Satirists From Russia

"La grande rupture - sociologie d'un monde bouleversé, Alexandre Zinoviev (trad. Slobodan Despot), éd. Éditions l'Âge d'Homme"

"The mechanism of financial totalitarianism is constituted by the giant financial system of society, which is now conditioned above all by the infinite number of financial exchanges extending over all aspects of human life and society as a whole, including everything connected with capitalism."

"The income of the financial mechanism does not come from the exploitation of wage earners: the individuals who are part of it receive their wages without producing anything. They are servants of a government apparatus similar to that of the state. [...] In reality, its type of financing is similar to that of the state, which produces nothing. It takes the tribute of those it serves, that is to say, that it exploits."

"the end of communism also marked the end of democracy, our era today is not only post-communist, it is also post-democratic. Today we are witnessing the establishment of democratic totalitarianism, or if you prefer, the establishment of totalitarian democracy."

"Communist totalitarianism was sensitive to criticism from the West, and the West was also influenced by communism, particularly through its communist parties. Today we live in a world dominated by a single ideology, a single fact, by a single globalist party."

"Totalitarianism is spreading everywhere because the supranational structure imposes its law on nations. This non-democratic super structure gives orders, sanctions, bombs, and starves."

"Financial totalitarianism has subjugated the political powers. Financial totalitarianism is cold. It knows neither pity nor feelings. Political dictatorships are pitiful compared to this totalitarianism. A certain resistance was possible within the hardest dictatorships, no revolt is possible against a bank."

"Democratic totalitarianism and financial dictatorship exclude social revolution."

"La Suprasociété globale et la Russie, Alexandre Zinoviev (trad. Gérard Conio), éd. L'Age d'Homme, 2000"

"Concrete historical processes are always a mixture of two types of processes: 1) the spontaneous, unplanned and undirected type; 2) the conscious and volitional, planned and directed type. Their proportions and roles vary within certain limits. When the second type is dominant, the whole process is, for the most part, planned (programmed) and directed, although some of its components remain unplanned and undirected."

"In order to describe a spontaneous historical process, one must appeal to dialectics. To describe conscious-voluntary processes, another methodological apparatus must be used. In this case it is indispensable to know what the social plans (projects) are; how and why they are decided, how they are realized, how, by what means and according to what rules, the social management of people is practiced. This is not in contradiction with the dialectic, it is another orientation of the study of social objects."

"... in the social tragedy the judge pronounces a verdict against the victim."

"... Russia has made a breach in the world evolutionary process, discovering a new direction of social evolution, qualitatively different from the Western direction. On this way Russia has achieved colossal successes. It has found the solution to the most fundamental social problems, in principle unsolvable in the Western way. It has become a real communist competitor to the Western variant of human evolution."

"... the masters of the global supra-society continue Hitler's work, but using the much more powerful means of contemporary science and masking their aims under the label of democracy."

"We can consider that the era we have just entered is not only post-communist but also post-democratic."

"... as far as the conquests of science are concerned, they are the foundation on which an obscurantism flourishes, with which the obscurantism of the Middle Ages pales in comparison."

"It follows that, to make a communist country, it is not enough to take power, collectivize the economy or impose a state ideology. We need deeper transformations, namely: organizing the masses differently, in accordance with community laws to which all aspects of life must be subject. (…) p. 14-16"

"[...] literature plays a sort of ideological role; it instills in men perspectives of humanity. p. 132"

"There is a sociological law according to which systems which have contact end up looking alike... p. 138 and 144"

"I am not for any ideology, I am for Man, for the Human being with a capital H, I am neither for socialism, nor for communism, nor for capitalism... . 142"

"The dissident movement in Russia, despite everything, remains compliant with the regime. It is a diet product. For my part, I stay outside of this whole society. I don't fight any diet. p. 143"

"I address every man, my writings seek to reach what is human in every living being. p. 143"

"The S-F is a very powerful, very modern tool, [...]. p. 143"

"You probably know that, in my books, many characters - to make the possible happen - fight against the impossible. But if we gather 100,000 people, if we lock them in an enclosure, if we let them live there for a year while feeding them normally, I can guarantee you that I know in advance what will happen from here there. I can write it down for you somewhere, in a small envelope that we will open in a year, in order to check if I was wrong. Because such experiences are innumerable: every time you try to organize a very large mass of people, the methods of organization are always and everywhere the same. And a year from now, when you find these people locked up, you will find subordinates, superiors, you will find inequality, you will find a mafia and a small local “KGB”."

"Furthermore, if people seek power, it is not for power per se, but for the material advantages that their position and influence could provide them. p. 42"

"Communist society is a veritable paradise for parasites. p. 42"

"I must insist on the fact that communist society does not only have negative aspects. I would even say that its positive aspects are absolutely fundamental and that the negative points result directly from them. p. 48"

"Others question the real facts and make mistakes. For my part, I am ignorant of this side of reality and I am hardly wrong. There are several ways to find the truth of things: for me, it's always in my head and in my heart."

"The disease of our time is mediocrity."

"A western citizen is being brainwashed much more than a soviet citizen ever was during the era of communist propaganda. In ideology, the main thing is not the ideas, but rather the mechanisms of their distribution. The might of the Western media, for example, is incomparably greater than that of the propaganda mechanisms of the Vatican when it was at the zenith of its power. And it is not only the cinema, literature, philosophy – all the levers of influence and mechanisms used in the promulgation of culture, in its broadest sense, work in this direction. At the slightest impulse all who work in this area respond with such consistency that it is hard not to think that all orders come from a single source of power."

