The Meaning of Soviet Philosophy
Dear all,
The intention of this blog is to introduce to a wider audience and invite for a discussion on the heritage of the unknown tradition of Soviet Philosophy in todays rapidly evolving world. One of the most paradoxical facts related to the Cold War is the total ignorance of Western academics of the intellectual development in the Soviet Union after the Second World War. This fact got evident to me during the work on my thesis "The Reception of Western Postpositivism in The Soviet Union. The Dissolution of Marxism-Leninism from Within" which was successfully defended at the University of Oslo, Norway in the autumn of 1999. The western research in this Soviet development showed extremely scarce. The monograph "Science, Philosophy and Human Behavior in the Soviet Union" by the Boston-based American scholar Loren Graham from 1987, remains one of very few western academic openings to the internal philosophical development in the Soviet Union during the Cold war. The Sovietological School of the Catholic Father Joseph M. Bochenskij and the quarterly Studies in Soviet Thought represented the resistance of the Catolich church against the Soviet challenge, but also opened up for a more symphatetic attitude towards Soviet ideology as, in their view, a failed atheistic religion. This openess was made use of by the Soviet philosopher in US-exile David B. Zilberman, when his general analysis of Soviet society "The postsociological society" was printed in the journal posthumously in 1978. Zilberman, who died shortly before in a car-accident in Boston, presented the methodological turn in postwar marxist thought as a major achievement in modern philosophy, making the true role of marxism in late Soviet society invisible to westerners and also to the Soviets themselves. The most important development of Marxism in the postwar period took place neither in Frankfurt nor in Paris, but in Moscow, he claimed.
Zilberman explains: "Perhaps a radical change of culture, plus reassesments from a "displaced position" can be particularly helpful in finding these latent regularitites. For instance, the author of this study always was very far from Marxism. I deliberately (perhaps a bit snobbishly) tried to ignore Marxism. When I was living in the USSR, it never could have come to my mind to consider Marx seriously as a social theorist of living relevance. For me it was a matter of principle not to quote Marx at all in my dissertation which contained a critical analysis of practically all prominent social theorists. Perhaps I did not even feel the above phenomenon properly: as a body does not normally feel the pressure of the surrounding atmosphere. But, after coming to the West and thus aquiring an "external purchase", it did not take me long to understand two basic things. First, that Soviet Marxism is very much alive and creative, even though it speaks different languages and thinks about non-conventional subjects. Second, that Soviet Marxism has developed important symbolic qualities and thereby changed from a normatively imposed formal system of ideology (not unlike the normatively enforced system of formal law in the US) to a somewhat informal system of culture (not unlike those based on custom and tradition)." (End of quote.)
This charachter of Soviet intellectual life should be widely recognized by western specialists on the former Soviet Union. The Western relation towards Soviet Union during the Cold war was highly politicized. An open and symphatetic attitude towards the Soviet project was suspicious in the eyes of rank and file western anticommunists. On the other hand the KGB and the Soviet regime was overeager to make use of any signs of sympathy, making it hard for open western scholars to pursue a truly balanced position. The loosening up in the eighties and the end of the powermonopoly of the Soviet Communist Party was a necessary precondition to ease relations between east and west. Unfortunately, the development since the fall of the Soviet Union has not been particularly favourable for a the necessary grand scale information-exchange between the former antagonistic blocs. The economic superiour Western countries has made use of their power to impose their prejudices on the former Soviet Union. This means that the Western countries should take a large part of the responsibility for the harsh brutalizing of former Soviet Society, related to the privatization of former state property, the destruction of the public sector and the deprivation of social and economic rights of the former Soviet population.
In my view, the democratic movement in the former Soviet Union, now in control of power in the second largest of the former Soviet republics Ukraine, Georgia and Kirgistan and pressing the neototalitarian regime in Russia and elsewhere, represents a confirmation of the insight of David B. Zilberman. Zilberman in many ways foresaw todays development in the former Soviet Union, when he wrote: "As a feedback from "ideational isolationism", the Soviet population will keep the idealized picture of the West. That is why, if one day all the ideological barriers were broken down, many would perhaps be disappointed - that is how the principle of "future reliability" works. Some critical symptoms of this kind are revealed by the unsuccessfull dissident movement and by the limited emigration from the USSR. These two "social experiments" turn out to be rather eufunctional for the system, as they actually trigger the process of formation of the "new historical community" and thereby contribute to the development of the corresponding "metamorphosis" of mass consciousness. Perhaps never before in all its history has the country been heading so quickly toward a congruence between power-structure and subjective public feelings."
