SWEET JESUS, ADD DARWIN AND IT'S EVERY AWFUL ISM OF MODERNITY:

Famously, one of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's favorite phrases was, "It's boring in the world, gentlemen!" And according to Vienna-based historian, culturologist, professor, and author Alexander Etkind, Dostoyevsky stands as a particular hero to current Russian President Vladimir Putin for exactly this sentiment.

Etkind, born in St. Petersburg, is well-known in the world of the humanities and social sciences for his series of books that have become fundamental to the perception of Russian history.

In an interview with RFE/RL, he delves into the need to psychoanalyze the deep pathology that has manifested itself in the current Russian government, and he maintains that it is through the understanding of Russia's past preoccupations and prerogatives that we can glimpse the true mechanism of Putin's motives in detaching modern Russia from the modern world -- and, ultimately, its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

RFE/RL: Your book Eros Of The Impossible: The History Of Psychoanalysis In Russia, published in 1993, is a collection of essays about Russia's Silver Age (1890-1917) from a psychoanalytical perspective. Nietzsche plays an important role in the intellectual history of that period, and you write that everywhere else Nietzscheism was a beautiful intellectual game, but in Russia it was practical Nietzscheism. Lenin is a practical example. Can we apply an understanding of Nietzsche to what is happening in Russia now, to its war in Ukraine, and to Putin himself?

Alexander Etkind: The first chapters speak of there being a strange combination of Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud. This led to extraordinary phenomena: Trotsky, for example, was both a Nietzschean and a Freudian, although he considered himself, of course, exclusively a Marxist. The most difficult thing for these people was the idea of a "superman." For Trotsky, as for Gorky, and for other people, this idea was essential: to create new people, and these people will live in a completely new way.

Putinism, unfortunately, is intellectually very poor. I believe Trotsky read Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud, but I don't believe Putin has read anything like that.... Once upon a time, [Andrei] Illarionov, the [former] chief economic adviser to the Russian president, gave him Ayn Rand to read.

Tweet   @brothersjudd