PUSHKIN #6-7. SUMMARY

The renewed Pushkin offers a wide range of materials - differing both in their topics and manner of presentation - which analyze not only books and problems related to reading but also urgent issues of politics, history and language. One may say that Pushkin aims at providing a diagnosis of the phenomena of modern Russian culture in those spheres between which within society itself there often seems to be no visible interaction. This diagnosis is made on the basis of the existing practices of journalistic and analytical discourses. Pushkin contributors - writers, journalists and scholars - each in his or her own specific way are engaged in treating the problems of general interest.

Thus, the opening bloc of materials concentrates on the problem of civil rights and their guarantees, approaching it from the journalistic perspective. Mark Pechersky analyzes the experience of Martin Luther King, his unprecedented struggle for the equal rights of Blacks in America, the struggle that went hand in hand with certain tangible restrictions. Mikhail Veller deals with the current situation of actual illegality in this country. Comparing the Lynch trial and the Law, he comes to the almost paradoxical conclusion that the former is preferable to the latter in the conditions when the content of the Law is reduced to the literally conceived "Christian morals of general charity". The impotence of the Law is a synonym of the death of civilization, in the author's opinion.

The next section is devoted exclusively to the Stolitsa magazine. Natalya Ivanova recollects her cooperation with this magazine at the time when Stolitsa was still in its cradle, developing its popular, yet far from populist, style. Valeria Novodvorskaya tells the sad story of the collapse of Andrey Malgin's Stolitsa which was executed for "high treason" because of its unrelenting adherence to Western values and an active anti-war stance. Mikhail Dubrovsky's material analyzes the difficulties of the third version of Stolitsa, explaining its "honorary capitulation" by the fact that "yuppies" contributing to the magazine have in fact neglected the real reading public that was far from being well-to-do. The uniting pathos of the periodical meant for Muscovites was gradually forever lost.

Entering into a discussion with Alexander Etkind, author of the recently published intellectual best-seller "Khlyst", Sergey Zemlyanoi offers his own interpretation of the history of Russian sects, establishing, among other things, a continuity between the sectarian thinking and movement of the 19th-early 20th centuries, on the one hand, and the religious situation in Kiev Russia at the time of the adoption of Christianity as a state religion, on the other.

Mikhail Iampolsky offers a reader's diary focusing on the writings of the recently deceased Ernst Junger. The author calls him one of "the cleverest writers of the 20th century". While expressing his personal preferences as a reader, Iampolsky concludes that our reading is always directed by the unconscious. This explains his well-understood scepticism about "the principles of philological intertextuality and the cultural context".

The essay by JorgeLuis Borges unknown to the Russian readers reveals the writer's unexpected interest in "Russian enigmas". Based on a note kept in the Vatican library and attributed to Danzas, Pushkin's second, Borges develops the apocryphal version of the fatal duel, suggesting that by killing himself Pushkin not only "corrects" the will of the Creator, subjecting actual events to the "laws of high tragedy", but also for the last time desperately demonstrates to the world "the firy blood" of his African ancestors.

Kyrill Kutalov continues the topic of writers. In a manner reminiscent of the grotesque he creates a combined portrait of the Modern Russian Writer: it is a centaur consisting half of (the prose of) Gandlevsky and half of (the prose of) Melikhov.

Robert Coalson's article actually problematizes the interpretation of Soviet history. He shows the characteristic features and obvious defects of the so-called "revisionist" (apologetic) trend in recent Western studies of the Stalinist regime and its sources.

In the section entitled "The News of Language" Zinovy Zinik writes about the change in the energetic potential of the speech of live communication. To his mind, this change is due to the fact that for the first time the sensation of unity, which was at the core of recent communication in Russia, is replaced with "the comprehension of one's individuality" outwardly seen as "indifference, treason and treachery" on the part of old friends.

Evaluating the current situation of the Russian libraries, Margarita Samokhina indicates various possibilities (including those that may bring profit) of their carrying out their cultural and educational mission. The substantial conversation between Mikhail Kotomin and Andrey Rossius, young head of one of the chairs of the Moscow State University, sheds light on the situation in the universities and, in particular, on the teaching and studying of classical philology at present.