"The congruence of power-structure and subjective public feelings" anticipated by Zilberman was manifested by the millions enforcing the orange revolution and bringing forth Viktor Jushchenko as the new president of Ukraine. Zilbermans insight show this development to be first and foremost a postsoviet phenomenon, made possible through the liberalizing effort by Soviet philosophers throughout the post-war era. These philosophical circles belongs to the Soviet equivalent of the Western generation of 68, and are still in full activity in research institutes all over the former Soviet Union. During my two stays in Moscow for fieldwork on my dissertation I made contact with several representatives of this, for us, unknown philosophical tradition. I would like to mention in special todays director of the Institute of philosophy of the Russian academy of sciences, Vjacheslav Semenovich Stepin, as an oustanding representative of Soviet philosophy. Stepin is originally from Minsk in Belorussia, where he as a young scholar started his methodological inquiries in close cooperation with the most advanced Belorussian nuclear scientists. Stepin is an typical advocate of the Soviet strive to bridge postpositivist relativism and the belief in rationality, and has developed a complex model of scientific activity in a historical perspective. In his last book, the monumental study "Scientific theory" from 2000, Stepin even argues for the possibility of a unified scientific theory bridging the gap between the humanitarian and the natural sciences, known as the science wars. This synthetical approach and awareness of the necessity of wholeness in science, stressed by the controversial western epistemologist Michael Polanyj in the 60ties, is typical for the Soviet philosophical effort, and makes it an important corrective to postmodern fragmentary western philosopy, still under the spell of logical positivism.
Stepin may in fact be seen as a leading charachter within the philosophical movement known as critical rationalism, connected to western capacities like Karl R. Popper, Thomas Kuhn, Imre Lakatos and Paul Feyerabend. If Stepins works were available in english he would for sure have had a broad audience in the West. Like Popper and Feyerabend he has shown eager, when it got possible after the liberalizationprocess, to transfer his philosophical insights to the general debates of political and social issues. His little pamphflet "The Epoch of Changes and Scenarios for the Future" from 1996 is an enlightening discussion of the relevance of the Marxist and Soviet philosophical heritage under the new circumstances: "There exists a lot of primitive conclusions and myths regarding the history of Soviet philosophy. For instance, it is held, that since philosophy was under hard ideological control, it represented a dogmatic form of Marxism. Further it is presupposed, that nothing new or of interest could appear in the frames of such a dogmatic and ideologized philosophy. The whole Soviet period is conceived nothing but a mess, a cleavage from the worlds philosophical thought, out of which we need a long time to crawl. This construction of myths in regard of our philosophy is one of the ideological components of the pesudodemocratizm, which is charachterized by a primitive inversion of the perspective on the Soviet past, making the achievements of yesterday appear as failures. "
- Those who in the Soviet era proclaimed "the one and only correct philosophy of dialectical materialism" and the crisis of western philosophy, while drawing both ideas and texts from the very western philosophy unregarding quotes or notes, today cry out the critical state of Russian philosophy, Stepin pointed out in his pamphlet of 1996, presenting a criticism of postsoviet Russian reality only to have become even more justified under todays truly pseudeodemocratic regime of the authoritarian Russian president Vladimir Putin.
The insight of Zilberman, confirmed by Stepin as one of the most outstanding representatives of Soviet philosophy, shows Soviet philosophy, not CIA, to be a leading moving force of the democraticationsprocess of the former Soviet Union.
This blog is intended for networkbuilding and cooperation of Soviet philosophers all over the world, for our blessed cause of realizing a democratic and sustainable future.
Lets rock!
