia

where you have two homeless drug addicts stabbing each other because of an argument over nature and stuff like this. I guess it's because the Soviet intelligentsia was so heavily alumpinized that the intellectuals turned out to be homeless drug addicts. It's the other way around. Maybe that, yes. But overall, there is a kind of gap in the study of Western philosophy because of how the Soviet Union treated this in the academic realm. For example, the only really Western term of philosophy that was published in the USSR until the Perestroika was Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy. It was translated and published in 1959 and before that and afterwards nothing for decades. And yeah, so it shows the really weird taste of Soviet censors and Soviet academia because

it's of course a hilariously chauvinistic book, The History of Western Philosophy. It's absolute like Anglo supremacy. It's like Montaigne is like mentioned in one half sentence and Byron gets an entire chapter. Like it's ridiculously Anglophiliac. So yes, there was a big gap in that. Oh yes, it's problematic. It's only came really about after Pernis Brolka that people were able to read Western philosophy at all. Yes, I see. Yes. In the United States, as you know, it's all Dugin. It's assumed that he's the most powerful mind in Russia today and that everyone read Dugin, and he's the state ideologue. I think we talked this before. We don't need to dwell on it, but that's not really true, is it? I don't think, from what I know from Russia friends,

Dugin is very important at all within Russia. Very few people read him, but then again very few people read philosophy books, especially modern ones, so it's hard to say how influential he is, but certainly less so than it is imagined. Yes, I know you had some thoughts on ethnogenesis of various... I just remembered one thing I wanted to add about Zemecin, a little biographical detail, namely that of course probably as mentioned he was a revolutionary before, during 1917 he was a member of terrorist organizations, and then he left the Soviet Union and kind of distanced himself from the Soviet regime, but he also sharply distanced himself from like the white immigration, he hated them. But the interesting thing is that Zamyatin, he was allowed to leave for Paris but he was

accepted into the union of Soviet writers while he was already living in Paris. So basically even after he left they still viewed him as one of their own and I think that says everything you need to know about his character. Among the white emigres, by the way, have there been, I guess there's Nabokov, but aside from him, are there any especially nice nostalgic writers of, you know, I think Rachmaninoff is very nostalgic old regime, old Russian music. Well, it doesn't have to be just nostalgic, but are there great writers among white emigres? There were lots of great poets. There were lots of great poets. For example, Georgy Ivanov, of course, already famous silver age poet, when still in Russia before the revolution, but then you had also some of the ... Nismyelov, for example.

Nismyelov is probably the greatest completely forgotten 20th century Russian poet, compared to how good and important he actually was. You know, there was a huge Russian diaspora in Khabim, and they had like a school of poetry, a group of poets called the Chureivka, who viewed Arseniy Nismelov as their godfather, as their literary godfather. Pasternak and Tsvetayeva, they spoke extremely highly of Nismelov. they liked him he was killed by the Soviets in August 45 when they attacked Manchuria and yeah so Nismeelov is a great poet whom I also really like is Nikolay Turevierev, veteran of the Civil War at Cossack and he wrote a lot of very great nostalgic poetry about Cossack life before the revolution and so I really like them. Yes, of course, poetry is very hard to translate.

And people from other languages hardly know 20th century poets, even from German or French, you know. I like Stefan Georgi very much. But he's so little known that even supposed experts in German language and philosophy who try to attack my book did not get that the last aphorism is named after one of his famous poems. poems. Nobody reads poetry. It's just a translation problem also, I think. But aside from Nabokov, are there any novelists in that group? I don't know. But look, we don't need to keep up. Well, it's hard actually. Really good novelists, white immigrants. I'm thinking and I'm mostly coming up with poets like Bunin of course. I just I would think that's a very good subject for a novelist. Avierchenko, pretty good. I like him. He is very quiet similar to Chekhov.