"After the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, a massive attack on the social rights of citizens was launched in the West. Today the socialists who are in power in most European countries are pursuing policies of dismantling the social security system, destroying everything that was socialist in the capitalist countries. There is no longer a political force in the West capable of protecting ordinary citizens. The existence of political parties is a mere formality. They will differ less and less as time goes on. The war in the Balkans was anything but democratic. Nevertheless, the war was perpetrated by the socialists who historically have been against these kinds of ventures. Environmentalists, who are in power in some countries, welcomed the environmental catastrophe caused by the NATO bombings. They even dared to claim that bombs containing depleted uranium are not dangerous for the environment, even though soldiers loading them wear special protective overalls. Thus, democracy is gradually disappearing from the social structure of the West. Totalitarianism is spreading everywhere because the supranational structure imposes its laws on individual states. This undemocratic superstructure gives orders, imposes sanctions, organizes embargos, drops bombs, causes hunger. Even Clinton obeys it. Financial totalitarianism has subjugated political power. Emotions and compassion are alien to cold financial totalitarianism. Compared with financial dictatorship, political dictatorship is humane. Resistance was possible inside the most brutal dictatorships. Rebellion against banks is impossible."

"Although Russia was the first victim of the global Americanisation, one should realise, that the whole Western Europe is affected. The liberal democracy belongs to the past. So does classical Capitalism. We are already situated in a post-democratic era: The new ruling class has realised that one cannot solve the problems of mankind through democracy."

"I discovered a law of social organization that I call the “law of social regeneration” and which can be stated as follows: when a social system collapses, but the men and the political framework remain unchanged, the new social system resembles the one that has just disappeared. Under this law, many elements of Sovietism were preserved or regenerated."

"Western societies were not born in a day. They were formed over the centuries, at the cost of devastating wars, fierce social struggles and enormous human sacrifices. Western values did not come from nowhere either: they are based on religious and philosophical doctrines which are not universal and which therefore cannot be applied to just anyone at any time. What's more, it is not the real Western model that has been implemented here, but its propaganda version."

"the mathematical modeling of social phenomena only makes sense and can only give a positive result under one condition: if the modelers have at their disposal a scientific theory of the objects modeled. The model is not a theory, the model is only one of the means."

"the model gives good and solid results, provided there is a scientific theory."

"And people will be mislead in such a way that they will chew what they are given and be satisfied. You see, with modern means of manipulation, manipulative people can do anything. Not to mention medical means. They'll just make and give pills, injections, and any number of people - any number of people can be made into anything."

"It is the characteristic of totalitarian systems to understand nothing about humor."

"Communism was an ideal for me. But above all an education system: […]. I was therefore educated and raised as an idealist communist, in the sense that Thomas More, Campanella, Charles Fourier or Saint-Simon understood it, who mean a lot to me. But this communism was perverted and betrayed by the leaders of the Party. The reality I observed did not correspond at all to the ideals of communism."

"F.B._ What is your relationship with Alexander Solzhenitsyn? A.Z. _ I've never had one and I don't want to have one. As a writer, his "work" is mediocre, overvalued. And as a thinker, it's close to nullity. I am looking to the future, and Solzhenitsyn, to the past."

"The intellectual level of Westerners has never been very high. This is still the case today: you don't have to be intelligent to have power. Westerners create computer models, but they don't have scientific models."

"I argued from the beginning that in the socio-political sphere, Westernism seeks to strengthen the non-democratic aspect of the system of power and administration, to strengthen the role of the state, to introduce non-democratic elements into the system of power and to make democracy a means of manipulating the masses and a camouflage for the totalitarian aspect."

"The effectiveness of the Westernist economy is conditioned by three laws: the rational organization of business; brutal work discipline; maximum use of the means of production and labor force."

"Western society is undemocratic, totalitarian in its very essence - at the level of production cells. And that is why it is democratic in its superstructure, in its ideology. There is a sort of law of constancy of the sum of democracy and totalitarianism."

"...Social laws are immutable. You can destroy a nation, but you cannot destroy the laws by which nations are formed and exist. If the West faces a real threat to its existence, it will not stop at reducing the world's population. I'm pretty sure AIDS, SARS, etc. are all man-made viruses. And I am absolutely certain that in the decades to come, the United States will see China break up into dozens of states. This is all the more inevitable since a billion and a half Chinese are violating the biosociological optimum of humanity."

"Biotechnology is likely to play a role in reducing the world's population, eliminating unwanted peoples, etc. But no matter what we invent, the heart of society will remain the natural man with a human body and a human intellect."

"Communism was so organic for Russia and had so powerfully entered the way of life and psychology of Russians that the destruction of communism was equivalent to the destruction of Russia and of the Russian people as a historic people. [...] In a word, they [the anti-communists] aimed at communism but killed Russia."

"I consider him [i.e Stalin] one of the greatest persons in the history of mankind. In the history of Russia he was, in my opinion, even greater than Lenin. Until Stalin's death I was anti-Stalinist, but I always regarded him as a brilliant personality."

"New knowledge [of] the objects of investigation comes not through observation and experiment (as happens on the empirical level) but through logical judgments in the framework of a given or newly developed theory (i.e., special groups of concepts and statements united by rules of logic)"

"Today, fear of the truth is not a fear of the unknown, but a fear of something we know very well. People are afraid of themselves because they know who they are. p. 302"