Best regards
Sigurd Lydersen
The intention of this blog is to introduce to a wider audience and invite for a discussion on the heritage of the unknown tradition of Soviet Philosophy in todays rapidly evolving world. One of the most paradoxical facts related to the Cold War is the total ignorance of Western academics of the intellectual development in the Soviet Union after the Second World War. This fact got evident to me during the work on my thesis "The Reception of Western Postpositivism in The Soviet Union. The Dissolution of Marxism-Leninism from Within" which was successfully defended at the University of Oslo, Norway in the autumn of 1999. The western research in this Soviet development showed extremely scarce. The monograph "Science, Philosophy and Human Behavior in the Soviet Union" by the Boston-based American scholar Loren Graham from 1987, remains one of very few western academic openings to the internal philosophical development in the Soviet Union during the Cold war. The Sovietological School of the Catholic Father Joseph M. Bochenskij and the quarterly Studies in Soviet Thought represented the resistance of the Catolich church against the Soviet challenge, but also opened up for a more symphatetic attitude towards Soviet ideology as, in their view, a failed atheistic religion. This openess was made use of by the Soviet philosopher in US-exile David B. Zilberman, when his general analysis of Soviet society "The postsociological society" was printed in the journal posthumously in 1978. Zilberman, who died shortly before in a car-accident in Boston, presented the methodological turn in postwar marxist thought as a major achievement in modern philosophy, making the true role of marxism in late Soviet society invisible to westerners and also to the Soviets themselves. The most important development of Marxism in the postwar period took place neither in Frankfurt nor in Paris, but in Moscow, he claimed.
Zilberman explains: "Perhaps a radical change of culture, plus reassesments from a "displaced position" can be particularly helpful in finding these latent regularitites. For instance, the author of this study always was very far from Marxism. I deliberately (perhaps a bit snobbishly) tried to ignore Marxism. When I was living in the USSR, it never could have come to my mind to consider Marx seriously as a social theorist of living relevance. For me it was a matter of principle not to quote Marx at all in my dissertation which contained a critical analysis of practically all prominent social theorists. Perhaps I did not even feel the above phenomenon properly: as a body does not normally feel the pressure of the surrounding atmosphere. But, after coming to the West and thus aquiring an "external purchase", it did not take me long to understand two basic things. First, that Soviet Marxism is very much alive and creative, even though it speaks different languages and thinks about non-conventional subjects. Second, that Soviet Marxism has developed important symbolic qualities and thereby changed from a normatively imposed formal system of ideology (not unlike the normatively enforced system of formal law in the US) to a somewhat informal system of culture (not unlike those based on custom and tradition)." (End of quote.)
This charachter of Soviet intellectual life should be widely recognized by western specialists on the former Soviet Union. The Western relation towards Soviet Union during the Cold war was highly politicized. An open and symphatetic attitude towards the Soviet project was suspicious in the eyes of rank and file western anticommunists. On the other hand the KGB and the Soviet regime was overeager to make use of any signs of sympathy, making it hard for open western scholars to pursue a truly balanced position. The loosening up in the eighties and the end of the powermonopoly of the Soviet Communist Party was a necessary precondition to ease relations between east and west. Unfortunately, the development since the fall of the Soviet Union has not been particularly favourable for a the necessary grand scale information-exchange between the former antagonistic blocs. The economic superiour Western countries has made use of their power to impose their prejudices on the former Soviet Union. This means that the Western countries should take a large part of the responsibility for the harsh brutalizing of former Soviet Society, related to the privatization of former state property, the destruction of the public sector and the deprivation of social and economic rights of the former Soviet population.
In my view, the democratic movement in the former Soviet Union, now in control of power in the second largest of the former Soviet republics Ukraine, Georgia and Kirgistan and pressing the neototalitarian regime in Russia and elsewhere, represents a confirmation of the insight of David B. Zilberman. Zilberman in many ways foresaw todays development in the former Soviet Union, when he wrote: "As a feedback from "ideational isolationism", the Soviet population will keep the idealized picture of the West. That is why, if one day all the ideological barriers were broken down, many would perhaps be disappointed - that is how the principle of "future reliability" works. Some critical symptoms of this kind are revealed by the unsuccessfull dissident movement and by the limited emigration from the USSR. These two "social experiments" turn out to be rather eufunctional for the system, as they actually trigger the process of formation of the "new historical community" and thereby contribute to the development of the corresponding "metamorphosis" of mass consciousness. Perhaps never before in all its history has the country been heading so quickly toward a congruence between power-structure and subjective public feelings."