Yes. I think nostalgia lead very well to a right of novel. I mean, almost all novels now are written in contemporary scene, but the great novels of the past were almost always, I mean not always, but very often they were historical novels, right? I mean War and Peace's historical novel, Stendhal novel, Charterhouse of Parma is historical, all of these are historical novels I think would have been very nice for a white Russian emigrate who have written some nostalgic about the end of the Russian empire, but I don't know if this was done. Well there is of course a lot, but we have to separate between just like okay writers who wrote about stuff that we like and actually great writers. And in terms of great writers because I think it's a bit difficult.

You have maybe, pretty famous, is Mireszkowski, but I'm personally not a huge fan of his work, yeah. I know you know literary scenes now also in West Europe. Is Robert Musil wildly red in Germany? I don't think so, I don't think so. Yes, I think that they are trying to reinterpret Musil also as a liberal writer of some type, a liberal left-wing, I think there are efforts to reinterpret any Nietzschean modernist as left-wing, you know, they cannot... I mean I'm not super familiar with Musil, I only read Man Without Quarities last year for the first time. Yes. And I haven't read any of the other works. No, but I'm saying the left cannot abide the idea that so many great modernist writers were right-wing or even far-right-wing.

They can't hide this about Selim, but they're trying to about certain others. But we don't need to dwell on this matter. I know, before we go, you had some opinion about ethnogenesis that you wanted to talk about. Ah, yes, yes, Big Dog wanted to say something, yes. Yes, big dog. Right, so yeah, I've heard, Bob, you say, quote, Russians are varyaks who are larping as hazards. So what did you mean by this? I meant that the description of Ibn Fadlan, I think, but there may have been others who show the early Rus were simply Vikings who were trying to roleplay as the Khazar Khagan and adopting all the ceremonies and even dress of the Khazar court. Is this wrong? Well, yeah, maybe they did that, but I think condensing the Russian ethnogenesis or the

origin of the Russian state to the Khazar LARP in Varyaks is a very narrow way to go about it. Well, in general, I don't have… I should not say it's my, it was Hakan, you know, it was in my talks, yeah, Hakan loves this image. But, you know. Well, yeah, it's a great image, actually. But yeah, let's talk a bit about the Varyaks. For some reason, doubting medieval accounts of some Christian monks that are sitting alone in the monastery and write about events centuries prior to them being even born is considered to be weird. How can you doubt that? Because the primary source of early Russian history is Niester, a monk who wrote a tale of bygone years in the early 20th century. So that's That's the primary source regarding Varyaks, who are Varyaks war-engines, is basically

Eastern Vikings, let's say that. But it's actually unclear, maybe they're Finnic, maybe Rurik was N1 haplogroup or else. But still, it's a source about Varyaks being invited to the Slavic lands. and rooting them over from 19th century. So are you yourself a proponent of the Normanist theory of the origin of the Russian state, or maybe… No, I know that there are debates around this, and especially sensitive now with the Ukrainians claiming that they are descendants of the Swedes fighting the Oriental hordes of Moscow. It's very strange to me, actually, to hear the propaganda coming out of Ukraine. I know we shouldn't talk about Ukraine, but they like to call Russians this name Ugric, right? Yes. And I guess I think they're doing it because in English it sounds like the name ogre, or

in general, Ugric sounds like a barbaric name. But I don't understand why they should try to look down on Finns. I mean, the Ugrians are the Finns. The Finns are a rival of Moscow and I would say Finland, quite a bit more advanced country than Ukraine. It's strange. Well, it's not strange. I know why they're doing it. They also adopted Swedish flag colors, blue and yellow, right? It's all to appear a certain way to themselves and to the West. So look, in terms of these contemporary debates, I don't have an opinion. But yes, I've always assumed that the, I mean, the very name Rus is a Viking name, is it not? I assume that the origin of at least the Russian state is Vikings who came, they did defeat the Khazars, whether they role played as them is debatable.

