“In times of darkness people do not uncertainty anything” (Montescius)
Book Alexander Etkinda, a Russian who has worked in the West for years and has been in orbit of the Georg Soros Empire, is simply a reading hard due to the confusion of partially correct and based on circumstantial criticisms of the country in which the author was born, with a immense amount of unspeakable accusations, half-truths, silences, as well as nonsense and propaganda written lies with ferociousness dressed in pseudo-scientific jargon.
Nevertheless, there are 2 reasons for reading. The first is due to the rule that hatred adds to the hater of cleverness in searching for flaws of an object that wants to detest. The same is actual of the author's description of Russian weaknesses. Therefore, the Russians, but besides the friendly people of Russia should not underestimate Etkind's work, due to the fact that an aversion-driven analysis like no another helps to look at their own shortcomings and shortcomings. The second reason is that Etkind's essay is simply a synthesis of the image of the planet that dominates the minds and psyche of people possessed by a conglomerate of the most dangerous modern superstitions that the author besides confesses. “Russia vs. Modernity” besides gives a good example of how to effectively mix legitimate criticism, real problems and noble sounding demands with false ideology.
In Etkind's essay, all kinds of evil he thinks the planet is focused on in Russia and they all merge. This serves to build a self-image of the planet on the basis of the other to the existing one, in this sense the image sketched by Etkind is revolutionary. Among the flaws of the Russian empire, the foundation of strength and wealth on possession, extraction and export of fossil fuels is the first. In this context, Etkind is making a fundamental discrimination between countries whose income comes from the taxes and labour of citizens and those whose origin of wealth is the exploitation of fossil fuels. In addition to the extraction itself, this fact of export is the most differentiated factor. This is the most interesting and containing comparatively much fact part of criticism of the Russian system, in which, as Etkind writes, the state is rich on exports of natural material, the funds obtained are owned by advanced officials and oligarchs, and both groups are additionally powered by many peculiar services officers.
In specified a system, people as taxation payers are not valued, their possible entrepreneurship can be a threat, there is no mediate class or alleged civilian society. The mottos obtained from fuel exports are adequate elite to acquisition luxury goods from abroad, get property at attractive globe points and build hundreds of millions of yachts that Etkind compares to statues from Easter Island. The local population can find employment to operate them, but is incapable to produce modern chips, although at the same time Russian specialists whenever they are on emigration, then they make careers in high-tech industries. A large percent of the population continues to harvest food from their own plots, and grandmother's pensions are an crucial component in supporting the multitude of single mothers and their fewer children.
The elite educates offspring in western schools while teachers in Russia are underpaid. Defending this interior colony from alien temptations is utilized by a atomic weapon scarer. According to Etkind, specified a functioning society has a state structure that is characterized by the following: “The average people functioned in 2 different political economies. The general public – Caucasian farmers, Siberian workers, Petersburg designers – exchanged products of his work within the country; the elite traded natural resources for western luxury, services and weapons. Most of the Russian population lived at levels specified as those of Turkey or Romania, whose average income was similar; the number lived like Qatari or Saudis. These different sections of society barely saw each other, and the mediate class that could connect them proved to be the missing link."
Past tense in all quotes describing Russia follows that Etkind writing his book in 2023 was convinced that erstwhile it was printed in 2024, Russia in its present form, after losing the war in Ukraine will cease to exist. In another place of the same occupation arguing with John Mearsheimer He wrote: “There is no worse mistake than misprophecies in war. They uncover the desires of these experts and embarrass them." However, this does not change the fact that the image of Russia that he outlined in this section is not lacking the characteristics of truth. A clear analogy with the 1st Republic of Poland during the oligarchy of magnate and Polish people, and above all the economy based on the export of grain, whose crops were cultivated by enslaved and despised peasants, comes to the Polish reader.