"The congruence of power-structure and subjective public feelings" anticipated by Zilberman was manifested by the millions enforcing the orange revolution and bringing forth Viktor Jushchenko as the new president of Ukraine. Zilbermans insight show this development to be first and foremost a postsoviet phenomenon, made possible through the liberalizing effort by Soviet philosophers throughout the post-war era. These philosophical circles belongs to the Soviet equivalent of the Western generation of 68, and are still in full activity in research institutes all over the former Soviet Union. During my two stays in Moscow for fieldwork on my dissertation I made contact with several representatives of this, for us, unknown philosophical tradition. I would like to mention in special todays director of the Institute of philosophy of the Russian academy of sciences, Vjacheslav Semenovich Stepin, as an oustanding representative of Soviet philosophy. Stepin is originally from Minsk in Belorussia, where he as a young scholar started his methodological inquiries in close cooperation with the most advanced Belorussian nuclear scientists. Stepin is an typical advocate of the Soviet strive to bridge postpositivist relativism and the belief in rationality, and has developed a complex model of scientific activity in a historical perspective. In his last book, the monumental study "Scientific theory" from 2000, Stepin even argues for the possibility of a unified scientific theory bridging the gap between the humanitarian and the natural sciences, known as the science wars. This synthetical approach and awareness of the necessity of wholeness in science, stressed by the controversial western epistemologist Michael Polanyj in the 60ties, is typical for the Soviet philosophical effort, and makes it an important corrective to postmodern fragmentary western philosopy, still under the spell of logical positivism.
Stepin may in fact be seen as a leading charachter within the philosophical movement known as critical rationalism, connected to western capacities like Karl R. Popper, Thomas Kuhn, Imre Lakatos and Paul Feyerabend. If Stepins works were available in english he would for sure have had a broad audience in the West. Like Popper and Feyerabend he has shown eager, when it got possible after the liberalizationprocess, to transfer his philosophical insights to the general debates of political and social issues. His little pamphflet "The Epoch of Changes and Scenarios for the Future" from 1996 is an enlightening discussion of the relevance of the Marxist and Soviet philosophical heritage under the new circumstances: "There exists a lot of primitive conclusions and myths regarding the history of Soviet philosophy. For instance, it is held, that since philosophy was under hard ideological control, it represented a dogmatic form of Marxism. Further it is presupposed, that nothing new or of interest could appear in the frames of such a dogmatic and ideologized philosophy. The whole Soviet period is conceived nothing but a mess, a cleavage from the worlds philosophical thought, out of which we need a long time to crawl. This construction of myths in regard of our philosophy is one of the ideological components of the pesudodemocratizm, which is charachterized by a primitive inversion of the perspective on the Soviet past, making the achievements of yesterday appear as failures. "
- Those who in the Soviet era proclaimed "the one and only correct philosophy of dialectical materialism" and the crisis of western philosophy, while drawing both ideas and texts from the very western philosophy unregarding quotes or notes, today cry out the critical state of Russian philosophy, Stepin pointed out in his pamphlet of 1996, presenting a criticism of postsoviet Russian reality only to have become even more justified under todays truly pseudeodemocratic regime of the authoritarian Russian president Vladimir Putin.
The insight of Zilberman, confirmed by Stepin as one of the most outstanding representatives of Soviet philosophy, shows Soviet philosophy, not CIA, to be a leading moving force of the democraticationsprocess of the former Soviet Union.
This blog is intended for networkbuilding and cooperation of Soviet philosophers all over the world, for our blessed cause of realizing a democratic and sustainable future.
Lets rock!
Best regards
Sigurd Lydersen
posted by Sigurd Lydersen at
4:15 AM
4 Comments:
Dear Sigurd:
It seems to me that speaking on Soviet Philosophy it is necessary not making identification of Soviet Philosophy and Moscow-centered philosophy. This is a common failure of all Western authors who write on this theme.
