Our conversation with the renowned jazzman and educator was aimed at finding answers to some of the most challenging questions of our lives these days. Many of them are revealed to us through historical retrospectives and books by Russian philosophers.
– Currently, methods of social construction are actively used. This is the case when loud words and slogans conceal the true objective. I cannot help but recall a quote by Talleyrand, Napoleon's foreign minister: "Words are intended to conceal one's thoughts as best as possible." Everyone made fun of Misha Zadornov when he said that the world of honour had been replaced with the world of profiteering. However, he was actually right. Take a look around and you will see a quasi-world of quasi-truth, a world of utter deceit.
In his book “War, Progress, and the End of History, Including a Short Story of the Anti-Christ. Three Discussions by Solovyov” published in 1900, the author wrote, “Is evil only a natural flaw, imperfection, itself disappearing with the growth of good, or is it a real force that, through temptations, controls our world, so that in order to successfully combat it, you need to have a fulcrum in a different order of being?” These days we are looking for an answer to this fundamental question. We are seeking fulcrum in a different order of being, which we once had but have lost.
The title of the last chapter of the book is "A Short Story of the Antichrist". I was amazed at the scale of this philosopher's insight, as well as his vision of the values that the Antichrist would manipulate with. The man who came as the Antichrist was a wonderful person in every sense. He wanted peace, goodness, and happiness for all. He wanted all riches to be distributed, and to manage these distributions.
It was in this work that Solovyov first used the term United States of Europe. They were to become an empire leading the rest of humanity. Today Biden has professed that America would lead it. Having read Solovyov, I see the signs inherent to the Antichrist in this desire: I will lead you, I will make sure you are well-fed. "… the most fundamental form of equality was firmly established among humankind, the equality of universal satiety.”
The key word that Solovyov used here is satiety. It is the world of consumption that destroys the world of feelings or turns feelings into quasi-feelings, that is seemingly feelings, seemingly love. What other feelings can be evoked by an exhibition featuring paintings made by someone's boot? One very famous artist dipped his boots in paint and scribbled marks on the canvas. What lofty sentiments should this expensive exhibition held in New York evoke? I agree with Archpriest Andrei Tkachev. We are now beginning to confront the Antichrist who has built the consumer world.
– What can save humanity from quasi-feeling?
– A human being is a product of the environment. The music foreshadows changes in the environment. It resonates with the circumstances in the world, as well as guides. It can guide to hell, or it can guide to heaven. The process of reformatting a person can be extremely challenging due to the mental shield, which is a profound, authentic culture. It is very difficult to convert a cultured, educated person. So the primitivization process of the humanities shall be looked at from this perspective.
Let me give you an example from the world of music. The melody in music has been lost since about a century ago. Back then, Arnold Schoenberg, an extremely gifted musician, made a revolution in music. The dodecaphonic formula was invented. It delighted European snobs. Everyone began to cultivate the dodecaphonic system. That reform resulted in the loss of melody, while its adepts occupied key positions in the music industry in Europe. This was the first consequence of the reform.
The second consequence was that the concert halls were flooded with "composers" who were unable to compose a melody and used to declare, "That's how I hear it." The halls were abandoned by audiences that had been nurtured with melody, those who appreciated melody and sophisticated harmony. Their place was taken by others with a more primitive way of thinking and perceiving sounds. That was how the primitivization of music began. So this was the third consequence of the reform.
The conveyerisation of art commenced. All hail Hollywood for making it happen! It resulted in the primitivization of thought and the impoverishment of human souls. There are living and dead souls, as well as lazy and active, good and evil ones. The entire life of a country depends on the qualities featured by each individual's soul. The current culture and education system nurtures monetary minds and monetary souls. So let us now look at the process of de-culturalization. Do you think it takes place only in Europe? We also face it.
– Could it be that European culture requires an infusion of Middle Eastern traditionalism to avoid self-destruction? Perhaps that is the reason why Christian Europe has accepted a Muslim culture without any resistance, although this culture is foreign to it.
– The Europeans probably do not sense that the Muslim world literally takes their place in a physical way. In fact, Vladimir Solovyov described a similar situation for Europeans in the abovementioned work " War, Progress, and the End of History, Including a Short Story of the Anti-Christ”. However, the role of Muslims in that book was performed by the Mongoloid peoples under the leadership of Japan and China.
