New “Demons”

Here is a dialogue in which I’ve participated thousands of times. Literally.

— Ukrainian leaders are crooks and thieves.
— No, they are building democracy in hostile circumstances created by Russia.

— They are banning Russian language and Russian culture and bringing back ultra-nationalist hateful rhetoric.
— No, they are building democracy in hostile atmosphere created by Russia.

— They burn civilians in Odessa, shoot them down in Donetsk, and everywhere else they can detect dissent and challenge.
— That’s a normal democratic process. How else can you build democracy in hostile atmosphere.

Of course, a mirror image of that exists when the subject is Russia.

— Russia are trying to rebuild after years of corruption and mismanagement.
— No, Russia is rebuilding Soviet Union and wants to control the world.

— Russia is quickly liberalizing, decriminalizing, and opening up.
— No, they are extending their autocracy in a more sophisticated manner.

It can go on forever, of course; but the question is rather fundamental. Why, when dealing with very similar people, with people who lived side by side for centuries, who shared culture, religion, history, achievements, failures, husbands, wives, children — why are we taking such a different view?

It is clear that behind it, lies a mass psychosis, mass formation, fostered by years of cold war and centuries of Russophobia. When suddenly, all the bad is projected upon Russia, and all the good — upon Ukraine.

Why is this cliche-ridden discourse persist, however? We don’t do it with other national or cultural groups. On the margins, maybe, but not as the part of the accepted discourse.

Teaching Dostoevsky, I am discovering a rather disturbing answer.

It would be a cliche to observe that Dostoevsky was a profound psychologist. Even Nietzsche had acknowledged it. But Dostoevsky’s insights spread beyond individual paranoias, anxieties and projections, to the formation of mass psychosis.

His Demons, also known as Possessed, is not a satire of Russia’s failed revolutionary plotters. It is not an expose of liberals. Nor is it a study of some demonic Prince of Darkness, Stavrogin and his nihilistic rebellion. It is about the formation of mass psychosis of the modern era. Dostoevsky was there long before Europe embark on its mass psychoses of the XX century, resulting in war hysteria, nazism, McCarthyism and so on.

What triggers the provincial society that Dostoevsky describes to embark on the most ridiculous behavior. One guy thinks that pulling people by the nose, biting their ears and raping young girls constitutes metaphysical rebellion. Another claims that God is synthetic body of Russian people, the third asserts that by committing suicide he becomes god. The fourth suggests that absolute freedom is achieved through absolute slavery. The list of maniacs can go on, including the Russian-German governor, who fails to govern but spends time cutting trains and boats out of paper, and listens only to his German secretary and over-ambitious wife, several holy fools, former liberal professor, sex-obsessed women who want to sleep with Stavrogin (Rasputin of his time), and various city officials, who cheat, lie, abuse, yet dream of socialist brotherhood and liberty.

What unites all these maniacs, besides the hatred of the current state of affairs? It is one person only that runs from one group to another, and unites them all. Pyotr Verkhovensky, who has the courage to declare that he is not a socialist, but a scoundrel.

In other words, for Dostoevsky, it takes a cynical scoundrel (read politicians and media) — whip the whole town into a frenzy of violence, hatred, paranoia and crime. Pyotr lies, flatters, procures women, bullies, incites murders and suicides, organizes carnivals that end in fire and violence, and eventually begins to run the whole region.

Dostoevsky’s title implies some form of demonic possession. Town in general, and people individually, all became possessed. But underneath this “supernatural” explanation, lies a much more banal one. Pyotr is an actual son, and many others are “spiritual” children of a naive, liberal professor who can only mock and dismiss, who has no clue of current political or social state of affairs, but writes about some liberal attempt of some liberal town in medieval Switzerland. It is this parental cynicism, mockery, negligence, and moral vacuum that open the space for demonic possession.

And now let’s look at all the current EU leaders. Are they not the modern equivalent of Pyotr Verkhovensky? Their parents were cynical communists (if we are talking about Baltics, Poles, or Ukrainians), or the hippies of the sixties in case of the western leaders. Their obnoxious kids, all those Clintons, von der Leyens, Kaja Kalasses, Starmers, Macrons and Zelenskys — are nothing but scoundrels. They run around the world capitals, organize chaos, collect money, induce violence and mayhem, resort to the services of Epsteins, and sow further cynicism and corruption.

Dostoevsky exposed the methods and origins of these “demons” very well. But his solution sounds a bit naive. So the “father” of all these motley crew of demons, the liberal professor, scandalized by what he had witnessed and encouraged, has the change of heart, reads Bible, and calls for Jesus to exorcise the demons.