If Etkind had stayed in his analysis at this stage, he would not have been besides revealing, but would have remained within the limits of discipline or even common sense. But specified moderation was lacking. The first discovery in his opinion is that countries whose revenues are based on fossil fuel export revenues are mostly prone to aggression. Libya, Iraq or yet Russia itself opposed to NATO's expansion are aggressive in this scheme, while the real aggressors are peace-loving democracies that owe their well-being to citizens who do not consume fossil fuels. The full past of colonial empires and postcolonial exploitation in Etkind's consciousness and explanation does not exist. If we look for examples in past to support this kind of regularity, we could draw the other conclusion: countries without mediate class, rich in minerals or agricultural produce are frequently the victims of competitors with mediate class and seeking natural materials for their own industries and outlets for goods after processing. Analyzing the issue of aggressiveness through common sense psychology, it does not seem that the Russian oligarchs have any reason to wage war.
Etkind seeking justification for Russia's alleged warriorry and Putin combines it with a superstition of climateism which uncritically and contrary to sound discipline confesses. In his opinion, the real reason for Russia's ascribed aggression is the fear that the departure through the West and the planet from fossil fuels will deprive Russia of their export income. In order to make this thesis credible Etkind creates fresh concepts designed to give the features of technological historiosophy its denial of reasonably simple and universal cognition of the causes and past of Earth's climate change. According to Etkinda, the West and Ukraine are heading for a “gay – modernity” based on “renewable energy sources” (RES), while Russia represents the receding past of “paleon-modernity” fossil fuels, and these "not only pollute the environment, but besides corrupt people: this double action is Gaia's revenge".
Everything happens in the age of "anthropocene", which is simply a word by language analogy, which is intended to give the impression that human activity can be compared to the cosmic forces that shaped the Earth's climate in epochs specified as millions of years of Pleistocene. Unfortunately, Etkind does not mention in this context the ecological disaster caused by wind farms and photovoltaic panels. The silence of uncomfortable facts, or the denial of them, is simply a full - book procedure. On the another hand, he clearly realizes that the alleged renewable energy may not be adequate and so approves the thesis of a German economist Felix Creutzig "He proposed measures that would halve Europe's dependence on Russian fuels all year and reduce global emissions by 3 percent. 3 sectors would play a key function in this proposal: transport, construction and food. Europeans would gotta drive and fly less, go to teleconferencing, alternatively of commute, introduce greater velocity limits, reduce the amount of energy for heating and air conditioning in the summer, eat little meat, subsidize public transport and advance social equality. This would consequence in negative economical growth. However, specified solutions are more reasonable than war." While criticism of the fetish of economical growth is worthy of in-depth consideration, the last conviction suggests that possibly it is the another way around, that possibly the climateism was invented to harass Russia and get to her wealth, which she has with specified a stubbornness of arms.
The climate at Etkind's work is connected with even specified a seemingly distant phenomenon as flu and flu-like infections. It turns out that "carbon dioxide promotes the transfer from 1 individual to another of viruses in the air". The extraction of fossil fuels and secreted during their combustion deadly to climate and wellness carbon dioxide is besides coupled with the disadvantages that the Russian society in the area of household and relations between the sexes. In this passage Etkind again cites many facts that may be the basis for genuine concern for the state of Russian society. Divorce, kid rearing by single mothers, low fertility and mass abortion are authentic plagues harassing Russians to a higher degree than any Western nations, although Etkind admits that the number of abortions in Putin's time decreased in 2014 to 1/4 of the 1991 numbers. It rightly points to home violence, alcoholism and an exceptionally large difference in the average life expectancy of men and women as a social problem that has a mediocre bearing on upbringing.