but I know that there are debates about this, that there's another point of view. Yes, I'm personally a proponent of the Normanist theory, to be honest, and I've never found any of the anti-Normanist arguments convincing, but overall, it is just really hard to, like the sources are very scarce, as Victor says, it's all like half mythology, like no one knows if Rurik was actually real and people are debating his ethnicity, so I don't know. There's also that basically in all of Eastern Europe and parts of Northern Europe too, there was the title of Kagan Khan, basically, like Genghis Khan, Kagan, was used by various groups, Maybe that has to do, maybe that was part of laughing as hazards or any other successful

asiatic nomad groups there because there are, there is also a theory, I've read a hypothesis, I don't know how serious it is considered by academics that maybe Hagan is a form of Scandinavian name Hakan. That makes no sense. Why would the word be that in Turkic across the steppe, then, that makes… Yes. Yes. I mean, are they saying the Scandinavians adopted it from the Turks? I don't know. I don't know. Maybe it's a question. They are the descendants of the Turks, after all. But yeah, it's all very complicated, yeah. And I'm not also a proponent of some other theory because it's all a mystery land, right? And seriously, talking about the 9th century is pointless, especially when you talk about the Russian state then.

So basically, you just asked, the anti-Normanist theory is basically, well, anything that says that the Rus were not Scandinavians. So basically, the very basic anti-Normanist concept of history is that Rurik and his boys were not Scandinavians. Namely that they were either Slavs or like... They were Ubrics. Yes, either Slavs or like Finno-Ugrics or Poles or something like this. Yes, but how would these people explain Ibn Fadlan's description? I mean, do you know how they argue that way? Because I believe his description is very clear that they were Vikings. Yes, yes, I agree, but I'm not sure when were these, if these texts were even known to be like Slavophile historians who came up with antinomianism. So I don't know if, if Romanov, for example, knew about these texts even.

No, the political uses of the, sorry, go on, go on. I mean, there is no real contradiction, because what is a Viking? It's a pirate, and they might have been Finnic pirates, right? Seafaring pirates as well. And I don't think that he specified that they were Swedish pirates or the Danish ones. Yes, I don't know why it's... I am with Kirill on this in the sense I don't know why it should matter so much politically, but I know East Europe quite well and for some reason people think resolving these disputes from a thousand years ago should convince the other side to give up today or something like it. It's similar to Israeli-Palestinian conflict where each side thinks that if they can establish through some historical certainty that they were there first or they own this house first,

that the other side should give up and it's just bizarre to me. It has no value whatsoever in convincing the other side or even internationally that you have a superior cause, I don't understand its political use, but I have a related question if you guys don't mind, we change subject slightly for a moment, because I know we talked before about the origin of the Kagats in Europe and I'm actually interested in the origin of the Cathars themselves because it is said It was this Manichean sect that spread from the politions in Armenia who were exiled and they moved to the Balkans and they formed the nucleus from which the Bogomil sect and this Bogomil sect then spread to West Europe somehow. But this leaves open the question of why the Rhineland, southern France and northern Italy

were so ready to accept such a heresy, and I always thought a lot of these heresies are actually thinly disguised excuses for paganism that resented the church, but they couldn't say that and so they pretended to be this other version of Christianity, which I think perhaps could also explain things in the Middle East like the Alawites or the Mandaean, Marsh, Arabs and so forth. But I wanted to ask you your opinion on this, on the persistence possibly of paganism into Europe into late historical times in a covert way. Because if you look at Iran, I think in Iran, even in the 16th, 17th, 18th century, 50% of the population was still Zoroastrian. This is what I hear. And it's no accident then that Iran is the

engine of repeated heresies in the Islamic world, most notably Shiite, but many others that came from there, Babism, the Baha'i, and I think quite a few others. And when you look at Europe, you see a big thing, of course, reformation. But even before that, Germany was an engine of heresies. You look at North Italy, it isn't just the Khazars, there were the Waldensians also, there are many other such things. And so I wonder, would you agree with maybe some strange claims that Europe was possibly 30, 40, 50% even pagan into the 1600s, 1700s, at least in certain areas, and that some of these religious disputes are, I mean, not the big ones, not the Reformation, but some of these other ones are possibly a very thin cover for persistence of paganism. I don't know what you think this.