Vlad
www.kuz.org.ua
By
vlad, at 12:56 AM
Dear professor Vladimir Kuznecov at Institute of philosophy of the National Academy Of Sciences of Ukraine,
Finally I found your comment for my introduction on the Soviet heritage of philosophy at my blog dedicated for it: http://sovietphilosophy.blogspot.com/2005/05/meaning-of-soviet-philosophy.html. From the empty blog established for the purpose of leaving the comment, I can tell that you wrote it in december. I realize now that I should have left my contact-info at the blog, as I am to be reached directly at my e-mail sigurd_lydersen@yahoo.com, or by cell-phone + 47 99 25 84 17 or home-phone +47 21 39 74 72.
I hope you accept my sincere apologies for not replying for your comment before, Vlad, as I do not check the blog regularly for rare comments, and I stumbled upon this one only by coincident. Checking out your home-page at http://www.kuz.org.ua/eindex.htm, I`m overwhelmed to realize with whom I`m dealing, and most grateful and humble for the interest you have payed for my blog on Soviet philosophy. I regard your comment not only a greeting and and aknowledgement from a Ukrainian professional college, but also the great institution which you represent, the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.
The bias you points out towards Moscow-centered philosophers in my and other western authors approach to this Soviet intellectual history, corresponds with the general impression I got while dealing with Ukrainian authors in front of the socalled orange revolution. The Ukrainian writer and journalist and at that time secretary of the National Ukrainian Writers Union (NSPU) Oleksandr Mikhajljuta, with whom I got connected under a visit in Kiev in april 2003 as a representative of a Norwegian authors union, made me aware of the Moscow-centered bias of western correspondents on the general political development, which I did my best from my position back in Norway to compensate for, by serving as a channel for mr. Mikhajljuta. Under my stay in Ukraine from July to December 2004, I did not pursue my professional interest in the Soviet heritage of philosophy at the educational and research institutions, not to complicate the already complex situation further, as my main ambition was to attract Norwegian-western attention to the Ukrainian decisive development, which I hard a hard time to succeed with, of course, with few supporters back home in Norway.
After the wedding with my crimean-tatarian Zeynep in Crimea November 26. 2005, I made use of the week in Kiev to settle the visa for her arrival with me in Norway, to finally pay a visit to the University of Taras Schevchenko and its philosophical department. Showing up without notice, I got a nice chat with deputy director Bugrov, who checked me out by claiming that Soviet philosophy was well-known to western colleges from the book by Loren Graham from 87, of which I`m quite familiar and had the chance to meet with Graham in Oslo the autumn of 99. - One bird does not make a summer, I held to Bugrov, and he loosened up and told about the great number of Ukrainian philosophers pursuing a Soviet agenda at the department, and the rater low regard of western guest-lecturers, deaf and blind of the Soviet development and background, and presenting very little new.
To hold this openly to the western guest-lecturers would be unpolite, and remove the Ukrainians of one of the few western academic contacts, while the need is to develop and strenghten such contacts. In this regard I find it extremely interesting to learn from your homepage that you are the translator of the text-book of my old professors Gunnar Skirbekk and Nils Gilje at the University of Bergen. I`m familiar with this translation from my former occupation in the service of Norwegian authors, and am professionally curious about how it emerged, and why. Professor Gunnar Skirbekk was the first one I made my suggestion of a master-dissertation on the Soviet philosophical development for in the autumn of 96, where he showed rather critical and reluctant to what I proposed, doubting my ability to carry such a project through. I`m happy today to have proved this ability, as my dissertation was finished at the University of Oslo three years later, and is constanly lended out from the University-library by readers curious about my findings and conclutions: http://ask.bibsys.no/ask/action/show;jsessionid=0000MkM9EFR_vT1EypoL01mYNrC:116t9p56j?pid=000083801&kid=biblio
Stumpling over your comment from Kiev, Vlad, challenging for a widening of the approach from Moscow-centered philosophy, as the first comment ever on my blog dedicated soviet philosophy, causes some reflections. Given an inner national rivalry in the field of post-Soviet philosophy, as a reflection of the general political situation, the National Academy Of Sciences of Ukraine suddenly to me seems as a very interesting institution to cooperate closer with in the necessary integration of post-Soviet and western philosophy, of which my master-dissertation of 1999 represent. I`m curious to explore the possibilites of such a cooperation, providing Ukrainian philosophers like your self a chance to reach out for a much wider public, and act as the intermediary of western and post-Soviet philosophy. I realize from your comment that Ukrainian philosophers have quite another personal interest in such an integration than your more self-sufficient Russian colleges, answering to a political regime which shows more and more hostile to the west, in the old Soviet manner, and which has a certain interest in reviving the cold war of yesterday, to maintain the virtues of "peace and stability".