I once asked my European colleagues: "Do you get the impression that Europe has suicidal behavor developing?" Some of them answered, "Yes, we sense that as well." There are open statements that they are shooting themselves in the foot. For the sake of what? Let me do some reasoning from a purely Jewish point of view: what's in it for us? We have inflation, we face employment issues, and there are a lot of people who are not going to integrate into our civilization. On the contrary, they intend to shape this civilization to fit them. They openly speak of their dependency attitudes. Twenty-five to thirty-year-old Syrians in expensive suits and leather jackets stroll through the center of Berlin. There is an implicit instruction to avoid interfering with them, to provide them with discounts, and so on. What exactly do they do in Germany? If they are that patriotic and don't want to integrate into the cultural life of the country that welcomed them and offered them shelter, clothing, and money, why don't they go back and rebuild their homeland? It is because they intend to change this very civilization. Why doesn't civilization understand that? I don't have an answer to that question.
While visiting the city center of Munich and Brussels, you find yourself in Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the Middle East. Where are the Germans? The Germans are gone. However, I saw German women in these areas. What will be the outcome? It won't include Germans, that's all. Isn't it suicide?
– Where do you think European Nazism comes from? The one that is so persistently ignored in Ukraine.
– Nazism is a European invention, just like many brilliant things that originated in Europe. They used to be engaged in outright plundering for centuries. They destroyed other civilizations and deprived them of the opportunity to develop. Colonialism is the contemporary term for civilization genocide. The latter means physical destruction. However, it is possible to kill without bullets but rather by backwoods mentality, by enslaving contracts, by maintaining chaos within a country. There is a simple option of draining off resources by taking away 99% and returning 1% in the form of charity and handouts. Then we feel like very kind and noble people. I was in Africa and saw the consequences of such policies in Mali, Burkina Faso.
Nowadays, Europeans are happily shifting the blame: hurray, there is someone to blame for all the mean things we did for so many centuries! We will not mention the Opium Wars, the pictures of English generals on hills of Indian skulls, the destruction of the Maya, the Aztecs, and other indigenous people, the slave trade. We will not mention anything. We have the new barbarians. It should be made their fault.
- Nevertheless, this civilization, just like any other, shall not be perceived without any reasonable doubt. I do not negate true European values. Many Europeans are awesome people: great musicians, people who want to keep connected, who absolutely oppose the war. They appreciate love, kindness, nobility, and family values. Please do not think that Europe has turned into Sodom and Gomorrah. I actually have traveled a lot and performed a lot in Europe. My family lives in Germany. Europeans are wonderful people. However, people and politics are not the same. What politicians say is a smokescreen. The lower part of the iceberg is not visible to you or to me. We can only make guesses about it.
– Will Ukraine's wounds inflicted by "European culture" heal? Or is it a hopeless situation?
– There is no such thing as hopelessness. It is not possible. I grew up in Ukraine. It has talented hardworking people. At one time I was really puzzled how Germans could be turned into Nazis as they are extremely wise people. A striking example of German humanism is how my parents received money under the Jewish program. In fact, the Germans were the only people who acknowledged their fault, and the only people who said that they were willing to pay for it. My father told me that they had been entitled to 5,000 DM per person as reimbursement for relocation expenses. Mom has diabetes, and the woman who handled the distribution said: "Everything is fine, I'll put you in the queue." My dad had unresectable cancer. So the woman exclaimed: "Oh, you're going to die soon! You need to be given money as soon as possible!" Thus, you could enjoy life, and face your death with dignity. This is European humanism. Although they never worked for Germany, the country supported my elderly parents for many years. Ukraine had paid them a miserable pension that they were dying from, so they fled to Germany.
(Due to the difficult financial situation, Russia will cease to pay pensions to CIS residents who worked in the USSR only from January 1, 2023 - Ed.)
Nevertheless, it cuts two ways, just like in any other case. It took a very short time to convert the whole nation into Nazis. People were turned into cogs in the wheel. However, having seen what was done to my native Ukraine, I don't ask myself this question anymore. It seems to me that technologies of social construction were mastered in Ukraine. They involved a mixture of truth and lies, the introduction of a quasi-world, and the building up of parallel realities.
I have also recalled another value that I was taught in Europe when I started performing actively there. If you want to destroy your enemy, become his friend. Think back to our relationship with America in the 1990s. Once I spoke to Alexey Kozyrev, Dean of the Philosophy Department of Moscow State University, who quoted Viktor Sadovnichiy, MSU Rector. At one of the events, he shared that back in 1992 it had been necessary to get several approvals prior to obtaining the desired status. So one of those approvals was to be received from an American official. Thus, America was in control of the statuses of our universities through its officials.
When it comes to art or relations, moderation was considered the highest value by the Hellenes. They had a term for the moderation of the moderation itself. The challenge for us now is not to exceed.