I would say that paganism is the default state of peasants. I mean, if you look at the word itself, the etymology, it basically means peasant. A pagan is a peasant, because Christianity was a religion of the city. And it spread only slowly to the countryside. And of course, many riots persisted or were reinterpreted. And you had, for centuries, these small enclaves. I remember reading, I think, in Greece somewhere, I think around Lamia, maybe. I don't remember exactly. Somewhere in the mountains, you had basically ancient Greek paganism up until the early modern period. And even in times of crisis or breakdown of peasants often default to pagan rights, I remember After reading this book I don't remember what the study was called. It was by an American sociologist.

The title had something about backward society in it. Yes, I found it. Edward Benfield, The Moral Basis of a Backward Society. Yes, the bureaucrat talk about this. Yes, exactly. I read it after Second City bureaucrat talked about it. And he has a super interesting part in it about peasants in Italy and their relationship to the church. And how many of them are like completely deaf to actual church doctrines and that they treat the saints like pagan gods. and that they basically like refuse to pray to God because he's too abstract for them and instead they pray to the images of saints and they try to do like butter with the saints like if you make it rain next weekend I will say 10 prayers and so on and it's bizarre type religion and I think

without strong spiritual guidance like some sort of paganism is the default state of Yes, well, I would say that animism of a kind is the natty, the natural religion of man, and I agree with you that people naturally revert to that in the absence of, let's say, some type of theological authority. But I think I want to say even beyond that, yes, there are enclaves even now, especially in East Europe, and I'll say why this is significant in a moment. I'm not surprised you mentioned Sicily. But there are enclaves in East Europe, especially Lithuania, Latvia, but also the Balkans where there are pagan rituals carried out March 21st and other such dates, almost completely unchanged with a very thin Christian veneer.

But of course there, and as I assume in Sicily, the peasants at least nominally believe that they are Christian, and they do not have a, let's say, covert counter identity that they are conscious of. They don't see a conflict between these. It's not a conscious continuation of a pagan tradition. I'm trying to make a stronger claim that there was such a conscious continuation at least up to 1500-1600s in Europe, and as more evidence I can bring, we are talking about the Finns, the Finns in Russia. Well, the Mari, you call them the Cheremis, I think, but the Mari are the only extant practicing pagans in Europe, and they pretended to convert to Christianity in the 1600s, forced by the Russians, but they never really converted, they pretended to, and so what you have there

is not like a meme resurrection of let's roleplay as our ancient pagan forebears. I think it's an uninterrupted tradition that was not really successfully suppressed and then with the end of communism, they can just come out again and say, well, we've always been pagan, we never changed. I am wondering if you think such thing is possible even in Europe and I mean, in mainland temperate Europe, and I think it was especially World War II that dealt the final end of such small enclaves. You can imagine why, that they would disappear especially in Germany after World War II, but they did not really disappear in the periphery of Europe. I don't I think there is a link between paganism and some sort of egalitarian society or maybe

a more matriarchal society because as you said about the Qataris, I think Qataris let women to become priests and it's also the case with Maori people because Maori Russian Volga Finolubrics are noticeably less patriarchal and I think wherever there is a more matriarchal society the more pagan it actually is. But yeah, that's it. I would personally dispute the claim that the Mari people have an uninterrupted pagan because it's all this stuff they now pretend that it was practiced like in the shadows for centuries but I feel like it was the same case was like in Ossetia right you have this neo-paganism in Ossetia which they call ASEANism which they pretend is a direct continuation of ancient Scythian religion but it's actually like some neo-pagan stuff from the 1980s by Perestroika

intellectuals who tried to create some spiritual foundation for like ethnic separatism and just because some rights persisted in the form like on the same level that ancient germanic rights or slavic rights persist in eastern and western europe that does not mean that it's like an uninterrupted religious tradition even among the mari you mean i thought that was established probably probably to a much greater extent than for anyone else yes i see so that yes i'll run that but i still don't really think that they were. I think it's mostly a neo-Pagan revival thing. Yes, no, that's interesting. Are the Volga Finnics, are the Volga Fino-Ugrics, are they loyal to Moscow? Are they loyal to Russia? They want to remain with Russia?

