Victor Pelevin “The Sacred Book of Werewolf”

Have you seen the hit of the last Venice Biennale – the haystack in which the first Belarusian postmodernist, Mikolai Klimaksovich, hid from his local police inspector for four years?  Alexander called this work plagiaristic and told Brian about the similar haystack famously used before the revolution by Vladimir Lenin.  Brian observed that repetition is not necessarily plagiarism, it is the very essence of the postmodern, or – to put it in broader terms – the foundation of the modern cultural gestalt, which is manifested in everything, from the cloning of sheep to remakes of old movies, for what else can you do after the end of history?  Brian said it was precisely Klimaksovich’s use of quotation that made him a postmodernist, not a plagiarizer.  But Alexander objected that no quotations would ever have saved this Klimaksovich from the Russian police, and history might have come to an end in Belarus, but there was not sign of it breaking down yet in Russia.

Then Brian showed Alexander a work by Asuro Keshami, one which he regards with especial affection, not least owing to the serious investment required for its production and installation.  Keshami’s work, inspired by the oeuvre of Camille Paglia, of whom you must have heard, consists of an immense tube of red plastic with projections on the inside in the form of white fangs.  It is proposed to install in the open air in one of London’s sports stadiums.

And now I am getting to the point.  One of the most serious problems in the world of modern art is the invention of original and fresh verbal interpretations of a work.  Literally just a few phrases are required, which can be reprinted in the catalogues and reviews.  This apparently trivial detail can often decide the fate of a piece of art.  It is very important here to be able to perceive things from an unexpected, shocking angle, and your friend, with his barbarically fresh view of the world, does this remarkably well.  Therefore, Brian would like permission to use the ideas expressed by Alexander yesterday for the conceptual support of the installation.  The accompanying text which I include below is by way of being a fusion of Brian’s and Alexander’s ideas:

Asuro Keshami’s work ‘VD-42 CC’ combines the languages of different areas – engineering, technology and science.  At the base level the subject-matter is the overcoming  of space: physical space, the space of taboo and the space of our subconscious fears.  The languages of engineering and technology deal with the material from which the object is constructed, but the artist addresses the viewer in the language of emotions.  When the viewer learns that certain people have given this little queer fifteen million pounds to stretch out a huge imitation-leather cunt above an abandoned soccer pitch, he remembers what he does in his own life and how much he is paid for it, then he looks at the photo of this little queer in his horn-rimmed spectacles and funny jacket, and experiences confusion and bewilderment bordering on the feeling that the German philosopher Martin Heidegger called ‘abandonment’ (Geworfenheit).  The viewer is invited to concentrate on these feelings, which constitute the precise aesthetic effect that the installation attempts to achieve.

from “Monumental Propaganda” by Vladimir Voinovich

I feel sorry for those future generations who will not even be able to imagine that there was a time when the broad extensive lands of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (broad extensive lands, not expensive foreign brands) were all under the sway of a general system of sociopolitical views that were progressive in every respect and compulsory for every one of the three hundred million representatives of the peoples, nations, and tribes (some of them still pretty wild) who occupied those extensive lands, and which went by the name of the Sole Correct Scientific World Outlook.

The world outlook was uniquely correct, and it was promulgated by the only political party (there was no need for any others).  But while all the members of the Party accepted the Sole Correct Scientific outlook, they were divided among themselves into two hostile tendencies.  One tendency was Marxist-Leninist and the other was Stalinist.  The Marxist-Leninists were good Marxists, kind people.  They wanted to establish a good life on earth for good people and a bad life for bad people, but it had to be done in accordance with the World Outlook.  And therefore they killed bad people, but whenever they could, they left the good people alive.  The Stalinists, however, were essentially democrats – they killed everybody without distinction, and they regarded the World Outlook not as a dogma but as a guide to action.  Consequently, the Marxist-Leninists were regarded as humanists and devotees of the Sole Correct Scientific World Outlook (SCOSWO), while the Stalinists were devoted to Stalin and were prepared to follow him in any direction, wherever he might lead them.