However, as in the case of the social structure, alternatively than placing them in a historical context, and note that they are mostly the inheritance of communism with its imposed atheization and actual top-down demoralization, the culprit again turns out to be ... and what a fossil fuel extraction. Etkind presented this dependence in a distinctive way, writing: "In trying to capture the economic, sex and intellectual character of this kind of man, I gave him the name PetromachoIt’s okay. ” Among another things, its emergence is that: “In Russia, 1 percent of the population worked for oil and gas extraction – only men. In terms of sex inequality among workers around the world, the mining manufacture ranked second – after the military. Another 2-3 percent of the Russian population found employment in guarding pipelines, securing financial flows and protecting oil oligarchs and their assets – and in this case it was only for men."
Several paragraphs further show that specified inequality is not due to natural predispositions, for according to Etkind: “It is known that women are capable of working in mining, construction and safety sectors equally with men. It was not nature, but culture determined discrimination in training and recruitment. Greed, fear and inertia translated economical troubles into home violence, male chauvinism and homophobia in the Petromacian edition." The question of whether sex inequality is due to cultural conditions or the curse of having natural resources is confusing again erstwhile Etkind quotes Michael Ross Writing: “Where there was no oil supply, girls’ education lasted longer, and women had more jobs. This was due to the improvement of another manufacturing industries in these countries, frequently related to the textile industry, which make little wealth than oil, but let greater sex equality."
Similar ambivalence besides exists for women themselves, among whom Etkind distinguishes 2 groups. 1 of these is that: “The oppressed oil state and its allies have become heroes or symbols of opposition (...) From Pussy Riot in Russia to Femen in Ukraine, from Julia Tymoshenko in Kiev to Swiatlana Cichanouska in Minsk”. The another is seemingly benevolent Russian grandmothers, whose sinister function was dedicated to a separate chapter. It turns out: “Grandmothers, depending on how strong her individual charm and power were, imposed their pre-modern ideas and patterns of behavior: community tradition, aversion to risk, external location of control. grandma regulation in families where the influence of the generation of parents – absent fathers and overburdened by the work of mothers – was insignificant, meant slowing down cultural development. (...) The replacement of absent fathers by grandmothers proved to be an effective and lasting weapon against modernity.” Its male counterpart, Putin and his surroundings, is the equivalent of a culturally inhibiting grandmother’s improvement in the country, for Etkind writes: “Putin’s gerontocracy, which is fraught with social services and fascinated with conservative values, can be seen as the idealized counterpart of a household dominated by a grandmother. specified a widowed grandmother’s household was matriarchal. The country dominated by a solitary Cremol old man was patriarchal. Like a bond in a sexless but polygamous marriage, these institutions complemented and supported each another through various economical and cultural links."
The age and communicative referring to the Oedipus complex seamlessly introduces readers to the issue of the war in Ukraine, which in Etkinda's communicative appears not only as air poisoning by Russian tanks to halt the construction of windmills in Ukraine, but also, possibly even most of all, as a phenomenon that reverses the story of Oedipus, in which the old man Putin tries to execution his son, as he writes: "The Russian-Ukrainian War – fought between 2 neighboring peoples who spoke akin languages but whose cultures followed in diverging directions – was in fact a clash of generations; the conflict of Oedipus on a immense scale." The existence of Ukrainian oligarchs, persecutions and murders on the Russian population is completely overlooked in Etkind's story, and the economical collapse of the country over Dnieprem explains: “As Tooze stated, Ukraine's economical growth in the decades after the collapse of the russian Union was 3 times lower than Russia. However, he did not mention that the second country owed its economical growth to the export of fossil fuels that polluted the world, while in the case of Ukraine it was the consequence of the work of farmers and IT workers."
Just as unconvincing as the wealth of the “farmers” working in Ukraine for global agroholdings are his geopolitical considerations, though in them besides comes the grain of fact erstwhile he polematizes with John Mearsheimer indicating that “The war prompted Finland and Sweden to declare accession to NATO. After they were joined, the alliance was much closer to Russia's key centres than to Ukraine's membership." The quintessence of geopolitical threads in Etkind's work is his final imagination of the defedalization of Russia. It refers to the plan of an American diplomat William Bullitta from the period immediately after the end of planet War I, which proposed to divide Russia into 23 separate states as a way to end the civilian war. Lenin accepted the proposal, but yet it did not happen as Etkind claims due to the skeptical attitude of the US president Wilson's Woodrow. Etkind completes his book with a description of Russia divided into many smaller states after a conference akin to that held in Versailles from 1918 to 1919, and writes: “New countries repulsively recalled the long period of their submission to the Federation. And above all, they were grateful to the country that fought war with it and won."
