VASSILY AKSYONOV
187
demic fashion. Having crumbled down in the East,
it
resurrects again in
the West, commercially in the book stores and movie studios, intellectu–
ally - in the last hangouts of free spirit, the university campuses. The re–
search of some scholarly ideologues invites society to the verge of a new
totalitarianism. The theories of so-called "de-elitization" and
"deconstruction" establish a low mediocre level for the arts, vigorously
cutting down the tops of everything which, one way or another, creates
a variety of landscapes. In a bizarre mode, these academic doctrines play
into the hands of the hacks who
fill
the drugstores' bookshelves. It's hard
not to raise the question why some independent minds, those,
hypothetically, boats of individualism, so willingly moor to the concrete
docks of the stereotype. Perhaps it wouldn't be a mistake to say that we
all, the members of the academic and literary communities of the West,
including the splitters of the East, somehow or other, have been affected
by the strange phenomenon of "left censorship," based on the notorious
principles of "political correctness." As regards those now much-spoken–
about theories of "anti-Westernism, multi-culturalism, sexism and Mro–
centrism," their interpretations, sometimes in a paradoxical way, remind
me of the notorious anti-cosmopolitan campaign which was carried out
by the communist apparatchiks in the beginning of the fifties in the
USSR.
For us, "the old Russian boys," with our so dearly-nurtured anarchic
impulses, it's hard to be lured by that questionable stuff, insofar as we
aren't to trust even a MacDonald's commercial.
Poor diagnosticians, we fail to define the genuine origin of the Self,
i.e., of everybody's core, we fail to guess and divide the proportions of
the angelic and demonic. Poor superficial internists, we cannot compre–
hend that this is just one of numerous other even more torturing blind
alleys. And only under conditions of a certain self-leniency can I pro–
nounce a few more or less definite things. A collective consciousness can
be benevolent for big business, the political (communism), or the
commercial (book sales). However, it unconditionally ruins the smaller
businesses which combine artistry and creativity. In this humble and
innermost business, a person, whoever he might be, a poet or a grocery
store owner, appeals to his essence, he is thirsty for an extreme
individualistic action known as the explosion of personal liberty, as
Inspiration.
The three-day August spiritual revolution in Russia was none other
than
a miracle of mass individualism, since every one of those revolution–
ary
masses should have made his or her personal decision, a youth with a
three-colored £lag on the barricades, a tankman inside his armored
monster, a pensioner in the crowd which protected the Russian
Parliament Building and hence, faced almost imminent massacre. Then,