Such thoughts are provoked in me from your little, but telling comment, Vlad, which I suppose is the true Valdimir Ivanovich Kuznecov, and no provocateur. If you are a provocateur, you are really an advanced one, which I owe one, for this timely reminder.
Hope to hear from you, and my best greetings for you, your family, colleges and friends over in Ukraine, my second home-land. To learn more about me, please contact my Ukrainian friends Oleksandr Mikhajljuta on his cellular phone 8050 6915653, or the head of the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine Igor Lubchenko on his office-number 234 52 09.
I hope for and am looking forward to hear from you again, by e-mail, Vlad. I forward this answer of mine for Skirbekk and other relevant Norwegian professionals, professor Andrej Maidansky at the University of Taganrog, who has contacted me regarding our common interest in Evald Ilenkov, and Mikhajljuta and his translator, and the Helsinki 90-group, which appointed me their Norwegian representative the week in Kiev back in December 2005, but of which I haven`t heard anything since then. The former head of Helsinki 90, my great friend Jurij Murasjov, an ardent Ukrainian patriot and teacher, was killed by a car while walking on a pavement in Podil in early September 2005, which weakened the whole democratic structure in the defense of Human rights in Ukraine seriously, leaving unexperienced youngsters, his former students, behind.
So the struggle for democracy and human rights continues, in Ukraine as elsewhere, with Norway as no exception..
Best regards
Sigurd Lydersen, Oslo, Norway
By
Sigurd Lydersen, at 11:44 AM
Dear Vlad,
Thanks for your rapid answer, where you make the question:
"From the list of addressees of your letter I concluded, that there is a group of Western and East scholars that wish to study the history of Soviet philosophy. Am I right?"
- To my mind, this field of study is highly important not only for historians and philosophers, but also for policymakers in the former USSR and the West. Negative experience is experience too, you write. I do perfectly agree with you, and that is why I established my blog on this theme back in May 2005, which you are the first one to leave a qualified comment on, back in December 2006, which I found and answered only yesterday.
As I explained yesterday, my primary concern during my stay in Ukraine from July to December 2004 was to attract the attention of the general Norwegian public to the struggle of the Ukrainians for their dignity and rights, not to become a slave-pool for rich western Europe, and europeanized Russia. In my naive view this perspective would easily catch many followers, to make my Ukrainian enterprise popular and successfull, as I`m in conduct of the arguments and the know-how of how to present them in an interesting and even funny way, as a writer. But "terrible situation in the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine" you mention and crisises elsewhere is not a result of the lack of men and women like my self in conduct of the argument and with the will to spread it. It is a result of heavy structural failures, and of power-apparatuses on both sides of the former Iron curtain with the will to defend their positions by any means, and with the means to do so.
I`ve written extensively on the harsh repression I was faced with when returning from Ukraine and the orange revolution in December 2004 in a letter for my Ukrainian friends one year ago, and published on my Soviet philosophy-blog:
http://sovietphilosophy.blogspot.com/2006/04/blog-post.html
The protection against my argument the Norwegian cold-war-regime found in a totalitarian paragraph of the Norwegian criminal codex from the harsh 50ties, making it a criminal offense to pose "peace-disturbances" felt by someone to be "scaring, painful or ruthless" and violating their "private peace". Following the development in Ukraine, in Ukraine, the summer and autumn of 2004, some female police attorney at the Oslo police found reason to fine me NOK 8000, about 1000 euros, for my "peacedisturbances" against two persons in the leadership of my NGO The Norwegian Peace Association. Obviously the lady felt, confronted with the "evidence-material", that the alternative of persecuting me was to pay allegiance to my radical views, and risk repercussions herself, if she ran the risk of taking me under her protection, so that the witch-hunt went on, with the very Oslo-police enlisted.