[…] so our Admiral, being a man of immense learning and absolutely independent views, who always had his own original opinion on everything, regarded SCOSWO disrespectfully even in those times when very few people could even conceive of such a possibility.  Under his influence I also began to ponder and to doubt things that had seemed incontrovertible to me only recently.  I began to wonder why SCOSWO was regarded as exclusively true and scientific and why the cause of the people’s future happiness required so many of the people to be killed, hounded, ruined, starved and frozen.  And whether it might not have been better to invent some Uniquely Incorrect SCOSWO that would be a bit less hard on people.  To this very day, however, the devotees of SCOSWO claim that the theory was good but the practice was bad.  Lenin devised it correctly, but Stalin applied in wrongly.  But who, where, in what country, has ever applied it correctly? Khrushchev? Brezhnev? Mao Tse-tung? Kim Il-Sung? Ho Chi Minh? Pol Pot? Castro? Honecker? Who? Where? When?  What is so good about this theory if it can never be confirmed in practice anywhere under any conditions?

Nowadays, of course, the number of people selflessly devoted to SCOSWO has fallen a bit.  But in the times we are describing here the broad expanses of our homeland were home to quite large numbers of them, one of whom was Mark Semyonovich Shubkin, a faithful adherent of SCOSWO, a disciple first of Lenin-Stalin and then of Lenin alone.  But he held on to Lenin for a long time, with firm, total commitment.  Shubkin remained faithful to SCOSWO and to Lenin before and after his arrest, during his nocturnal interrogations, even during the years he spent engaged in public works.  Despite the cold and hunger, never, not once, not for a single moment (until certain time came) did he doubt.  Major and minor devils frequently tempted him, trying to sow doubt in his mind, but he endured like Jesus Christ, in whom he did not believe.

The investigator Tikhonravov beat Mark Semyonovich very painfully with a towel twisted into a heavy rope while abusing him in the vilest possible terms, blinded him with the table lamp, prevented him from sleeping and wouldn’t let him sit down, but when Mark Semyonovich, enduring all of this stoically, pointed to the portrait of Lenin hanging above the investigator’s head and rebuked him with quotations from the leader, Tikhonravov replied simply, “I couldn’t give a shit for your Lenin.”  To which Shubkin was unable to find sufficiently convincing counterarguments.  But he continued to display his previous fortitude.  And he left the camp unbroken, undefeated, with his views unchanged.  That is, in the words of the Admiral, he left it the same fool he was when he entered it.  A sealed and certified fool, the Admiral called him, meaning a fool with certificates with big seals on them.

I must confess there were times when the Admiral’s judgments seemed too harsh to me.  And din Shubkin’s case undeservedly harsh.  After all, if a man had been through the camps and not changed his convictions in spite of everything, surely that was worthy of respect?

“Sheer stupidity, no matter what,” the Admiral used to reply mercilessly, “and not even stupidity – absolute idiocy.”

The Admiral regarded Shubkin with mild contempt, although at first he himself had attempted to shatter his faith in SCOSWO and its supreme idol.  He used to tell Shubkin about the German money and the German railroad carriage (which also happened to have seals on it), about the priests and prostitutes executed on the personal orders of “the most humane man ever to walk the earth,” about his progressive paralysis as a result of syphilis, and many other things which at that time were known to only a few.  None of these stories produced even the slightest effect on Shubkin.  Especially since he knew many of them already.  But he explained the actions of his idol by objective circumstances, harsh necessity and the fact that revolutions are not made wearing kid gloves.  He advised the Admiral to undertake a close rereading of Lenin’s full collected works.  “And then,” he said, “it will become clear even to you that Lenin is a genius.  “If he’s a genius,” the Admiral used to argue, “Then why is this prison camp socialism of ours so badly constructed?”  Shubkin would object, “Lenin didn’t intend to build what exists now, but something better.”  “But a genius,” the Admiral used to say, “builds what he wants to build, not something else.”  “Lenin,” Shubkin would explain, “couldn’t not foresee the inertness of the peasant masses, which would not appreciate the advantages of socialism, and he could not foresee that petit-bourgeois element would work its way up to the leadership of the country, that the leadership would turn aside from the road he has chosen, reject the New Economic Policy and advance too fast into collectivization.”  “But a genius,” the Admiral would persist, “is only a genius if he does foresee things.  It doesn’t take a genius not to foresee things.  We can all do that.”  “Vladimir Ilich,” Shubkin would sigh, “was born a hundred years ahead of his time.” “Well there I agree with you,” the Admiral would say, nodding this head in confirmation, “but at your age you should know that premature children are often retarded.”