Standing at the center of the author's affirmative imagination of "gay – modernity", which will replace the "paleon-modernity" embodyed by Russian imperialism, is the creation that Etkind describes as follows: "If the worst case script begins, the authoritarian phrase may seem a reasonable way to face the climate crisis". Clearly, it is about forcing a resilient population to live in cold housing and another restrictions. Power in an authoritatively managed grove – modernity is to be exercised in this imagination by Egyptian priests-like experts. Their apology was written in the introduction: “To last an anthropocene, we must trust experts. We live in a planet where risky scenarios are likely, although we cannot see it. It is experts who tell us about climate change, viruses, contamination and another threats. We can seldom test the reliability of their data."
However, the incorrect social structure of Russia is one more time in the way of assurance for experts, making the elite besides distant from the “completion” that begins to believe in the “conspiracy theories” and then “a tendency to self-fulfilling materialization of these theories” emerges. A key component of the grove – modernity is besides digitalisation, which will make not only work but besides amusement and education "digitalised" and all to "reduce emissions". In the description of the grove – modernity there are besides disturbing sentences: “Gaia – modernity is simply a revolution – both permanent and global. Unlike Trotsky (...), our leaders have no time for trials and mistakes.” “Gaia – modernity will be cosmopolitan (...) due to the fact that – as any gnostic heresies erstwhile preached – either all will be saved or all will be condemned.” And "our state is transformed into a fresh state of nature."
These second full pairs of spiritual fervors are the essence of Etkind's worldview and the globalist madmen behind it, and at the same time the justification of a totalitarian planet in which people, in order not to harm nature, are intertwined in digitized enclaves, ruled authoritarianally by experts. This is to facilitate social atomization, the elimination of sex differences and intergenerational ties.
Etkind's views may awaken a grin of pity in those who have struggled to get through not only his intellectual chaos work, but besides became acquainted with the works of scientists dealing with climate, history, geopolitics, psychology or sociology. Then, as you can see on your hand, the apt stigma of weakness, the indicating of authentic problems are skillfully intertwined into superficial, conflicting analyses and paper wisdom creating another crazy ideology. In Russia versus modernity, solutions are strikingly unilateral and monocausal. In this regard, they remind the work of an inexhaustible Austrian painter, who besides seemed to know the simple solutions to all problems, the full evil of the planet besides associated with 1 and besides liked to put in his reflections threads from natural sciences, specified as the 1 about the "sikorka that goes to the sikorka", which corresponds to stories about burning in the oven as a origin of climate change. Above all, however, how well he pointed out Eberhard Jäckel In the work "Hitler's view of the world", he "wanted to realize and realize the communicative "according to its meaning" and then carry out political action on this basis.
Aleksandr Etkind is employed at the university George Soros“who has a weakness for Russian intellectuals” and “more than anyone else pressured Russia to accept modernity. Thousands of young scientists, journalists and artists first experienced creative freedom and fair pay thanks to his charity, the Open Society, which invested millions of dollars in Russia." His book is actively promoted by mainstream media and received besides flattering reviews in Poland in large-volume weekly and portals, and the Polish edition itself was co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. For this reason, too, it is not appropriate to ignore her alone and, above all, her insane visions.
Olaf Swolkień
Alexander Etkind, “Russia vs. Modernity”, Political Criticism, Warsaw 2025, p. 200.
Think Poland, No. 13-14 (30.03-6.04.2025)