This case displays in a nutshell the tragedy of western liberal democracies, with a basic notion of individual autonomity which is wildly utopian, and in fact a remnant from our not to far ago medieval religious notion of reality.
Unfortunately the persons on my e-mail-list does not yet constitute any "a group of Western and East scholars that wish to study the history of Soviet philosophy", but you are perfectly right that by putting the persons on my e-mail list I relate to them as if they constituted such a group, to make them aware of our little "chat", and the possibilites embedded in Norwegian-Ukrainian mutual approach.
Your nice answer for me, is a powerful demonstrations for the rest of the "group" that I am not primarily an evil and mad "peacedisturber", or "terrorist" if you want, but a rather serious and professional scholar, who should not be generally despised and unemployed, but do his job for a normal salary at the University of Oslo, to provide my pregnant wife and the daughter we are expecting at April 10.
Gunnar Skirbekk and his Norwegian colleges still have great doubts about me and my abilites, you see. May be you can help explain them who I really are, as I`ve done my best to explain who you are ?
Hope so! I read and write Russian well and am of course greatly interested in all sort of information you can provide me, especially on the state of affairs of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. For an updated introduction for my great interest in the history of soviet philosophy, see the description for a Phd-project, with your predecessor Ivan Vladimirovich Kuznecov in a central role, as a philosopher of a far greater importance than sir Karl Popper, in my view.
This is dynamite!
Best regards
Sigurd Lydersen, Oslo, Norway
vladkuz vladkuz@mail.itua.net wrote:
Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2007 11:07:41 +0200
From: vladkuz vladkuz@mail.itua.net
To: sigurd lydersen sigurd_lydersen@yahoo.com
Subject: Kuznetsov190307
Dear Sigurd:
Thank you very much for your kind message. “Better late than never”.
I was also proven again and again that our world is too small and we are all home-folks. Let me mention only Gunnar Skirbekk, your wife and your participation in so called Orange revolution. Maybe we met at Independence square those days! Maybe I could find your face in my video!
Are you still interesting in studies of Soviet and post-Soviet Philosophy in particular and science in general?
From the list of addressees of your letter I concluded, that there is a group of Western and East scholars that wish to study the history of Soviet philosophy. Am I right?
To my mind, this field of study is highly important not only for historians and philosophers, but also for policymakers in the former USSR and the West. Negative experience is experience too.
Ironically, there is (at least in Ukraine) no wish and resources to write the TRUE history of philosophy/science in the former USSR and post-USSR and even analyze the present state.
I tried to get your dissertation. I am sorry, I do not know any Norwegian languages.
Do you read Russian and/or Ukrainian? I can send to you some my papers. Papers on philosophy are written mainly in Russian and English, those on terrible situation in the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine – in Ukrainian. I hope that your wife can read Ukrainian.
With best wishes,
Vlad
sigurd lydersen sigurd_lydersen@yahoo.com wrote:
The Explosive Internet
Understanding Ukraine..
In fact in our globalized world distance sometimes may be the requirement for a full understanding, to better grasp the whole of the process, and not get drowned in details.
Ukrainians living in Norway, for instance, get a perspective on Norwegian society, which ordinary Norwegians living in Norway are blindfolded of, because they may compare Norwegian reality to their own Ukrainian, and get culturally open and sensitive.
The same goes for you and me travelling to Ukraine, with our western background, which ordinary Ukrainians lack, and compensate by guessing and idealizing. That`s why we need each other in a globalized world not only to learn about the other, but also to understand our self.
Thanks, Taras!
http://blog.taraskuzio.net/2007/03/12/living-in-ukraine-is-not-a-requirement-for-understanding-her/
Best regards
Sigurd Lydersen, Oslo, Norway
sigurd_lydersen@yahoo.com
http://sovietphilosophy.blogspot.com/2005/05/meaning-of-soviet-philosophy.html
By
Sigurd Lydersen, at 3:20 AM
http://sovietphilosophy.blogspot.com/2005/05/liberalizing-effect-of-soviet.html
By
Sigurd Lydersen, at 3:24 AM
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