Shubkin withstood all the Admiral’s onslaughts and for a long time, throughout the sixties and halfway through the seventies, he remained faithful to SCOSWO, and moreover, in doing so he behaved almost entirely in accordance with the behest of Christ, who had told his apostles: Go forth and preach.  Shubkin preached to the old and the young, even to children of preschool age, hammering SCOSWO into children’s heads in a form accessible to them.

from “Monumental Propaganda” by Vladimir Voinovich

They say that an individual’s mental capabilities are determined by the weight of his brain.  But a big brain can only be contained in a beg head.  Turgenev had a big head.  And his brain, accordingly, weighed as much as two loaves of bread.  Lenin had an even bigger head, and naturally no one in the world had a bigger brain than him, and in Soviet times it was dangerous even to doubt it.  You could lose your own head, whatever size it was.

[…] then went back to the Admiral and said in Shubkin’s defense: “You tell me that he’s a fool, but he’s got such a huge head, it must be full of something.”

“Yes, it’s full of foolishness,” the Admiral said ruthlessly.  Let me tell you something.  You’ve probably been out in the country.  You may have noticed that every village has one idiot and one wise man.  Some simple peasant.  With a head the size of your fist and a brain that’s probably not very big.  But he thinks simply, clearly and soundly on the basis of his own knowledge of life and personal experience.  So what I’d advise you to learn is this.  The human brain is distinguished not only by its dimensions, but by its ability to assimilate input.  The brain, crudely speaking, can be a warehouse, a mill or a chemical laboratory.  A warehouse can be really vast and stocked with various kinds of items, but the more items there are, the harder it is to make sense of them.  A mill can only grind up whatever is poured into it.  It may be small and primitive, but it will still grind good grain into pretty good flour.  But even if you take a big, modern mill, the very finest, with good grindstones and ideal sieves and load it up with bad grain, it won’t turn out anything, that’s any good.  The creative brain is the highest type, a chemical laboratory – load anything you like into it and it produces something fundamentally new, a synthesis.  Everything in it works: knowledge, memory, the capacity for independent thought.  That kind of brain is very rare, even among people with big heads.”

“I suppose Lenin must have had that kind of brain?” I suggested.

“Lenin?” the Admiral repeated in amazement.  Oh, come one!  Lenin had an ideological brain.  Yet another type that’s not very common.  Not a warehouse, not a mill, not a laboratory, but a kind of stomach in the head.  Put in all sorts of high-quality foodstuffs and they’re all digested and transformed into shit.”

“Well, then,” I exclaimed, delighted to have discovered this definition, “that means Shubkin has a stomach-brain too.”

“No, no,” the Admiral protested.  “What Shubkin has is a mill-brain.  If you poured good grain into it, you might get good flour.  But he’s loaded up his mill with Lenin’s shit, so what comes out is shit too.”

[…] “So you believe a man can be very learned, know a great deal, possess a phenomenal memory and an exceptional talent for languages, and still be no more than a fool?”

“Why yes,” said the Admiral with a nod.  “Your Shubkin’s an example/”

“And Lenin?”

“Lenin’s a fool too,” the Admiral said calmly.

I couldn’t restrain myself at that.

