Soviet Philosophy

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Organic Politics

Dear Taras,

I understand from the last posting at your blog and the answer you sent me for my comment yesterday below, that you experience some kind of trouble in your professional work towards Ukraine. In a Western context you are regarded a leading specialist on Ukrainian affairs, and that was why we invited you from Toronto to Oslo to give the main lecture at our seminar on Ukraine May 3-4 2004. From your reply I can tell that your last blog-posting is directed towards the Ukrainians, making use of the "living in Ukraine is a requirement to understand her"-argument, to raise a wall between you and them.

Even though I haven`t followed your extensive writing on Ukraine regularly, I`ve mentioned a certain tendency. There was this scandal around a certain minister of finance shortly after Yuschenkos inauguration, where you were a leading figure in the campaign against him, for not being able to produce the document proving that he in fact had the phd-degree he claimed to have. I remember I sent you an e-mail at this occasion, and challenged you on your persecution of the new Yuschenko-government, and got an irritated answer, that I should n`t bother to tell you what to write and not to write.

The same approach is evident in your post on Jurij Luzhkovs visit to Crimea from February 27, http://blog.taraskuzio.net/2007/02/27/why-should-we-be-surprised-that-luzhkov-does-it-again/, where you actually call for a USSR-style totalitarian banning of Luzhkov not to arrive at the Crimean peninsula, as if the mayor of Moscow was to be regarded some kind of Russian contagious disease.

It is not so hard to understand why responsible Ukrainians feel a need to distance themselves from persons pushing for such measures. To ban Luzkov from visiting Crimea would mean a major victory in the Russian-Ukrainian propaganda-war, and fuel the Russian charge that Yuschenko represent a revival of the Ukrainian fascism from WWII, which justifies the harshest counter-measures, in self-defence.

In this way you run the risk of being perceived by ordinary Ukrainians as one of the many provocateurs instigating conflict and justifying harsh counter-measures. My Crimean-tatarian wife Zeynep with whom I met in the dramatic days of the orange revolution, tells how the Crimean-tatarian leaders held to their people that they under no circumstances should give after to provocations, when they made their demonstrations in Simferopol in the end of the nineties. When we walked on the Bankova-street in Kiev at the end of the orange revolution, I was puzzled to learn that the demonstrators had made their own guard to protect the guard protecting the presidential administration. On my inquiry they explained it with the need to prevent instigating provocateurs from reaching the guard, and provoke counter-measures. I read in the Ukrainian newspapers how guards against provocateurs were established spontanously, and stumbling into one another in fulfilling their duties under the orange revolution in the streets of Kiev.

This concept of self-emerging and -regulating systems, some sort of "organic politics", is in my view the fascinating piece about the Ukrainian orange revolution, as an expression not of the raise of a people repressed by Soviet totalitarism, but a people having collectively "graduated" from the "Soviet University" with good results, and making use of their competence to provide success for themselves in the globalized village our world is rapidly shrinking into.

Best regards
Sigurd Lydersen


Taras Kuzio <@> wrote:

From: "Taras Kuzio" <@>
To:
Subject: RE: [Taras Kuzio Official Blog] Comment: "Living in Ukraine is Not a Requirement for Understanding Her"
Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2007 10:29:47 -0400

Sugurd,

I could not agree more! It's a pity not all Ukrainians see it that way.

Best wishes,
Taras

-----Original Message-----
From: @ [mailto:@]
Sent: Monday, March 19, 2007 4:52 AM
To: @
Subject: [Taras Kuzio Official Blog] Comment: "Living in Ukraine is Not a
Requirement for Understanding Her"

New comment on your post #26 "Living in Ukraine is Not a Requirement for
Understanding Her"
Author : Sigurd Lydersen (IP: 81.191.158.104 , c689EBF51.dhcp.bluecom.no)
E-mail : sigurd_lydersen@yahoo.com
URI :
http://sovietphilosophy.blogspot.com/2005/05/meaning-of-soviet-philosophy.ht
ml
Whois : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=81.191.158.104
Comment:
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 globalized world not only to
learn about the other, but also to understand our self.

Thanks, Taras!

Best regards
Sigurd Lydersen, Oslo, Norway
sigurd_lydersen@yahoo.com
http://sovietphilosophy.blogspot.com/2005/05/meaning-of-soviet-philosophy.ht
ml

You can see all comments on this post here:
http://blog.taraskuzio.net/2007/03/12/living-in-ukraine-is-not-a-requirement
-for-understanding-her/#comments


To delete this comment, visit:
http://blog.taraskuzio.net/wp-admin/post.php?action=confirmdeletecomment&p=2
6&comment=4400

vladkuz wrote:
Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2007 11:07:41 +0200
From: vladkuz
To: sigurd lydersen
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 wrote:

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 and other Ukrainian democratic patriots. 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 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, represented by my master-dissertation of 1999. I`m curious to explore the possibilites of such a cooperation, providing Ukrainian philosophers like your self a better chance to reach out for a western public, and act as the intermediary of western and post-Soviet philosophy. I realize from your comment that Ukrainian philosophers possible have another personal interest in such an integration than your more self-sufficient Russian colleges, answering to a political regime which tends 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 by your little, but telling comment, Vlad, which I suppose is the true Vladimir Ivanovich Kuznecov, and no provocateur. If you are a provocateur, you are surely 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..

https://www2.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=12590920&postID=111505300059714826

Best regards
Sigurd Lydersen, Oslo, Norway


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now that's room service! Choose from over 150,000 hotels
in 45,000 destinations on Yahoo! Travel to find your fit.