[253] In this case there simply would be nobody who supports them among the members of society, and the relics would become «fossils», not subcultures which continue to exist.
This, in particular, can be said of gypsies one of the characteristic traits of whose culture is parasitism on the non-gypsy society which they live in. This quality of gypsy culture has even originated a special verb in the Russian language — «vytsyganit’» (from «tsygan» — gypsy) meaning to persuade, to induce somebody to give something as a «present» despite his own intentions.
[254] Even if the native people of a culture disappear completely, viable «relics» cannot be destroyed. It is demonstrated by the interest to reconstruct the culture of pre-Columbian American civilization, as well as by the «game» of Indians (including movies) some white Americans play in. The result of those games is that the culture of the native people of those lands still exist as a relic pointing out to Americans the defectiveness and viciousness of their own culture in various aspects.
[255] The issue of forming an artistic taste is important, but essentially it comes to two points. First, how is the rejecting of some artistic styles and ability of enjoying others cultivated. Second, what consequences of such cultivated aversion to some styles and works and enjoying other styles and works will there be for society
[256] This is a qualitative transformation of society, its impact on daily life and its consequences being by far greater than those of introducing computer and Internet technologies which process we are witnesses and participants of today.
Opponents may say that the government of Nicholas II worked out a program that provided for eliminating illiteracy by 1920. Yet, they would say, World War I, the revolution and the Civil War impeded its realization. Such opponents should know that, first, Russia had no reasons to enter that war — it was to continue the peaceful policy of P. Stolypin, and there would be neither a revolution, nor a Civil War; second, it was as far back as Alexander III who had a chance of issuing a decree on eliminating illiteracy and developing popular schooling instead of issuing a decree about «the cook’s children» which denied access to education for common people. If accompanied by righteous internal policy, this could create a personnel reserve of people loyal to the state who could resolve the problem of social development of the multinational Russian civilization by way of reform and not by way of a revolutionary upheaval.
[257] Many people got the opportunity of verifying this statement by their own experience and the experience of their children and grand-children after the bourgeois reformers came to power.
[258] Even in the 1970-s when diplomas of most Soviet universities and colleges were not recognized in advanced capitalist countries, the graduates of our universities were superior to foreign graduates in the field of fundamental education allowing them to easily master the applied factual material which has always been serving (with minor exceptions) as the basis of the entire Western system of higher professional education.
Our diplomas were not recognized in the West due to two factors. First, the applied factual material necessary for working in the USSR and in the West was different. Second, due to the closed nature of Western professional corporations.
That our system of education whose principles had not changed since the times of Stalin was better than the Western one even at the end of «zastoy» (stagnation) can be proven by the fact that graduates of Soviet colleges take up a disproportionately large share among the theoretical physicists, chemists and programmers of the USA. Our graduates were taught not how to do things, they learned how things are interconnected in nature and technology, and this fundamental knowledge allowed them when necessary to answer the question of how to do things on their own, thereby resolving applied problems.
[259] Russia will spend many decades to overcome the consequences of that perversion.
[260] The conflict of worldviews called «physicists and lyric poets» (natural scientists, engineers and those educated in the humanities) sprung up in the late 1950-s — early 1960-s and was one of the late expressions of that discord. Yet the name given to that conflict is inaccurate: making natural sciences, called «physics», the object of the «lyric poets» criticism, this name helped the philosophy prevailing in educated circles escape that criticism, though it is philosophy which is in any epoch the source of methods and accomplishments of natural sciences.
[261] Proof of this statement is provided in the following works by Internal Predictor of the USSR: “The Small House in Kolomna” (a comment on the story of the same name by A. Pushkin), “Ruslan and Lyudmila” (How the state of Russian people and the peoples of the USSR developed and came into being in the course of the global historic process, expressed by means of imagery belonging to the First Russia’s Poet A. Pushkin), “Copper Horseman is Something Different from the Copper Snake…”, “«Master and Margaret»: a Hymn to Demonism? Or the Gospel of the Covenantless Faith”.
[262] They all share the spirit of despair and insolubility of social problems considered by the authors because those problems themselves are created by the unnatural Biblical culture which the authors could not rid themselves of. This is the very reason why they are attributed to the nihilistic cultural movement.
They have no «positive hero» whom contemporaries could imitate and thereby arrive at the future happiness of the society. The fates of all characters from Chatsky, Onegin, and Pechorin to Bazarov and Dostoyevsky’s heroes are warnings, saying: do not follow them but look for other ways to shape your destiny and the destiny of the society.
[263] The name of the movement is derived from «future». It shows that V. Mayakovsky looked for the way to the bright future and was not an advocate of avant-gardism as such which is permanently nihilistic and therefore useless to society. In most cases avant-gardism can be characterized by a joke:
— Art should be useful…
— Useful for people?
— No, for the artist.
V. Mayakovsky cared for people’s happiness, not for becoming a well-to-do businessman who fools the fastidious bourgeois and empties their pockets, like one of the 20th centuries best-known avant-gardists — Pablo Picasso — once confessed.
[264] Russian association of proletarian writers.
[265] The opposition to the bureaucratic regimes and socialist ideals continued to express itself artistically in nihilistic avant-gardism in the post-1953 times. The so-called «Bulldozed exhibition» of the Khrushchev period was aimed directly at stimulating this artistic movement.
But nihilism is barren, as the history of post-1985 artistic development in Russia demonstrated. It is barren in the following sense: in the Soviet era every work of art was aimed at expressing some kind of idea. Nihilistic avant-gardism is devoid of ideas. Or, more precisely, it has only one idea — permissiveness of instinctive manifestations. But instincts are the same for everyone, and perversions of instincts bring nothing new: they remain to be instincts under different covers and nothing else. Most «discoveries» of the avant-gardism of the late 20th century repeat the perversions of Russian pre-revolutionary decadence. The only difference lies in applying modern technical achievements that were not known in those times.