“Look here,” I said, “of course, you’re an original character and a paradoxical thinker, and I regard Lenin critically myself, but calling him fool is going too far.  He turned the whole world upside down.”

“For what purpose?”

“The purpose is a different matter.”

“No,” said the Admiral, finally growing heated.  “It’s not a different matter.  I’ve already explained that to your Shubkin.  An intelligent man is a man who sets himself a goal and achieves it.  But a man who sets himself an unachievable goal and doesn’t understand that it’s unachievable cannot be regarded as intelligent.”

“Well, let’s assume that in terms of everyday life you’re right.  But Lenin didn’t just set himself a simple goal; he set himself a grandiose one.”

“Because he’s not just a simple fool,” said the Admiral.  “He’s a grandiose fool.  Put that down in your notebook too: Lenin is a grandiose fool.”

The Admiral paused for a moment; then he must have decided that he ought to offer some arguments for his idea after all.

“I…” he began, “unlike you, I have had the time… I’ve read him from cover to cover.  And he, begging your pardon, made a total asshole of himself.  In every sense.  He made a revolution and seized power and turned Russia upside down, but what for?  Where are the things that he predicted?  Where is communism?  Why is capitalism still alive today if it had reached its final stage in his lifetime?  Shubkin tried to prove Lenin’s intelligence by saying that after the revolution he realized they gone too far and decided to make a partial return to capitalism and declared the New Economic Policy.  But isn’t it stupid to destroy something that existed in complete form in order to go back to it in partial form?  In general, I repeat, your Lenin was a grandiose fool, or a brilliant fool, I can’t even be bothered to argue about it.”

It was already late, but I took the risk of missing the last bus and asked the Admiral what he thought about Stalin.  Was he a fool too?

“No,” said the Admiral, bundling himself up in the blanket.  “Stalin was by no means a fool.  He set goals that were clear to him and achieved them very precisely.”

“But in doing so that he said – “”

“What difference does it make what he said?” the Admiral asked with a tired yawn.  “What matters is what he did.  And he always did exactly what he wanted.”

from “Monumental Propaganda” by Vladimir Voinovich

[…] I told the Admiral about my conversations with Shubkin.  I told him honestly that when I argued with Shubkin I sometimes felt that I was right, but I couldn’t prove it because he crushed me with his authority.  And the fact that he was older, and that he’d been in the camps for so long, and he knew everything.  I’d express some thought, and he’d come back with a quotation from Lenin or from Marx, or even from Hegel or Descartes.

“Tell me, the Admiral asked, breaking a single cake, “does it not seem to you that this Shubkin of yours is an absolute fool?”

“But how,” I objected in confusion, “how can I consider him a fool when he’s so learned?”

“Why, do you think learning and intelligence are the same thing?”

“Well…” I thought about it.  “Of course, if a man is learned, he has a lot of learning in his head – when he’s thinking something over, he can operate with a large quantity of data – “

“There you go!”  the Admiral broke in cheerfully.  “He can operate!  But what if he can’t?  You talk about quotations.  But has he ever told you a single idea of his own that he personally devised?”

“Why would he?” I asked.  “If he has so many good ideas invented by other people in his head, why would he need to think up his own?”

“Ah, I see, you’re also… how can I put it…?”

“You’re trying to tell me I’m a fool as well?” I put in, offended.

“No, no,” said the Admiral.  “I’m a polite person and I wouldn’t express myself so harshly in the present case, but you think it over for yourself.  The human race has already expressed so many extremely clever ideas, but does that mean we don’t need anything else?  Why are you and I sitting here thinking, and not just firing quotations at each other?  Although, believe me, I’ve got plenty of them in my head too.  And some of them are quite brilliant.  I can use some of them to corroborate my line of thought.  But it’s not possible to replace original thought with quotations.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because no thought is worth a damn unless it’s born in the head of a concrete person in concrete circumstances on the basis of his own experience as a result of is own thinking.  Perhaps,” he said with a condescending chuckle, “you should note that down as a quotation and then use it in an argument with Shubkin […]