Radical Responses to the Soviet Collapse by Joseph Kellner A
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
The End of History: Radical Responses to the Soviet Collapse by Joseph Kellner A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Yuri Slezkine, Chair Professor Victoria Frede Professor John Connelly Professor Alexei Yurchak Spring 2018 Abstract The End of History: Radical Responses to the Soviet Collapse by Joseph Kellner Doctor of Philosophy in History University of California, Berkeley Professor Yuri Slezkine, Chair This dissertation is the first cultural history of the dissolution of the USSR. It examines the spirited and highly visible search by many Soviets for meaning after the discrediting and disappearance of state ideological control. Marxism-Leninism imagined history as an inexorable if halting ascent, lifting humanity into a luminous, just and rational future. But however vaguely that future was described, it bore no resemblance to the USSR in 1989. Instead, at the twilight of Soviet communism, a newly freed press revealed a darkening world of crime and corruption, and criminals and the corrupt were gaining handily from the newly freed markets. Widespread dislocation in the labor market, mass emigration and cascading crises of public health made the collapse a time of incomparable stress and disorientation. And amidst this material and moral crisis, Soviet streets flooded with prophets, proselytizers and mystics, each offering uncertain citizens new and often radical routes out of the abyss. In examining this milieu, the dissertation explores the ultimate fate of the Marxist-Leninist worldview, once its vision of the future was relegated to the past. While that worldview framed humanity’s linear progress as scientific fact, notions of history’s shape are always a matter of interpretation and, indeed, of belief. Different conceptions of time and their implications are the major analytical thread binding my case studies together. The beliefs that my subjects adopted - beliefs esoteric or dogmatic, foreign or homespun, utopian or apocalyptic - led them to reimagine time in cycles, downward spirals, abrupt ends and new beginnings. Viewed together, the culture of the collapse reveals a dramatic fraying at the end of Soviet time and, in many respects, of a much longer European arc. It is not without cause that most survey courses of modern Europe end in the East in 1989. The Soviet collapse was the most momentous geopolitical event of the late 20th century, but a certain story of European modernity - of devolved political power, self-realization of the individual, scientific and industrial progress, and secularization - ends there as well. The USSR, having self-consciously adopted the mantle of that modernity, did produce distinctly modern people: urban, middle class, well-educated and unencumbered from youth by the opiate of religious faith. Yet it is precisely these people - my subjects - who then diverge from the 1 supposed modern path. Their stories raise important questions about rationalism, ideology, and longstanding notions of progress. The dissertation is built on five case studies, each exploring a particular set of beliefs. Topics were selected both for their high visibility at the time and for their radical departure from Soviet life as it was known – they include a history of Soviet astrology, of the Soviet Hare Krishna movement, of the arrival of Mormonism, of the apocalyptic Vissarion sect, and of mathematician Anatolii Fomenko’s popular and imaginative “New Chronology” of world history which, based on ostensibly hard data, folds all historical epochs into the last thousand years. The chapters progress chronologically, and in doing so, trace the origins and flourishing of the spiritual world of the collapse. The case studies are grounded in over sixty interviews, which I conducted in Moscow and among sect members in remote southern Siberia. These form the backbone of each chapter, with substantial buttressing from archival materials, Soviet media, and broad reading in the sociology of religion. Each case study also requires a firm grounding in the specific doctrines in question, and much research time has been dedicated to unrecorded conversation and deep reading of scriptures, books and pamphlets produced by the groups under study. The conclusions of my project should draw interest in several discrete fields. First, it should draw the interest of religious scholars in multiple disciplines. The USSR was the most totalizing and long-lived experiment in altering the mindsets of a polity, and state atheism was a major pillar of its official ideology. In most respects, atheism failed to capture hearts and minds, but its impact was still profound, even as people adopted new and radically un-Soviet beliefs. Science and rationalism retain their cachet among most of my subjects, and each belief system I profile must reckon with the authority of modern science. Scholars interested in conversion and belief in the modern era, and in so-called "New Religious Movements" in particular, should find much to consider in my work. Second, historians and sociologists interested in crises and societal upheavals, especially from social and cultural perspectives, will see parallels between my work and their own. In Russia, this moment has notable precursors at the end of the 19th century, and during the succession crisis of the early 17th, particularly as concerns esotericism and the occult. These are explored in my chapter on astrology. To an American reader, it might recall the Great Awakenings of the early republic or the 1960s, explored with Mormonism and the Hare Krishnas, respectively. And Vissarion’s sect, self-consciously modeled on the ministry of Jesus Christ, introduces an even grander historical perspective. Some of the most surprising insights of the project come from readings in remote historical epochs - indeed, the nexus of spiritual and political crises seems unrestrained by period and place. Finally, studies of the collapse of the Soviet Union comprise a field unto themselves, with growing productivity in history, sociology, anthropology and political science. Political and economic histories of some quality have already been written, but the event - the most momentous geopolitical change of the late 20th century - is predictably complex. I hope that my project, above all, will contribute substantially to this collaborative work, as the first cultural history of the collapse and transition. 2 Table of Contents Acknowledgments............................................................................................................................................. ii Introduction........................................................................................................................................................ 2 Chapter 1: As Above, So Below.................................................................................................................... 24 Chapter 2: Let Communism Live Forever................................................................................................... 56 Chapter 3: That They Might Have Joy......................................................................................................... 95 Chapter 4: Those Who Know History....................................................................................................... 122 Chapter 5: The End of History................................................................................................................... 162 Conclusion...................................................................................................................................................... 207 Bibliography................................................................................................................................................... 211 i Acknowledgments “You’ll have the best dissertation, because nobody else will find people like these.” Nikolai Nepomniashchii, former Editor-in-Chief, Vokrug Sveta Of the hundreds of pages of this dissertation, these acknowledgments are the only words I can claim to have written alone. And they are worse for it - the reader will see here the persistent weaknesses that dog my work, which have otherwise been buffed out by the community that made this project a reality. Specifically, the acknowledgments are wordy at times; weak in argument; full of vague, unprovable and sentimental assertions, and most of all, grossly insufficient in recognizing my enormous scholarly and personal debts. I only apologize for the last - to those who read this section from beginning to end and do not find their own name, I ask that you return to this sentence, and accept my apologies and my thanks. For the rest, named below, no amount of polish could reveal the depth of my gratitude. That isn’t entirely true - certain grant-giving institutions dictate precisely the gratitude I am to express, and I do so with perfect sincerity: Research for this dissertation was supported in part by a fellowship from IREX (International Research & Exchanges Board) with funds provided by the United States Department of State through the Title VIII Program. Neither of these organizations are responsible for the views expressed herein. The research and writing were also assisted by a Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies. At the University of California, I have been privileged