Yeah, they are. I've heard in some Udmurt village some tall tales about Udmurs being secretly pagan up to maybe well 21st century maybe but yeah and they were offering human sacrifices and whatnot but it might be village rumors i don't know it is true that udmorts are the eaters of the dead is this uh from ancient times is this true or no i have not actually seen um udmorts to eat any of that so I'm not sure about that but yeah I think in general Udmurtz are more suicidal types and they're quite different psychologically than Russians and are very eager they are not afraid of death as much and they welcome it because there is a lot of Udmurtz suicides and I believe that it's also true for other Volga Finnogurics. Why Russia state does not weaponize this to form

extreme special force, Finnoid special forces? It sounds that's suitable for that. Yeah, I think creating an Udmurt special force would end the Ukrainian conflict for good. Yes, there are some Buddhists in the Russian army and they also have like military Buddhist lamas. Yes. There was some very interesting photos of like kalmic troops with their lamas on the front lines and I was thinking that they should make a Mongolian volunteer battalion and name it after Unger. Yes. No, I think it's very good. I like that Russia remains a multinational empire, does not try to homogenize peoples. Since we're talking of ethnogenesis, I think it was disaster what happened in West Europe, especially with states like France, where again, Gobineau describes it as an ethnic

fiction that leads to the amalgamation of different European races that shouldn't be amalgamated. And he did not even think that French peasants are of the same nation as the French themselves, you know? I mean, the way he talked about them is that they're essentially a different nation within a nation. And this means... Yes, I mean France in itself is in that matter a very artificial construct, so to speak, because you have like half a dozen nationalities or ethnicities that make up France really. Like Brittany has very little to do with historically culturally with the rest of France. And basically it took, as I've read, it's basically that only World War I really turned France into a homogenic state because that's when they killed the regional languages

and dialects because you had like people recruited from the same regions and they would speak their dialect and as casualties mounted, they would get mixed with people from other parts of the country. Like you would have soldiers from Occitania, from around Montpellier or Marseille serving together with like Bretons And basically, that's how the Breton language died out, because they had to communicate in French. But I think it's also a deeply natural process that happened everywhere, decentralization. I mean, Germany is the same. Like, it's hard to make the case that, like, Frisians and Bavarians are the same on any level, except through, like, romantic nationalism. Yes. No, I think this process of centralization you talk about is very destructive and nationalism

has done a lot more to homogenize peoples than globalism has done so far, I think. So far, in some ways that is true. Of course, Leontief actually said the same, he said that nationalism is like the sharpest weapon of progress. Yes, look, I do not want to keep you, it's been almost an hour on this segment, we should go soon. If you have time, I have one more quick question. On the last show, I was reading archives of Ilair du Berriere and he talked about this part of Russian foreign intelligence called Network 11, part of Inostraniy Otteil, doing amazing work abroad, rotting other societies with various tricks. Why Russia stopped doing this? It is very exciting, and you were so good at this, and now you stop and…

The FSB is much less capable than the KGB was, especially since a large part of the material base of the KGB was just split up between the various Soviet republics and the networks were all destroyed, all of the agientuga in other countries was given up out of cuckold goodwill gestures towards the west, and the spy networks were dismantled and so on. And for example, we talked about this privately, the SPU, the Ukrainian Intelligence Service, It has a much better claim for the title of being successor of the KGB than the Russian FSB does Because they inherited a lot of the personnel and the FSB was created The Russian secret service and the Ukrainian secret service were both created by the last head of the Ukrainian KGB

So that's one of the reasons why they really punch above the weight in terms of like Intel and spy stuff and sabotage and so on. So yeah, as you can see, SBU is quite good at rotting the West, so they are doing their job. No, this is very interesting. Yeah, Ukrainian occupied government, people don't want to talk about this problem in Canada and United States. But look, gentlemen, it's been a pleasure having you on. I don't want to keep you. I know the wolves are closing in on your location outside Moscow forest. And where I am is sunny and I still hope to catch some sun today. So why not we end this until let's meet more often and have show more often what you say. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, sounds great. Thank you for inviting us. No, thank you for coming.

Thank you for having us on. It's always a pleasure. No, thank you and glory to eternal Russia and very good. We talk soon. Until next time, Bap out.