Sergey Mitrofanov brings the reader back to the sphere of literature proper. His essay is a kind of apology of the Russian thriller. He imbues the thriller with a viability that has left other literary practices and genres. Among the most noticable authors of action books he mentions Alexander Bushkov, Daniil Koretsky and Sergey Alekseyev.

Exploring the technology of the political scandal, Maksim Sokolov demonstrates the degree of deviation from it in modern Russian periodicals, "Moskovsky Komsomolets" first of all. By adding piquant details, these periodicals neither reveal nor change anything in the bad reputation of politicians and bankers. However, thanks to the efforts of the press they are gradually transformed into literary characters. The "minister-as-Faust - banker-as-Mephisto" theme in its degraded version becomes prevailing.

Suddenly discovering himself as a direct participant of the election campaign in Nizhny Novgorod, Ivan Zasursky offers his lengthy notes full of bitter revelations about the badly organized and corrupted local electoral process.

Anton Katin singles out the main genres used by the mass media in creating the portrait of a politician. They include: ode, sacral life description, icon-painting, invective, Pandora's Box, or simple blackmail, akin to the former, puppets imitated on an ever increasing scale by real politicians, and, lastly, psychological portrait brilliantly incorporated in the creative work of Maksim Sokolov. Katin's conclusion seems to be the following: in the absence of coherent political programs politicians have nothing else to do than to imitate their own characters and prototypes, however literary and irreal they may seem.

The section "Not far from Moscow" opens with Sergey Datsyuk's sober description of the modern Ukrainian elite which is in a state of tormenting transition. Its main characteristic feature appears to be "the inability to construct life strategies connected with state institutions", i.e. its fundamentally marginal position, as well as its inability to transform ideology into texts. The author predicts the downfall of this elite at the coming elections.

Ilyas Mitupov indulges in nostalgic recollections of a Vilnius book lover, whereas Victor Toporov describes the exotic ideology and activities of today's Leningrad separatists.

In its next section Pushkin presents "The Third Millennium" project. The recently set up "Committee 2,000" sees its task in elaborating the style, scenario, and concrete forms of celebrating the "Russian Millennium". One may find here information about similar institutions abroad.

Georgy Knabe's "Europe. Rome. World" is an important contribution to the subject. His essay tackles not only the inherent need in self-identification with the socium on the part of the human society, but also the form this necessity takes today - at the end of the second millennium - all over the world and in particular in Europe. The author arrives at the conclusion that the idea of Europe, with its clearly expressed Latin roots, is precisely the factor of real integration - both of alien elements into European culture and of the separate nation-states situated on the territory of Europe into a single unified community. European Latinity consists first of all of the stable legal regulations developed by the Roman Law. It is on their basis that the highly attractive and efficient system of European social security functions today. If "the legacy of the ancient Roman world" in the form of a harmonious balance (if only an ideal) is "the root and foundation of the European cultural and historical tradition", it is not unreasonable to suggest that this very legacy together with its values "will not disappear in the flow of the millennia".

Vyacheslav Glazychev reflects on two specific capitals - Washington and Moscow. Their insufficiency as cities is explained by the fact that Washington being an administrative center is inefficient as a normal city, whereas Moscow shows at once the absence of a municipal policy and the anachronism of its current transformations.

Denis Dragunsky continues the theme of "millennium". He focuses his attention on the Russian national project. Determining the contours of the latter for the third millennium, the author postulates the necessity of solving the following problems: adequate spatial self-determination replacing the historical project of expansion; adaptation of ethnism to the globalistic concepts of the 21st century; the mastering of a lucid Russian language as opposed to the so-called Russotalk marked with an opacity of meaning; rejection of "the Christian Orthodox dialectics"; finally, alteration of the Russian style, i.e. of "the ordinary daily, social and mental habits".

Mikhail Epshtein's lengthy text explores the technological power of the Internet as a medium which exceeds the message (to paraphrase Marshall Macluhan's famous aphorism "The medium is the message" with respect to communicative means). The essay treats the actual situation of hyper-authorship when the writer (or writers, to be more exact) is not confined to the easily identifiable limits of a biological being. And this is not so much a case of pseudonymy, as the "interference" of two or more probable authors, "their overlapping". On these grounds the author, described earlier in terms of his death, may resurrect.